Più blu e meno vivo

Il nuovo studio del WWF, “Living Blue Planet“, è riassunto in un’immagine e poche righe:

This report provides the most accurate picture of the state of the ocean–and the results are not good. We have lost half the fish populations that we rely on in less than half a century. The findings spell trouble for all nations, but will especially impact people in the developing world who rely on seafood for their daily diets and economic livelihoods.
While over-exploitation is identified as the major threat to ocean biodiversity, the study finds that climate change is causing the ocean to change more rapidly than at any other point in millions of years. Rising temperatures and increasing acidity levels caused by carbon dioxide aggravate the negative impacts of overfishing and other major threats including habitat degradation and pollution.

Deprimente, ma conviene anche (ri)leggere quello uscito in febbraio, “Smart investments in ocean health, research and analysis”, alcuni investimenti sono astuti davvero.

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“Più blu” perché continua a restringersi l’estensione minima della banchisa artica. Secondo il NSIC

On September 11, 2015, sea ice extent dropped to 4.41 million square kilometers, the fourth lowest minimum in the satellite record. This appears to be the lowest extent of the year.
“Appare” perché il meteo potrebbe ridurlo ulteriormente, anche se di poco.
The minimum extent was reached four days earlier than the 1981 to 2010 average minimum date of September 15. The extent ranked behind 2012 (lowest), 2007 (second lowest), and 2011 (third lowest). Moreover, the nine lowest extents in the satellite era have all occurred in the last nine years.

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Breaking News (not)

Da un ventennio, quando un neghista sostiene che gli scienziati truccano i dati e il riscaldamento globale è una truffa, di solito qualcuno gli chiede “come mai BigOil & Coal, per le quali lavorano gli unici scienziati onesti, non pubblicano i dati che lo dimostrano?”

Con una marea di documenti interni, Inside Climate News pubblica la risposta della Exxon:

“In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,” senior company scientist James Black told Exxon’s Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.
It was July 1977 when Exxon’s leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis… Exxon responded swiftly. Within months the company launched its own extraordinary research into carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and its impact on the earth. Exxon’s ambitious program included both empirical CO₂ sampling and rigorous climate modeling. It assembled a brain trust that would spend more than a decade deepening the company’s understanding of an environmental problem that posed an existential threat to the oil business.
Then, toward the end of the 1980s, Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research. 
Dopo la testimonianza di James Hansen al Congresso nel giugno 1988
Exxon started financing efforts to amplify doubt about the state of climate science.
Exxon helped to found and lead the Global Climate Coalition, an alliance of some of the world’s largest companies seeking to halt government efforts to curb fossil fuel emissions. Exxon used the American Petroleum Institute, right-wing think tanks, campaign contributions and its own lobbying to push a narrative that climate science was too uncertain to necessitate cuts in fossil fuel emissions.
As the international community moved in 1997 to take a first step in curbing emissions with the Kyoto Protocol, Exxon’s chairman and CEO Lee Raymond argued to stop it.

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Nel gennaio 2014, l’editore Copernicus aveva chiuso la rivista Pattern Recognition in Physics perché Nicola Scafetta et al. si erano comprati un numero speciale di climate crackpottery. Come ricorda il delizioso lagomorfo, Scafetta et al. avevano promesso di continuare a pubblicarla da soli entro la settimana successiva, sotto la direzione prima del potty peer Christopher Monckton e poi di Sid-Ali Ouadfeul, un ricercatore dell’Ente petroli algerino, che pare averla seppellita definitivamente.

Scafetta e Monckton, Ouadfeul non credo, saranno ben accetti dall‘accademia sul modello Fucilla, appena fondata da un gruppetto di studiosi di psicologia, scienze socio-politiche e diritto, salvo Judith Curry, tutti di estrema destra, salvo Steven Pinker (gone a bit out of his depth):

Our mission is to increase viewpoint diversity in the academy, with a special focus on the social sciences.

Mission impossible stando al cv dei fondatori. Come J. Curry, José Duarte combatte “l’ideologia” del consenso sul clima, Haidt et al. combattono “l’ideologia” del welfare, dei diritti umani per donne, emigrati, gays ecc. Da bravi provinciali, dividono pure gli psicologi sociali di tutto il mondo in Democratici e Repubblicani.