Category Archives: Musings

Priorities

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I’m sick of all the politics surrounding climate science.

I wish it could go back to just being science, the way it was in the 1970s, without all these people trying to sabotage it for us. I wish we could concentrate on the joy and fascination we feel when we learn about the climate system, without having to deal with hate mail and quotes taken out of context.

I’m tired of the game of Broken Telephone in science journalism, the game that somehow always allows Fox News to make claims like “melting Arctic sea ice isn’t caused by warming temperatures”. I’m tired of the outright falsehoods that are permitted to circulate around the world, in respected publications, without consequences.

I’m tired of unnecessary investigations into the integrity of climatology researchers and organizations. I’m tired of the accusations of “whitewash” when these investigations invariably come up clear. I’m tired of scientists being portrayed as frauds if they don’t achieve a 100% success rate in their projections.

I’m tired of the politicians that attempt to subject innocent scientists to criminal prosecution. They’re so unwilling to accept the reality of anthropogenic global climate change that they think scientific fraud on an unprecedented scale is more likely than well-established properties of physics playing out as expected. It frightens and astounds me that people with such an upside-down understanding of the scientific process hold immense power in the American government.

I first became interested in climate science because of the science, not because of all the politics surrounding it. The earliest thing I can remember sparking my interest is learning about the different isotopes of oxygen, and how they can be used to reconstruct temperature.

These days, however, it’s nearly impossible to learn about climate science without running into silly arguments and widespread misconceptions and stubborn denialism. I started writing this blog so that I would have an outlet to keep myself sane as I waded through all the muddle. As time went on, an element of public education developed, along with priceless learning opportunities and collaboration. This blog has grown to so much more than I ever anticipated.

I don’t really have the heart to read Naomi Oreskes’ new book quite yet, or to re-read Climate Cover-Up, or to scroll down to the comment section when CBC publishes online articles about climate change. I know what a dire situation we are in, not only ecologically and climatologically, but also socially – in terms of public understanding and science communication. I know what a mess we’re in, and I don’t need reminding. I don’t know how we’re going to get out of the mess, but I try to do my part by continuing to pour my sociological musings into this sanity-inducing and morale-raising outlet.

I just want to work my way through David Archer’s book, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, and learn how to use all the atmospheric science equations within it. I want to download papers from Nature and Science and read them on the bus. I want to keep a close eye on the “Advanced” versions of Skeptical Science rebuttals, because isn’t it just amazing that we have a simple logarithmic equation for the relationship between radiative forcing and atmospheric CO2 concentration?

Many people might find it strange that I see straight science as a break, some sort of retreat from that which is more difficult to stomach. But then, we’re in a strange situation here.

The Best Cartoons Ever

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Over the past year, I have seen far too many political cartoons on the editorial pages of newspapers accusing climate scientists of fraud. It amazes me what is allowed to be published without evidence in respected media publications.

However, there are still some great cartoons about climate change, sans libel. Here are two of my favourite, that I haven’t seen featured on any other blogs.

From Lee Judge of Cartoonist Group:

From Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle:

Please comment with your thoughts on these cartoons, and include your favourites! If you would like them embedded directly in the comment (img tags require administrator rights, as Colin Reynolds discovered) include the link and I’ll embed it for you.

A Quick Poll

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I really enjoy books about climate change. When you’re as new to the subject as I am, they’re a great way to catch up on what is now common knowledge in the climate science community, and thus hasn’t been discussed recently in the peer-reviewed literature. I suppose I could also read the entire IPCC report to catch up, but that’s a little dry, to say the least.

Of course, this is assuming that the books actually reflect the peer-reviewed literature. Scientists in the field, like Andrew Weaver, Stephen Schneider, and Henry Pollack, write many of the popular books on climate change, so they’re pretty good about citing their sources. However, while tracking these down at the bookstore, one often encounters a lot of “Big Green and Global Warming Hysteria will Destroy our Freedoms and Create a Communist World Government!” publications.

All in all, though, I love this area of publishing. I frequently come out of the library with most of their climate science section under my arm, and now I’m frantically trying to finish reading before they realize how many times I’ve renewed some of the books. Exams got in the way of reading….

Here’s a quick poll – what’s your favourite book on climate change or climate science? Leave your responses in the comments, I’d love to read them.

I think I would place The Discovery of Global Warming, by Spencer Weart, at the top of my list – read my recent review of it here. It’s basic enough to appeal to people new to the issue, while detailed and comprehensive enough for scientists and long-time enthusiasts to enjoy. It contains as much information as a textbook, but is written like a compelling novel. Highly recommended to all.

If We Were Wrong

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What if we were wrong about this whole climate change thing? What if global warming was actually nonexistent/natural/a global conspiracy?

I, for one, would be thrilled.

Yes, there would be humiliation, and all the effort we have spent on communication would be a waste, but that would be a small price to pay. For two reasons, being wrong about this would be so worth it.

Firstly, can you imagine having this weight off our shoulders? Can you imagine not having it wiggling its way into every thought you have about the future? I want to have kids one day….but what state will the world economy be in by then? I want to travel to the Amazon….but how many of its species will be lost by the time I get there? And all because we were too lazy, around the turn of the century, to do anything to stop it.

We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard, and too damned cheap.

-Kurt Vonnegut

Secondly, what an incredible scientific opportunity it would be for this problem not to exist. I think that we can agree that a great deal of climatological theory and methods would have to be wrong for climate change to be proven natural/nonexistent/a global conspiracy. Anthropogenic global warming fits perfectly with our understanding of the climate system, and if it were proven wrong, a huge hole would be blown in this understanding.

We would have to rebuild that hole. We would have to redo all kinds of science. We would have to rediscover new ways of doing everything. How amazing would that be? What kind of an opportunity would a scientist rather have?

Summer Plans

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Apologies for not posting last week. I am right in the middle of high school graduation events so things have been a little crazy.

I start my B.Sc in the fall, and am hoping to continue posting at least once a week. However, I want to write as much as possible this summer, in case university impedes my frequency of posting next year.

I want to continue my series of basic climate science articles – no, I haven’t forgotten about it! I have a list of several dozen topics to cover, becoming more complex once I get over the basic explanation of climate forcings. I feel that radiative balance and the idea of forcings is really at the heart of understanding climate change. Just like people pushing on a box, and net force leading to net acceleration, our activities are pushing on the climate – and this net forcing will lead to net global warming.

I am also working my way through a stack of books about climate change, pretty much everything I could get my hands on. I have renewed some of them 4 times from the library already, which I feel sort of guilty about, so I plan to steam through that reading this summer. As always, I will review my favourites here.

Of course, sociological musings will be posted whenever inspiration strikes. The incredible hullabaloo that resulted from Whatevergate seems to have subsided, although much damage has gone unrepaired. It will be interesting to watch what happens to public sentiment towards climate change in the coming months. Preliminary signs are more optimistic than I expected, but further communication of accurate science is desperately needed.

Infinite thanks for all your support. Here’s to a productive and relaxing summer for everyone.

The Best Satire Ever

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A few days ago we covered analogies, and Dan Olner pointed me to a great one that has sparked this post.

It was written as an April Fools’ on RealClimate, and reads in part:

A “consensus view” amongst climate scientists holds that the Northern Hemisphere will be warming this month, as spring is coming. This is thought to be due to the Earth’s orbit around the sun and the inclination of the Earth’s axis, tilting the Northern Hemisphere progressively towards the sun throughout March and April and increasing the amount of solar radiation received at northern latitudes.

In a new novel, State of Euphoria, bestselling author Michael Crikey uncovers major flaws in this theory and warns against false hopes for the arrival of spring.

This is not merely fiction: Crikey underpins his thesis with numerous scientific diagrams. He presents measurements from over a dozen weather stations in the Northern Hemisphere where temperatures show a cooling trend in March. He further cites scientific results which show that in some places, snow and ice have increased in the past weeks, counter to climatologists’ claims that they should be melting away in the spring sun. He further argues that even the average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere has not increased steadily; during one week of March, it showed a slight cooling despite the increase in solar radiation.

“This casts a grave shadow of doubt on the theory of the seasons”, says Crikey. “Consensus science is not good science.” He says we should not trust computer models projecting that June will be much warmer than March in most of the Northern Hemisphere. “These models cannot even predict the weather in two weeks time – why should we believe what they say about temperatures in two months?” He also says that only six months ago, scientists were predicting a cooling.

This wasn’t the only time that RC wrote a satirical post for April Fools’ Day. One of their most popular posts is the Sheep Albedo Feedback:

The hypothesis begins with the simple observation that most sheep are white, and therefore have a higher albedo than the land on which they typically graze. This effect is confirmed by the recent Sheep Radiation Budget Experiment. The next step in the chain of logic is to note that the sheep population of New Zealand has plummeted in recent years. The resulting decrease in albedo leads to an increase in absorbed Solar radiation, thus warming the planet…..There is in fact an important destabilizing feedback in the system: as climate gets warmer, there is less demand for wool sweaters and wooly underwear. Hence the sheep population tends to drop, leading to even more warming. In an extreme form, this can lead to a “runaway sheep-albedo feedback.”

The Christian Science Monitor did an April Fools’ article of its own, which never fails to cheer me up, unless I make the mistake of reading the comments below it. Anyway, it begins:

In an unprecedented move Wednesday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee rescinded the Peace Prize it awarded in 2007 to former US vice president Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, amid overwhelming evidence that global warming is an elaborate hoax cooked up by Mr. Gore.

A press release from the committee quotes a chagrined Rajendra Pachauri, the UN climate panel’s chair, who claims that he was the victim of a “cunning deception spanning decades”:

“I am deeply ashamed for having unwittingly perpetuated such a massive fraud on the governments of the world,” said Mr. Pachauri.

“It turns out that all that data from satellites and radiosondes, surface temperature readings, borehole analysis, measurements of rising sea levels, melting glaciers and permafrost, phenological data, and proxy reconstructions of paleoclimatic conditions were all fabricated out of thin air by my former friend, Al Gore. Now that I think about it, I suppose that we should have instituted some sort of peer-review process before publishing such alarming conclusions. Once again, I’m very sorry.”

If we’re going to talk about satire, we can’t forget DenialDepot, a great example of Poe’s Law. The “About” tab on the home page reads:

I believe that one day all science will be done on blogs because we bloggers are natural skeptics, disbelieving the mainstream and accepting the possibility of any alternative idea.

We stand unimpressed by “textbooks”, “peer review journals” and so-called “facts”. There are no facts, just dissenting opinion. We are infinitely small compared to nature and can’t grasp anything as certain as a fact.

Nothing is settled and we should question everything. The debate is NOT over Gore! When so-called “experts” in their “peer reviewed journals” say one thing, we dare the impossible and find imaginative ways to believe something else entirely.

Be sure to check out the posts on snowstorms, exponentials, the Oregon Petition, and the new theory of climate.

Anything I’ve left out? Share your favourite climate change satire in the comments below.

The Best Analogies Ever

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An analogy is a powerful tool in science communication. Here are two of my favourites to do with climate change.

The first is of my own creation (although it isn’t too original) and came about after I had presented to high school students a few times. As anyone taking high school physics learns pretty quickly, when using the formula F=ma, to find the net acceleration (the actual, observable result) you must always use the net force. If three people are pushing a box three different directions, you can’t just take one person into account. You have to look at all of them to see which way the box will move, and how fast.

Similarly, to analyze observed climate change, you can’t just take one forcing into account. You can’t only look at greenhouse gases and expect that they will track perfectly with the global temperature. You have to look at what the sun is doing, what aerosol levels are doing, where the ENSO cycle is. Climate is influenced by a combination of factors, and it will never track perfectly with any one. But if only one is changing significantly, and the others are staying pretty much steady, it’s obvious which way the box is going to move.

I found the second analogy in David Archer’s book Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast. I’m only two pages in and already I found something that I want to share here!

[The energy budget/climate equilibrium] is analogous to a sink with water flowing in from a faucet. The faucet fills the sink at some constant rate, while outflow down the drain depends on the water level in the sink. The sink fills up until water drains out as fast as it comes in.

It is possible to change the average temperature of the Earth by altering the energy flow either coming in or going out. In our sink, one way to raise the water level is to turn up the faucet and wait a few minutes. The water will rise until it finds a new equilibrium water depth. We can also alter the water level by partly constricting the drain. Egg shells and orange peels work well for this purpose. If the drain is partly obstructed, the equilibrium water level will rise.”

Brilliant, no? I think that Greg Craven had a similar analogy (the “bathtub”) in his book.

What are your favourite analogies – of your own creation or that you heard elsewhere? Share them in the comments below.

Sea Turtles and Kids

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A true story. I found it incredibly inspiring, so I wanted to share it with all of you.

A seven-year-old girl was doing a school project on sea turtles, and found out something interesting – that the sex of a fertilized egg depends largely on the temperature in which it is laid. Climate change, therefore, could lead to too many female sea turtles and not enough males, which could further endanger the species. I did a bit of research on this myself (here’s a review paper on the subject) and am absolutely amazed that a seven-year-old was able to grasp something of this complexity.

She told her parents about it that night, and her dad’s reaction confused her. He said that he didn’t believe this theory – that he didn’t think there was any warming and so sea turtles would be just fine.

So the girl went back to school a little confused, and asked her teacher about it, and possibly did some more research, but the gist of the story is that she kept the part about climate change in her sea turtle project. And she presented it to her parents when she was done.

It gives me hope that, even in this time of rampant miscommunication and misconceptions about climate science, there are still people who know how to assess credibility. And some of them are only seven.

A Good Discussion Starter

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How did you become interested in the issue of climate change? What sparked your interest, and why?

For me, it was purely a coincidence. I wanted to get involved in school groups and so I joined the environmental club. I liked a lot of the people in it, and found the discussions very interesting.

Around the same time, my friends and I enjoyed watching the vlogbrothers’ YouTube channel, mostly because they had the same nerdy sense of humour as us. One of the two brothers, Hank Green, ran an environmental technology website called EcoGeek as his day job.

So I was sifting through the archives of EcoGeek and stumbled upon a post about Greg Craven’s Manpollo Project. I watched the embedded first video and was completely hooked. This was exactly the kind of thing I loved – critical thinking, thoughtful discussion with a purpose, lots of science and graphs.

When I caught the flu a few months later, I watched the entire six-hour series over the course of a day. From that point, there was no turning back – I began to research climate change almost every day. I owe my interest/obsession in this topic largely to Greg Craven, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. It’s amazing the ripples one person can make!

What sparked your interest? I’d love to read about it in the comments.

Staying Sane

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A long time ago, I learned to turn off the emotional half of my brain – can’t remember whether it’s right or left – when I read studies about climate change. I look at model results and projections from a purely analytical standpoint. I register how awful the scenarios are, but I don’t let it all the way in. I don’t let myself really think about the consequences. Instead, I think about how cool it is that we can study climate in this way, and how powerful math can be, so I find it quite easy to stay positive and not go completely insane.

I find this much more difficult when I read about climate change communication or policy. I think the analytical, math-loving side of my brain doesn’t have anything to do, so the full weight of the issue falls on the emotional half, and I go sort of nuts.

Take, for example, the bill that’s close to passing through the South Dakota government, requiring schools to teach climate change in a “balanced” fashion, framing it as a “largely speculative theory” that is disproven by astrology (?) Look at how US Senator James Inhofe, former Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, has decided to criminally investigate 17 climate scientists with no evidence of criminal activity. Or how misconceptions spread by several British journalists have even made it into the Globe and Mail. The only misinformation that doesn’t make me angry anymore is the writing of the Heartland Institute and S. Fred Singer, because it’s so ridiculous that it seems like satire, even if it’s intended to be serious.

How do you stand it? How do you stay sane? How do you walk around all day without feeling the heavy weight of the world’s future, tossed aside by people who won’t be around to care?

I find it easy to stay happy when I only look at the scientific side of this issue. But as public communication is becoming absolutely vital for climate scientists, we can’t submerge ourselves in math anymore. Just look at how many editorials Nature has written lately on the abysmal state of climate change journalism. Even the peer-reviewed literature can’t stay separate from public communication and policy.

Most of you have been at it longer than I have. How do you cope? We’re going to need to figure it out, because our sanity is needed now more than ever.