My story on Johannes Feddema’s paper on the global effects of land use changes finally ran in this morning’s paper. Forgive the headline. I tried to play the bait and switch game in the story and I guess I didn’t get away with it – at least with the copy editor who wrote the headline. …
In the comments over at RealClimate, Bradfield Lyon posted links to a couple of excellent global drought monitoring resources: Global Weighted Anomaly Standardized Precipitation indexes, and Global Standardized Precipitation Indexes Rasmus had discussed the potential for global warming to have been implicated in the current drought in the Amazon, and I had asked the underlying …
Our old friend Michael Fumento back in the day chastised me for being a lowly blogger while he was widely published in newspapers. No more. Tim Lambert points out that Scripps Howard, which used to carry Fumento’s column, has sacked the conservative pundit for writing about the glories of Monsanto’s biotechnology without disclosing that he …
As I’ve mentioned before, the coolest aspect of my job is having carte blanche to call up smart people and make them explain stuff too me. Today’s case in point is Paul Polechla, the University of New Mexico’s aquatic mammals expert. When I saw what I thought might be a beaver dam a couple of …
Benny Peiser, in the comments below, suggests I am misleading my readers and asks that I set the record straight. So let me quote from both Benny’s CCNet email and the Xu et al. paper. First Benny’s CCnet subject line: NEW STUDY: “SOLAR ACTIVITY IS PRIMARY DRIVING FORCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE” Now Xu et al., …
There are essentially two ways societies can respond to drought. One is societal adaption – stored water and food (or water and food trading), limits on growth during wet times, or mobility to move from dry places to wet places. The other is to just ignore reality (or not understand the reality) and then get …
Benny Peiser last week sent ’round a note on his CCNet list about a study just published by Hai Xu and colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences on the solar-climate link. “New study – Solar Activity is Primary Driving Force of Climate Change” was Benny’s subject line. The paper wasn’t on line for free, …
Rick Piltz, the guy who left the U.S. Climate Change Science Program in a highly visible way last summer, has a piece in the Dec. 27 issue of the American Geophysical Union’s Eos, calling for a “Second U.S. National Climate Change Assessment.” Piltz argues that the National Assessment, completed in 2000, was “a pioneering experiment …
Interesting interview with hurricane guy Kerry Emanuel in today’s New York Times. Q. There are scientists who say of fossil fuel consumption and global warming, We may not have all the evidence yet, but we ought to be acting as if the worst could happen. Do you agree? A. It’s always struck me as odd …
One of our regular commenters has been asking about the effect of soot on snow. It’s an issue I don’t know much about, but Roger Pielke Sr. this morning blogs a new paper discussing the issue.