global warming
ddobbs | June 29, 2009Paul Krugman tunes out the noise:
Temperature is a noisy time series, so if you pick and choose your dates over a short time span you can usually make whatever case you want. That's why you need to look at longer trends and do some statistical analysis. But I thought that it would be a good thing to look at the data myself.
So here's the average annual global temperature since 1880, shown as .01 degrees C deviation from the 1951-80 average.
What this tells me is that annual temperature is indeed noisy: there have been many large fluctuations, indeed much larger than the up-and-down in the…
tlambert | June 26, 2009Senator Fielding has rejected the science and now claims:
Over the last 15 years, global temperatures haven't been going up and, therefore, there hasn't been in the last 15 years a period of global warming,
Clearly there was never any chance of convincing someone who can look at a graph like this one and not see any increase in temperature since the mid 90s:
Fielding has released a reply from his four denialists to the answers to his questions. Basically they just continue to insist that global warming stopped in 1998. Tamino takes them apart with lots of graphs:
It's appropriate to end…
nisbetmc | June 16, 2009Over at the NY Times' Dot Earth, Andrew Revkin has started a conversation with readers on the merits of framing as applied to climate change communication. Revkin takes as a point of departure the Seed magazine roundtable on the issue published a few weeks back. Revkin adds to the mix another voice on the matter, scientist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olson. In his remarks excerpted by Revkin, Olson correctly points out that it's not just the frame but also the source--or the spokesperson--that matters.
The full range of comments from readers is well worth reading. I weighed in with my own response…
illconsidered | June 16, 2009Of all the myriad climate skeptic arguments out there, the argument that the current rise in CO2 is not human caused truly is one of the most ridiculous positions one could take.
(Please note, I am not saying it is ridiculous to consider, we should consider everything, but like wondering if the light in the fridge really turns off when you close the door, a quick check with your cell phone video camera really should put it to rest!)
It is of course one of the standard denials in the HTTTACS series.
I am closing comments on that thread and directing them here, as surprising as it is to me…
tlambert | June 12, 2009The plot "scientist has a crazy idea that no-one accepts but is proven right" has been used in movies from Ghostbusters to the Day After Tomorrow, but when it is satirised in Land of the Lost, S.T. Karnick decides:
My guess is that this aspect of the film was not intended as direct satire but instead simply reflects something the filmmakers picked up in the contemporary zeitgeist. However, its presence in the central story of the film and the bookend scenes-which are in very important places in the film, the beginning and end-gives it great prominence and suggests that skepticism toward such…
illconsidered | June 11, 2009I think I will start to close down comments on some of the guide articles as the comment threads get too long and meandering, and instead direct people from there to dedicated "open threads".
So consider this the first implementation of that idea for the article "CO2 Lags, not leads". Comments there are now closed.
The main reason I want to do this article first, aside from the recent explosion of unproductive comments, is because I would like to make a correction and a couple of clarifications based on what came out there. The majority of the comments fall squarely in the "completely…
tlambert | June 4, 2009The articles discussed in the Sydney Writer's Festival panel are now available on line:
Sharon Beder examines the global warming sceptics' bag of tricks.
David Spratt on why the climate catastrophe leaves no room for pragmatism
My article (on blogging about global warming). The posts discussed are on Michael Duffy and on Andrew Bolt.
nisbetmc | June 2, 2009In a fascinating cover article at the Sunday NY Times magazine, Bill Clinton reflects on health care and climate change as the two major failures of his presidency. Here are the key passages where Clinton describes why he wasn't able to accomplish more on climate change:
On climate change, he argued that he did what he could as president; he pushed for the Kyoto treaty curbing greenhouse gases but never sent it to the Senate because it would not be ratified. "Nobody was really focusing on climate change," he said. "So a lot of times you have to wait for the time to get right."...
...A few…
nisbetmc | June 1, 2009In an article in the Sunday edition, WPost reporters Steve Mufson and Juliet Eilperin detail how Obama during his presidential campaign took the lead in urging his staffers to re-frame their message on energy and climate change. As the headline notes, Obama's campaign and White House has gained traction by "re-framing" the issue in terms of jobs and national security, the type of communication strategy and bully pulpit leadership that I urged was necessary in an April article at the journal Environment.
Unfortunately, as I wrote last week and detailed at Environment, though the White House is…
nisbetmc | May 31, 2009
I spent the past three days with my colleague Ed Maibach and several graduate students conducting one-on-one interviews about climate change with participants recruited and screened from among the diversity of visitors to the National Mall in Washington, DC.
In conducting these qualitative interviews--which varied in time between 30 minutes to more than an hour--I was amazed at the forms of localized knowledge and depth of reasoning that participants from different educational backgrounds and with varying political views brought to the topic of climate change.
The experience reflected…
tlambert | May 27, 2009John Quiggin categorizes those that reject climate science into Tribalists, Ideologists, Hacks and sufferers of Emeritus disease.
Speaking of hacks, Bob Burton has discovered some more about Pat Michaels funding:
[New Hope Environmental Services], which he wholly owns, describes itself as "an advocacy science consulting firm." These days, New Hope's main activities are publishing the firm's blog, World Climate Report, and helping anonymous clients to publicize "findings on climate change and scientific and social perspectives that may not otherwise appear in the popular literature or media."…
nisbetmc | May 27, 2009Over at the NY Times' Dot Earth blog, Andrew Revkin has launched a conversation with his readers on the challenge of navigating the many emerging arguments and claims about climate policy, with Revkin emphasizing the need to engage with a range of ideas and perspectives about what should be done. As I wrote about a few weeks back, if as a society we only engage with narrowly like-minded opinions and perspectives, we will lose the ability to build consensus and achieve effective policy actions.
Unfortunately, as Revkin alludes to, the dominant style among several prominent progressive…
tlambert | May 25, 2009Jeff Sparrow has some pictures of the climate panel at the Sydney Writer's Festival. It was very popular and many people were turned away when the room filled. I'm afraid that there doesn't seem to be a recording available. David Spratt and Sharon Beder's talks were based on their articles in the latest issue of Overland, but I talked about something different.
I read out this blurb from Quadrant (link added by me)
Debate censored
When the Sydney [Left] Writers' Festival hold a phoney "forum" on climate change they ensure dissent is silenced by excluding Ian Plimer - writer of the best…
nisbetmc | May 21, 2009Hooked around the accidental release of a climate change "rebranding" memo by the firm EcoAmerica a few weeks back, Seed magazine runs today an interesting roundtable discussion on the good, the bad, and the ugly of applying framing research to communicating about climate change.
I provide comments as one of six experts "who discuss the merits of framing climate change, the language that troubles them, and the inherent bias of any chosen word." Others include climate scientists Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt, ecologist Ann Kinzig, political scientist Clark Miller and science writer Robert…
sciencewoman | May 17, 2009One my friends lives outside of Anchorage, Alaska and recently had a black bear pay a visit to her backyard. Now her preschoolers are obsessed with bears.
Minnow too has a bit of a bear obsession at the moment, though she hasn't seen any bears in their natural habitat. At school, she's been reading "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" and at home one of her favorite books is the "Berenstain Bear's Big Honey Hunt." Saturday morning, Minnow announced that we were going on a bear hunt, or maybe that we were going to look for bees that would, presumably, lead us to bears. We made it all the way to the…
nisbetmc | May 12, 2009At the Washington Post today, Dana Milbank reviews Rush Limbaugh's Monday program. The peg is Wanda Sykes' comments at this weekend's White House Correspondents Dinner.
Perhaps of greater interest, later in the column, Milbank reports on this line delivered by Rush during his Monday program:
Among callers to his show yesterday, the opinions of Limbaugh were more on the side of extravagant admiration: "There are no words to adequately describe our appreciation for your program and your individual accomplishments as a patriot."
The host had a similar sentiment: "I normally don't pat myself on…
nisbetmc | May 11, 2009If you read the NY Times or WPost in print, you've probably noticed over the past 6 months the regular full page ads that have been placed by Monsanto. Similar to the nuclear energy industry, Monsanto is seeking to re-frame and re-position food biotechnology as a "middle way" technology needed to adapt to climate change.
For example, one recent ad running at the NY Times headlines: "9 billion people to feed. A changing climate. NOW WHAT?" In smaller print the ad continues with these themes adding to it a narrative wrapped around social progress with the beneficiaries farmers and people:…
nisbetmc | May 11, 2009Last week, John Holdren appeared for a 45 minute interview on NPR Science Friday with host Ira Flatow. Below the fold, I have pasted excerpts of his comments relative to climate change policy options as well as investment in nuclear energy. In the interview, Holdren also had the chance to elaborate on his past comments on geo-engineering. Here's what he said:
FLATOW:...Let's talk a little bit about - back to energy a little bit and in global climate change. I know you've been in the press a lot, in the media a lot, talking about geo-engineering as something that is - you were quoted as, "…
ddobbs | May 6, 2009
Science Progress looks at the discouraging feedback loop between climate change and Western wildfires:
New research investigating the impact of climate change on western wildfires presents a bleak picture. CAP Senior Fellow Tom Kenworthy covers the latest science in an American Progress column this week, explaining the problematic feedback cycle: higher temperatures from global warming increase the risks of wildfires, and increased fires release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere:
A new paper in the April 24 issue of the journal Science, for example, concludes that scientists have…
denialism | April 30, 2009It's been two years now since we said hello to scienceblogs, and had our introductory posts on Conspiracy, Unified theory of the Crank, and the denialist deck of cards.
Lately reading a recent profile of a crank, Marc Morano in the NYT, which was sent to me by the crank himself. I can't help but be amazed how our initial description has held up.
For one, throughout the article, it's wonderful how wihtout realizing it, Morano exposes the the fact he's living in a bizarre fantasy world. Starting with the questionable reality of his confrontation with Al Gore:
For example, Mr. Morano said…