AGU Day 2: The role of CO2 in the earth’s history | Serendipity. Yesterday afternoon, I managed to catch the Bjernes Lecture, which was given by Richard B. Alley: “The biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History”. The room was absolutely packed – standing room only, I estimated at least 2,000 people in the audience. And it was easy to see why – Richard is a brilliant speaker, and he was addressing a crucial topic – an account of all the evidence we have of the role of CO2 throughout prehistory. By way of introduction, he pointed out how many brains are in the room, and how much good we’re all doing. Although he characterizes himself as not being an atmospheric scientist, except perhaps by default, but as he looks more and more at paleo-geology, it becomes clear how important CO2 is.
He has found that CO2 makes a great organising principle for his class on the geology of climate change at Penn State, because CO2 keeps cropping up everywhere anyway. So, he’s going to take us through the history to demonstrate this. What’s left: The Discovery of Global Warming - A History. How long have we known? | Serendipity. I’m giving a talk today to a group of high school students. Most of the talk focusses on climate models, and the kinds of experiments you can do with them. But I thought I’d start with a little bit of history, to demonstrate some key points in the development of our understanding of climate change. Here’s some of the slides I put together (drawing heavily on Spencer Weart’s the Discovery of Global Warming for inspiration). Comments on these slides are welcome. I plan to start with this image: …and ask some general questions like: What do you think of when you see this image? For millions of years, the planet had a natural control system that kept the climate relatively stable.
I then show some graphs showing temperature changes through pre-history, together with graphs of the recent temperature rise. S Climate Watch | KQED's multimedia series providing in-depth coverage of climate-related science and policy issues from a California perspective. Move forms California’s largest science & environmental unit for electronic media Keven Guillory Climate Watch Sr. Editor Craig Miller with Producer Molly Samuel in the KQED studios.
After four years, numerous awards, and something just shy of 900 blog posts, the multimedia reporting effort that’s been known as Climate Watch is turning a significant page. KQED is combining our efforts with Quest, the station’s more broadly-based science and environmental news and programming effort. We’ll continue to cover climate-related issues, as evidenced by the recent rollout of Heat and Harvest, a major multimedia project with the combined resources of Climate Watch, Quest and the Center for Investigative Reporting. California’s heat wave came late and is staying late Craig Miller Sunset on San Pablo Bay. The Great American Heat Wave of 2012 arrived later in California than in many parts of the country — and it’s in no hurry to leave. Bodega Marine Lab / UC Davis By Nicholas Christen and Craig Miller. Climate Change. 350.org. Connect the Dots. We Are Power Shift. Links related to “Power Shift,” a special edition of Grist.
Climategate: What Really Happened? Illustration: Jonathan Bartlett Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Update! Read our coverage of Climategate 2.0. Read also: Chris Mooney on the science of why we don’t believe science. IT’S DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE how a guy who spends most of his time looking at endless columns of temperature records became a “fucking terrorist,” “killer,” or “one-world-government socialist.” Back in 1999, Mann—then a newly minted Ph.D. You may have seen a version of the graph, known as the “hockey stick,” in the film An Inconvenient Truth—the rise in carbon dioxide levels* is so steep, Al Gore uses a mechanical ladder to reach the most recent readings. The film and the IPCC report made the chart famous, but Mann’s version (PDF) appeared in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Watch our video on how we fact-checked the hockey stick graph. Yet global warming skeptics have made the graph exhibit A in their cause. The Hockey Game.