Ball or Aerosol?

[youtube d6IBiR9m3vY] According to the likes of Bob Ward, George Monbiot, Ben Goldacre and Steve Connor, it is a well established fact that the slump in global temperatures over three decades in the middle of the last century is the result of changes in the...

Let Them Eat Shrubbery

Science is often at its most newsworthy when it proves the blatantly obvious: getting drunk makes you more likely to fall over; sunbathing is a risk factor for sunburn, etc. But science that 'proves' something that journalists, commentators and policy bods like to...

Who'd've Discredited It?

'Case against climate change discredited by study' shrieked the Independent yesterday. That must be one hell of a study. Except that it isn't: A difference in the way British and American ships measured the temperature of the ocean during the 1940s may explain why the...

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...