Australia more vulnerable but prepared, says UN climate chief

After all the misinformation bad reporting from The Australian (Summer of disaster ‘not climate change’: Rajendra Pachauri), here is a more accurate piece about what Dr Rayendra Pachauri actually said when visiting Australia this week.

By Tom Arup, The Age

May 17, 2011

SCIENTIFIC evidence linking climate change to the intensity and frequency of natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and drought is mounting, the head of the world’s peak climate science body says.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said a new report on extreme weather events to be released later this year will support previous findings natural disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity around the world. Continue reading

The denial house of cards.

USA Today: Evidence of plagiarism and complaints about the peer-review process have led a statistics journal to retract a federally funded study that condemned scientific support for global warming

May 16, 2011

Hockey Stick small

Climate science is a solid edifice built around the work of thousands of scientists, vast amounts of data, and countless peer-reviewed publications.  As the National Academy of Sciences report put it, “Although the scientific process is always open to new ideas and results, the fundamental causes and consequences of climate change have been established by many years of scientific research, are supported by many different lines of evidence, and have stood firm in the face of careful examination, repeated testing, and the rigorous evaluation of alternative theories and explanation.” Continue reading

Climate change logic lost in translation

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By Prof Stephan Lewandowsky, Australian Professorial Fellow, Cognitive Science Laboratories at University of Western Australia

Reposted from The Conversation (May 16 2011)

Quick, consider the following: all polar bears are animals. Some animals are white.

Therefore, some polar bears are white. Is this conclusion logically implied or not?

There is a 75% chance you might endorse this conclusion despite it being logically false. Continue reading

REPORT: Koch Fueling Far Right Academic Centers At Universities Across The Country

An interesting post at Think Progress By Lee Fang on May 11th, 2011.

Corporate takeover of academic freedom!  You would have to conclude that Florida State University President Eric J. Barron needs to do a little deep thinking about what his institute stands for. He wouldn’t want to end up as the president of Florida State University of Petroleum Products (FSUPP) would he?

Yesterday, ThinkProgress highlighted reports from the St. Petersburg Times and the Tallahassee Democrat regarding a Koch-funded economics department at Florida State University (FSU). FSU had accepted a $1.5 million grant from a foundation controlled by petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch on the condition that Koch’s people would have a free hand in selecting professors and approving publications. The simmering controversy sheds light on the vast influence of the Koch political machine, which spans from the top conservative think tanks, Republican politicians, a small army of contracted lobbyists, and Tea Party front groups in nearly every state. Continue reading

FEELING THE HEAT by Jo Chandler

‘This beautifully written book tells the climate story with an unflinching and deeply personal honesty.’ Clive Hamilton. Age feature writer Jo Chandler is a seasoned worrier, but not a catastrophist. She has worried about the looming spectre of climate change for years, while always clinging to the modicum of comfort that it was something gradual, even stoppable.

Lately, the most sober and serious of scientists are increasingly preoccupied with climate ‘tipping points’—sinister, swift, and inescapable, plunging the planet into something unrecognisable. So many graphs, all tracking emphatically in the wrong direction. Together they conjure a picture of all of humanity crowded aboard a leaky boat, on a darkening sea, under a thunderous sky. In a attempt to understand what is happening to our planet, Chandler travels to climate science frontiers Antarctica, the Great Barrier Reef, the Wimmera and North Queensland’s tropical rainforests, meeting the scientists and discovering the realities embedded in the science.

Written in the vein of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, Feeling the Heatis part detective story and part quest. Chandler puts together some of the pieces in the climate puzzle, meets many passionate and eccentric characters, discovers what makes them tick, and learns a thing or two about herself.Jo Chandler is a Walkley Award-winning senior writer with The Age. She has particular interests in reporting on climate change, human rights and development, indigenous issues, social affairs, and medical and science news. She has two teenage children.

The Bolt Report: ‘generally dull’.

Andrew Bolt ... same topics, without the impactWith the debut of the Bolt report, even I thought it would be better than it was! All the music and excitement at the start of the show! Wow – I was expecting fireworks with our very own Glen Beck equivalent rising up out of the smoke and hype!   Unfortunately, all the bang and whiz was not matched by pizazz or content.  It was if he was reading straight from his pitiful column in the Sun Herald.  If I were Gina Rinehart, I would be asking for my money back!  It seems that almost everybody was disappointed with the content.  I guess Channel 10 will continue on its downward slide.

What was Andrew thinking? Here is an amusing review of the ‘Bolt Report’ by Tim Dick,  Sydney Morning Herald’s media editor.  His review is insightful and entertaining.  Surely Boltie’s show should be called ‘Nuts and Bolts’ (as a good friend suggested the other day).  Actually, that title would be misleading given that practical mechanics is a lot more exciting than the drivel we saw on Sunday!

The Bolt Report: all Bolt, no report

Tim Dick, Sydney Morning Herald media editor, May 9 2011

Read the original article here

Not having seen every attempt at television current affairs in Australia, it is impossible to judge The Bolt Report the worst. But surely it comes close.

Continue reading

Jeremy Grantham must-read, “Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever”

 

I have been reading Paul Gilding’s excellent book, “The Great Disruption”.  In it he talks about a major switching of market activity and strategy driven by sudden and reduced access to resources.  What do the market experts think?  A friend sent me this relevant article written by Jeremy Grantham, a British investor who is Co-founder and Chief Investment Strategist of Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo (GMO), a Boston-based asset management firm. GMO is one of the largest managers of such funds and holds around US $107 billion in assets under management as of December 2010. According to Wikipedia, Grantham is regarded as a highly knowledgeable investor in various stock, bond, and commodity markets, and is particularly noted for his prediction of various bubbles.

Here is what Jeremy has to say about the impending shift.

UPDATE: Mass mortality of corals on West Australian reefs.

UPDATE-2:  Looks like the Ningaloo reefs are likely to escape major mortality given they have remained just outside the main hot spot.  These reefs are likely to lose about 10% of their corals. Things still remain serious in this analysis for the Houtman Abrolhos Islands (well inside the hotspot – see map and Tyler’s comments).  We will have to wait for the results of the surveys to be completed and analysed.

UPDATE:   Tyler Christensen of NOAA‘s Coral Reef Watch commented:

“A small correction… the “hottest” color code for that DHW image really means “16 or more”. The DHWs off Western Australia got much higher than just 16. Our virtual station at the Houtman Abrolhos Islands got to a staggering 30.7 degree-weeks! Ningaloo maxed out at a comparatively cool 9.05 degree-weeks.”

Posted by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, May 6 2011

On 12 April, we put up a report from Dr Tyrone Ridgway on West Australia’s reefs that were bleaching for the first time as result of high temperatures.  Unfortunately, the accumulated heat stress has got worse and appears to be hitting all-time records, with the latest degree-heating-week data from NOAA (May 5, 2011) reaching 16 along the West Australian coast as shown.

This amount of heat stress is not only driving record coral bleaching (as has already been seen in the region), but will also cause the mass mortality of corals and other organisms.

NOTE – to understand the novelty of the thermal stress seen across West Australian coral reefs, have a look at the NOAA ‘Hotspots’ time series data.  It looks like the problem relates to the exceptional warming that began around October-November last year. Continue reading