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

INTERTEL'S Resident Libertarian Deniers Again Ignorantly Spout Off On Climate Change

It was coincidental yesterday that not long after a lunch conversation with our friend Nan, the monthly 'Port of Call' (Intertel's Region 7 NL) arrived in the mail.   Why coincidental?

At lunch, Nan bemoaned her fundamentalist sister who accused her of being "anti-Christian" because she accepted Darwinian Evolution as a fact. Nan was asked : "Do you really understand evolution?" Nan simply replied "No'"  Whereupon her sis "Rita" challenged her good sense: "Then why do you believe it?" Nan simply replied: "Because actual scientists have unearthed the evidence for it, including for natural selection, mutation."

But at the end the two remained at contretemps. Such is also the case with climate change deniers, or what I call pseudo-sophisticated climate change denier enablers. These people often have attained high education credentials - say in psychology or economics. However,  they are convinced they can opine on issues outside their specialty fields like global warming - or the alleged absence for it- without doing any hard work or proper research. . They believe they can simply bloviate from their armchairs or keyboards. They also invoke the comeback that "well, because the proponents -scientists can't put it into simple words" then it must be wrong or at least not compelling.

Such is the case with  Dr. Steven B. Mason:

in one of the two Port of Call 'letters to the editor" taking me to task for my original take on Carol Dane's infantile book review that appeared in PoC some months ago, e.g.  http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-high-iq-book-reviewer-shows-she-can.html

Mason begins his missive by quaintly asking: "How can I believe anything when what I believe changes?"   This is actually a misrepresentation of his stance when what he really means is "How can I believe anything when the science behind it changes?" And seen in this light, one wonders if Mason was ever a genuine scientist at all, because the very nature of the scientific enterprise is to mount new discoveries, via new findings obtained from ever more refined instruments and techniques. Hence the change from the old epicycles-based Ptolemaic solar system to the heliocentric one. Or, the change from Bohr's simple 'planetary' model atom to the wave model of Schrodinger, Born et al. Or the change from Newtonian gravitation to general relativity (though the former is still used for space trajectories, missions).

The point is that a real scientist - even a psychiatrist or psychologist- would know and understand science HAS to change for our understanding of the cosmos, nature to evolve. It is unscientific and naive to expect findings to remain static.

He then compares the Moon landings ("99 % sure") to extraterrestrial visitors ("1% sure") though interestingly he cites no "changes" in scientific evidence pertaining to either.  He claims from this he "prefers to hover around 50%" in  terms of his belief, but seems to forget or doesn't care that actual scientific acceptance of a hypothesis comes from testable evidence or confirmed data from a prior experiment (e.g. the LIGO finding for gravitational waves)  not "belief".  This is astonishing given Mason has not only been a  scientist - well, at least a psychologist, but also a college prof.

Then he drags climate science into his muddled mix along with Moon landings, "angels and devils" and "extraterrestrials".   He writes:

"I remember when experts were predicting another Ice Age and I figured why not? The ice was once a mile thick over Central Park....But now the experts are predicting it will get hot and I figure why not? Is global warming a fact? If so is it man-made, ...can it be reversed? Clearly I don't know but then who does?"

Actually,  a lot of hard working actual climate scientists  trained in a field a hell of a lot more complex than psychology or modern psychiatry.. A field (atmospheric science) wherein they have to actually produce testable data, such as from analysis of ice cores, changing cloud albedo etc. and  can't beg off on the basis of there being no confirmations or "ambiguity".  One such professional climate scientist,   Gunter Weller -  I met while at the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, AK in 1985-86.

By late 1986  Prof. Weller had shown the abnormal heating of the Arctic - some 5 - 7F greater than the continental U.S.

The ice cores available at Dr. Weller's  Atmospheric Physics lab (part of the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks) were extracted from Arctic ice at depths corresponding with geological time frames dating back over 80,000 years. His results showed that the greatest ambient temperatures corresponded to the highest CO2 concentrations recorded in the ice cores. Also the largest increases in ambient temperatures have occurred over the past 50-60 years, during which the CO2 increases have been largest (now approaching 400 ppm). Since then this relationship has only been further corroborated. Does Steve Mason know this, or has he made any  effort to learn about it? Obviously not. It's easier to make glib comments to be on the "50 percent" line regarding global warming than extend one's mind outside an academic comfort zone.

Regarding Mason's dilemma on once being told about "global cooling" and Ice ages, this is a common misstep of those semi-educated on climate change or the trajectory of research which has now unimpeachably led to accepting anthropogenic global warming. It reminds me of the appearance of the  WSJ's resident denier Brett Stephens on the Real Time show a year and a half ago.

WSJ denier Brett Stephens much likc Steve Mason "once read about global cooling"

Stephens spouted out to host Bill Maher: "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, including Mason, 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. (Much like the Ptolemaic solar system based  on "epicycles") 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 largely 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 receded and warming assumed dominance. Rising temperatures ever since have confirmed the effects.

Mason then reveals his almost complete failure to grasp the nature of physical science with this idiotic remark (p. 4):

"If you look up Herd Animal you might as well find a guy in a lab coat and a bow tie...The reason is simple...scientists are even more protective of their reputations than teen girls of a generation ago. And they have to be. Make one false step and no one will get on an elevator with you at conferences".

Seriously?   The utter arrogance here of a prime member of a herd discipline (psychology) to write off physical scientists this way is beyond belief.   It also shows me  that he has about as much comprehension of the actual scientific process as a kindergartner has of quantum measurements and the role of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.  The second line is also choice and makes me wonder if Dr. Steve has even attended any conferences other than parent-teacher for his kids.

Having attended many conferences (solar physics, astrometry, celestial mechanics, space physics)  I have seen colleagues make the occasional "false step" (as in a paper presentation)  but no one held it against them because each realized it's entirely possible  to be wrong on occasion. Who wants to make a snark critique in the question period when his turn might be next? Only in religious realms, or maybe in Mason's psychology, do we have something approaching a "priest hood" with its dogmas and "beliefs" - as embedded in psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistics Manual. (For an excellent expose all the psychobabble within it, check out 'The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry'.)

Like many before him, Mason is stuck in neutral believing that all or most of modern climate science is based on "appeal to authority".  Thus "many scientists agreeing as though it were proof of a concept".  Errr no, Dr. Steve. They don't agree "because others agree."  They do so because actual analyses - like of Gunter Weller's ice cores- point to actual changes of CO2 concentrations in  different layers of ice extending back thousands of years.  This connection was most powerfully explicated by Gale Christianson in his book, 'Greenhouse' noting that there has never ever (from the ice core data) been an ice age when the CO2 concentration was over 200 ppm.

Observing increasing concentrations of CO2 with a warming climate, it is then possible to craft the hypothesis that rising CO2 levels and a warming climate are inextricably linked. And since the most  profound rise has been from the Industrial Revolution there is a direct connection to human activity in generating CO2 from burning fossil fuels  This stuff isn't "rocket science" but appears to be for Mason who also referenced asking a physical scientist friend if he could explain a complex theory in simple words and his pal answered 'no'. But then this is the same Mason who in one Integra article admitted he understood nothing of quantum mechanics either, such as the wave-particle duality. He then extrapolated from that to assert that he "didn't think others understood it either"- using his own limited grasp of a subject as a standard for all.

Mason's take here seems to be that if it can't be  reduced to simple language then there's not much reason to accept it. But if that is so there is a hell of a lot of modern science most people would not accept, i.e.  general relativity, quantum mechanics, stellar evolution, gene splicing...to name a few.. But are the objectors truly in a position to express skepticism? I doubt it! To do so one needs to  at least possess the relative backgrounds and/or some  exposure to the material approximating that of those who've done the work!

Incredibly, in his last paragraphs Mason then jumps to the Chicxulub (asteroid impact) event that eliminated the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, based on the work of Luis Alvarez. He claims he "asked the younger Alvarez" about a "smoking gun" and was informed "not to worry there is an embarrassment of riches". Translation: there is so much disparate data to choose from that anyone - even his dad- could find just about any explanation desired. Which is total asinine nonsense.   The point missed by Mason is that the isotope Iridium 192 is used as a key marker for whether an asteroid (or meteoroid) is of extraterrestrial origin. This is because it occurs with much higher abundance than in Earth's crust. It was this discovery (for Ir 192 in specific layers near Chicxulub)  that provided the basis for Luis Alvarez' theory.

Mason goes on to babble::

"I find it hard to disagree with the majority (on climate science). However, I also find it hard to disagree with those like Kort Patterson whose opinion I value"

Really? Then you are allowing your subjective emotions (friendship?) to cloud your objective judgment.  It also shows me that you truly do not agree with the majority (the vast climate science research community) if you can also accept Patterson's climate codswallop including his belief in a global conspiracy to promote alarm.  One cannot on the one hand accept the bona fide science, and on the other the inflated and erroneous opinions of a climate know nothing who by virtue of his IQ thinks he's entitled to spout off on anything. (Does Mason also accept evolution at the same time as another friend's creationism? No, didn't think so, anymore than he believes one can square the circle!)

The last statement by Mason is truly pathetic and shows he cares not a whit for the welfare of future generations who are likely to experience heat waves and floods that make the current events seem like minor inconveniences

"The only thing about which I'm confident is that the Global Warming issue needn't generate anywhere near the heat it does".

However, as with his tenuous grasp of basic thermal science, Mason fails to appreciate that most of that 'heat' is a result of the obdurate deniers who calumniate and disparage  the actual climate scientists while they fancy themselves the exponents of real science and its traditions.

The case in point here is one Brewster Gillett, who is supposedly the "proof reader" for PoC  and scribbled the second letter taking me to task, writing that I (along with another writer, Karl Schlotterbeck) evidenced "reduced capacity for appreciation of subtlety in writing". No, I have the appreciation for sure. But NOT when dealing with lame deniers like Kort Patterson whose pseudoscientific claptrap needs to be bluntly exposed, not subtly, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/06/intertels-kort-patterson-conjures-wacko.html

"Subtle" then doesn't cut it if a guy really believes (and bloviates)  that "celestial mechanics" (Milankovitch effect) and solar changes are fully responsible for climate change and that global warming is taking place on Mars. Such a bozo needs to be hit with the metaphorical equivalent of a 2 by 4.

Gillett then bloviates like Patterson before him of the "massive amounts of deception" complaining  we (AGW proponents) somehow embrace "global economic justice" as our real reason to educate fellow citizens' on global warming. Thereby employing the common Libbie trope that global warming science is a "Trojan Horse" for overturning market economics and interjecting socialism or some such B.S.  This sort of tripe isn't even worth dignifying with a full response - only to say it shows the complainant has his head up his ass. (Apart from which no serious scientist would ever be published in a peer reviewed journal if he submitted a paper conflating economic justice with climate change).

Gillett then claims to "have followed the controversy from the very beginning" but one is left to wonder how much he really grasps (if indeed he has grasped any), given he then writes:

"Not one of the alarmists has yet shown any concrete proof that the Industrial Revolution has been responsible for whatever amount of warming the globe is currently experiencing"

But I have on a number of occasions, and not merely in blog posts but also in Port of Call articles and letter. In particular I cited and discussed at length solar physicist's John Eddy's contributions pertaining to the ratios of C14 to C12 over time.














As Eddy observed concerning this output ('The New Solar Physics'. p. 17):

“The gradual fall from left to right (increasing C14/C12 ratio) is…probably not a solar effect but the result of the known, slow decrease in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic moment.[1] exposing the Earth to ever-increased cosmic ray fluxes and increased radiocarbon production.

The sharp upward spike at the modern end of the curve, representing a marked drop in relative radiocarbon, is generally attributed to anthropogenic causes—the mark of increased population and the Industrial Age. The burning of low radiocarbon fossil fuels- coal and oil- and the systematic burning off of the world’s forests for agriculture can be expected to dilute the natural C14/C12 ratio in the troposphere to produce an effect like the one sho wn,"

In other words, we have the "smoking gun" that the onset of accelerated global warming actually commenced in the Industrial Revolution. Add in the fact that the CO2 molecule has an atmospheric lifetime of up to 100 years, and it is essentially 'case closed' for this hypothesis   Indeed, even more information can be extracted from the graph which was originally put forward by P.E. Damon ('The Solar Output and Its Variation', The University of Colorado Press, Boulder, 1977)

Assuming the validity of the arbitrary norm (zero line or abscissa) for 1890, then it is clear that the magnitude of the Middle Ages warming period (relative C14 strength of -18), for example, is less than about ½ the relative effect attributed mainly to anthropogenic sources in the modern era (-40). Even if one fourth the latter magnitude is assigned to solar activity (based on solar variability component detected over 1861-1990 amounting to 0.1- 0.5 W/m^2 vs. 2.0 to 2.8 W/m^2 for heating component arising from greenhouse gas emissions, cf. Martin I. Hoffert et al, in Nature, Vol. 401, p. 764) the anthropogenic effect is at least 3/2 that for the last (exclusively solar) warming period.

These examples disclose a major misunderstanding on the part of these Libertarian climate change deniers: naively expecting deterministic outcomes from disciplines based on stochastic processes. .Thus, a reasonable skeptic must allow for a higher threshold of fuzziness than allowed in celestial mechanics where I can very exactly predict Jupiter's position in 50 years. Further, complaints like Mason's and Gillett's betray an ignorance of the distinction between the predictive standards of different scientific disciplines. A layman with no physics background can be forgiven for overstepping but not  members of a high IQ society which ought to be dedicated to objective inquiry as opposed to hiding behind a political ideology (In this case blatant Libertarianism)

Another ignorant remark by Gillett is:

"the loudest proponents of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) have been deliberately lying and destroying data"

This, again, harks back to the email hack of a few global warming scientists back in 2011. The belief expressed by those like Gillett and his buddy Patterson, doubtless originated from a WSJ article from 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 reliabiity of anthropogenic global warming theory than they ever admit in public"

Delingspole, who is as bad at propaganda as the WC  hacks trying to pass Lee Harvey Oswald off as JFK's assassin, then names the "usual suspects": 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. Certainly nothing to merit expulsion from any professional organizations or dismissal from their university positions as some hysterical deniers demanded.

Another news item missed by this braying  ilk? How a once  prominent climate change skeptic – Richard Muller- decided to use the emails kerfuffle to investigate matters for himself . (The Denver Post, 'Skeptic No Longer Cool to Warming', 11/28/11,  p. 9A). Muller, an atmospheric physicist who was based at the University of California-Berkeley and the Lawrence Livermore National Lab,  completed an extensive study - partly funded by the global warming denier Koch Brothers - which showed land temperatures crept to 1.6 F degrees warmer than in the 1950s, even taking into account the "heat island" effects near cities .

Muller in his research proceeded to plumb a range of data, and went all the way back to the era of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson for readings in the 18th century. The accumulated evidence from all his data showed agreement with the mainstream global warming research community, that Earth's land temperatures are increasing and more rapidly than ever. Muller presented his results at a subsequent climate conference  asserting (ibid.):

"Greenhouse gases could have a disastrous impact on the world"

That a front and center climate skeptic could utter these words discloses that the claim of "fudging data" is total horse shit. Hence Gillett, and by extension Kort Patterson, are full of total horse shit.

That the likes of this clown Gillett then has the absolute chutzpah to rail about the "abuse of scientific traditions" is the epitome of irony. Because it is HE and his lot of brainwashed minions who are manifestly debasing scientific traditions in the interest of a market economics which ignores real world physics. But we've seen this before and it is the basis of agnotology. This is the term used by Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends.

Sadly, it is a sordid technique employed by the libertarian  intelligentsia of the high IQ societies to try to undermine actual science.  Those interested can read more details here:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/as-i-noted-in-earlier-blog-httpbrane.html

Gillett again:

"So the lies go forward and even putatively intelligent people like Stahl and Schlotterbeck apparently accept those lies uncritically as do the masses."

An astounding remark emanating from the keyboard of a person I'd not even regard as "putatively intelligent" given that absurd statement which turns the meaning of actual science on its head. In fact, I do hope that his future proofreading exploits avoid any further genuine scientific contributions.

But maybe he can handle a few from Dr. Steve Mason!

The most amusing sentence in Gillett's wasted space? His final assertion:

"And no, Stahl and Schlotterbeck, I have not now or ever have been in the employ of the petroleum industry."

Missing the point that one doesn't have to be "in the employ" of the fossil fuelers in order to be brainwashed by their propaganda. As Gillett manifestly is, at least to the same extent as his buddy Patterson.

Look, one more thing: I've no objection to those like Gillett, Patterson, Mason or any others arguing from strict economics that they dislike climate research pointing to advancing warming - a result of human activity.  Thereby making the case that economic pain will be a result of accepting the data. But do not dare invoke a specious science of your own ignorant fabrication to try to make an opposite case, and especially to besmirch actual climate scientists like Prof. Gunther Weller who've spend decades accumulating their ice cores' data.

The view reinforced in these latest diatribes is that AGW critics from high IQ societies are basically lazy and aren't prepared to exert their brains by doing actual research and plowing through formal climate science papers. They are also myopic in failing to see beyond their own subjective commitment to economic aspects of their Libertarian ideology.  These aspects obviously would be adversely affected if climate change is real - which it is.

Suffice it to say I don't plan to  submit a response to Patterson's PoC which more and more has become a sounding board for his silly libbie POVs on everything, not just climate change.  First, because it  would be  a waste of time, and Patterson would either cut it short or insert another of his daft "editor's responses", and second, because it would merely elicit more nonsense from the Intertel libbie peanut gallery. It's clear as I said before, that these folks represent perfect examples of what one gets when intelligence runs amuck without guidelines or specialty disciplinary critical thinking to ground it.

Sad, but it discloses that - as my wife Janice put it this morning. -  a high IQ isn't any guarantee of having common sense or even a basic operative intelligence for accurately  perceiving reality. (I.e. the ability to do genuine critical thinking to filter out propaganda and PR). If any of these Intertel climate change critics were serious they'd spend less time in their Libertarian echo chamber of denial and more perusing the site for actual climate science:

www.realclimate.org

These inveterate climate change naysayers could also do themselves a favor by consulting the  "State of the Climate Report" put together by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).


Note (8/3): The day before our friend Nan arrived we endured a hail storm almost right out of the hail scene in 'Day After Tomorrow' e.g.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYpIeyg8Axs


The insurance assessor came today and inspected our roof then took photos showing it essentially destroyed by impacts estimated to be from hail between tennis and softball size. The inspector acknowledged the massive damage throughout our area including windows blown out, roofs shattered from impacts and decks, fences destroyed. Related to climate change? Of course!
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To see the actual policy statement of the American Geophysical Union, the broad organization for most climate research, go to:

http://sciencepolicy.agu.org/files/2013/07/AGU-Climate-Change-Position-Statement_August-2013.pdf

"These are the people who think that intelligent design is real and that climate change is not. They do not want to know better. They do not want to be disputed with “facts” and “statistics” .... Bless their paranoid, passive-aggressive, willfully ignorant hearts"-
Mary Elizabeth Williams, on salon.com