cmooney | January 31, 2007Some wit once said something like, "My pessimism extends so far as to suspect the sincerity of the pessimists." As we witness a flurry of activity concerning global warming on Capitol Hill--and with the IPCC report just days from emerging--that's the outlook I'd like to apply to the climate issue.
Just because there's a surge of attention doesn't mean that surge will translate into lasting action. I'm still convinced such action is going to have to wait until after the 2008 election. There's a revealing passage about this in an L.A. Times story today:
"There's going to be a lot of sound and…
cmooney | January 31, 2007A very interesting issue--discussed in comments here and here--has arisen over one aspect of Roger Pielke, Jr.'s testimony yesterday. In that testimony (PDF), Pielke suggested that Waxman's committee had cherry-picked science with the following statement in a memorandum (the original of which I have not been able to locate):
". . . recently published studies have suggested that the impacts [of global warming] include increases in the intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms, increases in wildfires, and loss of wildlife, such as polar bears and walruses."
The above statement on hurricanes…
cmooney | January 31, 2007
Cyclone Dora, in the South Indian basin, was estimated to have 75 knot or about 86 mile per hour maximum sustained winds in the latest advisory from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. That's significantly stronger than any storm yet in 2007, and Dora is expected to intensify further. The storm does not pose any immediate threat to land, although a turn to the west could take it toward La Reunion and perhaps ultimately Madagascar and the African mainland.
In any event, Dora is a reminder that tropical weather is about to get pretty fiesty in the Southern Hemisphere as we move into February and…
cmooney | January 31, 2007Iain Murray is repeating the lame argument made by Darrell Issa at the Waxman hearing yesterday:
The UCS mailed out over 1600 survey forms to climate scientists and based their assertions of political interference on the 297 that got returned. That's a response rate of just 19 percent. OMB guidelines clearly state that a response rate of less than 80 percent requires an investigation of potential biases and an even closer investigation for a response rate lower than 70 percent. A response rate of lower than twenty percent is clearly vulnerable to the charge of a self-selecting sample,…
cmooney | January 30, 2007 Here's hard proof of the RWOS brandishing that I spoke of earlier. I assure you, I had nothing to do with this, but then, I don't exactly object, either.
Apparently Rep. Cooper also had some pretty revealing comments in his opening statement to the Waxman hearing. ThinkProgress has more.
UPDATE: Apparently the whole hearing will re-air tonight on CSPAN:
CSPAN tonight. 08:03 PM EST. 3:38 (est.)
House Committee
Political Influence on Climate Change Research
Oversight and Government Reform
Henry Waxman , D-CA
P.S.: It appears that Rep. Cooper also somehow got his hands on an early copy of my…
cmooney | January 30, 2007
Well, I got off jury duty and managed to get over to the Hill after all. As I write this, the Waxman hearing is still ongoing, and you can watch it here. I have it on good authority from three people that in the opening statements, Rep. Jim Cooper, a Democrat, actually waved a copy of The Republican War on Science around. I'll be looking for that on the replay. [Never mind, here's an image of it. - ed]
As I rode cabs to and from the hearing, I heard radio news coverage both times talking about it--and that itself is a big achievement, it seems to me. Finally, Democrats can set the agenda,…
cmooney | January 30, 2007
Oh well. There's a very important politicization of science hearing (PDF) on the Hill this morning in about an hour, and jury duty is going to prevent me from going. I haven't been picked for a trial yet, but my last "voir dire" also didn't end by the end of the day yesterday...and the Superior Court has some bizarre rule about not being able to pay staff for any overtime hours. So all the potential jurors have to come back and finish the selection process today instead.
Maybe I'll make it over for the end of the Waxman hearing if by some miracle I get off early. In any event, it looks…
cmooney | January 29, 2007While I was battling through the snow on my way to Ithaca to give a talk about my new book, my old one was prompting quite a stir over at the Volokh Conspiracy. Jonathan Adler has done a lengthy, critical review of the book for the journal Regulation, published by the Cato Institute, and that's what touched off all the commentary.
I've been off the "war on science" beat lately and am feeling a tad rusty, but I'm going to try to respond to Adler's review if I have time. Today I start jury duty, which is a bit of a complication, but I still may get around to doing a reply.
In the meantime,…
cmooney | January 27, 2007
In essence, it went like this: Getting to and from Ithaca was a !!%$^# nightmare.
But once I got there, the talk went extremely well.
I won't bother you with all the details about how my flight to Ithaca from LaGuardia, and my back-up flight to Syracuse, were both canceled. About how I then decided to rent a car and drive the 234 miles between New York City and the Cornell Campus. About how I met a vicious snow storm/flurry along I-81 N somewhere in the Poconos between Scranton and Binghamton that forced me off the road--I couldn't see two inches in front of me. About how I then found a…
cmooney | January 25, 2007
Well, I am off to Ithaca today to deliver my first major talk (tomorrow) on the subject of hurricanes and global warming, sponsored by the Cornell Department of Communication and co-sponsored by the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, the Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, and the Ethical, Legal, & Social Issues focus area of New Life Sciences Initiative.
I really appreciate the invite and opportunity to deliver this presentation, as it has been an early chance to develop a talk and accompanying slide show that I will be continuing to hone between now and the…
cmooney | January 24, 2007Seed just published my take on the State of the Union speech, and the role of global warming therein. In essence, it's a very pessimistic outlook. I really doubt we can expect strong action on the issue until a new administration comes in. The current Congress may pass a few bills outlining various forms of emission capping programs, but I doubt they'll become law. In short, look for global warming to become a campaign issue in '08....
cmooney | January 24, 2007 I am a tad frustrated that I have probable jury duty next week. As result, I may have to miss Henry Waxman's January 30th scheduled hearing "regarding political interference in the work of government climate change scientists." I and many others have been pushing for the new Congress to use its investigative powers in this arena for some time, and I always knew that Waxman would make it happen.
Get ready to watch the Bush administration squirm.
In fact, you can already see how it's going to go down when you read Waxman's letter (PDF) to White House Council on Environmental Quality chair Jim…
cmooney | January 24, 2007
Bush's treatment of global warming in the State of the Union address was pretty uninspiring, unless you like vagaries. I have a Seed piece going up about this today so I won't say more, except to point out the actual language so you can see for yourself:
America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.
Well, at least the preceding stuff about fuel economy standards was…
cmooney | January 23, 2007As if there was any doubt....the State of the Union energy/climate policies are already up on the website of the White House. There is some potentially good stuff about renewable fuels and auto efficiency, but there are no mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions in there. There is no "cap and trade" policy. Once again--unless the White House put all of this stuff on the web as an elaborate deception--the breathless "scoops" from the British press about global warming are wrong.
cmooney | January 23, 2007
Well, I have done some quick research, in anticipation of the State of the Union address tonight. I think you folks will get a kick out of this:
2002 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 2. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
2003 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 4. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
2004 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 3. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
2005 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 1. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
2006 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 2. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
Total mentions of God:…
cmooney | January 23, 2007There's a widespread sense that a change is afoot on the climate issue--so much so, in fact, that some commentators are producing what I view as simplistic accounts of how this came about. See for example Sebastian Mallaby in the Washington Post:
Eight months ago, when Gore's climate documentary was released, this state of affairs was inconceivable. Not only was Bush still a player, the case for climate change was widely doubted. Chortling climate-deniers, expecting an easy propaganda victory over the man whose energy-tax proposal they killed in 1993, greeted Gore's movie with glee. A group…
cmooney | January 23, 2007
I was just reading a report (PDF) about the damages caused by Hurricane Catarina, a very anomalous event, to Brazil in 2004. The report is written in English but reading through, I rather doubt that's the first language of its authors. I was amused to come across this paragraph in particular:
The impact was intense over the fauna. Coastal birds were blown towards the valleys and the mountain range situated 40 km from the coast. Many birds died and sickened due to virus infection and inadequate feeding. It was also noticed an increase on the number and aggressiveness of mosquitoes, and farm…
cmooney | January 22, 2007
[Huge waves slam the port city of Wimereux in Northern France.]
Last week I griped about how various media organizations were calling the large scale cyclonic system that slammed Europe a "hurricane." In this post, I'd like to be a bit more positive and look more closely at this weather phenomenon that was dubbed "Kyrill." (Not Hurricane Kyrill.)
The storm had a central pressure that dropped down as low as 964 millibars, according to Wikipedia (which I'm relying on because I can't read German). That helped produce winds as strong as 125 miles per hour. I'm not sure if these are gusts or…
cmooney | January 22, 2007I don't trust the British papers with their various hyperventilating "scoops" about the forthcoming IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. But the Toronto Star just had a story that does sound realistic, reporting on what is purportedly a leaked final draft of the upcoming report's "Summary for Policymakers" section, which is always the most quoted and widely read part of the document.
Assuming this Star story is accurate, there isn't much in it that's very surprising. Apparently the new report attributes recent warming more strongly than ever to human activities. That would make four in a row for…
cmooney | January 21, 2007
The story goes that when Jule Gregory Charney, at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, ran an early numerical weather prediction in 1953, he and his colleagues managed to correctly hindcast a big snowstorm that had hit Washington, D.C., the previous year (fooling forecasters at the time). The quotation above is what Charney apparently said in a late night call to Harry Wexler, research director of the U.S. Weather Bureau. The moment has come to be regarded as a kind of turning point in meteorological history.
I couldn't help thinking of those words as our first snowfall--or at least,…