Unthreaded
Our gracious host puts Cook's PR cookery in its rightful place, via Canada's Financial Post:
The 97%: No you don’t have a climate consensus
Well done, Bish :-)
Hilary Ostrov
In the past, scientists have decried climatic phenomena such as the Medieval Warming Period as not being sufficiently global in nature (and hence the last twenty years of the last century were being held up as being unprecedented).
But now, if the IPCC is suddenly suggesting that Britain's climate could get cooler over the next 80 years, then by the same logic none of us (or any of our children or grandchildren) is likely to witness truly global warming anytime during the remainder of this century.
We may witness regional warming, yes: we always have. But global warming, no.
No wonder these talks are taking such a long time. Anyone want to bet they'll be done on time? I suspect they'll carry on through the weekend ...
matthu
Mars rather than Earth, but an interesting episode in the drive for more open access science:
Blog release of paywalled NASA papers on Mars Curiosity mission
a series of papers dealing with data from NASA's Mars Curiosity mission were paywalled at Science mag., even though US law requires all such data to be publicly available. The science blogger (and prominent biologist) at the link above decided to "liberate" them....
Skiphil
Jiminy: "The tide is turning". Well maybe - but note:
(a) this is the Telegraph, not the Guardian; and
(b) it still contains this sort of feeble journalism:
the reason for the current “pause”, scientists believe, is that the heat has been stored up in the deep oceans, as part of a natural cycle
Robin Guenier
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/10336853/We-need-to-cool-things-down-over-climate-change.html
This would never have been written a few years ago... The tide is turning.
Jiminy Cricket
Ross
Perhaps I'm missing something, but doesn't convection feature somewhere..?
jamesp
This is interesting: Sceptical comments on Damian Carrington's article on the Guardian are not being censored!
There is one quoting a letter from Mr Axel Morner! It ends: "So, Mr President, you and your ministers in the Maldives really don’t need to worry about a future life beneath the waves. You should pass on this message to the people of the Maldives. It is high time to release them from this terrible psychological burden. Yours, Nils-Axel Mörner"
Another writes "I think even the regulars here are embarrassed at the complete absence of interest of the Maldivians in actually" battling" against climate change themselves while insisting that the First World put their hands in their pockets."
Come on, Guardian censor. Keep up!
Brent Hargreaves
@Jiminy Cricket I find the Guardian piece by Damian Carrington rather heartening. It reinforces the sense that the Global Warming myth is busted.
Carrington's tone is hysterical. The words are those of a hopeless romantic, a tilter-at-windmills, a man so wedded to the desired catastrophe of Global Warming that its failure to arrive leaves him bereft, the last man to describe the wonders he longs to see destroyed: "...aquamarine water, iridescent parrotfish and myriad others prune the pink and green coral reef while squid pulse with purple phosphorescence over gliding hawksbill turtles". (Sob... these beauties... these purple parrotfish pruning pink phosphorescent particles of pristine.... oh piss off Carrington you puerile prat.)
A Carrington Event was, until recently, defined as "a massive solar coronal ejection, in visible motion, of such scale that terrestrial electromagnetic disruption is the result". In your honour, Damo, (yes, you DID google yourself!), I suggest that we redefine it as purple prose provoked by a poignant prediliction for perilous..... (oh, Damo, you're the wordsmith. Finish that sentence for me, there's a good lad.)
Factual question, Damo: Did you REALLY see purple phosphorescence in the wake of a squid? That is what you said.
Factual question, Damo: Did you actually go in the water? Or did you sit with your laptop imagining the things you wrote?
Brent Hargreaves
@Hilary. I'll second that. The good guys reduce the deficit by one goal. The Global WarmingTM Industry has been very effective in getting its memes into the press and thence into the culture, as opposed to sinking without trace.
Other examples come to mind, such as "the global warming is hiding in the deep ocean"; "freshwater runoff from Greenland will reverse the Gulf Stream with a step change drop in British Isles temperatures"; and the big one... "climate is in unstable equilibrium with no self-correcting mechanism". Who will float, from our side, the meme that "The Tipping Point claim is a baseless alarmist fallacy"?