2009: Second Warmest Year Ever

From the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.

Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade, due to strong cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to near-record global temperatures. The past year was only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on record, and tied with a cluster of other years — 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007 1998 and 2007 — as the second warmest year since recordkeeping began.

32,000 Scientists Oppose Global Warming (Not Really)

Climate Change and Hacked E-mails: A Good Overview of What Really Happened

FactCheck.org Looks at Climategate

Full article here.  The summary:

In late November 2009, more than 1,000 e-mails between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia were stolen and made public by an as-yet-unnamed hacker. Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded:

• The messages, which span 13 years, show a few scientists in a bad light, being rude or dismissive. An investigation is underway, but there’s still plenty of evidence that the earth is getting warmer and that humans are largely responsible.
• Some critics say the e-mails negate the conclusions of a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the IPCC report relied on data from a large number of sources, of which CRU was only one.
• E-mails being cited as “smoking guns” have been misrepresented. For instance, one e-mail that refers to “hiding the decline” isn’t talking about a decline in actual temperatures as measured at weather stations. These have continued to rise, and 2009 may turn out to be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. The “decline” actually refers to a problem with recent data from tree rings.

Global Warming Takes a Hit

A recent controversy involving stolen emails may be responsible for dwindling belief among Americans in human-created climate change.  At Real Clear Politics, Tom Bevan summarizes the results of a CNN/Opinion Research poll that probed whether respondants believe global warming is real and weather humans are the cause of it.

Only 45% of those surveyed agreed with the statement that “Global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by emissions from cars and industrial facilities such as power plants and factories.” That number is down from 54% who agreed with the statement in June of last year and in May of 2007.

Meanwhile, the number of people who agreed with the statement that “Global warming is a theory that has not yet been proven” jumped to 31% in the current survey, up eight points from June 2008.

As a scientist, I find the evidence for man-made climate change overwhelming.  The “revelations” in a few stolen emails have little impact on the larger scientific picture.

Balanced against the poll’s finding is an editorial that appears today in newspapers across the world.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Now for some random thoughts:

Climate change is both a scientific issue and a policy issue.  The science is somewhat complicated when one drills down to the details, but the basic idea is straightforward.  The planet’s climate is rapidly changing, largely because of human industrial activity and the greenhouse effect.  But “rapidly” doesn’t mean disaster movie rapidly (think Day After Tomorrow).  It means over the course of a few decades or centuries, which is fast compared to the eons of the planet’s history.  A misunderstanding here affects the policy issue.

And the policy issue is muddy anyway.  The best course of action isn’t clear when one thinks about the political and economic problems.  It took aggressive industrialization over many decades to unwittingly alter the planet’s climate, and it will take an effort of similar scale, cost, and complexity to reverse or at least modulate the changes.

Public support is up and down at best.  People don’t like to be told to change their lifestyle (although climate change will leave them few options).  So we begin with a somewhat hostile audience.  Then we add an unfortunate controversy generated by a few stolen emails, whose impact on the scientific issues has been greatly exaggerated.  Next add predictions of planet-wide catastophe that often read like the synopsis of a disaster movie.  When people read “Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, . . .” many read this to mean it’ll happen by Tuesday.  When it doesn’t, they lose confidence in what scientists are saying because they misinterpret the message.  The full impact of climate change may not be felt for decades or centuries.  Thus climate change is an excellent and very unfornate example of how difficult it is for scientists to communicate complex ideas to the general public.

Building Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a massive monument (to what?) on the Salisbury Plain in England. No one knows why or how it was built. The “why” may never be known, but Wally Wallington of Flint, Michigan may have figured out the how. You have to see this to believe it.

Global Warming and Hacked E-Mails

At Climate Progress, NASA’s James Hensen talks about the recent controversy over stolen email messages.

SB:  Last week, someone leaked e-mails obtained by hacking into the server at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Activists who have long denied the reality of climate change  say they show that climatologists have engaged in a grand conspiracy to manufacture a case that global warming is occurring due to human activities. Do the hacked e-mails undermine the case for anthropogenic climate change?

JH:  No, they have no effect on the science.  The evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming.

SB:  Do the e-mails indicate any unethical efforts to hide data that do not support the idea of anthropogenic global warming or to keep contrary ideas out of the scientific literature and IPCC reports?

JH:  They indicate poor judgment in specific cases. First, the data behind any analysis should be made publicly available.  Second, rather than trying so hard to prohibit publication of shoddy science, which is impossible, it is better that reviews, such as by IPCC and the National Academy of Sciences, summarize the full range of opinions and explain clearly the basis of the scientific assessment. The “contrarians” or “deniers” do not have a scientific leg to stand on.  Their aim is to win a public relations battle, or at least get a draw, which may be enough to stymie the actions that are needed to stabilize climate.

Co-operation and Evolution

Mark Vernon writes about Sarah Coakley’s inaugural lecture at Cambridge.  Coakley argues that sacrifice is an integral part of the evolutionary process.

Her argument stems from her collaboration with Martin Nowak, professor of biology and mathematics at Harvard University. He’s been working on the possibility of a new principle in evolution, that of co-operation, without which, he’s shown using game theory, “competitiveness dethrones itself” – which is to say that natural selection couldn’t work. By co-operation he means something quite specific: foregoing of fitness advantage so that others may have it. His work resonates with that of other evolutionarists, notably Lynn Margulis, who’s argued that multicellular life could never have evolved without symbiosis. The point is that this kind of co-operation is not just a supervenience on essentially selfish mechanisms, as advocated in the work of Richard Dawkins. Individual advantage cannot explain it, co-operationists say. If that’s right, co-operation must be as fundamental in evolution as mutation and natural selection.

Newsflash: Scientists Discover that Women in Bikinis are Awesome

It’s not uncommon for scientists to “discover” through research a result that virtually everyone else already knows.  For example, scientists have recently determined that men see bikini-clad women as sex objects.  What a shock.  Women have been wearing bikinis for several decades now, like this girl, and . . .

. . . what was I writing about?  It is baseball season yet?  If the Yankees can get past the A-Rod mess, they might be okay.  And my cats have been acting really weird lately.  When is Spring getting here anyway?

Oh yeah, I remember.  It’s very easy to take common knowledge for granted.  A great deal of what we think we know we really don’t, until someone does some research to back it up.  Think of how many times common knowledge has been overturned.  That’s part of what science does for us.  It helps us back up our common knowledge when common knowledge is correct, and tears it down when it’s wrong.  That’s one reason why this kind of research is not even close to a waste of time.  Another reason is that gives me an excuse to post another picture of Bar Refaeli:

Here, Refaeli is saying, “Yes, I am beautiful.  And you shall never have me, you puny little man.”

New Science Curriculum in Texas Pleases Scientists

Matt Frazier writes for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram:

The final proposal for the state’s science curriculum pleases scientists and watch groups, who say it will help protect Texas public school classrooms over the next decade from what they call “watered-down science” — specifically during the instruction of evolution.

Much of the concern over earlier versions of the proposed curriculum centered on a requirement that students be able to analyze the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories, a phrase which some say is being used by creationists — including some members of the State Board of Education — to subvert the teaching of evolution.

The new proposal uses language from the National Academy of Sciences—click here for the full text.  Follow this link to compare the current language, which has been much criticized by scientists.

My take: In the coming decades the United States will face extraordinary competition from India and China, among other places.  To maintain our economic independence it is critical that our children receive the best possible education in math and science.  Among other things, that means teaching evolution in biology classes.

Follow this link to learn more about biological evolution.

HT: Religion Clause.