Foreword: As you may recall, I was invited to speak at NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) back in April about the surfacestations project by Climate Reference Network chief scientist Dr. Gary Baker. It was a good visit, and I appreciated Dr. Baker’s good humor, candor and straightforward no-nonsense scientific approach to surface measurements.
While I was there, I met with Dr. Tom Karl, as well as Dr. Peterson. During that meeting with Dr. Karl I had no hint of the type of rhetoric used in this document which is now in preparation, but Peterson was clearly trying to convince me on his position, in fact he had asked to be added to my visit schedule specifically so that he could put on his presentation for me.
To say the least, I’m shocked that NCDC’s leadership has changed from being the nation’s record keeper of weather and climatic data, to being what appears to me now as an advocacy group. The draft document reads more like a news article in many places than it does a scientific document, and unlike a scientific document, it has a number of what I would call “emotionally based graphics” in it that have nothing to do with the science.
Dr. Roger Pielke does a good job of summarizing the issue, and his commentary is below. He also clearly points out a conflict of interest. From my perspective, this is bureaucracy at its very worst.
In the meantime public comments are invited, due by August 14th, and readers of this forums may want to avail themselves of that opportunity. Here is the link for public comments
Comments On The Draft CCSP Report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States”
A guest post by Dr. Roger Pielke:
The Draft report Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States has been released. There is an announcement of the Public Review Draft of the Unified Synthesis Product Global Climate Change in the United States. Public comments are due by August 14 2008 [Climate Science readers are urged to submit comments].
This US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report is Co-Chaired by Thomas R. Karl, Jerry Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson with the Senior Editor and Synthesis Team Coordinator Susan J. Hassol. These are the same individuals who have led past CCSP reports (e.g. see and see), with Tom Karl and Tom Peterson deliberately excluding scientific perspectives that differ from their viewpoints (i.e. see). Susan Hassol was writer of the HBO Special “To Hot Not to Handle”. This HBO show clearly had a specific perspective on the climate change issue, and lacked a balanced perspective. The HBO Executive Producer was Ms. Laurie David.
A clear real conflict of interest is obvious.
As a result, this report continues the biased narrow perspective of the earlier CCSP reports, as has been reported on a number of times on Climate Science and in other communications (e.g. see and see). As just one example of the bias, the Karl et al report starts with the text
“The Future is in Our Hands
Human-induced climate change is affecting us now. Its impacts on our economy, security, and quality of life will increase in the decades to come. Beyond the next few decades, when warming is “locked in” to the climate system from human activities to date, the future lies largely in our hands. Will we begin reducing heat trapping emissions now, thereby reducing future climate disruption and its impacts? Will we alter our planning and development in ways that reduce our vulnerability to the changes that are already on the way? The choices are ours.”
This statement perpetuates the rejected perspective on the role of humans in the climate system that
the human influence [on the climate system] is dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide.
The perspective that is, however, supported by a wide body of scientific evidence (e.g. see) is that
natural variations are more important than recognized in the Karl et al CCSP synthesis report and that the human influence involves a diverse range of first-order climate forcings, including, but not limited to the human input of CO2.
The remainder of the Karl et al CCSP report necessarily miscommunicates climate information since it is built on their incorrect focus on “reducing heat trapping emissions”, rather than also on the role of natural variations as observed in the past, and on the other first order climate forcings such as the role of aerosols in precipitation, nitrogen deposition and land use/land cover change (e.g. see).
For example, their claim that
“Historical climate and weather patterns are no longer an adequate guide to the future”
is not supported by the observational evidence (e.g. see where an example is presented of past data that we should use to plan for the future).
Thus the conclusion is that the US CCSP Program has failed in its mission. These reports have become stale and in-bred, since the same people are repeating their perspective on the climate issue.
The CCSP program, initiated within the Bush Administration, offered the opportunity to provide an independent assessment of the role of humans and natural variability in the climate system, as well as a comprehensive framework for reducing societal and environmental vulnerability to risk from climate variations and change through adaptation and mitigation. The CCSP process, however, has not succeeded in this goal.
As recommended in the Climate Science weblog [see] we need new scientists who are not encumbered by their prior advocacy positions on climate change to lead the preparation of balanced climate assessment reports.
The response of the media when this report is released in its final form will also be enlightening. Those reporters who parrot the synthesis without questioning its obvious bias and conflict of interest should be identified as sycophants. Those who adequately communicate the diversity of scientifically supported disagreements with the report should be lauded for the true journalist that they are.
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“A guest post by Dr. Roger Pielke:
This US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report is Co-Chaired by Thomas R. Karl, Jerry Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson with the Senior Editor and Synthesis Team Coordinator Susan J. Hassol. These are the same individuals who have led past CCSP reports (e.g. see and see), with Tom Karl and Tom Peterson deliberately excluding scientific perspectives that differ from their viewpoints (i.e. see). Susan Hassol was writer of the HBO Special “To Hot Not to Handle”. This HBO show clearly had a specific perspective on the climate change issue, and lacked a balanced perspective. The HBO Executive Producer was Ms. Laurie David.
A clear real conflict of interest is obvious.”
Exactly! After this nonsense is published, the next HBO “special” Susan Hassol writes – “2 Hot Not 2 Handle 2” – will quote “the OFFICIAL US Government reports on impacts of global climate change on th US” – she’ll be quoting herself as “the government!”
Don’t put up with the Hassol!
You are PAYING for this B.S.
So I would suggest you send them the comments they have requested, at this email address
USP-comments@climatescience.gov
and that you further consider contacting the Inspector General of the Commerce Department about the clear conflict of interest. You can use the online complaint form
http://www.oig.doc.gov/oig/Hotline_complaintform.htm
This type of conflict of interest on the taxpayer’s time & dime is ILLEGAL.
Thanks, David L. Hagen, for the link to federal budget info on NASA and similar organizations. Money is what is driving this AGW/CO2 scare:
$41,800,000 – 1997 budget
$43,300,000 – 2008 budget [est.]
$50,600,000 – 2009 budget request for NASA and others to “Improve national capacity to develop and apply climate models.”
That’s a huge increase that starves other deserving science programs, — especially in the face of recent studies such as this recent peer-reviewed paper, which proves that no climate model is, or can be, accurate.
Government organizations such as NASA have been turned from non-political science bodies into ravening money grubbers, salivating at the thought of millions upon millions of additional tax dollars every year, year after year. Note that there isn’t one dime allocated to studying whether the climate is experiencing natural fluctuations within normal geological cycles.
James Hansen and the scientists he retains on his staff are corrupted by money. Most know the truth, but keep silent in fear of retribution from the boss, who has called for trial and imprisonment for those who disagree with him. The AGW/climate disaster is a discredited hoax, based on a scam to get ever more tax dollars by scaring the general public.
As the excellent link posted by BUCKO36 in the second post, one quarter of our population doesn’t know that the Earth revolves around the Sun. How can we fight ignorance on that massive scale?
“The CCSP program, initiated within the Bush Administration, offered the opportunity to provide an independent assessment of the role of humans and natural variability in the climate system, as well as a comprehensive framework for reducing societal and environmental vulnerability to risk from climate variations and change through adaptation and mitigation. The CCSP process, however, has not succeeded in this goal.”
I assume this quote was Roger Pielke’s?
REPLY: Yes from Pielke.
As does Leon Brozyna, I also have difficulties with the statement, “Historical climate and weather patterns are no longer an adequate guide to the future.”
Historical climate data is rich and varied—from multiple studies of ice core data to eustatic sea levels—but one thing is consistent: all of the deep historical patterns demonstrate that the present condition is not all that unusual. The very vocal AGW promoters do not benefit from any consideration of historical climate data, so they simply discard it completely and encourage others to dismiss it out of hand.
For example, consider R. Fairbridge’s reconstruction of Late Holocene sea levels (past 6,000 years) from 1976. The worst-cast scenario as postulated by the IPCC leads to a sea level that is just shy of the average sea level during that period of human civilization. Further, the predicted rise that will ostensibly inundate vast tracts of humanity will be no worse than the average of the past 2,000 years.
They certainly do not want their followers to have a look at the Eemian Interglacial data. If we were to consider similarities between the Eemian and the Late Holocene Interglacials and then conclude that the present may roughly follow the pattern of previous Pleistocene interglacials, the Holocene climate optimum was reached 4,000 years ago and we are on the down slope to a protracted cooling. that doesn’t fit the agenda, do it must be discarded and buried.
So it seems that Al Gore has again used his contacts to present his own version of reality. This is not the end though, lies always travel faster than the truth, keep up the excellent work.
the lies and their source will be found out in the fullness of time. This new statement is testament to the work that Anthony and his team have done in attracting attention to the NCDC. It is a shame that the element of surprise is lost with the internet as Gore and the like will always have a counterpunch prepared.
I wish some very rich American would take one or more of these issues up in a court of law. Surely tax payers have a right to be informed of the truth. Where data and numbers are concerned this should be easy to prove.
Why has this not happened yet? Monckton was offering help to anyone in the US who had the money to take up a legal challenge against the man or his minions.
I actually find phrases like “Unified Synthesis Product” more frightening than global warming. There is something Orwellian about it: dissent will not be tolerated.
When the argument is lost on the science and facts, fake it and lie.
I still doubt people will willingly pay more in taxes so government can pretend to control the weather. It also looks like the weather is not going to cooperate with the lies.
Carsten Arnholm (13:57:33) mentions something that fits a clear pattern: numerous formerly reputable periodicals and journals are doing an about-face, changing 180 degrees from reporting science, to being AGW/climate disaster advocates.
As a subscriber to the Economist for the past three decades, and to the AAAS journal Science for two decades, I have recently noticed an immense change, wherein global warming advocacy permeates more and more articles. The Economist is now an advocate of, and a partisan for the [repeatedly falsified] hypothesis of AGW/climate disaster caused by rising CO2.
The following is a typical example, from the current Economistissue. In an article on Canada’s military, the Economist reports: “There is even a plan for a naval port in Nanisivik, in the territory of Nunavut, and up to eight Arctic patrol vessels to fly the flag in the increasingly ice-free far north.” [my emphasis]. Similar pro-AGW advocacy is found in every issue of this once esteemed and unbiased periodical.
The Economist certainly has the same access to government figures that we do here, showing that the Arctic has added 1.05 million more kilometers of ice cover this year. Yet they deliberately engage in AGW scaremongering. Why is this, and why are so many formerly reputable publications and journals suddenly putting out demonstrably false information?
The reason is the “Hansen effect.” Deceptive proponents of the AGW/CO2 scare do not need to get to each individual reporter in order to convince them put comments like the one above into articles unrelated to AGW. Someone needs only to get to the person at the top, such as the Economist’s editor-in-chief, Mr. Mickelthwaite. The lowly reporter, eager to please the boss and keep his job, knows exactly what his marching orders are — and so he inserts a false comment about “the increasingly ice-free north.” After all, the reporter has a family to feed.
As a hypothetical example, a newly-minted internet $billionaire, such as the very left-of-center Mark Cuban, or the even more leftist Grantham siblings running the Grantham Foundation, approach the editors in charge of publications such as the National Climate Data Center’s journal, or The Planetary Report, or Scientific American, National Geographic, Science, Nature, or any of the others that have recently become uncompromising advocates of AGW/planetary catastrophe — and make an offer. If your editor’s income is $150,000 a year, and someone with literally thousands of $millions to spend surreptitiously offers you, say, a $million or two a year, deposited in a Cayman Islands account, to convince you to “see it my way,” many [not all, of course] may decide that “everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I? I have a family to support, too.” As can be easily found online, James Hansen has personally taken well over a million dollars from various AGW/climate disaster advocating foundations — that we know about.
Granted, this is speculation. But looking at the same rampant corruption in numerous formerly reputable publications, only some of which are mentioned above — and which now all have recently decided to toe the AGW global warming line, despite extremely strong scientific and empirical evidence to the contrary — then what other theory of human behavior could account for the total corruption of science that we are now witnessing?
” Joy (16:16:40) :
I wish some very rich American would take one or more of these issues up in a court of law. Surely tax payers have a right to be informed of the truth. Where data and numbers are concerned this should be easy to prove.
Why has this not happened yet? ”
Most likely because Gore and his minion Steve Howard have already recruited a lot of them to the AGW camp. Looking at Branson’s latest autobiog, this was done through 2006. I’m so dissapointed in Branson for this. I thought he was a lot smarter than to fall for these falsehoods.
Slowly but surely the voice of reason and logic will overwhelm the lies.
As Arnholm points out above:
“But looking at the same rampant corruption in numerous formerly reputable publications, only some of which are mentioned above — and which now all have recently decided to toe the AGW global warming line..”
To you it is corruption, but to be corrupt involves huge amounts of money, and just looking at Exxon, I see $100 billion US per year at risk, so this explains why for years they attempted to squelch real science. Now it is apparent that science is winning over those who deny scientific progress.
Thank god for the real scientists at the IPCC who labored long and hard to establish this long term threat to humanity. Thank god for great men like Al Gore and James Hansen who take on the big money vested interests, and are taking this issue front and center against the self centered and delusional, who are threatening our country and our planet in order to protect some special monied interests.
“I am taking names!” Steve Huntwork
I never repeat rhymes on this site but in this case I offer this consolation to you, Steve.
The eggs has scrambled.
The crow has been stewed.
The guest are arriving
to get their just due.
Many reps will flame out
and many will rue
the day they dared did battle
with CO2
drat! please delete “dared” Please, my moderator? Pretty please?
Paul K (17:38:21)
Surely you gest!
How are we to have faith in our governmetn when it cant make a statement that agrees with it’s own empirical data. Models are models but empirical data is observed recorded fact.
What a shame that science has evolved to such a degree of ruthless controlling political power grab.
Science may never recover from this debacle.
I agree that those responsible should be held responsible.
Bill Derryberry
Make that jest, not gest.
I have seldom read funnier parody than that of Paul K above.
Paul K (17:38:21)
Boy, I don’t know to say.
Would you like to buy a bridge? I hear there one for sale over by Brooklyn.
Paul K,
How would you like it if your name was spelled in small caps. Why mention God’s name at all if you can’t be courteous? There are other synonym for the Deity’s name, you know.
REPLY: In reading that post Paul K made I don’t see that as intentional – Anthony
smokey — “…then what other theory of human behavior could account for the total corruption of science that we are now witnessing?”
You’re suggesting conspiracy, and I reckon it’s simpler: you’re observing evidence of the continuing debasement of journalism. What Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre do is actual journalism; they collect the relevent facts (e.g. a photo record of surface stations, Mann’s data, etc.) and then let us chew on what it all means.
What passes for journalists these days, though, is different: they all attend the same parties, know the same people, and everyone in their group thinks in similar fashion to them. There’s political bias in the mainstream media for the same reason — many “journalists” are urban folk who simply don’t know many (if any) people not sharing their political view. They gradually tend to think then that their view *is* the mainstream; they don’t really hear much else from those they know.
Thus the reporter who wrote of the “soon to be ice free” bit probably “knows” this to be true because everyone he knows also “knows” this to be fact. So does the editor. No conspiracy is required.
[…] Watts Up With That? – 01 August, 2008 _____________________________ […]
Smokey (16:54:55): …then what other theory of human behavior could account for the total corruption of science that we are now witnessing?
I think randomengineer at 22:25:54 got it in the comment: …“knows” this to be true because everyone he knows also “knows” this to be fact…
The condition is known as Information cascade – informational cascades and has given us a lot of very bad science, medicine, whatever from way back.
Just read: Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html?_r=1&ei=5087&em=&en=53bfd0df7f448ca4&ex=1192161600&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
Smokey: “If your editor’s income is $150,000 a year, and someone with literally thousands of $millions to spend surreptitiously offers you, say, a $million or two a year…”
That’s serious money. How much would this person offer an ordinary member of the public to insert pro-AGW messages in letters to newspapers, or in blog comments and the like?
I do not ask this question for my own information, but I have a friend who not only has a family to support, but recently lost his job and was forced to default on his subprime mortgage. My friend would greatly appreciate contact details for this generous wealthy person.
In the Southeast region summation there is this quote:
• Decline in forest growth and agricultural crop
production due to the combined
effects of thermal stress and declining soil
moisture10.
Could this be why many tree ring reconstructions indicate there was no MWP?
Paul K
Would you like a piece of humble pie?
If you don’t get the science right you will get the policy wrong. Go back to the IPCC report and read it for yourself. You will be surprised at the difference between the rhetoric of alarm in comparrison with what the report says. Contrary to what many have said, you don’t have to be an expert scientist to read through the IPCC 4th assessment report. There are also other sources of reading material but I guess you won’t credit those in your current state of mind.
Bear in mind where the tipping point was in the 1980’s compared with where we are now.
Here is a quote from one scientist who DOES believe in AGW. Read it carefully Paul:
“Self evidently dangerous climate change will not come from a normal scientific process of truth seeking. Although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the social contingent dementions of a post normal science, but to proffer such insights scientists and politicians must trade normal truth for influence.”
“Climate change is a reality and science confirms that human activity is heavily implicated in this change. But over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country. The phenomenon of catastrophic climate change. It seems that mere climate change was not going to be bad enough and so it now must be catastrophic to be worthy of attention. The increasing use of this pejorative term and its bedfellow qualifiers, chaotic, irreversible, rapid has altered the public discourse around climate change. I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric. It seems that it is we the professional climate scientists who are now the catastrophy sceptics! How the wheel turns!
Why is it not just campaigners but politicians and scientists too who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror and disaster with the observable physical reality of climate change, actively ignoring the careful hedging of science’s predictions?
To state that climate change will be catastrophic hides a cascade of value laden assumptions that do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.”
Mike Hulme the director 2000-2007 of the tyndall centre for climate change research
If you can’t take it from someone who you believe is simply describing his right wing opinions then the above prose will hopefully make you stop and think about truth versus loud assertion.