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.
Hanson and his ilk, Santer, Mann, Jones, etc are not worth wasting words on. [snip – policy]
@fredb:
It is the chief executives of a country who control its diplomatic stances. Canada’s head (PM) has made far more absolute, anti-AGW statements than the US’s head. So it’s untrue that “the US is unique.”
The US as a nation has not “denied the reality of climate change.” Even among Republicans, few dare to go that far. (And of course what deniers deny is not that the climate is changing–you should drop that transparent misdirection when posting here. Rather, they minimize the manmade contribution to it and the potential for runaway positive feedback.) What a faction among Republicans has done is to block cap and trade taxation schemes, and oppose the EPA’s attempts to penalize CO2 emissions.
Sure, the US is no longer playing a leading role in designing mitigation strategies, taxation schemes, new treaties, etc. Neither is China. Is China “losing the edge in the global game of chess”?
Pamela Gray says:
October 11, 2011 at 6:57 am
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to create and maintain blocking highs. We are talking about a pressure system that stays put in the midst of different neighboring pressure systems. These competing systems want to create winds that sweep them away. To stay put is really something. The key to any teleconnections with global warming is to determine what kind of energy is necessary to build and maintain more blocking highs than usual in that region.
The Rossby wave in the polar vortex became locked, the chaotic motion of the fluid flows in the atmosphere is extremely complex (see http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~joel/g110_w08/lecture_notes/midlat_upper/midlat_upper.html ) much is due to the vorticity of the atmosphere and also such things as the effects of a drop in UV leading to more cooling at the poles, the equatorward shifts in the polar jet etc. The effect can lead to a standing wave rather than one that meanders slowly eastward. This ‘locks in’ the weather as the Ferrel cell weather systems follow the stationary path of the jet stream.
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.”
QUE???
Excuse me, Mr. Hansen, but how many millions of dollars did your prime spokesman of AGW, Mr Gore, put in his AGW-publicity campaign? Was it 280 mln? And all governments in their campaigns to raise awareness for this non-issue? A couple of billion?
Tsssss, sore loser. The truth will set you free.
AGW is a hoax and your game is up.
As I understand it there remains an ongoing police investigation into the UEA and /or Hadley, over the climate-gate emails, and in particular into Jones email urging others to delete emails. If the political climate ever permits, then it is not impossible that the Crown Prosecution Service may issue proceedings against Jones. Whether or not encouraging others to delete emails is a breach of the data protection act and whether or not that carries a risk of a jail sentence I do not know. My guess is he will escape prosecution. His effective promotion will have helped send the “right” messages to those authorities that might be interested in investigating the matter.
I am surprised that there seems to be no US prosecutor interest in Santer’s admitted role in the IPCC report, that I have read on the internet that he now says he was encouraged in by Bolin. Perhaps a shift in the political climate in the US might see some judicial interest in the role of various well known climate science individuals, including Santer and Mann.
Perhaps scientific fraud and or misrepresentation of the facts is not a crime on the statute books, no matter what the damage to different countries economies and the lives of their peoples. I think it should be.
Hansen will likely suffer an ignominious retirement, though a wealthy one.
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.”
Facts to prove your case please, Mr. Hansen! Facts please and no mumbo jumbo! Your science was so overwhelmingly obvious and settled. So it should be so easy to win the debate. Just win it Mr. Hansen or admit that you had it all wrong and that CO2 contributes very little to climate change.
The AGW movement is often linked with socialism and left wing politics – but am I alone in seeing the essential fascism it actually embodies? And how Saving the Planet could so easily become the way of wiping out our remaining freedoms with the blessing of most of the people it disenfranchises? Pseudo-Green Fascism is coming!
JJThoms –
Yes, this is EXACTLY the same thing as asking to see all of the data that backs up your models.
Agree with Jeff D above. I can’t help thinking by recent actions that something’s about to hit the fan for the pro-AGWers. Obama had the ideal opportunity to insert global warming into his press conference last Thursday when discussing Solyndra and US energy policy. Nothing! I get the feeling that politicians are putting some distance between themselves and global warming. No hard evidence…just a feeling. Something’s coming down the pipeline and it’s not good for the alarmists.
the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals,
=================================================
and the climate alarmist lobby only employs…
movie producers
news papers
magazines
TV movies
Nature specials
blogs
politicians
governments
developing countries
cartoons
editorials
demonstrations
school text books
internet reference sites……………………….
William,
Your comment – that CO2 greenhouse effect is logarithmic such that subsequent increases in CO2 has less and less effect.
– reminded me of something I recalled from my A. Physics course. If I remember correctly, the mechanism by which a GHG works is the absorbtion or excitation of it’s molecule(s) by infrared radiation. Different gases absorb within different parts of this spectrum (incidence as I recall). In covering this part of the science, it was noted that CO2 was near saturation with regard to the bandwidth of spectrum it absorbs at. (This in the mid 1990’s.) CH4 and the CFC’s seemed to be gasses to be of concern. I remember thinking at the time that while the whole CFC – Ozone hole issue may have been over blown, the elimination of CFC’s from the market might potentially prove a good idea if one was concerned about global warming.
What I would like to ask the folks here is why I never see the saturation issue brought up? Was my learning faulty? The closest I’ve seen was the Waterloo paper a year or two ago that noted a correlation between declining CFC concentrations and a flattening of the temperture rise.
An economy-wide tax on carbon dioxide emissions has just passed the Australian House of Representatives in one of the most brazens subversions of Australian democracy by the minority leftwing Greens-Labour government, which promised the exact opposite. The Government now has less than 30% support, and will stagger towards oblivion at the next election, which isn’t due until 2013.
The fact Hansen uses the word, “Winning,” demonstrates his psyche is focused on “sides,” which tends to suggest his focus has been politics and not science.
Science has no “sides.” Everyone is on the same side, (supposedly.) And what side is that?
Truth, pure and simple. No spin.
“We don’t call people on the other side of the debate ugly denigrating names like deniers and flat earthers.”
But that’s not because we’re nicer. We just can’t think of anything rude enough.
I think he and NASA now need each other too much; they’ve both jumped the same shark, and can’t get off.
Tom says:
October 11, 2011 at 4:00 pm
An economy-wide tax on carbon dioxide emissions has just passed the Australian House of Representatives in one of the most brazens subversions of Australian democracy by the minority leftwing Greens-Labour government, which promised the exact opposite. The Government now has less than 30% support, and will stagger towards oblivion at the next election, which isn’t due until 2013.
____________________________________________
Just get the new crop of politicians to sign in blood that they will repeal the law before you vote for them. You might also want to consider the ancient practice of holding their first born hostage to insure they act in good faith.
The distinction is illusory. Fascism is (also) the central control of all industry and all aspects of life by government. I.e., Statism. National Socialism differed only in that it was National in its ambitions, as well (Deutschland Uber Alles). The red of its flag background was chosen quite deliberately to appeal to Bolsheviks.
Hmm. I thought science was about discovery, not a game to be won or lost.
Ryan says:
October 11, 2011 at 4:08 am
20 years of being told the world is about to end due to global warming whilst at the same time we had twenty years of dramatically increased CO2 output but declining temperatures would tend to demonstrate to most reasonable people that global warming theory has already been falsified….
____________________________________________
Do not forget that some of us heard the same mouth pieces screaming about the coming Ice age in the 60’s and 70’s. At least that had a bit of science behind it since we are towards the end of the Holocene interglacial.
Then we got thirty years of “Global Warming” hysteria which has sinced morphed into the catch all “Climate Change”
By this time adrenal exhaustion has set in. If it were not for the greedy politicians and their buddies like Al Gore hanging around like vampires waiting to suck more blood from the rest of the population I would completely ignore the subject.
“By this time adrenal exhaustion has set in.”
Gail, that’s the most accurate description I’ve seen…………..
Michael J Alexander says:
October 11, 2011 at 8:07 am
It’s not a battle dammit… It’s supposed to be science!
_________________________
I am afraid you are wrong. It is a battle. The goal is world wide taxes controlled not by nations but by a “global entity”, global governance and the destruction of “the affluent middle class” Maurice Strong, Father of Global Warming and member of the UN Commission on Global Governance made that very clear when he stated at the opening session of the Rio Conference (Earth Summit II) in 1992.
“It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.”
If it was just about “Global Warming” it would be a heck of a lot less dangerous. Instead it is about the permanent destruction of western civilization.
At the time of Maurice Strong’s First Earth Summit in 1972 heralding the beginning of global warming, Obama’s Science Czar was co-author of a book stating
“The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”
On another occasion, Holdren, when asked whether Americans would “need to reduce their living standards,” said:
“I think ultimately that the rate of growth of material consumption is going to have to come down, and there’s going to have to be a degree of redistribution of how much we consume, in terms of energy and material resources, in order to leave room for people who are poor to become more prosperous.” http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2368
Notice both of these individuals are still very influential today forty years later.
From the very start in 1972 BEFORE we saw any warming the plan was in place. It has NEVER EVER been about science, it has always been about politics and at the time they KNEW we were due for 30 years of warming!
How can I say this? Because Gleissberg had published in 1939 & in 1971 and identified an 88 yr cycle in the weather patterns. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2002JA009390.shtml
kelly liddle says:
Not winning in Australia. Carbon (dioxide) Tax expected to pass parliament tomorrow.
And making inevitable the defeat of the Gillard government.
Don’t underestimate Hansen.
What he did is playing rhetoric tricks of denotatum and connotation to gain
self-enhancement. It’s only a clever move to strengthen his position and to
keep a backdoor open for all other cases.
In this speech he threw a boomerang on skeptics.
You can wait for it… there’s still more to come from him.
This man can not be trusted… in no way ever.
He would sell his own grandmother to keep his position.
Well, duh! That’s all Hansen deserves.
#1. We don’t rewrite history either, by censoring postings that simply are trying to ask questions, like Real Climate does.