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Berényi Péter at 01:13 AM on 10 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
#52 Riccardo at 00:40 AM on 10 April, 2010 for sure, stressing them more won't be of any help next time You miss the point. These creatures are designed to survive El Nino events. When the problem is not too much dissolved CO2 in water, but lack of nutrients, including carbon dioxide. Solubility of CO2 drops with increasing temperature (due to El Nino). On the other hand, they are quite happy with upwelling oversaturated La Nina water, regardless of extremely low pH. -
Berényi Péter at 01:00 AM on 10 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
#19 doug_bostrom at 07:56 AM on 8 April, 2010 where we may read about naturally occurring pools of liquid C02 in the deep ocean? Here: Submarine venting of liquid carbon dioxide on a Mariana Arc volcano Lupton & al. G3 Volume 7, Number 8 10 August 2006 Q08007, doi:10.1029/2005GC001152 ISSN: 1525-2027 -
Riccardo at 00:40 AM on 10 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
Berényi Péter, it looks a bit weird to claim that the Galapos coral are "well and alive". Alive they are, not so well though. The appearance of new species and the discovering of a specie thought to be extinct say that they are recovering from a deep crisis. They suffered a 97% loss in 1982-83 and a further 99% losses in 1997-98; luckly they're managing to recover. So far so good. But for sure, stressing them more won't be of any help next time. -
nautilus_mr at 00:34 AM on 10 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
Wow, I've just spent a couple of hours reading some of the response volumes. These are absolute GOLD. Lucid, balanced, thorough. Volume 1 spells out clearly that the EPA is obliged to carefully consider every available source -so there is no valid charge that they have relied solely on the IPCC and ignored the sceptics. These volumes look like they are among the most comprehensive resources on climate change available. Downloading every volume is one of my best uses of bandwidth for a while! -
JMurphy at 00:20 AM on 10 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
To those wondering about historic pH levels, the WIKIPEDIA link provided by Jimbo leads to the following : The Royal Society Based upon current measurements of ocean pH, analysis of CO2 concentration in ice cores, our understanding of the rate of CO2 absorption and retention in the surface oceans, and knowledge of the CaCO3 buffer (Section 2.2.2), it is possible to calculate that the pH of the surface oceans was 0.1 units higher in pre-industrial times (Caldeira & Wickett 2003; Key et al 2004). Link here Which leads to : Caldeira & Wickett and Key et al More : Orr et al Orr et al Supplemental -
silence at 23:59 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
FWIW, Rabett Run has been posting a series of the better responses from the EPA response to comments: Part 6: how we know warming isn't a result of increased solar output part 5: The Roger Pielke Jr. flood-related damage meme part 4: why looking at global temperature makes sense Part 3: No, it isn't some solar magnetic or solar wind effects part 2: global warming is not a result of humidity changes Part 1: CO2 concentrations really have risen -
nautilus_mr at 23:40 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
Incidentally, I sent the EPA an email asking if there was a time line for responding to the petitions. When I get a reply, I'll let you know (goodness knows how many lunatic emails they have to sift through, so it may take a while). -
Berényi Péter at 23:34 PM on 9 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
Well guys, I have looked into the acidification issue a bit and found the usual pattern: not even the opposite is true. Variability of Surface Layer CO2 Parameters in the Western and Central Equatorial Pacific Masao Ishii & al. Global Environmental Change in the Ocean and on Land, Eds., M. Shiyomi et al., pp. 59~V94. © by TERRAPUB, 2004. 1. Eastern equatorial Pacific is particularly interesting 2. It is one of the regions with the lowest alkalinity in oceans (with pH sometimes as low as 7.9) 3. It is a net source of CO2 to the atmosphere (up to 1012 kg C year-1) 4. Dissolved CO2 in surface waters is highly variable, depending on ENSO phase 5. It is highest during La Nina events, lowest in strong El Nino. On the other hand we know El Nino sometimes has a really devastating effect on coastal ecosystems. La Nina is just the opposite.
Galapagos is in the middle of this region, so marine life there has to tolerate the great swings of ENSO.
Still, it thrives in La Nina with its high CO2 concentrations and acidic waters from the deep and suffers when carbon dioxide is low in waters coming from the West Pacific warm pool.
As a reality check, let us see a map of average absolute pH values of sea water (as opposed to anomalies):
Thank to God, Galapagos coral reefs are still well and alive.
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nautilus_mr at 23:33 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
re #7 Jacob, I get what you are saying and thankyou for the references - of those you mention, I have only read Sornette's "Why Stock Markets Crash" - a magnificent book. It seems to me the critical issue is that the inherent properties of the systems to be modelled, the object of study, place fundamental constraints on what models can achieve. I suspect we agree that one cannot use the particular challenges of economic models in order to attack the possibility of reliable climate modelling. - it makes no sense, refusing to eat apples because one has an allergy to oranges! -
dhogaza at 22:43 PM on 9 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
RSVP:As my (non hybrid) petrol burning vehicle was idling at a red light, I was wondering why the concept of "idle" continues to exist, and why these motors cant simply stop completely as long as the vehicle is at a halt. I'm sure this is technically possible
Hybrids already do this, and automakers apparently are going to mainstream this. Another trick (in the sense in which engineers and scientists (including Phil Jones) use the word) that's already been deployed is to shut down some of the cylinders while the car is cruising at steady speed on relatively flat terrain. -
Alexandre at 22:24 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
nautilus_mr #1 says: the exception being the Chamber of Commerce, which appears to be making an argument for industry self-regulation against EPA intervention Self regulation would be great. But sadly, industry manoeuvers seem to bend towards denialism. -
John Cross at 22:23 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
nautilus_mr #1: Good call. I had not gotten around to looking at the petitions yet; am still working my way through the comments. There is a comment by Steve Mcintyre who bases his argument mostly on the assumption that the IPCC document did not pass peer-review (or was inadequately peer-reviewed) and therefor did not meet the EPAs own guidelines and should not be used as a reference. I like John's title and noticed that there was a similarity between the EPA's response and Skeptical Science. However I would call it Skpetical Science on on aspirin. Does the EPA response have its own iPhone App? I think not! John (Cross) -
chris at 22:19 PM on 9 April 2010Is the science settled?
fydijkstra at 18:44 PM on 8 April, 2010 Your two examples illustrate the problem with ignoring the science, and then pretending therefore that we don't know what we do know! Craig Loehle hasn't shown what you suggest at all. He showed that if one selects a small sample of poorly appropriate records, and then misunderstands the convention for scaling these to a common date, that one can get into a mess regarding analysis of paleotemperature. You might have noticed that Loehle issued a correction to his first paper, a major blunder of which was misunderstanding that "BP" in paleoanalysis doesn't mean P = present (since the "present" is remorslessely advancing year on year), but refers to 1950 by convention. So even within Loehle's rather deficient analysis, he showed that the MWP might have been around as warm as the mid 20th century in the Northern Hemisphere. His analysis completely misses out the large warming since the mid-20th century. . Since that time we've had an anomalous warming in the NH of around 0.7 oC under conditions that there has been no solar contribution, and the volcanic activity has been quite significant. The evidence (even Loehle's) indicates that were now very likely a good bit warmer than the MWP. But why peruse non-science magazines for your information?; you're bound to misunderstand the nature of scientific knowledge if you don't address the science. If you are interested in paleoproxyanalysis of temperature without recourse to tree ring studies, it makes much more sense to look at the properly peer-reviewed science. This supports the conclusion that if one analyses paleoproxydata, eliminating tree-ring data sets, that the late 20th century and contemporary warming is anomalous in the context of the last millennium and more. And why go to some stuff that someone posted on the web to address the question of warming since the LIA and ocean circulation effects when this can be addressed by looking at the properly peer-reviewed science. This shows that the contribution of “natural oscillations” to the warming of the last 30 years was likely negligible. One can create the impression of uncertainty by basing one’s information on stuff from dodgy sources that are designed to confuse the issue (and that we know are incorrect). But if we’re really interested in these issues one really should address the science. -
Jacob Bock Axelsen at 20:56 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
nautilus_mr As people like Mandelbrot pointed out, the position of a market or a key variable in an economy today is greatly influenced by the perceptions and beliefs of the participants within the system -all highly dependent on recent activity within the system. While this is true, it does not limit successfull modeling efforts of economic systems or human behavior in general. For example, I can point you to the publications of Eugene Stanley, Didier Sornette, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and Dirk Helbing, whom are all physicists. As Krugman says:"economists favour beauty over truth" - and I think this is the central problem. -
johnd at 20:31 PM on 9 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
Berényi Péter @44 and VoxRat @ 46. Sometimes we are fooled into assuming a high degree of accuracy by a high degree of resolution of the measurement in question. Cheap electronic measuring devices are an example. Just because they display units to a resolution of 0.001 unit doesn't necessarily guarantee that they are any more accurate than 1.000 unit. I think many historic reconstructions may not be able to guarantee even that same degree of accuracy. At least with cheap electronic goods there is a standard of known accuracy that they can be calibrated against. With historic reconstructions they are subject to the accuracy of any number of assumptions. -
James Wight at 20:27 PM on 9 April 2010It's not us
It seems very strange that the big umbrella arguments (“It’s not happening”, “It’s not us”, etc) are so far down the list. Why don’t all the instances of each sub-argument count towards the tally of its parent?Response: Initially when I submitted skeptic articles, I did include the umbrella arguments but I stopped doing it fairly early on - was just a bit tedious and I decided to focus on the specific argument being made. If anything, over time, I've even been dividing sub-arguments into sub-sub-arguments and getting narrower with the focus.
I think I prefer this way - otherwise "It's not happening" and "It's not us" will be #1 and #2 which is a bit too general for my liking. -
RSVP at 20:22 PM on 9 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
Ned "I'm not sure what the policy relevance of this is, however. Does the fact that AGW won't be worse than a comet slamming into Yucatan mean that we shouldn't bother trying to prevent or reduce the impact of AGW? " As my (non hybrid) petrol burning vehicle was idling at a red light, I was wondering why the concept of "idle" continues to exist, and why these motors cant simply stop completely as long as the vehicle is at a halt. I'm sure this is technically possible. My next thought, of course, was how much more energy it would take for such large scale retooling, and whether on the whole, this would have any benefit to the environment. While this may not be the greatest example, it illustrates the kind of problem I believe we are running into. I am not questioning whether we should bother, rather that one must be very careful in deciding what to actually do, given that almost anything you do do is likely to have a hitch. -
embb at 20:20 PM on 9 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Jacob:"I was mostly thinking of societies where public opinion and public policy making is correlated." well, this qualifies as a "pious wish" for me. The game participants are states, so any factor that will weaken the position of one participant will simply provide an advantage for the other - so in effect the social peer pressure can do a LOT of harm, even to the climate. -
nautilus_mr at 20:08 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
re: #5 That is a good point. One of the reasons many attempts to model economies and markets fall short is because they employ models in which all the variables are considered independent. As people like Mandelbrot pointed out, the position of a market or a key variable in an economy today is greatly influenced by the perceptions and beliefs of the participants within the system -all highly dependent on recent activity within the system. This means economic models are far less viable than models of physical systems, in which the characteristics and behaviour of the elements in the system do not radically change without notice. There are naturally degrees of certainty about how chemicals interact within a natural system, but there is no sense in which a CO2 molecule will unexpectedly change its behaviour because it suddenly changes its confidence about the behaviour of other molecules. I won't go further, because I realise it may be OT, but just thought it was an interesting point.. -
batsvensson at 19:38 PM on 9 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
"Examination of the mass extinction [...] are consistent with the physiological effects of elevated CO2 concentrations (along with the effects of global warming)." What exactly is your claim? -
James Wight at 18:57 PM on 9 April 2010CO2 measurements are suspect
There's a mistake on this page. The video shown in the “Further viewing box” is identical to the first of the two above. Is this box supposed to contain a third video or is it just left over from a previous version of this page?Response: Left over from a previous version. I've replaced the 3rd video with a different one - thanks for pointing it out. -
Jacob Bock Axelsen at 18:36 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
Another quick initial peek into the petition of the Chamber of Commerce p.28, indicates a significant cost for small businesses by referring to a study of the Heritage Foundation. In this study it is mentioned that 3 million jobs would be lost by 2029 as direct consequence by referring (ref. 10) to another prior study from the Heritage Foundation as response to the advanced notice of the EPA decision. This latter study used a macroeconomic model to make the projection, where they assume the economy grows without major disruptions including "large oil price shocks, untoward swings in macroeconomic policy, or excessively rapid increases in demand". These assumptions are naturally extremely unrealistic. Furthermore, it just so happens that Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner in macroeconomics, last year at the London School of Economics stated that the last 30 years of macroeconomical models are at least useless. For example, during the first semester the economics student is taught that markets are in equilibrium by supply meeting demand. This notion was disproven by Benoit Mandelbrot already back in 1963. Now, if climate models that can explain the past, the present and the future (with known shortcomings) are under intense scrutiny, why would anyone trust wrong macroeconomic simulations based on "no disruptions"? Tit-for-tat. -
Uncle Pete at 18:27 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
Thanks for this post John, I was indeed wondering at the time of publishing in dec 09 , if this would be a "gamechanger" Ie , is someone , an organisation or individual ,going to sue a coalburning powerstation or some such, for threatening the health and wellbeing of future generations. It certainly would be an educational court case. Or is a response from a federal agency to a supreme court ruling essentially useless as a basis for prosecution? -
nautilus_mr at 18:26 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
Incidentally, I have just sent the EPA an email asking if there was a projected timeline for responses to the petitions. I will let you all know what reply I get. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:30 PM on 9 April 2010A database of peer-reviewed papers on climate change
Poptech, impact factor is undoubtedly subjective but it's the common currency for evaluating journals. It's no use directing me to a collection of opinions about it, because I don't make the rules or set the conventions, others do. If E&E has a low impact factor and you believe that to be unfair you'll need to take it up with somebody else. -
Albatross at 15:07 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science Housekeeping: Preview, translations and icons
Thanks very much for this John. Yes, I am guilty as charged ;) Hopefully the preview function will greatly reduce your workload. -
yocta at 14:41 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
RE#1 nautilus_mr I agree. Some of the petitions are embarrassing. Looking at the Competitive Enterprise Institute's petition they even include Watts' "study" as part of their argument against the EPA regulating greenhouse gases. Just yesterday the vice president of strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute did an opinion piece at the Washington Post attacking no not the science but that the EPA is only wanting to regulate greenhouse gases for power and money. Maybe he should have stuck to what was written in the petition...but I doubt it would have had the same emotional response as the stories comments show. I just hope these people aren't the voting type. There are some big name climate skeptics in these petitions so it may be worth it if one had more time, to categorize the main arguments that the petitions have in common as it could very much gleam the overall strategies of the agencies that produce them. I may have a go on the weekend if I get time. -
Doug Mackie at 13:35 PM on 9 April 2010A residential lifetime
Clarification re #84 The only way for this idea to work is to convert low carbon density land to high carbon density land. Hence we are talking about taking a large area of desert and turning it into a forest. Every year. And never cutting it down. Box 3.2 of TAR explains the “maximum impacts of reforestation and deforestation on atmospheric CO2” using a simple spherical cow calculation: Emissions to date ~500 PgC and increasing. Total reforestation sucks up ~200 PgC maximum. (re actual calculation in #84: The exact values for carbon content of large areas is difficult to nail down and Table 3.2 of TAR gives somewhat higher carbon densities but I agree that the point is that forestation would need to increase each year - just to keep pace). -
nautilus_mr at 13:02 PM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
On a preliminary skim of the "Petitions for Reconsideration", it is worth noting that all but one petition bases its argument on the so-called "Climategate scandal" (the exception being the Chamber of Commerce, which appears to be making an argument for industry self-regulation against EPA intervention). A quick perusal again suggests the petitioners' arguments are the same exaggerations and distortions that may sway Fox News viewers, but the EPA will need to make a considered and logically sound response. When that happens, I suspect it will be a very handy document for us all to read. -
jmymac1958 at 12:33 PM on 9 April 2010Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate
I read the Pacala 2004 paper. I guess my post was too flippant, so I'll be nice. I need to state a few things first: I believe the scientists have proven the Earth is getting warmer. I believe that the additional CO2 from human activity has greatly accelerated the natural cycle of CO2 levels in the atmosphere. I know the oil is going to run out. I know we must develop new energy sources to replace the oil. Now as to the Pacala 2004 paper: The statement that technology available today could be used to make the 15 "wedges" called for (in the paper)to keep from doubling the CO2 concentration is most likely true. But, just because the technology is available, doesn't mean the wedges will ever be implemented. Some of the wedges seem a little unobtainable to me: Using 1/6th of the earth's farmland to produce crops for biofuel, while at the same time reducing deforestation to zero, and planting more trees. Grow more on less land? (Don't yell at me about the rain forest, I'm just questioning the ability to feed everybody, make ethanol and use less land.) The green parts of the paper (windmills, solar, geothermal, etc.) won't happen unless some company could prodcue and sell the items at a profit. The reason these technologies have not taken off is they don't fill that requirement. Some of the suggestions will never be implemented because people just won't do it. For example: you'll never make everybody on the planet drive only 1/2 as much as they do today. This being said, my main point is that we probably can't do the things suggested in the paper, so we need to concentrate on what to do because the earth is warming up. I don't beleive we can stop it so let's not waste time on the unobtainable, and concentrate on what to do once it happens. -
andrew k2249 at 12:00 PM on 9 April 2010A brief history of our iPhone app
My android has everything I need EXCEPT the skeptical science app. Please port it to android soon! Thank you. -
Tom Dayton at 11:18 AM on 9 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
nhthinker, before you post a comment, you should evaluate whether it is on topic for that thread. You should look through the list of Skeptic Arguments to find the most appropriate one. On the left side of every page there is a big thermometer. At the bottom of the thermometer there is a link "View All Arguments...." Click it to see the full list of links. -
Tom Dayton at 11:15 AM on 9 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
nhthinker, you did write something that does have appropriate threads on this site: "But it certainly does not seem that it is coming from scientific curiosity when you make a choice not to consider the question of whether there is any amount of human induced CO2 that could be considered valuable to the environment as a scientifically valid question." Your comments in that regard would be on topic in either of these threads: Global warming is good, which lists side by side the claims of positives and negatives of global warming or CO2 is not a pollutant But further comments on this thread you are reading now, probably will be deleted if they are off topic. -
Ned at 10:50 AM on 9 April 2010A database of peer-reviewed papers on climate change
Well, Poptech, maybe it's just me, but I don't see any obvious non-subjective way to assess the quality of a journal. A successful journal is one that publishes papers that are cited frequently, open avenues for new productive research, and generally raise the reputation of the journal among scientists working in its field. When that happens, people will submit more papers to the journal because publication in its pages is now considered a mark of distinction. The editors can then be more choosy and pick only the best papers, which further raises the journal's reputation ... that's what every journal editor wants to happen. This spiral can also go in the opposite direction. When a journal publishes a paper that can't be replicated, or that has clearly demonstrable analytical flaws, that's a bad sign. Likewise, if its papers don't seem to be stimulating new ideas or opening up new areas of research, it won't be cited as often and people will choose to submit their good papers elsewhere. As I said with E&E, there have been a series of very poor papers that seem to indicate a problem with the peer review process there -- either it doesn't exist at all, or it's not very effective, or somehow papers are getting routed around the review process, or something. So people tend not to take E&E very seriously. Yes, this is all subjective, but the end result is real. Active scientists don't have much time in their lives, especially those working in academia (as my friend says, "It's a great job, having all this flexibility ... I can work any 80 hours a week that I choose!") So they make judgments about what to spend their time on and reading E&E tends not to make that cut. Anyway, I'd agree that what I'm talking about is very subjective. If you have suggestions for a more objective way to assess the quality of a journal, one that doesn't involve the opinions of the scientists working in its field, I'd be interested in discussing that. -
scaddenp at 10:47 AM on 9 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Just to further clarify that. I would accept as reasonably safe, CO2 increases such that rate of temperature change was no faster than that due to Milankovich solar forcings. ie a lot lower than what we doing now. -
scaddenp at 10:41 AM on 9 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
The fossil record would indicate that abrupt change is very bad, not that it doesnt happen. Asteroids especially come to mind. Single volcanoes certainly make short term changes to temperature but the aerosols are short lived. There is evidence that climate change due to mass volcanism is also highly undesirable. (from the point of view of species that went extinct). The natural ice age cycle has rates that are a/ very slow compared to current change b/ entirely predictable. While I don't know what you regard as "good analysis" of CO2 addition rate, you should be making some risk assessments. The various economic analyses of cost have considered sea level rise of 1m by 2100. The effects of water-cycle disruption are harder to assess but that is what IPCC WG2 is all about. Have you read it? Does that sound "safe" to you? Whether the temp. now are less than previous interglacial periods is irrelevant- in the past those temperatures were reached with warming rates much lower than now. Rate is far more important than absolute level because adaptation takes time. -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:18 AM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science Housekeeping: Preview, translations and icons
That's great you've got someone translating Chinese. My wife is Chinese and sometimes I have a hard time explaining complex climate issues to her. Now I can just show her the Skeptical Science article! -
nhthinker at 10:06 AM on 9 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
scaddenp- Thanks very much for your thoughtful assessment. As to abrupt changes changes- sometimes they occur naturally- Volcanoes and asteroids come to mind. Thus having the CO2 in the atmosphere prior to the occurrence of the abrupt cooling event may be necessary to speed the rewarming. How fast can humans safely add CO2 to the atmosphere? I'm not sure there is good analysis on this. The current modern temperatures are still significantly less than the highs of the previous interglacial periods. -
Doug Bostrom at 09:59 AM on 9 April 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
BTW, CryoSat uses radar sensing as opposed to lasers so it's not really a direct substitute for ICESat, whose replacement is laconically scheduled for 2014. However CryoSat will be able to provide extent measurements which can combined w/NASA'a stopgap coverage to continue gathering data. Another splicing controversy smorgasbord for rejectionistas, doubtless, but unfortunately priorities in the U.S. leading up to ICESat's final failure precluded timely launch of a substitute. -
scaddenp at 09:50 AM on 9 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
nhthinker - the issues associated with human-induced climate are about RATE of change. Who knows what an "optimal level" of CO2 is? What we do know is that changing the climate too fast is highly undesirable. Suppose you decided that 3 degrees would be better earth, would avoid an ice age etc. What you then have to decide is how fast is it safe to make that change over. The environment is stressed by change from ice age to interglacial but not too bad. If you accept rate as safe, then we need to by changing the temperature at around 1/10 of rate we are doing so at the moment. Also, I think such engineering is premature. Your efforts would reduced by natural sequestration by the time you needed it. A safer strategy would be as Ned said. Hold your carbon reserves for a few thousand years (or whatever the optimal point is) and then burn them - SLOWLY. -
Doug Bostrom at 09:47 AM on 9 April 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
ESA CryoSat 2 successfully launched, replacing spacecraft lost in the 2006 launch attempt and neatly slipping into place to take over for ICESat, now (RIP) to be retired by NASA after a final laser failure late last year. Excellent article w/many interesting details here at SpaceFlightNow. ESA mission homepage here Interesting note: this launch was from a old missile silo, the subterranean type. Talk about swords to plowshares, eh? -
CoalGeologist at 09:38 AM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science Housekeeping: Preview, translations and icons
There is a nice write-up on SkepticalScience.com appearing in the most recent (8-April-10) issue of the Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media The article asks, "Are you listening, Washington, D.C.? – try this trick." (referring to the nifty SkepticalScience iPhone app, not to "hiding the decline"!) -
Doug Bostrom at 09:00 AM on 9 April 2010A database of peer-reviewed papers on climate change
There's an article on journal impact here at Wikipedia for those interested in accepted or at least less controversial ways of assessing such things. -
Riccardo at 08:28 AM on 9 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
nhthinker, actually you should be satisfied by the interest of climatologists on "the impact of their scientific inquiry", at least for what concern next century. Some of them also addressed the not-so-pressing problem of next ice age tens of thousands years ahead. And, finally, the impact of ongoing climate change has been addressed regionally, some winners and some loosers in the short term, only loosers in the BAU scenario in the long term. All of these things has been put on the table for the wider audience to be able to decide what to do. I really don't get about what you're complaining. -
VoxRat at 08:00 AM on 9 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
Berényi Péter #44: "BTW, I wonder how they figured out how much average ocean pH was 250 years ago with such accuracy. " I was wondering that, too. It's not easy to figure out from the link (Wikipedia). -
nhthinker at 07:51 AM on 9 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Most scientists care about what the impact of their scientific inquiry is. So we get pleadings about saving the planet for a scientist's 10-year old daughter and let the future generations fend for themselves. But I guess you don't consider that a value judgment as long as its coming from a scientist "on your side". If you want to leave the impression that you think there is no amount of human caused CO2 that would be good, then you have successfully left that impression without actually saying it. But it certainly does not seem that it is coming from scientific curiosity when you make a choice not to consider the question of whether there is any amount of human induced CO2 that could be considered valuable to the environment as a scientifically valid question. One would expect that you as a scientist studying CO2 should be at least be glancingly interested in the answer to such a question. -
Berényi Péter at 07:22 AM on 9 April 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
#83 doug_bostrom at 02:20 AM on 9 April, 2010 you should take a look at David Roper's site Done. Same silly curve fitting I was trying to make fun of. -
Berényi Péter at 06:42 AM on 9 April 2010A residential lifetime
#84 Philippe Chantreau at 16:01 PM on 7 April, 2010 How much vegetation is necessary to store 1 year's worth of emissions? How much land does that require? The carbon stored in plant biomass is about 8 kg/m2 both in grasslands and forests. The carbon released to the atmosphere is some 8 × 1012 kg annually. Therefore you would need 1012 m2 which translates to 387000 sq miles (larger than Texas). -
Jim Powell at 06:37 AM on 9 April 2010Skeptical Science Housekeeping: Preview, translations and icons
John, Thanks for helping me; next time I may not need it thanks to the Preview button. Jimbo. -
Riccardo at 06:27 AM on 9 April 2010Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
Berényi Péter, diurnal and annual temperatures may vary a couple of tens of degree Celcius. Does it mean that the biosphere is already adapted to similar changes in average temperature? The same question can be asked for almost any physical/chemical variable. You reasoning is a huge oversimplification.
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