Climate science – Page 79

Revolution and realism required: UN report

I’ve been looking at the The World Economic and Social Survey 2011: The Great Green Technological Transformation which Gareth drew attention to in his recent post. It’s a long document prepared by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), not intended for casual consumption, and I haven’t read all 250 pages. But the theme chosen for the year’s survey is fundamental for the challenge of climate change and it’s somewhat cheering just to see the title. I thought it worth highlighting some of the content.

The survey is quite clear on the necessity for a green technological transformation. Our progress over the past two centuries has been at a cost to the natural environment which cannot continue.

“About half of the forests that covered the earth are gone, groundwater resources are being depleted and contaminated, enormous reductions in biodiversity have already taken place and, through increased burning of fossil fuels, the stability of the planet’s climate is being threatened by global warming.”

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Things to do in Wellington and Dargaville

Late notice, for which I apologise, but climate scientist Kevin Trenberth is giving a public lecture in Wellington on Friday (July 15th) on The Russian heatwave and other recent climate extremes. Trenberth’s talk is being organised by the NZ Climate Change Research Institute and will be at the Old Government Buildings Lecture Theatre 2, from 12:30 – 1:30pm. If you can’t make it, you can get a good idea of what he will discuss from this guest article by KT posted at Skeptical Science this week. Well worth a read. Trenberth is also holding a media briefing for the Science Media Centre tomorrow afternoon, which I hope to report on in due course.

Also this week, the Saunders, Oram and Salinger road show has added an extra gig into their Northland tour — in Dargaville tomorrow at 1-30 pm at the Kaipara District Council, 42 Hokianga Road, Dargaville. Contact Chris Donahoe for more information. Jim S also asks me to note that the title of the urban talks ( in Timaru, Auckland and Dunedin) has changed to Preparing for White Swans: Climate change and opportunities for the economy. Full tour details here (pdf).

The CCRI has just released the July edition of their What’s Hot newsletter, full of recent climate related news, linked to the original articles. It’s a good digest of recent news, worth the download.

Another green world (please)

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Geoff Ross, founder of vodka maker 42 Below, explains the thinking behind the Pure Advantage campaign, launched last week to persuade New Zealand that “green growth” is the best way (some might say the only credible way) for the NZ economy to develop [Herald, Stuff]. Pure Advantage is the brainchild of a group of NZ business leaders, convinced that NZ’s existing reputation as (relatively) clean and green place can be leveraged to give the country an advantage as the world moves to embrace “green growth” — something already worth, they say, $6 trillion a year worldwide.

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Ocean acidification: How much is too much?

Over at Skeptical Science we (Doug Mackie, Christina McGraw, and Keith Hunter) have started a long series (18 parts) about ocean acidification (Introduction , 1, 2). We all deride blog science. Blog science is what happens when people try to get a complex message across in 800 words or less. Real science takes time to explain. There is too much et voila in writing about climate change in general and ocean acidification in particular. Denialists have not touched ocean acidification because they don’t understand it. The chemistry is very subtle and even posts on normally reliable blogs like Skeptical Science have made errors.

A local Dunedin denier sent me ‘proof’ that ocean acidification was not real and even if it was then it wasn’t a problem. The ‘proof’ was a document published by the SPPI. The document was previously ‘published’ (cough) in Energy and Environment. Really, they very best argument the denialists have is “acid means pH less than 7 but ocean pH is greater than 7 so there is therefore no acidification”.

In this document (which I am not linking to because they don’t need the traffic) 5 of the 12 points for policy makers are variations on the pH greater than 7 argument. At first I puzzled at this: Do they really think policy makers are so dumb they won’t notice the same thing said 5 ways? Then I remembered Don Brash and had to concede the point. Yes, many policy makers are that dumb. (6 more points in the summary for policy makers are variations of ‘the gravy train’ meme and the last point says that measurements to date agree with IPCC projections – while mangling the terminology).

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Hulme: gone soft

Mike Hulme has added his ambiguous contribution to the climate change series on The Conversation. As per usual he’s in effect protesting that those who take the science at its face value are alienating the public. He offers an alternative to the first statement in the open letter from the scientific community which kicked off the series.

Here’s what the scientists said:

“The overwhelming scientific evidence tells us that human greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in climate changes that cannot be explained by natural causes. Climate change is real, we are causing it, and it is happening right now.”

Here’s what Hulme offers in its place: Continue reading “Hulme: gone soft”