Tag: Yale Forum

Antarctica’s melting, seas will rise: here’s why

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71l9lzLsBRc&w=480]

How is Antarctica melting? Much faster than we hoped, according to the latest research — neatly explained in the latest Peter Sinclair This Is Not Cool video for Yale Climate Connections (formerly the Yale Forum), cunningly titled Meltwater Pulse 2b. Just how fast the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will melt, and how much East Antarctica will contribute to near term sea level rise is open an open question, but the news is not good, as the latest research on the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet at the end of the last ice age suggests.

Life at 400ppm: catching up with a Pliocene atmosphere

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntRhitFPw9c&w=480]

With global atmospheric carbon dioxide bumping along just under 400ppm, and sure to break through to higher levels in the near future, it’s worth taking a long hard look at what the climate system was like the last time CO2 was at these levels — the Pliocene period 3-5 million years ago. Professor Maureen Raymo of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is a paleoclimate expert, and in this new video by Peter Sinclair for the Yale Climate Forum she explains how we can find out what might be in store when the planet finally catches up with its atmosphere. Not good news, especially if you consider that we’re certain to blow well past 400 ppm in coming decades, unless dramatic action is taken to reduce carbon emissions.

This is not cool: no slowdown in global warming

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=047vmL6Q_4g&w=480]

Peter Sinclair’s latest video in his This Is Not Cool series for the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media looks at why global warming — the steady accumulation of energy in the climate system — continues, despite media buying into the denier-promulgated myth of a hiatus, pause or slowdown in warming. Sinclair’s compiled interviews with real experts — Josh Willis, Kevin Trenberth, and James Hansen among them — and they explain what’s going on in a clear and compelling way. The next time someone claims that warming’s stopped, point them at this video.

Murderers, tyrants and madmen (and me)

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Peter Sinclair’s latest video in his This Is Not Cool series for the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media picks up on Heartland head honcho Joe Bast’s allegation that:

“…the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

Bast remains unapologetic, despite the steady loss of financial support his tactical blunder has brought. On the Heartland blog, in a “Dear John” letter to one of his tame “experts”, he accuses Michael Mann and Bill McKibben of being “madmen”. I’ve shared a stage with McKibben. If he’s mad, then so am I. Count me proud to be as mad as Mike or Bill. In fact, I’m as mad as hell that hypocrites and liars like Bast ((Just one example: although Heartland used the Unabomber as an example of a global warming believer, as a matter of fact Kaczynski’s very strange manifesto makes no mention of global warming (scroll down) or climate change.)) and his supporters are doing their best to destroy the future of this planet.