New Hampshire Republican voters sick of climate denialism too

January 13, 2012 Jason Thibeaultantiscience, climate change, global warming, Republicans10 Comments

I have this irrational penchant for assuming we humans will, eventually, let our better angels of empathy and rationality win out in the long run. This plays to that aspect of my psychology.

Of course, there are so many other reasons not to vote for Republicans that you don’t need to point out the fact that it’s been completely and thoroughly awash in scientific denialism for decades and fix that alone to get me to consider them rational actors on the political stage. You’d also have to untie them from religious zelaotry and magical thinking about economic factors and war hawkishness… et cetera, et cetera.

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Climate: definitely not due to solar forcing or cosmic rays

December 28, 2011 Jason Thibeaultclimate change, cosmic rays, fossil fuels, global warming, solar forcing2 Comments

I kinda made a private vow that I wouldn’t keep reposting Peter Sinclair’s excellent Climate Crock of the Week videos quite so regularly, because I don’t want to be accused of simply ripping him off. But the bastard went and included both a Rickroll and several Fantastic Four references. Sigh.

I love that the anti-AGW crowd keeps positing arguments to take the place of the obvious and demonstrably correct reality — that the planet’s heating up and we’re responsible — and science just keeps knocking those arguments down. I’m very sad, however, that we’re probably going to keep playing this game and letting them posit more things that might be responsible for global warming in an attempt to supplant the understanding that it’s actually us burning fossil fuels, til it’s completely impossible to do anything about it.

Justin Trudeau apologizes for being right about Environment minister Peter Kent

December 16, 2011 Jason ThibeaultCanada, climate change, Conservatives, Durban, global warming, Justin Trudeau, Kyoto protocol, Peter Kent, swearing, The Majority of 39%14 Comments

As you might know, recently Canada withdrew from the Kyoto protocol shortly after the Durban conference — what our next steps are once Kyoto ends — came to agreement. While the problems with the Kyoto protocol are myriad, including that it didn’t go far enough, didn’t include the top climate destroyers, and explicitly excluded carbon taxes as a means to achieve reductions, it was in fact something. The Durban talks involved what to do for each country in light of their progress toward achieving lower emissions overall, and it’s fairly self-evident that Canada withdrew to avoid the international scorn they had coming. Not that they avoided any of the scorn by withdrawing — such a blatantly transparent responsibility dodge was not lost on anyone.

In the House of Commons on Wednesday, NDP MP Megan Leslie questioned Environment minister Peter Kent over Canada’s withdrawl from Kyoto. His response was galling.
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Canada withdraws from Kyoto protocol

December 13, 2011 Jason ThibeaultCanada, climate change, global warming, Kyoto protocol3 Comments

Hot on the heels of my last post, wherein Michael Mann proclaims there’s still time to make the right choices, Canada makes a very wrong one. And for very wrong reasons.

Canada has pulled out of the Kyoto protocol on climate change, one day after an update [the Durban accord] was agreed on, saying the accord won’t work.
[…]
“The Kyoto protocol does not cover the world’s largest two emitters, the United States and China, and therefore cannot work,” Kent said. “It’s now clear that Kyoto is not the path forward to a global solution to climate change. If anything it’s an impediment.”

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Michael Mann at TEDxPSU: “there’s still time”

December 13, 2011 Jason Thibeaultclimate, climate change, denialism, global warming, hockey stick graph, Michael Mann, pseudoscience, science1 Comment

Michael Mann and his IPCC report, the hockey stick graph, which has (by the way) been vindicated in twelve subsequent papers as being accurate and correct in how steeply climate has changed since humans began emitting CO₂, have essentially sealed the climate denialists’ fate. Unfortunately, these same climate denialists, by their systematic campaign of disinformation about climate change, have all but sealed all of humanity into ours, in preventing us from taking meaningful action. Mann says, however, “there’s still time to make the right choice”.
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Frozen Planet promo

December 12, 2011 Jason Thibeaultbbc, climate change, documentaries, Frozen Planet, global warming, nature porn2 Comments

I was on the fence about actually buying BBC’s Frozen Planet, though I started warming to it after rumors that it was going to cut out mentions of climate change in North American releases turned out to be false. Now, however, I think I need to get the Blu-Ray — on the condition that I can get the Attenborough version.

Yes, it was the turtle at ~1:30 that sold me.

US, China in solar power throwdown

December 11, 2011 Jason ThibeaultAmerica, China, climate change, Cold War, oil, photovoltaic technology, solar power2 Comments

This is not quite the kind of international friction I like to see, especially with regard to technology with such promise and in such infancy.

Upon an appeal filed by SolarWorld Industries America and six other undisclosed firms, the US Department of Commerce (DOC) said on 8 November that it would conduct an investigation to determine whether Chinese firms have been selling solar panels in the US at unfair discounts and receiving illegal government subsidies, China Daily states.
[…]

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It’s not about the “hockey stick”

December 7, 2011 Jason Thibeaultclimate, climate change, denialism, global warming, skepticism3 Comments

Peter Sinclair’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week videos are uniformly excellent. His latest discusses the climate contrarians’ seeming belief that all of climate science depends on that one thoroughly accurate hockey stick graph created by Michael Mann, which has been vindicated by correlating studies no less than nine times (and once by a true climate skeptic). Video below the fold.
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Fukushima: it gets even worse

December 3, 2011 Jason Thibeaultenergy, Fukushima, meltdown, nuclear, nuclear energy3 Comments

As though it wasn’t bad enough already. The NY Times reports that the meltdown may have already escaped containment and begun boring through the concrete floor, according to a computer simulation of the original accident.

Soon after an earthquake and a tsunami on March 11 knocked out cooling systems at the power plant, nuclear fuel rods in three of its six reactors overheated and slumped, the operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has said.

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The real climategate

November 27, 2011 Jason Thibeaultantiscience, climate change, climategate, denialism, global warming5 Comments

The climate denialsphere, having learned exactly the wrong lesson from the last email hack, has attempted to overshadow another international talk on climate change by releasing the remainder of the e-mails illegally obtained via a hack of university mail servers in the original incident now known as “Climategate”.
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Lousy Canuck

… Because I don't watch enough hockey, drink enough beer, or eat enough bacon.

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