MetaFilter posts tagged with science and globalwarming

Need ammo?

Neilopolis — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:55:38 -0800

How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic: "...a handy one-stop shop for all the material you should need to rebut the more common anti-global warming science arguments constantly echoed across the internet."

ClimateGate?

Who_Am_I — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:14:02 -0800

The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit suffered a security breach this week. Hackers made off with thousands of email correspondences between some of the world's top climate scientists, and posted them to the Internet¹.

Tony Hake has posted an article at The Examiner, highlighting what he feels are the most egregious examples of scientists manipulating and hiding data to support the established theories about Climate Change. Some of the scientists involved counter that the quotes are taken out of context, and that "People are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way".

¹ I'm not going to link to them, but the Examiner article mentions where to get them.

3D Mapping

netbros — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:44:55 -0800

Durango Bill's Home Page. With topics that include: 3D end-to-end tour of the Grand Canyon, the origin and formation of the Colorado River, and examples of river systems that cut through mountain ranges instead of taking easier routes around them in Ancestral Rivers of the World. But if geology and 3D mapping isn't your thing, Bill also entertains and informs with his evaluations of creationism and religious cultists, an energy/oil analysis, gaming probability analysis, graph and number theories and applied mathematics. Durango Bill is a busy dude.

Is the Science Settled Enough for Policy?

nola — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 16:02:51 -0800

A great lecture on global warming given by Professor Stephen Schneider at Stanford University Professor Schneider discusses the pitfalls of presenting scientific ideas on global warming to the public.

There Could Be Blood

kliuless — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:36:53 -0800

Andy Grove on Our Electric Future - "Energy independence [viz.] is the wrong goal. Here is a plan Americans can stick to." Perhaps some infrastructure spending^1,2 is in order? [etc., &c., cf.] also see :P - "Tesla Motors Is Delivering Cars" - "Superconducting Power Grid Launches In New York" - "New heights reached in polymer based solar cell efficiency"

[S]pray a sheet of glass with a mixture of dyes combined with a substance called tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminium. In combination, the dyes and the glass act as the waveguide, preventing light from escaping. Meanwhile, the interaction between the different dye molecules and those of the tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminium allows a quantum-mechanical phenomenon, called Förster energy transfer, to come into play. This eliminates the reabsorption loss by ensuring that light is re-emitted at a frequency which the dye molecules cannot then reabsorb. On top of this—literally—Dr Currie and Dr Mapel have come up with another trick: placing a second sandwich of dye and glass over the first. The upper layer of dye intercepts high-energy light, such as ultraviolet. The lower one captures longer wavelengths that have passed unperturbed through the upper, and also any lower-energy light that has been re-emitted within the top layer and somehow escaped. The upshot is a device that, even as a prototype, converts ten times more of the incident light into electricity than a conventional solar cell. [and btw]

cheers!

I soon found myself observing when plants first blossomed and leafed

Tehanu — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 10:17:18 -0800

Thoreau was into it. Scientists are using it to understand climate change. When Project Budburst starts again on Febraury 15th, you can participate, too. Maps of 2007 data from the National Phenology Network: first leaf date and first bloom date. Phenology projects in various parts of the world.

Are dead-tree magazines good or bad for the climate?

finite — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 22:12:14 -0800

"So by this analysis dead-tree magazines have a smaller net carbon footprint than web media. We cut down trees and put them in the ground. From a climate change perspective, this is a good thing" explains Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine's editor-in-chief. While some decry this type of carbon footprint accounting as "cheating", the paper industry has lately been eager to convince the public that they are carbon-neutral.

limits

kliuless — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:09:35 -0800

The dangers of living in a zero-sum world economy - naked capitalism reprints (with added commentary) an FT article by Martin Wolf on why it's vital for (civilised) society to sustain a 'positive-sum' world, otherwise: "A zero-sum economy leads, inevitably, to repression at home and plunder abroad." Wolf's solution? "The condition for success is successful investment in human ingenuity." Of course! Some are calling for more socialism, while others would press on to build more megaprojects. For me, at least part of the solution lies in environmental accounting and natural capitalism :P

Water, water everywh—Oh dear.

Weebot — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:18:26 -0800

So you've all heard about how global warming will lead to rising sea-levels, but what about falling freshwater levels? The New York Times ran an in-depth piece about the disappearing freshwater reserves for the Western United States last week, that being one of the more underreported effects of global warming. With the area's population projected to rise substantially over the next few decades—60 million in California alone by the mid-21st century!—the water demands are going to be a logistical nightmare without even considering a reduced capacity.

September 2007 polar sea ice anomaly

sergeant sandwich — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:49:59 -0800

Video (8MB, MPEG) of arctic sea ice extent, recorded from January to September 2007. [other formats] This summer a dramatic decrease compared to previous years in the extent of the north pole ice cap was observed. Scientists are freaked out [bugmenot]. This summer, the Northwest Passage was open for a few weeks, allowing three ships to traverse it. This data was taken by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. Comparison with past years. More information here.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and some sub-ice seas have orange starfish

easternblot — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:29:19 -0800

After two big Antarctic ice shelves broke off several years ago, a world of new species was found underneath. Pictures and a press release came out yesterday, showing spindly orange starfish among other interesting creatures. Here is some more information on the expedition. The fact that the shelves melted when they did is most likely a result of global warming, but having them out of the way gave researchers a golden opportunity to study what lives beneath the ice. Other occassions where a disaster has simultaneously been a great research opportunity include radioactive fallouts: at Chernobyl the evacuated area has been monitored for the past decades to see which species move in and how they thrive (previously on Metafilter)

Climate Change

augustweed — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:19:23 -0800

Scientists claim that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought. For a demonstration of how cosmic rays affect cloud formation, you can build a Cloud Chamber.

White House reverses stance on existence of global warming

russilwvong — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 11:26:34 -0800

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has endorsed the recent IPCC report, reversing the White House stance on the existence of global warming. Bodman claims that the Bush administration has always accepted scientific studies pointing to man-made climate change, even as Henry Waxman, House oversight committee chair, has been holding hearings on the White House's misleading the public on global warming for the last six years; hearing documents. Bodman also rejects caps on CO2 emissions, claiming that the US is "a small contributor when you look at the rest of the world," when in fact it's the largest contributor worldwide (and has an even greater share of cumulative CO2 emissions). Previously: IPCC, Waxman.

Scientific American digs deep on climate change

jacob hauser — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 10:33:07 -0800

Anyone interested in climate change or is still wondering about it's potential effects and possible solutions should check out this must-read Special Issue of Scientific American. Here is a freebie article they have posted online called A Climate Repair Manual.

The great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition

Smedleyman — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 23:58:32 -0800

The return of astronauts to the moon by 2020? Yeah! Hurricane predictions, long-term monitoring of weather and climate change? Not so much. (related here and here)

NOAA or Noah?

kliuless — Wed, 03 May 2006 19:03:48 -0800

A NOAA report says Earth's surface and atmosphere are both warming, and that earlier work that found otherwise contains flaws. In other news, global warming has started to weaken an important wind circulation pattern over the Pacific Ocean, a study suggests. The change could alter climate and the marine food chain in that area; polar bears and walrus pups sad.

Hansen Speaks

alms — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 17:38:42 -0800

That scientist NASA tried to silence? He finally did the radio interview last week.

Bush Turns Up the Heat on NASA

digaman — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:03:12 -0800

Bush administration tries to silence NASA's chief climate expert James Hansen from granting interviews about global warming. Meanwhile, a new study by Australian researchers confirms that global sea levels are rising, and may make island nations like Tuvalu and the Maldives uninhabitable by the end of the century. [via RawStory]

Green Alps?

LarryC — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 07:49:13 -0800

A New Alpine Melt Theory: "The Alpine glaciers are shrinking, that much we know. But new research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, they were smaller than today. And 7,000 years ago they probably weren't around at all." Fascinating report from Der Spiegal about the "Green Alps" theory. This page has a small graphic showing the Alps today and how they might have looked in a warmer period. Another article here. Maybe Otzi forgot to pack his sunscreen?

a glitch of the electronics

gsb — Tue, 10 May 2005 02:14:10 -0800

Junk Science. George Monbiot has a critical look at some the claims put forward by "climate change" deniers. There's lots of interesting refutation, with some amusement: "But there was still one mystery to clear up. While Bellamy’s source claimed that 55% of 625 glaciers are advancing, Bellamy claimed that 555 of them – or 89% – are advancing. This figure appears to exist nowhere else. But on the standard English keyboard, 5 and % occupy the same key. If you try to hit %, but fail to press shift, you get 555, instead of 55%. This is the only explanation I can produce for his figure. When I challenged him, he admitted that there had been “a glitch of the electronics”."

Those Who Fail To Learn History. . . something or the other.

absalom — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 09:28:16 -0800

The Rapanui (of Easter Island), the Mayans, and the Norse colonists of Greenland all share one similarity: each culture was brought down by preventable, human-cause environmental catastrophe. Sure, Michael Crichton says it's all bunk, but Jared Diamond (the author of the infinitely discussable, Pulitzer prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel) recently came out with a new book that suggests that maybe we ought to be worried after all. Hear him discuss it on NPR's morning edition.

Real Climate blog

stbalbach — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 20:49:07 -0800

RealClimate is a blog written by nine working climatologists from around the world (all experts in their field), focusing on explaining climate science, providing context to current reports in the mainstream media, and rebutting the fallacious arguments of carbon lobby hacks. (via World Changing)

That's not the rapture, it's the space people harvesting you for meat

jimray — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 21:32:18 -0800

Republican environmental politics as usual? While the president's policies seem to be standard for his party, Bill Moyers thinks there's more than meets the eye. On receiving Harvard medical school's Global Environment Citizen Award, Moyers posits that destruction of the environment isn't just good for big business, it's a self fulfilling prophecy of the apocalypse. Not just any old apocalypse, it's The Rapture, complete with plagues for the non-believers and immmediate ascension to the right hand of God Himself for the righteous.

Two days after Moyer's speech, Science magazine looks at the scientific consensus on global warming. If you're having a hard time explaining all this to your kids, don't worry, your tax dollars are hard at work.

When did skeptic become a dirty word?

gd779 — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 21:18:28 -0800

Did belief in extraterrestrials pave the way for today’s general belief in global warming? Is the blending of public policy with science creating junk science? Michael Crichton drew out an intriguing connection in this lecture at Caltech. Via Arts & Letters Daily.

another canary tips over

specialk420 — Tue, 23 Sep 2003 07:31:14 -0800

another canary tips over
as the administration (more specifically the white house council on environmental quality and its head james l. connaughton) continue to ignore and bury the warnings of the effects global warming from their own scientists.