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Adelaide latest victim of global water shortages: The water in Australia’s biggest river is running so low and is so salty that the nation’s fifth-largest city, Adelaide, is at risk of having to ship water in to its residents, politicians have warned. Adelaide’s water crisis follows similar problems in cities around the world, as the combination of growing . . . → Read More: Water, water, and methane Finally, the issue of whether the “magic number” for the atmospheric CO2 level is 450 ppm (parts per million) or 350 is getting more attention. In this case, the attention is in the form of a NY Times article, Is 350 the New 450 When It Comes to Capping Carbon Emissions?, which I highly recommend: Nearly . . . → Read More: 350 vs 450 Much to my surprise, it seems that many people writing about energy and environmental issues have decided to not just touch the third rail of those topics–population–but to hug it as tightly as possible even as they convulse from the voltage. The latest example I’ve seen comes from TreeHugger, It’s Not Them, It’s Us: Developing World Population . . . → Read More: Hugging the third rail NOAA: Unusual Arctic Warmth, Tropical Wetness Likely Cause for Methane Increase: Unusually high temperatures in the Arctic and heavy rains in the tropics likely drove a global increase in atmospheric methane in 2007 and 2008 after a decade of near-zero growth, according to a new study. Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, . . . → Read More: Methane mystery solved? Many of you probably know about this free book and have already downloaded a copy and actually read it[1], but let me point the rest you to it. The book is David McKay’s Sustainable Energy – without the hot air. You can get the book from the above link as one ginormous PDF (roughly 50MB), or . . . → Read More: Doc alert: Sustainable Energy Finally, the Asia water situation is getting some attention. I’ve been convinced for some time that water was the primary vector for climate chaos’ impacts on human beings, and that the Asian situation would be the worst of it, even more so than the horrors now being visited on California and Australia, to name just . . . → Read More: Melting the third pole Sometimes you hit the lottery with the very first ticket you buy, and sometimes you miss the jackpot by such a narrow margin that all you can do is summon up your best Maxwell Smart impersonation and say, “Missed it by that much.” A reminder of that general level of statistical perversity reality confronts us with comes . . . → Read More: The perversity of reality The United Nations Environment Programme has issued a report on the state of climate change. From the press release, Impacts of Climate Change Coming Faster and Sooner: New UNEP Science Report Underlines Urgency for Governments to Seal the Deal in Copenhagen: The pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of . . . → Read More: Doc alert: Climate Change Science Compendium A safe operating space for humanity [PDF]: Although Earth has undergone many periods of significant environmental change, the planet’s environment has been unusually stable for the past 10,000 years. This period of stability – known to geologists as the Holocene – has seen human civilizations arise, develop and thrive. Such stability may now be under threat. Since . . . → Read More: Document alert: A place for humanity A new study is showing bad news from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. NASA data: Greenland, Antarctic ice melt worsening: New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode. British scientists for the first time calculated changes in . . . → Read More: Document alert: Ice sheet melting |
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