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- BioBolt: A semi-invasive skull implant
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- Loricifera: Larger life without oxygen
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- New projections: Drought increasing worldwide
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Tag Archives: global warming
Key ocean currents warming at accelerated rate
The signs of climate change appear like pieces of a mosaic, a patchwork of scientific data and observation. Most individual signs don’t carry great significance, but here’s one that does – the persistent rise of the temperature of the oceans over the past 100 years. The research comes from an international team (China, Japan, Australia, [...]
Posted in News: Climate Change Also tagged anthropogenic, climate change, climatology, currents, Gulf Stream, Kuroshio current, oceans 1 Comment
The seven billionth baby
At a relatively arbitrary date, October 31, 2011 at a relatively arbitrary time of 11:58 PM in Manila in the Phillipines (near the International Dateline), a relatively arbitrary baby (Danica May Camacho) was born – the seven billionth person alive on Earth. That is according to the United Nations Population Fund. The U.S. Census Bureau [...]
Posted in Commentable Also tagged nuclear holocaust, overpopulation, seven billion, world population Leave a comment
The Global Warming controversy is ended…
Global surface temperatures………Credit: Berkeley Earth Project The Global Warming controversy is ended. Right. Take a look at the graph above. It shows the results of global temperature measurements over a span of some 100-200 years as compiled by four groups: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), United Kingdom Meteorology [...]
Posted in Impact: Climate Change Also tagged AGW, Berkeley, climate change, Earth Surface Temperature, Met Office, Muller, NASA, NOAA, Rohde, skeptic 2 Comments
Arctic Council: Getting serious about making money from global warming
Oh the irony. On the one hand there is the well propagandized denial of global warming, which is so effective in some countries (the United States chief among several) that politicians of all (yellow) stripes dare not mention its name. On the other hand there is this: Secret US embassy cables released by Wikileaks show [...]
Posted in Impact: Climate Change Also tagged Arctic, Arctic Council, Arctic ice, Greenland, icecap, natural gas, Northwest Passage, oil, sea level rise Leave a comment
Mapping the impact of climate change
Climate change vulnerability: Red=high, Blue=low, White=few people….Credit: McGill University Researcher Jason Samson at McGill University (Ontario, Canada) used sampling and statistical techniques originally designed to study animal migration due to climate change. He reasoned that human populations will also be forced to move (emigration/immigration) for many of the same factors, especially those relating to scarcity [...]
Posted in News: Climate Change Also tagged Africa, Arabian Peninsula, climate change, climate vulnerability, Samson Leave a comment
Global warming: The climatology of resignation
Second in a series of posts discussing the impact of ten topics framed by ‘Insights of the Decade’ from the December 17, 2010 special issue of Science Magazine. The topics are: Inflammation, climatology, tricks of light, alien planets, the microbiome, cell development, Martian water, the DNA time machine, cosmology and epigenetics. This post reads more [...]
Posted in Impact: Climate Change Also tagged AAAS, AGW, climate change, climatology, consensus, Media, paleoclimatology, politics 2 Comments
New evidence: Change in North Atlantic currents
The Labrador Current……..Credit: Wikipedia Along the Eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada, at the bottom of the ocean shelves live a deep-sea coral known as a gorgonian or sea fan. The often intricate fan shape of these corals is used to filter food from the prevailing sea current. In the cold waters of [...]
Posted in News: Climate Change Also tagged AGW, climate change, coral, gorgonian, Labrador Current, nitrogen signature, North Atlantic Oscillation, rings Leave a comment
…And you thought global warming couldn’t be funny…
I don’t believe in greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. My husband’s been producing them for years, and the house doesn’t get any warmer. How many dead light bulbs does it take before a global warming denialist changes one? Ha! Everybody knows that light bulbs never burn out. Global warming is more serious than [...]
Addressing the climate change information gap(s)
As most people who follow science and technology are aware, climate change as an issue has lately become the victim of bad vibes. That’s not how you’d describe it? Okay. Point is: while the evidence for a changing global climate continues to roll in, the public seems to become less impressed. Depending on where you [...]
Posted in Impact: Climate Change Also tagged climate change, climateprediction.net, climatology, glacier melting, met. U.K., sea level, weather at home Leave a comment
The biodiversity crisis is more than extinctions
Published to coincide with the so called United Nations Biodiversity Conference (officially: The tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties) in Nagoya, Japan October 18-29, 2010, are a number of studies and reports on the current state of biodiversity. The most striking is a new assessment of the vertebrate species (that’s us and anything [...]
Posted in Impact: Species Loss Also tagged biodiversity, extinction, Nagoya, species loss, U.N., vertebrates Leave a comment
New projections: Drought increasing worldwide
Drought regions by 2099……Credit: National Center for Atmospheric Research (USA) According to Aiguo Dai, lead climatologist for a new study released by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) [Drought under global warming: a review] the signs of increasing drought are already visible. They will become obvious and severe by 2030. By 2099 some areas [...]
Posted in News: Climate Change Also tagged climate, climate change, climatology, drought, IPCC, NCAR, NSF, Palmer Scale, PDSI 1 Comment
The problem with grasping the ocean acidification problem
Sometimes the scale of a problem defies attempts to precisely define its reality and impact. Global warming is one such problem. Acidification of the oceans is another. These both represent tangible changes, one to the earth’s atmosphere; the other to the seas. Scientists have for years taken measurements, made comparisons, and generally (as in a [...]
Posted in News: Degrading Oceans Also tagged acidification, carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, degrading oceans, pH Leave a comment
Possible Tipping Point: Arctic approaches Pliocene conditions
Scientists have known for decades that the Arctic is a belle-weather for climate change. If evidence is needed for something happening (or not happening) to the climate, the Arctic is just about the best place to find it. Another piece of evidence from Arctic has just been reported in the journal Geology led by a [...]
Posted in News: Climate Change Also tagged Arctic, Beaver Pond, climate change, CO2 levels, Ellesmere Island, ice-free, Pliocene Leave a comment
Climate change consensus: An open letter from 255 Scientists
Sometimes…often…many of the scientific rebuttals to climate change deniers amount to pep-talking the base (an Americanism for rallying those who are already loyal to the cause). Well, sometimes the base needs a good pep-talk. Like now, when the voices of global warming denialism are being orchestrated into a general anti-science chorus. That’s what 255 members [...]
Posted in Spun Also tagged anti-science, Big Bang, climate change, evolution, science, scientific method, theory Comments closed
James Lovelock: A climate change pessimist
“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,” said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. “The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.” [Source: The Guardian] [...]
Posted in Spun Also tagged acidification, climate change, Gaia, Gaia Hypothesis, IPCC, James Lovelock Leave a comment
A framework for thinking about a healthy planet
We should be angry when information that must be widely available – something with real public impact – is sequestered behind a paywall. This is by way of putting some emotional steam into an important article in the eminent Scientific American, April 2010, titled Boundaries for a Healthy Planet. Why is this article important? The [...]
Posted in Impact: Climate Change Also tagged acid oceans, AGW, biodiversity loss, boundaries, climate change, healthy planet, land use, nine environmental boundaries, nitrogen, overpopulation, ozone depletion, phosphorous, planetary boundaries, pollution, tipping points, water shortage Leave a comment
Climate Change: Madness in their methane?
A few years ago the whole ‘cow farts are global climate threat’ thing seemed more than a bit overblown. (Cow and other farts being mostly methane, dontcha know.) It became difficult to mention methane in connection with global warming without raising images of bovine herds worldwide in a massive chorus of postprandial flatulence. Besides, CO2 [...]
Posted in Impact: Climate Change Also tagged Arctic Sea, climate change, methane, methane hydrate, peat, permafrost, Siberian shelf Leave a comment
Radical thinking in agriculture needed
A new report, published online in the journal Science, titled “Radically Rethinking Agriculture for the 21st Century” was prepared by sixteen top specialists in population, climate, agriculture, and food genetics. They represented a mixture of academics, corporations (Monsanto, DuPont), and government scientists. The report was first presented to the U.S. State Department in 2009. Three [...]
Posted in News: Genetic Modification Also tagged agriculture, climate change, food shortage, genetic modification, GM, overpopulation, USDA Leave a comment
Global warming may have unforeseen (and nasty) tipping points
Similar to the financial crisis of 2008, or the over-fishing of the seas, the dynamics of the global warming problem are pretty well known. What is not known are all the possible ‘tipping points,’ those events (big or small) that can push the dynamic forces into crisis, and how rapidly crises can develop. That’s the [...]
Posted in Impact: Climate Change Also tagged AGW, climate change, ecology, ecosystems, tipping point Leave a comment
Branson’s no virgin on peak oil
Celebrity endorsements can be a mixed blessing. How do you react when a celebrity such as Richard Branson (that’s SIR Richard Branson, if you please) says something like this: “The next five years will see us face another crunch – the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is [...]
Posted in Spun Also tagged alternative energy, Branson, CO2, hydrocarbon use, oil, peak oil, petroleum 2 Comments
Also tracking: Science and tech disappointments
Turning the year to a new decade is bound to produce a wide variety of retrospectives. Lists are always popular. I came across an interesting list the other day at the Scientific American site: 10 Science Letdowns of the New Millennium by Katherine Harmon. The original is presented as a slide show. Why, I’m not [...]
Posted in Impact: General Also tagged alternative energy, anti-science, brain, cancer, cars, climate change, electric cars, evolution, exobiology, genetics, HIV, neurology, paleontology, power grid, science, space, technology 1 Comment
The sound of silence on peak oil
Drive cars. Fly planes. Heat houses. Make plastics… How much of our daily activity (especially our jobs) depend on the use of hydrocarbons, that is, oil and natural gas? Can you think of many things with a more direct impact on the world’s economy and our lives than a shortage of oil or gas? Rhetorical [...]
New study: Sea rise underestimated
It seems the more details we get about global warming, the more pessimistic the predictions. This is not strictly true, for example some studies show that the oceans have greater capacity than we thought to absorb carbon-dioxide and buffer the greenhouse effect. Still, the overall impression is that with each new study, the possibility for [...]
Posted in News: Climate Change Also tagged climate change, ice-cap melting, IPCC, sea rise Leave a comment
The Planet Under Pressure conference