hrynyshyn | November 30, 2007"It" is the great geoengineering debate. And the stakes have never been higher.
The basics are ably described by Chris Mooney and his blog partner Sheril Kirshenbaum has already supplied a less-than-appreciative response. Even though there are still a good number of misinformed folks out there who can't accept the reality of climate change, some sectors of the scientific community have already given up on the hope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and moved on to thinking about ways to counteract the resulting warming.
What we're talking about is fiddling with the atmospheric and oceanic…
hrynyshyn | November 28, 2007Coal is turning out to be one of those political litmus-test issues for those worried about climate change. And as usual, the country is polarized. The Iowa Utilities Board is the on the side of angels. Holding the fort with Satan are Arkansas and Indiana, among others. It splits on predictable party lines when it comes to presidential politics, too. But leading the fight against coal isn't a White House hopeful. It's someone who's supposed to stay out of politics. None other than NASA climate guru James Hansen.
First, some context. Iowa recently rejected an application to build a coal-fired…
hrynyshyn | November 19, 2007My favorite Sunday morning NPR radio host , Liane Hansen, introduced a story about the release of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change synthesis report by describing its contents as "terrifying." Later in the day I came across an AFP report on a study from Australia's Climate Institute, from which we learn that "greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than worst-case predictions" from the IPCC. So reality is worse than terrifying? Hold on a sec.
It is true that the Australian report does make for more worrisome reading than the IPCC synthesis. For one thing, the latter is…
hrynyshyn | November 17, 2007Our observer of all things antipodean, Deltoid Tim, reminds us that there are still some pseudoskeptics out there of some stature who not only cling to the notion that humans aren't to blame for climate change, but also continue to insist the world isn't warming at all. Nigel Lawson, a member of that bizarre and elite club known as the British House of Lords, was on a New Zealand television morning show the other day, fielding softballs on the subject, when he actually said:
"There's no global warming happening at the present time. That is clear. That's accepted on all sides."
But I suppose…
hrynyshyn | November 15, 2007Nature's editors have written an excellent summary of the state of climate politics in anticipation of the Bali negotiations on a post-Kyoto regime. Despite recapping all the daunting challenges, including the technological hurdles facing those interested in carbon capture and sequestration, the editorial manages to strike an optimistic tone ;;;;; except for the penultimate observation:
The outlook for the US delegation is less promising. Its negotiators will include ideologues who will stop at nothing to derail the humble progress the rest of the world has managed to make through the Kyoto…
hrynyshyn | November 12, 2007Forget efficient, clean, renewable technologies. Never mind grandiose geo-engineering schemes. No need to choose between carbon taxes and emissions caps. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has a cheaper, simpler alternative to the climate change conundrum: prayer.
Perdue's state-wide day of prayer, scheduled for this Tuesday, isn't an answer to climate change in general, just the crazy drought that's taken hold in much of the US Southeast. Atlanta has maybe 70 days worth of drinkable water left in the one reservoir that city engineers assumed would be forever sufficient.
Up here in the southeaster…
hrynyshyn | November 12, 2007Begin your week with a dose of hilarity at the expense of the editor of the Ely Times, a modest little publication for some of the very few readers in Nevada who don't live in Vegas or Reno. If you have time you can then let the story drag you in a more substantive issue.
In an attempt to make sense of the role of carbon dioxide in climate change -- the somewhat inaccurate but useful metaphor of the greenhouse effect -- editor Kent Harper ends up mired in a war of words with climatologist Michael Mann over just how cold the Earth would be without atmospheric CO2. Of course, Harper loses, and…
hrynyshyn | November 9, 2007The Seventh Day Adventists aren't the brightest lights on the tree (although as they don't celebrate Christmas, I suppose that's not the best metaphor), but sometimes their propaganda astounds even me. The latest edition of the church's monthly magazine, Signs of the Times, offered freely in streetboxes around the world, asks "Has Science Found God?" Gee, I wonder what the answer found within will be?
That's the difference between secular journalism and religious propaganda . When Time or Newsweek asks such questions (Is OJ really guilty?) you know the magazine will leave the conclusion up to…
hrynyshyn | November 8, 2007Vote now, before the polls close today at 10 pm ET, in the Best Science Blog competition. It's neck and neck between Bad Astronomy, which is a pretty cool read, and Climate Audit, which is a place where people who refuse to accept the science on climate change hang out. So help give BA the edge.
hrynyshyn | November 8, 2007By now you may of heard of a fictional paper in a fictional peer-reviewed journal that claims to prove that bacteria, not humans, are to blame for climate change. Here's a link to "Carbon dioxide production by benthic bacteria: the death of manmade global warming theory?" (Journal of Geoclimatic Studies (2007) 13:3. 223-231) in case you're wondering what it's actually all about. Already some observers are depressed that the hoax was revealed before more gullible denialists got taken in, which only a few did, such as this poor chump.
Earlier this morning, Reuters ran a story, "Hoax bacteria…
hrynyshyn | November 8, 2007So Hillary has finally joined the bandwagon and called for an 80 percent cut, from 1990 levels, in fossil-fuel emissions by 2050, joining Edwards and Obama, Bill McKibben and most of the environmental movement. William "Stoat" McConnelly is skeptical. As well we should be. I am, of course, highly skeptical as well. But is that response sufficient and appropriate?
There are lots of reasons to treat such a goal as wildly unrealistic. According to the latest report from the International Energy Association, "if governments around the world stick with current policies ... the world's energy needs…
hrynyshyn | November 2, 2007Yet another study undermines the seemingly obvious concept that trees are inherently good for what ails the planet, climate-wise. Carbon-offset vendors take note: you could be making things worse. They're still needed in the Amazon, of course, but not so much in Ontario.
Tom Gower et al write in Nature that forest fires in northern boreal zones are helping turn forests into net carbon emitters instead of the sponges most people think they are. The paper, "Fire as the dominant driver of central Canadian boreal forest carbon balance," also puts the blame for the change in fire patterns on…
hrynyshyn | November 1, 2007I had a little fun yesterday -- at my own expense -- by writing what a few commenters correctly identified as an attempt to generate traffic on this blog. The subject was the use of the term "woman president," which I actually do think is poor English, but my motivation wasn't convincing anyone stop using it.
It all began over the weekend, when I heard the term on a BBC news broadcast and a day later on NPR. As a former copy editor who had come across the use of "woman" as an adjective before, it continues to grate on my nerves, and I'm not the only one. Not because it's wrong, but just…
hrynyshyn | October 31, 2007For reasons unknown to this observer, Tim Russert has in some parts a reputation as a serious journalist. Last night's Democratic presidential debate should put that notion to rest. Russert asked Dennis Kucinich to verify a passage from a new book by reincarnation nut-case Shirley MacLaine in which he is said to have seen a UFO, and then put the question of extraterrestrial life to Barack Obama. What the frak?
Both answers -- Kucinich: "I did ... it was unidentified" and Obama: I don't know" -- were the only possible reasonable responses. The problem with Russert's questions is not that…
hrynyshyn | October 29, 2007You know the English language is in trouble when both NPR and the BBC World Service decide that "woman" is an adjective, as in "Argentina has just elected its first woman president." As a copy editor, I had to fix that one numerous times, usually in the copy of young reporters whose excuse was that the proper adjective, "female," was too clinical, and they didn't want their story to read as if it concerned a science project. Oh really?
First, that's no excuse. "Woman" is noun. Look it up. I always managed to win the argument by pointing out that you wouldn't seriously consider using the…
hrynyshyn | October 27, 2007Mark H at the Denialism blog asks if a story on CNN's website about how to get rid of ghosts in your house is a joke. Turns out the original story is from the online version of This Old House magazine (to which I subscribe, living as I do in an old house in need of renovations.) And considering how down to earth the magazine is, a seemingly serious piece on ghosts must be a joke, right?
Perhaps it was intended that way, But it wasn't taken that wasy by many readers who posted comments. The story, by Keith Pandolfi, begins with an interview with a real, professional ghost-buster, Troy Taylor.…
hrynyshyn | October 26, 2007There's no getting around it: the climate is just too damn complex, and computer models, "no matter how powerful, can never give a precise prediction of how greenhouse gases will warm the Earth, according to a new study" (New Scientist) So say a couple of guys who have published their mathematical musing in Science. But this changes nothing.
Those who refuse to accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change will continue to insist we can't act without better data, and those who understand the science will continue to argue that we have enough information to justify acting now.
But for…
hrynyshyn | October 26, 2007
Eighteen years ago British journalist/historian James Burke wrote and starred in a TV documentary on climate change. After the Warming (downloadable version available at Google Video) was presented in the guise of a future historian's review of the events leading up to a time, in 2050, when the world had come to grips with the consequences of global warming. I gave my copy to a friend in 1994, and have been trying to find another since. This week I finally did. And watching it now is positively eerie. And depressing.
Eerie because it begins by describing things like the "full-scale…
hrynyshyn | October 25, 2007A paper speculating on the mechanisms responsible for the origin of life on Earth gets retracted, 52 years after it was published. Why? Because the author, a secular chemistry professor at Brooklyn College, is tired of creationists using it to support their arguments against evolution.
How sad. In his letter to American Scientist, where the paper was published in 1955, Jacobson writes that he discovered some errors in his paper:
Retraction this untimely is not normally undertaken, but in this case I request it because of continued irresponsible contemporary use by creationists who have…
hrynyshyn | October 24, 2007No, I don't mean that the idea the world's oil production has peaked and is now declining has been discredited. Anything but. Rather a seemingly respectable group of parliamentarians and scientists has concluded that the peak has already happened. Last year, to be precise, according to the Energy Watch Group. (PDF here)
The major result from this analysis is that world oil production has peaked in 2006.
Production will start to decline at a rate of several percent per year. By 2020, and even more
by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can…