global warming
grrlscientist | February 3, 2007
Greenland Ice Sheets are breaking up.
Image source: NASA.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report [PDF] was just released to the public yesterday and already, it is being criticised by scientists for being "too optimistic". For example, the observed sea level rise has been following the upper range of the 2001 IPCC estimate. Thus, "It's pretty unequivocal" that the rise in sea levels is accelerating.
Other experts said the panel missed some important new developments, because it set a December 2005 cutoff date for submission of scientific papers and other data. Since…
grrlscientist | February 3, 2007tags: global warming, IPCC Report, weather, environment, nature
A new report [PDF] that was released last Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveals that there is at least a 90 percent chance that the burning of fossil fuels was the primary cause of global warming since 1950. The report stated that the world as a whole needs to cut its fossil fuel emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050. This report includes work from more than 2,000 scientists from across the globe and is based on peer-reviewed research.
The report, considered the most authoritative science on…
grrlscientist | February 3, 2007
Polar bears, Ursus maritimus, stranded on melting iceberg.
Scientists are finding bodies of dead polar bears in the sea near Alaska and in the Arctic. Apparently, the bears are being overcome with exhaustion and starvation as they are forced to swim hundreds of miles in search of food.
"As the ice gets farther out from the shore because of warming, it's a longer swim that costs [the bears] more energy and makes them more vulnerable," said Dr Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service.
A comprehensive report published today by a United Nations panel says there is a 90 per cent…
tlambert | February 3, 2007
I must be really important because Glenn Reynolds has made a specious attack on me based on something I wrote, not in a post, but in a comment on another blog. I wrote that the sea level projections in the draft AR4 report were similar to those in the previous report. Reynolds:
Number problems for Tim Lambert? Color me unsurprised.
He links to Tim Blair, who cleverly quotes me like this:
Lambert looks for a way out: "I didn't say the numbers were the same, merely similar." The numbers in question are ... 59 and 88.
No, those aren't the numbers in question. Blair left out my next sentence…
cmooney | February 2, 2007From the White House's statement on the new IPCC report:
"This Summary for Policymakers captures and summarizes the current state of climate science research and will serve as a valuable source of information for policymakers," said Dr. Sharon Hays, the leader of the U.S. delegation at the meeting and Associate Director/Deputy Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "It reflects the sizeable and robust body of knowledge regarding the physical science of climate change, including the finding that the Earth is warming and that human activities have very…
tlambert | February 2, 2007Now that the new IPCC report has been released it's time to revisit the inaccurate leaks that appeared in The Australian and in The Sunday Telegraph. Both reporters made the same two errors:
they reported the value for climate sensitivity (the eventual warming from doubling CO2) as the IPCC projection for warming by 2100
they reported the maximum sea level rise for scenario B2 (43 cm) as the maximum rise, ignoring the other scenarios and the fact that the rise does not include any increase from accelerating ice flow.
The false reports generated erroneous commentary like this nonsense from…
purepedantry | February 2, 2007The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is out today, and I was shocked to discover that it is already being misreported. It was being mis-reported before, but that was just leaks. You can lie with leaks. They are easily selective.
Now the mis-reportage is being done with the actually report out, so I have a piece of advice for everyone. Just read the thing. It isn't that complicated. Read it for yourself because every time I read a news article about it I notice some new crock of hooey.
Take this for instance:
The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees…
tlambert | February 2, 2007The IPCC has released the Summary For
Policymakers of the Fourth Assessment Report. Some of the conclusions:
Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely [defined as >90% probability] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations
The equilibrium climate sensitivity is a measure of the climate system
response to sustained radiative forcing. It is not a projection but is
defined as the global average surface warming following a doubling of
carbon dioxide concentrations. It is likely [>66% chance]…
nisbetmc | February 1, 2007
GRAPH: MAJOR NEWSPAPER ATENTION TO "BLOOD" OR "CONFLICT" DIAMONDS
All eyes in the science advocacy community will be on Paris tomorrow, as the policymakers' summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is released. Though the most important scientific document on global warming, it remains unclear just how much media and public focus the report will generate.
Earlier this week, celebrities launched Global Cool, a sleek new multimedia campaign to generate attention to global warming among the sizable majority of Americans who tune out almost all coverage of public…
cmooney | February 1, 2007Naomi Oreskes has an op-ed in the Post this morning on this subject, in anticipation of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report release tomorrow. I went over a lot of this ground in researching the new book, and there's one detail I can never get over. John Tyndall discovered what we now think of as the greenhouse effect at pretty much the same time that Darwin published On the Origin of Species. In other words, the theoretical understanding of the behavior of greenhouse gases goes back just as far as the theory of evolution by natural selection.
That's really something, when you think about it.
cmooney | January 31, 2007Some wit once said something like, "My pessimism extends so far as to suspect the sincerity of the pessimists." As we witness a flurry of activity concerning global warming on Capitol Hill--and with the IPCC report just days from emerging--that's the outlook I'd like to apply to the climate issue.
Just because there's a surge of attention doesn't mean that surge will translate into lasting action. I'm still convinced such action is going to have to wait until after the 2008 election. There's a revealing passage about this in an L.A. Times story today:
"There's going to be a lot of sound and…
nisbetmc | January 31, 2007
Tuesday was "open mike" day at Senator Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works committee, reports the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin. Senate Dems including Barak Obama took stage to hammer home the overwhelming consensus that climate change is real, and that major policy action, notably emission caps, is needed.
In her speech to open the session, Boxer compared the moment to the early 1970s, when a burning Cuyahoga River and the nation's smog filled cities galvanized Congress to take action on clean air and clean water. "It's once again our turn again to stand up and lead this…
nisbetmc | January 30, 2007
Scientists and environmental advocates will watch with excited anticipation on Friday as the policymakers' summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is released in Paris, France. The IPCC reports are designed to be the most important events in climate science and policy, gathering world experts to craft an authoritative summary of the state of human understanding. Yet here in the United States, if past trends are predictive, the IPCC report is unlikely to make a major dent in the news or public agenda, much less shift public opinion.
As the Pew analysis (pictured above) of…
tlambert | January 29, 2007There's denial and there's pathological denial.
In comments to my post at On Line Opinion OLO editor Graham Young has continued to deny that Peiser admitted to making multiple errors. The latest bit of denial:
"To say he concedes, when you know he doesn't, is not only "deeply dishonest", but blatantly so"
This is despite Young emailing Peiser to verify the accuracy of this Media Watch report:
"And when we pressed him to provide the names of the articles, he eventually conceded - there was only one."
nisbetmc | January 27, 2007As disappointing as this week's State of the Union address might have been to many climate change advocates, in today's Washington Post, Peter Baker and Steven Mufson have a revealing page one account backgrounding the evolution of Bush's thinking on the issue.
According to the article, in the last year, Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sach's chairman Hank Paulson along with FedEx Chair Frederick W. Smith have been pushing Bush for policy action on greenhouse gas emissions and energy independence. It was at a Dec. 13 meeting with Paulson, Smith, and Goldman Sachs vice-chairman Robert…
tlambert | January 26, 2007Earlier I wrote about Khilyuk and Chilingar
their mistake is so large and so obvious that anyone who cites them either has no clue about climate science or doesn't care whether what they write is true or not.
So who has discredited themselves by citing them?
Robert M. Carter, C. R. de Freitas, Indur M. Goklany, David Holland and Richard S. Lindzen
Ron Bailey
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Andrew Bolt
Tim Blair
The Idsos
Pat Michaels
Pat Michaels went way beyond merely citing them, writing over a thousand words about how it was peer-reviewed and how the authors were from USC and how it…
tlambert | January 25, 2007Paul Hamer sends me an email about Khilyuk and Chilingar: (my emphasis)
I had a quick poke around on the ISI database to see if anyone had cited
their original study that you've covered. I found that their is a single
citation - a self citation. It turns out Khilyuk and Chilingar have written
another article with the help of one O. G Sorokhtin.
I can't be 100% certain but seems like they're making a very dodgy claim
here:
"The main factor determining climate's temperature parameters is the
atmospheric pressure."
They then proceed to breeze over geological history and suggest two
mechanisms…
grrlscientist | January 25, 2007
Image: Photo illustration by John Blackford; original photograph by Cameron Davidson.
A good argument for building UP instead of OUT: It looks like a lot of people will be going to work via water taxis in the future.
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tags: Manhattan, global warming,sea level
nisbetmc | January 24, 2007
I've noted in recent presentations and posts the strong role of partisanship in how Americans view the science and relative urgency of global warming. Yet according to a Pew survey released this week, the divide runs deeper and more complex.
Pew reports striking educational differences in partisans' views of global warming. According to the survey analysis, among Republicans, higher education is linked to greater skepticism about global warming -- fully 43% of Republicans with a college degree say that there is no evidence of global warming, compared with 24% of Republicans with less…
cmooney | January 24, 2007Seed just published my take on the State of the Union speech, and the role of global warming therein. In essence, it's a very pessimistic outlook. I really doubt we can expect strong action on the issue until a new administration comes in. The current Congress may pass a few bills outlining various forms of emission capping programs, but I doubt they'll become law. In short, look for global warming to become a campaign issue in '08....