I gave a talk called “How to Avoid the Truth About Climate Change” for the College of Science and Health at Utah Valley University.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with me, I am a Republican and a geochemist who, until a few years ago, was quite skeptical about the idea that humans are causing significant climate change.

In the presentation, I briefly talked about how I had made the transition from being a climate change “skeptic” to being an outspoken advocate of mainstream climate science.  I then discussed how it is that people like me can so effectively avoid the truth about climate change.

Please pass this video along!  I am actually writing a book with the same title, but there’s no way I can get it published before the Republican primaries.  Hopefully this kind of thing can influence a few people toward the center on this issue.

[UPDATE:  If the embedded video below doesn't have sound, try a direct link to the video on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDNXuX6D60U]

I did an informal presentation for the LDS Earth Stewardship group, which is now on YouTube.  If you can’t stand watching me talk, believe me–I understand.

Peter Sinclair posted a link to this video from an Australian television show, The Hamster Wheel.

The Guardian has a nice article on the Perry administration’s censorship of a scientific report that mentioned the effects of climate change on the state of Galveston Bay in Texas.  Turns out that all 200 scientists who authored the report are asking that their names be taken off.  The piece also mentions Ken Cuccinelli’s climate witch-hunting in Virginia, and Rep. Mike Noel’s attempt to get Rob Davies fired at Utah State University.

Here’s the money quote from one of the Texas officials who censored the report.

Mother Jones has tracked the changes. The agency has defended its actions. “It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and publish it,” Andrea Morrow, a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. “Information was included in a report that we disagree with.”

She said Anderson’s report had been “inconsistent with current agency policy”, and that he had refused to change it. She refused to answer any questions. Campaigners said the censorship by the Texas state authorities was a throwback to the George Bush era when White House officials also interfered with scientific reports on climate change.

Did you catch that?  Current science is “inconsistent with current agency policy”.

This is a really blatant example, folks.

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/10/12/342544/perry-appointed-agency-censors-global-warming/

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/12/342210/flood-gate-perry-sea-level-rise-censorship/

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Professor-says-state-agency-censored-article-2212118.php

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/10/texas-censors-scientists-work-revealing-climate-change-impacts-galveston-bay.php

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2011/10/13/a-preview-of-climate-science-censorship-to-expect-under-a-perry-administration/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/12/texas-agency-censors-climate-change-references-in-key-scientific-report/

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/perry-officials-censored-climate-report

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/10/11/Academic-accuses-Texas-of-censorship/UPI-66191318354385/

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-10-12-texas-tries-to-censor-climate-change-information

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/14/rick-perry-texas-censorship-environment-report?newsfeed=true

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/187277-news-bites-officials-in-perrys-administration-edited-climate-report

http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/rice-u-professor-says-texas-agency-censored-article-over-climate-change/37164

The day after the publisher of The Daily Herald, Rona Rahlf, told me she would take my complaint about their editors under advisement, I sent her this note.

Hi Rona,

Any decisions, yet?  Here are the facts of the case:

What the leader of the CERN team, Jasper Kirkby, said about their conclusions:  ”At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step.”

What the Daily Herald editorial board said about the CERN team’s conclusions:  ”Scientists there have concluded that cosmic rays play a much larger role than previously thought in creating clouds on earth.”

If the Daily Herald corrects errors of fact, is there any way to get around the need to correct this?

Note that I’m not asking you to fire Randy and Jim.  They seem like regular guys, who maybe need to take a peek outside the bomb shelter once in a while.  I just want a retraction.

Barry Bickmore

If you are similarly disgusted by a “news” organization that can’t deal with simple fact corrections, please e-mail Ms. Rahlf.

They called in Christopher Monckton once more, but this time His Lordship got his clock cleaned by the Australian media.  They were sharpening the knives even before his plane took off.  And this time, at least, Monckton and his troupe of people-who-have-a-hard-time-telling-the-truth lost.  Australia just put a modest price on carbon emissions.  (NOTE TO MONCKTON’S LAWYERS:  Notice how I didn’t say “liars”.  I have no idea whether Monckton really believes he’s a member of Parliament, and believes that all those scientists he cites really agree with how he uses their work.  I just know that neither is true.)  Graham Redfearn has the story.

A climatologist from South Africa sent the following letter to Rona Rahlf, publisher of the Daily Herald.  If anyone else wants to chime in, please do.

Dear Ms Rahlf: I suspect this email from South Africa may come as a bit of a surprise.  However, in my reading on the web I felt prompted to send you a letter.

In my job as a Professor of Climatology, I keep tabs on the blog discussions around the issues of climate change, and follow both sides of the debate (which is most polarized into rhetoric in the USA) in order to stay aware of the trends in the public view.  In doing so I came across a posting by Barry Bickmore (http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/will-the-daily-herald-print-a-retraction/).

As I operate in a continent that is comprised of “developing nations”, I am particularly sensitive to deception and manipulation of messages, because of the implications and consequences for the society are magnified where many live with significant vulnerability.

The article in the Herald that is discussed by Barry Bickmore, and the email communications he cites with the journalists, are extremely disturbing.  I confirm the error of the initial newspaper articles, but more to the point, I find the ethics of the authors to be worrying.  Aside from the snide and condescending tone taken in the personal emails to Bickmore, there is a clear and apparent disregard for truth at the expense of promoting a personal agenda.  It is clear that the journalists have a strong bias of opinion, and that they are letting this significantly twist the integrity of their journalistic objectivity.

Climate change at it’s heart is an ethical issue; the decisions of humans brought us to this point, and the decisions of humans will determine our experience of the future.  The journalism portrayed in this case is a contribution to a breakdown of ethics, and communicates a message that is a contribution to the decisions of the future.  That the journalist states in his email to Bickmore “I very much doubt that what either the Daily Herald or Barry Bickmore writes will make a measurable difference in the political outcome” is actually neither here or there — ethical principles are not about the scale on ones relevance.

Thus, I wanted to let you know that even on the far side of the world, your newspapers reputation is suffering.  Quite aside from any personal views on climate change, there is a responsibility to not deceive people; all the more so when one speaks from a position of power as a newspaper does.  The responsibility in this case lies firstly with the journalist, then with the editor, and now with yourself.

I hope you will take a serious and hard look at the veracity of facts in the articles, and the measure of objectivity portrayed therein.

Regards

*********************************

Prof. Bruce Hewitson

DST Research Chair in Climate Change

Climate System Analysis Group

Dept. Environmental & Geographical Sc.

University of Cape Town

If you do write to Ms. Rahlf, please note the following contrast.

What the leader of the CERN team, Jasper Kirkby, said about their conclusions:  ”At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step.”

What the Daily Herald editorial board said about the CERN team’s conclusions:  ”Scientists there have concluded that cosmic rays play a much larger role than previously thought in creating clouds on earth.”

I’m a little disappointed that it’s taken Ms. Rahlf more than 10 minutes to consider this issue.

Given that the editors (Randy Wright and Jim Tynen) seem ok with the idea of publishing errors of fact that they know to be errors, I decided to give the publisher, Rona Rahlf a try.  Here’s what I wrote:

———–

Dear Rona,

I am a long-time subscriber to the Daily Herald, and a political conservative.  However, I am also an associate professor of geological sciences at BYU, so I have enough Earth science background to discern that human-induced climate change is likely to be a big problem, no matter how inconvenient that fact is for my political ideology.  For about 1 1/2 years, I’ve corresponded on and off with Randy Wright and Jim Tynen about their constant stream of editorials that have presented an enormous number of base distortions about the state of climate science.

I fully understand that people (even people like me) have biases, and we make stupid arguments from time to time.  I think you understand that, too, which is why this statement on your Contact webpage is so minimalist.  ”The Herald corrects errors of fact appearing in its news and opinion columns.”  I’m fine with that as a strong statement of the bare minimum required with respect to standard journalistic ethics.  As the late Senator Moynihan is said to have put it, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

Your editors flout that minimalist ethic, however.

On Aug. 28, 2011, you published an editorial called “Huntsman’s Blind Trust in Global Warming,” in which you said,

A paper in the prestigious journal Nature reported on findings from Europe’s CERN Laboratory, the most advanced particle accelerator in the world. Scientists there have concluded that cosmic rays play a much larger role than previously thought in creating clouds on earth. Obviously, cloud cover has a huge effect on temperatures. Which means that all warming theories have been knocked into a cocked hat.

On Sept. 1, I wrote Jim Tynan and Randy Wright to inform them that the lead author of the study in question, Jasper Kirkby, had explicitly stated that their experiments did NOT yet say anything about cosmic rays and climate.  He told Scientific American magazine, “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step.”  Here’s the link, if you want to look it up.  The article also has a good summary of why that experiment isn’t enough to make any sort of case for cosmic rays being a major climate driver.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cloud-formation-may-be-linked-to-cosmic-rays

An experienced science journalist, Peter Hadfield, made a nice video that explains the same thing here, with some additional background.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvztL9r47MI&feature=player_embedded

Jim Tynan wrote back to say, in part, this:

I don’t think I have special insights into the physics  — I just think Kirkby is talking politics, not science (as is too often true in this debate).

To me, when a scientist in his position tries to downplay the results, it’s actually confirmation: He obviously would like for this study to disappear, but  the data were so powerful that they couldn’t be swept under the rug, at least not now.

And PR and journalistic spin are in my domain. Spinmeister’s rule no. 2:  When there’s an inconvenient truth too obvious to be outright denied, try to find some distraction or some way of minimizing the impact.

No, the report doesn’t say in so many words that “warming is a crock.” But it gives hard evidence that cosmic rays affect cloud cover. And it’s obvious that affects climate,.

Notice what he said.  He knew full well that Jasper Kirkby had denied that his experiment led to any such conclusion, but Jim Tynan could report that Kirkby and his team “have concluded that cosmic rays play a much larger role than previously thought in creating clouds on earth” because Jim Tynan could read Kirkby’s mind and find out what he REALLY meant.  Oh, there’s no wiggle room here.  The editorial didn’t say that the Daily Herald editorial board had concluded, based on Kirkby’s data, that cosmic rays play a much larger role, etc.  The editorial said that the CERN scientists had concluded this, which the lead author explicitly denied.

I decided to drop the issue, for the time being, because I was convinced that Jim Tynan really believed he could read Jasper Kirkby’s mind.  But then this Sunday you published another editorial that made the same claim, in the same words!  I e-mailed Randy and Jim about it again, wondering if I could write an op-ed exposing their deception, or whether they would simply write some kind of retraction, or admission that their source was the voices in Jim’s head.  Here was Randy’s response.

Dear Mr. Bickmore –

Sunday’s piece was intended to be our signoff on this subject — at leastfor some time. I think we want to wait to see what happens next in both science and politics. If climate change wins in either arena, we will be glad to publish a column by you on the subject of “I told you so.”  Alternatively, we would also accept an “I was wrong” column.

There are two possibilities: Either climate change will win out politically, with a massive shift of dollars into investments, regulations and foreign aid that will, at best, deliver minuscule change in C02; or climate change and the massive redistribution of wealth desired by many third-world governments, climate scientists and Al Gore will not occur, owing to lack of votes.

I very much doubt that what either the Daily Herald or Barry Bickmore writes will make a measurable difference in the political outcome. I rather suspect our combined influence will be even less than the most optimistic reduction of carbon that might be purchased by mortgaging my great-great-grandchildren and dooming them to a future of insufficient and expensive energy.

You are a good Mormon, I presume, judging from your position. So I don’t know why the prospective death of Planet Earth seems to bother you so much.  Doom will come eventually, one way or another. Isn’t the earth supposed to pass away and be renewed? And won’t heaven pass away and another rise to take its place? If you hold this religious view with as much fervor as you hold your view on man-made climate change, you might someday sit back with a bemused smile when you find that our political system has made a decision that shortens the planet’s life.

Given a general lack of persuasive evidence and the bad economics that attend virtually all corrective choices, I rather expect the political outcome will be disappointing to alarmists. In the final analysis, it’s going to come down to policy votes, and today I’ll wager that climate change will not prevail.

We should have more definitive answers to all this in, say, 40 years, at which time we can consider publishing your proposed column. After all, the intelligence gained in the four decades since the early 1970s has been quite helpful in deciding what to do about the dire scientific predictions of the onset of a new ice age. A good time to evaluate the scientific consensus on climate change would be around 2051.

On one item I have no doubt, however: By 2051 there will be a scientific consensus that Randy Wright is dead.

RW

Jim Tynen had been quite prescient about this.  Remember how he said, “And PR and journalistic spin are in my domain. Spinmeister’s rule no. 2:  When there’s an inconvenient truth too obvious to be outright denied, try to find some distraction or some way of minimizing the impact”?  That’s what Randy did.  He and Jim both knew, going into this last editorial, that the CERN scientists had said no such thing, and in fact had said the opposite.  But instead of addressing the elephant in the room, he tried to cloud the issue by bringing in all sorts of other points about scientific uncertainty, and so on.  No matter how uncertain the science is, it is certain that Jim and Randy knowingly printed false information, and they refuse to acknowledge it in any way.

So my questions to you, Rona, are these.  I imagine you are on the editorial board, so how do you feel about having printed blatantly false information under your name?  How do you feel about Jim and Randy printing the same false information a second time, after Jim had admitted that he knew Jasper Kirkby had said no such thing?  How do you feel about their evasion of the issue of retraction, when your website specifically states, “The Herald corrects errors of fact appearing in its news and opinion columns”?  Are you going to print a retraction, or are you going to take Jim’s line of thinking, and rationalize that you know what those scientists were really thinking?

If you would like to see the full correspondence between me and your editors, just let me know.

Sincerely,

Barry Bickmore

Orem, Utah

———————

Rona Rahlf sent back a reply saying, “Thank you Barry for the feedback.  I’ll take it under advisement.  R”

We’ll see, I guess.

I’m convinced that one reason people just can’t fathom the depths of ideological brain-mush we conservatives have willed upon ourselves with respect to climate change is that the scale of it is just too unbelievable.  Who could suspend their disbelief in a novel character like Christopher Monckton, for instance?  He pretends to be a member of the British Parliament, says he’s developed a miracle cure for most known diseases, repeatedly gets caught telling falsehoods about climate research… and gets invited to testify before the U.S. Congress?  Rrrrriiiiiigggghhhht.  Well, I’m starting to see the editors of the Daily Herald, my local paper, in the same light.  If I were to tell my neighbors my experiences with these guys, would they believe me?  I sort of doubt it.

In my last post, I wrote about how the DH editors had written an opinion piece about climate change, in which they said that scientists at CERN “have concluded that cosmic rays play a much larger role than previously thought in creating clouds on earth.”  They had said that before, and I had pointed out to them that the study’s lead author, Jasper Kirkby, had emphatically denied this, but Jim Tynan had told me that he knew how to read between the lines (i.e., read Kirkby’s mind and determine that he meant the exact opposite of what he said.)

Back then, I had also asked if they would print an op-ed by me about the errors in their piece, but they declined, just as they had a few times before.  Well, when I blogged today about their latest fib-telling spree, I sent the link to the editors, Randy Wright and Jim Tynan, and then sent them this follow-up message

Just for kicks, I decided to ask whether you guys would print an op-ed by me about how you printed false information… or at least information that originated with Jim Tynen’s ability to read the minds of scientists and tell when they mean the exact opposite of what they say.  You see, with the number of words allowed in an op-ed, I could throw in big quotations from Jim’s e-mail, where he admitted that Jasper Kirkby didn’t actually say that his experiment proved any significant link between cosmic ray flux and climate, but claimed that he could tell what Kirkby really had in mind about it.

You’ve never agreed to print an op-ed by me before, when I’ve asked, so I wasn’t going to bother.  I have reconsidered because this is one of the worst cases of intellectual dishonesty (or insanity?) I’ve ever seen.  Nevermind that Randy promised to investigate Monckton’s fake data, and never followed up.  Nevermind that you keep repeating the same idiotic line about water vapor being a more important greenhouse gas than CO2, even though it is explicitly accounted for in the standard theories.  All that can be chalked up to ideology-fueled, willful ignorance.  But this is something different, because in this case Jim either knowingly printed false information, or he actually thinks he can read minds.  If the latter, he at least should have informed readers that he was getting his information from the little voices in his head.

So what do you think?  Will you let me spill the beans on your pages, or will you pretend it never happened?  Here’s another idea–maybe you could write an editorial where you lay out the facts in this case, even if you admit no fault.  Sort of a “Truth in Advertising” push, so to speak.

What say ye, gentlemen?

Barry Bickmore

Randy Wright responded with this message.

Dear Mr. Bickmore –

Sunday’s piece was intended to be our signoff on this subject — at least
for some time. I think we want to wait to see what happens next in both
science and politics. If climate change wins in either arena, we will be
glad to publish a column by you on the subject of “I told you so.”
Alternatively, we would also accept an “I was wrong” column.

There are two possibilities: Either climate change will win out politically,
with a massive shift of dollars into investments, regulations and foreign
aid that will, at best, deliver minuscule change in C02; or climate change
and the massive redistribution of wealth desired by many third-world
governments, climate scientists and Al Gore will not occur, owing to lack of
votes.

I very much doubt that what either the Daily Herald or Barry Bickmore writes
will make a measurable difference in the political outcome. I rather suspect
our combined influence will be even less than the most optimistic reduction
of carbon that might be purchased by mortgaging my great-great-grandchildren
and dooming them to a future of insufficient and expensive energy.

You are a good Mormon, I presume, judging from your position. So I don’t
know why the prospective death of Planet Earth seems to bother you so much.
Doom will come eventually, one way or another. Isn’t the earth supposed to
pass away and be renewed? And won’t heaven pass away and another rise to
take its place? If you hold this religious view with as much fervor as you
hold your view on man-made climate change, you might someday sit back with a
bemused smile when you find that our political system has made a decision
that shortens the planet’s life.

Given a general lack of persuasive evidence and the bad economics that
attend virtually all corrective choices, I rather expect the political
outcome will be disappointing to alarmists. In the final analysis, it’s
going to come down to policy votes, and today I’ll wager that climate change
will not prevail.

We should have more definitive answers to all this in, say, 40 years, at
which time we can consider publishing your proposed column. After all, the
intelligence gained in the four decades since the early 1970s has been quite
helpful in deciding what to do about the dire scientific predictions of the
onset of a new ice age. A good time to evaluate the scientific consensus on
climate change would be around 2051.

On one item I have no doubt, however: By 2051 there will be a scientific
consensus that Randy Wright is dead.

RW

Did you notice where he addressed the charge that they had knowingly printed a falsehood?  Neither did I.  I just sent them this reply.

Dear Randy (and Jim),

You guys crack me up.  It’s no wonder you like Monckton so much, because he is the undisputed master of throwing out an enormous cloud of smoke when he is (frequently) caught telling demonstrable falsehoods.  I point out that you have printed an outright falsehood, and that I have Jim Tynan on record saying that his source is his personal intuition about what Jasper Kirkby REALLY meant to say (i.e., the exact opposite of what he did say,) and you respond with… what, exactly?

I’ll paraphrase.

“Well, we weren’t going to open up that can of worms again for a while, anyway, and really, what difference does it make?  You may be right about climate change, or we may be right, but who can tell, what with space-age materials and such?  And after all, the whole thing is going to end someday, right?  Mormons believe in the end of the world, right?  So why don’t you behave like a pitchfork-waving psychopath and try to bring it about as soon as possible?  But, given my tough-minded journalistic nature, I’m betting the climate won’t change much, because all that evidence they talk about (the stuff I haven’t bothered to read or understand–see our nearly continuous stream of editorial comments about water vapor) isn’t very convincing.  I mean, there were a few scientists 40 years ago who thought we were headed into an ice age!  I didn’t actually try to find out whether there might have been even more scientists, even back then, who were worried about global warming due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, but… where was I?  Oh, yeah.  We should wait until I’m dead to decide who’s right or wrong.”

Since I’m a mind-reader, with abilities at least as great as Jim’s, I’ll paraphrase what you REALLY meant to say.

“We don’t care that we printed a claim we knew to be false.”

Barry

Apologies in advance to my friends who disapprove of my tendency toward sarcasm.  I’m trying to stop.  Really.  But in this case, I think God will make a special allowance because I am totally unprepared to stop myself in the face of this kind of thing.  Rest assured that I will feel kind of guilty later.

UPDATE:  Ok, so I did feel a little bad about the sarcasm in the morning, so I sent Jim and Randy this note.

Dear Randy and Jim,

I’m sorry I let myself get a little too sarcastic in the last message I sent.

However, I still find it unbelievable that you would respond to the charge that you had knowingly printed a falsehood with, ”I very much doubt that what either the Daily Herald or Barry Bickmore writes will make a measurable difference in the political outcome.”  In other words, it’s ok you lied, because it won’t make much difference, anyway.  If there’s one thing that journalists should care about, it’s accurate reporting of facts.  Anyone can accidentally leave out important facts, or spin them according to some bias or other.  But when you report a fact, there is no question that you should check it’s accuracy, and that if an obvious inaccuracy is pointed out to you, you should care enough to write a retraction.  That’s the kind of ethic expressed on the Daily Herald’s contact page.  ”The Herald corrects errors of fact appearing in its news and opinion columns.”

But you don’t care, because your journalistic ethics take a backseat to your ideology.

Barry Bickmore

My local newspaper is The Daily Herald, and let’s just say that this particular paper fits well into the “reddest county” of the “reddest state” in the nation.  Since I’m politically conservative, I actually agree with many of the editorial points of view expressed in the paper, but on the subject of climate change, the Herald’s editors are WAAAAAYYYYYY out in fantasyland.  That is, I’m pretty sure they think they can read minds.  No, I’m not joking.  I’ve corresponded with the editors, Randy Wright and Jim Tynan, for over a year about their constant stream of climate nonsense, but it’s become clear that there is no reasoning with these people on this issue.

Last year, Lord Monckton came to town, and Jim Tynan gushed over how he had provided a “dazzling tour of the science,” speaking out for freedom and liberty, blah, blah, blah.  In an e-mail conversation with Randy Wright, I informed him that I could prove that Monckton had made up some of the data he used to bash the IPCC.  (You can read about it here.)  Here’s what Randy said, in part.

You should know that we don’t take anything on faith (including Monckton). When my mother says “I love you,” I check it out.

In a subsequent e-mail, Randy said,

I’m simply an enemy of pretention in all it’s forms — including Monckton’s, or yours if applicable. We’re looking at Monckton in more detail, as I mentioned.

So what was the result of their hard-nosed investigative journalism into Monckton’s claims, you ask?  I have no idea.  Somehow, Randy never got back to me on that.  But yesterday Jim Tynan published a 2/3 page rant about “The Phony ‘Consensus’ on Climate Change,” the print version of which had a large photo of Monckton giving his lecture.

Oh, they had all the usual stuff.  They attacked Doran and Zimmerman’s study of Earth scientists opinions about climate change because they thought the sample of actively publishing climatologists was too small.  I actually calculated the margin of error on their results, and it turns out that instead of just saying 97.4% of actively publishing climatologists believe humans are significantly affecting global climate, they should have said something more like 93.8-99.9%.  Yeah, a bigger sample size might have totally changed their conclusions.  Of course, Tynan didn’t provide any alternative polling data.  Instead, he gave us the Oregon Petition and Senator Inhofe’s 1000 scientists who disagree with the IPCC.  Nevermind that the Oregon Petition could be signed by anyone who claimed to have even a bachelor’s degree in any science, engineering, medical, or math field, and that it was probably more likely that a urine sample technician signed than a real climate researcher.  Nevermind that Inhofe’s report included mostly non-specialists in climate, and although he touted a few IPCC authors in the bunch, they amounted to less than 1% of the total number of IPCC authors.

I could go on ad nauseum, e.g., Tynan cited Craig Idso, who apparently doesn’t understand how water vapor acts in the climate system.  But the Grand Poobah of them all was this claim.

Moreover, a recent paper in the prestigious journal Nature reported on findings from Europe’s CERN Laboratory, the most advanced particle accelerator in the world. Scientists there have concluded that cosmic rays play a much larger role than previously thought in creating clouds on earth.

Of course, Jim had claimed the same thing in an editorial just a few weeks ago.  At that time, I wrote to him to inform him that the lead author of the CERN study had told Scientific American, “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step.”  So why is Jim still claiming that the CERN scientists have concluded something far beyond what they say is possible to conclude from their experiment?  Jim’s reply to me from a few weeks ago is quite revealing, in that respect.

I don’t think I have special insights into the physics  — I just think Kirkby is talking politics, not science (as is too often true in this debate).

To me, when a scientist in his position tries to downplay the results, it’s actually confirmation: He obviously would like for this study to disappear, but  the data were so powerful that they couldn’t be swept under the rug, at least not now.

And PR and journalistic spin are in my domain. Spinmeister’s rule no. 2:  When there’s an inconvenient truth too obvious to be outright denied, try to find some distraction or some way of minimizing the impact.

No, the report doesn’t say in so many words that “warming is a crock.” But it gives hard evidence that cosmic rays affect cloud cover. And it’s obvious that affects climate.

That’s right!  Jim Tynan, the hard-nosed, iconoclastic journalist, is too wily and sophisticated to be fooled by scientists who downplay the importance of their results.  In fact, Kirkby’s denial that his experiment is proof of a strong cosmic ray-climate connection is actually proof of such a connection!

It would be easy, at this point, to call Jim Tynan a liar, but I’m convinced that he actually believes he can read Jasper Kirkby’s mind.  It would be nice, however, if in the future Mr. Tynan would inform his readers that the source of his information is ESP.

If you would like to see a good explanation for why the CERN experiment couldn’t possibly prove what Jim Tynan says it proves, see the following video by an experienced science journalist, Peter Hadfield.

Climate change will adversely affect chocolate production?  That’s it.

Here are some recent articles about Republicans who are trying to get the party to reverse course on climate change denial.

1. Retired Republicans Quietly Try to Shift GOP Climate-Change Focus, National Journal.

2. D. R. Tucker, Confessions of a Climate Change Convert, Frum Forum.

3. D. R. Tucker, Dawn of the Deniers.

The second piece by Tucker was especially hard-hitting.  Consider this bit:

However, I realize now that I was also wrong on this point. When it comes to epistemic closure, American progressives are rank amateurs compared to American conservatives. The negativity I received from the right for accepting climate science was unlike anything I have ever experienced—but I’m actually glad to have experienced it, since it forced me to confront some inconvenient political truths.

Looking back, my disputes with the left gave me the fortitude I needed to deal with the right’s aggressively enforced epistemic closure. The progressives who gave me grief for supporting President Clinton’s impeachment and John McCain’s White House bid gave me the best training possible to deal with a far more pernicious, and far more pervasive, form of ideological intolerance.

Being branded a “RINO” and a “warmist” by the close-minded conservative class was the wake-up call I needed. In a weird way, I want to thank the conservatives who condemned my conversion on climate change. They helped me realize that a “warmist” is merely someone who accepts scientific reality instead of denying it—and that a “RINO” is another word for a Republican with an IQ above room temperature.

Is this really where we want to go?  Making conservatives who respect science choose between voting for candidates who disagree with them about many fiscal and social issues, or voting for candidates who are incapable of dealing with reality?

Bob Inglis, former Republican congressman from North Carolina, has a great column in USA Today.

Two climate scientists of opposite political persuasions encourage our politicians to get it together with respect to climate change action.

Remote Sensing just published a rebuttal to Spencer and Braswell’s latest paper.  The rebuttal, written by Kevin Trenberth, John Fasullo, and John Abraham, is mostly based on an earlier RealClimate post by Trenberth and Fasullo, but tidied up and updated for publication.

The Deseret News has published an article on Wolfgang Wagner’s resignation over the Spencer and Braswell paper Remote Sensing published.  Since it’s a local paper, which always highlights any local angles, the article highlighted my review of Spencer’s book, The Great Global Warming Blunder, and whatever it might have contributed to Wagner’s decision–which is speculation, since he didn’t mention any specific sources of criticism that might have contributed to his decision.  (In my opinion, any contribution I might have made was probably overhyped.  I told the reporter all about what had happened, but emphasized that the main critique of S&B’s paper before the resignation was Trenberth and Fasullo’s, and they just mentioned my earlier critique as an example of how Spencer has a habit of abusing statistics to squeeze a low climate sensitivity out of a 1-box climate model.  I did, however, note that Spencer was up to some of the same old tricks in the paper, e.g., he was using a weird value for the ocean mixed layer depth, which affected his results.)

The article actually made me feel some sympathy for Roy Spencer.  Reporters are generally not trained in any science, so it really is a stretch for them to boil a science story down to a level the general public can understand.  If you don’t have a significantly deeper understanding to begin with, the “boiling down” process inevitably leads to some errors.  When Roy was criticized for feeding the media frenzy over his paper, he said,

I had nothing to do with James Taylor’s article. It might have been a little over the top on interpretation (but not necessarily wrong).

In this case, I don’t think the Deseret News reporter did a bad job, but I wouldn’t have written exactly the same thing.  She made some errors here and there.  (E.g., she misidentified Roy’s book that I critiqued–I’ve never read Climate Confusion.  Trenberth and Fasullo’s blog post came after S&B’s paper, not before, but the blog post mentioned a paper by Trenberth, Fasullo, O’Dell, and Wong that was published previously and should have been addressed by S&B.  Also, I don’t think my quoted statements were always exactly right, or at least the context was sometimes a tiny bit blurry.)  But then, I’m sure she was going on hastily written notes, and at least she e-mailed me to clarify a few things before she went to press.

In the end, the reporter got across that I thought S&B were playing fast and loose with their statistics, and that I had previously demonstrated that Roy had repeatedly done something similar in the past.

So what should I do?  If I were to refrain from saying anything, or act as if the newspaper article were 100% accurate, I’m sure I would be lambasted on many a contrarian blog.  (I’m sure I will be, in any case.)  At the same time, I don’t want to be too critical of the reporter, who was pushed into the deep end and really tried to get the facts straight before her deadline.  Certainly I think she got across a message that her audience needed to hear, especially since the Deseret News recently published an article in which they used the S&B paper to illustrate the point that human-induced climate change is still “controversial” among climate scientists.

So there you have it.  I’ve seen a lot worse, and I think the core message was on target, but there were a few problems.  If anyone has any problem with something I was quoted as saying in the article, please comment below, and I’ll provide more context.

 

In my last post, I gave some of the details of Andrew Dessler’s latest paper, which criticizes a recent paper by Roy Spencer and Danny Braswell.  One of the criticisms I highlighted was the charge that S&B said they had analyzed output from 14 climate models, but only compared 6 of the models to the data–the 3 with the least, and the 3 with the greatest, climate sensitivity.  They argued that the 3 least sensitive models did a slightly better job (on average) than the 3 most sensitive ones, but none of them were very good at reproducing the data, so maybe that indicates the real climate is less sensitive than ANY of the models.  They also used the temperature series (there are several) that gave the most marked difference from the data.  I provided a number of links to show that Spencer has a history of botching his statistics, and noted that in the past he has simply brushed off criticisms of his statistical abuse, relying on the statistical naïveté of his core audience.

Summary:  Roy Spencer’s latest paper, published in Remote Sensing, supposedly “blew a gaping hole” in the standard theory of climate change.  A new paper by Andrew Dessler shows that this is just another in a long string of Roy’s faulty claims to prove that climate sensitivity is lower than previously thought.  The main problem in all of these attempts has been rampant abuse of statistics.  Typically, Roy would brush off such criticisms, relying on the statistical naïveté of his core audience and the media, and claim he is being persecuted by the “IPCC gatekeepers”.  In this case, one of Dessler’s figures shows very clearly how Spencer and his co-author Danny Braswell left out of their analysis all the data that didn’t fit with their hypothesis.  It’s so clear that even people who don’t know much about statistics can see the problem.  There is no running from this one–no claiming that Spencer is being persecuted–unless he wants us to believe he’s being persecuted by his own data.

A few weeks ago, there was a big media frenzy over a new paper by Roy Spencer and Danny Braswell, published in the journal Remote Sensing.  The paper claimed to show, via some satellite data, that the climate models used by the IPCC are way off the mark.  Big news, right?  However, it turned out that Spencer had, for the umpteenth time, botched his statistics.  To summarize, Spencer and Braswell 1) compared a 10 year period of data with 100 year periods in the models, instead of breaking the 100 years into 10 year periods, 2) didn’t put error bars on the data or the model output, and 3) didn’t plot some of the models that did a better job at reproducing the data.  If they had done all this the right way, they would have seen that the models do a decent job, although some are better than others.

Another criticism of Spencer and Braswell’s paper was their choice of venue, the open-access journal, Remote Sensing.  Now, some of these for-profit, open-access journals are a bit shady, and routinely publish things that should have been rejected with prejudice, but it’s usually hard to tell until they have been around a few years.  The bigger worry was that Remote Sensing hasn’t published a lot of climate science in the past.  In such a case, the editors handling the manuscript probably aren’t climate specialists, and may not know who the best reviewers would be.  Often, authors are allowed to suggest some good reviewers, and if the editors don’t know who would be better, or that the suggested reviewers are all buddies of the authors, they might just ask the suggested reviewers.

It turns out that this was very likely the case here.

The editor of Remote Sensing, Wolfgang Wagner, has now published an editorial in which he 1) describes how the peer review process failed in this case, and 2) announces his resignation in an attempt to save the reputation of the journal.  Here’s the money quote.

In hindsight, it is possible to see why the review process of the paper by Spencer and Braswell did not fulfill its aim. The managing editor of Remote Sensing selected three senior scientists from renowned US universities, each of them having an impressive publication record. Their reviews had an apparently good technical standard and suggested one “major revision”, one “minor revision” and one “accept as is”. The authors revised their paper according to the comments made by the reviewers and, consequently, the editorial board member who handled this paper accepted the paper (and could in fact not have done otherwise). Therefore, from a purely formal point of view, there were no errors with the review process. But, as the case presents itself now, the editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors. This selection by itself does not mean that the review process for this paper was wrong. In science, diversity and controversy are essential to progress and therefore it is important that different opinions are heard and openly discussed. Therefore editors should take special care that minority views are not suppressed, meaning that it certainly would not be correct to reject all controversial papers already during the review process. If a paper presents interesting scientific arguments, even if controversial, it should be published and responded to in the open literature. This was my initial response after having become aware of this particular case. So why, after a more careful study of the pro and contra arguments, have I changed my initial view? The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature (cf. [7]), a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers. In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal. This regrettably brought me to the decision to resign as Editor-in-Chief―to make clear that the journal Remote Sensing takes the review process very seriously.

UPDATE 1:  Read more about this from Joe Romm (and others linked from his blog) and Leo Hickman at The Guardian.  The BBC has now picked this up, and makes the same kind of points I did about how things work when you submit your work to an off-topic journal.  Media Matters has now picked it up.  More comments on Ars Technica.  Peter Gleick has a blog post up about this at the Forbes magazine site.  You may remember that the original media frenzy about S&B’s paper was started with a Forbes blog written by James Taylor, from the Heartland Institute.  Interestingly, the Forbes homepage has bumped Peter’s blog off in favor of less viewed entries already.  Could they be sensitive to the fact that they are guilty of letting some non-scientist shill for a right-wing “think-tank” interpret climate science for their readers?  John Nielsen-Gammon (Texas State Climatologist) has similar insights to mine about the likely course of the review process in this case.

UPDATE 2:  Andrew Dessler has just published a paper that exposes certain aspects of Spencer and Braswell’s paper that, well, ticked me off, for one thing.  It’s a bombshell.

The Daily Beast has a nice article on why the Mormon candidates in the GOP primary race are the only ones who haven’t disavowed mainstream climate science and evolution.  My pal Summer Rupper was interviewed for the piece.

Meanwhile, Dana Nuccitelli just posted a detailed examination of the GOP candidates statements about climate change on Skeptical Science.

The National Science Foundation Inspector General’s office just released a report on its investigation of allegations that “Hockey Team” captain Michael Mann had falsified data.  (Read all about it from Joe Romm.)

Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed.

The NSF investigation essentially confirms the finding of an earlier Penn State University internal investigation.

Clearly, the circle of conspirators implicated in hiding wrongdoing by Michael Mann has expanded once again!  But never fear–the allegations didn’t go away when the British government found no evidence of data tampering, or when the National Research Council in the USA found the same.  They didn’t go away when over a dozen subsequent studies showed the original Hockey Stick graph was about right, and the main conclusions drawn were correct.  After all, where loudmouth ideologues are blowing smoke, there must be fire!

The allegations won’t go away now, either.  One man–Virginia State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli–has the courage to ignore the utter lack of supporting evidence for the allegations, and use his position to go on a fishing expedition for the evidence that must be out there, somewhere.  And even if he doesn’t find any evidence for these particular allegations, well, Mann must have done something wrong, sometime, or at least said something in an e-mail that can be taken out of context to make it sound like he’s done something wrong.  When you’re dealing with a giant, yet super-secret, conspiracy, you have to play hardball.

Jim Steenburgh, a climatologist at the University of Utah, posted on his blog a bunch of videos of the GOP presidential candidates talking about their views about climate change.  A must-see.

A reporter from a New Zealand TV station interviewed Lord Monckton, who got pretty irate when the reporter brought up John Abraham’s gutting of one of Monckton’s presentations.  Among the startling revelations–Monckton is going to sue Abraham for libel!!!

No, really!  Remember how last August Monckton said, “We’re quietly gathering the evidence. Sometimes a libel action is the only way to make liars face their lies, and pay for them.”  Oh yes, he was just biding his time, quietly gathering evidence until… well, a year later… when he finally has the goods on that poor sap, Prof. Abraham.  Ah, maybe this goes back to the BBC documentary about Monckton that aired earlier this year, in which he creepily claimed that he was having Prof. Abraham’s finances watched.  Be afraid, John.

If there are any other Mormons out there, you should check out the new LDS Earth Stewardship blog.  Great stuff.

The Deseret News published an article the other day entitled, “Global warming, climate science far from settled“.  They let me publish an op-ed in response.

For the past few years, Roy Spencer has had a love affair, of sorts, with “simple climate models”.  After all, who needs some fancy-schmancy global circulation model (GCM) when you can boil down the main features (energy in and energy out) to a simple “1-box” or “zero-dimensional” model that you can run on a spreadsheet?

Spencer wasn’t the first one to use such a model, and every modeler knows that it is usually a good idea to use the simplest model you can get away with to represent complex physical processes.  The key here is to recognize that the simpler the model, the more phenomena are glossed over, so simpler models are only going to be good for particular, specialized purposes.

In this case, Spencer wants to use simple climate models to estimate equilibrium climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2.  Let’s look back and see how he’s done with that so far.

Over in Australia, Christopher Monckton is busy trying to stir up controversy about a proposed carbon tax over there by challenging anyone who disagrees with him to a live debate.  Here’s the meat of his latest challenge to Malcolm Turnbull:

Now therefore I, The Right Honourable Christopher Walter, by the Grace of God and Letters Patent under the Hand and Seal of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second (whom God preserve) Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, do by these presents challenge the said Absolute Banker to a Debate on live television, during which each party shall have the opportunity to state his case and to examine the other’s case, with a view to informing Hard-Working Taxpayers and allowing them to decide for themselves whether the truth is being told by me or by the said Member for Goldman Sachs, upon whom I call to take up this challenge, if he dares.

Now, Monckton is a very good debater, if by “very good” one means that he is a master of fooling people into believing him by spouting scientific-sounding nonsense and Latin phrases.  It’s been shown any number of times that his claims are often utterly divorced from the reality of the sources he cites, so what is his debate opponent to do if Monckton brings in a fresh one?  A person who insists on sticking to responsible arguments can’t just accuse him of making things up without taking time to check the sources, after all.

But listen up, my Australian friends, because herein lies the key to neutralizing Monckton’s debate fever.  He loves live debate, because it plays to his strengths:  i.e., unlimited confidence and total disregard for responsible argument.  He’s not so excited about written debate, where the participants are given time to check each others’ sources.  At least, that’s been my experience.

Back in late 2009, 18 professors at my institution (including me) wrote a letter to the Utah Legislature objecting to how they had been handling climate change issues.  Bob Ferguson, president of the Science and Public Policy Institute and Monckton’s handler, wrote us all a threatening letter challenging us to publicly debate some climate skeptic he would provide (and which turned out to be Monckton.)  All of us either refused or ignored the request, because we thought the challenge was ridiculous.  What would a sound-bite fest like that prove?  However, I told Bob that I would be happy to do a written, online debate with Monckton.  Why?  Because I would have time to check Monckton’s sources to see if they said what he claimed.  Bob wrote back that he thought it was a reasonable suggestion.  A few months later, Bob came back and offered me $5000 to do the debate, and I refused, but renewed my offer to do an online, written debate (for free!!!)  His answer was simply, “No.”  No explanation.

So why not try that, my Australian mates?  If he challenges you to a debate, give him a counter-offer for a more responsible format.  He probably won’t take the offer, but if he does, you’ll have hundreds of climate scientists who would love to help you shove it down Monckton’s throat.

Monckton Quote of the Day

Regarding his recent interview with ABC’s Adam Spencer in Australia, Lord Christopher Monckton said:

He would not allow me to speak. He kept saying, ‘You are not a real peer, not a real scientist’, and he was implying that I’m a complete idiot who makes things up.

For background information regarding Spencer’s implied message, please see:

Lord Monckton’s Rap Sheet

Monckton Makes It Up

I expect the Australian media will pick the latest story about Monckton up, so for any who might read this blog, here is a little nudge to help you tell the story how it should be told.

First, the sort of people who support Monckton are already trying to spin it this way:  ”Who cares if he isn’t a member of the House of Lords?”  But the point of the criticism is not that he isn’t a member of Parliament.  It is that he claims to be a member of Parliament, but is not.  He has even represented himself to foreign governments as a member of Parliament.  Stop and think about it for a moment.  Oh, I understand that Monckton really thinks he SHOULD be a member of Parliament, but how seriously would anyone take Al Gore if he went about saying that he really was the President of the United States because he thinks the Supreme Court didn’t have the right to stop the recounts in 2000?  Yes, a few nutjobs would take him seriously, but that’s the point–only nutjobs would take him seriously.

Here’s a recap of the whole sordid affair taken from Lord Monckton’s Rap Sheet:

Monckton represented himself to members of the U.S. Congress as a member of the U.K. House of Lords (the upper house of Parliament.)  When people started pointing out that he doesn’t appear on the official list of members, however, he started saying that he is a member “without a seat or vote.”  When queried, the House of Lords responded that there is no such thing as a member without a seat or vote, and Lord Monckton had never been a member because he inherited his title (Viscount) in 2006, after all but 92 hereditary peers had been barred from membership in the House of Lords since 1999.  When asked to respond about this misrepresentation by members of Congress, Monckton basically acknowledged that the British government doesn’t recognize him as a member of the House of Lords, but claimed that they’re wrong because his “Letters Patent” that granted his title to the family (and presumably mention membership in the House of Lords) had never been revoked by specific legislation.  He said that the Lord President of the Council in the House of Lords had admitted that letters patent could only be annulled by specific legislation.  However, Tim Lambert actually looked up what the Lord President of the Council said, and it turns out that she used the House of Lords Act 1999 as an example of legislation that altered the effect of Letters Patent.  In other words, she said the exact opposite of Monckton’s claim.  UPDATE:  I should have mentioned that Monckton has also gone about using a logo that it quite similar to that of Parliament.  Derek at Friends of Gin and Tonic sent an inquiry to the House of Lords Information Office about Monckton’s claim to be a member and his use of the logo, and they responded that, “The House is currently taking steps with a view to ensuring that Lord Monckton does not in future either claim to be a member of the House or use the parliamentary emblem or any variant thereof.”  UPDATED UPDATE:  Leo Hickman at The Guardian followed up on this with the House of Lords, and found that it’s just possible Monckton could do prison time.  We can only hope, but it appears that Monckton may be quietly backing down!  In his latest post on the Watts Up With That? blog, Monckton has changed his logo to a gaudy coronet, rather than the gaudy coronet and pink portcullis.  ANOTHER UPDATE:  Monckton is still claiming to be a member of the House of Lords, and he has added the portcullis back into his logo (although with wavy chains instead of straight).  Now the House has taken the step of publishing a “cease and desist” letter on their website.  Full story by Leo Hickman in The Guardian.

During his ongoing Australian speaking tour, Lord Monckton has again been claiming to be a member of the House of Lords without a seat or vote.  Now the House of Lords has published a “cease and desist” letter on their website.  Full story by Leo Hickman in The Guardian.

Many others have mentioned the recent grilling of Lord Monckton by Australian radio commentator Adam Spencer.  (Here’s a good one by Moth at New Anthropocene.)  Spencer grilled him about claiming to be a member of Parliament, about misinterpreting scientific literature, about claiming to be a Nobel laureate, and so on.  The bit about claiming to be a Nobel laureate caught my eye, because although Monckton claims it was a joke, Spencer asked him why this claim is so widespread on the Internet.  Monckton replied that it wasn’t on any website he has control of.  Of course, as Moth and others have pointed out, the Science and Public Policy Institute (sppinstitute.org–I’m not kidding) website has a bio of Monckton that makes this claim, and Monckton is the “Chief Policy Advisor” for SPPI.

Well, I have a juicy little tidbit to add to the mix.  In April of last year, I personally informed Bob Ferguson (president of SPPI) about his organization’s complicity in Monckton’s résumé padding in an e-mail conversation.

Yep.

A new study has come out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that claims to explain why the global climate hasn’t been warming over the last decade as fast as it had been.  The culprit may be a gazillion new Chinese coal-fired power plants, many of which aren’t equipped with “scrubbers” that take sulfur aerosols out of the emissions.  So while these new plants have been spewing out lots of CO2, which tends to warm the planet, they have also been emitting lots of the aerosols, which tend to reflect sunlight back into space, cooling the planet.  Hallelujah, right?  Well, the problem is that sulfur aerosols only help in the short-term, whereas lots of the CO2 we emit will be warming the planet for hundreds, or even thousands of years to come.

Read the full story in The Independent.

Tea Party darling Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota) is one of those Republican presidential candidates who doesn’t think unlimited greenhouse gas emissions will be a problem.  On the House floor she once said that CO2 is “a natural byproduct of nature” and “there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas”.

I’ve concluded that we need this kind of person in the White House.  Bachmann not only has the faith to alter fundamental physics and the history of scientific publishing just by wishing, but she displays incredible poise under pressure.  Just witness how her campaign handled the bemusement of the sneering liberals after she recently expressed her desire to mimic a serial killer.  From the Minnesota Independent:

Presidential hopeful and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann appeared to commit a large blunder Monday when, after she announced her presidential campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, she promised to “mimic the spirit of Waterloo’s own John Wayne.”

However, according to The Washington Times, Bachmann misspoke because Waterloo’s John Wayne was not the beloved movie star, but rather John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer.

“Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too,” Bachmann said in an interview with FoxNews after her announcement.

According to an update by the AP, she really turned this around by acknowledging her error.

The GOP congresswoman told CNN today her comments “were just misspeaking” and that her main intent was to show she identified with Wayne’s patriotism.

“I wish I could be perfect,” Bachmann said. “I’m a substantive, serious person” who has “good sense on how to turn the economy around” as president.

Lord Christopher Monckton, caught up in a media firestorm in Australia for calling economist Ross Garnaut a fascist while flashing up a slide with a rather innocuous statement of Garnaut’s next to a Nazi flag, has now issued an “unreserved apology”!!!

…

which he then followed with a call for apologies from people who call contrarians like himself “climate deniers” or “denialists”.  You know, because people who, against all evidence, deny that the Holocaust occurred are called “Holocaust deniers” or “denialists”.  And if you use a word to describe one group, that must mean you think any other group you describe with the same word IS EXACTLY THE SAME IN ALL RESPECTS.

That’s why I avoid using the word “sympathizer.”  The first time I heard that word, someone was talking about “Nazi sympathizers,” so when I heard someone speaking of “terrorist sympathizers,” I was appalled.  I mean, obviously the person talking meant to imply that all terrorist sympathizers are closet Nazis.  How else could I interpret it?  For shame.

On a serious note, I avoid using the terms “denier” and “denialist”–not because I think such terms are usually meant to equate people with Nazis, but because I don’t want to listen to all the whining.

In a speech given at the 2011 Big Footprint Conference, sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance, Monckton gave a long tirade about “eco-fascists”, and compared them to Hitler.  (Look about 50 minutes into the presentation.)  He also flashed up slides with quotations by various accused “eco-fascists” next to a large Nazi flag.  Obviously, there are people who think Democracy can’t deal with a problem like climate change and should move to a more totalitarian form of government, but His Lordship was rather free with his Nazi analogies.  E.g., Prof. Ross Garnaut, an Australian economist who wrote a government report on dealing with climate change, said that people who don’t know anything about climate science have no rational choice but to accept what the experts say about it.  Of course, for Monckton this sentiment is radically anti-Democratic, but the fact is that Prof. Garnaut was simply encouraging people to be rational.  To everyone but the tinfoil hat crowd, summarily rejecting an overwhelming consensus of scientific experts without knowing what you are talking about is, well… irrational.

Well, this doesn’t sit well with Andrew Bolt, a well known conservative political columnist in Australia.  Although Bolt has been a Monckton fan in the past, and frankly he seems to have no real basis for his own skepticism aside from his political leanings, he says:

Monckton is right to warn against the surrender to argument-by-authority. He is right to warn against the surrender of sovereignty to international bodies claiming to work for “the planet”.

But he’s gone too far in this deeply pesonal attack and an apology is in order. Without one, it will be unwise for other sceptics to associate themselves with him on his Australian tour.

And so it begins.  I’ve often wondered just what it would take for Monckton to start embarrassing other prominent climate contrarians.  Would it be the fake IPCC CO2 and temperature projections?  Nope.  Would it be the non-stop mischaracterization of scientific papers?  Nope.  Would it be falsely claiming to be a member of Parliament?  Nope.  Would it be all the threatened lawsuits?  Nope again.   He used a gratuitous Nazi analogy, and that’s beyond the pale, apparently.  Go figure.

 

Moncktonophiles will recognize a recurring theme, here.  There aren’t very many credentialed climate scientists who reject the consensus that humans are causing significant climate change, so what is a contrarian Minnesota state senator to do if he wants to verbally beat down the opposition?  Answer:  inflate his own credentials.

That’s what has happened with Sen. Michael Jungbauer (East Bethel).  A guy who doesn’t even have a college degree now has “a major in biochemistry,” has taken a class in “tropospheric chemistry” (even though it doesn’t show up on any of his transcripts), and he’s working on a Master’s degree in Environmental Policy (from a university that doesn’t have a Master’s program in Environmental Policy).

Read the whole story at MinnPost.com.

This is cool.  There is an article today in my university’s student newspaper about a Utah-based company called RaPower3.  Apparently, they have developed an innovative solar-thermal system that is comparatively cheap.  Solar-thermal systems concentrate light from the Sun to boil water and make steam to drive a turbine, just like burning coal makes steam to drive a turbine.  Solar-photovoltaic systems convert light directly into electricity, but the materials are way more expensive.  The RaPower3 people say they will soon be able to generate electricity for the same price as coal.  I’m not sure if that includes tax incentives, but I hope more of this kind of thing keeps popping up.  As soon as solar energy is as cheap as fossil fuels on a large scale, there won’t be much to argue about, anymore, in terms of what to do about climate change.

The lunatic fringe is on the march.  Read about it in the Irish Times.

[UPDATE:  In the comments below, Daniel linked to a follow-up article that indicates the initial story was misreported.  The death threats actually occurred at least a year ago.  The Australian National University, where the scientists in question work, maintains that the misreporting was the fault of the Canberra Times reporter who wrote the story, but I have to admit it sounds like somebody's political stunt got away from them.]

[UPDATED UPDATE:  It looks like the Daily Telegraph piece I linked above might be complete BS.  See this thread on Deltoid, with associated comments.]

Proving once again that being politically conservative doesn’t have to mean denying that problems exist, Mitt Romney has reaffirmed his stance that humans are causing significant climate change.  Read all about it in The Boston Globe.

It looks like Romney and Huntsman are the only Republican presidential hopefuls who haven’t jumped with both feet into the contrarian camp.  I expect waffling from politicians, and both Romney (especially Romney) and Huntsman have done their share.  But moving into anti-science-anti-reality just to mollify the slack-jawed-loud-mouthed wing of the party is going beyond the pale, for me.  I’m glad the two Mormons in the race have the integrity not to go there, at least.  Hopefully they can help move the debate over to what should be done, rather than whether there is really a problem.

The Salt Lake Tribune just published a nice editorial about a youth group’s petition to get state agencies to start lowering their carbon emissions.  While the editors don’t know whether the specific targets advocated by the group are feasible, they hope the petition helps motivate both the legislative and executive branches of the Utah government to start actively talking about what is feasible.

That doesn’t mean the challenge isn’t worth raising, or that the young people filing this petition don’t deserve a serious answer to their altogether fair question: After you guys have squeezed every last dollar out of the earth, sky and water, what will be left for us?

On a related note, here’s one of my reasons why.  Following is a recent video of my 13-year old daughter playing a saxophone solo for “Misty” with her Jr. High jazz band.  They beat out all the high schools at the festival and won the award for Outstanding Jazz Band.  My daughter won the medal for Outstanding Jazz Soloist.  I figure we ought to keep the world the kind of place where awesome budding jazz musicians can flourish.

Summary:  Roy Spencer has come up with yet another “silver bullet” to show that climate sensitivity is lower than IPCC estimates.  I.e., he fits a simple 1-box climate model to the net flux of heat into the upper 700 m of the ocean, and infers a climate sensitivity of only about 1 °C (2x CO2).  There are several flaws in his methods–inconsistent  initial conditions, failure to use the appropriate data, and failure to account for ocean heating deeper than 700 m.  (He fixed the last one in an update.)  All of these flaws pushed his model to produce a lower climate sensitivity estimate.  When the flaws are corrected, the model estimates climate sensitivities of at least 3 °C, which is the IPCC’s central estimate.  In any case, a simple 1-box climate model does not appear to be adequate for this kind of analysis over only a few decades.  But while Spencer’s latest effort doesn’t really do any damage to the consensus position, it turns out that it does directly contradict the work he promoted in The Great Global Warming Blunder.

Regular readers of my blog may have noticed that I’m not really into tracking down the funding sources of climate contrarians.  If some scientists really think they’re oppressed Galileos, and so need money from non-traditional sources to continue researching their groundbreaking geniusness, why not take some cash from Exxon or the Koch brothers?  Maybe the funding source is worth noting, so people can take it into account when deciding how much to trust these scientists, but I don’t think it’s necessarily some kind of smoking gun.  And so I usually pass over these discussions and focus on scientific issues.

I may have to change my mind.

Last week, the St. Petersburg Times reported that Charles Koch donated $1.5 million to the Florida State University Economics Department.  In exchange, he has to sign off on any new faculty hires.

In case you’re not familiar with the world of academia, let me clue you in.  This is bad.  It’s really bad.

Below is my reply to this letter from Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).  I’ve collected all my posts about Orrin Hatch here.

Dear Senator Hatch,

Thanks for your March 30 reply to my criticisms about your stance on climate change.  If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep trying to influence your views about this important issue.  As I told you before, I am a Republican who shares your aversion to increased government control, and a few years ago I might have been categorized as a “climate change skeptic” myself.  I wasn’t an activist, by any means, but I bought into some of the same objections about uncertainty in models, and so on, that you bring up.  When I really started looking into the issue, however, I had enough related expertise to realize that the skeptics I had been listening to were conveniently leaving out important information, throwing out red herrings, and focusing on grey areas having to do with details that wouldn’t really change the overall picture.  I’m hoping I can help you see what I did.

Orrin Hatch has now replied to my most recent letter, which you can read here.  Following is Senator Hatch’s latest.

March 30, 2011

Dear Dr. Bickmore:

Thanks for your most recent letters regarding my position on the climate change issue.  I appreciate your continued engagement on this important question.

I already knew that Kerry Emmanuel was a Republican, but it turns out that Richard Alley is, too.

Rep. Betty McCollum and John Abraham call out Congress for denying anthropogenic climate change.

A couple days ago Roy Spencer posted on his blog that, although he has “received many requests recently to respond to an extended blog critique by Barry Bickmore of my book,” he wouldn’t be responding to my 3-part review.  Now, I don’t mind if Roy doesn’t have time to respond to my critique–everyone has to prioritize, after all.  But I had to laugh at the way he went about announcing it.  “I will not be wasting much time addressing blog criticisms of my work,” he says.  Why?  “The peer-reviewed literature is where I must focus my attention.”  What’s more, he seems to view my critique as a “media attack.”

The editors of the prominent science journal, Nature, have published a stinging rebuke to the U.S. Representatives about to pass a bill that would overturn the EPA’s scientific finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger people.  Here’s the money quote:

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the US Congress has entered the intellectual wilderness, a sad state of affairs in a country that has led the world in many scientific arenas for so long. Global warming is a thorny problem, and disagreement about how to deal with it is understandable. It is not always clear how to interpret data or address legitimate questions. Nor is the scientific process, or any given scientist, perfect. But to deny that there is reason to be concerned, given the decades of work by countless scientists, is irresponsible.

Hat tip to Rob Davies.

I recently wrote another op-ed for ABC News (Australia), in which I pointed out that an Australian Senator, Nick Minchin, had indicated that he rejects a new government report on climate change because of some information he read from a blog by a climate scientist who is almost certainly Roy Spencer.  If you read the op-ed and compare it with what I’ve written about Orrin Hatch and certain members of the Utah Legislature, it will be clear that I have developed a certain strategy.  Here it is.

1. Debunk the main claims of prominent climate contrarians (e.g., Monckton and Spencer).
2. Watch for politicians who justify their contrarian stances by citing said debunked nonsense.
3. Publicly point out that these politicians claim they are following the dictates of Reason and True Science, but in fact they are just swallowing easily debunked nonsense because that’s what they want to hear.
4. I then throw in a plea to follow the scientific consensus if you’re not willing to do the work to become an expert yourself.

Does this strategy work?  It has convinced some people, but frankly, I’m not sure if this is the best strategy, or not.  So what do you think, readers?  Does my strategy seem like a good one, or should I be doing something else?