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Water is at the heart of farmers’ struggle to survive in Benin - Skeptical Science (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough food has become a worrying dilemma.
“Last year, our horticultural production plummeted due to water scarcity,” said Chantal Agbangla, a farmer residing in Soclogbo, a town located about 30 minutes by car from the capital of Dassa-Zoumé. “We had to travel nine kilometers to find water, mainly for our agricultural and domestic needs.”
Family farming, a pillar of the economy in Dassa-Zoumè, is more threatened than ever by climate change. Small-scale farms cover only about 2% of cultivable land in the ... Read more ...
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At a glance - The difference between weather and climate - Skeptical Science (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "The difference between weather and climate". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
How do you go about weather forecasting by yourself? Study the computer models. With experience, you will become familiar with the ... Read more ...
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2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #16 - Skeptical Science (Apr 21) |
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Apr 21 · Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic publication:
Here we use recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years to project sub-national damages from temperature and precipitation, including daily variability and extremes7,8. Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate ... Read more ...
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EGU2024 - An intense week of joining sessions virtually - Skeptical Science (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · Note: this blog post has been put together over the course of the week I followed the happenings at the conference virtually. Should recordings of the Great Debates and possibly Union Symposia mentioned below, be released sometime after the conference ends, I'll include links to the ones I participated in.
This year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) started on Monday April 15 both on premise in Vienna and online as a fully hybrid conference. This year, I decided to join virtually for the whole week, picking and chosing sessions I was interested in. At the time of publication this blog post was still an evolving compilation - a kind of personal diary - ... Read more ...
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New Research for Week #16 2024 - Skeptical Science (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Glacial isostatic adjustment reduces past and future Arctic subsea permafrost, Creel et al., Nature Communications:
Sea-level rise submerges terrestrial permafrost in the Arctic, turning it into subsea permafrost. Subsea permafrost underlies ~ 1.8 million km2 of Arctic continental shelf, with thicknesses in places exceeding 700 m. Sea-level variations over glacial-interglacial cycles control subsea permafrost distribution and thickness, yet no permafrost model has accounted for glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), which deviates local sea level from the global mean due to changes in ice and ocean loading. Here we incorporate GIA into a pan-Arctic model of subsea ... Read more ...
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How extreme was the Earth's temperature in 2023 - Skeptical Science (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · In 2023, the Earth reached temperature levels unprecedented in modern times. Given that, it’s reasonable to ask: What’s going on? There’s been lots of discussions by scientists about whether this is just the normal progression of global warming or if something we don’t understand is happening — in other words, we’ve broken the climate.
In this post, I compare the observational temperature record to an ensemble of state-of-the-art CMIP6 models to see exactly how unusual 2023 was. It turns out that 2023 is just not that unusual when compared to the model ensemble.
Let’s start with observations. I’m going to be using the ... Read more ...
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At a glance - Is the science settled? - Skeptical Science (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Is the science settled?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
Science, in all of its aspects, is an ongoing matter. It is based on making progress. For a familiar example, everyone knows that the dinosaurs died ... Read more ...
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What is Mexico doing about climate change? - Skeptical Science (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · The June general election in Mexico could mark a turning point in ensuring that the country’s climate policies better reflect the desire of its citizens to address the climate crisis, with both leading presidential candidates expressing support for renewable energy.
Mexico is the 10th-most populated country with the 15th-largest economy and is also the 11th-most climate-polluting country in the world.
In international surveys conducted in 2022 and 2023, Mexico had one of the highest percentages of citizens worried about human-caused climate change at 92%, compared to just 63% of Americans.* And 88% of Mexican respondents reported that they consider climate change ... Read more ...
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2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15 - Skeptical Science (Apr 14) |
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Apr 14 · Our story of the week is about adults in the room setting terms and conditions of good behavior. Here it's not parents telling children what to do but instead the widely adopted, mutually agreed system of coercive behavior modification we call "rule of law." Legislators providing courts of justice with laws to apply are how we formalize overcoming widely harmful selfish actions— or negligent inactions. These are our proxy adults telling us what we can't do or must do— our aspirations for better nature given teeth. We could wish that we were all so perfect as to never need grownup guidance of a kind leading to fines or imprisonment, but if anything can serve to illustrate ... Read more ...
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Fact Brief - Did global warming stop in 1998? - Skeptical Science (Apr 13) |
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Apr 13 · As a strong El Nino year, 1998 featured a significant spike in global temperatures. El Nino is the warm phase of a cyclic climatic pattern where sea temperatures in parts of the Pacific swing higher or lower than average. The 1998 El Nino stood out above the rising temperature trendline that is due to manmade global warming.
However, the long-term upward trend in globally-averaged temperatures has continued. In the past quarter century, the top ten hottest years on record have all occurred since 2010.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this ... Read more ...
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New Research for Week #15 2024 - Skeptical Science (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · Global carbon emissions in 2023, Liu et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment
Annual global CO2 emissions dropped markedly in 2020 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, decreasing by 5.8% relative to 2019 (ref. 1). There were hopes that green economic stimulus packages during the COVD crisis might mark the beginning of a longer-term decrease in global emissions toward net-zero emissions, but instead emissions rebounded and quickly exceeded pre-pandemic levels by 2021. However, year-on-year growth has slowed, with 5.4% increases in 2021 (ref. 2) (reaching 35.1 Gt CO2) and 1.9% increases in 2022 (ref. 3) (reaching 35.7 Gt CO2), rapidly using up the remaining carbon budget. Here, we ... Read more ...
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EGU2024 - Picking and chosing sessions to attend virtually - Skeptical Science (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · This year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) will take place as a fully hybrid conference in both Vienna and online from April 15 to 19. I decided to join the event virtually this year for the full week and I've already picked several sessions I plan to attend. Among them are two sessions, I'll be presenting in. This blog post provides an overview of my itinerary.
The week kicks off right away at 8:30 in the morning with a Union Symposia (US2) about the Climate emergency, human agency: making sense of the current state of scientific knowledge on climate change to strengthen climate literacy.
This Union Symposium will build on key findings from the ... Read more ...
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At a glance - The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is not causing global warming - Skeptical Science (Apr 9) |
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Apr 9 · On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is not causing global warming". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
Oscillate. To move repeatedly from side to side or up and down between two points, or to vary between two ... Read more ...
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Climate Adam: Is Global Warming Speeding Up? - Skeptical Science (Apr 8) |
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Apr 8 · This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).
Thanks to climate change, 2023 has shattered heat records, and 2024 is continuing where last year left off. With this devastating heat driving extreme weather - from heatwaves to downpours to wildfires - across the globe, scientists are increasingly asking if global warming could be accelerating. So what does the evidence show? Is the heating up of our planet speeding up? If so, what does this climate change mean for our future? And can we still hit the brakes and halt global ... Read more ...
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Gigafact and Skeptical Science collaborate to create fact briefs - Skeptical Science (Apr 6) |
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Apr 6 · If "Fact Briefs" ring a bell you are correct; we published 16 fact briefs a few years ago in collaboration with Repustar. We're happy to announce our restarting the creation of fact briefs together with Gigafact, a nonprofit equipping newsrooms to counter misinformation and protect the democratic process. The technology solution and concepts for Gigafact were actually incubated and tested within Repustar before becoming its own entity.
Our plan is to leverage the work we've been doing in the course of the ongoing rebuttal update project by creating fact briefs for already updated rebuttals, which now feature new at-a-glance sections. We'll also check if any of the already ... Read more ...
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New Research for Week #14 2024 - Skeptical Science (Apr 4) |
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Apr 4 · We need a solid scientific basis for nature-based climate solutions in the United States, Novick et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (perspective):
Ambitious NbCS [nature-based climate solutions] programs could deliver benefits for biodiversity, communities, and the climate. Unfortunately, a lack of evidence about specific benefits from specific strategies prevents researchers and policymakers from confidently prescribing when and where they should be used. Certainly, many NbCS are known to boost biodiversity, soil health, and air and water quality. But for these strategies to meaningfully support climate mitigation at a scale that justifies the private and ... Read more ...
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How can I make my retirement plan climate-friendly? - Skeptical Science (Apr 3) |
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Apr 3 · If you’re worried that your retirement plan might include investments in fossil fuels, here’s what you can do.
The first thing you’ll want to do is research what’s in your 401(k). Which stocks and bonds are in the mutual funds in your plan now, and which other funds are available through your employer’s plan?
Try FossilFreeFunds.org’s tool called Invest Your Values, which allows you to plug in the name of a fund and see what percentage of its investments are in fossil fuels, deforestation contributors, gun manufacturers, and the like. If you click on the grade the tool generates, say the “D” for fossil fuels, you get the ... Read more ...
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At a glance - Global warming and the El Niño Southern Oscillation - Skeptical Science (Apr 2) |
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Apr 2 · On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Global warming and the El Niño Southern Oscillation". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
This particular myth is distinguished by the online storm that it stirred up back in 2009. So what ... Read more ...
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A data scientist’s case for 'cautious optimism’ about climate change - Skeptical Science (Apr 1) |
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Apr 1 · Against the regular drumbeat of negative news on climate and the environment, a positive note can be both startling and therapeutic. To keep pressing forward, we need to know that progress has been — and still can be — made.
That’s the motivation behind “Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet” by Hannah Ritchie, a senior researcher in the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development and deputy editor and lead researcher for the influential website, Our World in Data.
In this undertaking, Hannah Ritchie was inspired by another researcher, Hans Rosling, whose data visualizations have awed ... Read more ...
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