Month: May 2014

Above, GOP Senator Marco Rubio complains that President Obama is ‘not a meteorologist”, so shouldn’t, apparently, listen to people that are.  He states he “understands there is a vast consensus” on the science of climate change.
He then shifts, and resorts to fogging the issue with straw men, successfully running out the clock on the interview.
This behavior, and other observations, indicate the increasing discomfort in the GOP that facts are catching up with them, and time is running out on the united front of denial.

USAToday:

Not all that long ago, leading Republicans took strong positions on climate change. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, co-authored legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions. And former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee presented the fight against global warming as a religious cause.

These days, it’s difficult to find a Republican candidate willing to speak out in favor of doing something. Anyone who does so risks defeat in GOP primaries, where ardent climate change skeptics hold sway.

This is a problem for the country, indeed the world.

The National Climate Assessment, released this week, adds to a mounting and overwhelming body of evidence that the effects of rising temperatures are here and now — and that even higher sea levels, more extreme weather and water shortages are in our future if nothing is done.

Addressing the threat won’t be easy, or popular. But denying that a problem even exists — which is common among the most vocal of Republicans — risks branding the party as one that is anti-science and refuses to participate in constructive governance.
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Given the increasing scientific certainty about global warming, and the likelihood that public opinion will shift in the face of ever more compelling evidence, Republicans should be thinking of ways of getting out in front of the issue.

Otherwise, like climate change itself, it will overtake them before they can react.

Below, on CNN, ‘conservative” S.E. Cupp complains that “Science Guy” Bill Nye is ‘bullying” her with the facts.(hard to watch, go to 5:20 for the takeaway)

Continue reading “Republicans Increasingly Defensive on Climate”

Quick primer on sea level, and survey of the cities considered to be most “resilient” in the face of climate change and other challenges.

I like Paul Douglas, and I think his pieces are eminently shareable due to his great visuals, and authoritative but easy going manner.

Sea level is the planetary thermometer.
Remember to direct people to google “colorado, satellite, sea level”, where they can view the actual current graph themselves. There is absolutely no process that can cause sea level to rise as it currently is, other than a warming planet.

New update on rain and El Nino for California/West Coast, from National Weather Service.

Hot topic of discussion this spring has been the signs of an emerging large El Nino event in the pacific, which may have big impacts globally in the coming year, and maybe longer. To find out more, I interviewed Dr. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Dr. Josh Willis of NASA JPL.

Their opinion? It’s on its way, and it looks like a big one.  I’ll have more on this in coming days.

One of the most vile and deceptive arguments that climate deniers like John Christy and Bjorn Lomborg like to make is that the only route to higher living standards in the developing world is thru fossil fuel development.

A new report exposes this, once again, as a lie.

Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON -– Peabody Energy Corp., the world’s largest private-sector coal company, launched a public relations and advertising campaign last month extolling the virtues of coal energy for poor people.
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Burson-Marsteller, the world’s largest PR firm, and its subsidiary, Proof Integrated Communications, are working behind the scenes on Peabody’s PR effort. Burson-Marsteller spokesman Paul Cordasco confirmed to The Huffington Post that the company is working on behalf of Peabody. Peabody spokeswoman Beth Sutton said “Burson-Marsteller and several other firms are providing support for the campaign.”

Sutton said the campaign “will be sustained long term” and “is aimed at changing the global conversation to focus on energy poverty.”

Continue reading “Is Coal Ready to Serve Man? Report Questions Claim.”

David Horsey in the LATimes:

Recently, I wrote about how the billionaire Koch boys, conservative state legislators and big utilities are leading the charge in several states to force private citizens with solar panels on their homes to pay extra fees to be connected to the power grid. At the time it looked as if they had won a big victory in Oklahoma, where the Republican-dominated Legislature passed a bill authorizing just such a fee scheme.

It turns out all the hard work of the anti-solar forces was immediately blunted by an executive order issued by Gov. Mary Fallin. The order directs the state energy commission to impose solar fees only as a last resort and to continue making expansion of solar power a priority.

The question is how a Republican governor in a deep red state can go against the Kochs, the most notable financial contributors to right wing causes in the country. The answer is that among the thousands of people who are installing solar panels on their roofs (at an estimated rate of one new system every four minutes) are a whole bunch of independent-minded folks with strong libertarian impulses. They may or may not belong to the tea party, but they want to be able to fend for themselves without big government or big business telling them what they can and can’t do.

To these conservative-minded citizens, the extra fee being pushed by the Kochs and the utilities is the worst thing in the world: a tax.

“Monopoly utilities want to extinguish the independent rooftop solar market in America to protect their socialist control of how we get our electricity.” That assertion comes from the website of a group named TUSK, or Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed. It is a coalition of conservatives led by former California Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr. that, so far, has been very successful in beating back the energy industry attack.

Rachel Maddow’s piece below was made before Governor Fallin’s executive order, still interesting though, as it fleshes out similar events in other states.

Generally good coverage of the US Global Change report big rollout.

 

War has broken out on noted climate change skeptic (“Official Climatologist of the Rush Limbaugh Show”) Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog.
All because Dr. Spencer is tired of hearing the same nonsense over and over, afraid it might make folks (like him) look, well, …naive, uninformed, gullible, and paranoid.
Well, yeah, ya think?

So, he wrote a post titled “Skeptical Arguments that Don’t Hold Water” (to which I might add “..as well as a warmer atmosphere.”)

It’s a little like watching Sean Hannity and Fox News try to distance themselves from the racist Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy.

Hilarity ensued with 600  outraged screams from Dr. Spencer’s naive, uninformed, gullible and paranoid readers. And counting.

Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog:

There are some very good arguments for being skeptical of global warming predictions. But the proliferation of bad arguments is becoming almost dizzying.

I understand and appreciate that many of the things we think we know in science end up being wrong. I get that. But some of the alternative explanations I’m seeing border on the ludicrous.

So, here’s my Top 10 list of stupid skeptic arguments. I’m sure there are more, and maybe I missed a couple important ones. Oh well.

My obvious goal here is not to change minds that are already made up, which is impossible (by definition), but to reach 1,000+ (mostly nasty) comments in response to this post. So, help me out here!

1. THERE IS NO GREENHOUSE EFFECT. Despite the fact that downwelling IR from the sky can be measured, and amounts to a level (~300 W/m2) that can be scarcely be ignored; the neglect of which would totally screw up weather forecast model runs if it was not included; and would lead to VERY cold nights if it didn’t exist; and can be easily measured directly with a handheld IR thermometer pointed at the sky (because an IR thermometer measures the IR-induced temperature change of the surface of a thermopile, QED)… Please stop the “no greenhouse effect” stuff. It’s making us skeptics look bad. I’ve blogged on this numerous times…maybe start here.

2. THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT VIOLATES THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. The second law can be stated in several ways, but one way is that the net flow of energy must be from higher temperature to lower temperature. This is not violated by the greenhouse effect. The apparent violation of the 2nd Law seems to be traced to the fact that all bodies emit IR radiation…including cooler bodies toward warmer bodies. But the NET flow of thermal radiation is still from the warmer body to the cooler body. Even if you don’t believe there is 2-way flow, and only 1-way flow…the rate of flow depends upon the temperature of both bodies, and changing the cooler body’s temperature will change the cooling rate (and thus the temperature) of the warmer body. So, yes, a cooler body can make a warm body even warmer still…as evidenced by putting your clothes on.

Continue reading “Spencer vs Climate Deniers”

As part of it’s coverage of the US Global Change report, CBS used this example of water scarcity.

The Story: More communities, like Wichita Falls, Texas, forced to use water “toilet to tap”. NPR via KERAnews.org:

Mayor Glenn Barham says three years of extreme drought have changed life for 104,000 people living in Wichita Falls, which is about 115 miles northwest of Fort Worth. “(There’s) no outside irrigation whatsoever with potable water. Car washes are closed one day a week.  If you drain your pool to do maintenance you aren’t allowed to fill it,” he explained. The mayor says citizens are pitching in and have cut their city’s water use by more than one-third.  Still, water supplies are still expected to run out in two years, which is why the city has built a 13-mile pipeline that connects its wastewater plant to the plant where water is purified for drinking. That’s right: What residents flush down the toilet will be part of what’s cleaned up and sent back to them through the tap. “It’s gross” “I think it’s gross,” said Marissa Oliveras as she ordered a glass of tap water with her sandwich at Gidget’s Sandwich Shack in downtown Wichita Falls. “I mean it’s recycled wastewater we could be drinking,” she said.  She plans to switch to bottled water. Kira Smith saves money ordering tap water at the restaurant now, but says she’ll pay $1.89 for a bottle of water when the recycled wastewater begins to flow. “It definitely grosses me out,” Smith said.  “I’m sure that they would clean it and filter it up to standards.  But it’s a mindset kind of thing. You know what I’m talking about?”

Continue reading “As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls. Tapping Toilets.”

From “Follow the Leaders”, an  installation by Isaac Cordal

Continue reading “Global Leaders Meet to Discuss Climate Change”