Researchers in the British Royal Society have concluded that neither the sun nor cosmic rays can be blamed for current warming trends around the planet. Given it’s nature one would think we’d point the finger at the sun first, but a recent paper published in “Proceedings A” shows that the sun’s energy output has actually dropped over the last 20 years, while global temperatures have risen.

The cosmic ray hypothesis holds that cosmic rays create clouds as they’re absorbed by the earth’s atmosphere. Some clouds lock heat in; others bounce solar radiation off the planet. Research shows that levels of cosmic rays seem to be completely statistically irrelevant to global temperature trends.

(more…)

The word is that “organic” farming techniques leave soil able to fix about 30% more carbon than large-scale industrial farming techniques. When you’re “organic” farming, you plant winter cover crops and you don’t till the soil (turning it in order to mix in fertilizers, uproot weeds, aerate it).

I guess my organic garden isn’t organic, because I do use a roto-tiller to till it.
(more…)

The Boston Globe reports on the “Boston-Area Climate Experiment” at UMass Boston, an attempt to predict how New England’s climate will change as temperatures rise over the next century. Unlike some climate modeling experiments, this one isn’t running on supercomputers - it’s running on an old farm in Waltham, and is being conducted by controlling the actual environmental conditions of small plots of land.
(more…)

The Onion reports on US President George W. Bush’s solution to global warming: the $100 trillion National Air Conditioner Initiative. This initiative would cover 90% of North Dakota with massive air conditioning unit which would devastate Canada.

(more…)

With global warming all the rage, we don’t hear much about that other bugaboo of the 70’s - nuclear winter. The engine of global warming is the dumping of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere - these gases absorb more heat from the sun and raise the general temperature of the planet. Nuclear winter works the other way - exploding nuclear devices throw carbon soot into the atmosphere which shields us from the sun’s warmth and lowers temperatures around the globe.

With Russia’s Vladimir Putin accusing the US of trying to restart the cold war and the US’ proposed missile defense shield for Europe all over the news recently, perhaps we’re not as far away from nuclear winter as we might have thought.

In the 60’s and 70’s the only countries capable of a nuclear exchange that could bring on nuclear winter were the US and the USSR… recent rhetoric aside, fortunately that scenario has seemed unlikely for many years now, but it’s no longer the only possibility.
(more…)

Salon has one-upped most writers about Colony Collapse Disorder in the bee world by actually gathering a group of bee experts and talking with them about what’s going on, rather than just pointlessly speculating and calling for tin-foil hats (which makes me think, so far I haven’t run across any “Mars needs bees” theories pointing the finger at alien-apiary abduction).

(more…)

Most climate change forecasts are pretty grim: drought, disease in some of the world’s poorest areas, loss of species, famine. Some forecasts of climate change are, for the US and Europe… not so bad. More rain. Longer growing seasons. Instead of having to move to Zone 4 for gardening, Zone 4 is coming to me.

(more…)

There’s lots of bad news on the climate change front. Links at the end.

• New Scientist reports that worldwide carbon dioxide emissions are growing even faster than predicted. This is bad news because carbon dioxide is implicated as the primary greenhouse gas implicated in climate change. Our industrialized society produces a certain amount of carbon dioxide and the planet is capable of absorbing back a certain amount.

(more…)

Recently in climate change:

• Scientific American talks about fixing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and what it will cost
• And apparently stabilizing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would cost between 0.2% and 3.0% of the GDP. I say go for it and then we can stop arguing about whether that’s the cause of warming.
• Summer temperatures in the US may rise by 10 degrees by 2080. Looking on the bright side, if rosemary becomes a perennial for my zone I’ll be happy.

(more…)

I’ve been busy enough with movies and bees that I haven’t touched on climate change for a while. The reality of it is that it gets boring having the same old apocalypse day-in and day-out, so it’s more fun to shake things up a bit (until I realize that I’ve written about zombies for two weeks running, at which point it’s well past time to move on to something else).

Links are all at the bottom of the article. I’ll be back on Friday with more on…zombies.

This is an old one but a good one - Canada’s former defense minister Paul Hellyer thinks that we should fix climate change using technology from UFO’s.

A letter to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette caused an uproar when the writer suggested that making daylight savings time start earlier in the year was contributed to climate change by adding an hour of daylight (and warmth) to the day. Apparently people online aren’t the only ones who need to use smiley faces in order to indicate humor.

(more…)