A Smoking Gun in Oklahoma

(And Another in Alaska)

From an article in The Space Reporter: 

Recalling Oklahoma Senator Inhofe's antics on the Senate floor yesterday, it seems only fitting that today's news about climate change comes from research performed in Oklahoma (and Alaska). A team led by Dan Feldman put precise measuring equipment in those states, to monitor carbon dioxide levels and the radiation budget -- incoming solar energy, outgoing energy radiated by the earth, and energy reflected, absorbed and emitted by the atmosphere. 

Result: Over the period from 2000 through 2010, carbon dioxide levels increased. Over the same period, energy absorbed by atmospheric carbon dioxide and reradiated back to the surface also increased. The science that predicted this result has now been confirmed.

Of course, we already had it confirmed. This is the same science that has let meteorologists improve their weather forecasting models by incorporating satellite measurements of the vertical profile of atmospheric temperature, based partly on the distribution of carbon dioxide. Everybody likes to gripe about inaccurate forecasts, but we all carry a weather app in our pockets nowadays, and we don't really question tomorrow's forecast very much. Forecasting has improved, in no small part due to the science of radiative transfer in the atmosphere -- the same science that says that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to a greenhouse effect and global warming.

The article quotes Feldman as saying, "This is clear observational evidence that when we add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it will push the system to a warmer place."

Take that, Senator Inhofe (and please drop your silly snowball)!

The Senate, a Screwball and a Climate Change Skeptic

The NBC News website posted an article, today, titled, "The Senate, a Snowball and a Climate Change Skeptic".  But I like my title better.

The article features a photograph of Senator James Inhofe, on the Senate floor, holding a snowball and carrying on about how it demonstrates that there's no such thing as global warming. He claims that the record cold being experienced in our northern and eastern states proves that there's no global warming.

Let's just put that into perspective.

The idea of global warming is that the globally and annually averaged surface temperature is rising. To find out whether this is happening, we would need to get the globally averaged temperature for the entire planet, for every year over a span of time. This has, in fact, been done. Following is the famous "hockey stick" graph from the work of Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes. Though a great many climate change deniers have complained loud and long that this picture cannot possibly be correct, the analysis has been performed several times, by different researchers using different methodologies, and all have produced roughly similar pictures: Since the beginning of the industrial age, when we started pouring gigatons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, globally averaged surface temperature has been rising.

Some of the research that has verified this picture was led by Dr. Richard Muller, a physics professor and sometime global warming skeptic, who assembled a team to exhaustively examine every shred of data that had led climate scientists, including Mann, Bradley, and Hughes, to the conclusion that the climate is warming. He even accepted research funding from the Koch brothers, who are famous for denying the reality of global warming. Nevertheless, his team verified that this picture is accurate.  On average, the planet is heating up, and this warming is caused by the greenhouse gases that we are adding to the atmosphere.

But Senator Inhofe can't accept this, because, in one spot on the surface of the earth, in one month of the year, it's unseasonably cold. He appears to honestly believe that, because it's colder than normal in one place at one time, it is impossible that the average might be increasing.

If he really believes that, then I suspect he doesn't get the joke when Garrison Keillor reports "the news from Lake Wobegon, where ... all the children are above average."

Political Theater Targets the Environment

A news item in Salon (and many other places) reports that the House of Representatives has passed H.R. 1422, which would prevent the best scientific experts on any given topic (those who have done enough research that they have succeeded in getting their findings published in scientific journals) from serving on the EPA's Scientific Advisory Board -- but it would allow industry representatives (whose motives can charitably be described as "suspect") to serve. This is all in an effort to improve "transparency".

What's transparent here is the attempt to force the EPA to make decisions that are not informed by sound science. The bill's supporters think that it makes perfectly good sense to base decisions on what they think the truth should be rather than on what the truth actually is. And those industry experts will be happy to explain what the truth ought to be.

Of course, the President will exercise his veto. John Boehner knows this, so the only possible conclusion is that this action has nothing to do with governing and everything to do political posturing.

Somebody please tell me again why we pay these folks to go to Washington.

Climate Change Conundrum

According to an article at ScienceDaily, Yale University's Dan Kahan has reported in the journal Political Psychology that Americans believe some fairly silly things about climate science.

That's no real surprise.

The surprise is that, among Americans who have more than average understanding of climate science, opinions as to the reality of man-made global warming are more divided than among Americans who don't understand the science.

Really?

This means that many Americans are adept at simultaneously believing two diametrically opposed ideas: 

• Humans are adding a lot of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere raises globally averaged surface temperature, sea level, and ocean acidity. These changes cause species extinctions, altered rainfall and temperature distributions, and other more or less permanent disasters.
• The climate is not changing. Or, if it is, it doesn't involve warming, increase of sea level, and increase of ocean acidity. Or, if it does, it isn't caused by human activity. Or, if it is, it's okay because we'll adapt.

This is a lot like a driver racing toward a cliff that he can't see because he forgot to put on his glasses. He puts them on, but keeps racing toward the cliff, even though he can now see it clearly, because he firmly believes that the cliff is not really there -- or, if it is, he won't fall off it -- or, if he does, he'll land in a soft pile of marshmallows. And the improved vision doesn't change his opinion.
 
The article points out that a lot of marketing money has been going into educating Americans to understand the science, and expecting that understanding to help them accept the reality of the problem and the need to do something about it.  Apparently, these efforts are not bearing much fruit, because those who don't want to believe in man-made global warming simply continue to disbelieve, even after they fully understand the science.

The last sentence in the article is tantalizing: "Kahan pointed to the success of local political leaders in southeast Florida in depoliticizing discussions of climate science, an example that is discussed at length in the study."

That has me really wondering: What did southeast Florida do and can we replicate it elsewhere? Unfortunately, I can't see Kahan's original article, because the two University libraries I have access to won't get it until next February. I hope I can remember to look it up then.