global warming
hrynyshyn | February 17, 2011Media outlets both main and sidestream are abuzz (atwitter?) with the story that scientists are finally daring to link specific weather events with anthropogenic climate change. A pair of papers in Nature are to blame. One, Human contribution to more-intense precipitation extremes, concludes that the titular events "have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas." The other manages to summarize the whole thing in its tile: "Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to…
gregladen | February 16, 2011How do you separate harmless belief in religion or superstition and ... well, harmful belief in religion or superstition? We have been having a bit of a go-round* between some of my regular blog readers, including my Catholic but not anti-Evolution niece whose daughter recently acted in a commercial for the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Sondrah and I respectfully agree to disagree about certain issues, but clearly do agree on the importance of having real science, and not creationism, taught in public schools. That is what a lot of people who think of themselves as religious prefer,…
hrynyshyn | February 16, 2011As a father of a four-year-old, I'm a big fan of Bob the Builder. The basic plot of each episode of the charming stop-motion children's series revolves around one or more pieces of heavy machinery learning self-discipline, which, as a new PNAS study shows, is a key skill associated with success and happiness later in life. I also like the optimism embedded in the catch-phrase that Bob's machine team invariably declares: "Can we build it? Yes we can!"
If only that can-do spirit were as evident in the public debate over how to respond to the threat of climate change. Recently a spate of reports…
illconsidered | February 14, 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 RecognitionFebruary 13, 2011 Note Chuckles, COP17+, WikiLeaks, Sri Lanka, Pakistan Bottom Line, Subsidies, World Bank, Thermodynamics, Cook Melting Arctic, Megafauna, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Agro-corps, Food Prices, Food Riots?, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs,…
tlambert | February 10, 2011The latest attempt by the climate auditors to smear a scientist comes from Ryan O'Donnell who accused Eric Steig of "blatant dishonesty and duplicity". According to O'Donnell, as an anonymous reviewer Steig forced O'Donnell to use a particular method ('iridge') in his analysis and then, as himself, criticized O'Donnell for using that method. But as a fair-minded reading of the review comments reveals, and Steig himself explains this is not true. Steig as reviewer did not force them to use iridge, rather, he said that it seemed reasonable but there were problems with the method that the…
tlambert | February 8, 2011This graph by Peter Gleick reveals the cherry pick used by Harrison Schmitt to claim that "Artic [sic] sea ice has returned to 1989 levels of coverage" and Heartland's Joseph Bast to claim
"In fact, National Snow and Ice Data Center records show conclusively that in April 2009, Arctic sea ice extent had indeed returned to and surpassed 1989 levels."
See more on this from John Cook at Skeptical Science.
illconsidered | February 7, 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...February 6, 2011 Chuckles, COP17+, IYF, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Oysters Bottom Line, Subsidies, EHM, Thermodynamics, Cook Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Fish, Misreporting, Prices, Riots?, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures,…
illconsidered | February 1, 2011By far my favorite climate crank is the Non-Lord Cristopher Monckton. He is prolific and pseudo-scientific and the darling of the denialosphere, but he is also a certifiable crackpot and a very colourful loon. He is great material to make fun of and I highly endorse his self-promotion as the spokesman-in-chief for the climate sceptic community.
Unfortunately, after the laughing stops, his nonsense continues to resonate in the anti-science echo-chambers. The arguments, gibberish dressed up in sciencey language and mathematical equations, need to be undressed and shown for what they are.…
illconsidered | January 31, 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 YearsJanuary 30, 2011 Chuckles, COP17, G20, Cablegate, WSF-WEF, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Australia, Pakistan Bottom Line, Subsidies, Thermodynamics, UEF, Cook, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Agro Corps, Food Prices, Foresight, Food vs. Biofuel, IP Issues, GMOs, Food…
illconsidered | January 25, 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 Instability News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is notWisdomJanuary 23, 2011 Chuckles, COP16, WFES, Why?, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Australia Bottom Line, UEF, Thermodynamics, Cook, Post CRU, Late Comments Melting Arctic, Megafauna, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Agro-chem Corps, Food Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs,…
illconsidered | January 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 Information Overload is Pattern RecognitionJanuary 16, 2011 Chuckles, Cancun, Gillett, Winter, Australia, Brazil, Sri Lanka Bottom Line, Ratcliffe - Kennedy, Earth Networks, Open Everything, Cook, Post CRU, Birds Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food prices, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs,…
tlambert | January 17, 2011Continuing the discussion with Richard Tol, Eli Rabett looks at how FUND models the costs of ecosystem damage and finds that it has a catastrophic loss of bio-diversity in 40 years -- 99% of species going extinct, but this only costs $250 per person because the only cost counted is that it makes people feel bad.
cagapakis | January 15, 2011
With The Symbiotic Household, Elliott P. Montgomery seeks to find answers to problems caused by climate change. Low-cost, low energy solutions are proposed through complex genetic engineering of domesticated insects--"What better way to deal with a future need than with a future technology?"
The project is deliberatively provocative; "By offering a problematic answer, I want to encourage viewers to question the entire scenario and thereby take part in the discussion." What do you think?
via we make money not art
tlambert | January 13, 2011Andrew Bolt thirteen months ago:
Note down the prediction:
David Jones, the head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology, said yesterday that claims by sceptics the planet was cooling were wrong... Dr Jones said an El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean - linked to hotter, drier conditions in Australia - would have an effect on the world's climate next year. ''There is a significant probability next year will be the globe's warmest year on record.''
NASA:
Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers…
illconsidered | January 13, 2011Over on the history of CO2 thread, that old chestnut of an issue has been raised, namely that there's this one paper in one journal, notorious for publishing anti-science papers on climate (a field well outside its focus), that has shown wild flucuations in CO2 to levels well above today's in times as recent as 60 years ago. Therefore....Not the IPCC.
The paper is by Ernst G Beck and the journal is Energy and Environment, 2009 (sorry, all my primary links are stale...anyone?)
Here is the graph, supposedly showing global CO2 levels:
This picture is at-a-glance completely implausible.
To…
illconsidered | January 10, 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...January 9, 2011 Chuckles, COP16, COP17+, Perspectives, Harbinger?, Australia, WikiLeaks, Winter Bottom Line, Subsidies, Laws, Thermodynamics, GHE, Cook, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Norther Light, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Price Index, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon…
tlambert | January 9, 2011Andrew Bolt may have the worst case of confirmation bias ever seen. To Bolt, whether something is true or not has nothing to do with its accuracy and everything to do with whether it suits him or not. Here in its entirety,
If the evidence were so strong, there'd be no need for such untruths
Dennis Ambler checks the statistics behind recently claims that 97 per cent of climate scientists believe man is heating the planet and finds evidence of some exaggeration:
However a headline of "0.73% of climate scientists think that humans are affecting the climate" doesn't quite have the same ring as…
tlambert | January 8, 2011Via BigCityLib (whose post title I stole), the story of Richard Tol's approach to science:
For the 2008 project, Tol co-wrote a paper along with Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University and two researchers from the Electric Power Research Institute, a US trade association. The two climate change proposals were ranked against numerous development and human welfare issues and came in 29th and 30th out of 30.
Long-term Lomborg critic KÃ¥re Fog took Tol, whose FUND computer-model was the basis for the simulation, to task about the study. Tol admitted that the study used a discount rate that fell…
tlambert | January 6, 2011Hey, remember how Don Easterbrook deliberately falsified a baseline to make it look like past temperatures were warmer than current ones? Well, he's at it again. He has taken a graph of temperature proxies for Greenland and used the value for 1855 as the "present". Gareth Renowden comments
1855 â Easterbrookâs âpresentâ â was not warmer than 1934, 1998 or 2010 in Greenland, let alone around the world. His claim that 9,100 out of the last 10,500 years were warmer than recent peak years is â to put it bluntly â pure bullshit, based on a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of…
tlambert | January 6, 2011You may recall Ken Ring, who gave us this gem:
CO2 is also nearly twice as heavy as air (molecular weight 44, that of air 29) so it cannot rise anywhere beyond haze level of a couple of hundred feet.
Now Channel Seven's Sunrise has done its viewers a disservice by having Ken Ring on to argue that global warming is not happenning. Graeme Readfearn investigated Ring's background and found that Ring had written a book on how to read cat's paws:
Ken Ring is a mathematician and a long-time magician, mind-reader and public speaker with a passion for the ancient discipline of palmistry. Ken…