Kid blogger Chris Mooney (at left) often writes fascinating articles for their sheer single mindedness of purpose – making anyone who doubts AGW in even the slightest look like fools. I’ve been on the receiving end a few times but generally never bother to respond. I do however, find it interesting that he gets to blog at Discover magazine, while at the same time writing hit pieces for Jim Hoggan’s paid public relations inflamers over at DeSmog Blog. Science and paid PR don’t mix.
But back to our story, Chris must have never been to Missouri, or taken a course where science is taught to be tested by replication and verification. Otherwise, he wouldn’t get so upset when the aptly named commenter “Nullius in Verba” (Take nobody’s word for it) asked to see the calcs behind what Mooney was writing about. It starts out innocently enough:
In the article is this passage about Kerry Emanuel’s “back of the envelope” calcs that prove the issue:
And then comes the obvious question, since the calcs were not included in the article, nor by any link nor citation. The response however, is the surprise:
See the comments yourself here
Hectoring? Wow! So much for the “discovery” in Discover magazine. Change the name to “Don’t Ask Magazine” perhaps?
I guess that makes anyone who asks to see proof of BOE calculations either from Missouri, a denier, or both:
OK I’ve had my chuckle and made my point. Ribbing aside, Chris Mooney really could do everyone a great service by simply answering the question, or writing to Dr. Emanuel and having him show it for him if he doesn’t know what those calcs are. Either way, next time Chris writes about how we all just need better communications, using trusted messengers, remind him of this over the top response.
h/t to Tom Nelson
UPDATE: After only 5 comments, comments for the article were closed. No discussion allowed. That’s really lame Chris.
It’s time to take on this [snip] clown and put him in his place. I’ll keep my eye out for him!
Latitude says:
June 14, 2011 at 8:08 am
Dave Springer says:
June 14, 2011 at 7:19 am
. Ice ages are not the norm for the earth when viewed against geological stretches of time.
===========================================================================
“But Dave, wouldn’t you say that it’s a lot harder for the earth to stay warm………”
Demonstrably not. Ice ages would the norm instead of the exception. This is where CO2 takes on its most important climate regulating job. When snow and ice take over it brings the carbon and water cycles to a screeching halt. At the same time vulcanism doesn’t stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere so over millions of years it builds up enough to start melting some ice and once the ice starts melting the water cycle kicks back into gear and accelerates the melt. Then the thermostat kicks in and end result of all that CO2 and no more ice anywhere is an earth that’s green from pole to pole. Tropical, sub-tropical, and temperate zones all get wider and we have temperate conditions all the way to the poles. This is a stable state that persists for tens and hundreds of millions of years at a stretch. The current ice age, which isn’t a bad one, is due to the arrangement of the continents and possibly the sun’s position in the galaxy relative to the plane and spiral arms if Svensmark is right about cosmic rays throttling cloud formation. Ice ages should and are growing more rare because over geologic time the sun has steadily increased in brightness at a rate of about 10% every 1.5 billion years. There’s been a liquid ocean and temperature poles most of the time even when the sun was only 70% its current brightness. We’d be cooking in our own juices today if there wasn’t a thermostat that limits the earth’s maximum surface temperature. It’s quite a remarkable machine at work that has kept the earth in a temperature regime suitable for life as we know it for billions of years. There’s at least an illusion of design in it.
Prospect.org erased all the commennts from yesterday. So I helped refresh their memories…
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=reality_bites
Oh, and yes they retitled the article and moved it. New link above.
Chris has also gotten a bad reputation amongst many scientists for his book ‘Unscientific America’ and various other antics. This latest episode doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Regarding these so-called ‘back of the envelope’ calculations, I am reminded of a quote that goes something like:
“For every problem there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong.”
Pinning hopes on a trace gas? Di-hydrogen monoxide, by many accounts, would seem to be the real workhorse; Simply witness from a meteor perspective the cooling in the evening on a humid night vs a ‘dry’ night …
Experimental Evaluation of the NightCool Nocturnal Radiation Cooling Concept
DOE Award No. DE-FC26-06NT42767
UCF/DSEC Contract No. 20126034
ENDS 233 – ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS I slide set
.
Sorry, Dave, but you’re talking a lot of nonsense. Ice ages are the norm and have been the norm for the past 2.5 million years. There have been approximately 18 major ice advances over that time, separated by brief interglacials. The generation of ice ages comes from a combination of changes to the earth’s axial tilt, continental drift, the growth over time in the size of continents, and alterations in the earth’s orbit. In the latter case, at this time the earth’s northern hemisphere has its summer and the southern its winter when the earth is at aphelion, or furthest from the sun. 11,000 years from now this will be reversed with a dramatic effect on the chilling of the earth’s continents and consequent buildup of ice.
Ice ages are caused by accumulation of more snow during winter than is melted off during summer. The factors above are all much larger factors in determining ice advances and retreats than the tiny incremental warming of the sun that will occur over this time period. By following through the Milankovich cycles, it can readily be shown that the current ice ages will extend for another 2-10 million years. Your tropics from pole to pole is a wonderful fantasy, but it cannot happen. The current interglacial is unlikely to last more than another two thousand years. And then we’re back in the deep freeze for another 100,000 years or so.
Dave Springer says:
June 14, 2011 at 7:19 am
Demonstrably not. Ice ages would the norm instead of the exception. This is where CO2 takes on its most important climate regulating job
===========================================================================
That explains why no matter how high CO2 levels are, temperatures fall first and drag CO2 levels down second.
Who would have thought that something that is only ~0,04% of the atmosphere would be so potent.
….but like Gates likes to say, there’s been a 40% increase!
Shame we can’t blame the past decade of static and cooling on something else………
Thirty years of screaming, and one third of that (10 years) did not cooperate.
Note to Frank.
You are quoting the original Arrhenius analysis. I understand he revised his calculations of the CO2 sensitivity to 1.2deg rise a few years later. Oh and by the way, he thought the sun’s heat was generated by burning coal!
Absence of the calculation is evidence that there is no calcuation.
1) re: ““Democrats have vastly more PHDs and experts” – the reason the ph’ds and experts are
in different groups is that the ph’ds studied political “science” and the experts practice it.
2) the reason he can’t show the “back of the envelope” calcs in the comments is that the methodology involves waving the envelope (not writing on it) between stating the problem and announcing the solution.
Mooney is correct. Stop hectoring him.
I did a back of the envelope calculation myself and it is all true. As you can see,
2 + 2 + CO2 = Anthropogenic Global Warming Catastrophe
Simple physics and mathematics! Science 1 Anti-Science 0.
Okay, here’s a back of the envelope calculation for Mr Mooney:
Suppose you have quantities A and B, and suppose they are equal. That is,
A = B
Muliply both sides by A:
A^2 = AB
Subtract B^2 from both sides:
A^2-B^2 = AB-B^2
Factor both sides:
(A+B)(A-B) = B(A-B)
Cancel the common factor A-B:
A+B = B
Now, remembering that A=B, we have
B+B=B, or 2B=B
Cancel B:
2=1.
The sky is falling! RUN!
Every notice the predominance of “Moon”-named folks in the AGW crowd. Mooney, Mo(o)nbiot, and other Moonbats … I’m just sayin’ …
The quote dates back to March 31st, 2011 and is contained in Emanuel’s testimony file:
http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/hearings/Emanuel%20testimony.pdf
Here is the full quote: “Today, students at MIT and elsewhere can do hand calculations or use simple models of radiative and convective heat transfer to explore climate physics, and they find climate sensitivities in the same range as those reported in the first National Academy of Sciences report on anthropogenic climate change in 1979”
I doubt that Chris understands what a sensitivity analysis is and what it’s limitations are, either.
According to Steve McIntyre, in that same Emanuel statement to Congress, Emanuel made untrue statements about “hide the decline” – see ClimateAudit – http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/31/disinformation-from-kerry-emanuel/
I saw the video of Chris and couldn’t tell what his background is. Gut instinct, from his tone and rather vacuous delivery, told me that he must be some kind of journalist, but from the video I thought I heard “night science” fellow from m.i.t. What the hell is “night science”? I went to m.i.t. and I never heard of such a thing. Then I looked it up — “Knight Science Journalism Fellow.” Oh, that explains he is, a journalist. In the general purvue of the field, it’s always the people who have the least capability to actually do science who have the strongest, most inapprpropraitely sanctimonious and wrong-headed opinions about it. It’s painful reading magazines like Scientific American and Discover these days. You can alays tell the articles written by journalists from the ones written by real scientists. If it’s overly simplified, ignores important qualifictations on results, and is seemingly chosen for some rather lame political purpose rather than general scientific interest, it’s written by a journalist. The quality of those magazines has been on a downward trajectory for at least a decade and a half. I let my subscriptions lapse years ago. Every onc ein a while I try them out again only to be sorely disappointed. If they would only permit those guys to copy edit and correct grammar which is about what they are good for, those magazines might be half decent.
Re: his video. Why the eff should the public look to the MEDIA of all places for information on science? Learn about science from a bunch of humanities specialists? What in tarnation?….
Simplified Back of the Envelope Calculations
Assume doubling CO2 concentration will raise global temps from 3 to 8 degrees C
Then, if the CO2 concentration doubles the global temp will raise 5.5 degress +/- 2.5 degrees C
Hectoring: to intimidate or harass by bluster or personal pressure
Knowing as I do that one of the key tactics that the left uses to push their agenda is to always accuse the other side of doing what they themselves are actually doing; every time the left makes an accusation I am immediately suspicious. Chris Mooney accuses “Nullius in Verba” of hectoring when all he did was to ask a very simple and straightforward question. Most observers of Mooney’s reply would say, “What, are you kidding me? How can that possibly be hectoring?” But Mooney is just using the Saul Alinsky like tactics he has been taught by other members of the left. However since I know the playbook of the left then I can deduce that the left uses “hectoring” to achieve their political agenda, and as I reflect on the “debate” about AGW I can see that is exactly what the left is doing. Remember that every time the left makes an accusation, especially one that makes you scratch you head and say “what?” you can be sure that the left is doing that exact thing.
Help requested: I have updated Chris Mooney’s wikipedia entry to include a Controversy section detailing this incident. Any improvements would be much appreciated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Mooney_%28journalist%29
MJDrabik says:
June 15, 2011 at 12:21 pm
gone – as if it never happened.
Consistent aren’t they. Well, some word beginning with c anyway.
Many excellent comments on this thread, and I’m only partway through them…. but defaulting to a quick easy reply for me that came to mind when reading:
In grad school when writing my thesis I confess to one little bit of harmless fun general ‘revenge’ that I was just unable to resist – in laying out a sequence of equations that wasn’t simple (not horribly difficult either, but still, not simple), I omitted one chunk consisting of a good number of steps, jumping from directly from one step to the next by inserting only the ubiquitous (in academia/textbooks etc) and all too often horribly frustrating phrase “thus it is intuitively obvious that….” Not one prof on my board, including the dean, mentioned it. I got a good giggle tho – evil and wicked of me, I know! {VBG} Heck, maybe the prof’s didn’t call me on it because they figured a touch of ‘turn about is fair play’ was ok and got a little giggle out of it too, who knows. Of course, being the boy scout that I am (figuratively speaking), had it been a real textbook or somewhere that it mattered, I’d’ve been unable to inflict that one on other poor souls – at least not without inserting several more of the intermediate steps to help ’em out a little!
LarryT’s math prof who actually came back to class with the 5 pages to actually TEACH his students, rather than just skipping over it and continuing as all too many would, gets 5 gold stars. We certainly need more like that in our universities!!
As to the “enlightenment ethic” – while I would dearly love to see more solid science used to base policy, anyone who believes that just having PhD’s and allowing those so ‘enlightened’ to reign over all will create a ‘better society’ really ought to watch the series “Firefly” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303461/ all the way through to the end, including the follow-on movie “Serenity.” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/ Just be sure to watch it in the order originally intended (as on the DVD’s) and NOT according to the original air dates.
Or heck, be sure to watch it if you just like Sci-Fi or Space Westerns – it was a great/fun series canceled far far too soon, and it speaks very very clearly on just how ‘enlightened’ things can be if left in the hands of folks of Mooney’s ilk. Right now I believe it’s something like 5th highest drama TV series ever with >1000 votes, above even shows like The Soprano’s, even tho Firefly only had 14 episodes and the one movie (the network did everything possible to ‘kill’ it, airing the series out of order with time gaps between episodes, etc). Current rating from over 45,600+ folks is 9.4 (out of 10 max).
Or heck, wrt the ‘enlightenment ethic’ Mooney apparently needs to study a bit of our own history here on Earth, beginning with Eugenics and Hitler. What really gets me is just how much I’d apply some of Mooney’s own statements wrt to skeptics and Republicans etc. to Mooney’s OWN beliefs – its as if in accusing others he’s clearly describing himself instead. Something that seems far far too prevalent within the “AGW warmist/believers” camp. Sigh.
Mooney doesn’t want to think about the reason no instrument on earth can show any sign of A.N.Y.
Greenhouse
Gas
Effect
At ALL. He’s STUPIFIED at how the optical telescopy and infra-red telescopy fields have had YEARS to come out SCREAMING BLOODY MURDER about all the ADDED HEAT DISTORTION from all the HEAT in the atmosphere making OPTICAL TELESCOPY MORE DIFFICULT even with ASSEMBLIES to FLEX the MIRRORS to OFFSET the EFFECT called ATMOSPHERIC SCINTILLATION: the STARS twinkling over his ill-educated head.
Not a word.
For SCORES of years.
The INFRA RED telescopy field: SCREAMING BLOODY MURDER about the G.H.G. EFFECT … and all that RISING I.R. that’s -oh I’m sorry FALLING – a RISING quantity of I.R. FALLING on their instruments, making the viewing nearly impossible, or substantially or even SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult?
oH, DARNIT JIM, THIS ONE’s DEAD, TOO! the AMOUNT of I.R. COMING DOWN has D.E.C.R.E.A.S.E.D.
Aw man… there HAS to be a GREENHOUSE GAS EFFECT, you can SEE it in the DISTORTION GROWING in ALLLLL those night time pictures of parts of the sky through the ATMOSPHERE!
Oh that’s right,
LoL @ur momisugly any moron who believes there’s a G.H.G. EFFECT of A.N.Y. K.I.N.D:
but that MICROSCOPES PEERING THRU the atmosphere CAN’T DETECT A.N.Y. measurable difference in the ATMOSPHERE’S BEHAVIOR except a – WHAAAAAT??? a REDUCTION of I.R. FROM ABOVE???
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
The miles deep, turbulent, heat conductive, compressed fluid FRIGID IMMERSION BATH that HEATED the WARM ROCK dropped into it, has anOTHER MAGICAL EFFECT:
HEAT: on gas – defined by MOTION – that CREATES NO ADDITIONAL MOTION of the GAS it’s ON, rendering even TELESCOPY UNABLE to TRACK that MAGICAL
MYSTERIOUSLY
MISSING
G.H.G. Effect.
And all that HEAT? .
That alcoholic Mooney sits out under the stars at night STUNNED at the MAGICAL HEAT in the ATMOSPHERE that CAN’T EVEN BE PICKED UP using a TELESCOPE multiplying distortion THOUSANDS of TIMES,
NOR, even an INFRA-RED TELESCOPE.
NOPE: CAIN’T BE DUN.
Mooney’s the kind of vapid intellectual invalid who thinks WIKIPEDIA is real sients.
LoL.. You’ve just gotta laugh…
Wow I see I deserve to be snipped, I forgot it’s improper to call a posing fake, a posing fake, and point out the stars twinkling over his head prove he’s one.
If he’s not a posing fake, WHY AREN’T THOSE STARS TWINKLING MORE WITH PASSING DECADES,
AND WHY ISN’T THERE MORE I.R. COMING DOWN from the SKY where the CO2 EMMISSIONS, and the ACTUAL LEVELS, have been RAGING ?
Why is there LESS if there is A.N.Y. KIND of G.H.G. Effect at ALL?
NONE of them can answer that because the ANSWER’S AS EASY as GETTING the RECORDS of the ASSEMBLIES which FLEX MIRRORS on TELESCOPES to OFFSET the HEAT DISTORTION that is MANDATORY with existence of HEAT,
in atmospheric GAS.
_Jim says:
June 14, 2011 at 11:42 am
Latitude says June 14, 2011 at 8:08 am:
“But Dave, wouldn’t you say that it’s a lot harder for the earth to stay warm………”
Dave Springer says on June 14, 2011 at 9:48 am:
“Demonstrably not. Ice ages would the norm instead of the exception. This is where CO2 takes on its most important climate regulating job. ”
_Jim replies: “Pinning hopes on a trace gas? Di-hydrogen monoxide, by many accounts, would seem to be the real workhorse;”
I agree and you’d have known that I agree if you actually read what I wrote. Go back and find where I said that CO2 doesn’t have a large role so long as the surface of the ocean is mostly free of ice. The water cycle gets shut down when the surface is covered by ice and air temperature is sub-freezing. Antarctica is the dryest place on the earth with interior getting 2″ annually. The Sahara desert gets 3″. Even water vapor as a GHG is not significant over the ocean because the ocean doesn’t absorb downwelling infrared which is the mode of operation for the greenhouse effect. When downwelling infrared hits the ocean surface it is absorbed in the first few microns where it only serves to raise the evaporation rate. The absorbed energy is then carried aloft in latent heat of vaporization not become sensible heat again until the vapor condenses. The GHG effect is significant only over solid surfaces. The first 30 meters of liquid ocean does far more than greenhouse gases. Almost all incident energy from sunlight is absorbed by the ocean and serves to warm the water. The energy cannot escape by the same mechanism (radiative) because water is nearly impervious to infrared. So the energy absorbed at depth as sunlight must make its way to the surface by convection and conduction and even then only about 20% escapes radiatively, 10% conductively, and a whopping 70% by evaporation. Liquid water is like water vapor on steroids when it comes to greenhouse effect.
Infrared absorption by snow is different than water. It acts more like a land surface and in particular it gets dark on top as it ages from accumulation of soot. Soot floats so even if there’s a partial melt it just concentrates the soot on top. Soot absorbs downwelling infrared quite well. Anyone who’s ever seen snowdrifts alongside a highway with lots of 18 wheelers going by melt in the spring knows they can get almost black on top.