Josh 13

Josh 11

More cartoons by Josh here.

Lindzen on TVO

Just watching a really interesting video interview of Richard Lindzen. It's long, but is actually worth the investment of time, which is not something I usually say about videos.

H/T Josh in the comments.

Update on Mar 13, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Just finished watching it - that is probably the most informative show on climate change I've ever seen.

Josh 10

More cartoons by Josh here.

Josh 6

More cartoons by Josh here.

Andy Russell's blog

The Guardian piece I cited in the last article quotes a physicist named Andy Russell who has written to the IoP expressing his dissatisfaction with their submission. It turns out that Andy also has a blog, which looks very interesting and can be seen here.

JeanS on anonymity

JeanS is well known to followers of climate blogs, being a regular commenter and occasional author at Climate Audit. After Leo Hickman's piece the other day criticising anonymous posters, I asked Jean (not his real name), who is a professional statistician, whether he'd like to say something about his desire as a practising scientist to remain anonymous when contributing to blogs. The following has been lightly edited for language.

...being anonymous is deliberate decision I made after long consideration when I started actively commenting on climate-related blogs. The main reason is that I want to keep my real career out of this. I'm in the academic world, and unlike the US, we do not have a tenure system. People are only human, and anything, even a small thing, that can be used against you might be used, even if it does not have anything to do with the actual topic. That is, I see that using my real name would present some risks to my academic career but I can hardly imagine any situation where it might be helpful.

Click to read more ...

BBC presenter can't question AGW

I'm grateful to Charles Crawford for this item, in which BBC Radio Five Live's Peter Allen tells a listener that he is not allowed to question manmade global warming. The programme will soon disappear from the BBC website so an excerpt is attached below.

Peter Allen on AGW

Josh 4

Leo Hickman on anonymity

The Guardian's Leo Hickman has added his thoughts to my earlier piece commenting on his call for climate bloggers to lose their anonymity. This, he believes, will create trust in what they are saying. Many readers have responded with thoughtful contributions, and in particular I'd echo Lucia's point about the nature of the problem being one of the public not trusting the scientists rather than the other way round, as Leo seems to think. Turning Tide also points out that anonymity of commenters does encourage readers to assess comments on the arguments made rather than any spurious authority of the writer.

Click to read more ...

Academic sceptics

Roger Harrabin emails to ask if I know any UK-based physical scientists who are sceptics. Not many is the answer, but then I don't know who the vast majority of my readers are anyway.

I do serve a lot of pages to readers at .ac.uk web domains, and I can see that at least some of these are from physical science departments, so it's fair to say that such people exist, although they are perhaps few in number. If so, Roger H would like to hear from you, in confidence, if necessary. He also welcomes evidence that putting one's head above the parapet in this way is a career-ending move.

Commenters have already noted Paul Dennis's remarks at WUWT to the effect that he responded to Roger H's earlier call and didn't get any reply worth the mentioning, but I would suggest that this could reasonably be interpreted as an oversight. Best to make the effort I would say.

Reisinger and the divergence problem

An interesting article from the New Zealand Herald, looking at the divergence problem. What particularly fascinated me was the explanation of the issue from Andy Reisinger, who some will remember as being a man who is very close to Rajendra Pachauri.

Reisinger is a climatologist, but not, if I remember correctly, a paleo guy. It's odd then to see him being the expert interviewed on the subject of the divergence problem. It might also explain the explanation he gives for this inconvenient effect:

Dr Andy Reisinger, a climate researcher at Victoria University who has followed the progress of proxy temperature reconstructions, said it could be that a lack of rain in recent decades had stunted tree growth in some high-altitude spots - or that when temperatures reached a certain point, trees began to react differently.

Whatever the cause, "the relationships [between tree-rings and temperature] that we've developed for the last 500-100 years may not apply in the last 50," he said.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that paleoclimatologists picked trees that were sensitive to temperature rather than precipitation when they set about recreating temperatures of the past. If a drop in rainfall can cause a drop in growth now, then it could have caused a drop in the past. In other words, the paleo guys will have to admit that they know absolutely nothing about temperatures before the nineteenth century.

Tennekes resigns

Henk Tennekes, a prominent sceptic, has resigned from the National Academy of Arts and Sciences of the Netherlands. His resignation statement is a must-read.

+++Lord Stern in email hacking+++

Channel Four news:

Exclusive: Channel 4 News can reveal that renowned climate change economist, Lord Stern, has had his email targeted by a virus.

The British government's climate change guru, Lord Stern, has had his emails sabotaged in a possible "hacking attack" Channel 4 News can reveal. 

Full story here.

Paul Dennis blogs!

UEA geochemist Paul Dennis, who has been much in the news recently, has started a new blog called Harmonic Oscillator.

Why not go over and wish him well.

(H/T Lucia)