Maybe I've just been at this too long. But it seems that the ratio between banal observations and helpful analyses of the climate crisis is much larger than usual. I mean, I was offline for five days over Thanksgiving and apparently missed nothing. Consider this conclusion from Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, writing in Yale's 360:
First, climate change seems tailor-made to be a low priority for most people. The threat is distant in both time and space.
As Special Agent Gibbs might say: "Ya think?"
And over at Nature Climate Change Reports, an interview with NASA climatologist James Hansen wraps up with his lament that "climate change is an exceedingly difficult problem."
That one gets my vote for the titular award. But there's more. How about this from Grist's David Roberts, discussing the refusal of Americans to accept the climate science:
If I can't convince a guy standing in a downpour that it's raining, seems to me the dumbass in the rain is the story, not my poor messaging.
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Roberts may have a point, but the problem is that you can't change the dumbass. Dumbasses are remarkably resilient to any efforts to make them non-dumbasses. You can, however, change your method of getting your message out to the dumbasses.
This is an exceedingly stupid post. Why are you wasting your readers time with this garbage?
Good post on the same subject, here.
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/zorita/
Quack. Quack. Quack.
Walks like a duck. Quacks like a duck.
Must be the global warming pseudo-science mascot.
Quack Quack.
"But it seems that the ratio between banal observations and helpful analyses of the climate crisis is much larger than usual."
Judith Curry's piece is not banal; it's terrifying:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/27/%C2%AD-climategate-judith-curry-o…
You could just read CA or WUWT and address some of the ostensible nonsense (including "lost" data, FOIA requests for said data, emails wherein holders of said data claimed they'd expunge it before giving it to the heathens.) (Or CA's explication of "hide the decline" and how it concerns the validity of treemometers instead of any actual declines in modern temps.)
You didn't "miss nothing" but because you find what's been said disagreeable, you're identifying it as boring, which is what lots of kids do when they're losing.
'Some' people here are clearly standing in the rain, and not realising it at all. ALL data CRU used (it is NOT the repository of data !) is available at the GHCN and National Meteorological Services. But that requires making an effort. A rather big effort. And seeing such a big effort being attacked by a heavily biased group of auditors would make anyone use strong wording saying things they would never do in practice.
@James, you can add this one to your list of relevant quotes: "ill doers are ill deemers". The strong allegations of fraud and data tampering clearly comes from people who project their own questionable morals onto others.
What is this nonsense?
Two points: firstly Americans can't even work out that having a lot of guns and using them is correlated with the torrent of blood in your schools, roads and workplaces. Or that paying unnecessarily huge amounts of money for poor healthcare is bad. So how do you expect these same people to understand anything requiring calm analysis and rationality?
Secondly, we aren't standing in a downpour. A very few people can see some direct results of global warming - those in cold regions who see glaciers or ice shelves melting or those on low-lying islands seeing their land start to disappear.
For the rest of us, each day is warm or cold, wet or dry, as it always has been, and the seasons change and each day is different. Any trend of a degree or two is completely imperceptible to ordinary senses as the normal variability of weather swamps it.
Climate change is currently points on graphs. That's where it can be seen, not in individual experiences
A degree or two change in an average temperature is less than the difference between night and day, between today and tomorrow. That's NOT to say it's not important. But it is not obvious to one's senses in the same way as summer and winter are.
A controversial teaching program linked to an alleged cult leader managed to slip into 44 New York City public schools because it didn't cost enough to trigger detailed background checks, school officials said yesterday.
#8 is some sort of spammer, it's shown up on at least one other scienceblogs blog.
> sikiÅ izle
Google on it -- it's a very active spambot.
Sam C @ # 7: Climate change is currently points on graphs. That's where it can be seen, not in individual experiences
When I moved to north central Florida in the mid-'80's, it was a local truism that first frost occurred by Thanksgiving. Now it's almost a week past that day, and the lowest my porch thermometer has recorded is 40F. It hardly froze at all here last winter; the year before, not until February.
If the individual is paying attention, climate change is perceptible. That's an increasingly rare if, however.