Arctic sea ice flatline

Usually September is the month that gets everyone checking out the arctic sea ice pictures daily, and this is just weather, but it’s interesting. 
Mark Serreze has a commentary at Roger Pielke’s site on the developments.

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Skeptics/Denialists Part 2: Hotspots and Repetition

In Part 1 I discussed the difference between skeptics and denialists. Not a few hours after I did that, I read a post over at Deltoid where Tim Lambert talks about a popular subject: Hotspots (no, nothing to do with geology).

Will the real skeptics please stand up?

Chris wants to ask the age-old question: what separates denialists from skeptics? There are no scientific studies that unequivocally show particular people are being dishonest, and all people (even scientists) are prone to mistakes, so the existence of a bad publication doesn’t show that someone is pushing an agenda. Being “skeptical” is a job that all scientists have, and although the term may have a bad name attached to it in global warming debates, it’s actually a very honorable title to have and it’s difficult to find any scientist who is not skeptical of a lot.

This is of course different than simply plugging your fingers in your ears and denying any evidence put in your face.

An update to Kiehl and Trenberth 1997

Kiehl and Trenberth 1997 is a widely cited document on the Earth’s global, annual energy budget and discusses important things like how much solar radiation comes in, how much is reflected away, how much infrared goes out, how the surface energy budget is partitioned between radiative and the latent and sensible heat fluxes, etc. The authors (along with J. T. Fasullo) have a new, 2008 paper on the same subject—and a new colorful diagram to go along with it.  These values are all globally and annually averaged, with the “net absorbed” part of 0.9 W/m² due to the enhanced greenhouse effect.

Update— Actually it will be a 2009 paper, coming out in BAMS in March.