hrynyshyn
Posts by this author
November 18, 2009
Too precious not to pass along:
Canadian Tourism Federation Welcome Video from Canadian Tourism Federation on Vimeo.
In case there's any doubt. There is no "Canadian Tourism Federation."
November 12, 2009
A fascinating paper about to be published in Geophysical Review Letters compares the number of record highs and lows at temperature stations across the U.S. since the 1940s. The authors found that we're getting more record highs and fewer record lows, in a pattern that yet again confirms that…
November 10, 2009
In an otherwise typically error-dominated Newsweek column, George F. Will spelled "minuscule" correctly. So I don't want to read any complaints that Will gets everything wrong each time he writes about climate change.
Of course, that doesn't mean we can't correct his myriad other mistakes. Here's…
November 9, 2009
Climate Cover-Up
The Crusade to Deny Global Warming
Greystone Books, 250 pages
Canadian public relations agent James "DeSmogBlog" Hoggan has assembled a comprehensive history of corporate efforts to stall action on climate change in a modest little book that should shock and appall anyone who's…
November 4, 2009
(Pseudo)-Skeptical Environmental Bjorn Lomborg advises in the Wall Street Journal that spending money on anti-malarial campaigns makes more sense than, and by implication is morally superior to, spending money on cutting carbon emissions. But to make his case, he has to abandon all hope of ever…
October 30, 2009
Rarely does a blogging day pass that I don't stumble upon some post or comment or email that champions the value of skepticism of anthropogenic global warming and the need for scientists to answer their critics. So it's refreshing to read a concise and cogent reminder of why such attacks are…
October 29, 2009
The costs of doing something about climate change are the subject of much debate these, and Canada is no exception. The federal government, like the ones before it, has shown little interest in honest analysis, so one of the country's biggest banks, TD Bank, decided to pay for a study all on its…
October 27, 2009
By now, I'd expect the authors of Superfreakonomics are having mixed feelings about their new book. On the one hand, they're making good money as the book enjoys healthy sales. On the other, just about every actual expert in the field to which Chapter 5 is devoted -- climate change -- has savaged…
October 26, 2009
For those who really grok the precautionary principle, aiming for a lower, and therefore inherently safer, maximum atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration is the logical choice. Civilization arose over the last 10,000 years in a world in which CO2 represented just 280 of every million atoms we and…
October 23, 2009
Another depressing poll result from one of the more reputable sources:
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones [excellent!] and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence…
October 23, 2009
Before criticizing our newest ScienceBlogger, David Sloan Wilson, who has moved here from the Huffington Post, let me add my voice to those who are welcoming the move. It is a good thing to have such an esteemed and accomplished scientist among our ranks. But like fellow blogger Eric Michael…
October 22, 2009
Not being a regular, or even occasional, listener of Rush Limbaugh, I have no idea if this week's obscene call for New York Times climate reporter Andy Revkin to commit suicide was simply par for the course. We all know that Limbaugh is an entertainer who is just doing what he needs to do to…
October 20, 2009
In which your humble blogger makes a desperate attempt to write something original about the latest affront to reasonable discourse in the global warming crisis.
There's little point in duplicating the devastating criticism that has been leveled at Superfreakonomics, the sequel to the wildly…
October 16, 2009
Every now and then a commenter at this or any number of other climate-oriented blogs spews out the phrase "the height of arrogance" and uses it in a way that defies logic. For example, one "Bruce" recently wrote
"It is the height of arrgoance [sic] to suggest a trace gas like CO2 has anything to…
October 15, 2009
Some group of bloggers has decided that today, Oct. 15, 2009, is "Blog Action Day." And this year's theme is climate change. Excellent, Smithers.
My instincts are to ignore such declarations. It's always an International Year of This or National X Awareness Month, or World Y Day. Community…
October 14, 2009
Hmmm. Not sure this will accomplish what the British government hopes it will.
On the other hand, the U.K. is far ahead of most of the rest of the world when it comes to getting serious about greenhouse-gas emission legislation -- no one else has binding targets, and 34 per cent below 1990 levels…
October 12, 2009
Most observers of climate change media coverage long ago stopped wringing their hands every time Fox News reported that global warming has stopped and that humans are responsible anyway, mostly to avoid calluses. A while back it seemed like Fox might be ready to embrace the actual science, but old…
October 9, 2009
Sugar-book author H. Leighton Steward, about whom I have written before, was on Capitol Hill this week arguing that rising CO2 concentrations are nothing to worry about. Among his claims is this, as reported by US News & World Report's Paul Bedard:
As an example, he said that Earth's atmosphere…
October 8, 2009
Let's just make one thing clear: I believe anthropogenic climate change constitutes the most serious public policy challenge of our time, second only in the history of civilization to global thermonuclear warfare. It's hard to overstate the danger of business as usual when it comes to our fossil-…
October 5, 2009
Well, I play Air hockey, Ball hockey, Barn Hockey, Bubble Hockey, Field hockey, Floor hockey, Ice hockey, Kitchen hockey, Road hockey, Roller hockey, Table hockey, Twist hockey
And I play hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey…
October 5, 2009
With all due respect to the recipients of this year's Nobel prizes -- telomeres are more than worthy of our attention -- it's time for an overhaul of the whole thing.
Complaints about the outdated categories that ignore an enormous range of scientific endeavors appear each year at this time, and…
October 1, 2009
It's not a home run by any stretch of the imagination, but the Senate's counterpart to the Waxman-Markey climate change bill (a.k.a. ACES) that the House narrowly passed earlier this year at least gets global warming onto first base. There's bad and good in the awkwardly titled Clean Energy Jobs…
September 29, 2009
The arguments against carbon capture and sequestration are legion and the list of reasons not to invest more resources in the technology just keeps getting longer. Here's a new analysis from Canadian journalist Graham Thomson. Some of his figures-- on global carbon emissions, for example -- are…
September 28, 2009
U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu is all about saving the coal industry. In the latest issue of Science, which includes a feature series on carbon capture and sequestration, he writes optimistically about the challenges and opportunities such technologies pose and why it could save us all from…
September 25, 2009
A few weeks ago the nightly hour-long documentary series on CBC Radio, "Ideas," allowed Canadian climate change pseudoskeptic Larry Solomon an entire hour to make his case against the science of anthropogenic global warming. The producers offered not a single challenge to any of Solomon's arguments…
September 24, 2009
The journal Nature has just published a massive feature series on, to use a well-worn phrase, "the limits to growth." The centerpiece is a graphic created by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and his colleagues as part of "a new approach to defining biophysical preconditions for…
September 22, 2009
Don't be SUCH a scientist
by Randy Olson
195 pages, Island Press
In my review last year of Randy Olson's 2008 film, Sizzle, I wrote that I wanted to like it. I'm exactly the kind of viewer who will eat up anything a marine biologist has to say about communicating science and climate change. But…
September 18, 2009
It's a surprisingly complicated question. There are few reliable sources of data on just how much energy and resources are involved in extracting petroleum from the bitumen-laden sands of northern Alberta. But the inertia that comes with the tens of billions of dollars that have been invested in…
September 16, 2009
The good news from the Bay of Fundy is that the world's largest tides may soon be generating electricity. The bad news is there's at least one Globe and Mail copy editor who doesn't know the difference between waves and tides.
But that's not the most amusing news from the region. For that, we turn…