International report confirms 2016 was warmest year on record for the globe – Largest annual increase in greenhouse gases in the 58-year record

10 August 2017 (NOAA) – The 27th annual State of the Climate report has confirmed that 2016 topped 2015 as the warmest year in 137 years of record keeping. The report found that most indicators of climate change continued to follow trends of a warming world, and several, including land and ocean temperatures, sea level […]

1.5C of global warming already baked in – “The window of opportunity on a 1.5-degree target is closing”

31 July 2017 (CU Boulder Today) – Even if humans could instantly turn off all emissions of greenhouse gases, Earth would continue to heat up about two more degrees Fahrenheit by the turn of the century, according to a sophisticated new analysis published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.If current emission rates continue for […]

Young people’s burden: requirement of negative CO2 emissions – “A current narrative, that humanity has turned the corner and is moving toward solving the global warming problem, is wrong”

By James Hansen 18 July 2017 (Earth Institute) – The paper is published today in Earth System Dynamics.  There is also a video with Sophie and Jim.Conclusions include: Global warming in the past 50 years has raised global temperature well above the prior range in the Holocene (the current interglacial period, approximately the past 11,700 […]

Climate impacts of super-giant oilfields go up with age

17 July 2017 By Ker Than (Stanford News) – Even oilfields aren’t immune to the ravages of time: A new study finds that as some of the world’s largest oilfields age, the energy required to keep them operating can rise dramatically even as the amount of petroleum they produce drops.Failing to take the changing energy […]

Carbon in atmosphere is rising, even as emissions stabilize

By Justin Gillis 26 June 2017 CAPE GRIM, Tasmania (The New York Times) – On the best days, the wind howling across this rugged promontory has not touched land for thousands of miles, and the arriving air seems as if it should be the cleanest in the world. But on a cliff above the sea, […]

Burning fossil fuels almost ended all life on Earth – “It should be a national priority to study the Permian to figure out what the hell happened”

By Peter Brannen 11 July 2017 (The Atlantic) – “Who you with?” “I’m a science journalist,” I said, jolted from my reverie on the shoulder of I-68 in Maryland, where a crowd of geologists had gathered on a field trip to poke at some rocks revealed by the highway department’s dynamite. The rocks, slate gray […]

NOAA’s greenhouse gas index up 40 percent since 1990 – Carbon dioxide increase is accelerating

11 July 2017 (NOAA) – NOAA’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, which tracks the warming influence of long-lived greenhouse gases, has increased by 40 percent from 1990 to 2016 — with most of that attributable to rising carbon dioxide levels, according to NOAA climate scientists. [cf. Graph of the Day: NOAA annual greenhouse gas index (AGGI), […]

Three years to safeguard our climate

By Christiana Figueres, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Gail Whiteman, Johan Rockström, Anthony Hobley, and Stefan Rahmstorf 28 June 2017 (Nature) – In the past three years, global emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have levelled after rising for decades. This is a sign that policies and investments in climate mitigation are starting […]

“Full toolbox” needed to solve global warming – “Our energy system is leaking waste carbon dioxide into the atmosphere”

Washington, DC, 19 June 2017 (Carnegie Institution For Science) – Solving the climate change problem means transitioning to an energy system that emits little or no greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. According to new work from a team of experts including Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira, achieving a near-zero-emissions energy system will depend on being able to […]

Scientists throw light on mysterious ice age temperature jumps – “A gradual rise of CO2 within the atmosphere can hit a tipping point, triggering abrupt temperature shifts that drastically affect the climate across the Northern Hemisphere”

20 June 2017 (Cardiff University) – Scientists believe they have discovered the reason behind mysterious changes to the climate that saw temperatures fluctuate by up to 15°C within just a few decades during the ice age periods. In a new study published today, the researchers show that rising levels of CO2 could have reached a […]

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