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MundoAmérica, ,

Societal change usually happens slowly, even once it's clear there's a problem. That's because, in a country as big as the United States, public opinion moves in leisurely currents. Change often requires going up against powerful, established interests, and it can take decades for those currents to erode the foundations of our special-interest fortresses. Think civil rights, gay marriage, equal rights for women.

Even facing undeniably real problems — say, discrimination against gay people — one can make the case that gradual change is the best option. Had some mythical liberal Supreme Court declared, in 1990, that gay marriage was now the law of the land, the backlash might have been swift and severe.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Parece que se ha convertido en un rito de las negociaciones climáticas en las Naciones Unidas llegar al borde del colapso antes de que, rozando el plazo final, se logre un acuerdo intenso y lleno de polémica. Aún así, la complicada conclusión de las conversaciones de este año en Doha, en que cerca de 200 países acordaron extender el protocolo de Kyoto, no ha hecho más que fijar el escenario para negociaciones todavía más dramáticas en 2015, cuando se debe alcanzar un nuevo acuerdo global.

El acuerdo que se acaba de cerrar tiende un puente entre el régimen climático antiguo y uno nuevo que aún está por definirse.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

There is much concern over rising sea levels and disappearing coastline. Yet how are such changes really measured?

Satellites can measure tiny changes in sea levels referenced to a known baseline, but those measurements have only been available since 1993. Two other methods used for changes occurring over more than 100 years are tide gauges and efforts by the United Nations‘ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in computer modeling.

A tide gauge monitors water level changes in relation to a local reference height. They are simple devices, not too different from a pingpong ball floating in a tube. Tide gauge data are available for more than 1,750 stations around the world and are the longest time series available.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalEconomíaReflexionesNaturaleza, ,

El mundo ha vuelto a fracasar en su intento de alcanzar acuerdo sólido alguno sobre el clima, esta vez en las negociaciones que concluyeron recientemente en Doha. El lector puede no haberlo advertido, porque, en contraste muy marcado con los años anteriores, la mayoría de los medios de comunicación, como reflejo de un desinterés cada vez mayor del público, se han limitado a pasar por alto dichas negociaciones.

La reunión de Doha era la continuación de veinte años de negociaciones fracasadas sobre el clima, desde la Cumbre de la Tierra inicial, celebrada en Río en 1992. Allí, los países prometieron reducir en el año 2000 las emisiones de gases que provocan el efecto de invernadero a los niveles de 1990; los países de la OCDE se alejaron del objetivo en casi un nueve por ciento.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

La Conferencia sobre el clima de Doha no fue un acontecimiento espectacular en que se tomaran decisiones sobre el acuerdo mundial sobre el clima de 2015, lo que parece haber sorprendido a algunos comentaristas y grupos de defensa del medio ambiente. Pero nadie debería asombrarse. Todos los países acordaron el año pasado, en Durban, que las conferencias sobre el clima desde aquella hasta 2015 prepararían el terreno para el gran acuerdo de 2015.

Antes de Doha, la UE presentó su lista de tareas para avanzar hacia un nuevo acuerdo sobre el clima en 2015. Ahora podemos marcar las casillas de esta lista, y gracias entre otras cosas al papel activo de España.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

We all know (or should know) by now that the carbon dioxide we produce when we burn fossil fuels and cut down forests is the planet’s single largest contributor to global warming. It persists in the atmosphere for centuries. Reducing these emissions by as much as half by 2050 is essential to avoid disastrous consequences by the end of this century, and we must begin immediately.

But this is a herculean undertaking, both technically and politically, as the lack of progress at United Nations climate talks here this week attests. And even if we are able to do this over the next 40 years, we would not slow the rate of warming enough by midcentury to moderate consequences like rising sea levels, the release of methane and carbon dioxide from melting arctic permafrost, and a rise in extreme weather.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Last summer’s Rio+20 Conference tried unsuccessfully to rivet global attention on the latest “urgent problem” of unsustainable development. This week, another United Nations five-star-hotel convention, in Doha, Qatar, is working overtime to revive climate alarmism as a “central organizing principle” for global governance.

The strategies remain unchanged: There are treaties, laws, regulations and higher taxes for hydrocarbon energy, all under the direction of unelected, unaccountable fanatics who insist they are saving planet Earth from ecological collapse. The agenda is likewise the same: Slash hydrocarbon use, transfer wealth, regulate economic growth and control people’s lives.

With the Kyoto Protocol set to expire at the end of December, Qatar conventioneers are determined to forge new international agreements in the face of numerous harsh realities.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Last month was the 333rd consecutive month that global temperatures were above the 20th century average, and 2012 will almost certainly be the hottest ever recorded in the US. Hurricanes, heatwaves, wildfires and droughts blistered farmlands and ruined crops from Kansas to Assam, and Britain has had its wettest summer and driest spring to date. Nigeria, China and much of India and Australia have all had their worst floods in decades. In September the Arctic sea ice cover shrank 50% below the 1979-2000 average.

In a world where climate extremes come faster than ever, the World Bank has found common ground with Greenpeace.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Cuando la “súper tormenta” Sandy golpeó la costa oriental de los Estados Unidos el 29 de octubre, no sólo inundó el metro de Nueva York y se convirtió en el factor más importante para el 15% de los votantes estadounidenses (the most important factor for 15% of US voters) en las elecciones presidenciales de la semana siguiente, sino que también resucitó la aseveración injustificada & que señala que el calentamiento global es el culpable de este tipo de eventos, junto con el argumento moralmente irresponsable acerca de que debemos ayudar a las futuras víctimas de huracanes mediante la reducción de las emisiones de CO2.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Nada nos hace concentrarnos mentalmente como una crisis en toda regla. Como millones de personas más en la ciudad de Nueva York, oí al huracán Sandy sacudir mis ventanas y mis puertas. Tuve más suerte que muchos. Lo único que hizo fue sacudirlas.

Durante muchos años, los expertos han estado advirtiendo que esa clase de tormentas arrollarían las anticuadas infraestructuras urbanas de la ciudad. Agua salada entró a raudales en las estaciones de metro abiertas. Los daños en el sistema de suministro de electricidad redujo una tercera parte de Manhattan a un estado de obscuridad premoderno y eso fue sólo en Nueva York.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza

En las últimas semanas de la temporada norteamericana de huracanes, época en la que no se espera que una supertormenta cause daños generalizados en la costa oriental de los Estados Unidos, el huracán Sandy nos recuerda la sombría amenaza de los episodios climáticos extremos. Con la más baja presión central de la temporada de huracanes en 2012, Sandy puede haber causado daños de hasta 20.000 millones de dólares, por lo que ha resultado ser una de las supertormentas más costosas de la Historia.

Sandy se combinó con un sistema meteorológico que avanzaba desde el Este, lo que creó grandes dificultades a los pronosticadores y unas condiciones climáticas sin precedentes para la región.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

I spent much of Sunday in touch with a group of fellow researchers. Like myself, they are college professors who are interested in understanding how people respond to weather and climate.

When we recognized last week that Hurricane Sandy was likely to make landfall rather than turning out to sea, we decided to conduct a telephone survey.

On Friday, we began asking East Coast residents how likely they thought the storm was to strike, how dangerous it would be, and what steps they were taking to protect themselves from the storm.

We are curious to see how well they could sort out the multiple threats -- wind, storm surge, heavy rain.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

It was a long hot summer.

The United States experienced the warmest July in its history, with more than 3,000 heat records broken across the country. Overall, the summer was the nation's third warmest on record and comes in a year that is turning out to be the hottest ever. High temperatures along with low precipitation generated drought conditions across 60% of the Lower 48 states, which affected 70% of the corn and soybean crop and rendered part of the Mississippi River nonnavigable. Arctic Sea ice declined to a record low, and a surface thaw swept across 97% of the Greenland ice cap.…  Seguir leyendo »

Global-warming fanatics take note

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Scientists have been studying solar influences on the climate for more than 5,000 years.

Chinese imperial astronomers kept detailed sunspot records. They noticed that more sunspots meant warmer weather. In 1801, the celebrated astronomer William Herschel (discoverer of the planet Uranus) observed that when there were fewer spots, the price of wheat soared. He surmised that less light and heat from the sun resulted in reduced harvests.

Earlier last month, professor Richard Muller of the University of California-Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project announced that in the project’s newly constructed global land temperature record, “no component that matches solar activity” was related to temperature.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

El verano ha sido bastante tranquilo en el frente del euro. Quizá Grecia vuelva a darnos un susto en los próximos días si Berlín y París mantienen su intransigencia. Pero el calor y la tregua monetaria de este verano nos permiten recordar la otra gran crisis de nuestro tiempo, la del cambio climático, que las urgencias del corto plazo han hecho pasar a segundo plano.

Los científicos nos explican que el cerebro humano no es un cerebro verde, porque responde mal a los riesgos a largo plazo. Parece como si tuviésemos una capacidad limitada de inquietud, por lo que seríamos incapaces de mantener nuestra preocupación por una amenaza lejana cuando se presentan problemas de efectos más inmediatos como las crisis financieras o el desempleo.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,

The battle against runaway climate change is being lost. The green movement and the energy industry — while engaged in a furious debate on issues from nuclear power to oil sands — are missing the bigger picture.

There is little recognition by either side that current policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are inadequate for dealing with the threat that they pose. It is the coal-fueled growth of countries like China and India that generates much of these emissions. Unless a cheap, rapidly deployable substitute fuel is found for coal, then it will be next to impossible to safely rein in rising carbon dioxide levels around the world.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.

But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.

My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.

In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Last week, NASA announced that 97% of Greenland's vast ice sheet had undergone at least some surface melting this summer, compared with a normal melt area of about 50%. The 2012 figure, said the headline on the space agency's press release, was "unprecedented."

That's a powerful word in any context, but it's especially so when you're talking about the politically charged topic of climate change. If the melting was unprecedented, it would reinforce the idea that scientists are right about the dangers of human-generated greenhouse gases, and at the same time make it harder for skeptics to take potshots at the science.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

In recent months, Americans have experienced numerous extreme weather-related events, including droughts, wildfires and heat waves.

We've witnessed the warmest spring since record-keeping began in 1895.

Thirty-one states reached record-high temperatures.

The period between July 2011 and June 2012 was the hottest 12 months on record.

And last year 14 extreme weather-related events caused an incalculable loss of human life and cost the U.S. economy more than $55 billion. Understandably, many Americans are wondering if these events are manifestations of a longer-term shift in climate.

At present we cannot definitively link any single extreme event to climate change. But it is worthwhile to consider whether the apparent increase in some extreme events has roots in a larger, longer-term trend, since that would predict a continuation of these events in the future.…  Seguir leyendo »