2) The blog reports of the Schulte piece misrepresent the research question that we originally posed. It was, "How many papers published in referred journals disagree with the statement, "...most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations"? This statement came from the IPCC (2001) and was reiterated explicitly by the 2001 NAS report, so we wanted to know how many papers diverged from that consensus position. The answer was none. The Schulte claim does not refutes that. [More]
[My emphasis]

Labels: environment, global warming

This fits with my intuition: We face such a huge looming problem with fossil fuels exhaustion that we should be thinking about moving away from fossil fuels due to rising costs and lowered production rather than because we might melt the polar ice caps. We need to embrace solar, nuclear, and wind because we just do not have as much fossil fuels left as the climate doomsters think we do.

If the Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, and Peak Coal folks are correct then why do the IPCC types spend so much time talking about climate catastrophe? My guess: Human-caused climate disaster makes for a far more dramatic moral story of human sin. Talk of using up all the coal and oil doesn't satisfy the need to see human action in such sinful terms. If we run out of oil then we suffer from the exhaustion of the oil but nature doesn't suffer as much as we do. We sin, but against ourselves. By contrast, if we heat up the planet the argument can be made for humans as massive sinners against nature. [More]

Labels: energy, global warming

Global-warming activists would like this. But so would skeptics, because they believe the models are exaggerating the warming forecasts. After all, the averaged UAH/ RSS tropical troposphere series went up only about 0.08C over the past decade, and has been going down since 2002. Some solar scientists even expect pronounced cooling to begin in a decade. If they are right, the T3 tax will fall below zero within two decades, turning into a subsidy for carbon emissions.

At this point the global-warming alarmists would leap up to slam the proposal. But not so fast, Mr. Gore: The tax would only become a carbon subsidy if all the climate models are wrong, if greenhouse gases are not warming the atmosphere, and if the sun actually controls the climate. Alarmists sneeringly denounce such claims as "denialism," so they can hardly reject the policy on the belief that they are true.

Under the T3 tax, the regulator gets to call everyone's bluff at once, without gambling in advance on who is right. If the tax goes up, it ought to have. If it doesn't go up, it shouldn't have. Either way we get a sensible outcome. [More of a really interesting proposal]

Regardless, I appreciate suggestions for solutions in addition to proof of one position or other.

Labels: global warming, policy

The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season should have above-average activity, with three major hurricanes and a good chance at least one of them will make landfall, a top hurricane researcher said Friday. [More]

Not bad at all. In general, the predictions fall within a storm or two of the observed totals. Last season, though, the forecasters had a bad year. 2004's six intense hurricanes doubled most predictions. The seasonal total of nine hurricanes was also significantly higher than expected. Forecasters blamed the poor predictions on a "year [that] did not behave like any other year we have studied." [More]

The problem is not Gray's age -- we all revered Henry Stommel who did some of his finest work in his seventies. The problem is Gray's failure to adapt to a modern era of meteorology, which demands hypotheses soundly grounded in quantitative and consistent physical formulations, not seat-of-the-pants flying. The WSJ also made much of the withdrawal of an invitation for Gray to join a debate on hurricane trends at an Atlanta tropical meteorology conference. We can't speak for the organizers, but we find it easy to believe that their decision was guided more by the invalidity of Gray's scientific reasoning than by any political or personal considerations. [More]

Labels: global warming, weather

Policymakers and businesses are now trying to figure out the best way to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, which is produced by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. Why impose limits? Because accumulating scientific evidence indicates that the increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is causing average temperatures to rise globally. This increase could trigger significant disruption of the world’s climate by the end of this century. Although there remain serious uncertainties about the magnitude of the human role in climate change, there is a growing consensus that emissions need to be reduced. [If you only read one link - read this one]

Economic growth. Public finance experts have long preached that consumption taxes are better than income taxes for long-run economic growth, because income taxes discourage saving and investment. Gas is a component of consumption. An increased reliance on gas taxes over income taxes would make the tax code more favorable to growth. It would also encourage firms to devote more R&D spending to the search for gasoline substitutes. [More]

Tillage will decompose the residue faster by mixing oxygen into the soil system, but the carbon and nitrogen release from the residue will be rapid, far before the crop needs the nutrients. A legume cover crop could reduce some of this nitrogen penalty by providing some biological diversity. [More]

Labels: global warming, policy, pollution

1. The flip-floppers seem to be all flipping one way. (OK, Mitt Romney is an exception, but is there any issue he is not steering hard right on?) If anthropogenic climate change was still in a hazy cloud of uncertainty, shouldn't scientists be changing their positions in both directions? Farmers have another issue as well: biotech acceptance. How can we deride those who overlook the consensus of science saying biotech plants are safe when we refuse to acknowledge the consensus of science on global warming?

   In any case, the overwhelming scientific consensus is that current varieties of genetically enhanced crops are safe to eat and don't pose unusual risks to the natural environment. But that isn't stopping Greenpeace from waging a global "Say no to genetic engineering" campaign or the Friends of the Earth from demanding a GM Freeze. Perhaps the idea of scientific consensus is not all that it's cracked up to be. After all, scientific consensus does not mean "certain truth." Whatever the current consensus of any scientific issue is can change in the light of new research. Nevertheless, environmentalist ideologues accuse those who question the climate change consensus of bad faith and worse. But aren't they exhibiting a similar bad faith when they reject the broad scientific consensus on genetically modified crops? [More]
   

2. The politics of resistance to human-causality now overshadows the science. Thank you very much, Al Gore. Many on the right are cut off from objective thought because it could lead to idealogical apostacy.

   As I see it, the opponents of action on climate change fall into two camps. In one camp are the ideologues. These are people with a knee-jerk negative reaction to any kind of environmental regulation—or, for that matter, any kind of government regulation. They are also people who never met an international treaty or institution that they felt was worthy of U.S. support – apart, perhaps, from the International House of Pancakes. Getting this group to support U.S. action on climate change and/or U.S. participation in any kind of national or global response to this issue is, in short, a lost cause. [More]

   Since global warming has become a political issue, we decide by politics - although to be fair, the performance by pseudo-conservatives in power in other arenas (economics, foreign policy, etc.) is making this less of an issue.
3. Real businesses betting real money. Seriously wealthy board members on large corporations are betting fortunes that the climate problem is real. Some want to make money fixing it, some want to avoid losing money because of it, and some simply think it it the right way to act. Climate change is on the agenda.
   
4. The skeptics are becoming shriller and stranger. The tenor of the debate has become paranoid in the opposition. Conspiracy and even weirder threads fill the void left by decreasing rebuttal evidence.
   

Labels: environment, global warming, politics

1. Is everything now routinely leaked? Drudge posted the SOTU an hour before the President delivered it. The Iraq Study Group Report was old news when it arrived. And one broker friend thinks even crop reports are being leaked. How else to explain a limit-up close the day before the report? Why bother with a ritualistic announcement if the entire staff has been chatting with the press about it for days?
   
2. The early leak responses have been critical in that the report purportedly low-balls the effects, especially sea-level rise.

The early versions of the report predict that by 2100 the sea level will rise anywhere between 5 and 23 inches. That's far lower than the 20 to 55 inches forecast by 2100 in a study published in the peer-review journal Science this month. Other climate experts, including NASA's James Hansen, predict sea level rise that can be measured by feet more than inches.

The report is also expected to include some kind of proviso that says things could be much worse if ice sheets continue to melt.

The prediction being considered this week by the IPCC is "obviously not the full story because ice sheet decay is something we cannot model right now, but we know it's happening," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate panel lead author from Germany who made the larger prediction of up to 55 inches of sea level rise. "A document like that tends to underestimate the risk," he said.

Greenland's massive ice sheet could begin to melt this century and may disappear completely within the next thousand years if global warming continues at its present rate. According to a new climate change study, the melting of Greenland's ice sheet would raise the oceans by seven meters (23 feet), threatening to submerge cities located at sea level, from London to Los Angeles. [More]

Labels: global warming

Labels: global warming

Labels: global warming, predictions

Labels: fun, global warming

THE United Nations conference on climate change, which closed on Friday in Nairobi, was distinguished mainly by its ineffectualness. Like many such events it had proclaimed a grand ambition: to design a more effective régime to replace the Kyoto protocol after 2012. But for all the posturing in the plenary sessions, there was no sign of urgency or radicalism in the corridors. [More]

Labels: global warming, politics

The Dutch climatologist, awarded a 1995 Nobel in chemistry for his work uncovering the threat to Earth's atmospheric ozone layer, suggested that balloons bearing heavy guns be used to carry sulfates high aloft and fire them into the stratosphere.

While carbon dioxide keeps heat from escaping Earth, substances such as sulfur dioxide, a common air pollutant, reflect solar radiation, helping cool the planet. [More]

Labels: global warming