climate change
hrynyshyn | June 4, 2010Hard as it is for someone who isn't familiar with intricacies of U.S. government-run climate science to believe, there is no climatology analog of the the immigration or revenue services, something responsible for overseeing the big picture. Sure, there's NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but that does a lot of things other than measure and model the climate. There's NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, but it's mostly a number-crunching lab, and not really set up to engage the public. That's about to change, and the folks tasked with overseeing the creation of the new Climate…
illconsidered | June 2, 2010The 2010 hurricane season has begun, and has done so with a hard blow to Guatemala, including dozens of fatalities (83 so far). Ironically, this storm was not particularily violent, not even getting above tropical storm status, but the rainfall was very intense.
As always, the best place to follow the hurricane season is Jeff Master's Weather Underground.
His introductory pst to this season lists the following reasons to worry about the months ahead:
"unprecedented sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic"
the ending of El Nino conditions
a million refugees from the recent earthquake in…
hrynyshyn | June 2, 2010If the title of Matt Ridley's new book, The Rational Optimist, sounds a little familiar, that's because it borrows heavily from the world view of one Bjorn "The Skeptical Environmentalist" Lomborg. Both contrarians dismiss global warming as nothing to worry about, although Ridley seems even less convinced that the planet is actually experiencing anthropogenic global warming. I don't have time to read it -- but I did manage to take a look at the kind of thinking that Ridley uses at his blog.
This week, Ridley wrote about what his research in the "Holocene Optimum," uncovered. What he found, he…
hrynyshyn | June 1, 2010Today marks the official start of North Atlantic hurricane season. So...
One of the key differences between genuine climatology and anti-scientific denialism of anthropogenic climate change is the flexibility of the former and the stubbornness of the latter when it comes to our ever-evolving understanding of how the world works. The connection between hurricanes and climate is a perfect example.
When the "An Inconvenient Truth" crew was filming Al Gore deliver his now-familiar presentation, they couldn't have anticipated that two major hurricanes would, as if on cue, roar through the Gulf of…
illconsidered | June 1, 2010A new study came out in Nature a couple of weeks ago that assesses multiple records of ocean temperatures over the last couple of decades and finds that there is "a statistically significant linear warming trend for 1993-2008 of 0.64âWâm-2".
The challenge the paper took on was one of assessing the uncertainties and inconsistencies in the various records. The paper is Lyman, J.L., et al. 2010. Robust warming of the global upper ocean. Nature 465 and Real Climate had an article about it here.
Also in that issue of Nature is an article by Kevin Trenbreth [PDF] that discusses that paper and…
hrynyshyn | May 31, 2010A paper in Nature Geoscience published early this month was much derided by the usual suspects in the pseudoskeptic community. Contrary to what many critics of "Methane emissions from extinct megafauna" claim, the research does not lead to the conclusion that humans are solely responsible for a global cooling event known as the Younger Dryas, which saw a brief reversal in the warming trend that brought the last ice age to an end. But it does remind us of just how interconnected are all the elements of the planetary ecosystem, and how dangerous it is to tinker with one of them.
The authors,…
hrynyshyn | May 31, 2010"Climate change is an issue that is almost designed to create apathy ..."
-- Linda Connor, Science Alert, 20 May 2010
The writer argues that the rise of climate change denialism in the face of growing scientific evidence of serious consequences of climate change can be explained by looking at basic human psychology. Essentially, we're talking about extrapolating psychology to the sociological sphere.
Negative messages about the future, such as those expressed in discourses of climate crisis, are a challenge to our cultural projects of immortality. These negative messages, connected with death…
hrynyshyn | May 28, 2010This week's Science has a lengthy review of a long list of recent books by and about climatologists. If you're interested in doing some not-so-light reading this summer (in a year predicted to be the warmest on record), the review, which Science has made freely available, should steer you in the right direction. The reviewer, Columbia University philosopher Philip Kitcher, covers a lot of territory. He puts it all in perspective by pointing out that while many of the books try to convince readers of the simple truth of climate change, the sad truth is that:
Even if American public opinion…
hrynyshyn | May 26, 2010Back in the winter of 1990-91, when I was a between-real-jobs freelancer hanging out in Vancouver with plenty of time on my hands to read, I would cycle down to Stanley Park each rainless day, find a quiet stretch of beach, and read. I went through dozens of books before returning to the working world, but the only book I remember in any detail is Bill McKibben's The End of Nature. It was the first full-length, popular-science take on climate change, and I've spent much of the last 20 years thinking and writing about the subject, thanks to that book. So has McKibben.
eaarth is an oddly…
hrynyshyn | May 25, 2010The appearance of an editorial in the far-right-leaning Washington Times challenging the reality of anthropogenic climate change is not particularly interesting. What is worth looking at is the width of the gap between the research cited by the editorialist and what the research is actually all about.
The editorial, which ran under the headline "Nero was hotter than Al Gore," argues that a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds the Earth was warmer in Roman times than it is today. Even if true, this would mean little, unless the ancient anomalously warm period…
illconsidered | May 24, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
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 Climate Instability News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsMay 23, 2010 Chuckles, IPCC-5, COP16+, Figueres, Cochabamba, NAS-ACC, Lyman, Ocean Volume Lake Tanganyika, Anthropocene, Carbon Tariffs, Subsidies, TEEB, Malaria, Hartwell, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures…
illconsidered | May 23, 2010Still back at Keith Kloor's place, Judith Curry seems determined to dig in to her position that governments and the IPCC and consensus minded science bloggers need to take the climate skeptics more seriously. Personally I think she completely misses the boat, because most of these folks have in fact been soundly debunked, or at the very least thouroughly addressed in purely scientific manners. We are talking about Climate Audit and Watts Up With That, these are her candidates. As well as having had their more serious contentions seriously looked at, these sites bury any potentially…
grrlscientist | May 21, 2010tags: Pay Attention to Penguins, birds, penguins, environment, global warming, ethics, climate change, Dee Boersma, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
Think of penguins as ocean sentinels, says Dee Boersma -- they're on the frontlines of sea change. Sharing stories of penguin life and culture, she suggests that we start listening to what penguins are telling us.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on…
hrynyshyn | May 20, 2010The first three of the "America's Climate Choices" reports from a U.S. National Academy of Sciences committee restate the case that there is "strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that Earth is warming" and calls for the adoption of "an economy-wide carbon pricing system." Not really Earth-shattering news, just climate-disrupting. What is worth drawing your attention to is the embrace of something akin to the "trillionth tonne" idea.
Until now, most government-associated documents dwell on end-point targets. A given a certain chance of keeping…
grrlscientist | May 19, 2010tags: Why I'm a Weekday Vegetarian, environment, global warming, meat, vegetarianism, ethics, climate change, Graham Hill, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
We all know the arguments that being vegetarian is better for the environment and for the animals -- but in a carnivorous culture, it can be hard to make the change. Graham Hill has a powerful, pragmatic suggestion ...
The video following the TEDTalk is more interesting than the actual talk itself.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and…
hrynyshyn | May 18, 2010What's being billed as the U.S. Senate's last chance to pass a bill that deals with climate change, the American Power Act, aims for a now-familiar target: a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 83% by 2050. The idea is that if the developed world can manage to reach that goal, the global goal only has to be something like a 50% cut by mid century. As has been pointed out, this will not be easy.
The authors of a recent paper in PNAS call it "a forbidding challenge." Why? It turns out the math and underlying science are much less forbidding. Allow me to take a stab at explaining it in…
sastyk | May 18, 2010
Ok, part of this is just that I really like the word "Glyptodon" and am trying to find more uses for it ;-). But there is a point here, I'm pretty sure.
A while back I was teaching a class, and the gentleman teaching before me, an Algonquin Native Descendent, who was talking about the history of the ways that waterways in the Northern US had impacted patterns of settlement and development, became quite passionate at the sight of Eric's t-shirt, which had an mastodon on it. The gentleman launched into a staunch defense of his ancestors, who for a long time were typically considered to be…
illconsidered | May 14, 2010Okay, that's sarcasm. Wille Soon is featured in an interview on the Examiner.com website, but grilling is hardy how to describe the pathetic softballs Kir Meyers throws, rather rolls, his way.
Here are a few of the questions he asked:
Many of the scientists promoting the global warming theory appear to be driven by politics rather than hard scientific data. What are your thoughts?
What needs to be done to combat the strong-arm tactics being used against scientists who disagree with the AGW theory?
What is your opinion of Al Gore?
Really not much more to say about that...
illconsidered | May 13, 2010This is very interesting!
It was only after returning to shore and closely examining the photographs they had taken that the researchers allowed themselves to acknowledge that what they had seen was, in fact, a gray whale.
There was only one problem.
There are no gray whales off Israel.
There are no gray whales in the Mediterranean.
There are, in fact, no gray whales in the Atlantic
The prevailing hypothesis is this whale got lost in the Northwest Passage and confused the east west coast of Europe with the east west coast of North America. (oops)
Added Dr. Aviad Scheinin of IMMRAC:
Due to the…
hrynyshyn | May 13, 2010... is actually good news for those holding down the scientific fort.
Last week, Science published a letter from 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences pleading for "an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues" in the climatology community. The letter laid bare (not bear) the scientific basis for the theory of anthropogenic climate change, a theory the authors said belongs in the same category as the theories of evolution and the Big Bang. So far so good. It was accompanied by a collage image of polar bear isolated on a single ice floe (at…