Two climate shorts - Phil Jones joins Tautology Club, and a new blog debuts

1.  Refer to this XKCD comic on Tautology Club.  Climatologist Phil Jones got a little sloppy and joined the Club when he said this to the BBC:

Of course, if the MWP [Medieval Warm Period] was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented.

Tautologies like that are a waste of space, but that's a minor sin.   BBC should've pressed him on it, but they were halfway into Tautology Club themselves through the preceding question asking if the MWP was global then does it become the precedent.  The geographic reach of the MWP is one of the major unresolved questions about that period.

Of course, the mortal sin is from lying rightwing journalists whose lines are parroted elsewhere, and twist the tautology into an admission that the MWP "may have been" warmer than today.


2.  A new enviro blog from some friends, particularly relevant to Californians and Bay Area folks, called Green/the New IPO.  Good stuff about climate change evasion by the California GOP, among other issues.  Also on the same target is how California's AB32 law to fight climate change, the one now being targeted by the bad guys, is crucial in the fight against California's significant air pollution problems.