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Runaway Daily
Posts Tagged 'CO2'
Trying to Explain Hansen
Posted on July 23, 2011 in Paleoclimate
James Hansen is a hero of the fight to understand and stop climate change. He has co-authored a new paper about climate change in Earth’s past, which can be used to help anticipate climate change in the near future.
The paper is only available to people with access to scientific journal articles. Fortunately, Hansen has provided a publicly accessible brief online.
Sadly, though, the brief is very hard to understand. It’s probably only comprehensible to those who have a scientific background and a good working knowledge of recent work in climate science, including Hansen’s own work.
A typical working journalist would tend to either not understand Hansen’s brief at all, or misunderstand the points Hansen is trying to make. Climate science skeptics and deniers could easily use the brief to make claims of their own, undermining Hansen’s work.
Hansen says that there are three main ways to understand climate change trends of today:
Why “Runaway”?
Posted on March 5, 2010 in What is RCC
“Runaway climate change” is what happens when global warming becomes self-sustaining. A global warming spiral kicks in if:
- The environment absorbs less CO2. About 50% of our current emissions are absorbed by the environment – roughly half of that by the oceans, the other half by plants on land. This uptake of CO2 by the environment may already be in decline.
- Reflection of sunlight drops. As snow and ice cover retreat – as cover is smaller in geographic extent, or seasonal cover lasts for less of the year – dark ground and even darker water are exposed, which absorb sunlight, further warming the earth.
- More CO2 and methane are emitted from nature. Soils, forests, peat, the seas, organic deposits in permafrost, and methane clathrates all emit some CO2 and methane. As the environment warms, “natural” emissions increase.
