Debating climate science is the "moral and scientific equivalent of debating gravity," Paul Douglas, Republican meteorologist.

by Scott Mandia, "Global Warming -- Man or Myth?" February 18, 2014

A few weeks ago, a journalist contacted the Climate Science Rapid Response Team to get various opinions about whether climate scientists should take a public position or in some sense a political position on the issue and get involved in the debate/discussion over climate change in public venues and through media coverage. After sending the request to several climate experts, I also asked Paul Douglas, a meteorologist, registered Republican, and entrepreneur, for his thoughts. With permission, I have posted his response below:


My name is Paul Douglas. Scott Mandia suggested I drop you a quick note in response to your recent CSRRT inquiry. I’m not a climate scientist; I’m a Penn State meteorologist and an entrepreneur who has launched a series of weather/technology companies over the years. I’ve been talking about weather trends; how what I’ve been witnessing on the weather maps since the 1990s dovetails with what climate models have been predicting all along. I began talking about these trends on WCCO-TV and The Star Tribune in the Twin Cities back in the late 90s, and immediately got push-back from a minority of viewers and readers who felt somehow threatened by the science. I still write a daily weather and climate science blog, and produce a daily 2:30 video segment on meteorology and climate science for our new national weather channel, WeatherNation TV.

I talk to 50+ organizations about weather and climate trends during a typical year across the Upper Midwest, and still hear a fair amount of skepticism, cynicism and outright science denial. As a meteorologist I have an obligation to be scientifically accurate, to explain the trends and most likely triggers as competently as possible. 
Communication, especially of complex scientific issues, is always challenging, but I believe we have an obligation to translate the implications of science, not only what it is – but what it means. The implications. It would be like a heart surgeon telling a patient he has an irregular heartbeat, and then leaving out the part of an implantable stent and going on a statin. I’m a meteorologist, but I haven’t renounced my citizenship. As such I speak out about issues, trying to highlight the signal amidst the noise. And there’s an awful lot of noise, confusion, obfuscation and (deliberate, well-funded and orchestrated) denial out there today, because of policy implications, and the sheer amount of money in the energy sector that’s in play. Trillions of dollars of carbon potentially at risk.

As an entrepreneur if I don’t respect the data and see the business world as it really is, not as I’d like it to be, I become road kill. My venture quickly goes out of business and I have to lay off good people. So it is with science, which, like nature, never moves in a straight line. But I tell people the truth as I perceive it to be. The data is the data. If we don’t react to facts on the ground and listen to professional scientists, including climate scientists, and base policy decisions on a careful and deliberate attempt to document observed changes/causes using the scientific method, we’re setting ourselves up for failure on a planetary scale.

To the heart of your question, why don’t more climate scientists enter into the public debate? Because the debate is over. It’s the moral and scientific equivalent of debating gravity. The experts have spoken, and because a very small minority of stakeholders and shareholders don’t care for the implications there is vociferous push-back from certain special interests. I worked in television news for 35 years. Mainstream media likes a good on-air food-fight, a protagonist and antagonist, shouting at each other about their worldviews. It attracts curiosity and eyeballs – it’s ultimately good for ratings. But it’s a false equivalent, and it’s a terrible way to conduct science. We put a handful of (paid) climate skeptics and industry lobbyists on a stage with thousands of the world’s leading climate PhD’s, and think this is somehow serving the public interest? It’s not. It’s creating more confusion, more delay and more denial, as viewers and readers pick and choose their reality as easily as reading changing channels on their TV or grazing over their morning horoscope. I can absolutely understand why more professionals don’t want to subject themselves to inane banter with science-deniers.

When I talk to groups and individuals I tell them the truth: it’s good to be skeptical. In a day and age of hackers, scams, media spin and political lobbyists people should be skeptical – it’s a necessary self-defense mechanism these days. And then I remind them that the most skeptical people on the planet are scientists. Science is organized skepticism. The fact that thousands of experts agree on not only climate trends, but the triggers (burning of fossil fuels) is extremely significant.

Schopenhauer once said that all truth goes through 3 stages: first it is ridiculed, then violently opposed, then finally accepted as self-evident. We are at the end of Stage 2. Manufactured doubt and industry push-back is preventing us from taking the planetary actions necessary to avoid even more disastrous climate volatility. When sea walls go up around Manhattan and Miami, when a large western city runs out of water or goes up in flames, when crops fail year after year across the Midwest and cruise ships packed with curious gawkers routinely sail across the North Pole, maybe the professional denialists will move on to their next target.

Not sure if that answers your question – just wanted to offer up my opinion. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.

Paul Douglas
Founder, President
Media Logic Group LLC

http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/republican-meteorologist-entrepreneur-debating-cause-of-climate-change-is-moral-and-scientific-equivalent-of-debating-gravity/

Climate scientists not cowed by relentless climate change deniers

Groups that provide moral support, legal counsel, and swift rebuttals of misinformation are sprouting up.

by Toni Feder, Physics Today, February 2012 

Receiving an email with a statement like “You should resign, and if you don’t, I’ll work to see that you are fired” or “I know where your kids go to school” would be unsettling enough. But they “pale compared to what other climate scientists are getting,” says Raymond Orbach, director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, at whom the first threat above was aimed.

Now climate scientists—in atmospheric physics and chemistry, geophysics, meteorology, hydrology, and oceanography, among other disciplines—have begun to fight back. “I think the community is finding a voice,” says Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose work has largely focused on identifying the human influence on global climate, and who once answered a late-night knock to find a dead rat on his doorstep.

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change is happening, although details of how it will play out are uncertain. Every few years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issues a report prepared by hundreds of scientists and government officials from around the world; the next is due out in 2014. The latest, published in 2007, says that warming of the climate system is unequivocal, that most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid 20th century is due to human activities, and that past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will contribute to warming and sea-level rise for more than a millennium. Yet deniers have hampered efforts to tackle climate change, and their actions, especially in North America, the UK, and Australia, have led to climate researchers being investigated by their governments, suffering nervous breakdowns, and spending time and money defending their rights and reputations.

Ben Santer testified in May 2010 before the now-defunct House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming about the harassment of climate scientists.

US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

 

Successful tactics

Harassment of climate scientists by climate-change deniers goes back at least to 1995, after the IPCC published its Second Assessment Report. Santer was the lead author of chapter 8, which looked at the causes of climate change. “The single sentence ‘The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate’ changed my life,” he says. “I was the guy who was associated with this sentence. Those who did not like that finding did everything not only to undermine the finding but also to undermine my scientific reputation.”

The harassment has ramped up in recent years, says Michael Mann of the Pennsylvania State University, whose book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, due to be published by Columbia University Press in early March, includes a retelling of his own ongoing experiences with harassment. “Political intimidation, character attacks, what appear to be orchestrated phone and email campaigns, nasty and thinly veiled threats, not just to us but to our families, are what it means in modern American life to be a climate scientist,” says Mann. Even this magazine, after publishing last October articles on the science of climate change—about its being under fire and about communicating that science to the public—received an abundance of letters with the tenor, “How could PHYSICS TODAY print such a one-sided portrayal of climate science when many reputable scientists disagree?”

Fossil-fuel interests, says Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher at NASA, “have adopted a shoot-the-messenger approach. It’s been a very successful strategy. They have created a chilling effect, so other [scientists] won’t say what they think and the conversation in public stays bereft of anyone who knows what they are talking about.” Schmidt cofounded RealClimate.org, a forum for climate scientists to “provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary.” Meanwhile, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a vocal opponent to limiting greenhouse gas emissions, is suing NASA for the release of Schmidt’s personal emails.

Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research says he has seen young scientists get a surge of nasty emails when they publish on climate change. “They are flabbergasted. A lot of the community is unaware this is happening.” And, he notes, the people who send the emails have “gotten off scot-free.”

Although direct correlation is difficult to prove, climate scientists point to governmental inaction to exemplify deniers’ successes. The US never signed on to the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, and in December Canada became the first country to withdraw from the agreement. Public concern about climate change is volatile, and the US and many other governments have dragged their feet on requiring emissions reductions. “Burning fossil fuels has consequences for air quality, acid rain, climate change,” says Trenberth. “The biggest problem is that [the US] has not put a price on carbon. There ought to be a cost attached [to emissions] to compensate future generations for all the environmental and health damages, especially those damages yet to come.”

Climate scientist Gavin Schmidt in December 2011 receiving the first annual American Geophysical Union Climate Communications Prize.

GARY WAGNER PHOTOS

 

“We as a society have suffered lost opportunities due to the climate change denial movement,” says Mann. “If their goal has been to mortgage the lives of their children and grandchildren, then the campaign has been successful. It has certainly set back efforts to curtail emissions.” It hasn’t helped, he says, that the media have often been one-sided or inaccurate in their coverage of deniers’ attacks on climate change.

Still, climate scientists say they don’t think the denier movement has discouraged people from doing climate-related research. “I hope not,” says Santer. “It would be a sad outcome if it deterred people from working on these critically important issues.”

Denying the deniers

Santer’s approach to false claims is to set the record straight. For example, when some scientists claimed that global warming has stopped and that computer models cannot simulate decade-long periods with little or no warming, Santer and colleagues showed that simulations can indeed produce such hiatus periods. Santer says, “I have tried to do the science necessary to address extraordinary and incorrect claims of no warming or no human influence. I don’t think we have the luxury of letting such false claims go unchallenged. If our elected representatives are to take wise decisions on how to address climate change, they need access to the best scientific information, not to wishful thinking and misinformation.”

Debunking the myths by summarizing the science “should be the ultimate tool to push back,” says Eelco Rohling, a paleoclimatologist at the UK’s University of Southampton. “But at the moment it’s a losing battle.” Rohling is involved in efforts to create a uniform framework for analyzing and reporting paleoclimate research results. “What we need for both science and for outreach to the public is to all sing from the same hymn sheet,” he says. “Hopefully [the framework] will create more uniformity in the numbers that come out, so deniers can’t cherry pick the numbers they use.”

Rather than trying to change people’s minds, Orbach, who served as undersecretary for science at the US Department of Energy under President George W. Bush, says he is focusing on “adaptation”—on practical responses to climate change. “There is an area of disagreement—the anthropogenic contribution to climate change—but evidence points to an increase in global temperature, whether or not people are responsible. Now let’s find a way to deal with the situation we face—houses in areas that flood, lack of water, and so on.”

Throwing punches

Climate scientists have gotten some good publicity. Most prominent was the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, which was shared by Al Gore and the IPCC “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” New annual prizes for climate change communication were created last year by the American Geophysical Union and Climate One, a radio and TV program from the Commonwealth Club of California. And the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in June issued a rare statement saying they were “deeply concerned” by the attacks on climate scientists. The “hostile environment” created by the attacks, the statement continued, “both impedes the progress of science and interferes with the applications of science to the solution of global problems.” The AAAS statement was a way to “fight back,” says Orbach, who is on the board of directors.

One new development is the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, which features more than 140 climate scientists plus a few historians and economists on call to provide information to journalists and lawmakers. Trenberth, a member of the team, says, “[We] provide rebuttal, response, and clarification” to misleading reports in the media.

This past September, rapid response team cofounder Scott Mandia and others launched the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. The nonprofit group raises money for climate scientists embroiled in legal battles. As of December, it had raised more than $20,000 for Mann, who is fighting Freedom of Information Act demands by the American Tradition Institute think tank for 5,000 pages of his email correspondence. The fund also offers informal counseling to harassed climate scientists and plans to hire a staff attorney to offer quick and experienced help. “Many scientists think they can win by blocking punches. You have to throw them,” says Mandia, who teaches physical sciences at New York’s Suffolk County Community College. “The main thing is that the world understands there is a group that will defend climate scientists who are being harassed.”

http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v65/i2/p22_s1?bypassSSO=1

A climatologist in West Texas, Katharine Hayhoe, takes on skeptics with scientific data — and her own faith as an evangelical Christian

Spreading the global warming gospel

A climatologist in West Texas takes on skeptics with scientific data — and her own faith as an evangelical Christian.

Katharine Hayhoe speaks about climate change to students and faculty at Wayland Baptist University in West Texas. She's a climatologist and an evangelical Christian. (Geoffrey McAllister, Chicago Tribune / November 9, 2011)

by Neela Banerjee, Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2011


Katharine Hayhoe speaks about climate change to students and faculty at Wayland Baptist University in West Texas. She's a climatologist and an evangelical Christian.


When Katharine Hayhoe was faced with telling a group of petroleum engineers in the heart of the Texas oil patch that the main culprit for climate change is humanity's consumption of fossil fuels, she expected pushback.


"Aren't you scientists just in this for the money?" one older man asked — the latest insult after a string of anonymous emails asserting that she and other climatologists were corrupt liars.


Most climatologists refuse to answer skeptics, preferring to let the research speak for itself. Hayhoe is one of a small but growing number of scientists willing to engage climate change doubters face to face. Unlike most of her colleagues, she is driven as much by the tenets of her faith as the urgency of the science.


A rising star among climatologists, Hayhoe, the daughter of missionaries, is also an evangelical Christian. Though the science supporting climate change grows ever more compelling, fewer Americans now accept the scientific consensus than they did three years ago. No group is more resistant than political conservatives, especially white evangelical Christians, who often say that climate change is a hoax.


Besides teaching at Texas Tech in Lubbock, conducting research and writing, Hayhoe meets with Christian colleges, church groups, senior citizens, professional associations and just about anyone else to explain that Earth's climate is changing and that human beings are behind it.


Like any climatologist, she is armed with data. Yet Hayhoe also speaks of climate change in a language to which conservative Christians can relate, about protecting God's creation and loving one's neighbors. Hayhoe is a climate change evangelist in the West Texas Bible Belt, compelled by her faith to protect the least among us by sharing what she knows, even if it's science that many around her reject.


"People ask me if I believe in global warming. I tell them, 'No, I don't,' because belief is faith; faith is the evidence of things not seen," Hayhoe said. "Science is evidence of things seen. To have an open mind, we have to use the brains that God gave us to look at the science," she said.


Hayhoe, who serves as a reviewer for the main United Nations report on climate change, focuses her work on understanding and communicating the complex effects expected from climate change.


"She is perhaps the best communicator on climate change," said John Abraham, associate professor of thermal sciences at the University of St. Thomas and founder of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, an information clearinghouse.


One brisk, windy morning recently, Hayhoe took the stage at Wayland Baptist University, a small school about an hour from Lubbock.


"We have parents and communities who have a natural tendency to distrust science, and that's unfortunate," said Herbert Grover, dean of Wayland's school of math and science. "We asked Katharine to come because we wanted to take full advantage of her credentials as a scientist and as a Christian."


She tells the 300 students in sweats and Uggs that even if they ignore thermometers, scientists and data, they can still see the impact of climate change beyond their windows. An epic drought has gripped Texas, with climate change likely worsening the low rainfall that comes with the La Nina weather pattern in the region.


"A one- or two-degree increase in the world's temperature may not seem like much," she tells the students in the chilly auditorium, most paying attention rather than sleeping or texting. "But think of your own body when your temperature goes up by one and a half degrees. It means you're getting sick."


Hayhoe, 39, moved to Texas six years ago when her husband, Andrew Farley, was hired as a professor of linguistics at Texas Tech and as pastor of Ecclesia, a small evangelical church in Lubbock. Brought in to Texas Tech's geoscience department, Hayhoe now teaches in the political science department, because, she said, "climate change is a very political science in West Texas."


A Canadian, Hayhoe's first efforts as a climate change evangelist focused on her skeptic husband: Like many American evangelicals, Farley grew up thinking that environmentalism was a leftist cause. "I saw climate change as the same as saving the whales, hugging trees and wearing hemp," he said.


As Hayhoe's reputation grew, several of Farley's close friends voiced disapproval of her research, and he raised objections too. To answer Farley's questions, Hayhoe showed him data that reveal, for instance, how Earth's temperature has risen markedly after the Industrial Revolution — as the combustion of fossil fuels grew.


Hayhoe's success in changing other minds has been uneven. Her book for evangelicals, "A Climate for Change," sells tepidly because Christian bookstores won't stock it. At a senior citizen center in Lubbock, a man shaking with rage shouted an expletive-studded monologue about how the greenhouse effect doesn't exist. At a talk for Texas Tech business school students, her arguments were simply dismissed. At the end of any given talk, perhaps one person might tell Hayhoe she's convinced him of the scientific consensus on global warming. 


Lately, though, something may have shifted. At a recent talk at Wayland Baptist, no one was rude, and Rick Ross, a 21-year-old math major, told Hayhoe she had inspired him to "go out and do something." Hayhoe was surprised. "What was that all about?" she said to Grover, her host, as they gathered her things after her last talk of the day. "Nobody challenged me? Maybe those people didn't come."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-evangelical-warming-20111207,0,2075349.story

Scott Mandia: AGU 2011 Presentation PA33C-06: The Climate Science Rapid Response Team -- A Model for Science Communication. Scott A. Mandia, John A. Abraham, Ray Weymann & Michael Ashley. Location: Room 302 (Moscone South) Time: 3:10–3:25 PST

AGU 2011 Presentation: The Climate Science Rapid Response Team

by Scott Mandia, "Climate Change - Man or Myth?" blog, November 29, 2011

Want to learn more about the Climate Science Rapid Response Team (CSRRT)?  Come hear my presentation at the AGU Fall Meeting 2011 in San Francisco on Wednesday December 7.  During this 15 minute presentation, I will describe CSRRT’s history and process along with a few example success stories. The various other science communication outreach activities that the CSRRT scientists and its matchmakers are engaged in will also be presented.

PA33C-06. The Climate Science Rapid Response Team – A Model for Science Communication
Scott A. Mandia; John A. Abraham; Ray Weymann; Michael Ashley
Location: Room 302 (Moscone South)
Time: 3:10–3:25 PST

Scott Mandia: CERN cosmic rays and clouds explained, Irene and flooding

From Peter Sinclair's "Climate Denial Crock of the Week"


Scott Mandia explains the (in)significance of the CERN cloud and cosmic rays results wrt to climate change, and the effect of rain in Irene as opposed to its winds



The Climate Science Rapid Response Team, one of the reality-based community’s most effective responses to anti-science quackery in the media, has been ably represented by John Abraham in some high-profile venues over the last few months. Now we’re fortunate that the media has found out about another of CSRRT’s lucid luminaries, meteorologist and co-founder Scott Mandia.


http://climatecrocks.com/2011/08/30/scott-mandia-interview-irene-wrapped-cern-explained/

Background claims by Minnesota state Senate's global-warming skeptic, Michael Jungbauer, fail to check out

Background claims by state Senate's global-warming skeptic fail to check out

by Don Shelby, MinnPost.com, June 15, 2011

The Minnesota Senate's most notable authority on global warming comes from East Bethel. Michael Jungbauer was once its mayor. He is in his third term at the state Legislature and he has fashioned himself into a force of nature when it comes to the environment.

But Jungbauer doesn't believe the planet is warming. In fact, he told me, "I think the earth is going to cool." From his position on the Senate Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee, he has the power to change the way Minnesota approaches the issue. And his influence is apparent. The Minnesota Legislature has been busy undoing much of Minnesota's nation-leading policies enacted to deal with global warming.

He is also a television star, of sorts. He makes little videos on his pet theories and puts them on his webpage and on YouTube.com. You can see a few of his lectures here.

Sen. Jungbauer is fond of making pronouncements from on high regarding the scientific weakness of the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He takes positions in direct opposition to 98% of published and peer-reviewed climate, atmospheric scientists and glaciologists. But the water and sewer treatment specialist by day is, apparently, quite knowledgeable on all manner of science. It certainly appears to be. He uses big words and cites studies in his lectures.

No scientist
The problem is, he is not a scientist. Even though his published biography lists his higher education credits from Moody Bible Institute, Anoka Ramsey Community College and Metropolitan State University and that he is working on his master's degree in environmental policy and that he has a background in biochemistry, it turns out he has never graduated from college. He doesn't have a bachelor's degree.

He is an ordained minister, of sorts. But, although his official biography says he has a degree from Moody, he does not. In direct answer to my question, Jungbauer responded: "No I did not graduate. But I have a certificate."

The truth is that Jungbauer was ordained by Christian Motor Sports International out of Gilbert, Ariz. His senate biography says the organization provides "chapel services, pastoral care, outreach and Christian fellowship at car races, car shows, cruise-ins and tractor pulls."

Now, if you are going to take on the most noted scientists in the world working on CO2 and its effects on a warming planet, you would need a background in science. And he is ready to tell the members of his committee and witnesses who come to testify that they are dealing with a man not to be toyed with. A sample of his officious, talking-down-to-the-rest-of-us approach can be seen here.

 

He has said he has a major in biochemistry. That suggests he received a degree with enough credit hours to give him a major in that important science. But he does not have a degree in biochemistry. He told me that he is getting a master's degree in environmental policy at Metropolitan State University, but that school doesn't have a master's program in environmental policy. When I asked him about that, he said: "Well, that's what they told me."

He tells people from his committee perch "in my tropospherical chemistry class they said there is no scientific evidence that would link CO2 to higher temperatures." I don't doubt someone said that to Sen. Jungbauer, but whoever said it would be the only scientist in the world who thinks that.

But that is not the important point. What's important is that there is no evidence Jungbauer ever took a "tropospherical chemistry" class. When I confronted him with that inconsistency, he said: "Well, it was part of a discussion in another class I took."

By way of explanation, Jungbauer told me that he has attended lots of classes in other parts of the country, and had gone to lots of conferences. One of the conferences he attended was the fourth International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute. He has been a featured speaker for Heartland. Heartland is a fossil-fuel funded, conservative think-tank designed to protect the interests of oil and coal from government regulation.

Jungbauer told me he gets no contributions from Heartland, but he has been paid to speak at conferences and on Heartland sponsored radio programs. Heartland gets a lot of the money it pays to Jungbauer from Exxon-Mobil, Koch Brothers and the Scaife Foundation.

Mike Jungbauer

'Studied all 13 disciplines of science'
Jungbauer says he has "studied all 13 disciplines of science" contained in the IPCC reports. It is a ludicrous statement. The very authors of the IPCC reports haven't studied every discipline represented, nor would they ever say they have.

I asked the senator for the source of some of his theories. He mentioned S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, the authors of "Unstoppable Global Warming – Every 1500 Years." It is a denialist handbook. It came as a surprise to Jungbauer when I told him that Avery wasn't a scientist, but an economist (though it doesn't stop Avery from trying to sound like a scientist) or that S. Fred Singer not only thinks global warming a fraud, but that he also testified that smoking didn't cause cancer and argued that concerns over acid rain were overblown and generally believes that environmentalism will be the death of America.

I asked Jungbauer to give me another name. He gave me Dr. Roy Spencer, a noted skeptic at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. He and Spencer had appeared at the same Heartland Conference. Jungbauer's fondness for Spencer's science is a problem. As I reported, Jungbauer believes the increased CO2 will actually cause the planet to cool, it is important to note the Spencer doesn't believe that for a minute.

Here's a short paragraph from Spencer's own website: "Mankind's burning of fossil fuels creates more atmospheric carbon dioxide. As we add more CO2, more infrared energy is trapped, strengthening the earth's greenhouse effect. This causes a warming tendency in the lower atmosphere and at the surface."

Spencer made a similar statement at the very Heartland Conference he and Jungbauer attended together.

Spencer is a darling of the skeptics because even though he concedes the planet will warm, he thinks most scientists are alarmists. He's not convinced global warming is any big deal.

But then again, you can't wish away known science. Unless, you are Sen. Michael Jungbauer, who has studied all 13 disciplines of global warming science, you know, but has apparently wished it all away. The scariest part is that he is one of our state's most outspoken leaders on environmental policy.

Jungbauer says that for eight years he's been trying to get someone to present evidence that CO2 causes warming. He told the committee that if anyone does, he will climb to the top of the capitol and shout, "I was wrong."

'Ignorance of the science'
I consulted Professor John Abraham, thermal scientist at the University of St. Thomas and a member of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team. Abraham said the senator's comment "displays a complete ignorance of the science. Even contrarians would know that CO2 can increase global temperature and no reputable scientist would disagree. The skeptics only wonder how much the earth will warm. There is no dispute that it will happen."

Then Abraham gave me several lines of science to prove the point, including an article with a title that would scare most people to death: "Increases in Greenhouse Forcing Inferred from the Outgoing Longwave Radiation Spectra of Earth in 1970 and 1997." I quote from it for Sen. Jungbauer's benefit: "Our results provide direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth's greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate."

I asked Jungbauer if he'd be willing to debate Professor Abraham in public. Jungbauer said: "Anytime, anywhere, I'll just need some time to do some reading." Abraham has agreed. I'd like to see such a debate and invite the public and the press.

http://www.minnpost.com/donshelby/2011/06/15/29151/background_claims_by_state_senates_global-warming_skeptic_fail_to_check_out

Sen. Jungbauer, an avid cross-trainer, may wish to start stair-climbing exercises. His next stop might be the top of the Capitol.

Jeff Jacoby Pollutes Debate With Climate Fallacies

by Jocelyn Fong, Media Matters, June 3, 2011

In a Boston Globe column titled "Cooler heads prevail against climate panic," Jeff Jacoby denounces what he deems to be "climate fearmongering" about the dangers posed by unchecked greenhouse gas emissions. I agree that hyperbole is often damaging to public discourse; however, Jacoby should acknowledge that misleading and fallacious claims are of equal concern.

We could start with his own suggestion that those concerned about global warming engage in "end-of-the-world doomsaying" akin to Harold Camping's apocalypse prophesies. As a side note, Rush Limbaugh, who's known for his thoughtful and moderate rhetoric, said the same thing a couple weeks ago.

In his column, Jacoby forwards the claim that "rising carbon-dioxide levels" are not "anything to fear," citing physicist William Happer's assertion that "carbon is the stuff of life." Jacoby also quotes from Happer's statement that "about fifty million years ago" CO2 levels were "much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly." (For his part, Happer thinks that those concerned about climate change are far worse than Harold Camping -- they're more like Nazis.)

Jacoby's argument misrepresents the anxieties that so many, including the national science academies of 13 nations and the U.S. military, have about climate change. The existence of Earth or of life itself is not in question. Indeed, if that's the standard for taking action, then I can't think of any tragedy or injustice that would merit concern.

Rather, as scientists contacted through the Climate Science Rapid Response Team explained, climate change demands attention because it is altering the environments in which our societies operate faster than we are adapting, and the transition may be difficult, expensive, and painful in many cases -- all the more so if nothing is done to slow the changes and mitigate our vulnerabilities.

Happer's comparison to the Eocene epoch (56-34 million years ago) contributes little to the debate over whether global warming is a serious problem. As Purdue University's Matthew Huber explained via email, the world 50 million years ago was quite a bit different from the one we know, with "crocodiles, palm trees, and ginger plants near the North Pole," temperatures in continental North America that were 10-15 °C warmer, and sea level "about 100m higher." Needless to say, these are not the assumptions upon which we have built our cities, economies, or food and water systems, and any rapid shift in the climate toward these conditions would cause major disruptions.

Huber, an expert in past warm climates in Earth's history, added that it's a "red herring" to point to the fact that life flourished 50 million years ago, in part because "we are taking global warming that occurred naturally over millions of years and compressing it into several centuries."

Penn State paleoclimatologist Lee Kump also emphasized this point, explaining that "life had plenty of time to adapt to the rising temperatures and CO2 levels" 50 million years ago, and we are currently driving up CO2 levels "at a much higher rate" (centuries rather than millions of years). He added, "At this rate life doesn't have the opportunity it had in the Eocene to adapt. Nor do natural systems like the ocean's carbon cycle have time to buffer the change."

Not to mention that the human population 50 million years ago was zero, whereas during the current period of global climate change, we'll have the well-being of up to 10 billion people to worry about, in addition to the many other species and ecosystems affected.

To bolster his argument that human-caused climate change isn't a serious problem, Jacoby employs some more logical gymnastics:

[W]hy recoil from the modest increase in carbon emissions caused by fossil-fuel use? Because more CO2 means more climate change? Happer shoots down that idea. The earth's climate is always changing, sometimes dramatically. During the medieval warming of a thousand years ago, temperatures were much higher than they are now; during the Little Ice Age six centuries later they were much lower. "Yet there is no evidence for significant increase of CO2 in the medieval warm period, nor for a significant decrease at the time of the subsequent little ice age.''

It's interesting that Jacoby asserts that "temperatures were much higher than they are now" during the medieval warm period. For their part, climate scientists say the data isn't sufficient to produce a definitive global temperature for that period. According to the National Research Council, "confidence in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions is lower before A.D. 1600 and especially before A.D. 900" due to "the relative scarcity of precisely dated proxy evidence." However, NRC noted that "presently available evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900."

But regardless of the global temperature during the medieval warm period, Jacoby presents a fallacious argument when he seeks to refute the notion that "more CO2 means more climate change" by noting that climate change isn't always driven by CO2. That's kind of like denying that your nausea and vomiting was caused by the rotten meat you ate because the last time you had these symptoms, it was morning sickness.

No climate scientist has ever said that CO2 is the only factor influencing the climate. In fact, sorting out the myriad complex forces involved is exactly what they do. And according to of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, studies indicate that "warming by the sun and other variations in natural systems cannot explain" the current period of global warming.

If Jeff Jacoby wants a better discourse about climate change, I'm all for it. As a media figure with a public platform, he can start by accurately characterizing the views of those with which he disagrees, grounding arguments in sound logic, and consulting peer-reviewed science.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201106030011

Bjørn Lomborg: Debunked by the Climate Science Rapid Response Team

Bjørn Lomborg: Debunked by Climate Science Rapid Response Team

by Salvatore Cardoni, Take Part, June 2, 2011

Bjørn to stretch the truth? (Photo: Adrian Dennis/Getty)

On June 2, 2011, TakePart published an exclusive interview with Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish statistician and former climate change skeptic.

Because we questioned two of Lomborg's answers, we submitted them to the Climate Science Rapid Response Team (CSRRT) for analysis.

Founded in late 2010, the first of its kind organization is a match-making service that links members of the media with top scientists. The end goal is to improve communication about climate change.

What follows are the two TakePart questions, Lomborg’s answers that we believed to be questionable, and the truth according to CSRRT.

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TakePart: You’ve argued that climate change isn’t the end of the world. Why not?

Bjørn Lomborg: Listen, if you look at the best models out there that indicate what’s going to happen, we’re looking at a sea level rise of somewhere between half and two feet. This will constitute a problem. We know that sea levels rose about a foot over the last 150 years. But it has a very small consequence. And if you look at all of the impacts that are likely to come from global warming, most of them are negative, the economists argue that the total impact by the end of the century will be on the order of 2-5% of global GDP. That means we will be less rich. That means we will have to spend more money on dealing with the problems that global warming will incur on us. That’s the bad. But remember, 2-5% is not 100%. It is a problem, but it is not the end of the world. 

The Truth

Turns out, TakePart was not the first media outlet to question Lomborg's sea level assertion.

When we contacted CSRRT for their review of his answer, we were directed to their debunking of a similar claim Lomborg made in a November 22, 2010, Washington Post op-ed: "the fact that the best research we have—from the United Nations climate panel—says that global sea levels are not likely to rise more than about 20 inches by 2100."

Back then, Think Progress asked CSRRT to assess his statement.

Three scientists—the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology's Ken Caldiera, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Josh Willis, and Rutgers University's Alan Robock—independently confirmed that Lomborg had misrepresented the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report.

Read their full debunking here.

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TakePart: You’ve argued that to do that sort of R&D, the world would need an annual investment of $100 billion. In practical terms, how would you pay for it?

Bjørn Lomborg: At the end of the day, that’s a question for politicians to answer. All economists would ask how much bad is an extra ton of CO2? The answer is about $7.00 per ton of CO2. So that’s 6 cents on a gallon of gasoline. If you did this across the world, then we would raise about $250 billion every year. So that would amply pay for the $100 billion in research and development. There’s some beauty in saying we should tax the bad. But let's not kid ourselves; this won’t stop the problem. It will reduce emissions about 10%, but it will be able to raise the funds that are necessary to actually discover the technology that will solve the problem.

The Truth

Gary Yohe, Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies at Weseleyan Univesity, responded in an email to TakePart’s questioning of Lomborg’s claim that an extra ton of CO2 would cost $7.00:

This question is about the social cost of carbon—estimates of the present value of economic damages that can be associated with emitting one ton of carbon dioxide (or carbon, depending on units) at some point in time.

IPCC (2007a, 2007b) reports that estimates of the “social cost of carbon” (discounted economic damages that can be attributed to incremental emissions of carbon typically denoted SCC) vary widely and change over time. The United States EPA (2010) reviewed this literature so that it could offer estimates that could be applied in analyses of a wide range of regulations that might have positive or negative implications with respect to carbon emissions. The range was represented by four values for 2007 (2007$): $5, $21, $35 and $65 per ton of carbon dioxide, but the distribution is not symmetric. Any specific estimate depends upon assumptions about time preference, risk aversion, inequality aversion and the specification of uncertain parameters like climate sensitivity (the increase in equilibrium global mean temperature associated with a doubling of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases relative to pre-industrial levels). Estimates as high as $95 per ton of carbon dioxide were noted in Chapter 20 of IPCC (2007b).

More here: http://www.takepart.com/news/2011/06/02/bjrn-lomborg-debunked-by-climate-science-rapid-response-team

Climate Science Rapid Response Team asks Monckton for help with with inquiry from Abu Ali Al-Hussain of the Doric Foundation, Doha, Qatar

Climate Science Rapid Response Team Asks Monckton for Help

by Scott Mandia, "Climate Change: Man or Myth?" blog, May 1, 2011

The Climate Science Rapid Response Team is a match-making service to connect climate scientists with lawmakers and the media. The group is committed to providing rapid, high-quality information to media and government officials.  To use the service, requesters use the inquiry form to identify themselves, pose their question and provide a deadline for the response.  That information is then immediately sent to Dr. John Abraham, Dr. Ray Weymann, and me.  One of these three “matchmakers” then immediately forwards the inquiry to those scientists with the most appropriate expertise.  An authoritative response from one of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team scientists will be returned to the inquirer either directly or via one of the three matchmakers.  For more information about the Team and to read about a typical day when I am “on call” seeLisa Palmer’s story over at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media.

John, Ray, and I occasionally receive “crank inquiries” from the Climate Science Rapid Response Team web site.  These emails are normally deleted.  On Friday April 29, 2011 we received an inquiry from Dr. Abu Ali-Hussain of the Doric Foundation, an organization claiming to be academic advisors to a group of Gulf States’ sovereign wealth funds.  A quick search revealed no such organization and the inquiry came from the UK.  The inquiry is strikingly like something that would have originated from the 3rd Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley.  Instead of deleting the request, John, Ray, and I replied with the message below.  (The initial inquiry from Dr. Abu Ali-Hussain appears below our response.)

Esteemed Abu Ali Al-Hussain,

First of all, our heartiest congratulations on having reached your 1031st birthday.

Regarding your several inquiries about climate issues, these inquiries suggest a level of such profound mis-apprehension of fundamental statistical analysis and climate science, that, rather than send them to some of our qualified experts, we think it more appropriate to refer you to someone with an equally profound mis-apprehension of these same issues. Specifically, we suggest you contact 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

Should you wish further material we refer you to the document “Climate Scientists Respond” where issues bearing a remarkable resemblance to the ones raised in your inquiry are dealt with at length.

Finally, if we may be so bold, would you be so kind as to intercede with your patrons at the Gulf States Sovereign Wealth funds to see if they would be willing to make a modest contribution of  1 billion $US to defray the cost of administering the CSRRT.

Your humble and obedient servants,

John Patrick Abraham
Scott A. Mandia
Ray J. Weymann

p.s. Please do not take offense, but in your next inquiry would you endeavor to be less prolix. The demands on our time are exceedingly great.

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Name: Dr. Abu Ali Al-Hussain

Email: (censored)

Organization: Doric Foundation

Organization Description: Academic advisors to a group of Gulf States’ sovereign wealth funds

Response Needed By: Soonest

Enquiry: This inquiry is confidential and we must ask you not to use our name in any of your publicity. We are currently reviewing the state of climate science as presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. On pages 37, 104, and 253 of the Fourth Assessment Report (2007), the IPCC reproduces a graph of annual mean global surface temperature anomalies from the Hadley Center/Climatic Research Unit, overlaid by four linear-regression trend-lines starting respectively in approximately 1855, 1905, 1955 and 1980 and all ending in 2005. Our previous enquiries have established that the scientists’ final draft of the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report contained the same graph, but with only a single trend-line, from 1855-2005. Our principals are concerned that between the submission of the scientists’ final draft and publication of the official IPCC document the three additional – and, if our understanding is correct, gratuitous – trend-lines were added, without any statement to the effect that an alteration had been made, and that on each of the three pages where the graph thus altered was reproduced a conclusion was unjustifiably inserted to the effect that the rate of global warming is itself accelerating. Our enquiries have also established that the chairman of the IPCC has had this improper methodology and the consequently improper conclusion drawn to his attention, in person as well as in writing, but that he has failed to make any correction or to restore the graph as originally submitted by the scientists, or to explain why no such correction should be made. It appears to us that the IPCC’s conclusion that the rate of warming is accelerating, and that we are to blame, is central to the case being made in the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. However, our principals are concerned that this conclusion is on three occasions stated on the basis of a graph which has been altered in a manner that constitutes an inappropriate statistical technique, raising questions about the reliability of the conclusion. As a heuristic, we have determined that careful selection of start-points for multiple trend-lines on a sufficiently short segment of the graph of a sine-wave, which we chose because its long-run trend is by definition zero, can suggest, falsely, either that the trend is rising at an accelerating rate or that it is falling at an accelerating rate. Our questions to you are as follows:

1. Are we correct in understanding that the graph as it appears on the three pages in question has indeed been altered from the form in which it was originally submitted?

2. If the graph was altered, by whom was it altered, and on whose order or authority?

3. If the graph was altered, what steps did the IPCC take to ensure that the alterations were peer-reviewed, and who, if anyone, peer-reviewed the graph in its altered form?

4. Are we justified in our understanding that the IPCC is incorrect in reaching its central conclusion on the basis of the relative slopes of the inserted trend-lines, and that the statistical technique upon which it seeks to rely in reaching that central conclusion is defective?

5. Irrespective of whether the IPCC used a correct statistical technique to reach its central conclusion, is that conclusion in fact correct? We have determined that the Central England Temperature Record, which our analysis of the data suggests is a respectable proxy for global temperature anomalies, inferentially because the stations are at a temperate latitude, showed a warming of approximately 2.2 K from 1695-1730, equivalent to a centennial rate of 6.5 K, an order of magnitude greater than the warming observed in the 20th century, and four times greater than the maximum supra-decadal rate of warming observed in the entire 161 years of the global instrumental record, which occurred from 1860-1880, 1910-1940, and 1976-2001, since when there has been no warming. On the face of things, it does not seem to us that a discernible human influence on the global temperature record is yet discernible. Are we right?

6. We have discovered that the scientists’ final draft of the 1995 Second Assessment Report of the IPCC contained five statements – which our own analysis of the data supports – to the effect that no discernible human influence on global temperature had yet been detected, and that it was not possible to say when such an influence would be detected. However, by the time of publication all five of these statements had been deleted and replaced with a single statement to the opposite effect. Which of the two positions is right, and why?

7. We have discovered that the scientists’ final draft of the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report was altered upon receipt by the IPCC with the insertion of a table of contributions to sea-level rise that did not sum to within a factor 2 of the correct total, and that the reason for the error was an order-of-magnitude overstatement by the IPCC of the contributions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise both since the 1960s and again since 1993. Our enquiries have established that the error was reported to the IPCC on the day of publication. On looking at the revised version of the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report we have verified that the table now sums correctly and that the four order-of-magnitude overstatements have been corrected, but we cannot find any acknowledgement or statement that the originally-published report has been thus altered. Are you able to point us to the relevant statement? Our principals are naturally concerned that alterations can be made n ot only to the scientists’ final drafts of the IPCC’s assessment reports but also to the published reports themselves without any explicit statement being placed on the record to the effect that the alterations have been made.

8. We note that all four of the IPCC’s assessment reports – 1990, 1995, 2001, and 2007 – are heavily based on and biased in favor of modeling as opposed to theory and observation. The IPCC has been making long-term predictions of future climate states on the basis of modeling: yet its 2001 Third Assessment Report says that the climate is a complex, non-linear, chaotic object, so that the prediction of future climate states is not possible. Our principals are concerned at this apparently serious contradiction. On reading Sir James Lighthill’s paper of 1998 on the chaoticity of a pendulum’s oscillation, and Edward Lorenz’s paper of 1963 on deterministic non-periodic flow, we conclude that there are indeed fundamental constraints on the modeling of a chaotic object such as the climate. Does the IPCC’s approach take these constraints sufficiently into account?

9. The First Assessment Report appears to predict – again on the basis of modeling – that global temperature would rise by 0.8 K in the 40 years 1990-2030, based on the assumption that a doubling of CO2 concentration would cause 2.5 K warming. Are we right in understanding that, so far, the warming rate has been <0.2 K in the 20 years since 1990, Implying that the IPCC’s original medium-term projection of future global temperature change may prove to have been excessive by a factor 2, even though the IPCC’s current central estimate is that the warming at CO2 doubling will be 3.3 K? 10. Please supply estimates of the radiative forcings from all anthropogenic influences in the 61 years since 1950, the first year in which, according to the IPCC’s 2001 report, reliable measurements of the climate-relevant species of greenhouse gases were available, and draw our attention to any clear statement in the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the appropriate interval for the 21st-century transient-climate-sensitivity parameter.

Thank you.

Abu Ali Al-Hussain Doric Foundation, Doha, Qatar

http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/climate-science-rapid-response-team-asks-monckton-for-help/#more-1534