Posted on 28 February 2016 by John Hartz

SkS Highlights

Earth is warming 50x faster than when it comes out of an ice age by Dana Nuccitelli garnered the most comments of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. Fossil fuel funded report denies the expert global warming consensus by John Abraham attracted the second highest number. Both articles were written for the Climate Consensus - the 97% blog hosted by the Guardian newspaper. 

El Niño News

A new NASA visualization shows the 2015 El Niño unfolding in the Pacific Ocean, as sea surface temperatures create different patterns than seen in the 1997-1998 El Niño. Computer models are just one tool that NASA scientists are using to study this large El Nino event, and compare it to other events in the past.

NASA sees a different kind of El Nino by Kate Ramsayer, Phys.org, Feb 25, 2016 

Toon of the Week

Quote of the Week

"Tar sands are a climate killer and the Obama Administration was right to block Keystone XL," said Colin Roche, extractives campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe. "Trade policy should not be a backdoor for corporations to challenge or dissuade measures to tackle climate change. It's time to drop investor-state dispute mechanisms in any form, stop harmful trade deals and start taking necessary action to stop climate destruction."

Opposing Corporate Coup, Campaigners Block Trade Talk Doors by Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams, Feb 22, 2016

He Said What?

As Donald Trump continued to gain momentum in his bid for the White House, Republican officials, donors, and members of Congress declined on Wednesday to join forces against him.

“We’ve heard this kind of alarmism before,” a senior Republican senator told Slate, responding to warnings that a Trump nomination would doom the Republican Party. “Remember global warming? Gases, temperatures, the sky is falling? It’s all speculation. I’ll believe this Trump wave when I see it.”

An Inconvenient Trump by William Saletan, Slate, Feb 24, 2016

SkS Spotlights

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is the intergovernmental body which assesses the state of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services it provides to society, in response to requests from decision makers. IPBES is placed under the auspices of four United Nations entities: UNEP, UNESCO, FAO and UNDP and administered by UNEP. Its secretariat is hosted by the German government and located on the UN campus, in Bonn, Germany. One thousand scientists from all over the world currently contribute to the work of IPBES on a voluntary basis. They are nominated by their government or an organisation, and selected by the MEP. Peer review forms a key component of the work of IPBES to ensure that a range of views is reflected in its work, and that the work is complete to the highest scientific standards.

The mission of IPBES is to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development.

Coming Soon on SkS

• Climate scientists laugh as anti-climate think tank GWPF forgets about physics (Dana)
• Mapped: The sensitivity of the world’s ecosystems to climate (Robert McSweeney)
• Guest post (John Abraham)
• Centuries of Melting Already Locked in for Polar Ice, Scientists Say (Phil Mckenna)
• Will Fossil Fuel Prices Fully Recover? (Riduna)
• 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10 (John Hartz)
• 2016 SkS Weekly Digest #10 (John Hartz) 

Poster of the Week

SkS Week in Review 

• 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #9 by John Hartz
• How Exxon Overstates the Uncertainty in Climate Science By John H Cushman Jr (InsideClimate News)
• US seafood species highly vulnerable to climate change, study says by Robert McSweeney (Carbon Brief)
• Earth is warming 50x faster than when it comes out of an ice age by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian)
• The Uncertainty Handbook: Download and Translations by BaerbelW
• Fossil fuel funded report denies the expert global warming consensus by John Abraham (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian) 
• 2016 SkS Weekly Digest #8 by John Hartz

97 Hours of Consensus: James McCarthy

James McCarthy's bio page

Quote derived from:

"[A]ll the professional societies of climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers that have ever looked at this problem have made very consistent statements that climate is changing, it's changing in unusual ways, and the only way that change can be explained is as a result of human activities. Most people have no idea that something between 95 and 100 % of climate scientists completely agree with that statement."