Must We Hack Our Planet’s Atmosphere?
The failure of recent efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions has built some momentum toward expanding research on geoengineering options. Although everything possible must be done to shift to a sustainable and energy-efficient economy – along with changing to simple life-styles and putting a cap on the world’s population – all this will not be enough to eliminate the danger of runaway climate change.
Somehow, we have to find a safe way to remove the huge amount of excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. To analogize, diet and medicine alone won’t cure our planet; surgery will also be required. Too much CO2 in our atmosphere not only contributes to global heating, sea-level rise, more severe storms and desertification; it has also caused a 30% increase in ocean acidification, and this too threatens the life of everything on Earth.
Revised Essay on Regional Cold Anomalies by Dr. James Hansen, With New Graphs and Photos
The Earth has been in a period of rapid global warming for the past three decades. The assertion that the planet has entered a period of cooling in the past decade is without foundation. On the contrary, we find no significant deviation from the warming trend of the past three decades. Weather fluctuations exceed the magnitude of average global warming over the past half century. However, the perceptive person should be able to notice that climate is warming on decadal time scales. The global temperature trend over the past few decades has been strong enough that there is a noticeable “loading” of the climate dice that define the probability of unusually warm or cool seasons.
Where in the World is the Worst Place for Cold Weather?
The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world.
Cleaning Up the Excess CO2
The other way to reduce the air’s excess CO2 is to unbalance the carbon cycle, typically by preventing some of the CO2 captured by photosynthesis from going back into the air when cells decompose. One has to stash dead biomass where the air can’t get to it. While sealed landfills help, it is only the ocean depths that would appear to have the capacity to draw down all of the CO2 that we have added since 1750.
Global Climatic Disruption Becoming More Evident
It’s easy for people in Russia, England and on the eastern coast of the US, with the severe winter conditions they’re experiencing, to forget that on other parts of our Planet are feeling the heat of dangerous climate change. What we should remember is that what we’re witnessing is not so much “Global Warming,” or even “Climate Change,” but “Global Climatic Disruption,” the term coined by President Obama’s chief science advisor John Holdren.
A Holiday Gift from Climate Scientist James Hansen
For new inspiration and knowledge, we would most like to recognise James Hansen, who with the publication of his book Storms of My Grandchildren has made climate science accessible and interesting to anyone with a high school education.
Final Episode of BBC World’s “Hot Cities” Available
Los Angeles is one of the most polluting cities in the world thanks largely to its love affair with the car. It is a city built on consumption. Each person produces around 20 tonnes of emissions per year – twice as much as anyone else. Now they are about to reap what has been sown. In LA there has been a big increase in wildfires, water supplies are under threat, rising sea levels could have a massive impact on LA’s huge port and destroy thousands of homes. “Hot Cities” goes to LA just as the city launches its adaptation strategy.
56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages publish the same editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change
Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.
Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.
State of Climate Science: Videos of US Senate Select Committee Hearing
With the international climate change talks in Copenhagen fast approaching, there is real urgency to reach diplomatic consensus on a planetary solution. In a hearing hosted by Chairman Edward J. Markey on December 2, 2009, the US Senate Select Committee explored with climate scientists from the Obama administration, Dr. John Holdren and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the urgent, consensus view on our planetary problem: that global warming is real, and the science indicates that it is getting worse.
The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science
On the eve of the Copenhagen conference, a group of scientists has issued an update on the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their conclusions? Ice at both poles is melting faster than predicted, the claims of recent global cooling are wrong, and world leaders must act fast if steep temperature rises are to be avoided.
