Ryan Cooper

This is a question of of tone and confidence. Which report provides a more stark view of the dangers of climate change? (I'm comparing the summaries since that's the only part the vast majority of people will read, and therefore is a good view on what the IPCC Working Group II wanted to emphasize.) On current effects of climate change: 2007 : With regard to changes in snow, ice and frozen ground (including permafrost), there is high confidence that natural systems are affected... Based on growing evidence, there is high confidence that the following effects on hydrological systems are occurring: increased runoff and earlier spring peak discharge in many glacier- and snow-fed rivers [1.3];  warming of lakes and rivers in many regions, with effects on thermal structure and water quality There is very high confidence, based on more evidence from a wider range of species, that recent warming is strongly affecting terrestrial biological systems... Based on sa...

I was blogging for the Monthly  this weekend, and this time I'm actually going to do a compilation of all the posts I wrote, because I'm rather pleased with how they turned out. To wit: 1. There was a bit of a fracas around pictures showing a meltwater lake at the North Pole. Turns out that's something of an exaggeration . 2. What can we learn from PayPal accidentally giving some guy $92 quadrillion for a few minutes ? 3. Why my fellow broke young men won't be slickered by conservative scumbags into bailing on Obamacare . 4. Social Security evades the effective demand problem with forced saving by transferring the money rather than storing it. 5. Walter Russell Mead is just completely full of shit about climate change . 6. Tom Coburn has this fascinating view that you should win elections if you want to implement your agenda . 7. An America where voting just broke down by race would suck balls . 8. Against the housing status quo . This one is almost enti...

This time I narrated it myself. Probably again quite amateurish, but I think it came out reasonably well considering my lack of experience. Check it out: Comments or suggestions appreciated, though please remember I'm still a noob at this stuff.

An engineered phytoplankton bloom, designed to lock carbon on the seafloor, seen from space . When folks talk about climate change for a lay audience they typically omit a discussion of geoengineering (meaning trying to deliberately lower the earth's temperature using technology), I imagine because they don't want to complicate the issue and the implications are uncomfortable. For one thing many of the strategies miss many of the worst effects of climate change; seeding the atmosphere with reflective chemicals like sulfur dioxide to decrease warming, for example, does nothing to combat ocean acidification. For another geoengineering would have to be an ongoing process, especially if we continue to burn carbon—better to use this opportunity to move to a renewable-based economy and put fossil fuels behind us. I also suspect that it seems like a bit of a cheat, a way for humanity to wriggle out of the dire consequences of its actions. But I've had in the back of my ...

Bloomberg Businessweek shows how it's done: The story is also great : Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us—and they’re right—that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all. Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater.

It's a Reid Gower -style illustration of a David Roberts talk , set to some music. Check it out: Probably pretty amateurish, but I figure video editing is a good skill to have and this is one of the best ways to learn. I got mostly finished with this days ago, but I've been obsessively tweaking it for probably too long and I'm starting to question my aesthetic judgement. I think the smart move is to just let it loose and see how my loyal readers react. So if you've got a few minutes, I'd very much appreciate any feedback, aesthetic, technical or otherwise.

Tyler Cowen posted a link to this little animation, which as an aspiring blogger I very much appreciated: However, I was troubled by a short section about how Cowen doesn't go in for a lot of traditional blogging: People have a tendency to approach issues, and they want to apply simple good-versus-evil narratives, heroes versus villains, a certain kind of intolerance. What I do in my writing on the blog is I try to deliberately subvert all of  those expectations and to present points in some other way, with some other emotional framing, almost just to trick people, or force them to think about things in a new way again. That to me is more the mission of the blog. Again, I think that's a great clip with much wisdom, and I like Tyler quite a bit, though I often vehemently disagree with him. But I don't like the word "trick." I view my duty as a writer to say, for the most part, exactly what I mean as precisely and (I hope) elegantly as I can. While it's g...

New York City, via Wikimedia Here's a great story from Climate Central on the vulnerability of New York's transport system to climate change:  This was also supported by Climate Central’s own scientific research published in March, which showed that during the next several decades, the frequency of damaging storm surges in places like New York will rise significantly as sea levels creep up. The research projected a sea level rise of 13 inches in New York by 2050, and found that global warming-related sea level rise more than triples the odds of a 100-year flood or worse by 2030.  Without global warming, the odds of such a flood would be just 8 percent by 2030, but with global warming the odds rise to 26 percent. [...]  Even without sea level rise, a 100-year flood would inundate large portions of the subway system, Jacob’s team concluded. But with a 4-foot rise in sea level, storm-related flooding would inundate much of Manhattan’s subways, including almost a...

Over at Real Climate, they've got an interesting look back at one of James Hanson's old papers, which was predicting the likely course of global warming: Always a good idea to go back and check one's work. The kicker, though, is that the paper was published in 1981, when heavy-duty climate science was still getting off the ground. Things have gotten a lot more sophisticated and accurate since then, but the basic conclusions have been basically solid for more than 30 years.

The flooding in Pakistan is almost too horrible to believe. Nearly a third of the country is underwater. This series of pictures from the redoubtable photography team at the Boston Globe is excellent and wrenching. I urge those of you with some spare change to donate what you can.

This classic Joe Romm post lays out the nitty-gritty: It would require some 12-14 of Princeton’s “stabilization wedges” — strategies and/or technologies that over a period of a few decades each ultimately reduce projected global carbon emissions by one billion metric tons per year (see technical paper here , less technical one here ). These 12-14 wedges are my focus here. [...] I do believe only “one” solution exists in this sense — We must deploy every conceivable energy-efficient and low carbon technology that we have today as fast as we can. Princeton’s Pacala and Socolow proposed that this could be done over 50 years, but that is almost certainly too slow. [...] This is what the entire planet must achieve:

Chris Mooney : Yet at precisely this time, a growing movement argues that 2° Celsius—which corresponds to roughly 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—simply isn’t “safe.” Famed NASA climate scientist James Hansen and the 350.org movement are pushing the boundaries of the conversation by calling for a return to levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations that we have already passed (we are currently at 390 parts per million), and that correspond to something more like 1.5°C. And in Copenhagen, a bloc of developing nations has also coalesced around this goal, citing the threats of submerged Pacific islands, a scorched Africa, and much else.