Arguments
2013 SkS Weekly Digest #14
Posted on 7 April 2013 by John Hartz
SkS Highlights
Dana's The Fool's Gold of Current Climate generated the most comments of articles posted this past week. Agnostic's Food Security - What Security? came in second and Dana's Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year was third.
Toon of the Week
Quote of the Week
“Should we still debate whether the Earth is flat?” Maher demanded. “That’s not how science works. At some point, you reach a consensus, then debate the next issue.” - Bill Maher
Maher: Debating climate change is like arguing about whether the Earth is flat by David Ferguson, The Raw Story, Apr 6, 2013
The Week in Review
- The History of Climate Science by John Mason
- Sportsmen’s and Anglers’ Views Highlighted in New ‘This Is Not Cool’ Video by Greenman
- 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #14 by John Hartz
- Food Security - What Security? by Agnostic
- 2013 SkS News Bulletin #6: Alberta Tar Sands and Keystone XL Pipeline by John Hartz
- The Fool's Gold of Current Climate by Dana
- Klotzbach Revisited and John Christy's response, part 2 by JosHag
- Klotzbach Revisited and John Christy's response, part 1 by JosHag
- Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year by Dana
- Book review: Cold Cash, Cool Climate by Jonathan Koomey by John Cook
Rebuttal Articles Updated
Dana's Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year has been incorporated into the rebuttal to the myth 'CO2 limits will harm the economy' and 'renewable energy is too expensive.'
Coming Soon
- Land Surface Warming Confirmed Independently Without Land Station Data (Dana)
- Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable(Andy Skuce)
- Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'(Dana)
- Antarctic Octopus Living Testament To Global Warming (Daniel Bailey)
- Thin, Low Arctic Clouds Played an Important Role in Widespread 2012 Greenland Ice Sheet Melt (John Hartz)
- 2013 SkS News Roundup (John Hartz)
In the Works
- Global Warming is Accelerating, but it's Still Groundhog Day at the Daily Mail (Rob Painting)
- Forks in the road (Sarah)
- New Research Shows Humans Causing More Strong Hurricanes (Dana)
- The radiative role of clouds – which ones warm and which ones cool the Earth (jenikhollan)
- A tale told in maps and charts: Texas in the National Climate Assessment (Dana)
- New satellite confirms dramatic thinning of Arctic ice (MarkR)
SkS in the News
Media Matters made use of the Escalator in debunking Fox News' denial of climate denial.
The Conversation (re-published by Phys.org) interviewed John Cook about the Australian Climate Commission report on extreme weather in Australia.
Climate Progress re-posted and IndyMedia referenced Rob Painting's Earth Encounters Giant Speed Bump on the Road to Higher Sea Level.
Brad Plumer at The Washington Post referenced the SkS evaluation of James Hansen's 1988 climate projections.
Mary Ellen Harte at The Huffington Post referenced Dana's New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated.
Media Matters referenced Nuccitelli et al. and Dana and Zeke's Making Sense of Sensitivity … and Keeping It in Perspective to debunk Rush Limbaugh's distortion of The Economist's climate sensitivity article.
Climate Progress also re-posted the Making Sense of Sensitivity post.
Andrew Revkin at DotEarth referenced the discussion of the Marcott paper on SkS.
Citizen's Challenge referenced the SkS page on Roy Spencer.
SkS Spotlights
Climate Change Institute of the Australian National University (ANU)
Vision: To build and support a cohesive, interactive community of climate change-related researchers and teachers at the ANU.
Mission: To contribute to climate change solutions through innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to research and teaching, drawing on the wealth of expertise across the University's seven colleges, and to connect our work to governments, the private sector and civil society.
Strategies
- Building a collaborative community of climate change scholars across the University via seminars, symposia and other internal events
- Developing research aimed at tackling critical climate change issues, through stimulating disciplinary work and enabling new interdisciplinary approaches, supported by significant new external funding
- Working with academic areas to create exciting, innovative climate-oriented courses at undergraduate, post-graduate and professional levels
- Providing policy-relevant advice to the Australian and ACT Governments, supported by our expertise, our ongoing research, and out role as the national university
- Communicating the activities and outcomes of the ANU climate change community to a wide range of audiences locally, nationally and internationally.
A denial press release that Mike Mann shared on his FB.
Denier Delingpole Wishes For ‘Climate Nuremberg’
It's not worth reading the original (referred therein by Joe Romm) because it's indeed nauseating, if taken seriously. Waste of time to wrestle with pigs. But it's worth at least reading this commentary by Joe.
Climate Science Deniers have reached the new low. To date I thought Monckton was the bigest nutter among the deniers. Now he was overtaken by James Delingpole.
This James Delingpole fellow openly admits he has nothing but the "art of metaphor". Abusive and bullying metaphors, like a kindy child, or a nutter in a mental institution. And a UK Daily Telegraph has printed it. Unbelievable! Lower than I ever expected. I wonder if they can go any lower still...
Actually, Delingpole has been a special kind of crazy for a long time. He just isn't as well known as Monckton.
That said, I've never been comfortable with the fact that there have been calls for a 'climate Nuremberg' going the other way too. People should be held accountable for lies, slander, and destructive deceptions, but let's leave the Nazis out of it.
According to last week's 'Economist' report warming has plateaued and climate sensitivity is most likely lower than the 3 degreesC for doubling CO2. Any comment on this?
archie lever @3, warming has "plateaued" at a rate of rise greater than the twentieth century average (GISTemp). That little fact the economist probably forgot to mention. Further, paleo studies of climate sensitivity continue to show climate sensitivity greater than 3 C. Studies of temperature increase in the last century and some studies of the increase since the LGM show lower sensitivity; but the latter depend on a controversially high finding of LGM temperatures and the former are very noisy. So perhaps, and hopefully they are right about the climate sensitivity - but that is not a conclusion that can be drawn from the full range of recent studies.
archie lever, there is a Skeptical Science analysis of that Economist article.
Archie, has global warming plateaud? (two 16-year trends that overlap, one .3C per decade; the other .0875C per decade; and the climate-scale trend (37 years): .165C per decade, just under the expected rate of warming)
What do you think? Respond on the appropriate thread.
[TD] Archie, there best thread for that particular issue is "Human activity continues to warm the planet over the past 16 years". For the more general conversation you started, use "Making Sense of Sensitivity … and Keeping It in Perspective." No matter where you post, you can see all replies by doing what most regular readers do: Watch the overall Recent Comments list, which you can get to by clicking the "Comments" link in the blue bar at the top of every Skeptical Science page.