Climate Change
Tag archives for Climate Change
Understanding Storms and Global Warming: A Quaint Parable
Posted by Greg Laden on May 21, 2013 
A quaint New England rocky creek Imagine standing next to Parable Creek, an imaginary rocky brook in New England. The water is rushing past you from left to right, around the rocks that emerge tall above the surface of the stream, mounding over the top of those that are lower down. The deepest parts of…
Are there more tornadoes because of global warming?
Posted by Greg Laden on May 21, 2013 
There are good reasons to believe that global warming leads to more storminess, but the exact nature of that transition is unclear and hard to measure. Part of the reason for this difficulty is that a given type of storm may become more likely under certain conditions caused by climate change, while a different kind…
Why Global Warming’s Effects Will Be Worse Than You Were Thinking
Posted by Greg Laden on May 20, 2013 
The story of climate change has always been more of worst-case, or at least, worser-case scenarios developing and less about good news showing up out of nowhere and making us unexpectedly happy. A few decades ago, it became clear that the release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere primarily as CO2 was going to cause…
The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania
Posted by Greg Laden on May 20, 2013 
There is a book called “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania” produced by the Heartland Institute. The Heartland Institute is famous for doing all that work to prove that smoking is not bad for you, and more recently, that climate change is not real or is not important or…
Will God Allow Us To Ruin Our Planet?
Posted by Greg Laden on May 16, 2013 It is being debated in the US Senate! (Unofficially.) Here’s Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on the issue: See also: Sen. Whitehouse destroys colleague who said God won’t allow climate change And this: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Global Warming Consensus: We can haz it!
Posted by Greg Laden on May 16, 2013 
An important study has just been published1 examining the level of consensus among scientists about climate change. The issue at hand is this: What is the level of agreement in the scientific community about the reality of climate change and about the human role in climate change? The new paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic…
Dark Snow Project on The Weather Channel
Posted by Greg Laden on May 16, 2013 The melting of the Greenland ice sheet is a problem, and it seems to be happening faster than scientists had originally thought it might. This is probably because of soot darkening the snow, which collects solar heat and melts the ice. Some, perhaps much, of this soot may come from the extensive fires we are…
Can Obama’s Organizing For Action (OFA) help save the planet? The jury is out.
Posted by Greg Laden on May 15, 2013 You’ve gotta love South Minneapolis. My friend Sharon Sund passed me an email this morning about an Organizing for Action meeting in South Minneapolis to discuss climate change activism. Sharon and I had been talking about local climate change activism earlier in the week so she thought I’d liked to go to this meeting and…
Blockading A Coal Plant in Massachusetts (Breaking news)
Posted by Greg Laden on May 15, 2013 
Environmental activists have just taken up a position off shore of the Brayton Point coal plant, near Fall River Massachusetts, in an effort to block access by a ship attempting to deliver coal there. THIS is their web site, where there is a live Ustream. One of the activists, Jay O’Hara, is tweeting from here:…
Crowdfunding the Dark Snow Project
Posted by Greg Laden on May 14, 2013 New research indicates that the reflectivity of the surface of the Greenland Glacier is decreasing due to the deposition of dark particles from fires on the surface of the ice. This phenomenon is contributing to unprecedented melting of the ice sheet. This is a huge concern. One of the most significant outcomes of global warming…
Climate Scientist Mann on 400 ppm CO2
Posted by Greg Laden on May 13, 2013 Climate Scientists Michael Mann, author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, interviewed on Democracy Now:
Bill O’Reilly, you are ON NOTICE
Posted by Greg Laden on May 8, 2013 Stop lying to your fans. They are beginning to figure it out. Watch: Here is some background.
Genie Scott: Denialism of Climate Change and Evolution
Posted by Greg Laden on May 7, 2013 
Here is a presentation by Genie Scott of the National Center for Science Education. Far more people are climate change deniers than evolution deniers, but both camps use similar strategies to promote their views. Genie Scott explores the connections, the similarities, and the divergent ideologies. Where: New York. When: 10/23/2011. Hosted by the New York…
Putting the 400 ppm CO2 thing in perspective
Posted by Greg Laden on April 30, 2013 Before the release of vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere mainly through the burning of fossil fuels, the atmospheric concentration of this gas was about 300 ppm or a bit more. Soon, that number will be 400 ppm. How soon? Let’s see … it is now Tuesday at about 7pm. Maybe mid morning tomorrow?…
Bangladesh and Sea Level Rise
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2013 
You’ve all heard about the horrible tragedy in Bangladesh, still unfolding. Not to distract from that event, or diminish its importance, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at that low lying country in relation to long term sea level rise caused by climate change. I am making no claim here about…
James Hansen’s Legacy
Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2013 
James Hansen, author of “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity“, recently announced his retirement from his position as director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. My friend John Abraham write’s about Hansen’s retirement in his inaugural* post in the new blog “Climate…
The Truth About Global Warming’s Famous Slowdown
Posted by Greg Laden on April 24, 2013 Dana Nuccitelli writes: The rate of heat building up on Earth over the past decade is equivalent to detonating about 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second. Take a moment to visualize 4 atomic bomb detonations happening every single second. That’s the global warming that we’re frequently told isn’t happening. That’s Dana’s opening paragraph in the…
“Denialism on a Large Scale”
Posted by Greg Laden on April 16, 2013 “Denialism on a Large Scale” Greg Laden on Atheists Talk #214, April 14, 2013 I was interviewed on Minnesota Atheists Talk Radio about climate change and climate change denialism last Sunday AM. Since you were in church, I’m sure you missed it! But you can catch the podcast HERE.
Why is winter not ending?
Posted by Greg Laden on April 15, 2013 
Why is it snowing so much in the Northern US States this Spring? Two words: Global Warming. Let me ‘splain. Weather is all about air and moisture. The distribution of air is uneven, with some places having more air in big piles, other places having less air, into which the extra air from the big…
The Link Between Climate Change Denialism and Fundamental Christianity
Posted by Greg Laden on April 12, 2013 I think the primary political framework for climate change denialism is Libertarianism, with a lot of overlap with Tea Partiers, who are essentially Libertarians Without Brains. Libertarians can’t live with the fact that their philosophy guarantees the misery and horrors of climate change so most of them (but not all) exist in full denial. At…
What is climate sensitivity, why does it matter, and who’s got what wrong and why?
Posted by Greg Laden on April 11, 2013 
Climate sensitivity is the number of degrees C that the earth’s average temperature (of the atmosphere air and water on top of the “earth” per se) will increase with a doubling of “pre-industrial CO2″ in the environment. This is an important number … and it is a number, and to save you the suspense, the…
Do the math: A climate movie coming out soon
Posted by Greg Laden on April 11, 2013 
Here’s the trailer: The web site including information on screenings, is here.
Climate Change: Radio update on science and denialism
Posted by Greg Laden on April 9, 2013 
I’ll be interviewed by Stephanie Zvan regarding the current status of climate change research, what’s happening in the climate these days, with a special focus on climate change denialism, this coming Sunday morning on Minnesota Atheists Talk Radio. There are a lot of interesting things going on with the science as well as the politics.…
The Science of Climate Change
Posted by Greg Laden on April 9, 2013 A lecture by Professor Paul Valdes, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.
Global Warming Skepticism In Decline
Posted by Greg Laden on April 9, 2013 There is a new Gallup poll that together with earlier data from Gallup provides some interesting information about attitudes in the US about global warming. Earlier polls have shown increase and decrease in concern about global warming, and changes in what people think of news about climate change and the severity of the problem. Recently,…
Arctic Sea Ice Update
Posted by Greg Laden on April 8, 2013 Time to start watching the Arctic Sea Ice breakup. This happens every year, but as you know, the total amount of ice left each summer has been reducing, and the “old ice” which forms a basis for the arctic ice refreeze is disappearing. The result of this change in arctic ice patterns has been a…
Treatment of Climate Change and Hockey Stick Controversy in Wikipedia
Posted by Greg Laden on March 31, 2013 The current Wikipedia entry for Climate Change has about 7000 words on that one page (including notes, all the other words that show up on Wikipedia pages). The current Wikipedia entry for the Hockey Stick Controversy has about 25,000 words in all. The controversy over one aspect of climate change, the basic observation of temperature…
Climate Change Denialism
Posted by Greg Laden on March 27, 2013 There are two very important posts out there that I’d like to make you aware of related to climate change denialism. Here’s the teasers, please click through and read them. If you like them, tweet them! First, from The Scientist, an opinion piece by Michael Mann, author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars:…
Hunters, Anglers, and Climate Change: Win a free shotgun!
Posted by Greg Laden on March 27, 2013 This comes form Peter Sinclair’s blog: The Conservation Hawks is a new group dedicated to harnessing the power of sportsmen to address climate change. Stop. Before you give in to anger, or to the “conservation fatigue” that can fall upon us like a giant wet carpet whenever climate change is mentioned, consider this: If you…
Arctic Sea Ice Cracking Thing (Updated)
Posted by Greg Laden on March 23, 2013 It is important to get this right. There is something interesting happening in the Arctic right now, and some people are pointing to it and jumping up and down and yelling about how it is a major climate change event. But it may very well not be. Or it could be. The thing that is…
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