This is both my personal learning project and my contribution in the struggle to confront the ongoing Republican/ libertarian assault on rational science and constructive learning, as manifested in their malicious strategic Attacks on Science ~ A collection of articles, scientific resources, plus my own essays and indepth critique of various presentations from unidirectional-skeptics ~ Hopefully a resource for the busy, yet discerning, student who's concerned about the health of our Earth
Once again George Monbiot has written a brutally honest article assessing what we (American citizens and voters) have allowed to happen to our government. How we're going to recover from this, I don't know. But, I do know that honestly assessing the situation is a requirement if there's to be any hope at all.
I thank Mr. Monbiot for his permission to repost his incisive article.
Dirty industries spend more on politics, keeping us in the fossil age.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 19th January 2017
Make America Wait Again. That’s what Donald Trump’s energy policy amounts to. Stop all the clocks, put the technological revolution on hold, ensure that the transition from fossil fuels to clean power is delayed for as long as possible.
Trump is the president corporate Luddites have dreamt of; the man who will let them squeeze every last cent from their oil and coal reserves before they become worthless. They need him because science, technology and people’s demands for a safe and stable world have left them stranded. There is no fair fight that they can win, so their last hope lies with a government that will rig the competition.
To this end, Trump has appointed to his cabinet some of those responsible for a universal crime: inflicted not on particular nations or groups, but on everyone.
Looks like we've got a debate doing after all. Dave Burton has challenged me with a series of questions. It's in the comments section after Dave Dewitt's "The Changing Carolina Coast: Managing The Threat Of Rising Water," at http://wunc.org/post/changing-carolina-coast-managing-threat-rising-water#stream/0 As these things go it's gotten confused and convoluted in a hurry. That's another tactic, Gish Gallop, tons of distracting questions that offer nothing, so far a learning is concerned, more like playing catch the ball with a dog, but using a bucket full of balls. Though I'll admit Dave was kind enough to come up with 5 "straight forward" questions. In this retelling I've been able to add a little more information.
either here or on my web site.{Perhaps that has more to do with your lack of introspection and inability to admit being wrong and learning from said mistake.} But do feel free to try, Pete. Please be specific. I suggest that you start with my list of five things which are surprising to many climate alarmists:
1. Do you dispute the fact that the new NC Sea Level Rise Reportabandons the 2010 Report's erroneous claim that sea-level rise has accelerated due to global warming?
2. Do you doubt that the Obama Administration's Dr. Steven Koonin has acknowledged that sea-level is rising no faster now (at ~400 ppmv CO2 & 1.8 ppmv CH4) than it was 70 years ago (at ~310 ppmv CO2 & 1.1 ppmv CH4)?
3. Do you dispute the fact that incremental increases in atmospheric CO2 levels have a diminishing effect on temperatures?
4. Do you doubt that Scientific American called anthropogenic CO2 "The Precious Air Fertilizer," because it is so dramatically helpful for agriculture?
5. Do you question the fact that most of the apparent rise in sea-level at Duck, NC is because the land near the southern Chesapeake is sinking, rather than because the sea is rising?
Can you answer "yes" to any of those questions, Pete, or do you acknowledge that I am correct about all five?
_____________________________________________
Please note, how NC-20 Dave’s response has devolved this into a lawyerly word game. Tossing down carefully crafted misdirections cloaked in questions, and demanding only a simple Yes/No answer. No details please. That’s how political games work. But, that is not how any of us learn anything, nor how science works.
These global warming dialogues, exchanges, debates (whatever you want to call them) should be about constructive learning experiences so I’ll try to make some lemonade out of the lemons NC-20 Dave dropped at my feet.
Published on Jan 25, 2016 | 1000frolly | 30:04 painful minutes long
1000frolly writes in his description: NASA scientists Walt Meier and Nathan Kurtz are baffled by the "Mystery" of just why the Antarctic simply refuses to warm. {Wrong! Someone simply did an execrable job of putting together that NASAGoddard video. Vital information was left on the cutting room floor!}
Instead, it's been cooling for decades! {Michael Crichton may say so, but he's a dead fiction thriller writer, can't you do better than that?
There's plenty of warming happening on and around Antarctica.}
Their CO2-driven computer models insist that it has to be warming!
It must be! After all; The Science is "Settled" - isn't it? {Yes, Antarctica is warming! Yes, the fundamentals are settled. Actually, models are plenty accurate, just need to be willing to assess them honestly.}
This is the "Mystery of Antarctica"! The "Canary in the Coal Mine"!
I will explain just why the Antarctic refuses to warm {But, he never does.},
and why this means that the Enhanced Carbon Dioxide hypothesis (CAGW) has to be thrown out. {Only by ignoring tons of evidence can one cling to such disconnected nonsense.}
It's been interesting in a masochistic sort of way, it's helped teach me about "cosmoclimatology" and Antarctica is always fascinating (if sad) to research and I learned a few more facts, such as that eye popping map of Antarctic bottom waters. But dealing with 1000frolly's words was the heart of this. My ongoing struggle to comprehend how someone can believe and broadcast such cobbled together kindergarden 'science', glued will tons of malicious slander towards honest competent experts.
Supported with a gross double standard toward evidentiary expectations. A crank's notions are given more weight than decades worth of Air Force research, followed by literally thousands of scientists and tens of thousands of support staff around globe, studying our planet with ever greater detail and understanding.
All of this is forced through with an attitude of absolute self-certainty and total disregard, nay hostility, towards all contrary information.
He, they, turn what should be a learning process into malicious political theater focused on sowing confusion, distrust and resentment. It has nothing to do with learning. Please join me in my examination of 1000frolly many deceptions and lies, check out the footnotes, for corroborating evidence. You can open them in a second window for side by side viewing "(4B) Profiles in Malicious Deception (footnotes): YouTube's 1000frolly: Antarctic Fraud"
22:55 - 1000frolly: Let's get back to the Antarctic, (Polyakov et. al 2002b)
Now global circulation models forced by carbon dioxide, as they all areshow that both poles should warm far more than tropical regions.{Well yes. Climate models utilize established physics, can't get away from the CO2 reality, any more than you can ignore gravity.}{see #1}
We often get requests to provide an easy-to-understand explanation for why increasing CO2 is a significant problem without relying on climate models and we are generally happy to oblige. The explanation has a number of separate steps which tend to sometimes get confused and so we will try to break it down carefully.
Step 1: There is a natural greenhouse effect
Step 2: Trace gases contribute to the natural greenhouse effect
Step 3: The trace greenhouse gases have increased markedly due to human emissions
Step 4: Radiative forcing is a useful diagnostic and can easily be calculated
Step 5: Climate sensitivity is around 3ºC for a doubling of CO2
Step 6: Radiative forcing x climate sensitivity is a significant number
This is the third installment of my dissection of 1000frolly's malicious nonsense in his 1/25/16 YouTube video, "NASA - The "Mystery" of Antarctic Cooling," for an introduction please refer to the first installment.
This continues where #2A and #2B-footnotes left off. Frolly is still trying to sell his cosmoclimatology while taking a few swipes at the IPCC. This post contains his words with my commentary and footnote numbers. I've created a second document (#3B) with footnotes that support my critique. Ideally you can open both and view them side by side.
I transcribed 1000frolly's words as accurately as I could. If you find any errors, I will acknowledge and correct them.1000frolly's words are in Comic Sans fontand mine are in Verdana font.
16:30 - Because all this happened before human activity could have influenced the climate.{Ergo, human's can't change climate? Frolly, do you actually believe that? CO2 is known to have impacted climate throughout Earth's history, to think that humans injecting more than 2 gigatons month, after month, after month isn't going to have an impact? I mean, that's like crazy. see #15} So we know there was a mechanism and this mechanism is related to cosmic ray cloud interactions. {NO. A lot of arm waving, but no mechanism was described or demonstrated.}
This is the second installment of my dissection of 1000frolly's malicious nonsense in his 1/25/16 YouTube video, "NASA - The "Mystery" of Antarctic Cooling." For a better introduction please refer to the first installment.
1000Frolly I'm going to approach this slightly differently from past critiques. Rather then interspersing my supplemental information within the text, I created a second document of footnotes of my supporting information to stand side by side with your words in this post. As it goes with debates, I will inject my running commentary throughout. The footnote numbers reference the collection at http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/03/2b-deception-svensmark-1000frolly.html Ideally you can open both and view them side by side. Frolly let our virtual debate continue. Complaining about me behind my back is cheating. I will post your comments as I get them, and I offer you a 'guest post' for your thoughtful response, fair and square.
Frolly since you never did get past arm-waving long enough to explain any of "cosmoclimatology" details, I'll start with Svensmark's own explanation of the mechanism, before returning to your game.
Please notice there is nothing "amplifying" going on here. Furthermore, what climate science contrarians ignore is that all this is about micro effects, while our atmosphere is filled with gigatons worth of appropriately sized aerosols already acting as cloud nucleating particles:
... Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, the discovery{False. There was no observation, no discovery. It was a contrived correlation and one that's questioned by most experts.}that low-level clouds are particularly affected by cosmic-ray variations suggested that a simpler experiment, operating only at sea-level temperature and pressure, might capture some of the essential microphysics. Instead of a particle beam, we used natural cosmic rays, supplemented by gamma rays when we wanted to check the effect of increased ionization of the air.
Our team set up the experiment in the basement of the Danish National Space Center, with a large plastic box containing purified air{thus eliminating the cloud nucleating aerosols that are always present in our natural sky.} and the trace gases that occur naturally in unpolluted air over the ocean. Ultraviolet lamps mimicked the Sun's rays. During experiments, instruments traced the chemical action of the penetrating cosmic rays in the reaction chamber. We called the experiment SKY, which means “cloud” in Danish. By 2005 ...
A couple days after my post I discovered that YouTube's 1000frolly had gotten to the video a few weeks before me and used it's unfortunate omissions as a platform for driving home his argument that CO2 science is a hoax and that scientists are clueless shills.
Now it's my turn to unpack 1000frolly's malicious fraud. This is the footnotes to part two of my detailed review of his malicious deception saturated "NASA - The "Mystery" of Antarctic Cooling" (Jan 25, 2016).
For easy reference you can open this footnotes page and view it side by side with frolly's dialogue interspersed with my running commentary and corrections.
=======================
{#1} "see quite clearly... Yoshimura Gleissberg cycle"
It's arm waving, the Yoshimura Gleissberg cycle isn't even holding up to it's own predictions and it's certainly no help in understanding recent climate fluctuations.
The Gleisberg cycle implied that the next solar cycle have a maximum smoothed sunspot number of about 145±30 in 2010 (instead 2010 was just after the cycle's solar minimum) ....[27]
"... Comparing natural terrestrial and solar phenomena, we found that the most sustained and strongest modulation of historical drought occurrence is at ∼60–64 years and is between the historical drought series and the solar proxy Be10. For modern droughts we notice that the coherence is similar among AMO, SOI and the solar indices. We can conclude that the sea surface temperatures (AMO) and solar activity leave their signal in terms of severe droughts in the Maya lands, however in the long term, the influence of the SOI on this type of phenomenon is less clear."
{#3} "But of course if you're, um, Henrik Svensmark"
Yeah. If you're Svensmark, you invest so much of your ego into your own personal vision, that you ignore solid critique.
Experts consistently judge his work sloppy, incomplete and that he grossly oversells his conclusions (but then the bar in the contrarian media is quite low.). Here's an overview of his work, with links to exhaustive scientific reviews of Svensmark's various claims, critiques he consistently sidesteps. (also see #15)
February 16th I posted "A Study in Miscommunication - Increasing Antarctic Ice Extent (is No) Mystery!" in which I describe the failings of a NASAGoddard video who's omission riddled and inept communication does more to confuse than clarify. A couple days after my post I discovered that YouTube's 1000frolly had gotten to the video a few weeks before me and used it's unfortunate omissions as a platform for driving home his argument that CO2 science is a hoax and that scientists are clueless shills.
Now it's my turn to unpack 1000frolly's malicious fraud. To do that I needed to transcribe his video which was a pain. His surly condescension dripping delivery made the YouTube transcript near worthless and the listening increasingly irritating, but finish it I did. I intersperse 1000frolly's words with reality checks, and links to supporting evidence for my claims. (I've done my best to accurately reproduce his words, if you find errors, let me know, I'll correct them.)
What's frustrating is that this will do no good. The Republican/libertarian driven PR campaign is founded on anger and a conviction that malicious tactical lies are part of their Free Speech Right. I recall theAmerican standards that we used to strive for,honesty, honor and decency. Civility to opponents, fair-play, all this seems to have become irrelevant. But, it shouldn't be. Though it seems like talking to bricks in a wall, the future demands we keep trying.
(part 1) Profiles in Malicious Deception, 1000frolly's
Frolly starts with a clip from the video, I'll share the whole thing, it's short. The terrible omission and poor followup starts around 1:10 min. Although previous to that, notice melting glaciers are never mentioned. Why leave that out?
NASA | The Arctic and the Antarctic Respond in Opposite Ways
What are these guys saying, these supposed scientists. He admits that the Antarctic is cooling and yet he said "Ah that doesn't refute global warming." - Hey, hello, how can you have global warming, when the globe is not warming? Only part of it is warming.
_________________________
Hey, HELLO!
Antarctica = 5.4 million square miles; Earth=197 million square miles;
Antarctica = 2.7% of the globe. Hello?
Then the dripping venom, "Supposed" scientists, in his head. In reality these are experts and people of real responsibility, who have established good reputations among their colleagues on account of their solid work. Frolly's sniping from the side lines sounds more like some drop-out ridiculing the professors who were stuck grading the tests he flunked.
For the record, any comment posted over here is fair game for finding itself featured as a stand-alone post. I don't change any words, beyond occasional courtesy spell correction, paragraph-breaks, highlights. My commentary is clearly marked. Or as in this case, I don't have a word to interject. I believe it belongs upfront, because Kevin's comment did an excellent job of boiling it down to basics. If your struggling with figuring out the climate science contrarian mind-scape, here's a short but good read.
It's really pretty simple logic: By assembling a list that contains completely contradictory claims all PopTech is promoting is ignorance, uncertainty, and doubt. Color me surprised (/snark).
Knowledge is gained by comparing competing claims and discarding those that are not consistent with all the evidence.
As with most of the denialsphere, PopTech shies away from actual definitions.
The theory of AGW is pretty simple: Human activities have the net effect of making the planet we live on warmer. The theory is true. If not, there's a Nobel Prize awaiting the paper that shows our current understanding of radiative transfer is completely incorrect.
(Touch up edited and footnote added, Saturday, Jan 30 morning.) January 26, 2016 at 1:22 AM Poptech writes: "Now you are making libelous claims that I attempt to "overwhelm with self-serving rhetoric"?"
This from the man who submitted yet another missive with 14 articles no less. 700 words worth of long winded complaints and rationalization regarding what I've written about his fraud.
So okay Poptech, I told you I'd post them, here are your two important comments along with my observations. Have a good day Andrew.
Here is a summary refuting the gibberish you copied and pasted:
1. The list has nothing to do with an author's personal opinion on AGW but whether a paper supports a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW or Alarmism.
__________
Right there's a red flag that you are in this to peddle politics and not for the learning about our global heat and moisture distribution engine.
_________________________________________
2. The IPCC is irrelevant to the purpose of the list. While some papers directly criticize the IPCC, it has nothing to do with whether a paper appears on the list or not. Papers are listed if they support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW or Alarmism. Alarmist claims can come from anywhere in the media, including but not limited to the Internet. In the cases of the "someone" on the Internet they are not random people but well-known activists, environmentalists or journalists.
__________
"Alarmist claims can come from anywhere"
In other words you don't really care if these arguments are serious claims or merely the rantings of the under-informed, or the bitter.
_________________________________________
3. None of the papers "confirm" fundamental properties of AGW, as a paper that supports a skeptic argument against Alarmism will likely acknowledge AGW (in some form) but this does not mean they "support" AGW theory as defined by the IPCC.
__________
What the heck does that mean?
If this were any sort of serious effort - you'd start by sharing your understanding of what the "IPCC defines as the "AGW theory." But, this isn't a serious effort to understand anything. Seems all you have is this sort of vague arm waving.
This afternoon Poptech piled on more comments defending Poptech's List of Confusion. Two were a list of 14points no less, adding up to over 700 words. The irony is great, considering he's the fellow who wrote: January 26, 2016 at 1:22 AM Poptech: *"Now you are making libelous claims that I attempt to "overwhelm with self-serving rhetoric"?"*
It's another self-certain gish-gallop and a masterpiece of rationalization with more than a little bit of the hubristic self aggrandizing about it. As Poptech should know by now, when I get such material, I save it for a closer examination and I will be posting that when I get to it, along with a thoughtful critique and supplemental information.
But first, I think Poptech owes it to intellectual integrity to answer some simple questions himself.
Why should anyone bother with his list? It's worthless.
If Poptech doesn't agree, please explain what purpose it serves, in connection to understanding what's happening to our climate system?
Even more fundamental, Please tell us why you believe we should not trust the collective information all these professional outfits have amassed?
I had thoughts of reviewing a few other papers from Poptech's list considering what a hoot Reifsnyder's "Tale of ten fallacies" was. (you can read about it at "Considering Poptech's standards of excellence")
But, I'm over it. Too many other things to catch up on. If Andrew decides to continue the dialogue I'll be happy to field his complaints and claims and repeat my questions for him, if not, fine.
For my final post in this series I'm going to do a pure cut'n paste of an excellent, thoughtful examination of Poptech's list of papers over at https://itsnotnova.wordpress.com.
It's the sort of well narrated detail work I dream of doing, but time constraints, a chaotic hyper-attention syndrome, and frankly my limited understanding keep me from it. (I don't fail to recognize that I am a lay-person, my education has been of the casual self administered sort. It's great for what it is, but it certainly has limitations. That's why I love turning to the educated adults who have spent their lives and careers in a formal pursuit of learning about all the details and getting a grasp of the whole picture and its various components.)
I get the feeling ItsNotNova understands the science from the inside, as opposed to, from the outside looking in, such as I and most fellow blogger do. That's why I want to finish this Poptech series with his/her excellent review of Poptech's list of Confusion.
Joanna Nova, known for her hatred of anyone on her website calling deniers a denier, invokes the use of this term for anyone willing to question a list of papers.
This is also another strawman argument, no one needs to deny the existence of these papers, because quite obviously they do exist, but they don’t destroy AGW as some people might be fooled into thinking.
Nova’s words
Who are the deniers now? 800 Peer Reviewed Papers in support of skepticism of AGW or the negative environmental or economic effects of AGW.
Seeing this list people might be fooled into thinking these papers somehow rebut the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Nova seems fooled into thinking we need to “deny” them all. In fact as we’ll see, the author of these papers likes to categorise this list in his unique way, thus making it appear there are a lot of papers that dispute the science of AGW.
“Merchant of doubt” Nova blindly promotes the list in several of her posts, but misses out on one of the nuances of Poptech’s criteria, ALARM! Poptech will list papers if HE decides they rebut an alarming claim made by “someone” on the internet. A paper doesn’t have to dispute the mainstream climate science found in the IPCC report in order to be included.
We can’t really blame Nova for not noticing the subtle difference; originally Poptech listed this list as “450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming” as seen in numerous blogger websites (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). Poptech’s ALARM was added later when he realised his mistake in listing certain papers.
Poptech has a “rebuttal” (of kind) where he claims I lie because …
