rachel.blog

Tag: Climate change

  • Giant parasitic viruses

    I love science fiction as a genre. A little while ago I read a very old science fiction novel – written in 1938 – by John W. Campbell called Who Goes There? It has been made into a film a few times called The Thing. The story goes like this: A group of scientists are…

  • Abrupt climate change

    I’ve just watched a good video on the andthentheresphysics blog about climate change that begs to be shared. It’s called Expecting the Unexpected and features scientists discussing the possibility of abrupt climate change which is something we should fear. Here it is: Climate science contrarians like to say that climate change is nothing to worry…

  • Hypocrites, climate change, tragedies and solutions

    I’ve just had an amazing morning on twitter. I woke up to a tweet from someone basically saying that because I don’t pay the annual TV licence fee in the UK then I probably don’t have the right to complain about their service. So I jovially replied that I’ll be back in the UK come…

  • An open letter to the BBC

    I have finally got around to writing my letter to the BBC to complain about their coverage of climate change. Here it is below for all to read. If anyone would like to copy it in part or full for the purposes of emailing the BBC as well, then please be my guest. The email…

  • The denial of science

    Daniel’s recent battle with a Thai monkey got me thinking about vaccinations. He has had all of his rabies vaccinations now but it was quite a detailed process with lots of shots required and at very particular intervals and all of the same type i.e.there are a few options for rabies vaccinations I am told…

  • The extraordinary words of Dr Roy Spencer

    I can’t resist writing about this because it’s jaw-dropping stuff for me. Dr Roy Spencer, a research scientist at the University of Alabama and a climate science contrarian, has written on his blog that, “When politicians and scientists started calling people like me “deniers”, they crossed the line. They are still doing it…..I’m now going…

  • Possible return to El Niño?

    There’s a recent paper which is predicting a 75% chance of El Niño conditions returning late 2014. Should we be worried? I think so. The last major El Niño event was in 1998 and it was the largest ever recorded and caused global temperatures to spike. Since then global surface temperatures have been creeping up only…

  • Someone is mean on the internet

    I have not felt like blogging lately. But today I am out of sorts and it is not because of The Franchise, it is because people are mean to each other on the internet. There are not many topics that generate as much vitriol and animosity as climate change does. Why is this the case?…

  • 100% pure?

    There’s a documentary screening in New Zealand at the moment which is about New Zealand’s 100% pure image and how – with the rising pollution of rivers and swimming spots in New Zealand – this is increasingly at odds with reality (h/t to HotTopic for this). Episode 2 of the series is about climate change. Here’s…

  • We are running out of time…

    A friend sent me a link to a good article this morning (thank you!) about climate change and how if we don’t address it soon, it may end up becoming impossible to address. It is based on a leaked IPCC report, working group III – policies to limit damage, which is due for release in…

  • Barracking for the underdog

    [Note: in Australian English, barracking means to shout support for] Everyone wants the underdog to win. At least I do but I think I take this further by also favouring the weak, helpless and those that cannot fight for themselves especially animals and children. They are at our mercy. We are the bullies. Climate change…

  • On blog moderation and dealing with smarm

    If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s when people say one thing and mean another. Everyone does it but some more so than others. I am sometimes guilty of this myself but mostly I prefer to say exactly what I think. When we don’t speak the truth we are being fake and I hate…

  • Earth to warm 4C by 2100 under business as usual

    A new paper by Steven Sherwood et al. published in Nature this week is predicting a higher climate sensitivity of 3°C or more per doubling of CO2. The paper is called Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing. Current projections of climate sensitivity fall in the range of 1.5-4.5°C. Part of the…

  • Denial Tango 2014

    This is a great song written by the Aussie group Men With Day Jobs. Thanks to Hot Topic for bringing it to my attention.

  • Does climate change need a new agenda?

    I was speaking to some friends of mine recently about climate change (I know what you’re thinking, those poor souls). They understand and accept the science of climate change but were not particularly interested in the topic or its solutions. One thought wind farms were ugly and the other felt the answer lay with reducing…

  • Do climate change policies hurt the world’s poor?

    There’s something about what Bjorn Lomborg writes that makes me cross. He’s got an article on Project Syndicate in which he argues that environmental policy is hurting the world’s poor. He’s specifically referring to climate change policy and he thinks that what the developing world really needs is access to cheap fossil fuels. The article…

  • An atomic bomb analogy

    I want to ask my lovely readers what they think of an analogy which uses atomic bombs to help describe an amount of energy. The graphic below uses Hiroshima atomic bombs to convey the rate at which the Earth is currently accumulating energy, which is a lot. It was created by Skeptical Science – a…

  • Dangerous climate change

    It must be about time I wrote something about global warming again. I want to write about a new paper by James Hansen – the world’s best known climate scientist and former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. It’s called Assessing “Dangerous climate change”: required reductions of carbon emissions to protect young people,…

  • Climate change: the state of the science

    I’ve just seen this great video about the science of climate change and what we can expect for the next hundred or so years. I think it’s better than the recently released IPCC video which I also posted on my blog. This one is only four minutes and very good. It is produced by a Canadian…

  • Myles Allen’s proposal to bury the carbon problem

    Wottsupwiththatblog has very kindly let me write a guest post on his blog. I am reblogging it here in case any of my readers are interested. Myles Allen's proposal to bury the carbon problem. A guest post by Rachel ———————————— Because Wotts is very busy at the moment and because I’m quite keen for a…