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| CLIMATEDEBATEDAILY.COM | November 21, 2008 |
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Calls to action
Underground carbon sequestration would be a way to deal with emissions from coal-fired power plants. Now a practical means to sequester may be on the horizon ...continue »
After years of living in fear of climate change, we are fast acquiring the weapons to defeat it. But the only man who can unite humanity for this struggle is Barack Obama ...continue »
Capping carbon emissions would spur on technology, create new jobs, and add to economic prosparity around the globe, say a group of U.S. business leaders ...continue »
The heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ...continue »
Scientists have unveiled the first direct evidence that massive floods deep below Antarctica's ice cover are accelerating the flow of glaciers into the sea ...continue »
Global warming will have a devastating impact on California's agriculture, infrastructure, and overall economy over the next century, according to a new report ...continue »
A thick brown cloud of soot and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threatens health and food supplies across the world: the newest threat from global warming ...continue »
It is frightening to see how quickly the oceans are changing: more than 90% of the oceans' top predators – large sharks, tuna, swordfish, cod – are now gone ...continue »
A type of rock found at or near the surface in Oman and other areas around the world could be harnessed to soak up globe-warming carbon dioxide ...continue »
The outlook for oil is even bleaker than it was a few years back. Three out of five petroleum geologists surveyed think global oil output will peak within 10 years ...continue »
Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at the Los Alamos laboratory ...continue »
What are the General Circulation Models that the IPCC uses to predict future warming, and how exactly do they work? Some top climate modellers have written a FAQ ...continue »
President-elect Obama will shred the Bush administration's energy policies and introduce a major climate bill to bring the US back into the international environment fold ...continue » [more] [more]
Even as the world struggles to fashion fair and effective forms of mitigation, adaptation will be essential to minimize the worst consequences of climate change ...continue »
In a graph of US federal R&D dollars, the portion that represents money going to energy research resembles an emaciated python that had one decent meal ...continue »
Solar power is exploding in America, with states from California to New Jersey vying to attract renewable energy companies. The potential for job creation is huge ...continue »
Until recently the data showed less warming in the tropical troposphere than on the surface, a result inconsistent with basic climate theory. The discrepency is now resolved ...continue » [more]
It's been shown that human activity is responsible for climate change in North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia. But not Antarctica. Until now, that is ...continue » [more]
Thomas L. Friedman explains why the country that creates an energy technology revolution is going to have the most national security, economic security and global respect ...continue »
The consulting editor of Petroleum Review – a flagship oil-industry journal – claims peak oil will occur by 2013. He's calling for an industrial Green New Deal, starting now ...continue »
When John Sterman asked 212 MIT grad students how much CO2 emissions must be cut in order to stabilize atmospheric carbon levels, he got a perplexing result ...continue »
Risks of inaction over climate change far outweigh the turmoil of the global financial crisis, says economist and global warming expert Sir Nicholas Stern ...continue »
Banking crisis, recession, stocks tumbling, and a gloomy economy – you may think it's a bad time to worry about climate change. In fact, it's exactly the right time ...continue »
New Zealand and other island states are set to become a lifeboat nations, "because the world may get almost intolerable during the coming century," says James Lovelock ...continue »
Since 1995, there have been 207 named storms in the Atlantic basin, a 68% increase from the previous 13 years, says the NOAA. Of these, 111 were hurricanes ...continue »
A climate model is like a laboratory. It combines hundreds of hours of work by scientists all over the world, including people who study some very particular processes ...continue »
The Little Ice Age of the 1600s may have been brought about by low solar irradiance. That doesn't mean more recent climate zig-zags have the same cause ...continue »
An more green alternative to our doomed free-market model is now a priority before a global recession, combined with an unstable climate, forces itself upon us ...continue »
McCain and Obama agree on the need for climate legislation, expansion of nonpolluting energy sources, and leadership in global talks on a new climate treaty ...continue »
It would be a dangerous folly for the EU to tamper with the European-wide target of reducing CO2 emissions to 20 per cent of 1990 levels, says The Independent ...continue »
Even the most stringent of proposed climate mitigation measures may not avert destructive climate change in coming years, a new analysis published in Nature shows ...continue »
The ever-worsening reality of global warming is driving more and more scientists to become desperate about our future. Yet deniers continue to recruit followers. Why? ...part 1 ... part 2
The financial crisis for which we must now pay heavily prefigures the real collapse, says George Monbiot, when humanity bumps against its ecological limits ...continue »
Worst case scenario: Antarctica will have a resident population of 3.5 million and global trade may have collapsed by 2040. Meanwhile, the world will be at war over water ...continue »
Despite some recovery of the Arctic summer sea ice this year, the signs suggest the transition to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean is underway ...continue »
Climate change caused by rising CO2 is now widely recognized. But the other side of the equation, massive absorption of CO2 by the ocean, has received far less attention ...continue »
Making green energy work may depend on three unlikely heroes: an Australian engineer by the name of Maria Skyllas-Kazacos, a battery, and the element vanadium ...continue »
The notion that we need nuclear power to address climate change does not reflect the realities of the marketplace or rapid new developments in energy technology ...continue » [more]
The UK government's climate change watchdog says greenhouse emissions must be cut 80% by 2050. It also says this can be achieved at very little cost ...continue » [more]
Conventional projections for how warm things will get come out of a calculation everyone knows is wrong. Paleoclimate data suggest future temps have been badly underestimated ...continue »
California is inhabited by a fantasia of alternative-energy start-ups, many operating in "stealth mode" while they get their products ready. Some will reshape the world. But which? ...continue »
Europe is warming faster than the world average, and changing climate is set to turn the Mediterranean region even more arid and the north ever wetter ...continue »
It took governments a week to drop decades of hardened economic practice to save the financial system. Why does it take longer to save the planet from runaway warming? ...continue »
Purchasing carbon offsets is often unkindly compared with the old practice of buying indulgences from the Catholic Church. But it's a valuable tool in emission reduction ...continue »
The official Australian Garnaut report warns that very steep, fast emission cuts are required to avoid dangerous warming. The UK Met Office is saying the same thing ...Met Office » Garnaut »
One key advantage of plug-in hybrid vehicles is that they will be very cheap to run, at about $0.02 per mile versus $0.12 per mile for an ordinary car ...continue »
Ending America's oil addiction isn't just about the environment. Oil dependency makes dictators stronger, democratic countries weaker and radical terrorists richer ...continue »
Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have grown about four times faster since 2000 than during the 1990s. This is even worse than the IPCC's worst-case scenario ...continue »
Bill Gates is betting that algae will provide the answer to our future fuel needs. Along with the Rockefellers and Wellcome Trust he's investing $100 million in algal biofuels ...continue »
The world's first commercial wave-power farm has gone live three miles off the coast of Portugal. It consist of a group of 140-meter-long "wave snakes" ...continue »
Climate sceptics who argue that global warming has stopped have their "heads in the sand", according to the UK's Met Office. Short-term blips don't alter the long term trend ...continue »
New observations suggest that a ticking time bomb under the seas of the Arctic is beginning to go off. Massive deposits of subsea methane are bubbling to the surface ...continue » [more] [more] [more]
Chemists believe that by mimicking photosynthesis in the lab they could revolutionize fuel production within five years. It's simply a matter or finding the right catalysts ...continue »
Most people think of climate change as a gradual process. This ignores "the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse": ice sheets, permafrost, methane hydrates and megadroughts ...continue »
Mohonk House has remained pretty much frozen in time since Grover Cleveland was president. The result is a unique insight into climate change's progress ...continue » [riposte]
The Department of Energy says $43 billion would buy enough wind power to supply 20% of the USA's electricity by 2030. The economic benefit would exceed $440 billion ...continue »
The jury in effect sat through a six-day seminar on global warming, in a forum where lying is illegal and every statement can be challenged by top barristers. And their decision? ...continue »
Arctic sea ice may well have reached its lowest volume ever, as ice coverage looks set to be close to last year’s record lows, and with thinner ice overall ...continue » [graph] [graph]
Suppose the sunspot cycle were to close down for some reason. Would that be sufficient to offset the effects of anthropogenic CO2, as skeptics think? Not by a long chalk ...continue »
Ice-core data suggest that the Earth's temp can sometimes change amazingly fast, warming as much as 15 degrees in some regions within a couple of decades ...continue »
Thirty years ago a secret organization of US scientists answering to the Department of Defence issued a prescient report about climate change. Ronald Reagan buried it ...continue » [YouTube]
As a jury finds Greenpeace justified in damaging a coal-plant, Oliver Tickell works the figures to show wind is an inexpensive replacement for coal and nuclear ...Greenpeace » Wind »
Whatever short-sighted climate ostriches might say, the fact is that one cold, wet summer – or even several in a row – does not mean global cooling has begun ...continue » [more]
What equations govern how much warming will be caused by our CO2 emissions? If you want a nice, simple answer to question then, sadly, you're out of luck. Here's why ...continue » [riposte]
Scientists are warning that political inaction on global warming has become so dire that extreme and risky geo-engineering interventions need to be planned ...continue » [more] [more]
Most scientists are amazed that climate change gets treated as an article of faith - something to be believed or disbelieved - rather than as a problem surrounded by uncertainty ...continue » [more]
A new study in Science contains the highest estimate of sea level rise by 2100 that has been published in the literature to date: up to two meters ...continue »
A new study indicates that recent global temps have no precedent in the last 1500 years. Will skeptics acknowledge the progress that's been made? (Don't hold your breath.) ...continue » [riposte] [riposte]
Solutions to our food and energy woes can go hand in hand. Consider the plans for giant “eco-rigs” in Japanese seas, and for vast sea-water greenhouses in the Sahara ...greenhouses » eco-rigs »
Ten years on from the study that provoked all the ire, Michael Mann's conclusion is that, far from being broken, "the hockey stick is alive and well" ...continue » [riposte]
Humanity uses about two TW of electricity. The Sun shines down on Earth with a power of 174,000 TW. Therein lies the ultimate answer to our energy problems ...continue » [more] [more]
One of the main challenges to using wind power is that the wind, in general, is unpredictable. But there is a solution waiting in the wings: compressed air storage ...continue »
A couple of weeks ago this article appeared on our "dissenting voices" column. Did you believe it? If you did, you shouldn't have. (See the "editor's note", at the end) ...continue »
For the first time in recorded history both the Northeast and Northwest Passages are open. Artic sea ice extent is rapidly closing on record low set in 2007 ...continue » [more] [graph] [map]
New estimates show that Arctic permafrost contains 60% more carbon than previously estimated. As it warms and rots a disastrous positive feedback will be set in motion ...continue »
Melting alpine glaciers are revealing fascinating clues to Neolithic life. They also pose a severe challenge to skeptics who believe in a very hot medieval warm period ...continue »
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus argue that liberals and conservatives can agree to disagree about the seriousness of climate-change and still agree on solutions ...continue »
Björn Lomborg has been a persistent global warming naysayer and his claims misrepresent my findings, writes Gary Yohe, economist and lead author for the IPCC ...continue » [more]
Vast quantities of energy are stored within a couple of miles of your present location. The direction? Straight down. The next "killer app" may be enhanced geothermal ...continue » [more] [more]
A new study has found that the mercury could hit Sahara-style highs of 120 degrees in Europe, Australia and the American Midwest as global warming really kicks in ...continue »
Last month was the fifth warmest July on record – and this despite the fact that we are presently in a solar minimum and barely out of a strong La Niña ...continue »
Expert forecasts of minimum sea ice extent in 2008, based on July data, indicate a continuation of dramatic ice loss. And that's not even factoring in what's happened in August ...continue »
A new study of rainfall data has revealed that computer models don't accurately capture global warming's effect on extreme downpours. It is twice as bad as the models predict ...continue »
Imagine a naked person at the South Pole. If they put on clothing, they'll appear cooler to a thermal imager, but really they're losing less heat. The same goes for the Earth ...continue »
If you're not duly alarmed about ocean acidification, try putting yourself in the place of a sea urchin spermatozoan fighting its way through the water to the egg ...continue » [more]
A host of independent analyses make it clear that the cost of keeping CO2 concentrations at or below 450 ppm is very low indeed, and that the cost of not doing so will be enormous ...continue »
An oldie but a goodie: Gavin Schmidt's and Caspar Amman's dummies' guide to the "Hockey Stick" controversy, in which they explain why it is much ado about nothing ...continue »
Warm winds are rapidly melting and breaking up the ice over the Beaufort Sea, and Amundsen's historic Northwest Passage is on the point of opening up ...continue » [satellite map]
Ice in the Arctic melted at an unprecedented rate last week, and 2008's decline in sea-ice is now threatening to break the extraordinary record set only last year ...continue » [graph] [graph]
If you take the flue gas from a power plant and bubble it through seawater, you get cement. It may be an extremely effective carbon capture and storage system ...continue »
"Mitigate for two degrees, adapt for four" has long been the catchphrase among climate negotiators. The harsh truth is that even a two degree rise will be a catastrophe ...continue »
Greenland has a new language, "Climate-Speak". Key phrases include "Just a few years ago...", "I've never seen that before..." and "Well usually, but now I don't know" ...continue »
The science of ocean acidification is both straightforward and highly alarming. The key notion is that of a "saturation horizon". Here is a quick rundown ...continue »
New kite technologies will allow us to tap into high-altitude wind, an energy source far more abundant and reliable than the ground-level wind normal turbines rely on ....continue »
Why is it rational to mitigate climate change even when the relevant science isn't yet set in stone? In a brilliant and funny series of YouTube clips, Greg Craven explains ...continue » [more]
Big Tobacco ran a decades-long public relations campaign to discredit cancer research. Big Oil has acknowledged running a similar campaign against climate science ...continue » [more]
Skeptics claim there are no practical alternatives to fossil fuels for transportation. But there are plenty of viable technologies around the corner ...splitting water » algal petroleum » others »
The mantra of the climate skeptics is that global warming stopped in 1998. But saying it - however loudly, frequently and insistently - doesn't make it true ...continue » [more]
A pattern of rapid growth, new technology, and falling production costs is putting solar power on the brink of becoming the world's dominant electricity source ...continue » [more]
What effect will acidification have on sea-life? Disturbing clues are found in ocean areas where the waters are naturally more acidic ...undersea volcanoes » Eastern Pacific »
The moral to be drawn from Ofcom's ruling on The Great Global Warming Swindle? Simply this: don't believe anything you see in a TV documentary made in the UK ...continue »
The weather forecast for the planet is not just bad, but appalling, says Andrew Simms. We have only 100 months left to act to prevent dangerous climate change ...continue »
A tiny area of African land smaller than Wales could one day generate enough solar power to supply all of Europe with clean energy ...continue »
There has been great excitement in the skeptics' camp about a recent article in the non-peer-reviewed Physics & Society. It is inept and riddled with errors ...continue »
The combined average global land and ocean surface temperatures for June 2008 ranked eighth warmest for June since worldwide records began in 1880 ...continue »
The Great Global Warming Swindle wasn't found to be "materially misleading". Why? Simply because in the UK documentaries aren't required to display "due accuracy" ...continue » [more] [more]
Spiralling oil prices that trigger a global power-down could buy us the time to stop global warming. In fact, it's happening right now. Will it work? We're about to find out ...continue »
No mistake is too dumb for someone, somewhere to make if they think they can spin it into supporting their anti-science agenda. Here is a case in point ...continue »
Ocean acidification, a.k.a. "osteoporosis of the oceans", is the evil twin of climate change. It will make coral, and many of the species that rely on it, go the way of the dinosaurs ...continue » [more]
In the latest issue of Physics & Society we have, in the IPCC's corner, a tutorial on the basic physics of climate change by David Hafemeister & Peter Schwartz ...continue »
Weird but true: global warming skeptics tend to be fervent believers in immanent and dangerous global cooling caused by an inactive sun. Here are some relevant facts ...continue »
The really surprising thing about the ongoing collapse of the Wilkins ice shelf is that it is occurring in the dead of the Antarctic winter. Warm currents may be to blame ...continue »
A new technology allows light striking a windowpane to be funnelled to small, cheap solar cells along the pane's edge. It promises to turn skyscrapers into energy plants ...continue »
“If you save the living environment, the biodiversity that we have left, you will also automatically save the physical environment, too,” observes E.O. Wilson ...continue »
Though Mt. Shasta’s glaciers are growing, glaciers are retreating in the Sierra Nevada, the Rockies, the Cascades, and elsewhere in the rest of the world ...continue »
It's expected most species of coral will be killed off by acidification and warming by 2050. With them will go all those creatures that depend on the reefs: about 30% of ocean life ...continue »
"The scientific debate is closing, but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science." The words of a Republican political consultant ...continue »
Global warming is profoundly altering ecosystems. Fish are being forced into deeper, cooler waters, and on land plants are being pushed up to higher elevations ...plants » fish »
When the contributions of El Niño and La Niña are statistically excised from the global temperature record the recent warming trend becomes all the more obvious ...continue »
While a doubling of atmospheric CO2 might not have dire effects on climate, the resulting acidification of the oceans may spell the end of coral reefs ...continue »
PricewaterhouseCoopers says CO2 emissions could be reduced 50% by 2050 at the cost of achieving a GDP in 2051 that would otherwise be reached in 2050 ...continue »
Skeptics are claiming that the loss of Arctic sea ice is a result, not of global warming, but of heat from volcanoes on the ocean floor. Another lousy argument ...continue »
No particular weather event, goes the mantra, can be blamed on global warming. With "100-year storms" striking every 15 years, this pretense has worn thin ...continue »
The right to free speech has limits. Even in the U.S. there's no right to falsely yell "fire" in a crowded theater. In effect that's what climate skeptics are doing ...continue » [more] [more]
The trend of scientific and political opinon is clear, says Tony Blair. For reasons of energy security as well as climate change we must radically reduce our dependence on carbon ...continue »
The sea ice at the North Pole is thin and vulnerable, and seasoned polar scientists say there is a greater than 50:50 chance of open water at the Pole this summer ...continue » [more]
The White House got an email from the EPA saying the evidence for man-made global warming is compelling and robust. Take a guess how they dealt with it ...continue » [more]
Can renewables replace fossil fuels? Hermann Scheer, the driving force behind Germany's hugely successful renewables revolution, has shown they can ...continue »
The latest science says we must stop building coal-fired plants and deploy low-carbon technologies as fast as humanly possible. Cap-and-trade is a distraction ...continue »
James Hansen to Congress: oil company CEOs who fund disinformation about climate change should be tried for crimes against humanity and nature ...continue » [more] [more]
Another skeptical argument down the tubes: a recently reported anomalous cooling of the oceans turns out to be an artefact of poor bathythermograph data ...continue » [more] [more]
"We should act on climate mitigation and adaptation not because we are able to predict the future, but because we cannot." This from Roger Pielke Jr., darling of the skeptics ...continue » [more]
"Bangladesh, 1971-2071: born in blood, died in water." Thus will read the epitaph of a nation already being swamped by the effects of global warming ...continue »
It's an environmental Catch-22. Winds amplified by the manmade ozone hole seal off Antarctica from global warming. By repairing the ozone hole we will remove that protection ...continue »
A hectare of corn produces about 0.2 tonnes of oil equivalent. Rapeseed generates around 1.2 tonnes. Algae can theoretically produce 50 to 140 tonnes from the same land ...continue »
The holy grail known as "grid parity" - whereby electricity from the sun can be produced as cheaply as it can be bought from the grid - is now just a few years away ...continue » [more]
Even the Antarctic winter can't protect the Wilkins ice shelf. A 160km² chunk has just broken up, leaving a huge area of the shelf buttressed by a delicate thread of ice ...continue » [more]
250 million years ago a colossal belch of lava in Siberia roasted limestone and coal deposits and released huge amounts of CO2. 80% to 90% of species vanished ...continue »
An MIT analysis of the EU's carbon cap-and-trade system shows that it has operated well and has had little or no negative impact on the overall EU economy ...continue »
Will global warming take a brief break over the next few years? The climate scientists who run RealClimate are prepared to bet serious money that it won't ...continue »
Rising CO2 levels can threaten life in ways totally unrelated to global warming. For example, consider the fate of koalas, trying to get by on a poor diet of gum-tree leaves ...continue »
Global warming's effects are starkly evident in Siberia. Billions of tons of rotting permafrost are converting to methane, and Lake Baikal is warming rapidly ...Methane » ...Lake Baikal »
A recent Nature article that supposedly predicts a decade of global cooling has been widely misreported. Its predictions are consistent with very rapid warming over the next ten years ...continue »
At least 45 scientists are demanding that their names be struck from the list of "co-authors" of a skeptical document published by the Heartland Institute ...continue » [more]
Nigel Lawson makes an unlikely Dr Strangelove, but he has learned to stop worrying and love a warmer world. The arguments he deploys are, however, less than compelling ...continue »
Those who imagine it's impracticable to replace coal-fired power with clean energy need to acquaint themselves with the basic facts about concentrated solar ...continue »
Warming allows pine beetles to thrive. Forests ravaged by the beetle release hundreds of megatonnes of CO2. More warming ensues. And on it goes ...continue »
Tapping just 5 percent of the USA's geothermal wealth would generate enough electricity for 260 million people. A government energy lab says it's doable ...continue »
Most Arctic sea ice is now young, thin and vulnerable to rapid melting. If winds are as warm as in 2007 then the North Pole could be ice free this summer ...continue » [graph]
The plant hardiness zone map for the USA, drawn in 1990, is now out of date. A new map shows marked warming and rapid northward movement of the zones ...continue »
A survey of EPA scientists has revealed rampant political interference in their work, along with political barriers to the free communication of scientific results ...continue » [Full Report]
Last month was the second hottest March ever recorded, and average land surface temperatures over the globe were the highest ever recorded in March ...continue »
Skeptics theorize that cosmic rays seed clouds and that the sun controls climate by modulating the cosmic ray flux. More new evidence contradicts this theory ...continue »
Samuel Thernstrom, ex-Bush official and press director at a conservative think-tank, is disturbed by staggering omissions in Bush's climate-change speech ...continue »
If the US is fighting in the war on global warming it's fighting on the wrong side. But with a few policies that wouldn't break the bank it could turn that around ...continue »
A useful analogy: imagine it’s 2025, and you’ve got a 486-pound ex-president being wheeled in to accept congratulations for his excellent physical fitness program ...continue »
The Greenland ice sheet is a holdover of the most recent ice age, stranded out of time, a relic of conditions that no longer apply. And relics are fragile ...continue » [more]
Ever heard of cars powered by ultracapacitors? It is just possible that this technology might be about to change the world as we know it ...continue »
It behooves skeptics who trumpeted the low global temps of January to attach equal significance to the temps of March. La Niña notwithstanding, March was hot ...continue » [more]
Concentrated solar and wind power are technologies that could easily meet the USA's energy needs if the government had the foresight to act ...concentrated solar » and wind »
Hundreds of millions of people are facing the prospect of starvation as a food crisis unfolds with frightening speed. Global warming is one of the causes ...continue » [more]
If you're worried that stopping global warming will wreck the economy, you're looking at this all wrong. It will create an historic economic opportunity ...continue » [more]
New technology allows floating wind turbines to be moored in waters up to 1000 feet deep, so far out to sea that the visual impact from shore is nil ...continue »
The temperature predictions made by the IPCC in 1995 and 2001 have been borne out very well by what has actually been measured in the years since ...continue »
The paradox, says top economist Jeffrey Sachs, is that we are on a path to doing huge damage to ourselves, yet the cost of finding an alternative is extraordinarily modest ...continue »
In a brand-new slideshow Al Gore presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting ...continue »
Spain's wind turbines now produce enough wattage to power Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia, Toledo, Cordoba, Granada, Zaragoza, and Bilbao combined ...continue »
A new study argues that climate change should be tackled with a government-financed alternative energy quest, not with a carbon cap treaty. How about all of the above? ...continue »
The shocking incapacity of self-interested humans to respond rationally to climate change has been exposed by an experiment conducted at the Max Planck Institute ...continue »
Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity or by cosmic rays ...continue »
Exposed boulders in a remote and desolate corner of Western Antarctica harbor a warning that the region's glaciers could collapse and drive up sea levels by 1 meter ...continue »
Why spend billions mitigating CO2 emissions when our best climate models are very unreliable? The reasons are absolutely compelling, as Stephen Schneider explains ...continue »
A giant, thousand-ton turbine being attached to the bottom of a loch in Northern Ireland is the first in the world to harvest energy from the tides ...continue »
India is installing 10ft barbed-wire barriers along its entire 2000 mile border with Bangladesh – to keep out an anticipated torrent of climate refugees ...continue »
Unlike sea ice in the Arctic, the way climate change is tinkering with the natural timing of day-to-day life is concrete and local. People can experience it with all five senses ...continue »
The sun's alone among potential sources of renewable energy in being able to meet our needs. It can meet them many times over. So why the pathetic level of investment? ...continue »
Black soot causes respiratory disease and has a much bigger role in global warming than previously thought. Mitigation is easy and the payoff will be large and quick ...continue »
Another ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula is on the verge of collapse. It is larger and farther south than any of the shelves that have been lost to date ...continue »
The true lesson of Thomas Malthus isn't that the world is doomed, but that preservation of human life requires analysis and then tough action ...continue »
Artificial reservoirs built since the 1950s hold back enough water to make sea levels go up by 3cm. Even so, sea levels are going up at a fast clip ...continue »
The medieval warm period is often cited as proof that warming can be a benefit. But it was a time when calamitous droughts wrecked havoc around the globe ...continue »
Skeptics who claim that global warming has stalled might like to try having a look at the graphs some time. The trends could hardly be more stark ...continue »
Unless we bring CO2 down to 1988 levels the Earth will soon be quite unlike the planet on which civilization developed. So says NASA's Jim Hansen ...continue » [report here]
Despite a cold winter, unusual currents have depleted the Arctic sea of much of its old, thick ice. Conditions are ripe for another major melt this summer ...continue »
Skeptics often accuse climate modellers of investing too much faith in arcane computer code. But the modellers are more aware than anyone of the models' limits ...continue »
All around the world the glaciers that store water for billions of people are retreating at an ever increasing rate under the influence of climate change ...continue » (More here.)
Australia's water-starved farms and cavernous empty grain silos are set to affect prices of food around the globe. It's Australia's worst drought on record ...continue »
Market forces will swiftly unleash the private capital and innovation needed to beat climate change if the US government puts a cap-and-trade system in place ...continue »
Russell Seitz is a climate skeptic who despairingly admits that barely any of the prominent figures on his own side are competent in the field of climate science ...continue »
The really scary thing about a document warning of humanity's imminent peril that was signed by more than half of all living Nobel prize winners is that the media ignored it ...continue »
Skeptics about global warming are strangely unskeptical of the theory that climate is controlled by cosmic rays. Never mind that it's riddled with fatal flaws ...continue » (More here.) (But see this.)
Critics of carbon cap-and-trade schemes take note: they worked for sulphur pollution and solved the problem of acid rain at a quarter of the expected cost ...continue »
The skeptics' claim that scientists were mainly worried about global cooling in the 1970s has been thoroughly debunked by a survey of that era's literature ...continue » (More here.)
Skeptics often claim that mitigating CO2 does not make good economic sense. A major new report from the OECD blows that argument out of the water ...continue » [report summary]
The skeptics' International Climate Change Conference was all about science, |
