global warming
gregladen | June 19, 2013Let me 'splain.
If you want to know exactly where your dog is, you could put at GPS sensor in the middle of it's body, perhaps near the pancreas. It would give you an average position for your dog, and would be most accurate most of the time.
If you put the GPS sensor on the tip of the dog's tail, and used that to estimate where your dog is, you would be nearly wrong much of the time, even if over the long term this would be a good estimate for where your dog has been.
More importantly, if you wanted to measure the movement of your dog, the GPS sensor in the middle of the dog's body would…
gregladen | June 19, 2013Science is good at seeing things that you can’t really see. For example, science can provide an accurate three dimensional model of a critically important molecule even though no one has ever directly seen what this molecule looks like. That three dimensional model of the molecule can be used to understand things such as a) how life works and b) how to address some important disease.
Science can measure the exact proportions of each of several elements that are invisible that make up the air. We can sense the air but we can’t see Nitrogen vs. Oxygen vs. CO2 in the air, while Science can.…
gregladen | June 19, 2013... or Climate Noobs Bork Climate-science?
... or Can't News Be Correct?
(add your own below)
The thing is, CNBC, which is supposed to be a news station, is fueling public misunderstanding of climate science. This is bad journalism, and virtually criminal given the importance of climate change and the need for good science based policy related to climate change. We are long past the point where we can tolerate false balance, astro-turfing, and rating mongering. We need to have a good public understanding of climate science, we need it now, and we need "news" organizations like CNBC to stop…
gregladen | June 18, 2013NOTE: I've rewritten this post and redone the graphic. The original map on which I based the reconstruction, provided by the USGS, is distinctly different than the one the USGS provides today. The difference is, in fact, rather dramatic. In comparing the older and newer versions of the maps, I have decided to assume the later, more recent, version is more correct. I admit to being a little annoyed at the USGS providing a truly bogus map on their web site, but that is water under the bridge, as it were. So, the following post is edited a bit and a new graphic is provided. Thanks to…
illconsidered | June 17, 2013Logging 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
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Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is not Wisdom
June 16, 2013
Chuckles, COP19+, Bonn, Xi-Obama, G8, IEA, EIA, Europe Flood, Cook
Fukushima: Note, News, Policies, Related Papers
Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food: Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production
Hurricanes, Monsoon, Notable Weather, Extreme Weather…
gregladen | June 13, 2013High temperatures and dry conditions have caused the outbreak, increased intensity, and rapid spread of numerous wildfires in Colorado. Again. Fires happen, but the number, size, and intensity of wildfires in the western United States has been very high in recent years, and this is caused by global warming.
Global warming causes more rain and more frequent and more severe storm lines. More rain causes more plant growth in otherwise arid regions, and severe storms knock a lot of that vegetation down. This causes more light to get to the ground, so "ladder" vegetation, which enhances fire…
gregladen | June 12, 2013This is a long but excellent presentation of The Climate Desk, originally posted HERE where there is a blog post by Chris Mooney giving more details.
climatenexus on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free
A recent post of mine on the topic is HERE.
gregladen | June 12, 2013Obviously, you don't want to help melt the ice cap. But you can help scientists figure out how and why it is happening and to learn important details of what might be one of the most important effects of global warming happening right now.
First, a word on why this is important. Look out the window. If you live in Bavaria, and you look out your window, perhaps you can see fish swimming by because you are in the middle of a huge flood affecting Central Europe. Look out the window. If you live in the American Midwest, it is either raining, about to rain, or it just rained, and you might be…
illconsidered | June 10, 2013Logging 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
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Information Overloadis Pattern Recognition
June 9, 2013
Chuckles, COP19+, Bonn, WED, WOD, European Floods, Patriot, CO2 Fertilization
Bottom Line, Pricing Nature, Global Legal Framework, Cook, Warnings, Lu, Weathermen
Fukushima: Note, News, Related Papers
Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food: Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production
Hurricanes,…
gregladen | June 7, 2013Weatherman Bob disappeared today. He was consumed, or maybe absorbed, by his Green Screen. A Green Screen is a screen, green in color, with special properties. A TV studio camera and the equipment it is hooked to replace the green screen with an imaginary background. So, a person who is not green can stand in front of the Green Screen and to the TV viewer it will look like the person is standing in front of something else. This is how weather reporters on TV ply their trade. They look like they are standing in front of a map of the region showing cold fronts and warm fronts and…
gregladen | June 6, 2013I have two items for you. First is a video produced by Media Matters on Right Wing Science. I especially love Bill Nye's facial expressions as he is assailed with unbelievable stupidity:
And now, also from Media Matters, this fun infographic. Share it around!
gregladen | June 5, 2013Since 2001 the amount of Arctic Sea ice that has melted during the summer has generally increased. There may have been a long term trend in melting of ice in the northern hemisphere generally, including mountain glaciers, the Greenland glaciers, and seasonally, Arctic Sea Ice. But the seasonal melting of Arctic Sea ice seems to represent a metastable shift unprecedented in available data. There is probably a tipping point followed by positive feedback. From 2001 onwards, the amount of sea ice melted each summer has gone up, and this has resulted in two related effects: 1) The total amount…
gregladen | June 4, 2013This is a guest post by David Kirtley. David originally posted this as a Google Doc, and I'm reproducing his work here with his permission. Just the other day I was speaking to a climate change skeptic who made mention of an old Time or Newsweek (he was not sure) article that talked about fears of a coming ice age. There were in fact a number of articles back in the 1970s that discussed the whole Ice Age problem, and I'm not sure what my friend was referring to. But here, David Kirtley places a recent meme that seems to be an attempt to diffuse concern about global warming because we…
gregladen | June 4, 2013Global Warming is the increase in the Earth's temperature owing to the greenhouse effects of the release of CO2 and other gasses into the atmosphere, mainly by humans burning fossil fuel, but also by the release of Methane from oil wells and melting of Arctic permafrost, natural gas from leaky pipes, and so on. This increase in temperature occurs in both the atmosphere and the oceans, as well as the land surface itself. During some periods of time most of the increase seems to happen in the atmosphere, while during other times it seems to occur more in the oceans. (As an aside: when you…
illconsidered | June 3, 2013Sipping from the Internet Firehose...
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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June 2, 2013
Chuckles, Roll Cloud, COP19+, Black Carbon, WIN, Patriot, Bodman
Otto, Cook et al, Aurornis, Bottom Line, Pricing Nature, Cook
Fukushima: Note, News, Policies
Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food: Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, Production
Hurricanes, Monsoon, Notable Weather, Extreme Weather, New Weather
GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures,…
illconsidered | May 28, 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
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Chronicling a new Age of Consequences
May 26, 2013
Chuckles, COP19+, GWSP, State of Nature, MAHB, Moore EF5, Otto
Consensus , Warnings, Subsidies, Thermodynamics, Cook, Shrinkology
Fukushima: Note, News, Policies
Melting Arctic, Research Station, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food: Crisis, Fisheries, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production
Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Extreme Weather, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures…
milhayser | May 24, 2013The threshold of 400 carbon dioxide molecules per million molecules of Earth's atmosphere is an arbitrary but still significant milestone, reflecting a near 50% increase in the concentration of the greenhouse gas since humanity first started burning fossil fuels for industry. Sure, the Earth has experienced hotter chemistry before, but Peter Gleick says it all the in the title of his post: The Last Time Atmospheric CO2 was at 400 parts per million Humans Didn’t Exist. The Arctic was also free of ice, and CO2 levels were changing 1000 times slower than they are today. Not that we can't survive…
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…
illconsidered | May 20, 2013Logging 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
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May 19, 2013
Chuckles, COP19+, Arctic Council, Consensus, Warren
400 ppmv, Ventus Project, Red List, Bottom Line, Cook
Fukushima: Note, News
Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food: Crisis, Fisheries, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production
Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Extreme Weather, New Weather
GHGs, Temperatures, Aerosols,…
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…