This is a big post in two parts. The first is our take on the current story about the Himalayan glaciers. The second is a similar case of non-scientific research being passed off as 'science'. A story in the Sunday Times demonstrates the murky nature of the process by...
Rekindling the Climate Embers
Goodbye Hockey Stick, hello Burning Embers? A paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences resurrects and updates a fancy graphic published in the IPCC's TAR in 2001, but which was omitted from AR4 in 2007, and finds - guess what - that...
The Consensus: Carbon DiOccidental?
According to an article at the Register by Andrew Orlowski: Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission. Three of the five researchers disagree with the UN's IPCC...
The Poorly Physician in a Huff
Just over a year ago, we picked up on a post at the miserablist blog, Grist, by Professor Andrew Dessler, former scientific advisor to the Clinton administration. Dessler had compared the planet's 'suffering' from climate change to a child with cancer. 'Who are his...
Biased Broadcasting Climate
Dr. Iain Stewart's new BBC2 series Earth: The Climate Wars promised to be a 'definitive guide' to the climate debate. Instead, this week's episode 'Fightback', which focused on the sceptics was as shallow and as hollow as any old commentary. The film's blurb on BBC...
Rewriting Slavery
In the August edition of History Today, Jean-Francois Mouhot argues that 'reliance on fossil fuels has made slave owners of us all'. Hmm. Most of us approach slavery with the underlying assumption that our modern civilization is morally far superior to the barbaric...
Who is Pachauri Calling 'Flat Earthers'?
A hat-tip to Anthony Watts, who points to an interview in the Chicago Tribune with head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri. Q: What do you think about the small but vocal group of doubters still out there? A: There is, even today, a Flat Earth Society that meets every...
More Is Less in Bangladesh
Bangladesh landmass 'is growing', reports the BBC: Satellite images of Bangladesh over the past 32 years show that the country is growing annually by about 20 square kilometres (12.5 square miles), said Maminul Haque Sarker of the Dhaka-based Centre for Environment...
The Ethics of 'the Ethics of Climate Change'
James Garvey didn't like Ben's review of his book on Culture Wars. But instead of responding to it, he seems to have merely laid out the same argument again. Science can give us a grip on the fact of climate change. (For a start, have a look here:...
Fat People are Killing the Butterflies
Steve Connor, science editor at the Independent newspaper warns us that Tropical insects rather than polar bears could be among the first species to become extinct as a result of global warming, a study has found. What does that even mean? Are the polar bears OK...