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21 February 2012
Barren marsh reveals plant-loss peril
When the plants go, the whole marsh falls apart. That’s what researchers have found in an innovative experiment in Belgium in which acres of reeds were literally mowed down, enabling the team to observe the consequences of extensive plant loss, which were more severe than expected.
9 February 2012
Cold fury of Europe’s freezing spells to fade
With bitter temperatures gripping much of Europe for the last two weeks, many in the Netherlands have been glued to the weather forecasts, hoping for the cold to continue. At stake was whether the ice would get thick enough to hold the traditional Elfstedentocht, a 125-mile, 11-city skating race across frozen canals and lakes. But by the end of the century Western Europe’s cold periods could be significantly warmer than they are now – by about 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s bad news for ice skating, since the average cold spell will be above freezing.
26 January 2012
Global Warming is Scary
When I was visiting my friends in Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks ago, we had dinner at a local mall just before I headed to the airport for my flight home to South Africa. As we were leaving the mall, I bought myself a few children’s books in Arabic. After I finish up my PhD in April, I’m hoping to work through these Arabic children’s books as a way …
11 December 2011
AGU 2011: Day 3
Well, as usual, the hectic pace of AGU caught up with me (and my laptop started having fits), so I’m behind on my meeting posts. So, we’ll go back to Wednesday’s activities:
9 December 2011
Storing carbon dioxide underground impacts microbial communities
The threat of ballooning carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere puts us between a rock and a hard place, which is exactly where some people propose the gas should go.
Warmer weather makes some flowers late bloomers
Warmer temperatures have caused some flowers to bloom earlier — but the response isn’t universal. Several species have confounded scientists by showing their colors later in warmer spring weather. One possible explanation: Flowers that bloom later than expected are remembering warm winter weather, according to research presented Thursday afternoon at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting.
Surviving an acidic tide
Francisco Chavez has been studying a single bay in northern California for over half his scientific career. But his work isn’t isolated; his measurements are helping tell the story of Pacific Ocean acidification.
7 December 2011
Doubling virtual carbon dioxide provides insight into atmospheric interactions
It’s an environmentalist’s nightmare: What would happen if the amount of carbon dioxide doubled overnight? Yutian Wu asked just that question.
21 October 2011
BBC: Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project Finds Earth is Warming
This is big. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project was launched by skeptics and included funding from the Koch brothers in response to “Climategate.” That fiasco began with the hacking of the University of East Anglia climate researchers’ emails. Read more at the BBC.
16 August 2011
A quieter sun won’t make up for global warming
The Sun seems to be taking a bit of a rest. In recent years, scientists have detected fewer sunspots on the star’s surface, and many expect that number to drop further in coming decades — possibly echoing the Maunder Minimum, a period of low solar activity that happened centuries ago. But a decrease in the number of sunspots would not have much of a cooling effect on Earth over the next century, according to new research accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.
25 January 2011
Science under attack – updated with Youtube links to the video
This post presents a brief review of a programme broadcast last night by the BBC about problems with public trust in science. Focusing primarily on climate change, and presented by the President of the Royal Society, the programme concluded that scientists need to be much more proactive in communicating with non-scientific audiences. There are two particularly interesting interviews with the climate change denier James Delingpole.
21 December 2010
Community-based landslide warning systems
This post features the development of community-based landslide warning systems in less developed countries, using an example by way of an illustration. There is also a short consideration of the current European and US weather in the context of climate change.
1 December 2010
Communicating climate science with blogs and apps: Q&A with John Cook (Skeptical Science)
Over the past three years, climate science blogger John Cook has become well known for his website Skeptical Science, which takes on common arguments from climate change skeptics with a user-friendly database of peer-reviewed research. Earlier this year he also launched a Skeptical Science iPhone and Android app.
24 November 2010
Lessons learned from Climategate
The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media has asked nine climate scientists and seven journalists what – if anything – they’ve learned from Climategate. The second part of the two-part series of interviews was published yesterday. It’s worth a read if you followed media coverage of Climategate since it gathers several pithy interviews in one place. The interviews feel surprisingly consistent. More than one scientist mentioned feeling under public …
14 November 2010
The new Manhattan Project?
Is scientific research into geoengineering a “process… eerily reminiscent of the race to develop nuclear weapons in the 1940s”? I’m quoting from a Comment is Free article by Adam Corner. Both he and I were at a geoengineering conference at the UK’s Royal Society early last week and – eerily – we both thought about the Manhattan Project. I’d been flippant about geoengineering until I attended the Royal Society conference. …
9 November 2010
The bot is back
The climate sceptic-pestering Twitterbot I blogged about earlier hasn’t tweeted its last, after all. I noticed earlier today that it hadn’t spammed anyone for 18 hours and wondered what had happened to it.
The climateskepticbot’s last tweet?
Many blog readers will have heard about the Twitterbot that spams climate sceptics with canned arguments. I was skeptical about the scepticbot’s skills finding and replying to real people’s tweets. This morning, I poked the chatbot with a pointy stick… erm, embarked on a lengthy test of which phrases get its attention with tweets like:
4 November 2010
Climate change isn’t a game. Or is it?
The fate of the world could rest on your computer. I’m talking about the Fate of the World: a PC strategy game with a geoscientific twist. A beta version of the game is now available.
3 November 2010
Go on, hug a social scientist
At this weekend’s Battle of Ideas debating festival in London, I heard Dr Daniel Glaser from the UK’s Wellcome Trust claim scientists don’t reflect on the social consequences of their work. He was argued down, but it’s a common stereotype about physical scientists. Physical scientists are equally likely to stereotype social science research as woolly, subjective and not a solid basis for decision-making. With this in mind, I was fascinated by …
28 October 2010
Warning! Climate change is a fire hazard
Here’s some bad news. Wildfires triggered by heat waves – like those that swept through Russia this summer – could dominate the coming century. Research by NASA’s Dr Olga Pechony and Dr Drew Shindell suggests hotter weather could take over from people as the controlling force behind the world’s blazes. Firefighters and governments may need to adapt.
