Bait and Switch

A new post at WUWT claims to “debunk” claims that “human caused warming doubled western U.S. area burned since 1984.” It was in response to a story in the LA Times of new research in PNAS (Publications of the National Academy of Science).

Zombies

As I mentioned earlier, some denier comments were submitted to the post about Extreme Denial. This blog isn’t about spreading denier claims, it’s about exposing them, so their comments will get exactly the focus they deserve.

Zombie Comments

The last post brought out some deniers submitting comments. They seem to think they may have some “surprises” in store for me. Not so; they’re just reviving *other* zombie arguments.

What’s definitely *not* a surprise is that they want to change the subject. It was: the use of extremes as cherry-picked starting points to mislead people about the trend. But they want to talk about other things … I guess that mud isn’t working for them any more.

The surprise might be for them, because I’ll expose the fallacy of their claims in an upcoming post. But that will wait until after the weekend.

Extreme Denial

Here’s global temperature anomaly (annual averages) since 1951, according to data from NASA (the year 2016 isn’t yet complete, so that value is for the year-to-date):

Trump Lies, Handlers Try to Change the Subject

Early in Monday night’s presidential debate Hillary Clinton mentioned that Donald Trump had said global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. Trump interrupted (he does that a lot) to protest that he never said that.

Trump’s problem is that he said it on Twitter — so it’s right there, for everybody to see (and we’ve seen a lot about it, many times). Denying that he said it, was an outright lie. There’s no doubt. Denying it when it’s been seen (and repeated) so often by so many people, is just plain stupid.

It’s the Ice, Stupid

Earlier this month the WUWT blog treated us to a bizarre post about how this year didn’t set a new record for lowest Arctic sea ice extent (it only came in 2nd-lowest), in spite of “two very strong storms.” Doubling down, they offer another post trumpeting “record Arctic sea ice growth in September.” Which makes me wonder: are those guys trying to make themselves look like idiots?

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.