Botswana talks global warming - The Botswana Gazette

Ordinary folks puzzled

“Don’t you know that scientists lie a lot to make money? I don’t believe them when they tell us that there is global warming because of emissions from fire or burning coal. What I know is that when smoke goes up the sky it triggers rainfall and that is what we need in this country.” These were  the words of the unemployed Mothusi Songa as he sat alone in front of his shack in Old Naledi when The Gazette visited the area.

Songa does not believe that the recent heat waves were due to global warming because Botswana has always been a hot country thus to him an extra hot day is not a surprise

Mediterranean Subtropical Storm | Planet3.0

While neither the Mediterranean storm nor the Alaskan storm currently whirling is without precedent, both are rare events. Have two such deep extratropical lows ever existed at the same time?

The Reference Frame: Science: climate sensitivity is 1.7-2.6 °C

I am convinced that this reconstruction is still a significant overestimate (by a factor of two or so) relatively to the correct figure but once again, the paper shows that the numerical value of the climate sensitivity isn't really what distinguishes climate realists from climate crusaders. The emotional and political reaction is what makes the difference.

Imagine that the climate sensitivity is 2.3 °C, their best estimate. About 0.8 °C of it has already materialized so the remaining warming up to the CO2 doubling would be 1.5 °C. That's demonstrably not harmful – it's just twice the harmless warming we may have seen, assuming, for the sake of generosity, that the end of the Little Ice Age was caused by James Watt and his steam engine 50 years before he was born, as the IPCC railway engineers claim.

- Bishop Hill blog - Darien II

One commenter on the last thread rather perspicaciously pointed out the parallels between Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond's leap for renewables and the Darien scheme - the disastrous commercial venture at the end of the 17th century that bankrupted the Scottish establishment and led to the country having to go cap in hand to the English and ask for union.