1.6 Billion data points say Earth is warming

According to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California,  "Global warming is real and greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity are the main cause."

What adds to the impact of this quote is that Richard Muller was once a serious global warming skeptic. To help him resolve the question of whether the Earth is really warming, he organized a small group of dedicated researchers to study all scientific Earth temperature data......in all 1.6 billion data points.

Richard is no longer a skeptic. He now firmly believes the Earth is warming because of human emissions, primarily CO2. For very concisely presented details on his group's study, see  BerkeleyEarth.org

A provocative thought re our climate future

 "The future depends on what we do in the present. " -- Mahatma Gandhi
 Above quote forwarded by Sally Fintel

Why we do not respond to the climate change threat

".......researchers in the burgeoning field of climate psychology have identified another obstacle, one rooted in the very ways our brains work. The mental habits that help us navigate the local, practical demands of day-to-day life, they say, make it difficult to engage with the more abstract, global dangers posed by climate change."

Above quote is from this NY Times article .

I too, think it is very true...how else can we explain being like Ostriches concerning climate change? The science is so very sound!!!

Understanding the Universe Now

The title is in reference to a Boston Globe article titled "The Higgs Boson Nightmare Scenario", which got me thinking hard, because it asked so many good questions about fundamental science. I will not try to paraphrase the questions, but I do highly recommend the article.

Relevance to climate change? Very much so! The more we know about where we are, the better we can take care of where we are...on OUR planet Earth.

Spaceship Planet Earth

How many people can Planet Earth host in a sustainable way? We are currently at 7 billion, and seemingly headed to 9 billion, and beyond. Are we already beyond Earth's healthy carrying capacity? I think  at very least, we are right at very the limits of it.

For a stunning example of what happens when the carrying capacity of a finite environment is exceeded, see the first few paragraphs of Home Planet in the Cornell Alumni magazine.

One last quote from the above linked article by Frank T. Rhodes, Cornell President for 18 years: “......it’s easy to forget that we share the planet with two million other named species, and the effect we’re having on them is huge. We just assume that every other species gets out of the way while we take what we want. But there’s a limit to how long we can go on doing that, because like it or not we depend to varying degrees on many of these other species. We injure not just them, but ourselves, by the casual way in which we plunder the planet.”

Sea Level Rise, some at-odds perspectives

Want a few laughs, and lots of good view points? Watch the 10 minute video from Yale Climate forums offered here. It is especially applicable to those of us that live on the east coast of the US.

And it is especially distressing to those of us who want to vote for sane, objective and unbiased elected officials.

China Solar Plans

As I am sure you are aware, many US Solar panel manufacturers are going out of business because of competition from low cost panels from China. Well, this has also impacted China to divert much of its excess solar panel production to internal use. Net result for the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is still very good. For details: Renewable Energy and Bloomberg.

Is Global Warming Really Happening?

"Trenberth, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change, said for most of the last century record high and low temperatures were about even. So far this year, there have be 15,055 record highs, but only 1,343 record lows. That ratio of about 11 to 1, Trenberth said, is some of the clearest evidence yet of climate change." (full article)

I certainly agree that the evidence is becoming irrefutable, unless you are an Ostrich with your head buried in the sand, which by the way, they do not do. 

For an in depth perspective from NASA Earth Observatory describing the recent Derecho storm that left millions without power, see  Derecho Strikes the Eastern US and Power Outages in Washington DC Area. Most climatologists think that the severity of this storm was increased due to global warming. Not a proven point, but as more severe storms occur, the evidence mounts.