If you doubt any claim made about man-made global warming, Jennifer Jacquet thinks you are a “miscreant” and on par with those who deny that “smoking causes cancer.” She also draws the conclusion that since one “denialist” sports the same upper-lip fuzz as Snidely P. Whiplash, the rest of them are somewhere twirling their moustaches and up to now good.
Well, these kinds of childish insults are common by now. Sticks and stones, etc. What makes Jacquet’s edge-of-sanity ramblings interesting is her involvement in work called “Shifting Baselines.” Jacquet, and others at her web site, call “Shifting Baselines” a syndrome.
In case you weren’t paying attention, I said s-y-n-d-r-o-m-e. These are scary things and ordinarily require medical treatment, or even psychological counseling, so we are talking of serious things here. What are the signs of this dread malady? From Jacquet’s link to Wikipedia:
Shiftin...
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Heartland Climate Conference SummaryFrom: wmbriggs.com
Post Date: 2008-03-05 05:10:57
This is an editorial that I sent out to various places.
I am one of the scientists that attended the recent Heartland Climate Conference in Manhattan, where I live. It is my belief that the strident and frequent claims of catastrophes caused by man-made global warming are stated with a degree of confidence not warranted by the data.
Although it is a logically fallacy to invoke this argument against opponents, let me say first that I have never accepted any money (except my graduate studen...
more Heartland conference: day 3 and wrap upFrom: wmbriggs.com
Post Date: 2008-03-04 13:18:19
Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus started off the day with a rousing speech. I hadn’t known he was an economist, but it was obvious quickly through his use of phrases like “maximize their personal utility function” and “is there statistically significant global warming?” This was not a standard political speech.
He joked that certain people “want to stop economic growth [in Europe]; though, not their own,” particularly in developing countries. ...
more Titan TV’s short piece on the Heartland ConferenceFrom: wmbriggs.com
Post Date: 2008-03-05 14:37:47
A couple of days ago I wrote that people from Titan TV interviewed me, and a slew of others, at the Heartland Climate Conference. Their piece is now on the web and can be found here. I didn’t make the cut, sadly; proving once again I have the perfect face for radio.
I gather, by the selection and arrangement of the sounds bites presented, the Titan TV reporter was attempting irony and humor, which I can tell you ain’t easy. Most who try fail.
Oh—and you’ll get this if...
more Afternoon at GISSFrom: wmbriggs.com
Post Date: 2008-03-07 12:47:31
Tim Hall at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies invited me to give a seminar on statistical hurricane modeling. A link to my presentation is below.
Tim, with Stephen Jewson, is doing some interesting work on modeling hurricane tracks, so far mainly in the Atlantic. He has some papers on the GISS web site which you can download. He’s using this work to better quantify landfall frequencies, which are of obvious interest.
What I found most intriguing is that he’s able to show how...
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