global warming
tlambert | June 16, 2006Tom Bethell's discussion with Chris Mooney is here. I agree with PZ Myers: Flatow let Bethell ramble on far too much. Bethell was allowed to burn up the first ten minutes of the show to make his first point -- his claim that government agencies promote problems like global warming and bird flu to justify more funding. He could have made his point in ten seconds.
Mooney mentioned my global warming skeptic bingo when Bethell brought up one of the standard skeptic arguments about the world cooling from 1940 to 1970 despite increasing CO2. While that is one of the sort of arguments that GWS…
tlambert | June 16, 2006Tim Blair responds to Mieszkowski's conclusion that "climate scientists say that, basically, Gore got it right" with a link to an article by Tom Harris who writes:
Albert Einstein once said, "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
While the gods must consider An Inconvenient Truth the ultimate comedy, real climate scientists are crying over Al Gore's new film. This is not just because the ex-vice-president commits numerous basic science mistakes. They are also concerned that many in the media and public will fail to…
tlambert | June 15, 2006Matt Drudge recently linked to a web site claiming that climate experts disagreed with Al Gore about global warming. Hundreds of blogs uncritically swallowed the claim.
One of the few skeptics was Bruce Perens who wrote
We ran a pointer to a global-warming-doubter story this morning. Here's the link. I decided to pull the story after reviewing the author attribution (he's from a paid political PR agency), and the venue's other coverage on this issue. Sorry.
Hey, I've got my doubts about global warming too. But it does seem that the "con" side of the argument often comes from people who are…
cmooney | June 15, 2006Seeing as I'm debating Bethell on NPR's Science Friday tomorrow, I thought I would begin the warm-up session here by posting some samples of what he's had to say about various scientific topics, starting with the biggie--global warming. I am not going to comment on these passages; I'm simply going to list three quotes, number them, and then leave the rest up to you folks. You were excellent when it came to helping me prep to debate Ron Bailey, so I'm sure you will be equally awesome this time around.
Here goes:
1. It is often said: If we don't know whether to take an umbrella to work, how can…
tlambert | June 13, 2006The latest from the NZ Climate Science recommended Ken Ring:
Basic science:
Scattered here and there, ozone is individual molecules, not some kind of sheet metal covering the whole sky. How much? 3 parts in 100,000 of the atmosphere. Even CO2 is 35 parts in 100,000, yes 10x as much per volume and THAT doesn't protect us, in fact you and your friends are saying that that amount of CO2 HARMS us! Get it right Thomas, harms or protects, you can't have it both ways. If you believe a 3mm Ozone layer is protecting the 200 million square miles of the surface of the Earth from the sun's intense energy…
purepedantry | June 12, 2006Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.
The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.
Polar bears feed primarily on ringed seals and use sea ice for feeding, mating and giving birth.
Polar bears kill each other for population regulation, dominance…
tlambert | June 12, 2006Over at Salon Katharine Mieszkowski asks "Did Al get the science right?"
The usual oil industry flacks and dogmatic skeptics have surfaced to denounce Al Gore's global warming movie. But climate scientists say that, basically, he got it right.
tlambert | June 11, 2006Christopher Pearson foolishly relies on Ian Plimer for an article claiming that the link between global warming and sea level rises is "bad science":
Plimer notes that "the tidal measuring station at Port Adelaide is sinking, thereby recording a sea level rise". The same is true of many other areas of subsidence, a fact apparently lost on most contemporary oceanographers. "If there is a sea-level rise we would expect every atoll in every ocean to be inundated. But we don't see this. We would expect harbours around the world to record a sea level rise. This is not recorded. So something is…
tlambert | June 10, 2006Brad Delong:
And Iain Murray makes me sorry I named John Derbyshire the Stupidest Man Alive:
The Corner on National Review Online: A meteorite hit a remote area of northern Norway yesterday. The explosive force of the impact was equivalent to that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I wonder if they'll try to blame this on global warming?
Jonathan Chait:
Over at the Corner, Iain Murray is assuring readers that An Inconvenient Truth is really very dull. Oh, I'm sure it is--that's why Murray, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is spearheading a massive p.r. blitz to…
scientificactivist | June 10, 2006Conservatives in America have become pretty adept at shrugging off worries about global warming, and when it comes to evolution, well, they have their own ideas about how that works. However, this headline from National Geographic might cause some circuits to blow:
"Global Warming Is Spurring Evolution, Study Says"
Wow, what a catch-22! They can continue to ignore global warming but risk causing the body of evidence in favor of evolution to grow even faster, thus making it more difficult to sneak religious ideas in classrooms. On the other hand, if they try to reverse climate change, they'…
tlambert | June 10, 2006Julian Sanchez speculates:
Given the choice between an ultimately misguided but thoughtful post, for which the aforementioned piss-taking might require some research or careful grappling with facially plausible arguments, and some hack's latest howler, a lot of us are going to find it tempting to take the easy shot. I know there are definitely a few sites I visit almost exclusively to hunt for fodder -- places I know I won't just find ideas I disagree with intensely, but ideas I disagree with intensely backed by moronic arguments that are good for a bit of fun. I can't say for sure how…
nisbetmc | June 9, 2006
In 2004 when The Day After Tomorrow hit theaters, I wrote this column evaluating its possible impacts. Later, Anthony Leiserowitz followed with a study appearing in Environment magazine assessing the public and media impact of the film.
As other studies have shown with films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, and Passion of the Christ, there is a strong self-selection influence, with like-minded citizens attending the film, and coming away with their beliefs reinforced. So, for example, in the case of the Passion of the Christ, the already strongly religious attended the film, and came away with…
tlambert | June 8, 2006The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition go for a variation of the global warming ended in 1998 cherry pick:
"The NIWA record tells us that the current pother on global warming was caused by the sudden temperature increase in New Zealand of 1.8ºC from 1993 to 1998, caused by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation ocean event of 1998. Since then temperatures are plunging, and are currently below the average of the last 50 years.
Unfortunately, they have forgotten the first rule of cherrypicking: don't let the rubes see the data you left out. They include a graph of New Zealand temperatures…
nisbetmc | June 8, 2006In my latest Science and the Media web column at Skeptical Inquirer Online, I take a look at the current debate over re-investment in nuclear energy as a means to curb greenhouse gas emissions and shift the country towards energy independence. I show that the same frames used in the nuclear energy debate during the 1970s are still in play today.
I also review poll findings that indicate public support for nuclear energy has increased since 2001. However, comparisons to independent surveys show that public support isn't nearly as strong as industry-sponsored poll trends indicate.
tlambert | June 7, 2006In this post I stated:
The New York Post found someone [Kyle Smith] with less knowledge of science than Tim Blair to review An Inconvenient Truth.
I was wrong. Tim Blair has less knowledge of science than does Kyle Smith.
Smith made a correction:
"Correction: an earlier version of this review incorrectly linked lead and smog to global warming."
Blair, on the other hand, cannot grasp the meaning of "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe." Read his confused comments in this thread as we try to explain radiative forcing to him:
what approximate area…
tlambert | June 5, 2006In Paul Krugman's May 29 column he wrote about Pat Michael's "fraud, pure and simple" that James Hansen's 1988 prediction of global warming was too high by 300%. (Michael's fraud was described earlier by Hansen, Gavin Schmidt, Hansen again and me.)
Michaels has posted a denial, so I'm going to go back to the original sources so that everyone can see what Michaels did.
In Michaels' 1998 testimony he stated:
Ten years ago, on June 23, 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen testified before the House of Representatives that there was a strong "cause and effect relationship" between observed…
tlambert | June 5, 2006The New York Post found someone with less knowledge of science than Tim Blair to review An Inconvenient Truth. David Roberts takes the review to pieces.
Henry Farrell writes about Dave Kopel's claim that global warming skeptics don't get enough coverage in the media.
Judd at Think Progress writes about Jason Steorts' disregard for accuracy.
Over at NZ Climate Science Coalition "Distinguished NZ climate science" "shows CO2 and temperature not connected":
"This coldest May in 10 years comes at a time when recordings made at Baring Head of
carbon dioxide over New Zealand show that…
tlambert | June 2, 2006From the Onion: Critics Blast Al Gore's Documentary As 'Realistic'
Not from the Onion: Republicans gave out free snow cones to students for an event they called "Global Cooling Day."
From Ringworld:
Gareth: You may care to reflect on another category of best-seller - the astrological predictions that sell well each new year. They don't prove that astrology works (because it doesn't), but it shows some people think it does.
Ken Ring: Wrong, it proves it does work or the same people wouldn't keep buying it. Probably wouldn't work for you though. Many people don't know what astrology is.…
tlambert | June 1, 2006Hansen's 1988 paper that Pat Michaels misrepresented in testimony is not available online. I've put some extracts here.
Hansen, J., I. Fung, A. Lacis, D. Rind, Lebedeff, R. Ruedy, G. Russell, and P. Stone 1988. Global climate changes as forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies three-dimensional model. J. Geophys. Res. 93, 9341-9364.
Abstract
We use a three-dimensional climate model, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) model II with 8° by 10° horizontal resolution, to simulate the global climate effects of time-dependent variations of atmospheric trace gases and aerosols.…
tlambert | June 1, 2006I'm with John Quiggin in the debate about Joel Achenbach's story on the global warming skeptics: he's hung them out to dry. Bill Gray looks crazy when he likens Gore to Hitler, and Achenbach even gets a CEI shill to admit to being dishonest:
Horner talks about baselines used in climate trends. Why start in 1860? That was the end of the Little Ice Age. Of course the world has warmed since then. That's cheating with the baseline. At one point Horner refers to the "cooling" since 1998 -- a record-breaking year with a major El Nino event in the Pacific. He admits he is being disingenuous.
"We're…