The long-awaited review of the IPCC has been delivered by the InterAcademy Council (an Amsterdam-based organization of the world’s science academies).  Contrary to the misguided expectations of the denialist community, the Inter-Academy Council has concluded that the periodic assessment reports of the IPCC have been successful overall.  There is some need, however, for improving some of the reporting process and for developing a better set of processes to deal with the growing scientific and political complexity of the climate change issue.
Here is the press release posted today by the …

Apart from playing host to one of the most unconventional election days in Australia’s history, August 21st also marked a rather unfortunate milestone – when humanity consumed all of the renewable resources that nature has been able to generate during this year.
Earth Overshoot Day is an initiative of the new economics foundation and the Global Footprint Network, and signifies the day in which human demand has outstripped the annual biocapacity of the Earth. Since the first Earth Overshoot Day in 1987, human consumption has been continuously growing beyond the sustainable …

Climate change certainly appears to a topic that both leaders would prefer not to discuss in much detail during the current election campaign.  Ignoring for a moment that the policies put forth are expected to lead to an increase in Australia’s emissions (according to the Climate Institute’s Pollute O Meter), Tony Abbott has this week barely concealed his skepticism of human induced climate change, and Julia Gillard devoted just 0.2% of her campaign launch speech to the topic.
While climate change seems to be the elephant in the room being ignored …

By Ian Wylie
Financial Times Published: August 9 2010 23:35 | Last updated: August 9 2010 23:35
The cold call asking you to pledge money to a charity is an uncomfortable conversation at the best of times. But what if the person on the other end of the line happens to be the third-richest man in the world?
It seems Warren Buffett, who has been calling up fellow American billionaires to ask them to donate at least half their wealth to charitable causes, also knows an evasive answer when he hears one. “Sometimes they’re just …

Andrew Trounson, Higher Education Supplement,
The Australian,
August 11, 2010 12:00AM
LABOR’S Science and Research Minister Kim Carr has hit out at anti-scientific opinion on climate change. He has warned that the scientific method was coming under public attack, undermining science and replacing it with irrationality.
“In all fields we want to encourage debate, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept the earth is flat,” Senator Carr told the HES yesterday after launching Labor’s science policy, which includes a $21 million science literacy project.
“We don’t have to accept every lunatic …

It sounds like something from a sci-fi movie, but the artificial manipulation of the Earth’s climate has been touted as a possible strategy to reduce the effects of unmitigated climate change. Thanks to the painfully slow progress that has been made towards reducing our carbon emissions, there has been some surprisingly serious discussion about the prospect of geoengineering the climate in order to suit the needs of humans.
Of the various forms that have been suggested (large machines to suck CO2 from the air, space-borne mirrors to reflect sunlight, iron filings …

Dr Stefan Hajkowicz gave an interesting presentation on 12 July 2010 in Brisbane, Australia, on recent CSIRO research of megatrends, megashocks and future scenarios.
Stefan is the co-author of Our Future World: an analysis of global trends, shocks and scenarios, released by CSIRO in April 2010. The report is being used to guide CSIRO’s research investment strategy.
The report defined a “megatrend” as “a collection of trends, patterns of economic, social or environmental activity that will change the way people live and the science and technology products they demand.”
The five interrelated megatrends …

Update 19/7/10: The Support John Abraham page now has over 900 signatories, and a Facebook group has also been set up.  John Abraham has the full support of his university – contrast with the tone of response that Christopher Monckton appears to favour and it is becomes very hard to see how someone could take Monckton’s arguments seriously.
…..
John Abraham from St Thomas University recently presented an extraordinarily detailed rebuttal of a sample of Christopher Monckton’s arguments.  After his initial response a few weeks ago, Monckton has not only asked Prof. …

Several denialists have sort to deliberately confuse the readership over the important evidence gathered by De’ath et al. (2009) on slowing coral calcification on the Great Barrier Reef.  Given the recent resurgence in this misinformation, I thought it would be a good idea to post Dr Glenn De’ath, Dr Janice M. Lough and Dr Katharina E. Fabricius’s recent reply  to Dr Peter Ridd’s confused and misleading claims.
The maintenance of coral calcification rates is critical for the future of coral reefs and it is, therefore, important to identify spatial patterns and …

A fairly convoluted (but interesting none the less) paper just got published in PNAS by Anderegg et al (2010) looking at climate change and scientific credibility (more coverage by the Guardian here). Why don’t we trust climate scientists? To answer this question, the authors conducted a literature search of 1,372 climate researchers whose work “constitutes expertise or credibility in technical and policy-relevant scientific research”, and conclude what we’ve been blogging here for some time: “Despite media tendencies to present both sides in debates, which can contribute to continued public …

Professor Neville Nicholls, Monash University
Contrary to the impression you might have gained from the media, the global climate is NOT cooling. In fact, the last twelve months, June 2009 – May 2010, has been the hottest June-May period on record, in both the 31-year satellite record of lower atmosphere global temperature and the 131-year surface global temperature record. In both data series the last 12 months have been more than 0.4C hotter than the average temperature of the last two decades of the 20th century.
The figure below plots the time …

I have just returned from a series of off-campus meetings to find that there has been little excitement in my absence.  Apparently, I have been portrayed as some sort of hothead who tried to interfere with the “Watts up with that?” tour by denialists Anthony Watts, David Archibald and Bob Carter.
“Unprofessional and arrogant academic interrupts poor old denialist weatherman.”  Goodness– that does sound believable.  That is until one examines the complete audio record, which my trusty ‘photographer’ (Dr. John Bruno) and I were able to obtain.
What transpired was triggered by …

Denier disciples Bob Carter and Anthony Watts are giving a talk in Brisbane tonight at The Irish Club (175 Elizabeth Street, 7:00 pm).
The Climate Shifts crew and other scientists will be there en masse to record and debunk the lies that will be told.
But as a primer, we thought a simple compilation of the lies these two fools have been spreading would be valuable background information for any media planning to cover the event.
Bob Carter: Bob is a geologist associated with James Cook Uni.  Bob was a key player in one of …

I was sent this insightful article by ANU academic Andrew Glikson about denialism written by two medical scientists, Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee.
Whether it is the belief that the world is only a few thousands of years old, that HIV does not cause AIDS, or greenhouse gases don’t affect the energy balance of the planet, there are five unifying characteristics of denialism according to Diethelm and McKee.
As I listed them here, I found myself ticking them off one by one.
See what you think:
1. Belief that a major conspiracy is blocking …

Now this is something you’d think all those self-proclaimed skeptics would be skeptical about.  But you’d be wrong, e.g., see here, here and here.  Note that despite being debunked days ago, all these sites are still carrying the story with no correction.  Including Mark Morano’s Climate Depot:
It took scientist Michael Tobis, a scientist at the University of Texas, just a few emails and questions to debunk the entire crazy story.

See full coverage here on the excellent Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media.
A Cruel Climate Hoax Perpetrated On Texas Fourth Grader …

Here’s a great interview with the (near legendary!) John Cook, the man behind the scenes at Skeptical Science. Here’s what John has to say:

Skeptically Speaking is a fantastic radio show with the slogan “Question everything”. Hosted by Desiree Shell (and with a catchy jingle, note to Doug Moutal), the show is committed to the skepticism community (by skepticism, they mean a basis on scientific evidence, not misinformation or ideology). Last Sunday, they aired a show, The Evidence for Climate Change, featuring an interview with myself. You can download the whole …