The Policy Lass

Here’s an interesting example of denialist chumming by Curry for your delectation: (h/t to Willard for giving me the scent)

I am putting this out there for discussion. Why do scientists see the need to jump right out there and make statements like this without even looking at the basics of the regional climatology? Trenberth and Somerville are activists on the topic of AGW
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/the-road-from-climate-science-to-climate-advocacy/

I am open to other/better interpretations of this situation, but I am personally not seeing any. The better question is why does NOAA find attribution services to be important, and why was there a consensus at the Workshop on its importance? Exactly how is someone supposed to make use of this information? [my emphasis]

Gobsmacked here. Absolutely gobsmacked.

First, this is pure denialist chumming, and the evidence is in the comments. Curry throws out some bait and here come the sharks — or guppies depending on your take on this.

Here’s some bait, just to get the scent in the water:

Summary: Not sure what the motive is for the attribution of extreme events, other than to build political will for climate change policies.

Here’s another bit of chum:

why does NOAA find attribution services to be important and why was there a consensus at the Workshop on its importance?

LOL! She answers the question then asks it.

The very first poster gives Curry the answer that deniers have been working hard to create in the minds of the gullible:

etudiant | January 15, 2011 at 10:08 am | Reply

Clearly science is becoming more market oriented.
NOAA sees a need for a hook to highlight its Climate Service. Extreme weather events are tailor made for this purpose. Funding is made available and “science” follows.
Rather sad, imo.

Willard reminded me of the Trenberth travesty in another post. Apropos is this quote, taken from one of the illegally hacked / released CRU emails. Given the continual misrepresentation of it in the denialosphere, it, and the misrepresentation, deserves reconsideration:

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

To consider something seriously, you have to look at it in its proper context. I argue, as do many others, that this line taken from the CRU emails, along with countless others, are used out of context to condemn climate science and smear scientists. Perhaps this line, along with “the trick” to “hide the decline”, is one of the most clear examples of the machinations of the denialist machine and its witting or unwitting dupes who propagate such tripe around the blogosphere.

I’ve come up with a term for the trainwreck that is Curry’s blog and similar ventures  – Climate Denial Chum. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but just to be clear, people like McIntyre, Watts and Curry throw bait out there knowing full well (or at least, they should know full well) that when they do, the sharks will come. Then, they do little in the ensuing frenzy. Hey – it feeds the tip jar and garners traffic…

What do you think?

The infamous and much-misrepresented quote and Trenberth’s submission “Promoting climate information and communication of climate change” to the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, are not given serious consideration on skeptic / contrarian / denialst blogs. They are, in fact, merely used as convenient truncheons to make one’s personal and very biased point.

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I’ve posted on this before but today I want to explore one of the most oft-repeated canards of the denialist crowd — “Climate science has been corrupted by all the untold trillions in money flowing its way” and that they are only studying global warming because that’s where the money is or “They study global warming so they can get huge science grants” or they’re only “in it for the gold” after the title of Michael Tobis’s blog.

Just as one example of the meme that scientists are living high off the public purse is the recent resignation letter of Harold Lewis from the APS. Here is an excerpt:

The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison dêtre of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society. It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.

Here is the APS response to his accusations:

_

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Many who call themselves “skeptics” rail at the label denialist or denier when applied to climate science, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Some make the specious claim that the label is a deliberate reference to Holocaust Denialism when I and others who use the term never had any intention to make the link. I believe they do so because it allows them to wear a mantle of martyr, but hey, feel free. If that’s what you want to be…

When it comes to climate denial, I think there are few legitimate skeptics remaining and ample reason that it so. That said, an honest skeptic is known by their questions and answers. They have a role to play in keeping the debate focused, but as I say, there are few honest skeptics remaining. Instead, most of those who call themselves “skeptics” at this point in time and who parrot the arguments of denialism are, for all intents and purposes, denialists.  Sorry, folks but there comes a point in time when to reject is to deny, no matter what your intentions. When you reject the findings of a science that has such overwhelming evidence backing it, you are a denialist. In this case, at this time, “skeptic = denialist”.

Speaking of denialism, I was reading over at Keith Kloor’s place as a result of a link there that Willard posted and came across this discussion by David Brin, noted SF author (a favourite of mine BTW). I have the article in Skeptic and wanted to post his comment for discussion:

“The denier movement pretends to be about asking honest questions about a scientific matter that is both complex and *possibly* fraught with systematic errors.  I believe that honest skeptics can play an important role there.  But denialism is ALSO about preventing the community consensus in atmospheric science from affecting public policy. “

Yes! This is what the famous tobacco memo noted — “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the “body of fact” that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” The goal of denialism, whether about tobacco or climate, is to create an atmosphere of doubt around the scientific consensus.

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Here’s my 2010 summary courtesy of the helper monkeys at WordPress! Thanks to everyone who visited and who posted. It’s been an experience.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 60,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 7 days for that many people to see it.

[in other words, I'm the tiny shop at the end of the huge bazaar!]

In 2010, there were 94 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 96 posts. There were 137 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 8mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was August 16th with 1,106 views. The most popular post that day was The Eternal Return .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were rabett.blogspot.com, climateaudit.org, initforthegold.blogspot.com, scienceblogs.com, and deepclimate.org.

[Thanks to Rabett, IIFTG, DC  and others for providing links to my blog or posts or coming here from those blogs -- appreciated!]

Some visitors came searching, mostly for far side cartoons, beelzebub, policy lass, shewonk, and donkey.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

The Eternal Return August 2010
39 comments

The One — Chopped Down to Size February 2010
160 comments

One of these things is not like the other… February 2010
13 comments

Enron and the Case of the Zombie Fungus February 2010
210 comments

The Oxburgh Report April 2010
18 comments

Is it just me, or has there been a noticeable shift in the tone of the lukewarmers and lukewarmistas over the past year or so?

I may be inaccurate, but to me, the term “lukewarm” tends to suggest that a person is tepid, or has a tepid acceptance of something. They are not hot for the idea, nor are they cold to it. They are so-so. Middle of the road. When it comes to the Lukers, they agree that warming is happening, but that it will likely be on the low end of projections. Nothing much to worry about. 2C at doubling, with little likelihood or evidence of positive feedbacks.

I was reading over at Lucia’s Blackboard and noticed this — strategy??? –  on the part of Mosher and Lucia that seems to imply they “believe” in AGW and willingly speak of “warming” and write things like “as the earth warms” and even step in to openly deny accusations of fraud launched against the Team by the more strident deniers in the comments. What they do is complain about the attitude and behavior of some climate scientists towards “skeptics”.

IOW, they are concern trolls in the great global warming debate.

Here’s Mosher:

Here is the problem you face with lukewarmers. we accept the science. we dont accept some of the behavior of a small number of scientists. We think the science can and does survive this behavior, so we have NO PROBLEM saying the behavior was not best practices.

So, what is it with the lukers?

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File this in the “I read the stupid so you don’t have to” and the “A little levity” categories.

I am continually amazed at how much pure unadulterated stupid takes place on Watts Up With That. I mean, it takes the stupid cake, doesn’t it?  Reading over at WUWT is a  guilty pleasure of mine, like eating a McD’s Big Mac —  you know it’s junk food, greasy, no nutrition beyond empty calories, but you can’t help yourself.

The commentary there is just a comedienne’s dream — a goldmine of yuks. It’s almost too easy, it’s so full of juicy stupid.

I’d personally be embarrassed to admit that so much stupid followed my blog and posted in the comments. Take the most recent post: “Do We Care if 2010 is the Warmest Year in History?”

WTF?

First, it must be really hard for the denier to keep a stiff upper lip, given the records set for high temperature in the past few years. The only solution is to — why, to deny, of course. The whole global warming phenom is just a hoax, a lie, a big scam by the socialists hoping to create a one-world order to destroy the US of A. Besides it’s really cold in Europe and the eastern seaboard of the USA, right?  Besides, in the USA, 1934 is really warmer than 1998, so there must not be any global warming. Hansen is just a liar.

And Al Gore is fat.

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This post on Climate Etc. got me thinking about one of the most-oft repeated mantras of the more paranoid part of the denialist crowd — that global warming is just a big hoax by statists hoping to enlarge social control, create one world government, increase taxes and other scary things. Punkster is an example of this group as anyone familiar with his posts on this blog can attest.

According to this group of fantasists hysterics skeptics/contrarians, global warming is a hoax perpetrated by socialists hoping to beggar the developed world and enrich the developing world by creating one world order OMG!!!112.

Here’s the post at Climate Etc. by Douglas Chang, which excerpts Noel Sheppard’s article in NZZ:

Douglas Chang | November 18, 2010 at 8:01 pm | Reply
“BREAKING: UN IPCC Official Admits ‘We Redistribute World’s Wealth By Climate Policy’

By Noel Sheppard | November 18, 2010 | 11:27

If you needed any more evidence that the entire theory of man-made global warming was a scheme to redistribute wealth you got it Sunday when a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told a German news outlet, “[W]e redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

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It’s been a year since I was pulled back into the climate wars. I’d been a frequent visitor and sometime poster before the CRU email hack – aka “Climategate” – but had been busy with other matters, work and personal and so I had been absent for probably a year or more from the climate blogosphere. Sure, I still read the occasional blog and received email updates for Real Climate, so I read all the posts there. But surfing the climate blogs was not a major preoccupation.

I’ve always loved a good debate, enjoyed the fray involved in the clash of ideas, but the climate wars just tired me out. The unrelenting sameness of the battle, the immovable front, the same ol same ol dead horse flogged into a pulp… It became too much and I took a break.

I figured that no matter what I did or didn’t do to participate, the thing would live on like a bad case of zombie fever — and I was right!  Feeling very much like Michael Corleone, when I did get drawn right back in through a hat-tip about the CRU hack from an old libertarian adversary-friend, I found the armies and tactics pretty much the same. Mostly the same players, mostly the same refrain, although the tenor of the debates became a bit more hysterical with deniers gleefully cherry-picking emails for quotes to mis-represent and a number of AGW supporters wondering what it all meant.

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I was ill earlier this week and spent my time on the couch watching youtube. Of course, being the wonk that I am, I spent my youtube time not watching funny cats or silly dancing girls and men, but watching videos about global warming.

I watched Bjorn Lomborg’s five part series, “The Facts About the Environment” since he claims if you watch his presentation, you don’t have to buy the book, “The Real State of the World”. Always interested in saving trees and money, I took him up on it.

His lecture in a nutshell?

Don’t worry. Be happy.

Yes, that’s right, folks. As far as I can tell, his message is this:

We can’t make proper decisions if we think we have a gun at our heads. Alarmism on the part of environmentalists and climate scientists prevents a rational discussion. We can’t properly prioritize our goals and objectives if we feel under threat.

Luckily, there is no gun. Read more…