global warming
tlambert | May 5, 2008A week ago I wrote
I predict that Avery will maintain that all the scientists are wrong about their own work and refuse to remove any names from the list.
And look what they wrote:
In response to the complaints, The Heartland Institute has changed the headlines that its PR department had chosen for some of the documents related to the lists, from "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares" to "500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares." ...
We plan to make no further changes to the articles or to the lists. ...
Many of the…
tlambert | May 4, 2008There really is no excuse for this, from Michael Duffy:
Global warming stopped six years ago. It might start again tomorrow, but from 2002 until now, average global temperatures have remained fairly constant. This is in contrast to the previous period when, as everyone knows, the temperature trend was upwards.
Look at the graph below, showing 8-year trends for each 8-year period in the data. (Graph is from RealClimate.) Notice that the eight year trend is sometimes negative. That's because an eight year trend can be greatly affected by an unusually warm or cold year or two. But Duffy…
scientificactivist | May 3, 2008This morning, I had to wake up to another article about John McCain's and Hillary Clinton's proposal to temporarily waive the gas tax this summer. That's it. I'm just going to have to come out and say it: this is a really, really, really stupid idea. Period.
I'm not an economist--far from it--but you don't have to be one to see the flaws in this plan. I'm not going to go into the details too much here, but for more check out this article from the Washington Post or this op-ed from Thomas Friedman. Also, Jake has a nice summary at Pure Pedantry. The intended purpose of this gas tax…
scientificactivist | April 30, 2008When the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) last week released a report detailing widespread political interference in science at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), I almost didn't blog about it, since the fact that political interference runs rampant in the Bush Administration shouldn't be news to anyone. And, since this interference is occasionally motivated by political or religious ideology but much more often driven by the disproportionate protection of the business interests of the Administration's industry supporters, one would expect political interference at the EPA to be…
tlambert | April 29, 2008Richard Littlemore reports:
Dozens of scientists are demanding that their names be removed from a widely distributed Heartland Institute article entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares. ...
DeSmogBlog manager Kevin Grandia emailed 122 of the scientists yesterday afternoon, calling their attention to the list. So far - in less than 24 hours - three dozen of those scientists had responded in outrage, denying that their research supports Avery's conclusions and demanding that their names be removed.
Click on the link to see some of the responses.
I…
tlambert | April 27, 2008ABC's normally excellent Ockham's razor has taken a refreshing change from presenting the thoughts of scientists on science based on peer-reviewed research to presenting the opinion of a political scientist on global warming based on stuff he found on denialist web sites. Yes, they had Don Aitkin on. Now just because Aitkin isn't a scientist and his sources weren't scientists either it doesn't necessarily follow that he would get his facts wrong, but that would be the way to bet. And if you had bet that way you would have won. Look:
It warmed again from 1975 to 1998, and then it stopped…
tlambert | April 25, 2008Robert Lichter reports on a survey of American climate scientists commissioned by STATS at GMU. Some of the findings:
In 1991 the Gallup organization conducted a telephone survey on global climate change among 400 scientists drawn from membership lists of the American Meteorological Association and the American Geophysical Union.
We repeated several of their questions verbatim, in order to measure changes in scientific opinion over time. On a variety of questions, opinion has consistently shifted toward increased belief in and concern about global warming. Among the changes:
In 1991 only 60…
nisbetmc | April 23, 2008Earlier this week, I argued that a fundamental shift was needed in climate change communication strategy and that the shift meant refocusing news coverage on urban areas rather than arctic regions:
Climate change needs to be repackaged around core ideas and values that a majority of Americans already care about. This means shifting the public lens away from distant arctic regions, socially remote people and places, or consequences far off in the future, and instead recasting climate change as an urban problem with local impacts and solutions.
Now comes this report from Cristine Russell at…
grrlscientist | April 23, 2008tags: global warming, humor, behavior, streaming video
According to the Christian Science Monitor, cows are one of the main culprits in global warming. This streaming video shows how [0:39].
nisbetmc | April 22, 2008Few details are provided, but in a buzz-generating interview, here is what The Sun (UK) reports:
"The former US Vice President said: 'I will make a sequel to the 2006 documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' and despite earths 'rising fever', I am hopeful for a happy ending".
nisbetmc | April 22, 2008In his appearance last week on NPR Science Friday (audio), Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs framed the climate challenge not in terms of regulating pollution but rather as an energy and technology problem. Sachs brings an important moderating voice to the climate debate, offering a message that goes beyond the polarized rhetoric of conservatives and many environmentalists.
Sachs appeared on the show to talk about his new book "Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet." Early in the interview, he was asked by host Ira Flatow about the common argument against taking action on climate…
tlambert | April 22, 2008From the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre
CLIMATE CHANGE: Show me the money?
Michael Molitor
6:45pm for 7pm start, Wednesday 23rd April, 2008
Science Theatre, UNSW .
In order to stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at safe levels by 2050 we will need to avoid more than 600 billion tonnes in expected carbon emissions over the next 42 years. There is both a massive potential cost and opportunity associated with achieving this ambitious global target. Leading companies have already recognised the scale of the opportunity and are investing in low carbon solutions. Is…
tlambert | April 22, 2008Robert Fawcett and David Jones of the National Climate Centre, Australian Bureau of Meteorology have written a short paper debunking the global-warming-has-ended myth:
There is very little justification for asserting that global warming
has gone away over the past ten years, not least because the linear
trend in globally-averaged annual mean temperatures (the standard
yardstick) over the period 1998-2007 remains upward. While 1998 was
the world's warmest year in the surface-based instrumental record up
to that point in time, 2005 was equally warm and in some data sets
surpassed 1998. A…
nisbetmc | April 21, 2008
As I have argued in talks and articles over the past year, the communication challenge on global warming is to create the public opinion environment where meaningful policy action can take place. This means shaping public perceptions so that global warming is considered a top tier political priority.
Until Congressional members start to see the issue showing up in polls as a perceived priority and until they start to hear more of a diverse public voice on the matter, Congress will have little incentive to make the tough political choices and trade-offs that are needed.
The communication…
nisbetmc | April 21, 2008Back in February, I traveled to Rome, Italy to present at a conference sponsored by Columbia University's Earth Institute and the Adriano Olivetti Foundation. The focus was on climate change and cities. For the proceedings on that conference, I was asked to contribute a short overview on the communication challenge surrounding climate change and the connection to urban areas and populations. Below I have pasted a first draft of that contribution, as I conclude:
Solving the public opinion challenge means defining the complexities of climate change in a way that connects to the specific core…
nisbetmc | April 19, 2008
Despite record amounts of media attention and ever certain science about threats to the environment, Americans' commitment to taking environmentally sustainable actions remains little changed over the past eight years. In the first of their annual Earth Day survey reports, Gallup finds that only 28% of Americans say that they have made major changes in their lifestyles to protect the environment. This proportion is little changed over the 31% in 2000.
As for the actions that Americans' consider major lifestyle changes, a strong plurality (39%) report the relatively simple activity of…
cmooney | April 18, 2008Okay, so...The Daily Show was pretty easy. Lewis Black's "Root of All Evil"? A bit tougher.
I went on the show with Sean Carroll, Jennifer Ouellette, Clifford Johnson, Michael Shermer, and a number of other "scientists" for a schtick called "Last Scientist Standing"--a parody of American Idol. And, well, if you want to see what didn't end up on the cutting room floor, click here and then scroll down to "American Idol vs. High School -- Kindler." Or just watch--the Kindler routine comes up soon enough.
And then tell me I'm not a great actor, even faced with considerable adversity...and that I…
nisbetmc | April 18, 2008
Back in the spring of 2006, Time magazine ran the cover at left warning Americans to "Be Worried, Be VERY Worried" about global warming. As I've written in different places (summary), this type of packaging for coverage of climate change is representative of the Pandora's Box frame of catastrophe.
By focusing in on specific dramatic environmental impacts such as melting polar ice, sea level rise, the threat to polar bears, or the possibility of more intense hurricanes, advocates and journalists seek to dramatize a technical issue and provoke public concern and attention. As Ellen Goodman…
tlambert | April 17, 2008Another news story about scientists being shown up by a teen also proves to be completely wrong
First the story appeared on April 4 in Germany's 'leading' tabloid ("I have calculated the end of the world ... and NASA says, I'm right"), later in more serious papers ("Nico and the end of the world") - and today, thanks apparently to an AFP story where the writer hadn't found it necessary to check anything, it has taken off around the world. Alas: it's absolute nonsense! The claim is that a 13-year old German schoolboy "discovered" - while working on an entry for a major German science…
tlambert | April 16, 2008A few weeks ago Dave Hansford, the environmental writer for the New Zealand Listener, wrote an article on how global warming deniers create an illusion of dissent:
In November, three members of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition - Bryan Leyland, Owen McShane and Vincent Gray - spoke at UN climate talks in Denpasar in support of a US-based conservative group, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). They told delegates "climate change is a non-problem" and that they should "have the courage to do nothing".
Leyland says CFACT did not pay him to attend the Bali talks, but…