Climate Change

Photos of Alaska: Then And Now. This is A Get Ready to Be Shocked When You See What it Looks Like Now.
http://www.snowaddiction.org/2014/0...cked-when-you-see-what-it-looks-like-now.html

Photographing Alaska's stunning landscapes has been a passion of Bruce Molnia's since the first time he visited the 49th state, as a Cornell University graduate student in the late 1960s. It was these photos – taken by everyone from John Muir in 1879 to later explorers like William Field and National Geographic's Bradford Washburn – that Molnia would use when he was asked in 1999 by then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit to find "unequivocal, unambiguous" proof that climate change was real.
 
Global BS!!!!

The earth goes through cycles, it's only the ego driven human that comes up with all these, "theories"!!!
 
Models 'grossly underestimate' costs of global warming, Nicholas Stern says
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/c...rming-nicholas-stern-says-20140616-zs8tr.html

Existing economic models “grossly underestimate” the costs of global warming, undermining the urgency for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new paper by leading UK climate change economist Lord Nicholas Stern.

The risks are in fact likely to be so large that a globally coordinated carbon price of $US32-$US103 ($34-$110) per tonne of emissions is needed as soon as 2015 to prevent the temperature increase from exceeding 2 degrees of pre-industrial age levels, said Lord Stern and co-author Simon Dietz, from the UK’s Grantham Research Institute.

Within two decades, the carbon price will need to almost triple in real terms to $US82-$US260 a tonne, the two researchers say in their paper to be published in The Economic Journal.


New economic model shows risks from climate change are bigger than previously estimated
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/dietz_stern_june2014/

A new version of a standard economic model shows that the risks from unchecked climate change are bigger than previously estimated and strengthens the case for strong cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new paper by Simon Dietz and Nicholas Stern which is published today (16 June 2014).

The paper, which has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of ‘The Economic Journal’, found that living standards could even start to decline later this century unless the growth in annual emissions of greenhouse gases is checked.
 
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A climate fix would ruin investors
Humanity is making risky climate bets and ExxonMobil will probably be proved right
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5a2356a4-f58e-11e3-afd3-00144feabdc0.html

June 17, 2014 4:44 pm
By Martin Wolf

How much of the world’s fossil fuel reserves will eventually be burnt? This is not just a question for those concerned with climate policy. It is also a question for investors even if they believe (absurdly, in my view) that the science of climate change is a hoax. What, they must ask themselves, would it mean for my investments in fossil fuel exploration and production if policymakers acted on their expressed belief in the science of climate change? Where would that leave investments in companies that own reserves today and are investing in exploration and additional production for tomorrow? Might all this spending prove a disastrous waste of resources that would be better deployed elsewhere?

Unburnable Carbon 2013 , a report produced by London-based non-governmental organisation Carbon Tracker and the http://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_organisation=Grantham%20Research%20Institute&article=true on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, raises precisely this question. The conclusion is quite simple: burning known reserves of fossil fuels is incompatible with meeting the climate targets governments have set themselves. This being so, prudent investors should apply a discount to both the value of those reserves and returns on new investments in this sector. It is possible that much of this additional spending would prove fruitless. At worst, these assets might be “stranded” forever.

In 2010 governments agreed that emissions should be kept at a level intended to prevent an increase in global average temperatures of more than 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Using standard models, the report concludes that total emissions of carbon dioxide between 2013 and 2050 needed to deliver that outcome, at 80 per cent probability, would be 900 gigatonnes (billion tonnes), and 1,075 gigatonnes, even at 50 per cent probability.

Emissions

Then, between 2050 and 2100, emissions could be a further 75 gigatonnes, to stay below the 2C ceiling at 80 per cent probability, and 475 gigatonnes, to stay below it at 50 per cent probability. Carbon capture and storage would help, but not that much. Removing an annual flow of 8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2050 would require close to 3,800 such plants. Even so, unabated emissions must fall sharply.

According to the World Energy Outlook 2012, existing reserves of fossil fuels would, if burnt without capture of the carbon dioxide emissions, release 2,860 gigatonnes – roughly three times the global carbon budget. Burning this stock, without any further additions to it, would push the global average temperature up by well over 3C.

So what might this mean for the companies listed on the stock exchanges of the world? These hold reserves equivalent to 762 gigatonnes of emissions – about a quarter of the total, the rest being owned by non-listed entities, principally national oil companies. Listed companies are also seeking to develop potential reserves, to bring their total to over 1,500 gigatonnes. On its own the latter sum would exceed the limits on emissions until 2050 needed to keep the average temperature increase below 3C at a mere 50 per cent probability: thus there would be a 50 per cent chance that the rise would be greater. But listed companies would not be on their own: national companies would produce, too.

If instead the listed companies were allocated a quarter of the world’s carbon budget, in line with their share in global reserves, they could not exploit more than a third of their existing reserves of 762 gigatonnes, let alone any additional discoveries if the temperature rise is to be kept below 2C. Even going to a 3C limit would not help much. The listed companies could still not exploit even half of their reserves under that more generous ceiling.

Something then will have to give: either the world will abandon its pledge to keep emissions below the level thought to produce a temperature rise of 2C or the fossil fuel companies are holding stranded assets and investing in unusable ones. Investors are implicitly betting on the former possibility.

The oil companies are well aware of this issue. In its response to critics, ExxonMobil says it does not envisage a low-carbon scenario of the kind many climate researchers advocate. The company believes the costs this would entail, and “the damaging impact to accessible, reliable and affordable energy resulting from the policy changes . . . are beyond those that societies, especially the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, would be willing to bear”. Instead, the company envisages only that the flow of emissions will stop increasing some time around 2030. But it does not give projections of concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It also does not address temperature effects of those concentrations.

Inertia

The explanation ExxonMobil gives for its optimism about demand for fossil fuels is the rising world demand for energy and the inertia in the global energy system. Even though renewable energy production will grow at a faster rate than other sources, its potential is limited by challenges of “scalability, geographic dispersion, intermittency (in the case of solar and wind), and cost relative to other sources”. The company expects that renewables will comprise only about 5 per cent of the energy mix by 2040.

The world has got itself into an extremely contradictory place. Governments have committed themselves to a view of the risks of climate change. That view implies a rapid revolution in the energy mix and correspondingly rapid reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases.

But major energy producers do not believe governments will do what they promise. They envisage a very different and quite unrevolutionary energy future in which the reserves they now possess and those they plan to develop will all be burnt.

Investors have to guess not just who is more likely to be right, but what probabilities to put on the possible outcomes. I believe humanity is making risky bets in the climate casino. I think it is likely that humanity will continue to make these risky bets. In that case ExxonMobil will be proved right. But it is always possible that humanity will wake up and make the needed investments in rapid change, driven by the magic of the market and technological innovation. If that happened, fossil fuel reserves would indeed be stranded. Investors beware: the risk of that cannot be zero. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014)
 
The Coming Climate Crash
Lessons for Climate Change in the 2008 Recession
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/o...for-climate-change-in-the-2008-recession.html

THERE is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout my work in finance, government and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage.

For too many years, we failed to rein in the excesses building up in the nation’s financial markets. When the credit bubble burst in 2008, the damage was devastating. Millions suffered. Many still do.

We’re making the same mistake today with climate change. We’re staring down a climate bubble that poses enormous risks to both our environment and economy. The warning signs are clear and growing more urgent as the risks go unchecked.

This is a crisis we can’t afford to ignore. I feel as if I’m watching as we fly in slow motion on a collision course toward a giant mountain. We can see the crash coming, and yet we’re sitting on our hands rather than altering course.

We need to act now, even though there is much disagreement, including from members of my own Republican Party, on how to address this issue while remaining economically competitive. They’re right to consider the economic implications. But we must not lose sight of the profound economic risks of doing nothing.
 
Supreme Court limits greenhouse gas regulations
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/23/supreme-court-greenhouse-gas/8567453/

A divided Supreme Court blocked the Obama administration Monday from requiring permits for some industries that spew greenhouse gases, but the ruling won't prohibit other means of regulating the pollutant that causes global warming.

The court's conservative wing ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency exceeded its authority by changing the emissions threshold for greenhouse gases in the Clean Air Act. That action can only be taken by Congress, the justices said.

The 5-4 ruling, which partially reverses a 2012 federal appeals court decision, represents a moral victory for industry and state government opponents of the federal regulations. They have complained that the rules could cost billions of dollars to implement and threaten thousands of jobs.

But the court said the EPA can regulate greenhouse gas emissions from industries already required to get permits for other forms of emissions.

And it only removed one method the administration uses to regulate greenhouse gas emissions at power plants, refineries and other stationary sources, leaving other methods in place. That likely means that the administration will move ahead with its new regulations on existing coal-fired power plants, setting off a new wave of lawsuits.

The court's liberal wing dissented from part of the decision, arguing that the EPA's actions were reasonable in order to avoid an absurd over-regulation of pollutants such as carbon dioxide -- and would help the very industries seeking to overturn them.

The high court ruled 5-4 in 2007 that greenhouse gases qualify as an air pollutant, even though their impact isn't as direct as others. That decision gave the EPA authority to regulate tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles. The stationary source regulation was the next step in the process.

Unlike other air pollutants, carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming are so ubiquitous that the EPA raised the law's threshold level requiring a permit from 100 tons per year to at least 75,000 tons. Opponents decried the move as a major rewrite of the law -- something only Congress can do.

Industries, a coalition of conservative states, Republican lawmakers and others claimed the Clean Air Act of 1970 doesn't empower the administration to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other stationary sources. They say the regulations, begun in 2010, risk jobs and economic development.

The administration, along with environmental groups and a number of other states, including California and New York, said the Clean Air Act was meant to address all air pollutants, including greenhouse gases. Once the administration addressed auto and truck emissions, they argued, the next natural step was power plants.

The EPA's decision to greatly multiply the level of emissions requiring a permit was simply common sense, proponents said. Otherwise, more than 80,000 mid-size businesses, hospitals, universities, apartment buildings and shopping malls would have required permits.

In April, the Supreme Court handed the administration a major victory in another air pollution case, upholding a regulation that forces 28 states in the Midwest and South to reduce ozone and fine particle emissions that flow north and east into other states.
 
On N.C.’s Outer Banks, scary climate-change predictions prompt a chance of forecast
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...42cf96-f6f3-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

NAGS HEAD, N.C. — The dangers of climate change were revealed to Willo Kelly in a government conference room in the summer of 2011. In 100 years, state officials said, the ocean would be 39 inches higher and her home on the Outer Banks would be swamped.

The state had detailed maps to illustrate this claim and was developing aWeb site where people could check by street address to see if their property was doomed. There was no talk of salvation, no plan to hold back the tide. The 39-inch forecast was “a death sentence,” Kelly said, “for ever trying to sell your house.”

So Kelly, a lobbyist for Realtors and home builders on the Outer Banks, resolved to prove the forecast wrong. And thus began one of the nation’s most notorious battles over climate change.

Coastal residents joined forces with climate skeptics to attack the science of global warming and persuade North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature to deep-six the 39-inch projection, which had been advanced under the outgoing Democratic governor. Now, the state is working on a new forecast that will look only 30 years out and therefore show the seas rising by no more than eight inches.


 
BBC staff told to stop inviting cranks on to science programmes
BBC Trust says 200 senior managers trained not to insert 'false balance' into stories when issues were non-contentious
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...inviting-cranks-on-to-science-programmes.html

The Trust said that man-made climate change was one area where too much weight had been given to unqualified critics.

In April the BBC was accused of misleading viewers about climate change and creating ‘false balance’ by allowing unqualified sceptics to have too much air-time.

In a damning parliamentary report, the corporation was criticised for distorting the debate, with Radio 4’s Today and World at One programmes coming in for particular criticism.

The BBC’s determination to give a balanced view has seen it pit scientists arguing for climate change against far less qualified opponents such as Lord Lawson who heads a campaign group lobbying against the government’s climate change policies.

Andrew Montford, who runs the Bishop Hill climate sceptic blog, former children’s television presenter Johnny Ball and Bob Carter, a retired Australian geologist, are among the other climate sceptics that have appeared on the BBC.

The report highlighted World at One edition in September of a landmark UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) research project which found concluded with 95 per cent certainty that the climate is changing and that human activity is the main cause.

The programme’s producers tried more than a dozen qualified UK scientists to give an opposing view but could not find one willing to do so – so they went to Mr Carter in Australia.

Pitted against Energy Secretary Ed Davey, Mr Carter described the findings of the most authoritative report ever undertaken into the science of climate change – put together by hundreds of scientists around the world – as “hocus-pocus science”.


 
Climate Change: The False Discourse of “Carbon Credits”. What Needs to Be Done
By Tony Cartalucci

Assigning blame for climate change that will happen with or without human activity on Earth constitutes a disingenuous discourse.

The climate changes, and nearly everything on Earth and beyond it effects that change.

From geological processes to biological evolution, to changes in the sun’s output, to yes, even human activity – absolutely everything has an impact on the climate for better or for worse.


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The climate has been in a constant, linear state of change, long before human beings evolved, and even throughout the relatively short period of time humans have inhabited the Earth. This continuous change may have within it temporary cycles, but at no two points in Earth’s natural history has the climate been the same.



Image: Global warming in Antarctica, 65 millions years BC.
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65 million years ago, there were no ice caps. CO2 and temperatures were much higher than they are today, and Antarctica was covered with thriving temperate forests inhabited by dinosaurs. In an opposite and more recent extreme, our ancient ancestors struggled through a global ice age. Today, we live on a planet much warmer than inhabited by our cave-dwelling ancestors, but much cooler than anything the dinosaurs experienced.

Climate change happened, and is happening now. And even with the complete negating of all human activity on Earth, it will continue to change. This does not absolve humanity from addressing its impact on the environment. Quite the contrary. However it gives us a crucial imperative currently being ignored by policy makers and activists alike.

All the carbon credits, electric cars, and solar panels in the world will do nothing to prevent potentially hazardous climate change, natural or man-made. Tinkering with the climate through “geoengineering” could result in a catastrophic extinction-event unlike anything experienced in natural history. While human activity negatively impacting the climate should be addressed, measures must be taken to confront climate change that will come no matter what we do within the current false discourse now taking place.What’s Suggested and Why it Won’t Work

At the very center of this false discourse lies the most ridiculous of all suggestions, “carbon credits.” It is the modern equivalent of trying to clean New York City’s 19th century streets of horse manure by taxing it. Horse manure disappeared from New York’s streets when the car was invented. To eliminate the negative health, sociopolitical, and environmental impact of petroleum fueled cars, yet another novel innovation must be invented. Electric cars charged with renewable sources of energy would be a good start. The move to ahydrogen-based economy may be another worthwhile pursuit.

To eliminate CO2 and other emissions from power plants and factories, likewise, innovations must be made.And while these measures are welcomed, even with clean cars and renewable clean energy, climate change driven by other forces, both on Earth and beyond, and many of which are beyond our means to change or safely manipulate, will still continue. Carbon credits is an outright scam. Alternative forms of transportation and energy production are absolute necessities but will not stop natural climate change. But within the current false discourse, even these crucial necessities are not being approached with any serious focus, with schemes like carbon credits, progress-stunting resource rationing, and neo-eugenic population control taking center stage.

What Needs to Be Done

Mitigating the impact of human activity on the planet, not only in terms of atmospheric conditions and composition, but in all terms including polluting our water and soil, and corrupting the genomes of plant and animal species through the proliferation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), must be addressed not politically but pragmatically. If governments cannot think of a particular technical solution to address each and every way modern society negatively impacts the environment, it should be investing in scientific, technological, and design-oriented education to produce a population of problem solvers that can devise appropriate and pragmatic solutions themselves.

It was the industrial revolution and a population capable of creating, inventing, and innovating during the 19th and 20th century that created solutions to the many health and environmental hazards that existed at the time. Of course, new hazards were created in the process. Why now do people believe that anything other than continued innovation can be used to solve these new problems? Technological progress and investment in all that drives it, should be the top priority of anyone genuinely concerned about climate change.

Image: Future agriculture taking place within an enclosed, protected, optimized environment allows food production to continue no matter what the climate outside is doing.

However, even with our impact on the environment completely negated through technological innovation, climate change will continue regardless – just as it had long before humanity came into being.For humanity and the species it coinhabits the Earth with to survive inevitable climate change, we must build infrastructure and economies that are independent and immune from the climate no matter what it does.

Our cities, farms, homes, businesses, and even sanctuaries for ecosystems we seek to preserve must be designed and engineered to take whatever is going on outside, and make it work with what we need to survive and thrive on the inside.Urban and rural agriculture that takes place within self-contained systems that can conserve and reuse resources, including water and soil nutrients, as well as control atmospheric conditions for optimal growing environments – immense high-tech greenhouses in other words – could protect our crops from global heating or cooling. Architecture that is modular, flexible, mobile, and adaptable could adjust to sea levels, filling in space where land is exposed, or moved to higher grounds when land disappears. Cities and agricultural systems that float upon the sea would make rising and falling sea levels more or less irrelevant



Image: The ultimate expression of environmental mastery is constructing ecosystems and civilizations where they naturally could not exist. Humanity has already permanently inhabited orbit in the form of the International Space Station for over a decade, we must simply take the next step.
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And perhaps the ultimate expression of environmental mastery would be creating habitable ecosystems where none could ever exist naturally – beneath the waves, underground, or even in orbit above Earth. Environmental mastery of this level should be the ultimate goal of governments, organizations, and activists around the world who seek to preserve both our ecosystems and our civilization.

Such a future is the realm of science fiction, but a future that does not look upward and outward, is not a future worth striving toward.

In the interim, there are already people experimenting and moving forward alternative models of decentralized high-tech agricultural, energy, and architectural solutions that will make weathering climate change more manageable. Perhaps the decentralized but collaborative nature technological progress is taking through local hackerspaces, urban agriculture, and cooperatives could create solutions far quicker and without the political baggage and meddling special interests impeding progress on national and international scales.For those frustrated by the lack of pragmatic solutions for issues such a climate change, genetic pollution, or the poisoning of our air, water, and soil, starting projects at your local hackerspace to create or improve technology to protect your food supply, energy, water, and air could be the beginning of a real environmental movement that actually solves problems rather than perpetually complain and argue about them.

Geoengineering and the “Moonraker Scenario”

The other option is one of anti-human regression – where faux-environmentalists who harbor misanthropic hatred for humanity demand all progress stop, energy production be reduced, and instead of finding better alternatives to do more with less, demand that all do as little as possible with as little as possible. Such a mentality is at best putting human progress into “sleep mode.” At worst, it threatens our very survival, which has since the dawn of history itself, depended on exploration, innovation, and the ability to conquer adversity rather than surrender to it.Those like White House science adviser, John P. Holdren who suggests the planet be scoured of its populous human inhabitants, now toys with the idea of geoengineering, or extreme global climate manipulation. The likelihood that people like Holdren seek to do so for the continued progress of humanity, rather than to fulfill long desired “depopulation” is slim to none. The chances that people like Holdren seek to “accidentally” plunge the planet into conditions that devastate agriculture and starve hundreds of millions, or even billions to death, are somewhat greater.This would be the “Moonraker scenario” – referencing the 1979 James Bond movie Moonraker.

In the film, a deranged industrialist conspires to wipe out humanity and in the ruins repopulate it with what he perceives to be a “master race.” While a science fiction thriller, the movie reflects the darkest desires of tyrants throughout the ages – to erase what exists and build an empire of their own designs in its place. As human nature itself does not change, neither have the aspects of human nature that drive such dark desires. From the intentional and reckless genetic pollution perpetrated by huge agricultural and biotech monopolies through the proliferation of GMOs, to attempts to surveil, control, and even manipulate public perception, to the sabotaged false discourse regarding climate change itself and the consideration of geoengineering – it appears attempts to overwrite the planet’s climate, population, and culture is already underway, either by design or self-destructive ignorance.By exiting the false discourse on climate change – and other false discourses – and demanding and participating in pragmatic, technological progress, we can protect ourselves as much from the effects of inevitable natural climate change as we can from the delusions and designs of megalomaniacs.

An educated, informed, and technologically literate population has the ability to create a technologically driven future that serves the population’s best interests. Anything less leaves us at the mercy of an unpredictable elite that history has already many times warned us about.
 
[CO2] Geoengineering is a nonstarter, but plenty of money will be made.

This is a reasonable business plan, but money gets in the way.

Mitigating the impact of human activity on the planet, not only in terms of atmospheric conditions and composition, but in all terms including polluting our water and soil, and corrupting the genomes of plant and animal species through the proliferation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), must be addressed not politically but pragmatically. If governments cannot think of a particular technical solution to address each and every way modern society negatively impacts the environment, it should be investing in scientific, technological, and design-oriented education to produce a population of problem solvers that can devise appropriate and pragmatic solutions themselves.
As a species, we tend to think of ourselves as the ultimate, the peak of evolution, etc., but our species will not even come close to being the "survivor." In fact, we just might end up being the "weakest" species to ever evolve shown by our duration. I am hopeful, but think it more likely a tipping point towards extinction will be reached which there is no chance of turning back. Basically, for the most part, nobody gives a shit about anyone but themselves. Now, that is a failed business model.
 
How Did US Renewable Energy Policy Get So Off Track?
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/07/04/us/

In 1978 a monumental multi-departmental study was submitted to President Carter concluding that “solar energy could make a significant contribution to U.S. energy supply by the end of this century”. The study, backed by 30 federal departments, stated that “even with today’s subsidized energy prices, many solar technologies are already economic.” Yet no action was taken and solar power and other renewable energies stagnated for over 30 years. Until now? Allan Hoffman, former senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy, who personally delivered the report to the White House back in 1978, recalls what went wrong – and what lessons the U.S. should draw if it is to avoid another failed renewables revolution.
 
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