Global Climate Change Science News

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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by macdoc » Wed Oct 17, 2012 10:05 pm

Moving on to someone who does know what he is talking about when it comes to climate science...Gavin Schmidt
This is a very interesting article as one of the worlds top climate scientists and communicators eviscerates and examines the entrails of a typical denier bit of garbage circulated in the deniosphere....interesting reading

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... more-13252
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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by JimC » Thu Oct 18, 2012 8:26 am

Well, from tomorrow I am responsible for a little less brown coal being burned in Victoria - the photo-voltaic panels get installed...
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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by macdoc » Fri Nov 02, 2012 12:50 am

Well this is refreshing...no more namby pamby
Bloomberg Businessweek: ‘It’s Global Warming, Stupid’
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/1 ... re-1122241
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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by Jason » Fri Nov 02, 2012 12:53 am

In other news, we've had snow and subzero temperatures since mid October. Global warming? Pah.

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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by macdoc » Fri Nov 02, 2012 10:07 pm

The denidiots never stop trying to alter the reality. :nono:
Meet The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia
popsci.com
Ken Mampel, an unemployed, 56-year-old Floridian, is in large part the creator of the massive Hurricane Sandy Wikipedia page.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/articl ... edia-sandy

unemployed and he's the voice of authority on climate now.....these guys are nuts
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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by Jason » Fri Nov 02, 2012 10:23 pm

He did create the wikipedia page. :prof:

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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by macdoc » Fri Nov 02, 2012 10:53 pm

Create out of whole clothe I believe the phrase goes...:coffee:
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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by Pensioner » Fri Nov 02, 2012 11:15 pm

Thanks for links Mac.
“I wish no harm to any human being, but I, as one man, am going to exercise my freedom of speech. No human being on the face of the earth, no government is going to take from me my right to speak, my right to protest against wrong, my right to do everything that is for the benefit of mankind. I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot.”

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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by macdoc » Sun Nov 04, 2012 6:09 am

The Economist weighs in on the costs of inaction - pay now or pay much more later....$60 billion is just a small down payment
Hurricane Sandy
Costs to come

Oct 31st 2012, 17:03 by R.A. | WASHINGTON

Image
THE economic approach to global warming is relatively straightforward. The emission of greenhouse gases generates a negative spillover—global warming—that harms others. Someone driving a car emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which contributes to climate change, but because most of the cost of the car's contribution to warming will be felt by people other than the driver, he has an incentive to drive too much. Aggregate that decision to emit too much across all of the world's population, and you get a serious economic problem.

Luckily, there is a solution. By taxing the emission of greenhouse gases, one can align private and public costs. The cost of the driver's emissions will be "internalised", he'll drive less, emissions will fall, and warming will slow. All that remains is to tot up an estimate of the "social cost of carbon" and convert that into an optimal tax rate. And in fact, many models reckon the tax need not be too high, as it makes sense to accommodate quite a lot of warming. The costs of climate change will mount over time, but so too will global income, the thinking goes. Economic actors are resilient and will be able to adapt. All in all, we shouldn't expect global warming to dent expected GDP growth so much that a stifling tax rate is necessary.

There is some wisdom in this analysis. Remarkably, Americans have adopted what is effectively an even more sanguine view of the harm from warming, by refusing to tax carbon and investing quite conservatively in green technology and research. But as the devastation from Hurricane Sandy makes clear, the economic approach is a bit too anti-septic and simplistic a way of understanding and responding to an incredibly complex and potentially catastrophic climate phenomenon. The American approach is out-and-out reckless.

With the superstorm now dissipating, estimates of its economic impact are beginning to emerge. Kate Mackenzie comments on some of them here. Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius notes that damage estimates of $10 billion to $20 billion look small and may well be revised up (Hurricane Katrina was responsible for roughly $113 billion in damage). Yet the observed impact of the storm on economic numbers could be even smaller. October data will probably take a hit, but much of the shortfall may be made up in November and December such that fourth-quarter GDP will hardly register the event. Pimco's Mohamed El-Erian reckons that the storm will show up in the fourth-quarter data, but mostly because state and federal governments are less fiscally willing and able to provide support. Still, the fact that such an epic storm might not even knock the GDP statistics off track lends credence to those who argue, for instance, that things like a massively expensive sea wall to protect New York City or an Apollo programme for green energy would represent useless waste.

But there are two problems with this mode of thinking. One is that the economic resiliency that allows us to shift economic activity across time and geography, holding down the cost of such storms, has its limits. People cluster together in New York City, despite the high cost of living, because of the extraordinary advantages of being there, surrounded by other skilled professionals. There are "returns to scale" that hold New York together—productivity per person rises with population and density. Given limited disruption, the city will quickly bounce back, but a larger disaster could disperse enough of the city's people and businesses to undermine the scale that acts as New York's gravity. That could generate very large economic losses. New York can't easily be replaced, and even if it were logistically possible to create another megacity there's no guarantee that resources would re-congeal there. They might stick, instead, to lots of smaller cities: a much less productive distribution.

The more serious issue, however, is simply that GDP is not capturing everything we care about. GDP is a flow of income, for one thing. A storm that destroys existing wealth could actually raise the flow of production in the short term as people rebuild, such that higher GDP growth might nonetheless mean less wealth overall. Moreover, GDP is a very imperfect measure of human welfare. Even if GDP and wealth were relatively unharmed by the storm, we might nonetheless want to prevent a great deal of human suffering. The damage to America's northeast pales in comparison with the destruction wrought in Haiti, but because Haitians are so poor the economic cost of the damage there is almost imperceptible. The fact that the average Haitian emits about a hundredth as much carbon dioxide each year as the typical American suggests that unaccounted-for economic injustice may be at least as big a concern with global warming as underestimated human costs.

And so it would be entirely appropriate if the damage done by Sandy shakes Americans out of complacency on the issue of global warming, despite the relatively tolerable price tag of the storm. The storm is costlier than the estimated bill reflects. And future storms will be costlier still.

Many scientists and journalists are cautious in listing climate change as a causal factor behind a storm like Sandy. Understandably so: weather emerges as part of a complex system, and it would be impossible to say whether a storm would or would not have materialised without global warming. But scientists are becoming ever less shy in drawing a line between a higher frequency of "extreme" weather events and a warming climate. Climate shifts the probability distribution of such events, and so global warming may not have "caused" Sandy, but it makes Sandy-like storms more probable. As the ever-less-funny joke goes, 500-year weather events seem to pop up every one or two years these days. Frequency and intensity of storms aside, future hurricanes that hit the east coast will do so atop rising sea levels. Contemplate the images of seawater rushing over Manhattan streets and into subway and highway tunnels. Then consider that sea levels are rising. And then reflect on the fact that New York is very much like a typical megacity in being located on the water; tracing a finger around America's coastlines leads one past most of the country's largest and richest cities.

Americans may absorb all of this and decide that the smart choice continues to be a course of inaction. They may continue to believe that the storms—and droughts and heat waves and blizzards and floods—to come will be manageable because they'll be richer and well-equipped to adapt. Hopefully, there will at least be a better sense of what that is likely to mean and the trade-offs it will involve. Adaptation will be an ongoing, costly slog, with a side order of substantial human suffering. It will be one American icon after another threatened. Adaptation is not going to be easy. Hopefully Americans will ask themselves whether it's so much worse than the alternatives—high carbon taxes or large public investments or both—after all.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexch ... cane-sandy
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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by Tero » Thu Nov 15, 2012 11:42 pm

I had a useful tip on another board today:
Tero, you are wasting your time. I've seen these people before. Global warming is caused by Al Gore. Get rid of Al, problem gone.
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

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Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by macdoc » Fri Nov 16, 2012 9:11 pm

this is quite astonishing
If you’re 27 or younger, you’ve never experienced a colder-than-average month

By Philip Bump

This image sums up 2012, temperature-wise.
Image

Nowhere on the surface of the planet have we seen any record cold temperatures over the course of the year so far. Every land surface in the world saw warmer-than-average temperatures except Alaska and the eastern tip of Russia. The continental United States has been blanketed with record warmth — and the seas just off the East Coast have been much warmer than average, for which Sandy sends her thanks.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration summarizes October 2012:

The average temperature across land and ocean surfaces during October was 14.63°C (58.23°F). This is 0.63°C (1.13°F) above the 20th century average and ties with 2008 as the fifth warmest October on record. The record warmest October occurred in 2003 and the record coldest October occurred in 1912. This is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature.

Emphasis added. If you were born in or after April 1985, if you are right now 27 years old or younger, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. That’s beyond astonishing.
more
http://grist.org/news/if-youre-27-or-yo ... age-month/
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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by Tero » Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:06 pm

Easily read book. If You can read a graph with xand y, you can read this.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0071502408

By buying the paper copy instrad of Kindle, did I increase global warming?

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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by macdoc » Wed Nov 21, 2012 4:24 am

Some progress on the "bravery" front.
Full steam ahead for carbon trading

* 17:32 20 November 2012 by Michael Marshall
* For similar stories, visit the Climate Change Topic Guide

How can you force firms to cut down their carbon emissions? Put a price on them. That's the idea behind carbon trading, which got a boost last week when California launched the world's second-largest carbon market. Other new and improved trading systems are springing up around the globe and could eventually work together.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... ading.html

and further down
One remaining problem with local carbon markets is that firms can avoid paying for emissions by outsourcing manufacturing abroad. This may explain why the UK's emissions fell in recent years. "A lot of emissions got exported to countries like China," says Taschini.

But as more carbon markets launch, fewer countries will be willing to import emissions. China, for example, is launching seven prototype markets, and hopes to have a national system by 2016. South Korea will set up a market next year, and Brazil, Mexico and India are considering setting them up too.

The system will work better if markets link up to trade internationally – greater competition for permits should add to the incentive to cut emissions. The first such link will be between the ETS and Australia's new trading system, after it launches in 2015. "Linking is the holy grail," says Burtraw.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... ading.html
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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by macdoc » Wed Nov 21, 2012 12:00 pm

21 November 2012 Last updated at 06:00 ET

Climate change evident across Europe, says report
By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News

Image
Flooded properties as the River Tiber, Rome, breaches its banks (Getty Images) The cost of damage from extreme weather events is projected to increase in the future

The effects of climate change are already evident in Europe and the situation is set to get worse, the European Environment Agency has warned.

In a report, the agency says the past decade in Europe has been the warmest on record.

It adds that the cost of damage caused by extreme weather events is rising, and the continent is set to become more vulnerable in the future.

The findings have been published ahead of next week's UN climate conference.

They join a UN Environment Programme report also released on Wednesday showing dangerous growth in the "emissions gap" - the difference between current carbon emission levels and those needed to avert climate change.

"Every indicator we have in terms of giving us an early warning of climate change and increasing vulnerability is giving us a very strong signal," observed EEA executive director Jacqueline McGlade.

"It is across the board, it is not just global temperatures," she told BBC News.

"It is in human health aspects, in forests, sea levels, agriculture, biodiversity - the signals are coming in from right across the environment."

2C or not 2C

The report - Climate Change, Impacts and Vulnerabilities in Europe 2012 - involving more than 50 authors from a range of organisations, listed a number of "key messages", including:

* Observed climate change has "already led to a wide range of impacts on environmental systems and society; further climate change impacts are projected for the future";
* Climate change can increase existing vulnerabilities and deepen socio-economic imbalances in Europe;
* The combined impacts of projected climate change and socio-economic development is set to see the damage costs of extreme weather events continue to increase.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20408350
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Re: Global Climate Change Science News

Post by macdoc » Thu Nov 22, 2012 12:34 am

Speaking of global action ....some heft here..

snip
The alliance of 200 investment institutions includes Scottish Widows, Aviva and HSBC and controls $21 trillion (£13trn) of assets worldwide and its lobbying of the UK government is part of a broader campaign to persuade the world’s biggest economies to escalate their actions against climate change.

The alliance’s call, which extends to countries such as the US, China and India, represents by far the biggest political intervention staged by financial investors over climate change and underlines just how concerned they have become about the damage it could inflict on the global economy.

“Hurricane Sandy, which caused more than $50bn (£31bn) in economic losses, is typical of what we can expect if no action is taken and warming trends continue,” said Chris Davis, a member of the alliance who advises institutions controlling $11trillion (£6.9 trn) on climate change issues.

“Investors are rightly concerned about the short and long-term economic risks of climate change and understand that ambitious climate and clean energy policies are urgently needed to avoid catastrophic impact,” Mr Davis added.

In a letter to the governments, ahead of the international climate negotiations that kick off in Doha on Monday, the alliance urges the world’s largest economies to engage in “a new dialogue on climate change policy”.[HILITE] In particular, it calls for “clear, consistent and predictable policies that encourage low carbon investment[/HILITE]”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... rnalSearch
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