Intertel's Kort Patterson Conjures Wacko Conspiracy Theory On Global Warming 'Alarmists'

"Many people continue to believe the lies and demand that Western Industrial Civilization commit cultural suicide by adopting the crippling constraints sought by the global warming conspirators."

- Kort Patterson, 'Editor's Reply', Port of Call, June/July 2016, p. 6


Okay, look, it's known that one of my pet peeves is entitled members of high IQ societies (e.g. Mensa, Intertel) who feel they can spout off about anything they want - whether on global warming, economic inequality, socialism or whatever ....merely because they are members. There is something about these upper-mid-level IQ societies (I never detect any of it from those in the Triple Nine Society) that brings this flawed trait out in the open.

As I wrote in my post on public misperceptions of Mensa:

"there is such a phenomenon as mistaken expertise or inflated expertise which is very typical of Mensa, as well as Intertel members. Thus, because a person merely belongs to Mensa or Intertel he or she may believe they are qualified to expound on any subject, whether global warming, the financial crash of 2008, or the JFK assassination - without doing the heavy lifting (in research) before opinionating."

The yap before you research syndrome certainly applied to  Kort Patterson - a computer techie and Editor of Intertel's Region 7 NL 'Port Of Call'  in his recent "Editor's Reply" lambasting the entire climate science (real) research community. One is forced to hypothesize that those like Patterson, when they opinionate on topics for which they're unqualified to render a burp,  are themselves failed astrophysicists or even failed climate scientists. Unable to make the cut in those disciplines they content themselves with shooting down the letters, replies, articles of expert members (who actually do have physics or climate science degrees) and act like tinhorn tyrants because they have control of the content of their media.

Such was the case recently after I corrected Kort on one of his ridiculous "Editor's notes"  (May, Port of Call)- but rather than allow its publication, he punked out. He allowed the first three paragraphs then abruptly terminated it and  wrote: "1800 more characters plus propaganda" - before unleashing his own two page "Editor's Reply". This was basically a long-winded, half baked conspiracy theory based on a farrago of already exposed  climate canards combined with his own woeful scientific ignorance. In his screed, which is really all it was, he conjectured that the IPCC along with "disreputable pseudo-scientists" ("the Alarmists") have sought to impede the work of the "real scientists' (mainly the deniers).

Some aspects of Kort's conspiracy theory hatched in his (June/July) Editor's Reply:

1- The Journal Nature "has degenerated into a corrupt promoter of alarmist propaganda".

Interesting, given it was exactly the Nature article by Noel Keenlyside et al that the deniers originally latched on to try to prove global warming had "paused" the past 16 (now 17) years!  For over 8 years they invoked it to attempt to prove global warming was a "hoax". It was only AFTER the deniers' misinterpretations were exposed, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/george-will-no-warming-for-last-16.html

that they began to castigate the same journal as an organ of "propaganda".


2- The head of IPCC (Richard Tol) "reluctantly admitted" there'd been no "significant warming" for ten years.

But Tol  (when he made that "admission") wasn't privy to the latest research that had found no pause in warming after all.  Tol's "reluctant admission" thus was based on an erroneous interpretation resulting from a disproportionate use of buoys the past several decades. As is now known, these buoys tend to give cooler readings than measurements taken from ships. This was noted by Thomas Karl, Director of the National Centers for Environmental Information of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (NOAA) and lead author of the groundbreaking paper which appeared in the journal Science back in August, 2015.

As Karl noted, quoted in Eos Transactions - Earth & Space Science (July 1, 2015):

"The biggest takeaway is there is no slowdown in global warming".

Indeed, he added that warming the past fifteen years is the "strongest it's been since the latter half of the 20th century". Putting an exclamation point on that, April this year has been the hottest since records were initiated.

A good summary of the paper may be accessed at:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/noaa-analysis-journal-science-no-slowdown-in-global-warming-in-recent-years.html

3- The Alarmists try to restrict participation to just those who can be trusted to parrot the officially approved story line

Seriously, if I hadn't seen this in an Intertel publication, I'd have been convinced it was written by a high grade moron.  Restrict participation? Uh yeah, Kort, to those who actually have specialized in climate science as opposed to computer techies like you, along with engineers, chemists and economists who fancy themselves climate experts. Jeezus Peace.

In many of my blog posts I've also repeatedly cited the actual results from REAL climate scientists, as opposed to the many pretenders! Specifically, I've referenced the scientific consensus on global warming reported in Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22, by P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman which found that (p. 24) :

“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

The authors concluded (p. 24) :

“The challenge appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact (non-existent debate among real climate specialists) to policy makers and a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate exists among scientists”


4- Global warming advocates launched an aggressive preemptive campaign to suppress any questioning of their unfounded appeals to authority.

What "aggressive campaign"? Kort's perceptions appear here to be more amiss than my brother Jerry's, venturing from the implausible to the paranoid. In fact, it has been the fossil fuel corporations and allied think tanks (like The Heritage Foundation) that launched all the aggressive campaigns to undermine the genuine science - and brainwash those without much physics background - like Kort- into thinking there was some kind of nefarious plot.

I refer readers to the Union of Concerned Scientists which exposed the sundry propaganda ploys in their recent journals. Those who want to access all 340 pages of the 'Climate Deception Dossiers' can go here:

www.ucsusa.org/decadesofdeception

Over and over in his two thousand word global warming conspiracy tract, Kort asserts the "Alarmists"  are resorting to the fallacy of "appeal to authority". But I guess he might think that because virtually no denier  papers are published in peer-reviewed professional journals. They are generally dismissed precisely because they lack the basics of scientific authority - including: proper data selection,  analysis, consistent interpretation of data, and appropriate mathematical techniques. Hence, their papers are tagged as the opposite of  authoritative science which is in fact  pseudo-science, such as Kort Patterson is peddling.

Only a totally unscientific fool would write the following claptrap as Patterson does (p. 5):

"Changes in the Earth's celestial mechanics and variations in solar radiation are the primary sources of changes in the Earth's climate"

Which is an assertion I'd expect from a semi-knowledgeable first year computer science student, but not an astrophysicist or astronomer.

His reference to "celestial mechanics" is complete bollocks. It is in fact a reference to the Milankovitch hypothesis that has never found acceptance in standard celestial mechanics texts.

It was developed by a Serbian civil engineer (& later meteorologist) who acquired the avocation of astronomy – as a personal abiding interest. This is admirable, but puts him basically in the same class as Immanuel Velikovsky – who was a Russian psychologist – trying to do astronomy but arriving at bunkum like 'Worlds in Collision'. As I noted concerning that work in my July 20, 2011 post:

 " 'Worlds in Collision’ postulated the dynamical idiocy that Jupiter belched out a "comet" with the mass the size of Venus, which then blasted off toward the Sun, passing so near the Earth en route that it caused it’s rotation to halt (coinciding with Joshua’s famous trumpet blare) and in the process triggered the precipitation of carbohydrates (from hydrocarbons?!) – manifesting in the manna for the Israelites. "

Baloney like non-astronomer  Velikovsky's is also perhaps why Milankovitch's "cycles"  appear in no standard astrometric or celestial mechanics monographs. It is the bastard offspring of a non-astronomer and doesn’t follow at all from any standard celestial mechanics principles, equations or theories. (I explained this for Kort's benefit in my original PoC piece that he published, but it seemingly went over his head.)

This marginalization can also be rationally justified (within the astronomically- affected community) on the basis that the Milankovitch hypothesis hasn’t yet been adequately tested (e.g. beyond finding geological correlations - which of course is not causation) to prove itself worthy to compare to rigorous astronomical theories – say like the one for the lunar libration.

For example, when conditions are favorable for an ice age in the northern hemisphere, they’re not favorable for one in the southern hemisphere. How could the Milankovitch Cycles cause a global change in climate then? Also, Milankovitch cycles can only account for a temperature difference of 1° to 2°. How is it possible then that sediment records show temperature differences of 7° to 10°? The 100,000 yr. Milankovitch cycle is dominant in the record, yet it has the weakest astronomical effect  

Moreover, in the record, it doesn’t always occur at 100,000 years – rather it ranges from 80,000 to 125,000 yrs.. How can these variances be explained? Until they are – most astronomers won’t embrace the hypothesis, especially if is bound up with geological correlations as opposed to a consistent model for the changing orbital elements of the planet. .

But it's Kort's invocation of solar variations that truly exposes his profound ignorance. I went through all the reasons in a post from just over a year ago.  As I noted, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/06/new-evidence-sun-is-cooling-salvation.html

"On average, with violent inputs (from solar flares)  smoothed out, the Earth's temperature changes by about +0.07 K (kelvin) over a solar cycle. Compare this to the 1.6 K change (current est. increase) arising from global warming over the past 100 years mostly traced to human use of fossil fuels. Thus, the greenhouse component is nearly 23 times greater.

Even if the solar forcing on climate is enhanced by positive feedbacks the amplification is usually no more than a factor 2. So that 0.07 K increases become  0.14 K increases. The human component is still more important by a factor 11.4, a point made by T. Woods when he emphasized( in his paper 'Solar Irradiance: Recent Results and Future Research Plans')  that the recent results support the hypothesis that "anthropogenic greenhouse gases are the primary contributor to global warming."

Another ludicrous canard compliments of Kort:

"Water vapor is far more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2"

Actually, no. Kort is a bit behind the times in his physics research! We now know that water vapor is not a factor in the initial positive feedback phase and it certainly doesn’t trump CO2. This was pointed out by Spencer Weart in his excellent article: 'The Discovery of the Risk of Global Warming’, in Physics Today, Jan. 1997, p. 34). Weart pointed out that even a tiny, minuscule amount of CO2 is vastly more efficient at blocking the re-radiation of energy than any amount of water vapor- at those bands. Part of the misconception arose because early researchers, lacking the current technology of infrared spectroscopy, assumed that water vapor bands already blocked out most of what would (ordinarily) be taken by CO2.  They were wrong, as in WAAAAY wrong.

Another Kortian miscue:

"The global warming currently occurring on Mars casts serious doubts on the Alarmists' claim that global warming is caused by human activity."

No it does not.  But let's not tell Kort that, his mind is already made up and he's on the lookout for anything that reinforces his confirmation bias.

But Skeptic Science’s take is direct and to the point:

“It is hard to understand how anyone could claim global warming is happening on Mars when we can’t even agree what’s happening on the planet we live on. Yet they do, and the alleged reasoning is this; if other planets are warming up, then there is some solar system-wide phenomena at work – and therefore that it isn’t human activity causing climate change here on Earth.

The broadest counter argument depends on a simple premise: we know so little about Mars that it's impossible to say what trends in climate the planet is experiencing, or why changes occur.”

SO how was the conclusion arrived at? Skeptic Science again to the rescue:

“NASA scientist Lori Fenton, who observed that changes in albedo – the property of light surfaces to reflect sunlight e.g. ice and snow – were shown when comparing 1977pictures of the Martian surface taken by the Viking spacecraft, to a 1999 image compiled by the Mars Global Surveyor. The pictures revealed that in 1977 the surface was brighter than in 1999, and from this Fenton used a general circulation model to suggest that between 1977 and 1999 the planet had experienced a warming trend of 0.65 degrees C. Fenton attributed the warming to surface dust causing a change in the planet's albedo.

Unfortunately, Fenton’s conclusions were undermined by the failure to distinguish between climate (trends) and weather (single events). Taking two end points – pictures from 1977 and 1999 – did not reveal any kind of trend, merely the weather on two specific Martian days. Without the intervening data – which was not available – it is impossible to say whether there was a trend in albedo reduction”

Reduction of albedo (surface reflectivity), of course, would have implied a basis for Martian global warming.  The ambiguous results here show Kort is jumping the gun on his Martian global warming claims. But truth be told a lot of Patterson's delusionary thinking may be on account of his own straw man fallacy that "global warming conspirators believe Earth must have some kind of 'normal' temperature". No, not true! Rather climate scientists point to only a narrow band of temperatures for which the biosphere is adaptable. Once a runaway greenhouse sets in and the oceans literally boil away, no life can adapt.  And only a moron would insist 212F is a "normal" temperature.

 In the end, Kort Patterson has revealed himself not only as a global warming conspiracy alarmist  (and irrational hysteric) but a committed agnotologist.  To refresh people's memories -  agnotology, derived from the Greek 'agnosis' i.e.  the study of culturally constructed ignorance- is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty).

Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends . In other words, the supporters of agnotology - whoever they may be- are all committed to one end: destroying the science to enable economic profit and hence planetary biosphere ruin.  Of course, libertarian drama queen that he is,  Kort doesn't phrase it that way but as "Western Industrial civilization committing cultural suicide".

Kort then - as exemplified by his ridiculous quote (top), and paranoia about some giant scientific  "swindle" -   is a perfect example of what one gets when intelligence runs amuck without guidelines or specialty disciplinary critical thinking to ground it. In effect, his recent "reply" shows that high I.Q. , superior intellect, can't be a standard for dispensing objective scientific facts if left to its own impulses to criticize without also examining the scientific basis (and inherent biases)  of its critiques.

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/67895/lying-about-science-for-politics-is-evil

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/04/newsmaxglobal-warming-is-22-billion.html

It's Official: 2015 Was Hottest Year On Record

Most may already have been aware but now they know 2015 was the hottest year on record, at least since reliable records began in 1880.  If the forecasts, as well as those of the UK Hadley Center prove accurate, then 2016 will exceed even the record 2015.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced their findings at a joint news conference Wednesday.  It is to be noted that the NOAA and NASA each track temperatures globally using slightly different analytical methods.  This in itself makes their joint statement and agreement even more significant.

By the reckoning of NOAA and NASA  our planet is inexorably warming in response to rising concentrations of CO2. Previous EOS Transactions papers have put the rise at a rate of 2 ppm/ year and we are already at nearly 390 ppm. Autos and coal factories contribute to this higher concentration but also deforestation. See e.g.

http://www.wri.org/blog/2013/11/new-high-resolution-forest-maps-reveal-world-loses-50-soccer-fields-trees-minute

How bad, how wretched, can it get? How about a heat index of 170F by the year 2100?


And this may well be conservative if specific thresholds are crossed (e.g. the 6C increase mark) by that year.

As a recent TIME report noted (Dec. 28, p. 18):

"A 3.5 C temperature rise would occur even if all (200) nations meet initial pledges to reduce carbon emissions.  This would still submerge coastal cities and drive over half of species to extinction."

It would also make life so horrific for humans, many will wish for extinction. Think of 6-8 month heat waves lasting even through supposed 'cold' months and temperatures hitting 95F- 100 F regularly - even in December. Think of it happening not just in the U.S. but globally.  And think of power grids mostly being down because they are unable to meet the vastly enhanced power demands, say for air conditioning.

All the indicators for 2015 show we are well on our way. For that year the average temperature was the highest in 136 years over the 1880-2015 interval, surpassing the previous record set in 2014 by 0..29F and marking the fourth time a global temperature record has been set.  Meanwhile, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.62F (0.90 C) above the 20th century average. This is mind boggling given that the total increase up to mid-20th century had been estimated at 0.8C.

NASA scientists also emphasized that 15 of the past 16 warmest years on record occurred since 2001. So much for the "global warming pause" the deniers have been using like a bogus cudgel since 1998.

Climate scientists at the UK Hadley Center For Climate Prediction and Research (which independently tracks global temperatures) also confirm the NOAA, NASA conclusions. Indeed, they note that global temperatures in 2015 reached 1C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. Admittedly, as I pointed out earlier, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/12/warmest-xmas-ever-in-east-dont.html

El Niño has contributed to this record with the increased warming of the Pacific Ocean.

However, the El Niño effect doesn't explain everything.  Climate expert Dr. Michael Mann explained to the New York Times, that even if the global climate weren't warming, the odds of setting two back-to-back record years would be about one chance in every 1,500 pairs of years.

He added that because the planet is warming, the odds of setting back-to-back record years are really closer to one in 10.  Most terrifying, is that there's good evidence that this is nothing compared to what's to come.  For reference, This graph shows how global temperatures have historically, for more than 400,000 years, tracked with carbon dioxide and methane levels in the atmosphere.

The graph at the top shows how the temperatures have soared since the start of official record keeping (source: The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 18, p. A7)

See also:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/01/20/its-official-2015-smashed-2014s-global-temperature-record-it-wasnt-even-close/

Can We Get Conservo Idiots to Stop Babbling About Climate Change?

You know the ones I’m writing about. They don’t even have an “A.A.” behind their names but feel qualified to babble about any scientific issues that strike their fancy. They’ve never taken even a first year college physics course, or even high school physics, but to see them waxing on about some aspect of climate change – global warming in their blogs you’d think they’d published papers in Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union.

Recall I’d taken one such cretin to task before in my Sept. 21 blog from last year, when he couldn’t even get straight the differences between Arctic and Antarctic ice and melting in terms of global warming impact. I noted at that time several errors, including:

1) A serious error of omission, namely ignoring the critical land ice contribution and focusing only on sea ice. This is a common error made by those who rush into areas for which they have little or no preparation. In Antarctica, sea ice nearly entirely melts away during the S. hemisphere summer but is extensive in the winter.

2) Failing to distinguish the two forms of Antarctic ice: to wit, land ice is actually stored ocean water that once fell as precipitation. Sea ice, meanwhile, is ice which forms in salt water (sea water) mainly during the winter months.

3) Failure to distinguish Arctic from Antarctic ice cover and hence the relative importance of each. Arctic sea ice - while its cover fluctuates- remains all year round (so far anyway) and hence provides a reflective surface to increase albedo. (proportion of reflectance back into space).

You’d think after such errors were made, leading to terrible conclusions, i.e. claiming that Antarctic sea ice is "growing" and hence global warming is a hoax- they’d learn to shut their mouths and blogs after being exposed- but oh no, they’d rather be “wrong and strong”. Determined to remain irrepressible idiots when it comes to scientific literacy – as opposed to changelings (which might be effected if they actually took a physics course, instead of wasting thousands on “bible online courses” to be a fake preacher.

The latest incursion into territory these semi-educated nitwits don’t understand has to do with the claim of a “global warming pause” made by the UK Met office. I suppose the particular dunderhead in question felt that just by quoting “UK Met office” he’d garner some fake gravitas, but never appreciated someone might hold him to account.

But if the moron had actually checked the Met office site, he would have seen the error of his ways. (On second thought, it likely wouldn’t have mattered since he clearly can’t read anyway). But on the site, it is noted:

"The Met Office Hadley Centre has written three reports that address the recent pause in global warming and seek to answer the following questions:

What have been the recent trends in other indicators of climate over this period?

• What are the potential drivers of the current pause?

• How does the recent pause affect our projections of future climate?

The answers are delivered in three separate .pdf papers found at the site:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/recent-pause-in-warming

Summarizing the results of the papers, the site notes:

The first paper shows that a wide range of observed climate indicators continue to show changes that are consistent with a globally warming world, and our understanding of how the climate system works.

The second suggests that it is not possible to explain the recent lack of surface warming solely by reductions in the total energy received by the planet, i.e. the balance between the total solar energy entering the system and the thermal energy leaving it. Changes in the exchange of heat between the upper and deep ocean appear to have caused at least part of the pause in surface warming, and observations suggest that the Pacific Ocean may play a key role.

The final paper shows that the recent pause in global surface temperature rise does not materially alter the risks of substantial warming of the Earth by the end of this century. Nor does it invalidate the fundamental physics of global warming, the scientific basis of climate models and their estimates of climate sensitivity.

Did this gooniper read any of this? One wonders! A more salient point is whether there has indeed been any genuine pause in warming at all, as intimated in the 2nd and 3rd statements and I have dealt with this in a number of prior blogs. I noted a paper in Nature – written by Dr. Noel Keenlyside et al- which made a tentative claim for monotonic global cooling since ca. 1998. This 'jumped the shark' and then became embedded into the warming skeptics' arsenal of disinfo and set real global warming science education back at least a decade in my estimation.

I will get to why the Hadley assumption of an ongoing pause is wrong later (despite the fact - as the UK site admitted - it doesn't affect the fundamental physics of warming), but the root of the continued misapprehension by the faux skeptic brigade is their misinterpretation of the data appearing in the Nature paper - not at all helped by the media which have also misconstrued it.Instead of taking shortcuts, skeptics could have retrieved the ACTUAL paper from Nature! They could have studied the paper's key figure, the one that looks at past and (forecast) future global temperatures, "Hindcast/forecast decadal variations in global mean temperature, as compared with observations and standard climate model projections".

The first thing they’d have noted about the figure -- indeed, one major source of confusion -- is that each point represents a ten-year centered mean. That is, each point represents the average temperature of the decade starting 5 years before that point and ending 5 years after that point. Thus, the statistics for potential “cooling” could not possibly have been justifiably extrapolated beyond 1998 + 5 = 2003. Yet imbeciles all over the place have insisted it is ongoing.

Even the UK Met Office evidently blew it, as pointed out by the very reliable site for real climate scientists, realclimate.org. In their extended caption attached to their Fig. 1, for example, it is noted:

Even the highly “cherry-picked” 11-year period starting with the warm 1998 and ending with the cold 2008 still shows a warming trend of 0.11 ºC per decade (which may surprise some lay people who tend to connect the end points, rather than include all ten data points into a proper trend

Real Climate also points out, in its caption for Fig. 2 (in its article on the supposed "pause"):

The animated graph shows the temperature difference between the two 5-year periods 1999-2003 and 2004-2008. The largest warming has occurred over the Arctic in the past decade and is missing in the Hadley data.

WHY is it missing? Out of neglect, incompetence, what? Did Hadley’s researchers not appreciate how deniers are hysterical to latch onto anything, any kind of “life raft” to peddle their bollocks and baloney? The point is that had the data been properly included, from the period 2004-08 the issue of any recent “pause” wouldn’t even be on the table, not even remotely!

This conforms to the red line for the figure labeled “"Hindcast/forecast decadal variations in global mean temperature, as compared with observations and standard climate model projections"in the Nature publication. Incredibly, this line represents the actual global temperature data from the U.K.'s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research. Does one arm of the UK’s Met office not know what the other is doing?

In any case, any serious person that’s read the Nature paper (discounting conservo denier trolls) ought to have asked: Why does the red line stop in 1998 and not 2007? Again, it’s a running 10-year mean, and the authors used data from a Hadley paper that ends around 2003, In effect, they can't do a ten-year centered mean after 1998!

This again is consistent with Real Climate’s assertion that the largest warming has occurred over the Arctic in the past decade, and that the Hadley graph (in the Nature paper) essentially found the “pause” ended at 2003.

The final cautionary note from Real Climate ought to make even climate dunderheads who blog on issues they don’t understand, take notice:

“If we want to relate global temperature to global forcings like greenhouse gases, we’d better not have a “hole” in our data set. That’s because global temperature follows a simple planetary heat budget, determined by the balance of what comes in and what goes out. But if data coverage is not really global, the heat budget is not closed. One would have to account for the heat flow across the boundary of the “hole”, i.e. in and out of the Arctic, and the whole thing becomes ill-determined (because we don’t know how much that is). Hence the GISS data are clearly more useful in this respect (than the UK Hadley data), and the supposed pause in warming turns out to be just an artifact of the “Arctic hole” in the Hadley data – we don’t even need to refer to natural variability to explain it.”

This is an incredibly critical point, but whether the conservo cretins will follow it before they babble nonsense again, is another question. It basically means that the UK Met center had no need to even drag remote mention of any "pause" into the discussion - to stir up the deniers' idiots' nests, especially in the US of A.