global warming
tlambert | February 4, 2010There have been new developments in Leakegate, the scandal swirling about reporter Jonathan Leake, who deliberately concealed facts that contradicted the story he wanted to spin. Deltoid can reveal that Leake was up to the same tricks in his story that claims that the IPCC "wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters". Bryan Walker has the detailed dissection, but the short version is that Leake took one part of the discussion of one paper in the IPCC WG2 report and pretended that this was all it said, entirely ignoring the WG1 report and the discussion of other papers in the WG2…
tlambert | February 3, 2010Jonathan Leake recently wrote a story alleging that the statement in the IPCC AR4 WG2 that up to 40% of the Amazon forest could vanish due to climate change was "bogus". Deltoid can now reveal that Leake deliberately concealed the fact that Dan Nepstad, the author of the 1999 Nature paper cited as evidence for the claim about the vulnerability of the Amazon had replied to Leake's query and informed him the claim was basically correct:
At the time of the IPCC [report], there was ample evidence that a large portion of the Amazon forest is very close to the lower limit of rainfall that is…
nisbetmc | February 2, 2010A reminder for readers in Boston and Cambridge: Thursday this week I will be a panelist on a discussion about climate change and the media at the Kennedy School of Government. Details are below and at this link. Audio of the panel discussion will be archived online and I will post a link when available.
The big draw, of course, will be fellow panelist Andrew Revkin, making one of his first public appearances since taking a buyout from his full time position at the New York Times.
The Public Divide over Climate Change: Science, Skeptics and the Media
Seminar
Series: ENRP Seminar
Open to the…
illconsidered | February 1, 2010A commenter just asked on the original "One or two warm years is not Global Warming" thread if the article is still true five years later.
Certainly the logic of it, that the temperature trend is unequivocally warming and we are not claimig global warming because of a record or two, still holds, but I thought it might be interesting to revisit the specific data points I raised in it and ask if they are still true.
The temperature data points are from the GISS analysis and can be found here (as you see, I have discovered where they hide their data!).
The statements I made are as follows:
every…
illconsidered | January 31, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Information overload is pattern recognition January 31, 2010 Chuckles, COP15, Copenhagen Accord, Scorecard, BASIC, COP16, Solomon et al., EPI, WGMS, Usama, IPCC Attack Bottom Line, Cold Snap, Frank et al., WEF, WSF, China & AGW, Gates, OIC - Oct 2011 Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land…
nisbetmc | January 27, 2010Two surveys released this week provide more information on how public opinion may or may not be shifting relative to climate change and energy. I provide some highlights and quick context below on fears over a growing "climate fatigue."
Pew: Global Warming and Energy Wane as Perceived Priorities
Earlier this week, timed to tonight's State of the Union address, Pew released its annual survey of perceived policy priorities for the President and Congress. As has been the case the past few years, global warming ranked last among the more than 20 issues polled with only 28% of Americans rating the…
nisbetmc | January 26, 2010In the two days leading up to their annual conference in San Diego later this month, AAAS will be sponsoring a two-day workshop on improving climate change literacy through informal education activities.
I will be participating in one of the panels and I hope to be blogging summaries of the event. Below is a description of the special invitation only conference and go here for an agenda.
More than 150 educators from informal science institutions and projects--including science centers, museums, zoos, and aquariums; media projects; and community programs--will gather in San Diego to expand…
grrlscientist | January 26, 2010tags: Story of Stuff, environment, pollution, climate change, global warming, recycling, social commentary, cultural observation, planned obsolescence, perceived obsolescence, fashion, advertizing, social psychology, streaming video
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental…
nisbetmc | January 25, 2010Nature magazine ran an editorial last week arguing the need for new directions in climate change communication, reflecting directly many of the themes shared at this blog and in past articles or presentations. Specifically, the Nature editors conclude:
The climate-research community would thus do well to use a diverse set of voices, from different backgrounds, when communicating with policy-makers and the public. And scientists should be careful not to disparage those on the other side of a debate: a respectful tone makes it easier for people to change their minds if they share something in…
nisbetmc | January 25, 2010For readers at Harvard, I will be participating in a panel discussion at the Kennedy School of Government on Thurs. Feb. 4 from noon to 2pm. Details are below and at this link.
The big draw, of course, will be fellow panelist Andrew Revkin, making one of his first public appearances since taking a buyout from his full time position at the New York Times.
February 4, 2010 - 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Contact Name:
Christine Russell
Cristine_Russell@hks.harvard.edu
Harvard Kennedy School Nye B/C, Taubman Building, 5th Floor 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA
"The Public Divide Over Climate Change: Scientists…
tlambert | January 25, 2010It's been over two years since John V, used the surfacestations.org data to show that the warming trends were the same for "good" and "bad" weather stations. Since then they've collected data on more stations, but still have not published their own comparison. It would be cynical of me to suggest that the reason is that the data doesn't show what they want, but now Menne et al have published a peer reviewed paper analysing a more extensive set of stations, and surprise, surprise the "bad" stations have a cooling bias. John Cook has the details.
nisbetmc | January 20, 2010
The Katzen Arts Center on the American University campus will be host to a discussion of the civic and personal challenges that college students face on climate change.
Here's a head up on a very timely panel and forum to be held here at American University on February 9th and to be broadcast live on NPR affiliate WAMU. If you can't attend, the broadcast will be archived at the WAMU site. More details will be forthcoming, including a social media site where forum attendees and listeners can weigh in with their comments and feedback.
The Climate Change Generation: Youth, Media and Politics…
tlambert | January 19, 2010Newspapers such as the London Times are reporting that the IPCC is about to retract something from the AR4 WG2 report:
A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
The claim was indeed wrong. John Nielsen-Gammon has written a detailed analysis of the error with an update here. I've discovered a bit more about it, which I will get to presently, but first I want to look at the Times statement that it was a "central claim" and the New York Times statement that it was a "much-publicized estimate".
Actually, the estimate does…
illconsidered | January 18, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years January 17, 2010 Copenhagen, BASIC, UN Investors Summit, Berlin, WFES, IRENA, Cochabamba, Cold Snap, CRU Carbon Tariffs, Grumbine, In Case Of Failure, Objectivity Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs, C & N Cycles, Temperatures,…
illconsidered | January 14, 2010Apropos the recent spate of commenting about the hacked CRU emails, Kevin Trenberth has an article at The Daily Camera.
He makes this remark about his constantly mischaracterized "travesty" quote ("The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."):
The quote has been taken out of context. It relates to our ability to track energy flow through the climate system. We can do this very well from 1992 to 2003, when large warming occurred, but not from 2004 to 2008. The quote refers to our observation system which is inadequate to observe…
tlambert | January 14, 2010Possum Comitatus has noticed a very interesting change in Roy Spencer's presentation of his satelite temperature data.
This is the November version:
And this is the December version:
Spot the difference!
Update: Gavin reminds me that in April Spencer was using a ridiculous degree 4 fit to the data:
If he'd stuck with that, the current graph would look like this:
The polynomial is still decreasing at the end, but the divergence from the data is striking.
nisbetmc | January 4, 2010Last month, I did an interview with the Philadelphia City Paper on the stolen CRU emails. The feature story provides useful background and context on the communication dynamics of the event. Yet in organizing these details and assembling quotes, the reporter applies a now dominant narrative that the controversy is the latest sign of the growing strength of the climate skeptic movement, a movement fueled by the "anti-science" hostility of American society.
The moral lesson of this narrative, told by liberal commentators and reflected at mainstream outlets and various science media, argues…
mikethemadbiologist | January 3, 2010Before I start, let me say that I have no personal animus towards Chris Mooney: my limited interactions with him have been civil, and I agree with him on many things. But this beating up the victim has to stop. Sure, I agree with Mooney that many scientists need to learn how to communicate with the public better (although Randy Olsen really needs to stop setting up straw men to knock down). But many scientists do communicate with the public, in one form or another, to the extent they are able to do so.
If a reporter contacts me, I always try to make time to speak with, usually to the…
terrasig | January 1, 2010Steve Silberman and Rebecca Skloot just pointed out to me an editorial from science writer Chris Mooney that has appeared online and will be in the Sunday, January 3rd edition of The Washington Post.
In the essay, "On issues like global warming and evolution, scientists need to speak up," Mooney continues his longstanding call to scientists to take ownership in combating scientific misinformation, invoking the very weak response of the scientific community to the aftermath of e-mails and documents hacked from the Climatic Research Institute at the University of East Anglia.
The central lesson…
nisbetmc | December 31, 2009The American University news media relations office is running a Web feature that focuses on many of the themes discussed at this blog. The feature is in the form of a "Q&A." You can read the feature here. Below are the questions for which I responded with written answers.
Q: What is "framing" and why is it important?
Q: What, in your opinion, is the most pressing scientific issue in need of being reframed in the United States, and why does it need to be reframed (what about the communication of this issue has not worked to win over broader public support)?
Q: How would you reframe…