Welcome to the sixth edition of climate cuttings, in which I round up interesting postings in the world of global warming.
Reaction to the Lockwood paper, which claims that the sun can't be causing recent warming, rumbles on.
Climate scientist Eduardo Zorita describes a Nature post lauding the results as "an example of what science journalism should not be". He goes on to explain why the Lockwood paper might be considered superficial.
Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist and co-author of a book on the solar theory of climate change with Henrik Svensmark, is interviewed in the London Book Review. He points out that the earth has stopped warming despite continued rises in CO2, a fact that supports the solar theory better than the CO2 one.
John Brignell of Numberwatch, in common with other commentators, takes issue with the odd smoothing algorithm used by Lockwood.
Astronomer David Whitehouse weighs in too.
Anthony Watts of surfacestations.org (15% of the network now surveyed!) has been investigating the impact of the paint used on climate stations. This was originally specified as whitewash, but because this is no longer available, latex paint is now used instead. He thinks that this may have introduced a warming bias into the data and has designed an experiment to find out if he's right. Why has nobody done this before?
Glacier melt has been something of a theme for the week. Roger Pielke notes a paper describing the advance of the Siachen glacier in the Himalayas, and points out that this evidence needs to be taken into account when considering the oft-repeated claims that glaciers are retreating everywhere. William Connelly says that nobody is saying this. Lonnie Thompson (a man who is perhaps best known for not archiving his data) then somewhat takes the ground from under Connelly's feet when he is quoted in the New York Times as saying that glacial ice loss is “a repeating theme whether you are in tropical Andes, the Himalayas or Kilimanjaro in Africa.”
Roger Pielke has also been highlighting the issue of land use and its effect on climate. This is an area which is not well captured by climate models.
Not climate, but weather - a distinction lost on most of the MSM - but it's been remarkably cold in many parts of the world, particularly in the southern hemisphere.
First snow in Buenos Aires for nearly a century
Cold snap in Peru prompts emergency
Savage cold snap has brought record low temperatures to Australia
It's also been wet and not very warm in the UK. The Met Office had predicted a hot dry summer, so they've now decided to hedge their bets about the outlook for the winter. It will be wetter, but dryer. Perhaps. This is the Gypsy Rose Lee school of weather forecasting, I guess.
An environmentalist went for a swim near the north pole, claiming that this was only possible because of recent climate change. It was widely pointed out that this wasn't true.