climate change
illconsidered | December 3, 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 Overload is Pattern RecognitionDecember 1, 2013 Chuckles, COP20+, COP19, Gates & Larter, Heede Energiewende, Crap Detector, CookFukushima: Note, News, Policies Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, Geopolitics, AntarcticaFood: Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, Production Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Forecasts GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Aerosols, Volcanoes Weather Machine, Temperatures, Paleoclimate…
pgleick | December 3, 2013Water policy and water problems always seem to be someone else’s responsibility. Those farmers who use all the water; the guy down the street who lets his sprinklers run all over the sidewalk; the Central Valley cities that don’t even have water meters; the environmentalists who are demanding water for some inconsequential fish we can’t even eat; those swimming pool owners in hot Los Angeles.
The reality, of course, is that water problems belong to all of us. We all contribute in various ways through our choices of appliances, or diets, or Congressional representatives, or gardens. And every…
illconsidered | November 27, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 67
Table of Contents
Chapter 69
Chapter 68
Estrangement, February 1, 2059
I hadn't seen Jon in the flesh for almost three years. I was shocked by how much he had changed. He was harder and smoother somehow, as if he had an invisible barrier just above his skin. Nothing stuck to him. At first I thought it was shock over Matt's death, but there was more to it than that. Jon drifted through the funeral like an alien. He talked, he laughed, he shared old stories, but it was all surface. There was a distance and a calculation in him that made me…
illconsidered | November 22, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 66
Table of Contents
Chapter 68
Chapter 67
The Body, January 18, 2059
I put off planning the funeral because I had no idea when Matt's body was going to arrive. Relations between the North and South American continents are not exactly smooth. You could say that, except for diplomatic and scientific contacts, they are defined by the wall across the ithmus below Mexico. I had to work through ConSec, and that meant Carman.
This was a difficult period for me. It was xmas and I was far from seasonally happy. My thoughts seemed always to come back…
illconsidered | November 18, 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 As We Enter a New Age of ConsequencesNovember 17, 2013 Chuckles, COP19, Dailies, WMO, WEO, Cowtan & Way, GermanWatch WG2 Leak, Maldives, Energiewende, Estrada, Subsidies, Pricing Nature, CookFukushima: Note, News, Policies Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, AntarcticaFood: Crisis, Fisheries, Land Grabs, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes, Haiyan, Recovery, Zoraida, Misc. Notable Weather, Extreme Weather…
illconsidered | November 14, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 65
Table of Contents
Chapter 67
Chapter 66
Arrangements, December 11, 2058
Anna was mercifully asleep when I got home. When I told Edie about Matt, she was subdued. She put her hand to her mouth and sat down quickly. Then to my surprise, her attention shifted to me. She was concerned about me. I appreciated that, but I had another duty. To call Jon.
Matt's death hit Jon just as hard as it hit me. The braggadocio and oneupmanship were gone. We didn't talk long. I pointedly did not raise the issue of Matt's body and interment in order to give…
gregladen | November 13, 2013That nefarious leech of an organization, the Heartland Institute, the one that put up the billboards implying that people who think climate change is important are mad bombers, has done something really offensive, again. They made a fake packet of information with fake stuff about climate change and sent it to teachers and other educators, as well as graduate students, to try to trick them into passing the lies and deceptions on to their students. According to the National Center for Science Education:
Around Halloween, thousands of science teachers, science professors, and graduate…
illconsidered | November 11, 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 YearsNovember 10, 2013 Chuckles, COP19+, WG2 Leak, Haiyan, Fukushima, Maldives, Energiewende Bottom Line, Subsidies, GFIs, Cook, ShrinkologyFukushima: Note, News Melting Arctic, Megafauna, Methane, Geopolitics, AntarcticaFood: Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes, Extreme Weather GHGs, Nitrogen Cycle, Solar, Cosmic Rays, Aerosols, Volcanoes ENSO,…
gregladen | November 11, 2013I’m sure the measurements are still being checked and adjusted but it is clear that Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda was one of the most powerful tropical cyclones (termed “Typhoon” in the western Pacific) ever recorded. There are several ways to measure how big and bad a tropical cyclone is including it’s overall size from end to end, how low the barometric pressure gets, how high the sustained wind speed is, and how wide that wind field is. In addition, when a typhoon hits land details matter. The front right quadrant of a counter-clockwise spinning typhoon packs the maximum punch and if that part of…
gregladen | November 10, 2013Should there be a Category 6, or even a Category 7, to classify extra bit tropical cyclones like Haiyan?
Some tropical cyclones labeled Category 5 are much stronger than others. It has been suggested that we would be smart to extend the system to have a Category 6 and maybe even a Category 7 to allow the additional severity of these storms to be indicated when they are being spoken of in the news or by officials in charge of scaring people into doing the right thing, like running away or staying indoors.
There is resistance to this proposal that comes from two mostly distinct places. One is…
illconsidered | November 6, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 64
Table of Contents
Chapter 66
Chapter 65
Matthew Fontaine, December 11, 2058
Over the course of that summer and fall, the number of sunshades slowly increased. It became part of the weather report. "And today the sunshade count is ..." On clear days the sun was too bright, but on cloudy days the smudge on the side of the sun was easily discernible.
One morning in early December, I had the radio on during the usual rush to get ready and they mentioned a food riot in Brazil. As ususal I wondered if Matt were still in South America, but didn't…
illconsidered | November 4, 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 Another Week of Anthropocene Antics Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is not WisdomNovember 3, 2013 Chuckles, COP19+, Post AR5, WG2 Leak, Maplecroft, Kunming, Teng, Donner DLST, Maldives, Energiewende, Bottom Line, Subsidies, Pricing Nature, CookFukushima: Note, News, Policies Melting Arctic, Megafauna, Methane, Geopolitics, AntarcticaFood: Crisis, Fisheries, GMOs, Production Hurricanes, Notable Weather, Extreme…
illconsidered | October 31, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 63
Table of Contents
Chapter 65
Chapter 64
The Eclipse Machine, September 7, 2058
I woke up early from a bad dream. My father was talking about the animals of the north that were disappearing --- caribou, muskox and bears. Then I was a bearman breaking into a shack. Some guy was shooting at me. I woke up with a start, when a bullet hit me in the shoulder.
I lay in bed totally still --- listening. The house was quiet. The clock read 5:13 and there was no way I was going back to sleep. With a sigh I rolled out of bed and into the washroom.
It's…
illconsidered | October 29, 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 Overload is Pattern Recognition
October 27, 2013
Chuckles, COP19+, Bangkok, Post-AR5, Maldives, Potash, Energiewende
Bottom Line, Pricing Nature, Cook, Shrinkology
Fukushima: Note, News, Policies, Related Papers
Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food: Crisis, Fisheries, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Labelling, Production
Hurricanes, Monsoon, Notable Weather, Extreme Weather
GHGs…
illconsidered | October 23, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 62
Table of Contents
Chapter 64
The Atlas, August 16, 2058
When I got home today, the Electronic Atlas was sitting on the kitchen table. The Atlas was one of six prototype devices for a project a business buddy of Matt's had abandoned. It was a thin display surface half a meter square in the centre of which was a slowly rotating image of the Earth.
If you touched any part of the planet, it would get larger. You could flip through different views: topographical, political, meteorological, agricultural and so on. More detailed statistics on…
illconsidered | October 21, 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...October 20, 2013 Chuckles, COP19+, Alternatives, Post-AR5, ODI, Maldives, Governance Energiewende, Bottom Line, GFIs, Pricing Nature, CookFukushima: Note, News Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, AntarcticaFood: Crisis, Fisheries, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes, Notable Weather, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Aerosols, Weather Machine Sensitivity, Clouds, Ozone…
illconsidered | October 16, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 61
Table of Contents
Chapter 63
Chapter 62
Baumgarten, July 2, 2058
I got another late night call from Rhamaposa. He looked terrible --- shaken and drawn out.
"What happened to you?" I asked.
"I did a tour across the Sahel." He shook his head and shuddered.
"Oh."
He grimaced. "Starving cattle. Dead children. What a time to be in a dry country!"
"Where are you now?"
"Djibouti."
I looked at him in surprise. I wasn't aware that UNGETF had any official contact with the Caliphate.
"The Arab Democratic Union asked me to update them on our projects…
illconsidered | October 14, 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 As we enter a new Age of ConsequencesOctober 13, 2013 Chuckles, COP19+, GCF, Greenhouse 2013, Africa Climate, Post-AR5, Mora Potash, Maldives GFIs, CookFukushima: Note, News, Related Papers Melting Arctic, Walrus, Methane, Geopolitics, AntarcticaFood: Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, Notable Weather, Abrupt CC, Carbon Cycle, Cosmic Rays Weather Machine,…
pgleick | October 14, 2013Snow. Glaciers. Icecaps, River flows. All of these are vulnerable to climate change, especially rising temperature. This isn't just theory. It’s now observable fact.
Scientists worry about the growing threat of climate change because the global climate is tied to everything that society cares about: human and environmental health, food and industrial production, water availability, extreme events, and more. Figuring out how all these pieces tie together is difficult. And many of us, from scientists to the public to policy makers, have only a partial understanding of the true implications of…
illconsidered | October 10, 2013The Bottleneck Years
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 60
Table of Contents
Chapter 62
Chapter 61
Crystal Jellies, March 19, 2058
The first time I saw a telescopic view of the L1 sunshades, I remembered standing in an aquarium watching crystal jellyfish. These tiny, delicate creatures were so beautiful I could scarce believe such miracles existed. I was transported. For a second, I was back watching those fluttering pink mauve miracles, but I wasn't. It was a swarm of sunshades illuminated by brilliant sunlight. Here and there, the deep blue of an ion drive could be seen.
I thought of the…