Month: April 2017

My response to Neil deGrasse Tyson about denial of science.

Guest essay by Donna Hedley

I love Neil deGrasse Tyson. He has done so much to make science interesting and understandable. He is wise and humble. His love for science is infectious. However, I think he is wrong when he talks about the denial of science, especially when it is about climate change.

I agree with him when he says we need to become scientifically literate and that is something I have endeavoured to do over the last few years. I have come to be better understanding of what science is, and how it works. I am not a scientist, but I do have a brain and believe I have come to some intelligent conclusions. Not only that, I am open minded enough to listen to alternative ideas. I want to know the truth, even if it means that someday…

The “uncertainty monster” strikes again

We’ve been highly critical for some time of the paper in summer 2015 by Karl et al. that claimed “the pause” or hiatus went away once “properly adjusted” ocean surface temperature data was applied to the global surface temperature dataset. Virtually everyone in the climate skeptic community considers Karl et al. little more than a sleight of hand.

No matter, this paper published today in Nature Climate Change by Hedemann et al. not only confirms the existence of “the pause” in global temperature, but suggests a cause, saying “…the hiatus could also have been caused by internal variability in the top-of-atmosphere energy imbalance“.

That’s an important sentence, because it demonstrates that despite many claims to the contrary, CO2 induced forcing of the planetary temperature is not the control knob, and natural variability remains in force.

Also of note, see the offset as designated…