Archive: Climate Change
Freedman: Why Is James Hansen So Worried?
James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, has had it with policymakers' lack of progress to address global climate change, and he is not afraid to let them know it. In commemoration of landmark climate change testimony he gave in 1988, which first...
By Andrew Freedman | June 30, 2008; 10:30 AM ET | Comments (50)
North Pole Ice Could Briefly Disappear
Scientists say there's a 50-50 chance that, for the first time in human history, the North Pole will go ice-free for a time this summer. Here's a short summary from FOXNews.com, and a more in-depth story from The Independent. Also note our own Andrew Freedman wrote extensively about the dwindling...
By Dan Stillman | June 27, 2008; 10:45 AM ET | Comments (28)
Freedman: Increasingly Going to Extremes
As a swollen Mississippi River breached levees last week, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program released a report that warned of more heavy precipitation events and associated flooding in the coming years due to global climate change. The report, entitled "Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate," is possibly...
By Andrew Freedman | June 24, 2008; 10:00 AM ET | Comments (41)
Freedman: Explaining an Extreme Spring
This spring's weather sounds like it was crafted from a pitch meeting between a hapless Hollywood screenwriter and a studio executive. The pitch? "It's a movie in which flooding inundates downtown middle America, tornadoes strike boy scouts, strong winds lash the nation's capital, and record heat wave has New Yorkers...
By Andrew Freedman | June 17, 2008; 10:15 AM ET | Comments (40)
Freedman: Climate News from the Arctic to Kiribati
With presidential politics dominating much of the news coverage last week, along with the D.C. area thunderstorms and the heat, there were several climate change science news items that may have slipped past your Doppler 9000. First up was another sobering assessment of Arctic sea ice cover. The National Snow...
By Andrew Freedman | June 9, 2008; 10:30 AM ET | Comments (8)
Freedman: Is Climate Change Twisting Tornadoes?
The 2008 tornado season is off to such an abnormally active and deadly start that even typically storm-hardy residents of tornado-prone areas of the country have begun asking: what is going on? For example, on May 21, the New York Times ran a story that told the woeful tale of...
By Andrew Freedman | June 2, 2008; 10:00 AM ET | Comments (45)
Oval Office Debate on Global Warming?
AccuWeather senior meteorologist Joe Bastardi has some advice for the President-elect to be: Within the first 100 days of office, get the top five SCIENTISTS on both sides of the issue in front of you in the oval office and let them argue it out. No cameras, no press, just...
By Capital Weather Gang | May 19, 2008; 06:30 PM ET | Comments (16)
Freedman: Arctic Sea Ice May Set Record Low
The Interior Department's decision last week to list the polar bear as a "threatened" species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) may soon be seen as either a prescient move, or possibly even as too little too late, if scientists' ominous predictions for this summer's Arctic sea ice melt and...
By Andrew Freedman | May 19, 2008; 10:30 AM ET | Comments (36)
Bangladesh's Example for a Post-Nargis World
Tropical Cyclone Nargis, which exacted a staggering human toll on the politically isolated and poor country of Myanmar, has demonstrated once again that there is an urgent need for a more robust infrastructure in developing countries for issuing and disseminating warnings of natural hazards. Unlike when the deadly Indian Ocean...
By Andrew Freedman | May 14, 2008; 10:30 AM ET | Comments (35)
Warming North Pole, More Complex South
A team of 30 scientists reports on the contrasting climate shifts that are taking place in the Arctic and Antarctic. While the Arctic is clearly warming, one manmade environmental crisis -- ozone destruction -- is having more sway in Antarctica. But what happens when the ozone hole heals?...
By Andrew Freedman | May 9, 2008; 07:00 PM ET | Comments (4)
Freedman: Global Warming Has Not Been Canceled
Many stories were written last week about a study in the scientific journal Nature [subscription required] showing that, during the next few years, naturally shifting ocean currents may offset some of the greenhouse gas-induced warming trend for parts of North America and Europe. The trouble with the study was that...
By Andrew Freedman | May 5, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (10)
In Focus: Greenhouse Gas Increases Accelerating
More detailed measurements encouraged Global average CO2 concentrations since 2004 (monthly values in red, long-term trend in black). Click here to enlarge. Credit: NOAA The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last week that increases in two major greenhouse gases accelerated in 2007. Carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary contributor to...
By Steve Scolnik | April 30, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (8)
Freedman: Three Statistics for Climate Change Talks
Recently, representatives of 17 nations met in Paris as part of the Bush administration's initiative to engage the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters to reduce the emissions that are contributing to global climate change. You can probably guess how much progress was achieved... none. But there was at least some...
By Andrew Freedman | April 28, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (29)
Freedman: A Harsh Climate for Optimism
While there are many reasons to be enthusiastic about environmental progress on this Earth Day week, it's difficult for people in the climate science community to be in a celebratory mood at the moment. Despite the abundant attention devoted to climate change since the last Earth Day, many climate scientists...
By Andrew Freedman | April 22, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (49)
Freedman: The Price of Al Gore's Climate Battle
To a climate change contrarian, Al Gore is a one-man axis of evil. By publicizing the dangers of global climate change, and now launching one of the most expensive and far-reaching issue advocacy campaigns of at least the past several years, Gore has helped to vault climate change to the...
By Andrew Freedman | April 7, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (246)
Freedman: Climate Change Low on Public Agenda
The American public does not view global climate change as a top tier problem facing the country today, according to a recent Gallup poll. The poll found that "the economy in general" topped the list, followed by the Iraq War and about two dozen other issues, including "lack of money,"...
By Andrew Freedman | March 31, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (11)
Shoveling Out From a Snow Job
At a recent dinner seminar that I attended, upon hearing that I was a Capital Weather Gang member, an otherwise respectable appearing gentleman asked me how global warming could be occurring in light of the "record-breaking cold winter." I must admit that I was a bit mystified at first, since...
By Steve Scolnik | March 28, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (20)
Freedman: To Be Renovated
In a small corner of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, past the dinosaur exhibit with its throngs of stroller-pushing tourists and beyond the Dinosaur Cafe that sells overpriced salads, lies an exhibit on ice ages that proclaims that the earth is not in fact warming due to human...
By Andrew Freedman | March 3, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (11)
Bucket O' Bookmarks: BudBurst
Citizen scientists sought Cinquefoil wildflowers in Colorado. (Photo by Carlye Calvin, ©UCAR.) Gardeners, for years you've been relying on data from meteorologists to plan your activities; now you have a chance to repay the favor by helping climate research. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) has announced that, starting...
By Steve Scolnik | February 15, 2008; 06:00 PM ET | Comments (2)
Freedman: The Meaning of an Asterisk
What do last year's abnormally warm year worldwide and Barry Bonds' home run record have in common? They both may need an asterisk to signify that someone has been cooking the books. When baseball slugger Bonds broke Hank Aaron's home run record last year, many in the baseball world sought...
By Andrew Freedman | February 10, 2008; 10:30 AM ET | Comments (22)
Climate Corner: Acting Locally
100-year flood plain, from Maryland Department of the Environment. Click on image to enlarge. A working group of the Maryland Commission on Climate Change met today in Reisterstown, as reported by AP (via Baltimore's WJZ-TV), to work on its recommendations for the state's response to global warming. Gov. O'Malley...
By Steve Scolnik | February 8, 2008; 06:00 PM ET | Comments (11)
Media: Weather for the Eyes and Ears
New shows available in audio and video, online and on TV Coming soon to the National Geographic Channel is Six Degrees Could Change the World, based on the book, Six Degrees, which was just released in the U.S. after being published last year in the U.K. The show premieres this...
By Steve Scolnik | February 5, 2008; 07:00 PM ET | Comments (7)
Freedman: How Should we "Focus the Nation?"
This past week, more than 1,000 institutions of learning, mainly colleges and universities, participated in "Focus the Nation," a national "teach-in" on global climate change science and solutions. The event was aimed at raising awareness of climate change and ways to address the challenge that it poses to the global...
By Andrew Freedman | February 3, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (8)
551.5: Book Nook
551.5 is the Dewey Decimal System classification for meteorology. In his post last weekend, Ground Truth, Andrew points out that seeing is believing: Because climate change "exists beyond our field of vision it's hard to be completely convinced of its existence, and therefore of the necessity of addressing it." Andrew...
By Steve Scolnik | January 23, 2008; 07:30 PM ET | Comments (10)
Climate Corner: Myth-tery Science Theater 2008
One of the major myths of the climate change saga comes in for some major debunking at a session Wednesday of the 20th Conference on Climate Variability and Change, which is meeting in conjunction with the 88th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) this week in New Orleans....
By Steve Scolnik | January 22, 2008; 07:50 PM ET | Comments (6)
Freedman: Ground Truth
"Seeing is believing" is a saying that can mean a great deal in life. It is typically used in conversation to refer to something strange that happened that no one would have believed could happen until it actually happened, like a window-washer falling 47 stories and surviving or a penguin...
By Andrew Freedman | January 20, 2008; 11:00 AM ET | Comments (16)
