A Fun Thing to Do This Halloween

If any trick-or-treaters show up with these costumes, just do like Granny...


Image source: http://www.indystar.com/opinion/varvel/

Oh, man, do I got a million of 'em, or what? Happy Halloween, everyone!

The Close 2014 Senate Races and Climate Change

On Tuesday, November 4, 2014, of the 100 total US Senate seats, 64 will not be contested, and 36 will, 21 of which are presently held by Democrats, and 15 by Republicans. The NY Times and CNN appear to agree that the outcomes for about 24 of these Senate races are all but foregone conclusions, with 10 safely resulting in a Democrat victory (Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia), and 14 Republican (Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming).

If your head is starting to spin a little from parsing those numbers and trying to keep track of the states, don't worry, because the essential takeaway here is that there are about 12 interesting, unpredictable Senate races that could go either way on Tuesday (the NY Times says only 11, but I'm going to throw in West Virginia, anyway...take that, NY Times).

The candidate's stance on climate change could and should be the deciding factor in these tight contests, so let's see who understands the issue and its urgency, and therefore deserves the Senate seat. Based on the position stated outright or implied by preferred policy, the following "thermometer" ratings will be given.



In other words, the candidate gets a red thermometer for being a climate realist, a yellow for being a lukewarmer, and a blue for being a denier.

Alaska - Mark Begich (D), Dan Sullivan (R)

Begich: "You have to broaden the perspective and look at what's the goal here. If the goal is to lower emissions, that's disconnected to most people. If the goal is to save taxpayers' money, now the public has some interest."

Sullivan: "I think the jury’s out on climate change...I think the federal response to climate change should not be what the Obama administration is doing, which is trying to kill energy and low-cost energy, and particularly coal."

Arkansas - Mark Pryor (D), Tom Cotton (R)

Pryor: "A federal cap-and-trade program is perhaps the most significant endeavor undertaken by Congress in over 70 years and must be done with great care."

Cotton: "America has the world’s largest fossil-fuel reserves in the world. I view our fossil fuels as a valuable asset to be used, not an embarrassing liability to be restrained...We must open federal lands and the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to more exploration and production. The oil-and-gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic Ocean, and federal public lands in the West and Alaska are a tremendous untapped source of economic growth...I strongly oppose all forms of a 'cap and trade' schemes...The government shouldn’t subsidize [alternative energy sources], nor should it artificially increase the cost of oil and gas by singling the industry out for tax hikes and regulatory burdens."

Colorado - Mark Udall (D), Cory Gardner (R)

Udall: "Coloradans know that it's time to start planning for our energy future. Nothing less than our national security and economic success depend on it. Reducing our reliance on foreign oil and curbing the effects of climate change have long been priorities of mine, and I'm working in the Senate to create a plan to tackle these important goals. To do so, we will need an all-of-the-above strategy that includes all of our energy sources, with a special emphasis on those that are clean and domestic. That means focusing on everything from renewable energy and energy efficiency to natural gas and safe nuclear power."

Gardner: "I believe that the climate is changing, I disagree to the extent that it's been in the news."

Georgia - Michelle Nunn (D), David Perdue (R)

Nunn: "Georgia is helping lead America towards an economy that benefits from clean energy investment. We have made huge advances in solar power, becoming one of the fastest growing solar energy markets in the country. Georgia’s solar energy companies are investing in our state and helping increase the amount of energy we use from renewable sources.

"Currently $32 billion leaves Georgia each year to pay for petroleum, natural gas, and coal. But when we supply our energy needs from within our own state, the money stays in Georgia, creating jobs and multiplying the benefits throughout our economy.

"I believe that Washington must create the conditions for these clean energy companies to thrive. This means reducing the uncertainty surrounding renewable energy tax incentives and investing in public-private partnerships that advance clean energy research."

Perdue: "Earlier today, the League of Conservation Voters, a liberal environmentalist group endorsed Michelle Nunn. The group is against the construction of the Keystone Pipeline, advocates for such things like Obama’s war on coal, burdensome EPA regulations, and cap-and-trade...Michelle Nunn supports their liberal agenda. Her own jobs plan refuses to address how burdensome regulations on the coal industry will raise energy prices and destroy jobs. Her website says she wants to 'act now' on climate change."

Iowa - Bruce Braley (D), Joni Ernst (R)

Braley: "Just like our parents and grandparents passed on a better planet to us, we have an obligation to protect the environment for our children and grandchildren. That’s why I supported the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), which promotes renewable sources of energy, like wind and solar. It also helps advance alternative transportation fuels, clean electric vehicles, and the smart grid and electricity transmission."

Ernst: "Yes, we do see climates change but I have not seen proven proof that it is entirely man-made. I think we do have cyclic changes in weather, and I think that’s been throughout the course of history."

Kansas - Greg Orman (I), Pat Roberts (R)

Orman: (Kansas Sierra Club Chairwoman Yvonne Cather said she expects Orman is avoiding the subject, as well as the Obama administration's efforts to address climate change with executive action, 'because that's a political hot potato' for many candidates...Loomis similarly suggested that Orman's silence on issues like KXL is strategic, as he aims to pick up voters who have become disillusioned with Roberts as he seeks a fourth Senate term.)

Roberts: "There's no question there's some global warming, but I'm not sure what it means. A lot of this is condescending elitism."

Kentucky - Alison Lundergan Grimes (D), Mitch McConnell (R)

Grimes: "I recognize the reality of climate change and the imperative of addressing its potential consequences...The difference between me and the position of many national Democrats is that I am pro-coal and will lead to develop a long-term strategy that addresses economic and energy demands, as well as climate concerns. I oppose drastic unilateral steps such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax because they fall far short of that standard."

McConnell: "For everybody who thinks it's warming, I can find somebody who thinks it isn't...Even if you conceded the point, which I don't concede, but if you conceded the point, it isn't going to be addressed by one country. So the idea is, we tie our own hands behind our back and others don't."

Louisiana - Mary Landrieu (D), Bill Cassidy (R)

Landrieu: "The President and I have very different views on how to tackle the challenges of climate change. We both want to protect the environment, but I believe that overzealous regulations are harmful to our economy.

"I wish the President today would have instead approved the Keystone Pipeline to create new jobs here at home. And any call to single out the energy industry, including oil and gas, for increased taxes is unwise and counterproductive to economic growth. We should be encouraged that America's emission of CO2 has declined to its lowest level in two decades, and emissions have fallen 13 percent in the last five years alone.

"I am encouraged that the President wants to make coastal communities more resilient to extreme weather by removing counterproductive policies."

Cassidy: "It could just be a shift on the axis."

Michigan - Gary Peters (D), Terri Lynn Land (R)

Peters: "In 2009, I proudly voted for the American Clean Energy and Security Act to invest in renewable energy sources, reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions and lay the groundwork for a clean energy economy. By pursuing clean energy technologies, we'll break our nation's addiction to foreign fossil fuels and create thousands of American jobs. All of us must do our part to fight global climate change and that's why I’ll keep fighting for important legislation like this."

Land: "My #1 concern is Michigan jobs. Climate change is absolutely real but we cannot afford @Peters4Michigan job-killing regulations #MISEN"

New Hampshire - Jeanne Shaheen (D), Scott Brown (R)

Shaheen: "I’ve long believed that we have a moral obligation to address climate change and the time for action is now. By acting quickly, we’ll not only be protecting our environment for future generations but we can also create jobs, grow our economy and reduce our dependence on foreign oil."

Brown: (Rubens acknowledged climate change, while Brown and Smith said 'no' when asked if science has proven climate change is occurring.)

North Carolina - Kay Hagan (D), Thom Tillis (R)

Hagan: "This is a pressing problem that needs to be addressed and too often gets pushed to the backburner...This current path is unsustainable, and we must take steps now to slow and stop the effects of climate change. This is a challenge that will need to be addressed from many different directions."

Tillis: (When asked if climate change is a fact, all four candidates vying to challenge incumbent Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan said no.

The candidates, Greg Brannon, Heather Grant, Mark Harris and Thom Tillis, were asked the question during a debate Tuesday night.)

West Virginia - Natalie Tennant (D), Shelley Moore Capito (R)

Tennant: (Capito’s Democratic opponent for the Senate seat, Natalie Tennant, opposes Obama’s environmental policies that Republicans say amount to a "war on coal." Tennant said she does believe in human-induced climate change.)

Capito: (Capito said she doesn’t "necessarily think the climate is changing," but told reporters afterward she misspoke and does think people contribute to climate change.)

So now that you know the breakdown, get yer butts in gear, and vote on Tuesday! You could be the difference between business as usual and the enactment of policy that will actually reduce our emissions.

Oh, and if you were expecting a similar summary of the House and/or Governor elections, there are waaaaaaayyyy too many, so think again. It may not be much of a life, but I'm gonna spend some of it away from the computer. ;)

Two Year Anniversary of Sandy Making Landfall in the Northeast US

Two years after a unique and powerful storm ravaged the northeastern US coastline, many communities are still assessing the historic levels of damage, waiting on funding assistance, and rebuilding. And emotions are still running high.

Whether or not Governor Christie deserves blame for the pace of the storm clean-up, he most certainly deserves criticism for his ignorant stance on climate change and Sandy.

"‘Cause I don’t think there’s been any proof thus far that Sandy was caused by climate change."

Again, Governor, for the nine millionth time, causing Sandy is a red herring. The issue was and always will be the inarguable intensification of the storm due to our warming planet. Perhaps it'd be good for Christie to watch the Nova documentary from a couple years ago another time (or, more likely, and sadly, for the first time).

"There were parts of Manhattan being impacted 25 feet above sea level."

- Jeff Weber, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

"...as the climate warms, the sea levels will rise. It's already risen around a foot in the last hundred years in the New York area."

- Adam Sobel, Columbia University

Sam Harris, Bill Maher, Ben Affleck, Religion, and...Yup, Climate Change

Right about now, you're probably scratching your head and trying to make all the seemingly unrelated puzzle pieces in the title of this post fit together. Hang in there, it'll all be clear soon (I hope).

To start, even people living under rocks heard about this exchange — troubling and fascinating in equal measure — a couple weeks ago on Bill Maher's Real Time.



It's pretty obvious Sam's near supercomputer ability to instantaneously call forth essential facts about Islam began causing many of Ben's ideological walls, which he probably cherished and thought were rock-solid, to crumble, and the resulting apoplexy almost turned him into his O'Bannion character from Dazed and Confused for real.

The reactionary racism accusation/straw man and the "shifty Jew" analogy were completely obnoxious, infantile, and inappropriate. Islam is not a race; it is a religion...a collection of dated ideals, apocryphal stories, and mostly backward morals which could only have lasted this long in our culture thanks to an extreme dedication on the part of humans to ignoring evidence and dismissing reason. Is someone racist for criticizing Christianity? The password is "no." As he often does, Harris was making an eloquent, reasoned argument along these lines, and Affleck was simply sticking his fingers in his ears and having a tantrum ridiculous enough to make an 8 year-old blanch. Further proof that you are just NOT allowed to criticize religion, not even in a calm, factual, and rational manner, in front of some people.

The shock waves from this titanic television event are still rippling through the blogosphere and Web.

After linking to that SFGate blog post, do I even need to mention once again that you are just not allowed to criticize religion?

A few days after his appearance on Maher's show, Sam was interviewed on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, mostly about the heated debate (not surprisingly, Sam's doing the talk show rounds to sell a book, and his publisher must be doing backflips over all the attention). The entire discussion is worth watching, but I want to focus on one question O'Donnell posed and Harris' response.

Lawrence O'Donnell: "Sam, I think one of the things we are talking about here, uh, uh, uh, or that's involved here is the maturation curves of religions. Christendom, uh, was once a pretty murderous operation."

Sam Harris: "Yeah."

Lawrence O'Donnell: "The Inquisition was all about murdering people for not being, uh, good Christians, and not being convincing Christians after they had, uh, converted. Uh, just conversion wasn't good enough, and so, so, uh, but, but what happened at some point was that Christianity matured out of that thinking, and they matured out of thinking that the penalty for not observing the Sabbath should be death. And so no one is killed anywhere in the world now for not observing the Sabbath. No one is stoned to death for that..."

Sam Harris: "Right."

Lawrence O'Donnell: "...anymore. So, I guess, what, what I'm looking at when I look at, at this situation now, uh, with, uh, this fanatical interpretation of passages of the Quran is when and how will, will that same maturation curve be followed, uh, in Islam?"

Sam Harris: "Well, the first thing to point out is we don't have centuries to wait for this process. It took centuries, as you say, and, and..."

Lawrence O'Donnell: "Yes."

Sam Harris: "...it was based on the collision with science, and secular human rights, and, and secular ethics. Uh, it took a long time. We need, we need to hasten this process through honest conversation."

Let's just skip over the fact that O'Donnell does not seem to understand that religion did not so much "mature" as have its fangs and claws torn out in the West by enlightenments and highly-influential, legally-binding, secular documents like the US Constitution (factors largely lacking in the Middle East), and get right to the essence of what Sam said...

We don't have centuries to wait...collisions with science...hastening the process through honest conversation...

When I heard those words, I couldn't help but think that they may no longer apply to Western religion's greatly attenuated murderous nature, but when it comes to faith's retrograde effect on the urgency of the climate change issue and discussion, they unfortunately are still relevant to the point of being painfully poignant.

Delaware May Shrink 11% by 2100 Due to Sea Level Rise

Delaware, being the 6th most densely populated state in the US, must have some lifestyle appeal going for it, but, let's face it, it ain't very big, and therefore really can't afford to lose any size. Minus a couple, three chicken farms, it might be forced to fill out the forms for becoming a large county in New Jersey or Pennsylvania. Or maybe like Pluto, it would be re-classified as a dwarf state, or something.

All kidding aside, this report from WHYY's excellent radio show, The Pulse, details how Delaware officials are scrambling to protect its relatively meager landmass, its historic neighborhoods, and a critical part of its economy from the effects of climate change, sea level rise (SLR), and stronger storms.

Predictive maps show that most of the [Wilmington neighborhood of Southbridge] would be permanently covered by water if sea levels rise by a meter and a half, the upper limit state officials are preparing for by century's end.

Eleven percent of Delaware's landmass could be inundated by 2100, according to state projections...

"One of the things that we're really trying to make sure that people understand is that sea level rise is not just an issue for people with giant houses along the ocean," said Susan Love, a coastal programs planner for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

Geez, that's strange. I mean, it's almost like Susan Love had a particular group of people with an extremely ignorant take on SLR in mind when she said that.

Nah. Never mind. Must be my imagination.

Unfortunately the Future Looks Even Drier for California

"Roughly three quarters of the locations in the West have posted decreases [in spring snow water equivalent since 1950], and California is no exception...very large decreases in the spring snowpack, you know, complete loss in many areas [by 2070 based on RCP 4.5]."

- Philip Mote, Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Hansen Walks Fine Political Line; Near Liberal Riot toward End o_O

James Hansen's climate change advocacy stems from the inarguable fact that he really does care about present and future generations, plain and simple. Whether or not they agree with him, and whatever ulterior motives they try to attribute to other advocates like Gore and Suzuki in order to change the subject and avoid addressing the real issue, our warming planet, I think deniers can at the very least admit that, when it comes to Hansen, there is no deception whatsoever — not even cards being played tight to the chest — perceived or otherwise. He holds nothing back, and talks straight from his impressive mind and his deep heart, switching between the two fairly effortlessly.

I agree with 99% of what he says in the video below, including this...

"The solution does need to come from the conservative side."

I'm even mostly in agreement with this part of the talk, where he once again touts the benefits of nuclear energy, while laying much of the blame for the off-and-on political moratorium in this country at the feet of liberals.

"Unfortunately, beginning with Jimmy Carter and then Bill Clinton, they terminated research and development on advanced generation nuclear power, which, uh, was a big mistake. And it's, it's hard for liberals to admit that...because we burned India and China's share of the, of the, uh, carbon budget, we should help them with [advanced nuclear] technology. Instead, we've kind of withheld the expertise that the US has in those technologies."

That's a fair point, and I get what he's trying to do here. He is trying to open a door through which conservative deniers, who, by virtue of their own obstinate dismissal of the legitimate science, have been frozen out of the conversation, can re-enter the public exchange, holding their heads up. I'm not so sure how keen they'll be to share nuke tech with China, or even India, but the "blame Carter and Clinton" aspect will have attraction for them, I'm sure. It's a compelling approach, one that regular readers of this blog (all 2 of them) will notice is not exactly praised and championed around these parts very often, but I will admit it does offer some hope of producing concerted political effort on this particular issue (not so much on the larger, root problem of science denial, though). However, it requires Hansen walk a fine line, and continually revitalize reasons why those who accept the scientific consensus still deserve more blame than those who deny it. Personally, I would fail utterly at this balancing act, so I will take a pass and instead continue to bludgeon deniers mercilessly with the truth. And I did notice that Hansen himself slips up a little, and allows a bit of irresolution to bubble to the surface every now and then (emphasis mine)...

"Well, no, the conservatives don't want the government to get bigger. That's what they're afraid of...The truth is the conservatives and the Republicans, the majority of them, do not deny the science...And it turns out what they're afraid of is that this will be used to increase taxes, and to increase regulations, and intrusion of government into people's lives. That's what they're afraid of. That's why they then deny the science."

Now, we can debate the validity of the particular assertions he makes here (i.e.: whether or not the Right really wants less government, or simply wants a bigger, more intrusive government that marches to its own ideological drumbeat) until we are blue in the face (or red...get it?). The point I'm concerned with here, the rather telling bit, is Hansen claims one minute that conservatives do not deny the science, and then in the next breath implies they do deny the science publicly, but their real "behind closed doors" concerns absolve them of any blame for policy inaction. He seems to have an internal inconsistency and conflict...a lingering doubt, if you will...in his own mind, and therefore in the argumentation he is trying to put forth as well, that he needs to work out.

Still, this is not some deceptive tactic on his part. I believe he truly feels this is a helpful stance which will bring about a result we all need and can support: reduced emissions via bipartisan agreement. It's just not always gonna be easy to adhere to and sell, which brings me to the last point I wanna make before finally posting the video...

Sheesh, does the man have patience in surplus, or what?. Watch the somewhat heated exchange his position elicits toward the end of the Q&A session, and how Hansen tries to handle it affably. He's a champ.



Also, check out the YouTube channel which uploaded this video for an...interesting digression into another topic (or many) altogether. :)

Oh, and what is the only bit Steven Goddard, Lord of Cherry-Picking, chose to take from an extensive, informative talk? The one little smidgeon of information that appears to agree with his harebrained denial of climate science, of course. And even then, he screws up Hansen's point royally. Nope, sorry, Little Squeakathon Stevie, Hansen does NOT say, "the methane global warming scam is nothing but BS." Your listening comprehension is nothing but BS.

By the way, it doesn't seem likely that Goddard'll let my comment post. It's still in moderation limbo. Though I suppose he's busy getting schooled by Gavin Schmidt, et al, because he's too dense to understand a warming world may cause the atmosphere to hold more moisture and therefore increase precipitation in some areas, including snow in winter, but cause it to melt sooner/faster in spring.

(Update: The comment was allowed to post. :) We'll see how it goes over. Somehow, in trying to get a screen capture of the comment for my own blog, and trying to submit it over at Goddard's, I managed to include a typo and omit the word "to" before "commenting." Grrrrrrrrrrr. No response to my point about the missing source, however.)

I Decided to Kick the Brainless Hornets' Nest

Steven Goddard likes to accuse NASA of cooking the books just about every five bleeding seconds. He seems determined to turn his blog into the premier source for ass-backward and completely asinine interpretations of NASA's research. No, really, the guy is simply an intellectually-stunted disaster.

I guess if you were feeling extremely generous, you could say he's truly and sincerely devoted to the extirpation of fraud wherever it may be found but just too abysmally stupid to distinguish it from legitimate research. Well, unfortunately for this slimy little blogging cretin, he doesn't even have that excuse to fall back on.

Witness his latest travesty of a post regarding sea level rise (SLR) in the Miami, FL area. You would figure, if he is indeed concerned about fraud, that when he posted the following worthless, cherry-picked graph, at the very least, he would have mentioned/linked to the source for the data. Yeah, not so much.



One centimeter of SLR in the Miami, FL area, eh, Tiny Steven? Gee, what happened to all your concern about fraud, you spineless charlatan? That went out the window quick, because, see, here's what NOAA has to say about your 1 cm...

Miami Beach, FL (~30 cm or just under 1 ft since 1900):


Vaca Key, FL (~40 cm or just over 1 ft since 1900):


Key West, FL (~30 cm or just under 1 ft since 1900):


Fort Meyers, FL (~30 cm or just under 1 ft since 1900):


In case you missed that clicking on those images gets you to the source, here is where I got those graphs. Notice how I actually link to my source, Little Squeaky Stevie Goddard?

I just couldn't let this one slide, dear blog readers, so I left the following comment over at Real Science (Jaezuz, it's painful typing that inappropriate blog title). Let's see if Goddard has the guts to let it post.

Shotgun Blogging: Valerie Plame, Warming and Conflicts, and a Return to Bolivia's Vanishing Glaciers

I like Valerie Plame. I think she and her husband Joe Wilson are incredibly brave and intelligent people, who unfortunately paid the price for telling the American people and the world the truth at a time when a bunch of thugs had drained Washington's credibility reservoir far below its normal drought levels. Whenever I listen to or read one of her interviews, more often than not I learn something new, and I am always reminded how much of an engaging straight shooter she is. Now, all that may be well and good, you, dear reader, are probably thinking, but why the heck am I bringing her up here in a climate change blog post? Well, she was on The Takeaway today, and, as usual, she made some interesting, spot-on comments.

"Climate change and terrorists getting nuclear weapons, I think, are our two biggest problems...The good news is that at the height of the Cold War in 1985, there were approximately 68,000 nuclear weapons; now we're down to about 17,000 nuclear weapons, of which maybe 4,000 have active nuclear warheads. So, uh, we're down quite a bit. Still more than enough to blow up the world as we know it, uh, and I just think ultimately you have to drain the swamp, if you're going to, uh, even consider, you know, mankind continuing...Just maintaining our nuclear arsenal over the next decade is going to cost a trillion dollars. A trillion dollars. That's just the United States. I mean, I can think of a lot of other places where that money might be useful."

Well, shucks, Valerie, so can I. In fact, I can think of a way we could use that money to combat at least one of the problems you mentioned.

The National Bureau of Economic Research has published a meta-analysis of 55 studies of the relationship between climate change and conflicts worldwide (emphasis mine).

Looking across 55 studies, we find that deviations from moderate temperatures and precipitation patterns systematically increase the risk of conflict, often substantially, with average effects that are highly statistically significant.

Remember these images from the IPCC's AR4? Alright, fine, it was a silly question, since most people probably don't read IPCC assessment reports, and all of no one remembers specific passages. Still, they're pretty dramatic, nonetheless.



Whether or not you agree with the World Bank's insistence that, in order for areas facing severe shortages to receive loans, public water supplies must be privatized, the organization is highlighting an issue that might otherwise go overlooked.



If recent history is any guide, I think all of us already know the blockheaded denier response to this: THEY SHOULD MOVE WHERE THEY DON'T HAVE TO RELY ON GLACIER MELT FOR THEIR WATER SUPPLY.

Deniers...sometimes you just gotta love their infantile...uh...solutions.

Peter Thiel and Glenn Beck Babbling Like Morons

This post is further proof that climate change deniers, especially of the libertarian variety, are seriously unhinged.

If you don't know, Peter "I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible" Thiel is a billionaire venture capitalist, PayPal co-founder, and co-author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Glenn Beck, if you're the one remaining unaware person, is a conservative, on-air personality and the Internet's favorite running joke. Both are living proof that you don't need to be very intelligent to be obscenely wealthy.

Apparently, they recently decided to sit down, have a thoroughly mindless and unnecessary tête-à-tête, and record it. Here are the partial transcript and the video of the insipid exchange. The fun in the form of blithering stupidity begins at about the 2:22 mark. Their shared favorite word seems to be "monolithic," in case you wanted to make a drinking game out of it.

Peter Thiel: "We have all these monolithic debates about science or pseudoscience, like there's the climate change debate, and we're—"

Glenn Beck: "Is that science or pseudoscience?" (My note: It figures he has to ask...a libertarian venture capitalist, the best source on any scientific topic, dontchyaknow.)

Peter Thiel: "I think...ummm...I think very often...I think it's more pseudoscience, but, uh, it's often, uh, it's, again, whenever...whenever you can't have a debate, I often think that's...that's evidence that there's a problem. You know, when people use the word 'science,' it's, uh, it's often a 'tell,' like in poker, that you're bluffing. And, so, it's like, uh, you know, it's like we have 'social science,' we have 'political science.' We don't call it 'physical science,' or 'chemical science,' we just call them 'physics' and 'chemistry,' because we just know they're...they're right. And you can debate the periodic table of elements. No one will be upset if you ask questions about that. Call it 'climate science,' it's a 'tell' like in poker. It's telling you that, uh, that people are, um, are exaggerating and that they're bluffing a little bit."

Glenn Beck: "So..."

Peter Thiel: "But, um, but, uh...but I think...I think that, uh...you know, I think this monolithic, uh, culture is breaking down. People are asking questions. You know, the weather has not been getting warmer for the last 15 years. The hockey stick that Al Gore predicted, uh, in the early 2000's, um, on the...on the climate has not happened for the last decade. I think as this monolithic culture breaks down, you can have more real debates, and, and I think that's, that's...that, that would be a good thing on that."

These two dipshits actually thought it would be a good idea to record and upload this travesty of a pointless and vapid conversation? Oh, brother.

Let's forget Thiel's abysmally embarrassing mistake of thinking the "pause" that wasn't had the same timeline and therefore could be used to refute Mann's hockey stick graph (which stops before, not starts at or after, the year 2000, mind), and wrapping it all up together with a "lemme really confuse matters and blame it on Al Gore" bow on top. Instead, let's address Thiel's poker analogy that attaching the word "science" onto something somehow magically indicates you're bluffing or trying to exaggerate what you know.

Did rocket science somehow bluff its way to reaching the Moon and the other planets in our solar system?

Is Harvard trying to fool us all and inflate what it knows about medicine and health by naming its medical school "The Division of Medical Sciences?"

Is the entire field of neuroscience bluffing about its knowledge of the nervous system and the brain?

And, for fuck's sake, did computer science exaggerate the information and communication technology running on a worldwide network of machines that made your lucrative Web site and personal fortune possible, Thiel?

Jaezuz Cheeeeeroist, what an abject moron.

Using poker analogies to express ignorant, personal opinions about climate change is a clear sign someone's a science-denier idiot, bluffing about his understanding of legitimate climate research, and solipsistic and narcissistic behavior that could only be surpassed by being a Stanford graduate and part-time professor who dangles money in front of people to tempt them away from getting a higher education. Figure that one the fuck out, people. In fact, once you begin researching Thiel, you quickly become aware of a pattern of wanting to benefit as much as he can from a country's educational, economic, and political systems, only to fund efforts to undermine its taxation and regulation (without which those aforementioned personal gains probably could not have happened, mind), and then completely unplug into some bizarre, libertarian, anti-statist, seaborne utopia.

Peter, if you ever actually manage to make those ridiculous platforms work, can you do us all a favor and take Patrick Moore and Stefan Molyneux with you, please? Thank you. Oh yeah, by the way, if we're smart, we'll levy a massive exodus tax before you can sail off into the libertarian blue yonder. Do try not to cry too much about it, mmmmmkay?

Well, There's Your Problem Right There

Today, I saw this bumper sticker on a car:



I'm sure I've seen it a million times before without giving it much thought, but, for whatever reason, this time around it struck me that, despite being an atheist, I can actually endorse one particular interpretation of this Bible verse, which I'm nearly 100% certain Matthew didn't have in mind when authoring it 2000 or so years ago. See, since prayer and worship never seem to prevent tragedies or do anything or anyone any tangible, verifiable good, not even churches or churchgoers, and therefore God, if He exists, is nothing more than a negligent absentee slumlord at best, or a malicious universal tyrant at worst, this is kinda how I see things here.



When it comes to global issues like climate change, which require widespread public acceptance and understanding to gain any meaningful traction, the "all things are possible" bit is precisely the problem. Just ask this guy.



Unfortunately, belief in God, once again, leads to all manner of contradictory outcomes.

• Cornwall Alliance Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming: We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence—are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history...We believe mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, achievable mainly by greatly reduced use of fossil fuels, will greatly increase the price of energy and harm economies.
• Eden Reforestation Project: "In the United States, climate change is controversial, so I want to go on record that Eden Projects is not first and foremost about whether climate change is right or wrong."
• Southern Baptist Evironment & Climate Initiative: We have recently engaged in study, reflection and prayer related to the challenges presented by environmental and climate change issues. These things have not always been treated with pressing concern as major issues. Indeed, some of us have required considerable convincing before becoming persuaded that these are real problems that deserve our attention. But now we have seen and heard enough to be persuaded that these issues are among the current era’s challenges that require a unified moral voice.
• Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and co-author of A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions: "When I look at the information we get from the planet I look at it as God's creation speaking to us. And in this case there's no question that God's creation is telling us that it is running a fever."
• Tom Minnery, Sr. Vice President of Public Policy, Focus on the Family: "When we think about science, we think about the truth. Yet, in so-called global warming science, we've gotten a lot less than the truth many times."
• Rick Santorum: "We want to make sure we have a candidate go up against President Obama who...didn't buy the last environmental hoax, man-made global warming...The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is."

Faith is, after all, belief without evidence, so, even having never personally encountered religious thinking before, one would safely assume, based on the definition alone, that its application in matters of intellectual investigation will bring about a legion of unreliable, unrelated, unsatisfactory results, as the above list pretty clearly demonstrates. How could an examination which ignores evidence produce anything but helter-skelter diagnoses?

Quite the contrary, with scientific consensus, our most reliable, verification and evidence-intensive means of uncovering truths about the world around us, all things are not possible. In fact, more often than not, there can be only one conclusion drawn, when the majority opinion in any area of research is considered in an honest and open-minded way. This is why climate change deniers are so deserving of the title. They simply deny the mountains of peer-reviewed evidence in the attempt to sway the rest of us over to their dishonest, close-minded side.

Goddard Calls Pentagon Yo-Yos; Watts Pretends It Doesn't Exist

Climate change deniers can't quite manage to wrap their empty heads around the recent Pentagon report calling global warming an immediate security threat, among other things, so their reactions are as varied as they are comical and childish.

Steven Goddard decided to dive right in and challenge DoD claims based on legitimate, peer-reviewed research with extreme ignorance and his standard, ineffectual, scientific illiteracy.

"Now Yo-Yo’s at the Pentagon blame Syrian drought on CO2...Blaming the drought on an increase of 0.0001 mole fraction CO2, is every bit as ignorant as blaming Yo-Yo’s. Mankind has not progressed,"

Forget mankind not having progressed, Little Steven, because you may single-handedly prevent our species from ever progressing. For one thing, learn how to punctuate to at least some degree of proficiency, and when to capitalize, you nitwit. I'm not asking you to be an English scholar, just to hit the period key when you should every now and then instead of ending sentences with nothing at all or commas, and to stop giving generic toys more respect than you do the Department of Defense. This is simple shit you should have mastered before completing third grade, knucklehead. And, see, smallest of Tiny-Small Stevies (notice how I capitalized your new title?), the atmosphere taken as a whole is EXTREMELY MASSIVE, and CO2 is pretty damn efficient at absorbing and reemitting infrared radiation back down to Earth, so half-wit statements like "an increase of 0.0001 mole fraction CO2" fail to take into account that going from 0.028% to 0.04% of approximately 5×10^15 metric tons is an increase of about six hundred billion metric tons of a strong greenhouse gas. Starting to sink in yet, dumb dumb? Probably not, because I'm sure you're also too dense to understand the powerful effect of an even smaller concentration of ozone, but I'll mention it, anyway, for anyone else who, unlike you, has enough intelligence to appreciate that fractional changes in trace atmospheric gases can have major impacts on us and our civilization.

In other words, you're still a miserably confused idiot, you miserably confused idiot.

However, I will give you some credit for at least acknowledging that the DoD report exists. Your buddy, Anthony Watts, couldn't even muster that much courage. Instead, since its release, he and his lackeys have been desperate to find distractions of all kinds, any distraction at all really, to avoid the point.

Piers Corbyn: Climate Change Is Delusional, NOT Lightning Bolts Shooting between Planets

Apparently, a fairly unimpressive record of weather prediction somehow magically qualifies a single individual to overturn a scientific consensus consisting of thousands of climate experts by name-calling alone.

"And the idea itself that CO2 controls climate, and man's CO2 in particular controls climate, is actually delusional nonsense."

- Piers Corbyn, weatheraction.com

Delusional nonsense. Weird, Piers, because one would figure that if you are indeed so concerned about "delusional nonsense," you would steer clear of giving interviews to crackpots who think the worlds in our solar system trade lightning bolts so often and so vigorously that this exchange of electrical discharge leaves scarring on their surfaces.



I suppose there's nothing surprising in deniers having nowhere to disseminate their own demented and delusional nonsense that CO2 is not the main driver of the observed modern warming besides a bunch of similarly deluded crackpot sites. It seems to be the rule rather than the exception anymore.

Them There Libberls Shouldn't Oughtta Be There, Anyway

Yesterday, I blogged about a rather unsettling policy response to sea level rise (SLR) due to climate change being adopted by countries which apparently have resigned themselves to the seeming inevitability that we will do little or nothing to change our fossil fuel-dependent ways.

Like a lot of countries, the USA has many people living along its shores and in large, seaside metropolises, so the logistics of applying this retreat plan will be....interesting, to say the least. I suppose another general state of American affairs — that liberals mostly prefer urban lifestyles, whereas conservatives often opt for rural and suburban environs — could hold true elsewhere, and I could even imagine that disdain for those with opposing personal politics who have chosen different living arrangements is a universal phenomenon as well, but, for my international readers (all 2 or 3 of you) who may not be aware, I should stress that this animosity can be particularly strong here in the States. Nothing exemplifies the intensity more clearly than the schadenfreude some conservative climate change deniers experience when considering the negative effects SLR will have on more cosmopolitan surroundings.















Obviously, this exercise of copying and pasting obnoxious and worthless denier quotes could go on indefinitely, but, make no mistake, these people are so hopelessly confused they truly believe they are adding something of merit to the discussion. To them, the troubling implications of SLR for port cities and people living close to the ocean are just fodder for jokes, or just deserts, or both. That, of course, assumes they believe seas will rise. Blaming/taunting city slickers and writing off major towns on shorelines as superfluous and expendable is more than just a huge economic mistake, however. Perhaps paradoxically, the urban way of life on average has about 30% less of a carbon footprint than living out in the country. And, in fact, if places like New York do end up being abandoned and evacuated, the worst possible outcome would be to ask the residents to adopt, say, what might appear to be an ecologically-sound lifestyle of a Vermonter, surprisingly enough.

The key to New York City’s relative environmental benignity is the very thing that, to most Americans, makes it appear to be an ecological nightmare: its extreme compactness...Americans tend to think of dense cities as despoilers of the natural landscape, but they actually help to preserve it. If you spread all 8.2 million New York City residents across the countryside at the population density of Vermont, you would need a space equal to the land area of the six New England states plus New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia — and then, of course, you’d have to find places to put all the people you were displacing.

We need our cities for more reasons than might meet the eye, and certainly more than thoughtless deniers are capable of understanding. More importantly, they are entirely too vital to our civilization to concede defeat and begin this strange, disheartening retreat in ten years.

Planned Retreat Starting in 2025

"I think maybe the biggest issue, the biggest concern, is what will sea level do in the coming centuries? [Nine meters] is pretty high. I mean, that's going to displace nearly every major mega-city on the planet just about."

- Dr. Mick O'Leary, Marine Geoscientist, Curtin University

This video is really well-done and informative, and you should watch the whole thing, but if you want to fast-forward to what was the essential bombshell for me personally, it comes at about the 10:28 mark. I must admit I had no idea some countries, such as Wales, are already conceding defeat to our crushing fossil fuel addiction, and assuming a do-nothing-meaningful, business-as-usual "response" to what is the most urgent, known threat we face. I don't even know how to process the adoption of such a plan just yet. To some degree, it makes perfect sense, because basically not a single nation capable of making an impactful difference is willing to do so. And time for effective policy has all but run out. On the other hand, it is simply too depressing for words.



I guess I only have one question after viewing this video: where will the 8.4 million people living in New York City relocate?

Oh yeah, and how much exactly will it cost to build this new New York?

Also, since we found out during Katrina that the poorest Americans can't even afford to evacuate temporarily, where will they find the money to permanently move their families and take up new residences elsewhere?

Additionally, what will this new location offer all of them in the way of a livelihood?

Not to mention, how far inland does New New York have to move to escape an eventual 75 meter rise in ocean waters?

Or is the idea to retain its major port city status by keeping it on an ever-changing shoreline, and turn this into a never-ending relocation program?

And what about the nearly 25 million people in Shanghai? Where are they going to go/work? Hong Kong?! With its nearly 7 million inhabitants who will need a new home every bit as much as Shanghai residents?

While we're at it, where do all the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people in London, Mumbai, Tokyo, Sydney, etc. migrate? And how do they recover some semblance of their previous existence/prosperity?

Hate to harp on matters, but do I need to remind everyone that our cities, their populations, and their economies are not our only concerns here?

I guess I actually want a lot more answers than just one. In fact, the more I consider this "adaptation," or "solution," or whatever unsatisfying label we choose for this strategy, the more I begin to realize that I have veritable shit ton of questions about it.

Don't you?

Gee, We Won't Be Fracking Our Way out of the Problem...Whodathunk?

Oil and gas extraction using some form of fracturing has been around for over a century. The specific technique of hydraulic fracturing itself arose several decades ago. But the highly intensive shale gas boom in America has lasted for only about ten years or so now. Its praises are of course sung at howling decibel levels by climate change deniers, so there has been no shortage of claims regarding fracking's alleged panoply of miraculous environmental, financial, and political benefits.

"Developed economies should therefore help emerging economies switch from coal to natural gas; and shale gas technology should be advanced as rapidly as possible and shared freely...environmentalists should recognise the shale gas revolution as beneficial to society – and lend their full support to helping it advance."

- Anthony Watts

"A large part of the success behind this tremendous oil and gas production and jobs creation is due to an energy-extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing...Although natural gas prices in the United States have historically been volatile, the abundance of shale gas brings the possibility of low, stable prices."

- Nicolas Loris, The Heritage Foundation

A proposed [fracking] ban in response to widespread green hysteria leaves [Germany] at the mercy of Vladimir Putin.

- The Wall Street Journal

"The displacement of coal by natural gas in the power generation sector has allowed the U.S. to reduce its carbon footprint back to levels not seen since the early 1990s, and the only response from the 'environmental' movement has been to complain even louder."

- David Blackmon, Forbes

"The US CO2 emmisions has gone down to early 1990’s level. This is ONLY because of the cheap price of natural gas (Thank You Hydraulic Fracturing!)"

- westhoustongeo, contributor at Steven Goddard's blog

Well, cheap natural gas prices and, you know, that slight economic issue we had a while back, which curtailed industrial output and therefore our emissions...but, hey, thank you, anyway, hydraulic fracturing!

Even President Obama, who is probably more interested in a boost to a sputtering economy than an environmental remedy, has gotten in on the heady cheerleading.

"The all-of-the-above energy strategy I announced a few years ago is working, and today, America is closer to energy independence than we’ve been in decades. One of the reasons why is natural gas, if extracted safely, it’s the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change."

So, OK then, let's put some rose-colored fracking glasses on here for a moment, pretend the Great Recession had nothing to do with emission reductions, attribute the decline in US emissions predominantly to fracking, and see where this amazing gas extraction technology has gotten us...



We've gone from a 2004-6 peak of just under 6 Gt CO2 annual output to a 2012 total of just over 5 Gt CO2 per year. Let's just call it a 1 Gt per year reduction for simplicity's sake, which I will admit is certainly better than nothing or an increase, but hardly an amount that will allow fracking to prevent the Arctic meltdown all on its own. Among the fracking proponents above, only Obama admits it's merely one aspect of a multifaceted approach aimed at reducing emissions enough to make a difference. The rest act as if we can ride the shale gas wave off into the carbon-neutral sunset.

Removing our rose-colored spectacles and regaining a focus on reality, we are reminded that, despite the deniosphere's love affair with hydraulic fracturing, it is far from the sole reason US CO2 emissions have dropped over the past few years, so all the accolades for this 1 Gt/year drop are not deserved. And a recent paper in Nature confirms this by all but putting the final nail in the coffin of fracking's potential to reverse climate change.

Some researchers have observed that abundant natural gas substituting for coal could reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions 3, 4, 5, 6. Others have reported that the non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions associated with shale gas production make its lifecycle emissions higher than those of coal 7, 8...Here we show that market-driven increases in global supplies of unconventional natural gas do not discernibly reduce the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions or climate forcing.

We can't frack our way out of this mess, but, as all five of my blog readers know, I believe there's a much better way to satisfy the world's energy needs while simultaneously reducing GHGs. Sure, it may come with a hefty price tag, but so do our present emission levels.

I Tell Ya, These Liberals and Their Climate Change...

On Monday, yet another tree-hugging, bleeding-heart, the-sky-is-falling, Chicken Little, alarmist, anti-American, anti-capitalist, and Marxist-Leninist organization sounded the "destroy our economy" rally horn to summon all the socialist scientists on the government till and ever reliably left-leaning Hollywood to its cause.

Just look at some of the ridiculously panic-stricken claims this group made about how global warming will affect us:

• Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict. They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe.
• [These climate change impacts] all place additional burdens on economies, societies, and institutions around the world.
• The third National Climate Assessment notes that certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense, including heat waves, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, floods and droughts.
• Sea levels are rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and glaciers and arctic sea ice are melting.
• Scientists predict that these changes will continue and even increase in frequency or duration over the next 100 years.
• These climate-­related effects are already being observed...throughout the U.S. and overseas...
• The changing climate will affect operating environments and may aggravate existing or trigger new risks to U.S. interests.
• A changing climate will have real impacts on our military and the way it executes its missions.

Oh, man, that last one was just too rich for words, eh? I mean, sheesh, if the liberals in this namby-pamby org are gonna fling around absurd catastrophic anthropogenic climate change talking points like that, then they must have adopted a pretty laughable and pathetic banner or logo to hide behind, right? Lemme see if I can find it to post it...



Oh, dear...





Oh, no...





This simply isn't good...





How will deniers manage to slander/disparage this critical institution...?





(Ahem...)





Yup, folks, despite screwball deniers' best efforts, it seems the "liberals" have infiltrated...drum roll, please...the Pentagon!!

Is there nowhere safe from the horrible clutches of...of...legitimate, peer-reviewed, consensus-backed science?!

And look at this starry-eyed, pie-in-the-sky, left-wing quote from the DoD report! I knew it was Obama's fault all along! (Bewildered, flabbergasted, and, quite frankly, shocked and appalled emphasis mine.)

"And because we know that climate change is taking place, we are assessing our coastal and desert installations to help ensure they will be resilient to its effects. Planning for climate change and smarter energy investments not only make us a stronger military, they have many additional benefits–saving us money, reducing demand, and helping protect the environment. These initiatives all support President Obama’s Climate Action Plan..."

- Chuck Hagel, US Secretary of Defense

(Note: For those who experience extreme difficulty recognizing obvious sarcasm, no, this tongue-in-cheek post was not to be taken literally, or as representative of my real views on climate change.)

"Stick It to Climate Change Deniers," Says President

This is a big moment in the fight against climate change—stick it to climate change deniers by adding your name: http://t.co/fkCzkiMhFw

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 14, 2014

Jack Shapiro, Obama's National Issues Campaign Manager, is striking exactly the right tone here when he calls for aggressively taking the offensive on the climate change issue. For way too long, people with the science on their side have been on the defensive, playing catch-up to flat-out misinformation, and trying to politely right the unending stream of wrongs coming from climate change "skeptics." (Emphasis mine below.)

Deniers and deep-pocketed polluters make it pretty hard to get anything done on climate change—but here's one meaningful way you can fight them: The EPA is collecting comments on President Obama's climate plan, and it's our chance to show public support.

If you care about fighting climate change—or just want to stick it to the groups denying basic science—add your name to tell the EPA where you stand.

This is one of the decisive moments in the fight against climate change. Collecting comments gives the EPA a chance to see what ordinary people have to say about this important issue. (Don't worry—they hear from the special interests on every day that ends in Y.)

The other side thinks they can win this fight simply by shouting the loudest, and they have a lot of money to back it up. What they don't have is a whole lot of people—genuine voices standing up for what's right. And we've proved time and again that, when we raise our voices together, we can take on even the most powerful interests.

Now, that's what I'm talking about.







But, seriously, get clicking and add your support. After submitting your email, you will be asked to donate, which I encourage you to do if you can. However, if you can't donate, you will still be included in the list of sponsors. And we live in a world where numbers do count for something!

Record Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Still Only Proves One Thing

"Some people have looked at the Antarctic increasing trend, and used that to suggest that global warming isn't happening, or that the increase in the Antarctic is offsetting the decrease in the Arctic, and that's simply not true. If you look at just simply the magnitude of the changes we're seeing in the wintertime, the Arctic is decreasing about twice as fast as what the Antarctic is increasing."

- Dr. Walt Meier, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

This year's sea ice extent in Antarctica does not change the fact that the Earth is heating up due to our emissions, but it does prove one thing. You can post a video and an article from NASA/Goddard which plainly and simply contrast and put in clear perspective conditions at opposite ends of the planet, and which provide several reasonable explanations for the minimal sea ice expansion at one pole relative to the larger loss at the other (all in complete harmony with a warming world, mind), and none of it will manage to penetrate the impregnably thick skulls of the deniers who flock to your strange site (scroll down to the comment section, and commence to facepalming). Not one bit. Zilcho. Nada. Nothing.

Oh, brother.

Not Sure Which Is Worse: Denial or Scams

This is another great video exposé by Thunderf00t. Notice how, once again, unlike Anthony Watts and Dr. Roy Spencer, he does not make the ignorant claim that a swindle somehow incriminates the legitimate science upon which it is trying to capitalize.

Nobel in Physics Goes to Bright Idea for Climate Change

This year's Nobel for a physics discovery went to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura for their research which made the creation of blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) possible.

Why was the color blue so important? Well, if you want to make white light for general purpose lighting, you can't do it with just red and green LEDs, which were in existence for at least 30 years before the blue one was invented. Remember, white is what you get when you combine all three primary colors, so blue was the remaining puzzle piece for any practical application of LEDs in homes and businesses.



Since an LED bulb can produce anywhere from 50-300 lumens per watt, even at the low end, it uses less than a third of the energy required to light an incandescent bulb.

"Something like a fourth of our electricity consumption goes to illumination," Nobel Prize committee member Olle Inganäs of Linköping University in Sweden said during a press conference October 7 announcing the award. "Having much more light for much less electricity is really going to have a big impact."

Let's crunch some numbers real quick...

Globally, electricity generation accounts for about 10 billion metric tons of CO2 each year. One quarter of that, or the CO2 output for lighting based on Inganäs' number, equals 2.5 billion metric tons. Assuming all incandescent light sources, we could reduce global CO2 emissions by about 1.7 metric tons if we switched everything over to LEDs. That won't exactly keep the Arctic from becoming ice-free in summer, so "big impact" may be overstating things, but it's a start. Go show some appreciation for the blue LED and swap whatever bulbs you can, people. :)

Hundreds of Sporting Groups Call for Climate Change Action

I believe Les Claypool of Primus once said fishing was the most spiritual activity he had ever engaged in, and I concur. Unfortunately, I don't get the chance much anymore, but hitting a farm pond at dusk in spring or summer, slowly working a plastic worm with a Carolina rig, and engaging in some largemouth catch-and-release is probably about as close to heaven as a godless heathen such as myself can ever hope to get. That's why it warmed the cockles of my otherwise cold and callous heart when I read that the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, Trout Unlimited, the National Wildlife Federation, the Fishing Nerds...that's right, the Fishing Nerds...and many other organizations dedicated to preserving hunting and fishing and the lands and waterways that enable these pastimes all wrote President Obama endorsing and encouraging more action on climate change.

On behalf of the undersigned sportsmen conservation organizations, businesses, and millions of Americans who enjoy and depend on our wildlife and natural resources, we write to express our support for your common-sense efforts to address the threat of climate change. We especially appreciate your recognition that responding to climate change requires steps to reduce the carbon pollution that threatens fish and wildlife, as well as accelerated measures to support natural resources adaptation and enhance the resilience of fish and wildlife habitats.

It's difficult to say how any one species of game or fish will be affected by global warming. As with any dramatic change in climate, there will be winners and losers, surely, but if the WWF's Living Planet Report can serve as a guide, due to many man-made stressors including our emissions, things may not be looking up for my favorite bit of transcendental redneck recreation, freshwater angling.

Falling by 76 per cent, populations of freshwater species declined more rapidly than marine (39 per cent) and terrestrial (39 per cent) populations

By the way, dear blog readers, here's a rare glimpse of yours truly having a little luck trout fishing on a glacier lake way up in the Cascades of Washington state. In fact, the fishing was so good in this particular location (I caught something on just about every cast) that I started feeling somewhat sheepish and guilty, and put down the pole. The idea is to conserve natural resources, not consume every last available shred of them, right? ;)

Do Republicans Enjoy Sounding Stupid?

"Well, I'm a scientist. I believe in peer-reviewed science, you know, but I don't see any peer-reviewed science that proves there is any, you know, man-made catastrophic climate change."

- Rep. Dan Benishek (R-Mich.)

First of all, Dr. Benishek, let's get something straight here. Being a medical industry professional and a surgeon does not automatically make you a scientist. It does, however, most likely make you a well-paid technician. So unless you have participated or are participating presently in some form of peer-reviewed medical research, you cannot make the claim that you are a scientist. And, really, if your participation is all in the past, then you are not a practicing scientist, and arguably nothing more than a science commentator or communicator at this point with the earned title attached to your name. Secondly, even if you just stepped out of a lab where you discovered a cure for cancer, that does not mean you now get to casually determine which scientific consensus the rest of us are allowed to embrace. And, finally, even were you a climate scientist, that still does not qualify you to dismiss the science underpinning the dangers of anthropogenic climate change.

Most of the time, when someone actually is a scientist, he or she does not need these simple notions explained to him or her. However, it seems like whenever you put that "R" after a politician's name, the explanation becomes obligatory.

Since 1970, Animal Populations Cut in Half

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has released its annual Living Planet Report for 2014, and while last year gave us the good with the bad, after only the first few sentences of the foreword and message by WWF International Director General, Marco Lambertini, it becomes pretty clear that this year's conclusions cannot avoid some fairly depressing and grim realities (my emphasis).

"This latest edition of the Living Planet Report is not for the faint-hearted. One key point that jumps out and captures the overall picture is that the Living Planet Index (LPI), which measures more than 10,000 representative populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, has declined by 52 per cent since 1970. Put another way, in less than two human generations, population sizes of vertebrate species have dropped by half. These are the living forms that constitute the fabric of the ecosystems which sustain life on Earth – and the barometer of what we are doing to our own planet, our only home. We ignore their decline at our peril."

The various facts and stats in the report will not do much to engender hope either.

• Falling by 76 per cent, populations of freshwater species declined more rapidly than marine (39 per cent) and terrestrial (39 per cent) populations.
• Only around 880 mountain gorillas remain in the wild – about 200 of them in Virunga National Park. (My note: Although they have experienced a recent slight population increase, one can only surmise — due to lack of historical census data — that this number is down from tens or possibly hundreds of thousands before hunting, war, disease, and destruction of forest habitat since the year 1900 caused extreme declines.)
• Even though slightly more populations are increasing than declining, the magnitude of the population decline is much greater than that of the increase, resulting in an overall reduction since 1970.
• Due to a rapid loss of their traditional habitat, forest elephants had been restricted to a mere 6-7 per cent of their historic range (circa 1900) by 1984. Further recent analysis suggests that, across the forest elephant’s range, the population size declined by more than 60 per cent between 2002 and 2011 – primarily due to increasing rates of poaching for ivory (Maisels et al., 2013).
• The sharpest declines in marine populations have been observed in the tropics and the Southern Ocean. Species in decline in the tropics include marine turtles, particularly in the Indo-Pacific realm, and seabirds overall in the Atlantic, with bycatch from fishing being one of the main drivers behind these trends. Among the fish species showing declines are many shark species, which have suffered as a result of overfishing both in tropical Atlantic (Baum and Myers, 2004) and Pacific regions (Clarke et al., 2013b).
• ...many rhino populations in Africa (Figure 18) have become regionally extinct or are in decline, despite largely occurring inside protected areas.
• There are fewer than 5,000 black rhino and about 20,000 white rhino left in the wild (Emslie, 2012a; 2012b).
• Even under optimistic assumptions on the ability of coral reefs to rapidly adapt to thermal stress, one- to two-thirds of all the word’s coral reefs are projected to experience long-term degradation (Frieler et al., 2013).
• Humanity currently needs the regenerative capacity of 1.5 Earths to provide the ecological goods and services we use each year. This “overshoot” is possible because – for now – we can cut trees faster than they mature, harvest more fish than the oceans can replenish, or emit more carbon into the atmosphere than the forests and oceans can absorb.

That last couple of bullets serve as a reminder that, although it is presently not the greatest culprit, climate change is playing a significant role in the observed species population declines.



And it does not take an advanced degree in climatology to realize that as global warming worsens so will its negative biodiversity impacts.

Past climate changes were slower than those anticipated for the 21st century, but even these drove significant ecosystem shifts and extinctions (Williams et al., 2011).

We just have to ask ourselves if we want to keep wiping out the wildlife on our planet. It's that simple. Is a world barren of most higher forms of animal life except us what we really want? Could anyone in his or her right mind possibly answer yes to that question? Forget environmental concerns and the troubling implications for our own survival for a moment. What will it mean for each one of us psychologically to look out over a land and seascape once teaming with life, gone quiet and empty, and know that we are responsible for the disturbing level of sterilization? Can we not find a way to control ourselves?

OK, DNews Is Just Trying to Aggravate More Deniers Than This Blog

Apparently, climate change is tipping the human sex ratio scales in females' favor, and causing DNews to try and steal my thunder by making videos about odd scientific discoveries which really tick off clueless YouTube deniers. Oi, the comments under the video...if you don't laugh, you'll cry.



Am I the only one for whom this video brought to mind how sex was determined for dinosaurs and maybe our biological antecedents millions of years ago? Could there be some vestige of that gender-deciding trait, long ago replaced in fetus-bearing mammals with X/Y chromosomes, at play here? Probably not, but it's still fun to consider...

There's Even Climate Change Evidence in Earth's Gravitational Field

Changes in Earth’s gravity field resulting from loss of ice from West Antarctica between November 2009 and June 2012 (mE = 10^–12 s^–2) (*see important note below). A combination of data from ESA’s GOCE mission and NASA’s Grace satellites shows the ‘vertical gravity gradient change’. Image source.

Even the Earth's gravitational pull seems determined to prove climate change denier ignorance wrong. Here's Amy Shira Teitel of DNews to explain how we've lost enough mass from ice sheets in Antarctica to cause changes strong enough for ESA and NASA gravity-sniffing satellites to detect.



I was wondering why she hadn't been on the Weekly Space Hangout in quite some time. :)

Here's an ESA video which summarizes how GOCE and Grace mission data combined forces to provide this discovery.



FYI, Grace is still going strong in an extended mission phase, whereas GOCE de-orbited and burned up in the atmosphere last year.



* This unit is used in geophysics to measure gravitational gradients, or the change in the acceleration of gravity with distance, horizontal or vertical. It is called a milli-Eötvös, abbreviated to mE, and by definition and simple mathematical deduction it amounts to one-thousandth of an Eötvös, a unit equaling 10^-9 per second squared (s^-2). The unit honors the Hungarian physicist Roland von Eötvös (1848-1919). Presumably, the ESA image above of West Antarctic and its land ice is missing a scale which would denote the mE amount represented by each color. You can see an example where such a scale was not mistakenly omitted here.