Gareth – Page 103

Skewed views of science

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This excellent video by QualiaSoup looks at how people make judgements about science, and how opinion and bias can distort reality. Climate science is not mentioned, but it’s all too obvious how the arguments used here apply to those who deny the need for action — especially in the light of Doug Mackie’s recent post on cognitive dissonance. Hat-tip to GrrlScientist, who suggests it would make an excellent video to show students taking an introductory science course. It would indeed.

Warm year passing

2010 was the fifth warmest year in the long term New Zealand record, and December the third warmest, according to figures released by NIWA and analysis by Jim Salinger. Salinger’s rankings are based on the revised “seven station series”. According to Jim:

[December] was 1.6 Â°C above the 1971-2000 average and the third equal warmest with 1988. Only 1934 and 2005 Decemberâ€™s were warmer, with the average temperature being 18.5 and 17.5 Â°C respectively.

This capped off another warm year, with an average temperature of 13.1Â°C, making 2010 the fifth warmest year nationally since the seven station series began in 1906. Only 1971, 1998, 1999 and 2005 have been warmer with temperatures of 13.2, 13.4, 13.4 and 13.1Â°C respectively.

NZ’s warmth is being helped along by a strong La NiÃ±a in the tropical Pacific, bringing warm moist air down towards the country. NIWA’s climate summary for the December has all the weather details and local statistics. Their annual summary for 2010 will be available soon.

de Freitas: politics cloud his understanding of climate science

The southern summer silly season is here, and newspapers are desperate for copy. That’s about the only good reason I can think of for the nation’s biggest-selling newspaper, Auckland’s NZ Herald, giving Chris “unreliable witness” de Freitas yet more space to re-run some tired old climate sceptic arguments under the headline Emotion clouding underlying science of global warming. Doubt is his product, and he tries very hard to sound reasonable as he spins his tale. It’s a pity then that the Auckland University associate professor not only misrepresents the evidence, but gets it so badly wrong that he’s an embarrassment to his department.

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Easterbrook’s wrong (again)

Over the holiday period I’ve had a number of people point me at the latest “essay” by Don “Cooling-gate” Easterbrook — it was featured in full at µWatts, translated into German and Dutch, and made headline material for Morano: Geologist: 9,099 Of Last 10,500 Years Warmer Than 2010. I was a little surprised. I thought that recent temperatures were the warmest for at least hundreds, and probably thousands of years. But this is Easterbrook, and he’s up to his old tricks. He’s “hiding the incline” in temperatures by mangling the data from Greenland ice cores. Has he learned nothing since I last looked at his “work”? Apparently not.

Easterbrook’s argument is so flimsy and his presentation of data so dodgy that even the normally uncritical crowd at µWatts voiced grave doubts about his analysis. But there were a number of loose ends left over from my last look at Greenland ice core data, and so I took the opportunity to do a little more research. Playing fast and loose with the facts, and making schoolboy errors in the process, is not a good look for a professor emeritus. But that’s what Easterbrook’s been doing…

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Albert the knowledge penguin on climate

Albert the Knowledge Penguin explains the real story of climate change, from the science to the politics, and gets it right. Read the rest of the story here. British cartoonist Darryl Cunningham has clearly done a lot of research, got a good grasp of the issues — and he eviscerates the Koch and Scaife-funded campaign to derail action. Great pay off line, too.