My Washington Post Answer to George Will

Excellent work, Chris!

They printed that? On real paper? In a regular edition?

Huh, who would have thought. A weekend well spent, Chris.

Very well written article, Chris.

Unfortunately, I fear that the people who really need to read it won't. But then, I'm a pessimist.

There is never had so much of ice in the antartique since its discovery by James Cook in 1770. To go out 1000MW in photovoltaic panels, it would be necessary to have a 50 mile ground ². Expense: + of 60 billions $ + 70 billions $ installation of stocking.
In equal or lesser expense there is the nuclear power station which would develop 20 times more (20000MW)

?????!

Mr Mooney: Did you cover the recent Heartland Conference in NY? If not why not? Instead of critiquing Mr. Will, a non-scientist, why not critique REAL scientists. For instance Dr. Richard Lindzen, MIT. Are you aware of the REAL controversies concerning the CO2 data collected at only one data point in Hawaii used in most climate change models? Are you aware of the REAL data concerning CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels? Are you aware of any data on climate change other than predictions made from models that are based on controversial assumptions. Do you know how mathematical models are constructed and operate? I could add many more questions, however, if you are not prepared to deal honestly with these questions, then you should not consider yourself a honest reviewer of climate change literature. Be aware that organizations such as AAAS (of which I am a Fellow) have taken policy positions of not accepting studies that will indicate contrary positions to IPCC. Respectfully submitted

Chris

It is an excellent piece. It is, as always, a bit of a distressing eye-opener to read the denier responses, such as the comparison of publishing you to publishing material from the Taliban.

The publication of your piece and the WMO letter (which are among 1000s of pieces that Hiatt and the Post received), together, is a strong implicit statement by the Post editorial board, perhaps reflecting some serious internal discontent over publishing Will's deception. Have to wonder, however, if there will be a formal statement (an editorial) to reinforce your two pieces.

FYI: Have added both pieces to my attempt to keep up with the Will Affair: http://getenergysmartnow.com/2009/03/04/the-will-affair-struggling-to-k…

Did you cover the recent Heartland Conference in NY? If not why not?

I thought Tim Lambert did a good job covering it.

Congrats, Chris! Very well done from start to finish.

Your and the WMO notes are good. But the cynic in me notices that it took the Post 5 weeks to run the responses, and when they did run, it was on Saturday, not a Sunday as Will's ran. If I remember correctly, Saturday circulation is 1/2 to 1/3rd of the Sunday circulation.

Mr. Beattie, if you would like to make a case, then make it. The questions you ask insinuate much but substantiate nothing.

yorumsuz

Everyone who lives in a community where the local newspaper carried the George Will column needs to be pushing their local editors to publish Chris's answer. I have discussed this with the Opinion Page Editor at the San Jose Mercury News and it quickly became an issue of syndication agreements, rights to reproduce, etc.

Chris, we need to understand how we might do this that is fair to you.

Wes,
If any paper wants to run my piece just put me in the email loop and we'll figure this out.

Way to go

The Post has for the last week and a half been running lots of science.

Chris;

Congratulations on a weekend of time well spent!

Arianna Huffington wrote a piece some time ago on the limitations of newspapers:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_alterman?cu…

They are not a great place for real debate. You risked a lot of time hoping they would post your letter. I would like to see a long internet debate between George and you that runs for a week. Wouldn't that be interesting?

http://www.biodiversivist.com

Per question of my comments: It would take too much space to answer the questions I raised. If you truly want to understand the differences between the two sides of climate change researchers, suggest you visit the Heartland Conference website and begin reading presentations made at the conference. Or, if you don't have enough time to read many of them in order to try and understand the science behind observing and understanding climate change, suggest you just read the presentation made by H. H. Schmitt (former scientist- astronaut). Or, if you would be interested in reading a compendium on the politicization of climate change, read Dr. Lindzen's paper: Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions? If you don't take the time to become familiar with problems of modeling the huge atmospheric and ocean systems that partly control climate, and which the IPCC relies on to make its predictions, then you will not be in a position to critique what is being reported. You will be no better than a parrot.

Unfortunately it seems that they are, as you say, presenting it as a debate, rather than making a correction. So Will still gets to pretend that his points are debatable.

"Unfortunately it seems that they are, as you say, presenting it as a debate..."

Well, we certainly wouldn't want that to happen, would we? After all, the seance is settled. Isn't it?

Re Don Beattie

Mr. Beattie suggests that Mr. Mooney report on a conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute. Of course, the Heartland Institute relative to global warming is about as reliable as the Discovery Institute relative to evolution, global warming, HIV/AIDS and the Holocaust.

Mr. Beattie, I went to the Heartland Institute website and proceeded to the material on the conference. I was dismayed to learn that there were no scientific papers published; all that was available were videos and Powerpoint presentations. Let's dismiss the videos out of hand as useless sources of scientific reasoning -- I don't want to get into silly arguments as to whether the speaker said "warming" or "farming" or suchlike. So I downloaded three of the most likely looking Powerpoint presentations and delved through them.

Even these weren't enough to derive any useful conclusions. The presentation by David Evans seemed more political than scientific, and none of its scientific claims were presented in a manner that permitted rigorous analysis. There were just lots of pretty pictures with cute labels and statements that "this proves IPCC wrong". WHAT proves it wrong? Where's the line of reasoning? It just isn't there.

So I moved on to Tom Segalstad's presentation. It has a nicely technical sounding title: "Carbon isotope mass balance modelling of atmospheric vs. oceanic CO2". And in fact it is certainly the most technically impressive presentation I saw; there's a lot of data in there. Unfortunately, figuring it out is rather like watching a movie with no audio; lots of crucial logical steps simply don't show up. The author comes to some rather startling conclusions, such as his claim that the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is only 5 or 6 years instead of the several hundred claimed by the IPCC, or his claim that the IPCC underestimated the absorption capacity of the oceans for CO2 by a factor of 20. I would have like to see these claims substantiated, but the substantiation just isn't there; there are only charts and diagrams.

So I turned to Fred Goldberg's Powerpoint presentation. This was an embarrassment; there was no clear train of thought. If this weren't a computer presentation, I would have thought that perhaps he spilled his slide tray and re-assembled his slides in random order. For example, one of slides makes the point that only one in 10,000 atmospheric molecules is CO2 -- insinuating that this somehow argues against the AGW hypothesis. Are we supposed to take this seriously? There are a variety of other blunders of similar magnitude. What really threw me for a loop was a photograph of some damaged prickly pears in the middle of a discussion of El Nino. What do THEY have to do with any of this!!?!?!

So my conclusion is that the presentations at the conference were pretty lightweight stuff. I was hoping to find some real science, but in fact all I found were some a bunch of incomplete Powerpoint presentations.

Perhaps you are aware of something more substantial that came out of that conference. If so, I'd sure like to see it. What I did see was mostly fluff.

Oh, I forgot to mention, Mr. Beattie: I attempted to access the video for Mr. Schmitt's presentation because you particularly recommended it. However, when I clicked on the link to play the video, I got the audio for Myron Ebell's presentation. I downloaded the 98 MB video file, but it would not play.

I think Tim Lambert (whom I linked to above) did a good of showing that the "debate" as the Heartland Institute wanted it has jumped the shark. (Actually, they jumped it a long time ago. But this time they did even from a crude PR standpoint.)

For Don Beattie:

There's more than one station measuring CO2:
CO2 Measuring Stations

and there aren't any controversies about CO2 on Mauna Loa:
Mauna Loa Volcanic Emissions 1958-Present

Hey Chris:

You're bullshiting people as usual. There was a cooling scare in the 70's promulgated by dipsticks like the idiot that lost the best to Simon over resources depletion.

Like in your turgid book, stop pretending you're fair minded on these issues as you're basically a hard left political activist pretending otherwise.

Mr. Beattie: are you the same chap listed by Google as having given a $1000 US donation to the Republican National Committee ("Donald A. Beattie, retired, Jacksonville FL 32259") last May? The AAAS lists as a Fellow a Donald A. Beattie in Jacksonville, a retired NASA manager...maybe there is more than one retired Donald A Beattie in Jacksonville, but...
If you are the same Donald A. Beattie, do you think your politics are somehow influencing your ability to weigh good science versus the non-science that comprised the Heartland propaganda conference? Just asking.

Re goose step

Mr. goose step (by the way, a good moniker, considering that Mr. goose step recalls one Josef Goebbels and the big lie theory) repeats the big lie that scientific consensus in the 1970s pointed toward global cooling. This lie has been refuted by numerous commentators. The fact is that the global cooling theory was proposed by a small minority of climate scientists at the time, just like it is now being proposed, mostly by whackjobs like Mr. goose step.

Wow. Chris, that was excellent. Very well written and direct.

One would hope that The Post learned something about fact-checking from the Will episode. Besides the scientific aspect, the fact that the authorities that Will cited pointed out his errors undermines his objectivity and scientific rigor.

Let's hope George Will finally understands the difference between polemics and science. He wrote the article as a polemic, but was duly taken to task by the science.

As I do not claim to be a climate scientist but one who attempts to understand important issues, a few final thoughts. Heartland Conference, that I did not attend but discussed with Jack Schmitt and Richard Lindzen, was a venue to discuss other opinions on an important issue. Don't know why Schmitt's presentation not available, he told me it would be.

Next, could not find any reports in the scientific literature on climate change authored by Tim Lambert. Perhaps he is just a commentator like journalist George Will. Will does write interesting stories about baseball, a subject that he appears to follow closely.

Of course CO2 is measured in many places. However, the Mauna Loa measurement that I understand is often used in climate models, is a high reading compared to other stations, and there are questions about the readings. Based on my understanding of atmospheric CO2 analyses, there is data that supports questioning origin, types, and concentration. Atmospheric dwell time is also debatable.

I find it amusing that critics hide behind anonymous names: Tom, Oaken Wolf, SLC, Erasmussina. What are they hiding? Perhaps they are AIG executives keeping their heads below the trenches.

Many years ago I had a yellow-head parrot. I taught it to repeat many funny, short, sayings that entertained friends and guests. When returning to the US for a position at NASA, I gave the parrot to a friend staying in country. I did not want it subjected to the required long, isolated, quarantine. Even parrots should be able to live a happy life.

Re Don Beattie

Let's see about the Heartland Institute. Attached is a link to a web site, which undoubtedly will be denounced as a bunch of left wing pinko commies by Mr. Beattie, which discusses the associations and views of this institute.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute

A nice juicy tidbit from the site.

Although Heartland calls itself "a genuinely independent source of research and commentary," its has been a frequent ally of, and funded by, the tobacco industry. According to a 1995 internal report by Philip Morris USA (PM) on its corporate contributions budget, the company uses its contributions "as a strategic tool to promote our overall business objectives and to advance our government affairs agenda," in particular by supporting "the work of free market 'think tanks' and other public policy groups whose philosophy is consistent with our point of view. ... [W]e have given general support over the years to such groups as the Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Washington Legal Foundation and a variety of other organizations that help provide information about the ultimate course of legislation, regulation and public opinion through their studies, papers, op-ed pieces and conferences.

In fact, not only is the Heartland Institute a shill for global warming denier special interests, it is also a shill for the tobacco companies.

Mr. Beattie, I do not believe that you are correct in stating that only the Mauna Loa measurements are used in the various climate models; certainly the IPCC does not rely on only those measurements. In Note a to Table 2.1 of the AR4, they state:
"Data for CO2 are combined measurements from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) and SIO networks (see Section 2.3.1); "

Section 2.3.1 describes at length the many sources of data used; most significant is the fact that a New Zealand station has been gathering data for a long time and its data series is important because it provides a southern hemisphere measurement.
Moreover, you have provided no substantiation for your claim that the Mauna Loa data is higher than the measurements at other stations. You point out that the volcano itself releases CO2, but that does not necessarily mean that the CO2 data is compromised. It should be easy for you to produce the source of your information on this point. Please do so.

Mr. Beattie, why do you find it amusing that participants in this discussion "hide behind" user names? The practice is universal on the Web, largely because the Web is stalked by radicals who sometimes harass individuals of opposing political beliefs. I myself have been subjected to such harassment. If you find this practice amusing, political blogs must be a laff-a-minute experience for you.

Re Richard Lindzen

Regarding Prof. Lindzen, as we sit here today, he is a reputable climatologist who dissents from the scientific consensus about global warming. However, in associating with a disreputable organization like the Heartland Institute, he is in grave danger of entering Peter Duesberg/Arthur Butz territory.

yorumsuz

SLC:

> ...Prof. Lindzen ... is a reputable climatologist...

That's debatable: http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/Lindzen.htm

Don Beattie:

I find it amusing that critics hide behind anonymous names: Tom, Oaken Wolf, SLC, Erasmussina. What are they hiding? Perhaps they are AIG executives keeping their heads below the trenches.

This is about the strongest argument you have put forward, and it is nothing but an ad hominem, a weak attempt to redirect the argument away from the evidence.

You didn't attend the conference, but you rail against everyone else that didn't attend. You snark about Tim not publishing while telling us we should listen to a bunch of non-climatologists who also have not published on climate.

Since you like to play the appeal to authority card, list the names of the scientists at that conference that have published on climate.

Re DavidCOG

Apparently, Prof. Lindzen, like Fred Singer, has already entered Peter Duesberg/Arthur Butz territory.

Folks, I'm a bit nervous about attacking Mr. Lindzen. I suggest that we simply dispense with any consideration that he is or is not an authority and instead just concentrate on the science. Similarly, I think that we should address only Mr. Beattie's scientific arguments.

Re Eramussimo

It's not a question of attacking Prof. Lindzen. It's pointing out his associations as they may effect his judgments. The web site linked to by Mr. DavidCOG is quite devastating and indicates that Prof. Lindzen has numerous conflicts of interest.

SLC:

Stop making idiotic comments. There were gloom and doom pieces in news journals throughout the 70's warning about global cooling and that we were going to run out of resources in 30 years time.

Of course Mooney, the English Lit major forgets to mentions or makes light of that.

Mooney, the English Lit major is now a historian checking out footnotes. :-)

In reality all Mooney does is write hit pieces for the left. His book was a joke and his article was another typical clownish hit piece.

There were gloom and doom pieces in news journals throughout the 70's warning about global cooling and that we were going to run out of resources in 30 years time.

And we all know how accurate the "news journals" are in reporting what actually goes on in the scientific world, are't we?

Is this the best you can do?

Goose step, the gloom and doom pieces to which you refer appeared in Time and Newsweek. They did not appear in scientific journals. If you'd like to complain to those newsmagazines about their editorial content, feel free to do so. However, it is incorrect to impute that these newsmagazines represented the opinions of the scientific community. If you want to know the thinking of the scientific community, consult the journals of the time. If you do so, you will discover that there was in fact no serious concern about global cooling. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report on the subject that concluded that we simply did not have enough data at that time to draw any conclusions.

@Erasmussimo, you were much more kind than was appropriate, IMO, but thanks for saying much more clearly what I was being snarky about.

How long shall we now wait for Goose step's apology for the personal attack on Mooney?

Money, IMO, is someone whose publications I've read, and who gets science and science reporting better than most "science reporters" in the MSM.

I predict that no apology will be forthcoming from Goose step, as neither corrections nor apologies are something that denialists understand.

Eras:

Those two magazines were pretty close to the journals of record at the time. Both carried lots of authority. Pre-web media was pretty sparse in comparison. If they suggested that scientists said such and such, then it was pretty certain that scientists were feeding information to them.

It's really not much different to now really. James Hansen suggesting we're past the tipping point, thinks senior executives from the coal industry need to need jailed and democracy is not an effective political system to undo AGW. All that crap gets carried in the media. Hansen is a leading light in the AGW industry so his comments should or shouldn't be looked on with carrying cache?

Same goes for an English lit major who writes a book on the GOP war on science and then dishonestly ignores the tripe from the left or changes the goal posts mid stream like Mooney did while pretending he's a man of science.

30 years from now people will be looking on and saying what you are... Mooney wasn't a scientist and Hansen's bullshit wasn't peer reviewed. It's bullshit , right? Both were trying to change public opinion.

Re Goose step

I would suggest that right wing whackjob Mr. Goose step consult the scientific journals published during the 1970s, rather then Newsweek and Time magazines for evidence that the scientific consensus at the time favored global cooling. As others have stated, he will come up empty. I would also suggest that Mr. Goose steps' smear attacks on Mr. Mooney and Dr. Hanson only show that he is a devote of the Karl Rove school of character assassination. Mr. Mooney doesn't like the use of strong language on his blog so I will refrain from responding to Mr. Goose step in the manner to which he richly deserves. If this were Ed Brayton's blog, I would not be so restrained.

Re global cooling

After some cogitating, I seem to recall that the brouhaha about global cooling in the 1970s in the popular press had to do with a phenomena called nuclear winter. This effect was proposed by Carl Sagan amongst others and was based on the following hypothesis.

Sagan opined that a full scale nuclear war would cause large amounts of dust to be ejected into the stratosphere which would block sunlight from reaching the earths surface and thus shut down photosynthesis and cause a global cooling effect. This was extremely controversial at the time with, interestingly enough, the same right wing whackjobs who today deny global warming, poo poohing the notion.

However, a partial vindication was discovered in the 1980s with the work of Luis and Walter Alvarez (the former a Nobel Prize winner in physics, the latter, a geologist, his son) who found evidence that an asteroid collision was responsible for the K/T extinction that eliminated the dinosaurs as it forced enough dust into the stratosphere to shut down photosynthesis for several years, in addition to causing an ice age. This is now the scientific consensus as to the cause of the K/T extinction, although, to be fair, there are still a few reputable naysayers like Robert Bakker. The notion of nuclear winter is still somewhat controversial as it is not clear how many nuclear explosions and of what yield would be required to produce the amount of dust that occurred in the K/T asteroid extinction.

The nuclear winter theory has nothing to do with the current argument as to whether the earth is undergoing a warming or cooling episode.

Nuclear winter: In this context, it is worth taking a look at the paper "Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict" wherein it is predicted that ozone losses and the ensuing destruction of life will be even more than predicted for past nuclear winter scenarios, even with a "small" nuclear war between India and Pakistan with about 50-100 15 kT Hiroshima type bombs. The paper should be taken with a grain of salt though. This of course has nothing to do with the current warming about global warming/cooling.

Link:
Mills, M.J., Toon, O.B., Turco, R.P., Kinnison, D.E., Garcia, R.R. (2008). Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(14), 5307-5312. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0710058105

By the way I am not too familiar with the media history of global cooling in the 1970s but I am not sure that the debate then had to do with nuclear winter. I only say this because the Sagan et al. paper on nuclear winter was published in Science in 1983, although some discussion on it was taking place a bit earlier (but I doubt whether it was widespread in the popular sources)

SLC

No amount of lying and dissembling will support your silly screen antics that there were scientists feeding fears of apocalyptic cooling in the 70's.

Listen you drop kick, I'm not making up that stuff about Hansen as it came from his own fat uncouth mouth.

And I'm not character assassinating anyone. Mooney's book was a left wing polemic written by some one who changed the goal posts throughout to make one side look worse. It doesn't take an IQ higher than 100 to figure out what Mooney was doing. You're obviously below that.

250 odd years (since the industrial revolution) has witnessed all the anti-science coming from the left: Like how humans organize themselves such in commerce or the technology we use(GM crops anyone). So don't come at me with the nonsense about one group being more anti-science than the other.

Ask any leftwinger if they believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. Of course they respond in the affirmative. Then ask them why they think that as far as human evolution goes it ends at the neck? Dimwit.

No ashtush

It didn't have to do with the fear of a nuke winter. Scientists were simply responding to the temp gauge at the time which was showing a cooling and some were fearful that in a short while after were heading into another ice-age.

Nuke winter was another issue and did actually appear to be real enough if all guns started to blaze.

The crap that scientists only speak through peer review is the biggest load of swill I've ever seen. Hansen for instance is in the media every waking moment scaring the kids or demanding oil company execs get thrown in front of the Hague for crimes against humanity. That's not peer reviewed, however that was said by a scientist: Hansen.

To suggest these guys were silent in the 70's is laughable.

I'm not making up that stuff about Hansen as it came from his own fat uncouth mouth.

I think this is one of those "don't feed the troll" moments.

Al Gore is fat. James Hansen is fat. Can't they find better help?

I agree. You should stop responding when someone starts insinuating that Darwinian evolution is a left-wing belief and conspiracy

To everyone arguing about whether or not there was a global cooling scare in the 1970's: you don't have to argue based on 30-year-old memories of headlines and school discussions. Thomas Peterson, William Connolley, and John Fleck already did, and it was published in the Bulletin of the American Meterological Society. And it's available online for free. And Chris linked to it in the online version of his Washington Post piece.

It's free, it's peer-reviewed, and it's readable.

Re Goose step

Mr. Goose step, for all his fulminations of stupidity, has yet to present any evidence of scientific consensus on global cooling in the 1970s. All he presents is rhetorical vomit and name calling. Mr. Goose step is lying sack of horse manure who lacks sufficient intelligence to grab his hindquarters with both hands. And by the way, Mr. Goose steps' rhetoric is right out of neo-Nazi web sites like stormfront.

However, since moron Goose step likes to bad mouth James Hanson, I will take the opportunity to bad mouth one of the foremost global warming deniers, namely Prof. Fred Singer. Prof. Singer is a world class denier who, in the past, has denied the relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer and who has denied that CFCs were responsible for ozone depletion. He is just as full of crap about global warming as he was about smoking and CFCs.