ipcc

On November 1, Boulder Colorado became the first community in the country to authorize separation from their incumbent utility based on that utility's reliance on coal generation. Through this vote, Boulder has chosen to stop talking about climate change and move those intentions into action by tying utility performance to reductions in greenhouse gases.[read more]

The good news: developed countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol, Canada notwithstanding, have collectively reduced CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels. The bad news: Emissions from the United States, China, India and other developing countries took a giant leap in 2010, bringing total global emissions 6 per cent higher than the...[read more]

Using REDD+ as a private sector offsetting mechanism runs the risk of creating perverse incentives, exposing land to market price volatility and causing supply-induced price suppression. However, for the purposes of a deeper exploration into the market-related issues of REDD+, let’s assume these problems are solved and that forest carbon can, in theory, be commoditised and traded. This begs the question of whether forest carbon can be treated and traded like any other commodity.[read more]

Ask any climate scientist to explain global warming to a fifth grader, and they will pull out the bathtub analogy: The atmosphere is the tub. The level of carbon is the water standing in said tub. There’s a spigot and a sink—water in and water out. For the longest time, carbon in and carbon out of the atmosphere have been in balance....[read more]

Marrying Gas and Renewables A Turkish developer recently announced that it would build a new power plant using technology from GE that matches wind and solar generation to the output of a highly responsive natural gas turbine, all integrated in one package with the hardware and software to mesh its output with the grid. GE is...[read more]

Later this month the IPCC will launch a very substantial report on Renewable Energy and Climate Change. In advance of that, a “Summary for Policy Makers” was released early this week following the 11th Session of Working Group III of the IPCC, held in Abu Dhabi on 5-8th May. In tandem with the Summary document was a press release, which starts out with the words - "Close to 80 percent of the world’s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies a new report shows." Not surprisingly, this key phrase was repeated in headlines the world over, with much media enthusiasm for the report. But it isn’t what the Summary is actually about, nor does the Summary give any details into how this may come about.[read more]

Here's a NOAA graphic that's been floating around. It's interesting how a little attention to design makes it somehow more attractive. It really doesn't take long to get the gist. Maybe the colors will help people remember it, though. Call it the Quaternary CO2 Hockey Stick or the orange on navy blue curve.A site called Universe Today...[read more]

It's hard to stop thinking about all the oddities coming from Judith Curry. I think one could easily fill a blog just cataloguing them.Astonishingly, after all that she has said in the last few months, whe writes a piece today asking "how we can end the war with skeptics", where the collective pronoun includes herself not among skeptics...[read more]

The worst news possible about the IPCC comes in the form of a new report. Does this one claim that the IPCC made some newly discovered trivial mistake? No. Unlike the plethora of barely there (or wholly imagined) “-gates” we’ve all read so much about in recent weeks that say nothing about the underlying science or the overall IPCC...[read more]

In the ongoing onslaught on the science underlying global warming, one recent criticism has focused on the finding that global warming could cause large-scale dieback of Amazon rainforest as cited in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (a point spun by the opponents of action on global warming as this post...[read more]

There is one question that no one who denies manmade climate change wants to answer: what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing. No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us. That’s UK...[read more]

[If you are a scientist wishing to sign the letter, please fill out the form on the this page.] It is our intention in offering this open letter to bring the focus back to credible science, rather than invented hyperbole, so that it can bear on the policy debate in the United States and throughout the world.  We first discuss some...[read more]

Stefan Rahmstorf has an exceelent post on RealClimate about the curiously low sea level rise projection in the latest IPCC report, Sealevelgate: Imagine this. In its latest report, the IPCC has predicted up to 3 meters of sea level rise by the end of this century. But “climate sceptics” websites were quick to reveal a few problems (...[read more]

By Dave Rochlin - originally posted on care2.com It was an interesting week for the climate movement. Al Gore published on Op Ed piece in the New York Times entitled "We Can't Wish Away Climate Change", and The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a statement that they intend to establish an independent...[read more]

As usual (sigh) Blogger eats some resolution and screws up the graphic. Click on the image for a somewhat better look. This is my crude attempt at the Big Big Picture (thanks to Larry Marder for the name) of our actual circumstances, focusing on climate. (There are other slices through it that are equally daunting, and they have...[read more]