Posted on 27 April 2014 by John Hartz

SkS Highlights

The biggest story of the year could very well be the onset of El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean. Rob Painting's timely SkS post, Is a Powerful El Niño Brewing in the Pacific Ocean? details how and why El Nino conditions form. Painting's closing paragraph is well worth noting.

The arrival of a powerful El Niño would cause an abrupt rise in global surface temperatures as heat is discharged from the tropical ocean, and would entail widespread weather-related disruption and suffering around the world - so is not something to be welcomed. We (SkS) will take a look at the likely consequences if such an event unfolds, but for now we'll keep a watchful eye on the Pacific.

On the good news front is John Cook's post, Skeptical Science consensus paper voted ERL's best article of 2013.

Setting the record straight is one of Dana's specialties. He does so again in his post, Climate dollars and sense – preventing global warming is the cheap option.

Toon of the Week

Source: Obama's Last Shot: The president came into office promising to make fighting climate change a priority. Now, he finally seems to be getting serious about it, Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone, Apr 23, 2014

h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists

Quote of the Week

"I’d like to think that writing a book like my book* is part of what it is to slap people in the face. I would like to see some politicians start speaking more realistically to people about this problem. You know, people talk about budget deficits; a lot of doom and gloom. But when you talk about climate change, you almost seem to have to do it with a happier face on, if you’re going to be thought politically relevant. I mean my contribution is to try to write a book that I think, in a completely rational and not emotive way, just tells it how it is. I don’t have any secrets for how to do more than that. I wish I did." - Dale Jamieson, Professor of environmental studies and philosophy at NYU

*“Reason In a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed and What it Means for Our Future,”

The rise and fall of America’s climate deniers: How politics hijacked the fight against global warming by Lindsay Abrams, Salon, Apr 26, 2014

SkS Rebuttal Article Update

Dana's post, Climate dollars and sense – preventing global warming is the cheap option has been incorporated into the Basic and Intermediate versions of the SkS rebuttal article, What's cheaper, mitigation or adaptation?

SkS in the News

Dana's SkS article, An Updated Look at What Keystone XL and Alberta Tar Sands Mean for the Climate is referenced in Michelle Leung's Media Matters article, Right-Wing Media Greet Keystone Delay Announcement With Waves Of Misinformation.

In his blog post, Climate Denial and the Death of Rationality, Peter Heft cites Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, Cook et al, 2013 Environmental Research Letters.  

SkS Spotlights

The Nation magazine celebrated Earth Day 2014 with special, wall-to-wall coverage of the climate challenge. Every piece of content posted on TheNation.com focused on climate change, its implications and solutions.

• ‘Jobs vs. the Environment’: How to Counter This Divisive Big Lieby Jeremy Brecher
• Let This Earth Day Be The Lastby Wen Stephenson
• Elizabeth Kolbert on Species Extinction and Climate Change by Jon Wiener
• Brazil’s World Cup Will Kick the Environment in the Teeth
• People of Color Are Already Getting Hit the Hardest by Climate Changeby Steven Hsieh
• Where Have All the Green Jobs Gone? by Michelle Chen
• The ‘Environmentalists’ Who Scapegoat Immigrants and Women on Climate Change by Dani McClain
• This Is My Brain on Paper Towels by Leslie Savan
• Earth Day’s Founding Father by Katrina vanden Heuvel
• >Climate Change is the Tragedy of the Global Commons by Katha Pollitt
• Fighting Despair to Fight Climate Change by Michelle Goldberg 

SkS Week in Review

• 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #17 by John Hartz
• How global warming broke the thermometer record by Kevin C
• Wave goodbye to the stadium wave - global warming still caused by humans by John Abraham
• Is a Powerful El Niño Brewing in the Pacific Ocean? by Rob Painting
• Climate dollars and sense – preventing global warming is the cheap option by Dana
• Skeptical Science consensus paper voted ERL's best article of 2013 by John Cook  

Coming Soon on SkS 

• Palmer United Party gets most basic climate facts wrong (John Cook)
• What’s your carbon footprint and where does it come from? (Marcin Popkiewicz)
• Brandis confuses right to be heard with right to be taken seriously (Peter Ellerton)
• Past and Future CO2 (Gavin Foster, Dana Royer, Rob Painting, and Dan Lunt)
• New Video: Abrupt Climate Change, and the Expected Unexpected (Peter Sinclair)
• 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #18 (John Hartz)