Dangerous Things Done in Desperation.

With the seriousness of the situation regards AGW becoming more clear, talk of geo-engineering has increased. I think that rather than try to stem population increase, examine our economic system and expectations, and reduce CO2 emissions, this will be seen as a viable option in the years to come.

However geo-engineering will, I am confident, be used as an excuse to carry on emitting CO2 and avoiding dealing with the fundamental flaw in our civilisation; exponential growth in a finite world. It is dangerous and is a recipe for disaster.

In the wake of another mass murder...

Advice from a forensic psychiatrist, via Charlie Brooker. Will we ever learn?

Lake El'gygytgyn and Arctic Warming.

The post on which this is based has been in abeyance since before my recent illness, and resultant blogging hiatus. Due to questions asked in the comments of my previous post I've expanded it and am posting it as an answer to a question about how warm the Arctic has been in the past, and whether this throws light upon the claimed likelihood of an imminent and catastrophic methane blow out.

Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Probably the best analogue for the current Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). How good an analogue is it, and are we really at risk of re-running it? I think we are going to re-run the PETM, not in the sense that we are likely to achieve the same absolute temperatures, although that may be possible, but in the sense that a temperature increase of at least 3degC is achievable from our fossil fuel emissions alone and this will be amplified by methane and carbon dioxide emissions from the Arctic region causing a d13C drop as seen in the PETM. Talk of lowering to 350pm or keeping temperature below 2degC is idle fantasy.