hrynyshyn | August 25, 2009In an effort to launch what it calls "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to defend the science of climate change at a public hearing.
Believe it or not. As reported by the L.A. Times:
"It would be evolution versus creationism," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. "It would be the science of climate change on trial."
The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential…
hrynyshyn | August 25, 2009I put the last word of the headline in quotes, because in this space, I prefer to use the term "pseudoskeptics" when describing those who claim to be applying scientific analysis to the issues without bothering to actually understand the science involved or stay abreast of even long-ago-published research. The shorter word, however, appears in an undeniably provocative essay at Grist by one Adam D. Sacks, a veteran climate change campaigner.
What to do about pseudoskeptics is a common these in this space, because there are an awful lot of them, and like many other science bloggers concerned…
hrynyshyn | August 24, 2009There's a fascinating exchange between two of England's better minds, George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth, over at the former's blog/website under the rubric of "Should we seek to save industrial civilization?"
It begins with Kingsnorth's lament over the implications of all the exponential growth curves he's come across in recent times:
Sitting on the desk in front of me are a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each graph is identical: it represents time, from the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, human population levels, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of…
hrynyshyn | August 21, 2009If you pay attention to environmental matters in North Carolina, you already know this, but I'm still catching up on a month's neglect:
The NC Senate voted 42-1 earlier this month to ban most wind turbines from the state's windiest regions. While offshore wind farms are still kosher (for the time being), anyone hoping to take advantage of the some prime kinetic energy in the Blue Ridge Mountains will have some serious lobbying to do. Rarely does anything attract that kind of support. 42 to 1?
The legislation, which amends section 113 of the General Statutes, doesn't come right out and say no…
hrynyshyn | August 20, 2009For me, the most interesting parallel between the national debates over how to stop heating the planet and how to reform health care insurance is the response both have generated in my own brain.
For years now, the failure of a sizable portion of the American public to accept the need to sharply reduce the primary causes of anthropogenic global warming has elicited frustration and, at times, fury. Similar emotions jump across my synapses in the face of daily news reports of the paranoid reaction of what is probably the same demographic slice of the country to proposals for government-run…
hrynyshyn | August 18, 2009From the Center for American Progress, via Climate Progress:
and from the comments to Joe Romm's post:
Mark Shapiro says:
August 18, 2009 at 11:01 am
. . . "It would be great if the skeptics were right!"
That's a near-perfect rejoinder whether debating a skeptic or just chatting with friends. Followed with:
"Then the only value of clean, safe renewable energy would be clean air, better health, stronger national security, and conserving our natural heritage.
(I'm easing back into real blogging after a few weeks of vacation followed by intense real work.)
hrynyshyn | August 10, 2009The similarities between the campaign against mitigating the consequences of climate change and the campaign against health insurance reform go far beyond the use of distortion and fiction. The parallels are everywhere.
For example, those with vested (monied) interests in the status quo are turning to the same lobbying and public relations outfits to carry out the campaigns. The latest firm to be identified is Bonner & Associates, which, according to the Virginia Daily Progress,
was founded in 1984 by Jack Bonner and is considered a pioneer in the field of "strategic grassroots," in…
hrynyshyn | July 30, 2009Returning from a non-wired vacation I find much has happened in the past couple of weeks. One team of researchers is arguing that sea levels won't rise as much as other fear, another team finds the northern peatlands will release more carbon than we once thought, a new study pegs the potential savings from energy efficiency at more than 20%and YouTube temporarily yanked a recent Climate Crock of the Week video for no good reason.
All worth exploring. But the best was the July 21 episode of The Daily Show in which Jon Stewart tries to explain the Markey-Waxman climate bill without falling…
hrynyshyn | July 17, 2009If predicting climate trends was as easy as predicting the reaction of global warming pseudoskeptics there wouldn't be any deniers left. When I came across a new study in Nature Geoscience on the cause of the massive shift in the climate 55 million years ago, my first reaction was, "How long will it take before someone completely misrepresents this paper as evidence that undermines anthropogenic global warming?"
Not long. See here, here and here, if you have the time.
In the paper, Richard E. Zeebe of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii and his…
hrynyshyn | July 16, 2009As someone with a marine biology degree, I've been asked to help spread the word about the threat to ocean ecosystems from falling pH levels -- what everyone who doesn't have a marine biology degree calls ocean acidification. It's a worthy cause. Read the following letter, review this report and then go to this site and do something about it:
We are both lifelong boaters. What we have learned from sailing across the Pacific over the past 6 years, and especially from scientists focused on marine conservation, is startling. Whether you spend time on the water or not, Ocean Acidification…
hrynyshyn | July 15, 2009Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney are getting a lot of mileage out of their new book, Unscientific America. This week they pop up in Newsweek to argue that we should welcome the likely appointment of Francis Collins as head of NIH because in a time of polarization, he's a unifying figure, one that embraces both religion (Christianity in this case) and science.
On first glance, their logic seems sounds. We know that many Americans are unwilling to accept science as a worthy pursuit, one that should figure strongly in the development of public policy. We know many of them do so because they…
hrynyshyn | July 14, 2009By "that," I mean Sarah Palin's first attempt at recreating herself as a pundit. For some reason, the Washington Post continues to publish error-ridden op-eds.
By "this," I mean former Fortune managing editor Eric Pooley's debunking of the climate-bill scare tactics of Warren Buffet, scare tactics that lesser minds (see above) embrace.
Both items were published today.
h/t to Joe Romm.
hrynyshyn | July 10, 2009Poor Chris Mooney. He's found himself deep in the old "are science and religion compatible" debate. I usually try to stay out of this particular rabbit hole, but the Island of Doubt could use a traffic boost to make up for my upcoming vacation, so...
Chris and his Unscientific America co-author Sheril Kirshenbaum have drawn the ire of the New Atheistis by blaming Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, et al. for a good part of the yawning gap between science and the humanities.
It's funny, because the contempt that the issue draws out of otherwise mild-mannered folks is rarely matched anywhere in the…
hrynyshyn | July 9, 2009The science machine continues to churn out depressing reports. The high-latitude permafrost contains more carbon than originally thought. The Arctic Ocean ice is even thinner than we feared. But my thoughts are dominated by the issues raised by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in their new book, Unscientific America.
I reviewed it Tuesday. Today I came across a fascinating interview with NASA climatologist and RealClimate.org founder Gavin Schmidt. It's long but worth reading. Among the highlights is his discussion of his efforts to bridge the cultural gap between scientists and society at…
hrynyshyn | July 7, 2009
Unscientific America:
How scientific illiteracy threatens our future
by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum
209 pages,$24 (US) Basic Books,
I wish I'd written this book. Its subject matter is exactly the thing that gets me going. The tension between science and irrationality was the original inspiration for this blog. There are a few elements that I would have approached differently, of course But my quibbles are minor and none detract from the the book's primary strength: solid, concise writing that wastes no ink or paper (just 132 pages, not counting endnotes) getting to the heart of the…
hrynyshyn | July 6, 2009For at least as long as I've been paying attention, Roger Pielke Sr. hasn't been all that popular among those are doing their best to convince the world to take the threat of climate change seriously. He's a genuine, and until recently, reputable scientist at a genuine and reputable institution of higher learning, Colorado State University. His hard-line skepticism has at times proven useful when it comes to keeping the rest of the climatology community on its toes. He accepts that humans are contributing to climate change, but is concerned that the general focus on carbon dioxide as the…
hrynyshyn | July 2, 2009And now we turn to a voice of reason. Ken Caldera, discussing the nuts and bolt of science, and climatology in particular, as part of a group interview with Discover magazine, reminds us all just how silly it is to argue that anthropogenic global warming is bothing but a conspiracy theory propagated by disingenuous researchers (and former vice-presidents) who are only trying to line their own pockets:
There was a climate contrarian who testified before the Senate last week. He made the claim that climate scientists were some kind of club and they all made money by somehow supporting each…
hrynyshyn | July 1, 2009 I have an extremely low attention threshold for any mention of the small town of Inuvik, NWT, tucked away in the northwest corner of Canada's Northwest Territories. Not because it's a particularly beautiful place, or politically, economically or scientifically significant, but because I spent 14 months there back in the early 1990s as editor its newspaper, the Inuvik Drum. So when a former premier of one of Canada's provinces makes a speech there, I'm one of the few people outside of Inuvik who perk up. More so when the former premier is speaking about extracting more fossil fuels from…
hrynyshyn | June 29, 2009Even the most optimistic elements of the environmental community know that Friday's passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act by the U.S. House of Representatives was the easy part. Getting something comparable through the Senate will be much tougher. Paul Krugman says it best:
Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday's debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a "hoax" that has been "perpetrated out of the scientific community." I'd call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to…
hrynyshyn | June 25, 2009I've been agonizing over this for weeks. My initial stance was yes, because if Waxman-Markey (a.k.a. the American Clean Energy and Security Act) doesn't make it, I doubt we can afford to wait for Congress to take another stab at it. But the lobbying over the past few days has been fierce. I get emails from both sides, and by both I mean both sides of the environmental community.
The argument against ACESA is compelling. For example, the Climate Crisis Coalitions' latest email enumerate the weakness of the bill thusly:
1) Weak cap. ACESA's cap on greenhouse gas emissions represents reductions…