First, a quick reminder on the vulnerability of science to easy-to-make statistical mistakes: Science News has the scoop. Mainly dealing with medical and laboratory science, it retells a couple of important stories, e.g.

In 2007, for instance, researchers combing the medical literature found numerous studies linking a total of 85 genetic ( Read more... )

To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data ( Read more... )

Prime Minister Rudd, of New Zealand, has decided that climate change skeptics are holding the world to ransom.

Speaking at the Lowy Institute yesterday, Mr Rudd divided the opponents of climate change action into three groups - science sceptics, those who paid lip service to the science but opposed taking action, and the ''wait for others'' group ( Read more... )

As it turns out, math is hard. Physicists, government advisors, environmental journalists, all of them can get trapped in simple math problems, and end up spouting nonsense -- and believing it.

Latest Example:

It came in July, courtesy of the chief climate adviser to the German government. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chair of an advisory council ( Read more... )

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Minnesotans for Global Warming, a group that needs your support. They have a nice theme song...

Well, we have an answer. Sadly, it's one that will make you want it to stay bottled up in the Senate, because it's going to cost you in dollars out of your pocket, and raises you'll never see. We start with the economic effects:


( Read more... )

1. Is global warming occurring?

Nine out of ten US weather stations will report warming over the relevant period. Sadly, this is due primarily to technical faults in the weather stations, not to global warming. Either they are sited in places which have developed heat sources, or they are constructed of materials that intensify the effect of ( Read more... )

As it turns out, the models they use are very unreliable, even on their own terms.

Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and ( Read more... )

Hysteria. That's the word for this. A quick flavor:

We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be ( Read more... )

OK, global warming. Don't think CO2 has much to do with it (see past decade of plateau and drop while CO2 increases), but then, I've had experience of research contradicting reality before.

Favorite example:

Hurricanes getting stronger!

Hurricanes Getting weaker!

and, of course, Stunning new breakthrough on hurricanes says it's Global Warming! ( Read more... )