You were born at the wrong time, if you're under 35. 

You missed all the great movements.

The civil rights movement. The 60s. Even the Reagan Revolution. 

You are stuck in a time that is inconsequential. All of our discussions are about meaninglessness. The big topic on CNN is a haircut that happened 50 years ago. The number one topic on Fox news is a bake sale.

This must be because there is nothing worth talking about. All of history is over. There is nothing left to do but fiddle with the footnotes, rant about the placement of commas in the comments section and pretend to get angry about the fact that Courtney is using Ben just to...

Forgive me for missing this bit of news, but at the end of the New York Times' review of Steve Coll's new book on ExxonMobil, the reviewer notes: "[Exxon] has acknowledged global warming; it has advocated for a carbon tax."  Sorry, but ...  WHAT? Did I read that right? ...

Does the good outweigh the bad? 

How complaining on Facebook and Twitter could change the world

Normally, it is complicated explaining a direct role of biology in an economy---to many variables to juggle. However, it is not difficult to connect-the-dots between the role of temperature on the rate of photosynthesis, the driving force in plant physiology and agricultural production.

A new study in Nature Climate Change and summarized by the New York Times presents the affect of climate change on corn prices. Increasing temperatures will have a greater influence on corn productivity than oil prices, national or international trade policies, or government mandates to produce ethanol as a biofuel. This climate induced affect has a direct relationship to basic biology.

Photosynthesis is the process of converting...

Spring arrived earlier this year, perhaps by nearly a month from anecdotal accounts. A NASA satellite has captured an image of the Piedmont area, between the Appalachians and the Atlantic coast, using its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that is providing more precise measurements. In an early April image, the Appalachian Mountains remain brown as the trees cover higher elevations and have not begun producing leaves yet.



Spring Greening along East Coast

(credit: NASA)

The timing...

If you’re someone who is perplexed to understand weather events and their relationship to climate change, then a clever video by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research UCAR is worth watching. Comparing increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to a baseball player on steroids, the effects become obvious:







Baseball and the Climate on Steroids (credit: NCAR & UCAR)





WHB

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The jailed climate activist has a book club. RiledUp has joined it.

When asked by RiledUp, the GOP strategist disputes facts of climate change, points to "cold records" set in Europe. Says: "This not going to be a major political issue."

Cloud forests are some of the most amazing ecosystems on planet Earth. They are restricted in distribution, exceptionally diverse, and threatened almost everywhere they exist. They are also one of the most magical places I have ever had the opportunity to visit and investigate. Their primeval nature is both spooky and astounding to experience by anyone willing to make an effort.

The University of Queensland and the Australian Research Council have released a report on the potential impacts of climate change on Mexican cloud forests and by extrapolation to cloud forests wherever they exist worldwide. The Australian report does not make for pleasure reading. If current trends continue, Mexico will lost up to 70 percent of its cloud forests by 2080 in an article published by Nature Climate Change and potentially the remainder by a combination of deforestation and...

The Winter of 2011-2012 will go into the record books.

NOAA (the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration) has just announced the rankings and the winter of 2011-2012 was the 4th warmest winter on record. According to the National Climate Data Center, a part of NOAA:

“The winter average temperature of 36.8°F was just 0.4°F cooler than the warmest winter on record, the winter of 1999 – 2000.”

It was also the 3rd least snowy winter on record and March 2012 registered the highest temperature ever recorded in US history. Temperatures in the lower 48 states were 36.8°F or just 0.4°F cooler than the warmest winter on record, the winter of 1999 – 2000. Additionally, the U.S. Set More Than 15,000 March Weather Records as reported NOAA as well.

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While most mountaineering attention is directed towards Mount Everest and climbing attempts being made to commemorate the 1963 American first ascent, other eyes are following the impact of climate change on mountains everywhere.

In a new post to the Energy Collective on Five Iconic Mountains Threatened by Climate Change, Joseph Romm notes that glacial melt, invasive species, mudslides, and erosion are all impacting mountains around the world. Focusing his attention on five famous mountain landscapes: Mount Everest (Asia), the Matterhorn (Europe), Mount McKinley/Denali...

Recently we mentioned a new national initiative to interrupt the volume of big data that is accumulating from the internet, space explorations, and environmental studies. This NASA animation illustrates the value of 3D visualization of data sets gathered during the massive tornadoes that hit the Dallas area on April 3rd.



";" alt=""> Texas Tornados in 3D (credit: NASA)



As the new visualization technologies becomes more common, numerous other applications will be emerge and find utility beyond disaster prediction.

WHB







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In the middle of a moronic debate about gas prices, the Washington Post offers a powerful reminder: the climate is still warming. 

The potential for coastal zone flooding caused by climate change has been analyzed by Climate Central.

The research organization has produced a new report, Surging Seas, and wants to inform people about the threat and inspire them to take action to keep the crises from getting worse. The results of their new maps aren’t pretty. They indicate that nearly 5 million Americans are vulnerable to sea level increases already. Locations including the coastal Gulf Coast states, Florida, the Chesapeake Bay region, and parts of California are particularly at risk and this will only increase over the coming years.



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It never hurts for a new film to receive some positive reviews. Chasing Ice, a new documentary film about climate change that screened at the Sundance Film Festival, just received a good one:

“James Balog’s Chasing Ice is the smoking gun on climate change, a beautiful compelling savage indictment of the deniers.”

Robert Kennedy, Jr.





Chasing Ice Poster

(credit: Sundance FF)

It will be interesting to learn the...

Tim DeChristopher has been in prison for more than seven months. He's worth still thinking about.

"Do you believe in global warming?" He asked me. He was a dentist for kids. He had perfect teeth. I was riding public transport with him. He'd seen me reading "The Weather Makers," a book about how man affects the climate. "I mean," he continued. "I know the world is warming. But do you think humans are causing it? Or do you think it's part of natural cycles? Couldn't this just be nature?" I paused to think. I don't know for sure, I said. I'm not a climate scientist. I don't really understand what the Greenhouse Effect is. Maybe the Earth is getting warmer because of a tilt in the axis or more solar flares. In the past, the climate has changed because volcanoes erupted and more of a certain type of plant existed. "Yes," he said. "Maybe this is just like that. Maybe this is just nature." Could be, I say. Maybe nature is one thing and humans are another thing. Maybe the fact that there are seven billion people on the planet doesn't affect the planet at all. Maybe those seven billion people and...

Every so often, the USDA updates its hardiness zone maps for the nation. The agricultural agency released their latest map at the beginning of 2012 to reflect changes since 1990.

A hardiness zone is defined, “as a geographically defined area in which a specific category of plant life is capable of growing under the existing climatic conditions, including its ability to withstand the minimum temperatures of the zone.” The maps are of particular utility to farmers and gardeners making plans for spring plantings. Over the past fifty years, hardiness zones have been changing due to the affects of climate change as a comparison of earlier maps illustrate.

 

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Dear Climate Morons:

If global warming isn't caused by people and the billions of fires we light every day in our engines and power plants, and it's caused instead by sun spots or solar flares or a wobbly Earth, then why is so much of the warming happening in the northern hemisphere, where all the people are?

 

In the vein of full disclosure, it must be admitted that I am super-biased about the subject matter of a yet-to-be released movie, Chasing Ice, the film’s subject James Balog, a friend of 40 years, and the Sundance Film Festival where I was an original long-time volunteer. It is hard not to celebrate this fantastic documentary film, the dedicated explorer-photographer, and a festival that has come to represent all that is important in independent filmmaking.

Chasing Ice chronicles the efforts of Balog and his small, elite, crew of scientists, engineers, and artists to bring the existential reality of climate change to a wider audience beyond dry government reports and climate statistics. It succeeds well at this task as The Hollywood Reporter so aptly reviewed.

Using spectacular photography for which he is well known from work...

From way back in 2007, here's an oldie but a goodie, as climate scientist Richard C.J. Somerville drops some genius during a debate with exceptional novelist and noted climate blowhard Michael Crichton. The end is great, when he dismisses wing nuts like Crichton by summarizing: "it tends to be the rare exception rather than the rule when a lone genius eventually prevails over conventional mainstream scientific thought." Here's the whole excerpt: 

The science community today has impeccable settled science ... that demonstrates the reality of global warming and its primary origin in human activities.

We fully understand the fundamental physics behind the greenhouse effect. We also now have persuasive observational evidence of dramatic changes already taking place in the climate system, changes that are not in any sense small. Mankind‘s fingerprints have now clearly emerged above the noise of natural variability….

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In the vein of full disclosure, I must admit non-impartiality in this posting. My friend of over 40 years, James Balog, is the subject of a new documentary film—Chasing Ice—that will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this month.

For the better part of a decade, Jim and his Extreme Ice Survey crew have travelled to the world’s icy regions ranging from the Andes, Himalayas, and Rockies, to the glacial landscapes in Greenland, Alaska, and Antarctica. Using custom-made camera and video gear, he has documented the changes to these extreme environments from global climate change. The EIS time-lapse videos capture the impacts better than legions of official climate change reports and international conferences. Here is one example from the Umiamako Glacier system in Greenland:



 

 

Umiamako Glacier retreat 2007-2010

(credit: Extreme Ice Survey)  

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In the immensely popular Harry Potter book series, Harry has a magical companion, a snowy owl named Hedwig, who alerts him of pending danger.

These beautiful, white, owls with large yellow eyes normally inhabit the high Arctic where they prey on lemmings and voles. This year they have decided to make a rare visit south into our lower latitudes. The visiting owls are exciting young Harry’s, Hermione's, and any older folk who may have never seen these majestic birds of prey.

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2011 was a extreme year for weather events. Normally three or four big storms happen in a given year but in 2011 twelve major events were recorded. From massive floods to droughts, fires, and killer tornadoes, this extreme weather cost the USA over $50 billion in damages and repairs.

The PBS Newshour focused attention on the environmental and economic consequences of this years events and the influence of a warming atmosphere from CO2 induced climate change. 



Watch How 2011 Became a 'Mind-Boggling' Year of Extreme Weather on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

The year of living extremely may become the norm rather than the exception as climate models predict even more extreme weather.

Riled Up

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Water has always been a valuable natural commodity but as climate change really gets underway it will become even or critical and potentially limiting. Living in the West may require changes in the way we think and use this life sustaining resource. Colorado native, Peter McBride comments here in his personal survey of the Colorado River as it once flowed into the Gulf of California:

“The Colorado River is the seventh largest river in the U.S., supplying water to over 30 million people. It is also one of the most diverted, silted, and heavily litigated rivers in the world. The farmers and residents of the rapidly growing western states rely on the river for irrigation, drinking water, and electricity. This demand has permanently altered the river’s ecology as his video,

The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict, shows us:

"The Colorado River; Flowing Through Conflict" by Peter McBride from Peter McBride...

December 11 is designated ‌International Mountain Day by the United Nations. This year’s theme is Mountains & Forests and their critical role in maintaining ecological balance.



Gravely Mountains, Montana

(credit: SWP Media)

With the vital role mountains play everywhere in providing water supplies, wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation, environmental moderation by forest cover, and their sheer majesty this is a day to celebrate.

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It isn’t often that a hurricane heads towards Alaska but one is on its way. The storm barreling towards the Baring Straits is predicted to carry hurricane-force winds and waves as it hits along the Alaskan coast. The National Weather Service has stated: "This will be an extremely dangerous and life-threatening storm of epic magnitudes rarely experienced," in Alaska.

A NOAA satellite image captured the scale of the weather system.

 



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The Appalachian folksingers, the Carter Family, wrote a beautiful sea shanty-- The Storms Are On The Ocean --about a sailor leaving his homeland and a girl far behind: I'm going away to leave you, love I'm going away for awhile, But I'll return to you again someday If I go ten thousand miles

In the 18th and 19th Centuries seafaring voyages like the one in the Carter tune were a treacherous matter and storms were always on the horizon. Times and sea going vessels have changed but the threat of storms has not. They are getting even more intense and dangerous with each passing year due to a changing climate.

A recent paper shows just how dangerous storms are becoming. In this case. the atmospheric pollution, instead of CO2, comes from smoke and soot. Environmental researchers at the University of Virginia compared cyclone patterns in the Arabian Sea between 1979-2010, a thirty year period. Their report, Arabian Sea Tropical...

New imagery from aerial surveys of Antarctica shows the development of an enormous crack in the Pine Island Glacier. Measurements indicate that the glacier basin makes the highest contribution of ice into the ocean than any other glacier in the world. This is of particular interest since the ice sheet is so large, unstable, and a large source of uncertainty in predicting rising sea levels due to global climate change. 

You can watch the impressive NASA video here:

 





Major crack observed in Antarctic ice shelf (credit: NASA)





 

Riled Up

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