environment: coastlines erosion oceans scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 4: West Coastin’
The July 18 Monterey Herald (CA) reports on a study of Pacific coastal erosion:
The storms that battered the West Coast during the winter of 2009-10 eroded record chunks of shoreline, and more will likely disappear as the changing climate brings more such powerful storm seasons, scientists warn in a new study.
Pacific waves were 20 percent stronger on average than any year since 1997 and higher-than-usual sea levels drove them further inland, tearing away on average one-third m ore land in California.
The state’s beaches were “eroded to often unprecedented levels,” said Patrick Barnard, a coastal geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who led the research.
“It’s the kind of winter we may experience more frequently” as global temperatures rise, he said.
Nowhere along the West Coast was erosion more pronounced than at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. That winter, the Pacific encroached 184 feet inland, 75 percent more than in a typical season.
Maybe scientists should hold up a big flag when they have something important to say? Sent July 18:
When the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patrick Barnard says, “there’s no indication (of) a light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon, given the current trends that we’re observing,” he’s using language designed for careful and accurate communication. But anyone who understands “science-speak” will recognize the signs: Dr. Barnard is extremely alarmed. While his team’s research on the Pacific coastline’s future in a post-global-warming world has scary enough implications for communities on the ocean’s edge, when you consider that countless regional environments and ecosystems around the planet face similar disturbances, these are frightening findings indeed. Take the changes faced by Ocean Beach and multiply them a hundred thousand times, and you can begin to imagine the disruptions the coming climate chaos will bring. In their precise and unemotional way, the scientists are shouting out a warning: we must act now if we are to mitigate the storms of the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility deforestation forests scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 2: O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum
More on the Forests study, this time from the Christian Science Monitor for July 17:
Want to save the planet? Plant a tree.
Or maybe a lot of them. Or maybe don’t cut down so many.
These are the implications of a new study, which found that the world’s forests play an unexpectedly large role in climate change, vacuuming up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) and storing the carbon in wood, according to research published online Thursday by the journal Science.
That, in turn, helps regulate CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere – and keeps the planet from overheating.
Kind of a clunky letter, but I’m having kind of a clunky day, so it fits. Sent Sunday, July 17, as the expected heat wave starts moving into position.
Extreme weather events are coming faster and faster, harder and harder, all over the planet. It looks like our carbon dioxide chickens are coming home to roost, as emissions from the last century’s fossil fuel consumption accumulate in the atmosphere. A runaway greenhouse effect may not yet be totally inevitable, but it’s definitely on the horizon unless all of the world’s nations take serious and concerted action against climate chaos. Our history of slash-and-burn deforestation has devastated millions of acres of carbon sink — in the name of disposable paper products. Humanity’s survival cannot be assumed in an economic system that assigns value to destroying the ecosystems of which we are a part. The discovery that our planet’s forests absorb more CO2 than was previously suspected is good news, but it comes with an important caveat: we must ensure that forest lands are preserved and expanded over the coming years.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists scientific consensus wildfires
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 25: Smoke Signals
The July 9 edition of the Summit County Voice (CO), features a good report on how scientists are studying the relationship between climate change and the wildfires that have been wreaking havoc in the American West:
Fires are one of nature’s primary carbon-cycling mechanisms, said Dr. Melita Keywood, a researcher with Australia’s national research agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
A press release from CSIRO highlighted some of the questions Keywood raised in a recent presentation at a gathering of geophysicists.
“Understanding changes in the occurrence and magnitude of fires will be an important challenge for which there needs to be a clear focus on the tools and methodologies available to scientists to predict fire occurrence in a changing climate,” Keywood said.
She said the link between long-term climate change and short-term variability in fire activity is complex, with multiple and potentially unknown feedbacks.
Smoking is bad for your health. Sent July 9:
The key phrase in your report on wildfires and climate change can be found in the fifth paragraph: “the link between long-term climate change and short-term variability in fire activity is complex, with multiple and potentially unknown feedbacks.” Both parts of this sentence deserve careful attention. Climate denialists universally fail to understand that complicated phenomena are connected in complicated ways; their simplistic “analysis” reaches its most sophisticated level with “global warming can’t be real, because it’s cold outside.” And those same denialists have never been able to grasp the idea of “feedbacks,” loops of causation in which the symptoms of a problem exacerbate the problem itself (what happens when you and your partner mix up the dual controls on an electric blanket?). When a scientist uses a phrase like “multiple and potentially unknown feedbacks,” she’s giving us a very strongly worded warning: this problem has the potential to get much worse in ways we cannot yet imagine. Welcome to the future!
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 24: Ditto, Ditto, Ditto…
A guy named Ken Midkiff writes a good piece on our likely future in the July 8 issue of the Columbia Tribune (MO):
There are, to be sure, a few skeptics and deniers — mostly those who rely on faux news for “information.” There was never any doubt that that more greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere would cause the planet to become warmer. But the skeptics and deniers have determined it is futile to argue that the planetary temperature is not rising — every measurement demonstrates that it is. The arguments now are about human responsibility and which areas will be affected and how.
As to the first argument, the global-warming skeptics and deniers are quite literally willing to gamble on everyone’s life. If human activities are responsible for raising the level of greenhouse gases and no contrary action is taken, the gamble fails. That is not a risk that should be taken.
At what level of certainty is a seat belt to be fastened? Even if we are just contributing to (not totally causing) global warming, we need to find non-polluting ways of doing things.
I didn’t even bother reading the comments; I just sent the following:
Ken Midkiff’s realistic assessment of the country’s next few decades is sure to demonstrate one of contemporary life’s few certainties: any published article dealing straightforwardly with the facts of climate change will attract vituperation from people who consider Rush Limbaugh a trustworthy source of information. As the scientific evidence piles up higher and higher, the climate denialists are going into overdrive. Their feverish reiterations of “hoax” and their derisive references to “algore” (Rush’s nickname for one of the few politicians to fully grasp the magnitude of the crisis) show their desperation. A sane society would properly relegate these hyperparanoid conspiracy theorists to the margins. Alas, in contemporary American culture, outright rejection of science is a virtual prerequisite for success in either politics or the media — which means that we can no longer expect our laws and opinions to bear any relationship to reality. It would be hilarious if our lives weren’t at stake.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 16: The Changer Things Get, The Samer They Are
The same AP article on the deepening crisis, this time from the June 29 Idaho Press-Tribune:
“The indicators show unequivocally that the world continues to warm,” Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in releasing the annual State of the Climate report for 2010.
“There is a clear and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” added Peter Thorne of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, North Carolina State University.
Sent June 30:
While the Earth is certainly, as Dr. Peter Thorne puts it, “sending us a clear and unmistakable signal” about the looming climate catastrophe, the systemic dysfunctionality of our media and politics ensures that those who hear it are in no position to make a difference. When the fossil-fuel industry purchases the allegiance of our legislators and multinational corporations control our news, the end result is political paralysis — something that human civilization can no longer afford. The situational deafness of political opportunists is no longer just an example of institutionalized corruption, but a genuine and pressing danger. That “clear and unmistakable signal” is telling us: the time available to mitigate the disastrous consequences of climate change is rapidly running out. A philosopher might ask: if a window of opportunity slams, but no one hears it, does it make a sound?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots NCDC Republican obstructionism Republicans scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 15: No News Is Good News
Lots of newspapers are running something about this June 29 report from the National Climate Data Center. Among them is the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel:
WASHINGTON — The world’s climate is not only continuing to warm, it’s adding heat-trapping greenhouse gases faster than in the past, researchers said Tuesday. The global temperature has been warmer than the 20th-century average every month for more than 25 years, they said at a teleconference.
“The indicators show unequivocally that the world continues to warm,” Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in releasing the annual State of the Climate report for 2010.
The evidence keeps accumulating, and by now it’s way deeper than an anomalous blizzard in Washington, DC. But that won’t stop the climate-change denialists in media and politics. By now their positions are fixed in stone; it would be easier to get all that extra atmospheric CO2 back in the ground than to get the GOP’s anti-science zealots to admit error. During the Bush administration, an un-named official derided the “reality-based community,” saying, “We’re an empire. We make our own reality.” And the current Republican party still clings stubbornly to the notion that inconvenient facts can be ignored, forever if necessary. As the NCDC report shows, pretty soon those facts will be too hot to handle. Eventually, of course, climate denialists will admit the reality of climate change — but America and the world cannot afford to wait any longer. It’s time for them to wake up; the coffee’s burning.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: scientific consensus wildfires
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 1: Who Burned Cock Robin?
When it comes to those disastrous forest fires (still raging as this is being written on June 16), the experts are reluctant to point the finger of blame:
The fires searing parts of the West are an eerie echo of the past, a frightening reminder of a once terrible danger that had been held largely at bay for decades.
The number of large wildfires has been rising for roughly the past 25 years, and they are lasting longer during fire seasons that also last longer.
Is it global warming? Experts won’t say that, pointing instead to a variety of factors, including weather, insect infestations and more people living and camping in the woods.
Fortunately, I’m not an expert.
Sent June 16:
The unwillingness of climatologists to assert that global climate change has caused the Arizona wildfires says a lot more about scientific integrity than it does about the way those conflagrations got started. Ethical and responsible scientists are reluctant to describe a complex situation in simplistic ways; a climate specialist who asserted direct causality between global warming and increased forest fires would be rightly criticized by his or her professional colleagues. But when we dig a little deeper (something our media often forgets to do), we discover that these same scientists have been predicting for decades that an accelerating greenhouse effect will create conditions likely to bring more frequent fires, floods, snowstorms, tornadoes, and any other extreme environmental event you can imagine. While professional responsibility prevents scientists from stating unambiguous causality, moral responsibility demands that our politicians stop wasting time on trivialities, and address the looming threat of catastrophic climate change.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists idiots scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 26: Bliss.
A twerp named Bronwyn Eyre writes a generic denialist screed in the June 10 Saskatoon Star-Phoenix:
I know it’s futile to complain about the weather. But are weather researchers fair game?
Last week, it was reported a University of Regina project, led by Prof. Dave Sauchyn, was being awarded $1.25 million from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to study the role of climate change in natural disasters on the Prairies.
“Climate is a pattern. One event is weather,” Sauchyn said. “But if you get a bunch of these (weather incidents) from across the Prairies and it happens again and again, we say, ‘Something is going on.’ And it’s probably climate change.”
Sounds a bit like witchcraft reasoning to me.
Look: If there’s a clear pattern of global warming – sorry, “climate change” – that can be proven without skullduggery or obfuscation, most of us will be willing to do what it takes to rectify things. But increasingly, it seems, “experts” are claiming wacky weather simply to advance an agenda.
Sigh. Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
Sent June 11:
Bronwyn Eyre’s flip dismissal of climate change relies on facile generalities when an outright misstatement of fact isn’t available. For example, the so-called “climategate” scandal has been debunked, and the researchers’ facts have been vindicated. Repeatedly. When she calls for the “hard, empirical evidence,” what does she mean? A stack of temperature readings and atmospheric CO2 levels, minus the expertise required to correlate and synthesize the data? If I’m really sick and need some tests, do I know how to interpret the results? No; without medical training, I require professional expertise. Climatologists are the professional specialists; it is destructive folly to reject their advice just because it conflicts with one’s ideological preconceptions. Arguing with a climate-change denialist like Ms. Eyre is eerily similar to arguing with a young-earth creationist who dismisses the “hard, empirical evidence” for Darwinian evolution; her glib insouciance is not genuine skepticism, but scientific ignorance and innumeracy.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists idiots scientific consensus scientific method tree rings Water
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 25: Look! Bipartisanship!
The June 10 Seattle Times reports on yet another study confirming what we all know:
They looked at the rings of thousands of ancient trees in the mountains above the most important rivers in the West.
What they found may influence how water gets used from Arizona to Canada — and particularly in the Columbia River basin.
Despite odd years like this one, researchers have long reported declines in the mountain snows that power Western rivers. But on Thursday a group of scientists said they now also know this: Those declines are virtually unprecedented throughout most of the last millennium.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and University of Washington measured tree-ring growth from forests that included 800-year-old trees. They learned that snowpack reductions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries were unlike any other period dating to at least the year 1200, according to new research published in the journal Science.
It struck me that these results aren’t surprising to either side of the “debate” any more, and I thought I’d address that surprising unanimity of perception in this letter, sent June 10:
Of course the newest study from the U.S. Geological Survey confirms the existence of climate change, and reinforces the predictions of a complex and catastrophic future for our country and the world! Up to this point, both climate-change denialists and environmental realists are in agreement. But the realists expect to see these results because many decades worth of research on climate questions already supports the core hypothesis: climate change is human-caused, and it’s going to have severe impacts on all of our lives for generations to come. Denialists, by contrast, expect these results because they believe scientific research is part of a liberal campaign to take away their SUVs and force them to change their lightbulbs, a laughable conspiracy theory boosted by corporations afraid of lessening their quarterly returns. Sense and survival on the one hand — paranoia and profit on the other. The choice is clear.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots Ken Cuccinelli plagiarism Republican obstructionism scientific consensus scientific literacy
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Year 2, Month 5, Day 27: What Matters Is That He Could See That Far!
The Wegman Report, used by Republican politicians to justify inaction on climate change, has been withdrawn by the journal which originally published it, following revelations that the whole thing was both filled with errors and substantially plagiarized. Heh heh heh.
Evidence of plagiarism and complaints about the peer-review process have led a statistics journal to retract a federally funded study that condemned scientific support for global warming.
The study, which appeared in 2008 in the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, was headed by statistician Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Its analysis was an outgrowth of a controversial congressional report that Wegman headed in 2006. The “Wegman Report” suggested climate scientists colluded in their studies and questioned whether global warming was real. The report has since become a touchstone among climate change naysayers.
The journal publisher’s legal team “has decided to retract the study,” said CSDA journal editor Stanley Azen of the University of Southern California, following complaints of plagiarism. A November review by three plagiarism experts of the 2006 congressional report for USA TODAY also concluded that portions contained text from Wikipedia and textbooks. The journal study, co-authored by Wegman student Yasmin Said, detailed part of the congressional report’s analysis.
A commenter at Daily Kos put the idea into my head about Ken Cuccinelli’s dilemma, and I decided to put it into a letter. Sent May 16:
So the “Wegman Report” from George Mason University turns out to be both flawed and plagiarized. This poses a problem for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, whose harassment of climate scientist Michael Mann is predicated on Mann’s funding from the University of Virginia. Given that George Mason University receives extensive state and federal support, it’s inescapable: Edward Wegman’s academic misconduct qualifies as a misuse of public funds, and we may confidently expect Mr. Cuccinelli to pursue legal action against Wegman and GMU. Let’s pause a minute to let the hilarity subside, and remember that George Mason University also receives substantial funding from the notorious Koch brothers, well-known supporters of climate-change denialism. While Republican legislators are unlikely to repudiate the Wegman report, perhaps this scandal might inspire our more ignorant politicians to do some of their own science homework, rather than relying on the grownup version of a term-paper service.
Warren Senders