Category: Climate cranks

Eyes on the prize

A few weeks ago I burned a little midnight oil and, hunched over this very keyboard, wrote a little story about The Last Climate Denier in New Zealand. If you were to think that it was a tad satirical, you would not be wrong. It’s a sad story, set in a parallel universe that bears a striking resemblance to The Burning World, and was my entry in this year’s Royal Society of NZ Manhire Prize (fiction section). Now I learn that by some strange misjudgement my short story finds itself in the shortlist for the prize. I can’t publish the story here until after it loses (which will be late November), but in the meantime you can download it here. It’s a two hankie story, so be prepared…

[The superb Mavis Staples.]

Clive Hamilton on Einstein, scientific dadaism and the roots of climate denial

Clive Hamilton has a riveting essay in a new book edited by psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe, Engaging with Climate Change, which had its origin at an inter-disciplinary conference at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London a couple of years ago. Hamilton’s subject is what history can teach us about climate change denial. He begins with the deep polarisation of US society and the way in which global warming has become a battleground in this wider culture war. The implications of climate change threaten conservative cultural identity. Not that liberals are less likely to sift evidence through ideological filters, but in the case of global warming the evidence overwhelmingly endorses liberal beliefs that unrestrained capitalism threatens future well-being, that government intervention is needed and the environmentalists were right all along. In Europe, the absence of a long and rancorous culture war explains the relative weakness of climate change denial.

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I felt the chill before the winter came

Being keen on accuracy in all things, I feel I should draw the attention of the readers of Hot Topic to a prediction failure. Back in August, in a post called Arctic Sea Ice Forecast: It’s going to be tough to stay cool, I made a number of predictions about how the climate crank echo chamber would respond to the record-breaking Arctic sea ice summer minimum that was then on its way. A number of those predictions came to pass, as this recent accounting demonstrates, but I made some longer term predictions that we can now examine.

Here’s what I wrote on August 12:

When the re-freeze starts, and the Arctic basin is covered in ice once more (early December), Anthony Watts will report on the record rate of ice formation, calling it a “stunning recovery“.

I wish to apologise to Mr Watts, because I got both the timing of his statement and his precise words wrong. Here’s what he said in a post dated October 18 – Sea Ice News Volume 3 Number 15 – Arctic refreeze fastest ever:

After all of the news about a minimum record ice extent last month, this is interesting. As we know when water loses its ice cover, it allows a lot of heat to radiate into space as LWIR. many predictied that as a result of the extra open ocean surface, we see a very fast refreeze in the Arctic. It appears they were right. In fact, this is the fastest monthly scale refreeze rate in the NSIDC satellite record going back to 1979 ((Copied and pasted from µWatts, so the typos are his.)). [My emphasis]

He couldn’t wait until December before commenting on the freeze-up, but perhaps he’s saving the phrase “stunning recovery” for later use — or leaving it for his friend Steven Goddard, who has been exploring novel metrics for the autumn freeze. Sorry, Anthony.

[Elvis Costello]

NIWA v cranks: costs are in, losers start whinging

Having successfully defended the High Court challenge to its New Zealand temperature reconstructions brought by NZ’s climate cranks and being awarded costs by the judge, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research (NIWA) is said to be seeking costs of $118,000 from the plaintiffs. Richard Treadgold, the instigator of the whole sorry affair, has posted the figure being sought at his blog and added this interesting snippet to a lengthy (and extremely tedious and tendentious) post on the subject:

It [NIWA] actually names two individuals who, it claims, should personally pay the $118,000 – and they weren’t even parties to the court case. Terry Dunleavy is the honorary secretary of the NZ Climate Science Coalition and Barry Brill is the chairman of the Coalition, and a lawyer, who helped bring the court case.

It’s a scandal, because the parties, of course, were the NZCSET and NIWA. No individuals were involved on either side.

Treadgold conveniently ignores the obvious “scandal”: that Dunleavy formed the NZ CSET specifically to bring the case ((Details here: Dunleavy was the founder of the the Trust (with Bryan Leyland and Doug Edmeades) and trust deed was not filed until several weeks after the court documents, and not granted until six weeks after the case began.)). Until the case came to court and a Queens Counsel was retained to argue on their behalf, the legal case was being run by Barry Brill ((The trust’s legal case was so ineptly run that the judge awarded costs on a higher scale than usual — because it had changed arguments at the last minute.)). Dunleavy queered his pitch even further by presenting himself to the court as an “expert witness” giving impartial evidence, despite being the founder of the trust bringing the case. In his judgement, Justice Venning was scathing about Dunleavy’s soi-disant expertise:

Section 25 could only apply if Mr Dunleavy was an expert in the particular area of the science of meteorology and/or climate. He is not. He has no applicable qualifications. His interest in the area does not sufficiently qualify him as an expert. […] substantial passages of Mr Dunleavy’s evidence are inadmissible.

NIWA’s decision to pursue Dunleavy and Brill suggests that they and their advisers have little confidence in the NZ CSET’s ability or willingness to meet the costs awarded. As I have noted more than once, if a trust can be formed solely to avoid personal liability in a failed High Court case, then there is a big risk of abuse of process by plaintiffs who pursue cases they have no hope of winning, purely to make political points.

Treadgold attempts to run a “public interest” defence in his blog post, claiming that if the CSET had won, the taxpayer would have been saved billions of dollars by the removal of the need for action on climate change. As examples of self-delusion go, that takes more than a mere biscuit, it purloins an entire warehouse full of chocolate hobnobs ((Rik Mayall takes the Treadgold role, obviously.)).

The New Zealand temperature record, whatever it may say about how warm or cold NZ has been in the past, has never underpinned NZ government decision making on climate matters. Nor would a decision in favour of the CSET have changed the laws of physics.

Treadgold — and by extension all of the cranks involved in bringing this futile legal action — are so disconnected from physical and political reality that they are obviously finding it hard to cope when cold facts intrude on their little epistemic bubble. I do hope they have pockets deep enough to face up to facts, and to live with the folly of their actions. The New Zealand taxpayer deserves nothing less.

Prat watch #7.5: No, you’re not entitled to your opinion

This morning my breakfast reading included a marvellous short article at The Conversation from philosopher Patrick Stokes of Deakin University in Melbourne. Stokes riffs on that familiar justification for holding a view, “I’m entitled to my opinion”, and makes some interesting observations about how it distorts public debate:

The problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like” – and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse.

You can see where this is going, can’t you? Given my look at the strange inexpertise of Richard Treadgold at his Climate Conversation Group last week, Stokes’ analysis seems strangely apposite. So I did a little more digging…

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