5 Scariest Things About Climate Change
February 7, 2012
Popular new video gives a quick overview of just why climate change is, well, – kind of undesirable.
Jeff Masters: “…not the atmosphere I know anymore”
February 6, 2012
While the upper midwest of the US experiences days of sparkling clear and snowless weather, other parts of the globe are experiencing extremes of another kind.
The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence.
A dramatic loss of sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas above northern Russia could explain why a chill Arctic wind has engulfed much of Europe and killed 221 people over the past week
A growing number of experts believe complex wind patterns are being changed because melting Arctic sea ice has exposed huge swaths of normally frozen ocean to the atmosphere above.
In particular, the loss of Arctic sea ice could be influencing the development of high-pressure weather systems over northern Russia, which bring very cold winds from the Arctic and Siberia to Western Europe and the British Isles, the scientists believe. An intense anticyclone over north-west Russia is behind the bitterly cold easterly winds that have swept across Europe and some climate scientists say the lack of Arctic sea ice brought about by global warming is responsible.
Jeff Masters on All Things Considered:
CORNISH: Lots of folks have been talking about this crazy weather being, you know, climate change, essentially. And do you – is there any connection?
MASTERS: Well, at this point, we don’t know. I have to say I’ve been a meteorologist for 30 years, and when I look at the atmosphere over the last couple of years, it’s really not the atmosphere I know anymore. There have been substantial changes. We’ve seen major perturbations to the rhythms I’ve grown accustomed to. And when you start seeing unprecedented events, like we’ve seen in the past few years, you do have to look at, well, is there a major climate-altering force at work?
And, well, we know there are. There are a lot of heat-trapping gases, like carbon dioxide, going in the atmosphere, and those could potentially cause some of these unprecedented events, though we don’t have any theory right now that can show exactly what’s going on.
Solar Revolution Brewing in Third World
February 6, 2012
I’ve written before on the technological “leapfrogging” that will spread renewable energy like wildfire in among the rural third world poor – just like the cell phone revolution vaulted billions into the technological age without the intermediate step of building huge, expensive and unwieldy networks of transmission wires. The comparison with old style central power plants and 21st century solar and wind is more than apt.
SOLAR power has always had a reputation for being expensive, but not for much longer. In India, electricity from solar is now cheaper than that from diesel generators. The news – which will boost India’s “Solar Mission” to install 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2022 – could have implications for other developing nations too.
Recent figures from market analysts Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF)show that the price of solar panels fell by almost 50 per cent in 2011. They are now just one-quarter of what they were in 2008. That makes them a cost-effective option for many people in developing countries.
A quarter of people in India do not have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2011 World Energy Outlook report. Those who are connected to the national grid experience frequent blackouts. To cope, many homes and factories install diesel generators. But this comes at a cost. Not only does burning diesel produce carbon dioxide, contributing to climate change, the fumes produced have been linked to health problems from respiratory and heart disease to cancer.
Now the generators could be on their way out. In India, electricity from solar supplied to the grid has fallen to just 8.78 rupees per kilowatt-hour compared with 17 rupees for diesel. The drop has little to do with improvements in thenotoriously poor efficiency of solar panels: industrial panels still only convert15 to 18 per cent of the energy they receive into electricity. But they are now much cheaper to produce, so inefficiency is no longer a major sticking point.
Investment in India out-paces the rest of the world, thanks to the improving cost-competitiveness of wind and solar
New Delhi, London and New York, 2 February 2012 – Clean energy investments in India reached $10.3bn in 2011, some 52% higher than the $6.8bn invested in 2010. This was the highest growth figure of any significant economy in the world. There is plenty of room for further expansion – in 2011, India accounted for 4% of global investment in clean energy.
The large growth was driven by a seven-fold increase in funding for grid-connected solar projects: from $0.6bn in 2010 to $4.2bn in 2011. Solar almost reached the same level of investments as wind, which totalled $4.6bn.
Ashish Sethia, head of India research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: “There was concern at the beginning of last year that increasing lending rates might hit investment. Policy measures like the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, and renewable energy’s increasing cost competitiveness, have made this a record year.”
Texas Drought “likely to Intensify”
February 6, 2012
The extreme drought gripping Texas and the rest of the Southwest is likely to intensify, according to a panel of climate experts from Columbia University.
Richard Seager, an expert on droughts in North America, told a Washington audience that the Texas drought of the past decade has been the continent’s most serious.
The luckiest three percent of the state’s land is rated as having a “severe drought,” said Lisa Goddard, an expert on climate prediction. Another 88% of the state is considered “exceptional.”
The drought can be attributed to the La Nina phenomenon, a cooling pattern in the Pacific Ocean, in combination with a warming pattern in the Atlantic Ocean, panelists marking the second annual Climate Science Day explained.
However, the drought is also part of a “host of problems out there that we’re creating for ourselves,” Seager said, referring to global warming. He added that we can expect weather extremes, especially the drought, to intensify, and for the Southwestern states to become more arid with time.
The drought has forced third-world like conditions on some small Texas communities.
Enjoying the Modern Convenience of Fossil Fuels in the Third World
February 4, 2012
Because for Oil companies, its always, all about the children….
Environmentalists blame Shell and other foreign oil firms for polluting the country’s oil-rich Niger Delta. Some environmentalists say as much as 550 million gallons of oil poured into the delta during Shell’s roughly 50 years of production in Nigeria — a rate roughly comparable to one Exxon Valdez disaster per year. An estimated 11 million gallons was released during the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.Shell in recent years has said most of the spills in the delta are caused by militant attacks or thieves tapping into pipelines to steal crude oil, which ends up sold into the black market or cooked into a crude diesel or kerosene. Company statistics kept by Shell show spills have dropped as militant attacks in the region subsided, though this single spill at Bonga roughly doubles the amount of oil spilled by Shell this year.
A Shell deepwater drilling site off the Nigerian coast that the company reported leaking on Wednesday may have spilled up to 2.4 million gallons, according to nonprofit environmental satellite monitoring group SkyTruth.
If so, that’s far worse than indicated in statements made so far by Royal Dutch Shell, which has put the amount of oil leaked at the Bonga offshore site at “less than 40,000 barrels,” (1.7 million gallons).
“That could mean anything from 1 gallon to 1.7 million gallons,” John Amos, founder and president of satellite-imaging nonprofit SkyTruth told TPM.
Solar Parking Canopy
February 4, 2012
Imagine these in every mall parking lot in the US.
Music Break: Three Little Birds/Playing for Change
February 4, 2012
The “Playing for Change” video series is original, inspiring, and ground breaking.
This is a pretty good example of why.
Climate Denial Thugs: Threats Against Climate Scientists Commonplace
February 3, 2012
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
― Isaac Asimov
When reading about society’s that destroy themselves by turning against their most thoughtful, educated, and insightful citizens, one thinks of the medieval inquisition, China’s cultural revolution, or the Cambodian holocaust. Such events have always seemed beyond the pale, unimaginable for most in the developed world.
The anti-science and climate denial movement of today shows us that those brutal, authoritarian, anti intellectual impulses are still strong, and maybe, in the age of Fox news and internet, getting stronger.
Receiving an email with a statement like “You should resign, and if you don’t, I’ll work to see that you are fired” or “I know where your kids go to school” would be unsettling enough. But they “pale compared to what other climate scientists are getting,” says Raymond Orbach, director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, at whom the first threat above was aimed.Now climate scientists—in atmospheric physics and chemistry, geophysics, meteorology, hydrology, and oceanography, among other disciplines—have begun to fight back. “I think the community is finding a voice,” says Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose work has largely focused on identifying the human influence on global climate, and who once answered a late-night knock to find a dead rat on his doorstep.
Pale Blue Dot: Ultimate Edit of Sagan’s Classic
February 3, 2012
Scientists Answer the Wall Street 16
February 1, 2012
The following is a letter written by Kevin Trenberth and signed by a distinguished group of Earth and Atmospheric scientists in response to last week’s ridiculous “Don’t Panic over Climate Change” Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal.
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