climate change
hrynyshyn | September 10, 2009Miles Grant at Grist has alerted us to a new global-warming pseudoskeptic website, PlantsNeedCO2.org, with questionable parentage. Although "Plants Need CO2 is a 501 (c)(3) non profit corporation" it appears to be closely associated with decidedly profit-oriented types.
The domain name is registered to Houston-based Quintana Minerals, although the company's IT chief, Sammer Arnouk, told me they've registered hundreds of sites to all kinds of groups, including non-profits. There is none of the usual information on the "about us" link beyond a bio of a spokesperson, one H. Leighton Steward, "a…
grrlscientist | September 10, 2009tags: researchblogging.org, global warming, climate variation, climate change, penguins, El Nino, marine zoning, P. Dee Boersma
Adélie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, and chicks.
(a) Adélie penguin chicks may get covered in snow during storms, but beneath the snow their down is warm and dry. (b) When rain falls, downy Adélie chicks can get wet and, when soaked, can become hypothermic and die.
Images: P. Dee Boersma.
According to an article that was just published in the journal BioScience, penguin populations are declining sharply due to the combined effects of overfishing and pollution…
grrlscientist | September 8, 2009tags: South Pacific Islands, Indonesia, Sumatra, geology, nature, volcano, global warming, Lake Toba, PBS, NOVA, television
Sixty-two-mile-long Lake Toba, seen in the center of this satellite image,
was created by the largest explosive volcanic eruption of the past
100,000 years -- an eruption whose aftermath holds important clues for us
today about rapid climate change, Drew Shindell says.
Image: NASA.
Wow, there are days when I wish I had a television, and today is one of them. Why? Tonight, PBS is showing a really fascinating program; a NOVA show entitled Mystery of the Megavolcano that…
hrynyshyn | September 8, 2009The typical western post-industrial human being has two roles to play in society: citizen and consumer. Both offer the opportunity to exert power and influence, and whether we like it or not, neglecting one over the other invariably gives competing interests an opening. On matter climatological, most campaigners have been focused in recent times on the political sphere, and understandably so: legislation and regulatory proposals are on the table in the U.S., Europe, Australia and elsewhere. But there are those who are keeping an eye on the marketplace, where it may also be possible to effect…
hrynyshyn | September 2, 2009While the U.S. Senate's sense of urgency on the climate change front wanes, a new campaign originating on the other side of rapidly warming pond is urging us all to get with the program by cutting our emissions sooner rather than later. This is obviously a good idea from a scientific point of view, but what are its chances of success?
The 10:10 campaign draws on the always-obvious-when-you-think-about-it, but until recently largely ignored, fact that it matters very much how quickly we reduce the carbon emissions that are trapping all the extra heat in the atmosphere and oceans. A pair of…
hrynyshyn | August 27, 2009Yes, your car, and your toaster and television, too, if your electrical utility includes coal- or gas-fired power plants in its portfolio, are contributing to a shift in the Earth's axis by changing the distribution of water in the oceans. This according to a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters (in press).
The effect isn't large enough for anyone to worry about -- at just 1.5 cm, or less than a inch per year, Polaris will still be the North Pole star for a while yet -- but the authors of paper write that
The proposed polar motion signal is therefore not negligible in comparison to other…
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…
illconsidered | August 23, 2009A commenter here brought up the controversy du jour for the denialosphere, how Greenpeace alledgedly admitted lying in a press release. Of course that stretch, (well, it's a stretch to call it a stretch), was further stretched to "Greenpeace just admitted that much of the human-caused global warming hype is also a fraud." Talk about extrapolation!
Anyway, as usual it is not what they would have us believe it is. Michael Tobis has all the details, worth reading. The whole thing rests on the imprecision of the phrase "arctic ice", very commonly used to really mean "arctic sea ice".
The…
illconsidered | August 21, 2009I had an open thread a couple of weeks ago about Ian Plimer's recent novel supposedly exposing the lie that is Anthropogenic Global Warming.
I have not read it. A few commenter's defending the book asked how anyone can judge it if they have not read it.
Well, no one can read every book that is out there, not even every book about global warming. We all have to choose. This of course introduces the possibility of bias confirmation. If I feel it in my gut that this particular book will be crap, I won't read it and I will assume I am right about it.
But here's the thing, it is possible to…
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…
illconsidered | August 10, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...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 Another Week of Global Warming News Information overload is pattern recognition August 9, 2009 Chuckle, Coal Fight, Bonner & Assoc., USGS, Pacific Island States, Cash4Clunkers, EPRI Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Methane, Antarctica, Carbon Tariffs, APA, Milankovitch, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures…
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…
illconsidered | August 7, 2009A recent comment here brought up the frequent contrarian argument that there is a signature patern to enhanced greenhouse gas warming that is missing in the observational data despite showing up in the models. This is notably absent from the How to talk to a climate sceptic guide, something I hope to rectify Real Soon Now(tm).
I left a comment response but thought I may as well put it here in a new thread as it is OT over there.
Here is the referenced graph:
Figure 9.1. Zonal mean atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1999 (°C per century) as simulated by the PCM model from (a) solar…
illconsidered | August 6, 2009A very frequent whinge from climate change denialists is that the big bad environmental industrial complex is suppressing any dissent from the pre-approved party line. This is never accompanied by any actual evidence beyond an occasional anecdote.
One such anecdote emerged last June in what was trumpeted as the EPA supressing one of its own internal documents assessing the state of climate science and refuting the IPCC party line.
Have a look at one of Peter Sinclair's excellent Climate Crock of the Week videos below and see just how, yet again, the story falls to pieces with the most…
illconsidered | August 3, 2009 Sipping from the internet firehose...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 Sipping from the internet firehose... August 2, 2009 McKinsey Report, WPO Poll, Nile Basin Conf., G2 Conf., Bonner & Assoc., Cash4Clunkers, Dire Projections Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Xcel Perversity, Bangladesh conf., Jellyfish, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs, Temperatures, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests…
bleimanb | August 1, 2009According to a new study reported on by National Geographic, all of the flipping, flapping, undulating, kicking, tail whipping, swishing and swoshing that sea creatures use to propel themselves in the ocean may account for a large portion of "ocean mixing" and this in turn may make climate change modeling even more complicated a task. Ocean mixing is the mixing up of sea water layers (including their temperatures, salinity, etc.). Previously, it was thought that wind, weather, seismic activity and tides were the main forces behind ocean mixing. But according to this study, published…
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…
illconsidered | July 28, 2009I have tried to make it quite clear a few times that regardless of no new record, there is no evidence that the underlying rising trend in global surface temperatures has reversed or stopped. But absent a short term rising trend the inattentive public is very vulnerable to disengenouous denialists claiming warming is over (did they ever admit it was happening??). So I am afraid that that talking point will not go away until 1998's record status does so as well.
So when will that happen? I'm not talking about statistically insignificant 0.05oC win by a nose in one record but not another, I…
grrlscientist | July 23, 2009tags: Gordon Brown, world wide web, WWW, social injustice, poverty, security, climate change, economy, ethics, streaming video
We're at a unique moment in history, argues UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: we can use today's interconnectedness to develop our shared global ethic -- and work together to confront the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy [16:43]
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