Climate Chaos Labrats

What if the world were a cage of lab rats and GHG emmissions an accumulation of fecal matter? Blogger ThrobGoblin lays it all out for you here.

This is one of 13 panels that tell the whole amusing story!

Polar Bear: Victim or Perpetrator?

Having already revealed the defintive proof of Global Warming, at last the real (non-anthropogenic of course) cause of Global Warmng is uncovered:

(Please don't pester me with all that scientific clap-trap about penguins and polar bears living at opposite poles...stupid facts and their liberal agenda)

Jason Jones and An Inconvenient Truth

The Daily Show investigates a recent event where a Seattle school decided not to show Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth because of a parental objection - "Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore."

Jason Jones does his thing with the parent in question...

As is often the case with these interviews, the reality portions are funnier than the farcical ones.

Keeping it simple

A commentor, bmcworldcitizen offers us this amusing, simplifying and positive YouTube video about, well, what else?



(About 5 minutes)

I notice an entertaining image I used here in the past.

Hot times in the Solar System

There is an interesting and entertaining column by Oliver Morton on Nature's news website about the continuing use by climate science contrarians of climate change on other bodies in the solar system. I have a couple of "Talk to a Sceptic" guide entries on that (see here for the newest version of the Mars and Pluto canard) as well as some artwork that takes its inspiration from on of the more obscure versions of this talking point.

Oliver Morton's article is full of great lines and clear rebuttals and methodically goes planetoid by planetoid showing the lack of substance "skeptics" so readily embrace. For example:

• Pluto is still warming from its ~80 year summer
• Triton's warming southern hemisphere is just in its hottest orbital position
• Mars is experiencing changing albedo, probably due to dust storms

He also make the very good point that given "climate is always changing", in any random look around our solar system you should expect to find a handful of warming climates.

For his conclusion he writes:

What's saddening is that people should miss what these various phenomena really have in common — their explicability. They show that our ideas of atmospheric physics are applicable and useful on bodies that range from the tiny (Pluto, the atmosphere of which is hardly worth mentioning) to the gigantic (Jupiter, the atmosphere of which outweighs a hundred solid Earths).

And computer models based on the ones used to study the climate on Earth provide results even when applied to the hugely different conditions on Mars. That is truly impressive.

So what these disparate observations actually tell us is that the scientific community — the scientific community that enjoys a firm consensus on the causes of Earthly climatic change — has a fairly impressive grasp of the fundamentals of how weather works elsewhere, as well. It's a rather inspiring insight. But it is not the lesson that climate sceptics want their readers to learn.

Word.

Making an ASS out of U and ME

(The title seems like a good description of what it is to argue too long with your typical climate denialist, but it has a more specific connection to this short post.)

Unfortunately Blogger, (as far as I can tell) has no way to display recent comments, so a few interesting exchanges go on behind the scenes. I don't have any good ideas for rectifying that, but I did want to share a laugh with readers from the latest comment on the "How To" front page. I spent some time back and forth with one anonymouse and after all that work their concluding position is?

"I will stand by my assumptions"

LOL! Who needs data and logic when you are well armed with assumptions, right?

Nothing to do with anything

Ok, this is about as OT for this blog you can get, but it is too hilarious not to share!

Tek Jansen (Stephen Colbert as a super hero) puts sci-fi time travel to its ultimate uses:

I hope you laughed at least half as much as I did!

Al Gore on the Tonight Show

No scientific content, but some good humour. Check it out on Gristmill or Treehugger.

(I tried to upload it to Youtube, but it may be more than 10 minutes because it did not stay.)

Take a Sceptic to the Movies this Weekend

Lisa Taylor reminds us over on The Gristmill that the The Great Warming is premiering this weekend. I don't see when it is coming to Vancouver, but other venues throughout the United States are listed here.

It still looks quite good to me, if any AFTIC readers or visitors see it, let me know how it is. A guest post review would be welcome too.

Inhofe and CNN

Senator James Inhofe gave a 45 minute speech to the senate recently on his favorite "global warming is a hoax" theme (check here for all the dupes who have fallen for it!).

Dave Roberts on The Gristmill took it apart quite well here. Inhofe trotts out many of the standards:

• It was warmer in the MWP
• The Hockey Stick is bogus
• Kyoto would do nothing
• Antarctic ice is growing
• Everyone was crying "Ice Age Coming!" in the 70's
• There is no eidence that CO2 is causing the rise now
• There is no consensus about it
• Peiser found plenty of science bucking the IPCC view
  

But happily, as a sign of the times, CNN (the Fox News wannabe) did their part to highlight just who is duping who. This is their 3:50min piece on it:

It ends with the comment that Inhofe declined to come on for an interview. Well, it seems he did so after all and that 9+min piece is here:

(I found it frustrating to listen too, but there it is!)

Hodgman on Hurricanes

Now for the lighter side of raging monster storms tearing across the globe destroying lives and property...

(h/t to Prometheus!)

Pat Michaels and the Holiday Inn Express

"State Climatologist? No, I'm no State Climatologist. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once." (that chuckle from Eli Rabbet in the Global Change google group)

One interesting development while I was away last month concerns Patrick Michaels, one of the gaggle of standard climate sceptic voices. It seemed to have started with a leaked memo from an electric/coal company that discussed some of their global warming denial strategy and mentioned having earmarked $100,000 for Dr. Michaels. Tim Lambert discusses it briefly here, and Real Climate talked about its scientific point of view here.

Then in this post, Eli Rabett noted some digging into Michaels' background was calling into question just whether or not the position of State Climatologist of Virginia, the title on Pat Michaels' business card, even exists! Eli has further thoughts and developments here, very much worth reading, including an aparent game of "Hot Potatoe" between the State and the University of Virginia with Michaels as the potatoe, and official requests that he ensure no one thinks he actually represents anybody when he makes his speeches and writes his op-eds.

Does it matter? One poster in the Global Change thread thought it only distracts from the problems with Michaels' scientific arguments.

But does Patrick Michaels' present any credible scientific arguments? I don't think so. If the main arena for this issue were scientific, Patrick Michaels' name would have had no meaning for a long time now. But the arena in which the climate sceptics are effective is by far more one of appearances and PR. In this arena, Michaels' sole source of credibility is his job title and if it turns out it was never really his, whatever the reason, he will need another source of credibility.

The only risk is that he gets this from martyrdom. To avoid this, anyone concerned about the scientific part of the debate should avoid dancing on the State Climatologist of Virginia's grave!

Finally, Proof Positive!

(Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic guide)

Objection:
There is no proof of global warming.

There are other takes to this objection, but this seems worth its own post!

Answer:
Climate Science has thus far proved unable to pull the woolies over the eyes of the public. Time after time, the meager offerings of globally averaged temperature trends, vanishing arctic sea ice, shrinking glaciers, melting ice sheets, earlier springs, satellite analyses of upper tropospheric temperatures and a comprehensive theory supported by the massive computational power of sophisticated computer models have been dismissed, denied and rebutted one by one.

But no more! At last the real smoking gun has been found, the definitive trend has, er.. revealed itself. Was it NASA that found the proof? Or NOAA? Will you see it in the IPCC AR4? No. From the Climate Research Institute of Victoria's Secret (hey, why shouldn't they get in on all that grant money?) comes proof positive of a sustained and rapid Global Warming trend:

ExxonMobil, eat my shorts!

Other Guides, by Category

Some Happy Thoughts (For a Change)

It seems that a response to that recent "what warming?" open letter to Stephen Harper has been published by the CBC, at least on the web. This one is clearly from the reality based community!

See here for the article, which does link as well to this .pdf of the letter. It has 90 signatures, more than the 60 from the other. Jennifer Marohasy asks disingenously: is 60 better than 90?

Well it depends who they are. I'm sure you could find 90 people with PhD's to sign just about anything (60 has been done, as we saw already!). I did however note the following things about these 90 signatories, all of which are a contrast to that other letter's 60 signatories:

• they are all from Canadian institutions
• they are all working in climate science fields
• they are unfamiliar names to me (i.e. busy doing their jobs rather than op-eds and Fox News interviews)

I think that is significant and commendable.

And for the laugh half of the laugh or cry choice we all face trying to debate science with people who long ago left the reality-based community, I invite you to view this message from The Blue Men.

Fun on Usenet

Okay, it's generally a waste of time, but sometimes reading contrarian arguments on alt.global-warming pays off with a good belly laugh!

The latest proof that Global Warming is a hoax? This headline: "US Remains in Ice Age's Grip" posted by Ray "Loopey" Lopez.

The subtle flaw in the argument? It is a movie review of Ice Age: The Meltdown! Better luck next time, Ray.