[cf. Report: Cheap natural gas leads to more plants and pollution] By Bill McKibben23 March 2016 (The Nation) – Global warming is, in the end, not about the noisy political battles here on the planet’s surface. It actually happens in constant, silent interactions in the atmosphere, where the molecular structure of certain gases traps […]
By Chris Mooney 21 March 2016 (Washington Post) – If you dig deep enough into the Earth’s climate change archives, you hear about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. And then you get scared. This is a time period, about 56 million years ago, when something mysterious happened — there are many ideas as to […]
23 March 2016 (Desdemona Despair) – Back in 2011, Desdemona was asked by a local church to give a presentation on the condition of the world’s oceans (State of the Oceans 2011 video; pdf slide deck; PowerPoint). As part of the talk, Des wanted estimates for human disturbances to the great cycles of elements on […]
By Michael Slezak18 March 2016 (The Guardian) – The latest federal government carbon emissions inventory shows Australia has increased its emissions and has come under fire for allegedly vastly underestimating the amount of land clearing that has occurred, and its associated emissions. The Quarterly Update of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, which counts emissions […]
By Jeff Masters and Bob Henson13 March 2016 (wunderground.com) – On Saturday, NASA dropped a bombshell of a climate report. February 2016 has soared past all rivals as the warmest seasonally adjusted month in more than a century of global recordkeeping. NASA’s analysis showed that February ran 1.35°C (2.43°F) above the 1951-1980 global average for […]
8 March 2016 (Global Footprint Network) – Global Footprint Network launches its 2016 edition of the National Footprint Accounts today, featuring a refined carbon Footprint calculation. The updated calculation has revealed that the global carbon Footprint is 16 percent higher than previously calculated, with a consequent 8 percent increase in the global Ecological Footprint. The […]
10 March 2016 (University of Queensland) – Global warming could occur more quickly than expected, according to a new model by University of Queensland and Griffith University researchers. The model is the first to include ‘energy use per person’ as a predictive factor rather than focusing solely on economies or populations. It forecasts that population […]
By Bobby Magill10 March 2016 (Climate Central) – The annual growth rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose more in 2015 than scientists have ever seen in a single year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday. It was the fourth year in a row that carbon dioxide concentrations grew by more than […]
By Arthur Neslen29 February 2016 BRUSSELS (Guardian) – The EU is set to emit 2bn tonnes more CO2 than it promised at the Paris climate talks, threatening an agreement to cap global warming at 2C, a note from the European commission has revealed. Carbon prices will rise too slowly to cut industrial emissions as much […]
By Chris Mooney 29 February 2016 (Washington Post) – On Sunday night while accepting a long-anticipated Oscar for best actor, for his role in “The Revenant,” Leonardo DiCaprio seized the moment to highlight the plight of the planet. “Making “The Revenant” was about man’s relationship to the natural world,” DiCaprio said. “A world that we […]