- The arresting comparison above is of the main Chinese stock market index with the Japanese one, and comes via Sober Look.
- ConservAmerica is an organization trying to make the Republican Party greener and promote the conservative tradition of environmental protection. I don't fully agree with their positions, but it still seems worthy to be trying to bring the GOP to a more sane place on the environment than it currently is in.
- Sea ice minimum in? Staring at this graph, that looks like it could well be right, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a last little jog down.
- Scientist Julienne Stroeve just came back from a voyage through the sea ice and reported they could only find one floe big enough to moor to, and that one broke in half while they were moored to it.
- Siemens cutting a third of the jobs in its US wind business due to lack of new orders.
- $4/gallon? Been there, done that.
- Excellent slides from a July 2012 presentation on drought by Aiguo Dai in Beijing. Note Prof Dai says:
Larger warming over land than over ocean leads to - larger PE increases over land than over ocean - increases in water vapor transport from oceans can not match atmospheric demand over land -> drier conditions over land.This is a suggestion I made earlier - but in email I had with him at the beginning of 2012 he didn't confirm it - so I'm happy to see him do so here.
This graph was also particularly interesting - suggesting that recent improvements to latest climate models (CMIP5 vs CMIP3) haven't changed the answer much:
The current dry conditions in the U.S. may last and worsen during the next 20 yrs as the IPO cold phase persists and global warming continues.
the prevalence of the dry areas over the wet areas despite the rising atmospheric water vapor content is because of the on-going imbalance of the energy budget of the earth, that ism the water vapor stays in the atmosphere a bit longer in 'energy overdose', Iäll presume? Or is it calculated from the continents part only? Then it would need a bit different and more detailed explanation,
ReplyDeleteThe Sober Look piece was interesting. As well as its political situation, China's economy is starting to look a bit shaky.
ReplyDeleteThe fallout is starting to spread: BHP to shelve its Red Hill coalmine.
"[As well as this announcement] ... BHP has already in the past six months announced 1700 jobs would be lost as two mines closed and that it would not go ahead with the already approved (but not started) Peak Downs expansion.
... BHP does not believe medium and long-term global demand is as strong as it once did and thinks US exports in response to any high prices will cap future price rises."
With respect to Artic sea ice, I think alarm shoudl be tempered by the fact that Antartic ice and sea ice is at its recorded maximum. The southern hemishpere by virtue of being mostly Ocean is climatically less volatile and a better palce to measure global temerpature and trends.
ReplyDeleteI also beleive the risks due to rising temperatures should compared against the risks (including enironmental costs) that stem from not having large amounts of cheap energy available worldwide and the risks assocaited with a war between or by large militaries over access to energy resources.