Global Warming

Wildfires Cause Climate Change, Climate Change Causes Wildfires

An obvious question about the raging wildfire in Santa Barbara is whether  climate change is the cause.  While it’s impossible to blame any individual fire on increasing temperatures, we know that climate change is responsible for more frequent and more intense wildfires in the southwest.  But less obvious and at least as troubling is that …

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Do we need a weatherman to know which way the climate goes?

A new report, Climate Change in the American Mind, was just released by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.  This report summarizes and synthesizes original polling research on our opinions, attitudes, and knowledge about climate change.  (Statistician Nate Silver has an interesting post at Fivethirtyeight.com about some of …

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Global warming still a partisan issue

The latest Gallup Poll on attitudes toward climate change has a disturbing message for advocates of strong policies either to limit greenhouse gas emissions or to promote effective adaptation. Forty-one percent of respondents think that news coverage generally exaggerates the seriousness of global warming, the highest number since Gallup started asking the question in 1997. …

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Statistician contests George Will’s misguided climate op-ed

Nate Silver, the statistician who blogs at fivethirtyeight.com and made national news (and the Colbert Report) last year by being the most accurate and reliable predictor of the presidential election results, has turned his attention to climate change.  In response to an op-ed yesterday by George Will in the Washington Post, Silver analyzes temperature trends and debunks the …

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Earth, we’re just not that into you

As part of the continual fallout from last month’s Pew poll on the country’s “top priorities” for 2009, which ranked the issue of global warming dead last, I’ve found myself in several conversations recently about terminology. Assuming one believes that this ranking is too low, is part of the problem the poll’s use of the term …

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When the Seas Turn Sour

Just in case you didn’t have enough to worry about, the New York Times reports there is growing concern about the impact of CO2 levels on the oceans: The oceans have long buffered the effects of climate changeby absorbing a substantial portion of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. But this benefit has a catch: as …

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