The Wind Beneath Dr. Spencer's Wings

Dr. Spencer is a guy who puts his personal faith before rigorous science and who’s higher-calling is that of taxpayer watchdog dedicated to minimizing the role of government.  He has a day job over at the University of Alabama Huntsville.  Team Leader even, for the Advanced Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite where he’s racked up an epic string of, not just errors, but also deliberately misinforming leaders and citizens.  Almost as though keeping people ill-informed is his goal.

My previous post contains a long collection itemizing the details which compels the above assessment.  (Attacking me the messenger won’t change those hard facts!)

In this post I want to consider the mechanism that has encouraged and enabled this man to continue broadcasting his deception to the masses despite all the down to Earth evidence demonstrating that humanity's gluttonous burning of fossil fuels is already altering the living conditions on our planet.

It all started with a few small minds, but deep pockets.  Minds obsessed with ensuring ever increasing power and profits for their chosen.  Not surprisingly, such an attitude lead to a ruthless desire to crush all opposition, be it evidence or messengers, and damn the consequences.

These people have managed to create a fantastical alternate-universe consisting of a hermetically sealed echo-chamber peddling faux-science.  In their world personal faith, desire and power are more important than honesty, rationality and objective learning.  Nah, their product is disconnect and the delusion that it’s okay to ignore our impacts upon this Earth’s life supporting biosphere.

So who is part of this conspiracy against rationality and learning about our Earth that enables someone like Roy Spencer to get all that mileage on basically nothing but hot air?  In the remainder of this post I share a report compiled by the The Union of Concerned Scientists, USA.  It’s a brief review of some of the biggest players in this malicious campaign of deception. 

American Enterprise Institute

Americans for Prosperity

American Legislative Exchange Council

Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University

Cato Institute

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Heartland Institute

Heritage Foundation

Institute for Energy Research

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

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Union of Concerned Scientist 

GLOBAL WARMING > FIGHT MISINFORMATION

Global Warming Skeptic Organizations

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/global-warming-skeptic.html#.V57DuleTnzI

Roy Spencer's TPPI Mishmash of Myths, Nonsense and Fraud

Here's another Repost from SkepticalScience.com and Dana Nuccitelli, it was originally written for The Guardian and concerns the latest Dr. Roy Spencer broadside against serious climate science and the learning process.  

With much appreciation I'm taking advantage of SkS CreativeCommon's license and am reposting Dana's article because I believe Roy Spencer's crimes against science and our children's future demands to be exposed for what they are, fraud.  And that this information needs to be circulated and become common knowledge, please pass it on. 
(Monday morning - I've updated this post by adding on a list of links (and quotes) to further detailed examination of Spencer's dubious science and his even more dubious writings on the topic.)

These are the best arguments from the 3% of climate scientist 'skeptics.' Really.

Posted on 25 July 2016 by Dana Nuccitelli | SkepticalScience.com | The Guardian

When I give a presentation and mention the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming, I’m often asked, “what’s the deal with the other 3%?”. These are the publishing climate scientists who argue that something other than humans is responsible for the majority of global warming, although their explanations are often contradictory and don’t withstand scientific scrutiny.

A few months ago, the world’s largest private sector coal company went to court, made its best scientific case against the 97% expert consensus, and lost. One of coal’s expert witnesses was University of Alabama at Huntsville climate scientist Roy Spencer - a controversial figure who once compared those with whom he disagreed to Nazis, and has expressed his love for Fox News.

Last week, Spencer wrote a white paper for the Texas Public Policy Institute (TPPI) outlining the contrarian case against climate concerns. TPPI is part of the web of denial, having received substantial funding from both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, including $65,000 from ExxonMobil and at least $911,499 from Koch-related foundations since 1998, and over $3 million from “dark money” anonymizers Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

Spencer’s arguments should of course be evaluated on their own merits, regardless of who commissioned them. However, it turns out that they have little merit on which to stand. The white paper is a classic example of a Gish Gallop – producing such a large volume of nonsense arguments that refuting all of them is too time-consuming. 

A mishmash of myths

Most of Spencer’s white paper consists of repeating a variety of long-debunked myths. It’s laid out in the form of 13 basic climate questions that Spencer tries to answer. Fortunately, SkepticalScience.com has a database of over 200 climate myths, and summaries of what the peer-reviewed scientific research says about each. This makes it possible to handle Spencer’s 13-point Gish Gallop by simply referring to the relevant myth rebuttals. So here we go:

#2 - Matt Ridley let's debate your "cheerleaders for alarm"

Matt Ridley this is the second installment of my review of your blogpost What the climate wars did to science where I describe the various failures in your arguments.  Last week I contacted you about the first installment and to offer a formal invitation to debate.  But, you've remained silent.  
(Admittedly Matt, I can appreciate that hiding from my intellectual challenge, like Jim Steele does, makes more sense than joining the debate in a fair and square manner and revealing how bankrupt your arguments are - still the invitation remains.)

Now on to considering your "cheerleading for alarm" section.

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Policy-based evidence making is all too frequent in climate science

By Matt Ridley |  The "Rational Optimist.com" |  Published on Sunday, July 05, 2015
Part Two ±450-935 (out of 5950 words)

Matt Ridley:  Cheerleaders for alarm. This is precisely what has happened with the climate debate and it is at risk of damaging the whole reputation of science. 

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What precisely?  You define nothing!

"Cheerleaders for alarm" ? - Who, What, Where, When?

"climate debate" -  It's tough to get any more inclusive than that.

Then you pull the dirty trick of jumping from the nebulous "climate debate" to the "whole reputation of science."  Matt, where do you get off pinning what pundits have said onto scientists?  That's pure dishonestly!

By playing this game you allow yourself to smear any scientist with whatever nonsense you like.  Even though that nonsense never came from any real scientist to begin with.  

That's called fraud and has nothing to do with learning about the why and how of the scientific understanding that underpins the current global warming "consensus."

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Matt Ridley:  The “bad idea” in this case is not that climate changes, nor that human beings influence climate change; but that the impending change is sufficiently dangerous to require urgent policy responses. 

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Matt, I suggest your "bad idea" is to tailor your sentences toward belittling scientists and rejecting their evidence without ever even considering that evidence.

Here you deliberately ignore the severe impacts that past climate changes had on the biological systems that had developed under their previous climate regime. 

Matt Ridley let's debate your "What the climate wars did to science"

{edited for typos and some minor additions 19:30 MDT }
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Matt Ridley I've been reading your "What the climate wars did to science" and I'll give it to you, it's one piece of work.  From the bizarre comparison of "Lysenkoism" with two centuries worth of climate science; to your championing that artful misinformer JimSteele (a person who regularly attacks scientists based on misrepresenting the facts, while hiding from debating the merits of his storyline.); then you pile on the malicious Dr. Parmesan slander campaign (while lying about what her paper actually says); etc.; finishing with that lofty plea to 'keep the debate alive'.  It really is too much, still I'm thinking you want a debate, Okay, let's have a debate!  

I believe I can explain why your words are such deceptive theater while outlining the difference between your brand of 'playing games for short term political gain' and scientists commitment to learning in order to understand reality as it is, rather than how we wish it could be.

I challenge you, Matt Ridley, to participate in this public "debate" by rationally explaining why you might disagree with my assessment.  I will post your comments unaltered - I'll even consider a "guest post" from you, if it contains a substantive rational response.

We'll see how it goes.  Since your blog post was six thousand words long and I have very limited free time these days, and people have limited patience, I'll be doing this is smaller segments.  Here I review your first 450 words.

Sincerely,

Citizenschallenge

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What the climate wars did to science
Published on Sunday, July 05, 2015, updated Sunday, July 05, 2015 
by Matt Ridley - at the so-called RationalOptimist.com  -  5950 words

Policy-based evidence making is all too frequent in climate science