Climate Climate & Energy

Baseball All Year Round!

Northeast U.S. may feel like South if climate continues changing, says study The days of mild summers in the Northeastern U.S. may be numbered, says a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists. If global greenhouse-gas emissions were reduced by 3 percent each year, the average temperature in the nine Northeast states would still likely […]

Can industrial agriculture withstand climate change?

If the fossil fuels don’t getcha, the genetics will. Photo: iStockphoto In the United States, the clearest signs of climate change so far have been stern words from Al Gore and a few hotter-than-normal summers. In Greenland, by contrast, global warming has sparked a revolution — at least, when it comes to agriculture. A recent […]

Nothing to Sea Here, Folks

Arctic sea ice melts to second-lowest monthly minimum on record Last month, sea ice in the Arctic melted to the second-lowest monthly minimum it has reached in 29 years of satellite measurements. The ice reached its record monthly minimum in September 2005; scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center say the monthly record […]

A dispatch from a forward-looking climate conference in Germany

Michael Levitin is a freelance writer based in Germany. Last week, he attended KyotoPlus: Escaping the Climate Trap, an international conference held in Berlin. Monday, 2 Oct 2006 Berlin, Germany Imagine a trans-European “super grid” of renewable energy connecting solar parks in northern Africa to wind farms in Scandinavia. Consider the millions in savings — […]

Plain speaking from an expert

To a layperson, the world of climatology can be an intimidatingly foreign land. Denizens of this world -- scientists -- speak a daunting, often-impenetrable blend of acronyms (AGW, IPCC, WPAC, ENSO), Latinisms (anomalies, coterminous, precipitation deficits), and math (confidence limits, regression-based, boundary knots).

Besides the sheer complexity of global climate systems, the dreariness of this jargon may be one of the big reasons the general public has been slow to awaken to the seriousness of the threat of global warming. In fact, a conference on climate change organized by Yale last year called for "training scientists to speak in language that is understandable to different audiences."

One scientist who needs no such training is Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and meteorologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., an institution closely linked to NASA. In the world of science, Patzert is known for his work matching TOPEX satellite weather data to the actual behavior of the Pacific Ocean and its weather systems, especially El Nino and its less-well-known counterpart La Nina. In the media world, he is a go-to guy for comments on weather patterns for the L.A. Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and CBS News, in part because he has a sense of humor.

Patzert, who has briskly guided my reporting on climate questions for years, generously agreed to an extended email interview for Grist. Since he has become known for his work with the media, and even won medals for his outreach efforts, I thought I'd begin with a question about why the rhetoric of climatology is so turgid and difficult. His answer was more than I bargained for:

Touched by an Angela

German Chancellor will focus on climate as she leads G8 and E.U. German Chancellor Angela Merkel intends to make climate change top priority when her country takes the reins of both the European Union and the G8 at the beginning of next year. Enviros are likely to welcome the leadership of Merkel, a former environment […]

Really

Good for Angela Merkel:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel named confronting climate change as her country's top priority as leader of the Group of Eight (G8) nations next year and will also use Germany's weight as president of the EU to push for the reduction of energy use at the same time.

Somebody give that lady a backrub!

Bluster’s Last Stand

DOD declares wind turbines can interfere with radar, but says some can proceed The Defense Department has finally completed a long-awaited study on how wind farms impact military radar, which clears the way for some stalled wind projects to continue. At least a dozen projects in Illinois, North Dakota, and Wisconsin had been put on […]

Quick, Hide the Mung Beans

Unexpected levels of human-caused methane could mean trouble A rise in human-caused methane emissions — a phrase that certainly does not make us giggle — has been masked by a decline in natural methane releases, says a new report in Nature. Atmospheric concentrations of methane, less abundant than carbon dioxide but 20 times greenhouse-gassier, have […]

Overfishing, global warming causing increases in jellyfish populations

Ahoy, me hearties! Me hopes ye've now recovered from Talk Like a Pirate Day. Turned out to be a jolly good time here at Grist HQ aboard me ship -- a good lot of pirate jokes and a few noggins o' rum and me timbers were shivered, if ye know what I mean.

Well, this week mateys, me post was inspired by the maritime adventures of a coworker shipmate during his travels in Cabo. Apparently, after a dip in the refreshing waters, his partner started to develop a large welt -- likely from a jellyfish floating stealthily nearby. The anecdote led me to mention how jellyfish had ruined many a day at the beaches where I grew up and how I thought populations were increasing due to warmer waters in recent years. Read: global warming. So I did a bit of research to find out if this is, in fact, true.