Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project acquired this image of asteroid 3122 Florence on August 28, 2017. The Virtual Telescope Project will have a livestream of this asteroid’s close pass. The livestream is scheduled for August 31, 2017, starting at 19:30 UTC; translate to your time zone.
Named for Florence Nightingale, asteroid 3122 Florence is the biggest near-Earth object to pass so close since this category of objects was discovered over a century ago! It’s at least 2.7 miles (4.35 km) in diameter. It’ll safely pass by our planet on September 1, 2017 at over 18 times the Earth-moon distance. It’s visible now in small telescopes and might even be visible in binoculars; here are charts that can help you find it.
Radar images of asteroid 3122 Florence, obtained from August 29, 2017 via Goldstone Radar in California. Higher resolution radar images expected in the next few days, as the space rock will also be studied from Arecibo Observatory. Image via NASA/JPL.
Bottom line: Photos of asteroid 3122 Florence, a large near-Earth object, which will pass Earth on September 1, 2017.
Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project acquired this image of asteroid 3122 Florence on August 28, 2017. The Virtual Telescope Project will have a livestream of this asteroid’s close pass. The livestream is scheduled for August 31, 2017, starting at 19:30 UTC; translate to your time zone.
Named for Florence Nightingale, asteroid 3122 Florence is the biggest near-Earth object to pass so close since this category of objects was discovered over a century ago! It’s at least 2.7 miles (4.35 km) in diameter. It’ll safely pass by our planet on September 1, 2017 at over 18 times the Earth-moon distance. It’s visible now in small telescopes and might even be visible in binoculars; here are charts that can help you find it.
Radar images of asteroid 3122 Florence, obtained from August 29, 2017 via Goldstone Radar in California. Higher resolution radar images expected in the next few days, as the space rock will also be studied from Arecibo Observatory. Image via NASA/JPL.
Bottom line: Photos of asteroid 3122 Florence, a large near-Earth object, which will pass Earth on September 1, 2017.
This is a re-post from Critical Angle
Participating in social media creates a wide and diverse network of acquaintances. Often, these people become “friends”, even though direct personal contact may never made with them. It can be hard to establish traditional friendships without face-to-face encounters. Before the Internet, reading body language, voice inflections and facial expressions was as big a part of communication as speech itself. For many of us who spend a disproportionate amount of time in front of screens, much of our communication has become disembodied. But we still have bodies and, unfortunately, bodies break down.
I never wanted to write this post, but I feel that I owe it to the people I have come to know as online friends. They deserve to know that I’m suffering from a fatal illness. However, I hate the idea of now being treated differently because of this disclosure. I am not fishing for compliments or looking for moral support.
In 2002, at age 48, I was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer. I had a prostatectomy, but, despite the entire removal of the gland, there were small amounts of metastatic disease detected in nearby lymph nodes. The cancer had not been cured. Progression of the disease was slowed for many years by intermittent hormone treatment. I experienced no physical symptoms of the disease for twelve years, although the consequences of surgery and hormone treatment were no fun. But life continued and it was good.
As Hemingway remarked about going bankrupt, my cancer progressed gradually at first and then suddenly. About two years ago, my body’s plumbing and scaffolding started to show signs of trouble. More aggressive hormonal drugs were prescribed, which brought me back to good health for a year. Then, as the effectiveness of those drugs failed, chemotherapy beat back the worst symptoms for most of another year. Chemotherapy side-effects can often be managed quite well these days and it is not the horror that many imagine.
You become aware that the treatment options are running out when the oncologists start talking about maximizing quality, rather than quantity, of life. That’s where I am now. My life expectancy has been reduced from years to months. There still may be a few tricks left in my doctors’ books that may help extend my life beyond current expectations, but they are long shots and may not be available.
I was originally given a median life expectancy of six years. I have lasted fifteen and I’m not done quite yet. The palaeontologist and science writer Stephen Jay Gould wrote an excellent essay on statistics and cancer: The Median Isn’t the Message. He had an eight-month median life expectation after his diagnosis of mesothelioma, but Gould lasted twenty years and was eventually killed by a different kind of cancer.
Being born as a white, male baby-boomer into a good family in a prosperous country (Britain) and having made some lucky life choices means I’ve been a big winner in the human lottery. I’ve never had to live through a war, never gone hungry, never been abused. My career as an industrial scientist was challenging and rewarding. I even managed to sneak in a little publishable research along the way.
For most of my teenage and adult life I’ve been a keen—if average ability—rock-climber, back-county skier and alpinist. I’ve had several near-misses and the occasional epic outing, but never suffered any serious injury. A careless slip or an avalanche could easily have ended my life early. Only once did a climbing companion of mine need rescuing and hospitalization. He was hit by a falling rock in Bristol’s Avon Gorge. His helmet saved him from lasting injury, we lowered him to the roadside below and he was in an ambulance in minutes. I’ve indulged in many dangerous activities and never paid the price.
Living in Canada means that I have received first-class medical treatment, without once having had to worry about paying for it. I held a high-stress oil-company executive job for a few years before and after my diagnosis. I had an inkling that the long hours would have killed me if I had kept it up. My employer was understanding and eventually laid me off with a generous redundancy package. There wasn’t room in that corporate culture for employees who were not able to give their all.
I quit full-time work in 2005 and moved from Alberta to the beautiful coast of British Columbia. I became a geoscience consultant, setting my own hours and my own pace. Working mostly from home removes the stress of the daily commute, although I did have to make occasional trips to Calgary as well as to the UK, Peru, Argentina, Romania and Russia. Consultants get paid for travel time, employees often have to give up their weekends unpaid. The relationship between client and consultant is usually easier than between boss and employee.
There were no worries about losing health insurance. Had I been an American, I would likely have faced a terrible decision about whether to hang on to my stressful job, or impoverish my dependents by quitting and giving up health coverage.
Canada now permits physician-assisted suicide, so I’m reassured that I won’t have to needlessly endure a protracted death. I’m told that relatively few people follow through with it in practice, but it’s comforting to know that there is an option.
Most importantly, I have had indispensable support from loved ones. Family members can suffer as much or more than the patients. They feel obliged to stay strong and supportive whereas I’m allowed—even expected—to let go emotionally. Perhaps I’m revealing too much detail about myself in this blogpost, but I’m going to respect the privacy of my carers by saying nothing more about them.
There are plenty of younger, better people who have suffered worse diseases. The British physicist Sir David MacKay springs to mind. He died of cancer at age 48—the age at which I was diagnosed fifteen years ago—leaving behind a young family and the potential to add to his already brilliant contributions to the debate on climate solutions. MacKay wrote a detailed and fascinating account of his treatment on his blog, I’m not going to attempt to do that.
Seeing young children in cancer centres and the horror in the faces of their parents, provides a sense of perspective for those of us who face a perhaps untimely death after decades of happy lives.
Philip Larkin, in his masterpiece poem Aubade, expresses the deep fear of death that most of us have felt. An extract:
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
He writes later:
…Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Perhaps it’s understandable that a young man like Dylan Thomas (who died at 39) should urge his elders to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”, but older folk might be better advised instead try to find the wisdom to be grateful for a long life, well-lived, and accept the inevitable with as much grace as they can muster.
A recent, brilliantly written piece in the New Yorker by Cory Taylor expresses my current attitude about dying almost exactly.
Initial reactions to a dire diagnosis vary, but most of us initially suffer denial. People like me who are used to having technical control instinctively try to find out everything we can about the disease. Almost everyone I know who has been given a cancer diagnosis has looked for an unconventional cure at first. They try a drastic change of diet or concoctions of herbal infusions. I did too. But I’ve given up trying to pretend that I can find out anything that the specialists don’t already know. I’ve learned to try to focus on living well and leave the treatment choices to the consensus of the experts.
Many people become uncomfortable around cancer sufferers. There’s a natural tendency to look for reasons for the disease—why them, why not me?—and to resist the notion that in most cases getting cancer is just lousy luck. Humans instinctively try to find underlying reasons for outcomes. Good health can sometimes be attributed to having lived a virtuous life, with illness blamed on bad lifestyle choices. This can be partly true, of course, but more often than not, shit just happens.
With good intentions, friends will sometimes urge sufferers to adopt a more positive attitude. Certainly, if cancer patients are unduly stressed it may not be helpful for the progression of their disease—perhaps misery depresses immune systems and it certainly makes lives less bearable. But there’s scant evidence that urging sufferers to buck-up and look on the bright side helps outcomes at all. On the contrary, this can place an extra burden on the victims by making them feel they are not doing enough to help themselves. If you know someone with cancer, please put aside any advice and judgment. Just be nice.
Importantly, the family members on the front line of providing care can suffer even greater mental anguish than the patients. Their pain and grief will endure long after the patient has died. Help them, sympathize with them, never tell them they are not doing enough.
The certainty of a premature death focuses the mind. Strangely, at moments of acute stress, one sometimes feels the exhilarating sensation of living in the present moment—experiencing a beautiful, perfect, harmonic world—instant Zen mastery. But it is fleeting. Familiar mental attitudes reassert themselves. At least that’s what happens to me.
But one unexpected change is acquiring a lasting and enhanced appreciation for the humdrum, the everyday stuff of living, rather than the extraordinary experiences that we sometimes think ought to define our lives. As he died of cancer, the singer Warren Zevon advised: “Enjoy every sandwich.” It sounds trite, but it’s true.
Forget about bucket lists. Get used to replacing the thrill of new experiences with the intensity of doing ordinary things for perhaps the last time.
It may seem a little odd to end this disclosure about my looming demise with a technical commentary on climate change. However, concern about what happens to the planet after my death—whenever that date might be—has been important to me over the past few years. Having the fatal moment moved forward doesn’t change anything.
For the past ten years, I’ve become obsessive about learning and writing about climate change. I’ve done my best to provide my own perspective as an ex-oilman and geoscientist. Most of my contributions are recorded on this blog. I’ve lately found it hard to apply the sustained effort to research and write in-depth pieces that add anything coherent and novel enough to be worth publishing. I would love, for example, to dig deeper into the means and benefits of mitigation technologies and the costs of inaction.
I have become reluctantly pessimistic about our ability to avoid dangerous global change. If the best mitigation efforts are made and we get lucky with climate sensitivity and carbon-cycle feedbacks, we might succeed in limiting surface warming to 2-3°C. If we are mitigation laggards and the response of the Earth System to the abrupt chemical changes we are delivering to the atmosphere turns out to be severe, the consequences could be dire. Even in the best imaginable case, we are in for some nasty, disruptive shocks, unfairly focussed on the poorest people: those who have done the least to cause the problem.
A recent paper by Mora et al. predicts that parts of Brazil, W Africa and SE Asia will experience, by 2100, “deadly” outdoor conditions of heat and humidity for humans for most of the year, even under a middling emissions scenario like RCP4.5.
The very worst cases—much more than 4° C of average surface warming—may have only low chances of happening. Nevertheless, such outcomes would force such drastic transformations in the world order that conventional economic cost-benefit analysis and discount-rate considerations would no longer apply. When it becomes a matter of survival—war, disease, disaster—money becomes no object. Rates of return on investment and enhancing economic growth take a back seat when the future of civilization itself is threatened. Admittedly, finite resources would still need to be optimally allocated: I wouldn’t argue for throwing the entire discipline of economics out of the window.
I fear that the defining issue of the latter part of the twenty-first century will be the application of geoengineering, particularly albedo modification. The technical uncertainties and political implications are staggering. But it’s likely coming, whether we are ready or not. It’s crazy that policy makers and researchers are giving it so little attention.
We can speculate, of course, that there might be other perils—a horrible pandemic; out-of-control artificial intelligence; an all-out nuclear war; an asteroid; unforeseen consequences of genetic modification—that could prove even more destructive. But anthropogenic climate change is a certainty rather than some remote risk. The temptation to apply a quick fix will one day prove irresistible for those countries that find themselves under acute climatic stress.
I dislike applying both military and disease metaphors to the climate crisis. More often than not, they distort rather than illuminate the true nature of the problem.
Nevertheless, proposed geoengineering remedies for global warming have some parallels with cancer treatments. There’s little doubt that they will reduce the impact of some of the worst symptoms and prolong survival. But some problems, most notably ocean acidification, will remain unaddressed by solar radiation management. Even though average global temperatures can certainly be lowered by feeding reflective particles into the stratosphere—we know this from observations of big volcanic eruptions—regional consequences can’t yet be adequately predicted by climate models.
Cancer treatments affect only the patients. Medical ethics protects them by insisting on first obtaining their informed consent. Albedo geoengineering, in contrast, can be applied unilaterally and inexpensively by any middle-power country, which could well be oblivious to any negative consequences inflicted on its neighbours.
The dosage of the stratospheric sulphate medication will forever have to be maintained. It will have to be increased if we continue to burn fossil fuels. If, for any reason, the albedo meds were suddenly interrupted, the shock to the global climate system would be sudden and truly catastrophic. Global temperatures could shoot up several degrees in a few years: it would be like taking a wrecking ball to our planetary home.
The only “cure” for climate change will be in attempting to restore the stable climate in which human civilization developed. We will have to find a way to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations back to below 400ppm, perhaps even to 350ppm, as James Hansen and other scientists have recommended. That will be extraordinarily expensive and perhaps not even physically possible.
It will demand sacrifice, investment and restraint from the majority of the world to achieve a positive result that will take decades to manifest itself. It will require not only sucking CO2 out of the air, but a nearly equal and additional amount out of the oceans. Basically, we would have to put back in to the Earth most of the carbon we have taken out of it since the Industrial Revolution. The challenge is made harder because the physical mass of the required carbon disposal is amplified by a factor of more than three: those carbon atoms we dug up and burned are now wedded to two heavier oxygen atoms.
A long-term program of planetary CO2 liposuction, combined with a strict carbon diet, could eventually turn things around. But even with such an attempted cure, there will still be the earthly equivalents of scar tissue, damaged vital organs and lost limbs—coral reefs, ice sheets, precious ecosystems—that may never restore themselves within human timelines.
One of the great benefits of my engaging in research and activism on climate change has been making friends with some determined and talented people. They have taught me so much. They will continue the struggle to communicate the nature of the crisis and advocate for solutions. In particular, the volunteers in the Skeptical Science team have been an inspiration. Long may they run.
I’m still keen to continue conversations, especially with people I don’t agree with. There’s so much more to learn. A politically conservative perspective on climate solutions is essential. It’s a tragedy that many right-wingers have ruled themselves out of serious debate, with their idiotic, tribally motivated denial of basic science. To solve this problem we will have to change everything. That will require willing contributions from all of us.
Participating in the struggle against denial of the scientific consensus on climate is something I would dearly like to continue doing, but force majeure dictates some triage of my efforts. I’m no longer going to bicker with those who don’t engage in good faith. Life really is too short.
I’m not gone quite yet and I’ll try to keep doing what I can.
This is a re-post from Critical Angle
Participating in social media creates a wide and diverse network of acquaintances. Often, these people become “friends”, even though direct personal contact may never made with them. It can be hard to establish traditional friendships without face-to-face encounters. Before the Internet, reading body language, voice inflections and facial expressions was as big a part of communication as speech itself. For many of us who spend a disproportionate amount of time in front of screens, much of our communication has become disembodied. But we still have bodies and, unfortunately, bodies break down.
I never wanted to write this post, but I feel that I owe it to the people I have come to know as online friends. They deserve to know that I’m suffering from a fatal illness. However, I hate the idea of now being treated differently because of this disclosure. I am not fishing for compliments or looking for moral support.
In 2002, at age 48, I was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer. I had a prostatectomy, but, despite the entire removal of the gland, there were small amounts of metastatic disease detected in nearby lymph nodes. The cancer had not been cured. Progression of the disease was slowed for many years by intermittent hormone treatment. I experienced no physical symptoms of the disease for twelve years, although the consequences of surgery and hormone treatment were no fun. But life continued and it was good.
As Hemingway remarked about going bankrupt, my cancer progressed gradually at first and then suddenly. About two years ago, my body’s plumbing and scaffolding started to show signs of trouble. More aggressive hormonal drugs were prescribed, which brought me back to good health for a year. Then, as the effectiveness of those drugs failed, chemotherapy beat back the worst symptoms for most of another year. Chemotherapy side-effects can often be managed quite well these days and it is not the horror that many imagine.
You become aware that the treatment options are running out when the oncologists start talking about maximizing quality, rather than quantity, of life. That’s where I am now. My life expectancy has been reduced from years to months. There still may be a few tricks left in my doctors’ books that may help extend my life beyond current expectations, but they are long shots and may not be available.
I was originally given a median life expectancy of six years. I have lasted fifteen and I’m not done quite yet. The palaeontologist and science writer Stephen Jay Gould wrote an excellent essay on statistics and cancer: The Median Isn’t the Message. He had an eight-month median life expectation after his diagnosis of mesothelioma, but Gould lasted twenty years and was eventually killed by a different kind of cancer.
Being born as a white, male baby-boomer into a good family in a prosperous country (Britain) and having made some lucky life choices means I’ve been a big winner in the human lottery. I’ve never had to live through a war, never gone hungry, never been abused. My career as an industrial scientist was challenging and rewarding. I even managed to sneak in a little publishable research along the way.
For most of my teenage and adult life I’ve been a keen—if average ability—rock-climber, back-county skier and alpinist. I’ve had several near-misses and the occasional epic outing, but never suffered any serious injury. A careless slip or an avalanche could easily have ended my life early. Only once did a climbing companion of mine need rescuing and hospitalization. He was hit by a falling rock in Bristol’s Avon Gorge. His helmet saved him from lasting injury, we lowered him to the roadside below and he was in an ambulance in minutes. I’ve indulged in many dangerous activities and never paid the price.
Living in Canada means that I have received first-class medical treatment, without once having had to worry about paying for it. I held a high-stress oil-company executive job for a few years before and after my diagnosis. I had an inkling that the long hours would have killed me if I had kept it up. My employer was understanding and eventually laid me off with a generous redundancy package. There wasn’t room in that corporate culture for employees who were not able to give their all.
I quit full-time work in 2005 and moved from Alberta to the beautiful coast of British Columbia. I became a geoscience consultant, setting my own hours and my own pace. Working mostly from home removes the stress of the daily commute, although I did have to make occasional trips to Calgary as well as to the UK, Peru, Argentina, Romania and Russia. Consultants get paid for travel time, employees often have to give up their weekends unpaid. The relationship between client and consultant is usually easier than between boss and employee.
There were no worries about losing health insurance. Had I been an American, I would likely have faced a terrible decision about whether to hang on to my stressful job, or impoverish my dependents by quitting and giving up health coverage.
Canada now permits physician-assisted suicide, so I’m reassured that I won’t have to needlessly endure a protracted death. I’m told that relatively few people follow through with it in practice, but it’s comforting to know that there is an option.
Most importantly, I have had indispensable support from loved ones. Family members can suffer as much or more than the patients. They feel obliged to stay strong and supportive whereas I’m allowed—even expected—to let go emotionally. Perhaps I’m revealing too much detail about myself in this blogpost, but I’m going to respect the privacy of my carers by saying nothing more about them.
There are plenty of younger, better people who have suffered worse diseases. The British physicist Sir David MacKay springs to mind. He died of cancer at age 48—the age at which I was diagnosed fifteen years ago—leaving behind a young family and the potential to add to his already brilliant contributions to the debate on climate solutions. MacKay wrote a detailed and fascinating account of his treatment on his blog, I’m not going to attempt to do that.
Seeing young children in cancer centres and the horror in the faces of their parents, provides a sense of perspective for those of us who face a perhaps untimely death after decades of happy lives.
Philip Larkin, in his masterpiece poem Aubade, expresses the deep fear of death that most of us have felt. An extract:
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
He writes later:
…Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Perhaps it’s understandable that a young man like Dylan Thomas (who died at 39) should urge his elders to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”, but older folk might be better advised instead try to find the wisdom to be grateful for a long life, well-lived, and accept the inevitable with as much grace as they can muster.
A recent, brilliantly written piece in the New Yorker by Cory Taylor expresses my current attitude about dying almost exactly.
Initial reactions to a dire diagnosis vary, but most of us initially suffer denial. People like me who are used to having technical control instinctively try to find out everything we can about the disease. Almost everyone I know who has been given a cancer diagnosis has looked for an unconventional cure at first. They try a drastic change of diet or concoctions of herbal infusions. I did too. But I’ve given up trying to pretend that I can find out anything that the specialists don’t already know. I’ve learned to try to focus on living well and leave the treatment choices to the consensus of the experts.
Many people become uncomfortable around cancer sufferers. There’s a natural tendency to look for reasons for the disease—why them, why not me?—and to resist the notion that in most cases getting cancer is just lousy luck. Humans instinctively try to find underlying reasons for outcomes. Good health can sometimes be attributed to having lived a virtuous life, with illness blamed on bad lifestyle choices. This can be partly true, of course, but more often than not, shit just happens.
With good intentions, friends will sometimes urge sufferers to adopt a more positive attitude. Certainly, if cancer patients are unduly stressed it may not be helpful for the progression of their disease—perhaps misery depresses immune systems and it certainly makes lives less bearable. But there’s scant evidence that urging sufferers to buck-up and look on the bright side helps outcomes at all. On the contrary, this can place an extra burden on the victims by making them feel they are not doing enough to help themselves. If you know someone with cancer, please put aside any advice and judgment. Just be nice.
Importantly, the family members on the front line of providing care can suffer even greater mental anguish than the patients. Their pain and grief will endure long after the patient has died. Help them, sympathize with them, never tell them they are not doing enough.
The certainty of a premature death focuses the mind. Strangely, at moments of acute stress, one sometimes feels the exhilarating sensation of living in the present moment—experiencing a beautiful, perfect, harmonic world—instant Zen mastery. But it is fleeting. Familiar mental attitudes reassert themselves. At least that’s what happens to me.
But one unexpected change is acquiring a lasting and enhanced appreciation for the humdrum, the everyday stuff of living, rather than the extraordinary experiences that we sometimes think ought to define our lives. As he died of cancer, the singer Warren Zevon advised: “Enjoy every sandwich.” It sounds trite, but it’s true.
Forget about bucket lists. Get used to replacing the thrill of new experiences with the intensity of doing ordinary things for perhaps the last time.
It may seem a little odd to end this disclosure about my looming demise with a technical commentary on climate change. However, concern about what happens to the planet after my death—whenever that date might be—has been important to me over the past few years. Having the fatal moment moved forward doesn’t change anything.
For the past ten years, I’ve become obsessive about learning and writing about climate change. I’ve done my best to provide my own perspective as an ex-oilman and geoscientist. Most of my contributions are recorded on this blog. I’ve lately found it hard to apply the sustained effort to research and write in-depth pieces that add anything coherent and novel enough to be worth publishing. I would love, for example, to dig deeper into the means and benefits of mitigation technologies and the costs of inaction.
I have become reluctantly pessimistic about our ability to avoid dangerous global change. If the best mitigation efforts are made and we get lucky with climate sensitivity and carbon-cycle feedbacks, we might succeed in limiting surface warming to 2-3°C. If we are mitigation laggards and the response of the Earth System to the abrupt chemical changes we are delivering to the atmosphere turns out to be severe, the consequences could be dire. Even in the best imaginable case, we are in for some nasty, disruptive shocks, unfairly focussed on the poorest people: those who have done the least to cause the problem.
A recent paper by Mora et al. predicts that parts of Brazil, W Africa and SE Asia will experience, by 2100, “deadly” outdoor conditions of heat and humidity for humans for most of the year, even under a middling emissions scenario like RCP4.5.
The very worst cases—much more than 4° C of average surface warming—may have only low chances of happening. Nevertheless, such outcomes would force such drastic transformations in the world order that conventional economic cost-benefit analysis and discount-rate considerations would no longer apply. When it becomes a matter of survival—war, disease, disaster—money becomes no object. Rates of return on investment and enhancing economic growth take a back seat when the future of civilization itself is threatened. Admittedly, finite resources would still need to be optimally allocated: I wouldn’t argue for throwing the entire discipline of economics out of the window.
I fear that the defining issue of the latter part of the twenty-first century will be the application of geoengineering, particularly albedo modification. The technical uncertainties and political implications are staggering. But it’s likely coming, whether we are ready or not. It’s crazy that policy makers and researchers are giving it so little attention.
We can speculate, of course, that there might be other perils—a horrible pandemic; out-of-control artificial intelligence; an all-out nuclear war; an asteroid; unforeseen consequences of genetic modification—that could prove even more destructive. But anthropogenic climate change is a certainty rather than some remote risk. The temptation to apply a quick fix will one day prove irresistible for those countries that find themselves under acute climatic stress.
I dislike applying both military and disease metaphors to the climate crisis. More often than not, they distort rather than illuminate the true nature of the problem.
Nevertheless, proposed geoengineering remedies for global warming have some parallels with cancer treatments. There’s little doubt that they will reduce the impact of some of the worst symptoms and prolong survival. But some problems, most notably ocean acidification, will remain unaddressed by solar radiation management. Even though average global temperatures can certainly be lowered by feeding reflective particles into the stratosphere—we know this from observations of big volcanic eruptions—regional consequences can’t yet be adequately predicted by climate models.
Cancer treatments affect only the patients. Medical ethics protects them by insisting on first obtaining their informed consent. Albedo geoengineering, in contrast, can be applied unilaterally and inexpensively by any middle-power country, which could well be oblivious to any negative consequences inflicted on its neighbours.
The dosage of the stratospheric sulphate medication will forever have to be maintained. It will have to be increased if we continue to burn fossil fuels. If, for any reason, the albedo meds were suddenly interrupted, the shock to the global climate system would be sudden and truly catastrophic. Global temperatures could shoot up several degrees in a few years: it would be like taking a wrecking ball to our planetary home.
The only “cure” for climate change will be in attempting to restore the stable climate in which human civilization developed. We will have to find a way to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations back to below 400ppm, perhaps even to 350ppm, as James Hansen and other scientists have recommended. That will be extraordinarily expensive and perhaps not even physically possible.
It will demand sacrifice, investment and restraint from the majority of the world to achieve a positive result that will take decades to manifest itself. It will require not only sucking CO2 out of the air, but a nearly equal and additional amount out of the oceans. Basically, we would have to put back in to the Earth most of the carbon we have taken out of it since the Industrial Revolution. The challenge is made harder because the physical mass of the required carbon disposal is amplified by a factor of more than three: those carbon atoms we dug up and burned are now wedded to two heavier oxygen atoms.
A long-term program of planetary CO2 liposuction, combined with a strict carbon diet, could eventually turn things around. But even with such an attempted cure, there will still be the earthly equivalents of scar tissue, damaged vital organs and lost limbs—coral reefs, ice sheets, precious ecosystems—that may never restore themselves within human timelines.
One of the great benefits of my engaging in research and activism on climate change has been making friends with some determined and talented people. They have taught me so much. They will continue the struggle to communicate the nature of the crisis and advocate for solutions. In particular, the volunteers in the Skeptical Science team have been an inspiration. Long may they run.
I’m still keen to continue conversations, especially with people I don’t agree with. There’s so much more to learn. A politically conservative perspective on climate solutions is essential. It’s a tragedy that many right-wingers have ruled themselves out of serious debate, with their idiotic, tribally motivated denial of basic science. To solve this problem we will have to change everything. That will require willing contributions from all of us.
Participating in the struggle against denial of the scientific consensus on climate is something I would dearly like to continue doing, but force majeure dictates some triage of my efforts. I’m no longer going to bicker with those who don’t engage in good faith. Life really is too short.
I’m not gone quite yet and I’ll try to keep doing what I can.
About five years ago, Skeptical Science had a weekly feature called "new research from last week" which was compiled by me. I stopped doing the posts at the end of 2012. Now I'll start making those posts again. This time I won't promise to have a post at a certain time every week, but only that there will roughly be one new post per week.
Below are the new papers I noticed between August 21 and August 27. The title for each paper is shown and links to its abstract. Additionally, I have included a quote from the abstract for some papers. Papers have been divided into four categories: climate change (containing climate science relating to climate change), climate change impacts (contains papers on how climate change affects different things such as biosphere and mankind), climate change mitigation (contains research on actions we can do to mitigate climate change), and other papers (contains for example papers on past climates and on general climate science).
1. North Atlantic observations sharpen meridional overturning projections
"Our results present more evidence that AMOC likely already started slowing down."
2. Longwave Emission Trends over Africa and Implications for Atlantic Hurricanes
"GCMs predict a continuation of the increasing OLR gradient in response to greenhouse gas forcing. Assuming a steady linear relationship between African easterly waves and tropical cyclogenesis, this result suggests a future increase in Atlantic tropical cyclone frequency by 10% (20%) at the end of the 21st century under the RCP 4.5 (8.5) forcing scenario."
3. Evaluating the evidence of a global sea surface temperature threshold for tropical cyclone genesis
"Here, a basin-by-basin analysis of the SST distributions in the five most active ocean basins is performed, which shows that there is no global SST threshold for TC genesis. The distributions of genesis SST show substantial variations between basins."
4. How much have California winters warmed over the last century?
"Averaged across California over 1920-2015, Tmax trends vary from -0.30 to 1.2 °C/century while Tmin trends range from 1.2 to 1.9 °C/century."
5. Western North Pacific tropical cyclone model tracks in present and future climates
"The first is a statistically significant increase in the North-South expansion, which can also be viewed as a poleward shift, as TC tracks are prevented from expanding equatorward due to the weak Coriolis force near the Equator. The second change is an eastward shift in the storm tracks that occur near the central Pacific in one of the multi-model ensembles, indicating a possible increase in the occurrence of storms near Hawaii in a warming climate."
6. North Atlantic polar lows and weather regimes: do current links persist in a warmer climate?
"While a relationship has been identified for the present climate, under a warmer climate, polar low favorable conditions are expected to occur less often, and the large-scale circulation variability appears to have reduced influence on stability, and thus, on polar low occurrence."
7. Examining the Climatology of Shortwave Radiation in the Northeastern United States
"Statistically significant decreases in shortwave radiation are identified which are dominated by changes during the summer months. Because this coincides with the season of greatest insolation and the highest potential for energy production, financial implications may be large for the solar energy industry if such trends persist into the future."
"Concerning the warming in the SFB, an examination of the observations and the heat budget in an unstructured-grid numerical model simulation suggested that the warming during the second half of 2014 and early 2016 originated in the adjacent California coastal ocean and propagated through the Golden Gate into the Bay."
"Climate models show that the spatial variability in sea-level trends observed by tide-gauge records is dominated by the GIA contribution and the steric contribution over 1900-2015. Climate models also show that it is important to include all contributions to sea-level changes as they cause significant local deviations; for example, the groundwater depletion around India which is responsible for the low 20th century sea-level rise in the region."
10. Extreme cyclone events in the Arctic: Wintertime variability and trends
11. Atmospheric eddies mediate lapse rate feedback and Arctic amplification
13. Towards consistent diagnostics of the coupled atmosphere and ocean energy budgets
14. Mechanisms underlying recent decadal changes in subpolar North Atlantic Ocean heat content
15. The warmer the ocean surface, the shallower the mixed layer: How much of this is true?
16. Horizontal and vertical variability of observed soil temperatures
22. Climatic variability of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and western US snowpack
23. The influence of topography on midlatitude cyclones on Australia's east coast
24. Detection of Sea Level Fingerprints derived from GRACE gravity data
25. Climatology of Heavy Precipitation over Corsica in the Period 1985 – 2015
27. Variability of temperature properties over Kenya based on observed and reanalyzed datasets
28. Bathymetric control of warm ocean water access along the East Antarctic Margin
30. Promoting flood risk reduction: the role of insurance in Germany and England
"We find that in both countries FRM [Flood Risk Management] is still a reactive, event-driven process, while anticipatory FRM remains underdeveloped. However, collaboration between insurers and FRM decision-makers has already been successful, for example in improving risk knowledge and awareness, while in other areas insurance acts as a disincentive for more risk reduction action."
31. The Role of Health in Urban Climate Adaptation: An Analysis of Six U.S. Cities
"We found that interviewees’ ability to understand the connection between climate and health was a major determinant for health adaptation implementation."
32. The Brazilian World Cup: too hot for soccer?
"The results showed the air temperature and relative humidity data analyzed here both individually and in the form of an index indicate that the World Cup held in Brazil in 2014 did not put any of the players at risk due to extreme heat."
33. Environmental indicators of oyster norovirus outbreaks in coastal waters
"Among the six environmental indicators, the most important three indicators, including water temperature, solar radiation and gage height, are capable of explaining 77.7% of model-predicted oyster norovirus outbreaks while the extremely low temperature alone may explain 37.2% of oyster norovirus outbreaks."
34. Sound physiological knowledge and principles in modeling shrinking of fishes under climate change
35. A first look at factors affecting aragonite compensation depth in the eastern Arabian Sea
36. Implications of climate and outdoor thermal comfort on tourism: the case of Italy
37. Potential climate change impacts on fire intensity and key wildfire suppression thresholds in Canada
38. Simulating plant invasion dynamics in mountain ecosystems under global change scenarios
39. Humidity does not appear to trigger leaf out in woody plants
40. Tracing biogeochemical subsidies from glacier runoff into Alaska's coastal marine food webs
41. Net community production in the bottom of first-year sea ice over the Arctic spring bloom
42. Negative Emissions from Stopping Deforestation and Forest Degradation, Globally
"Accounting for these committed emissions, we estimate that stopping deforestation and allowing secondary forests to grow would yield cumulative negative emissions between 2016 and 2100 of about 120 PgC, globally. Extending the lifetimes of wood products could potentially remove another 10 PgC from the atmosphere, for a total of approximately 130 PgC, or about 13 years of fossil fuel use at today's rate." ... "But if greater negative emissions are to be realized, they will require an expansion of forest area, greater efficiencies in converting harvested wood to long-lasting products and sources of energy, and novel approaches for sequestering carbon in soils. That is, they will require current management practices to change."
43. Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014)
"We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science—by way of its scientists’ academic publications—but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy, we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public."
"We found that technology change indeed reduced aggregate carbon dioxide emissions, but the scale and intensity effects of technology change separately expressed positive and negative values. As a consequence, previous studies that only consider the intensity effect overestimate the impact of technology change on carbon dioxide emissions."
"Carbon emissions due to loss of urban trees were found to be significant and unaccounted for the metro rail project."
46. The perspectives of the urban poor in climate vulnerability assessments – The case of Kota, India
47. How Much Does Wind Power Reduce CO2 Emissions? Evidence from the Irish Single Electricity Market
48. An 810-year history of cold season temperature variability for northern Poland
"Investigations into climate-growth relationships found year-to-year ring-width variability to be more strongly correlated to cold season temperature (November to April) prior to the growing season than summer temperatures during tree-ring formation."
49. Late Quaternary glaciation of the northern Urals: a review and new observations
52. Investigating δ18O of Turbo sarmaticus (L. 1758) as an indicator of sea surface temperatures
53. On the spatio-temporal representativeness of observations
About five years ago, Skeptical Science had a weekly feature called "new research from last week" which was compiled by me. I stopped doing the posts at the end of 2012. Now I'll start making those posts again. This time I won't promise to have a post at a certain time every week, but only that there will roughly be one new post per week.
Below are the new papers I noticed between August 21 and August 27. The title for each paper is shown and links to its abstract. Additionally, I have included a quote from the abstract for some papers. Papers have been divided into four categories: climate change (containing climate science relating to climate change), climate change impacts (contains papers on how climate change affects different things such as biosphere and mankind), climate change mitigation (contains research on actions we can do to mitigate climate change), and other papers (contains for example papers on past climates and on general climate science).
1. North Atlantic observations sharpen meridional overturning projections
"Our results present more evidence that AMOC likely already started slowing down."
2. Longwave Emission Trends over Africa and Implications for Atlantic Hurricanes
"GCMs predict a continuation of the increasing OLR gradient in response to greenhouse gas forcing. Assuming a steady linear relationship between African easterly waves and tropical cyclogenesis, this result suggests a future increase in Atlantic tropical cyclone frequency by 10% (20%) at the end of the 21st century under the RCP 4.5 (8.5) forcing scenario."
3. Evaluating the evidence of a global sea surface temperature threshold for tropical cyclone genesis
"Here, a basin-by-basin analysis of the SST distributions in the five most active ocean basins is performed, which shows that there is no global SST threshold for TC genesis. The distributions of genesis SST show substantial variations between basins."
4. How much have California winters warmed over the last century?
"Averaged across California over 1920-2015, Tmax trends vary from -0.30 to 1.2 °C/century while Tmin trends range from 1.2 to 1.9 °C/century."
5. Western North Pacific tropical cyclone model tracks in present and future climates
"The first is a statistically significant increase in the North-South expansion, which can also be viewed as a poleward shift, as TC tracks are prevented from expanding equatorward due to the weak Coriolis force near the Equator. The second change is an eastward shift in the storm tracks that occur near the central Pacific in one of the multi-model ensembles, indicating a possible increase in the occurrence of storms near Hawaii in a warming climate."
6. North Atlantic polar lows and weather regimes: do current links persist in a warmer climate?
"While a relationship has been identified for the present climate, under a warmer climate, polar low favorable conditions are expected to occur less often, and the large-scale circulation variability appears to have reduced influence on stability, and thus, on polar low occurrence."
7. Examining the Climatology of Shortwave Radiation in the Northeastern United States
"Statistically significant decreases in shortwave radiation are identified which are dominated by changes during the summer months. Because this coincides with the season of greatest insolation and the highest potential for energy production, financial implications may be large for the solar energy industry if such trends persist into the future."
"Concerning the warming in the SFB, an examination of the observations and the heat budget in an unstructured-grid numerical model simulation suggested that the warming during the second half of 2014 and early 2016 originated in the adjacent California coastal ocean and propagated through the Golden Gate into the Bay."
"Climate models show that the spatial variability in sea-level trends observed by tide-gauge records is dominated by the GIA contribution and the steric contribution over 1900-2015. Climate models also show that it is important to include all contributions to sea-level changes as they cause significant local deviations; for example, the groundwater depletion around India which is responsible for the low 20th century sea-level rise in the region."
10. Extreme cyclone events in the Arctic: Wintertime variability and trends
11. Atmospheric eddies mediate lapse rate feedback and Arctic amplification
13. Towards consistent diagnostics of the coupled atmosphere and ocean energy budgets
14. Mechanisms underlying recent decadal changes in subpolar North Atlantic Ocean heat content
15. The warmer the ocean surface, the shallower the mixed layer: How much of this is true?
16. Horizontal and vertical variability of observed soil temperatures
22. Climatic variability of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and western US snowpack
23. The influence of topography on midlatitude cyclones on Australia's east coast
24. Detection of Sea Level Fingerprints derived from GRACE gravity data
25. Climatology of Heavy Precipitation over Corsica in the Period 1985 – 2015
27. Variability of temperature properties over Kenya based on observed and reanalyzed datasets
28. Bathymetric control of warm ocean water access along the East Antarctic Margin
30. Promoting flood risk reduction: the role of insurance in Germany and England
"We find that in both countries FRM [Flood Risk Management] is still a reactive, event-driven process, while anticipatory FRM remains underdeveloped. However, collaboration between insurers and FRM decision-makers has already been successful, for example in improving risk knowledge and awareness, while in other areas insurance acts as a disincentive for more risk reduction action."
31. The Role of Health in Urban Climate Adaptation: An Analysis of Six U.S. Cities
"We found that interviewees’ ability to understand the connection between climate and health was a major determinant for health adaptation implementation."
32. The Brazilian World Cup: too hot for soccer?
"The results showed the air temperature and relative humidity data analyzed here both individually and in the form of an index indicate that the World Cup held in Brazil in 2014 did not put any of the players at risk due to extreme heat."
33. Environmental indicators of oyster norovirus outbreaks in coastal waters
"Among the six environmental indicators, the most important three indicators, including water temperature, solar radiation and gage height, are capable of explaining 77.7% of model-predicted oyster norovirus outbreaks while the extremely low temperature alone may explain 37.2% of oyster norovirus outbreaks."
34. Sound physiological knowledge and principles in modeling shrinking of fishes under climate change
35. A first look at factors affecting aragonite compensation depth in the eastern Arabian Sea
36. Implications of climate and outdoor thermal comfort on tourism: the case of Italy
37. Potential climate change impacts on fire intensity and key wildfire suppression thresholds in Canada
38. Simulating plant invasion dynamics in mountain ecosystems under global change scenarios
39. Humidity does not appear to trigger leaf out in woody plants
40. Tracing biogeochemical subsidies from glacier runoff into Alaska's coastal marine food webs
41. Net community production in the bottom of first-year sea ice over the Arctic spring bloom
42. Negative Emissions from Stopping Deforestation and Forest Degradation, Globally
"Accounting for these committed emissions, we estimate that stopping deforestation and allowing secondary forests to grow would yield cumulative negative emissions between 2016 and 2100 of about 120 PgC, globally. Extending the lifetimes of wood products could potentially remove another 10 PgC from the atmosphere, for a total of approximately 130 PgC, or about 13 years of fossil fuel use at today's rate." ... "But if greater negative emissions are to be realized, they will require an expansion of forest area, greater efficiencies in converting harvested wood to long-lasting products and sources of energy, and novel approaches for sequestering carbon in soils. That is, they will require current management practices to change."
43. Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014)
"We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science—by way of its scientists’ academic publications—but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy, we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public."
"We found that technology change indeed reduced aggregate carbon dioxide emissions, but the scale and intensity effects of technology change separately expressed positive and negative values. As a consequence, previous studies that only consider the intensity effect overestimate the impact of technology change on carbon dioxide emissions."
"Carbon emissions due to loss of urban trees were found to be significant and unaccounted for the metro rail project."
46. The perspectives of the urban poor in climate vulnerability assessments – The case of Kota, India
47. How Much Does Wind Power Reduce CO2 Emissions? Evidence from the Irish Single Electricity Market
48. An 810-year history of cold season temperature variability for northern Poland
"Investigations into climate-growth relationships found year-to-year ring-width variability to be more strongly correlated to cold season temperature (November to April) prior to the growing season than summer temperatures during tree-ring formation."
49. Late Quaternary glaciation of the northern Urals: a review and new observations
52. Investigating δ18O of Turbo sarmaticus (L. 1758) as an indicator of sea surface temperatures
53. On the spatio-temporal representativeness of observations
Approximately one-quarter of Americans identify as evangelical Christians, and that group also tends to be more resistant to the reality of human-caused global warming. As a new paper by Brian Webb and Doug Hayhoe notes:
a 2008 study found that just 44% of evangelicals believed global warming to be caused mostly by human activities, compared to 64% of nonevangelicals (Smith and Leiserowitz, 2013) while, a 2011 survey found that only 27% of white evangelicals believed there to be a scientific consensus on climate change, compared to 40% of the American public (Public Religion Research Institute, 2011).
These findings appear to stem from two primary factors. First, evangelicals tend to be socially and politically conservative, and climate change is among the many issues that have become politically polarized in America. Second, there is sometimes a perceived conflict between science and religion, as Christians distrust what they perceive as scientists’ “moral agenda” on issues like evolution, stem cell research, and climate change. As Webb and Hayhoe describe it:
theological conservatism, scientific skepticism, political affiliation, and sociocultural influences have reinforced one another to instill climate skepticism into the evangelical tribe mentality, thus creating a formidable barrier to climate education efforts.
There are also evangelicals who have tried to convince their peer group about the reality of human-caused climate change and our moral obligation to address it. These include the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Evangelical Climate Initiative, the Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, and evangelical climate scientists like Sir John Houghton and Doug Hayhoe’s daughter Katharine Hayhoe(one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people). However, a majority of evangelicals continue to reject the reality of human-caused climate change, and there hasn’t been research quantifying the effectiveness of these evangelical climate leadership efforts.
Brian Webb and Doug Hayhoe’s study did just that by testing the effectiveness of a climate lecture delivered by Katharine Hayhoe to undergraduate students at the predominantly evangelical Houghton College in New York. Approximately half of the participants self-identified as conservatives and Republicans, 28% as liberals and Democrats, and the remainder as neither liberal nor conservative. 63% of the participants identified as evangelicals (most of the rest were of other Christian denominations).
Katharine Hayhoe’s lecture presented climate science information through the lens of an evangelical tradition. In addition to presenting scientific evidence, it included an introduction about the difference between faith and science (faith is based on things that are spiritually discerned, whereas science is based on observation). About six minutes of the 33- to 53-minute lectures were devoted to theology-based ethics.
The participants filled out a survey before and after the lecture, detailing their acceptance that global warming is happening, its cause, whether there’s a scientific consensus, how high of a priority they consider it, how worried they are about it, and how much it will harm various groups. The results showed an increase in pro-climate beliefs for every single question after listening to Katharine Hayhoe’s lecture.
Acceptance that global warming is happening increased for 48% of participants, and that humans are causing it for 39%. Awareness of the expert scientific consensus increased among 27% of participants. 52% were more worried about climate change after watching the lecture, and 67% increased their responses about how much harm climate change will do. 55% of participants viewed addressing climate change a higher priority after attending Katharine Hayhoe’s lecture. For most of the remaining participants, there was no change in responses to these questions.
By testing three different lecture approaches, Webb and Hayhoe also concluded that the lecture was equally effective when presented in person or as a recorded video, and that adding material about common climate misconceptions didn’t make the lecture any more effective.
There’s been some debate among social scientists about how much facts matter in today’s politically polarized society.
Approximately one-quarter of Americans identify as evangelical Christians, and that group also tends to be more resistant to the reality of human-caused global warming. As a new paper by Brian Webb and Doug Hayhoe notes:
a 2008 study found that just 44% of evangelicals believed global warming to be caused mostly by human activities, compared to 64% of nonevangelicals (Smith and Leiserowitz, 2013) while, a 2011 survey found that only 27% of white evangelicals believed there to be a scientific consensus on climate change, compared to 40% of the American public (Public Religion Research Institute, 2011).
These findings appear to stem from two primary factors. First, evangelicals tend to be socially and politically conservative, and climate change is among the many issues that have become politically polarized in America. Second, there is sometimes a perceived conflict between science and religion, as Christians distrust what they perceive as scientists’ “moral agenda” on issues like evolution, stem cell research, and climate change. As Webb and Hayhoe describe it:
theological conservatism, scientific skepticism, political affiliation, and sociocultural influences have reinforced one another to instill climate skepticism into the evangelical tribe mentality, thus creating a formidable barrier to climate education efforts.
There are also evangelicals who have tried to convince their peer group about the reality of human-caused climate change and our moral obligation to address it. These include the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Evangelical Climate Initiative, the Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, and evangelical climate scientists like Sir John Houghton and Doug Hayhoe’s daughter Katharine Hayhoe(one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people). However, a majority of evangelicals continue to reject the reality of human-caused climate change, and there hasn’t been research quantifying the effectiveness of these evangelical climate leadership efforts.
Brian Webb and Doug Hayhoe’s study did just that by testing the effectiveness of a climate lecture delivered by Katharine Hayhoe to undergraduate students at the predominantly evangelical Houghton College in New York. Approximately half of the participants self-identified as conservatives and Republicans, 28% as liberals and Democrats, and the remainder as neither liberal nor conservative. 63% of the participants identified as evangelicals (most of the rest were of other Christian denominations).
Katharine Hayhoe’s lecture presented climate science information through the lens of an evangelical tradition. In addition to presenting scientific evidence, it included an introduction about the difference between faith and science (faith is based on things that are spiritually discerned, whereas science is based on observation). About six minutes of the 33- to 53-minute lectures were devoted to theology-based ethics.
The participants filled out a survey before and after the lecture, detailing their acceptance that global warming is happening, its cause, whether there’s a scientific consensus, how high of a priority they consider it, how worried they are about it, and how much it will harm various groups. The results showed an increase in pro-climate beliefs for every single question after listening to Katharine Hayhoe’s lecture.
Acceptance that global warming is happening increased for 48% of participants, and that humans are causing it for 39%. Awareness of the expert scientific consensus increased among 27% of participants. 52% were more worried about climate change after watching the lecture, and 67% increased their responses about how much harm climate change will do. 55% of participants viewed addressing climate change a higher priority after attending Katharine Hayhoe’s lecture. For most of the remaining participants, there was no change in responses to these questions.
By testing three different lecture approaches, Webb and Hayhoe also concluded that the lecture was equally effective when presented in person or as a recorded video, and that adding material about common climate misconceptions didn’t make the lecture any more effective.
There’s been some debate among social scientists about how much facts matter in today’s politically polarized society.
A Harvest Moon via Dan Bush of Missouri Skies
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we call the closest full moon to the autumn equinox the Harvest Moon. In 2017, the September equinox comes on September 22. And full moon comes much earlier in the month, on the night of September 5-6 for the Americas. Is the September 5-6 full moon the Harvest Moon? Or is the only true Harvest Moon for the the Northern Hemisphere the full moon of October 5, which is, in fact, the closest full moon to our autumn equinox? Follow the links below to learn more.
Is the Harvest Moon bigger, or brighter or more colorful?
When is the Harvest Moon in 2017?
How did the Harvest Moon get its name?
When is the Southern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon?
What are some other full moon names?
Harvest Moon sunset and moonrise – September 19, 2013 – as seen by EarthSky Facebook friend Andy Somers in Noumea, New Caledonia. One of the characteristics of the Harvest Moon is that it rises around the time of sunset for several evenings in a row.
What is a Harvest Moon? In skylore, the Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the autumn equinox. Depending on the year, the Harvest Moon – by the usual definition of that name – can come anywhere from two weeks before to two weeks after the autumn equinox.
Harvest Moon is just a name. But this full moon does have special characteristics, related to the time of moonrise. Nature is particularly cooperative in giving us full-looking moons near the horizon after sunset, for several evenings in a row, around the time of the Harvest Moon.
Here’s what happens. On average, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day. But when a full moon happens close to the autumn equinox, the moon (at mid-temperate latitudes) rises only about 30 to 35 minutes later daily for several days before and after the full Harvest moon. For very high northern latitudes, there’s even less time between successive moonrises. It happens because the ecliptic – or the moon’s orbital path – makes a narrow angle with the evening horizon near the autumn equinox.
The difference between 50 minutes and 35 minutes may not seem like much. But it means that, in the nights after the full Harvest Moon, you’ll see the moon ascending in the east relatively soon after sunset. The moon will rise during or near twilight on these nights, making it seem as if there are several full moons – for a few nights in a row – around the time of the Harvest Moon.
In autumn, the angle of the ecliptic – or sun and moon’s path – makes a narrow angle with the horizon. Image via classicalastronomy.com.
The narrow angle of the ecliptic means the moon rises noticeably farther north on the horizon, from one night to the next. So there is no long period of darkness between sunset and moonrise. Image via classicalastronomy.com.
Jarred Donkersley caught this photo of 2016’s Harvest Moon at the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, California.
Is the Harvest Moon bigger, or brighter or more colorful? Not necessarily.
Because the moon’s orbit around Earth isn’t a perfect circle, the distance of the Harvest Moon is a bit different every year. But the 2017 Harvest Moon does not count as a bigger-than-average full moon. Instead, the moon’s perigee for September is the 13th; for October, it’s the 9th. The September and October full moons aren’t particularly close full moons.
Still, in any year, you might think the Harvest Moon looks bigger or brighter or more orange. That’s because the Harvest Moon has such a powerful mystique. Many people look for it shortly after sunset around the time of full moon. After sunset around any full moon, the moon will always be near the horizon. It’ll just have risen. It’s the location of the moon near the horizon that causes the Harvest Moon – or any full moon – to look big and orange in color.
The orange color of a moon near the horizon is a true physical effect. It stems from the fact that – when you look toward the horizon – you are looking through a greater thickness of Earth’s atmosphere than when you gaze up and overhead. The atmosphere scatters blue light – that’s why the sky looks blue. The greater thickness of atmosphere in the direction of a horizon scatters blue light most effectively, but it lets red light pass through to your eyes. So a moon near the horizon takes on a yellow or orange or reddish hue.
The bigger-than-usual size of a moon seen near the horizon is something else entirely. It’s a trick that your eyes are playing – an illusion – called the Moon Illusion. You can find many lengthy explanations of the Moon Illusion by doing an online search for those words yourself.
Worldwide map via the US Naval Observatory. Day and night sides of Earth at the instant of the full moon (2017 September 6 at 7:03 UTC). The shadow line passing to the left of Africa depicts sunrise and the shadow line to the right of Australia represents sunset.
When is the Harvest Moon in 2017? More often than not, the September full moon is the Northern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon. The Harvest Moon is usually defined as the full moon closest to the autumn equinox, which – in the Northern Hemisphere – comes on or near September 22 each year.
2016’s Harvest Moon fell in September. 2018’s Harvest Moon will, too.
But, in 2017, the September 6 full moon comes too early to be the Northern Hemisphere’s official Harvest Moon, according to the most widely accepted definition of the term. That’s because the full moon of October 5, 2017, will fall closer to this year’s September 22 equinox. The October 2017 full moon will be this year’s Harvest Moon, while the September 5-6 full moon will carry its ordinary monthly full moon name of Fruit Moon in the Northern Hemisphere (and Worm Moon, Lenten Moon, Crow Moon, Sugar Moon, Chaste Moon or Sap Moon in the Southern Hemisphere). Read more about full moon names.
However, in most respects, the September 2017 and October 2017 full moons can be regarded as Harvest Moon co-stars. By that we mean that both have the characteristics of a Harvest Moon. The primary Harvest Moon characteristic has to do with the moonrise. On the average, the moon rises some 50 minutes later with each passing day. Around the time of the full Harvest Moon, the lag time between successive moonrises is reduced to a yearly low.
In 2017, there’s no appreciable difference between the lag in moonrise times associated with September and October full moons. In both of these months, the moon rises a shorter-than-usual time after sunset for several evenings in a row, following the date of full moon.
Ed and Bettina Berg in Las Vegas, Nevada contributed this image of the 2016 Harvest Moon.
How did the Harvest Moon get its name? The shorter-than-usual lag time between moonrises around the full Harvest Moon means no long period of darkness between sunset and moonrise for days in succession.
In the days before tractor lights, the lamp of the Harvest Moon helped farmers to gather their crops, despite the diminishing daylight hours. As the sun’s light faded in the west, the moon would soon rise in the east to illuminate the fields throughout the night.
Who named the Harvest Moon? That name probably sprang to the lips of farmers throughout the Northern Hemisphere, on autumn evenings, as the Harvest Moon aided in bringing in the crops.
The name was popularized in the early 20th century by the song below.
Shine On Harvest Moon
By Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth (1903)
Shine on, shine on harvest moon
Up in the sky,
I ain’t had no lovin’
Since January, February, June or July
Snow time ain’t no time to stay
Outdoors and spoon,
So shine on, shine on harvest moon,
For me and my gal.
And don’t miss this more recent version of the song by Leon Redbone.
When is the Southern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon? For the Southern Hemisphere, the autumn equinox falls in March. So the Southern Hemisphere always has a full moon with these same characteristics – rising shortly after sunset for several nights in a row – in March or April.
What are some other full moon names? Every full moon has a name. The names vary in cultures around the world, and they particularly vary between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. One of the most famous full moon names – other than Harvest Moon – is Hunter’s Moon. That’s the name for the full moon after the Harvest Moon. For the Northern Hemisphere, this year’s Hunter’s Moon comes on October 16. Read more about full moon names here.
Bottom line: According to folklore, the closest full moon to the autumn equinox is the Harvest Moon. In 2017, the autumnal equinox for the Northern Hemisphere comes on September 22. So this hemisphere’s Harvest Moon is the full moon of October 5. But many will call the full moon on the night of September 5-6 a Harvest Moon, too. Indeed, the September 2017 full moon shares the characteristics of a Harvest Moon.
A Harvest Moon via Dan Bush of Missouri Skies
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we call the closest full moon to the autumn equinox the Harvest Moon. In 2017, the September equinox comes on September 22. And full moon comes much earlier in the month, on the night of September 5-6 for the Americas. Is the September 5-6 full moon the Harvest Moon? Or is the only true Harvest Moon for the the Northern Hemisphere the full moon of October 5, which is, in fact, the closest full moon to our autumn equinox? Follow the links below to learn more.
Is the Harvest Moon bigger, or brighter or more colorful?
When is the Harvest Moon in 2017?
How did the Harvest Moon get its name?
When is the Southern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon?
What are some other full moon names?
Harvest Moon sunset and moonrise – September 19, 2013 – as seen by EarthSky Facebook friend Andy Somers in Noumea, New Caledonia. One of the characteristics of the Harvest Moon is that it rises around the time of sunset for several evenings in a row.
What is a Harvest Moon? In skylore, the Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the autumn equinox. Depending on the year, the Harvest Moon – by the usual definition of that name – can come anywhere from two weeks before to two weeks after the autumn equinox.
Harvest Moon is just a name. But this full moon does have special characteristics, related to the time of moonrise. Nature is particularly cooperative in giving us full-looking moons near the horizon after sunset, for several evenings in a row, around the time of the Harvest Moon.
Here’s what happens. On average, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day. But when a full moon happens close to the autumn equinox, the moon (at mid-temperate latitudes) rises only about 30 to 35 minutes later daily for several days before and after the full Harvest moon. For very high northern latitudes, there’s even less time between successive moonrises. It happens because the ecliptic – or the moon’s orbital path – makes a narrow angle with the evening horizon near the autumn equinox.
The difference between 50 minutes and 35 minutes may not seem like much. But it means that, in the nights after the full Harvest Moon, you’ll see the moon ascending in the east relatively soon after sunset. The moon will rise during or near twilight on these nights, making it seem as if there are several full moons – for a few nights in a row – around the time of the Harvest Moon.
In autumn, the angle of the ecliptic – or sun and moon’s path – makes a narrow angle with the horizon. Image via classicalastronomy.com.
The narrow angle of the ecliptic means the moon rises noticeably farther north on the horizon, from one night to the next. So there is no long period of darkness between sunset and moonrise. Image via classicalastronomy.com.
Jarred Donkersley caught this photo of 2016’s Harvest Moon at the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, California.
Is the Harvest Moon bigger, or brighter or more colorful? Not necessarily.
Because the moon’s orbit around Earth isn’t a perfect circle, the distance of the Harvest Moon is a bit different every year. But the 2017 Harvest Moon does not count as a bigger-than-average full moon. Instead, the moon’s perigee for September is the 13th; for October, it’s the 9th. The September and October full moons aren’t particularly close full moons.
Still, in any year, you might think the Harvest Moon looks bigger or brighter or more orange. That’s because the Harvest Moon has such a powerful mystique. Many people look for it shortly after sunset around the time of full moon. After sunset around any full moon, the moon will always be near the horizon. It’ll just have risen. It’s the location of the moon near the horizon that causes the Harvest Moon – or any full moon – to look big and orange in color.
The orange color of a moon near the horizon is a true physical effect. It stems from the fact that – when you look toward the horizon – you are looking through a greater thickness of Earth’s atmosphere than when you gaze up and overhead. The atmosphere scatters blue light – that’s why the sky looks blue. The greater thickness of atmosphere in the direction of a horizon scatters blue light most effectively, but it lets red light pass through to your eyes. So a moon near the horizon takes on a yellow or orange or reddish hue.
The bigger-than-usual size of a moon seen near the horizon is something else entirely. It’s a trick that your eyes are playing – an illusion – called the Moon Illusion. You can find many lengthy explanations of the Moon Illusion by doing an online search for those words yourself.
Worldwide map via the US Naval Observatory. Day and night sides of Earth at the instant of the full moon (2017 September 6 at 7:03 UTC). The shadow line passing to the left of Africa depicts sunrise and the shadow line to the right of Australia represents sunset.
When is the Harvest Moon in 2017? More often than not, the September full moon is the Northern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon. The Harvest Moon is usually defined as the full moon closest to the autumn equinox, which – in the Northern Hemisphere – comes on or near September 22 each year.
2016’s Harvest Moon fell in September. 2018’s Harvest Moon will, too.
But, in 2017, the September 6 full moon comes too early to be the Northern Hemisphere’s official Harvest Moon, according to the most widely accepted definition of the term. That’s because the full moon of October 5, 2017, will fall closer to this year’s September 22 equinox. The October 2017 full moon will be this year’s Harvest Moon, while the September 5-6 full moon will carry its ordinary monthly full moon name of Fruit Moon in the Northern Hemisphere (and Worm Moon, Lenten Moon, Crow Moon, Sugar Moon, Chaste Moon or Sap Moon in the Southern Hemisphere). Read more about full moon names.
However, in most respects, the September 2017 and October 2017 full moons can be regarded as Harvest Moon co-stars. By that we mean that both have the characteristics of a Harvest Moon. The primary Harvest Moon characteristic has to do with the moonrise. On the average, the moon rises some 50 minutes later with each passing day. Around the time of the full Harvest Moon, the lag time between successive moonrises is reduced to a yearly low.
In 2017, there’s no appreciable difference between the lag in moonrise times associated with September and October full moons. In both of these months, the moon rises a shorter-than-usual time after sunset for several evenings in a row, following the date of full moon.
Ed and Bettina Berg in Las Vegas, Nevada contributed this image of the 2016 Harvest Moon.
How did the Harvest Moon get its name? The shorter-than-usual lag time between moonrises around the full Harvest Moon means no long period of darkness between sunset and moonrise for days in succession.
In the days before tractor lights, the lamp of the Harvest Moon helped farmers to gather their crops, despite the diminishing daylight hours. As the sun’s light faded in the west, the moon would soon rise in the east to illuminate the fields throughout the night.
Who named the Harvest Moon? That name probably sprang to the lips of farmers throughout the Northern Hemisphere, on autumn evenings, as the Harvest Moon aided in bringing in the crops.
The name was popularized in the early 20th century by the song below.
Shine On Harvest Moon
By Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth (1903)
Shine on, shine on harvest moon
Up in the sky,
I ain’t had no lovin’
Since January, February, June or July
Snow time ain’t no time to stay
Outdoors and spoon,
So shine on, shine on harvest moon,
For me and my gal.
And don’t miss this more recent version of the song by Leon Redbone.
When is the Southern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon? For the Southern Hemisphere, the autumn equinox falls in March. So the Southern Hemisphere always has a full moon with these same characteristics – rising shortly after sunset for several nights in a row – in March or April.
What are some other full moon names? Every full moon has a name. The names vary in cultures around the world, and they particularly vary between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. One of the most famous full moon names – other than Harvest Moon – is Hunter’s Moon. That’s the name for the full moon after the Harvest Moon. For the Northern Hemisphere, this year’s Hunter’s Moon comes on October 16. Read more about full moon names here.
Bottom line: According to folklore, the closest full moon to the autumn equinox is the Harvest Moon. In 2017, the autumnal equinox for the Northern Hemisphere comes on September 22. So this hemisphere’s Harvest Moon is the full moon of October 5. But many will call the full moon on the night of September 5-6 a Harvest Moon, too. Indeed, the September 2017 full moon shares the characteristics of a Harvest Moon.
