Climate
hrynyshyn | May 15, 2008Now don't talk to me about the polar bear
Dont talk to me about ozone layer
Aint so much of anything these days, even the air
They're running out of rhinos, What do I care ?
Lets hear it for the dolphin, Lets hear it for the trees
Aint runnin' out of nothin in my deep freeze
--Mark Knopfler
So the Bush administration finally found a way to officially add the polar bear to the list of endangered species without bringing down the wrath of the robber barons of the petroleum industry. Well, sort of.
Interior Secretary Dick Kempthorne's solution was to effectively nullify the Endangered Species…
hrynyshyn | May 14, 2008Word is the U.S. Interior Department, after much delay, is going to list the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) "as a threatened species because of declining Arctic sea ice," according to major news service alert. Marvelous. Now all we have to do to save the species is stop climate change. More analysis as details emerge...
hrynyshyn | May 13, 2008John McCain's plan to decelerate climate change brings to mind the problem posed by fast food restaurant fare. It's attractive and convenient, but ultimately bad for you.
Burgers, fries, onion rings and milkshakes are popular because don't have to wait long to satisfy your hunger, they taste darn good and they don't cost a fortune. You can't live on them for long, though. Just ask Morgan "Super Size Me" Spurlock. Indeed, fast food is at the heart of one of the modern society's most pressing health challenges: rising obesity rates. And you can't make a McDonald's menu healthy just by adding a…
hrynyshyn | May 12, 2008The latest Pew survey on Americans' attitudes toward the climate crisis is so depressing, I am reminded of that old Busby Meyers song, "What's the use of getting sober, when you're gonna get drunk again?" I mean, really. Why bother? But because the only alternative to carrying on is to not carry on, here's my attempt at giving the numbers a positive spin.
The Pew study found that "[T]he proportion of Americans who say that the earth is getting warmer has decreased modestly since January 2007, mostly because of a decline among Republicans." Since January, the percentage who recognize reality…
hrynyshyn | May 5, 2008Got the Monday blues? Then find five minutes to brighten your day by playing what I call spot-the-slander on the Heartland Institute's list of "500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming." The rules are simple:
1. Open the PDF that lists the scientists who agree with the proposition outlined on the page linked above search the file for a popular research institution at which climatologists are employed. For example: "NASA."
2. When you get a hit, copy and paste the name of the researcher associated with that institution into a reliable internet search engine. In the…
hrynyshyn | May 1, 2008Climatologists probably need to take a stiff drink before they open the papers (or fire up their web browsers) the morning after their studies appear in print or online. Two if the studies involved say anything interesting about global warming. Today's coverage of a Nature paper that predicts a decade-long, regional cooling trend for Europe and North America is sure to give the authors the jitters.
Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, and his co-authors laced their letter with caveats. They call their attempt to model the effects of meridional…
hrynyshyn | April 30, 2008It's hard to say just when humanity stopped trying to prevent climate change. Some say only a few prescient individuals ever really took the threat seriously until the dramatic events of 2012. But by then, of course, it was too late to do anything about it. Still, if we have to pinpoint a specific time that the public conversation began to switch from how to avoid catastrophic global warming to learning to live with the consequences, 2008 would be as good a candidate as any.
It had only been a couple of years since almost-president Al Gore had awoken the American people from their slumber…
voltagegate | April 24, 2008Ed has a great review of a recent paper in Nature presenting new research that describes just how extensive the damage done by the mountain pine beetle in British Columbia. The culprit of the outbreak is most likely climate change since sudden drops in temperature common in northern areas like BC have historically been a check on the beetle's population; in recent years, the winters have been less intense and the beetle populations have benefited from the extension.
It immediately reminded me of the extinction-themed AAAS session I attended and blogged about last year, where ecologist Jim…
hrynyshyn | April 23, 2008Just about everyone assumes that there's at least 200 years worth of coal left in the ground. This makes fears about greenhouse-gas emissions that cause global warming all the more acute, coal being the most carbon-intensive of the fossil-fuels. But what if popular estimates of coal reserves are no more accurate that what the oil companies are telling us about oil? What if, in other words, peak coal is as real a possibility as peak oil?
Well, some analysts say that just may be the case. A couple of months ago New Scientist ran a feature under the head of "Coal: Bleak outlook for the black…
hrynyshyn | April 18, 2008It is hard to think of a better example of doublespeak. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal editorial on George W's climate change speech and came to the exact opposite conclusion of what really happened. I know the WSJ editorial page has been hostile to reality for years when it comes to climatology, but this goes beyond the pale:
The White House deserves credit for playing the political hand in front of it. It would have been easy enough to abdicate responsibility to the next occupant of the Oval Office, who will be far more likely to wave aside economic considerations in the interests of "…
hrynyshyn | April 17, 2008If there's one thing every environmentally minded American can agree on, it's the complete failure of the Bush administration to recognize the severity of the climate crisis. (Greenhouse-gas emissions stablilization by 2025? You've got to be kidding.) But sometimes it seems that's all we can agree on. Take the ongoing squabbling between Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress (with some help from Dave Roberts at Grist) and the Breakthrough gang (Ted Nordhaus, Michael Schellenberger and Roger Pielke Jr.) Their mutual sniping and name-calling was amusing for all of five minutes. Now it's…
hrynyshyn | April 15, 2008I'm sure James Hansen has better things to do with his NASA paycheck than hire a lawyer to sue a 16-year-old over a libelous statement on her website. Give the amount of time he's spent crafting public letters to governors, prime ministers and corporate CEOs, though, perhaps he could find the time to write a small note expressing his concern to the parents of Kristen Byrnes of Portland, Maine.
Ms. Byrne was featured on NPR's Morning Edition this Tuesday. She's a top student at her school, and to her credit has recognized the importance of skepticism in science, something it took me an extra…
hrynyshyn | April 14, 2008For once, playing the role of unofficial in-house organ for the Republican Party is pays off in the scoop department. The Washington Times is reporting this morning George W. Bush is about to call for legislation that would do something about the country's greenhouse gas emissions. The story is short on details. All we really get is:
"This is an attempt to move the administration and the party closer to the center on global warming. With these steps, it is hoped that the debate over this is over, and it is time to do something," said an administration source close to the White House who is…
hrynyshyn | April 13, 2008It will be interesting to see how the climate change pseudoskeptics spin the latest research from Kerry Emmanuel. He's the guy whose 2005 paper suggesting climate change is making tropical cyclones stronger prompted the use of the "Hurricane Katrina=global warming meme. Al Gore even used the image of a hurricane emerging from a smokestack to promote An Inconvenient Truth, and his slide show included a large section on a causal connection. But now Emmanuel admits he might have been wrong.
Might is the operative word here. In a new paper in the March issue of Bulletin of the American…
chaoticutopia | April 11, 2008What if you could escape this busy world, rise above the clouds, and see everything from a new perspective? From that astronauts-eye-view, you could see the greenhouse effect in action: Sunlight pouring in, some reflected off of clouds in the upper layers of the atmosphere, some filtering down below. The light that does manage to reach the earth is absorbed or reflected by the surface below. That reflected earth shine bounces off the clouds as well, in colors imperceptible to you or I. Would it be an alien sight? Colors we can’t see, our homes obstructed by that foggy greenhouse roof, with…
hrynyshyn | April 9, 2008Al Gores' climate crisis slide show has a new tenor and his appeal has a new focus. And in my not-so-humble opinion, it's a welcome shift that makes up for a serious deficiency in his previous attempts to change the world's thinking.
When I give his slide show (as a trained member of his Climate Project) I always emphasize that changing light bulbs and buying hybrid cars is a nice start, but what we really need is to change our political leadership and the laws governing greenhouse-gas emissions.
I know why Gore was reluctant to include the political dimension -- beyond his clever opening…
hrynyshyn | April 8, 2008New York City's political elite have thumbed their noses at common sense, rejecting a plan to impose an $8 traffic fee on cars and trucks entering the Manhattan core during peak hours. I could understand if NYC was a guinea pig for downtown traffic levies. But that's not at all the case. In fact...
According to a New Scientist story from this past November:
NINE months after London started to charge motorists for driving in the city centre, the leaders of the world's cities are falling over themselves to see if they can repeat London's trick of cutting traffic jams. "We have been inundated…
hrynyshyn | April 1, 2008The fundamental question facing climate crisis activists is how to go about convincing the world to change its energy production and consumption habits. I still haven't found good answer to that. But Joe Romm has produced a magnificent primer on the challenges involved in changing those habits over at Climate Progress. There we learn why nuclear power won't be a serious player in whatever "clean" energy mix we come up with, why the Pacala and Socolow "wedge" strategy supplies only a conceptual tool instead of a useful guide to the required transformation, and why we have to start down that…
hrynyshyn | March 31, 2008It would appear that the staff at the Competitive Enterprise Institute don't like being called liars. I don't blame them for that. No likes being caught in the act. In a recent post dealing with the CEI's latest television ads attacking those of us who are worried about climate change, I made that charge. The good news is I managed to provoke the institute into wasting some of its corporate sponsors' money by spending the time it takes to respond to my charge. The bad news is they're still lying.
Senior CEI fellow Marlo Lewis argues on the CEI's "OpenMarket.org" blog that their ads fairly…
voltagegate | March 31, 2008So Saturday was Earth Hour, and as if anyone reading this blog didn't know, lights were supposed to be cut off from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. to send a message to mysterious world power that the world was ready to cut down on energy use. Sort of.
I didn't honor the Earth Hour. We rarely have more than one light on in our home at a time on a daily basis because it's wasteful and increasingly expensive. I don't have a million electronic devices running 24/7, we walk to the store when we can (Heather can walk to work) and luckily, my commute is only about 15 minutes a day. In every daily activity, even…