NASA's Gavin Schmidt @ClimateOfGavin goes full emotional – rorts himself with an unsupportable claim, Gleick plays 'me too'

Tom Nelson writes:

The end days of the climate hoax are upon us: Award-winning climate communicator Gavin Schmidt calls distinguished Princeton physicist Dr. William Happer and NASA moonwalker Harrison Schmitt “idiots”.

Unfortunately, Gavin forgot to check the data first. But that’s generally what The Team does when they take to Twitter. No science there, only raw emotions.

Twitter / ClimateOfGavin: Happer and Schmitt in the WSJ: …

Happer and Schmitt in the WSJ: "Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide" I call BS (1/2)

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) May 9, 2013

and…

DDT? Parabens? Sulphuric acid? CFCs? Napalm? Agent Orange? (2/2) #HapperandSchmittareidiots

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) May 9, 2013

Flashback:  A Deserved Award for Gavin Schmidt of Real Climate and NASA – NYTimes.com

Gavin Schmidt, the climate modeler at NASA and Columbia University who has long endured the slings and arrows that come with blogging on climate, has now gained a laurel for his efforts — the inaugural $25,000 Climate Communications Prize of the American Geophysical Union.

The data says that Schmitt and Happer are correct. In books and on the web, carbon dioxide is far more discussed (and maligned) than the other chemicals he lists.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=carbon+dioxide%2CDDT%2CParabens%2CSulphuric+acid%2C+CFCs%2CNapalm%2CAgent+Orange&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

On the web as news headlines, CO2 is still the overall leader, as indicated by the bar graph but has recently waned. Parabens seems to be the new bogeyman with the press as they seem to care less and less about CO2:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=carbon%20dioxide,DDT,Parabens,Sulphuric%20acid,CFCs,Napalm,Agent%20Orange

Gavin should look at data, rather than be emotional Twitter ranter like Michael Mann. But when your livlihood is dying, I suppose emotions are all you have left.

Take for example Peter Gleick’s response. Tom Nelson documents that too:

Don’t miss this: After distinguished Princeton physicist Dr. William Happer and NASA Moonwalker Harrison H. Schmitt defend CO2 in a WSJ article, Gleick goes apoplectic

THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Distinguished physicist Dr. William Happer: ‘The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science’

The demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature.

By HARRISON H. SCHMITT AND WILLIAM HAPPER

WSJ.COM 5/8/13: Of all of the world’s chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That’s simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.

The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.

Another twisted and scientifically bad #climate piece in the #WSJ. Deceptive from the first paragraph to the last. http://t.co/4kHUBmVWhL.

— Peter Gleick 🇺🇸 (@PeterGleick) May 9, 2013

he adds

Of the first 7 sentences in this #WSJ #climate piece, 6 are outright false. The other is opinion. http://t.co/MmWY1LI4RK. Then I gave up.

— Peter Gleick 🇺🇸 (@PeterGleick) May 9, 2013

and finally

@PeterGleick Here's scrawled notes on the first seven sentences, before I gave up. Please, continue. pic.twitter.com/FXtrRg1F2n

— Peter Gleick 🇺🇸 (@PeterGleick) May 9, 2013

It’s like grade school with Gleick.

I’m just going to pick one, readers can refute the others.

There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.

Gosh, you’d think Gleick would note what the IPCC SREX report, Nature, and NOAA says about this:

There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change… The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados… The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses.  –IPCC Special Report on Extremes, Chapter 4

From Nature: Extreme weather

Better models are needed before exceptional events can be reliably linked to global warming.

NOAA sums up the situation neatly in their FAQ.

Does “global warming” cause tornadoes? No. Thunderstorms do. The harder question may be, “Will climate change influence tornado occurrence?” The best answer is: We don’t know. According to the National Science and Technology Council’s Scientific Assessment on Climate Change, “Trends in other extreme weather events that occur at small spatial scales–such as tornadoes, hail, lightning, and dust storms–cannot be determined at the present time due to insufficient evidence.” This is because tornadoes are short-fused weather, on the time scale of seconds and minutes, and a space scale of fractions of a mile across. In contrast, climate trends take many years, decades, or millennia, spanning vast areas of the globe. The numerous unknowns dwell in the vast gap between those time and space scales. Climate models cannot resolve tornadoes or individual thunderstorms. They can indicate broad-scale shifts in three of the four favorable ingredients for severe thunderstorms (moisture, instability and wind shear), but as any severe weather forecaster can attest, having some favorable factors in place doesn’t guarantee tornadoes. Our physical understanding indicates mixed signals–some ingredients may increase (instability), while others may decrease (shear), in a warmer world. The other key ingredient (storm-scale lift), and to varying extents moisture, instability and shear, depend mostly on day-to-day patterns, and often, even minute-to-minute local weather. Finally, tornado recordkeeping itself also has been prone to many errors and uncertainties, doesn’t exist for most of the world, and even in the U. S., only covers several decades in detailed form.

But hey, who needs data when you can spew raw religious emotion on Twitter?

The last time Gleick got this worked up about a WSJ op-ed unfavorable to his views, he committed a crime. Heads up everybody!

Related articles

• WSJ op-ed by Schmitt and Happer: In Defense of Carbon Dioxide (wattsupwiththat.com)
• NASA Moonwalker Harrison H. Schmitt & Prof. William Happer in WSJ: ‘Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxid (climatedepot.com)
• Freeman Dyson speaks out about climate science, and fudge (wattsupwiththat.com)