I wondered what Stephen Sackur might want to put to Rajendra Pachauri when he interviewed the IPCC chair on BBC’s Hardtalk this week. His agenda turned out to be depressingly predictable for the most part. The opening was not encouraging. Sackur referred to other options than a global climate deal in view of the stalled international negotiations, mentioning the abandonment of the Kyoto approach proposed by David King recently. “Has Pachauri got the energy and the ideas to reframe the climate change debate?” he asked.
Category: environment and ecology
Global Climate Change: A Primer
Global Climate Change: A Primer may be a book for beginners, but those with an understanding of the issue will find interest in the wide-ranging exposition provided by geologist Orrin Pilkey and his lawyer son Keith. Pilkey’s research area has been shorelines and coastal geology, with a special focus on barrier island coasts, and his previous book The Rising Sea, which I reviewed here, gave clear warning of the possible magnitude of sea level rise this century. This primer has been written to provide a brief and simple account for the layperson of the science of global climate change. The guided tour the authors provide is well managed in terms both of the straightforward language they use and the topics they select to survey.
BBC about to bite bullet on climate BS
“I recommend that the BBC takes a less rigid view of ‘due impartiality’ as it applies to science (in practice and not just in its guidelines) and takes into account the non‐contentious nature of some material and the need to avoid giving undue attention to marginal opinion.” This is one of the recommendations of a review commissioned last year by the BBC Trust from Professor Steve Jones, emeritus professor of genetics at University College London. He was asked to assess the impartiality and accuracy of BBC science coverage across television, radio and the internet. His review and the Trust report which responds to it have now been published, along with the news that the BBC has accepted his recommendations.
Kivalina: A Climate Change Story
The remote Alaska village of Kivalina has been in danger for a number of years from the effects of climate change: “Sea ice no longer adequately forms on the village’s coastline, leaving the tiny island—perched on a thin strip of land between a sea and a lagoon—vulnerable to storms and erosion, and requiring relocation.” But the word relocation is easier spoken than achieved, as Christine Shearer’s arresting book Kivalina: A Climate Change Story tells.
Government sources of finance don’t appear to be available for the move estimated to cost between $100 million and $400 million. The village therefore in 2008 filed a claim against twenty four oil, electricity and coal companies alleging that the defendants are significant contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, exacerbating global warming and the erosion in Kivalina, constituting a public nuisance under federal and state law. The suit seeks damages of up to $400 million, enough to cover relocation costs. There were secondary claims of conspiracy and concert of action against eight of the companies for conspiring to create a false scientific debate about climate change to deceive the public. The ruling to date is that the issue of addressing climate change and its negative effects is not a matter for the courts but should be left to the government. The judgment is being appealed.
Wet, wet, wet
Sunshine is pouring down on the Arctic, and the high summer melting season is well under way. This photograph from NASA’s Earth Observatory shows crew from the US Coast Guard cutter Healey collecting a supply drop canister from melt ponds on the surface of the ice in the Beaufort Sea during the current Icescape exercise. Which is a good looking way to introduce a rather serious graph…