Climate Skeptics Photo Essay - Part 2

What do climate skeptics look like? Do they sport horns and sharp teeth?

Judging by the silly commentary in some parts of the blogosphere it appears some folks think so. So here are some shots taken at the climate skeptics' conference in Chicago last month.

Decide for yourself. Do these people bear the telltale signs of derangement and sub-optimal intelligence? Is it possible they're smart, well-intentioned men and women who simply see the world differently?

See Part 1 of this photo essay here.

Photos of UK climate skeptic James Delingpole appear here.

Photos from a 2009 skeptics' conference in Washington, D.C. are here.

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>> Shielding climate orthodoxy from free speech
>> Bullies need not apply
>> If we don't agree, you're crazy
>> Climate skepticism is free speech

Climate Skeptics Photo Essay - Part 1

At the recent Heartland climate skeptics' conference in Chicago, I took thousands of photos. This morning I published Part 1 of a photo essay from those three days on my photography website.

An event such as this has a mood, a personality. The challenge is to capture fleeting moments that faithfully represent the larger whole.

At more than 700-strong, the participants at this conference were diverse. They came from a variety of countries, cultural backgrounds, and political persuasions. They were engaging presenters and attentive listeners. They didn't always agree but treated each other with respect nevertheless.

In case you missed them, some photos of UK climate skeptic James Delingpole appear HERE.

You can also see photos from last year's one-day skeptics' conference in Washington, D.C. HERE.

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>> We trusted too completely
>> The great peer-review fairy tale
>> Climate skepticism is free speech
>> Bullies need not apply

We Trusted Too Completely

Eight days ago, as a climate skeptics' conference involving 700 attendees got underway in Chicago, I snapped the above photo of a streetside newspaper box. (Click the image for a larger view.)

The news story is a tragic one. It involves an executive with a Chicago-area commuter rail service who, a week earlier, apparently committed suicide following the discovery of financial irregularities at his workplace.

The headline caught my eye for other reasons. It seemed to apply to the climate debate - and to conclusions I've now begun formulating following a year of intensive research.

Close examination of the climate bible produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has left me dumbfounded. (See my related blog posts in the right-hand column here.) A report that is relied on by governments around the world, that those governments point to when citizens object to new climate policies, increasingly appears to be a house of cards.

Almost nothing we've been told about the climate bible now seems remotely true. Almost nothing the IPCC's own chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, has said - or continues to say - about it seems connected to reality. (See Hilary Ostrov's analysis of Pachauri's inaccurate and contradictory remarks here.)

Is it based 100 percent on peer-reviewed literature? Try two-thirds. How could a fact as elementary as this have been overlooked from the time the report appeared in early 2007 until two months ago, when a group of ordinary citizens decided to examine this question for themselves?

Does the report restrict itself to research completed by late 2005? Think again. The Stern Review is cited 26 times across 12 chapters even though that document wasn't released until late October 2006. A particular issue of an academic journal is cited 39 times even though that issue wasn't published until May 2007. A research paper is cited by three IPCC chapters across two working groups even though it wasn't accepted for publication until May 2008 and didn't appear in print until November of that year.

If this weren't such an important matter these irregularities would surely be raw material for a comedic farce. The 2007 IPCC report - which was awarded a Nobel prize, no less - increasingly appears to be a sick joke. The fact that not one government - and not one science body - on this planet has conducted an independent audit of even a small portion of this report is breathtaking.

Elements of the above newspaper article surely apply here. The world does, indeed, appear to have "trusted too completely, too deeply" in the IPCC process. The IPCC milieu, like the situation at the commuter train organization, now appears to be rife with "blatant disregard for [the] rules" and to be characterized by "a climate of limited checks and balances."

How long will it take the wider world to acknowledge these facts?

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UPDATE (June 13): An earlier version of this post said 800 people attended the skeptics' conference. That number has been superseded by a final, official tally of 705.

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>> The Stern Review scandal: IPCC breaks 3 of its own rules
>> More IPCC mischief
>> Cutoff dates, what cutoff dates?
>> The great peer-review fairy tale

Skeptics' Conference - First Photos

(click images for a larger view)

The 4th International Conference on Climate Change opens in Chicago today. Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, there's a reception at 5 pm and, during dinner (which begins at six), Steve McIntyre from ClimateAudit.org will be a keynote speaker - along with former NASA astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt.

An introductory press event, held at noon on this gloriously sunny Sunday, was well attended - compared to the sparse media showing at the 3rd conference held last June (see photo #14 here). Roger Harrabin from the BBC is among the media contingent covering this 3-day conference, and one of the speakers at the press event was James Delingpole, whose Telegraph blog in the UK helped break the Climategate story.

Professor emeritus Don Easterbrook, who has studied and taught geology for the past 48 years (authoring three textbooks and 150 papers in the process), provided a sneak peek of research findings he'll be discussing tomorrow. These findings suggest a relationship between cyclical ocean events and temperature that appears far more compelling than the alleged relationship between atmospheric C02 content and temperature.

Here are a few quick pix from the media event:

James Delingpole

James Delingpole

Don Easterbrook

Don Easterbrook

One of the most distressing aspects of the climate change debate is the insistence on the part of folks such as Al Gore that all scientists of any standing agree that climate change is a crisis and that the only scientists who dissent are marginal and unpublished.

This is absolutely not the case. One may disagree with Schmitt or Easterbrook, but no honest person can dismiss these men's very real and impressive credentials.


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>> photos from the June 2009 skeptics' conference
>> If we don't agree you're crazy
>> Bullies need not apply
>> Climate skepticism is free speech
>> Al Gore blows tobacco smoke in our face - again

Who's Concerned About the Climate Report?

It's a wonderful world, and technology makes it even more marvelous. On the evening of March 8th I called for volunteers to help audit the references cited in all 44 chapters of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

By last night, roughly 48 hours later, 19 people whose acquaintance I'd not made before had been in touch. By this morning, our ranks had grown further. These people live in different parts of North America but also in Australia, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK.

Many hold math, science, or engineering degrees. One is a medical doctor, another is a lawyer. Two have commerce degrees. Some are retired. Five of us are girls.

We are, therefore, an impressive random sample of citizens of the world who think the climate report requires a second look. There is no evidence to suggest we are anti-science - quite the opposite. There's no evidence to suggest, as someone unkindly implied on Twitter, that we're morons. Again, quite the opposite.

Together we've already audited several chapters while collectively producing a stream of ideas, tips, and suggestions regarding possible future avenues of research. To have accomplished so much in so little time is amazing. It is also a testament to the power of ordinary people - once we're equipped with potent tools such as personal computers and e-mail.

Without the World Wide Web, a project like this would have been difficult, expensive, and horrendously time-consuming. Instead, conducting a citizen audit of this kind is now relatively painless logistically speaking, allowing us to focus our energy on the important tasks.

Long live the Internet. And long live independent thinkers who refuse to accept the word of authority figures. We are experienced, intelligent, worldly adults who expect to be treated as such. Now we're examining the climate report for ourselves.

See the list of Citizen Auditors

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>> Help audit the UN climate report
>> The great peer-review fairy tale
>> Independent bloggers vs corporate environmentalists
>> Let there be no more scientific consensuses

Reuters' Climate Change Fiction

Is the average journalist completely clueless when it comes to climate change? Do they go out of their way to quote equally clueless "experts"? Do they ignore profoundly significant news events and instead write articles brimming with their own assumptions and prejudices? A look at the recent behaviour of Reuters - which forms part of "the world's largest international multimedia news agency" - suggests all of the above.

Remember the BBC interview with Dr. Phil Jones published 11 days ago? It was immensely newsworthy because Jones is not just the director of the Climatic Research Unit (the home of the explosive leaked/hacked Climategate e-mails), he has played a central role in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consensus process.

It is because of senior climate researchers like Jones that Time magazine told us last August: "the science is clear...we're boiling the planet." Except that, in the BBC interview (in which he was by no means ambushed, but was instead assisted by his university's press office), Jones made a startling admission.

He was asked: "Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?" He responded: "Yes, but only just." He then continued on for four more sentences, arguing that the "trend is quite close to the significance level" and pointing out that statistical significance is more likely to show up when one examines longer time periods rather than shorter ones.

Some day that "Yes" may come to be regarded as the utterance that inexplicably failed to shake the world. If warming over the past 15 years has been so marginal that even people who believe firmly in human-caused global warming admit it isn't significant, what's all the fuss about? On what basis have news outlets advised us that "humanity faces a profound emergency"?

Jones' acknowledgment that things aren't nearly so dire is a HUGE story. So what has Reuters said about it? Not one word.

Check for yourself. Click on over to Reuters.com, type "Phil Jones" into the search box at the top right of your screen, scroll through the pages of results and you won't find a single mention of his name since the BBC interview.

Type "statistically significant" into that same box and you'll discover that Reuters journalists have used this term recently when discussing in vitro fertilization, pharmaceutical trials, energy efficiency, and premature births – but that it has not passed their lips in a climate change context since the Jones BBC interview appeared on February 13th until today.

What have they been writing instead? Well, yesterday Reuters published an article by journalist Ed Stoddard. Dubiously labeled an "analysis" piece, its central claim is that American climate change skepticism is at odds "with prevailing views in Europe."

Why does journalist Stoddard believe this to be the case? Partly because a Canadian pollster says so. Here's Stoddard's copy in all it's glory:

"It's a very different debate in Europe, where there is no discussion about whether climate change is occurring. But in the United States it is about whether it exists," said John Wright of pollster Ipsos.

As blogger/aggregator Tom Nelson pointed out almost immediately, however, Ipsos employees in different parts of the world apparently don't read each other's polling results. It so happens that a headline in yesterday's Guardian smartly contradicts Wright: "Sharp decline in public's belief in climate threat, British poll reveals." Here are a few snippets from the article:

The proportion of adults who believe climate change is "definitely" a reality dropped by 30% over the last year, from 44% to 31%, in the latest survey by Ipsos Mori.

… Another finding…is a significant drop in those who said climate change was caused by human activities. One year ago this number was one in three, but this year just one in five people believes global warming to be man-made, according to Edward Langley, Ipsos Mori's head of environment research. [bold added]

So while Langley of Ipsos Mori tells a newspaper that only 1 in 3 UK adults believe climate change is real and only one in five believe humans are responsible for it, Wright of Ipsos Reid gets quoted by Reuters declaring that, in Europe, "there is no discussion about whether climate change is occurring."

Anyone remotely familiar with the climate change debate knows that skepticism is alive and well in many nations around the world, including European ones. That a Canadian pollster would be so misinformed is disturbing. That a Reuters journalist would write down and distribute such fiction is inexcusable.

If climate skepticism is purely an American phenomenon:

• why did the largest daily paper in The Netherlands run a story recently vindicating a prominent climate skeptic? ("He was right after all" declared the headline)
• why did the weekly left-leaning, one-million-circulation German news magazine Der Spiegel recently run a two-part series titled "Can Climate Forecasts Still be Trusted?"
• why did Harris poll results released last October find that, when you total them up, the exact same number of Germans as Americans believe climate change poses either "no threat" or only a minor one? (see the first blurb of red text on page 2 of this PDF)
  
• why does every last one of the top 10 conservative blogs in the UK embrace climate skepticism - even though the British Conservative Party says man-made climate change is real?
• why did 6,000 Australians attend the sold-out public speaking engagements of British climate skeptic Christopher Monckton recently? (on at least one occasion he went out into the parking lot to deliver a short version to the overflow audience)
• why did Australia's federal minister for Climate Change and Water devote so much time in a speech last week to bad-mouthing skeptics?
• why did Open Magazine, an English-language publication in India, splash "The Climate Change Fraud" in large text across its front cover on January 30th, followed by a story inside titled "The Hottest Hoax in the World"?
  

I could continue, but we all get the picture.

So what's going on at Reuters? In the Stoddard piece US climate skepticism is linked to some of the same old bogeymen: "the influence of U.S. talk radio" and the "oil lobby." Despite the fact that America has long been the source of many of the world's most significant technological innovations, Reuters implies that it's home to anti-scientific bumpkins who fail to show academics sufficient respect:

Science can be controversial in a country where evangelical Christians make up a quarter of the adult population. Many, for example, doubt the theory of evolution..."In other countries academics hold a more revered position...And so some of these Europeans look at America and say there is all this evidence, why don't you believe?..." said Michael Lindsay, a political sociologist at Rice University in Houston.

A quote from the Sierra Club adds insult to injury by suggesting the American public is easily befuddled:

"I don't think it's that Americans are confused about global warming, it's that they're being confused," said the incoming executive director of conservation group Sierra Club, Michael Brune, who blames big spending by oil, coal and other energy industries.

Curiously, the only European poll numbers Reuters bothers to quote involve France (in addition to non-European Brazil and Japan). This is hardly convincing support for the claim that the American situation is dramatically different from the one in Europe.

In short, Reuters has published utter rubbish. It should hang its head in shame.

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[Full disclosure. In my earlier life as a journalist I, too, have interviewed Canadian pollster John Wright. Moreover, my husband was employed by Ipsos between 2000 and 2005.]


>> Time magazine's controversial glacier expert
>> Science says: hop on one foot
>> What she said about the climate bible 3 months ago
>> Did IQs drop sharply?

Independent Bloggers vs Corporate Environmentalists

[desktop wallpaper version available here]

Another day, another smarmy accusation that people who are skeptical of climate change are being funded by a shadowy conspiracy connected in one manner or another to big oil, big coal, big tobacco or - horror of horrors - right-wing think tanks.

These accusations are tiresome. They're ugly. They're almost entirely unsubstantiated. Most of all, they're a waste of time. They amount to shooting the messenger rather than addressing the bleeping message.

So why do they keep getting repeated? I think I've sorted out two reasons. First: the lavishly-funded corporate nature of the environmental movement circa 2010. Second: modern technological wonders such as personal computers and the Internet.

Environmental organizations today bear little resemblance to the shoestring operations of yesteryear. As a book published 14 years ago observed:

While Greenpeace used to be a pair of bell-bottomed blue jeans, today it is more like a three-piece pinstripe suit.

Indeed. In 1971, Greenpeace was an "upstart peace group from Vancouver" that held meetings in a Unitarian church. After it chartered a 30-year-old "creaking fish boat" to protest a US nuclear arms test, it could barely afford to pay for the boat's fuel.

Last month, however, when The Guardian reported that Greenpeace had commissioned a brand new £14 million ($22 million US) mega-yacht, it observed that "cost should not be a problem for the group, which, with nearly three million supporters, is extremely wealthy."

How wealthy? According to publicly-available figures compiled by Climate-Resistance.org, over a 12-year period Greenpeace raised $2.4 billion. That works out to $200 million a year in resources.

If you think that's impressive, take a moment to ponder the fact that the World Wildlife Fund raised $3.1 billion in just six years (2003-2008). Which means that that organization has ready access to half a billion dollars annually.

When you're that big – and that loaded – suddenly everything costs a small fortune. Want to start a new blog? That'll require a series of meetings. You'll need to invite web design folks, IT folks, a contingent of in-house PR people, an ad agency person or two, a corporate strategy person, and probably someone from legal. You'll meet in shiny offices in a fashionable part of town and order-in sandwiches from the pricey, organic, fair-trade café at the end of the street.

Compare and contrast to how independent individuals of utterly modest means from all over the world currently behave. They sign up to a service like Blogger.com (which is owned by Google) and, within a few hours at most, for no cost whatsoever, have launched themselves as a blogger. Alternatively, for well under $10 in hosting fees a month, they can publish their own website.

For no money, therefore, climate skeptics in the early 21st century are in a position to theoretically communicate online with as many people as is Greenpeace. From their basements and their attics, in often non-trendy geographical locations, it isn't their funding that matters - it's their skill sets.

Many skeptical-leaning bloggers have scientific, mathematical, and statistical training - not to mention decades of real-world experience under their belts. Others have been professional communicators (I, myself, am a former print journalist). Some are speed-readers, others have photographic memories. Many, like the folks who rendered the Climategate e-mails fully searchable within a matter of hours, have impressive information technology skills. Some are retired, with plenty of time on their hands. Others devote as many hours to reading and writing about climate issues in a week as they'd otherwise spend on knitting or golf.

From the perspective of environmental organization staffers, research agency employees, and tenured university professors it must appear as though skeptics have access to deep pockets. In the universe those people inhabit, even the simplest tasks can end up as budget line items. There are layers of bureaucracy, paperwork, office politics, and regulations to consider.

For the small and growing army of skeptical climate bloggers, however, none of that applies. The equivalent of a battered fishing boat will do nicely, thank you.

Those vessels are now everywhere. They're being sailed by real people and fueled by grassroots concern, outrage, and passion. And they're not going away.

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>> Slurs, smears & money
>> Al Gore's tobacco hypocrisy
>> Greenpeace and the Nobel-winning climate report
>> Climate skepticism is free speech
>> Green time capsule: 1970 eco ideas not pretty

Is This Politics or Science?

When someone makes a statement about global warming it's important to ask ourselves: are they informing us about a scientific issue or are they taking bits of latex, inflating them with lots of hot air, and presenting us with a bouquet of political assumptions?

Everyone does the latter, to some degree. We interpret the world according to our beliefs, experiences, and values. (Hopefully, we also strive to be fair-minded.) But a problem arises when certain people insist that the processed, dyed, manufactured, and inflated balloons clutched in their hand are actually a cup of unadulterated liquid sap fresh from the rubber tree.

I've now been researching the global warming debate for the better part of a year. I've read a variety of perspectives and encountered all sorts of political spin. I find it curious that those who believe humanity has set in motion catastrophic global warming deny vociferously that they themselves are in any way political. They believe their perspective is simply the truth - and that the very existence of alternative viewpoints shows that science has been corrupted by politics.

This week's news contains flagrant examples of such thinking. I'm going to discuss just one [more here and here]. In an interview published yesterday, Dr. Michael Mann, (who has revealed himself, via the Climategate e-mails, to be a less-than-attractive human being) accused climate skeptics of creating a "poisonous atmosphere." This, he says, is:

…similar in many ways to that poisonous atmosphere we saw last summer in those healthcare town hall meetings — irrational sort of conspiracy-driven lunatics, frankly…

Now I'm not an American, but even I recognize Democratic Party rhetoric. Those who exercised their free-speech right to criticize proposed health care measures at public meetings have been written off by fans of the party in power as irrational nutcases.

There's nothing measured or good-natured about this. It's an example of partisan politics at its ugliest. It demonstrates that, rather than dealing with the content of people's concerns, Democratic Party hardliners prefer to hurl insults and name-call. No one who values diversity and inclusiveness can regard this as admirable.

Mann has therefore advertised – as surely as if he'd splashed it on a Times Square billboard – his own political orientation. He's made it clear that he personally buys into this profoundly partisan view of the world. He isn't merely a Democratic, he's hardcore.

Which is important to have clarity about since he then declares that: "The science community isn’t organized — it doesn’t have a single politically driven motive as the climate change deniers do." [bold added]

That sound you hear is me spitting up my chai latte. Does Mann mean climate scientists are never politically motivated? Or does he regard people whom he nastily denigrates as "climate change deniers" to be unified around a single motivation?

Both ways of interpreting this statement render it absurd. If science were conducted entirely by robots on a remote planet, politics-free science might be possible. But scientific research is undertaken by human beings – very few of whom could ever be described as not having "a single politically driven motive."

It's equally preposterous to suggest that the millions of people who have reservations about the current state of climate science can be viewed as any sort of monolith. Humans are never motivated by one thing alone. Declaring that a geographically and professionally diverse group are all propelled by a single doctrine is psychology too simplistic even for comic books.

It's clear that Mann - the hardcore Democrat - regards his own viewpoint as the unadorned truth, the equivalent of unprocessed liquid latex collected moments ago from the rubber tree. In his mind, other people exaggerate and twist the facts while he just tells it like it is.

Yet not once does he acknowledge that some criticisms of current climate science are valid, that other viewpoints deserve a hearing, or that climate skeptics have identified legitimate research shortcomings. In his opinion, anyone who sees the world differently is engaging in "a war…against the climate science and scientists". Tellingly, he speaks of the climate science rather than of competing perspectives.

But there are always multiple points-of-view. In his collection of thoughtful essays, The Scientist as Rebel, renowned physicist Freeman Dyson describes science as "a mosaic of partial and conflicting visions." No one has all the answers. Two different researchers, with different areas of expertise, will inevitably assess the same scientific question differently. It may be that both of them are at least somewhat correct – or that both of them will be proved wrong in the fullness of time.

As Tom Fuller wrote yesterday:

…the [global warming] argument isn't really about CO2. Most people with a bit of a scientific background understand…that more CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to elevate temperatures. The argument is really about water vapor. Does doubling CO2 then create enough extra water vapor to amplify this heating by a multiple, and if so, what is that multiple? How sensitive is the atmosphere to a doubling of CO2?

The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] thinks it's moderate. The alarmist extreme thinks it's high. Lukewarmers think it's low. Real skeptics think it's non-existent, or even negative. The argument before the court is that we don't know. And until we do know, what right does one faction have to blacken the names and reputations of those with opposing views?

Mann approaches climate science the way he approaches the health care debate. If you're not on his team, you deserve neither respect nor consideration. He's all about scoring points, trashing the opposition, and winning at all costs.

For those of us who think science is about being open to new ideas and new perspectives, Mann isn't the kind of scientist we'd want our kids to grow up to be.

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>> Bullies need not apply
>> If we don't agree, you're crazy
>> The cult of the expert
>> Bias: how the media distort the news

Climate Skepticism is Free Speech

I've been researching the global warming debate since April 2009. I'm still fitting together the pieces of this multi-dimensional puzzle. The big picture hasn't yet come fully into focus. But I am now certain of one thing. Climate change skepticism is free speech.

Some people disagree with climate skepticism. Good for them. But that doesn't give them the right to deny their friends, neighbors, or fellow citizens the opportunity to hear about it.

In democracies, various parties present their ideas and the public gets to choose from amongst competing analyses and visions. At election time, all who meet minimum criteria are allowed to participate - to argue their case before the electorate.

We'd take a dim view of any candidate who insisted that one or more of his opponents should be prevented from running for office.

But that is precisely the position of many who promote global warming theory. Rather than giving skeptics their turn at the podium, such people want to banish skeptics from the candidate's list. They say skeptics aren't simply mistaken but are equivalent to the most reprehensible amongst us - Holocaust deniers.

[Click for larger version of this screengrab of the first part of a
Boston Globe column by Ellen Goodman, dated Feb. 9, 2007.
The column no longer appears to be available online.]

They say skeptics are mentally ill. They call them "climate killers" and "the planet's worst enemies."

[Click image for full article]

They describe skeptics as "heinous climate villains" and "bastards who are responsible for subverting public understanding of climate change."

[Click image for full article]

They strive hard, in other words, to disqualify skeptics from the race itself - to convince the world that skeptics are too evil or unstable to even be permitted to take part.

Global warming proponents are, therefore, trying to cheat. Rather than competing against the skeptics on an even playing field, out in the open, so that the public can make its own decisions, they insist theirs is the only perspective that deserves to be heard, that anything else amounts to "subverting public understanding" - an Orwellian turn of phrase if ever there was one.

Not everyone who believes in global warming acts this way. But those who are appalled by such behavior need to speak up. Every time we hear the words "denier" or "denialist" in a climate context we need to distance ourselves from such pejorative, silencing language.

We need to declare, loudly, that all points of view have a right to be heard - that climate change skepticism is, in fact, free speech.

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>> Why the Munk Debate proves the debate isn't over
>> If we don't agree, you're crazy
>> Bullies need not apply
>> Al Gore thinks your brain is too primitive

Bullies Need Not Apply

Environmental advocates - who now include media commentators and high-ranking politicians - frequently suffer from an unpleasant malady whenever they get talking about global warming. They're rude. They're intolerant. They're mean-spirited.

In short, they behave like bullies. If you don't already agree with them, you're morally defective and need to get a brain for the good of the planet. A recent speech by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provides an astonishing example of this headspace.

Martin Luther King Jr., we should remember, applied his considerable rhetorical skill to persuading those who saw the world differently to change their minds. He appealed to their better natures, to their moral reasoning. He got respect because he treated others with respect.

Mr. Rudd doesn't view his opponents as equals who have a right to civility. He considers them errant children whom he intends to publicly scold until they start thinking correctly. Australian climate skeptic Joanne Nova's spirited reply to Mr. Rudd is well worth reading.

In a similar vein, the bloggers at Climate-Resistance.org address advocates of global warming theory such as UK newspaper columnist George Monbiot. They observe that it's now standard practice for such people to diminish both the moral character and the intelligence of those with whom they disagree.

It seems the world is overrun with true-believers who inevitably (if perhaps unconsciously) adopt the following positions as described by Climate-Resistance.org:

• What’s the point of having an argument, when you already know you’re right?
• What’s the point of debate, if all it is going to mean is that the wrong ideas get an airing?

Environmentalists like to talk about democracy. Yet they clearly consider the masses too gullible to sort wheat from chaff.

They say "the debate is over" when, in fact, few people have witnessed an actual debate between someone who believes in an impending global warming catastrophe and someone who is skeptical.

They discourage people from reading Michael Crichton's global-warming-questioning novel, State of Fear - rather than encouraging them to become acquainted with the broad brushstrokes of the larger discussion.

Rather than demonstrating a quiet confidence in the strength of their own arguments, they want their neighbours and co-workers shielded from competing ideas.

Rather than persuading, they condemn. They name-call. They accuse.

Well I have a message for these folks: If you live in a sandbox where you're bigger, stronger, and nastier than everyone else maybe such behavior will get you somewhere.

But in the grown-up world, if you want people to join your team and share your views, you need to begin by showing them some respect.

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>> Our hyperactive planet (regarding Michael Crichton's State of Fear)
>> We have heard this rhetoric before (ditto)

Climate Confusion

Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians, and Misguided Policies That Hurt the Poor by Roy W. Spencer (2008, Encounter Books)

Spencer is one of those bogeymen you may have heard about: a bona fide climate scientist who is skeptical of global warming theory. This book's dust jacket tells us he holds a PhD in meteorology, has been a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA, and is co-developer of "the original satellite method for precise monitoring of global temperatures from Earth-orbiting satellites."

Currently a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, he also "serves as the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS...flying on NASA's Aqua satellite." In other words, Spencer possesses credentials most of us can only dream about.

This does not make him infallible. But it does mean that, unlike many people who pontificate about global warming (Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sheryl Crow), he has authentic, firsthand knowledge of the scientific issues under discussion.

I saw Spencer deliver a presentation in quiet, scientifically-appropriate tones this past June and have seen clips of interviews with him. "Animated" is not the first descriptor that jumps to mind. Thus, the caustic tongue and wry wit in this volume was a fun surprise. (From page 48: "We'll use the following simplified illustration, which is appropriate for either middle school students or congressional testimony.")

Occasionally his judgments seem harsh and a tad too dismissive of ideas with which he disagrees. Elsewhere, he casts people in an unflattering light but provides the reader with so few details that independent corroboration of nasty allegations is impossible. Unsubstantiated allegations aren't helpful in an arena as emotionally and politically charged as the global warming debate. That Spencer includes not one footnote in the entire volume is a source of immense frustration to folks like me, who are reading his work as part of a larger research endeavor and feel obliged to independently verify everything anyone says.

Then there's the fact that one of the few external sources Spencer does overtly cite (in passing while discussing the scientific significance of the word "tendency") is a book titled Darwinian Fairytales. Introducing the evolution/creationism/intelligent design controversy, however obliquely, into an already politicized discussion seems unnecessarily provocative.

Much later in the book Spencer appears to clarify his position on these matters when he writes: "I have nothing against people's religious beliefs - only their labeling them as 'science.'" Still, in an era in which international environmental groups and public relations firms run entire websites devoted to smearing people - especially scientists - who fail to toe the global warming party line, it seems regrettable that Spencer chose to go there at all.

That being said, it's worth remembering that Al Gore is a practicing Baptist who aggressively talks about the "spiritual" and "moral" implications of his environmental crusade.

We should also take note of Bill McKibben, who wrote what is considered to be the first mainstream book on global warming back in 1989, titled The End of Nature.

These days McKibben is known as the founder of 350.org "an international climate campaign". As the bio on his official website observes, he "is active in the Methodist Church, and his writing sometimes has a spiritual bent."

Indeed. Although he frequently cites scientists and their research in The End of Nature, an uncharitable reader might characterize this as an attempt to provide a veneer of scientific respectability to what is essentially a philosophical/spiritual/overtly emotional tract.

McKibben talks incessantly about his feelings of "sadness." In one paragraph in particular, he uses the word four times (see pages 60, 68, 72, 73, 74, 160, 162). He also tells us a great deal about his other emotional responses to environmental questions:

• grief (p.73)
• loneliness (76, 144)
• fretfulness (86)
• fear, panic and nervousness (89, 175)
• revulsion (147)
  
• depression (182)
  
• [Page numbers refer to the 2006 US paperback edition]

McKibbin says he locates "God in nature" (61, 68) and quotes a naturalist observing that "We now use the word Nature very much as our fathers used the word God" (61). He describes the Old Testament's Book of Job as "one of the most far-reaching defenses ever written of wilderness, of nature free from the hand of man" (64).

Moreover, throughout The End of Nature, McKibben's language frequently echoes fire-and-brimstone moralism. He declares that "most of the Western world has gone along its prideful way" (65). He says humanity has the capacity to "destroy all that is good and worthwhile" (72) and speaks of "shame" and "self-loathing" (74).

He decries humanity's "turbocharged and jet-propelled arrogance" (87) and warns that "[s]ooner or later our loans will be called in" (39). He exhorts that we must "choose to remain God's creatures" (182) and choose "between that old clarity or new darkness" (183). He says God may well be watching "to see if we...bow down and humble ourselves, or if we compound original sin with terminal sin" (184).

McKibben insists that "sacrifices" are "demanded" (12) and that refusing to follow his advice "will lead us, if not straight to hell, then straight to a place with a similar temperature" (124). Elsewhere, he exhorts, brandishing his finger at us, that "a few more decades of ungoverned fossil-fuel use and we burn up, to put it bluntly" (128). (Recall, dear reader, that his book appeared in 1989. Two decades have come and gone, but we aren't soot and smoke yet.)

Perhaps most telling of all, McKibben describes pre-revolutionary America as a "paradise" (42), insists that we need to "rise out of the wreckage we have made of the world" (147), and longs openly for a lost Eden - the "sweet and wild garden" that humanity has replaced with "a greenhouse" (78).

But wait, there's more. On the book's very first page, McKibben sympathizes with the creationist point-of-view: "Muddled though they are scientifically," he writes, "the creationists, believing in the sudden appearance of the earth some seven thousand years ago, may intuitively understand more about the progress of time than the rest of us."

Critics of Spencer's global warming skepticism take note: If your reason for dismissing him involves religion or creationism, the influential McKibben (whose End of Nature "has been printed in more than 20 languages") is arguably far more tainted.

But I digress. To get back to Climate Confusion, this book made me giggle and guffaw. Chapters three and four, titled "How Weather Works" and "How Global Warming (Allegedly) Works" were a bit of a slog for this non-scientist. The rest, however, were entertaining as well as thought-provoking.

When each of us is making up our minds about how much of the global warming hype to take seriously, Spencer's perspective is a helpful one. Here's a taste from the preface:

Not long ago we were told humanity had fifty years to solve the global warming problem. Then, we heard we have only ten years to change our polluting ways. Now, some are claiming we have only five years left. Soon, we'll be talking about sending a Terminator back through time to fix the problem for us. Maybe the Governor of California can help us with that.

Spencer is a member of a vulnerable and demonized community - climate researchers whose opinions diverge from the dire, catastrophic global warming predictions that now emanate from government, pop culture, and mass media. It's imperative that voices such as his get heard.

P.S.
This blog post was intended to be a list of rough-and-ready quotes, compiled for my own research purposes, from Spencer's book. Instead, my creative genius (in the manner that Elizabeth Gilbert uses this term) put in an appearance and the post metamorphosed into something else. When that list is complete I'll link to it below. Cheers!

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Did IQs Drop Sharply?

Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?! sound bite Aliens sound bites

There's a scene in Aliens, James Cameron's masterpiece, in which the protagonist loses her temper and asks a roomful of people: "Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?"

There are days when I feel similarly exasperated. It's as though a broad swath of otherwise sensible people have taken leave of their senses. According to this week's New Yorker: "humanity is in the process of bringing about an ecological catastrophe of unparalleled scope and significance." Meanwhile, Time magazine declares that: "the science is clear...we're boiling the planet."

Pardon me? When leading publications in countries blessed with free speech can't be counted on to approach important issues with reasonable doubt, they risk losing the trust of their readers.

We're talking here about that highly unreliable pastime known as "predicting the future." The gypsy with her beads and crooked fingers can't foresee the future - and neither can a roomful of computer-assisted climate scientists. Rather than living the obscure life associated with most research, these guys have convinced themselves they're superheroes saving the planet. Evidently they've gone a long way to convincing the rest of us of that, too.

But we all know there aren't any crystal balls. It doesn't matter how impressive their computer is - no one can predict the future. Science can't reliably tell us what the weather will be like next week. Yet these guys claim to know, within a few degrees, how hot it's going to be 100 years from now?

A lot of things can happen between now and then. Fifteen years ago Google didn't exist. Ten years ago no one had ever heard of an iPod. Lots of unexpected things occur in our fast-paced universe. And human ingenuity has always been about pulling rabbits out of hats.

In the early 1970s, temperatures were cooler than normal and scientists warned of an impending ice age. The minor warming trend that followed during the 80s and 90s appears to have halted several years ago. For anyone - never mind Nobel-prize-winning US Energy Secretary Steven Chu - to have anything to do with a magazine article that claims we're currently boiling the planet is a disgrace.

As a counterpoint to Chu, let me introduce you to Burt Rutan. This gentleman's place in the history books is secure. He's been inducted into six Halls of Fame, set world records, and been honored at home and abroad. He's an aerospace engineer who has accomplished things no one else on Earth has [more here]. In his world, he has to be very certain of his data - because when his math is wrong, things explode and people die.

Rutan knows how to analyze data. He's spent decades honing his skills, learning all the ways to differentiate reliable numbers from dodgy ones. Now he's turned his attention to the theory of global warming. He's looked at the graphs and charts, he's assessed the claims of the small army of scientists whose jobs and reputations have become entwined with ringing the alarm bell about global warming.

And he has rejected their analysis. He thinks their data is cow dung and alleges deception, presentation fraud, and manipulation of the numbers. He's invited NASA's activist scientist, James Hansen, to sue him so that the truth of these matters might be explored in a court of law - a context in which concepts like a fair trial and equal time still have meaning.

Rutan has delivered 40-minutes worth of this sort of commentary twice, publicly, in front of audiences at the end of July. And here it is, the end of August, yet publications like Time magazine and the New Yorker seem to think it isn't worth mentioning.

There aren't any guarantees that Rutan is right. Since no one is infallible, it's possible he's wrong. But since he's one of our brightest lights, shouldn't we at least listen to what he has to say? If he's telling us that global warming is a bunch of hooey and that our only real extinction threat involves asteroids shouldn't we consider this possibility?

Since the mainstream media have decided, en masse, that his views aren't newsorthy, here's a link to his 33-slide PowerPoint presentation. It's also available as a PDF, with each slide followed by a page of speaking notes. (For a quick hit, see my earlier blog post here.)

A video was reportedly made of his talk. As soon as it becomes available, I'll post it here.

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Aerospace Pioneer Dismisses Global Warming

In some circles, aerospace engineer Burt Rutan is a demi-god. In 2005, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has been inducted into six different halls of fame - including the International Aerospace Hall of Fame and the US National Aviation Hall of Fame.

Rutan has received the Heinlein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Aerospace, a Presidential Citizens Medal, and has been honored by British and French aeronautical bodies.

In 2004, SpaceShipOne, designed by Rutan, was the first privately-funded craft to enter space and return (twice within a 2-week period). In 1986, his Voyager craft became the first airplane to fly around the globe without stopping or refueling.

Recently Rutan delivered a talk to Experimental Aircraft Association audiences in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in which he dismissed climate change as a serious concern. (His 33-slide PowerPoint deck from that talk is also available as a PDF.)

Rutan isn't a climate scientist. But he has spent decades honing his ability to analyze and interpret disparate kinds of data. His rule of thumb: "The more complex or uncertain the data, the more judgment is needed...and the more susceptible the conclusions are to bias."

After examining the alleged evidence supporting global warming theory - much of it associated with NASA's James Hansen - Rutan declares it bunk. Below is slide #8 (p. 15 in the PDF) from his talk:

The words appearing on some of Rutan's slides are harsh: deception, presentation fraud, data manipulation. He accuses the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of weighting one group of data 390 times more than another in order to transform "falling temperatures" into "rising temperatures" in the graphs it has presented to world leaders and the public.

Rutan's assessment of journalists is equally uncomplimentary: "The media does not investigate. They just listen to the alarmists and then report that global warming is 'worse than the UN predictions.'"

Rutan points out that periods of slight warming - of the sort that occurred between 1975 and 1998 - aren't unusual. The years 1860-1880 and 1910-1940 experienced similar warming, he says. He devotes four slides (26-29) to the theme of "show me the data" - in which he concludes that numerous claims of impending climate-related disasters aren't supported by the evidence.

Because the climate has always changed and will always continue to do so, he calls climate change "the world's safest bet" and declares it "silly" to consider it a crisis. He's also adamant that "consensus has nothing to do with science and science has nothing to do with consensus."

It's hardly surprising, therefore, that Rutan rejects the US cap-and-trade legislation currently under consideration. In his view, these measures are "naive, non-scientific, irrelevant, hopeless and oxymoronic."

If the US government "really wants to protect citizens from a possible planet catastrophe," he concludes, it should fund research into systems that can defend against asteroid strikes. This is, he says "the only real extinction threat the planet has ever had and the only one in which Man can indeed use his intelligence and sweat to successfully defeat."

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