Month: September 2011

The Spencer Braswell gambit is not a new one for the anti science fringe. This is fact follows a well worn template that has been replicated a number of times, and not just by climate deniers.

Chris Mooney had a pitch-perfect take on the denial industry M.O. in this piece from 2004 –

This is how it begins: Proponents of a fringe or non-mainstream scientific viewpoint seek added credibility. They’re sick of being taunted for having few (if any) peer reviewed publications in their favor. Fed up, they decide to do something about it.

These “skeptics” find what they consider to be a weak point in the mainstream theory and critique it. Not by conducting original research; they simply review previous work. Then they find a little-known, not particularly influential journal where an editor sympathetic to their viewpoint hangs his hat.

They get their paper through the peer review process and into print. They publicize the hell out of it. Activists get excited by the study, which has considerable political implications.

Before long, mainstream scientists catch on to what’s happening. They shake their heads. Some slam the article and the journal that published it, questioning the review process and the editor’s ideological leanings. In published critiques, they tear the paper to scientific shreds.

Embarrassed, the journal’s publisher backs away from the work. But it’s too late for that. The press has gotten involved, and though the work in question has been discredited in the world of science, partisans who favor its conclusions for ideological reasons will champion it for years to come.

The scientific waters are muddied. The damage is done.

——

that’s the start of a longer piece that compares Soon/Balliunas to similar hits undertaken by the creationist-science faction – who accuse their critics of “imposing a gag rule on science” — sound familiar?

The longer piece is worth reading as an addition to science history.

“in the sediments that I looked at under the microscope..there’s essentially nothing in it that was moving around..”

Are we ready to apologize to BP yet?

Continue reading “One Year Later – Sea Floor in Gulf Still a Wasteland”

BBC 

The editor of a science journal has resigned after admitting that a recent paper casting doubt on man-made climate change should not have been published.

The paper, by US scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell, claimed that computer models of climate inflated projections of temperature increase.

It was seized on by “sceptic” bloggers, but attacked by mainstream scientists.

Wolfgang Wagner, editor of Remote Sensing journal, says he agrees with their criticisms and is stepping down.

Peter Gleick in Forbes

One month ago, a paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell was published in the journal Remote Sensing arguing that far less future global warming will occur than the scientific community currently anticipates. This highly controversial finding – controversial since it is at odds with observations, basic understanding of atmospheric physics, models, and with what most scientists think we know about climate science — was seized upon by climate change deniers and skeptics and broadcast loud and far.

While other climate experts quickly pointed to fatal flaws in the paper, it received a great deal of attention from certain media. In something of a media frenzy, Fox News, the authors themselves in press releases and web comments, Forbes, in a column by a lawyer at the Heartland Institute, Drudge, and others loudly pointed to this as evidence that the vast array of science on climate change was wrong.

The staggering news today is that the editor of the journal that published the paper has just resigned, with a blistering editorial calling the Spencer and Braswell paper “fundamentally flawed,” with both “fundamental methodological errors” and “false claims.” That editor, Professor Wolfgang Wagner of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, is a leading international expert in the field of remote sensing. In announcing his resignation, Professor Wagner says “With this step I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements.”

More comment and explanation below, and a video to remind us that this pattern is not new.

Continue reading “Bombshell: Journal Editor Resigns over Flawed Spencer paper”

Nick Sundt of World Wildlife Fund writes:

Thu, 09/01/2011 – 16:20

Just weeks before Arctic sea ice extent reaches a record or near-record annual low, observers estimate that over 20,000 walruses have hauled-out near Point Lay, Alaska.  The aerial observers also have spotted dead walruses on their flights over the Chukchi Sea.

By 17 August, approximately 8,000 walruses were observed during a survey flight of the Chukchi Offshore Monitoring in Drilling Area (COMIDA) marine mammal aerial survey project (see 8,000 Walruses Congregate along Alaska Shoreline, Unable to Find Sea Ice Near Feeding Areas,   WWF Climate Blog, 19 August).  Another COMIDA flight two days later (19 August) reported [PDF] their numbers had grown to about 10,000 walruses.

Continue reading “20,000 Walrus now Hauled out at Point Lay, Alaska”

James Hansen makes the point that the planet is in an energy imbalance of about 3/4 of a watt per square meter, planet wide.

I asked some very competent scientists to break that down for me in understandable terms. Here are some answers.

————————-

3/4 W / m2 = 382 terawatts globally

 A typical space heater puts out about 1500 W of heat.

This is equivalent to running 36 space heaters for every man, woman, and child on Earth (all 7 billion of us).

Those 250 billion space heaters would just be capable of warming the Earth at the same rate that the excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are warming us.

Continue reading “James Hansen Interview: Tar Sands, Jail – and the Energy Imbalance”

From Nick Sundt’s WWF Climate Blog:

Above: “Two large walrus haulouts (estimated sizes 5000 and 3000 animals)sighted during COMIDA flight 234 [PDF] [17 August 2011]. The haulouts were located slightly north of Pt. Lay, at 69.81N, 163.06W, separated from one another by a very short distance. In the vicinity of the sighting, the COMIDA team was flying the coastal transect one km offshore, with the aircraft at 1550’, and no reaction by the walruses was noted.” (click on image for larger high resolution image).  Source: Blaine Thorn (National Marine Mammal Laboratory, Alaska Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

We reported on 12 Aug that walruses, driven ashore by the lack of Arctic sea ice over shallow waters, were starting to “haul out” along the Alaskan shores of the Chukchi sea (see Arctic Weather Pattern Likely to Push Arctic Sea Ice Extent to Record Lows, Again Forcing Thousands of Walruses Ashore). Airborne observers now report that by 17 August, “[a]pproximately 8,000 walruses were observed hauled out on land slightly north of Point Lay [Alaska].”

Continue reading “Walrus Haulouts Observed Again on Alaska Shoreline”

In “Confessions of a Climate Change Convert”, D. R. Tucker explained the change in consciousness that came to a conservative writer after seriously looking at the evidence for  anthropogenic climate change.
Today, he offers another insight into the conservative’s climate quandary.

The amusement parks I visited when I was a child had signs indicating that one had to be “this tall” in order to go on a ride. Viewing the endless stream of op-eds and Fox News Channel segments ridiculing the very notion of global warming, I ask myself if we need new signs indicating that one must be “this smart” to understand climate science.

There’s an overlap between media outlets geared to the lowest common intellectual denominator and media outlets that vigorously denounce the scientific verdict on climate change. Long before recognizing the reality of global warming, I was unnerved by the dynamic of right-leaning media outlets embracing tabloid sensationalism, lurid and unsettling content, flashy headlines and graphics. Fox, the New York Post, the boy-we-miss-Bush blogs—all of these entities appealed to emotion, and all of these entities abhorred climate science.

There are only four reasons conservatives reject the scientific verdict on climate—absolute scientific ignorance, support of or support from fossil fuel interests, unrestrained contempt for Al Gore, and rigid ideological opposition to virtually any form of government regulation. Sometimes it’s hard to determine which reason is the biggest factor in climate denial. Yes, the pecuniary pleasures proffered by petroleum promoters have a lot to do with the “It’s all a hoax!” hooey from the right. Yet scientific ignorance might play a bigger role than money when it comes to conservative climate callousness.

Climate science isn’t simple to make simple. It’s hard to explain in a 30-second sound bite how global warming makes hurricanes more dangerous, the role it plays in increasing the intensity of snowstorms, the risk it poses to oceans, to wildlife, to us. It’s tough to make some folks comprehend that human beings can affect the climate by virtue of their activities. The very concept scares people. Science scares people.

I know what it’s like to have a fear of science. I loathed science classes in high school and college, and could not wait for those classes to be over. Chemistry, biology and the natural world were above my pay grade, so to speak. I felt mentally lost in those science classes, thrown for a loop, unable to relate to what was being discussed in any way.  I loathed science as much as I loved literature.

It was quite easy for me to buy into Rush Limbaugh’s denigration of science; it was a contempt I already shared. Limbaugh—who often talked of how much he hated school—promoted the idea that scientists didn’t really know what they were talking about, that they were just making up mumbo-jumbo with no relevance to the real world. That’s how I felt. What did my science teachers know, anyway?

Continue reading “Dare to Be Dumb”

Video from July 26.

The following text appeared in a handwritten letter from Tim DeChristopher addressed to Grist’s Jennifer Prediger. 

If I had ever doubted the power of words, Judge Benson made their importance all too clear at my sentencing last month. When he sentenced me to two years in prison plus three years probation, he admitted my offense “wasn’t too bad.” The problem, Judge Benson insisted, was my “continuing trail of statements” and my lack of regret.

Apparently, all he really wanted was an apology, and for that, two years in prison could have been avoided. In fact, Judge Benson said that had it not been for the political statements I made in public, I would have avoided prosecution entirely. As is generally the case with civil disobedience, it was extremely important to the government that I come before the majesty of the court with my head bowed and express regret. So important, in fact, that an apology with proper genuflection is currently fair trade for a couple years in prison. Perhaps that’s why most activist cases end in a plea bargain.

Continue reading ““If I had ever doubted the power of words,..” Prison Letter from Tim DeChristopher”