climate change
illconsidered | March 17, 2009While on the subject of interviews, I was recently contacted with an interview request by the website The Reef Tank. Loath to turn down any opportunity to talk about myself (what do you expect, I'm a blogger fer cryin' out loud!) I filled out the question sheet they sent over and you can read the interview here.
Given the marine life focus of their site, we discussed ocean acidification and the PETM event after a couple of blogging generalities.
They also asked my opinion of aquariums, with a warning it is controversial. I did not have much to say, and I guessed that the controversies must…
illconsidered | March 16, 2009Elizabeth Kolbert, journalist and author of "Field Notes from a Catastrophe", is interviewed by Yale Environment 360 editor Roger Cohn.
The interview was put on their site mid-last week and readers might find it quite interesting.
Kolbert discussed a wide range of issues: how the media and scientists are both responsible for the lack of public understanding on climate change; the Obama administration's chances of passing climate-related legislation; and the prospects of geoengineering the planet to mitigate the effects of warming. On whether there is a moral or ethical dimension to this issue…
hrynyshyn | March 13, 2009Elizabeth Kolbert's interview in Yale's e360 magazine is a sobering read. But what's even more interesting than the light she sheds on the reasons why the polls keep finding the public is out of touch with the science is the stark reminder I came across in the article's comment section that we've blown the last quarter century.
Greenpeace has posted a PDF of a 1983 New York Times story that, with only minimal edits of a few numbers -- replace the carbon-dioxide concentration, which was 340 ppm back then, with today's 387 -- could easily run today. I've converted the whole thing to HTML and,…
sheril | March 13, 2009Last year we participated in Earth Hour, an international movement demonstrating that millions of people around the world are ready to do something about climate change. Join us again on Saturday March 28, 2009 at 8:30PM (your local time):
This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world's first global election, between Earth and global warming.
For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote - Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global…
hrynyshyn | March 11, 2009There's a good reason why of all the consequences of anthropogenic global warming, nothing garners as much attention as sea level rise ;;;; with the possible exception of those darn charismatic polar bears, that is.
It's the same reason Al Gore devoted half a dozen slides in his climate change presentation to animations depicting the flooding that would come with a six- or seven-metre rise. While we can't predict just how much the oceans will rise if the world's glaciers and the Western Antarctic and Greenlandic ice sheets were to melt, everyone knows, without having to take a course in…
hrynyshyn | March 3, 2009My first take on Andy Revkin's odd little story effectively equating the climate change "hyperbole" generated by Al Gore and George F. Will was a quick shrug. Now I am not so sure.
While making such a comparison is clearly out of line, it seemed to me that anyone reading the story would come away more impressed by the differences between how Gore and Will handled their errors, rather than any implied similarities. Gore immediately withdrew a problematic sequence from his slide show when it was pointed out that the described trend in weather-related damages was not linked exclusively to…
hrynyshyn | March 2, 2009Last week we learned from the Washington Post's ombudsman that George F. Will had supplied a list of 20ish internet references to Post editors in support of his much-criticized Feb. 15 column. That column repeated his long-standing belief that the world is not warming according to the prevailing consensus of the world's climatologists. Now, Will claims to be on sound scientific footing and refuses to admit to the many errors that his critics say he keeps making. So it should not be surprising that the list of verifying sources that purport to support his arguments is of great interest to the…
illconsidered | March 2, 2009Over 12,000 people are expected at a student climate conference this weekend and today over one thousand will gather today in Washington DC.
The focus of the DC protest is the local coal fired plant that powers capitol buildings heat and air conditioning. The target is symbolic, and congress has preemptively agreed to switch the plant to natural gas.
But the most compelling reason to pay attention to this:
Jim Hansen at NASA, [...] may be arrested today with us all
We can all expect more of this from the attack dogs, of course. (BTW, when I went to that link, the Google Ad prominently…
hrynyshyn | February 28, 2009Like Carl Zimmer, I can't get past the George F. Will/WaPo climate change denial scandal. Carl's latest piece delves deeper into the nature of journalism and fact-checking at the Post, and I'm going to weigh in with my observations of working at newspapers off and on for the past 22 years.
First, contrary to what many non-journalists seem to believe, George F. Will is a journalist. Just because he gets to add interpretation and value judgment to the factual material that serves as his raw material doesn't mean he gets to flout the ethical parameters of the business. In other words, he is…
hrynyshyn | February 27, 2009How do I put this politely?
It is not possible for a reasonable person equipped with a secondary education to read the material George F. Will cites in his columns arguing against the scientific evidence for global warming and come to the conclusions that Will reaches.
It's been less than a day, but already the mountain of criticism written in response to a new column, leaked yesterday and published today in the Washington Post, in which American's leading conservative columns defends his previous column on the subject, is astounding. Carl Zimmer's is among the best, as usual. There's also…
illconsidered | February 27, 2009Things Break does a thorough take-down of George Will's continued dishonesty in the Washington Post. For the background, if somehow you have missed this kerfuffle, check his earlier post.
The story in a nutshell is not remarkable: mainstream columnist prints op-ed full of outright falsehoods, complaints are rejected, paper stands by its right to fill the information age with disinformation. ie Facts don't matter.
The only remarkable thing really is the attention it is receiving and who knows, perhaps there will be some real consequences... like maybe people will remember this for a change.…
illconsidered | February 26, 2009Today's DemocracyNow! has a segment with Chris Field, a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other guest discussing worsening outlooks of future warming and increased lobbying efforts from the fossil fuel industry.
We speak to Chris Field, a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, about his warning that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is rising more rapidly than expected in recent years. Field says the current trajectory of climate change is now much worse than the IPCC had…
hrynyshyn | February 26, 2009I owe author Eric Roston a book review. He was kind enough to send me a copy of The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat late last year. It took me a while to get around to it, and I regret not reading it earlier.
The Carbon Age is not the best piece of science writing I've ever had the pleasure of devouring. It could have used another edit, for starters, to ensure that new ideas and terms are explained at first occurence rather than several pages later. And I'm not sure that a biography of carbon is enough to tie together disparate chapters on stellar…
illconsidered | February 25, 2009Contrary to the popular talking point, climate models do take into account H2O as a greenhouse gas. In fact, it is the largest single feedback factor in the climate system. And also contrary to another popular talking point, models are being validated in many ways.
Go have a read at Gristmill for a post by Andrew Dessler on a recent paper he co-authored[PDF] that seeks to assess the state of current climate science literature on the topic of water vapor feedback in models and the climate system. He describes papers raw material as a "mountain of evidence" supporting a strongly positive…
hrynyshyn | February 25, 2009My apologies if you're weary of posts revolving around George F. Will and his inability to accept responsibility for getting climate science completely wrong. But the contrast between that sorry episode in one non-scientist's efforts to communicate science with those of Al Gore's is too stark to pass up.
This week Al Gore accepted that it had been a mistake to include a series of animated slides in the latest version of his climate change presentation. The images accurately record a dramatic spike in weather-related damages around the world in recent years, with the U.S. suffering more than…
hrynyshyn | February 23, 2009I just returned from delivering an hour-long presentation on climate change to the local chapter of American Association of University Women. It was one of the most intelligent and educated audiences I've had the pleasure to appear before. Followup questions were poignant and well-considered. But then someone piped up with:
"This is all makes a lot of sense. But last weekend I was reading a column by George Will...."
Sigh. The gentleman who had come across Will's error-laden Feb. 15 column, "Dark Green Doomsayers," was sincerely puzzled, I think. He seemed like a reasonable fellow who just…
sheril | February 22, 2009Having recently emerged from the hospital, I'm catching up on the news I've missed--beginning with the Washington Post nonsense Chris has covered here.
Apparently reporter George Will is about as informed on climate change as octuplet mom Nadya Suleman is on the fiscal responsibilities of raising children. There's not much I'll add that hasn't already been written, except given Will's influential position, his dishonesty is far more reprehensible.
illconsidered | February 21, 2009Michael Tobis has another well written and thought provoking essay on In It for the Gold asking if continuing developments in climatology are going to affect mitigation policy.
It can be argued that climatology is not an important input into climate change related policy. It is premature to take climatological input into account in adaptation strategy, while on the other hand as far as mitigation goes (i.e., on the global scale) the picture has pretty much stayed about the same for some substantial time.
That idea does not fit in very well with the common denialist refrain that climatologists…
hrynyshyn | February 20, 2009The focus has shifted from George F. Will's refusal to accept the science of climate change to the Washington Post's refusal to accept responsibility for Will's breach of journalism's most sacred tenets. I don't have more to say, but Carl Zimmer's second analysis of the problem is bang on. There's also Joe Romm (again) and Hilzoy of the Washington Monthly.
The bottom line is, Will was caught misrepresenting the science, and when the errors were brought to his editors' attention, in no uncertain terms, they refused to acknowledge any had been made. It's one thing to make a sloppy mistake,…
hrynyshyn | February 19, 2009Barack Obama and his Canadian counterpart, Stephen Harper, just wrapped up a joint press conference. Of course, no one said anything particularly newsworthy, but a few comments are worth mentioning.
First, Harper said his approach to climate change, an approach that favors Bush-style emissions intensity (relative to economic output) is no different from Obama's preferred absolute reductions. Here's the rough transcript:
Harper: WHEN I LOOK AT THE PRESIDENT'S PLATFORM, THE KIND OF TARGETS HIS ADMINISTRATION HAS LAID OUT FOR THE REDUCTION OF GREENHOUSE GASES ARE VERY SIMILAR TO OURS. YOU SAY WE…