Al Gore Wrong

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There seems little point in commenting here about the Al Gore-Mr. Justice Burton kerfuffle, given that a) everyone who comes here and cares about climate issues already knows all about it, and b) everyone who comes here and cares about climate issues has already made up their mind about its significance. But since I’ll lose my climate blogger’s union card if I don’t say something, I’ll just say – what William said:

what would also be a problem would be if all the good guys felt obliged to get trapped into defending AIT to the death. I hope that doesn’t happen (Myles Allen on R4 last night didn’t). It should be clear that AIT is a partisan film, not a source for the science; for that we have the readily available IPCC (or wikipedia, if you want a readable summary). AIT is in some danger of becoming a cuckoo overshadowing what it is supposedly explaining. Skeptics can find it very convenient to attack the film, and thereby pretend they are attacking the basic science.

On Consensus

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Andrew Dessler has a great post today on the implications of the recent ozone chemistry discovery for the standard argument that science as an institution is uncomfortable with those who attack consensus:

Overall, the idea that any scientific community is not interested in new ideas is ridiculous. Good new ideas are the fuel that science runs on, and when new ones come out, they are thoroughly investigated by the scientific community. This new result about the ozone hole is a good example.

Daybook

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  • water politics: Looks like Sophie and the guy with the steely set in his jaw are going to stop Caesar’s evil plot to steal groundwater to build subdivisions.
  • water politics II: Looks like Sophie and the guy with the steely set in his jaw may need to head over to Arizona next.
  • water politics III: Drought plus fire seems to have focused Australians’ minds on the question of climate change: “Extreme weather, including a drought that has persisted in some places for six years, has focused the Australian public on climate change, and it is shaping up as a major issue in the general elections that are expected to be called in the next few weeks.”
  • paper of the day: OK, so we’ll grant, for purpose of discussion, that global climate changing is a problem. How much greenhouse reductions do we need to make in response to achieve what sort of result? Weaver et al. tackle the question. Their answer? Lots: “Our results suggest that if a 2.0°C warming is to be avoided, direct CO2 capture from the air, together with subsequent sequestration, would eventually have to be introduced in addition to sustained 90% global carbon emissions reductions by 2050.”
  • music:I’ve always enjoyed Performance Today. Good music, along with great storytelling. But I usually only get 15 minutes of it during my morning drive to work. Turns out there’s this newfangled Internet thingie that allows me to listen any time I want!

I Guess This is One Way to Respond to Drought

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From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

As northern Georgia suffers through a monumental drought and the toughest water restrictions ever imposed, Stone Mountain is using up to 38 gallons of water a minute — for 12 to 18 hours a day for the next month — to make snow.

On the day Gov. Sonny Perdue took the state’s water conservation efforts indoors and declared October “Take A Shorter Shower” month, the park was embarking on a whole new way to burn through the state’s shrinking supply of H2O.

Daybook

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  • reading: Tired of printing out PDF’s, I’m placing my order today for the IPCC Working Group I report
  • paper of the day: “A Method of Approximating Rainfall over Long Periods and Some Results of its Application,” A.E. Douglass, Science, Jan. 3, 1913. Sorry, nothing to link here, you’ll just have to take my word for how cool it is. As near as I’ve been able to determine, it’s the first use of tree rings to do a rainfall reconstruction.
  • music: Milestones The guy’s such an amazingly arrogant asshole, you want to just be done with him, but then he slides in that mute and begins filling in around those moments of quiet and … what can I say. I forgive him. Always have, always will.
  • word of the day: drupe – a fleshy fruit with a pit, like an olive