The whole framing thing is much more clear in my mind in the nuclear realm, maybe simply because I’ve spent a lot more of my journalistic career there. Over at the work blog, a Saturday morning musing on a current case in which a new project, the Department of Energy’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, is the subject of a fierce framing fight. This makes an interesting case study, because the issue is fresh, and therefore the stakes are high as both sides seek to frame the issue in the public mind.
Evaluating the IPCC
Benny Peiser sent around a circular yesterday to his CCNet list about a potentially interesting project:
CALL FOR PAPERS: THE IPCC: STRUCTURE, PROCESS AND POLITICS
During the last decade, climate experts and government officials from more than 100 countries have unanimously agreed the key findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC’s analysis, its review of scientific literature and its predictions were carefully scrutinised by governments and generally accepted. The unanimous political support the IPCC has obtained from the international community represents a comprehensive consensus on the science and economics of climate change.
Despite this globally sanctioned agreement, there have been serious reservations about the way the IPCC works and how it produces its conclusions. Two years ago, the Economic Affairs Committee of Britain’s House of Lords concluded that there are concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, and the influence of political considerations in its findings. I am pleased to announce the planned publication of a special issue of Energy & Environment that will specifically address questions surrounding the structure, process and politics of the IPCC. This announcement solicits articles for consideration for this special issue.Papers are invited on all subjects related to the IPCC, its working and the way it produces its reports. Interested authors should send a brief but informative abstract of one or two pages as an e-mail attachment to me at b.j.peiser@ljmu.ac.uk (as I will serve as the E&E’s guest editor for this special issue)
Authors’ instructions can be found at:
http://www.multi-science.co.uk/gen_authors.htm
Does It Matter If It’s Right?
A very smart friend suggests that people seeking information on the Internet don’t necessarily want the right answer, but rather an easily accessible answer. I was reminded of his comments by this from Matthew Nisbet:
In the digital age, information is found based on availability rather than accuracy. If different interest groups start blogs that attack peer-reviewed science, and the scientific community does not engage in similar communication mode, they will miss an important opportunity to educate the public.
This, it seems to me, is a strong argument in favor of RealClimate.
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
The Climate Prediction Center’s monthly El Nino – La Nina update is out today with an increasingly solid forecast of a La Nina (meaning dry here) winter of 2007-08:
[A]tmospheric and oceanic conditions continue to indicate the possibility that La Niña conditions will develop over the next 2-3 months.
The forecast comes on the heels of a relatively dry final streamflow forecast for the year:
LA Burns
Los Angeles FireOriginally uploaded by Chucks Chicken.
When I was a kid, the mountain behind my Southern California home burned. We could see the fire coming many miles and hours away, creeping west across the front face of the San Gabriels. By midday, they sent us home from school, and I vividly remember (I must have been 10) the smell and that impossible red light of sun filtered through smoke. We spent that evening up on our wood shake roof, watering it down and watching the mountain burn. At some point, they lit a backfire, and the hillside exploded from bottom to top. We lived a couple of miles from the fire, and you could feel the heat.
It was the coolest, scariest thing I had ever seen.
This picture from Chucks Chicken, palm trees and flame as Griffith Park burns, gives me shivers. (Hat tip Kit Stolz.)
Johnston: Demands Issued
Folks claiming to be Alan Johnston’s kidnappers have delivered a tape to al-Jazeera outlining their demands:
The tape includes a demand for the release of Muslim prisoners in British jails, and readings from the Koran.
Big Toe at the Park
Spring seemed to click into place this evening, I’m not sure why. We’ve had warmer weather, and today’s high of 73F (23C) is actually below average for May 9, and not close to the warmest day this year. But the iris are in spectacular bloom, and when Lissa and I took a walk after dinner, people just seemed to be more outside.
Around the block, the neighborhood kids were playing some wild shoot-em-up game, and the front door across the street was open, with the screen door closed, so you could hear the dogs going apeshit as we walked by with Sadie. It’s that open front door thing, I guess, that gave it the feel of spring maybe. I don’t know.
I sent Inkstain staff anthropologist Big Toe over to the park around the corner from Inkstain World Headquarters to gather some data. He counted about 50 people out: walking the park perimeter, playing two volleyball games (the folks in the background of the picture above), playing an 8-person no-goalie soccer game, reading, walking dogs, sitting on the park bench smoking, parents with little ones on the play equipment. We don’t have a lot of data to compare it to. On Aug. 11, 2005, I counted 70 people out. It was 92F (33C) that day, which was warmer than normal.
Big Toe’s the expert here, and he argues that public spaces like this, while contributing to the proximate value of the surrounding real estate, also create what is called in the literature “vital public spaces” where members of various groups can interact in neutral space. Me, I’m no intellectual. I just like a warm spring evening at the park.
South Carolina Drought
Government officials in South Carolina are on drought alert:
The Drought Response Committee put the entire state in an incipient drought Tuesday, which is the first of four stages of drought. The declaration warns water system managers to closely monitor their reservoirs. The Department of Natural Resources also will begin to more carefully monitor conditions across the state.
The Drought Monitor has more than half the state in some sort of dry/drought status.
2007 Iris
Lissa’s front yard iris are in full flower.
While We’re On the Subject of Hurricanes….
Colin Price at Tel Aviv University and colleagues have a paper in GRL looking at lightning storms in East Africa as precursors for the easterly waves that are precursors of Atlantic hurricanes:
More than 90% of the tropical storms and hurricanes during these 2 years were preceded by periods of above average thunderstorm activity in eastern Africa. During the 2006 season not only was the east African lightning activity 23% lower than during 2005, but there was 36% less lightning activity over the entire African continent during 2006. We suggest the possibility that lightning activity in tropical Africa may represent an important precursor of Atlantic hurricane formation.