ATM S 111, Spring, 2008

Peterson et al. (2008), The myth of the 1970's global cooling scientific consensus, Bulletin Amer. Meteo. Soc., 34, 1325. Based on number of journal publications and reports by official scientific organizations, the dominant concern during the 1970's was global warming, not global cooling, as sometimes alleged.

Holdren et al. (2008), Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being, Science, 319, 424-434. Outstanding overview of human needs from a global perspective by the former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and current science advisor to President Obama. Holdren advocates for a more active and effective role of science in addressing those needs. Article discusses climate change, but serves to put climate change into a larger context of critical problems facing the world (and opportunities for addressing them).

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Week 2: The basics; radiation, global energy balance, climate sensitivity, feedbacks, tippling points. Who is responsible?

Required

Rough Guide: p.20-42

Course Pack: IPCC 2007 WG-1 SPM (Working Group I Summary for Policymakers)

Supplemental

IPCC 2007 Working Group I: Technical Summary (73pp). Scientific Assessment. The "Technical Summary" (TS) is longer than the "Summary for Policymakers" (SPM), but worth looking at for the many excellent graphics and more complete discussions and explanations.

Working Group I: Frequently Asked Questions. Background explanation of several key topics, aimed at the general reader. Very useful.

IPCC 2007, WG I, Chap 1: Historical Overview of Climate Change Science. Mostly a review of science over the period of IPCC reports (1990-2007). Contains a lot of useful information, although style is pretty dry. Reads more like a textbook than a critical analysis.

The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect, by Spencer Weart

Excellent scientific history showing how 19th and early 20th researchers pieced together an understanding of how trace constituents in the atmosphere are responsible for keeping the Earth's surface warm and habitable and of how of how an initially skeptical scientific community came to understand that burning fossil fuels was in fact causing the global concentration of carbon dioxide to increase.

Gardner and Stern (2008), The short list: The most effective actions US households can take to curb climate change, Environment, Sept/Oct, 2008. Many lists exist, but rarely are they prioritized. This article quantifies and compares the energy savings from various actions and, more generally, discusses strategies for more effective use of voluntary action by individuals. WARNING: Article is best read on-line. The print version is poorly formatted and lacks the references.

Links to opinion surveys, U.S. public opinions regarding global warming:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/26/opinion/polls/main2731709.shtml
This is for a New York Times/CBS opinion poll conducted in 2007, with a link to a pdf of the complete results mid-way down the page.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/106660/Little-Increase-Americans-Global-Warming-Worries.aspx
This has the results of a Gallup poll conducted in March 2008.

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Week 3: Impacts of global warming: heat, floods and droughts, the big melt, sea-level rise

Rough Guide: p.45-105

Course Pack: none

Supplemental

sources mentioned in Tues Jan 20 lecture:

Sharma 2005, Indian Journal of Medical Research, medical cause of heat death

List of temperature records in 2008 (mostly cold) from UW meteorologist Mark Albright

IPCC 2007 Working Group II: Summary for Policymakers (16pp). Summarizes in very condensed form what is known about the potential impacts of global warming around the world.

IPCC 2007 Working Group II: Technical Summary (56pp). Longer than the Summary for Policymakers, but worth looking at for the many excellent graphics and more explicit descriptions of impacts.

Hansen, J. (2007), Climate Catastrophe. New Scientist

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Week 4: More about impacts: the oceans, storms, ecosystems, agriculture. The carbon cycle

Required

Rough Guide: p.106-168

Course Pack: Carbon cycle

Supplemental

Battisti et al. (2009), Historical warnings of future food insecurity with unprecedented seasonal heat, Science, 323, 240-244. This article was discussed in lecture. It argues that temperature effects (even more than drought) on global food supply could be severe by mid- and late-century.

Hansen, J. (2008), Save the Wild: Perspective of a Climatologist (chapter in 2008 book: State of the Wild)

Hoegh-Guldberg et al. (2007). "Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification", Science, 1737-1742. Updated estimate of worldwide damage to coral reefs from rising temperatures and ocean acidification. (CO2 is the main cause of both effects. It is a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and the part that dissolves into the ocean forms carbonic acid.) A comment (by Baird et al.) and response (by Hoegh-Guldberg et al.) were published in 2008.

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Week 5: Monitoring climate change; Climates of the past

Required

Rough Guide: p.171-244

Course Pack: none

Supplemental

Kerr (2006), Getting warmer, however you measure it, Science, 304, 805. Something of a watershed moment for global warming science. Satellite temperature data seemed to show absence of warming, contradicting the surface thermometer record. This was a key argument of the so-called "global warming skeptics". UW professor Qiang Fu and graduate student Celeste Johanson found a problem in the way the satellite data had been analyzed. When corrected, satellite and surface records agree - Earth is getting warmer.

Week 6: Making projections of global warming into the future

Required

Rough Guide: p.227-244

Course Pack: IPCC 2007 WG-1 SPM (last page on Emission Scenarios)

Carbon cycle

Forecasting Framework

Supplemental

Hansen et al., 1981, Climatic impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, Science, 213, 957-966.

An outstanding overview of global warming science and prediction of what is to come. As it is now almost 30 years later, the predictions can be tested to a great extent. How well did they do?

Hansen et al., 1988, Global climate changes as forecast by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies three dimensional model, J. Geophys. Res., 93, 9341-9364.

This article contains specific climate-model predictions for how the Earth's temperature will change over the next 50 years - including rate of increase and geographical pattern of increase (where it will warm the most and the least). The first 20 years of predictions can now be compared to the actual changes that have been measured. This is one of the best ways we can evaluate confidence in climate models. How well did Hansen and colleagues do?

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Week 7: Dealing with uncertainty

Required

Rough Guide: none

Course Pack: Popper 1960, Knowledge without authority (required)

Moral Considerations (optional)

Debate Framework (critical)

Supplemental

Caldeira et al. (2003) Climate sensitivity uncertainty and the need for energy without CO2 emissions, Science, 299, 2052-2054. Present uncertainty in climate sensitivity translates into far higher (truly enormous) uncertainty in how much carbon the world can emit prior to crossing a threshold of "dangerous climate change". Nevertheless, even for low sensitivity, there will need to be radical changes in energy sources during this century. See, too, an excellent related article (Hoffert et al., 2002) on potential sources of carbon-free energy.

Keenlyside et al. (2008), "Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector" Nature, 453, 84-88. The title is innocuous, but the implications of this article (if it is right) are politically and scientifically explosive. A method for short-term climate predictions (10-20 years) is presented based on cycles of large-scale ocean currents. The model predicts that global mean temperatures will be flat for the next decade. Since they have already been flat since 1998, this would mean 2 decades of flat temperatures, very much in contrast to IPCC predictions that Earth will warm at a rate of about 0.2 C/decade. A nice summary and context by Richard Wood ("Natural ups and downs") is provided in the same issue of Science.

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Week 8: The global warming debate

Required (all material handed out in class)

Rough Guide: p.247-277

Course Pack: Debate Framework

Debate Seattle Times 2003

Supplemental

Web link: Archive of global warming skeptics and arguments (Wiki, spinoff of RealClimate.org)
Web link: Top 10 skeptic arguments (and rebuttals), assembled by the BBC

Contrarian Petition to Bali Climate Negotiations (Dec 2007)

Scientist Petition to Bali Climate Negotiations (Dec 2007)

American Geophysical Union (AGU) Position Statement (2008)

American Meteorological Society (AMS) Statement on Climate Change (2007)

Curry et al. (2006). "Mixing Politics and Science in Testing the Hypothesis That Greenhouse Warming Is Causing a Global Increase in Hurrican Intensity", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1025-1037.

Soon and Baliunas (2003) and critical review by Mann (2003)

Soon and Baliunas reanalyze climate proxy data and claim that the 20th century was not unusually warm when viewed in the context of the past 1000 years. This analysis dramatically contracted the IPCC 2001 report which had, in fact, emphasized exactly the reverse. The report was published in a fairly obscure journal and was quickly discredited within the scientific community (e.g. the Mann et al. review above). But it was seized upon with great enthusiasm by global warming skeptics and the Bush White House even attempted to re-write an EPA report on global warming featuring the results of this article instead of the IPCC.

Global Warming Petition and Fake Article (1998), Report on same by Robert Park (1998):

In 1998, thousands of U.W. scientists received a petition on global warming. The mailing included a background paper on the subject, formatted to look like a peer-reviewed publication. In fact, it was simply a rambling attack on the global warming theory which was never peer reviewed or published. Those receiving the petition were mostly not climate scientists and, therefore, would not necessarily recognize the numerous mistakes and inaccuracies contained in the article. It was a shoddy act of manipulation, but many scientists fell for it. The petition results were then used to assert that most U.S. scientists do not believe global warming is real.

Lomborg, Bjorn. Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming. Knopf, 244 pp. Lomborg is not a climate scientist but an economist/statistician. His basic argument is that money spent trying to reduce GHG emissions would be better spent directly combating human problems like poverty, hunger, disease, and vulnerability to extreme weather. This is certainly worth considering. However, the vast bulk of the book is a series of efforts to minimize the dangers of global warming and these arguments are not, for the most part, based on sound science.

Summary of Cool It by Helen Amos (UW undergraduate)

Review of Cool It by Ruddiman, William. "Act Now (But How?)" published in Science (2008).

Lockwood, M. and Froehlich, C (2007). "Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature", The Royal Society, 14 pp. A favorite argument of global warming skeptics is that recent climate changes are tightly correlated with solar variations, implying that they are caused by the Sun and not by any human factors. Unfortunately (for this hypothesis), the correlations fall apart when data from the last decade are included.

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Week 9: Technological Solutions

Rough Guide: p. 278-285 ("The Predicament")

p. 306-332 ("Technological solutions")

Course Pack: Raupach 2007: Global and regional drivers... (required)

Pacala and Sokolov 2004: Stabilization wedges (required)

Supplemental

IPCC 2007 Working Group III: Summary for Policymakers Working Group III examines actual emissions of GHGs, emission forecasts, and potential methods of reducing emissions.

Fay, J. and Golomb, D. Energy and the Environment, Oxford University Press, 302 pp.

Hoffert et al. (2002) "Advanced Technology Paths to Global Climate Stability" Science, 298, 981-987. Outstanding overview of world energy needs and options for fulfilling those needs.

Hotsinki, R. (2007), "Stabilization wedges: A concept and game", Princeton Environmental Institute, Carbon Mitigation Initiative, http://www.princeton.edu/~cmi/resources. Material for classroom instruction/activity in which students learn about options for stabilizing CO2 emissions by selecting 7 wedges from among 15 different strategies. (see also Pacala and Sokolow, 2004 and Sokolow and Pacala, 2006)

Hansen, James. "Declaration of Stewardship". 2007. 1 pp. Hansen's suggested pledge for political candidates who claim to be serious about global warming. Key provision is a moratorium on coal-burning power plants. As far as I know, not one politician has agreed to sign. Might be worth asking them why.

Inslee, J. and Hendricks, B. Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy, Island Press, 329 pp.

Kintish, E. (2008), "The Greening of Synfuels", Science, 320, 306-308. This news overview discusses prospects for news types of synfuel/biofuel plants to make clean energy from dirty coal. It also gives a brief history of the failed synfuel program of the 1970's.

Laurence, W (2007). "Switch to Corn Promotes Amazon Deforestation", Science, 1721. [see also collection of articles in the "Biofuel problems" section, below]

Raupach et al. (2007). "Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions", PNAS, 10288-10293. Despite the Kyoto treaty, global emissions of CO2 have accelerated in the last 5 years such that emission rates now exceed the worst-case scenarios laid out a decade ago by IPCC. This article documents the steep increase and the economic/technological forces that are driving it.

Sokolow, R. and S. Pacala (2006), "A plan to keep carbon in check", Scientific American, Sept, 50-57. Updated presentation of the "wedges" idea for popular consumption.

Strand, S. E. and Benford, G. (2009), "Ocean sequestration of crop residue carbon: Recycling fossil fuel carbon back to deep sediments", Environ. Sci. Technol., in press. Lead author is UW professor in College of Forest Resources. Authors claim that dumping bales of crop residue into the ocean is far more efficient that other proposed methods of carbon sequestration and could be implemented now with existing technology and infrastructure. It could remove about 0.6 GtC/yr, or about 15% of current rate of global increase in atmospheric CO2.

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Week 10: The challenge of climate stabilization

Required

Rough Guide: p. 278-305

Course Pack: Principles in International Agreements

Raupach 2007: Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions

Hansen 2008 Petition to Swiss Federal Council

Supplemental

IPCC 2007 Working Group III: Summary for Policymakers Working Group III examines actual emissions of GHGs, emission forecasts, and potential methods of reducing emissions.

Cicerone, R. (2006). "Geoengineering: Encouraging Research and Overseeing Implmentation", Climatic Change, 221-226. [see also the collection of articles in the "Geoengineering" section, below]

Laurence, W (2007). "Switch to Corn Promotes Amazon Deforestation", Science, 1721. [see also collection of articles in the "Biofuel problems" section, below]

Pielke, Jr. et al., 2008, Dangerous Assumptions, Nature, 452, 531-532.

This article reveals a little-known but extremely important aspect of the IPCC Business-as-Usual emission scenarios - namely, that the predicted emissions assume there will be steady improvements in energy efficiency. Thus, when governments tout improved efficiency as evidence that they are tackling the climate change problem, it is likely that they are, in fact, just following the predicted BAU trajectory. In other words, to get off the BAU trajectory requires much more change than is commonly assumed.

Prins and Rayner, 2007, Time to ditch Kyoto, Nature, 449, 973-975.

This 3-page commentary provides a hard-hitting critique of international attempts so far to control GHG emissions. More importantly, it provides specific recommendations for how to change course and do better. Two responses were published a few weeks later - one agreeing that Kyoto has failed but disagreeing with the diagnosis; the other defending Kyoto and current international policy efforts.

Solomon et al., 2009, Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 106, 1704-1709.

It is likely that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will peak during this century and slowly decline thereafter, as the world transitions away from energy sources that emit CO2. However, "peak CO2" could be anywhere from 450 ppm (for extremely rapid emissions reductions) to 1200 ppm (for continued reliance on fossil fuels until they are mostly gone). This article argues that the "peak CO2" concentration caused by the present generation humans will set the level of climate change for the next 1000 years. During this 1000 year period, temperatures will remain about the same and sea level will continue to rise.

International Climate Task Force (2005), "Meeting the Climate Challenge", A committee of leading politicians and scientists from around the world wrote this brief (~15 pages of text) report ahead of the 2005 G-8 conference. Serious, specific, and meaningful set of policy recommendations, emphasizing what the richest nations (i.e. the G-8) should do immediately.

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Additional Topics

Biofuel problems

Fargione et al., 2008, Land clearing and the biofuel carbon debt, Science, 319, 1235-1237.

From the Abstract: "Converting rainforest, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food-crop-based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a 'biofuel carbon debt' by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels." This is one of a pair of articles published

Laurance, W. F., 2007, Switch to corn promotes Amazon deforestation, Science, 318, 1721.

This brief letter outlines the problem of crop subsidies in the U.S. intended to support "renewable energy" by encouraging production of corn-based ethanol actually have the effect of promoting tropical deforestation in Brazil as well as increasing food prices world wide.

Searchinger et al., 2008, Use of U.S. croplands for biofuels increases greenhouse gases through emissions from land-use change, Science, 319, 1238-1240.

The title pretty much says it all. Switching from gasoline to corn- and soy-based ethanol results in an increase of greenhouse gas emissions, even though corn-based ethanol is a "renewable" fuel. The problem arises because of the global food market. By reducing food supply, you drive up food prices which results in more tropical forest being cleared to grow crops. The carbon released from the tropical forests more than offsets the carbon saved by using corn-based ethanol. This is one of a pair of articles published in Science that shook up thinking with regard to biofuels. The other article is Fargione et al., 2008.

in Science that shook up thinking with regard to biofuels. The other article is Searchinger et al., 2008.

Coral Reefs

Emission trends and forecasts

Pielke, Jr. et al., 2008, Dangerous Assumptions, Nature, 452, 531-532.

see also:

Hoffert et al. (2002) "Advanced Technology Paths to Global Climate Stability" Science, 298, 981-987. Outstanding overview of world energy needs and options for fulfilling those needs.

Geoengineering

Bengtsson, L. (2006). "Geoengineering to Confine Climate Change: Is It At All Feasible?", Climatic Change, 229-234.

Cicerone, R. (2006). "Geoengineering: Encouraging Research and Overseeing Implmentation", Climatic Change, 221-226.

Kiehl, J. (2006). "Geoengineering Climate Change: Treating the Symptom over the Cause?", Climatic Change, 227-228.

Kintisch, E. (2007). "Scientists Say Continued Warming Warrants Closer Look at Drastic Fixes", Science, 1054-1055.

Lawrence, M. (2006). "The Geoengineering Dilema: To Speak or Not to Speak", Climatic Change, 245-248.

MacCracken, M. (2006). "Geoengineering: Worthy of Cautious Evaluation?", Climatic Change, 235-243.

Morton, O. (2007). "Is This What It Takes to Save the World?", Nature, 132-136.

Global Warming Science History

The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect, by Spencer Weart

Hansen et al., 1981, Climatic impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, Science, 213, 957-966.

An outstanding overview of global warming science and prediction of what is to come. As it is now more than 20 years later, the predictions can be tested to a great extent. How well did they do?

Greenland Ice-Sheet Rapid Disintigration

2006 warning:

Bindshadler (2006), "Hitting the Ice-Sheets where it Hurts", Science 311, 1720-1721.

Kerr, R. (2006), "A Worrying Trend of Less Ice, Higher Seas", Science, 311, 1698-1701.

Overpeck, 2006, Paleoclimate evidence for future ice-sheet instability and rapid sea-level rise
Overpeck, 2006, Supplemental information

Several recent studies have shown Greenland and Antarctic glaciers breaking up faster than what was expected even a 5 years ago. Richard Kerr reviews this recent evidence and ponders whether these might be the early signs of a major change in understanding about global warming. Bindshadler provides another review of the evidence. The Overpeck article is more substantial and detailed. He approaches this issue by comparing climate predictions for the next 100 years to what we know about a slightly warmer period in the distant past - the previous interglacial period of 130,000 years ago. All of these articles should be incorporated into your report, along with the 2008 update (see below). (You probably don't need the Overpeck "Supplemental information", but I include it here for completeness, since it is part of the Overpeck article.)

2007 alarm:

Hansen, James. "Climate Catastrophe". New Scientist. 2007. 5 pp.
Hansen, James. "Scientific Reticence and Sea-Level Rise". Environmental Research Letters. 2007. 6 pp.

Hansen takes the warning very seriously and wonders why other scientists are being more cautious. Very interesting material for thinking about the culture of science and the role of science in public policy making.

2007 IPCC:

Be sure to include the discussions of this topic from the 2007 IPCC report. Hansen considered the IPCC to be overly cautious.

2008 update:

Kerr, R. (2008). "Greenland Ice Slipping Away but Not All That Quickly", Science, 320, 301. This is a 1-page news report discussing the latest findings on the possibility of rapid disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet. Substantial sea-level rise this century due to Greenland now seems unlikely, although there are remaining mysteries. Much better monitoring would help.

Stabilization Wedges

Pacala, S. and R. Sokolow (2004), "Stabilization wedges: Solving the climate problem for the next 50 years with current technologies", Science 305, 968-972. The original article presenting the concept of dividing the task of reducing CO2 emissions into manageable (although still very challenging) pieces.

Sokolow, R. and S. Pacala (2006), "A plan to keep carbon in check", Scientific American, Sept, 50-57. Updated presentation of the "wedges" idea for popular consumption.

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IPCC

2007

Full 2007 Report: http://www.ipcc.ch/

Working Group I: Frontmatter

            Working Group I: Summary for Policymakers
          Working Group I: Technical Summary
            Working Group I: Frequently Asked Questions
        Working Group II: Frontmatter
            Working Group II: Summary for Policymakers
          Working Group II: Technical Summary
          Working Group III: Frontmatter
            Working Group III: Summary for Policymakers
            Working Group III: Technical Summary
            Synthesis

Review Comments and Reponses

The open nature of the IPCC review process is quite unusual in science. For the most part, peer-reviews and author replies are confidential and known only to journal editors and the involved parties. However, given the importance of the IPCC findings, it has been decided that all comments and author responses (through two rounds of review) will be made publicly available on the web. This information is potentially of enormous value to scholars studying the scientific process and the interface between science and society.

Working Group I: Scientific Assessment

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/

click just below, "IPCC AR4 WG1 Review Comments and Responses Available"

Working Group II: Impacts and Vulnerabilities

http://www.ipcc-wg2.org/

click on the link to the "Fourth Assessment Report" on the left,

then click on the link to "Review Archive"

Working Group III: Mitigation

http://www.mnp.nl/ipcc/pages_media/ar4.html

at the bottom of the page, you’ll read:

“The subsequent drafts of the individual chapters and the expert and government comments on these drafts.”

click on “drafts”

2001

Working Group I: Summary for Policymakers

Working Group I: Technical Summary

            Working Group II: Summary for Policymakers
            Working Group II: Technical Summary
            Working Group III: Summary for Policymakers
            Working Group III: Technical Summary
          Synthesis

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Advocacy articles by Jim Hansen

(Dr. Hansen is arguably the world's leading scientific authority on global climate change.)
Jim Hansen's webpage (with all his articles): http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh

Hansen, James."Why We Can't Wait". The Nation. 2007. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070507/hansen
Hansen, James. "Climate Catastrophe". New Scientist. 2007. 5 pp.
Hansen, J. (2008), Save the Wild: Perspective of a Climatologist (chapter in 2008 book: State of the Wild)

Hansen, James. "Defusing the Global Warming Time Bomb". 2003. 32 pp.
Hansen, James. "Declaration of Stewardship". 2007. 1 pp. (suggested pledge for political candidates)
Hansen, James. "Scientific Reticence and Sea-Level Rise". Environmental Research Letters. 2007. 6 pp.
Hansen, James. "The Wrong Choice for Massachusetts". The Boston Globe. 2008.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/01/02/the_wrong_choice_for_massachusetts/
Hansen, James. "Special Interests are the One Big Obstacle". Times Online. 2007.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article1499726.ece

Note: To get on Jim Hansen's email list, e-mail: hansencu@gmail.com with "ADD" as the subject of your message. You will receive notices of new publications and sometimes discussions of papers he is working on. It is well worth it if you want to follow developments in global warming and global warming policy.

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Statements of Professional Science Organizations

American Geophysical Union (AGU) Position Statement (2008)
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/positions/climate_change.shtml

American Meteorological Society (AMS) Statement on Climate Change (2007)

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Petitions

Union of Concerned Scientists (2008) : Petition to U.S. Government, signed by large number of climate scientists, calling for deep cuts in GHGs
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/2008scientists_letter..html

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Webpages

Debate

Web link: Archive of global warming skeptics and arguments (Wiki, spinoff of RealClimate.org)
Web link: Top 10 skeptic arguments (and rebuttals), assembled by the BBC, contributions from both Gavin Schmidt and Fred Singer.

Skeptics

Climate Science, by Roger Pielki, Sr.

http://climatesci.org/

ICE Cap

http://icecap.us/

CCNet (email list edited by Benny Peiser)

Daily digest of news, opinion, and research articles relevant to global warming and other catastrophe theories.

To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserver@livjm.ac.uk with "subscribe cambridge-conference" as the subject

Dr. Peiser's web-page: http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/

Believers

Real Climate (basically, presents the IPCC consensus view)

http://www.realclimate.org/

Jim Hansen's personal web page

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh

[Note: To get on Jim Hansen's email list, e-mail: hansencu@gmail.com

with "ADD" as the subject of your message]

Action

UW Atmospheric Sciences blog on voluntary climate action

http://www.voluntaryclimateaction.blogspot.com/

One Sky, a Washington State climate action group

http://www.1skywashington.org/

Apollo Alliance, national effort for "Good Jobs, Clean Energy"

http://www.apolloalliance.org/

Dot Earth by NY Times Science Reporter, Andrew Revkin

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/

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Books

Kolbert, Elizabeth (2006) Field Notes from a Catastrophe, Bloomsbury, 225 pp. This eloquent portrayal of the global warming dilemma was the UW Common Book for 2007/2008.
   Summary of Field Notes... by Helen Amos (UW undergraduate)

Lomborg, Bjorn. Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming. Knopf, 244 pp.
   Summary of Cool It by Helen Amos (UW undergraduate)
    Review of Cool It by Ruddiman, William. "Act Now (But How?)" published in Science (2008).

Fay, J. and Golomb, D. Energy and the Environment, Oxford University Press, 302 pp.

Inslee, J. and Hendricks, B. Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy, Island Press, 329 pp.

Lovelock, James. The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity, Basic Books, 159 pp. Lovelock is a tremendously creative and important earth-system scientist. This book, however, is a bit over-the-top in presenting the gravity of the threat to humanity posed by global warming. And it is downright peculiar in the solutions it advocates: wind-energy is terrible because it destroys the aesthetics of the rural English countryside; nuclear energy is great because ... well, because Lovelock is certain all the dangers can be easily overcome.

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Peer-reviewed journal articles: alphabetical list

Baird et al. (2008) "Coral Adaptation in the Face of Climate Change". Science, 320, 315. Letter and response. The letter is a comment on an article by Hoegh-Guldberg et al. (2007) that estimated worldwide damage to coral reefs from rising temperatures and ocean acidification. Baird et al. argue that coral mortality may have been overestimated because the coral may be more adaptable than Hoegh-Guldberg assume. There is also a response by Hoegh-Guldberg.

Barnett et al. (2008) "Human-Induced Changes in the Hydrology of the Western United States". Science, 319, 1080-1083.

Bengtsson, L. (2006). "Geoengineering to Confine Climate Change: Is It At All Feasible?", Climatic Change, 229-234.

Bindshadler (2006), "Hitting the Ice-Sheets where it Hurts", Science 311, 1720-1721.

Cicerone, R. (2006). "Geoengineering: Encouraging Research and Overseeing Implmentation", Climatic Change, 221-226.

Curry et al. (2006). "Mixing Politics and Science in Testing the Hypothesis That Greenhouse Warming Is Causing a Global Increase in Hurrican Intensity", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1025-1037.

Fargione et al., 2008, Land clearing and the biofuel carbon debt, Science, 319, 1235-1237.

Hansen et al., 1981, Climatic impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, Science, 213, 957-966.

An outstanding overview of global warming science and prediction of what is to come. As it is now more than 20 years later, the predictions can be tested to a great extent. How well did they do?

Hansen et al., 1988, Global climate changes as forecast by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies three dimensional model, J. Geophys. Res., 93, 9341-9364.

Hoffert et al. (2002) "Advanced Technology Paths to Global Climate Stability" Science, 298, 981-987. Outstanding overview of world energy needs and options for fulfilling those needs.

Holdren et al. (2008), Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being, Science, 319, 424-434. Outstanding overview of human needs from a global perspective by the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Holdren advocates for a more active and effective role of science in addressing those needs. Article discusses climate change, but serves to put climate change into a larger context of critical problems facing the world (and opportunities for addressing them).

Kerr, R. (2006), "A Worrying Trend of Less Ice, Higher Seas", Science, 311, 1698-1701.

Kerr (2006), Getting warmer, however you measure it, Science, 304, 805. Something of a watershed moment for global warming science. Satellite temperature data seemed to show absence of warming, contradicting the surface thermometer record. This was a key argument of the so-called "global warming skeptics". UW professor Qiang Fu and graduate student Celeste Johanson found a problem in the way the satellite data had been analyzed. When corrected, satellite and surface records agree - Earth is getting warmer.

Kiehl, J. (2006). "Geoengineering Climate Change: Treating the Symptom over the Cause?", Climatic Change, 227-228.

Kintisch, E. (2007). "Scientists Say Continued Warming Warrants Closer Look at Drastic Fixes", Science, 1054-1055.

Kintish, E. (2008), "The Greening of Synfuels", Science, 320, 306-308. This news overview discusses prospects for news types of synfuel/biofuel plants to make clean energy from dirty coal. It also gives a brief history of the failed synfuel program of the 1970's.

Laurance, W. F., 2007, Switch to corn promotes Amazon deforestation, Science, 318, 1721.

Lawrence, M. (2006). "The Geoengineering Dilema: To Speak or Not to Speak", Climatic Change, 245-248.

Lockwood, M. and Froehlich, C (2007). "Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature", The Royal Society, 14 pp. A favorite argument of global warming skeptics is that recent climate changes are tightly correlated with solar variations, implying that they are caused by the Sun and not by any human factors. Unfortunately (for this hypothesis), the correlations fall apart when data from the last decade are included.

Lorius et al., 1990, The ice-core record: climate sensitivity and future greenhouse warming, Nature, 347, 139-145.

An excellent example of using the energy-balance theory of climate change. Lorius and colleagues diagnose how sensitive the earth's climate is by looking at temperature changes and greenhouse gas forcings associated with the last ice-age.

MacCracken, M. (2006). "Geoengineering: Worthy of Cautious Evaluation?", Climatic Change, 235-243.

Mann and Jones, 2003, Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, doi:10.1029/2003GL017814.

Michael Mann extends the 1000 year proxy temperature record featured in IPCC 2001 even further. This brief article does a fine job of discussing and displaying the sparse nature of the data and the method used to estimate from it both global mean temperature and its uncertainty.

Morton, O. (2007). "Is This What It Takes to Save the World?", Nature, 132-136.

Overpeck, 2006, Paleoclimate evidence for future ice-sheet instability and rapid sea-level rise
Overpeck, 2006, Supplemental information

Pielke, Jr. et al., 2008, Dangerous Assumptions, Nature, 452, 531-532.

Prins and Rayner, 2007, Time to ditch Kyoto, Nature, 449, 973-975.

Popper, 1960, Knowledge without Authority (12pp) Popper discusses the nature of scientific knowledge (and knowledge in general).

Prins, G. and Rayner, S. (2007). "Time to ditch Kyoto", Nature, 973-975.

Searchinger et al., 2008, Use of U.S. croplands for biofuels increases greenhouse gases through emissions from land-use change, Science, 319, 1238-1240.

in Science that shook up thinking with regard to biofuels. The other article is Searchinger et al., 2008.

Solomon et al., 2009, Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 106, 1704-1709.

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