Back in the old days, yesterday, making comments on the mobile version of Scienceblogs.com was sometimes difficult because the thingie at the bottom of the post that suggests the other wonderful blog posts you might want to visit tended to cover up the comments.
That has been fixed!
That is all, thank you very much for your patience.
Just a quick note that will be of interest to my local readers. Senator Leo Foley passed away at the age of 87, just a few days ago. Senator John Hoffman, who now hold Senator Foley’s old seat, wrote this:
Last Friday, Feb. 5 former Coon Rapids Senator Leo T. Foley passed away peacefully surrounded by his loved ones; he was 87. Sen. Foley served the Coon Rapids area for 14 years, serving from 1997 to 2011. I took up the mantle of serving the area following Sen. Foley’s retirement.
I first met Leo in 2002, and ever since then I was incredibly proud to call him my State Senator. Leo Foley lived a life of service, first for 33 years as a Minnesota State Trooper, and later as an assistant Anoka County Attorney and as a senator. I really appreciated and admired his work and his passion for the community. Leo always had an ear to listen, and you could sense he really cared about improving the lives of those he represented. He will be missed by all who knew him.
A Celebration of Leo’s life will be held on Saturday, Feb. 13 at 11 a.m. at First Congregational Church of Anoka. Visitation will be held one hour prior.
I only met Senator Foley a couple of times. He was still Senator when I moved into his state Senate district. But, I frequently recall one conversation we had, just before he retired.
I don’t remember what we were talking about, but at some point he asked me, “So, what kind of vehicle do you think we used back in the early 60s when we went around Coon Rapids to survey it for all the planned development and road building?”
He was referring to the time before the big highway that now passes through the town was built, when the majority of the development here was farmland, but large areas were being partitioned and platted for residential and commercial building. Senator Foley was, at the time, on the County Commission (IIRC) and he and other officials were looking over the landscape to see if the planned development made sense, etc.
“I don’t know, a Land Rover maybe?”
“No, not a Land Rover,” he replied. I could tell that whatever the vehicle was, it was something odd.
“A tractor?” I suggested, realizing that much of the town was farmland at the time.
“Nope. A boat. A Lund Fishing boat with a 40 horsepower motor.”
Of course, that made sense. Most of Coon Rapids sits on a sand plain that formed in the near-delta shallows of an ancient glacial lake. Except better drained parts (ironically) near the Mississippi, it would have been a big wetland. A boat would do it!
Anyway, RIP Leo Foley, and thanks for your excellent service.
The following is a repost of a Facebook Post by Michael Mann
Begin Repost
Several colleagues have notified me of the following email that has been sent to a presumably broad group of researchers and academics by John Droz of the ?#?Koch?-funded American Tradition Institute (?#?ATI?) (read about Droz here).
The email forwards a sign-on letter from ?#?GeorgeMarshallInstitute? chair and ?#?climatechange? denier ?#?WillHapper? (read about Happer here) asking colleagues to support the Lamar Smith (R-TX) witch-hunt against NOAA scientists (my The New York Times op-ed on the matter is here).
The email and letter are reprinted below, along with the list of initial signatories, which reads like a who’s who of climate change contrarianism, with many of the most notorious industry-funded climate change deniers listed.
Begin forwarded message:
From: “John Droz, jr.” XXXXX
Date: January 15, 2016 at 10:17:56 AM PST
Subject: Scientific Integrity of Government Agencies
To: XXXXX
NAME,
I’m very selective in what I publicly endorse — but I’m very supportive of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Below is can email I’m passing on from Dr. Will Happer, who is asking that you cosign an important letter (attached). If you choose to do that (as I have) please email Dr. Happer directly (by clicking on his name). He is planning on submitting the material by January 22nd.
NAME,
I am writing you to ask if you would consider joining other scientists in supporting the attached letter to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. A list of those who have already agreed to be co-signers is attached.
The intent is to help the Committee, chaired by Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas. They are trying to combat the charge that they have declared war on Science — when all they have done is try to fulfill their mandate to assure that federal agencies (like NOAA) follow the law, especially with respect to “influential scientific information,” and “highly influential scientific assessments.”
NOAA, EPA and other agencies have always violated this requirement to some degree, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, but violations over the past few years are of unprecedented scope and gravity. An example of the sort of propaganda to which this House Committee has been subject can be found here.
I hope you will let us use your name, with your preferred “tag line” (similar to those on the attached list). If there are other good technical people that might be interested, please pass this onto them.
Best wishes,
Will Happer
Princeton
Initial Signatories:
ALEXANDER, Ralph B, PhD Physics, University of Oxford, former Associate Professor, Wayne State University, Detroit, author of book, Global Warming False Alarm, Canterbury Publishing, 2012
ANDERSON, Charles R, Ph.D., Physics, Case Western Reserve University; Sc.B., Physics, Brown University; Founder and President of Anderson Materials Evaluation, Inc., previously Senior Scientist at Lockheed Martin Laboratories – Baltimore and Research Physicist in the Department of the Navy; 43 years’ experience using particle beams, gamma rays, x-rays, ultra-violet light, visible light, and infra-red radiation to characterize materials.
ARMSTRONG, J. Scott, Professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, One of the world’s leading experts on forecasting, he has also published 19 papers on the scientific method.
ASHWORTH, Robert A., Vice President of ClearStack Power LLC, Chemical Engineer with over 50 scientific papers published.
BARRANTE, James R., Emeritus Professor of Physical Chemistry, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT; author of book Global Warming for Dim Wits: A Scientist’s Perspective of Climate Change, Universal Publishers, Boca Raton, FL, 2010.
BASTARDI, Joe, Bastardi, Chief meteorologist, Weatherbell Analytics
BATTIG, Dr. Charles G, M.S. E.E.; M.D, Life member IEEE, American Society of Anesthesiologists; President, Piedmont Chapter, Virginia Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment;. Policy advisor, Heartland Institute
BELL, Larry: Launched the research and education program in space architecture at the University of Houston and author of Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax.
BELLER, Denis Beller, PhD, Lt. Col, USAF, retired (first tenured uniformed professor in the then–70-year history of the USAF Institute of Technology) co-author of seminal Foreign Affairs essay The Need for Nuclear Power, Jan/Feb 2000 (with Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Rhodes), former Research Prof. of Nuclear Engineering, Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas
BENARD, David J, Ph.D Physics (University of Illinois, 1972) Co-inventor of the oxygen-iodine chemical laser
BERRY, Edwin X, PhD, Physics, Climate Physics LLC, Bigfork, MT, Memberships: American Meteorological Society, AMS, Certified Consulting Meteorologist #180, American Physical Society.
BEZDEK, Roger. Ph.D, Economics, President, MISI; former research Director in ERDA and DOE and Senior Advisor, U.S. Treasury Department. Author of 6 books and 300 papers published in scientific and professional journals.
BLETHEN, John, Ph.D, physics, Stanford University, 1974, McGill, Nevada
BOHNAK, Karl, WLUC-TV6 NBC & FOX U, Chief Meteorologist
BRESLOW, Jan L, M.A. Physical Chemistry Columbia University, Doctor of Medicine Harvard Medical School, Fredrick Henry Leonhardt Professor Rockefeller University, Member National Academy of Sciences, Member National Academy of Medicine, Member German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), published more than 250 original peer reviewed research papers
BRIGGS, William, Statistician with specialty in evaluating the goodness and usefulness of models.
BROOKS, Scott, Electronic-Electomechanical Engineering, Albuquerque, NM
BRUMM, Douglas B, Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, Professor of Electrical Engineering (Emeritus), Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan; Life Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
BUTOS, Wiliam N, George M. Ferris Professor of Corporation Finance & Investments Department of Economics, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06106
CAMPANELLA, Angelo, Ph.D., Physics and Electrical Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, 55+ year experience in infrared physics, military electronics, and applied physics.
CARLIN, Alan, PhD Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; BS, Physics, California Institute of Technology; senior analyst and manager, USEPA, 1971–2010; author or co-author of about 40 publications; author of Environmentalism Gone Mad: How a Sierra Club Activist and Senior EPA Analyst Discovered a Radical Green Energy Fantasy, 2015, Stairway Press.
CATANESE, Carmen, M.S., Ph.D. in physics (Yale University), Retired Exec. VP, The Sarnoff Corp (SRI),Author of 12 peer-reviewed articles in science and engineering , Holder of 12 issued US patents
CHRISTENSEN, Charles R., PhD Chemistry, California Institute of Technology. Retired Research Physicist, U.S. Army Missile Command. Seven Patents and numerous journal publications in optics and optical materials.
COLEMAN, John, BS, University of Illinois, Former Professional Member of the American Meteorological Society, Broadcast Meteorologist of the Year (1982) of the American Meteorological Society, Founder of “The Weather Channel”, original Meteorologist on ABC “Good Morning, America”, TV Meteorologist for 61 years on stations in New York, Chicago, San Diego, etc.
CONDON, William F., Ph.D., Electroanalytical Chemistry, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry (analytical and environmental), Southern Connecticut State University.
CROWE, Donald R, B.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida; licensed Professional Engineer (P.E., Florida); Consulting Construction Executive; over 40 years’ experience in construction, product engineering, manufacturing, and information technology.
CUNNINGHAM, Walter; MS Degree in Physics; Physicist, RAND Corp; Astronaut, Apollo 7; Founder, Earth Awareness Foundation, 1970; Advisory Board, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (5 years); Writer and Lecturer on the global warming issue.
D’ALEO, Joseph, AMS Fellow, CCM, Chair of Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, Former Professor of Meteorology/Climatology, Lyndon State College, Co-founder the Weather Channel, Chief Meteorologist, WSI, Weatherbell Analytics
D’ALONZO, Raphael P, Ph.D., Analytical Chemistry, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Retired – the Procter & Gamble Company, former Department Head, Data Management.
DeLONG, James V., J.D., Harvard Law School, mcl; former Research Director of the Administrative Conference of the United States; former Senior Analyst, Program Evaluation Office, U.S. Bureau of the Budget; author of numerous articles on administrative law, regulatory, and environmental issues, including Climate Issues and Facts (Marshall Institute, 2015), A Skeptical Look at the Carbon Tax (Marshall Institute 2013), and Out of Bounds and Out of Control: Regulatory Enforcement at the EPA (Cato Institute 2002).
DOIRON, Harold H, PhD, Mechanical Engineering, Vice President, Engineering
(retired) InDyne, Inc. Houston, Texas, Chairman, The Right Climate Stuff Research Team of retired NASA Apollo Program scientists and engineers. Member, American Society of Mechanical Engineers
DOUGLASS, David, Professor of Physics, University of Rochester.
DOYLE, Jeffrey M, PhD Resource Economics Michigan State University, President, Thermoeconomics
DRIESSEN, Paul K: BA, geology and ecology, Lawrence University; JD, environmental and natural resource law, University of Denver; author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death, Miracle Molecule: Carbon Dioxide, Gas of Life, and other books; author of many articles and reports on energy, mining, climate change, sustainable development, malaria control and other topics; senior policy analyst, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality.
DROZ, John Jr. Physicist. Energy expert with over 35 years of environmental advocacy.
DUNN, John Dale, MD JD, Policy advisor Heartland Institute, Chicago, IL, and American Council on Science and Health, New York City, Civilian Faculty, Emergency Medicine, Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center, Fort Hood, Texas, Clinical Instructor, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland. Lecturer and writer on human health effects of air pollution and climate as well as environmental law and air pollution science for 25 years.
EASTERBROOK, Don: Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University. He has studied global climate change for five decades, has written three textbooks and a dozen other books, published more than 185 papers in professional journals, and has presented 30 research papers at international meetings in 15 countries.
ENDRIZ, John Endriz, BS. (Engineering, MIT), PhD (Eng., Stanford, U), Retired VP, SDL, Inc
ENSTROM, James E., PhD, Physics; MPH, Epidemiology; Research Professor/Researcher (retired), UCLA School of Public Health, and President, Scientific Integrity Institute, Los Angeles; Life Member, American Physical Society; Founding Fellow, American College of Epidemiology; extensive scientific expertise on health effects of air pollution.
EVERETT, Bruce, Faculty Tufts University’s Fletcher School, over forty years of experience in the international energy industry.
EVERETT, Robert, Electrical Engineer, Retired President of the MITRE Corporation
FAGAN, Matthew J, PhD, B.Sc(Hons) Nuclear Physics. Founder and president of FastCAM Inc. with 17 robotic technology patents and published patent applications in the US.
FORBING, Irv, PhD in oral surgery, MS in bacteriology, College of Physicians and Surgeons in San Francisco.
FRANK, Neil, Ph.D., meteorology, Florida State University, Former Director National Hurricane Center and former Chief Meteorologist KHOU TV, CBS Houston. member, American Meteorological Society
FRANK, Patrick, Ph.D. Chemistry, Stanford University. More than 60 peer-reviewed publications, including several assessing uncertainty in the surface air temperature record and in climate model air temperature projections.
FRICKE, Martin Ph.D.: Nuclear physicist; Senior Fellow of the APS; elected to the APS Executive Panel on Public Affairs (POPA); nuclear physics research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Corporate Officer of seven R&D companies; Extraordinary Minister of Catholic Diocese of San Diego.
FULKS, Gordon J, PhD Physics, The Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research at the University of Chicago. Five decades of experience studying physical, astrophysical,and geophysical phenomena for universities, government agencies, and private clients.
GAMBLIN, Rodger L, Former VP Mead Corporation. Inventor. Author or coauthor on 46 U.S. patents.
GAMOTA, George Ph.D.: Physics; former professor University of Michigan, Fellow of the APS; Fellow of the AAAS; Senior Member of the IEEE; elected to the APS Executive Panel on Public Affairs (POPA); Founding Director of Research, Department of Defense; Corporate Board member and Executive at several R&D companies; former Bedford Chief Scientist MITRE Corporation.
GERHARD, Lee C, PhD., Senior Scientist Emeritus, Univ. of Kansas, Director and State Geologist, Kansas Geological Survey (Ret.), meteorology background. Extensive published research in both geology and climate change. Honorary member, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Association of American State Geologists and others. Member Russian Academy of Natural Science (US Br.), Kansas Geologist license #1. Former Getty Professor of Geological Engineering, Colorado School of Mines.
GERLACH, Ulrich H., PhD Relativistic Astrophysics, Princeton University, Professor of Mathematics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
GERONDEAU, Christian, engineer and scientist,graduated from ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE in PARIS,an energy expert,the author of many books on climate matters, two of them available in English: “CLIMATE,THE GREAT DELUSION ” and “ UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE LIARS”.
GIAEVER, Ivar, Applied BioPhysics, Inc., Nobel Prize in Physics, 1973
GLATZLE, Albrecht, Agro-Biologist, Dr. sc. agr. (Hohenheim University, Germany), Director of Research of INTTAS (retired), Loma Plata Paraguay Asociación Rural del Paraguay (ARP), Society of Range Management, US Grassland Society of Southern Africa, Fellow of the Tropical Grassland Society of Australia (AUSTRALIA)
GOSSELIN, Pierre, Mechanical Engineering, author of the blog, http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.PhRMBOBJ.dpbs (GERMANY)
GOULD, Laurence I, Professor of Physics, University of Hartford, Past Chair (2004), New England Section of the American Physical Society, Professor of Physics, University of Hartford, Past Chair (2004), New England Section of the American Physical Society
GRAY, William M., Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University (1961-present). Ph.D. Meteorology from U. Chicago. Tropical meteorology specialist – initiated Atlantic seasonal hurricane prediction.
GREGORY, WILLIAM D., PhD, PE, Registered Patent Agent (US); BS(physics) Georgetown University; PhD(physics), MIT; Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Health Sciences, and former Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Senior Member IEEE, Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi; author on 100+ peer reviewed articles, inventor on 100+ US and foreign patents; currently Chair of the Board and Chief Science Officer, NovaScan LLC, developer of cancer detection devices.
HAPPER, William is Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics (emeritus) at Princeton University, former Director of the Office of Energy Research Director of Research, U.S. Department of Energy, Member National Academy of Sciences
HAYDEN, Howard C, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Connecticut. Editor and Publisher, The Energy Advocate, now in 20th year of publication.
HENNIGAN,Thomas D, Environmental and Forest Biology, Associate Professor of Biology, Truett-McConnell College, Cleveland, Georgia, Ecological Society of America.
HESS, Michael L, BS Computer Information Systems, Raytheon Senior Field Engineer, Retired, U. S. Army, CW3, Retired, Florida State University
HIGGINBOTHAM, Richard, DoD Retiree, Past Member of the Defense Acquisition Regulatory Council’s Environmental Regulatory Committee MBA form American Graduate University, Covina, CA.
HUGHES, Terence J., Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences and Climate Change, University of Maine. A half-century career studying the interaction of global climate with continental ice sheets, past, present, and future, focused on inherent instabilities in ice sheets that facilitate their rapid gravitational collapse.
HUMLUM, Ole, Professor of Physical Geography, Physical Geography, Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo (NORWAY)
IDSO, Craig: Founder and Chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society.
KARAJAS, John, retired geologist, specialist stratigrapher and sedimentologist who, as a result has gained a wide-ranging understanding of the geological history of planet earth and its climatic history.
KAUFMAN, John, Retired, Faculty of Cornell University 1973–191976 & Michigan State University 1976–1981, Research Agronomist
KEEN, Richard A., Ph.D. Climatology/Geography, University of Colorado, Emeritus Instructor of Atmospheric Science, University of Colorado, Author of 7 books and numerous reports and scientific papers on Climate and Meteorology. NWS climate change, Observer for Monsanto (retired as Science Fellow) 1981–2002 & Agrium 2003–2007.
KENDRICK, Hugh, Ph.D. Nuclear Engineering, University of Michigan; former Director, Plans & Analysis, Office of Nuclear Reactor Research, US.DOE; retired VP SAIC.
KAISER, Klaus L.E., Dr. rer. nat. (Technical University Munich, Germany), Research Scientist (retired), Natl. Water Research Institute. Author/coauthor of numerous scientific papers, author of numerous popular public press articles, author/editor of several books, Canadian
KNOX, Robert S, Ph. D., Physics and Optics, U. of Rochester,1953.Professor of Physics Emeritus, U.of Rochester, fellow, American Physical Society; charter member, American Society for Photobiology.
KRAMM, Gerhard, Dr. rer. nat.(Humboldt-University of Berlin, Germany), Research Associate Professor of Meteorology (retired), author and co-author of numerous papers on meteorology and textbook co-author.
LANGNER, Carl G, PhD, Retired senior staff engineer for Shell E&P Technology Co, author or co-author of 31 patents along with numerous industry papers, member NAE
LAPOINT, Patricia A, Ph.D. Professor of Management, Author of several articles on wind energy
LEGATES, David R, Ph.D., Climatology, U of Delaware, 1988, Professor, University of Delaware, Member: AMS.
LEHR, Jay Ph.D. Science Director, The Heartland Institute, author or co-author of 35 science books relating to water, energy and the environment.
LESSER, Jonathan A, PhD, President, Continental Economics, Inc. Sandia Park, NM
LESTER, David H, Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, retired consultant in Environmental Analysis and Nuclear Technology, former Asst. Vice-President SAIC, San Diego, CA, Currently Chairman of the Board of Go-Nuclear.
LINDSTROM, Richard E., Ph.D., Physical Chemistry, Thermodynamics of Phase Changes, Professor Emeritus, University of Connecticut
LINDZEN, Richard: emeritus, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Member of National Academy of Sciences, author of numerous papers on climate and meteorology
LIPMAN, Everett, Associate Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
LUPO, Anthony R, Professor, Atmospheric Science, University of Missouri
LYNCH, William t, IEEE Fellow, Former Director at Semiconductor Research Corporation, Former Dept. Head of VLSI Device Technology at Bell Laboratories, Former member of the U.S. Nuclear Emergency Team #1, and a nuclear and radiation effects specialist
MACDONALD, James, M.S. Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Retired Chief meteorologist, Travelers Research Center Weather Service, Hartford, CT. 35 years weather forecasting experience.
MALKAN, Matthew, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. He received his PhD in Astronomy from Caltech. He is the lead author or co-author of over 350 peer-reviewed articles.
MANGINO, Martin J, Ph.D., Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University, Research Director, VCU Trauma Center, President, Virginia Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE), Richmond
MARTINIS, John, Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa
Barbara.
MARSH, James A, Professor of Immunology (emeritus), Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University
MCCALL, Gene, Ph. D., former chief scientist of Air Force Space Command and former chair of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.
MISCOLCZI, F. M., PhD, Astrophysics, Earth Sciences, Former NASA Senior Principal Scientist. Foreign Associate Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
MILLER, Dennis D, Ph.D, Professor of Economics, Holder of the Endowed Buckhorn Chair in Economics, Baldwin Wallace University, Berea, Ohio.
MILLOY, Steven j, MHS (Biostatistics), JD, LLM. Founder & publisher,JunkScience.com.
MITCHELL, Dennis M. -Certified Public Accountant( Louisiana) and Qualified Environmental Professional( IPEP), Honorary Lifetime Member International Air & Waste Management Association
MONCKTON, Christopher,
MOORE, JOHN H., Ph.D. Economics, University of Virginia; Deputy Director, National Science Foundation, 1985–1989; President, Sigma Xi, 1998–1999; President, Grove City College, 1996–2003
MOORE, Patrick, Ph.D., Co-founder and 15-year Director of Greenpeace, B.Sc. (Honours) Biology and Forestry, Ph.D. Ecology, Co-Chair US Clean and Safe Energy Coalition 2006–2012, Chair for Ecology, Energy, and Prosperity of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy 2015. Director, CO2 Coalition.
NAGEL, Mechthild, PhD, Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies at the State University of New York, College at Cortland, has written on ethical issues of water rights in South Africa
NEWTON, Michael Newton, Professor Emeritus, Forest Ecology, Oregon State University.
NIKOLOV, Ned, Ph.D., Physical Scientist (with expertise in atmosphere-ecosystem interactions, vegetation remote sensing, fire-weather forecasting and climate dynamics), USDA Forest Service.
NICHOLS, Rodney, former President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York Academy of Sciences; Scholar-in-Residence at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Executive Vice President of The Rockefeller University, R&D manager Office of the Secretary of Defense.
NUSGEN, Dr. Ursula, MSc MRCPCH FRCPath, (the MSc relates to Tropical Pediatrics) Consultant Microbiologist, Mater Private Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
O’KEEFE, William O’Keefe, President, Solutions Consulting, former CEO George C Marshall Institute, and for Executive Vice President, American Petroleum Institute.
OSBORN, Jeffery BM, BS Geology, University of Kansas, Petroleum Engineer, Memberships in American Association of Petroleum Geologists for 34 years, and in other scientific societies.
PARISH, Trueman, PhD Chemical Engineering retired former Director of Engineering Research, Eastman Chemical Company.
PAYNE, Franklin Ed, M.D. Doctor of Medicine, Associate Professor of Family, Medicine (Retired), Georgia Regents University, Augusta, GA.
PERRY, Charles A, PhD, Hydrologist and Solar Physicist, formerly of USGS (retired)
PLIMER, Ian PhD, FGS, FTSE, FAIMM, Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne (Australia). Co-editor of Encyclopedia of Geology, author of Heaven and Earth (2009), How to get expelled from school (2011), Not for greens (2014) and Heaven and Hell (2015), (AUSTRALIA).
PROMBOIN, Ronald L., Ph.D. (Economics), Stanford University, Former professor of Finance and Economics, University of Maryland University College.
PRUD’HOMME, Rémy, Harvard Law School, PhD economics Un. of Paris, Formerly Deputy-Director Environment Directorate OECD, Prof emeritus Univ of Paris, Visiting Professor MIT, Most recent book: Warmism as an Ideology – Soft
Science, Hard Doctrine (FRANCE)
QUENEAU, Paul B, Adjunct Professor, Colorado School of Mines; Principal Metallurgical Engineer and President, The Bear Group, PB Queneau & Associates Inc.
QUIRK, Thomas W. D.Phil. Nuclear physicist and former Fellow of three
Oxford Colleges. Published papers on methane, ocean changes, wind power, nuclear fuel cycle and psychology, behavioural economics and climate
change (AUSTRALIA)
RIGANATI, John P., PhD Electrical Engineering, retired Vice President Sarnoff Corporation, former member Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, cofounder The Journal of Supercomputing & IEEE Computation in Science and Engineering, 70 publications.
RITTAUD Benoît, Ph.D: mathematics, Paris–13 university, Sorbonne-Paris-Cité, associate professor, essayist. Most recent book: The Exponential Fear (La Peur exponentielle, Paris, PUF, 2015), (FRANCE).
ROGERS, Norman: founder of Rabbit Semiconductor Company, member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.
ROMBOUGH, Charles T, Ph.D., Nuclear Engineering, Founder and President of CTR Technical Services, Inc., a nuclear consulting firm, Manitou Springs, Colorado.
RUTAN, Burt, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne.
RUST, James H, PhD, Professor of nuclear engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (retired), Atlanta, Georgia
SCAFETTA, Nicola, Ph.D, Professor of Oceanography and Atmospheric Science, University of Naples Federico II, Italy, Former research scientist of Physics at Duke University. 87 Publications in complex systems and climate change (ITALY)
SCHMITT, Harrison, Geologist, Astronaut, Former U.S. Senator, Former Chair NASA Advisory Council
SHAVIV, Nir J, Professor of Physics, Chairman, Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (ISRAEL)
SHEAHEN, Thomas P, B.S. and Ph.D. in Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Research career in energy sciences, including Demand-Side Management (Energy Conservation); author of book Introduction to High-Temperature Superconductivity; measured infrared absorption by CO2 and H2O.
SINGER, S. Fred, PhD. Emeritus Prof of Envir Sciences, U of VA. Founding director, US Weather Satellite Service; former Vice Chm, Nat’l Advis Comm
on Oceans and Atmosphere. Fellow, AAAS, AGU, APS, AIAA. Founding chm of NIPCC. Co-author of NYT best-seller Unstoppable Global Warming
SOON, Willie, Scientist.
SPENCER, Roy W, PhD, Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville
STEWARD, H. Leighton: Geologist, environmentalists, and Chairman of Plants Need CO2.org.
TAYLOR, George, Ph.D. Computer Science, U.C. Berkeley
TESDORF, Nicholas, B.Arch.(Hons) Architecture, Architect, F.R.A.I.A. A.R.I.B.A., Sydney NSW / London England , University of Melbourne (AUSTRALIA)
TRIMBLE, Stanley W, Emeritus Professor, UCLA. Over the past 42 years, author, coauthor, or editor of 9 books on environmental issues in water including ENVIRONMENTAL HYDROLOGY (2013, 2015) and THE ENCYLOPEDIA OF WATER SCIENCE (2007), plus about 100 scientific papers, many published in SCIENCE.
VALENTINE, Brian G, US Department of Energy, Associate Professor of Engineering ,University of Maryland at College Park
VAN LOON, Harry, PhD, Meteorology and Climatology, formerly of NCAR
VARENHOLT, Fritz, Ph.D., Professor of the University of Hamburg, Department pf Chemistry, former Senator of the State of Hamburg, Germany, author of the Book, The neglected sun, CEO of the German Wildlife Foundation.
VELASCO HERRERA, Victor Manuel, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Institute of Geophysics, Space Science (GERMANY)
THOMPSON, David E., PhD Mechanical Engineering, Professor and Dean Emeritus, College of Engineering, the University of Idaho. Published Design Analysis, Mathematical Modeling of Nonlinear Systems (Cambridge Press, 1988).
WALLACE, Lance, PhD Astrophysics, 100 publications, mostly on human exposure to environmental pollutants, founding member of International Society of Exposure Science and International Society for Indoor Air and Climate (ISIAQ), member of AAAS and AAAR.
WEINSTEIN, Leonard, ScD, Aerospace Engineering, B.Sc Physics. Former NASA Senior Research Scientist and former Senior Research Fellow, National Institute of Aerospace, retired after 51 years research. Associate fellow AIAA, Recipient of AIAA Engineer of the year, and numerous other awards.
WERNER, Samuel A, Curators’ Professor of Physics Emeritus, University of Missouri and Guest Researcher, Neutron Physics Group, NIST, Fellow APS, AAAS, NSSA
WHITSETT, Bob, Ph.D., geophysicist, ret. Former Special Projects Manager, CGG American Services
WOLFE, Danley B., PhD – Chemical Engineering (Ohio State University, tau beta pi), MBA – University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (beta gamma sigma); energy and chemicals research and business management; management consultant, President – Chem Energy Advisors
WOLFRAM, Thomas, physicist, former Chairman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri-Columbia, Fellow of the American Physical Society, and retired Director of Division of Physical Technology,Amoco Corporation.
WOOD, Peter, President, National Association of Scholars.
WYSMULLER, Thomas, (NASA Ret.) 2013 “Water Day” chair, UNESCO-IHE (Delft, NL); 2015 “Sea-Level presenter” at http://www.waterconf.org (Varna, Bulgaria); 2016 Sea-Level chair at Symmetrion, (Vienna, Austria), Founding member, NASA TRCS Climate Group, Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX).
YOUNG, S. Stanley, PhD, Statistics and Genetics, CEO of CGStat, Adjunct Professor of Statistics, North Carolina State University, University of British Columbia and University of Waterloo, Fellow of American Statistical Association and AAAS, 3 patents; over 60 papers; six “best paper” awards.
ZYBACH, Bob, PhD, Environmental Sciences, Historical ecologist with long-term research focus on Pacific Northwest catastrophic wildfires and reforestation history, more than 200 popular articles, editorials, presentations, reports and media interviews.
I had previously reviewed the Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse, suggesting it as a replacement for the Apple Magic Mouse. Now, I’ve tried it on my Linux machine (don’t know why that took so long). It turns out to work very well, better than most, possibly all, mice I’ve used.
One’s mouse is a very personal thing, and everyone is going to have a potentially different opinion about what the best mouse is. The Ultrathin is designed to work with laptops/notebooks because it is small, and it is assumed that everything you use with such a portable device must be small. The truth is, you can carry around a whopping big mouse in your notebook bag and not even notice, so this is a bit of a fallacy. Anyway, it obviously works with any computer with a bluetooth connection, desktop or laptop.
Also, some people want their mouse to be big, some want it to be small. And most people can probably grow to like whichever mouse they are using, and thus develop their preference longer term. I personally like a very large mouse or a very small mouse. I can not explain that.
There are, these days, two fundamentally different kinds of mouse. One is the kind with buttons and scroll bars and such, the other is the kind with a swipe-able surface. The Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse
As I noted in my earlier review, my Apple mouse was starting to act strange, so I decided to replace it, and instead of getting an Apple mouse, I got the cheaper Logitech touchy mouse to try it out, and I’ve not looked back.
There are two versions of this mouse, the T631 for Mac
I have read on the Internet, which is never wrong, that the Windows version works fine on Linux, and I can attest to the Mac version working fine on Linux as well. I doubt that at present Linux is using all the various swipy capabilities of the mouse, but it moves the cursor, has left and right click, swipe-scrolling, and it may also emulate a middle mouse button. Two fingered swiping back and forth trigger Linux buttons 8 and 9. And so on.
Obviously, I’ve not tried this mouse on Windows. Why would I ever do that?
This is a bluetooth mouse (and that is how you get it to work with your Linux machine). The mouse has a selector switch, A and B, so you can pair it with two different computers (such as your desktop or your laptop).
Unlike the Apple Mouse or many other existing mice, this device does not use batteries that you replace. (Indeed, the Apple Mouse is even pretty picky about the kind of battery you use.) You plug it in to a micro USB cord hooked to something with power, every now and then. It charges really fast, and the charge lasts a long time.
I recommend the T630 or T31
Four elements are being added to the Periodic Table of the Elements. (I’m going to need a new shower curtain
Meanwhile, have you read The Periodic Kingdom: A Journey Into The Land Of The Chemical Elements
And now the video:
Last December, the United States Senate subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, headed by Ted Cruz, held a hearing to which they invited a gaggle of climate change deniers and one good guy to testify about how the science on climate change is all wrong. I wrote about it here. The strangest aspect of this hearing was probably shock jock Mark Steyn’s use of the venue to argue his case in a civil law suit pertaining to his apparently libelous behavior. But there was another feature of this hearing worth noting. Both the deniers, in particular John Christy, and Senator Cruz focused on a set of data that they construed to indicated showed that global warming is not really happening.
The oceans are warming significantly. The Earth’s surface, as measured by thermometers as well as direct and indirect measurements of the sea surface, is warming significantly. The only people who doubt this are those who are either very badly misinformed or politically or financially motivated to deny reality.
But among the data are satellite based measurements of the troposphere. These data also show warming if properly analyzed, but some forms of these data can be used to make a graph that might give the impression that the warming we clearly see is not happening, or at least, not happening much.
So what is going on here? Are these satellite data telling the Real Truth, contrary to what all the other data show, or is this just a bad data set, or are these data being abused by contrarians?
Most of the satellite data in question come from a set of birds that are deployed for use in weather prediction, but secondarily measure the temperature of the Troposphere. They have sensors that collect microwave energy emitted by Oxygen molecules to estimate temperature. This technique has certain advantages and certain disadvantages, and is fairly easy to deploy.
How one goes from these microwave signals to a temperature measurement is actually very complicated. This has been further complicated by the failure of some of the instruments, and the fact that over time the satellites, in a polar orbit, lose altitude over time, which changes how the readings must be calibrated. Also, the satellites are supposed to pass over the Earth at nearly noon and nearly midnight (on opposite sides of the planet) as the Earth rotates beneath. But this synchronization goes off over a period of time as well.
And that is the simple version.
There have been many studies of these data, and attempts to adjust for all of the problems in this methodology. The experts do not all agree on how to correct the data. There are two approaches commonly used to produce potentially usable data (known as RSS and UAH) and each has advantages and disadvantages.
Skeptical Science has a set of three discussions, couched in less or more technical terms, of how this all works. If this is of interest to you, check it out.
Tamino, at Open Mind, addressed Ted Cruz’s misuse of the satellite data and concludes,
When Ted Cruz said that both satellites and balloon data fail to show warming, he was just plain wrong. When he said these data sets were the best evidence of whether warming is occurring, he was just plain wrong. Together, those two claims make up point number 4 of the 7 things he called “facts” — but he was wrong about their being facts. They’re just claims, claims which are just plain wrong.
Ted Cruz also didn’t seem able to keep straight how many of his so-called “facts” he listed. There were 7, but he repeatedly referred to 8. I guess when it comes to counting anywhere near as high as 10, Ted Cruz is again likely to be just plain wrong.
The US is engaged in the laborious process of electing a new leader, who will likely be President for 8 years. Climate change has finally become an issue in US electoral politics. The climate policies of the next US President, and the Congress, will have a direct impact on the climate, because those policies will affect how much fossil carbon is put into the atmosphere over coming decades. So it is vital to consider what the climate may do during the next administration and the longer period that will include that administration’s effective legacy period, more or less the next decade starting now.
There is evidence that the ongoing warming of the planet’s surface is likely accelerate in the near future. Recent decades have seen the Earth’s surface temperatures go up at a relatively slower than average rate compared to earlier decades. The best available science suggests that this rate is about to increase. We can expect a series of mostly record breaking months and years that will add up to an alarmingly warm planet.
(The graphic showing continued global warming through 2015 at the top of the post is from here.)
I wrote about this last February, in discussing a paper by Steinmann, Mann, and Miller, that said:
The recent slowdown in global warming has brought into question the reliability of climate model projections of future temperature change and has led to a vigorous debate over whether this slowdown is the result of naturally occurring, internal variability or forcing external to Earth’s climate system. … we applied a semi-empirical approach that combines climate observations and model simulations to estimate Atlantic- and Pacific-based internal multidecadal variability (termed “AMO” and “PMO,” respectively). Using this method [we show that] competition between a modest positive peak in the AMO and a substantially negative-trending PMO … produce a slowdown or “false pause” in warming of the past decade.
That research was also discussed by Chris Mooney and John Upton. John Upton updated this discussion earlier this week, noting,
Cyclical changes in the Pacific Ocean have thrown earth’s surface into what may be an unprecedented warming spurt, following a global warming slowdown that lasted about 15 years.
While El Niño is being blamed for an outbreak of floods, storms and unseasonable temperatures across the planet, a much slower-moving cycle of the Pacific Ocean has also been playing a role in record-breaking warmth. The recent effects of both ocean cycles are being amplified by climate change.
This is pretty complicated, and even those who are on the cutting edge of this research are cautious in making links between their models and the on the ground reality of warming in the near future. The long term rise in surface temperature, which is what we usually refer to when using the term “Global Warming,” is not steady and smooth, but instead, it is rather squiggly. But the ups and downs that accompany the general upward trend are mostly caused by things that are known.
The sun provides the energy to warm the Earth’s surface, and this contribution changes over time, but the sun varies very little in its output, and thus has less influence than other factors. The sun’s energy warms the Earth mainly because our atmosphere contains some greenhouse gasses. The more greenhouse gas the more surface warmth. As humans add greenhouse gas (mainly CO2 released by burning fossil fuel) the surface temperature eventually rises to a higher equilibrium. But the variation in the sun’s strength is hardly observable.
Aerosols, also known as dust or in some cases pollution (or airborne particles) can reduce the surface temperature by intercepting some of the Sun’s energy on its way to the surface (I oversimplify). These aerosols come mainly from industrial pollution and volcanoes. The addition of a large amount of aerosol into the atmosphere by a major volcanic eruption can have a relative cooling effect but one that lasts for a short duration, because the dust eventually settles.
There are many other important factors. Changes in land use patterns that cause changes in effectiveness of carbon sinks – places where atmospheric carbon (mainly CO2) is trapped in solid form by biological systems – increase atmospheric CO2. Melting glacial ice takes up heat and influences surface temperatures. And so on.
The biggest single factor that imposes a squiggle on the upward trending line of surface temperature is the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean. Close to 100% of the extra heat added to the Earth’s system by global warming ends up in the world’s oceans. The heat is moved into the ocean because the surface warms up (from the sun) but surface water is constantly being mixed into lower levels of the ocean, and visa versa. When it comes to the Earth’s surface temperature, the ocean is the dog and the surface is the tail.
A famous, and now perhaps infamous, example of this interaction between ocean and air is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Here’s the simple version (see here for more detail). The equatorial Pacific’s surface is constantly being warmed by the sun. The surface waters are usually blown towards the west by trade winds. (Those trade winds are caused in part by the rotation of the Earth, and in part by the ongoing redistribution of excess tropical heat towards the poles). This causes warm water to move west, where it is potentially subducted into the ocean, moving heat into the sea. That heat eventually may work its way out of the ocean through various currents.
During many years, the ins and the outs are similar. During some years, La Niña years, the amount of heat moving into the ocean is larger, which can cause a small cooling influence on the planet. Every now and then, the reverse happens. This involves complicated changes in trade winds and ocean currents. A good chunk of the heat that has been stored in the Pacific now emerges and is added very abruptly, over a period of several months, to the atmosphere. This is an El Niño event. We are at this moment experiencing one of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded, possibly the strongest (we won’t know until it has been going a while longer.)
ENSO is one, in fact the biggest, example of atmosphere-ocean interaction that influences surface temperatures. But, ENSO is only one part of the interaction between the Pacific and the atmosphere. There is also a phenomenon known as the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation (PMO). For its part, the Atlantic has the AMO, a similar system. These phenomena are characterized by a general transfer of heat either into or out of the ocean, with several years in a row seeing more heat move into the ocean, followed by several years in a row of more heat moving out of the ocean.
Though ENSO and the PMO are distinct processes, they may be related. I asked climate scientist Michael Mann if he views El Nino as part of the larger scale system of PMO, or if El Niño essentially rides on top of, or acts independently from PMO. He told me, “I would say the latter. At some level, the PMO really describes the long-term changes in the frequency and magnitude of El Niño and La Niña events, i.e. change in the behavior of ENSO on multidecadal timescales, and it will appear as multidecadal oscillation with an ENSO-like signature with some modifications due to the fact that certain processes, like gyre-advection and subduction of water masses, act on longer timescales and do they are seen with the PMO bot not El Niño or La Niña.”
The influence of ENSO on global surface temperatures is well illustrated in this graphic from Skeptical Science.
Here, the surface temperature anomaly is shown from the late 1960s to the present. The annual values are classified into years during which ENSO was neutral, or neutral with volcanic influences, La Nina years, and El Niño years with or without volcanoes. A separate trend line is shown for years that should be relatively warm (El Niño), relatively cool (La Niña), and years that should be about average.
The influence of the PMO is also apparent.
This graphic shows the measurement of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the surface temperature anomalies. The data are averaged out over a two year cycle (otherwise the PDO would be way too squiggly to be useful visually). Notice that during periods when the PDO is positive (adding heat to the atmosphere) there tends to be a stronger upward trend of surface temperature, and when the PDO is negative, the surface temperature rises more slowly. Remember, a lot of other factors, such as aerosols, are influencing the temperature line, so this relationship is quite imperfect.
Also notice that both lines trend dramatically upward near the end of the graph. This reflects the last couple of years (including right now) of dramatically increasing surface temperatures, and an apparent positive shift in the PDO. Just as interesting is the negative PDO associated with a reduced upward trend in the surface temperatures, fondly known by many as the “Hiatus” or “Pause” in global warming, during the first part of the 20th century. Indeed, it is likely that this slowdown (not really a pause) in warming is largely a result of a higher rate of excess heat being plowed into the oceans, and less coming back out. This is also a period during which the ENSO system produced no strong El Niños.
But the PDO is, as noted, part of a larger phenomenon of ocean-atmosphere interaction. The study noted above by Steinman, Mann, and Miller takes a broad view of these oscillations and their impact on climate. In RealClimate, Mann writes,
We focused on the Northern Hemisphere and the role played by two climate oscillations known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or “AMO” … and the … Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation or “PMO”… The oscillation in Northern Hemisphere average temperatures (which we term the Northern Hemisphere Multidecadal Oscillation or “NMO”) is found to result from a combination of the AMO and PMO.
…Our conclusion that natural cooling in the Pacific is a principal contributor to the recent slowdown in large-scale warming is consistent with some other recent studies…
…the state-of-the-art climate model simulations analyzed in our current study suggest that this phenomenon is a manifestation of purely random, internal oscillations in the climate system.
This finding has potential ramifications for the climate changes we will see in the decades ahead. As we note in the last line of our article,
Given the pattern of past historical variation, this trend will likely reverse with internal variability, instead adding to anthropogenic warming in the coming decades.
That is perhaps the most worrying implication of our study, for it implies that the “false pause” may simply have been a cause for false complacency, when it comes to averting dangerous climate change.
Have political leaders and representatives been lukewarm on climate change over recent years in part because the climate change itself has been less dramatic than it could be? And, conversely, is it the case that the next couple of decades will see a reverse in both? I asked Michael Mann if his research indicated that the indicators such as the PMO, AMO, or the derived NMO, show that the oceans are about to contribute to a speedup in warming. He told me, “…both PMO and AMO contribute to NMO, but in recent decades PMO has been the dominant player, and yes, I would expect to see the recent turn toward El Nino-like conditions and enhanced hemispheric/global warming as an apparent upturn in the NMO, though it is always difficult if not impossible to diagnose true change in the low-frequency signal right at the end of a time series.”
Let’s have a closer look at the influence of the PDO on global surface temperatures. Since the human influence on the atmosphere has grown over time, we want to focus on more recent decades when the input of additional greenhouse gases had already risen to a high level. This graphic shows the NASA GISS surface temperature anomaly values (the dots) from 1980 to the present, but with some trend lines added in.
(The NOAA GISS data are a running 12 month mean using the monthly data. Note that the trend lines added to this graph are meant to visually underscore the differences between time periods in the overall trend, and have no special statistical value.)
The black dots and the curvy trend line to the left represent a period of time when the PDO was positive, but also includes a depression in surface temperature because of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. I made the trend line a “second order polynomial” instead of a regular straight line. A polynomial equation can capture internal curviness of a series of data.
(A polynomial equation that is of the same “order” as the number of points in the data set would, theoretically, zig and zag back and forth to account for each data point’s position which would be absurd. One must be careful with poylnomials. But a second order polynomial can honestly reflect a modest curviness in a series of data, and in this case, helps the line do its job at visually presenting a short term pattern.)
The second series of data, in blue, shows a period of mostly negative PMO, again, with a second order polynomial line drawn on it. This is the period of time that includes the so-called “hiatus” in global warming, when the upward trend of increasing surface temperature was somewhat attenuated. That attenuation was probably caused by a number of factors, and in fact, at least one of those factors had to do with inadequacies of the data itself, in that the measurements fail to account for extreme warming in the Arctic and parts of Africa. But the negative PMO, and likely, according to Steinmann, Mann and Miller, a larger scale relationship between atmosphere and ocean, seem to have somewhat flattened out the line.
But then we come to the third part of the data, in red. The ocean-atmosphere relationship has switched the other way. The PMO has been positive since the last part of 2013, and over a smaller and more recent time frame, we have been experiencing a strong El Niño.
This graphic does a nice job showing how short and medium term upward and downward trends eventually cancel out to produce a single upward trend in global surface temperature. Very short term shifts such as a given El Niño event or a given Volcanic eruption cause the most obvious squiggles. Somewhat longer term, multi-decade trends such as the PDO cause longer parts of the series of measurements to rise more or less quickly. But over nearly 40 years shown here, and longer periods, all the ups and downs average out to a single trend that can be reliably projected for a reasonable period of time.
These ups and downs in the rate of warming are not important to the long term trend, but they are important because of their immediate effects on weather. And that is all that should matter. But these short and medium term trends, as well as even more immediate events such as individual storms, take on a greater importance that has nothing to do with the science of climate change itself. These changes affect the way politicians, advocates, and the general public, regard climate change, and serve to motivate or attenuate action on one side of the false debate or another.
We have known enough about climate change and its causes to have started the shift from fossil fuels to alternative strategies for producing energy long before 1980, but have in fact done very little to solve this problem. Initially, climate change seemed more like a thing of the future, and in fact, had relatively little impact on the most influential and powerful nations and people. Disruptions of weather patterns started to become more apparent around or just before 1980, but for the next few decades anti-science forces were well organized, and their efforts were enhanced, at the beginning of the 21st century, by the unthinking and unknowing process of air-sea interactions that reduced the rate of surface temperature increase even while weather patterns continued to become more and more chaotic.
But the truth is, a widespread flood in the American bottomlands defeats a snowball in the hands of a contrarian Senator. Eventually, more and more people in the US have been affected by inclement weather, and the frequency with which destructive storms of various kinds hammer the same subpopulation again and again has gone up. The symbolic snowball melts under the cold hard stare of voters who wonder how they are going to rebuild their lives after floods, severe storms, and droughts have taken away their property, in some cases their loved ones, and raised their insurance rates.
So the question emerges, will the next decade or so be a period of increased, or of attenuated, motivation from Mother Nature to act on climate change? The rational actor will act now, because we know that the greenhouse gas we pump into the atmosphere today changes the climate for decades to come. The reactionary actor with little capability or interest in thinking long term (i.e. most people) will be mollified by a decade with few severe storms, not much flooding, a seemingly secure food supply, and a snowball or two.
I left the projection of the future as a single estimate based on the past several decades (all the data shown on the graph). I could have imposed a more upward trending line, maybe a nice curve like these polynomials show, as an extension to the blue line. But since the graphic is going out a couple more decades, and the ups and downs average out over several decades, I think it is fair enough to use the linear projection shown by the red dotted line.
I’m not actually making a prediction of future global surface temperatures here. What I’m showing instead is that two things seem to be true. First, long term (over decades) global warming has happened and will likely to continue at about the same pace for a while. This has been going on long enough that by now we should viscerally understand that the squiggles are misleading. Second, the last couple of decades have been a period of reduced warming, but that period is likely over, and we are likely to experience an increased rate of warming.
Will surface temperatures during the term of the next POTUS squiggle about mostly above that red dotted line on this graph, or will those temperatures squiggle up and down above and below the line, or even below it? Based on the best available science, that first choice is most likely. Whomever ends up being POTUS, and the corresponding Congress, will be enacting (or failing to enact) policy during a period of surface temperature increasing at a rate higher than we have in recent years.
A vitally important known unknown, is what will the effects of such a rise in surface temperature be. We have various levels of confidence that storminess, changes in the distribution of rainfall, drought, and through the melting of glacial ice, sea level rise, are all important forms of climate disruption we are currently experiencing, and we should expect more of the same. The unknown is whether or not we should expect a dramatic acceleration of these changes in the short term future.
How will the insurance industry address an increase in widespread catastrophic damage caused by storms and floods? Will the government have to underwrite future losses, or will disaster insurance simply become something we can’t have? Will there be damage to our food production system that ultimately results in less certainly in the food supply, and how will we deal with that? The well known “reugee crisis” is a climate refugee crisis. But it may be a small one compared to what could happen in the future. Will we need to restrict development in mountain areas more subject to fires, and withdraw settlement from low lying areas along major rivers? How will we address more widespread and more severe killer heat waves?
The battle to preserve the use of fossil fuels exists at the state level in the US. Should we have a national effort to stop the legislatures in red states from putting the kibosh on local development of clean energy sources, either by energy utilities or individual home owners?
Sea level rise has already had several negative effects, but it is also is a longer term issue, and is perhaps among the most serious consequences of human greenhouse gas pollution. At some point, American politicians in some areas will be faced not with the question, “Will this or that Congressional district be represented by a Democrat or a Republican,” but rather, “Where the people who lived in this district go now that the sea is taking it?”
Over time, I think the social and political will to address climate change has grown, though very slowly. It might seem that the effects of climate change right now are fairly severe, with floods and fires and all that being more common. But while these effects are real and important, they have been minor compared to what the future is likely to bring. The anemic but positive growth of willingness to act has occurred in a political and physical climate that is less than nurturing of dramatic and effective action.
Whoever is elected president this time around, and the Congress, will serve during a period when the people’s will to act will transform from that inspired by activists pushing for change, to outcries of a larger number of desperate and suffering newcomers to the rational side of the climate change discussion.
Expect a sea change in the politics of science policy.
Added: See this recent post by Peter Sinclair, and his video:
I had considered writing an accounting of all the outlandish weather events of 2015, but that project quickly became a tl:dr list of untoward happenings which is both alarming and a bit boring, since it is so long. So, I decided to generate something less comprehensive, focusing more on the context and meaning of the diverse and impressive set of outcomes of anthropogenic global warming, an historically strong El Niño, and, well, weather which is already a pretty whacky thing.
See: Highlights of Climate Change Research in 2015
It should be noted right away that 2015 is the last year in which any human alive will see CO2 levels dip below 400 parts per million.
Floods, probably. Around the world, there were a lot of floods, and a lot of them were very damaging and deadly. Also, many of these floods appeared with little warning, even in places like Texas, where the meteorology is pretty good. Those Texas floods were of special note, as were the floods in the Carolinas. But outside the US there were major floods in Asia, especially Vietnam and Myanmar, as well as Yemen. Alaska, Oklahoma, Atacama in South America, also saw severe floods.
I’m pretty sure it is accurate to say that there was more flooding, and more severe flooding, than typical for, say, 20th century climatology. We had many 1,000 year flood events, too many to assume that these events remain as 1,000 year events.
See: Global Warming Changing Weather in the US Northeast
There are probably two or three reasons for increased flooding, which of course is caused by increased and concentrated rainfall along with other factors such as land use changes that cause rainfall to result in more flooding. One is the simple fact that a warmer atmosphere, due to global warming, contains more water, and thus, we get more rain. How much more? Not a lot, but enough to make a difference. If you put together a bunch of weather data and plot the annual precipitation rate over the last century or so, and fit a line to the data, the line will look flat. It isn’t really flat, and in fact, a properly fitted line on good data will show a statistically significant upslope. But still, the total amount of extra precipitation is a small percentage of the usual amount of precipitation, so the slope is not impressive unless you draw it out using heavy-handed graphing methods.
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A few other places are doing end of year reviews. Inside Climate is doing a series of 2015 retrospectives. Skeptical Science has an overview of the year. Environmental health news has a wish list pivoting on 2015 and a year in review. And Then There’s Physics summarizes 2015. Critical Angle takes a critical look at 2015 here. If you see any more out there in the wild, let me know. Media Matters has “The 15 Most Ridiculous Things Conservative Media Said About Climate Change In 2015.” Media Matters also has 5 New Year’s Resolutions For Reporting On Climate Change. HotWhopper has The Fake Sceptic Awards for 2015 here.
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A second factor is a set of changes in how, when, and where the rain falls. Normally, in the temperate regions, rain storms move along with trade winds, guided or influenced by jet streams, fairly quickly. But if the jet streams slow down, the storms slow down, so we may see 4 inches of rain fall in one place that normally would have been spread out over a larger area, never exceeding half (or less) of that amount in any given area. The jet streams have slowed down and also become curvier, which both increases the amount of rain that falls in a give area but also may transfer moisture from and to places that are normally not involved as much in such a process. For example, the storm we are expecting today in the upper Midwest and Plains is not a typical Canadian Clipper, but rather a Gulf Coast storm related to the deadly blizzards and tornado swarms we’ve seen over the last few days to the south.
See: Does global warming destroy your house in a flood?
This clumping of rain in smaller areas also means that other areas that would normally have received some rain don’t, causing what my colleague Paul Douglas refers to as “flash droughts.” These are dry periods that don’t last long enough, and are not severe enough, to register on any official drought-o-meter, but nonetheless stress local water systems (such as farming) enough to be a nuisance.
A third factor is sea surface temperature. This really relates to, and is probably one of the main causes, of the first factor (increased precip overall), and feeds into the second factor (clumping of rain) but deserves its own consideration. Elevated sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic off the US coast last winter caused a lot more moisture than normal to feed into nor’easter storms, which in turn have become more common (because of increased sea surface temperatures and other factors), thus dumping large quantities of snow in the US Northeast. The same thing dumped lots of extra snow in a region that normally gets very little snow, the US Southeast, the winter before.
See: A selection of books on climate change
These changes have been happening for decades, and are due to global warming. The warming caused by the human release of extra greenhouse gasses, and other human effects, increase the warmth, thus the evaporation, thus the precipitation. Part of this warming trend involved increasing the warmth of the Arctic at a much higher rate than most of the rest of the planet. This, in turn, seems to have caused the jet stream to become wavy and slow down. The jet streams and trade winds are ultimately caused and controlled by the Earth spinning, which has not changed, and the temperature differential between the warm equator and the cold poles, which has changed quite a bit.
See: Weather Whiplash Is Like My Old Broken Sprinkler
Didn’t El Niño cause these changes, and thus, aren’t these weather events unrelated to global warming?
No, and for two reasons.
First, many of these events happened during the first half of the year, before the start of the current El Niño, which is in fact the strongest El Niño so far observed directly, and possibly the strongest El Niño in millennia.
The second reason is that the heat released by the El Niño (the release of heat stored in the Pacific Ocean is what an El Niño is, in functional terms) is added to an already warmed world. It may even be that the extra severity of this year’s El Niño is upscaled by anthropogenic global warming. In any event, any records we set during the current El Niño exceed earlier El Niño years because the El Niños we experience are shorter term warming events on top of a steadily increasing global warming phenomenon.
Last year and this year, or really, the last few years, have seen excessive, above normal rates of forest and brush fires in various regions. We have seen major fires in Australia, North America, and Southeast Asia during this period, with North America breaking several recent records this year.
See: Forest fires in Indonesia choke much of south-east Asia
These fires are caused by a combination of factors, but ultimately heat increasing evaporation, prior rainy years increasing available fuel, and warm winters increasing tree death to parasites (thus increasing fuel), all have contributed.
North America, in the old days, had much more fire-heavy years than anything recent because we were busy cutting down the forest, piling up “slash” (left over tree parts) and running sparky old fashioned coal-driven railroad engines up and down between the slash piles, catching them on fire. In addition, just burning the slash on purpose contributed to the overall amount of fire, especially when the slash fires got out of control.
We also saw some pretty impressive fires a couple of decades ago because of what we now know were bad fire management practices, which had actually grown out of those earlier decades of logging related fires. In other words, the frequency and distribution of forest and brush fires is complex. During aridification, probably global warming related, in Africa during the 70s and 80s, vast areas started to burn more regularly than usual. In those days, I would fly at night over Libya, Chad and the Sudan a couple of times a year, and could observe the entire region was burning all the time, easily visible from 26,000 feet.
The bottom line: The frequency and extent of fires is variable and chaotic, but anthropogenic global warming seems to have contributed significantly to us having more of them.
Record breaking tropical storms occurred in 2015. All of the tropical cyclone/hurricane basins saw interesting activity, with the Atlantic being the most quiet, and the Eastern Pacific, possibly, being the strangest.
There were 22 Category 4 or 5 storms this year in the Northern Hemisphere, a record number. The last record year was recent, 2004. Studies have shown overall that the total energy that forms up in tropical cyclones has increased with global warming, though the actual total number of storms is highly variable.
It is reasonable to expect an increase in the frequency and severity of tropical storms with global warming, while at the same time, in some areas, smaller storms may become less common. This is partly because smaller storms are more readily abated by some of the global-warming related changes in weather systems such as increased wind shear and increased dust in the tropical atmosphere. At the same time, extremely high sea surface temperatures, and also, high water temperatures as depth (100–200 meters) increase the potential strength of storms that do get past that initial formation.
Hurricane Patricia, in the Eastern Pacific (landfall in Mexico) was an especially important storm. It was a physically small storm, but had more powerful winds than ever seen in a tropical storm. The storm went from nothing to a full hurricane in several hours (instead of several days).
The significance of this can not be underestimated. We have a situation where the conditions that might cause a hurricane to form are extreme, because of global warming (and this year, more so because of El Niño). So, when when these conditions are in place, a hurricane can form faster, and get more powerful, than normal. Consider the prospect of a land falling Category 5+ storm forming offshore from an area with low lying terrain (not like where Patricia struck land) with a high population density (not like where Patricia struck land) and moving on shore immediately. Like for instance, an Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico version of Patricia making landfall near Miami or NOLA.
Most of the really large hurricanes of this year were in the Pacific basin, distributed across the entire region, but Hurricane Joaquin, which was a very large and powerful storm in the Atlantic, did have us on the edge of our seats for a while when some of the better weather predicting models suggested it might make landfall. Also, nearly unprecedented tropical storms formed near the Arabian Pennensula.
Other than February, which was merely hot rather than really hot, globally, every month so far this year has broken or nearly broken one or more records, depending on which database one uses. The running 12-month average of surface temperatures started to break records before El Niño kicked in, and continued to do so since. This will continue for several more months, even if the El Niño phenomenon itself stops soon, because it takes several months for surface temperatures to show the El Niño effect.
More specifically, there were killer heat waves in the Western Cape of South Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Australia recorded its hottest day ever. North America experienced numerous record breaking days, in the US and Canada. Cherry trees thought it was spring and bloomed last week in Washington. I saw birds building a nest outside my house in Minnesota two weeks ago, and our lawn was green(ish) through last weekend.
Let us not forget the Great Blob of Hot Water in the northern Pacific. This non El Niño phenomenon, which has been going for a couple of years no, has had El Niño like effects in the region, and probably relates to the non normal weather in along the western coast of North America, including record breaking heat in Alaska, major storms in or near Alaska, and of course, the California Drought.
A Haboob-Nado in China involved some of the strongest winds ever seen in the region, and may have, very unusually, contained an embedded tornado. We had a mild tornado season in the US, in Tornado Alley, until a few days ago when a not-very-seasonal tornado season sprung up and killed close to 50 people in just a few days. The American southeast does get winter tornadoes, but Michigan does not. But this year, there was a first ever recorded December tornado in that state.
The Arctic Sea ice has been diminishing in its minimum extent for a few decades now, and this year we saw the third lowest amount. The volume of Arctic sea ice continues to shrink.
You all know about the Syrian Refugee crisis. This is the latest chapter in the collapse of the Syrian state, which in turn happened because of long term drought in that country killing off the agricultural system and forcing farmers into the cities, where many became involved in the Syrian Civil War, which opened up the opportunity for the Islamic State to take a large amount of territory in the region. And so on. The Syrian refugee crisis is likely to be an early version of more of the same to come over future decades. And, I quickly point out, this is not likely to have been the first climate refugee situation, just much worse than prior events related to the spread of deserts in North Africa and drying out in West Asia.
This year saw some interesting research in climate change.
One team studies major oscillations in climate that relate to oceans (of which El Niño is a shorter-term smaller part). This research suggests that the last couple of decades have seen less warming than we might expect over the long term, and further suggests that an uptick in the rate of warming is in our medium term future.
Related research also shows that accelerated melting of northern glaciers, especially Greenland, could alter Atlantic currents, so while the Earth generally warms due to increased greenhouse gasses, weather may change to a colder regime in Europe, some time over the next few dedades.
We are seeing an increased rate at which climate and weather experts are attributing bad weather to global warming. This is partly a shift in thinking and methods among the experts, and partly because of an actual increase in such events.
There has been interesting research in the Antarctic. We are seeing increased concern about, and evidence for, destabilization of huge inland glaciers that could start to fall apart and contribute to sea level rise at any time in the next several years. At the same time we saw one study that seemed to suggest that Antarctic is gaining ice, rather than losing it. If that is true, than recent decades of sea level rise are partly unexplained. Alternatively, the research, which has some known flaws, may simply be wrong. Look for some interesting results related to Antarctic glacier during 2016.
The famous #FauxPause in global warming, claimed by many climate change deniers to be a real thing (no warming in X years, etc.) was already known to be Faux, but this year saw several independent nails being driven into that coffin. Rather than a pause that disproves global warming, we have a better understood series of changed in the long term warming in the planet’s surface temperature.
See: In a blind test, economists reject the notion of a global warming pause
Sea floor biotic diversity was shown to be threatened by warming, coral bleaching is more likely and in fact happening at a higher rate, and probably mostly due to El Niño, there has been some odd ocean animal migrations.
The planting zones, the gardening and agricultural zones we use to decide which crops to plant and when, have over the last several years shifted in most places in North America by one or two zones. This year, the people who make the zone maps came out with a new one.
Sea levels continue to rise, and the rate of rise is rising. Rare nuisance flooding in coastal areas, most famously but not only Miami, have become regular events. Sales in waterproof shoes are expected to increase.
Across meteorology we see the graph and chart makers scrambling to find new colors for their maps showing heat. Y-axes are being stretched everywhere. We seem to be stuck with a five level category system for tropical cyclones/hurricanes, but we are seeing so many storms that are way stronger, bigger, more destructive than earlier Category 5 storms that talk of adding a category is no longer being responded to with angry mobs of pitchfork wielding weather forecasters who came of age with the older system.
See: How to not look like an idiot
There has been a great deal of significant climate change related activism, and COP happened, with a strong message to address the human causes of climate change sooner than later. Climate change has actually become an issue in US elections. For the first time a major world leader, President Obama, has faced off with the deniers and told them to STFU. Major news outlets such as the Washington Post and the Guardian have started to take climate change seriously. The idea that reporters must give equal weight to the “two sides of the story” (science is real, vs. science is not real) is disappearing.
Denial of climate change and climate change science reached its high water mark over the last 12 months. It will now fade away.
And that is a short and incomplete summary of weather and climate in 2015.
A note for my regular readers: Yes, I chose the burning Earth graphic to annoy the denialist. Check the comments below to see if that annoyed anyone.
August Berkshire of Minnesota Atheists has organized an Atheist Talk radio show for tomorrow, Sunday Morning, in which various people will discuss many of the top science stories of 2015.
The idea is for each guest to take the Discover Magazine’s top 100 stories of 2015, pick a subset of ten, and have at them. Some subset of Brianne Bilyeu, August Berkshire, Maddy Love, and me will be on the show, but I think there may have been a cancellation, not sure who, other than that it wasn’t me who will not be there. Anyway, it will be an interesting show … what are the top stories, and why pick this story or that story instead of some other story?
For example, did August Berkshire pick his ten stories because he has free will? Or was there any research over the last year that suggests that free will is an illusion? Yes, there is a good chance we will be going meta on you.
Join us live at 9:00 AM Central time on the radio or listen to the podcast later.
UPDATE: The Podcast Is Here!
With the imminent release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you might want to refresh your memory by watching the earlier Star Wars films, or even the films and other related productions.
There are two or three philosophies on this. The most obvious is to watch the films in chronological order, or story order, so you are seeing the historical development of the things that happened. This is simple. Watch Episode I first, and work your way in order through Episode VI.
There are objections to this method, however, because the way the story was told, out of historical sequence, involves certain reveals that would be ruined if you watched them in historical order.
The release order of the films, which presumably reflects the intentions of the artist, is:
Episode IV
Episode V
Episode VI
Episode I
Episode II
Episode III
Then, of course, Episode VII, and eventually Episodes VIII and IX
Software expert Rod Hilton developed what come to be known as the “Machete Order” (called that because his blog is named “Absolutely No Machete Juggling”). Hiton argues, as noted, that the historical order (he calls it the “episode order”) ruins a key reveal that so and so is so and so’s father. Hilton rightly notes that this is a key feature of the entire story, and it is not a good idea to ruin that. If anyone watching the films does not know about this reveal, then watching them in historical, or episode, order is the wrong thing to do.
He also argues that the release order is fine for the first three films has its problems as well. His suggestion is a different order from either historical or episode, and it runs like this:
Episode IV
Episode V
Episode II
Episode III
Episode VI
Notably, you don’t watch Episode I at all. The reason? It sucks. Read the original (well, updated) blog post for all the reasons.
Another dude, Ernest Rister, suggests the same order but he leaves in Episode I, so you get this:
You can get the digital version of the existing films at Amazon: Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection
You might want to go totally crazy and also watch and read the other things that are parts of the story but not in those movies, such as the TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars
By the way, John Abraham wrote a review of the recently published novel, “Dark Disciple,” which fits near the beginning of the cannon, here.
As you may know, Mike Haubrich and I have been planning to develop a podcast. Well, we did it, and you can visit the first episode here.
In this episode, Mike and I discuss some of the reasons behind why we created Ikonokast, and interview writer and science policy expert Shawn Otto. We touch on the recent Paris climate conference, Ted Cruz as the freshest face of absurd over the time science denialism, Shawn’s new novel, his forthcoming book on science policy, and the ScienceDebate.com project.
Ikonokast has a web site, and each podcast will be shown presented in a blog post, at least for now. Eventually the podcast will be available through the usual other means such as iTunes, etc. (may even be there by the time you write this).
Please visit Ikonkast and let us know what you think!
You are a scientists and you are doing two things.
First, you have finished a preliminary study and submitted a grant proposal based on your evolving idea about something, and you have just submitted a related paper to a peer reviewed journal. Well, OK, that’s a bunch of things, but they are all related to the temporal stream of the research you are expected to do as a member of the academic community.
Second, you are having conversations with your mentor, your colleagues, others, about this research in which you are traveling up and down various alleyways searching for answers to outstanding questions, ways to refine your methodology, approaches to explaining complex things. Most of the time, just when you think you might have cornered an answer, it turns out to be just another question briefly disguised as a result. But, the whole time, you are having this conversation and it is fruitful and productive, and helps your research move forward.
Suddenly, Nefarious Guy, who is the antagonist in this story, appears on the scene. The first thing Nefarious Guy does is to force you to release the data from your preliminary study, and to put a copy of the peer reviewed paper you’ve submitted on the internet. The result? Some bogus dood at another institution gets hold of your preliminary study, publishes the result under his own name. Meanwhile, the journal contacts you and says they are rejecting your paper. They want new, as yet undistributed results taking up the precious pages of their journal, and your paper is no longer new, since it is all over the internet. The last four years of work is now severely damaged. Your tenure committee is not impressed with your excuses. Your career is damaged. Later, when you give a talk to some high school kids on what is like to be a scientist, a youngster asks, “What advice would you give to someone like me, who really wants to be a scientist?” You are compelled, ethically, to tell her to start off by making friends with a lawyer and not having very high expectations for her career.
But Nefarious Guy did not end his antics there. He also got hold of many of those conversations you’ve been having with your colleagues. You see, those conversations, in conformity with the way the modern world works, have largely been via email, and these emails have been acquired and made public. Now, Nefarious Guy and his minions have been mining these emails and putting bits and pieces of them out there, stripped of their actual context and embedded in a stream of lies about how the research was done and what the motivations of the researcher “really” are.
This dishonest misrepresentation of the honest conversations you’ve had does not damage your career, because all the other scientists and academics, including the granting agencies, can see right through Nefarious Guy’s exploits. But his actions do something worse. They damage science itself, because they become part of the public discourse, and the public is generally gullible, often looking for a reason to complain anyway, and do not understand the nature of what has happened.
Nefarious Guy is a stand in for any number of politically motivated science deniers who wish to damage the scientific process, discredit the widely held scientific consensus on climate change, and punish individual scientists for being honest and truthful.
One such individual is Congressman Lemar Smith of Texas. Michael Mann, a climate scientist who has been subjected to some of this sort of nefarious activity
Mann notes that Smith “has long disputed the overwhelming scientific evidence that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are changing the climate. Now he is using his committee chairmanship to go after the government’s own climate scientists, whose latest study is an inconvenience to his views.”
Last month, Smith subpoenaed climate scientist Kathryn Sullivan of NOAA demanding the release of those honest convo emails and other similar documents pertaining to climate change related research published in Science. The study produced results most inconvenient. Essentially, it was a detailed look at the data showing that the famous #FauxPause in the rise of global surface temperatures was indeed faux.
NOAA told Smith to take a hike. Smith doubled down. More than once. It is important to note that no one is denying access to data, methods, or results. The entire scientific community is appalled at Congressman Smith’s requests and his implications that these scientists are up to something. The information Smith needs to prove himself wrong are available. This is nothing but an expeditionary move to damage science and some of the scientists who do that science.
Mann notes that Smith has tried to do this sort of damage before, sometimes with success.
Mann concludes,
While there is no doubt climate change is real and caused by humans, there is absolutely a debate to be had about the details of climate policy, and there are prominent Republicans participating constructively in that discourse. Let’s hear more from these sensible voices. And let’s end the McCarthy-like assault on science led by the Lamar Smiths of the world. Our nation is better than that.
The New York Times gave Smith right of reply, in which he doubles down yet again, asserting that “federal employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have altered temperature data to try to refute an 18-year plateau in global temperatures…” He insists that satellite data refute the idea that warming has continued. That satellite data to which he refers is the cooked up unpublished and unreviewed, known-to-be-faulty bogus result of a couple of science deniers. Well, it is published, in a blog post, but not in the peer reviewed literature.
No wonder so many Americans distrust Congress. Both houses.
UPDATE! This post was written months ago when, yet again, the Senate tried to do something about guns. You are probably looking for information on the more recent chance for the Senate to show that the are not up to the task of protecting American Citizens. For information on who voted for what in this round, CLICK HERE.
We’ve had a spate of spree killings lately, most recently and famously the killing of 14 people in San Bernardino by two people who should not have owned firearms but were apparently able to legally purchase assault rifles, pistols, and thousands of rounds of ammo.
So, Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey, a Democrat and a Republican, introduced an amendment that would expand background checks for commercial gun sales. This would be a helpful provision, but really wasn’t much of a restriction. No one in the Senate should have voted against it. But several did. By definition, those who voted against the proposal are gun nuts, and they should not be in the Senate or any other elected office. Here are their names:
I thought I’d share this update from the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.
We have much to be grateful for at CSLDF – this year, we became an independent 501(c)(3) organization, provided legal services to 30+ researchers, and took on some of the worst groups attacking climate scientists. Thank you for your support! We truly couldn’t have done it without you.
Unfortunately, assaults on climate scientists continue. Most notably, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) has launched an investigation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), claiming that NOAA “alters data to get the politically correct results they want.” Rep. Smith has targeted a NOAA study, and the NOAA scientists behind the study, which found that recent temperature increases were greater than earlier studies indicated – contradicting Rep. Smith’s belief that global warming has “paused.” NOAA provided Rep. Smith with much of the information he sought, but it has rightfully refused to hand over scientists’ private emails because protecting internal deliberations is essential for fostering free scientific discourse. Rep. Smith has not responded well. For more on this, please read our post at the Columbia Climate Law blog.
Similarly, the fossil-fuel industry funded Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a lawsuit this month, claiming that open records laws give them the right to access the personal correspondence of George Mason University professor Dr. Ed Maibach, an expert in climate change communications. We fully expect that this lawsuit will be exposed as meritless – as have similar lawsuits before – but sadly, seeking scientists’ emails is an increasingly popular way to harass, intimidate, and attempt to discredit researchers.
Unfortunately, legal attacks on the climate science community happen on a regular basis. To help as many scientists as possible, we will again be offering free one-on-one consultations with an attorney at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco, from December 14 to 18. Details available here.
Please consider donating to help us protect climate scientists from legal attacks. As always, your support is greatly appreciated.