- Justin Gillis, writing in The New York Times, provides a very informative list of short answers to 13 hard (and important) questions about climate change.
- Adam Vaughan, writing in The Guardian, has compiled a list of the expected changes associated with various levels of warming.
- If you know that the Paris Climate Summit is going on, but you aren’t quite sure exactly what is likely to happen, then The Guardian has a summary for you, as does Climate Home. Because of the sheer volume of articles coming out about the Summit I’m not going to attempt to cover it, although I will put in a few things that particularly catch my eye.
- On Tuesday, President Obama said that part of the agreement from Paris should be legally binding, the periodic review of emission reduction targets. Sophie Yeo of Carbon Brief explains how this might work. In a sweeping interview in Rolling Stone, John Kerry discusses the implications of legally binding agreements in Paris and a host of other issues associated with climate change.
- The Breakthrough Energy Coalition, made up of more than 25 investors from 10 countries was launched Monday at the Paris Climate Summit. Its goal is to spark an economic revolution based upon clean energy technology. The announcement was made in conjunction with Mission Innovation, an initiative involving 21 governments to spur renewable energy development. Jules Kortenhorst, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, took this as a highly encouraging sign.
- One of the most important concepts to come out of climate science in the past decade is that of a carbon budget, which quantifies the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted to the atmosphere while still limiting warming to 2 degrees C. This concept was discussed in a series of articles in Nature in 2009, incorporated into the 2013-2014 IPCC report, and popularized by Bill McKibben in his article “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” in Rolling Stone in 2012. Nevertheless, as reported by Justin Gillis in The New York Times, the carbon budget will not be part of the discussions in Paris, in part because it raises issues that are just too difficult to tackle.
- The Washington Post published an interesting series of articles related to climate change. Part 1 dealt with “The Great Thaw“; Part 2 with “The Invisible Threat” posed by insects carrying viruses further north; Part 3 with the oceans and giant moving boulders; and Part 4 with “The Magic Number“, i.e., 2 degrees C. Finally, they summarized the key points of climate change science in a fascinating interactive graphic.
- According to the World Meteorological Organization the period 2011-2015 will be the warmest five year period on record. In addition, because of a strong El Nino coupled with global warming, 2015 is likely to be the warmest year on record.
- One initiative to come out of the Postcard to Paris event at the Ice House on November 29 was to increase local action to make Harrisonburg more energy efficient and resilient. Toward that end, you might find a new report by the Post Carbon Institute to be helpful. It is entitled Six Foundation for Building Community Resilience.
- The UN’s World Food Programme and Britain’s Met office Hadley Centre have unveiled a website that lets the user control future greenhouse gas emissions and climate adaptation strategies to see their impact on global food security on a country by country basis. Roz Pidcock at Carbon Brief walks you through the website.
- One tactic used by people who do not want to act against climate change is to focus on the uncertainty inherent in any system as complex as the climate system, thereby hoping to make people shrug off the risks. However, uncertainty in the climate system actually increases the inherent risks, making early action even more important, as explained by Stephan Lewandowsky and co-authors in The Guardian. Unfortunately, focusing on the uncertainty is far more effective at making people discount climate change than a variety of framing techniques are at causing them to be concerned.
- During the Eocene, fifty million years ago, Earth was a hot house due to high CO2 concentrations. Until now, the CO2 concentration during the Eocene was thought to be 1,125 ppm, far higher than today’s levels. However, recent evidence from the examination of certain mineral crystals suggests that the CO2 concentration was as low as 680 ppm, a level we could reach by the end of the century if we continue with business as usual. The new data suggest that Earth of more sensitive to CO2 concentrations than previously thought.
- Fueled by the effects of El Niño, torrential rains in Tamil Nadu, a state with nearly 70 million people in southern India, are causing massive flooding. The rains are the heaviest in over a century. Ironically, India, along with Saudi Arabia, quashed efforts by the vulnerable nations to introduce a UN study on the benefits of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C rather than 2 degrees, a proposal backed by Germany and France. James Hansen agreed that 2 degrees was too much and called for a rising global price on carbon.
- Readers of The Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg are aware that the editor loves to cite past warming of Earth as evidence that we need not be concerned about current warming. However, as Chris Mooney of The Washington Post points out, “This may be one of the weakest arguments against human-caused climate change.”
- Eight industrialized nations, which have pledged $2 billion a year to the Green Climate Fund to help vulnerable nations adapt to climate change, spend a combined $80 billion a year on subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, according to Oil Change International.
These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.
Climate Action Alliance of the Valley 