Month: November 2014

Helmet strongly suggested.

Description:

Humanity’s survival depends on not burning two-thirds of our global oil reserves, so we must act now by limiting fossil fuel extraction. The highly biodiverse Amazon basin is a keystone area in combating climate change because it regulates our planet’s health and drives global weather patterns. Preserving regions most critical for our survival—from the Amazon to the Arctic—is the solution to avoiding climate chaos. That’s why we are globally calling to KEEP THE OIL IN THE GROUND, starting with the Amazon.

He may not be a climate scientist, but, he is a science guy.
People love to hear from Bill Nye on climate change.

In Australia, President Obama devoted an impressive piece, almost 8 minutes, of a longer address, to the issue of climate change, no doubt much to the discomfort of his climate denier host, Prime Minister Tony Abbot.

If this is Obama finally being Obama, I look forward to a repeat performance of this in the US, when he gets back.  This kind of Presidential focus is what is necessary to move the public opinion ball forward and light a fire under climate deniers in congress.

CBC:

The G20 communique will include a significant passage on climate change, EU officials said on Sunday, as the United States and other heavyweight nations override host Australia’s attempts to keep the issue off the formal agenda.
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On Sunday, momentum swung back to other major concerns for the Group of 20 leading economies, including climate change.

That is something of an embarrassment for Australia, which had argued it was not a clear economic issue and so should not be discussed at the G20. Indeed, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has questioned the science behind climate change.

“The most difficult discussion was on climate change,” an EU official told reporters on condition of anonymity. “This was really trench warfare, this was really step by step by step. In the end we have references to most of the things we wanted.”

The official said the passage included practical measures that countries could take and a reference to contributing to the Green Climate Fund, which U.S. President Barack Obama committed $3 billion to on Saturday.

The U.S. and Europe led the push to have climate change discussed at the meeting, with Obama using a speech on Saturday to warn that Australia’s iconic Great Barrier Reef was under threat.

Junkee.com

Regardless, it took the President just 20 minutes to get to the topic on everyone’s minds: climate change. And when he did, the entire room broke into applause. “Here in the Asia Pacific, nobody has more at stake when it comes to thinking about and then acting on climate change,” he said. “Here in Australia, it means longer droughts, more wildfires… The incredible natural glory of the Great Barrier Reef is threatened.”

Continue reading “Obama Up Over Climate Denial Down Under”

Teachable moment. Let’s get caught up again on the whole polar vortex thing. This post might be a good one to share with anyone who’s wondering what’s up with the cold snap we are seeing in North America.

Above: Nice video from Dr Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

ClimateProgress:

The Arctic Outbreak, an unseasonable bout of frigid air that’s sweeping across the U.S. this week, is not the same as last winter’s so-called “Polar Vortex” event. Though both gave Americans the rare experience of breathing crisp, cold Arctic air, both were caused by different things: last winter’s “Polar Vortex” event seemingly random, and the current Arctic Outbreak caused by Super Typhoon Nuri in the Western Pacific.

But the two events do have at least two things in common. One is that that they’re both due to deep dips in the jet stream. In both cases, Arctic air from the Polar Vortex has been displaced to the south by a wavy jet stream, which brings coldness down to the temperate United States and leaves Alaska and the Arctic relatively warm. Sure enough, right now it’s warmer in Alaska than it is in Texas, and next week the National Weather Service predicts temperatures in Alaska will be 70 percent higher than average, with temperatures in Texas about 50 percent below average.
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Though it may seem contradictory that extreme cold events could be linked to global warming, it’s been shown time and again that bizarre and unpredictable things can happen to the weather when heat accumulates in the atmosphere and ocean. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, which in turn can make precipitation events — including snow — more extreme. And some scientists think a warmer ocean can make tropical storms more intense, which can drive big dips in the jet stream.The latter is why some scientists, like bioanthropologist Greg Laden, think that climate change helped make this year’s Arctic Outbreak more intense.

“We can’t rule out climate change here,” said Laden, who writes for National Geographic’s Scienceblog. “[Super Typhoon Nuri] was in the top 2 or 3 hurricanes, maybe the top 2 of the year, in terms of overall strength. That’s because the Pacific has been really warm, creating a lot of extra hurricanes and extra strong hurricanes.”

A growing body of research led by Jennifer Francis, a research professor at Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Science, suggests Arctic warming causes less drastic changes in temperatures between northern and southern climates, leading to weakened west-to-east winds, and ultimately, a wavier jet stream like the one that caused last year’s Polar Vortex event.

“This kind of pattern is going to be more likely, and has been more likely,” she said at the time. “Extremes on both ends are a symptom. Wild, unusual temperatures of both sides, both warmer and colder.”

NPR:

Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist at Weather Underground, wants people understand.

“This is just a regular old cold front,” Masters says. “The polar vortex has been around forever. It’s just the media happened to notice it last year, and it’s really not a very scientifically accurate thing to talk about.”

He says the recent popularity of the phrase is misleading. The polar vortex is a constant flow of arctic air circling in the upper atmosphere above the North and South Poles. The cold is usually corralled up there — but sometimes little bits of the arctic air escape.

“It’s just the ordinary sort of weather you expect in winter,” Masters says. “Every now and then you get a big trough of low pressure. It dips down from the pole and it allows arctic air to seep southwards.”

That’s not to say the polar vortex wasn’t involved in this bout of unseasonably cold weather. Masters says Typhoon Nuri, which hit Alaska last week, pushed one of those troughs of arctic air south across the eastern U.S.

Such temperature shifts serve a purpose, says Steven Nelson of the National Weather Service.

“These cold intrusions, cold fronts, are really restoring the balance in the temperature and moisture across the earth’s surface,” he says.

Below, I interviewed Dr. Serreze’ colleague, Dr. Walt Meier, formerly of the NSIDC, now of NASA Goddard, last year in San Francisco.

Below, the Weather Channel on the current arctic intrusion in North America:

Continue reading “What is the Polar Vortex? And Are we In One Now?”

I interviewed Stanford Scientist Ken Caldeira last year in San Francisco at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, on warming, acid oceans, and other questions.  Here’s his solutions take.

Caldeira did a nice job handling climate denier blowhard Lou Dobbs back in January. Continue reading “Ken Caldeira: A Small Sacrifice to Solve Climate Change?”

Shoot, I want one!

Business Insider:

The unpredictability of a bike commute in densely packed cities is dangerous — a rider needs to navigate cars, buses, potholes, taxis, and distracted pedestrians.

In fact, there are so many hassles and dangerous elements that many people avoid it altogether.

But the nonprofit Oregon Manifest wants to change all that. They teamed up with Fuji Bikes and challenged five design teams from busy American cities to build the ultimate urban utility bike — something that would make commuting in a city not only safer, but more enjoyable, too.

After a public vote, the end result was “The Denny.”

Tea Party-ish Climate Deniers, of course, view any encouragement of bicycling with suspicion, as some kind of plot against our freedom, by dark international forces. Continue reading “Urban Superbike Fills Practical Needs for Commuters”

Above, some clips from my investigation into the climate denying Heartland Institute, and their plan to “recapture” K thru 12 education for Creationism and Climate Denial.

Below, news item describing how the largest educational publisher in the world, Pearson Education, has removed climate denial from its textbooks.

National Journal:

Here’s how the revised Pearson fifth-grade social studies textbooks teaches global warming:

Burning fuels like gasoline releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, which occurs both naturally and through human activities, is called a greenhouse gas, because it traps heat. As the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases increase, the Earth warms. Scientists warn that climate change, caused by this warming, will pose challenges to society.

Here’s what the earlier version said:

Burning oil to run cars also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some scientists believe that this carbon dioxide could lead to a slow heating of Earth’s overall climate. This temperature change is known as global warming or climate change. Scientists disagree about what is causing climate change.

When the proposed Texas textbooks were released in September, the National Center for Science Education heavily criticized the assertion that “scientists disagree about what is causing climate change.”

95 percent of climate scientists agree that human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, is the primary driver of global warming. For the sake of comparison, that agreement is equivalent to the scientific consensus that smoking cigarettes is deadly.

Pressure came from a number of science advocacy groups for textbooks to change, ahead of an upcoming vote by the Texas Board of Education.

Continue reading “Climate Denial Removed from Textbooks. More Work Needed.”

Lauren Kurtz is the new Director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, (click the link to support them) which will offer legal protection and advice to scientists who may come under attack from the right wing disinformation machine.

ClimateProgress:

The problem Kurtz hopes to address is a real one. Scientists who perform climate-related research have increasingly been the subject of personal attacks — email hacking, copious online abuse, a dead rat left on a scientists’ doorstep. At least one prominent scientist has been the subject of a failed lawsuit by a right-wing policy group, alleging manipulation of data, and demanding copies of personal emails and other communications under the Freedom of Information Act.

Many climate scientists say these attacks are political, perpetrated by people who can’t accept the policy solutions to the problem of human-caused global warming.

“I firmly believe that I would now be leading a different life if my research suggested that there was no human effect on climate,” said climate scientist Benjamin D. Santer during a Congressional hearing in 2010. “We need to follow the research wherever it leads us, without fear of the consequences of speaking truth to power.”

The CSLDF was founded with that goal in mind. It was created in 2011 by Professors Scott Mandia and John Abraham, after they learned that climate scientist Michael Mann was using his personal funds to defend himself against the now-infamous lawsuit brought by the American Tradition Institute. Mandia and Abraham formed the group, and in 24 hours raised $10,000 to allow Mann to continue his research while fighting the case.

Dr. Michael Mann’s continuing political and legal battle over the years has been detailed in his book “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars”.

Below, the extended story of Mike Mann’s “Hockey Stick” fight.

Dr. Mann’s actual testimony before congress in hearings called by climate denier “Smokey Joe” Barton – (famous for his boot-licking apology to the Chairman of BP after the Gulf Oil spill).

Under the fold, my videos on the so-called “Climate Gate” non-scandal. Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: Lauren Kurtz of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, and Why Good Scientists Sometimes Need a Good Lawyer”

This week’s theme: China wakes up.

Shanren – Description:

About four years ago, when I was rooting around for Chinese music videos, I was sent a charming animation from a band called Shanren. The song “30 Years” was about the trials and tribulations of moving from the country to the big city to look for work. This is a motif that resonates with all working folks, and I won’t even go into the hundreds of great songs dealing with this from the West’s Industrial Revolution right through to today. “30 Years” describes what is going on in China currently, as its rapid industrialization is causing a vast shift in population from rural to urban centers. I was therefor already interested when I was contacted by the band’s publicist, informing me that they would be playing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, at Pianos.

Continue reading “Shanren”