An Index to All Posted Essays
Essays are grouped by topic
More than 80 unique essays were added to this Less Heat More Light site between May of 2021 and February of 2025. No new entries are planned, but I hope that the list might continue to be useful to teachers and others who present climate science to general audiences, or anyone interested in how the climate system works.
A shorter list of most frequently read essays has also been posted to the website.
This index includes all live posts grouped into the following categories:
Why Less Heat More Light - Science, Not Politics
Simpler Stories With Real Numbers - Trends, Graphs and Models
Seeing Planet Earth - Some Amazing Technologies Let Us See Our Dynamic Planet in Real Time
Insights Into the Climate System - From Atmospheric Rivers to The Polar Vortex, Key Actors and Processes
Our Climate Future - Oceans, Ice and Hurricanes
Plants and Ecosystems - From ozone impacts to changing Autumn Colors to Thawing Permafrost
Changing Direction - Alternative Energy Strategies
Reflections
Titles are active links to the essays posted on this Substack site. As the essays are no longer in time sequence in this index, some references to "earlier" or "following" titles are now inaccurate. I apologize for this and also for any broken links in the “Sources” sections that may have developed since the first posting. Presentation format changed some over time and not all posts have been edited to a common style.
Thanks again for reading these essays!
Why Less Heat More Light
Less Heat – More Light - Focusing on the science, not the politics
Simpler Stories With Real Numbers
Climate Change in Four Easy Steps - We have known the basics for a long time and two iconic data sets capture much of the story
Why Carbon Dioxide Predicts Temperature Increases - And when it might not - how greenhouse gases affect temperature
Quantitative Reasoning with Climate Data - With Scott Ollinger - Linking carbon dioxide and temperature using an older, one-parameter model, and with a role for El Niño!
We Should Have Expected That Very Hot 2023 - With Scott Ollinger and Steve Frolking - The fundamentals of the climate system have not changed and warming might pause again by the end of 2024
An Intuitive View of the Climate System And a Surprising Result - Viewing data graphs as pictures in an exhibition not
Nuts and Bolts of a Simple Model of Climate Change - With Scott Ollinger - A full description of the model used in the essay above
Two Hopeful Trends for Our Climate Future - Declining birth rates and increasing carbon efficiency could lead to net zero
How Are We Doing? - Personal picks for a dashboard to track global change
“It Was a 1000-Year Storm!” – Predicting the chance of extreme events – including ones that haven’t happened
Hurricane Ian - A "500-year" Storm? - Not really - category 4 and 5 storms happen every 30-80 years
After Ian - Using the past to plan for the future
Predicting the Big One - Not an earthquake but a catastrophic series of storms
Seeing Planet Earth
A Visual Tour of a Dynamic Planet - Daily updates on a NASA website present amazing images of a changing world
Visualizing a Greenhouse Gas - Stunning technologies provide dynamic images of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
Taking the Pulse of the Planet - Exquisite technologies add an "Ocean Pulse" to the Keeling Curve
Methane Super-Emitters - New high-tech satellites produce detailed emissions images for this powerful greenhouse gas.
Taking the Temperature of the Earth - Amazing technologies allow a precise calculation of the energy balance of the Earth
Hawaii is a Paradise for Scientists As Well - A "Hot Spot" in more ways than one
Mapping Seamounts - When light and sound fall short, gravity maps the ocean floor
A Good News Story Captured by a Young and Innovative Researcher - A 23-year-old investigator uses low-cost technology to capture some magic off the coast of Long Island, NY
Insights into the Climate System
Why We Can't Predict Next Week's Weather - Even AI Can't Overcome Chaos in the Climate System
Why We Can’t Predict Next Year’s Weather – Oscillations are playing the parachute game with the climate system
Why We CAN Predict Our Climate Future - Weather is just noise along the path we have charted for global climate change
The Global Conveyor Belt - A massive, global circulation of seawater buffers the effects of greenhouse gas emissions - and gives us time to deal with climate change
Block That Jet Stream - This dynamic and wildly variable part of the weather/climate system helps us visualize and understand extreme and persistent weather events
Block That Jet Stream II – Impacts of a Changing Climate System – Can a warmer Arctic mean more extreme and persistent weather across North America?
Rivers in the Sky - A recently discovered, large-scale cloud and storm pattern has serious connections to severe weather and climate change.
Some Good News for California? - Recent storms buck the El Niño pattern - again!
Weird Wild Western Weather - Why? - California had its MoJO working - and no one saw it coming
The Polar Vortex Strikes Again! - Can a warmer planet cause extremely cold weather?
A Critical Control Point in Our Climate System? - Ocean circulation, the Gulf Stream, and a possible tipping point
Arctic Amplification: Aerosols and Greenhouse Gases - Has the far north always warmed faster than the rest of the Earth?
Greenhouse Gases Drive a Warming World - An interactive graphic that eliminates alternative explanations
The Future of Oceans, Ice and Hurricanes
Oceans and Ice – Inertia and Momentum in the Climate System - Oceans have absorbed carbon dioxide and heat – Massive ice caps delay melting
Zombie Ice - A new name for a known problem grabs the headlines. Will it catalyze action?
Back to the future - Ancient climates give an integrated view of our possible climate futures.
Hurricanes and the Global Energy Balance – How much energy do they move towards the poles?
Losing Ocean Ice, Gaining Ocean Heat – Tipping points or accelerated change?
A Stormy Hurricane Season Ahead? - Climate oscillations and warming oceans yield predictions for an active year.
The Power and Beauty of Hurricanes – An ode to the climate system’s most powerful actors
Wet and Green from Hot and Dry - The biggest desert on Earth feeds the Amazon and spawns hurricanes
What is Driving Rising Sea Levels? - Heat storage, ice melt, or both – and how do we know?
Flooding of Coastal Cities Will Increase Exponentially - How a slow but steady linear increase in sea level becomes a non-linear increase in high tide flood frequency
Update on Visualizations of Sea Level Rise - Here is a place to start
Resisting the Inevitable Rise in Sea Level - A Tale of Four Cities
Resisting Rising Seas in the US - A guided tour of plans and projects
Poking It With Sticks - Is the rate of sea level rise increasing?
The Climate Future of the U.S. and How We Might Change It - A summary of the 2023 Fifth National Climate Assessment
Happy New Year! How Did We Do in 2023? - Updating a dashboard that tracks global change
Plants and Ecosystems
Methane Bombs and Massive Sinkholes in Arctic Tundra - The future of permafrost and a tipping point long past
The Massive Sargassum Blob - Coming Soon to a Beach Near You! - Is this the biggest shift in global biology in the last 12 years?
Ozone: the good, the bad and the ugly? - A highly reactive gas plays different roles in different parts of the atmosphere
Consider the Humble Leaf - Crafty green strategists, autumn leaf color and climate change
Subtle Changes to Autumn Leaf Color - Without an early frost, a longer but less red fall leaf season
Not a Great Day to Be a Plant - Effects of dry soils on plants can help droughts persist
Deforestation and Carbon - A long and complex history
Forests have had a good week - What is their real impact on atmospheric carbon?
Changing Direction
We are Flooded with Renewable Energy Every Day - Wind and solar can be enough - Which has the greater potential?
Keeping It Local: "Behind the Meter" Alternatives for Growing Low-Carbon Electricity - Working on your side of the meter allows creative solutions
You May Not Need A Roof in the Sun to Access Solar Energy - Communities create a market for renewable energy from the bottom up
Storing the Sun - We are awash in solar energy - how can we store it for use in the dark?
Energy From Underground - Geothermal systems draw nuclear and solar energy from the solid Earth
Gridlock - Why are there 8,100 renewable energy projects waiting for permission to join the U.S. grid?
Fun with the Sun - Playing with the numbers on solar energy
Bill Gates, Vaclav Smil and the All-Electric Economy - Can we get there from here?
Rethinking Hydrogen - A hydrogen energy skeptic reconsiders the possibilities
Hot Air from Cold and Cold Air from Hot - A small miracle on your windowsill
Energy Down on the Farm - A perfect pairing of waste management and greenhouse crop production
Geoengineering the Climate System - Can control points in the climate system be manipulated safely?
Reflections
Cognitive Dissonance – Are We of Two Minds on Climate Change? - The gap between what we know and what we do – and a proposal to empower the younger generations
The Population Bomb Revisited - Are there too many of us now? Will there be too few in the future?
Experiencing the Eclipse - Combining scientific precision with a sense of wonder
Once Upon a Time - A Folktale for the Solstice
Life Is Simple - Can a 14th century philosopher help with the presentation of climate science?
A Rare Earth - So many things could have gone wrong - Approaching our home planet with humility and a sense of wonder.
Solstice - There are some things we can't change
Earth Day and Another Anniversary – Three years of essays on weather and climate
Tipping Points Revisited – Have We Initiated the Anthropocene? – Maybe so
Stephen J Gould’s Last University Presentation - Courage and professionalism on Earth Day 2002
Earth Day 1 and Earth Day 51 - Never the biggest story in town
The Carbon Cost of War - War destroys human lives, and also the built environment supporting those lives
The Palisades Fire - A tragedy continuing to unfold