On Climate, Comedy, Copyrights, and Cinematography

30 07 2009

The good news: there’s new and exciting opportunities opening themselves to us.The bad news; some people are hilariously unquestioning.

comedy-climate-cinema

It has been an even more entertaining than usual couple of days in the alarmosphere. I’d been traveling the last week, doing TV station work and station surveys. While on the road I discovered through an email that I was the subject of a YouTube Video called “Climate Crock of the Week”.

The video was about my surfacestations.org project and was titled “What’s up with Watts?”. It was sad and funny at the same time, and as is typically the case with our old friends it was directed at me personally, far more than it tried substance. Equally typically, and sadly, what substance it tried turned out to be wrong. I continued on my travels, my friend Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. posted an opinion on it last week to address some of the issues.

Little did I know bizarro land awaited upon my return home.

Sitting down Saturday night, to watch the video again, detecting through its exquisite subtleties and nuance, I couldn’t help but laugh, because once again I noticed that everything reported in it was just wrong.

In fact, it probably was the worst job of fact-finding I had ever seen, which as WUWT readers know, is a bold assessment. I’ve been involved in broadcast TV news for 25 years, and have seen some really bad work from greenhorns fresh out of reporters school. This video reminded me of those. It was as if whoever put it together had never researched it, but just strung together a bunch of graphics, video, photos, and a monotone voice-over track with ad hominems liberally sprinkled for seasoning. I figured it was probably just an overzealous college student out to save the world and this was some college project. It had that air of  radical burningman quality about it.

Curiosity piqued, I inquired into just who is this climate Solon? To my surprise, he turned out to be an “independent film producer” working out of his house in Midland, MI under the name “Greenman Studio”, one Peter Sinclair, a proud graduate of Al Gore’s Climate Camp. I still figured him to be a kid and imagined his mom was yelling down into the basement “Peter that’s too loud, turn it down!”.

I also wondered if it was the same “Green Man” that had once prompted surfacestations volunteer Gary Boden to create this nifty patch: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 352 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

Sea level rise by 2100, “nailed”! Between 7 and 82 centimeters

30 07 2009

New predictions for sea level rise

Sea level graph from the University of Colorado is shown below:

uc_seallevel_2009r2

University of Bristol Press release issued 26 July 2009

Fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements have been used to place better constraints on future sea level rise, and to test sea level projections.

The results are published today in Nature Geoscience and predict that the amount of sea level rise by the end of this century will be between 7- 82 cm – depending on the amount of warming that occurs – a figure similar to that projected by the IPCC report of 2007.

Placing limits on the amount of sea level rise over the next century is one of the most pressing challenges for climate scientists. The uncertainties around different methods to achieve accurate predictions are highly contentious because the response of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to warming is not well understood.

Dr Mark Siddall from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, together with colleagues from Switzerland and the US, used fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements to reconstruct sea level fluctuations in response to changing climate for the past 22,000 years, a period that covers the transition from glacial maximum to the warm Holocene interglacial period. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 138 Comments »

Categories : sea level

Interesting article on thermometer placement

30 07 2009

How to properly place your outdoor thermometer

04:52 PM PDT on Wednesday, July 29, 2009

By TRAVIS PITTMAN / KING5.com

excerpts:

SEATTLE – With temperatures in the Puget Sound region breaking records this week, many people are playing a watching and waiting game – waiting to see when the thermometer outside their home will reach triple digits.

…

Below is a photo of a thermometer sent to KING 5 News Tuesday afternoon by a viewer in Oso, east of Arlington. It clearly shows the temperature reading 116 degrees. You can also clearly tell the sun is reflecting off it and it’s mounted right next to a building.

source: KING 5 Viewer Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 64 Comments »

Categories : weather_stations

American Chemical Society members revolting against their editor for pro AGW views

30 07 2009

Scientists seek to remove climate fear promoting editor and ‘trade him to New York Times or Washington Post’
http://www.lhup.edu/chemistry/images/acs_logo_4c%201%20.jpg
An outpouring of skeptical scientists who are members of the American Chemical Society (ACS) are revolting against the group’s editor-in-chief — with some demanding he be removed — after an editorial appeared claiming “the science of anthropogenic climate change is becoming increasingly well established.”

The editorial claimed the “consensus” view was growing “increasingly difficult to challenge, despite the efforts of diehard climate-change deniers.” The editor now admits he is “startled” by the negative reaction from the group’s scientific members. The American Chemical Society bills itself as the “world’s largest scientific society.”

The June 22, 2009 editorial in Chemical and Engineering News by editor in chief Rudy Baum, is facing widespread blowback and condemnation from American Chemical Society member scientists. Baum concluded his editorial by stating that “deniers” are attempting to “derail meaningful efforts to respond to global climate change.”

Dozens of letters from ACS members were published on July 27, 2009 castigating Baum, with some scientists calling for his replacement as editor-in-chief.

The editorial was met with a swift, passionate and scientific rebuke from Baum’s colleagues. Virtually all of the letters published on July 27 in castigated Baum’s climate science views. Scientists rebuked Baum’s use of the word “deniers” because of the terms “association with Holocaust deniers.” In addition, the scientists called Baum’s editorial: “disgusting”; “a disgrace”; “filled with misinformation”; “unworthy of a scientific periodical” and “pap.”

One outraged ACS member wrote to Baum: “When all is said and done, and you and your kind are proven wrong (again), you will have moved on to be an unthinking urn for another rat pleading catastrophe. You will be removed. I promise.”

Baum ’startled’ by scientists reaction. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 216 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change