Diary Of The Last Age

Is there,  on the Left, an anti-science predilection, that matches the Right ? There’s a widespread misconception about science denial – that on issues like the safety vaccines and genetically modified foods (GMOs), denial is found predominantly on the political left, mirroring the denial of evolution and  climate  science on the political right. This assumption has even been presented on  The Daily Show , but it’s supported by precious little evidence. In fact,  as Chris Mooney documented in great detail in 2014 : [The data]  do not support the idea that vaccine denial is a special left-wing cause. As for GMOs, while resistance may be strongest on the far left, worries on this issue are quite prominent across the spectrum as well.   In neither case are these beliefs a mirror image, on the left,  of  climate change  or evolution denial [on the political right]. A  new YouGov poll  provided some data on this The YouGov ...

For all my years being involved in following the global warming crisis, the one thing that I haven't been able to figure out is why it became so politicized.  I still don't know the answer to that but I'd like to respond to the constant drum of denial that I see on the internet.  Two of the most frequent arguments raised by the deniers is first: the purported consensus is a creation of government funding for climate research, and second:  it is a liberal plot to ruin our economy. Well, to both of those I present Exxon.  Their research determined decades ago that gas and oil consumption was going to be a threat to the planet, in fact as late as the 1960's : A document discovered by DeSmog reveals that Exxon was aware as early as the late 1960s that global emissions of CO 2 from combustion was a chief pollution concern affecting global ecology.  Those details were found in a 1970 report, “Pollution Is Everybody’s Business,” authored by H.R. Holland, a Che...

Last October, calls went out for carbon pricing to help the reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide.  Now the IMF and the World Bank are making carbon pricing a newly urgent cause . The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are pressing governments to impose a price tag on planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions, using economic leverage and technical assistance that institutions like the United Nations cannot muster. But the leaders of the World Bank, the I.M.F. and other major global institutions say cutting emissions enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change will not be possible unless all fossil fuel polluters are forced to pay for the carbon dioxide they emit. “There is now an overwhelmingly obvious scientific consensus that the more carbon pollution we put into the air the more impact it has on warming the massive melting of the Arctic, the cycles of droughts and flooding, the die-offs of coral reefs,” the World Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, said ...

Scientists have discovered sub-glacial lakes deep in the ice of Greenland. One lake, described in the journal Cryosphere , once held billions of gallons of water and emptied to form a giant crater – 2 km across and around 70 m deep – in just a few weeks. Dr Howat and his colleagues detected the crater on a spot about 50 km inland from the southwest Greenland coast earlier in 2014. “The fact that our lake appears to have been stable for at least several decades, and then drained in a matter of weeks – or less – after a few very hot summers, may signal a fundamental change happening in the ice sheet,” Dr Howat said. In addition to adding to the increase in sea level: The melting of Greenland’s glaciers has also added a large boost of freshwater to the North Atlantic which could alter ocean currents and the ocean’s ability to take up carbon dioxide.  The alteration of the ocean current is likely to be to the Gulf Stream which keeps Europe relatively warm for its latitude, and...

I've previously mentioned the threat to Florida.  The impact is already real . The densely populated megalopolis of South Florida is losing it's water wells as sea water intrudes into the Biscayne Aquifer. Salt water has already moved 6 miles inland in Broward County and is likely to continue to creep westward. A report titled Climate Change AND Sea-Level Rise IN Florida notes the hellish calamity that will affect Florida's urban populations, economy, ecosystems and coasts. Anyone planning to move to Florida, not to mention mortgage companies, should be reading that report carefully. Later this summer there'll almost certainly be a Florida update on the Zika virus.

A new study shows that global warming is 97%  anthropogenic, i.e., due to human activities. The study considered temperature changes for the period of 1951–2010. During that time, global surface temperatures warmed about 0.65°C. During that same period, their statistical approach which combines observations and climate models outputs found that humans have caused 0.67 ± 0.12°C warming, while natural factors have had essentially no effect on global temperatures (-0.01 ± 0.02°C). This diagram is not from the study, but illustrates the point it makes: Five datasets of global surface temperature and lower troposphere temperature are shown in this animation before and after removing the short-term effects of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) , solar variability , and volcanic aerosols .  A 12-month running average was applied to each dataset.  Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) used multiple linear regression to determine and then statistically filter out these shor...

to wonder what is happening to our planet.  All you have to do is to be paying attention and you will see the something here and something there that is new and appears to be telling us that we might be in danger, maybe in great danger of events beyond our control. For example , Emerging from a winter that has had staggeringly warm Arctic temperatures, scientists monitoring the vast Greenland ice sheet announced Tuesday that it is experiencing a record-breaking level of melt for so early in the season. ... Dramatic increases in sea level over the next few years are possible  due to the melting Greenland ice. And this is having another impact on our planet.  The North Pole which has been slowly moving towards Canada has been diverted by the loss of mass from melting Greenland ice towards England, specifically along the Greenwich Meridian . And wildfires:   Once Confined to a Season, Burn Earlier and Longer : The first Alaska wildfire of 2016 broke out in l...