Pruitt's Red Team Challenge, bunch of Hot Air

Updating Pruitt's Red team Blue team challenge, December 15th, E and E News’ Robin Bravenender reported, EPA air chief Bill Wehrum attended a White House meeting with Trump energy aide Mike Catanzaro, deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn and others to discuss the future of the debate and it has been put on hold.  {Brought over from my new Confronting Science Contrarians.blogspot}

I’m not at all surprised, after all Republicans have way more to lose.  Republicans are the ones performing the flim flam.  I think it’s a wonderful idea, compose a Blue team of savvy, well spoken, sharp-witted science communicators who have a deep understanding of Republican's war on rational constructive science debate and learning, along with the ability to enunciate today’s climate science understanding under fire.

No, not real climate scientists!  Scientists have had their constructive debates (among competent experts who understand the details such as the math, science, unexpected complexities and such.).  Scientists have published their results.  Scientists' work is On The Record!  Scientists are busy using their talents to continue the research.  Leave the politics to the public arena.

Use the Red team Blue team confrontation to force Republicans to show their cards.  Seems to me a wonderful opportunity to publicly expose their fraud.  That's why I'm working on a few posts related to pursuing the challenge, even if only from a distance.

Trump team puts controversial ‘red team’ challenge to climate science ‘on hold’

By Robin Bravender, E&E News  |  Dec. 15, 2017 

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/trump-team-puts-controversial-red-team-challenge-climate-science-hold

Open Letter to E&E News reporter Scott Waldman" Global? What global?

The past two days I've been catching up on the latest internet climate science faux-scandal, the John Bates affair.  Fortunately enough has been written about it, see the preceding post for those details, that I won't rehash it here.  What I do want to rehash is how easily communicators and reporters fall into the contrarians script without even recognizing it.  My case in point is an otherwise good article written by Energy and Environment News reporter Scott Waldman.  Reading the offending sentence I felt so irritated I sat down to write him an email that blossomed beyond first intentions and that I want to share since this blog is all about trying to provoke some thought, perhaps even a little soul searching.

______________________________________________________________

Dear Mr. Waldman,

I read your article “'Whistleblower' says protocol was breached but no data fraud” 

( http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060049630 ) with much interest, but when I got to the section “Bates: Be careful of bias.” You wrote, "For many years, climate scientists were puzzled by an apparent plateau in global temperatures. …”

What the heck? Global SURFACE temperatures are NOT "global temperatures”!!  Why are you repeating that contrarian meme?  It was global surface temperatures that seems to "pause" although that was never true either since record temps kept happening.  The best that can honestly be said is that the rate of increase had apparently slowed.  If I’m being inaccurate please call me on it.

Besides, that 'apparent pause [sic] in Global SURFACE Temperatures, excluded the rapidly warming poles and some other less significant areas of our planet’s surface. Here again, if I'm mistaken on that point, someone please correct me.  

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/articles/articles/FyfeEtAlNatureClimate16.pdf
¶8  It has been suggested²⁰ that the lack of Arctic surface measurements has resulted in an underestimate of the true rate of GMST increase in the early twenty-first century. Independent satellite-based observations^21,22 of the temperature of the lower troposphere (TLT; Fig. 2f) have near-global, time- invariant coverage. Although satellite TLT datasets also have important uncertainties²¹, they corroborate the slowdown of GMST increase²³ and provide independent evidence that the slowdown is a real phenomenon.  Fyfe et al. 2016

Also see:   http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract 

"Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends."  Kevin Cowtan and Robert Way - 2014 see comments.

Authorsebruary 2014

Sou reviews the John Bates / David Rose affair. NOAA data protocols

Sou at HotWhopper has written an article that neatly sums up the recent John Bates Affair, with a leading role played by the notorious liar for pay, David Rose of the "Mail" tabloid and the nearly as dubious blog run by Judith Curry. I've spent the last couple days learning about it and wanting to write about it but frankly its overwhelming, though I do hope to take a closer look at John Bates' deceptive word play which deserves more attention than its received.  I was also inspired to write a reporter at E&E News, but I'll save that for the next post.

Since Sou has done such an excellent job of summarizing the affair I'm mirroring her article here.  Without further ado.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2017

David Rose doubles down on #climate disinformation about NOAA. Let's get some perspective

Sou | 5:37 PM | February 14, 2017

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2017/02/david-rose-doubles-down-on-climate.html#references

I've had a post in train for a week now, after last week's ridiculously wrong article from David Rose in the Mail on Sunday. He based it on another ridiculous article, that one from John Bates on Judith Curry's climate disinformation blog. David Rose has followed it up with another ridiculously wrong article, which says nothing new and in which he's just trying to justify all the mistakes and lies in his first article.

John Bates is a meteorologist turned computer data person whose nose was out of joint because he didn't always get his way when he used to work at NOAA. It was a sour grapes whine from someone who wanted attention. That's all. However his attention-seeking moan had major repercussions through the deniosphere.

In his latest article, David Rose finishes with this:

We cannot allow such a vital issue for our future to be mired in half truths and deceptions.

Which raises the question - why is David Rose himself so mired in half truths and deceptions? His article doesn't just contain half truths, he's a bald-faced liar!

John Bates slagged off scientists, with no evidence, just to get some attention