Real Global Temperature Trend, p21 – Science is ruthless. We have ‘about zero’ years of emissions to stay below 1.5 degrees

That is if you correct for one important piece of scientific criticism to the below graph. But even if you prefer to ignore what may seem the nitty gritty of climatology and accept a maximum global carbon budget of 8.9 … Continue reading

Real Global Temperature Trend, p11 – Under agreed 1.5 degrees target world has 8 years of emissions for rest of century

And that understanding has just ended the Age of Coal. Thank you coal – it’s been great fun. We’ll have to leave the rest of you where you’ve been for the previous millions of years. In our quest to uncover … Continue reading

#BreakFree2016 – If 6 countries would stop exporting coal, that would be very helpful

Just 6 countries: The United States, Colombia, South Africa, Russia, Indonesia and Australia. If somehow we could sprinkle (perhaps shake) a little common sense, the rest of the world would be deprived of imports of the most polluting and CO2-intensive fossil fuel … Continue reading

Mistaken headlines due to IEA report. In fact global CO2 emissions reached dramatic new record in 2015. Good news is ‘Energy’, not ‘Climate’

But the problem is, no one is properly measuring. We again point to the Keeling curve – this time NOAA’s ‘global average’ atmospheric CO2 concentration over the last 5 years. Very easy to conclude world media are annoyingly wrong today, … Continue reading

Holiday plans – Plane or Train? Planes are about 20 times as bad for the climate – per kilometre

Yes. We don’t like to talk about it – but it’s high time we did: CO2 emissions of air travel are 20.5 times higher than train, per kilometer*, per passenger, according to the European Environmental Agency. Cars are somewhere in … Continue reading

Global 2015-2016 winter forecast: comparing NCEP model runs to NOAA’s ‘typical El Niño patterns’ – Brazil in for shock, little relief for California

Normally we think of droughts over South East Asia (i.e. Borneo) and north-eastern Australia (Queensland) associated with strong El Niño events. This for instance led to dramatic fires through the tropical rainforests of Borneo, during the last ‘Super El Niño’ … Continue reading

IPCC graph of the day: bridging a gap of >600 ppm – immediate clamp down on fossil fuels required

Yesterday we took a look at what we have been doing over the past 40 years. Now we take a look at what we will be doing over the rest of the 21st century. It’s a real shocker to look … Continue reading

The future of our biobased economy? Snail-powered cameras and crab-powered computers

With our conventional energy supplies getting more expensive or less reliable by the day, many researchers aim to find new sources of energy. Sometimes those new energy sources seem a bit too farfetched to make it to general use. We … Continue reading

Not recession but gas prices responsible for reduction in US carbon emissions

When the economic recession hit the US in 2009, at least one good thing seemed to have come from it: a reduction in carbon emissions to levels not seen since 1996. But as it turns out, the recession wasn’t the … Continue reading

Nanotech helps make plastics without oil

Nearly all chemical products ranging from antifreeze and medicine to plastics and paint are currently made from petroleum. But since it became apparent that the petroleum supply was not as reliable and unending as many had hoped, several techniques have … Continue reading