While balmy hints of spring melt piles of snow in the eastern U.S., the impending end of winter marks peak season for Arctic sea ice. But this year, that winter maximum area is currently on track to hit a record low since satellite records began in 1979.
What that low-ice mark means for the spring and summer melting seasons is unclear, but the milestone would still be notable in the global warming-fueled cycle of Arctic sea ice decline.
“The fact that we're starting the melt season with low — maybe record low — winter extents cannot be good,” Jennifer Francis, a Rutgers University Arctic researcher, said in an email.
Arctic Sea Ice Dwindling Toward Record Winter Low by Andrea Thompson, Climate Central, Mar 11, 2015
Looking back years later at his first major work, “The Birth of Tragedy,” the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gave himself credit for being the first modern thinker to tackle “theproblem of science itself,” for presenting “science for the first time as problematic and questionable.” Dude! If the perverse German genius could only have known how far “the problem of science” would extend in our age, or to what ends his critique of Socratic reason would be twisted. He might be delighted or horrified in equal measure – one thing you can say for Nietzsche is that his attitudes are never predictable – to see how much we now live in a world he made, or at least made possible.
It may seem like a ridiculous leap to connect a scholarly work about ancient Greek culture published in 1872 with the contemporary rise of climate denialism and other forms of pimped-out skepticism, in which every aspect of science is treated by the media and the public as a matter of ideological debate and subjective interpretation. I’m not suggesting that the leading climate skeptics, corporate shills and other professional mind-clouders seen in Robert Kenner’s new documentary “Merchants of Doubt” have read Nietzsche and based their P.R. playbook on what he would have termed an appeal to the Dionysian impulse, the primitive, violent and ecstatic forces that lie below the surface of civilization. (You can see two prime specimens at the top of the page: James Taylor of the libertarian-oriented Heartland Institute and longtime oil lobbyist William O’Keefe, who now heads the George C. Marshall Institute, a climate-obsessed right-wing think tank.) They didn’t have to. That impulse is baked into human culture at this point, and it can be exploited without entirely being recognized or understood.
Climate deniers and other pimped-out professional skeptics: The paranoid legacy of Nietzsche’s “problem of science” by Andrew O'Hehir, Salon, Mar 7, 2015
The rate of climate change we're experiencing now is faster than at any time in the last millennium, a new study shows.
Researchers compared how temperature varied over 40-year periods in the past, present and future, and concluded that the Earth is entering a new "regime" of rapid temperature change.
We're already locked into fast-paced changes in the near future because of past emissions, the researchers say.
That means we'll need to adapt to minimise the impacts of climate change, even if greenhouse gas emissions are cut substantially.
Earth entering new era of rapid temperature change, study warns by Robert McSweeney, The Carbon Brief, Mar 9, 2015
At the end of this year, 196 countries from around the world will meet in Paris for the first attempt to reach a global deal on climate action since the much-hyped climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009. Hope is building that Paris will see an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2020, and ultimately keep global warming to below 2C.
In the lead-up to the meeting, countries will submit intended contributions to a global climate deal, known as INDCs, or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. These may be targets and baselines (for instance, greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030), but may also take other forms.
Essentially, an INDC is a public pledge from a country on how it plans to play its part in post-2020 collective action on climate change.
It is hoped that all countries that intend to publish an INDC will do so well in advance of the upcoming climate conference in Paris in December 2015. The secretariat to the UN’s climate change body is to produce a report on the total effect of INDCs submitted by 1 October 2015.
To date, Switzerland and the European Union have submitted INDCs and the majority of country submissions are expected before September.
But how will these INDCs fit into a global climate deal?
Explainer: how countries could come to a global climate deal in 2015 by Anita Talberg and Malte Meinshausen, The Conversation US Pilot, MAr 11, 2015
By late January of this year, Elizabeth Radke figured she was pretty much done with Florida. She had already graduated from the University of Florida, where she had gotten her PhD in epidemiology. She had moved from the Sunshine State to the Washington area, where she took a job at Arlington County’s public health department. And a paper from her time there, which looked at how climate change in Florida had affected ciguatera — a commonly reported marine food-borne illness — was getting closer to publication.
But then, on Jan. 27, a message popped into her inbox. Subject: “Paper Review.” And Radke realized she wasn’t through with Florida yet. In fact, she was about to get dragged into what has now become a national scandal over an alleged “unwritten policy” among some Florida state environmental offices that forbids the use of terms such as “climate change” and “global warming” in official correspondence.
Fla. scientist told to remove words ‘climate change’ from study on climate change by Terrence McCoy, Washington Post, Mar 10, 2015
One of the biggest unknowns in understanding the effects of climate change today is the melting rate of glacial ice in Antarctica. Scientists agree rising atmospheric and ocean temperatures could destabilize these ice sheets, but there is uncertainty about how fast they will lose ice.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is of particular concern to scientists because it contains enough ice to raise global sea level by up to 16 feet, and its physical configuration makes it susceptible to melting by warm ocean water. Recent studies have suggested that the collapse of certain parts of the ice sheet is inevitable. But will that process take several decades or centuries?
Friction Means Antarctic Glaciers More Sensitive to Climate Change Than We Thought, Caltech, Mar 10, 2015
Greenland is warmer than it has been in more than 100,000 years and climate disrupting feedback loops have begun. Since 2000, ice loss has increased over 600 percent, and liquid water now exists inside the ice sheet year-round, no longer refreezing during winter.
Melt and ice loss dynamics from Greenland are far more complicated than we understood just a few years ago. New discoveries have been made that add large uncertainties as to exactly how fast ice melt and iceberg discharge will increase in the future. Over the last decade, continued research into the rate of ice loss in Greenland has downplayed any rapid acceleration of current melt rates. New discoveries could be changing our understanding of this last decade's work.
Greenland Reels: Climate Disrupting Feedbacks Have Begun by Bruce Melton, Truthout, Mar 5, 2015
The EU has set out its contribution to a new international climate change agreement, in advance of talks in Paris this December.
The EU pledge, known as an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), was submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on Friday and is the second official submission, following first-placed Switzerland.
Carbon Brief runs through the key points from the EU's offer and summarises reactions to the announcement.
How ambitious is the EU's offer to the Paris climate change talks? by Simon Evans, The Carbon Brief, Mar 10, 2015
Before the release this Friday of the documentary "Merchants of Doubt," S. Fred Singer sought the advice of nearly 30 climate skeptics about their chances of halting the movie and whether he should sue Naomi Oreskes, who co-authored the book on which it's based.
"Has she finally gone too far?" asked Singer.
The discussion is outlined in a chain of emails initiated last fall by the 90-year-old physicist, who is featured in the film for his work questioning the amount of influence people have on rising temperatures. His request reached a mix of academics and others who have been mostly antagonistic toward mainstream climate findings. ClimateWire obtained the emails from a source who received them as a forwarded message.
Merchants of Doubt about Global Warming Hope to Strike Back by Evan Lehmann and ClimateWire/Scientific American, Mar 9, 2015
More than 15,000 protesters gathered in London on Saturday for a climate change march, which is to end with a rally outside Parliament. Activist Russell Brand is scheduled to deliver speeches near Westminster. The event is one of around 2,500 around the world calling for tougher action on climate change.
Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: "Climate change is here, visible, and we know it's time to act. "It's time to stand up against those determined to burn the last drops of oil and gas and be confident in our power to build a better future. In coming together we help build the climate movement and inspire others to join us."
She added: "Young people, parents, grandparents, those new to the movement and veteran campaigners, we can all play our part, demanding our government legislate for the common good and not short-term vested interests. We're raising our voices for a year of climate action the UK and the world has never seen before."
People's Climate March In London Draws Huge Crowd, Including Russell Brand by Paul Vale, The Huffington Post, Mar 7, 2015
Sao Paulo, in the wake of another dry summer in southeast Brazil, continues to struggle with a multi-year drought. The city has implemented water rationing, but reservoir levels still hover at perilously low levels and will likely remain there or drop even further as the usual rainy season ends.
What is traditionally the rainy season runs from September through April and brings the most rain from December through February. Yet for the second year in a row, rains have failed to fully materialize. The 2013-14 wet season saw rainfall deficits of nearly 16 inches and this year, though not quite as bad as last, is running up to 8 inches below normal according to data available from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.
Sao Paulo’s Reservoirs Feel Pinch of Failed Wet Season by Brian Kahn, Climate Central, Mar 10, 2015
When there’s a report in the news about the latest science on climate change, the source is very often the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This body plays a very important role in global climate change policy around the world. Its reports, five of which have been published since 1990, enjoy a degree of credibility that renders them influential for public opinion. And more impoClimate Central, MAr rtant, the reports are accepted as the definitive source by international negotiators working under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Now, though, the IPCC is at a crossroads. Its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) – the latest of its comprehensive studies published every five to seven years – is complete and largely successful. But, like many large institutions, the IPCC has experienced severe growing pains. Its size has increased to the point that it has become cumbersome. It sometimes fails to address the most important issues.
And most striking of all, it is now at risk of losing the involvement of the world’s best scientists due to the massive burdens that participation entails.
The IPCC is contemplating organizational changes aimed at engaging more scientists and boosting representation from different countries. Because it has so much influence, these changes matter to more than just climate scientists.
The UN’s climate change body looks inward to move ahead by Robert Stavins, The Conversation US Pilot. Mar 9, 2015
The first big item is that solar physicist Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon appears to be firmly in the pocket of fossil fuel interests. He is not a climate scientist, but he’s published papers linking changes in the Sun’s output to Earth’s temperature, claiming that it’s the Sun heating us up, not human-generated carbon dioxide.
His claims about the science have been pretty thoroughly torn apart by climate scientists dating back as far as 2003 and have also been refuted on the Skeptical Science site as well. Despite the claims, the Sun’s output has marginally decreased in recent years, while temperatures on Earth go up.
Greenpeace obtained FOIA documents showing Soon received more than $1 million of funding from Big Oil over the past few years. A funding source isn’t necessarily damning, except for two things. One is that Soon neglected to mention his funding in nearly a dozen papers he’s published, and that is a huge, huge, no-no in science. If you have a potential conflict of interest, you report it.
Unlike Temperatures, Climate Change Deniers Are Falling Fast by Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy, Slate, Mar 11, 2015
Three years ago, the nation’s top utility executives gathered at a Colorado resort to hear warnings about a grave new threat to operators of America’s electric grid: not superstorms or cyberattacks, but rooftop solar panels.
If demand for residential solar continued to soar, traditional utilities could soon face serious problems, from “declining retail sales” and a “loss of customers” to “potential obsolescence,” according to a presentation prepared for the group. “Industry must prepare an action plan to address the challenges,” it said.
The warning, delivered to a private meeting of the utility industry’s main trade association, became a call to arms for electricity providers in nearly every corner of the nation. Three years later, the industry and its fossil-fuel supporters are waging a determined campaign to stop a home-solar insurgency that is rattling the boardrooms of the country’s government-regulated electric monopolies.
Utilities wage campaign against rooftop solar by Joby Warrick, Washington Post, MAr 7, 2015
Last week drought in São Paulo was so bad, residents tried drilling through basement floors for groundwater. As reservoirs dry up across the world, a billion people have no access to safe drinking water. Rationing and a battle to control supplies will follow
Why fresh water shortages will cause the next great global crisis by Robin McKie, The Guardian, Mar 7, 2015
Posted by John Hartz on Wednesday, 11 March, 2015
 |
The Skeptical Science website by Skeptical Science is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. |