Mexico passes ambitious climate change law to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, and 50 percent below 2000 levels by 2050. The law also stipulates that 35 percent of Mexico's electricity should come from renewable sources by the year 2024. It joins the United Kingdom in having legally binding emissions goals aimed at stemming the effects of climate change.
posted by stbalbach
on Apr 26, 2012 -
25 comments
"Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically." Link.
[more inside]
posted by BobbyVan
on Jan 27, 2012 -
270 comments
"Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, there's no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of myths.
The Debunking Handbook boils the research down into a short, simple summary, intended as a guide for communicators in all areas (not just climate) who encounter misinformation."
Direct PDF link.
posted by brundlefly
on Jan 3, 2012 -
33 comments
Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice An excerpt from what should be a very incendiary academic paper by
Hansen, J, et al:
Thus there is no need to equivocate about the summer heat waves in Texas in 2011 and Moscow
in 2010, which exceeded 3σ – it is nearly certain that they would not have occurred in the
absence of global warming. If global warming is not slowed from its current pace, by midcentury 3σ events will be the new norm and 5σ events will be common.
posted by Renoroc
on Nov 11, 2011 -
38 comments
Although the past 12 years have seen the warmest 10 years on record, temperatures have remained fairly steady, even while CO2 emissions grew by nearly a third. Temperatures should have been increasing during this period, rather 1998 was tied with 2010 for hottest on record. Now a
study suggests why (pdf): sulfur emissions from Asian coal plants (China mostly) are so high they mimic the effects of a volcano which can cause short term cooling by reflecting light back into space. Insidiously, the long-term warming caused by CO2 (coal) has been masked by short-term cooling of sulfur (coal).
posted by stbalbach
on Jul 5, 2011 -
85 comments
What I've always wanted-
an atlas of the world's vulnerability to climate change (downloadable pdf on page).
posted by leibniz
on Oct 20, 2010 -
12 comments
Sorry. Today we put up a mini-movie about 10:10 and climate change called 'No Pressure’. Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended. As a result of these concerns we've taken it off our website. We won't be making any attempt to censor or remove
other versions currently in circulation on the internet.
posted by thescientificmethhead
on Oct 1, 2010 -
65 comments
"...Arctic sea ice – frozen seawater that floats on the ocean surface – is now at its lowest physical extent ever recorded for the time of year, suggesting that it is on course to break the previous record low set in 2007.
...
Earth has been 0.65C warmer over the past 12 months than during the 1951 to 1980 mean, and that the global temperature for 2010 will exceed the 2005 record."
2010 set to be the
warmest year on record.
posted by p3on
on Jun 20, 2010 -
306 comments
Odds of Cooking the Grandkids:
"There is a horrible paper in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which looks at how the limits of human physiology interact with upper-range global warming scenarios. The bottom line conclusion is that there is a small - of order 5% - risk of global warming creating a situation in which a large fraction of the planet was uninhabitable (in the sense that if you were outside for an extended period during the hottest days of the year, even in the shade with wet clothing, you would die)." [more inside]
posted by symbollocks
on May 7, 2010 -
47 comments
James Lovelock, 90, says
we're too stupid to prevent climate change. "I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change." One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added in
an extended interview. "I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while." He thinks only a catastrophic event would now persuade humanity to take the threat of climate change seriously enough, such as the collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica.
posted by stbalbach
on Mar 30, 2010 -
78 comments
In 1896, Swedish physical chemist and Nobel laureate
Svante Arrhenius calculated that doubling CO
2 in the atmosphere would raise Earth's temperature 5-6°C. The idea didn't get traction at the time, in part because many believed it impossible for humanity to affect the climate (sound familiar?), but Arrhenius might have been on to something. Historian and physicist
Spencer Weart's history of the
century-long scientific investigation and popular debate will re-frame your perspective on today's crisis and arm you to educate the uninformed. If you don't know the history, you are probably repeating it.
[After I-don't-know-how-many years, my first FPP]
posted by guanxi
on Mar 6, 2010 -
34 comments
Do you want to personally verify climate science? You can, with open source data and algorithms.
OpenTemp.org: An Open Analysis of the Historical Temperature Record.
Clear Climate Code: Python reimplementation of GISTEMP, the NASA GISS surface temperature analysis.
EDGCM: a research-grade Global Climate Model (GCM) with a user-friendly interface that can be run on a desktop computer.
posted by stbalbach
on Jan 15, 2010 -
42 comments
The University of East Anglia's
Climatic Research Unit suffered a
security breach this week. Hackers made off with thousands of email correspondences between some of the world's top climate scientists, and posted them to the Internet
1.
Tony Hake has posted an
article at The Examiner, highlighting what he feels are the most egregious examples of scientists manipulating and hiding data to support the established theories about Climate Change. Some of the scientists involved
counter that the quotes are taken out of context, and that "People are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way".
1 I'm not going to link to them, but the Examiner article mentions where to get them.
posted by Who_Am_I
on Nov 20, 2009 -
146 comments
In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 14, 2009 -
60 comments
Tim Nicholson, a UK former executive, believes he was
fired for his environmental views. He has
sued his former employer for discrimination on grounds of the
Employment Equality act, which states that employees may not be discriminated against for religious or philosophical beliefs. His former employers argue that his views were political, and thus do not fall under the act.
[more inside]
posted by mccarty.tim
on Nov 3, 2009 -
28 comments
80 percent of Americans say global warming is real and poses a threat to humanity. Which is good because if the global temperature raises by
4 degrees we're all dead. However only 44 percent would be willing to face any financial hardship in the name of a solution.
posted by Artw
on Aug 10, 2008 -
89 comments
Melting Greenland glacier water forms a "slow wave" that stays in the Atlantic for at least 50 years before reaching the Pacific, according to a new study. The water piles up in the Atlantic. "It is often assumed that sea levels will rise instantaneously, but that is unlikely, given what we know about ocean dynamics." Fifty years after the meltwater is released from Greenland, sea-level rise could be 30 times greater around Greenland and down the eastern side of North America, including the Gulf of Mexico, than in the Pacific Ocean. Sea-level rises in Europe are around six times that of the Pacific, but only a fifth as great as on the opposite shore of the Atlantic.
posted by stbalbach
on Jul 8, 2008 -
43 comments
