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Palin on Global Warming

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Here at RealClimate we understandably have an intense interest in the positions of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates regarding global warming and carbon emissions. What the stance bodes for future action on climate change is consequential in itself, but beyond that the ability to use sound science in this case serves as a bellweather for the candidates’ whole approach to science. Whatever else you can say about the candidates, it has been encouraging that both John McCain and Barack Obama favor mandatory action to reduce US carbon emissions.

But, enter Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain’s pick for VP. Palin’s position on global warming has been stated quite clearly in this recent interview with the publication Newsmax , where she says “A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.” How is this to be reconciled with McCain’s position? Do they just agree to differ? What does this bode for future actions if McCain were to win the election, especially in view of the fact that, in a Cheney-esque way, Palin is likely to be put in charge of energy policy? The recent vice-presidential debate sheds some light on the issue. A full transcript of the debate is here.

Una traduzione in italiano è disponibile qui.
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Simple Question, Simple Answer… Not Les question simples n’appellent pas toujours des réponses simples

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Guest commentary by Spencer R. Weart, American Institute of Physics

I often get emails from scientifically trained people who are looking for a straightforward calculation of the global warming that greenhouse gas emissions will bring. What are the physics equations and data on gases that predict just how far the temperature will rise? A natural question, when public expositions of the greenhouse effect usually present it as a matter of elementary physics. These people, typically senior engineers, get suspicious when experts seem to evade their question. Some try to work out the answer themselves (Lord Monckton for example) and complain that the experts dismiss their beautiful logic.

The engineers’ demand that the case for dangerous global warming be proved with a page or so of equations does sound reasonable, and it has a long history. The history reveals how the nature of the climate system inevitably betrays a lover of simple answers.

Billet par l’invité Spencer R. Weart, American Institute of Physics (traduit par Jean-Denis Vauguet)
A translation in Japanese is available here
Guest commentary by Spencer R. Weart American Institute of Physics
Český překlad k dispozici zde.
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How much will sea level rise? ¿Cuanto subirá el nivel del mar?Quanto aumenterà il livello del mare?

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… is the question people have been putting a lot of thought into since the IPCC AR4 report came out. We analysed what was in the report quite carefully at the time and pointed out that the allowance for dynamic ice sheet processes was very uncertain, and actually precluded setting a upper limit on what might be expected. The numbers that appeared in some headlines (up to 59 cm by 2100) did not take that uncertainty into account.

Una traducción en español está disponible aquí.
Una traduzione in italiano è disponibile qui.
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Weekend round-up

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A few interesting pieces from around the web relevant to some previous postings:

  • The latest satellite imagery from the Wilkins Ice Sheet (discussed recently) is not looking good. And most curiously the collapse is happening in winter.
  • The Weather Channel “Forecast Earth” team make a valiant attempt to explain the problems and promise for regional climate change projections by 2050. See our post on the general subject from last year).
  • And for those of you following the various sagas of political interference in the communication of climate science, a nice interactive graphic summary, courtesy of UCS.

Next week will be a little quiet – it is mid-summer after all – so apologies in advance if the moderation is a somewhat slow. You may also note that we have instituted a “captcha” step to the commenting process. This uses reCAPTCHA which as well as providing protection against spam, helps with the digitization of old books.

All-paper salutes to the environment

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The Onion last week had a great (recycled) spoof on the various ‘green’ special issues being published but, not to be outdone, the contributors to RealClimate have also been busy producing paper products about the environment.

Surprisingly perhaps, as well as having day jobs and writing for this blog, collectively we have written a number of popular science books about climate change. Some of these have already been published, but there are a few more “in the pipeline”. We try not to overdo self-promotion on this website (for instance, we don’t blog about most of our own technical publications) but since these projects are synergistic with our aims here, it makes sense to let people know what we’ve been up to. We have therefore set up a page listing “Our Books” that we will keep up-to-date as more titles become available. It’s also linked from the new animated gif image on the side bar.

Ice Shelf Instability

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Guest contribution from Mauri S. Pelto

Ice shelves are floating platforms of ice fed by mountain glaciers and ice sheets flowing from the land onto the ocean. The ice flows from the grounding line where it becomes floating to the seaward front, where icebergs calve. For a typical glacier when the climate warms the glacier merely retreats, reducing its low elevation, high melting area by increasing its mean elevation. An ice shelf is nearly flat and cannot retreat in this fashion. Ice shelves cannot persist unless the entire ice shelf is an accumulation zone, where snowpack does not completely melt even in the summer.


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The Global Cooling Bet – Part 2 Apuesta al Enfriamiento Global – Segunda ParteLa scommessa sul raffreddamento globale – II parte

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Last week we proposed a bet against the “pause in global warming” forecast in Nature by Keenlyside et al. and we promised to present our scientific case later – so here it is.

Una traduzione in italiano è disponibile qui
Dieser Beitrag erscheint zeitgleich auf deutsch auf Klimalounge


Traducido por Angela Carosio

La semana pasada propusimos una apuesta contra el pronóstico en un artículo de la revista Nature “pausa en el calentamiento global” por Keenlyside et al. y prometimos presentar nuestro caso científico en otra ocasión, y aquí está.

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Butterflies, tornadoes and climate modelling

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Ed Lorenz hiking Many of you will have seen the obituaries (MIT, NYT) for Ed Lorenz, who died a short time ago. Lorenz is most famous scientifically for discovering the exquisite sensitivity to initial conditions (i.e. chaos) in a simple model of fluid convection, which serves as an archetype for the weather prediction problem. He is most famous outside science for the ‘The Butterfly Effect’ described in his 1972 paper “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”. Lorenz’s contributions to both atmospheric science and the mathematics of dynamical systems were wide ranging and seminal. He also directly touched the lives of many of us here at RealClimate, and both his wisdom, and quiet personal charm will be sorely missed.

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Moulins, Calving Fronts and Greenland Outlet Glacier Acceleration Sifones, frentes glaciares y la aceleración de los glaciares exteriores de Groenlandia

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Guest Commentary by Mauri Pelto

The net loss in volume and hence sea level contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) has doubled in recent years from 90 to 220 cubic kilometers/year has been noted recently (Rignot and Kanagaratnam, 2007). The main cause of this increase is the acceleration of several large outlet glaciers. There has also been an alarming increase in the number of photographs of meltwater draining into a moulin somewhere on the GIS, often near Swiss Camp (35 km inland from the calving front). The story goes—warmer temperatures, more surface melting, more meltwater draining through moulins to glacier base, lubricating glacier bed, reducing friction, increasing velocity, and finally raising sea level. Examining this issue two years RealClimate suggested this was likely the correct story. A number of recent results suggest that we need to take another look at this story.

Una traducción está disponible aquí
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Air Capture Captura de Aire

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Guest Commentary by Frank Zeman

[This is one of an occasional series on the science of mitigation/adaptation/geo-engineering that we hope to continue. Since this isn’t our core expertise, we’d especially appreciate balanced contributions from other scientists.]

One of the central challenges of controlling anthropogenic climate change is developing technologies that deal with emissions from small, dispersed sources such as automobiles and residential houses. Capturing these emissions is more difficult as they are too small to support infrastructure, such as pipelines, and may be mobile, as with cars. For these reasons, proposed solutions, such as switching to using hydrogen or electricity as a fuel, rely on the carbon-free generation of electricity or hydrogen. That implies that the fuel must be made either by renewable generation (wind, solar, geothermal etc.), nuclear or by facilities that capture the carbon dioxide and store it (CCS).

There is however an alternative that gets some occasional attention: Air Capture (for instance, here or here). The idea would be to let people emit the carbon dioxide at the source but then capture it directly from the atmosphere at a separate facility.

Par Frank Zeman, traducido por Angela Carosio
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