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Melting icebergs raise the sea level

Cross-posted from Quirin Schiermeier on The Great Beyond Since 1994, around 750 cubic kilometers of floating ice – equivalent to the volume of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia – have been melting each year around the Arctic Ocean and off Antarctica, an analysis of satellite observation has revealed. The massive loss of sea ice actually adds a wee bit to global sea level rise, scientists report in a paper in Geophysical Research Letters. Popular belief has it that the melting of drifting icebergs and floating ice shelves has no effect on the height of the surrounding sea level just like melting  … Read more

CRU inquiry: science solid despite lack of statistical know-how

CRU inquiry: science solid despite lack of statistical know-how

Cross-posted by Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond The integrity of research by the ‘climate-gate’ scientists has been upheld by the latest report into the email theft affair, despite the inquiry team expressing surprise that few professional statisticians were involved in work that is “fundamentally statistical”. This inquiry, headed by Ron Oxburgh, is one of a number into the aftermath of emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. It was established to consider allegations that papers emanating from CRU had manipulated data dishonestly to support pre-determined conclusions on climate change. “We saw no evidence  … Read more

Are climate scientists ignoring the lessons of climategate?

Guest post by Keith Kloor If there was one thing that most observers seemed to agree on in the aftermath of the hacking at the University of East Anglia, it was, as Fred Pearce wrote in Yale Environment 360, that the emails revealed a “bunker mentality among many of the scientists” at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. Other metaphors have been suggested by Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech University, who has said, repeatedly, that the stolen CRU emails revealed a “tribalism” among climate scientists, and a “”https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/a-climate-scientist-on-climate-skeptics">circling of the wagons strategy.” More recently, controversies  … Read more