NY Times Deserves To Lose Subscribers By Hiring Bret Stephens

 Climate denier and former WSJ columnist-nitwit Bret Stephens - now hired at NY Times to spew his bunkum. Critical thinkers  have reacted by canceling their  Times' subscriptions.

According to Business Insider, The New York Times - which had gained tens of thousands of new subscribers in the wake of the Trump ascension - is now losing them by the thousands  after hiring climate denier Bret Stephens as a new columnist. What The Times was thinking, if  its editorial board was thinking at all, is a puzzle wrapped in an enigma. Striving for balance? No, you don't hire a dope like Stephens for that, and besides too many savvy liberals are onto the false objectivity spin.

So, it boils down to a simple bone -headed move. The Times, for whatever reason, has sought to "enhance" its stable of columnists but in doing so outraged its readership. And they should be outraged when scientific inquiry is undercut in favor of propaganda from a dedicated climate know nothing and denialist.  Recall how way back on January 23, 2015, Stephens was skewered on Bill Maher's 'Real Time'  for his nonsensical takes when he compared today's consensus on global warming to a spurious one for global cooling in the 70s.  Stephens blurted:

 "What I'm saying is if you look at a Newsweek from 1975 you will see it"

 Whereupon Maher moaned, 'Oh no, not the cooling thing!'

To which Stephens responded: "Yes, the cooling thing!"

For those who may not know, global cooling was once all the rage--  briefly! Some popular  'zines picked it up in the mid to late 70s but it was soon left in the scientific dustbin. This was after it was discovered a decade or so later, that it had been incepted by particulates and aerosols in the atmosphere.  After the Clean Air Act and similar bills were passed overseas (e.g. in the UK), those particulates disappeared and the cooling was no longer evident. (Aerosols remained and gave way to the global dimming phenomenon which also concealed the worst of global warming - but when aerosols were also controlled - after similar legislation, global dimming also receded and warming assumed dominance.)

So what Stephens ought to have read was the  more recent Newsweek piece on the global warming disinformation industry (Aug. 13, 2007, ‘The Truth About Denial’, p. 21) noting the corporate media has been especially guilty in its misplaced notions of objectivity and fairness since they:

“qualified every mention of human influence on climate change with ‘some scientists believe’ when the reality is that the vast preponderance of scientific opinion accepts that human-induced greenhouse emissions are contributing to warming”.

Maher then noted 2014 as the hottest year ever and hence asked whether the talking point that warming has halted since 1998 "shouldn't die" - since 1998 was an El Nino year so was an aberration. To which Stephens replied:

"No because it was the hottest year ever by a hundredth of a degree so what the people are pointing out is we've had the same high temperatures for the past fifteen years."

Which is bollocks. First, because the temperature actually rose as a global mean by 1.24F not  "one hundredth of a degree".  Also the deniers never claimed the past 15 years were all high temperature years, they claimed warming had ceased from 1998, which is not the same thing.  The fact that 16 of the past 17 years have all been progressively  hotter puts the kibosh on this flatulence. See also:

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

When Maher cited work detailing 10,855 peer-reviewed climate papers of which only two rejected the notion of man-made climate change-  2 out of 10,855 - and asked: 'Doesn't that persuade you?' and adding "Don't you think scientists know more about science then we do?', Stephens blurted:

"What doesn't persuade me is that scientists ought to know more about public policy  than we do and ought to dictate what public policy is."

He then cited the example of Bjorn Lomborg "bringing together some of the greatest scientists alive" and  Lomborg had asked them: "What are your priorities?" Stephens testily claimed this lot agreed that the "least amount of resources should be devoted to climate change."

Maher laughed and joked that: "Maybe these were different scientists from the 10,855 I mentioned". He also admitted he was not familiar with "the study"  - but let's provide some contextual  background, in particular first noting it was not a "study" but a contrarian climate convocation and also these were not scientists but economists.

As I observed in a blog post response at the time:

The Copenhagen Consensus – organized by longtime skeptic Bjorn Lomborg, and composed entirely of economists- would naturally have rated global warming lowest in its priorities for challenges facing the world.  But these are not climate scientists, after all! They’d be vastly more concerned with economic blowback.

Hence, they'd invoke agnotology or deliberately casting doubt on the science in order to try to establish the primacy of economics in our lives - never mind lives in the runaway greenhouse wouldn't be livable and no economics of any value would survive.

In the end, the fact that Stephens confused scientists with economists in the "Copenhagen Consensus"  disclosed he's not even remotely qualified to be involved in any climate change-global warming discussion. Hell, he wasn't even aware that global dimming was responsible for the aberration of cooling in the 70s and the fact that "theory" has long since bit the dust

In his debut Times' column, Stephens confirmed he hasn't advanced significantly over his prior climate goofs and gaffes. Therein he mocked the notion of "certainty" in the anthropogenic greenhouse warming model  when no such aspect applies. Thus,  Stephens confuses and conflates a strong scientific consensus with "certainty".

First, no serious climate scientist claims we have reduced  the science to a "certainty".  Rather AGW (anthropogenic global warming) remains in the realm of probability assessment as do all other valid theories including quantum theory and general relativity. The reason is based on the nature of scientific inquiry which advances by successive approximations.

Thus, I offer a hypothesis say X(t1)  at time t1.  This has associated with it come uncertainty + x, so we have:  X(t1)  +  x.

But as more data come in the uncertainty is reduced, say to   +  x/2 by time t2.
  So we now have:

X(t2)  +   x/2

In the next iteration as more and more climate scientists assess the data (ice cores bearing CO2, extent of glacier retreat in m/yr.  CO2 concentration in the ambient atmosphere in ppm etc., ocean pH change) we may find the uncertainty is now   + x/ 4 at time t3. Thus. the hypothesis forecast is now at:

X(t3)   +  x/4

The upshot is that the general hypothesis, call it X(t) has been successively refined over ensuing data integration and the results approximate to an ideal value or expectation, But at no time do we find the uncertainty vanish. This aspect holds as much for Newtonian gravitation as it does for Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Science, which too many (like Brett Stephens)  believe is based on "proof" or "certainty", is actually much more subtle in its evidentiary approaches as I showed above.  In addition, one must distinguish stochastic sciences (like climate science and meteorology - which are not the same, btw) from deterministic sciences like celestial mechanics. In either case we assess the quality of the science not by certainty or proof but the QA (quality assurance) i.e. of the evidence in relation to what is forecast or expected.

My point is that we leave "proof" and "certainty" to the rarefied areas of pure math. In empirical science we instead apply quality assurance (QA) criteria to the evidence available for particular hypotheses. Thus, it is more practical to consider criteria of adequacy, and whether data meet these criteria. For example, a leading global warming hypothesis is that no further ice ages can occur once the CO2 concentration reaches 400 ppm. To substantiate that, extant ice core  records disclose that no ice ages have occurred when the CO2 concentration exceeded 200 ppm. (See e.g. Gale Christianson's book, 'Greenhouse')

In this way, the relative merit of a scientific finding can be adduced based on standards similar to those employed in industrial quality control. If certain minimal criteria or standards are not met, then the finding is regarded with skepticism or rejected outright. So far none of the minimal criteria or standards for the primary hypotheses have been found unmet in the case of global warming.

Indeed, as recent CO2 concentrations have been found to be increasing at a rate of 2 ppm/ yr, Earth temperatures have never been hotter. 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.  Taken in tandem we have the equivalent of 2.5 x 10 ⁷  TJ injected each year into the atmosphere or roughly 400,000 Hiroshima size A-bombs. In most other circumstances a nation lighting up the planet with that many A-bombs would be immediately taken down by the human community

The energy inputs arising from global warming now are of such magnitude that few comprehend them and fewer scientists are willing to discuss them in terms of what the future portends. (See the link at the bottom to get an idea from those who are willing.)

None of this is grasped by Stephens in his inaugural NY Times' codswallop, which is why it is a travesty to have this imp now peddling denial bunkum when we need greater awareness of the scientific facts. (And again, facts have relative degrees of certainty, as I showed - but this doesn't mean we ignore them until all uncertainty vanishes. That will never happen!)

SO,  I am with all those canceling their Times' subscriptions.  Allowing even one "Bret Stephens" to spew his nonsense in a venue supposedly supportive of science is one too many. Am I being "too harsh"  on The Times, and "alienating Climate allies"?  Hell no!  The Times brought this indictment on itself by opting at this late stage to send mixed messages to further confuse readers who may lack the scientific background to distinguish crap from supported research.. "Allies"  who believe Brett Stephens' voice is needed to further delay any feasible action are no allies at all. With "friends" like these we don't need enemies.

The media then have but one task in this respect: focus on the fact that we are facing a planetary emergency and don't fucking obfuscate the landscape by the cynical exploitation of distracting assholes and misinformation. If you can't do that you deserve reader desertions!

See also:


http://www.salon.com/2017/04/30/its-the-end-of-the-world-and-we-know-it-scientists-in-many-disciplines-see-apocalypse-soon/

Union of Concerned Scientists Exposes The Fraudsters On Climate Change

Part of the document retrieved from the fossil fuel doubt merchants on when "victory will be achieved."


The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)  includes thousands of genuine research scientists devoted to educating the public on actual scientific findings and what they portend, and exposing the science charlatans who seek to cloud the public mind to unfolding realities. One of the latter is that the planet is indeed getting hotter with the month of July now in the record books as the hottest ever. This as yet more research (published in Science) shows the warming "pause" never happened and hundreds of fires scorch the West with over seven million acres burning - giving a horrific preview of the world to come in the era of the runaway greenhouse (except in that case the fires will ravage the whole country and last through the year)

Their other achievement has been accessing documents that prove the climate deniers (exposed in the Naomi Oreskes' book The Merchants of Doubt) have been determined to hoodwink the public on climate change - its validity and its peril.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-zuesse/63515/the-latest-science-on-global-warming



Readers will recall how I've exposed Willie Soon as one of these merchants of doubt, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/another-climate-scientist-fake-exposed.html

But as the latest UCS Bulletin noted, Soon is only a small part of a much bigger story, as disclosed in the UCS Report, The Climate Deception Dossiers.  The latter is the product of a year's review and analysis of a wide range of internal corporate and trade group documents.

As with the case of fracking, the perpetrators will never own up to their slimy dishonest tactics themselves, or the damage they're doing. You have to expose them by exposing their actual documents that they themselves wrote and - in essence- wherein they've admitted the havoc they're wreaking.

Like the climate deniers, the frackers were exposed in Naomi Oreskes' book, particularly the PR Departments that serve the frackers and their political backers lot.    As for documents retrieved, in one, from Southwestern Energy, the diagram clearly shows that the gas well has a cement barrier with a casing that prevents gases from migrating upwards. But this isn't a Powerpoint about well casings but rather about how cement and casings fail and allow methane gas and other substances to migrate into aquifers.  Thus, we see from their own documents how cement fails.

In the case of the climate deceivers, the UCS team drew on evidence culled from 85 documents pried loose by leaks, lawsuits and FOIA requests. It almost reminds one of the extraordinary efforts that had to be invested to pry loose the JFK assassination documents (after the JFK Records Act) that showed the fell hand of the CIA and NSA in the assassination. 

What the UCS team unearthed is absolutely appalling. Spanning three decades, the documents reveal a mammoth cover up on a par with the cover up and disinformation in the Kennedy assassination. The UCS obtained documents expose that the world's largest fossil fuel companies: BP, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Shell  and Peabody Energy - were fully aware of the reality of climate change but continued to spend tens of millions of dollars to sow doubt and promote contrarian arguments they knew to be wrong.

Taken together, the documents show that the six companies, in conjunction with the American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil and gas industry's premier trade association - and a host of front groups - colluded to intentionally deceive the public.

One eye -opening formerly secret document revealed that scientific experts commissioned by the fraudulent "Global Climate Coalition" - had actually warned that heat-trapping gases were indeed causing global warming. But as the segment of attached document shows, these charlatans didn't want to hear it. It was more important to bamboozle the gullible public - who'd then be set against those of us with the scientific facts.

Thus, the GCC ignominiously ignored its own scientists and continued to conduct a public relations campaign to undermine national and international efforts to address global warming in a serious fashion. Among the chestnuts used by these fraudsters:

"the role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood."

Another tactic was to attribute the main cause of global warming to "solar activity" - a canard that's long since been dismissed in the astrophysics, solar physics and climate science communities. See e.g.

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

Those who want to access all 340 pages of the 'Climate Deception Dossiers' can go here:

www.ucsusa.org/decadesofdeception

Another Fake Climate Scientist Exposed: Willie Soon

Thanks to Chris Hayes in a segment on his  Monday might 'All In' for exposing yet another paid hack climate denier posing as a climate scientist and "astrophysicist". This would be none other than Willie Soon, whose dubious history regarding climate science precedes him.  This concerned a spurious paper in a joint 2003 effort by Soon and Sallie Baliunas with a graphic misuse of statistics. Reference to it may be found at: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0007A664-3534-1F03-BA6A80A84189EEDF

The methodology used by Soon and Baliunas was terrible, and any proper referee versed at all in statistics would've tossed most of their analyses out in a heartbeat. Especially their deliberate  use of 50-year data periods, increments when the IPCC scientists had already disclosed anthropogenic warming appears at 30 -year levels. In effect, Baliunas and Soon employed what we call a 'selective effects filter' to cull the data they preferred not to have to deal with. As serious climate critics pointed out in the aftermath of the paper, by using much wider 50 year periods one essentially whitewashes the signal right out of the data.

Sadly, it seems Soon hasn't learned his climate lessons. But mayhap he's being paid too much as a shill for the denial lobby to do so. Hayes led off the segment with a pie chart showing 97 percent of published climate papers agree global warming is happening and humans are the primary cause. This elicits the question: 'Who makes up the other 3 percent?'

Hayes' immediate response was that these minority climate change deniers (I disdain misuse of the word 'skeptics' as Chris does) are not all they appear That is, objective researchers in pursuit of scientific truth. Such is the case with Dr. Willie Soon, ostensibly based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, until one digs beneath the surface. (And btw, when one is praised by the most infamous climate change denier - James Inhofe - one knows he's hit new lows and is really a bottom feeder scientifically.)

Hayes then went on to cite the truth about Soon using a clip and excerpt from the New York Times. e.g.

"Though often described on conservative news programs as a 'Harvard astrophysicist', Dr. Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard."

More technically, Soon is actually a part-time employee of the Smithsonian which jointly runs  the Center along with Harvard. More to the point, Soon is only there because he brings in his own funding. What exactly this translates into wasn't known until Greenpeace submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for Soon's grant correspondence. What they found also appeared in the Times' piece on 'Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html?_r=0)':

"He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers."

Can anyone say 'paid whore' for the fossil fuelers? I can!   Especially as Soon, according to the Times:

described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.

So can Hayes. As he put it:

"There are now one point two million more reasons to doubt his work."

Which, let's face it, would already be doubt worthy given how he earlier played with statistics to wash out the actual global warming signal from his paper.

Maybe Soon needs to very soon click on the link below to see the more rapid melting of ice caps and glaciers, which we're actually seeing in real time, showing climate change-global warming is happening as I write:

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

The preceding ought to get even the most blinkered global warming denier's attention, as well as http://www.salon.com/2015/02/26/scientists_stick_it_to_climate_deniers_study_provides_direct_evidence_that_human_activity_is_causing_global_warming/

See also:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/21/climate-change-denier-willie-soon-funded-energy-industry

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/23/the-favorite-scientist-of-climate-change-deniers-is-under-fire-for-taking-oil-money/

And more documents on Soon's deplorable brand of science can be found here:

http://www.climateinvestigations.org/willie-soon-harvard-smithsonian-documents-reveal-southern-company-scandal

Dissecting An Anti-Global Warming Crackpot: Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK)

Satellite image of Arctic at point of maximal Arctic melting. Increasing warmth in the Arctic is destabilizing the polar vortex causing cold to  intermittently spill southward into North America

Let’s admit that considering all the morons who know little or nothing about climate change,  the potential for education (or re-education) is minimal - given most have likely never even taken a high school physics course.  This is important because if they had taken such a course, they’d at least know the differences between heat and temperature, radiation and conduction, as well as between weather and climate.  At the very least, we’d expect them to be familiar with fundamental physical principles such as entropy (2nd law of thermodynamics),  and not to be running their gums off making criticisms they can’t support and which problems at root they have little insight into.

Even granted all this, it still leaves a ‘grade A’ asshole like Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) as a standout among the morons inhabiting the country – given this joker is actually a so- called “leader”.    How stupid is this asshole? Inhofe is probably the most vocal global warming denier in the US Congress, and has virtually declared War on Science in the process. According to Inhofe, anthropogenic global warming is "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state."  Is he serious? Evidently! Also evidently – they teach history as poorly in Okieland as they do science.

If not they’d have been cognizant that the “wall of separation of church and state” – while not explicitly in the Constitution, was formulated by Jefferson in his (1802) letter to Danbury Baptists:

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

It thereby became an unspoken, unwritten principle that has been practiced on many judicial levels since.

Why am I picking on this cornpone,  cornball fool? Well, because he’s once more stepped into a mammoth clump of cowshit regarding global warming (which I will get to) and likely is too dumb to even know it. Recall, Inhofe is one of the leading global warming deniers in Congress, and is well known for having called global warming  "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."  Which makes one wonder if this Okie yokel even knows the definition of “hoax”. Sure, it’s a one syllable word but even those can give a dimwit fits and Inhofe fits the bill.   He is also one of the Republican Party's leaders in the culture wars and is why many of those with similar IQ love to jump on his bandwagon.

Even before he became one of the biggest, proudest global warming deniers Inhofe already made a name for himself as noted by “Rational Wiki”. Thus, “in the hours following the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Inhofe made a statement on TV that pissed off a lot of federal employees. When asked about casualties, he said that he doubted that there would be many because, since the federal offices opened at 9 a.m., most of the employees would probably still be somewhere else drinking coffee” (The bombing occurred at 9:02 a.m.)

This was after a building had been blown up by a domestic terrorist named Timothy McVeigh  in April, 1995 killing 168 innocent people and injuring 680 others. It shows clearly the level of assholinity at work in this troll’s brain – making you wonder how a state could  be so clueless (i.e. have so many clueless, lamo voters) as to catapult him into any position above dog catcher.

Back to global warming!

“Reading things he’s said about global warming  is like  perusing a denier’s playbook of nonsense” according to one Slate piece on him. Readers can check them out to see if they agree.

This brings us to his more recent anti-global warming nonsense. His most recent exhibition occurred barely days ago (July 30) and some readers may recall the context. That is, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) had submitted a resolution simply acknowledging that global warming exists and poses a threat to the interests of the United States—which it does, on both counts.

But it was all too much for Inhofe who saw to it the resolution was scrapped – since as usual it didn’t get the absurd 60-vote filibuster proof majority- thanks to the Repukes siding with Inhofe’s denial. After the Dem’s failed effort, Inhofe  came unhinged with his usual claptrap against global warming and calling it a “hoax” and a “waste of money”.

Inhofe’s action was so egregious, that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) took to the floor and magnificently schooled him on reality.

But Inhofe’s shenanigans echoed his stance from back in January this year, when – after the polar vortex had made itself known (bringing sub-freezing temperatures to much of the nation) he promptly jumped onto the bandwagon of the ignorant dolts by proclaiming global warming was “therefore laughable” because no predictions based on it squared with the extreme cold temperatures.

He must have forgotten or never processed that-  as originally proposed by Prof. Gunther Weller (of the Geophysical Institute)  more than 25 years ago, a polar vortex  (Weller called it  a stable polar cyclone)   existed and was subject to instability as the Arctic warmed. Weller was one of the first to predict back in 1986, when I was also at the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, AK, that the Arctic would warm up to 7F faster than the rest of North America. His predictions have since been borne out.

Also, with increased warming in the Arctic we’ve seen the circulation in the vortex weakened and the vortex’s cold spill southward – discharging energy and creating the record breaking cold observed by much of the nation last winter. We’ve seen some of the same dynamic at work this summer when much lower than average temperatures penetrated far south (with the jet stream) into the Midwest – sending lows into the 30s. A typhoon that struck Japan also was partly to blame, but the general Arctic instability contributed to the Jet stream’s extraordinary downflow.

It’s become a Republican mantra to say, “I’m not a scientist”  as if that gives them license to sputter any idiotic bollocks  they want. But the proper response to a statement like that is what Charlie Crist, gubernatorial candidate for Florida, said: “I'm not a scientist either, but I can use my brain and I can talk to one.”  DOH!

And the most aggravating nonsense is the repeated claim, as from the likes of Inhofe and his denier lackeys,  that “there’s no evidence for global warming” Really?  Then how account for 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

But these knuckleheads would likely merely assert that “PBS is in on it” , i.e. gaming us with fake footage created in a CGI lab, and are part of the "global warming conspiracy” that Inhofe and his lot believe in. What this conspiracy is all about I have no idea, but it seems to be something along the lines of spending lots of money on more science and less on energy (i.e. allowing the oil drillers to take over the whole country and turn it into a shit pile between the natural gas and oil shale fracking)

How does Inhofe get away with this? Easy! Because like most rabid deniers and anti-science buffoons in congress he’s hugely funded by the oil industry.  In this way the idea of unjustified doubt is sown among a public that largely lacks a science background. We call this agnotology. Derived from the Greek 'agnosis' - the study of culturally constructed ignorance- it is achieved primarily by deliberately sowing doubt for political or economic ends. The agnotologist and his ilk succeed once the following trope is emitted and embraced by the power structure, as well as ill-informed citizens:

‘There is still so much uncertainty, we shouldn’t invest money to solve the climate problem,’

 As "evidence" that global warming is a hoax Inhofe has cited the Oregon Petition, and he persists in saying that there is a scientific consensus that climate is getting cooler. In 2010, he said that “I don’t think that anyone disagrees with the fact that we actually are in a cold period that started about nine years ago.”

However, I have skewered this BS multiple times, e.g.

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

The media often talk blithely and disparagingly of “conspiracy theorists” – but there is perhaps no bigger one than Jim Inhofe. (And we are talking nutso conspiracy theories here, not valid ones like the JFK conspiracy!) For example, in an address to The Washington Briefing: 2006 Values Voter Summit Inhofe asserted that global warming is a conspiracy cooked up by the UN to destroy America and in his own words climate science "kind of reminds ... I could use the Third Reich, the Big Lie ...”


Forget for the moment if his analogies were correct, and the EPA really was the “Gestapo” Inhofe would be sitting in a concentration camp about now. It shows he knows about as much of the Third Reich as he does solar magnetohydrodynamics.

Who’s involved in this massive conspiracy of Inhofe’s? It seems to vary almost with each time he yaps about it.  On one occasion the fool blamed it on George Soros,  but later he appears to have added Michael Moore and MoveOn.org to the list of people who are really behind the alleged climate change hoax. At least he’s consistent in picking out ‘small fry’ to be behind such an enterprise, given that 96.2 percent of all climate scientists support its reality!

What we can conclude based on Inhofe's illustrious history and connection with the most retrogressive elements of society, is that the man is a waste of space. We can only hope that eventually Oklahomans come to their senses and dispatch this cracker crackpot to the retirement he so justly merits.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/margaret-kimberley/57452/climate-change-point-of-no-return

and:

http://www.salon.com/2014/08/04/this_is_climate_change_ohios_water_crisis_was_a_manmade_disaster/

What Happened to Nate Silver? Why Let A Climate Denier Occupy Space On His Blog?

No, "free speech" isn't the issue!  If a massive terrorist  'dirty' bomb was about to go off - say in Manhattan- we would not applaud those who deliberately gave misinformation, offered denial or other deflections. We'd prosecute them at least for obstruction of justice if not treason. A similar analogy can be invoked for radical climate change denial, now demanding a response  more urgent than ever as we learn (from a leaked IPCC report) that Climate change has already left its mark "on all continents and across the oceans", damaging food crops, spreading disease, and melting glaciers.

According to a UK Guardian Report, e.g.

"Some parts of the world could soon be at a tipping point.  For others, that tipping point has already arrived. "Both warm water coral reef and Arctic ecosystems are already experiencing irreversible regime shifts," the approved version of the report will say."

Adding:

"The gravest of those risks was to people in low-lying coastal areas and on small islands, because of storm surges, coastal flooding and sea-level rise."

This is already being seen in islands like Barbados, where the increasing sea level is reclaiming ever more prime beach land. It's also at work in South Florida, steadily shrinking beach sand unless it's constantly replaced. But tourists sunning themselves on beaches is the least of our concerns. The biggest is catastrophic climate change leading to the runaway greenhouse effect.

NY Times' columnist Nicholas Kristoff,  several weeks ago, noted a contest he'd held for the "Neglected Topic" winner among his columns. By a large margin it was climate change with one person comparing it to "staring down an asteroid". This is not exaggeration, other in terms of the time scale. If we fail to act decisively and dramatically our species will experience as much devastation as if a Torino scale 9 asteroid had hit. What are we doing about it?  Nothing of substance! Even Kristoff admitted:

"We in the news media manage to cover weather very aggressively but we are reticent on climate."

He adds that the coverage of climate has actually declined in American media since 2007 - according to researchers at the University of Colorado. As this media attention factor has declined, so also have the proportion of Americans who accept global warming is real. Of course, the largest divergence is between Republicans (24% accept it) and Democrats (65%).

Into this milieu, statistics guru Nate Silver has entered with his revived 538 blog, now incorporating a climate science section. Unfortunately, Silver picked exactly the wrong person to be the central contributor - a denier named Roger Pielke Jr. who - truth be told - isn't even a climate scientist.   According to one profile on Wikipedia:

"Pielke Jr. is an American meteorologist with interests in climate variability and climate change",

 Leaving out all the fulsome  bollocks on his assorted "numerical modeling" skills  this is basically what it all comes down to: his meteorological background. As I noted in a Jan. 2012 post on the climate agnotologists,  citing the Jan.-Feb. 2011 issue of The Columbia Journalism Review,  most meteorologists have a distorted view on climate change- global warming. They can't help it (as Al Roker also demonstrated a couple weeks ago) it's how they're taught. The Review pointed out the following aberrations in its survey of  members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and why most don't buy climate change:

 

1- Given their familiarity with the defects in their own extended predictions, meteorologists looking at long range climate questions (such as global warming effects) are predisposed to “see a system doomed to terminal unpredictability”.

2- Most skeptic meterologists (like Bob Breck an AMS-certified chief meteorologist at New Orleans WVUE) didn’t properly recognize the limits of their own scientific training – and hence the implausibility of their pronouncing on climate science.

3- Because of (2) the skeptic meteorologists tend to see their own “informed intuition” as the source of some kind of ersatz scientific authority – particularly if the skeptics are also excellent communicators, or fancy themselves so.

Some of the paradoxical statistics that were cited in the article, based on surveys carried out by Emory University Journalism lecturer Kris Wilson, included:

- 29% agreed with Weather Channel mogul John Coleman’s take that global warming was “the greatest scam in history”.

-Only 24% believed that humans were responsible for most of the change over the past half century.

- 50% were certain this wasn’t true and that humans weren’t responsible.

-Only 17% of the opinionated TV weathermen “received a graduate degree, a prerequisite for an academic researcher in any scientific field”.

 

If nothing else, this ought to forewarn any person who purports to have a blog featuring climate change topics to look before leaping and choosing an obfuscator like Pielke Jr. But don't take my word for it.

 

As one reviewer of his book  The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming,  puts it:

 

"Pielke Jr. is really astonishing in the way he almost completely denies the urgent need to mitigate climate change by greatly lowering global carbon emissions. He does it in a very slick way by masquerading as someone with real and different solutions, when in reality all he proposes is that society do next to nothing about burning fossil fuels.

 

 He basically brushes aside climate change as if it were a trivial concern. His proposal is to tax carbon at such a low and inconsequential rate that even Exxon Mobile agrees to the tax, and then to use the proceeds to fund more research on alternative energy and other mitigation strategies. That's IT. Well almost.

 

 He also spends an inordinate amount of time bashing climate scientists (which he is admittedly not) for being human beings and voicing their intense concern for the future of the planet, which their research has shown is in big trouble if we do nothing or little to decrease carbon emissions in the very near future. This book is not worth reading and I regret the time I spent getting through it. If you want to learn about climate change and our options for dealing with its consequences, there are dozens of other books that really address the issue.”

 

Why didn't Nate Silver know this before hiring the guy for input on his 538 blog? Perhaps he believed Pielke Jr was a climate  "moderate" and he'd be less likely to be criticized if he chose a "middle ground" guy as opposed to say Michael Mann (associated with the specious nonsense called "climategate" see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/11/climategate-20-or-more-pseudo-climate.html

 

The reviewer's  isn't an exceptional take, but conforms with what most serious climate researchers think of Pielke and his work.  Skeptic Science refers to Pielke Jr as a “classic misinformer” and gives examples.

 

For example, Pielke Jr. claimed:

 

"Not all glaciers and ice caps are melting. While the Arctic Ice for example has been decreasing, Antarctic ice has not"

 

 

But this is refuted by Skeptic Science here:Arctic sea ice loss is three times greater than Antarctic sea ice gain.

I also dispatched this nonsense in my own blog post here:

 

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/brainiac-goops-screw-it-up-again-on.html

 

To see a comprehensive rebuttal by Skeptic Science of many other of Pielke Jr. claims - go to this link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/fivethirtyeight-pielke-downplay-climate-damages.html

A recent salon.com article on Pielke Jr. perhaps offers some of the most trenchant observations of the guy, such as:

 

 

One remarkable feature of Pielke Jr.’s discussion is its shrillness. “Clique,” “coup,” and “plotting” are the kinds of terms usually reserved for organized crime syndicates, terrorist organizations, and other conspiracies against the public good. The repeated use of the word “activist” mobilizes a characteristic trope of right-wing ideologues. The term is typically applied to judges, who like scientists are supposed to be neutral when carrying out their duties, but all too often, on this view, betray their professional responsibilities.


Even someone who is sympathetic to the claim that political considerations sometimes find their way into climate science might shrink from Pielke Jr.’s characterization of climate science as “a fully politicized enterprise.” He makes such institutions as the National Center for Atmospheric Research sound like an outpost of the Democratic National Committee, or perhaps something even worse.

What is most troubling about Pielke Jr.’s account is its lack of balance. As we will see, the politicization of science by a handful of climate change deniers and their patrons is extremely well documented, and continues to be a major obstacle to the United States adopting effective climate policy. Yet in a 26-page chapter on the politicization of science, Pielke Jr. devotes only one paragraph to the behavior of those “opposed to action on climate change.” Their worst offense seems to be “[blowing] out of proportion papers at odds with the views of most other scientists.” If only.

The Jewish Daily Forward meanwhile has this take:

 

"Trained as a political scientist, Pielke is an ornery, combative smart-aleck who claims to accept the facts of man-made climate change, but spends much of his time debunking new climate research, downplaying the threats and ridiculing scientists who disagree. He expends so much energy belittling climate experts — he recently accused White House science adviser John Holdren of “zombie science” — that he was listed in Foreign Policy’s 2010 Guide to Climate Skeptics. (The rest of his time seems to be spent crying foul when his victims hit back.)"

The Daily Forward goes on to note:

 

"Critics from columnist Paul Krugman to leading climatologist Michael Mann to liberal bloggers at ThinkProgress and Salon all claim Silver hurt his website’s credibility — fatally, some huffed — by hiring a “climate confusionist” like Pielke"

 

Actually, Pielke Jr is your standard "agnotologist" - one of a species of right wing types who sow deliberate  doubt to postpone critical action on climate, in favor of economic priority. It's exemplified in this 2012 headline and story in the Wall Street Journal:

 Agnotology, derived from the Greek 'agnosis' - the study of culturally constructed ignorance- is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made.   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 ruin. Proctor also notes these special interests are often paid handsomely to sow immense confusion on the issue.

 

The concept is simple: sow enough doubt, portray denial as a "logical" counterpoint to acceptance, and you win. The Neoliberal media then presents both sides - and hails it as evidence of their "objectivity".  As Nicholas Krisfoff pointed out this cynical trend is already paying dividends as the media retreats from the issue, and Americans follow as fewer accept it as real. Would they do the same if a mammoth asteroid approached? I doubt it, but then human brains simply don't process slow moving catastrophes in the same way.

 

The question remains of why Nate Silver would help spread agnotology, and my answer is simple: He himself simply isn't adequately educated on climate change. In many ways it reminds me of SPLC Intelligence Report writer Marilyn Elias, who did a piece on the JFK assassination  (actually on Richard Belzer) for the Winter issue and got it all wrong. Why? Because she let disinformationist Gerald Posner do her thinking for her as opposed to performing her own independent investigation - for example of Jack Ruby's role in the assassination of Oswald.

 

If Silver has learned his lesson, then all the hullaballo may be worth it. In the meantime, bloggers and scientists need to follow the advice of real climate scientist Michael Mann ('If You See Something, Say Something', Sunday Review, NY Times) as he warns:

 

"If scientists choose not to engage in the public debate, we leave a vacuum that will be filled by those whose agenda is one of short term self-interest. There is a great cost to society if scientists fail to participate in the larger conversation - if we do not do all we can to ensure the policy debate is informed by an honest assessment of the risks. In fact it would be an abrogation of our responsibility if we remained quiet in the face of such a grave threat."

 

And as the new IPCC report notes, this is a grave threat indeed. Those like Pielke Jr. drive the impetus to shut us up invoking the nonsense we are "politicizing science" but in reality, when a risk as grave as the runaway greenhouse is around the corner - politics itself is subsumed by science. Since politics' role is first and foremost the disposition of resources via governance, than it redounds on us to ensure science has a predominant role if a scientifically disclosed threat warrants it.

 

Let us hope Nate Silver has learned from this so he uses more discretion in the future in choosing his fellow  538 bloggers.

 

 See also:

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/29/the_rights_new_climate_change_lie_its_all_the_scientists_fault/

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/30/californiapocalypse_once_in_a_millennium_drought_a_wakeup_call_for_america/

 

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.