Like what Judith Curry saw recently at NCAR’s seminar, he seems to think it is all about communication.
Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals, whereas “scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don’t have the wherewithal to do it.”
Yet sceptics are the ones without any MSM support. So where do they get this idea? Full story here
A few things come to mind that he didn’t cover as other possible reasons skeptics are winning:
1. We don’t hide behind FOIA laws, then circumvent them when we lose. If you’d shared the data when asked, Climategate would never have happened.
2. We don’t rewrite history, either by deleting>morphing commentary like Skepicalscience does, or by creating questionable paleostatistical methods to enable pretending the trees tell us last 900 years were flat without any possible natural variance.
3. We don’t call people on the other side of the debate ugly denigrating names like deniers and flat earthers.
4. We don’t keep trying to link weather patterns/weather events to climate in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Burning issue: Hansen’s evidence that the world is hotting up
Moscow, August 2010
Russia experienced its hottest-ever summer last year – for weeks, a large portion of European Russia was more than 7 °C (12.6 °F) warmer than normal, and a new national record was set of 44 °C (111 °F). Raging forest fires filled Moscow with smoke, forcing the cancellation of air services and obliging people to don face masks.
Jim, get a clue, the Moscow heat wave had NOTHING TO DO with global warming. It was a blocking high weather pattern. NOAA’s own work concludes this:
NOAA finds”climate change” blameless in 2010 Russian heat wave
We mentioned this previously on WUWT, now it is officially peer reviewed and accepted.
NOAA: Natural Variability Main Culprit of Deadly Russian Heat Wave That Killed Thousands
Source here
Daily Moscow temperature record from November 1 2009 to October 31 2010. Red and blue shaded areas represent departures from the long-term average (smooth curve) in Moscow. Temperatures significantly above the long-term average scorched Moscow for much of July and August. NOAA credit. – click to enlargeThe deadly Russian heat wave of 2010 was due to a natural atmospheric phenomenon often associated with weather extremes, according to a new NOAA study. And while the scientists could not attribute the intensity of this particular heat wave to climate change, they found that extreme heat waves are likely to become increasingly frequent in the region in coming decades.
So Jim, when you try to tell us that the 2010 Russian heat wave was caused by global warming, people who know better have no choice but to call post normal science BS on you.
h/t to Kevin Hearle
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
@JJThoms says: October 11, 2011 at 9:39 am
Can you wait until the next big oil check comes in?
JJThoms says:
October 11, 2011 at 9:39 am
You assume that the laws in question are used for abuse only. McIntyre and others who filed FOI requests did so only after making polite and reasonable requests for data. After nearly a decade, the data has not arrived. There was no abuse of the laws by McIntyre or the other major sceptics who filed them.
Sometimes I think we don’t see the forest for the trees. Like all logical people we take a subject and dissect it to the point that we forget what we were actually looking at in the first place.
Right about the time Mann inserted himself into the ATI Hockey Stick Lawsuit there has been a snowball of propaganda being spewed from MSM. Easily 20 to 1 in favor of the CAGW crowd. We have editors falling on the sword, Hansen getting arrested, and of course the bizarre conference to justify Mann’s investigation. Any of this on its own would be trivial but wave after wave of studies being released and the actions of the “Team” at this moment in time suggest some concerted effort to regain the moral high ground.
All of these would indicate to me a circling of the wagons or propping up of the troops for what they see as an imminent show down. What is it that they know that we do not?
Forecasted weather for the next couple of years will not be in their favor?
ClimateGate 2.0 after the release of Mann’s data?
Inquires into the IPCC data that the EPA used in error to support the agenda?
Some unknown piece of data that is about to be released that once and for all ends the debate?
There is something that has sent them in a tizzy and I don’t think it’s so much the science that is being released to refute the idea. They have a machine in place to whitewash / discredit any of this and it has worked well for them for 20 years.
I have not seen what I think will be the true beginning of the end for this Global Hoax. When the ship does start to sink we will see the rats jumping.
fredb says:
October 11, 2011 at 6:55 am
Richard M questions my comment on whether the skeptics in the USA matter, and notes “Did he miss out on the positions of China, Canada and India? How about Russia and Brazil?”
Richard: I think you’re conflating strategic positioning for advantage in the political game of climate negotiations…..
___________________________________
Their news media is showing articles about global cooling.
There is this article from Pravda (Russian propaganda rag)
Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age, 11 Jan 08
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-earth_ice_age-0
The Chinese Government “allowed” this research
Chinese scientists, are predicting Global Cooling: Zhen-Shan, L. and Xian, S. 2007. Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years.
Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics 95: 115-121. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/clim/reject/rejectex/132.html
The Times of India: Global warming or global cooling?
“Almost as soon as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming came into effect on February 15, Kashmir suffered the highest snowfall in three decades with over 150 killed, and Mumbai recorded the lowest temperature in 40 years…..
In the media, disaster is news, and its absence is not. This principle has been exploited so skillfully by ecological scare-mongers that it is now regarded as politically incorrect, even unscientific, to denounce global warming hysteria as unproven speculation.
Meteorologists are a standing joke for getting predictions wrong even a few days ahead. The same jokers are being taken seriously when they use computer models to predict the weather 100 years hence…..” http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2005-02-27/all-that-matters/27852441_1_global-warming-global-cooling-computer-models
Daily News & Analysis, India: Global warming may become global cooling this century
“…A leading analyst has claimed that global warming is set to become global cooling this century, with temperatures falling by about 0.5 degree Celsius by the year 2050.
According to a report in Daily Express, the analyst in question is Professor Michael Beenstock from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who said that theories of climate change are wrong.
He warned that climatologists have misused statistics, leading them to the mistaken conclusion global warming is evidence of the greenhouse effect…..” http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_global-warming-may-become-global-cooling-this-century_1345011
fredb says:
“When one perceives individual positions or nation’s responses in either-or terms, or only as being on one or other side in a perceived disagreement, then one is closing the door on developing reasoned debate.”
I would agree on the validity of this statement, if the nations (note the plural) involved were on the same playing field. When it comes to climate change, though, the playing field resembles a gopher-pocked fairway. Although the potential of exchanged monies is clearly what compels all countries to the negotiation table (let’s drop the pretense of “saving the planet” for the remainder of the post), the receipt and allocation of the same represent the impact craters on that playing field – and rightly so.
“The politically contaminated global strategic maneuvering is nuanced and complex, as is the climate systems response to forcing.”
One of those is inherently chaotic, while the other is oftentimes (deliberately) chaotic. I think your comparison, although quippy, falls flat.
“…[W]hen a nation positions itself on a foundation of stark absolutes, it loses the edge in the global game of chess.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but where has the USA adopted a “foundation of stark absolutes” vis-à-vis the climate change debate? Indeed, Hansen himself is employed and funded by the very same nation you accuse of taking a polarizing and “simple stance.” If anything, the climate change debate (yes, it still is a debate because that’s what the scientific method encourages) has been appropriately vigorous in the USA, while a majority of the developed world has elected to assuage its capital success and accompanying environmental guilt via the selling of carbon indulgences. Yet you appear to label such sales as an “edge” – interesting.
Al Gore invents internet
Jim Hansen invents AGW
Al Gore endorses and builds career on AGW
Internet skeptics destroy AGW
Marie says:
October 11, 2011 at 6:27 am (Edit) . . .
Yes that’s the worst of it, young minds being polluted.
My grand daughter was severely penalized for putting in an essay on why the AGW thingy is rubbish. Her argument was sound, her references numerous yet she was penalized, marked down severely, because of her position.
It does make me question how much we might have been “guided” in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. I am pro democracy, rule of law, market economy which makes me conservative and realistic in my eyes. If we had been taught AGW at school perhaps we would find fewer skeptics in our midst.
The skeptics are winning the war of public opinion because they are providing more plausible scientific arguments supported by current field evidence for their views and in terms that the public can understand and via a media that the public most often use ,namely the internet.
As Eddie Valiant would say, “what a Maroon!”, when science becomes more about winning than about finding the truth, all kinds of sophomoric shenanigans ensue. I’m at the point where, when some warmist tries to argue with me I just say that the existing data is so hopelessly taint that he might just save his breath.
Dr. Hansen:
Have you ever considered actually releasing the data? How about having a fact-based discussion of the issues?
He said: “They have been winning the argument for several years, even though the science has become clearer.”
==================================================
Tell me again what it’s called when you have two opposites going on in your head at the same time………….
————————–
If the word ‘argument’ in Hansen’s quote is meant in the sense of a discourse or debate, then there has been no real argument in public made by the IPCC supported ‘consensus’ scientists of ‘settled’ alarming AGW. They have simply posited their biased findings with an assumption of authority and did not argue/debate/discourse with skeptics. They rejected public open venue participation with skeptics; they hid behind the illusion of the IPCC sanction of authority.
There has been an increasingly significant level of arguments in open venues by the skeptics. The public sensed reasonable and comprehensive arguments in the skeptical positions in open venues. Word gets around fast. Surely, the MSM feeds vicariously off the open venue blogs. : )
If there had been, for the last 10+ years, frequent open venue argument/discourse/debate in public between alarming AGW science supporters and skeptics, then the trust in climate science would have been maintained at a credible level and the science would been improved.
It wasn’t communication failure, per se, for the IPCC supported science of alarming AGW, it was a virtual absence of the most critical communication at the heart of science . . . . the absence of interactive communication with the skeptics in public in open venues.
Why was there a lack of debate in public open venues? It seems the climategate emails show the tip of the iceberg that is the answer.
John
The problem is the truthfulness of the message and the messenger not the lack of a professional PR consultant to advise in packaging the message. The lack of warming in the last 12 years explained by:
1) Chinese coal emissions or
2) Volcanic eruptions in equatorial regions or
3) AGW heat is moving into the deep ocean or
4) Stupid deniers not listening to the message. 1+1 = 3 so says we all.
Hansen in his book compares Venus where the atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of Earth and the atmosphere is 98% CO2 to the earth where CO2 makes up 0.038% of the atmosphere. CO2 is 230,000 times on Venus than the earth. There is no explanation why Venus is compared to the earth.
Hansen might have explained, that in the geological past CO2 levels have been high when the planet was cold and low when the planet was warm. It appears on the earth, planetary cloud increases and decreases to regulate the planetary temperatures which can override the greenhouse effect of CO2. Hansen might have noted that CO2 greenhouse effect is logarithmic such that subsequent increases in CO2 has less and less effect. Roughly 60% of the warming due to doubling of CO2 should have occurred now. It has not which indicates the extreme AGW hypothesis is not correct. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 based will result in less than 1C warming with most of the warming occurring at high latitudes. The biosphere will expand due to the slight warming and increase atmospheric CO2 content.
Hansen notes the IPCC models predict a reduction in the magnitude of storms if the planet warms as most of the warming will occur at higher latitudes, which reduces the temperature differential. Hansen’s comment is the IPCC models are not accurate and what will happen is not predictable. Hansen might have used Gore’s scientific explanation, which is obviously anyone who watches television is aware the climate is changing and the cause is AGW.
http://www.amazon.com/Storms-My-Grandchildren-Catastrophe-Humanity/dp/1608192008
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
This is an example of IPCC communication that has gone awry.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
‘I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media.
All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.”
You can’t be just a bit pregnant.
[You need to categorically who you are.]
From the article: “… climate science itself is becoming ever clearer in showing that the earth is in increasing danger from rising temperatures”.
Does anyone have any idea what specifically Hansen could be referring to here?
A drastic change in tactics is called for. Lord Monckton has wanted to debate Gore for years. Perhaps Hansen should defend Gore’s book and the CAGW theory in a debate with Lord Monckton. Of course that will not happen. Many important facts that Lord Monckton made before climategate were confirmed by Phil Jones in the BBC interview on February 13, 2010.
kim says:
October 11, 2011 at 9:25 am
“Skeptics are winning because it is cooling. They’d be losing if it were warming.”
I would be less skeptical about the warming effect of CO2 if it were warming. Because that would indicate that the AGW theory describes reality correctly.
Keith Battye says:
October 11, 2011 at 10:39 am
“My grand daughter was severely penalized for putting in an essay on why the AGW thingy is rubbish. ”
Same old, same old.
I remember writing 2 essays about Mao back at college in the mid seventies. One very positive. Got an A. Then one were I pointed out that he was a mass murderer, and some other things. Got a C. That teacher generation are now the bosses in the different departments in government. You just cant get rid of them until they retire.
Gail Combs says:
October 11, 2011 at 10:29 am
“According to a report in Daily Express, the analyst in question is Professor Michael Beenstock from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who said that theories of climate change are wrong.”
http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/beenstock/Nature_Paper091209.pdf
Michael Beenstock and Yaniv Reingewertz …
“We show that when these shortcomings are corrected, there is no evidence relating
global warming in the 20th century to the level of greenhouse gases in the long run.
…
This means that
an increase in CO2 emissions only has a temporary warming effect. We show that
previous investigators have confused the temporary with the permanent.”
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vancouver+Western+Canada+facing+record+cold+temperatures+this+winter/5528542/story.html
But, but, I thought the science was settled? /sarc
Hansen says:
“Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals, whereas “scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don’t have the wherewithal to do it.”
_________________________________________________
Yeah right. Hansen has the gall to say that when he has Congresswoman Rosa Delauro’s Husband Stan Greenberg working to advance his agenda????
“…He was also a strategic consultant to the Climate Center of the Natural Resources Defense Council on its multi-year campaign on global warming……NGO board memberships include the American Museum of Natural History, the National Endowment for Democracy, The Africa-America Institute, the Citizens Committee for New York City, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Refugees International…….Republican pollster Frank Luntz says “Stan Greenberg scares the hell out of me. He doesn’t just have a finger on the people’s pulse; he’s got an IV injected into it.” http://ilf.ndi.org/panelists#StanleyGreenberg
His company Greenberg Carville Shrum directed campaigns in 60 countries, including Tony Blair in the UK, Clinton in the USA and was responsible for the Bolivia fiasco. Greenberg “…specializes in research on globalization, international trade…” http://216.92.66.74/index.php?title=Stanley_Greenberg
Bolivia fiasco: http://www.nlginternational.org/report/NLG__BOLIVIA_REPORT_2007.pdf
Then there is his other company:
“Whether you want to win your election, lead your country, increase your bottom line, or change the world, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner can help you find the answer,” GQRR states on its website http://www.gqrr.com/
Greenberg writes for the Democratic Strategist http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/ and also formed Democracy Corps http://archive.democracycorps.com/
“ Greenberg’s work for private sector organizations – including major corporations, trade associations and public interest organizations – focuses on managing change and reform….Greenberg has conducted extensive research in Europe (particularly Great Britain, Germany and France), Central and South America (Argentina and Brazil), and Africa (South Africa). He specializes in research on globalization, international trade, corporate consolidation, technology and the Internet. For organizations, Greenberg has helped manage and frame a number of issues – including education, school financing, American identity, the economy, environmental regulation, international trade, managed care, biotechnology, copyrights, privacy and the Internet….
Greenberg has advised a broad range of political campaigns, including those of President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore, Senators Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman and Jeff Bingaman; Governor Jim Florio and gubernatorial candidate, Andy Young; former Vice-President Walter Mondale; and a number of candidates for the U.S. Congress. For many years, he served as principal polling advisor to the Democratic National Committee.
“Greenberg works jointly on private sector projects with prominent Republican pollsters in the United States – including Fred Steeper (pollster to former President Bush), Bill McInturff and Linda DiVall – to bring a bi-partisan focus to public issues….” http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stanley_Greenberg
Hansen is complaining when he has a heavy hitter like this guy working to advance his message???? Not to mention the United nations and most school. Who do we have? The Heartland Institute, Arthur B. Robinson and the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, the blogs, some individual scientists, a couple brave journalists?
Truth always wins.
Even now their argument is that the 6 mm drop in sea level was caused by La Nina. But the previous El Ninos remain without effect?
They discover now the suns influence ( UV influence ) on the regional weather – see new ice age scare in england after years of constant sun axyome. It is only a step to recognize suns further influence on the bigger climatic events like El Nino and La Nina.
There was another scientists who found a historical series of 30 years of El Ninos and respectively La Ninas in the past (I recall something like the years 570-650 need to search for that article) which were much more significant then the present ones.
It remains only to connect dots and you got the explanation of several decades of recent warming. How twisted must one be to still to deny all and say the ChuckNorris molecule is ruling the climate?
They lost the scientific argument as they do not make science any more.
Hansen and company is losing al lot of ground because they keep losing things to talk about.
And clinging to remnant bromides only goes so far.
It must be tough for them not to be able to elaborate on so many elements of AGW that have become simply nonsensicle.
As witnessed here, like no other place, there many major elements of AGW that have no legitimacy at all and the proponents look foolish having ever attemped to pitch themin the first place. Let alone cling to them with ever increasing lunacy.
What a fine example it is that the NFS only now figures out Archimedes’ buoyancy principle.
Oops! What a whopper.
So, Jim, was this little snaffoo because “scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don’t have the wherewithal to do it”?
That’s like saying all the lipstick covering the pig hasn’t worked because it’s not very good lipstick.
Or that if only professionals had applied the lipstick no one would see the pig?
Fredb. The US could easily leave the rest of the world behind in competitiveness if it would simply leave this discredited idea of CO2 caused global catastrophe behind and develop all of its own natural resources here at home. We have sufficient reserves of oil, natural gas and coal for at least two centuries. If the US would simply reduce the inane regulations and massively develop its own carbon based resources (mainly coal WITHOUT CCS for electricity generatrion) for energy and let the rest of the world foolishly rely on extremely expensive and unreliable wind and solar power, we would have an immense competitive advantage. It is the nations switching to “GREEN” energy that are going down the tubes. The Chinese are relying on COAL for their own power and selling GREEN to everyone else since they control the rare metal resources.
Using our roughly 200 year window of cheap and reliable fossil fuel reserves, the US should be investing a few $billion per year in fusion energy research (instead of a few $billion a year in global warming research). Fusion energy is the power of our universe and is what mankind eventually needs to acquire.
Hopefully, our next election will put the US on this road. Those countries that wish to be prosperous will have to follow our lead or end up in poverty. This idea that we have to go GREEN or get left behind is simply inane.
Scientists should be criminally prosecuted for engaging in propaganda. Didnt Hansen chain himself somewhere? The authorities did science a grave injustice by unchaining him.