Climate Change
gregladen | May 13, 2016You've heard the phrase, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," an insightful phrase penned in 1972 by Theodosius Dobzhansky. I would like to add a second part to that phrase, and it goes like this: "... and, nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of co-evolution." This would hardly be an exaggeration, and it can hardly be better exemplified than with examples from migratory birds. Migratory birds have to be adapted to at least three different ecological settings. They breed in one area, migrate (and often spend considerable time) through another…
gregladen | May 12, 2016Subtitle: Politicians School Scientists In How To Do It
Alternative Title: Where were Bernie and Hillary????
You need to know right away that the Lede to this story is buried way the hell down the page.
That’s OK, though, because others are covering this, and the point of my missive is to put the current situation into a somewhat larger context. Ultimately, the point I want to make is this: Even when a problem is mired in deeply entrenched corporate interests, small groups of tenacious heroes can make the world measurably better, and there is such a thing happening right now in the…
gregladen | May 10, 2016This is a segment of The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, in which climate scientist Professor Michael Mann provides important perspective on the link between climate change and other disasters such as tornadoes. (See also: The Meaning of the Fort McMurray Fire).
Michael Mann is the author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, and Dire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change (a visually rich summary of the most recent IPCC report) as well as the forthcoming book combining climate science and political cartooning, The Madhouse Effect: How…
gregladen | May 6, 2016The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy, by climate scientist Michael Mann and cartoonist Tom Toles is now available for pre-order. I've not gotten my review copy of it yet, but it looks fantastic.
From the publisher:
The award winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Tom Toles have fought at the frontlines of climate denialism for most of their careers. They have witnessed the manipulation of the media by business and political interests and the…
gregladen | May 6, 2016The Climate Change Connection
It is hard to understand the connection between climate change and wild fire. This is in part because it is hard to understand the factors that determine the frequency and extent of wild fires to begin with, and partly because of the messiness of the conversation about climate change and fire. I'm going to try to make this simple, I don't expect to succeed, but maybe we can achieve a somewhat improved understanding.
Fires have to start, then they burn for a while, then they stop.
Most wild fires are probably started by humans. This does not mean that human…
gregladen | April 29, 2016
This is a guest posts by Claire Cohen Cortright.
Claire Cohen Cortright is a mother, climate activist, and biology teacher living in upstate New York. She
is an active member of Citizens Climate Lobby and moderator at Global Warming Fact of the Day.
______________________________________________
It is time, now, for climate activists to get vocal.
As it becomes more clear that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, there is increasing talk about the importance of unifying the party. Negotiations are on the horizon … for Vice President and for the Party’s…
gregladen | April 20, 2016Corals are ocean-dwelling invertebrates in the same phylum as jellyfish. Corals are tiny and create an exoskeleton that is fixed to something hard, like the remains of previously existing corals. So these organisms build up a geological stratum, a reef, beneath the surface of the sea, often close enough that parts of the reef are exposed at the lowest water level. The coral reef system is the substrate for one of the Earth's major ecological zones.
Corals are symbiotic with a single celled dinoflagellate, a kind of algae that combines available nutrients such as ammonia and the…
gregladen | April 9, 2016Calling U.S. K-12 Science Education Professionals!
GHF Online science instructor Madeline Goodwin is doing her Master’s thesis research on climate science in the classroom, and she needs your help! She is doing a survey of science education professionals to find the answer to the following question:
What are the most important climate science concepts for students to ProfessionalPictureunderstand by the time they graduate high school?
If you are a K-12 science education professional in the United States, Madeline invites you to take her survey.
CLICK HERE
gregladen | April 6, 2016There is a new study out in Nature that is liable to be misinterpreted, or that may be flawed in a way that lends itself to misuse, in the context of climate science driven policy.
The study is "Northern Hemisphere hydroclimate variability over the past twelve centuries" by Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Paul J. Krusic, Hanna S. Sundqvist, Eduardo Zorita, Gudrun Brattström & David Frank
I'll make just a few comments here, but mainly, I want to point you to comments by climate scientist Michael Mann (author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines and…
gregladen | March 21, 2016Remember that movie, The Day After Tomorrow? Check out this (not too new but still very current) video by Greenman3610, with Stefan Rahmstorf">Stefan Rahmstorf, Jason Box, and Michael Mann, looking at the real life version of that phenomenon.
gregladen | March 18, 2016Though not enough. And for the wrong reasons. But this is still good news.
Somewhere around 1990, but you could justify an earlier date if you like, science knew enough about global warming, the increase in the planet's surface temperatures caused by human release of greenhouse gas pollution and other human effects, to have initiated meaningful action to shift our energy supply away from fossil fuels. We didn't know exactly what would happen, but we knew stuff would happen. How long has it taken for this science to turn into effective policy to address global warming? We don't know, because…
gregladen | March 7, 2016Climate Hawks Votes is running a primary in which you can chose either Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, or No Endorsement.
The web page where you can vote is here. You are required to enter some identifying information in order to eliminate or significantly reduced gaming of the poll, so the results should be reasonably fair.
There is a tendency for climate hawks (using the term generally, not in reference to this specific group) to favor Sanders on climate over Clinton, because Clinton is not 100% anti-fracking and anti-methane, while Sanders is. However, I think this is a bit unfair.…
gregladen | March 7, 2016Climate Change: A Wicked Problem: Complexity and Uncertainty at the Intersection of Science, Economics, Politics, and Human Behavior, by Frank Incropera, is a textbook suitable for use in advanced high school or college classes, but also an excellent primer on the topic for anyone interested in it. Incropera spares little details in describing how the Earth's climate system works, and how human generated greenhouse gases, and other effects, change the energy balance of the planet to produce the phenomenon we call "global warming," and other effects.
Incropera addresses the panoply of causes…
gregladen | March 3, 2016There wasn't a "pause" in global warming. The rate at which the plant's surface warms because of human greenhouse gas pollution varies over time. Sometimes the warming is quicker, sometimes it is slower.
There are multiple reasons for a temporary slowdown in the temerature curve, including the temperature curve being a little inaccurate, the ocean taking heat away from the surface, atmospheric dust varying over time in how much sunlight is reflected away, and so on. I recently wrote up a detailed discussion of the latest thinking on this interesting scientific problem, based mostly on a…
gregladen | February 26, 2016The latest episode of Ikonokast, the science podcast Mike Haubrich and I do, is now up. This is an interview with Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick. We talk about the California drought (past, present, and future), Syria, virtual water, El Nino and climate science denialism.
You can hear the podcast here: WHAT ABOUT WATER? DR. PETER GLEICK OF THE PACIFIC INSTITUTE.
gregladen | February 24, 2016The Arctic Sea freezes over. The Arctic Sea melts. This happens every year. The average date for the maximum extent of Arctic Sea ice, based on a period of 1981-2010, is March 12. The minimum extent is reached, on average, about September 15h.
Every year for the last several years, the minimum ice has been much lower than average in extent, and many years in a row have seen record minima. This is considered to be the result of global surface warming caused by human release of greenhouse gas pollution.
It is said that we can't use the maximum ice cover to predict the minimum ice cover…
gregladen | February 24, 2016A new paper (commentary) on the so-called "pause in global warming" puts it all together.
First let's establish this as a starting point. When climate science contrarians refer to a "pause" or "hiatus" in global warming, they usually mean that the process of warming of the Earth's surface caused by the human release of greenhouse gas is not a thing. They are usually implying, or overtly claiming, that the link between CO2 and other greenhouse gas pollutants and surface warming was never there to begin with, and previous warming, warming before "the pause," was natural variation. Many even…
gregladen | February 23, 2016Human caused greenhouse gas pollution has locked us into a situation where the global sea level will rise, at an unknown rate, high enough to inundate most major coastal cities and vast areas of agricultural land in low lying countries, and wipe out thousands of islands. Entire countries (small, low lying ones, and pacific ocean nations) will either disappear entirely or be made very small. Even as we head towards a likely limit in global food production in relation to increasing demand, large productive agricultural areas will be destroyed. As far as I can tell, there is nothing to stop this…
gregladen | February 22, 2016It is all about the honest conversation. And the dishonest conversation.
Corporate Funding of the Research Endeavor: Good
Corporations have an interest in research. They use this research for profit or to minimize liability. Some corporations have their own researchers, some provide grants to scientists to conduct research, and some fund activities that might not be thought of as research, but really are. For example, the publication fees for peer reviewed journals, funds to pay for scientists to attend conferences, and funds to support a scientific conference are paying for an important…
gregladen | February 16, 2016Recently NASA GISS released the measurement of the Earth's surface for January 2016. I added this latest measurement to the long term database (from 1880) and calculated the running 12 month average of surface temperatures. This is the resulting graph:
These are anomaly values, as indicated. January was the warmest month recorded in terms of anomaly, and it follows December 2015 as the previous warmest month. The top warmest anomalies in the entire NASA GISS database (going back to 1880) are listed below.Notice that all of these years are recent, and notice that the warmest and most recent…