I was floored and delighted to share a panel with Katharine Hayhoe at the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists this past week in Lubbock, Texas.
I managed to prevail on Dr. Hayhoe to sit for a few questions about where we are now on climate, and what the current research is showing us, in light of the dramatic extremes of the last two years.
Thank you Peter
very informative.
I have an image in my mind of huge methane releases that scientists are not using in their models…so is it possible that things are a lot worse than Katherine Hayhoe reports???
Re: “so is it possible that things are a lot worse than Katherine Hayhoe reports???”
It’s a question of tipping points. It’s predicted that there could be a catastrophic release of methane in the Arctic if the temperature goes up. But no one knows precisely when this might occur.
Several months ago Real Climate had a series of blog posts on this topic. The long and short of it is that the Arctic currently contributes about 5% of global methane emissions. Even if that were to double, it wouldn’t be catastrophic in and of itself.
Balancing the Arctic increase is the decrease in the size of cattle herds due to high feed costs. It turns out that cow farts are a not insignificant source of methane in the atmosphere.
NBC’s Chris Hayes covers the lack of coverage of climate change in the Presidential campaigns:
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2012/10/22
with Video