global warming
tlambert | December 9, 2008How would you describe this graph of global sea level from the University of Colorado?
Well if you're Jennifer Marohasy, you call it a "dip in global sea level" and say that "since 2005 the steady upward trend has stumbled".
The most recent observation is right on the long term trend line.
You can get a better idea of trends with this version, which removes the effects of changes in air pressure and seasons:
Who are you going to believe, Marohasy, or your lying eyes?
sheril | December 8, 2008
Just when you thought it was safe to acknowledge the unequivocal reality of global warming.....
Just when you thought the U.S. government was ready to admit that it has a serious emissions problem, and do something about it....
Just when you thought the skeptic party was over...
No way: There has been a strong run of nonsense from global warming "skeptics" and deniers lately. They are not ashamed, and they are not changing their tune. In fact, it sounds like they are gearing up for the next battle...
tlambert | December 6, 2008The Sydney Morning Herald has printed another letter correcting Michael Duffy's wrongheaded column. Bob Beale writes
Accusing a scientist of falsifying data is a grave and professionally damaging charge, about the worst one can make. Michael Duffy was careless and wrong to allege that Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "fudged" climate data during his recent public lecture in Sydney ("Truly inconvenient truths about climate change being ignored", November 8).
Duffy said he was shocked that Dr Pachauri displayed a graph of average global…
tlambert | November 27, 2008Miranda Devine, in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald brings us the sad story of how Ian Plimer is being shouted down and silenced:
Human-caused climate change is being "promoted with religious zeal ... there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics." ...
It is difficult for non-scientists to engage in the debate over what causes climate change and whether or not it can be stopped by new taxes and slower growth, because dissenting voices are shouted down by true believers in the scientific community who claim they alone have the authority to speak.
The same…
tlambert | November 25, 2008Erika Lovley, on the curious phenomenon that when Gore gives a speech, about half of the time the weather is colder than average:
While there's no scientific proof that The Gore Effect is anything more than a humorous coincidence, some climate skeptics say it may offer a snapshot of proof that the planet isn't warming as quickly as some climate change advocates say.
See David Roberts and Joe Romm for more details on Lovley's stenography.
tlambert | November 19, 2008It seems that Christopher Booker as well as being a global warming denier, is also an asbestos-is-harmful denier. George Monbiot has the story (links added by me):
This week Richard Wilson's book Don't Get Fooled Again is published. It contains a fascinating chapter on Booker's claims about white asbestos. Since 2002, he has published 38 articles on this topic, and every one of them is wrong. He champions the work of John Bridle, who has described himself as "the world's foremost authority on asbestos science". Bridle has claimed to possess an honorary professorship from the Russian Academy…
nisbetmc | November 18, 2008I taped an interview yesterday with PRI/BBC The World discussing the unfortunate use by science advocates of the term "denier" in debates over climate change, evolution, and other issues involving scientific expertise. I'm told the segment may appear as early as today or tomorrow. Archived audio will be found here.
The frame device "denier" should be laid to rest in the same rhetorical grave as other terms such as "anti-science." They serve little purpose other than to feed polarization while also frequently backfiring, turning the debate into a discussion of the alleged underhanded or…
tlambert | November 16, 2008It was entirely predictable that the denialists would hype up the glitch in the surface temperature record for last month. This opinion piece by Christopher Booker was picked up by Drudge, so the usual collection of global warming denialists have been fulminating about how this proves you can't trust the science. For example, at the Discovery Institute
But computer modeling is not pure science and at its best it is only as good as the information programed into it. That is true for wild claims made for computer models of evolution and it is true of climate modeling.
While all of this was…
sheril | November 13, 2008I've joined Chris at DeSmogBlog where I will soon be posting under my own name. The first contribution deals with President Obama and climate policy. Here is an excerpt:
Let's be realistic: Past climate bills have failed mainly due to predictable attacks claiming they would damage the economy. This has been in the Republican playbook forever, and codified in the infamous Luntz memo.
Such attacks will be louder now than ever; and yet at the same time, the Congress is also more favorable than ever to change, and the momentum is immense. President Obama can finally succeed on climate policy,…
tlambert | November 11, 2008Some more responses to Michael Duffy's wrongheaded column. Gavin Schmidt's letter in yesterday's SMH:
The opinion piece by Michael Duffy contains multiple errors of fact and plenty of errors of interpretation ("Truly inconvenient truths about climate change being ignored", November 8-9). ...
Realclimate is not "alarmist". Posts frequently debunk overheated claims in the media as well as criticising disinformation efforts. Acknowledging that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that its concentration is rising rapidly due to human activities may be alarming, but it is not alarmist.
Rajendra…
mikethemadbiologist | November 10, 2008While the talk about symbolism is important, a president actually has to do stuff. I've been hoping that somewhere there are a bunch of smart people figuring how to unfuck all the stuff that Little Lord Pontchartrain has fucked up using the power of the Executive Branch (here's one example)--hell, just coming up with a list of said fuckups would be a challenge. So I'm delighted to read this in the Washington Post:
Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse…
tlambert | November 10, 2008It's only been six months since his previous wrong-headed column claiming that global warming has ended, but Michael Duffy has decided to write another one:
Last month I witnessed something shocking. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was giving a talk at the University of NSW. The talk was accompanied by a slide presentation, and the most important graph showed average global temperatures. For the past decade it represented temperatures climbing sharply.
As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: "We're at a stage where…
nisbetmc | November 4, 2008
Opinion-leaders are a commonly overlooked resource by science organizations and advocates. Public communication initiatives too often ignore the special individuals across communities and social groups that can serve as vital go-betweens and information brokers, passing on messages about an issue such as climate change that can speak directly to their otherwise inattentive peers, co-workers, and friends.
In a forthcoming article at the journal Science Communication, we synthesize past research from politics, marketing, and public health, presenting a toolbox of concepts, measures, and…
tlambert | November 1, 2008Journalist Andrew Bolt reckons that the "green sickness" is "spreading". He quotes from a story by journalist Bryony Gordon:
Psychiatrists in America have identified a new mental illness that threatens the very fabric of society: an obsession with saving the planet. Some people are so addicted to cutting their carbon emissions that they seem to have gone quite mad.
Take, for example, Sharon Astyk, who makes her four children sleep in a huddle so she doesn't have to turn on the heating (if she was that concerned about the planet, perhaps she could have stopped reproducing after baby number two…
tlambert | October 29, 2008Leading climate scientist has a new theory
Environmentalism is just the latest attempt to find a substitute for the theory of evolution and it is paradoxical that it can be so widespread when next year (2009) is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his major work "The Origin of Species as the Result of Natural Selection".
Except that it's the Global Warming Skeptics who tend to be Creationists. And he got the title of Darwin's book wrong.
Gareth Renowden has more.
nisbetmc | October 24, 2008In a Policy Forum article published this week at Science, MIT Professor of Management John Sterman reports on an experiment that shows just how self-defeating it is to continue to overburden the public with technical and science-laden explanations of climate change, especially when the communication goal is to catalyze public demand for policy action.
In the experiment, MIT students with advanced training in either the sciences or economics were asked to read descriptions from the IPCC summary for policymakers that depicted the long term accumulation of C02 in the atmosphere. When asked then…
illconsidered | October 20, 2008This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
We all live on a thin crust that floats on a huge ball of molten iron, and at its core, the Earth's temperature is over 5000oC! It's pretty far fetched to think a few parts per million of CO2 can have a bigger effect that all that heat!
Answer:
Although there is nothing wrong with the statement that the Earth is truly very hot at its center (actually as hot as the surface of the sun) the notion that it is a significant source of heat at…
nisbetmc | October 19, 2008
In a two hour special, PBS Frontline tackles what the award winning series calls the most important issue of our time. (Promo above.) The special program airs Tuesday night in most US markets, check your local listings.
"I have reported on the Cold War, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the rise of Al Qaeda, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," says producer Martin Smith. "But nothing matches climate change in scope and severity."
From the press release:
The world needs to dramatically cut the carbon emissions responsible for wreaking havoc on the planet's climate, according to Dr.…
tlambert | October 14, 2008Remember Dennis Bray's useless survey of climate scientists? The URL and password were posted to the climatesceptics mail list, so the results were biased and included responses from people who were not climate scientists. Bray refused to concede that this meant that the survey was hopelessly flawed. Now he has conducted another survey. Bray has avoided the problems of his previous survey by surveying a list of climate scientists he compiled from journal publications and scientific institutions, and only allowing one response per invitation. However, Gavin Schmidt finds that some of the…