2012 SkS Weekly Digest #50

SkS goes to Washington

As reported by Forecast the Facts, The Escalator was featured in a speech on the floor of the US Senate this week by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).  The full transcript of the excellent speech can be viewed here.

SkS Highlights

In IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun, Dana skillfully exposes the absurdity of assertions made by a climate denier about what is causing global warming. As shown in a subsequent section of this digest, Dana’s article has been both reprinted and cited by numerous other websites and authors. Kudos to Dana for another job well done!

Toon of the Week

2012 Toon 50

Quote of the Week

The I.P.C.C. has won accolades over the years, most notably the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. But the reports have also become political lightning rods. Climate-change contrarians, though they publish very little in the relevant scientific literature, use the Internet to mount persistent attacks on the I.P.C.C. Being a human enterprise, the I.P.C.C. has certainly made mistakes, and these get magnified by people attempting to generate doubt about the overall body of climate science. 

A Contrarian Spin on the Next Big Climate Report by Justin Gillis, New York Times, Dec 14, 2012

The Week in Review

Coming Soon

SkS in the News

This was a very big week for SkS in the news.  Dana's IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun was re-posted and/or linked to by The Guardian, New York Times Green, New York Times Dot Earth, Huffington Post, Climate Progress, Mother Jones, Climate Crocks, Carbon Brief, Grist, Daily Beast, DeSmogBlog, Graham Readfearn, Der Spiegel, Maribo, Learn from Nature, Alternative Energy in the 21st Century, and Motherboard.  It was also Tweeted by Michael Mann and Chris Mooney, among many others.  Winston Churchill once said,

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

Not this time; we got the truth's pants on in record time and nipped this myth in the bud before the contrarians were able to misinform the public.  In a Google search for the 'IPCC leak' story, the top 7 results are good articles, most of which link to our Skeptical Science post.  Watts' original misinformative post only comes in at #8 on the list.  Well done to all climate realists who helped communicate the facts and immediately defeat this misinformation.

John Cook was also interviewed by ABC Radio News in helping to debunk this myth.

John Cook's PhD research into the effectiveness of communicating the consensus in terms of convincing people to accept the climate science evidence — which John stresses are still preliminary results, but which he presented at the AGU 2012 Fall Meeting — was highlighted by Live Science, Planet 3.0, and The Daily Star.

Rob Painting's Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise  was re-posted on Climate Progress.

Senator Whitehouse's excellent presentation incluing The Escalator noted above was praised by Dan Kahan.

Dana's This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co. was re-posted by Environment Guru.

In a story about climate denial in Indiana politics, several SkS resources were referenced by Daily Kos, Nation of Change, and PR Watch.

SkS Spotlights

The National Environment Research Center (NERC) is the UK's main agency for funding and managing research, training and knowledge exchange in the environmental sciences. Its work covers the full range of atmospheric, Earth, biological, terrestrial and aquatic science, from the deep oceans to the upper atmosphere and from the poles to the equator. 

Working internationally, NERC has bases at some of the most hostile places on the planet. It operates a fleet of research ships and aircraft and invests in satellite technology to monitor gradual environmental change on a global scale. It provides forewarning of, and solutions to, the key environmental challenges facing society.

Posted by John Hartz on Monday, 17 December, 2012


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