Long Term Effects of Global Warming Will Be Far Worse than Gulf of Mexico Catastrophe
Although the BP oil spill seriously threatens those who live along the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. intransigence on climate change threatens the entire world; a fact that is causing rising anger around the world. Yet the U.S. Congress continues to resist action on climate change on the basis that it will harm some U.S. economic interests, while ignoring our duties, responsibilities, and obligations to others to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to the U.S. fair share of safe global releases. For this reason, while the BP oil spill can be rightfully be understood as a disaster, U.S. Congressional inaction on climate change must be understood as a huge moral failure leading to an even greater disaster.
Why has the surface of the Arctic sea ice remained frozen this March?
Yesterday morning, March 30, I emailed James Overland with the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory/NOAA in Seattle asking him about the slow melt of visible Arctic sea ice, adding that this was certain to stoke the fires of the army of climate skeptics. This morning Dr. Overland replied that “the winds on the Atlantic side were [...]
Solar Minimum Induced Global Cooling? Don’t Bet On It
Will the media continue to ignore all the extreme weather that scientists have been predicting for years would become more common as we pour more heat trapping gases into the atmosphere? Given that we’ve only warmed about a degree Fahrenheit in the past half century and much of this country projected to warm 9°F or more on our current emissions path, it’s hard to imagine the kind of extreme weather we will ultimately be seen.
Pentagon Will Factor Global Warming into Long Term Strategic Planning
he Pentagon will for the first time rank global warming as a destabilizing force, adding fuel to conflict and putting US troops at risk around the world, in a major strategy review to be presented to Congress tomorrow. The Quadrennial Defense Review, prepared by the Pentagon to update Congress on its security vision, will direct military planners to keep track of the latest climate science, and to factor global warming into their long term strategic planning.
“While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden on civilian institutions and militaries around the world,” said a draft of the review seen by the Guardian.
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.
Watch Ross Gelbspan’s “great and profound” new video at Climate Progress
Pulitzer Prize-winning Investigative journalist Ross Gelbspan has a new video out — and is very much interested in your feedback on it. Please click here to get to the ClimateProgress site and post your own comment. There are over 90 comments to read, most of them very useful, some truly inspiring. And Ross is responding personally to many of them. Something important is beginning to happen here, and we may all want to be part of it.
