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How Climate Change Pseudoscience Became Publicly Accepted

The I recently wrote an OpEd for the Epoch Times which tries to succinctly capture my main grievances with the global warming scare. Here is brought again with a few comments (and references) added at its end.

Critique of “Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians”

This paper made some waves in the Media recently. It is based on highly biased data selection, and therefore flawed to its bone. It shouldn't have passed refereeing.

Solar Debunking Arguments are Defunct

An article interviewing me was removed yesterday from forbes. Instead, they published an article by Meteorologist Prof. Marshall Shepherd that claims that the sun has no effect on climate. That article, however, falls to the same pitfalls that pointed out on my blog yesterday.

Specifically, why is Shepherd’s arguments faulty? Although I addressed them yesterday, here they are brought again more explicitly and with figures.

Forbes censored an interview with me

A few days ago I was interviewed by Doron Levin, for an article to appear online on forbes.com. After having seen a draft (to make sure that I am quoted correctly), I told him good luck with getting it published, as I doubted it will. Why? Because a year ago I was interviewed by a reporter working for Bloomberg, while the cities of San Francisco and Oakland were deliberating a climate change lawsuit against Exxon-Mobil (which the latter won!), only to find out that their editorial board decided that it is inappropriate to publish an interview with a heretic like me. Doron’s reply was to assure me that Forbes’ current model of the publication online allows relative freedom with “relatively little interference from editors”. Yeah Sure.

22 minute talk summarizing my views on global warming

Just over a week ago I gave a 20 minute talk (which lasted almost 22 min) about the role that the sun plays in global warming in the Heartland institute's climate conference in DC. Here it is brought again for posterity.

Finally! The missing link between exploding stars, clouds and climate on Earth

Our new results published today in nature communications provide the last piece of a long studied puzzle. We finally found the actual physical mechanism linking between atmospheric ionization and the formation of cloud condensation nuclei. Thus, we now understand the complete physical picture linking solar activity and our galactic environment (which govern the flux of cosmic rays ionizing the atmosphere) to climate here on Earth though changes in the cloud characteristics.

The Sunspots 2.0? Irrelevant. The Sun, still is.

After being asked by 5 independent people about the new sunspot number reconstruction and that it doesn’t show that the sun should have contributed any warming to the 20th century, I decided to write about it here. I have one word to describe it – irrelevant. It is also a good opportunity to write about new results (well, one that saw the light of day a few months ago) showing again that the sun has a large effect on climate. Yet, the world will still continue to ignore it. Am I surprised? No I’m not.

Bits of Science / Roundup #1

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Aurorae on Ganymede
Since I look for interesting science bits (mostly astro bits) for the Monday coffee of our astrophysics group, I realized that I could share it with the readers including some interpretation (and hopefully some added value) by your humble servant. So, here’s my try. If it works (and won’t be too much time) I’ll continue! Although for the coffee I bring mostly astrophysics and some planetary science, here I’ll also try to bring interesting results in climate (those that aren't lame...).

Sights from a Field Trip in the Milky Way: From Paleoclimatology to Dark Matter

32 million year oscillation in the paleoclimate data
I was recently asked to write an article to “The Institute Letter” of Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where I am spending a wonderful sabbatical year. It briefly describes a very interesting discovery that my colleagues and I made, which is that the 32 million year oscillation of the solar system perpendicular to the galactic plane can clearly be seen in the paleoclimate data. In the article, I also discuss how the discovery came and some of its implications. I am bringing a slightly expanded version here (with more figures and elaborated caption), and references of course. Enjoy.

Gravity waves in rain clouds over the Arava valley

Lee Waves in Rain Clouds over the Arava Valley

Spring weather here in Israel was rather strange. Although winter with most of its precipitation should have been over, we had a few very rainy days. We're now in the midst of a heat wave with temperatures as much as 20°C higher than just a week before. In between there was a nice gravity wave appear over the Arava Valley, the first one I have ever seen in a rain radar!

Dust Dendrites

Dust dendrites on nylon sheath

My wife and I had our kitchen renovated aaa. Since this involved breaking a few walls (and cutting out a new window), we knew it would raise a lot of dust. Mind you, here in the middle east houses are built from concrete and concrete blocks, not wood. To minimize the dust annoyance (and damage), we decided to quarter off the living room from the kitchen by using large nylon sheets hung from the ceiling to the floor.

The worst of the BEST

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I was asked by quite a few people about my opinion on the BEST analysis of Richard Muller and his group in Berkeley. Since I didn’t want to keep my friends without an answer, I took a more careful look into the analysis. Here is what I think of it.

[Edit 2019: I noticed that the Berkeley website changed its structure, so the link is dead. However, the actual paper has since appeared]

Does the global temperature lag CO2? More flaws in the Shakun et al. paper in Nature.

Over the past two weeks, perhaps a dozen people asked me about the recently published paper of Shakun et al. in Nature. It allegedly demonstrates that the global temperature followed CO2 around the warming associated with the last interglacial warming, between 20 to 10 thousand years ago. One even sent the story as a news item on NPR. So, having no other choice, I decided to actually read the paper and find what is it all about. Should I abandon all that I advocated over the past decade?

Causes of Climate Change - Poll Results

Out of curiosity, I opened a few weeks ago a poll asking the visitors of this site, what do they think is the primary cause of global warming. 429 people answered the poll (thanks to all of you!).

The results can be summarized as follows.

First, the visitors of this site have the following background:
Background Fraction (Votes)
Layman 54.9% (232)
General Scientist 41.1% (174)
Climate Scientist 4.0% (17)

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