climate communication
stoat | December 17, 2007Mt wisely points out that the World Doesn't End in 2100. Its a fair point, and one that is often forgotten. However... its one that I have come to increasingly downweight as time goes by. For two reasons. One is practical: it simply won't work as a way of motivating people. If thats your best argument, the public won't listen. And the public, being very impatient of depth, aren't going to listen to anything but your best argument, if that. The second is that predicting societal and technological changes past 100 years is impossible. Even 100 years is pushing it, but further is just too much.
stoat | November 17, 2007So the AR4 synthesis is out. You can read the SPM and cherry-pick your favourite bit. The BBC has, and has selected climate change is "unequivocal" - fair enough but boring, because we've had that already - and may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts which made me sit up and take notice.
There is a headline that sez this, "Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change." But what is the supporting text? "Partial loss of ice sheets on polar land could imply metres of sea level rise, major changes…
stoat | November 10, 2007For some reason I've been honoured by a burst of comments from Piers "Solar" Corbyn, a man not ashamed to be associated with TGGWS.
PC defends his predictions of the mighty storm surge (without mentionning whether or not he predicted it would turn out to be dull), provides us with his CV (a priviledge indeed, if you click on "CV" at weatheraction you get "You are not authorized to view this resource"). PC claims some scientific pubs but when I search nothing shows up in ISI. And then one on bets.
Some of the later may be interesting:
2007 UK / England Temperatures will not be highest 'ever…
stoat | October 23, 2007Shock horror! Worlds press responds sensibly to a press release. Well it was one of ours, and the response seems to be to ignore it, which is fair enough. But a touch surprising, since its yet another iceberg breaking off Antarctica (this one half the size of London, the latest unit of measurement). Read all about it. Probably the problem is the third para: "This calving event is part of a natural cyclic process. A 34-year long study of the glacier has shown that a large iceberg breaks off roughly every 5-10 years. The last was in 2001."
stoat | October 17, 2007I seem to have got onto some stupid PR spam list. The latest comes from Nat Geog, and is typically silly. It sez: As you probably know, most people have a hard time seeing exactly where on the planet global warming has taken its toll. This photo gallery from NationalGeographic.com reveals global warming in action. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/photogalleries/greenland-pictures/index.html The gallery includes 8 stunning photos that illustrate how global warming has affected the beautiful country of Greenland. You might be surprised to see how the rising temperatures in the…
stoat | October 17, 2007You can read the party line on the AIT 9 "errors". I think its too kind; e.g. on SLR and Katrina Gore is misleading; on evacuation he is simply wrong. But the lake Chad bit was interesting.
stoat | October 12, 2007We'll be back with our usual programming of attack-mustelid on Gore :-) in a moment, but as a little interlude global cooling gets back in the news in the Cristian Science Monitor (thanks to ES). I rather like William Connolley, a sort of self-appointed historian of the global-cooling theory, says that although global cooling was briefly but prominently covered in some speculative news articles, the idea never got much traction within the scientific community. New data and research over the decades has convinced the vast majority of scientists that global warming is real and under way.…
stoat | October 11, 2007Yes indeed, time to weigh in on the great issue of the day: Mr Justice Burton vs Al Gore.
My first point was going to be, that it was a poor idea to have judges deciding science. Its still a point, but possibly not a major one in this case, because it looks like the amended guidance notes, which contain the core of what needs to be said to correct the film, were "agreed during the case" - exactly who agreed them is unclear, especially on the govt side, but at least it wasn't just the judge.
[Update: IPCC and Gore get 2007 peace Nobel "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater…
stoat | October 1, 2007Another unconvincing assualt on Lomborgs new book. I haven't read the book, so I don't know whats so terrible about it. But lots of people seem to dislike it. Alanna Mitchell says:
Worse still, he fails to take into account three of the characteristics of global climate change that scientists fear will make it so dangerous. First, the climate will become unstable and unpredictable, meaning it will be hard for humans to adapt farming, housing, energy sources and, yes, even air-conditioning supplies.
Well no. I haven't seen any evidence for this at all. Who says so? [Clarification: the problem…
stoat | September 24, 2007I assume this is all mostly a matter of stupidity and mischief making rather than any concerted attack, but the 1971 R+S science paper makes an unexpected comeback. Tim Lambert has the story; Lubos falls for the lies (I'm being a bit inaccurate there: Lubos doesn't fall for it, he jumps in with enthusiasm and ignorance).
Whats the point of all this? The usual mixture I suppose: you have to fill newspapers with something; that its wrong doesn't really bother anyone; that its misinformation serves the usual purposes. And it does in part so serve: I've just had to remove As a research associate…
stoat | September 3, 2007Interesting article Why the BBC should stand up to its climate campaign critics about whether the BBC should be campaigning on climate change. They have a charter, so they can go all lawyerly and examine whether they are acting in accordance with it. But the same question applies to scientists.
[Update: seems the BBC changed its mind
And perhaps unsurprisingly, some people are unhappy]
From the article: Peter Horrocks reportedly attacked the plans, arguing that "I absolutely don't think we should [campaign on issues such as climate change] because it's not impartial". He added that: "It's not…
stoat | September 1, 2007I've been looking for a suitable title to note the end of RP Sr's blog. I quite liked FB's, though I was going to go with "another one bites the dust" (QS, RP Jr, then Sr) but now RP has solved the problem for me. For a blog that had a lot of interesting science, its a shame to end like this.
After a series of failed attempts at picking holes in the IPCC reports, he has another go. The fundamental problem asserted is conflict of interest.
To this complaint I do have some sympathy, but RP loses that by ranting. In fact what his post is really complaining about is his failure to get his point…
stoat | August 29, 2007There have been various attempts to survey scientists opinions about climate change. Wiki has an article on this: Scientific opinion on climate change. Check the recent history for another attempt... :-)
All of these attempts have various methodological problems which I'm sure you can think of for yourselves; but they also suffer from a structural problem which is what I'll discuss here: which is: does it matter?
Of course in terms of public relations it does matter. People like to quote these things one way or the other, and learned societies put out statements either because they feel they…
stoat | August 23, 2007NERC has a new strategy draft out (I think its public - if you can't read it, its not...).
And it has an ambitious goal: UK to lead the world in the prediction of the regional and local impacts of
environmental change from months to decades. So thats bad news for the rest of the world, you'll be left trailling in our footsteps, crushed by the weight of powerful science flowing from our mighty budget which dwarfs yours. Or the goal might just fail. Or the rest of you might just decide that NERC can have this bit and go off and do something more exciting instead.
But enough snarking, whats more…
stoat | August 23, 2007I'm now hopelessly confused about the distinction between climate projection and prediction.
I used to be happy with what I thought was the case: that given the range in model results, and no good way of knowing the best, calling them predictions seemed too precise; so use a weaker word like projection instead. But.
The IPCC glossary says "A climate prediction or climate forecast is the result of an attempt to produce a most likely description or estimate of the actual evolution of the climate in the future, e.g. at seasonal, interannual or long-term time scales"
That isn't a very good…
stoat | August 20, 2007Israeli Climatologists Available for Comment on Hurricane Dean and Climate Change Developments says my inbox, and continues Nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the U.S. Gulf Coast, another dangerous Atlantic hurricane is gaining strength in the Caribbean. In a series of extreme weather developments, Hurricane Dean is fast converging on Jamaica as Tropical Storm Erin floods Oklahoma. This follows the 7.9-stength earthquake that hit Peru on August 17. The leading international climatologists from Israel listed below are available for comment for journalists covering this…
stoat | June 26, 2007G points out that the IPCC AR4 comments are now available. Presumably due to JA's efforts :-).
A quick browse didn't throw up anything funny (the Courntey bit is pathetic rather than funny).
I made a minor comment to the historical review section, commenting that "Reference to Hawking unneeded: original cite to Einstein enough" (I told you it was minor) which was "accepted". But then the next comment in line is "Reference to Hawking is inappropriate..." which is "rejected". Weird.
stoat | June 11, 2007Still don't have a full report on Climate change prediction:a robust or flawed process? but I do have a brief word of Lindzens tactics (being a skeptic he has "tactics", of course, unlike the Good Guys who just tell it straight). Which were, apparently, to discuss abstruse points in great detail. The idea being to prevent any conclusion being visible to anyone without a great command of the science. So although Keith Shine was there to correct his radiative physics, the audience were just left listening to two people talking over their heads.
Or at least, thats the highly simplified summary…
stoat | June 8, 2007Or so says the BBC. Predictably enough though there are no hard targets: as far as I can tell all that is promised is a statement promising to strongly consider at least a halving of global emissions by 2050. But I don't want to be too snarky until I've read what was actually said and agreed, rather than just the press take on it all.
There is a page for the summit and a news page and even a story entitled Breakthrough on climate protection which says
The leading industrialised nations (G8) aim to at least halve global CO2 emissions by 2050. The Heads of State and Government agreed at…
stoat | June 6, 2007So there was this great Dilbert cartoon, where the PHB asks Dilbert to get something, and to cover his back Dilbert must get the signatures of the VP of marketing, head of finance, and Griffin. Dilbert asks, would that be Griffin of accounts, or the mythical beast? To which the PHB says, whichever is harder.
But thats not the Griffin I mean, I'm on about Michael Griffin who wound up Kevin Vrames no end (oh, and who happens to be head of NASA). I was slightly less wound up, because I thought I could see what he meant: yes we have GW and yes we're causing it but we're unclear about the…