A global temperature review of 2024 confirms the trend that has been so concerning to climatologists. The last 10 years have been the warmest on record, and 2024 has been the warmest yet. The European Copernicus calculation measured 2024 as 1.6°C above the pre-industrial temperature, with most days being above the 1.5°C aspirational target set by the Paris Agreement (COP21) in 2015. Other organizations measured a slightly different temperature for 2024: NASA at 1.47°C, NOAA at 1.46°C, and Berkley Earth at 1.62°C. The differences are technical but the trend is the same. Global temperatures are rising in concert with our greenhouse gas emissions.
Continue reading The Quadra Project: Uninhabitable – Part 1Tag Archives: NASA
On the Threshold of a 1.5°C World
While there is some disagreement as to whether we have crossed the 1.5°C threshhold set at COP 21 in Paris, scientists agree that we are on the brink and 2024 was the hottest year on record.
At COP 29 last November, Jim Skea, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explained, “Children born today will not know a world without climate change. The IPCC has shown that we, and furthermore they, will live in a world marked by more intense storms, exceptional heatwaves, devastating floods and droughts, a world where food chains are disrupted, and where diseases reach new countries.”
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The Quadra Project: “Damned Fools”
The mood in the U.S. Senate on June 23, 1988, was expectant and tense. A prominent scientist from NASA, Dr. James Hansen, was giving testimony about the condition of the world’s climate and the implications for both the United States and planet Earth as a consequence of continued global carbon dioxide emissions. His prognosis was serious and sobering. His evidence unequivocally supported the conclusion that the results would be a catastrophic rise in temperature, with a consequent melting of ice caps, an uncontrollable rise in sea levels, and widespread disruptions in normal weather as carbon dioxide levels rose. Other scientific evidence was equivocal, but Hansen argued that no other explanation but carbon dioxide emissions came “anywhere close” to explaining the existing weather anomalies.
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The Quadra Project: Sounds of the Earth
On August 20, 1977, Voyager 2 was launched from NASA’s facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida. And exactly 15 days later, on September 5, 1977, Voyager 1 was launched from the same facility. The timing was crucial because astronomical calculations had placed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in a lineal alignment that would only occur once every 176 years. With this alignment, each planet could accelerate the two spacecrafts to their next destination, reducing the travel time from 30 years to 12 years.
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