Yesterday was hot and I left work early. Literally hot. And yesterday it was winter. But then today it hovered around 55 for most of the day, and in came Spring, and who knew? We have six months of daylight to look forward to. I’m excited about waking up at 5 to sunshine.
Of course, as ever, we continue apace in our destruction of the planet, which is a shame because I have friends here. But what else would we do, really?
It’s delish! Teaser:
Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused. It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses. In addition, there is very clear evidence that investing in the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.
And here’s what a list of credible experts looks like:
Kevin Trenberth, Sc.D., Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis Section National Center for Atmospheric Research, La Jolla, Calif.
Kevin Trenberth, Sc.D, Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Richard Somerville, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Katharine Hayhoe, Ph.D., Director, Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University
Rasmus Benestad, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, The Norwegian Meteorological Institute
Gerald Meehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences; Director, Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy, Princeton University
Peter Gleick, Ph.D., co-founder and president, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security
Michael C. MacCracken, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, Climate Institute, Washington
Michael Mann, Ph.D., Director, Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University
Steven Running, Ph.D., Professor, Director, Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, University of Montana
Robert Corell, Ph.D., Chair, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; Principal, Global Environment Technology Foundation
Dennis Ojima, Ph.D., Professor, Senior Research Scientist, and Head of the Dept. of Interior’s Climate Science Center at Colorado State University
Josh Willis, Ph.D., Climate Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Matthew England, Ph.D., Professor, Joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia
Ken Caldeira, Ph.D., Atmospheric Scientist, Dept. of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution
Warren Washington, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Terry L. Root, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
David Karoly, Ph.D., ARC Federation Fellow and Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia
Jeffrey Kiehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Donald Wuebbles, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois
Camille Parmesan, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, University of Texas; Professor of Global Change Biology, Marine Institute, University of Plymouth, UK
Simon Donner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada
Barrett N. Rock, Ph.D., Professor, Complex Systems Research Center and Department of Natural Resources, University of New Hampshire
David Griggs, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Australia
Roger N. Jones, Ph.D., Professor, Professorial Research Fellow, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Australia
William L. Chameides, Ph.D., Dean and Professor, School of the Environment, Duke University
Gary Yohe, Ph.D., Professor, Economics and Environmental Studies, Wesleyan University, CT
Robert Watson, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Chair of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Steven Sherwood, Ph.D., Director, Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Chris Rapley, Ph.D., Professor of Climate Science, University College London, UK
Joan Kleypas, Ph.D., Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
James J. McCarthy, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University
Stefan Rahmstorf, Ph.D., Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University, Germany
Julia Cole, Ph.D., Professor, Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
William H. Schlesinger, Ph.D., President, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Jonathan Overpeck, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
Eric Rignot, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine
Wolfgang Cramer, Professor of Global Ecology, Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France
Nir Shaviv was actually born after WWII (a first on this list), and has a decidedly non-white-man-sounding name, though I think Jews are considered white now, right? Right. He’s a white man. It doesn’t really matter.
Anyhoo, Shaviv seems to actually have some climate-science cred, via astrophysics. In 2003 he published a theory accounting for global temperature variance having something to do with our solar system’s passage through the Milky Way’s galactic arms. Thing is, in the paper making this case, his object of study isn’t the current drivers of climate change, but the drivers of climate change over the past 500 million years. And while he finds that, over that period, “at least 66% of the variance in the paleotemperature trend could be attributed to CRF variations likely due to solar system passages through the spiral arms of the galaxy,” that doesn’t imply that 66%+ of every variability is attributable to a cause. Basic statistics. And he acknowledges as much:
As a final qualification, we emphasize that our conclusion about the dominance of the CRF over climate variability is valid only on multimillion year time scales. At shorter time scales, other climatic factors may play an important role.
Even its relatively benign claim was seen as problematic by…
…who published a review in Eos that concluded,
Two main conclusions result from our analysis of Shaviv and Veizer [2003].The first is that the correlation of CRF and climate over the past 520 m.y. appears to not hold up under scrutiny. Even if we accept the questionable assumption that meteorite clusters give information on CRF variations, we find that the evidence for a link between CRF and climate amounts to little more than a similarity in the average periods of the CRF variations and a heavily smoothed temperature reconstruction. Phase agreement is poor.The authors applied several adjustments to the data to artificially enhanc the correlation.We thus find that the existence of a correlation has not been convincingly demonstrated.
Our second conclusion is independent of the first.Whether there is a link of CRF and temperature or not, the authors’ estimate of the effect of a CO2 doubling on climate is highly questionable. It is based on a simple and incomplete regression analysis that implicitly assumes that climate variations on time scales of millions of years, for different configurations of continents and ocean currents,for much higher CO2 levels than at present, and with unaccounted causes and contributing factors,can give direct quantitative information about the effect of rapid CO2 doubling from pre-industrial climate.The complexity and non-linearity of the climate system does not allow such a simple statistical derivation of climate sensitivity without a physical understanding of the key processes and feedbacks.We thus conclude that Shaviv and Veizer [2003] provide no cause for revising current estimates of climate sensitivity to CO2.
Undeterred, Shaviv has taken to the Internet, self-publishing a number of anti-anthropogenic polemics on his website (e.g.).
In the example, he argues that while there is, in fact, an impressive correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures over not only the last 400 thousand years, but over the last century, the causality is ambiguous. Anyway, blah blah, “we don’t fully understand the aerosol effect on cloud formation!” QUESTIONS QUESTIONS QUESTIONS and then he points out that there’s ALSO been a correlation between the last century’s increase in temperatures and an increase in solar activity, to which he elsewhere attributes something like half of the century’s warming.
He’s been in a fight over this with Michael Lockwood (meteorology prof at the University of Reading) and Claus Froehlich (of the World Radiation Centre in Switzerland) who argue that solar outputs since the 80s have actually been at historic lows, while the warming effect has continued. Here’s the actual paper. And here’s a 2010 inter-disciplinary lit. review (well cited) substantiating the conclusion that solar variation falls short of accounting for recent temperature changes.
Shaviv responded to Lockwood and Froehlich’s findings in a memo published by a self-described “conservative” science blog called “Reference Frame,” but no where else that I can find.
As for ulterior motives, he apparently wrote to SourceWatch “if you’re looking for dark secrets about my funding…you’ll find none,” and it doesn’t appear that they have.
Conclusion: This guy’s got more cred than anyone yet, but his respected work doesn’t appear hugely relevant to the current climate situation, and his work that does relate to it seems not particularly respected in the scientific community, which begs the question — is this really the best they can do?
PS – I’ve asked r/AskScience if they can comment on his credibility within the scientific community on this subject. Will update if/when I get any good responses.
Updated: From “FormerlyTurnipHunter,” who is an expert in “Quantum Information/Quantum Computing/Quantum Optics”:
Not every skeptic or denialist is an outright crackpot. Some scientists do really think they found a different mechanism to explain global warming and they should be taken seriously.
However, these skeptics’ theories usually don’t hold up to even the most cursory scrutiny. This is also the case for Shaviv’s theory on cosmic rays. He is not the only one propagating cosmic rays as the main cause for warming btw., there’s also Svensmark.
Their physics is not completely wrong, their [sic] is definitely a link between cosmic rays and cloud cover, which in turn influences the climate. The problem however is that the cosmic ray theory can’t explain the warming over the last three decades, in which solar activity was decreasing.
So why would these scientists still hold on to their theories despite a lack of evidence? I don’t know, but I’m a scientist myself and I know how hard it is to let go of your ideas sometimes. Especially when there’s a big enough lobby happy to believe you and give you money to talk about this research of yours.
According to desmogblog, a great resource on climate denialism, Shaviv at least doesn’t deny anthropogenic warming completely, he just places our contribution at roughly 1/3 (its more like 3/4).
So instead of a paid denier like many others I would say he’s simply a mediocre scientist who won’t let go of a disproven theory.
That we actively accelerate our species’ race toward certain death and destruction in the face of evidence that says, rather clearly, “Hey, knock it off” saddens me to no end.
We’ll always have Paris, I guess.
We’re all gonna burn:
Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.
“Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing,” Dr Semiletov said. “I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them.”
Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.
Read the rest, and then weep for our doomed species.
(via)
Because we’re doomed.
Oh, also, because I don’t have the right parts. But mostly because we’re doomed.
(via)
Update by Ben: This post needs some Wyclef –
When we are finished destroying the planet we currently live on, perhaps we can zip over to the recently discovered Kepler-22b and destroy that one, too.
Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years away. While the planet is larger
than Earth, its orbit of 290 days around a sun-like star resembles
that of our world. The planet’s host star belongs to the same class
as our sun, called G-type, although it is slightly smaller and
cooler.Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates reported in February 2011,
Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed. This milestone will be
published in The Astrophysical Journal.
We’re saved!
(via DM)
A record-setting 36.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide were added to the atmosphere in 2010. That’s a 45 percent increase in the global annual release of carbon dioxide by humans since 1990, reports the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in the report “Long-term trend in global CO2 emissions.”
Although many industrialized nations made cuts in the amount of carbon dioxide pollution they created, the rapid growth of India, China, Brazil and other developing nations resulted in a net increase during the two decades studied in the report.
Cheery, cheery, cheery.
There’s a counterintuitively chilling story over at Discovery News right now about how warming water temperatures have found king crabs “expanding their undersea kingdoms into parts of the Antarctic shelf and devouring whole ecosystems in the process.”
However, that’s not the reason I’m writing about it. The reason I’m writing about it is because Discovery News appears to have used a cooked crab in its headline image:
See, live crustaceans — and in this case, the king crab — don’t naturally possess the shiny red coloring you see above. That would make Darwin sad. Instead, they look like this:
And this:
The reason they turn a bright crimson when you cook them is because they
have a carotenoid pigment called astaxanthin in their shell, which provides a red coloring. However, in most lobsters [editor's note: and crabs and shrimp], this reddish color is mixed with other colors to form the lobster’s normal, often duller coloration. This coloration helps the lobster blend in well with its surroundings.
Astaxanthin is stable in heat, while the other pigments are not. This means that when a lobster is cooked, the other pigments break down, leaving only the bright red astaxanthin, thus a bright red lobster on your plate! [cite]
Which brings me to my question: Why the hell would Discovery News — a website whose parent company is devoted to telling you truths about the natural world — stoop to using a picture of a cooked king crab on a random beach instead of a live one, given that the story is about their über-liveliness and not their über-deliciousness? Yes, this is an exceedingly trivial hair to split, but it’s weird right? And even weirder if they actually staged this photo themselves, rather than buying it from a photo agency or freelancer.
Anyway. So. When’s dinner?
Via Gawker, this image:
Might just be the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Seriously. New York is flipping its lid over this storm. As if this barrier is going to do any good in real flood conditions. As if the tiny flood it might effectively deflect wouldn’t be deflected by the goddamn doors of the building in the first place. Jesus Christ, people.
As for me, I’m playing it cool. I brought the outdoor furniture inside and finally cut up some boards that needed to be cut up, threw ‘em in the trash. None of this shutting down subways nonsense. I’ve got a cooler full of sausages and lettuce and PBR, a bag of charcoal and opposable thumbs. I’ve got my shotgun, my hound, and my handle of Evan Williams. Bring it, Irene. You just bring it. We’re ready for you.
Also, “I don’t want another drink, I just want that last one again” should be everyone’s slogan for the next 24 hours.
