The University of Texas said today that it has accepted the findings of a damning independent review of the preparation of a report on potential impacts of shale gas drilling by the school’s Energy Institute. The school said it will undertake six recommended actions, the most significant being the withdrawal of papers from the Energy Institute’s Web site related to the report until they are submitted for fresh expert review.
In its news release, the university said that the lead investigator, Professor Chip Groat, retired last month and the institute’s director, Raymond Orbach, resigned. [*There's more from the StateImpact Texas reporting project here.]
The independent review, by a trio of noted science administrators and scholars, expressly did not examine the quality of the study’s findings, but focused on issues related to its creation — particularly what it deemed to be serious problems with undisclosed financial interests (earlier Dot Earth coverage is here). [Dec. 7, 4:37 p.m. | Update | Although the authors wrote that they were not tasked with evaluating the contents, a Dot Earth reader, "JD," pointed to a searing section of the summary (page 14) that I missed in my quick scan late yesterday; see the bottom of this post for the excerpt.]
Fresh imagery showing the increasingly illuminated night side of Earth has been produced by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is one of the clearest visible signs of the Anthropocene — an era in which one species, us, is becoming a planet-scale influence. The imagery also shows big dark gaps in populous places — reflecting the reality that some 1.3 billion people still lack access to electricity.
In its 2011 analysis of humanity’s electricity gap (the latest one that’s freely accessible), the International Energy Agency estimated that 1.3 billion people still lack access to electricity, with Asia just ahead of Africa in numbers living in the dark, but Africa with a much higher proportion lacking this vital resource (a 41.8 percent electrification rate) compared to Asia (81 percent).
Michael Schlesinger, a climatologist at the University of Illinois, has been immersed in both climate science and policy analysis for decades. Lately he has been working with younger researchers on papers aiming to clarify some of the basic questions about the human contribution to recent warming and to find a way for established and emerging industrial powers to divvy up the task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
I got to spend a few minutes with Schlesinger during a recent visit to the university to give a lecture. In the video above he summarizes the findings in these two new papers: Read more…
MITThomas W. Malone is the founding director of the Center for Collective Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Over the last several years, I’ve become familiar with the work of Thomas W. Malone and the Center for Collective Intelligence, the lab he directs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The center is studying, and trying to make the most of, the human species’ fast-growing capacity to think outside the box — with the box in this case being an individual’s skull and cerebral cortex.
Malone discussed his goals, work and background in a session recorded and transcribed by Edge.org, the Web site developed by the literary agent and intellectual impressario John Brockman as something of an online science salon.
Needless to say, Malone’s work on what he calls the evolving “global brain” relates powerfully to the thread of posts I’ve been writing on what I call Knowosphere. Here’s an excerpt from Malone’s remarks and a link to the video and full transcript: Read more…
NOAAMontastraea annularis, or boulder star coral, is one of 66 coral species proposed for protection under the Endangered Species Act by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
There are many reasons humanity is having a very hard time addressing the buildup of long-lived greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. (The stasis is on vivid display in Doha, Qatar, at the current round of climate treaty talks; track #cop18 on Twitter for the latest.)
One big reason is that while the basics of greenhouse theory have been clear for decades, the most consequential aspects of human-driven climate change remain the least certain. And humans, either as individuals or groups, have a hard time engaging effectively in such situations. (Review studies on “hyperbolic discounting” and uncertainty for starters.)
I think it’s important to come to grips with this reality, and the reality that many of these core questions are unlikely to be clarified any time soon. (There’s a lot of news on sea-level rise this week, and this resulted from some fantastic science. But when you dig beneath the headlines and paper abstracts, you see that we’re still stuck with the same plausible range of coastal retreat that’s been posited for many years — and is actually far less than what scientists were warning of when I wrote my 1988 Discover cover story.)
Paul Voosen, one of the most talented journalists probing human-driven climate change and related energy issues, has written an award-worthy two-part report for Greenwire on one of the most enduring sources of uncertainty in climate science — how the complicated response of clouds in a warming world limits understanding of how hot it could get from a given rise in greenhouse gas concentrations:
Earlier this year, the Stanford University climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh became an early adopter of Google+ Hangouts on Air — open video chats with invited participants and, when they drop in, members of the public.
Last night I invited Diffenbaugh to use the same portal to “meet” the students in my Blogging a Better Planet course at Pace University.
My first question was a simple one. Given his intensive research agenda, campus work and responsibilities as a lead author of a chapter in the next set of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, what in the world did he get out of spending time on YouTube?
In his reply, he describes a sense of responsibility to the public which, through federal research funding, pays for much of his science. But he also describes how he his online exchanges led in one case to a suggestion from a viewer that led to a new research direction. Like me, he clearly sees online communication as a two-way portal for sharing and shaping ideas, not merely a way to stake a position.
We also discussed how such experiments offer scientists and their institutions a direct path to the public as conventional science media shrink (read “The Changing Communication Climate” for more).
The video connection broke before the students had a chance to weigh in — with such glitches all a routine part of life in a new medium.
I encourage you to sample his previous videos. Particularly interesting was a discussion of extreme heat and storms, which he organized along with Greg Dalton, who runs Climate One, a project of the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco: Read more…
The Rainforest Alliance was a pioneer in testing the idea that businesses can prosper by adhering to transparent and science-based environmental standards for the products they grow or make. I became familiar with their work when I first plunged into rain forest reporting in a big way to write my 1990 book on the fight for the soul of the Amazon River basin. They’re still at it, developing projects in sustainable agriculture, forestry, tourism and education. (The education efforts include educating businesses, as in “A Practical Guide to Good Practice for Tropical Forest-Based Tours.”)
Tensie Whelan, the group’s president, sent the following “Your Dot” post reflecting on some recent discussions of certification issues and opportunities: Read more…
[Production note: I'm helping my older son relocate to New Orleans (22 hours of driving) so comment moderation and posting will be unavoidably sporadic for a few days.]
Michael D. SanClementsJeff Taylor, a scientist from the University of Colorado, downloads data from a temporary meteorological station near the Toolik Field Station on Alaska’s North Slope.
Last year, Michael SanClements, an ecologist affiliated with the Institute of Arctic & Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, sent a Dot Earth “Postcard” about a project studying soil microbes in Antarctica. Here’s a fresh contribution from SanClements, along with colleague Jeff Taylor, from the other end of the planet — Alaska’s Arctic tundra.
They are both staff scientists with the National Ecological Observatory Network, an initiative supported by the National Science Foundation that has a goal of creating a view of ecological change that spans the continent over the next three decades. As they explain below, without consistent monitoring, it’s hard to gauge the scope and causes of changes in environmental conditions: Read more…
By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth, which recently moved from the news side of The Times to the Opinion section, Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Conceived in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Dot Earth tracks relevant developments from suburbia to Siberia. The blog is an interactive exploration of trends and ideas with readers and experts.
Access to cheap energy underpins modern societies. Finding enough to fuel industrialized economies and pull developing countries out of poverty without overheating the climate is a central challenge of the 21st century.
Enshrined in history as an untouchable frontier, the Arctic is being transformed by significant warming, a rising thirst for oil and gas, and international tussles over shipping routes and seabed resources.
Human advancement can be aided by curbing everyday losses like the millions of avoidable deaths from indoor smoke and tainted water, and by increasing resilience in the face of predictable calamities like earthquakes and drought.
Earth’s veneer of millions of plant and animal species is a vital resource that will need careful tending as human populations and their demands for land, protein and fuels grow.
Andrew C. Revkin began exploring the human impact on the environment nearly 30 years ago. An early stop was Papeete, Tahiti. This narrated slide show describes his extensive travels.
How are climate change, scarcer resources, population growth and other challenges reshaping society? From science to business to politics to living, reporters track the high-stakes pursuit of a greener globe in a dialogue with experts and readers. Join the discussion at Green.
Solar parties, like Tupperware parties, are being used by solar companies to sell their products to neighbors of homeowners who have installed the arrays.
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