John Cook, ABC Religion and Ethics, Nov 17 2011

In a much publicised recent speech, Cardinal George Pell strongly endorsed the importance of evidence in public debate. He argues that “the debates about anthropogenic global warming can only be conducted by the accurate recognition and interpretation of scientific evidence.”

It would be hard to find anyone who would disagree with his sentiment – a proper understanding of climate must be built on a foundation of empirical observations. There’s just one problem: Cardinal Pell fails to practise what he preaches. Continue reading →

While some ecologists worry about whether or not life can evolve fast enough to keep up with the current rate of rapid anthropogenic climate change, another ‘evolutionary’ event is in progress.  Prof John Abraham has updated a graph from a few years ago which shows an upward trend in climate skeptic Dr John Christy‘s published conclusions about the rate of climate change.  Like global temperature itself, the rate of change in average global temperature that Dr Christy has been reporting appears to be increasing.

‘Evolution’ or just a slow learner? Continue reading →

Shawn Lawrence Otto, Huffington Post, 11/1/11

A hearing today has implications for academic freedom across the country. A Virginia judge grantedclimate scientist Michael Mann the right to intervene on his own behalf in a lawsuit filed by a climate change denial group seeking to get his private papers and emails from the University of Virginia. While this is an important victory for American-style freedom and privacy, its background is a story of just the opposite – attempts at authoritarian repression of science for political purposes.

In 2010 newly-elected Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a climate change denier, sued the University of Virginia to get Mann’s private papers. Cuccinelli wanted to sift through them in the wake of “climategate” to see if he could find anything he could spin into a case under the state’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, arguing that while an employee of UVA, Mann’s work on climate change may have used public money to perpetrate a fraud. Continue reading →

I thought these responses to the BEST study from the leading experts are worth posting (comments collected by our friends at the UK Science Media Centre).  A far cry from the response of ideologues such as Anthony Watts and Andrew Bolt:

Prof Sir John Beddington, Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government, said:

“Clearly this study needs peer review, but if correct it is pleasing to hear that this new analysis conforms with US work at NASA and NOAA and that of Phil Jones and his colleagues at the UK Hadley Center-UEA Climatic Research Unit. This work adds to the evidence about how climate change is

Others have also commented:   Continue reading →

Global warming is real, according to a major study released today. Despite a issues raised by climate denialists, the Berkeley Earth’s Surface Temperatures study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world temperature of approximately 1°C since 1950.

Professor Richard A Muller, who led the study, is UC Berkeley physicist, and long-time climate skeptic has publicly admitted that he was wrong about the IPCC and the evidence for global warming.  See press release here.  One wonders why Muller was motivated to repeat what the IPCC has been doing that much greater scales of rigor.   Whatever the reasons, the conclusions that Muller has come to has thrown a ‘cat among the pigeons’ with respect to climate deniers like Anthony Watts and Fred Singer.

UPDATE:  Here is Kelly Rigg in the Huffington Post – is climate denial unraveling? Continue reading →