Month: January 2011

Unsurprisingly, climate related disasters in the world’s top grain producing areas, starting with Russia last summer, and currently Australia and Argentina, will cause world grain prices to spike.

With each new incident of record monsoon floods, fires and earthquakes, more tremors shake the global economy.

The latest disaster is unfolding in Australia, where the northeastern state of Queensland has been inundated after a month of rain, and is proving every bit the catalyst for risingcommodity prices as the 2010 floods in Pakistan and the wildfires in Russia were. Flooding in Australia has roiled Asia-Pacific markets for coal, cotton, wheat and sugar.

If weather events are increasingly disastrous in the world’s bread baskets, global warming could result in a familiar and worsening pattern: periodic collisions between Asia’s seemingly limitless demand for goods and the world’s supply of basic agricultural and energy commodities. That could send average commodity prices significantly higher, limiting economic growth and, perhaps, affecting the appetite for burning coal.

IHS Global Insight predicted yesterday that the floods would trim at least two-tenths of a percent off of Australia’s projected 2011 gross domestic product. Queensland is the largest exporter of coal for making steel. Nearly all of the mines are closed, and seaborne coal prices are approaching record highs.

The article quotes Per Pinstrup-Andersen, a professor of food policy and economics at Cornell University, price volatility will stay with us “until we get a handle on climate change — if we ever do,…We have to somehow change our policies to deal with the risks involved in these dramatic fluctuations in food prices.”

Continue reading “Climate Fueled Floods Cause Food, Energy Prices to Soar”

New York Times:

Greenland’s massive ice sheet experienced record surface melting and runoff last year, according to research released today.

Unusually warm conditions in much of the country helped extend the annual melting season by up to 50 days longer in 2010 than the average observed between 1979 and 2009, researchers found.

Last year also set records for the amount of water runoff from the ice surface, loss of surface ice and the number of days when ice was bare rather than blanketed by snow. Summer snowfall was below average.

Continue reading “2010 Saw Record Greenland Melt”

Climate Science Watch reports:

The Republican Study Committee, which represents 165 House Republicans, issued a proposal today to cut more than $2.5 trillion from the federal budget in the next 10 years – with the aim of balancing the federal budget entirely through budget cuts in non-military programs. Buried in the RSC plan is this line item: “Eliminate taxpayer subsidies to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. $12.5 million annual savings.”

Expect continuing attacks of this kind from the right-wing denialist war on climate science contingent.

Cuts for military expenditures so far = 0.

Original Doc here.

Wash Post writeup here.

*Someone Is Wrong On The Internet

See also here

One reason the organic food industry has grown so dramatically over the last 20 years, is that, when given a choice, people like to choose a green option, and vote with their purchases for the kind of country, society, and planet they’d like to live in.

Now, consumers will have the ability to choose products based on the energy choices of the manufacturer. Continue reading “Look for the Wind-Made Label”

Shaw-Chen Liu: climate change and typhoons in Taiwan

Christopher Burn: climate change and melting permafrost

 

 

A lot of people are confused in distinguishing deep earth geothermal power, from the  ground source “Geothermal” heat pumps that are becoming more and more common for space heating and cooling. Both are key technologies – one for clean, renewable, base load electricity, the other for energy efficiency in housing and businesses.
Here’s a primer on how to tell them apart – First, Ground Source Geothermal:

Now, something quite different – deep earth geothermal, sometimes called Enhanced Geothermal

In his recent address to the National Press Club, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who has urged a rapid transition to renewable energy, was asked about possible bottlenecks in the supply of rare earth minerals used in wind turbines, solar collectors, and advanced batteries. (here, at 42:30)  His answer was, basically, that “rare earths” are not, in every case, that rare – that, with responsible extraction techniques, they are available in many parts of the world, and that increased prices were sparking a search for substitutes and alternative supplies.

Here are some examples:

Continue reading ““Rare Earth” Problem Yielding to Research”

Cost of Energy and Cumulative Domestic Capacity

Take just a moment to let this one sink in.

From DOE

Party Like it’s 1998

A mainstay of climate denial for a decade or so has been the ever-popular “It  stopped warming in 1998” canard.

Now that 2010 and 2009 have been very hot years, with 2010 tied for hottest in the record, and Nine of the past 10 years also ranking among the 10 warmest on record -maybe we can dispense with the 1998 meme- which was based on that year having the largest El Nino event on record  – while 2010 was hottest, “despite the presence of a La Niña and a remarkably inactive sun, two factors that have a cooling influence on the planet,”, according to NASA’s James Hansen.

I’ve done two videos on this, (second one is below the jump) but I keep hearing it.
Pat Micheals, – the Denialist best known here for getting the crap beaten out of him by Ben Santer – warned the tobacco and oil drenched mob at the Heartland Institute to stop it already with this loser of a talking point, something they didn’t want to hear. Climate Crock hidden cameras were there….

Continue reading “Can we drop “It Stopped warming in 1998” Now?”