How often have you heard that more certainty in climate science is needed before large scale mitigation polices should be implemented? Certainly many politicians and pundits have made that claim, and while at first blush this seems sensible, economists overwhelmingly say the opposite, as uncertainty increases so does the value of mitigation. Costs increase nonlinearly... Continue Reading →

The trouble with questioning authority, of course, doesn't come from the question; it comes from the complete indifference to the answer. –Michael Tobis UPDATE: More from Michael Tobis: The IPCC process is massive, and unprecedented, managed by flawed human beings. To make matters worse, it is a time-limited consensus process among scientists whose expertise is... Continue Reading →

Lets face it, Copenhagen was a failure. No commitment to carbon cuts, no targets set. Nothing that will slow the rise in GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, to say nothing of lowering them to 350ppm as some say is needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming. At best it could be described as... Continue Reading →

If our world leaders cannot cooperate enough to stop dangerous climate change in the scant time we have left…..how do they expect to be able to cooperate enough to adapt to the kind of world they’re committing to with their inaction? –Kate from climatesight.org

There isn’t a nation on the planet where the evidence of the impacts of climate change isn’t mounting. Frankly, those who look for any excuse to continue challenging the science have a fundamental responsibility which they have never fulfilled:  Prove us wrong or stand down.   Prove that the pollution we put in the atmosphere is... Continue Reading →

Two interesting (and opposing) takes on Copenhagen from two of the top climatologists in the world. First we have Stephen Schneider’s take, which is decidedly optimistic: And now we have James Hansen who thinks that the type of deal likely reached at Copenhagen is worse than no deal at all. AT the international climate talks... Continue Reading →

As spoken at the AGU 2009 Fall Meeting These remarks reflect the personal opinions of B.D. Santer. They do not represent the official views of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the U.S. Department of Energy. We live in extraordinary scientific and political times. Over the course of less than a dozen generations, humanity has transitioned... Continue Reading →

After the dramatic Arctic sea melt of the summer of 2007, many people become quite alarmed about what this meant for the future of the arctic. The notion was that as the white reflective ice gave way to dark absorptive ocean waters, more of the suns energy would be absorbed which would further speed up the melting... Continue Reading →

The anti-global-warming people are just filled with hate for anyone who suggests that maybe, just maybe, the vast majority of scientists are right. –Paul Krugman

Nature has published a great article on the whole climategate tempest. Here are the highlights: The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists' scathing remarks... Continue Reading →

… doesn’t actually exist. But if you disagree, please post specific examples of compromised science (vague claims simply won’t cut it), and then explain exactly how this changes our picture of the climate system. If you claim these emails somehow invalidate global warming, this is the absolute minimum one needs to substantiate those claims. UPDATE:... Continue Reading →

Here we go again: it has now been revealed that individuals posing as network technicians recently attempted to infiltrate another climate data center operated by the Government of Canada. According to sources at the University of Victoria, two people claiming to be network computer technicians presented themselves at the headquarters of the Canadian Centre for... Continue Reading →

The fifth video in an excellent series. (via Greenfyre)

Just about everyone knows they aren't able to understand, or make a meaningful contribution to, general relativity or quantum mechanics or number theory… Somehow, however, people imagine that they understand climate science. -William M. Connolley

(via Climate Progress)

Science works fine in aggregate, but this idea that science must have only flawless people doing impeccable work is a strawman set up by the superstitious to discredit empiricism through nutpicking. -Tim F. None of us who think the “Swifthack” is no big deal are arguing that every last email that has been revealed is... Continue Reading →

Skepticism in the truest scientific sense of the word is good and is indeed essential to science.  Skepticism should not be confused, however, with contrarianism that does not meet the basic standards of scientific inquiry. -Michael Mann Or in other words deniers aren’t skeptical, they are gullible.

The blog Carbon fixated provided some excellent must-read perspective on the recent ‘climategate’ email scandal. Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Renaissance and Enlightenment ‘thinking’ If you own any shares in companies that produce reflecting telescopes, use differential and integral calculus, or rely on the laws of motion, I should start dumping them... Continue Reading →