climate communication
stoat | June 6, 2007The Institute of Physics are holding a meeting on Climate change prediction:a robust or flawed process? Why IOP? Who knows, probably a hotbed of skeptics. Though the RMS is advertising it too. That page doesn't list the speakeres; this does: Lindzen and Thorpe. Oh dear, the traditional adversarial stuff. Rumour (thanks N) says that Piers Corbyn is also appearing on Lindzen's side, which if true indicates the entire thing is misorganised.
The blurb starts well enough with
One of the biggest concerns in contemporary society is the rise in global temperatures brought about by the release of…
stoat | June 4, 2007After a shaky start, Nature's Climate Feedback is staging a renaissance, with two interesting posts by Kevin Trenberth. The first, Predictions of Climate should provide some good quote mining for the septics (none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate, anyone?) and some hope for the climate modellers (However, the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional predictions of climate. But we need them. Indeed it is an imperative! So the science is just beginning. Beginning, that is, to face up to the challenge of building…
stoat | June 2, 2007It is important that the 2007 G8 Summit is addressing the linked issues of energy security and climate change. These are defining issues of our time, and bring together the themes of growth and responsibility in a way that highlights our duties to future generations.
In 2005, the Academies issued a statement emphasising that climate change was occurring and could be attributed mostly to human activities, and calling for efforts to tackle both the causes of climate change and the inevitable consequences of past and unavoidable future emissions. Since then the IPCC has published the Working…
stoat | May 29, 2007James Annan has been McIntyred and just for once I find the IPCC position indefensible.
stoat | May 17, 2007The Nude Scientist has produced a Climate change: A guide for the perplexed with some common myths explained, correctly as far as I can see. There is also a blog on it which has already degenerated into the usual rubbish, ho hum.
stoat | May 15, 2007I find that I need to understand the "defining dangerous climate change stuff". Up to now I've rather dismissed it as someone else's problem but now I need to know more. This is not a very satisfactory post, in part because I ran out of time to finish it. Its more a request for feedback, possibly based on some of the below. Where do I find a good (but not too long) discussion of the (ecological, mostly) effects/risks of climate change, with a reasonable amount of quantification. Not just wurbling about polar bears, but something more concrete.
The EU ended up deciding on 2 oC but I don't know…
stoat | May 11, 2007Via the Global Change newsgroup, and James Annan, I read a Proposed Global Climate Change Statement by the AAPG. The AAPG are the only known scientific (are they? probably close enough) organisation to have a totally wacko statement on climate chage and its clearly embarassing the saner folks over there. The new version is better, though not perfect.
stoat | May 4, 2007More framing stuff... oh dear. From Dave Roberts. Found whilst trying to establish whether "world climate report" is notable by wiki standards (Got an opinion on that? Feel free to comment here or on wiki...). Anyway, DR says:
Consider RealClimate. Did the scientists involved in the site really start it purely to raise the level of public knowledge about climate change? I think not. They wanted to raise the public level of knowledge about climate change because they thought by doing so they would make it more likely that society would address the problem. In other words: they want society to…
stoat | May 4, 2007Nature has started a new blog, http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/. So far so good, I wish them well, and it will be interesting to see how it goes on.
The fun aspect of all this is the fight for readers and commentors; a blog with no comments is hardly a blog at all. RP Jr has a post up that has so far attracted more comments at the riposte on deltoid than the original Nature blog. Whether this is because Deltoid has more readers; or Nature is heavily moderating comments; or people just like talking more at Deltoid, I don't know.
Meanwhile, von S's entry on The decay of the hockey stick…
stoat | May 3, 2007Climate change sceptics melt under spotlight, Columban priest reports. But no report from the meeting, sadly.
stoat | April 27, 2007Prompted by the proofs of my review of AIT for Met Apps (oh, the fame!) I looked at the site again and found The Science. What they list there is very thin and with no useful links. I would have hoped for something better.
Anyway, their first point is "The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years." and they source this to Emanuel, K. 2005. Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years. Nature 436: 686-688. Now E does say This combined PDI has nearly doubled over the past 30 yr, but never uses the word "category". And this is not…
stoat | April 25, 2007Just when you thought the Great Global Warming Swindle rubbish had died down, Bob Ward has to go and stir things up again. So it gets into the Grauniad and the Scotsman too.
Predictably enough, the scientists talk about the science; and Durkin avoids this to talk about gagging. A classic case of framing, much as I hate to admit it.
So the question is, why bother write the letter? The idea that Durkin would have said "its a fair cop guv; I've seen the truth and I'll withdraw it" is absurd. What will people that read the newspaper articles get? Not, sadly, a link to the letter detailing the…
stoat | April 23, 2007So says The Vancouver Sun (thanks to DR). In principle it would be a good idea: show the two together, note where they disagree, and go off to find what the actual data says. Which would rapidly show up how TGGWS has faked is graphs (I wonder which version is on the DVD?). However... how likely is it that schools will have the time and resources to do this?
stoat | April 21, 2007I've just listened to that Jeffrey Sachs, the international economist, giving the 2007 Reith Lecture called "Bursting At The Seams". I was only half listening but woke up when he said:
Now like the ozone crisis, public awareness has been the second step. For a long time climate change was discussed as something for the far future. Now it's understood as something that imperils us today as well. The heatwave in Europe in 2003, claiming more than twenty thousand lives; Hurricane Katrina, a storm of devastating proportions, shocking the American people and the world about what climate can do;…
stoat | April 17, 2007 A quiet day today (just as well after dinner and drinks last night with reprobate Jeff Ridley and somewhat more respectable John Turner). A bit of ice core stuff in the morning - using d-c-13 to understand glacial methane sources; trying to understand the 41kyr/100kyr switch in ice age cycles.
Pic shows view from the Reichsbrucke back to the conf center (just visible saying "austria" on the high-rez version) surrounded by expensive buildings. That was yesterday - today its raining :-(
Fortunately rain stops for lunch so I got out to the Wien museum, which turns out to be largely concerned…
stoat | April 2, 2007Court Rebukes Administration in Global Warming Case says the NYT (thanks to J), and its April the 2nd not first so I guess we can trust them.
In a vain attempt to blog this before the usual suspects do, I haven't bothered to more than skim the report of the decision. But it looks interesting... "In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars. Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his…
stoat | March 20, 2007I have an "opinion piece" in Scitizen. Its called... "Lack of Errors in the IPCC Statement for Policymakers"... :-)
stoat | March 14, 2007I have a guest post over at Ellee Seymour's blog. Its an attempt at explaining TGGWS for more political type folks.
Meanwhile The Independent has an article on the faked graphs; sadly the online version hasn't got the pix.
stoat | March 5, 2007In the course of Why Channel 4 has got it wrong over climate change Robin McKie says:
The Observer's travel desk already gets hate mail merely for highlighting interesting destinations that might seem to encourage carbon-producing air travel
Well no. Without condoning the hate mail (which probably isn't) the grauniad and observer frequently (almost always) runs travel sections on places you can only plausibly get to by air. They do this because their readers want them to. They run these alongside articles bemoaning the rise of CO2 from air travel. Its a contradiction they would do better…