Here’s the talk:
Eventually, there will probably be a book.
Tag Archives: Climate and weather
Al Jazeera interview on Muller Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study
More details, context, here.
An Important Victory for Climate Science
You’ve heard about “ClimateGate.” ClimateGate was a very successful but illegal campaign by anti-science to discredit climate science and climate scientists. Rest assured, the climate science is fine and the climate scientists are just trying to do their jobs, and doing quite well at that. Nonetheless, a combination of inaccurate representation of the contents of various emails written between climate scientists and what amounts to unethical treatment of climate science by the press resulted in a shift among the general populous in the US from about half of the people thinking that Global Warming is some sort of hoax (at worst) or bad science (at best) to something closer to 80% of citizens thinking this to be the case.
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McDonalds Reintroduces the McRib!!!
This is the biggest thing since Justin Beiber’s haircut! Video below the fold.
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Shawn Otto’s Book Launch Talk (with Don Shelby)
You’ll remember that I recently wrote up Shawn Otto’s talk at The Loft. The talk was filmed and is now a major motion picture!
Now that you’ve seen the talk, here’s your list of things to do:
Urban Heat Islands as Explanation for Hockey Stick Global Warming Curve
Urban areas can be warmer than surrounding non-urban areas because there is a lot of combustion, pavement and other structure can collect solar heat and retain it for a while, and other factors. It is not uncommon to look at a weather map where conditions for precipitation are marginal, and everywhere but the urban zone, or only the urban zone and nothing else, is showing a weather phenomenon. Because people and airports (where weather is very important) are located in or very near urban areas, it stands to reason that a lot of the data used to estimate global temperatures would be affected by any urban effects, and if urban areas are a) warmer than surrounding areas and b) increasingly warm over time then “global warming” may well be an artifact of the urban heat island effect. That wouldn’t necessarily make it a hoax, but it would make it wrong. We would then have to revise our understanding of certain aspects of physics because we expect global warming to occur in CO2 levels go up, but physics has been revised before. Kepler was wrong, Newton was wrong, maybe the climate change scientists are wrong too.
Some time ago a study was funded by a number of organizations and individuals, including some who are famously skeptical of global warming (such as the Charles G. Koch foundation) in order to see if urban heat island effects could explain the famous “Hockey Stick” curve. The study was supposed to be non-biased, and it may well be, but if there are any biases they would likely be in favor off anti-Global Warming thinking, or perhaps “pro-denialist” or “anti-warmist” … pick your term.
Well, just moments ago, the study was released and the findings are quite interesting. I have to admit, I was not expecting these findings at all, and they have caused me to change my mind about certain things. Which is fine, because that is how science works, but still, I was rather shocked.
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Science is always nonpartisan, but it is always political: Fool Me Twice
Shawn gave a talk at the release party, but since he is held in such high esteem, there was a problem deciding how he would be introduced. A book as important as “Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America” which examines the increasingly insignificant role science plays in the policy making process, written by the much beloved Shaw Otto would require an equally important and beloved personage to make the introduction. And, if such a person were to go on stage to introduce Shawn, there would have to be a fairly significant and widely respected person to introduce that person as well. And so on and so forth. I hear there were several meetings about this, and the UN was called in briefly to settle the evening’s program, and a solution was worked out that was more than acceptable.
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The Influence of Late Quaternary Climate-Change Velocity on Species Endemism
Rapid climate change can cause species extinction. But if a species is highly mobile or wide-ranging, then that effect may be attenuated. And, more rapid climate change would be more serious a problem than less rapid climate change. Therefore, there should be a relationship between species mobility (migration) and the rate, or velocity, of climate change vis-a-vis extinction. This is a nice set of hypotheses which have been tested in a recent paper. The abstract:
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Gobal Warming is Melting the Ice Caps
My first job as an archaeologist in Boston (having moved there from New York) had to do with Deer Island, the northern of two islands that separate Boston’s Inner and Outer Harbors. The actual archaeology was uninteresting but the historical research was fascinating. Among the things I learned is that Boston’s Inner Harbor regularly froze over. It no longer does. When the Continental Army placed the British in Boston under Siege at the beginning of the Revolution, the idea of holding off an assault until the harbor froze over was routine. No one expected the harbor to not freeze over. More recently, the harbor is generally open all winter, and when it does freeze over, it is a significant bother.
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The Majority of Americans Think Global Warming Is Real
There was a poll.
On climate change, 69% of respondents said that they believe that “there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades,” with 26% saying that they did not believe it, 2% volunteering that there is some or mixed evidence, and 3% saying that they didn’t know or refusing to answer the question. Among those who believed that there is evidence (whether solid or mixed), 64% said that “[c]limate change is caused mostly by human activity such as burning fossil fuels” came closest to their view, while 32% preferred “[c]limate change is caused mostly by natural patterns in the earth’s environment” instead, and 4% said that they didn’t know or refused to answer the question.
Unfortunately, that comes out to about 44% believing that climate change is anthropogenic.
Aquarius Yields NASA’s First Global Map of Ocean Salinity
The first global map of the salinity, or saltiness, of Earth’s ocean surface produced by NASA’s new Aquarius instrument reveals a rich tapestry of global salinity patterns, demonstrating Aquarius’ ability to resolve large-scale salinity distribution features clearly and with sharp contrast. NASA/GSFC/JPL-Caltech
One of NASA’s newest Big Sci machines has generated a high quality map of ocean salinity. It is still preliminary and a few months of calibration is needed, but soon enough Aquarius will start monitoring ocean salinity on an ongoing basis.
Ocean salinity is important because it is linked to the overall climate system. For instance, where evaporation is high, owing to atmospheric conditions, salinity goes up. Salinity is related to ocean currents … saline water sinks, drawing nearby water to itself. This can drive major ocean currents.
You can see the map and get various downloads here.
How To Do Good Climate Science Instead Of Bad Climate Science
In order to do good climate science, you have to understand and control for the sources of variation in the system. In any system that involvs metric change over time, there are four sources of variation:
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A Proxy Indicator is Not What You Think It Is
I want to say a word about what a proxyindicator is. And isn’t.
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Cloud Gate Link Cloud!
You all know about the latest dustups and new research related to climate change, including the resignation of the Editor-in-Chief of a major journal as well as some new papers about global warming. There has been so much activity over recent days that I thought a new link farm would be a good thing. So, here it is. Please let me know if I’ve missed anything!
Latest Research Shows That Clouds Do NOT Cause Global Warming
The question of whether clouds are the cause of global warming has been settled:
No, they are not.
Continue reading Latest Research Shows That Clouds Do NOT Cause Global Warming