climate communication
stoat | September 18, 2006Over at pharyngula (which I *cannot pronounce... I could never be a biologist) there is an account of the silly ID's folks attack on Chris Mooney for not having the right credentials to talk about the science. Its a silly attack, of course, and PZ dutifully rips it apart (I'm a bit baffled as to why ID is a scientific and *legal* issue... but anyway).
This post is only to point out that the reverse argument is used, just as foolishly: ie, "we can't possibly listen to you, you're a scientist who knows about the subject, and therefore obviously biased... we need someone *without* credentials…
stoat | September 18, 2006The AMQUA (American Quaternary Association, bet you didn't know that) takes AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists) to task for giving Crichton its journalism award for State of Fear, with the laughable assertion that "It is fiction, but it has the absolute ring of truth". The award says more about what petroleum geologists would like to be true than it does about reality; its nice to see AMQUA standing up against this nonsense.
stoat | September 8, 2006The Economist has a special survey on climate change (you get to read the intro for free. The rest is sub-only :-(). Its headlined "The heat is on" and storylined "Global warming, it now seems, is for real.".
[Oh wonderful. I read the special supplement on the assumption that it has most of the content, and then I get to the leader column which is far more interesting. I need to add an addendum to this post...]
Their conclusion is:
This survey will argue that although the science remains uncertain, the chances of serious consequences are high enough to make it worth spending the (not…
stoat | September 5, 2006Via Prometheus (who misrepresents it) I found Climate Science on Trial: How a single scientific graph became the focus of the debate over global warming. Its well worth reading. Towards the end we have this wonderful bit, demonstrating the sheer ignorance of many of the septics:
For some members of the House energy committee, the hockey stick has become something of a boogeyman, a dangerous figure they see lurking in all corners even when it isn't present.
Representative Barton and others repeatedly claimed that Mr. Mann's curve was in An Inconvenient Truth, the movie and book about Al Gore's…
stoat | August 16, 2006Is the title of an International seminar meeting at The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden September 11-12th 2006. Sounds like an attempt at a sexy title. However, the list of presentations doesnt look good... ironically, under why this meeting is a bad idea it says This meeting is not intended to be a skeptics vs non-skeptics confrontation - which it won't be, cos its packed with skeptics (with a few exceptions). Quality control appears to be poor, since they have let in Zbigniew Jaworowski.
And all this is being organised by an NMR specialist.
[Update: if you haven't…
stoat | August 4, 2006By E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Paul K. Driessen, Esq., Ross McKitrick, Ph.D., and Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D. I've never heard of 1 & 2, but given 3 & 4 its not hard to guess what its going to be like. And indeed, it doesn't disappoint.
Its yet another septic document which would be far better off saying less. Specifically, it wastes its time on the is-GW-anthro attribution question, and the is-there-a-consensus question, when it should be spending its time on the more interesting will-the-effects-be-bad.
So, it starts by quibbling whether the TAR says that current warming is anthro. Since…
stoat | August 2, 2006RP Sr joins the ranks of people telling us its been hot/cold somewhere on earth in some month, but more interestingly points to an essay by Carl Wunsch. Its one of a series, by various worthies, including TIm Palmer. I'm not quite sure what the point is, though... they don't seem to be much good... if you want to know about GE, youre better off with the wikipedia article.
Wunschs article is particularly stupid (yes I know he's a great man, that doesn't mean he doesn't say stupid things on occaision) that (I paraphrase) concludes that since the ice ages caused big changes in the past we…
stoat | July 28, 2006RC has a post on a leaked letter from the little-known IREA (Intermountain rural electric authority, since you ask) (though to be fair I should point out that desmog seem to have posted first). The IREA are worried because most of their lectric comes from coal and so are trying a PR campaign to persuade people that GW is all solar, or somesuch junk. RP Jr is up in arms about this, from his usual perspective - policy, with no interest in the science.
The frustrating thing about this is how pointless it all is. Most of the IREA "briefing" is straightforward junk, or simply misleading. There is…
stoat | July 26, 2006RP Jr criticises me for not posting about hurricanes whilst on holiday in the peak district. Sorry - the wireless connections on Stanage Edge are poor, and I didn't take my laptop anyway.
RP likes the story because the main result We are optimistic that continued research will eventually resolve much of the current controversy over the effect of climate change on hurricanes. But the more urgent problem of our lemming-like march to the sea requires immediate and sustained attention. We call upon leaders of government and industry to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of building practices,…
stoat | July 19, 2006Via Prometheus I find von S's testimony on the Hockey Stick and related issues. Interesting point number 1 is that von S has clearly noticed he is being used (or selectively quoted) by the septics, and so starts his testimony with Based on the scientific evidence, I am convinced that we are facing anthropogenic climate change brought about by the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Maybe that will be enough to stop too many septics pointing to it.
We also have I conclude that the claim of "detection of anthropogenic climate change" is valid independently of which historical…
stoat | July 18, 2006I'm wondering a bit if I took Prof Wegmans credentials a bit too much on faith.
A commenter on the previous post wrote I'm not too knocked out by Wegman's credentials as a prof at George Mason U, nor do I think he, who was leader of Reagan's idiotic "Star Wars Program", could be seen as an impartial, unbiased person. Sounds like the psycho Republicans like Barton are just calling on the old white guy network.... Is this fair? Was Wegman really leader of Star Wars? (only a bit; still that looks like a reasonably impressive CV).
The NRC people do seem to have had impeccable credentials. So…
stoat | July 6, 2006Says nature, ranking science blogs.
Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist who blogs at RealClimate, puts its success down to the hot topic and expert contributors. It helps to have "a passion for explaining things as clearly as possible, and a hell of a lot of patience to deal with all those comments rolling in". Gavin Schmidt, at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, says the blog fills "a hunger for raw but accessible information" that goes deeper than newspaper articles, but is more easily understood than the scientific literature. "Magazines fill a void, but they can't…
stoat | June 24, 2006In my last post I called it the NAS report, sorry. I had expected a proper analysis form some (disinterested?) party by now. Perhaps that was optimistic. Its a long report, and the important bits are dense, and have previously been done to death in debate and papers anyway, with nothing terribly conclusive emerging. But having looked at various reactions to the report, (the most interesting was the comments under the Prometheus entry; which also correctly re-iterate the point first made by RC (AFAIK) that the entire debate doesn't actually matter much for climate science) the overall effect…
stoat | June 22, 2006The long-awaited NAS report Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years is out. Roger Pielke says the NAS has rendered a near-complete vindication for the work of Mann et al as a first reaction. I've skimmed the first 4 pages (the summary); seems... err... plausible. Whatever that means. As some of the comments at the RC piece say, moving from IPCC-type semi-formalised probabilities to "plausible" is perhaps a step backwards. Interestingly, none of the methodological complaints from M&M make it into the summary as far as I can see. But thats just me being tribal :-)
stoat | June 19, 2006There is a lot of interest in the last Nature. Indeed so much that I'll just blip through it...
First off, the "open peer review" debate continues (as first blogged by JA), see here (for most of these links I think a subs is req, sorry). There are lots of entries there. I was struck by: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics was established in 2001 and last year published about 240 final papers. On average, one in four papers receives a comment from the scientific community in addition to the comments from designated reviewers. They appear to regard this as a success. But if only 1 in 4 gets any…
stoat | June 15, 2006Says The Canadian Free Press (warning: it has lots of stupid ads on it). I wonder what it is? But not very much. What does it *say*?
Well, its an attempt to counter Gores movie (oh good, that means people are worried by it...). There is much of the same-old-septic-rubbish in there, but a new (and bizarre argument): that we shouldn't think a vast majority are convinced by GW, because we should only count a small number of those who actually understand detection and attribution.
This is a very funny argument, because of course none of the skeptics are in this category. What most of the skeptics…
stoat | June 8, 2006The UK has appointed a special representative on climate change says the BBC.
Interesting. Does this prove that we're taking climate change seriously, or does it prove we're more interested in words than action?
stoat | June 1, 2006I've just found a couple of letters in Nature (subs req) re the "leaking" of the AR4. Climate: open review may ease acceptance of report by Michael MacCracken, saying As executive director of the Office of the US Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 1997, I was responsible in 1995 for urging adoption of the national review process of the IPCC report that is questioned in your News story. And Climate: US has always made IPCC drafts available says Harlan L. Watson;In fact, US procedures, first published in the Federal Register in 1995, reflect our longstanding commitment to open IPCC…
stoat | May 29, 2006The first blog I read was Quark Soup, back in the days when the M&M controversy was interesting... gosh that was a while ago. Then he got burned out; now he is back, at http://davidappell.blogspot.com/. Good.
DA doesn't much like a recent WaPo article on GW, that focusses on William Gray. But I thought it was OK; good even. It gives a good sense of how the s(k)eptics know they are on the losing side (at least of the scientific argument) and are getting rather frustrated by it.