Solar ovens and sustained poverty for Africa

via Climate Change Dispatch
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African families and hospitals cannot rely on limited solar power, instead of electricity.

via Climate Change Dispatch http://ift.tt/2jXMFWN

April 22, 2017 at 08:49AM

Sea ice off Newfoundland thickest ever yet another polar bear comes ashore

via polarbearscience
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Amid reports that ice conditions between Newfoundland and southern Labrador are the worst in living memory, another polar bear was reported ashore in the area — just after biologist Andrew Derocher explained to the CBC that bears only come on land when sea ice conditions “fail.”

“Ice too thick for coast guard’s heavy icebreaker” said a 20 April 2017 CBC report on the state of ice in the Strait of Belle Isle. The pack is thick first year ice (four feet thick or more in places) and embedded with icebergs of much older, thicker ice. The ice packed along the northern shore of Newfoundland is hampering fishermen from getting out to sea and is not expected to clear until mid-May.

NASA Worldview shows the extent of the pack ice over northwest Newfoundland and southern Labrador on 19 April 2017 (the Strait of Belle Isle is the bit between the two):

The same day that the above satellite image was taken (19 April), at the north end of the Strait on the Newfoundland side, a polar bear was spotted in a small community northwest of St. Anthony (marked below,  “Wildberry Country Lodge” at Parker’s Brook). It’s on the shore of north-facing Pistolet Bay on the Great Northern Peninsula, near the 1000 year old Viking occupation site of L’Anse aux Meadows.

There were no photos of the Parker’s Brook bear but lots of others have been taken this year of almost a dozen seen along Newfoundland shorelines since early March: see my recently updated post, with an updated map of reported sightings. Harp seals are now abundant in the pack ice of southern Davis Strait, providing polar bears with an ample source of food when they need it most and therefore, a strong attractant to the area.

Yet, as I reported yesterday, polar bear specialist Andrew Derocher told the CBC this week that polar bears are almost always “forced” ashore by poor ice conditions. The CBC report included his tweet from 10 April, where he suggested “failed” Newfoundland ice conditions were the cause of multiple bears onshore in Newfoundland this year.

Similar thick ice conditions off northern Newfoundland (perhaps even worse) occurred in 2007, see Twillingate in the spring of 2007 below:

Yet, in 2007 there was not a single polar bear reported onshore in Newfoundland (as far as I am aware) but this year there were almost a dozen. And the photos taken this year show fat, healthy bears – not animals struggling to survive.

A 21 April 2017 CBC article (“Changing sea ice bad omen for province’s polar bears: professor”), based on an interview with Derocher, quoted me saying this: “the polar bear sightings may be signals the population is rising.”

And here’s the full quote from the 12 April 2017 CBC article, based on the CBC Radio interview I gave that day for their Gander station, “Highway of ice: Easy route for polar bears chasing food, expert prof says” [a day or so after the article was posted, some petty soul [Derocher?] must have objected to me being referred to as an “expert”],  which shows my statement was suitably nuanced (my bold):

She said an increasing polar bear population may also be part of the reason for the sightings.

“Bears have been put on the list of threatened or vulnerable species because of concerns about what might happen in the future,” she said.

Derocher chose to interpret this as Crockford saying flat out that there have been more Newfoundland sightings this year because there are more Davis Strait bears, but the only evidence he can provide to counter that suggestion is a vague statement about having a “pretty good sense” of “what’s going to happen to polar bears” sometime in the future (my bold):

Last week, a zoologist who teaches at the University of Victoria said the polar bear sightings may be signals the population is rising. But Derocher said it isn’t so.

“There are literally dozens of studies that all point the same direction on sea ice and climate and what’s going to happen to polar bears. So we have a pretty good sense of that.”

Contrast this with a report from 2012, when the province saw what was (at that point) an unusually large number of polar bear sightings and incidents:

“Polar bear encounters on the rise in Newfoundland and Labrador” (The Star, 6 April 2012), my bold:

“Unusual pack ice conditions have prompted polar bear warnings in coastal Newfoundland communities, and two bear have been shot dead.”

Pack ice conditions unusually close to shore have prompted several polar bear warnings in coastal communities, and two bears were shot dead in the last week.

Wildlife officers shot a bear a week ago after it damaged several homes and killed livestock in Goose Cove, and police killed another one Tuesday when it got too close to homes in Greenspond in northeastern Newfoundland.

Shannon Crowley, a senior biologist with the provincial Environment Department, says the bears are tracking pack ice and seals that are especially close to shore this year around northern Newfoundland.

He said the bears are part of the Davis Strait population which is not considered endangered. It was estimated at about 2,200 bears six years ago, up from the most recent survey more than 20 years earlier.

Abundant harp seals, which make up much of the Davis Strait polar bear diet, may help explain those numbers, Crowley said in an interview. However, that particular population is still considered vulnerable because of potential effects of global warming on sea ice, he added.

“There is a true public safety concern,” Crowley said of the recent spate of onshore sightings and incidents.

“Polar bears just don’t have fear of many things in the environment that they’re in. They’ve been known to come right up when icebreakers are coming through … put their front paws on it and sniff, just check it out. They’re very curious.

“Ideally, in most situations, they just move on their way. But in some cases they may decide to hang out, and that becomes a public safety issue.”

Apparently, it was OK with Derocher for Shannon Crowley to say such things in 2012 (a male biologist) but not OK for me (a female biologist) to say essentially the same thing in 2017. Go figure.

Here’s what the ice looked like today:

via polarbearscience http://ift.tt/1oHvY57

April 22, 2017 at 07:35AM

Untangling the March for Science

via Climate Etc.
https://judithcurry.com

by Judith Curry

Pondering some thorny issues regarding science, its place in society and its relationship to politics.

Well today is the much-hyped March for Science. Last month I wrote a post Exactly what are scientists marching for?  Since my previous post, something like a bazillion words have been written about #marchforscience.   Some of them are pretty insightful, and I have been pondering the broad implications of what has been going on here.

What scientists are marching for – revisited

The twitter hashtag #marchforscience provides a wealth of information about the motives of individual scientists for marching.

A survey in Science Business  of 1040 scientists who are marching found:

Ninety three per cent of respondents said, “Opposing political attacks on the integrity of science” is very important to them as a reason for participating, 97 per cent said that “Encouraging public officials to make policies based on scientific facts and evidence” was a top priority, and 93 per cent said the same for, “Encouraging the public to support science.”

Other reasons that most respondents rated as very important included: Protesting cuts to funding for scientific research (90 percent),  Celebrating the value of science and scientists to society (89 percent) Promoting science education and scientific literacy among the public (86 percent). Fewer respondents ranked “Encouraging scientists to engage the public” (70 percent) and “Encouraging diversity and inclusion in science” (68 percent) as highly. Nevertheless, solid majorities said these reasons were very important.

Why Memphis has two marches for science is very illuminating:

The tension in Memphis parallels debates in the larger scientific community over the March for Science, and the relationship between science and politics. After many revisions of its mission statement, the national March for Science now explicitly describes itself as a political movement—and more than that, that it’s officially about diversity in science. But some scientists in Memphis, along with many others nationwide, want to keep the movement’s focus on improving public understanding of science and underlining the importance of funding for research. They wanted to avoid associations with a political movement—and even more emphatically, partisan politics.

Dave Roberts has an interesting take in an article at vox.com that in many ways describes the conflict in Memphis.  Roberts differentiates ‘science-t’ — fundamental science, from ‘science-p’ — applied science.  A better approach would be to frame this in terms of Pasteur’s quadrant

Any ‘war on science’ is related to the bottom half of the diagram, related to applied research, which relates to values and politics.  In my post, in context of climate science, I labeled the 4th quadrant as ‘climate model taxonomy’ where by the output of climate models was used to make alarming proclamations about what would happen in the 21st century.

A very different take is provided by March for Science as a microcosm of liberal racism:

You may be asking yourself, why are scientists marching on Washington? Scientists as a collective are generally silent on political battles—until you threaten their research funding as Trump has. Trump’s war on science has been so egregious that it has spurred the dormant scientific community to mobilize and march on our nation’s capital. However, after numerous science-related crises, such as the Flint, Mich., water crisis, it was lost on no one that the scientific community did not stand up en masse until its own interests were on the line.

‘Truth bombs’

Neil DeGrasse Tyson:  “The good thing about science that its true whether you believe it or not”

I was astonished to find a profound statement about ‘dropping truth bombs’ in an article at desmog:

Dropping truth bombs. This is a terrible reason to join a science march. Don’t do this.

Marching for science might seem comfortingly straightforward. Science activism has a shiny allure of certainty. Your placards come with citations. You’re on the side of evidence. You. Have. A. Graph.

But to believe science is that simple is bad science itself. And though it’s not bad as actively campaigning to undermine science, it’s up there.

Those on a science march shouting SCIENCE WORKS, BITCHES, will look like dogmatic, hectoring fools. We’ve got quite enough of them already at the moment. Plus, it’s profoundly misunderstanding the nature of science. And that’s just embarrassing.

Science is about evidence, and it is worth standing up for that. But science is not about absolute certainty and closing arguments. Moreover, the way we do science right now is rife with bullying, exploitation of junior staff, sexual harassment, racism, dealings with the arms trade and oil companies, and a whole host of other problems. All of that shapes scientists’ work.

Modern science is, in many ways, a very beautiful thing which we should celebrate and stand up for. But it has big problems too, and it’s blinkered to ignore them.

Go to the march, just leave the I HAZ TEH DATA HEAR ME ROAR banner at home.

Well, it looks like the organizers of the March for Science didn’t get the Truth Bomb message.

In an article Bill Nye perfect talking head for March for Science:

Nye is a good example of someone who promotes science as a close-minded ideology, not an open search for truth.

A real “March for Science” would celebrate scientific puzzles, disagreements, and competing ideas rather than fear them.

Just ask Italian philosopher of science Marcello Pera. In his book The Discourses of Science, he writes that science advances as scientists argue about how to interpret the evidence. They can only do that, though, if they are free to challenge established ideas and advance new ones.

Those who truly want to support science should defend the right of all scientists — including dissenters — to express their views. Those who stigmatize dissent do not protect science from its enemies. Instead, they subvert the process of scientific discovery they claim to revere.

From A march for conformity:

Organizers describe the march as “a call to support and safeguard the scientific community.” But then they silence and expel those who won’t bow to the community’s majority opinion — the “scientific consensus.”

March organizers say “our diversity is our greatest strength.” They say “a wealth of opinions, perspectives, and ideas is critical for the scientific process.” But they don’t really mean it. Their passion for diversity extends to race, religion, nationality, gender and sexual orientation, but not to opinions, perspectives and ideas.

For a really interesting essay on ‘truth’, see What role values play in scientific inquiry.

Politics

John Stossel sums it up succinctly in his article Earth Day Dopes:

The alarmists claim they’re marching for “science,” but they’re really marching for a left-wing religion.

An interpretation of the March as a cri-de-coeur against the Trump administration is provided by Cliff Mass :

Let me end, by saying that there is nothing wrong with marches against the current administration or the current Republican leadership in Congress. But don’t involve science in it.  If folks are honest, they would admit that this is basically a political protest against the current leadership in DC. Perhaps the most problematic leadership in the history of our country.   So have a march, but don’t use science as a cover, and don’t put science at risk.

Its not a war on science is very insightful, well worth reading with lots of history. Excerpt:

What appears to be a war on science by the current Congress and president is, in fact, no such thing. Fundamentally, it is a war on government. To be more specific, it is a war on a form of government with which science has become deeply aligned and allied over the past century. To the disparate wings of the conservative movement that believe that US strength lies in its economic freedoms, its individual liberties, and its business enterprises, one truth binds them all: the federal government has become far too powerful.

Science is, for today’s conservatives, an instrument of federal power. They attack science’s forms of truth-making, its databases, and its budgets not out of a rejection of either science or truth, but as part of a coherent strategy to weaken the power of the federal agencies that rely on them. Put simply, they war on science to sap the legitimacy of the federal government. Mistaking this for a war on science could lead to bad tactics, bad strategy, and potentially disastrous outcomes for both science and democracy.

For conservatives, the enemy is not science itself but the further expansion of powerful, centralized, science-informed government. For them it’s as much a crisis moment as it is for climate scientists: win now or lose the war for another century.

From How the march for science misunderstands politics:

If protesters want to change policies, they need to target the values, interests, and power structures that shape how research is applied. Taking Sarewitz seriously suggests that values, interests, and interpretive frames should be at the center of policy formation. Here, the march organizers offer little help. As they portray the world, there are only two kinds of people: pro-science and anti-science. Likewise, there are only two ways of acting: on the basis of science—facts, truth, data, evidence—or unscientifically, in accordance with ideology, self-interest, or mere caprice. “Political decision-making that impacts the lives of Americans and the world at large,” the march website declares, “should make use of peer-reviewed evidence and scientific consensus, not personal whims and decrees.”

Ron Bailey at Reason reminds us of an important point:

One problem is that many of the marchers apparently believe that scientific evidence necessarily implies the adoption of certain policies. This ignores the always salient issue of trade-offs. For example, acknowledging that man-made global warming could become a significant problem does not mean that the only “scientific” policy response must be the immediate deployment of the current versions of solar and wind power.

Something worth marching for

Some snippets that I pulled, but the attribution is lost:

A true “march for science” might tackle problems like the “replication crisis” or “confirmation bias.”

A real “March for Science” would celebrate scientific puzzles, disagreements, and competing ideas rather than fear them.

Andrea Saltelli : March against scientism, deficit model, commodification of science from predatory publishing to domination of corporate interests in science

From the Atlantic:

The most obvious thing that our government can do, and our society along with it, is to help science to flourish in its own right, and accept what it has to teach us. 

The practice of science is one of those human activities that elevates our lives a bit above merely surviving from day to day. Our brains, as wonderfully imperfect as they are, didn’t evolve to solve problems in quantum mechanics or biochemistry. But we haven’t been content to use our intelligence merely to scrounge up food and shelter. We’ve turned our attention to the stretches of the cosmos, the depths of time, and the mysteries of our own consciousness, and returned with remarkable discoveries.

And finally, I’ll repeat a statement that I made in my recent Congressional Testimony:

 

The ‘take away’ message

From 538:  Marching scientists will have a lot in common with angry 70’s farmers.  Excerpts:

Starting national conversations by protesting on the Mall is a longstanding tradition, and it’s important, Benton-Short said. But change doesn’t usually happen quickly afterwards, she said, citing early 20th century women’s suffrage marches as an example. The goal is really to make it clear to politicians that this is something people care about, and to start the process of creating political pressure. When it comes to specific political goals, Benton-Short wasn’t sure what the March on Science hoped to accomplish. “I know the big picture,” she said. “But what will be interesting is to also see the reaction to that. How congressmen, senators and Republicans interpret the day and the messages they walk away with.”

From Ron Bailey at Reason:

Microbiologist Alex Berezow:  “From the very outset, the march started as an anti-Trump protest. Then it morphed into a solidly progressive movement, embracing all manner of left-wing social justice causes.” Berezow added that the march could well end up harming the interests of the scientific community: “For decades, science has received broad bipartisan support. (In fact, Republicans usually funded science better than Democrats.) By biting the hand that feeds them, scientists risk losing funding, as well as alienating taxpayers. That is an awful idea, and it hurts everybody.”

Well it remains to be seen how the folks on The Hill react to all this.  I anticipate that they will ignore it.  I fear that the end result will be that we have a new cadre of scientist/activists, further polluting the objectivity of scientific research in support of policies that they don’t understand.

Its not a war on science articulates why the March won’t have its intended impact.  Read the whole thing, here is a hint:

Know your enemy, Sun Tzu reminds us in The Art of War. Science is in a war, but not the one many think. To avoid costly mistakes, scientists and those who support them need to know and understand the forces in the field. Those forces are not engaged in an attack on science—or the truth.

JC reflections

I think the ‘Memphis split’ is the most illuminating thing in all this.  No one is fighting a war against scientists in the top half of the quadrant diagram, where the concerns are about funding and immigration.  The issues  are in the bottom half of the quadrant diagram, when there is specific advocacy by scientists for certain policies, not to mention concerns about cherry-picked and biased science.  The attempt to scientize policy and political debates is at the heart of the perceived war on science.  The biggest danger for the top half of the diagram is pollution from activist baggage in the bottom half of the diagram.

Ultimately, the scientists have failed in The Art of War, in terms of knowing their ‘enemy’.

The March for Science has unleashed many things, that will be clarified with some distance and analyses from different perspectives.  Hopefully some of these things are for the good of science, but I fear substantial backlash may be the main result of all this.

It

via Climate Etc. https://judithcurry.com

April 22, 2017 at 06:30AM

Barents Icicles 2017

via Science Matters
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A chart of Barents Ice Cycles looks a lot like the icicles above, except upside down since Barents Sea is usually all water by September. Notice the black lines in the graph below hitting bottom near zero.

Note also the anomalies in red are flat until 1998, then decline to 2007 and then flat again.

Why Barents Sea Ice Matters

Barents Sea is No. 1, being located at the gateway between the Arctic and North Atlantic. Previous posts (here and here) have discussed research suggesting that changes in Barents Sea Ice may signal changes in Arctic Sea Ice a few years later. As well, the studies point to changes in heat transport from the North Atlantic driving the Barents Sea Ice, along with changes in salinity of the upper layer. And, as suggested by Zakharov (here), there are associated changes in atmospheric circulations, such as the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation).

Here we look at MASIE over the last decade and other datasets over longer terms in search for such patterns.

Observed Barents Sea Ice

Below is a more detailed look at 2017 compared with recent years.

 

This graph shows over the last 11 years, on average Barents sea ice starts declining beginning with April and melts out almost completely in September before recovering.  Some years, like 2014, the decline started much later and stopped with 100k km2 of ice persisting, resulting in the highest annual extent in the last decade.   Last year, 2016, was the opposite anomaly with much less ice than average all year.  2007 had the least Arctic ice overall in the last decade and was close to average in Barents during the summer months.

Note how exceptional is 2017 Barents ice extent.  It began extremely low in January and grew sharply to reach average by February, then dipped in March before rising strongly again in April.  It remains to be seen how much ice will grow, how late and how much will melt this year.

North Atlantic Meteorology in 2017

From AER comes more evidence of cooling in the North Atlantic and favorable conditions for ice formation there.

Dr. Judah Cohen provides his latest Arctic Oscillation and Polar Vortex Analysis and Forecast
on April 21, 2017.

• Currently pressure/geopotential height anomalies are mostly positive on the North Pacific side of the Arctic but mostly negative across the North Atlantic side of the Arctic with mostly negative pressure/geopotential height anomalies across the mid-latitude ocean basins. This is resulting in a negative Arctic Oscillation (AO) but a positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).
• Despite the positive NAO, temperatures are below normal across western Eurasia including much of Europe as a strong block/high pressure has developed in the eastern North Atlantic with a cold, northerly flow downstream of the block across Europe.
• The blocking high in the eastern North Atlantic is predicted to drift northward contributing to a negative bias to the AO and eventually the NAO over the next two weeks. Therefore, the pattern of cool temperatures across western Eurasia including Europe looks to continue into the foreseeable future.

 

Background on Barents from the Previous Post

Annual average BSIE (Barents Sea Ice Extent) is 315k km2, varying between 250k and 400k over the last ten years. The volatility is impressive, considering the daily Maximums and Minimums in the record. Average Max is 781k, ranging from 608k to 936k. Max occurs on day 77 (average) with a range from day 36 to 103. Average Min is 11k on day 244, ranging from 0k to 77k, and from days 210 to 278.

In fact, over this decade, there are not many average years. Five times BSIE melted to zero, two were about average, and 3 years much higher: 2006-7 were 2 and 3 times average, and 2014 was 7 times higher at 77k.

As for Maxes, only 1 year matched the 781k average. Four low years peaked at about 740k (2006,07,08 and 14), and the lowest year at 608k (2012). The four higher years start with the highest one, 936k in 2010, and include 2011, 13, and 15.

Comparing Barents Ice and NAO

This graph confirms that Barents winter extents (JFMA) correlate strongly (0.73) with annual Barents extents. And there is a slightly less strong inverse correlation with NAO index (-0.64). That means winter NAO in its negative phase is associated with larger ice extents, and vice-versa.

Comparing Barents Ice and Arctic Annual

Arctic Annual extents correlate with Barents Annuals at a moderately strong 0.46, but have only weaker associations with winter NAO or Barents winter averages. It appears that 2012 and 2015 interrupted a pattern of slowly rising extents.

NAO and Arctic Ice Longer Term

Fortunately there are sources providing an history of Arctic ice longer term and overlapping with the satellite era. For example:

Observed sea ice extent in the Russian Arctic, 1933–2006 Andrew R. Mahoney et al (2008)
http://ift.tt/1zegFPe

Mahoney et al say this about Arctic Ice oscillations:

We can therefore broadly divide the ice chart record into three periods. Period A, extending from the beginning of the record until the mid-1950s, was a period of declining summer sea ice extent over the whole Russian Arctic, though not consistently in every individual sea. . . Period B extended from the mid-1950s to the mid- 1980s and was a period of generally increasing or stable summer sea ice extent. For the Russian Arctic as a whole, this constituted a partial recovery of the sea ice lost during period A, though this is not the case in all seas. . . Period C began in the mid-1980s and continued to the end of the record (2006). It is characterized by a decrease in total and MY sea ice extent in all seas and seasons.

Comparing Arctic Ice with winter NAO index

The graph shows roughly a 60 year cycle, with a negative phase 1950-1980 and positive 1980 to 2010. As described above, Arctic ice extent grew up to 1979, the year satellite ice sensing started, and declined until 2007. The surprising NAO uptick recently coincides with the anomalous 2012 and 2015 meltings.

As of January 2016 NAO went negative for the first time in months.  There appears to be some technical difficulties with more recent readings.

Summary

If the Barents ice cycle repeats itself over the next decades, we should expect Arctic ice extents to grow as part of a natural oscillation. The NAO atmospheric circulation pattern is part of an ocean-ice-atmosphere system which is driven primarily by winter changes in the North Atlantic upper water layer.

 

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April 22, 2017 at 06:02AM