Slashdot Mirror

The classic paper on this is: Jones PD, Groisman PYa, Coughlan M, Plummer N, Wangl WC, Karl TR (1990) Assessment of urbanization effects in time series of surface air temperatures over land. Nature 347:169-172. This conclusion was refreshed by Easterling '97.

The IPCC TAR stated:

These results confirm the conclusions of Jones et al. (1990) and Easterling et al. (1997) that urban effects on 20th century globally and hemispherically averaged land air temperature time-series do not exceed about 0.05C over the period 1900 to 1990 (assumed here to represent one standard error in the assessed non-urban trends).

There have been a couple of recent papers that Steve has been looking at, but as his site is down I don't have the citations handy (and I don't know them off-hand).

You should be careful with realclimate.org. While the site is climate science by climate scientists, it is characterized by evangelism rather than objectivity. This isn't to say their evangelism isn't often scientific and correct, but they do distort, obscure, and ignore information that hurts their evangelism.

As it happens, Steve started his blog climateaudit.org after he was subject to smear campaigns on realclimate.org over a couple of papers he published demolishing the statistical techniques used in MBH'98. Judge for yourself: MM'05, rc1, rc2, Recap

Steve's papers were ultimately vindicated by a NAS panel review. A copy of which Steve posted on his website: Wegman Report

See realclimate for a complete discussion of the subject.

The global trend is a robust dataset, and the pattern is scientifically explainable and is not correlated with urban areas, which is what you would expect if it was a UHI effect.

1) If you think that CO2 is causing it to flood in South Asia, you are thinking more from superstition than science. 2) Net antarctic ice is accumulating, not melting. 3) If you think CO2 is making hurricanes larger or track towards major cities, you have a screw loose.

You could have saved your time if you'd just written: bullshit, bullshit and bullshit, since it's all the same anyway. No, you can't point to any one storm and say it happened because of global warming. But warmer temperatures absolutely do worsen tropical storms, and the earth has been warming. And RealClimate shot down the "thickening Antarctic ice" canard three years ago.

You global warming deniers are the new flat earthers. But at least flat earthers didn't screw over the rest of the planet. If you are also so confident it isn't happening, move to a nice coastal area in Malaysia and stay there.

Well said.

Just for the record, the "urban heat island" is a well documented phenomena that has already been accounted for, but there is always room for improvement in the estimation of such a difficult bias to measure.

"Michael Crichton IS/WAS a real doctor."

In my mind that makes the political interference even more obvious than it already is/was.

If an ex-MD can be invited and introduced to the senate as a "climate expert" based on a work of FICTION he created, why does the government's top doctor and others such as Jim Hansen (climatologist and head of NOAA) get sidelined/censored?

I have read that before and yes it does have some points raised by "skeptics".

"but the human contribution itself has not been quantitatively assessed

Checkout the attribution diagram, figure SPM-2 in the IPCC 2007 SPM.....seems wikipedia got it wrong on a contraversial subject!

Also check out this site, you will find Pielke often comments on articles and is a hand full of skeptics who does have some valid points but tends to view everything in a political light.

Also the "dispute" you quote is about the effects of AGW on specific hurricane basins, they are not disputing AGW itself. The fact remains that Gore is reporting the "best science available" not "every opinion available", there is no doubt that as the globe warms the climate will become more turbulent (anyone could "guess" that much from basic physics).

Al Gore does not "put me off", since I am not from the US his politcs are irrelevant to me. If you want to attack the IPCC then why don't you start with a real problem such as the "missing methane". However if you want to discredit it's scientific methods and conclusions by portraying it as an adgenda driven political body then I am simply not interested in what you have to say because I've heard it all before.

If you're going to post the IPCC numbers on sea level rise, you ought to know that when the report was released, there was a HUGE outcry from people who did science on the subject of sea level rise because they felt the numbers in the report vastly underestimated the expected rise. RealClimate has an extensive discussion of the numbers, here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007 /03/the-ipcc-sea-level-numbers/

Basically, our atmosphere has so much water vapor, that every frequency of IR that can be absorbed by it is already fully absorbed.

Basically, our atmosphere has so much water vapor, that every frequency of IR that can be absorbed by it is already fully absorbed.

Basically, our atmosphere has so much water vapor, that every frequency of IR that can be absorbed by it is already fully absorbed.

No; water vapor is worse at trapping infrared.

Sure, it causes most of our warming, but that's because we have so much of it, and it enters and leaves the atmosphere so quickly (average=10 days) that it functions as little more than an amplifier for the greenhouse effect of other gasses; it is a "feedback" effect rather than a "forcing" effect.

The first of my heresies says that all the fluff about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of twilight model experts and the crowd of diluted citizens that believe the numbers predicted by their models. Of course they say I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak.

Cry me a river.

But I have studied their climate models and know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics and do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields, farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in.

Show me the evidence.

The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That's why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

Ad hominem. And also, just plain wrong

There's no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global.

yes it is

I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I'm saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans.

Sorry, did anyone say that these issues were zero sum?

He also worked out a way to reverse global warming quite cheaply.

Possibly. It's a little more complicated than that.

I'm not even particularly opinionated on the issue of global warming, but this guy's said nothing, i repeat nothing in the above paragraph to contribute, other than his own opinion. THAT's why his first sentence is so defensive.

Happily for us, according to a Canadian climate scientist, based on the sunspot cycles, we're due for global cooling to start in 2020, so I wouldn't sweat it.

Sadly, this has also been refuted many times.

He's also a politician, and he quotes Michael Crichton as an authority. He can't find an actual scientist to quote? Of course, they're all part of the Vast Anti-carbon Conspiracy. So can we rebut "State of Fear" with "The Day After Tomorrow"? At least the latter didn't pretend it was anything but fantasy.

See here for commentary on State of Fear

Why do you keep calling it a fakery, when its the "debunkers" who were ultimately debunked?

Look - I think you're probably completely serious. My father in law is a brilliant guy, a good guy, but watches Fox and is misinformed. He gets sucked into the Punch and Judy of the fox pundit shows, and unfortunately picks up some really shaky data.

The best resource I've found on the web manned by actual climate scientists is Realclimate.org. Like me, you'll probably discount it as an advocacy organization at first, but look at the qualifications of the writers on the blog, and read the actual articles. It's really, really solid. It's not equivocal about the existence of man-made climate change, but nor are climate scientists.

Your search - "study questions temperature proxy data" - did not match any documents.

Your search - canada "climate proxy is wrong" - did not match any documents.

By the way, which little god of mine are you talking about? The one Nietzsche "killed"?

"Many people claim it is the sun. Who do you believe?"

The question is not "who" but "what", I belive that science has the most usefull answers. The link I pointed to represents one of the most rigourous scientific investigations ever undertaken.

People who say "the sun did it" obviously have not looked at figure SPM2 in the 2007 IPCC SPM. I thank you for the links and offer one of my own that I have found very informative. It is also worth noting that the site is run by world renowned climatologists who have had some input into the IPCC reports, so what you get is "straight from the horses mouth" so to speak.

We're talking about trade policy, and, wow, you managed to work in global warming, "the media" and George Soros. I salute you, winger.

Anyhoo.. you're totally wrong, or at least, at odds with the facts, since facts, truth, and debate in general occupy some fuzzy, extracranial space for people like you. The European Union numbers 500 million, or 2/3 larger than Am'rca, so there would most certainly be people to buy the damn imports. Europe's trade deficit with China is close to that of the United States, as you will find in this report by the Congressional Research Service dated January 4 of this year. Or you could just Google "china trade balance" and read the first 60 or so things that come up, it's all there.

Which brings me to what really tickles me pink about you, and others like you, viz. where do you get off being so self-righteous when you've obviously spent so little time actually reading primary source material and forming your own thoughts? Bill O'Reilly's talking points do not an argument make. Take that whole diatribe in the middle there, about global warming. Literally every point you make has been thoroughly refuted, and I'm not talking in a polemic, debatable fashion--you can go look these things up for yourself, and anyone who takes the time to do so (as I have) has to admit what you're saying is bunk. The 1970s Ice Age "consensus" consists of about 20 publications, almost all of them in the popular (not scientific) press. The notion that the medieval warm period compares to what we're seeing now is flat wrong. Solar radiation has been constant for the last 30 years, during which time the most significant warming has been recorded, so no correlation there. There is scant evidence that Mars is warming, and even if it is, human activity is a much more convincing explanation for our own warming. Etc. etc. etc.

That's not to say that convincing counterarguments to the anthropogenic warming hypothesis cannot be made, but these are not those, and you do not know them. Your slavish repetition of these canards makes it clear that you're not in the game for any sort of self-enlightenment, or desire to get at the truth, but simply to score points and massage your bruised ego by screaming at the George Soroses of the world. You're shouting at cars. Why? A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Because some don't buy into the media hype

Nope instead they buy the pseudo-science and bunkum of mockumentaries such as 'The Great Global Warming Swindle.'

My favorite(lately):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_Activity_ Proxies.png

That page has been linked in comments at real climate:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005 /07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/

(that article addresses the solar flare activity, but not the Be proxy)

My understanding was that the lead authors have final say on whether a change is acceptable or not. Mind you, the all night sessions just before the release of the summary due to Chinese and US delegates trying to water down some of the conclusions might have lead to lead authors finally giving in from sheer exhaustion, but they do have to give the final ok. See realclimate for a more complete discussion, but this also jibes with what those of my colleagues who were contributors to the IPCC draft chapters have told me...

First, his funding - yes, he gets a lot of money from public sources, undercutting the argument that the real reason that so many prominent climatologists support global warming theories is to get funding. As far as I know, he no longer gets money from oil and coal interests.

Secondly, his intentions - I believe that Lindzen is basically a good, honest scientist who believes what he says. I also think he's a regular human being (as are all scientists) who is capable of fooling himself. You can witness that by looking at some of his seemingly (to me, anyways) self-contradictory comments, but I'll get to those later.

Now, let's address the actual article in question:

There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true.

So, I've decided to go back through some previous things he's written, and I basically find the same pattern: he admits that humans are most likely contributing to global warming, but he neglects to even speculate as to how much. Why do you think that is? Or, if you think I've mischaracterized him, can you find any evidence to the contrary?

Finally, I'd like to stress that I am not a climatologist. However, other climatologists have critiqued his Newsweek article.

Finally, something about Lindzen that does make me ponder. Recently, the BBC attributed this to him:

This attitude has strong backing from Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who describes Exxon Mobil as "the only principled oil and gas company I know in the US."

Mars is irrelevant.

Didn't see the debunking of the global warming on Mars and the moons of the outer planets in our solar system occuring now too.

Oh, I don't know, maybe if you'd read the article you'd have found it?

RealClimate has also debunked that particular talking point.

"The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states."

Isolated the individual myths debunks could or not be strong enough... but combined is another matter. I.e. in the one that explains why CO2 is one of the most important greenhouses gases. Some of the other "global forcings" come and go, like with i.e. water vapour, but the CO2 takes time to be reabsorbed. The problem is maybe not just now, but what will happen if we keep going in the same way. Reading all as a whole could help.

You know, no single water drop can be made responsible for the flood, i agree that maybe CO2 alone, or even the one produced by humans alone couldnt make a big disaster, but in a somewhat self-balanced system if you keep pushing in the wrong direction things like points of no return happens, and worst case scenarios are always ugly.

~100 years of high SOLAR output seems to work...

Fixed that for you.

Given that I have personal access to two of the other people contained

I don't believe you.

and given that they're not reacting at all in the fashion Wikipedia claims,

Why should anyone believe the ramblings of some anonymous disturbed poster on slashdot over the people's public pronouncements?

Carl Wunsch is well known for being excitable.

Incredible that you should call ad hominem on someone else on this thread.

(snip some very naive confused ramblings based on misinformation)

can you point to any actual science that shows any good reason for the CO2 to have that lag

There are some papers referenced here.

Cite data or stop feigning familiarity.

I'm not feigning familiarity. I am not much more familiar with the science than you are, but the conclusions of the experts in the field who have studied the data are clear.

Global warming on Mars? No.

A few points that the simplistic "orb o' fire" theory overlooks:

1) Total solar irradiation hasn't increased noticeably since we started taking satellite measurements.

2) Mars is not Earth.

2a) We don't understand Martial climate nearly as well as Earth climate.

2b) We don't have global temperature measurements or global CO2 measurements for Mars.

2c) Martian atmosphere is much thinner than Earth atmosphere, leading to lower thermal inertia.

3) Regional changes (in this case at the poles) do not necessarily reflect global changes.

This is not a good talking point to be flinging about.

I've discussed the data and the theories with a number of people. It's useful to remember that global warming caused by CO2 is just a theory, based on two observations: First, the world is warming up. Second: observations of prior world temperature changes commensurate with observations of CO2 levels, and notably higher CO2 with higher temperatures. There is some evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, however there are much stronger greenhouse gases (i.e. methane) which we now produce at industrial levels.

The consequences are numerous. First, we may not address the actual problem that is causing global warming. Second, we may cause huge social and economic consequences for no benefit. Third, if there is no benefit, any future notion of relying upon "scientific evidence" may be viewed skeptically by the masses.

Dude, do you see ANY dinosaurs around here, saying, "Global warming will be just great for us, so bring it on?"

No. To put it bluntly, those creatures that were adapted to such warm weather have all gone extinct. The ecosystems that exist now will not be able to adjust to such a warming spike easily. Some won't be able to adapt at all.

By the way, for future reference: the whole "we can't be altering the planet because insects outweigh us" is just about the dumbest argument I've ever heard. That's about like saying "Bush can't be harming the country. In fact, he can't affect the country at all. He's just one guy, compared to five million homeless people! You want to blame somebody? Blame the hobos!"

Rising CO2 is mankind's fault. Case closed.

here

But fuck it, it's a Friday afternoon and I don't feel like digging up all the necessary smackdown data. Looks like I'm going with the goatse link anyway.

Goatse.cx

Or, at least, its functional equivalents to someone like stonecypher.

On the Greenland ice sheet, the IPCC report is being mischaracterized by Spiegel's reporter. There are also a handful of quotes from scientists about the imperfections and difficulties in climate models, which imply that those researchers share the reporter's skepticism about whether what the models say should be taken at all seriously. But do they? Or are they just being honest scientists describing their awareness of the limitations of their tools, who yet take seriously the likely threat that the best of those tools describe? At best, they are quoted out of context.

As for fewer deaths from the cold, surely we should remember the tens of thousands of deaths from the European heat wave a few summers ago. Then consider the NASA report just published estimating that by 2080 East Coast American cities which currently have summer temperatures in the the 80s with occasional spikes into the 90s will instead have typical temperatures in the 90s with occasional spikes into the 100s. What effect will that have on health? Have you tried breathing New York City ozone on a 95 degree day? What will that be like when it's 105 instead? How will it burn your lungs?

Vostok ice core data: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/ vostok/vostok.html
CO2 concentrations over the last 600000 years: http://www.realclimate.org/epica.jpg

Sadly, I can't find the graph that superposes the temperature record over the CO2 record. I'm sure another 30 minutes of googling for it will yield it.

The spike is over the last 150 years or so, and basic modeling techniques show you that it is abnormal. All your questions can be answered by looking through the two graphs I provided you.

Alright, I exaggerated when I said that our CO2 output dwarfs all natural emissions. You're right, that's probably wrong. However, our emissions are currently not being absorbed as fast as they are generated, and total concentrations are rising quite nicely. That's the key part - we are putting stuff into the regular cycle that doesn't get absorbed.

I know you don't think that it's affecting the earth. You still haven't given a reason why, despite the well known physics of infrared absorption, which are described quite nicely here: http://teaching.shu.ac.uk/hwb/chemistry/tutorials/ molspec/irspec1.htm
The data about CO2 affecting infrared radiation from earth can be found here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142, and at the Wikipedia article about greenhouse gases. If you object to the sources, you can always check the referenced literature.

I've got plenty of data. I can pull data for days. Where's yours? Where's your peer reviewed article? All you have is a few people who had to get a BBC documentary made, because people kept laughing at their theories and wouldn't bother publishing their papers. BTW, I've seen the BBC documentary - the data referenced in there, as well as the analysis thereof, has been widely discredited. For something real, read the IPCC reports: start here (http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/pub.htm), and don't stop until the end. Then come back.

Oh, and just for the heck of it, because I like Woods Hole and a friend of mine worked there, here's a little summary they threw together about the CO2 data collected: http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/ warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm

Again - where's your data?

Vostok ice core data: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/ vostok/vostok.html
CO2 concentrations over the last 600000 years: http://www.realclimate.org/epica.jpg

Sadly, I can't find the graph that superposes the temperature record over the CO2 record. I'm sure another 30 minutes of googling for it will yield it.

The spike is over the last 150 years or so, and basic modeling techniques show you that it is abnormal. All your questions can be answered by looking through the two graphs I provided you.

Alright, I exaggerated when I said that our CO2 output dwarfs all natural emissions. You're right, that's probably wrong. However, our emissions are currently not being absorbed as fast as they are generated, and total concentrations are rising quite nicely. That's the key part - we are putting stuff into the regular cycle that doesn't get absorbed.

I know you don't think that it's affecting the earth. You still haven't given a reason why, despite the well known physics of infrared absorption, which are described quite nicely here: http://teaching.shu.ac.uk/hwb/chemistry/tutorials/ molspec/irspec1.htm
The data about CO2 affecting infrared radiation from earth can be found here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142, and at the Wikipedia article about greenhouse gases. If you object to the sources, you can always check the referenced literature.

I've got plenty of data. I can pull data for days. Where's yours? Where's your peer reviewed article? All you have is a few people who had to get a BBC documentary made, because people kept laughing at their theories and wouldn't bother publishing their papers. BTW, I've seen the BBC documentary - the data referenced in there, as well as the analysis thereof, has been widely discredited. For something real, read the IPCC reports: start here (http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/pub.htm), and don't stop until the end. Then come back.

Oh, and just for the heck of it, because I like Woods Hole and a friend of mine worked there, here's a little summary they threw together about the CO2 data collected: http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/ warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm

Again - where's your data?

In the part of the "Swindle" film where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous---because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important --- diametrically opposite to the point I was making --- which is that global warming is both real and threatening in many different ways, some unexpected.

"Because the skeptics have to prove an arguement, rather than the "Scientists" have to prove their findings beyond doubt....Sorry, buddy, I live in reality, where scientific claims have to be backed up with proof instead of mass acceptance"

You may "live in reality" but your mind shows no sign of such constraints.
To anyone formally/self educated in the philosophy and practice of science, your posts are simply demonstrating you do not know the meaning of the words "skepticisim" and "science" and seem clueless as to how they relate to each other, the inescapable conclusion is you do not have the skills to practice either. (Hint: Proof is for mathemeticians, and "mass acceptance" is an intergral part of the scientific method that leads to terms such as "science says...", "established science", ect. "The scientific method" == "formalised skepticisim")

After consulting a reputable dictionary and then spending the next decade or so learning what it is that you are trying to discredit, you may want to try debunking this conservative but well known body of evidence. If a decade is too long then talk to some of the scientists about SPECIFICS.

"50 years ago we were talking about global cooling....the most outlandish predictions talk about a change of 5 degrees...."

Also if you are going to paraphrase ancient "talking points" at least try and get the temprature and timeframe right. Your post is so wrong it's almost funny but the joke is ruined by the fact that a large chunk of the population would see nothing wrong with your line of reasoning and many more would unknowingly dishonour the memory of Sagan by calling you a "skeptic".

That I find that many GW skeptics do the former. That is to say they raise legitimate questions of the empirical data. They question the methods used, such as using computer models to "prove" things (a model doesn't prove anything), the data gathered, the understanding of the system and so on. They bring up extremely valid points. However the response always seems to be the same: They are shouted down.

That's fine as far as it goes. And especially when it coincides with erring on the side of caution, it can be useful.

The problem I have with even a lot of the people in this camp is that it often looks like they're not actively developing a more useful conceptual framework for understanding climate change. The purpose of their questions doesn't seem to be to provoke thought or produce illumination.

The purpose simple seems to be to call existing understanding into doubt, and to prevent action based on it.

And then it gets taken to the popular sphere, where it absolutely IS, no question, used by industry shills, political entertainers, and other manipulators of the public mindset.

If the people who are getting shouted down want to be taken seriously, they're going to have to work harder on both fronts: gather better data, produce clearly better models. And they're going to have make the implications of their work clear, so that they don't find themselves being used in the same breath as those who say "Hah! Global warming my navel! I woke up this morning and there was a foot of snow!"

It's a rough road, but it's the real road travelled by those who've been able to fight existing consensus and shift paradigms.

From what I've seen, the skeptics do their best to present very well reasoned criticisms and questions of the accepted knowledge. The defenders are the ones that act unscientific and just shout the other side down.

I'm sure there is simple shouting down going on, as surely as there absolutely people who are living examples of the "Global warming my navel" crowd I mentioned before, and real industry shills.

There are, by the same token, people who are happy to genuinely argue the scientific case. For example, the sun-driven theory of climate change has been around for a while, and its critics aren't simply ignoring it:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=180

When the science of the skeptics can be called into question, as it often can be, the shoe should be worn on the other foot.

In the part of the "Swindle" film where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous---because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important --- diametrically opposite to the point I was making --- which is that global warming is both real and threatening in many different ways, some unexpected.

The scientific community generally regards Milankovitch cycles as being in large part responsible for non-industrial era warming. Yet, when it comes to industrial era warming, proponents of human-caused global climate change say that CO2 emissions are driving temperature. This is a logical departure from the previous theory because it readjusts causality.

Actually, a lot of climate scientists do tackle the questions of solar and orbital cycles effecting, and temperature causing CO2 emissions at the start of historical warming cycles rather than the other way around.

With regards to the lady in question from the original poster, I agree with the AC. Could we have a name to verify the claim? Does she still claim this more than 10 years later? If so, resubmit. There is an enormous amount of scientific research being done in this area, and there are organizations willing to fund research debunking global warming (mainly in the petrolium industry)... I don't mean this as a smear, honestly, I am serious. No matter where the funding is coming from, if the research is sound and stands up to scrutiny it would make her world famous. It would also be a big relief for me actually, it would remove a great cause of worry for me.

RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.