Friday, March 11, 2016

Recommended Reading

Heidi Cullen, NY Times: What Weather Is the Fault of Climate Change?

National Academy of Sciences: Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change
"The ability to understand and explain extreme events in the context of climate change has developed very rapidly over the past decade. In the past, a typical climate scientist’s response to questions about climate change’s role in any given extreme weather event was “we cannot attribute any single event to climate change.” The science has advanced to the point that this is no longer true as an unqualified blanket statement. In many cases, it is now often possible to make and defend quantitative statements about the extent to which human-induced climate change (or another causal factor, such as a specific mode of natural variability) has influenced either the magnitude or the probability of occurrence of specific types of events or event classes."
EOS: Scientists Find the Point of No Return for Antarctic Ice Cap -- about 600 ppmv

Scientific American: Widely Used Herbicide Linked to Cancer:
The World Health Organization's research arm declares glyphosate a probable carcinogen. What's the evidence?

Pacific Standard: Why Political Compromise Is So Hard: When issues get moralized, making concessions becomes nearly unthinkable

ThinkProgress: 60% of Americans are represented by a climate denier. (59 percent of the Republican House caucus and 70 percent of Republicans in the Senate. No Democrats.) Bribes from coal, oil and gas industry total $73,294,380.

Sondre Båtstrand, Policy and Politics: the US Republican party is the only conservative party in the world which denies the reality of climate change.

Miami Herald: Genetically modified mosquitoes clear key hurdle for Key West test. GMOs are coming. Here's a better way.

An Excellent Graphic, from Bloomberg Business: What's really warming the world? 

Perhaps more later.... 

1 comment:

David in Cal said...

I do not understand this comment: "the US Republican party is the only conservative party in the world which denies the reality of climate change." Although a check thrrough google shows this comment frequently made.

First of all, how does one determine the climate change position of a Party, as opposed to an individual? Perhaps the Party's position refers to the platform adopted at its most recent national convention. According to the Washington Post, the 2012 Republican Platform does NOT deny that the climate is changing. It does NOT say that man's activity has no impact on climate. It DOES say that climate is uncertain, and it specifically opposes certain programs, such as Cap and Trade. See

It looks to me like a lack of precision -- not surprising in political debate. Opposing certain programs and focusing on uncertainty get exaggerated as if these two positions were equivalent to denying that the climate is changing. But, there are valid reasons to oppose certain programs, even if one agrees that man-made climate change is real. Rubio did a good job of explaining in a recent CNN interview:
Rubio patiently tried to explain the difference between natural climate fluctuations and man-made climate change. “The question you should be asking a policymaker is: what can we do in government to affect the rise of sea levels? And the answer is, ‘oh, pass these laws we want you to pass.’ So I asked the environmentalists and others who are supporting those laws, ‘well, how many inches of feet of sea level rise will that law prevent?’ And there answer is, it won't prevent any.”

Rubio also pointed out that these climate regulations “will do nothing to affect the environment but will have a direct and immediate impact on our economy. I think that's a terrible tradeoff.”