Climate Change

Hopefully people interested in the blog wars have been alerted to the ongoing climate change “debate” between George Monbiot and Ian Plimer. If not, the best place to start is probably Monbiot’s blog itself (with several posts on the topic already). Greenfrye and Tamino also have some ongoing commentary, so have fun catching up on what’s going on.

Unfortunately, round 1 consisted of Plimer dodging Monbiot’s questions which ask Plimer to defend certain indefensible statements in his book “Heaven and Earth.” Maybe Plimer just “wanted to go first” so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, but his own set of questions intended for Monbiot are quite revealing about his intentions.

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This post has nothing particular to do with climate change, but I thought it might be worth pointing out a recent study analyzing the evolutionary history of Africans and African Americans.

Africa is the source of all modern humans, originating there a few hundred thousand years ago and spreading across the globe within the last 100,000 years. The authors analyze DNA from 113 populations of Africans from across the continent and find that they descend from 14 ancestral groups (with the highest within-population diversity worldwide) and find significant associations between genetic and geographic (as well as linguistic) distance in all regions of Africa. These groups later interact with each other to create the distinct populations that exist today. The study of African genetic diversity will be important for reconstructing African and African American population histories, as well as the genetic basis of diseases prevalent in Africa.

As another sidenote, there is a new blog called Darwinaia which will have focus on paleontology, history of science (particularly evolutionary related stuff), so if you’re into that, check it out.

I don’t like to comment about the information stemming from “Watts up with That” because no one in their right mind gets information from such a source, and by doing so I’m only allowing nonsense to set the tone in the climate debate, but Anthony Watts has a recent post about the water vapor feedback which I felt compelled to elaborate on.

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The increase (decrease) in specific humidity under a global warming (cooling) situation represents the most powerful climate feedback as a response to radiative perturbations, effectively doubling the sensitivity of Earth’s climate.

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I have recently posted on the 2009 Mathematics Awareness Month, a forum by the American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics that is a national-level event to spread awareness of the importance of Math. This year’s theme was Math and Climate.

I have recently submitted a paper to add to their list of Climate Articles entitled “An Analysis of Radiative Equilibrium, Forcings, and Feedbacks.” It’s a 21 page PDF file.

Every year in April, there is a Mathematics Awareness Month with the goal to increase public understanding and appreciation for mathematics. This year, the theme for the event is Mathematics and Climate.

Aerosols have played a large role in climate change over the 20th century and have partially offset greenhouse gas warming, leading to a net warming that is smaller than a purely GHG-forced 20th century climate change. They affect climate though their direct ability to reflect shortwave radiation, but also through their indirect influence on cloud cover. A recent study (in press) by some folks at GISS using ModelE have published on aerosol effects from 1890-1995 and I’ll summarize some of their work:

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Usually September is the month that gets everyone checking out the arctic sea ice pictures daily, and this is just weather, but it’s interesting. 
Mark Serreze has a commentary at Roger Pielke’s site on the developments.

In Part 1 I discussed the difference between skeptics and denialists. Not a few hours after I did that, I read a post over at Deltoid where Tim Lambert talks about a popular subject: Hotspots (no, nothing to do with geology).

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Chris wants to ask the age-old question: what separates denialists from skeptics? There are no scientific studies that unequivocally show particular people are being dishonest, and all people (even scientists) are prone to mistakes, so the existence of a bad publication doesn’t show that someone is pushing an agenda. Being “skeptical” is a job that all scientists have, and although the term may have a bad name attached to it in global warming debates, it’s actually a very honorable title to have and it’s difficult to find any scientist who is not skeptical of a lot.

This is of course different than simply plugging your fingers in your ears and denying any evidence put in your face.

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