A Few Things Ill Considered

A layman's take on the science of Global Warming featuring a guide on How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

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Advocates and Vested Interests

A common argument for someone concerned about the danger of Global Warming when faced with the hollow authority of a Fred Singer or a Patrick Michaels is to point out that they receive money from oil industry clients. This money supports their work, allows them to purchase public attention and it is money that comes from people or organizations that have a vested interest in denying the problem at hand and otherwise preventing any action to mitigate it.

I think it is better to address the many weaknesses in their arguments and highlight the many lies they have put their names to in the past, but it still strikes me as a reasonable point to bring up. Scientists are people after all, and people will lie for money. Fair enough.

Now it so happens that I have frequently heard the counter accusation, that the research that supports Global Warming is somehow funded by Greenpeace or the Sierra Club and is therefore similarily suspect. Again, the science should stand or fall on its own, but these debates sometimes, shall we say, stray a bit from the scientific topics (hard to believe, isn't it?). Now, this is clearly not the case. The research is coming from the likes of NASA's GISS. I suppose environmental organizations might hire scientists as consultants from time to time and maybe they actually do commision some special research on a particular special issue every now and then. But clearly, the big names in climate science do not depend on any particular environmental group or lobby, they work for universities and governments by and large.

But what if they did, would this then be an equivalence? I don't think so.

Roger Pielke Jr has just done a post on Prometheus comparing the recent kafuffle with Phil Cooney to a situation that he describes with Susan Hassol. Phil Cooney recall went from being a lawyer for the American Petroleum Institute, to being a White House staffer, where he edited out urgency and certainty from scientific reports on Global Warming, to a consulting job with Exxon Mobil. Susan Hassol is working now as a consultant for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program while at the same time is the writer for a film advocating action on Global Warming that is funded by unspecified environmental groups. Seems pretty flimsy to me.

But there is a fundamental difference aside from job particulars etc.

The difference lies in the often conflated meanings of what it means to have a vested interest and what it means to be an advocate. Clearly, Exxon Mobil has a vested interest in the GW debate, its revenue stream comes directly from the cause of CO2 pollution. But is it fair to say that environmental groups have some kind of vested interest? I don't think so. They have a position, a bias perhaps and they are advocates but this is not the same thing as a vested interest. There is no profit, no material gain for them in people reducing CO2 emissions, unless you consider a healthy environment a material gain (which I do, but then we all have that vested interest, don't we?). Why would they want a scientist to lie about a phoney environmental threat? And there are plenty of real ones out there after all, if you want to entertain the notion that they need the work.

I think this is why Michael Crichton's State of Fear is so ridiculously implausible, we have to believe there is huge wealth and power at stake for the environmentalists, so much that greed and ego drive them to lie, manipulate and even kill. It just doesn't pass the sniff test.

In the meantime, ExxonMobil just gave its CEO a whopping $400 million retirement package.

That doesn't quite pass either.

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Friday, April 21, 2006

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Some Happy Thoughts (For a Change)

It seems that a response to that recent "what warming?" open letter to Stephen Harper has been published by the CBC, at least on the web. This one is clearly from the reality based community!

See here for the article, which does link as well to this .pdf of the letter. It has 90 signatures, more than the 60 from the other. Jennifer Marohasy asks disingenously: is 60 better than 90?

Well it depends who they are. I'm sure you could find 90 people with PhD's to sign just about anything (60 has been done, as we saw already!). I did however note the following things about these 90 signatories, all of which are a contrast to that other letter's 60 signatories:
  • they are all from Canadian institutions
  • they are all working in climate science fields
  • they are unfamiliar names to me (i.e. busy doing their jobs rather than op-eds and Fox News interviews)

I think that is significant and commendable.

And for the laugh half of the laugh or cry choice we all face trying to debate science with people who long ago left the reality-based community, I invite you to view this message from The Blue Men.

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Thursday, April 20, 2006

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Scientists Aren't Even Sure

(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.

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Wednesday, April 19, 2006

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Update on Oh Canada

I noted in an earlier post a rather disgraceful open letter to Prime Minister Steven Harper from 60 "accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines".

Well, it seems at least one of the signatories, Dr. Gordon E. Swaters, says he was tricked into signing! He does not doubt that climate change is real and he is recanting and wishing he had never signed "that damn petition".

These professional denialists are a nasty, tricksy, wicked, wicked bunch!

(from a post on DesmogBlog.com noticed via a RealClimate comment)

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Monday, April 17, 2006

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No Past, No Present

(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.

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Saturday, April 15, 2006

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But The Glaciers Are Not Melting

(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.

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Friday, April 14, 2006

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The US Is a Net CO2 Sink

(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.

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Wednesday, April 12, 2006

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It's the Sun, Stupid

(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.

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Tuesday, April 11, 2006

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Warming Stopped in 1998

(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.

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Monday, April 10, 2006

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Fun on Usenet

Okay, it's generally a waste of time, but sometimes reading contrarian arguments on alt.global-warming pays off with a good belly laugh!

The latest proof that Global Warming is a hoax? This headline: "US Remains in Ice Age's Grip" posted by Ray "Loopey" Lopez.

The subtle flaw in the argument? It is a movie review of Ice Age: The Meltdown! Better luck next time, Ray.

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High Sticking?

An interesting story from the Society of Environmental Journalists, called "Has Balance Warped the Truth?" (internal, non-framed link) all about the Wall Street Journal, Steve McIntyre and Joe Barton's investigation into the Hockey Stick. Worth a read for some insight into the human attitudes behind the machine.

Sometimes I read or listen to a news report and wonder who do they think they are kidding, who are they writing this for? In the case of this poorly researched and severly biased Wall Street Journal article discussed in the above article, I think it was written specifically for Joe Barton.

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Sunday, April 09, 2006

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The Models Don't Have Clouds

(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.

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Friday, April 07, 2006

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Position Statements Hide Debate

(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.

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Thursday, April 06, 2006

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Oh Canada

Today's Financial Post has run an open letter to the Prime Minister of Canada. You can read it online here. It is an embarrassment. (I heard about it here, FWIW, fairly deep into the comments)

Amongst all the hand waves that strike me as completely detached from reality, two things stuck out:

"Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future."
and

"It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. "
The first, about the models, is hard to argue as they do not specify what observations they think do not fit the models. I am frankly not aware of any serious contradictions. It is likely this is an oblique reference to James Hansen's 1988 testimony and Patrick Micheals' subsequent perjury about it to the US congress in 1998. I have debunked that persistent urban legend here. It could also be a reference to satellite readings of upper and mid tropospheric warming. However last year, Spencer and Christy re-did this anaysis yet again after uncovering further errors and now the warming trend they found is in fact in agreement with model predictions. That was a big blow to the "What warming?" crowd. You can read some detail and see some references here.
(I note that Roy Spencer is one of the signatories, he at least should know what his own results are.)

The second quote about predictions from the 70's is also an urban legend (I'm being kind, many if not most of the people signing to that should know it for the lie it is, especially as they have it stated).

I am not generally a believer in arguments from authority or attacks on other's credentials, scientific arguments must stand on their own. However, this letter, as I said above, is one big hand wave with nothing specific or substantive to address, so I feel justified to note that most of the signatories are not climate scientists and it includes the usual batch of sceptical political economists and the regular cast of denialists for hire: Micheals, Baliunas, Singer, Peiser, Jaworowski, Essex and McKitrick.

There some demonstrable liars in there.

Some other standards:

Sorry, that letter is garbage.

[Please see this important update!]

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Hansen Has Been Wrong Before

(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.

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Historically CO2 Never Causes Temperature Change

(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.

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Monday, April 03, 2006

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The Modelers Won't Tell Us How Confident the Models Are

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

Objection:
There is no indication of how much confidence we should have in the models. How are we supposed to know if it is a serious prediction or just a wild guess?

This is a pretty sure indicator your objector hasn't ever looked at an actual climate model prediction.

Answer:
There is indeed a lot of uncertainty in what the future will be, but this is not all because of an imperfect understanding of how the climate works. A large part of it is simply not knowing how the human race will react to this danger and/or how the world economy will develope. Since these factors control what emissions of CO2 will accumulate in the atmosphere, which in turn influences the temperature, there is really no way for a climate model to predict what the future will be.

What modelers can do, however, is talk about and estimate the climate's sensitivity to CO2, usually in terms of how high the temperature will rise given a doubling of CO2. See the Real Climate glossary entry for climate sensitivity.

So how much certainty is there? This varies from model to model but typically a projection is given as a most likely temperature together with a range that encompasses all the likely values. In the IPCC report "likely" is defined as a 70% probability. If you want a specific number and range, you must chose a specific scenario of emissions over time and a specific model. The IPCC does note that:

The globally averaged surface temperature is projected to increase by 1.4 to 5.8°C over the period 1990 to 2100. These results are for the full range of 35 SRES scenarios, based on a number of climate models.

But what about the certainty of this summary of model predictions? Well, a recent paper by James Annan et al. has attempted to clarify this question by statistically combining the certainties of a wide variety of models in a variety of situations. Focusing on climate sensitivity, they conclude that in terms of the climate's response to a doubling of CO2, the model's say:

"The resulting distribution can be represented by (1.7,2.9,4.9) in the format used throughout this paper. That is to say, it has a maximum likelihood value of 2.9oC, and, using the IPCC terminology for confidence levels, we find a likely range of 2.2-3.9oC (70% confidence) and a very likely range of 1.7-4.9oC (95%). We can also state that climate sensitivity is very likely to lie below 4.5oC(95%). These results represent a substantial decrease in uncertainty over those originally presented in NAS [1979] and in subsequent research. They also imply that the sensitivity range of modern GCMs (2.1-4.4oC) is likely to include the correct value (with greater than 80% confidence)"

So, most likely value is 2.9oC with a 95% probability of falling between 1.7oC and 4.9oC.

There is a summary and discussion of this paper at Real Climate.

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