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- Climate Change Denial and the Media - Banishment of Science Reality
- Just Science app shows climate change is happening in pictures anyone can understand
- Lean and Rind Estimate Human and Natural Global Warming
- New research from last week 1/2012
- 2011 Year in Review (part 2)
- 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #1
- 2011 Expected to be Second Warmest Year on Record for the UK
- Skepticism About Lower Atmosphere Temperature Data
- Global Warming: Trend and Variation
- The 2011 Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards
- A Big Picture Look at Global Warming
- Myth of the Mini Ice Age
- Quantifying Extreme Heat Events
- SkS Weekly Digest #31
- North American mammal evolution tracks with climate change
- Science and Distortion - Stephen Schneider
- 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
- Michael Mann, hounded researcher
- A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
- UAH Misrepresentation Anniversary, Part 2 - Of Cherries and Volcanoes
- UAH Misrepresentation Anniversary, Part 1 - Overconfidence
- SkS Weekly Digest #30
- Climate change threshold nears for rapid increase in wildfires in Canada
- Peter Sinclair on Climate, Sun, and Cosmic Rays
- Making Arctic Sea Ice Loss Real
- Updating the Climate Big Picture
- Ocean Acidification Is Fatal To Fish
- The Media & Global Climate Science Communication
- Foster and Rahmstorf Measure the Global Warming Signal
- SkS Weekly Digest #29
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that refutes global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
Climate Change Denial and the Media - Banishment of Science Reality
Posted on 12 January 2012 by Brian Purdue
Skepticism and Critical Thinking
The general rules of skepticism are explained in “How to Access Evidence Beyond your Expertise” and also how scientific consensus works, with reference to climate science (It is recommended to listen to the 12 minute radio podcast before reading this article).
Skepticism Vs. Denial
Climate “skeptics”, and much of the media, have conveniently ignored the rules governing skepticism as discussed in the podcast. Like science, true skepticism is rigidly anchored to a foundation of “critical thinking” principles.
These "skeptics" are not the first to exploit skepticism and flout its principles. The tobacco and asbestos lobbies are two other blatant examples but there are many more that have hijacked the term “skeptic” and use it as a facade to hide behind. Climate "Skeptics" have been assisted either by a culpable media or the media’s pursuit of “balance“ before accurate and adequate reporting of the science.
Brief Overview
Public awareness and the so-called “debate” on human-induced climate change now spans more than three decades, with the informed scientific debate running much longer. Scientists and researchers from multiple disciplines have now reached a facts-based consensus, but the public and political discourse goes relentlessly on.
What became patently clear from the outset was this would not be a public debate about climate science, but an ideological and vested interests debate. Climate science was challenging the global energy generation status quo and the monolithic power of the fossil fuel industry that has ruled the world for 150 years but is now revealing its global climate disruption powers.
Just Science app shows climate change is happening in pictures anyone can understand
Posted on 11 January 2012 by norenstein
Guest post by Nick Orenstein
We find ourselves at a time where advances in scientific discovery and information gathering have accelerated faster than the general public’s understanding of issues equally vital to everyone on Earth. As a result, many non-scientists among us are: confused by too much math, politically biased by convenient half-truths, or somehow religiously opposed to the consequences of the scientific data.
The topic of “climate change” carries with it a slew of cultural connotations that often overshadow the fact-based science when the subject is discussed outside the laboratory and in the public commons. The world is torn, figuratively and literally. Someone needs to step in as the bridge between Science with a capital S, the General Public, and the Body Politic.
Last year, as a team of world-class scientists conducted the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study to independently analyze global land temperature data, I set out to build that bridge–or at least one of its lanes. Taking its slogan and running with it, Novim (the nonprofit group that sponsored the BEST study) began work on the “Just Science” mobile app to visualize the results of the study. Here was a chance, at last, to use modern technology in the pockets of millions to share the science–most importantly, to share the results as broadly and as visually as possible.
Lean and Rind Estimate Human and Natural Global Warming
Posted on 11 January 2012 by dana1981, KR
In a paper a few years back, Lean and Rind (2008) performed a very similar study to one we recently examined from Foster and Rahmstorf (2011), filtering out short-term effects on global temperature to tease out the human and natural contributions to global warming. To accomplish this, the scientists used a multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis to determine the contributions of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), solar activity, and anthropogenic influences on the measured global surface temperature changes.
Their key finding - the contribution of each effect to the observed global surface warming trends over the four periods in question - is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Contributions of solar activity (dark blue), volcanic activity (red), ENSO (green), and anthropogenic effects (purple) to global surface warming (HadCRUT observations shown in light blue), according to Lean and Rind (2008).
New research from last week 1/2012
Posted on 10 January 2012 by Ari Jokimäki
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the “New research from last week” in Skeptical Science. This new weekly feature provides a selection of peer-reviewed papers relating to climate science published (or in some cases accepted to be published) in scientific journals during the previous week.
This is a cross-post from AGW Observer, where this weekly feature has been active since week 40 of 2010. When each paper is published, it is notified in AGW Observer Facebook page and Twitter page. At least some of these are also retweeted in Skeptical Science Twitter page.
In this week's papers El Niño does some moonlighting in Europe. In New Zealand they found some unused sea level measurement stations while in Netherlands they apparently run out of official weather stations and started using weather amateur stations. The pines from Spain are showing the decline, but are doing so selectively. In Australia, they apparently didn't notice YD event at all. There's yet another effort with cosmic ray and climate connection. We also learn how to tell apart climate signal and noise. But did you know that female corals don't like climate change? Or that some Malaria species do seem to like it at least in Thar Desert? This is not all, we have studies also on Paris-London westerly index, dark aerosols, inland waters, and carbon in Siberia. However, this is just a scratch of the surface as there are hundreds of papers published every week relating to climate.
2011 Year in Review (part 2)
Posted on 10 January 2012 by MarkR
This is the second part of a two-part article summarizing what we learned about climate change and climate science during 2011. In Part 1 we explored 2011's harvest of climate data. It's now possible for anyone reading this to see the measurements showing that the atmosphere and oceans are warming, that ice is melting and the seas are rising. 2011 saw some criticisms of the temperature record put to the test and it turned out to be a triumphant year for the scientists who'd measured and reported global warming. Now we'll explore a few of the more cutting edge parts of climate science in 2011.
2012 SkS Weekly Digest #1
Posted on 9 January 2012 by John Hartz
Issue of the Week
The SkS author team is evaluating whether or not to make changes to the current Comments Policy. From your perspecive, how would you rate the current policy and its application by SkS moderators? What changes do you believe should be made to either the policy and/or its application?
SkS Highlights
SkS's most prolific author, Dana, posted two articles. The first, A Big Picture Look at Global Warming, provides lines of evidence showing that the planet is not only warming, but it's also warming at a rapid rate. Dana's second article, Skepticism About Lower Atmosphere Temperature Data, is a correction to an op-ed by James Taylor of the Heartland Institute that wwas recently posted on the Forbes magazine website. As one would expect, the guest post by Peter Gleick, The 2011 Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards, generated a good bit of commentary.
Toon of the Week
2011 Expected to be Second Warmest Year on Record for the UK
Posted on 9 January 2012 by John Hartz
This is a reprint of a news release posted (Dec 30, 2011) on the website of the UK's Met Office.
Provisional figures from the Met Office reveal temperatures this December have been close to average, but 2011 overall is the second warmest year on record for the UK.
The mean temperature so far this December has been 4.7 °C, 0.5 °C above the 1971-2000 average. This is a big swing from 2010, when temperatures were 5 °C below average to notch up the coldest December on record.
John Prior, National Climate Manager at the Met Office, said: "While it may have felt mild for many so far this December, temperatures overall have been close to what we would expect.
"It may be that the stark change from last year, which was the coldest December on record for the UK, has led many to think it has been unseasonably warm."
Skepticism About Lower Atmosphere Temperature Data
Posted on 8 January 2012 by dana1981
Note: This article was submitted to Forbes as a correction to the op-ed by James Taylor in question, but Forbes declined to publish it, so instead we're posting it here.
Forbes recently published an op-ed written by James Taylor of the Heartland Institute on the subject of the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) atmospheric temperature measurements on the record's 33rd anniversary. Unfortunately, the article contained a litany of errors which completely undermine its conclusions, and exhibited a distinct lack of true skepticism.
The main subject of the article was the fact that according to climate models, the Earth's lower atmosphere should warm approximately 20% faster than the surface, whereas UAH estimates place the lower atmosphere warming at about 20% less than surface temperature measurements. A true skeptic would acknowledge that there are three possible explanations for this discrepancy:
Global Warming: Trend and Variation
Posted on 7 January 2012 by Tom Curtis
The 2011 Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards
Posted on 6 January 2012 by Peter Gleick
[*B.S. means “Bad Science.” What did you think it meant?]
The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011 – a year in which unprecedented combinations of extreme weather events killed people and damaged property around the world. The scientific evidence for the accelerating human influence on climate further strengthened, as it has for decades now. Yet on the policy front, once again, national leaders did little to stem the growing emissions of greenhouse gases or to help societies prepare for increasingly severe consequences of climate changes, including rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, rising sea-levels, loss of snowpack and glaciers, disappearance of Arctic sea ice, and much more.
Why the failure to act? In part because climate change is a truly difficult challenge. But in part because of a concerted, well-funded, and aggressive anti-science campaign by climate change deniers and contrarians. These are mostly groups focused on protecting narrow financial interests, ideologues fearful of any government regulation, or scientific contrarians who cling to outdated, long-refuted interpretations of science. While much of the opposition to addressing the issue of climate change is political, it often hides behind pseudo-scientific claims, with persistent efforts to intentionally mislead the public and policymakers with bad science about climate change. Much of this effort is based on intentional falsehoods, misrepresentations, inflated uncertainties, or pure and utter B.S. – the same tactics that delayed efforts to tackle tobacco's health risks long after the science was understood (as documented in Naomi Oreske and Erik Conway’s book, Merchants of Doubt).
Last year, we issued the first ever “Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards.” I am now pleased to present the 2nd Annual (2011) Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards. In preparing the 2011 list of nominees, suggestions were received from around the world and a panel of reviewers -- all climate scientists or climate communicators -- waded through them. We present here the top nominees and the winner of the 2011 Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards.
A Big Picture Look at Global Warming
Posted on 5 January 2012 by dana1981
Let's take a step back and have a look at what the data say about the warming of the Earth's climate.
Rising Heat Content
The most relevant figure when talking about global warming is the Earth's total heat content. Data from Church et al. (2011) recently updated this picture, showing that total global heat content continues its steady climb upwards. As Figure 1 shows, most of this heat (about 90%) has gone into the oceans, and the continuing rise of both global and ocean heat content is probably the best indicator that global warming hasn't even slowed down.
Figure 1: Total global heat content. Data from Church et al. (2011).
Myth of the Mini Ice Age
Posted on 4 January 2012 by Rob Honeycutt
Peter Sinclair at Climate Denial Crock of the Week takes on the myth that sprang up again a few months ago suggesting that we were headed into a new mini ice age because of a new Maunder Minimum. This video features an interview Peter did at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco with Dan Lubin of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
Quantifying Extreme Heat Events
Posted on 3 January 2012 by michael sweet
James Hansen, M. Sato and R. Ruedy have posted a new paper to their website. It has not been peer reviewed yet, but will eventually be published with some changes. Hansen et al. (2011) analyzes surface temperature data and quantify the number of very hot and very cold summers and winters.
Temperature anomalies
Hansen et al. use the period 1951-1980 to calculate an average temperature for each location. Then the difference between a measured temperature and the average is calculated and called the anomaly. For example, if the average temperature in a place is 10°C, and one day records 15°C, then the anomaly is +5°C. The anomaly makes it easier to compare temperature records in different locations.
Where there are data, this allows maps of hotter-than-normal and colder-than-normal temperatures to be created, as in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Jun-Jul-Aug surface temperature anomalies in 1955, 1965, 1975 and the past nine years relative to 1951-1980 mean. Number on upper right is the global (area with data) mean.
SkS Weekly Digest #31
Posted on 2 January 2012 by John Hartz
A Look Ahead
This is the final issue of the SkS Weekly Digest for calendar year 2011. Next week's issue will be first of the new 2012 SkS Weekly Digest series. It will contain a new section, Issue of the Week, designed to engage SkS readers in an open discussion of a specified topical issue. The Coming Soon section will be enhanced to include a brief description of each article in the SkS pipeline in addtion to title and author.
In your opinion, what other changes should be made to the weekly digest in order to make it more informative and useful to you?
SkS Highlights
In his ususal no nonsense, analytic style, Dana seperated the wheat from the chaff found in a recent news release by John Chritsy and Roy Spencer. Dana's hard-hitting article was posted in two-parts: UAH Misrepresentation Anniversary, Part 1 - Overconfidence and UAH Misrepresentation Anniversary, Part 2 - Of Cherries and Volcanoes. The first part of Mark R's two-part retropsective article, 2011 Year in Review (part 1) , was posted and the second part will be posted this coming week.
Toon of the Week
Hank D and the Bee: Gray Hair = Green Mind
Source: Joe Mohr's Cartoon Archive
North American mammal evolution tracks with climate change
Posted on 2 January 2012 by John Hartz
This is a reprint of a News release posted (Dec 21, 2011) on the website of Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
History often seems to happen in waves — fashion and musical tastes turn over every decade and empires give way to new ones over centuries. A similar pattern characterizes the last 65 million years of natural history in North America, where a novel quantitative analysis has identified six distinct, consecutive waves of mammal species diversity or “evolutionary faunas.” What force of history determined the destiny of these groupings? The numbers say it was typically climate change.
Science and Distortion - Stephen Schneider
Posted on 1 January 2012 by Rob Honeycutt
This is a new video out produced by Stephen Thomson of Plomomedia that was first aired at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on December 6, 2011. It was an introduction piece for an event honoring the late Stephen Schneider and awarding Dr Richard Alley with the first Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Communication.
Not only is this an excellently produced video but it is a wonderful and balanced encapsulation of the reality of the climate situation and public debate. If you have friends who are just starting to become interested in the climate change issue, this would be an excellent place to point them for an introduction.
For further debunking of the myths that pop up in this video see:
CO2 is plant food? If only it were so simple.
2011 Year in Review (part 1)
Posted on 31 December 2011 by MarkR
Dramatic Events
Dramatic events grab headlines, and in the 2011 weather & climate sections of newspapers we've seen walls of fire burn across the American south, heartbreaking stories of Texan farmers losing their livelihoods to a record-breaking one year drought combined with record-breaking heat, tragedy across the midwest as a super active tornado season tore apart towns and massive flooding across the eastern states as record-breaking snowmelt combined with storms pounding the coast.
The US grabbed most of the news thanks to a record-breaking number of billion dollar weather disasters, but there have been weather & climate tragedies elsewhere: East African drought has caused the first UN announced famine in Africa in 30 years, heavy floods in Thailand have caused politicians there to suggest moving the capital (as well as rising seas, Bangkok is sinking into the ground) and scientists from Environment Canada have said that for the first year recorded, it was not a white Christmas for most Canadians.
Figure 1 - Hell and High Water? A helicopter surveys the devastation of Bangkok, Texas suffers brutal drought and a massive fire season, while Millington, Tennessee is under water.
Michael Mann, hounded researcher
Posted on 30 December 2011 by Andy S
Here is a translation of recent article (December 25th, 2011) in the French newspaper Le Monde by science journalist Stéphane Foucart. He reports on a talk that Michael Mann gave at the 2011 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, in which Mann introduces his forthcoming book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Foucart interviews Mann and discusses the background of the Hockey Stick and Climategate controversies. What is refreshing is the absence of the false balance, both-sides-of-the-story, style of reporting that is found so often in English language newspapers.
Original article (in French) from Le Monde
In early December, at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (the annual grand gathering of the bigwigs of the geoscience world), Michael Mann introduced his forthcoming book to his peers. The lecture was entertaining and the audience laughed heartily. The American climatologist, Director of the Earth System Center at Pennsylvania State University, cracked numerous jokes and made many witty asides. He scoffed at the anti-science of the Republican politicians and mocked their ridiculous statements on climate change; everybody laughed out loud.
But this, surely, is no laughing matter. Michael Mann’s forthcoming book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (Columbia University Press), is not really a science book; rather, as its title suggests, it deals instead with the war on climate science, which has at times turned into a manhunt, frequently with Mann as the quarry.
A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
Posted on 29 December 2011 by Tom Smerling
Peter Wehner has impeccable conservative credentials, having served under Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and most recently, as deputy assistant to Pres. George W. Bush. He resides at the "Ethics & Public Policy Center," a neo-con think tank.
After a long look at the evidence, Wehner concluded that the scientific consensus on climate is correct. He wrote two interesting posts titled "Conservatives and Climate Change," in the neo-con magazine Commentary, which prides itself in intellectual conservatism.
Wehner makes a nod to scientific uncertainties and the potential dangers of excessive government intervention, and he firmly rejects alarmism. Climate hawks will find plenty to argue with, but these caveats are worth considering because a) most have some merit, and b) they clarify exactly where many conservatives get stuck. If we don't address conservative reservations and fears directly, we're failing to get at the roots from which science denial stems.
More importantly, Wehner explicitly separates the question "Is it happening?" from "What should we do?" -- in itself a major step forward -- and for the most part he accepts the science. His gutsy stance is particularly welcome following the recent recantations by born-again climate agnostics Romney, Gingrich and Huntsman.
Check out these excerpts (The full posts are here at Part I & Part II)
UAH Misrepresentation Anniversary, Part 2 - Of Cherries and Volcanoes
Posted on 28 December 2011 by dana1981
In Part 1 of this post, we examined the overconfidence that Roy Spencer and John Christy displayed in the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) atmospheric temperature data - particularly in ther lower tropospheric temperature (TLT) estimates - in a press release marking the 33rd anniversary of the UAH satellite temperature record. In Part 2 we will examine a number of other misleading and false claims made in the press release.
Out of Step with Reality
The UAH press release repeats the myth that the observed warming is just a step function change (a flat period followed by a spike, followed by another flat period) due to the El Niño in 1997-1998:
"There was little or no warming for the first 19 years of satellite data. Clear net warming did not occur until the El Niño Pacific Ocean “warming event of the century” in late 1997. Since that upward jump, there has been little or no additional warming."
The UAH data directly contradicts the claims in this quote. We can see this by examining the trends while excluding the 1997-1998 El Niño. The UAH trend from 1979 to November 1997 is 0.04°C per decade - small, but a net warming. The trend from January 1999 through November 2011 is 0.18°C per decade - very clear warming, contrary to the press release claim. In fact, the post-El Niño trend exceeds the trend for the entire record of 0.14°C per decade (Figure 1).
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