Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, Middle East expert and high profile blogger has a piece on his site about whether and how scientists should engage environmental skeptics, in particular AGW deniers. His perspective is that we should and that it can be effective if done right but that there can be personal costs, e.g., hate mail and death threats. Also see the discussion at DotEarth about how scientists should respond and communicate. There are well argued points on both sides, or all sides, …

Ecologists and environmentalism
Donald R Strong (2008) Ecologists and environmentalism. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment: Vol. 6, No. 7, pp. 347-347.
Environmentalism needs serious discussion by ecologists. I was primed on this topic by recent statements made by colleagues to the effect that, “I’m no environmentalist, but… (insert an eminently reasonable environmentalist proposition of your choice here)”, as well as by a plaintive comment in a recent student evaluation, “The instructor is an environmentalist”. Denied the opportunity to reply to the student, I do so here. “This is an ecology course; …

I read James Hanson’s first book on climate change (“Storms of my Grandchildren” ) over the Christmas break. It is a engaging book which quietly outlines the essential facts for why one of the world’s leading planetary scientists feels we are headed for planetary disaster.  Phillip Adams does an excellent job of filling up the story by interviewing James Hansen below:
[http://www.climateshifts.org/media/ln.mp3]

Freeman Dyson: My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of …

This awesome essay is by Bill McKibben.  It originally appeared here and is being widely circulated. It is from his forthcoming book “Eaarth: Making a life on a tough new planet”.  I was in LA (doing my masters degree at CSUN) during the infamous OJ trials. Like everyone else around the world, I was shocked that a jury of peers could find him innocent given the overwhelming evidence against him. (and this is especially jarring given his recent quasi-confession). It was a stunning display of cognitive dissonance. The facts, more …

Science magazine’s awesome blog, ScienceNow, just held a contest for the best bloggers covering the 2010 AAAS meeting.  The third place winner Daniel Stolte, a science writer at the University of Arizona, made two excellent posts on two very depressing aspects of ocean degradation.  The first, “Blinded by the Noise”, is on marine noise pollution interfering with whale communication and the second, Oases of Life in Perpetual Darkness”, is about the destruction of ocean seamounts via bottom trawling. Ill excerpt them below, but both are worth reading in full.

Blinded by the Noise
A new …

Shock!  Somehow that Sei whale meat from Japan’s “scientific” whale hunt has found its way onto the plates of an LA sushi bar!  And giving this story an odd twist is the fact that the bust was initiated by hollywood activists that produced The Cove.
From the NYT: Oscar winners try to keep whale off sushi plates
with video cameras and tiny microphones, the team behind Sunday’s Oscar-winning documentary film “The Cove” orchestrated a Hollywood-meets-Greenpeace-style covert operation to ferret out what the authorities say is illegal whale meat at one of this town’s …

Last week I made a post about a new paper on methane seeping from the Arctic seafloor.  Since then, there have been several new posts on other sites about the work, putting it into a broader perspective and also taking somewhat contradictory views of the implications of the finding. The fear is that rapid methane release is considered one plausible mechanism that could lead to abrupt climate change via various positive feedbacks in the climate system.  As Nick Sundt points out (here)
A report released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, Abrupt Climate Change, said in December …

Professor David Karoly (one of Australia’s esteemed ARC Federation Fellows) wrote to several of us recently in frustration over the recent misinformation in the Courier Mail and on Andrew Bolt’s blog. As usual, Andrew and the News Ltd papers have cherry-picked their way through the truth. Here is what David wrote:
“I don’t like responding to all, and saturating others’ email inboxes, but the misinformation in John’s emails and the Andrew Bolt’s blog is as bad as ever.
Yes, there is more ice in winter than in summer (no surprise).
The …

Evidence from Institute of Physics drawn from energy industry consultant who argues global warming is a religion
David Adams, Guardian , Thursday 4 March 2010 21.00 GMT
Evidence from a respected scientific body to a parliamentary inquiry examining the behaviour of climate-change scientists, was drawn from an energy industry consultant who argues that global warming is a religion, the Guardian can reveal.
The submission, from the Institute of Physics (IOP), suggested that scientists at the University of East Anglia had cherry-picked data to support conclusions and that key reconstructions of past temperature could …

No, it isn’t yet April 1.  See here.  You gotta love the bit about this all being a “long post-mini-ice-age warming”. But still, I admire his (partial) intellectual honesty. Well, maybe that is overly generous since there never actually was a “break” in the warming.
The post includes this figure (from here):

A few things are worth noting:
1) Even accepting the faulty logic of a short-term lack of change in the global temperature measurements being a “break in the warming”, looking at the graphic above, it doesn’t look like a decade-long break to …

if you don’t believe it, see this, this, this, this…

The words “climate change” are now on the lips of almost every Australian. Plug these words into Google and you get 3.3 million hits for Australian pages, nearly a million more hits than for “health care”.  Australians talk about climate change, but for a variety of reasons. Some of us are concerned, some are skeptical, some of us don’t care and some don’t know what information to believe. The issue is enormous and the challenge seems insurmountable. To make a bad thing worse, the topic has recently been blurred by …

From today’s LA Times, by Margot Roosevelt, original story is posted here
Carbon dioxide (C02) is the most prevalent greenhouse gas that is trapping heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet to what most climate scientists consider dangerous levels. But methane, a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more powerful than CO2, has also been growing at an alarming rate, with concentrations more than doubling since pre-industrial times.
A paper published Thursday in the journal Science reveals that parts of the East Siberian continental shelf, which extends up to 1000 miles out into Arctic …

Here is the slightly haunting underwater gallery of statues in Cancun, Mexico (courtesy of the Isla Mujeres Underwater Art Museum – more pictures here)

And finally, here’s a great use for what is probably the last Elkhorn fire coral left in Mexico (thanks Pim!):

By Paul Gilding | March 3rd, 2010, Cockatoo Chronicles 16
When we focus on news that reinforces our environmental challenges, of which there’s no shortage, we forget just how exciting the opportunities in fixing them are and how fast these solutions are now accelerating. Every story about melting icecaps or raging floods brings a smarter, cleaner world closer. My favourite example at the moment is electric cars. While they had a bad start, we are now on the verge of the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for, with around 30 models coming …

The is quite a bit of buzz today about recent research that quantifies how much whaling has – and is – contributing to atmospheric carbon. The focus needs to be broadened beyond whales. Ocean habitats are continually overlooked by the global community as viable sites of carbon sequestration.