climate science

 

climate predictions

 

There is no greater danger to support for action on important issues of human impacts on the environment than an overselling of what climate science can provide.[read more]

A recent column by Daniel Sarewitz in Nature on bridging the "partisan divide" with respect to public perception of science inspired some spirited debate over on my twitter feed yesterday. Scientists are often perceived as being in the thrall of Democrats, , exposing the greater scientific enterprise to being undermined as simply another partisan front. But is it really that simple?[read more]

A recent analysis shows how the distribution of summer temperatures has shifted in recent decades, to the extent that there has been a notable change in the frequency of what were extreme outlying events. This in turn led NASA to assert that “the recent bouts of extremely warm summers, including the intense heat wave afflicting the U.S. Midwest this year, very likely are the consequence of global warming”.[read more]

The current spate of very hot weather across much of the USA (and not forgetting the balmy “winter” days in many states back in the early part of the year) raises the question of the role of climate change in relation to such extremes.[read more]

Christopher Kolaczan/Shutterstock

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, NASA climate scientist James Hansen again puts forward his very compelling argument for strong action on limiting global CO2 emissions. He argues that Canadian oil sands is illustrative of an ongoing global trend to extract or mine increasingly challenging reserves of oil, gas and coal and bring them to market, a behaviour that could mean "game over for the climate".[read more]

Climate change is one of those subjects that is awash with data, leading to an almost endless capacity for analysis and ultimately conclusion drawing. The same data can be used to create different analytical output and a single analysis can lead to more than one conclusion. This comes about not just from the climate data itself, but from energy use data, energy use projections and the combination of all of these into both simple and highly complex models which seek to map out climate scenarios for the balance of this century and beyond.[read more]

The external release of documents relating to the activities of the Heartland Institute has raised many questions, but an important issue that is now in the open again relates to the teaching of climate change in schools. How should this be handled and what should be taught? Is there justification in arguing that “both sides” of the issue should be covered? Are there “two sides” to this issue? If so, what exactly are the “two sides”, particularly in the context of a high school education?[read more]

An opinion piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal (Europe) on Tuesday (a few days earlier in the USA) presented the views of sixteen scientists on the issue of climate change under the heading “No Need to Panic About Global Warming“. Unfortunately there isn’t much in the way of science discussed and the reality of the policy world is very different from the story they have written.[read more]

Last week I had the privilege to attend an MIT forum and listen to the keynote address given by Nobel laureate Mario Molina. The subject of the address was the issue of conveying an understanding of the science of climate change to the general public. Professor Molina won the Nobel Prize and is best known for his work in identifying the role of chloro-fluorocarbons in the destruction of the ozone layer.[read more]

By many accounts 2011 has been a year of weather extremes and some commentators have used certain events to highlight the risks associated with climate change. While there is increasing evidence of unusual global weather events, should we just assume that every disaster is a sign of things to come?[read more]

Perhaps in response to the initial findings of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project and the reported disappointment of some climate skeptics after the lead of the project testified before a Congressional committee, the Wall Street Journal Europe published an article on April 5th by former commodity market statistician Douglas Keenan which questions the significance, in statistical terms, of the warming of the planet over the last century.[read more]

I think it’s pretty obvious who the winner will be this year.  I have tried to be responsive to those who felt last year’s Citizen Kane award didn’t give enough weighting to the unprincipled bad actors, as opposed to those who are merely doing a bad job.  As always, though, I welcome your thoughts on the “winners” and any...[read more]

Here is a selection of sustainable energy and climate change books I read in 2010. I’ve provided a few sentence summary of each book (from my perspective) and a Rating out of 5. Some books have been reviewed in more detail on BNC already — enter from the title of the book in this website’s search box to find the review (or...[read more]

One of the climate scientist I have learned the most from is Michael Oppenheimer the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University, and Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP).[read more]

Via Treehugger, a ten minute interview by Revkin of McKibben. (I think they talk past each other a bit without noticing. Revkin injects a bit of Pielkeism in there and I don't know if McKibben even notices.) But McKibben has come to the same place in the last year or so that many of us have. Our future is down to difficult vs impossible...[read more]