global warming
nisbetmc | April 1, 2007My focus on the striking partisan differences in perceptions about the urgency and science of global warming has generated serious buzz at the NY Daily News, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere across the Web. For many insiders I talk to here in DC, they are stunned by the poll numbers. Indeed, there's a false impression that the record amounts of media attention, the latest IPCC report, and Gore's movie have all put to rest any serious public resistance to the idea that human activities might be contributing to the Earth's warming.
Poll numbers aren't the only indicator that a "two Americas…
cmooney | March 30, 2007So says Roger Pielke, Jr., in a very illuminating post. He also adds: "On the very hot-button issues of climate change and the teaching of evolution, Republican political agendas require confronting current scientific consensus."
I agree entirely--indeed, that's the whole point of The Republican War on Science (of which Roger has been critical). This doesn't mean partisan alignments on these issues can't change; it doesn't mean that the situation has necessarily been the same in other periods in history; it doesn't mean the situation is the same in other countries. But right now, these are…
retrospectacle | March 29, 2007 Poor Al Gore, no good deed goes unpunished in his quest for climate change awareness. Only a few days ago he went before the Senate on a hearing on global warming. During which, climate change's biggest political foe, Senator James Inhofe and Gore argued heatedly.
Now, the Republicans are moving to block his 'Live Earth' rock concert venue, planned to take place on the steps of the Capitol July 7th.
One outspoken opponent of the concert is Senator James Inhofe, a longtime "debunker" of cataclysmic climate change, which he has derided as a "hoax."
"Senator Inhofe objects to having any events…
mikethemadbiologist | March 28, 2007Blogger Mike Stark recently debated Myron Ebell about global warming. Apparently, Mike Stark did more than just hold his own, which is pretty impressive considering the debate was hosted by the ultraconservative Federalist Society. Stark had this interesting point about credibility, which is similar to a point I made about creationist credibility:
First of all, when arguing with somebody that either has no credibility or is not arguing a credible position, don't donate the credibility they need to be seen as your equal.
You see, by calling his credibility into question immediately - and…
cmooney | March 28, 2007Well, as usual, there's much to say about the latest House hearing on political interferences with climate science. Beforehand, I had the honor of meeting Rep. Brad Miller, who's been a pioneer on this issue. For me, that was probably the highlight of the hearing. Miller was a nice, very personable guy. I told him I'd sent him a copy of Storm World. He represents North Carolina, after all.
Meanwhile, once the hearing started, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher once again, er, "distinguished" himself, using up all of his allotted time to speechify rather than ask the witnesses questions, talking about…
cmooney | March 26, 2007My latest Huffington Post entry is up; it's an attempt to add to the ongoing dialogue about why so many in the GOP are still in denial about global warming.
nisbetmc | March 26, 2007
As I've noted, in places like Canada and Europe, nuclear energy has been successfully reframed as an important "middle way" compromise solution in the debate over what to do about global warming. Now a report out today from the Oxford Research Group casts doubt on the potential of nuclear. From Reuters:
The surge in political popularity of nuclear power as a quick-fix, zero-carbon solution to global warming is misguided and potentially highly dangerous, a group of academics and scientists said on Monday. In its report "Secure energy, civil nuclear power, security and global warming", the…
tlambert | March 25, 2007Jonathan Chait analyses the reasons why Republicans deny anthropogenic global warming:
As the evidence for global warming gets stronger, Republicans are actually getting more skeptical. Al Gore's recent congressional testimony on the subject, and the chilly reception he received from GOP members, suggest the discouraging conclusion that skepticism on global warming is hardening into party dogma. Like the notion that tax cuts are always good or that President Bush is a brave war leader, it's something you almost have to believe if you're an elected Republican.
How did it get this way?
The…
cmooney | March 21, 2007I'll be doing the Morning Show on New York City's WOR Morning Show, at 7:10 am, with hosts Joe Bartlett and Donna Hanover. The subject: Global warming and Al Gore's testimony. You can listen live by going to the WOR page and clicking...."Listen Live." I won't be on for all that long, so if you're interested, tune in promptly....
cmooney | March 21, 2007I found Al Gore's opening testimony--which I just watched--deeply stirring. Whenever I hear the guy talk, my feeling is always the same: He exudes intelligence.
By contrast, I found the behavior of Rep. Joe Barton--constantly raising petty parliamentary objections, quibbling over whether Gore's actual presentation did or didn't match his written testimony closely enough, and then trying to fight over the science once again--to be small indeed.
But the question is, when it comes to Gore, do other Americans share my perceptions? They may well not. Matt Nisbet suggests that reactions to the…
nisbetmc | March 21, 2007
Gallup's annual Earth Day survey of public attitudes on the environment is out today, and the results are consistent with the patterns revealed across other surveys this year. In short, while 2006 featured a historic high in media attention to global warming and Al Gore scored publicity success with Inconvenient Truth, there still exists a "Two Americas" of public perceptions when it comes to the urgency of global warming.
As I have detailed here many times (1,2,3), the "Pandora's Box" frame of looming climate crisis continues to activate Democrats on the issue, but the powerful perceptual…
nisbetmc | March 21, 2007 All eyes today are on Capitol Hill as former VP Al Gore testifies before Congress on global warming. Bill Broad's NY Times' article last week has launched a new narrative in coverage, as various journalists review whether "Gore got the science right" in Inconvenient Truth. Interviewed by host Renee Montagne, NPR's Richard Harris weighs in today with his view. Of note, it appears that Harris was first turned on to the possibility of unease among scientists when he attended last year's American Geophysical Union meetings, where Gore spoke:
I saw Al Gore give a talk at the American…
cmooney | March 21, 2007The former veep hits both houses of Congress today--David Roberts has a very useful rundown of the hurdles he will face, including cross-ex from good old Inhofe. I am not particularly worried that on an intellectual level, Gore will have a serious problem with questions from any individual member. He knows climate science better than all of them.
Apparently the first hearing, beginning at 9:30, will be live webcast here. I will be watching closely to see if anyone actually scores any points against Gore on the science. More likely, we'll get the standard misbehavior and disregard for…
loom | March 20, 2007Next week I'll be heading to Utah. Southern Utah University asked me to be their Visiting Eccles Scholar, which means that I'll be spending a couple days talking with students and faculty. I'll also be giving two talks that are open to the public. The first, Wednesday evening, will be on global warming and extinctions, about which I wrote an article for the New York Times a couple months back. The next evening I'll be talking about E. coli and the meaning of life. It's the first time I'll be speaking about my book in public, so I'm looking forward to sharing some of the stuff I learned while…
tlambert | March 20, 2007Sylvia S Tognetti rounds up commentary on Broad's hit piece and puts it an a wider context:
The reason Al Gore has become a polarizing figure is not for any of the reasons given by Broad, who makes a crude attempt to paint him as an alarmist, but because of the kind of media invented tales found in the article itself, which is among the most irresponsible pieces of journalism I have seen. Lest Broad be unfairly singled out at what is considered "the newspaper of record" let us not forget that this report is "sadly typical of the work the New York Times has done on Gore for the past dozen…
tlambert | March 18, 2007This is a guest post by Matt Daws.
I'm a mathematician at St John's College in Oxford, and so having seen a number of posters around for a conference on climate change in my own college, I decided to head along. The organisers are sense about science who are one of a number of strange UK organisations that, in some sense, grew out of a small left-wing group called living marxism. These people seemed to have had a mass conversion to some form of libertarianism at some point, and now tend to campaign for the right for industry to do exactly what it likes etc. In particular, I have a lot of…
tlambert | March 16, 2007The Australian's War on Science has continued. Fortunately, I am able to outsource the refuting.
First, Nexus 6 takes apart a Tuesday editorial where the Australian foolishly allows itself to be swindled by a British TV show. (Mind you the Australian came back on Thursday with another editorial the next day where they repeated the same bogus arguments again.)
And on Friday there was another anti-global warming rant in the Australian, with Frank Devine coming out against peer review. Ian Musgrave demolishes Devine here.
Seems like the Australian is trying to make up in quantity what their…
nisbetmc | March 14, 2007
As Earth Day approaches, expect a number of major polling reports on American views of global warming. I recently had a study accepted at Public Opinion Quarterly that analyzes twenty years of available polling trends on global warming, and I will be updating the analysis in the next two weeks as these most recent surveys come out. I was interested in doing the study because, despite the availability of dozens of survey studies over the past two decades, no authoritative summary of their collective findings exists. As a consequence, survey results often become an ideological Rorschach…
tlambert | March 13, 2007Last November Ray Pierrehumbert at RealClimate was very disappointed in a New York Times article by William Broad:
The worst fault of the article, though, is that it leaves the reader with the impression that there is something in the deep time Phanerozoic climate record that fundamentally challenges the physics linking planetary temperature to CO2. This is utterly false, and deeply misleading.
And:
This article is far from the standard of excellence in reporting we have come to expect from the Times. We sincerely hope it's an aberration, and not indicative of the best Mr. Broad has to offer…
cmooney | March 13, 2007
As I noted previously on this blog, while in Vancouver I did a radio show on global warming in which one of many "skeptic" callers used the example of noted MIT oceanographer Carl Wunsch, and an alleged quotation from him, to cast doubt on the latest science. Having come across Wunsch's name several times in the context of working on Storm World, I was immediately suspicious that the caller was misrepresenting Wunsch, and in fact, eventually called him out on it.
Now I see (via the DeSmogBlog) that there's an addendum to all this. According to the Guardian, Wunsch is
....considering legal…