It's not enough to bash in heads, you have to bash in minds

There are very large and important differences between local and global statistics. Differences we cannot afford to overlook. [more]

Now with more globe-y-goodness Isn’t it pretty? This new fancy 3-ball was created by Ali Lupu. Go check out his other work and while you are over at his place tell him to hurry up and release his amazingly illustrated children’s book! [more]

If you put all the water on Earth in one place it would look like this: Yes that is a lot of water, but compared with the rest of the planet it really is a tiny ball via Boing Boing UPDATE: Here is another image which also does the same thing with earth’s atmosphere. [more]

Canada has no real plan to meet its stated 2020 GHG emissions goals, and has no idea how much its hodgepodge of sector specific regulations will cost. In his latest report, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Scott Vaughan says Canada would need to reduce emissions by 178 million tonnes over the next eight years in order to meet the set targets — an unlikely feat. [more]

XKCD is always a great way to cheer up on a Monday morning. Here is just a snip from the latest brilliant comic that is sure to please at least some Planet3.0 readers: [more]

I think Tamino is right: Some have criticized Microsoft for “supporting” the so-called “Heartland Institute.” The basis of this is that Microsoft provides free software because the so-called “Heartland Institute” is, at present, legally classified as a nonprofit organization. There have even been suggestions to pressure Microsoft no longer to allow the so-called “Heartland Institute” free software access, because of their global warming denial. [more]

By now the news is stale, but on Friday Heartland pulled down the highly offensive billboards comparing the acceptance of mainstream climate science with such despicable people as the Unabomber. They, however, refuse to apologize: We do not apologize for running the ad, and we will continue to experiment with ways to communicate the ‘realist’ message on the climate. [more]

This absurd and extreme guilt by association that Heartland is pushing should be countered by making it abundantly just clear how absolutely absurd it really is. And while we are at it why not make people laugh a little. (image via Dan Johnson on Facebook) UPDATE: Let the meme begin: Nine out of 10 psychos agree: Heartland’s bonkers climate billboards need company! [more]

TransCanada applies for Keystone XL pipeline permit: TransCanada Corp has asked the U.S. government for approval to build the $7.6 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline which has been put on hold due to environmental concerns. Is anyone surprised? [more]

If Journalists would just stop asking questions, the government wouldn't have to stop the scientists from answering. Better yet, if the scientists would stop doing science there would be nothing to ask them about. And if mother nature would stop being such a drama queen in the first place we wouldn't have to worry about any of this. [more]

Nature News has more [more]

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David Appell spots a nice little calculation in the recently published Levitus 2012 paper on ocean heat content: We have estimated an increase of 24 x 1022 J representing a volume mean warming of 0.09°C of the 0-2000 m layer of the World Ocean. If this heat were instantly transferred to the lower 10 km of the global atmosphere it would result in a volume mean warming of this atmospheric layer by approximately 36°C (65°F). [more]

John Nielsen-Gammon takes a look at claims that the mean surface temperature has stopped warming: There aren’t that many full-blown El Niño events, but they seem to be following a steady upward trend. There are more La Niña events, and they too clearly follow a steady upward trend. Finally, the many neutral years also so no sign of departing from a steady upward trend. [more]

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… Pass climate change legislation. Via Nature news and the BBC. [more]

If people believe that sustainability and economic growth are incompatible then why would their place their bets with economic growth? [more]

I have never been a fan of earth hour and was contemplating writing an article explaining why I find it is pointless, but Maggie Koerth-Baker saved me the trouble: This Saturday, thousands of people will voluntarily spend an evening without electrictricity. No lights. No television. No computers. They’ll eat dinner by candlelight, maybe light up a bonfire in the backyard and roast some marshmallows. [more]

A new emerging picture of what happened to the Norse of Greenland makes clear that successful short-term adaptation is no guarantee of long-term success. In fact successful adaptation can lead to less resilience and create dangerous vulnerabilities to later change. [more]

The Columbia Journalism Review talks to *gasp* actual lawyers in an attempt to answer the legal questions surrounding the Gleick/Heartland document leak. [more]

The denial machine is no longer content with muddying the waters of public and political discourse, they are now going after students directly. [more]

Originally published on Feb 24, 2012 @ 2:44am One of the early claims made accusing Peter Gleick of faking the Heartland memo (before he admitted to being the source of the other documents) had to do with his writing style. Supposedly it matched the writing style of the memo. Anthony Watts even suggested people perform [...] [more]

Both ‘sides’ of the climate debate should be judged by the same set of rules which means we should hold Heartland to the same standard to which we are currently holding Peter Gleick. [more]

This excerpt of a comment by climatehawk1 gets to an important point that usually doesn’t get enough attention and deserves to be promoted: If Gleick’s reputation is “in ruins,” what about Heartland’s, inasmuch as they have engaged in very elaborate, systematic, long-running misrepresentation? Scientists are held to an impossibly high standard, while Heartland and others [...] [more]

Keith Kloor is claiming that the Gleick/Heartland stolen documents incident is a new low in the climate wars. But is it? Is tricking Heartland into sending some documents really any worse than hacking into a server at CRU and stealing a bunch of emails? I don’t think so. Is tricking Heartland into sending some documents [...] [more]

Heartland threatens to sue those who comment on the leaked documents and Peter Gleick comes clean as the source of the leak. There will be lawyers and the public debate seems about to move further away from the science of climate change. But perhaps this incident will spark a long overdue interest by journalists and others to look deeper into the inner workings of Heartland and other 'think tanks', because it is well past time they received real scrutiny. [more]

The Heartland Institute is obviously not happy about those leaked documents. In fact they are so unhappy that they have threatened to sue anyone who has dared comment on the documents stating in a press release that “The individuals who have commented so far on these documents did not wait for Heartland to confirm or... [more]

Debunking myths and falsehoods is not always as straight forward as it might seem. Thankfully John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky have produced a Debunking Handbook that is straight forward. [more]

Emails, regardless of what they might say, do not have the capability to overturn decades of climate science done by thousands of individual scientists. Only more scientific research has that capability. [more]

The scope of the science that goes behind a single headline is greater than almost anyone realizes. [more]