greenhouse gases

Dr. Jodi Sherman wants to expand the medical profession’s understanding of patient safety far beyond the exam room and hospital bed. For Sherman, the oft-heard medical mantra of “first do no harm” should also push the health care system to do more to reduce its harmful air emissions and their impact on people’s health. “Traditionally, our duty has been to the patient in front of us,” Sherman told me. “But we have a duty to protect society as well.” Sherman, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine, recently co-authored a new study on harmful air pollutants coming…

Just to provide a little perspective, here are the latest data and a graph on atmospheric carbon dioxide, with information going back 800,000 years. Present day is on the far right ("You are here"). The data come from the atmospheric monitoring program of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California and can be found here. I've also noted the approximate period when homo sapiens first appeared -- thought to be around 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. During all human existence, pre-industrial levels of CO2 never exceeded around 275 parts per million (ppm). They touched 400 ppm…

"Being told about the effects of climate change is an appeal to our reason and to our desire to bring about change. But to see that Africans are the hardest hit by climate change, even though they generate almost no greenhouse gas, is a glaring injustice, which also triggers anger and outrage over those who seek to ignore it." -Sigmar Gabriel With all of the scientific issues subject to politicization in this world, there's arguably none that raises such strong emotions as the issue of global warming and climate change. This is the final installment of a three-part series on how one could…

On April 2nd, I posted three iconic graphs showing some of the clear observational evidence that we’re changing the climate. That post produced a substantial, and largely thoughtful response, and a request for more information and data along these lines. Here are three more, along with a bonus fourth, all with a theme of exponential growth – the powerful force that is behind much of the concern about climate change and many other environmental and social challenges. Figures like these are increasingly called “hockey stick” curves, after the work of Professor Michael Mann and others in the…