global warming
sheril | February 23, 2009
According to CNN, former Governor Gary Locke (D-WA) is likely to be nominated by President Obama as our next Secretary of Commerce.
Given NOAA accounts for up to 65% of the Commerce Department budget, you bet I'm eager to learn more. Among many duties, the incoming Secretary of Commerce faces enormous ocean related challenges so I will be following this story with interest.
nisbetmc | February 23, 2009Shankar Vendantam's story headlined "Climate Fears Are Driving 'Ecomigration' Across the Globe" runs on the front page at the Washington Post today. It's not often that climate change is a front-pager at the NY Times or the WPost, making it important to understand the types of narratives that prompt editors to give the issue top attention.
For example, in January 2006, Andrew Revkin's report that NASA political appointees were blocking James Hansen's ability to make public statements ran as the lead story of the Sunday NY Times. For Times' editors, who earned their stripes covering politics…
sheril | February 22, 2009Having recently emerged from the hospital, I'm catching up on the news I've missed--beginning with the Washington Post nonsense Chris has covered here.
Apparently reporter George Will is about as informed on climate change as octuplet mom Nadya Suleman is on the fiscal responsibilities of raising children. There's not much I'll add that hasn't already been written, except given Will's influential position, his dishonesty is far more reprehensible.
illconsidered | February 21, 2009The emergence of China as a dominant economic power is an epochal event, occasioning the most massive and rapid redistribution of the earth's resources in human history. The country has also become a ravenous consumer. Its appetite for raw materials drives up international commodity prices and shipping rates while its middle class, projected to jump to 700 million by 2020, is learning the gratifications of consumerism.
A very sobering read.
illconsidered | February 21, 2009Michael Tobis has another well written and thought provoking essay on In It for the Gold asking if continuing developments in climatology are going to affect mitigation policy.
It can be argued that climatology is not an important input into climate change related policy. It is premature to take climatological input into account in adaptation strategy, while on the other hand as far as mitigation goes (i.e., on the global scale) the picture has pretty much stayed about the same for some substantial time.
That idea does not fit in very well with the common denialist refrain that climatologists…
denialism | February 20, 2009I'm heartened to see a broad disgust with George Will's lies about climate science. After all it's pretty extraordinary when a major syndicated columnist repeats a lie about science, not once, not twice but three times despite being corrected.
PZ wishes he too could just make up his own facts, and Mike too is pleased the disgust is moving beyond the scientific community. Carl Zimmer at the Loom covers the broad mistakes made in the essay, and TPM documents how it was almost all lies. Mark Kleimen has caught on to the fact that in the end, this is just another conspiracy theory on par with…
mikethemadbiologist | February 20, 2009One of the more promising trends I've seen is that the various forms of denialism that scientists regularly decry (including those of us here at ScienceBlogs) are starting to be recognized by non-scientists. I don't know if there's a direct cause-and-effect here, or if like-minded people are coming up with the same idea (the most depressing cause would be if this got started with a stupid blog comment...). Anyway, I bring you public policy professor Mark Kleiman (italics mine):
One largely unremarked aspect of global-warming denialism (as exemplified by George Will and demolished by Mike…
cmooney | February 20, 2009Over at Wonk Room, Brad Johnson is trying to get responses from the Post about why George Will is allowed to ignore fact and reality, and why the Post won't run a correction of his errors. It's pretty pathetic. The great conservative "intellectual"--Will--is apparently unaccountable.
And you wonder why newspapers are failing today.
I think we need them desperately--see this Paul Starr cover story of the latest New Republic--but when the Washington Post acts in such a boneheaded manner in defending one of its columnists' egregious errors, it's hard to feel too bad for them.
tlambert | February 20, 2009I didn't write about George Will's recent global warming denial piece, because his numerous errors have been well documented. Even Nate Silver joined in.
But I can't let the latest development pass. The Washington Post has refused to make any corrections to his column. Why not?:
Alan Shearer, the Washington Post Writers Group editorial director, told the Wonk Room that he looked into the accuracy of Will's claim that "According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979":
We have plenty of references that support what George…
grrlscientist | February 19, 2009tags: global warming, climate change, birds, ornithology, Audubon Society, webcast
The idea that global warming is not just about polar bears in the Arctic, but also about American Robins in our own backyards has captured people's attention. Nearly 60% of the 305 species found in North America in winter are on the move, shifting their ranges northward by an average of 35 miles. Audubon scientists analyzed 40 years of citizen-science Christmas Bird Count data -- and their findings provide new and powerful evidence that global warming is having a serious impact on natural systems. Northward…
nisbetmc | February 19, 2009
A new study at the journal Risk Analysis examines the factors shaping public perceptions of nuclear energy and provides important clues about how to effectively mobilize public support for expanded investment in the technology. (See end of post.)
The study analyzes data from 1997, but the relative stability in public attitudes about nuclear energy and the strong measurement in the study of core constructs such as risk perceptions, environmental values, and nuclear attitudes make the findings still relevant.
Not surprisingly, according to the analysis, basic value orientations--including…
tlambert | February 18, 2009This is a guest post from John Mashey.
If there isn't some hidden gotcha (there might be, I'm no expert), it's one
of the best single things I've heard.
It's especially good for places with a lot of coal, who use concrete, who
are near the ocean, and might have use for softer water for desalination.
1) Calera is a just-barely-out-of-stealth, but very impressive startup ...
It already has 65 people and a pilot plant at Moss Landing, CA just South of
the Dynergy gas plant there. [CA doesn't have any coal plants handy, they'd
be better for this, actually.]
GooglelEarth: 36deg48'10.29"N,…
cmooney | February 18, 2009There is this strange idea out there that George Will is a smart person's conservative. Maybe it's the bow-tie.
But if you read his latest, scandalously hackish global warming column, you realize that nothing could be further from the truth. Any person who respects thought, ideas, knowledge, or the contemplative life--any person, in short, who deserves to be called an "intellectual"--could not write such a column; because any such person would have undertaken to learn something real about climate science before writing about it.
Yet this Will manifestly has not done, or he could not make the…
nisbetmc | February 18, 2009Just how important is public communication? Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren believes that scientists should devote 10% of their time to talking to the public about matters of science and policy, especially in the area of energy and climate. That's what he urged in the conclusion to his 2007 AAAS Presidential address and again last year at the energy summit sponsored by the National Academies. From the report to that summit:
"I suggested in my AAAS presidential address last year that everybody in the science and technology community who cares about the future of the world should be…
nisbetmc | February 18, 2009There's a must read Shorenstein Center white paper out by Time magazine contributor Eric Pooley, who spent Fall 2008 at Harvard researching how the news media covered the run up to the vote on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (paper, press release, Slate commentary).
Note Pooley's conclusion about the new false balance in news coverage of climate change:
Pooley concluded that the press misrepresented the economic debate over carbon cap and trade, failed to perform the basic service of making climate policy and its economic impact understandable to the reader, and allowed opponents…
tlambert | February 17, 2009Frank Tipler tells us:
Last year, Reid Bryson, the "father of climatology," and a leading AGW skeptic, passed away. Bryson's actual achievements are the hallmark of a genuine scientist as opposed to the work done by AGW advocates.
A true scientist demonstrates his knowledge by using it to make predictions which can be confirmed or refuted. Bryson successfully predicted, in December 1944, that the so-called "Caine Mutiny Typhoon" would hit Adm. William Halsey's Third Fleet.
And:
What counter-intuitive predictions have the Global Warmers ever made? I invite you to look. I myself could not find…
illconsidered | February 17, 2009Thanks to Crakar14, I came across this article from the India Times online:
In a major breakthrough that could help in the fight against global warming, a team of five Indian scientists from four institutes of the country have discovered a naturally occurring bacteria which converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into a compound found in limestone and chalk.
Based on this, Crakar thinks we should just continue business as usual and forget this whole global warming scare thing. (Oh, btw, that's what he thought that before too)
Now, I don't know anything more than what it says in the article, but it…
illconsidered | February 16, 2009I recently wrote about the tragic bushfires in Australia and how it seems to me that it is reasonable to ask if this would have happened without anthropogenic climate changes.
Real Climate has the details on this in their latest post: Bushfires and extreme heat in south-east Australia.
The post is by David Karoly, Professor of Meteorology at the University of Melbourne in Australia. He identifies four factors in the fire's ferocity - maximum temperatures, relative humidity, wind speeds and the ongoing drought - and discusses the possible role of climate change in each of them. For three of…
tlambert | February 12, 2009Eric Pooley writes about the consensus amongst economists on global warming. While they disagree on exactly what we should do, they agree on two things: the cost of inaction is much greater than the cost of action, and the cost of action is only about 1% of GDP. He concludes:
Journalists have missed the economic consensus partly because economists are such a querulous bunch--they argue bitterly among themselves even when they agree. When I asked Stavins about the Stern Review, for example, he criticized Stern's methodology and didn't mention that he concurs with most of Stern's broad…
mikethemadbiologist | February 12, 2009But he's not willing to let the rest of us know what this vital information is:
So we called Barnes and asked him what he was referring to.
At first, he cited the fact that it's been cold lately.
Perhaps sensing this was less than convincing, Barnes then asserted that there had been a "cooling spell" in recent years. "Haven't you noticed?" he asked.
Asked for firmer evidence of such cooling, Barnes demurred, telling TPMmuckraker he was too busy to track it down.
We pressed Barnes again: surely he could tell us where he had found this vital new information, which could upend the current debate…