Dr. Jim White is Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado.
Dr White chaired the production of a 2013 National Academy of Science report on Abrupt climate change.
His entire talk is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shBUcF…
Dr. White figured prominently in my video on Abrupt Climate Change, below. Continue reading “Dr. James White on Methane and Abrupt Change”
Was doing a fundraiser saturday night, trying to finance my trip to AGU in San Francisico next month. Somebody popped the Methane question. My “more information needed” answer probably did not satisfy him. But, ..
more information is needed.
As a PhD student in 1991, I placed my first methane-emissions measurement chamber on the Alaskan tundra. My goal was to reduce uncertainties in the estimates of greenhouse-gas emissions from the Arctic. The first assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had been released, and methane emissions from wetlands in the region had been identified as a ‘wild card’ in the climate system. They still are.
I followed the best practices at the time. My gas samples were handled according to protocols and calibrated against ‘god bottles’ of gases with precisely known concentrations — part of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s network of standards for atmospheric trace gas analysis. Other scientists carried out similarly careful work. More than 20 years on, Arctic methane emissions remain just as uncertain.
The reason is natural variability. Methane fluxes can vary by a factor of two or more from year to year, which is as large as the measurement uncertainties that we once set out to reduce1. So the range for global wetland methane emissions recognized today2 (140–280 teragrams of methane per year; see ‘Methane sources‘) is the same as it was in 1974, when the first global methane budget was published3.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas — it is some 25 times stronger per tonne than carbon dioxide in warming the climate. So not knowing why it varies in the atmosphere is a serious problem. Worse, tipping points in the climate system that cause sudden surges in methane release from the Arctic would have a substantial effect on global temperatures.
To learn what governs this variability, we need to expand ground-based networks across the polar region for monitoring carbon release from ecosystems and its exchange with the atmosphere. Attention should focus on the most prolific sources in wetlands, lakes and coastal areas. Continue reading “More Understanding Needed on Methane”
Video above, Jane Lubchenco, former NOAA administrator, in a clip from her appearance at Climate One in San Francisco last year, relating face-palming moment from her interactions with congress.
Her story illustrates what we’re up against in trying to pry science funding out of a congress that believes science is “lies from the pit of hell”.
Recent statistics show the accuracy (or “skill”) of the primary U.S. model – the GFS (Global Forecast System) – ranks third behind the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) global model, frequently referred to as the “European model”, and the United Kingdom Met (UK Met) Office global model.
After the European model schooled the U.S. GFS during Sandy, Congress took notice and authorized $23.7 million for forecasting equipment and supercomputer infrastructure in the National Weather Service (NWS).
A majority of voters in swing states prefer a candidate that wants to take action on climate change and curb carbon pollution, according to a new poll.
The poll, conducted by Hart Research for three national green groups, found that 54 percent of the eligible voters surveyed across five swing states are more likely to vote for a candidate that wants to fight climate change.
Additionally, 68 percent of the 1,505 likely voters questioned across the states favor a candidate that wants to expand clean energy like solar and wind.The poll, which surveyed voters via landline or cellphone in Colorado, New Hampshire, Michigan, Iowa and North Carolina, found 41 percent are less likely to vote for a Republican based on the candidate’s positions on energy, climate change and the environment.
When asking which issue they had heard about the most from candidates, however, a majority of voters ranked the president’s healthcare law as the top.
Since then polls show that the political landscape has changed. A 2013 survey by USA Today and Stanford University found that 71 percent of Americans say they are already seeing the results of climate change, and 55 percent support limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Mr. Krosnick of Stanford analyzed polls in 46 states conducted between 2006 and 2013 and found that in every state surveyed, at least 75 percent of the population acknowledged the existence of climate change, and at least 67 percent said the government should limit greenhouse gas emissions.
One result is that a cadre of Republican staffers and advisers, most under the age of 40, have started pushing their bosses to find a way to address the issue.
Climate deniers have already established beyond a doubt that Hurricanes are caused by Gay Parades, right? So that’s settled science.
Turns out it goes much deeper than that.
Forget about the overwhelming consensus among scientists and 200 years of physics. That climate thing? All a plot by gay people.
Thank..uh.., gosh.
Now I can forget about climate change and spend all my time obsessively and creepily fantasizing what kind of sex other people might be having.
On yesterday’s edition of “Washington Watch,” Tony Perkins returned to one of his favorite talking points about how gay rights are part of a population control conspiracy to extinguish the human race.
A listener called in to tell the Family Research Council president that he thinks the reason homosexuality is “promoted is because it doesn’t lead to reproduction and that’s why it’s promoted. There’s this anti-life agenda, there’s a total anti-human, anti-life, human beings are a virus, type of mentality.”
Perkins responded that the caller was “absolutely correct,” saying that he once wrote about how “climate change alarmists and those who are pushing population control” actually “promote homosexuality” because “there’s no procreation there.”
“They go crazy, they deny it but the evidence is there, it’s footnoted in my book.”
When it comes to psychological damage, certain religious beliefs and practices are reliably more toxic than others.
Janet Heimlich is an investigative journalist who has explored religious child maltreatment, which describes abuse and neglect in the service of religious belief. In her book, Breaking their Will, Heimlich identifies three characteristics of religious groups that are particularly prone to harming children. Clinical work with reclaimers, that is, people who are reclaiming their lives and in recovery from toxic religion, suggests that these same qualities put adults at risk, along with a particular set of manipulations found in fundamentalist Christian churches and biblical literalism.
Why the IPCC is a very conservative document, above, from my interview with Stefan Rahmstorf, last year in Reykjavik.
Chris Mooney in Washington Post Wonkblog:
On Nov. 2, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release its “Synthesis Report,” the final stage in a yearlong document dump that, collectively, presents the current expert consensus about climate change and its consequences. This synthesis report (which has already been leaked and reported on — like it always is) pulls together the conclusions of three prior reports of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report, and will “provide the roadmap by which policymakers will hopefully find their way to a global agreement to finally reverse course on climate change,” according to the IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri.
There’s just one problem. According to a number of scientific critics, the scientific consensus represented by the IPCC is a very conservative consensus. IPCC’s reports, they say, often underestimate the severity of global warming, in a way that may actually confuse policymakers (or worse). The IPCC, one scientific group charged last year, has a tendency to “err on the side of least drama.” And now, in a new study just out in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, another group of researchers echoes that point. In scientific parlance, they charge that the IPCC is focused on avoiding what are called “type 1” errors — claiming something is happening when it really is not (a “false positive”) — rather than on avoiding “type 2” errors — not claiming something is happening when it really is (a “false negative”).
The consequence is that we do not always hear directly from the IPCC about how bad things could be.
Continue reading “Are Scientists Too Conservative About Climate?”
I’m researching the impacts of sea level rise in Florida for the next video. One interesting wrinkle evolving, especially visible in this election season, is the increasingly difficult balancing act that conservative politicians have in areas like South Florida, where the impacts of climate change, particularly sea level rise, are so directly obvious in regular folk’s daily lives, that to maintain the default “it’s a liberal plot” position is to be seen as obviously unhinged.
Local politicians in the area are coming together on a “practical” option of “dealing with the problem” with out specifying what the root of the problem is.
Works like this:
Problem: There’s water on my street.
Solution: giant pumps to pump it out to sea.
Problem solved.
Wait. Wasn’t that an intervention by big government at tax payer expense? Shouldn’t the free market just sort out the winners and losers here?
Miami can afford pumps. For now. What about the rest of the area?
And if sea level is rising because of climate change – shouldn’t we deal with climate change?
“I’m not a scientist.”
I talked to Rolling Stone Senior writer Jeff Goodell about this strange, emerging syndrome, of conservatives spinning wildly in the face of their increasingly obvious blinders on the world’s most critical problem, and its solutions. Jeff has been covering the reaction to encroaching sea level rise in South Florida for several years, and if you have not read his piece “Goodbye Miami”, from last year, do so now.
Eli Lehrer, former conservative wonk for the Heartland Institute, came to his senses on climate a few years ago, (relatively speaking), and has been thinking about these sticky problems.
He wrote a worth-reading-in-entirety-piece recently in the conservative Weekly Standard:
Despite growing support from some conservative policy wonks, the idea of taxing carbon dioxide emissions, even as an alternative to the sort of heavy-handed greenhouse regulations promulgated by the Obama administration, has failed to garner much enthusiasm on the right.
The idea remains almost untouchable for Republican politicians, and the notion that there’s any chance that could change in the near future has been dismissed as “wishful thinking” by left-wing outlets like Mother Jones.
While this may be a fair assessment of the political facts as they stand, if progressives actually wanted to avert the various catastrophes that environmentalists say are inevitable without serious policy action—changes in growing seasons, collapse of certain fisheries, rising sea levels, and possibly increases in certain types of natural disasters—there are ways they could help sell a carbon tax to the right.
Conservatives will never support a carbon tax so long as they fear it will be used to promote more intrusive government, more spending, and more control over individuals’ lives. But if the left convincingly made the case that they are willing to give up new revenue, new regulations, and new resource development restrictions to make it happen, conservative support for a carbon tax is within the realm of possibility. But progressives will have to make certain policy concessions to get there.
Continue reading “Conservatives Increasingly Conflicted on Climate”
Someone spent an altogether scary amount of time planning this thing out. Drone-shot Music video from OK Go. We’re all amateurs compared to this.
The L.A. rock band OK Go is famous for its lively viral music videos featuring highly choreographed routines using treadmills, optical illusions and elaborate product placement.
The band’s latest video — for the their new track “I Won’t Let You Down” — is another viral sensation, racking up almost 9 million views in just four days. The video features the band riding what appears to be high-tech motorized unicycles, along with an alarming number of umbrella-wielding Japanese school girls.
Filmed at an abandoned warehouse complex outside of Tokyo, the video was funded by Honda and features the company’s U3-X personal mobility device. Officially unveiled in 2009, the one-wheel-drive U3-X is still in development and not yet available to consumers.
It’s evidently available to rock bands, though, and OK Go makes good use of the technology by performing a complex Busby Berkeley style routine showcasing the device’s surprising range of movement. Sort of like a Segway with a seat, the U3-X allows riders to achieve a full 360-degree range of lateral movement — forward, backward, side-to-side or diagonally — simply by shifting their weight.
The U3-X achieves this by way of internal gyroscopic balance system and a large central wheel, whose outer rim is wrapped in perpendicular smaller-diameter wheels. It’s a little hard to describe, but you can check out the specs on Honda’s project page.
As the five-minute video unspools — in one unbroken take, mind you — the camera zips around and shoots up into the sky, looking down on the 1,500 volunteer dancers below. Film director Morihiro Harano told Billboard magazine that he used an “octocopter” drone platform to move the camera, using both GPS and hand-held controls.
In the video’s final scene, the drone camera ascends to an altitude of nearly half a mile, as the dancers below use their umbrellas to the illusion of an impossible scrolling pixel display. It’s a pretty great trick, and the creative team says it took about 50 to 60 tries to get it right. Check it out.
