Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Why trust Roy Spencer?...or the "NASA 50"…or the Oregon Petition for that matter?

{edited 1/22/12 afternoon}

This post was inspired by a couple comments I received from a character who goes by "opit".  His comments and links are text book examples of ideology driven willful ignorance overriding honest curiosity and a desire to learn about our home planet.
opit writes: You say it is quibbling about minutae to argue about warming when it is not feasible to measure the aggregate of such ? Science is based on measurement. 
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Science may be based on measurements, but our planet's geophysical processes are not!  Science tries to portray the natural world to the best of it's abilities.  It's never 100% accurate so your insistence on perfection is setting up impossible expectations, not a smart way to treat the real world around us! 
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opit writes: That is why it is particularly interesting that Dr. Roy Spencer
in charge of satellite temperature measurement ( and many NASA scientists ) dispute not just particulars, but the representations of gross change being linked to CO 2 rise. 
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Dr. Roy Spencer is an extreme outlier scientist who's on the board of directors of the George C. Marshall Institute and a favorite of Heartland Institute and folks like Senator Inhofe - all three being totally focused on shaping policy with zero interest in learning about Earth's geophysical processes and climate science.  

Spencer has also lost the trust of his professional colleagues for making outlandish claims and misrepresenting the science such as those examined in the following.

This sampling reveals a libertarian debating-team approach to science.  By that I mean arguing for argument sake, and focusing on misleading dog-chasing-tail arguments that do nothing to further learning.

A careful reading shows that Roy's a dues paying member of that right wing school of thinking where economy reigns supreme and Earth's geophysical realities are disregarded.

The following was compiled by the SkepticalScience team of volunteers and I post it here, courtesy of their generous sharing policy, you can find the original at: http://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roy_Spencer.htm

Please notice that the responses have been linked to articles that share details and links to original sources.

Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"the warming trend over the Northern Hemisphere, where virtually all of the thermometer data exist, is a function of population density at the thermometer site."
30 March 2012 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"there are benefits to more CO2 in the air, and probably to a little bit of warming"
22 March 2012 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"we're talking about forestalling maybe hundredths of a degree, a few hundredths of a degree per decade of warming just based on the US shutting down half of its economy."
22 March 2012 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"there's no way to get rid of the CO2"
22 March 2012 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"I think...we may see very little warming in the future"
22 March 2012 (Source)
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What the Science Says 
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"I think that most of the warming we've seen could well be natural"
22 March 2012 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"for some reason it stopped warming in the last 10 years, which is one of those dirty little secrets of global warming science"
22 March 2012 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"The cost [of CO2 limits] in terms of human suffering, however, will be immense. "
7 March 2012 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"Even if we could substantially reduce U.S. CO2 emissions in the next 20 years, which barring some new technology is virtually impossible, the resulting (theoretically-computed) impact on U.S or global temperatures would be unmeasurable….hundredths of a degree C at best. "
7 March 2012 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"...ill-conceived energy policies that hurt economic growth kill poor people."
7 March 2012 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"While any single month’s drop in global temperatures cannot be blamed on climate change, it is still the kind of behavior we expect to see more often in a cooling world"
3 November 2011 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"the troposphere is ignoring your SUV"
30 October 2011 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"in Blunder I address what other scientists should have the courage to admit: that maybe putting more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing. "
20 April 2010 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"When properly interpreted, our satellite observations actually reveal that the system is quite IN-sensitive. And an insensitive climate system means that nature does not really care whether you travel by jet, or how many hamburgers or steaks you eat."
20 April 2010 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"what they have ignored is the potential for the climate system to cause its own climate change. Climate change is simply what the system does, owing to its complex, dynamic, chaotic internal behavior."
20 April 2010 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"warming in recent decades is mostly due to a natural cycle in the climate system — not to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning."
20 April 2010 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"The supposed explanation that global warming is due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide from our burning of fossil fuels turns out to be based upon little more than circumstantial evidence."
20 April 2010 (Source)
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What the Science Says 
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"Are we really sure that ALL of the atmospheric increase in CO2 is from humanity’s emissions? After all, the natural sources and sinks of CO2 are about 20 times the anthropogenic source, so all it would take is a small imbalance in the natural flows to rival the anthropogenic source. "
11 May 2009 (Source)
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What the Science Says 
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"climate modelers...mistakenly conclude that cloud feedbacks in the climate system are positive when in fact the evidence, when more critically examined, suggests they are negative."
27 December 2008 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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Roy Spencer's Climate Myths
"It is a little known fact that the extra carbon dioxide (and methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas) emitted by joggers accounts for close to 10% of the current Global Warming problem."
20 June 2005 (Source)
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What the Science Says
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A close look at the information within those links responding  to Roy's claims beg the question: Why would anyone believe such transparently misleading trash talk?

Sadly the answer seems to hide within the Right Wing audiences themselves - the folks
who willfully accept transparent con jobs and bromides that lull themselves into a comfortable hollywood inspired myth that they will never have to change their desires and habits.  

 Unfortunately, the change is coming and the longer these folks continue ignoring the situation the more catastrophic it will be for our children and their children.


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Continuing opit then pulls the "NASA 50" scientists canard:

opit writes: NASA is therefore an interesting resource, as it is contradicted by its own staff. http://ricochet.com/main-feed/50-NASA-Scientists-Against-Global-Warming, and article by the notorious 

This article is written by the notorious James Delingpole with a H/T to Marc Morano.  These people are politically motivated operatives - not investigative or science reporters, and they certainly have no climate science training, they are feeding us verifiable lies. 

Ironically, while climate science skeptics love claiming science isn't about consensus, they are shameless in playing the consensus card when it suits their purposes.  Such as this consensus among 50 former NASA employees who have a total combined climate science expertise adding up to zero.*  Why do the opti's of the world trust such arm chair quarterbacks more than real scientists who have actually been studying the subject full time?



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For a review of the many errors made in that letter see :http://scholarsandrogues.com/2012/04/25/errors-shortcomings-void-nasa-climate-letter/ 
"On March 28, 2012, 49 former NASA astronauts, scientists, engineers, and administrators sent a letter to NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr. The letter requested that NASA in general and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in particular stop publishing the scientific conclusions about the human-driven causes of global climate disruption.  
The letter was filled with no less than six serious errors regarding the science, data, and facts of climate science. The errors, in turn, exposed that the signers had confused their fame and/or their expertise in unrelated fields with expertise in climate science.  
And in response, NASA’s chief scientist politely suggested that the letter’s authors and signers should publish any contrary hypotheses and data in peer-reviewed scientific journals instead of trying to censor the publication of scientific conclusions from NASA climate scientists."
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* http://www.skepticalscience.com/NASA-climate-denialist-letter.html   
"Based on the job titles listed in the letter signatures, by my count they include 23 administrators, 8 astronauts, 7 engineers, 5 technicians, and 4 scientists/mathematicians of one sort or another (none of those sorts having the slightest relation to climate science).  Amongst the signatories and their 1,000 years of combined professional experience, that appears to include a grand total of zero hours of climate research experience, and zero peer-reviewed climate science papers.  You can review the signatories for yourself here."

(I added the highlights)
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"opit" goes on: Now I know Daily Mail is not a scientist's resource - but when such are challenged as unreliable, the field is open morninlibertycom-2014/01/19/scientists-say-no-to-global-warming-prepare-for-ice-age 
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This blogpost is by "Joeforamerica" some rightwing radio shock jock.
What's he know about climate science, or Earth observations?  But he does know what he hates - anyone who has any concern for "nature"... that would be our biosphere and our life support system.  

 He's the type that seems to believe we are still living in the 1800/1900s with a wild open country waiting to be tamed.

It's all about distraction and not learning about the planet we depend on.  Sadly the denialist industry seems to be getting their way politically, but their dishonesty will cost our children and their children dearly.

Oh, as for that coming ice age - nonsense.  Mind you, if society had not come along it is quite probable Earth would be heading into an ice age.  But the simple physics of increasing our planet's GHG insulation by a third and growing - has precluded that possibility.  But, you have to want to learn about the real science to know about such realities.
opit finishes with: So my assessment comes out more like http://blogs.denverpost.com/eletters/2013/07/26/the-scientists-who-dispute-global-warming-theory-2-letters/24180/ And the representations for AGW are arrogant and unwilling to accept alternative on 
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This one is a letter to the editor, with a response.  It has nothing to do with understanding the science and opit it's quite ironic, talk about arrogance, get this story.
  
Off in Oregon the founder of "Jesus-Plus-Nothing-Else" home-school system gets together with the masterful PR of doubt pioneer Fred Seitz, and protégés Willy Soon, Sallie Baliunas, and they created a National Academy of Sciences look alike document, then they tacked on a petition and handed it out for anyone to sign, climate science knowledge optional, identities not verified - and this "consensus" they use to dismiss full time hard working professionals and decades worth of data.  Now that's some might powerful arrogance and willful ignorance at work.

The Oregon Petition is a fraud plain and simple, when someone waves it in your face, you know you're dealing with a confirmed denialist who's mind has set to stone.  
Its aim is to keep everyone's Eyes Off The Prize, isn't it Opit? … and so tragically successful.

Robinson and son Zachary (http://www.desmogblog.com/art-robinson)

The 30,000 Global Warming Petition is Easily-Debunked Propaganda

Over 31,000 scientists signed the OISM Petition Project

The “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine”
(It’s actually Arthur Robinson’s farm in very rural Oregon)

What if the Oregon Petition names were real?

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"In the professional field of climate science, the consensus is unequivocal: 
human activities are causing climate change and additional anthropogenic CO2 may cause great disruption to the climate."  

{And if we want to be coldly scientific about it, scientists can't claim anything more than: 
"The sun "may" rise tomorrow morning."}





=======


Climate Change 2013:
The Physical Science Basis
IPCC Working Group I Contribution to AR5
The Twelfth Session of Working Group I (WGI-12) was held from 23 to 26 September 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden. At the Session, the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGI AR5) was approved and the underlying scientific and technical assessment accepted.

Video on the Working Group I Contribution
The IPCC has produced a video on its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The first part on the Working Group I contribution to AR5 is now available. The other parts will be released with the successive approvals of the other two Working Group contributions and the  Synthesis Report in the course of 2014.

Climate Change 2013 Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis


IPCCGeneva  |   Nov 21, 2013  |  9:20

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IPCC Working Group 1 Fact Sheet


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IPCC Working Group 1  Summary for Policymakers


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

The Report
§ 1 Scoping Meeting to outline 14 Chapters § Over 1000 nominations from 63 countries § 209 Lead Authors and 50 Review Editors from 39 countries § Over 600 Contributing Authors from 32 countries § Over 2 million gigabytes of numerical data from climate model simulations § Over 9200 scientific publications cited §

The First Order Draft Expert Review
§ Nearly 1500 individuals registered § 21,400 comments from 659 Expert Reviewers from 47 countries §

The Second Order Draft Expert and Government Review
§ Over 1500 individuals registered § 31,422 comments from 800 Expert Reviewers from 46 countries and 26 Governments §

The Final Government Distribution
§ 1855 comments from 32 Governments on the Final Draft Summary for Policymakers § 

Total Reviews
§ 54,677 comments § 1089 Expert Reviewers from 55 countries § 38 Governments § 

The WGI Approval Session
§23-26 September 2013, Stockholm, Sweden§
The Summary for Policymakers will be approved line-by-line by up to 195 Governments §



Additional information is available from www.climatechange2013.org
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 Some further information about the games Roy Spencer plays:

  • 3 March 2011 by bbickmore
  • 1 March 2011 by bbickmore
  • 27 February 2011 by bbickmore
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