SkS Highlights... El Niño Impacts... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
To meet the Paris climate goals, do we need to engineer the climate? by Simon Nicholson & drew the highest number of comments of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. After COP21: 7 Key Tasks to Implement the Paris Agreement by Eliza Northrop (World Resources Institute) attracted the second highest number.
Back in November, El Niño reached a fever pitch, vaulting into the ranks of the strongest events on record and wreaking havoc on weather patterns around the world. Now it is beginning to wane as the ocean cools, so what comes next?
It’s possible that by next fall, the tropical Pacific Ocean could seesaw into a state that is roughly El Niño’s opposite, forecasters say. Called La Niña, this climate state comes with its own set of global impacts, including higher chances of a dry winter in drought-plagued California and warm, wet weather in Southeast Asia.
Will La Niña Follow One of the Strongest Ever El Niños? by Andrea Thompson, Climate Central, Apr 8, 2016
Hat tip to What on Earth? comics
“In science, the word theory isn’t applied lightly,” Kenneth R. Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University, said. “It doesn’t mean a hunch or a guess. A theory is a system of explanations that ties together a whole bunch of facts. It not only explains those facts, but predicts what you ought to find from other observations and experiments.”
In Science, It’s Never ‘Just a Theory’ by Carl Zimmer, Science, New York Times, Apr 8, 2016
Second, the ongoing disinformation campaign funded by the fossil fuel industry (together with false balance by the media) has left the public with the impression that there is considerable scientific debate on a subject where there isn’t.
When people are informed about the reality of the overwhelming consensus they naturally are more inclined to want to take action, as social science research has shown.
One Fact About Climate Change That’s Worth Repeating by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, Apr 6, 2016
Introduction
We are a neutral and independent UK-based non-profit whose remit is to map, analyze and score the extent to which corporations are influencing climate change policy. Our approach is driven by a desire to construct an objective and internally consistent assessment platform in a field that is inherently subjective and anecdotal in nature. Our platform is open to all and our method is fully transparent. We present comparative ratings of influence over the climate policy process, applied to the leading industrial corporations in the world. Our scores may also be regarded as a measure of a corporation's readiness in the case of a shift towards a low carbon regulatory regime, based on the assumption that their support for this originates from a forward-thinking competitive strategy.
Our Mission
InfluenceMap is driven by a desire to remove the political gridlock that has hindered the climate change issue since the Earth Summit in 1992, and has since prevented a meaningful global agreement. Whilst the current mood of sustainability-driven CEOs appears to be confident that business is rallying behind the path to appropriate action, policymakers are sceptical, suggesting corporate influence has, and continues to be, a major factor in holding back the policy process. We provide our stakeholders with an online tool to access information on this topic, supporting key engagers in their interactions with companies and corporate representatives. We point to and support the recommendations of a key report on corporate engagement with climate policy from three UN agencies entitled Caring for Climate. It states that corporations be transparent, align their political influences (internally and externally), support climate legislation, and to stop obstructing it.
Our Approach
Quote derived with author's permission from:
"For many [global warming] means the global mean temperature increases. But for anthropogenic climate change, it means the climate change resulting from all kinds of human activities, and it is now well established that by far the biggest influence occurs from changes in atmospheric composition, which interfere with the natural flow of energy through the climate system."
Posted by John Hartz on Sunday, 10 April, 2016
 |
The Skeptical Science website by Skeptical Science is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. |