Blogging on Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet

Early Signs wins Polk Award

2007-04-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

The George Polk Award for radio reporting will honor the producers of "Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet." From the snowy slopes on Mount Kilimanjaro, the crowded delta of Bangladesh, the outskirts of Auckland, New Zealand, and elsewhere, 11 journalism students conducted interviews and reported on real-life perils already caused by global warming. Distributed in various formats nationwide, the seven-month project was edited and produced by the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley, American Public Media and Living on Earth. Print stories also appeared on Salon.com and in California Monthly. UC Berkeley NewsCenter covers the award here.

The group, financed by the journalism school and led by veteran investigative reporter Sandy Tolan and UC Berkeley climatologist John Harte of the Energy and Resources Group, received the award designated for radio reporting. Student reporters included Pauline Bartolone, Alexandra Berzon, Kate Cheney Davidson, Durrell Dawson, Jori Lewis, Felicia Mello, Nick Miroff, Jon Mooallem, Emilie Raguso, Aaron Selverston and Sandhya Someshekhar.

"Early Signs" home pages

2006-09-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

All of our Salon.com feature stories on climate change live in one place.

The NPR program Living on Earth has a similar page for our radio projects and transcripts.

Early Signs series launch

2006-03-17T01:56:00.000-08:00

Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet launched today with Jon Mooallem's article about Churchill, Manitoba and Nick Miroff's radio broadcast about the "Polar Bear Capital of the World." Hear it on NPR during Living On Earth.

Read our professor Sandy Tolan's series overview.

creation care

2005-10-07T09:20:00.000-07:00

From Grist, via Salon:

"A crisis of biblical proportions"

A pro-Bush but eco-conscious evangelical launches a crusade against global warming.
By Amanda Griscom Little

Oct. 07, 2005 | Polluters will have to answer to God, not just government, says Richard Cizik. Vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, Cizik is a pro-Bush Bible-brandishing reverend zealously opposed to abortion, gay marriage and embryonic stem-cell research. He is also on a mission to convert tens of millions of Americans to the cause of conservation, using a right-to-life framework. Cizik has been crisscrossing the United States in recent months, spreading the doctrine of "creation care" to evangelical Christians.

Read the rest of the article here.

Enviro index tool

2005-10-05T00:53:00.000-07:00

from kate: This is a pretty cool tool. Choose your country and check out its "environmental vulnerability index" (includes weather and climate).

Disappearing species

2005-10-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

from felicia: Fascinating article in the Independent on animal species disappearing due to climate.

Beetles spark wildfires, other warming in Alaska

2005-09-30T22:53:00.000-07:00

from Prof. Harte: Anchorage is showing more and more signs of warming: "an explosion of timber-chewing insect populations, record wildfires and shrinking sea ice are among the most obvious and jarring signs that Alaska is getting warmer as the global climate changes, scientists say."

Arctic Ice Melt

2005-09-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

It's been a bad summer for Arctic ice, the NY Times reports today, and GW's to blame.

Global Warming and the Airline Industry

2005-09-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

Interesting factoids about the GHG emissions of the airline industry from Reuters.

Permafrost takes center stage

2005-09-25T14:38:00.000-07:00

The National Snow and Ice Data Center compiles articles and research about chilly topics in the United States.

Eternal question?

2005-09-25T14:01:00.000-07:00

From NICK: Mention of climate change is curiously absent from this week-in-review piece in today's NY Times about our latest run of inclement weather. Instead, these new "force of nature" disasters are "ancient and divine," attributable to oscillating weather patterns. I think this question of "are the hurricanes GW-related or not" is on a lot of folks' minds and still unanswered.

Instant expert, c/o the New Scientist

2005-09-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

This science magazine has created a climate change cheat sheet.

The Weather Channel

2005-09-24T16:06:00.000-07:00

Giant hurricanes aside, I've always thought it was kind of amazing that the weather channel is as popular as it is...what should/could be its role in climate change awareness? Here's an article about the Weather Channel's own "climate change expert."

NYT: Global warming debate

2005-09-24T13:27:00.000-07:00

More confusion from the experts...
"What is clear is that an array of leading experts on oceans and climate agree that the tropical oceans have warmed in a way that is hard to attribute to anything other than overall warming of the climate from the buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions."
....
"But the authors of both analyses acknowledged that more data would be needed to confirm a link to human-caused warming. The murkiness arises because the relationship between long-term warming of the climate and seas is only perceptible in statistical studies of dozens of storms, not in the origin or fate of any particular storm."
....
"Kerry Emanuel, the author of one of the recent studies showing rising intensity, echoed many colleagues in saying that the impact of global warming was unlikely ever to be manifested in a black and white way that could serve as a call to arms for those seeking curbs on emissions. Instead, Dr. Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it would emerge as if someone had subtly, but progressively, loaded a pair of dice."

Global Warming News Experiment

2005-09-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

from KATE: I've been running an experiment w/ Google Alerts to see how many times stories about hurricanes and global warming appear online. The answer? A lot.

This is Global Warming

2005-09-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

Did you see the link Kate sent to the BBC article - it talked about a London Independent article that had a huge headline "This is Global Warming" above a picture of Rita. Just wondering what people think of that - "responsible" journalism? what all news organizations should be doing right now?

radio documentary on Climate Change in Alaska

2005-09-22T20:48:00.000-07:00

Listen to UC Berkeley J-school Alum Gabriel Spitzer's radio documentary on climate change in Shishmaref, Alaska.

The people of Shishmaref have been called the first American refugees from global warming.

Chronic erosion and flooding driven by climate change is making this remote Alaska village uninhabitable. The Inupiaq Eskimo community wants to pick up their village, and put it down somewhere safe.

Temperatures in Alaska have risen three-to-four times faster than the rest of the globe over the last 50 years. The Chukchi Sea is freezing later and later, leaving Shishmaref unprotected from the battering waves of fall storms. Villages up and down Alaska's coast are beginning to experience the same problems, and the costs of saving or moving these villages are mounting.

This documentary tells the story of this thousand-year-old community, providing a window into the human cost of global warning. It explores a unique culture endangered by gradual ecological disaster, explains the science of Arctic warming and coastal erosion, and examines the ethical and political dilemmas on the horizon.

And finally, listeners will hear and feel what a disastrous storm is like, as whole chunks of teh coast slide into the sea.

A shorter, 16-minute version of this story ran on the program "Living on Earth" in December of 2004. CDs of this program are available to stations on request.

This documentary was funded in part by a grant from the Alaska Humanities Forum.

Virtual march to win Larry David's prius

2005-09-21T23:58:00.000-07:00

Larry David will donate his "Curb Your Enthusiasm" hybrid to a lucky winner -- chosen from people who sign up for a Web march on Washington. Join General Wesley Clark, Willie Brown, Al Gore and even Schwarzenegger. David's wife has organized the campaign to "urge leaders to address global warming now."

Rita category 5

2005-09-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

Ok this is getting scary - two Category 5 storms in a month. Here's an article in the mercury news - no mention of global warming.

Storm instensity/rising temps -- a new study

2005-09-20T01:24:00.000-07:00

In an AP story that ran 9/16/05 in the NY Times-- "The number of storms in the two most powerful categories, 4 and 5, rose to an average of 18 a year worldwide since 1990, up from 11 in the 1970's, according to the report, which will be published in the journal Science....There was no increase in storms over all, the researchers said, just in their intensity. But the rise in intensity, they said, coincided with an increase of nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit in the surfaces of tropical seas around the world."

still, the AP counters the upcoming Science article with a skeptical quote from a meteorologist who calls the 1970s study data into question. where does this leave the reader?

Get updates

2005-09-19T21:41:00.000-07:00

Wrap up -- our pre-blog coverage in a nutshell

2005-09-19T19:39:00.000-07:00

Stanford works on solutions, from Kate
Skeptic Bellamy disputes global warming, from Sandy
Fortune magazine and the high cost of climate change, from Kate
101 solutions courtesty of EarthFuture, from Kate
UN Climate Change Conference, from Kate
How reporters cover Katrina: Grist analysis, from Emilie

Public health and climate change

2005-09-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

kate wrote: For anyone interested in the link between public health and climate change, Harvard Med School's Center for Health and the Global Environment identifies causal factors and experts to contact.

Clinton talks climate change

2005-09-19T18:52:00.000-07:00

Sandy emailed: You may have seen that Clinton did the rounds on the talk shows, starting with Larry King on Friday night (9/16/05) and including Stephanopoulos and Russert yesterday. I didn't catch much of Steph., but on the others he was very outspoken regarding global warming and Katrina and talked about the intensity (and frequency, which I'm not sure about) of Katrina and its relationship to global warming.

Berkeley prof fights global warming

2005-09-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

Felicia caught this East Bay Express feature from 9/14/05 about a local professor's work on solving global warming through carbon sequestration.

Hurricane Katrina Photos A Sham

2005-09-19T18:14:00.000-07:00

These images, taken by storm chaser Mike Hollingshead in Iowa, in late spring 2004, are currently being circulated on the web with the false provenence: "what Hurricane Katrina looked like coming into Mississippi."

Al Gore at the Sierra Summit

2005-09-19T16:25:00.000-07:00

September 9, 2005 -- Al Gore talks about climate change and Katrina at a Sierra Club event. (courtesy of Sandy)

2005-09-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

Here are some basic tutorials on HTML:
About bolding, underlining, and italicizing
About creating links to other pages
About adding images

Pentagon report says catastrophe is "plausible"

2005-09-14T19:46:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have already seen this, but back in March 2004, a Pentagon report went public about potentially catastrophic climate change scenarios and the ensuing threat to national security.

Read about and download the reports here.

There's an executive summary and a longer report, which I think should be put on our reading list for this class.

skeptics post#1

2005-09-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

Nature 436, 897 (18 August 2005) | doi:
10.1038/436897a

Climate sceptics place bets on world cooling down

Jim Giles

Solar physicists make $10,000 wager with climate
modeller.

A British climate modeller has finally persuaded
global-warming sceptics to wager money on their
contrarian predictions about climate change.

James Annan, who is based at the Japan Agency for
Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokohama, has
agreed a US$10,000 bet with Galina Mashnich and
Vladimir Bashkirtsev, two solar physicists who argue
that global temperatures are driven by changes in the
Sun's activity and will fall over the next decade. The
bet, which both sides say they are willing to
formalize in a legal document, came after other
climate sceptics refused to wager money.

Annan began his quest last winter after hearing
Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology who questions the extent to
which human activities are influencing climate, say he
was willing to bet that global temperatures will drop
over the next 20 years. "A pay-off at retirement age
would be a nice top-up to my pension," says Annan.

But no wager was ever agreed. Annan says that Lindzen
wanted odds of 50-to-1 against falling temperatures:
this meant that Annan would pay out $10,000 if
temperatures dropped, but receive only $200 if they
rose. In total, Annan says he tried and failed to
agree terms with seven sceptics.

Other potential climate gamblers have drawn a blank
with their attempts to enter similar bets with
climate-change sceptics. In May, environmental
activist George Monbiot challenged climate sceptic
Myron Ebell to a £5,000 (US$9,000) wager live on BBC
radio. Ebell, a global-warming specialist at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think-tank in
Washington DC, declined, saying he has four children
to put through university and so does not "want to
take risks".

Two Russian climate sceptics have $10,000 riding on
their prediction that a reduction in sunspot activity
will lower Earth's temperature.
But Annan's search ended with Mashnich and
Bashkirtsev, who are based at the Institute of
Solar-Terrestrial Physics in Irkutsk, Russia. They say
that global surface air temperatures closely correlate
with the size and number of sunspots. Sunspot levels
follow regular patterns and the Sun is expected to be
in a less active phase over the next few decades,
leading Mashnich and Bashkirtsev to predict a drop in
temperature.

Both sides have agreed to compare the average global
surface temperature between 1998 and 2003 with that
between 2012 and 2017, as defined by the records of
the US National Climatic Data Center. If the
temperature drops, Annan will pay Mashnich and
Bashkirtsev $10,000 in 2018, with the same sum going
the other way if the temperature rises.

Piers Corbyn, head of Weather Action, a private
meteorological service based in London, told Nature he
would like to enter into a similar bet. Corbyn's
theory, the details of which he has not revealed,
predicts that changes in solar activity will cause
"considerable world cooling" by 2040. Annan challenged
him to a bet in May, but Corbyn says he did not
receive the e-mail. "I'm happy to bet loads of money,"
he says.

Rush Limbaugh on global warming

2005-09-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

From Ali:

Rush Limbaugh's take on global warming:

Falsehood #5: Humans can't stop global warming;
therefore, humans can't be causing it

On August 31, Limbaugh used a discussion of whether
global warming contributed to the strength of
Hurricane Katrina as a segue into his frequently
asserted claim -- previously debunked by Media Matters
for America -- that humans are not contributing to
global warming. Limbaugh argued, "Nobody can prove
that man's causing [climate change]. To me, the proof
that man is not causing this is that there's nothing
we can do to stop it."

Limbaugh's claim rests on the logical fallacy that
humans are incapable of causing a process that they
cannot stop. By this logic, one could similarly assert
that since a single person cannot stop a forest fire,
a single person could not possibly cause a forest
fire. As convicted arsonists can attest, any person
with a can of gasoline and a match can easily prove
this wrong.

Limbaugh's claim is also circular: He argues, in
essence, that we shouldn't do anything to try to stop
global warming because we didn't create it, and we
know we didn't create it because we can't stop it.

>From the August 31 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh
Show:

LIMBAUGH: Where I part ways from you is that man is
causing it. There is no evidence of that. Zilch. Zero.
Nada. There's nothing more than a 25-year, shrill
campaign to create subconsciously the idea in
everybody's mind that when it gets hot in July and hot
in August, it must be global warming. When it gets
cold and a snowstorm happens in January, and it
happens a little bit -- be more intense than it was
last year, must be global warming. Nobody can prove
it. Nobody can prove that man's causing this. To me,
the proof that man is not causing this is that there's
nothing we can do to stop it. This hurricane was said
to be caused by global warming. Well, this hurricane
weakened right before it hit, and it had nothing to do
with the ocean temperature. It had to do with some dry
air that it encountered and pushed it further east

2005-09-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of Mumbia, India on September 10th, 2005. (thanks, Reuters!)

Welcome to the Early Signs blog!

2005-09-11T14:41:00.000-07:00

This is it - our class's very own personal blog. For now, this blog is private. You can only view this blog if you accepted your invitation to join. I'd like to blog anecdotes about climate change that we find in our everyday research.

For example: Did anyone else hear that the monsoon season in India was the worst in over 100 years? Mumbia was flooded in knee deep waters. And that's not the last of it:

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050911/main5.htm