global warming
tlambert | June 26, 2011Last year on Counterpoint Anthony Watts appeared:
Michael Duffy: In which direction does the bias lie? Are you suggesting that the temperature has not got as hot as the American official historical record suggests?
Anthony Watts: That's correct. It's an interesting situation. The early arguments against this project said that all of these different biases are going to cancel themselves out and there would be cool biases as well as warm biases, but we discovered that that wasn't the case. The vast majority of them are warm biases, and even such things as people thinking a tree might in fact…
tlambert | June 25, 2011The series of articles on climate change in The Conversation concludes:
David Karoly: Bob Carter's climate counter-consensus is an alternate reality:
Let's fall through a rabbit hole and enter a different world: the "Carter reality". In that world, it is OK to select any evidence that supports your ideas and ignore all other evidence. ...
In the Carter reality, "there has been no net warming between 1958 and 2005." Of course, in the real world, there is no basis for this statement from scientific analysis of observational data. The decade of the 2000s was warmer than the 1990s, which was…
illconsidered | June 24, 2011The natural world is complicated. Therefore, so is the science that tries to understand it.
Complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity are all a part of the story that describes processes that are as extraordinary as they are mundane. While these are the very characteristics of scientific study that motivate professional and amateur alike, they are also the characteristics that give delayers, doubters and liars in the climate debates ample material for confusing and misrepresenting reality.
One such complexity is the interaction of infra-red or long wave radiation (IR or LW), the ocean surface…
tlambert | June 23, 2011The series of articles on climate change in The Conversation continues:
Ross Garnaut: Australia's contribution matters: why we can't ignore our climate responsibilities
The view that one country's actions have no effect on other countries is present in all but the largest countries, but outside Australia is recognised more clearly for what it is: an excuse for not acting on climate change. The argument dissolves once it is recognised that there is no need to make a once-for-all decision on Australia's share of an ambitious global mitigation effort.
What is important is that we make it clear…
tlambert | June 21, 2011Lanai Vasek in The Australian reports:
In the latest incident, Federation of Australian Science and Technological Societies executive director Anna-Maria Arabia received an email today saying she would be "strung-up by the neck" and killed for her promotion of mainstream climate science.
The threat was emailed to her this morning before a "Respect the Science" campaign at Parliament House in Canberra today.
Shortly after before [see correction] she got the death threat, Arabia was attacked by Andrew Bolt:
At its annual gathering in Canberra today, the Federation of Australian Science and…
tlambert | June 20, 2011The series of articles on climate change in The Conversation continues:
Mike Sandiford: Our effect on the earth is real: how we're geo-engineering the planet:
In Australia natural erosion removes about 100 million tonnes of sediment each year. With our annual exports of coal and iron ore now at about 600 million tonnes, we have increased the geological erosion rate of the continent by many factors. ...
Our best estimates place human industrial emissions of sulfur dioxide and COâ at five and 100 times natural volcanic emissions, respectively. ...
The rate heat is released from the earth - a…
illconsidered | June 20, 2011 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 Disruption News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsJune 19, 2011 Chuckles, Bonn, The Conversation, Forest Europe, Solar Cycle, SRREN, Threats Bottom Line, Subsidies, C40, Psyche, Cook, Equinox Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Agro-Corps, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel,…
tlambert | June 16, 2011Rosslyn Beeby at The Canberra Times follows up her earlier story: (Hat tip Dave McRae):
Two of the most shocking cases involved young women who have had little media experience or exposure. One was invited to speak on climate change at a suburban library. Her brief was simple - talk about everyday things people can do to cut their carbon footprint, talk about climate books available at the library (list provided), leave time for questions, and mingle afterwards. The other woman was asked by a local newspaper to pose with her young children for a photograph to illustrate an article promoting a…
tlambert | June 14, 2011The Conversation has launched a series of articles on climate change, introduced by editor Megan Clement here. The first three are:
Climate change is real: an open letter from the scientific community:
The overwhelming scientific evidence tells us that human greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in climate changes that cannot be explained by natural causes.
Climate change is real, we are causing it, and it is happening right now.
Like it or not, humanity is facing a problem that is unparalleled in its scale and complexity. The magnitude of the problem was given a chilling focus in the most…
illconsidered | June 13, 2011 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 Disruption News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is notWisdomJune 12, 2011 Chuckles, Bonn, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk Equinox Summit, C40, Threats, SRoWE, GFI, Thermodynamics, Cook Melting Arctic, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Agro-Corps, Food Prices, Hunger, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle,…
gregladen | June 9, 2011There is no chance that there is any connection between the release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere, no chance, for instance that severe weather is increased because of global warming. Don't give it a second thought. The following video proves that you have nothing to worry about:
mikethemadbiologist | June 6, 2011It would be nice if educational 'reformers' took a break from busting teachers unions to deal with the infiltration of pseudo-scientific falsehoods into the science curriculum:
...the most brazen example is buried in the middle of the story: a coal-industry produced propaganda film for kids selling the lie that the atmosphere needs more greenhouse gas:
...the Coal Education Development and Resources foundation, known as CEDAR, offers small grants to teachers whose lessons dovetail with its industry-driven mission...
...CEDAR also offers a video to teachers called "The Greening of Planet Earth…
illconsidered | June 6, 2011 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 Disruption News Information Overloadis Pattern RecognitionJune 5, 2011 Chuckles, COP17+, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk C40, Death Threats, Cate Debate, FOI Weapon, Thermodynamics, Cook Melting Arctic, Penguins, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Agro-Corps, Food Prices, CCAFS, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs,…
tlambert | June 5, 2011The Canberra Times reports
Australia's leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats.
The Australian National University has confirmed it moved several high-profile climate scientists, economists and policy researchers into more secure buildings, following explicit threats to their personal safety.
Whoever could be inciting people to make such threats? Oh look, here's Tim Blair's response to the news:
But on the weekend we discovered that it only takes a few emails to scare climate…
illconsidered | June 2, 2011"I agree. This is real science. But I have no idea what it means."
There is a reason science is not a democracy.
If you don't (understandably) want to wade through that whole "analysis", here is the crux of the (surprise, surprise!) conclusion that climate sensitivity to CO2 is almost nothing:
If we accept the IPCC/AGW paradigm and grant the climatological purity of the early 20th century, then the natural recovery rate from the LIA averages about 0.05 C/decade. To proceed, we have to assume that the natural rate of 0.05 C/decade was fated to remain unchanged for the entire 130 years, through…
illconsidered | May 30, 2011 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 Disruption News Sipping from the Internet Firehose...May 29, 2011 Chuckles, Songda & Fukushima, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk The Question, Attribution, G8, Critical Decade, FOI Harassment Bottom Line, GFI, Norway, Thermodynamics, Psyche, Cook Melting Arctic, Reindeer, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel,…
illconsidered | May 23, 2011 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 Disruption News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsMay 22, 2011 Chuckles, IDB, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk, Socolow, Flooding Slave Lake, UK Carbon Plan, Stockholm Memorandum, Bottom Line, Prelude, Cook Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Agro-Corps, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes,…
tlambert | May 20, 2011Tim Stephens, who is Director of the Sydney Centre for International Law at the University of Sydney and also one of Cardinal Pell's parishioners writes in Eureka Street (published by the Australian Jesuits) about his efforts to get Pell to learn something about climate science:
Pell's interventions on climate change have prompted me to write to him on many occasions, passing on standard scientific texts on climate change, recent scientific papers of relevance and interest, and extending an invitation to organise a meeting with a leading climate scientist.
That offer has never been taken up,…
tlambert | May 18, 2011Naomi Oreskes appeared on The Drum on Tuesday. Lotharsson has written a handy summary. I want to comment on a couple of extraordinary claims by Tom Switzer in that episode. First (at 31:56):
"Interestingly, the IPCC models, there is a great deal of uncertainty, because the rate of warming has not increased to the extent that the IPCC models suggested it would in the 1990s -- there has been some tapering off. To the extent that that is true that does lead one to believe that there is more uncertainty.
Switzer provides more detail in this column in the Spectator:
I can name no better book to…