BPSDBLest any imagine that my parody of climate Denier cherry picking is too extreme because I pretend to use my own city as representing climate trends for the entire planet as being something climate Deniers actually do, check this out: OOPS, We Forgot Siberia!
I am rather fond of this piece of climate change Denierism for two reasons.
1) Apparently the state of Minnesota is an acceptable proxy for the entire planet. Who knew?
The sciences could have saved a lot of money and effort they wasted monitoring the entire planet by simply monitoring Minnesota. No sense crying over spent funds now … I wonder if monitoring the ice on Lake Superior would substitute for all of those expensive and finicky Arctic sensors?
Of course the author could have checked the accuracy of his belief that Minnesota is representative by comparing it to any other state, or several of them, or even somewhere else in the world, be it Benin or Bolivia.
Of course if we look at Oklahoma for example (or pick your own) we find his belief is pure nonsense (shocked I say, truly shocked); something he could and should have easily done for himself.
2) Note that the core “story” is that the global temperature records are hopelessly wrong because there are now many fewer weather stations in Siberia than there were in 1990.
From his graph (at top) you can see that when we had 15,000 Russian stations the earth was cool, and real warming only seemed to happen when we were down to 5,000. Obviously the global temperature trends are an artifact of the missing Siberian weather stations.
Does everyone remember the Denier orgasm in November over the trivial non-story when the GISS data accidentally repeated the October data for the Russian stations? (Mountains and molehills)
Apparently the Siberian weather stations are so numerous that they can significantly skew global temperature data, while simultaneously being so rare that their absence disguises true temperature trends. Maybe the existing Russian weather stations have a dual state analogous to light’s wave–particle duality, being simultaneously both at once?
Needless to say what the author of this scam is ignoring is that while the number of weather stations decreased significantly in the period mentioned, the coverage has not changed appreciably in almost a century.
An axiom of science that was drummed into us was “a difference is a difference only if it makes a difference.” Apparently this is not broadly known.
He also forgot to check what the Siberian temperature trends actually are:
As Climate Progress reported in “Another brutally hot year for the Siberian tundra“, more of this data is not going to help his Denier case, not one bit.
This committed soul is now engaged in documenting every missing station (some 10,000 apparently). Naturally he does not want you to look at the locations of the stations that still exist, it might create the impression that there is still fairly complete coverage.
And the Cherry on this cherry picking Sundae?
The argument that the missing Siberian stations are critically affecting global temperature measurements because we are missing out on extreme cold measurements necessary to balance the high temperatures being recorded elsewhere, while simultaneously:
i) suggesting that it is unnecessary to monitor Siberia al all, or Asia even, etc, because just monitoring Minnesota is all you need to do, and
ii) not asking the obvious question that if Minnesota is an acceptable proxy for the whole planet, why aren’t the locales giving us those high temperatures that need to be balanced equally valid? why not use them?
.. I love it! I sure hope this meme catches on as it is just too fun.
The take home lesson? If you really imagine that one locale tells the whole climate story, why not pick Melbourne Australia
or Oklahoma rather than Minnesota, your hometown, or whatever locale happens to be cold today?
Tamino has a really interesting look at another piece of climate projecting based on a single locale with his post Ellensburg.
Speaking of Cherry picks, Scruffy Dan has done another take down of that Denier standard “The 1998 cherry pick.” As well he may have identified a particular manifestation of Anti-Science Syndrome with Antarctic warming derangement syndrome.
Clearly climate change causes mental illness – ten minutes in the Denialosphere is enough to convince anyone.
More Shame
My absence caused me to fall far behind in “sipping from the internet firehose” as Coby Beck so aptly puts it (actually I typically just stick it in my mouth, which explains a lot).
Eli Rabett had some more insight into the irrationality and silliness of John Coleman at “Another damn alarmist” which I should have referenced in “John Coleman, put up or shut up.”
Denierism on the Web
re: my trivial look at web traffic and Denierism
Commenter Steve Bloom notes that in the comments thread on Kevin’s original piece commenter David has the same criticism that I do, viz Kevin’s search get’s both Denier sites and legitimate climate science sites (see “Flawed interpretation” by DavidCognito).
The comment by David and subsequent discussion by Steve is worth checking if this topic interests you.
With respect to my sample:
I have since learned that Jennifer Morahasy has not blogged in three weeks, which could explain a decline in traffic (did I mention at the time that it was a meaningless sample? I think that came up).
I also realised that one puzzling pattern, viz an increase in traffic coupled with a decrease in page views could represent a particular post getting passed around the net. This would lead to an increase in traffic that is looking for one particular page and does not stay to peruse the site.
In the same vein, a decrease in traffic coupled with an increase in page views probably represents such an event occuring in the previous sample period, hence a return to the regular traffic levels and pattern.
Commenter Shelly brings to my attention an archive of James Hansens writings on line, which is a useful little resource to have at hand. Shelly has a nice climate and energy blog/podcasts “Futurism Now” which I have been meaning to mention for a while.
Meanwhile, over at the Centre for Environmental Journalism the comments thread for the piece “The climate skeptic playbook” that I mentioned the other day attracted no less a person than Marc “Wormtongue” Morano. Not only attracted, but the entire thread is exchanges as he tries to defend Inhofe’s Folly.
Needless to say he indulges in the same misrepresentation, Straw Man arguments, and other logical fallacies that the original gibberish does, including an ad hominem on Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate.
Somehow the Wonkroom got hold of Morano’s mailing list and published “REVEALED: Marc Morano’s Pack Of Climate Denial Jokers.”
How anyone with any kind of scientific credential would not be deeply embarrassed to be associated in any way with the pseudo scientific sewage that seeps from Inhofe’s office is beyond me.
Whatever reservations they may have about climate science, surely they realize that the stuff Inhofe puts out is worse than misleading, it’s dishonest, insulting and criminal … and those are the good bits.
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 122 … still no evidence.
IMAGE CREDITS
Dual Wave/Particle Nature of Light by meeblax
Fenton’s Sundae by show and tell
[…] next. For this season, there’s been a rather unexpected conversion from frumpy to fashionable The dual state nature of Russian weather stations – greenfyre.wordpress.com 02/24/2009 BPSDB Lest any imagine that my parody of climate Denier cherry […]
Further to my comment at DeSmogBlog (‘David Cognito’ is another moniker – really should stick to one :/), it appears that the volume of searches for ‘global warming hoax’ has dropped even in the last few days – http://www.google.com/trends?q=global+warming+hoax%2C+global+warming&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 – there used to be a ratio reported of 1/180 for hoax / non-hoax searches. Now Google reports insufficient volume for ‘hoax’ ranking. Good stuff.
Not so good is that volume for ‘global warming’ has been decreasing the past two years.
I didn’t read all of Morano’s output over at cejournal.net (masochism never appealed to me), but skimming over it almost convinced me that he believes his own propaganda and distortion. He started off well with “First off, I am not a scientist.” and then amply demonstrated that by drawing equivalence between peer reviewed science and… just about anyone with an opinion. He even cited master cherry picking weatherman Watts. Ha!
It would be nice to believe that Morano has made this public appearance to try and defend himself because he knows his credibility is completely bankrupt. Is anyone going to report on his next, massaged release of ‘dissenting scientists’, other than the denial-o-sphere? He must realise that if he can’t fool a few MSM journos, he’s simply shouting at clouds, along with all the other Deniers?
I’m becoming encouraged that the war of attrition is being won by the rationalists. Unfortunately, it looks more and more like it’s happening twenty years too late – http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/23/mit-doubles-global-warming-projections/
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David, what did you think of the results I got re “global warming hoax”?
This also relates to the denier sentence:
“Can you global warmers explain why Mars is warming/cooling as well as earth” or something like that. The implication is that Mars is following trends on earth because the Sun is the source of the issue.
You have to ask the question:
“If you believe that the thousands of temperature measurement stations, satellites etc on and around earth are allegedly getting it wrong or aren’t enough, then how can you even consider Mars, when it is a completely different eco system and has at most half a dozen spacecraft monitoring it!”
So if they trust the measurements from a tiny number of sensors monitoring Mars, they have no reason for not trusting the thousands of measurements taken here.
These people shoot themselves in their own feet on a regular basis, because they are politically motivated and as such consistency and logic come second place.
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Hi Steve,
Re. the 2006 jump for the hoax search – Google Trends was launched then.
I think your other numbers demonstrate that the hoax thing is gaining no traction. It appealed to the usual wingnuts and that’s as far as it will get. Amusingly, there are a couple of other wingnut hoax theories that receive the same magnitude of searches – http://www.google.com/trends?q=global+warming+hoax%2C+911+conspiracy%2C+moon+landing+hoax&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 What’s the bet that it’s largely the same people? 🙂
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Re: Denierism (Denialism?) They has better honestly believe their delusions, because if any are proved to be intentionally deceptive it is a crime of fraud.
The dilettante denialist should first know the definition of criminal fraud: a false statement, or omission, of a material fact, made with knowledge of its falsity, made with the intention of inducing another to rely on it.
They may want to hold on to their delusional crazy acts.
Also we should look to the case of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil et al… http://www.noenergytomorrow.org/2008/09/tiny-alaskan-village-of-kivalina-vs-exxonmobil.html
It is still in the courts and the plaintiffs – the Native American village of Kivalina may prevail with their nuisance tort against major carbon fuel companies. But most interesting is that they also are charging unnamed conspiracy defendants:
From the Kivalina complaint:
http://www.climatelaw.org/ cases/ country/us/kivalina/ kivalina p. 69
269…The Conspiracy Defendants have engaged in agreements to participate in the intentional creation, contribution to and/or maintenance of a public nuisance, global warming. The Conspiracy Defendants participated and/or continue to participate in an agreement with each other to mislead the public with respect to the science of global warming and to delay public awareness of the issue
so that they could continue contributing to, maintaining and/or creating the nuisance without demands from the public that they change their behavior as a condition of further buying their products. At all times the Conspiracy Defendants were concerned that the public would become
concerned by global warming and that the growing concern would force a change in the Conspiracy
Defendants behavior which would be costly. Delaying these costs was the major objective of the
conspiracies described herein.
270. The Conspiracy Defendants have committed overt acts in furtherance of their agreements. The Conspiracy Defendants have participated in an agreement with each other to mislead the public with respect to the science of global warming, either individually or through their various industry fronts or trade associations, and have included overt acts that furthered their intentional creation,
contribution to and/or maintenance of a public nuisance, global warming.
Conspirators or crazy?
We might want to see what the courts say about deliberate denierists/denialists.
http://www.climatelaw.org/cases/country/us/kivalina/kivalina
Richard: Thank you for the update on Kivalina. I had forgotten that the suit was targeting conspiracy theorists. I’ve bookmarked Climate Law and will work my way through that in the next few days.
John Kerry ready to debate Will…Go Kerry Go. Its about time someone beats up on these err…repulsive people.
Facts Are Stubborn Things: George Will and Climate Change
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-kerry/facts-are-stubborn-things_b_170657.html
In the old Republican Congress they even trotted out the author of Jurassic Park as an expert witness to argue that climate change is fiction. This is Stone Age science, and now that we have the White House and the Congress real science must prevail. It is time to stop debating fiction writers, oil executives and flat-earth politicians, and actually find the way forward on climate change.
wow that sundae up there look mighty tasty
wow that sundae up there look mighty tasty
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