I know that you can’t blame a single drought, heat wave, hurricane, etc., on climate change. But the current drought in Australia has clearly become part of the political dynamic there. Consider a couple of stories on the wire this morning. First this: Immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will not halt the continuing damage …
An inch of snow when I measured this morning at my house – 0.14 inches of precip when melted. 0.12 at the airport. That’s a total of 0.18 total at the airport this month, as compared to an average of 0.5. It’s been wetter at my house – 0.49 inches. But it shows that a …
The folks at the Government Accountability Project have released a report, done in conjunction with the Union of Concerned Scientists, about government interference in climate science: • Nearly half of all respondents (46 percent of all respondents to the question) perceived or personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words “climate change,” “global warming,” or other …
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I recently picked up Bob Henson’s Rough Guide to Climate Change, and I must say it fills a great niche. I’m a fan of Andrew Dessler’s book, which is a great primer. But (sorry, Dr. D) it’s a bit on the wonkish side. Henson’s book has a Rough Guide snap to it that makes it …
One of the padres in New Mexico sent a letter home back in the 1600s expressing amazement that the residents of Gran Quivira, one of the pueblos near Albuquerque, saved their urine for use in the muds they used in building. It’s a dry place, you do stuff: Residents in tropical Queensland state will soon …
Western South Dakota is one of those classic drought cases. It was extraordinarily wet there during the 1990s, well above the long term mean. Of the 10 wettest years in a century of records in northwest South Dakota, four came during the 1990s. An astonishing six years during the 1990s were greater than one standard …
Drought-induced famine is largely a political rather than climatological disaster, as this account by Teshome Erkineh of response to drought conditions in Ethiopia demonstrates. It happens when societies, for whatever reason, fail to cope with climate variability. A million people died in 1983-84 because of drought. In 2003, under what was a more severe drought …
Marco Tedesco at the University of Maryland suggests a new technique for remote sensing of snowmelt atop the Greenland ice sheet. When he uses it, he reports: Long-term results show that snowmelt extent has been increasing at a rate of ?40,000 Km2 per year for the past 14 years. Snowmelt detection over the Greenland ice …
We subsidize ethanol so we can use it instead of gasoline in our cars. The price of corn rises. Poor folk in Mexico can’t afford their staple food: Mexico is in the grip of the worst tortilla crisis in its modern history. Dramatically rising international corn prices, spurred by demand for the grain-based fuel ethanol, …
Re my post earlier today about my snowy, muddy backyard, it’s worth pointing out that Albuquerque’s only received a total of 0.05 inch of precip since Jan. 1 at the airport, (0.25 at my house), well below normal for the month. It’s a late December storm that left things so muddy.