Hot air

An onlooker asks an artist painting landscapes 'How much extra is it for you to edit out the turbines?'

Back in July T. Boone Pickens announced a quartering of his mega-wind farm project. The project has essentially been scrapped due to continuing issues with access to transmission lines, as Mr. Pickens downplays wind in his wind+natural gas “plan.” The remaining order with GE has been halved to three hundred odd turbines, whose future home is expected to be relocated from the Texas panhandle to Canada or Montana. Continue reading

Defrosting skeptics & melting glaciers

Political Cartoon by Steve Sack

While the text of the comic is not quite accurate—we’ll chalk it up to artistic license—it gets the point across. In the past week or so, a number of independent groups have examined the “evidence” including FactCheck.org and the Associated Press. Even so, the East Anglian emails stirred one paper in England to publish an article purportedly giving 100 reasons why global warming was perfectly natural to which New Scientist replied with 50 reasons against. See also this side-by-side graphic refuting skeptics’ major points.

In other news, the New York Times recently interviewed a climatologist who strives to engage skeptics and openly debate the evidence.

Non Sequitur strip entitled "Nature's adaption process": Business man sees sign proclaiming global warming is a hoax, and to enter dark alley for proof. Thinks to himself "I knew it!" Waiting in the shadows is a polar bear with pencil

Meanwhile, Støre-Gore reports snow and ice across the world vanishing quickly as a new article in Nature suggests that Earth’s polar ice sheets vulnerable to even moderate global warming. Indeed, the Greenland ice cap is melting faster than ever. As a consequence, Antarctica could contribute 1.4m to sea-level rise. If for you, seeing is believing, check out James Balrog’s recent TED Talk in which he shows compelling time lapse photography of glacier retreat and deflation. A particularly troubled region he does not cover since the reports of its problems are fairly recent is the Himalayas.

Clever Climate Comics

This comic strip yesterday:

PC and Pixel

reminded me of a wonderful, but unfortunately defunct strip, Rustle the Leaf; though I don’t know why it wasn’t “Russell the Leaf.” I really used to look forward to this every week, and was quite disappointed when it stopped updating. Included below are some of my favorite strips as a brief introduction to this little known gem, and I hope you enjoy Russell and Rooty as much as I do:

rustle041226

rustle060730

If you work with kids, or just want to enjoy some extra strips, check out their lesson plans too; especially February 2006 – Toxic Transmissions. There’s also a simple but cute animated explanation of global warming.