Today was the first day I finally had a chance to attend some sessions in the morning. But that was after I missed a couple of presentations as I had to run to Radio Shack to get a new external harddrive. We’ve recorded so much interview footage that the drive I had with me just didn’t have enough space.
At AGU I dropped walked in the session Climate Literacy: Culture of Science AND Broader Impacts Done Well (ED31H) just before the start of the presentation Integrating Explicit Learning about the Culture of Science into the Pre-Service Teacher Curriculum through Readings and Reflections presented by Anne Egger.
Unfortunately it was another long day for me working in the interview room. I didn’t even have any lunch today so packed full was my schedule with interviews and getting footage for videos.
Though I did again meet a lot of great scientists and had a lot of fun. I did have a short chat with Lauren Kurtz the executive director of the Climate Science Defense Fund. I highly recommend you visit them at room 264 in Moscone South if you’re in need of legal advice. Something that is sadly often too needed in the current climate debate with all the attacks from climate science deniers.
For the first day I don’t have a lot to report about the happenings at AGU 2014. Unfortunately I spent the entire morning in an interview room and during the afternoon I was at Berkeley for another interview. Though I did catch a few tidbits in the hallways about interesting talks that happened at AGU.
The first one I heard about was Frontier’s Of Geophysics Lecture, Presented by Jeffrey Sachs. I’ll be watching it myself via the virtual options AGU offers when I’m back home.
Another interesting presentation that I missed was Richard Alley talking about abrupt climate change tipping points. I heard that there wasn’t anything new in the talk but that Richard Alley made it a great talk.
The coming days I’ll be at the AGU Fall Meeting. For those that aren’t familiar with it there’s a good introduction on the AGU’s website: With nearly 24,000 attendees, the AGU Fall Meeting is the largest Earth and space science meeting in the world. Now in its 47th year, the AGU Fall Meeting is the best place to present your…
A little over a year ago I wrote about Zwarte Piet and the controversy that had flared up surrounding him. Though the aim of that article was to give some context to foreigners about the history of Zwarte Piet and why the responses are so emotional when Zwarte Piet is critiqued.
Completely understandable that the first reaction is based in emotion as we adults have fond memories of Sinterklaas’ helper. We are after all talking about the person who throws candy at you and is the one who hands you your presents.
Continue reading Zwarte Piet And The Dutch Culture Wars
Very few Americans are aware of the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming (Maibach 2013). There’s a huge gap between the agreement the public thinks there is between scientists and the actual agreement among scientists. It’s because of this lack of awareness that several studies investigated what the agreement is among scientists.
When researchers surveyed climate scientists on the cause of global warming 97% of the actively publishing climatologists said that “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures” (Doran 2009) Researchers found the same patterns when they analysed public statements of climate experts (Anderegg 2010). When researchers looked into how the scientific consensus on global warming evolved from 1996 to 2009 they found a steady increase in the agreement among scientists (Bray 2010). The latest survey on the scientific literature found that 97% “endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming” (Cook 2013).
Continue reading Bart Verheggen Interview: Scientists’ Views About Attribution Of Global Warming
The so-called sceptics like Anthony Watts often have some very interesting predictions and speculations about global warming and climate change. Especially the predictions they make when dealing with their opponents can get very strange. The latest example of this was when Anthony Watts noticed a new widget on the Skeptical Science website.
Not much information was present what this widget was about. It had some sort of outline in it and a countdown, but what it was counting down to wasn’t obvious at the time. When you clicked on the widget it directed you to a page full of silhouettes.
Continue reading Watts Up With 97 Hours Of Consensus
Since June nothing happened on this website aside from me responding to comments. It wasn’t because I was busy at work, or the other usual time sinks were demanding my time and energy (that’s just the norm). No, it was because I was working on other projects. One of these was building the website for the podcast About a World…
Last year Cook et al. released a paper that analysed the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
What they did in that study was look at almost 12,000 abstracts from 1991 to 2011 that matched the search “global climate change” or “global warming.” What they found after analysing these abstracts is that among those that expressed a position on global warming, 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. They also contacted 8,547 authors to ask if they could rate their own papers and received 1,200 responses. The results for this again found that 97% of the selected papers stated that humans are causing global warming.
Continue reading Richard Tol’s 97% Scientific Consensus Gremlins
Those that are familiar with the website Watts Up With That know that some very strange content has shown up on it. A lot of it focusses on trying to discredit valid research on climate change and global warming, but in general it is also very dismissive about environmental concerns. Basically anything that can be used to cast doubt will get published, no matter how wrong or far-fetched it is.
This time Watts went after nitrogen pollution, something that is a real concern and can have serious consequences. Fertilizers contain nitrogen as it is a nutrient plants need to grow properly. But this isn’t the same nitrogen as we breathe, plants can’t absorb nitrogen gas. That’s why the nitrogen in fertilizers often is part of a compound, most commonly as NH3 or NO3. This what distinguishes nitrogen in fertilizers from the nitrogen in the air (which has the chemical formula of N2).
Continue reading Watts Up With Nitrogen Science Denial
Today was the first day I finally had a chance to attend some sessions in the morning. But that was after I missed a couple of presentations as I had to run to Radio Shack to get a new external harddrive. We’ve recorded so much interview footage that the drive I had with me just didn’t have enough space.
Very few Americans are aware of the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming (
Last year 
Those that are familiar with the website Watts Up With That know that some very strange content has shown up on it. A lot of it focusses on trying to discredit valid research on climate change and global warming, but in general it is also very dismissive about environmental concerns. Basically anything that can be used to cast doubt will get published, no matter how wrong or far-fetched it is.