‘Climate’ Archives
NY Times Public Editor Asks If Paper Should Publish Uncorrected Lies or Be a “Truth Vigilante.” Seriously.
No, this absurd piece is not (intentional) satire. But the “headline could just as well be found at the Onion,” as one of the many exasperated New York Times readers puts it. Obviously any paper, but most especially the New York Times, has little value to society if it knowingly prints lies — or if it fails to do the minimal [...]
Gaming for Good: Al Gore Brings Climate Reality to Video Games
by Zachary Rybarczyk Is Al Gore a secret gamer? Known for advocating climate protection measures through books, movies, TV shows and concerts, the Nobel Laureate is venturing into a new medium to spread his message: video games. Gore’s nonprofit climate education and advocacy organization, the Climate Reality Project, recently teamed up with [...]
A Pipeline of Oil Dollars Flowing to Members of Congress Pushing Keystone XL Decision
by Stephen Lacey and Zachary Rybarczyk The House of Representatives under the 112th Congress has been dubbed “the most anti-environmental House in history.” From a refusal to give up on styrofoam in the congressional cafeteria to the push for more uranium mining in the Grand Canyon, this House has an astonishingly deep resume of bad [...]
Must-Read on 2011′s Unprecedented Rains and Wet-Dry Extremes, Just What You’d Expect From Global Warming
Remarkably, more than half of the country (58%) experienced either a top-ten driest or top-ten wettest year, a new record. Percentage of the contiguous U.S. either in severe or greater drought (top 10% dryness) or extremely wet (top 10% wetness) during 2011, as computed using NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index. Image credit: NOAA/NCDC. by [...]
An online model of methane in the atmosphere
I’ve put together an easy-to-play-with online model of methane in the atmosphere. I’m going to use it for teaching along with the rest of the Understanding the Forecast webmodels, but it was designed to be relevant to the issue of abrupt new methane burps as we’ve been ruminating about lately on Realclimate. The model runs in [...]
Fear and Polluting on the Campaign Trail: Clean Energy Needs to Fight Back in 2012
“Politics is the art of controlling your environment.” — Hunter S. Thompson I’ve been writing for years about how renewable energy is “an issue we can all rally around” that shouldn’t involve partisan politics. In an ideal world that would hold true. But after seeing the relentless campaign waged by a [...]
Senate Staff Play Bizarre Office Pool on Wildfires
by Sarah Laskow, reposted from Grist Last summer, wildfires sped by drought turned large chunks of Texas into a moonscape. Nationally, 2011 saw the third worst wildfire season in the United States since 1960: More than 8.7 million acres of land burned. It’s the job of congressional staffers working on energy and natural resources issues to [...]
Iran, Electric Cars, and Our Stuck Narrative: Gas-Powered Vehicles Catch Fire 180,000 Times a Year
by Randy Essex, cross-posted from the Rocky Mountain Institute With Iran threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, chokepoint for the passage of 17 percent of globally traded oil, this is a good time to introduce myself to Outlet readers. This set of issues—oil addiction and the vehicle-centric, land-abusing society it engenders—has a lot [...]
Masters: “It Is Very Likely That This Has Been the Driest First Week of January in U.S. Recorded History”
Remarkably Dry and Warm Winter Due to “Most Extreme Configuration of the Jet Stream Ever Recorded” by Jeff Masters, reposted from WunderBlog Flowers are sprouting in January in New Hampshire, the Sierra Mountains in California are nearly snow-free, and lakes in much of Michigan still have not frozen. It’s 2012, and the new year is [...]
An Arctic methane worst-case scenario
Let’s suppose that the Arctic started to degas methane 100 times faster than it is today. I just made that number up trying to come up with a blow-the-doors-off surprise, something like the ozone hole. We ran the numbers to get an idea of how the climate impact of an Arctic Methane Nasty Surprise would stack up to that from [...]
