It’s a tired argument, this idea that because we can’t predict weather we certainly can’t predict climate. You’d expect to hear it from James Inhofe or a cranky uncle; you should never hear it from a university lecturer teaching a course on climate change. Unless you are a student at Carleton University, right here in Canada’s capital.

Heartland wants to fund the creation of K12 curricula that would teach students every long-debunked climate denial argument under, and including, the sun. They could save their anonymous funder’s money and just copy wholesale from Carleton University’s course “Climate Change: an Earth Sciences Perspective”, currently taught by Mr. Tom Harris, a former oil industry lobbyist.

The Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism (CASS, a science watchdog that more often takes an interest in pseudoscientific nonsense like homeopathy or dodgy nutrition claims in the media), part of the Centre for Inquiry Canada, has turned its attention to the teaching of science denial at Carleton University with the publication of a report fact-checking 142 separate claims made by Tom Harris in the course. It’s nothing short of a huge embarrassment for Carleton University, and for the Earth Sciences department that approved the course.

In the report, CASS provides fully quoted statements made in the course with detailed rebuttals for each one. Considering that this class is taught in one of the top 10 Canadian universities, it’s a shocking read.

I’ve gone through the document and tallied each time an argument appears, using skepticalscience.com’s list of the most common skeptic arguments as a template.

That’s not including another 41 separate arguments, including the ridiculous OISM petition project, claiming there’s no tropospheric hot spot, the oceans are cooling, Jupiter is warming, Climategate, and of course saying that scientists can’t even predict the weather.

Even a little fact-checking shows up erroneous, misleading and long-debunked claims. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could defend this course; academic freedom must at some point slam head-long into the obligation to teach things that are understood to be true. We do not accept creationism or intelligent design in our classrooms, regardless of the personal beliefs of the instructor, because we know its nonsense. We absolutely should not accept this.

Students deserve better than this cynical, distorted and mean-spirited view of the scientific enterprise. It’s tragic to see students presented with unbalanced and incomplete material. How can you tell students that tree rings do not track with temperature in the 20th century and not explain the divergence problem in full? It’s a fascinating issue, but presenting only one side short-changes inquiring minds.

It’s a review course, so students aren’t expected to have a deep understanding of the primary literature. Even so, it’s incumbent on the instructor to present the prevailing scientific opinion. It’s clear that isn’t what happens.

Harris sums up the course in the last lecture with take-away messages for the students:

* The only constant about climate is change.
* Carbon dioxide is plant food.
* There is no scientific consensus about climate change causes.
* Prepare for global cooling.
* Climate science is changing quickly.

There’s a place for discussion of controversies in climate science, and there’s an appropriate way of doing that. It isn’t in a review course for non-scientists and non-specialists who lack the domain expertise to know they are being played.

And it certainly isn’t in a course taught by an individual who doesn’t appear to even grasp the difference between weather and climate.

Read the full report here.

CBC reports that crews have already started pulling up some tulip beds a week before the festival is even due to start.

It isn’t all bad. The late blooming beds are still going strong, although they might not last the full two weeks of the Festival. And there are some beds that have yet to flower.

Yes, this winter it snowed in Europe and the U.S. But it was damn hot up here.

“As in any day where we symbolize a matter of significance, Earth Day highlights the cause, it highlights the importance of all of us making individual efforts, and so yes, it’s important,” he said.

“I would like Canadians to think about our responsibility as stewards as one of the most remarkable landmasses on the earth and the obligation we have to leave Canada, cleaner and better than we found it,” he said.

To make that a reality, he said, Canadians should think about whether they should reduce the size of their car, recycle more, leave their phone chargers plugged in or if they need to keep that flat-screen TV on all the time.

“It’s a question of the individual choices we make,” he added. “How many televisions are you going to have in your house? Are you going to shop and try to get the most efficient appliances in your home? It’s about choices.”

If Canadians should think about changing anything it is their laws and politicians, not their behaviour. We have tried Prentice’s approach before, after all. The One Tonne Challenge was an abject failure of a policy for reducing carbon emissions, and would not have made much of a dent considering the sources of most of this country’s emissions (see chart).

Note: The grey portion of the chart represents GHG emissions from the energy sector. The activity sectors reflect the UNFCCC methodology. Source: Environment Canada, 2007a. National Inventory Report: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada, 1990–2005. Greenhouse Gas Division, Ottawa, Ontario.

And besides, if Prentice really wants to change Canadians’ behaviour, he should do more than exhort them to just think about doing so for one day a year. A price on carbon, as economists will agree, would do more to change behaviour than would simply thinking a little on Earth Day.

The table below shows c02 increases on Mt Loa since 1959. One can notice the spiking of co2 when el ninos occur, and how the co2 increases were higher when the PDO went warm. This further supports my idea that we are going to get our answer as to what is causing the warming. Cycles of c02 and the evidence that the co2 RESPONDS to warming not causes is pretty straightforward with co-ordinating the data. The real kick in the teeth of co2 being the driver is the big fall with the Pinitubo cooling!

[table at link]

When you put it against the global temps, the co2 is plainly following the Pacific.. the new cold PDO should see a flattening out of the rate of rise.

It would appear the co2 spikes are occurring with warming that is caused by the natural drivers of the warm PDO and the el nino. The most damming of the evidence against co2 being the driver was the drop around 1992 with Pinitubo cooling. To the rationale, objective person, does this look like co2 with its erratic up and downs around the times of el ninos, is the driver, or the driven. The answer is obvious, it is responding to spikes that occur with warming episodes, the driven, not the driver. You can see the response in co2 with and after the nino.

Joe Bastardi is a senior long range weathercaster with Accuweather, and often seen on CNN and Fox News. He is also quite, quite wrong about CO2, fails to explain the year on year overall rise in atmospheric CO2 measured at Mauna Loa and appears to be oblivious to the relationship between gas solubility and ocean temperature.

Meteorologists are not climatologists, and sometimes it shows.

We can get a sense of their ubiquity from the following maps, first showing just the windmills recorded on manors in escheats (inquisitions post mortem). Source: Mills in the medieval economy: England, 1300-1540 By John Langdon.

Water was also widely harnessed on manor lands, both inland and at the coast as tidal mills. 

To get a sense of how common water and wind power was – when it used to be in everyone’s backyard – I also recommend reading The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages by Jean Gimpel.

For a distinguished cartoon or portfolio of cartoons characterized by originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing and pictorial effect, in print or online or both, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to Mark Fiore, self syndicated, for his animated cartoons appearing on SFGate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle Web site, where his biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues set a high standard for an emerging form of commentary.

According to the San Franciso Chronicle, “Fiore’s winning entry included "Science-gate," which adopts the voice-over tone of a mudslinging political ad to lampoon skeptics of global warming.”

You can see the winning entry here.

The Dutch ambassador isn’t worried:

Dutch ambassador Wim Geerts, who grew up with tulips, said Ottawa residents shouldn’t worry as things could change between now and festival time. "We’ll keep our fingers crossed," he said.

The organisers of the tulip festival plant the tulips to bloom in the early, middle or late season. They planted more than a million bulbs in October 2009.

There is no option of rescheduling the festival to coincide with the blooming of the tulips. "It’s a force that can’t be stopped," said Christine Charette, the festival’s director of planning and operations. "We have booked many acts. It has to begin as scheduled."

The festival, which runs from May 7 to May 24, draws close to 600,000 visitors to the Ottawa area.

Charette says she is hopeful. "This is Canada. It could snow tomorrow. We’re not too worried."

Source: Ottawa Citizen

The Onion.

His motivation:

"We’re putting the FOIs in just to find out what is happening with vivisection at the universities. If they’ve got nothing to hide, then it’s not a problem for them to put the information out there."

The researchers are nevertheless concerned. 

"The way these questions are phrased, I don’t think this is an exercise in openness," said Syed Khawar Abbas, veterinary officer at the University of Leeds. "This information can be used for intimidation. In the wrong hands, this information can cause problems for our scientists."

An information officer at a different university, who did not want to be identified, said: "This has caused a great deal of concern among our staff who are worried about receiving threats or worse. Most scientists faced with FOI requests are happy to put stuff into the open and welcome the scrutiny, but in this case they are having to second guess the motives of people who might use this information."

Oh yes, and this sounded familiar:

One university scientist said: "The most likely motivation here is that they want to catch somebody out. If they can find some bad wording in minutes from a meeting, then they can use that to claim we are up to no good."

I think we can go ahead now and add ‘harassment by FOI’ to the activist handbook.

Now, that is handy.