Tag: climate change

Bill Gates Considers the Nuclear Options
Business, Environment, News, Science

Bill Gates Considers the Nuclear Options

Gates’ advice for governments? You’re under-funding investment in pure energy research by a factor of three or more. This wouldn’t require a gigantic tax on the energy sector, just a few percent, and certainly a lower number than a carbon tax would likely impose. Energy innovation is unlike other areas because of its lengthy time-to-market–if you try to offer incentives on the scale of other industries, you’ll fail. Continue reading Bill Gates Considers the Nuclear Options

Cliff Mass to Deniers: “It’s Not the Volcanoes”
Environment, News, Science, Weather

Cliff Mass to Deniers: “It’s Not the Volcanoes”

Still, because Mass does offer critiques of climate change science from time to time, he ends up on the receiving end of emails from the disinformation brigade. His recent post, “Bogus Arguments of Some Global Warming ‘Skeptics’,” focuses on the supposition that “volcanoes put out way more CO2 than human activities. So it doesn’t matter what we do!” Continue reading Cliff Mass to Deniers: “It’s Not the Volcanoes”

Seattle’s Cold, Wet Spring Part of National “Extreme Spring”
News, Science, Weather

Seattle’s Cold, Wet Spring Part of National “Extreme Spring”

The Weather Underground’s meteorologist Jeff Masters has posted a La Niña wrap-up for you: “U.S. had most extreme spring on record for precipitation.” While the driest spring on record dessicated Texas, and one of the top-ten driest springs dehydrated New Mexico and Louisiana, northwesterners in Washington and Oregon were grumbling their way through one of the top-five coldest springs the region has seen in the last century or so. Washington was one of nine states deluged by the most precipitation seen in 117 years of record-keeping. Continue reading Seattle’s Cold, Wet Spring Part of National “Extreme Spring”

Cliff Mass vs. the Tree-Ring Gang in a PDO Classic
News, Science, Weather

Cliff Mass vs. the Tree-Ring Gang in a PDO Classic

University of Washington atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass has some debating words for authors of a recent study (“The Unusual Nature of Recent Snowpack Declines in the North American Cordillera”) suggesting the Western snowpack is dramatically shrinking due to climate change: “If you really check out the Science paper and look at the data, the loss of snowpack during the past few decades have not been serious. There is no clear smoking gun of anthropogenic global warming.” But is there? And do we really need to wait to be shot, first? Continue reading Cliff Mass vs. the Tree-Ring Gang in a PDO Classic

The Puget Sound Experiment in Acidification
Environment, News, Science

The Puget Sound Experiment in Acidification

Operating as a carbon dioxide sink, unfortunately, means the oceans are gradually (or frighteningly fast, considering the scale) becoming more acidic. On the 0-14 pH scale, 7 is neutral; the oceans on average have dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 (it’s a logarithmic scale, so that’s a much bigger shift than it looks). So they’re not going to eat the skin of bathers’ bones–yet!–but to the marine life adapted to 8.2, things don’t feel quite right at all. Continue reading The Puget Sound Experiment in Acidification

The Dirt on Seattle’s Tunnel-Vision Future
Environment, News, Science, Transportation, Weather

The Dirt on Seattle’s Tunnel-Vision Future

“Where is the last place that I would want to be, during a big Seattle Fault earthquake or a subduction zone quake if there was a reasonable-sized tsunami in Puget Sound?” Montgomery added, finishing his thought. “The last place I’d want to be is in a big hole under the waterfront.”

However compelling he is in laying all this out, short-term catastrophes are not what Montgomery spends most of his time thinking about. His last book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, is required reading for anyone who’s read Jared Diamond’s Collapse. Continue reading The Dirt on Seattle’s Tunnel-Vision Future