Letters to a heretic: An email conversation with climate change sceptic Professor Freeman Dyson - Climate Change, Environment
From: Steve Connor To: Freeman Dyson You are one of the most famous living scientists, credited as a visionary who has reshaped scientific thinking. Some have called you the "heir to Einstein", yet you are also a "climate sceptic" who questions the consensus on global warming and its link with carbon dioxide emissions. Would you also accept that CO2 levels have been increasing as a result of burning fossil fuels and that global temperatures have been rising for the past 50 years at least, and possibly for longer (4)? From: Freeman Dyson To: Steve Connor First of all, please cut out the mention of Einstein. Answers to your questions are: yes (1), yes (2), yes (3), maybe (4), no (5), no (6), no (7). There are six good reasons for saying no to the last three assertions. That will do for the first set of questions. No thank-you! You ask me where the extra trapped heat has gone, but I do not agree with the models that say the extra trapped heat exists. Yours sincerely, Freeman Dyson Steve Connor
‘New McCarthyism’ Described by Climate Scientist Michael Mann
Jul 8, 2012 1:32pm (Getty Images) Interview with scientist Michael Mann, author of ‘The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines,’ and the latest of many to describe efforts to intimidate climate scientists and create confusion about their findings. Nature’s Edge Notebook #31 Observation, Analysis, Reflection, New Questions About This Interview and Its Context: Following are the video and transcript of an interview with climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University, conducted on April 19, in New York’s Central Park. Long respected by his professional peers around the world, Mann became more widely known as one of the targets of the so-called and now discredited “climategate scandal,” involving hacked emails of several prominent climate scientists. Mann’s science and professional conduct (and that of others so targeted) have been repeatedly exonerated by independent professional review. But the book’s scope is far wider. He is not the first. – Sen. – Rep.
Global Warming Effects Map - Effects of Global Warming
What has global warming done since 1998?
No, it hasn't been cooling since 1998. Even if we ignore long term trends and just look at the record-breakers, that wasn't the hottest year ever. Different reports show that, overall, 2005 was hotter than 1998. What's more, globally, the hottest 12-month period ever recorded was from June 2009 to May 2010. Though humans love record-breakers, they don't, on their own, tell us a much about trends -- and it's trends that matter when monitoring Climate Change. There's also a tendency for some people just to concentrate on surface air temperatures when there are other, more useful, indicators that can give us a better idea how rapidly the world is warming. Figure 1: Land, atmosphere, and ice heating (red), 0-700 meter ocean heat content (OHC) increase (light blue), 700-2,000 meter OHC increase (dark blue).
Climate change warnings should put the heat on all of us
I TRUST THE scientific process. I think it is humanity’s best way of understanding the natural world, for acquiring new knowledge and integrating or correcting previous knowledge in a logical way. I trust the scientific theory of anthropogenic climate change. Just like the theory of evolution or the theory of gravity, the scientific theory of climate change has a robust and convincing body of scientific evidence behind it. Dating back nearly two hundred years and drawing from multiple lines of scientific research, scientists have been monitoring our planet’s climate and informing us of the rapid changes that are occurring, in large part, because of human activities. The scientific conclusions supporting climate change have been thoroughly examined, tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results that the likelihood of them being found wrong is now inconceivable. Climate change denial Unfortunately a small minority of readers will not agree with this synopsis. This year
Infographic: The politics of climate change - Interactive
Sea Levels Rising 60% Faster Than Expected
US Fish and Wildlife Service/CC BY 2.0 New research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research shows that global sea level rise is happening 60% faster than IPCC projections, even though temperatures are rising much as expected. Potsdam's Stefan Rahmstorf: It contrast to the physics of global warming itself, sea level rise is much more complex. To improve future projections it is very important to keep track of how well past projections match observational data. So how fast are sea levels actually rising? This latest research, based off satellite data so as to get more accurate readings and greater global coverage, shows that sea levels are rising on average 3.2mm each year—and not because of any temporary event like ice discharges from the ice sheets of Greenland or Antarctica, or because of internal variability in the climate system. The IPCC has projected that sea level rise is happening at the rate of 2mm per year.
Climate/Weather Infographic | Connect the Dots
[sociable]Check out the infographic below — it’s big, so you might need to give it a minute or two to load! You can also download it as a JPG or PDF.
Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William D. Nordhaus
The threat of climate change is an increasingly important environmental issue for the globe. Because the economic questions involved have received relatively little attention, I have been writing a nontechnical book for people who would like to see how market-based approaches could be used to formulate policy on climate change. When I showed an early draft to colleagues, their response was that I had left out the arguments of skeptics about climate change, and I accordingly addressed this at length. But one of the difficulties I found in examining the views of climate skeptics is that they are scattered widely in blogs, talks, and pamphlets. Then, I saw an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal of January 27, 2012, by a group of sixteen scientists, entitled “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” This is useful because it contains many of the standard criticisms in a succinct statement. • Is the planet in fact warming? • Are human influences an important contributor to warming?
