climate november II 2010

--text blogs are at the blistered orb--

EVENTS

Montana: largest snowfall in one day, 20 in/51 cm 11.21.
South Dakota: storm upon storm 11.21.Planet: GHG attain new record levels, now at 387 ppm 11.24.

TRENDS

climate change means colder winters 11.16.
fear of new food crisis as prices soar 11.18.
expanding coal market in Asia, esp. in China 11.22.
India, China are bying US coal mines shale gas fields 11.18.
AMERICAN DISENLIGHTENMENT

USA: Chicago Climate Exchange calls it quits 11.17.
USA: NYT editorial "energy and the lame duck" 11.22.
USA: free market fundamentalism, fascism, and populism 11.15.
USA: Bush still at large 11.16.
USA: the two most abhorrent lies of Bush's memoir 11.22.
USA: the origins of America's intellectual vacuum 11.15.
USA: hiding from reality 11.19.
USA: military casualities in Iraqistan now 500,000+ 11.18.
USA: tea partiers, Ayn Rand, and scam artists 11.21.
USA: Obama's limo hog stands out at green NATO summit 11.19.
USA: cover-up of BP contamination of FL beaches 11.8.
USA: CBS funnels disinformation about gas reserves 11.15.
GLOBAL ENLIGHTENMENT

China admits it is world's biggest climate sinner 11.23. & 11.24.Canadian public completely at odds with gov't over climate 11.19.
Japan reconsidering no growth economies (essay by S Hill) 11.20.
MITIGATION

National Academy of Science climate stabilization targets 2010
US offshore windpower permits will be expedited 11.23.New York to get bike share 11.22.
Mexico: Cancun COP-16 and its challenges 11.28.
Cancun, climate summit host and example of threats 11.28.

ESSAYS 'N' STUFF

Wangari Maathai: Cancun must be about more than climate 11.26.
Vincent di Stefano: on the eve of Cancun 11.26.
Brendan Smith: fighting doom: the new climate politics 11.23.
Dimitry Orlov: but what is 'community'? 11.21.
Armond Cohen: a cleantech revolution in four easy steps 11.17.
Michael Moore: don't be lame duck dems: letter to congress 11.16.

Johann Hari: is it "Gaia"? Or rather "Medea"? 11.26.
... and check out:
J B Foster et al The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on Earth

CLIMATE NEOLOGISM

"Eco-Ayatollah"

... as in: "I rather expect the eco-ayatollahs to take a dim view of all my travels lately."
Coined by Jim Kunstler in where the black swan dwells 11.29.


... off-subject, but makes the eco-ayatollah Mad Hun happy (from BBC): Roger Penrose agrees with Kant on cyclic universe 27.11.

climate november I 2010

--text posts are at the blistered orb--

EVENTS

Amazon: drought deepens 11.12.

Florida: first case of Dengue fever arrives 11.11.

Thailand: severe flooding has left 181 people dead 11.10.
Haiti: hurricane Tomas triggers floods 11.7.

Vietnam: severe flooding has left 159 people dead 11.4.

Germany: a month's rainfall in one day 11.13.

Malaysia: clean-up begins after historic flooding 11.8.

TRENDS

last remaining pristine corals are in remote Pacific 11.12.
climate scientists plan campaigns against skeptics 11.8.

UN report warns of threat to progress from climate change 11.5.

PRC report warns climate change hurting China's crops 11.5.

AMERICAN DISENLIGHTENMENT

USA: Obama to boost natural gas development 11.12.

USA: Rep Shimkus (R-IL): God denies climate change 11.12.

USA: Rep Shimkus could lead House environ policy 11.13.

USA: GOP climate deniers vie to run Energy Committee 11.5.

USA: Rep Sensenbrenner (R-WI): let's put Climate Com on ice 11.8.

USA: most radical capitalism of all times is last hope 11.11.USA: states to draft their own climate plans since feds don't 11.8.
USA: Europe ponders US election results 11.14.

USA: a recipe for fascism 11.8.

USA: the 13 dumbest things Americans believe 11.13.

USA: America, land of the free to be stupid 11.6.

USA: America is now officially for sale 11.5.

USA: 50% of new Congressmen deny climate change 11.4.

GLOBAL ENLIGHTENMENT

Cancun COP16 climate talks -- Q & A 11.8.
For Cancun, activists consider the long view 11.12.

International Climate Court plan gains momentum 11.12.

350Earth: can art save the climate? 11.12.

China: update on the one-child policy 11.2.

MITIGATION

Malaysia: green motorcycles set to make debut 11.12.
UN climate panel calls for carbon & transport taxes 11.5.

ESSAYS 'n' STUFF

Ted Rall yes I can 11.12.

Joseph Stiglitz the rich make their own laws 11.7.

James Galbraith how conservatives abandoned free market link
blast from the past: Dan Froomkin Bush ends with a whimper

Germany's ex-gov speaker Heye declares Bush a retard 11.10.

.

climate findings

--text posts are at the blistered orb--

Lots of new work, e.g. Environ Res Letters, Geophys Res Letters, PNAS etc., is about the how-to of measurement. I didn't link to this. Nature has an interesting research cluster on city adaptation. The Tamino blog has good posts on the death spiral of the arctic ice. Geology has items on methane clathrates; one on how typhoons roiling the waters can unzip the deposits, another on how massively/abruptly the deposits, once unzipped, would let go. Coincidence? Science has items on the Eocene heatspike (+ 6 C degrees) and new docu of its correlation with CO2. Nice work, but I don't understand why this makes headlines (e.g. Sci Am), let alone why this gets published in 2010. 1950 would've make more sense, no? Do we need more proof? Or is this just disenlightenment zeigeist, whereby the obvious needs to be shown time and again?

THE UNFOLDING CHANGES

(evaporation up 1982-1997; soil moisture down 1998-2008)
M Jung recent decline in the global land evapotranspiration trend
Nature 467 (2010): 951-954

(additional warming of at least 5-6 C likely)
various climate change evidence from the geological record
Geological Society (London) conference statement Nov 2010
... press: Earth will take 100,000 years to recover 2 Nov 10

(three excellent posts by Tamino on the arctic melt)
G Foster history of arctic sea ice (part 1) Open Mind Oct 16
G Foster can we talk? Open Mind Oct 28
G Foster how likely? Open Mind Nov 3

(Nagoya, no Copenhagen, got work done!)
[staff] world gets 2020 vision for conservation 2 Nov 10
Nature 468 (2010): 14
[staff] geoengineering faces ban 2 Nov 10
Nature 468 (2010): 13-14
[staff] welcome and unexpected progress
Science 330 (2010): 742-743
... various global diversity outlook 3 UNEP (May 2010)
... 2 C global warming too high for diversity Die Zeit

(how to do science in the disenlightenment)
S Lewis how to beat the media in the climate street fight
Nature 468 (2010) online doi 10.1038/468007a

UNDERSTANDING GLOBAL HEATING

(when seafloor CH4 lets go, it does so abruptly)
N Bangs et al massive methane release triggered by erosion
Geology 38 (2010): 1019-1022

(I sure hope CH4 deposits are elsewhere when this happens!)
K Rogers et al mass failures, tropical cyclone, submarine canyons
Geology 38 (2010): 1051-1054

(learning more about the PT extinction: nasty causal cascades )
T Algeo et al anomalous sediment fluxes and bio consequences
Geology 38 (2010): 1023-1026

(proof of high CO2 when it was hot--who'd have guessed?)
P Pearson increased atmospheric CO2 in mid-eocene
Science 330 (2010): 763-764

(ditto)
P Bijl mid-eocene atmo CO2 and temperature variations
Science 330 (2010): 819-821

(summary of the OMG! CO2-climate link by Sci Am)
[staff] CO2 triggered a global warming event 40 mya
Scientific American Nov 4

[staff] Brazil's climate modellers are set to go global
Nature 468 (2010): 20

MEANS & ISSUES OF MITIGATION

(water-starved communities plant fog-harvesting forests)
G Vince out of the mist
Science 330 (2010): 750-751

(financial incentives alone won't fuel urban adaptation)
R Buckley climate economics: hot in the city
critical review of M Kahn Climatopolis (Basic Books 2010)
Nature 467 (2010): 915-916

(environmental review details 'unacceptable' impacts)
[staff] mountaintop minding plans close to defeat
Nature 467 (2010): 1021

(water management research must focus on urban areas)
[editorial] save our cities
Nature 467 (2010): 883-884

(scientists must help mayors to prepare for a warming world)
C Rosenzweig et al cities lead the way in climate action
Nature 467 (2010): 909-911

(it's time for a holistic science of society & environment)
L Bettencourt/G West a unified theory of urban living
Nature 467 (2010): 912-913

(truly green buildings: how skyscrapers could trap CO2)
R Armstrong / N Spiller synthetic biology: living quarters
Nature 467 (2010): 916-918

(new ranching techniques could shave 7% off agri GHGs)
P Thornton/M Herrero reduced livestock emissions in tropics
PNAS 107 (45: 2010) doi 10.1073/pnas.o912890107

CIVIL EVOLUTION

(kids learn to interact better in public)
C Saulter why public transit is good for kids Grist 1 Nov 2010

(how to reduce farmers' vulnerability to climate impacts)
FAO launches website on climate-smart agriculture
UN FAO newsfeed 4 Nov 2010