Posted on 11 June 2012 by John Hartz

SkS Highlights

Using the metric of comments posted, Pal Review - the True Story and the Fairy Tale by Dana and John Mashey drew the most attention by SkS readers this past week. The article details a real life case of pal review which happened at the journal Climate Research between 1997 and 2003. Contrary to the standard conspiracy theory, the pal review did not involve mainstream climate scientists, but instead the climate science contrarians themselves.

Toon of the Week

Fictional Pledges

Source: Stephanie McMillan, Code Green.

Quote of the Week

"In biophysical terms, humanity has never been moving faster nor further from sustainability than it is now."

From, "Securing natural capital and expanding equity to rescale civilization" by Stanford biology Professors Paul Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily, with the Nature Conservancy's Peter Kareiva, published in Nature's new Rio+20 issue.

The article, "Stanford biologists call for humanity to 'scale itself back' " , also highlights the findings of the above cited paper.

Issue of the Week

How do you use the information posted on Skeptical Science?

Scientific Term of the Week

Abrupt climate change: The nonlinearity of the climate system may lead to abrupt climate change, sometimes called rapid climate change, abrupt events or even surprises. The term abrupt often refers to time scales faster than the typical time scale of the responsible forcing. However, not all abrupt climate changes need be externally forced. Some possible abrupt events that have been proposed include a dramatic reorganisation of the thermohaline circulation, rapid deglaciation and massive melting of permafrost or increases in soil respiration leading to fast changes in the carbon cycle. Others may be truly unexpected, resulting from a strong, rapidly changing forcing of a nonlinear system.

Source: Annex I (Glossary) to Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

The Week in Review

A complete listing of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. 

• Today's Climate More Sensitive to Carbon Dioxide Than in Past 12 Million Years by John Hartz
• Richard Alley Looks at The Big Picture by Dana
• Fred Singer Promotes Fossil Fuels through Myths and Misinformation by Dana
• Don Easterbrook's Heartland Distortion of Reality by Dana
• Pal Review - the True Story and the Fairy Tale by John Mashey & Dana
• New research from last week 22/2012 by by Ari Jokimäki

Coming Soon

A list of articles that are in the SkS pipeline. Most of these articles, but not necessarily all, will be posted during the week.

• Carbon Pricing Alarmists Disproven by the Reality of RGGI (Dana)
• New research from last week 23/2012 (Ari Jokimäki)
• HadCRUT4: Analysis and critique (Kevin C)
• Murry Salby's Correllation Condundrum (Dikran Marsupial)
• Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change (Tom Smerling)
• Adding wind power saves CO2 (MarkR)
• Seagrasses Can Store as Much Carbon as Forests (John Hartz)
• Christy Exaggerates the Model-Data Discrepancy (Dana)
• Hansen 1988 Update - Which Scenario is Closest to Reality? (Dana)

SkS in the News

Dana and John Mashey's Pal Review - the True Story and the Fairy Tale was re-posted on Climate Progress.   Dana's Don Easterbrook's Heartland Distortion of Reality and Tom Curtis' excellent sleuthing work for that piece were referenced in a good piece by Gareth at Hot Topic.  John Hartz's Today's Climate More Sensitive to Carbon Dioxide Than in Past 12 Million Years was re-posted on PlanetSave.   

SkS Spotlights: The Danish Climate Centre

The Danish Climate Centre (DKC) is located in Copenhagen within the Danish eteorological Institute (DMI).

The DKC provides society with in-depth climate information and endeavors to deliver the best possible advice on climate and climate change.

The DKS participates in research programmes, projects, and scientific collaboration in Denmark and internationally. DKS directs most ofits capacity towards joint research initiatives to tackle the key challenges in climate science and prediction.