hrynyshyn | November 18, 2009Too precious not to pass along:
Canadian Tourism Federation Welcome Video from Canadian Tourism Federation on Vimeo.
In case there's any doubt. There is no "Canadian Tourism Federation."
hrynyshyn | November 12, 2009A fascinating paper about to be published in Geophysical Review Letters compares the number of record highs and lows at temperature stations across the U.S. since the 1940s. The authors found that we're getting more record highs and fewer record lows, in a pattern that yet again confirms that climatologists know what they're talking about. They also extrapolate that trend into the future, with some interesting results, but first let's deal with the past.
Gerald A. Meehl*, Claudia Tebaldi, Guy Walton, David Easterling and Larry McDaniel analysed millions of U.S. temperature records for the…
hrynyshyn | November 10, 2009In an otherwise typically error-dominated Newsweek column, George F. Will spelled "minuscule" correctly. So I don't want to read any complaints that Will gets everything wrong each time he writes about climate change.
Of course, that doesn't mean we can't correct his myriad other mistakes. Here's one paragraph, with some necessary edits, just to get us started.
There is much an unremarkable level of debate about the reasons for, and the importance of, the fact that global warming has not increased continued for that long [11 years]. What we know is that computer models did not did predict…
hrynyshyn | November 9, 2009Climate Cover-Up
The Crusade to Deny Global Warming
Greystone Books, 250 pages
Canadian public relations agent James "DeSmogBlog" Hoggan has assembled a comprehensive history of corporate efforts to stall action on climate change in a modest little book that should shock and appall anyone who's been living under a rock for the past three decades. For the rest of us, Climate Cover-Up offers few new details. It still serves, however, as a convenient hard-copy reference manual for when the Internet is down and you need a rejuvenating jolt of outrage to help you decide which companies to boycott…
hrynyshyn | November 4, 2009(Pseudo)-Skeptical Environmental Bjorn Lomborg advises in the Wall Street Journal that spending money on anti-malarial campaigns makes more sense than, and by implication is morally superior to, spending money on cutting carbon emissions. But to make his case, he has to abandon all hope of ever being invited to join the Vulcan Science Academy.
It may be true that every dollar we spend combating the vectors of malaria and the treatments for it will save more lives than those who would be spared the disease if we spend it instead on avoiding catastrophic global warming. But Lomborg is abandons…
hrynyshyn | October 30, 2009Rarely does a blogging day pass that I don't stumble upon some post or comment or email that champions the value of skepticism of anthropogenic global warming and the need for scientists to answer their critics. So it's refreshing to read a concise and cogent reminder of why such attacks are misguided. From UBC's Simon Donner we get this rejoinder, made in reference to demands that real-climatologist Michael "hockey stick" Mann answer the criticism of non-climatologist Steve McIntyre
Think of it this way: wouldn't you rather that doctors spend their time actually developing treatments for…
hrynyshyn | October 29, 2009The costs of doing something about climate change are the subject of much debate these, and Canada is no exception. The federal government, like the ones before it, has shown little interest in honest analysis, so one of the country's biggest banks, TD Bank, decided to pay for a study all on its own. The results, which the bank's economists call "robust," represent perhaps the most comprehensive effort to nail down those costs, at least for one country. And what did the consultants they hired to write the report find? Good news, actually.
Unless, of course, you happen to own a piece of the…
hrynyshyn | October 27, 2009By now, I'd expect the authors of Superfreakonomics are having mixed feelings about their new book. On the one hand, they're making good money as the book enjoys healthy sales. On the other, just about every actual expert in the field to which Chapter 5 is devoted -- climate change -- has savaged their take on the subject.
This week comes perhaps the most devastating criticism, from four statisticians whose analysis of global temperature trends demonstrates just how wrong Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner got the numbers. And an AP story on the statisticians' analysis raises some serious…
hrynyshyn | October 26, 2009For those who really grok the precautionary principle, aiming for a lower, and therefore inherently safer, maximum atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration is the logical choice. Civilization arose over the last 10,000 years in a world in which CO2 represented just 280 of every million atoms we and every other respiring organism inhaled. Given the uncertainty over what level of the trace gas leads to dramatic changes in the climate -- we know there's a relationship but haven't been able to nail down the tipping point -- the closer to pre-industrial levels the better.
But there's a problem.…
hrynyshyn | October 23, 2009Another depressing poll result from one of the more reputable sources:
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones [excellent!] and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures.
Why the drop?
According to the experts that appear in the Guardian's story, it's the economy and corporate propaganda:
Michael…
hrynyshyn | October 23, 2009Before criticizing our newest ScienceBlogger, David Sloan Wilson, who has moved here from the Huffington Post, let me add my voice to those who are welcoming the move. It is a good thing to have such an esteemed and accomplished scientist among our ranks. But like fellow blogger Eric Michael Johnson, I found David's first post in these parts is more than a little unsettling.
Under the headline of "Goodbye HuffPost, Hello ScienceBlogs: Science as a Religion that Worships Truth as its God," he provocatively writes:
Science can even be regarded as a religion that worships truth as its god. It…
hrynyshyn | October 22, 2009Not being a regular, or even occasional, listener of Rush Limbaugh, I have no idea if this week's obscene call for New York Times climate reporter Andy Revkin to commit suicide was simply par for the course. We all know that Limbaugh is an entertainer who is just doing what he needs to do to attract attention, maintain audiences and retain advertiser support. It's a free country (for most of us). But I'm a journalist and I cover climate change, too. So this hits too close to home to ignore.
On Tuesday, Limbaugh's radio show included this line: "Mr. Revkin, why don't you just go kill yourself…
hrynyshyn | October 20, 2009In which your humble blogger makes a desperate attempt to write something original about the latest affront to reasonable discourse in the global warming crisis.
There's little point in duplicating the devastating criticism that has been leveled at Superfreakonomics, the sequel to the wildly popular book, Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I will point to just two examples: Gavin Schmidt's take-down at Real Climate, and Joe Romm's series at Climate Progress. But there are plenty more.
Even NPR couldn't run an interview with one of the authors without including a…
hrynyshyn | October 16, 2009Every now and then a commenter at this or any number of other climate-oriented blogs spews out the phrase "the height of arrogance" and uses it in a way that defies logic. For example, one "Bruce" recently wrote
"It is the height of arrgoance [sic] to suggest a trace gas like CO2 has anything to do with the climate cycles."
No, Bruce, it's not arrogant to accurately portray the chemistry and thermodynamics of climatology. This morning, however, I did find a case to which the phrase might be applied with some degree of accuracy:
Alberta's oil sands producers should be allowed to significantly…
hrynyshyn | October 15, 2009Some group of bloggers has decided that today, Oct. 15, 2009, is "Blog Action Day." And this year's theme is climate change. Excellent, Smithers.
My instincts are to ignore such declarations. It's always an International Year of This or National X Awareness Month, or World Y Day. Community newspapers take advantage of free copy and extra revenue by organizing special advertising supplements around them. I've always thought that they interfere with genuine news values by wasting space and resources on what are more or less abritrary pet-project campaigns.
But I've been planning on writing a…
hrynyshyn | October 14, 2009Hmmm. Not sure this will accomplish what the British government hopes it will.
On the other hand, the U.K. is far ahead of most of the rest of the world when it comes to getting serious about greenhouse-gas emission legislation -- no one else has binding targets, and 34 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 is among the most ambitious around. So maybe they do know what they're doing. Probably not, but still...
hrynyshyn | October 12, 2009Most observers of climate change media coverage long ago stopped wringing their hands every time Fox News reported that global warming has stopped and that humans are responsible anyway, mostly to avoid calluses. A while back it seemed like Fox might be ready to embrace the actual science, but old habits die hard. For example, Fox took a Sky News story back in August that suggested we may be on the verge of returning to record warm years and gave it the headline of "Natural Factors Could Cause Global Warming."
Yes, the story was about solar activity, but here's the nub of the science that was…
hrynyshyn | October 9, 2009Sugar-book author H. Leighton Steward, about whom I have written before, was on Capitol Hill this week arguing that rising CO2 concentrations are nothing to worry about. Among his claims is this, as reported by US News & World Report's Paul Bedard:
As an example, he said that Earth's atmosphere currently has about 338 [sic] parts per million of CO2 and that in Navy subs, the danger level for carbon dioxide isn't reached until the air has 8,000 parts per million of CO2.
If there was a prize for most irrelevant factoid ever offered in the history of climate change policy debates, other…
hrynyshyn | October 8, 2009Let's just make one thing clear: I believe anthropogenic climate change constitutes the most serious public policy challenge of our time, second only in the history of civilization to global thermonuclear warfare. It's hard to overstate the danger of business as usual when it comes to our fossil-fuel emissions. If, as a growing number of climatologists believe, we are headed for a world that is 4 °C warmer than pre-industrial norms by the latter half of this century, then averting that scenario should be at the top of everyone's priority list.
Still, it is still possible to exaggerate the…
hrynyshyn | October 5, 2009Well, I play Air hockey, Ball hockey, Barn Hockey, Bubble Hockey, Field hockey, Floor hockey, Ice hockey, Kitchen hockey, Road hockey, Roller hockey, Table hockey, Twist hockey
And I play hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey all the time!
Take shots!
-- Jughead
Take shots, indeed. Steve McIntyre is at it again, Tim "Deltoid" Lambert has the goods, and Gavin at Real Climate has an even more snarky response. But if you're too lazy to read the whole torrid thing, I'll summarize, because I'm pretty good at it, if I…