rachel.blog

Tag: global warming

  • Who is Christopher Monckton?

    I was wrong about Christopher Monckton. For some time now, I’ve thought he was the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (whatever that means), but it turns out that he’s Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest creation, uncovered by Australian comedian, Craig Reucassel. Thanks to Sou at HotWhopper for pointing this out.

  • Plane crashes and climate change

    I am quite fascinated by aeroplane crashes. It’s just another of my morbid obsessions. One crash in particular, stands in my mind above all others. It’s the 1990 crash of Colombian flight 52 into the village of Cove Neck, New York killing 73 of the 158 people on board. What is so intriguing about this…

  • In praise of change

    I’m an impatient person. I also relish change. I’m not one of those people who fears it and who rejects everything new. Perhaps this is partly why I have no objections to implementing the changes needed to stem global warming and am perplexed why so many people fight against them. I read this great tweet…

  • Can scientists have opinions on policy?

    This post is in response to an opinion piece in The Guardian this week, Climate scientists must not advocate particular policies that is written by a climate scientist, Tamsin Edwards. It has spawned a number of blog posts already so I probably don’t particularly need to add my own but being the opinionated person that I…

  • Burden of proof

    David Mitchell rants about global warming contrarians. Funny but true.

  • Has global warming stopped?

    It seems that almost weekly there’s an article in the news with some climate change contrarian telling the world that global warming has stopped. It’s for this reason that I’m not surprised by the disconnect between what scientists know about global warming and what the general public thinks they know. 97% of climate scientists agree that…

  • Physiological forcing

    I learnt a new word (or two) this week: physiological forcing. Sounds ominous doesn’t it? It’s like radiative forcing but relates to plants. I’m aware that some people who read my blog won’t know what is meant by radiative forcing so let’s deal with that first. The Earth gets energy from the sun in the…

  • Has Murry Salby passed his Salby date?

    I really only wanted to create this post so that I could use the title. 🙂 But perhaps I should flesh it out a little bit. People who do not follow climate change news will be wondering who is Murry Salby. Murry Salby was a professor of Environmental Science at Macquarie University in Sydney and…

  • Climate change targets

    There is general international agreement that we must limit temperature increase to 2°C if we are to minimise the impact of climate change. This is known as the 2°C temperature limit. But in some respects, global temperature is a rather arbitrary figure. Why not, for instance, set a target for the maximum ocean acidification or…

  • Renewable energy expected to overtake coal shortly after 2035

    According to an article in the July 6th, 2013 edition of New Scientist magazine, the age of renewable energy is upon us. Data from the International Energy Agency predicts renewable energy will exceed energy from all other sources of electricity except for coal, by 2016. Renewables are then poised to outstrip coal shortly after 2035.…

  • The economic benefits of tackling climate change

    Last week I wrote about the health benefits of ditching fossil fuels for carbon neutral fuels but now I want to highlight the economic benefits of doing so. A University of Massachusetts publication – The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy –  finds that investment in clean energy creates about three times as many…

  • Who is really being alarmist?

    People who accept what the scientists are saying which is that human carbon emissions are causing global warming are often called alarmist. But I think it is the people who protest the shift towards a low carbon economy who are being alarmist. I read a very biased article in the Washington Times this week –…

  • Global warming predictions spot-on

    Climate scientists have been getting a lot of flak. Something I repeatedly read is that their prediction of temperature rises have been wildly inaccurate and so therefore we shouldn’t believe anything they say. This is simply not true. One forecast made in 1999 by Oxford physicist, Myles Allen, has proved to be impressively spot-on. WottsUpWithThatBlog…

  • Great speech on climate change from President Obama

  • Wind turbines and birds

    Yesterday I wrote about the nocebo effect in wind turbine syndrome and a comment was made in that post about how windfarms kill birds. It is true that wind farms kill birds when they collide with the spinning blades but it is also true that the total number of deaths associated with wind farms is…

  • Bill McKibben and 565 gigatons

    Bill McKibben – journalist, author and environmental activist – is currently touring Australia and New Zealand with a very simple message: We can afford to emit no more than 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide if we are to stay below 2°C of warming, but fossil fuel companies have enough fuel in their reserves to emit…

  • Climate change and weather-related disasters

    Climate scientists have suggested that we will see more extreme weather as a result of climate change. Are there more weather-related disasters than there used to be? I have been wondering this recently but haven’t had the chance to verify it. The insurance industry ought to know the answer to this. So rather than trawl…

  • Insects, anyone?

    When my sister and I were little, our Thai nanny fried up some grasshoppers for us to eat. I can’t remember what they tasted like but I remember the experience well: it was fun and exciting. We caught the grasshoppers and she cooked them. There is a word for the practice of eating insects. It…

  • Can science predict the future?

    In 2009, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck L’Aquila, Italy, killing more than 300 people. Six Italian seismologists were later convicted of manslaughter for failing to adequately warn the citizens of L’Aquila of the deadly earthquake. L’Aquila had experienced a series of small tremors in the months leading up to the 6.3-magnitude quake causing the people to…

  • Should we care about people of the future?

    “Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?” Groucho Marx If we follow Groucho Marx‘s line of reasoning then future generations do not matter because while we are able to grant benefits to them, they are unable to return the favour. A key requirement of Groucho’s ethic is that there must be some…