Global Warming
gregladen | April 29, 2017https://twitter.com/Peoples_Climate/status/858366705105547265
https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/858380761786978304
https://twitter.com/USseriously/status/858380252749475840
https://twitter.com/HighTechAztec/status/858372516552822784
https://twitter.com/NRDC/status/858324745716215810
https://twitter.com/350/status/858314513845821440
https://twitter.com/tinselkorey/status/858380392214142977
https://twitter.com/WECAN_INTL/status/858307511551766532
https://twitter.com/fastlerner/status/858374486671994880
https://twitter.com/SierraClub/status/858382306737827840
gregladen | April 29, 2017From MMFA:
Broadcast networks are decreasing their climate coverage at a time when the case for reporting on the issue is become more and more compelling. By ignoring this serious matter, media are failing to inform audiences about pressing impacts on human migration patterns, women, and the economy.
In 2016, media had no shortage of compelling reasons to cover climate change -- from the revelation that it was the third consecutive hottest year on record to the United States’ election of a climate denier to its highest office. Yet broadcast news outlets’ coverage of climate change dropped a…
gregladen | April 29, 2017The EPA has removed climate science from its site in order that the site contents better reflect Donald Trump's perspective.
From Chris Mooney and Juliet Eilperin at the Washington Post:
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday evening that its website would be “undergoing changes” to better represent the new direction the agency is taking, triggering the removal of several agency websites containing detailed climate data and scientific information.
One of the websites that appeared to be gone had been cited to challenge statements made by the EPA’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt…
gregladen | April 28, 2017Right in the middle, between the Trump-inspired March for Science, and the Trump-inspired People's Climate March, the New York times managed to come down firmly on the side of climate and science denial, in its editorial pages.
This week sees the first NYT installment by the ex Wall Street Journal columnist and author Bret Stephens (also former editor of the The Jerusalem Post). He is a professional contrarian, well known for his denial of the importance and reality of climate change, as well as other right wing positions. I assume the New York Times added Stephens to their stable of…
gregladen | April 27, 2017The New York Times
Elizabeth Spayed, Public Editor
Dear Elizabeth,
I am writing to express my concern for the addition of Bret Stephens to the NYT team as a columnist.
I don't expect a columnist who seemingly writes about everything to be wrong about nothing. But the Gray Lady should, at the very least, expect a columnist to know something about something.
Stephens doesn't simply express opinions that are not popular in certain, many, circles. He attempts to support his opinions with what we now seem to be calling alt-facts.
For example, his opinion about the importance of climate change is…
gregladen | April 27, 2017I've been meaning to write a letter to the New York Times I just wrote this letter to the New York Times about their very wrong decision to add a climate science denier to their editorial staff. When they were recently challenged about this idea, the response was, paraphrasing, "millions of people believe this man that climate change is not for real."
Coming from the New York Times I find that deeply disturbing and overwhelmingly offensive.
Anyway, I haven't written my letter yet, but my friend and colleague Stefan Rahmstorf, climate scientist, did, and he says it is OK to post it. So, here…
gregladen | April 14, 2017Behold the following letter from Representative Donald S. Beyer in reference to the recent House Science, Space, and Technology hearing "Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy, Implications, and Scientific Method" held last month (Warning Big File):
Beyer Fact Check - Submitted April 11
Here is a smaller, much abbreviated and much less fun version of the letter, sans the extensive appendix:
Letter Only
gregladen | April 14, 2017The latest data from NASA GISS has come out, showing a surprise result for the month of March.
Hat tip to Jeff Masters of Wunderground for sending this info. He'll probably be blogging on it soon.
The surprise is that March, while expected to be warm due to human caused greenhouse gas pollution, turned out to be very warm globally. This is a surprise because the Earth supposedly just experienced a minor cooling La Niña event that ended in January. March 2017, it turns out, is the fourth warmest month since 1880 expressed as an anomaly from a 1951-1980 baseline (that's a bit tricky, more on…
gregladen | April 13, 2017The New York Times has a history of supporting a certain degree of climate change science denial, while at the same time supporting some very good journalism in this area. Just now, the Times jumped over one big giant shark by adding Bret Stephens to its opinion page staff.
Stephens comes to the Times from the Wall Street Journal, a Murdoch anti-science rag you are all familiar with.
In 2011, he wrote,
Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.
As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people…
gregladen | April 10, 2017About once a day, someone tells me that human caused climate change is not real because this or that thing in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contradicts something I, or some other scientists or science writer, has said.
I've noticed an uptick in references to the IPCC report by those intent on denying the reality of climate change. This even happened at recent congressional hearings, where "expert witnesses" made similar claims.
How can that be? How can the flagship scientific report on climate change, the objective source of information about the…
gregladen | April 10, 2017Here's a video from the Guardian on the current status of the reef:
This is going to take a while. If there is a major bleaching event every year for a few years, the reef could essentially die off right away, but most likely, there will still be a few years where coral can spread, and a few years that are not too bad. So one must adjust expectations.
Let me put this a different, perhaps cynical but probably realistic, view. In about four years from now, there will be some bone-headed global warming denier standing on a boat off shore in Australia, showing us a section of really nice, well…
gregladen | April 6, 2017As we pass through Spring on the way to summer, the sea ice in the Arctic is starting to melt. The ice usually peaks by the end of the first week in March or so, then slowly declines for a few weeks, then by about mid-May is heading rapidly towards its likely September minimum.
With global warming the ice has been reaching a lower winter maximum, and a much lower summer maximum. This is caused by warm air and water, and it contributes to global warming. The more ice on the sea for longer, during the northern Summer, reflects away a certain amount of sunlight. With less ice, less sunlight is…
gregladen | April 5, 2017Last week, House Representative Lamar Smith held yet another masturbatory hearing to promote climate science denial. Smith is bought and paid for by Big Oil, so that is the most obvious reason he and his Republican colleagues would put on such a dog and pony show, complete with a chorus of three science deniers (Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr, and John Cristy). I don't know why they invited actual and respected climate scientist Mike Mann, because all he did was ruin everything by stating facts, dispelling alt-facts, and making well timed Princess Bride references.
The hearings were called "…
gregladen | March 31, 2017A well known anti-science "think" tank has sent around, to teachers, a mailing including an antiscience book, a movie, and nice letter and, oddly, a pamphlet exposing the fact that the mailing is entirely politically motivated.
Most science teachers will ignore this. A few science teachers are science deniers, and they already had the material in the mailings. So, I think this was a huge waste of money and effort. But it happened and you should know about it, and you should warn anyone you know that is a teacher.
The real concern, in my opinion, is not this falling into the hands of science…
gregladen | March 29, 2017Congressman Lamar Smith is a well known science denier, especially a climate science denier.
Recently, he admitted that the House committee he runs is a tool of the anti-science forces.
At a recent conference at the pro-Tobacco anti-Science Koch (and others) funded fake think tank Heartland, this happened:
Smith: Next week we’re going to have a hearing on our favorite subject of climate change and also on the scientific method, which has been repeatedly ignored by the so-called self-professed climate scientists.
Audience Member: I applaud you for saying you’ll be using the term climate…
gregladen | March 28, 2017I want to tell you about what may be the most important research result in the area of climate change in recent years. First, a little background.
We know from paleoclimate studies that the Earth's climate system changes from time to time enough to leave a mark. For example, it is widely thought that during the "ice ages" (periods of extensive or moderate glaciation) over the last couple of million years, areas that are currently very dry had a lot more water. Some combination of rain and evaporation (more rain and less evaporation) conspired to fill playas (dried up lakes) or salt lakes (…
gregladen | March 23, 2017Media Matters has an amazing and rather depressing report out on the way broadcast media in the US covered climate change.
I'm going to give you a handful of bullet points that reflect only some of the results of this detailed study, then you go read it.
Bottom line: Coverage in 2016 was a fraction of the previous year, even though there was more climate change news in 2016 than most years ever have.
ABC covered climate change for a total of six minutes during the entire year of 2016
None of the major networks discussed the climate related consequences of a Clinton vs. a Trump presidency…
gregladen | March 13, 2017The Key for the above graphic:
Donald Trump's FEMA is not ready for this storm. The entire federal government is understaffed, and there are funding problems, and this applies to FEMA as well.
So, if you are anywhere in the area to be affected by this storm (the weather channel calls it Stella, I call it Trump's Storm One because it is the first big storm on his watch) you need to know that the usual help is not necessarily going to be available.
Maybe we should call it the Ides of March Storm.
A very large area will probably get a very large amount of snow. Keep up with your local NWS…
gregladen | March 9, 2017Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, the once funny but now highly repetitive cartoon about a nerd who has a job in an office.
Dr. Gavin Schmidt is high up in the top ten list of world class climate scientists. He is Director of the currently under siege GISS Unit of NASA, where much of the climate science done by that agency is carried out. If you read my blog, you've read his work, because you also read RealClimate, where GS writes about climate science in a manner designed to be understandable to the intelligent, honestly interested, thoughtful individual.
Adams has a history of going…
gregladen | February 5, 2017The year 2016 was messy and expensive and full of climate change enhanced weather disasters. There were, according to Jeff Masters and Bob Henson, over 30 billion dollar disasters last year.
This is the fourth-largest number on record going back to 1990, said insurance broker Aon Benfield in their Annual Global Climate and Catastrophe Report issued January 17 (updated January 23 to include a 31st billion-dollar disaster, the Gatlinburg, Tennessee fire.) The average from 1990 - 2016 was 22 billion-dollar weather disasters; the highest number since 1990 was 41, in 2013.
The frequency of flood…