2014 SkS Weekly Digest #50

SkS Highlights

Tamino's Guest blog post, Is Earth’s temperature about to soar?, drew the most comments of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. California just had its worst drought in over 1200 years, as temperatures and risks rise by Dana attracted the second highest number. 

El Niño Watch

Japan’s weather bureau said on Wednesday that an El Niño weather pattern, which can trigger drought in some parts of the world while causing flooding in others, had emerged during the summer for the first time in five years and was likely to continue into winter.

That marks the first declaration by a major meteorological bureau of the much-feared El Niño phenomenon, which had been widely expected to emerge this year.

First El Niño in five years declared by Japan's weather bureau, Reuters/The Guardian, Dec 10, 2104  

Toon of the Week

 2014 Toon 50

h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists

Quote of the Week

Another organizer at COP 20 is the Nigerian environmental leader Nnimmo Bassey. He said: “Before I left Nigeria, my temperature was gauged twice, to determine if I have high fever or if I have Ebola. Now, the temperature of the Earth has gone 0.8 degrees above preindustrial levels. If the Earth was to go through the same process ... it would’ve been quarantined because the Earth would’ve been judged to have high fever or Ebola. But, we can’t quarantine the Earth. We need to find who are the climate criminals and quarantine them.” 

Fighting for the Climate in the Heart of the World by Amy Goodman, TruthDig, Dec 10, 2014

SkS in the News

In his Bad Astronomy (Slate) blog post, Global Warming: It’s OK to Be Smart About It, Phil Plait references his prior blog post New Study: Climate Scientists Overwhelmingly Agree Global Warming Is Real and Our Fault which highlights The Consensus Project (TCP).

Plait's article also includes the following:

Not bad! He covers a lot of the basic knowledge you need to counter most of the silly global warming denier claims. If you need more, I suggest Skeptical Science’s amazing list of climate myth debunkings, and Hank Green’s video debunking of ten common claims.   

SkS Spotlights

97 Hours: Ben Santer  

Ben Santer's bio page

Coming Soon on SkS

Poster of the Week

2014 Poster 50 

h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists

SkS Week in Review

Posted by John Hartz on Sunday, 14 December, 2014


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