Dive right in:

• Sustainability: Choices, choices, choices – great piece by the BBC’s Richard Black.
• Matt Ridley and the Holocene Optimum – Matt Ridley making elementary mistakes again, you’d think he has some sort of wider agenda. Oh, he has.
• Could global brightening be causing global warming? – short answer: unfortunately not.
• A brief update on hurricanes & climate change – was Al Gore right to focus so much on hurricanes?
• Some excitable climate deniers just don’t understand what science is – “The essential problem is that the public — the media very much included — generally doesn’t understand science. Most of us think science is a list of absolutely certain facts that are not open for debate. If a theory is on the list, it’s not debatable and we should act on it; if it’s not, it is debatable and we should not act on it. As a result, scientists often find it hard to communicate scientific conclusions to the public. If they speak scientifically, they have to acknowledge that even though most scientists have come to a conclusion they are reasonably confident is true, there is continued uncertainty and debate. But if they do that, people will think the conclusion isn’t yet a scientific fact — and we shouldn’t act on it.”
• Massaging the Climate Message: New Political Conditions Bring Shifting Strategies – how the climate discourse is shifting, in the US at least.
• Only mother nature knows how to fertilize the ocean – more research needed, but yet another reason not to heavily rely on bio-sequestration.
• Investors step up climate change demands – follow the money.

Dive right in:

• Climate skeptic hides the incline in global temperatures – shock horror.
• Heat stress – setting a limit on what we can adapt to – if you didn’t know already, >7C temp rises will be bad, very bad.
• Migration in the context of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change: insights from analogues – long, but worth the read.
• A financial trick in the familiar biodiversity tale – because it’s not all just about climate change. Shocking stats.
• There’s no right and wrong to tackling climate change – Read this, then read it again, then make notes.

How much of what is recorded as scepticism about the scientific reality of climate change is simply a desire for it not to be true – or at the very least, for it not to be as bad as the scientists and politicians say? This is a question that cannot easily be answered.

When people are motivated not to believe something, they are also motivated not to acknowledge that their non-belief is anything other than rational. But two fishy tales shed some light on one type of climate change scepticism, and highlight a major challenge for climate change communicators: how do you persuade someone to believe something that they really don’t want to believe?

Dive right in:

• Climate Change: A Threat to Global Security. US & UK Defense agree. – “I am struck by how similar UK and U.S. thinking is on the national security implications of climate change. Our defense departments agree that the impact of climate change is likely to be most severe in areas where it coincides with other stresses, such as poverty, demographic growth, and resource shortages: areas through which much of the world’s trade already passes.”
• A Superstorm for Global Warming Research – a terrible terrible piece from Der Spiegel, who are usually pretty good at science reporting. Two of the authors have previously written some very misleading and inaccurate articles on climate change. Watch this space for updates…
• Visualizing Arctic Sea Ice Extent Trends – “If you find yourself asking “what about … or what happens when…”, it’s probably time to make another chart that directly addresses your new “compared to what” question. Don’t expect one chart to answer multiple questions.”
• Arctic ice recovers from the great melt – Wow, a semi-decent piece by Jonathan Leake! Apart from wrongly attributing the recent ‘spurt’ in ice growth to the Arctic Oscillation (it was more likely just a response to changes in regional atmospheric circulation) it’s a measured and almost insightful piece… is something weighing on his mind perhaps?

Dive right in:

• Scientists hash out the uncertainties of climate sensitivity – Here’s some great science journalism, climate sensitivity made fun (almost!).
• Methane bubbling out of Arctic Ocean – but is it new? Great piece by New Scientist on the Arctic permafrost and the uncertainties inherent in any ‘new’ scientific discovery.
• Debunking Lomborg, the Climate-Change Skeptic – Turns out Bjorn Lomborg really is the T-2000 of climate denial world: younger, smarter, stronger, more sophisticated. But essentially still a destructive machine sent from the future…
• Texan Scientists: On global warming, the science is solid – We need more scientists doing this sort of thing, regional and local newspapers are really important!

Dive right in:

• SealevelGate – Real Climate cover the true IPCC sea-level scandal. Must read.
• Climate of fear, Nature editorial (free access) – “The integrity of climate research has taken a very public battering in recent months. Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.”
• Overview of all the ‘Gates – very useful brief run-down of the last 4 months.
• Short must read: Climate Change and the Media – “What’s truly infuriating about this episode of journalistic malpractice is that, once again, it illustrates the reasons why the East Anglia scientists adopted an adversarial attitude towards information management with regard to outsiders and the media. They were afraid that any data they allowed to be characterised by non-climate scientists would be vulnerable to propagandistic distortion. And they were right.”

Dive right in:

• RealClimate | IPCC errors: facts and spin
• Defusing the Methane Greenhouse Time Bomb: Scientific American
• Richard Alley’s keynote at the 2009 AGU AGM – If you want a primer on the role of CO2 in the ancient climate, this is it.
• At least one journalist at the Telegraph understands risk
• More Grumbine Science: Cloud-temperature feedback – Great run through of cloud feedbacks, what we do know & what we don’t.
• A Historian Looks ‘Back’ at the Climate Fight – Dot Earth Blog – “But this was the first time the media reported that an entire community of scientists had been accused of actual dishonesty. Such claims, if directed for example at a politician on a matter of minor importance, would normally require serious investigation.”

Dive right in:

• PCC Adjudication on Ward vs. Booker – has to be read to be believed! Can you say ‘toothless’.
• What does openness in science mean? Potential problems with open access
• Climate deniers using FOI legisation as a filibuster…
• Earlier glacial melt rate revised downward, but recent melt is accelerating dramatically
• Climate Change Denier ‘Proves’ Climate Change
• Arctic melt to cost up to $24 trillion by 2050: report | Reuters
• Climate change impact of soil underestimated: study – AFP.
• Mark Lynas – Barbarians at the gate
• Pentagon to rank global warming as destabilising force

Dive right in:

• Radio 4, Today – IPCC ‘must earn trust’ with public
• IPCC denies newspaper claim that it overstated costs of natural disasters
• Deniergate: Turning the tables on climate sceptics
• New controversy in battle over the future of climate politics
• Great post on weather stations and the reliability of temperature data

This year, the modern environmental movement turns 40. Earth Day in 1970 marked the first mass environmental protest, and whilst some ecological ideas have a much older pedigree, it is only during the past four decades that they have attracted mainstream attention. As the disappointment of the Copenhagen climate talks sinks in, it is easy to be pessimistic about the future of environmentalism. But I would argue that, taking the longer-term perspective, it is still very much in the ascendant.