David Rose’s article in the Mail on Sunday simply reported what has happened recently to the Lower Tropospheric temperature over land. They show the El Nino spike very clearly and the possible return to pre El Nino temperatures. Some have said the article is flawed because it has cherry-picked the particular data used, implying it is the only data set that shows the global temperature drop. This is nonsense. Other temperature data sets show something similar ‚Äì that the global temperature has fallen a lot in recent months as a result of the ending of the El Nino. ‚Äì David Whitehouse, GWPF Observatory, 5 December 2016
With 2016 on track to being the warmest year on record, some climate scientists and environmentalists declared the recent slowdown in global warming to be over. But that might not be the case, according to a new study by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists. They say there’s a 16 percent chance global warming could progress at a slower rate through 2020, and a 6 percent chance the slowdown could last until 2030. –Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 1 December 2016
The spike in global temperatures from the 2015/2016 El Nino has caused some to declare the warming slowdown to be over. This is not necessarily the case; we will need at least another 5 years of observations to determine whether the slowdown is over and warming resumes at a pace of at least 0.2¬∞C/decade, or whether the slowdown will continue for another decade or two.—Judith Curry, Climate Etc., 30 November 2016
Much to my surprise, I showed up in the WikiLeaks releases before the election. In a 2014 email, a staffer at the Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta in 2003, took credit for a campaign to have me eliminated as a writer for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website. In the email, the editor of the think tank’s climate blog bragged to one of its billionaire donors, Tom Steyer: “I think it’s fair [to] say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538.” I understand why Mr. Podesta — most recently Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman — wanted to drive me out of the climate-change discussion. When substantively countering an academic’s research proves difficult, other techniques are needed to banish it. That is how politics sometimes works, and professors need to understand this if we want to participate in that arena. –Roger Pielke Jr. The Wall Street Journal, 3 December 2016
Dan M. Kahan and Jonathan C. Corbin have published a new study titled “A note on the perverse effects of actively open-minded thinking on climate-change polarization.” Right-leaning subjects (Conservatives-Republicans) who have a better understanding of current science and math and/or can be characterized as having the mental/personality trait of actively cultivating an open mind have less belief in the consensus version of climate change. This is the result that Kahan and Corbin label “perverse”. –Kip Hansen, Climate Etc., 1 December 2016
