The Island of Doubt

The hacked climate science email scandal that wasn't

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:51:16 -0500

Much is being made by those who really, really believe that there's a global conspiracy among climatologists of the emails and other documents stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. According to such bloggers, thousands of "embarrassing" pieces of correspondence between some of the leading climate researchers in the world now lay bare the scheme to mislead humanity about the nature of climate change.

I downloaded the 62 MB file and took a quick look at a random selection of what are mostly dull little missives bereft of the context required to understand them in any meaningful way. Just as you'd expect from bits and piece of correspondence never intended for public consumption. Next.

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The ultimate anti-tar sands message

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:58:09 -0500

I promise to get back to substantive blogging shortly, but in the meantime, if you've got three minutes to tear yourself away from coverage of Sarah Palin's book:

Scientifically sound? Not the words I would use, but not too far off the mark, either. Hyperbolic? Yes. Offensive? To some. Provocative? Absolutely. Greenpeace and the Agit-Pop gang know how to grab your attention. If, that is, you already care about preserving what's left of the planet's ability to host civilization as we know it.

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Canada learns to love global warming

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:15:31 -0500

Too precious not to pass along:

Canadian Tourism Federation Welcome Video from Canadian Tourism Federation on Vimeo.

In case there's any doubt. There is no "Canadian Tourism Federation."

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Record high and low temps: An interesting trend

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:52:07 -0500

A fascinating paper about to be published in Geophysical Review Letters compares the number of record highs and lows at temperature stations across the U.S. since the 1940s. The authors found that we're getting more record highs and fewer record lows, in a pattern that yet again confirms that climatologists know what they're talking about. They also extrapolate that trend into the future, with some interesting results, but first let's deal with the past.

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George Will gets something right

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:36:44 -0500

In an otherwise typically error-dominated Newsweek column, George F. Will spelled "minuscule" correctly. So I don't want to read any complaints that Will gets everything wrong each time he writes about climate change.

Of course, that doesn't mean we can't correct his myriad other mistakes. Here's one paragraph, with some necessary edits, just to get us started.

There is ~~much~~ an unremarkable level of debate about the reasons for, and the importance of, the fact that global warming has ~~not increased~~ continued for that long [11 years]. What we know is that computer models ~~did not~~ did predict this. Which matters, a lot, because we are incessantly exhorted to wager ~~trillions~~ uncertain sums of dollars and ~~diminished~~ increased freedom on the proposition that computer models are correctly projecting catastrophic global warming. On Nov. 2, The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey Ball reported some ~~inconvenient~~ data that is entirely consistent with the prevailing consensus on the theory of anthropogenic climate disruption. Soon after the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--it shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Thinking Man's Thinking Man [George: who calls him this, other than you? -- ed ]--reported that global warming is "unequivocal," there came evidence that the planet's temperature is ~~beginning to cool~~ continuing to rise. [George: temperatures rise or fall, they don't cool or warm; only the subject of measurement warms or cools -- ed] "That," Ball writes, "has led to one point of agreement: The models are imperfect," although climatologists confirmed that the models are performing as well as expected."

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Climate Cover-Up

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:22:26 -0500

Climate Cover-Up
The Crusade to Deny Global Warming
Greystone Books, 250 pages

Canadian public relations agent James "DeSmogBlog" Hoggan has assembled a comprehensive history of corporate efforts to stall action on climate change in a modest little book that should shock and appall anyone who's been living under a rock for the past three decades. For the rest of us, Climate Cover-Up offers few new details. It still serves, however, as a convenient hard-copy reference manual for when the Internet is down and you need a rejuvenating jolt of outrage to help you decide which companies to boycott this week.

That might sound like a dismissive review, but it I don't mean it to be taken that way.

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Bjorn Lomborg launches campaign against logic

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:54:33 -0500

(Pseudo)-Skeptical Environmental Bjorn Lomborg advises in the Wall Street Journal that spending money on anti-malarial campaigns makes more sense than, and by implication is morally superior to, spending money on cutting carbon emissions. But to make his case, he has to abandon all hope of ever being invited to join the Vulcan Science Academy.

It may be true that every dollar we spend combating the vectors of malaria and the treatments for it will save more lives than those who would be spared the disease if we spend it instead on avoiding catastrophic global warming. But Lomborg is abandons all logic when he writes:

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The link between the climate denial and anti-vaccine crowds

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:43:49 -0500

Rarely does a blogging day pass that I don't stumble upon some post or comment or email that champions the value of skepticism of anthropogenic global warming and the need for scientists to answer their critics. So it's refreshing to read a concise and cogent reminder of why such attacks are misguided. From UBC's Simon Donner we get this rejoinder, made in reference to demands that real-climatologist Michael "hockey stick" Mann answer the criticism of non-climatologist Steve McIntyre

Think of it this way: wouldn't you rather that doctors spend their time actually developing treatments for autism, rather than refuting the crazy theory that MMR vaccinations cause autism?

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Climate control in Canada: And now the good news

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:44:41 -0500

The costs of doing something about climate change are the subject of much debate these, and Canada is no exception. The federal government, like the ones before it, has shown little interest in honest analysis, so one of the country's biggest banks, TD Bank, decided to pay for a study all on its own. The results, which the bank's economists call "robust," represent perhaps the most comprehensive effort to nail down those costs, at least for one country. And what did the consultants they hired to write the report find? Good news, actually.

Unless, of course, you happen to own a piece of the fossil-fuel industry.

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Another nail in the Superfreakonomics coffin

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:24:43 -0500

By now, I'd expect the authors of Superfreakonomics are having mixed feelings about their new book. On the one hand, they're making good money as the book enjoys healthy sales. On the other, just about every actual expert in the field to which Chapter 5 is devoted -- climate change -- has savaged their take on the subject.

This week comes perhaps the most devastating criticism, from four statisticians whose analysis of global temperature trends demonstrates just how wrong Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner got the numbers. And an AP story on the statisticians' analysis raises some serious questions about the sincerity of the duo.

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Is 350 the right target for atmospheric CO2?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:48:31 -0500

For those who really grok the precautionary principle, aiming for a lower, and therefore inherently safer, maximum atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration is the logical choice. Civilization arose over the last 10,000 years in a world in which CO₂ represented just 280 of every million atoms we and every other respiring organism inhaled. Given the uncertainty over what level of the trace gas leads to dramatic changes in the climate -- we know there's a relationship but haven't been able to nail down the tipping point -- the closer to pre-industrial levels the better.

But there's a problem.

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Explaining plummeting belief in anthropogenic climate change

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:29:32 -0500

Another depressing poll result from one of the more reputable sources:

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones [excellent!] and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures.

Why the drop?

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Science is not a religion

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:29:07 -0500

Before criticizing our newest ScienceBlogger, David Sloan Wilson, who has moved here from the Huffington Post, let me add my voice to those who are welcoming the move. It is a good thing to have such an esteemed and accomplished scientist among our ranks. But like fellow blogger Eric Michael Johnson, I found David's first post in these parts is more than a little unsettling.

Under the headline of "Goodbye HuffPost, Hello ScienceBlogs: Science as a Religion that Worships Truth as its God," he provocatively writes:

Science can even be regarded as a religion that worships truth as its god. It might seem provocative to put it this way, but I find the comparison compelling and challenge my readers to show what's wrong with it.

Well, he asked for it.

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Limbaugh listeners need to do some soul-searching

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:20:06 -0500

Not being a regular, or even occasional, listener of Rush Limbaugh, I have no idea if this week's obscene call for New York Times climate reporter Andy Revkin to commit suicide was simply par for the course. We all know that Limbaugh is an entertainer who is just doing what he needs to do to attract attention, maintain audiences and retain advertiser support. It's a free country (for most of us). But I'm a journalist and I cover climate change, too. So this hits too close to home to ignore.

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Superfreakonomics: How did they get climate change so wrong?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:22:46 -0500

In which your humble blogger makes a desperate attempt to write something original about the latest affront to reasonable discourse in the global warming crisis.

There's little point in duplicating the devastating criticism that has been leveled at Superfreakonomics, the sequel to the wildly popular book, Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I will point to just two examples: Gavin Schmidt's take-down at Real Climate, and Joe Romm's series at Climate Progress. But there are plenty more.

Even NPR couldn't run an interview with one of the authors without including a postscript that qualified the item by noting "many scientists have come out against some of the view and conclusions in this book." So that leaves trying to explain just why it is the authors got it so incredibly wrong.

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