A Few Things Ill Considered

A layman's take on the science of Global Warming featuring a guide on How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

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Another week of GW news - October 29

(Courtesy of H.E.Taylor - jump to the bottom)

I suspect we are going to hear a lot about the Stern Report in the near future:


Click here to read the rest of the news for the week

Seems like all of the GHG levels are up, up, up:

In the hurricane wars:

The "THC shutdown, Europe cooling" scenario is back:

CERN is investigating the cosmic ray hypothesis:

Meanwhile in near earth orbit:

James Hansen has written a couple of article for YaleGlobal:

The impacts of GW are becoming clearer:

A conference on coral reefs heard some dire predictions:

And then there are the tropical rainforests:

Sea levels are rising:

And speaking of floods & droughts:

The troubling matter of falling food production is not going away:

Elsewhere on the mitigation front:

Meanwhile in the journals:

Before we get into politics, there was some science done:

Meanwhile on the Kyoto-2 front:

And back at Kyoto-1:

Meanwhile on the emissions trading front:

And on the American political front:

The Gore-apalooza is still bopping along:

While on the UK political front:

And in Europe:

In Australia, the Howard government has been spooked

In Canada, the minority Conservatives 'Clean Air Act' is being widely panned:

Meanwhile a coalition of political, business, and environment groups

Also in Canada, environmental activist David Suzuki is retiring:

  • 2006/10/27: Yahoo: Environmentalist Suzuki to quit spotlight for simple life
    "Nobody any longer knows what a sustainable future is," the bearded, bespectacled environmentalist told Reuters in a recent interview in Australia to promote his book, "David Suzuki: The Autobiography." "I feel like we are in a giant car heading for a brick wall at 100 miles an hour and everyone in the car is arguing where they want to sit. For God's sake, someone has to say put the brakes on and turn the wheel."

The idea of a carbon tax is still bouncing around:

The movement toward ecologically based economics is glacial:

Yes Virginia, humans are in a state of ecological overshoot:

Apocalypso anyone?:

As for how the media handles the science:

DeSmogBlog covered a conference of Environmental Journalists:

Here is something for your library:

And for your film & video enjoyment:

Meanwhile in the 'Sue the Bastards!' contingent:

The betting meme is back:

Wrestling over a new energy infrastructure continues unabated:

Increasing efficiencies will be necessary:

The reaction of business to climate change will be critical:

The carbon lobby are up to the usual:

Coby Beck is posting his his excellent "How to Talk to a Global Warming Sceptic" series on GristMill:

The original is still on his own blog:

Btw, Andrew Dessler is also moving to GristMill:

Then there was the usual news and commentary:

And here are a couple of sites you may find interesting and/or useful:

--regards--

-het

PS. You can access the previous postings of this series here

--

Only after the last tree has been cut down,
only after the last river has been poisoned,
only after the last fish has been caught,
only then will you find that money can not be eaten.

-Cree prophecy

Global Warming: http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/enviro/globalwarming.html

GW News: http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/enviro/gwnews.html

GW News Archive: http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/enviro/gwna.html

H.E. Taylor http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/


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posted by coby @ 10/29/2006 02:01:00 PM   5 comments

Monday, October 23, 2006

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New Guides by Category Coming

[Update]

Welcome to Crooks and Liars readers! I fear this is a poor introductory page for my humble blog. What I am mostly about is providing succint, scientifically supported rebuttals to the numerous and generally spurious objections to the well founded scientific case for human caused climate change, aka anthropogenic global warming. The side bar link "How to Talk to a Sceptic" is where it started, the cross referenced index of the arguments below is a working draft, but very complete except for formatting, the site continues to be developed.

Thanks for visiting, I hope you find useful information here, comments welcome on old or new threads, suggestions appreciated!
[End update, original post follows]

David Roberts of the Grist environmental website recently invited me to reproduce the How to Talk to a Sceptic Guide, and otherwise contribute, to the Gristmill blog. I accepted and will begin doing so probably this week. I will keep things going here too though, it is kick seeing the visitor stats growing (ok, not exactly Google numbers, but good enough for me!)

As well as being able to reach more people at this critical time in the debate, I am taking advantage of the opportunity to revisit each article and more importantly to roll out a new and improved Guides by Category page. I also hope this will be the motivation I have been missing to fill in some holes, both from recent developments and old but overlooked standbys.

Included below is a draft of the categorization. I would appreciate feedback before I make it into a proper page with a short preamble and links to the earlier versions that will take the place of this link in the sidebar. I especially need more details in the Argument Sources section, it was an undeveloped add-on.

(I should note that I still have every intention of making the whole thing a wiki and adding other related resources. )

Guides by Categories

Categories are: Stages of Denial, Scientific Topics, Types of Argument, Levels of Sophistication, Argument Sources.




Stages of Denial

  1. There's nothing happening
    1. Inadequate Evidence
    2. Contradictory Evidence
    3. No Consensus

  2. We Don't Know Why It's Happening
    1. Models Don't Work
    2. Prediction is Impossible
    3. We Can't Be Sure


  3. Climate Change is Natural
    1. It Happened Before

    2. It's Part of a Natural Change

    3. It's Not Caused By CO2

  4. Climate Change is Not Bad
    1. The Effects are Good
    2. The Effects are Minor
    3. Change is Normal
  5. Climate Change Can't be Stopped
    1. Too Late
    2. It's Someone Else's Problem
    3. Economically Infeasible

Scientific Topics

  1. Temperature

  2. Atmosphere

  3. Extreme Events


    1. Temperature Records


    2. Storms

    3. Droughts


  4. Cryosphere


    1. Glaciers


    2. Sea Ice


    3. Ice Sheets



  5. Oceans


  6. Modeling


    1. Scenarios


    2. Uncertainties



  7. Climate Forcings


    1. Solar Influences


    2. Greenhouse Gases


    3. Aerosols



  8. Paleo Climate


    1. Holocene


    2. Ice Ages


    3. Geologic History



  9. Scientific Process





Types of Argument





  1. Uninformed


  2. Misinformed


  3. Cherry Picking


  4. Urban Myths


  5. FUD


  6. Non Scientific


  7. Underdog Theories

  8. Crackpottery





Levels of Sophistication





  1. Silly


  2. Naive


  3. Specious


  4. Scientific





Argument Sources





  1. CO2 Science

  2. Junkscience

  3. Competitive Enterprise Institute

  4. Wall Street Journal

  5. Patrick Michaels


  6. Richard Lindzen


  7. Bob Carter


  8. Bill Gray

  9. Tim Ball

  10. James Inhofe


Labels:

posted by coby @ 10/23/2006 10:17:00 PM   13 comments