Heretics Corner: climate change denial

Showing posts with label climate change denial. Show all posts

Is Anthony Watts airbrushing his past ?

Watching Anthony Watts on PBS Newshour I was struck by how reasonable Anthony appeared. He stressed at least three times how he agreed Global Warming exists, and his account of his past was shall we say surprising. Anthony mentions James Hansen's testimony to Congress in '88 and claims that he was motivated by it. So the viewer could be forgiven for thinking that Anthony has taken a measured path from AGW proponent to skeptic over the years.

But surely theres something missing. What about Anthony's denial of global warming? He seems to be airbrushing that out of the record. I tried to post a message on the open thread on his blog asking how he got from Leipzig Declaration signatory to his current oh-so-reasonable stance. It hasn't made it through moderation.

Ironic how climate denial blogs claim their view is being suppressed yet are quick to censor any dissent or probing questions.

IMHO it's a worthwhile question. Conceding the world is warming but taking the stance that warming is insignificant is much more nuanced than his flat denial of the consensus back in 1995. We need to know whose judgment to trust and it seems Anthony can't account for his earlier stance. How can we take Anthony Watts seriously now ?

Climate skeptics don't doubt CO2 is a greenhouse gas, except when they do

I'm not welcome at Bishop Hill so when Andrew Montford posts some nonsense (which is pretty frequent) I have to note my corrections here.

Today Monty posts a bit of a cosy chat with Canadian industry frontman and faux environmentalist Patrick Moore. Moore begins thus : "What most people don't realize, partly because the media never explains it, is that there is no dispute over whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and all else being equal would result in a warming of the climate."

Really? I'm always a tad suspicious of anyone beginning their argument with 'this is what it's not about'.

Over on the right hand side of Monty's blog are the links to what Monty optimistically calls 'Science Blogs' . They include Lucy Skywalker author of an essay called "The lynching of innocent CO2" and peddles the old CO2 lags warming line. Or there's a link to the unfortunately titled No Tricks Zone which lists all these posts on CO2 and GHG so they don't miss a trick. Or there's a link to the absurdly self important Climate Realists hosting John O'Sullivans claptrap such as "Solar Ovens Prove Greenhouse Gas Theory is cooked " Oh puuuhleeeeeeez, is any further explanation necessary? No.

Odd how skepticism of CO2 being a greenhouse gas is so easy to find amongst *skeptics* also telling us that's not in dispute. File it under the inconsistency of climate change denial.

Is it really worth reading yet another climate blogpost ?

Anthony Watts has more to say about the siting of weather stations.
I think a graphic comment is in order .

Whoops Climate Denier Blog Caught Out Rewriting the Record Books

Another clanger from the unfortunately titled No Tricks Zone blog which claims "...not a hurricane seen in years". Cue Wikipedia for rebuttal of that one : 'When Tropical Storm Debby formed on June 23, it was the first time ever that four storms formed before July, since reliable record keeping began in 1851.'

Perhaps not a hurricane seen in over a week would be more accurate.

Particularly egregious though is the No Tricks Zone headline which claims Warmists are 'Rewriting History'.

Facts, who needs 'em in the climate deny-o-sphere ?

Why climate skepticism works

I think the reasons why climate *skepticism* is doing well are much more varied than reported elsewhere.

It's objectives are (whilst not easy to define from without) much lower than proponents objectives.
To the disinterested the mere existence of climate skepticism is reason enough to ally oneself with it.
It's a constantly changing narrative, a cat of many colours. That keeps the interest of adherents. Science is carrying a millstone by comparison, science's narrative is the unchanging laws of physics, so not only are climate scientists wrong they are boring. The scientific debate is highly nuanced, this can easily be misinterpreted to mean scientists are divided on facts.

Contrarians are always looking for a sign of "bias" in AGW but don't apply that standard to themselves. The language is loaded, and indeed has been hijacked by contrarians insisting on being called "skeptics" and not deniers.

That's just the more active climate contrarians, those you come across on the net. For every climate contrarian/skeptic that's posted something on the net there must surely be a thousand more that have never bothered to learn anything about the climate. You know who I mean, your relative whom you only meet at weddings and funerals but is adept at parroting Fox News. How does science reach them? They are safely cocooned in the knowledge that climate change is nonsense because Someone Else Says So.

Above all, climate skepticism is more commentary than case. Contrarian Geoff Chambers defines skepticism thus "We don’t deny that global temperatures have been rising irregularly for centuries, and that anthropogenic CO2 may be responsible for some of the recent rise. Where we disagree with the consensus is on the higher estimates of climate sensitivity endorsed by the IPCC and the catastrophic effects which are supposed inevitably to follow."

That may come as a surprise to many of the more casual climate contrarians/skeptics who think global warming is all a hoax or that it's all been disproved 'cos University of East Anglia scientists were caught sending and receiving emails , or that the world is in fact cooling.

Someone Else Says So may be a rational way of forming an opinion on what shoes to wear this autumn, but not on an issue as important as climate. It seems to me that the Someone Else Says So meme should really be populating the don't know camp but is in fact supporting an ill-informed brand of climate skepticism.

Ben Pile. Qualified pundit or bullshit artist?

If so-called climate skeptics want to project one falsehood above all others it's that their quest is a dispassionate search for truth in the spirit of openness. Ben Pile obligingly demolishes that sacred cow by refusing to answer a simple question :

Ben's answer is a question of his own :

This is all in the context of a 2650 word rant in which Ben dismisses prominent academic Professor Stephan Lewandowsky as “nothing more than a bullshit artist". It is those words (which are also an ad-hominem attack) that make his own qualifications germane. I could add that Ben frequently writes for Spiked on the subject of climate change and environmentalism and he is also environment advisor to Godfrey Bloom MEP. That's right, a legislator in the European Parliament who frequently lambasts climate science chooses to get his scientific advice from a man who is embarrassed to reveal his own scientific qualifications.

Of course Ben's entitled to his opinions, but are those opinions informed by any relevant educational qualifications or not? Sadly that's a question no so called climate skeptics are asking.

Bizarrely Ben describes my contribution as a "a mealy-mouthed attack on my qualification to speak about Lewandowsky’s bullshit." Emphasis added. So Ben is clearly alluding to a qualification that he isn't prepared to reveal, and he considers probing in that quarter to be off-limits. Ben, if you're reading this, what is your qualification? That is all I'm asking .

Indeed Ben has now deleted our entire exchange from his blog. I wonder if he would claim that deletion is in the spirit of openness and a dispassionate search for truth.

Monty turns the Unabomber ads Upside-down

"Is there one rule for upholders of the climate orthodoxy and another for dissenters?" asks blogger Andrew Montford. Since Monty routinely deletes any comment I post on his blog and even attempts to block me from viewing it I'll have to offer my answer here.

Monty's gripe today is that Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is a climate denier. No, to be more precise Monty's gripe is that Graham Readfearn's blog supporting the consensus has noted Breivik's manifesto actually cites the work of Lord Christopher Monckton, Alex Jones and Steve McIntyre and echoes the beliefs of many climate change deniers. Whilst what Graham Readfearn writes in DeSmogBlog happens to be perfectly true Monty isn't shy to argue for it to be censored.

This is of course in response to, and to detract from, Heartland's notorious Unabomber ads splashed over the Eisenhower Expressway Illinois.

But there are four important differences between Readfearn's commentary and Heartland's ads which have passed Montford by:

The Breivik story is contemporary. The minutiae of his 'personality' are being picked over by the mass media. Whereas the Unabomber has been on the inside of a Federal Penitentiary for 16 years now.
Breivik's climate denial leanings are co-incidental to his crimes . Readfearn is careful not to imply that a trait of mass murder is to be on the wrong side of the climate debate.
By contrast Heartland make exactly that claim in their commentary . The ads put forward no science whatsoever so they can't really be called skepticism. Heartland say in their press release: "The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren't scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen"
The Unabomber ad intends to make an empirical argument to the public, whereas this particular blogpost by Readfearn is largely preaching to the choir and is confined to commentary not scientific argument.

Advertising in a public context requires standards of decency, half the story here is how Heartland lack that. The other half is not the overlap between a mass murderer's views and Montford's; it's Montford's demand that other bloggers should recoil from noting that.

Anthony Watts can't do Attribution

Update: This post has been substantially rewritten now that Anthony Watts has printed my comment to his blog.

Anthony Watts declares on his blog : USA’s record warm March 2012 not caused by “global warming”

To support this assertion Watts draws on the work of Dr Martin P. Hoerling of NOAA . Hoerling finds GHG forcing "likely contributed on the order of 5% to 10% of the magnitude of the heat wave" which turns Watts's headline on it's head. Dr Martin P. Hoerling is an expert on attribution. Anthony Watts is not. So there's a wide gulf between the words of a NOAA scientist and what the blogger says the scientists said. WUWT cannot reflect the highly nuanced question of attribution. And that's not opinion, that is observation.

First denialist review of Mann - published without actually reading it

Publication of Dr Michael Mann's long awaited new book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines sends the deny-o-sphere into a spin of kneejerk punditry. First out of the traps is blogger Tom Nelson who only manages to blog that a keyword search on Kindle yielded hits for "denier" "Morano" "McIntyre" and "Watts".Yup Tom, it's a book, got words in it.

Quite how that constitutes a review is anyone's guess. But it's good enough for Watts Up With That who then urge readers not to review the book without reading it. But Anthony - that's precisely what Tom has just done.

This nonsense is continuing to barrel round the echo chamber with multiple negative reviews on Amazon from the same reviewer. Contrary to Amazon rules. A practice this blog notes climate deniers have form on.

Where are the skeptics ?

A stage magician cuts his assistant in half. A skeptic would reason that some kind of visual trick is at work, that the girl has not really been chopped in two.

The climate blog-o-sphere is quite different though. Andrew Montford makes a Freedom of Information request to the Met Office asking for Sir John Houghton's emails relating to AR3. The respondent answers that they do not hold any such emails. Monty then writes a blogpost concluding "it appears that Sir John has deleted historic records".

Observation nothing - conclusion scandal.

I've tried asking "How can you be sure that he holds emails relating to AR3 ?" Needless to say Monty meets that line of questioning with a stony silence.

Climate skeptics rewrite Sagan. Can they sink any lower ?

Carl Sagan was one of the greats of science communication. Often remembered for his epic Cosmos (well worth revisiting, available on You Tube) he was also the instigator of the Pioneer 10 plaque which carries humanity's message across the galaxy. Thus long after you and I have turned to dust Carl Sagan's work will still be on it's interstelllar voyage .

Vloggers have divided up much of Carl Sagan's work into bite sized chunks like 'pale blue dot' which gives an astrophyscist's perspective on our environment . Tear to the eye stuff.

Hat tip to Climate Crocks for finding this film which directly addresses the question of anthropogenic global warming .

Sagan died in 1996 at the age of 62.

2012 and a guest blogger on the Bishop Hill blog lifts a passage from chapter IV of Dr Sagan's book Cosmos and posits that Sagan would have opposed the AGW consensus and the IPCC. A staggeringly cynical use of a widely respected dead scientist to attack the IPCC and make a partisan point. Does make one wonder what next for the Bishop Hill blog , Charles Darwin blogs on Dark Matter perhaps or Euclid's thoughts on the PIP implant scandal?

Powerful video of Schneider on AGW impacts and denial

Hat tip Wild Weather Dan for this. Must see.

Climategate 2.0 Has Potholer nailed it ?

Three cheers for Potholer for putting his thoughts into words lickety split on Climategate 2.0

Now, I'd like to ask my advocates positioned as skeptics friends if Potholer is right or wrong @ 7:20 "But although conspiracy theorists get very excited when they see a doubt or an uncertainty expressed in the emails - and take this as a sign that these must be secret - no instance has been cited of an uncertainty that hasn't already been openly discussed by these researchers in publicly available scientific journals." ?

Parlez Vous Climate Skeptic ?

Mazzer writes "In far too many cases IPCC experts were not chosen on their scientific credentials but on their ideological affiliations and their association with the WWF or Greenpeace." I've asked Mazzer to cite just one case, to give me a single shred of evidence that IPCC contributors were recruited on the basis he claims. Mazzer responds "I can never prove that experts were selected on their ideological qualifications any more than you can prove they were not." So Mazzer interprets my request for evidence as a demand for proof and issues his own counter demand. Such is the standard of rhetoric.

So where is Mazzer getting his ideas from?

Mazzer is responding to my one star review for Donna Laframboise's new book. Laframboise provides plenty of innuendo for Mazzer to frame his view but no actual evidence. In Chapter 21 she writes "One day the IPCC may come to be seen as a textbook case of how badly things can go wrong when political amateurs are recruited and manipulated by UN-grade political operatives." Did you notice the caveat "one day the the IPCC may come to be seen as..." ? It enables Laframboise to employ conjecture to say anything she likes. Here she is doing the same thing to Australia.

At 1:57 Andrew Bolt asks a leading question, suggesting that IPCC contributors are chosen on the basis that they agree with the scientific consensus. Laframboise's response is peppered with "one suspects" "perhaps" and "it's not clear". Having read her book I have to say there is only one correct and honest answer that Laframboise could have given and that is to admit she has no actual evidence IPCC contributors were recruited on the basis of affiliations to Greenpeace , WWF or on agreement to the scientific consensus. I've tweeted Donna Laframboise to ask she support her claims with evidence . Perhaps I'm asking too much, she hasn't corrected the factual errors in Chapter 3 yet. So please, advocates positioned as skeptics and apologists for Donna Laframboise; where is the evidence in her book supporting what she is saying about selection of IPCC contributors ?

Book Review: The Delinquent Teenager

Have reviewed "The Delinquent Teenager" byDonna Laframboise, after approval by Amazon this should be posted on Amazon.co.uk too. It gets one star.

Shoddy research or a deliberate attempt to mislead

The first of many misleading claims are the two words ”IPCC EXPOSÉ” found on the front cover of "The Delinquent Teenager" . Nothing is being exposed here, this is basically a write up of Ms Laframboise's blog which the reader can get online for free.

Chapter 3 introduces three scientists Drs Gray, Reiter and Mörner whom she claims have all been “left out in the cold” all well known skeptics of anthropogenic global warming. Laframboise tells us that Gray has never served on the IPCC and goes on to say and that ‘they are all IPCC outsiders’ . This is untrue. Both Reiter and Mörner have served on the IPCC (Working Group II of the IPCC's fourth assessment report.) Laframboise clearly indicates the opposite. It’s either shoddy research or a deliberate attempt to mislead.

Moreover Dr Reiter serves on an advocacy group which receives no scrutiny from the author whatsoever. Such unequal treatment is the hallmark of Laframboise’s work. In Chapter 6 she asserts a new set of rules all her own “Since activists bring their own agenda to the table, and since agendas and science don't mix, environmentalists need to keep their distance from scientific endeavors.” No support is offered for this arbitrary statement, it’s not a protocol or part of any philosophy of science it’s just Laframboise’s made up rule . Any scientist with any connection to WWF or Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth is in Laframboise’s words “tarnished”. It is a witch hunt in print.

Laframboise labours under the illusion that IPCC scientists can be qualified for the job or not. But unable to point to the necessary qualifications she relies on a vague statement by IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri that IPCC contributors “… are people who are at the top of their profession”. Armed with this Laframboise sets out to find IPCC contributors who in her opinion fall short of that mark. So a geography professor in Holland is criticized for being young , an epidemiologist in London is criticized for not getting her doctorate quick enough and whenever Laframboise spots that the doctoral thesis of one scientist has been supervised by another the innuendo of favouritism is made. It is one grossly contrived gripe.

The arbiter of who should and who shouldn’t serve on the IPCC is none other than Donna Laframboise in this tome. She berates a biology PhD for example because there is ‘little indication’ he has reached the ‘threshold’ of being in the ‘world’s-top-experts’ even though no such threshold is established. “[H]is orientation is overtly activist” huffs Laframboise, yes all scientists are divided into two groups ‘activists’ and people the author tolerates.

Bad science is mixed with partisan political advocacy. Examining the link between human generated carbon dioxide and climate change Laframboise claims“But the truth of the matter is far from clear”. If Laframboise really finds that area of radiative physics far from clear then perhaps she should have thought twice about writing a book about climate change. The heat trapping properties of carbon dioxide can clearly be demonstrated in the laboratory and have been known for over a century. But it’s in the final chapter entitled “Disband the IPCC” which gives the game away. Laframboise is an activist herself and the true purpose of her writing is to undermine her subject.

Put simply Laframboise’s work cannot be trusted. She argues that the IPCC should maintain “a strict boundary between itself and green groups” but never stops to ask if perhaps libertarian think tanks might hold sway over some IPCC contributors. A ‘strict boundary’ it seems is a standard only for environmentalists not for Big Oil or libertarians. This is ironic because all four of the testimonials she draws on with a science background to praise her book have documented links to think tanks denying anthropogenic climate change. Laframboise seems to consider that point outside the scope of her work.

No the real villains of the climate change debate hardly get a mention (and when they do it’s complimentary.) Despite their strong anti-science influence, in particular spreading doubt about climate change , the words ‘George C. Marshall Institute’ or ‘Fraser institute’ never appear in this book. One can only assume that’s because Laframboise doesn’t want you to consider the other side of the equation .

Principally this book is about characterizing an institution. But because of the authors poor grasp of science, political prejudices and basic errors there really is no reason to trust anything written in this book, nor any reason to recommend it at all.

Ross McKitrick a fish out of water

Another IPCC contributor with think tank connections is Ross McKitrick who says "far from being an open network of top experts it has turned itself into a narrow clique of like-minded activists."

I'd like to venture why Professor McKitrick feels that way. McKitrick served on Working Group I which deals with the physical science basis for anthropogenic global warming. McKitrick's field is the dismal science of economics.

McKitrick is far more at home at the Fraser Institute . In 2001 this libertarian think tank published "Global Warming A Guide to the Science" an opus which staes "A review of the scientific literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide ... have produced no deleterious effects upon global climate or temperature." It also tells us "There is no clear evidence, nor unique attribution, of the global effects of anthropogenic CO2 on climate." Although this guff was published in 2001 it didn't stop Professor McKitrick from contributing to the IPCC's 2007 report.

Skeptic blogger wants less accuracy in Mail's climate output

Now read this sentence carefully and see if you can spot a call for for press censorship to protect climate policies from criticism.

"So if Dacre wants to strengthen the case for continued self-regulation of the UK press, perhaps he should consider how it is currently being undermined by his own newspaper's coverage of climate change and its blatant disregard for the PCC's rules."

Spot it? No, neither did I. Blogger "Climate Resistance" did though. He was so sure about it he tweeted. When pressed "Climate Resistance" was unable to support his assertion and insisted the call for censorship was implied. But how did "Climate Resistance" conclude that Bob Ward was implying 'to protect climate policies from criticism' ? "Climate Resistance"s response sheds no light on that mystery.

The twitterstorm was over the indefatigable Bob Ward's examination of the contradictions in the Daily Mail's stance over climate change and Paul Dacre's efforts to resist any kind of external regulation . Bob's article, which is well worth a read, is a criticism of the Daily Mail's editing . And of course it's an editor's job to cut and hence censor bad reporting. So if Bob's conclusion adds up to a call for censorship and "Climate Resistance" is certain of that , it's also implied that Climate Resistance wants to see less accurate climate reporting in the Daily Mail. I wonder if "Climate Resistance" knows what a corollary is.

Is This Man Britain's most dishonest hack ?

Yes it's a crowded field but Telegraph blogger James Delingpole finds the chutzpah to present two conflicting arguments within days of one another. James suggests corruption in this interview without presenting any actual evidence whatsoever noting (at 4:25) " You can buy a lot of vested interests a lot of businessmen a lot of politicians for that kind of money."

A couple of days later I suggest James sign himself up for George Monbiot's proposed register of interests for Journalists . James declines but blocks my twitter for the trouble . But over the next couple of days environmentalists (and Monbiot in particular) persistently trouble James's brain cell " It simply does not occur to them that those on the other side of the argument might actually hold the views they hold sincerely and honestly" James muses in another blogpost on the Daily Telegraph website.

So in the first case money corrupts , in the second case that same notion is "demonstrably untrue" .

Apropos Delingpole back in July he coined the term Polarbeargate in this blogpost about the travails of hard working scientist Dr Charles Monnett. In an article long on speculation and short on facts Delingpole noted that the investigation of Monnett would be "definitely one to watch." He was right about that. Monnett is now back at work, and the investigation floundered when no evidence turned up. Curiously , James Delingpole has not updated his readers about any of this "definitley one to watch" story.

The tricks of No Tricks Zone

You don't have to be a scientist to see that most of the so-called climate skepticism out there is complete bollocks. Step up to the plate Pierre Gosselin in Germany who writes the ironically titled "No Tricks Zone" .

Take this. Amospheric changes on all 9 planets explains the cause of global warming as "the sun, stupid" . A real skeptic would doubt any conclusion that is so forthright but Pierre expresses no doubts whatsoever and if you don't agree you're stupid. But what evidence is there that warming on other planets and the Earth share the same cause? Pierre offers none . He has arrived at his explanation for global warming on the Earth by ... looking at completely different planets. Unfortunately none of those other bodies in the solar system support life, a point that I have made to P but it seems to have gone past him.

A few days later Pierre's headline is "NOAA Data Shows Slowing Sea Level Rise". Pierre sorts the results of a selection of coastal stations around the globe into four categories which he calls 'observed most recent rate trend'. Although he claims six stations show a 'steady drop' three of those (Karachi, Walvis Bay and Tenerife) actually record numerical rises in sea level. So how does Pierre arrive at his 'observed most recent rate trend'? I ask if it's simply Pierre's opinion of the most recent direction of the line on the graph perhaps. "It was arrived at by looking at the data" is P's cryptic response. He then suggests "your time would be better spent if you asked [Stefan] Rahmstorf at the PIK how they reached their conclusions of accelerating SLR. " Quite.

The strange case of "Doctor" Corbyn

Apparently global warming is nothing to do with mankind. "We know theres no evidence in history for CO2 being a driver for temperature or climate in the real atmosphere we live in." Thus spake Piers Corbyn who is in no doubt that climate change is dictated by solar activity and the moon.

What is in doubt though is Piers Corbyn's credentials. He is often referred to as a doctor, indeed he is captioned on The Great Global Warming Swindle as Doctor Piers Corbyn. And it's disputed here. So who's right?

The Great Global Warming Swindle. Swindle

In a missive to wikipedia editors Piers writes "Instead of speculating about me and making up things some would do well to ask me or go to source. Degrees are easy to check for example. I have a first class degree in Physics from Imperial College and an MSc In Astrophyics from Queen Mary College for example." So no doctorate. Why are there numerous references on the web to 'Dr Piers Corbyn' then ? And why doesn't Piers Corbyn correct erroneous citations? In this interview he's introduced as Doctor Corbyn but he makes no effort to correct it.

Odd that Piers Corbyn should express so much certainty in his climate theory yet tolerate so much uncertainty over his own credentials. I've emailed his office but Piers hasn't replied.