Climate
hrynyshyn | August 27, 2008I know I'm probably beginning to sound a like a broken record (does anyone remember what that sounds like?), but I'd like to draw your attention once again to the plight of the planet's coral reefs. Today we have the Honolulu Declaration, in which a dozen leading reef researchers make a plea for stabilization of greenhouse-gas emissions. Will it do any good?
Probably not. While a few hundred thousand scuba diving enthusiasts, myself included (although I don't get down much, living as I do in the mountains of western North Carolina), and ecologists who understand corals' significance as marine…
hrynyshyn | August 26, 2008We all make mistakes. And even the most humble among us can be a little self-righteous when it comes to our pet projects. But when was the last time you came across a self-righteous pseudo-skeptic who had the decency to admit to getting it completely wrong? Meet Steven Goddard of The Register, a peculiar little news outlet published in London. Sort of. Goddard wrote a piece that appeared on Aug. 15 under the bold headline "Arctic ice refuses to melt as ordered." As anyone who has been following the plunging arctic sea-ice extent graphs at the National Snow and Ice Data Center can attest, this…
hrynyshyn | August 22, 2008If you need to kill some time while you wait for word on who Obama has chosen as running mate, check out this transcript of a radio debate on climate change. Canadian PR agent Richard Littlemore takes on British journalist Christopher Monckton on the Roy Green Show on Hamilton, Ont.'s CHML. The sad affair was presciently summed up 500 years ago by Michel de Montaigne: "No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately."
Monckton, who most recently embarrassed the American Physical Society by convincing one its online editors to post an error-ridden paper on…
hrynyshyn | August 20, 2008The news department of the journal Nature has just published an impressive round-up of all the major clean energy technologies ;;;; installed and theoretically capacity, prices, challenges, everything you need to know. Plus an inspiring editorial. A must read for anyone interested in the subject. And it's all free access. For now.
hrynyshyn | August 19, 2008Word is Al Gore is getting a prime speaking slot on the final night of the Democratic Convention. Those of us concerned about climate change, or even the role of science in presidential politics and governance in general, should welcome this news, right? Maybe not, if you pay attention to the polls. At least, that's Matt "Framing Science" Nisbet's contention. I would like to disagree with him, but want to spend a few minutes examining the issues, because I think it's an important one.
Matt's point is that, no matter how much good Gore has done in his campaign to enlighten the world about the…
hrynyshyn | August 15, 2008Jim Hansen wants to see all coal-fired plants shut down by 2030. Except for any plants that employ carbon-capture and sequestration. Al Gore wants to see the United States generate all its electricity from renewable sources by 2018, which means shutting down all the coal-fired plants. Except for any plants that employ carbon-capture and sequestration. Princeton University's Pacala and Socolow of the "wedge" strategy make CCS an integral part of their future clean energy portfolio. Everybody who's crunched the emissions numbers pretty much agrees that coal has got to go. Unless we can capture…
hrynyshyn | August 13, 2008I spent five years of my life in Canada's Arctic and not a day goes by that I'm not reminded just how powerful an impression those years left made on me. When I read the latest news on arctic sea-ice extent, I wish more people would recognize just how important what happens up there is to the rest of the planet. Now, I know fellow ScienceBlogger William Connelly is convinced "nothing much going on with sea ice at the moment." But that's not what I see in the latest graphs from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Just a couple of years ago, the scientists who study such things thought it…
hrynyshyn | August 8, 2008So the other day I found myself on a conference call with James Hansen, who is just back from a European trip during which he tried to convince environment ministers that we should stop burning coal. I was given the opportunity to put one question to the guy. So, referring to his many public letters that deal with the need to focus on coal, I asked if that means all the squabbling over whether the U.S. should lift the moratorium on offshore drilling is missing the point?
Before I get to his response, a little background. Hansen has been writing to heads of state and state governors for months…
hrynyshyn | August 6, 2008Every corner of my regular morning stroll through the internet is littered with references to coal. One could say that coal is in the air. And it doesn't smell good. First, there's this depressing news from British Columbia:
Teck-Cominco's eye-popping, $14-billion purchase of Fording Canadian Coal this week sends a clear signal that coal will play an important role in the future of British Columbia. The deal makes Teck-Cominco the world's second-largest producer of metallurgical coal -- the kind used in steelmaking -- and solidifies its status as Canada's largest diversified mining company.…
hrynyshyn | August 5, 2008It's finally time to comment on Gore's Law: "As an online climate change debate grows longer, the probability that denier arguments will descend into attacks on Al Gore approaches one."
I don't know why this is. I remember the first bumber sticker I saw after crossing the NC-Tennessee border during my first trip into Nashville, Tenn., for my training session with Gore and his Climate Project. It was a 2000 campaign leftover reading "A Gore-free Tennessee." What Gore did to warrant such antipathy is beyond me. I wasn't living in the U.S. during his tenure as vice-president, so maybe I missed…
hrynyshyn | August 4, 2008It is easy to be disappointed with Barack Obama's recent reversal on the acceptability of new offshore drilling. But unless this is your first presidential election, then you shouldn't be too surprised. Fans of any candidate have to be prepared for a long list of compromises as the November vote approaches and the two sides do what they think they have to do to win over those who don't share their core principles. But I am disappointed nevertheless. Especially as Obama seems to have given his energy policies a fair bit of thought.
The fact remains that no new offshore oil will be available…
hrynyshyn | July 29, 2008The man himself has been reduced to a footnote in the last advertisement from his new "we" campaign. The ad is scheduled to appear in the usual suspect media "to make sure Al Gore's clean electricity challenge stays on the top of our leaders' minds during their break." See a bigger version here.
The campaign is currently asking its millions of lip-service supporters to put their money where it counts by helping defray the placement costs of the ad in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and New York Times. My motive for giving you a preview is not to ask that you donate (although feel…
hrynyshyn | July 29, 2008Andy Revkin demonstrates once again why he's among the best science journalists around in his latest exploration of the challenges facing climatologists frustrated with the way their science is portrayed in the popular media. No real answer emerges from his analysis, but if every researcher and reporter involved in the subject read this piece, maybe we'd be closer to one.
The problem, in short:
Discordant findings have come in quick succession. How fast is Greenland shedding ice? Did human-caused warming wipe out frogs in the American tropics? Has warming strengthened hurricanes? Have the…
hrynyshyn | July 25, 2008As if the developing world didn't have a enough to worry about when it comes to joining the industrialized 21st century without following in the developed world's polluting footprints. A new study by British researchers finds that where you fly makes a difference to your impact on the climate. The take-home message is jet flights near the equator do more damage than at high latitudes.
"Impact of perturbations to nitrogen oxide emissions from global aviation" by Mark Köhler et al in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Vol. 113, D11305) studied the effects of all that nitrogen oxide spewing…
hrynyshyn | July 23, 2008We have to nip this idea in the bud: Shell is reviving the notion of liming the oceans. Why?
...because adding lime to seawater creates an increase in alkalinity, which in turn improves the water's ability to scrub the air clean of carbon.
Right. We know everything we need to know about ocean ecosystems, so there shouldn't be any problem with dumping millions of tonnes of limestone into them.
The project's coordinator, Gilles Bertherin, cites potentially massive ecological benefits from adding limestone to the waters. "Adding calcium hydroxide to seawater will also mitigate the effects of…
hrynyshyn | July 19, 2008The Internet makes it waaaay to easy to be stupid. Over at my other blog, a collective effort assembled by the Weather Channel, I write exclusively about climate issues. Each of my posts and just about all my colleague's posts dealing with the subject assume that climate change is real and that humans are largely responsible. It's easier that way to keep things short. It also happens to be a reflection of what climatologists think. But almost every post attracts comments from those who beg to differ and last week was no different. Except that some of the comments were more inane than usual.…
hrynyshyn | July 17, 2008I don't have time today to comment on Al Gore's latest challenge to America ;;; "to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years" — except to say that such a plan is at once the best idea to make it to the national stage in years and the most ambitious. More later.
greengabbro | July 14, 2008Before I give you my review of Randy Olson's new mockumentary about the global warming debate, I'd like to apologize for being such a terrible liberal documentary-goer. I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth, or Olson's previous movie, Flock of Dodos, or any of Michael Moore's work since "TV Nation". I keep meaning to, and then I forget, or I decide that I'd rather use those two hours of my life for an escapist Pixar fantasy or save the $9 for beer. I am totally going to fail at providing a compare'n'contrast with the relevant touchstones of the genre that will assist you in deciding whether or…
chaoticutopia | July 14, 2008
A new documentary on climate change, Sizzle, is being released soon. The film...
Wait! Don’t start dozing off. I know, I know, you’ve heard this before. I mean, c’mon, you browse around the virtual shelves at Amazon, looking for stuff about climate change, and you certainly won’t have as much difficulty as say, researching dentistry in the dark ages. (Just mouse over the links to see the vast difference." Even I’ve written my own powerpoint on the subject. Yeah. It’s been done. So, what makes this one special?
Well, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy is not your ordinary documentary. For one,…
hrynyshyn | July 14, 2008I wanted to like Sizzle. I really did. I like Randy Olson's contributions here on ScienceBlogs to Shifting Baselines. Randy is a former marine biologist and I have a degree in marine biology. He thinks the climate crisis is one of if not the most important public policy challenge of our time. So do I. Global warming pseudoskeptics drive him crazy. Me, too. If anyone should appreciate what Randy's trying to do with his latest documentary, it's me. The problem is, I wasn't quite sure what it is he's trying to do until the last section of the film. I think I figured it out, but I must report…