Topic: climate change

Scary isn't it: Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer, report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field. It's that (gasp) global warming! Are you positive? Reconstruction of the Gakkel Ridge beneath the Arctic ocean, where a valley filled with flat-topped volcanos up to 2 km wide and hundreds of metres high has been...

Last week we attended the Oregon Trout Unlimited State Council meeting at Belknap Hot Springs. Council Chair Tom Wolf was on hand to discuss the organization's conservation and legislative priorities for the upcoming year. The video below outlines that agenda: Wolf says key legislators and Governor Kulongoski’s office have promised to make the 2009 session one where water quantity,...the Oregon Department of Water Resources. 7. Global Warming/Climate bill: TU will be supporting climate change legislation to mitigate...

A couple of months ago, I touched on the fact (here) that giving beef cattle growth hormones and antibiotics can lower their greenhouse gas emissions. Faster growth reduces the amount of feed that the cattle require and thus the waste products that they produce. Yes, there are also downsides to speeding the growth of cattle in this manner. The subject makes for an interesting debate on the...

Over at Willamette Week, writer Corey Pein finds wingnuttery among the weeds while British Columbia attempts to curb global climate change: The Canuck provincial government may be more ambitious than the Kulongoski administration when it comes to environmental policy, but it faces the same sort of batshit-crazy "criticism." "Carbon tax, carbon smax," writes one commenter on the CBC site....

Can ya'll tell I'm caught up on my other work yet? NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has released a report from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research today released a scientific assessment that provides the first comprehensive analysis...

[Edit: Here's the audio!] "I believe that spending $4 billion dollars on a freeway bridge is a huge mistake," says economist Joe Cortright, in his opening statement at today's City Club forum on the Columbia River Crossing. Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder just finished his intro, making the case for the project--in part by referencing the East Bay Bridge in the Bay Area, which was seismically...would increase vehicle miles traveled [VMT] by 40 percent," when the recent governor's report on climate change says we need to reduce...

What motivation would you need to spend 4 billion dollars on one single highway project, 4 billion dollars on one single 5 mile stretch of highway. 4 billion dollars on one single project that would be considered the single most expensive public works project ever in the history of the Pacific Northwest? Would one of the nation's worst traffic bottlenecks qualify? I mean if you were...something that was pretty bad - I mean really bad? If you were going to ignore peak oil, or climate change, or air pollution, or g...

"I believe that spending $4 billion dollars on a freeway bridge is a huge mistake," says economist Joe Cortright, in his opening statement at today's City Club forum on the Columbia River Crossing. Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder just finished his intro, making the case for the project?in part by referencing the East Bay Bridge in the Bay Area, which was seismically unsound (they're replacing it,...would increase vehicle miles traveled [VMT] by 40 percent," when the recent governor's report on climate change says we need to reduce...

I was corresponding with someone at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado about today's Independent story that the North Pole is going to be ice free this year. He said the paper has overstated the story -- that there's the possibility of an ice free north pole around the end of the summer. But there's certainly the possibility that it won't happen this year. The Independent does...

Global Climate Chaos "It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year. The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists...