Tag Archives: climate change

CIA & Engineering the Earth’s Environment

Posted on by Mark Nykanen

Fascinating piece in The American Prospect (link, as always, to follow) that looks at the CIA’s recently revealed interest in studying geoengineering. That’s the use of technological means to slow down the planet’s warming. Various means have been bandied about to reflect sunlight back into space, now that nature’s way–vast ice sheets and snowfields, for [...]

U.N. Climate Study: “…outdated on the day it’s released.”

Posted on by Mark Nykanen

That’s the word from a story at CommonDreams.org by John Atcheson (link to follow). On numerous occasions I’ve noted that the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2007 grossly understated the impacts of the warming. In Atcheson’s account, we get a very good explanation of why that happened and why it will [...]

Wildfires Getting Wilder–and Why

Posted on by Mark Nykanen

Sending you over to Slate quickly this morning for a marvelous 1:47 video that explains as succinctly as possible why we’re seeing such massive wildfires this summer–and why we’re likely to see them over and over again in the years to come. Short, concise, and–ironically enough–chilling. Here’s the link: https://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2013/08/yosemite_fire_climate_change_we_are_all_to_blame_for_forest_fires.html

Earth is Still Hot, Still Melting, Still Setting Records–of the Worst Kind

Posted on by Mark Nykanen

That’s the yearly report card from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Does that news have a certain “redux” feel for you? Kind of like the alarm clock in “Ground Hog Day”? It certainly hits me that way, but let’s look at the “alarming” details, as provided by Climate Central (link to follow). For [...]

Methane “Belch” Looming “At Any Time”

Posted on by Mark Nykanen

The methane time bomb in the Arctic just keeps ticking away. A piece in today’s New Scientist puts it into perspective–and quickly. Billions of tons of methane–a greenhouse gas with twenty-five times the heat holding capacity of carbon dioxide–are set to rise to the surface at any moment. That “belch,” as the scientists involved call [...]