Climate
hrynyshyn | May 1, 2007In a story that caught the attention of only the more astute climate science journalists a few weeks ago, one of the more experienced oceanographers of our time, Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, reported that the Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than we thought. How much faster? So fast that the rate made the story seem too alarmist to take seriously.
As MSNBC's Alex Johnson reported,
Scientists had previously predicted that the summer sea ice would disappear from the Arctic by 2040. But Wadhams' measurements indicate that the thinning was already approaching 50 percent and that…
hrynyshyn | April 26, 2007The cover story of the latest edition of SEED, which arrived in my physical mailbox today, explores the green technological revolution under way in China. According to Shanghai correspondent Mara Hvistendahl, "an environmental consciousness is building" there. I sure hope she's right, because the latest news, too late to be included in the SEED feature, is that China will...
...exceed the United States as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases as early as the end of this year -- not 2010, as energy experts had previously forecast. (Nature 446, 954-955)
London's Independent, not too…
hrynyshyn | April 25, 2007Nobody emerges looking good in Hot Politics, a PBS Frontline documentary on the politics of the first Bush, Clinton and second Bush administrations. It aired last night, but the whole thing is available online. Not a lot we didn't already know, but it's sobering to be reminded that the inertia that has prevented serious action on global warming long predates the current federal government. For example...
A lot of us had forgotten how poorly the Clinton Administration scored on the environmental front. Clinton and VP Al Gore (there he is again), started off gangbusters with a radical proposal…
voltagegate | April 18, 2007Today is my one year blogiversary and I will be celebrating by helping the Sierra Student Coalition and other conservation groups on campus celebrate Earth Day 2007 a few days early, to coincide with our new president's inauguration.
The new pres has promised to sign the Talloires Declaration, declaring his dedication to promoting a sustainable campus.
The Bottom Line will have a table at the celebration, handing out our annual Earth Day edition of the paper. I should have pics of the event up later.
This also marks the day I will begin occasionally reposting substantial, non-timely posts…
voltagegate | April 17, 2007Maniola jurtina
Another study was published recently in Ecology that sought to tease out and analyze environmental factors (the other regarded deforestation and albedo), this time with a concentration on species diversity, specifically different native butterfly populations in Britain.
The butterflies were split into two main groups:
...habitat specialists, occupying one or a few localized habitats; [and] habitat generalists, occupying widespread and/or many habitats...
The researchers studied three factors affecting butterfly diversity: the direct and indirect (trophic cascade) effects of…
hrynyshyn | April 13, 2007Jeremy Bruno, one our newest ScienceBloggers, hit the nail on the head with a post about the folly of assuming that we can do about something climate change by planting more trees, at least in the non-tropical regions. This is not a new idea, and studies pointing out that lowering the albedo of snow-prone northern latitudes by increasing forest coverage more than offsets any increased carbon uptake by those very same trees have been coming out every few months for at least six years now. What I like about Jeremy's take is his observation that tree-planting advocates are symptomatic of the…
voltagegate | April 11, 2007My news editor wrote a great column (filling in for me) about the politicization of science and Climate Crisis Action Day last issue that I meant to link but never got to it:
As a science columnist, I would guess that I would be ignoring a pretty specific requirement of the Voltage Gate without addressing the scientific implications involved. Climate change is a scientific issue, one that will require the collective knowledge and drive of many of the world's best. However, the lines between science, politics and culture are becoming increasingly blurred. The overwhelming dedication to…
hrynyshyn | April 8, 2007Those who really care about the process behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports will probably want to grab this. It's a draft of Working Group II's Summary for Policymakers before the final editing session stripped it of some of the more dramatic (alarmist?) language following objections from China and Saudi Arabia. You know it's the earlier version because it has "The content of this draft should not be cited or quoted, and is embargoed from news coverage" on the cover page.
Thanks to Rick Piltz, who managed to get a hold of the draft posted it at his Climate Science…
hrynyshyn | April 6, 2007Before anyone reads the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report, the one released today on the impacts, there are a few things to keep in mind. Chief among them is the level of political interference in the final document. According to the AP
Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but in the end agreed to compromises. However, some scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change vowed never to take part in the process again.
"The authors lost," said one participant. "A lot of authors are not going to engage in the…
chaoticutopia | April 5, 2007
A while back, I asked for your input for a paper I was writing, concerning practical solutions for adapting to climate change. The paper was for a contest, which, unfortunately, I did not win. I'm sure others were more prepared to offer innovative solutions. I felt my paper made a good point, however, so I'm taking the opportunity to publish it here.
America, Adapt!
Leading our Country towards Sustainable Solutions
By Karmen Lee Franklin
Climate change is inevitable; this is obvious to anyone taking the time to examine the
multitude of evidence at hand. These changes, regardless of the…
hrynyshyn | April 2, 2007The U.S. Supreme Court says the Environmental Protection Agency has offered "no reasoned explanation" why it shouldn't regulate carbon dioxide, just like every other pollutant spewing from tailpipes and smokestacks. You'd think that would be a no-brainer, but ...
The court's four most conservative members -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both appointees of President George W. Bush, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- dissented.
The implications are theoretically immense. Of course, Bush will probably just sign a piece of paper noting that he doesn't agree…
hrynyshyn | March 28, 2007Bjorn Lomborg, the ex-Greenpeace bad-boy of statistics, is back at it. In last week's National Post, Canada's right-wing embarrassment of a newspaper, he once again takes on climate change activists. The problem with Lomborg, a man trained to play with numbers but seemingly devoid any understanding of how to understand what those numbers really mean (recall The Skeptical Environmentalist, his widely discredited attempt to argue that things aren't really all that bad), is that he doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes. Here's his essay, and my attempt to show why almost everything he says is…
hrynyshyn | March 20, 2007You've got to hand it to John Edwards. He's always trying to do the right thing, or at least appear to be doing the right thing. Last week he announced that his campaign for the White House will be a sustainable one, through the use of the latest fad in environmental circles: carbon offsets. It's a nice idea in theory -- facing the reality that one can't tour the country without producing significant amounts of greehouse gases, he's going to pay someone else to compensate for his emissions. But I've never been too enamored of the idea, and last week one of my favorite science journalists,…
hrynyshyn | March 8, 2007Towards the tail end of Al Gore's climate-change slide show -- the one in "An Inconvenient Truth" -- there's a slide on three misconceptions propagated by those who, for lack of a better term, have been called skeptics. One of those misconceptions always struck me a bit odd, and until yesterday, I wondered if it really belonged in the presentation. This is the problem line in question:
OK, if we accept that it's real and that we're causing it, isn't this problem so big that we can't possibly fix it?
Gore's thesis is that very same people who not so long ago argued that the Earth isn't warming…
hrynyshyn | February 6, 2007Venerable New York Times reporter William K. Stevens resurfaces today in the paper's Science Times with a few words on the changing nature of the debate over the changing climate. The headline is only slightly misleading:
"On the Climate Change Beat, Doubt Gives Way to Certainty"
Technically, there is no certainty, just diminishing levels of doubt. But it is a nice little essay. I just finished writing something similar for a magazine, and found the similarities with Steven's piece almost troubling, except that it's pretty obvious stuff.
To say that reasonable doubt is vanishing does not mean…
chaoticutopia | February 2, 2007Well, technically, it's still Friday somewhere...
It is bitterly cold in Colorado right now, somewhere around 10 degrees below 0, Fahrenheit. It was a bit warmer than that at sunset, when I spent some time admiring the fractal patterns in tree branches. (I'll confess, it's a favorite hobby of mine.) The windswept clouds, highlighted by the setting sun, made a lovely backdrop for the bare limbs. I realized, as snow drifted around my ankles, that I might be able to share the scene without the biting freeze. So, I was inspired to create a last minute layered fractal of trees:
The geometric…
hrynyshyn | January 26, 2007A new poll in Canada has climate change at the top of the worry list for the first time, and it's rising fast. The Globe and Mail poll puts the share of Canadians who say the environment is the most critical issue facing the country at 26 per cent, up from 12 per cent in July, and 4 per cent one year ago. To put this surprising finding in context, only 18 per cent said health care was their No. 1 concern. And health care has long ruled the top of that list.
(Terrorism got only 6 per cent and crime just 3 per cent, which might surprise Americans who consider Canada the 51st state, but isn't…
hrynyshyn | January 22, 2007When word came earlier this month that Washington state school board is refusing to present An Inconvenient Truth, Laurie David's documentary on Al Gore's climate change slide show, to its high school students, criticism was fast and furious. The main problem was the decision was taken in response to complaints from a creationist parent who demanded his somewhat less-than-scientific point of view be offered instead. ("Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore.") I wrote to the school board and suggested that the students can handle the truth, so to speak. The reply I received…
hrynyshyn | January 21, 2007Of course, we'll never be absolutely certain about the causes and future trends of climate change. That's not the way science works. But according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we're getting pretty darn close to that magical 19-times-out-of-20 territory that passes for conclusive evidence in scientific language.
The Toronto Star has got ahold of what is most like a next-to-final draft of the IPCC next report, due Feb. 2, and the language could scarcely be more worrisome. Here are the excerpts,as reported by Peter Gorrie:
"It is very likely that (man-made) greenhouse gas…
hrynyshyn | January 10, 2007Just a pointer to yet another thoughtful rejoinder from the Real Climate group in the wake of media hysteria. This time it's all about whether El Nino or climate change is to blame for the ridiculously warm weather that recently dominated much of North America. As usual, the answer is: it's too complicated for simple answers. Among the many poignant observations:
...while El Nino typically does perturb the winter Northern Hemisphere jet stream in a way that favors anomalous warmth over much of the northern half of the U.S., the typical amplitude of the warming (see Figure below right) is…