Environment

Silent Springs of Past

April 22, 2007

Today is Earthday, 2007. On today’s CBS News Sunday Morning Program, one of the feature stories was The Legacy of “Silent Spring.” We all now know that Rachel Carson, the author of the 1962 book, Silent Spring wrote the book (with fierce opposition from the pesticide industry) to inform the public the fact (according to Carson) that pesticides were destroying wildlife and endangering the environment.… Read more

The Green Year?

By Jack Hassard

April 21, 2007

Tomorrow is the year 2007 Earth Day, which started in 1970. Could the year 2007 be the Green Year, the tipping year in which government and industry embraced the importance of environmental sustainability just as the public is beginning to accept, and as the environmental movement has represented. Whether or not the environmental movement began in 1962 with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, this year has been marked by profound reports and a Supreme Court Ruling.… Read more

Goldilocks Climates: Do You Live in One?

By Jack Hassard

April 3, 2007

In today’s NYTimes, Andrew C. Revkin, the outstanding science reporter and writer, published an article entitled Wealth and Poverty, Drought and Flood: Reports from 4 Fronts in the War on Warming. In it he compares and contrasts four locations: Blantre, Malawi and Perth, Australia, each prone to drought, one in big trouble, the other moving ahead with desalination technology; Dhanaur, India and Maasbommel, the Netherlands, each prone to flooding, one seemingly defenseless, and the other experimenting with floating houses.… Read more

US Supreme Court to EPA: Regulate Emissions

By Jack Hassard

April 2, 2007

The US Supreme Court ruled (5 – 4) that the EPA must regulate emissions from cars, and also took the EPA to task for giving lame reasons why it should NOT regulate emissions. The decision rendered in the case MASSACHUSETTS ET AL. v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ET AL. is an important decision in the ongoing denial by the US Government that humans are impacting global warming, and that CO2 emissions ought to be reduced by 50 – 80% by 2050.… Read more

Uncertainty and Global Warming: Using the Nature of Science to Deny and Cast Doubt on a Robust Scientific Theory

By Jack Hassard

March 30, 2007

In their NYTimes article, Material Shows Weakening Of Climate Change Reports, Andrew C. Revkin and Matthew L. Wald reported on recently released House committee (Oversight and Government Reform) documents that indicated that a White House official edited goverment climate reports to play up uncertainty of the human role in global warming. The key word here is “uncertainty,” and I want to show how one of the values underlying science is being used to undermine scientific thinking, and sway the public against the “near certainty” of sea level rise, shrinkage of the ice caps, thawing of permafrost, all caused by global warming.… Read more

How Many Scientists Does It Take?

By Jack Hassard

March 28, 2007

In today’s NYTimes, Thomas Friedman posted an article entitled How Many Scientists?which was a wonderful play on words about climate change. As Friedman points out, and as we have said on this blog, more than 1000 scientists have read and agree to the Intergovernmental’s Report on Climate Change published in February. How many more scientists will it take to convince the naysayers, especially, as Friedman points out, Philip Cooney, who worked for the oil companies and the White House to deny the idea that the earth is heating up and that the main cause is the increase in CO2 emissions.… Read more

Views of Global Warming and Climate Change

By Jack Hassard

March 26, 2007

Last week I wrote several entries on the topic of global warming, and most recently on legislation at the Federal level related to global warming.

Is the Earth warming? According climate change scientists, the answer is yes, as shown in the graph below. However, making policy changes, as we have discussed here in this blog, is not simply going to happen because the data shows that we should.… Read more