“Climate Fears and Finance” - A look at CRC's Dr. S.J. Allen’s fraud.

I will be taking a closer look at Dr. Steven Allen’s (Capital Research Center) YouTube feature, “Climate Fears and Finance” which is a stringing together of misrepresentations, innuendo and lies about a topic that is of critical importance to our future, after an introduction. 

Finishing my Investors Business Daily takedown was the usual let down.  No one seems concerned or interested.  No one wants to be bothered.  In my short email exchanges with Dr. Mann, I could almost hear him thinking: ‘Buddy, I got a bottom drawer full of this and worse! What do you want me to do about it?’  Thing is, that’s right.  He’s got far more important work to do with that incredible brain, his time is too precious to be squandered on such contrived delusionals.

Still, people should care.  In particular, I can’t grasp why there are so few knowledgable students who care about their futures and honesty enough to confront such trash in comments sections where ever that sort of fraud gets astro-turfed.  

Why aren’t hundreds writing the sort of take-downs I am - say what you will about my quality or tone, these dissections are to the point and packed with valid information that climate science contrarians always run and hide from.  Nor are they tough to put together, if you have a familiarity with the topic, a curiosity to search out more information and wrestle with arguments.  They also make excellent personal learning tools. 

Or, for that matter the older folks like me who have been attentive witnesses to the past decades of slow ominous degradation of the biosphere we were born into, mature people who resent juvenile malicious nonsense when they see it.  We have Potholer54 and Greenman3610, but need many more.  Why are we leaving the playing field open to these strategically manipulative fraudsters?

In any event I did what I could, it’s part of the record now, back to catching up on my wage slaving obligations.  In my spare time I've returned to wresting with the Map Territory Problem and am reading from suggestions that Trenberth and Francis offered and this.  Of course, such reading always leads to looking up more papers.  Check out one link, read the abstract, perhaps dig into the full paper if available, do a little searching for other stuff related to points raised, see something else that catches my eye, before I know, I’ve got multiple pages with a dozen tabs on each open and me overwhelmed with info overload and deeply humbled by the folds within folds of complexities.  That’s when I must step back allowing things to soak in, reestablish my grip on the fundamentals and to get some perspective.

If I visit CFI and am not careful my sparring mate Mikie The Contrarian will have me chasing another one of his shticks.  Which is how I discovered the scandalous Dr. S.J. Allen of the Capital Research Center where he’s Vice President & Chief Investigative Officer.  He previously served as press secretary to U.S. Senator Jeremiah Denton, as editor of Tea Party Review magazine, and as senior researcher for Newt Gingrich 2012.  

edited 9/30/2017,  9:00 PM
Links to info re feedback mechanisms added October 11.

#5 Debating Republican Disconnect From Climate Science - Model Uncertainty

CC: I compliment E.M. for making the effort to explain himself and open himself up to critique.  That said, after reading his more detailed arguments, I don’t think I misunderstood at all.  I rather suspect E.M. isn’t aware of the memes he’s passing along like a destructive virus.

He has offered me the opportunity to describe the many games Republicans play with themselves in order to avoid facing our planet’s geophysical realities, for this opportunity I am grateful.

  

This will need to become a series if I’m going to do E.M.’s list justice.  For instance, the first paragraph offers me an opportunity to focus on the Republican PR machine’s unhinged dismissal of climate models and their accuracy.

_________________________________________________

E.M. writes:  I’m going to start this post by pointing out that you are taking the substance of my thoughts completely incorrectly. I put this on myself, as my thoughts were quickly written in a comment section and not articulated nearly as clearly as they could have been. 

My original statement came out poorly, and the questions I posed were intended not to critique the science of AGW, but to point out the limitations that arise from scientific modeling, easily the hardest task any research team is faced with.

________________________________________________

CC: No doubt climate models are among the most difficult and exacting challenges climate scientists undertake.  

But I wonder, Why not begin this topic with a review of all that climate models have been nailing with amazing precision?  What is the point of laser focusing on model uncertainties that deal with fine details?  Why do Republicans ignore the fundamental well understood facts?  
Being obsessed with all you don't know, does not enable learning!

E.M., are you willing to consider all the things climate models have been getting correct?

___________________________________________________

‘Climate models are unproven’–Actually, GCM’s have many confirmed successes under their belts

By Coby Beck on Nov 20, 2006

http://grist.org/article/climate-models-are-unproven/

… In 1988, James Hansen of NASA GISS fame predicted [PDF] that temperature would climb over the next 12 years, with a possible brief episode of cooling in the event of a large volcanic eruption. He made this prediction in a landmark paper and before a Senate hearing, which marked the official “coming out” to the general public of anthropogenic global warming. 

Twelve years later, he was proven remarkably correct, requiring adjustment only for the timing difference between the simulated future volcanic eruption and the actual eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

And let’s face it, every year of increasing global mean temperature is one more year of success for the climate models. The acceleration of the rise is also playing out as predicted, though to be fair, decades will need to pass before such confirmation is inarguable.

Putting global surface temperatures aside, there are some other significant model predictions made and confirmed:

• models predict that surface warming should be accompanied by cooling of the stratosphere, and this has indeed been observed;

• models have long predicted warming of the lower, mid, and upper troposphere, even while satellite readings seemed to disagree — but it turns out the satellite analysis was full of errors and on correction, this warming has been observed;

• models predict warming of ocean surface waters, as is now observed;

• models predict an energy imbalance between incoming sunlight and outgoing infrared radiation, which has been detected;

• models predict sharp and short-lived cooling of a few tenths of a degree in the event of large volcanic eruptions, and Mount Pinatubo confirmed this;

• models predict an amplification of warming trends in the Arctic region, and this is indeed happening;

• and finally, to get back to where we started, models predict continuing and accelerating warming of the surface, and so far they are correct. …

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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:

Judge rules: Drs. Spencer, Lindzen, Happer are not credible expert witnesses!

So reports John Abraham (Professor of thermal and fluid sciences at the University of St. Thomas, Minn) in a recent UK Guardian story about this important milestone.  It's no great shock to anyone who's spent any time examining the claims of these Godfather's of 'science by echo-chamber, slander and misrepresentation'. 

To me it represents a small victory in the struggle to expose the fundamentally dishonest nature of these central luminaries of the Republican/libertarian PR machine.  The one dedicated to confusing the public and leaders about serious climate science among other important issues.

Lately, real life has kept me too busy for serious blogging, but this news is worth sharing.  Particularly after the past week and my depression caused by realizing that Mr. Trump actually will become the GOP standard bearer.  It was a nice reminder that some rationality still exists out there.  

Though that rationality seems tougher and tougher to find, watching supposedly "principled" Republican Party leaders eat all their grand principled words as they scurry to fall in line under Herrn Trump.  Principled Right-wing, indeed.  You aren't kidding us.

Following are quotes from Dr. Abraham's story, that I hope encourage you to link to the full story.  There you'll find all sorts of further links to various related stories and information.

Following that I tag on a report from Greenpeace: Exposed: Academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel funding (It's no wonder the Republican crowd hate Greenpeace, but someone has to get the facts and evidence out there.).  Take a look at what drives this Dr. Happer.  

I wonder how my Republican pals would compare Happer's misdeeds with Dr. Mann's?  Then explain to me why Happer isn't being dragged out to be tarred and feathered, like they used to do in them good ol' days.

Update: also see John Mashey's detailed documentation: 

"Peabody's Outlier Gang Couldn't Shoot Straight In Minnesota Carbon Case, Judge Rebuffs Happer, Lindzen, Spencer, Mendelsohn, Bezdek"  

http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/06/07/peabodys-outlier-gang-couldnt-shoot-straight

Peabody coal's contrarian scientist witnesses lose their court case

Peabody Energy brought contrarians Spencer, Happer, and Lindzen to testify on their behalf, but the judge wasn’t convinced by their case

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/may/02/peabody-coals-contrarian-scientist-witnesses-lose-their-court-case

John Abraham | May 2, 2016

In Minnesota, an administrative hearing resulted in a judicial recommendation that will have impacts across the country. It was a case argued mainly between environmental groups (such as Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, and their clients Fresh Energy and the Sierra Club) and energy producers (such as the now-bankrupt coal company Peabody Energy) regarding what a reasonable social cost of carbon should be.

I was called as an expert witness in the case along with respected climate scientist Dr. Andrew Dessler. We were opposed by the well-known contrarians Drs. Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, and William Happer (who has recently received attention related to his charged fees in the case). (bold added) In full disclosure, Dr. Dessler and I were not paid for our work in the case. I recently wrote about the testimony and provided links to the testimonies submitted for the case. The judge’s recommendations and how they will impact energy decisions in the USA were the keys to this trial.

... A summary of the ruling can be found here and the full report is available here.

Debating-Rod Martin's globalwarmth_org's worship

I received the following challenge this morning that deserves a thorough response. 

Rod Martin, Jr.1:25 AM - January 6, 2016 via YouTube - 

proprietor of "GlobalWarmth.org" (#4)

+citizenschallengeYT, 

CO2 has been far higher in Earth's past with life thriving! (#1) Warming doesn't cause extreme weather; cold does. More accurately, storms are driven by thermal differences. Warming the Earth brings poles closer to equatorial temperatures, thus eliminating most storms (#2).  More warmth creates more evaporation which yields more rain and fewer, smaller deserts (#3).

GlobalWarmth.org_climate_science/extreme_weather

_______________________________________________

Here is a perfect example of what I describe as The Self-Certain believing their own mind's eye view of their world as reality, while relegating the real world to an imaginary construct.  

(#2) Rod's conviction that "warming the Earth brings poles closer to equatorial temperatures" and that thus we should welcome warming, demands that Earth is a cartoon construct, made of some solid heat conducting material and little more.  Storms on this planet are driven by regional scale temperature and barometric differences.  Our real geophysical Earth is huge, with a liquid ocean covering two-thirds of it's surface, land covering a third and a pulsating cryosphere covering large portions of both, all of which resides under an ocean of fluid gases in motion.  

Our planet has Jet Streams that push and pull storm systems across our globe.  What this "closer to equilibrium" temps means on our real planet Earth is that Jet Streams are slowing down a bit and meandering more, this in turn leads to all sorts of extreme weather events - as witnessed by the increasing tempo of infrastructure destroying, life disrupting events happening throughout the world these days.  How Rod manages to ignore all that is beyond me.  

(For a more authoritative description of what's going on I've embedded a short interview with Jennifer Francis PhD who's been studying this particular phenomena for a long time.)

Will, this one's for you - What we knew a half century ago.

(Well that was one of the worst intros I've written in a while, let me try that again. - edited Nov 8th PM)

I read an article that fits right into my recent retrospective musings* regarding global warming and what we are willingly doing to our children's future.  

The key point:  

On 5 November, 1965, the group now known as the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) cautioned President Lyndon B. Johnson that continued accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from fossil-fuel burning would “almost certainly cause significant changes” and “could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.”

You see climate science contrarians I deal with continue pretending there's still substantial doubt regarding the fundamentals of what we are doing. Nonsense!  

The foundations of a clear understanding that society actually was conducting a global geophysical experiment go back over 60 years.  In fact, we recently passed one of the early big milestones of that growing recognition - which Dana Nuccitelli reports on. 

With thanks to SkepticalScience.com, here's something to think about next time some contrarian character tries telling you there's a lot of uncertainty regarding climate science and what injecting over two gigatons of greenhouse gases into our thin atmosphere month, after month, after endless month will do.  

(Will, I gotta tell you, I sit slack jawed wondering, how can people so delude themselves that they trivialize this reality in favor of demanding to know the exact speed of our rush to catastrophe. Or waste precious time arguing total trivialities while ignoring the gorilla in the room.

Re. CAGW, if you think upending our planet's climate system isn't catastrophe on every level, you're lost within your own daydreams, oblivious to this Earth and the workings of this complex society you depend on but take oh so for granted.

Remember what environmentalists were saying back in those 'innocent' 60s: 

~ ~ ~ "You can kid yourself, but you can't fool mother nature!" ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  "No Deposit No Return Earth." ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  

What a tragedy so few were paying attention.            

__________________________________

Scientists warned the US president about global warming 50 years ago today

Posted on 5 November 2015 by dana1981

Fifty years ago today, as the American Association for the Advancement of Science highlighted, US president Lyndon Johnson’s science advisory committee sent him a report entitled Restoring the Quality of Our Environment. The introduction to the report noted:

Pollutants have altered on a global scale the carbon dioxide content of the air and the lead concentrations in ocean waters and human populations.

Roger Pielke Jr. Peddles Pernicious Poison

I don't think my title 'peddling pernicious poison' is too dramatic or misleading for the cynical game Pielke Jr. has been playing for years.  His reviews of climate science consistently leave out, and at times misrepresent, important evidence when it is inconsistent with the storyline he's peddling. Pielke's latest dust up has to do with his (and Dr. Roy Spencer's) misleading testimony before the U.S. Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works regarding droughts.

Pielke and Spencer misrepresent the science in order to validate their denying the link between anthropogenic global warming, changing weather patterns and drought.  And whereas Pielke and Spencer claim that there is no evidence linking a warming globe with increasing drought conditions, the evidence says something very different as John Holdren, the President's science advisor, explains quite clearly in the following statement.  

His words are untouched, though I have added some underlines and bold highlights, for easier scanning, along with adding a couple links to appropriate sources of further information.  At the end of this I've listed links to articles about other Pielke Jr. misdeeds.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Drought and Global Climate Change: An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr

by John P. Holdren, 
Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, 
Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

28 February 2014 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/critique_of_pielke_jr_statements_on_drought.pdf

Introduction

In the question and answer period following my February 25 testimony on the Administration’s Climate Action Plan before the Oversight Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) suggested that I had misled the American people with comments I made to reporters on February 13, linking recent severe droughts in the American West to global climate change. To support this proposition, Senator Sessions quoted from testimony before the Environment and Public Works Committee the previous July by Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., a University of Colorado political scientist. Specifically, the Senator read the following passages from Dr. Pielke’s written testimony:

Roy Spencer's argument depends on the lie

The following has been lifted from Sou's HotWhopper.com website.  She continues doing a great job of exposing Anthony and pals' many scientific shenanigans.  

She calls it "fudging" I call it yet another example of the acceptance, and rampant use, of the "strategic LIE" to win political battles.

Spencer's contribution has absolutely nothing to do with helping people learn about what we are doing to our climate system, instead he seems content with spreading deception and confusion.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Roy Spencer's latest deceit and deception

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2014

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-deceit-and-deception.html

Sheesh! How's this for unadulterated chart fudging. Roy Spencer has put up a chart and proclaimed (archived here):

...the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably.

I’ve updated our comparison of 90 climate models versus observations for global average surface temperatures through 2013, and we still see that >95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH):

Let's look at how he's conned his denier fans.  Below I've plotted the CMIP5 composite mean against UAH and GISTemp using a 1981-2010 baseline, which is what UAH normally uses, and then I'll discuss what Roy Spencer has effectively done:

Data Sources: NASA, UAH and KNMI Climate Explorer

What he's effectively done is shifted the CMIP5 charts up by around 0.3 degrees.  In case you find it hard to credit that even a contrarian scientist would stoop so low, here is Roy Spencer's chart, with my annotations:

Adapted from Source: Roy Spencer

Not only did Roy effectively shift up the CMIP5 data, Roy Spencer effectively shifted down the UAH data in comparison with HadCRUT4.  This is the chart of UAH and HadCRUT4 using the 1981-2010 30 year baseline - compare that to Roy Spencer's deceptive fudge:

Data sources: UAH and Met Office Hadley Centre

How did he fudge?  What Roy Spencer has done is he's used a five year average - 1979-1983 to plot his data instead of the normal 30 year baseline.  Why did he pick 1979 to 1983 as the baseline?  The answer can only be that he wanted to deceive his readers.  Here is a comparison of UAH and HadCRUT4 using his shonky five year baseline compared to his normal 30-year 1981-2010 baseline.

That's not all that he's done.  If you compare the five year baseline chart I plotted with Roy's chart - his chart shows UAH lower than HadCRUT4 in every year.  That's not what my chart above shows, even using his shonky 5-year baseline.  Roy said he's using "running five year means" - which only shows the elaborate lengths he felt he had to go to in order to deceive people.

Anyway, to further illustrate Roy's shonkiness, here is the longer term CMIP5 and CMIP3 means vs GISTemp using the normal 30 year baseline:

Data Sources: NASA and KNMI Climate Explorer

The divergence only becomes apparent from around 2005.  Going by Roy's past behaviour, I shouldn't be surprised at him fudging the data to this extent, but I am. …

For the entire article visit HotWhopper.com

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. 

~ ~ ~

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!