BPSDB This morning two amazing women, Anna Keenan and Sara Svensson, gave a press conference in Barcelona about the Climate Justice Fast. Nothing I might say could compare to their words and actions. I can’t embed the webcast, so please click the link below and hear why they are putting their health and lives on the line, as well as the statement by Agnes who puts the Fast in it’s proper context.

Climate Justice Fast! -
taking climate activism to the next level

Here is Paul Connor again, talking about Day 1.

and Kamrul Kahn from the Bengladesh Environmental Network explains why he is fasting in solidarity with the others in Climate Justice Fast!

The Fast has already gotten some decent press

• Climate activists fast to push leaders to sign strong deal at Copenhagen
• Man begins climate change hunger strike in Canberra
• Protesters angry over climate change inaction (Radio podcast)

and at Grist

• Activists launch climate hunger strike

You can follow the CJF on their blog here (Canberra, Day 2), and post messages of support to the CJF fasters here.

Thanks to Peter, Karla, Krishna, Martha, Stewart, Laura and Jess for participating in the rolling fast which we will be carrying on until the end of the Copenhagen talks. More people are most welcome to join (just leave a comment and I will be in touch). I have asked each person to journal their fasting so that I can post some of it here.

Day One, Solidarity Fast:  In support of those who have committed to real sacrifice here, I have chosen to fast today in solidarity. I will be back to my regular diet tomorrow, to get me primed for my committed days in the CJF rotation.  I have done many solo-fasts in my life, but never as part of a group.  I’m feeling a sense of interconnectedness to others I’ve never met, and heightened awareness of the importance of the statement that is being made.  (INDIE FILM MAKERS, ARE YOU OUT THERE?)  I am really pumped to be part of this.

I am already being given a taste of what my commitment is going to entail after fasting thus far for about twenty hours.  I’ve already had to face my addiction to food, which I wasn’t even aware existed.  Around 5:30 today, I found myself struggling with a desire to eat.  I must admit, I even toyed with the idea of breaking the fast, justifying to myself that, afterall, this was merely a ‘trial run’, that I hadn’t committed to anyone but myself here.

Certainly no one but me would even know if I had something to eat.  I tried to tell myself that today was merely a self-chosen day to raise my awareness and show solidarity for the “real” heroes.  I even strolled down to the cafeteria at work, and perused today’s offerings.  I am easily able to say that I left with more resolve to stay the course, albeit this leg of my fast will end tomorrow.  (Then comes Mary… who dare reheat pizza in the microwave behind my workstation.  Proud to report, though it smelled really good, I poured myself a cup of tea and thought of the real heroes here.  Godspeed to all of you.

~Karla @ the 45th parallel

“My life is my message. ” ~ Mohandas “Mahatma” Ghandi

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

BPSDB

True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it.

Gandhi

.

On Nov 6th activists will be beginning a 40 day fast for climate justice, including people in India, the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Bhutan, The Philippines, Germany, France, Honduras and inside the Copenhagen conference itself.

“We,
the participants of Climate Justice Fast!, are undertaking our international hunger strike in order to call upon world leaders to act with courage and good faith for our common, global good, by implementing the most rapid possible transition to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gasses  at below 350ppm CO2, and by committing to deliver justice for the  global poor, who are the least responsible for causing climate change, yet  are already suffering the most from its effects.

Justice for the poor can be delivered by funding climate adaptation and mitigation activities in developing nations with at least US$160 billion per year, by a commitment to reduce
over-consumption, wherever it exists, to equitable, sustainable levels and by eliminating developed countries’ subsidies of fossil fuels and shifting them to renewable energy.”

Including my friend Paul Connor. Here is Paul talking about the fast:

Paul, love ya sweetheart, but you’re wrong!

Your fast is not controversial; taking any meaningful action is controversial.

Our western culture and lifestyles rely on the fundamental belief in personal impotence and helplessness. You and the other participants are threatening because you are showing that action is possible, that personal sacrifice is possible, that love and hope are possible.

That is an uplifting message , a glimmer of possibility, even redemption, grace and deliverance. The fast is not an “extreme action” (as you once referred to it). It is bold, courageous, and inspiring …  and it scares the shit out of most of us.

“It is easy, of course, to fear happiness. There is often complacency in the acceptance of misery. We fear parting from our familiar roles. We fear the consequences of such a parting. We fear happiness because we fear failure. But we must overcome these fears. We must be brave. It is one thing to speculate about what might be. It is quite another to act in behalf of our dreams, to treat them as objectives that are achievable and worth achieving. It is one thing to run from unhappiness; it is another to take action to realize those qualities of dignity and well-being that are the true standards of the human spirit.“

Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato

You see, we have stopped believing that we will ever be other than as we are. Of course we think about getting the promotion, the computer upgrade, the nicer home. We believe in becoming better in the mundane sense of existing, but not of living.

“The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Milan Kundera

It’s a failure of memory and imagination really. The ability to remember what we once thought we could be. The imagination to believe in a future, to believe in ourselves; that we might someday ever be capable of real generosity, compassion, and courage. We have simply lacked the power to imagine that we are capable of dignity, of hope … of belief.

And there you are, doing it.

And if you can do it, maybe we could. And if we could, maybe we should. And if we should, why aren’t we? You see how dangerous that is? What will anchor us then? What will become of us if we loose our spirits and dare to dream?

So please do not apologise, but rather I hope that you have the grace to understand and to forgive us for not being there as one of you. But we still can be there with you, for you. We can help. You and the other participants deserve all the help the rest of us can provide.

For a start we can learn more about the Climate Justice Fast, the participants,  and fasting/hunger strikes.

Climate Justice Fast:

Climate Justice Fast:

Youtube Channel: including video diaries of Paul’s practice fast

• Facebook CJF Page:

  Facebook CJF Support:

• Activists plan hunger strikes for climate justice

• Anna K’s blog ‘Climate Change Perspectives‘

Fasting was used as a method of protesting injustice in pre-Christian Ireland, where it was known as Troscadh or Cealachan. It was detailed in the contemporary civic codes, and had specific rules by which it could be used. The fast was often carried out on the doorstep of the home of the offender.

Hunger strike

“Fasting is a form of action that is very valuable in building the internal discipline and the deeply-felt understanding of what’s really important in this world that we individually need to stay true to our best ideals. When you fast for more than a few days, especially on a water-only fast, you are forced to think about the reasons for your fasting, why you are putting yourself through this. You spend time thinking about all of the people all over the world who “fast” involuntarily because of an unjust world order which is dominated by a relative handful of billionaires and multi-billionaires.”

Gandhi today

In “The Methods of Nonviolent Action”  Sharpe classed fasting in the highest category of political action, Intervention. See the CJF Hunger Strike History and/or Hunger strike to learn more.

We can help by :

• Spread the word; blog, link, share about the Fast now, and as it progresses;
• Find out if there is a fast near us (for Ottawa, Canada here and here), and
  • contact them to see what they need ((CJF link to ‘Get Involved‘);
  • if they are fasting in public, stand with them when possible;
  • help spread the word locally (local press, at events, etc);
• Post our support on CJF sites and participant blogs;
• Host a CJF mini-event, have friends over for an evening Fast and watch Gandhi/Age of Stupid/other;
• Solidarity fast for 24? 48? other? hours:
  • relay or tandem solidarity fasting (fast for a period, then pass to the next person to keep a fast going for the full 40 days)*;
  • Write/blog/journal/twitter/video blog our fast. Let people know what and why.
• Learn more about climate change, 350, climate justice, and Copenhagen (lots more coming on this blog over the next few weeks);
• Work to support the demands put forward by the CJF (at top);
• Participate in events related to Copenhagen (eg The Wave)

Whatever else we may feel about it, the Climate Justice Fast is also an opportunity for the rest of us to remember what we wanted to be, and imagine that it is possible.

“The golden rule is to act fearlessly upon what one believes to be right.”

Gandhi

*I’d like to get some people willing to do short (1 day? 2? more? whatever you are comfortable with) fasts in solidarity with the Climate Justice Fast so that collectively we cover the full 40 days up to Copenhagen.  Leave a comment if you are up for it.

for LadyHawk

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

BPSDB Why the on-going fascination with the error filled climate change chapter in Superfreakonomics? Quite simple really, it’s a rare opportunity to get some anecdotal evidence on whether the climate science blogosphere has an impact, what kind of impact, and how much. This particular issue is valuable in that it has spilled over into the more public realm while still clearly ‘tagged’ as Superfreakonomics.

Naturally anecdotal evidence is far less than what we could wish for, but at least it is something. A sputtering match is still better than the usual darkness that we fumble around in.

Oh yes, there is also a link to where you can read the climate chapter if you haven’t yet and still want to ….

So I have been spending far too much of my life looking at blogs, reviews, and news stories which I will not be inflicting on you (why should you suffer too?). Nor am I even going to guess at how many, because frankly it’s a blur. Instead I will just offer some impressions of what I found.

The attempts to spin the book are interesting in that, other than the most brain dead climate change Deniers, for the most part no one is attempting to directly defend the chapter as accurate per se. Instead the defences seem to be taking two main forms, one Red Herring fallacy, the other a Straw Man Fallacy, both subsets of the larger Red Herring fallacy.

The Red Herring Fallacy:

The framing of this spin goes along the lines of ‘it’s just a pop culture book, so what does it matter? why get so worked up?’ The correct question is “does it matter?”, but in this instance the framing of the question is the spin. By prefixing the question with the dismissive “it’s just a …” one is led towards concluding that it doesn’t matter.

Does it matter? will the book influence what people believe?

Obvious alerts!:

1. it already has influenced what some people believe, as any internet search will tell you;
2. more people read pop culture books than the scientific literature, or even popular science media (well … duh);
3. the iconic fame of the Superfreaks means they are particularly influential relative to even most pop culture media;
4. if people weren’t influenced by ill-informed and fraudulent sources (aka the Denialosphere) we would already have dealt with climate change because everyone would know the facts, and we climate bloggers could go out and have lives.

So, yes, it matters … obviously.

The Straw Man Fallacy:

Basically the attempt is made to frame the “uproar” and criticism as being about the book being “controversial” (this is the one used in The Daily Show puff piece). The fact of the book being error ridden nonsense is completely ignored while trying to frame the authors as bold visionaries and the science community as petty, myopic reactionaries (pathologically obsessed with trivialities like facts, accuracy and truth?).

Speaking of flawed logic, this one is also a Bulverism as it takes as a given that the SuperFreaks are right, which is the very thing they most need to demonstrate.

Climate Progress explores this meme in more depth in Contrarian Chic: Why can’t the media tell the difference between an attack on dubious ‘conventional’ wisdom and an attack on genuine scientific wisdom? with respect to both Freeman Dyson and the Superfreaks.

It is an insidious spin in that the average person will think that they now understand the reason for the criticism and will look no further to check whether this is true. Undoubtedly most of the self-styled “skeptics” will uncritically swallow this line without a shred of doubt about it’s accuracy.

As such it is necessary to keep the pressure on and do everything possible to get the facts out there. People need to know that it does matter, and it is not a case of Galileo vs calcified orthodoxy, but rather Beavis and Butthead vs reality.

Over-arching Red Herring Fallacy:

Simon Donner covers part of this in The message or the messenger, noting that some of the narratives drifted into discussions of personalities rather than climate science and the accuracy of the book.  In a sense both of the first two spin attempts are sub-sets of this one in that they try to make the “story” about something else,

These tactics are effective when they go unchallenged, which is the norm. As such it is important stay on message and make sure that discussions are about climate science and the accuracy of the book, period.

Despite these, there is still lots of good coverage as well. Some updates of the SuperFreaks being Pwned by:

Enviroknow

But perhaps this was all just a clever marketing ploy.  I can’t help but wonder if chapter five was deliberately crafted to cause an uproar.  Some sort of hail mary attempt to draw attention to an otherwise less-than-spectacular book.  If this is the case — and you truly have adopted the ‘all news is good news’ mantra — then I guess congratulations are in order.  Your book is almost as relevant as the balloon boy.

Note to the Authors of Superfreakonomics

Interesting suggestion about it being a deliberate ploy, but I doubt it is the case. The authors seem genuinely dumfounded about the ruckus, apparently unaware that the reason everyone is saying that the chapter is shoddy nonsense is because the chapter really is shoddy nonsense. They seem to have believed (still do?) it was a legitimate contribution to the climate discussion …  absurd as that sounds.

As of this writing you can still find a copy of the climate change chapter at Enviroknow.

As well Enviroknow also posts/reposts (Who’s on first?) Levitt and Dubner Continue Misleading the Public on Geoengineering, a nice vivisection of the SuperFreaks  USAToday piece from Get Energy Smart Now!!! that I mentioned here.

I’ve identified 22 flaws in this latest 920 word piece.

Follow me, after fold, for a look at these 22 flaws. [Editor's note: This represents a flaw every 42 words. Flaws per word is an interesting metric for opinion pieces (and, well, anti-science syndrome suffering 'studies') that could merit future and further use.] [Emphasis added]

Pwned!!!

Deltoid (again)

I have a suggestion for a nicely controversial chapter in their next book, Hyperfreakonomics. Advocate that instead of treating type 2 diabetes with diet and exercise, people should avoid the bother of exercise and changing their diet and just inject insulin. When doctors object to this advice, respond that you are just calmly and logically answering the question: “How can we efficiently control blood sugar levels” while your critics are hung up on moral questions like “How can we keep this person healthy”.

Levitt and Dubner liken climate scientists to flat Earthers

I am going to have to disagree with Lambert that the real howler here is NOT the suggestion that climate scientists are ignorant rubes who think the Earth is flat, but rather it is Levitt and Dubner’s delusions of adequacy that they are somehow the modern Galileos who got it right.

The former premise is merely absurd and idiotic, whereas the latter goes well beyond that.

and more …

While the following posts don’t add any particularly new information to the story as it  has already been covered on this blog (here, here and here) there are some nice bon mots out there, so I have to tip my hat to:

DeSmogBlog

” … we’d like to add our voice to those who are disappointed by the clumsy unprofessionalism of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s new book … just because someone is good at Trivial Pursuit doesn’t mean they’ll be a reliable scientist … It’s the kind of blather that superannuated old contrarians (stand up Feeman Dyson) spout in order to entertain themselves at dinner … “

SuperFreaks: Smart, arrogant, ill-informed

Columbia Journalism Review

and Curtis Brainard for “The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, on the other, conducted a rather servile interview with Steven Levitt … ” Yes, “servile” describes it perfectly.

Newsweek

We Read it So You Don’t Have to: ‘Superfreakonomics’ for “Four observations from the dismal-science duo: … “

The Guardian

Not about the climate chapter, but Prostitution, for fun and profit notes that “The men behind Freakonomics offer a stunningly shallow and flawed view of sex work as a career option for women“

It seems the climate chapter is not the only one that was “stunningly shallow and flawed.” (thanks to Richard Pauli for the heads up).

DenialDepot

As ever Denial Depot seeks to shatter Poe’s Law and be even more absurd and idiotic than what they parody … you judge whether they managed it this time SuperDuperFreakonomics.

on Amazon

“Levitt and Dubner cheapen their thinking by presenting a few dozen pages that are littered with obvious mistakes and even the perpetuation of myths,  …  the whole thing is a shame. An eye sore in what could have otherwise been a fun book.“

Juliana Davidson

And of course much more pwnage can be found at Left as an Exercise.

Despite the relatively good job the climate blogs have done to get the word out there the spin is also proving fairly effective. Far too many of the sites I looked at were indulging in the versions of the spin described above. We need to keep getting the message out.

To that end please make an effort to take some action as discussed in this post, and note that as the last pwn illustrates, book reviews matter.  As do comments on book reviews and on other forums.

If you can, post a book review somewhere, or make a comment on a review, post links to your favourite critiques of the book, vote up the intelligent reviews, articles and comments, get the facts out there and pwn the Superfreaks!

“Over the 20th century, ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic main development region warmed during peak hurricane season, with the most pronounced warming occurring over the last four decades.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

IMAGE CREDITS:

pwn by klavr

He’s in my base killin my d00dz by chippenziedeutch

pwned! by sota767

Beatles PWN!!! by Emma Swann

Birthday Cake by Davers!

Pwned by bonjourpeewee

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread” is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;

Jon Stewart, Pwned! (by Jon Stewart)BPSDB

I was rereading Brad Johnson’s article about the Jon Stewart non-interview with Levitt of Superfreakonomics infamy when I realized that one of the links he provides is the Stewart interview on Crossfire…

Ouch, nasty, but so apropos. It brings up a couple of points worth mentioning in regard to the Levitt interview, so here is the Crossfire transcript, and here is the Crossfire interview:

Two points about the interview

1) Stewart is both clear and ruthless about how the failure of investigative journalism is damaging to society.

“…it’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America … Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations. … You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks …“

2) Carlson and Begala do challenge Stewart that he is no better, citing his interview with Kerry. Stewart responds that if they wish to compare themselves to a comedy show, that was fine with him. A number of people have made a similar point with regard to the Levitt interview, ie ‘come on, it’s a comedy show.’

Fair enough, up to a point, however:

1. It is contextual, it may not be appropriate to hold comedy show interviews up to the same standards as a show that purports to be investigative journalism, but nontheless they are interviews, not comedy skits.
2. Stewart’s comedy is largely acheived by contrasting people’s behaviour with reality and thereby exposing their absurdities and/or hypocrisy. Had Stewart been true to his comic style he would have been doing the same with Superfreakonomics, not doing a straight reading of the books absurd claims.
3. Parroting Levitt’s talking points verbatum was not comedy, or to the extent that it was, only because those points are laughable. Stewart can’t have it both ways, ie be taken seriously when he is trashing Bush or Beck, but when caught spewing nonsense himself it’s “just comedy”
4. “it’s comedy” is legitmate when it actually is comedy, but it’s not a universal excuse for every behaviour just because it happens on his show. In this instance it is as disingenous as the passive aggressive bullies who try to excuse every abuse with “I was just kidding.”

Levitt, Pwned for being uber lame

Over at RealClimate Raymond T. Pierrehumbert has written an “An open letter to Steve Levitt” that is well worth the read. In it he demonstrates just how easy it would have been for Superfreakonomics to get it right, and by implication, how inexcusable it is that they got it so badly wrong.

I have one minor quibble Ray, viz this statement:

“… what has been lost amidst all that extensive discussion is how really simple it would have been to get this stuff right.“

Not that Ray reads this blog (or even should), but I did say “For the most part the problems are things that a bright high school senior should be expected to have gotten right, so it’s a shock that Dubner and Levitt got them so wrong.”

Ray administers the coup de gras by posting a map for Levitt to walk from his office to Pierrehumbert’s, a distance of a couple of blocks … if he ever again has trouble finding a real climate scientist.

Fair enough, and if even that is too much work, there’a always Wikipedia (and before anyone objects, cite credible sources showing where Wikipedia is wrong about climate change).

Superfreaks Pwned for lying

Tim Lambert at Deltoid documents Dubner falsley claiming that ocean acidification is addressed in the book when it is not. He also calls out Levitt for trying to dodge the numerous critiques by claiming to be asking different questions. Truth is, the Superfreaks clearly do not understand either the questions or the answers.

Tip of the Hat to Lou Grinzo for an even bigger ocean acidification howler by Levitt, as reported by Ezra Klein

Of course, ocean acidification is an import issue. Now, there are ways to deal with ocean acidification, right, it’s actually, that’s actually, we know exactly how to un-acidifiy the oceans, is to pour a bunch of base into it, so, so if that turns out to be an incredibly big problem, then we can deal with that.

How are you supposed to react to that? As Lou says “Read that reply from Levitt again, and tell me which grade a child would have to be in before you would consider it an acceptable answer in an earth science class. You can probably guess my answer.”

Pwned as bullshitting whiners

The Way Things Break really shreds the Superfreaks for their shoddy, misleading treatment of geo-engineering, and the weasly response to the legitmate criticism of their work:

L&D would have you believe that a certain group of people (liberals the Politically Correct, Big Government worshiping, environmentalist, climate science-supporting “chattering classes”) are standing between honest discussion of the merits of the no-brainer geo-engineering fix and the colossal boondoggle of mitigation. L&D- brave, counter-intuitive visionaries that they are- have ridden forth on white steeds to rescue everyone else from the tyranny of those who support reducing greenhouse gas emissions (which is virtually every relevant scientific organization on the planet) and would keep this miracle cure secret.

The only problem with this scenario is that, like much of L&D’s work of late, it’s complete bullshit. [emphasis added]

Pwned in The House

h/t Think Progress (reposted here)

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) equates the current climate change Denierism with the tobacco industries disinformation campaign (quite correctly, see here), and includes Superfreakonomics as part of that campaign of lies and deception (also correctly)

Pwned for Myhrvold’s Folly

Somehow I missed some earlier work by Brad Johnson who did a very nice job of answering the questions posted by

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/10/26/superfreak-solar-nonsense/.

Bradford DeLong. Brad does a particularly nice job shredding their claims about renewable energy and emission reductions, thereby demonstrating clearly i) how badly wrong the Superfreaks are, and ii) getting it right was not that hard

• Answers For DeLong About The SuperFreaks, Part One
• Answers For Delong About The SuperFreaks, Part Two: ‘Global Cooling’ And ‘Economic Suicide’
• Answers For DeLong About The SuperFreaks, Part Three: Solar Power And Warming Debts

Pwned for acting like evolution deniers

“I lost all possibility of respect for the Freakonomists when I heard … a reading from the book’s “explanatory note”:

It should go without saying that I see parallels to creationism throughout this. The current creationist strategy is not to outright promote creationism (courts having been too cruel to such strategies), and instead advocating for the teaching evolution’s “weaknesses,” itself a strategy mapped out by creationists in the 1980s after losing their last case before the Supreme Court.”

Global warming, science denial, and how to teach more evolution

Pwned for citing  Deniers for credibility

Deltoid points out that in a desperate bid for credibility Dubner cites as his defenders Brett Stephens, Jonah Goldberg, and Jon Stewart. HELLO! Earth to Superfreaks! FYI:

Stephens is the idiot who authored the drivel which I discussed in “Actually it’s the WSJ, not a parody site … i think“, which is, if you can believe it, the piece Dubner cites for credibility. Goldberg is just as bad, as discussed in “Global Warming and the sun, JAQing off with NRO’s Jonah Goldberg.” In this latest piece Goldberg stays true to form (ie blithering nonsense) and Kevin Moon takes him down in The Anti-Denialism Deniers.

What does it tell you when you’re turning to climate change Deniers notorious for lying about the science as evidence of your scientific crediblity? Oh right, and Jon Stewart reading your talking points. Well, in regard to that I would like to quote Jon Stewart:

“If you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you’re more than welcome to.”

Pwnage Made Easy (update)

Seriously, it was after posting that I found Zimmer’s latest re; The Superfreaks, “Pwnage Made Easy”; ‘fools seldom differ’? I don’t differ with his sentiment:

“I smell an anthology here: a collection of the all-time greatest take-downs, in which scientists expose lazy thinking. How about, The Best Pwnage of 2009?”

UPDATE Nov 1st:

Pwned by Boston.com

Title of 5 page takedown? “Sloppynomics: The Freakonomics duo tackles climate change — and discovers the limits of cleverness” That had to hurt. I suspect I don’t need to discuss the assessment of the book

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;

BPSDB

“‘Even No One Care of Us, We Can start to Care Each Other and Nature First.’” – from the children of Sidhi Astu Orphanage House, Tuka, Bali, Indonesia, Climate Day of Action

A Number Heard Round the World

Moms Against Climate Change

“how will you know your enemy? by their color or your fear?

one by one, you can cage them in your freedom
make them all disappear“

Stars, Celebration Guns

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

BPSDBThe good news about the US Chamber of Commerce (CoC) and their climate change Denial public relations disaster just keeps rolling in, thanks to … The US Chamber of Commerce.

In August the CoC made a very public demand for political trials of climate change science. This proved to be a public relations “own goal” as the CoC outed itself as a regressive force for ignorance and stupidity. The tail spin just got worse as member corporations and groups began very publicly leaving the CoC accompanied by scathing critiques of the Chamber. Then the Yes Men and Avaaz Action Factory staged a press conference mocking the CoC and all hell broke loose.

Now it seems that having shot themselves in both feet, the CoC has reloaded and is aiming at their knees.

Files for DMCA

After their ineffectual attempts at damage control (here, here the CoC filed for a Digital Millennium Copyright Act take down of the Yes Men’s parody site. This brought the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (and here) into the fray, fighting on behalf of the Yes Men. Unfortunately the take down filing succeeded, but the Yes Men have since relocated the site.

Shades of the Anthony Watts debacle! Far from sweeping the whole affair under the carpet, it has led to a lot more coverage (of course):

• EFF: Chamber of Commerce Takes Aim at Yes Men
• Chamber Unleashes Lawyers on Yes Men
• Chamber of Commerces tries to Ralph Lauren the Yes Men

Sues Yes Men/AAF

Not content to having given the story much more visibility with their DMCA take down, the CoC is now suing the Yes Men and AAF.

“The conduct of those who organized the event was “destructive of public discourse,” the Chamber argues.”

Mother Jones

Really? It seems to me that there is actually a lot more public discourse about the issue as a result of the action. The Yes Men/AAF should be thanked for keeping public discussion of vital issues alive and vibrant instead of them being determined behind closed doors by a handful of insiders … like the CoC wanted.

“Instead, they deliberately broke the law in order to further commercial interest in their books, movies, and other merchandise.”

As Brainspore commented at Boing Boing, “Hot damn, those guys should join the U.S. Chamber of Commerce!”

The flaming hypocrisy has not gone unremarked:

“Of course, it is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other right-wing corporate groups that have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting “public relations hoaxes” to “undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.”

Think Progress

Needless to say this has generated even more media coverage.

• US Chamber of Commerce suing the Yes Men
• Chamber Of Commerce Sues Yes Men Over Climate Change Policy Prank

Stop the Chamber!

The Chamber has always been a potent behind the scenes lobbying force, including climate and clean energy  issues. Recently the CoC has been spending $34,000,000 lobbying last quarter, $300,000 per day (here and here) on climate lobbying alone. Indeed Change to Win claims that the CoC has morphed from a business service organization into a lobbying firm.

Internally they are trying to spin this story with themselves as the victim of viscious attacks by anti-business forces (like Nike and Exelon?). They even have a new fundraising effort (here and here) directed at their shrinking membership.

They even go so far as to say “We need your immediate support to help weather these continued attacks.” Fundraising hyperbole? or are they in real trouble? Will this help raise cash or just serve to remind their membership of this self-inflicted disaster?

Self-inflicted, because in their highly visible call for science trials they tried to do publicly what they have been doing privately for decades. Self–inflicted because they had plenty of warning that this stance was wrong, did not represent the membership,  and would backfire.

And the blowback is awesome! The mainstream coverage has been surprisingly negative towards the CoC, or at least neutral (here and here) even the ones critical of activists have been mild, eg here )

There are now grass roots campaigns calling for:

• the CoC top the climate trial  (here and here)
• Board members to resign; here (reposted here) and here
• Investigation of the CoC; here

while the CoC’s legendary political influence is decidedly waning (and here).

So what next? Needless to say the Chamber is not taking this lying down. They have launched a disingenuous PR campaign reasserting their earlier lies about accepting climate science and the need to find “real solutions.” With any luck this will keep them in the glare of the spotlight, and in that spirit  I sincerely wish this latest effort proves to be as successful as the last few have.

To make Glenn Beck’s head explode?BPSDB

“I really don’t know what I’m talking about, do I?”

Jon Stewart

Well no shit Sherlock! The question is, why not?

The context (nutshell version) is that the new book Superfreaknomics has a chapter on climate change that is scientific gibberish. Not simply wrong, but error riddled nonsense. One of authors was on The Daily Show last night for some slow ball questions, with a nerf ball … and no strikes called … with Stewart both pitching and catching for Levitt.

Brad Johnson has done a very nice summary of the Superfreaknomics issue and the interview here (reposted here and here) The issue has been covered on this blog here, here, and here, while Brian D continues to do an amazing job tracking the many, many critiques here.

If you want to watch the Interview you can see it here for Canada, and here for the United States.

What happened?

As Johnson notes, The Daily Show makes a point of mocking the main stream media for their soft, uncritical interviews and kid glove treatment of  celebrities. My personal favourite is here where they contrast the media’s fawning over then President Bush and his cronies with Oprah’s merciless grilling of author James Fry. 

So why the PR puff piece for Superfreakonomics? why the hypocrisy? The ‘frame’ for the interview is the controversy surrounding the book’s climate change science, so it’s not as though they didn’t know there were problems. Certainly all of the numerous errors and problems are well documented, fully explained, and easily accessible. Presumably they know how to use a search engine.

Despite that, the most penetrating question Stewart manages is “They feel you are betraying environmentalism? why are people so mad?” even as he offers the irrelevant “you’re not denying climate change” Straw Man argument for Levitt. Legitimate, informed critiques of geoengineering are dismissed as “dogmatic” …  by Stewart!

That’s right, Levitt doesn’t even have to BS the interview because Stewart does it for him. From mocking green living to calling climate science “a religion” Stewart sounds like he is reading Levitt’s talking points. Instead of challenging Levitt, Stewart does all of the disinformation and obfuscating for him. Journalism schools could use this as a case study of really appalling interview technique; it’s that bad. As Johnson says, “in this instance, there was nothing funny about Stewart’s inaccuracy.“

To make Glenn Beck’s head explode?

Think about it. What an opportunity for ‘pay back’ by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, or any of the other pundits Jon Stewart has skewered in the past. All they need to do is cover the story accurately while contrasting it to Stewart’s puff piece.

Trouble is, they would have to cover the climate change facts accurately to really expose what an appalling job Stewart did.

Given that most of them have been wallowing in climate change Denierism and that they actually like Superfreakonomics precisely because of it’s inaccuracies, that is not an easy choice. To expose Stewart they would have to expose Superfreakonomics.

Retract everything they ever said about climate to get back at Stewart? or cling to Denierism and take a pass on the chance to really stick it to The Daily Show? Embrace science and trash Stewart? Stay the course and let Stewart walk? I can see Beck’s head exploding given those choices.

Was that Stewart’s motivation? Even as I write this, is Limbaugh’s head spinning so violently it breaks his neck? It’s difficult to imagine why The Daily Show would so shamelessly abandon everything they preach and betray their principles so publicly, and for what?

A commenter on Daily Show Facebook page says ” Why Jon Stewart embraced and rebroadcast it is a mystery. Maybe his iconoclast side won out.” If so, then someone should tell Stewart that Levitt and Dubner have long since become icons, and that he just did an apologia for the status quo as surely as if it had been Cheney or Rumsfeld in the chair.

Regardless of their status, Stewart should not be giving anyone a free ride since it undermines everything he pretends to stand for. Free ride? this was better than free since Stewart did all of the heavy lifting for the book. Maybe the problem is that Stewart has become an icon, or at least mutated into what he first set out to slay.

What victory?

Which forces me to reconsider the question I discussed in “Scary Monsters (And superfreakonomics)“, ie have we accomplished anything by blogging about the book.

My premise was that the actions of numerous bloggers meant that the general public could hardly avoid being made aware of the books numerous errors and disinformation. It seemed a reasonable argument at the time, but less so now.

If The Daily Show is able to practice such willful ignorance despite the easy availability of the facts, what are we to expect from the general public? How are we going to achieve public education when, for whatever reason, even Jon Stewart is propagating such facile nonsense?

Be that as it may, there IS value to making sure that The Daily Show is aware that “we saw what you did there.”  Whether on their forums, their Facebook Page, or anywhere The Daily Show has a presence, let them know what you think of this interview …  and maybe suggest to Bill O’Rielly that they could do a correction piece

UPDATE Oct 29:  See Super Freaky Economist Continues to Mislead on Climate Issues for the Superfreaks latest (USA Today column) attempt to spin their gibberish.

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

BPSDB No, the Yes Men have not punked the Wall Street Journal, although you sure could be forgiven for thinking “Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomics” is a DenialDepot post mocking how extremely braindead and fraudulent climate change Denierism can be.

There’s really nothing in Brett Stephen’s article to suggest that it’s supposed to be serious (cf Poe’s Law). Then again it’s not that surprising, Brett Stephens is definitely not “boldly going where he has never gone before.”

Stephens opens with 6 paragraphs of summary (more or less)  of climate change as it appears in Superfreakonomics, liberally sprinkled with spurious cheap shots at Al Gore and all people who accept actual science and reason.

Then we get to the serious disinformation, errors and lying.  Links to the many  critiques and authors referred to by me may be found here, here and here.

“Mr. Gore, for instance, tells Messrs. Levitt and Dubner that the stratospheric sulfur solution is “nuts.” “

1. Gore said no such thing, Stephens is actually misquoting the book; it’s “people like Al Gore” think “it’s nuts“.
2. Logical fallacy (mis)-attributing to Gore rather than acknowledging the fact that many scientists have serious, science based critiques of the idea
   1. Why Levitt and Dubner like geo-engineering and why they are wrong
   2. The Geoengineering Quandary (In Living Color)

“Former Clinton administration official Joe Romm, who edits the Climate Progress blog, accuses the authors of “[pushing] global cooling myths” and “sheer illogic.“”

1. pretends Romm’s facts based, well documented critiques are just “accusations”;
2. spurious mention of Romm’s background … how does that change the truth of what Romm says?
3. Equally neglects to mention that the critiques by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Krugman (see original) are also well documented and fact based

“In fact, Messrs. Levitt and Dubner show every sign of being careful researchers, going so far as to send chapter drafts to their interviewees for comment prior to publication.”

1. While that shows a certain due diligence wrt to accuracy of the interviews conducted, it is not evidence of having done careful research. Then again, there is no evidence that Stephens actually understands what “research” is. He certainly hasn’t done any for this or any previous article on climate;
2. This is not a substitute for actually refuting the critiques, but then since Stephens scrupulously tries to imply that the critiques were without substance he can hardly now admit that they did make points that require refuting or conceding.

“Nor are they global warming “deniers,” insofar as they acknowledge that temperatures have risen by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.”

1. No one had accused them of ‘denying climate change’; it was Levitt who first pretended that they had as a way of evading responding to the real criticisms. Their critics merely documented at length and in detail the numerous glaring errors, false claims, and outright fabrications in the work;
2. “not challenging” means nothing when you then indulge in all of the distortions and fabrications noted in 1.) cf ’some of my best friends …’
3. ”not challenging” is a totally disingenuous claim to avoid taking responsibility for the things mentioned in i) as discussed in “Superfreakonomic-expialidocious “I did not deny climate change with that woman!” ”
   They should either refute the criticisms with credible science or acknowledge their many egregious errors.

From there Stephens repeats the “climate science is religion” meme

Question to Stephens, why is our “religion” based on tens of thousands of scientific studies, while your “science” is based on lies and frauds? Just thought I’d ask.

and then just regurgitates a bunch of the errors from the book as if they were facts and had not already been exposed as nonsense (as mentioned above, here, here and here).

We then get a few paragraphs repeating the delusion that geo-engineering can “solve” climate change, as above, NOT:

1. Why Levitt and Dubner like geo-engineering and why they are wrong
2. The Geoengineering Quandary (In Living Color)

He sums up with a totally irrelevant reference to Marxism (and here Frankbi thought he was out-idioting the Deniers … sorry Frank, as per Poe’s Law, it can’t be done), and the following confession to delusions of adequacy

“my sincere apologies to the authors for an endorsement that will surely give their critics another cartridge of ammunition“

No fear Brett, you’ve said nothing, there is absolutely nothing here to use as ammunition. For content you have created the intellectual perfect vacuum. And regardless, we would not hold Levitt and Dubner responsible for your inability to be honest or write a coherent article, so no worries on that score.

The only remaining enigma is how it is that someone who embraces an ideology that requires such pathetic lies and distortions to prop it up, manages to get through a day. That is a huge superfreaking mystery.

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

IMAGE CREDITS:

Mr Potato Head by Bud_Spencer

Mr. Potato Head by SheWatchedTheSky

Mr. Potato Head. by sleepjunky

Mr Potato Head by choctruffle

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

BPSDB“WASHINGTON — Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.

Only one problem: It’s not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press (for full story).”

Nice! Of course the climate science and science blogs have been saying so all along, repeatedly (below), but this independent AP story can be nothing but good news for the fact based, rational world.

[UPDATE 22:30 EST The APS story has +100,000 search engine hits already - wonderful! Kudos to Seth Borenstein]

Some discussions of this story (honestly? I post a link, reload the search and find that yet another blog is covering it. No fear … this one can’t get too much coverage).

• Myth of Cooling Globe shattered by AP-sponsored ‘blind’ test
• Statisticians Confirm: No Global Cooling Despite Skeptic Spin
• Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling
• “Global cooling” scam debunked yet again
• High-quality AP journalism shatters myth of recent global cooling

Given that, I am satisfied to document (and recognize) that the issue has been well covered for a very long time, and the continued willful ignorance on the part of the climate change Deniers is deliberate disinformation, but then what part of the Denier Canon isn’t?

Recent climate blogs

• Why global warming isn’t taking a break
• A warming pause?
• “Global warming stopped in 1998″
• NYT’s Revkin pushes global cooling myth (again!) and repeats outright misinformation.
• Has global warming really stopped?
• Claims of a Decade of Cooling Refuted By Analysis Showing It Warmest by Fair Margin
• Why the 1998-2008 Temperature Trend Doesn’t Mean a Whole Lot
• New GW denialists’ deceptive lie on global temperatures

Of course, as discussed on this blog:

• the only way there could be no inter-annual variation is if the Earth were literally flat in every respect “Climate Deniers literally are “Flat Earthers””
• every peak year is followed by a slightly cooler period “Global Warming is over! once every decade or so …“

Global Warming ends every decade or so ...

On this blog

• Global Cooling: proof that summer 2008 never happened!
• Global Warming? why is it so freaking cold?
• “Global Cooling” myth gets fried
• Global Warming is Over … Again
• Deniers Prove Staircases are Level!

And more

• Yes, Global Warming is Real and it’s Still Happening
• Earth to Jacoby: I Got Your Global Warming Right Here
• What Bob Carter and Andrew Bolt fail to grasp:”…
• Yes, the planet has kept warming since 1998
• The 1998 cherry pick
• Yes, the data show the planet STILL keeps warming
• Mind the Gap!
• “Climate sceptics have their head in the sand“
• New media same as the old media. Politico pimps global cooling
• Myth ” Temperatures plummeted in 2008″ proves global cooling
• Climate myths: Global warming stopped in 1998
• Did global warming stop in 1998?
• Temperatures are continuing to rise
• Collected debunking of “Seven Graphs”
• The Stupid Cult of Cooling and the Goyder Line debate
• Global Cooling-Wanna Bet?
• The Global Cooling Bet – Part 2
• Richard Lindzen claims global warming stopped in 1998
• Most bizarre Denier claim: “Global warming stopped in 1998″.
• Stop me if you’ve heard this before
• Global warming greatest in past decade
• Northern Hemisphere Sets 1300 Year Climate Warming Record
• Why Tim Ball is Wrong
• What the IPCC models really say

As I said, it’s not news to anyone who knows even basic climate change facts …

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

“When I looked in her eyes they were blue,

but nobody home”BPSDB

I thought I was done with this particular tar baby and would just leave it to Brian to keep track of the ongoing discussion of Superfreakonomics, but like others (eg here and here) I just can’t seem to shake it off. Actually there are some good reasons to revisit it, so please bear with me … or jump right to “what you can do.”

• He’s right

• It’s bad, seriously bad

• Popular sentiment

• Why it matters

• What you can do

He’s right

An interesting exchange took that took place on a forum a couple of days ago raised an important question generally, but with reference to Superfreaknonomics specifically. As is too often the case the more general discussion will have to wait while we deal with the Superfreaks.

On the forum in question Michael Tobis suggested that the blogosphere had a qualified victory with Superfreakonomics in managing to get the factual message ‘out there.’  Robert Grumbine quite reasonably asks  “But just what has been achieved?”

My take on it is, he’s right (cf Tevye).

I do believe we have managed to achieve something, while also agreeing with Grumbine that we need to understand exactly what, and what it means. The baseline for judging whether we have “achieved something” was the ‘do nothing’ scenario. I agree with Michael Tobis that saying nothing would have be taken as de facto accepting the Superfreakonomics version of climate science as credible. That was not an acceptable possibility.

I think it is also fair and reasonable to also ask what we might have done instead, and what effect that may have had. Not that I have any ideas, but you never get ideas for alternatives if you don’t ask yourself every time.

I certainly don’t believe that we have hurt book sales. At best we may have shifted them somewhat, probably even helped sell more books since controversy never hurts sales.

What we have achieved is that when people search the internet for the book title the front page of the search gets at least some articles that are critical of it. Not enough of them, and not in the top 5 hits, but at least some are on the front page. The average person stands a reasonable chance of being made aware the the book has significant problems with it’s treatment of climate.

It’s bad, seriously bad

The climate chapter of the book is bad …  really bad. The detailed critiques abound (and as discussed before) so I won’t repeat them; just to note that we’re not talking a few casual errors or some minor misinformation, we’re talking full on ignorance.

How bad? like actually using Happer as an alleged credible source and consequently screwing up 200 year old science that you can find in How and Why Wonder Books for ages 10 and up. … That bad.  Adam Siegel captures it very well with “the truthiness-laden pages of Superfreakonomics“; ie there are not that many outright falsehoods per se, but the parsing and presentation are carefully constructed as to leave the naive reader far more ignorant and misinformed than they had been.

Over at Deltoid Hank Roberts brings up an important point in Superfreakonomics defense, sort of.

““The only significant error,” he [Caldeira] wrote to Romm, “is the line: ‘carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.’ That is just wrong and I never would have said it. On the other hand, I f&@?ed up. They sent me the draft and I approved it without reading it carefully and I just missed it. … I think everyone operated in good faith, and this was just a mistake that got by my inadequate editing.” If that’s accurate…”

Hank Roberts

If it’s accurate then it does muddy the issue somewhat.  Since Caldeira”never would have said it” it begs the question as to where they got their version of Caldeira’s views from, and whether they were knowingly misrepresenting him.

On the other hand they do seem to have exercised due diligence in offering it to Caldeira for comment, and they cannot be faulted for not making a correction that no one asked for.

—-

UPDATE: 19:40 EST. OK, it’s even more complicated and nuanced than that … you judge “Caldeira explains the “right villain” episode”

—-

Romm has kept up the pressure:

• Coauthor of Superfreakonomics apologizes to me
• Myhrvold jumps the shark — and jumps ship on Superfreakonomics
• Interviews support my reporting on Superfreakonomics

Two critiques of the authors “rebuttal” that I shouldn’t have missed (can’t read everything):

• Superfreaking lame response on global cooling issue
• Superfreaks latest defense: they weren’t answering the most important question about climate change

The upshot seems to be that it’s contrarianism for it’s own sake, and not particularly well done contrarianism at that:

Levitt and Dubner just parachute into the field of climate science and offer some lazy punditry on the subject dressed up as “contrarianism.” There’s no original research. There’s nothing bold or explosive. It’s just garden-variety ignorance.

Bradford Plumer, “Does “Superfreakonomics” Need A Do-Over?“

• Superfreakonomics: How did they get climate change so wrong?
• Contrarianism without consequences
• Rules for Contrarians: 1. Don’t whine. That is all

Popular sentiment

On the plus side sites that do not typically discuss climate change are talking about it, and some of it is good (eg Superfreakonomics Panned For Getting Global Warming 100% Wrong). The axiom that any publicity is good publicity cuts both ways.

On the minus side, on too many sites it is not in an intelligent or informed discussion.

Take Are You A Real Scientist? Find Out Now! for example; amusing enough in it’s way, with the humourous flow chart and all, but it’s the usual climate change Denier fraud of pretending that the few dozen industry shills and cranks who propagate blatant frauds are somehow “real scientists”, whereas the millions who actually do climate research and/or base their conclusions on actual science are merely Al Gore puppets. For all I know this site may even be a generally intelligent one (I barely skimmed the other posts to ensure it was not a typical Denier site), but on the climate issue as seen in Superfreakonomics it is pure mis-informed Denierism.

Or “Eggheads Get All Riled Up Over Global-Warming Theories in SuperFreakonomics“; you can tell where that is going. Not  ’scientists’ (credible), but “Eggheads” (nerdy idiots). Not ‘object to obvious errors and misrepresentations’ (reasonable), but “Get All Riled Up” (irrational). Not ‘climate change science’ (fact based), but “Global-Warming Theories” (speculation). The actual article is not so bad and not nearly the hack job that the title would suggest, but I’ll bet it’s the tone of the title that it’s readers remember.

And then there are those who not only think that they now understand climate change, but that there is a cheap and effective solution. “Superfreaky solution to global warming” pretty much tells you what the article itself says, with absolutely no awareness of the huge problems and risks involved. How could they know? the book certainly doesn’t address them intelligently.

In the “more intelligent and informed” department we have things like Yoram Bauman (here and here) which is critical of Superfreakonomics and his articles are getting positive attention (eg here).  Yglesias praises Bauman as he “avoids attacking the superfreaks with any kind of strong language, name-calling, imputations of bad faith, or, indeed, real sense of urgency.” Most of that is positive, but the latter, the lack of a “real sense of urgency” is both accurate and a concern. The trouble is that these critiques are … well …  tepid.

The fact is that anyone not familiar with climate science is unlikely to appreciate just how inexcusably bad the chapter is. For the most part the problems are things that a bright high school senior should be expected to have gotten right, so it’s a shock that Dubner and Levitt got them so wrong.

I can see it leaving the public wondering if it isn’t a tempest in a teapot. It is so easy for people to fall into the mindset of ‘Bold new visionaries’ that the authors are, what does it matter that they got ‘a few details wrong’? It’s the Catch 22 of it not seeming important if you don’t ‘yell’, and sounding hysterical if you do. As an aside I have to wonder how much “name calling” and “bomb throwing” there would be if something this appallingly stupid had been written about economics.

Needless to say, the Denialosphere is having a field day as Deltoid documents in “What Do Superfreakonomics And Senator Inhofe Have In Common? No surprises there, but it adds to the noise that to the uninformed can seem as if the book has some credible support. How is the average person to know that Senator Laughing Stock from Hee Haw and Patrick Michaels are not credible sources for the time of day, much less climate science?

Why it matters

“Why does this matter? Because there’s a titanic battle going on over whether and how to reduce carbon emissions, and this soon-to-be bestseller tries to convince people that we don’t need to do so.”

Eric Pooley, Freakonomics Guys Flunk Science of Climate Change

“Remember the tobacco lobby tactics ? “Doubt is our product” was their motto and modus operandi. The Superfreakers build doubt about the Science of Climate Change into their presentation right from the start.”

Jo Abess, Superfreakonomics – Ooh Baby !

["Where there's smoke, the climate change Denial lobby" for more on climate Denierism and the tobacco lobby.]

Tom Olson compares Superfreaks (very unfavourably) to Katharine Hayhoe’s upcoming “A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions.” No doubt, but let’s face it, what are the respective readerships going to be like? In his review Tim Harford noted that “In the end, a book such as SuperFreakonomics stands or falls on its entertainment value. And on that count, there’s no doubt: it’s a page-turner.” There’s the rub, many more people are going to read Superfreakonomics than intelligent discussions of climate a science.

Make no mistake, I’d love everyone to read it if they understood the basic science. There’s nothing like reading Denier dreck to really appreciate just how appallingly vacuous and idiotic the Deniers are.

Unfortunately many of those who read Superfreakonomics are going to be left with the impression that they actually learned something. In fact they would have learned more and better science from a kiddy site, but they won’t realize that.

Which brings me back to my original point, that we need to make sure that people are seeing the critiques of the book so that they at least know that the content should be regarded with suspicion (ie actual skepticism, what a concept!).

What you can do

When it comes to moving a post up in the search engines, links matter – a lot. Pick one or more of the critiques that you particularly like (or one of the compendiums) and get the some link out there. You can do this by:

• posting them to a blog or site if you have one;
• tweeting them;
• share them on social networks like  Facebook and on forums;
  
• voting them up on any news sharing site that allow voting (eg Science &/or Earthblips, Stumble, Buzz, Digg, Care2, Reddit, etc;
• posting them to one or more of the above sites if they are not already there.

It matters, it really does, so please do it for at least one article by anyone that you liked (it also helps people to discover your favourite blogs – you will be doing some people a favour). Take two minutes right now and do it … please? 

UPDATE: Freakonomics comes in for some more well deserved flack in the Associated Press global cooling story posted here.

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 364 … still no evidence.

IMAGE CREDITS:

super freak eyes by Magalie L’Abbé

All my girls by rustykeller

Voldemort should see a dentist by kevindooley

170809-095 CPS by hha124l

home oxygen mask by Yankee November

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

BPSDBIn acknowledging the Woody Guthrie Award, Dan manages to weave together some of his own personal history, as well as Guthrie’s, anthropogenic climate change, and the struggles of the 1930s that inspired and motivated so much of Guthrie’s music, all in just a few short paragraphs!

Now that’s story telling! … he does Guthrie proud.

BPSDBIt has been almost a month since Honestpoet did me the singular honour of making me the recipient of the Woody Guthrie Award (presented to A Thinking Blogger). I am very late in acknowledging this honour and making the presentation to another blog for several reasons, one of them being the timing of my absence discussed under Houskeeping).

Another reason would be that I am a social coward. When asked to pick between two people I have been known to feign death rather than admit to a preference.  Receiving the award was humbling, but it also threw me into a panic. The third, related reason is that

I am in Awe of you

All of you who blog for climate and social justice. Your passion, commitment, knowledge, insight, creativity and basic insanity humbles me every day.

How to pick one of the many? I like so many of your efforts (including the many that I have yet to acknowledge with a link or inclusion in my hopelessly out of date blogroll), each for it’s own reason(s).

This one for the freshness of the ideas, another for it’s thorough research, one for covering the latest stories, another for deeper analysis, this one for it’s sober academic approach, the next for it’s quirkiness, another for it’s heartfelt rage, yet another precisely because it’s from an diametrically opposed political view from my own. And so on.

And that is just the climate blogs, never mind the others that I try to read when I can. How to compare them? Apples and oranges? we’re talking Goldfinches vs screwdrivers! Yes I am a ditherer, but I also take this quite seriously. I not only truly in awe of so many of you, I am also a major Woody Guthrie fan, so this is no trivial matter.

Calumet: The Copper Miners’ Strike & Massacre of 1913

Having determined that I was not in any position to change my name and flee the country I started winnowing down the list. After much thought and careful consideration I was still left with far too many. I then feigned death for a few hours, but even that didn’t help. Finally I put the names into a spreadsheet and used the good old ‘=rand()‘ function.

Cheating? Maybe, but I honestly believe that so many of you deserve recognition for your awesome efforts.  I hope Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal will not think less of the honour for my having gone this route, but rather shares my belief that it has been difficult because he is in the company of giants.

Why Dan’s? It’s definitely a “science blog” with occasional forays into politics and ‘other’, Dan’s Journal is solid science told with clear, conversational writing and lots of good graphics. In fact what has impressed me is his ability to find some stunning graphics that really drive home the point he is making, like this image of the Sept 2009 temperature anomalies

or the 30 trend in Northern Hemisphere sea ice anomalies. Truly pictures that are worth a thousand words.

That, and he authored “What Do Climate Scientists Think About Senator Laughing Stock?“¹, and also really pissed off Denver Weather Examiner and climate Denier Tony Hake; what’s not to love?

So there you go Dan, you’re the (hopefully) proud recipient of the Woody Guthrie Award for A Thinking Blogger. Now it’s your turn to name another worthy recipient, and try to be prompt about it please .

And sincere gratitude to Honestpoet for the honour, and to all of you who made this decision so hard by making the blogosphere so rich. You truly are the common working stiffs building the the internet information railway

… keep on doing please.

¹Note to Dan, your Maher link is dead, here’s one that works.

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 362 … still no evidence.

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

BPSDB

One of the great challenges in any social justice activism is that the ultimate goal is, practically speaking, impossible.  Whether we are talking about ending poverty or human trafficking, stopping climate change or saving the whales, any sort of realistic analysis says that they are unattainable goals that are beyond ridiculous.

Needless to say contemplating the obvious futility of one’s efforts is not the most uplifting way to spend time. Indeed it often very quickly leads to despair and apathy.

In considering whether to participate in the International Day of Climate Action tomorrow, there are plenty of reasons to consider doing nothing. The Day of Action is mean to build momentum towards the Copenhagen meetings, but isn’t that more or less a lost cause? There are certainly plenty of good reasons to think so.

At least once a day in Zen practice we chant the Four Bodhisattva Vows:

Beings are numberless; I vow to awaken with them.
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.
Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to become it.

(other versions)

Every day one is literally required to believe at least four impossible things before breakfast. I find the structure of the vows interesting in that each vow is preceded by a declaration of how ludicrously unattainable the goal is. One is essentially saying ‘it’s impossible, I vow to do it’, which is about as irrational as it gets.

There is not even an acknowledgment of the essential futility of the goal, no qualifying ‘even so’; just ‘I vow to do it.’ But as the Buddhist Master Ajahn Chah illustrated, it is not necessary that you believe it, just that you do it.

Of course Zen has no monopoly on impossible aspirations. Every faith tradition has them in both the great sense ie overarching universal goals, and for every day life eg never lying, or loving your neighbour as thyself, etc. I believe every faith tradition also fully understands that they are impossible to achieve, so now go out and do them.

And there is the paradox for activists. Our sense of futility is both real and reasonable, but

No one has the right to sit down and feel hopeless. There’s too much work to do.

Dorothy Day

So how does one resolve this contradiction? As ever, reality is complex and nuanced, and I believe there are multiple elements to the answer.

Everything worth doing is unrealistic. or at least seems to be. Anyone who seriously evaluates their chances of being an Olympic gold medalist before starting down that path has to conclude that it’s hopeless, yet every 2 years many people achieve that goal. As the Adidas ads say, “Impossible is nothing!”

It is also a matter of perspective in at least two ways, historical, and as to the real purpose and significance of the goal.

On thing to note about historical struggles is that success often came suddenly and unexpectedly. In almost every case when you look at the situation even a couple of years before success we find that things looked fairly hopeless. Whether the fall of the Berlin Wall or the end of official apartheid in South Africa, activists were as surprised as everyone else. Perhaps that is the reason that one veteran of the apartheid struggle remains optimistic about climate change:

“In South Africa, we showed that if we act on the side of justice, we have the power to turn tides. Worldwide, we have a chance to start turning the tide of climate change with just such a concerted effort today.”

Desmond Tutu, “Unity doomed apartheid. Next up: climate change“

Dark as the climate struggle may seem now, we cannot know what will happen next year, or in five years. Two years ago the US was undermining every attempt at international cooperation, now they are talking about making significant cuts in their own CO2 emissions. Too little and too late, but even that was considered a pipe dream until quite recently, so what will the next year or two bring?

Recently China and India became the new bogie men of carbon emissions with their growing economies and huge populations. Conventional wisdom had it that any climate action was futile without their participation, and that just wasn’t going to happen.

Except now they have signed a treaty of cooperation for action to reduce greenhouse gases.

Drew Jones describes a scenario where meaningful reductions in greenhouse gases seem not merely possible, but almost inevitable:

tth Living Climate Change

Maybe the aspirations at Hopenhagen are not so far fetched (be sure to add your voice). Will it work out that way? probably not, but we don’t know how it will work out if we act, only how it will end if we don’t.

The impossible aspirations are a shortcut to get us taking action now. If we sit back and learn everything we have to know to truly understand the issues we will die of old age before we have our answer. Nothing would ever be achieved if we waited for reasonable certainty. If it is the right thing to do and the goal actually is achievable it is necessary to act now.

Every struggle has a long history of people working towards the goal. If we look back on  those that succeeded (eg women’s sufferage) we have to acknowledge that many who worked towards that goal never lived to see it. Indeed many died without seeing any visible progress at all.

That they somehow found the courage and strength to persist is a miracle to be forever grateful for, because without their foundational work the subsequent progress and eventual victory would not have been possible. They had no way to know, just as we have no way to know. We cannot know if our work will lead to success, but we do know that if we do not try the goal will most certainly never be attained.

That is the equation of hope. Inaction guarantees failure, action makes hope possible.

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.”

Raymond Williams

That is your job as an activist, to make hope possible. For others, even for yourself, especially for yourself. Indeed hope is only possible when you act. It is by your action that you realize that the goal may actually be achievable. Nothing else will do it.

The person who tries to decide whether they can live without lying, or devoted to nonviolence, or without a car, will never know. The one who lives another day having done it starts to think it might be possible. Reducing one’s CO2 footprint by becoming vegetarian is inconceivable. Actually doing it is fairly straightforward and not that hard.

There is also the question of what function do these goals serve. Are they even meant to be achievable? or to serve as guides to get us traveling in the right direction? Think of the North Star, a navigational guide for millennia that got people where they needed to be. Did any of them think they were actually ever going to ‘arrive’ at the North Star?

In the same vein impossible aspirations may guide us to making the world a better, if not perfect place. We may not end poverty, but we may end it for some and lessen it for others. Surely that is worth achieving even if it is not as inspiring a goal as ending all poverty.

Most importantly, the outcomes as we conceive them may not matter at all. Perhaps the clearest example would be that of palliative care. The terminally ill are dying and nothing we do will change that, but we still recognize the importance of care. That the dying do so with dignity, comfort and love, matters.

It is the right thing to do. For them, for ourselves. A world in which there are no whales may or may not be one worth living in. A world in which whales are not loved passionately is definitely not worth living in. Ditto one in which people do not fight for justice, to stop racism, and so on.

John Daido Loori, Roshi (June 14, 1931 – October 9, 2009)

The enemy is indifference, not caring. Our struggles may not ever create the world we dream of, but by struggling we do create a world in which there is love and hope. That is achieved the moment we act, and only by acting can we achieve it.

The paradox is that if it’s not impossible, it’s probably not worth devoting your life to. By acting we may not stop climate change or any of the other injustices that we struggle against, but we will have created a world where love and hope are still alive, a world worth living in. We will have saved our own lives by making them worth living.

So tomorrow go out and take action. Even though what you fight for is impossible, even though it may be utterly futile, do it with full sincerity and commitment, do it filled with love for all that is worth loving. The outcome doesn’t matter, what matters is that love.

for LadyHawk

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 362 … still no evidence.

IMAGE CREDITS:

bamboo sketch by floating ink

oryoki bowl on the back of typing by floating ink

Cicada 1 by floating ink

Feather bowls by floating ink

Dragonfly by floating ink

John Daido Loori, Roshi by floating ink

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

BPSDBThe US Chamber of Commerce (CoC) disrupted a Yes Men /Avaaz Action Factory press conference on Monday as part of an elaborate prank meant to distract attention from the Chamber’s regressive and ignorant stance on climate issues. Some have suggested that it was the Yes Men who were pranking the US Chamber of Commerce (here and here) rather than the other way around. However, given that the Yes Men’s climate policies (full text of speech here and discussed here) are reality based and rational, whereas the CoC’s are obviously an irrational comic farce, that really doesn’t sound very credible (see also here).

Chamber of Hope

For me one of the most hopeful signs that we might be starting to take climate seriously is the plight of the US Chamber of Commerce after it’s most recent episode of climate change Denial. There are three elements to the CoC story that I find to be very hopeful

1. The Yes Men action was credible

2. Corporate flight from the CoC

3. Fallout and CoC’s attempts at damage control

The Yes Men action was credible

The Yes Man action (NB using the word “prank” trivializes this legitimate political action, so even though it conveys a positive spirit of fun I prefer to avoid it) was found to be credible enough that it took in The New York Times, Reuters and CNBC, and subsequently others (eg Fox Business Network and Scientific American).

If you think about it, this suggests a fairly significant shift in the broader social belief about what is possible. Even a couple of years ago such an about face by the CoC would have been considered so improbable as to require thorough fact checking. That at least some major and generally credible organizations thought the story to be believable enough to be taken at face value is a pretty impressive change in what we believe are the cultural and social norms.

This is one of the most important ‘invisible’ aspects of any social change. Before a change can happen a society must be able to imagine that it could, and apparently this is starting to occur.

Further, the coverage of the CoC itself has been neutral to unsympathetic, even by the very agencies that got hoaxed. Absent from the reporting the has been portrayals of the Yes Men as some form of eco-terrorists or nutbars.

Instead much of the reporting cites the corporate defections from the CoC (below) and the “Scopes Monkey Trial” Meme which the CoC has been so desperately trying to distance itself from (eg The Washington Post).

Not so surprising given that the CoC spokeperson in the video above (worth watching) promises to speak for the CoC on climate issues, and then refuses to answer any questions about the CoC and climate. In that sense I wonder if breaking up the event like that was not something of an own goal?

Corporate flight

Who left

Ever since the CoC put out a call for political trials on climate science corporations have been distancing themselves from the CoC to the point of leaving the agency.

• Mohawk Paper Joins Chamber of Commerce Exodus
• Apple Becomes Latest Company to Abandon U.S. Chamber Over Climate
• Nike Resigns From The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Board Of Directors Over Global Warming Disagreements
• Energy giant Exelon quits Chamber over climate denial
• Exelon Latest to Leave US Chamber of Commerce; Is Nike Next?
• Pacific Gas & Electric Company Leaves U.S. Chamber of Commerce Over Its Global Warming Denialism
• Levi Strauss & Co

While the CoC has attempted to portray the losses from their ranks as representing only a tiny fraction of their overall membership, the truth is rather different. For one thing the actual CoC membership is only a fraction of what they claim (here, here and here).

While the Chambers total head count may not be much affected by the firms that have left, these businesses are huge and the loss in terms of economic and political clout is significant.

Further, these are just the ones that we have heard about. Apple will make the news when it leaves, Irene’s Hardware won’t. Certainly local Chanbers of Commerce are leaving, have there been more bailouts by smaller businesses? who knows other than the CoC? and you can bet that they won’t tell.

These are not empty policy statements, this is real action by the corporations in question. Granted there is no direct cost to the firms, and presumably even some PR benefit, but the fact remains that they are leaving the largest and what used to be the most effective business lobby in the US. In that sense there is a very real cost to these actions, and that they are happening is quite significant (see also “Exit through lobby“)

How and why they left

The companies that are abandoning the CoC are doing so proudly, sending out press releases and statements announcing their departure and the reasons for it.

“We believe that our continued membership in an organization that vigorously opposes sensible climate change policies is detrimental to our position as a business leader with a strong record in the areas of environmental innovation and climate protection,”

George F. Milner, Mohawk’s Senior VP, Energy, Environmental, and Government Affairs.

“I think the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t act in in the best interest of business. … I think it’s a reputational risk to be associated with the chamber, given their behavior.”

Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder, executive chairman,  Seventh Generation

“The carbon-based free lunch is over. But while we can’t fix our climate problems for free, the price signal sent through a cap-and-trade system will drive low-carbon investments in the most inexpensive and efficient way possible,” said Rowe. “Putting a price on carbon is essential, because it will force us to do the cheapest things, like energy efficiency, first.”

John Rowe, Exelon CEO

There is also outspoken criticism of the CoC by some of it’s remaining membership, such as Johnson & Johnson and General Electric.

In contrast, there does not seem to be any line ups of corporate entities eager to declare their solidarity and support for the CoC’s stand. No doubt there are many who are quite happy with it, even some who feel it does not go far enough, but they aren’t drawing attention to it.

I guess they assume that declaring support would just draw fire and they would rather that the CoC take the flack. Thankfully that’s not going to work as people are confronting the CoC membership about where they stand on the CoC’s actions:

Meanwhile 43 investor groups, representing billions in holdings, have together asked many firms to distance themselves from the Chamber’s position.

Fallout and CoC’s damage control

So far the CoC is taking a ‘stand firm/stay the course‘ position, while attempting to maintain the fiction that they are seeking “real solutions” to the climate crisis.

Of the Yes Men action

“Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change,” Thomas Collamore, a spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.

“These irresponsible tactics are a foolish distraction from the serious effort by our nation to reduce greenhouse gases.”

The Chamber is seeking legitimate solutions to climate change? The CoC has a long history of Denial (here, here and here) and the most recent efforts are nothing less than an attempt to smother any meaningful action by the US Government (here and here). Even the business community calls “bullshit!”

‘ … an intellectually honest argument over the best policy response to the challenges of climate change is one thing; disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of these challenges are quite another. Unfortunately, it is difficult to read the Chamber’s latest maneuvers on this issue as anything but the latter“

Peter Darbee, PG&E chairman and CEO

CoC President and CEO Tom Donohue claims that “almost nobody is pressing us to change our position.” Really? in that case why has the CoC sent out a letter and created a web page beginning

“We understand that you may have received e-mails, letters and others communications from various groups asking your organization to end its association with the U.S. Chamber.”

in which they characterise their opponents as “…trial lawyers, activist unions, environmental extremists, …” FYI David Chavern, Chief Operating Officer, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the ones who think you are regressive morons are main stream scientists, the EPA, investor groups, your current and former membership (here and here), local Chambers of Commerce (and here and here), and members of your own Board.

… hardly environmental extremists by any measure other than Glenn Beck’s and the equally clueless. And clueless the CoC Executive seems to be, clearly misunderstanding just how the battle lines are drawn on this issue.

The truth is that the climate change issue has left the CoC in a shambles. Not just internal dissention about the policy, but even how the policy was determined. Mainstream media is reporting on the CoC in terms like “… increasingly shrill, doom-saying opposition to climate change legislation …” (“Chamber of overstated horrors“) and “Unfortunately for Tom [Donohue] , the world is finally catching on to his game.”(“Defections Expose Chamber’s Dirty Little Secrets“) (more here).

The New Yorker and even Business Week are questioning the CoC’s legitimacy. There are campaigns to pressure businesses to clarify where they stand on the CoC’s position (here)  and to take action to pressure the CoC.

More is sure to follow.

The Chamber of Commerce is pretending to be outraged by the Yes Men/Avaaz “Hoax” and say they will ask police to investigate. As a number of people are noting, it is the Chamber that have been hoaxing the public for years with their lies about climate change.

I would add that it is they who are the criminals. They want police and a trial? Let’s indulge them, because they definitely need to be investigated and be put on trial.

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 360 … still no evidence.

IMAGE CREDITS:

House of Commons Chamber: Speaker’s table by UK Parliament

House of Commons Chamber by UK Parliament

House of Lords Chamber by UK Parliament

The Chamber of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia by scazon

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

First, HUGE thanks to S2 for minding the store while I have been lost where ever it was that I was lost (below). Particularly as the absence turned out to be much longer than planned.

Also an interesting lesson learned … I have been futilely trying to recruit guest bloggers for many months, and it turns out that all I really had to do was disappear; who knew?

Lost?

A planned absence of a week or so extended because:

1. I’m an idiot, and catching up with everything once I return invariably takes much longer than anticipated;
2. Apparently when there is  a break for whatever reason I find that I extend it to catch up with things that get neglected when I am full on blogging (dishes, laundry, life etc);
3. I also pretend that I am going to clean up the backlog of links and reading, but in fact I invariably make it worse as I wander the the climate blogosphere;
4. My ancient computer is dying, seriously dying. I am getting a new one and it will arrive someday, but in the meantime this one  continues to randomly die which could mean more disappearances in the next little while;
5. My internet access stopped, and I assumed it was related to #4) above. After working on it for almost 2 days I discovered that the problem was my ISP … but by this point it Fri eve at 7 PM, before the long weekend … ir no one at the ISP office. All told sorting that out took almost another week, sending me back to #1).

Mike

BPSDBA week ago Joseph Romm fired the opening salvo in what became a hail of criticism of the forthcoming book “Superfreakonomics” by  Levitt and Dubner, particularly the climate change chapter which had been circulating on the web (albeit probably illicitly). Now the authors  have begun to reply to their critics, or at least put out what they claim is a reply … or as Only in it for the Gold put it “The authors, Dubner and Levitt, are busily jumping the shark …”

I was late in making it to the freak show and had not actually read any of the critiques when the authors began to reply.  As such I thought it would be interesting to discuss their reply rather than the climate chapter itself, particularly given the rather through treatment it has been getting (below). Thus I have read the critiques and the relevant parts of the book only after Levitt or Dubner framed it first.

Levitt begins his defense in The Rumors of Our Global-Warming Denial Are Greatly Exaggerated by emphasizing that the book “isn’t even on sale yet“, that critics are attacking it “before they’d even read the book“, “attacks on our chapter about global warming are already underway“, and “The bottom line is that the foundation of these attacks is essentially fraudulent.”  Sure sounds like a reasonable point to make in their defense, that the critiques are uninformed and speculative …  except of course it’s totally disingenuous.

The climate change chapter has been circulating on the web and the criticisms are clearly based on it, in most cases using direct quotes and page references. To suggest (without explicitly stating it) that people have not read the work is transparently false, albeit a technique the authors seem to favour.

Further, while the book itself may not be out, the authors have been going around doing interviews with titles like “Superfreakonomics: Everything you know about Global Warming is wrong” where they are said to be claiming a number of patently outrageous things such as CO2 not being the main culprit and implying that the most recent post-peak cooler phase is somehow more significant than every other one that has followed a peak year.

Levitt’s answer? ‘We are not climate change Deniers!’ Ummm, hate to tell you, but that’s not a response to specific criticisms. In fact it dodges them completely while pretending to having somehow addressed them, as if by that statement we are to understand they accept the very scientific facts that they are implying are wrong.

All told this initial retort is no more than a promise to thoroughly address the critics later while dodging the real questions and giving incomplete and out of context information. Not a promising start.

The follow-up Global Warming in SuperFreakonomics: The Anatomy of a Smear by Dubner continues where Levitt left off, in style and substance (or rather, lack of it) at least. The section “What we actually say in the book” does just that, restate certain points from the book that by and large do not address the specific criticisms, but instead simply talk around them.

Specific rebuttals are even worse. Debner says “If someone interprets our brief mention of the global-cooling scare of the 1970’s as an assertion of “a scientific consensus that the planet was cooling,” that feels like a willful misreading.”

I call bullshit. Reading the chapter in question (yes, I managed to get a copy, which I am happily deleting once this piece is done) there is no way a naive reader would interpret what they write as anything but suggesting that there had been a consensus on global cooling in the 1970s, even though the authors do not explicitly say so in so many words.

In what is typical Denier fashion they begin with some media anecdotes about global cooling and then state “what these scientists were talking about.” Not “a few” or “some” scientists, but an indeterminate “these scientists.” Yes, it is strictly true that the statement is referring only to those referenced earlier, but in the absence of any qualifiers or clarifications one is left with the impression that “these scientists” is somehow representative of broader opinion.

A few paragraphs later we learn that “These days, of course, the threat is the opposite” (pg 166) without any qualification about the difference between the science then and now. The authors are clearly juxtaposing and equating the fringe, speculative 1970s global cooling science with the current evidence based consensus on anthropogenic climate change. It does not take a deliberate misreading to arrive at this conclusion. The authors are clearly being deliberately obtuse while leaving room for the plausible deniability that Dubner is disingenuously invoking.

And on it goes;

Criticism, ‘the views of Caldeira have been misrepresented’

Response, “we asked Myhrvold, Caldeira, Wood, and others to review the first draft of our chapter and give us any and all feedback and corrections. We incorporated many of their suggestions into our next draft“

Again they are dodging the question; that is not a response to the criticism even though it is pretending to be. Did you misrepresent Caldeira or not? provide evidence!

Now it is true that the bulk of the chapter is about how to respond to climate change, and Levitt and others have more or less argued that ’so what does it matter if there are some minor errors in the lead up.’ Well:

1. the errors aren’t minor;
2. How you define a problem dictates the possible answers;
3. show it if they’re really inconsequential, then own them and move on;
4. what does it tell us about the quality of your work, including the promotion of geo-engineering?

Speaking of #4, Levitt and Dubner put a great deal of effort into arguing that we know too little about climate science to know what is really going on, and then turn around and suggest that we know enough to start seriously messing with the system.

“And it’s strange, given how much is made in both Freakonomics books of the law of unintended consequences, that they don’t mention this in the context of Myhrvold’s plan.”

Oliver Burkeman

Of course the “stratoshield” proposal they advocate has many potential problems, not the least of them that it is not a solution but rather an amelioration of one of the symptoms (ie heat) and does not address for eg ocean acidification at all. For more see:

• Why Levitt and Dubner like geo-engineering and why they are wrong
• The Geoengineering Quandary (In Living Color)

As for the rest, I think  Stoat’s summary describes it very well:

“Diagnosis, in brief: (1) they write about stuff they clearly don’t understand (2) they pick a catchy reverse-common-wisdom nugget as a headliner without the having the slightest interest in whether it is true or not (mind you, plenty of more respectable folk do the same) (3) they pick an expert to talk to, but since they don’t have a clue about the subject they don’t know how to pick a good expert, or even understand what the expert says (4) there is a grain of sense in there, but so badly wrapped in trash it is nearly unfindable.”

To be fair I really should critically examine each of the author’s points independently to determine their truth, but at this point I have lost hope that the rest will be any different.

They had a chance to establish their credibility by providing credible refutations where they could, or by acknowledging error when they could not.

Instead they have opted for a Nixonian “I am not a Denier” strategy and, at least in my eyes, have thoroughly discredited themselves. John Quiggin sums it up nicely …

“The general point is that contrarianism is a cheap way of allowing ideological hacks to think of themselves as fearless, independent thinkers, while never thinking (in fact reinforcing) the status quo.”

John Quiggin

UPDATE Oct 21 : Deltoid isn’t very impressed with the Freaks rebuttal either;

Underwhelming response from Superfreakonomics authors

As per the discussion in the comments below,  Left as an Exercise is going to keep updating links on this story, so with rare exceptions I will not be and instead refer you to FAIL: Superfreakonomics.

The Hailstorm

Romm

• Error-riddled ‘Superfreakonomics’: New book pushes global cooling myths, sheer illogic, and “patent nonsense” — and the primary climatologist it relies on, Ken Caldeira, says “it is an inaccurate portrayal of me” and “misleading” in “many” places.
• Error-riddled ‘Superfreakonomics’, Part 2: Who else have Nathan Myhrvold and the Groupthinkers at Intellectual Ventures duped and confused? Would you believe Bill Gates and Warren Buffett?
• Error-riddled ‘Superfreakonomics’, Part 3: It takes a village to debunk their anti-scientific nonsense, but why did they stop Amazon from allowing text searches?
• Error-riddled Superfreakonomics, Part 4: They get the economics dead wrong, too, and their response to critics is full of misrepresentations, just like their book
• Part 5: Error-riddled Superfreakonomics claims Caldeira’s “research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain.” Caldeira updates his website to read “Carbon dioxide is the right villain.”
• Anatomy of a debunking: Caldeira says Superfreakonomics is “damaging to me because it is an inaccurate portrayal of me” and filled with “many” misleading statements. Dubner continues to make false statements, parroted by Pielke and Morano. DeLong urges authors to “abjectly apologize” for the chapter.

Some Others

• Superfreakingmeta
• Paul Krugman Goes Meta
• Why Everything in Superfreakonomics About Global Warming Is Wrong
  New Book “SuperFreakonomics” Mischaracterizes Climate Science
• Superfreakonomics and the glory of contrarianism
• SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling (and some other stuff)?
• SuperFreakonomics Gets Climate Change Super Freaking Wrong
• Superfreakonomics Will Misinform Readers on Climate Science
• Superfreakonomics on climate, part 1
• Romm vs Freakshow II
• The Shoddy Statistics of Super Freakonomics
• Levitt and Dubner Disarm Themselves in Their Battle of Wits with Joe Romm…
• *Sigh* Last Post on Superfreakonomics, I Promise
• Six Questions for Levitt and Dubner (More Superfreakonomics Blogging)
• All Right. One More. I Gotta Correct the Record…
• Journalistic Malpractice From Leavitt and Dubner
• My review of Freakonomics 2
• Freakonomics update
• Expertise, and “expertise”

Compilations

• FAIL: Superfreakonomics
• Super Freaks of the Economics Profession
• The SuperFreakonomics Debacle: An Overview
• Superfreakonomics: It’s getting hot in here

“Since 1982, spring in East Asia (defined here as the eastern third of China and the Korean Peninsula) has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per decade.”  Earth Gauge

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 358 … still no evidence.

IMAGE CREDITS:

Freak Show #1. by Eve D.

“The Freak Show 1” by Tammy Manet

“The Freak Show 2” by Tammy Manet

“The Freak Show 3” by Tammy Manet

“The Freak Show 4” by Tammy Manet

“The Freak Show 5” by Tammy Manet

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BPSDB

Over at ClimateSight, in the middle of a long but highly readable post entitled Credibility in a Bewildered World, there is this:

And a controversy really sells. For example, would you rather pick up a newspaper with the headline “Another Study Confirms What Everyone Already Knew”, or “Scientists Locked in Epic Battle over Question of Global Warming”? We are naturally drawn to controversy. It’s so much more interesting to readers.

Possibly that was the inspiration for a remarkable article entitled What happened to global warming? by Paul Hudson on the BBC just over a week ago (it was remarkable because it was published by the BBC, and apparently penned by a “Climate correspondent”).

Needless to say, it was picked up all over the world – in fact it was the most popular article on the BBC’s Science & Environment website for three days running, which takes some doing. It could probably have done so for longer, but the BBC chopped the link to it after three days (which is also unusual in itself – popular articles tend to sit around for a while longer than this).

Quite how the article ended up where it did is in itself a bit of a mystery, as Leo Hickman explains in the Guardian.

However, all of the above is a bit of a preamble – what I’m really interested in is Hudson’s choice of “solar scientist” Piers Corbyn as one of his named “sceptics” (the other was Don Easterbrook – what is it with geologists?).

What is interesting about Hudson’s choice is that Corbyn doesn’t have much of a track record.

He runs a UK company called WeatherAction that predicts the weather – for a fee. Fees range from £12 for a single 30 day forecast up to £550 for a 12 month subscription.

Fair enough – if he thinks he can do better than the UK’s Met Office – and if he can find punters willing to pay for his services – good luck to him.

I personally wouldn’t subscribe on two grounds:

• I am not that obsessed with the weather
• I would be reluctant to pay for a service unless I was pretty sure that it was the best

How good are Corbyn’s forecasts?

William Connelly wasn’t impressed.

Corbyn claims to have made around £20,000 from betting on weather ( in a 12 year period) before he was “banned” from the bookmakers William Hill. He claims a 40% return on his bets.
This cannot be verified, but to be honest I doubt if William Hill (a major UK gambling organisation) would be unduly worried about a punter winning an average of around £1600 a year.

So Corbyn is a weather forecaster – but of course weather is not climate. How much does he know about the climate?

He doesn’t appear to have published anything in the literature. However he is one of the regulars at The Heartland Institute conferences. This is handy, because they put their presentations up on their website – Corbyn’s latest PowerPoint presentation is here (they also have audio and video links if you prefer – I didn’t bother with them).

A lot of it is the usual stuff (CO2 is good for plants, etc.) and his sources include Joe D’Aleo.
According to Corbyn, the climate is mostly driven by the 22 year Hale solar cycle (although Solar -Lunar magnetic modulation, whatever that is, apparently also has an effect). Apparently global temperatures peak two years after each odd cycle maximum, and reach their lowest two years after each even cycle maximum. To get this to work he uses two year averages(!). This means that by his reckoning global warming didn’t stop in 1998 – it stopped in 2002/2003. He also says that we should expect temperatures to fall through to at least 2015 (slide 28), although below this he then extends it to 2030 or possibly 2040.

Landscheidt springs instantly to mind – indeed Corbyn uses one of the diagrams that Landscheidt used early on in his presentation.

I’m fairly sure his correlation isn’t very good – if I can find the time I’ll look into this a bit more. But slide 27 is interesting. Because 1964 & 1965 were cold, it just allows him to claim that temperatures are highest at even cycle maximum plus 2. If you just look at the previous Hale cycles, the warmest period (by a long way) is the solar minimum on the even cycle.
It is also curious that he hasn’t included cycles 22 & 23 in his charts. Ignoring the last couple of decades seems an odd thing to do.

In fact, there’s quite a lot of interest in solar variability and the Earth’s magnetic field. If you want to know more you could read this post at Real Climate (especially the section titled “Solar variability and climate: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”.

Near the end of his presentation Corbyn comes up with this (in my view, a hilarious classic):

Doubling CO2 increases CO2 Greenhouse heating of Earth’s surface by 3.8 W/m2. It also increases plant growth & therefore transpiration heat removal (cooling) by 43% to 45%. Now, 44% of 8.6 = 3.8 W/m2
3.8 – 3.8 = 0 So CO2 increase has no net effect on world temperatures.

Which reminds me – at no point in his presentation does Corbyn offer any credible explantion of why the world has warmed as much as it has in the last 30 to 40 years.

As mentioned earlier, Corbyn is a gambler.

According to Nature (via Deltoid) Corbyn is “happy to bet loads of money”, but the story from James Annan is rather different (it is worth following this link just to read Corbin’s comment).

So – should Hudson have chosen Corbyn as an example of a “skeptical” scientist?

In my view, no. Corbyn does have a degree in Physics – but he hasn’t published anything in the literature since graduating, and his solar analysis techniques are a secret (understandably, since he makes his living out of them).

But then, readers of tea leaves don’t publish their techniques, either. Hudson should have had tried harder.

S2

IMAGE CREDITS:

Magazine cover from Modern Mechanix

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BPSDBI missed it – I was too busy.

However it seems to have been a success:

We are about to hit 27,000 32,000 total trackable blog posts, and our current estimate is that together we reached at least 17 million people today. We are also about to exceed 12,000 registered bloggers on the site and are working to get all of you who posted but haven’t yet registered into the final count.

The numbers are not huge in global terms. Maybe that reflects on the general level of interest in Climate Change worldwide – or maybe not. I don’t know of a good statistical source for this.
But since the aim was to increase awareness (even temporarily), it appears to have worked.

As I didn’t post, I’d recommend Jim Prall (an occasional commenter here). I don’t share his optimism, but that is just my personal opinion – and his blog deserves recognition if only because of his Herculean efforts at documenting and analysing who is saying what.

IMAGE CREDITS:

All images are from http://www.blogactionday.org/.

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish.

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

Image taken from http://birdbrainscan.blogspot.com/2009/10/happy-blog-action-day-for-climate.html, I don’t know precisely where he found it.

BPSDBThis one has been going around for a while now, so it isn’t new.
Apologies if you’re already aware of it, but if you haven’t come across it before, read on.

A reader recently pointed us towards a poster at http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Holgate/sealevel_change_poster_holgate.pdf as evidence that rising sea levels are no threat to humanity. In his view the key sentence appears to be

The first half of the century (1904-1953) had a slightly higher rate (1.91±0.14 mm/yr) in comparison with the second half of the century (1.42±0.14 mm/yr 1954-2003).

Conclusive proof, apparently, that the residents of Tuvalu and Bangladesh have nothing to fear and that sea level rise is the greatest lie ever told.

As I said it’s been doing the rounds for a while now. It was picked up (among others) by climateaudit, jennifermarohasy and wattsupwiththat. Amusingly, all three had a go at twisting it into “It’s the Sun!” by assuming correlation equals causation.

The link points to a pdf document boasting logos from both the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), so at first glance it seems to be genuine.
The odd thing is the url: it doesn’t point to either POL or the NERC, as you might expect. Instead, it points to a (horribly garish) denialist wesite in Luxembourg, with links to WUWT & Climateaudit and quotes from Lindzen and Crichton on the home page.

I’ve tried searching for “the poster” on both the POL and the NERC websites without success. That doesn’t man that it didn’t originate from POL, it just means that I can’t find it.

Leaving that aside, what does the poster actually tell us?

Actually not a lot, apart from the quote above. Although it doesn’t cite it, the poster mostly consists of snippets from “On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century” (S. J. Holgate, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L01602).
There are some small differences between the paper and the poster (and a typo in the poster that isn’t in the paper), so it’s possible that the poster predates the paper.

The paper itself is rather interesting. Holgate explores the idea that you can examine decadal changes in sea level by using a small number of high quality records. He finds that

the two highest decadal rates of change were recorded in the decades centred on 1980 (5.31 mm/yr) and 1939 (4.68 mm/yr) with the most negative decadal rates of change over the past 100 years during the decades centred on 1964 (−1.49 mm/yr) and 1987 (−1.33 mm/yr).

He finds a global increase of 174 mm over the 100 year period, and does indeed state that the rate in the first half of the 100 year period was greater than that in the second, but notes that “the difference in rates was not found to be significant”.

So does this paper dramatically contradict the IPCC and bring the whole climate change conspiracy edifice crashing down around us?

No.

Neither of the IPCC’s TAR and AR4 reports claimed that there was any significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century. The TAR suggested a central value of 1.5 mm/yr for the century, whilst the AR4 suggests 0.17 metres for the century. Both mention that there are strong regional and temporal fluctuations in sea level.

Holgate’s paper is entirely consistent with the IPCC view – and in fact the AR4 cites a 2004 paper that Holgate co-authored.

There are a growing number of scientists who think that the IPCC estimates for sea level rise during the 21st Centrury are too low. Perhaps Holgate disagrees with them?

Again, it would appear not.

Holgate and Stefan Rahmstorf (of RealClimate fame) did have a bit of a dispute in Science, but this was about analysis techniques. Such discussions are normal and natural, and part of the way that science evolves.

But, as Martha notes, Holgate does not dispute that the threat is real. As quoted by the BBC:

However, a rise of even a metre could have major implications for low-lying countries – especially, noted Dr Holgate, those whose economies are not geared up to build sophisticated sea defence systems.

“Eighty to 90% of Bangladesh is within a metre or so of sea level,” he said, “so if you live in the Ganges delta you’re in a lot of trouble; and that’s an awful lot of people.”

IMAGE CREDITS:

All images are from The Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory.

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.

BPSDBI seem to have opened up a can of worms in The Curious Incident of the Denier in the Night-time.

For anyone who has not yet waded through all the comments, I tried to calm things down by imposing a temporary ban (on that thread alone) on any comments that were not relevant to Mike’s original post.
(I should point out that I did so entirely without Mike’s knowledge or consent. It is going to be interesting to read what he makes of all this on his return).
My intention was to stop the circular reasoning and name-calling that was becoming more and more persistent.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

In practice, I may have made a rod for my own back. It is surprisingly hard to act as sole judge on the validity of comments, especially those from people for whom I have a lot of respect. To make matters worse, this isn’t even my blog – I’m just minding the shop for a while.

But it has got me thinking about the nature of censorship.

Possibly the most repeated quotation on the nature of free speech is

I disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

This is frequently (and wrongly) attributed to Voltaire.

According to this article (amongst other sources) it was actually written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall (writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G. Tallentyre in 1906). It seems that she was using this as an example of the sort of thing that Voltaire was likely to say.

It still makes a nice quote, though, even when it is wrongly attributed. But does it always make sense?

I listened to a talk on light pollution last night. It was mostly pretty interesting, but at one point the speaker made the rather astonishing claim that street lights are associated with melanoma. I had to challenge that, and after a brief discussion about how much ultraviolet light is emitted from street lamps and his admission that he couldn’t remember his source, we dropped the subject by mutual consent.

But that doesn’t seem to be the way it works on blogs.

Instead, some people can keep going round in circles spouting the same nonsense again and again as long as the blog owner permits it (or until they get bored and move on somewhere else).
And if the blog owner does lose patience and pulls the plug on them, they can jump up and down crying “Infamy! Infamy!“.

How much room should you give people in the name of free speech?

I don’t really know the answer, I’m on a steep learning curve here.

But maybe Tamino has it right when he says

It’s one thing to claim the right to say what you want. It’s quite another to insist that you have the right to spout your deceitful stupidity in my house.

IMAGE CREDITS:

Voltaire’s portrait from The Times Online

All the others are from Wikipedia

Comment Policy

Comments that are not relevant to the post that they appear under or the evolving discussion will simply be deleted, as will links to Denier spam known to be scientific gibberish

• The “Mostly” Open Thread is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
• The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.