climate change
hrynyshyn | March 30, 2011Last year much was made by climate-change deniers of a poorly referenced section of one of the IPCC reports of 2007 that said "up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be sensitive to future changes in rainfall." It turned out that the claim was based on solid science, despite the best efforts of those who just can't bring themselves to trust professional climatologists. You can read the whole sordid tale here. I revisit the issue because of a new paper about to be published by the American Geophysical Union that bears on this question.
"Widespread Decline in Greenness of Amazonian Vegetation…
illconsidered | March 28, 2011 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 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsMarch 27, 2011 Chuckles, Fukushima Heroes, Bad News, Fukushima Reactions, Fukushima Talk WWD, WMD, Earth Hour, WikiLeaks, Young, Ruddiman Bottom Line, UNGCF, The Question, Effectiveness, Cook, BEST Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs,…
hrynyshyn | March 25, 2011Just case you were wondering what was going on up North:
Arctic sea ice extent appeared to reach its maximum extent for the year on March 7, marking the beginning of the melt season. This year's maximum tied for the lowest in the satellite record -- NSIDC, March 23
illconsidered | March 23, 2011 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 Global Warming News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is notWisdomMarch 20, 2011 Chuckles, Equinox, Fukushima Reactions, Fukushima Talk, Inspiration, WikiLeaks Bottom Line, Thermodynamics, Attribution, Google, Sock Puppetry, Cook Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle,…
hrynyshyn | March 23, 2011I'm almost weary of blogging about nuclear power. But others are still going strong. Take the Globe and Mail's Doug Saunders, who writes this week that we shouldn't even think of abandoning the technology. Such enthusiasm is particularly curious because he glosses over the Achilles heel of nukes -- the cost -- and Canada has one of the most expensive varieties of nuclear reactors around.
I can only assume that Saunders hasn't done enough research, because if he had he would never come to conclusions such as this:
It may be possible in Europe and North America to talk about reducing consumer…
illconsidered | March 17, 2011I am off traveling again so the posting will be quiet for a while and the comments unattended for a couple of days. So be nice and don't forget three or more links lands you in the "unapproved" queue.
Before I go, I thought I would share the YouTube below that came to my attention via a "friend" request. I am a big fan of Climate Crocks and a couple of other climate YouTubers but this is quite different. It is thin on science but very energetic, young and slick, I can't help but think it is a very good approach because after all, we are in a PR battle not a scientifc one.
What do people…
sastyk | March 17, 2011Some of you may know that a publisher contacted me last year about turning a piece of short fiction I'd written from an adult perspective into a young adult novel. There are several reasons I wanted to do this - the first is that in many ways, the young adult fiction market is much more vital than the adult fiction market - a lot of adults read YA fiction, while the reverse is rarely true. There's the potential to reach a large audience this way. The other, more important reason to me is simply that teenagers and young adults have to know about our future, and they need a vision of a…
hrynyshyn | March 16, 2011How nuclear power is perceived by the general public will take decades to return to what it was a week ago. (Kind of like radioactive decay.) But the list of immutable and defining characteristics of the technology is long one and nothing that happens in Japan is likely to change them. First up: the daunting economics.
Each gigawatt reactor costs upwards of $14 billion these days. And climbing. As the increasingly useful Climopedia at Climate Central puts it: "the question on many peoples' minds today is not what the last nuclear power plant cost, but rather what the next nuclear plant will…
illconsidered | March 14, 2011 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 Overloadis Pattern RecognitionMarch 13, 2011 Chuckles, Abraham et al., Fukushima, The Question, WikiLeaks Bottom Line, Thermodynamics, Cook, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food Riots, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Aerosols, ENSO, State of the Oceans,…
hrynyshyn | March 14, 2011At one end of the hyperbole scale we have Helen "If you love this planet" Caldicott, who raises the specter of "cancer and genetic diseases" if things get any worse at the growing list of nuclear power reactors crippled or destroyed by last week's earthquake in Japan. At the other we have Republican congressman Mitch McConnell, who argues that we shouldn't abandon nuclear power, especially "right after a major environmental catastrophe."
In between the pundits and genuine experts are pointing out that the mining, processing, and burning of fossil fuels kill hundreds or even thousands of times…
sastyk | March 14, 2011"He'll never catch up!" the Sicilian cried. "Inconceivable!"
"You keep using that word!" the Spaniard snapped. "I don't think it means what you think it does."
..."Inconceivable!" the Sicilian cried.
The Spaniard whirled on him. "Stop saying that word!" It was inconceivable that anyone could follow us, but when we looked behind, there was the man in black. It was inconceivable that anyone could sail as fast as we could sail, and yet he gained on us. Now this too is inconceivable, but look - look" and the Spaniard pointed down through the night. "See how he rises."
The man in black was,…
lborkowski | March 11, 2011Earlier this week, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food released a report stating that agroecology - basically, sustainable agriculture - can double global food production over the next decade. Specifically, agroecology can raise production in the poor, food-deficit countries that most need additional crops. The techniques, which include using plants and beneficial animals in place of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, can be easily adopted by smallholder farmers. And these farmers' additional earnings will in turn support local sellers and service providers, who don't tend to…
hrynyshyn | March 10, 2011I don't drink much coffee. So the news that some coffee producers are finding it tough to deal with changes in growing conditions that could be an early taste of what global warming will bring doesn't strike close to home. And of course, "scientists are uncertain whether the peculiar weather patterns in the area are directly related to warming."
Still, what if the fears are warranted? Is "peak coffee" around the corner? Given how much coffee Americans guzzle, I wonder what would happen if prices started spiking -- just as they are about to do with the another habit-forming commodity.
sastyk | March 10, 2011In January of 2007, Aaron Newton, my friend and co-author of A Nation of Farmers came to Albany for four days of intense work on our book. We barely ate, slept or left the house, since we knew it would be the only chance the two of us had to hash everything out. Perhaps the single most intense moment for me, at least, was the conversation Aaron and I had about the central chapter of the book - the one that answered the question "Can we actually feed the 9+ billion people expected to live on this planet without lots of fossil fueled inputs?" This was the question answered by Tuesday's…
hrynyshyn | March 9, 2011"What is the optimum temperature for man?" asked Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith at yesterday's Congressional hearings on a bill that would remove the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions "Have we looked at that? These are questions that, believe it or not, I lay awake at night trying to figure out."
Call me crazy, but I don't believe it. I worry about climate change every day of my life and this is not something that keeps me awake at night. Although, if I understood as little about the basic facts of human history as you, who knows what would keep me up night?
The truth is, we…
illconsidered | March 8, 2011 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 Global Warming News Sipping from the Internet Firehose...March 6, 2011 Chuckles, Cancun, COP17+, Suzuki, Tim DeChristopher, Glory, NYT-Fracking, Barnosky Carbon Tariffs, Subsidies, Thermodynamics, Cook, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food Riots, FAC, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures,…
sastyk | March 8, 2011Today is the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day, founded to celebrate the achievements of women. Founded in Europe to advocate for greater participation of women in the public sphere, International Women's Day focuses heavily on those public sphere accomplishments of women - as political leaders, in education, in activism. Those are important and powerful things, the more important because most of us still have visceral memory of women's past. Consider this Guardian interview with women talking about what has changed in their lifetimes.
At the same time that we speak about the…
sastyk | March 6, 2011The theory, of course, is that eventually an inflection point in renewable production *might* be achievable, after which point total gobal energy consumption would decline. The fact, unfortunately, is that we're nowhere near achieving such an inflection point, as Tad Patzek carefully points out:
The rate of energy use and carbon dioxide emissions are virtually identical and have grown exponentially over the last 40 years.
The impact of large dams and nuclear power plants has been barely visible, and disappeared by 2007.
The renewable energy sources, wind turbines, biomass cogeneration, and…
hrynyshyn | March 4, 2011Andy Revkin recently asked us to consider this 1881 New York Times article and judge whether it's an example of early global warming alarmism or satire. It was unearthed by pseudoskeptic Steve Goddard, prompting Andy to write:
For some reason Goddard avoids pasting into his blog post the humorous, almost Twain-like, elements later in the article that clearly show the author was not exactly taking the astronomer's assertions very seriously.
By the time I got to Goddard's blog, he added this to his post:
[addendum] This 1881 article is satirizing one of the more alarmist explanations for the…
sastyk | March 4, 2011Over the years I know a lot of people who have asked whether I get frustrated with other people's denial about energy and environmental issues. I do, but most of the time I'm pretty good at not allowing it to get to me. Yesterday, however, I just snapped. After a phone conversation with a news reporter who has every reason to understand peak oil and climate change but seems to decline to, I lost it. If everyone else - from the media to the president to Joe Bob down the street gets to live in denial and ignorance, how come I don't? It seems like such a happy place.
I determined that I too…