John Holdren's IPCC Myths

President Obama’s science advisor says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change bases its conclusions on source material that has been vetted in excruciating detail. According to IPCC insiders, this is bunk.

Read the rest here.

This blog has relocated. You can sign up to receive an e-mail each time a new post is added under the "Email subscription" bar a little below the photo.NoFrakkingConsensus now has a Facebook page.

.

Scientists & Science Journalists - Please Grow Up

The "screaming death spiral" scientist now admits he might have overstated the matter.

I'm fascinated by the way people talk about climate change - what words they choose, what they don't say, and whether their arguments are intellectually rigorous or emotionally manipulative. In this regard, the manner in which Arctic ice melt is presented by activist scientists and activist journalists would make a great case study. Below are a few quick observations.

In December 2007, Mark Serreze, described as a "senior scientist at the U.S. government's National Snow and Ice Data Center," gave the Associated Press an emotionally-charged quote:

The Arctic is screaming.

Yep, that's what this man who has been trained in the cautious, tentative, rigorous approach known as the scientific method told the media. The quote appeared in an article that began with this paragraph:

An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years. [bold added]

The journalist, science writer Seth Borenstein, deliberately chose to use the words "relentless" and "ominous" in his first sentence. He chose to say that melting had not merely accelerated but had done so "greatly" - and to add in the "tipping point" jargon for good measure. He then made another deliberate choice when he devoted the very next sentence to rank speculation.

A few paragraphs down we're introduced to activist scientist Jay Zwally. In point of fact, he says he thinks the Arctic Ocean "could be nearly ice-free" in five years. But not to worry, he has another zinger of a quote at the ready:

The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming. Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines. [bold added]

The Associated Press article is a long one - more than 1,200 words - and readers must wade through all sorts of emotionally-laden verbiage before they arrive at the final paragraph and the observation of a more cautious scientist, Cecilia Bitz, who thinks that although ice melt is trending in one direction, what's occurring at that moment should probably be characterized as a blip.

A version of the above news story - always including the screaming but sometimes with the even-tempered remarks at the end chopped off - was reproduced in all sorts of venues around the world. Among these were the Kuwait Times, New York Sun, Boston Globe, Tehran Times, the UK Daily Mail, a Canadian television news website, CBS News, MSNBC and FOXnews.

On the National Geographic website, the story appeared under the let's-not-be-accused-of-understatement headline "Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years?" Similarly, the Scotland Herald inaccurately pushed the envelope still further with the headline "Summer ice in Arctic 'will be gone in under five years'" [italics added].

Google Books and another source (see p. 63 of this 171-page PDF) both report that the screaming Arctic and dead canary parts of the article were later cited by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Thomas Friedman in his 2009 bestseller Hot, Flat and Crowded.

In August of 2008 Serreze, who provided the screaming quote, told Reuters that:

Arctic ice is in its death spiral

Fast forward a couple of years and the screaming death spiral scientist now admits he might have overstated the matter. In a piece published this week on Wired.com, Serreze acknowledges that Mother Nature is a complicated gal. "The sea ice system surprises us," he says. Here are a few paragraphs from the story:

In 2007, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic declined rapidly. The drop from the previous year was so precipitous that it garnered worldwide attention and media coverage. In the last couple of years, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic...has recovered. This series of events, which underscored the year-to-year variability of the measurement, has made researchers cautious about describing events in the Arctic. [bold added]

“In hindsight, probably too much was read into 2007, and I would take some blame for that,” Serreze said. “There were so many of us that were astounded by what happened, and maybe we read too much into it.” [bold added]

Maybe we read too much into it. The more I research the predictions that have been made by environmentalists and activist scientists in recent decades, the more these words seem to apply. Never mind that the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years and that we've been recording temperatures, taking CO2 readings, and measuring ice thickness for a measly few hundred. If something happens that hasn't yet been recorded by humanity it's "record-breaking" and
"unprecedented" and therefore automatically ominous.

Never mind that geologists tell us polar ice has been present for less than 20 percent of Earth's history and that we live on a dynamic, ever-changing planet. Ice sheets and glaciers expand and contract. They've been behaving this way for millions of years. One could say it's what they do.

So why do so many scientists and science journalists - the very people who should know better - reject the dispassionate, sober perspective? Why do they remind us of emotionally volatile teenagers?

..

h/t Tom Nelson and Bishop Hill

..

>> The big picture: the Y2K lesson
>> A bogus 21-year-old climate prediction
>> 10-year snow prediction fails miserably
>> Global disaster is so 1976

Global Disaster Is So 1976

The mass media has spent the past several years - and, in particular, the past few weeks - scaring the wits out of little kids around the world. It's been telling them the Earth is in imminent danger of environmental collapse, that they live on a planet in peril, that the Copenhagen UN-sponsored climate summit was our last chance to avert disaster.

But as adults of a certain age know, we've heard this all before. Above is a 1976 paperback (click the image for a larger view) titled RIO: Reshaping the International Order. Thirty-three years ago there was no climate change crisis. Then, the concerns were over-population, Third World poverty, and nuclear weapons. Nevertheless we were told there was an urgent need to win a "global race for survival" and that Westerners would need to "give up" aspects of their affluent lifestyles in order to make this happen.

Below is a closer view of similar cheery titles from the same publisher: (click to enlarge)


That's right, folks. Back in 1976, people were yammering on about the "global disaster facing humanity," about "worldwide catastrophe" in our "near future," about how we'd end up extinct if we didn't stop being so greedy and environmentally irresponsible.

Page 36 of the RIO volume talks about "safeguarding the interests of future generations through the legacy of a habitable planet." Page 84 declares that "Many aspects of Western life have become wasteful and senseless and do not contribute to peoples' real happiness." On page 90, it says rich countries should "place a ceiling on meat consumption," "promote the use of public transit," define an official benchmark and then "declare that all consumption beyond that...is not only waste but a conscious action against the welfare of large numbers of poor and disprivileged, their own children, and the prospects for a peaceful world."

In 1976 it was being implied, as does the writer Thomas Friedman today, that China was superior to us since it had allegedly "shown that development can be built around people and geared to meeting their needs" (page 97). Then, as now, we were assured we had a savior: "the United Nations remains the only real machinery with the potential for constructing a fairer world" (p. 124).

Despite the fact that most people hadn't yet imagined powerful and liberating technologies such as home computers, the Internet, cell phones, and consumer GPS devices, readers in 1976 were warned against indulging in "wild and totally unwarranted technological optimism" (pp. 199, 373). Finally, then, as now, we were advised that: "Radical action is urgently needed" (p. 371) in order to stave off "threats of imminent disaster" (p. 375).

Attention professional doomsayers: just cool it, OK? Stop giving little kids nightmares.

..

>> We Have Heard This Rhetoric Before