Daily Archives: February 11, 2013

BBC Gets Climate Change Correction Story Wrong(ish)

I already told you about this. In a BBC/David Attenborough special on Africa, this specific statement was made: That part of the African continent had warmed by 3.5 degrees. This was corrected by Leo Hickman. That datum is invalid. Africa has indeed been affected by climate change, but that specific factoid is incorrect. Now, the BBC is patting itself on the back for correcting the special, but they are doing it wrong.

From the BBC Story:

The presenter then commented on the additional challenges presented by climate change, adding that parts of Africa now face higher temperatures.

However, a BBC statement, said: “There is widespread acknowledgement within the scientific community that the climate of Africa has been changing.

“We accept the detail is disputable and the commentary should have reflected that, therefore the line of commentary has been edited out of Sunday’s repeat and iPlayer version removed.”

They continue to say that climate change is real and affects Africa, and they make reference to an error in the documentary. But the error in the documentary is a) very specific and b) not entirely unrelated to reality, though the datum itself is totally bogus.

Here’s my quote mined version of the BBC statement: “parts of Africa now face higher temperatures…[but] the detail is disputable… [and] has been edited out of Sunday’s repeat and iPlayer version removed”

They should have been more clear about this.

Forward On Climate Blogathon

Today, a new Climate SOS Blogathon starts at the Daily Kos. I’ll be contributing a post tomorrow, which I’ll let you know about. The other contributors include an amazing list of bloggers, scientists, policy experts, and at least one federal level elected official of which I’m aware.

The first blog posted is: Keystone XL pipeline is not in the U.S. National Interest by A. Siegel who blogs at Get Energy Smart. NOW!!!!.

The list of posts will be managed HERE.

CO2 and Ocean Acidification

This graphic is from GRID-Arendal, a Norwegian Foundation collaborating with the UN Environment Programme. It shows CO2 concentrations in the ocean going up over a period of 20 eyars, and the corresponding drop in pH over the same time period.

Ocean acidification is a serious effect of climate change.

As CO2 in the ocean goes up, pH goes down
As carbon concentrations in the atmosphere increase, so do concentrations in the ocean, with resultant acidification as a natural chemical process.

There are more climate change related graphics HERE.

Charles Darwin, Geologist

Everyone knows that Darwin was a biologist, and in many ways he was the first prominent modern biologist. Though Darwin scholars know this, many people do not realize that he was also a geologist. Really, he was mainly a geologist on the day he stepped foot on The Beagle for his famous five year tour. This is especially true if we count his work on coral reefs as a geological study, even though coral reefs are a biological phenomenon. After all, the standing model for coral reef formation at the time came from the field of Geology.

To exemplify this, I’ve put together a list of several of Darwin’s print publications with their publication dates:

Continue reading Charles Darwin, Geologist