wattsupwiththat--2020-11-15--The Government Corruption of Science

The Government Corruption of Science

I wrote my latest book , Politics and Climate Change : A History , because I recognized that government funding of scientific research was corrupting science .
We were warned this might happen by President Eisenhower in his farewell address to the public , where he said : How right he was .
Federal money allows unelected and protected civil service bureaucrats to control scientific research .
They dictate the projects , and often outcomes .
They use selective leaks to the press to embarrass any elected politicians who try to interfere with their control over research .
The bureaucrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Politicians who disagree with them are suppressing or ignoring “ science.
” To them science is not a search for the truth , it is a dogma that must be believed .
Worse , they believe a consensus of experts is scientific fact .
Science is a method of disproving consensus opinion with observational facts , analysis , and reason .
It is a methodology , honed over centuries , that allows one person to show everyone else they are wrong .
Science is the opposite of political consensus .
Government money clearly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ estimates of the impact of man-made CO have not narrowed in 41 years , as we discussed in our last two posts , here and here .
Despite billions in government spending , the IPCC AR5 report ( IPCC , 2013 ) still says the impact of doubling CO is between 1.5°C and 4.5°C , exactly the same range given in the Charney Report ( Charney , et al.
, 1979 ) .
Empirical observation-based estimates , like the one by Nic Lewis and Judith Curry ( Lewis & Curry , 2018 ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not government funded .
The funding did not improve science , it was not intended to improve the science , it was political .
The bureaucrats use an ignorant and compliant news media to demonize any privately funded scientific research as “ corrupted ” by “ evil ” corporations .
The bureaucrats enlist the support of non-profit activists , supported by giant foundations , owned , and controlled by billionaires .
These billionaires seek influence and political power .
The non-profits , in turn , lobby the press to get their version of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ independent research is compared to an evil tobacco company and accused of lying to the public .
The book contains many examples of this .
This demonization is an attempt to deny corporations , farmers , and workers a voice in debates over government regulations and environmental issues .
The Union of Concerned Scientists ( UCS ) is a left-wing advocacy non-profit organization that pretends to be scientific .
It is well known for slanting its “ research ” to get desired results ( Activist Facts , 2020 ) .
Their report , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Grifo , Halpern , & Hansel , 2012 ) , is a blatant attempt to suppress any scientific debate of government regulations by private corporations .
The science is not debated or explained , one can imagine journalists and non-profits funded by billionaires saying , “ The public doesn ’ t need to understand this , we tell them what to think !
” In the words of the Australian wordsmith , Joanne Nova : Remember this the next time someone says the “ science is settled.
” Grifo , et al @ @ @ @ @ @ @ influence of companies with a financial stake in the outcome.
” If the companies have a financial stake in the outcome , they should be involved in the regulatory debate , how can it be otherwise in a republic ?
These companies have a first amendment right to be involved .
Grifo , et al .
are demanding what President Eisenhower feared , “ public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite ” ( Eisenhower , 1961 ) .
President Eisenhower had two fears , he was worried that scientists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government officials would control scientific research and outcomes .
We now have a devilish combination of the two .
Why have privately funded research ?
The UCS fears that companies will be dishonest .
They do not believe companies should use litigation to threaten their opponents into being silent , change their views , or destroy their reputations .
They also fear that corporations will not be transparent ( Grifo , Halpern , & Hansel , 2012 , p. 45 ) .
Yet as explained in Chapter 3 of our book , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attacked ExxonMobil in the “ ExxonKnew ” campaign .
We expect people to be aggressive in a debate , but we need the debate , and we need both sides to be in it .
If one side is excluded or suppressed in any fashion , our republic is gone , and a dictatorship or oligarchy is formed .
In the 19th and pre-WWII 20th century universities and private sector corporations and individuals worked closely together on research and academic programs .
This was a good combination ; universities tailored their degree programs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This supplied the corporations with well-trained employees and helped develop new products that improved the world .
The post-war explosion of federal funding of research is beginning to slow and simultaneously business funding has been increasing since about 2005 .
This is a good trend , but unfortunately , federal spending on research is still almost double corporate spending ( Mervis , 2017 ) .
As a result , university research is still more oriented toward government projects than business ventures and the government projects tend toward fearmongering projects like climate change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ products and better society .
We believe government funding of research should be no more than corporate funding , and ideally zero because the government tends to fund projects that are political , destructive , and divisive .
Japan ( Kazuyuki & Shingo , 2011 ) and China have many business-oriented university projects with American companies .
However , the projects in China are often with American companies like Microsoft or Google and are designed to steal U.S. technology ( Song , 2008 ) .
Estimates vary , but Chinese intellectual property theft @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 600 billion per year according to many sources ( Huang & Smith , 2019 ) .
According to the National Law Review : In the United States , liberal non-profit organizations , the news media , and some in government have driven a wedge between the natural collaboration of universities and business by demonizing the businesses and any funding they provide to universities .
This has hurt the businesses , the universities , and research in general .
It only helps our global competitors .
University climate change research is oriented toward creating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the earth .
The scenarios are used to try and eliminate millions of jobs in the fossil fuel industry .
They want to create fear in the public and make them more manageable .
This increases government power since the public will often give up their rights and their jobs to gain security .
In the 1970s , the news media predicted we would all die due to global cooling as explained in Chapter 6 of our book .
Some scientists even blamed human emissions of CO for the cooling .
The media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ humans are to blame , the story is even better .
Then warming began and again CO was the reason .
Now we are all going to die from CO -caused global warming .
The shameless media didn ’ t apologize or even blink , they published that as well .
When global cooling begins again , as it inevitably will , count on the media to find a compliant scientist to blame CO .
It isn ’ t just the government funding .
Media attention motivates universities to come up with scary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ improve and save lives .
Media attention means more government money .
As government money begins to drive university research , the universities become more isolated from the businesses they are supposed to be training employees for .
Students want high-profile government jobs so they can save the world and ignore the more beneficial and productive jobs in industry .
Those jobs go overseas .
University tuition and costs have gone up , but even accounting for increasing college costs , on average attending college is still worth it ( Abel & Deitz @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be the case in the future , technology may erode the premium that college graduates can demand in the marketplace ( Staton , 2014 ) .
This is all happening as the United States has allowed our technology to be stolen by China and other countries .
Onerous regulations , justified by sketchy and secret EPA funded research have forced high-paying , high value-add , manufacturing overseas .
Other excessive regulations , often designed and justified with secret government scientific research , have made some extraction businesses ( mining , oil , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expensive or economically impossible .
We are not only sending technology , manufacturing , and extraction overseas , we are simultaneously killing it in the United States and in Europe .
As high value-add jobs and high salaries leave , the value of a university education becomes less .
Service industry jobs , such as mowing lawns , waitressing , or becoming a store clerk , pay less and these are the jobs laid off technology , manufacturing , and extraction labor are forced into .
These jobs do not require university degrees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forced into them when the sectors they work in disappear .
The universities helped engineer the decline in western technology , manufacturing , and extraction and now they are engineering their own decline .
Businesses are far less likely to trust university educations as they become less involved in degree programs .
Students are graduating with more debt as costs go up and make less income to pay it back .
Many degrees have become valueless .
It has been estimated that student debt exceeds 1.5 trillion dollars in the U.S. ( Hanson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home buying , marriage and child-rearing , the most important stimulants to our economy .
Victor Davis Hanson speculated in National Review that universities are sowing the seeds of their own obsolescence ( Hanson , 2020 ) .
He is correct .
To make universities more relevant to our nation , youth , and economy , we must drastically reduce or eliminate government funded university research .
Defense research , of necessity , must remain under government control and must be done in secret .
But , except for defense , the government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to reform and enlarge their relationships with private industry .
Cutting off government funding of research would force this to occur .
They must orient their research toward productive areas that create new products , improve our wellbeing , and expand the economy .
Their faculties will be forced to move in the same direction and produce better workers for industry .
The doom-and-gloom orientation of much of our university Earth science research today is poisonous and destructive .
The media have made scientists into gods that spout “ truth ” and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possible , as we have seen , scientists only propose temporary ideas and then attempt to disprove them .
Truths , or more accurately facts , only exist until disproven .
Politicians choose scientists that “ prove ” things convenient to politicians .
Witness the corruption of the scientists in the IPCC , as described in Chapter 7 and elsewhere in the book .
Socrates was a scientist who was killed by politicians in 399BC .
Socrates believed that people should question everything .
His discussions were full of questions , the questions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his way of learning and teaching .
He never proved anything , but he learned .
Finally , by questioning the local gods and religion , he was killed .
He defied the consensus with his skepticism and died for it ( World History edu , 2020 ) .
Scientific debate is essential , and the less popular debater should not be jailed or killed .
The public and the news media , who should be asking probing questions , have become convinced that they can not understand science .
They are reduced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sound bites .
With a little work , most lay people can understand scientific papers and they should try .
Relying on politicians , scientists , and the media to tell us what is happening is not acceptable .
Scientists should write more that can be understood by lay people , as John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius did .
Scientists should graduate from writing plots for disaster movies to working to improve our lives .
The news media are awful at writing about science because they often have no interest in what is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This opinion is condensed from Chapter 8 of Politics and Climate Change : A History The bibliography can be downloaded here .

Opinion by Andy May
I wrote my latest book, Politics and Climate Change: A History, because I recognized that government funding of scientific research was corrupting science. We were warned this might happen by President Eisenhower in his farewell address to the public, where he said:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.” (Eisenhower, 1961)
How right he was.
Federal money allows unelected and protected civil service bureaucrats to control scientific research. They dictate the projects, and often outcomes. They use selective leaks to the press to embarrass any elected politicians who try to interfere with their control over research. The bureaucrats trade in fear and relish it. Politicians who disagree with them are suppressing or ignoring “science.” To them science is not a search for the truth, it is a dogma that must be believed. Worse, they believe a consensus of experts is scientific fact. Science is a method of disproving consensus opinion with observational facts, analysis, and reason. It is a methodology, honed over centuries, that allows one person to show everyone else they are wrong. Science is the opposite of political consensus.
Government money clearly does not improve research, the theoretical estimates of the impact of man-made CO 2 have not narrowed in 41 years, as we discussed in our last two posts, here and here. Despite billions in government spending, the IPCC AR5 report (IPCC, 2013) still says the impact of doubling CO 2 is between 1.5°C and 4.5°C, exactly the same range given in the Charney Report (Charney, et al., 1979). Empirical observation-based estimates, like the one by Nic Lewis and Judith Curry (Lewis & Curry, 2018), have narrowed, but these were not government funded. The funding did not improve science, it was not intended to improve the science, it was political.
The bureaucrats use an ignorant and compliant news media to demonize any privately funded scientific research as “corrupted” by “evil” corporations. The bureaucrats enlist the support of non-profit activists, supported by giant foundations, owned, and controlled by billionaires. These billionaires seek influence and political power. The non-profits, in turn, lobby the press to get their version of the story out. Every company doing independent research is compared to an evil tobacco company and accused of lying to the public. The book contains many examples of this.
This demonization is an attempt to deny corporations, farmers, and workers a voice in debates over government regulations and environmental issues. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a left-wing advocacy non-profit organization that pretends to be scientific. It is well known for slanting its “research” to get desired results (Activist Facts, 2020). Their report, Heads They Win, Tails We Lose (Grifo, Halpern, & Hansel, 2012), is a blatant attempt to suppress any scientific debate of government regulations by private corporations. The science is not debated or explained, one can imagine journalists and non-profits funded by billionaires saying, “The public doesn’t need to understand this, we tell them what to think!”
In the words of the Australian wordsmith, Joanne Nova:
“A trial without a defense is a sham Business without competition is a monopoly Science without debate is propaganda“
Remember this the next time someone says the “science is settled.”
Grifo, et al. complain that there is “inappropriate influence of companies with a financial stake in the outcome.” If the companies have a financial stake in the outcome, they should be involved in the regulatory debate, how can it be otherwise in a republic? These companies have a first amendment right to be involved. Grifo, et al. are demanding what President Eisenhower feared, “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite” (Eisenhower, 1961).
President Eisenhower had two fears, he was worried that scientists would take over public policy and that government officials would control scientific research and outcomes. We now have a devilish combination of the two.
Why have privately funded research?
The UCS fears that companies will be dishonest. They do not believe companies should use litigation to threaten their opponents into being silent, change their views, or destroy their reputations. They also fear that corporations will not be transparent (Grifo, Halpern, & Hansel, 2012, p. 45). Yet as explained in Chapter 3 of our book, the UCS did all these things when they attacked ExxonMobil in the “ExxonKnew” campaign. We expect people to be aggressive in a debate, but we need the debate, and we need both sides to be in it. If one side is excluded or suppressed in any fashion, our republic is gone, and a dictatorship or oligarchy is formed.
In the 19th and pre-WWII 20th century universities and private sector corporations and individuals worked closely together on research and academic programs. This was a good combination; universities tailored their degree programs and their research toward what industry needed. This supplied the corporations with well-trained employees and helped develop new products that improved the world.
The post-war explosion of federal funding of research is beginning to slow and simultaneously business funding has been increasing since about 2005. This is a good trend, but unfortunately, federal spending on research is still almost double corporate spending (Mervis, 2017). As a result, university research is still more oriented toward government projects than business ventures and the government projects tend toward fearmongering projects like climate change, rather than projects that create new products and better society. We believe government funding of research should be no more than corporate funding, and ideally zero because the government tends to fund projects that are political, destructive, and divisive.
Japan (Kazuyuki & Shingo, 2011) and China have many business-oriented university projects with American companies. However, the projects in China are often with American companies like Microsoft or Google and are designed to steal U.S. technology (Song, 2008). Estimates vary, but Chinese intellectual property theft amounts to $225 billion to $600 billion per year according to many sources (Huang & Smith, 2019). According to the National Law Review:
“China’s typical modus operandi is to steal American IP, replicate it, replace the U.S. company originating that IP in the Chinese domestic market, then displace the United States in the global market.” (Laufman, Casino, & Kasdan, 2020)
In the United States, liberal non-profit organizations, the news media, and some in government have driven a wedge between the natural collaboration of universities and business by demonizing the businesses and any funding they provide to universities. This has hurt the businesses, the universities, and research in general. It only helps our global competitors. University climate change research is oriented toward creating elaborate scenarios that predict the end of the earth. The scenarios are used to try and eliminate millions of jobs in the fossil fuel industry. They want to create fear in the public and make them more manageable. This increases government power since the public will often give up their rights and their jobs to gain security.
In the 1970s, the news media predicted we would all die due to global cooling as explained in Chapter 6 of our book. Some scientists even blamed human emissions of CO 2 for the cooling. The media love a good disaster prediction and if humans are to blame, the story is even better. Then warming began and again CO 2 was the reason. Now we are all going to die from CO 2 -caused global warming. The shameless media didn’t apologize or even blink, they published that as well. When global cooling begins again, as it inevitably will, count on the media to find a compliant scientist to blame CO 2 .
It isn’t just the government funding. Media attention motivates universities to come up with scary end-of-the-world stories, rather than products that improve and save lives. Media attention means more government money. As government money begins to drive university research, the universities become more isolated from the businesses they are supposed to be training employees for. Students want high-profile government jobs so they can save the world and ignore the more beneficial and productive jobs in industry. Those jobs go overseas.
University tuition and costs have gone up, but even accounting for increasing college costs, on average attending college is still worth it (Abel & Deitz, 2014). This may not be the case in the future, technology may erode the premium that college graduates can demand in the marketplace (Staton, 2014).
This is all happening as the United States has allowed our technology to be stolen by China and other countries. Onerous regulations, justified by sketchy and secret EPA funded research have forced high-paying, high value-add, manufacturing overseas. Other excessive regulations, often designed and justified with secret government scientific research, have made some extraction businesses (mining, oil, and gas) in the United States excessively expensive or economically impossible.
We are not only sending technology, manufacturing, and extraction overseas, we are simultaneously killing it in the United States and in Europe. As high value-add jobs and high salaries leave, the value of a university education becomes less. Service industry jobs, such as mowing lawns, waitressing, or becoming a store clerk, pay less and these are the jobs laid off technology, manufacturing, and extraction labor are forced into. These jobs do not require university degrees, but many with college degrees are forced into them when the sectors they work in disappear. The universities helped engineer the decline in western technology, manufacturing, and extraction and now they are engineering their own decline.
Businesses are far less likely to trust university educations as they become less involved in degree programs. Students are graduating with more debt as costs go up and make less income to pay it back. Many degrees have become valueless. It has been estimated that student debt exceeds 1.5 trillion dollars in the U.S. (Hanson, 2020). This debt slows home buying, marriage and child-rearing, the most important stimulants to our economy.
Victor Davis Hanson speculated in National Review that universities are sowing the seeds of their own obsolescence (Hanson, 2020). He is correct. To make universities more relevant to our nation, youth, and economy, we must drastically reduce or eliminate government funded university research.
Defense research, of necessity, must remain under government control and must be done in secret. But, except for defense, the government should withdraw from research funding. Universities need to reform and enlarge their relationships with private industry. Cutting off government funding of research would force this to occur. They must orient their research toward productive areas that create new products, improve our wellbeing, and expand the economy. Their faculties will be forced to move in the same direction and produce better workers for industry. The doom-and-gloom orientation of much of our university Earth science research today is poisonous and destructive.
The media have made scientists into gods that spout “truth” and “prove” things. Neither is possible, as we have seen, scientists only propose temporary ideas and then attempt to disprove them. Truths, or more accurately facts, only exist until disproven. Politicians choose scientists that “prove” things convenient to politicians. Witness the corruption of the scientists in the IPCC, as described in Chapter 7 and elsewhere in the book.
Socrates was a scientist who was killed by politicians in 399BC. Socrates believed that people should question everything. His discussions were full of questions, the questions led to more questions, it was his way of learning and teaching. He never proved anything, but he learned. Finally, by questioning the local gods and religion, he was killed. He defied the consensus with his skepticism and died for it (World History edu, 2020). Scientific debate is essential, and the less popular debater should not be jailed or killed.
The public and the news media, who should be asking probing questions, have become convinced that they cannot understand science. They are reduced to asking scientists to spoon feed them sound bites. With a little work, most lay people can understand scientific papers and they should try. Relying on politicians, scientists, and the media to tell us what is happening is not acceptable. Scientists should write more that can be understood by lay people, as John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius did. Scientists should graduate from writing plots for disaster movies to working to improve our lives. The news media are awful at writing about science because they often have no interest in what is true, they just want attention.
This opinion is condensed from Chapter 8 of Politics and Climate Change: A History
The bibliography can be downloaded here.
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wattsupwiththat--2020-11-15--Atmospheric rivers help create massive holes in Antarctic sea ice

Warm , moist rivers of air may have continent-wide effects and influence climate change Warm , moist rivers of air in Antarctica play a key role in creating massive holes in sea ice in the Weddell Sea and may influence ocean conditions around the vast continent as well as climate change , according to Rutgers co-authored research .
Scientists studied the role of long , intense plumes of warm , moist air – known as atmospheric rivers – in creating enormous openings in sea ice .
They focused on the Weddell Sea region of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polynyas ) infrequently develop during the winter .
A large hole in this area was first observed in 1973 and a hole developed again in the late winter and early spring of 2017 .
In the first study of its kind , published in the journal Science Advances , scientists found that repeated strong atmospheric rivers during late August through mid-September 2017 played a crucial role in forming the sea ice hole .
These rivers brought warm , moist air from the coast of South America to the polar environment , warming the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to melting .
“ Polynyas strongly influence the physical and ecological dynamics of the Southern Ocean , ” said co-author Kyle Mattingly , a post-doctoral researcher at the Rutgers Institute of Earth , Ocean , and Atmospheric Sciences .
“ They serve as giant ‘ windows ’ in the sea ice that allow large amounts of heat to move from the ocean to the atmosphere , modifying regional and global ocean circulation .
They also affect the timing and magnitude of phytoplankton ( algae ) blooms , which are the base of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pave the way for greater understanding of climate variability and climate change in these regions.
” Previous studies have found that atmospheric rivers influence melting of West Antarctic land ice and ice shelves , and the new study builds on those findings by showing their effects on Antarctic sea ice for the first time .
The rivers are thousands of miles long and the sea ice holes cover thousands of square miles , usually at specific locations that are primed by local ocean circulation conditions .
West Antarctica , an enormous ice sheet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and contributing to global sea-level rise , and the melting has accelerated in the 21st century .
If the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet melted , the ocean level would rise by about 200 feet , according to the National Snow & Ice Data Center .
Sea-level rise and flooding from coastal storms threaten coastal communities worldwide , especially in low-lying areas .
Under projected future climate change , atmospheric rivers are predicted to become more frequent , longer , wider and more effective in moving high levels of water vapor toward the Antarctic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the intensity of precipitation .
In general , where they make landfall is predicted to shift toward the poles , and the effect of climate change on sea ice holes in the Weddell Sea and elsewhere in the Southern Ocean is an important area for future research .
Co-authors include scientists at Khalifa University of Science and Technology , Stevens Institute of Technology and the Australian Antarctic Division and Australian Antarctic Program Partnership .

Warm, moist rivers of air may have continent-wide effects and influence climate change
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
Research News
IMAGE: A BAND OF CLOUDS IN AN ATMOSPHERIC RIVER EXTENDING FROM SOUTH AMERICA TO THE ANTARCTIC SEA ICE ZONE ON SEPT. 16, 2017. view more CREDIT: NASA
Warm, moist rivers of air in Antarctica play a key role in creating massive holes in sea ice in the Weddell Sea and may influence ocean conditions around the vast continent as well as climate change, according to Rutgers co-authored research.
Scientists studied the role of long, intense plumes of warm, moist air – known as atmospheric rivers – in creating enormous openings in sea ice. They focused on the Weddell Sea region of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, where these sea ice holes (called polynyas) infrequently develop during the winter. A large hole in this area was first observed in 1973 and a hole developed again in the late winter and early spring of 2017.
In the first study of its kind, published in the journal Science Advances, scientists found that repeated strong atmospheric rivers during late August through mid-September 2017 played a crucial role in forming the sea ice hole. These rivers brought warm, moist air from the coast of South America to the polar environment, warming the sea ice surface and making it vulnerable to melting.
“Polynyas strongly influence the physical and ecological dynamics of the Southern Ocean,” said co-author Kyle Mattingly, a post-doctoral researcher at the Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. “They serve as giant ‘windows’ in the sea ice that allow large amounts of heat to move from the ocean to the atmosphere, modifying regional and global ocean circulation. They also affect the timing and magnitude of phytoplankton (algae) blooms, which are the base of the marine food web. Our study will pave the way for greater understanding of climate variability and climate change in these regions.”
Previous studies have found that atmospheric rivers influence melting of West Antarctic land ice and ice shelves, and the new study builds on those findings by showing their effects on Antarctic sea ice for the first time. The rivers are thousands of miles long and the sea ice holes cover thousands of square miles, usually at specific locations that are primed by local ocean circulation conditions.
West Antarctica, an enormous ice sheet that sits on land, is melting and contributing to global sea-level rise, and the melting has accelerated in the 21st century. If the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet melted, the ocean level would rise by about 200 feet, according to the National Snow & Ice Data Center. Sea-level rise and flooding from coastal storms threaten coastal communities worldwide, especially in low-lying areas.
Under projected future climate change, atmospheric rivers are predicted to become more frequent, longer, wider and more effective in moving high levels of water vapor toward the Antarctic Ocean and continent, along with increasing the intensity of precipitation. In general, where they make landfall is predicted to shift toward the poles, and the effect of climate change on sea ice holes in the Weddell Sea and elsewhere in the Southern Ocean is an important area for future research.
###
Co-authors include scientists at Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Stevens Institute of Technology and the Australian Antarctic Division and Australian Antarctic Program Partnership.
From EurekAlert!
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wattsupwiththat--2020-11-15--The Guardian: “China has started to ‘walk the walk’ on climate crisis”

No criticism for China ?
The Guardian is praising China for cleaning up pollution , and attacking the USA over President Trump leaving the Paris Agreement .
But as is often the case with China , the rosy picture painted by The Guardian and their Chinese government approved “ activist ” source Ma Jun does not appear to match the reality of what is actually happening .
Ma Jun : China has started to ‘ walk the walk ’ on climate crisis US dropped the environmental ball under Trump , but Biden victory means the two countries can work together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Ma Jun experienced a strange role reversal during Donald Trump ’ s presidency .
Over more than two decades as one of China ’ s top environmental campaigners , American encouragement for Beijing to cut carbon emissions and temper the damage of rapid industrialisation had been part of the background music .
Ma never imagined he would see the US renege on environmental commitments while China began to face up to the challenge .
“ It ’ s been frustrating , ” says Ma of the past four years as we speak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beijing audible in the background .
“ When it comes to environmental collaboration between the governments , it has been hard to do anything.
” “ China has started changing its course .
We have seen a lot more ‘ walk the walk ’ action .
China has adopted some tough measures to try to deal with the pollution and environmental damage problem .
And we have seen some progress made because of that , ” Ma says .
Undoubtedly , many challenges remain .
Environmental concerns surround the multibillion-dollar belt and road @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s role at the heart of international trade for the next century .
Parts of the illegal wildlife trade centre on China , driving species extinction across the planet .
The current pandemic has only heightened the scrutiny .
Apart from a minor slap for the Belt and Road initiative , the Guardian seems happy to equate pollution cleanup with climate action , at least when it comes to China .
But as is often the case with China , reality appears to be a little different to the spin .
… Whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the idea , important industry players are making a push for significantly increased limits on coal-fired power capacity .
The industry group for China ’ s power sector giants , China Electricity Council , has argued that coal-power capacity “ will ” reach 1,300GW by 2030 , up from 1,050GW today .
This target is based on its projections for annual electricity demand and the need for capacity to meet peak loads .
A cap of 1,300GW in 2030 would imply the addition of well over 300GW of new coal-fired capacity this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of older plants .
China Electric Power Planning and Engineering Institute ( EPPEI ) , the authoritative consultancy that has designed most of China ’ s coal power units and grid infrastructure , warned in June 2019 that 16 provinces in the country should increase new capacity and start working on a new batch of thermal power plants to avoid the possibility of shortages in the next two to three years .
The thinktank affiliated with China ’ s giant grid utility company , State Grid Corporation of China ( SGCC ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a July 2019 intervention : “ [ China ] should not close coal power plants at a large scale too soon or too fast and , by around 2030 , we should maintain around 1,200GW of coal power to ensure the reliability of the power system , and key power generating regions should retain some backup and reserve capacity.
” However , the thinktank did not clearly define what “ too soon ” or “ too fast ” would mean in practice .
… There is no contradiction between China burning more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up their air pollution – China have become world leaders in constructing ultra-clean high efficiency coal plants .
They have had a lot of recent practice building them .
There is also a lot of talk about how China ’ s renewable push will displace other forms of power generation , but we ’ ve all seen how that has worked out in the West – even Green Germany has started building coal plants again , and clearing ancient forests to mine the coal beneath the trees .
If Germany ’ s legendary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if the desperate German quest for grid stability and energy security has driven the Germans to chop down a stand of trees which predates the dawn of civilisation , to dig out the coal beneath the trees , what chance does anyone else have of making renewables work ?

Ma Jun, Director, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, People’s Republic of China at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, China 2012. By World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland – Cropped from File:Ma Jun – Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2012.jpg, original source Asia’s Digital Age, CC BY-SA 2.0, link
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
No criticism for China? The Guardian is praising China for cleaning up pollution, and attacking the USA over President Trump leaving the Paris Agreement. But as is often the case with China, the rosy picture painted by The Guardian and their Chinese government approved “activist” source Ma Jun does not appear to match the reality of what is actually happening.
Ma Jun: China has started to ‘walk the walk’ on climate crisis US dropped the environmental ball under Trump, but Biden victory means the two countries can work together for a green recovery, says campaigner. Patrick Greenfield
Fri 13 Nov 2020 16.00 AEDT Ma Jun experienced a strange role reversal during Donald Trump’s presidency. Over more than two decades as one of China’s top environmental campaigners, American encouragement for Beijing to cut carbon emissions and temper the damage of rapid industrialisation had been part of the background music. Ma never imagined he would see the US renege on environmental commitments while China began to face up to the challenge. “It’s been frustrating,” says Ma of the past four years as we speak on the phone, the bustle of Beijing audible in the background. “When it comes to environmental collaboration between the governments, it has been hard to do anything.” … “China has started changing its course. We have seen a lot more ‘walk the walk’ action. China has adopted some tough measures to try to deal with the pollution and environmental damage problem. And we have seen some progress made because of that,” Ma says. … Undoubtedly, many challenges remain. Environmental concerns surround the multibillion-dollar belt and road initiative – likely to guarantee China’s role at the heart of international trade for the next century. Parts of the illegal wildlife trade centre on China, driving species extinction across the planet. The current pandemic has only heightened the scrutiny. … Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/13/ma-jun-china-is-beginning-to-walk-the-walk-on-climate-crisis-action-aoe
Apart from a minor slap for the Belt and Road initiative, the Guardian seems happy to equate pollution cleanup with climate action, at least when it comes to China.
But as is often the case with China, reality appears to be a little different to the spin.
… Whether or not there is high-level political support for the idea, important industry players are making a push for significantly increased limits on coal-fired power capacity. The industry group for China’s power sector giants, China Electricity Council, has argued that coal-power capacity “will” reach 1,300GW by 2030, up from 1,050GW today. This target is based on its projections for annual electricity demand and the need for capacity to meet peak loads. A cap of 1,300GW in 2030 would imply the addition of well over 300GW of new coal-fired capacity this decade, after accounting for the retirement of older plants. China Electric Power Planning and Engineering Institute (EPPEI), the authoritative consultancy that has designed most of China’s coal power units and grid infrastructure, warned in June 2019 that 16 provinces in the country should increase new capacity and start working on a new batch of thermal power plants to avoid the possibility of shortages in the next two to three years. The thinktank affiliated with China’s giant grid utility company, State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), stressed the need to maintain coal-power capacity in a July 2019 intervention: “[China] should not close coal power plants at a large scale too soon or too fast and, by around 2030, we should maintain around 1,200GW of coal power to ensure the reliability of the power system, and key power generating regions should retain some backup and reserve capacity.” However, the thinktank did not clearly define what “too soon” or “too fast” would mean in practice. … Read more: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-will-china-build-hundreds-of-new-coal-plants-in-the-2020s
There is no contradiction between China burning more coal yet at the same time cleaning up their air pollution – China have become world leaders in constructing ultra-clean high efficiency coal plants. They have had a lot of recent practice building them.
There is also a lot of talk about how China’s renewable push will displace other forms of power generation, but we’ve all seen how that has worked out in the West – even Green Germany has started building coal plants again, and clearing ancient forests to mine the coal beneath the trees.
If Germany’s legendary engineers cannot make renewables work, if the desperate German quest for grid stability and energy security has driven the Germans to chop down a stand of trees which predates the dawn of civilisation, to dig out the coal beneath the trees, what chance does anyone else have of making renewables work?
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wattsupwiththat--2020-11-14--The Cartoons by Josh Calendar 2021

The Cartoons by Josh Calendar 2021

What a crazy year it has been and still is !
The most therapeutic way to remember it all next @ @ @ @ @ Cartoon by Josh Calendar 2021 – you can buy one from Josh ’ s website @ @ @ @ @ is A4 , opening to A3 in size ( 42 x 29.7 cms ) and @ @ @ @ @ gsm paper by my brilliant local printer .
Post and packing is included in the @ @ @ @ @ of the cartoons are about the pandemic and Lockdowns , but there are also , @ @ @ @ @ Energy , the Environment and Climate Change as well as UK and US politics .

What a crazy year it has been and still is! The most therapeutic way to remember it all next year is to buy a Cartoon by Josh Calendar 2021 – you can buy one from Josh’s website right here.
The Calendar is A4, opening to A3 in size (42 x 29.7 cms ) and is beautifully printed on 170 gsm paper by my brilliant local printer. Post and packing is included in the prices. This year many of the cartoons are about the pandemic and Lockdowns, but there are also, of course, cartoons on Energy, the Environment and Climate Change as well as UK and US politics.
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wattsupwiththat--2020-11-14--Measuring the true cost of conservation

Measuring the true cost of conservation

Environmental conservation expert discusses how new research will play a key role in promoting a greener future For decades , scientists have been warning about potential future effects of global climate change , including more frequent wildfires , longer periods of drought , and sharp increases in the number , duration , and intensity of tropical storms .
And since the start of 2020 , we ’ ve seen natural disasters in record-breaking numbers , from the wildfires that ravaged California and Colorado , to most consecutive days with temperatures skyrocketing over 100 degrees in places like Arizona .
Environmental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , national stage : issues of climate change and conservation received more attention during the first presidential debate on September 29 , 2020 than in any other presidential debate in history .
When it comes to the topic of safeguarding the environment , Boston University Earth & Environment Assistant Professor Christoph Nolte is hardly a newcomer .
He ’ s spent the majority of his academic career studying the effectiveness of conservation , asking key questions about where concerted efforts take place , and what difference they make for our world at large @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy , Assistant Professor Nolte has now created the first high-resolution map of land value in the United states — a tool he says will better estimate environmental conservation costs , inform policy recommendations , and help peer academics conduct their own research on rebuilding and protecting what ’ s left of our natural resources and the biodiversity within our ecosystems .
Boston University interviewed Nolte to learn more about his research and its impact .
You ’ ve created the first high-resolution map of U.S. land value .
What spurred this research @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of cost data in conservation research .
Land conservation decisions are about trade-offs .
If we wish to keep forest carbon on the ground , species ’ habitats intact , wetlands functional , or landscapes beautiful , conservation usually means that we also give up something : the benefits from alternative land uses .
Arguments in favor of more conservation are widespread .
For instance , Harvard University ’ s E.O .
Wilson suggests that 50 % of the Earth should be protected .
However , those points are incomplete if they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be giving up where , who wins and who loses , and who gets to decide .
Ignoring costs can make us blind to the negative effects of regulation , often borne by those without a voice .
In the case of voluntary conservation programs , ignoring cost can mean that we end up with a proposal , but insufficient funding .
If we want to make informed societal decisions about conservation efforts , we need reliable , publicly accessible estimates of its cost .
Unfortunately , it is difficult to get good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t freely share their financial records .
Land prices can be good substitutes for data on conservation cost , but such data is valuable , sensitive , and unavailable to the public in most countries .
So when large-scale land price data in the United States became available to academics for free for the first time , this created an exciting opportunity to create the first high-resolution map of land value and see how well it would predict conservation cost .
What data did you use to generate this map ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Perhaps the most important is a nationwide database of properties and their sales .
This dataset came from Zillow , the real estate company , which obtains the data from public records and makes it available to academics and nonprofits .
In my research group , we developed a system that links this data to digital maps of property boundaries .
This allows us to obtain detailed information on land characteristics : buildings , terrain , land cover , road access , water access , flood risk , local demographics , nearby @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data is fed into a machine learning algorithm , which learns to predict sales prices from its knowledge of the characteristics of each property .
After the algorithm is trained , I let it predict the sales prices of every property in the country .
The result is this map .
What does this map tell us about environmental conservation costs ?
Why is it essential to have accurate land value data ?
I found that most of the cost estimates that were used in the literature have underestimated the cost of conservation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is particularly large near cities , where land values tend to be much higher than previous proxies suggested .
In other words , it means that we will need substantially higher levels of funding than previously assumed if we want to achieve certain environmental goals , such as protecting all floodplains from development or protecting species habitat in the face of climate change .
How can your research help to educate policymakers on future conservation plans and priorities ?
Why is this important ?
I believe that it is good to be realistic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can achieve .
For instance , in August , congress passed the Great American Outdoors Act , a historic bipartisan bill that makes $ 4.5 billion dollars of federal funding available for land protection .
If previous estimates of conservation cost were correct , this budget could help reach us proposed habitat protection needs for all species in the U.S .
However , the new cost data suggests that even such an unprecedented budget covers merely 5 % of what is actually needed .
That ’ s a big difference !
More accurate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where conservation investments should go .
When I reproduced recent work , about one quarter of the sites recommended for species protection shifted from one location to another , for instance , from expensive Long Island to slightly less expensive Southeastern Massachusetts .
While this result should be taken with a grain of salt , it shows that the quality of cost data matters .
The good news is that the cost map is now published , so anyone can incorporate it in their analyses and revisit their earlier findings .
How can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about environmental conservation as it relates to their day to day lives ?
Data on the cost of conservation helps us be real about the actual magnitude and severity of the conservation problem we are facing as a society .
Many of us feel positively about the benefits that conserved lands provide .
However , not all of us are willing to make sacrifices to protect these lands , whether it is by reducing our own ecological footprints , or by voting in favor of local land use regulations or measures that increase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ midst of this , we are exposed to advertising that suggests that we can cheaply “ offset ” our effects on the environment — for instance , that we can become “ carbon-neutral ” for a few dollars by purchasing carbon offsets when we fly .
A closer look at many cheap offsetting schemes suggests that they don ’ t actually reduce emission by very much .
But their existence has the side-effect that we are getting our hopes up that there might be a cheap way to get around the conservation problem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rare , and trade-offs are real .
This might be difficult to accept , but we should not ignore it , even if we so desperately want to feel good about our own levels of consumption .
Despite costs being much higher than originally estimated , why is conservation still such an important investment ?
Answers to this question have two dimensions : science and values .
Science helps us understand the consequences of our actions .
If we want to mitigate climate change , we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by conserving forests and wetlands , reducing urban sprawl , or increasing opportunities for local recreation .
If we want to prevent species extinctions , we need to protect and restore threatened habitat , conserve lands in climate refugia , and build ecological corridors , so species can move as temperatures rise .
And if we want to avoid damages from flooding , we should protect more floodplains from development .
Science tells us about the consequences of our actions , but it doesn ’ t tell us what to do .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ we , as individuals and as a society , care about these outcomes , and what we are willing to give up for them .
There are 8 billion of us .
What each of us cares about is shaped by our diverse beliefs and morals , our upbringing , the people in our lives , the media we consume , the things we enjoy doing , etc .
Given my affiliation , it probably won ’ t be a surprise that I feel positively about policies that reduce our collective human footprint @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anyone ’ s individual worldview to a standard .
Instead , I think what it is desirable to have a broader societal conservation of well-informed citizens that make those decisions together .
My job , alongside that of thousands of other colleagues , is to provide the tools that can help us gain clarity about what ’ s at stake .
Are there any other surprising findings ?
Could this data have other applications in areas outside of conservation ( for example , real estate ) ?
I was surprised by the predictive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ validation step , I tested whether estimated land values could predict the actual cost of more than 4,000 public land acquisitions for conservation that were distributed all over the country .
I expected that the predictions would outperform the proxies used in earlier studies , which they did .
But to my surprise , the predictions even outperformed the estimates of tax assessors .
Tax assessors are tasked with estimating the value of all properties in a given jurisdiction for taxation purposes , and part of that process often involves estimating the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Because assessors work locally and know their area much better than a national dataset does , I would have expected their estimates to vastly outperform mine .
However , instead , I found that mine were 29 % more accurate .
This does raise the question of why these differences exist and opens up new interesting avenues for scrutinizing existing methods for property taxation .
In your opinion , what is the single most important conservation issue facing the world today ?
It would be difficult to answer this question without pointing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ else that we think about in conservation .
If we don ’ t stop climate change , conserving species where they are today won ’ t conserve them in the future .
Future flooding and sea level rise will be a lot less manageable .
And we worry a lot more about the conservation of forests and wetlands today because we know that their loss fuels this fire .
At a project level , if you want to persuade people that conservation is a good idea , talking about rare or interesting species @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might get you more traction .
But many of those efforts might be a drop in the bucket if we don ’ t address this massive elephant in the room .
What do you hope people take away from this project ?
What are you planning to research next ?
For me , for my students , and for colleagues at universities all over the country , the synthesis of this rich database has created novel opportunities for empirical research that were unthinkable just a few years ago .
We currently support research @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oil spills and hazardous waste , the economic impacts of land regulations , the benefits of water quality and priorities for emissions reduction from forest protection .
My own curiosity has mostly to do with projects that help people protect the places and species they love : identifying opportunities for protection , scrutinizing the effectiveness of existing programs , and reducing the informational barriers to get conservation done .
It is an exciting time to do this research , and I ’ m glad that so many fantastic colleagues around the country are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ together .

Environmental conservation expert discusses how new research will play a key role in promoting a greener future
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Research NewsSHARE PRINT E-MAIL
IMAGE: ESTIMATED FAIR MARKET VALUE OF ALL PROPERTIES IN THE UNITED STATES (3D VISUALIZATION). view more CREDIT: PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRISTOPH NOLTE, BOSTON UNIVERSITY.
For decades, scientists have been warning about potential future effects of global climate change, including more frequent wildfires, longer periods of drought, and sharp increases in the number, duration, and intensity of tropical storms. And since the start of 2020, we’ve seen natural disasters in record-breaking numbers, from the wildfires that ravaged California and Colorado, to most consecutive days with temperatures skyrocketing over 100 degrees in places like Arizona. Environmental concerns are continually creeping to a broader, national stage: issues of climate change and conservation received more attention during the first presidential debate on September 29, 2020 than in any other presidential debate in history.
When it comes to the topic of safeguarding the environment, Boston University Earth & Environment Assistant Professor Christoph Nolte is hardly a newcomer. He’s spent the majority of his academic career studying the effectiveness of conservation, asking key questions about where concerted efforts take place, and what difference they make for our world at large. To inform future decisions about conservation policy, Assistant Professor Nolte has now created the first high-resolution map of land value in the United states — a tool he says will better estimate environmental conservation costs, inform policy recommendations, and help peer academics conduct their own research on rebuilding and protecting what’s left of our natural resources and the biodiversity within our ecosystems. Boston University interviewed Nolte to learn more about his research and its impact.
You’ve created the first high-resolution map of U.S. land value. What spurred this research?
I was dissatisfied with the quality of cost data in conservation research. Land conservation decisions are about trade-offs. If we wish to keep forest carbon on the ground, species’ habitats intact, wetlands functional, or landscapes beautiful, conservation usually means that we also give up something: the benefits from alternative land uses. Arguments in favor of more conservation are widespread. For instance, Harvard University’s E.O. Wilson suggests that 50% of the Earth should be protected. However, those points are incomplete if they are not also explicit about what we should be giving up where, who wins and who loses, and who gets to decide.
Ignoring costs can make us blind to the negative effects of regulation, often borne by those without a voice. In the case of voluntary conservation programs, ignoring cost can mean that we end up with a proposal, but insufficient funding. If we want to make informed societal decisions about conservation efforts, we need reliable, publicly accessible estimates of its cost.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to get good data for conservation cost. Conservation organizations don’t freely share their financial records. Land prices can be good substitutes for data on conservation cost, but such data is valuable, sensitive, and unavailable to the public in most countries. So when large-scale land price data in the United States became available to academics for free for the first time, this created an exciting opportunity to create the first high-resolution map of land value and see how well it would predict conservation cost.
What data did you use to generate this map?
There are many datasets behind this map. Perhaps the most important is a nationwide database of properties and their sales. This dataset came from Zillow, the real estate company, which obtains the data from public records and makes it available to academics and nonprofits. In my research group, we developed a system that links this data to digital maps of property boundaries. This allows us to obtain detailed information on land characteristics: buildings, terrain, land cover, road access, water access, flood risk, local demographics, nearby amenities, and so on. This data is fed into a machine learning algorithm, which learns to predict sales prices from its knowledge of the characteristics of each property. After the algorithm is trained, I let it predict the sales prices of every property in the country. The result is this map.
What does this map tell us about environmental conservation costs? Why is it essential to have accurate land value data?
I found that most of the cost estimates that were used in the literature have underestimated the cost of conservation in the United States. This underestimation is particularly large near cities, where land values tend to be much higher than previous proxies suggested. In other words, it means that we will need substantially higher levels of funding than previously assumed if we want to achieve certain environmental goals, such as protecting all floodplains from development or protecting species habitat in the face of climate change.
How can your research help to educate policymakers on future conservation plans and priorities? Why is this important?
I believe that it is good to be realistic about what a given level of funding can achieve. For instance, in August, congress passed the Great American Outdoors Act, a historic bipartisan bill that makes $4.5 billion dollars of federal funding available for land protection. If previous estimates of conservation cost were correct, this budget could help reach us proposed habitat protection needs for all species in the U.S. However, the new cost data suggests that even such an unprecedented budget covers merely 5% of what is actually needed. That’s a big difference!
More accurate cost data can also change recommendations about where conservation investments should go. When I reproduced recent work, about one quarter of the sites recommended for species protection shifted from one location to another, for instance, from expensive Long Island to slightly less expensive Southeastern Massachusetts. While this result should be taken with a grain of salt, it shows that the quality of cost data matters. The good news is that the cost map is now published, so anyone can incorporate it in their analyses and revisit their earlier findings.
How can people best use this data when thinking about environmental conservation as it relates to their day to day lives?
Data on the cost of conservation helps us be real about the actual magnitude and severity of the conservation problem we are facing as a society. Many of us feel positively about the benefits that conserved lands provide. However, not all of us are willing to make sacrifices to protect these lands, whether it is by reducing our own ecological footprints, or by voting in favor of local land use regulations or measures that increase taxes to fund conservation. In the midst of this, we are exposed to advertising that suggests that we can cheaply “offset” our effects on the environment — for instance, that we can become “carbon-neutral” for a few dollars by purchasing carbon offsets when we fly.
A closer look at many cheap offsetting schemes suggests that they don’t actually reduce emission by very much. But their existence has the side-effect that we are getting our hopes up that there might be a cheap way to get around the conservation problem. In reality, win-win situations are rare, and trade-offs are real. This might be difficult to accept, but we should not ignore it, even if we so desperately want to feel good about our own levels of consumption.
Despite costs being much higher than originally estimated, why is conservation still such an important investment?
Answers to this question have two dimensions: science and values. Science helps us understand the consequences of our actions. If we want to mitigate climate change, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Land conservation can help, for instance, by conserving forests and wetlands, reducing urban sprawl, or increasing opportunities for local recreation. If we want to prevent species extinctions, we need to protect and restore threatened habitat, conserve lands in climate refugia, and build ecological corridors, so species can move as temperatures rise. And if we want to avoid damages from flooding, we should protect more floodplains from development.
Science tells us about the consequences of our actions, but it doesn’t tell us what to do. The more difficult question is how much we, as individuals and as a society, care about these outcomes, and what we are willing to give up for them. There are 8 billion of us. What each of us cares about is shaped by our diverse beliefs and morals, our upbringing, the people in our lives, the media we consume, the things we enjoy doing, etc. Given my affiliation, it probably won’t be a surprise that I feel positively about policies that reduce our collective human footprint, but it is unwise to elevate anyone’s individual worldview to a standard. Instead, I think what it is desirable to have a broader societal conservation of well-informed citizens that make those decisions together. My job, alongside that of thousands of other colleagues, is to provide the tools that can help us gain clarity about what’s at stake.
Are there any other surprising findings? Could this data have other applications in areas outside of conservation (for example, real estate)?
I was surprised by the predictive power of the algorithm. As a validation step, I tested whether estimated land values could predict the actual cost of more than 4,000 public land acquisitions for conservation that were distributed all over the country. I expected that the predictions would outperform the proxies used in earlier studies, which they did. But to my surprise, the predictions even outperformed the estimates of tax assessors. Tax assessors are tasked with estimating the value of all properties in a given jurisdiction for taxation purposes, and part of that process often involves estimating the “fair market value” of each property. Because assessors work locally and know their area much better than a national dataset does, I would have expected their estimates to vastly outperform mine. However, instead, I found that mine were 29% more accurate. This does raise the question of why these differences exist and opens up new interesting avenues for scrutinizing existing methods for property taxation.
In your opinion, what is the single most important conservation issue facing the world today?
It would be difficult to answer this question without pointing towards climate change. It affects everything else that we think about in conservation. If we don’t stop climate change, conserving species where they are today won’t conserve them in the future. Future flooding and sea level rise will be a lot less manageable. And we worry a lot more about the conservation of forests and wetlands today because we know that their loss fuels this fire. At a project level, if you want to persuade people that conservation is a good idea, talking about rare or interesting species, beautiful landscapes, and recreational opportunities might get you more traction. But many of those efforts might be a drop in the bucket if we don’t address this massive elephant in the room.
What do you hope people take away from this project? What are you planning to research next?
For me, for my students, and for colleagues at universities all over the country, the synthesis of this rich database has created novel opportunities for empirical research that were unthinkable just a few years ago. We currently support research on the economic risks from flooding, oil spills and hazardous waste, the economic impacts of land regulations, the benefits of water quality and priorities for emissions reduction from forest protection. My own curiosity has mostly to do with projects that help people protect the places and species they love: identifying opportunities for protection, scrutinizing the effectiveness of existing programs, and reducing the informational barriers to get conservation done. It is an exciting time to do this research, and I’m glad that so many fantastic colleagues around the country are interested in advancing the frontiers of knowledge together.
###
From EurekAlert!
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wattsupwiththat--2020-11-14--Aurora-Chasing Citizen Scientists Help Discover A New Feature of STEVE

In 2018 , a new aurora-like discovery struck the world .
From 2015 to 2016 , citizen scientists reported 30 instances of a purple ribbon in the sky , with a green picket fence structure underneath .
Now named STEVE , or Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement , this phenomenon is still new to scientists , who are working to understand all its details .
What they do know is that STEVE is not a normal aurora – some think maybe it ’ s not an aurora at all – and a new finding about the formation of streaks within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to solving the mystery .
“ Often in physics , we build our understanding then test the extreme cases or test the cases in a different environment , ” Elizabeth MacDonald , a space scientist at NASA ’ s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt , Maryland , explains .
“ STEVE is different than the usual aurora , but it is made of light and it is driven by the auroral system .
In finding these tiny little streaks , we may be learning something fundamentally new in how green auroral light @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little streaks ” are extraordinarily small point-like features within the green picket fence of STEVE .
In a new paper for AGU Advances , researchers share their latest findings on these points .
They suggest the streaks could be moving points of light – elongated in the images due to blur from the cameras .
The tip of the streak in one image will line up with the end of the tail in the next image , contributing to this speculation from the scientists .
However , there are still a lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the green light is a point or indeed a line , is one extra clue to help scientists figure out what causes green light .
“ I ’ m not entirely sure about anything with respect to this phenomenon just yet , ” Joshua Semeter , a professor at Boston University and first author on the paper , said .
“ You have other sequences where it looks like there is a tube-shaped structure that persists from image to image and doesn ’ t seem to conform to a moving point source , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about that yet.
” Two different angles of distinctive green streaks below a STEVE event on Aug. 31 , 2016 , near Carstairs , Alberta , Canada .
Recent research about the formation of these streaks is allowing scientists to learn more about this aurora-like phenomenon.Credits : Copyright Neil Zeller , used with permission STEVE as a whole is something that scientists are still working to label .
Scientists tend to classify optical features in the sky into two categories : airglow and aurora .
When airglow occurs at night , atoms in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their stored energy in the form of light , creating bright swaths of color .
By studying the patterns in airglow , scientists can learn more about that area of the atmosphere , the ionosphere .
To be classified as an aurora , on the other hand , that release of light must be caused by electron bombardment .
These features are formed differently but also look different – airglow can occur across Earth , while auroras form in a broad ring around Earth ’ s magnetic poles .
“ STEVE in general @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of those categories , ” Semeter said .
“ The emissions are coming from mechanisms that we don ’ t fully understand just yet.
” STEVE ’ s purple emissions are likely a result of ions moving at a supersonic speed .
The green emissions seem to be related to eddies , like the ones you might see forming in a river , moving more slowly than the other water around it .
The green features are also moving more slowly than the structures in the purple emissions , and scientists speculate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the space particles – a brew of charged particles and magnetic field , called plasma – at these altitudes .
“ We know this kind of turbulence occurs .
There are people who base their entire careers on studying turbulence in the ionospheric plasma formed by very rapid flows.
” Semeter said .
“ The evidence generally comes from radar measurements .
We don ’ t ever have an optical signature.
” Semeter suggests that when it comes to the appearance of STEVE , the flows in these instances are so extreme , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the atmosphere .
“ This paper is the tip of the iceberg in this new area of these tiny little pieces of the picket fence .
Something we do in physics is try to chip away to increase our understanding , ” MacDonald said .
“ This paper establishes the altitude range and some of the techniques we can use to identify these features , then they can be better resolved in other observations.
” To establish the altitude range and identify these features , the scientists extensively used photos and videos captured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are the ones who brought the STEVE phenomenon to the scientists ’ attention .
Their photos are typically longer time lapse than our traditional scientific observations , ” MacDonald said .
“ Citizen scientists don ’ t get into the patterns that scientists get into .
They do things differently .
They are free to move the camera around and take whatever exposure they want.
” However , to make this new discovery of the points within STEVE , photographers actually took shorter exposure photographs to capture this movement .
To get those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the freezing cold , late at night , waiting for an aurora – or hopefully STEVE – to appear .
While data can indicate if an aurora will show up , indicators for STEVE haven ’ t been identified yet .
However , the aurora chasers show up and take pictures anyway .
Neil Zeller , a photographer and co-author on the paper , says he didn ’ t originally plan to be a citizen scientist .
“ It was just for the beauty of it , ” Zeller explained .
Zeller has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the start .
He showed a picture he took of STEVE to MacDonald years ago , sparking the first research into the phenomena .
Now he ’ s a co-author on this paper .
“ It ’ s an honor , it really is , ” Zeller said about contributing to this research .
“ I tend to take a step back from the scientists doing the work .
I ’ m out there for the beauty of it and to capture these phenomena in the sky.
” This paper also made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – a volunteer database of STEVE observations .
Michael Hunnekuhl , another author on the paper , maintains this database and has contributed to STEVE findings in the past .
Hunnekuhl noticed the streaks in the photographs independently of the scientists on the paper , and his detailed record and triangulation techniques were pivotal in this research .
Zeller and other citizen scientists plan to keep taking and examining those pictures , capturing the beauty of Earth ’ s atmosphere , and MacDonald , Semeter , and other scientists will keep studying them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Banner Image : Taken July 17 , 2018 , at Little Kenosee Lake , Saskatchewan , Canada , this photo shows the tiny green streaks below STEVE .
Neil Zeller , photographer and co-author on the paper , commented “ STEVE was bright and powerful for a full hour that night.
” Credit : Copyright Neil Zeller , used with permission

From NASA
In 2018, a new aurora-like discovery struck the world. From 2015 to 2016, citizen scientists reported 30 instances of a purple ribbon in the sky, with a green picket fence structure underneath. Now named STEVE, or Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, this phenomenon is still new to scientists, who are working to understand all its details. What they do know is that STEVE is not a normal aurora – some think maybe it’s not an aurora at all – and a new finding about the formation of streaks within the structure brings scientists one step closer to solving the mystery.
“Often in physics, we build our understanding then test the extreme cases or test the cases in a different environment,” Elizabeth MacDonald, a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, explains. “STEVE is different than the usual aurora, but it is made of light and it is driven by the auroral system. In finding these tiny little streaks, we may be learning something fundamentally new in how green auroral light can be produced.”
These “tiny little streaks” are extraordinarily small point-like features within the green picket fence of STEVE. In a new paper for AGU Advances, researchers share their latest findings on these points. They suggest the streaks could be moving points of light – elongated in the images due to blur from the cameras. The tip of the streak in one image will line up with the end of the tail in the next image, contributing to this speculation from the scientists. However, there are still a lot of questions to be answered – determining whether the green light is a point or indeed a line, is one extra clue to help scientists figure out what causes green light.
“I’m not entirely sure about anything with respect to this phenomenon just yet,” Joshua Semeter, a professor at Boston University and first author on the paper, said. “You have other sequences where it looks like there is a tube-shaped structure that persists from image to image and doesn’t seem to conform to a moving point source, so we’re not really sure about that yet.”
Two different angles of distinctive green streaks below a STEVE event on Aug. 31, 2016, near Carstairs, Alberta, Canada. Recent research about the formation of these streaks is allowing scientists to learn more about this aurora-like phenomenon.Credits: Copyright Neil Zeller, used with permission
STEVE as a whole is something that scientists are still working to label. Scientists tend to classify optical features in the sky into two categories: airglow and aurora. When airglow occurs at night, atoms in the atmosphere recombine and release some of their stored energy in the form of light, creating bright swaths of color. By studying the patterns in airglow, scientists can learn more about that area of the atmosphere, the ionosphere. To be classified as an aurora, on the other hand, that release of light must be caused by electron bombardment. These features are formed differently but also look different – airglow can occur across Earth, while auroras form in a broad ring around Earth’s magnetic poles.
“STEVE in general appears to not conform well to either one of those categories,” Semeter said. “The emissions are coming from mechanisms that we don’t fully understand just yet.”
STEVE’s purple emissions are likely a result of ions moving at a supersonic speed. The green emissions seem to be related to eddies, like the ones you might see forming in a river, moving more slowly than the other water around it. The green features are also moving more slowly than the structures in the purple emissions, and scientists speculate they could be caused by turbulence in the space particles – a brew of charged particles and magnetic field, called plasma – at these altitudes.
“We know this kind of turbulence occurs. There are people who base their entire careers on studying turbulence in the ionospheric plasma formed by very rapid flows.” Semeter said. “The evidence generally comes from radar measurements. We don’t ever have an optical signature.” Semeter suggests that when it comes to the appearance of STEVE, the flows in these instances are so extreme, that we can actually see them in the atmosphere.
“This paper is the tip of the iceberg in this new area of these tiny little pieces of the picket fence. Something we do in physics is try to chip away to increase our understanding,” MacDonald said. “This paper establishes the altitude range and some of the techniques we can use to identify these features, then they can be better resolved in other observations.”
To establish the altitude range and identify these features, the scientists extensively used photos and videos captured by citizen scientists.
“Citizen scientists are the ones who brought the STEVE phenomenon to the scientists’ attention. Their photos are typically longer time lapse than our traditional scientific observations,” MacDonald said. “Citizen scientists don’t get into the patterns that scientists get into. They do things differently. They are free to move the camera around and take whatever exposure they want.” However, to make this new discovery of the points within STEVE, photographers actually took shorter exposure photographs to capture this movement.
To get those photographs, citizen scientists spend hours in the freezing cold, late at night, waiting for an aurora – or hopefully STEVE – to appear. While data can indicate if an aurora will show up, indicators for STEVE haven’t been identified yet. However, the aurora chasers show up and take pictures anyway.
Neil Zeller, a photographer and co-author on the paper, says he didn’t originally plan to be a citizen scientist. “It was just for the beauty of it,” Zeller explained. Zeller has been involved with the discovery of STEVE from the start. He showed a picture he took of STEVE to MacDonald years ago, sparking the first research into the phenomena. Now he’s a co-author on this paper.
“It’s an honor, it really is,” Zeller said about contributing to this research. “I tend to take a step back from the scientists doing the work. I’m out there for the beauty of it and to capture these phenomena in the sky.”
This paper also made use of another valuable citizen scientist contribution – a volunteer database of STEVE observations. Michael Hunnekuhl, another author on the paper, maintains this database and has contributed to STEVE findings in the past. Hunnekuhl noticed the streaks in the photographs independently of the scientists on the paper, and his detailed record and triangulation techniques were pivotal in this research.
Zeller and other citizen scientists plan to keep taking and examining those pictures, capturing the beauty of Earth’s atmosphere, and MacDonald, Semeter, and other scientists will keep studying them, uncovering more about this new phenomenon.
Banner Image: Taken July 17, 2018, at Little Kenosee Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada, this photo shows the tiny green streaks below STEVE. Neil Zeller, photographer and co-author on the paper, commented “STEVE was bright and powerful for a full hour that night.” Credit: Copyright Neil Zeller, used with permission
By Abbey Interrante
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Last Updated: Nov. 13, 2020Editor: Sarah Frazier
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wattsupwiththat--2020-11-14--CSIRO State of the Climate Report: Australia Up by Almost 1.5C

According to the Australian CSIRO , Australia has already warmed by 1.4 ± 0.22C .
But the CSIRO assures us bad things are happening , really .
And they ’ re going to get worse .
But they admit tropical cyclones have decreased , and while overall river flow is down , tropical wet season rainfall is up .
• Australia ’ s climate has warmed on average by 1.44 ± 0.24 °C since national records began in 1910 , leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme heat events .
• There has been a decline of around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rainfall in the southwest of Australia since 1970 .
Across the same region May–July rainfall has seen the largest decrease , by around 20 per cent since 1970 .
• In the southeast of Australia there has been a decline of around 12 per cent in April to October rainfall since the late 1990s .
• There has been a decrease in streamflow at the majority of streamflow gauges across southern Australia since 1975 .
• Rainfall and streamflow have increased across parts of northern Australia since the 1970s .
• There has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and in the length of the fire season , across large parts of the country since the 1950s , especially in southern Australia .
Anomalies in annual mean sea surface temperature , and temperature over land , in the Australian region .
Anomalies are the departures from the 1961–1990 standard averaging period .
Sea surface temperature values ( data source : ERSST v5 , www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/ ) are provided for a region around Australia ( 4–46 °S and 94–174 °E ) .
Australia ’ s climate has warmed since national records began in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also warmed .
• There has been a decrease in the number of tropical cyclones observed in the Australian region since 1982 .
• Oceans around Australia are acidifying and have warmed by around 1 °C since 1910 , contributing to longer and more frequent marine heatwaves .
• Sea levels are rising around Australia , including more frequent extremes , that are increasing the risk of inundation and damage to coastal infrastructure and communities .
In the coming decades Australia will experience ongoing changes to its climate .
Australia is projected to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ temperatures , more heat extremes and fewer cold extremes .
• Continued decrease in cool season rainfall across many regions of southern and eastern Australia , likely leading to more time in drought , yet more intense , short duration heavy rainfall events .
• A consequential increase in the number of dangerous fire weather days and a longer fire season for southern and eastern Australia .
• Further sea level rise and continued warming and acidification of the oceans around Australia .
• Increased and longer-lasting marine heatwaves that will affect marine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and raise the likelihood of more frequent and severe bleaching events in coral reefs around Australia , including the Great Barrier and Ningaloo reefs .
• Fewer tropical cyclones , but a greater proportion projected to be of high intensity , with large variations from year to year .

Australian Deaths per Decade from Heatwaves. Source PerilAus / Risk Frontiers
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Australian CSIRO, Australia has already warmed by 1.4 ± 0.22C. But the CSIRO assures us bad things are happening, really. And they’re going to get worse. But they admit tropical cyclones have decreased, and while overall river flow is down, tropical wet season rainfall is up.
Key points Australia Australia’s climate has warmed
on average by 1.44 ± 0.24 °C since national records began in 1910, leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme heat events.
There has been a decline of around 16 per cent in April to October rainfall in the southwest of Australia since 1970. Across the same region May–July rainfall has seen the largest decrease, by around 20 per cent since 1970.
In the southeast of Australia there has been a decline of around
12 per cent in April to October rainfall since the late 1990s.
There has been a decrease in streamflow at the majority of streamflow gauges across southern Australia since 1975.
Rainfall and streamflow have increased across parts of northern Australia since the 1970s.
There has been an increase in extreme fire weather, and in the length of the fire season, across large parts of the country since the 1950s, especially in southern Australia. Anomalies in annual mean sea surface temperature, and temperature over land, in the Australian region. Anomalies are the departures from the 1961–1990 standard averaging period. Sea surface temperature values (data source: ERSST v5, www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/) are provided for a region around Australia (4–46 °S and 94–174 °E). Australia’s climate has warmed since national records began in 1910. The oceans surrounding Australia have also warmed. 2 Report at a glance There has been a decrease in the number of tropical cyclones observed in the Australian region since 1982.
Oceans around Australia are acidifying and have warmed by around 1 °C since 1910, contributing to longer and more frequent marine heatwaves. • Sea levels are rising around Australia, including more frequent extremes, that are increasing the risk of inundation and damage to coastal infrastructure and communities. Future In the coming decades Australia will experience ongoing changes to its climate. Australia is projected to see: Continued increases in air temperatures, more heat extremes and fewer cold extremes.
Continued decrease in cool season rainfall across many regions of southern and eastern Australia, likely leading to more time in drought, yet more intense, short duration heavy rainfall events. • A consequential increase in the number of dangerous fire weather days and a longer fire season for southern and eastern Australia. • Further sea level rise and continued warming and acidification of the oceans around Australia. • Increased and longer-lasting marine heatwaves that will affect marine environments, such as kelp forests, and raise the likelihood of more frequent and severe bleaching events in coral reefs around Australia, including the Great Barrier and Ningaloo reefs. • Fewer tropical cyclones, but a greater proportion projected to be of high intensity, with large variations from year to year. Read more: https://www.csiro.au/en/Showcase/state-of-the-climate
As someone who lives in a warm part of Australia, I’ve got to say 1.4C warming since 1910 does not feel like the end of the world.
There is substantial evidence Australia experienced warm spells in the 1800s comparable to today. 435 people died in a heatwave in 1894, a few years before the starting point of the CSIRO’s warming trend. Even more people died in the early 1900s (see the top of the page). JoNova has some information about extremely warm Australian temperatures recorded in the 1800s which the CSIRO and BOM usually seem to leave out when preparing climate reports.
If the drop in rainfall in the south is a genuine trend rather than just an example of Australia’s multi-decadal climate noise, the CSIRO has a solution on the drawing board which would drastically increase water availability for Australian farmers; a tropical megadam scheme which could capture some of that increased wet season rainfall, instead of continuing to allow it flow out into the sea.
Wet Season Rainfall. Source CSIRO State of the Climate 2020
If our politicians stopped frittering cash on renewables and pumped hydro schemes which cannot possibly have a measurable impact on global warming, there might be some money to spare to ensure water security for our farmers, regardless of any changes to Australia’s rainfall patterns.
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