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Comments 30751 to 30800:

  1. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    Glenn,

    I hadn't realised that Gilbert Plass's work was funded by the ONR - just goes to show that, even at my advanced age, one can still learn something new every day. (Assuming one is prepared to do so, of course!)

    cheers    bill f

  2. Stephen Baines at 22:02 PM on 6 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    Peter,

    You are asking people to explain why they don't understand what they don't understand, which of course requires that they understand it.  I read your post and it is very difficult to understand.  You have to take that as an honest assessment of a reader.

    It sounds like you are basically saying that we need a science that makes more of an emotional connection with people.  What that entails exactly, even what you even mean by science in this case (you seem to be using teaching science as an example), and even if I am interpreting your statement correctly, is unclear to me. 

    It probably is not appropriate on this thread to properly dissect the ins and outs of your blog post in detail. Maybe you could bring a single observation or point up for discussion?

  3. Glenn Tamblyn at 21:23 PM on 6 March 2015
    Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    BTF

    "Sounds like the Pentagon is part of that sneaky red/green commie/environmentalist plan to install a one-world government under the aegis of the United Nations.".

    Yep. And it goes all the way back to at least the 1950's.

    Gilbert Plass's work leading to his publication of "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change" in 1956 was funded by the Office of Naval Research.

    And the data in the HiTran spectroscopic database on infrared absorption properties of gases in the atmosphere was first being measured during the 1950's in support of US developments of the first heat-seeking  air-to-air missiles.

    The commonly used program ModTran that can be used to calculate infrared transmission through the atmosphere is 1/2 owned by the Pentagon. The officer responsible for signing-off on it's specs, testing and acceptance was for many years the Commandant of the USAF Geophysics Laboratory at Hanscomb Air Force Base in Massachusetts.

  4. Peter Metaskeptic at 20:54 PM on 6 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    I get the picture :D

    Now, I could bring the crouton but I would rather have an explanation. Fair enough for you?

  5. Rob Painting at 20:20 PM on 6 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    It's word salad to me as well.   

  6. Peter Metaskeptic at 18:56 PM on 6 March 2015
    2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10A

    About "We must defend science if we want a prosperous future" by Barry Jones.

    Texts like this one are very important because they point out to a much bigger issue than global warming alone, or vaccination, etc. Good thinking, or the lack of, is a root problem that has to be address.

    Regarding our line of defense, I would add that we should make a heavy use of social dilemmas.

  7. Peter Metaskeptic at 18:14 PM on 6 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    Rob Honeycutt,

    Could you at least give one example of a sentence or a paragraph that lacks coherency? It might be really helpful. Thx.

  8. Rob Honeycutt at 14:43 PM on 6 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    While I would agree that christoz could be a little more polite, having now attempted to read Metaskeptic's piece, starting from the opening sentence, I find it to be completely incoherent. I could only describe this as word salad.

  9. Peter Metaskeptic at 12:23 PM on 6 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    chriskoz,

    Frivolous person and I intimidate girls, whoua, you got my attention for sure. My answer is: you may be annoyed by the text, but there was no need to goes that far.

    I will answer any fair question regading argument in my texts.

    Have a nice day.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Agreed, lets keep this seemly.

  10. New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    ryland - It's not how loud you are, but whether or not you're heard. 

    Over the last few years I've seen more and more mainstream media (MSM) references to Skeptical Science, to RealClimate, etc, as reliable go-to sources of information. 

    And as Rob points out, the signal to noise ratio on SkS and RealClimate is worlds above that on the major denier blogs, where the comments seem to consist primarily of "yeah, me too", "it's a conspiracy", "you can't trust the scientists", repeated ad hominems, whackadoodle personal theories amounting to 'Just So' stories, and so on, rather than questions, information, or exchanges regarding the science of the opening posts. 

    Personally, I feel that that the content on the science sites is far higher than on the denier blogs. 

  11. PhilippeChantreau at 10:29 AM on 6 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    SkS, Real Climate andOpen Mind are better communicators of climate science. Those other sites mentioned are much better communicators of BS, the kind that rings an ideological bell with a large portion of the population. That is what their popularity is based on. Not to mention the histrionics like "we're going to hang them all" type of thing, which never fails to get the crowds excited...

  12. Daniel Bailey at 10:10 AM on 6 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    Ryland posits a false equivalence, in that Ryland presupposes that the volume of comments is indicative of communication veracity. 

    In reality, in the time that it takes for Skeptical Science to pull up the pants-legs of scientific truth, the anti-science "skeptics" make up things that circle the planet 8-fold.

  13. Rob Honeycutt at 09:48 AM on 6 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    ryland...  I would look at those numbers more in terms of signal to noise ratios. Anti-science blogs produce a tremendous amount of noise relative to any possible signal (legitimate scientific information). You should look at how much moderation is done on each site to tamp down the noise. Most of the anti-science blogs do little or no moderation, or worse, they actually moderate out more rational discussion in favor of the noise.

  14. New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    Is it fair to say that the various blogs, such as Skeptical Science, that put up posts on climate change are science communicators?  As I thought it might be I looked the 20 most recent posts on each of six blogs, three largely agreeing with AGW and three more sceptical,  and counted the comments for each of the posts.  For the pro-AGW blogs Skeptical Science had 207 comments in total, RealClimate had a total of 2565 and Open Mind atotal of 1055 comments.  This gave a  a grand total of 3827 comments from readers of these blogs.  For the more sceptical blogs, JoNova had a total of 3019 comments, Climate Etc had 8988  and WUWT 2730 This is a grand total of 14737 which is nearly four times the number of posts at the pro-AGW blogs.  

    I don't know whether or not all of the comments on all of the posts were in agreement, I doubt it, but why are there so many more on the sceptical blogs? From the numbers I think it reasonable to assume the readership of the more sceptical blogs is either a lot greater than for the pro-AGW blogs or on average, each commenter at the sceptical sites writes four times as many comments which seems unlikely    Assumingit is the readership that is so much greater why is that as the pro-AGW blogs would be expected to be the better communicators of climate science to their readers?

  15. New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    Peter@8,

    I've read your "Meta Skeptic pledge". I think you give very poor example of an interraction with 16y old girl at a counter as your approach to science communication. Those two have nothing to do with each other. One is your frivolous entertaining desire to intimidate the girl (or even overpower her ino unjustified submission), another is a responsible job of a teacher who wants future generations to inherit his knowledge.

    In general you fail to distinguish entertainment from work, frivolous ignorance from responsibility. That does not make sense, like failing to distinguish falsehood from truth.

    So the answer to your "pledge" is: teacher A is always better when it comes to his main job of having future generations inherit science. If A realises he made a mistake at some point (no one is perfect A in a real world - we are all a mix of A+B), then he must correct his mind and his teachings, according to the requirements of his profession. An entertaining abilities of teacher B is nice and of course A+that entertaining  bit of B is desirable and better than A only, however it's only a gravy over a main meat of science accuracy.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] The tone of this comment is hardly conducive to constructive debate. Please avoid throwing accusations around.

  16. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    @ PluviAL

    Hi there,

    First off, your choice of the initials BAE might not go down too well with BAE Systems plc.      ;)

    More seriously, I'm afraid your laid back attitude to the use of SI units is more than a little confusing. The phrase "air contains about 10 to the 22nd joules/watts of energy" being a prime example. The joule is the SI unit of energy, and the watt is the SI unit of power, and ne'r the twain shall meet.

    If you have a TV or DVD that has a power consumption of just one watt when left in standby mode, that would still add up to an energy consumption of nearly 31.6 megajoules if you left it plugged in for a year. Another way of thinking about this would be to call it a bit under 9 kilowatt-hrs.

    So when you talk about air containing about 1022 "joules/watts of energy", I really don't understand what you're trying to convey. (And I'm afraid it sounds like you are a bit wooly about this as well.) 

    However, let's assume you're trying to talk about the energy content of the atmosphere. Even then, that's a pretty meaningless concept, but let's try to go through the necessary steps. To start with, the mass of the atmosphere is about 5.3 x 1018 kg, and then we've got to think about the concept of Specific Heat. This is basically a constant* of proportionality linking the energy supplied to a "system", the mass of the "system" and the resulting temperature change of the "system". (*Of course, this is another one of those constants that isn't constant, as it is temperature dependent!)

    If you are talking about the energy in some "system", it really makes more sense to talk about the delta from some specified state. For example, the famous Levitus paper on Oceanic Heat Content rise talks about the change in heat content from a given start date.

    At the kind of temperatures humans experience (and stay alive) the Specific Heat of air is around 1010 joules/kilogram-Kelvin (J kg-1 K-1). That means it takes about 1010 joules to raise the temperature of 1 kg of air by 1 Kelvin.

    Scaling up (and ignoring variations in Specific Heat and not even considering Latent Heat) it therefore takes about 5.3 x 1021 joules to bring about a one degree K change in temperature. The total energy content of the atmosphere (ignoring Mass-Energy of course) would therefore be the energy required to raise its temperature from Absolute Zero to its present state. We're now talking somewhere in the vague region of 1024 joules, or a yotta-joule.

    Similarly, the opening sentence in your third paragraph seems to have gotten away from you somehow. Yep, the insolation at TOA is about 1.74 x 1017 watts. After allowing for albedo effects, this comes down to about 1.2 x 1017 watts actually entering the climate system. This does indeed dwarf our current primary power conversion of about 1.8 x 1013 watts.

    However, to categorize tapping into this resource in any seriously significant scale as being "very easy" is, in the short term at least, to engage in some seriously wishful thinking.

    I'm obviously not grasping what you're trying to say - and I suspect I'm not alone - so please try again to gather your thoughts and have another go.

     

    cheers     bill f

  17. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    It's a well-known pitfall (or technique) in questionnaire design that details of question wording and context can influence responses. If you're trying just to measure something then carefully neutral wording is best, and even then you might see a difference between "global warming" and "climate change" versions of the same question. On the other hand if you're actively trying to influence the responses (or test ways to do this) then wording or introductions that clue respondents about the "right" answers often have an effect. That's done in everything from psychology and survey experiments to advertisement testing or political push-polling ("Would you still plan to vote for candidate X if you knew that he ....").

    Experiments in questionnaire design and framing can give clear evidence about the effects of such manipulations, but leave open the question of how that generalizes to real life. In testing an advertising or political campaign it might be straightforward, for communicating science in our hyper-polarized context, perhaps not so much. Neutrally-worded, minimally manipulative surveys provide a key reality check on what's happening to public opinion in real life.

  18. Peter Metaskeptic at 03:31 AM on 6 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    I do understand the classical approach taken by you guys, but I'm no more agree with it. I wanted to write an answer, but the text is too long and has become an article with a larger scope.

    http://www.metaskeptic.net/metaskeptic-the-science-communicator-excuse.html

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] Link enabled. Please note that we frown on commenters posting "ads" for their own websites.

  19. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    The profusion of issues all show something else we all know, climate change is a complex, emotional, technological, and political issue. We focus on the technological/scientific issue, but the other aspects are just as important. This article’s attempt to bridge the emotional and political divide is important, though perhaps not well executed. We need more of this discussion. It’s an emotional argument before it is a political one, thus we must hear the opposition’s fears and concerns. Of course the US is more polarized than the British; we are more reliant on fossil fuels for our absurd city sprawl, and we have all the fuels we will ever need to ruin the climate in AC comfort.

    I’ll not use the P word for which I was very kindly rebuffed, before, but let me insert the concept using a different term: Benign Atmospheric Engineering BAE. The atmosphere/ocean preesent the syptoms of the problem, air contains about 10 to the 22nd joules/watts of energy and growing. It is the interface between the ocean system, the land system, and space. It is the engine which creates wind by processing energy out into space.

    What if we could insert our energy needs into this process of 26% from 175,000 TW per second, insolation? It is adjustable; either up or down. Which is what the discussion is all about. And it will amply supply civilization's current <20 TW needs, and future 200 TW needs... for space colonization. By invoking this energy, process, as source, we will affect the climate and change the characteristics of the atmosphere and land on the planet, but in a largely beneficial way, thus BAE. And it is very easy, farming is a minor BAE, so is hydroelectric, but this are very small and indirect processes. When we consider Geoengineering, we will open our minds to large scale and direct BAE, which is to the good.

  20. The oceans may be lulling us into a false sense of climate security

    Thanks for covering this important story. Abraham (from St. Thomas in St. Paul)  interviewing Steinman (from UMN Duluth) just drives home how many of us Minnesotans are important players in GW issues!

    Meanwhile, breaking news:


    NOAA officially calls it: We are in El Niño conditions.

    www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html

    Moderator Response:

    [Rob P] - A sizeable Kelvin wave is heading east across the Pacific Ocean. Combined with observed slowdown of the South Pacific subtropical gyre, there is the potential for a strong El Nino developing this year too. I suspect that the sustained trade winds in the southern hemisphere last year prevented proper ocean-atmosphere coupling. 2015 is shaping up as another interesting year weather wise.

  21. With climate change, US presidents matter

    What Warren Buffet says in public does not change the fact that the fastest growing component of BNSF business is hauling oil by rail. Admittedly, the volume is still dwarfed by the amount of coal hauled. And as a political play, what does Warren really risk by disagreeing with the President on an already vetoed bill?

    No matter how you slice and dice it, the tax treatment of the refined KXL oil is nothing more than massive corporate welfare to the tune of billions a year with the Kochs benefitting disproportionately.

  22. Climatology versus Pseudoscience book tests whose predictions have been right

    Yeah, a sensitivity estimate is not the same as a temperature projection.

  23. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    @ wili #10

    Another item to keep in reserve for "future interactions with similarly recalcitrant loved ones" would be the Quadrennial Defense Review from the US Department of Defense. (There are 8 references to "climate change" therein - I counted.)

    Even more in your face is the US Navy's Arctic Roadmap, which was produced by the Navy's Task Force: Climate Change.

    Sounds like the Pentagon is part of that sneaky red/green commie/environmentalist plan to install a one-world government under the aegis of the United Nations.

    cheers     bill f

  24. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    Thanks for the kind and thoughtful suggestions, Tom and Glenn. There may be too much water under that bridge for further discussion with that particular relative. But I'll keep your hints in mind for future interactions with similarly recalcitrant loved ones.

  25. Glenn Tamblyn at 13:41 PM on 5 March 2015
    Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    wili

    Maybe the key to getting him to think about it is to give him one or two key facts that support AGW and can only be rejected by rejecting opinions from conservative sources. Since he is a WSJ reader I assume he is Republican.

    Ask him why the US Defense Dept accepts AGW as the most serious future threat they will have to face and how they came to that conclusion - answer, they were involved in the core research into the properties of atmospheric gases, going all the way back to the 50's when they started designing heat seeking missiles.

  26. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    wili @7, perhaps you should ask him why he is accepting his climate science from the same people who deny the link between second hand smoke and health, reject the link between the HIV virus and AIDS, and who reject vaccination for measels etc?

  27. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    Many good points, sho. But at least while she was in office, Thatcher was lightyears ahead of Reagan on environmental issues: "Thatcher supported an active climate protection policy and was instrumental in the creation of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and in founding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the British Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter.Thatcher helped to put climate change, acid rain and general pollution in the British mainstream in the early 1980s"

    But the essential point is true--when the right in both countries (and in both parties in the US) handed over sovereign power to corporations, they insured that we would be living with much of the insanity we now face.

    The relative of mine who has the deepest science background--major medical researcher, dean of a major medical shool for many years...--flatly rejects the science of global warming, mostly based on the WSJ editorials he religiously. I'm not sure what exactly would alter his clearly ideologically based belief system. He certainly won't ever see little old me as enough of a scientific literate to question his dismissive statements.

  28. It's the sun

    Dan Pangburn - When total forcing changes, so does the climate in response. That changes the break-even point, and the imbalance goes away. 

    Now if the total forcing continues to change, as we see with our GHG emissions, the climate will follow along (albeit with a lag due to thermal inertia and slower feedbacks, primarily ocean heat content on the decadal level), but if the forcing ceases to change any imbalance will decay accordingly. There is no 'fixed offset' from a TSI change in the presence of a dynamic climate response.

    Short answer - a step change in forcing will cause a climate change, after which there won't be an imbalance to integrate. 

  29. New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    swampfoxh@5

    I learned about climate change through personal experiences ferrying (flying) new aircraft to their new owners across the world.

    Can you be more specific?

  30. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    Adam C @3: I agree that the study did show that presenting subjects with a fictitious solutions scenario that did not offend their sensibilities produced a small effect in reducing polarization. My problem was not that the solution presented was fictitious, but that the framing of the solution bore no resemblance to reality.

    Had the results been presented as "here's what happens to acceptance/rejection of the science when subjects are presented with a bogus, pain-free silver-bullet solution", then I wouldn't have objected.

    Perhaps more emphasis on frank discussions about realistic solutions could provide a way of closing the gap between those who accept and those who reject climate science. I would like to know.

  31. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    @Adam, #3

    I agree, but then the result becomes trivial because anyone could have predicted that outcome, right? So why do the study in the first place ...

    I have seen Kahan speak on the results of this experiment before, but I had not seen what the subjects were actually presented. To me, it is obviously meaningless to present false information which caters to what a person wants to hear, then essentially finding what would be expected, namely the avoidance of one pathway over another. We know that, we do not need a study for that. What we actually want to know if whether presenting realistic geoengineering options as one of the wedges of mitigation and adaptation has an effect on the perception of climate science. That is what Kahan appears to claim, but now I see how he overinterpreted his research ...

  32. 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33B

    John Baez has an interesting update on the Yamal craters.  Perhaps the most important new information is that some of the many circular craters on the Yamal peninsula are recent.  That has been determined by comparing satellite photos of the region.  Baez quotes extensively from an article, which says:

    "Professor Bogoyavlensky told The Siberian Times: ‘One of the most interesting objects here is the crater that we mark as B2, located 10 kilometres to the south of Bovanenkovo. On the satellite image you can see that it is one big lake surrounded by more than 20 small craters filled with water.

    "Studying the satellite images we found out that initially there were no craters nor a lake. Some craters appeared, then more. Then, I suppose that the craters filled with water and turned to several lakes, then merged into one large lake, 50 by 100 metres in diameter.

    ‘This big lake is surrounded by the network of more than 20 ‘baby’ craters now filled with water and I suppose that new ones could appear last summer or even now. We now counting them and making a catalogue. Some of them are very small, no more than 2 metres in diameter.’"

    This proves the formation of the craters has been an ongoing event over the last decade.  It follows that the current rate of increase in atmospheric methane already includes a contribution from the formation of yamal type craters.  The rate of formation could possibly accelerate with continued warming, but such an acceleration will result in an increase in the rate of methane increase rather than a sudden rapid rise (Shakhova event).

    Also of interest are anecdotal accounts of residents in the area seeing a flash at the time, and in the direction of the formation of one of the recent craters.  Such a flash would indicate the formation was literally explosive, with a significant proportion of the methane oxidizing when the crater was formed.  If true, that would indicate a far lower rate of methane release from these events than that estimated by David Archer at Real Climate.

    Finally, Baez links to an article by Chris Mooney assessing the risk of a methane lead disaster from such methane releases. 

  33. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    Why is England so polarised where in the Celtic Fringe (including the Republic of Ireland, where I live) climate denial hardly gets a look in? Even Scotland, with heavy dependence on North Sea oil revenues, is also a big developer of wind energy. 

    It correlates IMHO with Conservative politics - Margaret Thatcher, for example, was widely disliked outside of England, the Conservative party is basically an English party, and under her leadership Scottisn Nationalism got an enormous boost. I think Thatcher (and Reagan) did some necessary things, but they also gave big business unwarranted permission to interfere in the political process, something which seems to have also happened in Australia.

    Not that we problem-free here as regards climate change, but we have no Lord Lawsons, Tony Abbotts or James Inhofes. Or is we do, they work very quietly.

  34. Dan Pangburn at 06:53 AM on 5 March 2015
    It's the sun

    If TSI is a forcing, shouldn't the comparison on the graph be between the temperature change and the time-integral of the TSI which exceeds break-even?

  35. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    I think the study is relevent nonetheless. It's long been suspected that many "skeptics" aren't truly skeptical of the science, but rather they find the proferred solutions (taxes, regulations, international cooperation) to be politically unpalatable. They hate the cure, so they deny the disease.


    This study seems to bear that out. Offered a potential solution that doesn't offend their sensibilities, the subjects become much more willing to consider the problem. I think the authors were forced to invent a fictitious geoengineering solution in order to properly explore this question.

  36. funglestrumpet at 06:43 AM on 5 March 2015
    New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    One name that seems to be missing from the above suggestions is Viscount Christophere Monckton of Brenchley. It would be really interesting to know why he does what he does. I don't think for one minute that he actually believes what he says, and anyway, as Potholer 54 has so clearly shown on YouTube, he contradicts himself a lot of the time. Perhaps there's money involved somewhere along the line, but would a peer, even an hereditary one who has done nothing to earn their title, deliberately harm his country for a few pieces of silver? Surely not, it might cost him his title.

    (Carefully removes tongue from cheek!)

  37. Pluto is warming

    Intermediate tab text is missing.

  38. Neptune is warming

    Max Plank institute link is broken (source moved).

    (posted in the corrct thread this time :D )

    ... maybe Sromovsky 2003 link too?

  39. Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????

    Ugh, too many tabs, sorry totally posted that in the wrong thread :( 

    it shoulda been in this topic - http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars-intermediate.htm

  40. Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????

    Szwast 2006 link is broken (source moved).

  41. New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    Well, I'm not a celebrity and don't wish to be one, but I have been teaching a series titled: "Global Warming; Proof or Politics".  The course is about what you already know if you're signed on to SKS, but for the people who sign up with me, they are curious and generally not "convinced" either way...until they have finished the course.  Dcrickette asked for somebody from the conservative side...there are quite a few of us, but we keep our heads down.  I am a lifelong Conservative Republican, once personally acquainted with Ayn Rand, used to never vote for a Democrat until I grew tired of Republicans ignorant about climate change.  I am a former instructor of government and international politics at an obscure college in Virginia and manage an organic farm in the Alleghenies in western Virginia.  I  learned about climate change through personal experiences ferrying (flying) new aircraft to their new owners across the world.  Rest assured that there are millions of Republicans that understand the threat of greenhouse gases...but they don't like to admit it to many of their Republican friends.  Blood and politics are thicker than water and aerosols.

  42. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    Thanks Andy.

    It does seem utterly bizarre to use dummy geoengineering data that is so far removed from reality. One wonders why the study didn't adopt a "tell it like it is" approach to the test subjects?

    On the topic of political polarization regarding climate change information: I'm sure that you, like many of us, remember Newt Gingrich's aspirations toward the Republican Presidential nomination were badly dented at the mere suggestion of Katherine Heyhoe doing a chapter in a then forthcoming book. 

    In the UK, I'm afraid the cross party leadership show of unity (let's avoid the word "consensus") is far weaker than portrayed. Although Labour and the Lib-Dems seem pretty much to agree that this is a clear and present danger, the Tory party is rife with division on climate change.

    The joker in the pack is, of course, the UKIP party. Come the General Election on the 7th May, I will be (pleasantly) surprised if UKIP does not end up with more votes and more seats than the Lib-Dems, as UKIP's official stance on climate change is simply frightening.

    Their Energy Spokesman, Roger Helmer, has openly questioned the linkage between CO2 levels and human activity, and talks glibly of "climate alarmism".  In their Policies for People statement, the first bullet point in the section devoted to Energy reads...

    UKIP will repeal the Climate Change Act 2008 which costs the economy £18bn a year

    I wonder if it's too late to put my name down for the one-way mission to Mars?

     

    cheers      bill f

  43. New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    blithefrog,

    Calder is like Fred Hoyle, a brilliant British astronomer, who elucidated nuclear fusion in the stars, but who could not accept the Big Bang Theory (the name he created in derision, but it stuck). He also publicly doubted evolution, and theorised that the flu virus (indeed, life itself) came to the earth from outer space. 

    It is widely believed that Hoyle lost on a share of a Nobel Physics Prize because, when his peers received their awards, by that time he had embraced too many ideas in scientific disrepute.

    Hoyle also took up writing science fiction. I never read any of his books, but I would not hold such writing against him! Maybe his voyage into the world of fiction and the imagination played tricks on him.

    Hoyle's career, like Calder, shows that eminence and brilliance are no guarantee against ending up on the scientific fringe.

  44. Does providing information on geoengineering reduce climate polarization?

    Thanks. I had suspicions that there were problems with the Kahan study. Though there was a certain wry irony to the idea that some conservatives only accept gw science if spiced with schemes that at least one climate scientist called 'barking mad'!

  45. New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    Collin,

    Continuing with your wish list, here are some people (again from the UK) who are better known as science communicators rather than as scientists...

    Simon Singh and John & Mary Gribben (and I suppose David Attenborough would fit more comfortably into this category)

    Had he not shuffled off this mortal coil, I would have added Nigel Calder to the list, as it would have been interesting to find out what drove him over to the dark side. I still have many of his books from around the time of my university days, and, leading up to 2005, he also authored Einstein's Universe as part of the annus mirabilis centennary celebrations.

    However, he somewhat blotted the old copybook by participating in the making of the film The Great Global Warming Swindle, and, along with Henrik Svensmark, co-authoring The Chilling Stars. (The latter being a truly hilarious read!)

    cheers     bill f

  46. There is no consensus

    Climathulu?

  47. Understanding adjustments to temperature data

    Comparing fig.1 (left) and trends on comment 12 it is clear that adjustment on the oceans during the first half of XX century has an opposite effect in comparison with adjustment on the lands.

    Curiously this shows that raw data for land between 1910 and 1980 are similar to adjusted data for land+ocean.  

  48. Understanding adjustments to temperature data

    Bill @36 - Since you're also from Devon you may well be interested in our latest exploration into the effects of the "sceptical MSM" on the psyches of a subset of the local population:

    http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2015/03/arctic-basin-big-wave-surfing-contest-equipment-evaluation-1/

    Click a link or two and you will quickly discover how we're currently in the process of hauling both The Mail and The Telegraph in front of of the shiny new "Independent" Press Standards Organisation. However I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm optimistic the process will ultimately produce an outcome along the lines that OPOF suggests, i.e. "a proper presentation of the actual facts of the matter [that] could be provided as an introduction to every misleading report".


    With a general election looming 38 Degrees are pretty active at the moment. What do you reckon to the idea of starting a petition against what Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute described as "A national scandal"?

    https://twitter.com/ret_ward/status/384092857856176128

  49. Models are unreliable

    Tom Curtis,

    That's a lot to think about. We'll see what happens with improved computers, better instruments and measurements.

  50. It's not bad

    Good working paper summarizing research on social cost of carbon (SCC). SCC is basically the amount of an optimal tax that would "internalize" the negative impacts of carbon, expressed as $ per ton of carbon emissions. See Havranek et al. 2014 CUDARE Working Papers #1139.  Correcting for publication bias, estimates of SCC are in the range $0 - $130 per tC, in 2010 USD for emission year 2015.  Still a lot of uncertainty, but still suggests that optimal policy involves a positive tax on carbon, as high as $130 per ton. 

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