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.
Quotes of the day
It has always been funny, in a gallows humor sort of way, to watch conservatives who laud the limitless power and flexibility of markets turn around and insist that the economy would collapse if we were to put a price on carbon. All serious estimates suggest that we could phase in limits on greenhouse gas emissions with at most a small impact on the economy’s growth rate. -Paul Krugman
Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for … what? Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs and by right-wing politicians and think tanks? I have a much simpler but plausible ‘conspiracy theory’: the fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: ‘Have they no grandchildren?"-Jeremy Grantham
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:
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
Deniers are doing all conservatives a disservice
Deep Climate has uncovered some good climate reporting in the steaming pile that is the National Post. The article, written by Jonathan Kay, examines the claim that there exists a growing number of scientists who question the scientific consensus on global warming, and concludes that it is nonsense:
Have you heard about the “growing number” of eminent scientists who reject the theory that man-made greenhouse gases are increasing the earth’s temperature? It’s one of those factoids that, for years, has been casually dropped into the opening paragraphs of conservative manifestos against climate-change treaties and legislation.
Fine-sounding rhetoric — but all of it nonsense. In a new article published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, a group of scholars from Stanford University, the University of Toronto and elsewhere provide a statistical breakdown of the opinions of the world’s most prominent climate experts. Their conclusion: The group that is skeptical of the evidence of man-made global warming “comprises only 2% of the top 50 climate researchers as ranked by expertise (number of climate publications), 3% of researchers in the top 100, and 2.5% of the top 200, excluding researchers present in both groups … This result closely agrees with expert surveys, indicating that [about] 97% of self-identified actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of [man-made global warming].”
Prawngate: Monckton tries to censor critics
[UPDATE: I recommend everyone sign the petition supporting John Abraham, and join the Facebook group]
Monckton may have tried to delete his original response to John Abraham’s presentation in which he completely dismantles Monckton’s claims, but thanks to the power of the internet it has been preserved:
So unusual is this attempt actually to meet us in argument, and so venomously ad hominem are Abraham’s artful puerilities, delivered in a nasal and irritatingly matey tone (at least we are spared his face — he looks like an overcooked prawn), that climate-extremist bloggers everywhere have circulated them and praised them to the warming skies.
Which of course begs the question, on what planet must one live in order accuse someone of ad hominem while lunching into ad hominem in the same sentence!
But that was only the start.
Climategate: The scandal that wasn’t, Part 3
Just in case you were not yet convinced by the two previous reports into the CRU email (and the Penn State investigations into Mann’s conduct) the Muir Russell report has been released. This 6 month long investigation tracked down every allegation made against the CRU, and systematically demolished them. Concluding that:
On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt… In addition, we do not find that their behaviour has prejudiced the balance of advice given to policy makers. In particular, we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments.
And specifically about the claim that has, perhaps, had the most legs in the media:
On the allegations that there was subversion of the peer review or editorial process we find no evidence to substantiate this in the three instances examined in detail. On the basis of the independent work we commissioned (see Appendix 5) on the nature of peer review, we conclude that it is not uncommon for strongly opposed and robustly expressed positions to be taken up in heavily contested areas of science. We take the view that such behaviour does not in general threaten the integrity of peer review or publication.
The impression I got from the various people who have actual experience with the peer-review system is the same.
None of this should be surprising to those paying attention as it is the same basic conclusion reached by two other independent investigations.
Dishonesty and hate; my brush with Marc Morano
My comment about the PNAS paper that analyzed the expertise and prominence of scientists who have signed public declarations stating that they are convinced, or unconvinced by the evidence for global warming, and the disgusting references to the Stasi, and the holocaust made by some deniers got me more attention that I expected.
Why? Because Marc Morano linked to my post, and posted my email on his site Climate Depot. What happened next provides a look at why Morano should not be trusted and the absolute hate that his followers have for people like me who accept mainstream science and are disgusted by inappropriate equivalence to horrible events in recent history that cheapen the experiences of those who survived them.
Those accepting the science of global warming have more credibility and prominence than those who remain unconvinced [UPDATED]
A study Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirms what people who have been paying attention already know:
97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
Furthermore, researchers with fewer than 20 climate publications comprise ≈80% the UE group, as opposed to less than 10% of the CE group. This indicates that the bulk of UE researchers on the most prominent multisignatory statements about climate change have not published extensively in the peer-reviewed climate literature.
the expertise and prominence, two integral components of overall expert credibility, of climate researchers convinced by the evidence of [anthropogenic climate change] vastly overshadows that of the climate change skeptics and contrarians.
This is unsurprising, and is based on the work done by Jim Prall, who has been building a list of climate authors and the number of times they have been cited.
Predictably, given that this paper shows that deniers really are on the fringe, the paper has been criticized. But those critics have missed the point, and in many cases have been so over the top that they highlight the absurdity (and lack of decency) of the deniers.
Global warming proved false by a 4th grader
It’s over. Global warming has been torn to shreds. Utterly disproven. But by who?
It has to be someone who hasn’t yet been corrupted by the overwhelming evidence supporting anthropogenic global warming, so that excludes most people outside the denialism community. But having global warming disproven by a denialist isn’t that exciting. It happens at least once a week.
So why are deniers so exited this time around? Simple because this time around global warming was shown to be a crock by someone who cannot be ignored.
A 4th grader, named Julisa Raquel Castillo!
That’s right deniers are jumping over themselves because global warming was questioned by a 4th grader. Throw out the decades of research done by thousands of brilliant scientists because a 4th grader says it is all wrong.
Take that Science!
