Category Archives: Climate Change & Sustainability

Posts on aspects of climate science, climate action and climate policy & planning.

Climate clippings 35

Australian greenhouse graphs

The ABC has a graph of Australia’s greenhouse gases. I’ve extracted the pie chart here:

Australian GHG emissions 2009-10

The figures are for 2009-10 and exclude land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) which in 2005 was 6%.

Lots of GHG information can be found at the UNFCCC GHG data site, including a global map (may take a while to load).

This graph is of changes, 1990-2008 (including LULUCF), showing Australia and NZ in a bad light, but Turkey is the runaway champion. I suspect outsourcing of manufacturing from the EU.

There’s an interesting champagne glass image Jo Abess’s blog (scroll down) but I’m not sure of it’s pedigree. Continue reading Climate clippings 35

It’s simple, really

Clean Energy Future launch

Frustration at the nonsense purveyed on Madonna King’s program inspired me to send her an email, stating the main features of the Clean Energy Future (CEF) package in three simple points. In this post I give an expanded version so you can check and let me know if I’ve got it right. The scheme does seem to me to have an elegant simplicity about it together with a flexibility that bespeaks careful design.

First, the government is selling permits to pollute, not imposing a tax. About 500 of the biggest polluters will have to buy permits to dump their waste carbon into the atmosphere. Annabel Crabb quotes Gillard as saying:

“Around 500 big polluters will pay for every tonne of carbon pollution THEY put into OUR atmosphere.”

As Crabb says:

WE are getting those polluters to pay for what THEY do to US.

Continue reading It’s simple, really

Climate clippings 34

Mt Pinatubo

Volcanic CO2

Open Mind tells us that even earth scientists outside the field of volcanology don’t know how much CO2 volcanoes emit. Claims are made that it dwarfs human activity and that Mt Pinatubo emitted more than humans in the history of the world.

The answer is that it’s probably less than 1% and that we emit in half a day the equivalent of the Mt Pinatubo event. Continue reading Climate clippings 34

Climate clippings 33

Stormy weather

2010 possibly the worst ever for extreme weather

That’s according to über-meteorologist Jeff Masters posting at Climate Progress.

The year was extraordinary, featuring the hottest year on record equalling 2005, the most extreme winter Arctic atmospheric circulation on record, the warmest and driest winter on record for North America-Canada, the lowest volume of Arctic sea ice on record and 3rd lowest in extent, a record melting in Greenland, the second most extreme shift from El Niño to La Niña, the second worst coral bleaching year, the wettest year over land, the Amazon rainforest experienced its 2nd 100-year drought in 5 years and, it must be said, we had the lowest global tropical cyclone activity on record. Here’s the precipitation graph: Continue reading Climate clippings 33

Climate clippings 32

The sun up close, with sunspots


The little ice age cometh – not!

You may have seen the headlines:

“Three different lines of evidence suggest that the sun, which is expected to reach its maximum sunspot and magnetic activity in the current cycle in 2013, might even be entering a prolonged quiet period similar to the so-called Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 in which virtually no sunspots were observed.”

While the SMH was quite responsible, Fox News maxed it up:

Global Warming Be Damned, We Might Be Headed for a Mini Ice Age

The New Scientist tells us that last year:

researchers modelled what would happen to global temperatures if a grand minimum started now and continued until 2100. They found that it would lower temperatures by 0.3 °C at most.

That isn’t a new ice age: it’s a slightly less severe heatwave.

Skeptical Science has more, including this graph:

Grand solar Minimum temperature projection

See also RealClimate. Continue reading Climate clippings 32

Climate clippings 31

Hurricane Katrina

Severe weather alert: a busy hurricane season

That’s the forecast for 2011.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting a 70 per cent chance of 12 to 18 named storms, six to 10 of which are likely to reach hurricane force – with wind speeds of at least 119 kilometres per hour.

A normal season would have 11 named storms, six of them hurricanes. During 2005, which brought us Katrina, there were 28 named storms. Continue reading Climate clippings 31

Climate clippings 30

Antarctic research team with DC3

East Antarctic ice sheet sits on rivers and lakes

The Science Show reported on a new survey of East Antarctica published in nature.

probably something like the Northern Territory area was actually below 500 metres below sea level, and if you look at the deepest bits, something like the size of Tasmania was more than one kilometre deep.

The implication is that at some stage the sheet will melt faster than previously thought.

The lakes are formed through thermal heat from below.

See also here. Continue reading Climate clippings 30

Climate clippings 29

Planet earth

Take a look at where we are heading

This was linked on a previous thread, but I want to emphasise that 2010 saw the worst ever carbon emissions.

There’s a link in that article to five scenarios of temperature change by Mark Lynas. The scenarios are derived from his book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet which was favourably reviewed at RealClimate.

A rise of 1°C is unacceptable. For example, at that level the coral reefs of the world are under threat. At 4-5°C, which is where we’re heading if the do nothing brigade had their way, we have nightmare territory. Continue reading Climate clippings 29

Climate clippings 28

Joplin tornado

Link between tornadoes and climate change

Recent bad weather in the US, for example the tornado which mashed Joplin, Missouri, has led to many many stories speculating about the link between the intense tornado season and climate change. Joe Romm at Climate Progress takes a measured view:

1. When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.

2. Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.

Joe Romm’s substantive post Tornadoes, extreme weather, and climate change is well worth a read and has lots of comments and links about extreme weather in general as well as tornadoes. Continue reading Climate clippings 28

Climate crunch time arrives

Three emission reduction trajectories

The Climate Commission has just released its first report (download from here) entitled The Critical Decade: Climate science, risks and responses. The report is clear, simple and succinct with excellent illustrations.

If you want to cut to the chase, the message is encapsulated in the highlighted graph. If we, the world, start to reduce emissions now (impossible) by 3.7% a year, we can get away with an eventual reduction of about 85% by 2050. If we start reducing emissions in 2020 we’ll need to reduce by 9% each year (impossible). If we start in 2015 we can get away with reductions of 5.3% per year (barely possible). But we will have to reach zero net emissions by 2040 and then go negative. Is that possible? Barely, if at all, I suspect. Continue reading Climate crunch time arrives

Climate clippings 27

Solar power could crash Germany’s grid

Harnessing the sun’s energy could save the planet from climate change, an approach that Germany has readily adopted. Unfortunately, this enthusiasm for solar panels could overload the country’s ageing electricity grid.

Installed capacity is such that a huge surge can occur when the sun comes out. What’s needed, they say, is an electricity grid that can equalise inputs from the wind of the north to solar in the south.

(Please note the article dates from October 2010.) Continue reading Climate clippings 27

Own goal from the climate sceptics?

If you read the post at Deltoid superficially, you might get the impression that ex-weatherman and blogger Anthony Watts had scored a massive own goal. The bottom line is that he probably has, but the story is complicated, with some wriggle room. Continue reading Own goal from the climate sceptics?