An Open Letter to Congress From Climate Scientists
9 Comments | Posted February 1, 2011 | 01:36 PM (EST)
A group of the nation's leading climate scientists recently sent an open letter to members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate about the importance and urgency of addressing climate change in the new 112th Congress and about the strength of climate science. The letter was delivered...
A Brief Lesson in the Integrity of Science: Climate Scientists Challenge Bad Science, No Matter the Source
All scientists are, by definition, skeptics. Hence the motto of the Royal Society of London, one of the world's oldest scientific academies (founded in 1660), Nullius in verba: "Take nobody's word." Skeptics and good scientists question and change their minds when presented with competing and convincing evidence. Indeed, scientific reputations...
2010 Hottest Year on Record: The Graph That Should Be on the Front Page of Every Newspaper
Climate change is worsening, fast. The National Climate Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has just announced that for the entire planet,2010 is the hottest year on record, tied with 2005. And the period 2001 to 2010 is the hottest decade on record for the globe....
The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award
2010 saw widespread and growing evidence of rapidly warming global climate and strengthening scientific understanding of how humans are contributing to climate change. Yet on the policy front, little happened to stem the growing emissions of greenhouse gases or to help societies prepare for increasingly severe negative climate impacts, including...
Climate Fraud and Hypocrisy
As the Earth's climate continues to change at an accelerating rate, the juggling and magical thinking and outright hypocrisy of climate change deniers continues to accelerate as well. While there are many examples of the remarkable ability of deniers to hold onto mutually contradictory beliefs and ideas, here are four...
The Science of Climate Change and Closing Doors in Congress
On December 1, 2010, I provided oral and written testimony to a hearing of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming of the US Congress in Washington (Edward Markey, D-Mass, Chairman). It turns out this was the very last hearing of the Select Committee -- at...
Fiji Water: When Environment, Politics, and Economics Collide Over Bottled Water
Posted November 29, 2010 | 06:08 PM (EST)
Fiji Water, one of the world's most well-promoted brands of bottled water, is also one of the most secretive and private. Owned by Lynda and Stewart Resnick, the increasingly controversial Southern California billionaires, Fiji Water is a symbol of both the bad and the good in the world...
Unavoidable Climate Change -- Past the Point of No Return
Posted November 20, 2010 | 01:39 PM (EST)
It's too late. The world has missed the opportunity to avoid serious, damaging human-induced climate change. For a variety of reasons ranging from ignorance to political ideology to commercial self-interest to inertia to intentional misrepresentations and misdirections on the part of a small number of committed climate deniers, the United...
A Long Time Coming: The Human Right to Water
Posted October 26, 2010 | 06:13 PM (EST)
I've often daydreamed about what an alien civilization would think about Earth if they were ever to come visit, given our fractured ethnic, political, and economic planet, the epidemic violence, our ecological ignorance and mismanagement, the miserable way so many people live in poverty and misery, and our global failure...
Climate Change and the Integrity of Science, Again
Posted October 20, 2010 | 07:12 PM (EST)
Five months ago, Science magazine published the following Lead Letter, signed by 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences addressing attacks on the integrity of climate science. Given the continuing onslaught of false and misleading information being perpetrated by climate deniers, and given the
Has the U.S. Passed the Point of Peak Water?
Posted October 11, 2010 | 06:06 PM (EST)
Freshwater is fundamental for maintaining human health, agricultural production, economic activity, and critical ecosystem functions. But as populations and economies grow, new constraints on water resources are appearing, raising questions about ultimate limits to water availability. Such resource questions are not new. The specter of "peak oil" -- a peaking...
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