Not In My Back Yardarm

Biggest U.S. oil-tanker company slapped with $37 million in dumping fines They would have gotten away with it if it...

Not all amphibians are toast

Not all amphibians are toast. From Mongabay:

Poison arrow frogs appear to make special effort to avoid exposure to damaging ultraviolet-B radiation ... The researchers found that the two species of frogs appear to be exhibiting UV-B avoidance behavior, with vocalizing frogs found at sites where UV-B levels were more than six times lower than average.

The ozone depletion problem is generally assumed to be under control for now, though I'm sure you can find scientists who would argue otherwise, especially if fame and wealth would result (as with the topic of global warming). A lot of people have confused the two largely unrelated issues. However, UV-B radiation levels are still elevated and are suspected to be a major factor in the present amphibian extinction crisis. If so, then there is hope that the amphibian extinction event may slow as UV-B radiation levels continue to drop:

How high and how fast?

How high and fast will sea levels rise? An important piece (PDF) by Stefan Rahmstorf in Science concludes:

A rise of over 1 m by 2100 for strong warming scenarios cannot be ruled out, because all that such a rise would require is that the linear relation of the rate of sea-level rise and temperature, which was found to be valid in the 20th century, remains valid in the 21st century.

How can 3 percent be important?

Consider this argument often made by climate skeptics:

Water vapor is the most important gas, contributing 97 percent of the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is only small percentage. Therefore, regulating carbon dioxide will have no impact on our climate.

WhileEven if these numbers are generally correct, there are lots of problems with this argument. For example, it disregards the fact that climate forcing by water is really a feedback, and that changes in carbon dioxide are amplified by the water vapor feedback.

Then there's this problem: the argument includes an implicit assumption that a small fractional change of any quantity is intrinsically unimportant. It might make intuitive sense: carbon dioxide is only 3 percent of total forcing, and how can 3 percent of anything be important?

Continued …

And now for the IPCC report's regional assessments, continued from yesterday:

A new report could change the entire energy picture

Virtually everyone involved in energy discussions takes for granted that there’s plenty of coal waiting to be burnt. The typical...

She prefers a ‘people’s waterfront’

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Why are environmental activists so clueless at marketing climate change solutions?

Virgin Blue, the Australian extension of Richard Branson's airline empire, recently launched a program to allow passengers to purchase carbon offsets when they book a flight.

That's nice. But what struck me was this quote from Greenpeace's energy campaigner, Ben Pearson:

Virgin should not be criticized out of hand for this scheme, but it promotes the idea that dealing with climate change is easy and cheap rather than being about the difficult task of changing consumer behavior, government policy and investment.

An interview with Rupert Murdoch about News Corp.’s new climate strategy

Rupert Murdoch. When Rupert Murdoch, the cantankerous and conservative owner of Fox News, enthusiastically joins the fight against climate change,...