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Rewriting Environmental Science
Aqua OS X writes to tell us CBS News is reporting that government scientist James Hansen recently spoke out against the White House in an appearance on 60 Minutes. From the article: "Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science."
A couple of years ago I read about a large permanent settlement which Archeologists discovered here in Australia. It was occupied by Aboriginal people for a period of time and then abandoned.
The implication was that indiginous Australians tried to follow the natural progression from hunter gathering to large scale settlement, but it somehow failed.
I too wonder if this will happen here again.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Or, you could actually -read- the article.
Specifically the parts that note he was permitted from discussing a number of things and he had to give the interview with a NASA watchdog recording and overseeing the interview.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Not necessarily; Developed countries undergo population implosions.
Schools in Japan are shutting down in a wave, starting with the first grades, and then pushing onward through the school. Sometimes, they just shut down entire floors in their schools.
This is happening elsewhere, as well.
People are seriously freaked out about this.
The thing I find amusing, is that many environmentalists have problems with this.
In the 1990's, a bunch of environmentalists got together, and said, "What do we need to do? We need to seriously do something, so that people will be more environmentalist." The strategy, they decided on, was to mythologize environmentalism. That is, to get people to worship the Earth Mother, to shun technology, to get in psychic harmony with nature, and so on, and so forth.
And that strategy is totally being played out.
So when you tell them, "Hey, in Japan, they're freaking out, because people aren't having kids, and it seems to be because they're developed," it tends to not go over so well.
Here in Holland, many times i see the same problem. Close to where i live, the government wants to build a highway to relieve congestion on a parallel highway. So they hired scientists to study the effects of the new road. It turned out the road would make things worse: instead of relieving the congestion on the other road, it would increase congestion on every other main road in the surroundings.
The scientists, knowing what would happen, leaked this result immediately to the press, but the final report got stowed away in a very deep drawer. Parliamant had a tough job to get the report out of this drawer again.
But. Then came the obligatory environmental impact study. In this study, the former report is completely ignored. The vast increase of congestion is not taken into account in an evironmental impact assessment!
If the politicians have it their way (and they must be quick, everyone knows they will get their asses kicked next elections) we'll have a road that increases the congestion, costs about a billion euro's of tax money and will terribly damage the environment and landscape. But the construction firms will be very happy.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Does poor science qualify? How about Michael Mann's Hockey Stick work? From this week's New Scientist (subscription only article)
Though McKitrick and MacIntyre's paper is hidden behind Nature's subscription firewall, McKitrick shows the graph on his webpage. Note that McKitrick and MacIntyre aren't saying global warming isn't happening, they're just pointing out Mann's method is suspect.The New Scientist article goes on to cite poor data sources such as tree rings with known variability issues and inherent bias in data selection. When Mann was asked to divulge his source code so it could be inspected for methodology errors, he declined saying it was proprietary code. Revealing methodology is inherent in good science and Mann violated that key precept.
You should be skeptical of climatology in general given that it's even more removed from model failure than meteorolgy. Meteorologists are well acquainted with their models failing because they get feedback on a daily basis. Climatologist don't get that feedback because there's only one climate so they retrofit their models to fit past performance of the climate - a methodology that meteorologists have demonstrated doesn't work very well.
Even worse, they can't even agree on what's going to happen. One model has Europe roasting, another freezing. It can't be both but regardless of which outcome we eventually encounter, climatologists will claim they predicted it.
At it's core, the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis has relied on CO2 emissions as being causative. You have to be skeptical of a claim that an incredibly complex atmosephere which we can't fully model is being driven by variations of a single gas. A gas whose concentration is less than a tenth of one percent.
Unfortunately, contrary to popular belief, planting trees is not a solution per se. The carbon cycle may slow down a little, but eventually, all the carbon in leafs and trunks will end up as CO2 in atmosphere again.
Dynamically, some of it is retained (new trees hopefuly grow, as old die and rot) in forests, but forest fires can dramatically change that.
Besides, some experimental research had shown that plants have upper limit on CO2 atmospheric concentration they can handle. After that limit is breached, photosinthesys stops...
The only direction is to think of a way to speed up sinking of CO2 to the bottom of the ocean rifts and back under the Earth's crust.
Out of the hat, it could go as follows:
- pressurise and liquidify air (first step in obtaining industrial nitrogen, too).
- do fractional evaporation of liquid air and extract the CO2 fraction.
- pump the taken out CO2 to the ocean bed.
or else:
- use fast growing algae to tie carbon into biomass. If nescessary, engineer the strain that can handle high concentration of CO2, then feed it with CO2- enriched (use gas centrifuges - CO2 is one of the heaviest components of air) air in controlled environment (hydroponics)
- harvest algae and carbonize them by anaerob baking in (i.e. solar) ovens.
- compress and burry or sink thus obtained charcoal.
but first: stop pumping natural carbon reserves into atmosphere (burning fossil fuels)! We don't need to stop using fire, but we must stop adding ancient carbon into short (atmosphere-biosphere) carbon cycle.
With all the recent advances in genetics, why can't we have an highly efficient single-cell photosynthetic lipid (oil) factory little friend? Put them in the glass tank, conduct light to the bottom of it using mirrors, let the little buggers swim down so that they don't get stuck in the oil layer forming on top of the tank, pump the CO2-enriched air thru the water (or do it separately, not to stirr the water) so that they have what to eat... and just let the oil pour from the top. Voila - diesel fuel at your disposal!
Okay, okay, okay -- this sounds like McKitrick's bluster. I actually READ his book, I read his criticism of Mann's methodology, and I read a few rounds of responses. This doesn't make me educated on the subject, but it makes me more than educated enough to talk about McKitrick. His credentials on the subject are poor, his charges against Mann's work do not invalidate it, and having read his book, I cannot seriously believe that he is working in good faith.
There are valid criticisms of current climate science, and they are coming from within the scientific community, including the IPCC. The field of research is moving fast and the near-consensus from the people who know the most is that we're in trouble.
Did you read McKitrick's recommendations for climate science? Basically this: "Boy, math sure is hard, so let's all give it up and go home and have drinks with our friends." I really wish I was joking.