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
Here I respond to EM's points #14 to #17, no fireworks, still I found it interesting in that it nudges the dialogue towards the question of 'motivated learning.' For instance, my life long pursuit of Earth and climate learning is driven by my need to understand this wondrous planet I was born into as well as possible. Whereas EM, and I dare say, the entire Republican pursuit of climate science is driven by its threat to their short-term economic/political "interests".
It helps explain why they can so easily ignore the overwhelming evidence in favor of the established scientific "consensus." We are fools not to recognize this. We are but at the beginning of the human fossil fuels burning warming trajectory and unless we rearrange our priorities in a hurry, or there will be hell to pay.
To finish this installment I provide some sources that make plain that infrastructure and life destroying extreme weather events are being driven by an increasingly warming global climate engine and that Republicans minimize the threat at all of our own peril. (Some touch up edits Monday morning)
National Summary Information - December 2016
Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Table of Events
National Climate Assessment - 2014
The National Academy of Sciences
ATTRIBUTION OF Extreme Weather Events
IN THE CONTEXT OF Climate Change
American Meteorological Society
State of the Climate in 2015
NOT JUST THE KOCH BROTHERS:
NEW DREXEL STUDY REVEALS FUNDERS BEHIND THE CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL EFFORT
EM’s point #14, quoting me:If you look at this blog you’ll see plenty of very specific critiques, were I offer objective supporting evidence for my claims. I know what I’m talking about and ignoring my critiques doesn’t make their substance go away.
EM responds: I have neither the time nor the desire to read all of your blog posts, as this site is not easy to navigate and I have other things to do than read through all of your (all pretty much the same) posts.
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With all due respect, then you haven’t looked very far. As for quality of presentation, I agree it leaves much to be desired. But I’m no professional blogger, doing the best I can with what I have, in the limited moments I can spare from the rest of my day to days.
EM responds: I don’t argue with the evidence you present; because I’m not arguing AGW’s existence or the fact that rising global temperature is a net-negative for the planet.
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Actually you are, in that you are dismissing AGW’s already clear and present impacts on our global society and biosphere.
When I first came across the Climate Change National Forum I didn't get further than reading John Nielsen-Gammon articles. First there was the dog-chasing-tail review of a study by John Cook et al. that concluded "97% of (active) climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming." The absurdity of the echo-chamber's hair splitting over that study astounds me and having JNG take us on a tour of that denialist's hall of mirrors was a disappointment.
Then I read "The Basics of Extreme Weather and Global Warming." It was another disappointment, having nothing to do with the title's promise. Instead it was a rhetorical musing about all the ways we can't absolutely positively without fail know when, where, and exactly how much climate change is making weather crazier. As if that meant we could put the issue on a back burner for another couple decades until we could be absolutely positively certain of every detail.
Incidentally, for an example of a serious on-topic attempt to explain the basics of the "global warming" "extreme weather" connection go visit: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence.
Then after reading "The Weather Trap," which was another rhetorical exercise rather than any serious effort to explain our contemporary situation, I promised myself to do a detailed review of the last two essays (the first one is here) since they serve as such good vehicles to demonstrate examples of 'the anatomy of misdirection'. I'm no scholar and there's a bit of repetition, but than JNG was rather repetitive himself, still I have some observations I'd like to share, hoping someone better equipped might find something useful in here. JNG's words are complete and unaltered except for a few highlights and appear in Courier font.
I've written it as an open review directed at Professor Nielsen-Gammon personally, and included many links to help support my claims. I look forward to his response.
Professor John Nielsen-Gammon left a comment at my post titled "Dear Dr. Nielsen-Gammon, re. statistical certainty vs geophysical realities"he sent it before I finishedmy review of his "Extreme Weather" article and I didn't see it until after I posted it. His note provides me with an excellent vehicle to define my issues with JNG's, and many others, approach. It gives me a chance to point out some glaring omissions and to ask a couple questions. I have not changed or deleted any of Professor Nielsen-Gammon's words, I have underlined key ideas.
Recently I became familiar with a website and project called "Climate Change National Forum" which is intended to be a platform "by leading climate climate scientists to educate the American public about climate change."
In phase one their intention is to "... serve as an objective source for journalists, policy experts, scientists, and interested citizens. The site will first be used by scientists to discuss the latest research on climate change and share and debate ideas on aspects of climate change relevant to policy making. These scientists will also fact check a continuous stream of outside articles and news clips ..."
I'll admit I haven't made it past a few essays written by John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas State Climatologists and Regents Professor. On the one hand he is certainly no denialistregarding Manmade Global Warming, but on the other, if this essay is intended to help a lay-audience learn about the issue, then it's a perfect example of how to confuse rather than clarify.
We need to first consider the basics of our planet and global climate system's job of moving heat around.
Think about it in terms of a nearly closed system holding in more heat... energy - than it is radiating out into space. Will that system not become more energized and active?
The basic facts are:
We ARE adding heat to our life sustaining 'global heat distribution engine' - aka Climate System.
>>> means more energized and active
... means more wind and rain and storm surges interspersed with extending "doldrums" (heat and drought), thanks to Jet Stream disruption which is being driven by our Arctic Ice Cap's solar-reflector being transformed into a
solar heat collecting medium...
and water evaporator... and convection current driver... and higher altitude atmospheric mixing and warming... and so on and so forth.
Yet, that geophysics based appreciation seems so distant from the current public way of thinking. With many demanding abstract statistical certainty above geophysical common-sense.
I fear a big part of the blame can be laid at the feet of the very human, but still child-like "Faith" thing and believing we can understand God and reduce our planet to God's toy, created six thousand years ago for some heavenly entertainment and pretending that "my" mind and petty human ego can actually understand "The Will Of God" - OK that's a pretty harsh perspective of the whole thing, but so be it. Considering that at the root of the denialist attitude is a "Faith" that desire can be stronger than down to Earth physics.
~ ~ ~
There is no rational disputing that over the past century:
Our atmosphere's moisture holding ability has increased by 3-5%, due to increased CO2...
In light of my previous post regarding the much misrepresented Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's May 2oth Senate floor speech - which actually had nothing to do with the Moore tornado tragedy, despite what you may have read - I figured I may as well share the Senator's complete speech so you can see for yourself.
Mr./Madam President, every week we’re here I try to remind this body of the damage that carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and oceans, try to awaken us to our duty. I’ve done it thirty-three times now. I’ve tried to kick out the underpinnings of any argument the deniers could stand on.
I’ve kicked out the scientific denial argument, which properly belongs in the category of falsehood. I’ve kicked out the economic denial argument, pointing out that in a proper market the costs of carbon must be in the price of carbon. I tried to kick out the religious denial argument, showing that the belief that God will just tidy up after us however stupidly we behave runs counter to history and Biblical text.
Today, let’s take a crack at the political argument. How wise is it for the Republican Party to wed itself to the deniers and proclaim that climate change is a hoax?
Make no mistake. That is the default Republican position. The default Republican position is that climate change is a hoax. It’s been said right on this floor, and in committees, and I haven’t seen a single Republican Senator stand up afterwards in this chamber to say, “Wait a minute, that’s actually not the case.”
The chamber looks empty, but on C-SPAN lots of people are watching. Lots of Republicans are watching. Yet not one Republican has ever gotten back to me, even quietly on the side, to say, “You know what? This is really getting serious. Let’s see if we can work on this.”
An iron curtain of denial has fallen around the Republican Party. So let me respectfully ask my Republican colleagues: what are you thinking? How do you imagine this ends?
More than 95 percent of climate scientists are convinced that human carbon pollution is causing massive and unprecedented change to our atmosphere and oceans. You want to go with the five percent, and you think that’s a winning strategy?
Moreover, it turns out a lot of those five-percenters are on the payroll of the polluters. You know that. It’s public knowledge. Some of those “payroll scientists” are the same people who denied acid rain, or the dangers of tobacco.
You still like those odds? Those are the folks to whom you want to hitch your Republican wagons? You’ve got to know that they aren’t telling the truth. So where does this go? What’s your end game?
Our planet has had a run of at least 800,000 years with levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 170 and 300 ppm. That’s measurement; not theory. Eight hundred thousand years. Homo sapiens have only been around for about 200,000 years, so that 800,000 years—8,000 centuries—takes you back a ways. Eight hundred thousand years between 170 and 300 ppm, and in just the last 50 years we’ve blown out of that range, and have now hit 400 ppm and climbing.
And you want to be on the side of “nothing’s going on”? Really?
Have you noticed the floods and wildfires and droughts and superstorms and tornadoes and blizzards and temperature records? Have you noticed those warming, rising seas? Have you noticed species invading new territory, and miles of dead pine forests in the Rockies, and Arctic sea ice disappearing?
Do you understand that carbon in the atmosphere gets absorbed by the sea, and that that is a law of science and is not debatable? Do you understand that because they are absorbing the carbon the oceans are getting more acidic?
Thirty percent more acidic already and climbing? Do you understand that's a measurement, not a theory?
It’s one thing to be the party that stands against science. Are you really also going to be the party that stands against measurement?
And do you know the measurement is showing that the ocean are not just becoming more acidic, they’re becoming more acidic at the fastest rate recorded in a geologic record of 50 million years?
Have you not heard about the coral reefs, those incubators of the ocean, bleaching out and dying off? With almost twenty percent gone already worldwide?
If you’re a denier, look around. Do you think the news is getting better for you?
Let me ask my Republican friends, what’s your best bet on whether this climate and oceans problem gets better or worse in the next 20 or 40 years? Seriously. Your party’s reputation is on the line here—all the chips; tell me how you’re going to bet. Do you want to bet the reputation of the Republican Party that suddenly this is all going to magically start getting better? ‘Cause that’s what you’re doing.
And let me ask you this: what are the young people of today going to think when they are thirty-seven, or fifty-seven, and it really is worse, maybe a lot worse? What are they going to think about the Republican Party then? That you took the five percent bet with their futures? That you went with the polluters over the scientists?
Young people are already out there asking their universities to divest from coal, like they divested from the evils of apartheid and the dangers of tobacco. Good luck with that youth vote when you lock in with the coal merchants.
And the youth vote grows up and sticks around.
How’s it going to look for the Republican Party when the historical record shows—because facts have a funny way of coming out—that the campaign to fool the public on climate change was just as phony and dishonest as the campaign to fool the public on acid rain and the campaign to fool the public on tobacco? When the historical record discloses that the five percent wasn’t even real and was actually a scam, paid for by the polluters?
And you, with young Americans’ futures in the balance, took sides with the scam. If that is the state of play for young voters as they come of age, why would those young people ever trust the Republican Party, on anything else, ever again?
Speaking of taking sides, have you noticed who’s left on your side? The Koch brothers—billionaire polluters; the big oil companies -- the biggest polluters in the world; the coal barons—with their legacy of pollution, strip mining, “mountaintop removal,” and safety violations that kill their miners. There’s a fine cast to be surrounded by.
But wait, you say, there’s more. There’s the Heartland Institute, and the Institute for Energy Research, and the American Enterprise Institute, and the American Legislative Exchange Council; and the Heritage Foundation. There are many organizations.
Right. Like the heads of Hydra, they may look like many, but in reality it’s all the same beast. It’s all the same scheme. It’s all the same money behind the scheme. You can name those front organizations, and many more, but none of it is real. They’re all just part of the same cheesy vaudeville show put on by the big polluters.
Do you really want to lash yourself to that operation, and go down with that ship? The great Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, branding itself as the one that gave it all to protect a gang of scheming polluters? That’s where you’re headed.
Look who’s on the other side, on record, against you, seeing through that nonsense. How about the Joint Chiefs of Staff, our military leaders? How about the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops? How about NASA? NASA’s driving a vehicle as big as an SUV around on the surface of Mars right now. They sent it there, to Mars; they landed it safely, and now they’re driving it around. On Mars. Do you think those scientists just might know what they’re talking about?
How about every legitimate American scientific professional society -- about thirty of them? How about major American corporations like Walmart, Ford, Apple, or Coca-Cola? How about global insurance and reinsurance businesses, like Lloyd’s of London and Munich Re, whose business depends on accurate risk models?
Whose side do you like in that?
In this corner, the Joint Chiefs, the bishops, Walmart, Ford, Apple, Coke, NASA, thirty top scientific organizations, the top insurers and reinsurers, and by the way several thousand legitimate others.
In that corner, the polluting industry and a screen of sketchy organizations they fund.
Let’s be serious. Do you really want to bet the reputation of the Republican Party that the polluters are the ones we should count on here? ‘Cause that’s what you’re doing.
And for what? To protect market share for the polluters. That’s your upside. Market share for polluters.
I’m willing to do a carbon pollution fee that sets the market in balance, and returns every single dollar to the American people. No new agencies. No new taxes. No bigger government. Every dollar back. Just a balanced market, with the costs included in the price, which will make better energy choices, increase jobs, and prevent pollution. Yes, that does mean less market share for the polluters as new technologies emerge. That’s actually the point. But every single dollar back in Americans’ pockets.
And by the way, the American people -- three-quarters of them believe that climate change is real and that we need to do something about it.
So you may have a question for me: why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings, and disgrace ourselves?
I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma, and hurricanes swamp Alabama, and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, for billions of dollars to recover.
And the damage your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas; it hits Rhode Island with floods and storms, and Oregon with acidified seas, and Montana with dying forests. So like it or not, we’re in this together.
You drag America with you to your fate.
I want this future: a Republican Party that has returned to its senses, and is a strong and worthy adversary; in a strong America, that has done right by its people and the world. That’s what I want.
I don't want this future: a Republican Party disgraced, that let its extremists run it off the cliff; in an America suffering from grave economic and environmental and diplomatic damage, because we didn’t wake up and do our duty to our people, and lead the world.
I do not want that future. But that’s where you’re headed.
So I’ll keep reaching out and calling out, ever hopeful that you will wake up, before it is too late, both for you, and for the rest of us.
{I have included links to sources that offer background information to my claims.} Over at the Detroit News Frank Beckmann has written another one of those boilerplate articles that underscores the misunderstanding too many people have regarding global warming. {Anthony Watts couldn't resist jumping on the bandwagon also... but I'll focus on Beckmann's article.}
His May 21st Detroit News headline read "Senator blames global warming for tornado" Beckmann follows up with: "Not hard to believe, but Democratic Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse Monday tried to blame global warming for the tragic tornado in Oklahoma." ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“... So you may have a question for me: why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings, and disgrace ourselves?
I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma, and hurricanes swamp Alabama, and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, for billions of dollars to recover.
And the damage your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas; it hits Rhode Island with floods and storms, and Oregon with acidified seas, and Montana with dying forests. So like it or not, we’re in this together.
You drag America with you to your fate.
I want this future: a Republican Party that has returned to its senses, and is a strong and worthy adversary; in a strong America, that has done right by its people and the world. That’s what I want. . .”
Secondly, Senator Whitehouse was giving that pre-written speech while the Moore catastrophe was developing.
If anything, it was sort of a prophetic {if obvious} utterance - one that folks such as Beckmann would do better taking notice of.
You see Senator Whitehouse was trying to express the reality of how we are loading the climate dice and it's a story we should all be paying attention to. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In his second paragraph Beckmann writes:"Amazingly, these supposedly smart people are either ignorant of, or refuse to acknowledge, the history of extreme weather events on our planet, in our country, and – where tornadoes are concerned – in the American Southwest." ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This is pure folly, like trying to navigate heavy traffic with eye's glued to the rear-view mirror.
We must realize the past is no longer a window to the future - certainly not when we have increased our atmosphere's insulation ability by about a third! Please realize that cloaking our planet in a few extra layers of insulation truly has changed everything. Our "Earth: 2000s" is not the geo-physical being it was back in... say 1900s. Why can't Republicans bring themselves to admit that fundamental truth. Last century's goals and solutions are obsolete, wake up to our brave new world.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In his final paragraph Beckmann writes: "I wish I could get people like this senator to just read and consider the information as easily available as reading a Wiki page. Read the “List of North American tornadoes and tornado outbreaks” history here." ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
How ironic, I myself wish I could get people like Beckmann to appreciate that our "climate" is a "Global Heat Distribution Engine."
I wish Republicans would be interested in understanding the structure of our atmosphere starting with our dynamic but thin troposphere... where our weather happens.
I wish people like Beckmann would stop ignoring the physics of increasing the insulating ability of our atmosphere by something like a third!
I wish people like Beckmann would think about our North Pole. That glaring white, radiation reflecting, continent sized landscape of ice that IS now melting and evolving into a heat absorption plate called the Arctic Ocean.
More and more, every year, rather than reflecting radiation back to space, that surface is now warming and evaporating and sending up masses of moisture laden air into convection patterns that Earth hasn't experienced in geologic eons.
Then, those moist air masses displace and shove other air masses into the realm of the Jet Stream. This in turn causes that flow to become more serpentine and erratic.
Keep in mind that weather fronts and storm patterns are pushed and pulled by the Jet Streams which circle our planet.
I wish Republicans could appreciate that yes indeed the increasing tempo of ugly extreme climate events, be they tornadoes; or hurricanes; or droughts, or torrential rains; or long lived extreme heat waves - do relate back to our society's injection of over two gigatons of greenhouse gases, per month, into our atmosphere. The physics is clear and no amount of misrepresentation will change that reality.
