- Yay, a hurricane! Scientific American mourns on Oct. 7 that “The Atlantic hurricane season has been eerily quiet – Tropical Storm Isaias could change that”. Why exactly it’s eerie that people’s houses are not being blown away with loss of life and limb is unclear. But hooray, soon there could be death and devastation. And on Oct. 8 Heatmap, which had had to get by with a mere “powerful nor’easter storm” to this point, celebrated that “In the Gulf of Mexico, Tropical Storm Isaias officially strengthened into the first Atlantic hurricane of the season this morning.” Thank goodness for small mercies, right? (And no, we’re not being unfair; the New York Times seized on that same nor’easter to write “El Niño effect: This is likely to be the first of several East Coast storms to follow this path over the next few months, driven by a developing El Niño weather pattern.” Woot.
- From the “settled science” file, Phys.org declares that “Overlooked lakes may be helping to keep the Northern Hemisphere cool”. Unless they’re not, of course. News stories work better if they’re telling you something happened, not that it might have. And what did happen here is that some researchers said an important aspect of climate science is poorly understood: “Dr. Sarah Cooley of Duke University and colleagues say their results highlight an overlooked part of Earth’s climate system that could be better represented in climate models, which scientists use to understand how the planet responds to changing environmental conditions.” Or not understand it, since they don’t work. Or “Researchers call for more money for their research.” Which carefully hews to the party line: “the findings do not mean that lakes can offset the effects of global warming.” Because nothing can except giving politicians more money and power. In which case what could go wrong?
- Oh heh heh that seismic activity. Remember when in the aftermath of the Nepal-Tibet flooding disaster we were assured that the land was solid and immobile until we invented climate? Well, now we read that “Scientists discover that Earth’s crust has repeatedly rolled over – and it’s still happening”. Egad. And we read it in Scientific American, among the offenders though not the worst on that suddenly-there’s-instability nonsense. But of course it’s common sense that the planet is scarily dynamic including “Several times since the age of dinosaurs, the solid part of our planet has rolled over, drowning some continents and lifting others out of the sea…. Incredibly, a new Science study finds this massive upheaval has happened to our planet at least four times in the past 320 million years. And it’s still ongoing.” No. Not incredibly. Very credibly. So bear it in mind next time someone says, or implies, that everything was just placid and Edenic until the invention of the infernal combustion engine.
- New Scientist forgets its manners and writes “Inhaling high-dose CO2 clears Alzheimer’s proteins from the brain”. What? Don’t they know it’s “carbon pollution”?
- Although we deniers have all the money, the New York Times is delighted that “Marika Holland, a climate scientist focused on sea ice” just got a no-strings-attached John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants worth $800,000. And “Three of the fellows this year [out of 20] work on climate issues.” On the other hand we’re not sure what remains for her to do since she told the Times that “We’re living through the climate changes that the models have predicted, right? We predicted these changes decades ago, honestly. And now we’re living though them. And so I think climate science is really important, understanding what’s in store, what’s to come in the future.” But you predicted it decades ago so you do understand it, presumably. Except “we need large national centers to help us answer those questions.” Or lonely geniuses working in large national centers like NCAR to reinforce orthodox dogma. “This last year, there were climate disasters happening across the globe. Those are the kind of things that we need to understand and study.” Except that you just said the models predicted them years ago. Still, send money.
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Tidbits
14 Oct 2026 | News Roundup
"she told the Times that “We’re living through the climate changes that the models have predicted, right?
that is correct
the average climate model when programmed with actual CO2 growth represents the consensus opinion as of the late 1970s
the average prediction was +0.2°C a rise in temperature per decade and the actual surface increase of temperature per decade was +0.2°C per decade