Regular readers will recall that in late March to early April, there was a fair amount of excitement in some parts of the web about the Arctic sea ice cover having reached almost to climatology. That was rather exciting given that for much of the last several years the Arctic extent had been from moderately to extremely below climatology. I wrote up my take in Arctic Sea Ice Updates. Some of the excitable sources on the web were talking about sea ice recovering and the like. My comment back then (April 7, 2010) was:
So my guess for where we are in the Arctic: The ice formed by late season freezing and conveyor belt is thin. There has not been time for it to freeze thickly, nor for it to get mechanically piled up to be thick. The expansive winds that lead to the increase in extent also mean driving the ice towards warmer water. If the current pattern of blowing the ice out towards the edge were to be sustained, it points to a temporary high value for extent, and then a rapid drop in extent as the ice melts, or as winds reverse and compact the ice pack.
It's now almost 4 months later. What happened to the ice pack? Did it continue to hang near climatology? Go above climatology? Or did it sink rather rapidly back below climatology, as I'd suggested it would? The NSIDC report for July 6th notes that June saw the fastest recorded decline in June Arctic sea ice extent, and the lowest June Arctic sea ice extent.
28 July 2010
21 July 2010
I am John Abraham
Those of you of a certain age, or a certain other age, will remember the scene from the movie Spartacus where everyone steps forward and declares himself or herself to be Spartacus. So it goes now. Fortunately, it is only threats against jobs and not, yet, lives which are at hand.
Still, someone's job is indeed being threatened, and the 'transgression' involved is to address the scientific content, or lack thereof, in thewhiner's threatener's presentations. That would be no matter for concern if the threatener were some nonentity. But it is a person who has testified to the US Senate regarding the science of climate change. That makes it rather a serious issue -- this is not a marginal person whining from the distant reaches of the auditorium. This is a person with the ear of US Senators.
The person being threatened is John Abraham. He's a scientist at a small university in Minnesota who took the time to address the scientific claims of the person who styles himself as Lord Monckton, and, among other things, who recently was invited to address the US Senate on climate change. Abraham's response is at his University of St. Thomas web page. I encourage you to view/listen to the presentation Abraham made. And, of course, to examine yourself the original comments of Monckton's. And then to hit the scientific literature yourself to see who represented the science most accurately.
I'll include a raft more links below the fold, as many comments are already out there.
The thing which has me writing is the fact that this is such an absurd response from Monckton -- if he were at all interested in the science. That places this in to the 'weeding sources' category. If you're interested in the science, you, first, try to get it right yourself. Then, if someone else points to places where you might have gotten your science wrong (and, in fact, spectacularly wrong), your response is to correct your errors. You don't have to like it. Scientists are human, after all, and nobody likes to have it shown that they're wrong. Still, you do it. What you don't do is try to get fired the person who showed that you were wrong. But Monckton indeed responds to correction by trying to get his corrector fired.
So I encourage you to send your support to Abraham, by facebook group, to email his university, or the like (see, for instance, Hot Topic's petition to sign). We need more people who are willing to address the scientific content of public statements about climate. And they need to be reasonably confident that they're not going to lose their jobs for trying to speak honestly about the science.
Still, someone's job is indeed being threatened, and the 'transgression' involved is to address the scientific content, or lack thereof, in the
The person being threatened is John Abraham. He's a scientist at a small university in Minnesota who took the time to address the scientific claims of the person who styles himself as Lord Monckton, and, among other things, who recently was invited to address the US Senate on climate change. Abraham's response is at his University of St. Thomas web page. I encourage you to view/listen to the presentation Abraham made. And, of course, to examine yourself the original comments of Monckton's. And then to hit the scientific literature yourself to see who represented the science most accurately.
I'll include a raft more links below the fold, as many comments are already out there.
The thing which has me writing is the fact that this is such an absurd response from Monckton -- if he were at all interested in the science. That places this in to the 'weeding sources' category. If you're interested in the science, you, first, try to get it right yourself. Then, if someone else points to places where you might have gotten your science wrong (and, in fact, spectacularly wrong), your response is to correct your errors. You don't have to like it. Scientists are human, after all, and nobody likes to have it shown that they're wrong. Still, you do it. What you don't do is try to get fired the person who showed that you were wrong. But Monckton indeed responds to correction by trying to get his corrector fired.
So I encourage you to send your support to Abraham, by facebook group, to email his university, or the like (see, for instance, Hot Topic's petition to sign). We need more people who are willing to address the scientific content of public statements about climate. And they need to be reasonably confident that they're not going to lose their jobs for trying to speak honestly about the science.
20 July 2010
Catching up on comments
I'm on my way back from break and catching up in general, not just on comments. It looks like several species of bizarreness chose to break loose while I was taking my break, and it'll be a while to catch up to those too.
Several comments in on summer reading. My current summer reading is The Karamazov Brothers, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It's the Wordsworth Classics edition, which I picked up for about $4.50 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Yes, there's a story involved, and I'll get to that in a later note. There might even be a picture or two.
Two more comments on When will the ice be gone?. Ecologists are a good group to try to get ideas from (per Hank's comment about how to get an idea of what levels of ice loss are particularly meaningful). And I see that Belette and I have an area of interesting agreement, [update, that's disagreement] which suggests a later post to be made. Our point of broader agreement is that neither of us takes my estimate in that post terribly seriously. My aim being more to illustrate a way to approach the question. The exact answer ... not so important.
Crandles has some thoughts about Sea ice estimations. One quick response I'll make is that a reason for some of the variation, or lack thereof, is that the curves are for 14 day averages. Consequently, you won't see much happening at shorter time scales.
Several comments in on summer reading. My current summer reading is The Karamazov Brothers, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It's the Wordsworth Classics edition, which I picked up for about $4.50 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Yes, there's a story involved, and I'll get to that in a later note. There might even be a picture or two.
Two more comments on When will the ice be gone?. Ecologists are a good group to try to get ideas from (per Hank's comment about how to get an idea of what levels of ice loss are particularly meaningful). And I see that Belette and I have an area of interesting agreement, [update, that's disagreement] which suggests a later post to be made. Our point of broader agreement is that neither of us takes my estimate in that post terribly seriously. My aim being more to illustrate a way to approach the question. The exact answer ... not so important.
Crandles has some thoughts about Sea ice estimations. One quick response I'll make is that a reason for some of the variation, or lack thereof, is that the curves are for 14 day averages. Consequently, you won't see much happening at shorter time scales.
14 June 2010
Summer break
It'll be very quiet here for the next few weeks. Even though I'm not in school, summer break is not a bad idea.
Not sure what I'll be doing for my break reading. Thoughts about good summer reading, for me or others, welcome.
Not sure what I'll be doing for my break reading. Thoughts about good summer reading, for me or others, welcome.
04 June 2010
Supporting some good work
Following April's mention of world autism awareness day in April, I'll mention an effort to improve a school for special needs students. It is for a school near my sister (see more of her comments about autistic kids at that awareness day note) that includes autistic children:
Create safe, sensory Environments for special needs school children
Create safe, sensory Environments for special needs school children
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
