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nigelj at 06:56 AM on 24 December 2016Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools
PaulD @3, I agree that climate scepticism is primarily a war by vested interests to divide and confuse, but the email hacks discussed do seem to relate to Russia, and almost certainly have a range of motives. I was just sticking to the content of the article.
Dugan is another figure on the "alternate right" and a very concerning sort of person. Scientists just doing their jobs with integrity are up against people like Dugan, and political and business interests who sometimes want to win at all costs, and who recognise no sense of fair play. Its a most uneven playing field. -
One Planet Only Forever at 06:09 AM on 24 December 2016Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools
nigelj@1,
Populist does not really mean what you are using the term for. The Populists were a political movement that included socialist objectives like graduated taxation and state ownership of railways for the public good (to improve the circumstances of the less fortunate at the expense of the more fortunate).
Even using a term like popularist may not be helpful since my 1988 Canadian Edition of Webster's Dictionary indicates that is a person who seeks wide public support (and my older Oxford Dictionary does not even include that term). The likes of Putin and Trump do not seek wide support, they seek just enough support at the right time in the right place. And the thrive on misunderstanding that leads peoples thoughts awary from understanding and supporting what is required to advance humanity to a lasting better future for all (since the actions required for that advancement are clearly contrary to many of their selfish interests).
My description of Putin attempting to not use terms that could be twisted is: 'A greedy selfish person who deliberately and willingly appeals for popular support by promoting selfishness, intolerance and many other special interest groups that would be considered deplorable by Main Stream aspects of humanity that pursue the advancement of humanity through raised awareness, new learning and better understanding'. Trump and so many other powerful wealthy people are just like Putin.
Use of 'terms' can be subject to misunderstanding, especially when the meaning of a term can be subverted the way "Sustainable" has been subverted by proponents of the burning of fossil fuels to label efforts to "Prolong" the activity that is fundamanetally not sustainable (if sustain means continue to do indefinitely - which it did and always should), and that udeniabley needs to be curtailed far before the 'Freer choices of people in an industrialized consumerism midsleading marketing ruled economy of popularity and profitability' would end it.
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soo doh nim at 01:28 AM on 24 December 20162016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #50
What do you guys make of the refutation(?) of this that appeared in the Telegraph?
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Paul D at 01:07 AM on 24 December 2016Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools
Come on guys and girls.
You need to stop over analysing what 'Russia' is doing or even individuals in Russia.It is simple propaganda. The same goes for climate skeptics (in any country) etc.
There is NO interest in science. It is purely a war of intelligence and propaganda.
The idea is to confuse and destabilise the enemy. Hence you still get climate change skeptics deliberately regurgitating old lies and myths about ice, polar bears, volcanoes etc. There is no interest in science, it's purely to confuse, thereby maintaining the policy status quo or to reverse it to some previous state.
Hacking emails, denial of service attacks etc. It's all about causing disruption.Remember, this is all during peace time. Basically if war broke out, nowhere online would be safe!
We made our bed... -
chriskoz at 21:02 PM on 23 December 2016Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools
People in US as well as the rest of English-speaking world may not know who is standing behind that russian efforts to hijack western political system: Aleksandr Dugin. Specialising in propaganda and information war, employing social media, Dugin is the likely mastermind behind all latest russian hacking efforts. Consider for example this analysis. Based on this information, Dugin can be characterised as present day's Joseph Goebbels.
The same cannot be said of 2009 climate gate because there is no evidence of Dugin involvement. I don't think such nazi extremist as Dugin even cares about climate science: his motivation is purely political and not anti-scientific, and fossil fuel interests do not seem to influence him.
I'm mentioning Dugin here to remind the SkS readers how vulnerable western political systems are to such attacks: more vulnerable than we do realise. Dugin is now celebrating his big success in US and no doubt preparing for next polls in Europe: France and Germany. Unless we (western world where I also belong) find a way to stop post-truth propaganda influencing people via social media, we will continue losing that information war.
But there is no point discussing this subject here any further because it has nothing to do with climate sicence. This whole op is in fact unrelated to climate science. The link - that the 2009 climate gate hacks and 2016 election hacks that gave rise to post-truth politics of trumpism, both originated in Russia - appears incidental and perpetrators were likely different groups representing different special interests.
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Eclectic at 16:15 PM on 23 December 2016So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
Andrew1776, paleologically speaking, it is difficult to determine which of your alternatives is the correct one.
From a purely teleological analysis, it seems appropriate that volcanism would spew iridium, but commet impact would disperse irridium.
Andrew, you have frequently mentioned the crestaceous period — but not defined when it occurred. The very name suggests it was the period when the cockatoo evolved — and when there was a high level of sulphur in the air?
Or were you meaning the cretinaceous period? — being the new (post-Holocene) period, when the climate-science denier evolved.
Moderator Response:[PS] Attacks on grammar and spelling are not conducive to a constructive discussion and you run perilously close to ad hominem and inflammatory tone.
A constructive response would answer the question with appropriate references to back the answer.
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nigelj at 12:31 PM on 23 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
Michael sweet @10, I totally accept what you say, and that study seems very plausible to me.
I just picked numbers from less flattering studies, (Forbes etc) so that I'm not accused of cherrypicking the most flattering study (even though it may well be the most accurate). Even the numbers I quoted create a persuasive case for renewables.
Costs of solar and wind are all going in one direction, down, much like microprocessors did, following "Moores law". Maybe something similar is happening with renewable energy.
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Andrew1776 at 12:29 PM on 23 December 2016So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
Question for a geologist: Is it possible that the irridium layer was formed from volcanism? It seems to me that the most likely way irridium would cover the earth is if a commet hit the earth billions of years ago and was incorporated into the earth's crust and then melted and spewed out through volcanism that spewed the irridum into the atmosphere. Has anyone proposed this? Is there anything in the geological record that would distinguish between irridium upon impact and irridium through volcanism?
Moderator Response:[RH] I would suggest you use google scholar to do a little bit of research so that you can form intelligent questions. After that, if you have a question that pertains specifically to a topic on SkS, post it there.
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michael sweet at 11:57 AM on 23 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
Nigelj,
According to this Bloomburg article wind and solar are already the cheapest source of new energy in much of the world. In the USA WWS have to compete with fossil fuels that have already been built, many coal plants have no mortgage because they are so old. That makes it more difficult to compete. Coal is so expensive that coal power plants are being shut down. Mercury, arsenic and acid rain pollution are also probems with coal.
Texas has the most wind installed in the USA. They are not building those turbines because they value the environment, they are built because they are the cheapest source of energy. With the rapid decrease in cost of solar, more will be installed in the desert Western USA and individuals homes.
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Andrew1776 at 11:49 AM on 23 December 2016So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
Correlation is not causation. The problem with volcanic activity theory is that heat and CO2 are known to facilitate life, not destroy it. To harm plants, CO2 has to be above 7,000-10,000 ppm, which is way above what the volcanic acitivty would produce. While some organisms may do better than others, improved high CO2 and high temperatures is going to produce better living conditions for plants and is hardly a condition for mass extinction. It makes no sense.
From a biochemistry standpoint, it makes more sense that a lack of CO2 killed the dinosaurs. The carbon fixing enzyme RuBisco doesn't work well below 800-1000 ppm. The evolution of coccolithophores at the start of the crestaceous period must have cause CO2 levels to drop throughout that period. It's called the crestaceous period because its a massive chalk layer and chalk is calcium carbonate (i.e., sequestered carbon dioxide). The loss of CO2 should have had a catestrophic effect on the carbon fixing enzme Rubisco, which loses a lot of its activity below 600-800 ppm CO2. RuBisco is the universal enzyme for carbon fixation and sustain almost all life on earth. To make matters worse, flowering plants evolved during crestaceous. These plants dominate earth today. They flower in May when CO2 is at its peak. They have open stomata which allows them to hog all the CO2. They then die and come back the next year. Their ability to selectively take up CO2 in May when CO2 is high would decrease the CO2 concentration even further, eventually dropping atmospheric CO2 below the concentration needed for Rubisco to fix sufficient carbon in the then predominantly C3 pathway. Any plants that couldn't bloom and come back the next year would have died off along with organisms that ate those plants. This is true for ocean life and terrestrial life (e.g., algea blooms in the ocean).
It is hard to explain how this situation wouldn't have happened. We know the activity rates of RuBisco and that almost all life on earth is sustained by carbon fixed through Rubisco. We know the earth went from 4000 ppm CO2 to 180 ppm CO2. Even if you disagree about when it happened, logically we can agree that it did happen. As a biochemist, it seems all but impossible to think that crossing the activity threshold of RuBisco didn't have a catastrophic effect on life. How does the earth sustain life if THE carbon fixation enzyme isn't working? Over time, volcanic activity and weathering rocks would restore the CO2 and the earth would thrive. After enough cycles of mass extinctions, plants evolved mechanisms to cope with low CO2 (e.g., seeds, flowering, and the C4 pathway). It is almost certain that most mass extinctions were caused from plants fighting over CO2 and just like all populations, when they consume all of their food (CO2 is plant food) there is a catastrophic collapse in the population, along with everything that lives off it.
It seems really obvious to me that low CO2 (i.e., lack of food) killed the dinosaurs. How is it that nobody has proposed this or studied it? But yet they believe an astroid from space did it. LOL. The lack of sophistication in our species is shocking.
(snip)
Moderator Response:[RH] Being there was little of substance in this comment it was an easy decision to snip. If you genuinely wish to contribute to discussions on Skeptical Science you're going to have to substantiate your statements with actual scientific references. If you continue with comments like this one we will have no choice but to rescind posting privileges.
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nigelj at 11:33 AM on 23 December 2016Russian email hackers keep playing us for fools
Let’s be clear the Clinton and climategate email hacks were theft of people’s private correspondence. The thieves can’t even claim a public interest defence, or whistle blower defence, because there was no wrongdoing found in the documents.
It’s quite absurd to suggest climate scientists should be required to publish their correspondence. I don’t see Trump publishing his own private or business correspondence. Hell would freeze over first before he did that.
People I know still quote climategate as if it proves the IPCC wrong. The trouble is the media publish the headlines about a hack, but the enquiries that found no wrong doing never get published in the media, or only in the fine print at the back somewhere, and so another urban myth gets born.
We have evidence these hacks originated in Russia at high level. Putin is an authoritarian, and a populist, and his popularity has rested on him demonising America, especially liberal America. Trump has used similar tactics to get elected. They talk the same language so no wonder theres an attraction.
I don’t like the thought of Trump attempting to appease Putin any more than the way Clinton antagonised him. Both can only create all sorts of obvious problems. It would be better to maintain a sincere, respectful, but slightly detached approach.
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swampfoxh at 10:31 AM on 23 December 2016Republicans and Democrats alike want more clean energy
I've been a "member" of skep/sci.com for four, maybe five years, but it never occurred to me that "ya'll" had no exposure to the Yale/George Mason study showing, among other things, that 55% of Republicans believe the facts about climate change and about the same number support the EPA's efforts at greenhouse gas mitigation...so, mea culpa. Here in central Virginia we have "Valley Grassroots" a group of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans (and everything in between) trying to get the word out about climate change while trying to defeat the gas pipeline projects that are just going to make everything worse. We have a three hour power point presentation we present about every three/four months, free, to the public, about the facts of climate change. Some of our material comes from skep/sci so we think the presentation is pretty good. If any of you would like to "teach" this "course" we'll send you the PP presentation and you can do it from your "space". It's mostly copyrighted, but you are welcome to it for free if you pledge not to charge the people who will want to see it. Call me.
Don Henke
434-996-3257
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Wol at 09:46 AM on 23 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
denisaf @8: Adaptation to 2° is all very well, but that does nothing to stop the inevitable further rise to 3°,4°,5° and beyond.
Metaphorically it means still kicking the can down the road - but starting a few yards back!
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denisaf at 08:35 AM on 23 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
Whilst these decision moves by the Trump's are disturbing, they will not influence the continuing rapid, irreversible climate disruption and ocean pollution, warming and acidification. There is little moderation than can be done to so the emphaisis should be on adapting to the inevitable consequences of sea level rise and more storms, wildfires, floods, droughts and other dleterious events.
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nigelj at 06:18 AM on 23 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
Driving by @4, you make the comment that solar panels are 15% efficient etc. Well you can buy systems now that are 20% efficient, and experimental prototypes have been tested with 28% efficiency, and 45% is theoretically possible, which is similar to coal.
phys.org/news/2016-01-efficiency-dual-junction-solar-cell.html
However none of this is an adeqate way of judging solar cells. Its more about the electricity cost per unit of output, and in that respect solar cells are approximately 30 % more costly per unit output than coal, but this is dropping fast, really fast. Wind power is following a roughly similar trend and is already much the same price as coal, and that is with subsidies removed so we are comparing like with like.
Renewable energy is becoming cost competitive, however it doesn't have to be exacly the same price to justify itself. Nobody expects that we can resolve climate change at zero cost. You also need to consider the obvious fact that the costs of coal etc dont include costs inflicted on the environment.
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andrejones at 05:05 AM on 23 December 2016So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
I'm leaning towards the climate change theory rather than the asteroid impact. Dinosaurs have been found in many different continents and not a single one survived. The planet needed to be literally destroyed by meteors in order to have such a brutal effect and extinguish an entire species spread around the territory1!
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ubrew12 at 01:32 AM on 23 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
Article: "An ideologically driven purge?" Maybe, at the bottom. But at the top I think it's driven by money, fossil money. I recommend this article in Climate Crocks last week, talking about 'The Carbon Bubble'. Quote: "the differences between valuations and worth in fossil fuel... assets [is] the “Carbon Bubble.” It is still growing... the thing about bubbles: they always pop... People whose job it is to measure risk in financial markets are.. concerned about the... Carbon Bubble... Because when it bursts, trillions of dollars of imaginary assets will simply vanish in a very short time." By keeping the 'Carbon Bubble' going another decade or so, Tillerson, Putin, and Trump can make billions of dollars.
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chriskoz at 19:52 PM on 22 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
The Energy Dept witch hunt was apparently dismissed by president-elect team as “not authorized”. If it was just a joke of an irresponsible member of that team (matching the role model of president-elect himself), then I accept this wise retreat. But in my mind, the presidential team is just showing the same level of competence I've escribed earlier to president-elect. Bucle up folks: in the near future expect more crazy steps like this one, steps typical to a 12y old child rather than an adult holding he highest political office in the world.
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DrivingBy at 12:47 PM on 22 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
Welll,,,
Probably, the rest of the world will continue with little change. Perhaps without having the excuse of 'being bullied by the USA', countries who were ambivalent might become more interested in slowing AGW. Yeah, that's pure speculation, but in much of the world now being anti-USA is a popular fashion statement. Heck, it seems to be the position of the the Assuredly Smart People within the USA.
Trump is sending the wrong signals, at least at the moment. But I suspect the net effect will not be large; we're not going back to coal (the stuff's no longer the cheapest), we're not going to remove the scrubbers (and their expense) from existing coal plants, and the other 80% of the world will continue shaving costs from non-fossil energy.
One thing I do find odd: The one solar technology which appears to have an excellent payback time, high efficiency, low complexity and overall EROEI is never mentioned nor hyped. That's solar water pre-heating, which as none of the issues of home solar-to-electic systems. It can be capture most of the incoming solar heat, while a standard PV panel will be about 15% efficient, dropping gradually with time. Those panels are deep black, so they're causing a little bit of surface heating by themselves.
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Tom Curtis at 12:44 PM on 22 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
So, the question is, who will, and who will not testify before the "House scientific activities committee"?
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Tom Curtis at 12:42 PM on 22 December 2016Ocean acidification isn't serious
Further to my post @73, regardless of the theoretical basis, it is pointless for Andrew1776 to argue that increased CO2 levels would be good for corals, for too many real world examples exist proving the contrary. In particular, examples such as the CO2 seeps at Milne Bay:
Note that changes from pH factors typical of those expected in open ocean around 2050 (a) to those expected by the end of the century (b) with BAU do not reduce the coral cover, but massively reduce the diversity of coral species. In particular:
"The field surveys showed that at high compared with low pCO2 sites, hard coral cover was similar (33% versus 31%; Fig. 2a,...). However, the cover of massive Porites corals doubled, whereas the cover of structurally complex corals (with branching, foliose, and tabulate growth forms, that is, excluding massive, submassive and encrusting growth forms) was reduced three fold. The taxonomic richness of hard corals was reduced by 39%. The cover of fleshy non-calcareous macroalgae doubled and seagrass increased eight fold, whereas the cover of crustose coralline algae (important calcareous substrata for coral settlement) and of other red calcareous algae was reduced seven fold. Cover and richness of soft corals and sponge cover were also significantly reduced. The density and taxonomic richness of hard coral juveniles were reduced 2.8- and 2-fold, respectively, and of soft coral juveniles 18- and 12-fold, at the high pCO2 sites (Fig. 2b). Even juvenile densities of massive Porites declined >fourfold at high pCO2, despite the high representation of this taxon in the adult community."
Note that the reduction in juvenile Porites (> fourfold) shows them also to have been adversely effected by the increased pH, but that the lack of competition from other corals allow an overall increase in adult forms.
The sites with pH levels expected in the next century with ongoing BaU (c),
"... were covered by sand or rocks with individual coral colonies, macroalgae or dense seagrass (Fig. 1c, Supplementary Fig. S4). No reef development was found at a pH less than 7.70 (>1,000 ppm CO2), and hence the most intensely venting zones were excluded from the reef assessment."
More detail about the specific effects can be found here.
Similar observations have been made at other CO2 seeps in New Guinea, and the Mariana Islands, among others.
So, the fact that elevated pH due to increased CO2 concentration adversely effects corals and other calcifying sea life is not just a matter of theory, but of direct observation. Observation that Andrew1776 wants to simply ignore.
Moderator Response:[PS] Since comprehensive literature review is a better indicator of state than cherry picking a paper, I note this extensive review recently published here.
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Bob Loblaw at 12:17 PM on 22 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
"Are you now, or have you ever been, a climatologist?"
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Tom Curtis at 10:55 AM on 22 December 2016Ocean acidification isn't serious
Andrew1776 @67 cites Rahman and Shingjo (2011) as stating that "... the rate limiting step of coral mineralization is CO2(aq) + H2O CaCO".
With regard to that claim, it should first be noted that what is produced by Andrew1776 is not a valid chemical formula, something somebody with his claimed expertise should know. The correct formulas are:
- CO2(g) ↔ CO2(aq)
- CO2(aq) + H20 ↔ H2CO3
- H2CO3 ↔ H++ HCO3-
- HCO3- ↔ H++ CO32-
- Ca2+ + CO32- → CaCO3↓
Equation (2) represents the rate limiting equation, but that is not the whole story. It is equation (5) that represents the production of calcium carbonate. The crucial compound whose abundance controls the final rate of production of CaCO3 is CO32-. The ratio of the various reaction components in equations (2) through to (4) is determined by, among other things, the acidity of the water. It is shown on this graph (note the logarithmic scale):
You will notice that with the expected decrease in pH by the end of this century wiht BAU, the proportion of CO32- falls by more than 50%. That is just the ratio to the other compounds, of course, and as Andrew1776 is keen to point out, CO2(aq) will rise, and the relative amount of the other compounds with it. In fact, with business as usual, it will approximately double:
The net effect is that the absolute quantity of CO32- will fall, and with it the rate of calcification. That is in addition to any direct adverse effects from acidification.
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nigelj at 09:10 AM on 22 December 2016Trump questionnaire recalls dark history of ideology-driven science
The terrible ideologically driven science, intimidation, and authoritarianism you document is very real. Elements of this are effectively a form of subtle state sanctioned censorship, and totally counter to the American constitutional spirit of free speech.
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Philippe Chantreau at 08:40 AM on 22 December 2016Ocean acidification isn't serious
I find that it makes as much sense to say that CO2 is plant food than to say that O2 is people food. It is intellectually dishonest and physiologically inaccurate.
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nigelj at 08:04 AM on 22 December 2016This is not normal – climate researchers take to the streets to protect science
Daniel Mocnsy @14, I have been an atheist since age of about 10. I could never take the bible seriously, at face value, given the supernatural claims and large number of inconsistencies, but I do think it has some worthwhile ethical teachings in the New Testament. I agree with your views on how religion influences some peoples thinking.
I hope this website would permit a few polite comments on religion and politics on topics that relate to this, as some ocassionally do. Obviously its not appropriate on articles that discuss purely climate research issues.
There is a big intersection of religion and climate change, but its complex. The views of the bible belt differ considerably from the new Catholic Pope. But its worth discussing, and simply cannot be avoided.
Moderator Response:[PS] I think there are more appropriate sites for such a discussion. This site is dedicated to the science of climate change.
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nigelj at 07:33 AM on 22 December 2016Republicans and Democrats alike want more clean energy
Haze @4, I dont think young people are automatically naive and gullible. In fact most teenagers go through a rebellious stage where they question all forms of so called conventional wisdom, and look at a wide variety of sources of information.
However young people do get some basic information at school on the greenhouse effect, which is established science, and can probaly see that this science is settled and compelling.
Their parents never had that level of education on climate change. Their parents may also get more narrow in their world view and entrenched into partisan political leanings, and the older people get the harder it is to escape these, as people get set in their ways.
I didn't say builders are a subclass. But its a simple fact their education levels will not as high as a doctor for example. Trump has probably got used to speaking their language.
I deal in facts and honest observations. I used to be involved in the building industry for a couple of years at a very high professional level, and have a high regard for builders, and if anything some of them are under paid, although its probably small farmers and lower skilled occupations hurting most.
Yes I would agree the "elite" have got some things wrong, with maybe excessive immigration numbers, and blue collar workers being left behind during the period of globalisation. I think there's legitimate blame on both Republicans and Democrats in that regard.
This doesn't mean globalisation is wrong or should be reversed, it means certain things must be rectified, mitigated, and acknowledged by everyone. But in case you havent noticed, Trump is part of the very elite he criticises. He has made a lot of angry noises, maybe with some justification, but in my view his policies wont help his target audience, and need changing. People will eventually wake up to this.
But like I said Trump is intelligent, and may see business sense in renewable energy, and presumably he wont want China to get ahead of America on this.
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Tom Curtis at 01:31 AM on 22 December 20162016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #51
Turns out that snow has fallen in (a location in) the Sahara for the first time in 37 years. You were probably deafened by the denier chorus of "so much for global warming". What the deniers show is only how poor is their fact checking. In this instance, the snow fell at the Algerian town of Ain Sefra, a full kilometer above sea level in the Atlas Mountains. That high altitude results in low winter temperatures, with an average December range from 0.9 - 12.9 C, and a record minimum of -10.2 C. So the deniers are flaberghasted that snow should fall at a location that often experiences sub zero temperatures.
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bozzza at 20:45 PM on 21 December 2016Why Coal Is Not Our Future
@ 19,
I would simply ask why someone would bother doing that. Are you trying to say something about the methods of applied science versus the methods of mixed markets?
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Haze at 17:26 PM on 21 December 2016Republicans and Democrats alike want more clean energy
"A deeper dive into the results reveals that American voters are more knowledgeable about energy and the energy economy than is the president elect."
However,the American voters are now not in control of the climate change policies of the US nor of its economy. Donald Trump, whether you like it or not, is. Perhaps it is not the smartest approach to antagonise the President-elect.
NigelJ@3 "I'm absolutely sure I have seen decent quality public polling finding young people are generally less sceptical about climate change presumably due to the education they get.'
Perhaps young people are more naive and gullible than those somewhat older.
"Trump's grammar isn't too good and he is very plainly spoken. I wonder if this is deliberate, to connect with blue collar workers. Remember he is a property developer, so deals a lot with builders".
It is this elitism such as this that has been "blamed" for both the election of Trump and Brexit. Personally I consider it has no place here or anywhere else. Are builders some sub-class?
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Eclectic at 16:27 PM on 21 December 2016Ocean acidification isn't serious
Andrew1776 @70 and prior posts (including recently in other threads) ,
you fail to recognize or acknowledge that land-based and sea-based life forms have diverged in their evolution for 100's of millions of years (regarding body chemistry). In your passionate desire for marine creatures to make a problem-free transition to a low pH (or high phlogiston) condition in an eye-blink of evolutionary time, you are (it seems) indulging in wishful thinking of the most unrealistic kind.
In short, your revolutionary and idiosyncratic idea of an unproblematic abrupt change in physiological conditions , is an idea which comes several hundred million years too late.
Please remember that we a playing for high stakes - and the rapid "unnatural" acidification is a matter involving the entire planetary ocean : not a micro-experiment on a saline gallon or two in a kitchen sink. The high stakes require an intelligent risk-management approach to the situation, don't you agree?
An approach based on extensive biological knowledge, rather than on poorly-informed caprice.
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Eclectic at 15:35 PM on 21 December 2016This is not normal – climate researchers take to the streets to protect science
Daniel @16 , while superficially your suggestion of free e-books sounds reasonable (in the battle against ignorance and misinformation), nevertheless your basic premise is flawed.
To a very large degree, those who nowadays are uninformed about climate change and climate science, are so because they are uninterested in the subject or because their preference is to be educated passively (via mainstream media) rather than by their own studious efforts. Sure, there will be some exceptions to this - but far too few to justify a complete sacrifice by authors. Likewise, far too few to have a significant effect on the course of events (If that was your aim in properly educating them).
The other category of the uninformed/misinformed, is those who are hostile to the idea of recognizing the plain and obvious facts about Global Warming. Few, if any, of them will wish to read free books which they feel (rightly!) are almost certain to fail to confirm the deniers' prejudices. They actively seek disinformation, for the purpose of their own bias confirmation. They de-select and reject real scientific facts and opinions. Even the very few who would read a free science-based book, will read one while actively cherry-picking / filtering out / and distorting the contents. So no enlightenment to be gained there!
No, I don't think it is fair to blame even a part of today's "desperate times" on the authors' sin of avarice !
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Daniel Mocsny at 12:44 PM on 21 December 2016This is not normal – climate researchers take to the streets to protect science
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and for scientists, these are desperate measures.
How about this for a desperate measure: can the world's writers of science-based popular works please stop copywriting your books and reserving all rights? That is, could y'all start publishing under Open Access licenses?
Why this matters: we are in desperate times because the vast majority of humans have not read many science-based books about climate change. And they are not likely to read very much if they have to pay $20 to $50 a pop for books they don't agree with. A lack of reading is why the typical climate science denier continues to regurgitate the same debunked myths over and over. Nobody who has read enough climate science to be reasonably informed (say, 10 or 20 books at minimum) would remain stuck on opening denier gambits that have long been countered.
There is a powerful force that can at least partly offset the propaganda advantages of corporatized religion and politics: social recommendation. Individuals have considerable influence over the behavior of their friends and social contacts (especially in the real world). I know people who are marinating in politically or religiously-motived anti-science disinformation. I might have some ability to influence them to read things they would otherwise probably never consider reading. But given that they have zero motivation to have their minds changed, the barrier must be as low as possible.
One way to lower the barrier is by publishing freely. If I could freely and legally share ebooks with them, that would eliminate the sticking points of either having to pay for the books up front, or asking them to spend the time and effort to visit a library. (I've found something similar with persuading some of my neighbors to start composting their yard waste and sometimes even their kitchen scraps: if I obtain and help set up the compost bin for them, personally tutor them on how to do everything, give them starter compost, follow up to answer their questions, guarantee their success, and so on, then people who would otherwise never take up composting on their own initiative can adopt the behavior and sometimes even become enthusiastic. For people who are not already interested enough in something to have done it on their own, you have to identify and eliminate every possible sticking point, and give them an in-person push.)
Charging money for books limits the potential audience to people who already recognize the value of the books before they have read them. Non-free books are great tools for preaching to the choir (in this case, the people already convinced that climate change is real, human-caused, and a serious problem). But if you want to change the world, you have to reach and change minds who are at best indifferent and at worst hostile. That requires making the least possible demands on them up front - and asking them to read a book is already demanding enough.
There is a lot of freely-available content about climate change online (such as on this site, on Wikipedia, etc.). But reading books is still vital for becoming informed. The free online content tends to be fragmented, since a basic principle of Web design is appealing to the short attention span of the Web user. This makes it hard for even a motivated Web user to cobble together enough reading material to rival the comprehensive topical coverage of a book author. Indeed, for many of the useful snippets I've found online, I only knew to search for them after I read about the topics in books.
It's nice to have protests against Donald Trump's war against science - we'll be doing a lot of that over the next four or eight years, but the real battleground is the gray matter between billions of pairs of ears. Think of the cognitive distance we need to cover in units of person-book-reads. If we want to solve climate change, we need billions of people to read dozens of books each. We are literally (no pun intended) tens of billions of book-reads away from where we need to be, and we won't get there by imposing a tax on every one of those book-reads up front.
I understand the desire or perhaps even the need for book authors to get paid. Hey, who doesn't like money? But as the authors of Against Intellectual Monopoly (itself a free book) explain, there are lots of ways to get paid without metering access to information. (The Googles and Facebooks of the world are raking in billions without charging for their content up front.)
We have the same problem with most climate change documentary films and television programs. Virtually all of them are copyrighted with all rights reserved, so there's no legal way to aggregate and redistribute them for repeated viewing. Neither can we conveniently cite them in response to online debates, for example when a science denier makes an argument that a documentary visually rebuts. No third party can build encyclopedic, topically indexed access to all that valuable content while it remains encumbered by intellectual property rights.
When our customary way of doing things (in this case, business as usual) gets in the way of our very survival, then our customs need to change. Let's don't make the same mistake as the doomed British army at the Battle of Isandlwana, when the quartermasters were fatally slow in issuing out ammunition to the soldiers on the line being overrun by Zulu warriors, because they insisted on proper procedure. Science is similarly in danger of being overrun by a technologically inferior force, because once again our quartermasters insist on metering the vital resource.
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Rob Honeycutt at 12:35 PM on 21 December 2016Why Coal Is Not Our Future
Andrew... Being that there are no markets that are 100% coal, how do you justify that statement? Are you going to erect a small coal fired generator in your back yard?
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Andrew1776 at 12:18 PM on 21 December 2016Why Coal Is Not Our Future
Electric vehicles make coal more viable and cheaper. Cars can be charged at night which will improve utilization of existing coal-fired power plants. Producing more power without capital expenditures using the cheapest fuel available is going to make electricity cheaper at the same time demand is increasing. The coal and natural gas industry should be all for EVs.
Moderator Response:[PS] This is really getting into sloganeering and verging on trolling. To support that slogan, you need to show that unsubsidized cost of coal generation is lower than other forms. Useful resource would be here.
Make sure you back any assertions you are making with appropriate evidence or risk getting your comments deleted.
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Andrew1776 at 12:13 PM on 21 December 2016Why Coal Is Not Our Future
I've got a deposit on a Tesla Model 3. I'm going to have bumper stickers made that say, "Powered by American coal." If anyone wants one, let me know.
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psloss at 12:09 PM on 21 December 2016The Perfect Tide: Sea Level and the Future of South Florida
Looks like Miami will become the Venice of the Americas.
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Andrew1776 at 12:09 PM on 21 December 2016Ocean acidification isn't serious
Eclectic,
While your comments have the appearance of politeness, they are ad hominems. Where are the moderators on this?
More importantly, you don't address the issue. Do you agree that life evolved when the oceans were pH 7.4? We call this "physiological conditions". My premise is that it should be good for the planet for man-made CO2 to restore the earth to physiological conditions.
Climatology produced numerous papers (several in high profile journals such as nature) saying that carbonate-based organisms would be harmed by increasing CO2. Yet these organisms evolved in a high CO2 environment. It just doesn't make sense. Climatology produces "models" saying the coccolithophores are going to be destroyed, but then when someone actually measured what has happened to coccolithophores as pH has decreased, it turns out they increased by 10 fold. see: http://hub.jhu.edu/2015/11/26/rapid-plankton-growth-could-signal-climate-change/
Of course the original theory was catastrophic harm to coccolithophores. Now the problem is catestrophic success.
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixed link. Please provide a link to support that statement "Climatology produces "models" saying the coccolithophores are going to be destroyed".
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Daniel Mocsny at 11:21 AM on 21 December 2016This is not normal – climate researchers take to the streets to protect science
Dcrickett @6: I agree that rumors of our post-racial society are greatly exaggerated. However, as challenging as life may be for multi-racial children growing up in our environment of lingering racism, I suspect the challenges were considerably worse a century ago - back when "miscegenation" was still illegal in many jurisdictions.
Some of it is probably geographical. Compared to cosmopolitan places like New York City (which nonetheless gifted us with Donald Trump), the cultural values in much of Red State America might resemble a kind of living fossil of intolerance.
However, consider that as long as we still have identifiable racial groups living in close proximity for multiple generations (even centuries), that strongly suggest most people must have an in-group mating preference. As long as most people continue to be observably racist on one of life's most consequential decisions, it would be premature to declare us a post-racial society.
Another indication is the persistence of distinct racial dialects among people who grow up within walking distance of each other. Children learn their speech accents from their peers (which is why children of immigrants do not learn the accents of their parents, but rather of their host peer group). Thus if children growing up in close physical proximity speak differently from each other, they must be experiencing remarkable segregation in early life.
We might be "aspirationally" post-racial, at least among the college-educated minority. That is, among well-educated people in the United States, possibly a majority believe we should be post-racial, even if we aren't yet.
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Daniel Mocsny at 11:04 AM on 21 December 2016This is not normal – climate researchers take to the streets to protect science
nigelj@13 - astrology has been popular for centuries. So was pre-scientific medicine, until science invented evidence-based medicine. Even today, evidence-based medicine cannot cure all maladies (Zuckerberg notwithstanding), so a thriving market for pseudoscientific nostrums (such as homeopathy, acupuncture, etc.) persists. When science can't yet give people what they want, they turn to whoever claims the ability.
As to where selective reasoning (compartmentalized irrationality) comes from, an obvious contributor is America's $1 trillion religion industry. Every organized religion demands that its followers accept the extraordinary claims of its human leaders as facts, without any conclusive evidence. For any religion to survive, it must persuade people to reject critical thinking insofar as its unprovable theology goes. The vast majority of Americans (and indeed, humans) were taught to compartmentalize rationality on mother's knee - mere schooling is no match for that. (Upwards of 90% of religious people believe the religion they were born into.) This creates a vast reservoir of defective cognition that is all too easy for cynical political and commercial interests to appropriate for their own ends.
Note to moderator(s): the comments policy says "Rants about politics, religion, faith, (...) will be deleted." Given that religious Americans just played a decisive role in saddling us with Donald Trump, it may be difficult for an informed discussion about climate policy to steer clear of religion for at least the next four years - much as it would be difficult to discuss the Titanic without mentioning icebergs. While there are undoubtedly some religious people who embrace environmental values (such as the Creation Care movement), the profane and sexually immoral Donald Trump won record-high support among white Evangelicals. I can understand the desire to avoid tangling with religion, but while we're indulging in principled restraint the forces of anti-science have already moved in there. Saving the climate might require deliberately accelerating the move away from faith which is already well underway in the USA (but not far enough along yet to have prevented the orange menace from seizing power).
I know some people who are both deeply religious and deeply concerned about the environment, and who accept scientific reality. But fewer of those people are casting votes than those for whom religion means rejecting science. Learning how to talk people out of faith may be a productive route - perhaps the only viable route - for talking them out of their science denial. That is, when someone's religious faith happens to be tightly interlinked with their science denial, you probably can't cure the latter without eliciting in them a crisis of faith. Especially when we recall what religious people put their faith in: the words of their religious leaders and peers, in other words their particular sect. The people they have entrusted with their putatively eternal souls have assured them that climate change is bunk, so having to conclude that their religious authorities were completely wrong about a temporal issue of great importance would be deeply threatening to their hope for an afterlife. That obstacle vanishes when they conclude there is no reason to imagine any group of humans has any reliable knowledge about an afterlife - that is, when they move up the rationality scale to agnosticism or atheism.
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RedBaron at 10:57 AM on 21 December 2016How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Scaddenp,
I know of a study in progess in Idaho on exactly what you would like to see. But it isn't finished yet, much less published.
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scaddenp at 10:12 AM on 21 December 2016How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
All information useful. I cant do anything personally - I am geologist/geophysics but share space with interested researchers. You are right about getting a species into NZ that we dont already have - that would be long process. At moment kikuyu and paspalum are only common established species and both are outgrown heavily by rye for 3/4 of the country.
What would be interesting to compare would be year round gas emissions from pasture between here and good US - might shed light on soil process differences.
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RedBaron at 09:45 AM on 21 December 2016How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
@scaddenp,
The most hardy C4 grass I know of from N America is prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata) which can survive overwinter rhizome temps in the soil to –20 °C to –24 °C and also late hard frosts too. Unfortunately it is considered poor forage for dairy. It's fine for beef, (especially HPG) but too low in protein and palatability to realy be considered for a dairy. There is a subspecies of switchgrass called upland switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) that is almost as hardy. Switchgrass is an excellent forage for cattle; however, it has shown toxicity in horses, sheep, and goats and the unpland variety doesn't get as tall as the other types. Still might be a bit too tall for most dairy herds though. So probably not a good choice either.
However, if you give me some time to contact a couple scientist friends of mine that work up north I might be able to get you a better answer. One was working with symbiotic grassland microbiology in Yellowstone Park, which is subject to frosts and hard freezes all year, even mid summer. Likely there are a couple C4 grasses locally adapted to those extreme weather conditions. The other working specifically with Dairy grazing in Wisconsin and is an expert in dairy forage grasses. I MIGHT be able to work out a blend for you to trial as long as you can manage any regulatory issues that might arise. I do know New Zealand has some pretty strict regulation regarding grasses.
On a slightly different but related subject. Back to the carbon cycle. I have this study bookmarked. It won't necessarily help your dairy, but it is important information in developing the grassland biome restoration as a CO2 mitigation strategy.
Global distribution of C3 and C4 vegetation:
Carbon cycle implicationsPretty good information for those modeling potential impacts.
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Jonbo69 at 09:14 AM on 21 December 20162016 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #51
Thanks for the feedback. I've already had a bit of a go at the author re the quality of the site he has published on, whlie trying to remain polite considering what he was writing seemed totally bonkers. I was just wondering if he was a known 'skeptic' but it seems he does not even qualify as that, and whether he deserved a more comprehensive rebuttal, but it doesn't seem worth it. It just seems a bit of a cheek to link to his trashy paper and talks that he's given as a response to a paper published in Nature Geoscience.
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nigelj at 08:50 AM on 21 December 2016Republicans and Democrats alike want more clean energy
Chriskoz @1, good comment. Maybe politicians are more sceptical of climate science than some other groups because they are more in the older age group, and so haven't had much if any formal education on it. I'm absolutely sure I have seen decent quality public polling finding young people are generally less sceptical about climate change presumably due to the education they get.
Trump's grammar isn't too good and he is very plainly spoken. I wonder if this is deliberate, to connect with blue collar workers. Remember he is a property developer, so deals a lot with builders.
Trump comes out with the most absurd statements and policy ideas, but I just cant believe he is unintelligent. He has a degree from a top ranking university and holds a business empire together (just). However the combination of intelligence and crazy ideas and absurd claims is if anything particularly concerning, as it just doesn't make sense, and suggests some sort of personality issue and a serious disregard for honesty.
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Riduna at 08:39 AM on 21 December 2016Why Coal Is Not Our Future
Chris O’Niell - The sentence you quote refers to coal use for electricity generation in Australia only. It does not refer to global use of coal for this purpose or metal smelting, though some major users may be reducing consumption.
Global production and use of oil and gas are equally significant contributors of greenhouse gases, as are other anthropogenic activities, such as farming and damage to carbon sinks.
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nigelj at 08:04 AM on 21 December 2016This is not normal – climate researchers take to the streets to protect science
Daniel Mocsny @11, fair comments. You would indeed think the marvel of a smartphone, that most people now own, would be very good evidence of the power and validity of science, and as you say predictive ability is important.
"When people have incorrect theories they rarely produce useful results - see for example medicine in the Middle Ages,"
True, but one of the problems is flawed theories like astrology make such general predictions some of these are right, and those that aren't are quickly forgotten, glossed over or excused. This is why people get sucked in.
Some people just have this peculiar ability to be intelligent and technically rigorous yet take crazy ideas seriously at the same time. I'm not sure where that comes from!
We need to teach far more logic and analytical thinking in schools. It would help explain not just the power of science, but the importance of looking for evidence, and weaknesses in climate change denial, religion, and weaknesses in things like anti vaccination thinking or 911 conspiracies. I'm not saying all scepticism is wrong, but people need better mental tools to sort the wheat from the chaff.
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scaddenp at 08:02 AM on 21 December 2016How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Well I have to admire your confidence. Any pointers at all to grass species composition? Most of our dairying is south of limit for C4 grasses which might also be also be a factor.
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Daniel Mocsny at 07:13 AM on 21 December 2016The Perfect Tide: Sea Level and the Future of South Florida
See also: The Seas Are Rising Around Donald Trump - "He may deny global warming, but it's still threatening to swamp his properties."
The article seems a bit optimistic about Trump's life expectancy, though. It says:
"Despite Trump's pronouncements, there is strong evidence that he—personally—could pay the price for climate change in his property interests along the South Florida oceanfront and Intracoastal Waterway."
and then goes on to project the impact of sea level rise on some of Trump's signature properties by mid-century, when the 1946-born Trump would be over 100 years old. (Just 0.02 percent of the population, or 55,000 people, are 100 years old or older in the USA now. Only 71 people were documented to be older than 110 years on the entire planet in 2014.) Perhaps that is why Ivanka Trump claims to take the problem more seriously - she is much more likely to be alive to deal with the mess her father's science denial can only worsen.
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nigelj at 07:01 AM on 21 December 2016Republicans and Democrats alike want more clean energy
The whole thing is a frustrating, absurd sort of situation. I have also seen various polls indicating the majority of Americans take climate change seriously, and think something should be done. But they get ignored by politicians of all persuasions, although more so the republicans.
Why are the views of the majority of Americans so out of step with politicians, and so ignored by congress, or the senate? I just think the main reason is we have politicians (of all persuasions) afraid of upsetting the fossil fuel lobby, who presumably make big campaign donations.
Politicans are also acutely worried about votes, and the votes of the climate sceptical minority would be a concern. Politicans worry about every single vote.
We also have political parties being more concerned about branding themselves over the climate issue than the public at large would be, and the Republicans have taken a very definite sceptical brand. It then becomes a question of loyalty to the brand, no matter how absurd this is.
One solution would be to reduce the funding of elections by the private sector. You could have public funding of elections out of taxation, but I admit the chances of this happening in America would not be large given their general ideological leanings as a society. However the Democrats tried to put limits on campaign donations about 10 years ago, but this bill was struck down by the courts as 'unconstitutional'. Its hard to see an answer to the situation.
The best way of getting through to Trump may be mainly to promote that renewable energy is just good business, and a smart deal. He might relate to this.
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