Climate Change
gregladen | May 21, 2013There are good reasons to believe that global warming leads to more storminess, but the exact nature of that transition is unclear and hard to measure. Part of the reason for this difficulty is that a given type of storm may become more likely under certain conditions caused by climate change, while a different kind of storm may become less likely, with the "storminess" overall increasing but doing so indifferent ways across time. Also, the most severe, and thus possibly the most important, weather events are infrequent so it is difficult to see changes over time with any statistical…
gregladen | May 20, 2013The story of climate change has always been more of worst-case, or at least, worser-case scenarios developing and less about good news showing up out of nowhere and making us unexpectedly happy.
A few decades ago, it became clear that the release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere primarily as CO2 was going to cause a greenhouse effect (yes, dear reader, we've known this for looooong time ... the idea that this is a recent and still untested idea is a lie you've been fed so many times some of you may have begun to believe it). At that time climate scientists thought, reasonably, that…
gregladen | May 20, 2013There is a book called "The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania" produced by the Heartland Institute. The Heartland Institute is famous for doing all that work to prove that smoking is not bad for you, and more recently, that climate change is not real or is not important or is not human-caused etc. etc. Heartland is a libertarian "think" tank that receives money form big corporate interests like Tobacco and Petroleum and then uses that money to advance the interests of those corporate entities, regardless of the actual truth of the situation. They also use…
gregladen | May 18, 2013Again and again. Do you have to take a stupid pill every day to be a reporter? Or are reporters like this one speaking down to their audience. Either way, it's shocking.
gregladen | May 17, 2013Apparently that is a thing:
NEW YORK and COLORADO SPRINGS, May 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Over half of sustainable, responsible, impact (SRI) investment industry professionals say that retail investors (65 percent) and institutional investors (53 percent) are currently expressing interest in fossil fuel-free portfolios in the face of growing signs of climate change, according to First Affirmative Financial Network's Fossil Fuels Divestment Survey.
Read the rest here.
See also this:
Securities of fossil fuels firms, as an economic sector, may soon be on the decline.
Predictions as to when oil…
gregladen | May 16, 2013It is being debated in the US Senate! (Unofficially.) Here's Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on the issue:
See also: Sen. Whitehouse destroys colleague who said God won’t allow climate change
And this:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
gregladen | May 16, 2013An important study has just been published1 examining the level of consensus among scientists about climate change.
The issue at hand is this: What is the level of agreement in the scientific community about the reality of climate change and about the human role in climate change? The new paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, address this question and the answer is very clear. The number of climate scientists who question the reality of global warming or the human role in global warming is vanishingly small.
This is not the first…
gregladen | May 16, 2013The melting of the Greenland ice sheet is a problem, and it seems to be happening faster than scientists had originally thought it might. This is probably because of soot darkening the snow, which collects solar heat and melts the ice. Some, perhaps much, of this soot may come from the extensive fires we are experiencing. That increase in fires is probably caused by global warming. The problem is, we don't know enough about the "Dark Snow" phenomenon. There is a group of scientists trying to study this, and they have turned to Crowd Funding to help make this possible.
Here is recent…
gregladen | May 15, 2013Environmental activists have just taken up a position off shore of the Brayton Point coal plant, near Fall River Massachusetts, in an effort to block access by a ship attempting to deliver coal there.
This is the boat.
THIS is their web site, where there is a live Ustream.
One of the activists, Jay O'Hara, is tweeting from here: @oharjo and using the hashtag #coalisstupid
Here is a press release related to this event:
BREAKING NEWS: ACTIVISTS BLOCKING COAL SHIP "ENERGY ENTERPRISE" AT BRAYTON POINT COAL PLANT IN MASSACHUSETTS
Activists have begun a blockade of an incoming coal ship at the…
gregladen | May 14, 2013New research indicates that the reflectivity of the surface of the Greenland Glacier is decreasing due to the deposition of dark particles from fires on the surface of the ice. This phenomenon is contributing to unprecedented melting of the ice sheet. This is a huge concern. One of the most significant outcomes of global warming will be the melting of large portions of the world's glaciers, causing the sea level to rise dangerously.
There is a project called The Dark Snow Project which is an effort to measure this newly discovered effect. A large part of this research is being crown-…
gregladen | May 13, 2013Climate Scientists Michael Mann, author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, interviewed on Democracy Now:
gregladen | May 11, 2013Here's a template for a letter I hope you will consider sending/emailing to all of your elected representatives at the municipal, state, and federal levels, if you are in the US. Thanks
Dear [elected official]
I am writing to ask you to join the very small but hopefully growing number of elected representatives and executives in noting the important news this week regarding the human contribution to the amount of atmospheric CO2. This week the landmark value of 400 ppm was reached, which is a significant amount more than the pre-industrial baseline level of about 280 ppm. As an elected…
gregladen | May 9, 2013Experiment showing the absoption of infrared radiation by carbon dioxide. From the BBC 2 program "Earth: The Climate Wars"
gregladen | May 8, 2013Stop lying to your fans. They are beginning to figure it out. Watch:
Here is some background.
gregladen | May 7, 2013Here is a presentation by Genie Scott of the National Center for Science Education.
Far more people are climate change deniers than evolution deniers, but both camps use similar strategies to promote their views. Genie Scott explores the connections, the similarities, and the divergent ideologies. Where: New York. When: 10/23/2011. Hosted by the New York City Skeptics.
gregladen | April 30, 2013Before the release of vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere mainly through the burning of fossil fuels, the atmospheric concentration of this gas was about 300 ppm or a bit more. Soon, that number will be 400 ppm. How soon? Let's see ... it is now Tuesday at about 7pm. Maybe mid morning tomorrow? Maybe early next week? In fact, there have been one or two readings over the last few weeks that have registered above the 400 ppm mark.
So, this is important because humans have officially increased the concentration of this key greenhouse gas by a third. That's a big deal.
Having said that, I…
gregladen | April 30, 2013Published on Apr 30, 2013
Science education is under assault again. Not just evolution education, but climate change education. NCSE policy director Dr. Minda Berbeco traces the history of science denial, the links between evolution- and climate change deniers, recent legislation targeting both, the role of the Next Generation Science Standards, and more. Where: East Bay Atheists, Berkeley, CA. When: 4/21/2013
gregladen | April 29, 2013What do UFO's, the belief that magnetism causes climate change but atmospheric gasses are not related, child molestation, and academic sock puppeting have in common with sea level rise? To find out, set aside some time to carefully read this: UFOs, Sea Level Rise And The Magnetism Of Climate Science Denial and then click on this.
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Photo Credit: Jofre Ferrer via Compfight cc
gregladen | April 29, 2013You've all heard about the horrible tragedy in Bangladesh, still unfolding. Not to distract from that event, or diminish its importance, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at that low lying country in relation to long term sea level rise caused by climate change. I am making no claim here about the maximum rate of sea level rise or about the timing of sea level rise. But the truth is, there have been times in the past when there was virtually no year round ice (glaciers) anywhere on this planet, and sea levels were much higher than they are now. During a time period not too…