JO Chandler, The Age, June 29 2011

The myth of Climate-gate has endured because of media failings.

GEOLOGIST and long-time climate change denialist Bob Carter materialised on this page on Monday, reprising a weary routine – tiptoeing through the scientific archive to find the morsels of data that might, with a twirl here and a shimmy there, contrive to support his theory that global warming is a big fat conspiracy.

Meanwhile, in real news, the journal Nature Geoscience published a paper by American and British scientists that found West Antarctica’s Pine Island glacier is now melting 50 per cent faster than in 1994 (see below). Continue reading →

Sydney Morning Herald, June 27, 2011

West Antarctica’s biggest glacier is melting 50 per cent faster than in 1994, adding to a global increase in sea levels, US and UK scientists found.

The Pine Island glacier is losing about 78 cubic kilometrs (30 cubic miles) of ice per year, the researchers at Columbia University in New York and the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, said today. That’s up from 53 cubic kilometes in 1994. The study in the journal Nature Geoscience is based on data from a 2009 expedition. Continue reading →

Recently, John Parkinson sent me a threatening and abusive email not too dissimilar to those recently collated by journalist Graham ReadFearn.   In a later exchange, the same individual tried to take the line that this behaviour was not threatening or abusive, and that the scientific community was being too sensitive.  Similar sentiments have been circulated by Tim Blair.  My only response to John Parkinson was “What part of these emails is not abusive and threatening?”.

Here is an illuminating discussion of this issue by Graham Readfearn, released on ABC Drum Unleashed yesterday.

GRAHAM READFEARN, ABC Drum Unleashed, June 10, 2011

You will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f****** neck until you are dead, dead, dead.

The above note was contained in an email sent to one of these academics, but it is just one example. There are many scientists who over recent years have been receiving notes and communications like this. Continue reading →

Gold Coast Mail (June 8 2011)

CLIMATE change sceptics are an endangered species in Australia, a national survey shows.

The survey of almost 3100 Australians found 74 per cent believe the world’s climate is changing.

When asked a different question about the causes of climate change, which removed the reference to personal beliefs, 90 per cent of respondents said human activity was a factor.

Just five per cent said climate change was entirely caused by natural processes.

Overall, less than six per cent of respondents could reasonably be classified as true climate change sceptics, the study by Griffith University researchers found.

“It’s clear that people want the government to do something about climate change and they also feel they have a personal responsibility to act,” environmental and social psychologist Professor Joseph Reser told AAP. Continue reading →