Allie Wilkinson writing in ArsTechnica brings us some bad news: Evidence from caves in Siberia indicates that a global temperature increase of 1.5° Celsius may cause substantial thawing of a large tract of permanently frozen soil in Siberia. The thawing of this soil, known as permafrost, could have serious consequences for further changes in the... Continue Reading →

In my recent post on the Keystone XL pipeline I mentioned that until digging up the bitumen becomes unprofitable there will be an endless parade of proposals to ship the bitumen to markets around the world. TansCanada (which is also behind the Keystone XL pipeline) has just announced a proposal to convert an existing natural... Continue Reading →

Scott Vaughan, Canada's departing Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, released his final report. In it he describes how the development of Canada's natural resources is running dangerously ahead of Canada’s laws and policies to protect the environment. The Pembina Institute highlights the clearest example: Right now, the absolute (“no fault”) limit that oil... Continue Reading →

I think a lot of debates we see in the environmental community boil down to people having different "theories of change". A theory of change is simply that: a theory about how you think the world changes for the better. Some people think the world changes because of political movements. Others think it takes cultural... Continue Reading →

Having the leader of the free world state so clearly that we must respond to the threat of climate change is absolutely a good thing. Having him state that the path is both long and difficult is even better. But forgive me for being cynical; haven't we heard all of this before? I truly hope... Continue Reading →

(h/t Peter Sinclair)

... or nothing to see here. Move along folks. All of this cosmic nonsense was pre-debunked by Richard Alley in his great AGU talk from 2009 titled: The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History (starting at about 42 minutes): So despite what you might have read at some less-than-reputable publications, the recent... Continue Reading →

I find it hard to fully comprehend the scale of it

We all know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it. -Jean-Claude Juncker Talking about financial reforms, but the exact same situation applies to climate/sustainability.

TEDx has recently been used as a platform for pseudoscience, and in response they have published an open letter full of good advice on how non experts can spot pseudoscience. The letter makes it clear that there are some usually visible differences between good science and pseudoscience: Marks of good science: It makes claims that... Continue Reading →

This talk, by Ray Pierrehumbert, is an excellent response to Naomi Oreskes' observation that: "climate scientists are so busy talking about stuff they don't understand that they never get around to taking credit for what they got right." UPDATE: Steve Easterbrook has compiled a helpful list of the successful predictions in Ray Pierrehumbert's talk: Here... Continue Reading →

Or why I don't expect much progress from the current meeting in Doha h/t New Anthropocene

Perhaps you have heard that delegates from around the world have gathered in Doha to discuss what to do about the climate problem. Perhaps you hope that something worthwhile will come out of the negotiations. While I certainly do hope that something worthwhile is achieved by the delegates at Doha, I can't seem to garner much interest... Continue Reading →