A List for James Inhofe

A List for James Inhofe

"Senator James Inhofe is demanding that AP provide him the names of the 19 atmospheric scientists who told the press agency that the science in 'An Inconvenient Truth' was accurate."

EliRabett is collecting names of climate scientists who have seen Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and feel that it does the science of the issue justice. If you qualify, follow the link above and add your name.

Hockey Season Finally Over?

As followers of the climate change debate may recall, Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) requested a report from the NAS on the rather convoluted, contentious and cantankerous controversy surrounding the Infamous Hockey Stick graph and its conclusion that late 20th century warming and temperatures were likely faster and higher than any other period in the last 1000 years.

Well, the report is out and it seems to be a fairly strong vindication of Mann et al. There is some more fuzzy language that will surely be seized apon by some but there is certainly nothing to support the allegations of errors, omissions and frauds that have been thrown around. The main conclusion is that many other studies support these same findings and that this is not a central issue in the present and future of climate change.

Real Climate has more details and quotes here. Roger Pielke Jr. seems to agree, which is by no means a given in climate change issues.

Is Hockey Season finally over? I guess that depends on whether or not your interests are social, scientific, or political.

Climate Change NewSpeak: Warming is Cooling, Economists are Climatologists

A recent article by Tom Harris in CanadaFreePress.com is providing some well traveled fodder for fossil fools (sorry for the inflamatory language, but I needed to make the alliteration work!) . It is yet another poor attack on Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and as such is not particularily remarkable. Tim Lambert at Deltoid tears it apart rather thoroughly. Not a pretty picture.

So what more is there to say?

Well, it struck me that this article makes use of a couple of rather remarkably duplicitous tactics, of the Orwellian "War is Peace" variety. We can start with the title, "Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe", because it's not really Gore's warnings, it is Gore presenting the scientist's warnings of climate catastrophe.

So who is it then that is responding to Gore, according to Harris?

He starts out with a quote from Bob "warming stopped in 1998" Carter who has the chutzpah to accuse Al Gore of using circumstantial evidence! Then comes the real through-the-looking-glass twisting of reality: the naysayers are "hundreds of highly qualified [..] climate experts" and the consensus position is "immaterial" because "only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field." As the "coup de grace" evidence for this presented in the final paragraph, Harris cites the recent open letter to Prime Minister Harper urging him not to be fooled by Greenpeace and stating more research is needed before taking hasty actions like Kyoto. But looking at the list of sponsors for this letter we see that, as well as the regular group of well traveled denialists, these 60 signatories include mathematicians, economists, anthropologists, geneticists, chemists, engineers and other interesting fields hardly related to climate! Love is Hate.

And of course the IPCC consensus comes from these fine folks who are (surprise surprise) in fact the ones who work and publish papers in the climate field. Freedom is Slavery.

And of course, the article is full of many of the usual tried and not-so-true standards:

• Geological history does not support CO2's role
• Antarctic ice is growing
• Some sites show cooling
• The temperature record is unreliable
• The truth dare not be spoken

Not a very impressive presentation after all...

Sea Level in the Arctic is Falling

(Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic guide)

This article has moved to ScienceBlogs

It has also been updated and this page is still here only to preserve the original comment thread. Please visit A Few Things Ill Considered there. You may also like to view Painting With Water, Coby Beck's original fine art photography.

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth": How True? How Inconvenient?

An Inconvenient Truth

How True?

According to the climate scientists at Real Climate, Gore gets it right.

How well does the film handle the science? Admirably, I thought. It is remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research. Discussion of recent changes in Antarctica and Greenland are expertly laid out. He also does a very good job in talking about the relationship between sea surface temperature and hurricane intensity.

How Inconvenient?

Pretty much so, judging by the reaction of the Right Wing spin machine. Since they are all pretty much the same, let's pick one because he shares my last name (but no relation as far as I know!), Glenn Beck.

His reaction to the films description of the threat of rising sea levels?

This is what would happen to Shanghai. Does anybody really care? I mean, come on. Shanghai is under water. Oh, no! Who's gonna make those little umbrellas for those tropical drinks?

So much for morals. How about his take on the science?

Now, if Al Gore's projection is right about the CO2 level going as high as he says it will, then the temperature here on planet Earth will be about 400,000 degrees. We'll be the sun; we'll be the frickin sun. But that's a huge "if."

(It's huge alright, but I have another idea of just what it is...)

Since he proves to be no match for the message, what does he think of the messenger?

See, when you take a little bit of truth and then you mix it with untruth, or your theory, that's where you get people to believe. You know? It's like Hitler. Hitler said a little bit of truth, and then he mixed in "and it's the Jews' fault." That's where things get a little troublesome, and that's exactly what's happening.

Too bad the beltway pundits don't respect Godwin's Law, think of all the extra-strength aspirin we could save.

Of course, RC's endorsement is swamped by crap like Glenn Beck's, but for myself, until I can get to see it, I will take the vapidity and ad hominem nature of the attacks as evidence that this film does a good job.

How to Talk to a Climate ScepticGuide and Guides, by Category

100,000 Page Views

Today or tomorrow A Few Things Ill Considered hits 100,000 page views! After about three weeks starting mid February, 2006 of being what it was designed for, a convenient place for me to keep my standard arguments handy for sci.environment threads, and with only a trickle of visitors, I was outed by RealClimate and things really took off. We currently average about 200 visitors and 700 page views per day (no, not google numbers but enough to get a good kick out of it!).

Notable and flattering mentions since then include:

• BBC's Science and Nature section
• The Sierra Club (also here)
• The World Changing blog

and a bunch of the "in crowd" of blogs that discuss climate science, such as Stoat (the first one, thanks William, but does my abbreviation in your blogroll have to be "Ill"? : ), Deltoid, DesmogBlog, and quite a few others that I don't know or don't have time to read - or can't think of right now. The How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic guide comes up in blogs in at least 5 languages!

A Few Things Ill Considered continues to be very well placed strategically in the google searches, catching people looking for "global warming is a big hoax" or "hockey stick fraud" or "volcanoes emit more co2" or "global warming stopped in 1998" etc! (See here for a run down). I like to think a few souls have been saved!

Thanks for all who visit and especially those who comment, there have been some very good threads.

Guides, by Category

To Pump or not to Pump

(Not Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic guide)

Well, high oil prices apparently can bring up some pretty funny issues, like should self service stations be illegal or not! Apparently they are in New Jersey and Oregon, despite ongoing efforts to remove those laws. (Shouldn't the Church of the Free Market have some 'splainin to do about that one?)

Some news items, like this, are humorous on their own, but leave it to the Daily Show to put it under the Laughascope and reveal just a little bit more...

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=70225

BTW, has anyone out there actually been attacked by wild dogs while pumping your own gas?

Some Sites Show Cooling

(Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic guide)

This article has moved to ScienceBlogs

It has also been updated and this page is still here only to preserve the original comment thread. Please visit A Few Things Ill Considered there. You may also like to view Painting With Water, Coby Beck's original fine art photography.

Observations Show Climate Sensitivity Is Not Very High

(Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic guide)

This article has moved to ScienceBlogs

It has also been updated and this page is still here only to preserve the original comment thread. Please visit A Few Things Ill Considered there. You may also like to view Painting With Water, Coby Beck's original fine art photography.

Arguing with Old Data

Having become a bit fed up with people citing 6 year old MSU data from http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature/ , I decided to send the following email to the persons named at the bottom of that page:

Responsible Official: Dr. James E. Arnold (jim.arnold @ msfc.nasa.gov)

Page Curator: Paul J. Meyer paul.meyer @ msfc.nasa.gov)

Dear Sirs,

I am a concerned citizen in the global warming issue and participate in discussions of this topic on several blogs, including RealClimate and my own, and some usenet groups.
I am writing to you regarding this web page:
http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature/

Which contains for example this quote:
"The lower tropospheric data are often cited as evidence against global warming, because they have as yet failed to show any warming trend when averaged over the entire Earth"
This page is frequently cited by people still insisting that GW is not happening, they ignore the "last update" date on the page and are unaware or uninterested in the very recent reanalysis that is in agreement with the surface records and the model predictions.

I think this page, being very "top level" and not clear in its outdated historical nature has become a disservice to the public, causing confusion and becoming misinformation.

What are the chances of having this page either modified appropriately, updated with newer findings or simply removed?

Thank you for your attention.

Coby Beck
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-talk-to-global-warming-sceptic.html

It remains to be seen if we can get some action.

[update: bounce message: jim.arnold@msfc.nasa.gov: User unknown]