Is ignorance bliss when it comes to climate change? And is the weatherman the closet thing we have to a climate change guru? Find out this and more in today’s round-up of green news.
- Blame it on the Weatherman: When the temperature gets hot in your neigborhood, do your thoughts turn to climate change? You’re not alone. Check out this graph showing how warmer weather makes people more certain that climate change is happening.
- 100 and Counting: Treehugger puts a green eye toward Obama’s first 100 days with a timeline of all the ups and downs in the new administration’s environmental progress so far.
- The Fossil Fuel Piggy Bank: Two new studies published in Nature show we’re closer to reaching global warming tipping points than previously thought. Island of Doubt assess the damage.
- Never Talk to the Media Strangers: Mother Jones questions whether the firing of a top climate change scientist in New Zealand is a case of censorship.
- Hope for the Future? A recent study of the environmental beliefs and knowledge of students found that 15-year-olds who were less informed were also the most optimistic about future environmental change.
(Image: Clouds at sunrise in Arizona. Source: Kevin Dooley via a Creative Commons license.)
Tags: Climate Change, global warming, Media, New Zealand, Obama 100 days
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All humans will suffer from controls on global warming emissions.
Darci Palmquist must be a global cooling denialist. I’m a meteorologist and a sea ice analysist/forecaster for NOAA. I have studied and observed Atmospheric Science for 45 years. I just look at the facts. The earth has cooled since its peak in 1998. The temperature trend rounded the curve and the cooling accelerated in 2007. Antarctica has a yearly net ice gain, which increases with each passing year. The Arctic is beginning to see a net increase this year. Sure, there “was” a well documented warming from around 1850 to 1998. Even more interesting is how the great climate models never verify a forecast, and, missed the current 10+ year cooling trend.
If it makes sense to enact measures to reduce CO2 emissions when experts forecast warming, then surely it also makes sense to emit extra CO2 when experts forecast cooling. Or perhaps not.
Perhaps any link between climate change and carbon dioxide is not so strong or important. Consider the historical record.
The tiny fraction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased through the twentieth century. And yet, during that time, global average temperatures rose till about 1940, fell till about 1975, rose again till 1998, and then dropped away again. It is not surprising, then, that despite claims “the science is settled,” thousands of scientists disagree with forecasts of dangerous manmade global warming.
History again provides useful guidance.
Dave Percy Anchorage, Alaska