Category: News and Announcements

from Popular Science:
“Getting into a climate change debate on Twitter could be even more exhausting than it sounds now that a software developer named Nigel Leck has automated the process. Tired of arguing with climate change deniers in 140 character quips, the programmer wrote a script to do it for him. Chatbot @AI_AGW scans Twitter every five minutes searching for hundreds of phrases that fit the usual denier argument paradigm. Then it serves them up some science.

Those responses are pulled from a database of hundreds of responses that the software matches up to the argument made by the original tweeter. Those who claim the entire solar system is warming are met with something like: “Sun’s output has barely changed since 1970 & is irrelevant to recent global warming” followed by a link to corresponding scientific research.”

Word is that the climate bot links to sources like Skeptical Science, and…ahem…a certain climate themed video series as well.

With the collapse, at least for now, of efforts to set national standards for renewable energy and greenhouse gases, the action has moved to the state and local level.  One of the most important questions on the ballot in California this November is Proposition 23 – a fossil-industry supported initiative to repeal AB 32, passed in 2006, which is aimed at capping greenhouse emissions in California by 2020, and encouraging renewable energy development.  Naturally, the usual suspects are out to squash human progress.

September was tied as the 8th warmest on record, and continued a string of warm months that made January to September the hottest on record.

2010 is on track to become the warmest year in the instrumental record, despite the swing from el nino (warming) to la nina (cooling) conditions in the pacific over recent months. (check the blue data points over the eastern pacific in the above graph) The National Climate Data Center figure above is the iconic fingerprint of the process, and the series of monthly updates is highly recommended to those following the issue. I very commonly use the figures in my presentations and videos. Remember that the points represent temperature anomalies, differences, higher or lower, from the average temps during the 1961–1990 reference period.

We eagerly await the cooling trend that denialists have been promising. Due to be starting annny time now…

Oil has stopped gushing. Now we’re assessing the damage.
Divers assess undersea life in the Gulf.

Act now to get maximum leverage on the fantastic new opportunities from Sea Level Rise!
The Apex of Modern Leisure!

“..or for that matter, any kind of scientist.”

That’s what one of the world’s most well known climate scientists recently told friends.

This article in Politico is the case in point. In the event the House of representatives shifts to republicans, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a foe of progress, reason and science, will become chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

He has vowed to obstruct the pursuit of truth about climate change, and intimidate those foolish enough to ask questions and seek answers about the real world.

We’ll also get Joe “I apologize to BP” Barton on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and, in the case of the Senate switching hands, Senator James “global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” “There have never been any gay people in my family” Inhofe to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Every election is critical, as we saw in 2000, but this election could be a watershed if the tea-party fueled anti-science know-nothings of the Republican party take power. My father was chairman of the local county Republicans back in the Eisenhower/Kennedy era, and I know what that once-great party used to be like. But in today’s environment, people like Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, and even Ronald Reagan would not meet ideological purity test for what’s become the party of our own native Tea Party Taliban.

The world’s most accomplished scientists have decisively debunked the “obvious and elementary errors” in “Lord” Monckton’s testimony before the US Congress, see here.

What’s pathetic is that this load of garbage is what passes for science among congressional republicans – who made Monkton their only witness in recent hearings.

“Lord” Christopher Monckton will presumably move on to his third career of  inventing common cold cures and peddling snake oil for AIDS sufferers.

Readers are urged to write to their representative and urge them to read this document.

For whatever reason, islamaphobia, donor fatique, media indifference, the Pakistan mega-flood has slipped through the cracks after the initial media splash.

The Pakistani disaster is, in my mind, unquestionably, even more than Katrina, the template for the “threat multiplier” events that climate change will be triggering for the rest of our lives.

Those interested in keeping awareness alive and making a tax deductible donation for Pakistan, with some confidence that their donation will get to those who need it most, can go to this page set up by the US State Department.