Does the right of freedom of speech extend to shouting “Hoax” on a burning planet? The climate change / global warming Deniers1 made much hysterical arm waving out of James Hansen’s “call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature” and David Suzuki’s call for Denier politicians to be “hold politicians legally accountable“, do the Deniers have a point?
If you check the Denialosphere’s version of both the Hansen interview and Suzuki’s comments the narrative is that both were calling for the criminalization of legitimate dissent, the suppression of freedom of speech, and the punishment of thought crimes. As Richard Littlemore notes, according to the Denialosphere it is “environmental fascism,” “enviro-totalitarianism” and/or the beginning of an “enviro-inquisition.” Is that what really happened?
No, of course not. Every demonstration that Denierism is utter nonsense get’s labeled as something like “Greenhouse robots clamp down on true climate debate.” Typically the claim is utter hogwash (Aside: as a general guideline, if it comes from the Denialosphere it is probably nonsense).
What Hansen actually said was “CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” ie he is calling for trials for the decision makers who knowingly and maliciously engage in lies and fraud when they were fully aware that it is harmful to society.
Trial for those who engage in malicious lies and fraud, not dissent or skepticism. Hansen is suggesting that people guilty of criminal acts should be brought to justice … well duh.
A suggestion that apparently outrages the Deniers. Of course it is one of those ironic moments of unintentional candor that the Deniers implicitly admit that the entire Denier canon is nothing but lies and frauds, hence their objection.
And according to the bastion of climate ignorance ‘The National Post’ David Suzuki demanded that we “Jail politicians who ignore climate science” although in the text of the article they claim his actual suggestion was that “hold politicians legally accountable.” What he actually said was “”What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they’re doing is a criminal act.”
So he is calling for due process of the law against those who commit criminal acts, just as Hansen did. Of course Deniers like Anthony Watts try to spin this as a ‘thin edge of the wedge’, “I suspect he’ll be calling for the jailing of bloggers like myself next.” Well, the call is for prosecution of those who have committed criminal acts; if Mr Watts feels the shoe fits …
So do Suzuki and Hansen ‘have a case’? For Suzuki it is a little more clear cut as Richard Littlemore over at DeSmogBlog discusses in “National Post “Rabid Response Team” Assails Suzuki Over Jail Quote.” Canada signed the Kyoto Accord and it became law. Canada was legally bound to abide by that law. The law states “Every person who contravenes a regulation made under this Act is guilty of an offence punishable by indictment or on summary conviction, as prescribed by the regulations,” the act reads, “and liable to a fine or to imprisonment as prescribed by the regulations.” QED
Hansen’s case is more nuanced. Shouting “Hoax” in a burning theatre is obviously the inverse and logical equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theater, ie it is a malicious lie that is likely to lead to harm and possibly death. However, while it is generally acknowledged that “Shouting fire in a crowded theater” is a moral wrong it is not actually illegal and is protected by freedom of speech.
In Brandenburg v. Ohio the court ruled that it was not sufficient that there be a clear and present danger as per the Schenk ruling, but that the speech must be “directed to inciting and likely to incite imminent lawless action.” Insomuch as the mindless production of CO2 is completely insane, but perfectly legal, there is no grounds for any legal action along this line.
However, the appropriate model for legal action against oil companies and their executives is almost certainly the tobacco lawsuits. Here too we find corporate decision makers deliberately lying and funding doubt about the science in order to continue profiting even though it does great public harm. In fact it is no accident that many of the more prominent climate Deniers like Steve Milloy, Fred Singer and Thomas Gale Moore were also funded by big tobacco to do cancer denial before they became climate Deniers.
In the Litigation Against Tobacco Companies the courts found that the defendants were liable because the “Defendants have falsely denied, distorted and minimized the significant adverse health consequences of smoking for decades.” The criteria was “The scientific and medical community’s knowledge of the relationship of smoking and disease evolved through the 1950s and achieved consensus in 1964. However, even after 1964, Defendants continued to deny both the existence of such consensus and the overwhelming evidence on which it was based.”
So they ARE criminally liable if they continue to knowingly spread misinformation after the scientific community has acheived consensus. There is scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and there has been for 15 years.
Insomuch as the corporate Deniers claim that they have investigated the climate science thoroughly and that there is no significant evidence it seems to me they have lied themselves into a corner. Either they are lying about having examined the science or they are lying about what the science says, but either way they are lying.
So yes, Hansen is right. The oil executives are lying, they know it, and society should hold them accountable for it. Let justice be done.
After reading thousands of Denier comments and articles I am confident that many comments to this post will be the same misrepresentations and distortions attempting to portray it as a call for the suppression of dissent, just as they did for both Hansen and Suzuki. There will be almost no attempt to rationally engage the issue on it’s own merit, nor any evidence that they comprehend what has been said, or even actually read it.
Well folks – prove me wrong!
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Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 14 … still no evidence.
1As I discuss here I do not use the term “Denier” to refer to all climate change doubters. Those who thoughtfully and intelligently address the facts I call ’skeptics’.
Those who irrationally deny the existence of the science and instead propagate the lies and distortions such as those discussed above and linked to the right under “Debunking Denier Nonsense” are “Deniers”.
The choice of the correct term is based on their actions, not their conclusions.
PHOTO CREDITS:
free speech 2 Photo by dogwelder
Spanish Inquisition torture method: the rack Photo by un_owen
Spanish Inquisition torture method 2 Photo by un_owen
Lady Of Justice Photo by keithmaguire
“Trial for those who engage in malicious lies and fraud, not dissent or skepticism. Hansen is suggesting that people guilty of criminal acts should be brought to justice … well duh.”
So, who is the arbiter of what is a lie or fraud, versus what is dissent or skepticism? [1] Could it not just be possible that the oil CEO’s simply don’t believe? Or is the revealed truth [2] of “The consensus” so irrefutable that anyone skeptical simply must be a liar (or perhaps a Heretic)? Sounds like the Spanish Inquisition without the torture to me. [3]
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The problem is that the science is not completely definitive or unanimous, despite your arguments to the contrary.
A: The southern hemisphere has not warmed at all in the past century. Greenhouse warming is a global effect. Why does it not affect the south?
B: There is no direct proof that the amounts of warming we are seeing are due to CO2. Shouting louder does not change this fact. Such a proof may be impossible, since the planet is an immensly complex system with thousands of inputs into the function we call temperature. Isolating greenhouse gases as the sole cause is foolish without an extreme preponderance of evidence. As the medevial warm period and preivous climate optimums were of the same order of magnitude at the current warming, we cannot say that current warming is not due to the same causes.
C: There is no proof that the effects will be negative. In greenhouse experiments, it has been demonstrated that all life, plant and animal alike, function quite well at elevated CO2 levels up to several thousand ppm with no negative effects. Thus, the most credible threat, ocean acidification, will not cause any negative effects at all. Therefore there is no direct negative effect from CO2. Warming of the globe by less than 5 degrees F will cause changes, but we cannot say with any confidence that these will be net positive or negative. More deaths from heat, but fewer deaths from cold. More risk of drought, but longer growing seasons. And there is no evidence whatsoever to support the mass extinction theories. Species survive annual changes 10 times the magnitude of global warming simply going from summer to winter. Why can they not adapt slightly further?
Therefore, with simple arguments based on proven facts that lay people can understand and without resorting to any logical falacies (especially, argument to authority, straw man, or argument ad hominem, which are far too common on both sides of this debate), I can present a reasonable case that climate change is not something to panic about. Yet, you are not even allowing these arguments into evidence as a possibility that they might believe. They “must” be distorting evidence. However, we need hard proof of that fact to even consider condemnation much less a criminal charge.
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Ben:
Point-by-point:
A: Incorrect. (The data are available; I’m just citing a summary. I’ve replicated some of that myself.) Furthermore, since land heats up faster than sea and the southern hemisphere has less land than the northern hemisphere, we’d expect the south to warm slower than the north. This is first-year material.
B: Again, incorrect. CO2 (or more specifically, GHG) warming explains the cooling stratosphere. The natural cycles that drove the other cycles do not produce that effect. (Oh, and the MWP was cooler than it is today.)
C: I’m calling BS, especially since 1000ppm CO2 (the lowest value in “thousands”) is toxic to animal life and ocean acidification is already adversely affecting the base of marine food chains. Furthermore, the experiments on improved yield in greenhouses have failed to be replicated in the field: the Law of the Minimum applies here and it’s not CO2 that’s limiting crop growth.
Or, in summary:
So according to Ben, it’s not happening (A) and we’re not the ones doing it (B) and it’ll be good for us anyway (C). Got it, chief.
(Those three points don’t share any scientific basis between them. The only common point is that if any one of them were true, the proper course of action is to do nothing. Who’s the one blinded by ideology again?)
You quote David Suzuki as saying,
“What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they’re doing is a criminal act.”
The deniers have not used violence to advocate their point of view; they have only used speech. All the violence and vandalism that I am aware of has been on the other side.
What does Suzuki mean by, “what they’re doing is a criminal act”?
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Mike, something just occurred to me.
Philosophically, the positive existential declarations bear the burden of proof. Thus, statements like “you have to prove the effects will be negative” are correct (although depending on what standard of “prove” you’re speaking about — i.e. science literally cannot prove anything — you may have different judgement calls on where the “proof” lies).
Therefore, why do the Deniers assume that they don’t need to prove that it’ll be good? They sort of accept that by default on faith, and then say that it falls upon us to disprove it (because they don’t provide evidence to back up their claims).
It seems to me that this would be a good direction to take in denier challenges — prove your assertion that warming will be a net positive. (Naturally, this will fail on folk who deny there’s any warming; it’s intended for those who take Lomborg’s position that it’s happening but not worth doing anything about.)
OK, I read the article, for all interpretations of what that means. I followed the link and the link from the link, which leads to Suzuki’s point that he didn’t mean it to be taken literally. OK, I guess I’m too sensitive. [1]
Let’s move on to the real point — whether the dangers of global warming are established enough to warrant ignoring dissenting voices.
Let me introduce some terms that avoid pejorative connotations. I’ll call the folks who believe that CO2 is the main driver of recent warming “Carbonists,” and those who think the main driver is solar changes, “Solarists.” I don’t see either group thinking that the other driver makes zero contribution to temperature change, just that it’s the lesser of the two.
One interesting plot twist in all this is that the solar data is such that if the Solarists are right we should be in for one corker of a winter in the northern hemisphere. Solar cycle 24 is kicking in much later/slower than expected and there’s a lot of talk about the shrinking heliosphere and all that.
If it doesn’t happen, the Carbonists look right. If it does happen, the Solarists look right. This should be a pretty useful test as I don’t think the Solarists expect a warm winter and I don’t think the Carbonists expect a cold one. Somebody’s wrong and we’ll know in a few months.
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Frederick, the Deniers (as Mike uses the term; not all ‘solarists’ are Deniers, and not all Deniers are ‘solarists’) have been saying “just wait and see” for thirty years now. What have we seen?
Well, there’s a good summary here. Along with several peer-reviewed papers (directly linked from there). The most direct quote comes from Lockwood 2007, which was itself a survey of several other analyses, reconstructions, and records:
“…the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanism is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified.”
Pretty damning stuff. It’s supported by several other papers (many linked on that page above, plus others that are only accessable from academic institutions).
In brief, where’s your evidence supporting solar and refuting these researchers?
Furthermore, your ‘test’ belies a critical misunderstanding: You’re confusing weather and climate. The ‘carbonist’ view does NOT say that any particular winter will be hotter than any other, just that the trend over time will increase (and even THAT is a mischaracterization; the more proper term would be “the climate forcing from carbon dioxide will continue to increase.” Note that “forcing” is not the same thing as “temperature”). For instance, a volcanic eruption or La Nina event produce VERY strong cooling signals that would overwhelm the underlying, long-term carbon signal, resulting in a cold winter… but La Ninas last only a year or so, and even the biggest eruptions (i.e. Pinatubo) leave little to no trace past three years. Evidence to support this can be found on ANY annual temperature record — notice how the lines on those graphs are NEVER straight but rather fluctuate? Climate fundamentally comes down to energy imbalance, which is reasonably deterministic (although how that energy is expressed is difficult to pin down). Weather is basically shifting available energy around, and this is inherently chaotic. A single three-month measurement is essentially looking at weather, which tells us diddly squat about climate.
Thus, your ‘test’ would prove nothing insofar as carbon’s concerned. (This sets aside the logical problems about how it also wouldn’t prove anything about the ‘solarist’ viewpoint as there are other factors that could be present for warm cycles, not to mention the false dichotomy (either solar or carbon, not a combination of those two things or anything else).
Oh, I forgot to mention — there’s a very readable summary and answer to “Where’s the evidence that carbon’s causing the current warming?” available at A Few Things Ill-Considered that folk might enjoy reading. Coby’s earlier How To Talk To A Skeptic pages (linked to the right of Greenfyre’s) go into specific detail; this one deals with the more generic question that folks who haven’t done a lot of digging tend to suggest (i.e. I’ve had more people ask this question than bring up the MWP or the UHI, for instance).
It’s all at the layfolk level, but if readers have specific questions I’m prepared to raise peer-reviewed research to answer them. Once again, in light of the zero responses on Mike’s challenge, I question if others have that same claim.
So is it legal for me to order someone to murder someone else? After all, I’ve only used speech. It’s obviously free speech, right? I don’t think the law actually agrees with your “standard” of what’s criminal and what’s not.
Of course, all this talk about free speech misses a larger point: the real crime here isn’t the speech itself, it is the unbridled burning of fossil fuels, which causes the habitats to be destroyed, arable lands to be lost to massive flooding, and the ice protecting the Kivalina village to be melted away. What will you do if I set your house on fire while yammering about how you’re “suppressing” my “free speech”?
— bi, International Journal of Inactivism
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I’m going to stick to Brian’s comments and not deal with the “CO2 emissions are evil” equivalencies. My apologies to those who would like me to defend that ground but I don’t have much time for this and multiple topics would be inefficient.
Brian made some excellent points and I acknowledge that “Carbonists” and “Solarists” is an imperfect shorthand. Some deniers, for example, say that warmer is better and make second law of thermodynamic arguments about hurricanes, etc. I choose not to take that on either. (The “Carbonist” label is pretty good though — and a ton better than, say, “Faithful” or “Believers.”)
I think the interesting debate is between the theory that CO2 is the predominant cause of recent warming and the theory that Solar effects are (e.g. “chilling stars”). [1]
Brian gave some excellent links for the Carbonist case. I read them before but some refresher was in order. Thanks; I’m a skeptic, not a cynic. My view this:
1) I only trust the satellite data for the short term stuff. The surface record shows much more warming but has serious flaws. I assume you are familiar with the “how not to measure temperature” blogs. Any discrepancy between the surface data and the satellite data is easily covered by this. Most importantly, is there any reason to doubt the satellite data (especially after the orbital decay issues were fixed)? [2]
2) The satellite data shows a warming trend in line with the last few centuries. This trend started before the industrial revolution. Despite what may happen this winter, this trend should resume. (Please don’t give me that, “you’re contradicting yourself!” argument; I still think the long term solar trend is positive. The recovery from the Little Ice Age continues.) [3]
3) Atmospheric CO is simply exploding and China’s unrelenting coal expansion virtually guarantees this will continue for the foreseeable future. [4]
4) The recent “pause” in global warming is getting a bit long for an El Nino-La Nina effect. Another cold year would indicate that the Carbonist models are missing a significant term. (see [1]) Still, Brian is right that a single year does not mean much; it’s just that on the back of other cold years, it starts to constitute a trend. A few more of these and the “single year” defense is toast. [5]
So, in conclusion, I see CO2 shooting the moon and global temp rise taking a hiatus. A short hiatus can be explained by southern pacific oscillation stuff — a long one can’t. One super cold winter in the North may not kill the Carbonist case but at this point it’ll put a heck of a dent in it. [6] Meanwhile, the Solarists predicted this a few years ago.
I tend to give more credibility to people who predict something before it happens.
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Frederick, I do agree that “carbonist” is better than “believer”, especially since there’s no faith involved. I also can applaud you being civil over this — and I would like to apologize in advance if I come across as overly blunt. My tact filter is pointed firmly inwards, and as a result I tend to come across as very blunt, doubly so online due to a lack of tonal and body-language cues. There isn’t any hostility intended; it’s just the way I type.
I would, however, like to address a few specific points.
0) The “Chilling Stars” refers to cosmic rays, which supposedly have an impact in cloud generation (and thus a cooling effect). Sadly, this theory has little if any empirical evidence to back it up — and Svensmark himself (the original publisher) has basically admitted it’s false. [Caveat: He didn’t outright admit it, but the data he submitted to publication show that the only way the temperature record fits his cosmic ray prediction is if you remove the 0.14C/decade warming trend that we observe. In other words, the warming matches if you ignore the warming. More on this here.]
1a) Yes, there’s reason to doubt the satellite record. It’s not intended to measure lower tropospheric temperature. It measures stratospheric and upper tropospheric temperature indirectly and is used to extrapolate to lower atmospheric temperatures. You can read more about the process at Open Mind here and here. (Note that the two folks who run UAH — the record that was originally contradicting the ground measurements due to a bad algebra mistake — are both outspoken against the IPCC.)
1b) The “how not to measure temperature” blog is Watts Up With That, which is notoriously bad at data analysis. Since I mentioned Tamino above, I may as well bring up some other handy links on Watts. He’s not a credible source here. [1] (Still, it’s all right if you don’t want to use the surface record. The satellite record works for purposes of this discussion.)
2) You are confused. The satellite record started in 1979, when the satellites were first launched. They can’t show anything earlier than that. You’re probably thinking of temperature proxies, which look like this. (Note the Medieval Warm Period around 1000CE). On a semi-related note, two of those lines are different versions of the (in)famous hockey stick graph — but the others that corroborate its results are all independent (and there’s a more recent version that avoids tree rings altogether and still reaches the same qualitative conclusion, that recent warming is anomalously fast).
3) This doesn’t support the ‘solarist’ point one iota, nor does it attack the ‘carbonist’ view. Rather, it simply underlines the importance of acting sooner rather than later if the ‘carbonists’ are right — action which, on other grounds, is generally a good thing anyway (for instance, energy independence and peak oil, not to mention the tremendous economic benefits from increased efficiency). However, this second point is an ENTIRELY different front than climate denialism, which is the general focus of this blog. If the costs and benefits of action is a discussion that interests you, I suggest you check out Next Generation Energy or Joe Romm’s Climate Progress sections on economics and solutions.
…Oh, and if your statement is an argument against acting on emissions because China isn’t doing anything, I shouldn’t need to remind you that there are lots of things China isn’t doing that are worth doing anyway. For instance, say, democracy?
(I should note that most of the ‘carbonists’ I know say that we’re locked in for at least 2C warming over the next century. If we act fast, we can keep that from being exceeded. If you don’t think that’s all that significant, you need to read the IPCC report, which delineates the impact of several different amounts of warming.)
4) If you’re referring to the “global warming stopped in 1998, or 2001, or…” argument that’s often bandied about, Mike has an excellent introductory post on it here, and Tamino has a bit more detail along with some background theory.
This is, however, unlikely since you are speaking in terms of La Ninas (which explains the claims by some — including Antony Watts, by the way! — that 2007 wiped out a century of warming (by connecting the anomalously warm Jan ’07 directly to the La Nina-cold Dec ’07, which any statistician should cringe at), which are notoriously short-term. Which “pause” are you referring to?
(On a related note, you may find this discussion interesting, as it showcases why your query is the wrong question to be asking even if it’s motivated by the best intentions.)
4b) You may also find it interesting that if it were the sun being the main driver:
a) You’d expect the temperature to be rising fastest during the day
b) You’d expect the equator to receive the greatest temperature increase, with the poles more or less even with each other, and
c) You’d expect the stratosphere to be warming.
Instead, the temperature is rising fastest at night, the arctic is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world (while the antarctic is heating up slowest), and the stratosphere is cooling. All three of these are consistent with CO2 models, and interestingly were predicted at least as far back as 1979 with the Charney report. (Except the antarctic-slowest bit; that required a more sophisticated understanding of ocean currents to predict. However, using nothing more than simple CO2 models with a 3C climate sensitivity, they predicted the arctic would warm at roughly 4x the global average rate — which is almost *precisely* what is being observed.)
Given how solar irradiance hasn’t increased in at least 30 years (and likely 50 years), and the ‘elusive’ connection with solar cycles, it’s looking pretty bad for the ‘solarists’.
In conclusion, most of the points you bring up are of dubious credibility and/or do not support your points. I also asked for peer-reviewed literature supporting the ‘solarist’ viewpoint or countering those who attacked it earlier, and you didn’t provide any.
This doesn’t do much to support your point, Frederick. I’m hoping you have some data to defend it with.
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OK, there’s a lot to digest here and not enough time. (Right now I am particularly grateful for my day job — which is inventory theory and has nothing to do with climate science — and so following all these links is not feasible). Please consider this post to be an interim response.
The “PS Seen this? RSS and UAH” link given by Mike is the second “here” in Brian’s post and a good one. I have not seen this argument before and will, for now, just concede the apparent 0.05 degrees/decade added slope that the RSS data set implies. This still does not look to me to be significantly different from the warming that occurred over the previous century or so.
I am merely a curious observer with an education that permits me to digest any paper I have the time to read. I find the Carbonist position suspect because of:
1) The strong-arm tactics used. This is really creepy and I tend to lean away from people who behave like this. Al Gore (who cannot digest the technical papers) has not helped the Carbonist cause with his condescending and inflammatory language. Suzuki’s words were unfortunate too but at least he is qualified to speak on the topic. This isn’t a technical point; it just makes me suspicious.
2) The bogosity of Mann’s hockey stick and the shameless way that the IPCC dropped the graph from its latest report without comment. Again, it wasn’t the technical stuff, so much as the creepy behavior that makes me wonder.
3) The lousy siting of the surface temperature stations as documented by Anthony Watt. You can reject his data analysis but his photos of hundreds of weather stations badly located are noteworthy.
4) The construction of a new weather station at Badwater in Death Valley. There was one at Furnace Creek already and this redundant station, which gets reflected afternoon sun, is a blatant attempt at breaking the all time temperature record.
Now this is just the stuff that ticked me off. This may just be some cases of, “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” I owe y’all a real response, with technical details and this isn’t it. I have to go make money but I will get back to you by this weekend. If I don’t, the blogmaster has my permission to ping me with an email (I’m serious; the crises are unrelenting). You did make some points I hadn’t heard before and I need to follow more of your links.
And Brian, your tact filter is working good enough. I’ll read that link too, when I get time.
I’m short on time now, so I’ll only address a handful of those points. I’ll make a return later.
2) The Hockey Stick graph was exonerated by the National Research Council in 2006 and was not dropped from the IPCC report. The Climate Over Millenia graph I linked above was taken directly from the IPCC AR4 (I link that page because the report itself is PDF and loads much slower), and one of those lines was the Hockey Stick from Mann, Bradley, and Hughes. In other words, the stick wasn’t dropped — it was present, and with reinforcements.
The only folk who believe it was dropped from the report are those who haven’t read the report but have heard that it was dropped, which is a disingenuous myth at best that is easily falsified by reading the report.
(Also, the two biggest “bogosity” arguments against Mann are his statistical analysis and his use of tree rings. Both of these are addressed in his most recent paper — you get the stick shape with centered or uncentered PCA, and you get it with or without tree rings. All that changes is how far back you can look and how precise you can be. Tamino actually did an EXCELLENT introduction to PCA and works his way through the MBH result; it’s well worth a read.)
3) The siting doesn’t matter if the effect is addressed. All GISS stations have their temperatures adjusted using the nearest non-urban stations as baseline factors, which means that *all* of them should show anomalous increases for Watts to be right. (For instance, if one urban station shows a trend of +4C, and the nearby rural stations show a trend of +2C, then the urban station is probably off by +2C and is adjusted to account for that.)
Watts also doesn’t address the fact that a single photograph now doesn’t tell you anything about how that station was situated in the past — some stations could easily have been better or worse just five years ago, let alone over the decades they’ve been running.
Finally, this is all moot — if you distrust the surface record, use the satellite record. I should note that the two don’t differ anywhere near as much as you seem to think.
Most of these points are raised by people who either don’t know about the adjustments involved or those who deliberately sow misinformation (Steven McIntyre is a good example of this latter form). A little bit of investigation will show that they are misled.
I am honestly surprised, though, that you are more familiar with Antony Watts than the IPCC report. How can you be skeptical of something you haven’t taken the time to read?
(That ran overlong. I’m late. Gotta run. Sorry for the tone, again.)
Michael, that’s just as bogus as Palin saying that she didn’t want to debate the causes of climate change. Climate change is a big issue precisely because its possible consequences are physical, they’re wide-ranging, and they’re very very ugly — so how can you meaningfully avoid talking about consequences?
Greenfyre, but we can always nuke them! Nuke polar bears! Nuke Inuits! Nuke Bangladeshis! Nuke nuke nuke! Let’s destroy their homes and their environments, and if they retaliate, let’s just kill them all!
Freedom and Democracy in action.
— bi, International Journal of Inactivism
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OK, I’ve got a few minutes (and some insomnia) so let me make a start at the points, in order. I still have to do a lot of reading and this still isn’t “the big reply” but maybe we can take care of some of the pieces.
I’ll continue to ignore the issues of how to punish the “carbon polluters” and “great deceivers.” You can’t have the sentencing phase before the trial of guilt.
Addressing Mike’s replies in order:
[1] We don’t have much disagreement here, except semantics. The last decade has been the warmest ever. However, I’d interpret the word “warming” to refer to the first derivative of temperature. Thus, I’d quibble with the title, “Global warming greatest in past decade.”
[2] The linked article is long on hyperbole and terminator graphics and short on details. Some of the links from the link didn’t work (e.g. the link to Wiley at the beginning of the 4th graf). Nothing I got to impugns the satellite data. We can talk RSS vs. UAH (which I need to read a lot on — the Fourier analysis is a surprising argument) but the surface data is hugely suspect — no matter what the slope. I don’t see how the evidence against the station siting can be countered. The data can’t be trusted.
[3] At the top of the linked page is a link to a skeptical Science page that links to this:
Click to access c153.pdf
which supports the Solarist theory in general (check out the first graph!) though the concluding sentence indicates that it can’t cover the recent warming. [A]
[4] I don’t know the numbers but I’d be stunned if limiting India’s and China’s per capita CO2 emissions to the US levels would be much of a constraint. This sounds like a quick, safe and clever commitment made by political leaders that didn’t even need to be vetted. At their current growth rates, when would this ceiling come into play? [B]
This is important because it means that, like it or not, the Carbonist theory is going to be tested. China’s coal burning electric plants are real and, as we all agree, atmospheric CO2 is easy to measure and (to the best of my knowledge) not an area of disagreement. The rise is easy to extrapolate. If you predict a resulting tipping point, get ready to tip.
More to come . . .
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Dealing with 1 from your earlier post, as it seems I dealt with 4 indirectly anyway:
The ‘strongarm’ tactics are tactics used on both sides. I link several examples of Watts sowing disinformation, and a classic example of McIntyre doing the same. McIntyre insinuates fraud almost every post, which is a serious allegation that he never has the cajones to back up with a full accusation. Then there’s Viscount Monckton, an entire case study in and of himself.
However, the thing about these Deniers and the climate activists (yes, that’s the term I use for Gore and Suzuki) is that none of them matter, on either side, to the truth of the issue. That’s what the science resolves. On the activists’ side, there’s a vast array of diverse and thorough peer-reviewed research to support the basic conclusions, and literally unanimous calls to action from professional scientific organizations (some of which, like the Royal Society, have had a reputation for solid scientific work for longer than the United States has existed as a country!). On the inactivists’ side… well, see for yourself. Even when you get to those with scientific background, they don’t bring up peer-reviewed research but rather conspiracy theories. (I’m serious: S. Fred Singer rants about Third World Kleptocrats and the NWO while Lindzen just… well… check it out, it’s beyond words.
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Now, as for your second post.
2) The data can’t be trusted, you say? If you support the stations-are-poorly-sited position, have you obtained the data yourself, run them through the published GISS adjustments (which are designed to adjust for just this result, I mentioned a very basic example here, but I’ll bring it up again to mention that you should also see Tamino’s inline comments), and then compared the “good” stations to the “poorly sited” stations?
If you don’t want to go through that, ClimateAudit’s John V did. He’s posted his results numerous times; the first I could find was here. Note that the conclusion is “For the USA lower 48, there is excellent agreement between GISTEMP [ed: Using all stations] and my results using only the best stations (rural stations with CRN=1, 2, or 3).” (There’s another analysis where he includes all stations including CRN45, but I can’t find it on short notice. The conclusion is unchanged. As for areas outside the US, they follow the same GISS procedure, but do not have watchdog groups taking photos of them. Recall that a photo today doesn’t tell you how it was run in the past.)
Finally:
3) It’s precisely because the solar agreement is so good for so long and yet suddenly diverges dramatically that the sun cannot be the source of the current warming trend. (It’d be like a car that runs perfectly if it’s fueled with premium suddenly breaking down when you fill it with premium; you know it wasn’t the gas that broke the car.) That is precisely what that paper is telling us, and what is corroborated by all of the other papers mentioned on that page. The sun is not responsible for the current warming trend, no matter how you monkey with the data.
On a related note, even the ‘carbonists’ admit that the sun is a key climate driver. The question is if it’s in the driver seat now. The ‘solarists’ are saying that the sun’s influence should be one of cooling now (due to the prolonged solar minimum before solar cycle 24); this is something you brought up earlier. Since temperatures *are* continuing to increase (see also the Tamino links I provided in my point 4 above, which go into far more detail and background theory explanation) in spite of the ‘solarist’ claims, this seems to support the ‘carbonist’ view, doesn’t it?
Frederick,
No, we’re not talking about the “sentencing phase”. We’re talking precisely about whether ExxonMobil and friends, through unbridled burning of fossil fuels, are guilty of the rise in global temperatures, the destruction of arable lands, the melting of protective ice, and more.
And yet these are exactly the things you do not want to talk about.
How can there even be a meaningful discussion on climate change, if you insist on not talking about its possible consequences that make it such a big issue in the first place?
How can there even be a meaningful “trial”, if you insist on not talking about whether the accused are “guilty” or not?
— bi, International Journal of Inactivism
Web Design: Like this? 😉
There is a misunderstanding of what this paper says:
Click to access c153.pdf
It did not “conclude” that the recent warming is at variance with the solarist theory. The paper says that they did not study that period and it “accepts” the conclusions of others (particularly Bertrand et al. 2002; Stott et al. 2003). [1]
Their study does a clever reconstruction of past sunspots based on concentrations of Carbon-14 and Beryllium-10 and shows very good agreement between this reconstruction and the actual observed sunspots for the period where observed sunspots are available.
They then show good correlation between sunspots and global temperature (with a 10 year lag). This paper is well worth a careful read (and is not technically difficult).
It would be a mistake to reject their basic conclusion and model based on what they concede/accept about things outside their study.
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Dude, we’re talking about ‘climate change’, not ‘the part of climate change that happens to be studied by Usoskin et al. who point out they excluded the last 30 years of climate from their study’.
But again, as I’ve pointed out, you’re dodging the original question. Namely, are ExxonMobil and oil companies guilty of causing large-scale coastal flooding, the melting of Kivalina’s protective ice, the loss of precious natural resources and more, by excessive burning of fossil fuels?
“But Your Honour, there’s a report which shows our clients are good model citizens, and this report happens to exclude the last 30 years’ worth of events!” This excuse simply won’t wash in any other situation. So why should anyone accept it in the case of climate change?
— bi, International Journal of Inactivism
The purpose of the paper was to analyze the correlation between sunspots and global temperature. Their result was that the correlation was high.
It’s just one part of a very large field of research. I’ll analyze another paper when I get time. I am particularly interested in the argument that the RSS data is better than the UAH data based on Fourier analysis. So that one’s next — though it’s longer and more complex than the sunspot one.
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I said:
Nice to see that Frederick Michaels, after giving a boatload of excuses, is still trying his very best to avoid addressing this question.
— bi, International Journal of Inactivism
I was hoping to get a technical response but, failing that, I would take issue with the use of the present tense in reference to coastal flooding. If you would like to see what has been happening to sea level recently, all you have to do is look at the canals in South Bethany Beach Delaware. They are connected to the ocean through a series of bays and channels that act like a low-pass filter for the tides. The result is that there is no tidal fluctuation and the docks on those canals need not be floating docks. These fixed docks would make a change in sea level quite noticeable as getting into and out of boats would be affected.
Ask anyone who has lived there a few decades if sea level has risen and they’ll all say that any change has been too small to notice.
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Thanks Mike for the updated link on RSS v. UAH.
The Greek Aorist tense would be perfect (what a horrible pun).
I still owe you more analysis. This CANNOT be soon as I have huge November deadlines and my daughter’s marriage.
I have serious doubts about the terrestrial data and consider the RSS v. UAH issue to be pivotal to the whole debate. This is where I will focus (probably in December).
Thanks for your patience. I intend to follow through. Ping me if I don’t.
OK, I got a few hours to follow up (partially) and I reviewed the Tamino write-up and this paper/method which a poster claims is the new method that RSS “now uses.”
Click to access Mears_and_Wentz_TLT_submitted.pdf
Is he right to make that claim? Is the RSS “official” slope now ~0.2 K/decade?
[…] I suspect that the answer is the infamous tobacco lawsuits. The court cases which made it not only not profitable to engage in Denial, but enormously costly. Given the enormous damage that climate change is causing, and will cause, there is considerable scope for holding those who knowingly lie and deceive the public accountable for their actions. Further, there is legal grounds for doing so (see here). […]
[…] by law. Organized stupidity equally so, unless it is done in order to commit a crime. I grant there is an argument that this would apply in this case, but let’s leave that aside for […]