Category Archives: Global Warming

World Record for Largest Observed Snowflake … on a Google Doodle?

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The World record for the largest observed snowflake …

according to the Guinness Book of World Records, was attained this day of January 28th in 1887.  The city was Fort Keogh, Montana and the observer was a farmer.

Google’s doodle of today celebrates his discovery, though it appears he may have been the only witness to this frozen snowflake miracle of nature.

From Wikipedia we learn that Guinness’ recognized the world’s largest snowflakes as those of January 1887 at Fort Keogh, Montana; allegedly one measured 38 cm (15 inches) wide.

Berkeley Earth Project

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The Berkeley Earth Project is a very ambitious attempt to accurately assess the state of “Global Warming” in a very systematic and scientific way, free from the many biases, politics, and advocacy challenges that have arguably plagued the process to date.      Preliminary findings are just out here a bit prematurely, as the director of the project Muller recently testified to the US Congress:  http://berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Muller_Testimony_31_March_2011

Note that the results here are based on 2% sample they are using to validate their methods before they apply that method to the entire set of some 1.6 billion temperature records, a project that they maintain (and I agree) will result in the best measure to date of global temperature change.

Not surprisingly the 2% looks a lot like the temperature record we see from the major measurers of such things – CRU in England and NASA in the USA.     My gut expectation about the final record is that it will reflect a slight decrease in observed warming along with a significant, though modest, increase in the “uncertainty” of such measurements.     Why?   That finding would be very consistent with the fact that most of the climate scientists are doing excellent work that is good and only very slightly compromised by the alarmist bent.   That bent can’t change the data but I think it has inclined those – particularly in Paleodendrochronology – to view questionable assumptions by other scientists too sympathetically.   Sort of a “circling of the wagons” has happened as tree ring science emerged from almost total obscurity to the single most important “climate signal” in the global warming controversies.  The politics and alarmism and advocacy have very unfortunately led to some questionable interpretations and assumptions despite the obvious which are nearly rock solid findings of a global temperature rise over the last century.

Berkeley Earth is a great approach and I’m anxious to see how their transparent and hopefully unimpeachable methodology will shed light on global warming / climate change issues.

P.S.  IMHO  1.there is slight global warming, 2. it’s mostly human caused,  3. it’s not going to hurt much and 4. (most importantly) YOU (and I, and even the most fervent alarmist) are almost completely unwilling to do the things needed to change our warming prospects enough that it would make more than a trivial difference in the scheme of things.    If you travel much via planes or cars, keep your house between 65 and 85 degrees, fail to retrofit much of your life to save energy, etc, etc, etc then you are THE PROBLEM and you are NOT PART OF THE “SOLUTION”.      Sorry, but you won’t change and many of you won’t even build nuclear power plants – part of the no-brainer solution to energy needs.

Stop calling me a climate skeptic just because I don’t believe in alarmism!

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*scroll DOWN to skip to the summary*

I’m REALLY getting tired of so many friends and family calling me a global warming skeptic because 1. I am NOT a global warming skeptic and 2.  It distracts from the important debate over warming which is how much it will impact our lives.    There are really only two kinds of Global Warming Skeptics.  The first challenge the fact that the earth, on average, has been warming up a bit.   These folks are generally just stupid or stupidly adhering to the rants of people who are stupid, like Glenn Beck.    The earth is, on average over the last century, warming up.      Not much mind you – most estimates put the warming in the range of a degree C over the last century,  but clearly the earth is warming up a bit.

There is a second kind of global warming skeptic who believes that humans are not the cause of the observed warming.    FYI my misguided friends …  I am NOT in that camp either!     However a lot of bright folks are in that camp and are often scientifically challenging the idea that the observed warming of the last century is caused by human generated greenhouse gasses  or “GHCs”.   CO2 is usually cited as the main GHC culprit but there are several others like methane that are likely to play a role in observed warming.   GHCs are considered the main cause of the small observed warming if, like me, you believe the warming is caused by human activity.    So, I’m not THAT kind of skeptic either!   Some excellent skeptical discussion of warming is at  Climate Audit, the smartest of the “skeptic” blogs, and the counterpoint to Real Climate, the smartest of the blogs that discuss the science behind global warming.   Several key players in the Climate Debate post at RealClimate, many are distinuished NASA scientists.    I’d urge caution interpreting information from other places and even from these “very smart” blogs.   The comments at all blogs tend to be much more biased (often to the point of blatant stupidity) than the posts, which even at advocacy blogs are often somewhat informative  if you keep away from the personal or ego-driven junk.

Many blogs in the warming discussion take the form of advocating either for alarmism or skepticism rather than trying to review the science and the logical actions suggested by that science.   I’m particularly not fond of Joe Romm’s ridiculous  “Climate Progress” which is mostly a constant attack on even well-informed skepticism and dissent from the climate alarmist “party line”.   He seems to immediately ban  even well reasoned dissenters from the comments, leaving … a fools pool of alarmist nonsense and political advocacy.     Anthony Watts “Watts Up With That” is, IMHO, smarter and far more balanced than Climate Progress but is still pretty darn “skeptical”, tending to feature information that supports a skeptical view rather than promoting a more balanced perspective.

Summary:   I AM NOT A DAMN Climate SKEPTIC! However I am not worried much about global warming.  It’s impact so far has been trivial and it appears it will remain trivial, especially when we compare the likely impacts with current ongoing catastrophic conditions in much of the developing world, where water, disease, and poverty run rampant.   Let’s fix that stuff first, since we can actually have an impact in that arena, and fast.

P.S.  No, I have NOT changed my view about this, you just weren’t listening …   See?

Climate Change Projected Impacts from IPCC 4

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As the climate debates continue we see an interesting – and familiar – pattern.   Even as most now claim to accept the premise that “disaster is looming”, few are willing to take the steps needed to prevent that disaster.    Although in my opinion disaster is NOT looming and many climate claims are either exaggerated or unscientific nonsense, it’s certainly clear that the planet is warming and that we’re going to experience changes – mostly negative – from that warming.

The challenges we may face that are listed below are should help shape efforts to mitigate the negative changes that are coming.   They also should serve as a yardstick of how much the climate alarmists are justified in their concerns about climate catastrophe.   Despite many decades of “global warming alarm” we have seen very few examples of trouble so far unless you attribute to global warming things like the Australian Wildfires (cause: arson) or Hurricane Katrina (cause: nature, faulty dikes).

Mitigation of problems is likely to be a lot more productive and less costly than trying to stop the warming, which would be hard to do even if we had the resolve to do it.  And of course we do NOT have the resolve to mitigate CO2 in more than very modest and largely inconsequential ways.   This should be pretty darn obvious to all by now given that even those who claim they are willing to make the needed lifestyle changes to mitigate CO2 are not making those changes, such as advocating for massive nuclear power deployment, cutting personal energy use by 80% or so, etc.

So, let’s actually do something productive by addressing water shortages *NOW* when they will do a lot more good than in the future.   Millions are currently in peril from human and natural catastrophic conditions in many areas – especially in the developing world.  Why fret over conditions that might threaten us in 2100 when we can easily mitigate water and crop shortages RIGHT NOW.   Let’s get to work people!

Examples of some projected impacts for different regions are given in Table SPM.2.

Africa
  • By 2020, between 75 and 250 million of people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change.
  • By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised. This would further adversely affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition.
  • Towards the end of the 21st century, projected sea level rise will affect low-lying coastal areas with large populations. The cost of adaptation could amount to at least 5 to 10% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).scenarios (TS).
  • By 2080, an increase of 5 to 8% of arid and semi-arid land in Africa is projected under a range of climate
Asia
  • By the 2050s, freshwater availability in Central, South,East and South-East Asia, particularly in large river basins, is projected to decrease.
  • Coastal areas, especially heavily populated megadelta regions in South, East and South-East Asia, will be at greatest risk due to increased flooding from the sea and, in some megadeltas, flooding from the rivers.
  • Climate change is projected to compound the pressures on natural resources and the environment associated with rapid urbanisation, industrialisation and economic development.
  • Endemic morbidity and mortality due to diarrhoeal disease primarily associated with floods and droughts are expected to rise in East, South and South-East Asia due to projected changes in the hydrological cycle.
Australia and New Zealand
  • By 2020, significant loss of biodiversity is projected to occur in some ecologically rich sites, including the
  • Great Barrier Reef and Queensland Wet Tropics.
  • By 2030, water security problems are projected to intensify in southern and eastern Australia and, in New Zealand, in Northland and some eastern regions.
  • By 2030, production from agriculture and forestry is projected to decline over much of southern and eastern Australia, and over parts of eastern New Zealand, due to increased drought and fire. However, in New Zealand, initial benefits are projected in some other regions.
  • By 2050, ongoing coastal development and population growth in some areas of Australia and New Zealand are projected to exacerbate risks from sea level rise and increases in the severity and frequency of storms and coastal flooding.
Europe
  • Climate change is expected to magnify regional differences in Europe’s natural resources and assets. Negative impacts will include increased risk of inland flash floods and more frequent coastal flooding and increased erosion (due to storminess and sea level rise).
  • Mountainous areas will face glacier retreat, reduced snow cover and winter tourism, and extensive species losses (in some areas up to 60% under high emissions scenarios by 2080).
  • In southern Europe, climate change is projected to worsen conditions (high temperatures and drought) in a region already vulnerable to climate variability, and to reduce water availability, hydropower potential, summer tourism and, in general, crop productivity.
  • Climate change is also projected to increase the health risks due to heat waves and the frequency of wildfires.
Latin America
  • By mid-century, increases in temperature and associated decreases in soil water are projected to lead to gradual replacement of tropical forest by savanna in eastern Amazonia. Semi-arid vegetation will tend to be replaced by arid-land vegetation.
  • There is a risk of significant biodiversity loss through species extinction in many areas of tropical Latin America.
  • Productivity of some important crops is projected to decrease and livestock productivity to decline, with adverse consequences for food security. In temperate zones, soybean yields are projected to increase. Overall, the number of people at risk of hunger is projected to increase (TS; medium confidence).
  • Changes in precipitation patterns and the disappearance of glaciers are projected to significantly affect water availability for human consumption, agriculture and energy generation.
North America
  • Warming in western mountains is projected to cause decreased snowpack, more winter flooding and reduced summer flows, exacerbating competition for over-allocated water resources.
  • In the early decades of the century, moderate climate change is projected to increase aggregate yields of rain-fed agriculture by 5 to 20%, but with important variability among regions. Major challenges are projected for crops that are near the warm end of their suitable range or which depend on highly utilised water resources.
  • Cities that currently experience heat waves are expected to be further challenged by an increased number, intensity and duration of heat waves during the course of the century, with potential for adverse health impacts.
  • Coastal communities and habitats will be increasingly stressed by climate change impacts interacting with development and pollution.
Polar Regions
  • The main projected biophysical effects are reductions in thickness and extent of glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice, and changes in natural ecosystems with detrimental effects on many organisms including migratory birds, mammals and higher predators.
  • For human communities in the Arctic, impacts, particularly those resulting from changing snow and ice conditions, are projected to be mixed.
  • Detrimental impacts would include those on infrastructure and traditional indigenous ways of life.
  • In both polar regions, specific ecosystems and habitats are projected to be vulnerable, as climatic barriers to species invasions are lowered.
Small Islands
  • Sea level rise is expected to exacerbate inundation, storm surge, erosion and other coastal hazards, thus threatening vital infrastructure, settlements and facilities that support the livelihood of island communities.
  • Deterioration in coastal conditions, for example through erosion of beaches and coral bleaching, is expected to affect local resources.
  • By mid-century, climate change is expected to reduce water resources in many small islands, e.g. in the Caribbean and Pacific, to the point where they become insufficient to meet demand during low-rainfall periods.
  • With higher temperatures, increased invasion by non-native species is expected to occur, particularly on mid- and high-latitude islands.

COOL IT: The Movie

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Climatic clear thinker Bjorn Lomborg strikes again with a new film, “COOL IT”, based on his book of the same name.  Blog post: coolit-themovie.com

Lomborg’s points, which suggest we need to address problems like global warming and global poverty more rationally, are so obvious as to defy intelligent objection, yet he remains one of the most controversial activists on earth, especially after offending the sensibilities of many with his remarkable book “The Skeptical Environmentalist”.

Lomborg’s views are slowly gaining the respect they deserve as alarmism about environmental issues falls prey to the facts and to common sense observations.    Clearly there’s global warming, and clearly it’s not likely to be catastrophic.    Dealing with  massive current problems like global poverty, health, and economic issues will have a much greater return on our time and money investments than expensive and politicized mitigation programs, many of which will at best delay the effects of carbon emissions for only a few years at a staggering cost.

COOL IT serves as a counterpoint to the alarmism and denial that have characterized the climate debate for too long.

 

 

 

Global Warming Effects

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Many poo poo the idea that we are likely to adapt fairly easily to global warming changes because they are so tiny and take place over such a long period.     However I have seen very few well reasoned discussions of this topic – most true believers simply dismiss it out of hand and most global warming skeptics can’t even see the obvious warming trends.

At first glance it would seem we really don’t have much to worry about.   The earth has warmed less than a degree in the last 100 years, and even if that rate accelerates we are talking about tiny fractions of a degree every year.   Every day we and other animals adapt easily to temperature changes of 30 degrees and more.     Of course this type of daily change is not the same as gradual long term change, but it’s not clear to me why we can expect all hell to break loose as a result of very gradual temperature increases of fractions of degrees.

Here’s a good starting point for what I hope will eventually be a case by case examination of the negative potential consequences of warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming

Google’s 10 to the 10th project winners – spawning innovative solutions.

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Google’s  Project 10 to the 10th gathered 150,000 ideas and filtered them to five great ideas listed below.  Each will receive huge funding from Google:

Idea: Make educational content available online for free

The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides high-quality, free education to anyone, anywhere via an online library of more than 1,600 teaching videos. We are providing $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate their core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages.

Enhance science and engineering education

FIRST is a non-profit organization that promotes science and math education around the world through team competition. Its mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by giving them real world experience working with professional engineers and scientists. We are providing $3 million to develop and jump start new student-driven robotics team fundraising programs that will empower more student teams to participate in FIRST

Make government more transparent

Project funded: Public.Resource.Org is a non-profit organization focused on enabling online access to public government documents in the United States. We are providing $2 million to Public.Resource.Org to support the Law.Gov initiative, which aims to make all primary legal materials in the United States available to all.

Drive innovation in public transport

Project funded: Shweeb is a concept for short to medium distance, urban personal transport, using human-powered vehicles on a monorail. We are providing $1 million to fund research and development to test Shweeb’s technology for an urban setting

Provide quality education to African students

Project funded: The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is a center for math and science education and research in Cape Town, South Africa. AIMS’ primary focus is a one-year bridge program for recent university graduates that helps build skills and knowledge prior to Masters and PhD study. We are providing $2 million to fund the opening of additional AIMS centers to promote graduate level math and science study in Africa.

http://www.project10tothe100.com/

THANKS GOOGLE!

————    Joe rambles on —————-

I love the innovative spirit in contests and project like these, and also believe funding from deep pockets like Google is critical because I think in general innovations …. fail…. even in the for profit sector.     However in that sector we reward success hugely, so we get a fair number of entrepreneurial “players” who are looking to win the innovation lottery, and these players tend to spin out a few good ideas among mostly bad ones.

The current USA system tends to dramatically reward success and ruthlessly kill commercial failure, which is probably a good approach to optimize business success.  A common mistake by those who argue that “innovation is golden” is to only look at the few innovative projects that have had huge success  (Apple Computer, Google, etc) and ignore the *thousands* of failed innovations, most of which most of us never hear about.      One of the big lessons that should have been learned from the internet and real estate bubbles is that innovation does NOT foster success – it simply fosters new ideas.     Most internet companies that were spawned during the bubble have failed where a few like Google have become global economic powerhouses.

But as usual I digress.   THANKS Google for helping to spawn new ideas to do good.   That’s cool.

Global Warming – what’s to come?

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Today’s report on the IPCC “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” suggests that although the science is now clear, the politics are getting in the way of the credibility of the IPCC and climate science in general.   Unfortunately in my view we are not debating the important items about warming, which relate not so much to the science (that proves there is warming and suggests strongly that it’s caused by humans), but relate to whether we can do anything about this and how dangerous the warming will be for humanity.    In my view there is little to do now regardless of how dangerous the warming is to humanity, but it’s also unlikely the dangers are anything like they have been advertised by many in the activist community.

So I’m hoping to explore each of the following talking points in the coming months:

Climate change Impacts from NATURE CONSERVANCY:

It should be clear to everybody that the earth has warmed a bit over the past century – most scientists believe about  0.8 degrees.     It’s also *fairly* clear now that humans are almost certainly responsible for most of that warming, although there is more intelligent criticism of that idea than many believe   (climateaudit.org is the best source for the “smart skeptic” POV).

But far more relevant that those two issues are the following two issues:

1.   How will this affect us?

2.  What can we do about warming?

…. to be continued …

Does your Storytelling Trump the Truth?

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One of the greatest confusions of my life has been watching otherwise very sharp folks descend into a sort of silly crazed madness – or at least incoherency – with respect to complex topics like politics, economy, global warming, etc.

AT THE VERY LEAST a thinking person should realize that we generally don’t have enough data or enough experiments to draw firm and certain conclusions about most complex topics, yet most of us seem to want to do exactly that.     I like to think I’m open minded about most things and generally happy to entertain even the most skeptical views of ideas I hold dear, but I’m sure I fall into this incoherency sometimes too.   However I try to insist to myself that I’m going to let the facts drive my conclusion rather than create stories and then fit in only those facts that support them.

Happily I think I …. finally …. understand why smart people can believe such dumb things, or support their views so strongly without regard to a reasoned analysis of all the information.

Storytelling trumps the truth !

It is not clear to me why we humans are so enamored with stories as opposed to data analysis, but clearly we have a huge preference for the storybook versions of things.     This is fun and entertaining when it comes to films, theater, music, and reading stories to your kids.    Unfortunately our storytelling obsession often gets in the way of good science, politics, and economics, all of which are best driven by cold hard facts and cool, rational interpretations of that data.

The storytelling obsession is SO powerful in fact that I often have people argue with me over something that is downright totally obvious if you view it rationally for even a moment.    It’s the idea that we should all work very strongly against politically motivated spending patterns and try to prioritize spending so we spend where it does the most good.    Most people will initially agree with this, but as soon as you say, for example, that we should take money AWAY from keeping comatose folks alive and put that money towards prenatal care in the Bronx (or, heaven forbid, Africa!),  many people do the descent into irrationality and say things like “well, what if it’s your friend who is in a coma?”.      If you say we should cut the defense budget they say (irrationally) “But how will we protect ourselves”, as if spending and protection obviously go hand in hand.      Stories allow us to spin and bend the data and analysis to our own agendas, and this is not a healthy process.

Many will relate personal stories or create stories to describe scenarios where – in some limited set of circumstances – they would have been hurt by a system that did not prioritize things in their way.    OF COURSE we will all have times when a rational system does not meet our needs!    This happens all the time.    But political / storytelling  spending – which is now rampant – will in all cases virtually guarantee we have suboptimal allocation of resources.

The answer is that a rational person recognizes that we’re all in this together and we need more rational rules about spending and we’ll all need to live with (or die by) those rules.    Sure there can be processes for exceptions to the general rules, but it’s simply not rational to suggest, as many do, that “we should always spend all the money in the world to save every single person”.

I think see these storytelling effects best on the far left and right of issues.    These can be political where President Obama is portrayed as a conservative corporate stooge by the incoherent left and a communist non-citizen by the incoherent right.   Neither view lines up with any but a delusional view of reality, yet both are fairly popular (and incompatible) ideas.

On a global scale we see religious fanatics use storytelling to weave their madness and bring continued instability to many regions.     I’d argue that a major challenge for many nations is to abandon leaders who are primarily charismatic storytellers in favor of resolute and analytical problem solvers.    Ideally you’ll find people who are both and in my opinion Obama may fit that bill if he can extricate himself from old school Democratic party economic delusions.

Cost Benefit Analysis and the Environment

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One of the most interesting topics right now is how to allocate risks and costs with respect to environmental problems like climate change.    I’m having an email discussion with my good pal John and thought I’d bring some of that online for others to comment:

RE:  Cost Benefit Analysis and Environment:

John’s:  It is very easy to distort their definitions towards a point of view rather than towards something necessarily valid.  Not that cost/benefit is never useful.  It is very useful when the costs and benefits are relatively simple to define.  Unfortunately costs from environmental degradation and benefits from efforts to change behavior are very difficult to delineate.  In the end through the early environmental movement persistence and intelligent thinking about clean water and air prevailed over those who used cost/benefit analysis.

Joe:  Very good points except I’m not at all convinced about your last sentence.   I used to agree with that but (without enough research) I’d say we needed cost benefits and failed to do them, leading to massive spending or bans on things that had little impact on the overall quality or simply shifted industrial damages to poor countries.   I’ve lost a LOT of respect for mainstream US environmentalism because I think it is not a global perspective and it’s mostly emotional rather than analytical, leading to bizarre policy and spending recommendations that don’t line up with long term planning and well being. Kyoto – now partially discredited even in environmental camps as an ineffective and bad approach – is an excellent example of how emotion drives policy.

Although there is enough right wing froth to confuse the analysis, another example of emotion trumping reason seems to be the Silent Spring / DDT ban which as far as I can tell will eventually be seen as one of the greatest and catastrophic (in terms of lives lost) errors of environmental thinking – though it would be very hard to model/evaluate the damages to ecosystem if we’d kept spraying.  Still, the facts suggest we had a moral imperative to keep using DDT which would have saved *tens of millions* who have since died from Malaria.   If those had been US kids there is NO WAY the ban would have stuck.
The same imperative – I would argue – that should focus us on malaria and malnutrition while we should largely ignore climate change.
You are certainly right about Lomborg being a lightning rod for controversy, but I’d encourage you to look at his TED talk or other writings.   I’d suggest he’s a very clear thinker, pilloried unfairly by the vested interests of an increasingly entrenched climate and environmental bureacracy.    It’s not logical to think that the public sector is above all economic and political influences while the private sector is a prisoner to them.  Both are compromised, which is why the clearest voices come from people like Lomborg who have no dog in the fight other than “optimizing human experience”.   We can disagree about how to optimize things, but I want to hear more from people who have no stake in how we allocate resources.   That leaves out industry scientists …. and NASA as well, leaving us with thin pickings.    Still, I’d argue strongly – very strongly – that the best policy recommendations are coming from the economists who are looking at both costs and benefits.

Comments very welcome!