The Environment / Global Warming

• The Effects of Global Warming being Felt in the US

  In a recent PBS documentary, the mayor of Norfolk, Virginia, Paul Fraim, talks about how flooding has become a monthly occurrence in his town, and how global warming and sea level rise are as much a daily issue for him as education and fighting crime. In some parts of Norfolk, streets turn into rivers at high tide. Homes are flooded five out of six years. People lose their carpets, their appliances, their savings. And they can’t afford to move elsewhere.Sea levels have risen 14 inches in Norfolk since 1930–almost double the global rate. Part of this alarming change is due…

• Carbon Isotopes Prove Humans Have Caused Global Warming

  The earth is warming. But can we be sure that humans are the cause? Yes. The same way cycling officials were sure that biker Floyd Landis doped with synthetic testosterone while winning the 2006 Tour de France.With Lance Armstrong retired and most of the other top riders expelled for illegal drug use, Landis had become one of the favourites. He was leading when in stage 16 he fell to eleventh place. Then, just as his chances of winning seemed dashed, Landis won the next stage going away and went on to ride the Champs-Élysées in the winner’s yellow jersey.A few…

• Never Mind Earth Day, Carbon Emissions are still too High

  The first observance of Earth Day was March 21, 1970. I was 17, and along with other students at Broad Run High School, went out with garbage bags to clean up the side of the road leading to the school. Even then, of course, the world faced much more serious pollution issues than roadside litter. But that problem was one we students could do something about.Given the magnitude of the challenges the earth now faces, provoked by man-made global climate change as a result of our spewing massive amounts of carbon dioxide and soot into the atmosphere, the problems that…

• Catastrophic Climate Change to Hit Africa and the Middle East within a Decade

  A new study just published in Nature Geoscience has found it plausible for the first time that the world’s average surface temperature could rise by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 C.) by 2050, only 38 years from now. In February, the United Nations warned that the world only has a few years to substantially reduce its dependence on hydrocarbons, if it was to avoid the disasters facing the earth with a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees C. The likelihood that such a rise in temperature can be avoided is now low (emissions were up 6% in…

• Scrapping all Coal Plants Would have no Significant Effect for 100 Years

  Who could have dreamed solving climate change would be so easy? A new paper in Environmental Research Letters called “Greenhouse gases, climate change and the transition from coal to low-carbon electricity” concludes that replacement of all of the world’s currently operating coal-fired power plants — which produce about 40% of the world’s electricity — and replacing them with renewable energy would have an impact of 0.2 degrees Celsius 100 years from now. Cherry-Picking Conclusions According to One’s Viewpoint However, a number of climate change websites took away a very different message than I took away from the paper. Here is…

• How Severe an Impact Would the Keystone XL Pipeline have on the Environment?

  Last month, a group of 15 climate scientists (included the now disgraced Peter Gleick) sent a letter to Congress expressing their displeasure over the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. President Obama has weighed in against approval, but Congress wants a green light to allow construction of the 1,700-mile, $7 billion project. Most recently, Bill Clinton weighed in for the pipeline, indicating just how deep the positives of the project are for the U.S. and world oil market. So why are physical scientists getting political about a market-friendly pipeline to deliver oil from the Athabascan oil sands in Alberta, Canada, to various…

• The Climate Change Controversy Continues

  There are a couple of controversial items that have made it into the mainstream press recently that seem to have stirred a little controversy, and which are worth at least a mention. The first was the Opinion piece in the WSJ back in Januuary in which 16 scientists wrote that there was no need to panic over Global Warming. They note, in their letter: Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for…

• Why Oil Companies Don't Want Us Talking About Climate Change

  If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet -- as we shall see -- it’s unfortunately largely invisible to us. In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology.  Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery: “Blue Marble,” originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture…

• 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…