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Author |
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Ice Free or Die
Greenland's melting ice offers new mining opportunities, could fuel independence bid |
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04 Oct 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 6:38 AM on 04 Oct 2007 Even while Greenland's melting ice is slowly destroying the viability of subsistence hunting, it offers new economic opportunities that could ultimately fund the island country's bid for independence from Denmark. Diamond hunters from North America have been coming to Greenland to search for the precious stones in rock uncovered by glacial retreat. Melting ice of ... |
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| Topics: climate change impacts, Denmark, Greenland, news, politics (all these topics) |
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Out of Shipping Shape
Northwest Passage likely to be unpopular shipping route despite summer ice-free state |
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03 Oct 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 6:15 AM on 03 Oct 2007 While the record melting of the Arctic's sea ice this summer fully opened up the Northwest Passage for the first time since records began, it turns out few shippers would actually use the route even if the summer opening became more reliable. The shortcut route would shave off some 4,700 nautical miles from a typical Europe-to-east-Asia shipping journey as ... |
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| Topics: Arctic, business, climate change impacts, news (all these topics) |
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Moving Stricture
Corps may buy out coastal Miss. towns, encourage residents to move inland |
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02 Oct 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 3:13 PM on 02 Oct 2007 The Army Corps of Engineers is seeking support from three coastal Mississippi counties for a proposal to buy out 17,000 homes and encourage residents to move inland. The Corps generally reserves buyouts for areas prone to river flooding; the new proposal is an indication that the U.S. may be seriously considering the risk of sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and stronger hu ... |
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| Topics: Army Corps of Engineers, climate, climate change impacts, Mississippi, news, placemaking, politics, urban planning (all these topics) |
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Fashion, victim of climate change
Designers lament what will happen when there are no seasons |
Sarah van Schagen |
01 Oct 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Forget melting ice caps, disappearing polar-bear habitat, and rising seas that will inundate major metropolises (metropolii?) worldwide -- the real issue I've got with global warming is the impending devastation of the fashion industry. "The whole fashion system will have to change," says Beppe Modenese, called the founding father of Milan Fashion Week. "[It] must adapt to the reality that there is no strong difference between summer and ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, fashion, green living (all these topics) |
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Arctic ice shrinks by an Alaska plus a Texas
Ice loss hits record low this month in the Arctic |
Joseph Romm |
25 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Hitting a record low on September 16, 2007, the Arctic lost half a million square miles of ice compared to its last record low just two years ago. For all the details, check out the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) website, which notes 'the Northwest Passage is still open, but is starting to refreeze.' We are still on track for an ice free Arctic by 2030, decades ahead of the climate models. This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project ... |
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| Topics: Arctic, climate, climate change impacts, climate science (all these topics) |
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'It will happen'
An amazing AP article on sea level rise |
Joseph Romm |
24 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| This weekend, the AP released the following story: Global warming -- through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding -- is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 inches. It will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation. Wow! The first amazing thing is the confidence with which AP makes a statement beyond ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, climate science (all these topics) |
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Alan Greenspan is very overrated: Part II
Greenspan on climate change |
Joseph Romm |
22 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| If you thought Greenspan was confused about energy, his discussion of global warming in The Age of Turbulence is downright stupefying. He opens well (p. 454): There can be very little doubt that global warming is real and man-made. But the next sentence is (I kid you not): We may have to rename Glacier National Park when its glaciers disappear, in what now looks to be 2030, according to park scientists. That's what all the fuss is about -- we'll have to r ... |
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| Topics: books, carbon trading, climate, climate change impacts, climate change mitigation (all these topics) |
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A problem of Florida-sized proportions
Arctic sea ice continues to melt at alarming rate |
Andrew Sharpless |
20 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| A chunk of Arctic sea ice roughly the size of Florida melted in just six days, according to scientists who warn that ice in the region continues to melt at an alarming rate. Reports are already surfacing of the detrimental effects such rapid habitat loss is having on marine mammals, such as polar bears, which use the ice to hunt and migrate. Most recently scientists have said polar bear populations could drop by 66 percent by mid-century. Virtually every d ... |
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| Topics: Arctic, climate, climate change impacts, oceans (all these topics) |
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I Fought the Thaw and the Thaw Won
Extent of sea ice in Arctic sets record low, keeps on melting |
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20 Sep 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 6:27 AM on 20 Sep 2007 The extent of sea ice in the Arctic has already hit a record low this season, the gloomiest, if not doomiest, since satellite records began in the 1970s. The world will likely have to wait a month or so for the final numbers to be released since sea ice typically stops melting by the end of September, but researchers are already worried by the extra 380,000 square mi ... |
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| Topics: Arctic, climate change impacts, news (all these topics) |
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Siberian Tusky
Siberian permafrost melt threatens to accelerate climate change, reveals mammoth bones |
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19 Sep 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 6:23 AM on 19 Sep 2007 Some large sections of permafrost in Siberia have been thawing out in the last few years due to climate change. If the thaw continues apace (or speeds up) researchers worry that much more organic matter -- leftover plant and animal leavings from thousands of years ago, like mammoth dung, that never fully decayed due to sustained below-freezing temperatures -- wi ... |
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| Topics: climate change impacts, news, Russia (all these topics) |
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Don't Worry, White Billionaires, We Haven't Forgotten You
Native Americans likely to be hit especially hard by climate change, says report |
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18 Sep 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 1:08 PM on 18 Sep 2007 Climate change is likely to hit disadvantaged groups the hardest, and that includes Native Americans, according to a new report. Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder predict that rising seas will flood tribal lands in Florida and droughts will involve tribes in water wars in the Southwest; coastal towns in A ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, environmental justice, news (all these topics) |
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Debunking Bjørn Lomborg: Part III
Lomborg's a real Nowhere Man |
Joseph Romm |
17 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| In Cool It, Lomborg writes about global warming -- but the globe he is writing about certainly isn't Earth. We've already seen in Parts I and II that on Planet Lomborg, polar bears can evolve backwards and the ice sheets can't suffer rapid ice loss (as they are already doing on Earth). On Planet Lomborg, the carbon cycle has no amplifying feedbacks -- even though these are central to why warming on Earth will be worse than the IPCC projects. I couldn't even find the ... |
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| Topics: books, climate, climate change impacts (all these topics) |
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'Climate change: The limits of consensus'
A must-read article from Science on the underestimation of climate change impacts |
Joseph Romm |
14 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| The new issue of Science has a terrific article that underscores many of the points I have been making here. Its central argument is that the scientific consensus most likely underestimates future climate change impacts, especially in the crucial area of sea-level rise and carbon-cycle feedbacks. The authors are highly credible, led by Princeton's Michael Oppenheimer, one of the most widely published climate experts. I will excerpt the article here at length ($ub. r ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, climate science (all these topics) |
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You Say Potato, I Say Climate Emergency
Global warming brings Greenlanders potatoes, destroys their heritage |
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14 Sep 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 9:43 AM on 14 Sep 2007 It gets lost in all the gloom and doom, but global warming does have its upside. In the sub-Arctic south of Greenland, rising temperatures over the last five to 10 years have brought residents more potatoes, broccoli, and flowers, and have made officials optimistic about economically beneficial opportunities for drilling and mining as sea ice melts. Of co ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, Greenland, news (all these topics) |
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Debunking Bjorn Lomborg: Part I
The great polar bear irony |
Joseph Romm |
13 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| For debunkers, Lomborg's work is a target-rich environment. There is even a Lomborg-errors website, where a Danish biologist catalogs Lomborg's mistakes and 'attempts to document his dishonesty.' Lomborg's latest work of disinformation, Cool It, isn't out yet in Europe to be debunked, so I'll fill the gap for now. I will start with polar bears for two reasons. First, the nonironic reason: Lomborg starts his book with a chapter on polar bears, presumably because ... |
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| Topics: Arctic, books, climate, climate change impacts, polar bears, wildlife (all these topics) |
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Trouble Cropping Up
Climate change will cause agricultural output to decline significantly, says study |
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13 Sep 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 4:43 PM on 13 Sep 2007 Attention, people who eat: Climate change could cause global agriculture output to decline by up to 16 percent by 2080, according to a new study from the Center for Global Development and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Like life itself, the allocation won't be fair: productivity is likely to generally decline in developing countries -- Indi ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, climate, climate change impacts, food, news (all these topics) |
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The desertification-global warming feedback loop
Desertification amplifies climate change, and vice versa |
Joseph Romm |
13 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Here is yet another carbon-cycle amplifying feedback not in most climate models. On the one hand, the United Nations' top climate official, Yvo de Boer, announced that: Climate change has become the prime cause of an accelerating spread of deserts which threatens the world's drylands. On the other hand, he pointed out that desertification would, in turn, accelerate climate change: You'll see a sort of feedback mechanism ... quite a lot of carbon is captured in ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, climate science, desertification (all these topics) |
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Fortunately, We've Got It Under Control
Warming globe will have major security issues, says think tank |
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12 Sep 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 12:34 PM on 12 Sep 2007 The security implications of climate change resemble those of nuclear war, a security think tank said today. "Fundamental environmental issues of food, water, and energy security ultimately lie behind many present security concerns, and climate change will magnify all three," wrote the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which foresees coll ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, national security, news (all these topics) |
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Will polar bears go extinct by 2030? Part II
Loss of summer ice in the Arctic will threaten polar bear survival |
Joseph Romm |
11 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| We've seen the USGS predict that two-thirds of the polar bear population will be wiped out by 2050. But that analysis assumes the Arctic will still have summer ice then. The USGS acknowledges (PDF) their projection is 'conservative' since it is based upon an average of existing climate models and 'the observed trajectory of Arctic sea ice decline appears to be underestimated by currently available models.' In fact, the Arctic now is poised to lose all its ice by 2030 ... |
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| Topics: Arctic, climate, climate change impacts, climate science, habitat loss, polar bears, wildlife (all these topics) |
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Not So Green, Are Ya, Greenland?
Greenland glaciers melting at an alarming rate |
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10 Sep 2007 |
News |
| Posted at 3:09 PM on 10 Sep 2007 Depressing climate news, version 17,354: Greenland's two-mile-thick ice sheet is melting at a rate unforeseen to scientists and climate models. Chunks of ice breaking off are so huge that they're triggering earthquakes; the glaciers are adding some 58 trillion gallons of water annually to the oceans, more than twice as much as they were 10 years ago. In total, Greenland's ice holds e ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, news (all these topics) |
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The phrase 'glacial change' needs to be retired
Glacial melting is accelerating more quickly than projected |
Joseph Romm |
10 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Climate change is occurring much faster than the IPCC models project. The Greenland ice sheet is a prime example. Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat recently: We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at two metres an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 metres deep. That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, climate science, Greenland (all these topics) |
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Will polar bears go extinct by 2030? Part I
On the myth that polar bear populations are flourishing |
Joseph Romm |
10 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Human-caused global warming is poised to wipe out polar bears. The normally staid U.S. Geological Survey -- studying whether the bear should be listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act -- concluded grimly last Friday: Projected changes in future sea ice conditions, if realized, will result in loss of approximately 2/3 of the world's current polar bear population by the mid 21st century. Because the observed trajectory of Arctic sea i ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, polar bears, wildlife (all these topics) |
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Eh ...
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David Roberts |
09 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| ... who needs sea ice and polar bears anyway. |
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| Topics: Alaska, climate, climate change impacts, wildlife (all these topics) |
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'We should already be moving to prepare and protect ourselves'
Mooney on hurricanes and climate change |
David Roberts |
07 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Chris Mooney has a piece in the L.A. Times about the current hurricane season and the connection between hurricanes and climate change. It echoes the sensible line taken in Chris' book. This is the crucial bit: When it comes to the hurricane-global warming relationship, neither outright alarmism nor dismissive skepticism are warranted. Rather, taking the limited information that we have and making the most of it should lead to a stance of cautious, well-informed ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, severe weather (all these topics) |
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Global warming can breed terror
John Edwards links climate crisis and national security |
Glenn Hurowitz |
07 Sep 2007 |
Gristmill |
| In a major speech today on national security, presidential candidate John Edwards talked about how fighting the climate crisis is an integral part of battling terror (it also requires less duct tape): Finally, we must achieve energy independence. If we reduce our reliance on oil from instable parts of the world, Middle Eastern regimes will finally diversify their economies and modernize their societies. And fighting global climate change will reduce global disrupt ... |
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| Topics: climate, climate change impacts, international politics, John Edwards, politics (all these topics) |
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