Climate
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…
voltagegate | June 8, 2007Well, for Greenpeace anyway.
Police helicopters forced down a Greenpeace hot air balloon on today as the environmental group took to the skies to try to get its message across to world leaders at a G8 summit.
[...]
The white hot air balloon had a giant yellow banner with the slogan "G8 Act Now" hanging below it, with the word "Failed" stamped across it. It was in the air for around 15 minutes before it was forced down.
"The hot air balloon was spotted immediately," said police spokesman Manfred Luetjann. "The air space is closed. They did not get very far. The two people on board were taken…
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 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…
chaoticutopia | May 31, 2007
Poling along the South Platte River in a Flood
This photo was taken in the early 1900's by Charles Lillybridge, during a flood that very likely threatened his own studio. I haven't been able to pinpoint the year of this particular flood. Once upon a time, the river, meandering naturally through the plain, flooded quite frequently. The surrounding prairie wasn't disturbed; rather, the local wildlife flourished after such an event. The nomadic people who originally lived along these banks were able to adapt to the changing waters of what they called the Moonshell River. By the late 19th…
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…
chaoticutopia | May 21, 2007
Contrail descending from a cumulonimbus cloud.
I suppose the most obvious signs of life in this picture are human in origin. With the storm rolling in, most animals had already sought shelter. Not us... we keep flying over the country, or running outside to take pictures. We operate under the assumption that we have the upper hand when it comes to the weather. (Of course, looking at last week's news, that might be a faulty assumption.) I think this picture says otherwise... we may have conquered flight, but our biggest jets are still dwarfed by ordinary thunderheads.
All photos by the…
hrynyshyn | May 17, 2007Hot on the heels of the good news that the deep ocean conveyor doesn't appear to be on the verge of shutting down -- a scenario that would have eliminated many of the world's most important fisheries among other things -- comes the inevitable flipside bad news. The Southern Ocean has stopped absorbing carbon dioxide. Guess the honeymoon is over.
Just about every climate model includes the assumption that a good portion of all that CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere will be absorbed by the oceans, and the Southern Ocean in particular. So in addition to forcing the climatologists back to…
hrynyshyn | May 17, 2007New Scientist has assembled a marvelous list of 26 of the most-cited objections to the scientific consensus on climate change. Temperatures rise before carbon dioxide; polar bear population is increasing; there is no consensus; it's all there. This handy-dandy resource -- the answers include source materials -- should be bookmarked. Here's the complete list:
⢠Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter
⢠We can't do anything about climate change
⢠The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong
⢠Chaotic systems are not predictable
⢠We can't trust computer models of climate
⢠They…
voltagegate | May 15, 2007Welcome to the 5th edition of Oekologie, the 'sphere's only blog carnival focusing on ecology and environmental science. We are always looking for hosts (especially for October) and contributors, so please check out those tabs if you're interested in either.
Some of you may know that I have a tendency to mix in some history when hosting science carnivals. So, for the first themed edition of Oekologie, we will be using ancient and medieval Arabic nature writing to frame our moving monthly mag of biological interactions in the environment.
Zoology One of the most famous Arabic zoological…
hrynyshyn | May 15, 2007Anyone who uses Google's personalized home page service and never bothered to delete the default quote of the day was greeted this morning with one of third-rate sci-fi author Michael Crichton's more inane utterances."Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had." Just think about that for a moment as you consider the latest news on the possibility that global warming could stop what is somewhat inaccurately but widely known as the Gulf Stream from keeping Europe as warm as it is today.
According to Crichton, real…
voltagegate | May 9, 2007Global warming is not only stripping corals of their food source, it is opening the door to rapid, widespread infection.
A group of researchers (led by a Dr. John Bruno) published a paper in PLoS Biology this week looking into a possible correlation between the spread of white syndrome among schleractinian corals and warmer temperatures at the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The study found a positive correlation between warmer temperatures and outbreak.
More on schleractinian corals and how global warming is affecting them below the fold.
Schleractinian corals - such as the brain coral pictured -…
voltagegate | May 8, 2007Science Daily posted a few stories on climate change in the past two days, all three of equal interest.
The first study looks to the melting of the ice sheets that once covered the British Isles and how that affected ocean currents thousands of years ago. Will the same be true of Greenland's melting glaciers?
According to a revision article published in Science, ocean circulation during the last ice age was very different to present day circulation. The formation of deep water currents in the North Atlantic was much weaker and the flow of warm water from the Gulf Stream decreased. This led to…
voltagegate | May 7, 2007Oprah makes me sick. She recently had another uber-hypocritical show about environmental issues and I thought it would be appropriate to repost my reaction to her first show about "going green", which was aired last June. Hey, at least her blouse is green, right?
Has anyone noticed how Oprah collapses into a pool of plasmodium when her guests start talking science? Sure, when it's relationship issues or the inner child, she's all over it, wielding advice like a psycho-babble hammer.
I got a phone call from my mother yesterday afternoon."Turn on channel four, Oprah's talking about global…
hrynyshyn | May 4, 2007I didn't watch the Republican debate last night, so I can't be sure that climate change got short shift, but seeing as I couldn't find more than a hint of the subject in this morning's coverage on the net -- and heard only a passing reference in a NPR report listing the "other" subjects addressed -- I feel pretty safe concluding that the candidates assume the planet's future, and that of civilization, isn't of particularly interest to GOP voters. No surprise there. The question is, is this a bad thing, or good?
I used to bemoan the right-wing's antipathy to global warming in particular, and…
hrynyshyn | May 3, 2007Some commenters seem puzzled by my conclusion that a couple of recent studies of melting north polar ice could mean an ice-free Arctic within 13 years. I will agree that it does seem rather extreme, but the data support such a conclusion, as a responsible estimate of the near-term end of range of time values. Perhaps part of the problem can be traced to a rather poorly designed graph, drawn from data in a paper (subscription only) published Tuesday in Geophysical Research Letters. Allow me to explain:
The paper, by Julienne Stroeve, Marika M. Holland, Walt Meier, Ted Scambos, and Mark Serreze…