Global warming does not improve plant productivity

There’s a very short window where plants improve with more CO2, where they scrub more of it from the atmosphere than usual. This window is apparently overwhelmed in a hurry with the levels we’re seeing, though, resulting in crop die-outs which are exacerbated by warming-influenced droughts.

This would, in a perfect world, shut up those science denialists who admit global warming is happening, but think plants are going to fix it all for us. Considering we’re waging an all-out war on plants to begin with, I fail to see how these people honestly think there’s not a problem. It’s either short-sightedness or wishful thinking that leads people to believe this particular line of anti-AGW bunkum.

Global warming does not improve plant productivity
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Monckton and Watts cut and run from debate with Potholer54

Welp, this one’s dead in the water. Color me completely unsurprised. Apparently Anthony Watts is done with the Peter Hadfield / Christopher Monckton debate, all because Climate Crocks interviewed Potholer. Evidently offering evidence for assertions is “hateful” in Watts’ eyes.

Faced with real, checkable, online debate, where he would have to name his sources, put it in writing, and provide links for readers to fact check him (hmmm..sort of the way I do it in this video series) His CowardlyLion-ness decided to, well, run.

The host of the discussion, Pseudo-Science enthusiast Anthony Watts, told his faithful last weekend that, after I released a video of a Skype interview with Potholer discussing the situation, he would no longer provide a platform for discussion, since Potholer was “colluding” with that “hateful greenman”.

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Monckton and Watts cut and run from debate with Potholer54

SHOCKING REVELATION: Christopher Monckton is Sacha Baren Cohen?!

Got a bunch on my plate today. So, a post with a silly video for right now. Talk amongst yourselves!

Via D-Dave in the comments of my last post about Monckton’s debate-dodging, comes definitive proof that Monckton is actually a character by Sacha Baren Cohen. That certainly explains why he can’t join the debate — he’s too busy being The Dictator right now.

SHOCKING REVELATION: Christopher Monckton is Sacha Baren Cohen?!

Lord Christopher Monckton: where are you?

Potholer54, a.k.a former CBC correspondent Peter Hadfield, originally won my undying devotion for a series on Youtube debunking creationists. He’s also, recently, taken on climate change denialists, given how much overlap there is in the particular skillset you need to counter their dogmas. One of the biggest proponents of dogmatic climate antiscience is Lord Christopher Monckton. He and Potholer recently had a short dust-up over Monckton’s supposedly unassailable speeches. Anthony Watts, arch-denialist and proprietor of the Watts Up With That blog, hosted what began as an internet debate, and ended as a one-sided trouncing where Monckton retreated from the field unceremoniously with an as-yet unfulfilled promise to return and rebut.

It’s been several months since, and where I would have given up, Potholer is evidently not done with Monckton. He, and I strongly feel all Monckton’s and denialism’s proponents, deserve a rebuttal. Potholer authored an open letter to Monckton and posted it to Youtube.
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Lord Christopher Monckton: where are you?

What will your kids be taught about climate science?

Ezra Klein’s coverage of the NCSE stepping into the climate change battleground is very timely, and asks many very relevant questions.

One revelation from the recent Heartland Institute document leak is that the group is crafting a K-12 curriculum to teach kids that global warming is “controversial.” Heartland officials have confirmed this. So is climate change set to join evolution as the next big classroom controversy?
[…]
But could Heartland actually spread its views? Rosenau says that Heartland could do what creationist groups like the Discovery Institute have been doing for years and simply mail out supplemental materials to educators far and wide. “There will be teachers who are sympathetic to the skeptic view or who think the material looks useful, and they’ll say to themselves, okay, I’ll bring this into the classroom,” he explains. It’s worth noting that the Heartland Institute had already developed a video along these lines — titled “Unstoppable Solar Cycles,” which laid out the long-debunked theory that the sun is driving recent warming — and shipped it off to teachers. (These earlier efforts, according to one Heartland document, met with “only limited success.”)

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What will your kids be taught about climate science?

Humans are by far the leading cause of global warming

Skeptical Science has posted a thorough and comprehensive review of all the scientific literature, weighing all the various contributing variables leading to the present warming trend. We humans and our activities are, far and away, the number one contributing factor.


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Humans are by far the leading cause of global warming

Do extreme weather events make you more liberal?

I will happily admit, the next several posts over the next several days constitute me trying to play some amount of catch-up with my ever-burgeoning Firefox tabs and RSS feeds. I’m trying to post a bunch of days ahead of time, too, so I might be reporting on some older stuff. But I’ll try to keep it fresh and relevant with my opinionation. Apologies if we’re covering ground you’ve already covered, you savvy and avid reader you.

Via Peter Sinclair’s excellent Climate Denial Crock of the Week, this story from USA Today explores the ramifications of a study about how people react to global warming policy when having been exposed to examples of the kind of extreme weather event that climate realists have been warning of for decades.
Continue reading “Do extreme weather events make you more liberal?”

Do extreme weather events make you more liberal?

New Hampshire Republican voters sick of climate denialism too

I have this irrational penchant for assuming we humans will, eventually, let our better angels of empathy and rationality win out in the long run. This plays to that aspect of my psychology.

Of course, there are so many other reasons not to vote for Republicans that you don’t need to point out the fact that it’s been completely and thoroughly awash in scientific denialism for decades and fix that alone to get me to consider them rational actors on the political stage. You’d also have to untie them from religious zelaotry and magical thinking about economic factors and war hawkishness… et cetera, et cetera.

New Hampshire Republican voters sick of climate denialism too

Climate: definitely not due to solar forcing or cosmic rays

I kinda made a private vow that I wouldn’t keep reposting Peter Sinclair’s excellent Climate Crock of the Week videos quite so regularly, because I don’t want to be accused of simply ripping him off. But the bastard went and included both a Rickroll and several Fantastic Four references. Sigh.

I love that the anti-AGW crowd keeps positing arguments to take the place of the obvious and demonstrably correct reality — that the planet’s heating up and we’re responsible — and science just keeps knocking those arguments down. I’m very sad, however, that we’re probably going to keep playing this game and letting them posit more things that might be responsible for global warming in an attempt to supplant the understanding that it’s actually us burning fossil fuels, til it’s completely impossible to do anything about it.

Climate: definitely not due to solar forcing or cosmic rays

Justin Trudeau apologizes for being right about Environment minister Peter Kent

As you might know, recently Canada withdrew from the Kyoto protocol shortly after the Durban conference — what our next steps are once Kyoto ends — came to agreement. While the problems with the Kyoto protocol are myriad, including that it didn’t go far enough, didn’t include the top climate destroyers, and explicitly excluded carbon taxes as a means to achieve reductions, it was in fact something. The Durban talks involved what to do for each country in light of their progress toward achieving lower emissions overall, and it’s fairly self-evident that Canada withdrew to avoid the international scorn they had coming. Not that they avoided any of the scorn by withdrawing — such a blatantly transparent responsibility dodge was not lost on anyone.

In the House of Commons on Wednesday, NDP MP Megan Leslie questioned Environment minister Peter Kent over Canada’s withdrawl from Kyoto. His response was galling.
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Justin Trudeau apologizes for being right about Environment minister Peter Kent