Climate change

From David Snokes at Christian Scientific Society: Kevin Birdwell gave a general overview of the issue of global warming and humans’ contribution to it. On the scientific side, one of his main points was that carbon dioxide is not the whole story; there are many other considerations, possibly the greatest of which is the warming due to urban “hot spots”—people’s experience of heat rises in recent years may be much more related to the effects of city density (which can raise local temperatures by 10 degrees or more) than to overall global warming (which has been about 1 degree in the last century). He held out hope that new technology could solve some of these issues of urbanization. His talk Read More ›

Researchers suggest so based on studies of early fossil rabbit and horse types. From ScienceDaily: More than 50 million years ago, when the Earth experienced a series of extreme global warming events, early mammals responded by shrinking in size. While this mammalian dwarfism has previously been linked to the largest of these events, new research has found that this evolutionary process can happen in smaller, so-called hyperthermals, indicating an important pattern that could help shape an understanding of underlying effects of current human-caused climate change. … Researchers propose that the body change could have been an evolutionary response to create a more efficient way to reduce body heat. A smaller body size would allow the animals to cool down faster. Read More ›

Schedule and abstracts here. Note: 10:00 A.M. Kevin Birdwell. “Understanding Climate Change Factors” What variables affect climate change? Are they natural? Manmade? Both? Do greenhouse gases provide the sole basis for modern climate concerns? Or are their other important factors to consider? How does the need for large sources of energy to power society affect the climate debate? Finally, how do we approach these issues ethically? Bio: Kevin Birdwell received a PhD in physical geography, with emphasis in meteorology and environmental change, from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2011. He also holds a BS and an MS in geography, with an emphasis in remote sensing and math, from Murray State University, as well as an AA in the Bible Read More ›

For years I have closely followed both the evolution debate and the global warming debate.*  There are some important differences between the two debates, which may be the subject of a subsequent post.  However, the number of similarities is striking.  Enough so that for some time I have seriously considered writing a book detailing the parallels.  I believe it would be highly instructive for many– particularly for those who accept the party line of one of the theories but not the other – to recognize the many similarities between the two debates. Given the realities of other time commitments, however, I suspect my nascent efforts will never make it to publication before catastrophic global warming either fades with a whimper or Read More ›

We didn’t realize it was still legal to say so. From Michael Le Page at New Scientist: Countries in the EU, including the UK, are throwing away money by subsidising the burning of wood for energy, according to an independent report. While burning some forms of wood waste can indeed reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in practice the growing use of wood energy in the EU is increasing rather than reducing emissions, the new report concludes. Overall, burning wood for energy is much worse in climate terms than burning gas or even coal, but loopholes in the way emissions are counted are concealing the damage being done. More. Report.* The Times was going on about this too: Chopping down trees and transporting Read More ›

From coastal geologist Robert S. Youngjan at New York Times: Talk is growing about a March for Science on Washington, similar to the Women’s March the day after President Trump’s inauguration. It is a terrible idea. Among scientists, understandably, there is growing fear that fact-based decision making is losing its seat at the policy-making table. There’s also overwhelming frustration with the politicization of science by climate change skeptics and others who see it as threatening to their interests or beliefs. But trying to recreate the pointedly political Women’s March will serve only to reinforce the narrative from skeptical conservatives that scientists are an interest group and politicize their data, research and findings for their own ends. More. Good points but he Read More ›

As a sort of inoculation? From Natasha Lomas at Tech Crunch: Research conducted by social psychologists at Cambridge University in the UK, and Yale and George Mason in the US, offers a potential strategy for mitigating the spread of misinformation online — involving the use of pro-active warnings designed to contextualize and pre-expose web users to related but fake information in order to debunk factual distortion in advance. The researchers found that combining facts about climate change with a small dose of misinformation — in the form of a warning about potential distortion — helped study participants resist the influence of the false information. More. [link now fixed] Sounds like the usual motivated rubbish, actually. (That is: Give us JOBS Read More ›

From Maria Gallucci at Mashable: Separately, environmental and climate groups are planning a People’s Climate March in April to protest Trump’s plans to scrap former President Barack Obama’s climate policies and advance construction of controversial oil pipelines. Both climate activists and scientists said they were bolstered by the Women’s Marches, which drew millions of women and men around the world, from Washington down to Antarctica. Next to signs promoting women’s reproductive rights and dismissing Trump’s past xenophobic and misogynistic statements, many demonstrators carried posters urging participants to “Stand Up for Science” or declaring that “Climate Change is Real” — a fact that Trump said he doesn’t fully accept. More. Gee, that’ll help. When people have spent a lifetime immersed in Read More ›

From Kevin Mooney at Daily Signal: Just before joining climate change activist and former Vice President Al Gore for a press conference in New York City, seven state-level attorneys general huddled with a representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The political activist, Peter Frumhoff, called for them and other elected officials to move decisively against major corporations and institutions for “denying” climate change. The seeds of that call to action in March were planted four years earlier at a gathering of environmental activists, trial lawyers, and academics across the country in San Diego. The Daily Signal found this and other revealing bits of information among material produced in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against Virginia’s Read More ›

Three days ago: Why does climate change “denial” matter in a “post-truth” society? From Clare Foran at Atlantic: The entrenchment of climate-science denial is one of the ways the United States appears to be exceptional relative to the rest of the world. A comparative 2015 study of nine conservative political parties in countries such as Canada, Germany, and Spain concluded that “the U.S. Republican Party is an anomaly in denying anthropogenic climate change.” Meanwhile, Americans were least likely to agree that climate change is largely the result of human activity in a 2014 survey of 20 countries, including China, India, Australia, and Great Britain. … Clare Foran, meet Julie Shaw: A scientist on the benefits of a post-truth society: I’m Read More ›

From political analyst Michael Barone at TownHall: Liberal elites tell us that “the science is settled” and that people must have faith in their predictions. But science is never settled. Scientists produce theories and test them against observations. When Albert Einstein announced his relativity theory in 1905, he didn’t ask people to have faith. He claimed that his theory would do a better job than Isaac Newton’s of predicting observations in a solar eclipse in 1919. It is religion, not science, that demands that people have faith in things that otherwise seem unlikely, brands those who do not as “heretics” and “deniers,” requires participation in repeated rituals (recycling, anyone?), and permits sinners to purchase indulgences (carbon offsets for Al Gore’s Read More ›

From Clare Foran at Atlantic: The entrenchment of climate-science denial is one of the ways the United States appears to be exceptional relative to the rest of the world. A comparative 2015 study of nine conservative political parties in countries such as Canada, Germany, and Spain concluded that “the U.S. Republican Party is an anomaly in denying anthropogenic climate change.” Meanwhile, Americans were least likely to agree that climate change is largely the result of human activity in a 2014 survey of 20 countries, including China, India, Australia, and Great Britain. Scientific reality does not seem to have escaped the distorting influence of political polarization in the United States. A paper published in Environment earlier this year suggests that as Read More ›

“Greatly exaggerated,” as Mark Twain put it, when informed of media accounts of his own death. From Maria Gallucci at Mashable: The good news is, relatively speaking, that the rest of the 1,400-mile-long coral reef is alive — severely threatened, yes, but not yet dead. A widely shared “obituary” in Outside magazine last week inaccurately claimed that all of the Great Barrier Reef “passed away in 2016” after a brief battle with global warming and ocean acidification. … Huffington Post and other outlets soon set the record straight, clarifying that while most of the Australian reef is in serious trouble, we still have a fighting chance to rescue it from its deathbed. More. It reminds some of us here of Read More ›

Further to a recent account of cyberbullying of GMO scientists, Brian McNicoll writes at Townhall: Hysterical predictions that haven’t panned out have taken a toll on the credibility of scientists, and one would think environmentalists would want to be more careful about how they state their case going forward. Just 39 percent have “a lot of trust” in information received from climate scientists, according to a Pew Research poll released this week. Only 28 percent say they believe climate scientists understand the causes of global warming, and 19 percent say climate scientists know what should be done to address it. One thought that comes to mind: If there really were a worldwide climate apocalypse, would not more people be experiencing Read More ›

From John Timmer at Ars Technica: Somewhere around a million years ago, the climate underwent a transition. Earlier, it was going through glacial cycles every 40,000 years, but it shifted to taking 100,000 years to cycle (this shift is termed the mid-Pleistocene transition). Snyder’s new record shows that the planet was getting slowly but progressively colder for the first million years or so. But by 1.2 million years ago, the cooling trend began to slow down. After it flattened out, the overall global average temperature has remained stable through to the present, even as glacial cycles caused lots of fluctuations around that average. The analysis can’t separate cause and effect, so there are a number of possibilities here. One is Read More ›