Respected climate scientist refutes false claim that tree died due to climate change, and the pressure to not do so
Toby Nixon writes:
The Seattle Times ran a hysterical story about how climate change killed a large tree at the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle. Cliff Mass, professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington and no climate change skeptic, demolished the Times story in a strongly-worded blog post.
But perhaps more importantly, he goes on to describe the kind of pressure to which he is subjected to not post such corrections because of the ammunition it gives to “deniers”. It is an excellent exposition on the corruption of the scientific method that is rampant in climate science — not just the suppression of dissent, but the suppression of every small corrections of the most exaggerated claims.
Mass writes:
So what about temperature? Let’s examine the maximum temperature trend at the same Seattle Urban location for summer (June through August). There is a slight upward trend since 1895 by .05F per decade. Virtually nothing.
What about the period in which the poor lived (it was planted in 1948)? As shown below, temperatures actually COOLED during that period.
You get the message, the claim that warming summer temperatures produced by “climate change” somehow killed this pine is simply without support by the facts.
So the bottom line of all this is that the climate record disproves the Seattle Times claim that warming and drying killed that pine tree in the UW arboretum. There is no factual evidence that climate change ended the 72-year life of that tree. The fact that a non-native species was planted in a dry location and was not watered in the summer is a more probably explanation.
Why is an important media outlet not checking its facts before publishing such a front page story? Linda Mapes is an excellent writer, who has done great service describing the natural environment of our region. Why was she compelled to put a climate change spin on a story about the death of a non-native tree?
Now something personal. Every time I correct misinformation in the media like this, I get savaged by some “environmentalists” and media. I am accused of being a denier, a skeptic, an instrument of the oil companies, and stuff I could not repeat in this family friendly blog. Sometimes it is really hurtful. Charles Mudede of the Stranger is one of worst of the crowd, calling me “dangerous” and out of my mind (see example below).
I believe scientists must provide society with the straight truth, without hype or exaggeration, and that we must correct false or misleading information in the media. It is not our role to provide inaccurate information so that society will “do the right thing.”
Read the whole thing: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/05/seattle-times-climate-change-article-is.html
Welcome to the Spanish Inquisition. Never query the Orthodoxy.
Speaking truth to power is never without risk.
The left speaks power to truth.
Warren,
Didn’t you mean: Welcome to the Global Inquisition. Never query the Orthodoxy.
The pseudoreligion of “CAGW” and its Inquisition, thousends of Torquemadas and willing denouncers!
FACTS by DEFINITION are TRUE. It is NOT necessary to qualify them by calling them TRUE facts!
Statements or opinions which are NOT true are NOT FACTS!
PLEASE,PLEASE, PLEASE let’s THINK before we jump onto the keyboard and spew vitriol or just plain garbage.
What the world needs now is thoughtful, reasoned analysis of the events of the day, a return to civility in our language usage and personal interactions rather than what some commentators are doing now.
Good thoughts, good intentions, good actions from and to all.
All we need to do now is to convince those preaching the AGW orthodoxy to do so with “Thoughtfully Reasoned CIVILITY” in their language.
Johana, what about “alternative facts” (per Kellyanne Conway?)
One more step is necessary in the ‘true’ part of the logic chain – if something is ‘true’ it can usually be verified by repeating the experiment which showed it to be true. In other words there must always be an verified experimental basis for a thing to be true. No experiment to successfully repeat the phenomena – no truth!
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. 😉
Lynda V. Mapes spells her name with a “Y”.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/farewell-giant-pine-climate-change-kills-a-champion-at-washington-park-arboretum/
Chimp, the actual article is a hoot!!…..everyone needs to read it
The pine was killed by beetles and drought…..two more of the same pines are still alive and doing fine at the arboretum…they plan on installing irrigation now
bugs = normal
other pines = normal
drought = normal
Global warming is highly selective
Agree with this and Hultquist below.
As a tree person myself, I really get frustrated when a journalist makes news basically on a single dead tree. 72 years is not very much for a tree, and given trees don’t walk around, if you plant it at a non-suitable location, it will easily die. Arboretums loose trees to beetles every now and then. What is important is how well forests grow. As I mentioned a few days ago, forest productivity has steadily increased over decades in boreal forests of Finland. It only takes good forestry to ensure that. And 410 ppm of CO2 helps of course.
You could think an arboretum has the best forestry available, but it has different goal than productivity. In arboretums, there is a small number of tree individuals which are usually mostly not indigenous to that area. They are often from a different climatic zone and planted in a less-than-optimal way. If we’d for the productivity, we’d select tree species that actually suit for the place, and cut down most trees that won’t do well. But in an arboretum, we want to show what a tree looks like, so we try to keep them alive even if they are off their natural habitat.
So when a tree dies in an arboretum, it is a bit like a dolphin that died in a tank. If you don’t like it dies there, you should not have put it there in the first place.
Urban people see trees as individuals, and try to use a polar bear type framing to support claims of DAGW
You don’t need to speak. Be like a tree. Scientists and mothpieces are paid to make distance between solutions now, for profit later. The 93% not talking know how environs are working for us, and how both side of climate war are ready to plunge us all into terrible outcomes. Establish concensus amongst yourselves, and the rural people are served. No dolphin died in a tank.
What does bugs=normal and drought=normal mean? If warmer winters mean larger bug populations, that places increased stresses on trees. Have you heard of the pine beetle devastation in the US and Canada? If more occurrences of drought happen, that means more stress on trees. I am not saying these were the cause of this tree’s death, but it is simplistic to just hand wave and say bugs=normal and drought=normal.
Your statements “other pines=normal” and “global warming is highly selective” is very unscientific. For any kind of stressful situation – beetle attack, caterpillar infestation, drought – not all trees will die. Some are better able to withstand the stress than others.
Uh, Chris, please link all of that to increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. CAGW depends upon it.
@ Chris
Perhaps you missed the part were the good Dr. Nixon states that the temperatures in that area had actually cooled since the tree was planted 72yrs ago… but nevermind the facts.
Glad you enjoyed the good hoot.
Wonder if Ms. Mapes feels the least bit chastened.
I’m guessing not. Reporters are notorious for laughing off and even reveling in their mistakes which hurt and misinform people.
J “nevermind the facts” please point me to the links for the following: 1) nighttime low temperatures in the winter in that area since the tree was planted 2) rainfall figures for summer months since the tree was planted, including longest gaps between rainfall.
Pinus rigida (pitch pine) is native east of the Mississippi River (more or less).
That it has lived for 72 years in the Puget Sound region — marine west-coast environment — is a testament to Gaia’s benevolence.
Tonight we’ll have a glass of Washington (non-native) Syrah wine to toast the magnificence of this immigrant.
Happy Mother’s Day!
In its native environment, what is the life expectancy of a pitch pine? How much does that differ from how long that tree lived in the Pacific Northwest?
Just curious.
’bout 100 years
when talking about life expectancy the mean isn’t useful in predicting what kind of outlier a single death is. I’d like to see the histogram. I suspect 75 years is well within 2SD.
Mean, SD, kurtosis, skew, and even an actual histogram are the metrics needed.
Peter
In favored locations, 300 years
The Pacific Northwest, West of the Cascades, tends to be MUCH milder than just about anywhere east of the Mississippi. You don’t get the hot and cold extremes. You also don’t get as much rain. The rain you DO get tends to be all day drizzle, of a few tenths of an inch on average. Unlike EotM where you’ll get torrential downpours of an inch or more on a regular basis.
I grew up in Virginia, and long for the violent thunderstorms that were so awesome to watch when the power went out. Been out in Western Washington for 15 years, and only seen such a thing maybe twice.
“It is an excellent exposition on the corruption of the scientific method”
It has nothing to do with corruption of the scientific method. It is about correcting factual errors in a newspaper. Plus a complaint about how some activists feel that his dealing with the “exaggerators” is impolitic.
The activists however claim to be scientists, which clearly they are not, if they object to the scientific method, which requires telling the truth, regardless of the false ideology of CACA.
oh but the Left has adopted a “Take no prisoners, offer no quarter, Never surrender an inch of ground at any cost” mentality for protecting the Climate Change orthodoxy.
The climate inquisition has JCurry’s and Pielky, Jr’s professional academic scalps as trophy for heretical climate thoughts. They put everyone on notice, including Dr Mass, not to step over the line by these tactics. As a result it deivesthem ever-leftward; toward more extreme positions.
J’ever wonder why this IS? Think; for 30 years the CAGW pitch has caused massive changes in how our society sees itself in relation to the Earth. Vast amounts have been invested in industries and products that can only survive in the marketplace in the presence of the CAGW worldview. How many people will be buying Tesla or SolarCity products if they know we have many centuries’ worth of cheap natural gas freely available? The Left operates on GUILT. No guilt, they have no platform, no stick to beat the Ruled Classes into submission with. The day you look an SJW or radical “green” dead in the eye and say “So?” you are pushing back against the madness.
“Never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
It is left as an exercise for the reader to determine the origin of the above quote.
Sounds like Douglas Rushkoff.
Goldrider, CAGW is about depopulation, nothing else. Open your mind and eyes and it stares you in the face. All you have to do is think about the consequences of destroying healthy energy generation in favor of that which will not work unless you have a battery the size of the moon. All the while the temperature is dropping – the oceans can give up heat to “adjust” the temperature just so long before their store starts to run out. With a diminished capacity to generator energy, you can’t heat in even a mini ice age enough to avoid millions if not billions of lives lost to hypothermia and starvation.
I agree — it’s not about corruption of the scientific method. It’s about the corruption of the media.
Much of the problems in the climate discussion is rooted in such media distortions. Media is supposed to have standards before printing nonsense. They don’t seem to care if it’s in error.
Corruption of the scientific method is when they decide on the conclusion and then determine the data in to support the conclusion. A newspaper article doesn’t really fit that criteria. It’s more like corruption of media ethics.
http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/who-we-are/5-principles-of-journalism
she failed on all five counts.
To my mind, it’s “compartmentalization”; The Gores and such say we’re doomed, the Manns and such say you can see climate change all around us, the Lyndas and such say they see some right there, and there, etc., the Mudedes and such attack anyone who questions anyone involved, and the Stokes and such say it ain’t corruption of science . . (And I say bullshit ; )
And you would be RIGHT! Two nights ago the temperature here was 38 F. By Thursday it’s likely to be 85.
No one will die. Now, show me the carnage from this 1.5 degree increase since 1850. Where are the bodies, the buildings under water, the deserts, the famines? The truth is the Warmists ain’t got JACK, and they know it. Pull the grants and they’ll have to go find honest work, that’s the bottom line.
Actually I think you are technically correct.
It’s pretty clear that the scientific method, or any reasonable transmogrification thereof, was not involved.
What we do have is journalistic malfeasance. When DT tells a whopper, the left, and the press, jump all over it. When leftish journalists do the same, apparently they get a bye. 🙁
I’m pretty sure that Trump tells some whoppers on purpose, just to enjoy the MSM reaction. Like throwing fish to trained seals.
When I worked for the feds it was pretty obvious that contractors were leaving a few easy-to-spot, easy-to-fix qa deficiencies. The theory seemed to be that they had to give the inspectors something to find or the inspectors might find real problems or even make things up just to show that they were working.
It’s worth reading the Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. Zaphod Beeblebrox is made president of the galaxy in order to distract people from the real power mongers. When DT was elected, I thought he would do an excellent job at that, and I think he is. DT=ZB…
Brilliant!
I’m pretty sure I knew ZB in a different incarnation … only one head though.
Nick, your “exaggerators” are, in truth, outright li@rs. It seems to be the modus operandi of climate alarmists, purported scientists or not. Activists are not to be trusted; they are selling/promoting anything that supports a particular policy agenda.
Cherry picking again Stokes? It’s all you corrupt lot ever do.
I think Nick is correct. This is not a “corruption of the scientific method”. While such a corruption does occur, it is generally in the development of predetermined conclusions — usually by distorting the data to fit the conclusion they want. (Example — It is warmer, there is flooding therefore, the flooding must be caused by AGW.)
This newspaper article is a violation of journalist ethical standards (Yes — these still exist: https://www.spj.org/pdf/spj-code-of-ethics.pdf) and it is a violation of generally accepted standards of academic free speech. While both are wrong, neither rises to the failures of the scientific method.
I am not sure he will live that long.
What is the life expectancy of a climastologist ?
Notice how Nick dismisses the abuse as just “some activists”.
Only as long as their next grant funding. When the grant money dries up, they generally tend to blow away
A classic example of ‘Group Think’; which no-one in the ‘group’ will be able to comprehend.
If the pine were planted in AD 1948, it lived only ~69 years, this being the Year of Our Lord 2017.
They were hiding the decline.
If a tree falls in the park before it’s time, can we blame CO2 for it?
The pine might not have lived even 69 years had it not enjoyed a steadily increasing supply of airborne plant food during those decades.
Its.
Autofill strikes again.
Chimp so true.
A line sapling was planted. It must have been 3 years old when TRANSPLANTED…
Exactly.
Do you really think that a newly-fallen pine nut was stuck in the ground in an arboretum in 1948? Or is it possible that a three year old seedling was (trans) planted in 1948?
Why would the seedling need to be three years old?
A seedling was planted. Says so in the article.
Yes, but it doesn’t say that the seedling was three years old. Maybe that was known to be the case at the park.
I’m less familiar with pine seedlings, although I’ve planted a lot of them, than with Doug fir, stands of which are commercially regenerated from year-old container-grown seedlings, two-year-old transplants grown for the first year in containers, two-year-old bare root seedlings or three-year-old transplants.
Maybe with just one off and a non-native species, they waited for the seedling to get bigger and hardier. In which case, my bad.
So what Chimp? My dad had a life expectancy of 75 years yet he died and 50. I didn’t blame climate xhange
” I didn’t blame climate xhange”
Then you must be a SkepticDenier, in the pay of big oil,
Good God Gore (GGG) teaches us that climate change will kill us all by –
storm, fire, drowning or pestilence……do you doubt his word ?
For 1saveenergy: Remember that Al Gore blamed climate change for the extinction of the coelacanth. (Think about it. Kind of apposite to this subject line.)
Was that before or after Prince Albert objected that a picture of the Earth from space was hung upside down?
“It is not our role to provide inaccurate information so that society will “do the right thing.””
I’m glad someone thinks so. In Australia, a few years ago, the Melbourne Age published an editorial stating expressly that they wouldn’t print stories that might detract from the consensus for climate action. Amazingly the next day numerous sheep continued to buy it. However, over time its readership has declined so much that it is shedding staff. Hopefully it is in its death throes.
If you go to a sheep shearing and can’t see the sheep, you’re the sheep.
You are right Timothy I can vouch for that as I have had many letters to the Melbourne Age not published when all I was doing was attempting to correct blatantly false claims made by contributing articles on climate change
eg “that the Antarctic would be free of ice within a decade”
I pointed out that the Antarctic is 1.7 times the size of Australia (thus about 1.7 times the size of the contiguous USA ) and is covered in ice averaging 3 kilometres deep indicative of the fact there is one heck of a lot of ice to be melted.
My calculations suggested if the current rate of warming of just a peninsula of the Antarctic ( a small fraction of the continent ) was to occur allover ( although there is no apparent reason why it would) it would take 160,000 years to melt all the Antarctic ice sheet !
But the Age did not want its readers to be confused with such views running counter to the prevailing orthodoxy so my letter did not appear
“Telling the truth telling aids the climate deniers.” That’s something your mother probably told you to do.
Mr. Mass, the actions of those in your camp should give you a clue to both the motivations and the veracity of their claims. Perhaps you should dig deeper. But beware as you will be branded a heretic, and the wrath bestowed upon you by your former brethren will be a shock.
Zealots view this as a partisan war where disinformation is a necessary and justified tactic for winning. Conjured urgent catastrophe is the indispensable backdrop in the framing.
Goes back to the Dilbert cartoon earlier today.
The left has adopted a Climate Change orthodoxy that must not be questioned in the slightest even by the priest-class. To do so is called heresy or blasphemy.
Roger Pielky, Jr is a good example of someone the climate gestapo silenced for climate heresy. Not for doubting the CO2 science, but for questioning the economic impact.
The next step past heresy is apostasy, or to be labeled an apostate, as in someone who (a former member) renounces the religion altogether. Then there are climate infidels.
Label me an infidel. Proudly.
Mr. Mass would make an excellent director of the EPA, NOAA etc.
The politics of the position would quickly beat any attempt at moderation out of him. Which is why Trump put in Pruitt as he has no professional or reputational need to get along with the watermelons who must now follow him or quit.
This makes me think how future ages will look back with amazement how science got so big, so rich, so powerful and yet so retro-medieval that so many things could get blamed on something that was so evidently not even happening.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
I think future ages will understand quite readily how areas of current science got so corrupted: Money (as in “lots of…”), and precisely zero consequences for being wrong.
And before that, careerism. When “scientist” became a career unto itself, it opened the door for self-interest to get in the way of pursuing knowledge.
Cliff Mass picked up and linked with his own comments my CE guest post Shell Games some time ago, which savaged a completely wrong series of Seattle Times articles on ocean acidification and the Pacific Oyster. Upside down stupidly wrong science. Added New Guinea corals to complete same titled essay Shell Games in ebook Blowing Smoke. (Well, actually subtracted it, since the book essay was finished before the simplified more focused guest post was extracted for CE. Sent the lot to Seattle Times requesting a correction. Never heard back. Proof positive of MSM bias.
I nominate Nick Stokes as WUWT’s prime denier of reality, all types.
Naw. Disagree.
I respect Nick’s analytical and math skills. Top notch. Just can’t free himself of the consensus that blinds him.
Griff, on the other hand, would be my pick.
Why restrict Nick’s title to just WUWT?
I rather like leaving the WUWT focus out completely. “I nominate Nick Stokes as a prime denier of reality, all types
Is Lynda a sister to Mary Mapes? The CBS “journalist” who didn’t verify the Killian documents before running the story.
I don’t know, but Mary Mapes is from WA State.
That is why I asked. Journalistic malpractice runs in the family? That would be too rich.
Odds are good, I’d say.
You could call the paper and ask.
“Why was she compelled to put a climate change spin on a story about the death of a non-native tree?”
That is the story here, the ‘why’ and the ‘spin’, (un)fortunately we all already know the answer too well.
a tree died….obviously it was global warming 😉
Yes, apparently it is a tragedy when one tree dies due to climate change but in another Seattle article by Lynda it ok to cut “locally sourced” wood for burning. Lyinda Mapes, seeing her writing style, she is about passion, not science.
The Harvard Forest Woods Crew has readied the winter wood supply. Harvard Forest heats its buildings with locally sourced firewood from the Forest, thanks to the crew’s labors. (Lynda V. Mapes/The Seattle Times)
http://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/seeing-the-forest-for-the-trees-what-one-oak-tells-us-about-climate-change/
Passionate, understatment….almost environmental P’o’r’n like. Copy and Pasted from the article.
“John, I need a tree,” I wrote him early on…“Here,” John said. “This might be a good one,” he said, putting his hand on the big oak……I tipped my head back to see its broad crown. It was big, that was for sure…Dave Orwig, a master tree corer at the Forest, to bore deep into the oak….The big oak talked back with a krrreck as Orwig drilled the bit nearly to the tree’s heart. With a swift tug, he pulled out a long core of wood from the dark depths of the tree into the sunlight.
yup, I think she grew up in the 70’s, that is for sure – Duncan
Climate change is so sensitive and fragile a movement that any doubts will kill it? Is that what the true believers are now preaching?
if the profe wants to get some mileage out of it, he should feign jaded cynicism of the uberliberal, otherwise he might have to dye his hair or wear a pussy hat.
in any case, now that this new vein of outrage has been discovered, i do expect a flood of autistes to don their berets and birkenstocks and start a little schism. on the personal level, it’s really pursuit of celebrity at any cost.
That’s “vaghat,” gnomish. I gave that description of the confused protesters to all on WUWT awhile back.
Anthony, there seems to be a word missing below the first diagram.
What about the period in which the poor (TREE?) lived (it was planted in 1948)?
it beggars belief that there are such gullible people on this planet. The change in temperature in Seattle from the lowest on a winter day, to the highest on a Summer day, must be 80 degrees F or more, and the author of this article suggests that a 0.8 degree in warming since this tree was planted is the cause of its demise? how are we ever going to restore sanity when these types have had a religious like (CAGW) conversion?
It hasn’t warmed in Seattle since the tree was planted. That is the point of the second chart.
Speaking of trees, lets not forget how the CAGW movement have tried to blame the Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic on global warming. From Colorado to the vast boreal forests in northern Canada, the mountain pine beetle has run amuck with vast swaths of mature mostly monoculture pine forests. You hear this everywhere by the climate doomsters, but it is so far from the truth that even some official Government Foresters have to tell the truth.
The real problem is that when the pine forest is at a fairly advanced age by 90-100 years old, it is very susceptible to hosting the pine beetle larvae. The forest actually becomes food for the beetle outbreak and actually creates the beetle invasion. It has happened throughout history, and while it used to be somewhat controlled by fire, we now actively engage fire suppression so the problem just grows. Which creates a larger fire problem which when we do get an out of control forest fire it makes the fire problem worse and then they blame the fire on climate change. Can’t win for losing with these liars.
The CAGW crowd says that warming is responsible for this since we no longer get long cold snaps that freeze the pine beetle larvae dead. They forget to mention that it was mainly in the 1960’s and 1970’s most recently that we got these extended cold snaps of -40 that did sometimes control and freeze the larvae to death. But that hasn’t been the norm for all history, albeit the LIA most definitely did have some very severe winters. The pine beetle infestation is normal course for Mother Nature, and a simple comparison would be if you planted your entire garden to cabbage, would you blame GW/climate change if you get cabbage worms?
Ron, the pine in this news article was actually killed by pine beetles…says so in the article
Not sure what you are trying to say Latitude? I re-read the article above 3 times and see no mention of pine beetles killing the tree. What I read was that the tree in Seattle died as a result of global warming raising temperatures which was the point of the whole post. Did I miss something somewhere?
I thought the scientist who crushed the global warming theory of the original newspaper article said “The fact that a non-native species was planted in a dry location and was not watered in the summer is a more probably explanation.” And then he gets flack for pointing out it wasn’t watered. Maybe why the tree was stressed and succumbed to a beetle attack…
Anyway, I was talking about tens of millions of pine trees dying in our forests that the alarmists try to blame on CAGW which isn’t true.
@ Ron Williams 6:41
Farewell giant Pine by Lynda V. Mapes
Pitch Pine
Habitat
Native Range
Pitch pine grows over a wide geographical range-from central Maine to New York and extreme southeastern Ontario, south to Virginia and southern Ohio, and in the mountains to eastern Tennessee, northern Georgia, and western South Carolina. Because it grows mostly on the poorer soils, its distribution is spotty.
In the Northeast, pitch pine is most common on the sandy soils of Cape Cod, Long Island, and southeastern New Jersey, and in some sections of sandy or shallow soils in Pennsylvania (19).
Climate
The climate in the range of pitch pine is humid. Average annual precipitation is usually between 940 and 1420 mm (37 and 56 in) and is well distributed throughout the year. Length of the frost-free season ranges from 112 to 190 days and temperatures range from winter lows of -40° C (-40° F) in the northern part of the range to summer highs of more than 38° C (100° F) in most sections (9).
https://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/silvics_manual/Volume_1/pinus/rigida.htm
=================================================================================
Seattle climate couldn’t have killed the tree.
Not much of a tree. I had a bigger one than that die in my back yard.
There is no doubt that there has been a corruption of the scientific method. Just look at these recent studies of Antarctica, SLR, Arctic etc. How much longer can they continue with their BS and corruption?
http://notrickszone.com/category/antarctic/#sthash.aOQHVaoK.C6csB6ND.dpbs
http://notrickszone.com/category/arctic/#sthash.qy2vRrZJ.dpbs
…It is not our role to provide inaccurate information so that society will “do the right thing”…
Stephen Schneider disagreed. He said it is up to scientists to decide the balance between effectiveness and honesty.
…On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both…
I have read this quote from Stephan Schneider a number of times. I agree with the first sentence.
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts.”. Sorry Mr. Schneider, there is no other hand.
The rest is nothing but a rationalization for ignoring professional ethics with an “ends justifies the means” argument. In the licensed practice of engineering, such an ethical lapse could easily be deemed malpractice and result in suspension or revocation of license and a fine. Would you want to drive over a bridge designed by an engineer who failed to disclose doubts and uncertainty about the adequacy of the design? Maybe there should be a licensing board and statutory standards of ethics with required regular refresher courses for “scientists”.
Rick C
What, in your view, would constitute professional malpractice by a climate scientist?
It seems to me that as much dosh is being spend on the paid professional advice of this lot, they should be help professionally responsible for errors, omissions and false statements.
I realise of course that ‘climate scientists’ are not a ‘professional’ group – it seems they are open to pretty much anyone – but surely there are consequences for a paid group rendering opinions for a consideration? Is receiving compensation creating a common law social contract requiring that the advice include known problems and that caveats must be supplied, in the same document?
I have an Ontario registered PE son who is liable for the consequences of improper or incomplete advice. I don’t see how a bunch of climate scientists, if there is such a thing, demanding special privileges to be heard, to the exclusion of other scientists, all the while being exempt from common law ‘good faith’ rules or professional ethics policies.
Climate scientists should be held accountable for policies and directives they help create, by their paid advice, when that advice is improperly constituted and, possibly, biased for profit.
The whole point of being a member of an exclusive club is to be considered first, and to be considered capable of rendering policy-worthy professional advice.
Maybe there should be a licensing board and statutory standards of ethics
===================
we are told the science is settled. as such, climate change is no longer a scientific problem. scientists have no training in how to solve problems. they are trained in how to investigate problems.
engineers are trained to solve problems and thus are licensed. it is long past the time when the scientists should have stepped aside and the engineers called in.
OT Green Jobs:
http://programm.ard.de/TV/tagesschau24/das-offshore-hotel/eid_28721114677687
From the nearest port, the boat transfer to the offshore wind park DanTysk takes about 70 kilometers west of Sylt up to three hours. In order to be as permanent as possible on site, the operator has come up with something unique in Germany: the so-called offshore accommodation platform OAP, a kind of “hotel on stilts”. The Kameramam was allowed to experience exclusively the construction and everyday life 20 meters above the North Sea – a stormy matter.
DETAILS
REPEATS
SIMILAR SENDINGS
Your workplace is in the middle of the rough North Sea, 70 kilometers west of Sylt. For Christof Huss from Ahrensburg and Odila Gaertner from the island of Fehmarn, the boat transfer to the offshore wind park DanTysk from the nearest port in Esbjerg in Denmark takes up to three hours.
What to do so that the boss of two wind parks, DanTysk’s Servicechefin and the other offshore workers are on the spot as long and as often as possible? Their employer has come up with something unique in Germany: the so-called offshore accommodation platform OAP, a kind of “hotel on stilts”.
The NDR was allowed exclusively to experience the daily life 20 meters above the North Sea. In the summer of 2016 until the first winter storms, the camera team saw the life and work of the 100 million euro offshore hotel. In shift operation, up to 50 workers are accommodated on the housing platform for two weeks. On six floors, Stahlkoloss offers accommodation, offices, workshops, canteen, a small cinema, a gym and an on-board hospital. “Youth hostel standard for the price of the Berlin Adlon Hotel”, the offshore workers joke.
They love the wind but hate it at the same time. Because Christof Huss, Odila Gaertner and the others know that too little wind giant losses means to their employer. And when they are too windy, they do not come out to work. Service and repair of the wind turbines must fail. But the expectation of their employer is great, also because of the total investment of 1.3 billion euros. The harsh weather outside is, however, an extreme burden for sensitive technology. Especially in the case of the cranes and trans- ship ships, there are always problems or even total losses. The top goal, the maximum utilization of the wind park, is hardly achievable.
A fim of Mario Göhring
Kudos to Prof. Cliff Mass (!) for exhibiting a high standard of integrity, in the face of savage zealotry.
As for Lynda Mapes – Seattle Slimes and Charles Mudede – The Strangler, Dragnet’s Joe Friday said it best: “Just the fact Ma’am…. Just the facts!”
Yes, I’m always pleased to see some intellectual backbone from an alma mater of mine. I used to live close by the aboretum, and pass it on my walk into the University. The floating walkways on the the lakeside are a must for any visitors.
Seems climate hysteria is… just that.
https://www.google.ca/webhp?complete=0#complete=0&q=climate+hysteria
New young gods are very demanding. The climate apocalypse God demands the integrity, critical thinking skills and rational thought processes of the sincere true believer. climate kooks seem to believe it is a small price to pay in order to save the world. They of course fail to detect the ironic circular thinking required to achieve such mindlessness.
Chronic of construction; german only – sorry
https://youtu.be/a6G_cohSE7c
While it’s silly to conclude from oone example, Mass also makes mistakes.
Read the comments to the original article.
Drier and hotter augusts and bugs.
Again, while it’s silly to say it was only climate change it’s also premature to draw any conclusions from limited data.
Time will tell
Steve M.
Have you lived in the Seattle area, as I have?
DR. Mass showed that Precipitation trends are increasingly wetter over time,that temperature trend is slight cooling since it was planted.
Pine trees gets enough moisture in the Seattle region.
Steve Mosher. “Drier and hotter augusts and bugs.
Again, while it’s silly to say it was only climate change it’s also premature to draw any conclusions from limited data.”
You still draw conclusions out of nowhere: Neither drier and hotter Augusts nor bugs are attributable to a global climate change as cause, and even less to “anthropogenic”.
Time will NOT tell, the only piece of conviction of a crime is dead.
I have lived in the Seattle-Tacoma area since 1968 and I can testify indeed that there has been no climate change. We have cold rainy winters with only occasional freezing, warm, rainy, lush springs, warm to really warm dry summers, and cool rainy-dry falls. Like clockwork, the seasons just spin by.
And we get about 50 inches of rain per year, which causes ALL plants to thrive. My property has 100-foot-tall Douglas Firs in my back yard, and I have to hire an arborist at regular intervals to inspect them for insect damage. Too much damage and they become a threat of collapse or breakage, and have to be taken down. (No point in fighting any battle against it. By the time you can see the damage, the battle is essentially over.) Marvelous firewood. No need to worry about replanting. The natural seedfall will generate seedling and saplings if you leave your back turned. I let my back yard go without attention for a few years (medical problems) and the saplings were my height when I was able to resume policing the yard. Growing out of gravel, too.
A pine tree died in Seattle? Boo, hoo. Cry me a river. If we did not vigilantly keep trees in check, they would consume the countryside. About a decade ago, some fallow property (forested) in my neighborhood was sold and then cleared for development of an apartment complex. Once the trees were removed, I was astounded to see two houses that had been completely hidden from view, nearly as fresh as when they were built, by all indications sometime in the 1950s. They had been abandoned, and the forest grew up around them. That anyone in Seattle could imagine that trees were in danger from our stable and benign climate just goes to show the down side of unlimited immigration (in this case, from California, and the Land of Nod).
I think those of us who are old enough and have lived long enough in one place should speak out strongly in refutation of the “global warming” / “climate change” nonsense, on the principle that direct observation carries more weight than bogus mathematical models.
When you plant a non-native tree, it has to adjust to a different ecosystem from what its species is best adapted for. It also has to adjust to a change in climate. But that type of climate change has nothing to do with AGW. How could it? Moving a species from one type of climate to another can adversely affect its health and longevity, but what does that prove about CO2 causing a change in global climate? Absolutely nothing.
You could plant a tree native to California in Greenland and blame climate change for it’s inability to survive. But that would be disingenuous. Yes, the climate changed. And yes, the change was caused by human activity. But the circumstances were artificially contrived and have nothing to do with CO2 or AGW.
“Correct Facts” in the headline. Are there any other facts other than correct ones?
I got the references to correcting factual errors but the headline did its job in drawing my attention to the article. I was amused.
Drought in Seattle? The longest period without pouring rain in my lifetime is about 90 days.
That has to be a joke. Right?
The climate in Seattle is such that during the high sun season the precipitation is low. This is called a ” Csb ” in the Köppen system because of cooler summer than the Mediterranean climate (Csa). There were a couple of dryer than average years in the Puget Sound region and trees were stressed. This was visible along I-90, east of Seattle, near Olallie State Park. Such variability is common.
This chart shows the monthly numbers for 2015 — a very dry summer.
http://www.seattleweatherblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/image00524.png
“Trees were stressed.” I shake my head. What this probably means is that they were showing signs of being dry, which is absolutely normal under the circumstances. I am a native of the region, have been for my 66 years, and a dry tree in a dry summer is par for the course. Because our soils tend to be a buffer to all this, the trees recover and thrive in the wet season. “Stressed,” indeed. The thriving of trees in this region is THE reason that our major first industry was logging. Trees are weeds. They will take over every parcel of land if you let them. They had to be logged off the land en masse in order to make any arable land at all (according to my grandparent settlers). I have a comment on this fact further above.
But I will add another comment, with all this talk about “stressed” trees. Has anyone ever taken a mountain road up into the foothills of the Cascades on a day in the middle of a summer hot spell when the fire warning level is in the “red” zone? Get up into the hills, deep into the forest, on a stretch of gravel road, shimmering under the sun, and step out. You will get the sense that you have stuck your nose over an open can of turpentine. The trees are so resinous, they exude isoprene vapor. Highly inflammable. When I experienced this for the first time, I instantly understood why summer forest fires are probably the closest thing to hell on Earth. Fighting these things are like fighting in hand-to-hand combat with a mixture of gasoline and coal. AGC: ban forest fires! Anyway, just a note from those of us who live with this all our lives.
“Drought in Seattle? The longest period without pouring rain in my lifetime is about 90 days.
That has to be a joke. Right?”
So what” Species evolve with different degrees of drought tolerance, depending on the climate in that region. Or do you think pine trees have the same drought tolerance as saguaro cactuses?
Maybe we could (trans)plant a saguaro where the pine was and blame that future death on the changing world climate as well.
Chris, the point is the insane, hyper forcing of the CAGW meme in the media. The tree died, the climate did not change, alarmist warmists claimed that climate change caused the death and intelligent people pointed out the stupidity. Take a breath and get a grip; professional alarmists are everywhere, and they lie to you.
***Why is an important media outlet not checking its facts before publishing such a front page story? Linda Mapes is an excellent writer, who has done great service describing the natural environment of our region. Why was she compelled to put a climate change spin on a story about the death of a non-native tree?***
They do not bother because they are interviewing “experts”
Last December there was an Arctic conference in Winnipeg. One of the top dogs from the Winnipeg Free Press interviewed a scientist from the University of Manitoba. This person suggested (predicted?) that in 5 to 10 years Hudson Bay would be ice free in the WINTER!
I wrote to the writer, but received no reply. I may have posted this at WUWT.
The article was entitled, “Climate fast forward and Melting sea ice could brighten” and was in the paper about Dec 7, 2016 written by Bill Redekop.
That will be a cold day in hell when Hudson Bay doesn’t freeze over in winter. Average temperature at Churchill in Jan/Feb is about -30 C, without the windchill factor and little daylight in the northern parts. University of Manitoba has a lot of rogue ‘climate scientists’ similar to Penn State, home to the infamous Dr. M@nn. How is it possible that these people who apparently graduated high school can even contemplate making such a statement. You would think these so called ‘scientists’ would be red flagged immediately and disciplined.
U of M has another polar researcher professor who claimed 9-10 years ago that the Arctic Ocean had never been ice free in 3 million years but would now be completely ice free in summer within 25-30 years. Dr. David Barber also assisted in procuring the largest single climate research grant ($30.7 million) in Canadian history retrofitting the Cdn icebreaker Sir John Franklin to a Arctic research platform now known as the Amundsen. Sometimes I wonder if these icebreakers cracking up the ice in the Arctic is part of the problem with the melting ice cap. Wouldn’t that be ironic to see a headline that Arctic Researchers Are Part Of The Problem With The Melting Arctic Ocean.
I suspect the Seattle Times has been angling for a Pulitzer with this continuing stream (for at least four years) of front-page climate change stories based on reporting as-yet-unpublished research. (Getting scoops, IOW.)
In Nov. 2011 the Seattle Times published a front-page Sunday article, “Climate Change, beetle, may doom rugged pine” (using the singular to refer to one species of pine). I responded with a series of comments starting on the middle of page 7 of its comments page and continuing through the last page, #9. Start here:
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/reader_feedback/public/display.php?source_name=mbase&source_id=2016699269&offset=120&direction=ASC&column=create_date
This may have been the beginning to the Times’s Pulitzer-angling.
If you have to lie to convince people to support your cause, is your cause worth supporting?
Of course not. Next question?
For the last two decades I corrected such reports through media and seminars but the media and so-called big bosses repeat the same. It is like thousands to one. Even I countered the World Bank report [my counter was published along with the world bank report] in daily English newspaper but yet the reporting of the news paper did not change.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
The Departed.
In Soviet Union, if you don’t follow the narrative, the narrative follows you!
At Jo Nova – all is not lost!!!
Scientists discover an extra 5 million square kilometers of forest , just like that.
http://joannenova.com.au/
“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive” dates from 1513 but warmists haven’t learnt its lesson yet. The way to not be caught out telling lies, is to not tell them in the first place. In something trivial or short lived, you may get away with it but if CAGW is real, the timescale is great enough for lies and exaggerations to come back to bite the promoters. Having been caught lying, people start looking for lies, or just assuming that there are lies. By using the same techniques as for political campaigns, warmists have divided the populous, which is automatically a route to fail to cut CO2. Especially as warmists refuse to act if sceptics don’t.
Unfortunately, this can be read as when *first* we practise to deceive… practice makes perfect! [note the difference between the verb abd the noun!]
Having been caught lying, people start looking for lies, or just assuming that there are lies.
BINGO
It’s very simple. Eco fascism by the greenshirt extremists only accepts what it makes up as “fact”. Scientific method which questions every such assertion and demands proof by several, as many as have the expertise, and accepts clearly contrary evidence, itself tested by others, as failing the original hypothesis. That’s the science scientists should be defending. If we lose it we lose devloped society. Simple. You can’t engineer a hypothesis and expect it to work. Doesn’t work like that.
The preference for independent understanding over belief through independent test and challenge is the basis of our developed technological economies, that are themselves threatened in several ways by the mass belief in the pseudo science of populist beliefs created by extremists for their own fame and gain.
Real scientists should be saving technology from these retards. We need adequate, affordable and sustainable energy to power everything at the end of fossil, GM food, Vaccinations, gene therapy, etc. Or we must return to superstitious tribal feudalism based in the ignorant beliefs of the masses. Yet even professional institutions will not tell the truth to power. My own UK Institute of Physics and Institution of Engineering Technology (the old IEE plus Mechicals), won’t explain to government why renewable energy can’t deliver the UK’s needs at remotely the level required, very expensively, in science and economic fact, as it’s “unhelpful” to tell truth to politicians who are doing well from their fraud on the energy physics.
Real science method is anathema to all belief led cults, as it can end the frauds supported by false propaganda, why education is supposed to be secular and exclude irrational religion, and prefer the verifiable facts to unverifiable assertions. The educational system seems to have failed for the masses, who anyway prefer easy received opinion and tribalism to harder understanding.
To quote Reagan, Trust, and verify.
Americans forgot the last bit, and have the propensity to prefer irrational beliefs such as religion, Scientology anyone? – inexcusably more religious than most developed and educated countries. The USA created the bad science (BS) as religion culture, exported it through the propaganda of unknowing arts graduate led media believers like the BBC, along with their sub-prime debt and fast food,
We face a concerted attack on understanding by the forces of evil, bent on rolling back knowledge and progress for their own ends, to the days when religion controlled an ignorant world and its priests enriched themselves by creating fear of the unknown, inventing its own reality to fill the gaps, and suppressing other beliefs and real knowledge in the same way.
Such a culture must fail, Bridges, planes, buildings, cars built on hypotheses that can’t be tested and perhaps denied won’t work reliably. Why biologists don’t get physics and engineering. So we face the end of technological civilisation as we know it, built on thousands of years of scientific development, as humans demystified their natural world and removed the need for beliefs , gods and priests, be they Moche or Greenpeace. A triumph of the arrogant ignorance of the masses and their medias over the tested and proven understanding of their brightest and best.
And the knowing exploitation of this failing by the eco nazis in our society for their own profit at the actual expense of the masses. Sad, and very bad for manind, who wil have to figure out who to get through the next 80,000 year ice age, which wil require the mass migration of 10 Billion people and rebuilding of cities as the Oceans fall 100 metres, etc.. Take a look at the cyclic temperature graphs pf the last Million years and understand the MIlankovitch orbital clock that they correlate with, and relative levels of enrgy involved between these forces and a bit of atmosphere. We are past the peak of an interglacial ocean waming event, entering the next dominant state ice age now, in our almost stable circular orbit. It’s the Ocean temperatures that matter, of course. The atmosphere is simply a consequence, or symptom. The energies involved on a planetary scale more powerful than climate scientists can possibly imagine (30% varaition in the Sun’s enrgy and gravitational attaraction of the Earthe, itself 100 times the Moons(from memory – check) Yet still the tempertaure dffernces between ice age and warm states are predictable and relatively small, we can survive in both states – somewhere. But if you want a probale prediction, I would suggest ice age beats tipping point any day. One keeps happening, the other is a guess about how the atmosphere works whose numerical models are very rudimentary and ultimately unprovable. etc.
It’s all about power and money, and people who think they can understand science and draw their own conclusions without doing the work necessary. Not about real science.
And your qualifications to back up this statement are ?
[what are yours? – mod]
Physicist who also studied some meteorology, and who has been following the climate debate for 30 plus years
Also add that I am now a computer engineer working in private enterprise and my income is in no way from climate science
I am an electrical engineer, MIEE, and physicist with a physics degree, MInstP and a top UK school MBA in 1975, all well used in technology business so I have Chartered status in these disciplines so am CEng, CPhys, MBA. You can find my evidence in the parliamentary libaray. Better still you can check all this for yourself, it is very simple and just basic High School science applied to national data. No opinion required or appropriate in engineering delivery. There are only one set of facts about a particular situation. Hope that answers your question..
I love how Brianricatt couldn’t even understand his own illiterate post, and tried to simplify it for himself two minutes later.
I’m afraid Brian lost me at the second sentence: “eco fascism by the greenshirt extremists”, (who presumably include NASA, NOAA, and the Pentagon to name just a few). Mind as closed as a nuclear bomb shelter, qualifications or otherwise.
Alan, have you read any of the U.S. Assessment Reports? If so, please explain their mendacity and mindless drivel without falling back on some form of conspiracy.
U.S. agencies, like the IPCC, were given their marching orders. Please read the political history of the UN IPCC. Please read about how the scientists’ 1995 uncertainty was morphed into political certainty. Since then, all the money and mojo goes to CAGW.
Corruption, anyone?
Dave, in your first paragraph you scold me for promoting a conspiracy theory, and in your second you alledge an enormous global one.
I posit that where large amounts of money and power are at stake, wealthy individuals, companies, and industries are going to react if they feel threatened, and disinformation is sometimes a component of that reaction. This is historically beyond dispute. If that is in your mind a conspiracy theory then I am suggesting one by saying that fossil fuel interests are promoting the spread of disinformation, although I would not call it that. It assumes greed and self interest on the part on a relatively small group, and has happened many times before.
Yours by contrast appears to be massive and global, involving a huge number of individuals, more or less every peak science body, and governments of both left and right leanings, including 6 of the G7.
I leave that to speak for itself.
There are no global conspiracies, pro- or anti-CAGW, Alan. All it took was the well documented initial corruption at the UN. The political posturing and self-interested behaviors just followed naturally. Combine self-interested bureaucrats and politicians with green NGOs and, bingo, you have a global crisis!
As the counter evidence continues to build against CAGW, strident denials are manifest. The IPCC’s AR6 will be fascinating; how much misdirection can be served up to say that climate models reflect reality? How many puerile papers can be cited saying things like “the buttheaded gnat-catcher will go extinct if humans continue to have an industrial society?” I assume that AR6, like all the other IPCC documents, will be written to confuse the issues, not to elucidate facts concerning the real world.
AR6 will contain a listing of the effects of a warmer world on its ecosystems. No science about what actually caused historical temperature fluctuations and the minor warming since the Little Ice Age. I am already gearing up to survive the countless hours I will spend wading through turgid bureaucrat-speak, all to the effect of “no proof, but we assume.”
You said “U.S. agencies, like the IPCC, were given their marching orders”. Enlighten me: who gave those orders?
I hope he is a skeptic, because those who are not skeptics are not scientists.
Meanwhile outside of this little anti-science bubble of hot air chittering about a tree, huge sections of the coral in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia are bleaching due to sea temperatures. Go see it now before it dies taking a $multi-billion tourist industry with it.
[we are not anti-science here, in fact we are very pro-science. But we are anti-hype and against bad science. You should read this story before you go off and say more unfounded labeling – https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/05/falling-sea-level-the-critical-factor-in-2016-great-barrier-reef-bleaching/ -mod]
My neighbor, the Great Barrier Reef, is fine. It’s been this way before, and it’s going to recover again.
Keep up the narrative if you like, though, those tourist dollars taste delicious!
Firstly, a large proportion of the comments on this site are not remotely rational discourse, just railing against (to paraphrase) “greenies”, “lefties”, “group think” and “deluded or greedy scentists”. A lot is just the sort of plain smug, glib, self-riteous ignorance I would expect from a doddering elderly uncle. If you are fair minded read through the comments and tell me it is not so.
This is very similar stuff to the pro cigarette posse, possibly by some of the same people, except the stakes are far, far higher. The anti-scientist flavour is very strong, and of course if you can’t defeat the science, attack the credibility of scientists instead.
I guess only a “leftard” would take out insurance against a possible global catastophe being warned of by every peak science body and a huge majority of scientists.
Secondly, as only a Physicist, I am not sufficiently qualified to completely evaluate the article in the link, but as the diagrams in the article show, there is a trend to the bleaching in which it increases towards the equator.
Also, I quote the official website of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority:
“The Great Barrier Reef has experienced mass coral bleaching events in the past.
In 1998, there was a global mass bleaching event where 50 per cent of the reefs on the Great Barrier Reef suffered bleaching. During this time, sea temperatures on the Great Barrier Reef were the highest ever recorded.
Mass bleaching also occurred in 2002, with 60 per cent of reefs were affected. This was the largest coral bleaching event on record. Two periods of hot weather resulted in sea surface temperatures a few degrees centigrade higher than long-term summer maxima.
In both events, about five per cent of the Great Barrier Reef’s coral reefs were severely damaged.”
Thirdly as a Physicist, I AM qualified to evaluate the basic science of planetary temperature regulation. In simple terms, greenhouse gas concentrations are the knob that regulate our planets’ temperature. If scientists from other disciplines were NOT finding a diverse myriad of evidence of rising temperatures I would wonder what they are hiding. But they ARE.
Alan Barker
The problem with your “accept the 100% guarantee of disaster (disguised as “insurance” against a 5% possibility of potential temperature increases greater than 2 degrees)” is that the disaster is ONLY based on the projections of self-serving bureaucrats and self-selected “scientists” who benefit from the trillions taken from the world based ONLY on their hyped fears and collective propaganda.
Then, you compound that error, as ordered by the propaganda of those “peers” and propagandists who review their own “papers” and accept the millions paid each year in “climate change education” by inventing “a vast right wing conspiracy” (oops, that is the other socialist conspiracy, isnt it) of oil-company funding and “cigarette company science” (science studies edited to benefit those who take the money from commercial and political groups who benefit from the final results.) Which are, as 92 billion in climate change funding proves, ARE the CAGW alarmists and extremists!
And the politicians who seek the 3.1 trillion in taxes made necessary and possible only by these “self-selected scientists” who hype their propaganda.
And the bankers and commercial suppliers who benefot from 31 trillion a year in carbon futures trading.
Aye. The black grease of corruption is on your hands. Under your nails. In your mind, not the skeptics.
Insurance? When the slight chance of minor problems 100 years in the future must be balanced against the 100% assured 100 years of continuous disasters and starvation forced upon the world BY YOUR artificial demand to control energy use and deliberately raise prices on the world’s food, clothing, shelter, lights and power? Because you “fear” that some “potential” future world “might” enjoy the benefits of slightly warmer temperatures?
As a physicist, Alan, would you agree H2O vapor is far more prevalent in our atmosphere than other actively radiative gasses, including CO2? Would you agree that H2O’s radiative properties cover a far greater band of frequencies than that of CO2?
Would you agree, Alan, that IPCC climate models fail to reflect real-world measurements of atmospheric temperatures? Would you agree that those models fail to reflect actual measurements of atmospheric H2O concentrations? Would you agree that those models are not sufficient reason to fundamentally alter our social, economic and energy systems?
Sorry, but I could find one story to say anything. This is also by a self declared sceptic. Credibility thin.
“I have discussed these issues face to face with deniers
So you equate AGW sceptics on this blog – many/most of whom are professional scientists and qualified engineers – with Holocaust deniers and probably neo-Nazis and followers of David Duke too, do you?
You have utterly destroyed your credibility with just that one single word.
And then you accuse any of the aforesaid AGW sceptics of being paid to post by BIG OIL, whatever THAT is.
You’re a remarkably unpleasant, abusive piece of work, aren’t you?
Read some the comments. Lots of concern about giving “deniers” ammunition. No sense of irony that facts are the ammunition they are yapping about. Change the world based on politics and nothing more. Happy to sling the ammunition all day lomg
I have had Cliff Mass’s blog bookmarked for years as he provides one of the best scientific weather blogs. He is good scientist who will follow the truth wherever it takes him.
Cliff, you should ask your superiors in the department how telling the truth about science could possibly hurt “climate science” if climate science was valid science? It would be impossible to hurt good science with more facts.
Then, ask how suppressing true facts and science in order to allow support of bad science is anything more than the politicization of science and the promulgation of propaganda (junk science) to achieve a political goal. Is that what they stand for as a science department?
If they have to lie about the science, then they know that what they want the people to accept in the way of rules and life style regulation is something the people would not ordinarily allow. That is simply not acceptable.
University of Washington started the Washington Ocean Acidification Center – College of the Environment that has been supported by the state government. When Dr. Mass challenged his colleagues’ as well as the Seattle Times’ attribution that low pH water had affected oyster larvae due to climate change instead of natural acidification from the upwelling of deep low pH waters, he was admonished by the university despite having all the factors correctly identified. The Washington Ocean Acidification Center is drawing in big bucks from state government that the university wants to maintain.
Cliff Mass has done a stalwarts job of calling out all sorts of mangled alarmist’s science from fallacious acidification claims to bogus drought, precipitation and snow pack claims, false drought claims and now this tree.
He has accurately identified the alarmist as the blatant liars they are.
And yet he remains a warmer believing the science of AGW is valid and that action to reduce CO2 emissions must be taken.
How does Cliff not extend the credibility deficit he has so perfectly identified to the rest of the claims made by the AGW team?
He believes that effects of CO2 will begin in the future, but have not affected current problems.
I see a lot of snide remarks about “believers” in climate science here.
Know you are criticising every single peak science body in the world including NASA and NOAA and the judgement of the scientific community, who by an overwhelming majority accept the IPCCC findings, and the concerns of historical scientists as far back as Edison; on the whole, people professionally dedicated to seeking the truth.
Know that you are sneering at the theories and observations and measurements not just of climatologists and their models, but of Physicists (such as myself) who understand the fundamental link between greenhouse gas concentrations and global energy budgets, oceanographers, biologists, and many other disciplines, all observing temperature related changes. The Cherry Blossom arrival in Japan keeps getting earlier, and the latitudes in Australia where sub tropical spiders are found is moving south. NASA has satellite measurements of ice areas over the arctic shrinking over time.
All these people are liars or fools ? Really ?
By contrast, anyone reading this who is not on the payroll of the denialist industry and is genuinely interested in getting at the truth should understand that by various accounts this website is funded by the Heartland Institute, which is funded by Exxon Mobil and the Koch brothers and likely other big business interests with a very self interested agenda.
Oh, and the self interest of the insurance industry is following the money and the data: they are very worried about the relationship between climate change and the increase they are seeing in the costs of weather related natural disasters.
On the other hand, if you want to continue to believe that virtually every scientist and science body, most of whom have no financial interest in the result, is deluded or is lying to you, then go ahead, but please consider if that is a reasonable position or if your confirmation bias is being overworked on this issue.
Alan, your statement that professionals: “…all observing temperature related changes.” actually just affirms the general warming trends from the Little Ice Age. CO2 “control knob” theory wrecks on the shoals of historical temperature variations, including the 1915 to 1940 warming.
More recent estimations of TCS and ECS values of CO2 climate sensitivity is much lower than the IPCC values derived from climate models. Additionally, there have been no increases in extreme weather, as is predicted using those faulty models.
The science is not settled, and expensive policy aimed at CO2 reductions is not warranted.
Hi Dave, thanks for your reply.
What you term “control knob” theory is basic Physics. Are you familiar with the black body effect? It’s a quantum mechanics thing discovered by Boltzmann if I recall correctly. That plus greenhouse gases regulate our temperature over the long term, and in fact without greenhouse gases our planets’ overall AVERAGE temperature would be closer to 6C instead of 15C. You can easily look that up if you don’t believe me. Basically matter absorbs energy from the sun and as its temp rises it begins to emit radiation at fairly low frequency, with the frequency and energy emitted increasing with temperature. If you have been to a steel mill you will have seen the steel go from cold to red hot then to white hot. Thats the black body radiation part. The greenhouse gas part is that they absorb lower frequency radiation, stopping some of the energy getting out. So if you chuck more greenhouse gas into a planetary system, energy out will be less than energy in until the temperature rises enough. Then there will be a new equilibrium average planetary temperature. That is why scientists are talking about limiting CO2 concentration to specific values, because the basic Physics says that sets our long term average temp, and Physics does not lie. Hope that makes sense.
Now although we can calculate the rate of increase of energy (a truly frightening number of H bombs worth BTW, also can be looked up), because our planet is big and spinning and has lots of water to absorb energy, the rate of increase of surface temp is very jagged, and the effects on climate/weather very complex. That is the domain of mathematical climate models. These are improving partly because of improved computing power. Don’t confuse short term weather forecasts (small area, short timeframes) with climate modelling. Remember when weather forecasts were good maybe just for tomorrow ?
Because of all of this you have to look at trends over all time, but often people pick slices of time as gocha indicators, when all that proves is they dont quite understand or are playing games to support a false argument.
Not sure where you got the “climate sensitivity” stuff from, but the basics dont come from models. I dont need a model to tell me that if an atomic bomb is dropped on a city the damage will be real bad, but a model could tell you how the damage is distributed. See the difference.
Now I’m not advocating destroying society to deal with this issue. Interestingly, you don’t have to believe any of this climate change stuff to think there might be positive benefits to moving towards renewable energy.
Firstly, fossil fuels ARE going to run out. Indisputable fact. In how long is debatable.
Secondly, reducing dependence on oil means greater energy independence, which means countries are more independant of the chaos and corruption of the middle east. Thats good right ? Probably less wars and dead American soldiers.
Thirdly renewables are decentralized, which is actually great in poor countries. Put solar on the roof instead of building massive power stations and transmission line networks. If you dont believe me ask the prime minister of India.
Finally, about the increase in extreme weather, I think insurance companies would disagree with you on that.
Cheers!
Try following this blog for a few months,Alan, and get an understanding just how preciously wrongheaded you comment is. Climate is not that simple, and anyone claiming to have that level of understanding of climate is blowing smoke.
No one has a reliable model of why climate varies in decade or century scales, and an inadequate model of ice age periods exists.
Then you might get an idea of the politics that pervades most of the “solutions” proposed, which you do not seem to understand, either.
Respectfully Tom, I have been closely following the climate debate for more than 30 years.
In that time I have looked into the various standard objections that are put forward and almost without exception the ones I have looked at are based on lack of understanding of the science, cherry picking, poor logic or plain falsehood.
I have discussed these issues face to face with deniers, and I observe that I point out the verifiable errors in their logic or facts they shift to another argument, almost always ending up saying it’s all self interest or politics, which of course is a simply a way of shooting the messenger.
The core proposition seems to be that every peak science body in the world and virtually every scientist is fabricating data for either financial or political reasons. In other words, a massive global conspiracy. Of course this proposition is not falsifiable, so by philospher Karl Popper view, not itself scientific This I think is why deniers get so emotional about the topic: they are defending something so improbable as to be absurd. Probably explains the messianic religious tone present in quite a few of the posts.
I’m curious that there is no discussion here of the counter proposition (which does have some supporting evidence) that denialism is in part driven and funded by companies and wealthy individuals with vested interests in fossil fuels and/or political power. Probably various Arab countries too. There are well documented historical examples of this sort of behaviour.
The other last resort argument from denialists is that renewables are too expensive. This one is on it’s last gasp too, given the rapid growth in solar and wind has driven prices down, and companies and countries are jumping in on a big new business opportunities which is also providing rapid growth in job opportunities. Americans, the Chinese are eating your lunch in this area. It’s good to see Elon Musk out front in battery technology, because that is going to be critical in managing electricity supply in a mixed fossil/renewable transition period.
Honestly, I see the opposition here as akin to promoting steam trains when electric trains have arrived.
Alan Barker
Because that exaggerated claim – though often made – is a lie. There is NO such evidence of vast amounts of money funding the skeptic community. please, tell us of that funding, and who got that money? Anything like the millions in “new CAGW links to malaria” research money suddenly in the hands of the committee at Penn State charged with “investigating” Mann’s claims? Anything like the billions per year spent in the US alone – all to the chosen profits of the CAGW classes?
Perhaps those of us closest to center of that community would like such funds, there is no such funding. Now, just what ‘evidence” do you – as opposed to the millions per year spent in CAGW “education” and the billions per year in CAGW “research” and lab funds and solar energy windfall profits chasing (and always being caught by!) solar and renewable “prophets”
One minute digging around:
The Heartland Institute, according to the Institute’s web site, is a nonprofit “think tank” that questions the reality and import of climate change, second-hand smoke health hazards, and a host of other issues that might seem to require government regulation. A July 2011 Nature editorial points out the group’s lack of credibility:
“Despite criticizing climate scientists for being overconfident about their data, models and theories, the Heartland Institute proclaims a conspicuous confidence in single studies and grand interpretations….makes many bold assertions that are often questionable or misleading…. Many climate sceptics seem to review scientific data and studies not as scientists but as attorneys, magnifying doubts and treating incomplete explanations as falsehoods rather than signs of progress towards the truth. … The Heartland Institute and its ilk are not trying to build a theory of anything. They have set the bar much lower, and are happy muddying the waters.”[1]
An August 2014 Travis County Texas court ruling highlighted President and CEO Joseph Bast’s lack of credibility and reliability:
“Mr. Joseph Bast, president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, testified for the Intervenors regarding the Texas Taxpayers’ Savings Grant Programs (“TTSGP”), a school voucher bill that failed in the 82nd Legislative Session. As a threshold matter, this Court finds that Mr. Bast is not a credible witness and that he did not offer reliable opinions in this matter. While Mr. Bast described himself as an economist, he holds neither undergraduate nor graduate degrees in economics, and the highest level of education he completed was high school. Mr. Bast testified that he is 100% committed to the long-term goal of getting government out of the business of educating its own voting citizens. Further, his use of inflammatory and irresponsible language regarding global warming, and his admission that the long term goal of his advocacy of vouchers is to dismantle the “socialist” public education system further undermine his credibility with this Court.”[2]
As you probably already know, Travis county is Austin, Texas, an island of decidedly leftist liberals in the state. Somewhat better than Berkeley, but not much.
So to summarise the general thesis here on this thread as it appears to me, an interested outsider:
Climate change is a global conspiracy. Pretty much all scientists and global peak science bodies are hateful evil deluded leftist liars except strangely the tiny few heroes who have “found” the errors and or lies. Those heroes you believe no matter what, because they say what you want to hear.
No matter what the overwhelming scientific concensus is, it’s untrue because, well, see above.
Wow! Beam me up Scottie
Alan, please quit pussyfooting around and cite direct evidence of CAGW. Not evidence of a generally warming climate since the end of the Little Ice Age. Not evidence of observed climate metric adjustments to that warming. Not evidence of possible minor AGW sources. We have seen and understand all of those.
We need unequivocal evidence of climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 that would lead to over 2 degrees C warming. IPCC climate models tuned to the end of the 20th Century have been shown inaccurate on many measured climate metrics, so don’t tell me to bet the farm on their outputs.
While you are about that, Alan, please describe uncertainties related to aerosols, water vapor, clouds, solar impacts and so on. Please directly ask climate scientists their personal assessments of the likelihood of CAGW.
Don’t give me vague dogma, Alan. I want the narrow facts that lead to an inescapable conclusion that we need to fundamentally alter our society, economy and energy systems to avoid catastrophe. Come on; you’ve studied this for 30 years. The facts should be at your fingertips.
Aside from you bringing up a silly-ass conspiracy theory that all objections to “climate science” are mercenary (evidence would be nice),Otherwise, your post and reply is that all the IPCC models have no problems, none of which you seem aware of.
Try, for example, to rconcile Michael Mann’s hockey stick and recorded history of the past thousand years.
Alan, what a bunch of unrelated nonsense. I am no uneducated/ignorant rube to be bamboozled.
1) ECS is an emergent property of the models. IPCC CMIP5 models are shown to run “hot” and, additionally, fail to accurately reflect other actual climatic properties. IPCC AR5 had to reduce near-term model “projections” ad hoc, and could give no central estimate of ECS.
2) CO2 is a minor “greenhouse” gas. Climate model make many assumptions, beyond the physics of radiatively active gasses, to guess at future climate realities. Both their hindcasts and forecasts have been shown to be inaccurate; they are not fit for the purpose of fundamentally changing our society, economy and energy systems.
3) Were CO2 the “control knob,” the globe would have warmed far more over the last couple of decades. Look it up.
4) Why don’t we throw in a few things the climate modelers fail to get done very well? Like evaporation, atmospheric water vapor, cloud dynamics, ENSO, AMO, PDO and so on.
5) Have you ever even read anything about extreme weather events? Does the name Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. mean anything to you? Look him up, then tell me what insurance companies think. Come to think of it, didn’t investor and insurance guru, Warren Buffett (Geico), chime in on the lack of adjustments to insurance premiums for climate change?
6) You need to develop some reading and critical thinking skills, Alan.
“I have discussed these issues face to face with deniers
DENIERS?
So you equate AGW sceptics on this blog – many/most of whom are professional scientists and qualified engineers – with Holocaust deniers and probably neo-Nazis and followers of David Duke too, do you?
You have utterly destroyed your credibility with just that one single word.
And then you accuse any of the aforesaid AGW sceptics of being paid to post by BIG OIL, whatever THAT is.
You’re a remarkably unpleasant, abusive piece of work, aren’t you?
I encourage you to read my comments carefully.
I never said everyone on this site was paid to contribute. I believe I said this site (ie Anthony Watts) has received funding from the Heartland institute. He has said as much.
I only used the word denier. When it get all the other connotations? I didn’t mention Nazis or any of the other things, nor did I even think of that. I have trouble with using the word skeptic here because it implies open-mindedness, but I don’t see that much open-mindedness.
If you are talking abusive, just take a look back through many of the posts here and consider the language that is often used about people who believe the consensus view.
I note that many if not all respondees to my posts have generally twisted my words and responded to something I didn’t say rather that responding to what I said, your response being an example.
Climate Bolsheviks and Red Guard are not to be reasoned with. They can only called out for others to see repeatedly to help identify the threats in society.
only be called out
Well, climate change is a threat to southern forests with clear cutting for wood pellets to ship to the UK for green agenda in power plants. It is a bit roundabout but it is Seattle-type climate change perception driving the clear cutting. It’s crazy but it’s happening.
It was a really brutal winter in Seattle. Very La Nina-like even though we were ENSO Neutral. There were some pretty bad winters during the previous La Nina. Just saying …..
“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”
In the modern world of internet transparency and open social media the speaking of the truth may often result in a hostile response, You have to develop a thick skin and give as good as you get. This may be somewhat new to many of us but rest assured, I speak from experience, after the first dozen or so death threats it does get easier.
It is VERY important that if you have some expert knowledge or important considered opinion(s) you do now speak up, ideally loudly and repetitively. When you know you have the truth on your side you have little to fear from the deceivers.
Trust me when I tell you, the Greenie/Progressives in the whole Northwest have gone absolutely nuts. There’s always been sort of a half-hypnotized look in their eyes, but since they lost the election it’s more like full-on maniacal frenzy – like when you can see WAY too much of the whites of their eyes.
Yes, and they have turned Seattle into a cesspit of vagrants, druggies, and common criminals. Not to mention insanely constipated traffic engineering. They manage to pass extravagant multi-billion-dollar mass transit projects that have never been on budget or schedule or performance promises…but look very pretty and artsy-*artsy in their street-tagged tramcars. The love of the ideal (fantasy) has completely put aside any recognition of the real. I have formerly seen this level of mass psychosis only in student protests of rabid communists (60s-70s). It is unsettling to see it rife among “ordinary” people. One wonders what is really in Starbucks coffee.
If a Pitch Pine is a “giant” what is the word for a well-grown Ponderosa Pine?
One tree can easily be an indicator of Climate Change(tm). Just ask Dr Mann!
You don’t even need one tree. Just make the program select the “right numbers no matter what data is furnished”. The word is out that his program will draw that graph from random numbers.
The Seattle Times has killed more trees by itself than “climate change ” . No wonder those losers are going broke . The more CO2 the more plants and trees grow . Scientifically proven 100% .
Get real Seattle Times or get gone .
News Flash: Fake tree death news is spreading. Bushes are next.
When will brain-dead reporters be affected?
Hopeless in Seattle