illconsidered | April 30, 2010I always marvel at the scientist-government conspiracy theories the more wacky members of the climate denial machine toss around so confidently.
How do they fit this into their world view?
In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli's office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann's receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann-- now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State-- was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.
...
Among the documents Cuccinelli demands are any and all emailed or…
illconsidered | April 30, 2010From APOD:
(click on image for full resolution, totally awesome!)
Here is an equally stuning video of that prominence erupting:
Ironic that according to the IPCC that massive ball of fire has nothing to do with the climate which is entirely controled by CO2, isn't it?
(As humour is hard to detect on the internets I had better spell it out: the IPCC makes no such ridiculous claim, that is a denialist strawman. The sun sends around 343W/m^2 our way, but the important factor is change in that number, which since around 1850 is ~0.3W/m^2 while GHG direct forcing is ~2.5W/m^2. Kinda ruins the…
illconsidered | April 29, 2010At least his image does, in a field of wheat!
(go to actual Google Map)
And PZ Meyers still doesn't believe in him!
illconsidered | April 27, 2010I found this from a comment on a Skeptical Science article (worth a read in its own right) and thought readers here might be impressed.
It is from a TED talk by James Balog who has been creating fascinating and awe inspiring time-lapse videos of calving glaciers. The whole talk is about 20 minutes and worth listening to, if you must you can jump ahead to around the 9th minute when the set-up ends and the visuals begin:
Of course, the whole thing could have been cooked up by Phil Jones and CRU, with help from the NASA moon-landing fakers...
illconsidered | April 26, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Information overload is pattern recognitionApril 25, 2010 Chuckles, Cochabamba, COP15, COP16, MEF, BASIC, Emerging Tech, Goldman Prize, Geology, Volcano, Earth Day Bottom Line, Carbon Tariffs, Subsidies, Medapi, McKibben, Spot the Error, Weaver , Post CRU, QUB, Lockwood Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food…
illconsidered | April 24, 2010Richard Lindzen has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal for Earth Day and exhibits the best of climate denialism's ability to flip reality on its head. I was considering going through it and highlighting its many falsehoods and logical holes but Arthur Smith has done a fine job of it already.
The WSJ op-ed is behind a paywall, but if you click the first result in this google search, you can read it in full. Arthur's take down is here.
illconsidered | April 22, 2010Via DeSmogBlog comes the news that Andrew Weaver is suing Canada's National Post for libel and defamation.
You can read the press release here and the Statement of Claim is here [PDF].
While I think the basic aspect of holdinng a newspaper accountable for outright lies or reporting so irresponsible it is virtually indistinguishable from a lie is a Godd Thing, this particular action brings up some much less cut and dried issues such as holding the paper accountable for anonymous commenters and the paper accountable for article reposts.
Given the escalation of personal attacks and irresponsible…
illconsidered | April 21, 2010Don't miss April 19th's APOD, a truly awsome sight!
And while on the subject of Eyjafjallajokull and my recent post about it, readers should be aware of a correction on the source site. The best estimate of CO2 is in fact 150,000 tons per day, not 7400, with a possible maximum of 300,000 tons per day. So the graphic is much less compelling, but the story of Joe vs the Volcano is not affected.
illconsidered | April 21, 2010A nice site about our blue planet's blueness, The Reef Tank, asked to repost a recent ocean related article of mine and did so here.
Always worth checking them out!
illconsidered | April 20, 2010Last week I was interviewed by Ki Mae Heussner for an article on ACBNews.com. That article can be viewed here.
Anyone coming here from there via the "How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic" link, it was incomplete, click here.
I think that in the broader scheme of "science says sky is blue, Republicans disagree" journalistic balance, the article does well enough. It is a big topic to cover well as a one off assignment, which this may have been. I did not find any previous work of Ki Mae's in this area.
illconsidered | April 19, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the internet firehose...April 18, 2010 Chuckles, Copenhagen, COP16, Bonn, Cochabamba, MEF, WHCEM, Missing Heat, Volcano, Lockwood, Endangerment Bottom Line, Carbon Tariffs, Subsidies, Medupi, Krugman, QUB, CRU, Oxburgh Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Land Grabs, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs…
illconsidered | April 17, 2010[UPDATE: readers should be aware of a correction on the source site. The best estimate of CO2 is in fact 150,000 tons per day, not 7400, with a possible maximum of 300,000 tons per day. So the graphic is much less compelling, but the story of Joe vs the Volcano is not affected.]
Even if I can't say it, the volcano Eyjafjallajokull is great to illustrate just how ludicrous the "Volcanoes emit more CO2" argument is. Courtesy of Information Is Beautiful, here is a very telling graphic.
Is there really a need to say more?
illconsidered | April 14, 2010Climate denialists are fond of arguments regarding the falsifying of hypotheses. There are two main thrusts they use here, (ironically enough mutually exclusive thrusts**). The first is that global warming is an "unfalsifiable" theory and therefore not a true scientific construct. I don't recall any good example essays making this point to link to (maybe someone can post a link in the comments?), but I believe the idea comes mostly from the all too common conflation of the actual science and the mainstream reporting of the science. They say that the IPCC claims that extreme warmth and…
illconsidered | April 12, 2010 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News April 11, 2010 Chuckles, Bonn, COP 15, COP 16, MEF, Cochabamba, Krugman, Ecocide, Tremblor, Barometer, Eli's Expositions Bottom Line, Carbon Tariffs, Medupi, Corporate Coup, Weathermen, Science Bashing, FOI Abuse, CRU Kafuffle Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics of Arctic Resources Food Crisis, Neoliberal Food Policies, Food vs. Biofuel,…
illconsidered | April 8, 2010One more reason Barack Obama should change his slogan from "Change you can believe in" to "Token gestures and nice words so you can shut up for a while."
Sorry, but he is a monumental and tragic disappointment who has squandered a truly historic oportunity.
IMO
illconsidered | April 8, 2010Here is a fascinating exchange between George Monbiot and Steve Easterbrook exploring the larger issues behind the recent Swifthacking of CRU email (aka ClimateGate).
Steve makes an excellent presentation of the case for what happens to be my personal view on this mess, namely that the media has failed in a major and tragic way and that this is a tale of a successful propaganda campaign not scientific corruption. In my opinion, Monbiot seems to understand Steve's points but still does not get the real story.
Have a read:
The computer scientist Steve Easterbrook wrote an interesting critique…
illconsidered | April 6, 2010[editor's note: an initial name confusion had the orignal version of this article referring to Jay Rogers instead of the actual author of the AEI piece Jay Richards. This has been fixed and as well a no longer relevant paragraph has been removed. Apologies for any confusion.]
[Preliminary Note: Coby asked me to edit this essay for a guest post on "A Few Things Ill Considered" (AFTIC). The original post is here, but this version cleans up the salty language (I'm kind of a roughneck and freely curse on this forum) and polishes up the content and provides the links to the relevant source…
illconsidered | April 6, 2010A commenter here a couple of months ago posted a link to a truly great resource of paleoclimate proxy reconstructions covering various time periods all including the time of the Medieval Warm Period, or MWP.
The MWP was a time of generally warmer temperatures in the North Atlantic region lasting from roughly 950AD to 1250AD. It was once thought to have been global in extent and perhaps as warm as or warmer than today. Notably, the 1990 IPCC report contained a rough, manually drawn schematic of global temperatures over the last 1100 years that placed the MWP well above the current global…