Paul Douglas continues his Climate Matters series with a new update on drought in the midwest.
Month: April 2013
Monckton Panned in Kiwi-Land. Might Be Ready to Hang up Spurs.
New Zealand’s top climate change scientists have rallied together to slam a visiting sceptic who is touring the country to proclaim global warming as a myth that should be ignored.
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Dr James Renwick, associate professor of physical geography at Victoria University, dismissed Lord Monckton’s views as “rubbish”.
“He’s a great showman and speaker, and climate change is a vehicle to self-publicise.
“But he has no training and has studiously avoided learning anything about science, I would say.”
Niwa principal scientist Brett Mullan said Lord Monckton’s views were “very damaging” for public perception.
Professor Dave Frame, director of the Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University, described him as a “vaudeville act” to be ignored.
“Someone who goes around saying things we know are not true can actually be quite harmful.”
Lord Monckton has rejected the claims as ”hate speech”.
A week into his self-described “barnstorming” tour of New Zealand, arch-sceptic Christopher Monckton seems to be quietly licking his wounds after a string of farcical public and media appearances.
The armchair climate change expert has in the past managed to stimulate discussion of climate science on his tours of New Zealand and Australia, even if he has been criticized for manipulating and cherry-picking the science to suit his narrative on climate.
However, after his roasting in the media, his train wreck of a public discussion in Auckland and a falling out with one of his imagined allies, Monckton’s arguments against acting on climate change have received scant attention, overshadowed by his erratic behaviour.
The Weekend Herald lavished the full back page interview on Monckton last Saturday and in the process featured perhaps the best insight yet into the mind of Lord Monckton who abruptly ended the interview. Writes the Weekend Herald’s Michele Hewitson:
“It is very difficult to walk out on an interview when the only place you have to walk out of is the living room in the house where you are staying and into the kitchen where the person you are walking out on has to follow you to get to the front door. We stood about for a bit while he studiously ignored me and while I waited for him to laugh because it was so farcical.
“But he didn’t. He wouldn’t even say goodbye, which was quite some feat because it might have been the first time he had ever stopped talking.”
New Video: Arctic Ice – The Death Spiral Continues
After watching several videos of the breakup of Beaufort sea Ice during the dead of winter, I decided to contact a leading ice expert, Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, for analysis and perspective. I mixed his comments in with the increasingly-on-the-same-page warnings from his fellow scientists around the country.
I’ll post our full conversation later in the week.
Wildfire Increase is Subject of US Report – and the Dark Snow Project
As Jason Box outlines above, the cumulative effects of increasing wildfires on Greenland, and global ice in general, will be the impetus for the DarkSnowProject – Dr. Box’s research expedition to Greenland this summer, which I will be documenting. The basic premise: the Greenland ice sheet has been observed to be gradually darkening over the past decade. Some of that darkening may be caused by increased soot from North American Wildfires. I’ll be announcing more developments on this very soon.
Below, more evidence from US Government agencies on the climate driven increase in wildfires expected in coming decades.
The hotter, drier climate will transform Rocky Mountain forests, unleashing wider wildfires and insect attacks, federal scientists warn in a report for Congress and the White House.
The U.S. Forest Service scientists project that, by 2050, the area burned each year by increasingly severe wildfires will at least double, to around 20 million acres nationwide.
Some regions, including western Colorado, are expected to face up to a fivefold increase in acres burned if climate change continues on the current trajectory.
Floods, droughts and heat waves, driven by changing weather patterns, also are expected to spur bug infestations of the sort seen across 4 million acres of Colorado pine forests.
Wildfires in the U.S. will be at least twice as destructive by 2050, burning around 20 million acres nationwide each year, according to a federal report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Scientists from the U.S. Forest Service, who authored the report, found regions such as western Colorado — which already experienced its most destructive wildfire in history last summer — will face an even greater risk fire risk: those regions are expected to face up to a five-fold increase in acres burned by 2050.
Continue reading “Wildfire Increase is Subject of US Report – and the Dark Snow Project”
James Delingpole: The True Face of Denialism
James Delingpole in The Telegraph:
Should Michael Mann be given the electric chair for having concocted arguably the most risibly inept, misleading, cherry-picking, worthless and mendacious graph – the Hockey Stick – in the history of junk science?
Should George Monbiot be hanged by the neck for his decade or so’s hysterical promulgation of the great climate change scam and other idiocies too numerous to mention?
Should Tim Flannery be fed to the crocodiles for the role he has played in the fleecing of the Australian taxpayer and the diversion of scarce resources into pointless projects like all the eyewateringly expensive desalination plants built as a result of his doomy prognostications about water shortages caused by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming?
It ought to go without saying that my answer to all these questions is – *regretful sigh* – no.
If you ever needed (more) proof that the professional deniers are driven by a mindless rage devoid of any actual science, I urge you to read James Delingpole’s latest piece.
It will nauseate you — consider yourself warned. But I think it’s important to dissect this hate speech in detail because Delingpole seems to think that hate speech isn’t hate speech if you just use rhetoric — the figures of speech, like metaphor.
Having spent a quarter century studying rhetoric and having just published a well-received book on this very subject — Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga — I think I can safely say that is bullshit, though most likely only metaphorical bullshit (see below).
You may recall Delingpole’s 2011 meltdown on the BBC, where they got him to admit he is a hand-waving know-nothing: “It is not my job to sit down and read peer-reviewed papers because I simply haven’t got the time…. I am an interpreter of interpretations.” This pieces makes that meltdown look like the height of lucidity.
The piece is worth examining in detail because I think it is indicative of how the deniers and disinformers really feel — and we’ll know if that’s true if none of them denounce it.
The headline is “An English class for trolls, professional offence-takers and climate activists.” Delingpole is going to lecture us plebes on our native tongue.
Continue reading “James Delingpole: The True Face of Denialism”
Dark Snow Project On Track, On Budget, and On Line
We’re going to Greenland, and we’ll be there for this year’s melt season. That’s the Headline.
If you haven’t heard of the Dark Snow Project, – get thee to darksnowproject.org, and/or check out the videos above, or here and here.
We’ve got the barebones of a budget to get us there, but we are still fundraising in the hope of maximizing our capabilities for transportation and sampling once we get to the base of the ice sheet.
There are some really fantastic events coming up this month to raise awareness and additional funding. I’ll be posting more on that as things get nailed down in the next few days – but if you are anywhere near the New York City area, block out sunday, April 21, the day before earth day, for a fun and educational afternoon jaunt in the city.
Three weeks ago we were all beginning to wonder if this would really happen. Now, with some creativity in planning our modes of transport – the big ticket item – and with help from a volunteer cadre of highly motivated, highly skilled, highly caffeinated social media professionals who have jumped in to help, it looks like this thing has a shot at taking Citizen Science seriously viral.
Kicking off the April festivities, I’ll be a guest on the live video blog Magic Sandwich show Sunday afternoon, April 7, at 3 pm EDT, 8 pm in the UK/western europe. The broadcast will be available on Ustream and Vaughntv.
Let me say that Magic Sandwich Maestro DPR Jones is a friend of this series, and of facts and truth on the web – and helped me out a few years ago with a spectacular, bold, funny, bloody-minded and indescribably generous blogathon that spanned 10 time zones and scared up the votes for ClimateCrocks to win an online funding grant.
The Dark Snow Project will be sampling snow at various points on the Greenland sheet to look for mechanisms that might be contributing to the gradual darkening of the sheet, which has now been observed over a decade. Most especially, we’ll be looking for soot from wildfires that are on the increase in North America, to determine if they may be an important and unquantified climate feedback.
Thanks to all who have pitched in so far, if you have not yet – we’ve now added an IndieGoGo page to the crowdsourcing effort – with some great gifts for givers who go that route. If you go directly to the darksnowproject page – you can give via PayPal, via credit card, or by sending a check directly to Ohio State University, whose Foundation has tax exempt status. (all donations are US tax deductions)
Music Break: Snoop Lion – No Guns Allowed
Disclosure: I’m not rap-literate. I’m a white small town midwesterner. A granola head at that.
Took my son to an Eminem concert in Detroit one time – I really did like some of that early Em stuff, which I thought hilarious. Hardly know Snoop Dogg at all other than by reputation.
Supposedly he’s taking a new look at things. Maybe it’ll help.
[Verse: Snoop Lion / Cori B.]
Money makes a man and that’s a crime
If we all were rich, we’d spend more time
With our daughters and sons, they’re losing their minds
We all feel hurt,here’s mine, hear me now[Chorus: Snoop Lion / Cori B.]
Cause, no guns are allowed, in here tonight
We’re gonna have a free-for-all, no fights
I wanna get lost in the crowd, in here tonight
I need to hear my thoughts, turn the music up loud[Hook: Snoop Lion]
Let the music play, me don’t want no more gunplay
When the bodies hit the ground, there’s nothing left to say, ay, ay
Me don’t want to see no more innocent blood shed
Me don’t want to see no more youth dead
Come hear me now[Chorus: Snoop Lion / Cori B.]
[Verse: Drake]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, news from back home
This when it hurts to be gone
Two more young names to be carved out of stone
One summer day that went horribly wrong
Got my dawg on the phone
Cryin’ and sayin’ to leave him alone, but I’m not leavin’ his side
I know that somebody died, somebody’s child
Some people ducked down and some people hide
Some people just cannot react in time
Bullets do not choose a victim
It is the shooter that picks ’em
They just can’t wait to get you in the system
The district attorney could use a conviction
Told you no guns and then you didn’t listen
Life is so heavy with that on your soul
Dedicate this to Shyanne and Josh
And pour sumthin’ out for the lives that they stole
416[Chorus: Snoop Lion / Cori B.]
[Outro: Snoop Lion / Cori B.]
Money makes a man and that’s a crime
Money makes a man and that’s a crime
I wanna get lost in the crowd, in here tonight
Below: Trailer for Snoop’s new movie “Reincarnated”
Continue reading “Music Break: Snoop Lion – No Guns Allowed”
Limbaugh’s Political Science
No Oil Spill in Arkansas. All Quiet on EastAsian Front.
Enjoy this aerial footage of the Arkansas dilbit spill. Its all your going to see.
Brian Merchant at Motherboard:
Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline just ruptured and spewed toxic oily muck all over Arkansas. It ran like a river through the suburb of Mayflower, pop. 2,000. Now, Exxon has publicly decreed that it will clean up all of the oil it spilled. Which is kind of strange, because officially, according to Exxon, there was no oilspill. Technically, there was no oil in the pipeline in the first place.
That’s because if that pipeline was carrying oil, Exxon would have had to pay eight cents per barrel it pumped into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. The fund was set up by a 1980 law enacted to ensure there’s enough cash on hand to cover the costs of cleanup when, say, a giant pipeline ruptures and spews crude oil all over people’s houses. But, in a little legal slight-of-hand, tar sands oil, or bitumen, is not technically classified as oil. And that’s the stuff that was flowing through Exxon’s pipeline.
Continue reading “No Oil Spill in Arkansas. All Quiet on EastAsian Front.”
Turning Great Lakes to Toxic Soup
Video above would make good background music while reading this post.
One of the signal moments at the birth of the environmental movement came when the Cuyahoga River, a tributary of Lake Erie in Cleveland, caught fire. The river which runs thru a heavily industrialized district, was said to be so thick with pollution that rats were seen walking across it.
I was working as a deckhand on Great Lakes freighters a few years later – long after the fires were out – but I remember passing thru this area at night, on the way to drop off taconite pellets from Duluth at a steel mill. It made one think of a Bosch landscape.
The visuals of water bursting into flame brought home the reality of pollution’s effects in a visceral way to a generation of Americans.
Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can’t make you burn
Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on
Now, with exacerbation from climate change, invasive species and development pressure, the Lakes are under threat as they have not been since that fire on the water.
It was the largest algae bloom in Lake Erie’s recorded history — a scummy, toxic blob that oozed across nearly one-fifth of the lake’s surface during the summer and fall of 2011. It sucked oxygen from the water, clogged boat motors and washed ashore in rotting masses that turned beachgoers’ stomachs.