global warming
tlambert | August 16, 2010Seems that there's some excitement about a new paper A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable? to be published in Annals of Applied Statistics. Their reconstruction appears to be closest match to a hockey stick shape yet seen:
Also:
Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand…
illconsidered | August 16, 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 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsAugust 15, 2010 Chuckles, Post Bonn, COP16+, KlimaForum10, Jet Stream, The Question, China, Russia, Pakistan Bottom Line, Ecuadorian Oil, 1 Sky's Question, Post CRU, Late Comments Melting Arctic, Megafauna, Methane Food Crisis, Pavlovsk Experimental Station, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, Food Production…
tlambert | August 14, 2010The University of Queensland has surveyed Australian politicians (press release here, results here) on their attitude to climate change:
"Labor politicians are more influenced by scientists than Liberal/National politicians - 85 per cent of Labor politicians are highly influenced by this group compared to 44 per cent of Liberal/National politicians," Dr Fielding said.
Note this poll was conducted in October last year when Liberal Party policy was to adopt an emissions trading scheme and before the media beat up of anti-IPCC stories.
There is discussion of the survey on ABC's Lateline,…
illconsidered | August 9, 2010Regular readers will recall a recent post pointing to Dr Roy Spencer being cannabalized cannibalized over his stubborn insistence that the Greenhouse Effect does not violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Well, he seems to be a glutton for punishment as he is taking another crack at it.
This time, I am only pointing it out because he has taken a high tech experimental approach to observe the actual atmospheric back radiation and an interesting post results (hi tech compared to his last hotplate device!).
I just skimmed the comments, like last time, and while the die-hards are still hard to…
tlambert | August 8, 2010Following in the foot steps of the Sunday Times' retraction of their bogus Jonathan Leake story, the BBC has apologized for falsely stating that UEA researchers had "distorted the debate about global warming to make the threat seem even more serious than they believed it to be". The BBC offers the excuse "that this was a live programme being put together under the pressure of events", which is fair enough, except that it has taken over nine months to make this simple correction, for which, surely, there is no excuse.
Hat tip: BCL.
tlambert | August 7, 2010Anthony Watts has guest post by Ferdinand Engelbeen (the guy Plimer plagiarised) explaining how we know that the increase in CO2 is not natural. Good on Watts for putting some accurate science on his blog. Mind you, the comments include folks like Richard Courtney arguing against it.
Hat tip: TrueSceptic
illconsidered | August 4, 2010I think this YouTube video gets an A+ for content as it presents a great lineup of the compelling reasons we can be very confident that the case for anthropogenic global warming is solid.
But on style it does lack a little, oh well. If you want style, Lord Monckton is your man!
This video might be good to pass along as an intorduction/overview to any friends you might have who are not already well versed in the science of this issue.
illconsidered | August 2, 2010This, from adelady, is so well put I just had to highlight it. It is a response to the usual "we'll just deal with whatever climate change throws at us later" inactivist argument:
The one thing we do have in our favour is our astounding intelligence - it's also astounding how we fail to use that intelligence intelligently. As far as dealing "with any changes that occur", why on earth would we not use our wits to ensure that changes are minimised or directed in a way that best suits us? Cleverness, innovation, imagination - these are not mysterious, magical properties that will emerge in…
illconsidered | August 2, 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...August 1, 2010 Chuckles, BASIC, Bonn, COP16+, Water, Phytoplankton, State of the Climate, WCI, Free Access Subsidies, Psych, Snowstorms, Post CRU, Pepsigate Melting Arctic, HMS Investigator, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, Temperatures,…
tlambert | July 31, 2010In a column at the New York Times (or is it an advertorial for Watts up With That?), Virginia Heffernan uses the Pepsi affair to refight the postmodernist Science Wars. It seems that she's still upset by the Sokal hoax and wants some payback against the scientists.
Heffernan writes (and if you are wondering what this has to do with Derrida, I don't know either, but this is what she wrote after she donned "the old Derridean cloak"):
I was nonplussed by the high dudgeon of the so-called SciBlings. The bloggers evidently write often enough for ad-free academic journals that they still fume…
illconsidered | July 31, 2010A few random items on expertise, elitism and credibility.
The first is from an interview with the late Stphen Schneider about the recent PNAS paper on the relative expertise of "convinced" and "unconvinced" climate science activists, an interesting read:
About the 'elitist' part: Scientists are really stuck. It's exactly the same thing in medicine, it's the same thing with pilot's licenses and driver's licenses: We don't let just anyone go out there and make any claim that they're an expert, do anything they want, without checking their credibility. Is it elitist to license pilots and doctors…
illconsidered | July 30, 2010An excellent article by Michael, again, and an interesting comment thread underneath. I have rarely seen RPJr more forthcoming and clear about his whole angle in the climate policy debate. I also have to confess I see very little value in the "honest broker" concept as he defines and advocates it (Eli is quite right) and no justification for his distasteful attacks on Real Climate and Jim Hansen.
illconsidered | July 30, 2010This is not a reference to the recent three decades of rapidly increasing global temperatures, rather it is a reference to an aniversary of the first appearance of the term "global warming" in the peer reviewed literature. The paper was by Wally Broeker and titled "Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?"
Real Climate has an interesting post on the details of this paper. The short version is that despite numerous considerations in the paper that have played out differently than hypothesized, the overall prediction of temperature by the end of the 20th century was remarkably…
tlambert | July 30, 2010
Thingsbreak has produced a graphic illustration of how lazy journalists mislead in the name of "balance". On right is his colour coding of her story on the NOAA report on the State of the Climate in 2009, with red marking coverage of "Climategate" and contrarians and green marking coverage of the report that the story is ostensibly about. This, from the red coverage, quite takes your breath away:
David Herro, the financier, who follows climate science as a hobby, said NOAA also "lacks credibility".
Tim Lambert, the blogger, who follows climate journalism as a hobby, says Harvey lacks…
nisbetmc | July 29, 2010
In the wake of last week's defeat of cap and trade, the predictable narrative offered by bloggers and commentators has been to blame the failure on industry, skeptics, and Republicans. It's also the explanation likely echoing in the minds of many scientists and environmental advocates.
But it's important to take a step back from the easy emotional reaction and take a look at the complexity of factors that shape societal gridlock on this issue. As I remarked to Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth earlier this month:
If we were able to statistically model societal inaction on climate change, what…
illconsidered | July 29, 2010Dr Roy Spencer, normally a darling of the septics, is getting the full denialist savaging over at his own blog for daring to defend the physical basis for the greenhouse effect.
CanadaFreePress saw "NASA" in his job title and must have mistaken him for Jim Hansen as they hold nothing back in their scorn.
All very amusing!
nisbetmc | July 27, 2010In reaction to our BMC Public Health study published this month that examined the potential to re-frame climate change in terms of health, reader Stephanie Parent had this astute observation, one worth testing in follow up research.
I was jazzed to read your article "Maibach et al., Reframing climate change as a public health issue: an exploratory study of public reactions BMC Public Health 2010, 10:299" and learn of the Center for Climate Change Communication.
The discussion regarding Figures 4 and 5 struck an idea regarding how people did not respond well to the sentence about increasing…
mikethemadbiologist | July 27, 2010Well, we can always hope. In a recent column about global warming, Paul Krugman makes this ancillary point (italics mine):
Nor is this evidence tainted by scientific misbehavior. You've probably heard about the accusations leveled against climate researchers -- allegations of fabricated data, the supposedly damning e-mail messages of "Climategate," and so on. What you may not have heard, because it has received much less publicity, is that every one of these supposed scandals was eventually unmasked as a fraud concocted by opponents of climate action, then bought into by many in the news…
illconsidered | July 23, 2010"I don't think that anyone disagrees with the fact that we actually are in a cold period that started about nine years ago."
Um...okay. I guess that's true if your definition of "anyone" excludes every single scientific agency that concerns itself with climate indicators and those of us who actually look at them. A good dose of boring old real reality from the Union of Concerned Scientists follows:
In response to a question during an ABC News / Washington Post interview today about recent heat waves and record temperatures, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said, "I don't think that anyone…