Climate Change

[cheesehead]

retina,

What do you think would happen if you posted your straight, honest, uncomplicated Yes or No answer to the following question?

Do you see that the validity of the claim

97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field drink Kool-Aid

would be entirely independent of whether Kool-Aid is colored white, black, purple, or green? Yes or No?

[retina]

cheesehead: But again you missed my point. You argument points #1 and #2 are not something I particularly care about. I have no opinion about whether your point #1 is true or not. I am not arguing that the figures are wrong, or right, just that they are entirely pointless. I don't care to look into whether "97%-98%" is accurate or not.

I don't see any point to your badgering me to agree to #1 when I already stated that #1 is entirely meaningless. When I think something is meaningless I don't bother to try and decide if it is true, or false, or anything, I just ignore it.

However if it makes you feel better: #1 can be true even if #2 is false. That is really quite obvious, and I had pretty much already said that when I stated that the figures can be anything but the truth something else. But it makes no difference anyway because #1 is already meaningless. But whether I agreed or disagreed would not matter at all, since meaningless #1 in no way strengthens or weakens #2. I would have been happy to believe that 100% of publishers were in support of AGW. Or even that 0% supported. Or any figure in between. So 97%-98%, well okay, fine I simply accept it at face value but I give it no concern whatsoever.

Although #3 is certainly something that can easily be used by either side to try and further their arguments.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by retina

cheesehead: But again you missed my point.

Do you think you can convince readers of that if you keep repeating it, to distract them from the fact that I've been exposing your "point" for what it is, time and time again?

You argument points #1 and #2 are not something I particularly care about.

Then why do you spend so much time posting about the results of this study (i.e., #1)? And not doing so in an honest manner but repeatedly arguing about a strawman exaggeration of the study rather than about the study as it actually is?

I think you _do_ care about #1, and you are desperately trying to send up a smokescreen to try keeping the readers from seeing the study results (#1) as they actually are.

I have no opinion about whether your point #1 is true or not. I am not arguing that the figures are wrong, or right, just that they are entirely pointless.

Then why have you put so much verbal effort into trying to distort the findings (#1) of the study?

I don't see any point to your badgering me to agree to #1 when I already stated that #1 is entirely meaningless.

#1 is not meaningless. It refutes one of the most common propaganda points used by anti-AGWers.

I think that's why you're putting so much effort into this. You're convinced that ACC/AGW is wrong, so you just can't bear to see one of the propaganda items used by your side refuted -- without sending up a smokescreen to try to hide that refutation, that is.

When I think something is meaningless I don't bother to try and decide if it is true, or false, or anything, I just ignore it.

Then why haven't you ignored the "meaningless" something here? Instead, you've thrown a lot of effort into trying to distort it and argue about it and smokescreen it.

I think that you just can't bear to idly stand by when you see one of the most common propaganda points used by your side refuted.

However if it makes you feel better: #1 can be true even if #2 is false. That is really quite obvious, and I had pretty much already said that when I stated that the figures can be anything but the truth something else.

No, retina, it's NOT pretty much what you said.

You just can't bear to let a refutation of one of the most common propaganda points used by your side go without trying to send up a smokescreen to obscure it, can you?

But it makes no difference anyway because #1 is already meaningless.

No, it's not meaningless. Your actions demonstrate that it has great meaning to you.

It refutes one of the most common propaganda points used by your side.

But whether I agreed or disagreed would not matter at all, since meaningless #1 in no way strengthens or weakens #2.

What #1 does do, and this _is_ meaningful, is to refute one of the most common propaganda points used by your side.

You've been trying to confuse the reader by pretending that there's a relationship between #1 and #2. Now that I keep exposing you, you're slowly backing up step by step, post by post, to try to save face.

I would have been happy to believe that 100% of publishers were in support of AGW. Or even that 0% supported. Or any figure in between. So 97%-98%, well okay, fine I simply accept it at face value but I give it no concern whatsoever.

... because you don't want to admit that it refutes one of the most common propaganda points used by your side.

[cheesehead]

retina,

When I first posted this study's result, I just thought, "Okay, here's a refutation of deniers' contention that a significant fraction of climate researchers don't support AGW (and, as a kicker, how the ones that don't support it are noticeably less experienced than the ones that do)." Not a really big deal.

But thanks to your tenacity, I now see more clearly how important that propaganda point is, and how important it is to factually refute such propaganda used by the anti-AGW side. In fact, I'm going to investigate how I might usefully play a larger long-term role in debunking that and other anti-science efforts than I had been considering.

Thank you for showing me that.

[retina]

Hehe, I don't have a side in this. I already stated that. And your accusations about smokescreens are wildly off. However, whatever you want to believe is fine by me.

The propaganda by both sides is just a way to avoid the real data. Claiming certain percentages of people believe one thing, or another, does not address the data, or the real issues.

The data say what is happening. Don't get distracted by the extraneous arguments by "deniers" about "widespread disbelief", they are just trying to distract the "believers" into wasting time refuting pointless arguments. This has always been my point. The whole idea of claiming, and refuting, percentages of believers vs deniers, gets everyone nowhere and wastes time. Efforts are currently being wasted by unnecessary "studies" to determine how popular certain sides are.

I freely admit, without reservation, that the "believers" side is by far the most popular. I also freely admit that the "deniers" are claiming a bunch of bullshit to try and distract people from finding the real truth. I want everyone to stop being distracted, and antagonistic to each other, and just find the real truth. If it turns out that the climate is in real serious trouble then let's fix it. But we also need to make sure that any "fix" is not going to make things worse. More data required.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by retina

Hehe, I don't have a side in this. I already stated that. And your accusations about smokescreens are wildly off. However, whatever you want to believe is fine by me.

I put forth the smokescreen theory because the alternative -- that you really don't understand what the study authors and I are saying -- seems unrealistic.

Don't get distracted by the extraneous arguments by "deniers" about "widespread disbelief", they are just trying to distract the "believers" into wasting time refuting pointless arguments.

You're the one being distracted. Some folks simply did a simple study to gather facts to refute the argument of "widespread disbelief". I simply reported it here.

Had you not repeatedly distorted what the study said, and falsely accused me of trying to equate popularity with validity, I'd have had no reason to post further comment.

This has always been my point. The whole idea of claiming, and refuting, percentages of believers vs deniers, gets everyone nowhere and wastes time.

So, you decided to "save" our time by putting up a strawman distorion and making false accusations? Is that it?

You are lying, retina. (The alternative is that you have too poor a grasp of English to say what you mean.)

Efforts are currently being wasted by unnecessary "studies" to determine how popular certain sides are.

Oh? Can you direct us to documentation of such studies?

I want everyone to stop being distracted, and antagonistic to each other, and just find the real truth.

Then why did you step in here and do the opposite of what you're claiming is best?

If it turns out that the climate is in real serious trouble then let's fix it. But we also need to make sure that any "fix" is not going to make things worse. More data required.

The idea that we do not have enough data to proceed with beneficial measures without making things worse is just plain false. Four or five years ago Scientific American published a whole issue about things that would help and not hurt.

The only people who honestly think that we need to "wait for more data" are those who are ignorant of the data we already have had for several years. Such people need to educate themselves, not try to be roadblocks. (But see below about mass education failures.)

The argument that we cannot make any significant differences in CO₂ emissions without taking totalitarian or otherwise distasteful measures is false. Only the ignorant -- or those with a hidden agenda to prevent action for some other reason -- make that argument. It is quite possible to proceed swiftly with perfectly comfortable, liberty-preserving actions.

It is also apparent that advocates of these reasonable actions have been politically naive in failing to mount large education campaigns to get this information widely disseminated, and thus have allowed the fossil-fuel industry to mount a very successful disinformation campaign. Shame on us. I'm going to try to correct my own failures in this regard.

[retina]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

... and falsely accused me of trying to equate popularity with validity ...

Of course, I never accused you of that.

[cheesehead]

"Investigation of climate scientist at Penn State complete"

http://live.psu.edu/story/47378

A panel of leading scholars has cleared a well-known Penn State climate scientist of research misconduct, following a four-month internal investigation by the University.

Penn State Professor Michael Mann has been cleared of any wrongdoing, according to a report of the investigation that was released today (July 1). Mann was under investigation for allegations of research impropriety that surfaced last year after thousands of stolen e-mails were published online. The e-mails were obtained from computer servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, one of the main repositories of information about climate change.

The panel of leading scholars from various research fields, all tenured professors at Penn State, began its work on March 4 to look at whether Mann had "engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities." Mann is one of the leading researchers studying climate change.

A full report on the findings of the committee can be viewed at "Final Investigation Report Involving Dr. Michael E. Mann."

Letter from Henry C. Foley, Vice President for Research, Penn State
to Graham B. Spanier, President, Penn State

Letter from Henry C. Foley, Vice President for Research, Penn State
to Michael E. Mann, Professor of Meteorology, Penn State

Letter from Henry C. Foley, Vice President for Research, Penn State
to James Kroll, Head Administrative Investigations, Office of the Inspector General, The National Science Foundation

[ewmayer]

It's not just BP's oil in the Gulf that threatens world's oceans

WASHINGTON — A sobering new report warns that the oceans face a "fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation" not seen in millions of years as greenhouse gases and climate change already have affected temperature, acidity, sea and oxygen levels, the food chain and possibly major currents that could alter global weather.

The report, in Science magazine, brings together dozens of studies that collectively paint a dismal picture of deteriorating ocean health.

"This is further evidence we are well on our way to the next great extinction event," said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia and a co-author of the report.

John Bruno, an associate professor of marine sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the report's other co-author, isn't quite as alarmist, but he's equally concerned.

"We are becoming increasingly certain that the world's marine ecosystems are reaching tipping points," Bruno said, adding, "We really have no power or model to foresee" the impact.

[EWM: See my objection to this last bit in the comments section below the quotebox.]

The oceans, which cover 71 percent of the Earth's surface, have played a dominant role in regulating the planet's climate. However, even as the understanding of what's happening to terrestrial ecosystems as a result of climate change has grown, studies of marine ecosystems have lagged, the report says. The oceans are acting as a heat sink for rising temperatures and have absorbed about one-third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities.

Among other things, the report notes:

* The average temperature of the upper level of the oceans has increased more than 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, and global ocean surface temperatures in January were the second warmest ever recorded for that month.

* Though the increase in acidity is slight, it represents a "major departure" from the geochemical conditions that have existed in the oceans for hundred of thousands if not millions of years.

* Nutrient-poor "ocean deserts" in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans grew by 15 percent, or roughly 2.5 million square miles, from 1998 to 2006.

* Oxygen concentrations have been dropping off the Northwest U.S. coast and the coast of southern Africa, where dead zones are appearing regularly. There is paleontological evidence that declining oxygen levels in the oceans played a major role in at least four or five mass extinctions.

* Since the early 1980s, the production of phytoplankton, a crucial creature at the lower end of the food chain, has declined 6 percent, with 70 percent of the decline found in the northern parts of the oceans. Scientists also have found that phytoplankton are becoming smaller.

Volcanic activity and large meteorite strikes in the past have "resulted in hostile conditions that have increased extinction rates and driven ecosystem collapse," the report says. "There is now overwhelming evidence human activities are driving rapid changes on a scale similar to these past events.

"Many of these changes are already occurring within the world's oceans with serious consequences likely over the coming years."

One of the consequences could be a disruption of major ocean currents, particularly those flowing north and south, circulating warm water from the equator to polar regions and cold water from the poles back to the equator. Higher temperatures in polar regions and a decrease in the salinity of surface water due to melting ice sheets could interrupt such circulation, the report says.

The change in currents could further affect such climate phenomena as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation. Scientists just now are starting to understand how these phenomena affect global weather patterns.

"Although our comprehension of how this variability will change over the coming decades remains uncertain, the steady increase in heat content in the ocean and atmosphere are likely to have profound influences on the strength, direction and behavior of the world's major current systems," the report says.

My Comment: I wonder if the changing chemistry of the oceans may in fact be more worrisome than the accompanying temperature rise. The other thing that would be nice to see in this context is to what extent human-caused sewage and fertilizer runoff into the oceans may be exacerbating the CO2-caused trends ... one is a bit surprised to hear a phrase like "nutrient-poor 'ocean deserts'" in this context because when one hears about human wastes affecting the ocean food chain one frequently hears about e.g. algal blooms resulting from too many nutrients, and the ensuing explosion of algal concentration uses up most of the oxygen in the affected [LOL, I originally mistyped "affeced", which actually seems apropos when referring to effects of sewage runoff] area - perhaps the "desertification" is due to higher levels of the food chain [e.g. phytoplankton and the critters that feed on them] getting starved out as a result?

Technical objection: If you "really have no power or model to foresee the impact", then you have no business using pop-science-lit phrases like "the world's marine ecosystems are reaching tipping points". You can speak of rates of deterioration and the *possibility* of a tipping point, but "We are becoming increasingly certain" about the imminence of the latter is scientifically unsupportable, however sexy and quotable it may be.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Technical objection: If you "really have no power or model to foresee the impact", then you have no business using pop-science-lit phrases like "the world's marine ecosystems are reaching tipping points". You can speak of rates of deterioration and the *possibility* of a tipping point, but "We are becoming increasingly certain" about the imminence of the latter is scientifically unsupportable, however sexy and quotable it may be.

OTOH, if we had the full text from the Science article, rather than only this McClatchy article's blend of partial quotes and Les Blumenthal's paraphrase, might we get a different impression?

I checked the http://www.sciencemag.org/ site; this one doesn't seem to be posted yet.

[cheesehead]

A recent book explains the anti-AGW disinformation campaign funded by the fossil-fuel industry, which is the successor to earlier FUD campaigns against the Surgeon General's report on the link between tobacco smoke and cancer, and, before that, against Rachel Carson's indictment of the chemical industry in her book Silent Spring.

Here's a review:

http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/1...ew/#more-29787

Merchants of Doubt
How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

In Merchants of Doubt Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway take us on a fascinating trip down what they call Tobacco Road. Take the journey with them, and you’ll see renowned scientists abandon science, you’ll see environmentalism equated with communism, and you’ll discover the connection between the Cold War and climate denial.

And for the most part, you’ll be entertained along the way.

Oreskes and Conway are historians who focus on science. What they do best is to sort through history’s discarded headlines and peak into the nooks and crannies of scientific literature to weave together their tale and to reveal the hypocrisy and hubris of a few scientists who show up again and again in contrarian positions against established science.

The trip exposes an unlikely link between Manhattan project scientists and the cult of denial that confronted virtually every major public health and environmental initiative of the last sixty years.

The original villains in this story are Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, William Nierenberg, and Robert Jastrow – physicists all. Sietz and Neirenberg had been involved in building the atomic bomb, and both had worked on other weapons programs. Nierenberg had been the Director of the Scripps Institute and Jastrow, an astrophysicist, had headed up The Goddard Institute for Space Studies and he’d been a successful author of books popularizing space. Singer was a virtual rocket scientist and he had been the first Director of the National Weather Satellite Service. Seitz had been President of the National Academy of Sciences. Each had worked with or for the Reagan administration.

Oreskes and Conway set the table by giving the impressive credentials of these distinguished scientists then asking:

Just as Yali’s question sets up Jarred Diamond’s inquiry in Guns Germs and Steel, these questions animate the discussion in the rest of this book.

The authors trace these scientists through the original denier/delayer effort — the cynical “Doubt is our Product” campaign of the tobacco industry, to the current climate denier campaign, with stops at the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), Acid Rain, the Ozone Hole, the second hand smoke issue, and a swipe at Rachel Carson for good measure. Along the way, they accumulate fellow travelers such as Lomborg, Lindzen, Michaels, a host of neoclassical economists ready to discount the future down to or near zero, and of course, Conservative politicians.

Each of these campaigns could fit the same template: seemingly credible scientists, conservative think tanks (some created just for the campaigns), allied with industry, lubricated liberally with money and PR savvy, and leavened with a conviction that the ends justified the means. This explains why talented scientists willingly jettisoned the scientific method.

The boldface in this next part is my own emphasis:

And what was the end that justified this extreme behavior?

An almost religious conviction in small government and the potential evils of big government; a doctrinaire belief in unconstrained free markets and the purity of capitalism; and the conviction that “environmentalism” and other do-gooder efforts threatened our free market, capitalistic system.

Oreskes and Conway show why cold warriors saw threats to their brand of uber-capitalism as threats to the United States, and they show how environmentalism came to be seen by them as “green on the outside, but red on the inside.” The evolution [links to http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=36 -- cheesehead] of the Marshall Institute from SDI defender to Exxon-funded climate denier is particularly illustrative.

Climate scientists themselves come in for part of the blame. As the authors point out, while Singer et. al. and their allies from corporations and think tanks cast their disinformation and misinformation directly to the people, the press and politicians, the climate scientists, for the most part, spoke quietly among themselves.

No disinformation campaign can succeed without the cooperation of the press, and the authors provide some egregious examples of how the press in general, and such conservative organs as the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times in particular, printed long discredited information and baseless personal attacks, and declined to print rebuttals or retractions when the errors were pointed out.

The book is not without flaws. For example, while they document the press’s individual failures, they don’t hold the discipline as a whole to account to the extent that the media deserves. For example, consider the following statement:

Really? Their tactics were crude, the lies obvious, and the truth knowable with only a cursory web search. If the press was “fooled,” it was because they were either hopeless slackers, or they wanted to be fooled.

There's another factor: Science education in elementary and secondary schools all too often fails to teach students how to distinguish between genuine science and pseudoscience. Promoters of pseudoscience have become more and more expert in crafting arguments to fool people who don't have the best science foundations, even science journalists.

I used to think I got a good pre-college science education. But even after attending one of the world's top science colleges, I have been temporarily fooled by pseudoscience on several occasions. It happens less often now than when I was younger ... I hope. I've seen the persuasive subtlety of some pseudoscience, and I'm not surprised that it fools some well-educated people.

This is not an easy thing to cure.

The authors also describe the scientific method in a manner that makes it sound like a popularity contest. Their almost exclusive focus on peer reviews and peer consensus ignores the critical role of testable hypotheses and empirical observation. In the end, it is the quality and reproducibility of the data that speaks, and it forms the basis for the peer reviews. In their prescription for ‘A New View of Science,” they repeat this perspective, saying, “What counts as knowledge are the ideas that are accepted by the fellowship of experts …” This is a slippery slope, in which old theories never die and new ones could be subject to the whims of the times.

In the end, the authors correctly note that what motivates deniers is political ideology, not science. As CP’s [climateprogress.org -- cheesehead] Joe Romm put it in Hell and High Water, the reason most political conservatives and libertarians deny the reality of human-induced climate change is that they simply cannot stand the solution. So they attack both the solution and the science.

Despite its small flaws, Merchants is an impressive and disturbing piece of scholarship that does a good job of answering the questions they pose. It should be read by every editor and every member of Congress, and by climate scientists as well.

- - -

Of course, the disinformation campaigners know they'll have their political motivations exposed, so this time they've also prepared a preemptive counterstrike:

the absurd accusation that somehow the hundreds of climatologists around the world have conspired to set forth -- and maintain --- a massive lie (AGW), not only in order to be able to enrich themselves by selling cap-and-trade entitlements (or some variation on that), but also in order to set up an oppressive left-wing world government.