Global Warming or Climate Change

Humanity’s choice (via IPCC): Aggressive climate action ASAP (left figure) minimizes future warming and costs a mere 0.06% of annual growth. Continued inaction (right figure) results in catastrophic warming, 9°F over much of U.S. If an article doesn’t explain how to start aggressive action ASAP and stay far away from catastrophe, it’s wasting your time. This may turn out to be one of the most important years in world history. The  leading nations of the world  are finally making serious pledges to address the greatest preventable threat to health and well-being of humanity, leading up to the Paris climate talks in December. The success or failure of those talks may well determine the course of the next thousand years of human history. Whatever changes we are too greedy or myopic to stop from happening in the first place are “irreversible” on that timescale, as the world’s leading scientists and governments  explained  in November. So, for the next 9 months (and beyond) you

In this Oct. 30, 2012 file photo, a parking lot full of yellow cabs in Hoboken, N.J. is flooded as a result of Superstorm Sandy. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/CHARLES SYKES A coalition of big insurance companies, consumer groups, and environmental advocates are urging the United States to overhaul its disaster policies in the face of increasingly extreme weather due to human-caused climate change. According to  a report  released Tuesday by the SmarterSafer coalition, the U.S. needs to increase how much it spends on pre-disaster mitigation efforts and infrastructure protection. That way, it asserts, the U.S. can stop wasting so much money on cleaning up after a disaster happens. “Our current natural disaster policy framework focuses heavily on responding to disasters, rather than putting protective measures in place to reduce our vulnerability and limit a disaster’s impact,” the report reads. “This needlessly exposes Americans to greater risks to life and property and results in much

A view of smog covering Mexico City skyline on March 30, 2014. Mexico’s pledge has two components. It will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 22 percent and will halve the production of so-called black carbon -- particles created by burning wood, diesel and other fuels. Photographer: Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images Mexico has become the first developing nation to formally promise to cut its global-warming pollution, a potential milestone in efforts to reach a worldwide agreement on tackling climate change. Mexico expects greenhouse-gas emissions to peak by 2026 and then decline, Environment Minister Juan Jose Guerra Abud said at a news conference in Mexico City Friday. The nation has pledged to curb the growth of pollutants 25 percent from its current trajectory by 2030. The United Nations is encouraging more than 190 countries to submit by March 31 formal plans detailing how they will curb greenhouse-gas emissions. These documents are a key step leading up to a December meeting in

O ne of the most significant features of contemporary Homo sapiens is that they wake up after the mishappening has taken place. They take no proactive measures on the issues of the natural disasters. Earthquakes in Nepal-India are its glaring illustration where Homo sapiens has failed to exhibit its intelligence. After deaths of more than two thousands everyone talks about the disasters, mainly politicians. They boast of their achievements in providing assistance in rescue operations, that is wonderful jobs done but the real issue still remains out of their thought process, at the global level leaders still pay no heed to real issues. The issue is Global Warming. Is there any link between the under earth activities and global warming? It now appears that there exists a clear relationship between the global warming and earthquakes and other under earth activities. When the permafrost dissolves as has happened in Arctic and associated areas due to the increased global t

A  new study  out of Germany casts further doubt on the so-called global warming “consensus” by suggesting the atmosphere may be less sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide emissions than most scientists think. A study by scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology found that man-made aerosols had a much smaller cooling effect on the atmosphere during the 20th Century than was previously thought. Why is this big news? It means increases in carbon dioxide emissions likely cause less warming than most climate models suggest. What do aerosols have to do with anything? Well, aerosols are created from human activities like burning coal, driving cars or from fires. There are also natural aerosols like clouds and fog. Aerosols tend to  reflect solar energy  back into space, giving them a cooling effect that somewhat offsets warming from increased CO2 emissions. The Max Planck study suggests “that aerosol radiative forcing is less negative and more certain than is c

Dear EarthTalk : What is the best way to measure how close we are to the dreaded "point of no return" with climate change? In other words, when do we think we will have gone too far? —  David Johnston, via EarthTalk.org While we may not yet have reached the “point of no return”—when no amount of cutbacks on greenhouse gas emissions will save us from potentially catastrophic global warming—climate scientists warn we may be getting awfully close. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution a century ago, the average global temperature has risen some 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Most climatologists agree that, while the warming to date is already causing environmental problems, another 0.4 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature, representing a global average atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) of 450 parts per million (ppm), could set in motion unprecedented changes in global climate and a significant increase in the severity of natural disasters—and as such co

 Dark clouds before rain. New research shows that clouds and water vapor are amplifying global warming. Photograph: Michal Boubin / Alamy/Alamy John Abraham Thursday 23 April 2015  14.00 BST Last modified on Thursday 23 April 2015 14.03 BST Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Shares 798 Comments 92 A  very new paper  currently in press shines light on climate feedbacks and the balance of energy flows to and from the Earth. The paper was published by  Kevin Trenberth ,  Yongxin Zhang ,  John Fasullo , and Shoichi Taguchi. In this study, the authors ask and answer a number of challenging questions. Their findings move us a big step forward in understanding what is happening to the planet now, and how the climate will evolve into the future. So, what did the scientists do? First, they used measurements at the top of the Earth atmosphere to count the energy coming into the Earth system and the e