global warming
tlambert | March 16, 2008Nexus 6 has opened a school to teach global warming deniers the tricks of the trade. Lesson 1 was on the straw man, while lesson 2 revealed the secret of making things up. Andrew Bolt then almost immediately demonstrated lesson 1 and lesson 2.
tlambert | March 13, 2008CEI, which brought us the ludicrous "CO2: We call it life" ads is trying again. This time they are resorting to ad hominem attacks on Al Gore, and claiming that a carbon tax would result in "death on a massive scale". Makes sense. If CO2 is life, then taxing it must be death.
cmooney | March 10, 2008While we dither and dilly and dally....the Post now reports on the latest climate modeling studies, suggesting yet again that it's even worse than we previously thought and than the IPCC said...we now need to go to zero emissions very rapidly to stave off the worst consequences, and even then, it will take centuries to stabilize the climate.
Honestly, what can you say except, "This sucks"?
cmooney | March 7, 2008
I did my latest Science Progress column on this subject, in light of recent research suggesting "green" biofuels like ethanol might actually be bad for the environment.
My conclusion?
...enough doubts have been raised that no one can reasonably postulate biofuels as an automatic solution to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Depending on the details, they could actually cause dramatic setbacks. But it's also clear from the latest research that there will be more and less efficient-and more and less destructive-ways of generating and using biofuels. Despite huge…
nisbetmc | March 6, 2008Yesterday PRI's The World ran a five minute news report (audio) on The Heartland Institute's climate change conference to which I contributed analysis. Also at their web site, they feature an extended 6 minute interview where I provide further background and analysis on the Heartland Institute's framing strategy, describing why the flat earth message continues to be so successful with American audiences (audio). For more on HI's message strategy see these two previous posts (the cable news effect & the similarity to the intelligent design campaign.)
tlambert | March 5, 2008The latest story doing the rounds of the global warming deniers (Drudge, Instapundit, Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair etc ), is this one Michael Asher:
Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out.
Yes, they have repeated, yet again, that same misrepresentation of Tapping's views. I expect Drudge and co will do it yet again in a few more days.
Asher also claims:
All four major global temperature…
nisbetmc | March 5, 2008
As I explained yesterday, it's foolish to dismiss the potential impact of the Heartland Institute conference. The organizers have a powerful framing strategy, one that resonates strongly with conservative media outlets and many Americans. It's these kinds of successful PR strategies that continue to reinforce the "Two Americas" of global warming perceptions in the United States, with Democrats growing ever more concerned and convinced of the problem while Republicans remain skeptical, resulting in massive partisan differences in poll results across questions about global warming
Consider…
nisbetmc | March 4, 2008In a segment set to air on BBC/PRI's The World tomorrow, I offer my observations about the communication strategy of The Heartland Institute. The Chicago based think tank seeks to frame climate change in a way that is consistent with their free market ideology and mission.
Here's my analysis:
In seeking to bend science to fit with their preferred policy goals, the Heartland Institute (HI) chooses as a rhetorical bedfellow the Discovery Institute (DI), the think tank that brought us the public relations campaign against the teaching of evolution in schools. Not a bad choice strategically.…
cmooney | March 3, 2008I was very disappointed to see, when my latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine arrived, that it had an article by Bjorn Lomborg in it--downplaying the risk of global warming, as usual.
I started out my career working for SI, am currently a correspondent, etc...but I felt that in light of this big a mistake, I had to call the magazine out publicly.
I mean, how does publishing Lomborg's totally misleading underestimation of the risk of sea level rise help the cause of skepticism? I don't get it.
For my full take on Skeptical Inquirer's folly, see here.
tlambert | March 1, 2008James Annan tells the story of how no-one seems to want to publish a survey of climate scientists done by Fergus Brown. The survey found that the IPCC report represents the middle ground of climate scientists with most of them agreeing with it. However about 15% felt that it was too optimistic and another 15% felt that it was too pessimistic.
I think the survey was much better than Bray's useless survey of climate scientists. I would have liked to have seen more than one question, so that the areas of agreement and disagreement with the IPCC could be measured. The response rate was very…
tlambert | February 26, 2008The latest story doing the rounds of the global warming deniers (Drudge, Andrew Bolt, etc), is this one from Lorne Gunter in the National Post:
Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.
If you are feeling a little bit of deja vu right now, it's because Gunter is making the same misrepresentation of Tapping's views that we saw in the Investor's Business Daily a couple of weeks ago.
Mind you, Gunter isn't just…
tlambert | February 24, 2008Remember last year, when Exxon said that they would no longer fund organizations like the International Policy Network and the George Marshall Institute that misrepresent the science of global warming?
Well, they are still funding them. Also still on the list, are CO2science and the Center for Science and Public Policy.
Hat tip: Brian Schmidt.
grrlscientist | February 15, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, climate change, global warming, oceanic dead zones, west coast, North America, Oregon state, Washington state
Millions of dead crabs are washing up onto Oregon and Washington state beaches from the offshore "dead zone".
Ever since it was first noticed by crab fishermen who hauled up hundreds of dead and dying crabs in 2002, the "dead zone" that popped up in the waters along the northwestern coastal shelf just off the coast of Oregon has claimed unknown millions of lives. This oxygen-depleted region has transformed formerly rich seafloor communities teeming with…
tlambert | February 13, 2008KÃ¥re Fog has examined the lists of alleged errors in An Incovenient Truth put out by Monckton, the CEI and so on and counted how many actual errors they found. The score: in the film and book combined there were 2 errors and 12 flaws. (Fog
defines a flaw as "a misleading statement which does not fully agree with the facts".)
For comparison, Fog lists 110 errors and 208 flaws in Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist".
A complete list of the errors in AIT:
F, B p174: "We´ve had 30 so-called new diseases that have emerged in just the last quarter century." Diseases referred to in the…
tlambert | February 9, 2008The latest story doing the rounds of the global warming deniers (Drudge, Instapundit, Andrew Bolt, etc), is this one from the Investors Business Daily:
Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.
Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last…
tlambert | February 7, 2008John Mashey points me to a video of Naomi Oreskes' talk on "The American Denial of Global Warming":
The first part ("TRUTH") outlines the history of climate science
research, and the unpoliticized acceptance thereof that lasted until the
early 1990s. The second part "DENIAL" describes the George C. Marshall
Instiute's role in creating confusion and politicizing the issue, using
tactics from the cigarette wars.
Naomi knows her topic well, and is a lively speaker - I heard an earlier
version of this about a year ago, and this talk is well worth watching.
TRUTH
00:00 Introduction
02:00 Frank…
cmooney | February 7, 2008Clinton, Obama, and McCain have a lot in common on climate, but also perhaps a lot less than you might think. So, see here for what I think a race between two of them might mean for global warming policy. An excerpt:
Clinton's and Obama's cap and trade plans would auction off 100 percent of the initial pollution permits, using the proceeds for needed causes like investing in clean energy technologies that will reduce carbon emissions. In contrast, the Liberman-Warner bill - closer to McCain's favored approach - would auction off only a small percentage of allowances initially. Major emitters…
cmooney | February 7, 2008
..."not much," I'm afraid, is the answer to the question in the title of this post. In light of the recent, surprising tornado disasters in the South, I've done my latest Daily Green "Storm Pundit" item on the subject, and concluded the following: Given the data difficulties when it comes to studying such small scale and short lived phenomena as tornadoes, it is of course very hard to detect trends. However, there are theoretical reasons for expecting a change--more intense tornadoes, but perhaps less of them.
Is that cautious and unprovocative enough for you? See here for more.
cmooney | February 6, 2008I've just written a column about this to be syndicated by Blue Ridge Press, so I won't tip my hand yet...but instead I'll ask: What do you think? If it's a McCain-Clinton or a McCain-Obama race--i.e., a race in which both candidates care about addressing climate change--is that good for the issue (because it ensures that we'll get action in 2009) or bad for the issue (because global warming will seem to have been neutralized, even though there are actually significant differences between McCain and the two Dems)?
grrlscientist | February 4, 2008tags: global warming, LabLit, science fiction, book review
I read the first two books in this trilogy last year [book 1 and book 2] and ever since I finished them, I had wondered; and then what happened? Well, now I know the answer to this question, and I can honestly say that this, the third of three books, made the entire trilogy into a huge disappointment, even though the series started out by showing some promise. Sixty Days And Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson (NYC: Bantam Books; 2007) is the last installment in a eco-political near-future sci-fi thriller trilogy. This particular book's…