In the mean time ...

I will indeed be getting back to the simplest climate model, including that comment from Nick Barnes that got clobbered by my fingers being fatter than my smartphone buttons. (Deleted rather than approved message, fortunately I still have it in email.)

While waiting for that, some video suggested by Hank Roberts in a comment a fair while back (December 9th, 2011):

Recommending -- from the AGU videos, Ben Santer on Steve Schneider.
He begins with a memorial -- Steve Schneider is part of history.
He goes on to a teaching story.
http://vimeo.com/33387515
CG43G : AGU Fall Meeting 2011

AGU is the American Geophysical Union. I was surprised when, a while back, someone congratulated me on my 25 years as a member. They do some good work there. I just didn't realize that I was that old.

Different recommendations, also from Hank:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/MSU_cherries.gif might be a nice illustration for your discussion of results on deciding trends; it's from http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=3&t=130&&n=1005

Also a re-recommendation of the very cool slider graph tool here -- page down to get to it:
http://sciblogs.co.nz/hot-topic/2009/10/20/%E2%80%A6keep-out-of-the-kitchen/

During the multitudinous-record-setting month of March (for the US, at least) anonymous mentioned http://www.wunderground.com/climate/extremes.asp, which is a nice place to check out record temperatures and precipitation.


In a different mean time matter, I am starting to take http://penguindreams.wordpress.com/ live. There is much sawing and hammering still to do, but there are also a couple of real posts there already. My plan has always been for that blog to be the place where I don't restrain my use of math and scientific language. Questions are still, as always, welcome, including on that scientific language. If you don't have an intuitive idea already of what a Rossby radius is, do ask. Just that over there, I won't examine my language for such terms and go for verbal instead of mathematical descriptions. For those who'd like to get more in to guts of the science, a la scienceofdoom, that'll be the more apt place. If you think this blog is already scarily mathematical, that place might best be one to leave to other readers. The most recent note there is nonmathematical, just promises (threatens?) math to come. No plans to abandon this one. Just that sometimes things come up, such as Nick's questions/comments, where it would be easier to just whip out the mathematics straight off.

Also, now that I'm catching back up here (partial blame to my son who introduced me to World of Warcraft :-), there are answers showing up to long-asked questions. Or at least responses. Please check the 'recent comments' links below for yours Jacob.