climate change
hrynyshyn | October 7, 2011It's hard to argue against funding scientific research. But let me try.
This past week 18 experts assembled as the Task Force on Climate Remediation Research released the product of its collective wisdom. A creation of the Bipartisan Policy Center, which the New York Times' Cornelia Dean describes as "a research organization based in Washington founded by four senators — Democrats and Republicans — to offer policy advice to the government," the task force concluded that the U.S. should be spending unspecified sums on research into what is colloquially known as climate hacking. Most everyone…
tfk | October 5, 2011Modeled Behavior tells A Tale of Two Recessions, noting a rather shocking statistic:
as of the last few years the auto fleet in the United States has begun to shrink. That is, we are scrapping cars at a faster rate than we are producing them.
Unless something changes in the next 18 months, our scrappage rate will begin to exceed new cars sales by the millions of units per year. In a country that is still growing in population and still adding drivers every year its hard to explain why the optimal path is suddenly for the vehicle fleet to shrink.
What economist Karl Smith means is that it's…
hrynyshyn | October 5, 2011The good folks at the National Snow and Ice Data Center summarize the season in the Arctic Ocean. Turns out that the weather conditions that helped make 2007 a record for low sea-ice extent didn't recur. And yet, 2011 came within a relative hair's breadth of setting a new record. That means longer-term climate trends are to blame, not seasonal weather variation. The low-down:
Why did ice extent fall to a near record low without the sort of extreme weather conditions seen in 2007? One explanation is that the ice cover is thinner than it used to be; the melt season starts with more first-year…
hrynyshyn | October 4, 2011Climatologist Michael Mann is fed up. Actually, he's been fed up a long time, given that he's been the subject of mean-spirited investigations and slander for years now. We probably need more of this kind of rebuttal:
These are just lies, regurgitation of dishonest smears that have been manufactured by fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers, and those who do their bidding by lying to the public about the science.
Mann wrote that in an op-ed for the Vail Daily. It's not the New York Times, but that's the point. The climatology community needs to respond every time some ignorant…
illconsidered | October 3, 2011 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the Internet Firehose...October 2, 2011 Chuckles, Horn of Africa, Overshoot, Maathai, Jet Stream, IMECHE GDP, Subsidies, Ecocide, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs, Temperatures, Feedbacks,…
sastyk | October 3, 2011A number of readers have asked me what I think about the Wall Street protests. In general I think public protest is usually a good thing, and I'm pleased to see demonstrations in favor of good things like corporate accountability and against bad things like climate change. I think there are plenty of reasons for political activism in our country, and am always pleased by it.
On the other hand, do I think that this is the beginning of something profound and important? I can't say for sure, but I would guess not. Protesting Wall Street isn't a bad idea - but there's a fundamental problem in…
hrynyshyn | October 3, 2011Kate at Climate Sight remind us this week of just how challenging it can be for a mainstream media outlet to accurately report on climatology. Even when the reporter gets it right, a headline-writing editor can inject just enough obsfucation to leave readers puzzled or misinformed.
This particular piece of evidence attesting to the need for all journalists to possess more than just a passing knowledge of the field in question involves a new paper in Nature, "Unprecedented Arctic ozone loss in 2011." The implication of the authors' finding is that the Arctic's UV-radiation-blocking ozone…
hrynyshyn | September 30, 2011This story has been around a while, but I haven't been blogging much lately so I am only getting around to it now.
"..the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones."
So says a new paper. Troubling findings. Something's not quite right, and am hoping to nail it down. "The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change," by Harvard's Dan Kahan et al. tested a sufficiently large sample size of…
illconsidered | September 27, 2011Well, it is that time of year again, the sea ice in the Arctic has reached its minimum extent.
(please note that the image above shows the August data, September's graphic is not yet available though it will look very similar)
So how's that "recovery" coming along? According to NSIDC, this year's September minimum is the second lowest in the satellite record.
Peter, over at Climate Crock of the Week, presents his latest video on that topic, a very sober and sobering placement of this year in its long term context:
Once again, the choice is between the "climate skeptics" and your lying…
sastyk | September 26, 2011
It won't be news to most of my readership, but it is worth noting that the one thing that seems to be certain about climate change is that the 2007 IPCC report understated things. Sigh.
Sharon
illconsidered | September 26, 2011 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsSeptember 25, 2011 Chuckles, Equinox, COP17+, Horn of Africa, Pakistan Missing Heat, Easter Island, Atlasgate, Monnett, Subsidies, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Beasties, Methane, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Land Grabs, IP Issues, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs…
gregladen | September 25, 2011How do you know when alternative views are real alternatives, and thus should be considered in a "balanced view" vs. when those views are not any longer valid and should be ignored? This sounds like a hard thing to do but it is not as hard as you might think. I suggest two different approaches: "Tipping Points" and "Clues that Something is Wrong Here."
The Tipping Point approach works like this: As the percentage of qualified scientists that hold a particular view diminishes, when it reaches about 25 percent or so, the view should continue to be references but as a minority view. Many…
illconsidered | September 23, 2011Hat tip to Chris S on the last AWOGWN thread for posting the link, here is the video of David Mitchell shredding the "prove it first, then we'll stop the pollution" argument embedded below:
I have argued many times that the "let's do nothing til we're sure" people have it backwards because we are in fact doing something: altering the atmospheric chemistry. Do nothing til we're sure would entail an immediate cesation of all long-lived GHG emissions.
hrynyshyn | September 20, 2011Drawing attention to misinformed pseudoskeptical analyses of peer-reviewed climatology studies is usually counterproductive. But in this case, it's worth mentioning because the author makes such a common mistake that exploring the error might actually help shed light on the why so many people are easily led astray.
The offender is Anthony Watts, who is arguably (depending on how much weight you assign to blog popularity polls) among the most influential anti-science bloggers out there. His error was to confuse (or conflate, to use a fancier term beloved by social scientists) a direct effect…
sastyk | September 20, 2011Aaron Newton and I are starting out our first-ever Advanced Adapting-in-Place class, for people who have taken our previous course or who have been on the adaptation journey for a while. If you'd like to join us there are still spots available and world enough and time to join, so please email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com. In the meantime, the first step in sorting out what you need to do to get ready for a shifting future is to have some sense of what that future looks like - or the range of possible ways the future could look.
There are a lot of possible ways to imagine the future.…
hrynyshyn | September 19, 2011Fill in the blanks:
It is customary in the popular media and in many journal articles to cite a projected _________ figure as if it were a given, a figure so certain that it could virtually be used for long-range planning purposes. But we must carefully examine the assumptions behind such projections. And forecasts that ________ is going to level off or decline this century have been based on the assumption that the developing world will necessarily follow the path of the industrialized world. That is far from a sure bet.
That comes from an essay at Yale's e360.
Given that you're reading a…
illconsidered | September 19, 2011 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is notWisdomSeptember 18, 2011 Chuckles, COP17+, Horn of Africa, Pakistan, BGS Monnett, WikiLeaks, Subsidies, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food Prices, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Ozone,…
sastyk | September 14, 2011
Just watch, and understand why the death of what passed for culture in our youth is probably something we can bear with equanimity. Plus, the hair gave us a taste for the apocalyptic - the bangs are exactly what your hair will look like during a zombie attack.
Sharon
illconsidered | September 12, 2011 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Information Overloadis Pattern RecognitionSeptember 11, 2011 Chuckles, COP17+, Horn of Africa, Pakistan, Wigley, Keystone XL WikiLeaks, Dessler, Spencer, Monnett, Ecocide, How To?, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes…
illconsidered | September 10, 2011What Exxon says, through its various mouthpeices, that global warming is not happening or is happening but reversing or what have you, is apparently not what it believes.
Once seen as a useless, ice-clogged backwater, the Kara Sea now has the attention of oil companies. That is partly because the sea ice is apparently receding.
Two billion is alot of money to put where your mouth is not!