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Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation

Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?

 


Cutting carbon pollution is the key to curbing global warming

Posted on 5 December 2014 by John Abraham

Not all greenhouse gases are created equal. If we want to limit the temperature rise of the Earth, we really need to focus on the long-lasting greenhouse gases. They’re the ones that matter, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Joeri Rogelj and his colleagues.

Most of us already know this, but not all greenhouse gases are created equal. There are some greenhouse gases that, when emitted, only stay in the atmosphere for a short time. There are other greenhouse gases (like carbon dioxide) that stay aloft for decades to centuries. Finally, there are some that stay airborne for an intermediate duration. It has often been stated that we can “buy time” by focusing on short-lived greenhouse gases. Reducing things like black carbon or methane can give us some extra years to get our act together on carbon dioxide.

But this suggestion is challenged in the PNAS paper. There are two major issues that suggest we really need to focus on the long-lived gases. First, since short-lived gases only stay airborne for a brief period, any emissions that we make now will not impact the temperatures we can expect say in 2100. Reducing our emissions of short lived gases will affect the rate of temperature increase in the next few years, but will have very little impact on the maximum temperature that will be obtained. In fact, the present study is clear in stating,

Maximum temperature increases (peak warming) is to first order determined by the cumulative emissions of the long-lived greenhouse gases until the peak and by the annual emissions of the short-lived greenhouse gases at the time of the peak.

This doesn’t mean that reducing short-lived greenhouse gases isn’t important. In fact, the short-lived gases become more important if we have already reduced carbon dioxide. As stated in the paper,

Methane mitigation measures in the latter half of the century become important if carbon dioxide emissions have already been curbed, and warming thus peaks before 2100. Early action on methane is less important for limiting warming to below 2C.

Part of the paper’s conclusions are based on simple calculations with a climate model. But another part of the study is based on the interdependence of these greenhouse gases. The gases are interdependent because they may be cogenerated – they may be emitted from the same source.

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Drought and Deforestation in Brazil

Posted on 4 December 2014 by Guest Author

This is a guest post by Alexandre Lacerda who lives in Serra Negra, a small town about 150 Km north of São Paulo city, Brazil, where he works as an attorney and entrepreneur. He has contributed many of the Portuguese translations of Skeptical Science arguments and this is his first blog post.

I live in São Paulo, the richest state in Brazil, and also the one with the largest population. I live in a small town up on the hills about 150 Km north of São Paulo city, a large city with some 20 million inhabitants if you include all its surrounding metropolitan area.

The climate here is quite pleasant: dry, mild winters in the middle of the year (remember, this is the southern hemisphere) when we get a few frosts and hot summers cooled by frequent torrential rain in December-January. Well, at least that’s how it used to be. Frosts became a rare event, when they happen at all. And summer rains failed last year, which is what this article is about.

In our small town, public water reservoirs usually get quite low during winter, and get filled up again every summer with reliable rainfall. That’s something we learned to count on almost as we count on the sun rising tomorrow. The low reservoirs were something we looked at as something normal for the season, just as you don’t usually panic when your fridge is empty: after all, it will be replenished when needed.

Then, after a pretty unremarkable December last year, with a few good showers, January came and it was sunny. Day after day, we enjoyed the summer vacation with the feeling that the fun sunny days would any time be over. But they lingered on all month, then the next month, then the month after that. It slowly dawned on us that the rainy season would be over, but the necessary rain would not come.

Reservoir Brazil Normal

Reservoir Brazil Drought

 Local reservoir in normal condition (on top) and at the present drought (above). (personal archive)

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8 comments


Volcanoes may be responsible for most of the global surface warming slowdown

Posted on 3 December 2014 by dana1981

A new study has found that when particulates from small volcanic eruptions are properly accounted for, volcanoes may be responsible for much of the slowdown in global surface warming over the past 15 years.

Sulfur aerosol particulates pumped into the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions cause short-term cooling by blocking sunlight. Until recently, climate scientists thought that only large volcanic eruptions had a significant impact on global temperatures. There haven’t been any big eruptions since Mount Pinatubo in 1991. However, studies published over the past few years have found that even moderate volcanic eruptions can pump significant amounts of aerosol particulates into the atmosphere.

Virtually all research into the climate influence of volcanic aerosols has used satellite measurements of particulates in the upper atmosphere (the stratosphere). These satellite measurements only monitor the volcanic aerosol at heights of 15 km and above. The new paper by David Ridley and colleagues studied the amount of volcanic aerosols in portions of the stratosphere that lie below 15 km.

To do this, the researchers combined data from satellites, ground-based instruments in the AERONET program, and from instruments on weather balloons. The study was co-authored by 17 climate scientists, including some leading experts in aerosol research.

By combining all of these measurements, the scientists found that there is also a significant amount of volcanic aerosol in portions of the stratosphere below 15 km They concluded that for recent eruptions, between 30 and 70% of the overall amount of volcanic aerosol in the stratosphere has come from below 15 km. Since the year 2000, the study estimates that volcanoes have had a cooling influence on global surface temperatures. The likely range of this volcanic cooling influence lies between 0.05 and 0.12°C.

As the authors of the paper note, this cooling influence is not taken into account in the climate model simulations incorporated into the latest IPCC report,

The climate model simulations evaluated in the IPCC fifth assessment report [Stocker et al., 2013] generally assumed zero stratospheric aerosol after about 2000, and hence neglect any cooling effect of recent volcanoes

Although the global surface temperature data have been within the range of model simulations, they’ve been towards the lower end of those model runs over the past 10–15 years.

IPCC AR5 Figure 1.4. Solid lines and squares represent measured average global surface temperature changes by NASA (blue), NOAA (yellow), and the UK Hadley Centre (green). The colored shading shows the projected range of surface warming in the IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR; yellow), Second (SAR; green), Third (TAR; blue), and Fourth (AR4; red).

IPCC AR5 Figure 1.4. Solid lines and squares represent measured average global surface temperature changes by NASA (blue), NOAA (yellow), and the UK Hadley Centre (green). The colored shading shows the projected range of surface warming in the IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR; yellow), Second (SAR; green), Third (TAR; blue), and Fourth (AR4; red).

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97 Hours - the Turkish edition

Posted on 2 December 2014 by BaerbelW

Shortly after 97 Hours of Consensus had been successfully completed, we received an email from the Turkey-based blog Out for Beyond enquiring if they could create translated versions for the quotes. Obviously, we were quite happy with this chance to increase the project’s reach even further!

The Out for Beyond team quickly started to translate the quotes while we prepared the Skeptical Science website in order to eventually host the “dubbed” cartoons. Once they became available, the translations were proofread by a colleague of mine in Germany and given a big thumbs-up for their quality.

The first finished quote was the one for Michael Mann (who knew that he is fluent in Turkish?):

97Hours_Michael_Mann_TR

97Hours_49_James_HansenIn an effort to raise awareness in Turkey about climate change, Out for Beyond is publishing the quotes on their blog while COP20 in Lima is happening. The plan is to publish one quote per hour from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm each day, making this campaign stretch out for almost the complete duration of COP20. Please visit Out for Beyond to follow their project!

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2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49A

Posted on 1 December 2014 by John Hartz

All eyes on Lima as climate negotiations begin crucial period

The major UN climate talks of the year (COP20) get underway in Lima next week, offering up an opportunity to ramp up climate action while kicking off an intense 12 months of the global climate negotiations. In just a year’s time, governments from around the world are expected to sign off a new global climate agreement, which will see all countries, big and small, accept emissions targets.

In the last few months alone we’ve seen mass mobilisations around the world, the UN Secretary General’s climate summit, a stark report from the world’s climate scientists, and demands for action from a diverse community of voices including business and religious groups – all driving climate change back to the top of the political agenda. Governments can no longer afford to ignore the calls to scale up their transition from dirty fossil fuels to renewable energy. With China, the US and the EU all unveiling climate action plans in recent weeks, and nearly US $9.6 billion raised in climate finance pledges, a strong sense of political momentum accompanies the next fortnight of talks. But much work is still to be done.

Daily Tck: All eyes on Lima as climate negotiations begin crucial period by Tierney Smith, tcktcktck, Nov 30, 2014

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Our short film on the One-Two Punch of Climate Change

Posted on 1 December 2014 by John Cook

For our upcoming free online course, Making Sense of Climate Science Denial, we've been interviewing scientists in England and Australia. While on Heron Island last month talking to coral reef researchers, we also had the privilege of interviewing Sir David Attenborough about a range of issues, including the effects of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef. 

So when GetUp! announced the #ReefReels short film competition, asking for 3 minute films about the Great Barrier Reef, it seemed logical to use some of our wonderful interviews to communicate what the science is telling us about how climate change is impacting coral reefs.

The full interviews with Sir David Attenborough, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Annamieke Van Den Heuvel (as well as many others) will be released in March and April 2015 when we release our MOOC, Making Sense of Climate Science Denial. You can sign up for free now.

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2014 SkS Weekly Digest #48

Posted on 30 November 2014 by John Hartz

SkS Highlights

Mercury Rising: 2014 Likely to Surpass 2010 as Warmest Year on Record by Rob Painting garnered the most comments of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. Dana's The latest global warming bill and the Republican conundrum attracted the second highest number.

El Niño Watch

"With the Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching; my thoughts are quickly shifting from trying to make sense of the current ENSO picture to heaping mounds of stuffing and turkey. With that in mind and with full realization that this is one of the busiest travel days of the year, I tried to keep today’s ENSO blog post simple, involving a question I was asked repeatedly during my recent trip to California:

"What’s the deal with El Niño and California rainfall? An El Niño means lots of rain, right?"

Fun with Statistics: El Niño and California Rainfall by Tom Di Liberto, NOAA/Climate.gov, Nov 26, 2014

Toon of the Week

 2014 Toon 48

h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists

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2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #48B

Posted on 29 November 2014 by John Hartz

56 countries seek carbon capture incentives in next climate deal

Fiscal incentives for carbon capture should be part of the global climate change agreement that replaces the Kyoto Protocol, 56 countries belonging to the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said in a statement on Tuesday.

The recommendation by the UNECE member states puts the issue formally on the table for a meeting of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015, which aims to agree a legally binding treaty to replace Kyoto.

Delegates from almost 200 nations will meet i, n Peru next month to work on the accord, amid new scientific warnings about risks of floods, heatwaves, ocean acidification and rising seas.

56 countries seek carbon capture incentives in next climate deal, Reuters, Nolv 25, 2014 

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The Chinese scientific revolution aims to tackle climate change

Posted on 28 November 2014 by John Abraham

This article is about the future landscape of science in general, and climate science in particular.

Just a few days ago, the Chinese Academy of Sciences hosted a small workshop which involved scientists from around the world that work on a device called the Expendable Bathythermograph, or XBT for short. The obscurity of the conference speaks volumes; it didn’t get much, if any, press attention. This fact tells a lot about the host nation.

XBTs are devices that are used to measure ocean temperatures. They were developed many decades ago to help navies determine the depth of the thermocline. Submarines positioned below the thermocline are more able to avoid detection. The devices are released from the deck of a ship and they fall through the water, recording temperatures along the way. As they fall, they unspool a copper wire which is connected to a data collection device so that temperatures can be recorded.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of these devices are dropped into the world’s oceans. A huge database, stretching back to the 1960s is available for climate studies. The problem is that the devices are designed to be, well, expendable and cheap. When their wire spool runs out, the wire breaks, and the torpedo-like device detaches from the ship and sinks to the ocean floor. The expendable nature of the device has forced the cost per device to be low.

As a result, no pressure sensors were installed on the devices so water depth cannot be determined directly. Depth has to be inferred from a correlation of prior experiments. If the correlation is not correct, a scientist will not accurately know the depth of the probe in the water and consequently, will not be able to calculate the energy of the ocean waters. Ocean heating is the hallmark of global warming. If we can’t use XBTs to get an accurate sense of ocean heating, we are flying blind.

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8 comments


Mercury Rising: 2014 Likely to Surpass 2010 as Warmest Year on Record

Posted on 27 November 2014 by Rob Painting

The monthly global analysis for October has been released at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and it reveals that global surface temperature for October 2014 is the warmest October in 135 years of record-keeping. This follows on from the 2nd warmest April, and the warmest May, June, August, and September, ever recorded. In fact the first 10 months of 2014, January to October, are the warmest such period ever recorded, and 2014 is very likely to end up as the warmest year - taking over the title from the previous record year in 2010. Other surface temperature data sets, such as NASA GISTEMP and the Japan Meteorological Agency, also have 2014 on pace to break the annual record.

 

Figure 1 - Global surface temperature anomalies for January-October from 1880-2014. As indicated, 2014 is now the warmest January-October period on record - beating out 1998 and 2010 (tied) by 0.02°C. Image from NOAA NCDC.

With two complete months of data yet to come, it may appear premature in declaring 2014 a likely record-breaker, but 2014 is different to the evolution in surface temperature during 2010 - the previous record holder. Record warm years are typically associated with the development of El Niño events, whereas in 2014 El Niño is yet to even put in an appearance. 

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2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #48A

Posted on 26 November 2014 by John Hartz

Air pollution costs Britain £10bn a year, report shows

Britain has 10 of Europe’s top 50 “super-polluting” power stations and factories, helping to cost it more in health and environmental impacts than any other countries, except for Germany and Poland.

New air pollution figures from the European environment agency (EEA) suggest that a handful of power stations and industrial plants together cost the National Health Service and the wider UK economy over £10bn a year.

Of over 14,000 major industrial plants identified in Europe’s 27 countries, Drax power station in Selby and the Longannet plant at Kincardine in Scotland were ranked respectively 5th and 10th between 2008-2012.

Air pollution costs Britain £10bn a year, report shows by John Vidal, The Guardian, Nov 25, 2014 

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The latest global warming bill and the Republican conundrum

Posted on 25 November 2014 by dana1981

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced a climate bill in the US Senate last week. The American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act proposes to tax carbon pollution at the source or at the border for imports, and return 100% of the revenue to taxpayers. The tax would therefore be revenue-neutral, not increasing the size of government.

A revenue-neutral carbon tax has become an increasingly popular proposal for tackling global warming. Liberals have long been on board with requiring that polluters pay for their carbon emissions, but in the United States and a few other countries where climate science is treated as a partisan issue, conservatives have been resistant to this concept.

Research has shown that fear of government regulations is one of the primary reasons conservatives tend to reject the overwhelming scientific evidence for human-caused global warming. A majority of Republicans accept the scientific reality when they realize there are free market solutions available.

From Campbell and Kay, “Solution Aversion: On the Relation between Ideology and Motivated Disbelief,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014, Vol. 107, No. 5, 809–824. Published by the American Psychological Association, reprinted with permission.

From Campbell and Kay, “Solution Aversion: On the Relation between Ideology and Motivated Disbelief,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014, Vol. 107, No. 5, 809–824. Published by the American Psychological Association, reprinted with permission.

The American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act is a free market solution that, because it’s revenue-neutral, wouldn’t increase the size of government. All of the revenue generated would be returned to taxpayers through a variety of possible paths:

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Will New Climate Treaty Be a Thriller, or Shaggy Dog Story?

Posted on 24 November 2014 by Guest Author

The following article is reprinted by permission of its author, Stephen Leahy, who writes for the Inter Press Service (IPS) News Agency. To access the article as posted on the IPS website, click here.

COP 20 Peru Exhibition Facility

The as-yet unfinished exhibit area which forms part of the temporary installations that the host country has built in Lima to hold the COP 20, which runs Dec. 1-12. Credit: COP20 Peru

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Nov 17 2014 (IPS) - This December, 195 nations plus the European Union will meet in Lima for two weeks for the crucial U.N. Conference of the Parties on Climate Change, known as COP 20. The hope in Lima is to produce the first complete draft of a new global climate agreement.

However, this is like writing a book with 195 authors. After five years of negotiations, there is only an outline of the agreement and a couple of ‘chapters’ in rough draft.

The deadline is looming: the new climate agreement to keep climate change to less than two degrees C is to be signed in Paris in December 2015.

“A tremendous amount of work has to be done in Lima,” said Erika Rosenthal, an attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law organisation and advisor to the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

“Time is short after Lima and Paris cannot fail,” said Rosenthal. “Paris is the key political moment when the world can decisively move to reap all the benefits of a clean, carbon-free economy.”

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2014 SkS Weekly Digest #47

Posted on 23 November 2014 by John Hartz

SkS Highlights

President Obama's climate leadership faces the Keystone XL challenge by John Abraham attracted the highest number of comments of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. Coming in a close second was John Cook's Why we need to talk about the scientific consensus on climate change. Both articles were inititally posted on the blog, Climate Consensus - the 97% hosted on The Guardian. 

El Niño Watch 

Tropical Pacific Ocean moves closer to El Niño Enso Wrap-Up posted by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology on Nov 18, 2014

Toon of the Week

 2014 Toon 47

h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists

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2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #47B

Posted on 22 November 2014 by John Hartz

Acid maps reveal worst of climate change

Much of the change in climate change is happening to the ocean. It’s not just the extra heat hiding within the waves. The seven seas also absorb a big share of the carbon dioxide released by burning the fossilized sunshine known as coal, natural gas and oil. All those billions and billions of CO2 molecules interact with the brine to make it ever so slightly more acidic over time and, as more and more CO2 gets absorbed, the oceans become more acidic.

Now scientists have delivered the most comprehensive maps of this acid phenomena, a global picture of the oceans in 2005 against which future scientists can track just how much more acidic the oceans have become.

Acid Maps Reveal Worst of Climate Change by David Biello, Scientific American, Nov 20, 2014

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Why we need to talk about the scientific consensus on climate change

Posted on 20 November 2014 by John Cook

An interesting sequence of events followed the publication of a scientific paper the Skeptical Science team published in May last year. The paper found a 97% consensus that humans were causing global warming in relevant scientific papers. Finding an overwhelming consensus was nothing new. Studies in 2009 and 2010 also found 97% agreement among climate scientists on human-caused global warming. Nevertheless, the paper attracted much media attention, including tweets from Elon Musk and President Obama.

We expected our work would be attacked from those who reject climate science. We weren’t disappointed. Since publication, hundreds of blog posts, reports, videos, papers and op-eds have been published attacking our paper. A year and a half later, there is no sign of slowing. But this is just the latest chapter in over two decades of manufactured doubt on the scientific consensus about climate change.

What did surprise me were criticisms from scientists who accept the science on climate change. They weren’t arguing against the existence of a consensus, but whether we should be communicating the consensus. This surprised me, as our approach to climate communication was evidence-based, drawing on social science research. So in response, I along with co-author Peter Jacobs have published a scholarly paper summarising all the evidence and research underscoring the importance of consensus messaging.

One objection against consensus messaging is that scientists should be talking about evidence, rather than consensus. After all, our understanding of climate change is based on empirical measurements, not a show of hands. But this objection misunderstands the point of consensus messaging. It’s not about “proving” human-caused global warming. It’s about expressing the state of scientific understanding of climate change, which is built on a growing body of evidence.

Consensus messaging recognises the fact that people rely on expert opinion when it comes to complex scientific issues. Studies in 2011 and 2013 found that perception of scientific consensus is a gateway belief that has a flow-on effect to a number of other beliefs and attitudes. When people are aware of the high level of scientific agreement on human-caused global warming, they’re more likely to accept that climate change is happening, that humans are causing it and support policies to reduce carbon pollution.

Another argument against consensus messaging is that public understanding of the climate issue has moved on from fundamental issues such as the consensus. The evidence says otherwise. Public surveys have found that the public are deeply unaware of the consensus. On average, the public think there’s a 50:50 debate. There are several contributors to this “consensus gap”, including mainstream media’s tendency to give contrarian voices equal weight with the climate science community.

Funnily enough, a third objection to consensus messaging argues that we shouldn’t communicate consensus because public views have not moved on. In other words, the fact that public opinion about consensus hasn’t shifted over the last decade implies that consensus messaging is ineffective.

Dan Kahan argues that consensus is a polarizing message. Liberals are predisposed to respond positively to consensus messaging. Meanwhile, conservatives are more likely to reject the scientific consensus.

Political ideology certainly does influence people’s attitudes towards climate change. The following graph shows data I’ve collected from a representative sample of Americans, asking them how many climate scientists agreed about human-caused global warming. The horizontal access in this graph represents political ideology (specifically, support for an unregulated free market, free of interference from government).

These data come from research by John Cook, taken from a survey of a US representative sample (N=200).

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70 comments


2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #47A

Posted on 19 November 2014 by John Hartz

A carbon tax could bolster wobbly progress in renewable energy

A couple of years ago, the smart money was on wind. In 2012, 13 gigawatts worth of wind-powered electricity generation capacity was installed in the United States, enough to meet the needs of roughly three million homes. That was some 40 percent of all the capacity added to the nation’s power grid that year, up from seven gigawatts added in 2011 and just over five in 2010.

But then a federal subsidy ended. Only one gigawatt worth of wind power capacity was installed in 2013. In the first half of 2014, additions totaled0.835 gigawatts. Facing a Congress controlled by Republicans with little interest in renewable energy, wind power’s future suddenly appears much more uncertain.

“Wind is competitive in more and more markets,” said Letha Tawney at the World Resources Institute. “But any time there is uncertainty about the production tax credit, it all stops.” 

A Carbon Tax Could Bolster Wobbly Progress in Renewable Energy by Eduardo Porter, New York Times, Nov 18, 2014

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Turbulent week for global climate policy leaves many questions

Posted on 19 November 2014 by Guest Author

They came, they saw, they cuddled koalas and world leaders then largely ignored the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s instructions to ignore the global, intergenerational and morally challenging kerfuffle over climate change.

All in all the last seven days have proven to be momentous for climate change policy - both at the Brisbane G20 summit in Queensland and elsewhere.

Suspicions were confirmed, deals were announced and positions were galvanized, but there are still major questions as the world tries to find a safe route to a new global deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

I’ve been doing a bit of unpicking. Here are the threads.

Abbott coal’s great defender

It’s hard to think of a sterner test of Tony Abbott’s resolve to be the coal industry’s great international defender as that which he faced in Brisbane.

In the run up to the meeting, the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions, the United States and China, announced what many described as a “historic” agreement to kerb emissions (more on this in a bit).

As the host of the G20, Australia had already faced concerted pressure both behind the scenes and in front of them to make climate change a more central part of the meeting’s agenda.

When the US President Barack Obama finally arrived in Brisbane, he headed to the University of Queensland to deliver a speech where he called on other leaders to deliver a strong global agreement next year in Paris.

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1 comments


President Obama's climate leadership faces the Keystone XL challenge

Posted on 18 November 2014 by John Abraham

What a change a few years makes. For those of us concerned about climate change, seven years ago marked a low-point. It was a time where no meaningful actions had been taken to reduce carbon pollution and prepare our nation and the world for the threat of global warming. Now, we celebrate a series of major plans and actions that have the potential for helping us avoid the worst climate risks.

These past years have cemented Obama’s legacy as a climate-aware president. They have also cemented the opposition (as if more cement was needed) as either too weak-minded to understand basic physics or too cowardly, favoring political expediency over the fate of future generations. This is one of those issues on which history books hinge. This was the time the USA took a leadership role to simultaneously reduce carbon pollution, adapt to the unavoidable changes in the pipeline, and build the energy infrastructure to lead in the future’s energy economy.

What actions has the Obama administration taken? We can remember back to the increase in fuel efficiency standards for passenger vehicles and finalization of standards for commercial vehicles. These standards not only reduce carbon emissions but they lower costs to consumers and preserve the valuable resource petroleum.

Perhaps the most significant actions taken by the administration deal with pollution from existing and new coal power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency has developed a Clean Power Plant to reduce power-plant emissions. The plan allows flexibility in meeting emission reductions reflecting different conditions and power-portfolios across the country.

The administration has set forth an international agreement to reduce very potent greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons. This agreement was exciting because it gave lie to the idea that USA action would put as at an economic disadvantage. What this agreement showed is that when the USA acts, other countries follow.

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Just how ‘Sapiens’ in the world of high CO2 concentrations?

Posted on 17 November 2014 by Marcin Popkiewicz

High concentration of CO2 reduces man's intellectual abilities

Did you ever experience being at a lecture or a meeting in a room where you felt tired, your eyes were closing and no matter how hard you tried you could not concentrate? The reason did not have to be a boring subject or a mediocre lecturer – it is a common experience caused by high concentration of carbon dioxide in the air of a crowded and poorly ventilated conference room or a classroom.

People exhale carbon dioxide. If the room is crowded, small and poorly ventilated, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air grows. When in turn we inhale such air, the carbon dioxide contained in it gets dissolved in our blood and reacts with water to create carbonic acid [H2CO3], which, in turn dissolves into ions of hydrogen [H+] and bicarbonate [HCO3]. Increase in the concentration of hydrogen ions increases blood acidity and creates electrolyte imbalance, causing increased discomfort and decline in intellectual performance. We feel tired, numb and less capable of any mental or physical effort.

Blood pH vs CO2 concentration

Figure 1. Changes in blood acidity level (pH coefficient) as  a function of CO2 concentration in the air we breathe (expressed in number of CO2 molecules per million - ppm). Increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere from 280 ppm in the preindustrial era to the current approximately 400 ppm reduces pH of our blood by 0.1 (which is equivalent to acidity increase by 30%). Effective ventilation of buildings becomes more difficult (D. Robertson, 2006).

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