Delivering Messages Is Not Communicating

Fool me once says:
October 3, 2010 at 8:06 pm
“- so that explains the dramatic increase in the green vote in the recent Australian election.”
One must understand that on the face of it, when confronted with the simple question “do you want a cleaner, efficient, safer world”, almost every individual will give you a resounding yes. With due respect and given the millions if not billions spent on driving the “doom” message into every household, it’s not surprising that the campaign is yielding results. Realistically, we have to acknowledge that the majority of people do not have the inclination, or the necessary skills to separate the wheat from the chaff as it were. Plus it’s a lot “cooler” these days, to be a “mother earth” activist than a stinking oil/coal demon. Never mind the fact that each individual owes his livelihood and standard of living to the “enemy”. Nobody here is against a more efficient, cleaner world; we just know that by running around hysterically, while agitating for control in order to impose crippling legislation, based on dubious knowledge, is not only “un-cool”, but perilously stupid.

IMO you are confused. These ‘messages’ are not intended to communicate. They come in the forms of epistle and sermon and are aimed at believers and are to be passed on as memes. To question them is the normal reaction of the sceptic who then is tasked with proving a negative which, of course, is fruitless: the classic theist & atheist discourse.
Richard Dawkins has claimed that science is corrosive to religion and he may be proved correct, but for science to have a chance of being effective, it has to be correct. The fact that it is probably not is the real problem to be overcome. The repository of ‘the science’ is the IPCC and it has gatekeepers at all entry points. Nothing short of storming it will get the result of the communication that you wish for. I believe (sorry) that the internet is playing a major part in that storming; for search engine read siege engine.

Lucy Skywalker says:
October 4, 2010 at 1:48 am
“[…] Bgood, we know CO2 is a GHG. And each time it’s doubled, its GHG effect doubles.[…]”
Ahem no, each time it’s doubled, its GHG effect increases by a constant amount. That is the nature of a logarithmic function.

I’ve met greenies who look just like Franny Armstrong. They don’t like cars, they dress down into boyish clothes, they don’t like shopping or looking fashionable, they are vegan or vegetarian from an early age, and they have no aspirations to get high skills in a well paid profession, but would rather hang out with their friends just like they did when they were twelve. Now all of that is fine. But they still want to feel important, despite not having any useful skills like medicine or engineering or business. So they feel they are important (which is fine, as all humans are intrinsically valuable) but they have nothing useful to offer. So they become activists for a cause. The funny thing is that the planet us supposed to be in danger, but all we need to to is to adopt the lifestyle ilif these typical greenies. Now isn’t that a coincidence? What better way to make yourself feel important (even if you have no skills) than to believe that your no-skill no-money luser lifestyle is actually the most noble lifestyle and the most useful for saving the planet?? Isn’t it funny how the answer to the worlds problems just happens to be, “become more like me” ?! Meanwhile the successful people are the ones being productive and you know, consuming, and they make greenies look like losers, but no, it is the productive people who are bad, and the luser greens who are noble. I’m not trying to be mean to them, I’m just looking at the way in which even the quiet and gentle greens who dissavow material grasping, how these greens, how they also have needs. The need to feel important even when their chosen lifestyle is so chilled and unmaterialistic.

There is no “denial movement”, only people who have looked at the evidence presented about so-called “man-made global warming” and found it wanting.
There is a massive programme of funding going into the promotion of AGW, including from DEFRA and DECC. In 2006, the Institute for Public Policy Research, where David Miliband once worked, produced a paper called “Warm Words”, in which he had this message:
“…it is our recommendation that, at least for popular communications, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won. This means simply behaving as if man-made climate change is real, and that individual actions to prevent further change will be effective. The UK Government’s new climate-change slogan – ‘Together this generation will tackle climate change’ (Defra 2006) – is but an example of this approach. It constructs…its own factuality.”
This was written by a PR consultant and a novelist.
From 2001 to 2007, DEFRA spent £110 Million on environmental campaigns, a major part of which is devoted to promoting the concept of anthropogenic global warming. They are still spending our money on trying to convince us that we need to pay higher taxes on energy, even as the climate gets steadily colder.

Any man not believing in climate change spends a night in the box…

Following a letter of mine to my MP, I have a reply from Chris Huhne the Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change. (Well, he signed it at least!) Interestingly, my MP had written enclosing my letter to Greg Barker , the junior Minister for Climate Change, but it had been escalated to Huhne. I ust have hit a raw spot.
Regretably Huhne’s reply is hard copy & at present I don’t have it in electronic form. But among a lot of citing of IPCC stuff there are two comments I would like help on/ steer to where I can read up on the issues. I quote from his letter:
Quote A
“In his letter Mr Watkins suggests that changes in CO2 do not drive global warming. However, the lag between temperature and CO2 changes revealed in ice core records is likely related to the slow processes governing the deep ocean’s regulation of the atmospheric CO2 concentration”
Quote B
“There is direct experimental evidence for a strengthenenig greenhouse effect over the past few decades due to rising greenhouse gas emissions. This comes from satellite measurements showing a decrease in the outgoing long wave energy to space at wavelengths at which CO2 and methane (CH4) absorb energy(ref 1), and from surface measuements indicating an increase in infra-red downward radiation from the atmosphere to the Earth’s suface (ref 2)
ref1: Chen et al 2007 spectral signatures of cliate change in the earth’s infra red spectrum between 1970 & 2006
ref 2: Wang & Liang 2009 Global atmospheric downward long wave radiation over land surface under all-sky conditions from 1973 to 2008 (j. of Geophys Res vol 114)
My initial reaction to Q1 is that 800 yrs or so is a mighty slow process and if that is really the CO2 regulator then how come current concentrations are ascribed to human activity and/or teps are assumed to track CO2 concenrations with vastly shorter lag times.
Re Q2, I am short of knowledge. Do satellites have full coverage (eg of poles)? Even if true, negative feed back from H2O would dilute the temp effect? And I didn’t say CO2 had no effect, just no major effect in the real world climate system. And what is the quantitative effect measured here, in watts/sq meter I wonder? Is this the “missing heat” the non finding of which is a “travesty”?
Huhne goes on to say, in passing, ” positive feedbacks arise naturally from the physics underlying climate syste processes” and refs Chapter * of IPCC WG1.
He finishes as follows:
” The reduced global warming trend seen in recent years has been shown to be due to year- to -year and decadal scale natural climate variability. Decade long warm and cool periods have been seen before in the observation record. Such natural variations do not negate longer timescale trends & do not indicate any shortcomings in modern climate models.
In conclusion, although i accept that a sall minority of Earth scientisits dispute the IPCC review findings, the basic physics and observational records are clear and I am in no doubt that the risks of significant cliate changs, caused by unabated emissions, are very real. Given the potential global, regional and local impacts and consequences of future climate change, it therefore makes sense to restrict future global emissions.”
Well, folks, that is what you are up against. maybe the drafter of the letter felt a little pressed, if not desperate, but the political layer seems convinced and is pressing on. Mr Huhne is keen on windmills, for example.
Any comments welcome.

bgood2creation says:
October 3, 2010 at 11:30 pm
a jones,
Thanks for your reply . It is possible that it could be natural variability, I suppose, but I think it unlikely. I guess I could rephrase the question to be, “What is the most likely reason for the warming of the past few decades?” The IPCC answer you know well, “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.” What is the WUWT answer to this question?
The Answer Is: WE DON’T KNOW. The data is inconclusive because of it’s poor quality, mass manipulation and political use. We cannot even be certain that there has been any significant warming over the past 1000 years because data is both anecdotal and of poor quality. It seems possible that the MM was a real event, but of what depth? and the other warming periods could have been significant (roman and medieval) but the data has been so poorly managed and manipulated that we really don’t know. However, we are now in the age of satelite measurements, albeit embryonic, and therefore have an opportunity like never before to measure our planet accurately and without predjudice. Lets hope we can take it.

Thomas Fuller
—a cold winter in western media capitals—
This is an irrelevant occurrence if the public understands the real symptoms of the increased energy imbalance on the planet.
—new paper showing how models predict doom for whatever symbol they used, now people seem to want things like data, whatever that is. —
You seem to be insinuating that papers are released without data. Can you provide evidence for this?
—But there really isn’t enough data to make a definitive case for the type of climate change—
There is plenty enough work done of the last century on both observation, basic physics, and paleo-data to establish a highly probable risk of public danger for continuing to release heat trapping gases. There certainly isn’t data to refute to link between human action and the changing climate. You are accusing AGW proponents of argument from ignorance by arguing from ignorance. What do you consider scientifically definitive and exactly what damage would be needed to “do something”?
—And it is my personal opinion that that is precisely the way it works–deciding the appropriate action and then searching for supporting information, of whatever quality they can drum up—
Your opinion is irrelevant and factually incorrect. Research into climate change had been going on for decades before any ideas of “appropriate action”. This idea is quite laughable.
—-So they began also to run advertisements, such as jet planes crashing into skyscrapers—-
It is a well established fact that this ad was rejected by the WWF and never released by them. If you have proof that WWF used this ad, please provide it.
—They literally cannot admit uncertainty—
Would you mind opening the IPCC pdf and doing a search on the word uncertainty? Or do that for any science paper? This statement is just factually incorrect, and without correction, is purposefully misleading.
—But they’re not listening–and so in the end they cannot communicate.—
If this is the case, a few missteps doesn’t do the damage that articles like this one, where certain facts are dismissed, can confuse the public.

Well, isn’t this interesting. Huhne is relying on satellite data, which is known to be false.
His letter is absurd, the only believable part being his protestations that he is convinced of the global warming theory himself. That much is self-evident, but he obviously has never bothered checking any of the “facts” he so-freely throws around to “prove” his ridiculous assertions. Definitely gets an “F” for that effort, which is just plain insulting the intelligence of all those he is so eager to heap carbon taxes.
To enlighten anyone not familiar with the errors of satellite data, here is something you might find interesting:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Satellite Data Fraud
Dr Charles R. Anderson; “It is now perfectly clear that there are no reliable worldwide temperature records, and that we have little more than anecdotal information on the temperature history of the Earth.”
http://co2insanity.com/2010/08/19/leading-us-physicist-labels-satellitegate-scandal-a-%E2%80%98catastrophe%E2%80%99/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leading US Physicist Labels Satellitegate Scandal “A Catastrophe”.
Respected American physicist, Dr Charles R. Anderson has waded into the escalating Satellitegate controversy publishing a damning analysis on his blog.
In a fresh week of revelations when NOAA calls in their lawyers to handle the fallout, Anderson adds further fuel to the fire and fumes against NOAA, one of the four agencies charged with responsibility for collating global climate temperatures. NOAA is now fighting a rearguard legal defense to hold onto some semblance of credibility with growing evidence of systemic global warming data flaws by government climatologists.
Anderson, a successful Materials Physicist with his own laboratory, has looked closely at the evidence uncovered on NOAA. He has been astonished to discover, “Both higher altitudes and higher latitudes have been systematically removed from the measured temperature record with very poor and biased interpolated results taking their place.”
Like other esteemed scientists, Anderson has been quick to spot sinister flaws in official temperatures across northern Lake Michigan
http://climatechangedispatch.com/climate-reports/7479-us-government-in-massive-new-global-warming-scandal-noaa-disgraced
The website operated by the Michigan State University published ridiculously high surface water temperatures widely distributed over the lake many indicating super-boiling conditions. The fear is that these anomalies have been fed across the entire satellite dataset. The satellite that first ignited the fury is NOAA-16. But as we have since learned there are now five key satellites that have become either degraded or seriously comprised.
In his post, “Satellite Temperature Record Now Unreliable”
http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.com/2010/08/satellite-temperature-record-now.html
Anderson’s findings are that NOAA sought to cover up the “sensor degradation” on their satellite, NOAA-16. The U.S. physicist agrees there may now be thousands of temperatures in the range of 415-604 degrees Fahrenheit automatically fed into computer climate models and contaminating climate models with a substantial warming bias. This may have gone on for a far longer period than the five years originally identified.
Anderson continues, “One has to marvel at either the scientific incompetence this reveals or the completely unethical behavior of NOAA and its paid researchers that is laid open before us.”
The Indian Government Knew of Faults in 2004
The Indian government was long ago onto these faults, too. Researcher, Devendra Singh, tried and failed to draw attention to the increasing problems with the satellite as early as 2004 but his paper remained largely ignored outside of his native homeland.
Indian scientist, Singh reported that NOAA-16 started malfunctioning due to a scan motor problem that caused a “barcode” appearance. Singh’s paper, “Performance of the NOAA-16 and AIRS temperature soundings over India” exposed the satellite’s growing faults and identified three key errors that needed to be addressed.
Singh writes, “The first one is the instrument observation error. The second is caused by the differences in the observation time and location between the satellite and radiosonde. The third is sampling error due to atmospheric horizontal inhomogeneity of the field of view (FOV).” These from India thus endorse Dr. Anderson’s findings.
NOAA Proven to have engaged in Long-term Cover Up
Investigations are proving increasingly that such data was flagged by non-NOAA agencies years ago, but NOAA declined to publish notice of the faults until the problem was publicized loudly and widely in the first “Satellitegate” article, “US Government in Massive New Global Warming Scandal – NOAA Disgraced.”
http://climatechangedispatch.com/climate-reports/7479-us-government-in-massive-new-global-warming-scandal-noaa-disgraced
Official explanations initially dismissed the findings, but then NOAA conceded their accuracy in the face of the evidence.
A succession of record warm temperatures in recent years may be based on contaminated satellite readings.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/16/noaa-warmest-january-on-record-in-both-satellite-records/
But NOAA spokesman, Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis declined to clarify the extent of the satellite instrument problem or how long the fault might have gone undetected.
In another article, “Official: Satellite Failure Means Decade of Global Warming Data Doubtful”
http://climatechangedispatch.com/climate-reports/7491-official-satellite-failure-means-decade-of-global-warming-data-doubtful
we saw the smoking gun evidence of a cover up after examining the offending satellite’s AVHRR Subsystem Summary. The official summary shows no report of any ‘sensor degradation’ (NOAA’s admission) since its launch in September 2000.
http://www.oso.noaa.gov/poesstatus/componentStatusSummary.asp?spacecraft=16&subsystem=4
Subsystem Summary Details Censored Between 2005-10
But even more sinister is the fact that the official online summary now only shows events recorded up to 2005. All subsequent notations, that was on NOAA’s web pages showed entries inclusive to summer 2010 which have now been removed. However, climatechangefraud.com is displaying a sample of the missing evidence copied before NOAA took down the revealing web pages after it entered into “damage limitation” mode.
http://climatechangedispatch.com/images/stories/pics3/2010_Jul04_959EDT.gif
As events have unfolded we are also learning that major systemic failures in the rest of the satellite global data-collecting network were also not reported. Such serious flaws affect up to five U.S satellites as reported in an excellent article by Susan Bohan.
NOAA Tears Up its Own “Data Transparency” Policy
But rather than come clean, NOAA has ordered their lawyers to circle the wagons. Glenn Tallia, their Senior Counselor, wrote “The data and associated website at issue are not NOAA’s but instead are those of the Michigan State Sea Grant program. Thus, we have referred your email to the Michigan State Sea Grant program.”
Yes, Glenn, clearly the final data output was published by Michigan but the underlying fault is with your satellite!
With NOAA now hiding behind their attorneys we appear to see a contradiction of NOAA’s official pledge that ” The basic tenet of physical climate data management at NOAA is full and open data access” published in their document, “NOAA/National Climatic Data Center Open Access to Physical Climate Data Policy December 2009”.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/open-access-climate-data-policy.pdf
Sadly, we may now be at the start of yet another protracted delay and concealment process that tarnished NASA’s and CRU’s reputations in Climategate. We saw in that scandal that for 3-7 years the US and the UK government agencies cynically and unlawfully stymied Freedom of Information requests (FOIA).
NASA’s disgrace was affirmed in March 2010 when they finally conceded that their data was in worse shape than the much-maligned Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the UK’s University of East Anglia. CRU’s Professor Phil Jones only escaped criminal prosecution by way of a technicality.
The attorney credited with successfully forcing NASA to come clean was Christopher Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
American Physicist Pick Out Key Issues
Meanwhile, back on his blog, Anderson points to the key issues that NOAA tries to cover up. He refers to how Charles Pistis, Program Coordinator of the Michigan Sea Grant project, tried to pass off the flawed data as being an accidental product of the satellite’s malfunction sensors taking readings off the top of clouds rather than the surface temperatures.
By contrast, Anderson cogently refutes this explanation showing that such bogus data was consistently of very high temperatures not associated with those detected from cloud tops. He advises it is fair to assume that NOAA were using this temperature anomaly to favorably hype a doom-saying agenda of ever-increasing temperatures that served the misinformation process of government propaganda.
As Pistis admitted, all such satellite data is fed automatically into records and apparently as long as it showed high enough temperatures to satisfy the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW) advocates of those numbers were not going to make careful scrutiny for at least half a decade.
Anderson bemoans, “One has to marvel at either the scientific incompetence this reveals or the completely unethical behavior of NOAA and its paid researchers that is laid open before us. Charles Pistis has evaded the repeated question of whether the temperature measurement data from such satellites has gone into the NOAA temperature record. This sure suggests this is an awkward question to answer.”
Now Satellites NOAA-17 and 18 Suffer Calamities
While NOAA’s Nero fiddles ‘Rome’ continues to burn, and the satellite network just keeps on falling apart. After NOAA-16 bit the dust last NOAA-17 became rated ‘poor’ due to “scan motor degradation” while NOAA-18’s gyro’s are regarded by many now as good as dead. However, these satellites that each cross the US twice per day at twelve-hour intervals are still giving “direct readout”(HRPT or APT) or central processing to customers. So please, NOAA, tell us – is this GIGO still being fed into official climate models?
http://www.ofcm.gov/slso/2008/NSLSOP_Draft_V6.pdf
NOAA-17 appears in even worse condition. On February 12 and 19 2010, NOAA-17 concedes it has “AVHRR Scan Motor Degradation” with “Product(s) or Data Impacted.”
Beleaguered NOAA customers have been told, “direct readout users are going to have to deal with the missing data gaps as best they can.”
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SATS/SPBULL/MSG0502024.01.txt
On August 9 2010, NOAA 17 was listed as on ‘poor’ with scan motor problems and rising motor currents. NOAA admits, “Constant rephase by the MIRP was causing data dropouts on all the HRPT stream and APT and GAC derivatives. Auto re-phase has now been disabled and the resulting AVHRR products are almost all unusable.”
NOAA continues with tests on ’17’ with a view to finding a solution. On page 53 we find that NOAA-17 has an inoperable AMSU Instrument.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/weather-satellite-reports/message/2352
The status for August 17, 2010 was RED (not operational) and NOAA is undertaking “urgent gyro tests on NOAA 18.”
More evidence proving NOAA is running a “degrading” satellite network can be read here.
http://www.oso.noaa.gov/poesstatus/spacecraftStatusSummary.asp?spacecraft=15
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Perhaps Mr Huhne would like to respond? Though, I’m not holding my breath.
REPLY: He may or may not, but I will. This analysis by Anderson, saying things like “favorably hype a doom-saying agenda” is ridiculous. There’s no cover up. This sensor degradation and failure is normal for the technology. Yes the temperatures were off, the sensor failed. It happened to NSIDC also. The only thing that can be said here is that they weren’t watching the output of automated SST product closely enough, which was the same issue with NSIDC when I caught them plotting faulty NOAA17 data. NOAA19 is now online and 100% and automated product are moving to that. If you look at the spacecraft status page:
http://www.oso.noaa.gov/poesstatus/spacecraftStatusSummary.asp?spacecraft=14
You’ll see this spacecraft was taken offline, after running for 12 years…and as you go through the spacecraft numbers, 15,through 19 you’ll see they get progressively better, with 19 being fully operational.
Technology fails with age. It’s normal. Just like an automobile losing a battery after 3 years, or needing a new water pump, spacecraft also have failures. Unlike your car, sometimes redundant sensors and systems keep it’s mission going. Also unlike a car, you just can’t gring it into the shop and ask them to swap in a new AMSU unit in an afternoon.
Despite many requests to carry this story on WUWT, I refused to, because it’s wrongly presented with the cover up angle. – Anthony