I see I'm keeping up my habit of posts that are near-incomprehensible even to me after only a few months; its just like writing Perl. Anyway, here's my pick of the year, whilst we're in that grey quiet phase between Christmas and the New Year.
Jan: Science (and the related Peer review)
Feb: The idealised greenhouse effect model and its enemies. Or, if you prfer politics, my lack-of-prescience over the Ukraine.
Mar: Investors warn of ‘carbon bubble’ as Shell predicts climate regulation will hit profits?
Apr: septic.org? - not in itself desperately exciting, but I'll add it as a marker to what I don't want to do, which is to spend too much time discussing the clowns. Other people do that better.
May: Adventures in the denialosphere; that's just about compatible with my text of April, in that this is me bearding the clowns in their playpen over l'affaire Bengtsson. Andy Lacis's comment on "What is it that determines the terrestrial climate and how it changes?" is also worth reading.
Jun: The Iraqi government really is rubbish, isn’t it? (eschewing Monkers, and with fall-back tale of local boy dun good). [Update: and a mention for Force X from outer space, since I spent some time commenting there.]
Jul: The Bomb Plot.
Aug: The fruitarians are lazy.
Sep: Stubai: Wilder Freiger to the Muller Hutte - this one can stand for the rest. The other half of my summer hols was the Peloponnese.
Oct: Wadhams and the mighty [sh|tw]it storm in honour of this year's sea ice being dull. And, of course, "Chopper" responds. But I also like Limiting global warming to 2°C: the philosophy and the science?
Nov: The dim and distant history of climate blogging.
Dec: A clever compiler is indistinguishable from malice.
Refs
* 2013
* 2012
* 2010
* 2009
* 2015 Gardening Resolutions - TPP
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Now you've done it--
Reminding Tim Ball of anopsologic paintings may spur fruitarian posts averring that parsnips in post-Renaissance art confirm the medieval warm period
Surely your post inspired by this deserves a mention.
[Ah, yes. Force X from outer space. I probably should have mentioned that, since I spent a fair time commenting there. For something so desperately important, its all gone as quiet as AW's paper, no? -W]
An update on Bengtsson: he is now regularly blogging on a "libertarian" blog run by one of Sweden's most notorious climate denialists, He is mainly writing screeds against the "mass immigration". A friend of mine (a professor in statistics), wrote a blog post where he quoted Bengtsson on this issue.
http://haggstrom.blogspot.se/2014/11/vad-har-lennart-bengtsson-for-sig…
One of the quotes included a link to a pamphlet which called for an "Islam-free Europe". It turned out that it was the blog owner who had added that link, without any indication that it didn't belong to Bengtsson. Bengtsson got very upset and said he was going to contact his lawyer to take steps against, guess who? Against my friend, and not the blog owner who added the link. My friend hasn' t actually heard from the lawyer, but Bengtsson hasn't said anything about calling it off either.
[I feel a "where-are-they-now" series coming on, to cover issues raised during the year -W]
I'd be interested in a "where-are-they-now" series.
I didn't follow the Force X saga too closely (it was an effort to read past their assumptions) but the last thing I read on it was that they acknowledged some errors but still think they are on to something. Like AW's paper, its still on its way (with no acknowledgement the conclusions may be significantly different).
I may be wrong though, I haven't visited Jo since the "BIG NEWS" series.
#4, that is not reliable information in my opinion.
A more relevant picture of professor Lennart Bengtsson on a Science Blog like this would be to look at subjects like the following.
The following paper is an opinon piece in the leading Swedish newspaper DN:
Lennart Bengtsson, Deliang Chen, Marie-José Gaillard, Henning Rodhe (2013).
”Misstolkad klimatrapport hotar forskares trovärdighet”
http://www.dn.se/debatt/misstolkad-klimatrapport-hotar-forskares-trovar…
The following paper in Tellus B is part of a Thematic Cluster in honor of the late Professor Bert Bolin for his outstanding contributions to climate science:
Lennart Bengtsson and Stephen E. Schwartz (2013). Determination of a lower bound on Earth’s climate sensitivity. Tellus B 65:21533.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/tellusb.v65i0.21533
[I'd rather have something from LB for 2014, not 2013. After all, "l'affaire" was 2014, no? -W]
The following recently published paper supports the views of Lennart Bengtsson and his coauthors about the inconsistencies in recent assessments:
Stephen E. Schwartz, Robert J. Charlson, Ralph Kahn and Henning Rodhe (2014). Earth’s Climate Sensitivity: Apparent Inconsistencies in Recent Assessments, Earth’s Future (AGU),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2014EF000273
[That's this Schwartz I think -W]
Finally I have something else. Because I was involved in discussions here, and there were questions about my background, FYI there is the following paper, although probably not of immediate scientific interest for the readers of this blog, since this is a rather modest, purely fundamental, study:
Pehr Björnbom (2014). Temperature lapse rates at restricted thermodynamic equilibrium in the Earth system. Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans. Volume 69, March 2015, Pages 26–36.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dynatmoce.2014.10.001
[I don't do entropy myself; I admit to being surprised that there is anything left publishable in so simple a situation. However, I congratulate you on your publication -W]
The information in #4 is correct. Here is a more recent post by Bengtsson where he uses the Islamic State as an argument against immigration.
And here is a typical climate denial post by the blog owner (Lars Bern).
Thank you, W!
> [I’d rather have something from LB for 2014, not 2013. After all, “l’affaire” was 2014, no? -W]
I have found these two papers:
Stephanie Gleixner, Noel Keenlyside, Kevin I. Hodges, Wan-Ling Tseng, Lennart Bengtsson (2014). “An inter-hemispheric comparison of the tropical storm response to global warming”. Climate Dynamics. April 2014, Volume 42, Issue 7-8, pp 2147-2157
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-013-1914-6
M. Calisto, D. Folini, M. Wild, and L. Bengtsson (2014). “Cloud radiative forcing intercomparison between fully coupled CMIP5 models and CERES satellite data”. Ann. Geophys., 32, 793-807.
www.ann-geophys.net/32/793/2014/
doi:10.5194/angeo-32-793-2014
[I should have been more specific, though its hard to say in a few words. I meant, I'd rather have something interesting or, perhaps better, characteristic for 2014 from him. those are just middle-of-the-road perfectly worthy but not very exciting papers, on which he is last author. If they say anything about him, which I wouldn't insist on, its that his views are unexciting, viewed from within the mainstream. That hardly suits the characterisation you want to put on him -W]
W, you wrote:
“I’d rather have something interesting or, perhaps better, characteristic for 2014 from him.”
I am not sure that I understand your point. If those papers are not characteristic, then how could the ERL paper be, considering that he was one of many coauthors also in that case.
After what I have been told the ERL paper has been published in another journal after LB decided to resign as a coauthor on the paper in order that the other authors would not have to give up their authorships because of him. The paper was accepted for pubication without any changes.
So the paper is published out there, but we have to guess which paper it is.
["You have been told"? And "guess which paper"? That's just silly, and not really believable either. If LB had managed to sneak his stuff out into some unsuspecting journal, we'd have the denialists crowing about it by now -W]
I happen to be the friend Lars Karlsson mentions in #4, and I can testify (pace Björnbom #6) that what he writes is accurate.
W, you are right, it was silly by me to write like that. Sorry! But if I tell you that this paper is one of those that I have cited in a previous comment here, may be it's possible to guess which paper it is.
As to professors Karlsson and Häggström it should be mentioned that they defend their own cause in connection with the dispute mentioned in #4 by Karlsson.
Regarding prof Björnboms vague talk about "not reliable information" and "they defend their own cause", it is worth noting that he is a writer at the Swedish counterpart to WUWT.
And there is really no dispute. We are certainly never going to hear from Bengtsson's lawyer (poor man).
Ok, enough about this now.
Tom Toles's _outtake_
Meaning this cartoon didn't see print.
Shoulda. Coulda.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2015/01/01/thursdays-out…
[Ha ha, that's a good one, I'll try to save it for the next carbon tax post -W]
Tom Toles is outstanding on this subject, over and over.
http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/20…
and don't miss his blogging: http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/tom-toles