Category Archives: carbon dioxide sequestration
The Climate Crunch
(with the possibility of rapid 15-20 foot SLR out there) David Suzuki aptly calls the corner we’ve painted ourselves into “the climate crunch”. See his article. Why a “crunch”? Had we heeded early warnings and had political representatives done more … Continue reading
Dr Glen Peters on “Stylised pathways to `well below 2°C”’, and some solutions from Dr Steven Chu (but it’s late!)
Stylized pathways to “well below 2°C” Dr Peters has also written about “Can we really limit global warming to `well below’ two degrees centigrade?” An excerpt and abstract: Commentary: Yes, but only in a model. We have essentially emitted too … Continue reading
“Carbon emissions and climate: Where do we stand, and what can be done if it all goes wrong?”
On Sunday, 11th February 2018, I presented an Abstract of a 3 hour talk on the subject, “Carbon emissions and climate: Where do we stand, and what can be done if it all goes wrong?” at the Needham Lyceum, hosted … Continue reading
Will the Climate `play nice`
An explanation by Dr Jørgen Peder Steffensen, a down-to-earth one, about climate bifurcations. He’s hardly the only scientist that has warned about this. Dr Wally Broecker famously said: The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it … Continue reading
Getting back to 350 ppm CO2: You can’t go home again
(Update of this piece, included below.) (Major update of this piece included below.) You can’t. It’ll cost much more than 23 times 40 times the Gross World Product to do it. And, in any case, you need to go to … Continue reading
“Negative emissions” (from ATTP)
Originally posted on …and Then There's Physics:
I went to some Departmental talks recently and discovered that some of my colleagues are researchering possible carbon sequestration technologies. This could be very important, but appealing to negative emission technologies is…
Carbon Sinks in Crisis — It Looks Like the World’s Largest Rainforest is Starting to Bleed Greenhouse Gasses
Originally posted on robertscribbler:
Back in 2005, and again in 2010, the vast Amazon rainforest, which has been aptly described as the world’s lungs, briefly lost its ability to take in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Its drought-stressed trees were not growing…
David Suzuki on Agroecology
See Feeding humanity in a warming world. Dr Suzuki links University of California, Berkeley, Professor Miguel Altieri’s “Principles and strategies for designing sustainable farming systems“.
That two degree limit is closer than it appears
The UNFCCC’s COP21 concluded goals which aimed for limiting global warming to C, and certainly keeping it below C, both measured with respect to pre-industrial temperatures. Bad news. According to the United States National Center for Atmospheric Research (“NCAR”), in … Continue reading
Techno Utopias
Professor Kevin Anderson on Techno Utopias. The Paris “COP21” agreement is/was not only expecting miracles, it was counting on them. Y’think climate disruption causes ecosystem disruption: Try geoengineering. Well the answer was simple. If we choose to continue our love … Continue reading
Causal Diagrams
Like Sankey diagrams, causal diagrams are a useful tool to assess and communicate complicated systems and their intrarelationships: It’s possible to use these for analysis and prescription: Here is the (promised) presentation on reenforcing loops: So how can these techniques … Continue reading
Life cycle analysis of emissions from various forms of energy converted to electricity
There was a recent discussion regarding the life cycle analysis of various forms of energy, principally to be converted to electricity. Given that everything I know about sustainability and life cycle analysis suggests is it is a very complicated business, … Continue reading
References Regarding the 450 ppm CO2 Ceiling
Updated 23rd July 2015 J. Hansen, M. Sato, P. Hearty, R. Ruedy, M. Kelley, V. Masson-Delmotte, G. Russell, G. Tselioudis, J. Cao, E. Rignot, I. Velicogna, E. Kandiano, K. von Schuckmann, P. Kharecha, A. N. Legrande, M. Bauer, and K.-W. … Continue reading
Climate Justice
December 2015 will see the definitive meeting of the UNFCCC COP 21 intended to set targets and commitments under the UN treaty establishing UNFCCC and the IPCC, one approved and ratified by the United States (*). Before then, a good … Continue reading
We are trying. And the bitterest result is to have so-called colleagues align themselves with the Koch brothers
I attended a 350.org meeting tonight. One group A group presenting there called “Fighting Against Natural Gas” applauded themselves for assailing Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island for his supportive position on natural gas pipelines. Now, I am no friend of … Continue reading
“Barking mad”
Today was a big day at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (“NAS”). The Academy released two important climate reports, each dealing with one of two categories of global countermeasures for the effects of dumping unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide … Continue reading
The B-Team
Yes!! B Team Leaders Call for Net-Zero Greenhouse-Gas Emissions by 2050 About the B Team. See also Track 0
The designers of our climate
Originally posted on …and Then There's Physics:
Okay, I finally succumbed and actually waded through some of the new paper by Monckton, Soon, Legates & Briggs called Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model. I…
US$60/ton of Carbon
There’s a new paper out, by Frances Moore and Delavane Diaz of Stanford University, on the Social Cost of Carbon. It is “Temperature impacts on economic growth warrant a stringent mitigation policy“, Nature Climate Change, 12th January 2015. The principal … Continue reading
“Atmospheric lifetime of fossil fuel carbon dioxide” (2009)
These basic facts do not appear to be widely known, so it’s a good thing this classic paper is now available in a new, easily accessible form. David Archer, Michael Eby, Victor Brovkin, Andy Ridgwell, Long Cao, Uwe Mikolajewicz, Ken … Continue reading
More on ice sheets and 400 ppm CO2
Direct Air Capture of Carbon Dioxide
A new article from Scientific American suggests putting up a link to the 2011 study by the American Physical Society on the topic would be a good idea. Note that while some costs are estimated, and compared to costs of … Continue reading
Exciting if improbable news
There’s a report in the Financial Times today that UN negotiators are considering a proposal to phase out oil, coal, and gas by 2050. There’s a second permitting fossil fuels to be used, but only in countries which ensured “net … Continue reading
IPCC WG3 overview video, and Synthesis Report news conference
Leonardo DiCaprio, concerned citizen, at the United Nations
… [O]ne of the most keenly watched speeches at the summit was made by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a freshly appointed UN climate envoy. He said he played fictitious characters solving fictitious problems for a living. “I believe humankind has looked … Continue reading
“Expectations for a new climate agreement” (Jacoby, Chen, MIT, 2014)
Professors Jacoby and Chen have issued a report as part of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change which handicaps the outcomes of the negotiations which, by international agreement, need to take place in 2015 … Continue reading
Wally Broecker, 2015, “What Should We Do About Fossil Fuel CO2?”
Postscript, 19:03 EDT, 1st September 2014 See Wally Broecker’s article in Science where he proposed and coined both the terms “climatic change” and “global warming”. That was in August of 1975.