Climate science cranks: Wrong in small things, wrong in all things?

January 23, 2011

Earlier we discussed the political jabs lacking scientific merit at the blogs that have sprung up to harry and heckle climate scientists, especially a relatively new one called, inaptly, “haunting the library.”

The author and commenters have taken to calling Dr. James Hansen “Beijing Jim,” thinking it a cleverly insulting nickname.

What?

James Hansen, at Americans Who Tell the Truth.org

Portrait of James Hansen for James Hansen, at Americans Who Tell the Truth.org

I almost regret asking.  Why “Beijing Jim?”

They started it when Hansen wrote an opposite-editorial page piece for the South China Post, urging China to act against global warming anyway, despite the U.S.’s failure to take aggressive-enough action yet.

haunting the library tries to spin the piece as Hansen moving over to China’s side in all issues, a position they seem to think is somehow unpatriotic (and therefore, insulting to Hansen).

Actually, in the article, Hansen doesn’t let China off the hook at all.  It’s a patient, well-aimed call to China to do the right things.  Only by misreporting and misrepresenting what Hansen said can climate science cranks spin it.

James Hansen takes the honorable high road, calling on the world’s most-polluting nations to take action now to save our children’s and grandchildren’s future.  haunting the library issues schoolyard, childish and churlish taunts.

Oh, but Dear Reader, you’re already guessing at the particular intellectual clumsiness I’m getting to, aren’t you?  It’s about that taunting name, “Beijing Jim.”  It’s unfair and undeserved because Hansen represented America well, and honorably.  “Free Enterprise Jim” would be closer to the facts.

It’s also geographically wrong.  South China Morning Post is a Hong Kong newspaper, not Beijing.  Hong Kong is the Chinese outpost of rampant free enterprise, as you know and the rest of the world knows.  Hong Kong is not Beijing.

The climate science cranks at haunting the library don’t know climate science, don’t know newspaper publishing, and flail at geography, too. They’re cranky, too.  Cranky cranks.  Poetic, almost.

More:

_____________

January 24, 2011:  Others are watching, too.  Tim Lambert at Deltoid makes gentle correction of an Andrew Bolt column relying on misinformation from hauntingthelibrary.  Good discussion there.

7 Comments | Blogs, Climate change, climate_change, Cost of Green, denialism, History, Hoaxes, Political Smear, Politics, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Science ethics: Ten biggest science paper retractions of 2010

January 18, 2011

Science uses a tough system to correct errors and prevent frauds.  Peer-review makes it difficult to get a paper into a journal, period, let alone one with hoaxed-up data or conclusions.  Still, out of the tens of thousands of serious science papers published each year, a few sneak through that shouldn’t, sometimes due to researcher error, sometimes due mix-ups in peer review, sometimes — rarely — due to outright fraud.

In the past 15 months political action to fight global warming took huge hits around December 2009 when a few thousand e-mails were hacked from computers at the Hadley Climate Research Unit in England, one of the leading groups in climate research that indicates a warming Earth.   Critics of Hadley made great hay about how the alleged wrong-doing in the e-mails meant that all climate research was wrong, or at least questionable.

So, I was greatly interested to stumble across this article in The Scientist, which lists what that magazine calls the “Top Retractions of 2010” — papers retracted for errors and ethical reasons.

None of the top retractions had anything to do with climate research.  One of the most under-reported stories of 2010 was that the claims of error and fraud by climate scientists were, themselves, hoaxes.  Looking at the list of top retractions, unless you were really looking for the climate papers, you might never notice.

Most of the retractions were in medicine and health.  Several were in cancer research.  False science in climate studies does not appear to be a major problem, measured by retractions.

Those who accuse climate scientists falsely don’t really have anything to retract in a formal sense.  They did no science work that was published.

When do people wake up and realize that global warming is a real problem, and we shouldn’t be fooled by political smears of the scientists who discover the data?

1 Comment | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Ethics, Global warming, Green Politics, Hoaxes, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

But the Earth still warms

January 18, 2011

Political activists who oppose working to stop or slow greenhouse gas emissions in order to slow global warming find themselves in awkward positions recently.

Before, during and after the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009 they predicted that warming had stopped, and that we are entering a period of global cooling.  Alas for their claim, the planet refuses to cool.  The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest in human history; 2010 itself turned out to be one of the warmest years in history, worldwide.

NOAA graphic: Indicators of global warming: “Seven of these indicators would be expected to increase in a warming world, and observations show that they are, in fact, increasing. Three would be expected to decrease and they are, in fact, decreasing.”

Somebody stole hundreds of e-mails from one of the climate research clusters in England, and the anti-action activists claimed that the messages would reveal wrong-doing on the part of scientists, perhaps even criminal action.  Instead, five separate investigations discovered no wrong-doing on the parts of scientists, but a lot of hard work gone for too little action because of the anti-science shenanigans of the anti-action crew.  The science showing global warming remains untouched, with no significant body of research showing contrary.

One of the loudest voices against claims of global warming, Christopher Monckton, was unmasked as a blowhard and a fraud.    Scientists organized to refute the hoax claims of the anti-action activists.

So, the anti-action activists are sore.  They don’t take criticism well, and they especially don’t like anyone who points out their errors.

Sadly, they didn’t learn from the their past hoaxes.  So if even a lowly high school teacher should point out an error of history, they resort to making false claims and censorship against the teacher.  They have no data to back their case, nothing but invective to rebut with.

And so it was that a rather new site, hauntingthelibrary, took my comment noting where they could find the data to disabuse their wild claims, stripped it out, and substituted words I did not and would not write.

Fraud again, this time from hauntingthelibrary.  Hoax.  Fraud even in small things.

The movement against the science of global warming is rotten to its core.  (Seriously — most sites would be happy to note the pingback from this blog; the blogger had to act to block the pingback from showing up.  What are they so afraid of?)

Legend says that Galileo, backing out of the audience with the Pope in which he was put under house arrest after having “recanted” any claim that the Earth orbits the Sun, said quietly, “Still, it moves.”  Even the Pope’s powers through the Inquisition could not stop the Earth orbiting the Sun.  No matter how powerful the denial propaganda machines, no matter how many anti-science bloggers they recruit, the Earth keeps on stubbornly warming up.

Or, as Galileo might have said, “Eppure, lei si scalda!”

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Update: Then there is Anti-Gore Effect Sillies Syndrome — claiming Gore erred, when he didn’t.  It’s demonstrated with the infection fully affecting the judgment of its victims at this odd place, XD Talk Forums.

 

More:

Earlier at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

Photo by W. W. MacFarlane - Pine bark beetle damage in Teton National Forest

Photo by W. W. MacFarlane – NPR caption: “Many dead trees appear gray and red on the high-mountain slopes of Union Pass Bridger in Teton National Forest in Wyoming”

14 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, denialism, Dirty Tricks, Entomology, Forestry, History, Hoaxes, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Lens incompetence: Watts Up looks through the wrong end of the telescope

December 27, 2010

The wags and denialists over at Anthony Watts’ joint are up to their old tricks, accusing others of their own errors.  Today it’s a guest post by Bernie Lewin, in which he claims that climate warming was all psychological, a “scare”:

Yet we can find precedents to this science-base scare in many health scares of recent decades, and also in environmental scares since the DDT cancer scare triggered by Silent Spring, politicised by the EDF and legalized by the newly formed EPA. (See Scared to Death which finds a repeating pattern to these science-based scares.)

Woman looking through the wrong end of a telescope

This woman might be corrected; global warming denialists will staunchly insist she knows what she’s doing and doesn’t need YOUR advice.

He fails to even think that Rachel Carson was right.  Lewin demonstrates incompetence at history, law and science, and the first point of the Scout Law, all in one sentence.

So much error.  So little time to correct.

  1. Carson didn’t claim DDT caused cancer. She noted that we create thousands of chemicals that may cause cancer, that cancers were rising in frequency, and that there was no testing of the new substances prior to their marketing.   Was there a DDT/cancer scare?  Lewin doesn’t offer any evidence.  (We had to correct Matt Ridley on this a couple of weeks ago — see his post here.)
  2. EDF (Environmental Defense Fund, now known as Environmental Defense) was on DDT without Carson — suing to stop DDT spraying (for no good reason) on Long Island in 1968.  EDF relied on science that was courtroom ready.  (I had misremembered the year of EDF’s suit in an earlier version of this post; my apologies to the two or three who may have read it.)  EDF’s suits established, on the basis of science, that DDT is an uncontrollable poison in the wild.  Lewin ignores science and law in his off-hand indictment of Carson’s book and ED.
  3. EPA didn’t act against DDT until 1972.  EPA banned DDT use on agricultural crops in the U.S. because DDT kills non-target species and, basically, entire ecosystems.  EPA was specific:  The ban had nothing to do with cancer.  Once again, Lewin ignores history, science and law.

So, in Lewin’s guest post, we see the pattern that continues at Watts’s place — unfair and wrong indictments of science, ignorance of history, little understanding of law.

All while trying to mock scientists:  ‘Of course scientists are almost always wrong,’ Watts’s blog argues, once again.

Watts won’t let me correct his errors there, even though he’s still coddling those who misdescribe Rachel Carson as a mass murderer, while denying he does it himself.  Consequently his readers won’t be alerted to this post because Watts or his minions will edit out the automatic ping his blog gets that this post is here.  Propaganda promoting falsehood can’t stand the sunlight of fact and truth.

Just because there’s a scare doesn’t mean there’s not a reason to be scared.  DDT is a deadly toxin, so long-lived that it almost cannot ever be eradicated from the environment.  It kills everything small, quickly, unless so much of it is used that the small things evolve quickly to be resistant and immune to it.

So, if we are to assume, as Lewin wrote, that the anti-warming bunch is to warming what the campaign against Rachel Carson by the DDT manufacturers was to DDT’s harms, we get a hint of what’s really up at Watts Up:  Any anti-warming claim is a hoax.  Why put it so cryptically, if that’s what they meant to say?

When Lewin looks at the history of DDT and Rachel Carson, he’s looking at the false history, and he draws the wrong conclusions.  Should we trust a guy so sloppy with the facts to be right on anything else?

9 Comments | DDT, denialism, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Hoaxes, Law, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

60-second climate skeptic: A 20-second refutation (in about a minute)

December 22, 2010

Back in the life as a corporate consultant and occasional (too-seldom) lecturer, Perry W. Buffington and I got some good mileage out of our observation that, were you in need of delicate brain surgery, you’d probably cross off your list of potential surgeons the guy who had a copy of The One-Minute Brain Surgeon on his desk.  You wouldn’t trust your future to anyone who displayed The One-Minute Financial Planner.

Why in the world would you be ecstatic when your boss read a copy of The One-Minute Manager?”

My recollection is that the first time I actually heard Buff use the line, he got an immediate standing ovation from the very large assembly of workers and middle managers (hey, he’s good — audiences really like his stuff). Someone whose study of their profession is limited to one-minute bon mots, should be regarded with great skepticism, or perhaps be ignored completely,  no matter how bon the mots.  One-Minute [insert your profession here] makes a catchy title, and may even carry some good value in new ideas and good ideas reduced to readable length.  Ken Blanchard, the lead author of the One-Minute Manager series, did not intend his book to be the only text anyone used on a path to an MBA.  It’s frosting, it’s not the cake.  It’s quip, not quote, not prose.  Remember that.

One-minute experts do not exist.  (Some experts may refresh themselves with one-minute reviews of material — but you won’t take pharmaceuticals from the “One-Minute Pharmacist,” if you’re wise.)

Now comes Coyote Blog with a post, “The 60-second Climate Skeptic.”

One minute climate expert?  No.  That dog won’t hunt.

And here’s why, in 20 seconds:  Our concern for global warming is not produced by charts that show rising temperatures, but by two centuries of observations that natural plants and animals, and ice and weather, show effects from climate warming, and the thermometer measurements confirm that the planet is warming.  The Earth still warms, regardless what any chart says.

Here’s the 60 second explanation for the 20-second rebuttal.  Coyote blog makes eight statements or observations, all of them based on the science of carbon dioxide, a science which the author himself appears not to have mastered (he argues that additional carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere are immune from absorbing energy, if there are a lot of carbon dioxide molecules already present, apparently due to some magic mechanism he never mentions)

For 200 years scientists have measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — since at least 1960, with special concern for getting the measurements done accurately and right, because our industrial cultures dump a lot of CO2 waste into the air and any scientist understands that wastes cannot be absorbed without effect forever.  (Newton, Coyote.  You’ve heard of Newton?)  These measurements show increasing CO2.

Separately, botanists, zoologists, other biologists and especially those practicing ecology observed that plants and animals migrate north in the Northern Hemisphere, and south in the Southern Hemisphere, plus up mountain slopes where mountains exist, as if climate were warming, and it this warming were changing their climates, and hence, their habitat.

Beginning about 1965, atmospheric scientists have discussed what might be causing this warming.  At great length, after having eliminated every other known explanation (in true science and Sherlock Holmes fashion), CO2 is left as the likely culprit, the one changing thing that best explains the rise in global temperatures well past the time that paleoclimatologists rather expected a turn toward the cooler.

In short, the charts are used to try to explain the actual observations and measurements, and no matter how badly those charts may have been botched, the plants and animals have really moved, and the measured temperatures have really risen.

Coyote Blog tries to explain away reality as a figment of a scientist’s imagination.  But the Earth is still here.  As Galileo is reputed to have observed, regardless your religious views on heliocentricity, the Earth, she still moves.  Similarly, regardless one’s views on the dastardliness of scientists who carp in e-mails about unfair attacks on them, regardless how  badly one misunderstands CO2 chemistry, regardless any errors in creating charts for a UN agency, the Earth, she still warms.

Coyote Blog fails to discuss any of the effects or observations which lead to the charts on CO2.

“One-minute climate skeptics” can make a great contribution to science:  They are models of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and may be studied to understand that science.

 

Christopher Monckton out of focus

A dictionary could save space, using the same photo for definitions of "climate warming skeptic" and "Dunning-Kruger Effect." In the photo, Monckton is not quite so out-of-focus as usual.

19 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Annals of Global Warming: Lakes warming in temperate regions worldwide

November 24, 2010

While we were trying (unsuccessfully) to find the criminals who hacked the e-mails of scientists, and trying (unsuccessfully for the most part) to point out that being victims of a crime does not mean a group’s research is faulty, and watching the disastrous results of the cynical assault on American politics by e-mail thieves and modern enemies of Hypatia, the world continues to spin.  Galileo so aptly described the news:  Eppur si muove!

Lake Tahoe, Emerald Bay - one of the world's warming lakes - NASA photo

Lake Tahoe, seen here from Emerald Bay, was one of the primary validation sites for the global lake study. The lake, which straddles the borders of California and Nevada, is the largest alpine lake in North America. Image credit: NASA-JPL

Against those religiously inclined to ignore the facts, a modern Galileo could say:  Eppure, lei si scalda!

Just a few months ago critics of science told us that the Copenhagen conference on climate change was unnecessary, because the world is cooling, and not warming.  Eleven months ago, supporters of the theft of e-mails from the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain claimed that researchers had goofed about global warming, and then covered it up.  The sad old Earth kept turning and orbiting . . .

Comes now this news from NASA:

November 23, 2010

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

RELEASE : 10-308

NASA Study Finds Earth’s Lakes Are Warming

WASHINGTON — In the first comprehensive global survey of temperature trends in major lakes, NASA researchers determined Earth’s largest lakes have warmed during the past 25 years in response to climate change.

Researchers Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used satellite data to measure the surface temperatures of 167 large lakes worldwide.

They reported an average warming rate of 0.81 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. The warming trend was global, and the greatest increases were in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

“Our analysis provides a new, independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change over land around the world,” said Schneider, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “The results have implications for lake ecosystems, which can be adversely affected by even small water temperature changes.”

Small changes in water temperature can result in algal blooms that can make a lake toxic to fish or result in the introduction of non-native species that change the lake’s natural ecosystem.

Scientists have long used air temperature measurements taken near Earth’s surface to compute warming trends. More recently, scientists have supplemented these measurements with thermal infrared satellite data that can be used to provide a comprehensive, accurate view of how surface temperatures are changing worldwide.

The NASA researchers used thermal infrared imagery from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and European Space Agency satellites. They focused on summer temperatures (July-September in the Northern Hemisphere and January-March in the Southern Hemisphere) because of the difficulty in collecting data in seasons when lakes are ice-covered and/or often hidden by clouds. Only nighttime data were used in the study

The bodies studied were selected from a global database of lakes and wetlands based on size (typically at least 193 square miles or larger) or other unique characteristics of scientific merit. The selected lakes also had to have large surface areas located away from shorelines, so land influences did not interfere with the measurements. Satellite lake data were collected from the point farthest from any shoreline.

The largest and most consistent area of warming was northern Europe. The warming trend was slightly weaker in southeastern Europe, around the Black and Caspian seas and Kazakhstan. The trends increased slightly farther east in Siberia, Mongolia and northern China.

In North America, trends were slightly higher in the southwest United States than in the Great Lakes region. Warming was weaker in the tropics and in the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The results were consistent with the expected changes associated with global warming.

The satellite temperature trends largely agreed with trends measured by nine buoys in the Great Lakes, Earth’s largest group of freshwater lakes in terms of total surface area and volume.

The lake temperature trends were also in agreement with independent surface air temperature data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. In certain regions, such as the Great Lakes and northern Europe, water bodies appear to be warming more quickly than surrounding air temperature.

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

– end –

 

Warming trends in temperate zone lakes, 1985-2009 - NASA image, JPL

Global trends in seasonal nighttime lake surface temperatures, 1985-2009. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltec

World wide, a few lakes show not a great deal of warming, but none of the lakes sampled showed any cooling over the past two-and-a-half decades.

11 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Delingpole: Wrong and bitter on DDT

November 21, 2010

The Daily Telegraph’s James Delingpole got suckered by the anti-Rachel Carson propaganda, and wrote a bitter piece complaining about how environmentalists are ruining the environment and people’s lives (double whammy:  environmentalists worry about people over profits, and the environment over corporations, so Delingpole hoped to tweak ’em at both ends).  Lots of discussion, too much to read and most of it nasty and off target.

It was a smaller part of Delingpole’s generally anti-science, contrary-to-fact rant about global warming.

Chris Goodall fixed all of Delingpole’s errors on DDT at Carbon Commentary.

Being pro-DDT has become as religious an exercise as being for creationism taught in public schools.  There’s no good evidence to support the point, but there are a tiny handful of people who are gullible enough to spread whatever they say.  That tiny handful of advocates never gets the facts on their side, nor they on the side of the facts, but they appear deluded enough that they get their panties in a wad if you point out that their claims are false.  “I’m not a liar!” they’ll retort with indignation good enough to make them rivals of the Portugal soccer squad’s acting, or just crazy enough to fail to recognize their errors.

And so the falsehoods spiral on virally.

Rachel Carson’s ghost should get busier.  DDT can’t stop malaria, and now rarely slows it at all.  Rachel Carson was right — and had we listened in 1962, malaria might be a lot less prevalent today.

2 Comments | DDT, Global warming, History, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Red State: You’ll hear the banjoes

November 8, 2010

Somebody linked over to Red State.  What a creepy site.

First, it looks like those old ’50s school films about the creeping “Red Menace,” the way they paint every state Commie Red (no, I know they’re not conscious commies, but let’s call the color what it is).  It’s as if they have no knowledge of history over there, and they’ve never noticed.  It’s pretty clear that they have no desire nor need for white and blue, even to make “red, white and blue.”

Cover of record with "Dueling Banjoes"

If you have it on vinyl, you know what we mean.

Second, they brook no dissent at all.  Their terms of use (no open discussion) show the Red Staters get to decide whether you’re with the Red State Big Brother program — and if for any reason they decide you’re not toeing the party line, you’re vanquished.  No appeals.  “It’s not really an echo chamber, it’s unison singing.”

Third, there is the astonishing sucking sound where brains of skeptics should be.  Pick the stupid side of almost any issue, and it’s represented in spades there.  On the sciency front, for example, Red Staters have no use nor knowledge of Darwin, they think the warming temperatures of the climate are faked, probably by unholy, non-Red Stater weathermen, and they are convinced that the UN and others are using malaria for “population control” — so they favor massive amounts of DDT.

Remember Mr. Urquhart, the Delaware Tea Partier who, by the grace of God, lost the race for the state’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and his claim that “separation of church and state” was Hitler’s idea?  Urquhart appears to drift in the mainstream at Red State.

Try it.  Pick an issue, do a search at Red State to see if they don’t favor the stupid side, and see whether any real facts can get in.  Even the news that shows their positions wrong, say their position against more stimulus, they’ll spin to say it’s the other guy’s fault.

God save us.  It’s a new Red to fear, the new Red Scare.

18 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Creationism, DDT, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Global warming, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Red Scare | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Wegman Scandal: Attack on climate scientists based on shoddy scholarship

October 4, 2010

John Mashey assembled a massive document that nails down the case that bad science and politics make the complaints against scientists and the science that indicates global warming occurs, and can be attributed to greenhouse gases.  It is a scandal, though it’s unlikely to be reported that way.

Mashey’s entire paper — and it’s very, very large — is published at Deep Climate.

Mashey’s paper indicts staff work done for Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas — not that any of the voters in Barton’s district will let this major breach of ethics sway their votes, but those who want to vote against him can be gratified that they are on the moral side of the ballot.

Mashey wrote:

This report offers a detailed study of the “Wegman Report”: Edward J. Wegman, David W. Scott, Yasmin H. Said, “AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORT ON THE ‘HOCKEY STICK’ GLOBAL CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION”(2006).

It has been key prop of climate anti-science ever since. It was promoted to Congress by Representatives Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield as “independent, impartial, expert” work by a team of “eminent statisticians.” It was none of those.

A Barton staffer provided much of the source material to the Wegman team. The report itself contains numerous cases of obvious bias, as do process, testimony and follow-on actions. Of 91 pages, 35 are mostly plagiarized text, but often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning. Its Bibliography is mostly padding, 50% of the references uncited in the text.  Many references are irrelevant or dubious.  The team relied heavily on a long-obsolete sketch and very likely on various uncredited sources. Much of the work was done by Said (then less than 1 year post-PhD) and by students several years pre-PhD. The (distinguished) 2nd author Scott wrote only a 3-page standard mathematical Appendix.  Some commenters were surprised to be later named as serious “reviewers.”  Comments were often ignored anyway.  People were misused.

The Wegman Report claimed two missions: #1 evaluate statistical issues of the “hockey stick” temperature graph,  and #2 assess potential peer review issues in climate science.  For #1, the team might have been able to do a peer-review-grade statistical analysis, but in 91 pages managed not to do so.  For  #2, a credible assessment needed a senior, multidisciplinary panel, not a statistics professor and his students, demonstrably unfamiliar with the science and as a team, unqualified for that task.   Instead, they made an odd excursion into “social network analysis,” a discipline  in which they lacked experience, but used poorly to make baseless claims of potential wrongdoing.

In retrospect, the real missions were: #1 claim the “hockey stick” broken and #2 discredit climate science as a whole. All this was a facade for a PR campaign well-honed by Washington, DC “think tanks” and allies, underway for years.

Now, if only Mashey had some e-mails stolen from Joe Barton, we could get some traction on the issue, eh?  ::wink-wink, nudge-nudge::

One may wonder what it will take to rehabilitate the skeptical side of the debate, to the point that they contribute more than mau-mauing.

Mashey’s paper makes that case that Joe Barton worked hard to pull off a great, hoaxed political smear, with a high degree of success.  Who will have the backbone to do anything about it?  Global cooling will proceed to the next ice age before any Republican shows backbone, I predict.

But, how long before the Fort Worth Star-Telegram or the Dallas Morning News picks up the story?

Other Texas bloggers?  Anyone?

It’s not an air-tight legal brief (I could quibble with some of the legal material), but in a better world, a world where politicians actually do good politics and public servants do public service, the House Rules Committee and Ethics Committee would be reading Mashey’s piece, and asking pointed questions.  U.S. attorneys in Washington, D.C., and the Northern District of Texas, would also be downloading Mashey’s piece, and puzzling it out.  Journalists in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Galveston and Houston in Texas, and Washington, D.C., and New York, would also be poring over the piece.  Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia would also be paying attention to it, if he were concerned about justice.

More (watch for updates):

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Clean Air Act, Climate change, climate_change, Current History, Hoaxes, Political Smear, Politics, Scandals, Science, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Annals of Global Warming: Another broken campaign promise: 2010 hottest year on record

October 2, 2010

Last November and December, in their campaign to impugn science and promote air pollution, climate change “skeptics” said that global warming is done, and that we are in a new planetary cooling phase.

It’s one more broken campaign promise from the anti–climate science politicians, like Anthony Watts:  2010 on track to be the hottest year on record.

“The interesting thing about it is the temperature anomaly map for June shows it was pretty much warm everywhere over land except for a few places,” said David Easterling, of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which released the data. “That’s somewhat of an uncommon pattern to see almost all the land mass being that warm.”

Only the U.S. Pacific Northwest, northern Europe and southern China were cooler than average, according to NOAA.

As the Earth continues to heat up from rising levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, the planet is likely to see more record-breaking years. “As we continue to get warmer, the odds of any given year breaking the record are pretty high,” Easterling said.

Indeed, four of the five warmest years on record have come in the last decade. The reigning warmest year on record is 2005, followed by 1998, 2003, 2006 and 2009, Easterling said.

We don’t even have to see their intimate e-mails to know they fibbed to us.  The thermometer on the patio has the news.

Last year, when the world’s leaders were preparing to meet in Copenhagen, harpies from the radical and crazy right insisted that global warming had ceased its advances, and the global cooling would be the norm for the near and midrange future.  They promised!*

Good heavens!  Do you think they were fibbing when they said the scientists were wrong, and mean?  Were they fibbing when they said CO2 is not a pollutant?

How many more broken promises?  (/sarcasm off)

Would Copenhagen’s result been different had this information been available a year earlier?

See also:

_____________

*  Note:  No, they didn’t promise, not really.  Critics of taking action for a better future never promise anything solid.  They only carp that whatever being done is wrong, unnecessary, and too expensive.  Plus, they complain that the food is horrible to the point of being inedible, and the portions are too small.

4 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Cost of Green, History, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Anthony Watts targets Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, ends up getting scrubbed

September 14, 2010

Continuing comedy/tragedy at Watts Up With That, Anthony Watts’ staunchly anti-global-warming-science blog.

Funny in the denial of the obvious, funny in the dance to get around the science, tragic in that anyone grants much credence to the denials of the obvious and science — Watts steams on.

Watts and his moderators haven’t completely blocked my comments, and I can sneak one in on occasion just slipping under their radar.  We are all plagued by a recent spate of pro-DDT publicity, prompted by what I am not sure but encompassing a full-court press from anti-science moguls like Paul Driessen, pro-poison advocates, and a film by a crank (quack?) physician-to-the-stars who appears fearful of revealing his full name, Rutledge Taylor and “3 Billion and Counting.”  (Taylor’s film is sort of the “Expelled!” of the Chronically Obsessed with Rachel Carson (COWRC) set, but without the charm and science of Ben Stein’s film, since the scientists refused to sit for an interview with Taylor.)  (Taylor’s publicity refers to him as “Dr. Rutledge.”  Perhaps he aspires to the heights of academic and science credence granted Dr. Phil.)

Watts gave his pedestal over to an engineer, Indur Goklany, for a diatribe against Bill Gates. In comments, I tried to insert some data into an increasingly shrill and increasingly error-prone howl against Gates.  Of Gates I am no great fan (unfairly; I use Windows), but sometimes one needs to stand up for accuracy and fairness, just for the sake of accuracy and fairness.

Watts gave Goklany a platform to go after my two comments.  I’m Watts’ target for the day.

Dancing on the edge of science is treacherous, as Watts and Goklany may have discovered.  Goklany claims I make many errors in my comments, but he cites no evidence suggesting I err at all.  I merely pointed to the decline in death totals from malaria, and to the real work of the Gates Foundation.  Nothing in those comments has been tagged as incorrect.

In comments, however, truth breaks out.  Franklin’s adage about truth winning in a fair fight holds true, especially on a topic like malaria and DDT, where Watts and Goklany together, even were they the acme of broadcast meteorology and dissident engineering, can’t snuff out factual comments fast enough to keep up the tirade.  [You fellows there on the side:  Stop your betting about whether Goklany is a creationist!  Gambling is not allowed here, especially when the fix is in.  He confesses he is “an engineer,” after all.]

I may err; but take a look, Dear Reader, and see if the contrived case against Rachel Carson and for poisoning Africa with DDT doesn’t take a few hits, especially in comments.

Sometime, perhaps this week, I hope to get a substantial comment about the flurry of crank science on DDT, and Rutledge Taylor’s contemptible falsehoods.  But I am without time, and without computer most of the day.

Now, if only being Watts’ target would persuade his readers to actually come here to find the facts about DDT, it would be worth it.

_____________

Tim Lambert at Deltoid explains where Goklany runs off the rails of accurate information, and as usual, has more comments than we get in the Bathtub.

29 Comments | DDT, History, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas Attorney General refuses to enforce the law

September 13, 2010

Here’s a good reason to vote him out this fall:  Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott officially notified the federal government he won’t enforce clean air laws.  (Rude letter that follows, here.)

Can you imagine the contretemps had he announced he won’t enforce federal immigration laws, nor support their enforcement by federal officials?

Abbott is once again putting politics far, far ahead of science, no matter how it damages Texas (Texas pays premiums in home insurance already because of damage from global warming).

If it’s something in the water that generates such craziness, I hope it enters the water systems well south of Dallas.

Abbott’s opponent is a well-respected, deeply experienced, honorable attorney named Barbara Ann Radnofsky.  Almost every big polluting corporation in America is supporting Abbott.  You may want to consider that as you contribute to candidates this week (hurry!), and as you vote this fall.

More information, more resources:

Hard shake of the old scrub brush to Texas Climate News.

2 Comments | Clean Air Act, Climate change, climate_change, Environmental protection, Global warming, Law, Politics, Regulation, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Yet another blow against warming “skeptics”: Virginia judge quashed Cuccinelli’s witch hunt

September 2, 2010

Vivian Paige pulled together early reports and the actual court documents:  A judge in Virginia quashed the subpeona issued by Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to the University of Virginia, in a rather blatant attempt to silence a famous scientist working on global warming, Michael Mann.

Rosalind Helderman explained in the Virginia Politics blog of the Washington Post:

Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled that Cuccinelli can investigate whether fraud has occurred in university grants, as the attorney general had contended, but ruled that Cuccinelli’s subpoena failed to state a “reason to believe” that Mann had committed fraud.

The ruling is a major blow for Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic who had maintained that he was investigating whether Mann committed fraud in seeking government money for research that showed that the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming. Mann, now at Penn State University, worked at U-Va. until 2005.

According to Peatross, the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, under which the civil investigative demand was issued, requires that the attorney general include an “objective basis” to believe that fraud has been committed. Peatross indicates that the attorney general must state the reason so that it can be reviewed by a court, which Cuccinelli failed to do.

Peatross set the subpoena aside without prejudice, meaning Cuccinelli could give the subpoena another try by rewriting the civil demand to better explain the conduct he wishes to investigate. But the judge seemed skeptical of Cuccinelli’s underlying claim about Mann, noting that Cuccinelli’s deputy maintained in a court hearing that the nature of Mann’s fraud was described in subsequent court papers in the case.

“The Court has read with care those pages and understands the controversy regarding Dr. Mann’s work on the issue of global warming. However, it is not clear what he did was misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Peatross wrote.

Also, as suggested earlier here, the judge noted that Cuccinelli’s authority did not extend to four of the five grants questioned, because they were federal grants, not state grants.  (See here, too.)

Comments at Helderman’s article show the fault lines of division on global warming — purely political faultlines.

Since opponents of action against warming so frantically publicized stolen e-mails from researchers late last year, in official proceedings scientists have smacked down skeptics on almost every issue.

Which only means that scientists now sit in the position of Cassandra after Apollo’s curse.

20 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, Government, Hoaxes, Jurisprudence, Law, Political Smear, Politics, Research, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

NASA awards Global Climate Change Education grants

August 18, 2010

NASA announced a series of awards totaling $7.7 million to 17 agencies who will work to improve education on climate change. One of NASA’s goals and duties is to educate about NASA research.

These grants have been in the mill for a while, and should be welcomed by the winners of the awards. Wait for people convinced climate change isn’t happening or shouldn’t be prevented, to howl up a storm. 

Here’s the press release:

NASA Announces 2010 Global Climate Change Education Awards

WASHINGTON — NASA has awarded $7.7 million in cooperative agreements to 17 organizations across the United States to enhance learning through the use of NASA’s Earth science resources. The selected organizations include colleges and universities, nonprofit groups, and a community college. The winning proposals in the Global Climate Change Education Awards illustrated innovative approaches to using NASA content in elementary, secondary and undergraduate teaching, and lifelong learning. The proposals emphasized engaging students in NASA Earth observation data and Earth system models, and providing climate-related research experiences for teachers and undergraduate students. Each cooperative agreement is expected to leverage NASA’s unique contributions in climate and Earth system science. The grants support NASA’s goal of engaging students in the critical disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and inspiring the next generation of researchers and explorers. The 17 proposals will fund organizations in Washington, D.C., and 13 states: California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania. Winning proposals were selected through a merit-based, peer-reviewed competition. The performance period is up to three years and awards range in value from $300,000 to $700,000. For a list of selected organizations and projects descriptions, click on “Selected Proposals” and look for “Global Climate Change Education” at: http://nspires.nasaprs.com For information about NASA’s education programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/education

– end –

Winning proposals came from organizations across the nation (home state listed in parentheses; last name of principal investigator after the dash). Selected proposals in Funding Category D/M: Using NASA Earth system data, interactive models and simulations to Strengthen Teaching and Learning about Global Climate

  • American Meteorological Society – Brey
  • Columbia University – Chandler
  • Cayuga Community College (New York) – Coughlin
  • University of Toledo (Ohio) – Czajkowski
  • University of California at Riverside – Droser
  • University of North Carolina – Gray
  • Florida Atlantic University – Lambert
  • University of New Hampshire – Martin
  • Colorado State University – Moore
  • University of Idaho – Mulkey
  • University of Minnesota – Roehrig
  • University of Massachusetts – Rooney-Varga
  • SRI International (California) – Zalles

Selected proposals in Funding Category R: Global Climate Change Science Research Experiences for Pre- or In-Service Teachers

  • Institute for Earth Science Research and Education (Pennsylvania) – Brooks
  • Harvard University – Ellison
  • University of Nebraska – Gosselin
  • Oregon State University – O’Connell

Details of the winning proposals can be found here.

1 Comment | Climate change, climate_change, Education, Global warming, NASA, Research, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Another blog, shocked — shocked! — at cold in Argentina in July

August 10, 2010

Unlike the blog discussed in an earlier post at first, this blog seems to understand that it’s winter in South America.  Still, the author can’t understand why record cold in one small spot doesn’t completely negate warming in the rest of the world:  Minnesotans for Global Warming.

One almost expects to find it has sister sites:  Minnesotans Love Cancer, Minnesotans for Child Abuse, and Self-Lobotomies R Us.

Maybe it’s not the concept of climate that confuses these people, but the entire notion of “average global temperature.”  People who spend their entire lives below average, probably expect that’s the way it is in temperatures, too.  (Is that nasty enough for today?  I’m feeling crabby about idiocy.)

3 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Cost of Green, Global warming, Green Politics, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Science, Voodoo science, Woo | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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