Climate
hrynyshyn | September 15, 2007Everyone, even Wired magazine is jumping on the "news" from the European Space Agency that the Northwest Passage is open, right across the Arctic Archipelago. Which is odd because American researchers made the same announcement earlier this summer. We need better media coverage of the effects of climate change than this.
First, the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado had this to say on Sept 4:
Another notable aspect of August 2007 was the opening of the Northwest Passage... Might the Northeast Passage open in the next few weeks?
Five days later the center noted…
hrynyshyn | September 13, 2007Bjorn Lomborg's new book, Cool It! is getting less than sympathetic reviews from those whose job it is to understand climate science. No surprise there. But here's a review by an economist, in Nature no less. Given that Lomborg approaches the question of what to do -- and what not to do -- about climate change from a conventional cost-benefit perspective based on the advice of economists, including four Nobel laureates, the Nature review is devastating.
The review is behind a subscription wall, so here's the money paragraph:
Unfortunately, Lomborg's thesis is built on a deep misconception of…
hrynyshyn | September 10, 2007Why are so many economists so dismissive of attempts to do something about climate change? Adam Finkel, a regulatory law expert at the University of Pennsylvania, has a wonderful take on that question, in a comment posted at The Intersection, in response to a recent Newsweek column by Robert Samuelson. The money quote, so to speak:
[George F. Will], asked a legitimate half-question: "Are we sure the climate at this particular moment is exactly right, and that it must be preserved, no matter the cost?" If economists would ask, and help us answer, the more interesting half of the question--"…
hrynyshyn | September 4, 2007Everybody loves dolphins. They say wild dolphins have been known to save a human's life every now and then. So it only makes sense that swimming with dolphins would be a good thing, right? Wrong. A recently published meta-analysis of the last few years of studies of the alleged benefits -- so-called Dolphin Assisted Therapy -- confirms what I and, according to another recent paper, many others have long suspected.
The evidence, it seems, doesn't support claims that children and some adults suffering from physical and mental illnesses can improve their health by getting in the water and…
sb admin | September 3, 2007Read this book.
First and formost for a book review: Storm World is a good
read. You will not find yourself bogged down or forcing yourself to
push through a book that's "good for you." You will keep reading
because you will want to know more.
As for the book itself: Mooney clearly has a point of view in the
book, and does not hide it. However, that point of view is considered
based on the evidence, and he also admits that it is not exactly the
same as the point of view he expected to have when starting research for
the book. This is not a polemic, it is not a "the sky is falling, we're…
hrynyshyn | August 31, 2007Naomi Oreskes, the researcher who could find not a single peer-reviewed climate science publication that disagreed with the consensus that humans are largely to blame for global warming, defends herself against a pathetic attempt to show that she was wrong. (thanks Stranger Fruit.) But in her list of reasons why we shouldn't pay attention to her detractors, there is sad and completely unnecessary little example of the ad hominem logical fallacy:
6) The author is a medical researcher. As a historian of science I am trained to analyze and understand scientific arguments, their development,…
hrynyshyn | August 31, 2007Talk about alarmist climate science. A new study has confirmed earlier propositions that the most recent ice age will be the last, for at least half a million years, if we don't stop burning fossil fuels. But I say, this is not something we should be worried about.
In "The long-term legacy of fossil fuels," (Tellus B, 59(4): 664-672, September 2007), Toby Tyrell, John Shepherd and Stephanie Castle at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton conclude that the ocean's ability to absorb all that carbon dioxide we're pumping into the atmosphere to keep our decadent lifestyles afloat will…
hrynyshyn | August 29, 2007PZ Myers suggested I might have something to say in response to Bjorn "The Skeptical Environmentalist" Lomborg's resurfacing. Indeed I do. The Danish boy wonder is back with a new book, Cool It, in which he makes his case, yet again, that climate change isn't all that bad. He was wrong with his first book, which was savaged by everyone who actually knew the subject matter, and he's even more wrong now.
Salon has an aggressive interview and an excellent book review, and it is on the former that I will base my analysis of Lomborg's major cognitive failure, in lieu of wasting precious time and…
voltagegate | August 29, 2007Arthur Kanegis may have written the worst (best?) movie review of all time. Get Leo some green tights, cape and a steamy cup of shade grown.
Speaking of garbage, Ben Stein has sided with the IDers and will play a central role in a sinister new documentary called Expelled. If you haven't heard already, PZ was interviewed for the movie (under the impression that he was being interviewed for a more objective film), Randy Olson has shared his concerns on Pharyngula, and people have been laying into Stein on his first blog post about the movie. Here we go again, folks. Another big battle is…
hrynyshyn | August 29, 2007The North Polar ice sheet continues to recede, setting yet another record:
Sea ice extent continues to decline, and is now at 4.78 million square kilometers (1.84 million square miles), falling yet further below the record absolute minimum of 5.32 million square kilometers (2.05 million square miles) that occurred on September 20-21, 2005. -- The National Snow and Ice Data Center, Aug. 28.
Here's the map:
Caveat: this is sea ice extent, not total area coverage. Different groups measure different things. But the trend is unambiguous. The purple line is the median for a typical August.
Note…
hrynyshyn | August 27, 2007The climate change denial gang is so predictable. Even when the science as written, and as covered by reputable science journalists, makes it clear that the new evidence bolsters the general consensus, there are those who will give the findings the opposite interpretation. Today's topic is sunspots.
The title of the paper in question actually addresses the issue head on: "Solar-Cycle Warming at the Earth's Surface and an Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity." It's all about using that 11-year sunspot cycle -- the one that produces spectacular aurora and knocks out satellites --…
hrynyshyn | August 22, 2007It's the big question that bedevils climate science and politics: how close are these "tipping points" beyond which things get very bad very fast? Tim Lenton of the Laboratory for Global Marine and Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of East Anglia doesn't have any definitive answers, but he makes a valiant effort to explain what we do know in a new essay, "Tipping points in the Earth system." A properly peer-reviewed version is in progress, but for sheer background info, it's already required reading here on the Island.
Lenton has made a career of exploring some of the more extreme ideas…
voltagegate | August 21, 2007One of our geography profs, who is teaching a storm chasing class over the summer, was featured on Good Morning America this past Sunday:
"I think it's important the general public begins to understand the concept of inquiry-based science education, which is what this course is all about, and that Frostburg State University is one of those higher education institutions that is leading the way in this area," Arnold said. "I am thrilled that we have the opportunity to communicate these messages through the national media, and am very happy that 'Good Morning America' chose to broadcast a…
hrynyshyn | August 16, 2007New Scientist's Fred Pearce reports today on climatologist Tim Lenton's warnings about climate change "tipping points," some of which may already have been passed, although his story doesn't actually mention any of these past-tense points. Lenton was speaking at a meeting organized by the British Antarctic Survey on "complexity in nature" and it's hard to find anything more complex than the Earth's climate. But it turns out Lenton's nightmare scenarios, which he generates from the University of East Anglia in the UK aren't even as scary as some raised by American climatologists.
I don't know…
hrynyshyn | August 15, 2007Sooner or later, at least one member of the audience that has turned out to see me present Al Gore's climate change slide show wants to know why I haven't included nuclear power in the list of technologies that can help cut our carbon emissions. The question is usually put by the likes of a retired engineer who actually understands the physics and technical aspects of nuclear power. I have to admit that I don't welcome the question, because it tends to lead to a drawn-out debate at what is already a longer evening that most attendees bargained for. But I do have an answer: time.
I've written…
hrynyshyn | August 10, 2007That portion of the blogosphere that takes no shame in including Ann Coulter in their blogrolls is all atwitter with the news that NASA has "silently" released adjusted temperature records showing that 1934 is the warmest year on record, not 1998 or 2005 or 2006. How will Al Gore, James Hansen and all the other "enviromoonbats" recover from this embarrassing revelation? Probably without breaking a sweat, I would think.
Many of the blogs make no distinction between "warmest year in American history" and "warmest year in world history." And the difference, as you might expect, is more than a…
hrynyshyn | August 10, 2007Yet more evidence that the Arctic ice cap is disappearing at (yes, here comes that word again) alarming rates. This time the harbinger of bad news is William L. Chapman of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Today, the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area broke the record for the lowest recorded ice area in recorded history. The new record came a full month before the historic summer minimum typically occurs. There is still a month or more of melt likely this year. It is therefore almost certain that the previous 2005 record will be annihilated by the final 2007 annual minima closer to…
hrynyshyn | August 9, 2007When they talk about dangerous climate change, I don't think this is what they had in mind.
hrynyshyn | August 8, 2007Today's Washington Post includes an exploration of a relatively recent trend among evangelical Christians: environmentalism, or more specifically, climate change activism. There's not a lot new here, as the story has been covered in some depth for the last year or so. But it's worth reviewing, because whatever your feelings about the notion of fundamentalists working within a secular campaign, it's beginning to look like these unlikely bedfellows are going to be spending a lot of time between the sheets.
My first reaction to the idea of trying to engage evangelicals on climate change was…
hrynyshyn | August 6, 2007What with all the enthusiasm about the energy legislation now working its way through the U.S. Congress, it's easy to forget there is a fundamental contradiction between the goals of conservationists and those of the utilities involved in supplying the energy. And this inconvenient contradiction, between capitalism and conservation, is not easily resolved. A case in point is an ongoing marketing campaign by one of America's largest utilities, Duke Energy.
Duke just happens to be the supplier of the electricity that powers my family's ultra-efficient heat pump, compact fluorescent light bulbs…