Grand Game: Unbelievably Arrogant Scientist Edition

This is...it's.... well, it's hard to describe.

But I bet you find some howlers.  Please share your favorites in comments.

Nod to M.

We Can Do This, But It Makes Warming Worse

Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the U.S. Temperature-Mortality Relationship Over the 20th Century

Alan Barreca et al.
MIT Working Paper, December 2012

Abstract:
Adaptation is the only strategy that is guaranteed to be part of the world's climate strategy. Using the most comprehensive set of data files ever compiled on mortality and its determinants over the course of the 20th century, this paper makes two primary discoveries. First, we find that the mortality effect of an extremely hot day declined by about 80% between 1900-1959 and 1960-2004. As a consequence, days with temperatures exceeding 90°F were responsible for about 600 premature fatalities annually in the 1960-2004 period, compared to the approximately 3,600 premature fatalities that would have occurred if the temperature-mortality relationship from before 1960 still prevailed. Second, the adoption of residential air conditioning (AC) explains essentially the entire decline in the temperature-mortality relationship. In contrast, increased access to electricity and health care seem not to affect mortality on extremely hot days. Residential AC appears to be both the most promising technology to help poor countries mitigate the temperature related mortality impacts of climate change and, because fossil fuels are the least expensive source of energy, a technology whose proliferation will speed up the rate of climate change.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Climate change, fossil fuel use, and public opinion

Do alternative energy sources displace fossil fuels?

Richard York, Nature Climate Change, forthcoming

Abstract: A fundamental, generally implicit, assumption of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change reports and many energy analysts is that each unit of energy supplied by non-fossil-fuel sources takes the place of a unit of energy supplied by fossil-fuel sources. However, owing to the complexity of economic systems and human behaviour, it is often the case that changes aimed at reducing one type of resource consumption, either through improvements in efficiency of use or by developing substitutes, do not lead to the intended outcome when net effects are considered. Here, I show that the average pattern across most nations of the world over the past fifty years is one where each unit of total national energy use from non-fossil-fuel sources displaced less than one-quarter of a unit of fossil-fuel energy use and, focusing specifically on electricity, each unit of electricity generated by non-fossil-fuel sources displaced less than one-tenth of a unit of fossil-fuel-generated electricity. These results challenge conventional thinking in that they indicate that suppressing the use of fossil fuel will require changes other than simply technical ones such as expanding non-fossil-fuel energy production.

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Declining public concern about climate change: Can we blame the great recession?

Lyle Scruggs & Salil Benegal, Global Environmental Change, forthcoming

Abstract: Social surveys suggest that the American public's concern about climate change has declined dramatically since 2008. This has led to a search for explanations for this decline, and great deal of speculation that there has been a fundamental shift in public trust in climate science. We evaluate over thirty years of public opinion data about global warming and the environment, and suggest that the decline in belief about climate change is most likely driven by the economic insecurity caused by the Great Recession. Evidence from European nations further supports an economic explanation for changing public opinion. The pattern is consistent with more than forty years of public opinion about environmental policy. Popular alternative explanations for declining support – partisan politicization, biased media coverage, fluctuations in short-term weather conditions – are unable to explain the suddenness and timing of opinion trends. The implication of these findings is that the “crisis of confidence” in climate change will likely rebound after labor market conditions improve, but not until then.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Best athlete out of Russia since Maria Sharapova!

This crow is the absolute bizzle:

The Weather: These Folks DID Something About It

Civil conflicts are associated with the global climate, Solomon Hsiang, Kyle Meng & Mark Cane, Nature, 25 August 2011, Pages 438–441

Abstract: It has been proposed that changes in global climate have been responsible for episodes of widespread violence and even the collapse of civilizations. Yet previous studies have not shown that violence can be attributed to the global climate, only that random weather events might be correlated with conflict in some cases. Here we directly associate planetary- scale climate changes with global patterns of civil conflict by examining the dominant interannual mode of the modern climate, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Historians have argued that ENSO may have driven global patterns of civil conflict in the distant past, a hypothesis that we extend to the modern era and test quantitatively. Using data from 1950 to 2004, we show that the probability of new civil conflicts arising throughout the tropics doubles during El Niño years relative to La Niña years. This result, which indicates that ENSO may have had a role in 21% of all civil conflicts since 1950, is the first demonstration that the stability of modern societies relates strongly to the global climate.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

The culture that is Germany: Naturist Edition

The quantity theory of nudity may be holding in Germany. It appears that perhaps the same amount of skin is being shown by nude sunbathers; it's just been redistributed. Now there's a lot more skin on each of the much fewer naked bodies.

Or, as Reuters puts it, "Fatter & Fewer German Nudists as Numbers Dwindle"

Kurt Fisher, the head of the German Nudist Association, thinks he knows why the numbers are dwindling. Immigrants! Or more specifically, the wrong kind of immigrants:

""Germany is relying more and more on immigrants to keep the population steady. But many come from countries with strong religious beliefs." Immigrants who arrive from cultures where headscarves are common will not usually be interested in becoming naturists in Germany, he said."

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

Immanentize the Eschaton? No, But Days Are Shorter

The end of days?

No, but days are shorter now.

A bad day to be in Copenhagen

Consummate statesmen Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chavez addressed the climate change conference.

YIKES!!

Mugabe was as incisive as ever:

"Why is the guilty north not showing the same fundamentalist spirit it exhibits in our developing countries on human rights matters on this more menacing threat of climate change?"

And Chavez too got right to the heart of the matter:

"If the climate was a bank, they would have already saved it."

Now that things have devolved to a circus, why not go all the way and have Ahmadinejad say a few words?

What's that? He's on the schedule for tomorrow?

Holy Crap!

Warmer....You are Getting Warmer....

What an interesting guy this is. The title of the piece is "Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process."

He wrote this little firecracker.

Excerpt:

These words do not mean that I think anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. On the contrary, it is a question which we have to be very well aware of. But I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere -and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now- editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations,even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the 'politically correct picture'. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the 'pleasure' to experience all this in my area of research.