/ Global Warming

• We are not Thinking Big Enough with our Solutions to Climate Change

  Climate change presents us with a pressing challenge. A global consensus accepts that human activity is responsible for climate change and its associated dangers. However, there is disagreement on how best to address this challenge. The essay argues that leading proposals are unsatisfactory, such as the ecological footprint and polluter pays principle. The reasons include that they do not effectively manage climate change and may contribute to further problems. We require a new approach to address climate change. Even if you don’t accept the consensus on AGW, I suspect that few of you would say with confidence that there is…

• Global Warming - Fact or "Fuzzy Science"?

  Perhaps no environmental issue arouses more fierce partisan debate than global warming. On the one side are environmentalists and many scientists, on the other many governments and businessmen, who decry both the phenomena and the attendant costs in dealing with it. The debate was opened by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol climate treaty and has raged ever since. While the Clinton administration supported it, the Bush administration simply walked away from it. On 7 June 2005 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences posted a statement on its website noting, “The U.S. National Academy of Sciences joined 10 other national science academies today in…

• Interstellar Energy Cloud may be as much to Blame for Climate Change as CO2 Emissions

  For years climate change has been blamed on global warming, which has in turn been blamed on green-house gases produced from the combustion of fossil fuels. However there is another explication that perhaps can’t be held culpable for all changes affecting the global environment at the moment, but it certainly doesn’t improve the situation. On July 14th 2010 it was officially revealed that information from the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 satellites prove that our solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud of electrical energy. According to astrophysicist Alexei Dmitriev the energy in the cloud is being absorbed by…

• Startling the Global Community, Canada Withdraws from the Kyoto Convention

  Canada has announced its intention to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions (GGE), sandbagging the other signatories to the convention. The Kyoto protocol, initially adopted in Kyoto, Japan in 1997, was designed to combat global warming with the agreement allowing countries like China and India take voluntary, but non-binding steps to reduce their greenhouse gas carbon emissions. International condemnation was swift. China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said at a news briefing, "It is regrettable and flies in the face of the efforts of the international community for Canada to leave the Kyoto Protocol at a time…

• A Look at Why the Durban Climate Talks Failed

  Why did the Durban climate talks fail? Ultimately, the culprit is the near-universal pursuit of economic growth. All the major players want growth: the US, because it’s still pulling out of a recession; China, because it knows 10 percent annual growth can’t go on forever, but is trying to avoid a hard landing; Europe, which is trying to pull out of its sovereign debt spiral. The US and China, in particular, know that fossil fuels have given them growth in the past, and are especially reluctant to give them up now. The Chinese pulled a PR coup during the talks…

• Insurance Companies Feeling the Effects of Climate Change

  Environmentalists are not the only ones who worry as projections about climate change keep getting worse and worse. So do insurance companies, which feel the effects financially as the pace of climate-related disasters accelerates. It is telling that, even as some business groups oppose climate-change legislation in Washington, many of the companies with the most to lose from global warming are treating it as a reality – and pricing their products accordingly. Losses from extreme weather related to climate change are no longer chump change. Allstate CEO Tom Wilson this year told investors that catastrophic weather losses beyond hurricanes and…

• Global Warming Naysayers Says the Heat is On!

  The subject of Climate Change and Global Warming has a polarizing effect in the U.S. Like religion, you either believe or don’t believe. Strong sentiments resonate on both sides. It seems impossible to try to sway either camp. One of the biggest excuses used by anthropogenic climate change and global warming skeptics has been the unscrupulous nature of the scientific community. In a poll I conducted a few years ago titled “Climate Change – Fact or Fiction,” about 40% of 478 pages of comments raised concern over Climategate, scientists, financial gains and the political arena. Comments included: “Unfortunately, there are…

• Could Geo-Engineering Solve all our Climate Fears?

  Gio-engineering a.k.a climate engineering is the study of how to manipulate the planets climate to counter act the effect of global warming. This video describes various strategies to achieve this, from dispersing the suns rays with trillions of space based lenses, to creating denser clouds to reflect the suns heat. These suggestions could seriously help reverse global warming, but many people are worried about the impact on the global climate that any form of manipulation might have, and whether it could make the situation worse for many people. <iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QJsyol7olPM" width="560" height="315" scrolling="auto" frameborder="0"></iframe> My first reaction to schemes for…

• Is Climate Change Real? Take a Look at the Science Before you Decide

  Today, we’re going to make the world less comfortable, in two easy steps that each of you can do at home. Step 1 shows how easy it is to account for the carbon dioxide excess in the atmosphere based on our cumulative use of fossil fuels. Step 2 bypasses intricacies of thermal radiation to put an approximate scale on the amount of heating we would expect the excess CO2 to produce. Serves 7 billion. Climate Change in Context I view climate change as a genuine challenge to the stability of our coexistence with the planet. But it is not my…

• Global Warming Debate Finally Over? Five Questions For Richard Muller

  In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism, California Berkeley physicist Richard A. Muller describes the results from a recent re-examination of climate records and declares the debate is finally, really, truly over. Skepticism, Muller explains, may have been warranted before (how generous of him!), but now that the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project folks have worked over the temperature data again, there’s no more cause for skepticism about whether or not the globe has warmed. Warming Red Herring - and Five Real Questions Muller is right about the globe warming, but his framing of the…