global warming
nisbetmc | March 12, 2007
The next hurricane season is only a few months away, and when it comes to the possible link between global warming and more intense storms, according to a just released Gallup poll, roughly half of Americans think hurricanes have already become more powerful due to global warming or will in the next ten years.
Yet, relative to perceptions of this climate impact there remain major partisan differences. According to the survey, 83% of Democrats worry that hurricanes will become more powerful due to global warming compared to only 49% of Republicans.
cmooney | March 12, 2007
Seed has just put online my piece from the last issue--a profile of NASA's James Hansen. A lot has been said about Hansen in the past--he is inarguably our best known climate scientist--so I leave it to you to figure out whether I've actually said anything new. Here's a hint, though: I think I have.
Enjoy.
nisbetmc | March 12, 2007 The Guardian has the details on the PR tactic of polar bear photos to (over)dramatize the impacts of global warming, tracing the idea to a 1993 Coca-Cola campaign. Here's a little bit about the strategic use of "cuddly anthropomorphism on the tundra":
One photograph in particular has captured the imagination. In a neat piece of marketing, the Canadian Ice Service made available a stunning image to coincide with the IPCC report. Two bears, probably a mother and her cub, are pictured on a spectacular ice block off northern Alaska that might have been modelled by Henry Moore. They appear to be…
grrlscientist | March 11, 2007The tundra is is a special habitat where tree growth is inhibited by low temperatures and a short growing season. In the Arctic, the tundra is dominated by permafrost, a layer of permanently frozen subsoil, so the only vegetation that grows under such conditions are grasses, mosses and lichens. Forests of spruce trees and shrubs neighbor these tundra areas, and the boundary where they meet is called the treeline. However, climate change has extended the summer warming season and promoted tree growth, causing the treeline to encroach on the tundra faster than researchers thought possible.
"The…
grrlscientist | March 11, 2007According to a recently leaked memorandum, the Bush Administration is once again up to their dirty tricks; they are trying to gag government scientists by demanding they not to talk about polar bears, sea ice and climate change during official overseas trips.
Despite all this clumsy politicking, the Department of the Interior is currently considering whether to list polar bears as endangered and a decision is expected by January 2008.
A leaked e-mail from regional director Richard Hannon, from the Fish and Wildlife Service to his staff warned that any future overseas trips involving or…
nisbetmc | March 9, 2007 In a fragmented media system, not only do people choose among news outlets and stories based on their ideology and partisanship, but also based on their preference, or lack thereof, for public affairs-related content. It is very easy for the majority of the public to completely select themselves out of the news audience, paying almost exclusive attention to celebrity culture, entertainment, sports, or other diversionary topics. The challenge then is to think about angles on an issue like climate change that generate coverage in a non-traditional beat like the sports pages, thereby…
cmooney | March 8, 2007Andrew Revkin has the latest story:
The sample memorandums, described as to be used in writing travel requests, indicate that the employee seeking permission to travel "understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues."
Apparently these memos, to scientists in the Alaskan division of the Fish and Wildlife Service, are only about a week old. In other words, despite two congressional hearings already to investigate political interferences with the communication of science relating to climate change,…
nisbetmc | March 6, 2007Over at The Intersection, my friend and colleague Chris Mooney has more thoughts on why the IPCC report failed to impact the wider media and public agenda. Mooney is in Vancouver this week, presenting at the University of British Columbia, sharing thoughts and ideas that together we are likely to take on the road as part of a national speaking tour. Stay tuned for more details.
grrlscientist | March 5, 2007Anyone who doubts the existence of global warming should visit Shishmaref. Shishmaref is a tiny town located on a barrier island in Alaska. It is inhabited by approximately 600 people. Already, the glaciers melting are causing sea levels to rise; the frozen ground on which the village was built, also known as permafrost, is thawing, making the ground crumble like sand; and two homes have already tipped into the sea while many others are set to follow them to their watery demise.
Village elder Tony Weyiouanna estimates the tide moves an average of 10 feet (three metres) closer to the land…
nisbetmc | March 4, 2007Back in January, when a coalition of Big Industry CEOs and environmental groups got together to urge Congress and the President to pass "cap and trade" legislation on global warming pollutants, a sudden crack appeared in the long standing conservative opposition to major policy action on the problem.
Indeed, with CEOs like Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric and Peter A. Darbee of PG&E offering up a plan that would lead to a 20 to 40 percent reduction in current levels of global warming pollutants by 2050, it was time for long time opponents of action to regroup and reassess their…
tlambert | March 3, 2007I only wrote my last post on the Australian's War on Science a couple of days ago and already there's more attacks on science from them.
First we have this news article:
Professor Henderson said yesterday the report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, handed down on February 2, was "alarmist".
He said it had mislead Western governments over rising temperatures, and warned the cost of mitigation measures would be felt severely in Australia, unless it adopted a "balanced" view. ...
Professor Henderson said IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri was "alarmist" and his report "a heavily…
tlambert | March 2, 2007One conclusion of the recent IPCC report, produced by some 600 scientists and 620 expert reviewers, was:
Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since
the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in
anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
John Hawkins just surveyed a large number of right-wing bloggers and asked:
Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?
The result?
Yes (0) -- 0%
No (59) -- 100%
I wonder if any of these bloggers are brave enough to put their money where their mouth is.
nisbetmc | March 2, 2007In a column last year, I detailed the historical trajectory in the U.S. of frames on nuclear energy, with images moving from very positive interpretations centered on social progress and economic development during the 1950s and 1960s to a very negative focus on public accountability and a Pandora's Box of unknown disaster in the 1970s. These frames were locked in by the Three Mile Island accident in 1977, and reinforced in the 1980s by the Chernobyl disaster. Since TMI, no new nuclear reactors have been built in the U.S., and public support for nuclear energy has never moved above 50%.
Yet…
cmooney | March 2, 2007 Sadly, this recent paper on global warming (PDF) from the Senate Republican Policy Committee, which is chaired by Kay Bailey Hutchison, demonstrates that too many in the GOP still refuse to cop to the scientific consensus in this area. Many aspects of the document's discussion are judicious and well informed. Yet at the same time, the conclusions are completely skewed:
There are three general areas of scientific agreement on climate change.
⢠Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 380 ppm over the last century due in large part to…
tlambert | March 1, 2007Andrew Bolt is still trying to revive the bogus "Gore is a fat hypocrite" story. His main points are:
Gore is fat.
And:
Here he was, receiving film's highest honour for his smash documentary, in which he warns that within a century the seas will rise up to 6m while monster hurricanes tear through what's left of our cities.
Gore didn't say that would be 6m of sea level rise within a century. Nobody knows how long it will take, so Gore didn't give a figure. And the scientific consensus is that global warming will likely increase hurricane intensity.
And that is Gore buys his offsets…
nisbetmc | March 1, 2007The Golden Rule in politics is never promise something you can't deliver. In 1997 Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol and committed to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12, yet emissions today are now more than 30% above the target. Last week, it was claimed by Eddie Goldenberg, a former party policy advisor, that at the time, Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretian committed the country to Kyoto fully expecting to fall short of the targets. Here's how the Globe and Mail reported the comments:
"I am not sure that Canadian public opinion -- which was…
tlambert | February 27, 2007Conservatives and faux libertarians have been running with an attack on Al Gore from a junior version of the Competitive Enterprise Institute -- apparently he has a big house/office and it uses a lot of energy. Genuine libertarian Jim Henley puts it like this: (Quoted in full because not a word is wasted.)
Al Gore uses a lot of electricity. Al Gore buys carbon offsets. Libertarians who take anthropogenic global warming seriously - count me among them - generally favor markets in emissions over hard regulatory targets for individual homes and businesses. That way people and companies can…
nisbetmc | February 27, 2007 As I've chronicled at this blog, the IPCC report was a massive failure as a communication moment. The inability of the IPCC report to break through to the wider public about the urgency of climate change is just more evidence that relying on traditional science communication strategies has increasingly limited returns.
Instead, as I describe in my latest "Science and the Media" column at Skeptical Inquirer Online, other public engagement methods are sorely needed. Among options, I suggest reaching the wider public not directly via news coverage, but rather indirectly by way of a "two-step…
tlambert | February 27, 2007SkepticLawyer has a nice round up of blog reactions to the Australian Government's plan to ban incandescent light bulbs by 2010. (As well as lot more interesting links -- check it out.) For once, I find myself agreeing with Miranda Devine, who wrote:
So what kind of hypocrisy is there in a government that bans incandescent light bulbs while subsidising people who drive fuel-guzzling, greenhouse gas-emitting, giant four-wheel-drives?
With a 5 per cent import tariff on four-wheel-drives, most of which are imported, compared with a 10 per cent tariff on other cars, the Government is…
cmooney | February 27, 2007He says global warming is "Satan's attempt to redirect the church's primary focus" towards environmentalism. He also says the "jury is still out" on the subject.
Personally, I think Falwell should have stuck with bashing Teletubbies, blaming gays and feminists for 9/11, and saying that the Antichrist is Jewish and among us.
Those were really his strong areas.