John Holdren, Barack Obama’ senior advisor on science and technology has been frequently quoted as saying:
We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going…
Participating in social media creates a wide and diverse network of acquaintances. Often, these people become “friends”, even though direct personal contact may never made with them. It can be hard to establish traditional friendships without face-to-face encounters. Before the…
According to NASA, July 2017 was the warmest July on record, just slightly higher than July 2016. The global average anomaly was 0.83° C.
The year-to-date average anomaly is 0.94° C.
(Oops, the x-axis label is wrong. It should read…
I update the GISTEMP records every month, but I missed writing up April’s monthly summary. Real-world events have set my priorities elsewhere and this May 2017 write-up is a couple of weeks overdue. Monthly updates are probably overkill anyway, especially…
Cross-posted at Skeptical Science
The 97% consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) reported by Cook et al. (2013) (C13) is a robust estimate. Alternative methods, such as James Powell’s, that identify only explicit rejections of AGW and assume that all…
This is a quick update to my temperature graphs based on the latest NASA GISTEMP numbers. First, the monthly anomalies.
The March anomaly was 1.12C, the second-warmest March and the fourth-warmest month ever. In the absence of an El Niño,…
A bungled correction to a Globe and Mail article reveals that the intent was to publish a puff piece on the oil sands, not an objective analysis of the future of bitumen production in the face of serious climate change…
NASA’s GISTEMP temperature estimates for February 2017 are now out. February 2017 was the second-warmest February since records began (the first-warmest being in 2016) and was tied for the fourth-warmest monthly anomaly for any month.
Here is a plot of…
If the world is successful in reducing emissions sufficiently to avoid dangerous climate change, there is a limited future for a prospering oil-sands sector in Canada. The conventional wisdom among the Canadian establishment is that growing the oil-sands business is…
A graph that I included in my last monthly surface temperature blog post attracted a lot of attention thanks to a Tweet by Eric Holthaus.
Nearly 4,000 retweets is a lot of attention for a blogger like me. The graph…
‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world’s whole sap is sunk;
The general balm…
I used to do regular monthly global surface temperature updates earlier this year, but I stopped a few months ago. I was getting bored with writing them and I noticed that readers weren’t reading them either. Also, Tamino and Sou…
This piece was first published at Skeptical Science on December 1, 2016
In an announcement on November 29, 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved two new major pipeline expansions for Canadian bitumen. Altogether, the two projects will add over…
There are a lot of claims about the benefits that the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) pipeline project will supposedly have for BC, and Canada generally. Recently, I listened to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley on the CBC the other…
This a long piece that would probably be better split up into several separate, focussed articles. Never mind, consider it as a rambling, idiosyncratic and opinionated mind-dump on the subject of the future of oil. I may later rewrite parts…
This article was originally published online at Corporate Knights Magazine and will appear in the publication’s Fall 2016 hard-copy magazine. It was also previously republished, in part, at Skeptical Science.
Climate scientists are certain that human-caused emissions have increased carbon…
I have just had a piece published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: ‘We’d have to finish one new facility every working day for the next 70 years’—Why carbon capture is no panacea . I’m not allowed to repost…
Climate scientist Michael Mann has teamed up with cartoonist Tom Toles to write The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics and Driving Us Crazy. It’s an excellent book, well-written, authoritative on the science, revealing…
There has been a spate of blog articles in recent weeks by Michael Tobis, And Then There’s Physics Victor Venema and Eli Rabett. In part this was sparked by an article in the New York Times misleadingly titled There is…
The GISTEMP (NASA) data for July 2016 came out a few days ago and the records keep falling. July 2016 was warmer than any July on record by more than one-tenth of a degree..
That makes 10 months in a…
NASA has released its global surface temperature anomaly calculation for June 2016 and it sets a new record for June. June 2016 had an anomaly of 0.79°C, edging out the previous record from June 2015 (0.78°C) and the previous record…
This a rather personal rant about the recent referendum in Britain on the EU. There’s really nothing to do here with climate change, energy or science, so this is off-topic for this blog. I really have little to add to…
Originally published online at Corporate Knights Magazine on May 18, 2016 and in the hardcopy magazine in June 2016.
The Paris Agreement on mitigating climate change seeks to limit emissions with the goal of holding the increase in the global…
The huge El Niño of 2015-2016 has now ended and global surface temperatures are now declining very quickly. In fact, the global temperature anomaly fall from February-May 2016 was 0.40°C; the biggest three-month decline since November 1928-February 1929 (0.48°C). Even…
The GISTEMP global temperature anomalies are now out for April 2016.
The April 2016 anomaly fell by about 0.2 °C from the huge records set in February and March, but this was still this the warmest April on record by…
It’s probably obvious from the weird eyes and barely coherent ramblings that Sarah Palin’s brainwashing in Skeptical Science’s secret prison has done some permanent damage. We’re sorry. Nevertheless, she did get one of her programmed lines nearly right:
“…if 97%…
Originally published in Corporate Knights Magazine
In 1998 and 1999, American scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes published two papers that reconstructed the average temperatures of the northern hemisphere back to the year 1000. The articles showed a…
Forgive the facetious, click-bait headline.
The NASA GISTEMP global temperature anomalies for March are now available. March 2016 had by far the largest temperature anomaly (1.28°C) for any March on record and the second highest anomaly for any month ever,…
In a recent article in Skeptical Inquirer, geologist and writer James Lawrence Powell, claims that there is a 99.99% scientific consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). You might think that after all of the harsh criticism that the 2013 Cook…
Originally published at Corporate Knights on March 17, 2016.
Sorry Ted Cruz. There’s no conspiracy among scientists to exaggerate global warming by fudging the numbers.
Last year was the warmest year recorded since the measurement of global surface temperatures began…
