hrynyshyn | June 15, 2007For quite a few years now, some pretty smart people have been floating an answer to the thorny problem of how to get both the developed and the developing world to agree on a path to carbon emissions reductions. I have resisted supporting it because it's so bloody simple it seemed like I was missing something. But Gwynne Dyer just reminded me of the idea, and I have to admit, there is no alternative. We have to do this:
Every person on the planet gets the same emissions quota. Simple as that. We figure out how many tonnes of CO2 (and equivalent gases) the planet can tolerate without sending…
hrynyshyn | June 14, 2007It's as if man can't sin. The Southern Baptist Conference, perhaps the most powerful organization of fundamentalist protestants in America, has decided that the evidence humankind is responsible for global warming is just too thin. From Forbes (why not?):
Southern Baptists approved a resolution on global warming Wednesday that questions the prevailing scientific belief that humans are largely to blame for the phenomenon and also warns that increased regulation of greenhouse gases will hurt the poor (emphasis mine).... The SBC resolution, approved near the end of the denomination's annual…
hrynyshyn | June 14, 2007The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has released a radio ad designed to play on soccer mom's fears about road safety, dishonestly arguing that Congressional attempts to increase fuel mileage will make safe cars too expensive to afford. This despite the fact that SUVs tend to be more dangerous -- to both drivers and others -- than smaller vehicles. The New Scientist Environment blog has the details, the ad, and facts, including this graph illustrating the relative risk of a variety of cars and SUVs:
Click on the graph for a full-size version. And then consider the foolishness of a full-…
hrynyshyn | June 14, 2007From The Guardian's reliable and irreplaceable Ben Goldacre, who writes the "Bad Science" column, we learn the sad news that the ivory-tower types running University College London have no spines. Such a shame. It was such a good school. The offense? Asking one of their own to stop attacking alternative medicine.
Prof. David Colquhoun, "one of the most eminent scientists in the UK" according to Goldacre, has been taking on the merchants of woo, whether they be posing as homeopathists, acupuncturists, or faith healers, for six years "in attempt to improve public understanding of science." The…
hrynyshyn | June 13, 2007Barack Obama has finally decided that coal isn't any particular god's gift to humankind after all. It wasn't easy breaking with his black-seam mining allies in downstate Illinois, but it looks like he's decided green votes are more plentiful. About time. I was beginning to wonder whether he really is ready for prime time. I'm still not convinced, but...
In the early hours of this year Obama re-introduced the absurd Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007, a desperate attempt by the coal industry to hop aboard the "let's break American's oil addiction" bandwagon. Never mind that producing…
hrynyshyn | June 13, 2007When CNN announces it has "what Loch Ness Monster watchers say is among the finest footage ever taken" it's hard not to bite. Never mind that what used to be the most famous photographic evidence turned out to be fake. Never mind that the very concept of megafauna surviving in a 24-square-mile lake without giving itself away long ago is absurd. But what a disappointment the video is.
I've been to Loch Ness. It's a hauntingly beautiful place. The ruins of Urquart Castle that overlook its waters are a worthy visit. If tourism is your concern, there are more honest ways to draw visitors than…
hrynyshyn | June 11, 2007PZ Myers offers up a worthy review of a recent poll on Americans belief in science, one that not too surprisingly finds that fundamentalist Protestants are the least likely to believe in evolution. More interesting was the discovery that while higher levels of education tend to increase one's belief in evolution among most religious groups, it made no difference for the fundamentalists. In PZ's words, "they are completely refractory to education." That brought to mind a similar poll on belief in anthropogenic global warming (AWG) I heard mentioned on NPR this past weekend...
The climate poll…
hrynyshyn | June 10, 2007As Tara writes at Aetiology, it's interesting that the Rwandan government, which might be excused for letting for a little blood lust taint its criminal justice system, what with the slaughter of 800,000 people on their minds, has voted instead to abolish the death penalty. Yet here in America, capital punishment remains on the books in 38 states. I have little new to add, offer these thoughts, which I wrote more than a year ago in an attempt to give the subject a local take, back in pre-ScienceBlog days. My thesis was an is that a scientific approach to justice is incompatible with state-…
hrynyshyn | June 8, 2007Science magazine today has a long and comprehensive article on scientists who are "Pushing the Scary Side of Global Warming." As it won't be freely available for months, I will post some of the juicy bits, while doing my best not to violate the AAAS copyright.
First, you gotta love the headline. And the headline for Richard Kerr's story is just as provocative:
Greenhouse warming might be more disastrous than the recent international assessment managed to convey, scientists are realizing. But how can they get the word out without seeming alarmist?
This is, after all, the quintessential…
hrynyshyn | June 8, 2007They say wind turbines are where the renewable money is, but I don't know. Judging from all the solar power activity among the pious, I'd want to invest in photovoltaics. First there's the news that 80 per cent of Amish homes in one Ohio county already have solar arrays on their roof. Then the Vatican decides to replace the cement panels on the Paul VI Auditorium with PV panels. Hmmm....
The greening of the pope is easy enough to understand. The Vatican has always been a political institution and public relations is a big part of RC strategy. But the world's largest Amish community? Well, it…
hrynyshyn | June 7, 2007Dear Mr. Hume,
I doubt that you intended to further tarnish your already sullied reputation in the journalism community, but your failure to exercise even an infinitesimal measure of professional skepticism this past Monday during a climate change segment of your Fox News program "Special Report" has made you the laughingstock of the industry.
This may not trouble you on a personal level, so long has it been since you enjoyed even a modicum of respect from those who still exhibit some degree of concern for fairness, accuracy and responsible reporting in the news. But there are bigger issues…
hrynyshyn | June 6, 2007What does a climatologist have to do to attract some attention? Sure, there are plenty of good journalists and a handful of thoughtful editors and news directors out there, but sometimes it seems that even sensational climate stories get buried. For example, this past week we learn that global greenhouse gas emissions are growing faster than the worst-case scenarios used by the IPCC. Then we're treated to a study comparing changes in national emission levels. Both stories make for gripping copy, the kind of stuff that should set the blogosphere alight. And yet, here I am, desperately trying…
hrynyshyn | June 5, 2007President George W. Bush is getting plenty of attention for finally acknowledging that climate change is a problem, which is at least an improvement over the approach taken by the man overseeing the bulk of climatology being conducted for his government. Some have argued Bush's strategy is actually a cynical attempt to do an end run around the European campaign to slash greenhouse gas emissions. And now that theory is beginning to make sense, in light of the revelation of major cuts to American climate science itself.
AP reported yesterday that "The Bush administration is drastically scaling…
hrynyshyn | June 4, 2007Few historical events are cloaked in as much confusion and controversy as the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. There's dueling government reports -- one concluded it was the work of a lone gunman, the other fingered an undefined conspiracy. Otherwise respectable researchers and journalists have sunk into the quicksand of wild speculation and bureaucratic obsfucation. Yet another couple of books tackling the question are out, and never was there such a need to recall the value of skepticism.
Ron Rosenbaum's anti-review at Slate magazine is a perfect illustration of just how dangerous…
hrynyshyn | June 1, 2007Last night in Washington DC was held the 80th annual Scripps Spelling Bee. I love watching 8th-graders spell words they (and I) have never heard before. Two items of interest arose. First, the runner-up, for the second year in a row, was a Canadian, Nate Gartke of Alberta. Second, the favorite difficult word of another finalist, Isabel A. Jacobson of Wsconsin, is kakistocracy. What a marvellous word.
NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. kak·is·toc·ra·cies
Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.
Never has there been a word so timely yet so underused.
hrynyshyn | June 1, 2007The reaction from the scientific community to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin's lack of concern over climate change is blunt. Here are some examples. First, from Jim Hansen, who works for Griffin: "I almost fell off my chair. It's remarkably uninformed."
Next we have Berrien Moore, director, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire: "I don't understand it. I'm really stunned that he could say something like that. I mean, I really find it shocking."
And then there's Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences at Princeton University: "It's…
hrynyshyn | May 31, 2007The incredible words that spilled from my radio this morning were spoken by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. Asked on NPR's Morning Edition to respond to an attack on his agency's competence the previous day by Gregg Easterbrook, who wrote Wired magazine's "How NASA Screwed up," Griffin said some pretty strange things. Among the most bizarre was his response to host Steve Inskeep's question: "Do you think climate change is a problem?" Believe it or not this is what he said:
I have no doubt that ... a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem…
hrynyshyn | May 29, 2007The coal industry's PR machine is in overdrive. Today's New York Times gives the dirtiest energy sector every invented a lot of space to make its case that coal power can save the world from climate change, free us from dependence on MidEast oil, enhance the economy and cure cancer. OK, it can't cure cancer. In fact, mining it causes a lot of cancer, but you get the idea. There's one problem with the idea of clean coal: it doesn't exist.
"For so many, filthy coal is a dirty four-letter word," said Representative Nick V. Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the House Natural…
hrynyshyn | May 27, 2007If hell was real, a place of honor would be reserved for Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who blocked a plan to honor Rachel Carson last week. We named our cat after Carson, so you can guess how angry this makes me.
From a Reuters report a couple of days ago"
"Rachel Carson's work both directly and indirectly created a climate of hysteria and misinformation about the impact of DDT on the human populations," said John Hart, a spokesman for Coburn, in explaining why the Oklahoma Republican withheld his support for the plan to honor her.
"Obviously her central claim about what it does to ecosystems…
hrynyshyn | May 26, 2007The plight of just two humpback whales that got themselves lost up the Sacramento River has got the nation transfixed. This sort of thing happens every few years. Back in 1988, it was three gray whales trapped in the ice on the north slope of Alaska. It's curious how we, as in news directors, get all worked up about two members of the species, while Japan's plans to kill 50 of them deliberately garner almost no attention. Not that we're hypocrites, of course...
In fact, the United States has consistently opposed Japan's plans to kill 50 humpbacks, which are listed by the IUCN as still…