Just a quick look back on 2016’s work educating and communicating on global climate change. This year marks a decade that I’ve been bringing the fight to professional Climate Deniers and purveyors of Fake News.
I wanted to share this because so many readers and viewers helped out to make it happen this year with tax-deductible donations to Dark Snow Project – thanks to all who helped out.
The year started out with a bang, when my collection of interviews on satellite temperature measurements (above) was immediately attacked by a (then) little known Neo-nazi website, Breitbart.
It seems Breitbart took exception to my shredding of a favorite climate denial talking point, that satellite temperatures are some kind of gold standard of measure – and they commissioned a quick hit-job by know-nothing denialist James Delingpole – who found my video particularly treacherous for seeming “measured and reasonable”.
Obviously, they’re on to me.
That video was particularly well received by scientists – with Admiral David Titley, former Chief Oceanographer of the US Navy tweeting it as the “best he’d seen on this topic,” and Dr. Ben Santer tagging it “brilliant”.
Not to mention making a star out of atmospheric expert Andy Dessler.
I showed a director’s cut of that vid in San Francisco in December, to a packed audience of scientists and communicators, at last month’s American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.
In the summer, I visited the Greenland Ice sheet for the 4th time, and reaped great benefit from the goodwill and credibility I’ve built over the last decade among scientists and experts. That goodwill got me a couple of helicopter ride-alongs with science teams, and, all told, I visited three sites on the ice sheet where important research is being done, as these videos demonstrate, the first one with Larry Smith’s UCLA team –
and secondly with the Black and Bloom, a project funded by NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) lead by the University of Bristol and including the Universities of Sheffield, Leeds and Aberystwyth, who were camping at the same spot I stayed with the Dark Snow Project in 2014.
When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) updated its global temperature dataset to include revisions to the underlying databases, US House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) somehow knew that the scientists had done it wrong. In fact, he accused them of having “altered temperature data to get politically correct results.”
How could he know that? Well, Rep. Smith rejects the conclusions of climate science—like the fact that the Earth’s climate is warming. Despite the slight up and down wiggles of the estimated annual temperatures, the warming of the last couple decades increased ever so slightly in NOAA’s new analysis. To Smith, the result was a red flag. Suddenly he wanted to see the researchers’ e-mails and echoed the accusations of contrarian blogs about scientists’ supposedly nefarious adjustments to sea surface temperature measurements.
I described the Anti-Science Committee’s witch hunt against NOAA and NASA a few months ago, in this must-see vid.
Once again, science is shown to work. The laborious process in which scientists check and recheck their work and subject their ideas to peer review has led to another success. An independent test of global warming data has confirmed a groundbreaking 2015 study that showed warming was faster than prior estimates.
Because of its inconvenient findings, the study’s lead author Thomas Karl was subjected to harassment by Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the House Science Committee, in an effort to impugn his credibility. But now Karl and his co-authors have been vindicated.
Let’s take a step back and discuss the science. Measuring the temperature of the Earth is hard. There are many locations to measure and many choices to make. Should we measure the temperature of the ground? Of the ocean waters? How deep in the water? If we measure air temperatures, what height should the measurements be taken? How many locations should we make measurements at? What happens if the instruments change over time or if the location changes? What happens if a city grows near a measurement location and the so-called urban heat-island effect grows? How do we estimate the temperatures in areas where no measurements exist?
These and many other questions make measuring global warming challenge. Different groups of scientists make different decisions so that depending on the institution, they will get a slightly different temperature result.
Vladimir Putin may get his preferred US Secretary of State, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, but the laws of economics, and the logic of technological revolutions have not been repealed.
The Universe still is what it is, regardless of how you tweet it.
A record number of oil and gas companies became insolvent last year, according to a new study which environmentalists said highlighted the need for the UK to prepare for the move to a low-carbon economy.
They warned that the loss of jobs in the sector when it becomes clear that fossil fuels can no longer be burned because of the effect on global warming would lead to “desolate communities” unless people were retrained to work in the “new industries of the 21st century”.
The study by accountancy firm Moore Stephens found 16 oil and gas companies went insolvent last year, compared to none at all in 2012.
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After oil prices fell from about $120 a barrel to under $50 for most of the past year, smaller firms in the sector were unable to cope, Moore Stephens found.
The oil industry must brace for five energy “tsunamis” that threaten to drag prices as low as $10 a barrel in less than a decade, according to Engie SA’s innovation chief.
The falling cost of solar power and battery storage, rising sales of electric vehicles, increasingly “smart” buildings and cheap hydrogen will all weigh on crude, Thierry Lepercq, head of research, technology and innovation at the French energy company, said in an interview.
“Even if oil demand continues to climb until 2025, its price could drop to $10 if markets anticipate a significant fall in demand,” Lepercq said at his office near Paris. Crude last slumped to that level in 1998.
“Solar, battery storage, electrical and hydrogen vehicles, and connected devices are in a ‘J’ curve,” he said. “Hydrogen is the missing link in a 100 percent renewable-energy system, but technological bricks already exist.”
The former French gas monopoly, which is now the world’s largest non-state power producer following a decade of acquisitions, is investing in renewables while selling coal-fired plants and exploration assets to shield itself from commodity-price swings. It plans to spend 1.5 billion euros ($1.57 billion) by 2018 on technologies including grid-scale battery storage, hydrogen output, “mini-grids” that serve small clusters of homes, and smart buildings that link up heating, lighting and IT systems to save energy and cut costs.
Ohio Governor John Kasich is not exactly known as a champion of the environment, but apparently he knows a good deal when he sees one. The Republican governor made his conservative supporters hopping mad last week when he vetoed a bill that would have undercut Ohio’s goals for renewable energy. Adding insult to injury, Governor Kasich went out of his way to explain the importance of renewables to the state’s economy.
In it’s first act of the new session, the Trump session, the first Post-Russian hack session, the session where millions of Americans are asking if we have just suffered the greatest attack on America since Pearl Harbor, and an actual intrusion, if not takeover, of the White House by a foreign power – Congress asks – is it possible to gag a maggot?
These are not men that believe there will ever be a fair election in America again.
If you don’t know why Congress has ethics rules, your Reps just cut loose the regs brought on by the Jack Abramoff Scandal.
The federal investigations into Jack Abramoff and his political and business dealings are among the broadest and most extensive in American political history,[citation needed] involving well over a dozen offices of the FBI and over 100 FBI agents tasked exclusively to the investigation.[citation needed] Given the extent and complexity of the suspected corruption, an entire inter-governmental task force, involving many federal governmental departments and agencies, has been established to aid the federal investigation.[citation needed] The U.S. Justice Department has announced that it will not reveal the details of the investigation, or who specifically has been targeted for investigation, until indictments are issued. Under his plea agreements, Abramoff is required to answer all questions by federal investigators and prosecutors.
The investigations led to several plea agreements by those involved, including Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH).[1] Abramoff himself also plead guilty to federal corruption charges, including tax fraud and bribing public officials.[2] Abramoff’s activities also became an issue for many Democratic candidates in the November 2006 House and Senate elections, as many challengers painted the incumbent Republican Congress as corrupted by Abramoff and his powerful allies.[3][4][5] On March 29, 2006, he was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of more than $21 million.
As a result of Abramoff’s criminal behavior, prominent politicians with close ties to Abramoff as well as hundreds of Congressional politicians who have received money from his clients (see the monetary influence of Jack Abramoff) came under media scrutiny (with some even donating the money to charity[6]), with lobbying reform proposals presented by both parties. In September 2006 both the Senate and House passed bills and rules changes to make public earmarks but not make other substantive lobbying reforms.[7]
Defying the wishes of their top leaders, House Republicans voted behind closed doors Monday night to rein in the independent ethics office created eight years ago in the wake of a series of embarrassing congressional scandals.
The 119-to-74 vote during a GOP conference meeting means that the House rules package expected to be adopted Tuesday, the first day of the 115th Congress, would rename the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) as the Office of Congressional Complaint Review and place it under the oversight of the House Ethics Committee. Continue reading “Men in High Castles. Putin/Trump Congress ShitCans Ethics Rules in First Act”
