Skewering The Spurious Global Warming Narrative Of Another "High IQ" Libertarian: Thomas Nelson

As I predicted it wouldn’t be long before another Intertel Libertarian hack expelled his balderdash about global warming in the next “Port of Call” – now the official rag of the organization. In his fulsome gibberish entitled ‘A Brief Note On Global Warming’, Oct.-Nov. p. 1, 6) , Tom Nelson claims to have “debunked the whole scientific effort” of global warming science. To fix ideas, we're talking of over three thousand top tier climate researchers belonging to professional organizations and who regularly have peer reviewed papers published. Something I warrant Nelson has never done.

What I want to do here is begin by lambasting the last two thirds of  Nelson's semi-literate nonsense wherein he emphasizes the effects of "propaganda" and "gullibility". I promise to try to go easy on him, but I confess it will not be something that comes naturally. I have a very low tolerance level for members of high IQ societies that attack actual science in favor of cheap pseudo-science from assorted scientific whores and lackeys.

 

Under his header "The Propaganda Game"  (p. 6), he scribbles:

"The global warming campaign is explainable in one word: propaganda: It has been a major propaganda campaign for several years now. Its goal is the implementation of a new heavy tax called 'cap and trade''"

Let's  pause right there, and try to educate this genius- ignoramus. Most global warming researchers, and honest politicians,  have known for at least seven years that cap and trade is a fool's errand. As the MIT Technology Review puts it: "cap-and-trade, by itself, won’t make much of a dent. "

See e.g.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/414025/the-problem-with-cap-and-trade/


What WOULD make a dent - but likely would generate a hysterical Nelson and his fellow Libbies- is imposing a direct carbon tax on all oil supplies (including gasoline for autos) around the world. But the likelihood of this passing legislatures anytime soon  is about the same as Martians landing and kidnapping Trump before November 8th.  So, in the meantime, too many push "cap and trade" as a solution when it is only a Potemkin solution.

Nelson, having already screwed the pooch making his case, goes on to blabber:

"It's a clever program. The scientists who are telling us what's going on are the very people who are funded by government to give the propaganda foundation a measure of credibility."

Can anyone believe that an allegedly intelligent guy could believe this crap?  I mean, it's incredible a member of Intertel could demonstrate such profound ignorance. First, being "funded by the government" is not a priori given for any climate scientist. Yes, there are grants that provide some funding but not all scientists receive them, or the same amounts. Those likely to receive the most support are often stellar researchers like Gunter Weller - formerly of the Geophysical Institute -  or Michael Mann of Univ. of Pennsylvania.  Second, most climate researchers like Carolyn Snyder   whose research I described two blogs ago, are actually also employees of federal agencies that would ordinarily support the research of their workers anyway.

Third, scientists like many others in different fields (e.g. finance, economics,, genetic research) compete for scarce resources.  They are not about to help a competitor - say with a competing model or theory - be published merely because they propose global warming models.  Thus, if anything,  peer review is likely to be even more brutal than for deniers.

Fourth, last  I checked (maybe Nelson didn't), the "government" is not some vast, monolithic behemoth. It has branches, e.g. executive, judicial, legislative that don't  always see eye to eye. In the current cycle, last I looked, the conservative Republicans in the HOUSE have control of the purse strings, and aren't about to just dispense monies for scientific research - especially if they (like Sen. Jim Inhofe) don't like it!

Even the federal agencies, e.g. NASA, NOAA, EPA etc are not cash cows unto themselves to just dole out funds wherever (or to whomever) they want.. The House, in terms of its FY budgets, must allocate funds. Truth be told, it hasn't been too generous lately especially for critical pure scientific research including work on climate change, as well as space and solar physics.  This explodes Nelson's codswallop that "the grants and jobs depend upon their propaganda contribution". No, they depend on House budget allocations for their respective disciplines, as well as the quality of their publications - as members of professional organizations such as the American Geophysical Union.

The question now becomes, Can a guy THIS poorly informed actually be taken seriously? Or is he more like that clown king of Libertarian candidates, Gary Johnson? The dope who had an "Aleppo moment" and followed it up with another one when he was unable to name a single living world leader that he respected.

What confirms that Nelson is a total fool, never mind his writing in Intertel's PoC, is the following:

"Not surprisingly a few years ago they were caught lying in emails about the data behind their ominous predictions."

Guess Nelson never got the memo that this has been long since debunked. But like his oblivious cohort he picked this trope up from a WSJ article (Nov. 28, 2011)  by James Delingspole ('Climategate 2.0", p. A13) . Delingspole wrote at the time that a new release of mails showed that top scientists in the field fudging data, conspiring to bully, and silence opponents and displaying far less certainty about the reliability of anthropogenic global warming theory than they ever admit in public"

Delingspole  named  Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, and Michael Mann of Penn State University. This, despite the fact that three separate independent investigations found the researchers at East Anglia to be guilty of nothing more aberrant than academic hubris, some mild snark and poor decision making. The last investigation conducted for 6 months under the severe scrutiny of Sir Muir Russell, e..g.












who found that the "rigor and honesty of the climate scientists at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia were not in doubt."  The Muir report panel did say the scientists'  responses for reasonable requests for information were "unhelpful and defensive". Those interested can read more of the details here for the  Muir Russell report .

The takeaway point is that NONE of the climate researchers were guilty of the "data manipulation" accusations that Delingpole hurled  - and his "hi Q" libertarian peanut gallery continues to invoke. Bad judgment on the part of Mann, Jones etc.,  yeah, maybe! Because in the end scientists are human and the CRU researchers and Prof. Mann likely suspected their work would be twisted just as the deniers did with the work of Noel Keenlyside et al in Nature back in '08. Therein the authors rendered a tentative claim for monotonic global cooling since ca. 1998. This 'jumped the shark' and become embedded into the warming skeptics' arsenal of disinfo and set real global warming science education back at least a decade in my estimation. For details of how and why the deniers were wrong in their interpretation go here:

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


In his next section headed "The Requisite of Gullibility" Nelson really runs off the rails of intellectual discipline showing again this Intertel Libbie lot has allowed their high IQs to run amuck like a wild stallion - dragging them into making ludicrous statements that are unsupportable. Nelson writes:

"The people who are taken in by this swindle have gullibility quotients that do fall into a Gaussian distribution. In the left tail of the curve are the severely ingenuous and plain stupid. In the right tail are the hard-headed cynics who tend not to believe anything. In the middle are the standard, statistically normalized simpletons who were also taken in by the disappearing ozone scare.."

Of course, there is no such entity or measure as a "gullibility quotient".  It appears in no statistical monograph or journal of statistics and is evidently an invention of a group calling itself "the astute bloggers".  They base their "GQ" on a highly subjective "gullibility" test with more leading questions than a KKK entrance inquisition. See : http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2009/09/gullibility-test.html


One is thereby led to impute more than a little gullibility to Nelson.  He  places credence in a gullibility quotient but dismisses what he calls "the Ozone scare". That was no "scare" but actually an observed significant erosion of the ozone (O3) layer in the 1980s on account of chloroflourocarbons- or CFCs.  The phenomenon was as real as a heart attack and one which the late astronomer Carl Sagan took so seriously that he penned numerous popular essays on it..

See also e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/08/new-paper-shows-antarctic-ozone-hole.html


But see, to those who never took a serious college science course, and are invested in economic, political or general humbug,  genuine science and its methods are beyond their grasp.  In such a circumstance everything falls onto a spectrum of "belief" as opposed to QA related to evidence.  If a phenomenon doesn't jibe with their belief matrix it's a "hoax". I traced the "ozone hole is a hoax" claptrap to the same source as "nuclear winter is a hoax"-  to groupies of the political crackpot Lyndon LaRouche, e.g.


Recall this was the nut who supported Reagan's unworkable SDI program, as well as having ties to far right groups including the Liberty Lobby.  Might Nelson be a "LaRouchie" instead of a Libbie? It is possible, but I lean to the latter because that's the direction the Port of Call editor Kort blows.

Now, as to his claimed Gaussian distribution showing the spread of the "plain stupid" to "standard simpletons" to "hard headed cynics" - where the hell is it? He provides no graphic or paper citation, say from The Journal of the American Statistical Association.  This jive turkey doesn't even provide any indication of the standard deviations separating one group from the other, say the 'cynics" from "statistically normalized simpletons".

Would this condescending Babbitt also list the Pentagon and Dept. of Defense among the global warming believing simpletons? If so, I'd suggest he look up last year's 'Defense, National Security And Climate Change Symposium' , held in Washington, D.C.  At the Symposium,  Brigadier General Stephen Cheney stepped up to the podium to discuss 'Conflict and Climate Change'. Cheney, like some other speakers- zeroed in on climate-driven migration, asserting:

"We know for a fact that climate change is already driving internal and cross border migration"

Referencing here, for example, that in Bangladesh - the 'ground zero' of global warming- rising sea levels could displace 15 million by 2050. Oxford University's Norman Myers has projected there could be as many as 200 million climate refugees by mid-century.  Cheney's presentation tagged a number of conflict climate triggers, including the desertification in the borderlands between Chad and Nigeria which "has caused a lot of migration". He also indicated that the terror organization Boko Haram "is simply taking advantage of that".

Other aspects of Cheney's talk cited beefing up military infrastructure at home and abroad to be resistant to harsher climate. The army, in fact, has adopted a 'Net Zero' initiative to make its U.S. bases water and energy independent. I'd also advise Nelson to look into all the reinsurance companies (like Munich Re) that have climate change factored into their tables, costs, plans - but given his paranoid streak he'd probably blame that on a "scheming profit motive".

Nelson claimed he "read a book some years ago called 'The Big Con'" - which "included a colorful glossary of all the terms con artists use e.g. sap, sucker, mark etc." So one can conclude from this that his Gaussian distribution for global warming "suckers" doesn't actually exist. It is really a take off on the book he read, with his own subjectively applied regions (again, no stds) superposed . In other words, Nelson pulled it out of his ass, to be blunt.

Maybe the dumbest statement of all he leaves for the penultimate:

"None of this means that global warming is not happening. Whether it is or not is as unknowable as next week's lottery."

Is he serious? Unknowable?  Is he suffering from major cognitive decline?  Or, more likely, is it a manifestation of the Dunning -Kruger Effect?   Maybe this turkey just needs to leave his  armchair and little den to venture forth into the outside world and see some of the melting ice sheets as well as receding glaciers such as we observed in  Switzerland (Sept., 2014), and in Alaska in March, 2005. E.g. this plateau scene from Jungfraujoch which we also visited in 1978:

Note the people,  but most especially the lines of rope  tied to posts in the foreground,  in the photo taken by Janice in Sept., 2014.  None of those ropes existed when we last came in July, 1978. Unlike when we were there in 1978, the powers-that-be had roped off the entire plateau area and posted signs to warn visitors not to jump over the ropes to go beyond. With no such rope boundaries in '78,  we managed to hike far beyond those confines to the top of a steep slope nearly parallel with the Sphinx Observatory (far right). This time we observed chunks of snow and ice falling and suspected a primary reason was that global warming had rendered the snow-packed slopes more treacherous, and the risk of avalanche much greater. We'd have had to be fools to attempt what we did 36 years earlier, and in JULY at that time.

When we traveled to Alaska, in March, 2005, we saw similar unnerving sights. Many of these while we traveled in a small 'flightseeing' plane  to Mount Denali. One view from the cockpit of the plane is also shown below the whole plane view.














The original deal was that we were to land on a glacier near the peak and be able to walk around and see Denali up close and personal. This was the package promised. However, after several swoops low over the area the pilot warned us he wouldn't be able to fulfill it. His 27 years of experience and trained eyes informed him the supporting snow and ice was much too treacherous to sustain even a small plane landing. Did we really want our "money's worth"? Uh,  no.  What we saw, however, was enough to show that those who denied global warming were spouting absolute bollocks. Indeed, when I was at the University of Alaska over 1985-86 it was none other than Prof. Gunter Weller who had first shown how the Arctic was warming much more rapidly than the lower continent (up to 7F more) - and this was part of his anthropogenic warming predictions. (Nelson, in a footnote, refers to only 3 or 4 degrees - no  specific units, C or F-  as a "sign of "doomsaying".)

Then there is the coral bleaching arising from higher ocean temperatures that was painfully visible to us when we took a tour-based submarine ('Atlantis II)  across Carlisle Bay in Barbados in 2014, e.g.

                                                                       

The degree of bleaching and coral death was appalling. Also the increase in acidity of the oceans. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/08/physics-today-report-indicates-ocean.html

Perhaps this "genius" is too enthralled with his own propaganda narrative on global warming to do even minimally competent investigation and googling that would have led him to actual videos of unprecedented ice sheet and glacier melting, collapse. See e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRTInYTxLr4

Clearly, Nelson wouldn't recognize global warming if it burned his ass off and then sunk him in the next moisture-laden atmospheric driven deluge.

Now, let's go to the beginning of his "note" . He insists that for the "dire predictions" of global warming to be valid the following conditions must be met:

1)The input data must be scrupulously correct as a tiny error will be greatly multiplied by the long period of prediction.

2)The simulation modeling must be flawless for the same reason as (1)

3) There must be an absence of ‘black swans’ for the entire period.

He adds:

“To promulgate dire conclusions in the absence of the above disciplines presumes a deep gullibility in the targets of the propaganda effort”

In the case of (1) Nelson confuses error propagation applied to a stochastic phenomenon (like global warming) with a chaotic phenomenon, For example, any attempt to predict Jupiter's position in two million years would interject nonlinear aspects typically associated with "chaos".  Chaos, intruding via real number extra digits used in the parameters (e.g. the longitude of the perihelion),  would play havoc with the result and propagate a seriously large error.  But by virtue of being a stochastic science, no climate researcher with more than air between his ears would use such long strings of digits, say like  0.0000001133444 for the eccentricity (e) of the orbit.

The inputs that most predict the most dire effects of rapid warming then, are not so stringent nor do they have attached to them such absurd levels of accuracy. One we can name for instance is the concentration in parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is currently at about 400 ppm. Attendant on that is the fact that in the historical record (analysis via ice cores) there has never been an ice age when the CO2 concentration was higher than 200 ppm (See: 'Greenhouse' by Gale Christianson).

These two quantitative indices already tell us we are in dire straits, because: 1) we have surpassed the 200 ppm threshold and by a factor 2, and 2) the concentrations are increasing. The El Nino effect alone predicted to add 0.5 - 1.5 ppm to the existing increment of 2.0 ppm/ year. (Betts et al, EOS: Earth & Space Science News (Vol. 93, No. 15, p. 5):

http://go.nature.com/296UOpy

The temperature of the planet is currently out of balance by 0.6W/ m²  and this is almost entirely due to the annual rate of CO2 concentrations increasing. Further,  every increase in CO2 concentration by 2 ppm increases the radiative heating effect by 2 W/ m².

The one uncertainty amongst all these numbers is exactly when  (at what threshold) the runaway greenhouse effect kicks in.  The late Carl Sagan who wrote the generalist essay "Ambush - The Warming of the World", estimated (in a CNN interview with Ted Turner in 1990) that the runaway would emerge when the mean global temperature exceeds 6 degrees Celsius. Right now, we are well on the way to reaching 4 C by 2100.  Prof. Gunter Weller estimated it would kick in when the CO2 concentration level of 600 ppm is surpassed which seems reasonable. If it is at 400 ppm now - by many conservative measures -  then doing the math (adding 2 ppm  per year and 2 W/ m²   radiative heating contribution), gives us approximately 100 years. But bear in mind all this is conservative given the inputs from El Nino are actually increasing the yearly concentrations (Betts et al). 

Now, by the 2 ppm/yr. computation we have 100 years until the CO2 concentrations reach 600 ppm, which would be by 2116. By this same time, the value for the solar insolation or constant would be effectively at 1360  W/ m²     + 100 ( 2 W/ m²   ) =  1560  W/ m²     

At that point there is no issue of "dire consequences" - they will be legion- especially the millions dying from heat deaths as heat waves make the recent one in India - reaching 110 F for several weeks - look like a "walk in the park". Expect instead months of temperatures in the 130F - 140F range, more common to Death Valley or the sands of Iraq in the summer, for most of the globe.

But really, seriously now, are we really going to quibble about how "dire" the effects are at that 600 ppm level say, compared to 550 ppm, or even 520 ppm?  The conditions in even civilized,  advanced nations will border on the horrific in the pre-runaway years.  This will range from power grids crashing from overuse, to lack of water from utilities (because power is needed to pump water for use), to the spread of diseases such as dengue fever, as well as brain infestations by worms, e.g.


Now, Nelson can choose to 'believe" any of this or not. That is his privilege and right, but as I wrote in a recent response to Kort Patterson's trash "Tolerating Dishonesty" in the latest Integra ( September, p. 11):

"Clearly, a high IQ society above all ought to be dedicated to scientific facts, not hearsay or propaganda".

I stand by that. As for Nelson's condition (2), again, for the same reasons as already given the inputs (forcing component, solar insolation at time t, CO2 concentration etc.) do not have to be "flawless". Whether we are in a 550 ppm world, or a 600 ppm one, we shall see holy hell. We already are seeing various dire effects from terrible droughts and heat waves in India (Schools had been shut down in the eastern state of Orissa and more than 100 deaths from heatstroke had been reported from across the country. These include the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh which saw over 2,000 heat deaths last summer.  The Indian government has reported nearly 256 districts affected across India, home to nearly a fourth of the country's population - or 330m.)

Nelson's "no black swans" condition (3) is ludicrous given the whole thing is really based on a metaphor. As noted in the  Wikipedia entry:

"The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying which presumed black swans did not exist, but the saying was rewritten after black swans were discovered in the wild.
The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:

1. The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
2. The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
3. The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs"

The point seemingly missed by Nelson is that putative "black swans" only transpire because conscious, scientific observers have not always been around to observe them or may not have the technology to forecast them currently. (Because budget tenders won't provide the money, say in the case of tracking asteroids)  They may also not use the appropriate statistical techniques - say for the probability of "consequential rare events" like large solar flares. Does Taleb (or Nelson) even know about the Poisson distribution and statistics?  In the case of Poisson investigations, these are specifically designed for rare events amongst many other 'no events'. Thus, one typically may look at "no flare" days for particular spot classes and assess whether any null hypothesis makes the mark. The figure below shows an example for one Poisson distribution obtained by Beta-class sunspot  no flare days in 1980.

Such a Poisson process, e.g.  of the form P(t) =   exp (- l)   l^t  / t!, where the Poisson mean rate of occurrence is: l_m =   l Dt, with Dt  = t,  generally assumes the time interval Dt = 1d. In reality, measuring constraints (say achieving uniformly equal time intervals between successive Mt. Wilson magnetograms), will usually ensure  Dt ¹ 1d, so Dt  ¹  t thereby introducing a selection effect variability, complicating computation of P(t).




Major asteroid strikes are also inherently rare events and may be investigated using Poisson methods.

The Chicxulub  impactor event which took out the dinosaurs is a case in point. We also know that somewhere in space, right now, a planet killer asteroid is achieving orbital elements that might put it on a collision course with Earth. By the same token, solar physicists are aware that at some future time a solar CME could spell the end of civilization, all power systems, GPS too.  See

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/02/asteroid-hit-or-solar-meridian-centered.html

For reference, a CME in February 2013,  captured by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, is shown below as it shot away from the Sun at 800 km/s.

 The initial prediction was that the bulk of the ejected mass would sail over the Earth’s north pole. However, spaceweather.com warned there was still a chance of a glancing blow. The former likely meant high latitude observers on Earth would see brilliant auroras, but  experience no serious disturbance. A glancing blow possibly also meant one or more power grids knocked out such as occurred in Quebec in 1989 after a giant solar flare. As it turned out we missed the worst effects, only some SIDs.

Is this type of event a "black swan"? No, I don't believe so, because we could predict them IF we possessed the instruments and technology to track their evolution. We don't now. Currently the technology exists for the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite which can measure the intensity and magnetic orientation of any CME that sweeps by it. The problem is that ACE is nearly on its last legs and a replacement monitor is needed, lest we become "blind" to the killer CME with our name on it.

Fortuitously, a fully -ready space craft that can undertake ACE's duties exists. The problem? This Deep Space Climate Observatory (or DSCOVR) sits mothballed in storage at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,  Maryland. It sits idle because the Obama administration's $47.3 million budget request to refurbish and launch DSCOVR was forthwith rejected by the Republican-controlled House.

Perhaps, black swans happen because a supposedly intelligent species refuses to do the things necessary to protect itself from events which - while not totally "forseeable" - are nevertheless on the radar screens and early warning systems of the scientists who study them - including solar physicists (for CMEs), planetary astronomers (for asteroids), and climate research scientists (for climate change- global warming).

Narratives like Nelson's don't help, and are not appreciated, as they disparage the enterprise of real science while giving cover to pseudo-science, genuine propaganda - such as exposed in the fossil fuel companies' own documents e.g.

www.ucsusa.org/decadesofdeception

Maybe Nelson ought to wade through these phony documents and admissions by the likes of Exxon  before he next aspires to pin the "propaganda" tail on actual climate scientists!

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/69222/time-to-save-the-world-now

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-inteliigent-irrationalists-why-so.html

And:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/04/how-global-warming-deniers-get-better.html

Another Study Shows Global Warming "Pause" Never Happened

Yet another climate research paper has disclosed that there really was no global warming "hiatus" or pause. It was a matter of inconsistent data treatment, particularly in processing sea surface temperatures - especially as measured by buoys. First reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013, the claim resulted from 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 recent paper which appeared in the journal Science.

This error was likely compounded in conjunction with the misinterpretation of Hadley UK Center future projections on climate that I've already discussed at length, e.g.

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

I would even venture to say that the preponderance of false judgment by too many (mainly conservatives like George Will eager for a counter poise) resulted from the misinterpretation of data in that cited Nature paper by Noel Keenlyside et al from 2008.  But the new results independently show the warming pause to be bogus.

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

"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, July this year has been the hottest July 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

Why the measurement difficulty? Well, because the data gathering and process of analysis are inherently complex.  In order to achieve such a measurement as how Earth's average global temperature is increasing, there's a lot of "sausage making".  First, scientists must combine thousands of measurements from Earth's surface, taken by land instruments, ships. buoys and orbital satellites.

Second, each of these has its own random errors, all of which must be identified. Not only must researchers comb through the data to eliminate these errors, they must also correct for any differences in how each type of instrument measures temperature.

Thus, the authors of the Science paper had to dig into NOAA's global surface temperature analysis data to examine how sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were being measured. SSTs are measured in various ways:

- collecting ocean water in a bucket and measuring its temperature directly

- measuring the temperature of water taken in by a ship engine as a coolant

- using floating buoys moored in the various oceans

Each technique records slightly different temperatures in the same region so scientists have to adjust the data. In the past couple decades the number of buoys has increased - adding 15% more coverage to the ocean. But because buoys tend to read colder temperatures than ships at the same locations, a measurement bias is introduced which must be corrected for. This was the primary task set out by Karl et al.  They corrected for the bias by adding 0.12C to each buoy temperature.

By then combining the ocean data with improved calculations of air temperatures over land around the world, Karl and colleagues found that overall global surface warming over 2000-14 was 0.116C per decade or more than twice the estimated 0.039C starting in 1998 that the IPCC had reported.

Over and above all of this, as noted in the Sci-Am link below, from a statistical perspective:

"The pause does not actually exist, since observations over 15 years are not significant enough to be called a climate trend."

But by then the erroneous take had "jumped the shark", as it were, and the conservo media was blind to everything else including the inevitable corrections!

See also:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-scientists-helped-create-a-spurious-pause-in-global-warming/

Newsmax:"Global Warming Is $22 Billion Scam!"- The Idiot Parade Continues

 Newsmax is one of those "select"  sites that appears to be inbred with Fox. Its main content - most of the time- appears to appease the Reich wing nuts and Tea Party. You see it when you come across a story like the one wifey sent me yesterday morning. Full of huff and puff and reading codswallop like this:

"a top U.S. intelligence agent slams a 164-page document in the middle of the table. This document, you soon find out, contains damning evidence that a network of politicians, corporations, and scientists have conspired together to promote the fear of “global warming” . . . despite evidence clearly stating no such “global warming” exists.

The motive: $22 billion per year."

A "top U.S. intelligence agent informed them"? Yeah, right! And flying monkeys eat Repuke brains at night while clowns take over their bodies during the day. Of course, the author  - Tom Luongo-  imputes this so-called "agent" is a guy named John L. Casey (see below)- who "once did classified research". Seriously? A guy who once did "classified research" is an intelligence agent? I don't think so!   So, it's only a slightly larger step to believe this "agent"  asked Tommy boy to join him on this special "mission." What is it? To out those involved in the “$22b global warming lie" , which is "eating up precious taxpayer dollars". (We'll see how many such dollars are 'eaten' when the worst warming strikes and dykes must be built to prevent flooding in east coast cities and new power grids built to support the demand for a/c. during 4 month heat waves)

Can you say, crackpot?  What we have, in fact, is no "global warming lie"  but obdurate, ignorant dummies who believe they can bloviate on global warming though they never took a college physics course in their lives. Like one idiot on the Financial Times site ( a commenter) with whom I recently had an exchange - if you could call it that. In fact it was mostly him parroting the babble from assorted denier sites - which I recognized because I'd seen it from others. Thus, I wanted him to prove his arguments were authentically his so he was even entitled to have the debate. Thus I  presented him with one simple thermodynamics problem:

One kilogram of mercury is initially at 0 C. Find its change in entropy when heat is slowly added to raise its temperature to 100 C.

Data: Heat of fusion for Hg = 1.17 x 10 ⁴ J/ kg, specific heat (Hg) = 138 J/ kg C; Melting temperature (Hg) = -39 C)

Specific heat (H2O) = 4,200 J/ kg C
-----------------------------

Alas, he couldn't do it though he did confess "Look, I admit I don't really know what disciplines factor into climate science". Fair  enough, but if you don't know even that, do not parrot arguments to pretend you do! Anyway, this new guy - shown below:

Tom Luongo - Newsmax hack who claims he's been recruited by an "intelligence agent' to show global warming is a $22b lie.

Claims he has "new research" showing global warming is a "lie". One must then ask what it is. Enter now this new character, the former "intelligence agent" John L. Casey:

Supposedly a former White House "insider"  who  "is one of America’s most successful climate change researchers and climate prediction experts. ... He spent 35 years conducting classified research, examining confidential documents, and directing critical scientific programs."

Luongo and Newsmax  expended at least three paragraphs on Casey's alleged creds including his former NASA ties -"investigating the Space Shuttle disaster"-  as well as climate research and earthquake predictions. But this birdbrain was busted by the Broward - Palm Beach New Times ( 'Tea Party Welcomes Global Cooling Theorist') noting:

"This week's joker is one John L. Casey, president of the Space and Science Research Corp. and CEO of the International Earthquake and Volcano Prediction Center -- both outfits conveniently located in Orlando, just down the road from Disney World.

Casey, with a CV spotty as a case of measles, describes himself as "a former White House space program adviser, consultant to NASA Headquarters, and space shuttle engineer." He claims an M.A. in management from Webster University in St. Louis and a B.A. in physics and mathematics from "JSU" -- whatever and wherever that is."

In other words, this jive turkey isn't a real climate scientist at all, just another pretender like Willie Soon. Especially as we see:

"Casey's work has never been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, only self-published on the internet. He told New Times that's because "the importance of the findings and conclusions mandated the widest public dissemination possible, which the web supplies."

The web does supply a lot, but peer-reviewed journals and books are also critical. I have put lots of solar physics material on the web too - via this blog - but it's also  backed up by content from previously published peer -reviewed papers including in Solar Physics and the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and Meudon (France) Solar- Terrestrial Predictions Proceedings.

Meanwhile, the climate research I regularly cite is from peer-reviewed climate papers usually appearing earlier in Eos, the journal of the American Geophysical Union. In other words, my sources show I am not a hack or a clown like Casey and his advocate Tom Luongo .  On the topic of Casey's rationale for avoiding peer-reviewed journals, University of Miami climate scientist Dr. Benjamin Kirtman pointed out:

"This is the usual nonsense associated with individuals who are afraid their work cannot withstand peer review."

Why afraid? Well, because they know ab initio their work is too full of holes to be accepted for publication. And then the likes of Luongo have the nerve to implicate climate scientists in some fraudulent, cockamamey conspiracy to "hood wink the American public"!  This is exactly the sort of crap that allows critics to disparage all conspiracy theories and to conflate real ones with bogus foolishness.

Worse, for these two clowns,  as Dr. Kirtman continues about Casey's sorry work and record:

"It looks to me that Casey is confused about global dimming, which actually seems to be in a reversal... As for the "global cooling" Casey is arguing for, all evidence is to the contrary. Indeed, ocean heat uptake has continued to steadily rise since the 1950s, and there is no plausible physical process (including changes in solar output) that would end this trend in the near-term (10-30 years). Casey's "Summary Climate Assessment" has some unsupportable statements. For example, Casey's assessment states that "Integrated Global Atmospheric Temperatures continue to show a long term COOLING trend that began in 2007. (100 year trend)." This is untrue (by far, 2001-10 is the warmest decade since the 1850s) and it is not mathematically possible detect a 100-year trend with seven years of data."

This error of trying to extrapolate a 100 year trend from seven years of data is similar to the one committed by the  nitwits who claim warming "has stopped the past 17 or 18 years".  That is, in the original  Nature paper by Keenlyside et al, they mistook data points representing five year means for indefinite  means! See e.g.

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

Some of Casey's claims portrayed as facts include:

1) The oceans are not getting warmer.

Clearly shot down based on the migration of some  aquatic species (e.g. sharks) to warmer waters and other species  (including sardines etc.) to cooler waters because they cannot survive the warmer ones, i.e. in the Pacific. This latter has led to the debacle of seal pups starving to death off the So. Cal. coast, because their usual food  sources are absent, Then there is the measured increase in carbonic acid H2 CO3 in the oceans, a direct result of CO2 being absorbed. 

2) We haven't seen any warming in 17 years.

This is challenged and dismantled in the link shown above, where I rip Georgie Will to shreds - based on incorrect statistical interpretations. In addition, an important paper by Sonia Seneviratne appearing in Nature Climate Change in March last year showed another, secondary source of statistical error inheres in ignoring peak high temperatures over long duration in extended land areas. Seneviratne's team reported a clear rise in the area of land experiencing more than 30 days of harsh heat per year and other regions experiencing more than 50 days of sever heat. Both of these under-reported in satellite assays and hence disclosing a lower mean temperature than should have been noted. The results, the authors state:

"Show that it would be erroneous to interpret the recent slowdown (in the late 90s and early 2000s) as a general slowdown of climate change"   Adding:

"The mean temperature or any single variable is not enough to talk about climate change"

3) The North Polar Ice cap is increasing in size.

Also dealt with before (Sept. 2012), where I noted 3 primary errors made, to wit:

i) They commit an 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.

ii) They fail to distinguish the two forms of ice: Antarctic 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.

iii) They fail to distinguish Arctic from Antarctic ice cover and hence the relative importance of each. Arctic sea ice while its cover fluctuates, does remain all year round (so far anyway) and hence provides a reflective surface to increase albedo. (proportion of reflectance back into space). 

4) The 97% figure of climate scientists who support anthropogenic warming is completely fabricated.

Which is an out and out lie. In many of my past blog  posts I've  repeatedly cited the actual results from REAL climate scientists, as opposed to 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 who 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”

Indeed!

5) The Sun is the actual agent for  "natural" climate change. 

Which is total balderdash and the first sign the claimant is ignorant and has zero conception of solar physics as it relates to climate.  In his lecture at the 40th Meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society ('Solar Irradiance: Recent Results and Future Research Plans') Thomas N. Woods of the University of Colorado  noted that on average though, with such violent inputs smoothed out, the Earth's temperature changes by about 0.07 K (kelvin) over a solar cycle.

Compare this to the 0.6 K change (increase) in global temperatures over the past 100 years arising from human-caused greenhouse effect. Thus, the human component is over 8.5 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 4.2,

Which is never referenced by either Luongo or Casey, but then - given they are not real climate scientists - why expect anything different.  All we get from the likes of the delusional Luongo is the wild claim (unsubstantiated) that:

"Shortly after John exposed the truth about “global warming,” 1,000 emails and 2,000 documents from leading “global warming” scientists were found . . . revealing potential conspiracies, collusions, data manipulation, destruction of information, and even admission of flaws that were buried."

Sadly, most people lack the educational background and critical thinking skills to see through this bullshit, and would rather believe Newsmax and Luongo's hysterical ideations than the cold, hard facts of science which show unreservedly that humans are the main cause of global warming via pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/03/more_americans_trust_fox_news_than_the_government_to_tell_them_the_truth_about_climate_change/

Excerpt:

"When it comes to getting accurate, reliable information on global climate change, more Americans trust Fox News than the president. That’s a problem, the Huffington Post points out, while President Obama tends to contradict himself by insisting that we need to fight climate change and then signing off on fracking and offshore drilling"

A Scary Fact: Earth On Track For The Hottest Year On Record

Receding glacier seen in Switzerland on our trip there in September.

Perhaps the scariest story reported so far this year, is that Earth is on track for 2014 to break the record for the hottest year ever recorded. The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration reported on Monday, Oct. 20, that the previous month averaged 60.3 F - the hottest September in 135 years of record keeping. More sobering yet, May, June and August also set records.

Meanwhile, the first nine months of 2014 have registered a global average temperature of 58.72 F- tying it with 1998 for the warmest first nine months on record, according to NOAA's Climate Data Center.  According to NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden, quoted in the Denver Post (Oct. 21, p. 14A, 'Earth Headed for Hottest Year Yet'):

"It's pretty likely 2014 will break the record for the hottest year."

This may well come as a major surprise to those backward folks still spreading the misbegotten trope that warming has "halted since 1998". I refer to those like a character named Theo Vermaelen, who recently wrote in a letter to The Financial Times (Sept. 12, p. 10), commenting on a graph in an earlier (Sept. 10) article by Pilita Clark :

"It would have been enlightening to also plot a graph of average temperatures since 1984 so that all can see that since 1998 there has been no meaningful global warming.".

Actually, Theo, you're just not reading the graphs correctly, as I also advised columnist George Will in a previous post, e.g.:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/george-will-no-warming-for-last-16.html

As noted therein, the error made by Will (and likely Mr. Vermaelen as well) is a serious misreading of the graphs published in a Nature paper back in 2008 by Noel Keenlyside et al. The plausible misreading was rendered more probable by the authors'  tentative claim for "monotonic global cooling" since ca. 1998. This 'jumped the shark' and become embedded into the warming skeptics' arsenal of disinfo and set real global warming science education back at least a decade in my estimation.

The problem? Overlooking that for the key graph  each data point really represented a ten-year centered mean. That is, each point represented 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, or in Will's case, "16 years of no warming"  from 1998.

In addition, the mystery could have resolved itself had Will - and his equally unread mate, Vermaelen- spotted the red line in the graphic of the Nature publication and beheld that it was the actual global temperature data from the U.K.'s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research. They then could have asked themselves: "Why does the red line stop in 1998 and not 2007?"  Again, it’s a running 10-year mean, and the authors use data from a Hadley paper that ends around 2003, In effect, they can't do a ten-year centered mean after 1998.

Lazy deniers like Will and Vermaelen, however, have parlayed their own perceptual deficiency and this simple statistical peculiarity of the data into believing that global warming factually STOPPED in 1998! But the stunning fact is the evidence all around belies this canard!   Hell, one only needs to remove the blinkers and behold the scores of receding, melting glaciers, images and videos not long ago made available as in this  PBS program, see:

http://video.pbs.org/video/1108763899

Not to mention the scenes we saw in Switzerland, including of the once proud Eiger gletscher. Can these knuckleheads actually deny what they're seeing? How do they thing the recession of those glaciers occurred since 1998? Fairy dust?? Sprinkled from invisible sprites?

Climate scientist Blunden, in response to these dimwits who insist the world has not warmed in 18 years has this rejoinder:

"Well no one has told the planet that!"

She added (ibid.) that NOAA records show no pause in warming, period. But of course, this information issues from scientific sources not those from 'Fox n' Friends'!  Yes, 1998 broke a record for hottest year, but so also has 2005 and 2010, and likely 2014 as well.

If any excuse might be made for the likes of Will and Vermaelen it's that they don't regular read Nature so might have missed seeing the clarification letter Dr. Noel Keenlyside, subsequently provided to the publication: As he explained, they  were predicting no increase in average temperature of the "next decade" (2005 to 2015- relative to their data timeline) over the "previous decade", which, for them, is 2000 to 2010! And that is, in fact, precisely what their figures show -- that the 10-year mean global temperature centered around 2010 is the roughly the same as the mean global temperature centered around 2005. And both years are relatively HOT.

I guess the moral of the story is that people who pen newspaper columns like Will, or write letters to editors like Vermaelen, ought to first ensure they aren't adding to the already large cache of agnotology - for example as present here:












As we know, and I've stated before,agnotology, (derived from the Greek 'agnosis') is  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).

For those who want the real lowdown, without the bull crap, you can read the American Geophysical Union policy position statement on global warming here:

http://news.agu.org/press-release/american-geophysical-union-releases-revised-position-statement-on-climate-change/

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/59320/green-world-rising-a-call-to-save-the-earth-from-climate-change

2014: The Year Global Warming Deniers Will Wish They Were Right!

Two and a half years ago, in a blog post entitled 'If You Think It's Hot Now Just Wait a Few Years', I referenced climatologist S. George Philander who - 13 years earlier-  wrote a hot-button piece in Eos: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (March 31, 1998) entitled:‘Who is El Nino?’

Philander argued that El Nino and its sister cycle 'La Nina' are not merely the yings and yangs of a meteorological cycle but  offshoots of climate change in terms of their expected future behavior. Thus, as more CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere (as indicated by the Keeling curve - which shows CO2 injection has exceeded the absorption capacity of the oceans), El Nino will ramp up leading to blistering hot and dry conditions, even as La Nina brings cooler spells and precip in alternate periods. However, unmentioned is the game changer of altered albedo.

Each El Nino cycle that over-warms, has pernicious and permanent effects on the Arctic, leading to ever more polar ice melting and large glaciers retreating, including much of the land mass of Greenland. The situation worsens as rising temperatures (from higher CO2 levels) lead to earlier and earlier melting, Prolonged Arctic melting- the mechanism of which is shown below:

exposes ever more surface area- thereby reducing the albedo or reflectivity of the surface - leading to increased absorption of solar radiation. Meanwhile, bare ice is much less reflective than snow, absorbing even more solar radiation and further speeding any melting. (In the diagram, the red arrows indicate incoming radiation and the blue arrows indicate radiation reflected back into space. Percentages give the amounts of reflected incoming solar radiation).
As anyone can see (even without a physics background)the above process over time results in ever diminished reflection of solar radiation back into space, a darker Earth surface - with more IR (infrared radiation)absorbed - which reinforces more melting, which in turn leads to more absorbed solar radiation and ever more melting - in a positive feedback loop that will become ever more consolidated.

Now, we learn that El Nino is about to ramp up again this year. This is bad news given that even in the absence of El Nino, 2013 was one of the hottest years on record. Readers may find this incredible given the bone chilling cold recently, but last month was the warmest December in 30 years. Now, with El Nino's next onset the stage is set for heat records to be broken like never before. In some quarters there are projections that this may be the hottest year ever recorded (TIME, 'El Nino Is On Its Way', Jan. 13, p.41)

As Philander and others have noted (op. cit.) El Nino conditions are incepted when the surface waters of the Southern Pacific become abnormally warm. This is critical given the Pacific covers some 30 percent of the planet's area.  With the solar insolation at some 1360 watts/m^2  this means the added energy will force an array of radical weather changes globally.  It can also trigger extremes of weather conditions such as we've seen the past few El Nino cycles, i.e. extreme rainfall in parts of the Western Hemisphere along with prolonged dry conditions in Asia.

Other dynamical changes triggered by El Nino can affect quality of life, even food availability. For example, because El Nino can reduce the upwelling of cold, nutrient rich sea water (i.e. that supports large fish populations in the Pacific) and destroy coral reefs - marine life can be decimated. Already there are shortages of certain fish, e.g. blue fin tuna, and these are going to get much worse over this year as El Nino unfolds.

Apart from that, there is the spread of more tropical diseases, including dengue fever, schistosomiasis, malaria, and West Nile fever - and likely others. (I look for an emergence of Rift Valley Fever in the U.S. along with dengue.)  It is estimated the strong 1997-98 El Nino cost the U.S. some $25b in health care costs and hours lost on the job. This marked the year when West Nile really began to spread, and it also marked the increased incidence of worm infestation of human brains, especially around the world, e.g.
 

The three warmest years on record were all El Nino Years: 1998, 2005 and 2010. This year will likely beat those if the Southern Pacific heats up enough (about 0.9F) in which case climate scientists can declare an 'El Nino Effect'.  In this case, 2014 will likely break all prior heat records with extended heat waves with high temperatures rising above 105-110F and never dipping below 80-85F at night.

Bear in mind also, the unusual warmth of last year (despite no El Nino) comports with the controversial 2008 Nature paper of  Noel Keenlyside et al, which looked at past and (forecast) future global average temperatures, with the particular graphic for reference labeled:

 "Hindcast/forecast decadal variations in global mean temperature, as compared with observations and standard climate model projections".

The termination of the running ten-year mean labeled as "flat warming" thus would have ended last year. Recall that a source of confusion in the paper leading deniers to circulate the myth that "warming had ceased from 1998"  is that each point on the graph represented a ten-year centered mean. That is, each point represented 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.

One key marker was the red line in the Nature publication, highlighting actual global temperature data from the U.K.'s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research.  Another  marker was the black line in the same Figure, which was actually one of the IPCC scenario projections, labeled 'A1B.' It denoted a relatively high-CO2-growth model -- but actual carbon emissions since 2000 have wildly outpaced it. A further check by skeptics of the  additional solid green line - the "hindcast" of the authors – e.g. how well their model compared to actual data (and the A1B scenario) could also be done. It would have  been seen that, if extended (in dashes) through 2010 and finally to 2025, it JOINED up with A1B. In other words, a general trend of much higher warning.

The period 2013-14 marks the termination of the Keenlyside et al flat line trend and a general increase to higher and higher global surface temperatures on past 2025. This also comports with the most recent findings that much hotter climate change regimes are in store for us. According to a new study published in Nature, climate-change will “lock” into place by the year 2047 (plus or minus 14 years, when the uncertainty is factored in). Once that happens, every year after 2047 will be hotter than even the current hottest year on record.

By 2047, the study concludes, our current record temperatures will become the new normal temperatures.   Of course, since the planet has differing temperature regions, latitudes etc. the emergence of the new heat world will not be uniform.  The Nature study estimates that Singapore, for example, will reach its temperature point-of-no-return as soon as 2028. Cairo, they say, could start to see a “lock-in” of global warming in 2036, 11 years before the global X-year 2047.


According to Chris Field, one of the scientists who worked on the project, "One can think of this year [2047] as a kind of threshold into a hot new world from which one never goes back.”


People -adults living now, still alive in 2047, will remember 2014 as the year leading up to the new heat regime on Earth.  Instead of overly complaining about the cold, snow etc. Earthlings would do well to enjoy the next several weeks while they can. It may be the last "cool relief"  they see for some time! Spring with massive tornado outbreaks, heat and wildfires will be here soon enough. If the warming deniers are still babbling when this year concludes, well......all I can say is they are disconnected from the rest of the planet.  Disconnected to the extent of being certifiable for special insane asylum domiciling.

See also:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/science/earth/un-says-lag-in-confronting-climate-woes-will-be-costly.html?hp&_r=0