Note – this will be pinned as a top post for a few days. Other posts will appear below this one.
UPDATE: Josh weighs in with a Friday Funny.
UPDATE2: McKibben has a Forrest Gump moment with his latest propaganda video
I’m doing something I’ve never done before, I’m asking every reader of WUWT to write a letter to the editor this weekend. I don’t take this step lightly, but given what I’ve observed the last few days, I think it is time to stir the power of our collective WUWT community for the common good.
Readers may recall the debunkings I regularly put forth any time paid activists like Bill McKibben, Joe Romm, David Suzuki, or Brad Johnson (and others) try to make claims that human induced climate change is making our daily weather “more extreme”. You know and I know that this is “garbage science” (even worse than “junk science”) because it is an attempt to twist science to strike fear over climate into the hearts of the average citizen. It is an act of desperation, rooted in the fact that the modeled warming scenarios described by the scientist activist high priest of the global warming movement Dr. James Hansen, just have not come to pass. Climate feedbacks don’t seem to be strong, climate sensitivity doesn’t seem to be high, there’s been no statistically significant warming in the last decade, and thus the only thing left is to blame bouts of normally occurring severe weather on climate change. The level of thinking sophistication here isn’t much different from blaming witches for bad weather in medieval times, but the sophistication of telegraphing this message to the weak-minded is far more sophisticated than in those days.
And, yesterday, we saw a message similar to calls made during those dark times “she’s a witch, BURN her!” in Steve Zwick’s rant on Forbes.com where he says:
We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. … They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?
The level of delusional fail here is off the scale. If this were an isolated incident, we could simply laugh it off as the hateful rantings of a person afflicted with climate derangement syndrome. But there’s more.
Yesterday, it entered my children’s school (see below), and this week, we saw a survey on “extreme weather” conducted by Yale, use a phrase in the press release that is straight out of a propagandist organization, Bill McKibben’s 350.org. The heat is on to make climate all about the weather for propaganda purposes, and there’s no data to support it. It is a lie of global proportions. We need to step up. Here’s what I found in my children’s school yesterday:
At my children’s school yesterday, they had a book fair. In that book fair was this display from the publisher of a new book INsiders – Extreme Weather.
Of course you know what book I picked up to look at first, and it took me all of about 15 seconds to find this (I highlighted the relevant part digitally):
“Some scientists”? I think the author really meant “some activists”.
To be fair, there are some very good sections of the book well rooted in science, for example this one on lightning:
I know the author, H. Michael Mogil, who is well rooted in science, and who is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist. I can’t imagine him fully signing off on the climate=severe weather idea as McKibben et al put it. But, I think there was pressure from publishers to include the section on climate linkage, and I think he hedged his statement as best he could. My point is that is it beginning to pervade children’s books.
Also this week we had this poll released from Yale University, which got a ton of press thanks to it being carried in the Associated Press. It even made my own local newspaper.
The poll itself is a logical fallacy, with sloppy questions like this one:
I give it a thorough debunking here with a strong emphasis on the reporting bias introduced by our technologically saturated society. Anyone with a cellphone can report severe weather now and within minutes it can be known worldwide.
Here’s a quote from the lead author that was carried in news stories, bold mine:
“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect the dots.”
At the time, I didn’t note the significance of the “connect the dots” meme, but one of our sharp WUWT readers pointed out that this is the new catchphrase of Bill McKibben’s 350.org movement.
In tips and notes this morning, Nick Ryan confirmed this for me with this letter from McKibben he posted.
Subject: Good news.
From: organizers@350.org
To: nick_ryan@xxxx.xxx
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:57:30 +0000
Dear friends,
Good news this time.
At some point every one of us at 350 has thought to ourselves a little despairingly: is the world ever going to catch on to climate change? Today is one of those days when it feels like it just might happen.
A story on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times described a new poll — Americans in record numbers are understanding that the planet is warming because they’re seeing the “freaky” weather that comes with climate change.
And the story ends by describing the next step in this process: May 5, the giant Connect the Dots day that people are joining all around the globe: http://www.ClimateDots.org
When the zeitgeist conspires to help our efforts, we need to make the most of it. Two weeks is plenty of time to organize a beautiful photo for May 5, one that will help spread this idea. Are you in a place where flood and rain have caused havoc? Ten people with umbrellas can make a memorable “climate dot” for all the world to see. You’ll think of something appropriate for your place — and you can find lots of examples and ideas here.
This movement is growing quickly, and with not a moment to spare — new data from scientists like Jim Hansen at NASA shows that our carbon emissions have already made extreme weather many times more likely. We can’t take back the carbon we’ve already poured into the atmosphere, but if we work together hard and fast then we can keep it from getting steadily worse.
Earth Day is coming up this weekend, and there will be thousands of events across the US. Each one of them is a great place to spread the word about the big day of action on 5/5. When you’re on the front page of the Times it’s a sign that the message is starting to get through — but only one American in 300 reads that newspaper. Now it’s up to all of us to make sure that everyone around the world gets the message, and Connect the Dots day on 5/5 is our best chance to do that. Please join us.
Onwards,
Bill McKibben for 350.org
P.S. It is key to remember that these photos from May 5 are not just for their effect on that day. We need a bank of images showing the human face of global warming — pictures we’ll use for the hard and direct political work of the next few years. If people don’t know there’s a problem, they won’t try to solve it. So let’s show them on 5/5. Here’s a heartbreaking example, from some local activists in Texas:
Climate Activists in Texas
Clearly, due to the timing and the reference he made to “People are starting to connect the dots.”, the poll conducted by Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University is just a tool that is connected to this 350.org “climatedots.org” campaign, it isn’t science, it is blatant advocacy disguised as science of the brand Dr. James Hansen practices.
So looking at what is going in total this week, I think it is time for us to exercise our own rights to free speech, and thus I’m asking WUWT readers to write letters to the editor to your local newspapers and magazines to counter what will surely be a blitz of advocacy in the coming days.
This tactic is used by these NGO’s so there is nothing wrong with it. It is free speech in the finest American tradition. There is one hitch though, and that’s the newspaper editors back-channel.
You see, one of the perks of being a journalist in the TV and radio news business is that I’m privy to how things work. In print media, editors have established a back-channel to alert each other of potential letter writing campaigns, such as those form letters like we see from “Forecast the Facts”.
The key is to make this your own letter, in your own words. While I can suggest topics, the letters need to be written in your own words for them to be accepted.
You can start here with this essay, and draw from it.
Warren Meyer made some excellent points yesterday in his Zwick rebuttal at Forbes:
A Vivid Reminder of How The Climate Debate is Broken
I really liked this part, which speaks to reporting bias (like we have with severe weather):
In the summer of 2001, a little boy in Mississippi lost an arm in a shark attack. The media went absolutely crazy. For weeks and months they highlighted every shark attack on the evening news. They ran aerial footage of sharks in the water near beaches. They coined the term “Summer of the Shark.” According to Wikipedia, shark attacks were the number three story, in terms of network news time dedicated, of the summer.
Bombarded by such coverage, most Americans responded to polls by saying they were concerned about the uptick in shark attacks. In fact, there were actually about 10% fewer shark attacks in 2001 than in 2000. Our perceptions were severely biased by the coverage.
How to write a letter:
1. Go to your local newspaper website, locate the guidelines for letters to the editor. Typical letter policies limit letters to 200-250 words.
2. Do your research, craft your letter carefully. Cite facts, cite statistics such as I offer on WUWT. Use your own words, don’t quote me, though quoting people like Professor Grady Dixon “…it would be a mistake to blame climate change for a seeming increase in tornadoes” is fine.
3. [added] Readers are submitting content ideas in comments, have a look at those. Fr example Steve E. writes: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr’s posting on the IPCC SREX Report, “A Handy Bullshit Button on Disasters and Climate Change” here: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ca/2012/03/handy-bullshit-button-on-disasters-and.html is also a good source for letter content.
4. Send it, being mindful of length and guidelines.
Thank you for your consideration. – Anthony
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Phil C says:
April 20, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Ah yes, wouldn’t it be nice to load up that shiny silver bullet (a single one would do the job) and shoot that damn vampire where the sun don’t shine.
You don’t have one.
They have come full circle.
After years of chanting to us small minded people,”Weather is not climate”,
They are preaching “Weather IS Climate”@ur momisugly
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
This might be a good place to again ask questions that I ask from time to time, but for which I have never received answers that sounded like answers, to me?
The questions are:
What is the definition fo the word “weather”?
What is the definition of the word “climate”?
What is the difference between the two terms?
Some background for the questions in case it is useful: I grew up in the Los Angeles Basin; my father’s parents lived in Madera. From time to time we drove to visit them. My recollection is that from the foot of the Grapevine to someplace way north of there the terrain was what to my mind was typical desert, dry, dusty (a little salty, maybe); pretty barren. The Wiki article on Kesterson says in part “The climate of the San Joaquin Valley does not lend itself well to agricultural production and results in large scale irrigation projects in order to keep fertile farms in operation. According to some estimates, the climate of the San Joaquin Valley has approximately 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation and over 90 inches (2,300 mm) of evaporation annually.[3]”
The implication is that the climate for an area is defined and exhaustively and completely stated by reciting the precipitation record table.
Now days, that area is (or was the last time I was through there–did the fish thing destroy it?) is lush and green, as a result of the irrigation that changed the climate.
My personal definition that I use when somebody says “What is your climate there (“there” now being the Great Plains near Omaha)?” is that “the winters can be cold and hostile and when the snows hit South Dakota hard the drifts here can be formidable; the summers can be brutal with temperatures into the 100’s. But you know, as the irrigated, plowed land gets converted to houses and streets, and the land farther west gets plowed and irrigated it seems to me that the weather along the rivers here (Missouri, Platte, and Elkhorn) (note the switch from “climate” to “weather”) has been getting milder in both summer and winter. The Spring (usually a Wednesday) and Fall (often the Thursday before Labor Day) are beautiful.”
Smokey says:
Phil, you are just making the typical appeal to a political — not a scientific — authority.
So Smokey, I guess you are saying that the major scientific organizations in the U.S. — AAAS, AGU, NAS, APS, etc. — are de facto political, not scientific organizations. If that’s the argument you’re making, I wonder if Anthony Watts agrees with you.
Rationality seems thin on the ground. The MSM thrive on the deranged rants of tin-pot climate despots when they cry out to be ignored and consigned to institutional care. The MSM add ‘credibility’ where there is none, and lack the intellectual capacity to move beyond ‘fast sell sensationalism’.
I wrote recently to a Radio reporter as follows:
‘Recent comments last week (associated with the snowy weather) with the clear implication that due to “climate change” the insurance industry were meeting more claims due to an increase of adverse weather events. Where is the critical journalism, the challenge to an industry
to show the evidence of cause and effect, as opposed to merely correlation, which is in this case, meaningless – except that the insurance industry profiteering will cost everyone more for no discernible benefit. I attach a recently published article – ‘Significant decline in storminess over southeast Australia since the late 19th century’. Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal 61 (2011) 23-30 for your information, and that of your colleagues.’
The MSM response:
‘Thanks, and for the extra info. I personally found your info enlightening and realised how ignorant many of us are with the environment changes etc’.
The sub text:
Personal positions are irrelevant. Policy on climate reporting is predetermined.
Keep up the pressure.
Already done this, and surprisingly, my letter got published this week :-O
The local freebie paper Sun, carried Matthew England’s “Grim warnings on extreme weather” on April 4.
My letter [quote]
This article is extremely on-sided. Anyone who cares to do a search on “Matthew England” on websites such as award-winning
http://joannenova.com.au and
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com
http://wattsupwiththat.com
Will find many comments by eminent scientists critical of both Dr England and the IPCC. New Zealander Dr Vincent Gray has been an Expert Reviewer on every one of the previous Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and recently referred to this process as an “elaborate fraud on the international community”.
There is in fact little evidence that extreme weather events are worsening, and none of the recent weather events in Australia are in any way unprecedented. Dr England’s comments on natural disaster management, infrastructure and planning are particularly condescending to those people, locally and nationally, who have been working in these fields for decades, trying to develop resilience to events that HAVE happened in the past and WILL happen again in the future.
I suggest the author of this article has a look at “The Delinquent Teenager” (“who was mistaken for the world’s top climate expert”). This is an exposé of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by investigative journalist Donna Laframboise. Google it – only costs about $A5 to download.
Regards
Martin Clark
(Planning Consultant & Building Designer, Townsville) [endquote]
Following up on another comment:
“One example would be the floods in Queensland Australia that occurred in 2010/2011. They had floods that were just as severe in 1893 …”
And 1919 or thereabouts?. And 1974. 1974 had the same combination of weather patterns as 2010/2011. Same result. Big cyclone, big floods. So they built the Wyvenhoe Dam. Trouble is, Queensland has numerous river systems with 500,000 km2 catchments – and towns built along the courses and down near the estuaries. Duh.
I’ll also keep an eye on UK prediction of “Coldest May for 100 years”.
In May 1962 (I think – could have been ’61 or ’63) I climbed Great Malvern Hill. Couldn’t find the building (cafe?) until I realised it was underneath the snow …
May I connect the dots for the EPA with a 6 word essay?
“More carbon dioxide. More happy trees.”
Phil C,
I was referring to the leadership of the organizations, as opposed to the membership. I thought that was clear. The leadership is composed of many political activists, as Prof Lindzen makes clear. In fact, there is nothing I would change in my comment @12:58 pm above. Sorry you don’t like it. Sometimes the truth is painful.
I live in Teh Peoples Republic of Minnesota. Trying to get these leftist echo chambers to tell the truth instread of stumping for every looney leftard crusade is futile. I wish we could move them back towards actually reporting news, but that’s a failed campaign. It’s also why the dead tree media are dying here and the TV news is only holding on as it is the lazy man’s means of gathering the day’s events before tuning into ESPN for the evening. *sigh* I’d LOVE to have a TV “news” show. Fox isn’t too bad but even they have their failing presenters. I stick to the web.
Is it just another freaky coincidence that they selected May 5th, the birthday of Karl Marx, as their celebration date? Earth day falls on Lenin’s birthday, and now this brand new global warming holiday falls on the same day socialists celebrate the birth of Karl Marx. Strange.
I’ve lived in Texas for almost 50 years. During that time I have seen many extremes in weather – severe freezing conditions including a frozen White Rock Lake (1983), to heat waves that included 69 days above 100 degrees (1980), to dust storms, tornadoes etc. I’ve already connected the dots – Texas weather is wild and subject to change often.
if smokey won’t say it, phil, i will.
they are propaganda services, a special niched in the protest industry.
there is no economic justification for their existence; they are purely political.
they produce no durable values; they agitate for an agenda which is mainly to solicit funding and trade namelists for political consideration.
they have no honorable function and no honest culture has any use for them.
I’ve had many such letters published in our local rag. Keeping them short and pithy gives the best chance of publication. There’s always alarmist nut cases having replies published.
Boy’s textbook’s coverage of global warming is awful. But he says he zones out whenever they start talking climate. I asked him how’s that any different from his other subjects. Anyway, It was well stated by an earlier commenter, the schools are unwittingly creating critical thinkers, the exact opposite of their intended purpose.
Anthony, it would be nice to have a page with links to scientific work to reference. I know that there are fewer F3-F5 tornadoes but finding original work that shows this is difficult. You can find graph from NASA/NOHA etc that show all tornados but those are biased and show a rise as technology has found more not because more exist.
I know Roger Pielkie Jr. has done work on floods that show no rise but again, it is hard to link to that information directly.
We all know the fine work done by Ryan Maue has done and I can find that. But unfortunately this is one of the very few bits of science that is easily accessible.
It sure would be nice to have resources to get to quick and easily as we write letters…
Love this place and the education it provides!
I submitted a letter to the Oregonian:
Stop the Name-calling and Trust the Science
I am becoming increasingly concerned that extremist are trying to win the Climate argument by propaganda instead of science. Any scientific theory should be subject to rigorous testing to determine its correctness. But with the human-caused Climate Change theory, the proponents have been doing everything they can to subvert the scientific method. Instead they say that we don’t have time to test the hypothesis and that only a select few should be the gatekeepers of the methods, data, and conclusions. This is not science, this is a predetermined agenda-driven outcome. True science should welcome with open arms anyone that can prove them wrong.
Well the climate has been proving them wrong. Their predictions are not happening – warming is much less than predicted for example. So now they have moved to name calling – climate deniers (which shamefully evokes links to holocaust deniers). And beyond name calling we now have threats of “extreme weather” as signals of human-caused climate change. That is simply a lie. There is no statistical increase in extreme weather. Only the media coverage of extreme weather has increased, along with the extremist propaganda trying to repeat the lie enough times so that people believe it.
Can we please get back to the science, real science? And if the predictions are wrong, then the hypothesis is wrong.
ThinkingScientist @ur momisugly April 20, 2012 at 9:09 am
State
indoctrinationeducation is appalling.Phil C @ur momisugly April 20, 2012 at 1:51 pm
…you are saying that the major scientific organizations in the U.S. — AAAS, AGU, NAS, APS, etc. — are de facto political, not scientific organizations.
Yes, exactly that is what the guy is saying. Have you heard of Lysenko? This is not new; it ALWAYS happens when the state is the only
purchaserfunder of science – it’s called a monopsony, I believe.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony
My post appears to have got lost, it has not appeared.
[REPLY: Myrrh, you are a valued contributor to WUWT, but there are some conversations that we prefer not get started here. There are undoubtedly more suitable venues. -REP]
kim says on April 20, 2012 at 9:40 am:
“———-
Global cooling, happening.”
==============
Yes kim, you’re right – and global cooling has been happening, naturally, for many thousands of years – and CO2 is not going to trump it (that “naturally” bit I mean). –
But back to the “Letter to the Editor” writing, — – how do we explain, in our newspaper letters, that yes, even “skeptical scientists” concur that CO2 is a GHG and therefore does cause some of the warming, but it is only a little bit (about equal to the lowest IPCC estimates). –
How do we go on from there in 200 – 250 words?
I have tried to reason that there are no hard data in support of warming by CO2, and that furthermore there can be no experimental (or other data) supporting the theory that says that “thermal energy” from the surface can penetrate the atmosphere. – But alas to no avail. –
Well, can you name 10 scientists associated with “climate science” who do not believe CO2 cause any warming? – If yes, then try, by all means, to convince editors, journalists and readers with your reader’s letter that atmospheric CO2 increases do not matter. – If no, then you need more than 300 words to explain.
Until scientists realize that a temperature, in any object, above that of absolute zero (zero Kelvin or 0K) can only be achieved if energy from an external source is absorbed by the said object – and that for that reason – heat is a product of energy use and therefore cannot be classed as “Energy” and I am afraid we shall be much further into the “next Ice Age” before there is a real change of heart and minds.
Evasion. Anthony was objecting to the claim that AGW is causing more extreme weather. You responded by saying that scientific organizations have endorsed AGW. So what?
Larry Sheldon says:
April 20, 2012 at 1:50 pm
“What is the definition of the word “climate”?”
It is not average temperature, although some seem to think so.
The study of climate has a long history but, academically, the investigations of Wladimir Köppen involving plant distributions have become know because of the resulting colored maps. Plant zones being only found by tedious ground-work, the studies and resultant maps were difficult to update and complete in a fine-grained manner. Instrumentation allowed for greater coverage but required a shift in the things being measured. You can read about it here:
http://geography.about.com/od/physicalgeography/a/koppen.htm
Read about Wladimir Köppen here:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/322065/Wladimir-Koppen
Or there is Robert DeCourcy Ward’s old text, reproduced here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33994889/Climate
It is #20, published in 1908.
As for “weather” – go outside – an old saying is – Weather is what you get, climate is how you know what to expect. That will be based on where you are and the timing and patterns of those things that the atmosphere brings.
Larry Sheldon says:
April 20, 2012 at 12:38 pm
I’m working on it–but along the way I discovered that Jeff Masters has gone farther off the rails in a similar matter http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/article.html
—–
Wow, Dr. Masters actually recommended Skeptical Science website! It is nothing more than a propaganda website that is obviously set up to smear any scientists not sharing Master’s view on global warming caused by CO2. Look at the names they listed trying to smear them..
I fear we are partaking in a gun fight armed with knives.
I would not be surprised if there is a massive social media network behind this campaign.
However, I will chose to await an alarmist “letter to the editor” and then counter the specific points in that submission. Pre-emtive strikes are much harder to defend.
Sir
I note with consternation the concerted efforts around Earth Day to “join the dots” between extreme weather events and climate change. This campaign is designed to incite fear in the population by graphically showing that every flood, fire, famine or storm around the globe (i.e. local weather) indicates a catastrophically changing climate.
If warming is occurring at all (it is currently the same as it was 30 years ago), it will be beneficial to life on earth. There is no evidence that extreme weather events are increasing, let alone linked to climate change.
Greenpeace and World Wild Life Fund have huge budgets for propaganda. Newspapers including yours have a tendency to just recycle their press release output with little questioning or balance. This Earth Day, please balance their scary campaign with level-headed reporting of the facts.
Sincerely,
Mike Jowsey