Kudos to the European Union for its nascent leadership on efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions—it must hang tough in the face of opposition from China, India and the United States. There are legitimate debates over the most effective schemes for reducing earth's anthropogenic atmospheric carbon load1—there is no legitimate debate over the need for every nation to immediately implement a carbon-reducing scheme. |  |
Res:
UPDATED 08/07/2022 Princeton ZeroLab, Latest Report: Preliminary Report: The Climate and Energy Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (pdf)
UPDATED 04/02/2109 Nature, Extremes of Summer Climate Trigger Thousands of Thermokarst Landslides in A High Arctic Environment
UPDATED 01/02/2019 UCSD, Keeling Curve and EIA, Annual Energy Outlook 2018
with Projections to 2050
UPDATED 05/18/2018 Review of the Draft Fourth National Climate Assessment (2018): Summary
UPDATED 06/13/2017 Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China (English)
UPDATED 06/12/2017 C40, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group
UPDATED 05/23/2017 Joint Global Change Research Institute
UPDATED 03/16/2017 NAP, Review of the Draft Climate Science Special Report (2017) Chapter: Summary
UPDATED 11/22/2016 DMI, Arctic Temperatures Daily Mean Temperatures North of 80 degree North (1958-2016) [note: 260K is approximately 8.3F; Convert K2F by T(°F) = T(K) × 9/5 - 459.67 or just type "260K equals F" in your Google or browser bar and presto, 260K=8.33F].
UPDATED 11/03/2016 NSIDC, Sluggish ice growth in the Arctic and Overview of Current Conditions
UPDATED 09/01/2016 NAP, The Future of Atmospheric Chemistry Research: Remembering Yesterday, Understanding Today, Anticipating Tomorrow (2016)
UPDATED 08/23/2016 NAP, Commercial Aircraft Propulsion and Energy Systems Research: Reducing Global Carbon Emissions (2016)
UPDATED 07/29/2016 NAP, Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change (2016) Chapter: Summary
UPDATED 07/25/2016 NAP, Frontiers in Decadal Climate Variability: Proceedings of a Workshop (2016) Chapter: Overview and NASA, The Spectroscopic Foundation of Radiative Forcing of Climate by Carbon Dioxide (pdf slides)
UPDATED 07/25/2016 EPA, Nonroad Engines, Equipment, and Vehicles: Aircraft
UPDATED 10/21/2013 ClimateDotGov, State of the Climate in 2012: Highlights and ClimateScience, North American Carbon Budget and Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle
UPDATED 08/14/2013 NCADAC, Draft Climate Assessment Report
UPDATED 01/17/2013 NOEP, National Ocean Economics Program
UPDATED 01/17/2013 NAS, Review of the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Plan and NOAA, Ocean Acidification Program
UPDATED 11/19/2012 PCMDI, WCRP CMIP3 Multi-Model Dataset Archive at PCMDI
UPDATED 09/24/2012 NAS, Advancing Climate Modeling
UPDATED 07/31/2012 Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry
UPDATED 07/30/2012 U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program
UPDATED 03/29/2012 SEARCH, Study of Environmental Arctic Change
UPDATED 03/25/2012 IOPPW, Rain drains energy from the atmosphere
UPDATED 03/21/2012 USGCRP, Online Resource Library
UPDATED 03/19/2012 National Academy Grand Challenge Three, Develop carbon sequestration methods
UPDATED 03/01/2012 LDEO, Ocean Acidification Rate May Be Unprecedented, Study Says
Other Nascent Carbon Load Reducing Schemes:I
UPDATED 07/26/2017 ClimatePolicyInitiative, California Carbon Dashboard
UPDATED 11/15/2012 Reuters, California takes big step in limiting greenhouse gases
Web:
UPDATED 01/21/2020 WEF, Greta Thunberg on Averting a Climate Apocalypse | DAVOS [WEF] 2020 and ReutersGraphic, Swirling Smoke: How Australia's Bushfire Smoke Spread and Nature, Australia: Show the World What Climate Action Looks Like
UPDATED 12/13/2019 Time, Greta Thunberg: Time Magazine's 2019 Person of the Year
UPDATED 12/06/2019 Reuters, Activist Thunberg Warns U.N. Climate Summit That Leaders Cannot Hide
...leaders must allocate more resources to develop economically promising (i.e. cheap) CO2 extraction technologies, including methods, processes and materials...preferably using money generated from a robust carbon market (@~ $70-80 per tonne CO2)...
UPDATED 11/30/2019 CBSN, Pelosi To Lead Delegation To Climate Summit Amid U.S. Withdrawal From Paris Cimate Deal
UPDATED 10/25/2019 MOSAiC , Understanding the Consequences of Arctic Climate Change ...a better understanding of how the sea ice is evolving...
UPDATED 09/23/2019 Guardian, Greta Thunberg to World Leaders: 'How Dare You? You Have Stolen My Dreams and My Childhood' and Guardian, Greta Thunberg Condemns World Leaders in Emotional Speech at UN
...the ball is squarely in the court of the "adults"...
UPDATED 09/20/2019 WP, Greta Thunberg Leads NY Protest for Climate Change Action
UPDATED 09/18/2019 HouseForeignAffairs, Voices Leading the Next Generation on the Global Climate Crisis
UPDATED 08/14/2019 Nature, Teenage Activists and An IPCC Triumph
UPDATED 07/31/2019 PhyRevLetrers, Twenty-Five-Fold Reduction in Measurement Uncertainty for a Molecular Line Intensity (NIST pdf, 381K)
UPDATED 07/12/2019 EIA Report, Blowing It: Illegal Production and Use of Banned CFC-11 in China's Foam Blowing Industry (pdf 16pgs) and BBC, Ozone Hole Mystery: China Insulating Chemical Said To Be Source of Rise and Nature, China Plans CFC-Monitoring Network to Investigate Rogue Emissions and AGAGE, Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment, Shangdianzi GAW Regional Station and Nature, China Feels the Heat Over Rogue CFC Emissions
...measurement uncertainty is reduced when the sensors are closer to a point source...scientifically monitoring and measuring the global atmosphere must be a joint and transparent international effort...
UPDATED 03/15/2019 NYT, New Zealand Students Walk Out of Class, Kicking Off Global Strike
UPDATED 03/07/2019 IAP, Atmospheric Scientists Offer Climate Change Clues in New Studies
UPDATED 02/01/2019 Reuters, A Climate Problem Even California Can't Fix: Tailpipe Pollution
...it seems useful for our leaders to stop talking about eliminating tailpipe pollution and keep up an economically maximized cap on that pollution using all generated revenue to transition away from that pollution with alldiligent drought speed...an $80 per ton cap @ 429 million tons of pollution (2016) would have generated $34.320B (2016) to fund projects required to transition Californians away from the harmful pollution...
UPDATED 01/11/2019 SA, Oceans Are Warming Faster Than Predicted and SM, How Fast Are The Oceans Warming? (pdf) [vapor pressure seawater at 20 deg C is 0.0226 atm for assumed composition of seawater; for more information, MIT, Thermophysical Properties of Seawater]
UPDATED 01/02/2019 Urgenda, The 2015 Urgenda Climate Case AgainstThe Dutch Government
UPDATED 12/30/2018 MTP, Bloomberg on Climate Change: 'This World Is In Trouble' and MTP, Jerry Brown: Climate Change Is About Inventing, 'Not Just Adapting'
UPDATED 12/26/2018 TedxStockholm, School Strike for Climate, A Young Autistic Greta Thunberg Demands Reduction in Fossil Fuel Usage and NBER,Impacts of a Carbon Tax across US Household Income Groups: What Are the Equity-Efficiency Trade-Offs?
...hard demands by a determined young autistic Swedish girl (Greta Thunberg on Twitter)...extracting CO2 from our atmosphere is more costly than reducing fossil fuel usage via a $70 or $80 per ton tax (and increasing)...who can hedge the downside of discovering an energetically favorable catalyst before boiling off the atmosphere (Senator "snowball" Inhofe—as an octogenarian [84] he can afford to behave like global warming is a hoax—another reason to elect young-diverse-dynamic leaders)...how many hectares of real or CO2 capturing artificial trees...Kurzgesagt, The Most Efficient Way to Destroy the Universe...
UPDATED 12/13/2018 NatGeo, Paris to Pittsburgh - Full Episode
UPDATED 03/22/2018 NatGeo, How Cape Town's Residents Are Surviving the Water Crisis
UPDATED 03/04/2018 NatureClimateAtmosphericScience, Dramatic declines in Snowpack in the Western US (data)
UPDATED 07/26/2017 NASA, NASA flights Gauge Summer Sea Ice Melt In The Arctic
UPDATED 07/08/2017 Reuters, G20 Communique Exposes Divide With U.S. On Climate Policy and Guardian, G20 Summit: 'G19' Leave Trump Alone In Joint Statement On Climate Change - Latest (includes link to full G19 Communique) and NYT, Once Dominant, the United States Finds Itself Isolated at G-20
Unfortunately, our unfit, unstable, and unpresidential "new" alt-white-house will likely cause additional grave harm before it can be removed or replaced, but such can be the high price of manipulating democracy. Our nation is grateful to those who have dismissed the buffoonery while working hard to mitigate its harmful impacts.
* An articulate Australian political reporter summarizes the daily deplorable deception of our "new" alt-white-house. As party partisans come to its defense, Reince Priebus articulating the "profound" statement "...he [president] believes in the things he believes in...".
Really, we'll check back periodically and see what they "believe in" then...we've seen this movie before! It is shocking that anybody would defend our "new" alt-white-house! But, remember an estimated 63M of our citizenry voted for it!!!
UPDATED 07/07/2017 GovOfficeCa, California Governor Brown Announces Global Climate Action Summit In San Francisco In September 2018 and NYT, Jerry Brown Announces a Climate Summit Meeting in California and Quartz, Stephen Hawking Says Trump’s Climate Policies Are Pushing Earth Toward An Irreversible “tipping point”
It seems anomalous at best and schizophrenic at worse for our unfit, unstable, unpresidential "new" alt-white-house to so often forecast a dystopian future and lack any leadership on efforts to dramatically cut global greenhouse gases. Boiling off earth's atmosphere can get pretty dystopian, especially for our religious zealots (some might say wackos) who mostly envision a somewhat more "heavenly" future!
Kudos to the governor of California et al.
UPDATED 07/06/2017 Nature, El Nin˜o-likeTeleconnection Increases California
Precipitation In Response To Warming Jan 2107
UPDATED 07/05/2017 BBC, Volvo Goes Electric Across the Board
Kudos to Volvo for implicitly declaring the combustion engine† obsolete!
The combustion engine† has been obsolete and harmful for decades, but many corporate leaders seem petulantly focused on forestalling advancement to cleaner next generation products. In some cases implementing fraudulent and complex cheating schemes and cynically calling them "clean"!
† Expectations for our next generation industrialists must include the transparent and rapid obsolescence of harmful products. Science is not a cheerleader for industrialists it's their challenger and any intentional manipulation of science for purposes of product perpetuation must be castigated.
Why does it take one-hundred-forty-one years for an industrialists to declare the harmful combustion engine obsolete? (see The Brayton Ready Motor or Hydrocarbon Engine, Scientific Americam, May 13, 1876) and NAP, Review of the Research Program of the U.S. DRIVE Partnership: Fifth Report (2017)
UPDATED 07/01/2017 NatGeo, From the Ashes
If our policymakers persist with their depraved practices of sacrificing our citizenry to the fast evolving global economy they can expect another hatemongering wingnut and charlatan to lead our nation. While globalization is beneficial sacrificing our citizenry is not!
Global markets are tools we use not tenets to we impose.
UPDATED 06/28/2017 Springer, Consensuses and Discrepancies of Basin-scale Ocean Heat Content Changes in Different Ocean Analyses
UPDATED 06/16/2017 SA, Nevada Boosts Solar Power, Reversing Course Excellent, it has a big market for solar and wind energy next door.
UPDATED 06/13/2017 IAPChina, Understanding Multi-decadal Global Warming Rate Changes (English)
UPDATED 06/12/2017 WT, U.S. Formally Rejects Paris Climate Treaty At G-7 Environmental Meeting and Reuters, U.S. Breaks With G7 On Climate, Development Banks: Statement and Reuters, Kerry Says U.S. Climate Goals In Reach Despite Trump Paris Pullout
Our "new" alt-white-house is behaving like a toddler standing in the middle of a playground stomping his feet, screaming, crying, and pouting after everybody has left him behind.
UPDATED 06/11/2017 SFGate, San Francisco Joins 11 Cities In Posting Deleted Climate Data
It is unclear how our "new" alt-white-house will "negotiate" with itself? All signatories to the Paris Agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change must carry out the Paris Agreement without our nation. Our nation will rejoin the Paris Agreement after we've solved several problems (e.g. senators opportunistically using "snowball science") with our current government. In the meantime many of our citizens, states, and congressional leaders can and will encourage our businesses to ignore our "new" alt-white-house's untenable decision and abide by the existing Paris Agreement.
UPDATED 05/27/2017 BBC, G7 talks: Trump isolated over Paris climate change deal
UPDATED 05/17/2017 NatGeo, 6 Reasons Trump Can’t (Totally) Derail Progress on Climate
Some might add a 7th reason:
Even with an unscientific, unfortunate, uncouth, unbalanced, untrustworthy, unacceptable, unAmerican, untruthful, unsavory, unsuitable, undemocratic, unethical, unprepared, unpresidential, unfit, uninformed, unbelievable, unhinged, unconstitutional, unintelligible, unpredictable, unpopular, unscrupulous, undignified, unimpeached, unpalatable, unviable, unsalvageable, and unreproved "new" alt-white-house America will do the right thing!
Our nation must proceed with all diligent speed to a minimum cap and trade carbon price of $60/tn CO2.
UPDATED 04/11/2017 SA, China's Xi Outshines Trump as the World's Future Energy Leader
UPDATED 04/07/2017 SA, Court Upholds California's Cap-and-Trade Program and SA, Americans Used a Lot Less Coal in 2016 California's efforts to reduce atmospheric carbon loads clears a small but significant legal hurdle.
UPDATED 04/05/2017 AsiaSocietyNorCal, Strengthening California-China Collaboration on Clean Air and Climate Change (Panel 1)
Excellent, don't forget Mexico (building walls won't change the climate) and Canada.
UPDATED 03/28/2017 Reuters, Trump signs order sweeping away Obama-era climate policies and OUP, The unintended effect of calling out “fake news” and PopSci, Here’s how air pollution [PM2.5] kills 3,450,000 people a year
Our "new" alt-white-house thinks it's:
"...taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations,.."
Our "new" alt-white-house should disabuse itself of any notion that it's taking "historic" actions to remove job-killing regulations. We've historically listen to the same partisan dogma and nonsense for more than 30 years! (i.e. elimination of government intrusion and regulation is the cure-all or panacea.)
Those participating in our energy sector would be wise to assume a near energy future, which includes continued limits on coal usage. Signing an executive order implying coal is coming back is cynically cruel gimmick.
Our nation can simultaneously reduce anthropomorphic carbon loads while measuring the impacts of climate change with increasing precision! It's a bizarre assertion and twisted logic that requires our government not act until some unspecified measurement precision!
To our government's everlasting shame it permitted, if not actively encouraged this same bizarre and twisted logic to enable Big Tobacco to manufacture cigarettes, which is killing our citizenry by the hundreds of thousands a year to this day! Oh yah, and our scientists are still measuring with increasing precision how those cancers kill our citizenry!!
UPDATED 11/18/2016 CCTV, China to help Africa implement Paris Agreement and SA, China Takes the Climate Spotlight as U.S. Heads for Exit
Excellent! China works with Africa and America works with China (or not?) on reducing levels of greenhouse gases, notwithstanding prognostications that Trump's government (regime?) will prefer and pursue regressive unscientific goals and solutions.
UPDATED 11/07/2016 Climate change summit to find ways to implement Paris Agreement, Marrakech 2016
Implementation rules are important to make sure that each nation's annual emissions reduction progress reports are directly comparable, both intranational and international over time.
UPDATED 11/03/2016 Reuters, U.S., 35 states to boost electric vehicle charging stations
UPDATED 10/22/2016 SA, U.S. Residential Electricity Prices Decline for the First Time in 14 Years
UPDATED 10/07/2016 RCI, Pact will control emissions on international flights eventually
Voluntary commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions to specific levels should not be derided a priori.
UPDATED 10/05/2016 WH, SXSL: President Obama Participates in SXSL Discussion and UN, Ban Ki-moon (UN Secretary-General) on India's Ratification of the Paris Agreement
India has ratified the Paris Agreement on October 02, 2016, effectuating the agreement's framework for signatory nations. Kudos Mr. President et al. (look forward to reporting at the annual SXSL)
UPDATED 09/22/2016 PopSci, Obama Orders Pentagon to Plan for Climate Change [,Again?]
UPDATED 09/10/2016 NPR, California Gov. Jerry Brown Signs New Climate Change Laws
UPDATED 09/06/2016 Reuters, U.S., China ratify Paris climate agreement
UPDATED 08/17/2016 PopSci, Last Month Was the Warmest Month Ever Recorded
UPDATED 08/15/2016 LBL, Setting Sail to Study Ocean Carbon
UPDATED 07/25/2016 Reuters, EPA clears path to regulate carbon emissions from U.S. aircraft
UPDATED 07/20/2016 SA, Tobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway Public
Should big oil be treated like big tobacco?
UPDATED 06/28/2016 SA, North America Will Draw Half Its Electricity from Carbon-Free Sources by 2025
Kudos to Presidents Obama and Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada!
While Britain tries to figure out how to isolate and insulate itself, let the rest of the world cooperate to meet important global goals.
UPDATED 06/16/2016 SA, Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4 Million Years
Hey Senator Inhofe (R-OK) show us your senate-snowball-science on global warming (some might say stupidity), again!
UPDATED 06/08/2016 WP, Atmospheric carbon dioxide just reached a huge record high
Hey Senator Inhofe (R-OK) show us your senate-snowball-science on global warming (some might say stupidity), again!
UPDATED 06/04/2016 SA, Scientists Seek a New Measure for Methane
UPDATED 05/16/2016 BBC, April breaks global temperature record
Hey Senator Inhofe (R-OK) show us your senate-snowball-science on global warming (some might say stupidity), again!
UPDATED 05/03/2016 NPR, Fact Check: Hillary Clinton And Coal Jobs
Candidate Hillary Clinton is correct that the coal jobs are going away (fast), which is not to say that our current congressional leadership should not legislatively mitigate the impacts of the coal jobs displacement.
However, a significant proportion of our current congressional leadership are content to chant "free market", "lassie fair", political, and economic slogans instead of legislating policies that will mitigate the impacts of the coal jobs displacement.
It seems preferable to change the slogan chanting proportion of our current congressional leadership instead of criticizing her message.
UPDATED 04/22/2016 SA, Paris Agreement Offers New Climate Covenant with Future
We can't wait to begin studying each nation's plan to reduce their anthropomorphic atmospheric carbon loads and measuring the resultant global reductions.
As each nation's plan is analyzed and measured it will be useful to recall a quote oft attributed to W. Edward Deming: "In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data".
UPDATED 04/13/2016 Reuters, Leading global coal miner Peabody files for bankruptcy
The expectation is that many more coal mines will follow. The unexpected is that our congressional leadership will tell our citizenry that "free market" laissie-faire neo-anarchists' sincerely and strongly held beliefs will autonomously mitigate the well-known and understood economic dislocations, which will occur.
UPDATED 03/22/2016 Reuters, Carbon emissions highest in 66 million years, since dinosaur age
UPDATED 03/16/2016 Atlantic, Obama Abandons Plans to Drill in the Atlantic Ocean and Reuters, Obama administration reverses course on Atlantic oil drilling
UPDATED 02/25/2016 SA, Lowering Ocean Acidity Promotes Coral Growth on Great Barrier Reef
UPDATED 01/22/2016 NYT, New Methane Emission Rules Proposed by Interior Department
UPDATED 01/22/2016 NYT, Court Rejects a Bid to Block Coal Plant Regulations
UPDATED 01/20/2016 DoD, National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks anda Changing Climate July 2015
UPDATED 12/16/2015 SA, New Camera Sees Invisible Greenhouse Gas
The camera method of monitoring point source emission of methane is not so new, but it's nice that to learn that point source measures correlate well with regional measuring and monitoring.
UPDATED 12/12/2015 SA, World's First Global Deal to Combat Climate Change Adopted in Paris and NYT, Nations Approve Landmark Climate Accord in Paris (includes link to draft Paris Agreement)
Let's begin the periodic, open and transparently verified international reporting of numbers, tomorrow!
UPDATED 12/07/2015 NatGeo, Top U.S. Scientist: World Must Act Now to Reverse Climate Change
“The world needs ultimately to completely decarbonize,” says John Holdren, Obama’s science advisor
UPDATED 12/04/2015 Wired, Climate Scientists Used to Just Get Angry. Now They’re Taking Action
UPDATED 12/02/2015 WH, The President holds a Press Conference in Paris
Mr. President, no nation, developed or developing, should be required to choose between the rapacity of an economic system and a repressive military system, which your assertion at approximately 2:15 implies!
UPDATED 11/24/2015 SA, The U.S.Can [Must] Lead the World to a Climate Agreement
President Obama must make clear that our nation will lead by immediate implementation of the challenging changes required to ensure sustainably neutral anthropomorphic contribution to global warming.
UPDATED 11/10/2015 SA, Record Levels of CO2 Herald the Future of Climate Change
UPDATED 11/06/2015 GlobeMail, President Obama rejects TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL pipeline
Kudos to the President!
Other world leaders must demonstrate this same leadership at the upcoming climate conference where hard decisions will be required to transition all global economies to cleaner forms of energy.
UPDATED 09/01/2015 WH, The President Addresses the GLACIER Conference
UPDATED 08/29/2015 NatGeo, Oceans Will Rise Much More Than Predicted, NASA Saysand NASA, Greenland Ice Mass Loss: Jan. 2004 - June 2014 and Space, New NASA Model Maps Sea Level Rise Like Never Before (Video)
UPDATED 08/15/2015 Atlantic, China’s Air Problem Is Worse Than You Think
UPDATED 08/04/2015 WH, Fact Sheet: President Obama to Announce Historic Carbon Pollution Standards for Power Plants
Finally, ... and from a so called "lame duck presidency"...encore!
UPDATED 07/04/2014 Earth Observation, OCO-2 Mission Satellite
UPDATED 06/16/2014 Reuters, U.N. climate talks fracture over future of carbon markets
Delaying the formation of carbon markets (pollutants) will simply produce a higher initial price per pollutant tonnage, given a pollutant price-probability curve reasonably required to mitigate or offset the probable harm.
Negotiators must immediately establish global carbon markets notwithstanding pleas from the high polluters to slow-walk negotiations at the low end of a pollutant price-probability curve (e.g. $10/tonne CO2) or the low polluters to no-walk at the high end of a pollutant price-probability curve (e.g. $80/tonne CO2).
The current pollutant load has already effectively determined an outcome for the negotiations (e.g. between $20-$40/tonne CO2)—the sooner marketsis are established for pollutants the sooner innovation can begin moving the price down the pollutant price-probability curve.
Which is not to say that the polluters' pleas are noise level—but what professional negotiator is not skilled at filtering the noise?
UPDATED 06/15/2014 WH, President Obama Speaks at UC-Irvine Commencement
President lauds graduates and entreats their age demographic to aggressively accept climate change challenges required to reduce and mitigate its impacts.
UPDATED 06/02/2014 Reuters, U.S. unveils sweeping plan to slash power plant pollution and LAT, New EPA rule would seek to cut carbon emissions 30% by 2030
Kudos to our President and EPA for the extraordinary efforts aimed at reducing the United States's contribution to atmospheric carbon loads—hopefully, swiftly pushing through the inevitable challenges and litigation!
Whatever else "government overreach" means it does not mean more accurately costing carbon's contributions to the United States economic activity.
Our coal users appear to use the phrase "government overreach" as a euphemism for continuing their unmeasured, unconstrained, unaccountable and uncontested burning of coal, regardless of the harm or external costs?
UPDATED 04/03/2014 BBC, EU backs compromise on plane CO2 emissions
UPDATED 02/11/2014 ThomsonReuters, China's Hubei plans province's first carbon auction next month and Reuters, California vows to press ahead with climate change programsUPDATED 12/27/2013 ThomsonReutersTrust, EU reaches deal to cap super-warming F-gases
UPDATED 12/25/2013 NYT, Rethinking How to Split the Costs of Carbon
It's always been an illusion that the full costs of our energy usage can be externalized, but that illusion continues to delay, impede or prevent meaningful multilateral reforms necessary to immediately mitigate and minimize our energy usage.
UPDATED 12/20/2013 Reuters, Analysis: Strong start for California carbon market, but challenges loom
Kudos to California ARB's tightrope walking efforts to lower the excessive anthropomorphic atmospheric carbon load.
UPDATED 11/29/2013 VOA, Beijing Opens Carbon Trading Scheme to Fight Emissions
UPDATED 11/11/2013 ThomsonReutersTrust, Participants walk in front of the venue of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Warsaw
UPDATED 11/03/2013 ThomsonReutersTrust, New Obama order aims to prepare communities for severe weather
Kudos to our President for his partial leadership on issues related to climate change, notwithstanding an obstreperous Lower House of Congress.
UPDATED 10/21/2013 ESA, North American carbon dioxide sources and sinks: magnitude, attribution, and uncertainty
UPDATED 10/10/2013 MoraLab, Research Into The Interlinks Between Biodiversity Patterns, Processes, Threats, Conservation And Human Welfare, The Timing Of New Climates
UPDATED 09/22/2013 ThomsonReuters, Scientists set to prepare strongest warning that warming man-made
UPDATED 07/29/2013 LiveScience, Arctic Methane Claims Questioned (-->) and CSM, Arctic ice melt could cost an extra $60 trillion, say researchers
All alternatives but international cooperation are excluded by these enormous global impacts and costs. Article includes a link to the Nature study citing an updated Page09 model (initially developed by the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change).
UPDATED 07/17/2013 LiveScience, Acid Test: Rising CO2 Levels Killing Ocean Life (Op-Ed)
UPDATED 07/15/2013 TReuters, Seas may rise 2.3 metres per degree of global warming-report UPDATED 07/04/2013 WT, U.S. watches as EU struggles with ‘cap-and-trade’ and TReuters, Temperature-linked carbon tax could be effective - expert (on trying to avoid the unavoidable politics of pollution pricing of GHGs)
Hopefully, we will soon begin our "struggle" to reduce atmospheric CO2 loads, too.
The price of a 33 grams cartridge of C02 to fill bicycle tires is approximately $10. A metric ton of CO2 at this price is approximately $30,303.
A pollution permit priced at $6 per ton of CO2 seems like a bargain, even if the material cost for the metal bicycle tire fill cartridge is subtracted.
UPDATED 05/13/2013 TReuters, UN faces uphill battle to reduce global airline emissions
UPDATED 05/10/2013 NSF, Climate Record From Bottom of Russian Lake Shows Arctic Was Warmer Millions of Years Ago
UPDATED 05/06/2013 BBC, Arctic Ocean 'acidifying rapidly'
UPDATED 02/21/2013 HIPPO, HIPPO global-scale air chemistry dataset now available Includes links to Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) for obtaining dataset.
UPDATED 01/16/2013 NYT, Burning Fuel Particles Do More Damage to Climate Than Thought, Study Says These particles affect Arctic ice albedo
UPDATED 11/12/2012 NYT, E.U. Postpones Charges for Airline Emissions EU has postponed its mandatory carbon tax on airlines for a year to enable the global airline sector to voluntary adopt guidelines that reduce the amount of carbon they spewed into our atmosphere.
EU has threatened to reinstate its carbon tax if meaningful voluntary guidelines are not adopted within the postponement year.
UPDATED 09/22/2012 Reuters, Senate votes to shield US airlines from EU's carbon scheme
Sadly, on the rare occasion when our totally dysfunctional Congress is able to agree on something, it's to impede efforts too reduce the carbon load spewed into the atmosphere by airlines.
Understandably some nations may not appreciate Germany's unilateral efforts to tax domestic and foreign airlines' carbon emission. However, instead of impeding Germany's nascent efforts to reduce carbon loads other nations must join those efforts by implementing common, cooperative, and complementary airline carbon-taxing schemes.
UPDATED 08/27/2012 NSIDC, Arctic sea ice extent breaks 2007 record low
It seems useful to note that nature is not a respecter of human hubris or fairytales and that the fossil record indicates extinction is a more probable outcome than adaptation.
Substituting fairytales for facts and praying that "God" somehow solves a problem does not seem like an optimal adaptive strategy. Although, one can appreciate why those depending on such a strategy would incorporate "life after" extinction into their fairytale.
UPDATED 08/22/2012 NSIDC, Turn of the century drought worst in 800 years, study says
UPDATED 08/17/2012 WT, Use of natural gas credited for drop in CO2 emissions
UPDATED 07/26/2012 Discover, Greenland Two Day Slushi
UPDATED 07/01/2012 Economist, The melting north
UPDATED 06/30/2012 Nature, Global network will track acidifying oceans
UPDATED 04/04/2012 BBC, CO2 'drove end to last ice age' More evidence that an increasing CO2 load leads the lagging temperature rise.
UPDATED 03/27/2012 Reuters, Government proposes first carbon limits on power plants Kudos to our EPA for moving toward increasingly "cleaner" carbon sources.
Additional transparency is required about "fracking methods" so its economic externality forecasts can be updated and compared with those related to "coal methods" (with and without CO2 sequestration).
India and all other national and international airlines must opt-in to the nascent EU carbon-reducing scheme and adopt carbon-reducing schemes of their own.
Eventually, all nations must jointly agree to attach carbon fees to every purchased aircraft (and other mobile carbon sources)—the sooner, the better.
We can expect some nations to pursue the most torturous path possible to delay reducing their anthropogenic atmospheric carbon loads.
UPDATED 03/11/2012 Reuters, Aviation calls on EU leaders to fix carbon tax: FT
Our major airline executives have misdirected their complaints to the EU for its nascent efforts to reduce our growing and harmful anthropogenic carbon loads.
Their complaints should be directed to all national governments and aircraft manufacturers for the purpose of encouraging them to pursue joint efforts aimed at immediately reducing our growing and harmful anthropogenic carbon loads.
UPDATED 02/20/2012 Reuters,Moscow air talks to debate measures against EU: draft and Reuters, Q+A: Will Moscow talks unleash carbon trade war against EU?
Perhaps citizens living in the "carbon counter-measure nations" can express their preference for airlines and corporations, which join the EU's nascent efforts to immediately reduce atmospheric carbon loads?
UPDATED 02/16/2012 Reuters, Nobel winners urge EU leaders to back tar sands law
"Under the draft EU proposal, tar sands are assigned a default greenhouse gas value of 107 grams of carbon per megajoule, showing buyers it has more environmental impact than conventional crude with 87.5 grams." Reuters, EU won't drop aviation CO2 scheme: Instead of joining the urgently need efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions, specifically global CO2 (~390+ ppm), some nations are threatening retaliation. Hopefully, their retaliation will take the form of adopting a carbon-reducing scheme that includes airplanes.
-----notes-----
1. Those unfamiliar with earth's carbon cycle (global thermostat) may find the online introductory lectures, generously made available by University of Chicago and computational ocean chemist David Archer, helpful.
Perhaps perusal of A U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Plan (pdf) after the lectures.
UPDATED 06/14/2012 A detail discussion on building a climate model is presented by Enez Fung:
UPDATED 01/02/2019 UCSD, Keeling Curve and EIA, Annual Energy Outlook 2018
with Projections to 2050
 |
| Keeling Curve |
UPDATED 05/18/2018 Review of the Draft Fourth National Climate Assessment (2018): Summary
UPDATED 06/13/2017 Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China (English)
UPDATED 06/12/2017 C40, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group
UPDATED 05/23/2017 Joint Global Change Research Institute
UPDATED 03/16/2017 NAP, Review of the Draft Climate Science Special Report (2017) Chapter: Summary
UPDATED 11/22/2016 DMI, Arctic Temperatures Daily Mean Temperatures North of 80 degree North (1958-2016) [note: 260K is approximately 8.3F; Convert K2F by T(°F) = T(K) × 9/5 - 459.67 or just type "260K equals F" in your Google or browser bar and presto, 260K=8.33F].
UPDATED 11/03/2016 NSIDC, Sluggish ice growth in the Arctic and Overview of Current Conditions
UPDATED 09/01/2016 NAP, The Future of Atmospheric Chemistry Research: Remembering Yesterday, Understanding Today, Anticipating Tomorrow (2016)
UPDATED 08/23/2016 NAP, Commercial Aircraft Propulsion and Energy Systems Research: Reducing Global Carbon Emissions (2016)
UPDATED 07/29/2016 NAP, Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change (2016) Chapter: Summary
UPDATED 07/25/2016 NAP, Frontiers in Decadal Climate Variability: Proceedings of a Workshop (2016) Chapter: Overview and NASA, The Spectroscopic Foundation of Radiative Forcing of Climate by Carbon Dioxide (pdf slides)
UPDATED 07/25/2016 EPA, Nonroad Engines, Equipment, and Vehicles: Aircraft
UPDATED 10/21/2013 ClimateDotGov, State of the Climate in 2012: Highlights and ClimateScience, North American Carbon Budget and Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle
UPDATED 08/14/2013 NCADAC, Draft Climate Assessment Report
UPDATED 01/17/2013 NOEP, National Ocean Economics Program
UPDATED 01/17/2013 NAS, Review of the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Plan and NOAA, Ocean Acidification Program
UPDATED 11/19/2012 PCMDI, WCRP CMIP3 Multi-Model Dataset Archive at PCMDI
UPDATED 09/24/2012 NAS, Advancing Climate Modeling
UPDATED 07/31/2012 Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry
UPDATED 07/30/2012 U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program
UPDATED 03/29/2012 SEARCH, Study of Environmental Arctic Change
UPDATED 03/25/2012 IOPPW, Rain drains energy from the atmosphere
UPDATED 03/21/2012 USGCRP, Online Resource Library
UPDATED 03/19/2012 National Academy Grand Challenge Three, Develop carbon sequestration methods
UPDATED 03/01/2012 LDEO, Ocean Acidification Rate May Be Unprecedented, Study Says
Other Nascent Carbon Load Reducing Schemes:I
UPDATED 07/26/2017 ClimatePolicyInitiative, California Carbon Dashboard
UPDATED 11/15/2012 Reuters, California takes big step in limiting greenhouse gases
Web:
UPDATED 01/21/2020 WEF, Greta Thunberg on Averting a Climate Apocalypse | DAVOS [WEF] 2020 and ReutersGraphic, Swirling Smoke: How Australia's Bushfire Smoke Spread and Nature, Australia: Show the World What Climate Action Looks Like
...nations must stop telling us how much they will reduce greenhouse gases at some future date and start telling us how much they have reduced greenhouse gases yesterday...they can begin by immediately establishing a carbon tax or price ($60-$80 per ton) and use the revenues to further reduce greenhouse gases...
UPDATED 12/13/2019 Time, Greta Thunberg: Time Magazine's 2019 Person of the Year
UPDATED 12/06/2019 Reuters, Activist Thunberg Warns U.N. Climate Summit That Leaders Cannot Hide
...leaders must allocate more resources to develop economically promising (i.e. cheap) CO2 extraction technologies, including methods, processes and materials...preferably using money generated from a robust carbon market (@~ $70-80 per tonne CO2)...
UPDATED 11/30/2019 CBSN, Pelosi To Lead Delegation To Climate Summit Amid U.S. Withdrawal From Paris Cimate Deal
...our nation is fortunate that Speaker Pelosi is in the wheelhouse and will attend this years climate summit in Spain during a period in our nation's history when the GOP-RNC Party cum RAG Party chooses to label "best evidence" as "FAKE"...
UPDATED 10/25/2019 MOSAiC , Understanding the Consequences of Arctic Climate Change ...a better understanding of how the sea ice is evolving...
UPDATED 09/23/2019 Guardian, Greta Thunberg to World Leaders: 'How Dare You? You Have Stolen My Dreams and My Childhood' and Guardian, Greta Thunberg Condemns World Leaders in Emotional Speech at UN
...the ball is squarely in the court of the "adults"...
UPDATED 09/20/2019 WP, Greta Thunberg Leads NY Protest for Climate Change Action
UPDATED 09/18/2019 HouseForeignAffairs, Voices Leading the Next Generation on the Global Climate Crisis
UPDATED 08/14/2019 Nature, Teenage Activists and An IPCC Triumph
UPDATED 07/31/2019 PhyRevLetrers, Twenty-Five-Fold Reduction in Measurement Uncertainty for a Molecular Line Intensity (NIST pdf, 381K)
UPDATED 07/12/2019 EIA Report, Blowing It: Illegal Production and Use of Banned CFC-11 in China's Foam Blowing Industry (pdf 16pgs) and BBC, Ozone Hole Mystery: China Insulating Chemical Said To Be Source of Rise and Nature, China Plans CFC-Monitoring Network to Investigate Rogue Emissions and AGAGE, Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment, Shangdianzi GAW Regional Station and Nature, China Feels the Heat Over Rogue CFC Emissions
...measurement uncertainty is reduced when the sensors are closer to a point source...scientifically monitoring and measuring the global atmosphere must be a joint and transparent international effort...
UPDATED 02/01/2019 Reuters, A Climate Problem Even California Can't Fix: Tailpipe Pollution
...it seems useful for our leaders to stop talking about eliminating tailpipe pollution and keep up an economically maximized cap on that pollution using all generated revenue to transition away from that pollution with all
UPDATED 01/11/2019 SA, Oceans Are Warming Faster Than Predicted and SM, How Fast Are The Oceans Warming? (pdf) [vapor pressure seawater at 20 deg C is 0.0226 atm for assumed composition of seawater; for more information, MIT, Thermophysical Properties of Seawater]
UPDATED 01/02/2019 Urgenda, The 2015 Urgenda Climate Case AgainstThe Dutch Government
UPDATED 12/30/2018 MTP, Bloomberg on Climate Change: 'This World Is In Trouble' and MTP, Jerry Brown: Climate Change Is About Inventing, 'Not Just Adapting'
MTP, Jerry Brown: Climate Change Is About Inventing, 'Not Just Adapting'
MTP, How Do We Explain The Urgency of Climate Change
MTP, Politics and Climate Change: How to Break the Paralysis (more shows like this)
UPDATED 12/26/2018 TedxStockholm, School Strike for Climate, A Young Autistic Greta Thunberg Demands Reduction in Fossil Fuel Usage and NBER,Impacts of a Carbon Tax across US Household Income Groups: What Are the Equity-Efficiency Trade-Offs?
...hard demands by a determined young autistic Swedish girl (Greta Thunberg on Twitter)...extracting CO2 from our atmosphere is more costly than reducing fossil fuel usage via a $70 or $80 per ton tax (and increasing)...who can hedge the downside of discovering an energetically favorable catalyst before boiling off the atmosphere (Senator "snowball" Inhofe—as an octogenarian [84] he can afford to behave like global warming is a hoax—another reason to elect young-diverse-dynamic leaders)...how many hectares of real or CO2 capturing artificial trees...Kurzgesagt, The Most Efficient Way to Destroy the Universe...
...tragically, our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. couldn't find Pittsburgh on a map, much less represent it's interests...beetroot, lemons, garlic and olive oil are tasty but are not a solution set for climate change...kudos to those able to act to mitigate the effects of climate change in spite of the overwhelmingly ignorance of our current leadership...
...nature is highly unlikely to respect or forgive their ignorance and neither will Pittsburgh nor Paris...
...cruelly, its their lack of leadership that has presented some of our most vulnerable citizens and the world with a Hobson's Choice of unemployment or jobs selling fossil fuels...
...nature is highly unlikely to respect or forgive their ignorance and neither will Pittsburgh nor Paris...
...cruelly, its their lack of leadership that has presented some of our most vulnerable citizens and the world with a Hobson's Choice of unemployment or jobs selling fossil fuels...
UPDATED 12/12/2018 Guardian, US Accused of Obstructing Talks At UN Climate Change Summit
UPDATED 11/24/2018 NYT, What’s New in the Latest U.S. Climate Assessment and USGCRP, Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA) and Vox, 3 Big Takeaways from the Major New US Climate Report
UPDATED 06/18/2018 ForeignPolicy, Why Carbon Pricing Isn’t Working
UPDATED 06/15/2018 SA, Judge Orders EPA To Produce Science Behind Pruitt’s Warming Claims
...maybe Pruitt will produce Jesus to testify...it's unfortunate we need a 1925 "monkey trial" in 2018...kudos to the court...
UPDATED 06/02/2018 Reuters, U.S. Black Lung Cases On The Rise and WP, Trump’s Plan To Use A Cold War-era Law To Bolster The Coal Industry, Explained
...as more coal companies declare bankruptcy due to shifts toward renewable energy sources these claims will increase...it is unconscionable for our nation to do anything, but insure and indemnify all healthcare costs for those with coal mining related illness...
UPDATED 05/17/2018 USAToday, Earth Just Had Its 400th Straight Warmer-Than-Average Month Thanks To Global Warming
UPDATED 03/23/2018 Reuters, Nature's 'Alarming' Decline Threatens Food, Water, Energy: U.N. and Reuters, Macron Pushes for EU Minimum Price for Carbon (the min must be $60 per ton) and Reuters, Britain Blocks Plans for New Coal Mine on Climate Grounds and Reuters, Beijing Top Performer as Chinese Cities Cut Oct-Feb Pollution Levels
...our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. has proposed beetroot, lemons, garlic and olive oil as its solution to climate change...
UPDATED 11/24/2018 NYT, What’s New in the Latest U.S. Climate Assessment and USGCRP, Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA) and Vox, 3 Big Takeaways from the Major New US Climate Report
UPDATED 06/18/2018 ForeignPolicy, Why Carbon Pricing Isn’t Working
UPDATED 06/15/2018 SA, Judge Orders EPA To Produce Science Behind Pruitt’s Warming Claims
...maybe Pruitt will produce Jesus to testify...it's unfortunate we need a 1925 "monkey trial" in 2018...kudos to the court...
UPDATED 06/02/2018 Reuters, U.S. Black Lung Cases On The Rise and WP, Trump’s Plan To Use A Cold War-era Law To Bolster The Coal Industry, Explained
...as more coal companies declare bankruptcy due to shifts toward renewable energy sources these claims will increase...it is unconscionable for our nation to do anything, but insure and indemnify all healthcare costs for those with coal mining related illness...
UPDATED 05/17/2018 USAToday, Earth Just Had Its 400th Straight Warmer-Than-Average Month Thanks To Global Warming
The global community must disabuse our leaders of industry of the notion that they can produce or offer any "product or service", regardless of the damage it inflicts on our unique planet.
UPDATED 03/22/2018 NatGeo, How Cape Town's Residents Are Surviving the Water Crisis
Trade Wars Are Destabilizing—Water Wars Are Destructive
UPDATED 03/04/2018 NatureClimateAtmosphericScience, Dramatic declines in Snowpack in the Western US (data)
UPDATED 11/18/2017 Reuters, Bonn Talks Test global Resolve to Fix Climate, Without Trump
Will China play the lead or cameo role on stabilizing global climate-change?
UPDATED 11/17/2017 Nova, Can the US Tackle Climate Change Without Federal Action?
We must make our expectations clear for cutting greenhouse gases, notwithstanding the imprudence of our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al.
UPDATED 11/13/2017 EnvironmentalLetters, Warning Signs for Stabilizing Global CO2 Emissions and FutureEarth, The 10 Science ‘Must Knows’ on Climate Change
UPDATED 11/04/2017 UNFCCC, Welcome to the UN Climate Change Conference 2017 (COP23, from 6 to 17 November) and NYT, U.S. Report Says Humans Cause Climate Change, Contradicting Top Trump Officials and CSSR, Climate Science Special Report
Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume I
UPDATED 11/03/2017 SA, Global Climate Meeting Will Forge Ahead, Despite Trump’s Contempt
Will China play the lead or cameo role on stabilizing global climate-change?
UPDATED 11/17/2017 Nova, Can the US Tackle Climate Change Without Federal Action?
We must make our expectations clear for cutting greenhouse gases, notwithstanding the imprudence of our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al.
UPDATED 11/13/2017 EnvironmentalLetters, Warning Signs for Stabilizing Global CO2 Emissions and FutureEarth, The 10 Science ‘Must Knows’ on Climate Change
"Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and industry comprise ∼90% of all CO2 emissions from human activities. For the last three years, such emissions were stable, despite continuing growth in the global economy. Many positive trends contributed to this unique hiatus, including reduced coal use in China and elsewhere, continuing gains in energy efficiency, and a boom in low-carbon renewables such as wind and solar. However, the temporary hiatus appears to have ended in 2017. For 2017, we project emissions growth of 2.0% (range: 0.8%−3.0%) from 2016 levels (leap-year adjusted), reaching a record 36.8±2 Gt CO2. Economic projections suggest further emissions growth in 2018 is likely. Time is running out on our ability to keep global average temperature increases below 2 ◦C and, even more immediately, anything close to 1.5 ◦C."--Environmental Letters, 13 November 2017--
UPDATED 11/11/2017 UNFCCC, Understanding Oceanic and Atmospheric Phenomena and their Role in Climate Models and UNFCCC - On-Demand Events and COP23, Bonn Germany
Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume I
UPDATED 11/03/2017 SA, Global Climate Meeting Will Forge Ahead, Despite Trump’s Contempt
"...The world still faces a long, difficult path to achieving its goal. Last Tuesday, the U.N. announced a wide gap remains between nations’ current emissions pledges and the reductions needed to keep the planet’s temperature increase below 2 degrees C. Without greater ambition, the U.N. reported, the global rise could be 3 degrees C or more this century."--Scientific American, November 3, 2017
UPDATED 10/26/2017 Reuters, China's Chongqing Changan to Stop Selling Combustion-engine Cars from 2025
UPDATED 10/13/2017 PopSci, There's No Such Thing As Clean Coal
It's cruel for our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house to pretend it can "save" the coal industry or use the coal miners as props for its madness, misery and mayhem.
UPDATED 09/08/2017 Reuters, Defying Trump, Senate Panel Approves Funding for U.N. Climate Body
UPDATED 10/13/2017 PopSci, There's No Such Thing As Clean Coal
It's cruel for our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house to pretend it can "save" the coal industry or use the coal miners as props for its madness, misery and mayhem.
UPDATED 09/08/2017 Reuters, Defying Trump, Senate Panel Approves Funding for U.N. Climate Body
Maybe, as our "new" alt-white-house and congress defy each other our nation will actually do something positive?!
UPDATED 07/26/2017 NASA, NASA flights Gauge Summer Sea Ice Melt In The Arctic
UPDATED 07/08/2017 Reuters, G20 Communique Exposes Divide With U.S. On Climate Policy and Guardian, G20 Summit: 'G19' Leave Trump Alone In Joint Statement On Climate Change - Latest (includes link to full G19 Communique) and NYT, Once Dominant, the United States Finds Itself Isolated at G-20
Unfortunately, our unfit, unstable, and unpresidential "new" alt-white-house will likely cause additional grave harm before it can be removed or replaced, but such can be the high price of manipulating democracy. Our nation is grateful to those who have dismissed the buffoonery while working hard to mitigate its harmful impacts.
"...We take note of the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The United States of America announced it will immediately cease the implementation of its current nationally-determined contribution and affirms its strong commitment to an approach that lowers emissions while supporting economic growth and improving energy security needs. The United States of America states it will endeavour to work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently and help deploy renewable and other clean energy sources, given the importance of energy access and security in their nationally determined contributions.
The Leaders of the other G20 members state that the Paris Agreement is irreversible. We reiterate the importance of fulfilling the UNFCCC commitment by developed countries in providing means of implementation including financial resources to assist developing countries with respect to both mitigation and adaptation actions in line with Paris outcomes and note the OECD’s report “Investing in Climate, Investing in Growth”. We reaffirm our strong commitment to the Paris Agreement, moving swiftly towards its full implementation in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances and, to this end, we agree to the G20 Hamburg Climate and Energy Action Plan for Growth as set out in the Annex..."--G20, Declaration @ Hamburg, Germany dated 7-8 July 2017 pg 10--
* An articulate Australian political reporter summarizes the daily deplorable deception of our "new" alt-white-house. As party partisans come to its defense, Reince Priebus articulating the "profound" statement "...he [president] believes in the things he believes in...".
Really, we'll check back periodically and see what they "believe in" then...we've seen this movie before! It is shocking that anybody would defend our "new" alt-white-house! But, remember an estimated 63M of our citizenry voted for it!!!
UPDATED 07/07/2017 GovOfficeCa, California Governor Brown Announces Global Climate Action Summit In San Francisco In September 2018 and NYT, Jerry Brown Announces a Climate Summit Meeting in California and Quartz, Stephen Hawking Says Trump’s Climate Policies Are Pushing Earth Toward An Irreversible “tipping point”
It seems anomalous at best and schizophrenic at worse for our unfit, unstable, unpresidential "new" alt-white-house to so often forecast a dystopian future and lack any leadership on efforts to dramatically cut global greenhouse gases. Boiling off earth's atmosphere can get pretty dystopian, especially for our religious zealots (some might say wackos) who mostly envision a somewhat more "heavenly" future!
Kudos to the governor of California et al.
UPDATED 07/06/2017 Nature, El Nin˜o-likeTeleconnection Increases California
Precipitation In Response To Warming Jan 2107
UPDATED 07/05/2017 BBC, Volvo Goes Electric Across the Board
Kudos to Volvo for implicitly declaring the combustion engine† obsolete!
The combustion engine† has been obsolete and harmful for decades, but many corporate leaders seem petulantly focused on forestalling advancement to cleaner next generation products. In some cases implementing fraudulent and complex cheating schemes and cynically calling them "clean"!
† Expectations for our next generation industrialists must include the transparent and rapid obsolescence of harmful products. Science is not a cheerleader for industrialists it's their challenger and any intentional manipulation of science for purposes of product perpetuation must be castigated.
Why does it take one-hundred-forty-one years for an industrialists to declare the harmful combustion engine obsolete? (see The Brayton Ready Motor or Hydrocarbon Engine, Scientific Americam, May 13, 1876) and NAP, Review of the Research Program of the U.S. DRIVE Partnership: Fifth Report (2017)
If our policymakers persist with their depraved practices of sacrificing our citizenry to the fast evolving global economy they can expect another hatemongering wingnut and charlatan to lead our nation. While globalization is beneficial sacrificing our citizenry is not!
Global markets are tools we use not tenets to we impose.
UPDATED 06/28/2017 Springer, Consensuses and Discrepancies of Basin-scale Ocean Heat Content Changes in Different Ocean Analyses
UPDATED 06/16/2017 SA, Nevada Boosts Solar Power, Reversing Course Excellent, it has a big market for solar and wind energy next door.
UPDATED 06/13/2017 IAPChina, Understanding Multi-decadal Global Warming Rate Changes (English)
UPDATED 06/12/2017 WT, U.S. Formally Rejects Paris Climate Treaty At G-7 Environmental Meeting and Reuters, U.S. Breaks With G7 On Climate, Development Banks: Statement and Reuters, Kerry Says U.S. Climate Goals In Reach Despite Trump Paris Pullout
Our "new" alt-white-house is behaving like a toddler standing in the middle of a playground stomping his feet, screaming, crying, and pouting after everybody has left him behind.
UPDATED 06/11/2017 SFGate, San Francisco Joins 11 Cities In Posting Deleted Climate Data
Hosting the scrubbed EPA climate-change data is useful, but will not
meet San Francisco's 2020 goals.
On the other hand jointly (Germany, California, San Francisco, PG&E et al.) hosting a pilot off-shore wind farm to entirely power San Francisco would!
UPDATED 06/09/2017 Reuters, Coalition of 13 States to Challenge Trump on Vehicle Emission Standards
UPDATED 06/10/2017 Reuters, Germany, California To Tackle Climate Change Together and GE, How GE Uses Wind To Help Power Nearly One Million German Homes - In The Wild
UPDATED 06/06/2017 NYT, Bucking Trump, These Cities, States and Companies Commit to Paris Accord and BloombergTechnology, Google and Facebook Join Cities in Challenging Trump on Climate (incl. link to Open Letter "We Are Still In") and NBC, MeetThePress, Full Pruitt Interview: American Carbon Reductions Predate Paris Deal
Our EPAunder Administrator Scott Pruitt is unlikely to carry out anything beneficial for America's future...chants of "Make America Great Again" by our "new" alt-white-house and its unfit and incompetent leaders et al. will not make it so...nor will delusions or conspiratorial assertions...or fake coal jobs data (e.g. Atlantic, The White House Exaggerated the Growth of Coal Jobs by About 5,000 Percent)
UPDATED 06/02/2017 UPI, Coalition of U.S. Cities, States To Negotiate With U.N. On Climate and Nature, How Scientists Reacted To the US Leaving the Paris Climate Agreement
Kudos to our state, city, municipalities, business, and citizens for their efforts to make sure our nation will seamlessly comply with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Paris Agreement, which an incapacitated "new" alt-white-house is not able to do.
UPDATED 06/01/2017 FT, EU and China Strengthen Climate Ties and GovCaOffice, Governor Brown Issues Statement on White House Paris Climate Agreement Announcement
UPDATED 05/31/2017 NYT, Trump Expected to Pull U.S. From Paris Climate Accord and Bloomberg, Trump Plans to Exit Paris Climate Deal, White House Official Tells AP and SA, Do the Math: How Much Trump Could Raise U.S. Carbon Emissions and Hill, Top GOP Senators Tell Trump To Ditch Paris Climate Deal and Axios, Scoop: Top GOP Senators Urge Trump To Exit Paris Climate DealOn the other hand jointly (Germany, California, San Francisco, PG&E et al.) hosting a pilot off-shore wind farm to entirely power San Francisco would!
UPDATED 06/09/2017 Reuters, Coalition of 13 States to Challenge Trump on Vehicle Emission Standards
UPDATED 06/10/2017 Reuters, Germany, California To Tackle Climate Change Together and GE, How GE Uses Wind To Help Power Nearly One Million German Homes - In The Wild
UPDATED 06/06/2017 NYT, Bucking Trump, These Cities, States and Companies Commit to Paris Accord and BloombergTechnology, Google and Facebook Join Cities in Challenging Trump on Climate (incl. link to Open Letter "We Are Still In") and NBC, MeetThePress, Full Pruitt Interview: American Carbon Reductions Predate Paris Deal
Our EPA
Total Coal Mining Jobs, in Thousands
Our citizens need not await a declaration by Congress or supporters that the unfit "new" alt-white-house's disjointed (some might say delusional) ramblings are irreparably harming our nation.
...and do not forget to laugh...
UPDATED 06/02/2017 UPI, Coalition of U.S. Cities, States To Negotiate With U.N. On Climate and Nature, How Scientists Reacted To the US Leaving the Paris Climate Agreement
Kudos to our state, city, municipalities, business, and citizens for their efforts to make sure our nation will seamlessly comply with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Paris Agreement, which an incapacitated "new" alt-white-house is not able to do.
UPDATED 06/01/2017 FT, EU and China Strengthen Climate Ties and GovCaOffice, Governor Brown Issues Statement on White House Paris Climate Agreement Announcement
It is unclear how our "new" alt-white-house will "negotiate" with itself? All signatories to the Paris Agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change must carry out the Paris Agreement without our nation. Our nation will rejoin the Paris Agreement after we've solved several problems (e.g. senators opportunistically using "snowball science") with our current government. In the meantime many of our citizens, states, and congressional leaders can and will encourage our businesses to ignore our "new" alt-white-house's untenable decision and abide by the existing Paris Agreement.
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| Estimated Damage Assessment from Republicans' Rollback of Paris Agreement |
UPDATED 05/27/2017 BBC, G7 talks: Trump isolated over Paris climate change deal
UPDATED 05/17/2017 NatGeo, 6 Reasons Trump Can’t (Totally) Derail Progress on Climate
Some might add a 7th reason:
Even with an unscientific, unfortunate, uncouth, unbalanced, untrustworthy, unacceptable, unAmerican, untruthful, unsavory, unsuitable, undemocratic, unethical, unprepared, unpresidential, unfit, uninformed, unbelievable, unhinged, unconstitutional, unintelligible, unpredictable, unpopular, unscrupulous, undignified, unimpeached, unpalatable, unviable, unsalvageable, and unreproved "new" alt-white-house America will do the right thing!
Our nation must proceed with all diligent speed to a minimum cap and trade carbon price of $60/tn CO2.
UPDATED 04/11/2017 SA, China's Xi Outshines Trump as the World's Future Energy Leader
UPDATED 04/07/2017 SA, Court Upholds California's Cap-and-Trade Program and SA, Americans Used a Lot Less Coal in 2016 California's efforts to reduce atmospheric carbon loads clears a small but significant legal hurdle.
UPDATED 04/05/2017 AsiaSocietyNorCal, Strengthening California-China Collaboration on Clean Air and Climate Change (Panel 1)
Excellent, don't forget Mexico (building walls won't change the climate) and Canada.
UPDATED 03/28/2017 Reuters, Trump signs order sweeping away Obama-era climate policies and OUP, The unintended effect of calling out “fake news” and PopSci, Here’s how air pollution [PM2.5] kills 3,450,000 people a year
Our "new" alt-white-house thinks it's:
"...taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations,.."
Our "new" alt-white-house should disabuse itself of any notion that it's taking "historic" actions to remove job-killing regulations. We've historically listen to the same partisan dogma and nonsense for more than 30 years! (i.e. elimination of government intrusion and regulation is the cure-all or panacea.)
Those participating in our energy sector would be wise to assume a near energy future, which includes continued limits on coal usage. Signing an executive order implying coal is coming back is cynically cruel gimmick.
UPDATED 03/14/2017 SA, Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Hits Record Levels and ProPublica, Trump’s Defense Secretary Cites Climate Change as National Security Challenge
UPDATED 03/11/2017 AMNH, Human Population Through Time Reducing global population significantly reduces carbon loads, except for our "new" alt-white-house EPA et al., which assert that the anthropomorphic contribution to carbon loads is nonexistent or not provable! (CSPAN, EPA Administrator Confirmation Hearing Environmental and Public Works Committee) and SA, EPA Is Pounded in Many Ways
It's unclear what our "new" alt-white-house EPA administrator means when stating "...human activity in some manner impacts that [climate] change, the ability to measure with precision the degree of that impact and what to do about it are subject to continuing debate and dialog..." (@~32:10)
UPDATED 03/11/2017 AMNH, Human Population Through Time Reducing global population significantly reduces carbon loads, except for our "new" alt-white-house EPA et al., which assert that the anthropomorphic contribution to carbon loads is nonexistent or not provable! (CSPAN, EPA Administrator Confirmation Hearing Environmental and Public Works Committee) and SA, EPA Is Pounded in Many Ways
It's unclear what our "new" alt-white-house EPA administrator means when stating "...human activity in some manner impacts that [climate] change, the ability to measure with precision the degree of that impact and what to do about it are subject to continuing debate and dialog..." (@~32:10)
Our nation can simultaneously reduce anthropomorphic carbon loads while measuring the impacts of climate change with increasing precision! It's a bizarre assertion and twisted logic that requires our government not act until some unspecified measurement precision!
To our government's everlasting shame it permitted, if not actively encouraged this same bizarre and twisted logic to enable Big Tobacco to manufacture cigarettes, which is killing our citizenry by the hundreds of thousands a year to this day! Oh yah, and our scientists are still measuring with increasing precision how those cancers kill our citizenry!!
UPDATED 01/26/2017 SA, Trump Administration Orders EPA to Remove Its Climate Change Webpage and Reuters, U.S. government scientists go 'rogue' in defiance of Trump and SA, Scientists Are Planning the Next Big Washington March
Suppression of data will likely be the preferred solution to our global warming problem during the alt-white-house's short-term.
Its actions should not dissuade all other nations and leading states (e.g. California, New York, Canada, China, E.U., Mexico et al.) from moving forward with efforts to limit carbon loads and protect the global environment.
Fortunately, old scientific speak is pushing back against our “new” alt-white-house speak (aka lying)!
UPDATED 12/27/2016 NYT, California at Forefront of Climate Fight, Won't Back Down to Trump
Who else will give the science based guidance, which offsets the prayer based guidance asserted by our climate change clowns (deniers)?
UPDATED 12/14/2016 Reuters, U.S. Energy Department balks at Trump request for names on climate change
Wow, comrade Trump is already generating preinaugural Nixonian-like enemies lists of DOE scientists.
On the bright side he hasn't begun shooting our climate or other scientists, yet. Perhaps, he's awaiting senate confirmation of his choice to head DOE, a religious zealot (wacko?) named Rick Perry2, to pray that our pesky climate scientists go away?
What can possibly go wrong at the DOE run by a praying clown under a comrade Trump government (regime?)?!!!
UPDATED 12/12/2016 NewsHour, U.S. Builds First Offshore Wind Farm
Kudos to Rhode Island's for its wind power pilot project, notwithstanding its initial higher price points or preinaugural comments by comrade Trump and his climate clowns.
UPDATED 12/08/2016 PopSci, Trump's Pick to Lead the EPA is a Climate Denier (Who's Suing the EPA)
You can't make this stuff up! Can you countersue for stupidity?
UPDATED 12/08/2016 ChinaDaily, Chinese vice premier pledges more efforts to improve environment
Let's see the plan, not the press releases!
UPDATED 12/06/2016 SA, An Open Letter from Scientists to President-Elect Trump on Climate Change
UPDATED 11/22/2016 SA, Will the Rust Belt Stick with Coal Under Trump?
Suppression of data will likely be the preferred solution to our global warming problem during the alt-white-house's short-term.
Its actions should not dissuade all other nations and leading states (e.g. California, New York, Canada, China, E.U., Mexico et al.) from moving forward with efforts to limit carbon loads and protect the global environment.
Fortunately, old scientific speak is pushing back against our “new” alt-white-house speak (aka lying)!
UPDATED 12/27/2016 NYT, California at Forefront of Climate Fight, Won't Back Down to Trump
Who else will give the science based guidance, which offsets the prayer based guidance asserted by our climate change clowns (deniers)?
UPDATED 12/14/2016 Reuters, U.S. Energy Department balks at Trump request for names on climate change
Wow, comrade Trump is already generating preinaugural Nixonian-like enemies lists of DOE scientists.
On the bright side he hasn't begun shooting our climate or other scientists, yet. Perhaps, he's awaiting senate confirmation of his choice to head DOE, a religious zealot (wacko?) named Rick Perry2, to pray that our pesky climate scientists go away?
What can possibly go wrong at the DOE run by a praying clown under a comrade Trump government (regime?)?!!!
UPDATED 12/12/2016 NewsHour, U.S. Builds First Offshore Wind Farm
Kudos to Rhode Island's for its wind power pilot project, notwithstanding its initial higher price points or preinaugural comments by comrade Trump and his climate clowns.
UPDATED 12/08/2016 PopSci, Trump's Pick to Lead the EPA is a Climate Denier (Who's Suing the EPA)
You can't make this stuff up! Can you countersue for stupidity?
UPDATED 12/08/2016 ChinaDaily, Chinese vice premier pledges more efforts to improve environment
Let's see the plan, not the press releases!
UPDATED 12/06/2016 SA, An Open Letter from Scientists to President-Elect Trump on Climate Change
UPDATED 11/22/2016 SA, Will the Rust Belt Stick with Coal Under Trump?
If America's "Rust Belt" wants to continue rusting, their state leaders will "stick with Trump"! Our nation and the world is moving on to cleaner energy with or without the putative titular successor to President Obama!
UPDATED 11/18/2016 CCTV, China to help Africa implement Paris Agreement and SA, China Takes the Climate Spotlight as U.S. Heads for Exit
Excellent! China works with Africa and America works with China (or not?) on reducing levels of greenhouse gases, notwithstanding prognostications that Trump's government (regime?) will prefer and pursue regressive unscientific goals and solutions.
UPDATED 11/07/2016 Climate change summit to find ways to implement Paris Agreement, Marrakech 2016
UPDATED 11/03/2016 Reuters, U.S., 35 states to boost electric vehicle charging stations
UPDATED 10/22/2016 SA, U.S. Residential Electricity Prices Decline for the First Time in 14 Years
UPDATED 10/07/2016 RCI, Pact will control emissions on international flights eventually
Voluntary commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions to specific levels should not be derided a priori.
UPDATED 10/05/2016 WH, SXSL: President Obama Participates in SXSL Discussion and UN, Ban Ki-moon (UN Secretary-General) on India's Ratification of the Paris Agreement
India has ratified the Paris Agreement on October 02, 2016, effectuating the agreement's framework for signatory nations. Kudos Mr. President et al. (look forward to reporting at the annual SXSL)
UPDATED 09/22/2016 PopSci, Obama Orders Pentagon to Plan for Climate Change [,Again?]
UPDATED 09/10/2016 NPR, California Gov. Jerry Brown Signs New Climate Change Laws
UPDATED 09/06/2016 Reuters, U.S., China ratify Paris climate agreement
EuroNews English
UPDATED 08/31/2016 ClimateCentral, See Earth’s Temperature Spiral Toward 2°C
UPDATED 08/17/2016 PopSci, Last Month Was the Warmest Month Ever Recorded
UPDATED 08/15/2016 LBL, Setting Sail to Study Ocean Carbon
UPDATED 07/25/2016 Reuters, EPA clears path to regulate carbon emissions from U.S. aircraft
UPDATED 07/20/2016 SA, Tobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway Public
Should big oil be treated like big tobacco?
UPDATED 06/28/2016 SA, North America Will Draw Half Its Electricity from Carbon-Free Sources by 2025
Kudos to Presidents Obama and Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada!
While Britain tries to figure out how to isolate and insulate itself, let the rest of the world cooperate to meet important global goals.
UPDATED 06/16/2016 SA, Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4 Million Years
Hey Senator Inhofe (R-OK) show us your senate-snowball-science on global warming (some might say stupidity), again!
UPDATED 06/08/2016 WP, Atmospheric carbon dioxide just reached a huge record high
Hey Senator Inhofe (R-OK) show us your senate-snowball-science on global warming (some might say stupidity), again!
UPDATED 06/04/2016 SA, Scientists Seek a New Measure for Methane
UPDATED 05/16/2016 BBC, April breaks global temperature record
Hey Senator Inhofe (R-OK) show us your senate-snowball-science on global warming (some might say stupidity), again!
UPDATED 05/03/2016 NPR, Fact Check: Hillary Clinton And Coal Jobs
Candidate Hillary Clinton is correct that the coal jobs are going away (fast), which is not to say that our current congressional leadership should not legislatively mitigate the impacts of the coal jobs displacement.
However, a significant proportion of our current congressional leadership are content to chant "free market", "lassie fair", political, and economic slogans instead of legislating policies that will mitigate the impacts of the coal jobs displacement.
It seems preferable to change the slogan chanting proportion of our current congressional leadership instead of criticizing her message.
UPDATED 04/22/2016 SA, Paris Agreement Offers New Climate Covenant with Future
We can't wait to begin studying each nation's plan to reduce their anthropomorphic atmospheric carbon loads and measuring the resultant global reductions.
As each nation's plan is analyzed and measured it will be useful to recall a quote oft attributed to W. Edward Deming: "In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data".
UPDATED 04/13/2016 Reuters, Leading global coal miner Peabody files for bankruptcy
The expectation is that many more coal mines will follow. The unexpected is that our congressional leadership will tell our citizenry that "free market" laissie-faire neo-anarchists' sincerely and strongly held beliefs will autonomously mitigate the well-known and understood economic dislocations, which will occur.
UPDATED 03/22/2016 Reuters, Carbon emissions highest in 66 million years, since dinosaur age
UPDATED 03/16/2016 Atlantic, Obama Abandons Plans to Drill in the Atlantic Ocean and Reuters, Obama administration reverses course on Atlantic oil drilling
UPDATED 02/25/2016 SA, Lowering Ocean Acidity Promotes Coral Growth on Great Barrier Reef
UPDATED 01/22/2016 NYT, New Methane Emission Rules Proposed by Interior Department
UPDATED 01/22/2016 NYT, Court Rejects a Bid to Block Coal Plant Regulations
UPDATED 01/20/2016 DoD, National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks anda Changing Climate July 2015
UPDATED 12/16/2015 SA, New Camera Sees Invisible Greenhouse Gas
The camera method of monitoring point source emission of methane is not so new, but it's nice that to learn that point source measures correlate well with regional measuring and monitoring.
UPDATED 12/12/2015 SA, World's First Global Deal to Combat Climate Change Adopted in Paris and NYT, Nations Approve Landmark Climate Accord in Paris (includes link to draft Paris Agreement)
Let's begin the periodic, open and transparently verified international reporting of numbers, tomorrow!
UPDATED 12/07/2015 NatGeo, Top U.S. Scientist: World Must Act Now to Reverse Climate Change
“The world needs ultimately to completely decarbonize,” says John Holdren, Obama’s science advisor
UPDATED 12/04/2015 Wired, Climate Scientists Used to Just Get Angry. Now They’re Taking Action
UPDATED 12/02/2015 WH, The President holds a Press Conference in Paris
Mr. President, no nation, developed or developing, should be required to choose between the rapacity of an economic system and a repressive military system, which your assertion at approximately 2:15 implies!
UPDATED 11/24/2015 SA, The U.S.
President Obama must make clear that our nation will lead by immediate implementation of the challenging changes required to ensure sustainably neutral anthropomorphic contribution to global warming.
UPDATED 11/10/2015 SA, Record Levels of CO2 Herald the Future of Climate Change
UPDATED 11/06/2015 GlobeMail, President Obama rejects TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL pipeline
Kudos to the President!
Other world leaders must demonstrate this same leadership at the upcoming climate conference where hard decisions will be required to transition all global economies to cleaner forms of energy.
UPDATED 09/01/2015 WH, The President Addresses the GLACIER Conference
UPDATED 08/29/2015 NatGeo, Oceans Will Rise Much More Than Predicted, NASA Saysand NASA, Greenland Ice Mass Loss: Jan. 2004 - June 2014 and Space, New NASA Model Maps Sea Level Rise Like Never Before (Video)
UPDATED 08/15/2015 Atlantic, China’s Air Problem Is Worse Than You Think
UPDATED 08/04/2015 WH, Fact Sheet: President Obama to Announce Historic Carbon Pollution Standards for Power Plants
Finally, ... and from a so called "lame duck presidency"...encore!
UPDATED 07/04/2014 Earth Observation, OCO-2 Mission Satellite
UPDATED 06/16/2014 Reuters, U.N. climate talks fracture over future of carbon markets
Delaying the formation of carbon markets (pollutants) will simply produce a higher initial price per pollutant tonnage, given a pollutant price-probability curve reasonably required to mitigate or offset the probable harm.
Negotiators must immediately establish global carbon markets notwithstanding pleas from the high polluters to slow-walk negotiations at the low end of a pollutant price-probability curve (e.g. $10/tonne CO2) or the low polluters to no-walk at the high end of a pollutant price-probability curve (e.g. $80/tonne CO2).
The current pollutant load has already effectively determined an outcome for the negotiations (e.g. between $20-$40/tonne CO2)—the sooner markets
Which is not to say that the polluters' pleas are noise level—but what professional negotiator is not skilled at filtering the noise?
UPDATED 06/15/2014 WH, President Obama Speaks at UC-Irvine Commencement
President lauds graduates and entreats their age demographic to aggressively accept climate change challenges required to reduce and mitigate its impacts.
UPDATED 06/02/2014 Reuters, U.S. unveils sweeping plan to slash power plant pollution and LAT, New EPA rule would seek to cut carbon emissions 30% by 2030
Kudos to our President and EPA for the extraordinary efforts aimed at reducing the United States's contribution to atmospheric carbon loads—hopefully, swiftly pushing through the inevitable challenges and litigation!
Whatever else "government overreach" means it does not mean more accurately costing carbon's contributions to the United States economic activity.
Our coal users appear to use the phrase "government overreach" as a euphemism for continuing their unmeasured, unconstrained, unaccountable and uncontested burning of coal, regardless of the harm or external costs?
UPDATED 04/03/2014 BBC, EU backs compromise on plane CO2 emissions
UPDATED 02/11/2014 ThomsonReuters, China's Hubei plans province's first carbon auction next month and Reuters, California vows to press ahead with climate change programsUPDATED 12/27/2013 ThomsonReutersTrust, EU reaches deal to cap super-warming F-gases
UPDATED 12/25/2013 NYT, Rethinking How to Split the Costs of Carbon
It's always been an illusion that the full costs of our energy usage can be externalized, but that illusion continues to delay, impede or prevent meaningful multilateral reforms necessary to immediately mitigate and minimize our energy usage.
UPDATED 12/20/2013 Reuters, Analysis: Strong start for California carbon market, but challenges loom
Kudos to California ARB's tightrope walking efforts to lower the excessive anthropomorphic atmospheric carbon load.
UPDATED 11/29/2013 VOA, Beijing Opens Carbon Trading Scheme to Fight Emissions
UPDATED 11/11/2013 ThomsonReutersTrust, Participants walk in front of the venue of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Warsaw
UPDATED 11/03/2013 ThomsonReutersTrust, New Obama order aims to prepare communities for severe weather
Kudos to our President for his partial leadership on issues related to climate change, notwithstanding an obstreperous Lower House of Congress.
UPDATED 10/21/2013 ESA, North American carbon dioxide sources and sinks: magnitude, attribution, and uncertainty
UPDATED 10/10/2013 MoraLab, Research Into The Interlinks Between Biodiversity Patterns, Processes, Threats, Conservation And Human Welfare, The Timing Of New Climates
UPDATED 09/22/2013 ThomsonReuters, Scientists set to prepare strongest warning that warming man-made
UPDATED 07/29/2013 LiveScience, Arctic Methane Claims Questioned (-->) and CSM, Arctic ice melt could cost an extra $60 trillion, say researchers
All alternatives but international cooperation are excluded by these enormous global impacts and costs. Article includes a link to the Nature study citing an updated Page09 model (initially developed by the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change).
UPDATED 07/17/2013 LiveScience, Acid Test: Rising CO2 Levels Killing Ocean Life (Op-Ed)
UPDATED 07/15/2013 TReuters, Seas may rise 2.3 metres per degree of global warming-report UPDATED 07/04/2013 WT, U.S. watches as EU struggles with ‘cap-and-trade’ and TReuters, Temperature-linked carbon tax could be effective - expert (on trying to avoid the unavoidable politics of pollution pricing of GHGs)
Hopefully, we will soon begin our "struggle" to reduce atmospheric CO2 loads, too.
The price of a 33 grams cartridge of C02 to fill bicycle tires is approximately $10. A metric ton of CO2 at this price is approximately $30,303.
A pollution permit priced at $6 per ton of CO2 seems like a bargain, even if the material cost for the metal bicycle tire fill cartridge is subtracted.
UPDATED 05/13/2013 TReuters, UN faces uphill battle to reduce global airline emissions
UPDATED 05/10/2013 NSF, Climate Record From Bottom of Russian Lake Shows Arctic Was Warmer Millions of Years Ago
UPDATED 05/06/2013 BBC, Arctic Ocean 'acidifying rapidly'
UPDATED 02/21/2013 HIPPO, HIPPO global-scale air chemistry dataset now available Includes links to Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) for obtaining dataset.
UPDATED 01/16/2013 NYT, Burning Fuel Particles Do More Damage to Climate Than Thought, Study Says These particles affect Arctic ice albedo
UPDATED 11/12/2012 NYT, E.U. Postpones Charges for Airline Emissions EU has postponed its mandatory carbon tax on airlines for a year to enable the global airline sector to voluntary adopt guidelines that reduce the amount of carbon they spewed into our atmosphere.
EU has threatened to reinstate its carbon tax if meaningful voluntary guidelines are not adopted within the postponement year.
UPDATED 09/22/2012 Reuters, Senate votes to shield US airlines from EU's carbon scheme
Sadly, on the rare occasion when our totally dysfunctional Congress is able to agree on something, it's to impede efforts too reduce the carbon load spewed into the atmosphere by airlines.
Understandably some nations may not appreciate Germany's unilateral efforts to tax domestic and foreign airlines' carbon emission. However, instead of impeding Germany's nascent efforts to reduce carbon loads other nations must join those efforts by implementing common, cooperative, and complementary airline carbon-taxing schemes.
UPDATED 08/27/2012 NSIDC, Arctic sea ice extent breaks 2007 record low
It seems useful to note that nature is not a respecter of human hubris or fairytales and that the fossil record indicates extinction is a more probable outcome than adaptation.
Substituting fairytales for facts and praying that "God" somehow solves a problem does not seem like an optimal adaptive strategy. Although, one can appreciate why those depending on such a strategy would incorporate "life after" extinction into their fairytale.
UPDATED 08/22/2012 NSIDC, Turn of the century drought worst in 800 years, study says
UPDATED 08/17/2012 WT, Use of natural gas credited for drop in CO2 emissions
UPDATED 07/26/2012 Discover, Greenland Two Day Slushi
UPDATED 07/01/2012 Economist, The melting north
UPDATED 06/30/2012 Nature, Global network will track acidifying oceans
UPDATED 04/04/2012 BBC, CO2 'drove end to last ice age' More evidence that an increasing CO2 load leads the lagging temperature rise.
UPDATED 03/27/2012 Reuters, Government proposes first carbon limits on power plants Kudos to our EPA for moving toward increasingly "cleaner" carbon sources.
Additional transparency is required about "fracking methods" so its economic externality forecasts can be updated and compared with those related to "coal methods" (with and without CO2 sequestration).
- UPDATED 12/11/2012 SFGate, Energy experts say drilling can be made cleaner
India and all other national and international airlines must opt-in to the nascent EU carbon-reducing scheme and adopt carbon-reducing schemes of their own.
Eventually, all nations must jointly agree to attach carbon fees to every purchased aircraft (and other mobile carbon sources)—the sooner, the better.
We can expect some nations to pursue the most torturous path possible to delay reducing their anthropogenic atmospheric carbon loads.
UPDATED 03/11/2012 Reuters, Aviation calls on EU leaders to fix carbon tax: FT
Our major airline executives have misdirected their complaints to the EU for its nascent efforts to reduce our growing and harmful anthropogenic carbon loads.
Their complaints should be directed to all national governments and aircraft manufacturers for the purpose of encouraging them to pursue joint efforts aimed at immediately reducing our growing and harmful anthropogenic carbon loads.
UPDATED 02/20/2012 Reuters,Moscow air talks to debate measures against EU: draft and Reuters, Q+A: Will Moscow talks unleash carbon trade war against EU?
Perhaps citizens living in the "carbon counter-measure nations" can express their preference for airlines and corporations, which join the EU's nascent efforts to immediately reduce atmospheric carbon loads?
UPDATED 02/16/2012 Reuters, Nobel winners urge EU leaders to back tar sands law
"Under the draft EU proposal, tar sands are assigned a default greenhouse gas value of 107 grams of carbon per megajoule, showing buyers it has more environmental impact than conventional crude with 87.5 grams." Reuters, EU won't drop aviation CO2 scheme: Instead of joining the urgently need efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions, specifically global CO2 (~390+ ppm), some nations are threatening retaliation. Hopefully, their retaliation will take the form of adopting a carbon-reducing scheme that includes airplanes.
-----notes-----
1. Those unfamiliar with earth's carbon cycle (global thermostat) may find the online introductory lectures, generously made available by University of Chicago and computational ocean chemist David Archer, helpful.
Perhaps perusal of A U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Plan (pdf) after the lectures.
UPDATED 06/14/2012 A detail discussion on building a climate model is presented by Enez Fung:
2. You'll remember Rick Perry from his 2012 presidential campaign as the candidate who was going to cut three governmental agencies (Commerce, Education and ?), if only he could remember that his list included the Department of Energy.
