Archive for the 'News' Category

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Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong

Published on March 22, 2012 in News. 0 Comments

Icebergs in Iceland’s Jökulsárlón lagoon, which is constantly growing as the Vatnajökull glacier—Europe’s largest—melts; photograph by Olaf Otto Becker from his book Under the Nordic Light: A Journey Through Time, Iceland, 1999–2011, which has just been published by Hatje Cantz . Photo by William D. Nordhaus

By William D. Nordhaus from The New York Review of Books

The threat of climate change is an increasingly important environmental issue for the globe. Because the economic questions involved have received relatively little attention, I have been writing a nontechnical book for people who would like to see how market-based approaches could be used to formulate policy on climate change. When I showed an early draft to colleagues, their response was that I had left out the arguments of skeptics about climate change, and I accordingly addressed this at length.

But one of the difficulties I found in examining the views of climate skeptics is that they are scattered widely in blogs, talks, and pamphlets. Then, I saw an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal of January 27, 2012, by a group of sixteen scientists, entitled “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” This is useful because it contains many of the standard criticisms in a succinct statement. The basic message of the article is that the globe is not warming, that dissident voices are being suppressed, and that delaying policies to slow climate change for fifty years will have no serious economic or environment consequences.

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Earth’s Clouds are Getting Lower

Published on March 15, 2012 in News. 0 Comments

By Alan Buis from NASA

Earth’s clouds got a little lower — about one percent on average — during the first decade of this century, finds a new study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate.

Scientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand analyzed the first 10 years of global cloud-top height measurements (from March 2000 to February 2010) from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA’s Terra spacecraft. The study, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, revealed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height. Global average cloud height declined by around one percent over the decade, or by around 100 to 130 feet (30 to 40 meters). Most of the reduction was due to fewer clouds occurring at very high altitudes.

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Why Not Frack?

Published on March 11, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

A fracking site run by the Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, October 2011. Photo by Garth Lenz

By Bill McKibben from The New York Review of Books

In one sense, the analysts who forecast that “peak oil”—i.e., the point at which the rate of global petroleum extraction will begin to decline—would be reached over the last few years were correct. The planet is running short of the easy stuff, where you stick a drill in the ground and crude comes bubbling to the surface. The great oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Mexico have begun to dwindle; one result has been a rising price for energy.

We could, as a civilization, have taken that dwindling supply and rising price as a signal to convert to sun, wind, and other noncarbon forms of energy—it would have made eminent sense, most of all because it would have aided in the fight against global warming, the most difficult challenge the planet faces. Instead, we’ve taken it as a signal to scour the world for more hydrocarbons. And it turns out that they’re there—vast quantities of coal and oil and gas, buried deep or trapped in tight rock formations or mixed with other minerals.

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Indigenous Peoples at Forefront of Climate Change Offer Lessons On Plant Biodiversity

Published on March 7, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Cassava varieties of the same Yanesha were systematically sampled in 1983–86 and in 1999, 15 years later. Here, the same woman is photographed in her cassava field during the first survey (inset photo) and second survey (larger outer photo), when she is noticeably 15 years older. Photo by Salick et al. 1997 and Salick 2012)

From ScienceDaily

Humans are frequently blamed for deforestation and the destruction of environments, yet there are also examples of peoples and cultures around the world that have learned to manage and conserve the precious resources around them. The Yanesha of the upper Peruvian Amazon and the Tibetans of the Himalayas are two groups of indigenous peoples carrying on traditional ways of life, even in the face of rapid environmental changes. Over the last 40 years, Dr. Jan Salick, senior curator and ethnobotanist with the William L. Brown Center of the Missouri Botanical Garden has worked with these two cultures.

he explains how their traditional knowledge and practices hold the key to conserving, managing and even creating new biodiversity in a paper released in the new text, “Biodiversity in Agriculture: Domestication, Evolution, and Sustainability,” published by Cambridge University Press.

The Yanesha and Tibetans are dramatically different peoples living in radically dissimilar environments, but both cultures utilize and highly value plant biodiversity for their food, shelters, clothing and medicines.

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Leaked Docs Offer Insight Into How Climate-skeptic Groups Operate

Published on February 29, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

No money for you, buddy. Photograph by Nathan Denette from the AP

By Brad Plummer from the Washington Post

Recently, the DesmogBlog got its hands on a trove of alleged internal fund-raising documents from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit that spends a fair bit of time disputing mainstream climate science. Do they actually tell us anything?

First, some important details. At least one of the “strategy” documents (PDF) acquired by DesmogBlog appears to be a forgery — Heartland says that it is a “total fake” — though the forged document is mostly just a more inflammatory version of what’s in the actual fund-raising documents, which are not currently in dispute. (The Heartland Institute confirms that the fund-raising documents were inadvertently sent to an imposter who had set up a counterfeit e-mail address.) And, on the surface, there’s not a lot that’s new here: It’s been well-known for ages that skeptic groups spend a lot of money trying to call into question the scientific consensus on man-made global warming.

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Heartland Institute Plans to Instill Climate-change Denialism in Every Schoolchild

Published on February 14, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Heartland indoctrination documents (via Think Progress)

From the Daily Kos

Brad Johnson has come into possession of internal documents of the Heartland Institute. These show that the organization “is planning to develop a ‘global warming curriculum’ for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as ‘a major scientific controversy.’ This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant.”

Wojick will, the documents say, put together various teaching “modules” on climate issues, focusing on skepticism about whether CO2 emissions contribute to climate change and the “major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather.”

In an email to Johnson, James M. Taylor, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, explained why it is developing the curriculum denying climate change:

We are concerned that schools are teaching climate change issues in a manner that is not consistent with sound science and that is designed to lead students to the erroneous belief that humans are causing a global warming crisis. We hope that our efforts will restore sound science to climate change education and discourage the political propaganda that too often passes as “education”.

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What Hybrid Sharks Mean (and Don’t Mean) for Climate Change and Evolution: Fact-checking the Media Coverage

Published on January 30, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Photo by study author Pascal Geraghty, New South Wales Department of Primary Industry

By WhySharksMatters from Southern Fried Science

Last week, a team of 10 Australian scientists announced that they had found the world’s first “shark hybrids”, offspring of individuals from two different shark species which had interbred. During a routine survey of Australian marine life, 57 sharks were found that physically resembled one species of shark, but had genetic markers inconsistent with that species. Subsequent genetic investigation revealed that these 57 animals were hybrids between common blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus) and Australian blacktip sharks (C. tilstoni).

Some of these hybrids were “F1?, meaning that one parents was a common blacktip and one was an Australian blacktip. Others were “B+”(backcrossed), which means that one parent was a common blacktip/Australian blacktip hybrid, and the other was a “purebreed” of one of those two species. According to the study’s lead author, Dr. Jess Morgan of the University of Queensland, ”our genetic marker tells us that these hybrids are ‘at least’ F1, and that these animals are reproductively viable and can produce an F2…the hybrids may be generations past F2 but the existing genetic markers can’t distinguish how many generations past the second cross have occurred.”

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Organic Agriculture May Be Outgrowing Its Ideals

Published on January 25, 2012 in News. 0 Comments

By Elisabeth Rosenthal from The New York Times

Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation.

Growers here on the Baja Peninsula, the epicenter of Mexico’s thriving new organic export sector, describe their toil amid the cactuses as “planting the beach.”

Del Cabo Cooperative, a supplier here for Trader Joe’s and Fairway, is sending more than seven and a half tons of tomatoes and basil every day to the United States by truck and plane to sate the American demand for organic produce year-round.

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As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks

Published on January 18, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Katey M. Walter Anthony, a scientist, investigated a plume of methane, a greenhouse gas, at an Alaskan lake. Dr. Walter Anthony is a leading researcher in studying the escape of methane. Photo by Josh Haner from The New York Times

By Justin Gillis from The New York Times

A bubble rose through a hole in the surface of a frozen lake. It popped, followed by another, and another, as if a pot were somehow boiling in the icy depths.

Every bursting bubble sent up a puff of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas generated beneath the lake from the decay of plant debris. These plants last saw the light of day 30,000 years ago and have been locked in a deep freeze — until now.

“That’s a hot spot,” declared Katey M. Walter Anthony, a leading scientist in studying the escape of methane. A few minutes later, she leaned perilously over the edge of the ice, plunging a bottle into the water to grab a gas sample.

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In Glare of Climate Talks, Taking On Too Great a Task

Published on January 10, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

A coal-fired power plant in Changchun, China. Many environmental officials say all countries should be bound by the same rules. Photo from the Associated Press

By John M. Broder from The New York Times

For 17 years, officials from nearly 200 countries have gathered under the auspices of the United Nations to try to deal with one of the most vexing questions of our era — how to slow the heating of the planet.

Every year they leave a trail of disillusion and discontent, particularly among the poorest nations and those most vulnerable to rising seas and spreading deserts. Every year they fail to significantly advance their own stated goal of keeping the average global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.

That was the case again this year. The event, the 17th conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, wrapped up early Sunday morning with modest accomplishments: the promise to work toward a new global treaty in coming years and the establishment of a new climate fund.

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