tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64259334032896546922024-03-13T14:29:32.613-04:00Green HerringAn environmentalist responds to red herrings tossed out by denialists.Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-44773888336166504212018-10-08T23:54:00.000-04:002018-10-08T23:59:03.971-04:00The making of many books<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
The Making of Many Books</h2>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"... <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "verdana" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.</span>" </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
-- Ecclesiastes 12:12 (NIV)</blockquote>
<br />
Okay, so I may have been consuming <i>a bit</i> too much content lately - a bit!<br />
<br />
And I'm really feeling that I need to move from only reading to also writing. So to start, here's a little piece of writing on what I've been reading.<br />
<br />
I've always been a bookworm, and I appear to have a bit of a book hoarding issue, according to my spouse. The last few years the accumulation of instances of the dead-tree format has slowed appreciably, as I've mostly switched over to consuming content in e- formats: ebooks (Kindle, Kobo, PDF, or web-based), audiobooks (checked out of the Toronto Public Library, or accessed via my beloved Scribd subscription - see <a href="http://www.scribd.com/">www.scribd.com</a>) and podcasts. All these download into the appropriate app on my iPhone or iPad Mini: Libby, Scribd app, and DownCast.<br />
<br />
For audiobooks and podcasts, I've got a couple of nice Bluetooth wireless headsets that let me keep on 'reading' while I'm working around the house or the boat, commuting, or just vegging out. By keeping a selection of content in the audio queue and keeping the phone and the 'phones charged and handy, I get through a number of titles per week, week in and week out - on top of my actual reading of text off of screens.<br />
<br />
So, great: no more ever-growing stack of unread / barely begun (physical) books on the nightstand - yay! Unfortunately the queue of "save for later" titles, both text and audio, continues to pile up in i-space, i.e. on the screen of my mobile devices. The concomitant 'book guilt' -- the sense that I was kidding myself about ever getting through all these titles I told myself I want to read -- well, that hasn't gone away. This is a special kind of weariness the sage of Ecclesiastes might find it hard to grasp, but the gist of 12:12 still applies.<br />
<br />
I'm trying to view the backlog with a sense of opportunity - I'll never run out of choices for the next read! -- and to focus instead on what I <i>am</i> getting through. So what have I been reading?<br />
<br />
I'm consuming quite a lot of nonfiction titles this year:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>History, especially of colonialism: </li>
<ul>
<li>Charles Mann's <i>1491 </i>and <i>1493</i></li>
<li>Matthew Restall's <i>When Montezuma Met Cortes </i>(saved for later)</li>
<li>Alexander Anieves's <i>How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism</i></li>
</ul>
<li>Earth history: </li>
<ul>
<li>Peter Brannen's <i>The Ends of the World</i> </li>
</ul>
<li>Energy and climate change:</li>
<ul>
<li>Paul Hawken's <i>Drawdown</i></li>
<li>Chris Turner's <i>The Patch</i></li>
</ul>
<li>Agronomy(? - hard to name the category, but a great book): </li>
<ul>
<li>David R. Montgomery's <i>Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization</i></li>
</ul>
<li>Race in America: </li>
<ul>
<li>Kevin M Kruse's <i>White Flight</i></li>
<li>Ta-Nehisi Coates' <i>Between the World and Me </i></li>
<li>Charles M. Blow's <i>Fire Shut Up in my Bones </i>(mostly read)</li>
<li>Joan Walsh's <i>What's the Matter with White People </i>(begun)</li>
<li>John Howard Griffin's <i>Black Like Me</i></li>
<li>W.E.B. DuBois' <i>The Souls of Black Men </i>(saved for later)</li>
</ul>
<li>U.S. politics:</li>
<ul>
<li>Peter Bremmer's <i>Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism</i></li>
<li>Malcolm Nance's <i>The Plot to Hack America</i></li>
<li>Steven Levitsky's <i>How Democracies Die</i></li>
<li>Ellen R. Malcolm's <i>When Women Win: EMILY's List</i></li>
<li>Katie Tur's <i>Unbelievable</i></li>
<li>Luke Harding's <i>Collusion</i></li>
</ul>
<li>Biology / ecology (for an online biology book club):</li>
<ul>
<li>Peter Marra's <i>Cat Wars </i></li>
<li>Peter Wohlleben's <i>The Hidden Life of Trees</i></li>
</ul>
<li>Science</li>
<ul>
<li>Sharon Moalem's <i>Inheritance: How Our Genes Change Our Lives</i></li>
</ul>
</ul>
A few standouts in my 'save for later / really should get back to' queue:<br />
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Donald Boudreaux's <i>Globalization</i></li>
<li>S. Niggol Seo's <i>The Behavioral Economics of Climate Change </i>(in progress)</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
All that U.S. politics, colonialism and climate change can be pretty heavy, even unsettling reading, so I try to pace myself by interspersing some fiction (especially right before bed!) I enjoy detective and spy novels, both classics and newer contributions. I've scoured the Scandinavian crime fiction scene, which offers a nice range of crime novels set in Nordic countries.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I've found several authors with fresh takes on each genre, based in different times and places in recent history:</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Martin Cruz Smith (Arkady Renko, detective, USSR & Russian Federation)</li>
<li>Tom Rob Smith (Leo Demidov, detective, USSR)</li>
<li>Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch, detective, California)</li>
<li>Alan Furst (spy / resistance, WW II era)</li>
<li>Philip Kerr (Bernie Gunther, detective, Nazi Germany)</li>
<li>Charles Cumming (espionage, modern Britain)</li>
<li>Arnadur Indridason (Inspector Erlendur, detective, modern Iceland)</li>
<li>Henning Mankell (crime, Sweden)</li>
<li>Peter Hoeg (crime, Denmark)</li>
<li>Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (Martin Beck, detective, Sweden)</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
Then for sheer escapism, there are always the 'pulp' or high-productivity U.S. action writers like:</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Lee Child</li>
<li>Michael Connelly</li>
<li>Tom Clancy</li>
<li>Len Deighton</li>
</ul>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-56010180746248488142018-06-12T23:16:00.000-04:002018-06-12T23:16:30.641-04:00You are not the boss of me!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px; text-align: left;">
On Autonomy</h3>
<h4 style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px; text-align: left;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I don’t care what you say any more, this is my life /<br />
Go ahead with your own life – leave me alone!"</blockquote>
</h4>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px; text-align: left;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"></span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
-- 'My Life' by Billy Joel</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A young child sees that their present is limited,
constrained: “Eat your veggies! Don’t touch! Bedtime!” They look forward with
longing to a future where they outgrow these constraints.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Children see that their parents know what is good for them,
and that they must mature before they’ll be ready to take over making decisions
for themselves. Kids feel impatient to reach the plateaus where they
demonstrate competence at particular daily tasks – “Let <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i> do it!” </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">They perceive that reaching the goal of showing they’re
ready and able to do things for themselves is the doorway to a special freedom,
what we call “autonomy” – deciding for yourself about your own affairs. At
first this includes choices like what to wear today, having an allowance to
spend as you choose, deciding what friends to socialize with; learning to ride
a bicycle, then later how to drive. Eventually a young adult must take on more
responsibility for decisions about their future: what courses to take, where and how long to
attend school, college, university, and grad school; how late to stay out; when
to try drinking; whom to date and eventually whom to marry; when to move out,
rent a place, buy a bike, a scooter, perhaps a car.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Family, friends and colleagues will continue to weigh in
with opinions on these choices if permitted, but ultimately an adult has the
final decision and responsibility for their choices.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The importance of autonomy underlies many of our civic values
and political ideals. A central facet of why slavery is wrong lies in its denial
to enslaved persons of their autonomy. We recognize that all human persons have
an inherent right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as each
person sees fit. It’s not for me or you or anyone else to tell a person how to
exercise their autonomy. We do still place demands on adults, in the form of
laws, customs and social norms. These are justified as necessary to allow us
all to coexist in society without interfering with one another’s own rights. You’re
free to go to a bar and drink, but if drink makes you pugnacious, the freedom
of movement of your fist ends where my nose begins. One challenge for
government is fully protect citizen’s noses from their fellow citizens’ fists, imposing
only the minimum of constraint of everyone’s freedom. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Living in society today places many limits on yours or my
self-expression and autonomy: we have to stop at red lights; refrain from
theft, murder, arson or extortion. More positively, we have to work for a
living and pay taxes, and we depend on our fellow citizens to produce and sell
us whatever we need to buy to live our lives: food and drink, fuel,
electricity, news, things to read and shows to watch… you or I can’t produce
all of these alone, and we each have to go along with what everyone else
chooses to offer for sale and what price they ask. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So we each have a core right to autonomy over ourselves in
our life choices – but none of us is autonomous in the sense of Robinson Crusoe,
or Matt Damon in The Martian (and even they relied on tools and materiel
salvaged or left from the vessel from which they were marooned, originally
stocked by others.) Autonomy over one’s life choices cannot depend on self-sufficiency
in isolation from society. No man is an island, as Donne wrote, and we
recognize autonomy as a right against interference by others in ongoing
interaction with those others, not in isolation. Yes, you are free to exercise
your autonomy to live as a hermit, go camping in a remote wilderness, or cast
off solo in a well-stocked boat, but the point is that you need not do any of
those things to remain autonomous. The right to autonomy is a right to live in
society, in mutual inter-dependence —for food, for employment, news and ideas,
stories and relationships— yet free from compulsion or coercion. Nobody else can dictate your life choices. It’s
all on you. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13.33px;">
<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></div>
Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-69618587242379655342018-05-22T23:10:00.002-04:002018-05-23T11:20:07.830-04:00If you are not black<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If you are not black in America, don't go saying America is now "post-racial." If you are not black, you can't know what Black Americans experience - not truly. You can try to put yourself in a Black person's shoes; you can read black authors and journalists, and listen to commentary of black thought leaders. You can spend some time reading <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/the-truth-about-black-twitter/390120/">Black Twitter</a>. I've also included links to twitter accounts of authors I recommend below.<br />
<br />
If you are not black, and find black perspectives unfamiliar and perhaps off-putting, just keep trying. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">What you really don't want to do is to try to portray whites as 'victims' of anti-white 'racism,' or to push the hashtag #AllLivesMatter. Just ... don't. Instead, read more. Listen. If you're on twitter and are not black, there's a good chance you haven't followed many women of color. Find some, give them a follow, and see who they #FF. </span><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
If you view the world through TV, there are current and recent documentary series such as Soledad O'Brien's<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_in_America"> Black in America</a> <a href="http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/in.america/black.in.america/">series on CNN</a>, and W. Kamau Bell's <span id="goog_2074223910"></span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/shows/united-shades-of-america">United Shades of America<span id="goog_2074223911"></span></a>.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><br /></a>
If you view the world through books and the written word (and/or audiobook), there is a wealth of choice. <br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
I've read and can recommend:</h4>
Isabel Wilkerson's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8171378-the-warmth-of-other-suns">The Warmth of Other Suns</a> (well rendered in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Warmth-Other-Suns-Americas-Migration/dp/B004RFAIWO">audiobook</a> by narrator Robin Miles) (Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/Isabelwilkerson">@IsabelWilkerson )</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://ta-nehisicoates.com/">Ta-Nehisi Coates</a>' <a href="http://ta-nehisicoates.com/books/between-the-world-and-me/">Between the World and Me</a> (Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/@tanehisicoats" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #0066cc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Ta-Nehisi Coates</a>)<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/@kevinmkruse">Kevin M. Kruse</a>'s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/345070.White_Flight">White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism</a><br />
<br />
Michelle Alexander's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6792458-the-new-jim-crow">The New Jim Crow</a> (twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/@thenewjimcrow">@thenewjimcrow</a>)<br />
<u><span style="color: #000120;"><br /></span></u>
Andrew Young's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Easy-Burden-Movement-Transformation-America/dp/0060173629">An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America</a><br />
<br />
Charles M. Blow's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20256590-fire-shut-up-in-my-bones">Fire Shut Up in My Bones</a><br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Other things I'm interested to read on race in America include:</h4>
Cameron McWhirter's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10805364-red-summer">The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America</a> (Twitter: <br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/cammcwhirter">@cammcwhirter</a>)<br />
<br />
Ijeoma Oluo's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35099718-so-you-want-to-talk-about-race">So you want to talk about race</a> (Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/IjeomaOluo">@IjeomaOluo</a> )<br />
<br />
Reni Eddo-Lodge's Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race (Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/renireni">@renireni</a> )<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Kamau Bell's </span><a href="http://www.wkamaubell.com/" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #0066cc; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">writings</a> (Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/wkamaubell">@wkamaubell</a> )<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Help?</h4>
I'm also looking for a good book on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_riots#1960s">race riots of the 60's</a>, and on the L.A. riots of 1992 - send recommendations to <a href="https://twitter.com/@jimprall">@jimprall</a> on twitter.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-47948024856081816142018-04-20T23:13:00.001-04:002018-04-20T23:13:29.589-04:00Planes, trains, and ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
The Age of Engines</h2>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
How we got so far into the Anthropocene era</h4>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
For the past two centuries we've been digging up coal and burning it. We've burned coal for space heating--far more convenient than firewood!--and to fire steam boilers for locomotives, pumps (first, to de-water the coal mines and get even more coal), power turbines, and smelting steel. </div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
For over 100 years we've been drilling oil and then gas wells, <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">piping the gas to market (heating, industrial processes, fertilizer), and </span>refining crude oil to gasoline, kerosene, and heavier oil, while burning the oil distillates in cars, trucks, SUVs, motorcycles, taxis, buses, ships, trains, planes, <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">tractors,</span> ATVs, jet skis, dragsters, Indy cars, rally cars, funny cars, monster trucks... A lot of 'sports' entertainment relies on the excitement value of seeing which powerful gasoline engine will carry which daredevil competitor the fastest--or jump the farthest over other, less gigantic vehicles. I looked at photos and TV shows of a whole lot of these internal-combustion powerhouses. Every boy in my school drew pictures of 'cool' cars, and collected HotWheels(TM) toy cars. The coolest of all had to be Sizzlers - tiny battery-powered speedsters we raced around the FatTrack(TM) until they needed recharging. (Hey, electric vehicles in the 70's!) </div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
The fossil fuel sector is an historic stand-out: it transformed our global society into a hyper-connected, always-on-the-move rat race/traffic jam. Today we routinely catch flights halfway around the world, hop 14-storey cruise ships (all you can eat!), and order a lot of stuff online which was built far away, perhaps shipped by vast container ship, rail and/or tractor-trailer to the Giant Warehouse. Then it was packaged up just for us, barcode labelled and dispatched to us - perhaps by air freight, then onto a delivery van right to our door (or if you still go to 'stores,' the whole chain still worked to get your cornucopia of products onto the store shelves.)</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Think of how many internal combustion engines were needed in that supply chain--then consider how many times a day items are loaded up and sent via whatever fossil-fueled vehicle. There are now well over <a href="https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1093560_1-2-billion-vehicles-on-worlds-roads-now-2-billion-by-2035-report">a billion internal combustion engines</a> worldwide--hundreds of millions of passenger and freight vehicles, plus tractors, mowers, pumps, generators, ...</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
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Modern civilization is exquisitely dependent on the internal combustion engine.</div>
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Is this a problem?</div>
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Two distinct issues arise when we reflect on the vast scale and breathtaking rate of growth of the fossil fuels and the hardware in which we burn them: 'peak oil', and the greenhouse effect. I'll get into the issue of greenhouse gas emissions later; here, let me first focus on fossil fuel limits. First, these resources cannot be infinite, and a day must come when we can no longer go on increasing the volume produced. This is summed up in the concept of 'peak oil': that we must face the inevitability that the earth will eventually stop yielding as much oil (and gas and coal) as we have been demanding. The best case for geological limits on oil extraction that I've seen is Ken Deffeyes' book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hubberts-Peak-Impending-World-Shortage/dp/0691141193">Hubbert's Peak</a>. Here's a good <a href="http://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-10-14/review-when-oil-peaked-ken-deffeyes/">review of Deffeyes</a>' recent work. The website<span id="goog_1490391216"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_1490391215"> http://peakoil.com/<span id="goog_1490391217"></span></a> offers readers plenty of info on this viewpoint.</div>
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For a while, the concept of peak oil started to take root, impacting investors and even the world of policy. But it has always been held at bay as a 'fringe' movement. The powerful fossil fuel sector wanted no part of coming to terms with this, and free market fundamentalists clung to the blind faith that whatever we are going to need in the future, the 'magic of the marketplace' will always deliver it, somehow. Talk of ultimate limits remained anathema to this mindset. </div>
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Many more of us, mostly not wedded to such extreme ideology, still choose not to take the step back to look at these questions. The economy is ticking along, utterly reliant on ever more oil wells. It has to work. Don't ask me whether future generations will have the luxury of carrying on burning fuels as we've always been able to do -- too much for me to think about!</div>
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After a brief spell of very high oil prices, where it appeared that the 'peakers' may have been vindicated, oil prices fell as hydraulic fracturing methods came into play on a large scale. The U.S. is less dependent on imported oil than it has been in many decades.</div>
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One might try to point out that this new technique only delays the inevitable reckoning; that 'fracking' for oil is a lot more intrusive and disruptive to local residents, and it too must at some point hit a peak beyond which it can grow no further and must over time start to decline. So far, though, the extra time that fracking has bought the U.S. has pushed these considerations far off the front page, or the top-of-mind. Trump's EPA Administrator Scott Priutt feels justified in seeking to <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/15/14828070/trump-fuel-economy-standards">cancel established regulations</a> setting fleet fuel economy improvement targets for the coming years. Go ahead, keep making and driving gas guzzlers -- we'll just keep fracking til we've got wells on every block.</div>
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What, me worry?</div>
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<i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></h2>
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Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-67428414442738364302014-04-28T12:40:00.001-04:002014-04-28T12:40:23.328-04:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's not just me ... and it's not just climate<br />
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This <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X%2814%2970199-8/fulltext">commentary on Canada's falling standing globally</a> in the top-tier UK medical journal The Lancet pulls no punches. It will not come as news to anyone involved in climate policy discussions in Canada that the HarperGovernment(TM) has sought to muzzle federally-funded climate and environmental scientists. What's new here is how this is being noticed abroad, and the large negative impact this and Harper's other pro-industry ploys are having on Canada's world status.<br />
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The commentary points out several independent, global performance rankings on qualities other than GDP on which Canada's standing has been plummeting. I'll offer that tracking performance on these rankings is one good check on the job performance of our federal government. If we are dropping on civil society indices of openness, that's a big strike against the PM and party in power. Our fall to <a href="http://germanwatch.org/en/download/7158.pdf">55th out of 58 on the Climate Action Network ranking</a> is just one more sign of this extremist skew. But hey, we're still not quite as bad as Khazakstan, Iran or Saudi Arabia (remember, we're the "Saudi Arabia of tar"!) It cannot help our credibility in challenging Putin's expansionism when our ranking on this scale falls below that of Russia.</div>
Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-65172107607343224382012-12-12T00:16:00.001-05:002014-05-23T17:37:36.622-04:00Leading climate tweeps<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I enjoy Twitter and lately I went a bit overboard searching for people to follow. I discovered that Twitter sets a ceiling on how many people you can follow, which varies based on how many people follow <i>you</i>, but they won't tell you what the equation is. So I had to go back and un-follow some accounts I either found were tweeting far too little, or that I forgot why I followed them originally.<br />
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One group I've been searching out to follow is those who work in climate science, paleoclimate and paleoecology, glaciology and ice stuff, remote sensing - all that good stuff I've been reading and attending classes and guest lectures on for several years now.<br />
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I found some names I knew, then looked at who they follow, found some more names I recognized, and this week I went through my "following" list looking to see who I'd latched onto in this area. I was pleasantly surprised as I discovered quite a few very prominent names in the field are tweeting now. Here are some of the top names I found - please tweet or email me to suggest more tweeps!<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.983333587646484px;">Click the links to go to their Twitter profile - where you can click "Follow"</span><br />
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(follower stats as of 2012-12-10 except the later additions as of add date):<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">IPCC-specific:</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/IPCC_CH">@IPCC_CH</a> The IPCC's twitter feed (followed by 2342)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Cfigueres">@Cfigueres</a> UNFCC Executive Secretary Dr. Christina Figueres (followed by 12046)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/pwatkinson" style="line-height: 17.983333587646484px;">@pwatkinson</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.983333587646484px;"> Head climate negotiator for France (followed by 782)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/JPvanYpersele">@JPvanYpersele</a> IPCC vice-chair (followed by 119)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">climate leaders:</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann">@MichaelEMann</a> Univ. of Pennsylvania, realclimate.org (followed by 6388)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/HeidiCullen">@HeidiCullen</a> <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;">climate scientist, science journalist (followed by </span>4087)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/GlobalEcoGuy">@GlobalEcoGuy</a> Johnathan Foley, <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;">Director, Institute on the Environment (IonE), Univ. Minnesota (followed by 3030)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/rjtklein">@rjtklein</a> Richard Klein, <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;">Climate policy analyst at SEI and CSPR, IPCC author</span> (followed by 2606)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira">@KenCaldeira</a> senior climate scientist Stanford U. (followed by 2351)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/dr_andy_russell">@dr_andy_russell</a> <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;">Lecturer in Climate Change at</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #777777; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"> </span><a class="tweet-url twitter-atreply pretty-link" href="https://twitter.com/Brunel_IfE" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #940505; line-height: 17.999998092651367px; text-decoration: initial;" wotsearchprocessed="true"><s style="background-color: white; color: #be6969; line-height: 17.999998092651367px; text-decoration: initial;">@</s><b style="background-color: white; color: #940505; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17.999998092651367px; text-decoration: initial;">Brunel_IfE</b></a> (followed by 1920)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/richardabetts">@richardabetts</a> <i> </i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;">Climate scientist, Met Office Hadley Centre and Exeter University. IPCC AR5 Lead Author (followed by 1778)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/AGW_Prof">@AGW_Prof</a> Prof. Scott A. Mandia - SUNY Suffolk, founder of Climate Science Rapid Response Team</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/PaulREhrlich">@PaulREhrlich</a> population ecologist (followed by 1115)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/climate_ice">@climate_ice</a> Prof. Jason Box, Ohio State U. - "Mister Cryosphere" (followed by 1010)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/rahmstorf">@rahmstorf</a> Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf - PIK, realclimate.org (followed by 738)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/popepolar">@popepolar</a> Dr. Allen Pope (followed by 736)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/TusconPeck">@TusconPeck</a> Johnathan Overpeck (followed by 726)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/SimonLLewis">@SimonLLewis</a> (followed by 652)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/TheCostOfEnergy">@TheCostOfEnergy</a> Lou Grinzo (followed by 648)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/simondonner">@simondonner</a> Simon Donner, Univ. of British Columbia (followed by 643)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/BrianBledsoe">@BrianBledsoe</a> (followed by 637)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/ed_hawkins">@ed_hawkins</a> (followed by 584)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/AJWVictoriaBC">@AJWVictoriaBC</a> Dr. Andrew Weavers FCMOS FAMS - UBC (followed by 491)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/SMEasterbrook">@SMEasterbrook</a> Prof. Steve Easterbrook - Univ. of Toronto (hi Steve!) (followed by 388)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin">@ClimateOfGavin</a> Dr. Gavin Schmidt - GISS, realclimate.org (followed by 368)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlanRobock">@AlanRobock</a> Dr. Alan Robock - Rutgers U (followed by 214) [added to this list 2013-06]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/neiladger">@NeilAdger</a> - Univ. of Exeter (followed by193)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.983333587646484px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/vickypope2">@vickypope2</a> UK Met Office (followed by 111)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.983333587646484px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/ericsteig">@ericsteig</a> - realclimate.org (followed by 54)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.983333587646484px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/climatebook">@climatebook</a> Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert FAGU - Univ. of Chicago, realclimate.org (twitter feed for his textbook - followed by 46)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.983333587646484px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcmaccracken">@mcmaccracken</a> Dr. Mike MacCracken FAAAS, IAMAS, ICIA (followed by 43)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/BarryBickmore1">@BarryBickmore1</a> Brigham Young U. (followed by 37) </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/rikleemans">@rikleemans</a> Vageningen U (followed by 14)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 17.999998092651367px;">While I've sorted these by current number of followers, that's sometimes quite different from the order you'll find them on my table of most highly-cited authors on climate science. Some of the most highly cited who could use some more love on Twitter in proportion to their publication record are Neil Adger, Mike McCracken, and Rik Leemans -- but everyone here is well worth following, so don't be shy!</span><br />
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UPDATE 2013-06-25:</h4>
I somehow overlooked @AlanRobock at time of writing, so I've just added him. I gmailed his name this morning, and when I logged in to Twitter just now it suggested I follow him. Coincidence, or spooky SEO? You decide...<br />
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UPDATE#2, 2013-08-07:</h4>
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Just noticed two more important names in climate science now on twitter:</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/PdeMenocal">@PdeMenocal</a> Peter DeMenocal of Lamont-Doherty at Columbia (followed by 141)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/moraymo">@moraymo</a> Maureen Raymo of Lamont-Doherty at Columbia (followed by 189)<br />
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UPDATE#3, 2014-01-17</h4>
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Some more key climate scientists now on Twitter:<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/OveHG">@OveHG</a> Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of U. Queensland (followed by 503)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateOpp">@ClimateOpp</a> Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton (followed by 437)<br />
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UPDATE#4 2014-05-23</h4>
The follower counts posted above will be way out of date by now, but I don't have spare time to go back through the whole list and update them. Anyway, I'm adding one more update for Naomi Oreskes who just joined Twitter, along with some important names in #scicomms and climate politics/public understanding of science research:<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/NaomiOreskes">@NaomiOreskes</a> Naomi Oreskes of Harvard (followed by 422 after just one week and 12 tweets - got some good early #FFs)<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/skepticscience">@skepticscience</a> John Cook of U.Queensland (followed by 9211)<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/chriscmooney">@ChrisCMooney</a> of MotherJones and ClimateDesk (followed by 12.3K)<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/boykoff">@Boykoff</a> Max Boykoff of CIRES CSTPR, Boulder, CO (followed by 1392)<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/STWorg">@STWorg</a> Shaping Tomorrow's World team, led by Stephan Lewandowsky of U Bristol (followed by 598)<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/ecotone2">@ecotone2</a> Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale PCCC (followed by 582)<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/AaronMcCright">@AaronMcCright</a> Aaron McCright of MSU (followed by 391)<br />
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Also some climate science aware journalists worth a follow:<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/georgemonbiot">@georgemonbiot</a> George Monbiot of The Guardian (followed by 92.5K)</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/dvergano">@DVergano</a> Dan Vergano of National Geographic (followed by 13K)</div>
<a href="https://twitter.com/ElaineMcKewon">@ElaineMcKewon</a> Elaine McKewon journalism PhD cand., Syndey, AU (followed by 295)<br />
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Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-38908992385836208612012-12-11T22:53:00.002-05:002012-12-11T22:58:36.999-05:00Dusting off my climate authors site<h2>
Oof!</h2>
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A new open letter about climate change, published last month in Canada's <i>Financial Post,</i> got me busy going back into my website covering who signs such things and how seriously we should take them. I'm preparing a new post on this letter in particular, but I'm also going back and dusting the cobwebs off the rest of my web listing of climate scientists, statements, petitions and so forth. </div>
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After having worked at length in 2009 and 2010 to get the site to its current state, I gave myself a well-earned rest from updating it for a while. I devoted free time to other pursuits I also value, such as upgrading the energy-efficiency of our 1920 Toronto home, in time to claim some energy-retrofit tax credits that were set to expire. I made it in time, and had fun in the process. I upgraded the insulation in my attic (after struggling mightly trying to seal air leaks around the fixtures in the 2nd floor ceiling.) By renting the machine to blow in the shredded fiberglass as a D-I-Y, I actually got back the full cost of that upgrade.</div>
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I also had our foundation dug out and waterproofed, then insulated the basement and headers which were big areas of heat loss. I had new high-performance windows installed in the basement as well (we had the first and second floor windows done already some years back.) The basement was labour-intensive and I felt like I was holding down two jobs, but I did get some help by hiring a couple of neighbourhood youth (at or above the youth minimum wage.) When it came time for drywalling, I hired some tradesmen. I took digital photos at each stage, and presented before-and-after album to the inspector who verifies the work for the government rebates. He said mine was the best-documented job he'd ever inspected 8-) And yes, our heating bill was considerably lower the next winter - but then, the weather was a good deal milder too, so I don't have a clear read on how much good this did yet (I should probably do some math involving degree-days.)</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Once that huge job was done, I had some actual leisure to catch up on reading, both fiction and non-fiction. I'm a pretty voracious reader, and now with e-books my ever-growing pile of pending 'must reads' extends into cyberspace (and forks between Kobo, Kindle, and Goodreader... <i>sigh.</i> I realised today I have a problem remembering which e-book space a given unfinished title is languishing.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So when I started looking over my website, I found a lot of links had gone stale. First I reviewed my list of sources - links back to the original documents from which I noted who had signed which statements and letters. Sadly, several more of these had gone missing; fortunately each lost document is still housed at www.archive.org, so I've updated my links to that. I don't actually understand how they pay for this free service, and I got to wondering what will happen to people like me if that site ever goes under. {Tangent} Even worse would be the loss of a site like bit.ly, tinyurl, or any of the big URL shortening services. If one of them simply folded without donating their existing link base to the public good, a *whole* lot of web content would start to unravel. Just try not to think about this... {/Tangent}</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Next I went back to my big long list of names, citation stats and website links for authors. I thought of several new tidbits to start collecting: who has a Twitter account now? (32 found so far, many more to come I'm sure.) Who is written up at Wikipedia? (a column I started some time back and am just getting rolling on filling out.) Who has ties to coal, oil & gas interests? Who has an author profile page at Google Scholar? (Neat new feature, solves the problem of separating an author's own works from those of others with similar names; also shows Google's results on handy stats like h-index) Who is written up in SourceWatch or in DeSmogBlog's reference database? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
After going back to data entry mode for a number of days, I thought I'd look at the scripts I use to extract the data from Excel, format it for both HTML and JSON/jquery, and sort and summarize the results. I enjoy this kind of coding immensely, but I hadn't run this for quite some time and had to get my bearings a bit. After getting errors from code I know I used okay at the last batch run, I realised I'm not supposed to run it under Solaris, but on a Linux host. I found the code in perl's Spreadsheet::XLSX module doesn't like when your spreadsheet contains any formula error warnings - so I learned to use the "Review errors" button in the Formulas tab. (Turns out I'd just type a stray letter into a column where numbers belong, which another cell referenced in a calculation. Clear - problem solved.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Finally I had phase 1 of my script back up and running. I decided to activate the routine I'd added to check all the URLs for broken links as they are imported. This takes a lot longer, but with two years since the last pass, they really needed re-checking. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The results were stark. Some 25% of URLs I collected in 2009-10 have gone 404 in the intervening two years. A large majority of the URL base are on academic websites. I guess everyone feels compelled to "improve" their sites with a big re-org once in a while... sigh. Lots of manual searches to see what new paths everyone got reorged off to. Here are the specific numbers:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Finished URL checks. Found 3029 okay, 1153 broken</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I checked URLs for homepage and mugshot photo that I'd collected. I may just give up on trying to have a photo link for each person, though I thought that was nice to include. It's just a lot of added search time that might be better spent on other tasks.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I see I'll also want to add an option to my script to verify the other types of URL I've started gathering: Wikipedia, DeSmogBlog, Sourcewatch, and implicitly any Twitter handle can be formed into a URL for the person's Twitter profile. These at least should have a lot less turnover than the university homepage ones turn out to do.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Watch this space for more on this big push, including a "top climate science tweeps" report - some really big names are showing up on Twitter now. It's quite exciting.</div>
Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-36212309460184911472010-06-28T13:38:00.000-04:002010-06-28T13:38:17.801-04:00Commenting on lists and name-callingWell, last week Marc Morano posted my email on his climatedepot website and his email blast, in the process of comparing me to the Stasi (secret police of the former East German one-party-rule Communist regime.) Over the past week I've had a stream of hostile emails in response.<br />
<br />
Here I re-post <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/23/blacklist-peak-readership-for-denier-blogs/">an earlier reply I gave</a> at Joe Romm's ever lively and thought-provoking site www.climateprogress.org:<br />
<br />
As for web lists of statement signers: thanks Michael Tobis for saying it better than I ever could. Every list I compiled was from a statement already posted on the web. All the links are on my page of list sources<br />
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/ ~prall/ climate/ list_sources.html<br />
<br />
As for Marc Morano’s attempt to Swiftboat this as “Stasi-esque”: what amazing gall! He’s famous for having built a long list of climate skeptics during his term with Sen. Inhofe. Hypocrite! Why wasn’t that list “Stasi-esque?” Just because he agreed with their “side”?<br />
Nothing in our PNAS paper justifies comparisons to the Stasi. We don’t *say* anyone should persecute or blacklist signers of either type of statement, because of course we *don’t believe* that. (Hard to believe I’m even having to say this at all.) What we say is that the media should consider people’s qualifications and standing (oooh!)<br />
The only other way to spin this into something sinister is to argue that someone evil *might use* the lists to persecute people regardless of our intentions. That seems to be the main theme at Roger Pielke Jr’s blog.<br />
<br />
That objection of what someone might do with the list really falls down on the point Michael makes so well, that all the source lists I compiled were already on the web. Anyone who could misuse my list could just as well have found the same names on the original sources, or many of the same names plus many more on Morano’s list – and not all on his list by choice.<br />
<br />
Morano publicized his list relentlessly, and listed many more names as skeptics than I have. Morano also tended to quotemine, leading to false positives where the person in question would protest their inclusion as unrepresentative of their actual views, yet Morano would refuse to take them off. He’d just point to the mined quote he had, ignoring anything the source might say about being taken out of context or trying to tell him what their actual views are.<br />
<br />
If the fear is that someone biased against supporters of one “side” could focus their bias on people on a list, why was it okay for Morano to subject people to that risk with his list? Was Morano’s list “Stasi-esque” as well? If not, why not?<br />
<br />
Thanks again to those offering supportive comments on the PNAS paper. Since Morano published my email and compared me to the Stasi, let’s just say I’ve had a stream of unfriendly responses. (Oddly, people keep sending me really weak arguments like “there is no greenhouse effect” or predicting global cooling.)<br />
<br />
<br />
That's the end of my posting on climateprogress. Site host Joe Romm aptly commented:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>[JR: Remember, Morano publicly stated how he believes climate scientists should be treated: “I seriously believe we should kick them while they’re down,” he said. “They deserve to be publicly flogged.” He proudly linked to that interview on his blog.</blockquote>]Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-88276931584160918852010-06-22T18:13:00.002-04:002010-06-22T19:21:42.516-04:00Early reactions to Anderegg et al in PNASI'm the second author on the article "Expert Credibility in Climate Change" just out yesterday at <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract">http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract</a></span>. It's been written up several places, and is quickly making the rounds on the web, attracting a lot of comment and critique. I'll try to address questions or challenges here as I get time.<br />
<a href="http://www.pnas.org/"></a><br />
<br />
Today I received email from an author in Germany who said he was on the Stasi's list under the G.D.R (a horrific world, one that we who've never been there can scarcely imagine.)<br />
<br />
I wanted to address his concern about my online list. Here's what I wrote:<br />
<br />
Dear Dr. _______,<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">I can't imagine what it must have been like to live in the shadow of the</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Stasi. I would never want to see anything like that take place today. At</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">least now Germany is one country again and is a democracy, and I think a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">good example of it as well. I admire the mixed-member proportional</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">system you have. Here in Canada we have winner-takes-all voting, and our</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Green Party has never won a seat in Parliament despite polling over 11%</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">of the national vote. There is a group here promoting a change to such</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">an MMP system, though we are having trouble getting people to think</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">about this with so many other concerns on the agenda, especially the</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">economy.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">As for seeing my listings as some kind of "blacklist" - I'm quite</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">disappointed that people are viewing it in that light; that was never my</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">intention. I've only listed those whose names were already on an</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">existing public declaration, available on the web, and I list people who</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">signed affirmative statements as well (may we never see a day where any</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">government would persecute members of either group for their opinions!)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">I want the media to understand who has really researched climate and who</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">has not. Conversely, I certainly don't want to silence or exclude anyone</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">from civil policy debate; no one of us has all the answers on what</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">policies we should adopt to prepare for the future, and I do want to</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">hear from others on their views. The policy process must be democratic,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">even though that can be painfully slow. In the U.S. there is a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">distressingly strong role for corporate spending on political campaigns,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">with no limits at all since their Supreme Court's recent "Citizens</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">United" case. Companies like Exxon can dominate the discourse, leaving</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">ordinary citizen's voices little heard. Here again I think most European</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">countries have far more rational approaches to campaign spending laws. I</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">see corporate spending power and P.R. tricks as a more immediate threat</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">to the common good than actual (state) censorship of free expression.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Currently our major democracies have fairly good laws against state</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">censorship, which courts defend actively.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">I believe that rational public action to prepare for a future without</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">fossil fuels is one key to keeping prosperity and peace, and avoiding</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">the prospect of conflicts over scarce and declining non-renewable energy</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">sources. Again, Germany is far ahead of either Canada or the U.S. in</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">making those sensible preparations. The professor just down the hall</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">from me works on thin-film solar panels; the joint-venture company</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">developing his technologies opened their factory in Bischoswerda in the</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">former GDR thanks to strong support from the German government.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">[ I see I mis-spelled "Bischofswerda" in the email. Oops. Here's their WP page:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bischofswerda ]</span></span>Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-68371282374012890472010-06-20T07:44:00.000-04:002010-06-20T07:44:11.702-04:00Pesky scientists - so annoying!Scientists can be a real nuisance. They use big words, and act all smart and everything. Then they come around and tell us scary stuff like dangers we never even knew were there: radioactivity and cancer-causing chemicals and UV rays and nicotine. What a bunch of spoil-sports.<br />
<br />
Plus, they are often very hard to pin down - we pick up some story (or rumour) about a new danger, and try as reporters to get their take on it, but as often as not, they can't even give a simple yes or no answer. It's all "likely" this and "probable" that, and "statistically significant" or "balance of the evidence" or whatever. Lots of "on the other hand" until you just don't have enough hands, or even fingers, to count the different angles they want to look at.<br />
<br />
Now and then I think we'd almost rather not have those black and white answers that scientists hate to give. Take global warming, for example: if this is real, it's going to be quite a nuisance -- 'inconvenient,' so to speak. I mean, think about our <i>lifestyle</i>! It could cramp our ability to drive vehicles as big as some people's houses for personal security and -- let's face it -- ego gratification. I think a lot of us would just rather not know.<br />
<br />
So now, we have to deal with scientists who keep coming out and saying 'yes, this is a real problem' - over and over again. They keep putting out <a href="http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/list_sources.html">declarations and open letters</a> telling the world that our greenhouse gas emissions are already changing the climate, and forecasting that the problem has to get a lot worse if we keep on at the current rate. This is the problem with the <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/">IPCC</a> - behind all the "very likelys" and "probables," they basically say the same thing: this is a real problem. This same theme keeps coming up in declarations signed by thousands of scientists - <a href="http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/climate-activist-signers_2009-10.html">over 5000</a> of them, on eight statements issued since December 2009. <br />
<br />
Okay, scientists, now you're just starting to scare us. You're also sounding uncharacteristically decisive. Those of us who aren't comfortable with your message may have to do something about this. Here are some of our options:<br />
<ul><li>call your views "alarmist"<br />
</li>
<li>claim you are now <i>too</i> unified, so this must be 'group-think' and you're just bullying the numerous dissenters that we can't seem to find </li>
<li>find the handful of you who don't see the problem, and get them on TV a lot - a whole lot<br />
</li>
<li>take out full-page ads in the NYT saying you are wrong, signed by over 100 non-experts<br />
</li>
<li>get Rush Limbaugh to call you "socialists" and imply you want the UN to run everything<br />
</li>
<li>host a string of anti-conferences with lots of non-experts, to make you look less convincing<br />
</li>
<li>if all else fails, we can turn to <b>Fox News</b>!<br />
</li>
</ul>Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-52706448379104110572010-05-09T23:32:00.001-04:002012-12-08T23:44:58.851-05:00Thousands of scientists worldwide push back against attacks on integrity of climate scienceI've been quite busy updating my list of scientists who've signed statements on climate change. There have been several new declarations in the months since the posting of the stolen CRU emails; some of these have drawn signers numbering in the thousands. <br />
<br />
These lists reflect a truly broad and widespread response from scientists to the attacks from contrarian bloggers on the integrity of climate science in general, the IPCC, and on individual climate scientists. <br />
<br />
To emphasize just how broad the response has been, I've compiled a list of the names of the signers of these eight statements, with notations on which statements each one signed:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/affirmative-signers-on-climate-since-Dec-2009.html" target="_blank">Five thousand scientists worldwide defend climate science</a><br />
<br />
Here is a list of these most recent statements, with links to original sources. (The initials are the tag I've used to tag signers who are also authors in my database of climate author publication stats; after each I note how many signers already have their climate publication and citation stats collected in my <a href="http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/climate_authors_NEW_table.html">table of climate science authors</a>.)<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li> <b>NAS10</b>: May, 2010 <a href="http://www.pacinst.org/climate/climate_statement.pdf">statement from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences</a> defending the integrity of climate science, and condemning "McCarthy-like tactics" against climate scientists. <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/esteemed-scientists-hit-back-climate-denier-campaign-science-letter">Discussed at DeSmogBlog</a> and <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/05/06/national-academy-of-sciences-letter-defending-climate-science-integrity/">at ClimateProgress</a>. [23 are tallied in my stats table]<br />
</li>
<li> <b>FR10</b>: May, 2010 <a href="http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/2010/04/climat-400-scientifiques-signent-contre-claude-all%25C3%25A8gre.html">statement from over <strike>400</strike> 600 scientists</a> in France rebutting outrageous attacks on climate science by Claude Allegre. [55 are tallied in my stats table]<br />
</li>
<li> <b>NL10</b>: May, 2010 <a href="http://www.sense.nl/news/5753">statement from scientists in the Netherlands</a>; 50 initial signers; now 196 Dutch and 96 foreign signers [13 are tallied in my stats table].<br />
</li>
<li> <b>OLFS10</b>: March, 2010 <a href="http://www.openletterfromscientists.com/index.html">Open Letter from U.S. Scientists on the IPCC</a>, 320 signers (<a href="http://www.openletterfromscientists.com/list-of-signers.html">list</a>) [53 tallied in my stats table]<br />
</li>
<li> <b>UCS10</b>: March, 2010 <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/big_picture_solutions/scientists-and-economists.html">US Scientists and Economists' Call to Action</a> organised by the Union of Concerned Scientists. This builds on their similar 2008 statement, with over 2000 signatories. [178 tallied in my stats table]<br />
</li>
<li> <b>CSW09</b>: Dec., 2009 <a href="http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/open_letter_to_congress_from_u.s._scientists_4dec09/">letter to US Congress from 25 climate scientists</a> responding to the stolen email controversy, posted by Climate Science Watch [all 25 tallied in my stats table]<br />
</li>
<li> <b>WWFC09</b>: A Dec., 2009 open <a href="http://www.wwf.ca/conservation/global_warming/copenhagen/december2009/take_action/scientists_voice.cfm">letter organized by the World Wildlife Fund--Canada to Canada's Parliament</a> calling for action on climate, endorsed by 848 Canadian scientists. I've tagged over 60 already in my list. <br />
</li>
<li> <b>UKsc09</b>: Dec., 2009 <a href="http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/news/latest/uk-science-statement.html">Statement from the UK science community</a> signed by 1700 U.K. scientists, from 67 universities and 55 other institutions, re-affirming the integrity of climate science and data sources, in response to the University of East Anglia email break-in, which begins:<br />
<blockquote>
We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method.</blockquote>
This is perhaps the strongest and certainly the broadest response from scientists to the UEA email controversy. [I've tallied 108 signers in my author stats data.]<br />
<br />
</li>
</ul>
Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-44654961548219091352010-04-22T17:55:00.002-04:002010-04-22T18:04:25.284-04:00It's so not easy being greenWith apologies to Kermit The Frog... it's getting to where nothing is quite as green as it might seem.<br /><br />I just got an appeal by email from the Western Canadian Wilderness Committee, a group I've supported for some years, about their opposition to a proposal for a large new hydroelectric dam in B.C. (that's British Columbia, for you outlanders.)<br /><br />Now I know there are real ecological impact issues with any large hydro dam, and the submerged biomass decaying in low oxygen conditions emits methane - so such dams are not truly climate neutral. However, their letter brought up the kind of unexpected negative spin off that could make your head spin (off?) Here's their beef:<br /><br />Over half the power from the new dam would be sold to natural gas extraction operations in the nearby Horn River Basin (drilling? or at least pumping, de-watering, purification and compression.) That new gas supply in turn would be piped east into neighbouring Alberta, where it will be snapped up by ... big dirty TAR SANDS operations. Oh, yuck. <br /><br />So much for the green image of B.C. Hydro.<br /><br />You just can't win. It is sooooo not easy being green.Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-6474069359938294592010-02-19T23:37:00.004-05:002010-02-19T23:53:12.761-05:00Prof. Mike Mann speaks outHere's a great <a href="http://thebenshi.com/2010/02/18/14-mike-mann-part-ii-interview-who-will-provide-communication-expertise-and-leadership-for-the-science-community/"> interview with Penn State U Professor Mike Mann</a> by Randy Olsen, author of <span style="font-style:italic;">Don't Be Such a Scientist</span>.<br />Randy gets right to the key points on the recent campaign of attacks on climate science and scientists. Also worth a read is Randy's "part 1" about the <a href="http://thebenshi.com/2010/02/15/13-mike-mann-part-i-the-media-are-not-necessarily-your-friends/">embarrassingly unprofessional CBS News (tv) segment</a> that broadcast most of a libelous YouTube video attacking Prof. Mann as a scientific fraud who makes up data. They put a thin coating of "balance" over this, with a verbal mention of Prof. Mann's exhonoration over criticisms arising from the stolen UEA emails, but on screen they kept playing the scurrilous attack cartoon the whole time, complete with captioning.<br />I could go on and tell everyone to read Randy's book, and about how Prof. Mann's work stands up in spite of the harping about the hockey-stick graph, stolen emails and all. But it's late so I just wanted to get a quick post to link to the interview - check it out and see for yourself.Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-52578017917050908482010-02-19T08:06:00.002-05:002010-02-19T08:17:57.648-05:00Confused about climate? There's an app for that!John Cook's excellent resource <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com">skepticalscience</a> has taken an innovative twist: he's repackaged his quick comebacks to tired talking points from global warming skeptics or deniers into <a href="http://itunes.com/apps/skepticalscience">an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch</a>. (This may be a 'tipping point' for me to take the plunge on an iPod Touch that I've been 'i'-ing for a while.)<br />The great thing about this is that John's neatly organized material actually lends itself to just such a platform. Now, I am saying this without having bought that iPod Touch yet - but I've been quite impressed with his website. John boils down the essential issues and backs up his responses with links citing original peer-reviewed research. <br />John's new iPhone app is getting plenty of buzz in the media and online. Today it was picked up in the latest post on <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/throw-your-iphone-into-the-climate-debate/">RealClimate</a> (now that's the big time.) <br />Congrats, John!Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-60388825627248411442010-02-15T20:42:00.005-05:002010-02-17T16:16:57.573-05:00Pat Robertson, Haiti and WikipediaToday I heard an interview with a survivor of the horrific earthquake in Haiti last month, and it came up that some people in Haiti are blaming the earthquake on "the Americans." This is an intriguing twist, understandable perhaps from a people surrounded by a tradition which can impute malicious motives to almost any misfortune. It appears this claim may have originated with Hugo Chavez. <br /><br />Coming from the rationalist culture that I do, it is hard for me to imagine inhabiting a mental world so utterly different. In my world, we know that earthquakes are caused by sudden slippage of huge tectonic plates sliding past each other. We know where the fault lines are, when the largest recorded quakes took place in the past, and how to detect a quake anywhere in the world as it is happening. But we have no capacity to either explain or predict any specific quake happening at a particular time. At most we can say a given region is 'due' or 'overdue.' In short, we don't know why this quake happened then and there, but we know it was simply a terrible natural occurrence. There is nobody to blame, aside from debating how Haiti came to be so poor that it has no building code and thus nearly all its buildings are unsuited to the high-risk earthquake zone they have the misfortune to occupy.<br /><br />Then there are the people in our supposedly enlightened culture who continue to insist on imputing natural disasters to the moral blame game of divine retribution.<br />Right after the quake, America's most overexposed televangelist Pat Robertson opened his mouth to switch feet. He <a href="http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/80885093/">announced</a> that God chose to send the earthquake to devastate Haiti because of some "pact with the devil" that Robertson claims the Haitian people made in the course of pursuing their independence from French colonial rule. Everyone else up to President Obama rushed to denounce this claim; CBN posted this <a href="http://www.cbn.com/about/pressrelease_patrobertson_haiti.aspx">charming non retraction</a>.<br /><br />Whoa. Where to begin? I decided to review this zany claim on the terms we would use in looking at some contentious edit on Wikipedia. On Wikipedia, anyone can contribute, but you are expected to cite Reliable Sources for whatever you put in. Your own first-hand accounts aren't eligible, and neither are unverifiable third party suggestions of the sort you might find on blogs or hear through the rumour mill.<br /><br />Now, I'm having trouble picturing how Pat Robertson could back up his "pact with the devil" claim about Haiti. I doubt if Robertson is willing to argue that Satan has some kind of registry office where you can do a title search on all the souls the evil one has supposedly claimed under contract in return for hollow and fleeting fame, money or power in this life. I'm afraid whatever contracts may be out there binding souls are only written in some kind of invisible ink, legally binding beyond the grave and inaccessible to earthly investigators. So, not really suitable for attribution for the earthly Wikipedia.<br /><br />This is of course just another sad example of smug and judgmental fundies choosing to blame the victim out of some twisted desire to make "sense" of everything bad that happens. Instead of having to reconcile that he can't explain why any given earthquake happens at a particular time and place, Robertson chooses to dump on the already suffering populace of Haiti by declaring them hereditary satanists, to blame for their own misfortunes due to some vicious rumour that Robertson is willing to propagate. <br /><br />Here's someone who appears to have done some actual fact-checking on this subject, unlike Roberston: <a href="http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2010/s10010104.htm">Michael Ireland on the Haiti 'pact with the devil' slur</a> <br /><br />If I could speak to Robertson, I'd warn him to think hard about the Ninth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour." Robertson has a higher responsibility as he commands the attention of an enormous audience through his own cable and radio broadcasting network, CBN. If repeating a vicious rumour imputing blame to someone you've never met, based only on a rumour, can be viewed as "bearing false witness" - I think it can - then Robertson has sinned, egregiously and publicly. <br /><br />The people in Haiti who blame the USA for the earthquake are equally misguided about the absence of any link between geophysics and our ideas of right and wrong. However, I submit that we need not be too put out by the USA-earthquake suspicions harboured by some Haitians. They have experienced the ham-fisted interventions of successive U.S. administrations and a continuous stream of competing missionary groups. The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere even before the quake, Haiti deserves some slack for being succeptible to rumours and looking for someone to blame. <br /><br />Pat Robertson - not so much.<br /><br />[Update - 2010-02-17: I just found this article citing <a href="http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2010/02/does_gay_sex_cause_earthquakes.php">a rabbi who claims that gay sex caused the earthquake</a> - and Katrina, and the 2004 tsumani. What a country - the freedom to practice your religion in the most insane way possible.]Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-11962508484818203962010-02-15T10:38:00.003-05:002010-02-15T11:09:25.135-05:00Climate comebackScientists and those who still believe in science are pushing back on many fronts against the recent wave of attacks against the IPCC.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/764810--un-climate-panel-s-errors-no-excuse-to-put-work-on-ice">UN climate panel's errors no excuse to put work on ice</a> by UNEP head Achim Steiner ran in today's Toronto Star (and elsewhere I'm sure.) Steiner hits back directly at the absurd charges that have been flying about, launched by anti-science bloggers and parroted by the talking featherless bipeds on Fox and elsewhere:<br /><br /><blockquote>One notion promulgated in recent weeks is that the IPCC is sensationalist: This is perhaps the most astonishing, if not risible claim of all. Indeed, the panel has more often been criticized for being far too conservative in its projections of, for example, the likely sea-level rise in the 21st century. Indeed, caution rather than sensation has been the panel's watchword throughout its existence. [...]<br /><br />The fact is that the world would have to make a transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient future even if there were no climate change. With the world's human population set to rise from 6 billion to 9 billion people in the next half-century, we need to improve management of our atmosphere, air, lands, soils and oceans anyway. Rather than undermine the IPCC's work, we should renew and redouble our efforts to support its mammoth task in assembling the science and knowledge</blockquote><br /><br />Toronto's own green energy guru Tyler Hamilton also <a href="http://www.thestar.com/business/cleanbreak/article/765519--hamilton-spin-is-in-but-climate-change-still-there">takes on the overheated babble about the IPCC sinking and/or burning</a> in his Clean Break column today:<br /><br /><blockquote>In Canada, the Financial Post's resident libertarian Terence Corcoran wrote a column in late January with a headline that shouted "Climate agency going up in flames," while The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente wrote early in February that "the science scandals just keep on coming" and that the entire climate-change movement has been discredited. Columnist Rex Murphy, who has fittingly moved on to the National Post, is pretty much saying the same thing, only with bigger words.<br /><br />Wishful thinking doesn't make it so.</blockquote><br /><br />Hamilton notices both Terrence Corcoran and Margaret Wente point for support to leading Canadian climatologist Andrew Weaver at UVic. One problem: Weaver doesn't agree with them at all. As Hamilton writes:<br /><br /><blockquote>Here's what Weaver had to say when asked by the Star about the recent coverage. "It would be nice if they actually called me," he said.<br /><br />He said his comments from an earlier CanWest News Service story have been cherry picked and twisted. "It's all utterly ridiculous. The way it's being spun is that there's this sinking ship and the rats are trying to leave."<br /><br />But the true sinking ship is the Earth's climate system, he said. [...]<br /><br />Weaver points out that the 2007 IPCC report was, in fact, conservative with its conclusions. At the time it didn't have access to more accurate satellite data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission.<br /><br />The new GRACE data, said Weaver, "has revealed that Greenland has been melting rather dramatically. Also, not only is Antarctica melting, but West Antarctica is melting quite rapidly."</blockquote><br />As Hamilton sums this up: <br /><blockquote>Is this alarmism? Sure it is, and so it should be. Do climate-change scientists sometimes get worried and show it? Sure they do. Do we really expect them to go about their scientific duties with Mr. Spock-like precision that's void of emotion and human imperfection?</blockquote><br />So we've got a top Canadian climatologist telling us there's a serious problem, and then three highly visible non-scientists editorializing that the problem is just "alarmists" and trying to point to Weaver as being with them on that. Hmmm.<br /><br />To see how top Canadian climatologists feel about climate change, check out my <a href="http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/Canada_authors_table_by_clim.html">list of Canadian climate scientists</a> where Dr. Weaver ranks #1 (by far) in number of climate-related journal papers. Note that the top ten all signed one or both CMOS letters supporting prompt action to cut greenhouse emissions, as did 37 of the top 50; the only skeptic in the top 50 by paper count is an economist.Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-14346541553767713112010-02-14T22:37:00.004-05:002010-03-05T13:19:30.969-05:00Recent finds on the web - new Wiley review journal 'WIREs Climate Change'I saw Joe Romm's new project to post clear and simple overviews of the basics of climate science at climateprogress.org: <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/14/the-climate-science-project-with-your-help-part-1-why-increasing-co2-is-a-significant-problem/">Launching the Climate Science Project (with your help)</a> <br /><br />Seeing his appeal for suggestions, I <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/14/the-climate-science-project-with-your-help-part-1-why-increasing-co2-is-a-significant-problem/#comment-262520">chimed in with a few pointers</a> off the top of my head. This got in as comment #28 of 50 posted in the first day.<br /><br />As I commented on climateprogress, I first learned of the new e-journal "WIREs Climate Change" from Wiley Interscience, thanks to this <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100111105101.htm">Science Daily item</a>). Here, I'll just restate my point that <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com">ScienceDaily</a> does a great job covering <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/earth_climate/">climate science news</a> (along with lots of other fields.)<br /><br />So I went to add this new WIREs Climate Change title into my <a href="http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/journals.html">list of climate-related journals</a>. While I was at it, I updated that list a bit, adding categories for the long list of unranked journals. I grouped several of them coarsely under "paleo", "glaciology and polar", "oceanography and ocean-atmosphere interactions", and "other" (sorry, 'others' - nothing personal!)<br /><br />I've had a quick look at the premier issue of WIREs Climate Change (WCC for short?) and it looks promising. It's a review journal, meaning the articles can be longer (10-12 pg. in the print edition) and give more background/basics than a typical journal paper. This first issue is open access currently.<br /><br />The articles by Judith Lean on <a href="http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123222301/HTMLSTART">"Cycles and trends in solar irradiance and climate"</a> and David Parker on <a href="http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123222296/HTMLSTART">"Urban heat island effects on estimates of observed climate change"</a> both look worth reading and perhaps recommending on the web. <br /><br />I'm also looking forward to checking out some other titles from this issue including two on <a href="http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123205093/HTMLSTART">science</a> <a href="http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123222289/HTMLSTART">communications</a>.<br /><br />Other useful-looking bits I found on the web today:<br />Terrain.org essay on <a href=:http://www.terrain.org/articles/21/burns.htm">Ocean acidification - a greater threat than climate change or overfishing?</a><br /><br />The <a href="http://www.rmets.org">UK Royal Meteorological Society homepage</a> has several interesting looking links, including one to the above-mentioned WIREs, but with a flashier animated gif link, thus:<br><br /><a href="http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/aboutus/new_journals_opt-in_form.html"><image src="http://www.rmets.org/images/homepage/wires-ad.gif"></a><br /><br />Finally, I'm also intrigued by their link to a new resource for middle school teachers called <a href="http://www.climate4classrooms.org/">Climate4classrooms</a> This one has just a static gif for the link, but at least it's a preview:<br><br /><a href="http://www.climate4classrooms.org/"><img src="http://www.rmets.org/images/homepage/c4c.jpg"></a><br />Sadly the site itself appears to be 'broken' (saying 'Your database appears to be turned off' - should I make that, 'just not quite done yet'?) They do say it is just launching, so perhaps growing pains. Check them out if they do come online.<br />[Update 2010-03-05 - Climate4Classrooms is online and working now. Do check it out if you're involved in teaching or just want to see ways to present climate science at a level for kids.]Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-50638631559127375132010-02-10T17:29:00.002-05:002010-02-10T17:33:28.656-05:00Climate Shifts blog on UEA, FOI and death threatsI've found a really worthwhile climate-related blog from a dozen Australian scientists entitled <a href="http://www.climateshifts.org">Climate Shifts</a><br /><br />They've got a good post this week entitled <a href="http://www.climateshifts.org/?p=4346">Phil Jones and ‘climategate’: “The leak was bad. Then came the death threats.”</a> <br /><br />I recommend it, and the rest of their blog.Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-6122635006035541052010-02-07T17:10:00.002-05:002010-02-07T17:12:45.680-05:00Scientists pushing back against critics<A href="http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/features/2010/beddington.asp">UK's chief scientific advisor backs climate scientists</a><br />(follow the link to listen to the 12 minute audio interview)<br /><br />1 February 2010<br /><br />In the wake of recent climate change controversies, including how fast the IPCC stated Himalayan glaciers would disappear, the Government's chief scientific advisor, Professor John Beddington, talks frankly to the Natural Environment Research Council about the issues.<br /><br />He tells Sue Nelson why controversies don't undermine the science behind climate change, restates the case for urgent action and explains why communicating uncertainties is so difficult.Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-54719801790313322712010-01-30T08:55:00.003-05:002010-01-30T09:14:04.881-05:00Jim Lippard on climate skepticsI've discovered another blogger who has been tracing the links between climate skeptics, right-wing think tanks, and oily funding sources. <br /><br />His recent post <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/who-are-climate-change-skeptics.html">Who are the climate change skeptics?</a> digs into the names and qualifications of the NIPCC report authors, "expert" panels of various think tanks, Ian Plimer, and various others. I found his page because it links to my site, and I discovered he's made good use of my data on degree dates to illustrate that climate contrarians come from a significantly older demographic than either the IPCC or activist statement signers.<br /><br />In the comment thread, one commenter named Kahegi (who is critical of climate skeptics and anti-evolutionists) raised an issue of the validity of keyword searches to identify either expertise or supporters of a particular theory:<br /><br />"Kagehi said...<br />With respect, counting citations isn't always helpful. Some bozo did that a while back, claiming that "evolution" isn't part of *any* of the papers found at PubMed. His reasoning? If it had anything to do with evolution, they should be using the word specifically. In actual reality, if you search on a related term, which is actually used to convey *specific* information about the subject of what mutations are being looked at, any such word can generate tens of thousands of documents.<br /><br />Word searches are bad ways to look for this sort of stuff. What you think the experts are using, and what they do, isn't necessarily the same thing. "<br /><br />Jim Lippard responded:<br />"Kagehi: I agree that counting the publications containing "climate" has the problem you describe. But that's not the only measure discussed; I also look at overall citation counts. Again, that's at best a rough proxy for relevant credibility, since a scientist may have a high citation count in a non-climate science field."<br /><br />I felt this conceded too much to Kagehi's original objection to keyword searching. Here's a copy of the comment I posted there on the usefulness of keyword searches on "climate" (two typos in my original are corrected in []s):<br /><br />For the question of word searches in collecting publication stats, I think searches on "evolution" are not that comparable. I'll argue that while some articles relevant to climate science might fail to contain the word "climate," it's hard to see how someone could be actively publishing on climate change or climate science without using this word fairly regularly. Furthermore, the disparity in the stats between IPCC authors and skeptic signers on this metric is just so glaring that complaints about the imperfections of the metric seem moot. <br /><br />So what [if] using the word "climate" captures only part of the climate science literature? Surely what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and any shortfall in coverage with this term is not going to favor one group or the other?<br /><br />The median number of papers mention[ing] climate for the 619 IPCC AR4 wg1 authors is 93. The median among the 472 signers of any of the ten climate skeptic declarations that I've tabulated is ... two (2). It's astronomically implausible for that difference to be a mere artefact of the choice of search term.Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-90035929665588645542010-01-30T07:31:00.002-05:002010-01-30T08:27:12.649-05:00Wishing away climate changeDon't you just wish this whole climate change problem were a big misunderstanding? A joke, a trick, perhaps "a hoax"? <br /><br />Plenty of people are out there willing to tell you just that - this whole issue is not actually real, the voicing calling for greenhouse emission cuts are all "alarmists", and scientists aren't actually sure we're in any trouble. They'll tell you scientists aren't unanimous; they'll claim the evidence is tainted, sexed-up by rogue alarmist conspirators devoid of integrity. All the claims that Earth is warming at an unnatural rate are down to someone cooking the data. All the forecasts of looming trouble from further warming were unnecessary: CO2 is just "plant food" and we'll all be better off with happier crops as we watch the CO2 level blow past 400, 450, 500, 550 ppm. Where will it end? Doesn't matter, no harm done. Oh, and ocean acidification from rising CO2 - that's another myth we can just ignore.<br /><br />Can you imagine? Wouldn't that be so much easier? We could all just relax, head for the mall in our SUVs, and forget. The bookstore wouldn't need to have any books about Incovenient Truths, Chilling Stars, Weather Makers, Skeptical Environmentalists, or any of that. It would all be moot. <br /><br />Maybe Richard Lindzen might turn out to be right, and temperatures should only be expected to rise very slightly as CO2 builds up -- but how sure can we be sure about that? What about the dozens of other experts all saying Lindzen's estimate is far too low? Can we be sure they've all over-reacted? Maybe they're all in cahoots together trying to scare us. Maybe all the reports that temperatures are still setting record highs have been faked. Fox News thinks that's what happened. Maybe next year it will all turn around and temperatures will start settling back down to the levels of the 1990s. <br /><br />Maybe arctic sea ice will recover. George Will thinks it will. Maybe glaciers are all going to be fine, worldwide. Someone found a mistake about Himalayan glaciers in an IPCC report; maybe all the other glacier data, from every continent, is also a mistake -- or, another arm of the conspiracy! <br /><br />Maybe all the reports of birds migrating and plants flowering earlier each year were a mistake, or perhaps even another branch of this huge conspiracy! <br /><br />That's got to be it: all the bad news is just nasty corrupt scientists trying to scare us. The Canadian icebreaker expecting multi-year ice, and only finding floating fragments - maybe they faked the video, and all the data. The CBC film crew could have been in on it too.<br /><br />I wonder if they faked the ice cores and lake-bed sediment records, too? What if they are faking the ocean acidification data, and the coral bleaching? It's amazing what you can do in LightWave and Maya these days.<br /><br />Wow, it looks like almost every scientist, naturalist, and environmental journalist might be in on this vast eco-fascist conspiracy. They've got all the granting agencies and national science academies. It's everywhere! All the major science journals must be in on it too - except plucky little Energy & Environment, the last hold-out against the onslaught. Too bad nobody takes E&E seriously!<br /><br />I wonder who's orchestrating all this massive deception? Who could get so many people from so many different countries, professions, areas of research and specialization? How would you manage all the different players, and ensure nobody ever let slip what they all really knew? A cover-up of such proportions would require a powerful secret army of enforcers and a mastermind to create and plant all the fake claims, the stories behind them and plans for how to keep the real data hidden. <br /><br />Even Dan Brown could only dream of such a far-reaching empire of deceit. <br /><br />Only one man could be this conniving, this cunning and ruthless. Only one man could marshall every journalist and videographer, every scholar and postdoc drilling in the mud or ice on every continent, every analyst, statistician and reviewer.<br /><br />It can only be one man:<br /><br />Al Gore!Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-57562512415157469892010-01-25T20:09:00.003-05:002010-01-25T20:12:04.221-05:00Fool me five times...This line on www.realclimate.org made me LOL - and I resolved to spread it around.<br /><br />Philip Machanick wrote, in reaction to the appalling state of science journalism in general, and coverage of climate issues in particular:<br /><br />"The biggest puzzle is why professional journalists (with rare exceptions like Monbiot) fall for this [repeated vacuous climate denial claims] every time. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me five times, I’m a journalist.</span>"Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-12969916025525868902010-01-25T08:45:00.006-05:002010-01-25T09:12:18.993-05:00The Wrong Foot? Media coverage of a new denialist talking pointHere's another sad story of hasty journalism feeding the denial machine, with a belated twist of "balance." <br /><br />A new attack on climate science is now echoing around the intertubes, thanks to CanWest writer Richard Foot. His Jan. 21 piece headlined 'Scientists using selective temperature data, skeptics say' simply regurgitates a scurrilous attack by Joseph D'Aleo (non-scientist, non-professor) and E. Michael Smith ('a computer programmer') posted on the website of the "Science and Public Policy Institute". <br /><br />Foot openly admits "Both the authors, and the institute, are well-known in climate-change circles for their skepticism about the threat of global warming." Yet he makes virtually no effort to counter-balance their extreme ideological position. His whole article is just parroting their inflammatory attacks on science.<br /><br />Two days later, Foot issued a much more sensible and balanced account of this flap, "Fewer temperature reports could mean warming underestimated: scientist" (Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 23) getting quotes from an Environment Canada spokesperson pointing out that fewer stations is just as likely to lead to an underestimate of warming, and finishing off with a forceful rejoinder from Gavin Schmidt calling D'Aleo's charges "appallingly defamatory and ignorant" (!) You go, Gavin! Being a wire service story, after it ran in the Citizen the story was picked up in many smaller papers across Canada and online news sites.<br /><br />Here are links to the two original news stories at newspaper sites, followed by links to a Google query designed to find repetitions of each story anywhere online. As of 8:30 am Jan. 25th, hits are running A=325, B=36 (but A has a two-day head-start)<br /><br />A) <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=2465893">Scientists using selective temperature data, skeptics say</a><br /><br />B) <a href="http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/Fewer+temperature+reports+could+underestimate/2476467/story.html">Fewer temperature reports could mean warming underestimated: scientist</a><br /><br /><br />A) <a href="http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22just+one+thermometer%22+%22everything+north+of+latitude+65+degrees%22&hl=en&filter=0">google for 'just one thermometer' 'everything north of latitude 65 degrees'</a><br /><br />B) <a href="http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GPEA_enCA324CA324&q=gavin+schmidt+%22appallingly+defamatory+and+ignorant%22&start=0&sa=N&filter=0">google for 'appallingly defamatory and ignorant'</a><br /><br />No points to Foot for starting off on the 'wrong foot' (Oooh, alternate title idea!) with a denial-only piece, then coming back two days later with the "balance." <br /><br />Kudos to Gavin Schmidt for picking up on and strongly responding to this latest smear. Let's watch how the wire stories make their way around the web.Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-75602637212730646822010-01-19T17:42:00.003-05:002010-01-20T21:29:14.115-05:00SEPP - tying up loose endsI've been updating my page on list sources, and while re-checking the name counts for various lists, I noticed I had only 46 of the 47 names on the oldest skeptic letter, the 1992 SEPP "Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming." <br /><br />Thanks to my handy name-comparing perl script, I was able to pin down which name I'd missed: Terrance J. Clark, USAF meteorologist. <br /><br />The only work he has indexed on Google Scholas is his 1988 MSc thesis at Texas Tech on the Lubbock tornado in 1971. At least it's been cited by two others. Zero papers mentioning climate.<br /><br />While I was checking, I also noticed a name that I'd had to correct from how they are entered in the SEPP petition to get a positive match online:<br /><br />William E 'Reifenyder' is actually William E Reifsnyder (2nd 'e' should be an 's'), former Yale meteorology prof; PhD (1954), he died in 2006.Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6425933403289654692.post-83554071502237455902010-01-17T22:39:00.006-05:002010-01-19T14:41:54.143-05:00Tracking the Elusive Oregon Signer, part 2Okay, in <a href="http://birdbrainscan.blogspot.com/2010/01/tracking-elusive-oregon-signer.html">part one</a>, I reported on one of two listed California signers of the Oregon Petition whose names matched one I'd already collected by other means, but who had not signed any other skeptic letter or petition - leading me to dig deeper to make sure the match was legit.<br /><br />The other name of a California OISM signer with a PhD that evidently matched a name already on my list was John A Ogren, PhD. The <a href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aero/about/ogren/index.html">John A Ogren I had found already</a> earned his PhD in Civil Engineering from Washington State in 1983 ("Elemental carbon in the atmosphere"). Since 1991 he's worked as a Physical Scientist with the NOAA ESRL in Boulder, CO, and since 1994 an affiliate faculty member at Colorado State in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. His area of interest is aerosols and clouds.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aero/about/ogren/index.html">His CV</a> lists 57 journal papers, 51 conference papers and reviews, 30 invited presentations, five grad students supervised, and ten scientific committee memberships. (The CV looks a little out of date, with papers listed only up to 1998 or so; however, Google Scholar shows hits right up to the present with the author still at NOAA/ESRL.)<br /><br />This is the CV of an active, publishing scientist. This might even pass the Wikipedia "prof test" for notability (not every prof is supposed to warrant their own WP page...)<br /><br />So: is this the John A Ogren who signed the Oregon Petition? Nothing in his CV jumps out at me as fitting the climate skeptic type. But the big problem is that his CV shows he only lived in California for his undergrad degree and his first job from 1975-77. He left the state in 1978 - twenty years before the first Oregon Petition drive in 1998 - to take up a postdoc at Washington State. After that his career led him to Sweden for eight years, until he arrived in Colorado in 1991. He's been at NOAA/ESRL in Boulder throughout the 90's and up to the present. <br /><br />So when the Oregon Petition mailings went out, this John A. Ogren was not a California resident; he was in Colorado the whole time. Even if you suppose he somehow listed his "home state", he was born in New York (in Sept. 1952, so he's 57.)<br /><br />So it looks to me that this is very likely a false positive, and that some <span style="font-style:italic;">other </span>John A Ogren of California must have signed the Oregon Petition.<br /><br />But who?<br /><br />Well, a bunch of Google searches on variants of John A Ogren california eventually got me to this <a href="http://www.lookupanyone.com/namelistings/john-ogren.html">LookupAnyone.com directory of John Ogrens</a>. Lo and behold, there is a John Allan Ogren, age 93, who has been listed in Guerneville, CA and Windsor, CA, and at some point also in Eugene, OR. <br /><br />Clues! Windsor and Guerneville are right together, in Central Cal just outside of Santa Rosa. Eugene, OR is three hours by car from the OISM. The Calif/Oregon John A Ogren, now 93, would have been 81 in 1998 during the first OISM mailing. Might he have just mailed in the card? Or while in Oregon, might he have even associated with one of the seniors managing the Petition Project from the barn on Science and Medicine Road outside Cave Springs, OR? <br /><br />In favor of this West coast JA Ogren is the actual California residence, and the age doesn't hurt either. However, there is no way to verify if this JA Ogren in Guerneville, CA had a PhD. Nothing turns up on line - unsurprising as he would have reached retirement age in 1981, so any publication output he may have had is basically locked away on paper. <br /><br />Google Scholar does have digital records drawn from journal indices going back before the age of the internet. The Washington State/Sweden/Boulder JA Ogren began publishing around 1976, and using Advanced Search in Google Scholar with a date limit of 1976 or earlier brings up his earliest papers, matching what is in his CV.<br /><br />So did the much older Oregon/California JA Ogren publish anything in the 60s or 70s? Here's a search to check: <a href="http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&q=author:%22ja+ogren%22+&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_yhi=1975&as_vis=0">author:JA-Ogren with date range any time up to 1975</a>. As you'll see, this returns a single item found as a citation in another work, reportedly from 1971. It's still the Washington/Sweden/Boulder guy, based on the title. I think it may be a typo/clerical error on the date, as the real match on those two authors with those title words was published in 2002 (quite the typo - no digits the same!?) Whatever went wrong with that citation, the search shows nobody named JA-Ogren published anything at all before 1976. <br /><br />So the California John A Ogren, PhD, appears not to have had an academic or research career. We'll never know what he did for a living, unless someone wants to pay the $0.95 to LookupAnyone.com to reveal his phone number, and then bother a complete stranger who is 93 to ask if he remembers this Oregon Petition thing, and what did he do for a living.<br /><br />I'm not that nosy, myself. <br /><br />One last thought: If this person used their state abbreviation on the petition card, "CO" could be mistaken for "CA" depending on one's handwriting (cursive "a" is round, Art Robinson is getting on and maybe his eyesight is going, or his typing...) So maybe the NOAA/ERSL aerosols and clouds guy actually does have doubts about manmade global warming, and expressed these in a single petition signing some time between 1998 and the present, but wrote "CO" as his state, and that was mistaken for "CA". After all, clouds and aerosols are one of those 'lots of uncertainties still' topics so popular among climate change contrarians.<br /><br />Well, he hasn't gone whole hog into the climate contrarian movement, based on his CV. He's never published in Energy & Environment. He never signed any of the other dozen climate skeptic letters I've incorporated in my big list. Nor does anyone named Ogren shows up in the quotemining collections maintained by Marc Morano first for Sen. Inhofe, then more recently out on his own. It's pretty hard to fit this UWA/Sweden/Boulder guy in as the signer - very speculative.<br /><br />So which John A Ogren, PhD, of California (or CO??), do you think signed the Oregon Petition - the one who now lives in California, age 93, no web traces, or the one who is a widely cited climate scientist who only lived in California briefly and left <span style="font-style:italic;">twenty years</span> before the petition, and has done nothing else to suggest he is a climate change contrarian?<br /><br />It's anybody's guess.<br /><br />Or we could bother the Boulder JA Ogren by email and ask if he was the signer...Jim Prallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04033053570742850619noreply@blogger.com0