The Environment Archive

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Grist’s on the WSJ Anti-Climate Change BS case…

By
Ben Nolan
– February 1, 2012

Link. Highlight for me:

Another claim in the article is that “a recent study by William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls … ” Well, let’s ask Nordhaus what he thinks of that. In Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog he stridently disagrees with that statement:

The piece completely misrepresented my work. My work has long taken the view that policies to slow global warming would have net economic benefits, in the trillion of dollars of present value. This is true going back to work in the early 1990s (MIT Press, Yale Press, Science, PNAS, among others) … I can only assume they [are] either completely ignorant of the economics on the issue or are willfully misstating my findings.

Kapow!

Also links to another debunking by Joe Romm. Highlight:

Guys, if you’re going to push disinformation, you have to do better than this:

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now.  This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”….

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause.

Well, as the chart above shows, the last 10 years were easily the hottest on record.  As the Union of Concerned Scientists debunking notes, “2011 was the 35th year in a row in which global temperatures were above the historical average and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record.”  Doh!

And apparently these guys missed the news that last year’s Koch-Funded and Skeptic-Led Study Finds Recent Warming “On the High End” and Speeding Up.  The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) concluded:

… we find that the global land mean temperature has increased by 0.911 ± 0.042 C since the 1950s….  our analysis suggests a degree of global land-surface warming during the anthropogenic era that is consistent with prior work (e.g. NOAA) but on the high end of the existing range of reconstruction.

Double Doh!

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Good News, Everyone: A New Planet to Destroy!

By
Tom OHare
– December 5, 2011

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)

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Timelapse of the Day

By
Tom OHare
– December 1, 2011

This makes me miss Oregon.

(via)

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Life is only on Earth, and not for long

By
Ben Nolan
– November 28, 2011

News:

‎The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

[snip]

The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That’s an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.

Worse than the worst case scenario about which this was written…

In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. Those forecast global temperatures rising between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century with the best estimate at 7.5 degrees.

7.5 degree delta F is about a 4 degree delta C. From the food issue of FP that ran a couple months back…

The rule of thumb among crop ecologists is that for every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature above the growing season optimum, farmers can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields.“

So, assuming every degree added to global temperatures will be a net degree added over and above the growing season optimum, taking 90% (current yield minus 10%) to the power of 4 (90% of 90% 4 times), you get end-of-century grain yields approximately 34% smaller than current yields.

This is without taking into account the inevitable-seeming depletion of a terrifying portion of the world’s aquifers (described in detail in the same article).

Nor, giving the optimists their due, is it taking into account technological advancements in grain production — though marginal improvements attributable to technology, the same article reports, have been shrinking as mass capitalized agriculture has almost run out of traditionally-tended quality land to “modernize.”

Other news….

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that farmers will have to produce 70% more food by 2050 to meet the needs of the world’s expected 9-billion-strong population. That amounts to 1bn tonnes more wheat, rice and other cereals and 200m more tonnes of beef and other livestock.

Other news…

Canada will announce next month that it will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, CTV News has learned…

Why? Because CHINA.

Shoot me through the part of my brain that conservatives are apparently missing. Please?

Here’s the prologue to the new Trier film, Melancholia — fitting, no? I’m pecking away at a review, the tl;dr version of which is that it’s basically the best movie I’ve ever seen.

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BBC to enable American climate-change denial

By
Ben Nolan
– November 15, 2011

The Telegraph:

The BBC has dropped a climate change episode from its wildlife series Frozen Planet to help the show sell better abroad.

…

On Thin Ice features Sir David Attenborough, 85, talking at length about the melting of the ice and featuring hungry polar bears.

Viewers in the United States, where climate change sceptics are particularly strong group, will not see the full episode.

Instead, the BBC said that Discovery, which shows the series in the US, had a “scheduling issue so only had slots for six episodes”, so “elements” of the climate change episode would be incorporated into their final show, with editorial assistance from the Corporation.

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Why Daniel Quinn Should Kill Himself

By
Ben Nolan
– September 22, 2011

Simple:

  1. As Daniel Quinn would point out (see the long blockquote in Trevor’s Somalia post), overpopulation is a function of not enough humans dying (or, as he might put it, “every decrease in the number of humans dying has been met with an increase in population somewhere”);
  2. Increasing population means exacerbated suffering in the long run which is undesirable;
  3. Daniel Quinn is the human on whom Daniel Quinn has the most moral legitimacy to act;
  4. Daniel Quinn dying would increase the number of humans dying; THEREFORE
  5. Daniel Quinn should kill himself.

Anyone know if he ever had kids? Brief Googling isn’t turning up anything about any kind of personal life. If he has, it makes doubly obscene his advocacy for letting poor people starve to death (as a result, he doesn’t really mention, of the perversities of a global economic system set up to reinforce his privilege).

All of this is just to say that using the famine in Somalia as a jumping off point for speculation about Malthusianism is pretty gross.

I mentioned this in a comment below Trevor’s post, but it bears repeating: There are a ton of reproductive health organizations working in the developing/underdeveloped/third/whatever world devoted to providing contraceptives to poor and distressed populations, and to educating these populations about their use.

It’s basically a consensus in the development community that empowering women is the best way of promoting development precisely because they will choose to have many fewer children so that they can better participate in public life — bring in incomes that they can invest, etc.

This is the humane way of halting population growth, and if barriers can be removed and it’s expanded as it needs to be, it will have a far greater cumulative countervailing effect than letting a million Africans starve to death in the current crisis.

It will also fulfill a moral imperative that we in the developed world bear for being the beneficiaries of a system that overturned their traditional ways of life, and that they’re at the mercy of.

Here’s that Elizabeth Warren video again. Relevant bit at :50. In a post-colonial world, its reasoning obtains globally.

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It’s the fucking scare quotes that kill me

By
Ben Nolan
– August 10, 2011

FoxNation:

Poll: Majority Thinks Global Warming ‘Scientists’ Lie

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 69% say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40% who say this is Very Likely. Twenty-two percent (22%) don’t think it’s likely some scientists have falsified global warming data, including just six percent (6%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 10% are undecided.

First: According to Scientific American…

…approximately 30,000 scientists and engineers—about 18,000 of them American citizens—[earn] PhDs in the U.S. each year.

If 4 of those 30,000 “falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs” in their doctoral work, that would mean that “some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs.” Do I think it’s “at least likely” that at >0.013% of graduating PhDs are dishonest assholes with inadequate supervision? Yes. Does that tell us anything interesting at all? No. I am one of the 61% being touted implicitly as being on board the global warming denier train and yet I am absolutely convinced that human-caused climate change is occurring and catastrophically. So…

Conclusion: Even if you give any credence to the idea that a public opinion poll is a valid adjudication of the quality of a scientific discipline’s output, you have to acknowledge that Rasumussen’s poll question is (SURPRISE SURPRISE!) stupid and meaningless.

That’s not to deny that wayyy too many people have been snowjobbed into not realizing how not only real but fucking catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is. I’m not denying that. The point in bringing this up, though, is dishonest shit like this is being used by those who would serve the nihilism of the climate denier agenda to play to people’s instincts to bandwagon and it’s probably going to work, and that’s news because it’s one of the most fucking stupid and depressing things happening in the world right now.

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Today in Things To Look Into: The No-Nose Bike Saddle

By
Ben Nolan
– June 28, 2011

John Tierney (at the NYT):

Like most cyclists, Mr. Brown at first didn’t see any need to switch from the traditional saddle on the mountain bike he’d been riding full time for five years on the force. When researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and Safety offered new noseless saddles intended to prevent erectile dysfunction, he quickly told his supervisor, “No problems here!”

But then, after trying the new saddle, he felt the difference. His weight rested on his pelvic bones instead of the crotch area, which formerly pressed against the saddle’s nose. During his sleep, when he wore a monitor, the measure known as “percent of time erect” increased to 28 percent from 18 percent.

So now you know what percentage of the night this guy has an erection.

They also help head-off reported cases of genital numbness among women.

“The subject matter always draws juvenile chuckles,” he writes. “They don’t even listen long to understand what part of a man’s anatomy is being protected here.”

It’s the area of soft tissue called the perineum, and it’s not just a male problem — female cyclists have also reported soreness and numbness in this genital region. But neither sex seems interested in these saddles, and I’m as baffled as Mr. Brown is by their apathy.

I’ve spent much of my journalistic career debunking health scares, but the bike-saddle menace struck me as a no-brainer when I first heard about it. Why, if you had an easy alternative, would you take any risk with that part of the anatomy? Even if you didn’t feel any symptoms, even if you didn’t believe the researchers’ warnings, even if you thought it was perfectly healthy to feel numb during a ride — why not switch just for comfort’s sake? Why go on crushing your crotch?

When I tried a no-nose model for my 16-mile daily commute, it was so much more comfortable that I promptly threw away the old saddle. But over the years I’ve had zero success persuading any other cyclists to switch…

The snag:

Mr. Bombardier, who lives in Portland, Ore., went to stores armed with scientific papers and diagrams, but no one was interested. One shop owner took a look at his new saddle and summarized the marketing problem:

“This saddle screams out: I’ve got a problem. Who needs that in a bike shop?”

Well, there’s a certain logic to that retail strategy, at least for the short term. But if you’re in it for the long term, if you’d like your customers to keep cycling — and creating new customers — then it pays to protect the perineum.

Where to get yourself a noseless saddle.

I had a different video up earlier, but it wasn’t as informative as this one:

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An Excuse to Go Outside

By
Trevor Macomber
– June 27, 2011

Are you one of those people who, in theory, enjoys spending time outdoors, communing with nature, or otherwise embracing chlorophyll-based lifeforms, and yet, more often than not, finds themselves succumbing to the insidious force of SOFA INERTIA!!! ?

Yeah, me too. But good news! Now (and by “now” I mean, “for the last decade,” but shut up) you can reap untold fame, fortune, and/or malaria while earning your daily dose of exercise and vitamin D by engaging in the inexplicably compelling pastime of Geocaching — “an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device[2] and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, anywhere in the world.”

 

Lame-ass hippy activity? Umm, well, yeah. But with the right combination of buds, bud, or Bud, I think you’ll agree that geocaching is truly the sport of kings. (Just watch out for highways. And nightfall. Because you definitely don’t want either one of those catching up to you unexpectedly.)

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No One Should Listen To Bjorn Lomborg (whose systematic pattern of intellectual dishonesty has been comprehensively documented)

By
Ben Nolan
– June 15, 2011

Noted fountain of fudged facts and dodgy rhetoric Bjorn Lomborg is that “cool” and “European” supposed skeptic, not of man-made climate change, but of the catastrophicness of anthropogenic climate-change (which is an example of his dodgy rhetoric). He has Backstreetboy hair (see photo at right). He’s been given a podium by Slate and Newsweek, and his most recent article was just given a nod by Andrew Sullivan who fails utterly in the universal responsibility to never let mentions of noted fountain of fudged facts and dodgy rhetoric Bjorn Lomborg’s name go un-prefaced by a phrase like “noted fountain of fudged facts and dodgy rhetoric.” He doesn’t even follow-up his mention of noted fountain of fudged facts and dodgy rhetoric Bjorn Lomborg’s name with a parenthesis along the lines of… “(whose systematic pattern of intellectual dishonesty has been comprehensively documented)” — see, for example, the title to this post — preferably hyperlinked to this or this, which is really the least you can do. And if you’re Newsweek, and you’ve just published a huge piece of obfuscating bullshit straight out noted fountain of fudged facts and dodgy rhetoric Bjorn Lomborg (whose systematic pattern of intellectual dishonesty has been comprehensively documented)’s ass, at least do your readers the courtesy of hyperlinking his byline to the review YOU published in which noted fountain of fudged facts Bjorn Lomborg’s fact fudging is taken up and affirmed.

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