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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Latest Posts

2014 SkS Weekly Digest #52

Posted on 28 December 2014 by John Hartz

SkS Highlights

Record-Breaking Sea Surface Temperatures in 2014: Has the Climate Shifted? by Rob Painting attracted the most comments of the articles posted on Skeptical Science during the past week.

El Niño Watch

El Niño-like weather may persist in coming months as the Pacific Ocean continues to warm and indicators approach thresholds for the event that brings drought to Asia and heavier-than-usual rains to South America.

Sea-surface temperatures have exceeded the thresholds for a number of weeks and the Southern Oscillation Index has generally been negative for the past few months, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said today. While trade winds have been near-average along the equator, they have been weaker in the broader tropical belt, it said. A sustained weakening of trade winds is needed for the phenomenon to develop, the bureau says.

El Nino Seen Looming by Australia as Pacific Ocean Heats Up by Phoebe Sedgman, Bloomberg, Dec 23, 2014

Toon of the Week

2014 Toon 52

h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists

Quote of the Week

"How will we get to where we need to be? No one knows, but we do know that we must keep moving in the direction of reduced carbon emissions, a transformed energy economy, an escape from the tyranny of fossil fuel, and a vision of a world in which everything is connected. The story of this coming year is ours to write and it could be a story of Year One in the climate revolution, of the watershed when popular resistance changed the fundamentals as much as the people of France changed their world (and ours) more than 200 ago.

"Two hundred years hence, may someone somewhere hold in their hands a document from 2021, in wonder, because it was written during Year Six of the climate revolution, when all the old inevitabilities were finally being swept aside, when we seized hold of possibility and made it ours. “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings,” says Ursula K. Le Guin. And she’s right, even if it’s the hardest work we could ever do. Now, everything depends on it."

Everything’s Coming Together While Everything Falls Apart: the Climate for 2015 by Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch.com, Dec 23, 2014

SkS in the News

In their article, 12 ways to deal with a climate change denier – the BBQ guide, posted on The Conversation AU, Will J Grant and Rod Lamberts links to Dana's Guardian article, The top ten global warming 'skeptic' arguments answered and to the SkS website.

The Debunking Handbook is referred and linked to by Susannah Locke in her Vox article, How to debunk false beliefs without having it backfire.

In his artilce, Meet the US Senate's most important anti-environmentalist, posted on the Verge, Peter Moskowitz references and links to two SkS rebuttal articles:

Moskowtiz also writes:

"When you backtrack, trying to find the proof, you find all these fantasies," says John Mashey, a computer scientist who studies climate change deniers and helps run the website Skeptical Science.