global warming
tlambert | December 26, 2008Over at The Poor Man Institute voting is underway for the 2008 Wingnut Awards. The nominees for The Creamy Baileys Nobel Peace Prize for Science, 2008 are Chad Myers, Camille Paglia, Charlie Daniels, Gregg Easterbrook and James Inhofe. Hmmm...
mikethemadbiologist | December 23, 2008By way of Steve Benen, we read that, in response to Lou Dobbs' question of "What is dominant in terms of influencing weather?", CNN meterologist Chad Myers responds:
To think we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant. Mother nature is so big. The world is so big. The oceans are so big. I think we're going to die from a lack of fresh water or die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure. But this is like you said, in your career; my career has been 22 years long. That's a good career in TV. But in talking about climate, it is like having a car for…
nisbetmc | December 22, 2008At The Yale Climate Forum, Lisa Palmer contributes a very useful feature reviewing various strategies for how scientists can write effective newspaper op-eds on climate change.
Most of the first half of the feature focuses on examples that target national elite newspapers like the NY Times or WPost, either grabbing attention by using heated language, i.e. arguing against "deniers" that "infest" public discourse, or by proposing bigger picture policy initiatives such as boosting long term funding for NASA's Earth observing system. (Using too much heat, of course, often backfires.)
These types…
cmooney | December 22, 2008John Tierney, Roger Pielke, Jr., and Chris Horner have the knives out.
Joe Romm and Tim Lambert have begun the defenses.
I find the attacks pretty baseless. But I'd like to hear readers thoughts on all of this, as I may well be writing more about it....
CORRECTION: The Roger Pielke Jr. post is from August. It is not part of a wave of attacks on John Holdren. Sorry about that mistake.
tlambert | December 21, 2008So, I after looking at who was on Inhofe's list of scientists that he claims dispute global warming and on the Discovery Institute's list of Darwin dissentors, I thought I should see who was Inhofe's list and this list of HIV/AIDS "rethinkers". The HIV/AIDS list seems to be even dodgier than Inhofe's, including chiropracters, homeopaths, poets and this Lovecraft-inspired entry:
Ivy Shoots. PhD student, Miskatonic University, Massachusetts; Fulbright Scholar
Anyway, there were five names on both lists:
Eduardo Ferreyra. President of the Argentine Foundation for a Scientific Ecology, which…
tlambert | December 20, 2008Back in July, David Evans had on opinion piece in the Australian claiming:
The greenhouse signature is missing. ... The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics.
This is wrong. The hot spot is not the signature, since you get a hot spot, no matter what the cause. The signature is stratospheric cooling combined with tropospheric warming and that has been detected.
Despite being told this, Evans repeated his false claim on ABC radio prompting Barry Brooks to explain again that:
the hotspot was not a signature of the greenhouse…
cmooney | December 19, 2008It seems just days ago that we learned CNN is cutting its science unit, including Miles O'Brien, who took global warming very seriously.
And then last night, a guy who wasn't cut, meteorologist Chad Myers, popped off as follows: "You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant...Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big - I think we're going to die from a lack of fresh water or we're going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure."
This was part of a Lou Dobbs program that also featured a global…
nisbetmc | December 18, 2008
In two new TV advertisements, the We campaign is back on message (after one major stumble), framing appeals around the tagline of "Repower America," connecting a focus on clean energy to economic recovery, and using a rancher (above) and a construction worker (below) as spokespeople.
There's a lot to like about these new TV spots, starting with the tagline of "Repower America," a theme that resonates with wider news attention to fixing the country's economy and restoring the nation's sense of pride. Then there's the choice of actors as spokespeople.
The spot above featuring a truck driving…
tlambert | December 18, 2008Gareth Renowden on the confused mess that is New Zealand's climate policy:
When the ETS was first launched, National supported it. Then they withdrew support for the legislation in the run-up to the election, but campaigned on keeping the basic ETS structure while tinkering with (also known as watering down) the settings. Post-election, to pacify Rodney and his pack of cranks, the ETS was to be put on hold while a select committee considered, amongst other things, whether a carbon tax might be better. Now, on the last day of this session, we learn they're not going to do that, and the…
tlambert | December 17, 2008I haven't read David Archer's "The Long Thaw" yet, but it comes highly recommended. John Mashey:
This concise (180-page), clearly-written book is an excellent first book on climate science for the general audience, generally not requiring knowledge beyond that of high school. ...
Of the 50 or so books I own that discuss climate, this has jumped into the small group I recommend to people who ask "where should I start?"
Chris Mooney
I've never seen the planet's climate history explained so sweepingly and lucidly, arcing back deep into past, and looking out distantly to the almost…
tlambert | December 17, 2008Greenfyre has a nice roundup of corrections to Inhofe's list of 650 604 scientists that he claims dispute the consensus on global warming. Eli Rabett notes some resume inflation in the list, while Bob has a blog doing an entry on each name on the list
Reporters seem to have wised up to Inhofe's game and the list has been mostly ignored in the media. Here in Australia, that means that all the AGW denialist columnists will write about it, and sure enough, here's Miranda Devine in today's paper
They include Japanese scientist Dr Kiminori Itoh, who was an expert reviewer for last year's United…
tlambert | December 16, 2008Jim Prall has compiled a list of the authors of the IPCC Working Group 1 report for AR4. There are 618 WG1 authors, which is more than the 604 names on Inhofe's list. There are just three names on both lists, which is no surprise given the shortage of climate scientists on Inhofe's list.
First Erich Roeckner. He's not a sceptic at all. Brad Plumer explains how Inhofe quote mined Roekner:
I see Inhofe's "Gang of 650" also includes Erich Roeckner, a renowned climate modeler at Germany's Max Planck Institute, who's quoted as saying there are still kinks in current climate models. But that's…
cmooney | December 15, 2008We know who they are. We know they're determined. And we know they're qualified.
But precisely what measures will president-elect Obama's energy and environment team have to take in order to really get a handle on global warming? Will they use the Clean Air Act? A new law? Some combination of both?
And where will they be by the end of 2009, when the nations of the world assemble in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate the successor to the Kyoto Protocol?
I definitely have my thoughts on this--and am doing an article on the subject right now. But here's your chance to sound off (and I'm very…
nisbetmc | December 15, 2008There's probably no one better qualified than Carol Browner to coordinate the administration's efforts on energy and the environment. The looming question is whether or not Obama's new uber-czar positions can really accomplish anything. The Wall Street Journal has the details, quoting several experts who point to history as casting doubt on the effectiveness of czars:
"There've been so many czars over last 50 years, and they've all been failures," said Paul Light, an expert on government at New York University. "Nobody takes them seriously anymore." He pointed to officials placed in charge of…
tlambert | December 15, 2008The quick way to see if the Australian government's CO2 emission targets are adequate is to check the reaction from The Australian. Since The Australian believes that it's not warming and we're not causing it and it will not be harmful and we can't do anything about it, they're not going to approve of any targets that will do anything. So what's the verdict?
the Prime Minister's policy response to the Garnaut report is largely balanced, prudent and cautious. While honouring his promise to act on climate change, it is mindful of the need to protect jobs in challenging economic times.
Ouch.…
tlambert | December 13, 2008Inhofe's list of 650 scientists that supposedly dispute the consensus on AGW reminded me of another list: The Discovery Institute's list of scientists who dissent from Darwinism, so I thought I'd compare the two lists.
First, numbers. The Discovery Institute's list has 751 names, while Inhofe's has only 604. (Not "More Than 650" as he claims -- there are many names appearing more than once.)
Second, how do you get on the list? Well, you have to sign up to get on the Discovery Institute's list, but Inhofe will add you to his list if he thinks you're disputing the global warming consensus and…
tlambert | December 11, 2008Last year Inhofe released a list of 400 scientists who disputed mainstream climate science. But as Joe Romm and Andrew Dessler observed, the list was padded with TV weathermen, economists and so on and contained very few actual climate scientists. Now he's back with more of the same in a new list that adds 250 more names. Update: Joe Romm takes apart the new list. My favorite entry (reproduced in full so you can get the full nutty flavour):
Field Geologist Louis A.G. Hissink is the editor of The Australian Institute of
Geoscientists Newsletter and is currently working on the ore-reserve…
nisbetmc | December 11, 2008Think Progress, the blog for the Center for American Progress, has a detailed run down on the Obama administration's announced appointment of Steve Chu as Energy secretary, Carol Browner as the head of the new National Energy Council, and Lisa Jackson as head of the EPA. At Dot Earth, Andrew Revkin has more background on Chu.
The plan is for this new policy team to be working with Congress and the states to pass bold new initiatives on energy and climate change, but it is not necessarily a given that strong public support for these policies will follow along.
These policies--along with…
tlambert | December 10, 2008Michael, whose response to the graph showing the global average sea level going up was
There's no such thing as a global average sea level.
The awesome thing about this response is that it really is a corollary to McKitrick's Theorem that there is no such thing as a global average temperature since average sea level is an intensive quantity.
nisbetmc | December 9, 2008Over at George Mason's Center for Climate Change Communication, they are hosting a poll asking readers to vote for the 2008 Climate Change Communicator of the Year. Among the choices are such notables as Thomas Friedman, Bill McKibbon, John Warner, and Chevron's "Will You Join Us" Campaign.
But my vote would be for a name not on that list: the Reverend Richard Cizik, VP for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals. Cizik is a perfect spokesperson for a hard to mobilize segment of Republican-leaning America. Not only does he have credibility among Evangelicals, but…