The Island of Doubt

Trouble with the IPCC; trouble at the homefront

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:41:57 -0500

In case anyone is wondering why I haven't posted anything for the past few days, what with all the fuss over the IPCC and all, it's not because I'm reluctant to comment on it. It's just that my little piece of western North Carolina is only now recovering from an ice storm that knocked the power to my house out last Friday morning. I've only been back online for a few minutes and trying to catch up with all the happenings. Of course, I'm horribly behind in work that pays, so it may be a while before I get back to blogging regularly. Stay tuned.

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Why the denial camp is winning (and we're all losing) the climate wars

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:44:45 -0500

It's not so much that the pseudoskeptics who dominate the climate change denial camp are particularly clever, but they have been rather fortunate, and the forces aligned on the side of science have turned out to be human after all. The result is the denial camp is winning, and those on the defensive have some thinking to do.

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More distractions on the climate front

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:15:10 -0500

Never mind that the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record. Or that 2009 tied for the second-warmest year. Neither of those stories are consuming much airtime and web- and print-space. No, the biggest stories on the climate beat involve allegations of fraudulent activity on the part of some of the world's most experienced climatologists. The latest example concerns the lack of records specifying the location of remote Chinese weather stations and just how much they moved.

As Fred Pearce writes in The Guardian, "It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre academic dispute." But attention it is gathering, and before anyone accuses us "warmists" of ignoring another scandal, it behooves us to address it.

The story seems to involve the troubled Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia and his colleague, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany in New York, who published an oft-cited paper in Nature 20 years ago. The paper concluded that there was no "urban heat island effect" lending a warming bias to temperature records. But because Jones can't produce the documentation attesting to just where many of the Chinese weather stations that supplied some of the data were and how far, it at all, any were moved during the period of time the study involves, allegations of cover-up are raging.

It will probably be a while before we get to the bottom of the story. It is possible that the paper's findings will have to be retracted, which would be a shame. But it changes nothing of importance beyond the reputation of the scientists concerned.

First, there are plenty of other sources of independent data confirming anthropogenic global warming. Second, even if there was an urban heat island effect biasing a few Chinese data points, the effect is clearly not systemic through the world's weather stations. Here's the abstract to a paper from the National Climatic Data Center's Tom Peterson from seven years ago titled "Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous United States: No Difference Found."

Better yet, here's a hot off the presses paper from three of Peterson's NCDC colleagues, "On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record," that's basically a peer-reviewed version of a statement released last year by the station on why U.S. weather station records do not show a warming bias. In fact, not only is there no warming bias, but the opposite seems to the case:

Results indicate that there is a mean bias associated with poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites; however, this bias is consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to electronic sensors in the USHCN during the last 25 years. Moreover, the sign of the bias is counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative ("cool") bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive ("warm") bias in minimum temperatures.

So by all means, let's get to the bottom of Jones' latest travails. But we should no more confuse controversies surrounding a single paper with an entire body of science than we should confuse one blustery day in January with 150 years of an inexorably warming planet.

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Delingpole invents another "--gate" for his pseudoskeptical fans

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:09:33 -0500

James Delingpole continues to enjoy the privileges of blogging on the Daily Telegraph's imprimatur, despite his repeated misstatements on climatology. His latest affront to journalistic norms comes in the form of another alleged failure of a team of IPCC authors to cite real science. He's calling it "Amazongate." Oh dear.

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The public-scientist disconnect

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:27:55 -0500

So, to recap:

More than 96% of working climatologists say the global mean temperatures are rising, but only 34% of the public believes "Most scientists think global warming is happening."

How did we let this happen?

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Daily Mail invents a climate conspiracy

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:10:13 -0500

I've never met David Rose of the U.K.'s Daily Mail. And, while his past reporting on climate issues has tended to misrepresent the science of the day, it is entirely possible his editors are to blame for the fictionalization of his latest story. So I won't point fingers at this juncture. Regardless, the affair is an ominous reminder of how easily an idea can migrate across the world in a matter of hours even though anyone with a middle-school education could spot the flaw within a few seconds.

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The minority report

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:24:17 -0500

Here is Justice Stevens' core argument against his five colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court, each of who believes corporations are legally equivalent to citizens, as laid out in the dissenting opinion in Thursday's ruling on Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission.

The basic premise underlying the Court's ruling is its iteration, and constant reiteration, of the proposition that the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based on a speaker's identity, including its "identity" as a corporation. While that glittering generality has rhetorical appeal, it is not a correct statement of the law. Nor does it tell us when a corporation may engage in electioneering that some of its shareholders oppose. It does not even resolve the specific question whether Citizens United maybe required to finance some of its messages with the money in its PAC. The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court's disposition of this case.
In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure,and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.

I'd call that one of the truths that reasonable people hold to be "self evident," wouldn't you?

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Campaign finance ruling and the climate

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:09:19 -0500

By ruling that corporations are entitled to exercise unrestricted political speech, the U.S. Supreme Court has just made it much more difficult for Americans to make the transition from a fossil-fuel-based economy to a clean-energy economy.

Most democracies, including, until this morning, the U.S., recognize the danger of giving corporations free rein to influence the outcome of elections and so limit or ban political spending by corporations. But starting now, the $605 billion in profits available to the Fortune 100 can now be spent on advertising during American elections. This means those who are making the most money from the existing system are in a much greater position to help determine the future than those who are marginal players.

Fossil-fuel producers are among the richest corporations on the planet and in the U.S. They will now be able to outspend upstart solar, geothermal, wind-power, energy-efficiency and conservation-oriented businesses by several orders of magnitude. If you think it's tough to break into the energy market today, it just got a whole lot harder.

Other winners from today's ruling:

Carbon capture and sequestration researchers, as bringing down CCS costs (in both energy and money) will now almost certainly be needed in a world that is that even less likely to stop burning coal in time to prevent catastrophic climate change than it was yesterday.

The advertising industry.

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Republicans = the Borg: The Massachusetts vote proves the Many World hypothesis

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:39:00 -0500

I awoke this morning in a universe with a quantum signature that differs from that of the universe in which I fell asleep. I know this because it's the only way I can explain last night's Republican victory in the safest Democratic seat in the Senate.

It's just like that episode of Star Trek: TNG, the one in which Worf keeps flitting back and forth between alternate realities, including one where the Borg is practically ruling the universe, Once Riker discovers there are realities in which they aren't, he's willing to sabotage the effort to heal the trans-universe rift so he can escape his impending doom. (That one was called "Parallels.") That's how I feel.

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The Massachusetts vote

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:18:43 -0500

Dear Massachusetts voters:

If for some reason you haven't yet decided who should get your vote in today's Senate election, consider this little piece of information about Republican candidate Scott Brown, courtesy of the Boston Globe:

Brown typically skips climate change and global warming when discussing the environment; he sees the emissions debate as an economic one, spokesman Felix Browne said. On his website, under "Energy and Environment,'' Brown supports an array of domestic alternatives to foreign oil - including wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, and hydroelectric - but does not mention climate change.

And contrast with Democrat candidate Martha Coakley:

"We should have started yesterday on this problem, and every day we wait we're going to be behind the battle on it,'' said Coakley. "I think it's really important that elected officials and the scientists who know that this is a problem continue to keep it front and center and keep pressure on Congress to make changes.''

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Forget climategate; here's a real embarrassment for the IPCC

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:12:00 -0500

The revelation that at least one group of authors working for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would rely on grey literature or even popular media sources for their reporting could end up being a real blow to the Nobel prize-winning organization.

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Latif sets the record straight (again) on "several years of cooling"

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:50:25 -0500

Thanks to the dogged determination of über climate blogger Joe Romm, here's what Mojib Latif wants us all to understand about his previous references to a short-term cooling trend:

Given all the warnings about and plans to forestall global warming, people may be surprised to find, over the next several years that, over parts of the Northern hemisphere, summers are no warmer than before, maybe even a bit cooler-and that winters are as cold, or a bit colder, than they have been in the past couple of decades.
This is because the climate may go through a temporary halt in warming. It's nothing unusual, just a natural fluctuation. It doesn't mean that global warming is not still at work, or that we no longer need to worry about global temperatures rising by as much as 6°C by the end of the century -- an unprecedented warming in the history of mankind if no measures are taken to cut global carbon dioxide emissions. The only problem is that by considering the mean of many models of global warming, the natural fluctuations are averaged out, if they were not initialized by the current climate state, and this can be confusing.

I reproduce it here because Latif's comments on the subject have been grossly misrepresented, not only by usual suspects on Fox News, but my commenters at this blog and by otherwise respectable journalists the world over. This from a guy who has embrace the honorific middle name of "global warming." So let there by no further propagation of the falsehood that one of the world's leading climatologists is predicting decades of global cooling.

Now, I'm off to the Science Online 2010 conference, live streams of portions of which should be available here if you're interested.

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Obstacle No. 64 to dealing with climate change: The cult of celebrity

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:54:32 -0500

The news that Sarah Palin has found a new platform for her particular take on reality brings to mind one of the biggest obstacles to the development of meaningful action on the climate change front -- or any other serious public policy challenge, for that matter.

Palin is more akin to Paris Hilton or Pia Zadora than she is to most other public figures in two ways. First, she brings no obvious talent or experience to the public sphere, just popularity afforded her first by the electorate of a small and politically quirky state, and by the last man standing in one of the weakest fields of Republican presidential hopefuls in the party's history. Second, she is a lightning rod for contempt from those who find themselves troubled by the fact that such a character would enjoy such popularity.

Both factors should and do give pause to anyone pondering a career path that involves sharing the rarified air of celebrity. After all, it seems that one of the easiest routes is to deny science, rationalism, and intellectual accomplishment. And why would you want to subject yourself -- and your expose your family -- to the vicious attack dogs of the opposition?

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The climate change boycott gambit

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:40:36 -0500

What's better for a book and its author: good reviews or a threat of a boycott of the publisher?

Today I received an email from one Gavin Bower of Quartet Books of London, a publisher with a respectable history of daring to handle works that no one else was willing to touch. The Joy of Sex in 1973, for example. I've never heard from Bower or Quartet before, but for some reason I'm on their media contact list. The subject: a blog post from Quartet's publisher decrying an alleged "orchestrated boycott" from environmental fundamentalists upset that Quartet has published climate change pseudoskeptic Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth: Global Warming - The Missing Science.

You don't say.

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Is the Earth even more sensitive to CO2 levels than we thought?

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:13:26 -0500

One of the more common arguments from skeptics of anthropogenic climate change is that the Earth has experienced periods during which atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were much much higher than they are today -- as much as 10 times higher. Why worry about a mere 30% increase over pre-industrial levels?

There are several answers to that challenge. The most obvious is that while it may be true that CO2 levels have been several times higher that today's 387 parts per million, the Earth was also a very different place back then. The sea level was much higher, the temperature was much warmer and it bears noting that the biodiversity at such times was quite different. But the assumption that the atmospheric CO2 levels might have been 3,000 ppm did pose some challenges to climatologists trying to figure out how the rest of the planetary ecosystem responded to dramatic changes in CO2. Some of the things that were apparently happening during high CO2 periods didn't quite make sense.

Now, however, comes a paper in PNAS (access priviledges req'd) that reports a strong possibility that CO2 levels during one of those curious periods -- the Mesozoic, which was between 251 and 65 million years ago -- were much lower that previous estimates. If the authors are right, we may have to reconsider our predictions of what might happen over the next century if CO2 levels don't stabilize soon.

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