Geneva, 6 November 2013 (WMO) – The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2012, continuing an upward and accelerating trend which is driving climate change and will shape the future of our planet for hundreds and thousands of years. The World Meteorological Organization’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin shows […]
By Wendy Koch9 October 2013 NORTH POLE, Alaska (USA TODAY) – Up the road from Santa Claus Lane, past the candy cane-striped streetlamps, Cathy Richard’s backyard has a problem that not even elves — or the big guy in red — could fix. The wood deck moves up and down, like a slow-motion sleigh. “You […]
3 September 2013 (World Bank) – Some of the easiest targets for lowering greenhouse gas emissions are right in front of us every day: black carbon from diesel-fueled vehicles and solid fuel cooking fires, methane from solid waste, hydrofluorocarbons from aerosols. These are short-lived climate pollutants, named for their relatively short lifespan in the atmosphere. […]
By Kerry Sheridan6 August 2013 WASHINGTON (AFP) – The world lost record amounts of Arctic sea ice in 2012 and spewed out all-time high levels of greenhouse gases by burning fossil fuels, international climate scientists said Tuesday. Last year was among the top 10 on record for global land and surface temperature since modern data […]
By Nafeez Ahmed 5 August 2013 (The Guardian) – Debate over the plausibility of a catastrophic release of methane in coming decades due to thawing Arctic permafrost has escalated after a new Nature paper warned that exactly this scenario could trigger costs equivalent to the annual GDP of the global economy. Scientists of different persuasions […]
By Nafeez Ahmed 24 July 2013 (The Guardian) – A new paper in the journal Nature argues that the release of a 50 Gigatonne (Gt) methane pulse from thawing Arctic permafrost could destabilise the climate system and trigger costs as high as the value of the entire world’s GDP. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf’s (ESAS) […]
By John Abraham 7 July 2013 (The Guardian) – Perhaps I have been naïve, but for many years I have held the view that economists were good decision makers and that part of being a good decision maker was to seek out good information. Well-informed decisions, I thought, allowed people to earn better returns, to […]
3 July 2013 (UN) – The world experienced “unprecedented high-impact climate extremes” between 2001 and 2010 and more national temperature records were broken during that period than in any other decade, according to a United Nations report launched today. The report, The Global Climate 2001-2010, A Decade of Extremes, says the first decade of the […]
By Melissa Hathaway, guest blogger14 June 2013 It has been well publicized over the last 30 – 40 years that carbon dioxide is driving the greenhouse effect, resulting in: global warming; carbon cycle imbalances; the melting of the polar caps; and changes to the deep sea currents which carry warm water from the equator towards […]
22 February 2013 (BBC) – Evidence from Siberian caves suggests that a global temperature rise of 1.5C could see permafrost thaw over a large area of Siberia. A study shows that more than a trillion tonnes of the greenhouse gases CO2 and methane could be released into the atmosphere as a result. Evidence from Siberian […]
