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"THE United Nation's latest investigation into climate change reportedly admits the world has been warming at only just over half the rate it had claimed in 2007. According to the UK's Daily Mail newspaper, a leaked draft of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) latest assessment of the state of the climate and global warming - AR5 - says the earth has been warming at a rate of 0.12C each decade since 1951. But it says the last major IPCC report, released in 2007 and called AR4, claimed the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade." See also http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/16/climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial

"To some, the existence and consequences of global warming and climate change seems obvious while to others, the eco-friendly movement appears to be a mass-hysteria response to sensationalized hype. Where do you stand on this great debate? Here is a complete guide to both sides of the global warming issue. Read on to see which point of view makes more sense to you."

"Last week, the New York Times reported that venerable Dow Jones Industrial Average component Coca-Cola Co. was awakening to the impact of climate change on its business. The increase in unpredictable weather, droughts, floods and other climate-related events was disrupting the company's product supply. Some of their "essential ingredients" are now under threat. Global warming, according to the article, is being seen "as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk." This debate is no longer about whether global warming is real (it is) or whether humans are the most likely cause (you are), but rather, some very interesting and different questions that might be more professionally relevant to finance: How is this going to affect business? What are the investing consequences? Who will be the financial winners and losers of climate change?"

"The World Meteorological Organization just released its Global Climate Report (pdf), which wastes no time in announcing a stark truth. The report's first sentence: "The first decade of the 21st century was the warmest decade recorded since modern measurements began around 1850." Nine out of ten years between 2001 and 2010 were among the ten warmest in recorded history, according to the report, and the warmest year to date was 2010. For those worried about glacier melting, the heat spike wasn't isolated to land. The decade was warmest for both land and ocean surface temperatures. In case anyone still doubts the existence of global warming, take a gander at this chart:"

"Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown,' said Reuters. But warming is speeding up, and scientists can explain it"

"The cooling of eastern Pacific Ocean waters has been counteracting the warming effect of greenhouse gases. Our research, released today in Nature, shows this natural variability in ocean cycles is responsible for the "hiatus" in global warming over the last ten years or so."

"One of the most common misunderstandings amongst climate change "skeptics" is the difference between short-term noise and long-term signal.  This animation shows how the same temperature data (green) that is used to determine the long-term global surface air warming trend of 0.16°C per decade (red) can be used inappropriately to "cherrypick" short time periods that show a cooling trend simply because the endpoints are carefully chosen and the trend is dominated by short-term noise in the data (blue steps).  Isn't it strange how five periods of cooling can add up to a clear warming trend over the last 4 decades?  Several factors can have a large impact on short-term temperatures, such as oceanic cycles like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the 11-year solar cycle.  These short-term cycles don't have long-term effects on the Earth's temperature, unlike the continuing upward trend caused by global warming from human greenhouse gas emissions."

"I'm back, with the controversial topic of the so-called 'pause' in global warming. Some parts of the news media incorrectly claim that the climate is no longer warming, but is actually cooling. They get to this conclusion by everything from cherry-picking the data, all the way up to telling big fat fibs."

"Global drought has not increased significantly over the past 60 years, a report in Nature has found. Previous assessments of global drought have relied on the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which only accounts for temperature, and does not consider sunlight, humidity or wind. These assessments have falsely indicated that global drought will increase as the planet warms. The paper's authors show that when these additional factors are included, worldwide drought has actual changed very little since 1950."

"The global conveyer belt is part of the large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by differences in the density of the waters. It plays a key role in keeping the climate at balance and Europe warm. Global warming may change it forever with unforeseeable consequences. "

"THE frequency of tropical cyclones is at its lowest level in 1500 years in Western Australia and the lowest in 550 years in Queensland, a team of researchers has found. The new study also shows the number of cyclones lashing Australia has dropped greatly since the industrial revolution, suggesting that global warming might be causing a decline in the extreme events sooner than expected. A team of scientists led by Jordahna Haig, of James Cook University in Queensland, will publish their results in the British journal Nature today"

"Ocean warming has already affected global fisheries in the past four decades, a new international study has found, driving up the proportion of warm-water fish being caught and posing a threat to food security worldwide."

"Today, the most comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed climate research to date was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Our analysis found that among papers expressing a position on human-caused global warming, over 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. Overwhelming agreement among scientists had already formed in the early 1990s. And the consensus is getting stronger."

"In Spring 2013, we conducted our latest national survey on Americans' climate change and energy beliefs, attitudes, policy support, and behavior. The first report focuses on Americans' beliefs about extreme weather and climate change. We found that about six in ten Americans (58%) say "global warming is affecting weather in the United States." Many Americans believe global warming made recent extreme weather and climatic events "more severe," specifically: 2012 as the warmest year on record in the United States (50%); the ongoing drought in the Midwest and the Great Plains (49%); Superstorm Sandy (46%); and Superstorm Nemo (42%). We also found that about two out of three Americans say weather in the U.S. has been worse over the past several years, up 12 percentage points since Spring 2012. The report can be downloaded here: Extreme Weather and Climate Change in the American Mind, April 2013."

Here is a summary of global warming and climate change myths, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. Click the response for a more detailed response. You can also view them sorted by taxonomy, by popularity, in a print-friendly version, with short URLs or with fixed numbers you can use for permanent references.

"The fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is due out on September 27th, and is expected to reaffirm with growing confidence that humans are driving global warming and climate change. In anticipation of the widespread news coverage of this esteemed report, climate contrarians appear to be in damage control mode, trying to build up skeptical spin in media climate stories." See also http://www.news.com.au/national-news/global-warming-forecasts-wrong-says-un-report/story-fncynjr2-1226720435324

"In its draft form, the fought-over paragraph declared that, to have the best chance of not exceeding the international target for global warming of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, society can burn no more than about 1 trillion tons of carbon, in the form of fossil fuels, and spew the resulting gases into the atmosphere. More than half that carbon budget has been used already. Moreover, the draft made it clear that if countries want to be safe and take account of other gases that are warming the planet, the carbon budget would be even less than a trillion tons. At the rate things are going, we will exceed the budget in 30 years or fewer."

"Global warming has propelled Earth's climate from one of its coldest decades since the last ice age to one of its hottest -- in just one century. A heat spike like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years, said climatologist Shaun Marcott, who worked on a new study on global temperatures going back that far."

A clear change in salinity has been detected in the world's oceans, signalling shifts and an acceleration in the global rainfall and evaporation cycle. In a paper published today in the journal Science, Australian scientists from the CSIRO and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, reported changing patterns of salinity in the global ocean during the past 50 years, marking a clear fingerprint of climate change.

"The world experienced unprecedented high-impact climate extremes during the 2001-2010 decade, which was the warmest since the start of modern measurements in 1850 and continued an extended period of pronounced global warming. More national temperature records were reported broken than in any previous decade, according to a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The report, The Global Climate 2001-2010, A Decade of Climate Extremes, analysed global and regional temperatures and precipitation, as well as extreme events such as the heat waves in Europe and Russia, Hurricane Katrina in the United States of America, Tropical Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, droughts in the Amazon Basin, Australia and East Africa and floods in Pakistan."