• Independent statisticians reject recent global cooling claims in blind analysis
• Melting glaciers releasing pollutants from decades ago
• IEA: climate treaty necessary to keep energy prices low
• Floating cities as a response to sea level rise
• American Physical Society rejects changes to climate change statement

Climate disruption deniers have been claiming for years now that the global temperature has been cooling down, even though the temperature data clearly shows that it isn’t. Scientists and statisticians have pointed out that, mathematically speaking, the recent reduced warming trend is well within the noise, or put another way, it’s weather, not climate.

A new report by the Associated Press reveals what many of us knew already – the denier’s claims don’t hold water, statistically speaking. The report is intriguing because the AP provided their data to four independent statisticians without telling them what it was, and all four found that the slower warming of the past decade was statistically insignificant with respect to the actual data. Full Story »

When you look at the ice core record, there’s a significant amount of correlation between sea level rise and the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the air at the time. But the ice core record goes back less than a million years. A study published a couple of weeks ago in the journal Science measured proxy data for CO₂ concentration in the ocean and compared that data to other data on the stability of ice sheets. The authors discovered that there is strong correlation between the two going back at least 20 million years.

One of the challenges that the authors had was the fact that few available previous studies didn’t show correlation between the amount of CO₂ in the air and the global climate prior to the start of ice core data. The authors hypothesized that this was a problem with the other datasets and developed a set of tests to check their hypothesis. Full Story »

Every sperm and every egg, fertilized or not, is a living, breathing person, endowed by its Creator with certain inalienable rights. At least, that’s what the proposed 2010 personhood amendment to the Colorado state constitution implies. No, it doesn’t say that literally, but thanks to the vague wording of the amendment, that’s one possible interpretation.

It’s also clear from an article in The Colorado Independent that this is only half of what the amendment’s authors intended.

“It’s intended to account for human beings who may be created through asexual reproduction in laboratories and used as raw material for research, organs, or stem cells. Fertilization would not have properly applied to asexually reproduced humans, but even asexually reproduced human beings have a definite biological beginning,” [Gualberto Garcia] Jones explained. (Jones heads the organization that initiated this year’s amendment)

That this law could be interpreted to include sperm is an ironic example of the law of unintended consequences. Full Story »

STS-1, the first space shuttle mission, launched on April 12, 1981. At that point, the shuttle was already several years old, and the original designs stretch back to the early 1970’s. The shuttle then was designed using the same basic technology that was used to go to the Moon, and while it’s been updated several times since, it wasn’t until 2007 that the shuttle’s computer software was updated to the point that the computers wouldn’t require a reboot if the shuttle was in orbit over the New Year.

So the first test launch of NASA’s first new rocket in three decades is a big deal. And today, the Ares 1-X rocket, carrying a dummy second stage and packed with 700 sensors to gather flight data, launched successfully from Kennedy.

Full Story »

Imagine that in a few years you wake up to news reports on the radio that your town is under a flash flood watch. The ground has been so baked by the recent drought that water can’t soak in, and so the pounding rain is just flowing off into streams and filling low-lying areas.

What’s worse is you’ve got a pediatrician appointment today for both of your kids – their asthma is acting up and the drugs aren’t working as well as they should be. Furthermore, your son is still recovering from a case of malaria he picked up, probably from a mosquito bite he got during the pee wee football game by the reservoir a couple of months ago. At least the rains will damp down on your environmental allergies some today. Better rain, even flooding, than the dust storm that blew through the area a couple of weeks ago. That caused several major pileups and fouled up ventilation so bad that some of the buildings downtown are still closed..

As you pull together breakfast for the family, there’s no milk because it’s too expensive. Full Story »

• Tipping points will be difficult to identify
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce President complains about environmentalists
• Barrels instead of bottles
• Ocean acidification to turn parts of the Arctic Ocean corrosive by 2018
• El Niño and its relationship to ocean heat content

Is the Earth’s climate approaching a critical transition, aka a “tipping point,” beyond which major and largely unpredictable climate changes are guaranteed to occur? At this point, scientists do not know the answer to that question. A study published in the journal Nature aims to explain the mathematics of critical transitions beyond just the Earth’s climate and in the process, determine if there are early-warning signals that indicate when a complex system is about to undergo a critical transition.

According to the paper, every complex system, whether it be climate, asthma attacks and epileptic seizures, or systemic crashes in financial markets, exhibits the same basic precursor signs of a tipping point, at least mathematically speaking. Full Story »

SEJ member Tom Yulsman
asks a question of Vice
President Gore in Madison.
Photo: Anne Minard.

The fate of the earth could end up determined by which tipping point is reached first: a physical shift that ushers in abrupt climate change with catastrophic consequences, or a social one, in which public attitudes rapidly coalesce around a mandate to address climate change. Or, neither could materialize, at least not imminently.

Al Gore believes the U.S. is on the brink of a political tipping point on the climate issue. Speaking to the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference in Madison, Wisc., last Friday, the former vice president said, “The potential for change can build up without noticeable effect until it reaches a critical mass. I think that we are very close to that tipping point.” Full Story »

• Climate disruption will disrupt volcanism too
• EPA Office of Inspector General finds standard gases not so standard after all
• Driest years in Pacific Northwest drier than expected
• Northeast Passage opened this year for commercial shipping
• 12% of the merchant marine fleet is idled
• Recycling used plastic into fuel
• US Chamber of Commerce and car dealer industry group fight California emissions waiver
• Slowing population growth more effective than renewables at slowing GHG emissions

Nature News reported last week that vulcanologists have concluded that climate disruption will increase the number of volcanic eruptions. According to the article, the reason is that climate disruption is expected to reduce the amount of ice present atop volcanoes and thus reduce the amount of material keeping volcanoes from erupting. Full Story »

Scientists, mariners, and weather hobbyists started directly measuring temperature with thermometers globally in the late 1800s. When modern climatologists want temperature data farther back in time than those first global measurements, they have to use things called “proxies.” A proxy for temperature is something that, when calibrated properly, indirectly measures temperature. The most common proxies that are used as temperature stand-ins tend to be tree rings, the amount of an oxygen isotope in ice cores, and coral growth rings.

There are a couple of problems with proxies, however. The first problem is that scientists have to develop an appropriate and accurate calibration method to convert the width of a tree ring to an average annual or summer temperature. The second problem is that a given proxy may well be influenced by other factors beyond temperature, and so calibrating the proxy becomes a difficult and potentially error-prone process. For example, tree rings are a proxy for both temperature and moisture, and so any climatologist who wants to extract just the temperature information needs to discover a way to independently estimate the effect of moisture changes on the tree ring before the effect of temperature on the tree ring can be accurately determined.

A new study published September 17^th as a letter in the journal Nature describes a new method to compensate for proxy changes due to elevation in the Greenland ice sheet (GIS) during the Holocene (the present geologic epoch, starting about 12,000 years ago). Full Story »

Back in August, the UK government administration (collectively known as Whitehall) was criticized by Members of Parliament for failing to meet their own carbon emission targets. On September 15, UK Cabinet Office minister Angela Smith claimed in a BBC article that Whitehall had “saved enough carbon dioxide to fill almost 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.”

2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools sounds like a lot. Swimming pools are big, after all, and 2,500 of them would hold lots of water. But when I dug a little further, I found that Whitehall’s carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions were actually reduced by only 12,000 tonnes, a nearly negligible amount.

To put this into perspective, in 2006, the Energy Information Administration estimated that the total emissions for the United Kingdom was 585.71 million metric tons (aka tonnes). 12,000 tonnes is only 2 thousandths of one percent of the UK’s total emissions three years ago.

So how did we get from 12,000 tonnes to “2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools?” It’s called the ideal gas equation. Full Story »

• EPA Office of the Inspector General recommends EPA enforce Clean Water Act
• Climate change lobbyists grow by 31% leading up to ACES vote
• New information suggests climate change accelerating glacial erosion
• Wind turbines mistaken for tornadoes
• First deep water tethered wind turbine now operational
• Rare earth metals and renewable energy

Last week, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that the EPA’s internal monitoring organization, the Office of the Inspector General, found that the EPA’s current approach to controlling excess nutrient deposition into the Gulf of Mexico by the Mississippi River was not working. Full Story »

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce files for EPA climate disruption trial
• GRACE satellites show water use in India is unsustainable
• Biofuel crops may become next invasive species
• Is GM’s 230 MPG Volt claim real?
• Tubular Rail aims to invert train and rail
• July global ocean temperature sets two records

Earlier this week, the LATimes reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (hereafter “the Chamber”) has petitioned the EPA to hold a trial-like hearing on the science of climate disruption. According to the article, officials for the Chamber want to make it “‘the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century.’”

EPA officials interviewed for the LATimes article are dismissive of the Chamber’s petition, referring to it in the article as “frivolous” and a “waste of time.” However, given that the Chamber has threatened to take the EPA to federal court to force them to hold this trial-like hearing, it’s unlikely that the Chamber considers their petition “frivolous.” Full Story »

• ACCCE hired Bonner, but didn’t notify Congress of forgeries when they were discovered
• Cash for Clunkers doesn’t do much for climate
• National Academy of Sciences: we need independent GHG emission confirmation
• Climate disruption may, or may not, make disease worse

Before the House voted on the American Climate and Energy Security Act (ACES) earlier this year, someone hired Bonner & Associates (hereafter Bonner) to manufacture some grassroots opposition against ACES. At least one employee did so by forging letters from non-existent people to Representative Tom Perriello of Virginia. These letters were discovered, Bonner claims to have fired the employee, and a partner at Bonner apologized to the two minority groups from which the letters were supposedly sent. The apologies were, it’s fair to say, emphatically not accepted.

Since the Bonner story broke last Friday, there have been a lot of new information about who hired them, whether there were other Congresspeople who received forged letters, the legality or lack thereof, and an official response from a House committee with subpoena powers. Full Story »

Part 2 of a series; Previously: What Bell Labs and French Intellectuals Can Tell Us About Cronkite and Couric

The Signal-to-Noise Journey of American Media

The 20th Century represented a Golden Age of Institutional Journalism. The Yellow Journalism wars of the late 19th Century gave way to a more responsible mode of reporting built on ethical and professional codes that encouraged fairness and “objectivity.” (Granted, these concepts, like their bastard cousin “balance,” are not wholly unproblematic. Still, they represented a far better way of conducting journalism than we had seen before.) It’s probably not idealizing too much to assert that reporting in the Cronkite Era, for instance, was characterized by a commitment to rise above partisanship and manipulation. The journalist was expected to hold him/herself to a higher standard and to serve the public interest. These professionals – and I have met a few who are more than worthy of the title – believed they had a duty to search for the facts and to present them in a fashion that was as free of bias as possible.

In other words, their careers, like that of Claude Shannon, were devoted to maximizing the signal in the system – the system here being the “marketplace of ideas.” Full Story »

Part one of a two-part series.

From Cronkite to Couric: the Kingdom of Signal is swallowed by the Empire of Noise

The recent death of Walter Cronkite spurred the predictable outpouring of tributes, each reverencing in its own way a man who was the face and voice of journalism in America for a generation or more. The irony of all these accolades is that we live in an age where “broadcast journalist” is such a cruel oxymoron, and we seem to speeding headlong into an era where the word “journalist” itself threatens to become a freestanding joke. Why, against this backdrop, would so many people who are so involved in the daily repudiation of everything that Cronkite stood for make such a show memorializing the standard by which they so abjectly fail?

As I read what people had to say about Cronkite, I realized that something I studied and wrote about over a decade ago helps explain why our contemporary media has gone so deeply, tragically wrong. Full Story »

In early 2008, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) published their Petition Project, a list of names from people who all claimed to be scientists and who rejected the science behind the theory of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (AGW). This was an attempt to by the OISM to claim that there were far more scientists opposing AGW theory than there are supporting it. This so-called petition took on special importance coming after the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, and specifically the Working Group 1 (WG1) report on the science and attribution of climate change to human civilization.

The WG1 report was authored and reviewed by approximately 2000 scientists with varying expertise in climate and related fields, and so having a list of over 30,000 scientists that rejected the WG1’s conclusions was a powerful meme that AGW skeptics and deniers could use to cast doubt on the IPCC’s conclusions and, indirectly, on the entire theory of climate disruption. And in fact, this meme has become widespread in both legacy and new media today.

It is also completely false. Full Story »

• NE Pacific clouds observed to amplify warming
• Skeptical Inquirer publisher calls Inhofe’s list uncredible
• The ozone hole has reduced ocean CO₂ absorption
• Clinton Climate Initiative and Microsoft partner on Project 2°
• We might as well drive Model-Ts

The question of whether clouds are a positive or a negative feedback is one of the biggest remaining questions in climate modeling. A new paper in the journal Science is another piece of evidence that clouds will amplify the effects of climate disruption instead of dampen it.

The authors of the study analyzed two unrelated observational methods and found that both showed a decrease in cloud cover over the Northeast (NE) Pacific as a result of climate changes in sea surface temperature (SST), sea level pressure (SLP), and two measurements of the troposphere (the lower atmosphere). Full Story »

Earlier this week, for the first time in at least eight years, I revisited one of my favorite places on the Earth that I’ve yet experienced. It’s a snowmelt-filled, glacier-carved alpine lake just below treeline in Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s surrounded by tall cliffs and you have to scramble over boulders to get to it (something that my wife didn’t exactly appreciate when I tried to show it to her). Sure, it’s close to one of the favorite places for tourists in the park, but most of the time I don’t mind a few other people so long as they’re being polite and not too noisy, and the people eating lunch around the lake were generally OK.

This lake and I go way back, back to when I abandoned my Catholicism in favor of a neo-paganism of my own creation. It helped me find myself and a new spirituality in a period of my life when so many things were changing that it felt like the best I could do is hang on. And I feel that it was this lake that saved my life one very, very strange night in a strange town in central Pennsylvania.

I feel a spiritual connection to this lake, like I can feel its presence with me when I concentrate.

When I arrived at the lake, though, I discovered something that saddens me. Eight years ago the lake looked like liquid glass it was so pristine and clear. But yesterday it was green. Full Story »

Forty years ago today, Apollo 11 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, heading for the moon. The astronauts would safely achieve orbit and, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong would take his infamous “giant leap for mankind.”

I was a month old when the moon landing took place. Still, I can claim–albeit by technicality–that I was one of the millions of Americans who watched the moon landing on television. Sure, I was only a month old, but I still saw it.

I claim that moment for myself because the moon landing always strikes me as such a profound triumph of man’s will to redefine what is possible in this world (or, in this case, beyond our world). When I watch replays of Walter Cronkite anchoring the telecast of the moon landing, and he takes off his glasses and rubs his hands and can manage only to muster a “whew!” I can still feel Cronkite’s amazement. I can still feel my own amazement—and, yes, I still get choked up.

At a time when America frequently feels like it takes a step backwards for every step it takes forward, it’s nice to remember that we’re capable of giant leaps.

• Gas industry’s own fracking studies don’t support industry claims
• Can concentrating photovoltaic compete with solar thermal and standard photovoltaic?
• Wind turbines may affect weather
• Geoengineering doesn’t help acidification
• New study on the PETM raises questions, but no answers
• New climate idea might break US-China emissions stalemate

“Fracking” is the slang term used for hydraulic fracturing, a process by which the gas industry injects a slurry of unknown composition into a gas well in order to break up the rock and release the natural gas contained within. At present, the EPA exempts fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), but Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado has introduced legislation into the House (H.R.2766) to force the EPA to regulate fracking. In response, the gas industry has pushed back with studies that purport to show that regulation is both unnecessary and costly.

A new article by ProPublica, an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest,” shows that the exact same studies being used by industry to oppose fracking actually counter the industry’s own arguments. Full Story »