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2014 was Earth's hottest year on record
By Greg Botelho, CNN
Updated 11:01 AM ET, Fri January 16, 2015
The year 2014 was Earth's warmest on record, a U.S. weather agency announced Friday, with
average temperatures 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit above the previous high.
The National Climatic Data Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, noted the average temperatures over land and oceans were higher in 2014 than
any year since 1880, when record-keeping began.
This past December also had the third-highest average global land temperature -- out of any
December in the past 135 years -- at 2.45 degrees Fahrenheit above average, according to the
same agency.
Biography and summary of Ian Plimer’s book “Where does the carbon dioxide really come
from” received via e-mail forward on 11 January 2015. The text below has been altered
from the original to correct punctuation and formatting inconsistencies.
Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the
University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the
director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific
papers, six books, edited the Encyclopaedia of Geology and won three scientific awards for his
work. He has previously been employed by the University of New England , University of
Newcastle ,University of Melbourne ,University of Adelaide, and attended the University of
New South Wales and Macquarie University.
From “Where does the carbon dioxide really come from” by Plimer:
Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland. Since its first spewing of volcanic
ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the
past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet - all of you.
Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress - its that vital
chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for
us humans and all animal life. I know....it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon
emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of
driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids "The
Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using
only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV
and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your
bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs.....well, all of those
things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days. The volcanic ash emitted
into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes, FOUR DAYS - by that volcano in Iceland has
totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are
around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time - EVERY DAY.
I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano
Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth.
Yes, folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year - think about it.
Of course, I shouldn't spoil this 'touchy-feely tree-hugging' moment and mention the effect of
solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle,
which keeps happening despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.
And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud, but the fact of the matter is that the
bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to
reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.
Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you, on the
basis of the bogus 'human-caused' climate-change scenario. Hey, isn't it interesting how they
don't mention 'Global Warming' anymore, just 'Climate Change' - you know why? It's because
the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bull artists
got caught with their pants down.
And, just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme - that whopping
new tax - imposed on you that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer.
It won't stop any volcanoes from erupting, that's for sure.
But, hey, relax......give the world a hug and have a nice day!"
House Republicans just passed a bill forbidding scientists from advising the EPA on their
own research
By Lindsay Abrams, Salon.com
Wednesday, Nov 19, 2014 10:15 PM UTC.
The "reform" measure makes room for industry-funded experts on the EPA's advisory board
Congressional climate wars were dominated Tuesday by the U.S. Senate, which spent the day
debating, and ultimately failing to pass, a bill approving the construction of the Keystone XL
pipeline. While all that was happening, and largely unnoticed, the House was busy doing what it
does best: attacking science.
H.R. 1422, which passed 229-191, would shake up the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, placing
restrictions on those pesky scientists and creating room for experts with overt financial ties to the
industries affected by EPA regulations.
The bill is being framed as a play for transparency: Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, argued that
the board’s current structure is problematic because it “excludes industry experts, but not
officials for environmental advocacy groups.” The inclusion of industry experts, he said, would
right this injustice.
But the White House, which threatened to veto the bill, said it would “negatively affect the
appointment of experts and would weaken the scientific independence and integrity of the SAB.”
In what might be the most ridiculous aspect of the whole thing, the bill forbids scientific experts
from participating in “advisory activities” that either directly or indirectly involve their own
work. In case that wasn’t clear: experts would be forbidden from sharing their expertise in their
own research — the bizarre assumption, apparently, being that having conducted peer-reviewed
studies on a topic would constitute a conflict of interest. “In other words,” wrote Union of
Concerned Scientists director Andrew A. Rosenberg in an editorial for RollCall, “academic
scientists who know the most about a subject can’t weigh in, but experts paid by corporations
who want to block regulations can.”
Speaking on the House floor Tuesday, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., summed up what was
going on: “I get it, you don’t like science,” he told bill sponsor Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah. “And
you don’t like science that interferes with the interests of your corporate clients. But we need
science to protect public health and the environment.”
The House, alas, is staying the course, voting this week on two other bills aimed at impeding the
EPA, including one that prevents the agency from relying on what it calls “secret science” in
crafting its regulations — but which in reality, opponents argue, would effectively block the EPA
from adopting any new rules to protect public health. The trio, wrote Rep. Eddie Bernice
Johnson, D-Texas, in an editorial for the Hill, represents “the culmination of one of the most
anti-science and anti-health campaigns I’ve witnessed in my 22 years as a member of Congress.”
The White House has threatened to veto all three.
Composition of Eastern forests not affected due to climatic changes
By Ambika Choudhary Mahajan, Thewestsidestory.net
Posted on Oct 16 2014 - 9:14am
The findings of a study carried out by Penn State University suggest that the composition of the
eastern forests has not been altered due to climatic changes, but due to a change in disturbance
regimes.
Forests in the Eastern United States remain in a state of “disequilibrium” stemming from the
clear-cutting and large-scale burning that occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s, contends
Marc Abrams, professor of forest ecology and physiology.
The state of Minnesota is experiencing a significant overhaul of its forest populations, where
trees like the American basswood, black cherry, red maple, sugar maple, and white oak are
becoming increasingly prevalent, whereas the region’s more characteristic species like the white
spruce and balsam fir tree fight to acclimatize to increasing temperature and wet winter storms,
the Nature World News reported recently.
But, Marc Abrams, a researcher from Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences is disputing
on the fact that the climate is significantly a secondary factor involved in forests overhaul,
especially in the eastern United States forests. He further insisted that these forests are still
struggling to recover from the state of ‘disequilibrium’ which occurred in the late 1800s and
early 1900s from the clear-cutting and burning of large scale forests.
Moreover, Abrams noted, since about 1930 — during the Smokey Bear era — aggressive forestfire suppression has had a far greater influence on shifts in dominant tree species than minor
differences in temperature.
“Looking at the historical development of Eastern forests, the results of the change in types of
disturbances — both natural and man-caused — are much more significant than any change in
climate,” said Abrams, who is the Steimer Professor of Agriculture in the Department of
Ecosystem Science and Management.
“Over the last 50 years, most environmental science has focused on the impact of climate
change. In some systems, however, climate change impacts have not been as profound as in
others. This includes the forest composition of the eastern U.S.”
Abrams compared pre-settlement – original land survey data along with the present vegetation
conditions in the eastern US, in a recent study published in the journal Global Change Biology.
Shockingly, it revealed that the “change” experience by the eastern forests be similar to the still
ongoing turbulent results of European disturbances on what was once a balanced forest system.
Meanwhile, Abrams added that this doesn’t mean that the climate isn’t having its own
influences. It’s just that, “land-use change often trumped the impacts of a warming climate, and
this needs greater recognition in climate change discussions, scenarios and model
interpretations.”
Watching Fox News Addicts Viewers And Misinforms Them On Climate Change
By Joe Romm, Thinkprogress.org
Posted on September 30, 2014 at 4:20 pm
A new study finds that both conservative and non-conservative media are addictive to viewers.
But conservative media like Fox News is much more addictive. It is the “crack” of cable news.
Of course, Fox News is also far more inaccurate on issues like climate change than nonconservative media (such as CNN and MSNBC — see figure below). Thus its viewers are far
more misinformed on a broad range of issues, as many studies have found.
This latest study specifically points out that “our results suggest that governmental inaction on
climate change can partially be attributed to the echo chamber created by conservative media on
the issue.” That’s obvious, I know, but it always bears repeating because the stakes are so high.
We have a death spiral of disinformation for conservatives — “death” spiral because inaction on
climate change is ultimately self-destructive for all humans, not merely those who are accurately
informed on science.
The new study, “The Mutual Reinforcement of Media Selectivity and Effects: Testing the
Reinforcing Spirals Framework in the Context of Global Warming,” by Feldman, Myers,
Hmielowski, and Leiserowitz, appears in the “Journal of Communication.” Significantly, the
new study used a “two-wave” approach to track “respondents’ climate change beliefs, risk
perceptions, policy preferences, and related behaviors.” In 2008, the first wave of data collection
surveyed 2,164 respondents. Of those, 1,036 took part in a second survey wave in 2011.
Here are the key findings. First, in general, as other studies have found, “conservative media use
is negatively related to global warming belief certainty and support for mitigation policies, while
nonconservative media use is positively associated with belief certainty and policy support.”
Second, and more importantly, the media are both addictive and persuasive: “The results show
that consuming conservative or nonconservative media at Wave 1 makes people more likely to
consume those same media at Wave 2, partly as an indirect result of the media’s effects on global
warming belief certainty and policy preferences. Wave 2 media use, in turn, further strengthens
audiences’ global warming belief certainty and policy preferences.”
Third, Fox News is more addictive than nonconservative media:
Finally, it is notable that in testing the direct effects among media use, belief certainty, and
policy support, the association between Wave 1 policy support and Wave 2 nonconservative
media use was not significant, while this relationship was significant for conservative media use.
As a result, the mutual reinforcement of media effects and selectivity … was stronger when
they involved conservative media use than when they involved nonconservative media use.
Fox News appears to be more addictive by design, as the study and the Yale news release note. A
key strategy is “conservative media’s attempts to insulate their audiences from opposing views
— in part, by denouncing the mainstream media (i.e., other news sources) as liberal, biased, and
not to be trusted.”
These core findings “may help to explain why the overwhelming scientific evidence that global
warming is happening and caused by human activities has failed to gain traction among
conservatives, or at least among users of conservative media in the United States”:
“In essence, conservative media audiences are consuming messages that both challenge the
reality of global warming and warn that any contrary information from scientists or the
mainstream media should be dismissed,” the study notes. “This perpetuates further use of
conservative media, which reinforces their current beliefs about global warming, and so on in a
continuing feedback loop.”
What of the question of whether Fox News influences their viewers’ views or whether people
with those (conservative) views simply choose to watch Fox? Lead author Dr. Feldman of
Rutgers, told me the answer was a combination of both. She explains, “Our paper demonstrates a
dynamic relationship between media effects on public opinion and the effects of opinion on
media use.”
This finding matches that of earlier studies (see here). For instance, Jon Krosnick of Stanford
analyzed this question in “Frequent Viewers of Fox News Are Less Likely to Accept Scientists’
Views of Global Warming.” Krosnick notes that his “Figure 1 shows how more exposure to Fox
News was associated with less endorsement of the views of mainstream scientists about global
warming.” While he can’t know for sure whether people were persuaded by Fox or selectively
chose Fox, Krosnick argues they “are likely to result from a combination of persuasion by Fox
News coverage and of selective exposure by Republicans and conservative viewers to Fox News.
An earlier study, “Climate on Cable: The Effects of Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC on Global
Warming Beliefs and Perceptions,” led by Feldman found that “the views of Republicans on
climate change may be less solidified than Democrats, thereby making them more easily
influenced by the content of cable news,” specifically Fox News. That study explicitly says its
findings are “suggestive of direct persuasion, whereby the views of conservative-Republicans are
reflective of the cable news outlet they watch.”
Thus multiple papers find that the viewers of Fox News’ biased climate coverage are less likely
to accept scientists’ views of global warming — and that direct persuasion appears to have
played a role in shifting their views (see also “Foxgate: Fox News boss Bill Sammon ordered
staff to cast doubt on climate science”).
And so, to repeat, the latest study concludes, “Our results suggest that governmental inaction on
climate change can partially be attributed to the echo chamber created by conservative media on
the issue.” Much like crack, Fox News does damage to far more people than just its users.
Media Jumps To Conclusions On Ebola And Climate Change
by Emily Atkin, Thinkprogress.org
Posted on August 22, 2014 at 2:25 pm Updated: August 22, 2014 at 6:24 pm
If you read Newsweek or CNBC this week, you may be under the impression that one of the
primary drivers of the Ebola outbreak in Africa is climate change. It is not.
According to three veteran epidemiologists who study how climate impacts disease spread, there
is currently no scientific evidence that suggests a climate link to the current Ebola outbreak,
which has so far claimed the lives of at least 1,200 people. Prematurely reporting on this link is
harmful, they say, because it undermines good research that is being done on the growing link
between global warming and other types of infectious diseases, such as malaria and cholera.
“Because the whole climate change debate has been so controversial, we’ve got to be doing solid
science in that area,” said Andrew P. Dobson, an ecology and evolutionary biology professor at
Princeton University who has been researching infectious disease spread and its relation to
climate change since 1988. “If people start saying inflammatory things, it just messes up the
whole funding arena for everybody else.”
Both Newsweek’s story, titled “Ebola and Climate Change: Are Humans Responsible for the
Severity of the Current Outbreak?“, and CNBC’s story, titled “Is climate change key to the
spread of Ebola?”, quote scientists from the non-profit EcoHealth Alliance to suggest that the
virus could be worsened by a gradually warming earth. CNBC’s story in particular notes the
theory that the Ebola virus is spread to humans via infected fruit bats. Climate change could
cause those bats to have more babies, the story said, or could cause humans to come in contact
with bats more frequently as drought dries out agricultural land, sending people into the forest
for food.
But Jason Rohr, who studies disease ecology at the University of South Florida, said those
claims are “irresponsible” to make because they’re not yet backed up by peer-reviewed research.
“The evidence is incredibly weak,” he said. “There’s a difference between weather patterns
affecting an infectious disease and actual climate change impacting a disease. Weather patterns
are going to occur on a much smaller time scale, whereas climate change, you need to link it to a
long-term pattern. We’ve had so few [Ebola] outbreaks that we can’t yet make those claims.”
A. Marm Kilpatrick, who studies the ecology of infectious diseases at the University of
California Santa Cruz and used to work for EcoHealth, also said scientists lack the long-term
data to make those claims with confidence. While EcoHealth did not return ThinkProgress’
request for comment, Kilpatrick said he spoke with EcoHealth president Peter Daszak about the
quotes given to CNBC.
“They asked him, ‘Could climate have influenced transmission of that disease,’ and the answer is
sure,” he said. “We could all come up with stories about how that could have happened, but is
there any actual evidence for that at all? The answer is no, and if you said, what do you think are
the most important things leading to additional spill-over of Ebola from bats to people, none of
us would mention climate change.”
“Climate change still influences Ebola, it influences everything,” he added. “It’s just that if you
had to spend money on research efforts, it’d be more valuable to investigate other factors first.”
What scientists do have the data to claim confidently is that the spread of Ebola in humans may
begin when people eat or otherwise come into contact with bats, apes, and other wild animals.
This generally happens in undeveloped countries where health care is poor — another reason
why the disease spreads so easily from human to human.
To fight Ebola, Dobson said, scientists must find out more about the basic biology of Ebola
itself, and the immunology of bats, which he said seem to be reservoirs for a lot of infectious
diseases. In addition, bringing better health care education and infrastructure to the places
infected would do a world of good, he said.
Though Ebola in its current state is not cause for climate-related concern now, there are other,
more prolific infectious diseases that stand to worsen in a warming world and are far more
deserving of our attention in that context, Dobson said.
“We should be worried about climate change for other diseases,” he said. “Malaria, dengue fever
— where the development time of the pathogen is very dependent on temperature, and the
abundance of the mosquitoes is dependent on rainfall.”
Both vector-borne diseases — like those transmitted by mosquitoes — and water-borne diseases
have a more solid scientific link to climate change and need to be researched more because of it,
Dobson said. Because mosquitoes’ presence and lives are predominantly dependent on
temperature, research funding needs to be dedicated to both the developmental time of diseases
in the mosquitoes and the length of time the mosquitoes live for in hotter temperatures, he said.
For waterborne diseases like cholera, Dobson said more research needs to be done about how
rainfall patterns are going to be impacted by climate, and that needs to be paired with long-term
hospital records to analyze how the two are dependent.
Diseases that look as though they have stronger connections to climate change are showing their
faces throughout the United States. A mosquito-borne virus called chikungunya that’s been
spreading throughout the Caribbean islands over the past year has made its way to U.S. soil,
causing fevers, headaches, and joint swelling. The rise of that disease could be driven in part by
climate change, which is increasing temperatures and moisture levels in the U.S. and ultimately
facilitating a better environment for the type of mosquitoes that carry the virus.
In addition, the warm-water-dwelling, flesh-eating bacteria Vibrio vulnificus has infected more
than a dozen people in the U.S. this year, some of whom have died. Even barring any studies
connecting Vibrio and climate change specifically, a 2011 report from Climate Change and
European Marine Ecosystem Research, a group of 17 European marine institutes, drew
connections between climate change, the increasingly warm ocean waters, and the spread of
water-dwelling bacteria like Vibrio.
The ‘Climate Deniers’ Newest Argument
By Jeffrey Kluger, Time
Sept. 29, 2014
It's a lot easier to attack environmental scientists when you make up something they didn't say—
and then criticize them for saying it.
There are few things more satisfying than when people you’re arguing with say something
manifestly wrong or tone-deaf. It’s the polemical equivalent of getting a big, fat fastball right
right in your sweet spot. Just swing away with a look of disdain or checkable fact and the home
run trot is yours.
Alas, that happens less often than one might like, but there’s nothing that stops you from
pretending your adversary said something dumb and then pouncing on the imaginary remark.
Thus we had the “You didn’t build that” and “Let Detroit go bankrupt” silliness of the 2012
Presidential campaign, in which both President Obama and Mitt Romney were pilloried for
saying things they never actually said—or at least didn’t mean—at all. And so, too, we have the
“Climate science is settled” charade, in which climate change deniers hand-select four words
environmental scientists often do say, reframe those words to mean something else entirely, and
then beat the scientists up for faux-saying it.
We saw the examplar of this ignoble formula earlier in the year when Charles Krauthammer,
writing in the Washington Post, conceded that CO2 emissions aren’t good for the planet, but
declared, “I also believe that those scientists who pretend to know exactly what this will cause in
20, 30 or 50 years are white-coated propagandists.” As I observed at the time, these white-coated
propagandists are actually white-coated strawmen, since virtually all credible scientists
acknowledge that climate systems are far, far too complex to analyze with precise accuracy. Do
environmental researchers and green politicians ever say the science is “settled?” Yes they do—
but they mean that the fake debate over whether climate change is a vast hoax is finished. They
don’t mean there’s no work ahead.
Krauthammer, of course, is not a climate scientist—which gives him at least a small excuse. The
same cannot be said of Steven E. Koonin, whose recent piece in the Wall Street Journal took a
more nuanced approach to making the same point. Koonin is director of the Center for Urban
Science and Progress at New York University and a former Energy Department undersecretary
during Obama’s first term. Yet he runs with the same dishonest baton Krauthammer did.
“The idea that ‘Climate science is settled’ runs through today’s popular and policy discussions,”
he writes. “Unfortunately, that claim is misguided.” Koonin then ticks off the usual right-wing
talking points: The computer models are imperfect; the oceans’ role in warming has not been
studied fully; the history of Earth’s climate is poorly understood; there has been a slowing of
warming over the past 15 years. Stipulated, stipulated, stipulated and stipulated.
Again and again, climate scientists acknowledge every single one of these x-factors and again
and again they come back to the fact that the planet is sick and we’re playing a role. Knowing
that cigarettes can kill you is not the same as pretending to predict which fatal illness—if any—
you’re going to contract or just when and how severely that disease is going to strike. But you
can surely tell when you’re beginning to cough, and if you don’t quit smoking straightaway
you’re a fool.
In some ways, Koonin’s own familiarity with the climate field gets in the way of his argument.
He cites, for example, the fact that 55 different computer models have been used by the U.N.’s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and not one of them is in precise agreement
with the others. But where does he get that supposedly damning evidence? From the IPCC’s own
2013 report. That sounds a whole lot like a group of researchers openly acknowledging that the
science is not settled, even if it all points in the same direction.
Koonin also makes the mistake of counterfeit-evenhandedness when he writes, “I fear that
rigidly promulgating the idea that climate science is ‘settled’ (or is a ‘hoax’) demeans and chills
the scientific enterprise.” That conspicuous parenthetical is meant to provide the illusion of
balance, except the deniers truly do make the hoax claim (we’re looking at you Okla. Sen. James
Inhofe, former chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee) and climate
scientists truly don’t make the settledness claim—at least not the way Koonin is implying.