Tag: Skeptical Science

A (relatively) new Lowe for Christmas

As Nick explains in the intro, this is one, if not the best of Christmas songs. Please enjoy it with my compliments while sipping white wine in the sun, sweltering in the USA, or storm-tossed in the North Atlantic. For your reading pleasure, why not spend some time in the company of Skeptical Science’s retelling of the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol — or even revisit my own little attempt at Dickensian levity from a few years back.

The compliments of whatever season you celebrate from all at Hot Topic.

While they sleepwalk in Warsaw: icebergs calve, emissions climb, “pause” disappears

PIG B31

Warsaw has seen a deluge of important climate-related information released — so much that it’s been difficult to keep up — but still not enough to steel negotiators to reach an equitable arrangement that gives us all a chance at a reasonable future climate. And at the same time, the planet has been sending signals that it’s not happy. The Pine Island glacier has finally calved the giant iceberg that first started to shown signs of cracking away from the ice stream a couple of years ago. Iceberg B-31 has been described as being the size of Singapore (about 700 km2), but isn’t likely to move far from Pine Island Bay in the near future. NASA Earth Observatory coverage here and here; see also Telegraph (UK) and Antarctic Sun.

The Global Carbon Project announced earlier this week that greenhouse gas emissions are projected to reach the highest level in human history this year — 36 billion tonnes. There are some encouraging signs that the rate of growth may be slowing, but nowhere near enough to enable the planet to avoid hitting a two degree rise in the first half of this century. There’s an excellent visualisation of national emissions at the Global Carbon Atlas (and at the Guardian). See also The Age, Think Progress. Continue reading “While they sleepwalk in Warsaw: icebergs calve, emissions climb, “pause” disappears”

Measuring climate consensus: crowd-sourced survey

Why not devote 15 minutes of your time to a good cause? John Cook of Skeptical Science, one of the regulars on The Climate Show, who just happens to be a research fellow in climate communication for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, is crowd-sourcing a survey of the climate literature to try and measure the extent of any consensus that might exist. Here’s the full story, in John’s own words:

I’m seeking your assistance in conducting a crowd-sourced online survey of peer-reviewed climate research. I have compiled a database of around 12,000 papers listed in the ‘Web Of Science’ between 1991 to 2011 matching the topic ‘global warming’ or ‘global climate change’. I am now inviting readers from a diverse range of climate blogs to peruse the abstracts of these climate papers with the purpose of estimating the level of consensus in the literature regarding the proposition that humans are causing global warming. If you’re interested in having your readers participate in this survey, please post the following link to the survey:

Take the survey

The survey involves rating 10 randomly selected abstracts and is expected to take 15 minutes. Participants may sign up to receive the final results of the survey (de-individuated so no individual’s data will be published). No other personal information is required (and email is optional). Participants may elect to discontinue the survey at any point and results are only recorded if the survey is completed. Participant ratings are confidential and all data will be de-individuated in the final results so no individual ratings will be published.

The analysis is being conducted by the University of Queensland in collaboration with contributing authors of the website Skeptical Science. The research project is headed by John , and adheres to the Guidelines of the ethical review process of The University of Queensland.

Give it a try — you’ll be helping with an interesting research project, and it might even be educational…

The Climate Show #33: Salinger, carbon carnage and recursive fury

In this week’s news-packed edition of The Climate Show we have an exclusive interview with Jim Salinger, probably New Zealand’s highest profile climate scientist, talking about extremes and the shape of things to come. John Cook discusses his new paper with Stephan Lewandowsky, Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation, which is already upsetting climate cranks around the world, plus we look at carbon bubbles, renewable energy beating coal on price, and a simply superb iPad app.

Watch The Climate Show on our Youtube channel, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, listen to us via Stitcher on your smartphone or listen direct/download from the link below the fold.

Follow The Climate Show at The Climate Show web site, and on Facebook and Twitter.

Continue reading “The Climate Show #33: Salinger, carbon carnage and recursive fury”

Still warming after all these years (again)

Spread this excellent new video from the talented team at Skeptical Science far and wide. It explains why the latest denialist trope — no warming for 16 years — is rubbish. Take out the impact of the three biggest factors driving natural variations in the global average temperature — volcanoes, the El Niño Southern Oscillation and the solar cycle — and what’s left is the underlying upwards trend being driven by our CO2 emissions. The world’s warming, Australia’s burning, ice is melting and we did it. No room left for wishful thinking or complacency.