Funded Arrogance | JoNova

The debate that Senator Steve Fielding started continues, this time between heavyweights in Australian climate science. Yet again, the side with the funding, the power, and the large claims is unable to answer basic polite science questions. The pompous arrogance is evident. Why not just answer the question?

Professor Matthew England’s research teams have received nearly $2.5 million in funding from the Australian government, much of it for studying oceans and climate change. So when we need good answers on the topic, he would be the man. If a school student asked for help, we might expect only a two line reply passing on a link. But when the question comes from one of the most informed climate scientists in the country, with 12 years as head of Australia’s National Climate Centre, and it’s about a graph at the centre of legislative negotiations, it’s inexcusable that the reply was vague, poorly reasoned and didn’t answer the question. All this, in a conversation that England himself started.

Australian Climate Madness: Flannery and Greens fall out over ETS

Fight, fight, fight! I love it when the warm-mongers start beating the sh*t out of each other - saves us realists the bother!

Hurricane watch 2009: scraping the bottom « Climate Audit

With the North Atlantic hurricane season still waiting for a named storm, and the rest of the globe cyclonically challenged during the past several months, it is a good time to catch up on the research end of things. In terms of papers during the past 6-8 months, the amount of tropical cyclone and climate literature has largely dropped off compared to the heyday after Katrina. Regardless, the following is an "omnibus" style blog posting and can serve as the obligatory 2009 Atlantic Hurricanes posting.

First, the forecasts for the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season are decidedly below-normal or below median or less-active depending upon the metric or audience. The UK Met Office, which recently had its climate research budget slashed 25%, has determined the most likely amount of storms is 6, very low compared to what has been seen since the active period in the Atlantic began in 1995. The most likely Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) tally is predicted to be 60, which is in the basement compared to recent seasons.