Category Archives: Environmental change

Methane, again.

I ended up in quite an interesting Twitter discussion about methane and CO2. I got involved when someone mentioned this thread from Ken Caldeira. The point being made is that because CO2 has a long atmospheric lifetime, and because methane … Continue reading

Posted in Climate sensitivity, Environmental change, Global warming | Tagged , , , , , | 61 Comments

Responses to Considering Catastrophe

A while ago I wrote a post about a paper by Luke Kemp, and colleagues, suggesting that we should put more effort into exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios. There’s now been a response by Burgess et al. suggesting that Catastrophic … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Environmental change, Philosophy for Bloggers, Severe Events | Tagged , , , , , | 62 Comments

Maybe a little science denial is actually in order?

I ended up in a brief discussion on Twitter with Matthew Nisbet, Professor of Communication, Public Policy, and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, and Sander van der Linden, Professor of Social Psychology in Society at the University of Cambridge. Matthew Nisbet … Continue reading

Posted in advocacy, Environmental change, Policy, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , | 140 Comments

Cumulative and (probably) irreversible

This post may be written more in frustration than anything else, but I’ve had some recent discussions that have made me wonder if even those who spend their time thinking/writing/commenting about climate change fully appreciate that it’s a cumulative problem … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Environmental change, Global warming, Policy | Tagged , , , | 31 Comments

Vulnerability and resilience

I’m starting to better understand why some reasonable people are often concerned about the way in which the impact of extreme weather events are sometimes framed. It’s quite well explained in this recent paper by Myanna Lahsen and Jesse Ribot … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Environmental change, Global warming, Policy, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 146 Comments

Implications for mitigating methane emissions in agriculture

Since I was discussing methane in yesterday’s post, I thought I would highlight a paper on [u]nderstanding the implications for mitigating methane emissions in agriculture (H/T Miles King). The reason I found it interesting, is that it uses GWP* (which … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Environmental change, Policy | Tagged , , , , , | 47 Comments

Independent SAGE – Climate

Sir David King, who has been leading the Independent SAGE group, is planning to set up a similar group that will focus on climate change (H/T Doug McNeall). It will apparently have 14 experts, from 10 nations, and every continent. … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Environmental change, Global warming, Policy, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 32 Comments

Halting the vast release of methane is critical

A week or so ago there was a New York Times article called Halting the Vast Release of Methane Is Critical for Climate, U.N. Says. As the title suggests, it was reporting on a United Nations Report that (according to … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Environmental change, Global warming, Policy, Science | Tagged , , , , , | 95 Comments

Some thoughts about net-zero

There’s been a reasonable vigorous, but pleasant, debate on Twitter about “net-zero”. It was largely motivated by a Conversation article by James Dyke, Robert Watson, and Wolfgang Knorr called Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap. The basic … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Environmental change, Policy, Research, Scientists | Tagged , , , , , , | 15 Comments

‘Net zero’

There’s been some recent debate about the term ‘net-zero’. Just to give some basic background, given that the zero emission commitment is close to zero (i.e., when we get anthropogenic emissions to zero, global surface temperatures should soon stabilise) means … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Environmental change, Policy | Tagged , , , , | 24 Comments