climate change
illconsidered | September 13, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Another Week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the internet firehose...September 12, 2010 Chuckles, ASEM, COP16+, Geneva, World Water Week, Bees:Study, Bees:Spin Future CO2, Boris Worm, Pakistan, Correa, Cook, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Narwhal, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Pavlovsk Experimental Station, Food Riots, Land Grabs,…
hrynyshyn | September 9, 2010There's always room for one more post about oceanic acidification. Even Sheril Kirshenbaum understates the threat that it poses to the planet's ecosystems and civilization when she describes it a "huge deal." First, let's get one thing straight:
Falling pH levels in the seas do not constitute global warming's "evil twin." That would imply that global warming is oceanic acidification is global warming's good twin. Both are evil. The malapropism was used in a paper published earlier this year in Trends in Ecology & Evolution by a trio of researchers from Spain and Australia, but it's been…
illconsidered | September 6, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News September 5, 2010 Chuckles, Geneva, COP16+, Impact Theory, Bryozoans, Alroy, Lee, Pakistan Bottom Line, Environmental Risks, Grumbine, Cook, Lomborg, Input, IAC, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Tanker, Methane, Geopolitics, Cairn, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, Pavlovsk Agricultural Station Food Riot, Rome Meeting, The…
hrynyshyn | September 3, 2010Long weekend reading: Over at e360, Climate Central's Michael Lemonick sums up the latest thinking on the big question of whether clouds will alleviate or accelerate global warming.
It's no small detail. Just about everyone agrees that anthropogenic climate change will produce more cloud cover. The mystery is whether that in turn will produce a positive or negative feedback. Lemonick's take-home message is that the evidence is beginning, just, to tilt in favor of the bad-news scenario.
And although researchers are still far from certain whether an anticipated increase in cloudiness will…
illconsidered | September 3, 2010I just had to highlight a couple of good laughs from this week's GWNews:
and this one:
(source)
h/t to Kate at ClimateSight for highlighting the first one. Be sure to visit this page of hers for a bunch of other good ones inlined by commenters.
illconsidered | September 2, 2010(Note: due to blockages in the intertubes, this week's installment is late. Apologies to all whose week ground to a halt while anxiously waiting...)
Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Information overload is pattern recognitionAugust 29, 2010 Chuckles, COP15, COP16+, COP15 Cash, Overshoot, Thermosphere, The Question, Pakistan Bottom Line, Subsidies, Cook, IAC Leak, Post CRU,…
hrynyshyn | August 31, 2010Much is being and will be written about Bjorn Lomborg's volte face on climate change. After a decade of denial -- not of the reality of anthropogenic warming, but of the threat it poses to civiliation -- the Skeptical Environmentalist now says:
"If we care about the environment and about leaving this planet and its inhabitants with the best possible future, we actually have only one option: we all need to start seriously focusing, right now, on the most effective ways to fix global warming."
Is this worthy of a blog post? In a perfect world, no. But then, in a perfect world, I would be…
illconsidered | August 31, 2010So apparently, according to an "exclusive" in the Guardian, Bjørn Lomborg is about to put his "Cool It"thrusters into full reverse and declare that the world should be spending $100 billion per year towards "resolving the climate change problem by the end of this century".
This is a very interesting development to say the least.
My question to readers is both why do you think he is doing this and does it matter? Clearly we can only speculate on his motives and sincerity and I am not one to jump to negative conclusions without good reason, but should anyone care why he has changed his tune?…
hrynyshyn | August 30, 2010Former New York Times environment reporter Andrew C. Revkin was, once upon time, considered the leading light in that small community of professional journalists who have the luxury of devoting most of their working hours to climate change. Not so much anymore.
Since leaving the Times a few months back to assume the role of senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University, Revkin has maintained his quasi-journalistic role as the blogger behind the times Dot Earth blog. But the big change over the past year or so involves his reputation among other climate bloggers.
It's not…
hrynyshyn | August 26, 2010The invaluable pseudonymous Tamino has a brilliant explanation of the causes of the "global cooling" trend in the mid-20th century. There's nothing new, except the clarity of the writing. So if you've ever been stumped by a skeptic who suggests that anthropogenic climate change theorists can't explain why the planet cooled for the three decades following the Second World War, bookmark this post.
Just a tease:
... the 1940-1975 time period experienced anthropogenic global cooling. This cooling was from the same root cause as volcanic cooling, namely aerosols (mostly sulfate aerosols) in the…
illconsidered | August 25, 2010So over at Keith Kloor's place, we see Keith read a comment of Michael Tobis', (read it for your self here) in which he says: "Adaptation is crucial" and "adaptation and mitigation are not a tradeoff. They are two faces of the same coin." along with a whole bunch of, typical for Tobis, nuanced and intelligent points.
What does Keith want his readers to take away from that? That Michael Tobis is a hypocrite who does not really care about suffering humanity and his whole schtick is "the typical zero-sum talking point, that mitigation (curbing carbon emissions) has to take precedence over…
illconsidered | August 24, 2010I know we have a few denizens of the lands down under (I include New Zeland in that) so I thought there might be some interest in this analysis by George Monbiot of the recent national elections in Australia.
Apropos for this blog his take is all about climate change policy. Be sure to read to the end for this well supported clincher: "Right-wingers are making monkeys of themselves over climate change not just because their beliefs take precedence over the evidence, but also because their interests take precedence over their beliefs." Amen!
Mandas, crakar, Deepwater, adelady, does he get…
hrynyshyn | August 24, 2010A couple of scientists at the University of Montana say they have detected a small but non-negligible decline in global terretrial "net primary production." NPP is basically a way of measuring plant growth -- how much carbon they're removing from their surroundings and turning into biomass. To my mind, there are two noteworthy aspects to their research, which just appeared in Science. Both led to me to the phrase that is the title for this post, although each use carries distinct meanings.
First, "Drought-Induced Reduction in Global Terrestrial Net Primary Production from 2000 Through 2009"…
illconsidered | August 24, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Sipping from the internet firehose...August 22, 2010 Chuckles, COP16+, Geneva, Kathmandu, AAS Report, McShane & Wyner, Zhao & Running The Question, China, Russia, Pakistan, World Bank, Overshoot, Basic Versions, IAC, Post CRU, Montford Melting Arctic, Antarctica Food Crisis, GMOs, Pavlovsk Agricultural Station, Food Production…
illconsidered | August 23, 2010Via a new blog started up this summer, Fool me Once (sounds like wishful thinking ;-), proprieter Alden has graciously permitted me to embed a most excellent video he has produced on arctic sea ice.
He is covering a standard denialist talking point, that arctic sea ice has/is recovering, so the concepts will not be unfamiliar to any regulars here, but the very clear trains of argument and great use of data and graphics make this well worth watching.
The original posting is here.
His other post from about a month ago, is similarily clear and compelling. (Warning: video starts automatically,…
illconsidered | August 9, 2010Regular readers will recall a recent post pointing to Dr Roy Spencer being cannabalized cannibalized over his stubborn insistence that the Greenhouse Effect does not violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Well, he seems to be a glutton for punishment as he is taking another crack at it.
This time, I am only pointing it out because he has taken a high tech experimental approach to observe the actual atmospheric back radiation and an interesting post results (hi tech compared to his last hotplate device!).
I just skimmed the comments, like last time, and while the die-hards are still hard to…
illconsidered | August 4, 2010I think this YouTube video gets an A+ for content as it presents a great lineup of the compelling reasons we can be very confident that the case for anthropogenic global warming is solid.
But on style it does lack a little, oh well. If you want style, Lord Monckton is your man!
This video might be good to pass along as an intorduction/overview to any friends you might have who are not already well versed in the science of this issue.
illconsidered | August 2, 2010This, from adelady, is so well put I just had to highlight it. It is a response to the usual "we'll just deal with whatever climate change throws at us later" inactivist argument:
The one thing we do have in our favour is our astounding intelligence - it's also astounding how we fail to use that intelligence intelligently. As far as dealing "with any changes that occur", why on earth would we not use our wits to ensure that changes are minimised or directed in a way that best suits us? Cleverness, innovation, imagination - these are not mysterious, magical properties that will emerge in…
illconsidered | August 2, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the internet firehose...August 1, 2010 Chuckles, BASIC, Bonn, COP16+, Water, Phytoplankton, State of the Climate, WCI, Free Access Subsidies, Psych, Snowstorms, Post CRU, Pepsigate Melting Arctic, HMS Investigator, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, Temperatures,…
illconsidered | July 30, 2010An excellent article by Michael, again, and an interesting comment thread underneath. I have rarely seen RPJr more forthcoming and clear about his whole angle in the climate policy debate. I also have to confess I see very little value in the "honest broker" concept as he defines and advocates it (Eli is quite right) and no justification for his distasteful attacks on Real Climate and Jim Hansen.