Tears

Christiana Figueres is executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Pere Estupinyà is a Catalan science journalist trained in the US, director of a documentary on the energy transition funded by the national Spanish TV. At the end of the film, he asks Christiana Figueres about the timing at our disposal. You can view the documentary here.

Misleading Trends: Sea Level Version

Here’s some data, and the question is: what’s the trend rate at present (in the year 2016)?

Two Fools and a Scientist

Once upon a time in a galaxy not-so-far away, there were two fools and a scientist. By which I mean, last week at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Space, Science, and Technology.

Fool #1 is committe chair congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), who held the hearings to assert his right to subpoena information about ongoing criminal investigations by state attorneys general. His witnesses included fool #2, a law professor by the name of Ronald Rotunda, who decided to include in his testimony some actual science. Oops! I meant “the most extreme misrepresentation of science in recent memory.”

Speedup Skeptic

I enjoy reading the Climate Progress blog, often getting good information and ideas. But when it comes to one recent post, I have doubts about both its correctness and its wisdom.

The theme is encompassed in the title: “Record-smashing August means long-awaited ‘jump’ in global warming is here.” I’m skeptical.

Brian Cox’s Denier Takedown: a High Point for Climate Journalism

Many have enjoyed the smackdown which Brian Cox delivered to Malcom Rogers on Australian TV’s program “Q&A”. Myself included. Cox is a scientist, and one of the most popular science communicators in Britain (perhaps England’s answer to Neil deGrasse Tyson?). Roberts is a politician, a senator no less, in Australia. He’s also a climate denier.

Hot Days Down Under

A recent post at WUWT discusses projections for increase in the number of very hot days in northern Australia, based on expected temperature change estimated by computer models. It’s actually a follow-up to a previous post on that topic. The theme seems to be doubt about the projections based on general incredulity, combined with devising some “rules” designed to make people mistrust computer models in general.

Global Temperature HOT

NASA has just released their latest global temperature data, including the month of August 2016. It’s hot.

XKCD

See the original here.

Climate Deniers Embarrass Themselves about Arctic Sea Ice

This year, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic has already plunged to its 2nd-lowest annual minimum on record. Here are the yearly minima, although this year’s value is provisional because it may well dip even lower:

Deniers: Is This Really the Hill You Want to Die On?

Of all the lies we constantly hear from deniers, one of the most common (and with them, most popular) is some variation of “no global warming for 15 years.” It started many years ago with “no global warming since 1998,” has since been revised to “no global warming since 1997” and “no global warming since 2001” and “no global warming since 2002,” has run through “no global warming for 18 years” and “no global warming for 20 years,” but now seems to have settled on “no global warming for 15 years.”

The reason it keeps changing is that whenever they decide on what to bellow about, it quickly becomes obvious it’s not true. None of their claims is true. That’s no problem for them. Doubt is their product.