illconsidered | January 13, 2009A frequent commenter on many of my "How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic" articles has just taken me to task for what he sees as revealing inconsistencies.
'paul', who is generally respectful but still very antagonistic to the whole AGW concept, quotes me from various places saying at one time "The translation of what the science is
saying into the language of the public is this: Global warming is
definitely happening and it is definitely because of human activities and
it will definitely continue as long as CO2 keeps rising in the atmosphere." and in other places saying or agreeing with the…
illconsidered | January 12, 2009 Another Week of Climate Disruption News
Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
(skip to bottom) January 11, 2009 Top Stories:Coal Sludge, Tim DeChristopher Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica, Grumbine, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Corals, Desertification, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts…
illconsidered | January 9, 2009So it seems there is another advantage to owning a hybrid! It can double as an emergency generator in case of a blackout:
WHERE WAS YOUR HYBRID WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT?
Ever been caught with no power in the midst of a winter storm and not have a generator? Well, if you have a hybrid, you may not need one. An enterprising Boston man hooked up his house to his Toyota Prius recently during a three-day-long power outage. The Boston Herald reports: "John Sweeney of Harvard, Mass., has provided a tantalizing glimpse of the future. ... Sweeney, an electrical engineer, told the Boston Business…
illconsidered | January 8, 2009A video story from ABC news here tells how Glacier National Park has gone from somewhere between 120 and 150 glaciers 100 years ago to a couple of dozen today. Yikes! And a scientist they interview who has spent years monitoring them has gone from predicting they will be completely gone by 2050 to they will be completely gone by 2020.
It's an interesting video with some compelling before/after shots of some of the glaciers.
Then again, maybe it's just a side effect of NASA's fudging the temperature record....
illconsidered | January 8, 2009So I get a lot of "sceptical" comments on the "How to Talk to a Sceptic" guide, as one might well imagine. They cover quite a range from subtly misguided to poorly informed to angry political rants. I always try to answer if it seems like there might be a point.
A recent comment, made on the main guide page (usually a bad sign), is a bit of a head scratcher in terms of assessing whether it is sincere and whether there is a point in replying.
While, as I said, it is posted on the main page, Frederick targets the "It's cold in Wagga-Wagga" article and he is upset at me because I imply that it…
illconsidered | January 7, 2009Real Climate has a brief discussion of some recent research connecting the Younger Dryas cooling with a comet impact event.
They point to Open Mind which has some very interesting discussion.
Just FYI...
illconsidered | January 7, 2009I must confess, not looking at the numbers or anything, I have always mentally dismissed the impact of air travel on humanity's carbon footprint. But looking at the very cool video below my impression is a bit different!
Notice how the day-night terminator moves through the scene:
Anyone know where I could find a down-loadable, high resolution version of that?
[UPDATE] Thanks to Patrick in the comments: "Hi-Quality Versions available here, right at the Source: http://radar.zhaw.ch/"
illconsidered | January 6, 2009Here are this week's climate related podcasts (and some on only tangentially relevant subjects!).
NOTE: Presentation of content in this list does not imply endorsement of the views expressed within and I may or may not have listened to it myself! Please highlight good, bad or interesting aspects in the comments. You can email suggestions for specific items to include next time or additional sites to keep an eye on to a.few.things.illconsidered@gmail.com
Happy listening!
Quirks and Quarks:
Sucking CO2 (source page here) - "Ever wonder why we can't just build big machines to suck the…
illconsidered | January 6, 2009One of my first questions when I came to sci.environment for an education a few long years ago was "Does anyone know of a good resource for climate related information I can put on my mp3 player?"
I did not get much or any response then, but since I have found a few interesting podcasts that often have climate science related stories on my own.
So I thought I would make a new weekly posting out of it, "Climate science for your iPod", similar to H. E. Taylor's weekly Global Warming News Roundup.
Today will be the first installment, and I will endeavor to have one every Tuesday. Presentation…
illconsidered | January 5, 2009I found this YouTube clip via Crooks and Liars of James Hansen on Democracy Now. It also contains some highlights of other Democracy Now interviews, including one of Science Blogs' own Chris Mooney.
He talks about the political muzzling he has experience under both parties during his time at NASA. (But don't the denialists tell us of collusion between scaremongering politicians and money grubbing scientists?
Funny how the denialists tell us of collusion between scaremongering politicians and money grubbing scientists and yet the reality is NASA's earth sciences budget being cut and…
illconsidered | January 5, 2009 Another Week of Climate Disruption News
Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
(skip to bottom) January 4, 2009 Top Stories:Tennessee Coal Sludge, YD Impact Theory, Hansen Letter, Year End Roundups Melting Arctic, Arctic Geopolitics, Antarctica, Contrails, Particulates, Abrupt Climate Change Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Carbon Cycle, Feedbacks, Glaciers, Sea Levels Impacts, Forests, Corals, Wacky Weather,…
illconsidered | December 30, 2008The following article is a guest post by H. E. Taylor, who you might recognize as the one who graciously provides us with the weekly GW news roundups.
The Ecological Crunch and the Dyer Scale
When I saw the headline, "50 percent of all species disappearing"[2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] my first thought was of the Dyer scale. In his 2004 book, Future Tense, Gwynne Dyer defines a logarithmic scale of disasters in order to get a sense of proportion about terrorism. The idea can be applied more generally.Here is how he defines it:"If we are ever to get some sense of proportion back about terrorism, we…
illconsidered | December 29, 2008 Another Week of Climate Disruption News
Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
(skip to bottom) Another Week of Global Warming News Sipping from the internet firehose... December 28, 2008 Top Stories:Tennessee Coal Sludge, USCCSP on ACC, EEStor Patent, Economics, 2008-In-Review Melting Arctic, Arctic Geopolitics, Antarctica, Civilization Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Glaciers, Sea Levels Impacts, Forests, Climate Refugees,…
illconsidered | December 22, 2008 Another Week of Climate Disruption News
Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
(skip to bottom) December 21, 2008 Top Stories:Poznan, AGU, Abrupt Climate Change, Methane Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica, Recession, Year End, Cosmic Rays, Earth Hour, 350 ppm, Grumbine, Free Science Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperature Record, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Corals, Wacky Weather…
illconsidered | December 17, 2008How's this for jaw dropping, mind-boggling, unintentional irony?
Question to the Bush administration at this year's UN climate change talks:
If you look back over the course of the last few years, is there anything you would have done differently or is there anything you wished had happened but didn't happen?
Answer:
I wish first that Russia had made its mind up sooner as to whether it was going to join Kyoto or not.
Read the particulars here. (No it won't make anymore sense)
illconsidered | December 16, 2008My first Common Lisp programming job was for Mercury Scheduling (no longer around) working on the back end of airline crew control software. The main focus was assisting crew controllers in scheduling personnel on flights. We had to satisfy literally hundreds of constraints from union regulations, government regulations to...what else?...oh yeah, the constraints of reality like not being in two places at once or starting a new shift 1000 miles away in an hour's time (computers are stupid, you have to tell them everything!).
One thing I learned is just how complicated time can be when you…
illconsidered | December 15, 2008...interviews who??
Fatih Birol is the Chief Economist for the International Energy Authority, the agency that the whole world (or at least the "official" part of that world) relies on for forecasts about energy production and demand. This is the organization that governments around the world like to cite when dismissing as crackpots people warning about peak oil and the coming "oil shock".
This makes him a remarkably important person in terms of influence on world affairs. What is more central to our modern civilization than energy sources and consumption?
Well, now this man and his agency…
illconsidered | December 15, 2008 Sipping from the internet firehose...
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
(skip to bottom) December 14, 2008 Top Stories:Poznan, EU 20/20/20 Plan, Recession Melting Arctic, Wilkins SatWebCam, Methane, CCPI, Late Comment Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Carbon Cycle, Feedbacks, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels Impacts, Forests, Corals, Climate Refugees, Wacky Weather, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration,…
illconsidered | December 13, 2008Via last Thursday's APOD, I came to this site where I downloaded an excellent, high-res video about some recent research out of Germany. Over the last 16 years, a team of astronomers have taken images of a tiny patch of sky that is the very center of the milky way. By doing this they have been able to analyze the motion of 28 stars that are orbiting a supermassive blackhole that is the center of our galaxy.
I highly recommend the full video (232MB .m4v) but here is a small taste of the phenomenon from youtube:
One of the star's orbits is only 16 years long, and it gets as close to the…
illconsidered | December 11, 2008This is too hilarious for words, seven lumps of coal wearing scarves and toques singing Christmas carols about "clean coal" and energy independence!
There are six to chose from, I didn't get far but my favorite is transcribed below:
Frosty the Coalman, is a jolly happy soul,
He's abundant here in America and he helps our economy roll.
Frosty the Coalman's getting cleaner every dayHe's affordable and adorable and helps workers keep their pay.There must have been some magic in clean coal technology,For when they looked for pollutants there were nearly none to see.Oh, Frosty the Coalman, is a…