RealClimate is a finalist for "Best Science Blog" in this year's Weblog awards. As in years past, we are happy to have this chance to widen our readership over the voting period and we welcome anyone who is visiting for the first time. To get an idea of what we are about, start with the 'start here' button, or look at the index for climate-related topics that you might find interesting. Our goal is to add more context to climate stories that you might see - something that is often missing in mainstream coverage - and give some insight into what the climate science community is thinking and talking about.

As for this poll, historically winners appear to be mostly determined by whose devotees are most adept at voting from multiple machines or writing scripts, so we aren't too concerned about our eventual placement (and we are especially eager not to emulate last years contest). We'll add the voting widget to the side bar when it's available (you are allowed to once every 24 hours from a single IP address), and don't forget to check out other blogs nominated in other categories that you might find interesting.

Finally, a comment on the nature of science blogging: Science is the process of winnowing through plausible ideas, testing them against observations and continually refining our understanding. It is not generally marked by hasty jumping to conclusions; accusations of bad faith, fraud and conspiracy; continual and deliberate confusions of basic concepts (climate vs weather for instance); and the persistent cherry-picking of datasets to bolster pre-existing opinions. Science blogging can play a role in improving science - whether through education, communication or through harnessing the collective endeavors of 'citizen scientists' - but the kind of vituperative tone that dominates some blogs greatly diminishes any positive contribution they might make. Science (even climate science) should be about light, not heat. Online voters might want to bear that in mind.

At RealClimate, we have more than once been accused of being imbalanced — criticizing those who would deny the basic science of climate change, while leaving inflammatory statements by what might be called the "environmentalist side" without comment. It's not an entirely a fair criticism, because there is a world of difference between the willful obfuscation of science and the naive exaggeration of it. There are however plenty of silly, and sometimes outrageous, claims made - see e.g. the Telegraph on Jan. 3^rd — and we probably ought to do a better job of calling these out, particularly when they show up in prominent places. So to inaugurate the New Year, I humbly offer a rant about a minor but illustrative example that I happened to notice because there was a link to it on Nature Reports Climate Change.

The subject of the linked article, in the British online newspaper The Independent, is the decline of various bird and butterfly species in England. The article, entitled Changing climate devastates UK species, reports that "insects in particular, and creatures that feed on insects…were sharply reduced in numbers" due to a "cold late spring, a wet summer, with few sunny days, and the long dry autumn…." Now I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the claim that 2008 was a hard year for UK insects and insectivores. But this is weather we're talking about, not climate. And while it is true that at least one prominent study shows that there has been an overall increase in rainfall in the latitude band that includes the UK, and that climate models reproduce this trend (see e.g. the Zhang et al. article in Nature, in 2007), one cannot, as we are fond of pointing out, attribute a single, or even several individual extreme weather events to "climate change".

Indeed, Peter Stott, a co-author on the Zhang et al. study noted, in reference to 2007 (the wettest summer on record in the UK) that "This latest study cannot make the link between climate change and what we have experienced so far this summer." Moreover, most projections actually suggest drier summers in the UK in the future, though with increased convection (so less total precipitation, but bigger rainstorms).

Another thing that bugs me about the Independent article is the suggestion that climate is becoming "more unpredictable". I suspect what is meant here is that we used to know what a mean season and normal variations were, and now we don't. That's valid, since the baseline climate is changing. But saying it this way — that "climate is becoming more unpredictable" is misleading. In fact, climate may, if anything, become more predictable as anthropogenic forcing becomes even more dominant (as greenhouse gas concentrations increase), relative to natural forcing and variability. And what is definitely not the case — but might be inferred from the article — is that weather is becoming more unpredictable. Weather prediction is based on observations just a few days in advance — climate and climate trends have nothing to do with it.

The point here is not that we shouldn't be concerned about the fate of insects and birds in the UK (that would be the kind of conclusion that only the most willfully ignorant would draw.) They have been in decline for a long time (mostly due to land use change and pesticides) and there is little doubt that climate change will continue to add insult to injury. But it is simply wrong to confuse a year or even two years of unfavorable weather with a change in climate, and it is irresponsible to headline an article that is really about weather with the provocative juxtaposition of "climate" and "devastates". Doing so gives the average reader the sense that their personal observations about "weird weather patterns" or fewer sightings of Parus caeruleus represent definitive manifestations of climate change. The fact is, climate changes are — so far — small enough in most places, relative to the natural variability, that one's personal experience is a very poor guide to what is happening over the long term (observations of sea ice changes by those that live in the high Arctic notwithstanding).

Way back at the end of 2006, we did a review of the year's climate science discussion. It's that time of year again and so we've decided to give it another go. Feel free to suggest your own categories and winners…

Most clueless US politician talking about climate change (with the exception of Senator Inhofe who'd always win):
Sarah Palin:

Well, we're the only Arctic state, of course, Alaska. So we feel the impacts more than any other state, up there with the changes in climates. And certainly, it is apparent. We have erosion issues. And we have melting sea ice, of course. [….] You know there are - there are man's activities that can be contributed to the issues that we're dealing with now, these impacts. I'm not going to solely blame all of man's activities on changes in climate.

Most puzzling finding from 2006 that has yet to be convincingly replicated:
Methane from plants

Most reckless extrapolation of short term trends:
Michael "All global warming has been erased" Asher (Daily Tech)

This year's most (unsurprisingly) abused study:
Keenlyside et al. initialised climate forecasts (and no, they didn't take our bet).

Climate scientist with biggest disconnect between his peer-reviewed papers and his online discussions:
Roy Spencer

Most worn out contrarian cliche:
The "Gore Effect". This combines the irrelevant confusion of climate with weather and the slightly manic obsession with Al Gore over the actual science. Do please grow up.

Most bizarre new contrarian claim:
Global warming is caused by undersea volcanoes (and pirates!).

The S. Fred Singer award for the most dizzying turn-around of a climate pseudo-skeptic:
Dennis Avery: "Global warming is likely to continue" (2006) , to global warming is "unstoppable" (2006), to "Say Good-Bye To Global Warming And Hello To Global Cooling!" (2008).

Pottiest peer on the contrarian comedy circuit:
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

Least unexpected observations:
(Joint winners) 2008 near-record minima in Arctic sea ice extent, last decade of record warmth, long term increases in ocean heat content, record increases in CO2 emissions.

Most consistently wrong media outlet:
The Australian (runner-up the UK Daily Telegraph). Both comfortably beating out the perennial favorite, the Wall Street Journal - maybe things have really changed there?

Best actual good news:
The grown-ups being back in charge starting January 20 (compare with this).

Most inaccurate attempted insinuation about RealClimate:
'The Soros-funded Realclimate.org' Chris Horner

Most revealing insight into some US coal companies and year's best self parody:
Frosty the Coalman (video available here)

Most disturbing trend for science journalism:
The axing of dedicated science units at CNN, the Weather Channel and elsewhere. Can Climate Central and blogging journalists take up the slack?

Happy New Year to all of our readers!

As is usual, we have a brief round-up of books we have found interesting or noteworthy this year. While we mainly focus on new books, we include a couple of new editions of older books, and of course, our previous reviews might still be of some interest (2005, 2006, and 2007).
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The great thing about complex data is that one can basically come up with any number of headlines describing it - all of which can be literally true - but that give very different impressions. Thus we are sure that you will soon read that 2008 was warmer than any year in the 20th Century (with the exception of 1998), that is was the coolest year this century (starting from 2001), and that 7 or 8 of the 9 warmest years have occurred since 2000. There will undoubtedly also be a number of claims made that aren't true; 2008 is not the coolest year this decade (that was 2000), global warming hasn't 'stopped', CO₂ continues to be a greenhouse gas, and such variability is indeed predicted by climate models. Today's post is therefore dedicated to cutting through the hype and looking at the bigger picture.
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Browsing through the blogosphere recently, I came across an interesting little story about the scientific method, scientific progress, and un-scientific spin (h/t Hank Roberts). The subject concerns the polar ozone hole in Antarctica and a possible role for cosmic rays in its variability on solar cycle timescales. The proponents of this link are a small research group at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada, who find themselves up against the mainstream stratospheric chemistry community and whose ideas are twisted out of all recognition by the more foolish of the usual suspects.

The story hit the 'tubes earlier this year when researcher Q.B. Lu predicted that this years Antarctic ozone hole would be the biggest ever due to the actions of increased galactic cosmic rays (GCR) (because we are at solar minimum and GCR are inversely correlated to solar activity). This years peak ozone hole has now come and gone, and the prediction can therefore be evaluated. Unfortunately for Dr. Lu, this year's hole was merely about average for the decade - a result that wasn't too supportive for his theory.

This story made me a little curious about this though. Firstly, I didn't initially understand why cosmic rays should be playing a role in ozone depletion - most of the cosmic ray effects that are usually discussed revolve around cloud-aerosol connections, but there are not many clouds in the stratosphere where the ozone holes form, and the ones there are (Polar Stratospheric Clouds - PSCs) are much more sensitive to temperature and water vapour than they are likely to be to background aerosols. On further investigation, it turns out that this idea has been out there for a few years (and was reported on then) and has subsequently been discussed in the ozone literature.

So let's start with the background theory. Standard (Nobel-prize winning) stratospheric chemistry has tied ozone depletion to the increasing chlorine (Cl) load in the stratosphere which catalytically destroys ozone and comes from the photolytic dissolution of human-sourced chloro-fluoro-carbons (CFCs) high in the stratosphere. In the polar night, the presence of PSCs allows for a specific class of heterogeneous Cl reactions to occur on the surface of the cloud particles which turn out to be very efficient at destroying ozone. Hence the presence of an ozone hole in the very cold Antarctic polar vortex. Since PSCs are very sensitive to temperature, cold winter vortex conditions often presage a large ozone depletion the following spring (note that polar ozone depletion only occurs in sunlight and so is a spring time phenomena in both hemispheres). This is pretty much undisputed at this point (well, at least by serious scientists). We here at RealClimate even used this relationship to predict (successfully) a particularly large Arctic ozone depletion event in 2005.

Dr. Lu's theory though posits an additional mechanism to release the Cl from the CFCs - and that is through GCR effects. Specifically, Lu suggests that the action of the GCR on CFCs attached to PSCs causes more Cl to be released, thus potentially delivering more Cl exactly where it could enhance polar depletion most effectively. The evidence for this comes from correlations of ozone loss with GCR (over a couple of solar cycles) and some suggestive lab experiments. Note that this does not call into question the anthropogenic source of the Cl which is still from CFCs.

However, Lu and colleagues' theory has been strongly challenged in the literature. For instance, here, here and here. The comments focus on two main aspects, the weakness of the correlations (see figure), and the ancillary evidence that there isn't any obvious evidence for CFC destruction in the polar vortex itself. In fact, correlations of CFCs with air mass tracers from the upper stratosphere are very stable, indicating that the photolytic conversion of the CFCs is by far the dominant source of Cl. These rebuttals seem quite compelling, and there doesn't seem to be much continued support for Dr. Lu's GCR idea. However, Lu is still pushing it (hence the press release this year just weeks before the prediction would be put to the test). One might think Dr. Lu's ideas wrong, but one can't fault his bravery in putting them to the test.

As we stated above, the un-exceptional ozone loss this year pretty much undermines the correlations that were at the heart of Lu's idea. Thus I predict that this is unlikely to be discussed very much more in the literature except as an example of how interesting ideas are generated, discussed, tested and (in this case) found wanting. This indeed is how scientific progress is made.

But, as has often been noted, the contrarian-sphere is a world on its own. It was inevitable that the headline link between GCR and ozone holes would entice the old-school ozone depletion skeptics and 'everything-is-solar" proponents out of their burrows. Tim Ball led the charge. Now Dr. Ball is a long time skeptic on the human influence on ozone depletion as well as climate change, and so he couldn't resist the occasion to opine on all theories anthropogenic:

Nurtured by environmental hysteria and the determination to show all changes in the natural world are due to human activity, the claim CFCs were destroying ozone jumped directly from an unproven hypothesis to a scientific fact.

He also includes standard statements implying that scientists implicated CFCs in ozone depletion to deprive the developing world of refrigeration (oh my!), how there hasn't been a change in ozone depletion in any case (despite showing a series of figures obviously demonstrating this - see here as well) and so on…. He did however note that Dr. Lu's theories don't actually change any of the mainstream prescriptions for dealing with ozone depletion (though he does get confused about the CO₂ impact on stratospheric temperatures - it makes them colder, not warmer). But the real prize goes to Dennis "unstoppable" Avery who suggests that Dr. Lu's theories will confirm a link of GCR to climate change:

If the South Pole gets an ozone-hole maximum in the coming weeks, it will strengthen the case for cosmic rays, and endorse a Modern Warming driven by solar variations rather than human-emitted CO₂.

This is the same logic as assuming that because salt makes food taste better, throwing it behind your shoulder must bring luck. That is, they are just not connected. And I'm pretty sure he won't accept the logical corollary. Needless to say this is a very feeble grasping at straws. But to quote a recent Monbiot article:

There is no pool so shallow that a thousand bloggers won't drown in it.

Nor an ozone hole it seems either.

I recently came across an old copy of Arthur Koestler's "The Case of the Midwife Toad". Originally published in 1971, it's an exploration of a rather tragic footnote in the history of evolutionary science. Back in the early years of the 20th Century (prior to the understanding of DNA, but after Mendelian genetics had become well known), there was still a remnant of the biological community who preferred the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics over the Darwinian idea of natural selection of random mutations. One of the vanguard for the Lamarckian idea was Paul Kammerer whose specialty was the breeding of amphibians that apparently few others could match. He claimed that he could get his toads and salamanders to acquire characteristics that were useful in the new environments in which he raised his specimens. This was touted loudly (in the New York Times for instance) as proof of Lamarckian inheritance and Kammerer was hailed as a 'new Darwin'. It all ended very badly when one toad specimen was found to be faked (by who remains a mystery), and Kammerer killed himself shortly afterwards (though there may have been more involved than scientific disgrace).

The details of the experiments and controversy can be read online (with various slants) here and here, and a more modern non-replication of one of his experiments is described here. However, the reason I bring this up here is much more related to how the scientific community and Koestler dealt with this scientific maverick and the analogies that has for the climate science and its contrarians.
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Debra Saunders is a conservative columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle who has a history of writing misleading contrarian pieces on climate change. She contacted NASA Public Affairs recently for a comment on the initial glitch on the October GHCN numbers (see this earlier post for discussions of that). They forwarded the query to me and since her questions were straightforward, I answered them as best I could. Indeed in her subsequent column, she quotes me accurately and in context. However, the rest of her column shows none of the same appreciation for basic journalistic standards.
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Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt

Much in the spirit of the Fraser Institute's damp squib we reported on last year, S. Fred Singer and his merry band of contrarian luminaries (financed by the notorious "Heartland Institute" we've commented on previously) served up a similarly dishonest 'assessment' of the science of climate change earlier this year in the form of what they call the "NIPCC" report (the "N" presumably standing for 'not the' or 'nonsense'). This seems to be making the rounds again as Singer and Heartland are gearing up for a reprise of last year's critically…er…appraised "Conference on Climate Change" this March. Recently some have asked us for our opinion of the report and so we've decided we ought to finally go ahead and opine. Here goes.
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Confusion has continued regarding trends in global temperatures. The misconception 'the global warming has stopped' still lives on in some minds. We have already discussed why this argument is flawed. So why have we failed to convince ?

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