Articles by Kit Stolz

Antarctica ice may be OK after all

Environmentalists are often accused of enjoying "doom and gloom." This makes no sense, if you think about it for a second or two. No one accuses Republicans concerned about Islamic extremism of wanting to see another 9/11. Why should environmentalists who revere the beauty of this planet be accused of wanting to destroy it?

Nonetheless, this is one of those ideas that seems to have inserted itself in our body politic, like a tick half-absorbed. Only by going directly at it can enviros hope to dislodge this calumny.

In this spirit, let me bring up some remarkably good news from Antarctica.

Rhetorical cheapshots from a usual suspect

Global warming is complicated, and often counter-intuitive, which is one reason most scientists prefer the phrase "climate change" to describe it. But whether you call it climate change or global warming, its complexity offers easy opportunities for rhetorical cheap shots to right-wing zealots such as Drudge, who would like the whole issue to go away. Yesterday his popular tabloid ran an item about how a House hearing on the "warming of the planet" had to be canceled due to freezing rain.

One problem with the irony: this kind of "precipitation event" is exactly the scenario scientists predict for a warming planet.

In a statement prepared before his testimony about climate change to the same House Committee on Science and Technology last week, leading climatologist Dr. Kevin Trenberth, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research warned:

Can greed get us out?

Billionaire Richard Branson will announce today in London a prize of $25 million to the inventor of a device that effectively reduces greenhouse gas concentrations. Although the participants are under a media embargo, American climatologist James Hansen -- who will serve as a judge of the potential inventions, along with English scientist James Lovelock and Australian author Tim Flannery -- did discuss the topic of geoengineering a solution to global warming this week in front of a large crowd at U.C. Santa Barbara, as part of a lecture he gave on the dangers of human-caused climate change.

So says the Wall Street Journal

Speaking of good work by the MSM, the Wall Street Journal on Saturday ran an interesting little news story by John Fialka on why the long-term outlook for global warming may be "more dire than suggested" by the IPCC's just-released Fourth Assessment on Climate Change.

Two reasons: first, as Joe Romm mentioned in a post below, the report doesn't fully take into account the melting of inland glaciers. That's according to Tom Delmore, a climate modeler with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association.

Second, because of the limits of computing power, the report probably underestimates the amount of warming that will be caused by increasing amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere. That's according to Jim Butler, also with NOAA.

The story ran under an oddly inane headline, but it's well-reported, and very much worth reading.