rachel.blog

Category: Climate change

  • Science Fair Nightmare

    This is a funny youtube video about a climate change contrarian Dad at the school science fair. It’s well worth watching especially if you’ve got some contrarians in your family 😉 Thanks to the blogger at I’m not yet dead who brought it to my attention and who has an excellent post today called I…

  • Global warming underestimated

    Three posts in one day! I must be procrastinating. But I just have to share this youtube video which explains some research conducted by someone from the University of York – a very fine institution in a very fine city – as well as someone from the University of Newfoundland. According to their newly published…

  • When is it ok to discuss climate change?

    I just watched this speech by the Philippine Climate Change Commissioner, Yeb Saño, at the UN climate conference in Warsaw. He pleads for action on climate change with passion, breaking down in tears at one point. It’s well worth watching. Yeb Saño makes a direct connection between climate change and the tragedy unfolding in the…

  • Wind farms: love ’em or hate ’em?

    I promised one of my commentators that I’d write a blog post about wind farms. This is perhaps against my better judgement since there is sure to be a heated discussion in the comments but I am not usually one to shy away from a good debate.  So here goes. Why do wind farms generate…

  • Playing God with Earth’s thermostat

    In an attempt to propel the discussion from “is it or isn’t it happening” to “what should we do about it”, I want to bring up the topic of geo-engineering. This is essentially large-scale manipulation of Earth’s climate by us. It comes in many flavours from capturing CO2 for storage deep beneath the sea to developing…

  • Climate departure and Daily Mail hyperbole

    There was an article in the Daily Mail last week predicting a global warming apocalypse.  Here’s the headline: Apocalypse Now: Unstoppable man-made climate change will become reality by the end of the decade and could make New York, London and Paris uninhabitable within 45 years, claims new study Read more: Daily Mail The Daily Mail…

  • More excrement from James Delingpole

    There’s nothing quite a like an article written by James Delingpole to spoil my evening and incite anger. His articles are almost always inflammatory, biased, full of inconsistencies and quite often wrong. I just read his latest turd in the Telegraph and with each line I felt my blood pressure rising and my anger escalate.…

  • Be prepared!

    Be prepared! that’s the boy scout’s marching song, Be prepared! as through life you march along. Be prepared to hold your liquor pretty well, Don’t write naughty words on walls if you can’t spell. Read more: Tom Lehrer – Be Prepared Lyrics | MetroLyrics I was never a Boy Scout, for obvious reasons, but nor was…

  • 25 years of the IPCC

    In anticipation of the release of the IPCC assessment on climate change next week, I thought I’d post this video from Nature.com about the final report. Scientists are now 95% sure that the climate is warming and that we’re largely responsible. There’s also a good summary at Nature.com, The Final Assessment. Note: If you’re having…

  • Don’t believe what you read in the Daily Mail

    It goes without saying doesn’t it? But judging by the comments on a couple of recent climate change articles by Daily Mail journalist David Rose here and here, people will believe anything. Last week, David Rose wrote an article telling us all that the we are headed for global cooling. This week, he has an…

  • Why isn’t it getting colder?

    Most people in New Zealand and Australia will be familiar with the terms El Niño and La Niña which describe the Pacific ocean-atmosphere oscillation and which influence local temperature and rainfall. For Australia, El Niño events tend to bring warmer temperatures and drought while La Niña often brings widespread rain and flooding. The floods of 1973-1974 occurred…

  • Backwards reasoning

    George Monbiot wrote an article this week which has struck a chord with me called Backwards Reasoning. It is something we all do – reason backwards. If we’ve already made up our minds about something, then we reason with ourselves to justify that conclusion. If we don’t like a particular conclusion, we reject the premise.…

  • Who is Christopher Monckton?

    I was wrong about Christopher Monckton. For some time now, I’ve thought he was the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (whatever that means), but it turns out that he’s Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest creation, uncovered by Australian comedian, Craig Reucassel. Thanks to Sou at HotWhopper for pointing this out.

  • Plane crashes and climate change

    I am quite fascinated by aeroplane crashes. It’s just another of my morbid obsessions. One crash in particular, stands in my mind above all others. It’s the 1990 crash of Colombian flight 52 into the village of Cove Neck, New York killing 73 of the 158 people on board. What is so intriguing about this…

  • In praise of change

    I’m an impatient person. I also relish change. I’m not one of those people who fears it and who rejects everything new. Perhaps this is partly why I have no objections to implementing the changes needed to stem global warming and am perplexed why so many people fight against them. I read this great tweet…

  • Can scientists have opinions on policy?

    This post is in response to an opinion piece in The Guardian this week, Climate scientists must not advocate particular policies that is written by a climate scientist, Tamsin Edwards. It has spawned a number of blog posts already so I probably don’t particularly need to add my own but being the opinionated person that I…

  • Burden of proof

    David Mitchell rants about global warming contrarians. Funny but true.

  • Has global warming stopped?

    It seems that almost weekly there’s an article in the news with some climate change contrarian telling the world that global warming has stopped. It’s for this reason that I’m not surprised by the disconnect between what scientists know about global warming and what the general public thinks they know. 97% of climate scientists agree that…

  • The Curry test for ocean acidification

    There’s a recent post about ocean acidification on Judith Curry’s blog, Climate Etc. She includes the commentary from two opposing views on this topic and then weighs up the evidence herself and decides whose views she finds more credible.  The two points of view come from these two people: * Scott C. Doney – senior…

  • Physiological forcing

    I learnt a new word (or two) this week: physiological forcing. Sounds ominous doesn’t it? It’s like radiative forcing but relates to plants. I’m aware that some people who read my blog won’t know what is meant by radiative forcing so let’s deal with that first. The Earth gets energy from the sun in the…