Summary: Despite three years of La Nina, 2022 was the sixth hottest year on record. The last decade was the hottest decade on record. As you all know by now, we're causing the world to heat up. We've not got to a stage where we've stabilised the global temperature. In fact, we seem to be nowhere near stabilisation. Yet strangely there are still a few global warming deniers floating about. These deniers are arguing once again that an ice age is coming, or it's started cooling, or global warming has stopped, or "CO2 warming is a hoax" or some such nonsense. It's prompted me to w ..read more

Victor Venema died last week. His friends, colleagues and everyone who knew of him were shocked and felt an immense sadness when his friend and colleague, Frank Sonntag, let us know. Victor Venema was a climate scientist in the Meteorological Institute, University of Bonn, Germany. His main scientific interest was in the variability of data in complex systems. In particular, the study of variability in weather data and homogenization. In his own words (archived):  "At the moment most of my work and this blog is about the removal of non-climatic changes (variability) from historical ..read more

I've been with the same hosting company for many years. Yesterday (Australian time), first time ever, their email servers went down for several hours. It's back again now.  If anyone tried to send an email during that time, particularly anyone who is wanting to subscribe to email alerts, please try again. I'm referring to the article I posted a couple of days ago ..read more

The IPCC Summary for Policymakers WG1 report has just been released. You can download it here. I will be going through it and the technical summary (when it comes out) over the next few days. An initial glance shows that we need to do more to reduce emissions. A whole lot more. The press conference is on YouTube: This report will have a lot more space devoted to regional changes. There is a fabulous interactive atlas which allows you to drill down and across in all sorts of ways. There is so much to work through. Here are some initial points that might interest you: It's still possible to ..read more

Sorry for not following up my last post sooner. There'll be another climate post shortly.  My excuse is being consumed by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. Not me personally, I hasten to add. It's a big problem in the state next door, NSW, and has slipped from there into my home state, Victoria, a couple of times (and other parts of Australia). That's meant lockdowns to get us back to zero COVID-19. Having a slightly obsessive tendency, I've been spending too much time on the endless press conferences, news articles and tweets about the subject. This has been at the expense of writing blo ..read more

Today I'm going to tackle a difficult but important topic - internal conflict. Given the number of people involved, the number and complexity of the issues, and the decades over which the climate movement is likely to be needed, it's a pipe dream to think there will always be harmony. At the same time, if the sort of problems mentioned here aren't acknowledged and, preferably, dealt with well, they can spread and become very destructive. Sweeping things under the carpet, pretending conflict doesn't exist, only allows it to fester and grow. When a large number of people are working toward a co ..read more

I spent a lot of time in western Canada in the early 1970s. That's 50 years ago for all you young ones. The world was very different then. Edmonton was experiencing it's longest winter since, almost, forever. It was a long cold winter. In the summer in British Columbia they kidnapped whoever happened to be in the local pubs to fight the annual forest fires, but the temperatures rarely exceeded 80F. It was what people thought of as a bit unusual but not completely abnormal. Today the world is different. Hard to believe this week, but this is what we should have expected.  #Canada just had ..read more

Anthony Watts has set up a new website for climate disinformers and wilful deniers. (H/t CJ in the comments here at HotWhopper.) His disinformation website is called Everything Climate. Translating its stated aim from denier-speak, it is to hook people who aren't yet knowledgeable about climate to recruit them as conspiracy theorists for the climate disinformation cult. Questionable claims from the outset Anthony Watts is known in climate science denier circles as a climate science disinformer and conspiracy theorist. True to form, he made a number of questionable claims in his int ..read more

Climate science deniers can be grouped in different ways. Having observed them for more than a decade now, this is how I see them: The uninformed - ignorant about climate, doesn't read articles on climate. Strictly speaking the uninformed are not science deniers. They just don't know anything about climate. The misinformed - previouly uninformed who've read & unwittingly accepted climate disinformation. Wilful deniers (aka wilfully ignorant) - previously misinformed but have since been exposed to climate science findings and rejected them (usually for ideological or other reasons). All o ..read more

 As we approach the end of this unbelievably horrid year, my greetings are more muted. I wish all of you a happy time, whether you're with friends, family or on your lonesome.There are better times to come (and undoubtedly worse times, too). Make the most of what you have and be careful. Stay safe.  This day last year (Christmas Eve in south eastern Australia) it was hot and smoky: This year there's no smoke, just clear skies and a gentle summer breeze blowing. Lovely.  In closing, here's a pic of one of the friends I made this year ..read more