Summary: Six Assessment Reports on the global climate have been issued since 1990 by the IPCC.  The Fourth U.S. Climate Assessment was issued in 2017-2018.  These and other reports have warned, with increasing urgency up to the present, that the continued, unabated increases in emission rates of man-made greenhouse gases relative to values before the industrial revolution have led to corresponding increases in global average temperature.  These higher temperatures lead globally to increasingly extreme weather and climate events that cause physical and socioeconomic harms and dam ..read more

Summary: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued six Assessment Reports over the past three decades.  This blog has presented three posts recently tabulating the effects of warming and the scientific need for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that the Reports presented.  The posts focus on the unabated increase in man-made carbon dioxide emissions, the consequent increase in global average temperature, and the inexorable increase in sea level.  For each of these topics, from the beginning the Reports have declared the necessity of minimizing GHG emissions ..read more

Summary: Faith leaders of three religions around the world are selected here for discussion of the basis in their respective faiths for action to address global warming/climate change.  Christianity and Judaism both emphasize Biblical verses found in the Old Testament relating to Creation, as well as others, and the role of humans in preserving Creation.  These lead to the principle that the bounties of our planet are ours to cherish, protect and nurture; i. e., that humans have the responsibility for stewardship of these resources rather than exploiting them.  In Islam verses f ..read more

Summary: This series of three posts tabulates important findings from the six Assessment Reports (ARs) that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released since 1990.  The first post, “What, Again? Greenhouse Gases Accumulate in the Atmosphere, presents past greenhouse gas (GHG) emission rates and future emission scenarios in the ARs, and presents principles in the ARs to keep accumulated GHG levels to as low a level as possible. The second post, “What, Again? Global Warming Continues Unabated” summarizes the effects of higher GHGs on past and future pro ..read more

Summary: This series of posts tabulates important findings from the six Assessment Reports (ARs) that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released since 1990.  The previous post, “What, Again? Greenhouse Gases Accumulate in the Atmosphere, summarizing the six ARs, presents past greenhouse gas (GHG) emission rates, discusses future emission scenarios and proposes principles to minimize further emissions to keep accumulated GHG levels to as low a level as possible. This post presents the direct consequences of rising GHG emissions: the increase in global ..read more

Summary: This post tabulates important findings from the six Assessment Reports (ARs) that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released since 1990.  As shown here, climate scientists have recognized, as of the date of each AR, that a) man-made GHGs continue to be emitted and accumulate further in the atmosphere, b) predicted emissions risk accumulating climatically dangerous levels of GHGs, and c) principles are proposed to minimize further emissions so as to keep accumulated GHG levels to as low a level as possible.  Here attention is restricted t ..read more

Summary.  Scientific research is pursued as an unbiased, objective inquiry into the properties of the natural world.  Following this framework the foundations of climate science have been laid over the last two hundred years, establishing that man-made production of carbon dioxide induces an atmospheric greenhouse effect.  Current political influence seeks wrongly to raise doubts about these immutable facts. Introduction: The Pursuit of Science.  Scientific investigation is based on independent, unbiased, verifiable research; pursuit of new knowledge that builds on the resu ..read more

“U.N. Climate Talks End With Few Commitments and a ‘Lost’ Opportunity” is the heading in the New York Times, December 15, 2019, reporting on the largely failed conclusion to the annual UN climate conference held in Madrid, Spain.  Recent annual meetings are follow-ups to the conference in Paris four years earlier, which produced the 2015 Paris Agreement on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  It was agreed to by the almost 200 member nations of the UN, and has the goal of keeping the increase in the long-term global average temperature below 2°C (3.6°F) above the pre-industrial temperatur ..read more

On Dec. 11, 2019 TIME magazine named Greta Thunberg, the 16-year old Swedish climate activist, its Person of the Year.  A little more than one year ago (i.e. at age 15) she felt sufficiently worried Source: https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2019-greta-thunberg/ about the effects that climate change was wreaking that she felt she needed to take action.  She began once-weekly stints of abandoning her school and sitting, alone, in front of the Swedish Parliament building in Stockholm with a sign reading “Student Climate Strike”. After a few weeks others, especially youth, took up h ..read more

Summary: All over the world unprecedented weather extremes are occurring, with profound effects on human activities and health.  This post reports some recent climate events.  These instances are consistent with the forecasts that climate scientists have been making for several decades.  The IPCC issued a new, more urgent report in October 2018 specifying that we have to keep the world temperature increase below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, primarily by eliminating all emissions worldwide in about two decades. =============================== Tidal flooding, Eastern U. S.  Many citie ..read more