Climate Lynx

How Well Off Are You? A friend recently asked me if I was better off today than four years ago. That got me thinking: Am I better off than four years ago?  How do you measure how "well off" you are? This is rather personal, and I invite you to do a little self-analysis. My "well-off meter" fluctuates primarily with how well I conduct my life but is affected by the successes and failures of the climate movement. With the rise of extreme weather, you may have guessed correctly that my emotional state is sometimes challenged. But the fact that we have messed up the atmospheric balance and will suffer the consequences does not make me feel powerless or fatalistic.  Because science is racing to save us by designing new and safer nuclear plants, better and more efficient batteries, powerful wind turbines, cheaper solar panels, and new and better EVs, I am confident we can beat the fossil fuel habit if we have the will power and ability to work together. Financial se...

Last week I revisited a climate issue settled in the science community in 2012. The question was, “Are meteorological weather stations, due to their locations in cities, skewing temperature data to the hot side?” Meteorologists and climate scientists knew prior to 2011 they needed to adjust the data in UHI’s to prevent distortion. They made the corrections, but some scientists remained skeptical. In 2012, climate denier and Physicist Richard Muller did an extensive examination of meteorological weather stations in UHI locations. He found the data showing the rate the earth is warming was accurate supporting the previous science investigations. At that point, he ceased being a denier and joined mainstream science advocating the end of burning coal, oil and gas. Muller’s wakeup moment was twelve years ago. Urban Heat Islands are again in the news. They are not skewing data, they are killing people. UHIs are becoming a tragedy of the Climate Commons.    Aristotle warned tha...

We all know cities are hot. And some places in cities are deadly hot. The placement of meteorological stations anywhere can significantly impact the accuracy of the data they collect. In urban areas, weather stations may be near buildings, roads, or other heat sources, where the equipment registers higher temperatures. As we would suspect, the temperature readings at these stations are going to be higher than those at the stations in rural areas. But is the rate of increase in UHIs higher? Climate scientists need to know the rate of temperature increase! Scientists have long known UHIs could distort their temperature data. To ensure they are not misleading us, here are some of the ways scientists counter UHI anomalies: Data Adjustment : Scientists use statistical methods to adjust temperature data from urban weather stations, accounting for the UHI effect. These adjustments help to provide a more accurate representation of temperature trends. Comparison with Rura...

How do we measure how distinguished a climate scientist is? Recently, in an LTE to this newspaper, a Professor from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, John Christy, was cited as distinguished. Indeed, at one point in his career, he earned the honor of being referred to as distinguished. Like most climate scientists, he acknowledges the planet has warmed. However, he splits with 97% of the world's climate scientists because he does not believe the earth's climate is very "sensitive" to the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, CO2. In opposition to the 97%, he thinks that if we continue to burn coal, oil, and gas, the earth will warm more, but not much. Other climate scientists, just as or more "distinguished" than Christy, have examined and found errors in his work.  Who are the most respected scientists? Reuters assembled a list of the 1000 most respected climate scientists in 2021 (with updates available). Reuters staff created a weighted system bas...