Global Warming
Irregular Climate Episode 10
This week: The US Senate surrender, denynig the undeniable, deniers turn on each other, more blacklist hypocrisy, where has all the phytoplankton gone?, happy 35th birthday global warming, and the skeptic debunk of the week.
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This is the last episode until September. I am taking a late summer hiatus.
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Climate Crock–Heat Wave edition
Denier denies climate change!
Did you hear? A denier has denied climate change! Shocking isn’t it? Well, no not really. In fact it is entirely predictable, and hardly worth a blog post. If only I had the skills of a professional spin doctor, then I could turn this into something news worthy. For example look how Marc Morano spun this:
Left-wing Env. Scientist [Denis Rancourt] Bails Out Of Global Warming Movement
Wow! Now that is worth writing about, or rather it would be if there were any truth to this statement (ok even then it wouldn’t really matter). As Kevin Grandia at DeSmogBlog points out:
Rancourt has been writing rants against the science of climate change for years.
Morano is trying to spindoctor this into a newsworthy story by making it seem like Rancourt is someone who was completely accepting of the scientific reality of climate change and then just woke up one morning last week and decided to jump ship.
What makes this all the more ridiculous is that Morano himself pushed the exact same story about Rancourt in 2009 when he worked for Senator James Inhofe.
This is the dishonesty we have to deal with. If only this was an isolated incident.
The Laughlin contradiction
When I first wrote about Laughlin’s essay What the Earth Knows, I focused entirely on the foolishness of equating the survival of the earth with the survival of human civilization, and that the phrase Save the Planet was never meant to be taken literally. But I missed Laughlin’s contradiction.
Thankfully Friends of Gin and Tonic didn’t:
- On one hand: Carbon dioxide from the human burning of fossil fuel is building up in the atmosphere at a frightening pace, enough to double the present concentration in a century. This buildup has the potential to raise average temperatures on the earth several degrees centigrade, enough to modify the weather and accelerate melting of the polar ice sheets.
- On the other hand: Climate change, by contrast, is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone’s permission or explaining itself.
So which is it?
The truth is that climate changes due to what climatologists call forcings. Some of them act on very long time scales (aka geologic time), while some (such as our greenhouse gas emissions) act over much shorter time scales.
Denier hypocrisy, turning a white-list black
It was absolutely hypocritical for deniers to call the Expert credibility in climate change paper published in PNAS a blacklist. Deniers have been making lists of scientists who reject the consensus for a long time. It is one of their main debating tricks. But when someone takes the trouble to analyse the expertise and prominence of the names on the list cries of blacklist can be heard from all corners of the denialosphere .
This is pure hypocrisy.
And the absolutely hilarious blog Denial Depot has noticed:
Irregular Climate Episode 9
This week: Some good news, and some sad news, IOP oh no!, it’s not about saving the planet, the skeptic debunk of the week and Ken Cuccinelli doesn’t know when to quit
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The climate consensus visualized, part 2
Jon Cook brings us a new visualization of the climate consensus.
Quote of the day
It turns out that there are not enough mavericks in climate science to meet the media’s and blogosphere’s insatiable appetite for conflict. Thus into the arena steps a whole host of charlatans posing as climate scientists. These are a toxic brew of retired physicists, TV weather forecasters, political junkies, media hacks, and anyone else willing to tell an interviewer that he/she is a climate scientist. Typically, they have examined some of the more easily digestible evidence and, like good trial lawyers, cherry-pick that which suits their agendas while attacking or ignoring the rest. Often, they are a good deal more articulate than actual scientists, who usually prefer doing research to honing rhetorical technique. -Kerry Emanuel
It’s not about saving the planet
The phrase “Save the Planet” was never meant to be taken literally. This hunk of rock that we live on is incredibly old and resilient, and despite what we may do on it’s surface the planet itself is in no danger. People who campaign under the save the planet banner by in large understand that the planet will be fine regardless of what humans do. Only a handful of wackos would disagree, and all of them should be simply ignored.
However some people who ought to know better, like Stanford University physicist and 1998 physics laureate Robert Laughlin, do take save the planet literally, and in doing so reveal their folly:
Common sense tells us that damaging a thing this old is somewhat easier to imagine than it is to accomplish—like invading Russia. The earth has suffered mass volcanic explosions, floods, meteor impacts, mountain formation, and all manner of other abuses greater than anything people could inflict, and it’s still here. It’s a survivor.
The planet itself may be a survivor, but specific life forms are not. The dinosaurs for example did not survive. There is no guarantee that we will survive.
Irregular Climate Episode 8
This week: Journalismgate, Cuccinelli strikes back, Prawngate, and the skeptic debunk of the week!
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