Reasic.org

Unfortunately, the scientists who have devoted their lives’ work to understanding the various aspects of our planet’s climate system have the added displeasure of dealing with a group of people who have devoted themselves to spinning and distorting everything imaginable, when it comes to climate change. This phenomenon, known in some circles as climate denialism, has existed for many years. However, it seems to have picked up steam recently, with the help of a few biased “journalists” (and I use that term extremely loosely) at certain papers in the UK.

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When it comes to climate change, “skeptics” as they call themselves, have become very predictable. From the very beginning, they have been interested in nothing but using misinterpretations, red herrings, and general falsehoods to spread misinformation to the public. The latest, and perhaps most egregious, example is the reaction to the CRU hacked emails. As this article in the Guardian points out, every major claim made about the emails by “skeptics” is based on either (1) a ignorance or (2) lies:

Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked climate emails has been based on brief soundbites publicised by professional sceptics and their blogs. In many cases, these have been taken out of context and twisted to mean something they were never intended to.

The author basically says it’s lies, but I throw in ignorance to give those who just don’t know better, and believe everything they’re told, the benefit of the doubt. In this article, the author does an outstanding job of examining the context for the emails in question — something that is sorely lacking from any “skeptical” ramblings on the subject. First, he covers the most repeated quote, which involves a supposed attempt to “hide the decline”:

The full email from Jones says: “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) and from 1961 for Keith [Briffa]’s, to hide the decline.” The decline being referred to was an apparent decline in temperatures shown in analysis of tree rings. Tree rings have historically correlated well with changes in temperature, but that relationship has broken down in the past half century. The reasons are still debated among scientists. The “trick” was a graphic device used by Mann in a 1998 paper in Nature to merge tree ring data from earlier times with thermometer data for recent decades. He explained it in the paper. Jones was repeating it in another paper.

This statement in that email was basically dealing the issue of divergence in the last several decades between tree ring proxy data and modern temperature data. But I guess it sounds so much more like a massive conspiracy when it is construed to mean that scientists were adjusting the temperature record to make it seem as though the planet was warming when it really wasn’t.

*sigh*

In 2007, Anthony Watts, a meteorologist, blogger, and global warming denier, launched the website surfacestations.org. It was created in response to “a massive failure of bureaucracy to perform something so simple as taking some photographs and making some measurements and notes of a few to a few dozen weather stations in each state”. The primary purpose is basically to expose supposed biases in the land temperature record, due to improperly placed measurement devices, thereby proving that the planet is not really warming. According to this theory, the supposed warming is due primarily to errors in temperature measurement.

Nevermind for a minute that NASA corrects for various anomalies in their analysis of raw data, or that satellite measurements match nicely with land data. A recently released study has analyzed the data from the sites recorded at surfacestations.org, and found something very interesting:

Poor sites show a cooler maximum temperature compared to good sites. For minimum temperature, the poor sites are slightly warmer. The net effect is a cool bias in poorly sited stations.

Exactly the opposite that is insinuated by Watts. FAIL.

h/t Tim Lambert

I’ve often seen cap and trade legislation bashed for various reasons, and from both sides. Granted, it’s not a panacea for our planet’s environmental problems, but it seems to be a workable solultion that most people can agree on, and is therefore our best shot at tackling the problem of global warming. Take a look at this video and see what you think:

The Facts of Cap-and-Trade from Clean Energy Works on Vimeo.

I figured the point about cap and trade working would be a sticking point for many here, so I’ll go ahead and link straight to the MIT paper upon which that point was based:

http://web.mit.edu/ceepr/www/publications/DDCF.pdf

Full bibliography here:

http://ga3.org/campaign/cew_facts/forward

This post is my first attempt at retrieving my old posts from the internet archives. In May of 2007, I posted this rebuttal to a speech by Michael Crichton.

Recently, my attention was directed to a speech by Michael Crichton, given at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, on January 17, 2003. I was told that, while this speech contained some of the usual fallacious skeptical arguments, there were also somewhat convincing ones. So, I’ve given it a read, and I’d like to address Crichton’s arguments.

In his lecture, Crichton spoke against “pseudoscience” and against science being too closely linked with politics. Crichton then provides several examples of what he considers to be bad science being accepted by the scientific community and the public. He starts with the the SETI project, which he considers to be a “religion”, saying that it opened the door for other “pernicious garbage”. Next, he tackles previous claims about a nuclear winter, second-hand smoke, and computer models, all of which he claims were foolish. Having established, in his mind anyways, that all of these previous examples were false, he then correlates the acceptance of these to the acceptance of global warming and provides his own remedy for the problem, which is separating each of the phases of scientific research, so as to avoid corruption of the process.

Crichton approaches this subject as though it were a trial in which humanity were being charged with causing global warming. If this were the case, he would make a great defense attorney, because he provides plenty of doubt. However, I think the case should be turned around. It is the overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists whose work he is attacking who are on the defense. Therefore, Crichton is required to provide some detailed scientific arguments against the work of these scientists, which he has failed to do. At one point, he actually admits that he does not intend to do so:

And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science or non-science is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this more magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established.

I find it unfortunate that he decided to abandon the only method by which he could truly convince the world of his argument. Regardless of Crichton’s lack of any substantive scientific argument, I would still like to address many of the assertions made in his speech, as I believe that they are many times not grounded in fact.

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