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Communicating Climate

Friday round-up

25 Mar 2011 by group

Last week, Nature published another strong statement addressing the political/economic attack on climate science in an editorial titled “Into Ignorance“. It specifically criticized the right wing element of the U.S. Congress that is attempting to initiate legislation that would strip the US EPA of its powers to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants. In so doing, it cited as an example the charade of a hearing conducted recently, including the Republicans’ disrespectful and ignorant attitude toward the science and scientists. Among many low points, this may have reached its nadir when a House member from Nebraska asked, smirkingly and out of the blue, whether nitrogen should be banned–presumably to make the point that atmospheric gases are all either harmless or outright beneficial, and hence, should not be regulated. Aside from the obvious difference that humans are not altering the nitrogen concentration of the atmosphere, as they are with (several) greenhouse gases, such a question boggles the mind in terms of the mindset that must exist to ask it in a public congressional hearing in the first place. But rarely are the ignorant and ideological bashful about showing it, regardless of who might be listening. In fact an increasing number seem to take it as a badge of honor.

There have been even more strongly worded editorials in the scientific literature recently as well. Trevors and Saier (2011)*, in a journal with a strong tradition of stating exactly where it stands with respect to public policy decisions and their effect on the environment, pull no punches in a recent editorial, describing the numerous societal problems caused when those with the limited perspective and biases born of a narrow economic outlook on the world, get control. These include the losses of critical thinking skills, social/community ethics, and the subsequent wise decision making and planning skills that lead a society to long-term health and stability.

Meanwhile, scientific bodies charged with understanding how the world actually works–instead of how they would imagine and proclaim it to–continue to issue official statements endorsing the consensus view that humans are strongly warming the planet in recent decades, primarily by greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. Three years ago, we wondered whether geologists in general have a different view on climate change to the climate research community. A recent statement from the U.K. Geological Society, however, suggests that our impressions perhaps were not well-founded.

Notwithstanding these choices of ignorance, many other organizations continue apace with many worthwhile and diverse goals of how to deal with the problem. Here are a few links that we have run across in the last week or two that may be of interest to those interested in sustainability and adaptation. Please note the imminent deadlines on some of these.

The Center for Sustainable Development’s online courses related to community-level adaptation to climate change:

The CDKN International Research Call on Climate Compatible Development:

The Climate Frontlines call for abstracts for a July conference in Mexico City on the theme “Indigenous Peoples, Marginalized Populations and Climate Change” [Apologies: the official deadline for abstracts has apparently passed; view this is a conference announcement]

George Mason University’s call for votes on the Climate Change Communicator of the Year

*Trevors, J.T & Saier Jr., M.H. 2011. A vaccine against ignorance? Water, Air and Soil Pollution, DOI 10.1007/s11270-011-0773-1.

Filed Under: Climate Science, Communicating Climate

Blogging climate scientists

14 Mar 2011 by group

The newest arrival in the climate science blogosphere is Isaac Held. This is notable in a number of respects. First, Isaac is a top-tier climate scientist who is hugely respected in the community. For him to decide that it is worth his time to blog on the science should be an important signal for other scientists. Secondly, Isaac is a federal NOAA employee at GFDL in Princeton, and the blog is on the official GFDL website.

[Read more…] about Blogging climate scientists

Filed Under: Climate Science, Communicating Climate

Live-blogging the climate science hearings

7 Mar 2011 by Gavin

I will be live-blogging the House Energy and Commerce committee hearings on climate science with Eli Kintisch. The details are available here, and there should be a live feed from the committee website from 10am.

Eli and I did this last year for the last Democrat-run hearings, and it went quite well – a little like a play-by-play from Eli and some background analysis/cites from me. People can ask questions and comment in real time and depending on how busy it gets, they might get a response.

As usual, this hearing will likely be long on political grandstanding and short on informed discussion, but there might be some gems. Of the witnesses, John Christy and Roger Pielke Sr. are the main witnesses for the majority side, while Richard Somerville, Francis Zwiers and Chris Field are the Dem invitees. There is newcomer to the roster (at least to me), in Knute Nadelhoffer, who presumably will discuss climate change impacts on biological systems (but I don’t really know). There is one out-of-left-field witness, Donald Roberts, who is a serially wrong DDT advocate who is probably there in order to dismiss environmental regulation in general, following the well-worn strategy described in Oreskes and Conway’s “Merchants of Doubt” (Chapter 7 on the revisionist attacks on Rachel Carson) (NB. DDT-related arguments are off topic for this blog, but for background of the specifics of the DDT ‘meme’ see this summary, and interested commenters are encouraged to go to Deltoid).

Anyway, for those who are aficionados of science as contact sport (TM, Steve Schneider), it might be fun.

Update: This was also live-blogged at ClimateCentral and twittered by UCS.

Filed Under: Climate Science, Reporting on climate

Going to extremes

17 Feb 2011 by Gavin

There are two new papers in Nature this week that go right to the heart of the conversation about extreme events and their potential relationship to climate change. This is a complex issue, and one not well-suited to soundbite quotes and headlines, and so we’ll try and give a flavour of what the issues are and what new directions these new papers are pointing towards.
[Read more…] about Going to extremes

Filed Under: Climate Science, Hurricanes, Instrumental Record, Reporting on climate

The Starship vs. Spaceship Earth

7 Feb 2011 by eric

Eric Steig & Ray Pierrehumbert

One of my (Eric’s) favorite old books is The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower It’s a 1970s book about a father (Freeman Dyson, theoretical physicist living in Princeton) and son (George Dyson, hippy kayaker living 90 ft up in a fir tree in British Columbia) that couldn’t be more different, yet are strikingly similar in their originality and brilliance. I started out my career heading into astrophysics, and I’m also an avid sea kayaker and I grew up with the B.C. rainforest out my back door. So I think I have a sense of what drives these guys. Yet I’ve never understood how Freeman Dyson became such a climate contrarian and advocate for off-the-wall biogeoengineering solutions like carbon-eating trees, something we’ve written about before.

It turns out that Brower has wondered the same thing, and in a recent article in The Atlantic, he speculates on the answer. “How could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson,” writes Brower, “be so wrong about climate change and other environmental concerns..?”
[Read more…] about The Starship vs. Spaceship Earth

Filed Under: Climate Science, Communicating Climate, Geoengineering, Scientific practice, skeptics

West Antarctica: still warming

1 Feb 2011 by eric

The temperature reconstruction of O’Donnell et al. (2010) confirms that West Antarctica is warming — but underestimates the rate

Eric Steig

At the end of my post last month on the history of Antarctic science I noted that I had an initial, generally favorable opinion of the paper by O’Donnell et al. in the Journal of Climate. O’Donnell et al. is the peer-reviewed outcome of a series of blog posts started two years ago, mostly aimed at criticizing the 2009 paper in Nature, of which I was the lead author. As one would expect of a peer-reviewed paper, those obviously unsupportable claims found in the original blog posts are absent, and in my view O’Donnell et al. is a perfectly acceptable addition to the literature. O’Donnell et al. suggest several improvements to the methodology we used, most of which I agree with in principle. Unfortunately, their actual implementation by O’Donnell et al. leaves something to be desired, and yield a result that is in disagreement with independent evidence for the magnitude of warming, at least in West Antarctica.

In this post, I’ll summarize the key methodological changes suggested by O’Donnell et al., discuss how their results compare with our results, and the implications for our understanding of recent Antarctic climate change. I’ll then try to make sense of how O’Donnell et al. have apparently wound up with an erroneous result.
[Read more…] about West Antarctica: still warming

Filed Under: Arctic and Antarctic, Climate Science, Instrumental Record, Reporting on climate, skeptics

The obvious answer

28 Jan 2011 by rasmus

Climate science appears to be just like any other science. At least, this is the conclusion from a fresh publication by Marianne Ryghaug and Tomas Moe Skjølsvold (“The global warming of climate science: Climategate and the construction of scientific facts” in International studies in the philosophy of science). This finding is not news to the research community, but this analysis still hints that everything is not as it should be – because why would anyone report from a crime scene if the alleged crime has not even been committed?

[Read more…] about The obvious answer

Filed Under: Communicating Climate, skeptics

Overheard in the newsroom

12 Jan 2011 by group

Reporter doing a phone interview: “Please slow down, professor. You’ve been researching this topic for a decade. I’ve been researching it since lunchtime.”

From here (h/t Josh).

Filed Under: Reporting on climate

Forbes’ rich list of nonsense

6 Jan 2011 by group

Guest commentary from Michael Tobis and Scott Mandia with input from Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and Kevin Trenberth

While it is no longer surprising, it remains disheartening to see a blistering attack on climate science in the business press where thoughtful reviews of climate policy ought to be appearing. Of course, the underlying strategy is to pretend that no evidence that the climate is changing exists, so any effort to address climate change is a waste of resources.

A recent piece by Larry Bell in Forbes, entitled “Hot Sensations Vs. Cold Facts”, is a classic example.
[Read more…] about Forbes’ rich list of nonsense

Filed Under: Climate Science, Reporting on climate

Post-holiday round-up

28 Dec 2010 by group

What with holiday travel, and various other commitments, we’ve missed a few interesting stories over the last week or so.

First off, AGU has posted highlights from this year’s meeting – mainly the keynote lectures, and there are a few interesting presentations for instance from Tim Palmer on how to move climate modelling forward, Ellen Mosley-Thompson on the ice records, and David Hodell on abrupt climate change during the last deglaciation. (We should really have a ‘videos’ page where we can post these links more permanently – all suggestions for other videos to be placed there can be made in the comments).

More relevant for scientist readers might be Michael Oppenheimer’s talk on the science/policy interface and what scientists can usefully do, in the first Stephen Schneider Lecture. There was a wealth of coverage on AGU in general, and for those with patience, looking through the twitter feeds with #agu10 shows up a lot of interesting commentary from both scientists and journalists. Skeptical Science and Steve Easterbrook also have good round ups. [edited]

Second, there was a great front page piece in the New York Times by Justin Gillis on the Keeling curve – and the role that Dave Keeling’s son, Ralph, is playing in continuing his father’s groundbreaking work. Gillis had a few follow-up blogs that are also worth reading. We spend a lot of time criticising media descriptions on climate change, so it’s quite pleasing to be praising a high profile story instead.

Finally, something new. Miloslav Nic has put together a beta version of an interactive guide to IPCC AR4, with clickable references, cited author (for instance, all the Schneiders) and journal searches. This should be a very useful resource and hopefully something IPCC can adopt for themselves in the next report.

Back to normal posting soon….

Filed Under: Climate Science, Communicating Climate

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