Month: August 2013

Weaponized “Science”

I don’t have much time today unfortunately, but there was a minor kerfuffel in the news about a study (a term very loosely used) which according to the media reporters (also loosely used)  shows that Fox news watchers are being tricked by Fox into “distrust” of climate scientists.   The study, which I read, is available on line but before you click on it, IT WILL COST YOU IQ POINTS!   I accept no responsibility for neurological damage caused by individual failure to follow my warning.

Some headlines:

Fox News and conservative US media blamed for ‘decreasing trust’ in global warming denial

The Five Ways Conservative Media Keep Trying to Trick Us About Climate Change

Conservative Media Cultivates Distrust of Science in Right-Wingers

You can see the basic conclusions from the title, it is also interesting how many media outlets covered the story considering that only ONE has bothered to cover this little gem:

IRS official who oversaw Cincinatti exempt operations office during scandal gets promotion — Liberalism does breed corruption folks. How many times do we need to see government power repeated before we catch on.

Problems from the core hypotheses  assumptions of the study:

H1: Conservative media use will be negatively related to certainty that global warming is happening.

H2: Non-conservative media use will be positively related to certainty that global warming is happening.

H3: Conservative media use will be negatively related to trust in scientists.

H4: Non-conservative media use will be positively related to trust in scientists.

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H5: Trust in scientists will be positively related to certainty that global warming is happening.
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H6: There will be a negative indirect effect of conservative media use on certainty that global warming is happening through trust in scientists; that is, the negative association between conservative media use and certainty that global warming is happening will be explained, in part, by the negative influence of conservative media use on trust in scientists, which subsequently dampens belief certainty about global warming.
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H7: There will be a positive indirect effect of non-conservative media use on certainty that global warming is happening through trust in scientists; that is, the positive association between non-conservative media use and certainty that global warming is happening will be explained, in part, by the positive influence of non-conservative media use on trust in scientists, which subsequently increases belief certainty about global warming.

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Ok, so I think from the basic hypotheses we have ‘learnt’ that there is only conservative bias and ‘the rest’.  Even MSNBC is specifically named as the “rest” in the paper.

For example, several content analyses have revealed that Fox News and conservative radio programs (e.g.The Rush Limbaugh Show) cover issues and events – from the Iraq War to the campaign for the US presidency – in a way that is more supportive of conservative and Republican interests than CNN, MSNBC, and the national network news programs.

“the national network news programs”  – Don’t we all enjoy proper Vulcanesque clarity of unbiased climate science.

Of everything in the paper, this quote makes me warm:

 Consistent with previous research (see Boykoff, 2012; Nisbet, 2011), our results show that global warming continues to receive a moderate amount of media coverage, with spikes occurring around important events (e.g. the December 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark).”

AKA  CLIMATEGATE! 

Why are these people paid to write papers you ask?  Simply look to the donor list.  I looked up every single one, and their connections to government.   If you take your own time, you might find a few interesting connections yourself:

Rest assured that none of the funding came from extreme “non-conservative” associations having any indirect relationship to our current presidential administration.

No, we will not spend any time at this blog deconstructing any of their statistics.  We have limited time and this one doesn’t make the cut.

Climate Science – A Field of Dreams

Real Climate is still trying to communicate the message that climate science needs to communicate better, never realizing that the content of their message is their problem.  I mean, the first link on their page is to a Richard Alley presentation, where he flat says that there is no reason to adjust models.  He uses multiple paths like a straw man argument that critics of the models are only looking at one study.  He pulled up the example of the paleo-sensitivity plot where one recent study showed a lower climate sensitivity than the rest and complained about the amount of time he spent addressing that one.   The whole problem with his argument, which is conveniently brushed over, is that paleo-sensitivity papers are made of the least accurate and least trustworthy data and as we all know, the papers are quite often comprised of the exact same data.  Now he makes several other arguments, but the one he doesn’t make, is the one which holds the most credibility in the eyes of those of us who don’t collect government paychecks of a magnitude proportional to our climate activism —  comparisons of models to observations.

Lucia has some nice and very current work on the matter.  The chart below shows models from AR5 with their central trends and error bars in relation to GISS temperatures.  note that every single model is well above the observed GISS temp trend line and the very wide error bars still do not meet the GISS red line in most cases.   In a sane world, climate scientists should be very concerned about this, but instead we get piles of rubbish about how models are “pretty good” and a bunch of excuse making from Richard Alley’s of the world regarding ocean heat content.   But for those in the “know” there is one little detail – models are supposed to have heat content taken into account already.

rcp45_since1991

Why isn’t this a mainstream concern in a field that has become so dominated and enamored by modeling the addition of global warming gases to the atmosphere?    

It certainly would cause a scientist in ANY other field to step back and take note.  A person willing to step up and say that this result across every model is somehow “reasonable” or that there isn’t a problem, would be ignored in our drummed out of our fill-in-the-blank field with trailing guffaws, yet we are faced with a bunch of activist cheerleaders pushing for ideological “change” while ignoring the values on their instruments.  In the meantime, instead of addressing the blatantly obvious problems with the modeled results, they hold an entire conference on improving communication of climate doom to the public.

It gets better though.

There are 4 highlighted presentations in the Real Climate link above.    I couldn’t listen to the fourth one because it hurt my ears but the first three can be categorized as: 1 – argue that the science is still good and don’t present data to the contrary, 2 – Risk communication, more widely known as fear mongering, and 3 – Buzzwords, which perform the functions of the first two.

It isn’t an impressive plan when written out in clear English.

But what really got me going yesterday was the numerous news reports on two recent papers, which I don’t intend to read, where the scientists concluded that recent climate change IS TEN TIMES FASTER THAN ANY TIME IN HISTORY!  

From one article:

One study, from Stanford University, suggests that climate change is happening 10 times faster than it has at any time in the past 65 million years. The other study, from the University of Texas, suggests that Antarctic permafrost is now melting 10 times faster than in 11,000 years, adding further evidence that Earth’s Antarctic is, in fact, warming just as Earth’s Arctic is.

We who read papers know that historic data is proxy based, and that for various physical reasons proxy based data has a very poor time and magnitude resolution.   We also know that recent data is instrument based, and instrument based data has excellent time and magnitude resolution.   Essentially, the scientists know full-well that instrument data captures a higher frequency component than the historic proxy data can.    If today’s warming had happened and reversed at any time in the past 11,000 years, the event would be so short that it would look like a rounded imperceptibly small bump in the proxy based result instead of the clean high frequency response provided by modern instruments.

The “scientists” are fully aware of this, yet they make claims that are not just unsubstantiated, but they are known to be unsubstantiable with proxy data.   The claims are as disingenuous as you can be.  Now it is true that the equally activist media likes to exaggerate the claims further, but there sure isn’t a lot of correcting the record visible to those of us lowly CO2 producing readers.

If you wonder why people like myself, otherwise considered reasonably intelligent, would disagree with such a huge “scientific” consensus, you need look no farther than recent media for your answer.  

Warming rate and problematic effects of climate change are mathematically lower than what is being claimed.  Note the difference between that statement and the denialist meme Real Climate would write about skeptical bloggers like myself.   If the dreamers of Climate Science, want to affect change, they need to start with the quality of their own work.

Regulatory Creep

The Environmental Protection Agency of the United States is one of the largest and most draconian governmental organizations on the planet.  Under Obama, it has also become one of the most powerful.   The ability to regulate CO2 as a pollutant, being one of the chief new results of Obama’s already horrific presidency.   The problem with the EPA is that those in charge GAIN power by adding regulation.    Their funding is directly related to the ability to say NO to any citizen for whatever reason.   If you want to build a house, and the EPA has declared some feature of your property as protected, they get to say NO.   They also then need to monitor that “feature” of your property which requires funding and resources.

We have seen numerous new regulations from the government in recent years, since America already had massive environmental regulations, these new regulations seem to carry little or no benefit whatsoever, unless you are an EPA employee or better yet – boss.  A summary of some of the regulations and impacts is listed here.  In particular many of these regulations are allegedly designed to prevent emission of CO2, however, they simply add costs to the energy supply chain.   In fact, every single action the Obama admistration has taken has done nothing but add cost to business.   There has been not one single regulatory improvement for business or the quality of life put into law since he took office.   It is a credit to capitalism that the economy hasn’t collapsed a second time under his anti-common sense rule.

Yet our new EPA overlord Gina McCarthy, has set the tone for Obama’s second term of economic destruction with the following :

McCarthy signaled Tuesday that she was ready for the fight, saying that the agency would continue issuing new rules, regardless of claims by Republicans and industry groups that under Obama the EPA has been the most aggressive and overreaching since it was formed more than 40 years ago.

“Can we stop talking about environmental regulations killing jobs? Please, at least for today,” said McCarthy, referring to one of the favorite talking points of Republicans and industry groups.

As is the norm for the Obama talking heads, reality is simply ignored in favor of blatantly false statements which the media repeats as though they are reasonable and even factual.

“McCarthy said she planned to continue issuing new rules and felt President Barack Obama’s new Climate Action Plan could “fuel the complementary goals of turning America into a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing.”

The educated among us know that government burden for the simple sake of burden cannot and will not create jobs.   Yes it does create the need for solutions to work around the government in order to feed ourselves, but that is a cost, not a benefit.  Unnecessary regulations do not create wealth, they create POVERTY, reduce personal freedom and individual power while increasing the wealth, power and freedom of those in charge.   The same three known results of every socialist party on the planet.  Yet add them we do, because the media sings JOBS, and that government knows best.  All the while, the fools of us who are allowed to vote move from one issue to the next, rarely noticing the increasing rate of enslavement they experience, while the truly wealthy don’t care.

We know that more is coming, because the evil people in charge have told us so:

“Climate change will not be resolved overnight,” she added. “But it will be engaged over the next three years – that I can promise you.”

Global warming as it is being sold is an exaggerated and therefore fake problem, with real solutions being used to enact a political agenda.  An immoral agenda to take your freedom and transfer it to those who would carry the party banner highest and shout its wonders the loudest.    As we watch, climate scientists produce horrifically bad quality work, yet still gain international fame and bloated salaries and awards for their unqalified support of the party banner.  Do you ever wonder when the public will notice that their own wealth has decreased on average, while government employees roll in the cash?  Will you be surprised in 20 years when CO2 emissions are doubled and warming still hasn’t caused any problems.

I wonder, but I hold little hope that people are smart enough to figure out the answer – and that is right where Obama wants us.