Arguments
2014 SkS Weekly Digest #9
Posted on 2 March 2014 by John Hartz
SkS Highlights
Dana's The epidemic of climate science false balance in the media garnered the most comments of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. Bob Lacatena's A Hack by Any Other Name — Part 2 drew the second highest number of comments. Global warming continues, but volcanoes are slowing down the warming of the atmosphere by John Abraham attracted the thrid highest.
Toon of the Week
h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists.
Quote of the Week
"The impacts of climate change that have already occurred are very evident, they're widespread, they have consequences," Chris Field, a professor in the Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University and the co-chair of the IPCC working group drafting the report, said in a meeting with reporters Monday.
Climate Change 'Very Evident,' So Let's Deal With It, World Panel Says by Kate Shepard, The Huffington Post, Feb 24, 2014
SkS in the News
CNN's Carol Costello begins her broadcast segment, Why are we still debating climate change? with:
There is no debate.
Climate change is real. And, yes, we are, in part, to blame.
There is a 97% consensus among scientific experts that humans are causing global warming. Ninety-seven percent!
The link is to Dana Nucciteli's article, Survey finds 97% of climate science papers agree warming is man-made posted on Climate Consensus-the 97% hosted by The Guardian.
In his Comment is Free/The Guardian blog post, Australia’s most effective pseudoscience: climate change denial, Ketan Joshi links to the peer reviewed paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature by Cook et al posted on the Environmental Research Letters (ERL) website. The Consensus Project (TCP) is set forth in this paper.
Joshi also embeds and links to the SkS graphic, The Consensus Gap, created by John Cook.
David Appell concludes his Qurak Soup blog post, Dr. Patrick Moore Just Misled Congress with a link to the SkS article, CO2 was higher in the late Ordovician.
In his Op-Ed, The Myths of Charles Krauthammer: The Drinking Game, posted on Live Science, Michael Mann links to Dana's SkS article, Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap.
Phil Plait links to a previous article about the TCP in his Bad Astronomy/Slate post, Climate Change Deniers Lose Their Coo. He also refers readers to the Climate Consensus - the 97% blog by SkS contributors, Dana Nuccitelli and John Abraham, that is hiosted on The Guardian.
John Cook's article, ‘It’s been hot before’: faulty logic skews the climate debate, originally posted on The Conversation was reposted on the blog site, Hermit's Holler.The article includes Cook's original toon:
Graahm Readfearn links to a previous article about the TCP in his Planet OZ/Guardian post, Australia's renewables adviser scrapes the bottom of the climate denialist barrel and to the SkS article, Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
In his Care2 post, Green Your Life with 5 Environmental Apps for Your Phone, Kevin Matthews states:
I don’t know whether it’s more preposterous that people continue to deny climate change, or that I’ve somehow maintained friendships with some of these people. Frustratingly, in social situations where people dismiss global warming, I sometimes get too flustered to offer up a good argument. Thankfully, Skeptical Science is a useful tool for dismantling just about any argument a denier can offer up. With this app, I can find all of the relevant science and counterpoints at my fingertips to hopefully win over a skeptic… or failing that, at least I won’t sound like an idiot.
SkS Spotlights
The Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International) is an international organisation comprising national parliamentarians from over 80 countries committed to developing and overseeing the implementation of laws in pursuit of sustainable development.
On Feb 27, GLOBE International released the 4th edition of the GLOBE Climate Legislation Study – produced in partnership with the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics.
SkS Week in Review
- Drought and Global Climate Change: An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr by John Holdren
- 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #9B by John Hartz
- A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 3 by Bob Lacatena
- The epidemic of climate science false balance in the media by Dana
- 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #9A by John Hartz
- A Hack by Any Other Name — Part 2 by Bob Lacatena
- Global warming continues, but volcanoes are slowing down the warming of the atmosphere by John Abraham
- Our Facebook page reaches 20,000 likes by Anne-Marie Blackburn
Next Week on SkS
- The Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine is wrong to endorse Keystone XL (Andy Skuce)
- Cartoon: the climate contrarian guide to managing risk (Dana & John Cook)
- Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up (James Wight)
- Peer-reviewed papers by Skeptical Science authors (John Cook)
- UK Winter 2013-14 Round-up: Timeline of Disaster (John Mason)
- 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10 (John Hartz)
Not a fan of the toon of the week this week. I don't think SkS should be either, since it violates an important guideline in how to debunk myths -- it promotes a backfire effect. In fact, when I saw it I asked myself, "Did some climate scientists get caught fudging data?" I realize that the cartoon is portraying AGW-deniers, so showing one make a false claim is accurate, but I suspect it nevertheless propagates that particular myth.
Agree with Steve L. I can see the usual deniers claiming "SkS confesses that scientists fudged data" in big headlines and linking to the cartoon as a "source." That would be fit perfectly with their standard methods...
Steve L & Phillipe Chanteau:
Your concerns are duly noted.
The sentence, "Some scientists got caught fudging data!" is clearly being made by the climate denier sitting atop the North Pole.
If folks in Deniersville draw attention to this particular toon, the more people will see it and will have a good chuckle.