This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
In October, 2008, Al Gore's science advisor, James Hansen announced yet another "hottest" month on record. After all the alarmist banner headlines sank in, yet another "correction" quietly contradicted this, and October was not particularily warm after all. This is yet another example of why the temperature record can not be trusted.
Answer:
Wow. Where to begin with this one? There are many versions of this myth around already at the time of writing (November 2008) and there will undoubtably be many more as time goes by. They will not all say the same things so I will try to answer all of the more common memes that come up in this one place.
Firstly, James Hansen is one of the most respected and senior climate scientists working in the field today. His resume [PDF] is long and solid and his position for the last 27 years is Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Describing him as "Al Gore's science advisor" can only be an intentionally implied disparagement. It both minimizes his expertise and attempts to undermine his credibility by association (because we all know Al Gore is out to lunch, right?). Both of these tactics are common logical fallacies. When an argument is lead by such shallow efforts, it does not leave one very hopeful for what will follow!
Secondly, and perhaps most damningly for this talking point, the alledged "announcement" is complete, 100% fabrication. Neither Hansen, nor GISS, ever made any such announcement. Period. The claim they did is is either an outright lie, or the willing repetition of an outright lie. You think I am wrong about that? Well, let's have the link, then!
Thirdly, the alarmist headlines are also non-existent. Not too surprising given the absence of any announcement.
Okay, so the mountains are an illusion, what about the molehill?
There was indeed an error in the calculated anomaly for October 2008, placing it very high and at a new record. Through a programming glitch of some sort, Real Climate reports:
For many Russian stations (and some others), September temperatures were apparently copied over into October, giving an erroneous positive anomaly. The error appears to have been made somewhere between the reporting by the National Weather Services and NOAA's collation of the GHCN database. GISS, which produces one of the more visible analyses of this raw data, processed the input data as normal and ended up with an October anomaly that was too high.
Nobody's perfect, I think mistakes are bound to happen, especially in such intense data processing projects. The proof of the pudding is what happens next, and in this case the offending data was pulled in under 24 hours (with no premature announcement, remember?) and the error was investigated and corrected. (If only it would end there....**) So after the correction, how does October, 2008 fit into the scheme of things? October 2008 was well above the 1951-1980 baseline average, the fifth warmest October in at least the last 128 years, very likely much longer.
Does this event really give us reason to distrust the temperature analysis? Well, I think it reminds us that this is a human endeavour and mistakes are always possible, so it is a good idea to double check both the specific process and to compare the result to the many other independent global temperature indicators, they all point to the same conclusion.
"Trust, but verify" as the saying goes. After verification, one must still conclude that the long term warming trend is undeniable.
**While I am a firm believer in not judging a blog by its commenters, it is still revealing to see the kind of thinking that lies behind the denialists. Check out these highlights extracted from Watt's Up With That by Real Climate:
"I believe they had two sets of data: One would be released if Republicans won, and another if Democrats won.", "could this be a sneaky way to set up the BO presidency with an urgent need to regulate CO2?", "There are a great many of us who will under no circumstance allow the oppression of government rule to pervade over our freedom—-PERIOD!!!!!!" (exclamation marks reduced enormously), "these people are blinded by their own bias", "this sort of scientific fraud", "Climate science on the warmer side has degenerated to competitive lying", etc. (To be fair, there were people who made sensible comments as well).
This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
"October 2008, yet another phony record" is also posted on the Grist website, where additional comments can be found, though the author, Coby Beck, does not monitor or respond there.
Environment
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Comments
Coby, Matt at "Framing Science" objects to the term "denialist" when referring to Global Warming Skeptics. I object to the word "sceptic/skeptic" because of the responses that you place here. I have even laid out the case on my own blog, at Global Warming and Skeptics.
I am just wondering if there is a better way to refer to them than either denialists or skeptics?
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | November 18, 2008 3:49 PM
I do find it a sticky issue, which word to use. I guess I try to chose according to context. What was Matt's argument, and alternative? For some of the people and most of the arguments, skeptic is far too forgiving. I personally do not buy into the alledged denialist-holocaust denier connection. I never intend it that way and do not think it is a remotely reasonable assumption.
Posted by: coby | November 18, 2008 4:23 PM
From reading this post at Framing Science I can't really tell. I think he wants people to listen to the show to learn his alternative term.
Of these synonymns at Thesaurus.com,
the word that I find most appropriate is "scoffer."Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | November 19, 2008 4:24 AM
William@Stoat uses 'septic', which I find curiously aposite.
Posted by: outeast | November 19, 2008 5:49 AM
It seems that in today's world, there are too many people willing to undermine other people's credibility by making false claims. It's a breath of fresh air to witness one of these injustices being corrected, or at least somewhat cleared up. Thanks!
Posted by: Maria M | November 19, 2008 6:21 AM
The biggest problem with 'skeptic' is that most of those who insist AGW is not real, or not caused by humans offer all sorts of weird alternatives, like 'the data is faked by millions of dishonest scientists all over the world' , 'It was warmer in 1940', 'It's really geothermal', 'It's really cosmic rays', and so on. These alternatives are much more complicated, very tenuous, and rejected by all or nearly available evidence. They require one to be credulous - the opposite of skeptical.
Posted by: llewelly | November 19, 2008 8:08 AM
Mike Haubrich:
OT: Gotta love how they throw 'atheist' and 'misanthrope' into the same category.
Posted by: llewelly | November 19, 2008 8:12 AM
Oh, llewelly, I'm kind of used to it.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | November 19, 2008 7:13 PM
Given the high degree of credulity needed to be a 'skeptic', and the ability to argue 7 mutually contradictory hypotheses, I think CRANK is now the most accurate term. Skeptic may have been tenable 10-15 years ago, not now.
Posted by: stewart | November 20, 2008 5:59 AM
I use the term "pseudoskeptic" because it seems to capture the essence of the attitudes exhibited by those who refuse to accept the science of climate change.
Such people consider themselves skeptics, in that they aren't convinced by the evidence. But of course of true skeptic is willing to be convinced. For whatever reason -- ideology, stupidity, stubbornness -- these folks are not only unwilling to accept solid science, but are unwilling to subject their own positions to skeptical or critical analysis. They are false skeptics. Hence: Pseudoskeptics.
I first came across the term at Orac's blog, Respectful Insolencebut I have no idea whether he invented it.
Posted by: James Hrynyshyn | November 20, 2008 6:39 AM
Mike Haubrich, FCD
James Hrynyshyn
stewart
outeast
Maria M
Your comments are noted - FYI, as an AGW septic, I would prefer "Pagan", but I'll let you decide.
I can't say I remember Bohr, Heisenberg and Fermi having conversations about how to label their opponents though, I think they just got on with the work. Maybe you could do the same - I've written plenty of words on this site, feel free to point out where I've been ideological, a crank, stupid, unwilling to accept solid science etc.
Posted by: paul | November 20, 2008 8:55 AM
> if there is a better way to refer to them than either denialists or skeptics?
"Inactivist", as frankbi uses. I got into a radio call-in tangle with Robert C. Balling Jr. night before last, after calling him a denier (he denied it; said he just has a different view of the likely consequences) - which I would have done better to avoid.
(report, q, and plea for assistance on my blog, BTW)
Posted by: Anna Haynes | November 20, 2008 4:37 PM
it's a cliche by now, but as usual with the rightwingnuts, the paranoid fantasies they spin about their opponents tells us a lot more about their actics and actions.
Posted by: gzuckier | November 20, 2008 6:30 PM
Paul, while I can't say that you have been any of those things because, frankly I haven't been paying close enough attention to your ocmmnents, I would bet that Bohr, Heisenberg and Fermi's opponets were not so concerned with making a concentrated political effort in the popular press to attack their character.
I would bet their opponents were not so enamored of belching carbon.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | November 20, 2008 9:57 PM
Scoffer works for me; it's what I use when someone refers to me as a skeptic.
The bandwagon approach to AGW has its limitations, and there is more and more good physics being done that points away from CO2 as the major cause of climate change.
For me, the smoking gun was "Celestial Drivers of the Phanerozioc Climate", Shaviv & Veizer (2003). When independent geochemistry (ocean temperature) and astrophysics (radiocarbon levels and galactic position) are found to be correlated, there is a there there. The most recent paper I've found to be useful to catalog the current cosmic ray/climate connection science is by Jasper Kirkby, the British physicist in charge of the CERN CLOUD experiment. "Cosmic Rays and Climate" from the journal Surveys in Geophyics, http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf
You might not know that Kirkby had CLOUD funding at CERN a decade ago but IPCC partisans killed his funding after he let fly with his opinion that cosmic rays (or more to the point, lack of cosmic rays) could be the cause of all of the 20th century warming. More bad politics killing good science.
Posted by: G Goodknight | November 22, 2008 12:49 PM
G,
"You might not know that Kirkby had CLOUD funding at CERN a decade ago but IPCC partisans killed his funding after he let fly with his opinion that cosmic rays (or more to the point, lack of cosmic rays) could be the cause of all of the 20th century warming. "
Do you have some reference for that?
Posted by: coby | November 22, 2008 8:52 PM
Here's an article that said it well, from the google cache, sorry for the clumsy url:
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:hCH0ztlCE2oJ:www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html%3Fid%3D975f250d-ca5d-4f40-b687-a1672ed1f684+Jasper+kirkby+cloud+funding&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&lr=lang_en&client=firefox-a
Clouded research
LAWRENCE SOLOMON, Financial Post Published: Friday, February 23, 2007
With the success of Svensmark's low budget version, SKY, funding for the full up CLOUD experiment was finally found. Let's be clear; it isn't to prove there is a cosmic ray connection, that's established. CLOUD is to better characterize the mechanisms.
Posted by: G Goodknight | November 23, 2008 1:06 AM
Hansen undermined his own credibility when he stated that climate change liars “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5798
Something that would be uttered by someone in a religious war rather than by a rational scientist-
Posted by: Alan D. McIntire | November 23, 2008 11:07 AM
Not to pollute a website seemingly dedicated to stamping out skeptics and scoffers, but the Kirkby "Cosmic Rays and Climate" paper has a very lengthy list of references that are worth investigating, if what you are interested in is evaluating the science.
Perhaps someone here can help me with the status on the hunt for a real CO2 runaway positive feedback warming event. I've heard some claim that the Permian-Triassic event/extinction (~251 million years ago) was thought to be a candidate, but that's coincident with a cosmic ray minimum of the past 550 million years and probably belongs to the cosmics side of the fence.
Posted by: G Goodknight | November 23, 2008 12:38 PM
Sorry for the earlier link to the Sullivan article on Kirkby; the google crawler needs an update. It is available directly at:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=975f250d-ca5d-4f40-b687-a1672ed1f684
Posted by: G Goodknight | November 23, 2008 1:30 PM
Alan, look for an answer to your comment in a new post on Monday morning.
G, you should review some of the GCR discussion (and cited references) on Real Climate. They do some very indepth and technical discussion of that hypothesis and the alledged correlations.
As for "a real CO2 runaway positive feedback warming event", I suggest the PETM event if you don't like the Great Dying. FWIW though, we are at an unprecedented time in geological history so don't assume that no precendent would tells us that much!
Thanks for the links and the comments.
Posted by: coby | November 23, 2008 3:11 PM
Real Climate is a poor source for scientific debate. Biased towards the current modelers (since they are primarily *from* the modeling side), they understand the issues as understood by climate modelers, but are reactionary when it comes to the advances in physics since the early '90's.
The basic RC argument is much like the arguments from Creationists against Evolution. Pick a link in the chain, point out something about it that is not yet proven, or some incorrect claim about what is proven, and proclaim none of it is. Superficial analysis, and the correlations are far more than alleged. It has been known for years that radiocarbon levels seemed correlated with temperatures in the fossil record. Shaviv and Veizer just put meat on those bones, and they came to their basic conclusions independently.
Shaviv (a physics prof) has a website in English targeted at general undergraduate audiences. Here's one good page
http://sciencebits.com/ice-ages
To the points of RealClimate who have made stabs at Shaviv's research, he has
http://sciencebits.com/RealClimateSlurs
Posted by: G Goodknight | November 23, 2008 4:12 PM
Indeed, Real Climate is an extremely disappointing site. I've seen poor saps come there trying to legitimately understand the science behind AGW and they are treated rudely and shouted down the deities on the site. I tried to post a comment, just to say "lay off the guy", and it was never posted. I was very disappointed, especially after I saw they continued to pile on the poor guy until he said "This is my last post". I haven't visited the site yet. Personally, I'm just trying to get information on this complex subject and am looking for a truly neutral site, not some place where high IQ scientists reveal why most people don't take them seriously.
Posted by: miles | December 9, 2008 5:21 PM
Hi miles,
If you want to give yourself a basic education on the science then you can do no better than reading the IPCC reports. I also recommend Spencer Weart's History of Global warming (google should get you there asap).
As for Real Climate, as with all blogs, don't judge them by the comment threads, which though i haven't followed for quite some time, never used to strike me as you describe it. Just read and learn from the posts.
Posted by: coby | December 9, 2008 9:12 PM