Dissecting an Activist Web Site (Part Two)

This is part two of my critique of One Blue Marble. Rather than critique point-by-point on the presentation of climate change myths, I will highlight some key points. The method of argument presented throughout “One Blue Marble” remains a heavy reliance on Ad Hominem, Argument from Authority and name-calling.

The "climate scientists" who deny global warming are, with one or two exceptions, not actually climate scientists. They work at "institutes" that are funded by big oil, and they are unable to publish their "findings" in respected peer-reviewed scientific journals. They are out solely for number one. The Friends of Science (FoS) and Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) are prime examples. (The Union of Concerned Scientists has an excellent PDF available).

Again this is ad hominem attack and unsupported assertion.

As I stated in my previous post, scientific hypotheses stand or fall on merit through testing using empirical or experimental data. As such, the findings are independent of who funded them. Arguing that a study is invalid because it was funded by this or that organization is not scientific refutation, but ad hominem attack. If a study is flawed, it can be demonstrated as such through testing.

The “excellent” pdf from the Union of Concerned Scientists is similarly short on scientific refutation and long on ad hominem. A quick read will show that the author has adapted this particular document virtually whole cloth for most of his assertions, particularly when he connects to the tobacco industry.

Myth # 2: The world isn't warming, it's cooling, and it has been cooling since 1998.

Fact: See how clever the deniers are? Truth to tell, 1998, with a very strong El Nino event, was the second warmest on year on record. So if you compare, say, 1998 and 2002, you will find that 1998 was warmer.

His opening sentence is ad hominem. Satellite readings, thought by many scientists to be more accurate than surface measures, have declined or remained flat since 1995 after you adjust for the 1998 El Niño.¹ Given that atmospheric CO₂ levels have steadily increased within the same timeframe. Based on climate models advanced by the ACCTA crowd, this should not happen.

But that doesn't mean the world is cooling, and that's not the comparison you should be making. If you compare 2002 with any year in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s, you'll find that find that 2002 was much warmer. And if you plot the yearly temperatures for the last 130 years, you'll get a graph that looks like this one.



Actually you get this graph from plotting the yearly temperature anomaly, not the actual temperature. Look closely at the graph. It looks pretty scary until you realize that it is measured in tenths of a degree.

The anomaly is calculated relative to an average temperature, which in this case happens to be about 14°C for the period between 1961 and 1990. The anomaly shown in this graph then is, in very simplistic terms, the annualized daily deviation from that average. Keep in mind that the average, or mean temperature, should not be called the “normal” temperature. There is no such thing as a “normal” temperature.

None of this is raw data. This data, including that used to compute the average, is a derived figure since we do not actually have complete surface coverage. According to GISS, the best estimate for global mean temperature over the past 128 years is 14°C and this value is used by most scientists as the baseline for anomaly calculations.²

Second, notice that there are three significant and prolonged anomaly drops on the graph all of which occurred while atmospheric CO₂ levels are said to have increased. If the causal link between rising atmospheric CO₂ and rising temperatures is so strong, then these dips or even periods of flat-line should not occur.

Third, between 1880 and 1950 there were fewer than 4,000 surface stations measuring temperature world-wide for which there are records of any kind. GISS currently uses 6,257 stations world-wide in calculating the anomaly³. Given the Earth’s surface area of 196,939,900 sqmi, the surface station density used to calculate global temperature is one station per 31,475 sqmi. Given that surface temperatures can vary wildly within a few miles, this implies huge gaps in the actual data coverage. These data gaps are filled in mathematically to create the anomaly and to feed the climate models. Additionally, measurement accuracy in the early years is dubious, given the instruments available at the time.

Fourth, there is not, nor has there ever been a uniform international standard for when and how temperatures are recorded and this includes standards for proper sighting and configuration of measuring stations. Nor is there any process in place to evaluate stations in order to ensure that sampling errors are not influencing the data. In 1997 the IPCC, during preparation of the Third Assessment, recognized the need for some system to do this, but nothing was implemented.⁴

In the US a grassroots effort was launched to do this after the NOAA failed to take action. This was done in large part as a result of the urging in 2007 of Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. and others who were concerned that inaccurate data could be leading to invalid conclusions resulting in alarmism and knee-jerk reactions by governments.⁵

There are currently 1221 surface temperature stations in the US, of which 819 or 67% have been surveyed and evaluated as of 25 January 2009.⁶ Of this number 58% fall into the Category IV error (an artificial heat source within 10 meters). A further 11% are Category V error (Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface). Category IV and V are most likely to create “heat island” effects. Many of these stations are classified as “rural” by GISS, which then in turn affects how the raw data is handled in creating the anomaly.

See, here's the thing. It doesn't make sense mathematically to compare one year to any other year. It does make sense to compare decades. In truth, nine of the warmest 10 years on record have occurred in the last decade, and the last decade has been the warmest our planet has seen in more than 100,000 years.

In an earlier paragraph the author compared individual years, yet here he says that it is not the correct comparison. At least the author finally throws out an actual fact. Based on the calculated anomalies recorded over the last 128 years the last ten were the hottest on record.

Given that for about 88% of the past 100,000 years the earth was in an Ice Age (IA) the assertion about the last ten years being the hottest in 100,000 years becomes a little ridiculous. And yet the earth warmed roughly 2°C (from an annual average of about 12°C to 13.9°C) starting about 12,000 years ago and all without significant inputs of human-produced atmospheric CO₂.

Myth # 3: If human induced carbon emissions are responsible for the slight half a degree Fahrenheit rise in the earth's temperature since the 1970s, how do you explain the temperature increases during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from 900-1300 prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine?

Fact: Again, notice the cleverness: take a real event, and suggest that it means more than it does. Depending on world events, our climate does naturally warm and cool, so scientists confidently proclaim that the world did go through a period of slight warming after the Dark Ages and a period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) in the 1600 and 1700s.

Most estimates of MWP temperatures are higher than the current “drastic” warming and yet the author cavalierly dismisses the MWP as a period of “slight” warming. Prior to the MWP there was another cooling period and prior to that another warm period, each of which lasted hundreds of years. There seems to be a pattern here.

All of this is occurring during something called the Holocene Interglacial (HIG), a climate event so far lasting 8,000-12,000 years. The HIG in turn is occurring during something called an Ice House (IH), where mean surface temperatures are between 12°C and 14°C. The current IH has lasted roughly 30 million years (the low end for an IH).

I've watched as global warming deniers have used these events to promote preposterous ideas, including one wag who suggested that Greenland is called Greenland because it was ice free during the days of Eirik the Red, and that Eastern Island is treeless now because the cold weather during the LIA forced natives to burn the forests to stay warm. (It's far more complicated than that).

In fact, recent glacial retreat in Greenland has uncovered Viking settlements that had been buried under ice. It isn’t a wag at all. There are historical records of wheat and flax shipments from the settlements in Greenland to Denmark and other points in Europe.⁷ Viking settlements in Greenland were abandoned when farming became impossible in the late-14^th century with the advance of the LIA. Today it is impossible to grow wheat in Greenland because it is too cold and much of the land the Vikings farmed is still under ice.

But the point remains. Why did the Earth warm during the MWP? Well, the first point is that we don't know if the entire planet warmed, as the data is only conclusive for the North Hemisphere, which does appear to have enjoyed a milder climate for three or four centuries.

Scientists don't know the exact causes, but expect a number of variables came into play, including a shifting of ocean currents, a dearth of volcanic eruptions, and a dramatic increase in solar activity. But even still, over the 400-year course of the MWP, temperatures only rose by an estimated 0.3°C.

Temperatures have risen by more than 1°C in the last century, and more than 0.6°C in the last 30 years alone. As the above graph shows, that is a dramatic spike. Nine of the warmest 10 years on record have occurred in the last decade.

The author is comparing a 400-year average during MWP with an anomaly point-to-point increase. This is comparing apples and oranges and clearly demonstrates the author’s lack of understanding in both science and math. If we compare average to average, we are currently well below the MWP. In 2000 the 120-year average was about 13.97°C. By 2008, the 120-year average had risen to about 14.03°C, a “stunning” rise of .06°C, still nowhere near the MWP average quoted by the author⁸.

Myth # 4. More than 17,000 American scientists — two thirds with advanced degrees specializing in physics, geo-physics, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, environmental science, chemistry, and biochemistry — have signed a petition disputing the "consensus view" that man is responsible for climate change. If there is a scientific "consensus" that human carbon emissions are responsible for "global warming" how would you characterize the scientists who signed this petition? Are they merely heretical "deniers" in the pocket of Big Oil companies?

Fact: Of all the oily tricks played by the global warming denier industry, this is one of the oiliest. It's known as The Petition and, according to some sites, the number of scientists who openly debate the global warming consensus now stands at 31,000.

It's nothing more than a dirty trick organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

Apart from being all ad hominem, did the author really look at The Petition Project, or did he take someone else’s word for it? Draw your own conclusion below.

Nevertheless, 17,000 did sign the petition, and Seitz would have you believe that all 17,000 - or 31,000 in 2008 - are working scientists with PhDs.

But when you look deeper into the list, it begins to fall apart. The vast majority of signatories have nothing more than a bachelor's degree. By Seitz's definition, I'm a scientist. As well, scattering among the number of "scientists" are signatures by Spice Girl Dr. Geri Halliwell, author John Grisham, Hawkeye Pierce and BJ Honeycutt from MASH.

This is more ad hominem and argument from authority, but at this point we must also argue that either the author is intellectually lazy, or a liar.

The Petition Project web site contains no declaration that all the signatories are PhD’s. In fact, the site provides a breakdown by qualification and an explanation of what qualifies a signatory to be on the list. Simply having a college degree is not enough. There are currently over 1,000 additional signatories waiting to have their credentials verified so they may be added to the list of over 31,000.

There are two Honeycutts on the Petition: John D. Honeycutt, PhD and Baxter D. Honeycutt.

There are two Grisham’s: Richard S. Grisham and Strother Grisham.

There are ten Pierces: Bill D. Pierce, PhD, Matthew Lee Pierce, PhD, Susan K. Pierce, PhD, Allan Pierce, PhD, Walter H. Pierce, PhD, Frank A. Pierce, Mark S. Pierce, William Schuler Pierce, John E. Pierce, Rhonda L. Pierce, DVM.

There is no Geri Halliwell on the petition.

There is no way the author actually bothered to check the petition, which would indicate intellectual laziness, given the above findings. The option exists that he is lying to embellish his argument.

Don’t take my word for it, check for yourself: The Petition Project. While there, check the requirements for getting one’s name added to the petition.

Almost 10,000 signatures come from engineers, another 3,063 come from physicians and veterinarians. I have no doubt that these professionals are smart people, but it would be difficult to believe they are experts on global warming.

As I pointed out in the previous post, scientists from the author’s side of the debate also come from a myriad of fields including economists, veterinarians, medical doctors and engineers. Nor should anyone be counting Al Gore, the most prominent spokesperson, as a scientist - Nobel Prize not withstanding.

But even if we allow their signatures to stand unchallenged, they prove nothing. Even if more than 3,000 doctors signed the petition that would mean that 99.7 percent of all doctors practicing in the US didn't sign the petition, and 99.2 percent of US engineers didn't sign.

The Petition is a fraud and a deception.

What the signatories show is that there is disagreement and the science is not settled. That is the intent of The Petition Project. The Petition Project only includes scientists in the US. There are similar petitions and declarations being circulated world-wide.

The author is using logical fallacy: Some scientists argue “A”, therefore all remaining scientists argue “B.”

More to the point, when did we start settling science by vote?


References:
1.   http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt,
     http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
2.   http://data.giss.nasa.gov/
3.   http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
4.   http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/hofn/
5.   Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
6.   http://www.surfacestations.org/
7.   Jones, Gwyn; A History of the Vikings. Oxford University Press, 1968.
8.   http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt

I'm A Skeptic

I’m a Skeptic (the uppercase is explained below) and I’ve pretty much always been one. I’ve been pondering creating this blog for a long time. This is just what the blogosphere needs, another blog about climate change.

Over the past year I’ve read the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Fourth Assessment (released in November 2007) in its entirety. Yes, it took me that long. I read the Third Assessment a year ago and I plan to go back and read the first two assessments just capture the history, though I’ll more likely just skim them.

Of course I’ve visited the blogs and web sites for both sides of the debate (some are better than others), but what really strikes me is how the preponderance of ACCTA (Anthropogenic Climate Change Theory Advocate) sites and blogs rely primarily on ad hominem, argument from authority, threats, and strawmen in order to advance their agenda. Rarely do they argue with actual points of evidence. (Model results are not necessarily evidence, but we’ll leave that for a future post.) On those rare occasions when they do use evidence, ACCTA’s are just as guilty of cherry-picking data as some of their Skeptic opponents.

While I frequently use sarcasm (aka Ad Hominem) when arguing politics and emotional social issues (hey, I’m human too), I make an effort to avoid it in scientific discussion. And so, on this blog I will strive to avoid such fallacious method and stick to evidence and logic. I will also ruthlessly point out the above common reasoning errors when my opponents or supporters use them here.

To that end, I’ll start with some conventions I’ll use from now on.

Some conventions for future argument:

Temperature. All temperatures will be discussed in °C (degrees Celsius). 0°C is the freezing point of water and 100°C is the boiling point at sea level.

HH (Hot House). A period of warm conditions on Earth where the mean temperature is about 22°C and there is no ice anywhere. This is the normal state of Earth's climate, if by normal we mean predominant as in 96% of Earth's history.

IH (Ice House). A period of cooling and glaciation lasting 30 - 50 million years. This is an aberration from the normal hot planet. In an IH, mean temperature falls from 22°C to 12-14°C. Ice caps form and glaciation can cover significant portions of the planet. Current global mean temperature is about
14°C. There have been three IH periods in the last 542 million years (Phanerozoic Eon). There has been ice a total of about 4% of Earth history. We are in an IH now.

IA (Ice Age). That period during an IH when glaciation predominates. Ice covers significant portions of Earth's surface. IA's last 40,000 - 200,000 years.

IG (Interglacial). Those warming periods between IA's during an IH where glaciation and ice caps recede, but do not vanish. We are currently in an 8,000 - 12,000-year IG known as the Holocene Interglacial. IG's typically last 10,000 - 30,000 years.

This graph shows the three "Ice Houses" of the past 542 million years¹.
Note that Ice Houses are of shorter duration than Hot Houses.

Climate. Climate is weather, averaged over time—usually a minimum of 30 years. Regional climate means the average weather trends in an area. Global climate, an average of regional climate trends, describes the Earth’s climate as a whole.² (For this definition I used a source that endorses the ACCTA position, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), but hopefully we are all in agreement. It isn’t really a controversial point.)

Global climate change. Recognizable shifts in the global climate. (Personally, I think using the words “climate” and “change” together is redundant. Climate is all about change. Climate has never been stable.)

ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change). The paradigm that the earth is warming at an unprecedented and abnormal rate causing ice to melt, oceans to rise, climate to change. This is attributed to the activities of man since the industrial revolution, principally the release of CO2 into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. This has also been called AGW, or Anthropogenic Global Warming in some circles. Recent convention is to call it ACC.

ACCTA (Anthropogenic Climate Change Theory Advocates). This refers to the interlocking cartel of taxpayer-funded professors, leftish-intellectuals, corporate news media pundits, government policy makers, environmental activists, UN agency operatives and a community of climate scientists who have agreed to a consensus that ACC is real, is irrefutably proven, is drastic, is immensely dangerous and requires massive government-forced intercession into the industrialized capitalistic sector to control.³

Skeptics. Those who are not convinced in ACC or, even if they are, believe that massive intercession is neither necessary to control ACC, nor desirable. Some Skeptics may work for oil companies. They are a subset of the total. The majority simply do not believe that ACCTA’s have proven their case. Skeptics say, prove it with objective hard evidence.

Talking about climate change as if it is an exclusive artifact of human activity is disingenuous and dishonest. That is where the real argument begins between Skeptics and ACCTA’s -- anthropogenic climate change (meaning caused by human activity). Whether and how much humans affect global climate through CO2 emissions are the issues that are still not resolved.

As I stated in my opening, I’m a Skeptic. I don’t work for an oil company -- no matter how much ACCTA’s may wish to think so. I’m an Engineer by education (United States Military Academy) and an ORSA (Operations Research and Systems Analyst) by post-graduate training. I can do the science and math from primary sources. I don’t let others synthesize my opinion for me.

ORSA’s do computer modeling. ORSA’s are by training, Skeptics. We don’t trust computer modelers because we know the craft. It’s what we do. We tend to want raw data and the code so we can run the model ourselves and this is a bone of contention between Skeptics and ACCTA’s. That particular conflict will be a topic for another post.

Climate Fact Summary with Emphasis on the Holocene IG:

A. The earth is warming and has been for about 150 years. However, the scale of what we are talking about is broad, our measurements are recent (in geological time), all the variables are not known, nor do we know with certainty how to weight the variables we do know. Because we don't know all the variables or their proper weight, we cannot say with certainty if we we are at the beginning, middle or end of the upswing.
B. The current warming is part of a natural cycle, a rebound. (This is the main point of argument and we’ll come back to it in a future post.)
C. Prior to the current warming, it was colder for 400 years. This period is known as the Little Ice Age (LIA).
D. Prior to LIA, it was warmer than it is today. This period is known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and it lasted about 400 years.
E. The 20th Century warming slope is approaching, but has not yet reached, the level of MWP.
F. The current warmth should be expected to last for about 400 years.
G. During warming periods, agriculture moves further north. (During MWP, Viking settlers farmed wheat and flax in Greenland. Today, this is impossible because the climate is still too cold).
I. When the current warming period is over, we should expect the temperature to go back down as part of the normal fluctuation (unless we are leaving the IH).
J. These 400-year cycles have been going on throughout the Holocene IG. Assuming only a 15,000-year IG, we can expect 8 - 18 additional 400-year cycles (warming/cooling) based upon past history.
K. Before the Holocene IG, earth was in a deep freeze that lasted about 100,000 years. This is often called The Ice Age (IA), but more accurately it is merely the most recent IA.
L. The current IH has lasted about 30 million years. Within this IH there have been roughly 20 cycles of IA and IG.

This then is our starting point. I will be adding links to sources later which will include: research papers, data, graphs, web sites, and blogs where this issue is presented. It is my intention to group web site and blog links based upon scientific value and whether the site uses ad hominem, strawmen, threats, argument from authority, and personal attack to advance their position. I will be equally unkind to both sides.

References:

1. This is a rough graph intended only to illustrate the IH's of the past 542 million years from Earth in Time.
2. The National Center for Atmospheric Research
3. Borrowed from Earth in Time with modifications. John Donohue uses the term TEA (The Established Authority) instead of Anthropogenic Climate Change Theory Advocate.