Climate Change
gregladen | August 24, 2015We need to act urgently to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas pollution we humans create in order to slow down and eventually stop climate change. In the mean time we see case after case of something happening that seems unusual and that seems linked to global warming. We need not wait for the jury to return a verdict in every single case in order to act. We already know what many of the effects of climate change are, and we have a reasonably good idea of what effects will arise in the future. Even so, every now and then something happens that any reasonable person might guess is linked…
gregladen | August 20, 2015How do you explain a person seemingly legitimately trained in science drifting off and becoming more and more of a science denier?
In the case of Judith Curry I was unwilling to think of her as a full on science denier for a long time because her transition into denierhood seemed to be going very slowly, methodologically. It was almost like she was trying to drift over into denier land and maybe bring a few back with her. Like some people seem to do sometimes. But no, she just kept providing more and more evidence that she does not accept climate science's concensus that global warming is…
gregladen | August 13, 2015This is F@k1n' brilliant.
Cherry-pickin’ a bit of temperature data
And tryin’ to claim that climate change is in hiatus
It’s not, the trends are still going straight up
But they ain’t tryin’ to change their minds once they’re made up
In 1992 my mama’s thesis
Was about CO2 and Svante Arrhenius
So if you try to tell me that climate change isn’t serious
You’re dissin’ my mama, yup I’m kinda cliquish
Also by Baba Brinkman:
The Rap Guide to Religion
The Rap Guide to Evolution
The Rap Guide to Evolution: Revised [Explicit]
The Rap Canterbury Tales
The Rap Guide to Wilderness
The Rap Guide to…
gregladen | August 12, 2015Climate Models Accurately Predict Warming
Climate models employ piles of data and sophisticated computational techniques to predict what will happen in the future. Sometimes they predict what happened in the past as well. That is important to test the models (because we might know what happened in the past), or to fill in the blanks (we don’t always know exactly what happened in the past) or to understand complex climate systems better.
If you glance at the science denier rhetoric (mainly on blogs, you won’t find much in the peer reviewed literature because it isn’t good science) you’ll see…
gregladen | August 11, 2015Bill Maher and Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann discuss the “settled science” of climate change and the lack of public engagement on the issue. Dr. Mann is the co-author of "Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change.”
gregladen | August 4, 2015There are two new scientific research papers looking at variation over the last century or so in global warming. One paper looks at the march of annual estimates of global surface temperature (air over the land plus sea surface, not ocean), and applies a well established statistical technique to ask the question: Was there a pause in global warming some time over the last couple of decades, as claimed by some?
The answer is, no, there wasn’t.
The paper is open access, is very clearly written so it speaks for itself, and is available here. One of the authors has a blog post here, in German…
gregladen | August 3, 2015Men and women are different, on average, in a number of ways. It all probably starts with who has the physiology to have babies and who doesn't, and the differences spread out from there, affecting both the body and the mind. Decades of research show us that many of the body differences (but not all) are determined by developmental processes while many of the mind differences (but maybe not all) are determined by culture, but culture still has men and women as being different, so those differences tend to be persistent and predictable, on average.
One of the differences which seems to…
gregladen | August 2, 2015I did an interview with JD Goodwin at at Blue Streak Science. It is here. Great science podcast, check out their other items.
Here is the interview on iTunes.
gregladen | July 27, 2015What is not new
Ultimately sea levels will rise several feet, given the present levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. We already knew this by examining paleo data, and finding periods in the past with similar surface temperatures and/or similar atmospheric CO2 levels as today.
I put a graphic from a paper by Gavin Foster and Eelco Rohling at the top of the post. It does a good job of summarizing the paleo data.
If we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at current, or even somewhat reduced, levels for a few more decades, the ultimate increase in sea levels will be significant. Find the 400–500…
gregladen | July 20, 2015Every month NASA GISS comes out with the new data for the prior month's global surface temperature, and I generally grab that data set and make a graph or two. In a way this is a futile effort because the actual global surface temperature month by month is not as important as the long term trend. But at the same time it is a worthy exercise because it is news, and especially lately, we seem to be breaking records of one kind or another every month.
This month I was out of town and actually traveling sans computer, when the NASA GISS data became available. So, for me to produce the graphs…
gregladen | July 8, 2015A new paper has just been published. This paper is going to cause an uproar in the science denialist community. Mud will be thrown. Tin hats will be donned. Somebody better check the oil pressure.
Conspiracies everywhere
I see conspiracies everywhere. It's true.
Look at any internet site that talks about health, disease, diet, or anything related. Some of those sites will be legit science based sites. The majority will be sites feeding you woo. The anti-Vaxers, the anti-Milkers, the Homeopaths, man of the "natural food" sites. Now look more closely at those sites to find out what they…
gregladen | July 7, 2015Focusing on Earth, but also a few tidbits on wind, fire, and ice, some current news and observations about global warming.
Earth
As humans release greenhouse gas pollutants (mainly CO2) into the atmosphere, the surface of the Earth, and the top 2000 meters of the ocean, heat up. But some of the CO2 is absorbed into plant tissues and soil, as well as in the ocean or other standing water. Historically, about 30% of the extra CO2 is absorbed into the ocean, and another 30% converted into (mainly) plant tissue. We hope that enough CO2 is absorbed that the effects of greenhouse gas pollution is…
gregladen | July 1, 2015Humans have been releasing greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere for a long time now, and this has heated up the surface of the planet. This, in turn, has caused a number of alarming changes in weather. Several current weather events exemplify the effects of climate change.
Record High Temperatures Being Shattered
South Asia recently experienced a number of killer heatwaves, and that is still going on in the region. More recently, we've seen long standing record highs being broken in the American West. The Capital Climate group recently tweeted this list of records:
Hot Whopper…
gregladen | July 1, 2015I want to quickly mention two interesting items that crossed my desk. First is a study in Nature that looks at changes in extreme weather patterns between 1979 and very recently, the other is a study of how media has been addressing climate science denial among presidential candidates.
Evidence that global warming is intensifying extreme weather
First, the changes in weather. Human caused greenhouse gas pollution has resulted in important changes in key factors that affect the weather. The simplest (but not complete) explanation is probably this. Overall patterns of air circulation (…
gregladen | June 23, 2015See below for update.
Andrew Revkin has a new kind of fan. These are fans that agree with much of what Revkin says, or at least feel comfortable in his community of commenters. These fans feel their views are substantiated by what they read in Revkin's New York Times column, Dot Earth. They seem to be Libertarian, anti-environment, anti-science, pro-fossil fuel, and frankly, anti-green. Not just one or two of Andrew Revkin's fans, but a bunch -- with numbers possibly growing -- are of this mind, and this is very disturbing. If we had the technology to transport these fans back in time and…
gregladen | June 18, 2015Michael Mann was interviewed by Michael Smerconish about the Pope's recent letter on climate change:
Here's the NYT piece by Justin Gillis mentioned by Mann.
The graphic at the top is form here.
gregladen | June 18, 2015NOAA has released the data for average global surface temperature for the month of May. The number is 0.87 degrees C (1.57 degrees F) above the 20th century average for their data set. This is the highest value seen for the month of May since 1880, which is the earliest year in the database. The previous record value for may was last year. This year's May value is 0.08 degrees C (0.14 degrees F) higher than that.
According to NOAA:
The May globally-averaged land surface temperature was 2.30°F (1.28°C) above the 20th century average. This tied with 2012 as the highest for May in the 1880–…
gregladen | June 15, 2015This is a press release from the Center for Inquiry:
Skeptics Dare Heartland Institute to Take Up $25,000 Climate Challenge
A leading science advocacy group is throwing down the gauntlet to the Heartland Institute, a group that claims that global warming stopped in 1998, with a stark, simple challenge: If the 30-year average global land surface temperature goes up in 2015, setting a new record, the Heartland Institute must donate $25,000 to a science education nonprofit.
The challenge is presented by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), a program of the Center for Inquiry, which held…
gregladen | June 15, 2015Human released greenhouse gas pollution continues to warm the surface of the planet. May was thought to be likely a very very warm month but it turns out to be merely very warm (only one "very") according to data released this morning.
Shockingly, May turned out to be, in the NASA GISS data set, less warm than expected. (I mainly get my cues for what to expect from my friend and colleague John Abraham, who has written up the May NASA GISS results HERE.) At the same time the May data came out (earlier today) the data for April was adjusted by NASA (these adjustments happen all the time,…
gregladen | June 7, 2015The Problem with terminology
There is some confusion about the way we talk about global warming. Most of this confusion arises during the communication of science to the public or to policy makers. Part of this confusion rests within the science itself; There is no meaningful confusion about the nature of global warming or how it is observed, but there are some terminological glitches of the kind that arise in science all the time, and that rarely matter to the science itself.
The most commonly used indicator of global warming is a graph that is meant to show the effects of global warming…