Climate Change

Unlike in most of the developed world, religious fundamentalism in the U.S. inserts itself in serious policy debate and science.

The National Academy of Science is convening a two-day summit on March 30 and 31 on climate change.

The stage is about to be set for a national plan of action, whereby citizens across the country can participate. The Committee on America's Climate Choices will issue a detailed report in 2010.

Four panels will be set up to address four specific areas, which will include mitigation and adaptation strategies, climate change and the interaction on ecological systems and for me, most important, how to go about “informing” effective decision making and concrete action.

The Environmental Defense Action Fund has chosen the winners of its 30 second film contest on capping global warming pollution. Go to Pollution Cost.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Inspector General issued recently a report entitled EPA Needs a Comprehensive Research Plan and Policies to Fulfill its Emerging Climate Change Role.

The report calls for a major overhaul in terms of improved coordination among the administrative regions, up-to-date mitigation technologies and adaptation strategies, and modern assessment tools.

Andy Hobsbawm, founder of Green Thing, talks about creativity. Go to Creativity.

Scientific method is designed to let us ask questions of nature without being fooled by the answer. (Philip Meyer, author of Precision Journalism: A Reporter's Introduction to Social Science Methods)

An excellent book well worth reading for anyone interested in how to communicate climate change issues to the general public is Communicating on Climate Change: An Essential Resource for Journalists, Scientists, and Educators.

While I believe an Obama administration will make science in general a priority and its policy makers will understand what science is and is not, the electorate needs to comprehend what science is and is not, as well as why it's important to the country overall.

NASA issued recently a report put out by the US Climate Change Science Program. The report calls for more information on human-produced atmospheric particles called aerosols, in order to better predict complex climate changes.

As we now have a president that seems to have a grasp of scientific issues and an understanding of climate change and global warming, we should be able to put more energy and scientific talent into areas like this and get on with what needs to be done.

At the same time, we will now have someone in the White House that can speak to the public about what climate change is and is not, absolutely essential if we are to move forward.

Every time there is a freaking snowfall, it seems like everybody is going, ‘What’s going on?’ (Dr. Andrew Weaver, climate scientist and Nobel Prize recipient)

Yes, we know that climate science is complex, but there seems to be an exceptional amount of goofiness and misleading information (deliberate and otherwise) going around at the moment. Perhaps we can attribute it to those mysterious sunspots, the climate change deniers talk about.

But maybe we can call on Lou Dobbs for the answers, now that he’s had his first global warming “report” as of several days ago. CNN as we now know has axed its science division.

December 2007: An excellent and detailed history of the science of global warming and the creation of the denial industry.