Climate Change
gregladen | May 6, 2012This just in:
Diageo announces it is to end funding of Heartland Institute
Diageo, one the world's largest drinks companies, has announced it will no longer fund the Heartland Institute, a rightwing US thinktank which briefly ran a billboard campaign this week comparing people concerned about climate change to mass murderers and terrorists, such as Osama bin Laden, Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski.
On Thursday, a billboard appeared over the Eisenhower Expressway in Illinois showing a picture of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who in 1996 was convicted of a 17-year mail bombing campaign that…
gregladen | May 4, 2012As is the case with most things that are important, we as a society have done a very bad job of developing an effective conversation about Global Warming. The vast majority of electronic and real ink that I see spent on the discussion of Global Warming (outside of the peer reviewed literature) is not even about climate or climate change. Rather, it is about talking about climate change, the politics of climate change, critique of the rhetoric about climate change, clarification, obfuscation, complaining, accusing, yelling or belly-aching, and the occasional threat of violence. And today,…
gregladen | May 2, 2012PBS has something coming out tonight about teaching climate change in American Classrooms.
From a press release I just got in the mail:
The PBS NEWSHOUR examines the struggle over teaching climate change Wednesday
The PBS NewsHour's Hari Sreenivasan will report Wednesday (May 2) on how the controversy over climate change affects America's classrooms. Part of a NewsHour series on the impacts of climate change, Sreenivasan's piece takes a look at a political think tank creating climate change curriculum, examines recent state laws dictating what can be taught about global warming and…
gregladen | March 28, 2012Climate scientist Michael Mann is no stranger to smear campaigns. Man has the distinction of having made important contributions to climate science, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize. He is famous to many of you for having come up with the "hockey stick" metaphor.
Michael Mann is a good scientist who has done honest, important, and high quality work, but there are those who don't want to hear about the results he and other climate scientists have come up with. So, they hate him. And by "hate" I don't mean that they sit there not liking him. I mean, they actively hate him. They…
gregladen | March 23, 2012Potholer54 has written a letter to Monkton that you will want to read, and he's also made a video that you will want to see. First the letter (from here):
Open letter to Christopher Monckton - please return to the debate
Dear Mr. Monckton,
A couple of months ago you entered into a debate with me on wattsupwiththat.com (See "Update on the Monckton-Hadfield debate" - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/07/update-on-the-monckton-hadfield-d…) about alleged errors in your public lectures - allegations that I made in a series of videos on my YouTube channel "Potholer54". But as soon as I presented…
gregladen | February 28, 2012A report detailing an audit of a course called "Climate Change: An Earth Sciences Perspective" (ERTH 2402), taught at Carleton University, has been compiled by a team of concerned individuals and was released a few minutes ago. From the report:
The course... provides an unbalanced and, in many cases, factually inaccurate view of anthropogenic global warming which detracts from the high quality of teaching at Carleton University. We highlight 142 incorrect or equivocal claims and cite the relevant scientific literature to correct those statements. While the principle of academic freedom…
gregladen | February 28, 2012The EPA made what is called an "endangerment finding" a while back which asserts that it is appropriate to regulate the release of greenhouse gasses. This was challenged in court by science deinialists and energy interests via "the state of Virginia, the industry front-group Coalition for Responsible Regulation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Tea Party-industry front Southeastern Legal Foundation."
Brad Johnson has a post outlining the situation here.
The endangerment finding is based on a large and internally consist ant corpus of scientific findings. The argument against the finding…
gregladen | February 23, 2012As you know, there is much discussion about whether or not a "strategy memo" leaked from the Heartland Institute is a fake. We are told by a trustworthy source that this policy memo was leaked to him, and that he then tricked the Heartland Institute to supply him with additional documents, which he then used to verify the "strategy memo" based on cross reference of factual information. Only after the apparent veracity of the memo was determined did that individual, Peter Gleick, release all of the documents to the public.
Subsequently, a number of untrustworthy sources, such as Heartland…
gregladen | February 22, 2012You know about the Heartland Strategy memo. It is one of several documents produced and used internally by the Heartland Institute, a minor Libertarian "Think" Tank, demonstrating some rather unsavory activities, which are now under preliminary investigation by the US Congress. The memo contains little that is not found in other documents already admitted by Heartland to be genuine but there are a few details added and a much finer point is put on such nefarious programs as intruding into the public school system to trick teachers into "not teaching science" in science classes.
This memo is…
gregladen | February 14, 2012This seems to be fairly big news. The Heartland Institute is a conservative and libertarian "think" tank that cut its teeth on denying the dangers of cigarette smoking back in the 1990s. These days the Heartland Institute seems to be focused on Anthropogenic Climate Change Denialism and Science Denialism in general.
A piece of one of the revealed documents suggesting that the Heartland Institute wants to "dissuade teachers from teaching science."
Well, just a few hours ago, members of the climate change science, journalism, and blogging community received an interesting Valentine's Day…
gregladen | February 8, 2012If all the water currently trapped in all the glaciers across the entire world melted, the sea level would rise far more than most people imagine. Almost everyone living anywhere in the world at an elevation of below about 500 feet with a direct drainage to the sea would be directly affected; The sea level rise itself might be a bit over 300 feet, but oceans tend to migrate horizontally when they rise onto previously uninnundated land surfaces. So if you lived at 500 feet above sea level in most of Maine, you'd have a much shorter walk to the rocky shoreline, but if you lived at 500 feet…
gregladen | February 2, 2012Over the last few weeks, there has been quite a bit of discussion on the Blogosphere about certain global warming related issues. Denialists have come on strong with two major and widely disseminated distortions of scientific reports and consensus, and scientists and those interested in saving the Earth and who love puppies have countered with numerous well thought out and well done responses.
But it is hard to keep track of all this chatter. Pursuant to making that job easier, I've assembled a bunch of links that will help you track this discussion. There may be missing items, and if so…
gregladen | February 1, 2012And I suspect he's done so willingly. Well, you know what they say about statistics and liars.
Here's the story. The Wall Street Journal and the Daily Mail independently published highly misleading and blatantly idiotic pieces on climate change. We've covered this extensively already over the last few days. Phil Plait, of the Bad Astronomy Blog on Discovermagazine.com, was one of numerous scientists to respond to those flaming examples of horrific bottom feeding journalism with the post "While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower." In that post, he presented a still-image from a…
gregladen | January 31, 2012Brad Johnson at Think Progress has written a piece on Meteorologist Mark Johnson, of ABC's WEWS-TV in Cleveland Ohio. Johnson has apparently purposefully misrepresented data that was previously pre-misrepresented by the Daily Mail to make the statement that the earth has been cooling since 1998.
The earth has actually been warming since the 1990s, and the first decade of the present century is the warmest on record, but will almost certainly be exceeded in global temperature by the present decade, I write from my home in Minneapolis where temperatures on this fine January day stayed well…
gregladen | January 31, 2012Michael Mann, famous climate scientist, has released a book called The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (also available as a Kindle edition). I've not read it yet but I thought you'd like to know about it.
Michael Mann is the guy who came up with the Hockey Stick graph and metaphor. Early reviews are positive:
In this meticulous and engaging brief on climate change research and the political backlash to legitimate scientific work, Penn State professor Mann narrates the fight against misinformation from the inside. (Publishers Weekly )
An important and…
gregladen | January 30, 2012I suspect that the complexity of global climate change is under-appreciated. If you live in a cold climate and I tell you that things will get warmer, you may see this as good news and look forward to a future where you no longer have to get your antifreeze checked and replace your old battery in September in preparation for the bitter cold of winter. But global warming is not the only kind of change happening because of the release of huge amounts of carbon in the atmosphere, and even with respect to the warming itself, things are much more complex than "it gets warm." One example of this…
gregladen | January 29, 2012Since the Daily Mail is a British thing and the latest form of entertainment in Britain is Libel Tourism, I won't say to you that the Daily Mail is a rag full of lies and deceit. Instead, I'll let you be the judge.
These studies:
Decline in solar output unlikely to offset global warming
23 January 2012 - New research has found that solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years but that will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases.
Carried out by the Met Office and the University of Reading, the study establishes the most likely…
gregladen | January 27, 2012An anti-science climate denialist "think" tank (the word "think" clearly does not actually applyl here) is said to have received a big chunk of money from some anonymous source, and an effort has been made to find out who that source is. This is all happening in Britain where all the legal systems are strange and alien to me. Here's a teaser and a link to the details.
THERE IS "enormous public interest" in naming the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation's seed donor and "a pressing need to scrutinise" any links he has with the oil and coal industry, an information tribunal…
gregladen | January 25, 2012I liked Obama's State of the Union Address, and I liked the fact that a lot of other people seemed to like it. He made strong and positive statements about energy.
Imagine what we could accomplish ... A future where we're in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren't so tied to unstable parts of the world....
Tonight, I want to speak about how we move forward, and lay out a blueprint for an economy that's built to last - an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values....
... and his comments…
gregladen | January 17, 2012
Gleick is the new board member of the National Center for Science Education.