Posted on 14 June 2010 by John Cook

Dan Moutal has posted the 3rd episode of the Irregular Climate podcast. A welcome addition is new co-host, Graham Wayne (who goes by the username gpwayne here at Skeptical Science). That's not to say there was anything wrong with Dan podcasting solo but there is something very listenable about the two of them bantering about climate. It's like kicking back and sharing a beer with two climate geeks.

The only downside to the steadily improving quality of the podcast is it makes the dodgy audio quality of my 'debunk of the week' sound worse in comparison. Fortunately Graham is tutoring me in how to fix my audio quality so hopefully that'll improve in a few weeks. Please go to the iTunes store and rate the podcast to help it rank higher in searches. Irregular Climate is also now accepting donations so be sure to help support them.

Also, last week I recorded a phone interview with Alex Smith from Radio Ecoshock. The interview was on heat stroke so we discussed the recent Sherwood paper on the human limit to withstand heat stress. You can listen to the interview here or read the general transcript of the episode. It's worth listening to - I learnt a lot during the interview (I think Alex's questions were longer than my answers).

Lastly, I'll take the opportunity to use this post as a clearing house for one other issue. Whenever there's a post about Christopher Monckton, I get a sore finger from hitting the delete button to remove all the ad hominem attacks on Monckton. Please be aware of our Comments Policy regarding ad hominem comments, personal attacks and inflammatory language. In the discussion following John Abraham's response to Monckton's comment, there were many comments personally attacking Monckton. Our moderators did a fantastic job of culling these comments in order to keep a high quality discussion. This led Lou Grinzo to conclude:

There is an absolute must-read comment thread over on John Cook’s Skeptical Science, attached to the post Abraham reply to Monckton. I linked to this post last night, but that was before the comment thread exploded. including one comment (#10) which appears to be from Monckton himself.

I cannot stress this enough: Go read the whole comment thread.

I just read it, and a few things stood out:

This has to be one of the most on-point and focused comment threads I’ve ever seen in an energy and enviro discussion. Considering that I read RealClimate (as we all should), a site known for the exceptionally high content of its posts and reader contributions, that’s saying a hell of a lot.

So a big thanks to all the users who contributed to this discussion and the moderators who kept the thread on-topic. I recommend we all use Professor John Abraham as an example. Even when he is forced to endure personal insults from Monckton, his response stuck to purely scientific issues in a professional, civil tone. The guy is a class act and elevates the debate. Let's try to follow his example.