Yes, But Stephen...

You shouldn't go calling it "world hunger" when you miss a meal or two, either.

Apart from the fact that I haven't ever heard someone argue (except in jest) that global warming isn't real because one person was cold one time, this is just kind of stupid. He's using a "begging the question" fallacy (among others), where one assumes the very thing one is trying to prove has already been proved. Here, he's attempting to prove global warming exists by comparing it to the already established problem of world hunger, hoping we'll conflate the two. It's like if I tried to say "Bigfoot isn't real because I haven't seen him. Also, my dog doesn't exist anymore because I haven't seen him either." I already know that the dog exists, so I can logically guess that my failure to find him at the current moment doesn't mean he's blinked out of existence. On the other hand, since it's the actual existence of Bigfoot that's at question, the burden is going to be on those who claim he exists to produce the evidence.

Another problem I have with this is reflected in my line above the pic. Clearly, Colbert is insinuating that one single person's experience for one day is not enough to invalidate what he feels is a global problem. If one person is not enough to do so, then are a few years of rising global temperatures in the grand scope of the age of the Earth enough to declare a Global Warming problem? Is missing a meal and declaring "I'm famished" enough to declare world famine? And just how many cold people/days does it take to invalidate the Global Warming theory? There must be a number that would satisfy him, right? After all, to use his own analogy, if everyone "just ate" day after day after day after day, then world hunger would be over, wouldn't it? A theory must be falsifiable to be a good theory. So, I ask again: how many cold people/days (think of it as a unit of measurement, like foot/pounds) would it take? Everyone in my neighborhood? In New York? In the U.S., where recently all 50 states were below freezing? But that's just the U.S. What about Russia, which has been seeing some record cold? And how long? According to some, there's been a pause in global warming for a while now. If true, how long of a pause will be enough?

Sure, Colbert is witty, but wit has little to do with scientific accuracy.

The Rings...My Precious!

Yet another chink in the AGW armor?

Tree-rings prove climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years

For something on which the science is supposed to be settled, there seems to be a lot of "unsettling" information coming to light--the Argo data, satellite temperature readings, the rise of challengers to the IPCC, and now this.

Airbrushed (Climate) Models?

So I stumbled across yet another "sky-is-falling" Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) headline:

Has warming put 'Dirty Dozen' pollutants back in the saddle?

Apparently, the Arctic ice is melting and releasing nasty chemicals into the atmosphere, right?.  But then I stumbled across this little gem, buried in the middle:

The scientists indeed found a long-term downward trend in primary emissions after the Stockholm Convention banned production and trade in the "Dirty Dozen."

But a more complex and disturbing picture emerged when the same data was crunched through a simulation of the effect of global warming on POP concentrations.(emphasis mine)

So...I guess you could say that the picture is not only "complex and disturbing," but also "imaginary." Let's not even discuss the fact that apparently this model starts with the assumption that global warming exists, something still in dispute. (Before you go all Gore-ish on me, keep reading...) It's a computer model. It makes predictions. And if it's anything like most global warming models, it does it poorly. (Again, keep reading.) So, what this article is really saying is "we see a decrease in bad chemicals, but our made-up projections from our handy-dandy doomsday computer are saying we're all...well, doomed." And I'm not even going to get into the fact that many people out there, including scientists, think that banning DDT in the first place cost millions of lives due to malaria that could have been prevented. What I will say is that it's very hard to take this article seriously when one of the other "related headlines" on the page was this one:

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

The article states that NASA satellite data (which many consider to be more accurate than ground data and definitely more accurate than made-up-doomsday-computer data) indicates that:

the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Yeah, that's right--Your computer models SUCK. If that sounds familiar, you've probably been reading my blog for a while, since I posted on this way back in 2008.

So what does this mean? Well, we can say that...wait! Shhh! I think if you listen carefully, you might hear the stake being driven through the heart of the AGW Alarmist Movement....

In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth's atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth's atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

Can we finally take back Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize and Oscar (although maybe he should get one for acting, since he's fooled so many people)?

Cap And Trade THIS!

Looks like somebody's got some 'splaining to do. Richard Morrison, over at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has authored a press release about some skulduggery going on at the Environmental Protection Agency. I guess it's more of that "transparency" we were promised. The release is so short, I'm just going to post the whole thing. If you want to go to the original, it's here.

CEI Releases Global Warming Study Censored by EPA

Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.

The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense, and new findings that water vapor will moderate, rather than exacerbate, temperature.

New data also indicate that ocean cycles are probably the most important single factor in explaining temperature fluctuations, though solar cycles may play a role as well, and that reliable satellite data undercut the likelihood of endangerment from greenhouse gases. All of this demonstrates EPA should independently analyze the science, rather than just adopt the conclusions of outside organizations.

The released report is a draft version, prepared under EPA’s unusually short internal review schedule, and thus may contain inaccuracies which were corrected in the final report.

“While we hoped that EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its Administrator has been talking transparency since she took office. So we are releasing a draft version of the report ourselves, today,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.

It's worth checking out the link to the report covering the e-mails as well.

UPDATE: Fox finally got around to this.

Big story developing right now in Washington...

No, jerkweeds, it was developing days ago. You know, while you were drooling over the death of a pop singer.

Can You Say "Old News"?

You can if you've been a semi-regular reader here. This is by Wesley Pruden, and appears in today's op-ed in The Washington Times:

So far the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports 63 record snowfalls in the United States, 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month. Only 44 Octobers over the past 114 years have been cooler than this last one. The polar ice is accumulating faster than usual, and some of the experts now concede that the globe hasn't warmed since 1995.

he continues:

Only last month Dr. Hansen's institute announced that October was the hottest on record, and then said "uh, never mind." The London Daily Telegraph calls this "a surreal blunder [that] raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming."

In this account, the institute had to make the humiliating climb-down after two leading skeptics of the global-warming scam, Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist, and Steve McIntyre, a Canadian computer analyst, discovered that temperature readings from September had been carried over and repeated for October.

I've pointed out some of the problems with the whole global warming/climate change frenzy here, here, and here, and there are many others out there (much more qualified than I) saying much the same thing.

What are the odds Al Gore will give his Nobel Prize back?

Possibly The Dumbest Thing Ever Said

And it doesn't shock me much that it relates to Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). This is from Maurice Strong, adviser to Kofi Annan:

"We may get to the point where the only way to save the world will be for industrial civilisation to collapse."

Because things were soooo much better before industrial civilization.

Just do me a favor, and go back and read that one more time. Go on; I'll wait. The logic is astounding, isn't it? It's like saying "it may be that the only way to prevent further wars is to all commit suicide tomorrow." Oh, sure it will work, but at what cost. Someone needs to introduce Mr. Strong to the term "Pyhrric victory."

Let's face it: the "world," or "the planet," or "the environment," or whatever term you want to use has been here a long time in one form or another, and it's going to be here a long time after our species is gone. Our whole of recorded history, cosmically speaking, is a blink of the eye, a fart in the wind. Less, even. I'm getting really sick and tired of people trying to cloak their political views, or some misguided hatred of industry/capitalism/etc. in a robe of altruism.

Anyway, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If I were a betting man, I'd wager that an apocalypse by asteroid is much more likely (and sooner) than an apocalypse by AGW.

I Did A Little Climate Modeling In College...For The Money, Though. I Swear!

I'm sure I'll have the wonderful experience of being called a "climate change skeptic," or even better, a "climate change denier." The second term has the one-two punch of making it seem like I don't believe in climate change (I do. It changes from day to day, season to season. It's always changing.) and it uses a pejoratively loaded term like "denier" which makes it sound like I'm ignoring some basic truth while at the same time drawing comparisons to terms like "Holocaust denier." Just take a little look in my dictionary:

Skeptic: noun; 1) a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions. From skepsis 'inquiry, doubt'.

Deny: verb; 1) refuse to admit the truth or existence of.

See the difference? In one, you are questioning opinions; in the other, you are refusing to admit the truth. Big difference.

In any case, my feeling is that open questioning and debate are key components of scientific inquiry. Those who shout "the debate is over!" too often seem too desperate for the rest of us to believe them.

Now, on to the main course.

This is one of the best articles I've read discussing computer modeling--and its shortcomings--as it relates to climate change studies.

"The IPCC issues predictions for 20- to 30-year periods into the future, and updates them every 6-7 years, so in practice its current predictive capabilities can never be evaluated against real world data. As Tebaldi and Knutti observe, 'climate projections, decades or longer in the future by definition, cannot be validated directly through observed changes.'"

But more importantly, groups like the IPCC have created a "no-lose" situation. If the predictions from 20 years ago are correct, then the response is "see? We told you so!" If the predictions are incorrect, the response is "well, those predictions were based on the old models. We know much more now. Watch and see; we'll be right for the next 20 years." And so on.

Think I'm wrong? Read this:

The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be _______ ____. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the ________ trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."

Sounds pretty familiar doesn't it? You'd know enough to fill in the blanks with the terms "warming up" and "warming," right? Except you'd be wrong. Fill in those blanks with "cooling down" and "cooling," and you have an article from the April 28, 1975 issue of Newsweek. Want to see a little more?

There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now.

And this little gem:

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or divering[sic] arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve.

Yeah, that's right. Just 33 years ago, scientists were suggesting melting the arctic ice cap! The same one that we're now being warned will melt and kill us all! Okay, I'm exaggerating, but I think you can see my point. No? Well, what about this little nugget from an NPR report on the Argo system, which measures ocean temperature up to a depth of 3,000 feet:

Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."

I won't bother making fun of Willis for equating the terms "less rapid warming" and "slight cooling," but I will point out that the report also states "In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters." So, of course the article is critical of the global warming theory, right?

That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

Wow. Global warming exists, damn it. This new info means either it just stopped (but only temporarily), or these scientists are just too dumb to understand the data. But global warming exists. So with a "less rapid warming" of our oceans (combined with satellite temperature measurements--which some people seem to think are more reliable than ones on the ground--that also seem to be showing a "less rapid warming"), where is all this heat going to?

Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says. It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about.

Or maybe it was carried away on the wings of fairies. Are you kidding me?! We're talking about making climate policy decisions that could themselves have serious repercussions and we don't know "where the heat is going"?! We can't even track the freakin' clouds?!

I think the debate is far from over. And for some people, that's a really inconvenient truth.

Look Out! There goes the Araignee-Homme!

So the French "Spider-Man" climbed the NY Times building. He said he did it to protest climate change. He even unfurled a banner that read:

"Global warming kills more people than 9/11 every week."

Apart from the grammatical issues in it, including what I believe is a misplaced modifier*, that sentence troubles me. Protesting climate change is much different than protesting man-made climate change:

"Sacre merde, World! Will you stop getting warmer, and then cooler, and then warmer, and then cooler?? It seems like we go through this every year, no?"

Claiming that "global warming" kills people is like saying that time is the leading cause of death. If we could only stop it, everyone could live forever! But seriously, I can understand his wanting to bring attention to man's impact on the environment because that's the one issue that I haven't really seen much about in the news.


*First of all, 9/11 didn't actually kill anyone. It's just a day...and I guess technically, it should be 9/11/01. I think it would read better as "Every week, global warming kills more people than were killed on 9/11" or "Global warming kills more people every week than were killed on 9/11." It may seem like I'm nit-picking, or being hard on a non-native speaker, but c'mon--if you're going to risk your life to make a statement, I would think you might ask around and make sure what could be your final words are grammatically correct.

UPDATE: Apparently, there was a copycat climber. The new guy was climbing with a shirt that read "malaria no more." What's next? Erectile dysfunction? I can see the banner now: "I'm gonna get up it so you can get it up!"

Onward Rode the 32,000!

I'm sure you won't see many mainstream media sources covering this:

Using a subset of the mailing list of American Men and Women of Science, a who’s who of Science, Robinson mailed out his solicitations through the postal service, requesting signed petitions of those who agreed that Kyoto was a danger to humanity. The response rate was extraordinary, “much, much higher than anyone expected, much higher than you’d ordinarily expect,” he explained. He’s processed more than 31,000 at this point, more than 9,000 of them with PhDs, and has another 1,000 or so to go...

I think what's important here is not so much who believes what, but that the "consensus of opinion" that we hear so much about doesn't really exist.

For my money, I'm not sure that the scientific world should ever feel comfortable saying "the debate is over." They certainly shouldn't feel comfortable saying it about man-made global warming. It just seems antithetical to the scientific process.

Think Again!

So, you've been keeping up on your science? Well, now that you've read about how soft drinks are harmful to your children, or how obesity kills 400,000 people a year, or how global warming has nearly made the polar bear extinct...you should read this article, which lists the top ten most embarrassing moments in health and environmental science for 2004.

The list spotlights individuals and organizations that -- through exaggerated claims, bad judgment, and/or hidden agendas -- have most egregiously undermined public confidence in the scientific community’s capacity to conduct sound and unbiased research.

JunkScience.com has exposed and debunked flawed research and unfounded scientific claims since 1996.

Re: The polar bear "extinction":

A Canadian Press Newswire story earlier this year reported that, in three Arctic villages, polar bears "are so abundant there's a public safety issue." Local polar bears reportedly increased from about 2,100 in 1997 to as many as 2,600 in 2004. Inuits wanted to kill more bears, which are "fearsome predators."

An aerial survey of Alaskan polar bears published in Arctic (December 2003) reported a greater polar bear density than previous survey estimates dating to 1987.

If polar bears are getting skinnier as the 1999 study suggested, it may be due to greater numbers subsisting on the same level of available food. After all, harvesting Alaskan polar bears has been limited by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and international agreements since 1972.

This might become one of my new favorite sites.