Climate Science as a Game of Telephone » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

Remember this game you played as a kid: The first player whispers a sentence to the next player and each player successively whispers what that player believes they heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group, which invariably has changed in a quite amusing ways from the original. When kids play this game its called “Telephone”; when climate scientist play this game its called “peer-reviewed research.”
...
Read the whole thing, for the entire article is stunning. The fact that this type of mistake could be made in the first place is disconcerting. But for the IPCC chairman—who obviously knew nothing about the veracity of the claim about the Himalayan glacier—to say that any criticism is “voodoo science” is a level of hubris that can only come from a bureaucrat. If the IPCC can’t even be trusted on the simple issues how are we to trust them when they make claims about complex, controversial matters?

A guilt-edged opportunity to save the planet - Abu Dhabi

A survey commissioned by The National suggested that nearly all of us are worried about climate change, but few are actually willing to change our lifestyle if it costs us money.

Dry spell nothing new: Australia

A former cereal cropper, Mr Pendlebury has seen it all during his 77 years on the land.
...
"I can remember up at Beckom when I was a kid, we had a fairly wet year in 1939, but the '40's were hot and dry," he said.

"I remember during the summers of those years you would often hear of old people dying - the heat was just too much for them."
...
 The Katamatite resident can't remember a drought running for as long as the current one, but said he believed it was part of a natural cycle.

"It really doesn't mean much if it's the biggest drought in our records - we haven't been here that long," Mr Pendlebury said.

"People seem to be getting very worked up about this global warming stuff - you can't tell me the ice caps are melting in the northern hemisphere at the moment."

It's all part of a cycle: Australia

Extreme weather, including heatwaves and floods, are all part of a cycle for Bunnaloo farmer Bob Caldwell.

At 82 years old, Mr Caldwell can remember when it was so dry he could just about step across the Murray River at Echuca, and when floods swept across northern Victoria.
...
Asked about climate change, Mr Caldwell said he had seen rainfall charts spanning a century.

"There are waves of wet years and dry years," he said.

"I think we're just having a drought; it comes in cycles.

"I'm not much of a climate change believer."