‘Climate’ Archives
NASA: Climate Change May Flip 40% of Earth’s Major Ecosystems This Century
by Rolf Schuttenhelm, cross-posted from Bits of Science The results of studies that try to quantify the effects of climate change on biodiversity loss — which include damage to the micro scale level of subspecies and genetic variation — are perhaps most shocking. When, however, you focus on the response to climate change at the macro [...]
The Debunking Handbook Part 1: The First Myth About Debunking
The Debunking Handbook is a guide to debunking myths, by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky. Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, unfortunately there is no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of misinformation. This Handbook boils [...]
Recycling
Two slightly off-center topics that Realclimate has covered in the past have recently come up again. The first is an analysis of Freakonomics by statisticians Andrew Gelman and Kaiser Fung in American Scientist, while the second is a recent reimagining of Washington crossing the Delaware. The Gelman and Fung piece goes through a number of the [...]
How to Discuss Climate Change With Your Uncle During the Holidays
by Russell McLendon, in a Mother Nature Network cross-post Most people know better than to bring up politics, religion or climatology in polite company. It’s a recipe for arguments, or at least for awkwardness. But when families get together for big holiday meals … that recipe is often dusted off anyway. And whether it’s your [...]
The Ghost of Climate Yet to Come
Irreversible does not mean unstoppable: “Why show me this, if I am past all hope?” Unlike Scrooge, we don’t get a spirit to show us what the future holds if we don’t change our ways. In the past two years, though, we have gotten the tiniest glimpse of climate gone wild (see “Masters: “The stunning extremes we witnessed gives me [...]
Tim Wirth Slams Obama: “I Don’t Know Who and Where the Climate Leadership in the Administration Is. It Doesn’t Exist.”
U.N. Foundation President Tim Wirth told Climate Wire this week that President Obama has a “last window of opportunity” to avert catastrophic climate change — assuming he gets reelected: “I don’t know who and where the climate leadership in the administration is. It doesn’t exist. There is no resolve in the Obama [...]
Video: The Oddest and Dirtiest Moments of 2011 in the House Natural Resources Committee
Monitoring hearings can be pretty dry. Unless, of course, you’re monitoring the House Committee on Natural Resources. The Public Lands Team at the Center for American Progress just released a video highlighting this year’s top oddest and dirtiest moments committee: From the beginning of the 112th Congress it was suspected that Chairman [...]
Climate Story of the Year: Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security
This year has seen a great many important climate stories. Obviously, the continued self-destructive failure of the nation and the world to reverse greenhouse gas emission trends always deserve to be the top story in some sense: Biggest Jump Ever in Global Warming Pollution in 2010, Chinese CO2 Emissions Now Exceed U.S.’s By 50% IEA’s [...]
Interactive Graphic: China’s Explosive Consumption of Coal
Want to see just how much coal consumption in Asia has grown in the last 30 years? These new animated info-graphics from the Energy Information Administration tell a powerful and scary story. As expected, much of the recent growth in Asia — particularly since 2003 — has come from China. That country’s use of coal has increased 500% [...]
Copernicus and Arrhenius: Physics Then and Physics Today
There was a really interesting article in Physics Today this past October on the parallels between the slow acceptance of the idea of anthropogenic climate change and of the idea that the earth circles the sun. Author Steven Sherwood writes that: “Many who are unwilling to accept the full brunt of greenhouse warming have embraced a more [...]
