Dr. Spencer’s essay below reminds me of this famous cartoon:
Over at Lucia’s she wrote a post saying I had banged the Godwin’s Law “gong” by comparing the PNAS skeptic list paper as “stasi-esque”. For people that don’t know, the Stasi were the secret police of East Germany, post WWII, and post Nazism. So Stasi-esque doesn’t qualify for Godwins Law. They were famous for making lists of people and their associations, to use later for what could only be described as nefarious purposes. Their list making (like the skeptic list used for the PNAS paper) is what is the parallel here.
As for yellow badges, here’s what I’d like to see all skeptics wear. Maybe somebody can come up with a theme variation specific to climate skeptics.
We don’t need the negativism that is being fostered elsewhere.
Dr. Spencer has some interesting comments in his post below. – Anthony
===================================================
The Global Warming Inquisition Has Begun
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
A new “study” has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which has examined the credentials and publication records of climate scientists who are global warming skeptics versus those who accept the “tenets of anthropogenic climate change”.
Not surprisingly, the study finds that the skeptical scientists have fewer publications or are less credentialed than the marching army of scientists who have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 20 years to find every potential connection between fossil fuel use and changes in nature.
After all, nature does not cause change by itself, you know.
The study lends a pseudo-scientific air of respectability to what amounts to a black list of the minority of scientists who do not accept the premise that global warming is mostly the result of you driving your SUV and using incandescent light bulbs.
There is no question that there are very many more scientific papers which accept the mainstream view of global warming being caused by humans. And that might account for something if those papers actually independently investigated alternative, natural mechanisms that might explain most global warming in the last 30 to 50 years, and found that those natural mechanisms could not.
As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.
But those scientific studies did not address all of the alternative explanations. They couldn’t, because we do not have the data to investigate them. The vast majority of them simply assumed global warming was manmade.
I’m sorry, but in science a presupposition is not “evidence”.
Instead, anthropogenic climate change has become a scientific faith. The fact that the very first sentence in the PNAS article uses the phrase “tenets of anthropogenic climate change” hints at this, since the term “tenet” is most often used when referring to religious doctrine, or beliefs which cannot be proved to be true.
So, since we have no other evidence to go on, let’s pin the rap on humanity. It just so happens that’s the position politicians want, which is why politics played such a key role in the formation of the IPCC two decades ago.
The growing backlash against us skeptics makes me think of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, which started in the 12th Century. Of course, no one (I hope no one) will be tried and executed for not believing in anthropogenic climate change. But the fact that one of the five keywords or phrases attached to the new PNAS study is “climate denier” means that such divisive rhetoric is now considered to be part of our mainstream scientific lexicon by our country’s premier scientific organization, the National Academy of Sciences.
Surely, equating a belief in natural climate change to the belief that the Holocaust slaughter of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis never occurred is a new low for science as a discipline.
The new paper also implicitly adds most of the public to the black list, since surveys have shown dwindling public belief in the consensus view of climate change.
At least I have lots of company.
“”” Julienne says:
June 23, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Roy: Do you have any supporting evidence of this statement (publications, data, etc.?)
“As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.”
And what is meant by most? And is this a global 2% reduction in cloudiness? What about regional importance?
I am genuinely interested… “””
Well Julienne, if you are genuinely interested; read SCIENCE for July-7 2007; “How Much More Rain will Global Warming Bring ?” By Frank Wentz (RSS, Santa Rosa CA) et al.
In their paper they report on satellite measurements of changes in total global evaporation, total atmospheric water content, and total global precipitation that results from a 1 deg C rise in mean global surface temperature. No they didn’t measure a 1 deg C rise; it was less than that over the course of the measurements; note these were actual real world measured data; not the outputs of computer climate model simulations.
What they observed was that a 1 deg C rise, results in a 7% increase in all three parameters; Total global evaporation, total atmospheric water content, and total global precipitation.
Common sense says that precip and evap must always be equal over time; or else we would end up with the oceans overhead.
Now the standard GCMs agree with their observation of 7% increase in total atmospheric water content; but disagreed on the evap/precip amount claiming it is only 1% to 3% for a 1 deg C rise. That is an error of as much as a factor of 7 from real observed actual data. Fancy that; people giving credence to a fictional model that differs from reality by a factor of 7 times.
Now what Wentz et al didn’t mention was that in order to get a 7% increase in total global precipitation you also have to have an increase in total global cloud cover; like maybe about 7%; well 7% increase in clouds of the precipitating kind. Unless you have some theory of cloudless precipitation you want to promote.
That cloud cover increase could of course be a combination of increased cloud area; increased cloud optical density as a result of the increased water content; and increased cloud persistence time; before precipitation results in the dissipation of the cloud.
Now Dr Roy is saying only a 2% cloud decrease is enough to explain the warming; but Wentz’ results show the effect is much greater than that would imply. If a 7% change in cloud cover results from a 1 deg C rise; then you can pretty much kiss of any effect due to some small CO2 change. Increasing CO2 simply nudges up the long term mean global cloud cover percentage, by a miniscule amount; which simply blocks more sunlight than the increased returned LWIR from more CO2.
The water cloud system is in complete negative feedback control of the earth’s temperature range; and we couldn’t change the earth temperature; either up or down if we wanted to.
If it warms a bit; you get more water vapor; which eventually leads to more clouds, which reflect and block more sunlight from the ground, so it cools down. Nobody ever observed it to warm up in the shadow zone when a cloud passes in front of the sun; it always cools down.
And if it gets too cool, you simply get more precipitation, which dissipates some cloud, and allows more sunlight to reach the surface to warm it back up.
It’s so simple it ought to be taught in fifth grade.
But the problem is we have no way to measure accurately what total global cloud cover is. If you had wide field cameras in every single GPS satellite continuously monitoring the surface; that would still only give you a measure of the albedo contributions to temperature control; you have to have ground based below cloud monitoring to capture the effect of the optical blocking of additional sunlight from the ground; there is no such global capability; and clouds come and go so rapidly, that some silly twice per day observation would still not give you any real measure.
Only Mother gaia knows what the total global cloud cover is; and she always gets it right; which is why she keeps the Temperature so constant all the time.
We are all going to look back nostalgically on the era of the CO2 witchcraft; and wonder about how supposedly trained scientists could believe such nonsense.
If you have any good explanations for why cloud modulation does not feedback regulate the earth surface Temperature; I’m sure we’d all like to hear your exposition.
John from CA says:
June 23, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Here are some of the button/badge ideas listed on the “Ugliness — The blacklist of climate science” blog. [–snip–]
John,
How about this: One with the words ‘Blacklisted for telling the truth,’ or even the word ‘Truth’ with the verboten symbol over it.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
June 23, 2010 at 1:39 pm
I wonder if the release of the names and affiliations of “skeptics” isn’t leading towards some type of “payback” for all the nasty emails, death-threats, dead skunks etc. that were hurled at Phil Jones, Michael Mann & company?
The RealClimate crowd were furious about such treatment of their heroes, so I wonder if they are not now empowered to conduct e-campaigns of their own?
If such were ever proven to be true, they would be facing RICO charges in federal court for enticing others to stalk, itself which has its very own statute!
BRING IT ON!
Amused. says:
June 23, 2010 at 10:04 am
The state of Climate science now is that everything other than the CO2 emissions of mankind has been eliminated and that therefore, unless this is some Divine Plan, AGW is the only possible answer.
All that remains to discover that is of consequence is how soon and how serious. There is little argument among scientists that the bad is coming soon and that it will be bad. The long term, without serious action, is unthinkable. Some of the bad is here now and unstoppable.
I don’t know why people come out with this sort of thing. The science was settled a long, long time ago – even before this current scare. Moreover, by active intervention, the trouble at the time was corrected in its entirity.
When the climate changed, people asked themselves “What is causing it? Why are crops failing? Why are animals dying? Why is disease running rampant?” They employed the best brains, both in the scientific field, and in the legal equiry field. They searched high and low, discarded every possibility, and came up with a diagnosis by exclusion: Witches.
Crops failed? Witches.
Animals died? Witches.
Ugly wife? Witches.
This robust conclusion could be drawn, as for any measured moment of “now” we know all there is to know, and there can be nothing else.
CO2 – just another word for witches.
You won’t publish this for reasons that you have already stated. That’s not a problem. But perhaps you could suggest to your contributors that they keep out of their articles any views they may have about religion. They are utterly irrelevant and have no place in a website dedicated to scientific research.
(Sorry if you already received this comment but I wasn’t sure that it was sent as my internet connection keeps disconnecting.)
I added the raised eyebrow idea (included a globe for the iris) and the request from 899.
Button concepts version 2
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1313/4728913330_006b1f42bd_b.jpg
John from CA says:
June 23, 2010 at 4:12 pm
I added the raised eyebrow idea (included a globe for the iris) and the request from 899.
The raised eyebrow design is REALLY COOL!
Has anyone suggested a ‘Watts Up With That?’ button?
That would be with wording along the perimeter, with a frozen thermometer AND a raised eyebrow!
My button badge idea:
The four moons of Jupiter
Thanks 899, these are just mock-ups so feel free to be critical. No one has suggested a WUWT button concept yet but it makes a great headline and slogan. The eye and a frozen red bulb thermometer would be fun — I’ll try it tomorrow.
I’m probably going to regret asking this Colin but what do the 4 moons of Jupiter have to do with climate change on Earth?
Jonas, just to clarify, I need your name for my listless list.
It is, of course, also contained in the list of all things not contained in a list.
The raised-eyebrow, smiley-face, yellow badge of skepticism should include the admonition: Enjoy global warming–while it lasts!
Interesting comment on collide-a-scape. Comment 213
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/06/21/the-climate-experts/comment-page-4/#comment-8743
Seems that papers published before the digital age tend be offline, or scanned and the scanned ones aren’t searchable.
Those would be the papers by many of the older skeptics.
It seems that informed criticism of the Wattsupwiththat creed is not allowed. My responses do not make it through.
Shining a light on ignorance is frowned upon.
[Reply: I checked the spam bucket, nothing but spam there. Try again, I’ll watch for your post. ~dbs, mod.]
I wrote a long post replying to Smokey, Bruce, and Bob as well as dealing with general Climate matters.
I don’t have a couple of hours to spare to repeat it.
I did notice, btw, that a link I gave to better inform your readership about Cloud Cover did not show up in th unmoderated version.
[Reply: If you don’t have a couple of hours to spare to write the post you say disappeared, surely you have time to post a link on cloud cover. I’ll watch for it and make sure it gets posted. ~dbs, mod.]
sky and gilbert,
You’re both expressing a great concept. How to portray “thanks for the warmth/memories” and “history untold”.
Throw me a bone I can chew on visually — need more details.
My best ad critic just suggested the replacement for the word “Skeptic” in the eye version; “Really?” was her suggestion.
Works for me — any thoughts?
When people start arguing credentials, you know the facts (data) are not in their favor. Any scientist who tries to prove a point with an analysis like this should be deeply embarrassed, and PNAS should be equally embarrassed to print such crap.
Wasn’t Stephen Schneider one of the players in Climategate? That’s sort of like Goebbels writing a review of the evidence in favor of Jews being a problem.
Here’s some good images for shirts, bumper stickers, and stickers. Could be buttons, too: http://www.zazzle.com/climaterealist
Not my page, but I know the creators.
/Mr Lynn
I did send Jim Prall an email thanking him for my inclusion in his Black List. Of course, I figured he wouldn’t publish it. I was right: he didn’t. This is my email to Bill Prall:
Hi, Jim!
I want to thank you for including me among the climate denialists, but I resent being placed at the 430th place. However, I guess that encouraged the Spanish government and the Madrid city authorities to send me an airplane ticket to Madrid for giving a lecture on next October about the incoming global cooling and its relationship with the chaotic movement of the solar system’s baricenter.
Thanks again, I am proud of being a denier, not of climate change -it’s always changing, nor of the climate science (poor dear, still in diapers) but about the fraudulent claims you people have been making for years.
I don’t think you have ever considered your master’s advice about balancing the difference in being effective in your claims and being honest.
Anyway, thanks again. I got a free trip and a nice month staying in Spain. 🙂
Eduardo Ferreyra
President
Argentinean Foundation for a Scientific Ecology
There are several flaws in the paper by Anderregg et al.
First of all, the paper confuses research with what Thomas Kuhn called normal science. Although some climatologists do not publish as much as others, they can have a broad knowledge of climatology. Meteorologists or climatologists who apply climatology to make weather or climate predictions may not publish but they definitely know climatology. They know the limitations of numerical simulations since they use the models. The paper oversimplifies the AGW issue by associating climatologists who are unconvinced of the evidence (UE) of AGW with skeptics. Also, most papers published on climate are not focused on sub-topics which deal directly with for example on the sensitivity of climate models to CO2 forcing. Climatologists who have not published on the specific topic of the sensivitity to radiative forcing by CO2 (but have a large number of publications in other areas) are no more “experts” on the question than a climatologist or meteorologist who has published less.
Secondly, this paper demonstrates the unfortunate “publish or perish” philosophy which started to appear in the 80’s as research funds were getting scarcer. Researchers want to be the first to publish their results. They also have a tendency to “oversell” the problems which they want to address to get grants. Practitioners, such as applied climatologists who do mostly climate predictions or meteorologists are less concerned with publications. They get paid to make predictions. Since progress in research is done by concentrating in narrow fields, climatologists who want to publish a lot have to specialize and often don’t have a broad knowledge of the field.
Thirdly, the objective of climate research, and the reason why so much money has been invested in the research, is to develop predictive tools, not only of global temperature which is an abstract number, but of local regional precipitation and temperature extremes which policy makers can use to plan remediation strategies. As seen in Realclimate there is a huge debate among climatologists about the effect of CO2 radiative forcings on hurricanes for example. Should we apply the method of Anderegg et al to decide who is right ? Should we use this method to determine which research group has the correct model sensitivity to CO2 radiative forcing? I don’t think so.
Amused. says:
June 23, 2010 at 10:04 am
The state of Climate science now is that everything other than the CO2 emissions of mankind has been eliminated and that therefore, unless this is some Divine Plan, AGW is the only possible answer.
I love how Amused applies a universal negative (something unprovable by logic). Unless you are an all knowing god how would you know that all other possibilities have been eliminated or understood?
Anderegg, et al, apparently took solace from achieving similar percentages to another publish report: “This result closely agrees with expert surveys, indicating that ≈97% of self-identified actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of ACC”
However, here are the tenets in that report:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures
have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
I can agree with these tenets which are quite a contrast to the criteria they used in their analysis:
“Report that it is “very likely” that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been
responsible for “most” of the “unequivocal” warming of the Earth’s average
global temperature in the second half of the 20th century.”
The anthropogenic CO2 contribution can be “significant”, without being “most”. Given the coincidence of of the positive phases of natural multidecadal climate cycles and the warming influence of the negative aerosol forcing and the warming contribution of black carbon, I would be surprised if the “very likely … most” could be justified. I haven’t seen any credible model independent evidence for it. Since we are speaking of “credentials”, let me ask a rhetorical question “What are the credentials of the models?”
The basic premise of the Anderegg paper, that active research in the climate field and the number of publications is an indicator of the credibility of the opinions expressed. Since the basic scientific issue in dispute is whether the net feedback to CO2 forcing is negative or alarmingly positive, or somewhere in between. Assuming that a credible opinion should be an informed opinion, more important than the number of articles published, would be the number of articles that were read that were relevant to net feedbacks to CO2 forcing, and, of course, whether those articles were understood. This is a comparatively small set of articles, and only a small percentage of the scientists classified by Anderegg, et al, published in this key area. The relevant publications would be in modeling, the model diagnostic literature, and the model independent attempts to estimate the climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing. Note that the there are many specialties even within the modeling and model diagnostic community, so unless a specific effort has been made, the researchers opinions may not be informed on the key issue. Perhaps Anderegg, et al, would like to argue that the relevant publications cannot be understood by anyone other than the researchers who wrote them, but I suspect that the quality of the writing is better than that, and just a basic understanding of physics and climatology is all that is required to understand most of the publications.
If the Anderegg, et al, article is used like similar articles have been in the past, we should note, that it is a leap to jump from the result that a large percentage of those publishing in climate science agreeing to the “very likely … most” statement about recent warming to the conclusion that they also accept the alarming model projections based upon IPCC CO2 forcing scenerios. It is quite possible to agree with the former, while being unconvinced that the climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing is high.
I checked the website of the author of the report for his methods of data gathering and analysis. What a joke! See:
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/index.html
The bit that really made me laugh was when he wrote “I’m not an academic . . .” and then only a couple of paragraphs later dismissed a lot of sceptical scientists by sniffily commenting that “Most of these skeptics/deniers/petition signers have little to no academic credentials in this specific field, although a handful stand out as widely published in this or a somewhat related field. ”
So let me get this straight –
The author of the study argues that we shouldn’t take the sceptical scientists seriously as they have “little to no academic credentials in [the relevant] specific field” but wants us to take his study seriously, even though he’s a computer repair-man not an academic.
PS:
I also enjoyed his defence of his scientific credentials. Apparently, whilst he has none whatsoever, he does work at a university and reads all the popular science magazines he can. What does he think this is, “Good Will Hunting?”
I was disappointed to see this rubbish on Dr. Spencer’s website and told him so.