Australia's CSIRO dims the lights on climate and environment

If the article at the Sydney Morning Herald is true, then the CSIRO and Australian government have decided to dim the lights on climate science. Instead of researching climate science and climate change, the CSIRO management has decided to research how we can adapt to it.

It should not be a case of either/or. We need both.

Now applied research and development is the stock in trade of the CSIRO. That R&D organisation was established primarily for the "D" in R&D. It exists for the economic benefit of Australia. As with a lot of universities these days, it is expected to earn money through patents, licences, contracts and partnerships with industry and business. I've no problem with that. CSIRO has some very worthy successes. The problem I see is that in order for development there has to be research. Research precedes development in the R&D chain. If we don't properly understand what is happening and what is going to happen, then we won't properly understand what it is that we need to adapt to. So the question becomes - how are we going to adapt if we don't understand well enough what the future holds?

Judith Curry adopts a pet ostrich, Kip Hansen, promoting the Dozen Bright Minds Climate Workshop

After attacking scientists who push for open data, Judith Curry now wants to muzzle climate scientists. She promoted another article from a science-denying WUWT-er, who wants to restart climate science research (archived here).

Kip Hansen wants to ban monitoring of at least the following:

• global mean surface temperature
• ocean heat content
• global sea level.

He doesn't say why, but I expect that he's tired of hearing about the "hottest year on record" and the rest, and thinks that if he doesn't know what's happening it can't hurt him.

This year the Heartland Institute climate science denier fest is in Washington DC

This year the Heartland Institute's Annual Denier Fest is to be held in Washington DC. Going by Anthony Watts' headline, a lot of fake experts and climate misinformers will be presenting (archived here). All are welcome, particularly white men over 75 years of age who reject climate science, haven't been near a University science faculty in fifty years or don't know what a University science faculty is, and think that any and all climate science is a hoax.

What the Heartland Institute won't tell you

The Heartland Institute tells you what you want to hear, if you are a science denier. It won't tell you what is happening to our climates. That would be a step far too far for an extremist right wing lobby group in the USA. Instead, the Heartland Institute promises to feed you lies and half truths, from panels of fake experts, professional disinformers and anti-science bloggers.

Here is some of what the fakers from the Heartland Institute won't tell you:

Let's have a serious debate about climate...

In the HW comments recently there was been a bit of a discussion (no, not really a debate) about scientific consensus and climate.  Here's a video that should help you work through all the ifs, buts and maybes that are inherent in any climate science debate.

Over to you, John Oliver.

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Cook, John, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A. Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs, and Andrew Skuce. "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature." Environmental Research Letters 8, no. 2 (2013): 024024.doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

Science vs Policy and the ignorance of conspiracists at science-denying blogs

I admit to being surprised sometimes by the antics of science deniers and disinformers.  Anthony Watts and Judith Curry are incredibly ignorant of intergovernmental workings and don't know the difference between science and policy.

Anthony Watts today (archived here) has posted some excerpts from a document that purports to be:

SUMMARY OF THE 12TH SESSION OF WORKING GROUP I OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC) AND THIRTY-SIXTH SESSION OF THE IPCC

23-26 SEPTEMBER 2013

The document is from IISD Reporting Services.  I don't know the provenance of the summary itself (click here for pdf and html versions in English, French and Japanese), for example whether it was a formal report of the IPCC meeting or whether the summary was prepared by the IISD reporting service.  I've no reason to doubt it is a reasonable report of the IPCC meetings.  However I couldn't find anything similar on the IPCC website.

This blog post is a bit long - if you're on the home page, click here to read the rest.

A science denying fan of Monckton as Science Minister?

There is talk that Dennis Jensen is putting up his hand for the Science portfolio in the new Abbott government.  They say that people get the government they deserve but I really don't know what appalling sins the Australian people could have committed that would make them deserve such a thing.

Dennis Jensen denies science

Dennis Jensen in the Australian Federal Parliament 20 September 2011 couldn't be more clear:

I do not accept the premise of anthropogenic climate change, I do not accept that we are causing significant global warming and I reject the findings of the IPCC and its local scientific affiliates.

Dennis Jensen instead espouses the "teachings" of an eccentric entertainer

Dennis Jensen rejects science and follows the ramblings of an eccentric (being kind) entertainer from England, Monckton:

"Most of the stuff [Lord Monckton] says is entirely reasonable," Dr Jensen said.

Wow!  Just wow.  Here is a HotWhopper list of articles on Monckton's idiocy.  And click here for many more examples from Barry Bickmore.  And of course, SkepticalScience has been pointing out his silliness for years now.  Monckton even went too far for right wing blogger Andrew Bolt, in line with the Laws of Monckton.

Dennis Jensen demonstrates his ignorance of climate science

These tweets from Jensen are more examples of his ignorance.  In this first one Jensen demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the field, his notion about "models" is back to front.  The science isn't based on the models, it's the models that are based on the physics.  Science describes global warming without the need for models - including the physics of greenhouse gases and paleoclimatology.  The models are built to explore the complexities and to better explain what the long term future will bring under different scenarios.

@josh1782 @razhorses Only argument for AGW is models, nd they have not predicted stasis in last decade. So models falsified
— Dennis Jensen MP (@DennisJensenMP) June 14, 2013

Would Dennis Jensen MP really appoint James Delingpole, interpreter of interpretations to a climate hatchet job?

Jensen is a run-of-the-mill average ordinary science denier of the "climate has always changed" flavour.

Lots more here and here.

Dennis Jensen is an engineer not a climate scientist

Dennis has a PhD in materials engineering on ceramics, Going by the above tweet, Dennis hasn't heard of paleoclimatology, nor about the greenhouse effect.  Back to school for you, Dennis!  Although evidence suggests that if he's a dyed in the wool engineering denier there's not much hope for him as far as scientific understanding goes.  If he's both an engineering denier and an ideological science denier, then there's even less hope.

Dennis Jensen rejects the physics of the greenhouse effect

@GregRudd1 @OakeyMP Not at all. However, some theories have more rigorous supporting evidence than others. AGW models not supported by data
— Dennis Jensen MP (@DennisJensenMP) June 3, 2013

Oh no?  More evidence that Dennis denies the science.  All the evidence supports the fact that it is the increase in greenhouse gases that is causing global warming.

Dennis Jensen campaigns with conspiracy theorists

Dennis Jensen is an avowed "skeptic" and spoke at a fake sceptic event organised by conspiracy theorist "JoanneNova", which was also attended by Monckton - archived here from the JoanneNova website.

"JoNova" and her partner David Evans are conspiracy theorists of the one world government, fiat currency, Agenda21 type - along with "organisations" like Malcolm Roberts' Galileo Movement (which even Andrew Bolt disavows).  Western Australia has more than its fair share of cranks.  These people are every bit as nutty as Christopher Monckton.

Dennis Jensen proudly denies science on facebook

If you want to see just how ignorant Jensen is about climate science, have a gander at his new "update" on his facebook page.  Hopefully it's enough to put an end to any hopes he might have had for the science portfolio.  On the other hand, the LNP had, of all people, anti-science Sophie Mirabella as its shadow Minister for Science!  So you never know.

Will the Australian "government" become the laughing stock of the world?

Dennis Jensen comes across as just another nutter.  If he is ever appointed to the Science portfolio you can guarantee that if it wasn't already (given the election of Tony "climate change is crap" Abbott), Australia will be the laughing stock of the world.

Climate Science History Raises the Question: Is Anthony Watts "Thick as a Brick" or playing "Scary Bad Guy"?

When a scientist makes a new scientific discovery it generally attracts some attention.  The amount of attention it attracts depends on the perceived importance of the discovery.

Let's say that the discovery could affect numerous aspects of society - ranging from where people live, how and where they grow food, the spread of disease, the balance of all life on earth and a major extinction event.  That would attract considerable attention.  Add that it would affect the weather - arguably the item most discussed by humans on a daily basis with the possible exception of human health.  ("What's the weather today?" "Do I need to bring a brolly?" "Sorry I'm late, there was heavy traffic because of the rain." "Can't wait for the snow to go skiing again." vs "Hi, how are you?")

Such a discovery would be expected to attract a lot of attention.  First there would be a rash of studies to corroborate or refute the discovery.  Then if corroborated, there would be a rash of studies to scope the discovery.  What are the implications of the discovery?  How far do the impacts and effects extend?  Then along with scoping the boundaries and exploring the details there would be a lot of work put into what, if anything, should be done with the knowledge.  Is it possible to change the impacts?  If so, how?

A Brief History of Climate Research

It was first mooted by Fourier in the 1820s that the air, or more precisely some components in the air, kept earth at a liveable temperature.  This spawned other work by Tyndall in the mid 1800s, which identified which components were responsible and the mechanism by which it operated.  This in turn led to more work by Arrhenius to quantify how a change in the amount of these components would affect the temperature of earth.  All of this work was done more than 100 years ago.

A few decades later, in the 1930s, an engineer named Callendar did more calculations to determine the amount of actual change that was taking place in the composition of the air as a result of human activity, and what that means for surface temperatures.  The second world war intervened.  After the war Gilbert Plass  and others picked up the study.  In the 1950s, Charles David Keeling began to measure atmospheric CO2.

Finally, in the 1960s the President of the United States was formally alerted of the issue by Roger Reveille.

In the UK, the Climatic Research Unit commenced the massive task of collating and documenting temperature records across the entire world, going right back to when such measures were first recorded more than a hundred years earlier.  Elsewhere in the world scientific institutions expanded their research.

By the 1980s it was obvious to people in the scientific community and to many outside it that burning fossil fuels was causing or going to cause a change to climates all over the world.  Not only that, it was going to cause changes to the oceans, to glaciers, to waterways, to sea levels, to the spread of pests and diseases, to all life forms and ultimately would affect where and how people could live.  Governments were rightly concerned about this and acted together and created a mechanism by which they could be informed.  The IPCC was finally established in 1988.

Today there is little if any research aimed at corroborating the finding.  It's well accepted and understood.  There is ongoing research scoping the problems the discovery has uncovered.  Answering questions such as: how quickly will seas rise; how long before a region will run out of water; what areas will dry and what will be inundated; how many life forms will survive the resulting mass extinction, which ones and how will that affect humanity.  And a lot more research into how to combat the problems, such as: developing new crop varieties resistant to drought or excess moisture; how best to combat catastrophic bushfires of unprecedented ferocity; whether to relocate cities or build barriers to protect them.

Spencer Weart has written a history of climate research that can be accessed here.

My Snark of Today

This leads me to the question - which I know is not very polite and frowned upon, but it is pertinent: Are people who deny even the position of the science "Not Very Bright" or is it that they assume their audience is "Not Very Bright" or are they just shouting for the sake of it?

Anthony Watts sometimes comes across as being, to put it politely, thick as a brick.  Today on WUWT he shows a chart from a paper on scientific consensus, saying:

Roman Murieka has a great statistical analysis of the Cook ‘consensus’ paper over at Climate Audit. There’s a surprise result: The number of papers endorsing AGW is falling, while the number of papers with no position is increasing. Looks like an increase in uncertainty to me.

"Looks like an increase in uncertainty?"  Only if you are thick as a brick.  Anthony posts a chart based on this one from the Cook13 paper itself.  Roman's "analysis" as far as this chart went, consisted of adding linear trend lines.

Has Anthony even read the paper he's writing about? No?

Since Anthony wrote this as a "surprise result", it looks as if, despite his various articles on the study, Anthony hasn't even read the paper!  Not only that, but if the number of papers explicitly stating "humans are causing global warming" is declining - that is not a surprise, it's because that fact is so well accepted it doesn't bear repeating.  In the early 1990s as many as 50% of abstracts were still explicitly stating that humans are causing global warming.  These days it's fewer than 40%.

If there were an "increase in uncertainty" then the miniscule number of papers disputing the fact would have shot up.  Instead that miniscule number is even more miniscule.

The other thing that this article of Anthony's suggest is that he is not at all familiar with climate science.  For him to be unaware of the overwhelming consensus on the cause of the recent warming is barely credible.  For someone who's been blogging on the subject for four years or more his ignorance is appalling.  Surely he doesn't expect anyone to take him seriously.

Is Anthony Watts "Thick as a Brick" or a "Disinformation Propagandist"?

Watts as Scary Bad Guy
or Thick as a Brick!

For this reason among others I maintain we are entitled to wonder aloud if Anthony Watts is "thick as a brick" or a deliberate "disinformation propagandist" or both.

Why is it that on this arguably most critical problem ever faced by humankind, that there are still a number of people intent on spreading lies and delaying solutions.  What do they hope to gain?

Unless it's because they decided to not try for a place in history for the "good" figuring it's easier and takes far less effort to play the role of the villain, so they might at least be remembered for the "bad".

Yeah, right - as a comic book "bad guy" but more likely not even a footnote.

PostScript

Looking at the comments, it's reasonable to assume that Anthony has narrowed his target audience away from the general population to focus in on the Dismissives, including two people who endorse a paedophile analogy; several who want to argue the details of the 97% consensus and shift the focus to the less than 3%; and others who are distinctly paranoid arguing for a conspiracy on a gargantuan scale, hugely grander than any paranoid conspiracy theory before.  That the majority of humans are conspiring to hide the real facts from the 'skeptics' (and that 'skeptics' are not clever or able enough to figure out the 'real' situation).

More WUWT Denier Weirdness: Long Time Passing...

Or...Where have all the "warmists" gone? 

justthefactswuwt says:

April 26, 2013 at 8:41 pm
dbstealey says: April 26, 2013 at 8:15 pm  I would save that excellent and fun question to sandbag the next presumptuous Warmist commenter pretending to pass himself off as a climate expert....It would be even better asked in person! ☺

I can’t even get a Warmist to comment on my threads these days, there has to be someone out there who can explain how this all ties back to anthropogenic CO2 emissions… I wonder if the Warmist blog troll funding is drying up…

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Sandbagging? Warmist blog troll funding? Paranoid conspiracy theorising much?

jtfw only needs to ask Smokey/dbstealey or Anthony Watts.

Everyone who has the temerity to make a sensible, knowledgeable comment about climate science is automatically banned from WUWT.  If not immediately, then eventually.  Usually with the most scathing comment Anthony's little mind can come up with, viz: "Anonymous Coward".  But the Anonymous Coward tag is a last resort when, despite his best googling efforts, Anthony can't find and post their name, current employment and personal contact details as he bans them.

Unreasonably "Reasonable" - Uncertainty is No Monster - Live with It or Die by It

Or ... Why Judith Curry is Wrong

A major bushfire is heading straight for your home, getting bigger and faster and fiercer by the minute, fueled by wind and dry vegetation. The fire front is about 900 meters away. You can hear the roar, it's creating its own wind. You can see the glow through the thick pall of smoke that's covered the sky. The daylight is a weird colour, orange-pink - almost peach-coloured. You can't breathe properly, it smells of burning leaves. You can see the embers falling ahead of the fire. You can hear the loud bangs as trees explode in the heat and flames. You know from past fires something of what to expect, including the unexpected.

Your sister from a city a thousand miles away phones you and says, "It's not certain the fire will hit you, is it?"  Sis has always had a Pollyanna streak.  She is afraid for us and is seeking reassurance.

The weather bureau reports a 30% probability of a change in wind direction but not until some time later in the day, with a 10% probability of light rain.

Which of these responses would you regard as 'sensible'?

1. Dump tonnes of kerosene in the fire's path, leaving a trail of kerosene leading straight to your back door?
2. Don't take any action at all.  Wait until you have more information?
3. Send out helicopters, fire trucks with fire retardant to try to contain the blaze and pack up your car with family members, pets and whatever you can grab and get the hell out of there?

Too many people argue for the first response.  Keep adding fuel to the fire.  Keep pouring CO2 into the atmosphere.  Wait until it's 100% certain that the wind won't change in time and stop the fire's momentum.  Continuing to add fuel to the fire is the way to go until we can better 'scope' the uncertainty, they will argue.

A few people will argue for number two.  Don't add any more fuel to the fire but otherwise don't do anything until you know more.  Close all coal-fired power stations immediately.  Shut down the oil refineries.  But don't go building wind turbines or electric vehicles.  Don't plan for higher sea levels. Don't go changing building codes.  Don't shore up water storage for future droughts.

Others will argue for the third option.  Change the source of energy away from fossil fuels and adapt to what climate change will bring.  Minus the "getting the hell out of there".  (People who live in the bush will have their fire plan ready each summer, their valuables and pet cages at hand, their fire retardant clothes in their emergency kit along with a mask and water, and their fire escape route planned out.)  

What do you think about that?  What path would you recommend?

Nowhere else to go

Where I live there's a new classification of Code Red = Catastrophic fire warning.  Code Red is beyond Extreme.  When this is announced people are supposed to leave the area (not mandatory).  Problem is, there's usually nowhere within 500 km that isn't in the Catastrophic fire zone.  Just like with global warming.  We've only got one earth.

Seeking reassurance

Many climate science deniers appear to reject the evidence because they react like Sis did.  They want reassurance.  So much so that they seek it out.  They lap up disinformation and hoard it like gold.  They avoid or dismiss unpalatable facts as "alarmist".  They can't cope with 'alarm'.  Studies suggest the conservative brain is more responsive to fear.  Although this confers some advantages it can also impede reason, resulting in poor judgement and 'wrong' decisions.

There is always uncertainty

As anyone who's done any planning will tell you, there is always uncertainty. Uncertainty is not a monster.  There is almost never only one "right answer".  When facing something like a bushfire or climate change, the "wrongest" answer is to not act at all.  Societal paralysis while climate change continues unabated.  Geological history gives us insight into what to expect, including the unexpected.  If we waited for 100% certainty about everything in the future, we'd never get out of bed in the morning.

The "wrong" answer

To not act is as deliberate a decision as acting based on information at hand.  It is the wrong response.

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Quit Shooting the Messenger!  Demand Leadership from Leaders!

This post was inspired by reactions to Judith Curry's recent written and oral testimony to a US House of Reps subcommittee.  For example:

Shifting goal post alert: The real question that must be settled before any policy actions are taken to address the postulated threat from human-induced global warming is ....(insert shifting goal posts here)

Strawman construction 1:...suggesting (to me) a much more cautious approach to emissions reduction than has been adopted in Australia and elsewhere....Of course, I regard “cautious” as not taking extensive and costly action without more convincing evidence as to the merits of such action, others might interpret it as pre-emptive large-scale precautionary reductions.

Strawman 2: ...Those who posit that there is one (a problem), which requires remedial action, have to show empirical evidence that they know what the hell they are talking about – BEFORE they request any action be taken.

And Curry herself, IMO misrepresenting scientific uncertainty, its nature, how it is scoped and quantified, and the relative importance of different aspects of science and the relevance of different aspects to government policy development - and building her own strawmen.  Even though she states clearly up front that humans are causing global warming, she later implies that scientists are wrong to assert that humans are causing global warming, which is the scientific consensus, writing instead:

Given these uncertainties, there would seem to be plenty of scope for disagreement among scientists. Nevertheless, the consensus about dangerous anthropogenic climate change is portrayed as nearly total among climate scientists. Further, the consensus has been endorsed by all of the relevant national and international science academies and scientific societies.

I have been trying to understand how there can be such a strong consensus given these uncertainties....

...When uncertainty is not well characterized and there is concern about ‘unknown unknowns,’ there is increasing danger of getting the wrong answer and optimizing for the wrong thing.

And her over-simplification of decision-making pitfalls mixed with a bright red herring.  No, Judith, neither of these hits the nail on the head:

There are two situations to avoid: i) acting on the basis of a highly confident statement about the future that turns out to be wrong; and ii) missing the possibility of an extreme, catastrophic outcome. Avoiding both of these situations requires much deeper and better assessment of uncertainties and areas of ignorance, as well as creating a broader range of future scenarios than is currently provided by climate models.

I strongly disagree with Curry.  The main situation to avoid is that of waiting till it is too late.  Waiting until options are reduced to all but a few.  Waiting until atmospheric CO2 gets so high that there are no choices left to humanity.  Waiting until climate change wreaks havoc and destabilises economies such that we can no longer afford to take action.  Or worse, waiting until there are no longer coherent societies or stable governments that can see actions through to completion.  There are a myriad of actions that can be taken now, which won't be "wrong" in any sense of the word.

Leaders, take responsibility! Certain science, uncertain policy response

The biggest sin Curry commits is that of pointing her finger at science, rather than at the leaders, the rule-makers, the legislators.  The uncertainty is in the policy response, not the science.  The science is settled more than adequately to inform policy decisions.  Legislators' efforts need to go towards determining what paths to follow, what suite of policy responses and programs to implement.  It's not the science that's uncertain in this context.

Businesses wants a consistent policy direction.  The science is settled but the policy response, where it exists, is fragmented.  The corporate sector hates a policy vacuum.  Investors look for clear guidance.  The community elects leaders to lead, not fiddle while the bush burns. 

Curry confirms that there is a raging bushfire, that we run the risk of it burning down the house.  She can see the fire bearing down.  Everyone else can see the fire raging and heading in their direction.  But instead of calling for a plan of action to deal with the very real fire, she turns around and says:- "Well, maybe that bushfire we can all see bearing down on us isn't real.  It's red and it's hot and it's got flames and lots of white and black and yellow smoke, and it's leaving burnt forests and grasslands in its wake.  Just the same, I think it needs more analysis.  We need more measurements.  We need more temperature readings, to examine the smoke, analyse the smoke particles, confirm that those flames are really flames.  Build another model. We need to make sure it really is a bushfire before we start to think about getting out of its path or putting it out!  Meanwhile, let's add more kerosene."

IMO Judith confirms her adopted role as that of 'delayer', who wants to keep the bushfire burning by pouring tonnes kerosene onto it, under the guise of "waiting for certainty" about what is already certain.

Dissecting Denmor's Denial

Denmor drags out a climate science disinformer

I haven't posted any of the nonsense from HotCopper in a while.  So, courtesy of denmor, a science denier from HotCopper's science and medicine S&M club and the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition this is what passes for 'science' among the share trading science illiterati from Australia.  Denmor (who's been featured here before) and Clifford (Cliff) Ollier present a Gish gallop but not so much that we can't cover most issues touched on.

It makes for a long-ish post so if you arrived via HotWhopper's home page, click 'read more' below or click here.  (If you just want to see a pretty neat animation of CO2, jump down here.)

(Subs req'd to read the original thread. Access is free. Head vice recommended.)

As science-loving Tinnitus observes about denmor's 'contribution':

Wow A polemic paper on climate from a prof that doesn't work in climate science....Do people understand actually what a polemic paper is?

 Anyway, here goes....

Nancy's Spikes of Fancy (and Anthony's gone and done it again!)

Anthony Watts has posted an 'article' by WUWT reader Nancy Green and added some notes of his own.

Watts: you "really aren’t comparing similar data sets"

First - what has Anthony done again?

He just can't help himself.  Anthony decided to ignore the caution from the scientists and has gone ahead once again comparing local with global temperatures.  This time he used the Vostok ice core from Antarctica, which is only one of the proxies used by Marcott et al in their Holocene reconstruction.  And this time he put in a disclaimer: but this image is solely for entertainment purposes in the context of this article, then blew it by adding: and does make the point visually.

Looks like Anthony decided to ignore the scientists' jibe as well as his very own own caution.

Nancy's Spikes of Fancy

Now let's see what Nancy's flight of fancy is.  She's grabbed hold of the idea that because the Marcott et al's Holocene reconstruction resolves only to a couple of hundred years, it could be missing temperature 'spikes' of shorter duration.

So far so good.  Indeed it could.  The question is, how likely is that?

Nancy bounced off this idea into a real flight of fancy.  First she tried it out with informed readers at RealClimate.org, who were able to help her out - though she ignored their efforts.  Here is an excerpt from one of her excursions into the domain of climate scientists.  

Nancy Green says: 1 Apr 2013 at 10:09 AM

...it must be concluded that what Marcott is showing is only the natural variability in temperature and if any weight is to be given to the uptick, it shows that at higher resolutions there may be significant temperature spikes due to natural causes.

Gavin Schmidt helps her out with an inline comment:

[Response: Of the size and magnitude of the 20th Century - unlikely. Even the 8.2kyr event which is the biggest thing in the Holocene records in the North Atlantic is small comparatively. It would definitely be good to get more high resolution well-dated data included though, and Marcott's work is good basis for that to be built from. - gavin]

What about the Younger Dryas?

Nancy continues on this theme, this time referring to the Younger Dryas (which preceded the Holocene):

Nancy Green says:
1 Apr 2013 at 10:47 AM
...When one looks at long duration events we have the Younger Dryas event, with a temperature change of approximately 15C as compared to 2oth century warming of less than 0.7C....

Now that's a mistake any non-scientist and beginner climate science amateur could make, confusing local temperature fluctuations (Nancy's 15ºC) with global temperature fluctuations.  Gavin Schmidt helped set her straight, with an inline comment:

[Response: This is becoming a habit - the YD change of '15ºC' is a Greenland signal. It is not in phase with (much smaller) changes in the high Southern Latitudes, and in ocean cores, even in the N. Atlantic, it is much smaller. An estimate of the impact of the YD on global mean temperatures is found in the Shakun et al (2012) paper, and is likely less than a degree. Note that the whole glacial to interglacial change is only about 5ºC in total! - gavin]

The Younger Dryas is largely a northern hemisphere phenomenon as any reader of WUWT should know by now (they refer to Richard Alley's work describing the Younger Dryas in Central Greenland often, but no-one at WUWT seems to have read it or understood it).  It had particular effect in parts of the arctic. Nancy pushes the point, again confusing local temperature fluctuations with global temperatures:

Nancy Green says:
1 Apr 2013 at 11:03 AM.....Once cannot conclude from Marcott that there have been no short term events of similar magnitude to the Younger Dryas (approx 15C) within the period covered by Marcott. Such events would be hidden by the lack of resolution so long as they were shorter than 1/2 the sampling rate as per Nyquist.

And once more Gavin Schmidt helps her out, trying again to get the message through another way.  He didn't repeat himself that the global temperature didn't change by 15ºC (he's already told her that but she's ignored it.)  This time he reminds her that the reason we know about the Younger Dryas is because of ice cores.  If there had been a similar event it would show up in the ice cores - and it doesn't:

[Response: These are the same core that show the YD! You can't claim that a YD like event wouldn't be shown in the same cores. Please, you can do better than this. - gavin]

Spiking to the Stars

Nancy meanders off hither and thither pursuing her fantasy. The tone and content of this contribution, plus the fact that she hasn't learnt anything from the expert help she's been offered, is a great example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.  Her post was long and even travelled through the galaxy.  This post of Nancy's is pretty much the same as what she wrote at WUWT. I'll just give an excerpt where she tells climate scientists what they 'should' consider:

Nancy Green says:1 Apr 2013 at 10:53 PM

Thus, what Marcott is telling us is that we should expect to find a 20th century type spike in many high resolution paleo series. Rather than being an anomaly, the 20th century spike should appear in many places as we improve the resolution of the paleo temperature series. This is the message of Marcott and it is an important message that the researchers need to consider.

Nancy elicits responses from a few other people.

The_J says: 2 Apr 2013 at 6:40 AM 

You claimed that the Younger Dryas was a 15C swing in temperatures, and that the Younger Dryas isn’t detectable in the proxies. But both of those claims are wildly, absurdly wrong. I think you may have been confused by a statement on Wikipedia that the summit area on Greenland was 15C colder during YD than it is today. But that’s not a global-scale change of 15C! As discussed here, the entirety of the change from last glacial maximum to the Holocene was approximately 5C, and the Younger Dryas was approximately 0.6C. And of course the Younger Dryas is readily detectable in climate proxies … that’s how we know about it.

Ray Ladbury made some points relevant to Nancy's notions, and says: 3 Apr 2013 at 8:57 AM
...Dude, the planet is really, really big. It isn’t easy to pump that much energy in in a decade or two. We’ve only managed to do so by liberating most of the carbon sequestered since the Jurassic! The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum failed to achieve such rates of growth despite (probably) burning up the Deccan coal field!

dhogaza says: 2 Apr 2013 at 11:10 PM
:”PhysicsGuy @102 — Follow the links from comment #100 to discover why no such global spikes exist. There are plenty of other proxies in which such spikes would show up; none found.:’

And, of course, arguing that the paper’s analysis can’t capture such excursions is proof that they exist is just …
kinky.
Even without the fact that other proxies don’t show such spikes.

And here are two substantive comments from real climate scientists. I've broken raypierre's response into paragraphs for easier reading, and bolded what I believe to be the crucial points:

[Response: What a lot of this discussion of "spikes" is missing is that the point isn't whether the Holocene had any sudden rises with a cause analogous to the present. As many people have pointed out, that couldn't be, because the present rise is due to CO2, and is hence "durable," as many people have pointed out; it would show up in a record like Marcott's. But also, as others have pointed out, we already know from ice cores that CO2 fluctuated very little in the pre-industrial Holocene, so that isn't in the cards anyway.

What is at issue is whether there are any other mechanisms of centennial-scale variability that could cause a 1C or even a .5C spike. We know that the AMO can go a smallish fraction of that distance, and it's hard to rule out on first principles that some kind of ocean variability might not be able to do something bigger in amplitude if you wait long enough. There's no evidence that it can, and I myself find it hard to see how you could make the ocean do a centenniel scale uptick (a centennial scale downtick is easier, since there's all that cold water you could conceivably bring to the surface). 

But the Marcott analysis has no bearing on that question. I don't think the paper ever claimed it did, but the comparision with the instrumental era rise may have confused some people into thinking so. 

To repeat my earlier comment, it is useful to compare the instrumental era rise and the forecast of further rise to the Marcott record because we know the rise is durable and will last millennia. Thus, we know we are bringing about a durable increase that is huge compared to any long-duration variation over the Holocene. That's a big, big deal. --raypierre ]

[Response: To add to Raypierre: it would have to be ocean variability causing a spike in global-mean temperature without causing a spike in the high-resolution proxies from the ice cores. That is exceedingly unlikely; the ocean's deep-water formation sites near Greenland and Antarctica would surely experience major change during such a spike. 
Think of the 8k-event: the biggest in the Greenland ice cores over the entire Holocene, yet minor impact on global-mean temperature. -Stefan]

From a statistical viewpoint

This has turned out to be quite a long article already. But it would be very remiss of me to leave out an excellent piece of analysis by Tamino on this very topic.  Tamino shows that if a rise in global temperature anything like that of the past century had occurred  it would have shown up in the data.

You can read his analysis in his article "Smearing Climate Data".

A final word

So there you have it.  This current rise in temperature is 'durable' and caused by CO2 and is a big, big deal. It is well known from various sources that throughout the Holocene there has never been a rise in CO2 anything like the magnitude we've seen over the past century.  It is also virtually certain that during the Holocene, since human civilisation, there has never been a short term 'spike' in global surface temperature of the magnitude we are now facing with certainty (2ºC or more).

Nancy's post on WUWT brings up the number of Marcott Protest articles there to at least twenty four. The deniers have tried to argue from lots of different angles: from Nancy's invisible spikes to upticks to dating of core-tops to comparisons with temperatures on a summit high in Central Greenland and in Antarctica and even tacking centuries of temperatures in one single ocean location to a land-based modern instrumental record in another single location, with a gap of about a century from the tail of one to the beginning of the other.

Not one of their 'arguments' has come anywhere close to finding the slightest flaw in the Marcott Holocene reconstruction.  In fact, despite looking for impossible 'spikes' and obviously not understanding the paper itself, Nancy appears to largely support the paper, which will likely cause pandemonium among the DuKE (TM) of deniers.

WUWT Recipe: Baked Denier on Toast

Update: See Tamino's take down here.

---

OMG - now Anthony Watts is posting "CO2 is plant food" articles on his blog.  I suspect he's trying to prove @bloggies really are, as is generally accepted, a farce that no reputable science blogger would touch with a ten foot pole.

Let's all be "reasonable" deniers

Let's have a look at what his guest blogger, John Coleman* writes because it's a good example of a 'let's be reasonable, all the world's scientists are committing fraud' approach to denying science (as opposed to a more aggressive "CAGW Lysenko commie-socialist-fascist all the world's scientists are committing fraud" approach):

We'll say it's warming but try to prove it isn't

First he presents what he says are recent USA land temperatures, choosing a cherry-picked start date and with random green line drawn underneath the chart, purporting to be a 'trend':

Compare this to a real chart showing USA temperature trends from the EPA website:

And the global land-ocean surface temperatures from NASA (with my arrow pointing to temperatures of a century ago):

Then we'll cook up a nice little conspiracy theory

Next the conspiracy theories:

" if the temperatures and the means of processing the data had not been “adjusted”

Here is a paper by Hansen et al (2010) Global Surface Temperature Change, that includes a good description of how and why adjustments are made to account for differences such as time of observation (US particularly), changes to weather stations, UHI effect and other events (such as moving or altering weather stations) to ensure the record is accurate. Or see here, for an NOAA summary of adjustments to the US temperature record.

Add a cup of strawman

Then the strawman (assumption that evidence for global warming rests solely on the US temperature record of the past 15 years!):

...while the recent hot, dry weather is clearly out of the ordinary, as it stands for now, it is not the sort of extreme event that might prove global warming. 

SkepticalScience has short summaries of the multiple lines of evidence for global warming.  Much more detail can be found in the IPCC reports.

Add a pinch of doubt, a tablespoon of lies and mix well

Then the bold and confused lie:

any connection between the hot, dry weather and warming caused by the activities of mankind remains totally unproven

Evidence is mounting as discussed by Hansen, Sato and Ruedy (2010) Perception of Climate Change and RealClimate discussing a paper on the Russian heat wave (among other papers).

And another bold lie (what hole do these people crawl out of?):

Global warming is about a predicted dramatic increase in the temperature year after year leading to the melting of the polar ice caps resulting in a dramatic rise in ocean water levels producing coastal flooding. It also predicts non-stop droughts, massive world-wide, killer heat waves and super storms.

For what is actually expected to happen if we don't cut greenhouse gas emissions, the most comprehensive discussion is in the IPCC reports.

If you prefer youtube, the BBC has produced a video showing what might happen if we don't act, looking at temperature rises of one, two and three degrees. It also discusses what we can do about it.

(Tip o' the hat to Watching the Deniers)

Stir briskly with emotions and add another cup of lies

Then, for good measure, having warmed up the denialist crowd, Coleman throws in Al Gore and the IPCC, which can be guaranteed to make every true blue denier see red.

Then another bold lie as a segue into 'computer models' (just in case "Al Gore" and "IPCC" weren't sufficient to upset denialists, "computer models" are guaranteed to stir up an absolute frenzy of angry emotions):

The runaway heating predicted by the global warming advocates computer models...

No, Mr Coleman, 'computer models' do not predict 'runaway heating'.   Earth is not Venus.  Climate scientists model projections of temperature, sea levels and other effects, based on different scenarios such as different amounts of CO2 we choose to pour into the air.

Then Coleman makes a statement with a rather odd adjective (extraordinary!):

The theory is that carbon dioxide (CO2) in the exhaust from burning fossil fuels is an extraordinary greenhouse gas that amplifies the greenhouse effect in our atmosphere.

There is nothing extraordinary about either CO2 or greenhouse gases.  What is extraordinary is that despite knowing very well what we are heading towards, the world is not clamouring more loudly and acting more quickly to stop adding emissions of CO2.

Bake in a hot oven fuelled by more lies

Then he says that "Even if the predicted warming of the climate occurs, that does not prove the CO2 causative theory".   

Scientists theorised and proved by experiment that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, decades before anyone knew of genetics or molecular physics, which no-one questions these days. Coleman needs a history lesson.  He couldn't do much better than physicist and science historian Spencer Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming".

More lies here - playing Merchant of Doubt:

There is no consensus on what they show and why, just prolonged and spirited debate among the scientists. In the end, I fear, neither side is going to “win” this argument.

There are no 'sides' nor 'spirited debate'.  The evidence is clear and has been for a very long time, which you'll know already because you read Spencer Weart.

Geoscientist and science historian Dr Naomi Oreskes writes about the Merchants of Doubt.  Presumably Coleman thinks there is 'spirited debate' about the shape of earth (the earth is flat!) and ponders when "lizard men" first arrived on earth, birther-ism, 911-troofs and thinks smoking is good for your health.  

Click here for weird denierisms of all sorts of science.  Or read what Lewandowsky found in his "NASA faked the moon landing" paper, followed up by "Recursive Fury" based on the 'coming out' of dozens of conspiracy theorists.

While still hot, decorate with classic "golden oldie" denier memes

Then, after "proving" that "we" don't know if it's warming or not, he then rolls out one denier meme after another, "yes it's warming but it's natural", "CO2 is not a 'major' greenhouse gas", "no tipping point", "CO2 has been higher in the past" and penultimately the classic "CO2 is plant food" finishing up with "I don't know therefore no-one 'knows'".

Denialist defined

A classic piece of denialism - compare it with RationalWiki:

In scientific denialism, the denialist can deny a cause (carbon dioxide does not cause global warming), an effect (global warming does not occur), the association between the two (the earth is warming, but not because of carbon dioxide), the direction of the cause-and-effect relationship (carbon dioxide concentrations are increased because the earth is warming) or the identification of the cause-and-effect relationship (other factors than greenhouse gases cause the earth to warm). Often denialists will practice minimization (the earth is warming, but it's not harmful) and will use misplaced skepticism in the veneer of being a scientist when it is unwarranted..

* I couldn't find John Coleman easily doing a plain google search, so refined the search adding KUSI-TV.  Coleman has both a wikipedia entry (a television weather presenter and science denier) and a DeSmog Blog entry.  Coleman was a co-founder of the Weather Channel, since forced out.  His main claim to 'fame' these days seems to be as a minor player in the science denying fraternity promoted here by denialist  Anthony Watts.

Downside of the Conservative Brain

Ends and Means - Is Morality Dependent upon World View?

On one of my rare visits to the blog of Judith Curry, I came across a conundrum.  She had an article discussing whether the ends justify the means. 

In it she had a paragraph about Peter Gleick who, by pretending to be someone else, obtained revealing documents from the Heartland Institute.  She implied that she believes the ends did not justify the means in that case.  Her very next paragraph was about the stolen emails from CRU, and the way she referred to them it's clear she believes that when it comes to stealing thousands of emails, the ends did justify the means.

However in the latter case, the use to which the stolen emails were put was for nefarious purposes (to misrepresent science and scientists and thereby try to delay action to mitigate global warming).  On the other hand, the use to which the Heartland Institute documents were put was to expose nefarious goings on.  They showed, among other things, the depths to which the Heartland Institute would stoop to prevent any action to ameliorate global warming.

Now I'm not one to see the world in black and white, but Prof Curry's position does strike me as very perplexing from a moral standpoint. 

(Coby posted an article recently on the Heartland affair, in which he discusses how ethical ends vs means issues are not always black and white.  Scott Mandia expresses the view that what Dr Gleick did was wrong, but that despite this error, he continues to contribute a heap of good to the world, while the Heartland Institute continues to only do bad.  He provides scorecards as evidence.)

Logical fallacies and flawed assumptions

Curry bases her article on a post by Roger Pielke Jr, which in my opinion has logical fallacies and flawed assumptions. 

He argues that people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is akin to companies pretending horse meat is beef.  What he refers to is people wanting to mitigate global warming because they believe that it will cost relatively less to act sooner rather than later.  (Yes, his argument is more about cost in dollar terms in the relatively short term (decades) rather than loss of human life, biological diversity, and general ecological destruction over the medium to longer term (centuries to millenia.))

As well as disregarding medium to longer term impacts of global warming, there are (at least) two other flaws in Pielke Jr's argument:

Firstly, he says that the science is not 'strong' in regard to increasing costs associated with extreme events (hotter, longer droughts; bigger floods etc), as a proportion of GDP, even if we do nothing to limit global warming.  The jump from the science not being 'strong' to 'there will not be increasing costs/GDP associated with extreme events' as the world heats up, is a leap much to big to take IMO.  For one thing it's not a scientific point - the science is quite clear that we will get more and more often events that today are considered extreme.  The point he is putting forward is an economic one (not a scientific one) - that GDP will rise faster than costs associated with extreme events. IMO the science is at least grounded in evidence.  The economics has a lot more ifs and buts and assumptions (and in any case, he doesn't point directly to any cost/GDP projections to support his position.  He merely makes a passing mention of the Stern Review and the IPCC).

Secondly he seems to imply that even if people overly attribute an extreme event (today) to global warming then it is because someone (knowledgeable) has deliberately deceived them, rather than because they are ignorant or were mislead by another ignorant person.  There is nothing to support that assumption.

To sum up Roger Pielke Jr's position, he seems to be saying let's pay for extreme events as they happen.  Don't plan for them or take any preventative action now because the world will have more money in the future to deal with the increase in weather disasters.

To sum up Prof Curry's position, she seems to be saying:

1. Let the world heat up and do it's worst.  Let future generations deal with the consequences.

2. Deception is bad (even if you have good intentions) but stealing is good though you have bad intentions.

The Conservative Brain

I guess these positions are manifestations of the drawbacks of having a conservative brain. (Having a conservative brain is not inherently 'good' or 'bad'.  It has benefits as well as disadvantages.  There are upsides and downsides to having a liberal brain too.) 

This article gives some insight into the conservative brain. Put simply, scientific evidence indicates that people having a 'conservative brain' are more fearful (eg saying climate scientists are 'alarmists'); while people having a 'liberal brain' are more tolerant of uncertainty (more easily make decisions when there is inherent ambiguity). 

Then there is the finding that conservatives have a greater tendency to avoid self-harm ("I don't accept science because I don't want to pay tax"), whereas liberals avoid collective group harm ("I want to save the world and everyone and everything in it").

Combine those two tendencies of the conservative brain and you are part way towards explaining the difficulty many conservatives have when it comes to accepting, let alone acting upon, unpalatable facts that affect the whole world.

More of my musings on the conservative brain can be found here.

HotCopper deniers in full swing (trading) - 'hot'!

Are most share traders members of the scientific illiterati or is it just the ones who post on 'Australia's most popular share discussion board' HotCopper?  Could be worth some research (on another day).

The following examples show that anything posted on HotCopper should be read with supreme scepticism if you must read it at all.

Monckton gets it wrong again

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

My buddy Daruma is a good bloke, but he mistakenly thinks it's cooling.  He's been hoodwinked by 'evidence' provided as a rambling error-filled non-science article from climate science denier, birther and professional entertainer of the elderly, Christopher Monckton.

Deniers 'need their heads read'

Not only that, but there are five more HotCopper-ites who agree with him than disagree (+5 thumbs up).  This is despite the chart that butcherboy (Physics Honours graduate currently doing a Masters in climate studies) posted and got thumbed down for his efforts:

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

adding a copy of struggler's chart from SkepticalScience.com (saving HotCopperites a mouse click).  The chart is a gif animation.  If the animation doesn't show up*, click on the chart to open it in a new window.

HotCopper favours dumbing down and denialism (in line with its unwritten policies /s)

Science is an elite leftist scam - what?

In another thread, this post from Denmor sums up the average HotCopperites view of science in general:

Source: HotCopper.com S&M forum

HotCopper science deniers don't know the difference between science and politics, and any science they don't like must be a 'scam' by the 'elite left of politics'.

It really is getting hotter and hotter

Finally, let's look at some real science showing how temperatures are trending with and without the influence of ENSO, solar and volcanoes (derived from Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) by SkepticalScience).  It clearly shows that this global warming is from greenhouse gases, not from ENSO, volcanoes or the sun:

(This is a gif animation.)

* If the animations don't show up, set you browser to display web animations.  In IE open Internet Options and go to the multimedia section of advanced settings and select 'play animations in web pages', then restart your browser.

HotCopper Deniers of the Week

More silliness from denier share traders on HotCopper

Here is the latest world-shattering news straight from the keyboard of berretta - a resident science rejecter at the HotCopper share discussion forum (subs req'd):

Berretta doesn't just deny science he denies economics as well.  He seems to have decided that burning coal is not one of the main source of the additional atmospheric CO2 from human sources (usually edging out oil / petroleum products).





Younglogga, a newcomer to HotCopper, posted a decent response - he knows his stuff pretty well:

Silly old Berretta was having none of it.  In Berretta's mind he himself is the smartest man on HotCopper. Scientists know nada, according to him.

LesPaul is typical of the trolls, coming up with one of the tiredest, least original denier taunts on the internet: "Stop breathing if you accept science and let we scientific illiterati get on with destroying the planet in peace", he says.

While Mike68, who has often said that Cat 5 Tropical Cyclone Yasi was a good thing, and that global warming will also be good because jungles will grow, posted in the same vein as LesPaul:

The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything CO2 is 42 (+1)%

In fact it wasn't very hard to find the latest information.  (Ain't google wonderful.)

Last year coal was the biggest source of CO2 emissions. Here is what the Global Carbon Project says in its latest Global Carbon Budget report:

CO2 emissions from fossil fuels burning and cement production increased by 3% in 2011, with a total of 9.5±0.5 PgC emitted to the atmosphere (34.7 billion tonnes of CO2). These emissions were the highest in human history and 54% higher than in 1990 (the Kyoto Protocol reference year). In 2011, coal burning was responsible for 43% of the total emissions, oil 34%, gas 18%, and cement 5%.

(The above doesn't include equivalent emissions from deforestation, agriculture and other land use activities, which last year accounted for around 10% of the total. )

 

As for Berretta

So far, Berretta hasn't given his answer.  When he poses a silly question it is often his habit to not provide any answer of his own.  I guess he thinks if he says coal burning is not currently the biggest contributor then maybe someone will believe him.

As for HotCopper

Yes, this really is the standard that HotCopper aspires to.  The mods and management allow deniers to harass anyone who is actually interested in science and if that doesn't get rid of them, the mods add to the bullying.  Ultimately if you still insist on posting real science, management and mods form a lynch mob and ban you forever.