Climate Change

May 19 2017

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Can blog posts be better than journal articles?

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Environment, Health, History, Language, Media, Politics, Religion, Research | 98 Comments

The Dutch experimental psychologist Daniel Lakens asked this question on his website, and I thought it was worth distilling for mine, since I have had a lot to do with journals and more recently with websites. There has been a deal of discussion recently about the lack of effective replication in both the medical area and others, so the rules about publication are worth thinking about. Before the ‘peer review’ cheer squad starts to chant, I should tell you that Lakens’s goal is to improve the quality of journal articles, not to replace articles with blog posts. He offers five reasons…

Apr 29 2017

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The Social Cost of Carbon

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Environment, History, Language, Media, Politics, Religion, Research | 51 Comments

I was going to write about Earth Hour once more, and for the last time, when I realised that it seemed to have passed its use-by date, for it seemed to have been almost unnoticed. There was no sign of it in Hobart, where I was on the hallowed night, and I couldn’t find out much about its effects in Canberra, where I have been for past Earth Hours. Earth Day passed too, without much fuss. So I have gone on to a subject I have been playing with for some years now, which is caught up in the phrase, ‘the Social…

Apr 22 2017

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The March for Science

By Don Aitkin | ABC, Climate Change, Education, History, Media, Politics, Religion, Research | 119 Comments

I am writing this essay on the day of the March, which will happen in Washington DC and apparently 500 other cities, including several in Australia, where the March is happening as I write. What is it about? There is apparently a ‘war on science’, though who is conducting it is not clear. From its US website you can get this mission statement. The March for Science champions robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. We unite as a diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and for political leaders…

Apr 15 2017

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Gary Banks nails it

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Economy, Education, Environment, Media, Politics, Society | 59 Comments

For years now I have puzzled at the whole mess of our energy policy. People keep telling us that soon (or now) solar-panelled electricity, or wind, or something, will be cheaper than coal, so we should be transferring, at once. Such oracles never tell us about the hidden subsidies that would make this really true, if it were apparently true. I’ve given up responding. It is plain to me that wind and solar cannot power an electricity grid without abundant base-level fossil-fuel energy. Well, along comes Gary Banks to tell it as it is. For those who don’t know of…

Apr 02 2017

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April Off-Topic Thread

By Don Aitkin | ABC, Climate Change, Environment, History, Media, Politics, Religion, Research | 105 Comments

Gary C says: April 2, 2017 at 8:48 pm (Edit) Don Two articles from 2016 supporting models: “Comparing models to the satellite datasets” : http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/05/comparing-models -to-the-satellite-datasets/ “Models” : Models Reply Don Aitkin says: April 2, 2017 at 9:23 pm (Edit) Gary, you get the honour of having the first comment in the new Off-Topic Thread. I’ll comment there.

Apr 01 2017

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What is it that worries me about what the BoM and CSIRO tell us about climate change?

By Don Aitkin | ABC, Climate Change, Environment, History, Media, Politics, Religion, Research | 262 Comments

Commenter Chris asked me, in a comment at my last essay, what are your concerns over BoM reporting or data use? I had intended to write about something else, but it seemed sensible to deal with this issue at once. I have written about the Bureau before (here, for example, and here), but to this direct question there is a straightforward reply. I’ll deal first with the more general issue of BoM (Bureau of Meteorology) reporting, and note first that it is directly linked, as anyone who reads the website will see, with CSIRO’s biennnial reports on the State of Climate. So my response to Chris covers both…

Mar 12 2017

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A final thought on 2016 Australian warming

By Don Aitkin | ABC, Climate Change, Environment, History, Media, Politics, Religion, Research | 232 Comments

In an earlier essay this year, I used the useful maps prepared by Professor Ole Humlum of www.climate4you to ponder about how hot it actually was in Australia last year. I did so because of claims that the year was the hottest ever, as it was said to be for the world. When I wrote the piece I did not have access to the summary for the whole year, but I now have it, and it is displayed below. These data are from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, which is part of NASA, and they show the relative change between…

Feb 25 2017

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Mr Abbott as class bad boy

By Don Aitkin | Climate Change, Economy, Education, Environment, Health, History, Language, Media, Politics, Society | 155 Comments

Mr Abbott launched a book the other day, and the speech, which you can read here, instantly led to what I now think has been a media beat-up. His short address has become a further indication, for some in the media, and of course for the Labor Party, of the growing destabilising of the Government and the fragility of the Prime Minister. In fact, I think that Mr Abbott’s speech and its content deserve much closer reading. I should probably qualify what follows by saying that I do not agree with some of what Mr Abbott says, but he is absolutely right in reminding…

Feb 11 2017

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Exit right, Cory Bernardi

By Don Aitkin | ABC, Books, Climate Change, Economy, Environment, History, Humour, Media, Politics, Society | 165 Comments

I have not met Senator Bernardi, but I’ve read some of his writing. From what I have read in the media and on line, it might surprise some people to learn that in fact he is a published author. His seven books include two for children, the rest being about politics, collections of his own opinion pieces, and a book that did well in the review sections, The Conservative Revolution. Thus far the talk has all been about how his defection from the Liberal Party is another destabilising factor for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Since Bernardi is unlikely to vote for anything…

Jan 22 2017

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In terms of temperature, what sort of a year did we have in Australia?

By Don Aitkin | ABC, Climate Change, Environment, History, Media, Politics, Religion, Research | 480 Comments

For the past decade or so, each January has produced a news headline about whether or not this year has been the hottest ever. It seems to be agreed that 2016 was the hottest ever, but with a statistically insignificant increase over 2015, and only a tiny bit above 1998. In 2015, 2016 and 1998 the spike was due to an el Nino, which subsided quickly. As I have argued before, there is no human being who has ever experienced a global average temperature, unless coincidentally, and for a moment or two. What we want to know is what our own environment…