global warming
tlambert | June 5, 2010CSIRO's ECOS magazine has published an article on climate blogging by Graeme Readfern. Featured are Deltoid, Skeptical Science and Climate Shifts.
Hat tip: Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.
tlambert | June 4, 2010Howard Friel was interviewed on the Science Show
about his book The Lomborg Deception
So Lomborg was very clever to present himself as a centrist, but when you get into the details of his book he's hardly a centrist. I think he would be fairly classified as a climate denier. He takes almost every climate related issue from polar bears to melting glaciers to rising sea levels, and in my view very problematically downplays the significance of the impact of global warming on these areas. So people would classify him as a sceptic that is one notch above a denier, but I would not do that, I think…
tlambert | June 3, 2010Earlier I noted the way McIntyre quote mined the stolen CRU emails. But would an honest analysis of the messages have found? Brian Angliss makes the case that it is impossible to understand the emails without consulting with the authors to find out what the original context was.
tlambert | June 2, 2010Don Easterbrook has produced a response to my post on his hiding of the incline. Rather than correct his misuse of a graph of Holocene temperatures from Global Warming Art, Easterbrook has the cheek to call Gareth Renowden's correct identificiation of his source "an outright, contemptible lie". Renowden busts him again by showing an earlier version of the graph that Easterbrook claims did not come from Global Warming Art.
Look at Easterbrook's and the original version side by side:
Easterbrook's graph
Original graph at global warming art
You'll notice that Easterbrook's version does…
illconsidered | June 2, 2010The 2010 hurricane season has begun, and has done so with a hard blow to Guatemala, including dozens of fatalities (83 so far). Ironically, this storm was not particularily violent, not even getting above tropical storm status, but the rainfall was very intense.
As always, the best place to follow the hurricane season is Jeff Master's Weather Underground.
His introductory pst to this season lists the following reasons to worry about the months ahead:
"unprecedented sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic"
the ending of El Nino conditions
a million refugees from the recent earthquake in…
illconsidered | June 1, 2010A new study came out in Nature a couple of weeks ago that assesses multiple records of ocean temperatures over the last couple of decades and finds that there is "a statistically significant linear warming trend for 1993-2008 of 0.64âWâm-2".
The challenge the paper took on was one of assessing the uncertainties and inconsistencies in the various records. The paper is Lyman, J.L., et al. 2010. Robust warming of the global upper ocean. Nature 465 and Real Climate had an article about it here.
Also in that issue of Nature is an article by Kevin Trenbreth [PDF] that discusses that paper and…
illconsidered | May 31, 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...May 30, 2010 Chuckles, COP16+, Oslo, IPBES, How do we know?, Reforestation, Science-Beliefs, Oily Excuses Bottom Line, Subsidies, Royal Society, Post CRU, Late Comments Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle,…
tlambert | May 22, 2010Fox News reports on James M. Taylor's presentation at Heartland's Conference:
James M. Taylor, an environmental policy expert and a fellow at the Heartland Institute, said that global cooling is already happening. Based on figures provided by the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, he noted that snow records from the last 10 years exceeded the records set in the 1960s and 1970s.
A sign of global cooling? This past "decade set a record for largest average global snow extent," Taylor said.
I've redrawn the the figure from the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab with a trend line so that you can…
tlambert | May 21, 2010Fox News touts Don Easterbrook's talk at Heartland's Conference:
"Rather than global warming at a rate of 1 F per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030," said Easterbrook, speaking on a scientific panel discussion with other climatologists.
But Gareth Renowden has been looking at Easterbrook's slides and finds evidence of fraud
Looking through Easterbrook's slides, it seems he has taken a graph of Holocene temperature variations prepared by Global Warming Art (used at Wikipedia), and altered it…
grrlscientist | May 21, 2010tags: Pay Attention to Penguins, birds, penguins, environment, global warming, ethics, climate change, Dee Boersma, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
Think of penguins as ocean sentinels, says Dee Boersma -- they're on the frontlines of sea change. Sharing stories of penguin life and culture, she suggests that we start listening to what penguins are telling us.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on…
grrlscientist | May 19, 2010tags: Why I'm a Weekday Vegetarian, environment, global warming, meat, vegetarianism, ethics, climate change, Graham Hill, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
We all know the arguments that being vegetarian is better for the environment and for the animals -- but in a carnivorous culture, it can be hard to make the change. Graham Hill has a powerful, pragmatic suggestion ...
The video following the TEDTalk is more interesting than the actual talk itself.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and…
tlambert | May 14, 2010Peter Sinclair is locked in a close struggle in online voting for a $5000 grant that he can use to improve the quality of his Climate Denial Crock videos. If you've watched any of his videos here, please vote for him. You have to register, but it only takes a few seconds. Saturday, May 15 is the last day to vote. Here's one of his videos that I haven't featured before, on global warming on Mars:
illconsidered | May 14, 2010Okay, that's sarcasm. Wille Soon is featured in an interview on the Examiner.com website, but grilling is hardy how to describe the pathetic softballs Kir Meyers throws, rather rolls, his way.
Here are a few of the questions he asked:
Many of the scientists promoting the global warming theory appear to be driven by politics rather than hard scientific data. What are your thoughts?
What needs to be done to combat the strong-arm tactics being used against scientists who disagree with the AGW theory?
What is your opinion of Al Gore?
Really not much more to say about that...
illconsidered | May 11, 2010Some old news here and some new, all of it about my favorite climate contrarian, Lord Cristopher Monkton. He is my favorite because he is a clown and the more he is put forth as denialism's "Septical Champion" the better.
First the old news. You may recall Tim Lambert debated Cristopher Monckton in Sydney a couple of months ago. Well that debate is up on YouTube in full. It is a 15 part playlist, but Tim tells us his presentation is part 3 and 4. I watched most of it and it is worth the time.
I think it is kind of amusing, and revealing, that Monkton claims some rather intimate knowledge…
tlambert | May 10, 2010The Editors report
Camille Paglia, professor of humanities, worries about "a landscape of death in the humanities." I would agree with that, had it actually made any sense, although probably for different reasons:
This whole thing about global warming - I am absolutely incredulous at the gullibility of people. What is this hysteria over drowning polar bears? And finally I realized, people don't know polar bears can swim! For me, the answer is always more facts, more basic information, presented without sentimentality and without drama.
Take that, marine biologists!
Update: More Paglia…
tlambert | May 7, 2010255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences including 11 Nobel Laureates have signed an open letter in opposition to the attacks on science and scientists from global warming deniers:
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking…
mikethemadbiologist | May 7, 2010Impeach Cuccinelli. Impeach him now (to steal Brad DeLong's phrase). Earlier this week, I discussed Virginia Attorney General Cucinelli's subpoena envy harassment of climatologist Michael Mann. ScienceBlogling Tim Lambert describes what this fishing expedition entails:
Cuccinelli isn't just asking for documents relating to his research grants but all correspondence Mann had with Caspar Ammann, Raymond Bradley, Keith Briffa, John Christy, Edward Cook, Thomas Crowley, Roseanne D'Arrigo, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, David Douglass, Jan Esper, Melissa Free, Chris de Freitas, Vincent Grey [sic],…
grrlscientist | May 6, 2010tags: How we Wrecked the Ocean, oceans, fish, fishing industry, introduced species, biological pollution, chemical pollution, climate change, coral bleaching, Jeremy Jackson, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
In this bracing talk, coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson lays out the shocking state of the ocean today: overfished, overheated, polluted, with indicators that things will get much worse. Astonishing photos and stats make the case. So in a nutshell: we've wrecked everything around us: the water, the air, the animals, the climate, and any illusion of world peace we ever had. We're…
tlambert | May 5, 2010John Quiggin uses the Oregon Petition to illustrate the way the right insulates itself from knowledge about the world:
This kind of thinking is by no means unique to the contemporary right. But it is ubiquitous, and the staying power of the Oregon petition indicates way. Even the silliest claim, once made part of the canon must be defended to the last. In extreme cases, there is the option of dropping an utterly discredited talking point and then saying "we never said that". This is one thing the Internet has made much harder, with the perverse result that obstinacy in error has become more…
mikethemadbiologist | May 3, 2010For those who haven't heard rightwing extremist Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has subpoenaed all of the documents related to climatologist Michael Mann's state-funded research while Mann was at the University of Virginia (italics mine):
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.
If Cuccinelli…