Rocket Science!
via XKCD (of course)
Katharine Hayhoe on the Sandy/Climate connection
Katharine Hayhoe on Twitter (or rather the service TwitLonger since 140 characters is obviously not enough) explaining climate change's influence on Sandy, and the difficulties in communicating the nuances involved to the press: As a scientist in a field where consensus is constantly challenged, I'm a bit sensitive about being pitted against a colleague. Case in point,... Continue Reading →
Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change
via Planet3.0
A unique visualization of Sandy
The website hint.fm/wind/ (which understandably is currently very slow) has an incredibly interesting visualization of the wind patterns over the entire continental United States. An instantly recognizable feature tonight is Sandy.
The saga of Epsilon and Zeta
Check out XKCD for the whole story.
An upside to all of this lack of attention
John Nielsen-Gammon thinks that perhaps it is better that climate change isn't being given much attention in the 2012 election Maybe it’s a good thing that the major political parties are not engaged in a pitched battle over climate change. Maybe this presents us with an opportunity to remove the political baggage from the scientific... Continue Reading →
Loss of Arctic Sea Ice … and of a ‘Giant Parasol’
via the YALE forum on CLIMATE CHANGE & THE MEDIA
The demise of balance as bias has been greatly exaggerated
A least at that bastion of liberalism that is PBS News Hour. DeSmogBlog and Climate Progress have more. UPDATE: The PBS ombudsman has admitted that they 'stumbled badly'.
Symphony of Science: Our Biggest Challenge
The latest from the awesome Symphony of Science. This is what auto-tune was made for! h/t Peter Sinclar
4 amnesiac bloggers
Stephan Lewandowsky has identified the 4 remaining bloggers that he asked to post a link to his survey about climate denialism and conspiracy theories (paper here). They are: Dr Roger Pielke Jr (he replied to the initial contact) Mr Marc Morano (of Climatedepot; he replied to the initial contact) Dr Roy Spencer (no reply) Mr... Continue Reading →
A line by line response to Mitt Romney’s climate response to Science Debate 2012
Below is Romney's response (in the blockquotes, my comments are in normal text) to the Science Debate 2012 question on climate: The Earth’s climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet. What is your position on cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and other policies proposed... Continue Reading →
Quote of the day
John Nielsen-Gammon's conclusion after a thorough debunking of Steve Milloy's junk science: it took five pages to retort six pages of falsehoods. This is the epitome of junk science.
Where have I heard this before?
Take a guess what the conspiracy is: The experimental evidence does not agree with ______, and an elite knows it does not agree, but because its political they cover it up. Every now and again an experimental result might break through claiming a result that disagrees with ________. But what “they” (who want to cover-up)... Continue Reading →
Short-term needs vs the long-term
Romney's 'joke' about how Obama promised to heal the planet, while Romney would promise to help you and your family was quickly and deservedly mocked by many as a perfect example of someone simply not getting the importance sustainability. But while mocking Romney for his colossal miss-understanding of why we care about sustainability, and why... Continue Reading →
Quote of the day
Uncertainty regarding global warming appears to be a legitimate basis for postponing action, which is usually identified as 'costly.' But this idea is almost unique to climate change. In other areas of public safety, such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, inflation, or vaccination, an 'insurance' principle seems to prevail: if there is sufficient likelihood of significant... Continue Reading →
Climate Change: Lines of Evidence
Produced by the National Academies of Science.
Sea Ice: Climate vs Weather
Via Tamino's excellent Open Mind blog: This is climate change: This is weather: Put them together, you get a death spiral for Arctic sea ice:
Neil
By now the news of Neil Armstrong's death is a few days old, but while we all mourn the passing of a great man, we should take the opportunity to remember that only 66 years after the Wright brothers' first historic flight we put a man on the moon. What have we done in the... Continue Reading →
The big Curiosity update
A lot has happened in the past few weeks on Mars. First of all we have much more high resolution videos of the entry decent and landing: And amazing self portraits: And brilliant panoramas: Then came the system checks. First a little wiggling of the wheels: And a test of the laser systems: Then it... Continue Reading →
Quote of the day
Michael Tobis' contribution to the Daily Kos Climate Change SOS: The only game in town is the Last Ton game, where the lower the amount of fossil fuels burnt before the last ton is burnt, the better the ultimate result is for humanity and pretty much all other species. [UPDATE by mt]: Please note, the... Continue Reading →
A 2C target is largely out of the window
Depressingly, I agree: One of the government's most senior scientific advisers has said that efforts to stop a sharp rise in global temperatures were now "unrealistic". Prof Sir Bob Watson said that any hope of restricting the average temperature rise to 2C was "out the window". He said that the rise could be as high... Continue Reading →
The 50mm ‘trick’
From the Telegraph: Wind farm developers using 'tricks' to make turbines look smaller Wind farm developers make turbines look smaller than they actually are when applying for planning permission in order to 'trick' councils into giving them the go-ahead, a leading architect has warned. What is this nefarious trick? Using 50mm lenses to take pictures... Continue Reading →
What’s in that pipe?
It turns out pipeline operators aren't required to tell anyone: After the dilbit gushed into the river, it began separating into its constituent parts. The heavy bitumen sank to the river bottom, leaving a mess that is still being cleaned up. Meanwhile, the chemical additives evaporated, creating a foul smell that lingered for days. People reported headaches,... Continue Reading →
There is no solution to the problem of climate change without cutting emissions
When people say of the fight to cut GHG emissions, "this isn't working; let's try something else" they are never referring to making our (if it really is "our") actions bigger; they always want to make our goals smaller. There is always a prominent complaint of how "poisonous" the climate debate has become, but like... Continue Reading →
Shifting norms
My last article took issue with the trend of calling extreme heat-waves (like the one currently affecting much of the US) a new normal. But that doesn't mean that the normal climate hasn't shifted. This is made clear by this animation made from data in Hansen et al. 2012: Clearly the climate has shifted. But... Continue Reading →