My supervisors are so distinguished that they now exist in cartoon form! If that’s not the mark of a successful science communicator, I’m not sure what is.
Here is Katrin:
And here is Matt:
A former supervisor of mine also got a cartoon:
There are 97 cartoons like this over at Skeptical Science, a site which is quickly becoming a force of nature. This campaign reached millions of people through Twitter alone, and was even retweeted by President Obama.
ClimateSight 
Nice, those are 3 good quotes too!
97 hours of the world’s leading climate scientists telling us what we already know, and not one second on what we need to know. How about 97 hours on what we must do about Climate Change?
We can’t pump all that carbon into the atmosphere without something eventually happening.
We may disagree about exactly what will happen (heating Vs cooling), but for sure, something is going to happen.
And if we don’t know exactly how bad this “something” is going to be, doesn’t it make sense to stop pumping all that carbon into our air?
It’s a bit like kicking a dog. You know it’s going to do something in response to your unwelcome kicking, but you have absolutely no idea what it will be. So why do it.
Politicians and those controlling the mega wealth are the only ones who can implement appropriate action, but they won’t. Their agendas and other interests lure them away from listening to advice from the experts.
This cartoon looks at that aspect . . . .
Cheers
Mick
I wanna know where your cartoon is, Kate! :)
Our big footprint: http://www.wunderground.com/news/anthropocene-epoch-20141017
Thousands worry about Climate Change with the potential to kill millions, while billions worry about Ebola with the potential to kill thousands.
Liar’s Math
I was curious about the Canadian Government’s take on the impact of GreenHouse Gas emissions on future mean temperature and ocean level rises. So I visited this official website http://climatechange.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=4FE85A4C-1 In the article I learned that “The 2013 Canada’s Emissions Trends report estimates that, as a result of the combined efforts of federal, provincial and territorial governments, consumers and businesses, GHG emissions in 2020 will be 734 megatonnes (Mt). This is 128 Mt lower than where emissions would be in 2020 if no action were taken to reduce GHGs since 2005.” Nowhere in this article did I find any mention of mitigating GHG emissions associated with Oil Sands.
The more I studied this article the more confused I became, so I visited this unofficial website, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/14/canada-carbon-emissions-2030-tar-sands, which I believe may be more reputable.
The first paragraph states, “Tar sands expected to help drive 38% increase in emissions, Harper government admits in submission to the UN. Canada’s carbon emissions will soar 38% by 2030 mainly due to expanding tar sands projects, according to the government’s own projections.”
And the following paragraph from this website is most alarming, “Canada is likely under-reporting its emissions. An investigation in 2013 found that Canada’s reported emissions from its natural gas sector, the world’s third largest, could be missing as much as 212Mt in 2011 alone.” That omission, if correct, would be nearly 1.7 times the government’s projected GHG emissions reduction by 2020.
Then I read the following statements from a former Harper government appointee:
“The Canadian government has never attempted to implement the policies or slow the rapid expansion of the tar sands that could have enabled Canada to meet its 2020 target, said Mark Jaccard, an energy economist at Canada’s Simon Frasier University and former Harper government appointee.
“‘Now it’s too late. The government is not telling the truth to Canadians about the climate impacts of its energy policies,’ Jaccard told the Guardian. ‘We in Canada are living an Orwellian nightmare when it comes to our government and climate.'”
There it is. I seems that the Canadian Government may be lying to its own citizens and the entire world. According to this report from Canadian oil sands producers, http://www.capp.ca/forecast/Pages/default.aspx:
“Canadian oil production is projected to grow steadily by an annual average of four per cent or 175,000 barrels per day over the period to 2030 as companies continue to develop the oil sands in response to strong demand indications from North American and global energy markets.
“According to CAPP’s 2014 Crude Oil Forecast, Markets and Transportation, total Canadian crude oil production will increase to 6.4 million barrels per day by 2030 from 3.5 million barrels per day in 2013.”
It is hard to find an honest number for the Mt of GHG emissions associated with oil sands production in 2013, but we can expect a nearly doubling of the Mt of GHG emissions associated with oil sands production by 2030. Since it has been stated that current oil sands production generates about 8% of Canada’s GHG emissions, that number could be 20-40% of total GHG emissions by 2030, assuming we can believe claims that various other sources of GHG emissions will be significantly reduced by then.
I think a caricature of Kaitlin for 9 September 2015 is definitely on the cards…
I’m intrigued: what’s special about 09Sep2015?
Death by Ebola is Real, but Death by Climate Change is Not.
World production of coal has increased from 4677 Mt in 1990 to about 7823 Mt in 2013: http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/ Americans ship dirty coal to other countries so we don’t have to take responsibility for its impact on the world: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/not-my-backyard-us-sending-dirty-coal-abroad. Peak Oil Theory spells the end of cleaner oil and natural gas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil, so the world will have to breathe even more of our dirty coal pollutants. Unfortunately Fracking has put an end to the Peak Oil Theory: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2013/07/16/as-fracking-rises-peak-oil-theory-slowly-dies/, so the Big Energy Companies will have decades more time to extract that second half of cleaner oil and natural gas. But Fracking-Induced Methane Leaks are wiping out any benefits that cleaner oil and natural gas may have provided over dirty coal: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/10/22/3582904/methane-leaks-climate-benefit-fracking/ However, these leaks don’t bother Big Energy Companies, because world demand is steadily rising and profits are soaring: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption. Unfortunately, known renewable energy resources will never meet rising energy demand http://www.withouthotair.com/ without some remarkable technological breakthroughs that don’t seem anytime eminent. We should all be terrified because climatologists are saying that the world is close to a critical tipping point where unpredictable runaway heating and rising sea levels have the potential to displace and kill hundreds of millions or even billions of people. But instead we are terrified of ebola. The problem is that ebola will kill us, but climate change will not. Even though the probability may be substantial that climate change will kill hundreds of millions or even billions of people in the future, climate change will not kill us, we who could make a difference now. Because climate change will kill only those who haven’t even been born, those we don’t even know, then we may justifiably devote our worries to death by ebola, which is really real.