How the climate “debate” must be handled from now on

 I’m reposting a comment I just made to the top climate blog on ThinkProgress (headed up by Joe Romm) as it contains my current feelings about how the sheer danger and urgency of the position that humanity finds itself in is not effectively getting through to the public, and how the conventional way the scientific position is  being communicated is now failing us badly. I sketched out how we need to take the fight to the deniers, the propagandists and the irresponsibly complacent.

Romm’s post was about a recent New Scientist report – click link for the ThinkProgress post discussing it called 7 reasons climate change is even worse than we thought. Also have a look at the cover of the November 17th edition of New Scientist here which says it all loud and clear.

My post was in answer to the well rated poster “Prokaryotes” who posted this comment:

“prokaryotes says:

November 26, 2012 at 7:25 pm

Precautionary principle DEMANDS that we start cutting Co2 emissions immediately and go aggressively after the deniers”

_______________________________________________ 

To which I responded:

Yes, Yes, Yes! We need at least a two pronged attack. There are two major elements of the "sceptical arguments". Those put forward by the "lukewarmers", which have some scientific validity, and the much greater number of deceitful "magic tricks" that can fool those not up to speed with enough science. Both need addressing in different ways because they resonate with two different segments of society.

Firstly, we need a widespread global media friendly "debate" between four types - 1) representatives of the mainstream climate science position. Perfect would be Richard Alley. 2) the top "lukewarmers" - Lindzen is the obvious candidate 3) representatives from the risk assessment and forecasting industry such as actuaries from Munich Re. 4) economists who can assess the relative costs and benefits of doing either nothing or as much as it takes depending on the perceived risks.

At the commencement of this debate, the chairman should state the relative numbers of working, publishing peers that each scientific "side" of the debate has in their area of expertise and what the relative proportions of scientists supporting each side is.

Regardless of whether Lindzen put up a good show or not, the audience would see that his position is very much a tiny minority one. Too many of the public currently thinks there is an evenly balanced case on each side. Once they become aware of this error, they might see that they are in the position of Dirty Harry and the punk, neither of who knew for sure whether there was a bullet left in the Magnum  - except that the relative numbers of scientists and risks puts the public more in the situation of playing Russian Roulette with their family's and descendant's futures with an AK47 with a full magazine except one bullet...

I think the time has passed when just stating the consensus scientific position still works well enough to counter the powerful rhetoric and misleading arguments that the sceptical side has developed and refined over the last few years. The public is confused and uncertain as to who has reality on their side because the arguments of the "denialists" are just so damn convincing in THE MINDS OF THE PUBLIC. I have argued this point with committed educated "alarmists" and have been distressed to find out that too many just cannot understand it - they still think the way to convince the public is just to keep chanting ever louder that "the science is settled", "the consensus says" etc etc - they cannot seem to grasp that the public just doesn't blindly take the words of scientists as gospel any more and cannot see that their strategy is no longer helpful, but is fast becoming a handicap to generating more public pressure for urgent action.

In order to get political backing for the fundamental reforms we need, it is certain that the general public will need much greater confidence that action is necessary now and fast and that will only come when a large majority accept that the risks of doing nothing are huge and the benefits of an all-out assault on emissions will be much greater than they have been led to accept.

Websites such as skepticalscience.com are brilliant for the already converted, and their phone app debunking common denialist arguments is fantastic, but this is not enough. The general public has clearly not been exposed to those ripostes enough. The existence of resources like this that debunk the propaganda have not swayed the popular tide of doubt and uncertainty.

The second prong of the attack should be very widespread - newpaper ads, TV slots, radio shows, mass mailouts to residences etc - and should attack the denialist arguments that are just simple magic tricks, designed to mislead e.g. CO2 is a trace gas; it was warmer in the past; climate is always changing; warming stopped in 1997; CO2 is plant food; it's the Sun etc etc. Skepticalscience.com answers these by a clear exposition of the science but this is not an optimum strategy for convincing the mass of the public - what is needed is a clear set of analogies from ordinary life that ordinary people are familiar with and can relate to. An example to answer the "warming stopped in 1997" meme, which works because the climate unrealists draw a trend line from a recent cool period back to the height of the El Nino warmth and claim the trend is flat or declining, would be for the public to consider the graph of the weight of someone who overeats over decades but whose weight also varies wildly as they indulge in successive crash diets followed by periods of binge eating. Over thirty years they would only have to overeat, on average, by one ounce a day to eventually get to weigh over 600 pounds. The thirty year graph of their weight would look like the Himalayas as their weight varied by 50 pounds plus or minus as their eating habits changed but if the overeater drew a trend line from a "light" dieting period back to a "heavy" bingeing period, and claimed that they had no eating problems, most people would easily see that they were deluded and yet such a trick in the climate arena fools too many who are not familiar with such as the natural ocean cycles affecting temperatures over a couple of decades, climatologically, and thereby creating the convincing illusion on a cherry picked graph (to those unfamiliar with planetary mechanisms) that global warming has paused or reversed. People who would never get the statistical necessity that temperature trends only become significant over periods longer than 15 years would understand such a simple analogy straight off.

We need such a suite of analogies to "go aggressively after the deniers" because current practices are simply not working well enough. Too many still believe that the scientific debate is evenly balanced - that the climate sensitivity is too uncertain to guarantee a threat - even more would like to believe the hundreds of convincing pieces of deceit that there isn't any threat at all and that the science has been cooked up to get more governmental control of their lives or taxes out of their pockets.

Pollination must see - birds, bees, bats, bugs, and cactus flowers

Superb TED film about the various ways plants get pollinated. Watch out for the hummingbird versus the bee bit. Aerobatics to die for.

Moonlit pollination too.

 

 

Ponder on the delicate interactions and interdependencies of nature shown then watch 131 years of global temperature changes in 26 seconds. Consider how natural systems are very sensitive to small changes in the environment.

NASA | Temperature Data: 1880-2011

 

And the same sort of information in graphical form from the World Meteorological Society. Next time you hear someone claiming that global warming has stopped because “there hasn’t been any warming for 15 years”,  show them this. They won’t believe you because they are terminally thick or bad but at least you will have tried!

Peter Rhodes - the sequel

I got a prompt response from my email to Peter Rhodes – see the previous post – Peter Rhodes column in the JEP.

Here it is in its entirety:

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention

PR”

If one was naive, one might imagine that this was a thank-you-I-now-realise-I-was-wrong message. Others might see a brush off.

Peter Rhodes, according to one of his email addresses (p.rhodes@expressandstar.co.uk) appears to actually have a connection with the Express and Star newspapers which is not too surprising as they have a bit of a history of publishing wildly misleading “sceptical” climate science articles, frequently using massively debunked denialist rhetoric in those articles to push the newspaper’s political line. I used to like the Express when I was growing up – it was our family newspaper – now I don’t.

Peter Rhodes column in the JEP

Peter Rhodes writes a column published in the JEP. The  persona we see is that of a grizzled old cynical hack who has seen everything, got the T- shirt and is sceptical of it. He is a borderline climate change denialist as he sometimes writes scoffing about  the dangers. He eventually got on my nerves so I just fired off this response to his latest assault on the clever men of science - who actually know what they are talking about.

_______________________________________________________________

Dear Mr. Rhodes,

                       My attention has been drawn to one of your JEP columns, published on Thursday 29th December.

You wrote:

"Over the yule period, some parts of the United Kingdom were 30° C warmer than they were this time last year. Tell me again. Why exactly will an average rise of 2° C be a global catastrophe?"

Well, with a nod to Ronald Searle, as any fule kno, averages can be deceptive. Indeed, they are often used to deceive. Perhaps a reductio ad absurdum would illustrate this?

For example, the average annual temperature in the South of England is around 11 degees C. Imagine though if one day there was an extreme solar flare which pushed the temperature up for one day only to 100 C - boiling point. Hot enough to cook eggs on the pavement, and everything else, everywhere in Britain, including us.

The change in average temperature for the year? 0.24 degrees C. 11 deg C -> 11.24 deg C. By your "logic" nothing bad could have happened and there would be nothing to worry about.

The average rise of 2 degrees C by 2050 is a globally averaged figure. It does not mean that winters will be 2 deg warmer than normal, similarly summers won't just be a bit warmer either. It will not be smooth gentle and consistent. The 2 degrees C figure actually relates to the increase in temperature that satellites would see for the whole Earth, if it was measured from sufficient distance to iron out all the variations over the surface.

The true danger of global warming is in the increased variation and severity of temperature swings outside normally expected levels. Take a look at this recent article

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Summary-of-Hansen-Nov-2011.html to see the horrendous probabilities, then remember also that the 2 degrees figure you quote does not stop in 2050 but will continue to increase for centuries, although not at the same rate - unless the methane clathrate "gun" is "fired", in which case it's sayonara civilisation and also to most species on Earth. Worth gambling with? Is there a dangerous bullet in the climate gun or a blank? Do you feel lucky, punk?

The IPCC indicate that during the 21st century the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 1.1 to 2.9 °C (2 to 5.2 °F) for their lowest emissions scenario and 2.4 to 6.4 °C (4.3 to 11.5 °F) for their highest, so the figure of 2 degrees you quote, and that, for the sake of the argument, I have used, is a gross simplification of the full risks we face.

Before you print any more "sceptical" climate related stuff, please reflect that we only have one Earth, that we are experimenting with the gaseous composition of its atmosphere in an unprecedented way and that we are unable to do "test tube" science to establish beyond all doubt what the outcome will be. The only test tube big enough is the Earth, unfortunately we are stuck in that test tube so we can't escape any consequences and we can't go back in time to try another path. Real life is not like a video game. We can only try to predict what might happen based on the best available knowledge and risk assessment and take action to avoid it. Predicting risks and avoiding them is actually one of the better uses of intelligence. Cheap scoffing is probably the opposite.

Nick Palmer

Media spokesman for J-CAN - Jersey Climate Action Network

Member of Planning and Environment's J.E.F. - Jersey Environment Forum

On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it

Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer
http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com

Denialism Tango and something else and SOMETHING ELSE

Not "Men at Work" these are another Australian band called "Men with Day Jobs", socking it to the pathological sceptics.

Having had a chuckle, set your computer to full screen view, crank up the volume and prepare to get emotional.

NO COMMENT

by Gioacchino Petronicce

 

 

 

And finally, from a time when video wasn’t flashy, comes Carl Sagan’s famous “Pale Blue Dot”. The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the solar system (9 years after passing Saturn), was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space – 3.7 billion miles - at the request of Carl Sagan

BEST Climate Crock of the week

One of the biggest sources of climate change misinformation on the web, deceptively disguised as “scepticism”, is Wattsupwiththat, run by retired meteorologist Anthony Watts. Watts is the person on the Internet most responsible for viciously smearing scientists and spreading disinformation on global warming, particularly disinformation on the surface temperature record. He gets huge numbers of people reading it. For some years he has been promoting the idea that the apparent rise in global temperature has a lot to do with poor siting of the thermometers used to measure temperature changes and he organised a lot of volunteers to photograph and criticise the placement of thermometers because they were located near to tarmac, concrete, air conditioners etc. His theory is that the recorded rise in global temperatures is more down to urban thermometers getting hotter due to hot air from the tarmac etc. boosting the measurements rather than the planet heating up. Like many, indeed most, of the denialist arguments one sees, it sounds quite plausible –  some of the stupid, ignorant or mendacious types who come up with the propaganda know how easy it is to lie to the public – others do the lying accidentally, because their poor judgement leads them to deceive themselves.

The real science of course went Duhhh!! The effects that Watts and his minions have been ruthlessly claiming are a big flaw in global warming science have, of course, always been known about and the science has always adjusted the raw data to take account of this. If Watts acknowledged this at all, he would then lead his readers to think that these legitimate, necessary adjustments were data fudging! How can science win against someone using paranoid arguments like that? The tragedy is that too many of the gullible public lap up this crap, as one can clearly see if one reads the comment sections of online TV or newspaper websites.

Over the last few months there has been a tremendous excitement in the Wattsup end of the climate science denialism blogosphere because one of the few scientists  they listen(ed) to - Dr Richard Muller - announced that he was going to run a huge investigation into the temperature records. On his team was Professor Judith Curry – another darling of the deniers who writes a sort-of (her stated positions are very often rather muddled) sceptical blog, Climate etc. The research was even backed by, amongst others, the infamous Koch Foundation which bankrolls a fair bit of the denialist infrastructure. They were expecting this “unbiased” study to overturn the current scientific view on how much we are warming. Back in March, Anthony Watts even wrote (very unwisely, as it turned out…)

“And, I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise”

Well the results are in. The climate scientists were right all along and the denialists were full of ****. Is Anthony Watts accepting his Nemesis with good grace and acknowledging that his "big idea" was disastrously wrong? Sadly, no. Those who use paranoid thinking can always wriggle out somehow and Watts and his ilk are wriggling like champion eels in a world title wriggling competition.

Here’s a couple of media excerpts:

Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post: “For the clueless or cynical diehards who deny global warming, it’s getting awfully cold out there. The latest icy blast of reality comes from an eminent scientist whom the climate-change skeptics once lauded as one of their own. Richard Muller, a respected physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, used to dismiss alarmist climate research as being “polluted by political and activist frenzy.” Frustrated at what he considered shoddy science, Muller launched his own comprehensive study to set the record straight. Instead, the record set him straight”.

“Global warming is real,” Muller  wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal.

“When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find,” Muller wrote. “Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that.”

Here’s Pete Sinclair’s climate crock – Bad, Badder, BEST – that sticks the knife in to finally show up Watts as the weasel that he is.

Some like it hot – not! Climate Crock of the Week

Another masterpiece from Pete Sinclair. In it he contrasts the views and rhetoric of the usual suspects such as Rush Limbaugh, Lord Monckton, Alex Jones and Joe Bastardi, who misrepresent the truth, with actual events in the real world. He also shows just how long science has been warning the public about the dangers of altering the atmosphere  - at least 55 years. Now that the pigeons are coming home to roost climatically, and eventually climactically, it’s about time for the “we told you so”s to start. As an illustration of just how insane and incorrigible some people are, the propaganda blitz from the denialist pundits is still in top gear.

How much would you pay to save your bacon?

Unfortunately there is is a lot of propaganda around that alternative or renewable energy sources are not economic or efficient, compared with conventional sources.  Such distorted thinking seeks to persuade people that conventional energy sources, such as coal, are a lot cheaper than wind, tidal, solar energy etc.
We heard a local voice, Mr Derek Bernard, express such propaganda during the question session that followed Sir David King’s recent (July) address at Durrell about the effects that climate change can have in store for small islands. Mr Bernard had the nerve to claim that the figures on the performance of wind energy etc just did not add up. Professor Sir David King mildly commented that he can’t have been looking at the same figures that he had seen…

This article (click link) from triplepundit.com sketches out the fundamentally misleading nature of such propaganda, which rarely compares apples with apples because, in the evaluation of economic and environmental costs, an awful lot is left out of the accounting procedures used.

An extract follows:

“Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal unearths some rather alarming truths about the “externalities” associated with the extraction, transportation, processing and combustion of coal for the production of electricity in this country. When these externalized costs, which include health, environmental and economic impacts, are factored in, this doubles or even triples the cost of coal-powered electricity, making it more expensive than solar, wind, and other alternative sources”

Another aspect of the “conventional” view weighing heavily on our prospects for getting a more sustainable civilisation any time soon is the amount of money invested in it compared with general items of expenditure.

Here's a link to an article about the continuing campaign by the Daily Mail to muddy the waters and steer people away from all things alternative energy related.

Diverging slightly, here’s a great graphic.


This reminds me of a frequent cry during the late 60s and early 70’s about the American space programme.  Some pointed to the amount spent on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes and said we shouldn’t carry on with them because all that money could go to relieving world poverty instead. Others pointed out that the expenditure on the space programme was dwarfed by the amount that the Yanks spent on cosmetics and toothpaste which defused the argument a bit.

Can’t see the wood for the dead trees

A comment to a letter I had published in the JEP on behalf of J-CAN (which was in answer to a previously published climate denialist eccentric’s letter) although otherwise spot on illustrated an error that some make in their appreciation of the threats from climate change. This particular online comment (from "Pip Clement") included this phrase:

 “Fortunately for most of the people on here they will be dead by the time the effects really become apparent”

This is what I replied:

“The effects are likely to become apparent way earlier than you suggest. Worse than that, if we do nothing, we will discover in our lifetimes (even the older ones’) that we have gone beyond the point of no return, when we will not be able to reverse the situation.

The dice will have been cast long before our grandchildren will need to the ones to “be lucky”. Who needs to be lucky? It’s us.”

The comments following my replies are worth reading too if seeing breath-taking stupidity and arrogance expressed floats your boat…

The dangers from global warming do not simply come just from effects directly attributable to the rise in average planetary temperature. Often overlooked, or not publicised, are the consequences of the effects on the ecosphere – all the animals, birds, trees, plants, insects, fungi, bacteria, plankton etc. that forms the vast interlocking web of life. These systems are far more sensitive to changes in planetary temperatures than climatologists’ thermometers and satellites and large effects are already obvious such as the acidification (reduction in alkalinity for the ultra-picky) of the oceans, the reduction in plankton numbers - in the past 60 years, algal biomass has decreased by about 40%  - click for Nature article - and now here is evidence, from satellite photographs, of the huge impacts on pine forests in the US of the epidemic of pinebeetle infestation

Left: September 22, 2003. Right: September 25, 2010. Mountain Pine Beetles killed about 60 percent of the medium-to-large lodgepole pines on the western slopes of the park between the years depicted here. In the 2003 image, dense vegetation (dark green) is seen near the centre. In the 2010 image, the dark green has been replaced by shades of brown over large areas, indicating tree loss. Warmer winters are allowing more pine beetles to survive. In addition, summer drought stresses the trees and renders them more vulnerable to pine beetle attack   Read more here click this link or this one about a researcher investigating the die off. It’s not just a simple matter of more winter warmth = more pine beetles = more die off of trees, the full story is a bit more complex than that, but this is exactly the sort of large scale effects that will start happening to the natural world way before the climate changes are obvious in temperature trend lines to casual observers such as those who get their world view from the newspapers,  and opinionated television motor-mouths.

Joined up thinking! – watch the dots being joined up - must see video

Divide and conquer is a time honoured strategy. Manmade climate change deniers often cherry pick isolated facts or pieces of evidence to create or bolster their deceptions. They rely upon the short attention span/sound-bite media world we live in to make their case. They shamelessly re-use demolished arguments and misrepresented research because they know that the general public has a short memory and if they just repackage the same ideas in different wording, to put a different spin it, they will get away with it with a large number of casual observers.

Illustrative of this is the “weather versus climate” meme whereby for example the delusionists will shout out that Smalltown, Pennsylvania has the coldest/deepest temperatures/snow since the oldest resident can remember and therefore how can the Earth be warming up? Clearly all those thousands of scientists must be wrong! This meme relies upon the short memories or insular focus of too many who are just not that aware of, or care, what is happening elsewhere apart from in their own backyards.

We had an unusual pretty cold snowy patch before Christmas in Jersey but that didn’t mean that the Earth was cooling, did it? It meant only that the UK was having a cold snap. Now, we in Jersey are having a prolonged period of high temperatures and virtually non-existent rainfall. That does not mean that the Earth is warming up.  No one event, no matter how dramatic, can prove a statistical trend. However, if one adds up all the unusual events like this across the whole world and starts to see a trend of unusual events happening – like two once-in-a-hundred-years floods/droughts/tornadoes etc. happening within five years -  then the truly intelligent should start to question whether there is something globally unusual going on.

The video below -

“A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never.”

- is a stunning narration-with-pictures of a recent Washington Post op-ed by Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org. Bill’s organisation campaigns that the most sensible thing to do is to reduce current atmospheric CO2 levels (390'ish ppm) to 350 or below in order to give us the best chance of avoiding the worst that could happen. The video below is narrated and illustrated by Stephen Thomson of Plomomedia.com

Caution: for those who have irony/intelligence bypasses (far too many people in Jersey...) the style of narration is IRONIC. He is PARODYING the deniers and showing just how blisteringly stupid, ignorant and destructive they are. He constantly tells you not to make connections between the frequency of extreme weather events happening now and climate change predictions. He tells you not to notice any patterns and not to connect each separate event. In short he suggests that burying your ostrich heads in the sand is the most comforting way to react.

 

In addition to the events mentioned by Bill, here’s a few more from a comment on “Climate Crock of the Week” Peter Sinclair’s blog. Peter was generally praising the video and started out by saying “damn, I wish I’d done this”.

Comment by otter17: “Also, there is no need to worry about the Larsen B ice shelf collapse, the Manhattan-sized iceberg falling off of Greenland, the near-unanimous melting of glaciers worldwide, the coastal flooding in Brazil in 2010, the increased frequency of European heatwaves this past decade, the changing growing seasons, the coral bleaching events, the Yangtze River basin drought in China, the prolonged low water levels in Hoover Dam’s reservoir Lake Mead, the Missouri River flooding this year, the recent decade’s spike in Atlantic tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes, the increase in El Niño events over the past several decades, the sinkholes and ponds developing from melting permafrost in the Arctic and Subarctic, the methane bubbling up above the vast methane clathrate reservoirs north of Siberia, etc.

Yeah, don’t bother with those events either. And certainly don’t connect the dots with the rapid rise in greenhouse gas emissions or the hockey stick temperature graph”

 

 

Climate Crock versus Gerard B.

Sorry to keep harping on about local matters but it looks like Gerard Baudains will be standing for Deputy of St Clement again. Notwithstanding that he has got some good ideas in other areas, he unfortunately cannot see past his misguided views on climate change. Casting an eye over three of his recent letters to the JEP, he warmly promotes the hackneyed old denialist argument that, in the ice core records of past atmospheric concentrations, CO2 is clearly seen to increase only (I’m simplifying reality a bit here) after the temperature goes up which he, and legions of others who think too simplistically, claim is evidence that CO2 cannot therefore cause warming.

Over to the latest Climate Crock of the Week from Peter Sinclair. I like the fact that Peter is using the analogy of magic tricks to illustrate how the deniers use simple trickery and fallacious logic to fool people.

My favourite lines are in the bit where Peter ruthlessly and sardonically destroys the “Temperature leads CO2” meme which featured in “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. That execrable piece of deceit used a graph showing the 800 year lag of CO2 behind historical temperature rises:

“those who’ve watched this series for a while know that I always like to go to the source of any claim that climate deniers make – in this case a study by Nicolas Caillon, published in Science… which, of course, we’ll actually read.”

The "Temp Leads Carbon" Crock: Updated

 

Ooh Missus! Rap science - more swearing on Nick’s blog!

Before you all get shocked by the robust rap language in the video that this post is about (the second one below), you ought to first watch the LHC rap to get broken in gently to the sight of real scientists speaking out. In 2008, Kate McAlpine (A.K.A Alpinekat) released the Large Hadron Rap about the LHC at Cern, Switzerland. She is a science communicator (click for her website). Her rap music inspired video went viral and has had at least 6 million views so far.

Large Hadron Rap

 

Real climate scientists are a bit sick of the numbers of people in the media who talk disparagingly about climate science as if their views were worth anything (mostly, they’re not…). This video is a fun but serious rap by real working climate scientists from Australia. Here’s a link to an article about the making of the rap video

Be warned, the following video contains the “M-F bomb” - words that are often found in rap music - but get past that (or, if you’re too delicate, I’ve included the “clean” version afterwards – which seems a bit silly by comparison) and this is a shrewd comment on the huge numbers of people expressing opinions about subjects they don’t know enough about – such as those who pick up a few deceptive ideas from climate change denialist propaganda and think their “new understanding” gives their fond beliefs the edge over peer reviewed science. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect writ large. This particular manifestation of human stupidity just might be the death of many of us and untold future generations before the climate settles down again. Alarmism (I hear the deniers cry)? Why not? The potential of climate change is actually terrifying and it should scare people. Remember those multiple AGU (American Geophysical Union) delegates who have already made survival retreat plans? If you read that and don’t get alarmed, you’ve got more than one screw loose… Click for link to post.

The problem is the Dunning-Krugers then go on with such confidence in their own judgement that they pontificate about their ridiculously (and dangerously) warped understanding as if they had discovered some smoking gun holes in the science that the whole of science had somehow missed and this implausible idea seems to be unfortunately received rather well by too many people. No doubt some would like the smartest scientists to fall flat on their faces but, realistically, that’s not going to happen.

It’s all rather like those early stage X-Factor contestants who tell Simon Cowell that he’s a fool not to recognise their fantastic talent. This widespread misplaced confidence (A.K.A. unjustified arrogance) seems to be a bit of an epidemic these days. Unfortunately, most of these people can vote which is why the deceitful forces of denialism are trying so hard to spread their disinformation.

Favourite lines?

“Droppin’ facts all over this wax, while bitches are crying ‘bout a carbon tax”

“Denialists deny this in your dreams, coz climate change means greater extremes”

I'm a Climate Scientist (HUNGRY BEAST)

 

I'm A Climate Scientist - Extended Version - (CLEAN)

 

Climate Denial Crock of the Week

It's been a while since I posted a climate crock video. This one is about the way the denialists deliberately misquoted the so called Climategate emails and misrepresented the meaning of the words to suggest corrupt practices by the scientists involved. The denialists lied, misrepresented and distorted. Repeatedly. The video goes on to investigate Dr Richard Muller, who was the subject of the following quote taken from my reply on behalf of J-CAN to Gerard Baudains’ last JEP letter, which was a piece of ludicrous fantasy, mixed up thinking and deceptive assertions. I simply don’t understand how someone can be so wrong, so confidently.

(click for link to post in which the letters – Baudains’ and mine - were quoted)

“Perhaps the timing of his letter (Friday 1^st April) is explicable because of the high hopes of the “sceptics” for the preliminary findings, announced the previous day, of a large new study (B.E.S.T) from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on the integrity of global temperature measurements which was led by a scientist who has been critical of aspects of the mainstream position in the past.”

Dr Muller, up until very recently, was a "darling of the denialists" because he was preparing a report into the temperature records that such luminaries of the denialosphere as Anthony Watts, who runs the execrable Wattsupwiththat anti-science site, were expecting to confirm their ridiculous and paranoid anti-science B.S. Muller's report in fact confirmed that the temperature records used by global warming scientists were valid and that Anthony Watts "big thing" that he based his whole website on - which is that the temperature records must be unreliable because some of the readings were taken near heat sources such as hot tarmac and air conditioner outlets - was wrong. Watts' belief, that poorly sited readings were significant evidence against the demonstrated warming that mainstream science accepts, was completely wrong. Muller is also caught on camera (more than once), when he was playing to receptive audiences, repeating the same very inaccurate propagandised distortion and lies, as to what was actually in the Climategate emails, as was promulgated by the denialosphere. Dr Muller (PhD) is far from being stupid so what should we think of his integrity for spreading deceit?

Forest Gump said “stupid is as stupid does”.  Not all denialists are thick or evil but it’s very hard to understand how those who are apparently intelligent people can be so confused about reality. Perhaps there is something in the idea that some people can be negatively intelligent whereby they use their intellectual abilities to fool themselves and only look at information that confirms their prejudices.

Evil works behind the scenes

In the previous post, which was about a classic piece of denialist propaganda, sent to the JEP by Gerard Baudains, Gerard’s letter insinuated that J-CAN (Jersey Climate Action Network) are dupes for

GB: “push(ing) a theory scientifically proven to be untrue” … and “surely they must fall into the category I call 'useful idiots'—ie, used by others to promote an agenda without realising they are being used.”

This was a bit Alice through the looking glass as the actual dupes being misled by powerful, deceptive forces are Mr Baudains and the rest of the legions of climate science denialists. Unfortunately they are über-confident that the whole thing is just a gigantic hoax invented so that scientists can get more research money, or it’s a Trojan horse to bring in a world government or, at the very least,  a means of scaring people so that taxes can be raised.

The certainty of denialist dupes is often unshakeable – their arguments can be, and frequently have been, shot to pieces until there is virtually nothing left and yet they carry on regardless as if nothing had happened. Seemingly unscathed in their own minds, like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Tis but a scratch

 

Frequently they will use the same destroyed arguments again at a later date proving one of several things: 1) they are incorrigible 2)  they do not understand that when their argument was destroyed, it STAYS destroyed or 3) (and this does not apply to the sincere but gullible majority) they know they are spreading untrue propaganda and don’t care because all they want to achieve is the swaying of voters’ minds to promote their own special self interests, whether those are financial, political or ideological.

The following couple of videos show the more sinister aspect of the corporate propaganda being created which masquerades as being the natural views of “grassroots” citizens groups. The videos contain extracts from, and commentary on, a documentary called Astroturf wars – how corporate America is faking a grassroots revolution. The first one shows someone from Americans for Prosperity (click link for their website). Click here for the Wiki article on AFP. The “teacher” is basically showing Tea Party activists how to spread propaganda. AFP was founded/funded by the infamous Koch brothers.

Training Tea Party Activists In Guerilla Internet Tactics - BUSTED!

In the past, when I have touched on these subjects, I have attracted denialist trolls - some articulate and literate, others much less so – who have demanded that I back myself up with documentary proof of well established facts. This is one of the main tactics of denialists, and modern propagandists generally – to spread doubt and uncertainty in the minds of those reading the exchanges. It all wastes a colossal amount of time because it is rather like being told to produce proof if one had made a claim such as “don’t run around on the crumbly cliff edge or you might fall over and die” – a statement which is so blindingly obvious that video proof, or accident statistics, are not necessary to shine a light on the basic truth.

Try mentioning that the Koch brothers fund denialist/sceptic organisations and fundamentalist wing nut think tanks and you will get some troll turn up demanding proof. Here is some proof. Koch himself confirming, in his own words, what he has been accused of doing, and his company has denied he ever did. To be fair, they worded their denial in very slippery deceptive language so that they conveyed a certain meaning to the reader (to fool them) while actually stating something else.

Tea Party Astroturf Funders Caught On Tape

 

 

Response to Gerard Baudains’ Letter in the JEP 1/04/11

Ex-politician Gerard Baudains wrote a letter to the Jersey Evening Post  which was published on 1st April - it was not a joke but it was so far from the truth that it could quite easily have been one! It was basically an attempted hatchet job on Jersey Climate Action Network (J.C.A.N.) and global warming/climate change science generally. In a response I wrote to the JEP, I promised a detailed answer to his most misleading arguments because in order to show the falsity of his conclusions adequately, I needed more space than the paper would allow in a letter.
________________________________________________________
Firstly, here is the text of his letter
Those who urge action on climate change should get their facts right
1st April 2011


From Gerard Baudains.

I NOTICE (JEP, 24 March) a letter from a group calling themselves Jersey Climate Action Network.
While it is right that people are allowed to hold and express their own views (and the opportunity to express them), I do believe that when it comes to pressurising government to take a particular course of action (as this group does), those people have a duty to ensure that their message is both accurate and genuine.
Sadly the message proffered by this group is anything but accurate.
They appear, as far as I understand, to be asking the States to take action on climate change/global warming (one is never sure which, as groups such as these appear to think the two are interchangeable). If that is so, I am left wondering how our States – who can’t even sort out a workable machinery of government - can possibly reduce the effect of the sun on the earth.
Because that is what this group are effectively asking them to do.
I’m aware they will say that it is man’s actions - chiefly the burning of fossil fuels - that is the culprit, but that is not true and therefore falls foul of the accuracy requirement above.
There is no scientific evidence linking global warming to anthropogenic action.
In fact, quite the contrary - it has been scientifically proven that rises in carbon dioxide follow global warming by thousands of years. Rises in carbon dioxide cannot therefore be the cause.
Also, mans' contribution is two per cent or less - so what about the other 98 per cent? Are this group saying mans' two per cent causes warming while the other 98 per cent is inactive?
These are just a couple of many facts that disprove the theory.
Whichever way you look at it, the theory of anthropogenic global warming has long been proven to be a hoax. That the inter-governmental panel on climate change pushed the idea (although it has since retreated considerably) should come as no surprise - the title says it all. That some 'scientists' supported them is no surprise either - many relied on government grants and consequently told governments what they wanted to hear.
Conversely, there are thousands of genuine scientists who have signed their opposition to the theory.
So why does this modern-day equivalent of the Flat Earth Society continue to push a theory scientifically proven to be untrue? This is what worries me the most. If the people involved are ignorant of the fact that science has at last caught up with the mischief of the global warming theory, surely they must fall into the category I call 'useful idiots' - ie, used by others to promote an agenda without realising they are being used.
If, however, they are fully aware of the sinister agenda behind the whole global warming/climate change nonsense, they should come clean and tell us what their aims really are.
Climate change and global warming have occurred on earth for millions of years. What we are experiencing now is quite normal in that cycle, and it is caused by the sun.
That does not mean we should continue to squander the earth's resources. The rate we are using fossil fuel is almost beyond imagination, and we must find alternatives. Unfortunately, by amalgamating this message into a long-disproved theory, these groups only succeed in undermining an important argument.

Gerard Baudains
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Here is the response I wrote to the JEP
Dear Sir,
Your correspondent Mr Gerard Baudains makes many wild assertions in his letter (JEP 1^st April) which was headlined “Those who urge action on climate change should get their facts right”. He implies he has superior knowledge and that Jersey Climate Action Network’s “message is anything but accurate”. J.C.A.N. totally refutes this. We stand by what we say because we work with, and disseminate, up to date, accurate and widely accepted scientific wisdom.
He states "there is no scientific evidence linking global warming to anthropogenic action” yet every major scientific organisation in the world actually accepts that humans are altering the climate. Even those few legitimate “sceptical” scientists, such as Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, and Singer, who are regularly quoted by those who would deny the science, accept it - they only differ from the consensus inasmuch as they believe the warming will be a lot less than the mainstream position. And yet Mr Baudains claims to know better. He insinuates scientific corruption –“many scientists relied on government grants and consequently told governments what they wanted to hear” - and claims that “science has at last caught up with the mischief of the global warming theory” and then states that the IPCC who “pushed the idea” have “since retreated considerably”. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact the science is getting ever stronger and, worryingly, since the last IPCC reports, the predicted dangers (as reported from the scientific front lines) are now worse than before. Mr Baudains should realise it is vital to check the credibility of one’s sources,
Perhaps the timing of his letter (Friday 1^st April) is explicable because of the high hopes of the “sceptics” for the preliminary findings, announced the previous day, of a large new study (B.E.S.T) from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on the integrity of global temperature measurements which was led by a scientist who has been critical of aspects of the mainstream position in the past. They were anticipating it confirming their belief of systematic bias and unreliability in the temperature records. In fact, it did exactly the opposite and confirmed the accuracy of mainstream science. Perhaps Mr Baudains was expecting to ride the coat tails of a “smoking gun” hole having being blown in the science.
Mr Baudains presents several highly selected "facts" – rises in CO2 follow warming in the historical record - man's CO2 contribution is a fraction of natural emissions - thousands of genuine scientists have signed their opposition to the theory. He asserts that these "disprove the theory". Like a magician creating a convincing illusion by only allowing the audience to see what he wants them to, these cherry-picked isolated ideas will lead the unwary to jump to false conclusions. An adequate refutation of these points in this letter would be too long for publication so I invite people to look at our website www.j-can.org.je where they will find a full reply to these misleading ideas. Simply, his conclusions are diametrically opposed to the truth.
There are at least 150 disinformation arguments such as those he used. No doubt he is sincere in his beliefs but they have all been fully debunked many times. An easy source for people to check the truth about all these misleading ideas is to look at www.skepticalscience.com which covers all of the major errors and misdirections used by those who attempt to deny the science. There are basic, intermediate and advanced levels that debunk each falsity.
Readers need to be aware that there are very powerful political and economic forces abroad that seek to deny the science of anthropogenic climate change, the basic physics of which has been established for around 150 years. Like King Canute on the beach, these propagandists seek to persuade us, if we just believe in their politically driven fictions enough, that the seas will not rise and the globe will not warm up if we just believe strongly enough. Who should people trust? Those who promote politically biased pseudo-science or the overwhelming majority of global scientific organisations?
Sincerely,
Nick Palmer
Media spokesman for Jersey Climate Action Network
__________________________________________________________
Below are our responses to the false arguments, used in Mr Baudains’ letter, which we put on the JCAN website on Tuesday 5th April.
__________________________________________________________
The arguments used in Mr Baudains’ letter sound very plausible to a non specialist and that is why they are repeatedly used by those who wish to spread doubt and confusion about the science and the necessary actions we need to take to protect ourselves.
Here are the main fallacious arguments used by Mr Baudains followed by our responses:
1) Rises in carbon dioxide follow global warming by thousands of years so rises in carbon dioxide cannot therefore be the cause
This is highly illogical. The pre-historic records of CO2 and temperatures show they are closely correlated, which means they rise and fall together. However, changes in CO2 mostly follow changes in temperatures by about 600 to 1000 years. This does not mean that Mr Baudains’ conclusion is correct. If levels of CO2 rise, such as we are making them do now (we are thereby creating a force acting on the climate), then the planet will warm.
In prehistory, when the planet was made to warm for another reason, such as the changes in Earth’s orbit that are associated with ice ages (the Milankovitch cycles), the oceans warmed up and CO2 was emitted from them (as a feedback) over the next 600-1000 years - which is the delay seen in the paleo-climatological record . It is this delay that Mr Baudains purports to be evidence that CO2 cannot cause warming. What he appears not to know is that once the CO2 is emitted from the oceans, it then goes on to accelerate the warming from the orbital changes. If increased CO2 did not cause global warming, the planet would never escape from the ice ages. Apart from in the very distant past when massive volcanic activity over 10's of thousands of years increased CO2 levels, there would be no record of CO2 initiating warming, only records of the increased CO2 emitted from the oceans after natural events initiated warming. This particular "argument" of Mr Baudains is one of the all time classic pieces of deceit used to fool the public by the global warming science denialists.
2) Man’s contribution is two per cent or less - are J-CAN saying man’s two per cent causes warming while the other 98 per cent is inactive?
No. This is a strawman argument. All the CO2 is an active greenhouse gas but our emissions are increasing the total amount of CO2 faster than the natural processes can absorb them, so the greenhouse effect is increasing. Whilst true that mankind's emissions of fossil carbon derived CO2 (think of them like a deposit account) are dwarfed by natural emissions (think of them like a current account), the vital information that the denialist propaganda "accidentally" does not mention is that natural CO2 sinks (processes which absorb CO2) are slightly larger than the natural emissions.
Analogously, if you had a bath tub without a plug and the tap was putting in 20 litres a minute (natural emissions) and the plug hole was draining 20.1 litres a minute (natural sinks), the bath would never fill up. If you stuck a hose in with only 0.15 litres a minute flow (mankind's fossil fuel emissions) the bath would fill up. Although the hose flow is a small fraction of the tap's flow it is additional input to a virtually balanced system, so it accumulates. In the same way, CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere because of our actions. We know that the extra CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere is down to us because of the measured ratio of C12 to C13 which shows that our fossil fuel derived CO2 is building up.
3) The IPCC pushed the theory of anthropogenic global warming - it has since retreated considerably
This is simply wrong. The IPCC has not “retreated” at all. No scientific body of national or international standing is currently disputing that mankind is affecting, and will continue to affect, the climate because of our fossil fuel emissions; the last was (surprise!) the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which, however, in 2007 updated its 1999 statement rejecting the likelihood of human influence on recent climate with its current non-committal position. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article  which shows how badly Mr Baudains is in error.
4) Climate change and global warming have occurred on Earth for millions of years. What we are experiencing now is quite normal and is caused by the Sun
More illogic. A common sceptic argument is that climate has changed naturally in the past, long before 4x4s and coal-fired power plants, so how therefore can humans be causing global warming now? First you have to know that climate doesn’t just change at random. Climate changes when it’s forced to change. When our planet suffers an energy imbalance and gains or loses heat, global temperature changes.
There are a number of different forces which can influence the Earth’s climate. When the sun gets brighter, the planet receives more energy and warms. When volcanoes erupt, they emit particles into the atmosphere which reflect sunlight, and the planet cools. When there are more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the planet warms. These effects are referred to as external “forcings” because by changing the planet's energy balance, they force climate to change.
It is obvious that past climate change was caused by natural forcings. However, arguing that it shows we can’t be causing the current warming is like arguing that because people can get struck by lightning that there can’t be any danger from working on your house wiring without turning the power off! Unfortunately the “forcing” that we are applying to the climate with our emissions is stronger than past natural forcings – analogously, the voltage of the house wiring in our example would be many times that of the lightning!
Mr Baudains claims that global warming (that no credible source disputes is happening) is all down to the Sun. Until about 1960, measurements by scientists showed that the brightness and warmth of the sun, as seen from the Earth, was increasing. Over the same period temperature measurements of the air and sea showed that the Earth was gradually warming. However, between the 1960s and the present day the same solar measurements have shown that the energy from the sun is now decreasing. At the same time temperature measurements of the air and sea have shown that the Earth has continued to become warmer and warmer. This proves that it cannot be the sun; something else must be causing the Earth's temperature to rise. So, while there is no credible science indicating that the sun is causing the observed increase in global temperature, it's the known physical properties of greenhouse gases that provide us with the only real and measurable explanation of global warming.

Don’t be the only one…

Earth Hour 2011: 8.30pm, Saturday 26 March. Turn your lights off for just one hour. In addition to showing “solidarity” with actions to reduce energy use you just might prevent an attack by…?

Enjoy this Australian advert for Earth hour where some ordinary blokes can’t be bothered to turn off the light because “it’s only one light” and “every other light in Australia is off” .

 

Text below taken from earthhour.org:

 

ABOUT EARTH HOUR

---

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries/territories participating. Global landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, CN Tower in Toronto, Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.

In March 2009, hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4000 cities in 88 countries/territories officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative.

On Saturday 27 March, Earth Hour 2010 became the biggest Earth Hour ever. A record 128 countries and territories joined the global display of climate action. Iconic buildings and landmarks from Asia Pacific to Europe and Africa to the Americas switched off. People across the world from all walks of life turned off their lights and came together in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common – our planet.

Earth Hour 2011 will take place on Saturday 26 March at 8.30PM (local time). This Earth Hour we want you to go beyond the hour, so after the lights go back on think about what else you can do to make a difference. Together our actions add up.

Visit our Beyond the Hour platform to share your stories and to get inspiration from the actions our supporters have shared with us already.

 

This is how it was. What’s next? Feeling lucky, punks?

Calculated from NASA’s (click for more info) “Five-Year Average Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2010” and animated. Even a trainee climate scientist has been surprised at how fast things speed up right near the last couple of decades.You need to be at least a little bit scientifically literate to realise why anomalies are way more important to show the trend rather than absolute temperatures – a distinction which many cherry picking denialists, with their “it’s really cold here, so we must be in a cooling trend” garbage thinking cannot get clear in their heads but still, even they must get it, surely?

Note how the warming anomalies are by far the greatest in the Arctic zone where all the permafrost and Northern sea ice is. This is happening far faster than the last full IPCC digest of the science delineated in 2007. Those models did not take this faster heating and consequently faster rate of shrinkage of the ice into account in their models. Neither did they consider the release of methane from the permafrost nor the entrained carbon.

To those complacent enough to comfort themselves with the belief that the models’ predictions are wrong I say – you were right! Sort of. The predictions of the models were wrong – they did not take enough into account – but they were wrong in a bad way. Things are worse than previously suspected. Read again my post of the 19th February entitled  We’re ***’ed (We’re hosed…) which is about melting permafrost. I quoted Greg Craven who spoke recently at the AGU (American Geophysical Union):

“AGU rattled me to the core because my worst-case fears were not just confirmed, but exceeded (I found four paleoclimatologists who admitted to making plans for survival retreats), and my last hope–for the scientific community to enter the public debate–was completely dashed.”

I’ve since found out directly from Greg that the full story is that, of those he spoke to, he found four who would admit to this but they also confirmed that “many” more that they knew were doing the same.

Guernsey FUTU

Just had to post a link to our sister Island’s online satire sheet Guernsey FUTU and this witty article about climate change scepticism.

Disclosure: they paid me nothing for this free plug.

 

We’re ***’ed

It’s the weekend. Got plans? Hope they’re not long term ones… Have a look at this latest post from Climate Progress - one of the best, well referenced antidotes to the insane complacency, breathtaking stupidity and unjustified arrogance of the denialist disinformation websites and blogs.

The post is entitled:

NSIDC bombshell: Thawing permafrost feedback will turn Arctic from carbon sink to source in the 2020s, releasing 100 billion tons of carbon by 2100

Click on the title to read the original post. It’ll stop you worrying about your pension.

The title might sound dramatic but wait until you read the text. It’s also worth reading the comments too for the sense of resignation that previously hopeful people are starting to express. In there (at #82) you will find one from yours truly delineating the latest thoughts from Greg Craven (the author of “What’s the Worst that Could Happen?” – the book I assisted with that is linked to in this blog’s side bar). Greg recently did a speech, to the assembled multitudes of the American Geophysical Union, which was astonishingly powerful. Afterwards he talked to some members about their private thoughts. These are his own words (from the Manpollo.org site):

“Oh, and one last thing. You deserve the full story, but for now here’s the bottom line: we’re ****ed. AGU rattled me to the core because my worst-case fears were not just confirmed, but exceeded (I found four paleoclimatologists who admitted to making plans for survival retreats), and my last hope–for the scientific community to enter the public debate–was completely dashed.”

Paleoclimatologists are the guys who work out what happened to Earth’s climate tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of years ago. They know how the climate could turn (probably will now as this latest information suggests) because it has turned dangerously in the past under less of a kick than we are currently giving it. They know about prehistoric mass extinction events, due to this type of climatic kick, when large proportions of life on Earth died out and things didn’t settle down again for hundreds of thousands of years – millions in some cases.  When the Lindzen’s of this world preach to their faithful (I use the word advisedly) followers on Wattsupwiththat that climate sensitivity is lower than the IPCC best estimates and claim that any warming will be small and inconsequential, remember what is probably happening already and the knock on consequences.

Friedrich Schiller said: "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens," which means "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."

Movie Trailer! Why it’s a win win win to get off fossil fuels, even for those who are so blinkered that they refuse to acknowledge the dangers of climate change.

If you’re so ignorant, irrational or politically brainwashed that you think climate change is a hoax or won’t be a serious problem then go to see this movie which opens soon in (February). Here’s a climate change movie that doesn’t even care if you believe in climate change. See it and you’ll probably end up thinking it’s a good idea to wean ourselves off fossil fuels rapidly anyway.  

 

 

click image above for link to movie website