This post will remain at the top for a few days, new stories will appear below this one
UPDATE1: Andrew Revkin at the NYT weighs in, and semi endorses the leak, see update below – Anthony
UPDATE2: Alternate links have been sent to me, should go faster now. – Anthony
UPDATE3: The main site is down but a large “all in one” RAR file (and bittorrent) has been created by a readers, see below. – Anthony
UPDATE4: 7:30AM PST 12/14/12 reactions are now coming in worldwide, see here, and the IPCC is going to issue a statement today. – Anthony
UPDATE5: 8:30AM PST 12/14/12 The IPCC has issued a statement on the leak, see below. -Anthony
UPDATE6: 12PM PST 12/14/12 The real bombshell of the report is now evident, a lack of warming to match model projections, see it here
UPDATE7: 12:30PM PST 12/14/12 Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. Analysis of UN IPCC Draft report : IPCC ‘shows almost complete reversal from AR4 on trends in drought, hurricanes, floods’
UPDATE8: 5PM PST 12/14/12 Another IPCC reviewer speaks out, this time about water vapor trends – actual data and IPCC contradict each other.
UPDATE9: 2PM PST 12/16/12 A rebuttal to Steven Sherwood and the solar forcing pundits of the IPCC AR5 draft leak
Full AR5 draft leaked here, contains game-changing admission of enhanced solar forcing
(Alec Rawls) I participated in “expert review” of the Second Order Draft of AR5 (the next IPCC report), Working Group 1 (“The Scientific Basis”), and am now making the full draft available to the public. I believe that the leaking of this draft is entirely legal, that the taxpayer funded report report is properly in the public domain under the Freedom of Information Act, and that making it available to the public is in any case protected by established legal and ethical standards, but web hosting companies are not in the business of making such determinations so interested readers are encouraged to please download copies of the report for further dissemination in case this content is removed as a possible terms-of-service violation. My reasons for leaking the report are explained below. Here are the chapters:
From http://www.stopgreensuicide.com/
(which is down now, see updated links below in update #2)
Chapter 2: Observations: Atmosphere and Surface
Chapter 3: Observations: Ocean
Chapter 4: Observations: Cryosphere
Chapter 5: Information from Paleoclimate Archives
Chapter 6: Carbon and Other Biogeochemical Cycles
Chapter 7: Clouds and Aerosols
Chapter 8: Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing
Chapter 9: Evaluation of Climate Models
Chapter 10: Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional
Chapter 11: Near-term Climate Change: Projections and Predictability
Chapter 12: Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility
Chapter 14: Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change
Why leak the draft report?
By Alec Rawls (email) [writing at http://www.stopgreensuicide.com/ ]
General principles
The ethics of leaking tax-payer funded documents requires weighing the “public’s right to know” against any harm to the public interest that may result. The press often leaks even in the face of extreme such harm, as when the New York Times published details of how the Bush administration was tracking terrorist financing with the help of the private sector Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), causing this very successful anti-terror program to immediately collapse.
That was a bad leak, doing great harm to expose something that nobody needed to know about. With the UN’s IPCC reports the calculus is reversed. UN “climate chief” Christina Figueres explains what is at stake for the public:
… we are inspiring government, private sector, and civil society to [make] the biggest transformation that they have ever undertaken. The Industrial Revolution was also a transformation, but it wasn’t a guided transformation from a centralized policy perspective. This is a centralized transformation that is taking place because governments have decided that they need to listen to science.
So may we please see this “science” on the basis of which our existing energy infrastructure is to be ripped out in favor of non-existent “green” energy? The only reason for secrecy in the first place is to enhance the UN’s political control over a scientific story line that is aimed explicitly at policy makers. Thus the drafts ought to fall within the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.
The Obama administration implicitly acknowledged this when it tried to evade FOIA by setting up private “backdoor channels” for communications with the IPCC. If NCAR’s Gerald Meehl (a lead author of AR5’s chapter on near-term climate change), has working copies of the draft report (and he’s only one of dozens of U.S. government researchers who would), then by law the draft report (now finished) should be available to the public.
The IPCC’s official reason for wanting secrecy (as they explained it to Steve McIntyre in January 2012) is so that criticisms of the drafts are not spread out across the internet but get funneled through the UN’s comment process. If there is any merit to that rationale it is now moot. The comment period ended November 30th so the comment process can no longer be affected by publication.
As for my personal confidentiality agreement with the IPCC, I regard that as vitiated by the systematic dishonesty of the report (“omitted variable fraud” as I called it in my FOD comments). This is a general principle of journalistic confidentiality: bad faith on one side breaks the agreement on the other. They can’t ask reviewers to become complicit in their dishonesty by remaining silent about it.
Then there is the specific content of the Second Order Draft where the addition of one single sentence demands the release of the whole. That sentence is an astounding bit of honesty, a killing admission that completely undercuts the main premise and the main conclusion of the full report, revealing the fundamental dishonesty of the whole.
Lead story from the Second Order Draft: strong evidence for solar forcing beyond TSI now acknowledged by IPCC
Compared to the First Order Draft, the SOD now adds the following sentence, indicated in bold (page 7-43, lines 1-5, emphasis added):
Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link. We focus here on observed relationships between GCR and aerosol and cloud properties.
The Chapter 7 authors are admitting strong evidence (“many empirical relationships”) for enhanced solar forcing (forcing beyond total solar irradiance, or TSI), even if they don’t know what the mechanism is. This directly undercuts the main premise of the report, as stated in Chapter 8 (page 8-4, lines 54-57):
There is very high confidence that natural forcing is a small fraction of the anthropogenic forcing. In particular, over the past three decades (since 1980), robust evidence from satellite observations of the TSI and volcanic aerosols demonstrate a near-zero (–0.04 W m–2) change in the natural forcing compared to the anthropogenic AF increase of ~1.0 ± 0.3 W m–2.
The Chapter 8 authors (a different group than the Chapter 7 authors) are explicit here that their claim about natural forcing being small compared to anthropogenic forcing is based on an analysis in which the only solar forcing that is taken into account is TSI. This can be verified from the radiative forcing table on page 8-39 where the only solar variable included in the IPCC’s computer models is seen to be “solar irradiance.”
This analysis, where post-1980 warming gets attributed to the human release of CO2 on the grounds that it cannot be attributed to solar irradiance, cannot stand in the face of the Chapter 7 admission of substantial evidence for solar forcing beyond solar irradiance. Once the evidence for enhanced solar forcing is taken into account we can have no confidence that natural forcing is small compared to anthropogenic forcing.
The Chapter 8 premise that natural forcing is relatively small leads directly to the main conclusion of the entire report, stated in the first sentence of the Executive Summary (the very first sentence of the entire report): that advances since AR4 “further strengthen the basis for human activities being the primary driver in climate change” (p.1-2, lines 3-5). This headline conclusion is a direct descendant of the assumption that the only solar forcing is TSI, a claim that their own report no longer accepts.
The report still barely hints at the mountain of evidence for enhanced solar forcing, or the magnitude of the evidenced effect. Dozens of studies (section two here) have found between a .4 and .7 degree of correlation between solar activity and various climate indices, suggesting that solar activity “explains” in the statistical sense something like half of all past temperature change, very little of which could be explained by the very slight variation in TSI. At least the Chapter 7 team is now being explicit about what this evidence means: that some mechanism of enhanced solar forcing must be at work.
My full submitted comments (which I will post later) elaborate several important points. For instance, note that the Chapter 8 premise (page 8-4, lines 54-57) assumes that it is the change in the level of forcing since 1980, not the level of forcing, that would be causing warming. Solar activity was at historically high levels at least through the end of solar cycle 22 (1996), yet the IPCC is assuming that because this high level of solar forcing was roughly constant from 1950 until it fell off during solar cycle 23 it could not have caused post-1980 warming. In effect they are claiming that you can’t heat a pot of water by turning the burner to maximum and leaving it there, that you have to keep turning the flame up to get continued warming, an un-scientific absurdity that I have been writing about for several years (most recently in my post about Isaac Held’s bogus 2-box model of ocean equilibration).
The admission of strong evidence for enhanced solar forcing changes everything. The climate alarmists can’t continue to claim that warming was almost entirely due to human activity over a period when solar warming effects, now acknowledged to be important, were at a maximum. The final draft of AR5 WG1 is not scheduled to be released for another year but the public needs to know now how the main premises and conclusions of the IPCC story line have been undercut by the IPCC itself.
President Obama is already pushing a carbon tax premised on the fear that CO2 is causing dangerous global warming. Last week his people were at the UN’s climate meeting in Doha pretending that Hurricane Sandy was caused by human increments to CO2 as UN insiders assured the public that the next IPCC report will “scare the wits out of everyone” with its ramped-up predictions of human-caused global warming to come, but this is not where the evidence points, not if climate change is in any substantial measure driven by the sun, which has now gone quiet and is exerting what influence it has in the cooling direction.
The acknowledgement of strong evidence for enhanced solar forcing should upend the IPCC’s entire agenda. The easiest way for the UN to handle this disruptive admission would be to remove it from their final draft, which is another reason to make the draft report public now. The devastating admission needs to be known so that the IPCC can’t quietly take it back.
Will some press organization please host the leaked report?
Most of us have to worry about staying within cautiously written and cautiously applied terms-of-service agreements. That’s why I created this new website. If it gets taken down nothing else gets taken with it. Media companies don’t have this problem. They have their own servers and publishing things like the draft IPCC report is supposed to be their bailiwick.
If the press has First Amendment protection for the publication of leaked materials even when substantial national security interests are at stake (the Supreme Court precedent set in the Pentagon Papers case), then it can certainly republish a leaked draft of a climate science report where there is no public interest in secrecy. The leaker could be at risk (the case against Pentagon leaker Daniel Ellsberg was thrown out for government misconduct, not because his activity was found to be protected) but the press is safe, and their services would be appreciated.
United States taxpayers have funded climate science to the tune of well over 80 billion dollars, all channeled through the funding bureaucracy established by Vice President Albert “the end is nigh” Gore when he served as President Clinton’s “climate czar.” That Gore-built bureaucracy is still to this day striving to insure that not a penny of all those taxpayer billions ever goes to any researcher who is not committed to the premature conclusion that human contributions to atmospheric CO2 are causing dangerous global warming (despite the lack of any statistically significant warming for more than 15 years).
Acolytes of this bought “consensus” want to see what new propaganda their tax dollars have wrought and so do the skeptics. It’s unanimous, and an already twice-vetted draft is sitting now in thousands of government offices around the world. Time to fork it over to the people.
=============================================================
UPDATE1: Andrew Revkin writes in a story at the NYT Dot Earth today:
It’s important, before anyone attacks Rawls for posting the drafts (this is distinct from his views on their contents), to consider that panel report drafts at various stages of preparation have been leaked in the past by people with entirely different points of view.
That was the case in 2000, when I was leaked a final draft of the summary for policy makers of the second science report from the panel ahead of that year’s round of climate treaty negotiations. As I explained in the resulting news story, “A copy of the summary was obtained by The New York Times from someone who was eager to have the findings disseminated before the meetings in The Hague.”
Here’s a question I sent tonight to a variety of analysts of the panel’s workings over the years:
The leaker, Alec Rawls, clearly has a spin. But I’ve long thought that I.P.C.C. was in a weird losing game in trying to boost credibility through more semi-open review while trying to maintain confidentiality at same time. I’m sympathetic to the idea of having more of the I.P.C.C. process being fully open (a layered Public Library of Science-style approach to review can preserve the sanity of authors) in this age of enforced transparency (WikiLeaks being the most famous example).
I’ll post answers as they come in.
Full story at DotEarth
==============================================================
UPDATE2: Alternative links for AR5 WG1 SOD. At each page click on the button that says “create download link,” then “click here to download”:
Summary for Policymakers
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363425211/SummaryForPolicymakers_WG1AR5-SPM_FOD_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 1: Introduction
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363425214/Ch1-Introduction_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch01_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 2: Observations: Atmosphere and Surface
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436270/Ch2_Obs-atmosur_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch02_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 3: Observations: Ocean
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436276/Ch3_Obs-oceans_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch03_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 4: Observations: Cryosphere
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436279/Ch4_obs-cryo_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch04_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 5: Information from Paleoclimate Archives
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436282/Ch5_Paleo_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch05_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 6: Carbon and Other Biogeochemical Cycles
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436285/Ch6_Carbonbio_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch06_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 7: Clouds and Aerosols
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436286/Ch7_Clouds-aerosols_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch07_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 8: Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363425217/Ch8_Radiative-forcing_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch08_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 8 Supplement
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436312/Ch8_supplement_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch08_SM_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 9: Evaluation of Climate Models
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436298/Ch9_models_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch09_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 10: Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436302/Ch10_attribution_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch10_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 11: Near-term Climate Change: Projections and Predictability
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436303/Ch11_near-term_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch11_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 12: Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363425220/Ch12_long-term_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch12_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 13: Sea Level Change
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363425221/Ch13_sea-level_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch13_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 14: Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363425222/Ch14_future-regional_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch14_All_Final.pdf.html
Chapter 14 Supplement
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363436309/Ch14_supplement_WG1AR5_SOD_Ch14_SM_Final.pdf.html
Technical Summary
http://www.peejeshare.com/files/363425223/TechnicalSummary_WG1AR5-TS_FOD_All_Final.pdf.html
======================================================
UPDATE3: a large “all in one” RAR file has been created by a reader “hippo”
Link to the entire set of documents, as single RAR archive:
http://www.filedropper.com/wwwstopgreensuicidecom
And now a bittorrent magnet link:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3f31ecb2a557732ea8d42e14b87aca7efb5dbcc7&dn=IPCCAR5&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.cc.de%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.istole.it%3A80
reader “krischel” writes:
It’s a folder with each individual PDF in it.
If you have a torrent client like Transmission, you should be able to copy/paste open up that magnet URL and start downloading.
Replaced Link with the newer one. -ModE
==================================================
UPDATE4: 7:30AM PST 12/14/12 reactions are now coming in worldwide, see here, and the IPCC is going to issue a statement today.
UPDATE5: IPCC statement here: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/statement/Statement_WGI_AR5_SOD.pdf
Full text here in this WUWT post (easier reading)
It’s going to be fun watching how they try the justify these reports when the temperature starts to drop over the next several years, due to LACK of solar activity.
I still haven’t seen any decent explanation for the levelling off of temperatures over the past 12-16 years, despite accelerated world wide CO2 emissions.
What could possible be strong enough to counteract this massive CO2 forcing?
Kev_in_UK says that you don’t need a degree to think. That is correct and so is the fact that people without degrees can think; I wonder if this includes environmentalists. The IPCC is basically political organisation and in all politics brain-food is consumed, masticated, digested and then re-emerges as excrement. Unfortunately, this is true for many areas of life and knowledge. Most people tend to believe what they are told rather than actually think about things, this is just the way of the world. How many bloggers, scientists (especially chemists) question their motives and their preconceptions when choosing sides in debates. James Lovelock (a religious chemist) in his Gaia books clearly indicate his preconceptions for those that can read between the lines but yet many people, especially greenies including some scientists, will love what he says and ignore the philosophy behind what he says. Many of the bloggers on this, and many other issues, have biases that colour their judgements; our egos tell us we know best. True impartiality is a condition that seems to be restricted to a very few number of people but I think that it can be taught to others. People should question what they are told but most don’t. One example I like was a relatively recent explanation of why the Earth was warming and why the temperatures in winter were lower than average; the reason was apparently that an ocean warmer than the atmosphere above was taking heat out of the atmosphere resulting in cooler winter temperatures. Yet I know one physicist (also a member of the Australian Greens Party) that could not see what is wrong the above explanation. Debates like this brings out those that are religiously minded (dogmatic) rather than those that are scientifically minded (open minded – whether classically trained or not.
Kev, I think that the Earth has been warming slightly over the last few decades and also that soon (sooner rather than later) the Earth will drastically cool. In all this time, temperatures will vary. But then again, what do I know? I am just a bricklayer – with a B. Sc.
“Everywhere astral (environmental) hippiness as primitive as Australopithecus panders to some dead-head’s wishes, next we’ll be back burning witches.” – Would the last person to leave please turn out the enlightenment – T.I.S.M. De Rigueurmortis.
EcoFascist Science says
“The rush is now on for the next bogus geoengineering boondoggle, blocking out the sun.”
Now why would they want to do that when the sun has no influence on the world’s temperature ?????
It’s probably worth mentioning the work of the highly respected Dr Habibullo I. Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia who also heads the Russian-Ukrainian project “Astrometria” on the Russian part of the International Space Station.
His hypothesis is that “long-term variations in the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth are the main and principal reasons driving and defining the whole mechanism of climatic changes from the global warmings to the Little Ice Ages to the big glacial periods”, not carbon dioxide.
He has also shown that “the long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars”.
Dr Abdussamatov has predicted that the reduction in sunspots will reach a minimum in 2042, and temperatures will begin to fall in 2014 culminating in the 19th Little Ice Age in the past 7500 years, beginning in 2055±11.
In a paper published in February this year Dr Abdussamatov concluded that “we can expect the onsetof a deep bicentennial minimum of TSI in approximately 2042±11 and of the 19th deep minimum of global temperature in the past 7500 years – in 2055±11 (Fig. 4).
“In the nearest future we will observe a transition (between global warming and global cooling) period of unstable climate changes with the global temperature fluctuating around its maximum value reached in 1998-2005.
“After the maximum of solar cycle 24, from approximately 2014 we can expect the start of the next bicentennial cycle of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055±11. Thus, long-term variations of TSI (with account for their direct and secondary, based on feedback effects, influence) are the main fundamental cause of climate changes since variations of the Earth climate is mainly determined by a long-term imbalance between the energy of solar radiation entering the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere and the total energy emitted from the Earth back to space.”
http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/view/14754/10140
Given the recent lack of warming this prediction is on course to being realised and poses a far greater threat to humanity than the hopelessly flawed CAGW hypothesis ever did.
O/T but related:
14 Dec: UK Telegraph Blog: Tom Chivers: Climate, economics and predictions: the only certainty is that nothing’s certain
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100194356/the-only-certainty-is-that-nothings-certain/
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
This is huge. Consider this key sentence: “The (climate) forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.” In other words, an admission that there’s likely a solar role in climate beyond direct heating from the sun, such as Svensmark’s theory about the relation between the solar wind, cosmic rays, and cloud formation. This should be a body blow to the man-caused global warming crowd. Do read the whole thing.
@richardscourtney:
I, in fact, use that “reflection of self” in figuring out what the other side thinks and does. It’s remarkably effective. So, for example, Tzo talks about the “overlords”. Lets see, which side has overlords? The “self organizing system of individuals” of the rabble (said endearingly) of the skeptics? Or the UN / EU / IPCC / NSF driven top down central authority based AGW crowd? Hmmmm?
So just listen to their rants, then use two tools:
1) Reflective assessment. What do they accuse the other of doing? that is likely what THEY do or what they are experiencing. It is the social norm they have internalized.
2) Negative Space evaluation: What is not said. That is where they have fear. (Oddly, what is denied most loudly is often also a fear point, so there is a ‘barbell’ to the negative space to also look for). Take, for example, the way The Sun gets “disappeared” from the reports… and nearly no mention of long cycle historical events (Bond, D.O., LIA / MWP / Roman Optimum,…)
It can’t be helped, and both sides do it. Unfortunately for the Skeptics side, our “Reflective” reflex is to expect them to do honest science driven from facts and data to logical conclusions. We repeatedly look for it, and when they don’t respond, we are befuddled by their lack of caring about what WE value as our social norm. So when someone repeatedly makes disasters, don’t be befuddled by that, expecting them to work for the “right and good”… expect them to be thinking that they WANT disasters. “Never let a disaster go to waste”….
Interesting to me is the huge frequency with which warmers accuse skeptics of lying… (See #1)…
And acting from political motivations… (See #1)…
And being in the pay of powerful lobbies / “overlords”… (See #1)…
And NEVER discuss the huge government driven funding machine for them… (See #2)…
In that light, it makes perfect sense that they REPEATEDLY assert censorship here, on WUWT, despite a flood of comments from “Warmistas” (hard core warming advocates) and even sporadic flat out trolls. Posted for years for anyone to see… Despite the repeated statements about the moderation policy being what is stated in the box at the top of the page ( i.e. tone and legalities based, not belief and POV based – essentially don’t be an ass and don’t post things that get folks sued, and stay close to the topic of the thread…) Makes perfect sense in the context of #1… And the well documented repeated purging of any comment on most warmist blogs that has to do with things they want left “unsaid” makes a whole lot of sense now in the context of #2.
You see, skeptics don’t fear the truth, and real science does not fear “the counter argument” no matter how flaky. So we don’t see any reason to delete warmers POV / argument. Dispute them, yes. Delete? Why on earth delete something that looks so silly from the other side? And if I’m wrong and someone shows a better way, well, that’s called progress. All for it.
But if you are on a Government Dole via NSF or UN funding and MUST toe the party line to keep the good times rolling, a truth that is contrary to that “need” must be excised and attacked. ONLY the “approved” propaganda can be “up”. (As propaganda depends on quantity and repetition… The truth just needs to be heard by a thinking mind…) So truthful questions and truthful evidence and truthful doubts and truthful counter points are attacked, vilified (usually ‘attack the messenger’), deleted, and drowned out in a flood of non-sequitur and appeal to authority arguments… (Another useful tool, btw, is just to measure the number of Logical Fallacies vs correct logical syllogisms … the more LF the more it’s propaganda… the more correct logical syllogisms, data included btw, the less propaganda and the more honest science… but I haven’t named that thought tool yet… Perhaps the LF Ratio? Also need an ’emotional plea’ vs ‘logical syllogism’ metric…. Perhaps Emoto-Spock ratio? 😉
I find these tools help keep me, personally, centered and aware. To keep a ‘tidy mind’ and not be pulled off into silly propaganda wars…
@Zootcadillac:
Well, I’ve kept the first one up, too, but reduced the priority in the queue. Yes, it is polite, but the full one (with ‘summary pdf’) is to be preferred, so hopefully you are seeding both…
Why do you keep running into folks asserting that you cherry pick a past date to make a trend that can only be measured from the present backwards to the zero slope points?
I would assert it is ‘willful ignorance for effect’… See #2 above. They must blind themselves to the realty of how the data are measured, properly, and then make a non-sequitur argument “for effect” in order to have the “repetitions” needed by propaganda techniques. The argument need not be valid, only “plausible” to the “useful idiots’ that are the target of propaganda. In fact, the “simple but wrong” is better for such use than the “complex but right”. (That’s another thing I watch for BTW, the repeated and deliberate use of “SBW” and the avoidance of “CBR”… so “greenhouse”, despite being a broken metaphor and “Superstorm Sandy” instead of ‘not quite a hurricane and less powerful than those in recorded history; plus, a midget compared to what’s seen in the non-historical geologic record of the sand bars.”
Basically, it pays to study how propaganda techniques work, and then you can understand why some “illogical” things are done.
BTW, many of the folks parroting the “broken stuff” are not crafty propagandists. They will mostly be ‘true believers’ from the ‘useful idiot’ cohort. (That’s one of the propaganda techniques, btw, Dear Leader only presents the ‘package’ to the masses. Never debates it. You end up debating with a million tape recorders on playback… which doesn’t change the mind of 999,000 of them and wastes a lot of your effort… ) So if you accuse them of being propagandists or of telling Tall tales, they will be offended and call you names and be Righteously Indignant. See, they don’t know they are being spun up and used… And nobody likes it when you tell them they are a bit daft, and their baby is ugly…
Just the way it is…
What can you do about it? I don’t have a good answer for the Self Organizing System that is a liberty and individual based structure. Just keep pointing out the truth and looking to add thinking honest folks to the ‘self organization’ via being polite and rational, I guess.
@Gail Combs:
Nice list 😉
Folks forget that the “Third Way Socialism” of the National Socialists and the American Progressives involved the collaboration with and central authority direction of large corporations. The suppression of “small business” in favor of the large corporations that could be controlled better from the center….
The only proper axis for evaluating things (that keeps things clear) is simple:
Central Authority and Control vs. Distributed liberty and control.
Once you use that axis, it all ‘fits’ nicely. There is NO conflict between “Third Way Socialism” and “Corporatism”. In fact, it LOVES “Big Business”. What it despises is a gaggle of free independent small businesses …
Big Business of course loves this too. Who wouldn’t like a government guaranteed monopoly or coordinated “regulated” oligopoly? Who wouldn’t like the stamping out of all those unpredictable small competitors with their ‘disruptive technology’ and innovation / competition? The forces of “creative destruction” are not welcomed in large organizations…
@richard D:
You are most welcome! (Now pick up a shovel and help us shovel, all that ‘stuff’ that’s been thrown at us, out of the way 😉
@Green Sand:
You wouldn’t happen to be familiar with using MACD in stock charts would you? 😉
(Moving Average Convergence Divergence. Uses 2 different moving average periods of time and looks at their relationship to figure out inflections…)
@Ryan Spear:
The answer to your question is about one large book long! But I’ll try to condense it (with some loss of fidelity…). Realize, though, that the “sun did it!” thesis is not proven.
Short term, things do warm and cool in hours. That is highly visible in the desert. Way hot days. Way cold nights. Key is to realize it’s the amount of water over your head that matters. In the desert, nearly none. (In Florida, a few tons 😉
Now look at the ocean. Incoming infrared and some long wave visible light gets absorbed into the surface rapidly. (Due to this, just a few feet down, things start to look blue, eventually ending up a a black and white color pallet.) Blue light and ultra violet go far deeper.
So one immediate factor is the color of the sunlight. Right now, UV has dropped and we’ve got more visible / red. So more surface layer evaporation, less deep ocean direct heating. How long does it take for a very small increase of UV to warm the deep? I don’t know, but ‘a long time’ of continued warming. How long does it take to have that warmed water “overturn” and dump heat once the deep heating light drops off? A long time…
Using the “pot of water” metaphor: Imaging a swimming pool and you have a small heater keeping it just a bit above the air temperature. Now someone adds, or takes away, one candle worth of added heating. It will take a LONG time for that change to be completely reflected in the pool due to the mass size relative to the heating change. ( And in that example for all practical purposes it would be lost in changes of air flow et. al…. so put your swimming pool in a giant thermos bottle 😉
The other (and IMHO larger) factor is ocean current changes and overturning currents. It can take a few thousand years for some water at the bottom of the ocean to be circulated back to the top. It can take centuries for a top layer of warm to become a few dozen feet deeper, or shallower. Yet winds and ENSO can do this in months / years scale (and have large effect in weeks). So solar impacts on oceans via wind changes can be fast at the surface. Yet you still must then deal with the heat capacity of that water in the long run.
Finally, to the extent the sun does change cloud cover, that directly modulates the input to the above list. Response time in minutes. (Flame turned up or down under the pot). Yet the pot is very very large and can take decades to finish moving… So we end up with rapid changes of air temperature sometimes in response to sun modulation; but longer term changes in sea temperature and a ‘lag time’ from that showing up in longer slower air temperature change.
Hope that helps.
Some prior remarks by IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri:
“The IPCC is a totally transparent organization…Whatever we do is available for scrutiny at every stage.” – magazine interview, May 2009
“The objective and transparent manner in which the IPCC functions…should convey conviction on the strength of its findings to all rational persons…” – testimony to a US Senate committee, February 2009
“[The IPCC’s] work is carried out with complete transparency and objectivity…” – speech to heads of state, December 2008
“So you can’t think of a more transparent process…than what we have in the IPCC. I would only put that forward as valid reasons to accept the science and the scientific assessments that are carried out.” – newspaper interview, June 2007
These quotes posted by Anthony Watts in his reply above to a particularly nasty spitballer.
These quotes prove conclusively that Alec Rawls, in his release of AR5, has carried out stated IPCC policy of maintaining transparency, which policy had evidently been subverted. Anyone familiar with the IPCC can understand how such subversion could occur. Characterizing Rawl’s dutiful and conscientious act as a “leak” is to misapply that word. In fact, there is no doubt that Rajendra Pachauri should publicly commend Alec Rawls for restoring the lapsed transparency which his public statements have so indisputably avowed as official IPCC policy, assuming,of course, that Pachauri meant what he said. Let’s see what happens.
Yes, sir, known as “maccy-de” and I have an inbuilt slant to belt an braces hence 3 trends minimum. Plus I am aware that the lighter the colour of the tie the more food it will attract!
Glenn Tamblyn says: @ur momisugly December 14, 2012 at 2:35 am
For anyone who is interested….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thanks,
I took your information and annotated a version with the numbers and with links (I have not check all of them)
Impact of Cosmic Rays on Aerosols and Clouds
High solar activity leads to variations in the strength and three-dimensional structure of the heliosphere, which reduces the flux of galactic cosmic rays (GCR) impinging upon the Earth’s atmosphere by increasing the deflection of low energy GCR. As GCR is the primary source of atmospheric ionization, it has been suggested that GCR may act to amplify relative small variations in solar activity into climatologically significant effects (Ney, 1959),
http://www.swsc-journal.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/swsc/full_html/2012/01/swsc120049/swsc120049.html#R59
via a hypothesised relationship between ionization and cloudiness (e.g., Dickinson, 1975;
http://www.swsc-journal.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/swsc/full_html/2012/01/swsc120049/swsc120049.html#R13
Kirkby, 2007).
http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1938
There have been many studies aiming to test this hypothesis since AR4, which fall in two categories:
i) studies that seek to establish a causal relationship between cosmic rays and aerosols/clouds by looking at correlations between the two quantities on timescales of days to decades, and studies that test through observations or modeling one of the physical mechanisms that have been put forward. We assess these two categories of studies in the next two sections.
Correlations Between Cosmic Rays and Properties of Aerosols and Clouds
Order Draft Chapter 7 IPCC WGI Fifth Assessment Report
Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute 7-44 Total pages: 139
Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope 1 archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001;
http://www.swsc-journal.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/swsc/full_html/2012/01/swsc120049/swsc120049.html#R4
Dengel et al., 2009;
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2009.03026.x/full
Ram and Stolz, 1999).
http://www.swsc-journal.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/swsc/full_html/2012/01/swsc120049/swsc120049.html#R70
The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link. We focus here on observed relationships between GCR and aerosol and cloud properties. Such relationships have focused on decadal variations in GCR induced by the 11-year solar cycle, shorter variations associated with the quasi-periodic oscillation in solar activity centred on 1.68 years or sudden and large variations known as Forbush decrease events. It should be noted that GCR co-vary with other solar parameters such as solar and UV irradiance, which makes any attribution of cloud changes to GCR problematic (Laken et al., 2011).
http://www.swsc-journal.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/swsc/full_html/2012/01/swsc120049/swsc120049.html#R45
Some studies have shown co-variation between GCR and low-level cloud cover using global satellite data over periods of typically 5–10 years (Marsh and Svensmark, 2000;
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.5004
Pallé Bagó and Butler, 2000).
http://www.swsc-journal.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/swsc/full_html/2012/01/swsc120049/swsc120049.html#R64
Such correlations have not proved to be robust when extending the time period under consideration (Agee et al., 2012),
http://www.swsc-journal.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/swsc/full_html/2012/01/swsc120049/swsc120049.html#R1
restricting the analysis to particular cloud types (Kernthaler et al., 1999)
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/showciting?cid=2822867
or locations (Udelhofen and Cess, 2001;
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2001/2000GL012659.shtml
Usoskin and Kovaltsov, 2008).
http://www.swsc-journal.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/swsc/full_html/2012/01/swsc120049/swsc120049.html#R93 or http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/usoskin_CR_2008.pdf
The purported correlations have also been attributed to ENSO variability (Farrar, 2000;
http://www.swsc-journal.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/swsc/full_html/2012/01/swsc120049/swsc120049.html#R21 or http://www.biokurs.de/eike/daten/Solar_i_harrison2006.pdf
Laken et al., 2012)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2012JD017626 or http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/604447.SWSC_2012.pdf
and artefacts of the satellite data cannot be ruled out (Pallé, 2005).
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/WhatsNew.pdf
Statistically significant, but weak, correlations between diffuse fraction and cosmic rays have been found at some locations in the UK over the 1951 to 2000 period (Harrison and Stephenson, 2006).
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/462/2068/1221.full
Harrison (2008)
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/464/2098/2575.full.pdf
also found a unique 1.68-year periodicity in surface radiation for two different UK sites between 1978 and 1990, potentially indicative of a cosmic ray effect. Svensmark et al. (2009)
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/svensmark-forebush.pdf
found large global reductions in the aerosol Ångström exponent from AERONET, liquid water path from SSM/I, and cloud cover from MODIS and ISCCP after large Forbush decreases, but these results were not corroborated by other studies who found no statistically significant links between GCR and clouds at the global scale (Čalogović et al., 2010;
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL049764.shtml
Kristjánsson et al., 2008;
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/7373/2008/acp-8-7373-2008.pdf
Laken and Čalogović, 2011).
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL049764.shtml
Although some studies found small but significant positive correlations between GCR and high- and mid-altitude clouds (Laken et al., 2010;
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/10/18235/2010/acpd-10-18235-2010.pdf
Rohs et al., 2010),
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JD012608.shtml
these variations were very weak, and the results were highly sensitive to how the Forbush events were selected and composited (Laken et al., 2009).
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040961.shtml
7.4.5.2 Physical Mechanisms Linking Cosmic Rays to Cloudiness
The most widely studied mechanism proposed to explain the possible link between GCR and cloudiness is the “ion-aerosol clear air” mechanism, in which atmospheric ions produced by GCR facilitate aerosol nucleation and growth ultimately impacting CCN concentrations and cloud properties (Carslaw et al., 2002;
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/298/5599/1732.abstract
Usoskin and Kovaltsov, 2008).
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/usoskin_CR_2008.pdf
The variability of atmospheric ionization rates due to GCR changes can be considered relatively well quantified (Bazilevskaya et al., 2008),
http://ccc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/SSR_Baz_2008.pdf
whereas resulting changes in aerosol nucleation rates are very poorly known (Enghoff and Svensmark, 2008;
http://www.mendeley.com/research/role-atmospheric-ions-aerosol-nucleation-review/
Kazil et al., 2008).
http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/1322/
The Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD) experiment at CERN indicates that GCR-induced ionization enhances water–sulphuric acid nucleation in the middle and upper troposphere, but is very unlikely to give a significant contribution to nucleation taking place in the continental boundary layer (Kirkby et al., 2011).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10343
Field measurements qualitatively support this view but cannot provide any firm conclusion on the role of ions due to the scarcity and other limitations of free-troposphere measurements (Arnold, 2006;
http://zardoz.nilu.no/~andreas/publications/114.pdf
Mirme et al., 2010),
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/10/11251/2010/acpd-10-11251-2010.html
and due to difficulties in separating GCR-induced nucleation from other nucleation pathways in continental boundary layers (Hirsikko et al., 2011).
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/767/2011/acp-11-767-2011.pdf
If strong enough, the signal from GCR-induced nucleation should be detectable at the Earth’s surface because a big fraction of CCN in the global boundary layer is expected to originate from nucleation taking place in the free troposphere (Merikanto et al., 2009).
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012136.shtml
Based on surface aerosol measurements at one site, Kulmala et al. (2010)
http://www.physi.uni-heidelberg.de/Veranstaltungen/Vortraege/Abstract-Kulmala.pdf
found no connection between GCR and new particle formation or any other aerosol property over a solar cycle (1996–2008). Our understanding of the “ion-aerosol clear air” mechanism as a whole relies on a few model investigations that simulate GCR changes over a solar cycle (Kazil et al., 2012;
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2011GL050058
Pierce and Adams, 2009a;
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009GL037946
Snow-Kropla et al., 2011)
http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-11-4001-2011
or during strong Forbush decreases (Bondo et al., 2010;
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/10/2765/2010/acp-10-2765-2010.pdf
Snow-Kropla et al., 2011).
http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-11-4001-2011
Although all model studies found a detectable connection between GCR variations and either CCN changes or column aerosol properties, the response appears to be too weak to cause a significant radiative effect because GCR are unable to effectively raise CCN and droplet concentrations (Kazil et al., 2012).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2011GL050058
A second pathway linking GCR to cloudiness has been proposed through the global electric circuit (GEC). A small direct current is able to flow vertically between the ionosphere (maintained at approximately 250 kV by thunderstorms and electrified clouds) and the Earth’s surface over fair-weather regions because of GCRSecond
Order Draft Chapter 7 IPCC WGI Fifth Assessment Report
Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute 7-44 Total pages: 139
induced atmospheric ionization. Charges can accumulate at the upper and lower cloud boundaries 1 as a result of the effective scavenging of ions by cloud droplets (Tinsley, 2000).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010JD014580
This creates conductivity gradients at the cloud edges (Nicoll and Harrison, 2010),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010GL043605
and may influence droplet-droplet collision (Khain et al., 2004),
http://www.swsc-journal.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/swsc/full_html/2012/01/swsc120049/swsc120049.html#InR34
cloud droplet-particle collisions (Tinsley, 2000),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(2000)057
and cloud droplet formation processes (Harrison and Ambaum, 2008).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2008.0009
These microphysical effects may potentially influence cloud properties both directly and indirectly. Although Harrison and Ambaum (2010)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2010.09.025
observed a small reduction in downward LW radiation which they associated with variations in surface current density, supporting observations are extremely limited. Our current understanding of the relationship between cloud properties and the GEC remains very low, and there is no evidence yet that associated cloud processes could be of climatic significance.
7.4.5.3 Synthesis
Although there is some evidence that ionization from cosmic rays may enhance aerosol nucleation in the free troposphere, there is medium evidence and high agreement that the cosmic ray-ionization mechanism is too weak to influence global concentrations of CCN or their change over the last century or during a solar cycle in any climatically significant way. The lack of trend in the cosmic ray intensity over the last 50 years (Agee et al., 2012;
http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00169.1
McCracken and Beer, 2007)
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006JA012117.shtml
provides another strong argument against the hypothesis of a major contribution of cosmic rays to ongoing climate change.
Just in case Germany’s new 20+ coal fired (German built) powered power stations can’t keep Das Autos rolling:-
“German Lawmakers Reject Ban on Shale-Gas Fracking in Parliament”
“Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government won votes that will permit fracking to continue in Germany, saying the technique may help the country’s energy supply security. ”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-13/german-lawmakers-reject-ban-on-shale-gas-fracking-in-parliament.html
Das Kraut will never, never, ever, jeopardise Das Autos!
Enjoy your life in the free world, it is the only life you have!
E.M.Smith says:
December 14, 2012 at 4:35 pm
responding to the time lag in climate issues. Some years ago, I explained it to my 16yr old daughter using an analogy of the living room in our house. we have an electric fire, a central heating radiator, lights, TV, laptops, an entrance door, and some opening windows and curtains!.
Envisage these as variables of heat input and heat loss. We all know what happens when someone opens the closed door and cool air rushes in, you feel a draft, unless you are sat by the fire – and after a while it warms back up again when the door shuts. Then, think of having slightly open windows for ventilation – which you adjust when the room gets too warm or too cold, or if the wind starts to blow straight in the window opening, etc. then at night you pull the curtains (cloud cover?) and reduce heat loss through the window….etc, etc.
The point I was trying to make, was that with only these few variables, you can have lots of temperature variation caused by relatively small changes in one of the parameters and depending on the scale of the changes, or the coincidence of one or more changes acting together, or even opposing each other, the readjustment time of the temperature in the room would vary. If you then gave someone else a set of data from a dozen or so temperature sensors in that room, over a period of time (weeks/years, etc) – Imagine, starting blind, with just the data, how would they be able to work out which parameters had been changed according to the temp data only? and why? – what random or semi random events occurred during the timeseries (e.g. someone leaving/entering the room)? This is just considering a bloody ROOM!
Now – scale this up to the Earths biosphere – and tell me how realistically anyone can be sure of what the heck is going on with the climate – and more importantly what/who is causing the observed changes………
I am not really much of a fan of analogies, but when scale is involved, they can be quite useful.
regards
Kev
“This is a centralized transformation that is taking place because governments have decided that they need to listen to science.”
LOL
Climategate continues….
Thank goodness the debate about major climate controlling factors is back on the front burner and scientific truth will prevail over the lunacy of carbon taxing the industrialized countries! After release of the Feb. 2007, I (as a plant ecologist since 1966) analyzed N. American climate station data to see if the doom-and-gloom of runaway anthropogenic global warming that report “warned” us about was true. I quickly saw the weakness of their treatment (i.e. lack thereof) of land-based stations for the urban heat island effect (UHIE). My data clearly showed that since about 1997 our climate in N. America had been stabilized and cooled somewhat for 10 years. In addition, proper UHIE corrections showed clearly that the warming period from 1921 – 1941 was actually somewhat warmer than the more recent warm period! I gave these data (and Henrick Svensmark’s well-proven hypothesis of climate controlling mechanisms) to my wife who teaches high school English. She presented these data in a “critical thinking” curriculum she had developed. After her presentations she was mobbed by grateful young adults who had been duped into a state of fear. Shame on those who have jumped to conclusions without proper scientific analyses!
IPCC I, II, III, and IV are wrong. We apologize for having caused the unnecessary expenditures of billions and as partial apology have refunded all monies spent over this last generation of misguided and now discredited climate science advocacy.
Alec Rawls
You sir are a man of ethical core… Thank You
Bill gets popcorn and sets down to watch the alarmists go nuts… ( gonna need a really big bag)
Keep up the truth finding and hats off to the tireless and relentless posting of such.
The statement from the IPCC couldn’t be more clear. In effect, they are saying, “there’s still plenty of time for us to manufacture Pal Reviewed papers that will bring the literature into alignment with the Agenda”. We’ve seen this before. The draft is really just intended to identify where the literature fails to present a “nice tidy story”. The Team then uses this information to gin up papers that say what the IPCC wants them to say. The IPCC can then claim that “the best and most up-to-date science say that its worst than we thought”.
Of course this time, their tricks will be a bit more obvious.
Matthew R Marler says:.”
“That sounds like the “same” game, not a “changed” game.
Precisely ! The same “ignore real evidence” game that the IPCC have been using for a long time.
The fact is , that this time they have actually mentioned enhanced solar forcing, and even though they go ahead and dump the idea with no scientific reason to do so, the mention is still there.
So, the game HAS changed !!
They are preparing for the downturn in temperature that will most certainly follow the sun’s currently lazy solar activity.
Hi G. You mentioned corporate funding, so I’m posting an updated version of a comment I’ve made in previous threads. (I’ve added four items at the end.) I could say more on the topic, but it would take ages.
==================
Notes From Skull Island
Brian Martin, in his wonderful online booklet Strip the Experts, wrote that if your opponents:
This line of attack on skeptics has been very successful for the warmists in the past, which is why they constantly recur to it. But the recent skeptical attack has been mostly an indignant, blogger-led populist revolt against increased and unnecessary taxation and regulation (fewer barbecues, etc.) and against elitist presumption.
If our side were well funded and well organized, it would have the following characteristics:
1. There’d be a slick umbrella site like HufPo under which all dissident bloggers could shelter, cutting their costs, increasing ad revenue, and simplifying and standardizing the process of surfing the deviationist blogosphere, especially for visiting journalists. The effect would be to considerably “amplify” the dissenters’ voices.
2. Failing that, there’d be enough $ for individual sites to ensure that, for instance, Climate Audit would have been able to handle to traffic-surge in the wake of Climategate, instead of being overwhelmed. (How’s that unpreparedness agree with “well organized”?)
3. There’d be a PR agency to “package” stories emerging from the blogosphere and articles in scientific journals or contrarian columnists and feed them to media sources in easy-to-read, pre-edited form. (Or at least an unincorporated online network of funded individuals performing a PR function.) This is a topic that is so complex and filled with jargon that it desperately needs such pre-chewing to get the MSM to swallow it. But what do we have? Only Climate Depot, which provides leads, but no packaging.
4. There’d be a centralized, regularly updated, annotated, topically divided, web-wide index of useful “ammo” skeptical or skeptic-supporting articles. If I, or anyone, were cat-herder in chief, this would be one of the top items on the agenda.
5. There’d be a REPOSITORY for “quotes of the day” from blog commenters. (These get lost in the noise after a week or so otherwise.) Here’s an example, from Willis:
6. There’d be extensive book tours for every skeptical book published, to gain exposure in multiple markets via interviews in the local press, etc. Such tours could be extended for many months, well beyond any rational “payback” in book sales, if the real aim were to get media exposure – for instance by challenging local warmists to debates on the premises of the newspaper or broadcaster, etc. The funding for such a tour could easily be concealed.
7. Certain fringe or off-topic comments would be “moderated” out, because they step on people’s toes and don’t play well in Peoria. E.g., New World Order theorizing, bolshy bashing, boot-the-UN and tar-and-feather-‘em remarks, and most attribution-of-motives comments. Populist “venting” of all sorts would be toned down; instead the stress would be on sweet reasonableness and out-reaching to the average citizen and opinion-leader. Any media pro would advise that course, especially one with a big funder behind him (who wouldn’t want to be tarred by association with tin-foil-hat opinions (if news of a link ever came out)). Such a “mainstream” tone and mindset would be the fingerprint of any top-down campaign on a scientific topic.
8. Not only would there be more stylistic similarity, but the content would be less idiosyncratic as well. There’d be evidence of a “script” or list of talking points that skeptic commenters were following, instead of the typical home-brew assemblage of arguments.
9. There’d be an astro-turfed tag-team of high-stamina commenters assigned to Win the War for Wikipedia by out-shouting and out-censoring Connolley and Co. They’d also go en masse to Amazon and give warmist books a thumbs-down and engage in comment-combats there as well. But the dissenters in such venues have been an outnumbered, disorganized rabble.
10. There’d be much more stress on arguments that would move the masses and that don’t take a degree to understand. I.e., arguments about the costliness, technical impracticality, and political unenforceability of mitigation strategies, and about the ineffectiveness of massive CO2 emission-reduction in the atmosphere even if all those obstacles were of no account.
If skeptics were truly Machiavellian, or guided by political “pros” behind the scenes, they’d be hitting these popular hot buttons. Those are where the warmists’ case is shakiest — and it’s always a good strategy to focus on the opponents’ weakest points and pound on them endlessly. Instead, these topics make up only 10% or so of the skeptical thrust. Most dissenters devote most of their energy to talking about weather events, dissing believers, and arguing about technical and scientific matters.
11. There’d be an extensive online collection of opposition research, such as warmist predictions waiting to be shot down by contrary events. Such opposition research is so valuable a tactic (as is now being shown) that no political or PR consultant would have failed to insist on it.
E.g., a score of warmist predictions of less snowfall would have been at hand to counter Gore’s claim that the models predicted more snowfall. Similarly, the IPCC’s Assessment Reports would have been scoured for flaws and nits long ago. Instead, it wasn’t until Glaciergate that we got on its case in any semi-organized fashion.
12. There’d be an online point-by-point rebuttal of all the “How to Talk to A Skeptic” talking points, not just scattered counterpoints to a few of them. And there’d be a Wikipedia discussing those points and more in fuller detail. Lucy Skywalker is trying to assemble these, but it’s obviously an unfunded effort.
13. The Oregon Petition Project would have been handled professionally. I.e., there’d have been no short-sighted tactics such as use of NAS-lookalike typography, no claim that the signers constituted “a meaningful representation” (let alone that the consensus was on the skeptics’ side), no claim that all the signers were scientists (when some were technologists and dentists, etc.), and no implication that the signers had all been vetted. A skilled propagandist, such as one hired by King Coal, would have avoided such a transparent over-reaching, which threw away the petition’s effectiveness by handing the opposition a chance to counterpunch effectively.
14. There’d be a place for the reposting of the “highlights” of WUWT and other skeptic sites, and also such sites would have editors who would retroactively (after a month or so) work on a “sister site” consisting of “Highlights of WUWT,” in which outstanding paragraphs would be flagged and/or highlighted. This would make it easier for newcomers and journalists to effectively skim it and notice our better arguments and facts.
Such editorial work could be done by people who have good judgment and lots of knowledge of the issues, like Pamela Gray, Lucy Skywalker, etc.
15. There’d be a reposting of “negative highlights” from warmists’ sites in which the unsavory qualities of their leading lights and hatchetmen were on display. Call it, maybe, “Quoted Without Comment” or “Get a Load of This.” It would make an impact on fence-sitters.
16. There’d be a spiffy ad campaign consisting of short spots (20 to 40 seconds) that would focus on making one quick jab at the warmists. There should be a standard format for these ads, such as a common tag-line, music, lead-in, graphics style, etc. The touch should be light, with the aim of making the spots entertaining, such as by including little bits of silly rhymes, etc. The ads should also be “different,” to get around viewers’ defenses, and to make the message “sticky.” Care should be taken to avoid overstatement, and to make qualifications where necessary, to forestall counterpunches.
One easy target, because of its good “visuals” and absence of technical obscurity, would be to show non-performing wind turbines and weed-overgrown solar-panel farms. The failure of these ventures (relative to the promises that were made about them), and the fraud associated with them abroad, would be a benchmark against which other swarmist claims could be judged.
17. There’d be a copy editing & peer review service to vet our side’s books prior to publication, since any flubs will be seized on by warmists to discredit the entire work, as happened to Plimer’s book. Instead, dissenting books continue to be produced in an amateurish fashion. For instance, in Steve Goreham’s just-out (and excellent) Climatism!, I found two obvious spelling errors in just an hour’s skimming. (“Forego” for “forgo” and “principle” used where “principal” was needed.)
18. We’d be conducting polls of various groups of scientists designed to offset the effect of such polls by the other side.
19. There’d be mass distribution of my broken hockey stick button [give links]
20. We’d be pushing geoengineering as the preferred “adaptive” alternative to mitigation. It’s something that the average man can understand as a general concept. E.g., if it rains, open your umbrella. Instead, contrarian bloggers we’d virtually never mention geoengineering except to sneer at it.
21. Commenters would be compensated for accessing paywalled articles. Instead, virtually every thread on WUWT that critiques a warmist paper lamaents its paywalled status and critiques only what is outside the paywall.
Big Oil? Baby Oil is more like it. Ologeneous overlords? My companions and I on Skull Island laugh until we vomit.
“United States taxpayers have funded climate science to the tune of well over 80 billion dollars”
What Bernanke conjures up in a month to avoid the recession.
Bill McKibben,
Given that AR5 completely reverses the position of the IPCC on drought, hurricanes and floods, are you prepared to retract your article from earlier this year titled “The New Normal”? Are you prepared to admit that your alarmism was not founded on science after all? Will you, as the ethical journalist you claim to be, not only admit your folly, but publicly call out the IPCC and their minions for misleading you until now with claims that were increasingly ludicrous in face of the facts?
Will you apologize Bill? Will you say you are sorry Bill for ridiculing those of us who pointed out that a warming world should have less severe weather, not more? That the laws of physics could not produce any other result?
Faced with facts which falsify his argument, a fool argues anyway.
A man steps up, admits his error, and learns from his mistakes.
A coward slinks away in silence.
The IPCC has ceased playing the fool in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (on these matters at least).
What Bill, will you do now?
“In effect they are claiming that you can’t heat a pot of water by turning the burner to maximum and leaving it there, that you have to keep turning the flame up to get continued warming, an un-scientific absurdity that I have been writing about for several years (most recently in my post about Isaac Held’s bogus 2-box model of ocean equilibration).”
Agree totally, this is one of the key mistakes the climate alarmists have made, and it will be their great undoing. Every day the temperature continues to rise between noon and 2pm when incoming solar radation declines (barring e.g. clouds etc), yet climate scientists (presumably glued to their models and PCs in air conditioned offices) can’t even notice or understand this very simple observation.
G hit the wall with his ref to the GISS data set – the most corrupt set of adjusted data since Al Capone’s accountant was keeping the ‘books’ !
Otherwise, I ( being of cynical mind ) must say that those of us not in lock step with the Reich do need to be very cautious. The warmists have their little press release – reacting to the “leak” and so now, next year when AR5 official hits the streets they will be in perfect position to ridicule all the ‘stunning revelations’ of this leaked set of pubs, when examination of the official AR5 shows that our revelations are not there [ no longer in the doc ] .
Or, scenario B, the various graphs and conclusions have been edited to fall back in with the longer term, previous propaganda.
Sadly, it’s not final until it’s final. ( or some IPCC hack can no longer rewrite it ).
Thanks, Alec! At long last the “Summary For Policymakers” is published without the ipcc’s Press Release Propaganda preceding it by weeks and promising us that “smoking guns” will magically appear when we do finally see the SPM. And the SPM is at long last published along with the ‘science’ that it is allegedly based upon, instead of the latter following the SPM by several months so that the SPM can serve only as unsubstantiated, unscientific Propaganda. Restoring the scientific practice that makes a scientific publication’s conclusions appear only when accompanied by the actual science they are based upon is a great step back to reestablishing the practice of real science – and perhaps it’s also another rationale for your unilateral release of the whole AR5!