Showing posts with label Climate Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Climate Change. Show all posts

Nov 30, 2019

Climate Change

Climate change describes changes in the state of the atmosphere over time scales ranging from decades to millions of years. These changes can be caused by processes inside the Earth. e.g. volcanoes and forces from outside, e.g. variations in sunlight intensity. Other significant factors include: temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind, solar irradiance, humidity, precipitation, and topography.
The major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect; carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26%; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9%; and ozone (O3), which causes 3–7%.


A 2012 United Nations report revealed that the earth’s cattle population produces more carbon dioxide than automobiles, planes, and all other forms of transport combined. Also, the cow pies they drop and the gas they produce equals a third of the world’s methane emissions, which traps 84 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.

In the summer of 2016, EcoWatch published an article confirming that greenhouse gas emissions from livestock actually account for a higher percentage of total global emissions than the world’s 1.2 billion automobiles.

Jul 12, 2019

Climate Change History

Could not resist this bit of history from the climate groupies. We only had until the year 2000 before disaster would strike. Seems these dates change like the dates for the doomsayers predicting the end of the earth. As each date passes, another ominous warning and another 'disaster' date is set.

"U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked,  PETER JAMES SPIELMANN June 30, 1989

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of eco- refugees, threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.


He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control. As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday."

Feb 15, 2019

Warmer or Cooler

Headlines say that the world is doomed as 2018 was so warm, but the facts they offer spell something a bit different. The facts they give say the warmest year was 2016, 2017 was the third-warmest, and 2018 was fourth warmest.


That means 2017 was cooler than 2016 and 2018 was cooler than 2017. This indicates there has been a cooling trend for the past few years. It will be interesting to see if the polar vortex influences 2019 numbers.

May 25, 2018

Climate Stuff

Last week the NOAA announced that April was the 400th month of warmer than average temperature (and caused by us). The NOAA has been tracking temperature since 1880 and reports it has been getting warmer. Interesting that it corresponds directly to the end of the Little Ice Age around 1860. During the Little Ice Age, average global temperatures were 1-1.5 degree Celsius (2-3 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than they are today.

The Little Ice Age followed the Medieval Warm Period also known as the Medieval Climate Optimum, or Medieval Climatic Anomaly. Scientists believe possible causes of the Medieval Warm Period include increased solar activity, decreased volcanic activity, and changes to ocean circulation.

As late as 2012, scientists still did not agree when the Little Ice age specifically began or ended. Some believe 1300s beginning and others believe 1600s. Most agree it ended in the mid 1800s. A theory from 2012 reports that an unusual, 50-year-long episode of four massive tropical volcanic eruptions triggered the Little Ice Age. Their results are in contrast to the work of other scientists who contend that decreased radiation from the sun is what caused the Little Ice Age.

Scientists mostly agree that the warm period was caused by less volcanic activity and more solar activity. They also mostly agree it was followed by the ice age, which was caused by more volcanic activity and less solar activity.

They all agree that the earth has tilted on its axis over time and there have been many periods of colder weather and many periods of warmer weather on earth during the past millions of years.

Scientists also all agree that mankind cannot control volcanoes, the sun, or the earth tilting on its axis. What they cannot agree on is whether this time climate change is our fault, politics, or just another natural cycle of Mother Nature toying with us.

Mar 17, 2017

Wordology, Resilience

A new non-dictionary political term for Climate Change. To be resilient now means to encompass all previous climate change strategies: to resist, to mitigate, and to adapt. Its use in climate research and US academic papers has multiplied over time.

The 2015 US PREPARE Act, a bill to help the federal government recover from extreme weather events, does not mention climate change or global warming, but it uses the term 'resilience' 40 times. The word has also begun to show up in individual state plans to 'mitigate flooding' rather than to 'deal with sea level rise affects of climate change'. A rose by any other name. . .

Feb 6, 2015

Climate Change

Clothing could reflect 90 percent of body heat by dipping clothes in a solution made of AgNW, also known as silver nanowire. Regular clothing only reflects 20 percent of body heat back at your skin, making nanowire-coated clothing much more energy efficient. The study was conducted by Professor Yi Cui of Stanford University and his team of researchers. Since metal nanowire coating can conduct electricity, all you would need to do is connect a battery to the clothing.

They see metal-coated clothing as a way to combat the rampant energy demands of the winter months. They report that "47 percent of global energy continues to be spent simply on indoor heating." We are told global warming is caused by energy use. Now we find half of that is caused by trying to keep us warm. Hmmm

May 31, 2013

Global Warming, Global Cooling

It appears to me that long term climatologists may be suffering from the same afflictions as local weather celebrities, "It may be warmer tomorrow unless it gets cooler".

Attached is an interesting article from 1975 decrying the various governments for not getting ready for the impending global cooling. The chart is interesting because it is markedly different from global warming charts for the same period. Change the word 'cooling' to 'warming' and we have the same dystopian rhetoric used in any number of articles from recent years. . . until this year.

Seems some may be changing their minds again. Here is an April 2013 article from Forbes. LINK

Sep 22, 2010

Climate Change

It sure shows that scientists are flexible. First it was Global Cooling, then Global Warming, now the buzzword is just Climate Change. Personally, I prefer Change Happens.