Arguments
Where'd you get your PhD? Trump University? https://twitter.com/HouseScience/status/804402881982066688 …
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
Climate Science Legal Defense Fund at AGU and how you can help
Posted on 13 December 2016 by Guest Author
Executive Director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) Lauren Kurtz reminds us that we're living in "interesting times," describes how the CSLDF is here to help, encourages Skeptical Science readers to pitch in. You can help with a variety of worthy climate-related projects at the Skeptical Science crowd source funding page.
The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) was founded in September 2011 to defend climate scientists from harassing and invasive attacks via the legal system. Five years in, our work is more necessary than ever. The United States has elected a president who has mocked climate science, threatened to cut funding for research, and bullied those who disagree with him. His transition team also includes members of the very organizations we fight in court, like Myron Ebell and David Schnare.
We’ve seen politicians try to silence climate scientists' voices in the past. We fear that the incoming White House and Congress will be worse. Accordingly, CSLDF is expanding our efforts to offer climate scientists the best legal counsel so they can remain focused on their work: we’ve been increasing our pro bono network of attorneys available to help scientists, and creating educational materials and programs for scientists on how to respond to harassment. For those in San Francisco during the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, please consider attending our talk on how open records laws have been used to attack climate scientists on Wednesday, December 14, stop by our booth in the exhibit hall (booth 1523) for free legal education materials, or email lawyer@climatesciencedefensefund.org to schedule a free consultation with a lawyer.
Many of you have been with us through years of scientists being dragged into courtrooms, targeted with harassment by political appointees, and vilified by Congressional committees for simply doing research. Skeptical Science readers have been integral supporters of CSLDF, including generous donations made by many in the SkS community. SkS supporters were particularly critical for meeting the goals of our last fundraiser, a $50K match campaign. Thank you!
We are very grateful for everything you've done for the scientific community. In light of the new challenges facing climate scientists, please consider helping CSLDF again by volunteering your time, contributing to our litigation fund, or spreading the word to others who might help.
For more information, please visit climatesciencedefensefund.org or SkS’ own “Getting involved with Climate Science via crowdfunding and crowdsourcing” page.
On climate change, angels and demons are battling over Trump’s soul
Posted on 12 December 2016 by dana1981
There are signs that a war may be brewing over President-elect Donald Trump’s climate legacy, and the bad guys are winning.
In one corner: Team Ivanka
His daughter Ivanka appears to be establishing a role as the one person who might prevent the Trump administration from undoing all of the progress made by the Obama administration in cutting US carbon pollution, and instead establishing policies that will maximize the country’s burning of fossil fuels. According to Politico, Ivanka Trump wants to make climate change one of her signature issues. She recently coordinated meetings between the president-elect and Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio.
DiCaprio in particular wisely focused his presentation on the fact that a shift to clean renewable energy would create millions of jobs. The best way to help a businessman like Donald Trump appreciate the importance and benefits of cutting carbon pollution is to focus on the economic opportunities presented by the coming green technology revolution. It’s an opportunity that China is poised to seize upon, as UCLA Law School’s Alex Wang noted:
Climate change regulation is seen as an economic tool aimed at moving China’s economy toward the low-carbon, high-tech, and clean energy industries of the future. China would like nothing more than to have the U.S. retreat from clean energy innovation and allow it to step into the breach.
Skeptical Science at AGU 2016
Posted on 11 December 2016 by John Cook
Next week is going to be an exciting and busy period for Skeptical Science. Several of us will be presenting talks and posters at this week's AGU 2016 Fall Meeting.
Monday
John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli will each be presenting talks in a Monday morning session on climate literacy (session ED12A in Moscone South, room 307). This session will also feature Naomi Oreskes, Richard Alley, Mark Jacobson, Peter Sinclair, Stephan Lewandowsky and Alan Robock - not to be missed!)
- Communicating and countering misconceptions about the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming (John Cook, 11.05am)
- Climate Models have Accurately Predicted Global Warming (Dana Nuccitelli, 11.50am)
John Cook will be presenting a poster about our Denial101x MOOC in a poster session on science communication through curricula (ED13A-0923) on Monday afternoon. You can check out the poster below (full PDF 28Mb):
Sarah Green (who happens to cameo in John Cook's poster shown above, sporting a very fashionable jacket!) is also presenting a poster Monday afternoon:
- Matter and energy flows in climate education (ED13B-0939: Moscone South - Poster Hall)
2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #50
Posted on 11 December 2016 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Video of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
Record low volume highlights exceptional year for Arctic sea ice
With the latest sea ice data for November just in, 2016 continues to be a dramatic year in the Arctic. Following an unusually warm start to the year and record low ice in several months, a markedly sluggish freeze-up season in the back end of the year is also seeing records tumble.
Earlier this week, scientists confirmed the area of Arctic Ocean covered by sea ice – known as sea ice extent – reached a record low in November. Now, figures from the Piomas (Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System) confirm the volume of sea ice also hit record lows.
At close to 8,000 cubic kilometres (cubic km), total sea ice volume in November stood at just 48% of the long-term average and the smallest of any November in the satellite record stretching back to 1979.
Taken together, these findings show little sign of recovery after an exceptionally poor start to the winter freeze-up season. This doesn’t bode well for survival of the ice through next year’s summer melting season, say scientists.
Daily Arctic sea ice volume (relative to the 1979-2015 average) for the satellite record. The blue line shows the trend during the record of a decline of 3,000km3 per decade. Credit: Piomas.
Record low volume highlights exceptional year for Arctic sea ice, Carbon Brief, Dec 7, 2016
2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #50
Posted on 10 December 2016 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Dec 4, 2016
- Push to lock in fuel efficiency standards central to President Obama's climate policy before Trump administration takes over by David Shepardson, Reuters, Nov 30. 2016
- Canada Approves Two Pipelines, Axes One, Calls it a Climate Victory by Zahri Hirji & Lisa Song, InsideClimate News, Nov 30, 2016
- Truth vs post-truth: What’s causing our record-shattering global temperatures? by Dana Nuccitelli, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dec 2, 2016
- Germany tells World Bank to quit funding fossil fuels by Karl Mathiesen, Climate Home, Dec 1, 2016
- Cashing In on Climate Change, Opinion by Moises Velasquez-Manoff, Sunday Review, New York Times, Dec 3, 2016
- Is Florida’s climate change model — denial at the Capitol, frantic action at the beach — in store for the U.S. under Trump?, Opinion by David Helvarg, Los Angeles Times, Dec 2, 2016
- Indigenous peoples of the world’s coastlines are losing their fisheries — and their way of life by Daryl Fears, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Dec 2, 2016
- ACT leaves most of Australia behind on climate change initiatives: report by Katie Burgess, Sydney Morning Herald, Dec 2, 2016
Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Episode 6
Posted on 9 December 2016 by Guest Author
Global Weirding is produced by KTTZ Texas Tech Public Media and distributed by PBS Digital Studios. New episodes every other Wednesday at 10 am central. Brought to you in part by: Bob and Linda Herscher, Freese and Nichols, Inc, and the Texas Tech Climate Science Center.
Report helps scientists communicate how global warming is worsening natural disasters
Posted on 8 December 2016 by John Abraham
Climate scientists have done a great job winning the scientific arguments about climate change. To be clear about what I mean, we have done a very good job investigating whether or not the Earth’s climate is changing (it is), what is causing the change (humans), how much will it change in the future, and what will be the impacts.
There are no longer any reputable scientists who disagree with the principle view of that human emissions will cause climate change that will lead to societal and human losses (they already are). So, I use the term “win” here not to indicate it was a battle of “us” versus “them”. Rather, I mean “win” in that we have faithfully followed the scientific method, explored alternative hypotheses, checked and rechecked our work, and have come to a truth that is unassailable. We’ve done our job.
In the past, that is where our job ended. I mean maybe we would help with a press release on a breaking study, do an interview. But only rarely.
Now, particularly with an issue like climate change, that has such an impact on peoples’ lives, scientists are being asked to go further. We are being asked to effectively communicate to the public why this matters, what will happen if we take action or not, and what some trade-offs are. This means we can be put in an uncomfortable position where we’re forced to advocate. Some of my colleagues are understandably skittish about advocacy and avoid it religiously. Others, like myself, will advocate on occasion but be very clear about when the scientist hat comes off and the advocate hat is put on.
Getting involved with Climate Science via crowdfunding and crowdsourcing
Posted on 7 December 2016 by BaerbelW
At a guess, many of you reading this post are already making good personal choices to help mitigate climate change. Some of you would perhaps like to do more. So, here are some suggestions where you can get actively involved either via crowdfunding, where you make a monetary donation or via crowdsourcing, where you donate your or your computer's time to sift through different sets of data.
This post is divided into three sections:
Ongoing crowdfunding - sites and groups listed here are continously looking for donations
Shortterm crowdfunding - these are projects with a target amount and a set deadline
Crowdsourcing - projects looking for your (or your computer's) time
Ongoing crowdfunding
Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF)
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The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund was established to make sure that legal actions are not viewed as an attack against one scientist or institution, but as attacks against the scientific endeavor as a whole. As well. the CSLDF protects individual scientists facing unfair legal attacks by organized groups. Given the current climate - pun most definitely intended - in the U.S. the CSLDF's work is unfortunately becoming ever more important. Link to donation page |
| Jason Box's and Peter Sinclair's The Dark Snow Project gathers ‘hard numbers’ from the Arctic to quantify the distant snow/ice melting impact of industrial and wildfire black carbon soot; mineral dust; and microbes, each melt factor having some human driven enhancement. Link to donation page |  |
The Australian Climate Council
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After thousands of Australians chipped in to Australia's biggest crowd-funding campaign, the abolished Climate Commission has relaunched as the new, independent Climate Council. We exist to provide independent, authoritative climate change information to the Australian public. Why? Because our response to climate change should be based on the best science available. Link to donation page |
Citizens’ Climate Education (CCE)
| Your donation to Citizens’ Climate Education will train ordinary citizens to promote fair, effective, and non-partisan climate change solutions. Citizens’ Climate Education’s volunteers understand that we owe it to tomorrow’s generations to face our climate challenges today. These informed, respectful citizens work to build a clean and prosperous future, leading elected officials towards solutions that reduce carbon pollution, create jobs, and strengthen the American economy. Link to donation page |  |
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The goal of Real Skeptic is to look at claims about science and investigate what the scientific literature has to say about it. Since the official start of Real Sceptic a wide array of articles about skepticism were written for this website. There’s a heavy emphasis on the accuracy of the articles published and the usage of high quality sources. Link to Patreon page |
| InsideClimate News is an essential, global voice that exposes the truth about the climate crisis. We connect the dots to those responsible, so that you can hold them accountable. As we enter our 10th year, we’re launching The InsideClimate Circle to ensure that our award-winning nonprofit news organization remains fiercely independent and courageously persistent. Link to membership page |  |
From the eMail Bag: CO2 in the air and oceans
Posted on 6 December 2016 by David Kirtley
We occasionally receive excellent questions and/or comments by email or via our contact form and have then usually corresponded with the emailer directly. But, some of the questions and answers deserve a broader audience, so we decided to highlight some of them in a new series of blog posts. This is the first one of those posts and more will follow every once in a while in the future.
We recently received an email from Jeffrey Middlebrook who asked about the dynamics of CO2 transport from the atmosphere to the oceans:
...as atmospheric water vapor increases with CO2-driven atmospheric warming, there will be more CO2 capture by the increased water vapor (yielding more carbonic acid) which will transfer more CO2 to the oceans, thereby decreasing the effects of atmospheric CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and with greater precipitation due to more atmospheric water vapor more atmospheric heat will be transferred to the oceans and terrestrial landscapes. It seems plausible that the increases in atmospheric water vapor due to increases in atmospheric CO2 might just produce a strong negative feedback.
About 46% of human emissions of CO2 stay in the atmosphere, while ~26% makes its way to the oceans, and ~28% is used by plants. Our emissions of CO2 may be good for plants (at least for now) but the additional CO2 in the oceans is leading to climate change's "evil twin": ocean acidification. (For much more about ocean acidification see our series: OA is not OK.)
Figure 1. CO2 added to the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans due to Henry's law. More CO2 added since pre-industrial times leads to more CO2 absorbed by the oceans.
Fake news tries to blame human-caused global warming on El Niño
Posted on 5 December 2016 by dana1981
Human carbon pollution is heating the Earth incredibly fast. On top of that long-term human-caused global warming trend, there are fluctuations caused by various natural factors. One of these is the El Niño/La Niña cycle. The combination of human-caused warming and a strong El Niño event are on the verge of causing an unprecedented three consecutive record-breaking hot years.
Simply put, without global warming we would not be seeing record-breaking heat year after year. In fact, 2014 broke the temperature record without an El Niño assist, and then El Niño helped push 2015 over 2014, and 2016 over 2015.
Sadly, we live in a post-truth world dominated by fake news in which people increasingly seek information that confirms their ideological beliefs, rather than information that’s factually accurate from reliable sources. Because people have become incredibly polarized on the subject of climate change, those with a conservative worldview who prefer maintaining the status quo to the steps we need to take to prevent a climate catastrophe often seek out climate science-denying stories.
Into that environment step conservative columnists David Rose at the Mail on Sunday, parroted by Ross Clark in The Spectator and James Delingpole for Breitbart, all trying to blame the current record-shattering hot global temperatures entirely on El Niño. Perhaps saddest of all, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee tweeted the Breitbart piece, to which Senator Bernie Sanders appropriately responded:
An über cherry-picked argument
The conservative columnists made their case by claiming that, with the recent strong El Niño event ending, temperatures are “plummeting,” thus blaming the record heat on El Niño. There are several fatal flaws in their case.
First, the “plummet” they cite is not in global temperatures on the surface where we live, and where temperatures are easiest to measure accurately, but rather in satellite estimates of the temperature of the lower atmosphere above the portions of Earth’s surface covered by land masses. Second, although the satellite data extend as far back as 1979, and the global surface temperature data to 1880, they cherry pick the data by only showing the portion since 1997. Third, the argument is based entirely upon one relatively cool month (October 2016) that was only cool in that particularly cherry-picked data set.
The argument is easily debunked. While there was a strong El Niño event in 2015–2016, there was an equally strong event in 1997–1998. The two events had very similar short-term warming influences on global surface temperatures, but according to Nasa, 2016 will be about 0.35°C hotter than 1998. That difference is due to the long-term, human-caused global warming trend. In fact, according to Nasa, even October 2016 was hotter than every month on record prior to 1998. These “plummeting” post-El Niño temperatures are still as hot as the hottest month at the peak of the 1998 El Niño.
2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #49
Posted on 4 December 2016 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... SkS Highlights... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Video of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
At a time when a huge pulse of uncertainty has been injected into the global project to stop the planet’s warming, scientists have just raised the stakes even further.
In a massive new study published Wednesday in the influential journal Nature, no less than 50 authors from around the world document a so-called climate system “feedback” that, they say, could make global warming considerably worse over the coming decades.
That feedback involves the planet’s soils, which are a massive repository of carbon due to the plants and roots that have grown and died in them, in many cases over vast time periods (plants pull in carbon from the air through photosynthesis and use it to fuel their growth). It has long been feared that as warming increases, the microorganisms living in these soils would respond by very naturally upping their rate of respiration, a process that in turn releases carbon dioxide or methane, leading greenhouse gases.
Scientists have long feared this ‘feedback’ to the climate system. Now they say it’s happening by Chris Mooney, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, Nov 30, 2016
SkS Highlights...
Using the metric of comments garnered, the three most popular articles of those posted on SkS during the past week were:
- Dear Mr President-elect: a message from across the Pond by John Mason & Baerbel W
- Justin Trudeau approves two big oil sands pipeline expansions by Andy Skuce
- Trump and the GOP may be trying to kneecap climate research by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian)
Toon of the Week...
2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #49
Posted on 3 December 2016 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Nov 27, 2016
- The DWP is expanding its rooftop panel program to the 'solar desert' to meet its energy goals by Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times, Nov 23, 2016
- Here are 9 Obama Environmental Regulations in Trump's Crosshairs by Marianne Lavelle, InsideClimate News, Nov 22, 2016
- Anti-Elon Musk Campaign Has Big Ties to Big Energy by Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch, Nov 25, 2016
- EU in danger of missing its own climate targets by Terry Macalister, Climate News Network, Nov 24, 2016
- Carbon Farming: Hope for a Hot Planet by Brian Barth, Modern Farmer, Nov 25, 2016
- Exxon’s Accountants Are Experts in Climate Risk. What Did They Tell Exxon? by John H Cushman Jr, Inside Climate News, Nov 23, 2016
- Fish found to thrive in high levels of CO2 by Tim Radford, Climate News Network, Nov 24, 2016
- 'Remarkable year': What's behind the record low sea ice in Antarctica by Peter Hannam, Sydney Morning Herald, Nov 27, 2016
Fires and drought cook Tennessee - a state represented by climate deniers
Posted on 2 December 2016 by John Abraham
With my new hope that deniers of climate change will take ownership of the consequences, I am sad to report that this week, terrible wildfires have swept through Tennessee, a southeastern state in the USA. This state is beset by a tremendous drought, as seen by a recent US Drought Monitor map. There currently are severe, extreme, and exceptional drought conditions covering a wide swath of southern states. The causes of drought are combinations of lowered precipitation and higher temperatures.
The patterns of drought are the result of many weeks of weather (warm and dry) that have led to the current conditions. The recent high-temperature map from NOAA below provides just one example.
Justin Trudeau approves two big oil sands pipeline expansions
Posted on 1 December 2016 by Andy Skuce
In an announcement on November 29, 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved two new major pipeline expansions for Canadian bitumen. Altogether, the two projects will add over a million barrels per day to Canada's export capacity.
At the same press conference, Trudeau rejected the application for the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have provided 525,000 barrels per day of transportation from Alberta to the Pacific Ocean through the northern British Columbia coast, near Kitimat.
Northern Gateway (map by Enbridge)
The proposed export route would have involved tanker transport through fjords and treacherous seas in an area of protected wilderness known as the Great Bear Rainforest. Trudeau promised a legislated ban on all oil tankers on the BC Coast north of Vancouver Island. The Northern Gateway project was fiercely resisted by First Nations.
Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX)
The Trans Mountain Expansion project involves the twinning and expansion of an existing pipeline that runs from Edmonton, through Jasper National Park, to the Pacific coast at Vancouver.
The project currently has a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day and will be expanded to have a total capacity of 890,000 barrels per day. Around 400 Aframax tankers per year will transport diluted bitumen from the Westridge Marine Terminal, through Vancouver's Burrard Inlet, then down narrow passages, with strong tidal currents, between the Gulf Islands, and finally through the busy shipping lane of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the open ocean and markets around the Pacific. The project should be completed in 2019.
Chart by Doug Bostrom. Green line shows outbound tanker course, red overlay shows areas with strong tidal currents, in knots. High resolution PDF (big file)
Trump and the GOP may be trying to kneecap climate research
Posted on 30 November 2016 by dana1981
Last week, Donald Trump’s space policy advisor Bob Walker made headlines by suggesting that the incoming administration might slash Nasa’s climate and earth science research to focus the agency on deep space exploration. This caused great concern in the scientific community, because Nasa does some of the best climate research in the world, and its Earth science program does much more. Walker suggested the earth science research could be shifted to other agencies, but climate scientist Michael Mann explained what would result:
It’s difficult enough for us to build and maintain the platforms that are necessary for measuring how the oceans are changing, how the atmosphere is changing, with the infrastructure that we have when we total up the contributions from all of the agencies ... we [could] lose forever the possibility of the continuous records that we need so that we can monitor this planet.
Walker’s comments set off alarm bells for another reason. Were it simply a matter of transferring Nasa’s climate and earth science programs to other agencies, what would be the point? Such a transfer would be logistically difficult, and if the research funding weren’t cut, it wouldn’t save any taxpayer money. And it’s not as though the branches doing Nasa’s climate research are distracting other branches of the agency from conducting deep space exploration.
The suggestion does however look a lot like a Trojan horse whose true purpose is to cut government-funded climate research, perhaps transferring some of Nasa’s programs and budget to other agencies and simply scrapping the rest.
Bob Walker’s politicized science
In an interview with The Guardian, Walker accused Nasa of “politically correct environmental monitoring” and “politicized science.” Carol Off from CBC’s program As It Happens conducted a follow-up interview with Walker and asked for examples to support his accusations. Walker cited the example of Nasa’s announcement that 2014 was the hottest year on record, claiming:
Dear Mr President-elect: a message from across the Pond
Posted on 29 November 2016 by John Mason, BaerbelW
Dear Mr President-elect,
On 6 Nov 2012, at 11:15 am, you tweeted:
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
We'd like to take you on a quick tour back through the ages, because the early understanding of Earth's climate - and the role that carbon has to play in it - came from the West, not the East. Let's run through it quickly.
In 1800, British astronomer William Herschel first measured the heat that occurs in the warm – now known as infra-red (IR) – part of the spectrum. In 1824, French engineer Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier calculated that Earth should be colder than it is, at its orbital distance from the Sun. Today, it is common knowledge that outgoing IR radiation is emitted by the Earth's surface in response to heating by the Sun. But Fourier was the first to figure out that the IR was being slowed down during its journey back out to space. The air, he said, must act as a form of insulating blanket, keeping the planet warm. Smart guy.
This was just two years before Samuel Morey patented the first internal combustion engine.
In 1861, Anglo-Irish physicist John Tyndall observed that some atmospheric gases were transparent to IR radiation. But he found that others, like water vapor and carbon dioxide, were powerful IR absorbers. He was the first to propose that changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could influence the Earth's climate. In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius took it further. He made the first detailed calculations to see what a doubling of carbon dioxide levels might do to temperatures. His answer was a 5-6°C increase in the average global temperature. His ‘hot-house theory’ was set out for the first time in 1908 in his popular book ‘Worlds in the Making’.
In 1909, American astronomer Andrew Douglass developed the techniques of studying tree-rings and was the first to find the connection between tree ring widths and climate. In 1931, American physicist E.O Hulburt ran calculations to determine the effect of doubling carbon dioxide with the added burden of water vapor. His figure? 4°C of warming. In 1938, English engineer Guy Callendar discovered evidence of a warming temperature trend in the early twentieth century. He also found that CO2 levels were increasing and he warned that over the coming centuries there could be a climate shift to a permanently warmer state.
Scientists rate Canadian climate policies
Posted on 28 November 2016 by Guest Author
James Byrne is a Climate Scientist and Professor at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. He has published extensively on the impacts of climate change on water, ecosystems and society; served as an expert reviewer of many environmental impacts reports; and has led national and international environmental science and solutions communication programs. Catherine Potvin is Canada Research Chair on Climate Change Mitigation and Tropical Forests: Science for Empowerment. Her research includes biodiversity and ecosystem functioning; livelihoods, empowerment, and biodiversity; REDD+: carbon and co-benefits; and science to inform climate change policy.
Submitted on behalf of 60+ Sustainable Canada Dialogues Colleagues.
The Paris Agreement was ratified globally in November. This is unprecedented amongst international agreements for how quickly it has come into force. The Agreement allows each country to decide how it will tackle climate change, and requires as of 2020, regular reporting on progress. Countries of the world have officially embarked in a global race to implement ambitious climate policies that contribute to reducing green-house gas emissions at the planetary-scale.
This process is not unlike the Olympics games where countries get together to compare their strengths and performance. If Canada wants to be a medalist in 2020, domestic climate policies must rapidly be adopted to accelerate the low carbon transition. In this context, Sustainable Canada Dialogues (SCD) – a network of 60+ scholars from across Canada – produced Rating Canada’s Climate Policy; a progress report on Canada’s climate actions over the past year. We analysed climate decisions made in Ottawa in 2016 in relationship to the 10 policy orientations that we proposed previously in our position paper entitled Acting on Climate Change: Solutions from Canadian Scholars.
2016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #48
Posted on 26 November 2016 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Nov 20, 2016
- Fighting climate change with inner change: a case for heightened spiritual awareness by Tibi Puiu, ZME Scince, Nov 16, 2016
- Two Scientists' Upbeat Views on Marrakech by Bud Ward, Yale Climate Connections, Nov 17, 2016
- On climate change policy, neither time nor Trump are on Turnbull's side by Lenore Taylor, Guardian, Nov 18, 2016
- America’s TV meteorologists: Symptoms of climate change are rampant, undeniable, Opinion by Paul Douglas, Capital Weather Gang, Washington Post, Nov 18, 2016
- Climate Change in Trump’s Age of Ignorance, Opinion by Robert Proctor, Sunday Review, New York Times, Oct 19, 2016
- Climate change is real: Just ask the Pentagon by W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times, Nov 11, 2016
- Trump’s dilemma: to please his friends by trashing the Paris climate deal, or not?, Opinion by Bill McKibben, Guardian, Nov 18, 2016
- Video: UNEP chief scientist on 1.5C climate goal and Donald Trump by Leo Hickman, Carbon Brief, Nov 17, 2016
Trump or NASA – who's really politicising climate science?
Posted on 25 November 2016 by John Cook
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Climate research conducted at NASA had been “heavily politicised”, said Robert Walker, a senior adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump.
This has led him to recommend stripping funding for climate research at NASA.
Walker’s claim comes with a great deal of irony. Over the past few decades, climate science has indeed become heavily politicised. But it is ideological partisans cut from the same cloth as Walker who engineered such a polarised situation.
Believe it or not, climate change used to be a bipartisan issue. In 1988, Republican George H.W. Bush pledged to “fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect”.
Since those idealistic days when conservatives and liberals marched hand-in-hand towards a safer climate future, the level of public discourse has deteriorated.
Surveys of the US public over the past few decades show Democrats and Republicans growing further apart in their attitudes and beliefs about climate change.
For example, when asked whether most scientists agree on global warming, perceived consensus among Democrats has steadily increased over the last two decades. In contrast, perceived consensus among Republicans has been in stasis at around 50%.
Polarisation of perceived consensus among Republicans and Democrats. Dunlap et al. (2016)
Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Episode 5
Posted on 24 November 2016 by Guest Author
Global Weirding is produced by KTTZ Texas Tech Public Media and distributed by PBS Digital Studios. New episodes every other Wednesday at 10 am central. Brought to you in part by: Bob and Linda Herscher, Freese and Nichols, Inc, and the Texas Tech Climate Science Center.
