global warming
cmooney | January 24, 2007
Bush's treatment of global warming in the State of the Union address was pretty uninspiring, unless you like vagaries. I have a Seed piece going up about this today so I won't say more, except to point out the actual language so you can see for yourself:
America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.
Well, at least the preceding stuff about fuel economy standards was…
cmooney | January 23, 2007As if there was any doubt....the State of the Union energy/climate policies are already up on the website of the White House. There is some potentially good stuff about renewable fuels and auto efficiency, but there are no mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions in there. There is no "cap and trade" policy. Once again--unless the White House put all of this stuff on the web as an elaborate deception--the breathless "scoops" from the British press about global warming are wrong.
cmooney | January 23, 2007
Well, I have done some quick research, in anticipation of the State of the Union address tonight. I think you folks will get a kick out of this:
2002 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 2. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
2003 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 4. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
2004 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 3. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
2005 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 1. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
2006 SOTU: Mentions of "God": 2. Mentions of "global warming" or "climate change": 0.
Total mentions of God:…
nisbetmc | January 23, 2007At the Washington Post today , Juliet Eilperin and Michael Grunwald report on the diverging priorities of House speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic chairmen John Dingell and Henry Waxman, conflicts that might stall or even derail meaningful legislation on climate change. Last week, in a new column on Science & Policy at the journal Nature, David Goldston shared the news article's outlook, but added that similar personal rifts in the Senate might also delay a bill for a "couple Congresses."
According to the Washington Post report, Dingell's ties to industry and labor unions means that…
cmooney | January 23, 2007There's a widespread sense that a change is afoot on the climate issue--so much so, in fact, that some commentators are producing what I view as simplistic accounts of how this came about. See for example Sebastian Mallaby in the Washington Post:
Eight months ago, when Gore's climate documentary was released, this state of affairs was inconceivable. Not only was Bush still a player, the case for climate change was widely doubted. Chortling climate-deniers, expecting an easy propaganda victory over the man whose energy-tax proposal they killed in 1993, greeted Gore's movie with glee. A group…
loom | January 22, 2007The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is about to release its newest edition of its report on global warming. In this AP report, one of the scientists who co-authored part of the IPCC study promises that it will contain much more than a smoking gun. It will contain "a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles."
The IPCC has been strengthening its conclusions about human responsibility for the rise in global temperatures for a few years now. One thing that apparently will set this new edition apart will be a section that looks at the impact global warming is having on nature--plants…
retrospectacle | January 22, 2007Its a bit overdue, but I wanted to address the second point in regards to "An Inconvenient Truth"---whether or not carbon off-sets do any good and whether Al Gore is hypocritical for using jets (which pollute) to attend meetings, etc. This issue was first raised over at my SciBling's blog Stoat, during his review of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." During that review he said:
How would we stop global warming? Since Gore fervently believes in it, clearly we should - emulate his lifestyle! Yes thats right, fly around the world and visit all kinds of interesting places. Um. Maybe not so…
mikethemadbiologist | January 22, 2007A few days ago, I posted about the conservative dogpile over at the Weather Channel because one of their bloggers had some very scathing comments about global warming denialists. I found this post by a self-described "literature guy" which makes two very good points.
First, he makes a very good point about expertise and trust (italics mine):
Read posts by people who are angry that Dr. Cullen has made the monumentally unremarkable statement that anti global-warming dogma is junk science and that meteorologists--who have as much right to offer authoritative opinions on climate change as Imams…
cmooney | January 22, 2007I don't trust the British papers with their various hyperventilating "scoops" about the forthcoming IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. But the Toronto Star just had a story that does sound realistic, reporting on what is purportedly a leaked final draft of the upcoming report's "Summary for Policymakers" section, which is always the most quoted and widely read part of the document.
Assuming this Star story is accurate, there isn't much in it that's very surprising. Apparently the new report attributes recent warming more strongly than ever to human activities. That would make four in a row for…
tlambert | January 21, 2007In comments to my post at On Line Opinion Graham Young declares that it is his "dispassionate assessment" as the editor of On Line Opinion that I am "deeply dishonest" for stating that Peiser admitted his analysis was full of errors. Here are the relevant bits of the exchange (links added), with Young raising denial to a whole new level:
Young:
So what if Peiser didn't count correctly. Just one scientist who doesn't agree negates Gore's claim. If you check the abstracts republished on Lambert's blog you get this quote from the first one: "More and better measurements and statistical…
grrlscientist | January 20, 2007The previous story about global warming has an interesting background story regarding how the data were obtained. Basically, these data (pictured, right) were the result of the 250,000 people around the world helping the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists by downloading their software onto their home computers so they could compute a single simulation of the future.
The resulting data predict that temperatures in Britain will be about 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer by 2020 than in the 1970s, chosen as the baseline for this project. Since temperatures are already nearly 1 degree…
grrlscientist | January 20, 2007
Image: Union of Concerned Scientists.
In its last report, published in 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that there was a 66 to 90 percent chance that human activities were driving the most recent climate warming. But in its most recent report, which will be released on 2 February, the panel revised its claim and said that it is more than 90 percent likely that global warming since 1950 has been driven mainly by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and that more warming and rising sea levels are on the way.
Drafts of the…
tlambert | January 20, 2007My inbox has been filling up with emails from anti-science warrior Marc Morano furiously denouncing the suggestion by Hedi Cullen that meteorologists should understand the basic science of climate change and
I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming. (One good resource if you don't have a lot of time is the Pew Center's Climate Change 101.)
Morano managed to orchestrate an…
tlambert | January 20, 2007The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report is coming out on Feb 2 and we have some leaks about the drafts appearing in The Toronto Star and in Reuters. Just so you know not to trust them, the reports contracdict each other. The Toronto Star reports that projected warming by 2100 will be 2.0-4.5 degrees Celsius, while Reuters gives exactly the same range for climate sensitivity. I doubt that they are both right.
mikethemadbiologist | January 20, 2007...but I saw Al Gore speak last night, and he's not going to run for president. He did, however, have a lot of interesting things to say.
-role of television
-need to incorporate internet differently into schools
-overemphasis on liberal arts education (tension)
-slammed Bush and global warming critics
-decried scientific censorship
Gore was a keynote speaker at the "Science and Society: Closing the Gap" meeting held here in Boston. In his talk and the Q&A, Gore made some interesting observations:
1) The last forty years we have moved from a society built around the written and spoken…
nisbetmc | January 20, 2007
Science issues are lining up to be a big part of the political jockeying by the 2008 presidential hopefuls. Plans are in the works to make Framing Science the-go-to-site for news and insight tracking the candidates' strategies and positions. So stay tuned...but today, an update on the GOP side.
Former MA Gov. Mitt Romney has emerged as a hot ticket on the GOP fundraising trail, reportedly raising millions, and accumulating top staff to join his Boston HQ. Meanwhile, Washington buzz is that he is already the candidate of choice among Christian conservatives, based on his strong anti-…
mikethemadbiologist | January 19, 2007A few weeks ago, climatologist and Weather Channel blogger Heidi Cullen suggested that:
I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming...
Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms. And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy.…
cmooney | January 19, 2007Matt Nisbet has the most intriguing speculation I've yet seen as to why the rumors about a global warming policy shift, which I have heretofore discounted, might actually be true. At least one thing seems clear: There will be global warming content in the January 23rd State of the Union address. Question for some enterprising blog reader: Has Bush ever voluntarily discussed global warming, or even mentioned that phrase (or "climate change"), in a previous SOTU address? I am skeptical that it has happened before. If I'm right about that then anything that Bush says will, in some sense, be a…
tlambert | January 18, 2007When we last encountered NRSP director Tom Harris he was busy denying he was associated with the High Park Group (a PR company that lobbies for energy companies). Now, in a totally surprising twist, Jim Hoggan reveals:
Two of the three Directors on the board of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project are senior executives of the High Park Advocacy Group, a Toronto-based lobby firm that specializes in "energy, environment and ethics."
I'm shocked. Truly I am.
retrospectacle | January 18, 2007I came across a fascinating post over at Econobrowser about the striking correlations between a) and area's wealth and its proximity to oceans and rivers and b) an islands wealth and the time it spent as a European colony. Needless to say, both are positively correlated. Below the fold is a map of "global weath" as a function of GDP per kilometer. Interesting stuff, and very telling about the burgeoning economies of several notable "developing" nations. But how does this line up with global pollution?
(Click below the fold to view global wealth map and pollution map.)
This map assigns a…