global warming
tlambert | June 30, 2008In my previous post I noted in his story promoting AGW denial Adam Shand disputed even the most uncontroversial statements (eg "Summer is warmer than winter") from supporters of mainstream science he uncritically accepted everything from the AGW deniers. For example, he agrees with Jennifer Marohasy, who claims:
Global temperatures over the past ten years have stalled.
This is, of course, not true.
And he repeats this whopper:
The IPA has no policy on global warming
There are hundreds of items at the IPA website on global warming and they all argue directly or indirectly against taking…
tlambert | June 29, 2008You only have to look at the delight exhibited by Andrew Bolt ("Warming priests defocked [sic] on Sunday") in this story on Channel Nine's Sunday to know that they are promoting AGW denial. The reporter, Adam Shand, makes a pretence of objectivity by having three people from each side. But he blindly accepts everything that the three AGW deniers (William Kinninmonth, Jennifer Marohasy and Don Aitkin) say and even repeats some of their arguments himself ("We can't predict the weather, so how can we predict the climate?"). He undercuts the three on the other side. Randall Pearce is…
nisbetmc | June 28, 2008
As I've argued before, conservatives often have the advantage in elections and policy battles because of their tendency to enforce greater message discipline and coordination. The latest example is James Inhofe who for a decade has been perhaps the most visible and loudest voice of climate denial.
But now as his party's presidential nominee John McCain uses action on climate change as a way to appeal to moderates, Inhofe may very well be "laying low," letting his party leader do the talking on the issue, and refraining from what would otherwise be confusing messages about where the…
tlambert | June 26, 2008Olive Heffernan on Nigel Lawson's new book:
Like many of those who saw the Channel 4 documentary, readers of Lawson's offering on climate change 'An Appeal to Reason' are probably unaware it has been scientifically discredited in almost every review, including one on Nature Reports Climate Change by Sir John Houghton, Honorary Scientist at the UK's Hadley Centre.
As Sir Houghton writes:
Promised as a "rare breath of intellectual rigour" and a "hard headed examination of the realities" of climate change, this offering is neither cool nor rational....and is largely one of misleading messages.
mikethemadbiologist | June 25, 2008If Republicans claim that oil pipelines are good for caribou, I wonder what they'll make of the blackfly outbreak in Maine. About the first half of the previous sentence--that's not hyperbole. Really (by way of Digby):
During a radio interview on Wednesday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) attempted to argue that drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) would be beneficial for Arctic wildlife. Bachmann claimed that drilling would cause not only an "enhancement of wildlife expansion," but that the area around oil pipelines would also "become a meeting ground and '…
scientificactivist | June 24, 2008Apparently, the Bush Administration has adopted a sophisticated new strategy for not dealing with global warming. From The New York Times:
White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail
The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency's conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.
The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.'s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court…
cmooney | June 23, 2008The latest issue of Wired is now on newsstands, though not yet online. In it, I have a lengthy feature story about the scientific mainstreaming of geoengineering, which has occurred because of several trends:
1. Global warming seems to be moving even faster than scientists originally expected.
2. Political solutions seem to be evolving even more slowly than many pessimists would have expected.
3. One geoengineering idea--putting reflective particles in the stratosphere--is outdistancing all the other proposals and has become a clear, and apparently affordable, front-runner.
4. With possible…
tlambert | June 20, 2008Remember the wacky satellites cause global warming theory? Maria Brumm has found another one. Global warming has caused a fivefold increase in seismic activity. And this one was published by CBS news (though it's now been deleted) and picked up by Matt Drudge. Brumm comments:
Cursory examination reveals that Dr. Tom Chalko is a complete wackaloon! Even if you do not know the first thing about seismology, consider the warning signs that this "research" may actually be an attractive organic fertilizer:
Research article is published in a journal where 5/5 articles in the current issue are…
tlambert | June 18, 2008Last year the Tennessee Center for Policy Research made quite a splash with a press release on Al Gore's energy usage:
In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh--more than 20 times the national average.
They've just released figures for the past year
In the past year, Gore's home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.
Feel free to check my calculations, but I think that 213,210 is less than 221,000. Honest folks who report this but want to criticize Gore might write something like: "Gore doesn't reduce his…
tlambert | June 17, 2008Eli Rabett has been looking at Joel Kauffman who has published some HIV/AIDS denial in JPANDS and some AGW denial in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. I've mentioned JPANDS here before, but JSE is even further out on the fringe, promoting stuff like UFOs and parapsychology.
Rabett has some choice quotes from Kauffman's piece:
Either Warmers or Skeptics may accept that primordial ionizing radiation from within warms the Earth.
Later in the article Kauffman elaborates, arguing that undersea volcanoes are warming the oceans. I debunked that theory here. And he believes E-G Beck's…
sheril | June 17, 2008No doubt all this excess CO2 in the atmosphere is mucking up the planet, throwing all sorts of plants, animals, and natural cycles off kilter.
Enter Craig Venter.
Yes, the very same fellow who decoded the human genome in 2000 faster than anyone. Eight years later, he's set his sights on something that could be even bigger--replacing the petrochemical industry!
In short, the most well-known man in genomics is manipulating chromosomes and trying to create an organism that will ingest CO2, water, and sunlight, to give off fuels like diesel and gasoline that we can use it today's automobiles.…
tlambert | June 16, 2008John Mashey points me to this site, which claims that microwaves from satellites are causing global warming!
Satellite antennas transmit UHF and higher microwaves frequencies all over the planet. Because orbiting Satellites are in the vacuum of space, the microwave transmissions are scattered through our atmosphere at an accelerated rate. The Earth is a rotating electromagnetic field containing a dielectric material called water. Sending oscillating microwaves from an antenna inside a vacuum through an electromagnetic field through a dielectric material, such as water, creates radio frequency…
loom | June 13, 2008We've all heard about the dire straits polar bears are facing if they lose their icy habitat to global warming. But just how many species may global warming drive extinct? One way to find out is to look over the mass extinctions of the past--and the picture there's not pretty, as I explain in my new article, "Biodiversity in the Balance." It appears today in the new publication Yale Environment 360, an online environment magazine from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. They've already got some pieces from some big names, like Bill McKibben and Carl Safina. So check the…
tlambert | June 12, 2008Via John Quiggin, Rudy Baum, the editor-in-chief of Chemical & Engineering News has JPANDS number.
JAPS [usually abbreviated as JPANDS for obvious reasons] is a curious entity. It is not indexed by Chemical Abstracts Service, Pubmed, or ISI's Web of Science. It has published articles that question the link between HIV and AIDS and that link abortion to increased incidence of breast cancer and thimerosal-containing vaccines to autism. It is, in fact, the purveyor of utter nonsense. As far as I could ascertain, the Robinson paper is JAPS's only foray into climate-change research.
OISM is a…
nisbetmc | June 11, 2008
The National Journal has released its annual survey of Congressional members on their views of climate science. When asked: "Do you think it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made pollution?," of the 38 Democratic members of Congress interviewed, 98 percent answered "yes."
But among the 39 Republican members of Congress surveyed, just 26% percent answered in the affirmative. Among the reasons from Republican members on why they continue to doubt the science, the National Journal quotes the following:
"Reasonable people have doubts. For every Al…
cmooney | June 9, 2008Well, I'm anxiously awaiting the July 19 premiere of scientist-filmmaker Randy Olson's newest feature, entitled Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy. The website is now up, and the trailer looks hilarious, as do the other various clips available (hint, click on the planets--when you get to the website you'll see what I mean).
Here's a description of the film:
The movie is a unique and original mixture of three genres: mockumentary, documentary, and reality. It is the story of a scientist-turned-filmmaker (Olson) forced to team up with two fabulous but flaky Hollywood producers (comic actors…
scientificactivist | June 5, 2008A report by the NASA inspector general released earlier this week acknowledged that political appointees in the NASA press office censored climate scientists from 2004 to 2006. That would have been interesting news... about two years ago. Yawn.
What caught my eye, though, were these claims in an article by The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin:
The probe came at the request of 14 senators after The Washington Post and other news outlets reported in 2006 that Bush administration officials had monitored and impeded communications between NASA climate scientists and reporters.
James E. Hansen…
nisbetmc | June 5, 2008
A recent report for the Gallup survey organization by Oklahoma State sociologist Riley Dunlap backs up what I have been arguing at this blog and in various articles regarding the "Two Americas" of global warming perceptions.
Following the lead of their preferred party's elected officials and leaders, Democrats continue to grow more concerned about global warming while Republicans remain relatively unconcerned, dismissive of the science, and distrustful of news reports.
The full report is a must read. See in addition this recent study (PDF) I did analyzing two decades of public opinion…
grrlscientist | June 5, 2008tags: arctic ice pack, global warming, climate change, environment, physics, streaming video
A stunning animation from WWF International Polar Programme, showing the progressive melting of Artice sea ice since 1979. The white is older ice -- five years or more old -- and the blues are progressively younger ice, with the shade closest to the ocean being fresh, or one year old, ice. The red dots are tracking buoys, showing how the ice is shifting further and faster as it melts. [0:34].
nisbetmc | June 4, 2008
If the author is skeptical of mainstream science, is there a conservative think tank behind them?
A new study by a team of political scientists and sociologists at the journal Environmental Politics concludes that 9 out of 10 books published since 1972 that have disputed the seriousness of environmental problems and mainstream science can be linked to a conservative think tank (CTT). Following on earlier work by co-author Riley Dunlap and colleagues, the study examines the ability of conservative think tanks to use the media and other communication strategies to successfully challenge…