I couldn't give a puck about the hockey stick

I've resisted for several days, but with it was with a deep sigh that I realised I was going to have to write something about Hurricane Katrina. With politicians on both sides of the Atlantic on holiday there's sod all else in the news at the moment, and since most of my readers know my chosen career they probably expect it. I messed around for a bit with a few gags about Louisiana residents walking on sunshine, but to to be honest my heart wasn't in it.

Why my reluctance to jump on Katrina (if you'll pardon the pun)? Because I knew as soon as I saw the news that another dreary 'climate change' debate would be kicked off. As I believe I've already stated, my profession is plagued by the dismally stupid and uninformed opinions of the general public. Take the example of a Mr BUSHLOVERTWO, who confidently asserts that '...if global warming is causing the polar ice caps to melt, the water in the gulf would be cooler...not hotter...' I suggested he try heating a mixture of ice and water in a saucepan to see what happens, but his reply was not particularly erudite.

I've done my best to educate people, I really have. When I first started this gig, I had all sorts of high ideals about how people could be engaged by climatology - the Simon Schama of storms, the David Attenborough of atmospheric science. The fact is though, that in the climate change debate most people don't particularly want to informed. They're not interested in the state of current climate modeling, the atmosphere's inherently chaotic nature, or the limits or merits of the available data. Just as people prefer to moan about the quality of weather forecasts rather than hear about the technical issues regarding them, most people made their mind up about anthropogenic climate change ten years ago, and any research that gets picked up by the wire services is just blindly referenced or spuriously challenged by the underemployed of the world wide web.

To be honest, as a group climate scientists have done an awful lot to help the media destroy our own reputation. The endlessly tedious debate over Mann et al's 'hockey stick' climate reconstruction has become the icon of global warming, despite the fact that their findings were neither unique nor particularly informative. Similarly, an eminent climate analyst just down the corridor has had his name in the newspapers for stating publicly, without any evidence whatsoever, his theories on hurricanes and climate change as fact. He should have been massively censured by the scientific community, instead there was just a bit of growling and chest-beating amongst the silverbacks.

Global warming activist, or CO2 skeptic, they're all fucking up our research. As my mother says, don't meddle in things you don't (or refuse to) understand.

The Captain's Climate Charter
In order to show that I (grudgingly) accept that some of you have a brain, I'll cut my readers this deal. If anyone has any questions about climate change, then feel free to ask them via the Captain's mailbox. I won't answer them, because you don't need me to form your opinions for you, but I will post relevant links so that you can make up your own mind.