Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first (and primary) instalment of its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). Its key conclusions include: The Earth is accumulating heat. Heat-trapping greenhouse gases are rising: Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide have reached levels unprecedented in at least 800,000 years because …
Category: Scientific Consensus
Dec 21 2010
Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
The Skeptical Science team (which includes myself) have recently completed a 16-page booklet called The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism. (Actually it was completed a fortnight ago, but I forgot to link to it at the time. Anyway, better late than never.) To quote John Cook’s blog post launching the Guide: Scientific skepticism is …
Nov 23 2010
The Fake Scandal of Climategate
This post was written for Skeptical Science as the first part of a series on the fake scandal of Climategate. It’s bad enough that global warming contrarians are successfully misleading the public by propagating misconceptions about climate science. But recently it has become popular to attack climate scientists themselves, to accuse them of fraud and …
Oct 19 2010
Americans Know Nothing About Climate Change
A new survey of 2,030 American adults (weighted according to demographics and political party allegiance) confirms what previous surveys have suggested: that the American public’s understanding of climate change is dismal. The researchers graded the participants based on percentage of questions answered correctly (although some questions were harder than others). A majority, 52%, received an …
Oct 14 2010
Do the IPCC use alarmist language?
This post was written for Skeptical Science. Graham Wayne has recently written rebuttals to “The IPCC consensus is phony” and “IPCC is alarmist”. But, you might say, that’s only half the story – do the IPCC present their conclusions in an alarmist way? There are many different ways you might look at this, but one …
Sep 25 2010
Skeptical Science posts
I haven’t been posting very often recently, and one reason is that I’ve been busy writing for another climate blog called Skeptical Science which, unlike mine, actually has a readership. Skeptical Science is run by John Cook, and basically the core of the site is an increasingly comprehensive database of rebuttals to the arguments of …
Aug 04 2010
Global Warming Contrarians Part 7: State of the Climate
Claim: There’s no evidence that the global climate is warming. Why worry about a problem that’s invisible? Fact: Just about any aspect of climate you care to look at does show signs of global warming. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have recently released their 20th annual State of the Climate report. The report …
Aug 02 2010
Scientific Opinion versus Media Balance
Jul 09 2010
Global Warming Contrarians Part 1.1: Amateur Temperature Records
After a two-month hiatus, I’ve finally completed the next installment in my increasingly non-linear series of posts examining the (mostly bad) arguments against the reality of global warming. Originally I had planned out a sort of arc of subjects to cover, but as I learn more about climate science, I find I want to go …
Precarious Climate
- Climate strikes gather momentum
- Vote for a real opposition party, not Labor
- Australian climate voting guide
- Defending Assange 7: Trump’s tyranny
- Defending Assange 6: Britain’s bullshit
- Defending Assange 5: Ecuador’s excuses
- Defending Assange 4: “Russiagate” rubbish & media malignment
- Defending Assange 3: Sweden’s salaciousness
- Defending Assange 2: Obama’s obfuscation
- Defending Assange: The value of Wikileaks