rachel.blog

Tag: global warming

  • Hot Air: New Zealand climate change documentary

    Another day, another climate change documentary. This one follows the story of New Zealand’s climate change negotiations which were first born back in 1989. Since then, like in most other places, New Zealand’s emissions have grown. However the challenges here are slightly different to those in other nations as renewable power already makes up more than half of the domestic…

  • 2 Degrees

    There’s a new climate movie out called 2 Degrees which follows the failure of the UN climate negotiations while finding hope in the communities at the bottom (h/t HotTopic). You can watch the film online. Here’s an excerpt from their About page: The war on climate change has two major fronts: the fight against global deforestation and…

  • The difference between weather and climate

    This is a great two-minute video in which Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the difference between weather and climate (h/t HotTopic). It’s a preview from National Geographic Channel’s Cosmos series. The difference between weather and climate is important to understand because people have a tendency to see variations in the weather as a reason to dismiss climate change. For instance,…

  • It’s a conspiracy!

    I’ve finally finished reading Recursive Fury: a paper which studied blog comments written in response to the publication of NASA faked the moon landing-therefore (climate) science is a hoax. I’m not going to comment on the moon landing paper other than to say that it explored the connection between the endorsement of free-market economics and conspiratorial thinking.…

  • Gavin Schmidt: The emergent patterns of climate change

    This is a great TED talk given by Gavin Schmidt about how scientists use climate models to learn more about our climate (h/t Hot-Topic).

  • Bjorn Lomborg economics

    I’ve just seen a tweet of Bjorn Lomborg’s from the other day (yes, I’m a couple of days behind) on the cost of climate change versus the costs of mitigation. Here it is: New IPCC: Cost of climate less than 2% GDP in 2070. Cost of policy higher than 6% of GDP. Need smarter policies. https://t.co/kzlsUsHfyi —…

  • The consequences of climate change

    The science journalist, Peter Hadfield (aka Potholer), has a great new youtube video about the consequences of climate change (in our lifetimes). I have to give credit to Moth from New Anthropocene for bringing it to my attention. This to me is good science communication: it’s simple, clear and interesting.   Here’s a quote from the very end…

  • The impact of climate change on human health

    Chapter 11 of the IPCC report (yes, I’ve skipped a few chapters since my last post on this topic) is about Human health: impacts, adaptation and co-benefits. This is all about us so I think it deserves a post all on its own. Climate change will affect human health in three ways: Weather: Directly through…

  • Can we trust scientists?

    I saw this video on New Anthropocene recently and think it’s worth sharing. It is mostly about climate change but also science more broadly and why people don’t always trust the scientific consensus whether it be a consensus about climate change, vaccinations or evolution. Many years ago I lived next to a young woman who…

  • What we know

    I’ve just found this great interview with Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Pennsylvania State University, and he is a delight to listen to. If I were making a movie about some impending catastrophic event which included a part for an honest and dedicated scientist whose role was to alert the human population, I would pick…

  • Another post on blog moderation

    There’s not really any good resource on the web for how to moderate blogs; at least, not that I can find and I have looked. But I have come to learn a few things over the past few months which I want to write about for my own benefit and for anyone else who may…

  • Is climate change responsible for recent flooding in the UK?

    I’m not going to answer this question because I can’t but you can help to answer another question which is has climate change made extremely wet winters like the last in the UK more likely? Oxford University early this month launched the weather@home project which seeks to answer this question. The winter of 2013/2014 was…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.