global warming
tlambert | May 14, 2006Reporting on global warming in the media is far too often of the "he said/she said" type that just leaves the impression with the reader that is controversial and there is no way for the reader to work out what is really happening. So I should point to this article in the Wall Street Journal which does a good job of informing the reader about why scientists believe that people are largely responsible for the current global warming.
My only quibble is this bit:
Earth has warmed 1.4° Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. Skeptics concede that.
Most skeptics concede that, but some of them are…
tlambert | May 10, 2006Daniel Son writes
While an inordinate amount of attention is given to distant, theoretical threats of global warming, a tragically minimal amount of attention is given to the life and death problems of today, some of which directly result from policies enacted to stave off the "disastrous" conditions of global climate change.
A clear example of what can result from bad policies can be found in environmentalists blocking DDT use in African nations; DDT has reduced malaria-related deaths by 75% in countries who used DDT programs. An African dies from malaria every 40 seconds--the equivalent of…
tlambert | May 9, 2006In the olden days to become a leading climate scientist you had to work hard, do lots of research and publish it in good journals. Now there's a quicker method. Put out a press release.
A group of leading climate scientists has announced the formation of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, aimed at refuting what it believes are unfounded claims about man-made global warming. ...
The coalition includes such well-known climate scientists as:
Dr Vincent Gray, of Wellington, an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), most recently a visiting scholar at…
tlambert | May 3, 2006Last Sunday, about a hundred zombies lurched through downtown Sydney. In an interesting coincidence some zombie facts have lurched through a column by Ruth Lea:
And, interestingly, global average air temperatures, which are regarded as more reliable by climate scientists, have not changed over the past 20 to 30 years.
Oh look, it's the satellites don't show warming zombie. Dead for quite a while now, still staggering around in global warming skeptic writings.
And indeed it is, as there seems to be little scientific agreement that mankind's fossil-fuel burning is the major reason for…
tlambert | April 22, 2006Remember the letter from the 60 scientists denying that "climate change is real" meant anything? Now 90 scientists have written another letter stating:
There is increasingly unambiguous evidence of changing climate in Canada and around the world.
There will be increasing impacts of climate change on Canada's natural ecosystems and on our socio-economic activities.
Advances in climate science since the 2001 IPCC Assessment have provided more evidence supporting the need for action and development of a strategy for adaptation to projected changes.
Coby Beck notes some ways the 90 are…
cmooney | April 21, 2006Seed has just published an interview I did with the Times global warming reporter Andy Revkin to discuss climate change coverage and his new book, The North Pole Was Here, which is unique in that it is a GW book that's aimed at an audience aged 10 and higher (after all, they're the ones that are going to have to live with a different planet). There was some really good stuff in the interview, in my opinion, like the following:
Mooney: Is there anything that science journalists ought to be doing to focus attention more acutely on this issue [global warming]?
Revkin: The bottom line is, I don'…
tlambert | April 17, 2006Mark Hertsgaard has an excellent article in Vanity Fairexposing the war on climate science. For instance:
Call him the $45 million man. That's how much money Dr. Frederick Seitz, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, helped R. J. Reynolds Industries, Inc., give away to fund medical research in the 1970s and 1980s. The research avoided the central health issue facing Reynolds -- "They didn't want us looking at the health effects of cigarette smoking," says Seitz, who is now 94 -- but it nevertheless served the tobacco industry's purposes. Throughout those years, the…
tlambert | April 17, 2006
About a hundred Internet years ago in 1988 I posted this comment on Usenet:
Waste heat does not contribute significantly to global warming. It is all
(if it's really happening - we probably won't be sure until it's too late)
caused by the greenhouse effect. I agree with Brad - burning fossil fuels
could well be more harmful to the environment than nuclear power.
An op-ed by Patrick co-founder of Greenpeace (his middle name is "Moore") has ignited more discussion on global warming and nuclear power. Kevin Drum and Mark Kleiman agree with Mr co-founder of Greenpeace, while David Roberts…
cmooney | April 12, 2006Since he's been in the news I perused his website...and what did I find? An outright denial of human caused global warming, based upon a questionable-sounding argument (culled from some dude writing in The Telegraph) that I've never actually heard before:
Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Um...like I said, I've never heard…
tlambert | April 10, 2006Jennifer Marohasy has written a rather self-referential response to my criticism of the sixty scientists' letter. Rather than deal with the substance of my criticism, Marohasy, who works for the Institute of Public Affairs, predictably tried to attack my credibility, writing:
Rather than deal with the substance of the letter, Lambert, a computer scientist, predictably tries to attack the credibility of the scientists.
Of course, I did deal with the substance of the letter. When challenged in the comments, Marohasy claimed that there was some substance that I had not dealt with but would…
tlambert | April 8, 2006
Six Australian business leader reckon that the debate is over and climate change is real:
Six business leaders yesterday stepped into the greenhouse debate, and blew the whistle. Game over, they said: climate change is real, it's going to hurt, and unless we act now, it's going to hurt us a lot.
These guys know how to play the game. Westpac's CEO David Morgan is a former Treasury official, married to former Labor minister Ros Kelly. They weren't going to criticise John Howard over his handling of climate change; he doesn't like criticism. They just urged him to shift ground, and fast.…
cmooney | April 4, 2006Very apropos of my previous post about George Will and Robert Novak, just found this quotation from Michael Kinsley:
Abandoning the pretense of objectivity does not mean abandoning the journalist's most important obligation, which is factual accuracy. In fact, the practice of opinion journalism brings additional ethical obligations. These can be summarized in two words: intellectual honesty. Are you writing or saying what you really think? Have you tested it against the available counterarguments? Will you stand by an expressed principle in different situations, when it leads to an unpleasing…
cmooney | April 4, 2006I really think the folks at Real Climate have an important point when they write, in outrage over Robert Novak's recent attack on James Hansen, the following:
What is happening at the Washington Post, unfortunately, has nothing to do with a critical examination of the evidence for an imminent danger. It has nothing to do with a quest to come to a real understanding of the issue. The editorials mentioned above [by Novak and George Will] show no respect for the truth; they shamelessly use distortion and deception to discredit climate science and climate scientists. It is hardly new that us…
cmooney | April 3, 2006When it comes to global warming and prominent national columnists, there's probably no one with his head further crammed into the sand than George Will. Anyway, there's no need for me to debunk his latest nonsense, Real Climate and the Progress Report have already done a great job. But hey, Will can get the science wrong all he wants to--it's just "opinion," right?
cmooney | April 1, 2006This op-ed in today's New York Times, by "End of Environmentalism" prophets Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, is seriously weak. Actually, I would go so far as to call it lame. To wit:
We can agree to disagree on the causes of climate change. What we all must agree on, though, is that it poses a risk -- one for which we are woefully unprepared.
Yeah, right. If what we're seeing is natural that implies that it will go away. If what we're seeing is human caused that means it won't go away unless we clean up our act. The risk is therefore not the same, not by a long shot. That makes the…
cmooney | March 31, 2006NASA is to be commended for a new media policy easing up restrictions on scientist communications. Most importantly, scientists don't have to have little PR minders on their phone calls any more. Bravo. See here to learn more about the policy.
NASA's move is entirely positive--it represents progress. Still, it's pretty scant progress in light of years and years of abuses against science perpetrated by the Bush administration, and the wide range of agencies where these problems have manifested. The great danger, now, is that NASA will be pointed to as a success story in order to neutralize…
cmooney | March 31, 2006I am still busy at work revising The Republican War on Science for the paperback edition. Now the plan is to have both a new author preface, and then also to have updates at the end of most of the body chapters. And to complete this project, I am seeking more feedback.
Today I'm working on updates related to climate change--political science events that happened in this area from roughly mid 2005 up through the present. There have been quite a lot of them, but I have most prominently identified the following:
Whistleblower Rick Piltz's exposure of political editing of scientific reports at…
cmooney | March 30, 2006Via the Progress Report, I see that George W. Bush is sounding more and more like an out-and-out greenhouse skeptic. Perhaps his meeting with Michael Crichton influenced him? From Bush's recent press conference:
Q From Australia. I've got a question about global warming -- in the Australian Parliament, Tony Blair called for greater action. And this seems to be something that the U.S. President could make a major difference on. There's a virtual consensus that the planet is warming. If you addressed issues like emissions, fuel efficiency, issues to do with alternative energy in your last few…
cmooney | March 23, 2006I really, really enjoyed Elizabeth Kolbert's new book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe. I gave it a nice little review/plug in Seed. I would recommend it to anyone.
Still, I must say, I was staggered to read on the book's Amazon page the following editorial review (it's unclear who from): "An argument for the urgent danger of global warming in a book that is sure to be as influential as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring."
Er...Silent Spring is probably most influential environmental book of the 20th century (Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac may be a close runner up). Carson herself was…
cmooney | March 23, 2006Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers is at # 18 overall on Amazon.com this morning, presumably boosted dramatically by an appearance on "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross yesterday. He now has a shot at making the New York Times bestseller list. For those of us trying to convince the publishing industry that books on global warming are not a waste of their time, this is a truly heartening sign....
P.S.: If Flannery's book on global warming is doing well, just wait until Al Gore's comes out....