Skeptical Science New Research for Week #20, 2021
Deep dive into shady finances of climate misinformers
Skeptical Science is dedicated to combating malformed and especially fake skepticism about climate science, so it s hardly necessary for us to explain the relevance to our mission of a paper exploring the headwaters of misinformation and cultivated confusion. Instead we ll let the introduction of
In a 2016 congressional hearing on the climate crisis, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) held up a book entitled Why Scientists Disagree About Climate Change and asked: “Who funded this phony climate science denial textbook that the Heartland Institute published and mailed to thousands of schoolteachers around the country? . We know it costs a lot of money to print [but] we don’t know who paid for it!” (SDC 2019). The publisher of the “textbook” was the Heartland Institute, a central organization in the Climate Change Counter-Movement (CCCM). The CCCM is a complex netw
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Optimistic predictions expect reliable autonomous vehicles to be commercially available by 2030, at a time when mobility is undergoing a profound shift away from traditional modes of transportation and towards door-to-door services. Previous analysis suggested that public transport will lose market share to autonomous vehicles, but the environmental impact of changing transport use has hardly been considered. New research shows that the convenience of autonomous vehicles would likely come at an environmental cost.
A recent paper by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison addresses the use-phase implications of autonomous vehicles using a stated preference survey to reveal the potential users of autonomous vehicles and the resulting level of competition with traditional modes of transport. The results show an expected increase in environmental impacts across all the categories studied, due to a shift from less carbon intensive transportation options. The autho
Greenhouse emissions shrinking stratosphere: Ozone layer at risk as study predicts further decline
Greenhouse emissions shrinking stratosphere: Ozone layer at risk as study predicts further decline
The paper concluded that the decline in the stratosphere is likely to continue through the 21st Century.
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UPDATED: May 18, 2021 12:15 IST
While countries are trying to curb the emission by going carbon neutral and adopting the Paris agreement, a lot remains to be done to lower the global mean temperatures. (Photo: Getty)
Amid growing calls to check the rapid increase in greenhouse emissions, a new paper has raised concerns over the shrinking of the stratosphere due to changing climatic factors. The study is the first to reveal that the stratosphere has been shrinking not just in the 2000s but since the 1980s, a trend that could prove detrimental if it continues.
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Federal lawmakers have approved what will be the first American commercial scale offshore wind farm. The Vineyard Wind project will be located off the coast of Massachusetts and generate enough electricity to power 400,000 homes. It’s part of President Biden’s larger climate agenda to increase renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, and to move away from polluting-prone fossil fuels.
Ethan Coffel, Assistant Professor
Ethan Coffel, Assistant Professor of Geography and the Environment in the Maxwell School, explores this power and climate struggle in the Environmental Research Letters research paper, “Thermal power generation is disadvantaged in a thermal world.” Prof. Coffel has talked extensively about how warming temperatures will impact every part of our power infrastructure.
The thickness of the stratosphere has decreased by around 400 meters (1,312 feet) since 1980, and scientists fear that this contraction could reach 1.3 kilometers (0.8 miles) by 2080. Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the authors of a new study confirm for the first time that the stratosphere has been thinning on a global scale, and that greenhouse gas emissions are primarily responsible for this.
The stratosphere is a vital component of the atmosphere that extends from roughly 20 to 60 kilometers (12.4 to 37.3 miles) above the Earth’s surface, and contains the ozone layer. As such, it plays an important role in absorbing the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays – yet previous measurements have hinted at the fact that this crucial atmospheric layer may be thinning in places.