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Last Update:
03.02.13
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Reports, Booklets and Whitepapers
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Climate Change for Policymakers and Business Leaders
As of January
2013 this paper is currently unavailable. Checking on its
status.
February 2010, PDF file,
11 pages
Co-authored by PG&E
Corporation Chairman, CEO and President Peter Darbee and Carnegie
Institution climate change expert
Dr. Christopher Field. "This
paper, the product of a partnership between a science leader and a
business leader, provides an interesting illustration of how science
and policy interact. Science discovers facts and elucidates trends;
it provides a window for understanding what is (e.g., the present
climate and how it is changing), as well as a framework for
projecting what will be (future climate change and associated
risks). The policy decisions made by businesses and governments are
based on science, but also on economic and human factors that are
beyond the realm of science. This paper represents a merging of
policy-relevant scientific information with policy conclusions based
on that information and judgments about acceptable risks."
Also see
PG&E's
Environmental Commitment web page
Climate Change: Evidence, Impacts and Choices
2012, National Academy of Sciences, 40 pages
National Research Council booklet presented in three parts that (1)
summarizes the current state of knowledge about climate change; (2)
explains some impacts expected in this century and beyond; and (3)
examines how science can help inform choices about managing and
reducing the risks posed by climate change.
Also see related:
Climate Change: Lines of Evidence Videos and
Figure Gallery
and
Skeptical Science article
Climate
Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts over
Decades to Millennia
July 2010, National
Research Council
This report was prepared by a group of 15
distinguished Climate Scientists led by Dr. Susan Solomon. Based on
the best and most recent scientific research, the report analyzes
the impacts upon the Earth and human society for a range of levels
at which the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere is stabilized and
the associated range of the resultant increase in global
temperatures. The entire report may be downloaded free of charge by
going to Prepublication PDFs, but the entire document is very long.
I suggest you only download the
Executive Summary, which gives a clear picture of the
conclusions of the full report.
The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest
Climate Science 2009
November 2009,
PDF file,
64 pages
Prepared by 26 authors.
This booklet does exactly what the subtitle suggests. The 2007 IPCC
report reviewed the scientific literature on climate change through
2005. Since 2005 there have been significant advances in all aspects
of climate science. This report, put together by an international
team of 26 of the world's leading climate scientists, updates these
scientific advances, accompanied by some beautiful photographs.
Readers of either the Mann & Krump book or those reading the lessons
in the Tutorials in this website should be able to understand most
of this material.
Our Changing Climate 2012: Vulnerability & Adaptation to
the Increasing Risks from Climate Change in California
California Energy Commission, 2012, PDF, 16 pages
Produced by the California Institute of Energy and the
Environment based in the University of California, this
is summary report on the '2012 Vulnerability and
Adaptation Study', California's third major assessment
on climate change. The Third Assessment is provided by
the California Energy Commission and its Climate Change
Center. The complete Third Assessment is actually a
series of 37 reports for the energy, water, agriculture,
public health, coastal, transportation, and ecological
resource sectors. Each sector is represented in this
summary, highlighting significant climate impacts as
reported in the assessment, along with color graphics
making the data even more accessible. The assessment
included a regional focus for the San Francisco Bay
area, with 9 of the 37 reports dedicated to this region
as well.
The Scientific Guide
to Global Warming Skepticism
December 2010, PDF, 16 pages
This 16 page booklet might better be titled "The
Scientific Guide to Talking to Global Warming Skeptics".
It addresses the most common misconceptions about
climate science, with clever and useful illustrations.
It is intended especially for high school and college
science teachers, but is recommended for everyone.
Understanding and Responding to Climate Change -
Highlights of National Academies Reports - 2008
PDF file, 28 pages
A comprehensive and
easy-to-read analysis of findings and recommendations
from National Academies reports on climate change.
Warming World: Impacts by Degree
National Academy of Sciences, 2011, PDF, 40 pages
Emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil
fuels have ushered in a new epoch during which human
activities will largely determine the evolution of
Earth's climate. This booklet, based on the National
Research Council report "Climate Stabilization Targets:
Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts Over Decades to
Millennia" (2011), outlines the scientific information
that makes it clear that emission reductions today
matter in determining impacts that will be experienced
over the next few decades and into the coming centuries
and millennia. The booklet explains how policy choices
can be informed by recent advances in climate science
that show the relationships among increasing carbon
dioxide, global warming, related physical changes, and
resulting impacts. Expected impacts are identified and
quantified when possible, including impacts on stream
flow, wildfires, crop productivity, the frequency of
very hot summers, and sea-level rise and its associated
risks and vulnerabilities.
Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming
Michael E. Mann and
Lee R. Kump
DK Publishing Inc., July 2008
ISBN 978-0-7566-3995-2
This book is an "illustrated guide to the findings of the IPCC" and
is written by two climate scientists carrying out forefront
research. It is designed for readers with no formal background in
science and explains in clear language not only the basic science of
climate change but the projected impacts of climate change and steps
that can be taken to deal with them. Highly recommended.
Review by Penn State
/
Amazon
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the
Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke
to Global Warming
Erik M. Conway
and
Naomi Oreskes
Bloomsbury Press, June 2010
ISBN-13: 9781596916104
ISBN-10: 1596916109
The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research
on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues
affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark
studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global
warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this
community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers.
Bloomsbury Press /
Amazon
The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the
Front Lines
Michael E. Mann
Columbia University Press, March 2012
ISBN: 978-0-231-15254-9
In its 2001 report on global climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change of the United Nations prominently featured the
“Hockey Stick,” a chart showing global temperature data over the
past one thousand years. The Hockey Stick demonstrated that
temperature had risen with the increase in industrialization and use
of fossil fuels. The inescapable conclusion was that worldwide human
activity since the industrial age had raised CO2 levels, trapping
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and warming the planet.
Columbia University Press /
Amazon
Review and Commentary
by Dr. Ray Weymann
If readers know of short videos illustrating
important climate science concepts, please send them to me.
Dr. John Abraham
Response to a speech by Lord Christopher
Monckton
Christopher Monckton is one of the more prominent 'climate
skeptics', though he has no scientific training. In June 2010,
numerous assertions in a speech he gave at Bethel College,
Minnesota, in October 2009, were dissected in detail in a convincing
and entertaining way by Dr. John Abraham, an expert in heat transfer
and fluid mechanics and a member of the faculty at St. Thomas
University, also in Minnesota. Abraham's response to Monckton has
attracted a great deal of attention. The link above consists of a
series of short video clips. The entire series runs quite long, but
you can step through the slides at your leisure. I highly recommend
it. I suggest clicking on the little video camera icon so you can
easily scroll down the list of slides. Have your computer's
volume turned up to hear the presentation.
Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets
February 2013, National Science Foundation, 2.5 minutes
The Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) is a Science
and Technology Center established by the National Science Foundation
(NSF) in 2005 with the mission of developing new technologies and
computer models to measure and predict the response of sea level
change to the mass balance of the ice sheets in Greenland and
Antarctica. The NSF's Science and Technology Center (STC) program
combines the efforts of scientists and engineers to respond to
problems of global significance, supporting the intense, sustained,
collaborative work required to achieve progress in these areas.
CReSIS provides students and faculty with opportunities to pursue
exciting research in a variety of disciplines; to collaborate with
world-class scientists and engineers in the US and abroad; and to
make meaningful contributions to the ongoing, urgent work of
addressing the impact of climate change.
Climate Change Basics by Dr. Ray Weymann 50 minutes
In March 2011 I gave a talk on Climate Change at the Atascadero
Association of Retired People's building. It was one in a
series of forums on issues of general public interest sponsored by
the Atascadero Democratic Club. Mr. Walt Reil recorded the
talk on video and I have done some editing by inserting the actual
PowerPoint slides where appropriate. While some further
editing still needs doing, several people have asked me about this
video so I am making it available now rather than wait for further
editing. Although nearly one year has elapsed since I gave the
talk, the basic science is essentially unchanged. I hope
viewers will find it useful and I will be happy to respond to
comments sent to
ray.climate (@
sign) charter.net .
Climate Change: Lines of Evidence National Academy of
Sciences
National Research Council presents a series of videos explaining how
scientists have arrived at the state of knowledge about current
climate change and its causes.
Related article from
Skeptical Science
Related NAS materials:
Booklet (2012)
Climate Change: Evidence, Impacts and Choices and
Figure Gallery
Booklet (2010) Advancing
the Science of Climate Change
EARTH:
The Operators' Manual
04.18.11 National Science Foundation, On-line, 54 minutes
Host Richard
Alley –
a geologist, contributor to the United Nations panel on climate
change and former oil company employee whom Andy Revkin of the New
York Times once called "a cross between Woody Allen and Carl Sagan"
– leads the audience on this engaging one-hour special about climate
change and sustainable energy, premiering during Earth Month 2011.
"EARTH: The Operators’ Manual" ("ETOM" for short) is a rigorously
researched, beautifully filmed and ultimately uplifting antidote to
the widespread "doom and gloom" approach to climate change. The
program opens with a thorough grounding in Earth’s climate history
and an overview of the current dilemmas, but its main thrust is an
upbeat assessment of our many viable sustainable energy options.
Oceans of
Climate Change
04.21.09 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, On-line, 3.9 minutes
This short video, referred to in Lesson 5, and featuring
JPL
Oceanographer Dr. Joshua Willis, is a wonderful
demonstration of the difference between the ability of the ocean and
the atmosphere to store heat.
PETM - Unearthing Ancient Climate Change
February 2013, American Museum of Natural History, 8 minutes
Fifty-five million years ago, a sudden, enormous influx of carbon
flooded the ocean and atmosphere for reasons that are still unclear
to scientists. What is clear is that as atmospheric CO2 content
increased, the average global surface temperature rose 5°C to 9°C
(9°F to 16°F). The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), as
this global warming event is known, lasted upwards of 170,000 years
and had dramatic impacts on living things both on land and in
oceans. In this feature, a team of paleontologists, paleobotanists,
soil scientists, and other researchers take to the field in
Wyoming's Bighorn Basin to document how the climate, plants, and
animals there changed during the PETM. Their work will help predict
how our current global warming event could affect life on Earth.
Secrets Beneath the Ice
12.28.10 PBS NOVA, On-line, 53 minutes
Almost three miles of ice buries most of Antarctica, cloaking a
continent half again as large as the United States. But when an
Antarctic ice shelf the size of Manhattan collapsed in less than a
month in 2002, it shocked scientists and raised the alarming
possibility that Antarctica may be headed for a meltdown. Even a 10
percent loss of Antarctica's ice would cause catastrophic flooding
of coastal cities unlike any seen before in human history. What are
the chances of a widespread melt? "Secrets Beneath the Ice" explores
whether Antarctica's climate past can offer clues to what may
happen.
Ray Weymann's Comments:
This is a wonderful program about the history and possible future of
the Antarctic Ice Sheet. It runs a bit less than one hour. The
Antarctic Ice sheet holds by far the largest amount of fresh water
on the Earth. It has been existence for tens of millions of years.
If it were all converted to water, the sea level would rise by
several hundred feet. The research described in this fascinating
video is beginning to reveal that the history of the Antarctic Ice
Sheet has been subject to more significant and rapid changes than
was believed to be the case until very recently. But the video also
shows something else: the enormous dedication of the men and women
who are carrying out this research in spite of very primitive and
potentially very dangerous conditions. HIGHLY recommended.
Taking Earth's Temperature
2009, NASA, 4 minutes
Earth's climate is changing at an unprecedented rate. This video
explores climate modeling and other tools that NASA scientists use
to take the Earth's temperature.
Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media
An initiative of the
Yale Project on
Climate Change Communication to “Improve public
understanding of climate change.” One of their projects has
been to produce a series of videos. Some of these videos feature
interviews with climate scientists describing current research.
Others deal with aspects of communicating climate science to
journalists, TV weather forecasters and the general public.
There are (as of December 29, 2012) 20 videos in the series, which
can be downloaded from YouTube's
Yale Climate Forum Channel. There are many important
and interesting articles besides the videos to be found on the Yale
Forum site and I strongly recommend it.
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Resources for Teachers and
Students
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Virginia 3rd grade teacher Alberta Ferris kindly called
my attention to a wonderful resource for teachers who
are doing a unit on weather, Air & Water: Weather
Forecasting for Kids (link below), on which you will
find 15 links to further teaching resources about the
weather. I think they are suitable for both elementary
and middle school classes. Since the primary focus of
my website is climate science education I immediately
checked out A Student's Guide to Global Climate
Change (link below), which has further links to
explore various topics in more depth, including an
excellent short video. My only mild criticism
would be that I wish there were a segment explaining a
little more explicitly the difference between "weather"
and "climate" since these concepts are often confused in
the minds of adults as well as children. All in all,
however, these are great resources and thanks to Alberta
Ferris for bringing these sites to my attention.
A Student's Guide to Global Climate Change
Air & Water: Weather Forecasting for Kids
Teacher Patty Nevlin and her students suggest the
following article having excellent links to climate
change, energy and waste reduction and recycling
information designed for use by children.
Heating Up the Earth - Global Warming for Kids!
Hawthorn Heating & Air Conditioning
I haven’t tried to count the times I’ve heard the
phrase “so-called experts”. But it’s a lot and never
complimentary. Who are these so-called experts? Here’s a
working definition: “A so-called expert is someone who claims to
know more than I do, and whose opinion I strongly disagree with.”
But, seriously folks … Who should we trust for
reliable information? Where do we find it?
This is extremely important when it comes to
complex technical subjects involving many years of data collection,
analysis and peer review by many experts on the subject. A
vitally important challenge is how to present such information that
the general public can read and understand, as well as utilize it in
our nation's public educational processes.
In the case of climate science, professional groups, such as the
American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, or
the National Academy of Sciences publish non-technical summaries.
These summaries provide an excellent overview of exhaustive research
and collective analysis of many highly trained and experienced
"experts" in their fields.
For a very informative listing of a number of
expert findings on climate science and associated links to
additional information, please see
Expert Summaries.
Climate
Science Rapid Response Team
The Climate Science Rapid Response Team is a
match-making service to connect climate scientists with
lawmakers and the media. The group is committed to
providing rapid, high-quality information to media and
government officials. Climate Science Rapid
Response team member scientists are chosen to cover a
wide array of topics related to Climate Science. They
have been selected based upon their publications in
professional peer-reviewed scientific journals.
NASA Climate Kids
NASA's Eyes on the Earth
A great NASA website for children.
NASA Global Climate
Change NASA's "EYES ON THE EARTH"
Revised 12/8/12 to provide
updated location of EYES ON THE EARTH application
Major research efforts in climate science are conducted
at many of the laboratories of the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This
website is especially valuable for information on
climate research currently being carried out by
satellites launched by NASA.
Check out
EYES ON THE EARTH.
One of the offerings in this application is NASA
Satellites, which presents current orbits of
Earth-observing climate science satellites. Click
START button to access the Eyes on the Earth
application, which requires JAVA on your computer.
If the application does not load, you will be provided a
pop-up window of guidance information. If you are
using a Mac, you may need to download the application to
your computer. The application may take about a
minute to fully load. Once fully open, you can click on any individual
satellite to learn in more detail what aspect of the
climate that satellite is studying. Readers should be
aware that while NASA has responsibility for launching
these satellites, there are thousands of scientists
participating in the resulting science from many
universities in the U.S. and in foreign countries as
well.
National Center for Atmospheric Research NCAR
A broad range of climate science research is conducted
here including powerful computer simulations of the
climate to enhance understanding of the earth's complex
climate system.
NOAA Climate Services
A "one stop shop" for scientists, researchers, teachers,
students and the public of data, information and
predictions of Earth's climate. This wonderful
website is a plethora of informative and fascinating
information.
NOAA
Climate Program Office - Education
This National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
website is highly recommended, especially for science
teachers.
RealClimate
If
you want to read commentary about climate science from
the professionals who really know what they are talking
about, you can do no better than go to RealClimate.
However, some of the discussion may be somewhat
technical for readers. My advice is to stop at the
posts themselves rather than read through all the
comments, since it is sometimes difficult to separate
the 'wheat' from the 'chaff'. However, the posts
themselves are written by real experts."
Skeptical
Science
Anyone who is involved in communicating with the general
public about climate science will quickly run into the
same 'myths' over and over again. On the
Misperceptions page
I am writing about a few of the ones I have encountered
here on the California Central Coast. But, there
are many, many more, and it takes a great deal of effort
to research the peer-reviewed literature and respond to
these myths. Fortunately, this "Skeptical
Science" website does an admirable job of doing
exactly that and is an invaluable resource. I highly
recommend it.
Dr. Ray Weymann
ray.climate (@
sign) charter.net
Webmaster Walter Reil
walter.climate (@
sign) gmail.com
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