Category: Climate cranks

Bob Carter: untroubled by hobgoblins

It is always a privilege to follow the development of a great man’s thinking, and the Australian public — or at least that portion of it that listens to the ABC’s AM news show (“sets the agenda for the nation’s daily news and current affairs coverage”) — was lucky enough to witness evolution in action last Friday, when the programme chose to “balance” a report on the World Meteorological Organisation’s announcement of record temperatures in 2010 by talking to Bob Carter. Readers with long memories will recall that Carter has been louder than most in insisting that the planet’s been cooling for the last ten years, so the programme had a marvellous opportunity to make the great man squirm. Sadly, they blew it.

Here’s what he had to say in April 2009:

First, there has been no recent global warming in the common meaning of the term, for world average temperature has cooled for the last ten years. Furthermore, since 1940 the earth has warmed for nineteen years and cooled for forty-nine, the overall result being that global average temperature is now about the same as it was in 1940.

So how did he cope with the bad news that warming continues? Here’s the transcript & podcast:

Continue reading “Bob Carter: untroubled by hobgoblins”

Why dealing with climate change is difficult (spinach tarts and ice cream)

Let’s be clear about this: the failure to take adequate action to reduce emissions is not because of any weakness in our understanding of the science of climate. It has its roots instead in human psychology and sociology, as George Marshall explains in this series of three videos — The Ingenious Ways We Avoid Believing In Climate Change — a recording of a keynote address he gave to a conference in 2009. Marshall is a good presenter — he illustrates his points well (spinach tarts and ice cream feature prominently) — and provides a very good and concise overview of why many people prefer to ignore the climate problem. Whatever your views on the seriousness of the climate problem or how we should act to deal with it, you’ll find something in his talk to challenge your preconceptions. Parts two and three are below the fold…

Continue reading “Why dealing with climate change is difficult (spinach tarts and ice cream)”

Easterbrook adrift: WWU geology dept issues statement on climate change

Word reaches me that the geology department at Western Washington University — home of emeritus professor and data fiddler Don Easterbrook — has adopted a position statement on climate change. The statement is supported by the entire geology department, and is clearly designed to distance WWU’s geologists from Easterbrook’s odd ideas and dodgy practices. Here’s what they say:

Decades of scientific research have shown that climate can change from both natural and anthropogenic causes. The Geology Faculty at WWU concur with rigorous, peer-reviewed assessments by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research Council (2006), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) that global climate has warmed significantly and that human activities (mainly greenhouse-gas emissions) account for most of the warming since the middle 1900s. If current trends continue, the projected increase in global temperature by the end of the twenty-first century will result in large impacts on humans and other species. Addressing the challenges posed by climate change will require a combination of adaptation to the changes that are likely to occur and global reductions of carbon dioxide emissions from anthropogenic sources.

Congratulations to WWU’s geologists for taking this stand. I wonder if Easterbrook will now withdraw his claim that most of the last 10,000 years were warmer than today, apologise for stealing and altering a graph from Global Warming Art and apologise for calling me a liar? But then he is a denier, and that means never having to say you’re sorry…

Don Easterbrook’s Academic Dishonesty

A

As Don Easterbrook has shown no signs of withdrawing his article claiming that most of the last 10,000 years were warmer than present, and as his university has shown no appetite for addressing the issue, Professor Scott Mandia of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team and I decided to write to the local press. The letter below was sent to The Bellingham Herald (local newspaper) and to Western Front Online (Western Washington University newspaper) on Monday January 9, 2011. Scott also called and left a message with the Bellingham Herald News Editor. He did not hear back from either newspaper, so we’re reprinting the letter in full here and at Scott’s blog.

Sir or Madam,

Don Easterbrook, a Professor Emeritus at Western Washington University has been promoting his belief that natural cycles of the sun and oceans are going to cause global cooling over the next few decades and this will offset the CO2-caused warming headed our way. In 2001, he announced that global cooling was about to begin and would last for the next 25 years. Of course, the previous decade was the warmest in over 150 years and 2010 is likely to be the warmest or second warmest year in that period. Easterbrook wants to persuade us to ignore global warming despite the fact that most of his peers, climate scientists, military and intelligence experts, health officials, and insurance companies expect major societal disruptions due to the current and expected human-caused climate disruption.

It is ok to be wrong. Science cannot prove an idea is true but only that it is false. Correcting mistakes is how science moves forward. But Easterbrook is not just wrong, he is playing fast and loose with the data. He was caught red-handed using a doctored graph in a 2007 conference (see http://bit.ly/goEkd3) and in subsequent articles and talks. Easterbrook not only edited these graphics to change the information they contained, but did so in order to minimize the evidence of recent global warming. This is, at the very least, academic malpractice. More recently (12/28/10) he incorrectly labeled a graph of temperatures for the previous 10,000 years to claim that most of these years were warmer than present. His “current temperature” was really 1855 and not the much warmer present day. He was notified of his mistake but refuses to issue a retraction (see http://bit.ly/dW6BOk). A good scientist corrects and learns from mistakes, but this seems foreign to Easterbrook.

WWU officials were notified of Easterbrook’s doctoring of data last May and again this January but have so far chosen to do nothing. Academic freedom must be cherished and defended but dishonesty should never be condoned – whether at WWU or any other institution of higher education.

Scott Mandia and Gareth Renowden

 

Bios: Scott Mandia is a professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College, Long Island, New York and has been teaching meteorology and climatology courses for 23 years.

Gareth Renowden is an NZ-based science writer and blogger, author of Hot Topic – Global Warming & The Future of New Zealand. He has written extensively on Easterbrook’s cavalier approach to climate data.

Skewed views of science

This excellent video by QualiaSoup looks at how people make judgements about science, and how opinion and bias can distort reality. Climate science is not mentioned, but it’s all too obvious how the arguments used here apply to those who deny the need for action — especially in the light of Doug Mackie’s recent post on cognitive dissonance. Hat-tip to GrrlScientist, who suggests it would make an excellent video to show students taking an introductory science course. It would indeed.