Here’s a great article that dissects the “controversy” which the media latched on regarding the amount of snowpack decline in the Cascades. This addresses the issues brought up by one of my readers in this comment where he insinuates that this little media boondoggle casts doubts over the validity of climate change science or the reality of the scientific concensus.
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The facts surrounding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
There is an excellent new resource explaining the science behind the IPCC report, and debunks the mythsassociated with it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) brings together hundreds of the world’s leading scientists to study the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, the impacts of climate change on environment and society, and options for limiting climate change. This year, the IPCC is releasing its fourth assessment of climate change science, which shows...
Climate Change Verdict: Science Debate Concludes, Solution Debate Begins
The IPCC summary for policymakers definitively proclaimed the globe to be warming as a result of human activity, now the science shifts to impacts and solutions By David Biello, Scientific American The debate over whether the Earth’s climate is changing and whether humanity is responsible for that change closed in Paris on February 2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its summary for policymakers–a summation of the salient science in its much-longer...
Global warming man-made, will continue
The IPCC has finally released the Summary For Policymakers of its 4th report on climate change. Many scientists are complaining that in order to achieve a concensus from 113 countries, the language and warnings had to be significantly watered down. Still, this is a landmark report and it comes at a time when we seem to be reaching a tipping point in public opinion. I think we will start to see significant actions in the next...
Arctic Sea Ice decline in the 21st Century
Last month, Marika M. Holland, Cecilia M. Bitz, and Bruno Tremblay published a paper entitled “Future abrupt reductions in the summer Arctic sea ice” which generated a lot of press. In this article published on RealClimate, Cecilia Bitz explains the science behind the paper and gives her answers to the most common questions being asked. Read the article here.
The human hand in climate change
This is a rather long but very well written and very interesting essay. Well worth reading. By Kerry Emanuel, Boston Review Two strands of environmental philosophy run through the course of human history. The first holds that the natural state of the universe is one of infinite stability, with an unchanging earth anchoring the predictable revolutions of the sun, moon, and stars. Every scientific revolution that challenged this notion, from Copernicus’ heliocentricity to Hubble’s expanding...
New climate report too rosy, experts say
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Sun Jan 28, 10:41 PM ET WASHINGTON – Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that may be the sugarcoated version. Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top...
Alps are warmest in 1,300 years
By Veronika Oleksyn, AP, Tuesday Dec 5Â Â VIENNA, Austria – Europe’s Alpine region is going through its warmest period in 1,300 years, the head of an extensive climate study said Tuesday. “We are currently experiencing the warmest period in the Alpine region in 1,300 years,” Reinhard Boehm, a climatologist at Austria’s Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics said. Read the full story…
Historical climatology in Greenland
By Gavin Schmidt & Michael Mann, RealClimate Extending the instrumental record of climate beyond the late 19th Century when many of the national weather centers were first started is an important, difficult and undervalued task. It often is more akin to historical detective work than to climatology and can involve long searches in dusty archives, the ability to read archaic scripts and handwriting, and even Latin translations (for instance, when going through the archives...
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Here is a review by Science magazine that looked at 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords “climate change.” Not one of these studies disagreed with consensus view on climate change. ————- By Naomi Oreskes Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting...