I recently spoke to a Professional Development program for school teachers, in conjunction with the Australian Solar Energy Society conference. A PowerPoint file is available for download here.
[Updated 21 July 10.] One of the most frequently and loudly repeated claims of climate sceptics is that the Earth has cooled since 1998. What the data have actually been showing is a pause similar to pauses in the 1980s and 1990s. The likely cause of the recent pause has been the El-Niño-La-Niña cycle. So far 2010 has been the hottest year on record, so the pause is over. Let’s see if false claims of global cooling also cease.
[21 April: a version of this has been posted at On Line Opinion.]
The committee charged with examining the quality of the climate science conducted at the University of East Anglia has found “absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever”, according to its Chairperson, Lord Oxburgh.
Accusations of fraud or scientific misconduct have been widespread since emails were illegally hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit last year. Oxburgh continued “whatever was said in the emails, the basic science seems to have been done fairly and properly”. The committee considered that if there had been misconducted they would very likely have found it.
Despite the ascent of Tony Abbott to the Liberal Party leadership and some recent unhelpful comments by the Chair of the ABC, Maurice Newman, there are some glimmerings that the irrational backlash against global warming science may be peaking.
The backlash can be seen as part of a broader attack on evidence-based, sensible debate that has been systematically promoted in Australia over the past several decades. The attack has ranged over many social and political topics, including asylum seekers and the history wars, which concern our forebears treatment of indigenous people. It has also taken on an explicitly anti-science tone in recent years.
It is revealing to examine the nature of the climate controversy, and to spell out exactly what the approach of climate sceptics implies about how we should determine policy. There are also lessons on how our political process can be distorted by disinformation and by superficial interpretations of balance in reporting.
Published by On Line Opinion 18 January.
A report by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change finds no evidence for fraud or scientific misconduct in the emails hacked from the University of East Anglias Climate Research Unit. To quote the Pew report:
Although a small percentage of the emails are impolite and some express animosity toward opponents, when placed into proper context they do not appear to reveal fraud or other scientific misconduct by Dr. Jones or his correspondents.
Published by On Line Opinion, 8 Dec.
The triumph of climate delialists in the Liberal Party and the recent unauthorised release of allegedly damaging emails from a British climate research group are being portrayed by some as the end of the global warming conspiracy.
However the so-called scandal of the emails is a manufactured storm in a teacup. Anyway the evidence for human-caused global warming is far more diverse and robust than denialists make out. In fact the latest evidence is even clearer, and more ominous. Denialist politicians are on the wrong side of history.
Another favourite argument of global warming sceptics is that increases of carbon dioxide (CO2) lagged increases of temperature during the ice ages, so CO2 cant be the cause of global warming. At first sight this seems like a very reasonable argument. However climate scientists are not as stupid as some make them out to be.
Scepticism about global warming continues, along with outright denial that it is caused by humans, or even that it is happening at all. Informed debate is healthy, but much of the discussion is ill-informed, much of it addresses the wrong questions, and much of it misconceives science as a source of proof or truth.
[An updated version of this article now appears as
Global Cooling Over, Hottest Year to Date So Far, July 15 2010.]
One of the most frequently and loudly repeated claims of climate sceptics is that the Earth has cooled since 1998. The data to not show that.
I tried this on The Monthly magazine over a year ago, twice. Some of it is a little dated, but the essence is not. It covers not just the science and the economics (already unusual), but the nature and culture of science, and the feedbacks that so alarm scientists at present. They didn’t deign even to acknowledge receipt of course. OK, so their writing is excellent, but mine’s not so bad. And if that’s their primary criterion then they’re only providing a form of entertainment, however sophisticated.
There is a discernible pattern in the trajectories of many vanished societies and empires. Their lives were not long, graceful arcs with a gradual rise, a plateau and then a slow decline. Rather, their demise was sudden, and their greatest accomplishments came just before their collapse. The grandest Mayan temples were built near the end of the Mayan civilisation. The pattern of such societies was acceleration into sudden disaster.
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