Monthly Archives: May 2013

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Climate Science

Climate clippings 75

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Climate clippings_175

1. The scientific consensus remains solid

Suzanne Goldenberg in The Guardian has the story. A study led by John Cook of Skeptical Science fame considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers between 1991 and 2011.

Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.

The survey found that the consensus has grown slowly over time, and reached about 98% in 2011.

The study authors tell their story at Skeptical Science and the Guardian’s new blog.

Of the papers which specifically examine the contributors to global warming, they virtually all conclude that humans are the dominant cause over the past 50 to 100 years.

Continue reading Climate clippings 75 →

Climate Science, Environment

Oklahoma tornado and climate change

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Tornado damage_cropped_300

The Courier Mail had quite a good piece. If you want pics the BBC has a gallery or enter Oklahoma tornado at Google images. There are some videos collected here. The Courier Mail has a large photo gallery.

Climate Progress revisits tornadoes, extreme weather and climate change. The bottom line is that the jury is out.

In the US tornado alley warm moist air flows north from the Gulf of Mexico in the lower atmosphere and becomes unstable. Dry, cold air comes from the west over the Rockies in the upper atmosphere, with a shear effect to create the top of the column. The warm air becomes unstable and lifts. The shear effect of the upper wind spins the rising column. More air is sucked in by the spinning, rising column. That’s simplistic but those are the basic elements as I understand them.

With climate change the lower atmosphere warm air flow and instability are likely to be enhanced, but there could actually be less wind shear. We don’t know what the result of those factors will be over time, but the suggestion is that if anything there have been fewer severe tornadoes over recent decades. Continue reading Oklahoma tornado and climate change →

Climate Action, Technology

Climate clippings 74

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The weekend was a bit ordinary for me, but as supercoach Wayne Bennett says, if you can’t say anything nice say nothing. That’s how he addressed his troops after the thrashing they got in the previous week. This week they creamed the opposition!

This CC concentrates on climate mitigation, the practical stuff, rather than science, observations and future predictions. What I’m stepping around at the moment is politics, policy, opinion etc.

1. Renewables in surprising places

This image at Clean Technica indicates the potential of renewable energy. Please note that the amounts for coal etc are total reserves, whereas the renewables are annual.

renewable-energy-reserves

I’m not sure the natural gas is accurate as there is a lot of unconventional gas around. Continue reading Climate clippings 74 →

Climate Science

CO2 hits 400 ppm

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On May 9 CO2 reached 400 ppm at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) monitoring centre at Muana Loa and at at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. This is what’s been happening over the last 130 years in broad terms:

co2-temp_570

It seems many news organisations, for example the BBC, and some scientists are stressing that the last time concentrations were so high was 3 to 5 million years ago. In the linked article Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State gives a different view:

Mann said the last time scientists are confident that CO2 was sustained at the current levels was more than 10 million years ago, during the middle of the Miocene Period. Continue reading CO2 hits 400 ppm →

Climate Science

Climate clippings 73

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In this edition I’ve stuck to scientific articles, and, incidentally have used a couple (items 3 and 4) from stuff I gathered around this time last year when I thought I might be launching a new blog. For reasons we won’t go into it didn’t happen at that time.

1. Arctic ice watch

While we were on sabbatical last year the northern cryosphere had an exciting time. There was a giant storm in the Arctic ocean, Greenland surface melt covered virtually the whole ice sheet and all sorts of records were broken in the Arctic summer sea ice melt. I’m hoping to do an update to catch us up, but follow this link to see a dramatic animation of Arctic sea ice volume loss since 1979. I’ve posted this image to show how far we’ve come:

volume-comparison-1979-2012-v4

You can monitor Arctic sea ice extent on the NSIDC site. This image is a screenshot from the interactive graph on that page showing the way summer sea ice is sagging:

Sea ice extent_cropped_580 Continue reading Climate clippings 73 →

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning

NSW coal generation under pressure

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Well it is if the country stays on its present policy trajectory.

Sophie Vorrath at RenewEconomy comments on the latest pitt&sherry electricity emissions update (April data). Back in 1998 coal used to supply 90% of NSW’s National Electricity Market (NEM) electricity. Now this has fallen to less than 75%. One factor is that demand is falling more in NSW than in other states, as shown in these graphs:

Figure 1: Channges in electricity demand by state
Changes_electricity by state_cropped_580 Continue reading NSW coal generation under pressure →

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Culture, Technology

Climate clippings 72

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Climate clippings_275

The last Climate clippings was back in March 2012. I’ve decided to start it up again, so we’ll see how we go. What I try to do is to include up to eight entries with an average of no more than 125 words. Readers who want to keep up in a general way should be able to gain a basic understanding by reading the entries without following the links.

This time the entries blew out to an average of about 150 words.

Climate clippings also serves as an open thread to share interesting links.

1. Climate Consensus – the 97%

Announced at Skeptical Science as a new Guardian blog, John Abrahams and Dana Nuccitelli will be writing at Climate Consensus – the 97%. It does have comments, but to me is not formatted like a blog. Maybe a newspaper blog.

It really started on 24 April. So far it’s not high volume, but looks interesting. Nuccitelli blogs at Skeptical Science as dana1981. The new blog is targeted at a more general audience. It appears their output is going to include correcting the errors and myths of the climate change contrarians, which is welcome. Continue reading Climate clippings 72 →