Category Archives: Anthropocene

Use of Computer Simulations in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

Figure 2 in last week’s blog demonstrated our most important tool for determining how we identify human contributions to climate change on both a local and global scale. The figure, taken from the NASA site, describes simulated 20th century global … Continue reading

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Local Attributions

Myles Allen, one of the pioneers of the emerging science of determining how we attribute extreme climate events to humans, featured prominently in a Scientific American piece earlier this month: But the radio voice added that it would be “impossible … Continue reading

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Fake News: Attributions

Figure 1 – Snow in the Sahara If you do a Google image search for “Snow in the Sahara,” you will get a screen full of images similar to this one. What would bring you to search for that particular … Continue reading

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Fake News

I am an old guy; my bucket list is modest but I am trying to check off the remaining items while I can still fully enjoy them. There’s only one that remains out of my reach: I want to travel … Continue reading

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“Natural” or “Anthropogenic”? – Climate Change

Last week’s blog looked at various methods of distinguishing “natural” vs. “artificial” vanilla. I used this as a jumping off point to facilitate answering the much more important question of how we distinguish anthropogenic climate change from “natural” climate change … Continue reading

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“Natural” or “Anthropogenic”? – Vanilla Extract and Climate Change

Figure 1 – My Christmas present Happy New Year!!! I got a yummy Christmas present from a family member that doubled as a hint to try to improve my cooking: homemade vanilla extract. They got the vanilla beans from Honduras … Continue reading

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Saving the World through the Pursuit of Self Interest: Students Input

I have been teaching my Climate Change course using the TBL (Team Based Learning) system. I have 6 groups in my class, each composed of roughly 7 students that have been studying together throughout the semester. I have challenged the … Continue reading

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Irrationality and the Future

Climate change is all about future impact; the aspects that we see and deal with right now are limited to those already highlighted by early warning signs in this process. The fact that the issues are global means that mitigating … Continue reading

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Collective Irrationality and Individual Biases: Climate Change II

Last week I discussed some issues in terms of psychology of judgement and decision making; I feel that they need some clarification and expansion. I looked at how highly educated Democrats and Republicans diverge sharply in their opinions about the … Continue reading

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Long-term Adaptations III – Following the Netherlands: Sea Level Rise

One of the most pressing problems jeopardizing our planet’s capacity to sustainably support (human and other) life is sea level rise. This comes as a direct consequence of the rise in global temperature: the accelerated melting of land-based ice combined … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, Anthropogenic, Climate Change, IPCC, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment