Arguments
2014 SkS Weekly Digest #11
Posted on 16 March 2014 by John Hartz
SkS Highlights
Dana's GWPF* optimism on climate sensitivity is ill-founded attracted the highest number of comments of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up by James Wright drew the second highest number of comments. Coming in third was Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal by John Abraham.
*GWPF = Global Warming Policy Foundation, a UK anti-climate policy advocacy group.
Toon of the Week
h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists
Quote of the Week
"We need to understand where carbon goes, how much of it goes into the organic matter, how that affects the air-sea exchanges of CO2 and what happens to fossil fuel we have emitted from our tailpipes," said Siegal*. "Quantifying this carbon flux is critical for predicting the atmosphere's response to changing climates."
*David Siegel, Director of the Earth Research Institute at UC Santa Barbara,
How do oceans absorb carbon dioxide? Scientists find clues. by
Also see: A new study by a UCSB oceanographer assesses the role of the ocean’s biological pump in the global carbon cycle by Julie Cohen, Earth Research Institute at UC Santa Barbara, Mar 11, 2014
SkS in the News
U.S. Sen, Barbara Boxer (D-CA) stated the following in her article, Lessons From the Senate's Climate Change All-nighter, The Huffington Post.
"Ninety-seven percent of climate experts now say with virtual certainty that the planet is warming due mainly to human activities which have increased the amount of carbon pollution in our air. The level of scientific certainty on man-made climate change is about the same as the consensus among top scientists that cigarettes are deadly."
The SkS graphic, Where's the Global Warming going is embedded Melanie Fitzpatrick's article, Four climate change facts to keep the US Senate up all night posted on the RenewEconomy website.
Adnan Al-Daini begins his op-ed, Climate Change: The Science Is Robust, Accept it and Act with a reference to the SkS article, Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature.
In a blog post, The Skeptical Science Attack: Where My Professional World and My Vocation Converge, Jan Galkowski opines about the hack of SkS as detailed in the ongoing series of articles by Bob Lacatena.
Raveena Aulakh extensively quotes John Cook in her Toronto Star article, Tony Abbott: the boxer picking a fight with the environment
The TCP is referenced by U.S. Sen, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in his speech on the Senate floor during the course of the Up4Climate event hosted the Senate Climate Action Task Force. A video of the full session can be viewed courtesy of C-SPAN2, and is also searchable by speaker and keyword.
Graham P. Wayne links to the SkS rebuttal, Over 31,000 scientists signed the OISM Petition Project in his op-ed, Reject bogus Oregon-based survey on climate change posted on OregonLive.com.
SkS Spotlights
The mission of the Earth Research Institute (ERI) of the University of California Santa Barbara is to support research and education in the sciences of our solid, fluid, and living Earth.
ERI's areas of research comprise Natural Hazards, Human Impacts, Earth System Science, and Earth Evolution.
ERI was formed in July of 2011 through the merger of the Institute for Crustal Studies and the Institute for Computational Earth System Science.
ERI strives to build upon the existing research strengths of our founding units while fostering new interdisiciplinary collaborations examining how Earth processes affect mankind and how mankind perturbs the Earth.
SkS Rebuttal Article Updated
The discussion of the Shindell results contained in Dana's article, GWPF optimism on climate sensitivity is ill-founded has been incorporated into the Advanced rebuttal to the myth 'climate sensitivity is low'.
SkS Week in Review
- 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11 by John Hartz
- 30 US Senators Speak Up4Climate Science by Dana & Sarah
- A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5 by Bob Lacatena
- Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up by James Wright
- Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal by John Abraham
- GWPF optimism on climate sensitivity is ill-founded by Dana
Coming Soon on SkS
- East African countries are dealing with the impacts of climate change (John Abraham)
- A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 6 (Bob Lacatena)
- Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: J.S. Sawyer in 1972 (Dana)
- The Debunking One-Pager (John Cook)
- Skeptical Science consensus paper voted ERL's best article of 2013 (John Cook)
- A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 7 (Bob Lacatena)
Interested in comment from scientists on the Media watch story "AN ALARMING STORY" on 10 March about sea level rise, describing reportage of a 6 metre sea-level rise as alramist because they omitted the 4014 prediction-come-trueth date.
Apart from completely ignoring the issue of the climatic tipping points (methane burps in polar regions etc) for such an occurance potentially being yesterday, tomorrow or in the next couple of decades, the certainty of 2000 years for 6m seemed a little over-cofident to me as a lay follower of claimte science (having passed my Climate Change Conversations introduction to CC course on Coursera last year ;-] run by UBC)
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3960467.htm
Anyone care to discuss. I don't think it's possible for me to create my own thread on SkS hence this thread hyjack, apologies if I've broken etique.
wideEyedPupil@1,
Weekly Digest is the right place to raise any topic, so you don't need to be appologetic. However, this site is dedicated to discuss the science, not the primitive junk alarmism of the story you are pointing. It's a waste of time to dsicuss such junk so I bet no one will care.
The only exempt from this story worth discussing here is:
(i.e. climate change impacts on industrial civilisation's tourism and entertainment industry in this case) but of course the assertion is lost (left unpursued) among junk.
wideEyedPupil @1, I have responded on a more appropriate thread.
It is really good to see politicians using skeptical science to communicate climate change. I wouldn't be surprised if they start funding the site one day.