Author: John Bruno

  • Do the facts matter?

    Chris Mooney has an interesting piece on whether the climate change “consensus” is a useful policy approach. Is it changing the minds of people that formerly didn’t “believe in” climate change? And more broadly whether facts ever change minds. As two top researchers studying the science of science communication—a hot new field that combines public opinion research…

  • Q: What does the new IPCC report say about sea level rise?

    Q: What does the new IPCC report say about sea level rise?

    A: Nothing good. See the plot below of observed past and predicted future sea level (rise). Note the two plotted future scenarios are based on the new Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs): plausible trends in atmospheric CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) concentration named for the corresponding additional heat retained by 2100 in W m-2. For the past, proxy data are shown…

  • How much will the earth warm during your lifetime?

    Amazing interactive graphic on the Guardian.  Check it out!  This is me:

  • Advice from a mangrove

    Photo Credit: Neil Hammerschlag

  • What we know about coral loss

    See updates below in red Without empirical evidence that a population or guild of critters is declining it is pretty hard to understand why they are becoming scarce or to justify any remediation. This kind of work is essentially ecological bookkeeping. Or a form of empirical environmental journalism. I hear all the time from science…

  • My congressional testimony on Magnuson-Stevens

    I will be testifying tomorrow before the Committee on Natural Resources on the Reauthorization of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Watch the hearing live here. This is my opening statement: Chairman Hastings and Ranking Member DeFazio, My name is John Bruno and I am a marine community ecologist and Professor of Biology at…

  • Top 10 crazy things said about climate change

    10) “It could just be a shift on the axis.” —Congressman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) 9) “[Climate Change] led to the Vikings dominating Europe for several hundred years.” —Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) 8) “Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.” —Speaker of the House John…

  • Danger Reef

    Joe says view the HD version if possible!

  • Global imprint of climate change on marine life

    An NCEAS working group I was a minor participant in has an important new paper out in Nature Climate Change (Poloczanska et al 2013 PDF). Summary: We synthesized all available studies of the consistency of marine ecological observations with expectations under climate change. This yielded a metadatabase of 1,735 marine biological responses for which either regional or global climate…

  • Mapping projected ocean acidification