Category: Climate cranks

Song of the Australian scientists

Australian scientists have begun a push back against climate denial. Over at the excellent The Conversation site (a hugely interesting experiment in bringing academic expertise to the news cycle), Stephan Lewandowsky and a long list of prominent Australian academics have kicked off a series of articles “from the nation’s top minds on the science behind climate change and the efforts of “sceptics” to cloud the debate” titled Clearing up the Climate Debate.

Beginning today, The Conversation will bring much-needed and long-overdue accountability to the climate “sceptics.”

For the next two weeks, our series of daily analyses will show how they can side-step the scientific literature and how they subvert normal peer review. They invariably ignore clear refutations of their arguments and continue to promote demonstrably false critiques.

We will show that “sceptics” often show little regard for truth and the critical procedures of the ethical conduct of science on which real skepticism is based.

The individuals who deny the balance of scientific evidence on climate change will impose a heavy future burden on Australians if their unsupported opinions are given undue credence.

Not to mention imposing a heavy future burden on everyone else on the planet…

Lewandowsky’s introduction was followed in short order by The greenhouse effect is real: here’s why, by Karl Braganza of the Bureau of Meteorology — an admirably succinct statement of the facts of the matter.

The climate of Earth is now a closely monitored thing; from instruments in space, in the deep ocean, in the atmosphere and across the surface of both land and sea.

It’s now practically certain that increasing greenhouse gases have already warmed the climate system.

That continued rapid increases in greenhouse gases will cause rapid future warming is irrefutable.

This is an important series of articles: one worth following in detail. Congrats to Steve and everyone involved.

[Rambling Sid Rumpo]

The (un)principled sceptic

Over at Treadgold’s emporium, the owner is mining a rich vein of nonsense: he’s posting the letters to the editor the newspapers won’t print. One that caught my eye is from Professor Mike Kelly, a Cambridge nanotechnologist and climate sceptic who happens to hail from New Plymouth. Professor Kelly makes a good start:

It is perfectly possible to adopt a position, as I have, of ‘a principled climate science scepticism’.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? But a bit later on, in attempting to adduce evidence in support of his position he writes:

She [the author of the piece he’s complaining about] might like to look at the recent analysis by Pat Franks (sic) which tightens the conclusion that the anthropogenic contribution is at most 0.3°C per century. This concludes that it is rising temperatures that are increasing the atmospheric carbon dioxide, not the other way round.

Oh dear.

Continue reading “The (un)principled sceptic”

Mad, bad and dangerous

Australian climate scientists have been receiving abusive emails — even death threats — from people who mistake violence for political expression. Graham Readfearn provides some examples (not for the squeamish). The Canberra Times broke the story at the weekend and it’s been covered in depth at The Conversation (one, two). Tim Lambert comments on the vapid response from right wing commentator Tim Blair, but I was horrified by the unrepentant tone adopted by Joanne Nova:

This is sheer beef-it-up spin, making a mountain out of a molehill, clutching at straws in desperation to eek out a PR victory from the dregs of a fading scam.

I might have expected a ritual “we do not condone violence” from Nova and Blair, but it’s nowhere to be seen. Nor is this tactic new. It’s been a fact of life for climate scientists in the USA for years. That it’s crossing the Pacific and polluting the discourse in Australia should be a matter of shame for those opposing action on climate change.

It’s also evidence of how desperate the campaign of denial has become. Denied recourse to the evidence because it is overwhelmingly against them, they resort to bullying and hate speech. There’s a lesson here for those who would argue against action on climate change. When you make common cause with the crazies by invoking conspiracies as your case for inaction, then you open the doors on a very dangerous form of debate.

Predicting the bleeding obvious (and getting it wrong)

A couple of days ago one of the leading figures in the New Zealand climate crank pantheon, the Climate “Science” Coalition’s very own Bryan Leyland, popped in to Hot Topic and left a comment drawing attention to his new favourite game — “predicting” global temperatures by projecting the southern oscillation index forward seven months. He bases this on the “work” of John McLean, last mentioned here a couple of months ago when I looked at his prediction (happily promoted by the NZ C”S”C) that 2011 will be the “coolest year globally since 1956 or even earlier”. Suffice to say, it won’t be.

Leyland first notes the infamous McLean, De Freitas and Carter paper of 2009, then his own “prediction” that this year’s La Niña would bring a cooling in global temperatures, and then says:

What is remarkable about this is that a retired engineer with access to the Internet has been able to make accurate predictions of future climate. Yet, to my knowledge, no computer-based climate model nor any mainstream “climate scientist” predicted this cooling. To me, this is truly remarkable.

What’s really remarkable is that Leyland is actually only showing his ignorance of some pretty basic climate relationships.

Continue reading “Predicting the bleeding obvious (and getting it wrong)”

John Abraham: How to give good radio

It’s hard to know listening to this recent US radio interview with John Abraham whether to be more admiring of his incisive responses or more astonished at the regularity with which tired old denier claims are put forward by the interviewers. The interview perhaps highlights the extraordinary divergences of American society – home to impressively intelligent and dependable science yet harbouring, at high levels of government and in major media, scientific denial expressed with a confidence untethered to any scientific grounding.

Continue reading “John Abraham: How to give good radio”