GLOBAL CARBON FOOTPRINT
Total emissions by nation
Designed By
Stanford Kay
Nice infographic work. Search “People at risk” and you will find what vulnerability is all about.
Carbon map infographic: a new way to see the Earth move
Kiln, a partnership of Guardian writer Duncan Clark and developer Robin Houston has come up with this beautiful new take on the globe. Watch the animated intro or click on the topics and see the map move before your eyes. Adding shading lets you compare two datasets to see how they relate – so you can see clearly how poorest countries have the fastest growing populations but the lowest emissions. (This is the “consumption” view, where country size represents the carbon footprint of all goods and services consumed, including imports and excluding exports.)
What we knew about climate change in 1982. Fantastic video by Peter Sinclair, who runs Climate Crocks - a fantastic blog that debunks climate deniers. I love when he calls out newspapers and journalists on their bullshit reporting.
Anyway, this video shows that the core problem of climate change - the effects of manmade CO2 - hasn’t changed much since the 1950s (or earlier).
Scientific skepticism is healthy. In fact, science by its very nature is skeptical. Genuine skepticism means considering the full body of evidence before coming to a conclusion. However, when you take a close look at arguments expressing climate ‘skepticism’, what you often observe is cherry picking of pieces of evidence while rejecting any data that don’t fit the desired picture. This isn’t skepticism. It is ignoring facts and the science.
The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism looks at both the evidence that human activity is causing global warming and the ways that climate ‘skeptic’ arguments can mislead by presenting only small pieces of the puzzle rather than the full picture.
Quickly becoming the top TED talk of 2012: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change
“Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
James Hansen has made key insights into our global climate — and inspired a generation of activists and scientists.”
Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong
William D. Nordhaus answers to the opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal of January 27, 2012, by a group of sixteen scientists, entitled “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” His work was cited to argument their skeptic view and he tries to put some light.
It is, by far, one of the best pieces against skeptics. If you ever need to look for some reasons to cope with them, just remember this article is perfect.
“The Transition Companion: making your community more resilient in uncertain times” by Rob Hopkins
Climate Change and Social Ecology
A New Perspective on the Climate Challenge
Well, it should be a more complex draw, but this is it, basically. You can even forget the “conspiracy” part, as this enters the field of opinions and views. Just take the crucial part on scientific community, the peer review system and the IPCC work. That is all about: science, how science evolves and how scientific knowledge is built.
Assumed logic in pictorial form. Damn “big science”, trying to get all their greedy hands on that fabulous research money by making up climate change.
Small Gritty and Green: The promise of America’s smaller industrial cities in a low-carbon world
By Catherine Tumber
(Source: cles.org.uk)
(Source: brandingplaces.com)
Ouch. It’s already past 2010, so I guess the bottom two scenarios are no-gos. We can always hope for a peak oil- or financial-engineering-based total economic collapse though, right? …right?
The Wall Street Journal published a letter expressing skepticism about anthropogenic climate change signed by a group of engineers, retired weathermen, and scientists from fields other than climate science. In response, a much larger group of actual climate scientists signed onto a letter rebutting the first letter. The WSJ rejected it. Instead, the pre-eminent science journal Science, which is know for its rigor in treatments of science, published it, as "Climate change and the Integrity of Science" on January 27th, 2012.
Climate scientists slam the WSJ in this long rebuttal to a trashy editorial on climate denial. The first half of the piece are dozens of signatures, so you’l have to scroll scroll scroll to get to the red meat. But it’s well worth your time. A sampling:
(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.
(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.
(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
Check out this must read piece at ScienceBlogs
Climate Change Update
Republican Senator James Inhofe:
“As I said on the Senate floor on July 28, 2003, “much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science.” I called the threat of catastrophic global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” a statement that, to put it mildly, was not viewed kindly by environmental extremists and their elitist organizations. I also pointed out, in a lengthy committee report, that those same environmental extremists exploit the issue for fundraising purposes, raking in millions of dollars, even using federal taxpayer dollars to finance their campaigns.”
It is proper and courteous speech to refer to Senator Inhofe as a brain dead lying son of a bitch who by the way - has received money from Koch Industries. The oil firm has given nearly $25 million to climate-change denial groups. Senator Inhofe is a whore and a liar in the truest sense of the word. There is no disrespect or impropriety in saying so. Senator Inhofe, please put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger, it is the greatest thing that you can do for your country. Thank you. Inhofe can produce no valid science to back his claims.
President Barack Obama
President Obama:
“We now know without a doubt that global warming is threatening us with higher temperatures, more drought, more wildfire, more flooding, and more erosion of our coastal communities. People who don’t believe this can yell about it as loudly as they want, but it doesn’t change the fact that the overwhelming scientific evidence has proven this over and over again. We must act now with the rest of the world to curb emissions so that we can leave our children a safer, healthier planet.”
What is Global Warming?
The Earth as an ecosystem is changing, attributable in great part to the effects of globalization and man. More carbon dioxide is now in the atmosphere than has been in the past 650,000 years. This carbon stays in the atmosphere, acts like a warm blanket, and holds in the heat — hence the name ‘global warming.’
The reason we exist on this planet is because the earth naturally traps just enough heat in the atmosphere to keep the temperature within a very narrow range – this creates the conditions that give us breathable air, clean water, and the weather we depend on to survive. Human beings have begun to tip that balance. We’ve overloaded the atmosphere with heat-trapping gasses from our cars and factories and power plants. If we don’t start fixing the problem now, we’re in for devastating changes to our environment. We will experience extreme temperatures, rises in sea levels, and storms of unimaginable destructive fury. Recently, alarming events that are consistent with scientific predictions about the effects of climate change have become more and more commonplace.
