Climate
hrynyshyn | December 30, 2009It's taken me a while to assemble something cogent about the outcome of the CoP15, the Copenhagen conference that produced what some are calling "better than nothing." There are those who consider it a complete failure because the final accord, which didn't receive full approval, includes no specific carbon emissions reductions targets. Others point out that just getting China to agree to a watered-down provision on verification protocols was a major achievement and the best that could be hoped for. I doubt a useful evaluation will be forthcoming until much later in 2010. History's like that…
hrynyshyn | December 29, 2009I really should do this more often, but probably won't manage it again for another five years, so...
Thank you for reading this blog. There's a long list of regular readers and commenters who have helped make the Island of Doubt a project something approaching a worthy project, including Scott Belyea, Bob Koepp, Lance, dhogaza, Chris Salmon, paulm and Hume's Ghost. Not all of you share the concerns that inform my posts, but you keep coming back. And I appreciate it.
I don't moderate comments here, and for the most part I haven't felt the need because the vast majority of the exchanges remain…
milhayser | December 22, 2009
The climate summit in Copenhagen came to a tenuous conclusion on Friday, as five nations pulled a non-binding "agreement" from thin air. This agreement recognizes the threat of rising temperatures and pledges financial aid for developing countries, but sets no emission guidelines and is not legally enforcible anyway. On Casaubon's Book, Sharon Astyk fears what global warming will do to Santa's Workshop, writing that the major players at Copenhagen were "afraid to do hard things," and content to "pretend to do something" instead. Meanwhile, Greg Laden on his blog points out that Copenhagen…
hrynyshyn | December 22, 2009Not from me, but from Daniel Loxton of Skepticblog, who has been doing some thinking about what skeptics can learn from James Randi's missteps on climate science. His advice is bound to rankle the feathers of those who are innately distrustful of everyone and everything associated with "conventional wisdom," "expert consensus," or "recognized experts." But for the those who fancy themselves dragon-slayers of pseudoscience, it serves as a valuable reality check.
To begin, Loxton reminds us that "If we're serious about our science-based epistemology, we must be prepared to consistently defer to…
sastyk | December 18, 2009You've got to give our Secretary of State credit - she knows how to make an entrance. Show up at the door with 100 billion and people can't look away. Of course, she didn't promise 100 billion from the US, but to raise it collectively with some unspecified other folk by 2020, but still, it is an impressive number, and it isn't wasn't a bad way to get attention. That doesn't change the fact that the rich world is still trying to blame the poor, or that the climate talks are still failing.
Meanwhile, a new UN report released confirms what we already knew - that everything presently on the…
hrynyshyn | December 17, 2009James Randi has corrected himself. After this week's Swift blog post that verged on climate change denialism, he now writes that his observation that the world has cooled over the last 150 years was supposed to have said "warmed." And he accepts that his description of the Oregon Petition as something that "may be valid" was a mistake.
... the importance and the impact of this phenomenon is well beyond my grasp. I merely expressed my thoughts about the controversy, and I received a storm (no pun intended) of comments, many of which showed a lack of careful reading that led to unfair…
hrynyshyn | December 17, 2009I've run out of anything useful to say about Copenhagen. This graphic, from "Climate Interactive" tells you just about everything you need to know.
hrynyshyn | December 16, 2009James Randi has few peers when it comes to applying scientific rigor to claims of paranormal or supernatural activity. He's been doing it for what seems like eons, all without any formal scientific training. So when he even hints that climate change denialists might have a point, it's time to see what's up. After all, he's made a honorable career of attacking pseudoscience, not science itself.
The most recent post at his blog, named after Johnathan Swift is a bit on the rambling side, and little inconsistent. The most surprising paragraph is:
I strongly suspect that The Petition Project may…
sastyk | December 16, 2009Not long ago I was out at a dinner of climate activists, at the beginning of a conference I was at, and as we were climbing into the car of one of the program leaders, there was talk about whose car was messier. This is a competition I always win - I mentioned to them that not only do I have little kids in my car, messing it up, but I drive goats around in my Taurus.
Several people asked me why I drive goats in a car, (which even to me seems like a reasonable question). The answer is that I am a farmer with goats, but I don't have a pick up truck, so when they go to be bred or to the vet,…
hrynyshyn | December 15, 2009Following yesterday's Yes Men hoax, in which Canada's position on greenhouse-gas emissions was mocked, the country's minister of the environment seems to have become a persona non grata. At least, that's how it looked to a Toronto Star blogger reporting from Copenhagen:
Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice just finished his press conference and he dismissed the hoax press releases, saying "I am here to negotiate." The Minister's press people distributed a release for a photo-op of U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Prentice to occur shortly after the press conference, outside of the…
hrynyshyn | December 15, 2009The good news is Andrew Revkin will continue to post at his Dot Earth blog for the foreseeable future. The bad news is he will be doing so not as a staff reporter for the New York Times, which has allowed him the rare honor of specializing in something as specialized as climate change, for many years. Instead, it will be as Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at Pace University's Pace Academy for Applied Environmental Studies.
As a "mainstream" journalist, Andy operated under the constraints, baggage and inertia of a system that was ill-suited to cover a subject that fused science…
hrynyshyn | December 14, 2009It would be funny if so much weren't at stake.
Anonymous culture-jammers (probably the "Yes Men") earlier today apparently managed to fool the Wall Street Journal into reporting that Canada has abandoned it established greenhouse gas emissions reductions target of just 3% below 1990 levels by 2020. Instead, it would henceforth support something more in line with what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- and most of the developing world -- say is necessary to avoid dangerous interference in the global climate: 25-40% below 1990 by 2020.
Within an hour, the Canadian government had…
khannula | December 13, 2009I had a weird experience dealing with journals and peer review a little while ago. Recent discussions of the CRU e-mail hack (especially Janet's) has made me think more about it, and wonder about how the scientific community ought to think about expertise when it comes to peer review.
A little while ago, I was asked to be a reviewer for a journal article. That's a more common experience for people at research universities than for someone like me, but it's still something that's part of my job. I turned down the request because I didn't feel qualified to review the paper. That wouldn't have…
hrynyshyn | December 11, 2009Forget Copenhagen for a moment, and turn your attention back to the U.S. legislative process, into which has just been thrown a new option, a "third option" that just might be able to satisfy both the "it's the only game in town so let's support the cap-and-trade bills now before Congress" gang and those who call cap and trade a scam that's doomed to fail.
The cap-and-trade approach to reducing carbon emissions is the core of both the bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and the one already circulating in the Senate. It embraces the wisdom of the marketplace set us down the road…
milhayser | December 11, 2009
Tensions are mounting in Copenhagen over the so-called "Danish text," a draft agreement that would allow developed countries such as the United States and China to emit nearly twice as much carbon per capita as "third world" or developing countries. Meanwhile, scrappy island nation Tuvalu stood up for a stricter resolution, only to be scolded by the economies-that-be. Eric Michael Johnson on The Primate Diaries writes that the Danish text would "effectively stifle the growth of poor nations while allowing wealthy nations to continue their disproportionate levels of carbon pollution." In a…
hrynyshyn | December 10, 2009Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science. In an op-ed published in today's Washington Post, he excoriates Sarah Palin for her illterate essay, published earlier this week, on the topic of climate change.
While former Alaska governor Sarah Palin wrote in her Dec. 9 op-ed that she did not deny the "reality of some changes in climate," she distorted the clear scientific evidence that Earth's climate is changing, largely as a result of human behaviors. She also badly confused the concepts of…
hrynyshyn | December 9, 2009Dear Ms. Palin,
Re: "Copenhagen's political science" as published in the Washington Post. As the Post didn't see fit to edit or fact-check your piece, I thought I'd save you any embarrassment that might result if you see fit to publish it elsewhere.
I will begin with this paragraph:
The e-mails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed [deleted copies of] records, manipulated adjusted data to "hide the decline" in global select North American temperatures [tree-ring proxy data that conflicted with observational records], and tried to silence [challenge] their [non-expert]…
milhayser | December 8, 2009
A potentially historic climate change conference began in Copenhagen Monday and will run for the next two weeks as leaders and diplomats from around the world attempt to reach an agreement about global warming. Meanwhile, the stolen emails of Climategate are still making some headlines, but why? Dismissing cries of conspiracy, ScienceBloggers have moved on to consider the broader implications of the event. Josh Rosenau on Thoughts from Kansas decries the invasion of privacy, writing "I'm sure the server contained private notes to the researchers' loved ones and family and a host of other…
sb admin | December 8, 2009From the American Geophysical Union's Twitter feed ( @theAGU ):
Looking for a geoblogger to discuss blogging at Communicating your Science workshop Sunday Dec. 13 morning #AGU09 Contact mjvinas@agu.org
(I'm not going. Have fun in San Francisco - I'll be at home, grading.)
hrynyshyn | December 8, 2009I use the term "climategate" reluctantly because the stolen climatology email story has little in common with Watergate. Those who would deny the physical reality of climate change seem to have latched onto the meme, however, and it is my sad news to report that the essence of the meme, if not that particular label, is spreading further than I originally feared. The latest casualty is Canada's Globe and Mail.
Reporter Doug Saunders is no intellectual slouch. I've followed his work for a while now. He has proven his ability to cut through prevailing dogma -- replacing the myth that Ronald…