This blog uses the best up-to-date peer-reviewed climate science, quality sources, logic and critical thinking to explain man-made climate change and to debunk fake news, propaganda, myths and conspiracy theories.
Bloggen bruker den beste oppdaterte fagfellevurderte klimavitenskapen, kildekritikk og kritisk tenking til å forklare de menneskeskapte klimaendringene og til å svare på falske nyheter, propaganda, myter, konspirasjonsteorier og alternative virkelighetsoppfatninger om klima.
With Tropical Storm Ophelia’s transition to Hurricane Ophelia on Wednesday, 2017 became the first year in more than a century — and only the fourth on record — in which 10 Atlantic storms in a row reached hurricane strength.
Ophelia, far out in the Atlantic, does not pose a threat to the United States, though it may affect Ireland. But it puts this year in the history books by at least one measure. The last time 10 consecutive Atlantic storms became hurricanes was in 1893 — and because tracking technology was far more primitive then, meteorologists say, some weak tropical storms or tropical depressions may have gone undetected within that streak.
As wildfires continued to rip through Northern California’s wine country Wednesday and the death toll continued to rise, images of the blazes’ devastation capped one of the most extraordinary years of climate disasters that North America has ever seen.
Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria flattened numerous Caribbean islands, submerged Houston, broke rainfall and tropical cyclone intensity records and has left an estimated 94 percent of Puerto Rico without power nearly three weeks after Maria’s landing. It has left the world wondering if the devastation witnessed in 2017 will become more frequent as humans’ greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the globe.
FORSKERNE "SPÅDDE EN ISTID PÅ 70-TALLET" MYTEN OPPKLART
Hele formålet med denne myten er å hevde at forskere ikke er til å stole på, at de vil si / hevde / forutsi hva som helst bare for å få navnet sitt i avisene, og at media faller for det hele tiden. De tok feil om istiden i 1970-årene, de tar feil nå om global oppvarming.
The whole purpose of this myth is to argue that researchers are not reliable. They'll say / claim / predict anything just to get their name in the newspapers and that the media is falling for it all the time. They were wrong about the ice age in the 1970s, they are now wrong with global warming.
On deniers bloggs you will find videos like this reposted and reposted:
The cooling trend from 1940- 1970 was the result of fine aerosol pollution, which reflected solar radiation back out into space (also known as "global dimming").
After rising rapidly during the first part of the 20th century, global average temperatures did cool by about 0.2°C after 1940 and remained low until 1970, after which they began to climb rapidly again.
The rise in sulphate aerosols was largely due to the increase in industrial activities at the end of the second world war. In addition, the large eruption of Mount Agung in 1963 produced aerosols which cooled the lower atmosphere by about 0.5°C, while solar activity levelled off after increasing at the beginning of the century
The myth stems originally from a 1971 Rasool and Schneider study, which was predicated on a quadrupling of aerosol emissions; this possible pathway NEVER HAPPENED. Emissions
actually went the opposite trajectory due to the establishment of the
EPA and the Clean Water Act in 1970, the Vienna Convention on the
Protection of the Ozone Layer of 1985, the The Montreal Protocol on
Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer of 1987 and the Clean Air Act of
1990.
"There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then."
The primary hyping came from "pop-science" publications.
between 1965 and 1979, 44 scientific papers predicted warming, 20 were neutral and just 7 predicted cooling.
So while predictions of cooling got more media attention, the majority of scientists were predicting warming even then.
Gjenta etter meg:
En studie av den vitenskapelige litteraturen mellom 1965 og 1979,
viser at 44 fagfellevurderte papirer forutså oppvarming, 20 var nøytrale og bare 7 spådde cooling.
Så mens spådommene om cooling fikk mer medieoppmerksomhet, var flertallet av forskere enige om oppvarming selv da.
Here are the 7 papers on cooling. One of them is the Rasool and Schneider 1971 study which was was predicated on a quadrupling of aerosol emissions; this possible pathway NEVER HAPPENED.
"For me, the single most compelling time capsule showing what the scientific community believed in the 1970s is found in the National Academy of Science's 1977 publication Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics. Its ten chapters cover worldwide energy consumption, natural climate changes, industrial particulates and gases, energy transfer in the oceans, and climate modeling, and throughout it all runs constant study of CO2 levels.
Climate science as we know it today did not exist in the 1960s and 1970s. The integrated enterprise embodied in the Nobel Prizewinning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change existed then as separate threads of research pursued by isolated groups of scientists. Atmospheric chemists and modelers grappled with the measurement of changes in carbon dioxide and atmospheric gases, and the changes in climate that might result. Meanwhile, geologists and paleoclimate researchers tried to understand when Earth slipped into and out of ice ages, and why. An enduring popular myth suggests that in the 1970s the climate science community was predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice age, an observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate scientists say today about the prospect of global warming. A review of the literature suggests that, on the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking as being one of the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales. More importantly than showing the falsehood of the myth, this review describes how scientists of the time built the foundation on which the cohesive enterprise of modern climate science now rests.
In the 1970s there were a few developments in climate science:
Scientists were finding answers to the puzzle of what caused ice ages in the past: variations in earth’s orbit.
Scientists were gathering data from around the world to come up with
global average temperatures, and they found that temperatures had been
cooling since about the 1940s.
Scientists were realizing that some of this cooling was due to
increasing air pollution (soot and aerosols, tiny particles suspended in
the air) which was decreasing the amount of solar energy entering the
atmosphere.
Scientists were also quantifying the “greenhouse effect” of another
part of our increasing pollution: carbon dioxide (CO2), which should
cause the climate to warm.
Medienes rolle og Hvordan klimafornekterne utnytter og holder liv i myten: ved å vise til populær-magasin-artikler:
How deniers keeps the myth warm: By refering to pop magazine articles: "When the myth of the 1970s global cooling scare
arises in contemporary discussion over climate change, it is most often
in the form of citations not to the scientific literature, but to news media coverage.
(This media hype was found in newspapers, magazines, books and on
television). That is where US Senator James Inhofe turned for much of
the evidence to support his argument in a Senate floor speech in 2003
(Inhofe 2003). Chief among his evidence was a frequently cited Newsweek
story: "The Cooling World" (Gwynne 1975)."
Nine paragraphs written for Newsweek in 1975 continue to trump 40 years of climate science. It is a record that has its author amazed.
This
article, and much of the media coverage in its vein, overstated the
level of scientific concern regarding on global cooling and its effects
from that time period, a point graciously conceded by the author of the
1975 Newsweek article in a 2014 story he wrote for Inside Science.
Peter Gwynne, the man who wrote The Cooling world article, is rebutting his own story:
"In retrospect, I was over-enthusiastic in parts
of my Newsweek article. Thus, I suggested a connection between the
purported global cooling and increases in tornado activity that was
unjustified by climate science. I also predicted a forthcoming impact of
global cooling on the world’s food production that had scant research
to back it.[...] Our climate is warming -- not cooling, as the original story suggested"Peter Gwynne 2014.
"As calculated by the mathematician Milutin Milankovitch in the 1920s, these factors vary on interlocking cycles of around 20,000, 40,000 and 100,000 years, and if nothing else changed they would be certain to bring on a new Ice Age at some time. In the 1970s, there were scientists who thought this shift might be imminent; more recent data, according to William Connolley, a climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey who has made a hobby of studying Ice Age predictions , suggest that it might be much farther off." [...] predictions of global cooling never approached the kind of widespread scientific consensus that supports the greenhouse effect today. And for good reason: the tools scientists have at their disposal now—vastly more data, incomparably faster computers and infinitely more sophisticated mathematical models—render any forecasts from 1975 as inoperative as the predictions being made around the same time about the inevitable triumph of communism. Astronomers have been warning for decades that life on Earth could be wiped out by a collision with a giant meteorite; it hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean that journalists have been dupes or alarmists for reporting this news.
THE TIME COVERS I searched around on Time’s website and
looked through all of the covers from the 1970s. I was shocked
(shocked!) to find not a single cover with the promise of an in-depth,
special report on the Coming Ice Age. What about this cover from December 1973 with Archie Bunker shivering in his chair entitled “The Big Freeze”? Nope, that’s about the Energy Crisis. Maybe this cover from January 1977, again entitled “The Big Freeze”? Nope, that’s about the weather. How about this one from December 1979, “The Cooling of America”? Again with the Energy Crisis.
"By 1980 the predictions about ice ages
had ceased, due to the overwhelming evidence contained in an increasing
number of reports that warned of global warming.
Unfortunately, the
small number of predictions of an ice age appeared to be much more interesting than those of global warming, so it was those sensational 'Ice Age' stories in the press that so many people tend to remember."
La også Time Magazine selv få oppklare klimafornekter-løgnen:
A doctored Time magazine cover which became a favorite myth in denier-land. The authentic cover is to the right:
En falsk forside som altså har blitt til en urban myth. Her er den falske forsiden til venstre og den ekte til høyre:
Here we see how a
denier blog uses this fake Time cover to give the impression that
researchers have predicted ice age in the 70's and warming 30 years
later:
Her ser vi hvordan en fornekterblogg
bruker dette falske Time-coveret til å skape et inntrykk av at
forskerne har spådd istid på 70-tallet og oppvarming 30 år senere:
Grunnen til at fornektere må lage falske forsider? Time Magazine coverene på
70-tallet handlet faktisk IKKE om at verden skulle bli kjøligere.
La oss se nærmere på disse
coverne. Her
er andre eksempler på hvordan klimafornektere/tåkeleggerne
misforstår/bevisst jukser og setter sammen bilder for å fordreie
virkeligheten. Bilde nummer 1 og 3 omhandler kun lokale kalde vintre,
og dette er jo hinsides ironisk; klimafornektere forstår fortsatt ikke
at dette jo ER et tegn på global oppvarming, noe som Time-artikkelen til
høyre er klar på (More signs of GW). Med andre ord så handler disse to
artiklene om det motsatte av hva klimafornektere tror de handler om. I
denne sammenhengen dog, skapes det et
feilaktig inntrykk av at forskere har spådd istid - global oppvarming -
istid. Som her i den Exxon-sponsete ekkokammer-klimaløgn-bloggen WattsUpWithThat.
The reason why deniers must make fake covers? The Time Magazine covers in the 70's were NOT really about a cooling climate.
Despite the fact that this article
did not once mention the concept of global cooling, and despite the
fact that this article is about record setting cold temperatures in the
winter of 1977 and explicitly filed under the subject “weather,” WUWT
described the cover as:
An example [of the] global cooling scare of the 70s.
Let's have a closer look at these covers. Here
are examples of how the climate deniers / misunderstand /
deliberately cheat and merge pictures to distort reality. Picture number 1 and 3 only deal with local cold winters, and this is beyond ironic; climate
deniers still do not understand that this is indeed a sign of global
warming, as the Time article on the right is even saying:More signs of global warming. (Everyone has heard of the expression "Its to cold to snow", warmer weather brings more moisture to the air and this is available to weather systems.) In other words, these two articles confirms the opposite of what climate deniers think they are about. In this context, however, it creates an erroneous impression that researchers have predicted ice age - global warming - ice age.Like here in the Heartland / Exxon-sponsored echo chamber climate denier blog WattsUpWithThat. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/01/time-magazine-and-global-warming/
But again, these are NOT scientific journals, these are pop magazines. They'll pick the odd story most of the times. They will sensational their stories in order to sell more magazines. The vast majority of climate scientists predicted, as said, global warming already in the 70's. Slight uncertainty due to aerosols and air pollution caused some researchers to be in doubt.Here we see another version of the image collage:
Men
igjen, dette er magaziner og ukeblader som kun omtaler lokalt vær. Som
bedriver sensasjonsjournalistikk for å selge blader. Dette er
IKKE vitenskapelige tidsskrifter som spår om fremtidens klimaendringer. De
aller fleste klimaforskere spådde, som sagt, global oppvarming også på 70-tallet.
Litt usikkerhet pga aerosoler og luftforurensing gjorde at enkelte
forskere var usikre. Her ser vi en annen versjon av bildekollasjen:
Det første bildet (over) handler om olje/energi-krisen
i 1973 og har følgelig heller ingen verdens ting med global oppvarming
eller "forskerne spådde en istid på 70-tallet" å gjøre. Dette forhindrer
selvsagt ikke klimafornekterne å misbruke coveret. Her er et typisk eksempel på hvordan fornekter-blogger misbruker slike forsider.
The first picture (above) is about the oil / energy crisis in 1973 and consequently has absolutely nothing to do with the scientists predicted cooling in the 70's claim. This obviously does not prevent the climate deniers from misusing the cover. Like in this denier blog.
Her
ser vi igjen hvordan to bilder (over), som altså handler om energikriser, som har ingen verdens ting med "forskerne spådde en istid på 70-tallet" å gjøre, blir misbrukt for å fortelle en helt annen historie. Som her, i bloggen til den konservative politikeren Ron Paul. Du finner variasjoner over disse Time-coverne i hundrevis av klimafornekter-blogger. Også norske klimafornekter-steder pusher disse løgnhistoriene.
Here we see again how two images (above), which are about energy crises, and consequently has absolutely nothing to do with the "scientists predicted cooling in the 70's" claim, are misused to tell a completely different story. Like here, in the blog of conservative politician Ron Paul. You'll find variations over these Time covers in hundreds of climate denier blogs. http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?58663-Ron-Paul-Doesn-t-Accept-Evolution&p=5739183&fref=gc
BONUS: The effects and dangers of human made climate change was well known and understood by the US military and the president in the 1960s because they got their info from scientists, not pop magazines.
Fifty years ago: The White House knew all about climate change
Fifty years ago, on November 5, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House released “Restoring the Quality of our Environment”, a report that described the impacts of climate change, and foretold dramatic Antarctic ice sheet loss, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. https://goo.gl/ufDL5Z That 1965 White House report stated:
“Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about 25 percent more CO2 in our atmosphere than present.”
On the 50th anniversary of the White House report, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are indeed at 399 ppm: 25 percent over 1965 levels, exactly as predicted 50 years ago.
The 1965 White House report went on to detail the federal government’s extensive understanding of the urgency and dire impacts of climate change. The report warned:
“This will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate, not controllable through local or even national efforts, could occur. Possibilities of bringing about countervailing changes by deliberately modifying other processes that affect climate may then be very important.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson's Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty February 8, 1965
To the Congress of the United States:
"This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. "
Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants."
BONUS 2 Oh the irony. The only ones to predict cooling and ice age are.............contrarians and climate deniers...LOLOLOL.
You see them all over the place in climate denier-land. They are the denier darlings.
There are very few people still alive in our world with actually background from climate-related sciences, who still to some degree, deny AGW or who plays down the role and impact of C02 as a driver for climate change. Most of the denier "experts" are expert in a different field of science or a fake, a crank, a clown or a blown up authority paid to present the usual piss stream of propaganda lies and myths on behalf of the oil industry funded think tank who puts money on them.They will milk this old tired cow til it drops dead.
FAKE EXPERTS:
These are individuals purporting to be experts but whose views are inconsistent with established knowledge.
Fake experts have been used extensively by the tobacco industry who developed a strategy to recruit scientists who would counteract the growing evidence on the harmful effects of second-hand smoke.
“For example, the common idea that there will always be two opposing views does not always result in a rational conclusion. This was behind how tobacco firms used science to make their products look harmless, and is used today by climate change deniers to argue against the scientific evidence. “This ‘balance routine’ has allowed the cigarette men, or climate deniers today, to claim that there are two sides to every story, that ‘experts disagree’ – creating a false picture of the truth, hence ignorance.”
(Is there an argument?..Ohh, the science can't be settled then!)
If you wondered what deniers favorite think tank, The Heartland Institute have to say about tobacco today, here it comes, and im not kidding, but do this sound familiar to you:
"The public health community's campaign to demonize smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science". "The anti-smoking movement is hardly a grassroots phenomenon: It is largely funded by taxpayers and a few major foundations with left-liberal agendas." “The association between (second hand) tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.
Climate deniers of today have the same fake experts as the tobacco industry. Just so they can say, "listen, we have scientists who disagree, so the science is not settled."
Here are the climate denier darlings:
Blogger and creationist Roy Spencer, creationist Timothy Ball, blogger and lobbyist Richard Lindzen, the former evangelical pastorJohn Christy, notorious lier and oil shill Patrick Michaels and lobbyist blogger Judith Curry.
Why is it deniers only use these, over and over and over again?
Could it be they are all directly linked to oil industry funded think tanks? Could it be because their conclusions and findinds always are convenient for the oil industry? Lets have a closer look.
Here are 6 reasons why Spencer is completely useless and irrelevant on climate matters. 1) Roy Spencer is a Creationist, which means he is anti-science. Roy Spencer has signed the The Cornwall Alliance creationist petition - declaring that "God" would never allow global warming / climate change to happen.
"We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history." http://cornwallalliance.org/2009/05/signers-of-an-evangelical-declaration-on-global-warming/ http://cornwallalliance.org/2009/05/evangelical-declaration-on-global-warming/ https://www.realskeptic.com/2014/01/29/dr-roy-spencer-please-keep-religion-science/
Roy Spencer has essentially made up his mind about global warming. His research is not to consider if global warming is natural, it’s to show that global warming is natural. This completely changes how one should assess his research and anything he writes about global warming and climate change. Many accuse climate scientists of being biased but this seems like a classic example of explicit bias. Essentially it seems that Roy Spencer’s research is aimed at confirming his view that global warming and climate change are simply a consequence of some natural process and are not anthropogenic. I think everyone should bear this in mind when considering Roy Spencer’s views on global warming and climate change.
2) In the book The Evolution Crisis, creationist Spencer denies evolution:
"I was finally convinced that the theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution, because the creation model was actually better able to explain the physical and biological complexities of the world. [...] Science has scared us with its many discoveries and advances, but it has hit a brick wall in its attempt to get rid of the need for a creator and designer. http://theevolutioncrisis.org.uk/testimony2.php
3. In this guest essay on the website of the creationists in The Cornwall Alliance, the creationist Spencer writes:
"But there is no way to know whether “The global warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human activities…”, because there is no fingerprint of human-caused versus naturally caused climate change. To claim the changes are “unprecedented” cannot be demonstrated with reliable data, and are contradicted by some published paleoclimate data which suggests most centuries experience substantial warming or cooling." http://cornwallalliance.org/2014/05/1094/
This is contrary to what all other climate scientists are saying and contrary to basic physics. Because there is a human fingerprint on AGW:
The carbon in atmospheric CO2 contains information about its origin, so researchers can tell that fossil fuel emissions are the biggest source of the increase since pre-industrial times. The carbon from burning fossil fuels has a different isotopic signal than CO2 derived from natural sources. It's like a fingerprint. It's unique and has no other explanations. 4. Creationist Roy Spencer has been involved in making fraudulent research as published in Remote Sensing, which led to the editor quitting.
"the paper by [creationist] [Roy] Spencer and [William] Braswel was "fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal."
"Changes
in outgoing radiation are both a consequence and a cause of changes in
the earth’s temperature. Spencer and Braswell recently showed that in a
simple box model for the earth the regression of outgoing radiation
against surface temperature gave a slope that differed from the model’s
true feedback parameter. They went on to select input parameters for the
box model based on observations, computed the difference for those
conditions, and asserted that there is a significant bias for climate
studies. This paper shows that Spencer and Braswell overestimated the
difference".
5. Creationist Roy Spencer conveniently forgot to factor in sensor degredation in his database for a LONG time until the scientific community forced him to issue the corrections.
But rather than doing a careful analysis of various potential
explanations, McNider and Christy, as well as their colleague Roy
Spencer, prefer to draw far reaching conclusions based on a particularly
flawed comparison: They shift the modelled temperature anomaly upwards
to increase the discrepancy with observations by around 50%. Using this
tactic, Roy Spencer showed the following figure on his blog recently:
The misleading and fake graph. You will find this is hundreds of denier blogs and videos.
So what did he do? Jos Hagelaars
tried to reproduce the different steps involved. A comparison of annual
data, using a 1986-2005 baseline, would look as follows:
Spencer used a 5 year running mean instead of annual values, which would (should) look as follows:
The next step is re-baselining the figure to maximize the visual
appearance of a discrepancy: Let’s baseline everything to the 1979-1983
average (way too short of a period and chosen very tactically it seems):
Which looks surprisingly similar to Spencer’s trickery-graph. But critiquing Roy Spencer comes at a risk: He may call you a “global warming Nazi”. Those nasty CO2 molecules, that’ll teach them!
ANOTHER DEBUNK:
In 2014, the truth came out: Spencer’s UAH team had made a huge mistake in the calibration of their data. Instead of negligible upper-atmosphere warming, they found that the upper atmosphere had been warming at +0.14 degrees per decade, double the 1880-2014 rate of 0.07 degrees per decade. The other major satellite data set, RSS, also found a calibration error, meaning the Earth warmed 140% faster since 1998 than previous conclusions indicated. At the same time, the ground-based data from NOAA, NASA, the Hadley center and BEST all displayed agreement with one another. Once the 2014, 2015 and 2016 data are also included, the graph shows the scientific truth: the models are very much in line with what we observe.
"In fact out of all the temperature datasets — land, sea, weather balloons, and two from satellites (UAH and RSS) — only one dataset had shown unexpectedly slow warming in recent years, the RSS data. Unsurprisingly, that is the dataset deniers like Ted Cruz have glommed on to — despite the fact that it was widely believed the RSS data was being misanlayzed."
Several groups of scientists began looking closely at this discrepancy. With so many other pieces of evidence indicating warming, it seemed unlikely that the troposphere would not be warming. Errors were discovered in the methods the UAH group used to adjust the data.
To understand what was wrong: The satellites must pass over the same spot on Earth at the same time each day to get a temperature average. In reality the time the satellite passes drifts slightly as the orbit slowly decays. To compensate for this and other orbital changes a series of adjustments must be applied to the data.
So rather than, say, providing the public the best science, Spencer sees his “job” as persuading the public not to support efforts to reduce carbon pollution. So it’s no surprise that Spencer chose such a misleading headline, despite the fact that his own chart’s running 13-month average clearly shows that temperatures are rising.
If you’re wondering why Spencer plots a 13-month running average when 13 months do not actually correspond to anything relevant to homo sapiens, well, you’ll have to ask him. It is slightly easier to do the math. In any case, here is the more meaningful 12-month running average. https://thinkprogress.org/satellites-confirm-global-warming-ce6d636c469f/
John Christy and Spencer were wrong — dead wrong — for a very long time, which created one of the most enduring denier myths, that the satellite data didn’t show the global warming that the surface temperature data did. As RealClimate explained a few years ago:
We now know, of course, that the satellite data set confirms that the
climate is warming, and indeed at very nearly the same rate as indicated
by the surface temperature records. Now, there’s nothing wrong with
making mistakes when pursuing an innovative observational method, but
Spencer and Christy sat by for most of a decade allowing — indeed
encouraging — the use of their data set as an icon for global warming
skeptics. They committed serial errors in the data analysis, but
insisted they were right and models and thermometers were wrong. They
did little or nothing to root out possible sources of errors, and left
it to others to clean up the mess, as has now been done.
Amazingly
(or not), the “serial errors in the data analysis” all pushed the
(mis)analysis in the same, wrong direction. Coincidence? You decide.
But
what would you expect from a guy who contributed the chapter “The
Global Warming Fiasco” to a 2002 book called Global Warming and Other
Eco-Myths, published by Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading
provider of disinformation on global warming that was funded by
ExxonMobil?
____________________________
Spencer
and Christy’s data set has undergone many major corrections to address
various errors and biases. This is how science always progresses, but
those who believe that adjustments to surface temperature measurements are part of a conspiracy (including Roy Spencer)
always seem to neglect the major adjustments to the satellite data. In
fact, in its early days, Spencer and Christy’s data set seemed to
indicate the atmosphere was cooling, before a series of big adjustments were made. [..] Much of Spencer and Christy’s contrarian research has not withstood subsequent scientific scrutiny.
More new science destroys creationist Spencers outdated junk:
The existence of bias in recent global mean temperature estimates has
been confirmed by multiple means. This bias leads to an underestimation
of recent temperature trends. The evidence is as follows. Coverage bias
in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature
trends. Kevin Cowtan, Robert G. Way (2014)
The
new dataset shows substantially increased global-scale warming relative
to the previous version of the dataset, particularly after 1998.
The new dataset shows more warming than most other midtropospheric data
records constructed from the same set of satellites. It is also shown
that the new dataset is consistent with long-term changes in total
column water vapor over the tropical oceans, lending support to its
long-term accuracy. Sensitivity of Satellite-Derived
Tropospheric Temperature Trends to the Diurnal Cycle Adjustment Press
Release: 2016 Tropospheric Temperatures. A new press release from Dr.
Carl Mears using the Temperature Total Troposphere (TTT) dataset shows
that 2016 is the warmest year since the satellite record began in 1979. The previous record, set during the last major El Niño in 1998, was broken by 0.31 degrees Fahrenheit.
5.) The only "contrarian" peer-reviewed paper Spencer ever made on climate is one he co-authored, a paper that attempted to support Richard Lindzen's long debunked Iris-theory:
"The increase in longwave cooling is traced to decreasing coverage by
ice clouds, potentially supporting Lindzen's “infrared iris” hypothesis
of climate stabilization".
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.
6. Just the fact he is a Heartland crank.
In other words. Spencer has never delivered anything relevant to climate research in the peer-reviewed literature. Nada. NOTHING. That's probably why he only blogs his "findings". It is striking that he is communicating only through bloggs and YouTube, as lecturer at oil funded think tank conventions or as guest writer for creationists. Never with verifiable science through academic circles, in conversation with other researchers or through peer-reviewed articles in serious publications, magazines or journals. He is a big oil-financed think-tank creationist fringe blogger. And only that. __________________________________________
Creationist Spencer earned his doctorate in meteorology at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison in 1981 and went on to serve as a senior scientist for
climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Ala., where he and Christy received an award for their work monitoring
global temperatures with satellites. Spencer became a research scientist
at the University of Alabama at Huntsville in 2001. While
his personal website notes that his research has been entirely
supported by U.S. government agencies and not oil companies, he does
have a leadership role in groups with financial ties to Big Oil. They
include: * George C. Marshall Institute. Spencer
currently serves as a director at the George C. Marshall Institute, an
Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit that receives substantial funding from
oil and gas interests -- including Exxon, which has given the group at
least $840,000 since 1998,according to Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets.org
database. The Marshall Institute used to restrict its funding to
private foundations and individual donors, but in the late 1990s, after
it began working to cast doubt on global warming, the group made the
decision to accept money from corporations and their foundations. The
Marshall Institute's former executive director, Matthew B. Crawford,
wrote an essay for the New York Times back in 2009 that accused the
group -- which he did not name -- of distorting facts in pursuit of its
ideological agenda: But certain perversities became
apparent as I settled into the job. It sometimes required me to reason
backward, from desired conclusion to suitable premise. The organization
had taken certain positions, and there were some facts it was more fond
of than others. As its figurehead, I was making arguments I didn't fully
buy myself. Further, my boss seemed intent on retraining me according
to a certain cognitive style -- that of the corporate world, from which
he had recently come. This style demanded that I project an image of
rationality but not indulge too much in actual reasoning. *
Cornwall Alliance. Spencer is a member of the board of advisors of the
Cornwall Alliance, a conservative Christian public-policy group that
promotes a free-market approach to environmental stewardship and whose
"Resisting the Green Dragon" campaign portrays the climate-protection
movement as a sort of false religion. The Cornwall Alliance has close
ties to a conservative policy group called the Committee for a
Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which has received over $580,000 from
ExxonMobil since 1998, according to ExxonSecrets.org.
Paul Driessen, who played a guiding role in forming the group now known
as the Cornwall Alliance, also served as a consultant for ExxonMobil
and CFACT, which has also received at least $60,500 from Chevron and
$1.28 million from the the foundation of the Scaife family, whose wealth
comes in part from Gulf Oil, as Think Progress reports. *
Encounter Books. Spencer is the author of three books critical of
mainstream climate science: Climate Confusion, published in 2008, and
The Great Global Warming Blunder and The Bad Science and Bad Policy of
Obama's Global Warming Agenda, both released last year. All of those
works were published by Encounter Books, which is a project of the
conservative nonprofit Encounter for Culture and Education. That group's
major funders include the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, which
in turn is controlled by one of the owners of Kansas-based Koch
Industries, among the world's richest privately held companies with
extensive holdings in oil refineries and pipelines. The Kochs have
played a critical role in funding climate-denial efforts, contributing
$24.9 million to organizations that have worked to cast doubt on
mainstream climate science. * Tech Central Station.
Spencer served as a columnist and a member of the science roundtable for
Tech Central Station. Until 2006, TCS was run by DCI Group, a lobbying
and public-relations firm that has represented ExxonMobil. So
while Spencer may have "never been asked by any oil company to perform
any kind of service," he has certainly served the oil industry's
interest in amplifying doubt about climate change and downplaying the
scientific consensus that it's real and caused in large part by human
activity.
By Sue Sturgis on September 7, 2011 ------------------------------------- BONUS ROY SPENCER CONFIRMING THE GHE AND OUR C02 CAUSES WARMING:
Roy Spencer on the greenhouse effect:
“Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels creates more atmospheric carbon dioxide. As we add more CO2, more infrared energy is trapped, strengthing the Earth’s greenhouse effect. This causes a warming tendency in the lower atmosphere and at the surface.”
"I have not yet seen any compelling evidence that there exists a major flaw in the theory explaining the basic operation of the Earth’s natural Greenhouse Effect."
"Greenhouse components in the atmosphere (mostly water vapor, clouds, carbon dioxide, and methane) exert strong controls over how fast the Earth loses IR energy to outer space. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels creates more atmospheric carbon dioxide. As we add more CO2, more infrared energy is trapped, strengthing the Earth’s greenhouse effect. This causes a warming tendency in the lower atmosphere and at the surface
He even calls out for deniers to stop questioning the GHE because it makes them look like idiots....hilarious:
"Please stop the “no greenhouse effect” stuff. It’s making us skeptics look bad. "
Linked to oil funded think tanks? Check! Crank? Check!
“Dr. Christy is listed as a "Roundtable Speaker" for the George C. Marshall Institute, a right-wing conservative think tank on scientific issues and public policy. He is also listed as an expert for the Heartland Institute.”
The George C. Marshall Institute
(GMI) is a "non-profit" organization funded by the profits from oil and
gas interests and right-wing funders (listed later). It has received
substantial funding from Exxon's Exxon Education Foundation
John Christy and Spencer were wrong — dead wrong — for a very long time, which created one of the most enduring denier myths, that the satellite data didn’t show the global warming that the surface temperature data did. As RealClimate explained a few years ago:
We now know, of course, that the satellite data set confirms that the climate is warming, and indeed at very nearly the same rate as indicated by the surface temperature records. Now, there’s nothing wrong with making mistakes when pursuing an innovative observational method, but Spencer and Christy sat by for most of a decade allowing — indeed encouraging — the use of their data set as an icon for global warming skeptics. They committed serial errors in the data analysis, but insisted they were right and models and thermometers were wrong. They did little or nothing to root out possible sources of errors, and left it to others to clean up the mess, as has now been done.
Amazingly (or not), the “serial errors in the data analysis” all pushed the (mis)analysis in the same, wrong direction. Coincidence? You decide.
But what would you expect from a guy who contributed the chapter “The Global Warming Fiasco” to a 2002 book called Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths, published by Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading provider of disinformation on global warming that was funded by ExxonMobil?
The old and tired misleading Christy-graph debunked again:
No, you cant expect to find a correlation if you dont use the same elements. 3 apples + 2 cucumbers is not 5 bananas.
Graph shows a comparison between the average of an ensemble of 102 model calculations and observations (average of 3 satellite measurements and 4 balloon measurements). They have clearly not understood that they compare different sizes, so that they can not dismiss model calculations based on such.
The model calculations shown by Christy are derived from the Dutch data portal ClimateExplorer. However, model calculations of temperatures at different heights above the ground in this web portal can not be found, only the temperature near the ground. The satellite measurements and balloons, on the other hand, represent the average temperature in a volume that stretches from the ground to a height of about 15 km.
In addition to various statistical sizes, Christy uses different physical measures in comparison when comparing temperatures at the surface with the temperature of 15 km of the atmosphere. Increased greenhouse effect causes the lower part of the atmosphere (troposphere, which goes up to about 10km) to get warmer while the above layers of the stratosphere become colder. Does anyone see the problem with this comparison?
Not only that. The satellite measurements are also model calculations,. In fact, they base on similar models that show that CO2 provides global warming. Ironically, neither Spencer nor Christy have realized this fact. In addition, the satellite curve is sewn together by different satellites with short lifespan, and the measurements from the different satellites are scattered. It is not so easy to put them together to a reliable temperature curve. They have been corrected several times.
In other words, the figure of Christy and Spencer reveals basic deficiencies in understanding both statistics and physics.
The Guardian:
Christy and Spencer have also been affiliated with various conservative fossil fuel-funded think tanks. And Spencer is on the Board of Advisors of the Cornwall Alliance – a religious group that essentially believes God wouldn’t let damaging climate change happen.
Spencer and Christy made a valuable scientific contribution by creating their atmospheric temperature data set. However, given how few climate scientists dispute the expert consensus on human-caused global warming, it’s useful to examine their research and comments with a critical eye. When we do, it becomes clear that they have less in common with Galileo than with the scientists who disputed the links between smoking and cancer.
"Ball was a former professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg
from 1988 to 1996. The University of Winnipeg never had an office of
Climatology. His degree was in historical geography and not climatology."
But surely, he is not a creationist right? RIGHT?
Ball admitting he is a creationist:
"Even though it is still just a theory
and not a law 148 years after it was first proposed, Darwinian
evolution is the only view allowed in schools. Why? Such censorship
suggests fear of other ideas, a measure of indefensibility."
Tim Ball is apparently too LUDICROUS to be taken seriously:
Judge finds written attack on climate scientist too ludicrous to be libel.
Climate science denial dismissed - Judge finds Tim Ball too wacky to be believed
By the way - I did predict that Tim Ball was trying for the insanity defense, back in April last year. He must be very pleased his efforts have come to this!
B.C.
Supreme Court Justice Ronald Skolrood criticized Ball (a long-retired
geography professor from the University of Winnipeg) at length. Justice
Skolrood wrote:
“… despite Dr. Ball’s history as an
academic and a scientist, the Article is rife with errors and
inaccuracies, which suggests a lack of attention to detail on Dr. Ball’s
part, if not an indifference to the truth.”
“the Article is poorly written and
does not advance credible arguments in favour of Dr. Ball’s theory about
the corruption of climate science. Simply put, a reasonably thoughtful
and informed person who reads the Article is unlikely to place any stock
in Dr. Ball’s views, including his views of Dr. Weaver as a supporter
of conventional climate science.”
Except for two grants from the Mount Wilson Observatory, all of Soon's research since 2002 has been funded by fossil fuel interests, according to Harvard-Smithsonian records. The 11 Soon papers range from denial of human-caused global warming to articles that downplay the role of climate change in ecological impacts.
He not only took a lot of money, he hid that he took it. He keeps taking it. He knew what he was doing, regardless of his public statements since. Between the duplicity about funding and his inability to get the science right, he has no credibility. Others should be believed long before Soon or his ‘friends’.
DENIER LOBBYIST BLOGGER JUDITH CURRY
Judith A. Curryis chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She runs a climate blog and has been invited by Republicans on several occasions to testify at climate hearings about uncertainties in climate understanding and predictions. Climate scientists criticize her uncertainty-focused climate outreach communication for containing elementary mistakes and inflammatory assertions unsupported by evidence. Curry is a regular at Anthony Watts' denier blog, as well as Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit, another denier site. She has further embarrassed herself (and her university) by using refuted denier talking points and defending the Wegman Report, eventually admitting she hadn't even read it in the first place
Linked to oil/koch-brothers funded think tank? Check! The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank founded by Charles G. Koch and funded by the Koch brothers.
In 1988, James Hansen testified before the U.S. Senate on the danger of anthropogenic global warming. During that testimony he presented a graph — part of a paper published soon after. This graph had three lines on it, representing three scenarios based on three projections of future emissions and volcanism. Hansen was right on the money, and the models he used proved successful. Unfortunately, when Patrick Michaels made his testimony before Congress in 1998, ten years later, he saw fit to erase the two lower lines, B and C, and show the Senators only Line A. He did so to make his testimony that Hansen’s predictions had been off by 300% believable. He lied by omission. This lie was picked up by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear (one of many omissions, confusions, and falsehood in that book — see here).
Patrick J. Michaels also known as Pat Michaels, is a largely oil-funded global warming skeptic who argues that global warming models are fatally flawed and, in any event, we should take no action because new technologies will soon replace those that emit greenhouse gases.
In this video Michaels is admitting he is funded (40%) by the oil industry:
A review of claims made by the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels over the last quarter century shows that he has repeatedly been proven wrong over time.
Michaels is one of a few contrarian climate scientists who is often
featured in the media without disclosure of his funding from the fossil
fuel industry.
WoW really? Richard Lindzen a Heartland hired crank? Check.
New science on climate sensitivity throws Lindzens climate sensitivity theories out the window:
A new study by Kate Marvel, Gavin Schmidt, Ron Miller, and Larissa Nazarenko at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies [...] drew upon previous research by Drew Shindell and Kummer & Dessler, who identified a flaw in studies taking the energy budget approach. Those studies had assumed that the Earth’s climate is equally sensitive to all forcings.
But Heartland are not the only ones to put money on Lindzen:
Biggest US coal company funded dozens of groups questioning climate change. Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer, two contrarian scientists who appeared for Peabody at hearings in Minnesota last month on the social cost of carbon, were also included in the bankruptcy filings.
Biggest US coal company funded dozens of groups questioning climate change.
Analysis of Peabody Energy court documents show company backed trade groups, lobbyists and think tanks dubbed ‘heart and soul of climate denial’.
Roy Spencers og Richard Lindzens syn på AGW og CO2s rolle er som snydd ut av nesen til Peabodys Energys eget syn. La oss se hvor godt synspunktene samsvarer:
Roy Spencers and Richard Lindzens view on AGW and C02 is comically close to Peabody coals view:
Just last year, Peabody wrote to the White House Council on Environmental Quality describing carbon dioxide as;
“a benign gas that is essential for all life” and denying the dangers of global warming.
After all, what is it? – it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving. Richard Lindzen
“While the benefits of carbon dioxide are proven, the alleged risks of climate change are contrary to observed data, are based on admitted speculation, and lack adequate scientific basis,” the company wrote in the 24 March 2015 letter
"There are benefits to more CO2 in the air, and probably to a little bit of warming. Roy Spencer
Men det er sikkert helt "tilfeldig" at Spencer og Lindzen står på lønningslisten til USAs største kullkompani og "tilfeldigvis" har et syn på AGW som er fordelaktig for Peabody. Helt sikkert.
The truth behind Peabody's campaign to rebrand coal as a poverty cure
The world’s largest privately-held coal company has a long history of attacking climate science. Now it is working to change the conversation from a climate crisis to one of global poverty – with coal as the solution
Here we see Lindzen working for creationist madcap fake university PragerU and their right wing nut anti science petrolium propaganda:
The truth behind PragerU is very very dirty and ugly:
The man behind PragerU is the homophobic, paranoid, conspiranoid abortionist and creationist Dennis Prager. Read all about his scary agenda here.
"The Wilks brothers manage Interstate Explorations, an oil and gas field services company based out of Texas, and recently sold shares in the fracking and oil services enterprise Frac Tech, making them worth $1.4 billion each. In total, the Wilks family has donated $6,550,000 to PragerU. "The religious right seems to believe that the education system is the perfect battlefield to win this 'culture war' taking place in America," writes Shea. "While conservatives continue to push for privatization, efforts on public schools center on curriculum. Whether by pushing creationism, lowering comprehensive sexual education standards, or refusing Common Core, with resources like Prager University and financial supporters like the Wilks, their efforts have been enormously strengthened."
Here are some great videos which debunks the PragerU right wing creationist madcap batshit anti science nonsense:
