Oregon Institute of Science and Malarkey
A large number of US scientists (to our direct knowledge: engineers, biologists, computer scientists and geologists) received a package in the mail this week. The package consists of a colour preprint of a 'new' article by Robinson, Robinson and Soon and an exhortation to sign a petition demanding that the US not sign the Kyoto Protocol. If you get a feeling of deja vu, it is because this comes from our old friends, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and is an attempt to re-invigorate the highly criticised 1999 "Oregon Petition".
The article itself is just an update of the original article, minus an author (Baliunas), with a switch of Robinson children (Zachary's out, Noah is in), but with a large number of similar errors and language. As in previous case, this paper too, is not peer reviewed.
Since this is a rehash of the previous paper plus a few more cherry-picked statistics of dubious relevance, instead of tediously going through the whole thing ourselves, we are going to try something new - an open source debunking.
As we've mentioned previously, we've set up a Wiki to provide a one stop shop for articles debunking some of the worst climate contrarian pseudo-science. So, we've therefore set up a page for the new OISM paper, and what we'd like to do here is to start collecting material on this paper.
So, in the comments, please catalog any:
- links to articles dealing with debunkings of the previous incarnations of this paper
- obvious errors
- clear cherry-picking of data
- interesting edits between versions
and we'll collate all the pertinent stuff on the RC-Wiki page. To make things easier, please label all comments by the section or figure numbers.
Just to get you started, all versions of the paper make a mistake in the dating of Keigwin's Sargasso Sea record by 50 years (Figure 2 in early versions, Figure 1 now) since they do not notice that the published dates are in 'years BP' (Before Present) which is conventionally dated from 1950, not 2000. And that's even without getting into the question of why this is the only paleo-record they highlight, or on what logical basis they put the '2006′ value on.
In another example, the authors appear to think that human breathing out of CO2 is contributing to accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (Actually since that carbon comes directly and indirectly from recent plants taking it out of the air, our breathing is carbon neutral). Additionally, they take the ratio of temperature change to CO2 change in the ice core record and assume that is the climate sensitivity of climate to CO2 as opposed to the other way around.
There is much, much more. Have at it!
Title of this post courtesy of an email correspondent
10 October 2007 at 8:17 AM
The link to your’s wiki OISM page is not working.
[Response: fixed. - gavin]
10 October 2007 at 8:55 AM
Great idea. I registered at the wiki, intending to add Lomborg’s latest denial (as reported 10/7 in the Washington post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100501676.html). But I found the page locked for editing.
I’m no more a climate scientist than Lomborg, but even I begin to recognize his creative use of statistics–for example, not mentioning well-established severe weather increases, or creating a false dilemma between spending to combat global warming and spending to combat malaria. Seems to me that this article is another candidate for the wiki. - Peter Buck
[Response: We’ve decided to keep the RC-wiki editors restricted for the time being to prevent spam/vandalism etc., but we will transfer all information from these comments to the wiki page at regular intervals. Lomborgs piece may well be worth doing as well. So comment away! - gavin]
10 October 2007 at 8:59 AM
I was wondering when you guys were going to comment on that. The thing is, some people may just sign it thinking it says we need to take action to mitigate the damage caused by global warming without reading it through (because we are all so pressed for time). It is really obscene that so called scientists, MD’s no less, can send this through the mail.
10 October 2007 at 11:15 AM
Perhaps you would be kind enough, in the interest of balance, to include in your Wiki item listed under my name a reference to the correction which The Guardian were obliged to print 24 hours after Monbiot’s scientifically-inaccurate article. Also in the interest of balance, please reference the rebuttal of the RealClimate item entitled “Cuckoo Science” which is published by the Science and Public Policy Instutte and available at scienceandpublicpolicy.org. If you are not willing to include these items, then I should be grateful if you would take down the page referencing me. - Monckton of Brenchley
10 October 2007 at 11:24 AM
MDs are not scientists, IMO. (Two of my children are MDs.)
However, in this instance there may be some issue of ethics violations on the part of those authors which are MDs, and using that information in their blurb.
Somebody might like to check that out.
10 October 2007 at 12:08 PM
I’d suggest renaming it “Oregon Institute of Scientific Malarkey” so as not to imply they do actual science when not working on utter malarkey.
10 October 2007 at 12:11 PM
Most of the graphs show amount of fuel burnt, rather than CO2 concentrations, or better still radiative forcing. Perhaps this is to allow them to state that “hydrocarbon use has increased 6-fold”.
And then we have this nonsense:
“the sources and amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere are of secondary importance … it is human burninig of coal, oil and natural gas that is at issue. CO2 is merely an intermediate”
10 October 2007 at 12:39 PM
This isn’t the only thing at OISM:
At http://www.oism.org/pproject
near the bottom left of the page, one finds a link to an article by Mary Tiffany Gilder “debunking” Al Gore.
Why would anybody care?
Who is Mary Tiffany Gilder?
Well, she’s:
a) George Gilder’s daughter.
b) A medical student at Albany Medical College.
c) Such an expert at climate science that Steve Forbes featured her “debunking” Al Gore in the Sept 3, 2007 main editorial in Forbes magazine:
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0903/021.html?partner=yahoomag
I of course wrote a letter complaining about this to a friend at Forbes … but Steve Forbes does own the magazine, which makes it hard.
The original version of this was at the Discovery Institute, which surprised me at first (DI is most famous for Intelligent Design):
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=4022
But, then it turned out that George Gilder is involved in DI:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=10&isFellow=true
Perhaps Forbes didn’t want to point at a DI site…
At least Schulte (of the Monckton/Schulte/Morano v Oreskes flap) was already a published medical researcher, not just a medical student… but at least, editors of serious medical journals like The Lancet or BMJ actually understand.
However, after the petition project wiki is done, maybe people want to go after this one…
10 October 2007 at 12:53 PM
Can somebody, anybody, explain figure three of this paper? Where did that data originate?
10 October 2007 at 1:17 PM
I am an engineer at Penn State who got the packet from GWPP and immediately discounted it as nonsense. However then I received an email from a colleague that let me to this website. My first reaction was to think that you would be more effective if you simply presented clearly data and arguments that prove that the Robinson et al. arguments are riddled with important errors and based on bias rather than scientific arguement, without blatantly ridiculing of the people who wrote the article.
I have two questions about the packet that came from GWPP that I am wondering if someone could respond to:
1/ I find that the “Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons” is within the Penn State Universitty library system. The journal web-page says that as of 2003 it is peer-reviewed. Clearly, this journal is not the right place for a what is claimed to be a technical review of CO2 emmisions and consequences on global warming, however I do not understand why the author of “Oregon Institute of Science and Malarkey” wrote that the paper was not peer reviewed if the journal is a peer reviewed journal. The supplied link did not help me answer that question.
2/ The GWPP packet also included a note from “FredercK Seitz” who identifies himself as past president of the National Acadamy of Sciences and Rockefeller University. I looked him up on the web and it appears this is true. These are pretty serious credentials. I ask myself: why would a highly respected scientist put his name out as supporting a review that is such poor science? Regardless of his personal biases, a good scientist, we believe, does not support a paper that is scientifically erroneous. Do we conclude that Dr. Seitz has no scientific ethics? Do we conclude that a former NAS president has allowed personal biases to overcome scientific scrutiny? There was no mention of Dr. Seitz made in the commentary “Oregon Institute of Science and Malarky,” yet the inclusion of his letter urging support for the petition is probably much more important to the “anti Gobal Warming cause” than the article. Is Frederick Seitz a dishonest person and a poor scientist? How did he get to be president of the NAS? I really would like to understand this.
10 October 2007 at 2:27 PM
Most objections to the US signing the Kyoto Protocols have little to do with science and everything to do with politics - and rightly so.
10 October 2007 at 3:22 PM
Oh come on John can’t a well-connected med student with Google offer up a counter theory? It seems they always come up with the same one!
10 October 2007 at 3:25 PM
A couple of my colleagues received this as well. I found it interesting that several people in geology, engineering, and other people mentioned having gotten the package, but it wasn’t sent to anyone in the meteorology program.
10 October 2007 at 3:41 PM
Were the Robinson Robinson Soon (RRS) team behind that “schoolgirl who debunked global warming” thing?
The Sargasso Sea and the good ol’ US of A are not the whole of the world. And the theory is that the global energy balance is perturbed by enhanced greenhouse effect. So a real scientist would try to refute the theory by looking at the global level. Otherwise it’s like guessing the size of a sheet of paper using a 1cm square piece. So it seems RRS have totally given up all pretence of science by now.
Aside from the starter RC give. RRS state “The average temperature of the Earth has varied within a range of about 3°C during the past 3,000 years.”
That should read:
“The average temperature of the SARGASSO SEA has varied within a range of about 3°C during the past 3,000 years.”
A real scientific summary would use a range of peer work. Such as the studies used for this wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png RRS have obviously taken their 3 deg C from that graph - they have no alternate source.
“It is currently increasing as the Earth recovers from a period that is known as the Little Ice Age, as shown in Figure 1.” Well again it’s not the Earth they’re talking about, it’s the Sargasso Sea.
Here are the 3 main surface dataset graphs.
GISS http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
CRU http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
GHCN http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/trends.html
RRS have an odd notion of “rebound”, in their world a rebound tends to wait for a couple of centuries before really setting in. I have never found a peer reviewed paper that proposes a theory of rebound (rather than just handwaving speculation).
And anyway the LIA is associated with the Maunder Minimum and vulcanism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
As a hobbyist reader of the science, the problem for me is highlighted by the reference to Neptune, I’ve not been able to get access to Hammel & Lockwood (refs 43 & 44) although Sromovsky et al “The nature of Neptune’s increasing brightness: evidence for a seasonal response” is here:
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2003/17/paper.pdf And the title speaks for itself.
If I had the time I could continue, I’ll see what others come up with and try to make time over the coming weekend.
Based on this performance my impression is that Robinson, Robinson, and Soon should be working as lawyers. The problem that their approach poses both for them and for those who swallow this nonsense (not at insult - a supportable statement) is that physical processes are not amenable to persuasion by obfuscation.
10 October 2007 at 4:27 PM
“..no lord should have lordship save civilly..”
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/HoLNotice070307.pdf
10 October 2007 at 4:27 PM
Interesting that Viscount Monckton wrote in. For those who want to see a debunking of his famous editorial, try:
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Monckton.html
10 October 2007 at 4:36 PM
Re. #10, Jim Brasseur:
Frederick Seitz is a condensed matter physicist, and has never been a climate scientist.
Seitz is a former Chair of the George C. Marshall Institute; is Chairman of the Science and Environmental Policy Project; is on the Board of Academic and Scientific Advisors of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and has been a Science Advisor to The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition. All four organisations actively lobby against any measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all four are well known for publishing disinformation concerning science in order to achieve this objective; and all four are funded by sections of the fossil fuel industry.
Seitz has also worked as a consultant to the tobacco industry, and was described in an internal memo by Phillip Morris Co. in 1989 as “quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice.”.
Seitz was instrumental in organising the original “petition project” of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine or OISM: a petition that led the National Academy of Sciences to take unprecedented step of issuing a statement disassociating itself from the project and from its former president.
The petition, despite being frequently cited by global warming critics as showing that thousands of scientists disagree with the consensus on global warming, contains almost no people with relevant expertise; and its vetting was so lax that it included fictional signatories such as Star Wars characters and a member of the Spice Girls.
Seitz is also known for a highly disingenuous article that he published in the Wall Street journal in 1996, purporting to criticise the IPCC review process, and implying he was privy to this process, without revealing that he has never had any involvement with the IPCC and has never been a climate scientist (see also here).
10 October 2007 at 4:56 PM
Re Seitz:
However, he continued to, on toxins, the ozone hole, and climate change.
A long time ago, a friend and I each checked 10+ names from a long list of scientists opposing the conventional thinking on climate change. She got some who had published, but a long time ago. I got some oil geologists, and one who listed his typing skills above his environmental credentials on his resume.
10 October 2007 at 5:02 PM
Re. #4, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, I am aware that the Guardian published a response from you, under its right of reply policy; but that is not the same thing as publishing a correction. If they did indeed publish an actual correction rather than just an article written by you, can you provide a url where one can read it?
Regarding the Science and Public Policy Institute, see here.
10 October 2007 at 5:02 PM
Re the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
Perhaps the people studying contemporary society asked for this magazine to be put in your library.
10 October 2007 at 5:08 PM
For information purposes, it would be useful to check the IP of comment number 4 and see if it matches relevant IP’s of Monckton as mentioned by Monbiot and Tim Lambert:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/10/watch_monckton_squirm.php
But as MOnckton has no grasp of climatology or physics, he hardly needs debunking, so no need to waste a page on him unless he continues to peddle his mistakes as being correct.
10 October 2007 at 5:15 PM
In light of RealClimate’s endorsement of Al Gore’s film getting the science essentially right, I wonder what RC’s view of a court case in the UK finding 9 errors in it:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2632660.ece
10 October 2007 at 5:15 PM
Re: 10
You must not have read the Wikipedia entry on Seitz.
To summarize:
-Seitz was a professor of physics at Illinois from 1949-1968 where he did seminal work on the nature of unit cells in crystalline solids
-During much of this time (1962-1969) he was also president of the NAS
-Seitz ended his active research role in 1968 to take on an administrative job as president of Rockefeller university
-After retiring from academia altogether in 1979, he became a ‘permanent consultant’ for RJ Reynolds Tobacco
-In 1989, CEO of RJ Reynolds let Seitz go because “Dr Seitz is quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice”
-Seitz has continued to work for the Marshall Institute and other such think tanks
-He is currently 96 years old
So for the past 38 years, Seitz has been working for special interest groups. Despite his impressive credentials, the last time that he held an active research position was in 1968. Furthermore, his work involved solid state physics, not atmospheric dynamics. Based on this, I think that it is fair to question his motives.
10 October 2007 at 6:34 PM
re: #10
I must help out a fellow Penn Stater:
Sometimes even great scientists sometimes later go off into strange things, and Seitz has made a second career of it.
Karen Street’s link in #14 is worth examining.
10 October 2007 at 6:45 PM
Re/ Jim Brasseur at #10:
You’re joking, right? If not, then look me up. I’m gonna start my own peer-reviewed journal, and you will know it’s peer-reviewed because it’ll say so, right on the website. Don’t try looking for it, or JPANDS, on Medline — it would spoil the fun.
10 October 2007 at 7:03 PM
re: #10, http://www.desmogblog.com/friends-of-science-friends-of-tobacco also has some pertinent information about Seitz.
Also, re: whether Robinson, Robinson & Soon was “peer reviewed”, peers are people with whom the author shares a field of expertise. A doctor’s peers are doctors, a climate scientist’s peers are climate scientists. I am sure there are matters of method and data confirmation that will overlap, but the subtleties of a medical paper would be lost on a climate scientist, and the reverse is true. I doubt very much whether a peer review undertaken by The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons of a climate science paper really qualifies.
10 October 2007 at 7:10 PM
Note that for the journal that is apparently publishing this (Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons), it is not the first foray into publishing garbage of this sort. Here is a link to something that they published in regards to DDT a few years back: http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf
I guess that journal is trying to become a sort of multidisciplinary counterpart to “Energy and Environment”.
10 October 2007 at 7:43 PM
Here is a blogger who has done a pretty thorough investigation of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and the sort of junk that they publish: http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/91/strange-bedfellows
10 October 2007 at 7:51 PM
First, I would like to note that “An Inconvenient Truth” as been adjudged political by a British Court (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article3047673.ece) because of the errors in it. Under this ruling, a teacher that wants to show the movie in class must tell their students that it is political rather than scientific in nature. That is a ruling that I believe the Heartland will come to regret.
As for the current Marlarkey, my favorite pair of sentences are:
Glaciers regularly lengthen and shorten in delayed correlation with cooling and warming trends. Shortening lags temperature by about 20 years, so the current warming trend began in about 1800.
1) This in only plausible when the temperature is near 0C. (I.e, if the temperature in 10C and it cools 2C, the glacier will continue to shorten. If the temperature is -40C, there is likely to be no response to either a cooling or warming trend.)
2) In many scenarios, warming results in increased snowfall resulting in glacier lengthening as a direct result of climate warming.
3) Response time is dependent on a variety of factors, and this is not a constant.
Three serious mistakes in two sentences. Under the precedent of the British court ruling, this is a political tract, rather than a work of science.
10 October 2007 at 8:12 PM
Thank you for setting up the page for the new OISM paper. I hope some of the good points listed here by contributors will be compiled there quickly. I’m an engineering professor who works on global warming issues, so the stench of this article was apparent as soon as I opened the envelope. However, as noted by #10 above, it would be very helpful to have a concise, sober, and solid website to which I can direct my colleagues who also received the article and may not be as familiar with the confusion sowed by these science deniers.
10 October 2007 at 8:47 PM
Here is some more information about Seitz which shows how he signed on and how much he was paid by the Tobacco Institute.
10 October 2007 at 8:48 PM
Oregon Institute of Silly Malarkey, and that is an insult to the Irish.
10 October 2007 at 9:47 PM
Thanks for the wiki-debunking and for collecting the info in one place. I received the letter (I’m a geologist), and although it was clear that the article was nonsense, I didn’t know the history behind this group.
11 October 2007 at 12:06 AM
I noticed that Robinson’s Figure 1 is an incomplete reproduction of Keigwin’s figure. In the original, station “S” data are provided, showing that recent SST has been more than a half degree above the 23 C line on the plot. For some reason this data was removed by Robinson, and replaced with a single blue circle below the 23 degree line. The caption says that the SST rose by .25 degrees between 1975 and 2006, but no data are provided, and the data showing a larger increase at station “S” was stripped out of the original figure. The recent SST data were also taken off of the figure when it was reproduced in the Wall Street Journal. To actually remove data from a figure before reproducing it, without explaining why, seems like scientific fraud to me.
11 October 2007 at 12:06 AM
OFF TOPIC:
Didnt know where to put this. BUT… The IPCC AR4 FAQ link in the START HERE section seems to be dead.
It was:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_FAQs.pdf
but seems to be now:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_FAQs.pdf
I often share the ’start here’ page. Its a great page…but i hate dead links. Thats all. Thanks for a great resource.
11 October 2007 at 12:45 AM
The IPCC did a comparison of different climate models. I can’t seem to find it. I am hoping that they have p values (or equivalent probability statistics). I would be interested in seeing which the top model is these days. Does anybody have a favorite? Thanks!
11 October 2007 at 1:43 AM
I would like to make a request of the authors of this outstanding blog. I read a lot of the Scienceblogs and get really tired of their attempts to be personable and fill their pages with aggressive, colorful language (PZ Myers in particular). At first I thought it was cool, when there was just a little bit of it. But after a while, it just becomes another crappy voice. And I find myself appreciating Real Climate for the tone of professionalism you generally bring. I notice this post uses the word “malarky” — please try to avoid sliding down into the gutter of so many other blogs. This is a great blog in large part because it has a strong, clear and professional voice to it. As much as I used to want scientists to be “more like real people,” after a while, real people can kind of get tiresome. Please keep your great dignity. It really is appreciated.
11 October 2007 at 3:54 AM
Re: #29 - I am an environmental lawyer in Australia and a presenter for Al Gore’s Climate Project so I read the UK decision criticising “An Inconvenient Truth” (AIT) with interest. This is one topic that I feel I can contribute to on RealClimate and this seems like an appropriate thread for the post (I am a regular reader but I normally just follow the scientific discussion without contributing).
The decision, Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education & Skills [2007] EWHC 2288 (Admin), is available at http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html
The case arose from a decision of the UK government to distribute AIT to all UK state secondary schools. A father of two school children and a school governor claimed that the distribution of AIT infringed sections 406 and 497 of the Education Act 1996 (UK), which forbids “the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in [UK schools].”
There are a couple of preliminary points to note about how the case was conducted. First, the case was defended by the UK Government and Al Gore was not a party to it or called as a witness so he had no opportunity to respond to the criticisms of his film by the plaintiff. Second, the main witness for the plaintiff was an Australian climate skeptic, Bob Carter. See Deltoid’s profile of him at http://timlambert.org/category/science/bobcarter/
Turning to the decision, the judge accepted at paragraph 17 of his judgment that the following propositions are supported by a vast quantity of research published in peer-reviewed journals worldwide and by the great majority of the world’s climate scientists:
“The Film advances four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC:
(1) global average temperatures have been rising significantly over the past half century and are likely to continue to rise (”climate change”);
(2) climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (”greenhouse gases”);
(3) climate change will, if unchecked, have significant adverse effects on the world and its populations; and
(4) there are measures which individuals and governments can take which will help to reduce climate change or mitigate its effects.”
However, the judge then went on to find there are nine errors in AIT. The judge said that these errors “or departures from the mainstream, by Mr Gore in AIT in the course of his dynamic exposition, do arise in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of his political thesis.” The nine “errors” include, for example, that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”. The judge found “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s ”wake-up call“. It was common ground that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - “but only after, and over, millennia.”
While skeptics will claim this decision “proves” Al Gore and AIT are alarmist and false and will use it to spread disinformation, in the context of the acceptance by the judge that climate change is real and happening, the nine alleged errors are relatively minor matters that do not challenge the major message in the film: that climate change is real and that individuals and governments need to take action to prevent it.
11 October 2007 at 3:59 AM
“Correlation does not prove causality, but non-correlation proves non-causality.” - Para 19 of Atmospheric and Surface Temperatures
I suppose this is true, in the sense that if you had zero correlation it would be hard to justify causation. Although, I’m not sure it constitutes proof.
However, there is some correlation between CO2 levels (and even annual fossil fuel use) and temperature. All it demonstrates is that there is more than one causal factor, as is well known, with aerosols (from fossil fuels and volcanoes), land-use changes (through affecting CH$ and CO2 levels and albedo) and solar irradiance all playing a role.
Causality of CO2 influence on climate is, after all, proved by experiments of its effect on absorbing longwave radiation. The only question is the relative importance of CO2 (and human influence more generally) and other factors. Clearly this relative balance changes with time.
11 October 2007 at 7:05 AM
The IPCC asks that people link “through the front door” here:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
They make that clear right at the top:
“Please access the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), the Technical Summary (TS), chapters and other material from the following table of links. Links to the Supplementary Material pages are also provided.”
Within that table, the links do change whenever docs get revised.
11 October 2007 at 7:57 AM
#22 Adrian JC
In light of RealClimate’s endorsement of Al Gore’s film getting the science essentially right, I wonder what RC’s view of a court case in the UK finding 9 errors in it
I suspect that the Realclimate contributors would point to this passage:
That is: the film is essentially scientifically correct.
#29 Aaron Lewis:
First, I would like to note that “An Inconvenient Truth” as been adjudged political by a British Court (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article3047673.ece) because of the errors in it.
That’s not the case. That the film was political, and partisanly so, within the meaning of those words in the statute was pretty much common ground between the parties. On political:
and on partisan:
(all quotes taken from the judgment).
As to the errors in the film, they are all points at which the film departs from the mainstream consensus, defined by the IPCC reports. What the DoEaS was required to do was simply to point these out. The judge accepted the proposition that “…in any event, nothing in the 1996 Act (or elsewhere) obliged teachers to adopt a position of studied neutrality between, on the one hand, scientific views which reflect the great majority of world scientific opinion and, on the other, a minority view held by a few dissentient scientists.”
11 October 2007 at 8:50 AM
Timothy,
“Correlation does not prove causality, but non-correlation proves non-causality.” - Para 19 of Atmospheric and Surface Temperatures
We’ve known since well before Hume that the notion of causality is understood intuitively much more easily than it is pinned down rigorously. Hume originated the association between correlation and causation, with its implication that causation can only be established by repeated trials, etc. I would contend that the scientific criterion for causation is correlation + a scientific model for how the cause brings about the effect. The model may be based all or in part on repeated trials, but I would contend that it is a more stringent criterion.
11 October 2007 at 9:20 AM
Well done on these posts, everyone, and good to see ‘nonsense’ being jumped on so quickly.
That said, and regarding “AIT”, much as I admire Al Gore’s sentiment, I think the use of exaggeration and apocalyptic language actually works *against* the clarity of the climate science, such as it stands at present, rather than promoting clarity. Such language merely makes us sound like another voice in a clamour of competing, apocalyptic religions, each one warning in its own way of “the end of the world” and our need to repent, worship the true God/prophet/cause etc. Indeed, much of the criticism and hostility aimed against those of us who would wish to warn of the dangers of unrestrained CO2 emissions is that the proponents of CO2 warming hold their views ‘religiously’. I don’t think they do, actually, far from it in fact.
What still bothers me greatly, though, is that the upper range (’worse case’ rather than ‘worst case’?) scenarios occupy such a wide possible range of climate outcomes, mainly (as I understand it) because of the long upper tail of estimates of the climate sensitivity. That seems to me the point to hammer home, and keep hammering, presenting realistic outcomes over sensible time-frames. It’s boring and totally attritional compared with religious or political ways of influencing people, but I don’t see we have any alternative to it if we are to avoid ending up seeming like just another interest group.
11 October 2007 at 10:26 AM
Re 4 The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley “Perhaps you would be kind enough, in the interest of balance…”
You are mistaken in assuming that science can be balanced by editorial opinion and non-science, sir.
11 October 2007 at 10:59 AM
James Hansens seemingly subsequent work to the AIC stresses that sea level rises are unlikely to as the IPCC recent report states. I am unsre as to exactly how much sea leve lrise Mr Hansen is stating but WAIS and Greenland could be adding 10ft rathr than 80 cm’s.
Something to do with non linear collpase (is that a tipping point).
11 October 2007 at 11:14 AM
The attempt to discredit Frederck Seitz is childish, and shouldn’t be considered in the wiki unless there is an effort to dig up dirt on all scientists discussed. What are Mann’s, Schmidt’s, Benestad’s shortcomings – political preferences, industry affiliations, age, negative quips from peers? And who cares? You tell me how their publish work stands up to peer review, the extent of contributions to their field, successes in challenging conventions - that is information I can use. This website has the chance to become something more than a useless spin machine. Don’t blow it.
11 October 2007 at 11:18 AM
Re # 39 Timothy (and # 42, Ray’s comment): Correlation does not prove causality, but non-correlation proves non-causality.”
In biology, there are plenty of complex pathways (such as foodweb interactions, biochemical pathways, and neural responses) in which direct cause and effect relationships between two events may not be clearly correlated because of multiple branchpoints in the pathway, feeback loops, etc. So, a “signal” A may cause predicted response “B” in some cases, but not others; as a result, it can be difficult to see any correlation (the two events appear to occur randomly), though there is a well-understood cause and effect relationship between the two.
11 October 2007 at 11:38 AM
Just as a follow-up to my post in #43, it may interest people to see the response of the plaintiff (Mr Dimmock) after the UK court case against AIT, his words reported here from the BBC news website:
“Mr Dimmock said: ‘I am elated with today’s result, but still disappointed that the film is able to be shown in schools. If it was not for the case brought by myself, our young people would still be being indoctrinated with this political spin.’
So, as far as he is concerned, Gore’s film is indoctrination, not science, and presumably, by implication, those of us agreeing with the tone or drift of AIT are also no better than other indoctrinators, such as religious or political fanatics. And there will now be a lot of people tempted to follow the same view, or, perhaps worse, to say ” a plague on all your houses ..”, so that they have given up listening altogether.
So much for the perils of exaggeration, even well-meaning exaggeration by someone like Mr Gore. Well, we can’t say now that we haven’t been warned.
11 October 2007 at 11:41 AM
Nick Odoni wrote: “I think the use of exaggeration and apocalyptic language actually works *against* the clarity of the climate science, such as it stands at present, rather than promoting clarity.”
Someone once wrote that nothing produces clarity of mind like the knowledge that one will be hanged in the morning. “Apocalyptic language” about global warming and its likely consequences is entirely justified given the facts and is not “exaggeration”. Everyone needs to have great clarity about what is going to happen to the Earth’s biosphere and the human species if anthropogenic global warming continues, and clear language describing this will be, appropriately, apocalyptic.
I think that some people automatically reject such justifiably apocalyptic language as “exaggerated” because they have an a priori bias that such consequences are “unthinkable” and simply cannot happen, which is an understandable bias because we are talking of changes that are entirely outside the realm of human experience throughout the history of our species. But that mental bias — that psychological denial — needs to be recognized for what it is, and set aside, so that we can contemplate with clarity the consequences of our action or inaction.
11 October 2007 at 12:18 PM
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12775-zero-emissions-needed-to-avert-dangerous-warming.html
DOOMED !!!!!!!!
11 October 2007 at 12:25 PM
Nick Odoni — The Wikipdidia page on PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) contains no serious exaggerations. This period did indeed happen around 55 million years ago, so presumably something roughly similar could happen again. I fail to see how mentioning such a possiblity does not provide clear information.
11 October 2007 at 1:52 PM
So if we are all so committed to sound science, how come nobody from RC or related sites has yet provided a coherent, robust, scientifically demonstratable proof of the central proposition to the AGW argument? That is, that doubling CO2 levels in atmosphere will increase the global average temperature by 2.5 Degrees C.
The lack of response to this clear and explicit question is damning.
[Response: Been there, done that. And by the way, it’s probably 3 deg C, not 2.5. - gavin]
11 October 2007 at 2:07 PM
You can add physicists to your list of recipients. I got mine today. Don’t know how they found me, but I’m glad they did. I’ll add it to my collection of crackpot science, right next to the expanding contracting universe and the guy who found the 10th and 11th planets through the use of astrology.
For what it is worth, the NAS has publicly and explicitly dissociated itself from Frederick Seitz due to his previous efforts with the Oregon Institute and in particular publishing a report that was deceptively designed to look like an official NAS journal article.
11 October 2007 at 2:08 PM
Re: comments on perceived alarmism…
I just had another look at AIT; I have to say, I see no evidence of alarmism. Alarmism involves the cherry-picking of individual bits of information, out of step with a larger body, and making unwarranted and frightening claims. Raising the alarm, on the other hand, involves taking conclusions from a broad body of evidence as a whole.
In particular, regarding Greenland and sea levels, Gore points out that the signs are troubling (dramatically increasing extent of summertime surface melt), that the scientific community that studies the large ice sheets are not at all certain what will happen, though large-scale melt is becoming more likely, and the dramatic consequences should the Greenland ice sheet melt. He does not give a timeframe, and none was implied in the film.
Furthermore, I think it’s important to recognize that, from a policy perspective, the name of the game is risk management. The IPCC has done an excellent job of cataloging potential impacts and their likelihood. In addition to effects we can project with high confidence, there also exists the potential for catastrophic surprises. Given that the stakes are so high, it is important to examine these surprises. This isn’t alarmism, it’s laying out the risks of twiddling these knobs. It’s risk management.
Suppose that 2% of all commercial airline flights ended in catastrophic crashes; i.e., a 2% probability of death when climbing on an airplane. Would anyone ever put their child on an airplane? No, of course not! Because, relative to the cost, the risk is simply too high. Risk management.
11 October 2007 at 2:13 PM
The mailing went out to a lot more than just “engineers, biologists, computer scientists and geologists.” As I reported in my blog, I (a Ph.D. sociologist) received the mailing, but it was addressed to me as a member of the “Communications/Humanities/Fine Arts” faculty, so they aren’t picky who they get to sign their petition.
11 October 2007 at 2:13 PM
Re 41
Thanks! I had not seen the details when I posted.
Nevertheless, the case sets a benchmark for accuracy in school materials. I hope that such a high of standard accuracy is applied to all school materials.
I expect all science to be one sided. That is not partisan. The truth is one-sided.
However, the IPCC findings reflect the rather narrow view of scientists. It may be good science, but planners and engineers treat uncertainty differently and therefore have other views of the data. Thus, the IPCC is not the only correct and useful view of the data. AIT is informed by these other views. A climate scientist offering a “conservative estimate of predicted storms” means something very different from a engineer calculating a “conservative estimate of predicted storms.” One means that they have confidence that such storms will occur, and the other that they have confidence that no larger storm will occur. Failure to have strict conformance with the IPCC does not make AIT incorrect, partisan, or political.
Justice Burton is not a scientist, or an engineer, or a planner. He may not be aware that different forecasts are made for different purposes, and the different forecasts have different virtues. Just like King Canute on the seashore, Justice Burton is likely to see the sea rise much faster and farther than the court predicted.
11 October 2007 at 2:24 PM
I thought it was a petition for awareness .. and felt kind of sick when I realized it was just the opposite. Didnt take any time to trash it and start looking at Seitz bio on the web. How on earth a scientist ends up being like this?
11 October 2007 at 2:25 PM
With regard to the court ruling on Al Gore’s film:
I have read several times on this website (by posters, not by lead writers), the suggestion that climate change deniers should be tried and convicted in court. It is ironic, then, that the first court judgement on the climate change debate (that I am aware of) has ruled against over-zealous AGW-promotion. The judge has not ruled against the case for AGW, or the ’scientific concensus’ of the IPCC. He is ruling against the unscientific sensationlism that ultimately will have the effect of crying wolf. Gore’s film was the first big cry, and the judgement the first cynical response. Take note. Unless the more zealous and non-factual claims are moderated, the next two cries will follow quite quickly and the public will soon lose confidence.
11 October 2007 at 2:41 PM
Figure 1: the unsourced datapoint for 2006 is incorrect. Hadley Centre data (HADISST1: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadisst/data/download.html) for the Sargasso Sea (which I take to be the region 40-60 W, 25-35 N) for 2006 has a mean SST of 24.2 C, about where the “Medieval Optimum” peak is on the figure 1 graph.
[Response: thanks. That’s useful, but one needs to be a bit careful since there can be offsets in the proxy-climate calibration which means direct comparisons with modern obs and inferred past temperatures can be tricky. But no prizes for why they didn’t do it your way! - gavin]
11 October 2007 at 2:57 PM
OISM, figure 2. The caption states that “the principal source of melt energy is solar radiation”, which incorrectly implies that the Sun is to blame for glacier shortening. OISM fails to consider the effect of particulate carbon falling on glaciers as a principal cause of glacial melt. If considered properly, the effect of coal usage would be approximately double that for other fossil fuels.
Other quibbles: the y-axis of the graph is mislabeled “m x 10^-2″ while it should be “m x 10^2″; and the glacier shortening line, in blue, taken from Oerlemans 2005 (not Oerlemanns 2005 as in the references), was copied from Oerlemans’ “Excluding Alps” line and not the “Global” line, as it should have been. The two lines are not hugely different, but one wonders why OISM excluded the Alps?
11 October 2007 at 3:02 PM
PHE writes “the first court judgement … (that I am aware of) …”
Feed your head:
The Supreme Court’s Climate Change Decision: Massachusetts v. EPA …
On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court handed down Massachusetts v. EPA, its first pronouncement on climate change. By 5-4, the Court held hat (1) Massachusetts had standing to sue, (2) Section 202 of the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to regulate emissions from new motor vehicles on the basis of their possible climate change impacts, and (3) Section 202 does not authorize EPA to inject policy considerations into its decision whether to so regulate….
http://www.opencrs.com/document/RS22665
11 October 2007 at 3:20 PM
At one point in the article they say:”Total human industrial CO2 production, primarily from use of coal, oil, and natural gas and the production of cement, is currently about 8 Gt C per year (7,56,57). Humans also exhale about 0.6 Gt C per year, which has been sequestered by plants from atmospheric CO2. Office air concentrations often exceed 1,000 ppm CO2.
To put these figures in perspective, it is estimated that the atmosphere contains 780 Gt C; the surface ocean contains 1,000 Gt C; vegetation, soils, and detritus contain 2,000 Gt C; and the intermediate and deep oceans contain 38,000 Gt C, as CO2 or CO2 hydration products. Each year, the surface ocean and atmosphere exchange an estimated 90 Gt C; vegetation and the atmosphere, 100 Gt C; marine biota and the surface ocean, 50 Gt C; and the surface ocean and the intermediate and deep oceans, 40 Gt C (56,57).”
and further on they say: “Human production of 8 Gt C per year of CO2 is negligible as compared with the 40,000 Gt C residing in the oceans and biosphere. At ultimate equilibrium, human-produced CO2 will have an insignificant effect on the amounts in the various reservoirs. The rates of approach to equilibrium are, however, slow enough that human use creates a transient atmospheric increase.”
The old human production of CO2 is negligible compared with the much greater exchanges between the atmosphere and oceans and atmosphere and land trick eh- as Agent Maxwell Smart might have said.
This is answered very concisely and accurately at
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/faqs/2.html#q2.7
Under questions about climate change See answer No. 7, which says “2.7 As natural emissions of carbon dioxide are very much greater than those from human activities, surely the effect of man is insignificant?
The exchange of ‘man-made’ carbon dioxide between man-made emissions, atmosphere, ocean and land, is about 7 GtC per year, which also shows much larger natural exchanges between atmosphere and ocean (about 90 GtC/yr) and atmosphere and land (about 60 GtC/yr). However, these natural exchanges have been in balance for many thousands of years, leading to the pre-industrial concentration of CO2 remaining steady at about 280 ppm. The effect of the additional man-made emissions is to unbalance the budget and lead to the rise in concentrations seen since about 1850.”
So here’s to you Mr. Robinsons Heaven has a place for those whose half truths innuendo and outright falsehoods come into play- hey,hey,hey.
Malarkey is the appropriate word for this canard.
11 October 2007 at 3:31 PM
regarding UK, Gore, AIT:
Hopefully the Royal Society will provide comments, ideally, to accompany the DVD. The RS already covered the news item at its website.
Of course, it’s just a “mere left-leaning pressure group” according to Lord Monckton…
11 October 2007 at 3:36 PM
The first line of this non-peer-reviewed paper titled ‘Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide’ states: “ABSTRACT A review of the research literature”
BOING. REJECTED. It is already rejected by Science, Nature, etc. This paper in question does not quantify or qualify what it means by “research literature” at the beginning…ie. “ninety five peer-reviewed studies, published literature from 1980 to 2005.” Is this an effort to mislead gullible readers????
Their “research literature” might be non-checked, non-refereed literature from…oh let’s say the Oregon Institute, or a non-published report that failed peer-review from let’s say…oh…the Energy and Enviornment Journal.”
Following is an actual peer-reviewed paragraph doing the same thing correctly from a *real* peer-reviewed journal (Science) quantifying and qualifying published studies (on global warming concensus!).
“That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords “climate change” (9).”
Science 3 December 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1686
DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618
The Oregon Institute paper gets rejected in the first line in the scientific peer-review system.
11 October 2007 at 3:36 PM
re: #14 CobblyWorlds
If you mean Kristen Byrnes of ponderthemaunder (in)fame, I have found no trace of RRS involvement with that one, and I’ve looked pretty hard, so sorry, I think they’re innocent of that one.
====
OISM is at 2251 Dick George Rd
Cave Junction, OR 97523
GoogleEarth does a little better job than GoogleMaps (satellite).
According to Pipl, there’s an Arthur Robinson at 2252 Dick George Rd;
there’s a Science and Medicine Rd right nearby, which may be the real location. I can’t quite tell which of several buildings matches the picture on their home page.
If you visit their homepage, http://www.oism.org, you can see a picture of the barn-like structure where they work.
Also, their home page offers a feature that is a first for me:
of the people listed as faculty ….
two are deceased.
11 October 2007 at 3:41 PM
Re; 61 (Hank R)
Thank you for enlightening my head. As I read it, in that case the court does not pass judgement on the correctness of any claim, but allows Massachusents to test a claim or claims. The report goes onto say:
“The Court’s decision leaves EPA with three options under the section: find that motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions may “endanger public health or welfare” and issue emission standards, find that they do not satisfy that prerequisite, or decide that climate change science is so uncertain as to preclude making a finding either way.”
Is there an update?
11 October 2007 at 3:44 PM
I’m an atmospheric scientist in an atmospheric sciences department, and I received the mailing. Perhaps they thought I’d be more likely to sign because I’m a State Climatologist. Since it came on Monday, and I was debating Patrick Michaels on Wednesday, I gave it a quick, close read. The close read was useless for the debate, as Michaels and I both stuck to positions that were actually defensible. But here I can put to good use the death of brain cells caused by carefully reading the article…
Showing ‘world hydrocarbon use’ allows them to deny (p. 6) that the hydrocarbon increases are mostly anthropogenic. But no theory predicts a correlation between use and global temperatures. Putting aside the fact that a correlation (or absence) of one doesn’t prove anything, global temperatures are expected to be related to the time-lagged and smoothed integral of hydrocarbon use, not to the use itself.
(page 2) The assertion that current Earth temperatures are 1C lower now than 1000 years ago requires rejecting a recent NAS panel report in favor of an article by one of the authors and another unpublished manuscript.
The comparison of solar activity change over the past century (0.19%) and United States temperature change (0.21%) assumes that readers are sufficiently ignorant of basic blackbody radiation theory to think that the similarity of the numbers supports their thesis, rather than being convincing evidence against their thesis.
Reference #19 is private communication from one of the authors!
The first paragraph on page 8 argues that since past temperature variations were as large as they were and not considerably larger, CO2 increases cannot produce a water vapor feedback. (Yes, that is their complete argument.)
11 October 2007 at 3:53 PM
You can add physicists to that list. I’m a physics grad student at UCLA and I got one of those phony letters in my inbox today.
11 October 2007 at 4:35 PM
pete best (#50) wrote:
Oh for pete’s sake…
I figure we are already pretty well destined for “dangerous climate change” by IPCC standards - whether the IPCC knows it or not.
The big questions questions are:
1. How dangerous?
2. What will be the extent of the devastation in terms of human lives and the world economy?
We have quite a ways to go before the existence of modern civilization itself (such as it is) will be at stake, but the important point is that the longer it takes us to curb our emissions, the more carbon dioxide will be in the atmosphere and the higher the temperatures will rise. For each degree that the global average temperature rises, things will get a great deal worse than the preceding degree. No matter what we put into the atmosphere, we have a really good reason for cutting our emissions in the future, and the sooner we do it the better.
But we probably should focus on methane and black carbon to a greater extent for the time being — as this will buy us more time with regard to changing our ways — with regard to carbon dioxide. We should have an international Manhattan project for developing cheaper, less carbon intensive technologies, we should make these technologies widely available, particularly with the economic growth of China and India and other so-called third world countries, and we should try and raise the living standards of the globe as a whole more quickly so as to reduce population growth in all nations - as both carbon emissions per capita and population size will be large determinants of carbon emissions in the decades to come.
11 October 2007 at 5:46 PM
Re the ‘warming’ on Neptune. It is summertime on the Southern Hemisphere of that planet.
See here and here.
11 October 2007 at 6:31 PM
re #13 and #68;
My “package” came addressed with a generic dept. of “Sci/Tech” in the address. I would be curious to know who (e.g., publisher, professional society?) sold my work address and ultimately made it available to this group. Thanks for the open source debunking!
11 October 2007 at 8:22 PM
The article that accompanies the packet is such a tired repetition of the same old lies that it reminds me of Mark Twain’s description of a certain religious text: “chloroform in print”,
11 October 2007 at 9:04 PM
RE # 58 PHE “I have read several times on this website (by posters, not by lead writers), the suggestion that climate change deniers should be tried and convicted in court.
Hmm….I can’t say that I have ever read such a post on RC. But, I don’t read every post of every thread. Can you provide a specific example, or two, of such a post (name of thread, # of the post that states something like this)? It should be quite easy to do with the RC search tool.
11 October 2007 at 9:48 PM
Re #72 - I would hope that eventually, as far as the court of public opinion is concerned,those deniers who willfully try to obfuscate the issue, be sentenced to live on low lying lands in the equatorial regions.
#64 asks if this is an effort to mislead gullible readers. I can’t think of any other motivation, except perhaps self promotion.
12 October 2007 at 12:49 AM
Re #63 and others on Gore vs UK, actually this sentence is a good thing, and should be attached as an errata sheet with the movie. Most of the errors are not errors of climatological fact, but misrepresentations of the current consensus*). Now the movie can even claim to be “reviewed” — and by a lay person, no less. A judge is a layman on climatology, but a professional on evidence and proving things, and he did one heck of a job.
(Wished my dissertation contained only nine errors!)
*) As an example, the Greenland/West Antarctic ice sheet melting. The consensus view is that this takes many centuries to happen, but some scientists (like Hansen) have voiced concern about a possible “albedo flip” making this happen much quicker. This mechanism isn’t well understood, and therefore not part of current climate models (you can only model what you understand
) or IPCC AR4. The concern was prompted by the prehistorical observation of extremely steep terminations of ice ages. What Gore got wrong was failing to qualify “speculative and not well understood”.
12 October 2007 at 3:22 AM
Anyone remember the standard form response to solutions for spam? Perhaps one would be useful here too. To start the ball rolling:
——-
Thank you for your thoughts on climate change.
Your conclusion is wrong because
( ) You haven’t taken into account sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere
( ) That CO2 was extracted from the atmosphere and so is carbon-neutral
( ) The medieval warm period was not a global phenomenon
( ) The graph you refer to is designed to misrepresent the data
( ) Weather forecasting is not the same as climate prediction
( ) You cannot infer global conditions from local ones
( ) Other planet’s environments ar not a good model for Earth
( ) Correlation does not imply cause
The authorities or papers you cite to support your argument
( ) do not say what you think they say
( ) are scientists, but not in the field of climate science
( ) are not scientists
( ) are not peer reviewed
( ) have since been corrected
( ) have been completely debunked
( ) are loons
I would also like to point out that
( ) The IPCC conclusion is supported by the vast majority of
climate scientists
( ) The mass media sometimes gets it wrong
( ) Politicians sometime get it wrong
( ) Global cooling was not a widely supported hypothesis
( ) Science corrects itself as new evidence comes available
In conclusion
( ) Your points, while well made, are factually incorrect
( ) Some basic research on your part should have been done first
( ) Stop bothering the grown-ups
12 October 2007 at 4:40 AM
42, Hume - noted for bedtime reading (thanks).
63, The Met Office, have helped amend the guidance that goes with the DVD.
69, No, we should concentrate on the longest-lived GHGs first, as those have the consequences that we would have to deal with the longest. Tackling CO2 first allows us to overshoot a stabilisation target (in CO2 equivalent) and bring it back down afterwards by reducing CH4, NOx, etc.
With the situation as it is [Greenland on a knife-edge] the discussion is largely academic, because there is little sign of the determined action being taken such that it would make much difference either way.
I completely agree though, that even if we commit to losing Greenland, we can still take action to avoid losing the Himalayan ice sheets, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, limit ocean thermal expansion, limit the carbon-cycle feedbacks, etc. We can always make things better by cutting emissions. The “We’re all doomed” language does not help. A friend of mine has likened that attitude to “climate pr0n”. It would help to grow up a little.
12 October 2007 at 7:55 AM
by coincidence, I ran across OISM in a search yesterday…I was on a quest for cynically or misleadingly named NGO’s. Lobbying seems to bring out the most cynical sort of liars. This “institute” has a few superanuated old farts who seem at some point to have actually been interested in biochemistry but politics overtook their operation.
BTW, Congrats to Gore and to all IPCC scientists! It would appear the Nobel Committee does NOT judge inconvenient truths to be too political.
12 October 2007 at 9:56 AM
re 77
“I completely agree though, that even if we commit to losing Greenland, we can still take action to avoid losing the Himalayan ice sheets, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, limit ocean thermal expansion, limit the carbon-cycle feedbacks, etc. ”
Just curious…aren’t the Himalyas more “vulnerable” that the Greenland Ice Sheet?
I ask as there’s been a lot of talk in recent years that the Chinese are facing serious water shortage problems due to glacier melting.
12 October 2007 at 10:04 AM
re #75
I concur re judges often getting it right, even in areas outside their “expertise”. Kitzmiller v Dover illustrates this idea beautifully. Not just the discussion on the science…
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover_decision2.html#p121
…but also in terms of the three ring circus that surrounded the issue and how the Judge, expected by some to rule politically, instead ruled on the evidence.
On a related note, rode public transit past the hotel Al Gore is staying at here in San Francisco. It was swarming with media setting up in the rain wanting to ask him about his Nobel Prize.
Way to go, Al!
12 October 2007 at 11:05 AM
Re #49, #51 and those in a similar vein, much as I sympathise with your views - I too share the sense of alarm and the need for urgent action, I assure you! - I have to stand by what I wrote earlier, and the other comments on this blog which take a broadly similar view (for example #58,#69,#75,#77).
To repeat, I don’t think we clarify the science by using apocalyptic language or exaggerating our case. I think I understand why Gore felt the necessity to use rapid ice sheet melting and sea level change to ‘get home’ his message. However, the styles of presentation that can work in our favour will also be used against us, with ruthless zeal, by those who wish to deny that we are likely to have to confront very serious problems because of C02 and related warming effects in the atmosphere. My ‘hunch’ is that things are changing faster (mush faster?) in Greenland than we realise or are able to model/forecast, probably because of non-linear effects related to the basal conditions under the ice cap. But that doesn’t give me the excuse to present the hunch as ‘mainstream’ or anything else for that matter without some argument to back it up, and a warning that the ‘hunch’ is pretty speculative compared with the other science (see also #75).
Now Mr Gore has been awarded the Nobel Prize for his film. Much as I think he is to be applauded for this and for his wider efforts, I still feel very uncomfortable about the situation more generally, and I don’t doubt that this weekend we will get a raft of articles in the press stating how the Nobel Prize has been ” … corrupted by the zealotry of those supporting the ‘unproven theory’ of global warning …” or words to that effect. It wouldn’t even surprise me if some people go so far as to say that they would be tempted to send their prizes back, because they disagree with Gore’s getting the award, on the basis that he does not qualify his stronger claims clearly enough, or highlight the uncertainties properly etc etc. Anyway, stand by everyone for the attacks to start on the Nobel Prize committee itself and the Nobel award process, as being yet another established body infected by ‘global warming hysteria blah blah blah …. ‘
12 October 2007 at 12:30 PM
We are in the process of inventing the language to convey urgent issues which are not evident through observation.
This is a unique time in the history of man as well as the planet.
It was always an impossible goal to expect Gore’s message to hit everybody the same way. It would be naive to think that the opponents of AGW reduction would suddenly see the errors of their ways and stop denying.
On the other hand, the science keeps advancing. Soon AIT will be obsolete, its impressions and speculations replaced by knowledge. Some of what we learn will be good news - the Northern Atlantic will not stop receiving warmer waters after all. Some of it will be bad - the ice shelves and sheets are disintegrating far more quickly than we had previously believed they would. This will go on.
AIT was a moment in time. It was meant to convey urgency. If it was strident in areas, the intent was to make people pay attention.
The general message is 100% accurate. Anybody who stoops to pick at nits will just have to be expected to be left aside as the real thinking and planning go on.
12 October 2007 at 12:41 PM
Nick O., I do not hear Al Gore speaking in apocolyptic terms–certainly less so than the neocons preaching against the “islamofascists”. You have to realize that Science tends to be conservative in its assessment of consequences. Unfortunately, we are still neophytes in developing such assessments, and underselling the consequences has the potential to breed complacency among politicians. Gore does not even begin to discuss some of the most disturbing potential consequences of a warming world trying to support a population of 9-11 billion humans. The American right has at this point abandoned science in their efforts to cater to ideology. In doing so they have handed politicians like Al Gore a formidable weapon, an Oscar and now a Nobel prize. It remains to be seen whether they will wake up before handing him the Presidency.
12 October 2007 at 1:29 PM
I don’t think Al Gore is going to run for President. He’s no longer a politician. Among politicians, not one speaks loudly enough to be heard - maybe Inhofe’s last gasps.
12 October 2007 at 3:49 PM
Very interesting discussion. Where did they get the money to do this mailing? And the 1999 one? What organizations support the Oregon Institute?
12 October 2007 at 4:01 PM
PHE,
Don’t you think the fact that the EPA tried to make its case on jurisdictional and other procedural grounds, notably refusing to make a judgment as to whether green house gases, “cause[s], or contribute[s] to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,”, is pretty telling of the scientific evidence on hand on which to base such a judgment? To wit: if the EPA had ruled GHG’s were not an air pollutant according to the statute, the State of Massachusetts wouldn’t have had any case at all that EPA was required to regulate GHG emissions. No case, no embarrassment, no ticked off petroleum lobby- is it possible this didn’t occur to them? I should think this is a very calorie rich piece of food with which to feed your head.
As regards Al Gore’s movie, it has done nothing to affect the science. It was always educational and even political in nature. For what it has achieved in terms of publicity for a problem moneyed interests have been trying to bury for decades with increasing degrees of fraudulence, it is a success, small controversy or no. Furthermore, of the 9 issues raised by this generally fair opinion, none save perhaps the claim about Lake Chad couldn’t be addressed with some very minor tweaks in language (and meaning)- indeed, some would argue that they were addressed properly in the movie. So it is very much fair to say that the movie had the science right, as it’s been pointed out in this thread was reiterated by the judge.
12 October 2007 at 4:54 PM
To be a bit more blunt, considering that the EPA got kicked upside the head in the lawsuit as it was argued, if they’d tried arguing against the scientific consensus they would’ve been decapitated …
13 October 2007 at 9:59 AM
Re #76 by Mike (form letter to respond to warming deniers) — brilliant! Made me and my wife laugh out loud. Thanks.
13 October 2007 at 10:07 AM
In reading the comments on perceived “apocalyptic” language in AIT, I’m once again forced to beg distinction between alarmism and raising the alarm. And once again I’d ask people to stop falsely attributing comments to the film.
Gore did not articulate a time frame on the Greenland melt. I repeat, did NOT. He made the point that the glaciaologists are quite uncertain; that there are substantial worrying signs; that other parts of the cryosphere are reacting faster than predicted; that the costs of getting this one wrong are enormous. Again, the film was not only about science, but about risk management.
13 October 2007 at 11:41 AM
Re: #46
In terms of discrediting Frederick Seitz, it is not over the top to point out that:
When he was a “practicing” scientist his specialty was not only physics but a field of physics that has no possible bearing on climate science.
That he has not been an active researcher for decades.
That when he left academia he took up advocacy for politically conservative and industry causes.
In addition an interview done for a PBS special titled Hot Politics with Seitz is particularly telling. Here is one example of his thinking.
13 October 2007 at 12:48 PM
An inconvenient Peace Prize
By Bjorn Lomborg | October 13, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/10/13/an_inconvenient_peace_prize/
… Gore told the world in his Academy Award-winning movie to expect 20-foot sea-level rises over this century. He ignores the findings of his Nobel co-winners, who conclude that sea levels will rise between only a half-foot and two feet over this century, with their best expectation being about one foot. That’s similar to what the world experienced over the past 150 years. …
Little lost North Sea boy with finger still searching for a dike.
13 October 2007 at 5:40 PM
Re. #46, no-one has “attempted to discredit Frederck Seitz”, we have simply pointed out, accurately (and we gave many supporting citations proving its accuracy), that for the past 30 years or so he has been a full-time lobbyist - first on behalf of the tobacco industry, later on behalf of the fossil fuel industry - rather than a scientist, that when he was a scientist (and he was a very distinguished one in his field of condensed matter physics, up to 1968) he did not study climate, and that his lobbying activities have been extremely disingenuous. There is nothing controversial about those statements, they are strictly factual, and the evidence is all in the public domain, as you will see if you follow up the links several of us provided. If you really believe any of these statements not to be factual please provide some citations or evidence of your own to show the basis of your disagreement, instead of resorting to simply insulting people you disagree with.
13 October 2007 at 7:18 PM
Michel,
You say that Fred Seitz’s politics is irrelevant and that he should be judged by his published work. OK, let’s look at what Fred Seitz has published in peer-reviewed science journals on the subject of climate change…
[crickets chirping]
OK, that was easy. Next!
13 October 2007 at 8:00 PM
Re 91 JHC quoting Bjorn Lomborg in his Boston Globe article: “Gore told the world in his Academy Award-winning movie to expect 20-foot sea-level rises over this century.”
Here’s what Gore actually says in An Inconvenient Truth:
00:57:20
“If this [West Antarctica] were to go, sea level world-wide would go up twenty feet.”
00:57:33
“Greenland would also raise sea level almost twenty feet if it went.”
00:59:13
“If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted, this is what would happen to the sea level in Florida…”
Note that no time frame what so ever was stated or even implied for the breakup and melting.
Apparently Bjorn knows that If you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big one.
13 October 2007 at 9:20 PM
re 27: “…it is not the first foray into publishing garbage of this sort. Here is a link to something that they published in regards to DDT a few years back:….”
Hey! How did DDT get into this?? Actually the referenced article is predominately accurate except to a few zealots. I don’t think a good smear reference.
13 October 2007 at 11:58 PM
Richard Mett (#85) wrote:
Don’t know about this mailing, but judging from their tax returns, their funding for 1999 expenditures consisted in large part of “contributions from unidentified sources.”
Anyway, this will probably tell you more than you wanted to know:
SourceWatch: Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine
I would summarize some of it, but if I tried I would probably experience a serious (albeit temporary) decline in my typing skills….
14 October 2007 at 1:40 AM
Re OISM climate denial funding…?
The original 1998 petition was authored by Arthur Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon and Zachary W. Robinson.
Leaving out the Robinsons, a webtool by Greenpeace let’s us construct a diagram or “map” for Baliunas and Soon including most of the organizations they belong to, the amount to which those organizations are funded by Exxon, what their relationships to those organizations are - and which permits us to drill-down to find others who are associated with those organizations, etc.. Interestingly, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine isn’t in the database.
I have gone ahead and included Patrick Michaels kind of at the center of it all because that is where he usually is and otherwise it might be rather disorienting. This wouldn’t be a very good “map” if it left people disoriented, now would it? So he’s in. But I have left out the organizations he belongs to except where either Baliunas or Soon are members as well.
Sure enough, while Baliuanas and Soon belong to the American Petroleum Institute and the Climate Research Journal which Michaels does not belong to - two organizations, all three people belong to Tech Central Station, George C Marshall Institute, Heartland Institute and World Climate Report - four organizations. Michaels shares four more with just Baliunas and four more with just Soon. Thirteen of the nineteen Baliunas/Soon-organizations show funding by Exxon.
Baliunas/Soon map
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=1075
However, I haven’t a clue as to where the funding for the OISM climate-denial activities are coming from - beyond what you see here.
14 October 2007 at 8:14 AM
My own thoughts regarding this paper….
Their paper (The rewrite of Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide) is poorly structured, highly repetitive and ungrammatical. It involves the selection of non-representative samples (e.g., an overemphasis upon the US trends), graphs by studies which do not represent the consensus. In addition to being the amateurish product of amateurs who lack any background in climatology. Two of the main authors have a history of being financed by Exxon, it would appear to be deliberately misleading with no effort to present any balance. It is propaganda.
Thoughts regarding its analysis…
Should at first be line-by-line, with the with the objective of having well referenced separate essays for separate sections. Currently I have gone through it up to but not including Figure 8.
For the purpose of speed I have done this without references, but it can be sourced and split up into separate essays later. Just going for the general gist. I would also recommend having people pick certain themes such as sea-level rise, agriculture, etc. as writing essays which begin which what is stated (in multiple places) then provide a more well-rounded picture of the real world - possibly in addition to essays dealing with specific parts of the paper.
***
Deleterious effects upon the Earth’s weather and climate have included:
1. Increased drought, going from 20% of the world experiencing drought at any given time to 30% at present with a projected 50% experiencing drought at any given time later this century under Business As Usual;
2. Increased flooding in some parts of the world;
3. Increased heatwaves, with the likelihood of Europe experiencing heatwaves on the similar to that during 2005 doubling;
4. Larger deadzones as the result of gigantic algae blooms;
5. Food shortages in some parts of the world;
6. Some wars are already being attributed to reduced to climate change;
7. Larger hurricanes in the Atlantic;
[with the number of hurricanes of strength 4 or 5 doubling in the past 30 years as the result of increased surface and subsurface temperatures resulting in larger reservoirs]
8. Larger cyclones in the Pacific;
9. Cyclones showing up where they have no history of doing so in the past;
Katarina in 2004 in Brazil where none had formed in the Southern Atlantic and a hurricane near the Arabian Penninsula where no had formed in modern times according to any records;
10. Forest fires which are more frequent and on a much larger scale than they have been in the past - partly due to earlier melts and drier summertime conditions;
12. While plants do better under increased levels of carbon dioxide, on the whole, increased droughts would appear to already be negating the affects of this on the whole.
Data is bearing out predictions, particularly since the turn of the millenia. No actual data is cited regarding satellite records.
The Sargasso Sea is hardly representative of the paleoclimate record. Where periods may have been warmer in the past, the consensus is that this was a localized phenomena due to different climate patterns which may have been the result of different ocean circulation patterns.
A great deal of data and numerous studies has borne out Mann’s original hockey stick diagram for the past 1000 years which showed that global average temperatures during the past century have been higher than in the previous nine centuries, and the the rate at which temperatures rose since roughly the turn of the 20th century has been unprecendented. The only “studies” showing otherwise relying upon the use of red noise which is 100% red being introduced into the the proxies where standard practice would normally be to employ red noise which at the highest only 15% red.
Temperatures rougly 3000 years ago may have been higher.
Glacier mass and length are also in part a function of black carbon. Hydrocarbon use is not the only source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Levels of greenhouse gases due to human activities (particularly carbon dioxide and methane) would appear to have been rising as far back as 5000 years ago.
Finally, it would appear that the glaciers chosen for this chart were not representative.
The arctic temperature trend given for the twentieth century looks suspiciously like the continental contiguous 48 and should be checked. The forcing given for solar activity does not look correct and would appear to be ascribing the result of anthropogenic aerosols from 1940 to 1970 to solar activity. Likewise, differences between the Northern hemisphere temperature trends and the Southern hemisphere temperature trends would suggest that the actual cause of an apparent dip in the temperature graph for the global average temperature was due to aerosol emissions in the Northern hemisphere as the Southern hemisphere experienced only one year of statistically significant cooling whereas the Northern hemisphere experienced five years of statistically significant cooling.
Best estimates suggest that relative to 1880, it is only during the first year that forcing due to solar activity exceeded anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
The phenomena in which forcing due to carbon dioxide results in higher temperatures is well understood. The amplification of the effects of this forcing by water vapor feedback through increased partial pressure that increases exponentially as the result is well understood. Water vapor itself is generally incapable of resulting in forcing as any disequilibria which might result from fluctuations in atmospheric water vapor content falls out as precipitation before it could possibly raise temperatures on its own enough to maintain a higher absolute humidity.
The 6-fold increase in CO2 would appear to have had a highly significant effect over the whole of the twentieth century, particularly since anthropogenic aerosols have diminished since 1970. It is however logarithmic. With respect to glacier mass balance (the standard measure of glaciers) we have seen a highly significant loss of global mass balance which has been accelerating over the latter half of the twentieth century. In some cases, particularly at higher altitudes mass balance has actually increased, but this is by no means the norm.
Figure 1 is not illustrative. The consensus is that the global average temperature during the Medieval Climate Optimum was significantly lower than temperatures in the latter half of this century.
The United States is by no means representative of the globe but consists of only 2% of its area and would appear to be strongly influenced by a long-period oscillation. the statistically significant period of cooling for the globe as a whole consisted of only 5 years.
This paragraph is not simply misleading but incoherent. A discussion of a rise in temperature is immediately followed by a sentence which begins, “This is in good agreement…” and a discussion of a downward trend in temperature. The paragraph is misleading inasmuch as temperature is proportional to radiance raised to the fourth power. This paragraph is also misleading inasmuch as it treates the effects of aerosols as well-understood whereas the effects of greenhouse gases other than water vapor were treated as poorly understood when the forcing due to greenhouse gases is far better understood than that of aerosols - partly due to the effects of aerosols being more localized and temporary - given the fact that they tend to be washed out by precipitation, at least in the troposphere.
Figure 6 is bizarre, particularly in comparing seasonal changes between winter and summer (presumably) and it would appear that this is not based upon any sort of average but a cherry-picking of extremes. Smaller changes over an extended period of time and globally are highly significant, particularly in terms of weather patterns - as noted previously.