I tried my hardest, but despite my best efforts I just can’t avoid writing about the IPCC. I’ve gotta tell folks in New Mexico something. Hey, it could be worse. At least we don’t really see hurricanes, what with not having any oceans nearby.
Much more tomorrow.
I know that you can’t blame a single drought, heat wave, hurricane, etc., on climate change. But the current drought in Australia has clearly become part of the political dynamic there. Consider a couple of stories on the wire this morning. First this:
Immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will not halt the continuing damage to Australia’s environment, a federal government researcher warns.
The CSIRO expects Sydney’s maximum temperatures to rise 1.6 degrees by 2030 and 4.8 degrees by 2070.
Average rainfall will decrease by 40 per cent and water evaporation rates will jump 24 per cent by 2040 under the scorching conditions.
And this:
With Australia gripped by its worst drought on record, the issue of climate change has emerged as a battleground in this year’s national elections.
Prime Minister John Howard has come under renewed criticism for not ratifying the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, making Australia the only major industrial nation other than the U.S. to reject the treaty that mandates lower emissions of global-warming greenhouse gases.
An inch of snow when I measured this morning at my house – 0.14 inches of precip when melted. 0.12 at the airport. That’s a total of 0.18 total at the airport this month, as compared to an average of 0.5. It’s been wetter at my house – 0.49 inches. But it shows that a perception that its being incredibly wet here is biased by that huge late December storm, not by what’s actually been happening in January.
The folks at the Government Accountability Project have released a report, done in conjunction with the Union of Concerned Scientists, about government interference in climate science:
• Nearly half of all respondents (46 percent of all respondents to the question) perceived or
personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words “climate change,” “global warming,”
or other similar terms from a variety of communications.
• Two in five (43 percent) perceived or personally experienced changes or edits during
review that changed the meaning of scientific findings.
• Nearly half (46 percent) perceived or personally experienced new or unusual administrative requirements that impair climaterelated work.
• One-quarter (25 percent) perceived or personally experienced situations in which
scientists have actively objected to, resigned from, or removed themselves from a project
because of pressure to change scientific findings.
• Asked to quantify the number of incidents of interference of all types, 150 scientists
(58 percent) said they had personally experienced one or more such incidents within
the past five years, for a total of at least 435 incidents of political interference.
Given that this is based on a self-selected sample (those who chose to respond) I’d shy away from arguing that the numbers are representative, but the scope of the examples is suggestive.
I recently picked up Bob Henson’s Rough Guide to Climate Change, and I must say it fills a great niche. I’m a fan of Andrew Dessler’s book, which is a great primer. But (sorry, Dr. D) it’s a bit on the wonkish side. Henson’s book has a Rough Guide snap to it that makes it a great alternative for a general audience – solid on the science, easy on the eyes with lots of sidebars and graphics that make it exquisitely accessible.
(Full disclosure: I’m happy and humbled to report that Bob included Inkstain in his list of climate blogs worth reading, along with a number of the folks whose names you see mentioned in the rail on the right.)
One of the padres in New Mexico sent a letter home back in the 1600s expressing amazement that the residents of Gran Quivira, one of the pueblos near Albuquerque, saved their urine for use in the muds they used in building. It’s a dry place, you do stuff:
Residents in tropical Queensland state will soon be forced to drink recycled sewage to help Australia cope with its worst drought for a century.
Australia’s third most populous state, which attracts vast numbers of tourists drawn to its tropical weather, will be the first to introduce the measures and the rest of the nation could reasonably be expected to follow, according to John Howard, the Prime Minister.
Nora sends along this Oct. 23, 2001 Macforum discussion of Apple’s big announcement:
All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field™ is starting to warp Steve’s mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off.
Let us not gird science to our loins as the warrior buckles on his sword. Let us raise science aloft as the olive branch of peace and the emblem of hope.
John Wesley Powell, in an 1882 talk, “Darwin’s contributions to philosophy”
update: It’s worth pointing out here that Powell was full of extraordinary amounts of crap when he said this. He was about as combative in his use of science as they came in the 19th century, a true bureaucratic warrior.
Western South Dakota is one of those classic drought cases. It was extraordinarily wet there during the 1990s, well above the long term mean. Of the 10 wettest years in a century of records in northwest South Dakota, four came during the 1990s. An astonishing six years during the 1990s were greater than one standard deviation wetter than the long term mean in the southwest South Dakota climate division.
Andrea Cook at the Rapid City Journal gets points for trying to explain this to folks:
South Dakota benefited from relatively wet periods through most of the 1990s and in 2001, Todey said.
But her story reflects what seems to be an inevitable mistake in thinking about drought in this country (not her mistake, but the mistake of the people she’s talking to). Variation around the mean is normal. When we’re on the wet side of the mean – even way on the wet side of the mean – agriculturalists in the United States treat it as “normal,” expanding herds, planting, etc. (See my previous discussion of the fact that we don’t really have a word for the opposite of “drought”.) When we slip to the dry side of the mean, that’s a “drought”. There’s no question that western South Dakota has been on the dry side of the mean for the last five years. But within the ups and downs, the Standardized Precipitation Index for the region shows “near normal” conditions.