Just a short note to share a few of the days finds.
Johnny Rook over a Climaticide Chronicles has what he aptly called “Stunning Photos of Retreating Glaciers.”
“Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born”
W.B. Yeats Easter 1916
Lord knows how I missed this one “The narrow temperature window that gave us modern human civilization” at Climate Progress, but it really is a “must read.”
Brian D. has been a huge help with responding to comments on this blog as well as the one who brought the above article to my attention, so let’s bring his comment into the post to pair them up and make the video more visible.
—-
Ironically, the graph that came up in the previous comment thread that caused me to bring up
Ice Age Temperature
this slide… is also one of the best slides to pair it with. I’ve got a version on my laptop that highlights the small human-history segment to put that in perspective, since the slide above uses a quasi-log scale as opposed to a linear one that more people are familiar with. (You throw exponentials at people and they never understand the consequences…)
—-
For those who missed it Climate Dilemma has Hansen: Australian target “practically guarantees destruction of most life on the planet” which sums it up nicely, if not cheerfully.
Next Post: Mind prisons and prisms – CO2 lag and Global Warming
Greenfyre's 
Ironically, the graph that came up in the previous comment thread that caused me to bring up this slide… is also one of the best slides to pair it with. I’ve got a version on my laptop that highlights the small human-history segment to put that in perspective, since the slide above uses a quasi-log scale as opposed to a linear one that more people are familiar with. (You throw exponentials at people and they never understand the consequences…)
All cool.
Those photos are shocking.[1]
GreenFyre, I really appreciate some of your links for the social and political stuff since I make limited but focused use of the Internet. I learned alot, looking at your links today.
Maybe you could do a piece on the social-historical emergence of conspicuous consumption so that people could easily see that it is made up, recent, and irrational. [2]
Brian D you must have a background in physics. Unfortunately, the more technical discussions have lost me. Also, I wonder if you want to so frequently and directly defend GreenFyre, rather than the information? A defense of the information redirects the focus to where it’s needed.
Moving on. Thanks for some good reads, good luck… and Gobama!
—-
Martha: I wonder if you want to so frequently and directly defend GreenFyre, rather than the information? A defense of the information redirects the focus to where it’s needed.
True, but I’m not a scientist. (I’m a research assistant in cognitive science; you’re right about my undergrad being in physics.) Information that appears in scientific journals has passed peer review, which is all the defense it needs from most people. (Note: NOT all people. Other scientists in the field that have the expertise needed to criticize it undoubtedly should! I, however, know my limits; I’m not qualified to do so. Thus, folk more qualified than I am have defended it already through peer review, and I don’t think I could repeat their defense with the same proficiency.)
However, I’m a bit more experienced in PR, which is why I defend Mike (and point people to science wherever I can). It honestly seems like some of the commenters I’ve met — not just on this blog but on others — have little or no understanding of how science actually works. Knowing how peer-review works is second-nature to me (not only do I have a few publications of my own, my public school system growing up put heavy emphasis on scientific and critical thinking, which are essentially the same thing). Ditto for logic and statistics (you’d think the ideas of statistical significance, signal:noise ratio, and a least-squares fit would be common knowledge, since they’re high-school material, but…).
With Mike’s permission [1], I may write up a series of short essays in blogpost format that I’ve been meaning to do for a while, serving as a brief introduction to the applied science needed to navigate climate debates. Then, at least, people can see what’s required, instead of inferring it themselves.
—-