global warming
loom | July 19, 2006
As I browsed the new papers published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, I was brought up short by this frolicsome picture. It's a nice example of the visual display of information done right. It shows the spread of primates 55 million years ago across the Northern Hemisphere. I'm always game to learn about what primates were up to in Wyoming and Greenland. But this picture--and the paper that goes with it--have an extra value. They offer some clues to what sort of world we may be creating by pumping billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.…
tlambert | July 19, 2006Last month the National Research Council report on climate reconstructions released its report and basically vindicated the hockey stick. This was widely reported in the media. But not in The Australian. I did a search through the archives of The Australian to see what they had published about the study. They did not report anything when the hockey stick study was published or when it was included in the TAR or publish anything supportive of it. They have, however, published several stories on how it was wrong or fraudulent.
For example, Soon and Sallie Baliunas' badly flawed paper was…
tlambert | July 18, 2006We all know that the scientific consensus on global warming is that humans are causing most of it. The Creationist consensus is that humans aren't causing it. But just as their are divisions in the Creationist camp between Old Earth and Young Earth Creationists, they are divided on why people believe that humans are warming the planet.
Creationist Julia Gorin thinks it's to avoid thinking about the threat from fascist Islamonazi Hitlers
Freud called it displacement. People fixate on the environment when they can't deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives nonhawks a chance to look…
tlambert | July 17, 2006Chris Mooney on the report Joe Barton commissioned on the hockey stick:
I am beyond bored with the whole thing. I'm reaching the point of despair. Listen, people: This is an argument over a study that is now some eight years old. Eight years! You would think there is nothing new under the sun in climate science.
So let us recite, once again, for those who still don't get it: *One study never definitively proves anything in science. Any single study can be attacked and criticized. Any individual piece of work will have its gaps, shortcomings, and associated uncertainties.* As for those who…
nisbetmc | July 17, 2006
Previously I posted that journalists and news organizations have a "limited carrying capacity," meaning that they can't pay attention to all issues all the time, so that when one issue or set of issues rise in attention, other issues are bumped from coverage.
The relationship is relevant as the U.S. faces what has been called a "perfect storm" of foreign policy crises. These foreign policy topics have come to dominate the news over the last few weeks, but for the majority of Americans, perhaps the most salient issue in their daily lives right now is the record heat that stretches across…
tlambert | July 17, 2006
PZ Myers writes
Time's former "Blog of the Year," the execrable PowerLine blog with which I share a state, has done it again: said something so stupid and so palpably false that I'm feeling a bit embarrassed about ragging on Oklahoma in my previous post--I should feel ashamed by association at being a Minnesotan. Check out Deltoid: down is up in the world of the Hindrocket.
I feel PZ's pain. I share a state with Tim Blair, who has now made exactly the same blunder as Hindrocket: "Al Gore's Gaia love story suckered the coasts, but is now slowly fading". We'll see a correction from Blair…
cmooney | July 17, 2006Is anyone else as sick as I am of repeated attacks on the "hockey stick" reconstruction of past temperatures? Joe Barton and cronies are at it again. Just when one would have hoped that the National Academy of Sciences report on this topic would provide some modicum of closure, the "skeptics" have derived yet another seeming line of attack.
As for myself, I am beyond bored with the whole thing. I'm reaching the point of despair. Listen, people: This is an argument over a study that is now some eight years old. Eight years! You would think there is nothing new under the sun in climate science…
retrospectacle | July 16, 2006University of Michigan geophysicist Shaopeng Huang has found that even layers deep in the Earth have felt the increased heat from global warming, terming the change "rocky fever."
"Not to feel global warming, one would need to hide beneath 600 feet of rocks," Huang said. "Although its causes are debatable, recent global warming is indisputable."
Huang was part of a 2000 study, cited in the National Research Council report on global warming, which showed that the 20th century was the warmest of the last five centuries. Now, the temperature increase has been found to permeate subsurface rock…
nisbetmc | July 10, 2006Global warming is tapping the cultural zeit geist, with 2006 on track to smash an all-time record for news attention (more on this soon), and various film and TV events trying to raise public attention to the issue. The latest, reports the Washington Post today, is a Discovery Channel documentary slated for 9pm Sunday night, hosted by Tom Brokaw. And if Inconvenient Truth is setting records in terms of revenue for a science film, stay tuned for the fall, when Leonardo DiCaprio releases his 11th Hour documentary on the environment.
nisbetmc | July 10, 2006According to BoxOfficeMojo, the weekend take for Inconvenient Truth dropped to $1.16 million this week, down from $1.597 million last week, $2.016 million two weeks back, and $1.9 million three weeks ago. In total, the film has grossed $15,039,000, placing it fourth all time among documentaries, trailing Fahrenheit 9/11 at $119million, March of the Penguins at $77 million, and Bowling for Columbine at $21 million.
purepedantry | July 9, 2006Several bloggers and columnists have been expressing skepticism as to the concept of energy independence, and I think they make some good arguments.
John Fialka in the WSJ:
The allure of energy independence is easy to see. It reinforces the belief that Americans can control their own economic destiny and appeals to a "deep-seated cultural feeling that we are Fortress America and we will not be vulnerable to unstable regimes," says David Jhirad, a former Clinton administration energy official who is vice president at World Resources Institute, an environmental-research group.
In fact, experts…
tlambert | July 7, 2006I wrote earlier how some Global Warming Skeptics likened themselves to Creationists. Over at the Panda's Thumb Richard Hoppe has more:
Regular readers of the Thumb will recall that in February, the Ohio State Board of Education removed the "critical analysis of evolution" standard, benchmark, and lesson plan from the state's science standards. The matter was referred to the Achievement Committee of the Board, with instructions to consider whether a replacement should be inserted, and if so, what it should be. That was a hammer blow to the creationists on the board and to the Disco Institute.…
tlambert | July 7, 2006In an interview with People Bush says:
I think we have a problem on global warming. I think there is a debate about whether it's caused by mankind or whether it's caused naturally, but it's a worthy debate. It's a debate, actually, that I'm in the process of solving by advancing new technologies, burning coal cleanly in electric plants, or promoting hydrogen-powered automobiles, or advancing ethanol as an alternative to gasoline.
He's solving the "debate" about whether it's caused by mankind by advancing new technologies? Maybe he meant to say that he's solving the problem by advancing new…
tlambert | July 4, 2006Jim Motavalli has an interesting article about Inhofe's attack on the Associated Press:
Borenstein, through his membership in the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) and elsewhere, has a long history of arguing passionately for fair and balanced reporting. Perry Beeman, environmental reporter at the Des Moines Register and president of SEJ, comments: "My understanding is that Seth Borenstein gave more than 100 prominent global warming scientists the opportunity to comment on Gore's movie. That sample included at least seven that many would consider contrarian because they have not…
cmooney | July 3, 2006Not only did they give a journalism award to Michael Crichton for State of Fear. Now, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) is asking its members to comment on a draft "card" stating the group's position on climate change that is designed to be given out to the general public. The card apparently says, "All of the principal causes of climate change are beyond the control of human beings." Given this statement, which is wildly out of whack with scientific consensus, I'm not surprised that the AAPG website discussion of the card also says this: "The reviewers made several…
nisbetmc | July 3, 2006It appears that while audiences continue to go see Inconvenient Truth, some of the excitement has worn off. According to BoxOffice Mojo, the film opened in 73 more theaters this weekend, bringing its total to 587, still a tiny number compared to the 3000 screens that blockbusters run on. Across these theaters, the film earned 1.597 million over the weekend, down from the 2.016 million the week before, and the 1.911 million from two weeks back. So far, the film has earned a total of 12.359 million, ranking it fifth all-time among documentaries, just behind Madonna's Truth or Dare
Meanwhile…
tlambert | July 1, 2006Klein's Law states:
At any given moment, PowerLine has no idea what they're talking about.
John Hinderaker has responded to my post on how Hinderaker claimed that ticket sales for Al Gore's movie had gone down when they'd actually gone up. (See also MarkCC at Good Math, Bad Math.)
Update: Some web site criticized this post on the ground that, while revenue per theater has indeed dropped precipitously, An Inconvenient Truth has been put into vastly more theaters, so that there has been a sight increase in total revenue (as opposed to per-theater revenue) between, say, last weekend and the…
tlambert | June 30, 2006In February, 86 evangelical Christian leaders backed the Evangelical Climate Initiative, calling for federal legislation to reduce CO2 emissions.
Opposing them is a group called the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance who are collecting signatures in support of a documentarguing against the existence of anthropogenic global warming. It's the usual discredited stuff: Oregon petition, Peiser's discredited claims, Bray's bogus survey etc etc. The most interesting argument is on page 12:
It is ironic that many supporters of the ECI rely heavily on the claim
of scientific consensus to buttress…
cmooney | June 29, 2006I was supposed to stay and chat at the Clark Community Network after my posting went up earlier today, but I goofed...so I'm coming back tonight at 7 PM ET for an hour of chatting. Come on over and ask questions...I see that a number have piled up already....
tlambert | June 29, 2006Eli Rabbett :
Senator James Inhofe is demanding that AP provide him the names of the 19 atmospheric scientists who told the press agency that the science in "An Inconvenient Truth" was accurate. I have gone through a number of articles and put together a list of the first 14 that I could find.
Here is a chance for climate scientists to step up to the plate. If you agree with Jim Hansen, Robert Corell, Eric Steig, and the others listed below, put your name, some indication of your expertise and any other words you may wish into the comments. I will move them up into the text, and we will have…