Bringing Physics Into Disrepute

I first commented on the suspected link between the Institute of Physics and the noted Climate Change “sceptic” Piers Corbyn in a previous post :-

http://www.joabbess.com/2010/03/02/fred-pearce-still-crucifying-phil-jones/

One of my commentators challenged what I had written, so I edited it out, awaiting the opportunity to discover more.

More has now been uncovered; not my me, I hasten to add, but by another commentator :-

http://www.joabbess.com/2010/03/06/institute-of-physics-nosedive/#comment-600

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Zombie Climate Change Sceptic Arguments

Some bad ideas just won’t die.

Here’s Skeptical Science’s regularly updated list of the hottest and battiest Climate Change “sceptic” arguments :-

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

And here’s the full, and updateable list of nearly 250 “sceptical” arguments that have been weighed in the balance and found erroneously wanting :-

http://www.skepticalscience.com/resources.php

Why do these arguments keep coming back from the grave with their great big evil green zombie eyes and their matted, bird’s nest zombie hair and their outstretched murderous arms ?

Who is promoting and protecting these vampire lies ?

Who are the stinking, rotting funders of disinformation on Climate Change ?

I think we should find out, and ask them to stop.

Imagine There’s No Medicine

Imagine there’s no Medicine; no doctors, nurses, hospitals, surgeons, ward administrators, paramedics on bicycles in bright yellow and green jackets, ambulances, medical technology or pharmaceuticals. It’s not easy, even if you try. What would your life be like ? Pretty painful and quite possibly nastily shortened, I’d hazard.

There are people in the world who still do not have access to medical care (let’s think…all those Americans without basic health care insurance), so they know the grim realities of it all – but the reason I’m considering this is there could have been a point in human history where the development of Medicine was thwarted by sceptics and people with ulterior motives.

“You’re sick because you’ve sinned”, a portion of humanity used to believe; the wealthy throughout history have sometimes been keen for disease to wipe out the scum of the poor. Appeals to Nature and to God to explain sickness and accidental damage could have been followed by a refusal to care for or treat people – as it was not what the Laws of the Universe dictated.

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Open Season on Science

Like several commentators, I am picking out a trend in Internet communications that indicates that there is a tribe of “doubt believers” out there, proselytising for their cause : bringing down the Science of Climate Change.

These evangelists often write and reply to web posts with statements of alarmingly high confidence levels, assuming authority they cannot possibly claim, sometimes using anonymity to cloak their network connections.

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How You Were Taken In : Media “Balance”

Poor (middle-aged) old George Monbiot ! He really feels like he’s been wasting his time trying to get through to people to communicate about Climate Change :-

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/03/08/the-unpersuadables/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/mar/08/belief-in-climate-change-science

I don’t think that he should despair. What the ordinary, Tabloid-reading , Daily Telegraph-reading, Times of London-reading or even Guardian-reading man-or-woman-in-the-street thinks about Climate Change Science doesn’t really matter in the end, as long as the policymakers know the direction of travel required. That is, towards strong regulation on Carbon Emissions.

And anyway, I think that the problem of Climate Change “doubt” can be resolved relatively easily – by educating those who work in the Media.

Let me begin my argument by asking a question : is it right and fair and balanced to pitch Dr Benny Peiser against Professor Phil Jones on the subject of the Science of Global Warming ?

I ask this, because this is effectively what happened during the hearings of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on 1st March 2010, when Dr Benny Peiser and Lord Nigel Lawson were first in the seats, and then Professor Phil Jones and Professor Edward Acton sat in the seats later on :-

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/uc387-i/uc38702.htm

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How You Were Taken In : The Manufacture of Doubt

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/naomi_oreskes_on_merchants_of.php

Please do watch Naomi Oreske’s magristral (not “magisterial”, since she’s female) presentation on her new publication “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming” in the YouTube above.

The presentation is somewhat marred by poor audiovisual capture, but it’s fascinating, all the same, and good to hear her logical argumentation; and be reminded of what has been happening for the last 50 years in the public “debates” on Science.

The Media have still not gotten to grips with what Science actually is, and how to present it, and how to research it, and often end up interviewing and reporting people who are either not expert in the field they are asked about, or have an underlying agenda for misinformation being published.

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Institute of Physics Nosedive

Is the Institute of Physics “prestigious” ?

Well, of course, they are highly honoured, and have prestige, but I’m talking about the other meaning, of a sense of cunning, that lingers on in the French word for conjurer or magician : prestidigitateur : the speed of thinking gives capacity to move the fingers almost undetectably to create an illusion.

Several commentators have remarked on the similarity between the Institute of Physics submission to the Science and Technology Committee on “Climategate” and the arguments of several noted Climate Change sceptics.

The fact that James Delingpole loved it up should have been a clue to all the bug hunters out there that all was not well with the submission from the IoP :-

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The Climate Obstructers’ Gameplan

If you have any doubt that Science is under assault from the Climate Change Obstructers (self-styled “sceptics”), you need look no further than this piece of what I consider to be utter, utter, fetid 30-day-old left-in-the-sun tripe :-

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/04/global-warming-flaks-reduced-t

The number of outright inaccuracies in the piece is astonishing, including the switch on what Phil Jones really claimed about “statistically significant” global warming.

And it concludes with clear evidence of a globally organised campaign to bring down Climate Change Science, by hook or by crook :-

“There is vastly more material here than you will ever be able to absorb. I realized as I ploughed my way through it, or some of it, that the conclusion is encouraging. I am confident now that the official version is going to be overwhelmed, and that the mainstream media reporters are going to be overwhelmed, too. They are right now facing their own Tsunami of dissent. Politicians know very well what is happening, and cap and trade will not pass the U.S. Senate.”

“Coverage at such warm-supporting organs as the Washington Post and the New York Times has been reduced to a strategy of denial. They have been forced to deny that that there is any problem with the official story beyond what the climate officials themselves admit (and they admit very little — little more than typos).”

“But it doesn’t matter. The web has made all the difference and the reporters working to uphold the official version have more and more been forced into a defensive crouch. The exposure of this massive fraud will be a watershed in the history of environmentalism and it will continue to unfold whatever the mainstream media think or say.”

We have a (non-violent) fight on our hands, not of our own choosing : keep telling the truth, and insisting on correcting falsehoods; or face an uphill ramp of complications and delays.

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A Question of Pedantics

The Climate Change Science Obstructers, or “the obstructers”, who style themselves as “sceptics” (or “skeptics” if you are in other climes than the UK of GB and NI), love throwing any muck they can find, hoping that any little drab will stick.

Unfortunately, this does sometimes result in the breaching of semantic spaces, and false meanings can occur. Sadly, this seems to happen most often in the minds of journalists, who then write up the mistakes and publish them abroad widely.

Here is an example from a usually faithful reporter :-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7347658/Climategate-professor-admits-to-withholding-information.html

“‘Climategate’ professor admits to withholding information : The professor at the centre of the ‘climategate’ row, has admitted sending ’some pretty awful’ emails refusing to send information on to other scientists. : By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent : Published: 02 Mar 2010″

Dear Louise, I’ll have to interject right here : Phil Jones did not admit he refused to send data to other scientists.

Phil Jones explained that is is not “standard procedure” to include all the data in every research paper when it is published. That’s not the same as saying he “refused” to.

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True Science Search Engine

Breaking News : a “true science” Internet search engine that you can trust to give you the facts on Climate Change.

In the first stages of development, the new tool, which can help you exclude Climate Change scepticism from your Internet searches, is available online here :-

True Science Search Engine

Yes, it’s powered by Google, but that’s great.

If you find any Climate Change denier-sceptic web articles in the results, do let me know, and I can inform the search engine designers to improve the filtering.

The Truth-Tellers Collective

There appears to be a group of reliable truth-tellers building, out there in Web Log Land. The YouTube at the top is from Peter Sinclair and his “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” series. Always worth watching. A calming breath of fresh sane air for the mind :-

http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610

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The World Warms Up

The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center in their monthly “State of the Climate”, state :-

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/index.php

“Selected Global Highlights for January 2010 : The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). This is the fourth warmest January on record…”

How can this be ? The newspapers have been saying that Global Warming is just a confused scare story, or perhaps a tax-begging scam, or a bunch of self-important technologists on a gravy train creating false alarm to justify their funding streams – nothing to worry about. And of course, we can believe the mainstream Media implicitly. There are rules about the quality and accuracy of reporting.

Are NOAA sure they’ve checked that their thermometers are calibrated properly ? It all seems rather worrying that such a large American Science agency should be claiming that January 2010 was so warm when there has been all that snow and rain and ice about. The Media tried to point out this bad weather, but the scientists just carried on measuring high temperatures.

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The Faily Mail : Not To Be Trusted ?

It looks like the Daily Maul has messed up sufficiently this time to get a dishonourable mention on three major web logs (not including this one here, because this one is not a major web log).

You would have thought that after the poor coverage of Climate Change Science over the last couple of years and the disparaging put-downs by everyone from David King to George Monbiot that the newspapers would have realised by now that they need some proper, factual reporting from people qualified to do so. But not a shred of it.

My, my, how the newspapers are wasting our time and creating social division in spats between citizens around the watercooler and the schoolyard gate !

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Climategate Public Relations Fiasco

“Look”, said my telephone correspondent, “lots of people with influence know, deep down, that Climategate is just political, not real. The spin doesn’t disprove the science.”

“I know,” I acquiesced, “but it is still important what the public thinks, and this series of minor scandals, some completely baseless, and blown out of all proportion, needs some kind of comeback.”

Warming to my theme, I burbled on, “We can’t leave it hanging in the air like this. You never know when you will next meet a disparaging sceptic, who belligerently, senselessly, obstructs the good you are doing. And this crowd could influence the next Government…”

“OK then”, caved my buddy on the line, “what do you propose ?”

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The Guardian : Intellectually Bankrupt ?

I would like to bring before the court of public opinion some evidence that indicates that the leadership at The Guardian newspaper could be said to have become partially intellectually bankrupt.

Specimen A

Simon Hoggart pronounces on Climate Change Science despite not knowing a thing about it. I do not understand how this piece of writing was published, as it contains a number of inaccuracies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/feb/06/climate-change-simon-hoggarts-week

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Earth Twinned With Venus

I think the group of artists proposing that Letterkenny, County Donegal, should be twinned with Mars, may have got their Climate Change facts a little twisted :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/8473116.stm

“Irish island twinned with Mars in climate change stunt : An island in County Donegal is to be twinned with Mars in order to raise awareness of climate change. A community near Letterkenny will be linked with an island outcrop on the Red planet. The unusual move was suggested by a group of artists asked by Donegal County Council to explore art’s role in addressing issues of global warming. The Council’s Public Arts Manager, Terri Duffy, said it would act as an “attention-grabbing wake-up call”. “I know it’s a bit ‘out there’ but it is taking a very serious look at the relationship of art and climate change. Some people feel the earth is becoming more Mars like due to the effects of global warming…”

Mars is rather cold, owing to the fact that it doesn’t really have much of an atmosphere and so doesn’t have the benefit of much in terms of the Greenhouse Effect :-

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Send a Sceptic to Siberia

Yawn. Yet another anti-Science web log page floats into my field of vision. It’s so…boring, trying to keep up with the Global Warming Deniers. I can barely keep awake. Here’s an example of the trite, and frankly, petulant genre :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/

Actually, don’t bother reading it. It’s a waste of column inches.

If only the Climate Change Sceptics would just go away and let us get on with the gargantuan task of revitalising the Energy industry around sustainable technologies.

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Glaciers Melting in the Himalayas

Video Credit : Asia Society

The satellites and cameras do not lie : glaciers in the Himalayas are melting, and the loss of any part of this “third pole” ice cover threatens the freshwater supply for billions.

This weekend’s Media clamour on the subject focuses on the trail of a mis-attribution of a claim regarding the complete meltdown of the mountain glaciers.

Just because somebody’s got their references wrong, doesn’t mean that the glaciers have magically not been melting after all.

Yes, the IPCC process has failed to pick up this prediction error. No, it doesn’t throw the whole of the IPCC reports into the trash can.

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Laughing With James Delingpole

James Delingpole is so endearingly consistent in barking up the wrong tree, it’s sometimes easiest just to laugh along with his rambling, unscientific meanderings.

“‘AGW? I refute it THUS!”, he shouts out amusingly in his web log post of today :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100022226/agw-i-refute-it-thus-central-england-temperatures-1659-to-2009/

proving to me once and for all he could never be a statistician or a Police Officer, as he doesn’t know enough to detect an outright fabrication when he encounters one.

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Daily Express : Unreliable Sources

Another pretty poor headline from the Daily Express (and we all know that outrageous headlines sell newspapers), but the majority of the article is OK, until the almost inevitable signs of “balance” by quoting Piers Corbyn and Christopher Booker :-

“…Long-term forecaster and trends analyst Piers Corbyn, of WeatherAction, said: “Global warming is a failed science built on falsified data. It is a sham to say that man has caused it.”…”

Most serendipitously, the Global Warming Science that the genuine research community have been slaving away at for the last, ooo, 25 years, has not been undermined by one freakily cold Northern Hemisphere Winter, or they’d all be out of jobs pretty sharpish.

“…Christopher Booker, author of The Real Global Warming Disaster, said: “It is amazing how this scaremongering from climate change lobbyists keeps arising even though they are constantly being proved wrong. Last year there was snow in Saudia Arabia and still they persist in saying the temperature is going up.”…”

As time goes by, and more evidence is collated and analysed and more theoretical branches are investigated, the more Climate Change Science is shown to be accurate, both in projection and qualitative prediction.

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The Spectator’s Rod Liddle Fabricates

http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/5688478/questioning-the-climate-change-establishment.thtml

“Questioning the Climate Change Establishment : ROD LIDDLE : THURSDAY, 7TH JANUARY 2010 : So, this is now the coldest winter for thirty years and the snow is likely to hang around for two weeks, maybe three. How does this square with last year’s prediction from eminent scientists – the Met, the UAE change-the-numbers-monkeys, Marcus Brigstocke etc – that 2010 was going to be the hottest year on record? It could still be, of course – but it will have to go it some. Let’s keep an eye on the figures – so far, coldest for thirty years, remember. December was cold too, if you remember – yet apparently not included in the figures for 2009 which, if you recall, were jubilantly announced as being the fifth hottest since records began in the middle of November – ie when there was still 11 per cent of the year to go, the coldest bit…”

You’re entirely mistaken, Rodney.

All the data from 2009 for the Central England Temperarture, for example, was used in the calculation of the yearly mean. And all the data is available on the Hadley Centre website, and pictures too :-

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean2009.html

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/data/download.html

It’s true that NASA GISS and NOAA are a bit slow in publishing their data and charts, but in a short week or so, they’ll be posted.

Please check your facts before splurging. And that means all of you, respectable authentic journalists, opinion-formers and shock jocks alike.

The BBC Reviews Its Trust

The BBC Trust are to review the BBC’s treatment of Science in the BBC Media. I can’t say for sure whether that’s going to result in anything helpful or not, since it’s going to be effectively an “internal inquiry”. Their quest for objectivity may end up in compromise and playing to the heckling balconies :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/06/bbc-trust-science-impartiality-review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6941616/BBC-to-launch-review-into-allegations-of-bias-in-its-science-coverage.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241209/BBC-probes-bias-science-coverage.html

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Sceptics Have Infected The Guardian

It looks like The Guardian newspaper has been infected with Global Warming scepticism.

I thought the paper was supposed to have some decent editorial process on Science ! But, sadly, clearly, not.

Here are the main problems with the article :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/07/religion-climate-change

1. The author does not understand the processes that govern the accumulation of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.

2. The author appears to have no knowledge of how the Earth system as a whole regulated Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere in the distant past within certain limits of extent.

3. The author does not recognise that the current level of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere is much higher than in the distant past. Neither does he offer any explanation for why the level should have strayed outside the long-term boundaries.

4. The author accepts that periods of Earth History with more Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere were warmer than periods with less Carbon Dioxide, but fails to offer a possible mechanism that could draw down Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere now to the regulated boundaries of the distant past.

5. The author does not appear to appreciate that the Younger Dryas cooling event was almost certainly entirely unrelated to Carbon Dioxide levels in the Atmosphere.

6. The author does not appear to appreciate that the Younger Dryas cooling event was not global in scope. Or rather, although there are records of effects almost universally, the effects were not the same everywhere.

7. The author does not recount the extreme warming that ended the Younger Dryas event.

Which is what you would expect, since the main cause of the Younger Dryas event was not the level of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere; and naturally, the levels of Carbon Dioxide still in the Atmosphere caused the temperatures to return to where they were prior to the Younger Dryas cooling event.

The author of the article appears to be a software engineer with an education in biological sciences. I doubt he has ever taken a course in Global Warming Science. I suggest he should. It’s all online if he wants it. Here are David Archer’s lecture videos from the University of Chicago :-

http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/lectures.html

Wolfgang Knorr : Denialist Soup

The new trend on the wires from the amorphous, shifting pack of wildcards that deny the very science of Global Warming – write the wrong conclusion about a piece of research by Wolfgang Knorr from Bristol University – and then circulate it on the Internet.

The research was published late last year, but it’s only in the last couple of days that the Climate Change Deniers have started a serious viral “Public Relations” campaign to promote their mis-quotation. The “Carbon Capture Report” shows an uptick in popularity of covering this paper :-

http://www.carboncapturereport.org/cgi-bin/biodb?PROJID=3&mode=viewpersonname&name=dr_wolfgang_knorr

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Answer the Question, Professor Plimer

George Monbiot goes head to head with Professor Ian Plimer, but fails to get a straight answer out of the Australian mining geologist.

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