Sea Ice: Climate vs Weather
Via Tamino’s excellent Open Mind blog: This is climate change: This is weather: Put them together, you get a death spiral for Arctic sea ice:
Planet3.0
Quote of the day
Michael Tobis’ contribution to the Daily Kos Climate Change SOS: The only game in town is the Last Ton game, where the lower the amount of fossil fuels burnt before…
A 2C target is largely out of the window
Depressingly, I agree: One of the government’s most senior scientific advisers has said that efforts to stop a sharp rise in global temperatures were now “unrealistic”. Prof Sir Bob Watson…
The 50mm ‘trick’
From the Telegraph: Wind farm developers using ‘tricks’ to make turbines look smaller Wind farm developers make turbines look smaller than they actually are when applying for planning permission in…
What’s in that pipe?
It turns out pipeline operators aren’t required to tell anyone: After the dilbit gushed into the river, it began separating into its constituent parts. The heavy bitumen sank to the…
There is no solution to the problem of climate change without cutting emissions
When people say of the fight to cut GHG emissions, “this isn’t working; let’s try something else” they are never referring to making our (if it really is “our”) actions…
Shifting norms
My last article took issue with the trend of calling extreme heat-waves (like the one currently affecting much of the US) a new normal. But that doesn’t mean that the…
Deleting obstacles
I have always felt that the choice of Kitimat BC (which lies at the end of a long narrow fjord) as the destination for the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline was…
Only 2% of Canadians think the climate is not changing
Good news Everyone! Only two per cent of Canadians who responded to a new opinion poll believed climate change is not occurring. A further nine per cent believed climate change…
Rational debate [Humour]
via Tree Lobsters!” I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine who are the zombies
What if Natural Gas Produced All Our Energy?
David Appell crunches some numbers and finds that if the US were to use natural gas exclusively for all its energy production it would reduce GHG emissions from 5471 Mt…
What does a climate disaster look like?
The recent wave of extreme heat-waves and drought over much of the U.S. has rekindled the public’s interest in and acceptance of climate change. The inevitable question that always gets…
Muller’s BEST
After a couple of days filled with rumours and wild speculation we finally know what all the commotion was about. Richard Muller, the head of the BEST project, has written…
The nuclear approach to climate risk
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is holding a round table on Nuclear Power and climate change with a focus on developing countries.
Drought’s Footprint
More than half of the country was under moderate to extreme drought in June, the largest area of the contiguous United States affected by such dryness in nearly 60 years.…
Loss of Arctic Sea ice at least 70% man made
Not exactly shocking news, James Annan reports on the recent paper investigating: how much of the decline in sea ice was plausibly due to various natural phenomena like the Atlantic…
Questions for Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson
Now that Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon Mobil has admitted that CO2 emissions will cause warming David Appell thinks some follow-up questions are in order: Last month, Exxon Mobil…
Ars Technica on the Wall Street Journal
From the article: WSJ mangles history to argue government didn’t launch the Internet The Wall Street Journal has earned a reputation for producing in-depth and meticulously fact-checked news coverage. Unfortunately,…
What if we could harness the force for renewable energy?
Randall Munroe (the creator of XKCD) has created a “what-if” blog which is bound to become a delightful waste of time. One of the first questions he asks is “What…