A Few Things Ill Considered

CCW - Birth of a Climate Crock

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:59:04 -0800

From the "Climate Crock of the Week" videos:

For your viewing and discussing pleasures...

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CCW - 2009 Sea Ice update

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:45:42 -0800

From greenman3610's excellent "Climate Crock of the Week" video series:

Offered for your viewing and discussing pleasure...

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"On vacation" open thread, play nice!

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:33:47 -0800

So I will be in Fiji for a one week stop over on my way home from Tasmania to Vancouver and I do not expect to have much internet access and/or time. I think I will schedule a few "Climate Crock" posts for edumusement but otherwise no one will be minding the store here. (that unfortunately includes this Monday's "Another week of GW news" which will have to go up asap the week after next.)

So feel free to raise any topics for discussion here but try to play fair (that goes double for all you Turkish spampots out there!).

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Repower America

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:48:58 -0800

My fellow climate bloggers over at Desmog Blog have notified me and asked me to pass it on to AFTIC readers that there is a very cool new online push by former Vice-President Al Gore and the Alliance for Climate Protection called the "Repower America Wall."

The idea is to have videos from thousands of everyday people - friends, neighbors and colleagues -as well as high-profile leaders from business, faith groups, politicians etc adding their voices to a collective call to action on climate change. These videos will be used as the basis of campaign ads on TV, print, billboards and online.

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Another week of GW News, November 1, 2009

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:10:14 -0800

Sipping from the internet firehose...

This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup

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Reflecting on crakar and snowman

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:07:34 -0800

(why am I thinking about cocaine now?)

So recently two very prolific climate contrarian commenters picked up their toys and went home. Skip did a nice piece on that surprise event.

crakar was one of my most prolific commenters, contributing about 100 comments per month since last December. He always struck me as a congenial fellow but he was definately antagonistic to the science of global warming and contributed mainly misinformation and misunderstanding. Nevertheless, I am actually a bit sorry to see him go on a personal level even though his presence was on balance a negative contribution.

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Another week of GW News: October 25, 2009

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:49:46 -0800

Logging the Onset of the Bottleneck Years

This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup

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How to talk to crakar - point 5

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:26:44 -0800

Crakar said:

The peer-reviewed literature is unanimous in finding that the residence-time of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 7 years. The UN's climate panel, however, chooses a complex and unsatisfactory definition of residence-time that allows it to pretend that the residence time is in fact 100 years. This is one of many respects in which the climate panel, while claiming to represent the "consensus" of scientific opinion, is in fact entirely at odds with the peer-reviewed literature.

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How to talk to crakar - point 4

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:10:58 -0800

Crakar said:

Sea level is scarcely rising: The average rise in sea level over the past 10,000 years was 4 feet/century. During the 20th century it was 8 inches. In the past four years, sea level has scarcely risen at all. As recently as 2001, the IPCC had predicted that sea level might rise as much as 3 ft in the 21st century. However, this maximum was cut by more than one-third to less than 2 feet in the IPCC's 2007 report. Moerner (2004) says sea level will rise about 8 inches in the 21st century. Mr. Justice Burton, in the UK High Court, bluntly commented on Al Gore's predicted 20ft sea-level rise as follows: "The Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view." A fortiori, James Hansen's prediction of a 246ft sea-level rise is mere rodomontade. Sea-level rise since the beginning of 2006 has been negligible. Source: University of Colorado, 2009, release 4.

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How to talk to crakar - point 3

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:07:21 -0800

Crakar said:

The 3300 Argo bathythermograph buoys deployed throughout the world's oceans since late in 2003 have shown a slight cooling of the oceans over the past five years, directly contrary to the official theory that any "global warming" not showing in the atmosphere would definitely show up in the first 400 fathoms of the world's oceans, where at least 80% of any surplus heat would be stored. Source: ARGO project, June 2009.

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How to talk to crakar - point 2

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:00:22 -0800

Crakar said:

We are shown the results of computer model programmes that predict an apocolyptic future, these programs are based on modelling 16 (yes thats right only 16) parameters, many are considered by the IPCC as having a very low and low level of scientific understanding. Do the models incorporate the ocean cycles? or the atmosphere/ocean interactions? No they dont. There are many more parameters that they do not incorporate, but wait thats not all. We are expected to believe in these computer programmes because the IPCC scientists are in general agreement with them even though they predict a hot spot where no such thing exists. Without a hotspot there is no global warming.

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How to talk to crakar - point 1

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:45:57 -0800

Crakar said:

We are told that increasing CO2 levels cause/are causing the temps to rise, however the geological record shows this to be the opposite. Even if we look at the past 70 years (post 1940) when mans activity is supposed to be most pronounced we find that CO2 has risen for all 70 years but the temps have been either stable or falling for 40 of the 70 years. This would suggest to me that CO2 does not in fact cause the temp to rise but for others this information is of no concern because there is a general agreement amongst some scientists (IPCC) that the opposite is true.

One thing at a time.

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Narratives: or The anatomy of a climate contrarian

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:17:00 -0800

Let's continue the Hockey Stick Open thread, as suggested by skip, under a new title.

A great place to pick it up is skip's most excellent response to a comment from crakar. He totally nailed all of crakar's various diversions and strawmen.

This thread is about how and why people choose their positions in the faux climate debate.

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Another week of GW News: October 18, 2009

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:46:48 -0800

Sipping from the internet firehose...

This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup

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Consensus, what is it good for?

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:35:32 -0800

There is an overwhelming consensus supporting the basic tenets of anthropogenic global warming theory. Those tenets are that CO2 levels are rising, this rise is caused by human activity, this rise is causing a rapid warming trend and this trend will continue unless CO2 levels stabilise. Contrarians still like to deny this, but the existence of this consensus is an indisputable fact.

Additionally, but with much less certainty, the general picture emerging from scientific research is that the kinds of temperature changes that may be in the near future (~50 years) will cause problems ranging from very difficult to catastrophic.

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