Following from Dan Pangburn: Dan commented on this, helpfully providing links to several pdfs showing where he derived his constant.

So I took a look at them.

Dan uses the First Law of Thermodynamics.

That’s a start: Energy(in) – Energy(out) = Energy(retained).

Let’s take a look at Energy(Out). A single term: X·T⁴, where X is Dan’s constant.

Dan helpfully provides a link to Wikipedia’s A very simple model. This shows

(1-a)S = 4εσT⁴

where

• S is the solar constant – the incoming solar radiation per unit area—about 1367 W·m⁻²
• a is the Earth’s average albedo, measured to be 0.3
• σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant—approximately 5.67×10⁻⁸ J·K⁻⁴·m⁻²·s⁻¹
• ε is the effective emissivity of earth, about 0.612

Dividing both sides by (1-a)S, we get 1 = Y·T⁴ where Y = 4εσ/(1-a)S.

Plugging in the terms into Y, we get
Y = (4 x 0.612 x 5.67×10−8)/(0.7 x 1367) K⁻⁴
= 1.45·10^-10 K⁻⁴
(or 1·10^-10 K⁻⁴ to 1 s.f. – we can’t justify more than one significant figure)

Y can’t really be a constant, though, since 1 = Y·T⁴. If T increases then Y must decrease (and vice versa). Perhaps we should rewrite it as Y_i·T_i⁴ = 1. But for small ΔT Y will not change by much.

So far, so good.

Dan derives his constant in the same way, but then multiplies an additional term (the average sunspot count).

Quoting from his pdf on page 6:

The average sunspot number since 1700 is about 50, the energy radiated from the planet is about 342*0.7 = 239.4 (for the units used) and the earth’s effective emissivity is about 0.61 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_climate_model). Thus, as a place to start, X should be about 50/239.4 times the Stephan-Boltzmann constant times 0.61.

50/239.4*5.67E-8 *0.61 = 7.2E-9

Which then he “refines”, continuing:

With this plugged into the equation, a plausible graph is produced with a dramatic change observed to take place in about 1940. In EXCEL, 7.2E-9 was placed in a cell and the cell (value for X) called by the equation which produced a graph. The graph was observed as the value for X was varied. X was adjusted until the net energy from 1700 to about 1940 exhibited a fairly level trend. This occurs when X is 6.519E-9 (unbeknownst to me at the time, cell formatting rounded it to 6.52E-9).If an average sunspot number of 6.52/7.2*50 = 45.28 had been used, no adjustment would have been needed.

This is, of course, nonsense.

But we will follow this for now to see where it goes.

If we now multiply Y by Dan’s sunspot average count, we get
45.28Y = 45.28 x 1.45·10^-10 K⁻⁴
= 6.56·10^-9 K⁻⁴.

This is pretty close to Dan’s value (the difference is probably due to slightly different values of the terms S & ε, which I had used from the model).

To all intents and purposes X = 45.28Y.

Now go back to Dan’s term X·T⁴, the output energy.

Replacing X with 45.28Y, and remembering that Y·T⁴ = 1 (so that Y = T^-4), we get

X·T⁴ = 45.28·T^-4·T⁴.

Gosh! The Temperature terms cancel, the Stefan-Boltzmann equation vanishes, and the energy we are left with is ….
 
 
45.28 Sunspots ….
 
 

 
 
 
Image Credit:

Solar & Heliospheric Observatory

:

anom(Y) = calculated temperature anomaly in year Y
N(i) = average daily Brussels International sunspot number in year i
Y = number of years that have passed since 1700 (or any other year where the net summation is approximately zero such as 1856, 1902, 1910, 1938, or 1943)
T(i) = agt (average global temperature) of year i in °K,
ESST(c,Y) = ESST (Effective Sea Surface Temperature) in year Y calculated using an ESST range (magnitude) of c
CO2(Y) = ppmv CO2 in year Y
CO2start = ppmv CO2 in 1880

Dang, his equation is just too big to fit the image.
However we could simplify his equation and tidy it up a bit.

In the first summation, N(i) will always be positive, since N(i) >= 0 (you cannot have negative sunspots).

It is also dimensionless. For dimensional analysis Dan has to change this to degrees, but doesn’t say how it does.

In the second term, 6.52×10^-9T⁴ is quoted.
Dan did not state how this was derived, or cited. Is it based on science, or has Dan just made it up?

It is vaguely reminiscent of the Stefan Boltzmann law, but he is certainly not using the Stefan–Boltzmann constant (which is more than 10 times larger than Dans). Besides which the the Stefan Boltzmann equation is in units of Watts per square metre. We need to derive the anomaly in degrees Kelvin, so somehow Dan needs to define his constant.

Using Dan’s value at 288K, term 2 results in ~ 45. So (according to Dan) we should be warming whenever the “average daily Brussels International sunspot number” is more than 45 then we should result in warming (e.g. 2000), and a lower number should mean cooling (e.g. 2007).

Check any of your favourite datasets and see if how many years agree with Dan’s figures. I don’t know how many that you might find in agreement with Dan’s, since I gave up looking after seeing 2000 and 2007.

But there are more terms – perhaps we need to look at them to see if this makes more sense further along.

(Or maybe not. :))

ESST(c,Y) = ESST (Effective Sea Surface Temperature) in year Y calculated using an ESST range (magnitude) of c

I haven’t got a clue what this means, since Dan does not say how he derives it. But I don’t think it means the Sea Surface Temperature. Perhaps he meant the anomaly?

The last term does makes sense – that CO₂ will warm logarithmically.

Then we have Dan has four “coefficients”, a, b, c and d.

Usually are coefficients are constants without dimensions (e.g. π). I know that some engineering terms use coefficients with units, but if they are they quoted in units. Since Dan doesn’t explain the units for his terms the equation , there is a real problem with a, b & d when looking at dimensional analysis (I can’t comment on c since I don’t understand the term). Possibly he meant that a and d were in units of K and b was in K^-1 it might make more sense – but he didn’t say this.

But wait – Dan earlier stated that the coefficients are “to be determined” (i.e. not known).

They are not coefficients or even constants – he selects his terms according to the year (and even offers different versions for the same year).
His “coefficients” are variables! He even it states that the “coefficients” are adjusted to get the “best fit” of R².
If I’m reading this correctly, then there is no supporting science of his coefficients. His “coefficients” are nothing more than pattern matching.

Since the coefficients were determined using all available data, some reviewers asserted that the equation may have no predictive ability in spite of it being formulated from relevant physical
phenomena and a known law of thermodynamics.

(My emphasis)

Of course I would expect Dan as an engineer would understand “a known law of thermodynamics”. In fact I would expect him to know at least three of them.
Which one has he selected? It would help.

Dan has however predicted the temperature for the next 25 years or so (and, surprisingly enough, we see that it will be cooling).
He is assuming that the sunspot variability over the next years is the same as the pattern between 1915 to 1941 – which is fair enough, since that he knows that it is a guess.
If sunspots do resemble then Dan predicts a cooling of about of between 0.2 K and 0.4 K (depending on his variable “coefficients”, despite that he has no idea what almost all his terms are unknown).

The beauty of it is that his own graph shows substantial warming between 1915 to 1941.

Shot in the foot? I think so.

Finally, Dan “shows” that the temperature has been declining between 2005 and 2011 (despite that the 2011 isn’t yet known yet).
He draws a straight line between 2005 and 2011(using UAH).

This is just sloppy. If Dan knows how to calculate R² then he is perfectly capable of working out an OLS trend.

Over to you, Dan.

Image Credit:

climaterealists.com

Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) are a team of independent scientists who have released of their temperature record.
The team was led by Richard Muller, a physicist at the University of California. There were 10 contributors in total, only one of whom is a traditional climate scientist.
Saul Perlmutter, one of the team, recently won a Nobel Prize for “the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe”.

The team have drafted four papers:

1. Statistical Methods
2. Urban Heat Island
3. Station Quality
4. Decadal Variations

(If you don’t want to read the full papers, they have a two page summary)

Having looked at considerably more than the usual climate data, they conclude that

• The temperature records by GISS, NOAA and CRU are pretty much right (BEST are warming than CRU & NOAA)
• The “Urban Heat Island” is a myth, since urban areas are less then 0.5% of the surface on land
• Bad quality of stations is a real problem, but that they do not significantly change trends

Not exactly shattering news, then, but learning why the team decided to undertake the study is interesting.

In the Economist, who broke the story, tells us

Marshalled by an astrophysicist, Richard Muller, this group, which calls itself the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature, is notable in several ways. When embarking on the project 18 months ago, its members (including Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel prize for physics this month for his work on dark energy) were mostly new to climate science. And Dr Muller, for one, was mildly sceptical of its findings. This was partly, he says, because of “climategate”: the 2009 revelation of e-mails from scientists at CRU which suggested they had sometimes taken steps to disguise their adjustments of inconvenient palaeo-data. With this reputation, the Berkeley Earth team found it unusually easy to attract sponsors, including a donation of $150,000 from the Koch Foundation.

So Muller was sceptical. This is good and natural, of course. And they decided to check their results for themselves.

Rather than just use the datasets already available, they also included all the records that they had found (in some cases only for a short duration). In total they accumulated 1.6 billion records, about 5 times the data used by GISS, NOAA and CRU. And they had to develop a new analytical approach to incorporate fragments of records.

One caveat – the papers have been submitted (to the Journal of Geophysical Research) but have not yet been accepted. The CRU has declined an offer on the story, because the papers have not yet been through peer review. Possibly this is why Real Climate have not covered the story yet. It could still be a damp squib, but that leaves us exactly as it was before.

Certainly Watts critical (I counted eight blogs about BEST since the story broke), but I do not recall too much concern about peer review in the past.

And Dellingpole’s Global Warming is real is a gem:

“The planet has been warming,” says a new study of temperature records, conducted by Berkeley professor Richard Muller. I wonder what he’ll be telling us next: that night follows day? That water is wet? That great white sharks have nasty pointy teeth? That sheep go “baaaa”?

Some more sensible blogs include

• SkepticalScience (hat tip)
• The Great Beyond (Nature)
• Deltoid
• Open Mind (Tamino)
• Climate Central

And probably many more …

S2

Update: This was covered by BEST before, back in April. I was busy with Eigenvectors and didn’t pay attention.

Image Credit:

BEST

It will take me a while to catch up with all the dross in the inbox, but when I’ve caught up with it I’ll find another post.

Thanks to everyone who has continued to contribute the blog in the last few months, I will hopefully continue to do so.

S2

“It’s unlikely that the U.S. is going to take serious action on climate change until there are observable, dramatic events, almost catastrophic in nature, that drive public opinion and drive the political process in that direction,” Stavins, director of Harvard’s Environmental Economics Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said today in an interview in Bloomberg’s Boston office.“

Disaster Needed for U.S. to Act on Climate Change, Harvard’s Stavins Says

The argument that people will not do anything until it starts to affect them has probably been around for all of history. Certainly it is an old one with respect to climate change. The most recent iteration by Harvard economist Robert Stavins.

I was not able to find  much response to Stavins in the climate science blogosphere, perhaps because we have repeatedly been here before. However, there were two which illustrate several of the false assumptions that tend to get associated with this argument:

1. What do we mean by “affect”?

2. “Act” or react?

3. Why catastrophe? Why Wait?

.

Let’s start by noting that what is being referred to is what is known as “trigger events” in discussions of political activism. Trigger events are things that spike public awareness of a particular issue, for good or ill.

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af·fect [v. uh-fekt; n. af-ekt] –verb

.

Unfortunately every discussion of the “they won’t act until” argument and climate change immediately assumes that by “affect them” it is meant that climate change itself must directly affect people through floods or heat waves etc before they will take action.

Where does that come from? the assumption that we are only “affected” by the direct experience of the physical consequences of climate change? On one level I do understand it in the sense that this is usually implicitly stated in the sub-text.

On another level I don’t get it since these arguments are written by and for people who have been affected by the scientific facts. We have been affected by something other than a direct impact of climate change and are acting as a consequence, QED.

Now that huge numbers have not been affected similarly, or were affected but are not acting is trivially obvious. That education or scientific facts are the only possible non-direct affecter seems to be an unexamined assumption, unexamined and obviously false.

Here are some images from the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s.  These and others profoundly affected the people who saw them even though those people were not directly affected by racism in the ways that we would cite as relevant to the argument that “people won’t act unless …”

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People were affected by these images and they acted.

In the 1960s the United States conducted a war in Vietnam that devastated the population there, but largely did not directly affect most US citizens.

As you watch this video about a Buddhist monk self-immolating in protest, listen carefully to Roger Hilsman,  the State Department’s Director of Intelligence and Research, describe the political consequences of this action.

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Here are a couple more images from the Vietnam War that profoundly affected people who were, in the terms of the “until it affects them” argument, unaffected by the war.

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For many more examples see Images That Changed The World ? or just google variations of that phrase.

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act [akt] –verb (used without object)

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In his piece Can Catastrophe Galvanize Action on Global Warming? Keith Kloor confuses the reaction of inaction with not acting (ie they didn’t act, they reacted). To get there he defers to a number of authorities who cite various catastrophes where the public has not taken action, such as the financial crises and floods.

They are quite correct in noting that for the most part people did nothing that we could detect about these particular crises. What I want to ask is what exactly did the average person think they could do about these particular crises? They didn’t act, they reacted, largely by becoming more frightened and angry.

My point is that you will only see people act if they think there is anything useful that they can do. We have very successfully convinced the public that when it comes to financial policy they are not merely insignificant, they are irrelevant.

As for the flooding example given, there again it is framed as a national policy issue such that the measure of people taking action is changes in legislation and policy. These are not the only possible courses of action for people, but if it is your only measure of action than the conclusion is “no one acted.”

Even in a discussion of public disengagement the message is framed as to reinforce the irrelevance of public engagement. In this environment a catastrophe will not rally people who believe that there is nothing they can do, it will merely mire them further in despair.

In On Waiting for Catastrophe Michael Tobis expresses pessimism for the perfectly logical reason that there is a 40 year lag between when we start acting and when we can reasonably expect to see benefits from those actions. As such, if the needed events of sufficient scale to be motivating do not occur for another decade or more we will be far to far down the road to total catastrophe to make a difference. Fair enough as an argument for why we can’t wait, but it is presented more as a eulogy under the assumption that we have to wait.

Further, he goes on to say “As for what individuals can do, the sad answer is, very little.” This belief in individual powerlessness is another reason that we cannot afford to wait for a catastrophe. For people who have been led to believe that they are powerless and insignificant the worst possible thing would be to add an even greater, more intractable challenge that they must confront. Given that, they won’t act. What little remains of their humanity will simply curl up and die.

Actually all social movements are made up solely of individuals.  Thus it has ever been and thus it will ever be. They don’t come in any other flavour. Everything that was ever done was done by individuals. Sometimes alone, sometimes in organized groups, but nonetheless groups of individuals.

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pro·ac·tive [proh-ak-tiv] –adjective

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Getting back to what Stavins said “… until there are observable, dramatic events, almost catastrophic in nature, that drive public opinion …”. Why catastrophic? Absolutely no question about “observable”, and “dramatic” is good if possible, but why catastrophic?

And why wait?

Trigger events can be unplanned or natural events such as Chernobyl, or human caused/driven events such as the Selma March. The images above from the civil rights struggle were all trigger events, and they were all planned and organized by the civil rights activists. They were observable and dramatic, but only catastrophic for the regressives who wanted to maintain the status quo of racism.

As the images below attest, given the belief that they can make a difference, that they do matter, people will stand up unarmed in front of tanks and guns and every threat of the most violent suppression. Often they win.

These pictures are of individuals. Every person in every picture is one person who said no to the status quo. They did not get together and have a secret ballot to decide to go as a group. They could have stayed home. They didn’t. No force other than their own hearts compelled them to act. Compelled them as individuals.

“As for what individuals can do, the true answer is that they can shake the world by its roots. They can topple governments, free slaves and get the vote. To paraphrase O’Brien, they can realize those qualities of dignity and courage that are the true standards of the human spirit.

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I know you have seen this before, now watch it again.

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And then tell me again that there is nothing one individual can do. That there is nothing that we can do now that is observable and dramatic and that will affect others. Tell me again that we must wait.

Obviously most of us will never be asked to do something as dramatic or risky as the people in these pictures and videos have done. But we are asked to do something. Not by the State, or by our employers, or by our neighbours. We are asked by our hearts.

When you refuse to take a private automobile because there is a perfectly good, albeit mildly inconvenient public transit option, it affects people. When you suggest that group meals be had at venues that offer a vegetarian option, it affects people. When you seriously try to eat locally, it affects people. When you keep your home temperature at a perfectly comfortable temperature that is significantly different from the norm, it affects people.

When you go on a hunger strike, it affects people. When your friends and family see you being led away by police at a non-violent action, it affects people. When they can only see you for 20 minutes a week through 3 cm of bullet proof glass, it affects people.
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Of course in most cases just one person doing these things makes little difference, except to those affected. However, those people are affected, they witness that acting is possible. Some will even consider the possibility of doing so themselves. Some will do so.

Two people make slightly more difference, but then you never get to two without the one. Three, 50, 500, 10,000; at some point it is suddenly making a huge difference and far more quickly than any had imagined, but it never jumps to a million, or 10,000, or 1,000 all at once. It always starts with the one, and the one needs another one to make two, and those two need another one to make it three …

We are activists. “They” won’t act until they are affected by observable, dramatic events, so what are we waiting for?

Lets give them what they need.

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Hat tip to Magnus and Gareth

The F-bomb again, sigh. Maybe Tobis really has fundamentally altered the tone of climate science discussion? OK, they are climate scientists, there are actual facts and some legitimate political commentary in there, enjoy.

In the media landscape there are climate change deniers and believers, but rarely are those speaking about climate change actual climate scientists…

yo….we’re climate scientists.. and there’s no denying this Climate Change Is REEEEALL..

Who’s a climate scientist..
I’m a climate scientist..
Not a cleo finalist
No a climate scientist

Droppin facts all over this wax
While bitches be crying about a carbon tax
Climate change is caused by people
Earth Unlike Alien Has no sequel
We gotta move fast or we’ll be forsaken,
Cause we were too busy suckin dick Copenhagen: (Politician)

I said Burn! it’s hot in here..
32% more carbon in the atmosphere.
Oh Eee Ohh Eee oh wee ice ice ice
Raisin’ sea levels twice by twice
We’re scientists, what we speak is True.
Unlike Andrew Bolt our work is Peer Reviewed… ooohhh

Who’s a climate scientist..
I’m a climate scientist..
An Anglican revivalist
No a climate scientist

Feedback is like climate change on crack
The permafrosts subtracts: feedback
Methane release wack : feedback..
Write a letter then burn it: feedback
Denialists deny this in your dreams
Coz climate change means greater extremes,
Shit won’t be the norm
Heatwaves bigger badder storms
The Green house effect is just a theory sucker (Alan Jones)
Yeah so is gravity float away muther f**cker

Who’s a climate scientist..
I’m a climate scientist..
I’m not a climate Scientist
Who’s Climate Scientists
A Penny Farthing Cyclist
No
A Lebanese typist
No
A Paleontologist
No
A Sebaceous Cyst
No! a climate scientist! Yo! PREACH~!

Now, I just know that having been profoundly influenced by the post on media strategies you are all thinking “where can I share this that it will reach it’s target audience? Facebook? faculty lounge? playgroup? every Denier blog I can think of? (In your face muther f**cker)”

OK, the last may not be all that effective from a media strategy perspective, but sometimes Geeks just gotta have fun. Whichever context you choose (if any), underscore that there is more real science in this two minute video than two hours of Rob Carter babbling.

Whatever networks you access that may be appropriate, Do it!

Coal Cares

OK, I totally missed this one:

Why Free Inhalers? Because COAL CARES.

Coal Cares is a brand-new initiative from Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, to reach out to American youngsters with asthma and to help them keep their heads high in the face of those who would treat them with less than full dignity. For kids who have no choice but to use an inhaler, Coal Cares lets them inhale with pride.

It’s a Yes Men site. Enjoy the site, but also Jess Zimmerman’s article about it.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Science in the days of John Tyndall, the man who in the mid 19th century identified the greenhouse gases (the greenhouse effect itself was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824) certainly had to deal with Deniers.

After all, it was a period of great scientific discovery, including Darwin’s Evolution by Natural Selection. Scientific discoveries that threatened orthodoxy and ignorance.

Tyndall knew the consequences of Denial and the measure of the people who wallow in it:

” It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste.” ~ John Tyndall

He also knew how much point there was to presenting them with facts and reason in the hope that they would assess the facts fairly and objectively:

” Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain.”

So it’s no surprise that Tyndall took the time to try and help educate a broader public about science and scientific matters (“Fragments of science for unscientific people“). Those were simpler times when gentlemen wrote books and gave public talks for other gentlemen. Now with dozens of different types of media and instant global communication that can potentially reach almost any inhabitant on the planet the art of communication has become mind boggling.

Actually it’s not particularly any more complicated or difficult than it ever was, it’s just more incoherent and bewildering. What could and needed to be done was easier to discern then, now it is not so obvious, but the fundamentals remain the same.

In an earlier post I spoke of the need for a coherent, proactive media strategy. It is not my intent to lay one out, but rather to talk about what a media strategy is and what some of the options might be for implementation.

Further, as I stated in another earlier post: “Granted the climate science community is a loose network of a broad spectrum of individuals and groups, with occasional nodes that might be described as coalitions and the like, so I am not suggesting a unified strategy. It’s not only impractical, it’s probably impossible.

Even so, it is possible for us to have a loose strategy that is constantly discussed and reviewed, and which many in the network implement in ways that are suited to their strengths and abilities.”

For the moment I will take it as a given that our goal is to, at a minimum, get the majority of the population educated about climate change, which would include  understanding the need to take immediate action.

I do not want to be too cavalier in skipping this as I recognize that i) that is too minimal for many people (including myself), and ii) just what that means is open to a range of interpretation, but it will do for the moment.

Strategy

Let’s start with “strategy” since I find that it is usually misunderstood.  A strategy is is an overall plan for how one intends to achieve goals that provides guidance without dictating specifics.

A good strategy is chosen based on analysing the strengths and weaknesses of the respective sides and conducting a campaign accordingly. For example, a historical military commander might choose to use their superior cavalry to gather information for themselves while denying information to the enemy. A chess player might decide to play a cautious, strong defensive game if she knew her opponent was more prone to make mistakes while attacking. A politician might run a campaign emphasizing experience if they know that their voting record lined up well with the issues that concerned the voters in their constituency.

Note that none of the strategies spell out how a particular battle is to be fought. Instead they provide guidance for every situation about whether that battle should even be fought at all. If it should, it then provides guidance as to how. In the above examples:

1. Given their superior intelligence gathering the commander would always seek to keep the enemy confused and then only fight battles when he was certain of victory; otherwise they would always retreat.
2. Given choices of roughly equal value the chess player would always strengthen their defence rather than develop their offensive position, at least until the expected blunder happened and they could safely start attacking.
3. In every speech or interview the politician would refer to their record in some way no matter what the question or issue was. Things like “the voters know from my record that I have always been strong on education, so it will be no surprise that …”

Thinking strategically can be as simple as thinking through how each of us expects our efforts to result in change. If I write a piece on methane clathrates, who do I think will read it and what will they do with that knowledge? How does my piece connect to actual change?

I can write so as to make that more likely, and by thinking it through I more likely to do so. It could be as simple as explicitly stating it at the end of the piece eg “So write to your representative and ….” or “Go to this link and support … .” If a writer fails to do so, informed commentors can always add it to the comment thread.

Media

Too often we see this word and immediately jump to the assumption of “commercial mass media.” Mistake. Media is anything and everything we might use to reach the target audience. Social media, pamphlets, youtube comment threads, church bulletins and community papers, news sharing sites, the blogosphere, pirate radio, street art, poetry jams & open mic nights, billboards, street theatre, public talks, video sharing, organizational newsletters, etc, and even commercial mass media.

However, just saying “commercial mass media” still leaves you choosing from among paid ads, editorials, educating journalists, letter writing to the editor, documentaries, talk shows, news cycle piggy backing, magazines, newspapers, TV, independents vs chain, and so on. You get the picture. Which are chosen and how they are utilized depends on the strategy.

Choosing that will in turn require refining the goal somewhat. Just who are we targeting? Everyone? the Deniers? (bad idea) the undecided? Progressives? labour? women? middle class? rural poor?

Having decided a particular target audience informs which media to use and how.Targeting the rural poor with editorials in high end magazines is obviously a bad idea. Far better to start looking at what media the rural poor do get their information from and analysing how you could start engaging them.

Recognizing that your target is the rural poor may mean that writing an article for the local rural newspaper about crop yields in a changing climate will have far more impact than another blog post about arctic ice or CO2 levels. Maybe it would be good to develop a relationship with the editor or one of the journalists (if they have more than one).

As noted, a strategy has to provide guidance without dictating specifics. Everyone has to go with their strengths and resources. In this example I might not start investigating local rural papers, but I might blog more often about the impacts of climate change on the rural poor in the hope that someone else could use it in the manners described.

Equally, just because a loose strategy of emphasizing the use of machinima has been chosen does not mean that everyone should start producing machinima to educate about climate change.

Obviously someone who is influential in their faith community should use that strength and opportunity, but they might do so by using the communities newsletter to point people to particular machinima as opposed to reiterating the scientific argument in print.

Proactive

Quite a few in the climate science community are proactive in the sense of putting the scientific facts out there in the first place. Some proportion of us even craft our message for specific communities such as nature enthusiasts or the classroom. To a more limited extent some of those dealing with the Deniers do so by documenting their funding sources (hence pro-active).

For obvious reasons most of us tend to be more reactive in that we respond to Denier posts by exposing their frauds and hoaxes. The limitation is obviously that the response is always after the fact, and never reaches everyone it should.

For those whom it does reach it only has value in that they have to be aware of the fraud before the rebuttal makes sense.

For the broad issue of climate change science and given the goal of educating the public, which communities would we target and with what strategy? As a sub-campaign of that, what would the answers be for the goal of exposing the Deniers?

Paradoxically we could even have a strategy that is proactive in responding to the Deniers. A simple pro-active approach would be to use the existing, considerable documentation of Denier lies and errors and get more pieces in the general media discussing the Denier reliance on frauds and error to make their case.

Another example, the Deniers have organized efforts at cyber-censorship whereby articles posted to news sharing sites such as Digg, Reddit etc are systematically and blindly voted down to prevent people from seeing them.

A well organized community could vote good articles up before the Deniers strike, or in such numbers as to overwhelm the Deniers. Naturally the pro-science crowd should not behave as the Deniers do, and instead actually read the articles in question to ensure that they are deserving of support. This would have the added benefit of promoting more education on climate issues for the participants themselves as well as the broader public.

Coherent

It’s not that we are incoherent per se, at least not in the sense that our individual posts or efforts don’t make sense. What I mean is that as a collective we have not, as far as I am aware, even had the broader discussion of who we are targeting and what is the best approach to reach them.

As such there is no coherence to our collective approach. My hope is that by discussing strategies we can start to coordinate better and respond more effectively. If the core science bloggers understand that the more general bloggers are targeting a particular demographic then they can do more posts that speak to the relevant issues.

So let’s start the conversation about what would make for an effective media strategy. First we need some loose agreement on the core questions:

1. Is the goal described above sufficient, or does it need to be refined?
2. What demographic should we be focusing on?
3. What are our strengths and weaknesses?
4. What are the Denier’s strengths and weaknesses?

Endnote

For obvious reasons a good strategy would NOT refer to the greenhouse effect as the “Tyndall Gas Effect”, nor would it confuse the greenhouse effect with anthropogenic climate change as some Deniers try to do. The use of the term here was merely a device to honour a great scientist and early champion in the fight against the organized ignorance that is climate change Denial.

As long as we’re on the topic  (for the last time, at least for a good long while) I decided to move this post up (and several others still to appear).

The context is this video by Katie Goodman of Broad Comedy. It’s a little ditty that uses “f**ked” as a hook and to entertain, but that nonetheless touches on some important points relevant to mobilizing the public.

For most of the points I am going to do no more than note them in the expectation of returning to them at some later time. You may argue that I read too much into a comedic song, but I think that the lyrics resonate with the audience because they touch on truths regardless of the light nature of this particular context.

OK, that’s understated. In a microcosm it pretty much sums up where we are and why we are stuck here.  Kudos to Katie for raising those points, but the really scary interesting  scary thing about this video is the comments people made about it.

First watch the video if you care to (and are not too offended by the F-word) and then we can get to my points.

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When I first saw the video my immediate thought was that it should be the anthem for the youth climate justice movement. Let’s take a quick walk through some of the lyrics:

There’s never been a time
as fucked up as this

No argument there, not for humans anyway. Maybe the Toba eruption, and I understand the PETM was pretty nasty for most species, but that’s pedantic quibbling.

I didn’t fuck it up
You probably didn’t fuck it up

Pretty much true if the audience is under 25 (plus or minus) or not from the privileged 20% of the global population. Other than that, not so true. However, I am willing to bet that virtually everyone feels that it applies to them. That’s a key point and a difficult one for us. No one wants to feel responsible, yet in the privileged industrialized world pretty much all of us are.

That’s right, shift the blame

The lyrics resonate as they both avoid responsibility for the mess, with the added bonus of implying that one is also unable to do anything about it. This is probably as important as not being culpable. After all, even if one is not responsible for creating the mess some might argue that you should help clean it up if you are able to do so.

I can’t unfuck it up
You probably can’t unfuck it up

Trivially true as it applies to individuals, blatantly false if referring to individuals organizing themselves. Here again most will take it as a more or less 100% exoneration of responsibility to act. The cultural assumption is that all we can do is try to “elect the right people” and hope for the best.

“If we’re counting on them to unfuck it up
then we’re all fucked“

Speaks for itself, but note the contradiction. If I can’t, and you can’t, and they can’t or won’t, then who will? Does no one wonder about this? and if so, what do they conclude? Too often I suspect that the conclusion is that it is hopeless.

You just can’t help feeling bitter that it’s fucked up to begin with,
you just go round and round

A lot of people, particularly younger people, are understandably already pretty angry about the bleak future that will be inflicted on them, particularly because it was totally avoidable. That as a society we care more about inconsequential conveniences and self-indulgence than the well being of other people, most particularly our own children, would sure have me wicked off if I was 18.

Directing that anger into positive actions that may do something to change that future is going to be one of the greatest challenges we face. The default is the anger manifesting itself as violence and adding social chaos, a more entrenched opposition, and a Balkanized progressive movement to the the considerable obstacles we already face.

The problem is deep down inside you’re feeling depressed and hopeless, right?

Continue reading at News Junkie Post

Image Credits:

Protest 11 by marcovdz

Protest by Simon Shek

Anti-Chen Protest Day 32 – Million Men March by My Hourglass [Cloud]

Protest im MQ by _dChris

Protest in front of Georgian Embassy against arrests of Armenians in Javakhk by 517design

Yes, yes, naturally I realize that it isn’t actually meant as praise, it is clearly meant to be an insult.

However, Dr Curry really needs to actually read what she praises and what she condemns (like that was news).

What Dr Curry has done is cite “Science Abuse” on the site “Muck and Mystery” and say “the best way I can characterize this is the “anti-Greenfyre.”

The piece “Science Abuse” alleges to critique Chris Mooney’s recent Mother Jones piece “The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science“. What M&M actually does is:

• make many frankly ridiculous and idiotic claims (all unsupported).
• make almost no reference to actual facts, and none for the important points.
• cite & misrepresent popular media articles as evidence of problems with the scientific literature, and relies on a source that repeats (is the source of?) those errors
• is rife with logic failures: Straw Man, Red Herring, False Analogy, Circumstantial Ad Hominems, Hasty Generalizations (to name but a few).
• etc

About the only bits that make for semi-coherent reading are cribbed from this piece, which in turn bases it’s entire case on some Cherry Picked examples and a single study which in turn, if you actually read it, is a work that uses modeling (the irony), basing it’s work on three studies from the rather narrow sub-sub-sub-discipline of Genetic Associations.

I guess the blog “M&M” got named for consisting largely of a soft, brown substance coated with a colourful, nutritionless veneer? I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions from the fact that Dr Curry seems to think the M&M piece is worth reading.

So in summary, if we flip those around (ie M&M is the anti-Greenfyre), then what Dr Curry is really saying is that she is characterizing Greenfyre’s as:

• having coherent, logical arguments
• being evidence and fact based
• claims made are substantiated with credible sources
• is accurate, relevant and rational

I don’t know what to say. Thank you Dr Curry, thank you, but really, there are so many out there who are just as, if not much more deserving. Many, many good people who write coherent, fact based blogs, and who richly deserve the high compliment that being casually dismissed by you truly is. I wear it as an expletive of honour.

In it’s short life this blog has received

The Woodie Gutherie Award for a Thinking Blogger

The Tea Bagger Bury List of Achievement

The PopTart’s Incoherent Slander Campaign of Merit

and now, the much coveted

Ass Backwards Terminally Bewildered Curry Prize

I’m blushing … it really is all too much.  I’d like to thank Mom …

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Image Credit:

Grant-Pattishall Award by straup

What do you suppose tipped them off? the pictures on my FaceBook page? the articles I’ve written about it? the radical new concept of actually looking for information?

The delicious irony of discovering this immediately after writing a post about how the climate change Deniers are completely incapable of discerning what is relevant from what isn’t is just too funny.

Well this sure puts the lie to my claim that the Deniers wallow in irrational ad hominems rather than try to cope with the fact that they have absolutely no science or evidence to support their delusions.

However, the seemingly random way in which Deniers process the world is truly scary. On the one hand you have the apparent inability to recognize the simple causation chain of CO2 = GHG, humans add CO2 to atmosphere, Earth warms.

On the other hand you have the belief that bandying about totally irrelevant nonsense about people who are able to make the simple association given above is somehow relevant to the science, or that it in some way affects the facts.

What do these people do when they need a clean shirt? put the cat in the oven? plant onions? No wonder these people are frightened. How terrifying would it be to live in a world where you cannot cognitively connect relevant information and instead just randomly associate things and events?

What next for the Deniers ? basic literacy?

Hey Poptart … I also used to collect stamps, liked trout fishing, was really into reading Faulkner (although I did have a SciFi phase in my teens), and made my own sour dough bread for years. There you go, run wild!

Is there any hope that they will ever figure out that the way you discuss science is by actually looking at the science and discussing it? It sure doesn’t look promising.

Postscript

If anyone cares, the EF! chapter in question never practiced anything other than strict Gandhian non-violence that was totally open (ie no person involved ever hid their identity or gave false information to anyone. For some civil disobedience  actions we even gave the police lists of those involved and all relevant personal information in advance) and involved no harm to people or property.

Sadly that chapter dissolved over 15 yrs ago as the folks involved moved on to other things in their lives. It was an honour and a privilege to work with them and I have many a fond memory of truly awesome, committed activists giving their all to what they loved.

However, maybe it’s time to create Eaarth First!

BPSDB

Fuddle Duddle

Chamberlain, Trudeau or … ?

Flotsam

A couple of weeks ago Michael Tobis shocked the delicate, refined sensibilities of the climate change Deniers by stating unambiguously what is at stake and what he felt were the unhelpful contributions of Steve Mosher.

Michael was blowing off some steam and may have used some language that he generally doesn’t. The incident would warrant only passing remark except for some of the fall out and follow up.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Getting past the irrelevant, the incident raises some important questions about how we engage in the debate, what our goals are, and what the implications are for our struggle, as individuals and as a collective.

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Fuddle Duddle

Text of what Tobis actually said

“Let me explain why. It is not because I am a pusillanimous chickenshit, Mosher. It is because the fucking survival of the fucking planet is at fucking stake. And if we narrowly fucking miss pulling this out, it may well end up being your, your own fucking personal individual fucking self-satisfied mischief and disrespect for authority that tips the balance. You have a lot of fucking nerve saying you are on my “side”.

Unless and until you find it within yourself to understand that you have major fucked up, big time, by throwing big juicy meat to the deniers to chew on and spin paranoid fantasies about for years, even decades,”

What I heard as significant:

“Let me explain why. It is not because I am a pusillanimous chickenshit, Mosher. It is because the fucking survival of the fucking planet is at fucking stake.

What stood out for me was Tobis cutting to the core issue and expressing a decidedly less optimistic worldview than he generally does.  Calling Mosher out that way for vainly playing self-indulgent games, suffering as he does from the misapprehension that he is some sort of rebel, was rather harsh, but then I wasn’t sure what Tobis’ real purpose was.

Those, and the use of “pusillanimous“ which I have to admit I think is a lovely word and I always take note when someone uses it correctly.

All the Deniers apparently heard:

“Let me explain why. It is not because I am a pusillanimous chickenshit, Mosher. It is because the fucking survival of the fucking planet is at fucking stake. And if we narrowly fucking miss pulling this out, it may well end up being your, your own fucking personal individual fucking self-satisfied mischief and disrespect fornerve saying you are on my “side”. authority that tips the balance. You have a lot of fucking 

Unless and until you find it within yourself to understand that you have major fucked up,

The Denier response (eg Wormtongue, Lucretia, Wattsupmybutt) was to confirm the truth of Tobis’ earlier observation that they are incapable of even hearing, much less understanding the actual message. It’s almost as if they suffer from some form of Aspergers syndrome and are unable to distinguish what is relevant from what isn’t.

Missing from their posts is any discussion, or even mention of the fact of our imminent self-destruction, or Mosher’s role in undermining the rational discussion of it, or anything ar all that might interest an adult.

Whether one is offended by, or indifferent to coarse language, the fact remains that there was a great deal more to the post than eleven repetitions of the word “fuck”, and as usual the Deniers are completely oblivious to it. Instead it’s all:

 “giggle giggle Michael used the F word in class! giggle giggle  he really did giggle giggle  I heard it giggle giggle. He is so bad giggle giggle“

In the comment threads you can also see where some Deniers morphed into their fictious maiden aunts and were “shocked, shocked” to hear such language.  If you are low on your Recommended Daily Allowance of sanctimonious, self-righteous, hypocritical moralizing then you should have a look, but other than that there is absolutely nothing there.

I would think that if one feels the use of the expletive was unwarranted or counterproductive then one would make the case and move on to discussing the substance of the post. Instead the pre-teen Hannah Montana wannabe gaggle of Deniers cite Tobis’ language as “proof” that he has nothing to offer.

As ever the Deniers have no grasp of reality or logic. Stating the obvious, the evidence of whether Tobis has anything to offer would be found by actually reading what he had to say, something the Deniers never seem to do. As it happens Tobis’ post stands in sharp contrast to the Denier commentary in that it is not a vacuous pile of adolescent drivel preoccupied with the irrelevant.

Chamberlain, Trudeau or … ?

In a follow up piece Tobis posts a text chat he had with Willard discussing the post and whether he should have “done it.” Willard’s council is that he should not, but it is a conversation that doesn’t rigourously explore why not, although it touches on some important points which I want to be more explicit about.

One line of reasoning would be that the language distracts from the message and hence undermines Tobis’ purpose. Yes and no. For the most part we know full well the Deniers don’t listen and seem incapable of processing simple statements. Had Tobis left out the harsh language what the Deniers would have heard was:

“Let me explain why. It is not because I am a pusillanimous chickenshit, Mosher. It is because the fucking survival of the fucking planet is at fucking stake. And if we narrowly fucking miss pulling this out, it may well end up being your, your own fucking personal individual fucking self-satisfied mischief and disrespect fornerve saying you are on my “side”. authority that tips the balance. You have a lot of fucking 

Unless and until you find it within yourself to understand that you have major fucked up,

As such I don’t think that it makes much difference one way or the other.

Willard also argues that the rant was divisive, and I confess I start to get nervous when I hear that argument, at least when framed that way. Too often the demand that one “not be divisive” rapidly devolves into advocating being conciliatory and placatory, whether explicitly or implicitly.

This is a losing strategy for all the reasons Roberts discussed with respect to “post-truth politics.” The Deniers are not interested in rational discussion or fact, and conceding points simply to avoid being divisive will achieve nothing.

Read my lips

Let’s be blunt, Tobis is absolutely right, the fucking survival of the fucking planet is at fucking stake.  The obscenity is not Tobis’ choice of adjectives, but rather that we have brought the planet to this point. All the more obscene are the lies and frauds the Deniers use to further their ideological agenda.

Indeed I can think of nothing more obscene than the deaths that are already occurring as a direct consequence of the gross incompetence of the handful of Denier “scientists” coupled with the ignorance of the gullible mob desperate to believe them.

To cite Tobis as obscene while being one of the latter is simply sickening. If the choice is between being an appeaser or rude then I will have to advocate for the Trudeau approach; tell them to go fuddle duddle themselves.

Martin Luther King Jr et al

However, if we reframe the goal as “keep the avenues of dialogue open” it becomes an entirely different story. The goal here is not to avoid conflict (which it should never be), but rather to establish dialogue, or at least keep the possibility of dialogue always on the table.

Dialogue is about clearly expressing one’s own points and perspectives, and fully hearing out those of the other. It is about a sincere willingness to keep exploring opportunities for resolution that do not require conceding core issues or objectives.

It should be done frankly, but always respectfully and with no insult to the person; openly, honestly, and in good faith. If that results in conflict or division, so be it, it was clearly unavoidable. The important thing is to hold fast to the truth, which is defined both by the values one is advocating for and how one treats the other person.

After all, are we not fighting for “life” rather than simply “survival”? I think all of us carry a vision that presumes health, dignity and well being for all living things, not simply the persistence of particular genetic lineages. How can we advocate for that truth if we are not trying to live it as well?

Willard also discusses what is perhaps the most important point, albeit arguably just another aspect of living ones truths, viz who does Tobis want to be?

This is the real question, the real work, because it is inseparable from what we are trying to create. I realize that the axiom “you become what you do” sounds trite, but that does not make it any less true.

If you need evidence then I direct you to the Denialosphere and the Deniers who are out in the playground giggling about dirty words.  It is a monument to their behaviour, not their ideals, and a stark warning to us.

 The consequence of his post is that Tobis is struggling to understand who he is and how he can best contribute. That invariably leads to questions about what ones values are and how does one live them rather than simply fight for them; an oxymoron since the former is the latter, you do both or neither.

It has been easy enough to bumble along in the cocoon of modern liberal democracies giving lip service to noble ideals. That is how most of us have lived most of our lives. That is the past, it’s gone, a relict of Earth. We live on Eaarth now, and that won’t work anymore.

The coming years are going to be ones of struggle, struggle that forces us to confront what we believe in, what we are fighting for, what matters, who we are, who we want to be. We may think that these have always been important to us, but those are entirely different questions when engaged in serious political struggle rather than coffee shop banter.

The things we will need to give up will be far harder than the dross of private automobiles and other luxury conveniences. We will be required to set aside the the things we truly hold dear and treasure: vanity, ego, self-delusion, pride.

“Unless you are prepared to give up something valuable you will never be able to truly change at all, because you’ll be forever in the control of things you can’t give up.” — Andy Law

Eaarth needs us, and to respond to that need we each have to get clarity about who we are and how we live our truths. It is never a question of what you are willing to sacrifice; that is incidental. The real question invariably is what do you have the courage to become?

Zwei Wölfe kämpfen im Herzen eines jeden Mannes.
Der eine wird Liebe, der andere Hass genannt.
Und welcher gewinnt?
Der, den du am meisten nährst!

Flotsam

In writing this piece a few interesting things popped up that are pretty much irrelevant to the post itself, but which I want to share nonetheless.

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Sometimes no other word quite does the job …

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A little cultural and historical context by Les Galosches (which probably won’t mean much if you’re not Canadian).

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Boucrate just jamming on his guitar; pretty awesome if your tastes run this way (mine do).

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And finally, for Dr Ken Storey,

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in memory of several quite enjoyable conversations we had many years ago about the etymology, versatility and proper usage of the word “fuck.” Ever the nerdy scientist, Ken was interested in the topic not because it was crude, “rebellious” or titillating, but because it was interesting.  God love him.

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Comment Policy

–

It is worth knowing and abiding by whether you comment on this blog or not.

• The “Mostly” Open Thread” is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
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• The “Spam” Comment Thread is for comments posted by people who think that they can ignore site policy.

BPSDB On April 29th a person using the twitter account “@septscelles”  released a large file to Barrett Brown that purportedly contained secret US Chamber of Commerce documents. ~ Muskegon Critic

If you hadn’t heard about this it’s because there’s nothing to hear. The data dump seems to contain nothing that wasn’t already publicly available and/or of no interest. “a big nothing-burger.”

That works for me since I want to talk about the context rather than the content, and now can do so without the distraction of what the hacked information may or may not mean. Call this a preemptive discussion for if and when there is some sort of “real” release of information from one of the Denier monoliths.

I think there are three important issues to consider:

1. The validity of the content;
2. Our response to the content;
3. Our response to the nature of the release.

The validity of the content

Of the US Chamber of Commerce release The Atlantic Wire reports:

“Suspicions? Well, yes–Brown has reason to believe the new cache of documents isn’t totally on the level. Recall that when Anonymous released a bunch of documents from the cyberintelligence group Team Themis, those files described various strategies for discrediting watchdog groups–including creating “false documents” and “fake insider personas.” So Septscelles may be a concerned citizen who values transparency, or, as another posting at AnonNews puts it, he or she may be trying to “discredit Anonymous through a campaign of misinformation.”

A supposed leak or hack could well be a deliberate release of false documents to distract and discredit progressive information sources. Obviously one of their best defences  against a real damaging release is to get us to cry wolf so often that when something real does happen the universal response is “ho hum, what else is new?”

Equally, an insider with a grudge or a hacker who went to a great deal of trouble and came up dry could well try and doctor internal documents to give the appearance of wrong doing. In time this would naturally be exposed, but in the meantime people in the climate science community may have made some ill-considered statements.

No matter how juicy or damaging the information may seem, our best course is to reserve judgement and advise caution until the information has been verified somehow.

Our response to the content

It’s highly unlikely that any hack or release will contain information that unambiguously and with absolute clarity exposes malfeasance and wrong doing. This is true regardless of how incriminating something may seem.

While the the CRU Hack was pretty clearly shop talk and insider bitching to the knowledgeable reader, it was easy to see how some of the out of context quotes appeared quite sinister to a naive reader.

The last thing we want to do is repeat the stupidity of the climate change Deniers who continue to cling pathetically to the CRU hack as meaning anything.

As with the former point, reserving judgement and advising caution must be our response until there is clarity.

The nature of the release

This is by far the most difficult aspect to handle.

Whether a hack or a Wikileak, it is pretty much a given that the nature of a release would involve some sort of illegal act. How does our community respond to the act? Do we praise it? condemn it? make no comment? How do we respond to the Deniers inevitable, hypocritical condemnation of it as a violation of law and all standards of decency?

The temptation is naturally to cheer “our guy” as being an e-Robin Hood fighting the tyranny of the corporate usurpers. However, recall that when it came to the CRU hack quite a few in the climate science community condemned the act of hacking as illegal, unethical etc.  What will those people say if and when there is one that works in our favour? those who made no comment?

It is too much to hope that if it happens the one(s) responsible will step forward and accept the consequences, which while personally difficult for them would be brilliant in that fearless strategic nonviolent resistance is incredibly potent. Just look at the impact Tim DeChristopher‘s open acts of resistance are having.

Were it to happen this way we could simultaneously affirm the upholding of the law while praising the courage and commitment of the ones responsible.  We should be so lucky, but I’m not holding my breath.

As it is unlikely that the activists in question will act strategically folks may want to think through now what their response will be.

How will we avoid charges of hypocrisy and double standards? or of being traitors condemning a hero?

In fact, regardless of whether any such leak/hack ever happens it is a good idea to sort through one’s morality and decide just what one’s ethical stance is with regard to political action. The coming years promise to be interesting with respect to the politics of climate change and there will be instances where it is not simple or clear, just as there were with the civil rights movement, South Africa, etc.

How will we handle the inevitable questions? Far more difficult, how to  respond to the unspoken challenge those who act courageously pose to those who do not?

Recently Joe Romm was very impressed with Dave Roberts’ “Policy in an age of post-truth politics” where “the referees have left the building” and for the most part I have to agree (hint, read it).

However, I think there is one significant disagreement, less so with Roberts than Romm I think, who summarized Roberts’ article as:

“It speaks to what happens when the referees — the media — don’t call balls and strikes anymore but mainly report the play-by-play.”

The referee metaphor is indeed Roberts’, and he does say “But the referees [media] have left the building.” He is talking about a broken system, ie civic society generally, and the dysfunctional dynamic between the Republicans and the Democrats in the US specifically. The media reference is about the medias’ failure to play a watchdog role.

To which I say, what? Since when has the media been an impartial referee? Below is a sampling (and it is merely a small sampling) of quotes about the press over the past two and a half centuries. Use a search engine to find ‘Quotes “the press”‘ for many hours of more like them.

“The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. ” – Henry B Adams

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”  ~Thomas Jefferson

“…if only the press were to do its duty, or but a tenth of its duty, this hellish system could not go on.” – William Cobbett, 1830

“…the liberty of the Press is called the Palladium of Freedom, which means, in these days, the liberty of being deceived, swindled, and humbugged by the Press and paying hugely for the deception.” – Mark Twain 1870

“It is a free press…There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.” – Mark Twain

“The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow.  Bigness means weakness.”  ~Eric Sevareid,  1959

“Freedom of the press in Britain is freedom to print such of the proprietor’s prejudices as the advertiser’s won’t object to.” – Helen Swaffer

Granted selected quotes are not a scientific sampling, but they have to serve as a metaphoric ice core for a history that extends to well before proper instrumental records were kept.

So when was this Golden Age of neutral, objective reporting? Pre-Gutenburg perhaps? We romanticize the past based on a handful of gutsy reporters like Iggy Stone and Ed Morrow, forgetting that their fame is because they were notable exceptions, not examples of the norm.

For the greater part of the mass  media we’re damn lucky when they restrict themselves to simply “reporting the play-by-play.” Many are outright cheerleaders, and some (eg Faux News, The Telegraph, The National Post etc) have actually put players on the field.

The media are not and have never been outside of the debate, and most certainly not as neutral observers.

“The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.” – A. J. Liebling

The media were never the referees, ie those who enforce the rules. For the most part they are entertainers who must please the audience who attend their particular theatre, an audience who willingly suspend disbelief on the condition that the entertainers keep a straight face when claiming to speak the truth. The comic farce must always be played as though it were straight drama.

In a democracy the voters allegedly are the referees, although sometimes the justice system is. In any society it is the populace, whether by ballot or boycott, that ultimately enforces “the rules.” They are always the final arbiter, and usually the first one as well.

The problem is naturally that to the extent that the citizenry are the referees, they are blind. We need a free press not because the institution as a whole will act as watchdogs, (the majority will not), but because a handful of them will.

A free press makes an Ed Morrow possible, but these mavericks who misunderstand the fact that generally “journalist” is spelled S t e n o g r a p h e r (alternatively P u b l i c i s t) will always be the exception.

The real dynamic of journalism in liberal democracies is far more complicated, convoluted and nuanced than anything so mind numbingly simplistic as being “bought and paid for” by powerful interests. Fascinating though the topic may be, it is not my intent to explore it at this time.

Instead I want to emphasize that if we are to map out a successful political strategy for dealing with climate change we need to understand what the media is and how it actually functions. Lamenting that they fail as watchdogs may be useful as theatre, but broadly speaking it is not a role they ever fulfilled, nor are ever likely to.

Some quotes of particular relevance to the climate change issue that we need to consider when talking about the media would be:

“Journalism – a profession whose business it is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.”  ~Lord Northcliffe

“Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation.”  ~George Bernard Shaw

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” ~Malcolm X

We need to have a coherent, proactive media strategy that works with how the media actually functions. Some media will accurately and intelligently report the facts, but the majority will not. We cannot continue simply putting out the facts and hoping that at some point the media will report them properly.

In the activism course that I teach I continually emphasize that the moment you depend on media coverage for your success you have lost. Not only have you disempowered yourself by surrendering who determines the success of your actions, you have done so to one of the institutions that overall seeks to maintain the status quo, not change it.

As Roberts states “Again that forlorn, undying hope: that the politics can be taken out of politics.” Hope is not a strategy.  In this regard the entire climate science community has behaved as naively as Roberts cites Obama and the Democrats as being. Roberts is right, and he is right again in concluding:

“Policy is policy. Politics is politics. First you figure out what you want — in my case, I want clean energy, dense land use, and economic justice — and then you take every chance to make progress toward those goals. Meanwhile, you wage political war with the tools of politics: money, message, organization, solidarity, and a healthy dose of ruthless opportunism. Policy concessions aren’t just a poor weapon in that war; they are no weapon at all.”

The climate change fight is a political one and it will be waged on the streets, not at scientific congresses, in peer reviewed journals or even political conferences. All of the above have there place in that struggle, but we in the climate science community need to come to terms with the facts of what our role is and how we can contribute most effectively.

Method without Science,

or method

… “Opps!”

Seeing the recent “Science without method” post at Climate Etc I opted to first read the Nicol paper it was discussing before reading Dr Curry’s discussion of it.

The article alleges to highlight failures of climate change science, and in an obviously unintended way both it and Curry’s discussion of it does.

To give credit where credit is due, the exercise led me to rethinking how we frame the question of our current impasse. How it is possible for drivel like Nicol’s to somehow be taken seriously by anyone, never mind winding up actually influencing policies of countries.

First let’s get some context. In his paper Nicol said:

“Yet in contemporary research on matters to do with climate change, and despite enormous expenditure, not one serious attempt has been made to check the veracity of the numerous assumptions involved in greenhouse theory by actual experimentation.“

“greenhouse theory“, seriously? Has he not read any scientific literature post-1860?

That aside, this is just idiotically wrong as a general statement. Can he cite any specifics? Loaded as it is with qualifiers he would no doubt cite all of the relevant reserach (which he is clearly not familiar with, or simply doesn’t understand) as not “serious” attempt(s) (ie No True Scotsman fallacy).

“The one modern, definitive experiment, the search for the signature of the green house effect has failed totally.“

This is such outright nonsense that even Curry calls it out “Oops.  The signature of the Earth’s greenhouse effect is well known and demonstrated by the infrared spectra at the surface and measured by satellites.”

Oops? the flagrant display of unbelievable ignorance warrants only an “Oops“? Is this the Judith Curry who, based on a couple of minor errors and a fabricated scandal, said:

” … the IPCC dogma, it is the religious importance that the IPCC holds for this cadre of scientists; they will tolerate no dissent, and seek to trample and discredit anyone who challenges the IPCC. Who are these priests of the IPCC?” and so on

Hypocritical double standards much?

Well, what can we expect from some random physicist publishing a popular article on the web? Actually I think it reasonable to expect anyone who has had any scientific training whatsoever (like a pass BSc) to be able to manage the 20 min it would have required to get his facts straight, particularly if they are pretending enough authority to write on the subject. After all, these days even a lot of pre-school children know how to use a search engine.

Let’s also note that Nicol is not some random physicist, he is in fact Chairman [sic] of the Australian Climate Science Coalition (yes, another political PR/Lobbying Firm “Think Tank”)  and author of the irrelevant “A Fundamental Analysis of the Greenhouse Effect”.

Of course when you consider some of the other members of the scientific advisory panel, like Bob Carter,  David Evans, William Kininmonth, John McLean, and Ian Plimer to name a few, (condolences to our friends down under) you realize that Nicol may be the best available at the ACSC; he is merely ridiculously wrong, whereas the ACSC has far worse to offer.

Is it too much to ask that the Chair of anything with the term “Climate Science” in their title have at least a rudimentary grasp of the basic facts? Is that too much to expect? Apparently it is.

I should be (and I probably am) looking at the creme de la creme of climate change science “skepticism” written by the Chair of a “skeptic” think tank and being discussed by one of the premier “skeptic” blogs, and it’s a failed high school paper being graded by the student’s overprotective mother.

So I stopped there

The scientific failure that these pieces underscore is the failure to create a population sufficiently scientifically literate to immediately see these posts for ridiculous. Not merely ridiculous, but as allegedly serious scientific discussions of climate change science, outright insulting.

Surely there has to be a better way to approach this than merely documenting (yet again) that the Deniers are a bunch of clueless no hopers indulging in circle jerks to exploit the credulity of the gullible.

This is not news to any who actually read this, or most of the other science blogs. Why bother doing it again? On the off chance that any of the Deniers actually said anything rational it would immediately be picked up by the legitimate science community, so what’s the point?

Here again I think we are dealing with something that is necessary, but not sufficient. On the one hand it is necessary to document the vapidity of the Denier Canon:

• for those who are not aware and/or joining us late;
• for people who accept the science, but who want to see that it has answers to the Denier claims;

That this has not been sufficient is self-evident and much discussed, but that begs the question as to what else is needed?

Tactics without strategy

It seems to me (and perhaps someone can correct me) that most of the discussion of the public (mis)understanding of climate change science and the attendant policy failures is about messaging, how we present what we have to say.

That is tactics. Tactics are fine, you need tactics, but what is the strategy? What is it we want to achieve? Who is our target and why? Exactly how do our tactics lead us to achieving our goals?

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Granted the climate science community is a loose network of a broad spectrum of individuals and groups, with occasional nodes that might be described as coalitions and the like, so I am not suggesting a unified strategy. It’s not only impractical, it’s probably impossible.

Even so, it is possible for us to have a loose strategy that is constantly discussed and reviewed, and which many in the network implement in ways that are suited to their strengths and abilities.

The assumed “target” seems to be the public and policy makers. For the latter we assume access through official channels such as the government departments and academic societies, and secondarily through the electorate. For the former we put the science out there and hope that the media & NGOs will pick it up and pass it on, supplemented with blogs, podcasts and such other public voices as we can muster.

As for dealing with the Deniers, we are pretty much reactive and are restricted to documenting their errors and frauds, as well as exposing their links to vested interests. How this is meant to neutralize or counteract them is more assumed than stated, and depends heavily on assumptions of a rational society that is interested in self-preservation.

Is that a fair description?

If so, we need a clearer, more coherent, proactive strategy utilizing a broader range of tactics that takes advantage of the full range of people who support the rational, pro-science worldview and are willing to do something about it.

This is something I will be talking a lot more about in coming posts, and hopefully others will be as well.

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BPSDB The recent tornadoes in the United States have lead to a resurgence of articles talking about the link between extreme weather, natural disasters and climate change. If you are an interested member of the general public you are undoubtedly confused as the two sides of the debate seem to be making opposing claims, and both seem to have some science to back them up.

I’d like to talk a bit about why there is this confusion and what it means in practical terms for you and me. Then I’d like to discuss the opinion of the folks who take this issue very seriously indeed. No, I don’t mean the scientists, much more seriously than that – I am referring to the insurance industry.

The critical phrase is “seem to be making opposing claims“, because for the most part they are not. The climate change Deniers erroneously characterize the science based reports as ascribing the various tornadoes, storms and what have you as being caused by or linked to climate change. That is not what the ones I sampled were actually saying.

If you read the various reports they correctly note that given the current state of our knowledge it is impossible to directly link the recent extreme weather to climate change. It is also impossible to definitively say there is no link; that’s how uncertainty works.

Now from what I can gather it is probable that the influence of climate change on the most recent spate of tornadoes in the US south west was very small to none, but that’s not the end of the story.

In this case the problem boils down to the fact of our incomplete knowledge of many complex and interacting systems. Tornadoes are determined to a large extent by atmospheric moisture content and wind shear. Climate change is causing the former to increase and the latter to decrease. How fast and by how much each will change, particularly on a regional scale, is anyone’s guess.

The recent tornadoes are being ascribed more to the effects of the La Nina/El Nino natural cycles than anything else, but these simply refer to differences in ocean surface temperature. Stating the obvious, ocean temperature is most definitely being affected by climate change.  Exactly how, and what the consequences will be are less well understood,

The oceans are not static; they are dynamic systems with complex currents and cycles that range from the tides to oscillation patterns with periods from years to decades. These are influenced primarily by water temperature and salinity, both of which are changing as a consequence of climate change. As one “natural” cycle changes it also influences the others, and so on.

Now add to that the uncertainties about climate change. In this case the biggest uncertainty is what humans are going to do about it and when. Based on current policies and actions the most likely answer is “far too little, way too late.” That being said, it’s not just a matter of how much the climate changes, but also how fast.

Most of the changes in temperature etc that we see discussed relate to the coming century. That is most definitely not because climate change then plateaus or stops. If we do nothing we face a catastrophic 21st century; after that things start to get really bad.

Be that as it may, a scientist cannot give a single answer to what extreme weather is going to be like in 30 or 50 yrs if you can’t tell her what our CO2 emissions are going to be over the next 30 or 50 yrs. Without that information all she can do is give a range of possibilities from the highest to lowest possible scenarios, with the added uncertainty of our incomplete understanding of these complex systems.

Scott Mandia on the recent swarm of tornadoes, flooding, and extreme precipitation events

Hat tip to Climate Change: The Next Generation

Continue reading News Junkie Post

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hat tip to MindofDan

(how many climate change Deniers will actually get it?)

Rabett Runs

Eli has a totally fun flow chart in Rejection is fungable

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We have a winner “AGW is a Hoax“

for unintended honesty

in the “Truer Words Were Never Spoken” category!

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BPSDB Almost a year and a half after the CRUde Hack incident (“Climategate” to Fox News fans) the scientifically illiterate (aka climate change Deniers) are still obsessing on, and lying about this incident. I suppose that is what you do when you have no facts and don’t understand the science.

Renewed interest by the hard of thinking (aka #climategate) in this non-issue has led Greenman3610 to produce a new video: Unwinding “Hide the Decline”

Hat tip to DeSmog for the heads up. Added to Climate Denial Crock of the Week

My own discussion of Muller and his roadshow may be found at Richard Muller is a well bad tosser. Below is the bulleted version of the facts for the climate change Deniers who apparently can’t handle more than a couple of paragraphs of text or a few minutes of video:

• “Nature” refers to the scientific Journal “Nature”;
• “trick” is a commonly used term to mean “technique”, often used even in the titles of scholarly articles;
• ie the email refers to  a well known published technique;
• “hide the decline” was for a graphic for the cover illustration of a report, NOT any presentation of actual science;
• In the actual science “the decline” has been clearly shown in the graphs and discussed openly in the literature for over a decade and half (eg 1995 here, 2000 here and 2007 here);
• No scientists, nor any rational adult was misled because they get their information by actually reading scientific papers and articles, not by just looking at the pictures on the covers of brochures;
• OK, small children, family pets, Fox News and Richard Muller & Co. may have been misled, but who would take them seriously?

Come on people, I know there were a lot of emails, but most of us took only hours to realize there was absolutely nothing of significance there. Even with moving your lips while you read and having to look up the big words, 17 months should be more than enough to have figured it out, even for Fox News.

BPSDB Sometimes it takes a cartoon character to help understand a cartoon.

Recently I was introduced to the comic character Lauren Cooper,  a fictitious character created and performed by British comedic actress Catherine Tate.

While I enjoyed the comedy I was also struck by how much Lauren’s conflict dynamic mimicked that of many climate change Deniers.

Divorced of its’ normal context I found I was able to get much more analytical about what might actually be going on psychologically for the individual Denier. Possibly much more interesting, I was led to ask myself  “Why do I like Lauren even though she is a caricature of annoying people who make my life difficult?” and of course, what clues are there for how to deal effectively with Deniers?

Lauren Cooper, climate change Denier?

Lauren is an aggressive, obnoxious, poorly educated, self-absorbed, lower class 15 year old. Naturally her success as a comic character is because she parodies behaviour that we recognize; good comedians have to be keen observers of human behaviour.

No, Lauren is not a climate change Denier (I doubt she would even know what that meant), but she is interesting in that her argumentative dynamic uses the same basic pattern as the Deniers. Relative to everyday life Lauren is an outrageous, over the top caricature. Compared to some of the more familiar Deniers she is pretty average.

A Lauren Cooper sketch follows the same basic formula. First Lauren is caught out having done something “well bad” (ie stupid) and her mates remark on it. Often she will baldly deny it even happened at all despite the obvious fact that it did.

At some point she will attack the questioner with a Gish Gallop of shifting goal posts and red herrings that completely ignore the original issue “Are you disrespecting me? are you saying my mother is a prostitute? are you saying I’m stupid? are you saying my father is a wino? are you saying I’m a pikie?“

Always she will express her total indifference to what others think or have to say by repeatedly asking “Am I bovvered?”

At no time will she ever admit to any error, acknowledge the validity any criticism, nor will she respond to what the other person is actually saying (on the rare occasions that she even detects that they are saying anything).

Sound familiar?

Lauren’s appeal

Lauren’s life is one long string of social blunders because she lacks the skills to make it otherwise, never mind the ability to recover from them. Even so, through her stubborn refusal to admit to error she leaves the stage unbowed. Her life may be a self-inflicted shambles, but she feels that she has preserved her dignity.

In a world where she is pretty much totally insignificant and powerless Lauren manages to preserve her self-respect and even some sense of dignity by her refusal to acknowledge defeat. She never wins, she never learns anything, and she usually manages to turn a minor defeat into a total disaster, but she is “not bovvered.”

Lacking intelligence, talent, skills or social status Lauren has no other way to avoid being completely crushed by life. She cannot avoid her blunders, nor can she recover from them once they have been committed. All she can do is feign indifference to her humiliations; she is “not bovvered.”

In that sense Lauren is the little everyman who in some twisted way has scored a small victory in the lopsided conflict against the monolithic, uncaring world.  She is Charlie Chaplin’s Little Hobo and Mr Bean. Sad, pathetic, and most definitely tragic, but also heroic in her way. We may find her unpleasant, even loathsome in almost every respect, but still admire her absolute refusal to surrender.

Stating the obvious, Lauren’s appeal to us is also the appeal of her tactic to herself. When everything else is lost the refusal to surrender is the only thing that matters.

Classic Lauren

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The dynamics of Denial

When we discuss why people become Deniers we tend to focus on the psychological factors that make Denial appealing, ie why they first adopt a Denier position. I have yet to see any discussion on why Denial perpetuates. There seems to be an a priori assumption that it persists for the same reason that it initiates.

I want to suggest that while those initial factors remain important, the actual socio-psychological dynamic of remaining in Denial is more complex and powerful.

Granted, for some part of the population the factors of fear and ideological motivation etc may be appealing in initially self-identifying oneself as “skeptical”. However, are most of us not baffled by the complete intransigence of most Deniers to acknowledge obvious facts once they are brought to their attention? How is one to understand the “backfire effect“? ie that when given evidence that their belief is clearly false the Denier holds that belief even more strongly.

Ideology simply does not seem adequate to explain the sudden shift from advancing an uninformed opinion of dubious validity to the wholesale and complete abandonment of any pretense to rationality. I submit that Lauren offers us at least a partial answer.

Having been caught out believing something that is outrageously and transparently stupid (ie pretty much any part of the Denier Canon), what are the belief holders options for saving face? How can they end the conversation in a manner that leaves them with some dignity and self-respect intact?

The trap is particularly intractable for anyone who has some professional credential and clearly should have known better. Take the commenter who recently opted to cite Richard Muller as some sort of credible authority with respect to climate change science.

Allegedly a PhD engineer working on IR instrumentation and a “skeptic”, the commenter obviously:

• did absolutely no fact checking;
• has no understanding of even rudimentary climate science;
• gullibly accepted premises that were transparently false;
• overlooked any number of things that should have set off alarm bells.

So now he is trapped. Even for someone with an extremely well developed sense of self-worth the situation is profoundly humiliating. What are his options for extricating himself with dignity and grace?  Caught between having been sloppy enough to take this position, and bright/educated enough to appreciate how absurd the position is (albeit not necessarily consciously), how can he get out?

As soon as the Denier has taken a stance that even cursory examination shows to be bloody stupid, the issue is no longer climate change, or ideology, or anything as trivial as the fate of the Earth. As with Lauren who is indifferent to being beheaded because she doesn’t need her head, the real stake has become that most important of all possible issues, ego.

At this point the conflict is now solely and wholly about the Denier preserving their dignity and saving face. Facts and reality don’t matter. Unfortunately because the initial stance was so bloody stupid, about the only option available is the Lauren Cooper defence, viz

1. ignore/deny reality;
2. counter attack with irrelevant nonsense;
3. never admit error or defeat;
4. claim to be not bovvered.

Exit strategies

Perhaps you have also found yourself in a situation I encounter all too often. Having drifted into what is rapidly becoming an argument over climate change with someone who clearly has no idea what they are talking about, I find myself frantically trying to plot a dignified exit for them. Desperately I cast about for ways that I can make the case for reality while still offering them a gracious way to concede that they were mistaken.

Often the hunt is in vain, particularly with males. What can I say?

“I can understand why you believed that, but ...” Often I can’t understand it actually. The point was silly, and to claim otherwise is both false and patronizing. I mean what am I really saying if I make this claim? That the person is clearly a complete moron and hence it is no surprise that they believed the claim in question?

“What you say is true, but … ” Except it isn’t even remotely true.

“What you say appears to make sense, but … “ Except it makes absolutely no sense at all.

Yet another example where the sheer idiocy of the professional Denier’s claims actually help to perpetuate rather than undermine them.

Sometimes I have success with focusing blame on the Denial industry, eg “I can understand why you believed that given the well funded propaganda campaign … “, but even this often doesn’t work (again particularly with males) because the self-styled skeptic also believes themselves to be too smart to be fooled by propaganda.

Make no mistake, I more than happy to let them “win” the argument (whatever that means), as long as the facts of climate science are generally acknowledged. It is how to reconcile those two that continues to elude me.

Regardless, the only successful conclusion must include the preservation of the dignity and self respect of the Denier. There is no other way out of the situation, both in terms of individual exchanges and for the broader social phenomenon.

Somehow we have to find an exit strategy for the Deniers that let’s them leave the stage unbowed despite having accepted reality. As long as their only option is the Lauren Cooper defence, then that is the one they will use, and we simply cannot afford to continue having aggressive, obnoxious, poorly educated, self-absorbed, 15 year olds determining our collective fate.

Are you disrespecting me?

Having said that, I will also note that while it is how I try to act “in real life” you should not expect to see  a radical change in tone at Greenfyre’s. Greenfyre is me, but I am not Greenfyre.

Greenfyre is just a particular voice used to discuss aspects of climate change science and politics in one particular place that was created explicitly for that purpose. It is not the place to convert Deniers, nor to spend time trying to assuage their egos. Greenfyre does not tolerate fools or charlatans, and those pandering frauds, hoaxes, lies and irrational delusions will continue to receive rough treatment.

Put another way, those who wish to be treated with courteous respect in this place must offer the same to it’s inhabitants. Rational arguments substantiated with citations from credible sources will always be welcome.

Those who show contempt and disrespect for our intelligence by offering the idiocy of the Denier Canon as though any rational person could find it credible will simply have their claims be exposed for what they are, well bad lame, and they will have to take the shame.

BPSDB

Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules.

The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools.

Let me begin by saying I have enormous respect for William M. Connolley (aka Stoat) and generally do not significantly disagree with him.

However, in his Apr 5th piece “Muller is rubbish” Stoat said “But he [Muller] isn’t a tosser.”

Stoat, you’re just plain wrong, Muller most definitely is a well bad tosser, a “denialist chumming complete bollocks.”

Short Prologue

(more documentation at bottom)

Richard Muller is a Berkeley physicist of some minor notoriety in climate change circles for being critical of “the Hockey Stick” (ie historical temperature reconstructions). By “critical” I mean calling it “phoney.”

Earlier this year the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group began a project to re-examine the existing temperature data. The project drew criticism for, among other things:

• consisting exclusively of people with a poor track record for:
• discussing the science honestly.
• actually understanding the science.
• being funded in part by Koch Industries.

On March 31 Muller testified before Congress and affirmed the high quality of the existing climate science which sent the climate change Deniers into a frenzy.

The Muller sideshow has been one I have been largely ignoring, but then a repeat commenter brought this video clip to my attention:

The full talk may be found here.

MULLER: “What they did was, and there is a quote. A quote came out on the emails, these leaked emails that said, let’s use Mike’s trick “Hide The Decline.” That is the word. Let us use Mike’s trick “Hide The Decline.”

Except of course that is not the quote. The actual quote is:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [Sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Of course Muller never clearly states “This is the exact quote”, so strictly speaking he is not actually lying. What we are dealing with here is the tactic typical of more than a few Deniers of presenting information in a way that pretty much guarantees that the audience will be completely misled and draw all of the wrong conclusions, but if challenged the presenter plays coy and disingenuously asks “Who? me?”

It’s just more of the “I did not have sex with that Red Herring” plausible deniabilty defence of what can only be described as lies. Indeed the whole presentation is in this form.

Watch the clip as though you were a naive viewer and see if these are not the interpretations that a reasonable person would draw from how Muller presents it, even though all of them are false:

1. the data in question is the basis for the “hockey stick” ie both documented recent temperature rise, and the pre-instrumental record;
2. the tree ring proxy data undermines climate change science and/or “the hockey stick”;
3. the “Nature” trick is what was used on Brifa’s tree ring proxy data;
4. the adjusted data/graphic was published in a peer reviewed journal;
5. as a consequence of #4, the scientific community was fooled about climate change, particularly the faculty at Berkeley;
6. the “decline” was a secret until exposed by the Deniers;
7. CRU was not hacked, but rather it was a leak by an insider;
8. That the tree ring data came out through the CRU hack

1) It’s not of course. For the past 130 years the record is based largely on direct measurement, or is Muller unaware of that amazing new scientific instrument known as “the thermometer”? It’s only been around for about four centuries.

The historical record is based on a wide range of proxies using many different data sets from many different studies.

2) The tree ring proxy data can be dropped entirely and it makes no difference worth mentioning, a fact published in 2007.

3) As the full, accurate quote clearly shows, the “trick” is in reference to a different data set from Brifa’s tree ring proxies. Further, as I noted at the time, if you don’t immediately spot that “Mike’s Nature trick” is a reference to a technique published in the Journal Nature, then you probably don’t do science. (but note how Muller never mentions “Nature”, he just says “Mike’s trick.”)

4) The graphic in question was for the cover illustration of a report, not as the presentation of scientific data. When presenting the actual science the decline is clearly shown in the graphs and discussed in the text (eg 1995 here, 2000 here and 2007 here).

5) I don’t know how things are done at Berkeley, but most scientists read the scientific literature for information rather than basing their knowledge on a cover illustration.

Insomuch as Berkeley has an excellent reputation I am going to assume that the faculty there routinely follow this standard practice and it is only Muller’s misrepresentation of their competence that is the problem.

6) as noted in #4, the decline was known and freely discussed in the literature for a decade and a half before the CRU hack. Muller even says “in their paper” (suggesting he is referring to the 2007 Mann et al paper, published years before the CRU hack) “if you dig into it” (Muller means ‘if you just read it’ since they explicitly discuss the issue), etc.

7) The investigation into the incident is ongoing and there is no definitive answer as yet, but all of the actual evidence points to a hack, not a leak. Note that is evidence, something scientists rely on rather than just breezily claiming that some unidentified group “most people who know this business believe… .”

8 ) The data was available on the CRU web site and had been for years.

And so on. Completely exposing every misleading statement of Muller’s in just that five minute clip is far from done, but I think I have made my point; he is a disingenuous wanker. The references below document at much greater length the degree and extent to which Muller is misleading the public and anyone who mistakenly takes him at face value.

Notwithstanding the predictable defences of Muller (rebutted here), I find his presentation to be disingenuous to the point of being outright dishonest.

Make no mistake here, this is a formal presentation that we are watching, not idle faculty lounge banter.

Even if it were a casual discussion I think most scientists would agree that it is still inexcusably sloppy and misleading.

Just another example where the informal nature of a Denier presentation led to some unintended mischaracterizations and poor phrasing that just happened to leave the audience completely misinformed. No lies were told, and it’s just unfortunate that the result bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to reality. Yeah, right.

What makes the whole thing particularly nauseating is his feigned indignation at any scientist who would ever dare to misrepresent fact and mislead people, his supposed outrage at such deception.

Naturally if the climate scientists were actually guilty of the acts that Muller implies then his indignation would be understandable. However, those supposed acts are actually the creation of Muller misrepresenting the facts and misleading people. As I keep noting, the Denialosphere is never low on irony.

So Dr Muller, if a scientist who glosses up a cover graphic deserves such vehement condemnation and opprobrium as you have been dishing out, what would you say is appropriate for someone giving outrageously dishonest, misleading presentations as you have been doing? Surely watching your own performances you must be in fits of apoplexy at the inexcusable charlatanry, never mind the flaming hypocrisy, no?

Given his track record Muller was invited to testify to Congress by the House Republicans in the full expectation that he would affirm their idiotic delusion that climate change is a hoax. “In the hands of fools” indeed.

Muller Redeemed?

There has been much sturm und drang about Muller’s Congressional testimony on the preliminary analysis of the data and how his affirmation of the validity and quality of the science somehow shows him to be, at the end of the day, a real scientist of integrity and substance.

Here is my question, given how BEST has painted themselves into a corner, what the hell else was he going to do?

The whole premise of BEST is that they are doing a completely transparent, totally accountable review of the data. Everything would be available, everything would be public. The data, the code, the methodology, all of it laid out for everyone to see.

So BEST is absolutely committed to revealing everything when they release their conclusions. That is the only justification for the very  existence of BEST, and they knew that whatever they release will come under intense scrutiny by the entire scientific community.

They have put themselves in a position where any withholding or fudging will be immediately exposed and the entire project and staff utterly discreditied.

Since the existing science is of high quality and valid, and the data do clearly show the reality of climate change, Muller was stuck. What were his options? Lie to Congress and have that exposed shortly thereafter? thereby finishing off whatever academic credibility he has left? Refuse to testify even though it would later be revealed that preliminary results were available?

So I repeat, what the hell else was he going to do?

I am glad that he did what he did, but insomuch as he really had no other option I find I cannot interpret it as evidence of his essential good character and scientific integrity. For that I am going to need him to stop giving misleading presentations and interviews and start presenting the facts honestly, accurately, in context and in good faith.

Even better would be if he made some effort to correct his earlier misrepresentations and admit to the disingenuous and dishonest nature of them. Until then, as far as I am concerned he is nothing more than a well bad tosser.

UPDATE 28/4: see “Hide the decline” … in Denier intelligence for a new Greenman3610 video debunking Muller.

When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams,
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
When silence drowns the screams.

Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back
and laugh.

But I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying,
Yes I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying

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Denouement: This post was originally (and more correctly) titled “Confusion will be my epitaph” but I thought that might be too opaque. Listening to this King Crimson classic the other day I was struck by how well it describes this historical moment. I trust the last couplet requires no explication.

The Muller’s Tale

Muller

• Preference for Mild Curry

B.E.S.T.

• BEST project at Berkeley
• Koch-funded WORST Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project implodes

Congressional Testimony

• Muller is rubbish
• Climate myths at the U.S. House Hearing on climate change
• Learning from the Climate Hearing
• Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike’s trick with hide the decline
• Muller Misinformation #2: ‘leaked’ tree-ring data
• Muller Misinformation #3: Al Gore and polar bears
• Muller Misinformation #4: Time to Act
• The Truth, Still Inconvenient
• Bombshell 1: Climate science deniers claim to have full access to Berkeley temperature study work-product
• Koch-Funded Climate Skeptic’s Own Data Confirms Warming
• GOP’s only scientists at ‘Scopes’ climate hearing are Richard Muller and John Christy

Denialosphere reaction

• Hockey Stick Gossip
• Richard Muller Love-Fest

(hat tip to Quark Soup and Climate Progress)

Maybe you celebrated Earth Day, maybe you ignored it. Maybe you share the cynicism that has been becoming overt on more than a few environmental sites, or at least noticed it.

For the international celebration of a cause that we are working for, articles like (just a sampling):

• My F*%k Earth Day Blog Post
• Unsuck Earth Day, Please
• Let’s dump “Earth Day”
• Greenwash of the Week: Earth Day!

don’t exactly seem to be caught up in the spirit of it.

Or how about this group email?:

“It’s that time of year again: Earth Day, a singular day when the faithless are moved to buy reusable grocery bags.

At #######, we get pretty rankled at all the Earthapalooza shenanigans. What’s next, Ye Olde Mattress Sale? Honestly.

Let’s face it, we’re all just doing the best we can. And we do the best we can every stinking day. Not just on some tarted-up, feel-good, strum-your-guitar day of glowing holiness …“

I want to talk about something far more important than Earth Day, more important than saving endangered species,  or “the planet”, or humanity.

First a little context.

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