The biggest story of the year could very well be the onset of El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean. Rob Painting's timely SkS post, Is a Powerful El Niño Brewing in the Pacific Ocean? details how and why El Nino conditions form. Painting's closing paragraph is well worth noting.
The arrival of a powerful El Niño would cause an abrupt rise in global surface temperatures as heat is discharged from the tropical ocean, and would entail widespread weather-related disruption and suffering around the world - so is not something to be welcomed. We (SkS) will take a look at the likely consequences if such an event unfolds, but for now we'll keep a watchful eye on the Pacific.
On the good news front is John Cook's post, Skeptical Science consensus paper voted ERL's best article of 2013.
Setting the record straight is one of Dana's specialties. He does so again in his post, Climate dollars and sense – preventing global warming is the cheap option.
Source: Obama's Last Shot: The president came into office promising to make fighting climate change a priority. Now, he finally seems to be getting serious about it, Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone, Apr 23, 2014
h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists
"I’d like to think that writing a book like my book* is part of what it is to slap people in the face. I would like to see some politicians start speaking more realistically to people about this problem. You know, people talk about budget deficits; a lot of doom and gloom. But when you talk about climate change, you almost seem to have to do it with a happier face on, if you’re going to be thought politically relevant. I mean my contribution is to try to write a book that I think, in a completely rational and not emotive way, just tells it how it is. I don’t have any secrets for how to do more than that. I wish I did." - Dale Jamieson, Professor of environmental studies and philosophy at NYU
The rise and fall of America’s climate deniers: How politics hijacked the fight against global warming by Lindsay Abrams, Salon, Apr 26, 2014
Dana's post, Climate dollars and sense – preventing global warming is the cheap option has been incorporated into the Basic and Intermediate versions of the SkS rebuttal article, What's cheaper, mitigation or adaptation?
Dana's SkS article, An Updated Look at What Keystone XL and Alberta Tar Sands Mean for the Climate is referenced in Michelle Leung's Media Matters article, Right-Wing Media Greet Keystone Delay Announcement With Waves Of Misinformation.
In his blog post, Climate Denial and the Death of Rationality, Peter Heft cites Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, Cook et al, 2013 Environmental Research Letters.
The Nation magazine celebrated Earth Day 2014 with special, wall-to-wall coverage of the climate challenge. Every piece of content posted on TheNation.com focused on climate change, its implications and solutions.
Posted by John Hartz on Sunday, 27 April, 2014
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