Open access notables Back in April of 2020 Chi Xu et al. captivated some public attention with their paper Future of the human climate niche,  which explained a reasonable case for its startling conclusion about routine habitability of large parts of our planet now supporting dense populations. Now come the same researchers along with added talent to refine and extend those results, and the news isn't getting better. Quantifying the human cost of global warming paints a grim picture. Here are our stakes in play, as reflected in the abstract: The costs of climate change are ..read more

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk There are many good reasons to burn less coal: It’s polluting, expensive, damaging to human health, and emits more carbon pollution than any other form of electricity. But an oft-overlooked factor is that burning fuel to generate electricity is astonishingly inefficient. Major energy losses are an unavoidable consequence of converting heat into motion, which is how conventional power plants generate electricity. They typically burn coal or gas to heat water, which makes steam that spins the blades of a turbine that in ..read more

On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there. At a glance Just like “the climate has ch ..read more

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sara Peach In 1989, cartoonist Matt Groening told a reporter that his new television show, “The Simpsons,” would tackle the serious subjects in life. “It always amazes me how few cartoonists in print or animation go after the bigger issues, the kinds of things that keep you lying awake in the middle of the night,” Groening said, as reported by journalist Chris Turner in the book “Planet Simpson: How A Cartoon Masterpiece Defined A Generation.” Groening’s creation, an animated series about the yellow-colored, often-vulgar Simpsons family ..read more

A chronological listing of news and opinion articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, May 28, 2023 thru Sat, june 3, 2023. This week, several shared articles did quite well on our Facebook page: At a glance - How reliable are climate models?, Call for help: Update or create translations for updated rebuttals!, Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists, and, Antarctic Sea Ice Is at Record Lows. Is It an Alarming Shift?. Links posted on Facebook One in three GB News presenters cast doubt on climate science, study reveals ..read more

Over the years, we've published several calls for help with translations but most of them were rather generalized in nature like last year's blog post published in February 2022. This time around, we are asking for help with a quite specific task, namely to update existing translations for the rebuttals included in our ongoing Rebuttals Update Project. By the time this blog post gets published we will have completed updates for about 15 rebuttals with another 25 additional rebuttals getting close to completion. Importantly, the updated rebuttals now all include the new at-a-glance sectio ..read more

Open access notables Multiple studies indicate changes in the properties of Antarctic bottom water (AABW) over the past half century. These changes involve density and hence will affect both local and distant circulation of the oceans, not least overturning effects that are vital for marine biology but also climate and weather far distant from Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. While we can see what's happening, our understanding of what's driving change is incomplete. By synthesizing multiple observational channels in a uniquely suitable region, Kathryn Gunn et al. produce an important increm ..read more

This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). The world is getting hotter and the headlines are scary. So does climate change mean the world is about to pass the 1.5 degree limit set by the Paris Climate Agreement? And what would passing this limit even mean? Rather than showing that it's game over, increasing extreme weather and sea level rise would indicate that it's never been so urgent to stop climate change - it's never been so urgent to s ..read more

On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "How reliable are climate models?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there. At a glance So, what are computer models? Computer model ..read more

This story by Aaron Cantú was originally published in Capital & Main and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. Monic Uriarte was thrilled to get approved for an affordable apartment in Los Angeles’ University Park, close to USC. But soon after she and her family moved there in 2004, they started experiencing headaches and other illnesses. Her mother was diagnosed with asthma at age 70. Her daughter had to sleep propped up because she’d get nosebleeds so bad she’d choke. On sweltering days, when th ..read more