The folks running the Climate Working Group summer retreat on drought were kind enough to invite me up to Santa Fe this week. I spent most of the time listening, but they also extended the huge kindness of inviting me to speak. I think they hoped I could explain the rituals of my somewhat mystifying …
I’ve been much of the week up in Santa Fe at a workshop of drought scientists, and while we’ve been busy palavering, things have been changing on the ground here in the drought-stricken southwest. The greatest excitement was in Coronado National Memorial Park, near Bisbee in far southern Arizona, which got 12 inches of rain …
Zippy’s concerned about global warming: I’m concerned about global warming, but I’m even more concerned about Al Gore’s love affair with his Powerpoint program. On the one hand, I don’t want to be underwater in 30 years, but on the other, can Al Gore sweep into the oval office on a wave of animated carbon …
Andrew Dessler, one of my favorite climate science/politics/policy ‘splainers, has started a blog.
Interesting new bit of work by Dirmeyer and Brubaker in GRL about the effects of early spring on northern hemisphere water budgets: Over most mid- and high-latitude areas, a strong annual cycle of recycling ratio exists; low during winter when storm tracks are active, tropospheric circulation strong, and surface evaporation rates low, high during summer …
In which I describe the climate wars tribal labels being attached to me because of my Sunday story on climate change science.
There’s good reason to think the whole hurricane-global warming debate is a huge distraction, because of its relative lack of importance in understanding societal hurricane risk. (See Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog for the latest in many, many discussions of the data suggesting that building houses on the beach is the most important risk factor in …
Last fall, Lissa and I spent a couple of days in and around Lee’s Ferry. As the linchpin between the upper and lower Colorado basins, it’s central to storytelling about water, drought and the west, which is part of my attraction to the place. But it’s also magnificent country in a stark and powerful way. …
Naomi “Don’t Call Me Nancy” Oreskes responded yesterday in the Los Angeles Times to Richard Lindzen’s Wall Street Journal claim that her Science magazine review of the climate change literature had been refuted: My study demonstrated that there is no significant disagreement within the scientific community that the Earth is warming and that human activities …
One of the fundamental public misunderstandings about science, I think, is the difference between textbooks full of answers known and scientists poking blindly out at the fuzzy edge. That’s why the latest dietary study (“But I thought they said coffee was good for me!”) always causes such public puzzlement. That’s the premise I was trying …