Arguments
2014 SkS Weekly Digest #20
Posted on 20 May 2014 by John Hartz
Be sure to check out these new features: El Niño Watch, Poster of the Week, Insurance Industy Watch, and Mother Nature Always Bats Last.
SkS Highlights
As to be expected, Dana's Sense and climate sensitivity – more evidence we're in for a hot future attracted the most comments of the articles posted on SkS duirng the past week. "Climate sensitivity" is always a hot-button topic for many climate science geeks and faux climate science geeks.
El Niño Watch
NASA satellites and ocean sensors are showing that sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean this May look similar to the conditions in May 1997 that resulted in one of the strongest El Niño events of the last century during the fall and winter of 1997-98.
El Niño conditions usually cause milder and warmer winters in the Pacific Northwest.
Strongest El Nino in 17 years brewing: Oregon weather watch by Stuart Tomlinson, The Oregonian, May 15, 2014
Toon of the Week
h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists
Quote of the Week
California Governor Jerry Brown linked his state’s severe drought and wildfires to climate change on Sunday, saying California was “on the front lines” of the warming problem.
Brown said on ABC’s This Week that though California’s wildfires are relatively under control right now, the state is “in a very serious fire season” — one that’s seen about twice as many fires this year as the average — and future control of the fires depends largely on the weather. He said that as the climate changes in California, the state will need thousands more firefighters and California residents will have to be more careful about where and how they build.
“As we send billions and billions of tons of heat-trapping gases, we get heat and we get fires and we get what we’re seeing,” he said. “So, we’ve got to gear up. We’re going to deal with nature as best we can, but humanity is on a collision course with nature and we’re just going to have to adapt to it in the best way we can.”
California Gov. On Drought, Wildfires: ‘Humanity Is On A Collision Course With Nature’ by Katie Valentine, Climate Progress, May 19, 2014
SkS in the News
Joshua Holland, concludes his Moyers & Company article, Eight Pseudoscientific Climate Claims Debunked by Real Scientists with the following:
These are only some of the most common pseudoscientific climate arguments. The Skeptical Science website provides easy-to-understand scientific rebuttals to these and 168 others.
Holland also cites and links to Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues.
The Basic version of the SkS Rebuttal article, Is there a scientific consensus on global warming? is also cited and linked to by Holland.
In his NBC News blog post, Get a Reality Check on the Antarctic Meltdown and Rising Sea Level, Alan Boyle cites and links to the intermediate version of the SkS rebuttal article, Is Antarctica losing or gaining ice?
Bab Lacatena's Four-Hiro-Bombs-per-Second widget is cited and lanked to in David Goldstein's Interview with a Climate Vampire post on the Huffington Post.
In her Media Matters blog post, The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Fatalistic Climate Rhetoric, Denise Robins refers her readers to the Home Page of the SkS website. Robbins also interviewed Dana and quoted him in the article.
John Cook's Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature is cited and linked to by Chris Mooney in his Mother Jones article, Watch: John Oliver and Bill Nye Show Why Cable News Climate "Debates" Are So Ridiculous.
In his Climate Progress blog post, The 97 Percent: Watch John Oliver’s Hilarious ‘Statistically Representative Climate Change Debate’ Joe Romm cites and links to the SkS article, Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming. Romm's article is also reprinted on Oil Price.com.
SkS Spotlights
The Global Climate and Health Alliance was formed in Durban in 2011 to tackle climate change and to protect and promote public health.
The Alliance consists of health organizations from around the world united by a shared vision for a sustainable future. Specifically the Alliance members work together to:
- Ensure health impacts are integrated into global, national and local responses to climate change
- Encourage the health sector to mitigate and adapt for climate change
The Alliance does this through:
- Providing leadership
- Advocating for health and climate
- Policy and research
- Engaging and informing
The Alliance was launched following the inaugural Climate and Health summit, which took place during the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Alliance members meet annually at the conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Poster of the Week
h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists
Insurance Industry Watch
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Climate change lawsuits filed against some 200 US communities by Mica Rosenberg, Reuters/The Christian Science Monitor, May 17, 2014
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Insuring the apocalypse by McKenzie Funk, The New Yorker, May 15, 2014
- U.S. insurer class action may signal wave of climate-change suits by Mica Rosenberg, Reuters, May 16, 2014;
SkS Week in Review
- Behind The Times - another manufactured climate controversy conspiracy theory by Dana
- 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #20 by John Hartz
- 75% of Americans want to see climate change taught in schools, and four more graphs by Ros Donald
- The passing of a climate giant, Tom Crowley by John Abraham
- 6 major reports in a year: is it possible to have too much information about climate change? by Graham Wayne
- 97% - A Statistically Representative Debate On Global Warming by Rob Painting
- Sense and climate sensitivity – more evidence we're in for a hot future by Dana
Coming Soon on SkS
- Behind The Times - another manufactured climate controversy (Dana)
- Looking for connections (Marcin Popkiewicz)
- Record growth of atmospheric CO2 in 2013 (Alexander Ac)
- Video: Abrupt Climate Change, and the Expected Unexpected (Peter Sinclair)
- John Oliver's viral video: the best climate debate you'll ever see (Dana)
- SkS Weekly News Roundup (John Hartz)
Mother Nature Always Bats Last!
Second Confirmed Case of MERS in U.S.
“U.S. health officials said on Monday a second case of MERS, a deadly virus first discovered in the Middle East, has been confirmed in the state of Florida.” Here’s what you need to know about the virus that kills half the people it infects. [Reuters]
h/t to The Huffington Post
Please note that SkS is not US-centric. Therefore such shortcut may be confusing for readers outside US. A better warding would be:
chriskoz: Please note that the two paragraphs of the El Niño Watch section are the first two pragraphs of the the article verbatim. The name of the newspaper is also a big clue to what "Pacific Nothwest" means in this particualr context.
A big El Nino and the corresponding spike in surface temps is not something the deniers are looking forward to, so they are in full damage control mode these days.
Over the past 6 or so years, we have seen nothing but predictions of cooling from them, so with a likely new surface temp record in 2015, we should expect the denialiati to finally admit that they have been wrong, as they have proposed no natural explanation for a new surface record, rather the opposite.
Esop, your statement beginning "we should expect the denialiati ..." is as illogical as the denialati themselves ... the nature of denial is to deny was is real and true, ergo they will do no such thing as "admitting". Cheers!