Climate Change
gregladen | April 29, 2013James 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 Consensus - The 97%" ...
What does this mean for climate science and the future of the Earth? It is impossible to know now but instead of looking forward, I want to shine a light on what Jim has done for climate science, what he signifies to…
gregladen | April 24, 2013Dana 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 inaugural blog post in a new two-person blog called Climate Consensus - The 97% which started up today at The Guardian. The other blogger is my friend John Abraham.
Both of these authors are climate scientists. Dan is famous for his work at Sketpical…
gregladen | April 23, 2013No, it does not
We've had a winter-like spring here in Minnesota, and it was darn chilly on Saturday. In fact, we had a record low of 21F.
Paul Douglas, of Weather Nation did some digging: He tells us that while that was the first record low since 2004, there have been 42 record highs since Januray 1st of that year. The highs win. The Twin Cities is warming, and in this regard, we are not atypical! Global warming is real, folks.
gregladen | April 23, 2013Andy Lee Robinson's latest visualo-info-graphico-depiction of the loss of Arctic Sea Ice:
gregladen | 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.
gregladen | April 15, 2013Why 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 piles of air tends to spill. The big piles form because the surface beneath is relatively warm, causing the air to expand more than in adjoining areas. As air falls off these giant mounds of seeming nothingness, it forms low pressure systems that consist of swirling moving masses, made up of air of…
gregladen | April 12, 2013I 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 the same time, christian fundies are against climate change science because they are against science. Fundamentalist and Atheist Libertarians overlap in the area of climate science denialsim, and it is often strange to see that. We even see climate…
gregladen | April 12, 2013The famous climate scientist James Hansen, author of Storms of my Grandchildren, has just retired from his senior position at NASA. I'll be the climate science denialists are breathing a sigh of relief to have Hansen, who has been instrumental in developing our current understanding of climate change and who has been repeatedly attacked by those denialists, out of the way. Here's what he says about his retirement:
Oh. So, they are not getting rid of James Hansen after all. Oh well!
More information on Hansen's retirement, future plans, and related things HERE.
gregladen | April 11, 2013Climate 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 number is about 3 ... because it tells us what the direct effects of the release of fossil Carbon (mainly in the form of CO2) from the burning of fossil fuels would be.
Here's the thing. Climate change denialists would like the number to be 1, or some other number lower than 3. Well, we…
gregladen | April 11, 2013Here's the trailer:
The web site including information on screenings, is here.
gregladen | April 9, 2013A lecture by Professor Paul Valdes, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.
gregladen | April 9, 2013There 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, there has been a shift towards greater concern which follows a low point, which, in turn, follows a period of global concern.
One question involves reading off a list of specific concerns related to global warming and asking participants to rank their…
gregladen | April 8, 2013Time 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 shift from one form of "arctic oscillation" to another which has resulted in changes in Norther Hemisphere weather.
Here's a new video by Peter Sinclair bringing you up to date on sea ice as well as sea ice melt denialim:
The National Snow and Ice Data Center keeps track of the Arctic ice and…
gregladen | April 7, 2013... James Delingpole's Hate Speech in the UK Telegraph
This is James Delingpole demonstrating his prowess when it comes to understanding and commenting on climate science. Dellingpole is the one on our right:
OK, now that we've established Delingpole to be a misinformed misguided intellectual lighweight, let's look at his latest piece from the UK Telegraph:
Should Michael Mann be given the electric chair for having concocted arguably the most risibly inept, misleading, cherry-picking, worthless and mendacious graph – the Hockey Stick – in the history of junk science?
Should George Monbiot…
gregladen | March 31, 2013The 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 change known as the hockey stick graph, is certainly not more complex than, more important than, or harder to explain than climate change as a whole. Is this a failing of Wikipedia? A success for the Climate Science Deniers who are also hoping to have the…
gregladen | March 27, 2013There 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: Dispatches from the Front Lines:
Life as a Target: Attacks on my work aimed at undermining climate change science have turned me into a public figure. I have come to embrace that role.
As a climate scientist, I have seen my integrity perniciously attacked. Politicians have demanded I…
gregladen | March 27, 2013This 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 can convince Conservation Hawks chairman Todd Tanner that he’s wasting his time, that he does not have to worry about climate change, he will present to you his most prized possession: A Beretta Silver Pigeon 12 gauge over/under...
Go to Peter's blog and get your gun!…
gregladen | March 23, 2013It 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 happening is something that normally happens, but there are features of the event that are odd. We won't know its significance until the Northern Summer, and even then we won't be sure if this is just an unusual thing for this year or a new trend because, by definition, trends run over periods of time.
Every year as…
gregladen | March 22, 2013This is a hockey stick:
This is the Grim Reaper's Scythe:
This is global temperature over the last 10,000 years projected into the immediate future using good scientific estimates:
You decide. Should the Hockey Stick be replaced with the Grim Reaper's Scythe?
More information on the climate change graphic HERE.
See more climate change graphics HERE.
If you are not sure what any of this is about, you can read about the Hockey Stick thing here.
gregladen | March 15, 2013From Bloomberg
President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they have to consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways.
The result could be significant delays for natural gas- export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn.
“It’s got us very freaked out,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based group that represents 11,000 companies such as Exxon-Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Southern Co. (SO…