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Browsing All Posts published on »August, 2010«
Simple Sam learns about water vapour feedback
Sam came back to me with a question about climate feedback cycles and water vapour. “In that diagram you showed before, I noticed that water vapour was put in a different feedback loop from the other greenhouse gases,” says Sam. (See here.) “Why is that? Is it because no one can blame people for water […]
James Hansen, Activist
August 28, 2010
“How did you become an activist?” I was surprised by the question. I never considered myself an activist. I am a slow-paced taciturn scientist from the Midwest. Most of my relatives are pretty conservative. I can imagine attitudes at home toward “activists”. I was about to protest the characterization – but I had been arrested, […]
I Have a Dream
August 28, 2010
I have posted parts of I Have a Dream speech before. Now that American right-wing groups led by Glen Beck are attempting to by-pass Martin Luther King’s legacy and revile everything he stood for in right-wing rally in the same place at the same time, it is appropriate to reprint it to remind us all […]
Extroverts
August 28, 2010
I’m an introvert. Everybody—except sociopaths and psychopaths—is an introvert to some extent. That’s the part of you which pays attention to your effect on others. Extroverts don’t care that much. They assume that their own acceptance in society is enough to wipe away any missteps. They’re right, because as humans we’re programmed to deal with […]
Simple Sam Learns About the 4 Lines of Evidence
August 26, 2010
The Earth’s climate has changed, Sam. “I heard you say that before,” says Simple Sam. Temperatures all over the world have gone up in the past century, the oceans are warming, glaciers worldwide are melting, the hurricanes are howling stronger. And the evidence tells us that greenhouse gases put in the air by human activities […]
Removing noise from the climate record: a case study
August 25, 2010
I like old time rootsy music, Charlie Patton, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Cannon’s Jug Stompers, and other, more obscure, artists. But if you are familiar with the old 78 rpm discs from which such music is taken, you will know that they have more snap, crackle and pop than a bowl of […]
Conservative “think tanks” Strangeloving the solution to climate change
August 24, 2010
Now here’s a curious quote from an organization which has spent years lobbying and propagandizing against the idea of climate change. American Enterprise Institute: If warming proves to be uncontrollable and dangerous, what could we do? A growing number of climate scientists believe that there may be only one possible answer to that question: change […]
Brazil taxes oil to fight climate change
August 23, 2010
In Fortaleza, on the coastal edge of the dry lands of Northeastern Brazil, a region where climate change is expected to increase flooding and droughts, the Brazilian government has just made an announcement. It will use tax revenue from oil production to fight climate change. It is a move so breathtakingly obvious that the planet […]
Lands & Oceans In Perilous Decline Under Climate Change
August 23, 2010
At the end of July there was a scientific report which may have been one of the biggest pieces of news in climate change in a decade, in a year, in a season where such news arrives daily. It was also—in a world where climate disaster is becoming commonplace—among the most depressing news in its […]
Grandpa Theo
With Malaika
Klick This Pic
An Informal Chronology of the Aboriginal Land Question in BC
Father Theo's Blog 
August 31, 2010
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