climate change
illconsidered | February 1, 2014The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 76
Table of Contents
Chapter 78
Chapter 77
Unburdening, November 12, 2059
I was in a state by the time I arrived at Centre City. I half expected the eco-cops to tap me on the shoulder at any moment.
Edie met me at the door. "I didn't expect you until tomorrow," she said with a big smile. "I just happened to see you walk past the front window."
Then she caught my mood. "What's the matter?"
"Do you know how to upload to FabNet?"
"Yeah... I used to do that for Matt every once in a while."
"Good. I have something I want you to distribute." I…
illconsidered | January 30, 2014The good Lord Monckton, self parody at its absolute finest:
This charming and lively man, with a soul and a wit that are eternal youth personified, is the latest victim of the vicious hate campaign sedulously waged by the canting profiteers of doom against anyone who dares to speak out against the now-discredited notion that the West should be shut down at once so as to Save The Planet from global-warming Thermageddon.
Bowing to extreme pressure from a handful of mad scientists (mad, that is, at the loss of income and prestige that the inexorable collapse of the Great Lie entails), the…
gregladen | January 30, 2014I've written a post I'd like you to read at Minnesota Progressive Project: Why Erik Paulsen Has To Be Replaced As Minnesota’s Third District Representative
illconsidered | January 27, 2014This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
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Information Overload is Pattern Recognition
January 26, 2014
Chuckles, EU Climate Goals, WEF, WFES, POGO, Potash, Smog, Energiewende
Bottom Line, Subsidies, Cook, Shrinkology
Fukushima: Note, News, Policies
Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Tele-connections, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food: Crisis, Fisheries, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production
Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Abrupt CC, Extreme Weather, New Weather
GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Solar,…
illconsidered | January 22, 2014The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 74
Table of Contents
Chapter 76
Chapter 75
Ottawa, November 7, 2059
Over the next month I watched and waited from my vantage point in UNGETF for some Solar Radiation Management [SRM] scheme to take the place of the sunshield. None was forthcoming. There was talk about restarting the Japanese Group 2 effort, even funding Baumgarten, but there was also opposition. The long and short of it was... no other SRM technique was forthcoming.
Finally I felt compelled to act. I was still worried about the unknown actors involved in Matt's death, so I…
milhayser | January 20, 2014The anti-scientific M.O. of some political conservatives was in full swing during the 'polar vortex,' as frigid weather brought south from the Arctic led many commentators to scoff, "look how cold it is, can you believe anyone thinks the Earth is getting warmer?" Coby Beck adds some perspective from climate historian Christopher C. Burt on A Few Things Ill-Considered, writing "cold snaps like this past week’s used to occur every couple of years in the 1800′s," and more like every 5-10 years in the 1900's. Meanwhile the last time it got so cold in the U.S. was twenty years ago. Coby says "what…
illconsidered | January 16, 2014The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 73
Table of Contents
Chapter 75
Chapter 74
Waiting, September 18, 2059
I went back to the university and sat in my office. Luckily I didn't have any more classes that day. I tried to work, but it was no use. I ended up scanning half a dozen news channels looking for information about the sunshield and the rockets.
Finally I felt so useless, I headed back home. That meant I was offline for 35 or 40 minutes while I walked. I could have monitored the net with my padd, but I have always tried to pay attention to the real world around me: Be here…
pgleick | January 16, 2014 Figure 1: Monthly average precipitation showing the seasonality of precipitation in different parts of California, from the iconic California Water Atlas.
California has a “Mediterranean” climate, which means that each year it has a concentrated rainy season, followed by a long temperate and dry period. California’s rainy season typically runs from early October to late March, with very little precipitation outside of these months. (Figure 1 shows the average monthly rainfall for California.) It is now early 2014 and the rains have not come, for the third year in a row. While the …
illconsidered | January 14, 2014The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 72
Table of Contents
Chapter 74
Chapter 73
Sabotage, September 15, 2059
Anna was coming up on her fourth birthday when the rumblings of discontent from the Asian Union began to get louder. A mid-August snow in Japan had laid waste much of their fall crop. China was complaining about a loss of solar photovoltaic power.
Shortly after the Japanese snowstorm, Carillon admitted that there were some kinks in the system that needed to be worked out. The idea had been to keep the sunshields shading the northern hemisphere and have them switch…
illconsidered | January 10, 2014The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 71
Table of Contents
Chapter 73
Chapter 72
No Miracles, April 30, 2059
All that winter and spring, the sunshield count slowly increased. We passed 3,000, but nothing changed on Earth. Methane levels were still rising. Drought, flood and fire were constant. Grain reserves were less than a week, and some challenged those statistics, claiming they were just to make us feel good.
The demand went out for more sunshields. Brahmaputra got more money. That meant more factories and railguns to be built on the moon. Some 150 people in Hipparcus were…
illconsidered | January 10, 2014[Update: it seems clear that records were broken after all as has been pointed out in the comments. So we are only left with Fox's reaction and youtube fog-pee videos. And let's face it, Fox's reaction was pretty predictable...]
The recent cold snap was indeed remarkable and the media was buzzing about it for days. But it was not remarkable for the extreme cold, which in fact set no records, it was remarkable because it has become so unusual.
Unlike the recent heat waves in the US, Australia, Russia and Europe, this cold snap did not, repeat did not set any all time monthly or daily minimum…
illconsidered | January 8, 2014This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
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Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is not Wisdom
January 5, 2014
Chuckles, COP20+, COP19, Sherwood, Post-2013, Pre-2014
Bottom Line, Global Legal Framework, Cook
Fukushima: Note, News
Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food: Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Production
Hurricanes, Notable Weather, New Weather
GHGs, Aerosols, Volcanoes Ozone, Temperatures
Paleoclimate, Oceans, Biosphere…
illconsidered | December 31, 2013Happy New Year!!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
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Information Overload is Pattern Recognition
December 29, 2013
Chuckles, COP20, Brulle, Retrospectives
Potash, Accountability, Pricing Nature, Cook
Fukushima: Note, News, Policies
Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food: Crisis, Fisheries, GMOs, Production
Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Abrupt CC, Extreme Weather, New Weather
Solar, Climate Sensitivity, Temperatures, Satellites
Oceans, Ocean…
illconsidered | December 23, 2013This 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 Sipping from the Internet Firehose...Solstice EditionDecember 22, 2013 Chuckles, Solstice, COP19, AR5, WTO, Retrospectives, Accountability Coal, Energiewende, Bottom Line, Subsidies, Big Banks, Pricing Nature, CookFukushima: Note, News Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, AntarcticaFood: Crisis, Fisheries, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Abrupt CC, Extreme Weather, New Weather GHGs, Carbon…
illconsidered | December 19, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 70
Table of Contents
Chapter 72
Chapter 71
Decision Point, February 23, 2059
At UNGETF things were getting worse. Our Earthside measures were not working. Methane and carbon dioxide levels were still rising. There were a lot of grim faces around.
I put those concerns aside and turned my attention to Matt's sunbugs. Matt's multimedia files required an advanced and expensive Fraunhoeffer chemical synthesizer which the university did not have. A quick web check showed why. They cost over 5 million credits. I began to appreciate how Matt's money…
illconsidered | December 17, 2013This 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 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsDecember 15, 2013 Chuckles, COP19, AGU, WTO, Energiewende Bottom Line, Big Banks, Cook, ShrinkologyFukushima: Note, News Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Arctic Report Card, Methane, Geopolitics, AntarcticaFood: Crisis, Fisheries, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Forecasts, New Weather GHGs, Climate Sensitivity, Clouds, Ozone, ENSO,…
illconsidered | December 11, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 69
Table of Contents
Chapter 71
Chapter 70
Sunbugs, February 12, 2058
We adjusted slowly to the changes in our household. It felt funny sleeping in dad's old bed. Edie didn't say a word when I got rid of the old mattress and rearranged the room. I think she understood perfectly. The guest room became Anna's new bedroom. She was proud to have her own room, until it came to sleeping alone. It was not unusual to wake up and find her curled up beside us.
My sex life with Olivia had been boisterous and exuberant. With Edie, love making was quieter…
illconsidered | December 9, 2013This 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 Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is not WisdomDecember 8, 2013 Chuckles, COP19, GCF, WTO, Hansen, AGU, WCPFC, Potash, Energiewende Bottom Line, Big Banks, Pricing Nature, Thermodynamics, Antennae, Cook, MeteorologistsFukushima: Note, News, Policies Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, AntarcticaFood: Crisis, Fisheries, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Abrupt CC, Forecasts, Extreme…
pgleick | December 4, 2013Just to provide a little perspective, here are the latest data and a graph on atmospheric carbon dioxide, with information going back 800,000 years. Present day is on the far right ("You are here"). The data come from the atmospheric monitoring program of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California and can be found here.
I've also noted the approximate period when homo sapiens first appeared -- thought to be around 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. During all human existence, pre-industrial levels of CO2 never exceeded around 275 parts per million (ppm). They touched 400 ppm…
illconsidered | December 4, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 68
Table of Contents
Chapter 70
Chapter 69
Engagement, February 1, 2059
As I walked home from the station, it started to snow --- a wet, big-flaked snow which seemed entirely appropriate. By the time I got home, I was soaked to the skin and shivering uncontrollably.
Edie took one look at me and said, "Jump into a hot shower. I'll get dry clothes for you."
Half an hour later, I was sitting on the couch, bundled up in a comforter, drinking hot toddy and feeling foolish. I started apologizing. "I didn't plan properly. I should have worn warmer…