I just came across yet another powerful appeal from scientists in response to rising CO2 levels - this one specifically on the problem of ocean acidification. As CO2 dissolves into seawater, it reacts to form carbonate and bicarbonate ions. Adding more CO2 changes the balance between these ions, and that lowers the pH of the water.
Seawater is naturally slightly alkali, but we have witnessed a drop in pH (lower pH = more acidic = less basic/alkali) of around 0.1 units of pH, from 8.2 to 8.1. That may not sound like much, but it is enough to affect marine organisms, and the effect is projected to worsen as CO2 emissions continue in the future.
Oceanographers have been reporting on this issue for some time now, and have expressed concern about the potential damage to marine ecosystems. The Monaco Declaration of January 30, 2009 was an attempt to highlight these serious concerns, bringing together some 155 oceanographers from 26 countries taking part in the ASLO Aquatic Sciences Conference.
The group have started an extensive website www.ocean-acidification.net with background information on the problem, news on current research and goals for future work.
I quickly checked the list of signatories against my list of climate scientists, and found 16 I'd already listed. Oceanography is an allied discipline to climate science, given the central role of the ocean in the carbon cycle. Oceanographers appreciate the ecosystem risks inherent in rapidly forced changes to ocean pH that come with spiking CO2 in the atmosphere.
Overall, marine life is one of the hidden victims of carbon pollution. The oceans are under assault on so many fronts, from runoff of pesticides, fertilizer and general contaminants, through overfishing, fish farms causing outbreaks of fish lice and releasing antibiotics, shrimp farming driving destruction of mangrove forests needed as nurseries by many marine species, massive buildup of non-biodegradable plastic garbage (shopping bags, lost fishing nets, etc.) that are ingested by seabirds, turtles and fish, plus now water temperature changes, sea level rise and acidification, all piled one on top of the other. There's a horrendous negative synergy compounding between all these separate ways we impact marine life. All this takes place out of sight of most of us, largely unreported and unnoticed.
Losses of both subsistence and commercial fisheries threaten economic disaster in coastal communities worldwide. It's time for us to wake up to what's happening below the waves. I urge everyone to read the Monaco Declaration and look through the www.ocean-acidification.net website. For more news on this topic, see Science Daily
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Vast resources for learning
If you really want to understand the current outlook of climate scientists, and not just hear the opinions of bloggers making claims about what the science shows, there are many, many online resources that get you directly to the primary sources.
Nearly every science journal has an online edition now; indeed, some are phasing out paper editions to save costs and lower their environmental impact. While most still restrict full-text access to subscribers only, at least for the latest few issues, many now grant open access to back issues past a set window such as one year, and virtually all give free access to article abstracts. Many also have supplementary web content beyond the formal articles, which may include editorials, less technical subject reviews, news briefs, commentary, etc. as well as source data too extensive to fit into print format.
I've made up a web page listing over sixty journals that address climate science and allied disciplines, such as oceanography, biogeochemistry, etc.
Many readers will find most of the research articles in the academic journals beyond their interest or understanding; they are, after all, intended for professionals within their field, and will come across as "inside baseball" loaded with statistics, equations, jargon and loads of assumed background, leaving most of us struggling to keep up. That's normal, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with us for not being insiders, nor with them for talking to one another at their own level. When looking through academic journals, look especially for "review articles" which aim to recap the highlights of the state-of-the-art on a particular topic; these can be a better entry point for non-specialists trying to get a start on an unfamiliar subject. But even these will often demand a good measure of "science literacy."
For the "rest of us" who have not studied these fields enough to follow the primary literature, is there still a way to follow what's happening? Indeed there are several. Science journalism is still alive and has much to offer to the interested lay person. While the financial pressures on tradional media - both print and broadcast - have put the squeeze on science journalism in mass media, there are still many good sources in "science news."
This would include magazines such as New Scientist and Scientific American which attempt to address a broader audience while still aiming for the standards of academic publication - editorial and peer review, citation, and publishing qualified rebuttals.
As well, some of the top journals have supplementary products addressing science news and current issues. The AAAS website supplements their lead journal Science with an extensive website sciencemag.org, a lively podcast of science headlines and features. The magazine website has headlines linking to journal article abtracts, which are free for public access; full text of articles requires subscription or online payment.
Similarly, the UK's Royal Society supplements their lead print journal Nature with a fine website, including an entire site devoted to climate change at Nature Reports Climate Change
So although both Science and Nature are subscriber-only, each has free public access to excellent supplementary material, including much of relevance to climate.
Another excellent source is ScienceDaily, a free science news site with clear, brief write-ups of current work in all areas of science. To see what they've covered on climate, glaciers, ocean acidification, or whatever, just use their search box.
So if you are unfamiliar with what has been going on in the process of climate science, or only hearing about it second or third hand from bloggers, do yourself a favour and get a look at some of the excellent primary material, as well as good journalism reporting directly on primary sources, that is available online.
Nearly every science journal has an online edition now; indeed, some are phasing out paper editions to save costs and lower their environmental impact. While most still restrict full-text access to subscribers only, at least for the latest few issues, many now grant open access to back issues past a set window such as one year, and virtually all give free access to article abstracts. Many also have supplementary web content beyond the formal articles, which may include editorials, less technical subject reviews, news briefs, commentary, etc. as well as source data too extensive to fit into print format.
I've made up a web page listing over sixty journals that address climate science and allied disciplines, such as oceanography, biogeochemistry, etc.
Many readers will find most of the research articles in the academic journals beyond their interest or understanding; they are, after all, intended for professionals within their field, and will come across as "inside baseball" loaded with statistics, equations, jargon and loads of assumed background, leaving most of us struggling to keep up. That's normal, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with us for not being insiders, nor with them for talking to one another at their own level. When looking through academic journals, look especially for "review articles" which aim to recap the highlights of the state-of-the-art on a particular topic; these can be a better entry point for non-specialists trying to get a start on an unfamiliar subject. But even these will often demand a good measure of "science literacy."
For the "rest of us" who have not studied these fields enough to follow the primary literature, is there still a way to follow what's happening? Indeed there are several. Science journalism is still alive and has much to offer to the interested lay person. While the financial pressures on tradional media - both print and broadcast - have put the squeeze on science journalism in mass media, there are still many good sources in "science news."
This would include magazines such as New Scientist and Scientific American which attempt to address a broader audience while still aiming for the standards of academic publication - editorial and peer review, citation, and publishing qualified rebuttals.
As well, some of the top journals have supplementary products addressing science news and current issues. The AAAS website supplements their lead journal Science with an extensive website sciencemag.org, a lively podcast of science headlines and features. The magazine website has headlines linking to journal article abtracts, which are free for public access; full text of articles requires subscription or online payment.
Similarly, the UK's Royal Society supplements their lead print journal Nature with a fine website, including an entire site devoted to climate change at Nature Reports Climate Change
So although both Science and Nature are subscriber-only, each has free public access to excellent supplementary material, including much of relevance to climate.
Another excellent source is ScienceDaily, a free science news site with clear, brief write-ups of current work in all areas of science. To see what they've covered on climate, glaciers, ocean acidification, or whatever, just use their search box.
So if you are unfamiliar with what has been going on in the process of climate science, or only hearing about it second or third hand from bloggers, do yourself a favour and get a look at some of the excellent primary material, as well as good journalism reporting directly on primary sources, that is available online.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Rep. Boehner on cows and CO2
I just posted the following comment on Chris Mooney's excellent blog "The Intersection", at its new home on the Discover Magazine website. Here's the discussion thread that prompted this. See there for a video clip of George Stefanopoulos' interview with Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) (whose House homepage currently leads off with "Ohio’s coal industry employs about 3,000 people ... Coal and the Ohioans who depend on it are also quietly under attack, courtesy of the federal government" - because of the proposed CO2 cap-and-trade legislation, which he opposes.)
Chris wrote an editorial in response to Boehner's remarks, and in the blog entry he follows some of the response to his position. You might want to view the 2 minute clip and read the blog post as context for the following.
Here's what I posted on Chris' blog:
I’ll second the notion that Boehner’s red herring about CO2 not being a “carcinogen” is more revealing than his mentioning cows as a source of CO2. Technically, it’s true that cow “eructation” can include some CO2, but the video clip makes it clear Boehner was trying to deflect George’s question of whether climate change is a serious problem by tossing up the meme that CO2 is natural (yes) - implying that it can’t then be harmful (no!) - that’s the point of Mass. v. EPA and the new Finding of Risk: spiking GHG concentrations pose large environmental risks from drought, severe weather events, sea level rise and ocean acidification; these not based on any claim of toxicity of CO2, and Boehner ought to know that. He’s just playing a rhetorical card - one that I’m sure plays well for his base.
When it comes to cows, a key point missed in many of these superficial debates is that the US population of cattle is around 100 million - one cow per every three Americans - and we fatten them on subsidized ADM corn in CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations), not on grass. This is entirely unnatural for cattle; corn is much harder for cattle to digest than the grasses on which they are naturally adapted to ruminate. This causes them to “eructate” a lot more methane than cows grazed on grass. Here’s a recent article on cows and GHGs:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-greenhouse-hamburger
Fattening cattle on corn instead of grass also gives them acid indigestion, promoting growth of dangerous e-coli, requiring lots of antibiotics not needed for grass-fed cows, greatly increasing the risk of antibiotic resistant strains. Some of these really nasty e-coli find their way into our food supply, leading to food poisonings and mass recalls. This is documented in detail in the compelling bestseller _The Omnivore’s Dilemma_ by Michael Pollan - highly recommended reading!
But getting back to climate change, methane is indeed the #2 greenhouse gas (pardon the expression) after CO2. Concentrated feedlots can’t recycle the volumes of manure they yield, so it stews in manure “ponds” (devastating if they spill into waterways, as seen recently) where it ferments into yet more methane.
Rice farming, landfill garbage, and leaks from natural gas pipelines are other significant human sources of excess methane; wetlands and peat bogs are natural sources. Thawing of permafrost in the tundra is expected to add lots more methane as the climate warms (a big temperature-to-greenhouse-effect positive feedback.)
One methane molecule has some 21 times the greenhouse warming effect of one CO2 molecule; it takes around eight to ten years for methane in the atmosphere to oxidize into CO2 (adding yet one more CO2 molecule that will persist for on average 100 years).
Methane concentrations today are almost triple their pre-industrial levels. While those in denial about climate used to crow about a recent “plateau” in this very elevated level, there is recent evidence of levels starting to rise again, such as here:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=35856
Anyway, it’s clear that Boehner did not want to answer George’s persistent questions (props to George for focusing on the real issue). Boehner kept jumping ahead to “we shouldn’t act if China won’t” - which completely fails to answer the question about CO2!
I believe this illustrates the problem we are up against: many conservatives have already decided that capping CO2 will be too costly, will push jobs overseas, etc. From that point, they work backwards to choose talking points that cast doubt on the science
Chris wrote an editorial in response to Boehner's remarks, and in the blog entry he follows some of the response to his position. You might want to view the 2 minute clip and read the blog post as context for the following.
Here's what I posted on Chris' blog:
I’ll second the notion that Boehner’s red herring about CO2 not being a “carcinogen” is more revealing than his mentioning cows as a source of CO2. Technically, it’s true that cow “eructation” can include some CO2, but the video clip makes it clear Boehner was trying to deflect George’s question of whether climate change is a serious problem by tossing up the meme that CO2 is natural (yes) - implying that it can’t then be harmful (no!) - that’s the point of Mass. v. EPA and the new Finding of Risk: spiking GHG concentrations pose large environmental risks from drought, severe weather events, sea level rise and ocean acidification; these not based on any claim of toxicity of CO2, and Boehner ought to know that. He’s just playing a rhetorical card - one that I’m sure plays well for his base.
When it comes to cows, a key point missed in many of these superficial debates is that the US population of cattle is around 100 million - one cow per every three Americans - and we fatten them on subsidized ADM corn in CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations), not on grass. This is entirely unnatural for cattle; corn is much harder for cattle to digest than the grasses on which they are naturally adapted to ruminate. This causes them to “eructate” a lot more methane than cows grazed on grass. Here’s a recent article on cows and GHGs:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-greenhouse-hamburger
Fattening cattle on corn instead of grass also gives them acid indigestion, promoting growth of dangerous e-coli, requiring lots of antibiotics not needed for grass-fed cows, greatly increasing the risk of antibiotic resistant strains. Some of these really nasty e-coli find their way into our food supply, leading to food poisonings and mass recalls. This is documented in detail in the compelling bestseller _The Omnivore’s Dilemma_ by Michael Pollan - highly recommended reading!
But getting back to climate change, methane is indeed the #2 greenhouse gas (pardon the expression) after CO2. Concentrated feedlots can’t recycle the volumes of manure they yield, so it stews in manure “ponds” (devastating if they spill into waterways, as seen recently) where it ferments into yet more methane.
Rice farming, landfill garbage, and leaks from natural gas pipelines are other significant human sources of excess methane; wetlands and peat bogs are natural sources. Thawing of permafrost in the tundra is expected to add lots more methane as the climate warms (a big temperature-to-greenhouse-effect positive feedback.)
One methane molecule has some 21 times the greenhouse warming effect of one CO2 molecule; it takes around eight to ten years for methane in the atmosphere to oxidize into CO2 (adding yet one more CO2 molecule that will persist for on average 100 years).
Methane concentrations today are almost triple their pre-industrial levels. While those in denial about climate used to crow about a recent “plateau” in this very elevated level, there is recent evidence of levels starting to rise again, such as here:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=35856
Anyway, it’s clear that Boehner did not want to answer George’s persistent questions (props to George for focusing on the real issue). Boehner kept jumping ahead to “we shouldn’t act if China won’t” - which completely fails to answer the question about CO2!
I believe this illustrates the problem we are up against: many conservatives have already decided that capping CO2 will be too costly, will push jobs overseas, etc. From that point, they work backwards to choose talking points that cast doubt on the science
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Tangent: actual scans of bird brains
Well, I was checking to see where I'd posted or blogged using my birdbrainscan nickname, which I chose in hopes it would not be taken by anyone else anywhere. While I have never run into "name already taken" by someone else, today I did find one curious collision, with this catchy news story:
Brainy Birds Out-Thought Doomed Dinosaurs?
Hey, this one has everything for the bird-inclined paleo buff: the K-T mass extinction, working from tiny fossils to infer who survived and why, and of course, brainy birds. Plus there's a handy Scrabble(TM) word tossed in: "wulst"
Betcha didn't know that one.
Brainy Birds Out-Thought Doomed Dinosaurs?
Hey, this one has everything for the bird-inclined paleo buff: the K-T mass extinction, working from tiny fossils to infer who survived and why, and of course, brainy birds. Plus there's a handy Scrabble(TM) word tossed in: "wulst"
Betcha didn't know that one.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Even better?
This week I came across a study published this past September that gives a much clearer picture of the outlook of climate scientists on the whole.
A January, 2009 Paper in EOS 90:3 (20 Jan 09) by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman surveyed over 3,000 AGU members for their views on climate change.
The paper is linked on the EOS site but is subscriber-only: EOS Vol. 90 no. 3, 20 Jan.2009
Fortunately, this write-up at Scienceblogs is open-access.
Lesser mortals might see this as a threat to their own little personal slice of the pie, carved out of a winter's worth of evenings and weekends, but not I. No, I am noble and fair-minded, and I want credit to go where credit is due. TheseBAStards fine scholars got way better access that I've got.
I'll still hold forth my list as potentially useful: I show who is highly cited, link to their home page for everyone to see for themselves what each researcher is working on and what they've posted on their own sites. Also, my coverage of the now nearly a dozen public declarations and open letters goes beyond what has been done previously on the web. Much of the time, that has consisted of copying and pasting just the names without the context of who they are or how much weight they may carry within the field.
I hope my listing gives a glimpse into that issue that is of some use to others.
A January, 2009 Paper in EOS 90:3 (20 Jan 09) by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman surveyed over 3,000 AGU members for their views on climate change.
The paper is linked on the EOS site but is subscriber-only: EOS Vol. 90 no. 3, 20 Jan.2009
Fortunately, this write-up at Scienceblogs is open-access.
Lesser mortals might see this as a threat to their own little personal slice of the pie, carved out of a winter's worth of evenings and weekends, but not I. No, I am noble and fair-minded, and I want credit to go where credit is due. These
I'll still hold forth my list as potentially useful: I show who is highly cited, link to their home page for everyone to see for themselves what each researcher is working on and what they've posted on their own sites. Also, my coverage of the now nearly a dozen public declarations and open letters goes beyond what has been done previously on the web. Much of the time, that has consisted of copying and pasting just the names without the context of who they are or how much weight they may carry within the field.
I hope my listing gives a glimpse into that issue that is of some use to others.
Added UCS 2008
There is a powerful call for action on climate change put out by the Union of Concerned Scientists in May 2008, and endorsed by some 1728 American scientists and economists.
I've extracted the list of signers, and this weekend I compared it to my existing list. I was able to match up some 145 names already on my list who signed this declaration. I've added the tag "UCS08" in the Notes column beside names of signers. I also gathered homepage links and citation stats on any of these names that were still waiting in my 'no stats' queue.
With that done and the list sorted anew, I now find 181 of the top 500 have signed one of the 'activist' declarations versus just 21 signing any of the skeptics' statements. This is apart from having served as an IPCC contributing author.
Still to do: filter out economists from the remaining 1583 UCS08 names and post those names. The problem is they'll all fall in my 'no stats' queue, pushing that to far over 2/3 of the total size of the list. Ouch.
I've extracted the list of signers, and this weekend I compared it to my existing list. I was able to match up some 145 names already on my list who signed this declaration. I've added the tag "UCS08" in the Notes column beside names of signers. I also gathered homepage links and citation stats on any of these names that were still waiting in my 'no stats' queue.
With that done and the list sorted anew, I now find 181 of the top 500 have signed one of the 'activist' declarations versus just 21 signing any of the skeptics' statements. This is apart from having served as an IPCC contributing author.
Still to do: filter out economists from the remaining 1583 UCS08 names and post those names. The problem is they'll all fall in my 'no stats' queue, pushing that to far over 2/3 of the total size of the list. Ouch.
Friday, February 6, 2009
getting somewhere
Well I've put a ridiculous amount of my spare time into the big list of climate scientists - and as one respondent pointed out, many non-scientists or non-specialists who have also chimed in on the topic. I've been publicizing more recently, and I'm starting to get some very nice feedback, including from several prominent names on the list. It's a surreal experience to look in my inbox and see a name I know from reading assignments in my climatology course.
Anyway, I feel the list I've put together so far does a reasonable job of illustrating who is getting cited widely, as well as who is signing which kind of climate declaration. I'm struck by just now many of these declarations there have been. This morning I got an email pointing out two more activist statements by Swiss scientists. Earlier this week I found the original list from the skeptics' Leipzig Declaration (1995) and I believe there may be something from the skeptics back to 1992, still waiting to be tracked down and collated.
I found some nice freeware for building interactive timelines for the web, and I've been meaning to try out one of these for a timeline of climate statements; I could show dates of the Toronto conference in 1988, the IPCC ARs in 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007; the US NAS assessments, and the statements from science academies worldwide; then all the open letters and declarations both activist and skeptical that I've been logging here. I could make a bar showing the long time span that the OISM list has been accumulating... this should be interesting, if I can just get to it.
Until last month, I had only known of one skeptics' letter to the Canadian PM (CA06) and the activist climate scientist response later that same month (CMOS130). Then I did more digging and found the earlier CA02 and CA03 letters. Considering just Canadians, the CMOS 130 outnumber the 21 Canadians on the CA06 letter by six to one - and as for the broader case, the Canadian skeptics are also skewed toward retirees, non-scientists or non-climate-scientists, and many have little or no standing as far as citations to peer-reviewed publication.
At one point I'd had in mind to take Canada as a more tractable subset of the world population of climate scientists and skeptics. I have no hope of filling out the list with every possible climate scientist around the world, but for Canada I've got a reasonable first cut already. I might still want to include this argument in my analysis: I may not have anywhere near complete coverage of the world, but I've got most of the Canadians listed and counted (a lot of the CMOS130 names are still not done though.) My separate page for Canada could be the place to focus on the CA02-03-06 letters and the CMOS letter.
Of course, skeptic spinmeisters could then claim that Canada is not a representative sub-sample of the world's scientists. I doubt I could talk them out of that viewpoint; maybe we really are all pinkos with our socialized medicine where you can't have your policy canceled for having used it, and our gun registry, and that pinko David Suzuki on our government-run CBC (the one station on my radio dial with no commercials - I'm spoiled now and have to clench my teeth through those yelling matches and jingles waiting for a traffic update on AM - Ahh-LAARRRM Forrrrrce!)
Anyway, I feel the list I've put together so far does a reasonable job of illustrating who is getting cited widely, as well as who is signing which kind of climate declaration. I'm struck by just now many of these declarations there have been. This morning I got an email pointing out two more activist statements by Swiss scientists. Earlier this week I found the original list from the skeptics' Leipzig Declaration (1995) and I believe there may be something from the skeptics back to 1992, still waiting to be tracked down and collated.
I found some nice freeware for building interactive timelines for the web, and I've been meaning to try out one of these for a timeline of climate statements; I could show dates of the Toronto conference in 1988, the IPCC ARs in 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007; the US NAS assessments, and the statements from science academies worldwide; then all the open letters and declarations both activist and skeptical that I've been logging here. I could make a bar showing the long time span that the OISM list has been accumulating... this should be interesting, if I can just get to it.
Until last month, I had only known of one skeptics' letter to the Canadian PM (CA06) and the activist climate scientist response later that same month (CMOS130). Then I did more digging and found the earlier CA02 and CA03 letters. Considering just Canadians, the CMOS 130 outnumber the 21 Canadians on the CA06 letter by six to one - and as for the broader case, the Canadian skeptics are also skewed toward retirees, non-scientists or non-climate-scientists, and many have little or no standing as far as citations to peer-reviewed publication.
At one point I'd had in mind to take Canada as a more tractable subset of the world population of climate scientists and skeptics. I have no hope of filling out the list with every possible climate scientist around the world, but for Canada I've got a reasonable first cut already. I might still want to include this argument in my analysis: I may not have anywhere near complete coverage of the world, but I've got most of the Canadians listed and counted (a lot of the CMOS130 names are still not done though.) My separate page for Canada could be the place to focus on the CA02-03-06 letters and the CMOS letter.
Of course, skeptic spinmeisters could then claim that Canada is not a representative sub-sample of the world's scientists. I doubt I could talk them out of that viewpoint; maybe we really are all pinkos with our socialized medicine where you can't have your policy canceled for having used it, and our gun registry, and that pinko David Suzuki on our government-run CBC (the one station on my radio dial with no commercials - I'm spoiled now and have to clench my teeth through those yelling matches and jingles waiting for a traffic update on AM - Ahh-LAARRRM Forrrrrce!)
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