Tag: Climate change
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The bad news about the Black Death
Well, the good news first: all current known strains of the Bubonic Plague causing bacterium are genetically similar to traces of the Yersinia pestis bacterium found the skeletons of Londoners who died in the 1340s – when the plague killed a third or so of the population of Europe. That means (we hope!) there is […]
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Climate change is back
Climate is not weather… but it is a sign of how poorly framed the debate on climate change in Britain (and in the US) is, that it ebbs and flows with the weather. So now climate change is gaining in respectability in Britain after the appalling weather of the last few months and politicians who […]
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Polar vortices and climate change
The recent cold snap in the United States was, apparently, seen by many as undermining the claims of a majority of climate scientists that human activity was gradually – but potentially catastrophically – warming the climate. But, according to this article from the Associated Press, the most remarkable things about the cold was that […]
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Weather and climate (again)
Once again Britain and Ireland are taking a battering from the Atlantic and so it seems a good time to remind ourselves that some of those who dispute the scientific consensus on climate change were, this autumn, citing the low level of hurricanes on the US East Coast as supporting evidence. Now, they had played […]
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What not to say about the bad weather
The last six weeks has seen the UK hit by a number of storms and surely climate change is to blame? Well, no, you cannot say that. Not because climate change is not to blame. But because we just cannot definitively pin down a weather event to a change in climate. (Of course, this does […]
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Another example of “Delingpole-ism”
Yesterday I highlighted the attack made on the BBC’s science reporting by James Delingpole, a novelist, English Lit graduate and – as I argued – under-qualified crank. Delingpole claimed that the BBC should be “impartial” on science – by which he meant it should give an equal weighting to the views of the tiny minority […]
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Mail on Sunday 92% wrong on climate change
Sadly, I increasingly fear, in future decades our children and their children are likely to look back on this second decade of the twenty-first century as a wasted opportunity to put the findings of science into action. The scientific consensus on climate change is clear and stable. The only “argument” is about just how rapidly […]
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Heartland Institute claim anti-science document is a fake
The Heartland Institute, reports the Guardian, are claiming that the internal memo which appears to show that they are working on plans to “dissuade teachers from teaching science” is a “total fake”. Heartland had earlier admitted that other documents published alongside the memo were genuine, but later backtracked on that. They then went on to […]
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Climate change deniers aim to scare teachers off science
The usual claim from the climate change deniers is that they are merely pointing out that climate science is controversial or disputed. But their internal documents reveal what this is really all about (emphasis added): Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective. To counter this we are considering launching an effort to […]
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