Contradictory denier arguments
A key reason why I refuse to call deniers skeptics, is because they are not skeptical of claims which they think support the notion that global warming is not real. Or is not a problem. Any claim that supports this notion is accepted without any critical thought, even if it contradicts other claims they have accepted before.
This was recently highlighted by a commenter who said:
Bad news from the not-cold-enough arctic
Quote of the day
The climate science conspiracy being proposed would require very smart and very sinister people, if for no other reason than the necessity of getting all the national science academies on board. But smart and sinister people have better ways of making money than getting Ph.D.s and postdocs and ultimately striving for tenure at the meteorology department at Penn State or East Anglia. –Michael Tobis
Climate change: The big picture
This video presents a good summary of the multiple lines of evidence that underpin the conclusion of the IPCC and other reports that our greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for the recent warming trend.
Anyone who claims there is no empirical evidence for man-made global warming, has their head firmly in the sand.
Quote of the day
Debates are extremely useful for discussing matters that require human judgement. But pointless for establishing what is true of the physical world… If anyone wants to debate the existence or seriousness of anthropogenic climate change, I’d give the same response as I would if they wanted to debate the existence or strength of gravity. –Steve Easterbrook
Study that underestimates sea level rise pulled, deniers cheer… huh?
Want proof that deniers are not making scientific (or even coherent) arguments? Well take a look at their reaction to a study by Mark Siddall et al. that was recently retracted. Actually we need to go back a bit further to when this particular study was first published.
Quote of the day
Unfortunately, conspiracy theories are easy to disseminate. Many are willing to accept these theories at face value. The distribution of facts on complex scientific issues is a slower, more difficult process. -Ben Santer
Read his whole essay, it is well worth it.
The Lomborg Deception
Not surprising for those who have paid attention to Lomborg over the years. His favourite trick is to claim he agrees with the IPCC then consistently lie about what the IPCC said.
A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It(in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we’re grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg’s work is "a mirage," writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. "[I]t is a house of cards…Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature" of Lomborg’s work…
When Friel began checking Lomborg’s sources, "I found problems," he says. "As an experiment, I looked up one of his footnotes, found that it didn’t support what he said, and then did another, and kept going, finding the same pattern." He therefore took on the Augean stables undertaking of checking every one of the hundreds of citations in Cool It. Friel’s conclusion, as per his book’s title, is that Lomborg is "a performance artist disguised as an academic."
Also see here for a list of error’s found in his first book, the Skeptical Environmentalist.
Accountability
Scientific research labs and institutions are held accountable for what they publish and the media will actually criticize them for any mistakes. They simply couldn’t get away producing and publishing anything near as low quality as the SPPI analysis of the CRU emails. Even the investigative team that is reviewing the CRU emails is under scrutiny.
In contrast, none of the usual denialist outlets have any accountability. They can’t be discredited even if they deserve it. Noone writes headlines when Watt’s screws up. Same with the Heartland Institute and SPPI. Noone writes headlines when an analysis like the one the SPPI published gets spread like wildfire. The deniosphere have a lack of oversight. Anyone can say what they want of course – even really ridiculous things – but they should be justly held to account and widely discredited if they do say ridiculous things or behave badly (it’s overdue).
It’s ironic of course that a lot of denialist’s appeal to immense levels of accountability from the likes of the IPCC and the CRU, without demanding any of themselves.
1995gate and statistical significance
Did global warming stop in 1995? Of course not, but that is not what one gets from reading articles in the more irresponsible media outlets who report that:
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
[Phil Jone] said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.
The bold text is the headline. Note how it differs from the article text by omitting ‘statistically significant’. The headline is completely wrong there has been no U-turn, this is exactly what one would expect, while the article is only misleading. Most denier claims also omit ‘statistically significant’, and are equally as wrong.
This ‘shocking admission’ comes from an interview of Jones done by the BCC where they ask some rather odd questions, including the following:
Lies, damn lies, and fake quotes
The smoking gun of evidence that climate scientists are exaggerating their claims has been shown to be a complete fabrication:
Home sweet home
I am back from my trip to the loveliest fleet of islands anchored in the pacific, and while I didn’t find them to be that exactly, they were indeed nice, if over-developed. It’s good to be home, and the Olympic atmosphere is great, even if the weather is absurdly warm. I was out in a t-shirt yesterday… in February! Wacky!
I’ll have some pictures posted soon.
The electric car and the grid
It’s a win win… except for the pollution caused by battery manufacturing and disposal.
Climategate from the eye of the storm
Phill Jones the director of CRU has been at the eye of the storm since the CRU email hack last November, and it hasn’t been pretty.
Given that people have been willing to toss out the entire cannon of climate science because of these emails (not that they revealed anything that invalidates the science), it seems that we should at least listen to Pill Jones’ side of the story:
Errors in the IPCC and perspective
It was inevitable. The IPCC AR4 is over 3000 pages long, there are bound to be some errors contained within. But some perspective is needed when they are found; jumping to the conclusion that any error in the IPCC is proof that climate science is bunk, or that global warming is a sham is absurd.
Cool Mr Watts
Last year, NOAA issued a comment indicating that the temperature record produced only by the weather stations that Watts’ surfacestation.org project classified as good or best was statistically equivalent to the whole temperature record. This indicated that the question Watts had asked about the reliability of the surface temperature records (and it was a good question) was answered; it just wasn’t the answer Watts was looking for. According to the criteria set out by Watts and his surfacestation.org project the surface record was reliable.
There was just one problem, the comment made by NOAA wasn’t very detailed. Now the paper On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record (Menne 2010) has been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research looks at the issue in greater detail, and the results are definitely not what Watts has in mind. The poorly sited weather station show a slight cooling bias!
Mann exonerated, deniers claim this proves a conspiracy
Michael Mann (of the hockey stick fame) has been exonerated by Penn state in in its inquiry into Mann’s actions in light of the recent leaked emails. Here is what they found:
Going away
I am going away for a while, and might not have time/internet access readily available, so posting will slow to a craw, if not completely halt. Also I am turning on comment moderation to keep the trolls and spammers at bay, so be patient if your comment doesn’t appear immediately.
I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.
Why we need to cut emissions today, not tomorrow
The longer we wait to cut emissions, the more drastic our emissions cuts will have to be in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. Had we listened to the warnings of scientists in the 80s the reductions needed would have have been relatively easy to achieve. Had we taken the emissions targets of the Kyoto protocol seriously, our task would have been easier. Instead we waited, and are now faced with a problem that seems insurmountable, yet tomorrow it will be even more difficult to solve.
Steve Easterbrook explains why clearly and succinctly:
Climatologist criticizes IPCC, says its conclusions are valid
News has been making the rounds that respected Canadian climatologist Andrew Weaver has throw his hat behind those that criticize the IPCC. And in some respects he has done just that, but importantly he has not called into question the science included in the IPCC reports, nor the conclusion that our GHG emissions are responsible for the recent warming trend.
Banks move away from emissions trading
Amazon(non)gate
Once more, we find that the IPCC WG2 made an error. Only the error is not what is being trumpeted by deniers.
There was a dire warning in chapter 13 of the report of IPCC Working Group II:
"Up to 40% of Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation," it observed.
"It is more probable that forests will be replaced by ecosystems that have more resistance to multiple stresses caused by temperature increase, droughts and fires, such as tropical savannas."
Closer inspection reveals that the authors referenced for this work are, in fact, an expert linked to environmental group WWF and a green journalist.
Sounds, like the same type of issue as the Himalayan glacier error, citing the grey-literature, rather than the peer-reviewed literature. But on closer inspection the text of the IPCC is correct, and consistent with the science. The error was lazy citation. They should have cited the peer-reviewed literature, rather than a report from WWF.
Deniers are not making scientific arguments
Deniers are not making scientific arguments. Scientific arguments require consistency, something which deniers make no pretence of striving for.
Unfortunately, people assume genius at one thing means genius at all things
Unfortunately, people assume genius at one thing means genius at all things
The Impossible Hamster
I like this (and not just because I am a fan of giant space hamsters, and even miniature giant space hamsters), but I think the focus is wrong. It is not the size of the economy that maters but rather the environmental footprint of that economy. Typically the size of an economy is positively correlated to its environmental footprint, but that relationship is not set in stone, and if we wish to avoid disaster (be it climate related or some other environmental catastrophe) we need to ensure that the environmental impact of our economy becomes truly sustainable in the not too distant future.
Otherwise we will be faced with one environmental problem after another, each increasing in severity and becoming more difficult to solve, eventually coming across one that we are unable or unwilling to solve, and we will all be much worse off because if it.
So we have two options, try to deal with each environmental problem as they crop up (and our experience with global warming is hardly encouraging), or work on a broader fix that addresses the root cause of environmental degradation. I think we need both.
Neither of these will be easy, but the only alternative I see is a planetary crash.
(h/t Michael Tobis)
The Himalayas circa 2035
Once again we see that scientists are not perfect, but flawed like the rest of us (duh), and it turns out the reports made by those flawed humans are also not perfect (duh).
Science works fine in aggregate, but this idea that science must have only flawless people doing impeccable work is a strawman set up by the superstitious to discredit empiricism through nutpicking. -Tim F.
The IPCC Working Group 2 report (yes there are more than 1 IPCC reports included in the overall assessment) claimed that the likelihood of the Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035″ was “very high”. This was wrong. Very wrong. And it highlights why sticking to the peer-reviewed literature is so important. This particular claim came from a 2005 WWF report, which got its estimate of glacier loss from a 1999 article in New scientist.
And while both WWF reports and New Scientist are generally reliable, they are not peer-reviewed and thus should be viewed with increased scepticism. The IPCC failed to do this, and thus included an estimate for Himalayan glaciers that was obviously wrong.
As Mauri Pelto, director of the North Cascades Glacier Climate Project, says:
Graham [Cogley] and I both reviewed the IPCC section on glaciers and ice sheets, and the 2035 date is not there. It is in the regional section where only regional scientists reviewed the information…
[Himalayan Glaciers] show a sustain substantial retreat that is worrisome, but again the retreat rate average is between 10 and 20 m per year on large glaciers… One of the poster glaciers for Himalayan retreat is the Gangotri Glacier, this glacier is noted as retreating around 15 m year, and is 15 km long. How can we get rid of this anytime soon?
Even though the 2035 date is obviously wrong, it doesn’t mean that Himalayan glaciers are not in receding. They are. At alarming rates.
So is this the climate scandal that many are making this out to be?
No. Of course not.
Surveillance makes our communication networks less secure, and helps totalitarian states
An infrastructure conducive to surveillance and control invites surveillance and control, both by the people you expect and by the people you don’t… Whether the eavesdroppers are the good guys or the bad guys, these systems put us all at greater risk. Communications systems that have no inherent eavesdropping capabilities are more secure than systems with those capabilities built in. And it’s bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state. – Bruce Schneier
Western countries have passed laws that demand that communication networks have eavesdropping capabilities built in to them, and such capabilities inherently make those networks less secure, thus enabling the attacks on Google and others by China.
In essence our surveillance laws help totalitarian states like China… and they don’t make us any safer, in fact they can make less safe.
Quote of the Day
The greatest failure of modern media is a chronic inability to differentiate experts from cranks -ScruffyDan
Elitist scientists
(h/t Rationality Now via Michael Tobis)
Bjorn Lomborg, wrong with a dash of socialism
Bjorn Lomborg isn’t genuine in his arguments against putting a price on carbon. His latest op-ed in the Washington Post is a prime example.
Take a look at Lomborg’s calculation of costs:
All the major climate economic models show that to achieve the much-discussed goal of keeping temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius, we would need a global tax on carbon emissions that would start at $102 per ton (or about 90 cents per gallon of gasoline) — and increase to $4,000 per ton (or $35.51 per gallon of gasoline) by the end of the century. In all, this would cost the world $40 trillion a year. Most mainstream calculations conclude that this is 50 times more expensive than the climate damage it seeks to prevent.
Ignoring Lomborg’s claim that global warming will cost less than 1 trillion dollars, and the implication that most economists think tackling climate change is not worth it (most say it is), Lomborg misleads us my claiming that the cost placed on carbon is a reduction of global gross domestic product. The fact is that a cost on carbon means that money changes hands, nothing more. In other words paying 100 dollars a ton is does not reduce GDP by 100 times the number of tons of GHG’s. The money collected is not lost, it is spent elsewhere, or given back to the tax payers if the carbon pricing policy is revenue neutral.
Yes this will have large impacts on some industries (that is the point), but it wall also benefit other industries (also the point), and this will likely have an effect on total GDP (almost certainly negative, especially in the short-term, but nothing major).
Lomborg’s estimate of costs is so far off the map, it is not even wrong.
