An Easy 100,000 Dollars?

... or a fool and their 15$ parted?

I see via Deltoid that JunkScience is offering $100,000US for anyone who can prove the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. The problems?

• there is no such thing as proof in these kinds of scientific theories
• JunkScience explicitly states they are the sole and subjective arbiter of all terms and conclusions
• they want proof of the difference in global social, economic and environmental effects between two possible futures 100 years away!

I don't think they even take themselves seriously, it is just a cheap way to provide another shallow talking point.

Real Science Journalism

(via fellow Vancouverites DesmogBlog)

Tony Jones does an excellent job of exposing the fraud that is Albert Einstein....er, I mean Martin Durkin (I always get those two mixed up!), the producer of The Great Global Warming Swindle. You can watch his entire interview on YouTube in two parts, embedded below.

Suffice it to say, you won't ever hear this kind of reality based journalism on US mainstream news programs.

Monbiot's Final Response to Alexander Cockburn

George Monbiot calls it quits with a final response in his ongoing debate with Alexander Cockburn. Cockburn finally produced his "references" and of course it is not scientific publication, it is the usual frequently debunked bunk. It is also completely devoid of logical argument and is instead a laudry list of opinion from the usual suspects.

The whole exchange is archived here.

Dramatic and Emphatic National Academies Statement

Michael Tobis has been stamping his feet quite a bit since a few days ago about the recent publication of a new Joint Statement of the National Academies [PDF] of all the G8 countries.

Why? Because it is both emphatic in nature and invisible to the press. He highlights these four points:

• "Our present energy course is not sustainable."
• "Responding to this demand while minimizing further climate change will need all the determination and ingenuity we can muster."
• "The problem is not yet insoluble but becomes more difficult with each passing day."
• "G8 countries bear a special responsibility for the current high level of energy consumption and the associated climate change. Newly industrialized countries will share this responsibility in the future."

It is hard not to see it as an urgent call to action (these are scientists, remember) so Tobis wonders out loud why no one seems to be talking about it. Good question.

Monbiot: Response to Alexander Cockburn's articles

George Monbiot has another article in response to Alexander Cockburn's recent articles attacking the theory of anthropogenic global warming on Counter Punch and The Nation. It is a good shredding of the usual "corruption" charges leveled at the entire field of working climatologists.

ZMag has a nice one-stop shop for all the relevant links.

Swindled

RealClimate explains why UK TV Channel Four's recent "documentary" "The Great Global Warming Swindle" is actually self describing in its title, rather like the Junk Science website. For a revolting glimpse into how they get scientific voices to support their falsehoods read a letter to the station from one of their scientist interviewees. Money quote here:

Never before, however, have I had an experience like this one. My appearance in the "Global Warming Swindle" is deeply embarrasing, and my professional reputation has been damaged. I was duped

Sad, really. Reminds me of one of the "60 climate scientists" who signed that letter to the PM of Canada, he too said he was duped.

Inhofe on Larry King

Senator James Inhofe debates Senator Barbara Boxer about global warming on Larry King. Larry King is still seeking that impartial balance between reality and idiocy.

Inhofe trotts out all his favorites:

• mitigation = economic disaster
• there is no consensus
• 17,000 scientists disagree
• the Summary for Policymakers is written by politicians (para 5)
• these same people said we would all die in an ice age a few years ago

I fear rumors of the climate change debate's death may have been greatly exagerated. Guys like this will be around for quite a while.

Why do they have to do that?

"Methane fireballs tear across the sky"

Believe it or not, that is a quote from the Independent, not about the sequel to The Day After Tomorrow but about the latest IPCC Summary for Policymakers. Rabett Run has more. That is even more ridiculous than "global warming is a socialist hoax".

Why do they have to say things like that? It makes James Inhofe sound reasonable. And that's no small feat!

"Nation in a Deep Freeze: What Global Warming?"

Words of wisdom from Faux News. Never mind the basic illogic, due to an El Nino and continued greenhouse gas forcing of the global climate, 2007 is likely to be the warmest year yet on record.

New Weekly Feature

As an effort to save a baby from some bathwater, I have asked Harvey E. Taylor for permission to reproduce his weekly Global Warming News Roundup (that's the baby) that he posts regularily to usenet's sci.environment (that'd be the bathwater). As he has kindly agreed, I am pleased to announce that starting this week, A Few Things Ill Considered will be posting HET's lengthy summary of the week's Global Warming news.

There is probably more material each week than anyone out there will be able to read, but at least scanning the headlines will keep you up to date on what is new and important in the science, politics, and blogosphere of Global Warming.

Enjoy!

Getting our heads out of the hot, hot sand

(Guest post from Lisa T, who is involved with the film The Great Warming, and is trying to keep us up to date with this project)

E&ETV's acclaimed "On Point" show featured a webTV interview with The Great Warming producers today, to find out what they hope to accomplish with their documentary and coalition as the November elections approach.

Filmmakers Mike Taylor and Karen Coshof argue that while global warming and climate change are deadly serious issues, individuals, businesses, religious and secular groups and governments CAN make a difference if we all act fast, although as Coshof puts it in the interview, "the key word is fast!"

You can check out the interview at OnPoint, and join the broad-based coalition's "Call to Action," get voter tips and resources or adopt a theater for a screening at www.thegreatwarming.com

There’s also a new story on the religious green component of the film and coalition that’s been picked up by more than 70 media outlets. You can see it at Reuters AlertNet site.

The Great Warming

There is an interesting looking documentary on Global Warming due for release soon in the US, in time for the November elections. It is called The Great Warming, and looks like it will be quite good.
Via a comment here from Lisa T who is involved in the film:

The documentary was produced in Canada (shot partly in BC) and released in 2004 as a 3-part series on Discovery Canada and on Canal D in Quebec. There was a lot of clamour on the website for a US release, but the big networks told us "environment is too depressing for TV" (which may be one reason not much has improved here...). PBS ultimately released a short version last year called "Global Warming: The Signs + the Science".

THIS film is the culmination of all that, with a stronger activist voice, updated science content, inclusion of the faith-based green movement-- and a revisit of Louisiana, where every interviewee in 2002 predicted devastation on a Katrina scale. That part is infuriating, but worth seeing.

The website will give you a pretty good idea of the film (it's also gorgeously shot), and the link to the Call to Action coalition should go live Monday. If you like what you see, we'd appreciate anything you can do to spread the word - we don't have Al Gore's budget!

They don't have Al Gore's budget, but they do have Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morrisette!

Back From Australia

Well, as you may or may not have noticed, this blog has been pretty quiet, the last post being almost a month ago. That is not due to lack of interesting events, rather to my being away for a business trip in Australia. Tasmania to be more precise.

Now, while considering what to post next, a rather cheap shot from Roger Pielke Jr has given me that elusive motivation strong enough to overcome the inertia of the long silence.

So the subject of the post is the question I posed in the comments section of a recent Real Climate post.

Is it wrong to be pleased that the American people seem to have really awoken to the danger of Global Warming due to this summer's extreme heatwave and last year's hurricane season? The problem being that no individual storm can be directly attributed to global climate change and this summer's heat wave can't either and we will undoubtably still see some extreme cold snaps, record setting even, in the warming-or-not future.

Global Warming is a grave concern and large protions of the US public, being so susceptible to the accidental genius of the American propaganda machine, have long held its existence in doubt, believing there to be no conclusive scientific evidence yet available. This is not the reality. Now along comes a tremendous storm (not even so tremendous, Katrina was Category 3 at landfall) and suddenly people seem to believe Global Warming is here and now.

And this is the reality.

But Katrina was not proof of that, nor was this summer's heat wave. Not even the record warmth of 2005 can be claimed as "proof", proof does not exist in this kind of science, one must look at the balance of the evidence. So the public has come to believe in a reality through faulty reasoning.

Is it wrong to accept this state of affairs with gratitude? How hard should one try to stamp out that misconception, that Katrina is clear evidence that Global Warming is here? As I stated in my comment (link above), I would not say it, and will correct people who say it to me, but I don't feel any urge to go out of my way to stamp it out.

Is that wrong?

(An interesting article on distinguishing Hurricane Katrina from Catastrophe Katrina here.)

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

Cross Indexing Brainstorm

Development of the How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic guide is about to resume. I think I have so far covered most of the low hanging fruit that is out there, but there are clearly alot of arguments still to make against the swarm of objections still swirling, some silly but necessary, some a bit more sophisticated and indeed some with merit.

One thing stopping me at the moment is a concern that it is already a bit cumbersome to quickly find the needed rebuttal of the moment.

I like the "Guides by Category" well enough, but it is divided up too coarsely. There are also perhaps better ways to categorize things. But rather than trying to find the "best" way to subdivide topics I want to present as many different ways as feasible to chop it all up and let people chose their preference, perhaps using a different one depending on the target argument.

So this is a call for help. What works for you? How would you divide things up? Below are the categories and subcategories I have come up with so far so you can see what I mean.

Stages of Denial

• We Don't Understand Climate
  
  • Prediction is Impossible
  • Climate is Chaotic
  • We Lack Certainty
  • There is no Consensus
• The Climate Isn't Changing
  
  • There is Contradictory Evidence
  • There is Insufficient Evidence
• Climate Change is Not Our Fault
  
  • CO2 is Not the Cause
  • It Has Happened Before
  • It's a Natural Change
• Climate Change is Not Harmful
  
  • The Effects are Minor
  • The Effects Are Good
  • Change is Natural
• Climate Change Can't Be Stopped
  
  • It's Too Late Now
  • It's Someone Else's Problem
  • It is Economically Infeasible

Scientific Topics

• Atmosphere
• Oceans
• Temperature Change
• Modeling
  • Uncertainties
  • Scenarios
• Extreme Events
  • Hurricanes
  • Temperature Records
  • Droughts
• Climate Forcings
  • Solar Influences
  • Greehouse Gases
  • Aerosols
• Paleoclimate
  
  • Holocene
  • Ice Ages
  • Geologic History
• Cryosphere
  
  • Ice Sheets
  • Sea Ice
  • Glaciers
  • Permafrost

Argument Types

• Uniformed
• Misinformed
• Political
• Economic
• FUD
• Dodges
• Underdog Theories
• Crackpottery
• Strawmen
• Cherry Picking

Levels of Sophistication

• Silly
• Naive
• Specious
• Technical

Argument Users

• CO2 Science
• Junk Science
• John-Daly
• Warwick Hughes
• Bob Carter
• Patrick Michaels
• Michael Crichton
• Richard Lindzen
• Steve Milloy

What is missing?

New Global Change Discussion Group

As I mention in the introduction to the How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic guide, I cut my teeth in the climate change debate on sci.environment and alt.global-warming. Sadly, since I arrived there in around 11/04 the signal to noise ration has dropped dramatically and the cross posting to political groups and groups with rush limbaugh in their names are a constant stream. Consequently, the number of well informed active participants has dropped.

Michael Tobis has taken some initiative in creating an alternate venue to save the baby while still chucking the bathwater. Here is the announcement in full, I hope it becomes a very active discussion venue.

ANNOUNCING MODERATED GLOBAL CHANGE DISCUSSION FORUM

• globalchange.googlegroups.com

We are creating a moderated newsgroup/mailing list for the discussionof environmental science, economics, policy and politics, especially as related to global change issues such as climate change, biodiversity,and sustainability.

The signal to noise ratio on sci.environment and similar unmoderated discussion lists has dropped to the point where it can no longer sustain interesting or informative exchanges of information and ideas.

The success of the lightly moderated discussions on the realclimate.org blog has revealed that the hunger for serious and informed discussion remains. However, blogs do not fully replicate the broad-ranging conversational style that usenet once supported even in controversy-prone areas of interest.

Fortunately, new tools allow us to recapture most of the usenet experience without going through the tedious and archaic process of setting up a "big-eight" newsgroup.

It is difficult to specify what "fair" or "unfair" moderation meanswithout getting tediously legalistic. To avoid endless haggling aboutthis, we formulate our policy thus:

• Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if ANY moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude.

We are not unanimous in our opinions, and are open to submissions from people outside the spectrum of opinion represented by the moderators.

We will endeavor to remove obvious provocations ("trolls"). We also discourage postings that are redundant, in the sense that the poster has already made their points and does not seem to take account of the responses but is merely insistently reasserting points previously made.

Whether, as a consequence of this policy, you find the list useful and interesting or otherwise is left to yourself. If you don't like our list, by all means make your own.

==== HOW TO PARTICIPATE ====

I. WEB INTERFACE

Probably the easiest way to participate is to point your browser to

• http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange/

and you can read the messages immediately. You may send submissions through the web interface, or by email to

• globalchange@googlegroups.com

Using the interface in this way does not require you to get a Google login.

"Membership" is encouraged, as it permits us to give individual participants an overall approval, reducing propagation delays and the workload of the moderators. Membership does not automatically implye mail delivery of messages. Non-members may also post but all their messages require moderation.

II. RSS FEED

It is also possible to subscribe to the newsgroup as an RSS feed. See

• http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange/feeds

for more information

III. NNTP FEED

We are in the process of setting up an NNTP feed through gmane. When it is available we will offer futher information.

IV. MAILING LIST

You can subscribe to globalchange as a mailing list, but you have to use the web to sign up. Go to

• http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange/

and click "join this group" and follow instructions. To use this approach you will need to have or set up a free google login.

If you subscribe to the email, you need not ever use the web interface or your google account again. You may send submissions by email to globalchange@googlegroups.com

PLEASE PARTICIPATE!

Looking forward to reviving the historically interesting and productive usenet-style conversations on environmental matters, we are, sincerely, your globalchange moderators:

• James Annan
• Raymond Arritt
• Coby Beck
• William Connolley
• Michael Tobis

Active Threads

I have not yet found a way to get a real listing of recent comments, so thought I would ust post this because there are a couple of active threads from old posts.

http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/kyoto-is-ineffective.html
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/action-on-global-warming-is-suicide.html

The economic ones are my least competent subects, maybe others can contribute better material...

[Update]
see here
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/whats-wrong-with-warm-weather.html
and here as well
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/01/climate-is-always-changing.html

Jim Hansen on 60 Minutes

Via Crooks and Liars, the recent 60 minutes story on Global Warming and Jim Hansen can be seen here.

Very damning evidence of political interference, very good reporting.

Talk to a Sceptic Guides, by Category