The supply of inexpertise is vastly larger than the supply of expertise, [thus] the public is making very poorly informed judgments about this issue [climate change] and others where complex information is at issue and genuine expertise should matter. -Michael Tobis

It is no surprise that the current US climate bill (Waxman-Markey) making its way through the senate has problems. Big problems. For starters it doesn’t mandate the deep cuts the latest science say are needed to avoid the devastating effects of global warming, and its is a massively complex which will ensure that it will... Continue Reading →

A world whose atmosphere is loaded with carbon dioxide, on the one hand, and sulfur dioxide [to counter the warming effects of CO2], on the other, would be a fundamentally different place from the earth as we know it. From Elizabeth Kolbert’s review of SuperFreakonomics. She continues: Among the many likely consequences of shooting SO2... Continue Reading →

Burning fossil fuels costs the United States about $120 billion a year in health costs, mostly because of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution, the National Academy of Sciences reported in a study issued Monday. The damages are caused almost equally by coal and oil, according to the study, which was ordered by Congress.... Continue Reading →

As difficult as it may seem there are still people who deny that an overwhelming consensus exists within the scientific community. Given this, and given the climate bill making its way through the senate, 16 scientific societies located in the US have re-affirmed that a scientific consensus exists and that climate change posed significant problems... Continue Reading →

A big reason we are having so much trouble these days is because the networks of trust, especially the connections between science and society, but also the connections between any sort of authority and society, are in bad condition. I think if the national science academies of the main science producing countries on every continent... Continue Reading →

This is a great video series (currently only 4 videos long) that covers the history of climate science, the debate in the scientific community (yes it exists but it is very minimal, with the overwhelming majority of scientists supporting AGW, hence the consensus), and some popular myths.

A possible explanation for the increasing methane concentrations in the atmosphere. From Yale360: British and German scientists have discovered 250 plumes of methane gas rising from the thawing seabed off the Spitsbergen archipelago in the Norwegian Arctic, apparently a result of the warming of the West Spitsbergen current. The researchers measured the plumes rising from... Continue Reading →

Let's get back to having a public debate that is not overwhelmed by the ideological fanatics and deniers and instead focus on the very real and critical problems that this president was elected to address. The denialists and their scorched earth tactics have done a great deal of harm to our debate on reform. Now... Continue Reading →

Anthony Watts’ teachable moment has fully backfired; Youtube has accepted Peter Sinclair’s DMCA counter-notice and put-back request, and restored the Climate Change Denier Crock of the Week video titled Watts up with Watts? For those of you who have been following the story, this isn’t particularly surprising. Despite Watts’ claims that YouTube agreed with his... Continue Reading →

Did a recent peer-review study really debunk climate change? No, but it did claim as much: Finally, this study has shown that natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature, a relationship that is not included in current global climate models. It is well... Continue Reading →

An accurate depiction of the worst case scenario. All of a sudden I am hoping for the worst!

What global warming deniers wont accept as evidence: Nothing that was recorded by instruments such as weather-stations, ocean buoys or satellite data. Since all instruments are subject to error, we cannot use them to measure climate. Nothing that has been corrected to account for the error of recording instruments. Any corrected data is a fudge.... Continue Reading →

George Will is at it again. Thankfully this time he steers mostly away from argument’s requiring facts to back him up, preferring instead to argue that since China wont commit to firm GHG emissions reductions we should do anything. Despite the fact that such arguments only really make sense if your refuse to accept global... Continue Reading →

A new study indicates that there may still exist some as of yet unidentified positive feedbacks in the climate system that could make future warming greater than previously estimated. A reconstruction of the Earth’s climatic history during a key hot period 55 million years ago has highlighted a yawning gap in our understanding: this period’s... Continue Reading →

The fact that Marc Morano doesn’t present a synthesis view of the science of global warming will come as no surprise to my regular readers or anyone who knows of him. Morano grasps at anything that might (but frequently doesn’t) cast any doubt whatsoever on global warming, regardless of whether it contradicts other points he... Continue Reading →

At the end of the day it is impossible to deny (though some still try) the overwhelming consensus of climate scientist that fully accept that our GHG emissions are causing the earth to warm. Therefore at the heart of most denier talking points lies some sort of conspiracy theory. That it is the biggest hoax... Continue Reading →