Climate Climate & Energy

More carbon in the Arctic than previously thought

The tundra is probably the single most important amplifying carbon-cycle feedback. None of the IPCC's climate models, however, include carbon emissions from a defrosting tundra as a feedback.

Yet, as NOAA reported last month, levels of methane (a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) rose last year for the first time since 1998, which may be an early indication of thawing permafrost. So it seems like a good a time for a review and update of what we know.

The tundra or permafrost is soil that stays below freezing (32 degrees F) for at least two years. Normally, plants capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and slowly release that carbon back into the atmosphere after they die. But the Arctic acts like a freezer, and the decomposition rate is very low. The tundra is a carbon locker. We open it at our own risk.

Ignoring climate change will cost U.S. big bucks, says group

Doing nothing in the face of climate change would cost the U.S. $1.9 trillion a year (in today’s dollars) by the turn of the next century, says a new report from green group NRDC. That includes big spending on severe-weather damage, real-estate losses, and energy and water costs. The NRDC report is aimed to counter […]

Conservative pundit correctly recognizes the radical implications of the polar bear decision

This ran on VanityFair.com earlier today. George Will is far from the only middle-aged Boomer pundit who spends his time shadowboxing Dirty Hippies on the Washington Post editorial page, but his Thursday column is a doozy even by that genre’s dubious standards. Seems the Communist Greens, with their “hostility to markets” and contempt for individual […]

Earth screwed, but small Japanese towns happy

“We are seeing a flicker of light after long darkness. We never imagined coal would actually make a comeback.” — Michio Sakurai, mayor of Bibai, Japan, a coal mining town being revived by the international surge of demand for coal

Italy wants to reverse ban, move forward with nuclear power

After banning nuclear power for two decades, Italy has announced plans to build a new wave of nuclear plants. Concerns about oil prices, energy security, and fossil-fuel emissions contributed to the about-face by the world’s largest net importer of electricity. “Only nuclear plants safely produce energy on a vast scale with competitive costs, respecting the […]

Should you believe anything John Christy and Roy Spencer say?

I don't believe 'em. But should you?

You can't read everything or listen to everybody. Life is just too short. I debated Christy years ago, so I know he tries to peddle unscientific nonsense when he thinks he can get away with it.

But some of the comments in my recent post "The deniers are winning, especially with the GOP" can't seem to get enough of the analyses by these two scientists from the University of Alabama in Huntsville who famously screwed up the satellite temperature measurements of the troposphere.

In the interest of saving you some time, which is a major goal of my posts, let's see why these are two people you can program your mental DVR to fast forward through. First off, they were wrong -- dead wrong -- for a very long time, which created one of the most enduring denier myths: that the satellite data didn't show the global warming that the surface temperature data did. As RealClimate wrote yesterday:

350.org conference call

As he told Grist readers earlier this year, Bill McKibben is kicking off a new campaign based around the number 350 — as in 350 parts-per-million of CO2 in the atmosphere, the level scientists like Jim Hansen now believe is the safe upper threshold. (The bad news: we’re already closing in on 390.) The website, […]

Feds can dump more waste at Wash. Superfund site, says court

Washington State doesn’t have the right to refuse more dumping of radioactive waste at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site, an appeals court ruled Wednesday. In 2004, nearly 70 percent of Washingtonians voted to keep the federal government from disposing of more toxic waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation until the highly polluted Superfund site […]

World’s leading energy monitor worried about oil supply

Predictions that global oil supply will keep up with demand may be just plain wrong, says some peak-oil-preaching wacko the world’s leading energy monitor. The International Energy Agency is in the midst of its first rigorous survey of global oil supply, and has indicated that future supplies may be tighter than expected. “The prices are […]

It does not save carbon and is not a carbon offset

The list of very knowledgeable folk who still are pushing no-till farming as a greenhouse-gas mitigation strategy -- even though science passed them by a while ago -- includes:

• Sen. John McCain
• Princeton University* [PDF]
• The Chicago Climate Exchange [PDF]
• The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions [PDF]

I buried the science in the McCain post, but it deserves higher visibility. As a major review article [PDF] from Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, "Tillage and soil carbon sequestration -- What do we really know?" concluded: