John Cook, ABC Religion and Ethics, Nov 17 2011
In a much publicised recent speech, Cardinal George Pell strongly endorsed the importance of evidence in public debate. He argues that “the debates about anthropogenic global warming can only be conducted by the accurate recognition and interpretation of scientific evidence.”
It would be hard to find anyone who would disagree with his sentiment – a proper understanding of climate must be built on a foundation of empirical observations. There’s just one problem: Cardinal Pell fails to practise what he preaches.
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While some ecologists worry about whether or not life can evolve fast enough to keep up with the current rate of rapid anthropogenic climate change, another ‘evolutionary’ event is in progress. Prof John Abraham has updated a graph from a few years ago which shows an upward trend in climate skeptic Dr John Christy‘s published conclusions about the rate of climate change. Like global temperature itself, the rate of change in average global temperature that Dr Christy has been reporting appears to be increasing.
‘Evolution’ or just a slow learner?
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Shawn Lawrence Otto, Huffington Post, 11/1/11
A hearing today has implications for academic freedom across the country. A Virginia judge grantedclimate scientist Michael Mann the right to intervene on his own behalf in a lawsuit filed by a climate change denial group seeking to get his private papers and emails from the University of Virginia. While this is an important victory for American-style freedom and privacy, its background is a story of just the opposite – attempts at authoritarian repression of science for political purposes.
In 2010 newly-elected Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a climate change denier, sued the University of Virginia to get Mann’s private papers. Cuccinelli wanted to sift through them in the wake of “climategate” to see if he could find anything he could spin into a case under the state’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, arguing that while an employee of UVA, Mann’s work on climate change may have used public money to perpetrate a fraud.
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I thought these responses to the BEST study from the leading experts are worth posting (comments collected by our friends at the UK Science Media Centre). A far cry from the response of ideologues such as Anthony Watts and Andrew Bolt:
Prof Sir John Beddington, Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government, said:
“Clearly this study needs peer review, but if correct it is pleasing to hear that this new analysis conforms with US work at NASA and NOAA and that of Phil Jones and his colleagues at the UK Hadley Center-UEA Climatic Research Unit. This work adds to the evidence about how climate change is
Others have also commented:
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Global warming is real, according to a major study released today. Despite a issues raised by climate denialists, the Berkeley Earth’s Surface Temperatures study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world temperature of approximately 1°C since 1950.
Professor Richard A Muller, who led the study, is UC Berkeley physicist, and long-time climate skeptic has publicly admitted that he was wrong about the IPCC and the evidence for global warming. See press release here. One wonders why Muller was motivated to repeat what the IPCC has been doing that much greater scales of rigor. Whatever the reasons, the conclusions that Muller has come to has thrown a ‘cat among the pigeons’ with respect to climate deniers like Anthony Watts and Fred Singer.
UPDATE: Here is Kelly Rigg in the Huffington Post - is climate denial unraveling?
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As a result of an extensive research and monitoring program funded by the Queensland and Australian Governments over the last 5 years a greatly better understanding of the risks to Great Barrier Reef ecosystems from pesticide residues is now available and in the process of being published in the scientific literature. Most of the papers are or will be published in special issues of Marine Pollution Bulletin and Agriculture Ecosystems and the Environment. Some of the MPB papers are already published online and the rest from both issues will follow over the next few months. While the complete set is still uncertain (due to reviewing still in progress) the following are already out:
AFP: September 11, 2011
PARIS — The area covered by Arctic sea ice reached it lowest point this week since the start of satellite observations in 1972, German researchers announced on Saturday.
“The extent of the Arctic sea ice has reached on September 8, with 4.240 million square kilometres (1.637 million square miles), a new historic minimum,” the University of Bremen’s Institute of Environmental Physics said in a press release.
The new mark was about half-a-percent under the previous record low set in September 2007, it said.
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AUCKLAND (AFP) – Pacific leaders identified climate change as the greatest threat to the region, ordering officials to start work on plans to help people forced to relocate by rising sea levels.
The 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum on Thursday said the impact of climate change was already apparent in countries such as Kiribati, where some villagers have had to abandon their homes as the seas rise, and finance was needed to help them.
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Drowning out the truth about the Great Barrier Reef
The Conversation. Aug 30, 2011. MEDIA & DEMOCRACY, Click here to get a copy of this article to republish.
MEDIA & DEMOCRACY – Ove Hoegh-Guldberg dives into the media’s coverage of an Australian icon’s future.
One of the most straightforward climate change storylines is the link between global warming and coral reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef.
When our reef waters get too warm, corals sicken (bleach), often causing disease and death. And when the corals go, many of the other organisms go with them. At the current rate of ocean warming, we will soon exceed the critical temperature at which this happens every year, causing the Great Barrier Reef to rapidly degrade.
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I found this post by Jim Dipeso (shown), from almost a year ago (October 2010). It reminds us that the carbon tax is not a left-leaning proposition, and in fact is much more consistent with conservative ideology. Here in Australia, we have it quite back-to-front in a spectacular way. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott from our conservative Liberal National Party coalition supports direct action (Government intervention), while Prime Minister Julia Gillard is pushing a carbon tax, which depends on the dynamics of business markets to solve the problem. Maybe they should elect for a re-start, shake hands and swap policies. It is too confusing otherwise!
There is what Jim Dipeso said on a Republican website in the United States:
As a climate change activist, climatologist Jim Hansen takes his activism a step beyond where most would be willing to go.
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