Articles: The Keys to the Climate Debate

[Dr. David Evans] Surely the solution is to require any group of experts to be able to sufficiently explain their decision at several levels of complexity, right down to the very simple. If you cannot teach your idea simply, maybe you cannot really defend it. In particular, the experts must be able to explain fully without omissions, because omitting contradictory or anomalous evidence or ideas is the easiest way for an expert to convince a lay person, who is usually unaware that the confounding material exists.

Experience in financial and legal matters shows that we need some combination of auditing, checking, red teams, and professional defenders. Why should climate be any different?

The US Army has $7 Billion to Spend on Renewable Energy | JunkScience.com

In order to achieve the Department of Defence’s initiative to generate 25 percent of all energy demanded on its bases from renewable energy sources by 2025, the US Army has announced that it will invest $7 billion in new renewable energy projects.

Wow. Check the footprint of these super-duper solar panels | JunkScience.com

One nuke doesn’t have a 50 mi2 footprint and produces power even when it’s dark (a really good time to have lights working, no?). The maintenance involved in all these tracking arrays and cooling fans plus mirror cleaning, etc. suggests economy may not be all that brilliant either.

Parasites may get nastier with climate swings: study | JunkScience.com

Should probably have been headed “Dumb experiment design and what not to do to frogs”.

Note that frogs acclimated to 25°C suffered more from chytridiomycosis when shifted to incubators 10°C cooler that did frogs accustomed to the lower temperature either through nocturnal/diurnal swings or constantly lower temperatures. That doesn’t mean that changing temperatures are bad for amphibians, only that subjecting them to sudden dramatic change is an additional stressor that reduces their resistance to chytrid fungus.

Perhaps predictably, this crap is coming out in Nature Climate Change, although when I tried to access it they were experiencing technical difficulties. I’ll just have to trust Reuters repeated what they were told.