It won’t have escaped many of our readers’ notice that there has been what can only be described as a media frenzy (mostly in the UK) with regards to climate change in recent weeks. The coverage has contained more bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion on the subject than we have seen in such a short time anywhere. While the UK newspaper scene is uniquely competitive (especially compared to the US with over half a dozen national dailies selling in the same market), and historically there have been equally frenzied bouts of mis-reporting in the past on topics as diverse as pit bulls, vaccines and child abductions, there is something new in this mess that is worth discussing. And that has been a huge shift in the Overton window for climate change.
In any public discussion there are bounds which people who want to be thought of as having respectable ideas tend to stay between. This is most easily seen in health care debates. In the US, promotion of a National Health Service as in the UK or a single-payer system as in Canada is so far outside the bounds of normal health care politics, that these options are only ever brought up by ‘cranks’ (sigh). Meanwhile in the UK, discussions of health care delivery solutions outside of the NHS framework are never heard in the mainstream media. This limit on scope of the public debate has been called the Overton window.
The window does not have to remain static. Pressure groups and politicians can try and shift the bounds deliberately, or sometimes they are shifted by events. That seems to have been the case in the climate discussion. Prior to the email hack at CRU there had long been a pretty widespread avoidance of ‘global warming is a hoax’ proponents in serious discussions on the subject. The sceptics that were interviewed tended to be the slightly more sensible kind – people who did actually realise that CO2 was a greenhouse gas for instance. But the GW hoaxers were generally derided, or used as punchlines for jokes. This is not because they didn’t exist and weren’t continually making baseless accusations against scientists (they did and they were), but rather that their claims were self-evidently ridiculous and therefore not worth airing.
However, since the emails were released, and despite the fact that there is no evidence within them to support any of these claims of fraud and fabrication, the UK media has opened itself so wide to the spectrum of thought on climate that the GW hoaxers have now suddenly find themselves well within the mainstream. Nothing has changed the self-evidently ridiculousness of their arguments, but their presence at the media table has meant that the more reasonable critics seem far more centrist than they did a few months ago.
A few examples: Monckton being quoted as a ‘prominent climate sceptic’ on the front page of the New York Times this week (Wow!); The Guardian digging up baseless fraud accusations against a scientist at SUNY that had already been investigated and dismissed; The Sunday Times ignoring experts telling them the IPCC was right in favor of the anti-IPCC meme of the day; The Daily Mail making up quotes that fit their GW hoaxer narrative; The Daily Express breathlessly proclaiming the whole thing a ‘climate con’; The Sunday Times (again) dredging up unfounded accusations of corruption in the surface temperature data sets. All of these stories are based on the worst kind of oft-rebunked nonsense and they serve to make the more subtle kind of scepticism pushed by Lomborg et al seem almost erudite.
Perhaps this is driven by editors demanding that reporters come up with something new (to them) that fits into an anti-climate science theme that they are attempting to stoke. Or perhaps it is driven by the journalists desperate to maintain their scoop by pretending to their editors that this nonsense hasn’t been debunked a hundred times already? Who knows? All of these bad decisions are made easier when all of the actually sensible people, or people who know anything about the subject at all, are being assailed on all sides, and aren’t necessarily keen to find the time to explain, once again, that yes, the world is warming.
So far, so stupid. But even more concerning is the reaction from outside the UK media bubble. Two relatively prominent and respected US commentators – Curtis Brainard at CJR and Tom Yulsman in Colorado – have both bemoaned the fact that the US media (unusually perhaps) has not followed pell-mell into the fact-free abyss of their UK counterparts. Their point apparently seems to be that since much news print is being devoted to a story somewhere, then that story must be worth following. Indeed, since the substance to any particularly story is apparently proportional to the coverage, by not following the UK bandwagon, US journalists are missing a big story. Yulsman blames the lack of environmental beat reporters for lack of coverage in the US, but since most of the damage and bad reporting on this is from clueless and partisan news desk reporters in the UK, I actually expect that it is the environmental beat reporters’ prior experience with the forces of disinformation that prevents the contagion crossing the pond. To be sure, reporters should be able and willing (and encouraged) to write stories about anything to do with climate science and its institutions – but that kind of reporting is something very different from regurgitating disinformation, or repeating baseless accusations as fact.
So what is likely to happen now? As the various panels and reports on the CRU affair conclude, it is highly likely (almost certain in fact) that no-one will conclude that there has been any fraud, fabrication or scientific misconduct (since there hasn’t been). Eventually, people will realise (again) that the GW hoaxers are indeed cranks, and the mainstream window on their rants will close. In the meantime, huge amounts of misinformation, sprinkled liberally with plenty of disinformation, will be spread and public understanding on the issue will likely decline. As the history of the topic has shown, public attention to climate change comes and goes and this is likely to be seen as the latest bump on that ride.
What’s your source for that? Outside the former USSR, nuclear power engineering had advanced beyond any possibility of risking a Chernobyl by 1955.
(How fire can be domesticated)
241: Richard here’s an “alarmist piece about the 70’s ice age”. NOT.
George Will (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033101707.html ) wrote
“While worrying about Montana’s receding glaciers, Schweitzer, who is 50, should also worry about the fact that when he was 20 he was told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling. Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.”
Somehow the Post goofed and a year later the Will column was briefly open for comments so I wrote: ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/comments/display?contentID=AR2006033101707 )
Here is the full quote from the 1976 Science article that Mr Will cited. The paper was Variations in the Earths Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages J. D. Hays 1, John Imbrie 2, and N. J. Shackleton 3 7
“A model of future climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships, but ignoring anthropogenic effects, predicts that the long-term trend over the next sevem thousand years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation. You get a little different flavor when you read the whole quote compared to Georges little snippet in which he said they were proven spectacularly wrong.”
I can’t understand why the post pays a clown like George Will to write such lies.
Barton Paul Levenson wrote: “Undertone, I recommend reading Genesis in French.”
I much prefer the original Klingon.
> … an unproven advanced design, but Russia tried that in Chernobyl.
> The engineers knew it was safer …
Yeah, I’d also like to know where you got that idea and why you trust the source, whether it’s your own work or someone else’s.
You can look this stuff up. Example, from
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/NucEne/cherno2.html
“… The four RBMK-1000 reactors at Chernobyl represented crude technology that was 30 years old at the time of the accident. They are in fact similar to that used by Enrico Fermi at University of Chicago’s Stagg Field in 1942 to create world’s first chain reaction…. About half of soviet reactors use graphite moderators. Edwards says there are 15 RBMKs operating in USSR but that the other 40 reactors are similar to US reactors…..”
Seriously, you should use believing the RBMK was an advanced untested design as an index measuring your own credulity, and adjust for gullibility.
Don’t get fooled by people’s claims. Ask their source and check it yourself.
[Response: This thread is not going to get hijacked by a nuclear discussion. Anything further is OT. – gavin]
I love how one “skeptic” says “You need to do better PR – control the media spin!” and another “skeptic” says “Leave media spin alone. Keep to doing science.”
I really think humans are just designed to repeat the Easter Island situation over and over and over. We will use all resources, regardless of any warning about how it will affect the future, to the limit. Then, the last dregs of humanity will be left on a burnt-out planet, cowering in caves, cursing their ancestors.
Ray Ladbury says: 17 February 2010 at 3:28 PM
Further to your suggestion, how about if somebody wants to level an accusation of fraud they have to name a specific persons committing that fraud and the accuser has to also publish his/her own name, address etc. along with the charge. That alone would be a refreshing change. At least the term “fraud” would not end up debased.
With regard to “Jimbo” and his romantic wish for brave whistleblowers, there’s yet another example of the uncritical and guileless nature of “skeptics” being seduced by elliptical explanations for simple things. Leaving aside what seems most appealing to our sense of drama, a cursory examination of laws concerning “whistleblower” status seems to leave Jimbo’s hope with the status of “highly unlikely.”
A genuine whistleblower– one who could claim status– would have left organizational tracks and would almost undoubtedly already be known to any authorities investigating the CRU matter. In fact it appears that in most cases a whistleblower needs to actively claim status within a certain period of time to gain protection, so it’s unlikely such a person would remain in hiding and thus unknown. The requirement to seek status is not surprising because otherwise these laws could be abused to justify employee misbehavior.
In sum, if a disgruntled employee of CRU or EAU simply copied and disseminated notionally private files without further ado that’s just another case of dull old theft, not heroic behavior. I suppose while there is probably no paladin whistleblower for contrarians to fete, they could just possibly end up with a foolish martyr who did not think carefully or well, a gullible chump suborned, used, then discarded by fossil fuel interests.
As promised earlier, link to Deconstructing Global Warming video,.
http://freaquewaves.blogspot.com/2009/12/deconstructing-global-warming.html
Well, JonP, here are quotes from your post 201:
“You did not seem to take much issue when the media was sensationalizing the “warm” news. And you seem a bit surprised at how the media sensationalizes.”
“The years of silence when the media reported weather events as proving AGW, the years of insisting that the science is settled, the years of having blogs tell new-comers they are stupid and some not posting comments at all, have to come to an end.”
“To your point of what you part of the science should you or anyone give up to “train” in PR. You seem to find the time for this blog. I am sure there is someone, somewhere that could invest time into this, I mean it is rather important.”
All three statements demonstrate your ignorance of this blog, what it stands for, what its history is, and what it requires to maintain it.
RE- Comment by wilt — 17 February 2010 @ 1:47 PM:
The news item you quote at the BBC regarding the statement by Deputy Information Commissioner Graham Smith is part of a news item. Smith is quoted as saying:
“In a statement, Deputy Information Commissioner Graham Smith said it was an offence under section 77 of the Freedom of Information act ‘to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information.’”
Note this is the beginning of a paragraph following a quote by Prof. Jones. It is a factual statement explaining what the law is, not an accusation. If you think this is an accusation, then you should consider the following. If Smith is not in the chain of authority for judging Freedom of Information violations, this would just be an opinion. If Smith is in the chain of authority it would still be an opinion, but in addition a severe breach in ethics. There has not been any inquiry or judgment regarding this affair and any responsible official that made a judgment (accusation) prior to any investigation would probably loose his position. The article also mentions ongoing investigations.
Further, the UK Freedom of Information Act specifically states in the exemptions section that a FOI request can be denied if the requested information is already available in the public domain. All of the requested information was already available, so any ruling would very likely have been/will be not considered as an offense.
You should consider not believing everything you read in the popular press without checking. This is what this topic thread is all about.
Steve
Jimbo @t 250. Priceless! The irony, it burns. In a post about how reporters misquote, misrepresent and lie regarding scientists your comment has a link that misquotes and misrepresents Dr. Latif’s statements.
climateprogress.org/2010/01/14/science-dr-mojib-latif-global-warming-cooling/
Look up what Dr. Latif said for yourself if you don’t believe the link above. I’m sure someone will be happy to send you a copy of the journal article if you can’t access it.
btw, are you pulling a Poe? First the ironic link, and then linking to Watts, who regularly produces schoolboy errors, seems designed to let readers know you’re are not to be taken seriously.
Hello Gavin,
I can understand the frustration you display in your post, and I agree that journalists often do misquote, often do not understand the subject matter they report on, and sometimes do a terrible disservice to the facts. On a few occasions I have been personally involved in a story which was covered by the MSM, and I was shocked how poorly they did their most basic job of factual accuracy. There has been too much exaggeration and outright false reporting about the content of the UEA emails. Whatever else is in the emails, there is no evidence of falsification of data, as is (unfortunately) often reported.
That being said, I do think that well known climate scientist like you and others at RealClimate could help your credibility with many people by being tougher on those who exaggerate the expected negative consequences of global warming to advance their political agenda. A huge amount of non-sense that seems designed mainly to frighten people has been pushed by activists, and broadly reported in the MSM for many years. Outright dismissal of gross exaggerations would be very good PR for climate science.
The pendulum tends to swing to far to one side or the other. From alarmists views of impending disaster to denial there is any warming.
There is warming of course, especially from 1979-1998, from 1910-1940 and from 1850-1889, and since the beginning of the end of the last ice age 20,000 years ago. Man is partly responsible for recent warming,
but much of it is natural, and there is little evidence future warming will be catastrophic,
or that man could do anything about it anyways. While it is generally agreed CO2 doubling will cause
warming without feedbacks, of about 1.2 deg C, it is not agreed on what kind of feedbacks or their
magnitude (negative or positive), or that any doubling would be due entirely to man and not due in part to natural causes like natural warming of the oceans causing the oceans to vent CO2.
History has shown periods warmer than today and sea levels higher than today, and suggests another ice age is is looming. When that will be, nobody can say. It might get warmer before it gets colder, or it might not.
Climate change is the norm. Species adapt or they are extinguished. Man should prepare for climate change in all of it’s forms, colder, warmer, drier, wetter, etc. That is done by diversifying the food and water supplies, and storing it for days when food production drops due to droughts, floods, warmth or cold.
Science is never settled, consensus is a political term, and scientists are no more open than other disciplines. Careers are made and grants are received by pleasing those who are in charge of granting tenure and awarding grants, and those who give their universities large endowments. Much of science is funded by governments, so there is a political component.
The days when a Swiss patent officer can get a paper on special theory of relativity or quantum physics published are over. Peer review by anonymous reviewers whose careers are based on defending the existing paradigm will reject such papers. Those scientists wanting grants to disprove the CO2 hypothesis will be rejected by peers who seek to protect the hypothesis and their own reputations based on promoting the hypothesis. Peer review can be used to censor new ideas.
Most scientists are good people, but the system has gone bad and corrupted it, and it was never all that great in the first place. It is not just climate, it goes to genetically modified food, vaccine safety,
back to the days when scientists said asbestos, lead or tobacco was as not harmful to please those corporations or governments funding their science. British scientists in the 17th century said children could work 12 hr days in hot environments without harm. Scientists who claimed the continents drifted on plates were ridiculed. Doctors claiming bacteria were a source of ulcers were ignored for 40 years. Tesla was thought to be on to a source of free energy and JP Morgan refused to finance him since energy without being able to meter it would not be profitable. In fact, even our monetary system is based on a false paradigm, governments should be able to issue debt free money in a time of less than full employment without causing inflation. But the experts who are paid by private banks and educated in the false paradigm say impossible
and that governments can only spend money collected from taxes or which is borrowed and paid back at
interest.
Science is based on skepticism. Skepticism promotes good science. Thats the lesson of the day. Those who say otherwise and claim that scientists operate on consensus and the consensus should be trusted are not to be trusted.
It has been with great patience and due diligence that I have followed, and read, and researched climate science for some time now. Those in favor of global warming being induced and aggravated by CO2 and mans involvement in it, has been a general consensus for some time now, and up until Climategate broke, skeptics have been the butt of jokes over and over and over.
Now Gavin suggests, “The coverage(regarding Climategate) has contained more bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion on the subject than we have seen in such a short time anywhere.”
I strongly disagree Gavin.
Isn’t it about time that the science that supports AGW and those involved be examined closer. Shouldn’t there be transparency?
For how long has it just been assumed that the I.P.C.C. reports were just taken for granted for being actual peer-reviewed assessments?
While you may consider it just bad reporting,I think its bad form to dismiss anything thats contrary to the current beliefs about Climate Change.
If the science is strong enough to bear scrutiny, then let the scrutiny begin and if the science wins out, then all the alarmists of the past 30 years or so may then feel justified.
Until that time, why not just let “The coverage has contained more bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion on the subject than we have seen in such a short time anywhere.”, go on for just a short time longer.
Unless of course the science has something to hide , eh?
[Response: The IPCC is the most peer-reviewed document in the world. It is still not perfect. But even you could have reviewed it if you wanted to. Transparency is great, but even if the data was all locked up and the analyses secret (which it is not), the nonsense passing for journalism in the last few weeks would still be nonsense. But if you want transparency (and why not?), start downloading the data, or the code, or the papers (all of which are readily available), and point out where it is exactly that you think we are hiding anything. – gavin]
I rarely visit this blog – the censorship is disturbing. But today I was curious.,,
If I had tried as long and as hard as you guys to convince the public of a looming catastrophe and had failed, I would consider the possiblity that I was wrong.
BTW, most skeptics don’t dispute some warming. It’s the cause and the consequences and the appropriate policy that’s disputed.
It’s been warming for ~200 years. Pleaes plot human prosperity versus temperature and give that plot some thought.
“I doubt any journalism school teaches that ‘doing their job’ involves making up quotes, misrepresentating scientists and presenting innuendo as fact. But what do I know? – gavin”
This is a straw man, as you well know. It seems to me that journalists are simply conduits for science marketing these days, simply publishing press releases. The more catastrophic or concerning the press release, the more print it gets (it shifts copy).
There’s an awful lot of unmitigated rubbish out there, masquerading as unassailable fact, not just in the reporting of Environmental issue. It would be better if environment reporters actually started to take on board the counter-arguments, many of which are legitimate and worthy of public debate. But I don’t see this happening to any great degree.
There’s a lot of institutional bias out there in the media. You’ve got to lean towards the ideology of Environmentalism to study Environmental Sciences in the first place. Therefore of course you’re already more inclined to see a problem where none exists, or where the evidence is tenuous. Coupled with grant hungry institutions and PHD’s seeking tenure, I would say we have something approaching an unfortunte feedback mechanism.
> Steve Fitzpatrick
> … a huge amount …
[citation needed]
This is often claimed but rarely are actual examples cited. Got one in mind that nobody has tackled? Pointer always welcome to absurdity worth refuting.
I’m hearing a lot of moaning about biased reporting, with Joe Six Pack just gobbling up the 3-second sound bites. Well, not so long ago MSM printed nothing about the skeptical view. Not a word. The science was settled, Joe was told. Overwhelming consensus, he believed. The persistent voices of skeptical scientists were completely drowned out by he who could holler the loudest – namely those with the grants and the well-padded careers who could attribute anything and everything (from drowned polar bears to forest fires in Australia) to AGW. And MSM loved it. The headlines were marvelous, screaming about Armageddon and a Martian-like future. If someone quietly asked to see the empirical data, there was none (it had been deleted or the weather stations had been moved). Computer models. Tree rings. Consensus. Hockey stick. Science settled. Certainly no headlines questioning the validity. Just 3-second sound bites.
And in every AGW-hyped article in MSM there was no balance view. Nobody asked the scientists and meteorologists who had adopted a more reserved position for their take on why the Arctic sea ice was diminishing. Just pictures of ‘stranded’ polar bears, and plenty of scare stories about what will happen if this trend continues. Further, the was a simplistic implication through all these stories that AGW was the cause, CO2 was the problem, the science was established as fact.
As a lay observer of this phenomenon over the last 5+ years, it makes me laugh when I now see the protagonists of the theory loudly bemoaning the very same MSM for throwing a few simplistic headlines about. A media storm, is it? A feeding frenzy? No – this is just a realisation that maybe the skeptics have a point or two. Maybe the few objective journalists aren’t laughed at with total derision any more when they suggest investigating some of the skeptic’s claims. Maybe MSM editors realise that they have pandered to one side only for the past decade, and now it might be time to get some realistic perspective in the matter.
Face it guys, you’ve had it your way for a long time. Now is the time to get serious about the science. Use reasoned debate instead of hyperbole and answer the questions which your Theory of Anthroprogenic Global Warming raises. Have honest, balanced and transparent debate. Keep an open mind. Maybe, just maybe Co2 is not the infallible trigger you thought it was. Maybe, just maybe, something else is at play here. Let’s investigate. Let’s admit that the science is not settled, and that a consensus (if there is any) is no validation of a theory. I hope that in the end, rather than the ‘warmists’ or the ‘deniers’ winning, Science will be the winner.
I’ve pretty much given up, so now I am just waiting for the world to fall apart. Maybe it’s too much to expect that we could escape the fate of any other animal that overruns it’s environment, but it did seem that it might have been possible.
pft – excellent points you make. I thoroughly concur. Nice to see Tesla get a mention!
J. Warner, You are a contemptible little gnome. To come on here and make vague insinuations about the contributors to this blog is beneath contempt. You don’t even have the courage to state your accusations clearly.
Robinson says “You’ve got to lean towards the ideology of Environmentalism to study Environmental Sciences in the first place. ”
Uh, actually, no you don’t. And in any case, climate science is not an environmental discipline, but rather a geo-science. Straw men are a bore. Maybe if you actually looked into the science, you address issues instead of straw men.
@pft #262
Thank you – well said.
Live well and prosper.
Andreas, Sorry, but there is no amnesty for trolls. If someone comes on here claiming to be a physicist, they damn well better be or at least better know some physics.
Walt was a troll, and not a very bright one at that.
Mike J asserts:
“Maybe the few objective journalists aren’t laughed at with total derision any more when they suggest investigating some of the skeptic’s claims.”
Wouldn’t that be wonderful if most journalists actually did investigate “skeptic” claims publicly, like here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/feb/17/iphone-app-climate-change
rather than uncritically accepting them and giving equal or greater weight to a small minority of vocal individuals versus the balance of evidence in the scientific community.
Note how “skeptics” react to this:
“WARNING! There is an iphone app trying to put down what we have to say under the heading of ‘Skeptical Science’. We need as many of you as possible to promote that this iphone app is yet another attempt to discredit ‘Climate Realists’. We can only hope the general public can see through this as a cheap trick to prop up the FAILED SCIENCE OF MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGE”
Sounds more like a cult movement than honest skepticism.
The public has long given “skeptics” a free pass, rarely challenging their dubious assertions. If you’ve ever been to a scientific conference or are familiar with academic journals, you’ll note that such arguments are examined critically, explicitly or implicitly through presentations, review, and publication. It doesn’t usually contain the same shrill accusatory political tone that you and other “skeptics” have engaged in, nor does it obsessively focus on “anything-but-CO2” arguments, similar to that of a lawyer pursuing a given case.
The rest of your comments are littered with rhetoric and a stunning quantity of strawman arguments.
Mike J says: 17 February 2010 at 8:32 PM
“Now is the time to get serious about the science. Use reasoned debate instead of hyperbole and answer the questions which your Theory of Anthroprogenic Global Warming raises. Have honest, balanced and transparent debate. Keep an open mind. Maybe, just maybe Co2 is not the infallible trigger you thought it was. Maybe, just maybe, something else is at play here. Let’s investigate. Let’s admit that the science is not settled, and that a consensus (if there is any) is no validation of a theory. I hope that in the end, rather than the ‘warmists’ or the ‘deniers’ winning, Science will be the winner.”
Mike, that would be turning the clock back at least 20 years, for some of what you mention fully 30.
Here’s a great place to see how far we’ve come over the past 200 years:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
The whole enchilada, pretty much, including the roaches in the refritos such as they are. Check it out.
Gavin,
I admire and respect you as a climate scientists; leave economics to economists, where fairy tales rule, and where truth is stranger than the political propaganda that pours forth from many corners.
For example, you cannot possible blame the recent world financial crisis on “the gold standard” but you could certainly blame it on poorly-applied economic theory.
When translating climate science into public policy, I’m afraid we have the wrong bunch of “economists” advising Congress, which is one of the reasons climate legislation is going no where, for the present.
#264 sceptic:
I rarely visit this blog – the censorship is disturbing. But today I was curious…
Curiosity is the foundation of science so good for you. BTW, I think the amount of venom that does get through here is quite amazing. Gavin and the Team are far more diplomatic than he should be.
If I had tried as long and as hard as you guys to convince the public of a looming catastrophe and had failed, I would consider the possiblity that I was wrong.
Did you ever think that these folks are trying to save you so that is why they do not give up? Even those of you that are trying to bury these same scientists for ideological reasons?
BTW, most skeptics don’t dispute some warming. It’s the cause and the consequences and the appropriate policy that’s disputed.
There are VERY FEW of that kind. Most are accurately called denialists because they truly deny the science and never use the scientific method.
It’s been warming for ~200 years. Pleaes plot human prosperity versus temperature and give that plot some thought.
It is precisely because of SCIENTISTS that humans have prospered over that time frame yet, with climate change, scientists are being attacked. How do you think human prosperity will be in the year 2100 with a business as usual approach to GHG emissions? I bet you do not live in Bangladesh nor use water from glaciers to drink nor have your home built on permafrost nor farm in the US, etc., etc., etc.
Climate is changing faster than humans can adapt and the change will accelerate. And you will pay for it one way or another. The cheapest and most humane solution is to mitigate the source of the problem – increased GHGs.
Mike J says: “Now is the time to get serious about the science. Use reasoned debate instead of hyperbole and answer the questions which your Theory of Anthroprogenic Global Warming raises. Have honest, balanced and transparent debate. Keep an open mind.”
Mike, how about going through the index above, read any or all posts, then come back with anything, anything at all written by the scientists who operate this site that does not satisfy your criteria.
Tom Wiita@230.
I just spent some time reading through the FOI released emails from 2007 that you provided a link to. My reaction is that they provide clear evidence of
A) no malfeasance or fraud on the part of GISS and NASA scientists regarding the surface station temp data processing adjustment for USHCN/GHCN databases;
B) self-promoting, obsessive, and uninformed actions and rhetoric by Steve McIntyre; and
C) that despite coming across some interesting tidbits on tracking and analyzing surface temp data globally, I just wasted an hour of time at home
I’m not an enviro-ideologue or an “alarmist” and I find your accusations/implications of scientific malfeasance on the part of GISS to be simply and profoundly without merit.
Walt, you claim to be a physicist. Yet, you have made absolutely no statments that give any indication of technical expertise. None. You haven’t even said what your field of interest is. Anyone who knows physicists knows that the love to talk about their own research.
And if you had ever done scientific modeling, you would know that the whole point of modeling is to elucidate the physics. So, yes, Walt, we can model all those things. I myself have modeled cratering on icy satellites of Jupiter. I’ve modeled Neutrino oscillations. And transistors–inverters, even.
And yes, Walt, we can model climate. There is a lot we don’t know. Lots to learn. However, when it comes to a well-mixed, long-lived (>1000 years) greenhouse gas, the results stand out like a sore thumb. So I can tell my neighbor that just as this decade was warmer than the last, and that was warmer than the one before it, so the next decade will be warmer than this. If you bothered to look at the science, Walt, you’d know this…or at least a real physicist would.
Folks, it’s time for another denialist doublespeak lesson. Evidently it is arrogant for a scientist to expect that the 30 years he has devoted to studying a subject will give him more understanding of it than someone who has devoted, say, 30 minutes to the same subject. However, it is not arrogant for the person who has devoted 30 minutes to lecure the 30 year veteran on the minutiae of the subject.
Next time, we’ll learn how black is the new white and how freedom is the new slavery!
pft (262) — You have it wrong at almost every point. As for the next stade (massive ice sheets), from the references in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_forcing
on finds that the earliest possiblity is at least 20,000 years from now.
I’ll leave the rest of your misimpressions for others to correct.
Ha Nguyen says: 17 February 2010 at 7:15 PM
You make a good point. In any case, technically speaking real skeptics don’t believe anything, so my conclusion is that we see very few skeptics here. Of course, we also see the word fraud loosely used all too often of late, so I suppose we must accept that we’re to be generally degraded as collateral damage from PR flacks.
pft (#262),
You write riveting fiction. Very articulate.
“Those scientists wanting grants to disprove the CO2 hypothesis will be rejected by peers who seek to protect the hypothesis and their own reputations based on promoting the hypothesis.”
Those seeking to disprove the “Moon Landing” hypothesis or claim the Earth is flat might say the same thing, and unlike your argument, they wouldn’t have much evidence to the contrary rejecting it. Richard Lindzen, a notable contrarian, has received about $3 million in NSF grants, on top of his industry funding.
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/piSearch.do;jsessionid=4342016799271FFA0A06A9D10F3380BB?SearchType=piSearch&page=1&QueryText=&PIFirstName=&PILastName=lindzen&PIInstitution=&PIState=&PIZip=&PICountry=&Search=Search#results
William Gray, a rather shrill contrarian who pushes “hoax” rhetoric, has received even more.
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/piSearch.do?SearchType=piSearch&page=1&QueryText=&PIFirstName=william&PILastName=gray&PIInstitution=&PIState=&PIZip=&PICountry=&Search=Search#results
Researches have even examined this specific hypothesis, rejecting it.
http://people.oregonstate.edu/~stonedan/climate.pdf
As for some of your other assertions, I strongly suggest you examine the multiple lines of evidence regarding climate sensitivity.
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
I do agree that consensus is not fact. Once there was a general consensus that human activities weren’t warming the planet. It was through many observations over decades that the evidence for it began piling up. Scientists reached a virtual consensus based on this evidence. Some further reading material:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
“Science is based on skepticism. Skepticism promotes good science. Thats the lesson of the day. ”
This is genuine skepticism:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
What we see in the public debate is usually not genuine skepticism, but advocacy – individuals arguing like lawyers trying to convince a jury, selectively promoting misleading or fatally flawed arguments while ignoring the mountain of evidence to the contrary. I personally hope such behavior doesn’t taint the word “skeptics” forever, as there’s always a need for genuine skepticism.
Several genuine questions arise from all of this:
How much time do we – scientists, science communicators and advocates of action (not three distinct groups necessarily) – put into countering the recent ‘putsch’ by the denialist contingent? Is this just another flash in the pan after which common sense will once more prevail? The genuine sceptics will see sense and all will come clear to the generally perplexed? Is it a storm in a tea cup? Or are we seeing an irreversible (at least without concerted intervention) unravelling of the last strands of public confidence in the scientific community, not to mention NGOs? How intractable is the left-right polarisation of opinion on the issue? (Is it any different in the UK to the US and Australia, for instance, and if so, why?) Am I just plain paranoid, or is it safe to say that part of their (the cranks, hacks, right-wing thinktanks, et al.) strategy to tie up our time and leave us with less to work on the many still unresolved scientific and policy problems?
Just verbalising.
For your part, you’re doing a darn good job folks.
Corey Watts
@Ray Ladbury
I made no insinuations. I didn’t even link to the piece. I’m simply wondering if the piece is going to be allowed to blow up in NASA’s and GISS’s face, much as the BBC interview with Jones has done.
Gavin’s response hints that he feels he is removed from the controversy. Fair enough.
However, If I were Hansen, I think I’d be thinking about how to get out in front of the same/similar illegal blocking of FOIA requests, as that is exactly what has caused the major problem for Jones.
Right now Horner’s piece is on a little-known conservative blog. If Drudge or another large site picks it up, look out. The American people, the Tea Parties, the Populists, etc. are out to get anything that appears elitist. Not only does this appear elitist, it is fairly easy to make the argument (however unfounded) that NASA has wasted millions of tax payer dollars by fudging research, being unorganized, losing data, etc.
Ray, step out of your usual bulldog mentality and look at this from the view point of damage control.
“…lead or tobacco was as not harmful to please those corporations or governments funding their science.”
Oddly enough, some of the same folks disputing the consensus on global warming disputed the consensus on tobacco’s effect on health.
Lindzen:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_S._Lindzen#On_Tobacco
Fred Singer:
http://www.tobaccoscam.ucsf.edu/pdf/9.6-JunkScience-Yach.pdf
Steven Milloy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy#Links_to_tobacco_industry
There are always a few bad apples in the bunch. I wouldn’t villify the entire scientific community because of this. Lindzen, Singer, and other industry-funded scientists, who have had a clear conflict of interest, do not represent the scientific community on the whole.
178
flxible:
“Wayne Davidson – “Winter Olympics without winter should be more a news story than it is”
Only if one hasn’t been paying attention [like the Olympic committee, who’ve wised up NOW] – historically, the south coast of B.C. has what locals call “pre-spring” mid-February, sunny shirtsleeve weather, time to clean up the garden and get ready for early planting. Years ago the International Ski Assoc dropped Whistler as an event venue because of the erratic nature of spring conditions, if it’s not raining it’s foggy, or [like a couple days ago] there’s too much snow – and the 2nd Olympic venue is on a lower hill that regularly gets skunked. Current conditions may be indicative of climate change, like the effects of El Nino [the “immediate” cause this year], and are quite in line with the long term trend, but the only reason for it to be a real news story is the monetary effects.”
Good insights, I would add, in particular focus to contrarian press, the Telegraphs and Daily Mangles Tabloids of the world, they likely will cover very little NW North American coast being all time warmest winter, even with the winter Olympics media Juggernaut. Because it will expose the flaw in their propaganda;
All time lower atmosphere temperature highs = warmer air right where some lower ski slopes need snow.
All time lower atmosphere temperature highs .not equal. to globe cooling since 1998
and of course antifact tabloids equate great snowfall in Europe and East coast of US with all time global temperature lows which are not happening. Since Olympics proves otherwise, they will misquote climate scientists as a nice buffer against the reality which they evade for the sake of pleasing their Carbon loving bosses.
pft@262 states:
“Science is never settled, consensus is a political term, and scientists are no more open than other disciplines. Careers are made and grants are received by pleasing those who are in charge of granting tenure and awarding grants, and those who give their universities large endowments. Much of science is funded by governments, so there is a political component.”
First, to repeat what is stated it seems dozens of time per week on this blog, scientific consensus is entirely different from political or normative consensus.
Second, the above quote exemplifies a common error made frequently by Americans regarding how the science community works. Namely, the erroneous assumption that scientists, like much of American society, compete primarily for material wealth and employment security; and thus they are pre-disposed to ‘promoting’ AGW in order to turn on the spigots of government research funding, etc.
This is an example of “economism”, the tendency to view all aspects of culture and society in primarily economic terms. Economism is arguably a serious blind spot in American culture and politics, a myopia we ignore at our peril, especially relative to other nations and cultures in both the developed and developing worlds who are preparing for our warmer future utilizing different social norms.
Scientists are highly competitive, but they compete on distinct terms-namely the pursuit of scientific truth (of which scientific consensus can be viewed as the best possible mortal approximation) in all its socio-economic, biophysical, medical, anthropological, and countless other extraordinary manifestations.
For many folks, such description of scientific endeavor sounds idealistic, even absurd. Why? . . . . See above.
As always it is a pleasure in reading your posts Ray Ladbury and I am not sure if I said this already but: welcome back.
This is really hard to believe. I’ve followed this issue for the last five years or more and for around four and a half of those years, the Murdoch press, indeed all media outlets, have been willingly publishing any AGW press release or public pronouncements of doom and gloom from scientists, without questioning it. Now you aren’t getting blanket coverage and a little balance has been restored, you’re having a hissy fit over corporate bias!
The MSM is just doing what it always does, generating compelling headlines in order to boost sales.
From where I’m sitting, this has served the AGW agenda well up until very recently (I’m amazed to hear that some people here have the notion that AGW has been under represented in the news, especially UK news. What would the BBC be without its daily dose of AGW alarmism? Unrecognisable, I bet.)
Anyway, if those following the GW debate in and outside the MSM have learned anything (they should have learned something), it’s that you can’t take any of these articles (either pro or anti AGW) at face value. If anything they will at best serve as leaping off points in which discussion of the various issues can take place in greater detail outside of the media’s demand for simplification and sensationalism. And this is where the various blogs come in…
I think it’s true that the sceptical blogs have had a better run currently at deconstructing these reports in the media than the pro AGW blogs- and I wonder- is this due to the fact that the reports up until now have been mostly sympathetic to AGW concerns, or is it because the AGW blogs are largely unconcerned about what is being presented in the mainstream news? (prefering to stick to the science?)
Certainly, with AGW now under attack, blogs such as Realclimate have an opportunity (and I would hope, desire) to set things straight from the perspective of concerned scientists, to provide the kinds of detailed analysis of the issues that the public has come to demand on such an important issue as GW. Strangely though, thought perhaps not surprisingly, it’s been Climate Audit which has provided most of the depth and detail on ‘climategate’ so far. I’m not sure what this says about AGW blogs… there doesn’t seem to be a lot of meat to this particular post as an example- it seems more like an opportunity to call those who disagree with you names. It’s not doing much to set records straight.
Do your best at putting the information out there and the public will make up its own mind. That’s all you or anyone else can do.
272 Mike Flynn, 269 Mike J., and of course #262 pft
There is a point here about consensus, but I am looking for a word that would carry the day as far as getting something to happen about this, or any other problem. No matter what the word might be, skepticism is appropriate and action needs to be planned with some comprehension of technological and economic reality factored into the decision making process.
Usually in business situations there would be a much stronger engineering presence, which seems to have been short circuited in the IPCC planning process. Not to say that engineers can’t seriously mess things up as well.
In business situations the science folks play important roles but are not so much a part of the grubby hashing out the trade-offs process. This is a blessing for the science folks who would much prefer to be doing higher order thinking. Engineers are sometimes better at putting up with the attempts by management to put order into the process by simplifying any task down to something that they can put on a plan. For example, in the auto industry the capability to plan and schedule new fashion designs every year or so has long trumped any interest in hard to schedule, real technical development. All we are left with is the general, empty claim that innovation has happened.
What seems to have happened is that scientists have called for sweeping action by government on the assumption that the need for urgency would result in unquestioning funding like in war time. It seemed that every possible action was to be undertaken, regardless of cost. We have to notice that there is indeed some kickback happening.
So now it is time for some serious work.
By the way, how did Tesla get a mention for that free energy stuff. If it really amounted to anything would he have given up just because J.P. Morgan wouldn’t kick in the big bucks? I have never been all that excited about Tesla; he is not even mentioned in my E-M Fundamentals text book (I just checked)? As near as I can tell he was a capable engineer who helped Westinghouse set us on a disastrous course of hugely wasteful power plants, where power was distributed by high voltage AC lines made possible by his ideas. Not exactly something that involved a lot of thought about efficiency, huh? And now we get to pick up the mess on that. And guess what we do? We build a “smart” grid, where the only thing smart about it is that it will perpetuate large central power plants, located out in nowhere where only a third of the heat actually gets turned into electric energy. Nobody important really seems to care much about global warming.
@ MarkB #274
Your reference to a very recent article simply underscores my point.
You contend:
“The public has long given “skeptics” a free pass, rarely challenging their dubious assertions. ”
I disagree.
“If you’ve ever been to a scientific conference or are familiar with academic journals, you’ll note that such arguments are examined critically, explicitly or implicitly through presentations, review, and publication. ”
I agree.
“It doesn’t usually contain the same shrill accusatory political tone that you and other “skeptics” have engaged in, nor does it obsessively focus on “anything-but-CO2″ arguments, similar to that of a lawyer pursuing a given case. The rest of your comments are littered with rhetoric and a stunning quantity of strawman arguments.”
Sounds a wee bit shrill and accusatory to me, Mark. Never mind. Thanks for your feedback.
@ Doug Bostrom #275
Thanks for the link Doug – very interesting. However, my point was predominantly regards the reaction of the warmists to a recent upsurge in coverage of skeptical argument.
RE- Comment by Robinson — 17 February 2010 @ 9:55 PM:
So, from what you have argued you must think that balance should also be restored to the evolution/creation debate so that the anti science crowd should be given an equal voice on school curriculum.
Steve
Re #264 skeptic says:
If I had tried as long and as hard as you guys to convince the public of a looming catastrophe and had failed, I would consider the possiblity that I was wrong.
Not really since it’s human nature to be shortsighted and live for today. We are not good at accepting bad news in the future, especially when it might inconvenience us today.
John E. Pearson says:
“””241: Richard here’s an “alarmist piece about the 70’s ice age”. NOT.
George Will (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033101707.html ) wrote
“While worrying about Montana’s receding glaciers, Schweitzer, who is 50, should also worry about the fact that when he was 20 he was told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling. Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.”
Somehow the Post goofed and a year later the Will column was briefly open for comments so I wrote: ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/comments/display?contentID=AR2006033101707 )
Here is the full quote from the 1976 Science article that Mr Will cited. The paper was Variations in the Earths Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages J. D. Hays 1, John Imbrie 2, and N. J. Shackleton 3 7
“A model of future climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships, but ignoring anthropogenic effects, predicts that the long-term trend over the next sevem thousand years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation. You get a little different flavor when you read the whole quote compared to Georges little snippet in which he said they were proven spectacularly wrong.”
I can’t understand why the post pays a clown like George Will to write such lies.”””
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
-G- I was *trying* to be polite and not point fingers at *who really was* telling the public about the “coming 70s ice age” AND the 2000s “we’re all going to die tomorrow because of global warming” statements. *They* are just sooooooo sensitive when you say who it was.
Anyway here is one world-wide peer reviewed study (with more than the usual references) showing “the 1970s coming ice age” was not alarmist and not immininent in the science publications…as any ed _ _ _ _ _ d person would know (*They* too are just soooooo sensitive about that word).
Peterson, Connolley, Fleck, 2008, BAMS.
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2009Q1/111/Readings/Peterson2008_Myth_global_cooling_consensus.pdf
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/2008/08047peterson/peterson.pdf
Following is Peterson, Connolley, Fleck’s bibiliography for a little better investigation into the “1970s ice age” situation.
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@ Jim Bullis #293
“So now it is time for some serious work.”
Exactly.
I suggest that serious work might be best undertaken by an independent group of qualified scientists. Not a political organisation such as IPCC or UN. Such an independent group would have to be totally transparent in their funding sources, deductive reasoning, empirical data and methodology, at the highest standards of the scientific process. Reviews of their work would be done by scientists across many different disciplines, not just environmental sciences (too avoid ‘pal-review’ situations). I think the internet could provide a technological framework for this process, but some formalised structures would need to be engineered.
Thinking aloud… my 2 cents.
@Ron #258
Ron no matter how bad you want to build that straw man of my comments being a direct critique of RealClimate I state now, as I have before, my words are to be read in the overall context of those who are convinced of AGW and how they handle the PR part of it. Quite a sentence, no? So please spare me the condescending “go read the index” crap. Gavin has responded and I have accepted his response as fair, accurate and honest. Note in the first quote of mine you used, I said it “seemed” iow, my impression was and Gavin directly responded to it.
Let me ask you a question, Do you think proponents of the AGW theory could do a better job of communicating the message?
Oh let me ask a second, How many, to borrow a phrase “Joe sixpacks” do you think read RealClimate?
Would you like to converse or just label me, stick me in box and put your foot on it and pound your chest like Tarzan?
oops thats three ;-)