2011: a hot cold year

by Gareth January 22, 2012

The NASA numbers are in, and 2011 was the ninth warmest year since 1880 — 0.51ºC above the 1951-80 global mean. Nine of the ten warmest years in the long term record have occurred in this century. According to the analysis released by James Hansen and his team at GISS, a combination of low solar [...]

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The wrong road to take

by Bryan Walker January 19, 2012

It’s difficult not to become repetitive when blogging about climate change. The basic science is well-established. The dangers global warming poses to human society are clear and in some places present. The solutions lie with drastically cutting the level of greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to changes already unavoidable.  The mitigation solution in particular continues [...]

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Climate ethics and the reckless endangerment of denial

by Bryan Walker January 18, 2012

An interesting-looking series of posts has begun on the climate ethics blog of Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute. The series plans to put the the climate change disinformation campaign under the ethical spotlight. The introductory post written by Associate Professor Donald Brown examines some of the broad issues before planned subsequent posts look at the [...]

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Cranking it out: NZ papers conned by denier media strategy

by cindy January 16, 2012

My inbox in the last month has filled with emails about denier articles in leading New Zealand newspapers. It’s been a veritable crank central across the country. They include the ridiculous opinion piece by Jim Hopkins in the Herald late last year, a similar feature by Bryan Leyland  published in both the DomPost and The [...]

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Prat Watch #3: through the looking glass

by Gareth January 15, 2012

Sunday morning laughs: over at his Climate Conversation Club, Richard “no warming in NZ” Treadgold fulminates about about the contents1 of a stolen email: Appalling. It’s a free world, so even the “leaders” in climatology are entitled to express the opinion they like. But I draw attention to those who willingly follow these atrocious examples. [...]

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Climate Change and Migration

by Bryan Walker January 15, 2012

It’s all too easy for wealthy America and Europe to treat climate-induced migration as a border security issue. Gregory White, Professor of Government at Smith College in Massachusetts, argues in his recent book Climate Change and Migration: Security and Borders in a Warming World that a security-minded response to the phenomenon is both inappropriate and [...]

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McLean’s folly 2: the reckoning

by Gareth January 12, 2012

Ten months ago, Aussie “sceptic” John McLean predicted that 2011 would be “the coolest year since 1956″. I pointed out at the time that this was nonsense, and so it has proven to be. I’ve taken the GISS global temperature figure for Jan – Nov 2011 (+0.51ºC compared to the 1951-80 average) and added it [...]

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Hansen: extreme heat the new normal

by Bryan Walker January 11, 2012

James Hansen and two fellow-authors have circulated a new paper which they will be submitting for publication, Perceptions of Climate Change: The New Climate Dice. I’m not qualified to comment on its scientific detail beyond reporting it as relatively accessible to the lay person, but there were elements in the discussion with which it concluded [...]

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Signs of things to come: Salinger on Australian heatwaves

by Guest January 10, 2012

Climate change is happening now and Australia is in the firing line says Jim Salinger in this guest post. This article first appeared in the Dominion Post. As I watch from my summer subtropical perch in Brisbane, Queensland, the somewhat unprecedented rains that deluged parts of Australia during the summer of 2010/11 have been replaced [...]

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The climate terroirist – Gladstones’ new bag

by Gareth January 8, 2012

Regular listeners to The Climate Show will know that I often witter on about what I’ve been up to in my little vineyard. At Limestone Hills we grow pinot noir and syrah grapes and make small quantities of wine. It’s more than drinkable. One day it may even be very good. If we get that [...]

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