Group items tagged

IGF - The Internet Governance Forum. Did you know that the Internet and its usage are responsible for 5 per cent of the world's total electricity consumption

Just in case you missed these one... should be of interest for ACT's climate modelling squad. "As well as telling us more about Venus, it could be sending a warning to those on Earth seeking to inject our atmosphere with sulphur droplets in an attempt to mitigate climate change."

"WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a three-month investigation, a team of Northwestern University student reporters has found that the US nation's security establishment is not adequately prepared for many of the environmental changes that are coming faster than predicted and that threaten to reshape demands made on the military and intelligence community. This is despite the fact that the Defense Department has called climate change a potential "accelerant of instability." The Medill School of Journalism graduate student team began publication on January 10 of its findings on the national security implications of climate change with a series of print, video and interactive stories."

breakthroughs vs. accelerated deployment in climate change mitigation technologies.

indeed. puts me in mind of the often reinvented private ACT idea. actually there's a bunch of interesting looking articles on his website. http://www.khoslaventures.com/khosla/papers.html . No sps in the solar one as far as i can tell :) found this bit intriguing too in that, albeit presumably out of context, it doesn't make sense ""The solution to our energy problems is almost the exact opposite of what Khosla says," declares Joseph Romm, who is the editor of Climate Progress, an influential climate blog, and a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress Action Fund, a think-tank. "Technology breakthroughs are unlikely to be the answer. Accelerated deployment of existing technologies will get you down the cost curve much more rapidly than a breakthrough."" found this seemingly not very well considered piece (to be fair a blog post) by the guy http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/02/is-anyone-more-incoherent-than-vinod-khosla/ . maybe he's written some more convincing stuff in this vein somewhere.

"Mr Khosla (...) is investing over $1 billion of his clients' money in black swans" Well, with his own money his approach might be a little different :-)

"But researchers say what's good for ozone is bad for climate change. In the atmosphere, these replacement chemicals [replacements for CFCs] act like "super" greenhouse gases, with a heat-trapping power that can be 4,470 times that of carbon dioxide." Havent't heard of this before...

very interesting article indeed - good basis for our own assessment! check especially this part: "At an international meeting of climate scientists last month in Copenhagen, 15 talks dealt with different aspects of geoengineering." do you have the references?

I found the abstracts for this meeting online (http://www.iop.org/EJ/toc/1755-1315/6/45). I'm also looking for the papers which relate to the different talks. These could be helpfull too.

nina and Friederike - please have a look at this ... some good arguments in it very likely ....

detailed version of article "Time To Lift The Geoengineering Taboo, Experts Urge" with brief description of proposals, their cost and expected climate benefits

Did you know about this Weather Modification Office? Promising or dodgy?

Yes. In China it happens apparently quite often that weather is regionally modified, e.g. in order to have good weather conditions during certain events (like olympics in Beijing). But also in other countries weather modification is applied, for reasons of agriculture, pollution, skiing, etc. Obviously, one wonders on the environmental impact of such an artificial cloud feeding process with silver iodide. I just googled, stumbling upon this report http://www.weathermodification.org/AGI_toxicity.pdf which published the result: no environmentally harmful effects...

and w.r.t. ur question: I mean different weather conditions which we experience locally (like droughts or other extreme weather events) are (often) due to large-scale/global climatic changes. Hence, cloud seeding just describes a local, short-term mitigation of these events. However, there is a geoengineering proposal (so climate modification) which also suggests to seed clouds above the sea (i.e. increase cloud coverage, e.g. by using seaspray as cloud condesation nuclei), thereby increasing the planetary albedo (Earth reflectance) and reducing the energy reaching the Earth surface. If this idea is promising or not, I couldn't judge upon, but for sure it is worthwhile to take a closer look at.

Over the last 1000 years, temperature differences between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres were larger than previously thought. Using new data from the Southern Hemisphere, researchers have shown that climate model simulations overestimate the links between the climate variations across the Earth with implications for regional predictions.

NASA has it ... I WANT IT TOO!!!! 240 threads on 60 cores ... Imagine the possibilities of this new toy!! Francesco also has it in his new "kill the seals" job

I know at least of a few people who share this point of view :)

I think it is worth noting that Dyson's is not saying that climate change is an illusion - it is evident that a lot of CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere and hence something will change. His point is that we just don't know what will change and by how much and that (much) more experimental data is necessary to make predictive models.

On missing experimental work: just read in the news that condensation in cirrus clouds has been studied recently and that the models where incorrect as to what the significance of organic substances and soot is in cirrus cloud formation. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/05/08/science.1234145

one of the usual suspects advocating climate inaction .....

Interesting article, very practical in the approach ...

Not really new, as it seems...

Engineering and improving great tits so they can better withstand climate change. By selectively breeding and genetically engineering the birds scientists try to keep the time when the birds produce offspring in sync with the changing availability of food sources in spring (mainly grubs).