global warming
illconsidered | March 23, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...
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 March 22, 2009 Top Stories: Earth Hour, Maldives, US Polls, Copenhagen Melting Arctic, Polar Bear, Arctic Geopolitics, Grumbine, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, World…
denialism | March 21, 2009Congrats to Chris Mooney for getting his rebuttal to George Will published in the Washington Post. And kudos to the post for allowing his serious factual answer to an article composed entirely of crank arguments and lies (they also published a rebuttal from WMO Secretary General Michel Jarraud dealing with the lies in Will's article)
Mooney does an excellent job, and points out the frank dishonesty not just regarding the sea ice data (the only point the obtuse Ombudsman would even talk about), but also how every other argument in the entire article represents flawed rhetoric. In particular…
terrasig | March 21, 2009Kudos to The Washington Post for publishing an op-ed by author, journalist, blogger, Chris Mooney, on the George Will WaPo global warming fiasco. Author of "The Republican War on Science," "Storm World," and co-author with Sheril Kirshenbaum of the forthcoming "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future."
This is Mooney at his best - first and last paragraph:
A recent controversy over claims about climate science by Post op-ed columnist George F. Will raises a critical question: Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real…
tlambert | March 21, 2009The Washington Post has published Chris Mooney's reply to George Will's misinformation. Mooney corrects some of Will's false and misleading claims and finishes with:
Readers and commentators must learn to share some practices with scientists -- following up on sources, taking scientific knowledge seriously rather than cherry-picking misleading bits of information, and applying critical thinking to the weighing of evidence. That, in the end, is all that good science really is. It's also what good journalism and commentary alike must strive to be -- now more than ever.
There is also a letter…
cmooney | March 21, 2009As any reader of this blog knows, I was for a while very critical of the Washington Post editorial page amid the George Will affair. Now, my view has changed.
Today the Post publishes, replete with links to many scientific sources, my op-ed answering three claims Will made in his now infamous "Dark Green Doomsayers" column, and also making a broader point about why we need standards in science-centered journalism and commentary.
I'm extremely heartened that the Post ran the piece, and has at least allowed me to correct Will--or, to "debate" him. Without further ado, the oped begins like this…
grrlscientist | March 20, 2009tags: The State of the Birds 2009, ornithology, birds, endangered species, conservation, global warming, climate change, environment, invasive species, habitat loss
Streaming video [6:31]
According to the most comprehensive report ever published in the USA, nearly one third of America's 800 native bird species are endangered, threatened, or in significant decline, thanks to habitat loss, pollution, climate change, competition from invasive species and other threats.
The shocking report, published by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, reveals that of the more than 800 bird species that…
sheril | March 20, 2009Several readers have emailed me to comment on Michael Steele's ummmm...imaginative explanations of both global 'cooling' and Greenland:
"We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? No very long."
You want me to respond to that gibberish? Seriously? The…
tlambert | March 19, 2009Gerlich and Tscheuschner managed to get their stupidity published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B, which is embarrassing for the editors of that journal. Eli Rabbett is working on a reply, and is looking for coauthors.
cmooney | March 18, 2009My latest Science Progress column contemplates this question, in the wake of a spot of news that doesn't seem to have caused any uproar (yet)--namely, that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is apparently holding an event to discuss the prospect of geoengineering the climate.
As I write in the column:
This is newsworthy for at least two reasons: The U.S. government has, thus far, kept the subject of geoengineering at a relative arm's-length; and one reason for that shyness is the extremely checkered past history of U.S. military ventures in weather modification, including…
tlambert | March 16, 2009Allow me to shorten Heartland's 2009 International Conference on Climate Change for you.
Joseph L. Bast: Bray's survey shows that there is no consensus.
Vaclav Klaus: Environmentalists have a secret plan to "return mankind centuries back".
Richard Lindzen: It is an error to say "It's the sun!"
Tom McClintock: Al Gore is fat. And, it's the sun!
Lawrence Solomon: Environmental organizations are pawns of the foundations that fund them.
Tom Segalstad: Total human emissions of CO2 are twice the alleged increase in atmospheric CO2, therefore human emissions cannot be the cause of the increase.
Syun…
grrlscientist | March 16, 2009tags: windmills, windpower, bird-friendly windpower, conservation, environment, streaming video
Here's an intriguing video describing affordable and bird-friendly windmills that are competitive with more traditional windmills, and are designed to be used in urban and suburban areas as well as out in the countryside [2:02]
mikethemadbiologist | March 15, 2009There has been a lot of commentary about George Will attacking the observed phenomenon of global warming by referring to a poor analysis of research findings--an analysis that has been refuted by the study's authors. This has been followed by discussions of the future of journalism and other such rending of garments. For me, what L'affair Will highlights is the conflict within the newspaper business about how to remain viable.
There seem to be two models (and these are admittedly caricatures):
Have a diversity of opinion even if some opinions are nothing more than misinformation or…
cmooney | March 12, 2009Yale Environment 360 interviews the renowned New Yorker journalist, who blames the media and scientists alike for our staggering failure to deal with this issue. Here's a long quotation:
e360: We've talked about journalists and generally the challenges in conveying this issue to the public. But what about scientists? I mean, scientists have a responsibility to get their information out to the public whether it's through the media or through their own writings and work. How good a job do you think they have done in conveying this whole issue?
Kolbert: Oh, I don't think they've done a good job…
nisbetmc | March 11, 2009
A Gallup survey report released yesterday finds that a record 41% of Americans--and 66% of Republicans--now say that news reports of climate change are exaggerated. I first spotted this troubling trend in a 2007 paper analyzing twenty years of public opinion about climate change. This latest survey reinforces my fear that climate advocates have fallen into a dangerous communication trap.
At the root of this growing perception is something I blogged about earlier this week: As long as science is communicated as the principal reason compelling policy action--and this "compelling" science…
sheril | March 10, 2009The Guardian:
Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.
Say what?! Look, ocean acidification is a VERY real threat to our planet. That said, the seas are not turning to acid! (But gee, way to scare folks into envisioning the demise of the wicked witch!) This demonstrates a lack of taking the time to explore and understand what ocean acidification means--the term is used to describe the way the pH of oceans is becoming less basic as they absorb…
illconsidered | March 9, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...
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 March 8, 2009 Top Stories:Capitol Coal Protest, Patterns, Green Cars, Recession, Open Access Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica, Methane, Pseudoscience, The Pipeline, Daylight Saving, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites…
tlambert | March 8, 2009Heartland's International Conference on Climate Change is on again. I can't help but be impressed by the number of Australian organizations co-sponsoring the conference. Sponsors don't pay any money -- instead they get free admission to all meals and sessions for up to 20 people. And with 58 sponsors and 800 people registered to attend, that means they are giving away more admissions than people registered to attend. It's likely that almost everyone attending got free admission.
There are seven Australian organizations signed up as sponsors. As well as the obvious ones like Lavoisier and…
tlambert | March 7, 2009George Will has in an interview in the Pittsburgh Tribune where he repeats the whoppers from his column:
A: The critics completely ignored -- as again, understandably -- the evidence I gave of the global cooling hysteria of 30 years ago.
Q: They like to pretend that there really wasn't any hysteria back then.
A: Since I quoted the hysteria, it's a little hard for them to deny it.
More like took quotes out of context, as John Fleck explained:
If you read the full 1975 Science News article, rather than Will's hand-picked quote, you get a different picture. "The cooling trend observed since…
At The Three Cultures Summit on Climate Change, What Scientists Want to Learn From Social Scientists
nisbetmc | March 6, 2009
I'm spending the weekend in Oregon at an outpost on the edge of the Columbia River Valley. I'm in town for a unique three cultures summit on climate change, a workshop that brings together scientists, social scientists, philosophers, poets, and artists to discuss strategies and methods for public engagement and communication.
This afternoon we broke into separate disciplinary groups and embarked on a short hike to reflect on what we would like to learn from the other disciplines. When we returned, I jotted down the following notes on what scientists said they would most like to learn or…
cmooney | March 6, 2009A lot of people right now are striving desperately to establish this notion. Neil Munro's big story in the latest National Journal (here, subscription) is the latest example. In essence, it postulates a bunch of new rifts that are going to open between scientists and Democrats now that the latter are in power. I'm quoted in there with this comment:
"There is not going to be enough money to go around, so there will be a lot of scientific priorities that will be hard to meet," Mooney said. But, "I don't think it's going to be the same adversarial situation [seen in the Bush years]. Very few or…