Climate – Page 3 – This is Not Cool

New Video: What is Right? Climate as a Moral Question.

Pope Francis’ visit to the US catalyzed the growing sense across the country, and across the globe, that climate change is, above all, a moral issue.

More and more scientists have realized that speaking to this moral dimension is far more persuasive than speaking the language of science and fact, as compelling as those are. Most people simply respond better to an issue that is framed in moral terms.

The emerging story of what Exxon knew, and when they knew it, shows that the differences have never really been about the science questions – even the major oil companies knew the basic science truths 4 decades ago. They simply made a moral decision that the lives of the next ten thousand generations of human beings were not as important as their own profits, and we are now witnessing the early impacts of that decision.

Climate Comes of Age in Political Ads

“So what’s a Republican, like me, doing at a wind farm?” asks GOP Colorado Senate candidate Cory Gardner in the ad above.
Damn good question, given the hostility to renewable energy that leading GOP funders and interest groups have been showing in recent years, and the current political campaign.

NYTimes:

In Senate races in the general election, the analysis found, energy and the environment are the third-most mentioned issue in political advertisements, behind health care and jobs.

The explosion of energy and environmental ads also suggests the prominent role that the issues could play in the 2016 presidential race, especially as megadonors — such as Thomas F. Steyer, a California billionaire and environmental activist on the left, and Charles G. and David H. Koch, billionaire brothers on the right — take sides. Leaders of major environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters said they had collectively spent record amounts of money in this election cycle.

“Candidates are using energy and environment as a sledgehammer to win a race,” said Elizabeth Wilner, the senior vice president for politics at Kantar Media/CMAG.

Groups representing the energy industry and environmental advocacy have typically been the lead players in presenting policy positions in ads, but this year the candidates themselves and party political committees are also taking on that role.
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“What’s important about what’s going on right now is the extent to which the Democrats feel confident playing offense on environmental and energy issues, and the extent to which polling shows that they are scoring when they do that,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster.

What pollsters know, and what candidates are finding out, is that climate and energy issues work to move voters. In Mr. Gardner’s home state of Colorado, renewable energy is popular, and concerns about climate and environment are high – leading Democratic interest groups to seek to tie Mr. Gardner’s record of climate denial to his stands on other social issues where he seems to be out of step with his constituency.

The election results will tell us something about how well these kinds of attacks, and responses, have worked – but the swing in voter attitudes on climate change is unlikely to stop, especially given the possibility that 2014 could be the hottest year ever in the NASA surface temperature record, and if a developing El Nino warming event in the Pacific plays out in coming months, 2015 could be hotter still.

Not-So-Smart ALEC: Is New CEO Lying Liar, or Merely Clueless Tool?

I’m in a generous mood, and giving her benefit of the doubt. Going with “clueless tool”.
More evidence that being a climate denier is rapidly becoming socially icky in the class of spousal abuse, kiddy porn, or being, well, say, a holocaust denier.

Following a mass exodus of corporate contributors, and Google Executive Eric Schmidt’s declaration that they were “literally lying” about climate change – new CEO of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Koch funded science denial organization, goes on national radio and insists they know nothing, nothing, about climate denial. Or climate. Or anything. Why am I here again?

Crooks and Liars:

One week after updating its position on climate change, ALEC’s new CEO Lisa B. Nelson told (NPR radio hostess) Diane Rehm that ALEC doesn’t comment on climate change.

Lisa Nelson, the new CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, doesn’t know her organization’s position on climate change.

In a segment on WAMU’s Diane Rehm Show, ALEC’s Lisa Nelson claimed to not understand the science of climate change, and said, “We as an organization, specifically do not comment on climate change.”

Funny enough, just a week before, ALEC posted its “Position Statement on Renewables and Climate Change,” in response to heightened attention to its role in denying climate change.

The surge of attention is due to recent and very public departures by Google, Facebook, Yelp, Yahoo and even Occidental Petroleum, specifically citing ALEC’s backwards work on climate change.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said people working for ALEC are “literally lying” about global warming, announcing that Google’s staff didn’t wish to continue supporting such work (after Google’s failed attempts to get ALEC to support clean energy).

Diane Rehm Show:

REHM

10:32:49

And you’re listening to “The Diane Rehm Show.” For those listeners who did not tune in that day, I want to read for you the statement made by Eric Schmidt who was the CEO of Google. He says, I think the — when asked why Google was going to drop their affiliation with ALEC, he said that ALEC was twisting science in the pursuit of its political goals at the state level. And here’s his quote. He says, “I think the consensus within the company” Google that is “was that Google’s affiliation with ALEC was some sort of mistake. And so we’re trying not to do that in the future.”

He says “The facts of climate change are not in question anymore. Everyone understands climate change is occurring. The people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people. They’re just literally lying.” Now, I understand, Lisa, that ALEC has come out and said, we don’t have a position on climate change. At the same time I gather there has been a move by ALEC to move against the creation of solar energy.

—

yadda yadda
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NELSON

10:35:35

What’s not reported in those stories is the fact that the Environmental Defense Fund was also in those conversations and participating in our conversations. So I go back to my original comments that what we really want to do is foster that dialogue between all sides with respect to climate change We, as an organization, specifically do not comment on climate change. What we have issue with is government mandates and subsidies that enable the government to kind of pick winners and losers as they look for energy solutions.

Be thankful for small things.
I sure wouldn’t want this loser picking winners.

FYI – ALEC Position Statement on Climate Change, with Translation, below:

Extinction: Not Just for Polar Bears

This week another massive beaching of walruses in the Alaskan Arctic. I did video on this a few years ago that is still relevant. The science denial media would like images of suffering animals to just go away, and for you to stop thinking about it all the time, dammit.

Media Matters:

The Daily Caller tried to “debunk” the “myth” that a recent mass walrus beaching is connected to global warming, even though scientists say the walruses have crowded onshore because they cannot find a resting place on Arctic sea ice, which has declined significantly as the Earth warms.

An October 1 Daily Caller article titled “Myth Debunked: Arctic Walrus Beachings Are Nothing New” promoted zoologist Susan Crockford’s claims that a recent massive beaching of around 35,000 walruses on a single Alaskan shore has nothing to do with climate change. To support her claim, Crockford cherry-picked two instances of walrus beachings from the 1970s.

However, Biologist Anatoly Kochnev of Russia’s Pacific Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography told NBC News that extended beachings of this size only began occurring in the late 1990s, adding: “The reason is global warming.” Vox.com’s Brad Plumer further reported that this “appears to be the largest ever observed in northern Alaska, though NOAA is still trying to verify the exact numbers.” The current beaching is so vast that the Federal Aviation Authority is re-routing flights in order to avoid setting off a stampede.

In six of the past eight years, all of the floating sea ice in the Chukchi Sea (the region of the Arctic near the current haul-out) that walruses need to rest in between swims has completely melted away by mid-September, according to Chadwick Jay, head of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pacific walrus program.

In the Daily Caller article, Crockford even noted that mass walrus beachings occurred in 2009, 2011 and 2014, but dismissed them simply because they “did not coincide with the lowest levels of Arctic summer sea ice” in 2007 and 2012.

However, every one of these years had much less Arctic sea ice than the historical average, contributing to the extended beachings.

Continue reading “Extinction: Not Just for Polar Bears”

Fox News Flash! NASA Fakes Temp Data! Obama Born in Kenya! Batboy Found in Cave!

How low are they going? This low.

The blogger who won’t even tell us his real name, even though it is now open source, Steven Goddard, has been cited as an authority on climate.
Kind of like citing Orly Taitz as an authority on Kenyan Birth certificates. Did I mention “Goddard” is a birther, too? (not unusual in denierville – see below)

Media Matters:

Fox News is reviving accusations that NASA’s peer-reviewed adjustments to temperature data are an attempt to “fak[e]” global warming, a claim that even a climate “skeptic” threw cold water on.

Tony Heller, a birthed who criticizes climate science under the pseudonym “Steven Goddard,” wrote a blog post that claimed “NASA cooled 1934 and warmed 1998, to make 1998 the hottest year in US history instead of 1934.” After the Drudge Report promoted a report of this allegation by the conservative British newspaper The Telegraph, conservative media from Breitbart to The Washington Times claimed the data was “fabricated” or “faked.” On June 24, Fox & Friends picked it up, claiming that “the U.S. has actually been cooling since the 1930s” but scientists had “faked the numbers”.

However, the libertarian magazine Reason noted that even climate “skeptic” blogger Anthony Watts said that Goddard made “major errors in his analysis” and criticized the implication that “numbers are being plucked out of thin air in a nefarious way.”

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I profiled Anthony a few years back for his own craziness in regard to alleged plots to distort the temp records.
Can we all agree that, if your denialist nuttery is such that even Anthony Watts can’t back you – you, my friend, are a denialist nut.

Anthony Watts quoted in Reason:

Some segments of the Internet are abuzz with the claim by climate change skeptic Steven Goddard (Tony Heller) over at his Real Science blog that NASA/NOAA have been jiggering the numbers so that they can claim that warmest years in the continental United States occurred recently, not back in the 1930s. Folks, please watch out for confirmation bias.

Via email, I asked Anthony Watts, proprietor of WattsUpWithThat, what he thinks of Goddard’s claims. He responded…

…while it is true that NOAA does a tremendous amount of adjustment to the surface temperature record, the word “fabrication” implies that numbers are being plucked out of thin air in a nefarious way when it isn’t exactly the case.

“Goddard” is wrong is his assertions of fabrication, but the fact is that NCDC isn’t paying attention to small details, and the entire process from B91’s to CONUS creates an inflated warming signal. We published a preliminary paper two years ago on this which you can read here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/

About half the warming in the USA is due to adjustments. We’ received a lot of criticism for that paper, and we’ve spent two years reworking it and dealing with those criticisms. Our results are unchanged and will be published soon.

Continue reading “Fox News Flash! NASA Fakes Temp Data! Obama Born in Kenya! Batboy Found in Cave!”

CNN: Why Are We Even Debating Climate Change?

There is no “other side” of gravity, the earth’s orbit around the sun, or the roundness of the planet.

When the physics of climate change have been understood for 60 years, and the National Academy has been perfectly clear on climate for 35 years, – why does the media still play this as if it’s a “he said, she said” question?
In generations to come, the failure of global media, particularly in the US, will be one of the most studied, bewildering, and tragic aspects of the current generation’s inaction on climate.

Climate denial blogosphere really freaking out about this.

New Video: Mann and Rahmstorf on IPCC 2013

In Reykjavik last month, I had the chance to interview Mike Mann and Stefan Rahmstorf at length. Both are former IPCC authors, Mann is Professor of Geosciences at Penn State U, where he is Director of the Earth System Science Center, and is well known for his paleo-temperature reconstruction, the famous “Hockey Stick” graph.

Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf is an Oceanographer at Potsdam University in Germany. Both men are founders of the “RealClimate” blog.

I was able to include a lot of footage shot with the help of Phil Coates, an actual professional with a camera, meaning – good lighting, and good sound. The difference in quality is shocking, in a good way. Special thanks is also due to Gudni Elisson, organizer of the Earth 101 event which brought us all together in Iceland.

Also, this is the first of what I hope will be many videos produced with support from the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

For anyone that wants a quick, credible intro to what’s in the new report – this should get them started.

The new report Summary for Policy Makers is here.

DarkSnowProject Manhattan: The Video

On April 21, 2013, the Dark Snow Project brought a bit of Greenland to Manhattan, to illustrate the importance of this summer’s planned expedition to sample Greenland ice. It kicked off the last leg of our historic citizen-science crowd funding campaign.

If this final fundraising push is successful, I’ll be traveling in June to the Greenland Ice sheet as part of a scientific expedition to investigate the steady darkening and increasing melt of that important ice sheet. Bill Mckibben will be coming along to write this up for Rolling Stone, as well.

There are 3 ways to help out, if you haven’t already. One, you can go to Darksnowproject.org, and make a donation at the bottom of the page. Two, you can text darksnow to 50555, or Three, you can go to the IndieGoGo crowdsourcing site.

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.

From the Horse’s Mouth. The New Study on Cosmic Rays and Climate.

Here’s the Nature podcast interview with Jasper Kirkby, author of the new study that has denialists all atwitter (again) over cosmic rays.

Briefly, the theory is that cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, and when colliding with gas molecules create tiny cloud seeding particles, (“cloud condensation nuclei”) and thus, so the theory goes, could increase cloud cover.

Low clouds, in particular, reflect sunlight, and exert a cooling influence.

Therefore, so the theory goes, when the sun is in an active state, solar magnetic fields are strong, shielding the earth from cosmic rays, not as many clouds form, making it warmer – even warmer than it would be from the more active sun.

In periods such as the Maunder Minimum, a period of very few sunspots from 1645 to 1715, solar activity would have been low, thus, – ->lower magnetic fields –> letting in more cosmic rays —> producing more clouds
—> cooling the planet.

Voila. The Little Ice Age.

Recently, experiments were undertaken by Dr. Kirkby (interviewed above) at the European Atom smasher facility, – CERN – to learn more about the particle interactions that might validate this theory. The publication of his recent paper on the results has been bouncing around in the denialosphere as yet another “final nail in the coffin of man-caused global warming”.

Dr. Kirkby’s take, as you hear in the interview — not so much.

Continue reading “From the Horse’s Mouth. The New Study on Cosmic Rays and Climate.”