Week in review

by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week

Policy/Politics
Barackobama.com releases list of “climate deniers”, encourages you to go after them. [link]
Climate change activists dismiss fossil fuel divestment push as waste of time, resources [link]
Republicans To Investigate Climate Data Tampering By NASA [link]
WhiteHouse names @dpatil first ever Chief Data Scientist [link]
Disasters wanted: “too much capital in the reinsurance industry is chasing too few risks” [link]
“8 ways Obama sucks on climate” [link]
India can lead fight against global warming, say PM Narendra Modi [link]
Climate scientist Alan Robock raises suspicions about spy agencies interest in his geoengineering research [link]
Energy
Bjorn Lomborg: Electric car benefits? Just myths [link]
Benefits of Electric Vehicles are real [link]
Electric groups warn of power shortages with power-plant rule [link]
BP says huge rise in energy demand at odds with climate change fight [link]
75% Of International Experts View Germany’s Energiewende As A Threat To European Power Supply Stability [link]
Science
Op-ed on how dietary science was “settled” and then it wasnt and how that may be true for climate science [link]
2011 email conversation with Freeman Dyson about climate change [link]
Were model predictions of #ElNiño a bust? The answer at the @NOAAClimate #ENSO blog may surprise you. [link]
What pushes scientists to lie? The disturbing but familiar story of Haruko Obokata (great long read) [link]
New paper finds Greenland ice sheet minimum extent occurred 3000-5000 years ago [link]
Australian Academy of Science quotes unusually weak solar activity as a reason for the post 2001 temperature slowdown [link]
New @eapsMIT and @WHOI research reveals hidden deep-ocean carbon cycle with implications for #climatechange [link]
Climate Wars
The paper published by Monckton et al. Why models run hot is creating quite a stir.  Matt Briggs writes about the bizarre reaction by climate reporters [link] advertised by this tweet: Proof That Climate Reporters Are Uniformly Ignorant And Can’t Differentiate Science & Politics, and responds to a critique by Kevin Trenberth [link].
Climatedialogue.com has ended.  Final report published on the evaluation of the controversial Climate Dialogue project [link]. The controversy is associated with the ‘false balance’ of inviting skeptics, which is discussed at ATTP.  I am a big supporter of Climate Dialogue, and got into extensive twitter discussions with ATTP et al.  Can you imagine a physicist or chemist refusing to participate in a dialogue about their research with a published scientist having a different perspective, over a fear of ‘false balance’?
IPCC Chair Rachendra Pachauri is in seriously hot water over sexual harassment charges:

  • Delingpole: World’s Most Famous Yogic Railway Engineer in Hacking Scandal [link]
  • India Today:  RK Pachauri to be summoned by India police soon [link]
  • Reuters: UN climate panel chief Pachauri accused of sexual harassment [link]
  • Pointman’s analysis [link]
  • Spotlight on RK Pachauri’s steamy literary past [link]
  • Best tweet:  Is this the ‘tax return’ that brings down the Capone of Climate?  links to Donna LaFramboise’s analysis [link]

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