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.
Corey Watts, I think that once the sun gets back from its vacation _and_ we get a strong el Nino, the position of the anti-intellectuals will get much weaker. We are truly in a race between the melting of the permafrost and the awakening of the public.
I’m afraid that there is no way we can keep up with every single mistake in the UK press though. – gavin
Is there anyone who can keep up with IPCC mistakes? Answer – no mistakes, just small problems. That shows true confidence and robustness-gavin
Mike J says: 17 February 2010 at 10:40 PM
“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.”
Mike, you just described the IPCC’s main features, with the sole exception that it is organized as the “IPCC”.
Jonesy, take the time to read up on public health and ecology. I can find you example after example of scientists warning of trouble in time to avoid it and being ignored. I can’t find any of scientists warning mistakenly that something was going to happen. So no, being ignored isn’t a sign of being mistaken, when scientists speak up about policy in huge numbers in consistent agreement.
Scientists have been speaking up and participating as citizens in democracies for a couple of centuries. That’s a very short time. They’ve consistently been right, and consistently been fought by short term commercial interests that are extracting more than nature provides and wrecking a resource that could have lasted effectively forever.
Just one contemporary example of the many:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13346-tuna-fisheries-facing-a-codlike-collapse.html
http://endoftheline.com/blog/archives/1092
Stu says:
“”” Anyway, if those following the GW debate…”””
Urrrr, ummm, cough, cough, hem, hem… I take umbrage at this statement. And yes, …only uned _ _ _ _ _ d people would say this, not meaning to be demeaning if you know what I mean.
Below shows there is *no* debate among legitiimate climate scientists whose work holds up over time in the juried, published world-wide peer reviewed literature over whether human made global warming is going on…only among delusional or ahem uned _ _ _ _ _ d people.
If you mean mainstream scientific debate as to how fast it will fully manifest itself, when, exactly where, and what to do about it, then you have hit a home run…yes, that is where debate exists.
The world wide juried peer reviewed published work that has held up over time strongly disagrees with you if you say it is a debate of whether it is happening or what is causing it.
And you have utterly, absolutely, totally, extremely, entirely, wholly, outright, unreservedly, downright, fully, no evidence whatsoever to back up your statement in the scientific literature that stands up over time to the contrary…only the “people who do not like to be named” are saying it.
Orestes 2004, Science (183 citations) It has survived strenuous review, to put it mildly.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
Additionally, several scientific organizations have explicitly used the term “consensus” in their statements:
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2006: “The conclusions in this statement reflect the scientific consensus represented by, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Joint National Academies’ statement.”
US National Academy of Science: “In the judgment of most climate scientists, Earth’s warming in recent decades has been caused primarily by human activities that have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. … On climate change, [the National Academies’ reports] have assessed consensus findings on the science…”
Joint Science Academies’ statement, 2005: “We recognise the international scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”
Joint Science Academies’ statement, 2001: “The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world’s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus.”
American Meteorological Society, 2003: “The nature of science is such that there is rarely total agreement among scientists. Individual scientific statements and papers—the validity of some of which has yet to be assessed adequately—can be exploited in the policy debate and can leave the impression that the scientific community is sharply divided on issues where there is, in reality, a strong scientific consensus…. IPCC assessment reports are prepared at approximately five-year intervals by a large international group of experts who represent the broad range of expertise and perspectives relevant to the issues. The reports strive to reflect a consensus evaluation of the results of the full body of peer-reviewed research…. They provide an analysis of what is known and not known, the degree of consensus, and some indication of the degree of confidence that can be placed on the various statements and conclusions.”
Network of African Science Academies: “A consensus, based on current evidence, now exists within the global scientific community that human activities are the main source of climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for driving this change.” [21]
International Union for Quaternary Research, 2008: “INQUA recognizes the international scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”
Australian Coral Reef Society, 2006: “There is almost total consensus among experts that the earth’s climate is changing as a result of the build-up of greenhouse gases…. There is broad scientific consensus that coral reefs are heavily affected by the activities of man and there are significant global influences that can make reefs more vulnerable such as global warming….”
————————————————————————-
The following world-wide established scientifically-oriented
bodies have all issued verifiable written statements that human
caused-global warming/human-caused climate change is now
happening:
They are all risking their hard-earned reputations, which is all-
important in science, (and risking funding and ridicule if they are
wrong), to issue statements that human-caused climate change
is currently happening:
1) European Academy of Sciences and Arts- 2007
2) InterAcademy Council- 2007
3) International Council of Academies of Engineering and
Technological Sciences-2007
4) 32 national science academies (Australia, Belgium, Brazil,
Cameroon, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Ghana,
Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, India, Japan, Kenya,
Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, New Zealand, Russia,
Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Sweden, Tanzania, Uganda,
United Kingdom, United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe).-2001
5) The national science academies of the G8+5 nations issued a
joint statement declaring- 2009
6) Network of African Science Academies- (Cameroon, Ghana,
Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan,
Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, as well as the African
Academy of Sciences).- 2007
7) Royal Society of New Zealand- 2008
8) Polish Academy of Sciences- 2007
9) US National Research Council -2001
10) American Association for the Advancement of Science- 2006
11) European Science Foundation- 2007
12) Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological
Societies- 2008
13) American Geophysical Union- 2007
14) European Federation of Geologists- 2008
15) European Geosciences Union- 2005
16) Geological Society of America- 2006
17) Geological Society of Australia- 2009
18) International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics- 2007
19) National Association of Geoscience Teachers- 2009
20) American Meteorological Society- 2003
21) Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society- (As
of 2009)
22) Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric
Sciences- 2005
23) Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society- 2007
24) English Royal Meteorological Society- 2007
25) World Meteorological Organization- 2006
26) American Quaternary Association- (from at least 2009)
27) American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians- (from at
least 2009)
28) American Society for Microbiology- 2003
29) Australian Coral Reef Society- 2006
30) UK’s Institute of Biology- (from at least 2009)
31) Society of American Foresters- 2008
32) American Academy of Pediatrics- 2007
33) American College of Preventive Medicine- 2006
34) American Medical Association- 2008
35) American Public Health Association- 2007
36) Australian Medical Association- 2004
37) World Federation of Public Health Associations- 2001
38) World Health Organization- 2008
39) American Astronomical Society- (from at least 2009)
40) American Chemical Society- (from at least 2009)
41) American Institute of Physics- (from at least 2009)
42) American Physical Society- 2007
43) American Statistical Association- 2007
44) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Not one, I repeat, not one scientific body of national or
international standing, (to the best of my knowledge) is known to *reject* (but three out of four American geological scientific bodies are issuing neutral statements- some dating from 1999) about the basic findings of
human influence on recent climate change on the entire planet
Earth *currently as of 2009*)…
Jonesy says,
“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.”
Why should humans necessarily need to adopt any belief about the future? The long history of predictions, especially of the apocalyptic type, has not generated a good track record.
Imagine yourself in the year 1900. Now imagine yourself making a complex prediction about what would be going on in the year 2000. Would you honestly feel confident that you’d be right? Be honest.
Not believing is simply being reasonable and realistic. We can plan, and we should plan! But nowhere is it guaranteed that we’re going to get things right. This is applicable even to the short term. 100 years from now, who’s to say?
Appreciation of uncertainty should be a critical first step in dealing with any future risks. Many people sympathetic to AGW understand this. Many seem to forget.
i have to say that i’m amazed at the traffic on this site over the past week. i’ve been coming to this site for about 6 months now to learn and occasionally post and those whom i’ve had conversations with know i’m an AGW skeptic and while i’ve at times posted caustic messages (which i’ve apologised for) i learned that most of the regulars on here have a genuine desire to educate those who want that and will respond to these requests when the post is done in a scientific manner. of all the AGW sites, this one is the best hands down and i’ll come here to gain knowledge as long as it is here.
and as a skeptic and one who frequently visits this site i must admit that when i read the entire interview of dr. jones i viewed that as a big nothing burger. he didn’t say anything that i haven’t heard on here numerous times and the news articles were a distortion of his intent (imho). and that is coming from someone who watches fox news and reads george will’s column!
gavin et. al. that run this site – keep up the good work and i’ll return to debating the science on another day when this calms down and i have a question or issue worth raising.
ot – i’ve been looking on the GISS site for information on the weather stations – i.e. design of the stations, type of thermocouples used, calibration frequencies, etc. i couldn’t find it on the site and if anyone can point me to a link i’d appreciate it.
Re; 291 Robinson says: 17 February 2010 at 9:55 PM
“…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.”
You must take us for fools. Rupert Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. These are two of the most right wing anti AGW media around. And have been for years.
“Now you aren’t getting blanket coverage and a little balance has been restored, you’re having a hissy fit over corporate bias!”
Glenn Beck: ‘There aren’t enough knives’ for ‘dishonored’ climate scientists to kill themselves.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/11/glenn-beck-sarah-palin-climate-science/
This is balanced?
You are what’s hard to believe. No, not hard, impossible.
Forgive me, but Eli thinks he said this better three years ago
——————————
Eli is not comparing Tobis, Nisbet and Mooney to our favored pinati, for one thing, and it is a very important thing, when confronted by climate nuttery, they call it spinach and they don’t like it. Still, the tactics they recommend start by condemning what might loosely be called the Hansen-Gore position as way far out, and if not their science, saying that it enrages too many people.
This is the classic case of slamming the Overton Window shut on your own position. This is the
“window” in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on an issue. Overton described a method for moving that window, thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous “outer fringe” ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable…..
So what should be done. The important point which the Mooney’s, Nisbet’s and Tobis’ are missing, is that they should not define the middle excluding those far to either side of their position. If you try that the Inhofes will define the window for you as including them, you on the other side and Hansen shut out in the cold. If those who think climate change is an important issue try to find the “middle” position as an accommodation, the denialists will leave the middle as the extreme.
————————
Well, it looks like most of you have completely missed the boat when it comes to what the public will or will not do.
It matters not one whit if “not a single error has been found in the ~1000 pages of the WG1 AR4 report,” to the public if global warming / climate change has no disasterous impact. Those sections on the impact of global warming in the IPCC have been trashed because they were exaggerated, came from biased sources, and had material misstatements.
Because of perceived bias in the peer-review process I fully expect an effort to publish papers that detail the possible BENEFITS of global warming, just to prove that a journal is ‘fair and balanced’. Afterall, a warmer, wetter world with a carbon dioxide enriched atmosphere is great for the plant kingdom, and will translate to many benefits of the animal kingdom in general, and Man, specifically.
This one-two punch of the disasters having been hyped plus the publication of the advantages of GW will result in the public dismissing this subject completely.
The skeptics will declare victory, but those who really defeated AGW will have been the Al Gores and Pachouris of the world.
Another for Jonesy, this from Aldo Leopold:
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
One more person who doesn’t understand that the IPCC or UN doesn’t do research, that the research surveyed by those organizations are all done by independent, qualified scientists in many different countries.
Rather than speak ignorance, LEARN.
Walt The Physicist #110: “nobody does or can theoretically model and computationally simulate performance of a transistor”. Why does talking rubbish about one subject qualify you to know better than experts on another subject?
Here is some reading for you:
[1>/a>]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
Walt The Physicist #110: “nobody does or can theoretically model and computationally simulate performance of a transistor”. Why does talking rubbish about one subject qualify you to know better than experts on another subject?
Here is some reading for you (oops, URL glitch last time around):
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
Crap. There’s been no determination that Jones caused any illegal blocking of FOIA requests, in fact, they’ve all gone through proper channels.
All the denialists have is a statement that the statute of limitations has passed (in US terms), by a junior member of the ICO commission.
There’s been no formal determination whatsoever.
What happened to the “innocent until proven guilty bit”?
You’re essentially proclaiming that he’s guilty regardless of the facts, because of a newspaper quote that’s been widely misinterpreted.
So many excellent post here, and a very healthy discussion. One observation/question: Suppose we’d NOT had the extreme solar mimimum we’d seen in 2008-2009 combined with La Nina…and suppose the trends in the late 90’s and early 2000’s had continued. I posit these two events caused no small amount of the temporary cooling we’ve seen. I suspect the AGW doubters would have a far less ground to stand on, with our without the “climate-gate” and other so-called media disasters. The AGW science is sound, and truly, within a few years, as new higher global temp records are struck, and lower sea ice records, and higher sea levels, and all the rest of it, this period will become a “blip” in the debate, and hopefully one that can be learned from. The future climate will set the climate for the future of the debate.
Re: Wilt #52 Says
“You have have missed this, but the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK has recently concluded that Phil Jones’ CRU at the University of East Anglia broke the law with respect to the Freedom of Information Act. There will be no prosecution because the case is more than six months old. But that does not change the fact that misconduct has been observed.”
Actually the ICO won’t confirm this. This claim has apparently been made up out of thin air by the BBC. Just add that to the pile of BS rapidly accumulating on the Island. I guess those wellington boots the Brits are famous for are going to be put to good use. As Gavin has said we are still waiting for evidence of any act of wrong doing or made up data, etc. This is all cold fusion.
In regards to Texas. Man if you are hanging your hat on this story you’d best just walk away. Our good guvner Perry also recently told the EPA that the state would meet Clean Air Act requirements for visibility in 2150. I guess this was supposed to be some sort of a funny joke. If Texas could be hit up for pursuing a frivolous lawsuit, it would have been with AG Abbot’s latest mad hatter antics.
Never mind skeptics vs science , the reality is there is NO leadership from the wealthy or the political to do anything about this. Do humans prefer cold or hot?
#93/gavin’s response
You may want to reread the CRU emails or the recent interviews with Phil Jones: Data and meta-data gone missing; algorithms that are incomprehensible. That’s sloppy.
The fact that you agree with someone’s viewpoint does not make that person unbiased. Rather, it means that you share the same bias.
[Response: The fact that you don’t have any idea about the context or history of what you seeing doesn’t make them sloppy. That you are willing to believe the worst possible interpretations without any further investigation just reveals your bias. The fact is that weather station data are not clean – they are imperfect in many ways and many relevant issues to us now were not recorded by the authorities back in the day. Jones et al have worked long and hard to bring these records into shape, and yes, they are still not perfect. No data is ‘missing’, and while many pieces of legacy code can appear incomprehensible at first sight, they generally aren’t – and if you are referring to ‘Harry’, all of the problems were resolved and the new version of the data set he was working on is publicly available (CRU TS 3.0). To condemn a whole institution because a programmer found bugs in a new project seems a little harsh, don’t you think? – gavin]
299Mike J says:
@ 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.”””
Hey I agree…I suggest these independent people whose work does not stand up over time under world-wide published scrutiny and can’t prove their case with written evidence that stands up over time who seem to disagree with the IPCC, the consensus (IPCC, Orestes, 2004) and the published, juried peer review since 1824 and can’t prove it should start their own independent review free of all that nasty, awful restricting oversight and need to prove evidence that holds up over time.
Then we would get a real independent review of people whose work does not hold up under published scrutiny but whose work agrees with climate experts such as Rush, Beck, and Inhofe who have not published and and had work hold up over time under the peer review published system used since the 1600s. I trust experts like that, don’t you?
Wow, I think Easter Island listened to such experts as well and look at what happened to them (Collapse, Diamond 1283 citations)
A review states: “In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism.”
And no, people, I am *not* being “alarmist” and saying that “science” thinks this “will” happen to “us”…hey…stop eyeing your neighbor like that…
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2961959-0/fulltext?_eventId=login
IPCC 2007
http://www.cbe.wwu.edu/dunn/rprnts.eastersend.pdf
When Utah passed House Joint Resolution 12 declaring AGW a fraud, I sent a pointed letter to Mike Noel, the chairman of the committee. He had invited Roy Spencer to speak to the House of Representatives as an expert witness. One has come to expect a certain level of false statement and exaggeration from journalists, but when the majority of your state legislators do the same thing …
Mike Noel responded with “…I have not been persuaded by Al Gore who has absolutely no science background whatsoever and the D he received in his life science class at Havard may have been a gift considering that he believes that the earths core is millions of degrees C which would make our planet a star … My research of the literature from literally thousands of other scientists across the globe is the anthropogenic caused global warming is not occurring … you may want to look up some information on John Holdren, President Obama’s Science Advisor and his co-Authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich (Standford University Scientists) and their position on Global Warming and it’s relationship to world wide population control. As a student of UC Berkeley in the 1970’s, their book on Population, Resources, and Environment was required reading for one of my courses. The lengths to which they would go to obtain ecosystem balance is beyond anything you or I would ever support.”
Kind of a Twilight Zone sort of thing.
As another example, there is Mona Charen’s recent column http://www.creators.com/opinion/mona-charen/liberals-and-scientific-method.html .
Responding to these various PR pieces is like playing Whack-a-Mole, but needs to be done. Guess I need to spend a couple hours researching some of these claims enough to rebut them in a Letter to the Editor of our local paper.
“Let me ask you a question, Do you think proponents of the AGW theory could do a better job of communicating the message?”
Jon, seeing as what “arguments” from denialists are “winning” and are considered to be good by some posters, I don’t see how you can say that the arguments from the pro-science side could be better.
It seems for some people, any old explanation is fine.
Andreas, So far, CFU and you are the only ones who have responded to my offer of safe haven for reasoned debate. I do not think it is reasonable to let those who insist on playing Calvinball (read these, they’re great):
http://www.bartel.org/calvinball/
off easily. I will try to conform to the rules I’ve laid out in regards to exchanges with you and will ask CFU to do the same. This does not mean that I will give you a free pass if I think you are posting nonsense. I will tell you I think it’s nonsense and tell you why. To do less would be an insult to you, IMHO.
Deal?
CFU?
Jon P. and Ron,
Are you interested in the truce I offered under conditions of post #190 on this thread?
Personally, I would love to see less vitriol, but it has to be a two-way street. For instance, in respect to your post, I think that it is fair to point out that several posts on this blog have done just what you asked. What is more, several commenters (including myself) have pointed out several times when individual commenters or news reports confused weather with climate or went a bit hysterical on predictions. I do not see how you can hold this blog responsible for what others choose to do beyond its confines.
“262
pft says:
17 February 2010 at 8:04 PM
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.”
Care to prove that melting ice caps is both impossible if we continue BAU and that it won’t be a catastrophe?
Since the flooding would be 20ft easily for greenland melting and the New Orleans flooding was a mere 3ft, why all the catastrophe work and international aid to the US when this absolute non-catastrophe (by your estimations) occurred?
New Orleans, by the way, would be less of the US than would be flooded if the Greenland ice cap melted.
Now, if you’re going to say “but we can move”, then are you going to start moving now, are you making plans about how to move and where? For which you’ll need to know something about how the climate changes.
Which requires climate models.
And such moves are a catastrophe, as the much smaller temporary resettlement of the New Orleans populace shows.
Mike, What “independent group of qualified scientists” did you have in mind. Fully 97% of the experts (those actively publishing in climate science) already agree with the proposition that we are warming the planet.
How about the National Academies? Oh, they’ve already weighed in.
Physicists? AGU, APS AIP, IOP–all weighed in
Chemists? ACS on the side of warming
Meteorologists? AMS, done.
Scientists in general? AAAS and Sigma Xi both weiged in on the side of climate science.
Gee, Mike, it looks like the entire scientific community has beaten you to your idea. Do you accept their conclusions?
“265
Robinson says:
17 February 2010 at 8:12 PM
“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.”
No, this isn’t a straw man.
It’s a rhetorical question.
You may not know the difference.
As Andy would tell Two-Ton Tony: READ A BOOK!
You’re trying to square the circle.
How long do you think the perception of independence, non-politicalness, transparency and scientific validity and quality would survive against the powers threatened by their results? Do you remember how Bob Watson was replaced by Pachauri, and how Pachauri is now under the same attack?
My old pal Joe Dzhugashvili used to say “it doesn’t matter who votes, but who counts the votes.” He was very popular at 99.8% or so. It doesn’t matter who controls the science, but who controls the perception of the science. That‘s the problem.
“And in every AGW-hyped article in MSM there was no balance view.”
Your idea of balance has been noted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
We don’t have balance to flat earthers when the round-the-world-yacht-race completes.
But creationists would LOVE to see more of the sort of balance you profess is missing. Well it is missing, but there’s a reason for it: it isn’t balance.
“Not really since it’s human nature to be shortsighted and live for today.”
Humans are Genus Homo, subspecies sapiens sapiens (I think I got the boundary right).
Seriously wise man.
Shortsightedness and living for today is what animals do.
Shortsightedness and living for today is not wise.
If there are large sections of hominids in society who do so, they are not humans, since they are not seriously wise men.
Do you have any more ‘challenges’ Completely Fed Up
Uh, you’re reading comprehension (That was not me who said it) is as bad as your selection of quotes.
The times made up what Latif said.
Watts is no scientist and makes many mistakes and cares not a whit for them because he’s paid to muddy the waters, not produce science.
You fail.
Epically.
As we are now suffering the affects of the el nino, there haven’t been any noticable increase in skepticism in Sabah. Most people are comment on how weird the weather is – floods in December, drought and fires in Feb.
pft,
Mike J,
Well reasoned and balanced observations. Sound counsel for RC.
Good to see some long range views.
John
J. Warner, I detest insinuation and character assassination. You have simply alluded to irresponsible claims by an irresponsible hack, leaving people’s imaginations to run rampant. And to what purpose?
Gavin
I wouldn’t worry too much about this media storm, at least from the UK side. I think it’s helpful to put things into perspective.
The British media are what they are— a good dramatic ‘narrative’ is what sells copy and the sniff of a good ‘scandal’, in whatever context, is irresistible. Copenhagen, the cold weather, and the excesses of previous reporting in the other direction (gulf stream shutting down etc) have probably contributed to this.
On balance I don’t think public perceptions have greatly changed; at most it’s hardened pre-existing opinions. Those with contrarian inclinations may have become more outspoken, while few (if any) advocates for climate change action will have changed their minds. Interestingly, it has revealed an unexpected lack of understanding of the way science is practised among some commentators, such as George Monbiot.
But that’s by-the-by. There’s no real talk on the streets about any of this. Generally well informed family and friends aren’t discussing the ‘-gates’, or climate change at all very much- they didn’t before and they don’t now. I’m lucky to meet a broad cross-section of people through work, and it’s the same there. It’s just not an immediate concern for most people- jobs, health, wars in central Asia all take precedence.
If any of this frenzy were to greatly influence policy, than it might mean something- but I don’t think it will do that, either. The main parties all take nominally ‘green’ positions and- for what it’s worth- none seem ready to abandon them.
My opinion, FWIW, is that it’ll take much more than the current spate of so-called scandals, and certainly more than the longstanding sterile climate blog debates, to get the public fired up. When policies addressing more immediate, growing concerns— such as energy supply issues, global security, and health— start to align more fully with proposals addressing climate change, then there’ll be a real need to promote effective presentation of the relevant climate science and, of course, the accurate reporting of it.
In the meantime keep up the good work addressing the scientific issues in such a clear, insightful way. Let the current frenzy burn itself out.
Dave E.@268, I’m sorry. Did somebody mislead you and tell you this was going to be easy? Did you expect Ex-Mob and the coal interests to just fold when there are hundreds of billions of dollars on the table? And for you, the stakes are the futures of your progeny. I guess it’s just a matter of how much that is worth to you.
Robinson says “…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.”
So, ever hear of Fox News? The Wall Street Urinal? The National Post…
Gavin has previously referred to the “stolen personal emails” and “data” from the CRU.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/
Definition of Theft in the UK
A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly.
Reference: Section 1 of the Theft Act 1968.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1968/cukpga_19680060_en_1
So let us assume for a moment that CRU was hacked from whatever geographical location and the files downloaded onto the hacker’s computer but they left the original on the server. Is this theft bearing in mind that they did not permanently deprive the other of it?
“University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked…”
IF an administrator of the Wemailserver at CRU / UEA had proper access rights onto the server along with username and password and downloaded and disseminated the information for people to view on the Internet, then it cannot be that the Webmail was hacked.
[Response: This would clearly be an unauthorised release of data and would breach all of the relevant Data Protection Laws. – gavin]
“stolen personal emails”
This is up in the air as far as I’m concerned. When you work at an organisation in the UK are the emails you send and receive personal / private? Are your emails protected from other’s eyes if they are subject to a Freedom of Information request. We know at least they are not protected for NASA.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/business/foia/GISS.html
[Response: On this you are absolutely wrong. The only emails and documents that are FOIA-able are ‘agency documents’, for which there are a number of tests which need to be applied. Personal email sent to a US Govt. email address or personal documents in your office or desktop computer are not automatically agency docments (see Bloomberg vs SEC, DDC 2004, or this related case from a State court). The emails in the FOIA request above were discussions of agency business and so qualify, but this is determined on an email by email basis. – gavin]
I don’t know whether the emails and data was leaked, hacked or stolen and much remains to be seen. :o)
Ladies and Gentlemen
Whilst you all carry on your highly intellectual debating society, I would like to take a moment of your time to remind you that tomorrow (19th February), is the day that the Corus Steel Works in the UK closes with the loss of over 1600 jobs in a northern English town that it is already under huge pressure with increased unemployment.
This closure is the direct result of the acceptance of the AGW proposition and the subsequent creation of Cap and Trade.
[Response: No it isn’t. – gavin]
Tata, is closing one of Europe’s biggest steel works and can transfer the very same production to India.
In the process, Tata will be able to benefit from millions of pounds/dollars of carbon credits created through the reduced steel production in the UK and Europe – whilst there is no balancing cost in carbon debits (so to speak) – as the production is moved to India.
To summarise –
No reduction in total steel production
No reduction in total CO2 production
100s of millions of pounds to Tata from carbon trading
1600 British workers thrown out of work in the middle of the worst economic environment experienced for generations.
You people better be damn sure you know what you are doing because this is the result – and it stinks!
In my opinion, it is a devastating example of what happens when serious, well-meaning and committed people allow themselves to be associated with the likes of Al Gore.
Al Gore picks up your flag, waves it like it has never been waved before and is instrumental in bringing about the changes that result in the creation of a completely false market that directly ends the economic security of 1600 British workers.
Gavin, do you condemn this Cap and Trade market?
#316 R. Gates, Tamino, and as others have said:
Yes, the second half of the 2000s would likely have been warmer without the low TSI and the La Nina and yes, it is quite likely that in the next decade, AGW will become much more apparent and the few true skeptics and the many denialists will literally be standing on thin ice.
But can the world afford to wait for the final nail in the coffin?
“What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?”
— Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland (regarding ozone depletion)
And as the US, Canada, and Australia wait and wait, and oil gets more and more scarce, these countries will be very poorly positioned in the green technology revolution. To deny the science is to essentially be un-American (or un-Canadian, etc.)
#324: “To do less would be an insult to you, IMHO.
Deal? ”
Arrr.
To do less would also be an insult to WHY those points are desired. It’s not good playing by the queensbury rules when you’re up against a bottle cove.
The Amazing Gaspode knows this.
Walt the P: I wonder if there is some solid reasoning behind suggestion that the average global temperature during 1850 – 1940 was measured with accuracy of 0.1C?
BPL: You might want to take an introductory course in statistics. What happens to the accuracy of a mean as the number of observations increases? Are the error bars on a mean the same as the error bars on a single observation? Which is greater?
eroi: Even if the warming of the earth was true, taxation would not make a dent in it.
BPL: It would if the tax was on units of carbon emitted.
Look guys , I cannot find the time to read the torrent of reactions to this post. Gavin , you sure have hit a nerve here! And this has probably been stated already by some , but here in Oz the national newspaper The Australian ,is also printing a lot of rubbish imo re GW.
And people lined up in droves and paid $100 + to hear Monckton spruik on . It is fascinating and at the same time a bit scary to think how gullible people can be .Perhaps a guest post by a psychologist about group wishfull thinking is called for :)
JB: They got tired of doing that and let St. Augustine restart religion. That was 600 AD.
BPL: Augustine was more like 400 AD.
pft: 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.
BPL: We know the new CO2 is coming mainly from burning fossil fuels and not from the ocean by its radioisotope signal. Read:
Suess, H.E. 1955. “Radiocarbon Concentration in Modern Wood.” Sci. 122, 415-417.
Revelle, R. and H.E. Suess 1957. “Carbon Dioxide Exchange between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 During the Past Decades.” Tellus 9, 18-27.
Mike J: Let’s admit that the science is not settled, and that a consensus (if there is any) is no validation of a theory.
BPL: Why “admit” something that isn’t true? The science may not have all the details perfect yet–no science does–but the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, CO2 is increasing, we’re doing it, and it’s a serious threat–those are so well established at this point that only those completely ignorant of the relevant science don’t accept it.
PEER REVIEWED ALARMISM exemple to be published on march 15 in “Nature Geoscience”
“Jianjun Yin, a climate modeler at the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) at Florida State, said there is a better than 90 percent chance that the sea level rise along this heavily populated coast will exceed the mean global sea level rise by the year 2100. The rising waters in this region — perhaps by as much as 18 inches or more — can be attributed to thermal expansion and the slowing of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation because of warmer ocean surface temperatures.
Yin and colleagues Michael Schlesinger of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ronald Stouffer of Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University are the first to reach that conclusion after analyzing data from 10 state-of-the-art climate models, which have been used for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report. Yin’s study, “Model Projections of Rapid Sea Level Rise on the Northeast Coast of the United States,” will be published online March 15 in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“The northeast coast of the United States is among the most vulnerable regions to future changes in sea level and ocean circulation, especially when considering its population density and the potential socioeconomic consequences of such changes,” Yin said. “The most populous states and cities of the United States and centers of economy, politics, culture and education are located along that coast.”
The researchers found that the rapid sea-level rise occurred in all climate models whether they depicted low, medium or high rates of greenhouse-gas emissions. In a
medium greenhouse-gas emission scenario, the New York City coastal area would see an additional rise of about 8.3 inches above the mean sea level rise that is expected around the globe because of human-induced climate change.
Thermal expansion and the melting of land ice, such as the Greenland ice sheet, are expected to cause the global sea-level rise. The researchers projected the global sea-level rise of 10.2 inches based on thermal expansion alone. The contribution from the land ice melting was not assessed in this study due to uncertainty.
Considering that much of the metropolitan region of New York City is less than 16 feet above the mean sea level, with some parts of lower Manhattan only about 5 feet above the mean sea level, a rise of 8.3 inches in addition to the global mean rise would pose a threat to this region, especially if a hurricane or winter storm surge occurs, Yin said.”
http://www.physorg.com/news156182801.html
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305
Richard Ordway says:
17 February 2010 at 11:12 PM
“The following world-wide established scientifically-oriented
bodies have all issued verifiable written statements that human
caused-global warming/human-caused climate change is now
happening:
They are all risking their hard-earned reputations, which is all-
important in science, (and risking funding and ridicule if they are
wrong), to issue statements that human-caused climate change
is currently happening:”
8) Polish Academy of Sciences- 2007
You might want to have a look at: http://www.dakotavoice.com/2009/06/polish-academy-of-sciences-report-slams-global-warming-spin/
before you become so emphatic about institutions commitment to AGW.