Climate models are mathematical representations of the interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, ice – and the sun. This is clearly a very complex task, so models are built to estimate trends rather than events. For example, a climate model can tell you it will be cold in winter, but it can’t tell you what the temperature will be on a specific day – that’s weather forecasting. Climate trends are weather, averaged out over time - usually 30 years. Trends are important because they eliminate - or "smooth out" - single events that may be extreme, but quite rare.

Climate models have to be tested to find out if they work. We can’t wait for 30 years to see if a model is any good or not; models are tested against the past, against what we know happened. If a model can correctly predict trends from a starting point somewhere in the past, we could expect it to predict with reasonable certainty what might happen in the [...]

From Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=333
1/1/2001 12:00:00 AM
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A very nice surprise greeted me this morning on the local page of my AP News iPhone app: an interview in the News & Observer with Dr. Misha Angrist of the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy by freelance journalist, T. DeLene Beeland.

Angrist is perhaps best-known as the fourth of the first 10 people whose genome was sequenced for George Church's Personal Genome Project. Not surprisingly, his work focuses on the societal implications of the personal genomics movement and what knowing one's DNA sequence means today and will mean in the future. We last wrote about Misha here when he was featured in the [...]

From Terra Sigillata
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/omcb/~3/31uxVFtK5oQ/genome_boy_delene_beeland.php
2/23/2010 2:20:06 AM
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At the recent US House of Representatives Committee on Science Space and Technology climate hearing, the Republicans called Dr. John Christy as an expert witness testifying against the global warming consensus. Unfortunately, Christy spent his time repeating a long list of climate myths, including the common contrarian refrain that “climate model output does not match up to the real world”. Let’s examine this claim.

A tale of three climate indicators Surface temperature observations are well within the range of model projections:

From Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=701
4/19/2011 5:40:16 PM
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The fact that carbon dioxide is a 'greenhouse gas' - a gas that prevents a certain amount of heat radiation escaping back to space and thus maintains a generally warm climate on Earth, goes back to an idea that was first conceived, though not specifically with respect to CO2, nearly 200 years ago. The three-part tale of how this important physical property, its role in the geological past and understanding how it may affect our future, covers about two centuries of enquiry, discovery, innovation and problem-solving.

Part One can be viewed here 

 

From Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1408
5/2/2012 4:03:48 PM
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Reposted from The Conversation. This is the second article in a two-week series Clearing up the Climate Debate: read the opening statement here: Climate change is real: an open letter from the scientific community.

CLEARING UP THE CLIMATE DEBATE: Bureau of Meteorology scientist Karl Braganza explains why we know the climate is changing, and what’s causing it.

In public discussions of climate change, the full range and weight of evidence underpinning the current science can be difficult to find.

A good example of this is the role of observations of the climate system over the past one hundred years or more.

In the current public discourse, the focus has been mostly on changes in global [...]

From Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=807
6/15/2011 9:31:33 AM
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By and large, the mainstream media has a pretty dismal record in reporting about climate change, and a recent article in the National Post, written by Lawrence Solomon, continues in this vein. In the piece, Solomon makes light of the dire threat global warming poses to the continued existence of the Amazon rainforest. After the IPCC Amazon non-controversy, it's probably time to look at the issue in a bit more depth, and debunk Solomon at the same time. 

Don't believe anyth...everything [...]

From Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=740
5/16/2011 1:57:29 AM
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Russel Crowe is The Man. He's been in a bunch of awesome movies, he has rugged good looks (at least he did until he got fat), and he's from New Zealand, which I think means he's a Dúnedain. I mean, his ears aren't pointed and he's too tall to be a hobbit or a dwarf.

Perhaps most importantly, Crowe loves to punch people. More than that, he loves to brawl people. Sure, he's on record apologizing for his many brawls, but the World of Men knows that [...]

From Action Skeptics
http://actionskeptics.blogspot.com/2010/12/manly-wednesday-russel-crowe.html
12/9/2010 4:54:00 AM
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Can you think of a time when you were right about something and all your friends were wrong? I suspect you can. After all, we tend to remember things like that. It could have been something quite trivial. Perhaps you knew which band recorded a particular song, and all your friends thought it was someone else. The point is, you were right and everyone else was wrong.

Imagine what it must have been like to be the one person (or perhaps one of a very small number) who first realized that the Earth was not flat! Think of how much flack the earliest proponents of heliocentrism faced. And yet, they were right while the overwhelming majority was wrong.

From Atheist Revolution
http://www.atheistrev.com/2011/07/reality-is-not-democracy.html
7/6/2011 10:03:00 PM
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Yes, it's Valentine's Day. As we found out yesterday, some people have pretty strong feelings about this holiday. But there are few who care as much about this holiday as this guy:



What's up with scowly guy? His name is Pramod Mutalik and he's the chief of a right-wing Hindu group called Sri Ram Sene (Lord Ram's Army). The group believes that Valentine's Day is 'un-Indian.' They are threatening to attack any Indian couples celebrating Valentine's Day. That's right, if you celebrate a holiday that is about love and intimacy, they want to beat the snot out of you.

The group members consider themselves the caretakers of Indian [...]

From Masala Skeptic
http://www.masala-skeptic.com/2009/02/panties-for-peace.html
2/15/2009 5:24:00 AM
Search rank: 379

Created page with "Nowadays, there are lots of people out there that they are having a '''junk car''' in their backyard. In this case, this may result onto the pollution of the environment and thro..."

New page

Nowadays, there are lots of people out there that they are having a '''junk car''' in their backyard. In this case, this may result onto the pollution of the environment and through the junk cars, this will be surely be magnets to the vermin as well as the plants and the car will also be covered up by the rust. To remove this, you may visit the junkyard in Fresno so that it will be dispose properly just like in the '''[http://www.sell-junkcars.com/selling-a-chicago-junk-car chicago junk cars]'''.


To sell a car to a '''junk''' yard in Fresno, make sure that you obtain the title of your vehicle and along with this, is your ID. Nowadays, we all know that most of the companies today don't accept your [...]

From SkeptiCamp - Recent changes [en]
http://skepticamp.com/w/index.php?title=Chicago_Junk_Cars_-_How_to_Sell_a_Car_to_a_Junk_Yard_in_Fresno&diff=3720&oldid=prev
2/18/2012 8:40:00 PM
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It's worth re-reading this remarkable document from time to time, especially given that it says something very different from what many on the Right and in the Tea Party seem to think. It does, for example, give special importance to representative government; that is, in fact, one of the main purposes of the document. It does not call for a "right" to toss away any government someone disapproves of but lays out specific grievances and makes its declaration through the representatives of the people, not by mob action.

The document's wording was very carefully developed and has specific meaning to those who wrote it at the time and their descendants. If you've never read it, or haven't for a long time, give it a try.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume [...]

From White Coat Underground
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/whitecoatunderground/~3/K-2tKVlLTDs/in_congress_july_4th_1776.php
7/4/2010 11:07:44 PM
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Well, I actually cut band rehearsal on Thursday night. This is almost unheard of for me. The only times I've ever missed rehearsal, I was either ill or in England. I did have what I consider a really good reason, though. PZ Myers was speaking just down the road at Sierra College!!!

Author of the blog Pharyngula, PZ Myers is one of the top science bloggers AND one of the top two atheist bloggers (the other being the much "friendlier" Hemant Mehta). The Sierra College stop wrapped up a

From Chimaera Contemplations
http://ichthyologistbright.blogspot.com/2010/01/pz-myers.html
1/31/2010 12:57:00 PM
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Righteous Indignation 


First a minor warning: This week's episode's audiomix of RIPodcast was groovy if you are into early Pink Floyd or original pressings of the Kinks records, but if not then you ought to listen to the show on a mono-speaker.  Due to a minor computer mishap and the lack of running the show through Garage Band or similar audio program the stereo recording was very stereo.  


Anyway Haley was sick with hayfever, so it was Dr*T, Trystan, and Gavin who covered the news stories, while Hayley did most of [...]

From The Skeptical Review
http://www.skepreview.com/feeds/6671925538692139895/comments/default
4/28/2010 11:42:00 AM
Search rank: 355

Righteous Indignation 


First a minor warning: This week's episode's audiomix of RIPodcast was groovy if you are into early Pink Floyd or original pressings of the Kinks records, but if not then you ought to listen to the show on a mono-speaker.  Due to a minor computer mishap and the lack of running the show through Garage Band or similar audio program the stereo recording was very stereo.  


Anyway Haley was sick with hayfever, so it was Dr*T, Trystan, and Gavin who covered the news stories, while Hayley did most of [...]

From The Skeptical Review
http://www.skepreview.com/2010/04/righteous-indignation.html
4/28/2010 11:42:00 AM
Search rank: 355

Guest post by Alan Marshall from climatechangeanswers.org

Following the failure to reach a strong agreement at the Copenhagen conference, climate skeptics have had a good run in the Australian media, continuing their campaigns of disinformation. In such an atmosphere it is vital that we articulate the basic science of climate change, the principles of physics and chemistry which the skeptics ignore.

The purpose of this article is to clearly explain, in everyday language, the two key principles which together determine the rate at which temperatures rise. The first principle is the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide and other gases. The second principle is the thermal inertia of the oceans, sometimes referred to as climate lag. Few people have any feel for the numbers involved with the latter, so I will deal with it in more depth.

The Greenhouse Effect

[...]

From Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=381
9/23/2010 10:23:43 AM
Search rank: 351

Recently, global warming denialists have drawn attention to themselves by releasing of thousands of hacked e-mails and documents from the Climate Research Institute. These e-mails, sent over the course of 13 years purportedly show researchers manipulating data to create evidence that wasn’t actually there on behalf of global warming. In one e-mail a researcher writes, “I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.” In another e-mail from November 1999 they write, “I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.” In yet a third e-mail they write, “The fact is that we can't account for the lack of [...]

From Vegan Skeptic
http://veganskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/12/global-warming-denialists.html
12/6/2009 3:58:00 PM
Search rank: 351

Sometimes, I really hate fossils. I hate them with the passion of a spurned lover, one who is consumed with desire but knows that he will never, ever be satisfied. They drive me mad.

Right now we're at a point in our technology where we can take a small sample from a living organism and break it down into amazing detail — we can extract every gene, throw them into a computer, and compare them with every other gene that has been similarly sampled. We can look for the scars of evolution, we can analyze and figure out where on the tree of life this cell resides, we can even figure out what local populatons it lived in, who its ancestors bred with, and to a certain extent, what various alleles contributed to its form and physiology. We don't know [...]

From Pharyngula
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/FuQTl_mvhic/an_unpaleontological_lament_fo.php
7/16/2010 8:56:40 AM
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After a rapid rise in global surface air temperatures during the late 1970s to 1990s, the rate of global warming in the last decade or so has slowed. A recent scientific paper, Kaufmann (2011), suggests that once relevant factors are taken into consideration, the observed slow-down from 1998-2008 is in line with scientific understanding of the climate. 

Rapid industrialization in East Asia, particularly China, led to a big jump in sunlight-reflecting sulfate aerosol pollution, mainly through coal burning. This additional reflective aerosol pollution sheilded the Earth from greater warming, but is only a temporary reprieve. Sulfates have a short lifetime in the atmsophere, and when East Asia stops burning so much coal, the Earth is going to [...]

From Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=868
7/15/2011 9:54:27 PM
Search rank: 337