Re: The climate change thread

[pinhedz]

Here we go again--the temperature dial has been reset back to 1980 levels.

[pinhedz]

Grushenka reports on the grim situation in Finland:

"It's cold and snowy here. RFE/RL reports the last time such weather occurred was some 100 years ago, while two of the embassy laborers told me WWII was the last time: the bad weather complicated getting supplies to Stalingrad."

"The extreme cold has knocked out the compressor units in my apartment that provide heat/air conditioning, so I'm using the electric oven and some space heaters at present."

[pinhedz]

I don't have anything profound to say about any of this, but there's quite a collection of pics here:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/02/extreme_cold_weather_hits_euro.html

[pinhedz]

Still trending downward, but just a little bit.

The puzzler is that all those solar flares don't seem to be turning up the heat.

[pinhedz]

Usually DC has the annual cherry blossom festival in April, but this year the cherry blossoms have jumped the gun.

Climate change enthusiasts fear that the deniers are plotting to chop down the cherry trees (shooting the messenger, as they say).

But I think the deniers are more likely to just point out that the global temperature anomaly has been in a steep dive since July, 2011 (see graphs above), so it's probably just the DC weatherman that didn't get the memo.

[pinhedz]

By RACHEL D'ORO
Associated Press
Published: March 17th, 2012 06:47 AM

"Even by Alaska standards, this winter is unusual for the hardy residents of the state's largest city.

Near-record snowfall buried Anchorage neighborhoods, turning streets into canyons with walls of snow on each side. The snow's weight collapsed the roofs of some buildings. Moose are fleeing into the city to get away from too-deep snow.

And the city dumps are close to overflowing with snow that may not melt entirely before next winter.

Love or hate it, some residents are hoping for more, at least another 3.3 inches. Then they could say they made it through the winter when the nearly 60-year record of 132.6 inches was broken.

"I want it destroyed," resident Melissa Blair said. "I want to see another foot and knock that record out of the park."
....
Nearly 11 feet of snow has fallen on Anchorage this winter, forcing the city to haul away at least 250,000 tons of snow - or around 500 million pounds - to its six snow disposal sites."


But here's the kicker:
"When you start to see the extreme events become more common, that's when you can say that it is a consequence of global warming," University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver said.

[pinhedz]

The following is from the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 September 2010 04.21 EDT (I want to stress that The Guardian is entitled for full credit for this article, the pinhed does not claim any credit, and will not be plagiarizing anything from the Guardian either now or at any time in the future ):

Climate change may be causing flowers to open before bees emerge from hibernation leading to declines in pollination, new research suggests

Climate change could be affecting pollination by disrupting the synchronised timing of flower opening and bee emergence from hibernation, suggests new US-based research.

Declining numbers of bees and other pollinators have been causing growing concern in recent years, as scientists fear that decreased pollination could have major impacts on world food supplies.

However, a 17-year analysis of the wild lily in Colorado by scientists from the University of Toronto, suggests other factors may be at play. The study revealed a long-term decline in pollination, which was particularly pronounced earlier in the season.

Study author James Thomson said while bee numbers had declined at their research site he suspected that a 'climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more important factor'.

'Early in the year, when bumble bee queens are still hibernating, the fruiting rates are especially low,' he said. 'This is sobering because it suggests that pollination is vulnerable even in a relatively pristine environment that is free of pesticides and human disturbance but still subject to climate change.'

Despite the findings, other experts remained cautious about the influence of climate change on bee pollination. Francis Ratnieks, professor of apiculture at the University of Sussex, said the downward trend of pollination observed in the study was not strong enough to extrapolate to any wider issues.

'Who knows the degree to which [this] affects the long term viability of the population?' he said. The study also only looked at one plant species, he added.
______________________________________________________________________________________________

On the other hand, the following is from the website of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is currently has under review a class of previously-approved insecticides introduced in the mid-1980s. Farmers were encouraged to use these newly developed insecticides because of their purported environmental friendliness:

The neonicotinoids are a class of insecticides with a common mode of action that affects the central nervous system of insects, causing paralysis and death. All of the neonicotinoids were registered after 1984 and were not subject to reregistration. Some uncertainties have been identified since their initial registration regarding the potential environmental fate and effects of neonicotinoid pesticides, particularly as they relate to pollinators. Data suggest that neonicotinic residues can accumulate in pollen and nectar of treated plants and may represent a potential exposure to pollinators. Adverse effects data as well as beekill incidents have also been reported, highlighting the potential direct and/or indirect effects of neonicotinic pesticides. Therefore, among other refinements to ecological risk assessment during registration review, the Agency will consider potential effects of the neonicotinoids to honeybees and other pollinating insects.

The registration review docket for imidacloprid opened in December 2008, and the docket for nithiazine opened in March 2009. To better ensure a “level playing field” for the neonicotinoid class as a whole, and to best take advantage of new research as it becomes available, the Agency has moved the docket openings for the remaining neonicotinoids on the registration review schedule (acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, thiacloprid and thiamethoxam) to FY 2012.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Now they got the pinhed all confused.

The save-the-bees movement had me convinced that climate change was killing the bees. We could have ended up killing all the bees with neonicotinoids, while our attention was focussed on reducing carbon emissions.

It's probably a good thing to have a few open minds at the EPA.

[pinhedz]

Last month temps jumped back up above normal, but it's still pulling down the red line with the 13-month smoothing:

[pinhedz]

The Arctic sea ice is surging back--Russians say the pesky ice in the Bering Sea refuses to budge even in April.

[eddie]

The talking penguin's guide to climate change

Darryl Cunningham is using the graphic novel format to address the most serious issues in science and to fight disinformation

Killian Fox

The Observer, Sunday 22 April 2012


Scenes from the climate change chapter of Science Tales, by Darryl Cunningham. Illustration: Darryl Cunningham/Myriad Editions

"The argument for human-driven climate change is as follows…" says the talking penguin to the man in the red jacket in the middle of the Arctic ice field. If this sounds like the beginning of a joke, hold on for the punchline.


Science Tales
by Darryl Cunningham

The quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased sharply since the industrial revolution, the penguin goes on.

"But isn't it true that a growing number of eminent scientists now believe climate change to be wrong?" asks the man. "It's a tiny sliver of fringe opinion," says the penguin, explaining how oil and gas companies are bankrolling climate-change denial while the media supply the doubters with the oxygen of publicity. "The future looks bleak," the penguin concludes.

And the punchline? Drought, hunger, disease and the extinction of a fourth of the world's species, if we don't act soon.

It's a familiar story. What's unusual is the way it's told. Science Tales, in which this conversation appears, deals with some of the most urgent debates in science using pictures, speech bubbles and comic-strip layouts, as well as the penguin.

The man in the red jacket is the cartoon version of the author, Darryl Cunningham, who takes a view on such knotty issues as homeopathy and the MMR vaccine, sorting facts from fiction and presenting complex information in a highly accessible way.

An art-school graduate from Keighley, west Yorkshire, Cunningham dabbled with comics in the early 80s before switching to a career in mental health. He drew on the experience to write Psychiatric Tales (2010). "Each chapter looks at a different psychiatric illness and tries to explain it from the point of view of the sufferer and then looks at the biology of it. At the end, I wrap it up with my experience of depression and what that was like."

The new book begins on similar ground with a chapter on electroconvulsive therapy, before broadening out to tackle everything from evolution to moon landing conspiracy theories. He doesn't claim to be an expert but he brings extensive research, as the list of sources demonstrates, and no small amount of passion to the subject.

What compelled him to write it? "It was the amount of disinformation and anti-science stuff around," he tells me. The danger with alternative therapies such as homeopathy is "apart from the fact that you spend a lot of money on them, they could delay you from getting real treatment for something such as cancer where a week or a month could mean the difference between life and death".

There is a prejudice, usually held by people who haven't read one, that the graphic format is unsuited to tackling weighty subjects, but the form abounds with examples to the contrary: see Joe Sacco's pictorial reports from conflicts in Bosnia and Palestine or David B's unbearably moving account of a family illness in Epileptic. Far from being a frivolous medium, the graphic book is a great way of getting to grips with serious issues, Cunningham says. "It summarises things very quickly and you can plough through a lot of information. I love the simplicity of it."

There are downsides, he admits: "You can't go into massive detail, but in the end it's for a general reader so I'm not going to go too much into the nuts and bolts."

When scientists publish research, it is subjected to peer review, in which other scientists in the field put their methods and conclusions to the test. Cunningham put his work through a kind of peer-review process of his own. Each time he completed a chapter, he put it up on his blog so online readers could tell him what they made of it.

"The evolution chapter generated the most comments. I had people chipping in telling me, 'You've got that wrong', so I was able to make corrections for the published version. It was very useful feedback for me."

Not all criticism was constructive. "The alternative therapies chapters upset people the most, while some people were not happy with me because of the moon hoax chapter. But the responses that really made me think were about climate change. I had to step back and think about that, because the science is so complex."

He has done a good job of representing the subject in all its ambiguities, but ultimately it is a snapshot of how we understand climate change at this time. As new information emerges, that understanding will be expanded and refined. As his Afterword says: "Good science is testable, reproducible and stands the test of time. What doesn't work in science falls away and what remains is the truth."

[pinhedz]

It's a familiar story.

Yes it is--but it ain't science, which is understandable. The art student's forte is not science, so neither is the penguin's.

Cunningham has a great advantage in the debate, because he writes both sides of the dialogue, and can make the red-jacket guy as doltish as he wants.

[eddie]

Steve Bell

[eddie]

Steve Bell

[pinhedz]

The ice has been staging a remarkable comeback at both poles this year:

[pinhedz]

Paradoxically, there are preliminary reports that global temperatures rose sharply in April.

We might have to wait a few days to get the final word from Dr. Roy Spencer, PhD.