Don't shoot the messenger
Monday, December 7, marks the opening of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. At that meeting, the leaders of the world will gather to negotiate an agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The new agreement will be the world's road map for dealing with climate change, and the stakes are huge. It is fitting that the conference begins on the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for the Copenhagen conference is sure to be an epic political battle. Indeed, the battle has already been underway for several weeks, with most of the action centering on a PR assault launched by the anti-CO2 regulation forces that sensationalized the contents of the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia. The Wall Street Journal has long been at the forefront of the battle to discredit the science of climate change and the scientists involved, and last week they launched a major offensive, publishing multiple opinion pieces. I'll critique one of these, a December 1 editorial by Bret Stephens which accuses climate scientists of having a vested interest in promoting alarmist views of the climate in order to get research funding. "All of them have been on the receiving end of climate change-related funding, so all of them must believe in the reality (and catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God", Stephens wrote.
Money
It's always wise to follow the money when analyzing the motivations of people. However, Ph.D. atmospheric scientists are less motivated by money than, say, the typical reader of the Wall Street Journal. I am an example of that. Nobody owns more shares of Wunderground.com than I do, yet here I am criticizing the Wall Street Journal and some of the richest and most powerful corporations on the planet--hardly the sort of action that will generate more revenue for my company. Our top climate scientists are some of the most brilliant people on the planet. They could have easily made fortunes on Wall Street devising intricate schemes to hawk sub-prime mortgages or leverage obscure derivatives. Yet these people chose climate science as a career, out of a genuine curiosity about how the world works and desire to help find the truth of whether human-caused climate change poses a significant threat to humanity. The charges that these scientists are exaggerating the danger of human-caused global warming to get more funding is a personal attack on their integrity--a typical politician's ploy to avoid talking about the issues, when one has no valid arguments to bolster one's position. In my 29 years in the weather business, I've had the honor of working with many of the world's top weather and climate scientists. I can personally vouch for their integrity and commitment to pursue the scientific truth, no matter what that truth turns out to be. These are honest, incredibly hard-working public servants who are enduring a punishing assault on their integrity because they are the bearers of bad news. The Earth has plenty of pressing problems requiring the services of brilliant scientists; these public servants will always have a job, and have no need to exaggerate dangers or invent new threats in order to get more research funding. If one reads through the entire set of 3,000 emails hacked from the University of East Anglia--not just the choice few lines excerpted from chosen emails, and then spun by the anti-CO2 regulation lobby to make the scientists look bad--you will see that these scientists are the good guys. Never once is there a mention of fabricating data or fudging results to try to get more research funding. There is no conspiring to perpetate the massive "hoax" of human-caused global warming they have been accused of. Rather, we see a picture of some very smart, hardworking, and very human and imperfect scientists that are doing their best to learn the truth, and pass that information on to the rest of us. You don't get ahead in scince by fudging the data. It's publish or perish. While the peer-review system of publication is not perfect, it generally does an excellent job of rewarding those scientists who seek to publish the truth, and rejects those who do not. Published papers that turn out to be false will, in time, crumble under the weight of subsequent studies that do uncover the truth. Smart scientists tend to have big egos and hate being wrong, so there is additional motivation to publish truthful studies that will withstand the test of time and be validated by subsequent research.
Alarmism
Mr. Stephens uses the words "alarm" or "alarmist" four times in the editorial, and he is clearly trying to provoke an emotional reaction against those Chicken Littles guilty of raising the alarm. Speaking as an atmospheric scientist, I can tell you from long experience that we are not the wild-eyed, alarmist lot that the Wall Street Journal makes us out to be. This makes for some very dull parties (if you're not excited about discussing quasi-geostrophic theory), when we get together for a big bash. Very little alarming behavior takes place. (In fact, after I dragged my wife to three straight devastatingly dull departmental Christmas parties while I was in graduate school, she forbade me from ever requiring her to go to another.) Atmospheric scientists are not an alarmist lot--put us in quiet room with a window and give us a computer and pile of data to analyze, and we'll be as happy as a clam at high tide. The portrayal of climate scientists as alarmist, money-grubbing, dishonest hucksters out to destroy the economy to further their own selfish desires for money or fame is a common theme in climate change denial attacks, and is a very narrow-minded and ignorant one. It's more convenient to shoot the messenger than to acknowledge the truth of the bad news they're bringing.
Toleration of false alarms
It is possible that the alarms climate scientists are raising over climate change will turn out to be false. Environmental scientists have in the past issued false alarms over environmental problems that did not materialize as expected. However, we should expect and tolerate some degree of false alarms, given the uncertainty in forecasting these events. If our scientists never issue a false alarm, then the tolerance for issuing alarms is not correct. Would you criticize the National Weather Service for issuing a tornado warning when a possible tornado signature is spotted on Doppler radar, since less than half of these signatures result in in an actual tornado touchdown? Or the National Hurricane Center for issuing a hurricane warning, since only 25% of the warned coast receives hurricane-force winds, on average? No, some degree of false alarms must be tolerated. Our weather forecasters are dedicated public servants, doing their job of warning the public when their best scientific judgment indicates that there might be a significant threat. It is no different with our climate scientists. They are predicting that there is a greater than 90% chance that most of the observed global warming is due to human causes. Climate scientists are extremely concerned about what their scientific results are saying, and are doing their utmost to warn a public resistant to acknowledging the danger. This resistance runs very deep among conservatives. A 2008 Pew Center poll found that 75% of Democrats with a college education believed that humans were responsible for global warming, while only 19% of college educated Republicans believed that. Conservatives' core belief that a capitalist, free market economy with limited regulation is the best economic system in the world is challenged by acknowledging that human-caused global warming is real and a threat. I greatly respect conservatives who can objectively evaluate the validity of global warming science while holding that core belief, for it is difficult to accept that the best economic system in the world could spawn such a self-destructive force. But as I detailed in a post last week, corporations, by law, exist to make a profit. If scientific research shows that a corporation's products may be harmful to the public health, it the obligation of the company to its shareholders to employ whatever legal means possible to cast doubt on this science, in order to protect profits. The profits of the richest and most powerful industry the planet has ever seen--the fossil fuel industry--are currently so threatened. Thus, we are being subject to history's greatest campaign to deny science, and it is keeping us from much-needed action to curb the danger. These voices are telling us what we want to hear--the danger is not real, the scientists are corrupt and are falsifying their data, the uncertainties are great, and that we cannot afford to change. But the laws of physics don't care about ideology or free market economies or election cycles. The overwhelming majority of our top climate scientists are saying that the laws of physics dictate that massive amounts of greenhouse gases, when added to the atmosphere, will cause warming that will be very damaging to civilization. If we are to limit that damage, we must act soon, for the approaching storm will grow ever stronger the longer we wait. Don't shoot the messengers-- they are on your side.
Other posts in this series
Embattled UK climate scientist steps down
The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy
Is more CO2 beneficial for Earth's ecosystems?
Next post
My timing of my next post will depend upon the weather.
Our Climate Change expert, Dr. Ricky Rood, is in Copenhagen for this week's crucial COP15 climate change treaty negotiations. Be sure to tune into his blog for updates on the talks. Wunderground has provided financial support for several University of Michigan students to attend the talks, and I may be featuring portions of their blogs over the coming weeks.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Joan Baez?? There are 2 of them??
Volatile is an understatement. We have thunderstorms develop here from a clear sky, and 1 hr later, it's a super-cell thunderstorm, with a cloud height of 60,000FT, baseball size hail and a EF2 tornado attached to its SW corner. As it rotates counterclockwise on Doppler radar screens, at suppertime! That happens at least 2-5X/yr within out greater metropolitan area.
Suddenly, the weather in Nassau, Bahamas sounds so much nicer :0)!
Well said Pottery, I agree with you. Our good Doctor has picked a side to represent, but I admire that he not only provides us a place for debate, but encourages civil informed discourse.
Snicker snicker.
Err... no. That is a hallmark of good science - allowing for the possibility that, despite mounds of supporting evidence, a theory might in fact be incorrect.
Good morning, I am here in the DFW, TX area. Can I place an order for about 3 days like yours, a large Pepsi, large fries and a 1/2 LB burger, cooked medium-well, with onions, ketchup, sweet relish , lettuce and tomato please :0)!
AMSU
Interesting Sat Temp evaluation
A statistically significant cooling trend in RSS and UAH satellite data
Miami is a nice place to live. Rarely anything severe and usually if it is, it is usually just wind justs in the 40mph range. Only about 1 time a year do we get a really bad Severe T Storm. Hurricanes and TS's are always a concern but people in Miami are ready for then when they come. It can rain insanely hard here as well but it only lasts for 30-45 minutes at the most 95% of the time.
Morning Oss, good to see you have your stir stick out today :)
If Global warming continues,man made or not.
People can go diving to see the pretty coral reefs growing atop the Washington monument.
Coral reefs have survived many warmer periods in the past.
And will do so in the future.
Make that 2 of those.......
What color is the sky of that world you're
living in?
Unfortunately I can't convince myself to completely ignore all the data.
BBL
Record Report
Statement as of 5:13 am EST on December 06, 2009
... Record daily maximum snowfall set at Blacksburg Virginia...
A record snowfall of 3.9 inches was set at Blacksburg Virginia
yesterday. This breaks the old record of 2.6 inches set in 2005.
Wow, that sounds extremely scary. I can't even imagine it. We here rarely ever get more than 5 to 10 severe weather warnings a month, and the largest hail I've seen in my lifetime is pea-sized (although some places in S. Ontario do get golf-ball sized hail during thunderstorms). The highest wind gust I've seen while living here is probably close to 70 mph, and that's usually during a severe thunderstorm. I honestly could not imagine 10 INCHES of rain in an hour; four inches in an hour has occured in several places, but even that would be very scary. We do get funnel clouds here, but I rarely see them and have yet to catch one on camera. However, our area has seen three tornadoes in the past three or four years, each one less than five miles from my home (although we rarely get anything higher than F1). The strongest tornado ever to hit Southern Ontario was F4, when two such tornadoes tore long paths across the area in 1985. In winter, snowsqualls regularly provide zero visibility. Last year, in a town called Arkona, Ontario (not far from London), snowsqualls off Lake Huron dumped more than 110 cm of snow (about 43 inches) over two days.
The kind of weather in Texas, even some of the rapid temperature changes, seem almost inconceivable at my location (although we do often get crazy weather). However, I'll probably have to imagine that kind of weather if global warming moves tornado Alley closer to Canada. :P
Sure looks like an overdue warming cycle to me.
The older the data the more moderated or smoothed out.
The newer the data the more accurate(minus tricks)and thus sharper the graphed change.
Link
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature
There is a direct correlation between complacency and weight gain, or was it memory loss? I can't remember :)
The debate pretty much has been settled because the vast majority of scientists in this field agree that there is unequivocal evidence for global warming, and that the most likely cause of this warming is anthropogenic. I'm guessing the sky colour in your sky is Conservative, because the denial industry appeals most to the Conservative public. It's the Bush administration that carried out a massive misinformation campaign to persuade the American public that the science is not settled, even though it was mostly settled before Bush came into power (think Jim Inhofe and Philip Cooney).
It's after 4am here and now u have made me hungry. I have 4 very large tiger prawns and 1lb steak in the fridge that i cooked on the BBQ tonight.
For most coral reefs, it won't be the increased temps that kill them.
It will be the polluted runoff like is happening off the southern coast of Florida in the Florida Keys.
If Disney/Reedy Creek and South Florida Water Management get together and do what the Disney team is contemplating, the runoff with be much much cleaner and the coral reefs will be much better for it.
Link
So i guess the hockey stick started in 1975?
Post 73
Now that is something I agree with.
The polluted nutrient rich,silt filled runoff is a travesty.
That is man made and can be corrected!
Geez, hahu! Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I would really look like a buffoon being in a room with those 2!
Yes, the climate records indicate that the tempereatures around the globe are increasing.
The 2 arguments on GW are:
A) The Sun has normal fluctuations in out put, increasing or decreasing global temperatures. As the temperatures rise, more vegatation/trees grow, increasing CO2.
B) The emissions of CO2 from burning coal, natural gas, number 2 home heating oils (burned in households around the US also used to fire up many power plants in the NE US), burning/slashing world forests, and car/factory emissions are raising C02 levels, causing the global warming.
I believe it may be a combination of both A and B. And we, as residents of Earth, either need to be good stewards of our planet, or get ready to spend TRILLIONS of US Dollars to relocate cities and very civiliations around the globe.
And yes, Tornado Alley would reach out to say "HEY" to folks in the S Canadian plains, come Apr-Aug each year.
Global cooling
History of climate change science
Also, 1975 is close to when anthropogenic forcing took over from natural variations as the main driver of climate. Link
Good, then maybe you could ponder the 13 million pounds that Phil Smith and CRU have received in government grants over the last view years. Sure, he won't get rich, since most of that money is spread among many researchers, but his income is dependent upon those grants, so he and many others have a bias towards those grants, just as I have a bias regarding legislation that could impact my modest livliehood.
" While the peer-review system of publication is not perfect, it generally does an excellent job of rewarding those scientists who seek to publish the truth, "
You just keep singing this song, long after the emails have revealed serious problems in the AGW peer-review process.
"Speaking as an atmospheric scientist, I can tell you from long experience that we are not the wild-eyed, alarmist lot that the Wall Street Journal makes us out to be. "
What on earth does the nature of your Christmas parties have to do with the hype that some of your cohorts have engaged in to try and promote the idea of AGW? Some have even stated the need to hype the issue to gain public support. And others such as James Hansen have seen AGW action as a means for income redistribution. Whether you admit such or not, just as conservatives largely embrace free-market measures, liberals largely embrace government action and redistrbution - viewpoints that inevitibly color their viewpoints on the underlying science. Don't act like your political side is immune from politics here.
"Would you criticize the National Weather Service for issuing a tornado warning when a possible tornado signature is spotted on Doppler radar, since less than half of these signatures result in in an actual tornado touchdown?"
Last I checked, tornado warnings are not being used as a lever to push for massive reorganization of the global economy. You have a very high level of evidence to meet here, given the impact of what is being proposed, and the emails and especially the source code reveal the AGW side has not met it. Instead, the Britis Met Office will redo 160 years of climate data, a three-year project with an emphaisis on transparency. The way it should have been all along.
" corporations, by law, exist to make a profit."
And a lot of well-connected corporations have signed on to the concept of global warming controls as a means to make even more money. Have you even read up on the recent articles about the corruption problems in the Danish exchange, for example? Or read up on a list of the corporations who seek to make billions, if not trillions, from controlling and limiting the supply of energy and thereby raising its price?
It is high time you quit this spin and instead realize that the problems revealed at CRU are just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. If there truly is human-caused global warming, I am in favor of taking strong steps to combat it (I already have a pretty small carbon footprint), but the AGW movement needs to raise itself above any underlying politics of their own and concentrate on transparency, and quit pretending the CRU email and code dump is not a damning indictment of the lack of such to date. It's the least you owe the world.
It's 11:30AM CST 12-6-09, about lunch time here in Arlington, TX. That sounds good!!
"A" doesn't make sense. If there is more plant growth it will mean LESS CO2 in the long run because plant growth sequesters carbon.
I believe it's now more B and A, because anthropogenic factors are now a stronger forcing than solar and volcanic variability. However, the mechanism mentioned in A (warming leading to increased CO2 emissions from the biosphere) could prove to be a dangerous positive feedback mechanism. Another mechanism is the release of methane clathrates into the ocean and atmosphere, and this process was first confirmed to be initiating in 2008. Link My opinion is that, now since CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere are the main driver of climate due to how much these emissions have increased, solar activity is the short-term driver of climate, thereby explaining the relative stability in global temperatures circa 2006 - 2009. Three other such dips or stalls in temperature have occured since the late 1970's. Link
The world's governments really do need to start spending more on climate change. Here in Canada, there is an income-neutral carbon tax in place in BC, and in Quebec there is a less effective system. The United States spent over a trillion dollars in the Iraq war during the Bush administration, costing over a million lives. Part of this was for oil security, and America isn't winning, so why couldn't they have, in the same amount of time, spent the same amount of money and saved the same number of lives by mitigating climate change?! Now after eight years, we have probably less than half a decade to get the budgetary and monetary side of the problem solved and actually start a global mitigation program for climate change. The science not being 100% settled does not excuse inaction. We are currently in a global recession, so CO2 emissions are declining, so it's a good chance to implement GHG restrictions before the economy picks up again. This will create new jobs for the new economy.
Tornado Alley would likely not only visit the Canadian Prairies (yes, that's what we call them, not the Plains), but also Southern Ontario, where the tornado risk is the highest in the country. We seem to be getting more and more tornadoes in our own miniature tornado alley in recent years, and I'm not immediately going to blame this on global warming, but a northeast shift in the position of tornado alley caused by AGW would certainly have that effect.
Seems like that is a story I heard about concerning another church, a real church.
Maybe there is some ring of truth to that notion of the Church of IPCC.
atmoaggie, I do not want to speak for Baha or even try to explain what he meant. I totally agree with his sentiment. While we may not all agree on the subject of GW or even how the data is collected, your arguments are presented in such a way as to disseminate information, rather than an attack. This gives more credence to your position than those who presents themselves as the final authority on everything related to the subject. What I assume to what Baha was referring is that it is possible to have a debate with you but not with some others, because you base your opinion of the facts available to you. I believe that it would be best summed up in a little quotation which I know you have all come to expect from me.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. Emerson
It would be a better placed argument if people presented their ideas with an open mind and entered a dialogue rather than a monologue; a tactic for which some here have not yet grasped the concept!
I ask AGAIN...
- is this a bad thing?
and
- Is it a bad thing that the people in the fossil fuel industry are making Zillions of $$$ maintaining their current stand?
The ONLY people who are against cutting Greenhouse gasses (as far as I can see), are a small group of Americans, and the Saudi's.
I gather that the cost to the American taxpayer, to reduce Greenhouse gasses, will be in the region of $175.00 per year.
This is about as much as you would spend on toothpaste, haircuts, and shampoo, in a year.
Comparing global warming to a religion again? That's Inhofe's tactic. He cited fiction author Michael Crichton as one of his sources for inaction on climate change.
"Now is the Winter of our discontent". What a way to start a New Year! Fighting.
A revenue-neutral carbon tax would take some weight off other taxes such as income taxes. Also, one would have more control over how much they are taxed through a carbon tax than say through income and sales taxes. You cannot really control an income tax without sacrificing a way of life, but by adopting more environmentally-friendly lifestyles one can cut their carbon tax by a large amount.
I have not looked at the proposals, really.
Link
Did you ever take a math course in school.
They have been saying for months that the average home electric bill in the US will "DOUBLE"!!!
Using your math, 175 divided by 12 equals 14 dollars and change. Are you suggesting that the average monthly home electric bill is $14 ??
For most Americans, the average bill will double to over $500 per month. Lets see $250 times 12 equals....$3000
You seem to be off by somewhere near 1700%. Oh heck, whats a measly 1700%..?
And we haven't even looked at the other 'green house' costs.
Remember me mentioning bumper stickers, from years ago, that read, "If it is in the Bible, I believe it and that is that." ???
It looks like history is repeating itself once again...
This is a quote from a post today.
"This must be the longest-ever debate on a subject where the debate has actually already been settled."
Yupp.
Straight from the Church of the IPCC...
Have they distributed the bumper stickers yet?
Wowzer, no wonder the globe is warming ;).
On a more serious note, why don't you dig up some references to your "facts" about electricity bills calusakat.
It's fine to trash other peoples posts into the ground by me, as long as you back it up with well known accurate sources.
Will spend some more time on it ..
No, thanks...
What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
As long as 'fictional' data is acceptable to you, I will skip the bother of providing sources.
BTW The actual 'raw' data is different than that mentioned in this post.
I modified the data to reflect todays usage because it is probably really different from 2001 for which statistics are available.
But heck, what is a little 'fictional' data in this discussion?
The first website posting of the emails came from a Russian computer, he added: "It's a scandal. It was probably ordered, maybe by Russian hackers receiving money for doing it."
But climate sceptics, seeking anything to break the scientific consensus, have seen the stolen emails as manna from heaven. On Friday, Saudi Arabia's leading climate negotiator, Mohammad al-Sabban, said the emails suggested climate change does not have a human cause. He said the issue would have a "huge impact" on the negotiations.
Tempers are getting frayed. Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Climate Change, has branded senior Tory politicians Lord Lawson and David Davis as "climate saboteurs". And Gordon Brown referred on Friday to "behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-Earth climate sceptics". This week the Met Office will begin releasing of climate data records in a bid to draw a line under the matter.
On Friday, President Obama announced he would attend the last two days of the conference.
entire article
The $175.00 i quoted was seen by me a couple days ago, on CNN website. (Thur or Fri ??)
Cannot remember the exact reference, but it was an article to do with the Copenhagen meeting.
Can you answer them for me?
Instead of using diversionary tactics again...??
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