A Few Things Ill Considered

Weekly News Roundups

Posted by coby on September 25, 2007
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I would like to introduce to Scienceblogs a feature from the old Illconsidered site, the weekly “A week of GW News” posts. These posts are an accumulation of all the important global warming related news, science and blog content posted online in the preceeding week. I will post it at the beginning of each week, hopefully Sunday or Monday.


This weekly post is a monumental feat but I wish to strongly emphasize that it is not a feat of mine! I do a very small amount of html massaging to get it into the blogging software but the lion’s share of the credit for this service goes to H. E. Taylor. It is his sifting and sorting that brings us all this extremely handy compilation of the goings on in Global Warming news.

It is necessary for me to state this in a separate post because often readers thought this was my work and unjustly gave me credit for it despite a short disclaimer at the top of each edition.

HET had been doing these roundups for quite some time before I requested and he agreed to let me post it here. I had long considered it a valuable contribution in sci.environment which I followed until it descended into troll-spawning chaos. I thought this was a way to save at least one baby from that foul bathwater.

So starting tomorrow (yes, late on the first try!), check in each week for the latest “Week in GW News” courtesy of H. E. Taylor.

Oh yeah, if you are a sci-fi fan, don’t forget to check out his book, which I have read and heartily recommend!

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Comments

  1. #1 Posicionamiento
    September 13, 2009

    Some would say that GW is a political strategy

  2. #2 Sunglasses
    September 13, 2009

    I love “Water” it’s simply great.

  3. #3 Michael of Brisbane
    February 13, 2011

    Hey all,
    I’ve not posted for a while…
    I’m in Brisbane, Australia and I’d like to clarify that the recent floods affected PART of Brisbane. (the part that lies on the well known flood plain)
    Brisbane is a fairly large city. (approx 2 million)
    The areas flooded were the SAME areas flooded in the famous floods of 1974. (did we learn nothing?)
    This flood was comparative to the ’74 flood.
    In contrast, the well documented flood of 1893 was DOUBLE the magnitude of this one. (the flood history of Brisbane is fascinatin’!)
    On another note, Cyclone Yasi was indeed a bad cyclone, but not the worst.
    It certainly caused awful destruction, but it’s not all that unusual.
    What GETS me is that the “AGW Alarmists” want to imply that these events are “unusual” or are “caused or worsened by AGW”.
    This is simply not true. In all my reading there is no actual evidence.
    Look, I consider myself an avowed “greenie”.
    I recycle when I can and I pick up random litter! (I used to be a card-carrying member of Greenpeace!) It sounds frivolous I know, but I’d really like to read the actual evidence of AGW.
    (I don’t consider computer modelling to be evidence.)
    Surely this argument can be about “anthopogenic pollution” rather than the villification of the sixth element of the periodic table?

  4. #4 skip
    March 13, 2011

    What he said.

  5. #5 mandas
    March 13, 2011

    Michael

    Since you live in Brisbane you will know that there was a huge difference between the recent floods and the 1974 and the 1983 floods. The flood peak this time was much higher than 1983, and after the 1974 floods Wivenhoe Dam was built, which took – by some estimates – up to 5m of the height of these floods.

    Also, a significant difference this time is what happened further up the valley. I may live in Adelaide, but I lived in Toowoomba for two years and my wife comes from there (they still live in Brisbane and Toowoomba). You will well know that the devastation along the Lockyer Valley (ie above the dams) was unprecedented in living memory.

    So some of your statements about the flood are just wrong. The most recent flood was caused by the highest rainfall in history, and would have been worse than the worst flood in history (1894) if it wasn’t for the dams that were built after 1974. So in answer your rhetorical question, “did we learn nothing” – we learned a LOT.

    And I am at a loss to understand why you would be suggesting that we shouldn’t be investigating whether or not AGW may have played a role in the floods. Surely we should be investigating all factors, to see if we need to learn anything? You implied “did we learn nothing” from the 1974 floods. I would like to hope that we learn as much as we can from this flood as well, and that MUST include what the causative factors were. To dismiss any potential role for AGW without undertaking a scientific assessment would be the height of folly. Or do you think we should dismiss it entirely without a proper assessment?

    Oh – and your statement about ‘vilifying the sixth element of the periodic table’ is rather confusing. No-one is vilifying carbon; after all, it is essential for life. But GHGs such as CO2 and CH4 also have major impacts on climate, and no-one with any credibility would deny otherwise. There is over 150 years of evidence which demonstrates conclusively that these (and other) gases are important to keep the planet warm, and if you increase the quantities in the atmosphere, you also increase the heat content of the system. Surely you aren’t one of those pseudo-scientific idiots who wants to deny this known fact, and attempt to overturn the fundamental laws of physics.

    Yes, anthropogenic pollution is a major concern – and increasing quantities of CO2 is one element of that pollution that we need to deal with.

  6. #6 Chris S.
    March 14, 2011

    I see skip’s been caught out responding to spambots. I’m sure whatever that Turkish pornsite was saying it was broadly similar to mandas’ points though.

  7. #7 skip
    March 14, 2011

    Makes you think, though:

    Was the Black Knight of Climate Denial (great analogy, Coby) just an elaborate spambot himself?

  8. #8 Wow
    March 14, 2011

    “What GETS me is that the “AGW Alarmists” want to imply that these events are “unusual” or are “caused or worsened by AGW”.”

    So, since hurricanes are fed from warm oceans, what part of global temperature rises increase sea-surface temperatures did you miss?

    Or is it the warm ocean causation of hurricanes what you have problems with?

  9. #9 adelady
    March 14, 2011

    Vilifying carbon?

    Oh dear. At least now we have dozens of video clips to use when responding to this family of arguments.

    Water is also essential to life … cue video clip (your personal selection) of tsunamis engulfing large swathes of Japanese soil, homes and farms, or floods smothering vast expanses of usually productive land in Queensland and Pakistan, or USA towns being swamped.