Sustainability Science

This is an ambitious effort.  It will be interesting to see if the momentum continues after the fresh glow of the election has worn off. 

We have found the same thing with analyses of using prolific invasive species here in southern California.  The basic problem is that the most noxious invaders are not in locations where easy transportation corridors exist.  The next big hurdle is the fact that we would (hopefully) have a big immediate impact locally...forcing the harvesters to constantly be moving to new sites for material collection.

Good example of the true coasts of this idotic, immoral, and cynical campaign by the science-deniers that climate change is either 1) not real or 2) caused in large part by human activities.

More from the pal oil front lines.

This critique seems strange to me.  We are talking about military R&D.  The apparent uproar seems to miss that point.  The critiques from congressmen were apparently absent when the miitary was developing its own private Space Shuttle, it brain imaging initiative, all the robots and "future warrior" tech, ARPANET, etc., etc.  Let alone the congressional penchant to build military hardware that either fails cost benefit projects (such as the military's joint strike fighter) or simply is a joke and outright boondoggle (e.g. almost any new heavy caliber cannon/tank/etc.).  If we are going to critique R&D, then critique ALL R&D.  Critiquing a technology that is certianly in development and fraught with risks but which holds the possibility of huge benefits for society as a whole (not merely war fighting) seems to greatly miss the mark.  I am all for watchdoging and oversight, but this seems a very, very strange target with which to begin that activity.

I would also add that (while it is certainly within his purview) it is unusual to say the least that the former Captain Kiefer who is essentially 80% of this story is also chiming in with unreferenced statistics in the comments section of this section following the story text.  This seems to smack of a personal crusade on his part rather than a reasoned, objective analysis of the issue of government spending.

When we discuss about climate change or "global weirding", we normally talk about coastal flooding, etc.  But this panoply of events can also (apparently) include this.  I guess for some people/critters it is not much of a G'Day.

This is simply crazy.

Fantastic!  Now my lab doesn't have to work quite as hard to get this numbers (or use data from the EU and elsewhere less relevant to our U.S.-based airliner shipping).

Great.

Here is hoping this market will work.  But the perpetual issues with lack of transparency and corruption are obvious.

A family member just sent me a text with the subject line "Is this true???" and a link to this posting.  So I think it important that I respond with a posting on this story (making the internet rounds thanks to a calculated PR campaign).

The long and short of it is: "no this is not true."  

While you can all read this and explore this for yourselves, I would point out that this propaganda blog is a central clearing house for oil-gas/coal industry apologists and is far from an objective or even intellectually honest source of information.  There are many great folks in the petroleum industry, but this blog's author is not one of them.

Clues to show that the reality is far different from what is portrayed here:

1) No references for the data.

So you cannot verify the voracity to the data (or even know what is being represented...is this supposed to be satellite data?  Is this ice of a minimum thickness?  etc, etc.).  Drilling down to the data (through several links) you get a poorly formatted text file which appears to come from an academic sites, but this is clearly not the data used to generate this graphic.  At a minimum, lots of post prcessing of the data with tools most of the general public likely can't figure out would be needed.  The idea is to give you the impression that this is real and "sciencey" so don't you go looking into this your ownselves.  "Trust us."

2) Playing fast and loose with the facts (assuming these number are actually correct)/assuming you are an uncritical consumer of data.

For example, this graphic is intentionally misleading.  What this is actually showing in the order of magnitude change from year to year NOT absolute extent as impled by the title/comments.  One of the great aspects of climate change that most of the public is unclear about is the amount of noise being added into our global climate system by a more carbon-rich atmosphere.  As we go forward, we will see (and indeed have already seen) major shifts from one year to the next. So last year's conditions are not necessarily predicitve of next year's outcome.  This is one of the main reasons we think we are seeing various butterflies disappearing (the insects' lifecycles and those of their plant hosts/food are increasingly out of phase with one another, leading to failed recrecutiment of juvenile butterflies).   Just eyeballing these data (again, assuming they are correct) shows that this is indeed happening here: the greatest swings in ice are in the last few years.  So even this poor graphic actually makes the case that climate change IS HAPPENING and ushering major changes to our planet.

Everyone that studies climate cycles (or long-term dynamics of natural systems of any kind for that matter) compares conditions to long-term averages.  For example a typical comparison is 1950-2000 or (in the case of sea ice) 1981 to 2010.  Why wasn't this highlighted here?  Oh right, these folks are trying to mislead you...

3) The author of this blog is a former producer for Rush Limbaugh and a former aide to one of the most science-fearing/anti-science Senators' we have had in recent year (Senator Inhofe).  He is a frequent commentator for conservative news outlets, but no where else.  While this is an ad honium attack, it is nevertheless true and (in this case of propaganda I believe) relevant to this particular subject.

4) This blog clearly has an agenda.  While there is nothing wrong with having an agenda, we should always have our baloney detectors up when a decidedly non-expert in a technical subject (i.e. a non-scientist) wants to prove to us that he (they are most often hes and not shes) knows the correct answer to a technical issue.  Particulalry when the person only uses cherry-picked "facts" that support his position.

For further reading, you can check out:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

and

http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/4621