global warming
tlambert | July 22, 2008David Rado emails:
although the accuracy sections of our complaint were considered under section 2.2 of the broadcasting code, that was not the section that we had complained under. We complained primarily under section 5.7, but Ofcom decided section 5.7 only related to news programmes. We don't think the code makes it at all clear that it the requirement for accuracy only applies to news programmes (which is why we complained under that section) - and if it's really true that science documentaries are not expected to be accurate, that is a serious indictment of the broadcasting code.
Hmmm,…
nisbetmc | July 22, 2008
George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication has relaunched its Web site with among the new features a discussion forum. They also have a section devoted to updating readers with the latest journal articles, news articles, and open access research on climate change communication. (Full disclosure: I am an affiliated researcher with the Center.)
Founded last year by George Mason professor Ed Maibach, the Center's innovative research focuses on several key questions that have often been discussed here at Framing Science and on ScienceBlogs generally:
1. What are various…
tlambert | July 21, 2008(Via William Connolley). Ofcom, the UK media regulator has ruled that The Great Global Warming Swindle was unfair to the IPCC, David King, and Carl Wunsch and breached a requirement of impartiality about global warming policy. The full report is here. The complaint is a thorough demolition of all the falsehoods in the Swindle, and you can read it here. Also of interest is Dave Rado's story of how he came to put the complaint together -- it all started as a comment over at Stoat. [Insert some blog triumphalism here.]
A few quick comments. To get an idea of how deceitful Channel 4 and Martin…
scientificactivist | July 16, 2008When I published my review of Sizzle yesterday, I felt like adding a reluctant-parent-disciplinarian-esque "this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you" qualifier. Although I felt that Randy Olson's heart was in the right place, I just didn't have many positive things to say about his new movie, and I wasn't too excited about the prospect of writing such a negative review. But, since I had been recruited--like so many others--to participate in this science blogosphere-wide experiment before seeing the movie, I went along grudgingly.
Fortunately for me, various events today have helped…
cmooney | July 16, 2008
[From Sizzle: The scientist meets American culture.]
Yesterday my review of Randy Olson's Sizzle went up at Science Progress. I absolutely loved and raved about the movie. To my mind it's exactly the kind of thing we need more of.
So you can imagine how I felt when I surveyed the reactions from many of my fellow ScienceBloggers, who seem to be panning this film and just not getting it.
First, everyone is entitled to his or her aesthetic opinion. And indeed some fellow science bloggers really did like the film, including Bora, Jennifer Ouellette, and Greg Laden, to name a few.
Second, I…
tlambert | July 15, 2008Sizzle is a comedy about the making of a documentary about global warming. Randy Olson plays an inept director who interviews a collection of scientists and skeptics and is repeatedly interrupted by his cameraman, who is a skeptic. The people they interview are real, and all of the skeptics have featured on this blog: George Chilingar, whose argument was so obviously wrong that it discredits anyone who cites him, Bill Gray, who reckons that Al Gore is like Hitler, Pat Michaels, he of the fraudulent testimony to Congress, S Fred Singer, who cherrypicked the data to turn warming into cooling…
cmooney | July 15, 2008My review of Randy Olson's Sizzle just went up at Science Progress. Wonderful, excellent, hilarious, profound: These are some of the things that I would say about this movie. In the review I even note that Sizzle "may be the funniest global warming movie ever made (unless you count The Day After Tomorrow, which didn't mean to be)."
Here's an excerpt:
At the outset of Sizzle...Olson-the-mockumentary-character participates in a scene that will be all too familiar for people trying to promote science (or anything else) in Hollywood: He meets with studio executives to try to get funding for his…
grrlscientist | July 14, 2008tags: Sizzle, global warming, climate change, documentary, polar bears, hurricane Katrina, Randy Olson, film review
The new film, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy by Randy Olson that will be released in a few days, explores a topic that concerns me greatly, so when asked if I would review it, I was pleased to do so. Sizzle is advertized as a combination of a documentary, mockumentary and reality about global warming, and therein lies its problem : it has no idea what it is supposed to be, and as a result, the audience (me, in this case), doesn't either.
I wanted to like this film, really, I…
scientificactivist | July 14, 2008Today, science bloggers from across the web (and particularly here at ScienceBlogs) are reviewing Sizzle, a new film by Randy Olson, maker of Flock of Dodos. Sizzle, billed as a "global warming comedy" is part mockumentary and part documentary, and in that sense is difficult to pin down. And, intentionally or not, this confusion emerges as a defining characteristic throughout.
In the movie, Randy Olson plays himself, a filmmaker who sets out to make a movie about global warming featuring climate scientists. There's trouble from the beginning, as the big movie producers won't fund a project…
purepedantry | July 14, 2008Happy Sizzle Day!
Today numerous bloggers from ScienceBlogs and elsewhere will be reviewing a new movie Sizzle directed by Randy Olson of Flock of Dodos fame. Sizzle is a documentary/mockumentary/comedy partly about the science of global warming, but more in my opinion about the nature of the global warming debate.
I was fortunate enough to receive a pre-release copy of the film for review, and I can summarize in one sentence what I thought about it: Randy Olson gets it.
By gets it, I mean that he understands that there are two levels to the global warming debate. The first level is a…
mikethemadbiologist | July 14, 2008I'm not sure what to make of Randy Olson's newest movie, Sizzle. One reason is that the first half of the movie is weak.
Much of the humor is well, not funny. Yes, there are a couple funny moments, but it reminds me of those Saturday Night Live skits that are funny for the first thirty seconds, and by two minutes have just gone on for too long. If nothing else, it makes one appreciate that what Michael Moore does in his documentaries (whether you love them or hate them) is really difficult. The second half of the movie is more engaging, and it does ask an important question: why do the…
tlambert | July 14, 2008Last week Drudge hyped a story about how the manufacture of flat screen TVs was causing global warming. Naturally this was seized by denialists to argue that if everything causes global warming there is no point in doing anything about CO2. The story struck me as a beat up -- 4,000 tons of NF3 isn't much compared with 30 billion tons of CO2, but it's much worse than I expected. Eli Rabett has the details on why NF3 emissions are basically non-existent.
nisbetmc | July 13, 2008
Think that America's energy problems and high gas prices aren't changing perceptions among independents, even among liberals? Think again. According to a new Pew survey, as many liberals (45%) as conservatives (48%) now believe that energy exploration - including mining and drilling, as well as the construction of new power plants - is a more important priority for energy policy than increased conservation and regulation. Among liberals, it's an unheard of 23 point shift in preferences since just February of this year and as depicted at left, there's been a 15 point shift among moderates.…
nisbetmc | July 10, 2008
In the latest issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, Harvard University's Cristine Russell contributes an important analysis on the next stage in climate change media coverage. She spotlights reporters such as the NY Times' Andrew Revkin who are among an "advanced guard" of journalists who are figuring out how to strategically frame coverage of climate change in ways that resonate with new audiences and across a diversity of media platforms.
"Climate change will require thoughtful leadership and coordination at news organizations," asserts Russell. "Editors will need to integrate the…
cmooney | July 9, 2008
[Kivalina, Alaska, is suing Exxon Mobil and 24 other fossil fuel companies over climate change.]
My latest Science Progress column is up: It's about the growing potential for global warming tort cases--in which aggrieved parties directly sue polluting companies and seek damages--to succeed going forward. As I note:
...courts are beginning to notice the swell of cultural change that we see rising all around us on the climate issue. We're moving closer and closer, as a society, to fully accepting our responsibility to deal with global warming, and the courts--which have often served as a kind…
grrlscientist | July 3, 2008tags: politics, pollution, hunger, global warming, environmental destruction, biofuels, overpopulation, birth control, soylent green
Image: Matt Groening (The Simpson's).
A friend sent a link to an interesting article that was published today in the Guardian. This article reveals that the increased reliance on biofuels by the US and the EU is driving a worldwide food crisis. The confidential World Bank report, researched and written by an unnamed but "internationally-respected economist," has not been published but was instead leaked to the Guardian. Among other things, this report claims…
Barbara Boxer on Managing James Inhofe and the Frame that Turned John Warner into a Climate Advocate
nisbetmc | July 3, 2008
Barbara Boxer appeared on Bill Moyers last week, providing fresh insight into her relationship with James Inhofe as well as the strategic appeal that turned GOP Senator John Warner into a climate change advocate.
In describing her reaction to Inhofe's theatrics during Al Gore's testimony earlier this year, here's what she had to say (full transcript of the interview):
BARBARA BOXER: I was a little stunned because here I had taken the gavel after a tough, you know, election season. We came in. We got power finally, albeit very small margin. But I was the chairman of the committee now. And Jim…
grrlscientist | July 2, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, global warming, climate variation, climate change, penguins, El Nino, marine zoning, P. Dee Boersma
Adélie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, and chicks.
(a) Adélie penguin chicks may get covered in snow during storms, but beneath the snow their down is warm and dry. (b) When rain falls, downy Adélie chicks can get wet and, when soaked, can become hypothermic and die.
Images: P. Dee Boersma.
According to an article that was just published in the journal BioScience, penguin populations are declining sharply due to the combined effects of overfishing and pollution…
mikethemadbiologist | July 2, 2008There's a really interesting article in last week's NY Times magazine about global warming and the spread of weeds. There was, however, one jarring note, and it had to do with an incorrect definition of natural selection (italics mine):
"There's no such thing as natural selection," Ziska confides. He is not, he hastens to explain, a creationist. He is merely pointing out that the original 19th-century view of evolution, the one presented by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, is obsolete. Their model presented evolution as a process taking place in a nature independent of human interference.…
tlambert | July 2, 2008Adam Shand's claim that it is just an assumption that summer is warmer than winter has achieved international fame.
Shand removed any remaining doubt about where he stood with the classic move of copying a long list of papers that he reckoned questioned global warming from a AGW denial website. However, it seems he hadn't read any of them since he included Annan and Hargreaves "Can we believe in high climate sensitivity?, which supports the consensus that climate sensitivity is 3K per doubling of CO2.
But no matter how ridiculous a claim is, you can always find someone in blogspace to defend…