Chris Horner of the American Tradition Institute writes in with this:
So the American Association for the Advancement of Science, thoroughly rattled by the American Tradition Institute’s FOIA requests of UVa and NASA — and even more so by the litigation forced by the institutions’ respective stonewalling — issued a board statement comparing FOIA requests of climate scientists with death threats. Really.
Naturally this caught the eye of the New York Times, which had a young lady contact us for comment. Right off the bat it was clear she, too, had been rattled by the horrors of our outrageous efforts to …see certain records the taxpayer has paid for and which are expressly covered by transparency laws.
Her stance was sympathetic to AAS’s to the point of temper.
She first reaffirmed a fancy for the apparently absolute truth that a FOIA request for climate scientists’ records is indeed no different than death threats allegedly made in Australia against scientists — sadly, if that’s true, they are now treated to what ‘skeptics’ have experienced for years, as I have detailed.
Well, actually, her disinterest in Greenpeace having created this little cottage practice indicated that this is true only for certain climate scientists’ records. Not the ones whose records Greenpeace is asking her for…that’s just transparency, good-government type stuff.
She continued by wondering, as such, do we condone death threats (really?) and, if not, why would we then also issue a FOIA?
Why that is particularly amusing, as opposed to sad, is that she was shocked by my assertion that Big Science/Big Academia’s objection to having laws that obviously cover their own actually applied to their own was of a part with Hollywood objecting to laws being applied to Roman Polanski. Apparently, by saying this, I was accusing Michael Mann of some heinous crime. Or something.
So see the below as I sent to her and, given the above, I expect you will not see in the story. Surely because it will be too busy explaining the tyranny of Greenpeace broadly filing similar requests. ATI’s statement is here.
—–Original Message—–From: chornerlaw@aol.com
To: fostej@nytimes.com
Sent: Wed, Jun 29, 2011 1:14 pm
Subject: AAAS release citing ATI transparency efforts
Dear Joanna,I’m told you called ATI for comment. Below is my response per an earlier inquiry.Best,Christopher C. Horner Senior Fellow Competitive Enterprise Institute 1899 L St, NW 12th Floor Washington, DC, 20036 +1.202.331.2260 (O)…Several points:I noticed no relation between our initiative and the Board’s rhetoric until they mentioned us somewhat incongruously.The notion that application of laws expressly covering academics [is] an ‘attack’ on academics is substantively identical to Hollywood apologists calling application of other laws to Roman Polanski an attack on Polanski. They rather lost the plot somewhere along the way.The failure to mention the group that invented this series of requests, Greenpeace, informs a conclusion that this attempt at outrage is selective, and therefore either feigned or hypocritical. This is also new; their problem is quite plainly with the law(s), but it is a problem they have, over the decades of transparency and ethics laws applying to scientists subsisting on taxpayer revenue, heretofore forgotten to mention.Opposition to such laws applying to them is rather shocking. But then, maybe not so much when you also note their failure to comment on scientists being outed as advocating the flaunting of transparency laws.Finally, AAUP’s code of professional ethics indicates that efforts to manipulate the peer review process are impermissible. Given the overlap and for other reasons we assume this is something AAAS agrees with or at minimum accepts. But this, too, is insincere if such behavior is permissible — or at least, where just cause indicates further inquiry is warranted, it is to be ignored — if the party at issue is one who for various reasons the AAAS or AAUP et al. elevate or find sympathetic. In Mann’s case, if our review of his documents which belong to the taxpayer also happen to exonerate him from the suspicions that have arisen, we will be the first to do so.
==============================================================
Below is the ATI statement – Anthony
==============================================================
Statement from American Tradition Institute Environmental Law Center in Response to American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Misleading Accusations Against ATI Today
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Contacts:
Christopher Horner, director of litigation, chris.horner@atinstitute.org
Paul Chesser, executive director, paul.chesser@atinstitute.org
Today the board of directors for the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a statement and press release that denounced “personal attacks,” “harassment,” “death threats,” and “legal challenges” toward climate scientists. AAAS’s press release specifically cited actions taken by American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center in its efforts to obtain records of Climategate scientist Dr. Michael Mann from the University of Virginia, and its efforts to obtain outside employment records of climate activist Dr. James Hansen from the National Aeronautical and Space Administration(NASA).
AAAS wrote, in part,
“we are concerned that establishing a practice of aggressive inquiry into the professional histories of scientists whose findings may bear on policy in ways that some find unpalatable could well have a chilling effect on the willingness of scientists to conduct research that intersects with policy-relevant scientific questions.”
Response to AAAS from ATI Environmental Law Center director of litigation Christopher Horner:
“I noticed no relation between our initiative and the AAAS Board’s rhetoric until they mentioned us somewhat incongruously.
“The notion that application of laws that expressly cover academics is an ‘attack’ on them is substantively identical to Hollywood apologists who call application of other laws to Roman Polanski an attack on Polanski. They lost the plot somewhere along the way.
“AAAS’s failure to mention the group that invented this series of requests, Greenpeace, informs our conclusion that this outrage is selective, and is therefore either feigned or hypocritical. Their problem is plainly with the laws, but it is a problem they have had over the decades: That transparency and ethics laws also apply to scientists who subsist on taxpayer revenue. This they also forgot to mention.
“Finally, the American Association of University Professors’ code of professional ethics indicates that efforts to manipulate the peer review process are impermissible. Given the overlap, and for other reasons, we assume AAAS agrees with these principles or at a minimum accepts them. But this, too, is insincere if such behavior is permitted or ignored where just cause indicates further inquiry is warranted, as long as the parties at issue are those whose views the AAAS or AAUP sympathize with. In Mann’s case, if our review of his documents which belong to the taxpayer also happen to exonerate him from the suspicions that have arisen, we will be the first to do so.”
For an interview with Christopher Horner, email chris.horner@atinstitute.org or paul.chesser@atinstitute.org or call (202)670-2680.
================================================================
Reaction is now coming in. Alana Goodman of Commentray Magazine writes in a piece titled
Contentions – Climate Change Skepticism Now Considered ‘Harassment’?
…
Of course, what the AAAS calls “personal information” actually appears to be public data. The group’s statement comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed against NASA by the conservative American Traditional Institute earlier this month, which is trying to force the agency to release information about scientist James Hansen.
And after years of watching climate change advocates demonizing global warming skeptics, it’s hard to have any sympathy for the AAAS on this issue. Not to mention, previously leaked emails have shown climate change scientists behaving in ways abusive to the public trust. Skeptics should absolutely work to expose any potential corruption in the global warming advocacy community — and the fact AAAS is so terrified of legal challenges is good reason to believe these skeptics might be onto something.
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Smokey wrote;
> Not one single GCM predicted the flat to declining temperatures over the past decade.
So?
Again, the question is, how accurate does a climate model need to be? Will it matter, in 50 years, that the first decade of the 2000s saw flat temperatures? That decade was already 0.2 C warmer than the previous decade. All of this isn’t about the warmth of a particular decade, whether it was flat or not — it’s that what the world will look like in 50-100-150 years. No one today cares about the decade 1900-1910, given what has happened since. No one in the future will care much about this decade.
This is all about the long-term consequences of our increasing CO2 emissions.
Alarmist Appell once again fails to produce any evidence, per the scientific method, showing that CO2 is a problem. The entire “carbon” scare is based on pseudo-science, fueled by government grant money. It is no more scientific than Scientology. But it satisfies deluded cranks like Appell, who cling to unscientific juju just like Harold Camping’s true believers.
David Appell says:
July 2, 2011 at 7:31 pm
“kim wrote:
> But show me the evidence that anthropogenic climate change has killed anyone.
A paper in Nature attributes 166,000 deaths worldwide in 2000 to climate
change:
Patz, J. A., Campbell-Lendrum, D., Holloway, T., Foley, J.A. (2005). “Impact of regional
climate change on human health,” Nature 438: 310-317”
===============================================================
I chased down the abstract and there seem to be too many “ifs” and “projections” to qualify as evidence of massive deaths unequivocably casued by anthropgenic influence on climate.
What else have ya’ got?
Smokey wrote:
Alarmist Appell once again fails to produce any evidence, per the scientific method, showing that CO2 is a problem.
The evidence is copious throughout the climate science literature and summarized in great depth in the IPCC 4AR. Have you read the 4AR? (Be honest.) Are you even capable of reading it?
H.R. wrote:
> I chased down the abstract
So you didn’t read the paper then? Just the abstract. So from one highly condensed paragraph your drew your conclusions, without even bothering to read the actual paper, consider the methods and data, and follow up with their references. That’s what you’re telling me?
And from just that you dismiss the entire study?
It takes days and (really) weeks to properly read and understand a scientific paper, especially one of this variety. You spent two minutes reading the abstract and yet think you know better than experts who spent months writing it.
Clearly you are an unserious person who is not interested in real discussion of the issues. Frankly, your opinion does not matter — you have not earned one.
Smokey wrote:
> Appell. like the rest of the mendacious purveyors of the climate alarmist scare,
> pretend that a tiny trace gas controls the climate.
You do not understand the science. No one says that CO2 solely “controls” the climate. They do say that a mere 275 ppm of it in the atmosphere accounts for about a 7 K greenhouse effect. And that another 35% of this “trace gas” has about a 1 K effect on the global average. And especially that doubling the amount of this trace gas has a ~ 3 K effect on globally average temperatures.
If 275 ppm CO2 has a 7 K greenhouse effect (this is easily calculated and easily measured), then why shouldn’t a doubling of that amount cause further warming, even with (as first-order theory predicts) a logarithmic dependence — enough to potentially be of concern and warrant further detailed investigation?
H.R. asks Appell “What else have ya’ got?”
Appell has only his true belief system, which takes the place of rational thought. Most folks would look at the fact that CO2 has been rising steadily, and that the planet’s temperature has been flat to declining over the past decade and more, and rightly conclude that CO2 has little effect.
Empirical evidence shows conclusively that the effect of CO2 is negligible, therefore it can be disregarded for all practical purposes. But “carbon” is the demon in the religious cult of CAGW true believers, and it must be exorcised no matter what the cost to society.
From David Appell on July 2, 2011 at 7:07 pm:
Bold added:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2554.1?journalCode=clim
Eby, M., K. Zickfeld, A. Montenegro, D. Archer, K. J. Meissner, A. J. Weaver, 2009: Lifetime of Anthropogenic Climate Change: Millennial Time Scales of Potential CO2 and Surface Temperature Perturbations. J. Climate, 22, 2501–2511.
From the abstract:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.full
Susan Solomon, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Reto Knutti and Pierre Friedlingstein: Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions. PNAS, February 10, 2009, vol. 106 no. 6, 1704-1709.
From the abstract:
Peer-reviewed Climate Science™ is warning us that the elevated temperatures resulting from anthropogenic CO2 emissions will persist for a millennium to much longer. Thus it is more than reasonable to expect a model to be able to accurately forecast the temperature for at least fifty years, for a start. Feel free to come back and inform us when a modern model has passed that validation test. Hindcasting by a “tweaked” model doesn’t count, nor does “updating” as time goes by, it has to be able to say what the temperature will be at a future time and it must be that temperature at that time.
I only chose one number, James Sexton provided one, the rest came from you. You were obviously referring to surface air temperatures as you were talking about Hansen’s temperature prediction, which would be a global average number. On the GISTEMP data page it says of the “Combined Land-Surface Air and Sea-Surface Water Temperature Anomalies (Land-Ocean Temperature Index, LOTI)”:
Thus for comparison to the numbers you provided, such a combined land-sea surface temperature number is desired, as ultimately trends are being discussed. But such does not appear to be available on the GISTEMP site as an absolute value. I searched for such, and NOAA had a 20th century average value, which I presented.
And your math is still wrong.
The models say that if the CO2 emissions are this then at this time the temperature will be this amount. No socioeconomic factors apply.
Really? What is the definition of projection in this context?
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:
4. A prediction or an estimate of something in the future, based on present data or trends.
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged:
6. a prediction based on known evidence and observations
Thus a projection is a prediction in this context, unless you insist to the point of pedantry that the “or” of the first definition is a logical OR and a model “projection” is merely an “estimate of something in the future.” That would provide for a wonderful argument for an investment company to make in response to a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry, “Our models are not providing predictions of future performance for our clients, they are only providing estimates of future performance.”
A very lousy way, as only half of the foretold increase materialized. With his work foretelling temperatures for many decades into the future, not being able to get it right for even two decades is rather awful. If we had immediately acted on the resulting recommendations for emissions reductions, when the current cool streak happened naturally it would have been cited as proof of the model’s predictive ability. Given the demonstrated inaccuracy of those 1988 prognostications and the high probability of a natural change appearing to be a validation, any model attempting such a prophesy must pass a high standard for accuracy which includes validation over a long period. Again, let us know when one has done that.
David Appell says:
July 2, 2011 at 9:26 pm
You do not understand the science. No one says that CO2 solely “controls” the climate. They do say that a mere 275 ppm of it in the atmosphere accounts for about a 7 K greenhouse effect. And that another 35% of this “trace gas” has about a 1 K effect on the global average. And especially that doubling the amount of this trace gas has a ~ 3 K effect on globally average temperatures.
Looks like you have muddled together the effect of CO2 and the effect of the feedback. After saying, “You do not understand the science.”
Smokey says:
July 2, 2011 at 9:00 pm
“Alarmist Appell once again fails to produce any evidence, per the scientific method, showing that CO2 is a problem. The entire “carbon” scare is based on pseudo-science, fueled by government grant money. It is no more scientific than Scientology. But it satisfies deluded cranks like Appell, who cling to unscientific juju just like Harold Camping’s true believers.”
David Appell produced a mountain of evidence: “The evidence is copious throughout the climate science literature and summarized in great depth in the IPCC 4AR.”
The evidence is out there but, for one reason or another, you discount it all. You have strange standards of evidence if you think all of mainstream science can be “debunked” by a couple of out of context graphs. I would change my mind if I saw some serious science that proposed an alternative explanation for observations, but cherry-picked graphs, blog posts and papers that simply criticise research won’t cut it.
David Falkner wrote:
Looks like you have muddled together the effect of CO2 and the effect of the feedback.
I didn’t muddle anything. Feedbacks happen. Excluding them when making a change like 2xCO2 would be incomplete and misleading.
David Falkner wrote:
Looks like you have muddled together the effect of CO2 and the effect of the feedback.
Not including feedbacks would be akin to calculating the future value of an investment without considering that interest earned also itself earns interest. Over time that makes a substantial difference, and without it your calculation would give the wrong answer.
kadaka wrote:
Thus it is more than reasonable to expect a model to be able to accurately forecast the temperature for at least fifty years, for a start.
What do you mean by “accurate?”
Also, why 50?
kadaka wrote:
Thus it is more than reasonable to expect a model to be able to accurately forecast the temperature for at least fifty years, for a start.
Since no one can “accurately” predict the socioeconomic and energetic future of the world, a climate model will never have “accurate” data to work with. This is why the results of climate models are called “projections” and not “predictions.”
Given this, please tell me again how “accurate” a climate model’s projections have to be. How “accurate” must its hindcasting be? What about the element of chaos present in all complex nonlinear mathematical systems? It can never be eliminated, which is why ensemble averages are presented.
How does anyone make a policy decision about energy production, etc. in light of these inherent limitations in any climate model’s ability to predict the future climate?
Yes, but blindly assuming they will happen is also misleading. There is quite a lag issue in paleo records. Just curious, do you know what the ± is for the global average temperature quoted in the link up thread by NOAA?
…the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F)…
I mean, is the 20th century average 14.8°C ± 0? ± 10?
Ok, not sure why you took two posts to respond and say the same thing, but since you are going with an analogy about interest, I will say that if you are going to state that you are a scientist, it is really up to you to realize that you account for the principal in one account and the interest in another. You certainly don’t squeeze them in together and not disclose it. Now, you can discount your investments to present value if you are locked into an interest rate, but if you have a variable interest rate that swings the payouts (in real dollars) up to 50% of the value of the principal on a daily basis, there isn’t really any point in trying. Instead, you take the value of the investment and run with it. Capiche?
kadaka wrote:
The models say that if the CO2 emissions are this then at this time the temperature will be this amount.
How well did the CO2 function of time Hansen assumed compare to the actual record of CO2? What about other GHGs? Methane level did some funny things in the first decade of the 2000s, perhaps because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. What about other factors like land use changes? Volcanoes? Hansen assumed a few, but inevitably they come at different times and in different intensities. What about solar irradiance variations? What physical processes did Hansen have to leave out of his model that might have made a difference? The effect of contrails? Cow burps? Would his results have been different if his model grid resolution was 110 km as in the 4AR instead of Hansen’s 8 deg x 10 deg horizontal resolution? If more ocean and atmospheric levels were added? If the time steps were smaller?
There’s a lot more to it than just assuming some time function for CO2 emissions.
David Falkner wrote:
Yes, but blindly assuming they will happen is also misleading.
No one “blindly” assumes feedbacks happen. They are a result of the physics. People can, and do, argue about the details of the physics, but feedbacks are not put into models ad hoc.
David Falkner wrote:
do you know what the ± is for the global average temperature quoted in the link up thread by NOAA? … I mean, is the 20th century average 14.8°C ± 0? ± 10?
I don’t know off the top of my head, but I would guess it’s about ± 0.1 if they give the number to one digit after the decimal point. In any case, isn’t this why results for temperature anomalies are given and not absolute temperatures? Applications might need to know the absolute temperature and not just the anomaly, but that’s going to vary locally, of course (as, too, does the anomaly).
@David Appell says:
July 2, 2011 at 9:20 pm
“H.R. wrote:
> I chased down the abstract
So you didn’t read the paper then? Just the abstract. So from one highly condensed paragraph your drew your conclusions, without even bothering to read the actual paper, consider the methods and data, and follow up with their references. That’s what you’re telling me?
And from just that you dismiss the entire study? […]”
======================================================
Fair enough, so I chased down tha paper and a brief excerpt from the opening (which follows below), and as near as I can make out, you didn’t read the paper either. (see bolded.) My question still stands; what else have ya’ got?
Excerpt
“Uncertainty remains in attributing the expansion or resurgence
of diseases to climate change, owing to lack of long-term, high-quality data sets as well as the large influence of socio-economic factors and changes in immunity and drug resistance. Here we review the growing evidence that climate–health relationships pose increasing health risks under future projections of climate change and that the
warming trend over recent decades has already contributed to increased morbidity and mortality in many regions of the world. Potentially vulnerable regions include the temperate latitudes, which are projected to warm disproportionately, the regions around the Pacific and Indian oceans that are currently subjected to large rainfall variability due to the El Nin˜o/Southern Oscillation sub-Saharan Africa and sprawling cities where the urban heat island effect could intensify extreme climatic events. […]”
Again, too many maybe, could might, based on projections, etc. David, you chose poorly to back your case.
Where is the evidence? Show me the bodies of those actually killed by climate change and not killed by weather. What else have ya’ got?
David Appell says:
July 3, 2011 at 9:54 pm
I don’t know off the top of my head, but I would guess it’s about ± 0.1 if they give the number to one digit after the decimal point. In any case, isn’t this why results for temperature anomalies are given and not absolute temperatures? Applications might need to know the absolute temperature and not just the anomaly, but that’s going to vary locally, of course (as, too, does the anomaly).
You would guess? 0.1 doesn’t seem very reasonable. Especially given the siting issues detailed here.
David Falkner wrote:
You would guess? 0.1 doesn’t seem very reasonable.
Yes, I guessed. I don’t know, and I’m not especially interested right now. You asked the question–why don’t you go look it out yourself? Then explain why you think it matters.
k.d. wrote:
Again, too many maybe, could might, based on projections, etc. David, you chose poorly to back your case.
Yes, science, especially this kind, is full of uncertainties. And scientists are very honest about what those uncertainties are, hence the conservative language in the way they write papers. Very few things in science are known without any uncertainty. They stated their evidence and methods, they stated their results, and they stated their uncertainty. Until you can do better it is feckless to dismiss it completely because there are uncertainties–uncertainties cut both ways, and for all you know the situation could be worse than they claim as likely as better.
David Falkner wrote:
Instead, you take the value of the investment and run with it.
It’s an a-n-a-l-o-g-y. To me it makes no sense to talk about the effects of doubling CO2 without including the effect of the secondary effects created. It seems to come down to semantics and I’m not interested in quibbling about that.
Smokey wrote:
Most folks would look at the fact that CO2 has been rising steadily, and that the planet’s temperature has been flat to declining over the past decade and more, and rightly conclude that CO2 has little effect.
Most people might, but climate scientists don’t. They are well aware that many factors determine climate. They’ve never said or implied that temperature increases monotonically with CO2 level. There are other factors that have been notable in recent years — a slight decline in solar irradiance, phase changes in ocean cycles (esp the NAO), etc. The concerns about CO2 are for the long-term — the coming decades, 2050, 2100, etc. — not the last 5 years.
You are not accurately portraying the science.
REPLY: Oh puhleeze. Don’t whine about accuracy when you put up rubbish like this, then don’t have the nads to respond to the question.
We are still waiting for you to point out the valid death threats. Sorry, the repackaged ones from 5 years ago don’t count.
Since you’ve been beating us up over this, but have not responded to the questions, you need to show a list of current credible death threats or post an apology. This is required for you to continue to comment here Mr. Appell. Put up or shut up time. – Anthony Watts