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Comments 41051 to 41100:

  1. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    Nice to read about this here, because the exploitation of the general public's inability to seperate pseudoscience from decent science is a serious problem. 

    I recently did some reading of my own on the NIPCC and it was a frustrating experience. It has its origins with the SEPP, which is vague about its funding. However, there is nothing vague about what is said about the 'History of the NIPCC'. Essentially they say:

    Step 1: realize the IPCC can't be trusted because of where their money comes from.

    Step 2: Team up with the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which clearly states on its own website:

    ""Where do you get your funding?" This is a common inquiry we frequently receive. Our typical response is that we never discuss our funding. Why? Because we believe that ideas about the way the world of nature operates should stand or fall on their own merits, irrespective of the source of support for the person or organization that produces them."

    This results in a severe loss of credibility in my view...

  2. ONLY HOURS Left to Be Part of a New Collaborative Approach to Media Coverage of Climate

    Success! The project is fully funded.

    Special thanks to Skeptical Science readers who spread the word and made a significant share of the donations we believe. Some of our CNM articles will be posted here and we will send details about where you can follow the live blog. 

    Thank you.

  3. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    I was a little over-optimistic with what I said @12. The NIPCC Chapter 2 becomes rather quickly dull reading being mainly straw-man-lynchings, misrepresentations and denialist nonsense. How boring is that?
    I do wonder if a useful approach to debunking this NIPCC nonsense would be to compare the level of mistakes it manages to present with the level of mistakes within IPCC AR4. Then a short analysis of part of NIPCC would show that these numpties, the denialist 3%, are so error-prone that they create 30,000%* the level of error (* Actual value to be determined). How many mistakes in AR4 WG1? How many pages?

    Having read section 2.1 of NIPCC, it is truly riven with error. And almost all the citations are rather ancient. One passage is a simple cut-&-paste from Idso's website, a bizarre move as this insertion is new for 2013 in the NIPCC (that is, not in the 2011 version) but the insertion was written in 2000. So it's smack up to date, then.

    Well, it is smack up to date compared with some of their "case" that CO2 does not cause warming (apparently). That graph they use from the Journal of Archaeological Science gives part of the Alley 2005 data that is known to provide data only up to 1855. Yet the numpties assume it provides data up to 2000 (which is quite evidently wrong if anyone actually examines the graph) This erroneous assumption of 2000 data results in them concluding that temperature has not been affected much by the 100ppm rise of CO2 over the last 200 years. This is a whopping CO2 rise give the previous 275-285ppm CO2 range during a 4,800 year period which shows large temperature fluctuations (although I'm not sure the Romans ever reached Greenland, or did the Late Bronze Age for that matter). Of course, by 1855 CO2 had yet to rise above 290ppm which sort of pulls the rug from under their "case" that 'CO2 doesn't cause warming'.

    So to go through a whole chapter of this level of drivel is perhaps asking too much. I think I'll stick with a section or two. Error is ubiqitous although due process even on a single section will probably require more work than the numpties ever invested.

    Then, may be it takes a lot of effort to pack in so much error. For instance, the numpties say of Pagani et al 1999:-

    "They (Pagani et al 1999) stated their finding “appears in conflict with greenhouse theories of climate change.” In addition, they noted the air’s CO2 concentration seemed to rise after the expansion of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, also in conflict with greenhouse theories of climate change."

    I think that counts as two errors in just the one sentence as "conflict" is neither stated nor implied by Pagani et al 1999.

  4. Hans Rosling: 200 300 years of global change

    Andy @5

    the more I believe that any solution will require an "all of the above"

    quokka @6

    Anything other than "all of the above" looks increasingly untenable.

    Surely, we've known this for some time: 15 "wedges"

  5. Hans Rosling: 200 300 years of global change

    #4 KR,

    OK, my comment was mildly inflamatory, but somebody has to ask the question - how did the public become so badly misinformed about the contribution from wind+solar? This subject is deserving of more than a little attention.

    This level of "devasting ignorance" falsely and quite directly implies belief in a level of success in dealing with the climate problem that simply does not exist in reality. Collectively we are failing despite whatever local or national efforts have yielded some measure of success. The emissions intensity of the energy sector worldwide has not improved in 20 years (source IEA) but energy consumption has risen sharply and will continue to do so.

    I see little to be gained by not being ruthlessly honest about this. Complacency is not helpful at all especially among those members of the public who do accept the science and believe we have a serious problem.

    Just as an aside, the only period in the last 50 years when the emissions intensity of the energy sector did improve was between around mid 70s and early 90s due to rollout of nuclear power.

    Anything other than "all of the above" looks increasingly untenable.

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] Unsubstantiated global assertions (e.g. "...how did the public become so badly misinformed about the contribution from wind+solar?") constitute sloganeering -- which is prohibited by the SkS Comment Policy. Please read and adhere to the Comment Policy. 

  6. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

    And now on impact - why does this matter?

    I guess I’m interested (and likely biased) because I’m an engineer. I’m also interested in the motivations and causes of climate change denial.

    One of the drivers to increase entrenched positions in the debate, I believe, is the tendency to pidgeonhole or stereotype viewpoints. To include entire professions without a very careful examination of what is actually being suggested risks both alienating potential allies and obscuring the true root causes.

    Let’s say, for instance that at least a proportion of your hypothesis is true. I would not be surprised, for instance, to discover that “a larger proportion of US educated engineers than US educated natural scientists doubt the significance of human caused climate change”, although I’ve not seen any actual evidence to support that.

    If this were true, it would be useful to understand why. The paper you cite suggests that those in the US with a conservative and religious background are more likely to choose engineering than other STEM subjects. We could hypothesise the reasons for that, perhaps an unwillingness to choose subjects like biology likely to challenge core values such as creationism, or maybe a desire to uphold core values like economic self-sufficiency through a clear path to employment.

    Whether contrarianism of engineers, even if true, has anything to do with engineering per se is then questionable. It could only really be linked to engineering, rather than values and background, if it were shown that an engineering education increased this tendency. I suggest that is highly unlikely. As John points out, engineering faculties and institutions are, in fact very active in teaching and research on mitigation and adaptation to climate change and show, as far as I’m aware, no contrarian inclinations whatever.

    Which leaves the fundamental issue as nothing to do with professions, but rather on values:

    How do we engage with those who believe that climate science is in conflict with their core values?

    Stereotyping of groups in general and engineers in particular will only make that engagement more difficult.

  7. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

    Composer99,

    well, I think I owe you an apology too - I misread the abstract, your reading #12 looks correct.

    However, I can't agree with

    based on the findings in GH2007, one can reasonably expect to see engineers form a larger proportion of climate science contrarians than other STEM professionals.

    initially on the facts:

    Firstly, rather than a "reasonable expectation", it's a huge extrapolation from the paper, which is about Jihadism, not climate denial. 

    Secondly, the data in the paper is mainly US based, and what little data there is from elsewhere shows major differences vs US and also is very  hard to compare directly.  For example, whilst I have nothing against Town Planners, I wouldn't at all agree they should be included in "engineers"!

    Thirdly, your statement above seems to state that you expect engineer contrarians to be more numerous than other STEM contrarians.  That depends not only on proportions, but on numbers - you'd also need to demonstrate the total numbers to support your statement.  However, for example in the UK engineers are only about 1/3 of STEM total, see http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/crosscutting/sivs/stem/

    Fourthly, I'm not aware of any correlation between religious belief and climate contrarianism as you assert.  I'd be interested if you can point towards any evidence for this?

     

  8. Hans Rosling: 200 300 years of global change

    quokka: you are correct about the solar and wind contribution to German energy supply. According to this spreadsheet it amounts to about 4.5%. 

    That is sobering when you consider what a vigorous (and inspiring) effort the Germans have made to promote renewables and how much progress there is yet to be made before the economy is decarbonized. 

    The more I look at the problem of decarbonization, the more I believe that any solution will require an "all of the above" approach, with nuclear, CCS, conservation, lifestyle changes along and so on, along with solar and wind power. 

  9. Hans Rosling: 200 300 years of global change

    Wind power accounted for about  4% of US electrical supply (Table ES1.B) in 2012, and accounted for 25% of electrical power in the state of Iowa. Miles to go, certainly, but significant contributions from renewables are possible. 

    quokka - You might consider the details of the Comments Policy, in particular regarding "No accusations of deception". Those are serious accusations in your post, and without any support.  

  10. Hans Rosling: 200 300 years of global change

    "Less than 1% of the world's energy is currently generated by wind and solar power. In a survey of the UK public, 70% of people believe that the amount is five times or more that"

    I'm not suprised by that at all. Here's another fact - In 2012 non-hydro renewables supplied about 8.3% of Germany's energy (BP 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy). Take away the various bio technologies and solar+wind supplied perhaps  5% of Germany's energy. So what has been achieved in the nation that has probably spent the most money on solar and wind is right at the bottom of UK public perception of what has been achieved globally.

    Which should lead to the obvious question of what are the sources of this vast disconnect between public perception and reality.

    You really don't have to look too far for a couple of major contributors - various "green" organizations and the PR machine of the renewables industry. The public is bombarded with stories about PV in Germany generating as much power as "N" nuclear power plants (yes for an hour or two, but what about the rest of the time?) or PV supplying 50% of electricity (same story). If you want to find out how much energy was produced by PV in the middle of winter, you have to ferret out the information yourself - it won't be headlined in the Guardian.

    There has been a sustained campaign to overstate the achievement of solar and PV. Making the situation worse is the terrible energy reporting in the media. Frequently mixing up MW and MWh, pretending that there is no such thing as capacity factor, and singing the praises of some project or other on the basis that it will power "X" homes. Since when is a "home" a unit of energy or power? The "X" homes stuff is especially deceptive because it carries that implication that powering all homes by adding "n" more such projects will deal with the problem. No it won't - not even close.

    You don't have to wonder too much about the motivations of the renewables industry in this ongoing charade, but how about the "green" organizations? Why have they deliberately done their best to create such a disconnect between reality and public perception? The answer is pretty easy - they fear that perception of the achievements of solar/wind that matches the reality will open the door to nuclear power. And they do not want that - not at any price including the price of fundamentally obsfuscating the climate/energy problem.

    This is a very bad situation.

  11. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    I find the NIPCC entertaining, but its propaganda is very dangerous because most people don't know enough about the science to see through the cherry-picking and the lies. An example of a blatant misrepresentation is figure 3.1 in chapter 3 (solar forcing), page 245. One of the graphs presented there seems to show solar irradiance (TSI) increasing rapidly , and suggests that the global temperature trend has followed the changes in solar irradiance very closely in the last 40 years. This is nonsense (I understand that total solar irradiance seems to have peaked around the mid-20th century and certainly hasn't risen in the last 30 years of satellite observations).

    But how would anyone know that unless they were familiar with the evidence?

    NIPCC perfectly demonstrates the usefulness of this skeptical science website - just in the executive summary of the latest NIPCC report I think I found the following commonly used false arguments: #6, #12, #49, #67, #2, #21, #116, #138, #154, #7, #26, #52, #47, #49, #1, #13 and the bonus ball #113. (see "view all arguments" near the top left of this page, http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php )

    Also, there are loads of other misleading arguments in the executive summary which don't quite fit into any of the numbered myths on your website. The arguments which are used by proponents of climate change denial often evolve subtly over time, in much the same way that a virus may evolve so that a host's immune system finds it more difficult to deal with, and there are an infinite number of possible subtle variations on the same theme - this makes the job of challenging the denial industry a very difficult one.

  12. Hans Rosling: 200 300 years of global change

    Thanks for posting this, I hadn't seen this yet, and any video by Hans Rosling is worth watching.

    My Favourite definitely has to be the Magic Washing Machine.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZoKfap4g4w

  13. Hans Rosling: 200 300 years of global change

    "We think we have done more than we have done and we haven't understood how much we have to do. "

    That's the take away. I am glad that he is at least acknowledging now that there is a price to be paid for raising the affluence of countries to the point where they undergo a demographic transition and stop growing in population. I would hope that he would include the point that coal is not necessary for lifting people out of poverty any more. In many cases, solar and especially wind are better values.


    Infant mortality before industrialization had as much to do with ignorance about sanitation as about the rise in incomes of families. We can still keep babies alive (and provide the parents with contraceptives) without relying heavily on coal.

  14. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    Even the structure of the NIPCC report exposes its true intention, which is to mislead rather than to educate. Instead of examining the physical basis of climate change first (e.g., temperature measurements, CO2 measurements, species movements, ocean temperatures and levels, etc.), or basic physics, the first chapter of the "Physical Science" section begins by bashing the reliability of models.

    I'm also partial to this sentence in the Summary for Policymakers: "Global climate models produce meaningful results only if we assume we already know perfectly how the global climate works, and most climate scientists say we do not" (emphasis added).

    A central premise of the NIPCC report, therefore, is that unless we know everything about everything, we cannot make meaningful projections about anything. Fantastic.

  15. The Sun Has Cooled, So Why Are The Deep Oceans Warming?

    grindupBaker - There's no contradiction here. A warm atmosphere decreases the skin layer gradient, retaining more energy in the oceans and warming them faster, but in the balance reducing the amount of energy going from the oceans to the atmosphere. The rate of incoming sunlight->ocean->*->atmosphere energy flow is directly dependent on that gradient, at the '*' (as, of course, one of a number of factors in total energy). 

    Warming of the atmosphere, a change in temperature, depends on an energy imbalance, an energy accumulation in the atmosphere. If energy rising from the ocean decreases (because it's warming the oceans instead) incoming energy to the atmosphere decreases, as does the atmospheric warming rate. 

    It's really a matter of where at any time the top of atmosphere (TOA) energy imbalance is accumulating - more in the oceans (water warming fast, air warming slowly if at all), or more in the atnosphere (air warming fast, water warming more slowly). 

  16. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    jdixon1980: I second your idea of creating a "Let's set the record" straight document for distribution throughout the U.S.

    The National Acadamey of Sciences would be my first choice as author of the document. My second choice would be the Union of Concerned Scientists.

    Having said that, I'm not sure that either would have the financial resoures to print and distribute the millions of reports that would be needed.

    We should explore these and other possibilities further. 

  17. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    I would like to see a concise retort to the Heartland pamphlet distributed to teachers on the same scale, authored or endorsed by one or more actively researching climate scientists.  

    Nature editorial from 2011 is on point and the editors of Nature have credible expertise, but the writing comes across as sort of polemical, as does this kind of post from RealClimate 2008: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/not-the-ipcc-nipcc-report/.  I think they are fine for their intended readership, and I myself enjoyed reading them, but I could see grade/middle/high school teachers being turned off by their tone.  

    Graham Wayne, I like your post much more as a message for teachers.  It rightly criticizes the NIPCC, but doesn't poke fun.  I will certainly pass it along to teachers in my personal circle.  However, it unfortunately doesn't bear the signature or stamp of approval of a climate scientist or climate scientific body or journal (although you obviously are more than climate-literate enough to grasp the substantive flaws of the NIPCC that you point out), which would lend more weight to it for mass distribution.  I wonder if you could get one or more climate scientists to endorse your letter to teachers for that purpose?  Or is somebody already taking on a similar project, like maybe Union of Concerned Scientists or the National Center for Science Education?  

           

  18. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    John Hartz I noticed that too, and I had to Google "numpty," apparently British slang for someone who openly and unwittingly reveals their ignorance of a subject that they are rambling on about.  I like it, and I don't there is a counterpart in American English.  

  19. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    This thread seems ripe for a "What is the 'real name' of the NIPCC?" contest. So far we have two entries:

    1. Non Intelegent Panel on Climate Change by #11 MP3CE
    2. Numpy Idiots Professing Climatological Credentials by #12 MA Rodger

    The winner of this context will be required to donate $100 to the Climate News Mosaic (CNM). 

    As is always the case, the decisions of the SkS judges will be final. 

  20. ONLY HOURS Left to Be Part of a New Collaborative Approach to Media Coverage of Climate

    Tom @9 agree its the UN climate conference at end of every year that spikes coverage. Copenhagen had by far the biggest media turnout with 6000 media, 100,000 people marching in the streets etc. The graph does show how media interest in the UN meets has fallen off. Barely a handful of jurnos from North America at the 2012 COP in Doha. 

    With CNM we're hoping to do something to halt the decline.

    Thanks Alexandre - we're very close thanks to SkS readers!

  21. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    "Many climate sceptics seem to review scientific data and studies not as scientists but as attorneys . . . ."  

    It seems to me that quite a few of them are not scientists but attorneys - see James Taylor, J.D. e.g....  Being a lawyer myself and knowing many of them, I think I can say confidently that practicing law, more than most other professions, could make one susceptible to the allure of (and adept at constructing) grand self-delusions.  Laws are designed (and constantly modified) by people to create social outcomes, not explain or predict physical outcomes like scientific theories do.  Legal disputes between parties very frequently are limited to two opposing sides, who on the surface are arguing about the truth of what the existing law is, what the relevant facts are, and/or how the law should be applied to those facts, while they care not about the analysis but only about their side prevailing - the analysis is a means to an end rather than the end in itself.  I don't think these aspects of the modern legal system are necessarily bad things, but when you are constantly living and working in this framework, it is easy to fall into the trap of viewing everything, even science, through the lens of partisan advocacy.  

  22. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

    VeryTallGuy & John Hartz:

    I overstated the case I was making in comment #1, for which I apologize. I will stand by the statement that, based on the findings in GH2007, one can reasonably expect to see engineers form a larger proportion of climate science contrarians than other STEM professionals.

    GH2007 reviewed previous work documenting the political & religious views of academics in the US and elsewhere and found that on the average engineering faculty & students are more politically conservative (pp. 45-50), or more religious (pp. 51-53), or both, than their counterparts in other fields.

    This is a key finding in the paper, as noted in the abstract:

    We consider four hypotheses that could explain this pattern ["that engineers alone are strongly over-represented among graduates in violent [Islamist] groups in both" the Middle East/North Africa region and North America/Europe]. Is the engineers’ prominence among violent Islamists an accident of history amplified through network links, or do their technical skills make them attractive recruits? Do engineers have a ‘mindset’ that makes them a particularly good match for Islamism, or is their vigorous radicalization explained by the social conditions they endured in Islamic countries? We argue that the interaction between the last two causes is the most plausible explanation of our findings [...] [emphasis mine]

    To the best of my knowledge, political conservatism and religious belief are both strongly associated (perhaps even causally related) with the willingness to adopt contrarian positions on evolutionary biology and climatology. (I am not sure, VeryTallGuy, that either creationism or climate contrarianism can be said to be extremist as social phenomena even though they clearly are extreme scientific positions.)

    As final notes:

    • For what it is worth, which may be very little, I began my own post-secondary education studying software engineering.
    • With respect to my own current vocation, my admittedly anecdotal experience suggests on average practicing musicians and other performing artists are far more likely to have contrarian positions on various scientific subjects, including harmful positions such as anti-vaccine sentiments, than are practicing engineers or other STEM professionals, and for far weaker reasons.
  23. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    Re climate feedbacks @9 & 10.

    The NIPCC analysis of cloud feedbacks would indeed be laughable if they actually were talking of feedbacks. Actually it is far worse than that.

    The finding I quoted @4 is based within their Chapter 2 Forcings & Feedbacks , a 98 page treatment by Craig Idso & Tim Ball with contributions from Tom Segalstad. These gentlemen then must be the NIPCC experts on forcings & feedbacks. The quote @4 appears in Section 2.4 Clouds but it is very obvious from reading section 2.4.1 that these "experts" do not know the difference between "forcing" and "feedback" which is a trifle embarrasing, even for Numpy Idiots Professing Climatological Credentials.

    I think I will enjoy reading the rest of Chapter 2. I will learn why, for instance, these numpties source their paleoclimate reconstruction from an archaeologist and not from the original climatologist (Alley 2004) or perhaps a more recent piece of work.

  24. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

    @John Hartz #6

    Full disclosure:  I have a Masters in Chemical Engineering

  25. The Sun Has Cooled, So Why Are The Deep Oceans Warming?

    KR #11 My issue is not addressed. To clarify: I am in agreement with "decreased ocean cooling",  increased ocean warming, all the ocean stuff. I have specific disagreement with "A reduced viscous skin layer thermal gradient leads to less atmospheric warming over the oceans" because, by straightforward logic, this would depend on the cause of the reduced thermal gradient. If the cause was more circulation of cool water to the surface then " less atmospheric warming over the oceans" I agree. But if the cause was more LWR hitting the skin layer then there's no reason for the atmospheric warming over the oceans to reduce even though ocean cooling reduces --- because there's more energy overall due to more LWR.

  26. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    NIPCC - does it stand for Non Intelegent panel on Climate Change ?

  27. ONLY HOURS Left to Be Part of a New Collaborative Approach to Media Coverage of Climate

    I do hope these guys reach their goal.

  28. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    Glenn @9, it is worse than that.  Feedbacks are responses to change in temperature, not to changes in forcing.  As a result, other than slight differences due to differences in the geographical region, or altitude warmed, the feedback response to a change in greenhouse gas concentration will be the same as the feedback response to, for example, internal modes of ocean variability.  That means with net negative feedbacks, such internal modes of variability cannot shift temperatures from the equilibrium levels.  Any initial warming shift will result immediately in a negative feedback that cancels it out.  Should that feeback be stronger than the initial warming, it will induce a negative feedback on the cooling, thereby returning temperatures quickly to the original value.

    Thus, if net feedbacks are indeed negative, the only way we could have got the recent warming (or the MWP) is with a strongly cooling net forcing over the twentieth century.  In like manner, the only way we could have got the LIA is with a strongly warming net forcing over the 17th-19th centuries.  Indeed, if net feedbacks were negative, El Nino's should cool the Earth, and La Ninas warm it.

    The whole notion simply collapses under a weight of contradictory evidence, none of which the authors of the NIPCC examine, or even notice.

  29. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

    I'll argue that the scanty natural sciences degree requirements for a BA are sufficient for humanities majors to easily gain a toehold on the subject of climate science, certainly enough to grasp the inevitabilities forthcoming from the underlying physics.

    Same deal as an engineer's impoverished exposure to visual arts, for instance. A handful of courses is enough to distinguish between up and down, left and right, where to find more information. 

    If executed in good faith, typical baccalaureate specifications will inevitably create the potential for a useful generalist, a broad mind.

    Whether or not an effectively liberal education with a bent in any particular direction can overcome inherent fallibilities is quite another matter. Chris Horner suffices as an example of this indeterminacy. Bill Nye is another, Ray Kurzweil yet another, and then there's the guy who has been key* to the success of the NASA Mars rover programs. 

     

    *Deep pun. See this. 

     

  30. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    "Contrary to that assessment, several studies indicate the net global effect of cloud feedbacks is a cooling, the magnitude of which may equal or exceed the warming projected from increasing greenhouse gases."

    The logical conclusion if this were true would be that there is a 'special state' for the climate, which we just happen to be in now, where a negative feedback cuts in that doesn't occur at cooler temperatures. Thus setting an upper limit to the temperature for the Earth.

    So we could check for this by looking to the paleoclimate record to confirm that temps haven't been significantly warmer in the past, providing support for the idea.

    So the fact that 1/2 or more of the last 500 million years have been significantly warmer than today - 4-8 degrees warmer - indicates that such a upper limiting mechanism doesn't exist, at least not at our current climate level

    Gee, I wonder why those eminent scientists behind the NIPCC didn't think of checking this?

  31. ONLY HOURS Left to Be Part of a New Collaborative Approach to Media Coverage of Climate

    doug @7&8, you can take further consolation from the fact that the release of the UEA hacked emails coincided with the Copenhagen conference on climate change, which certainly attracted a lot of media attention in Australia.  Part of the spike, probably most of it in Europe, will be due to the conference rather than to the UEA hack.

  32. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

    Imagine how far those poor sods with humanities degrees have to go.  Still, as KR points out (implicitly), I . . . err . . . they may have an advantage in not having to overcome the biases encouraged by their training.  I've been wrong so many times (thank you, Tom) that I get over it pretty quickly.  

  33. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    There is a certain grim irony in a bunch of lawyers demonstrating such a lack of familiarity with the idea of "credible witnesses."

  34. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    Because taught in an environmental studies program at a university for several years before I retired, the Heartland Institut sent me a free copy of "The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism" by Steve Goreham. This paperback book of 240 pages has very good production values and is quite impressive. It is pure denialism with all of the standard misinformation, misdirection, illogic, cherrypicking, etc. If one didn't know much, it would be very convincing. Heartland's sponsors are spending a great deal of money in a highly professional propaganda campaign.

  35. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

    Engineers, physicists, economists, meteorologists, geologists, emeritus PhD's - No profession is immune to the mistakes of pontificating in an area not of your expertise, of confirmation bias, of looking at a large and unfamiliar field of data and theory - and claiming "Oh, look, you forgot to carry the '2', and hence you are completely wrong..."

    No person is immune to beginners mistakes in fields they do not know. And if the person in question is well established in their own field, used to being right, to being the reference point to others in that field, it can be difficult to put down the ego and humble oneself to being a starting student. 

    And worst of all, the drive, confidence, and ego involved with being an expert in one field can make it all but impossible for that person to even recognize their own lack of expertise in another. 

  36. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

    Further to VeryTallGuy and John and as a sample of the pragmatism of engineers, here's a sample of recent contributions to dealing with climate change by Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) Climate Decision Making Center. (CDMC). CDMC is a unit of CMU's higly respected Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP).

    It's notable that among all the papers published through EPP and CDMC, you won't find a single proposition that anthropogenic climate change is a problem that can be ignored or is false. 

    Real engineers try to solve problems using engineering skills rather than trying to wish them away.

  37. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    Unfortunately all to many scientists have "gone emeritus" to use the popular phrase. Ie trying to speak with authority outside their area of expertise, and all to often abandoning the scientific discipline in favour of strong self-belief. Worse when linked to dogmatic political beliefs as well. I think very successful (or lucky) scientists are more prone (eg Pauling) because thanks to their gifts, they lack experience in being wrong. The essence of science is allowing data to change your mind. Too many really good practitioners have little experience of this.

    So you shouldnt reject an argument because someone is old, but you shouldnt regard statements as authoritive unless they come from someone actively conducting research and publishing in the field. You should be especially suspicious of emeritus professors making statements outside their field.

  38. Dikran Marsupial at 04:41 AM on 31 October 2013
    US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    joeygoze an ad-hominem is an attack on the source of an argument made in place of an attack on its substance.  In this case, the comment is made in a section entitled "The Credibility of Sources", and is followed by a section entitled "The Quality of the Report", so it is (i) clearly labeled as a comment on the relative credibility of the sources and (ii) is not make in place of an attack on the content of the argument, merely preceding it.

    In a discussion of competence to speak on some particular issue, then there is a distinction to be made between working scientists and those in emeritus positions, namely the former have a need to continually keep up with research in their field, the latter do not.

    Now science is not determined by credibility of the source, but by the internal consistency and evidence for the argument.  The general public on the other hand are generally not in a position to accurately judge all aspects of the science, which means that we do have to take into account the credibility of the source, which is greatest for proffessional institutions (such as the Royal Society), has individual scientists somewhere in the middle, and political lobby groups rather further down the list. 

    In the case of the NIPCC report, the quality of the report is easy to determine, for example they have a chapter that cites Prof. Essenhigh's paper on the residence time of CO2, but fails to mention that the argument it contains has been thoroughly refuted, and doesn't reference the paper I wrote for the same journal explaining the errors (basic scholarship would suggest using e.g. Google scholar to look up papers that have cited key references to make sure that the referenced material is sound).  That the NIPCC report contains arguments so easily demonstrated to be wrong should give anyone cause for skepticism, regardless of who the authors may be.

  39. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    I found the NIPCC Executive Summary a most entertaining document. They try so hard, they have managed to shot dead the villain who they have also 'proved' wasn't ever there to be shot. So which is my favourite NIPCC finding? I think it would be:-

    The IPCC has concluded “the net radiative feedback due to all cloud types is likely positive” (p. 9 of the Summary for Policy Makers, Second Order Draft of AR5, dated October 5, 2012). Contrary to that assessment, several studies indicate the net global effect of cloud feedbacks is a cooling, the magnitude of which may equal or exceed the warming projected from increasing greenhouse gases.

    Our GHGs, it seems, create negative cloud feedbacks and so if they have any effect at all, they are cooling the planet down! That's a stroke of luck coz we're pumping out those GHGs like there's no tomorrow. Hey! The recent rises in global temperatures could well have been catastrophic without their cooling effects. ☺☻

  40. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    "...Of that 35, 16 of the listed contributors are retired e.g. emeritus positions..."

    The Ad-hominem attack on retired professors is not fair.  That is agism and should not disualify a retired professor from making a scientific point.

    Moderator Response:

    [PW] When any do make scientific points, they'll be listened to. As far as I have read--and that is reading a lot of work--none have, and none have published in a relevant or accepted climate journal. Perhaps you can point us to sources of data that do show any/some of their contrarian points to be valid?

  41. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    “promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems”  What's the use of having a free market without its most important attribute?  (freedom from reality)

  42. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

    @VeryTallGuy #5: 

    My sentiments exactly.

    BTW, I have a Bachelor of Civil Engineering degree. 

  43. ONLY HOURS Left to Be Part of a New Collaborative Approach to Media Coverage of Climate

    Actually, come to think of it, if we liken the graph above to energy it seems that little actual "work" was done by the UEA affair. Perhaps it's a stretch to analogize energy and headlines, but the integral of late 2009 appears to be fairly shrimpy compared to what came before and after. Lots of headline power in UEA but too short to accomplish much?

  44. ONLY HOURS Left to Be Part of a New Collaborative Approach to Media Coverage of Climate

    Anja, unfortunately Google Trends only shows relative frequency of searches:

    Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart. If at most 10% of searches for the given region and time frame were for "pizza," we'd consider this 100. This doesn't convey absolute search volume.

    and

    The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google
    over time. They don't represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized and presented on a scale from 0-100. Each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. When we don't have enoughdata, 0 is shown.

    The graph is drawn from searches satisfied by media headlines. To my mind, that's a proxy indicator for public interest as it's capable of being served by media. 

    Howerver, my much more intelligent spouse heard me grumbling about Google's sphinx-like silence on absolute numbers of headlines and after rolling her eyes took me here where we find this:

    Ain't it a shame that the tawdry twaddle from UEA produced a bigger spike of media coverage than AR4?

    Method behind the graph as well as more views and data are here: Media Coverage of Climate Change/Global Warming

  45. US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

    A nice infographic that compares and contrasts the two reports might make for a quick sanity check for those who aren't aware of the background of Heartland and the so called NIPCC.

  46. The Sun Has Cooled, So Why Are The Deep Oceans Warming?

    grindupBaker - Increased downward LWR decreases ocean cooling (oceans heat faster), while higher circulation of cool water to the surface ocean layers decreases atmospheric warming (and again, the oceans heat faster). In both situations the skin layer gradient is reduced and a higher percentage of incoming solar energy ends up being retained by the oceans. 

    The fact that atmospheric warming and increased downward LWR increases energy retention in the oceans is in fact the central aspect of how GHG's warm the ocean. 

    Since the oceans act as a thermal "flywheel", accelerating the warming of the oceans just speeds equilibrium with forcing imbalances, meaning that overall warming of the climate occurs faster. 

  47. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #44A

    Nice Guardian article "Missing logic of Australian PM's denial" commenting the latest taking point sported by Tony Abbott. I found especially funny (and accurate) this picture in the comment thread therein. It would be an excellent toon and Abbott's description at the same time. Clearly, our PM has reached a new "Moncktonian" low, becase - like Monckton - he just debunks himself.

  48. ONLY HOURS Left to Be Part of a New Collaborative Approach to Media Coverage of Climate

    Doug, thanks a lot for posting this very telling graph. I'll use it on a slide presenting the project tonight. And Bert, I love your alternative interpretation. Seems it will get very cold soon!

    I also tried Google trends with "climate change" and it looked similar, then with "CO2 emissions" and "greenhouse gases" - but those were just low lines on the bottom.

    The one thing I cannot find on your graph and the Google trend page is what the lines actually mean. How many articles/posts were there in 2007, for example? I guess it's just a graph showing relative interest. 

    A big Thank You to everyone who has supported our project so far. Very encouraging.

  49. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

    Composer99

    Enough of the engineer-bashing already!

    papers such as this one suggest engineers might be predisposed to the sort of worldview or mindset correlating strongly with the adoption of religious creationism, or indeed AGW contrarianism/denialism.

    Respectfully, the paper shows no such thing.  Indeed, it does the precise opposite! It in fact argues that Islamic extremism is a special case, due to engineers networks, technical skills and social conditions, and finds this is not replicated to other forms of extremism.

    From the abstract:

    engineers are virtually absent from left-wing violent extremists and only present rather than over-represented among right-wing extremists

    Noting that Lewandowsky associates AGW denialism with laissez-faire economics ie right wing extremism if anything, this paper, if relevant at all to AGW, could only be argued as placing engineers as no different to other groups.

  50. The Sun Has Cooled, So Why Are The Deep Oceans Warming?

    KR #9 The concept that LWR causes "less atmospheric warming over the oceans" does not seem correct because it breaks the law of conservation of energy. If there is no LWR at all then SWR-produced ocean heat warms the atmosphere. If LWR is added then that is adding energy in the very thin layer. It must go somewhere. It cannot cause less heating either up or down. I think the concept is that it blocks and replaces some ocean heat going up. 

     

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