Dishonest premises from Ross McKitrick at WUWT and the Cato Institute

Today at the conspiracy blog WUWT I came across another copy and paste from Anthony Watts. This time it was an article by Ross McKitrick (archived here) that he seems to have first posted at the conspiracy tank the Cato Institute.

Ross McKitrick is a climate disinformer from way back. He wants Donald Trump to pull out of the Paris Agreement so that he and his mates can continue to wreck the planet. He disgusts me.

Disinformers will happily promote the fallacy that because we probably can't reduce global surface temperatures easily by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, we shouldn't even try to slow the rise, let alone stop them rising. These people are clearly genocidal. The Cato Institute, Ross McKitrick and Anthony Watts can't wait for the world to burn at 2, 3, 4 or more degrees Celsisus above pre-industrial. (They are doing what they can to get it to 12 C to kill all our descendants.)

As you probably know, the Paris Agreement is aimed at keeping the rise in global temperature to 2 C above pre-industrial, and preferably at 1.5 C. It's not all that likely (but still worth trying for) that we'll make 2 C, let alone 1.5 C. As Ross says, Pruitt, who now runs the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA), is busy wrecking the environment, and Ross McKitrick is urging him on. What the current US government and President are doing will make it harder to stay safe. On the other hand, there is also a lot happening in the USA that is going to help, despite the efforts of the world destroyers who are currently "in charge".

I like visiting Earth but I don't want to live there with Ross McKitrick @wattsupwiththat

Ross McKitrick on Earth's destruction.
Image source: Wikipedia

Earth Hour was last night here where I live. It's one hour of the year when we can remind ourselves that we are part of a wonderful world. Whether you turn off your lights or not, Earth Hour is a reminder that our continued existence depends on all other living things on the planet. It's one hour of our lives when we can think about how everything on our planet is inextricably linked - from oxygen-giving forests to the life-sustaining water cycle. From the smallest microbe to the largest whale.

Every year for Earth Hour, Anthony Watts has an article protesting the fact that we are only able to survive in harmony with nature. He loathes the fact that his existence depends on nature. This year was no exception. In keeping with the fact that he only very rarely writes anything himself, Anthony lazily copied and pasted a protest by Ross McKitrick (archived here). Here's a quote:

I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization with all its tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.

The ultimate cherry pick - or how not to interpret a temperature chart, courtesy WUWT

They say a picture tells a thousand words. Is this the ultimate cherry pick?

19 years of pause and 17 years of rapid warming.
Data source: Wood for Trees Charts: WUWT and HotWhopper

Some context

Anthony Watts wrote about a paper by Ross McKitrick (whose name Anthony mis-spelled). It was published in some obscure statistics journal (with zero impact factor), in which Ross set out to "prove" that global warming "paused" 19 years ago. To illustrate, Anthony put up the above chart.

No, not both of them.  Guess which one was Anthony's :)  And I can cherry-pick too, can't I?

He said that Ross McKitrick didn't help him. Anthony Watts was able to come up with that chart all by himself. It's ironic that the abstract that Anthony posted included this sentence about cherry-picking endpoints:

Here, I propose a method for estimating the duration of the hiatus that is robust to unknown forms of heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation (HAC) in the temperature series and to cherry-picking of endpoints.

If you need it, here's a link explaining heteroskedasticity and Tamino discussing autocorrelation, plus more here.

Here's another chart, this time of GISTemp looking at global surface temperatures over the past few decades.

Data source: NASA GISTemp

I wonder if Tamino will bother to take on Ross McKitrick's latest effort?

From the WUWT comments

This first one is priceless. I'm guessing that it's a dig at Anthony's effort, but you can never tell. Lucius von Steinkaninchen  wrote:

September 1, 2014 at 10:26 am
Perhaps eventually we will reach the conclusion that “the pause” extends to the 70s and “global warming” never existed to begin with.

The stats is beyond me, however it mightn't be beyond Greg who says:

September 1, 2014 at 11:23 am
So he uses a method that requires that the data be trend stationary to show that the trend is not statationary but is lower during the 19y ‘pause’.
Seems to have lost something in translation. :?

Tony Brown prefers the word "plateau". climatereason wrote:

September 1, 2014 at 11:56 am
Its an ‘averaged’ pause as clearly the temperatures have moved both ways during the period so ‘pause’ is perhaps not a worthwhile matrix. . Eyeballing it I would say the first 10 years of the 19 year graph is rather variable whilst the second 9 year period is much more constant and would surely merit the term ‘plateau’
tonyb

Luverly! Judith Curry supports "the GWPF objectives"

Oh, this is just luverly!  Judith Curry today:

In the midst of all this noise I wasn’t sure what GWPF was all about.  Now I have a better idea, and I certainly support their objectives.

Weirdly, Judith implies that she did no investigation before effectively endorsing the GWPF by writing a foreword to a report of theirs.

Nigel Lawson offers a sample of "what the GWPF" is all about, which I expect would delight Judith Curry, knowing her views on the IPCC.  And I wonder would Judith agree with GWPF Director Benny Peiser who seemed to be suggesting that we might be heading for an ice age?

Do you reckon she's angling for a job on the GWPF's Academic Advisory Council with science deniers: Bob Carter and William Happer and Richard Lindzen and Ross McKitrick and Ian Plimer and Matt Ridley and Nir Shaviv and Henrik Svensmark and David Whitehouse and others?

What's next? An endorsement of James Delingpole, interpreter of interpretations?

(It's more likely she's angling for a job with the GWPF's US cousin, the Heartland Institute.)

The Evangelical Science Denier and the Alarmist Fundamentalist Religious Cult: The Cornwall Alliance

I wrote an article on David Legates' denial of science a few hours ago.  I've been told that David rejects science on quasi-religious grounds.  He is a member of a cult called the Cornwall Alliance.

David Legates apparently rejects even more aspects of climate science than does Roy Spencer.  Based on his article from yesterday, David rejects the greenhouse effect.  The things they have in common are that they are both employed as climate scientists and are both members of an evangelical quasi-religious cult in the USA called the Cornwall Alliance.  Based on their published material, this cult is a mixture of fundamentalist christianity, alarmist economics, pseudo-science, opposition to mainstream climate science and more than a hint of sexism (and suggestive of more deviant thinking).  It assumes male supremacy and that men were put on earth to plunder as they please.  Only in the USA, home of the weird and wacky.

A Mission to Reject Science

These chaps on their evangelical mission are not shy about using their "god" to distort and misrepresent the science.  It appears to be the very reason they formed their cult.  To promote disinformation about climate science and oppose any attempts to mitigate global warming. They are up front in their rejection of climate science.  They have an Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming which states in part:

We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. 

Now I've got no beef with anyone who wants to go to their temple or church or mosque or synagogue or wherever on whatever day of the week.  I do have a beef with people who create a false god so they can hide behind "him" (their image of god has to be male) and use that false image of a god to spread lies about important matters of science and  economics.  I also have a real beef with people who fake concern for "poor" people in less developed countries as an excuse for their evangelism.

The "holier than thou" attitude expressed in the cult's writings comes across to me as a sickening perversion.  Their quasi-religion smacks of "world view" and christian fundamentalism of the worst kind.  It's not about charity or hope.  It's about preserving their own personal status quo.  It is raw hypocrisy.

Alarmists of the Cornwall Alliance

Here are some examples of the alarmist ideas that these guys (and they are all men) promote.  They "believe" that progressively shifting to a clean energy economy over the next few decades will:

• destroy millions of jobs.
• cost trillions of dollars in lost economic production.
• slow, stop, or reverse economic growth.
• reduce the standard of living for all but the elite few who are well positioned to benefit from laws that unfairly advantage them at the expense of most businesses and all consumers.
• endanger liberty by putting vast new powers over private, social, and market life in the hands of national and international governments.
• condemn the world’s poor to generations of continued misery characterized by rampant disease and premature death.

How's that for alarmism.  Not only do they provide no evidence but they hold on fast to these convictions in the face of evidence to the contrary. 

World view drives their rejection of science and alarmist economics

These evangelists are up front that they reject science and promote alarmist economics because of their world view and religion.  It's got nothing to do with scientific facts or real world economics.  They state quite openly that:

Our examination of theology, worldview, and ethics (Chapter One) finds that global warming alarmism wrongly views the Earth and its ecosystems as the fragile product of chance, not the robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting product of God’s wise design and powerful sustaining. 

They reckon they can do whatever they like and their god will save them.  Fundamentalism in its pure form.

The fact that they refer to mainstream science, such as the greenhouse effect, as "global warming alarmism" puts them in the 8% Dismissives category of the Yale Project.  On the other hand, the fact that some of this motley lot of evangelicals have managed to wangle their way into positions where they have some influence, where they can chew the ear of politicians of dubious character, makes them not far removed from the description of "scumbucket" authority figures of Robert Altemeyer's Right Wing Authoritarians. ("Scumbuckets" take on the role of authority figures that Right Wing Authoritarians follow for support against their perceived persecution by formal authority, such as government.)

Anthony Watts is one of the people who promotes disinformation from these evangelical religious science deniers.  The Auditor, Steve McIntyre, who obsesses about things of which he has little understanding and no experience, has partnered with Ross McKitrick, a member of the Cornwall Alliance.  (One of Anthony Watts' attack dogs, Rev Richard S Courtney aka richardscourtney, is also a member of the Cornwall Alliance.)

The type of evangelism practiced by this crowd is typical US-style christian fundamentalism.  It places man (not woman) as second only to their god in the order of things and talks of subduing everything to "man's" desires.  It is sybaritic in nature.  The world is there for "man" to plunder.  In case any one of them feels a twinge of remorse for their greed and selfishness, they hide behind their god, telling themselves that's why their god created them.  They wrote their own rules to justify their crusade of disinformation.  The words peppered throughout their quasi-religious texts are highly suggestive, like "subdue" and "rule".  For example:

Human beings have the divine mandate to multiply and to fill, subdue, and rule the Earth, transforming it from wilderness into garden. They act as stewards under God to cultivate and guard what they subdue and rule. 

Yes, it's hard to believe this is the twenty first century.  It sounds like something from one of the less enlightened ages in the distant past.  One can imagine them burning witches and riding off to the crusades.  Actually, while I can imagine them burning witches I think they'd be the ones sending foot soldiers to battle rather than going off to fight in the trenches themselves.  Their writing smacks of elitism and a sense of righteous authority.  It's right up there with the McCarthyism of the 1950s and more recently, Inhofe and Cuccinelli wanting to prosecute scientists, viewing them as criminals.

I'm tolerant of people having their own religious beliefs and practicing whatever rituals makes them feel good.  I prefer they do it privately but I'm not intolerant of public displays or missions, provided they stick to their god thing and spirituality or peering into crystals or tarot cards or whatever.

What I'm much less tolerant of is people using their religion to mess with politics, education and science.

What I have no tolerance for is people who make up a false image of a god as an excuse for their crusade to spread disinformation.  Who hide behind their made-up god and make emotive appeals to the worst side of human nature (greed, selfishness, envy) or prey on the innate good in people (think of the starving millions) to promote their lies about straightforward mainstream science and economics.

Is climate disinformer Ross McKitrick dishonest or dumb?

I admit some reluctance in writing this article because I find it hard to believe anyone, even Ross McKitrick, could get it so wrong.  So if anyone finds a flaw in my interpretation, don't hesitate to sing out.  The article I'm writing about is archived here.

Ross McKitrick is an economist who spends time undermining climate science.  As far as I can make out, he sees his job as to try to persuade governments and people to rush headlong off a cliff.  The purpose is not clear. The motives for the immoral behaviour don't really matter.  The fact that it's immoral is enough.

Ross McKitrick is either intellectually challenged when it comes to matters scientific or dishonest.  Since he has an academic background I'll leave it to the reader to make up their own mind.

Today he's written another very silly article and managed to get it published on a very silly Canadian website (archived here).  It's all part of the various attempts by science deniers to get out their denier memes in advance of the IPCC report at the end of this month.

Ross McKitrick's put up a flawed chart from what is said to be an early working draft of the soon-to-be-released first volume of the IPCC report.  The chart shows projections of surface temperature with an overlay of the global surface temperature anomaly.  The chart itself is flawed as Tamino explains:

The flaw is this: all the series (both projections and observations) are aligned at 1990. But observations include random year-to-year fluctuations, whereas the projections do not because the average of multiple models averages those out. Using a single-year baseline (1990) offsets all subsequent years by the fluctuation of that baseline year. Instead, the projections should be aligned to the value due to the existing trend in observations at 1990.

Aligning the projections with a single extra-hot year makes the projections seem too hot, so observations are too cool by comparison. This is indeed a mistake — it would be just as much a mistake to align the projections with a single extra-cool year (like 1992), which would make the projections too cool and observations too hot by comparison.

Reading Tamino further, the projections should start about 0.1 degree lower to be in line with the trend.

Ross McKitrick is trying to tell his readers that the observed temperature is about to pop out of those bounds and therefore there is nothing to worry about.  Ross won't convince anyone but deniers that he's "right" about there being nothing to worry about.  That's why I say he's not doing a very good job.

The reason I say Ross is intellectually challenged when it comes to matter scientific is this.  He writes:

The IPCC graph shows that climate models predicted temperatures should have responded by rising somewhere between about 0.2 and 0.9 degrees C over the same period (from 1990). But the actual temperature change was only about 0.1 degrees, and was within the margin of error around zero. In other words, models significantly over-predicted the warming effect of CO2 emissions for the past 22 years.

First of all, if the observed temperature anomaly was within the margin of error, then the models can't be said to have "significantly over-predicted the warming".  As well as that, here's an animation showing where Ross's "should be" rise of 0.9 degrees from 1990 would put the observations:

The black bar shows the AR4 model range (brown range) for the last year of observations on the chart. I've also indicated where the bottom of the range would be if the modeled projections were properly aligned.  Then I've added where Ross McKitrick says the top range should be, with his 0.9 degrees above the 1990 temperature, which would make it around 1.2 degrees.  As you can see Ross's not just a little bit out, he's out by a huge margin.  Even without aligning the modeled projections properly, Ross's "should be" is much further away from the AR4 mean than the actual observations are.

Ross's 0.2 degrees higher than 1990 would bring the temperature up to plus 0.5 degrees, which is above the mid-point of the AR4 projection without even aligning the models properly - as seen below.  So he's way out with the bottom of his "should be" range as well:  Corrected - thanks to Lars Karlsson :)

Thing is, one has to be careful with using particular data points.  It's the trend that matters. Ross McKitrick should know better.  Either he does know better and he's a paid disinformer or he's stupid.

Anthony hasn't published this one yet.  I wonder if he will.  He must be finding it hard to choose between all the silly attempts by denialists with all their different spins on something that has yet to be finalised and released.

Note: I initially thought the author of the article was Pat Michaels.  It's actually Ross McKitrick.  And no-one noticed - which just goes to show all science deniers look the same.  Hard to tell them apart  :)