The skeptic case against climate change is unraveling before our eyes like someone walking away from an old sweater, thread in hand.
For those who have ever put the skeptic arguments to the test, it has always been clear that their criticisms rarely stand up to even the most basic level of academic rigor. But last week's release of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study delivered a decisive blow to the edifice of climate skepticism.
The key skeptic pillar, summarized by arch skeptic Anthony Watts, has always been this: "How do we know if global warming is a problem if we can't trust the temperature record?"
His 2009 study of US weather monitoring stations argued that many were located in areas where temperatures were likely to be higher than in surrounding areas, suggesting that estimates of warming were exaggerated. So the BEST study, partly funded by the climate denial industry, was undoubtedly meant to corroborate Watt's fundamental tenet.
Instead, the BEST study confirmed quite the opposite -- that rapid warming trends found by previous studies of climate change are in fact correct. While the study must still undergo peer review, it is a climate change denial killer for two reasons:
• The research was led by a prominent climate skeptic with funding by denial bankroller Charles Koch. It was given the seal of approval by Watts and other skeptics. Watts: "I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong." Fred Singer, another long-term denier said: "I applaud and support what is being done by the Project -- a very difficult but important undertaking."
• It annihilates the "climategate" accusations. Skeptics claimed that climate scientists had tried to hide discrepancies in the temperature record which were inconsistent with global warming trends. Even though every one of the six independent inquiries has exonerated the scientists as well as the science, deniers have been relentless. BEST shows that these discrepancies are inconsequential.
It's important to remember, however, that climate denial is not about getting at the truth. It is a well-funded, carefully orchestrated campaign to block regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. So once the skeptics realized their own study was going to fly in the face of their main talking points, they figured BEST would have to be neutralized somehow. Indeed, Watts has been back-pedaling for months, ever since the preliminary findings were known. Their counter-strategy generally went like this:
1) Create Confusion and Sow Doubt: On October 19, the day of BEST's release, climate denier command central Heartland Institute ran a story headlined: "GAO Confirms: Anthony Watts Is Right, UN Temperature Data Rigged To Show Warming"
Was the timing a coincidence? Hardly. The GAO study in question (PDF) was more than six weeks old and had already been reported widely in the blogosphere based on a distorted press release issued by the skeptics' very own Sen. James Inhofe. (And Heartland further distorted it beyond all recognition, I might add. Rigged data? GAO didn't even imply this, let alone confirm it.)
So why the sudden re-release of an old story, but this time focused specifically on vindicating Watts? Because it was his work that BEST eviscerates. As Watts himself admits, "I knew that behind the scenes, they were planning a media blitz" (and he of course is scrambling to cast doubt on the findings). It was a preemptive strike meant to imply that there were two sides to the story. And why refer to "UN temperature data" when the story had nothing to do with the UN? Because tapping into public mistrust of the UN is part of the denial narrative.
2) Change the Subject: The press didn't buy the standard "two sides" gambit. Virtually every major media outlet ran stories with headlines like this one from The Economist: "The heat is on: A new analysis of the temperature record leaves little room for the doubters. The world is warming."
So the next move was to pretend this was never a key tenet of the denier argument. The day after publication, Heartland's line was:
The mere assertion that the planet has warmed some tells us absolutely nothing we didn't already know... Few skeptics claim the earth has not warmed during the past 100 years...What defines global warming skeptics is the assertion that our present warming is not a crisis (human-induced or otherwise) - not an assertion that the planet has not warmed.Um, right. I Googled "Earth is cooling not warming" and got 13 million results. The Urban Heat Island effect has been a lynchpin argument of the deniers, led by Watts, for years.
Perhaps the most blatant example comes from the very man who coined the term climategate, James Delingpole. Just one year ago, in a piece titled Global Cooling and the New World Order, he wrote "the global elite is perfectly well aware that global cooling represents a far more serious and imminent threat to the world than global warming..." The same guy last week?
'The planet has been warming,' says a new study of temperature records, conducted by Berkeley professor Richard Muller. I wonder what he'll be telling us next: that night follows day? That water is wet? That great white sharks have nasty pointy teeth? That sheep go "baaaa"? ...It has been a truth long acknowledged by climate sceptics, deniers and realists of every conceivable hue that since the mid-19th century, the planet has been on a warming trend."
Outright denial is increasingly hard to defend, so the new talking point is "Yes, there is some climate change, and yes, a little might be man-made, but don't worry, most of it is natural so we don't need to do anything about it." This friendly face of climate denial is backed up by Heartland's insidiously deceptive "Encyclopedia" on Climate Change.
3) Silence Climate Scientists: climate scientists have been subjected to a veritable witch hunt. As a bunch of people understandably deficient in PR craft, they've proved an easy target for the skeptics. The most recent attack can be found in an obscure amendment (SA 862) to a Senate "minibus" budget bill (HR 2112). The amendment would prohibit federal employees (including scientists from NOAA, NASA, and other government institutions) from participating "in any password-protected electronic forum that involves the participation in a process or production of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
Of course the IPCC uses password-protected fora. Anyone who has ever used online tools (like Google docs) to work on joint papers knows they are far more efficient than using email. Having draft versions in the public domain would simply create confusion (see 1 above). It would be like conducting climate science as if it were a reality TV show, with every spat judged in the court of public opinion, although in this case the public is far less qualified to pass judgement than on whether Britney should be voted out of the house.
Fortunately, the truth is stubborn and it's only a matter of time before it prevails. Unfortunately, however, time is precisely what we don't have. Maybe we should take a more pragmatic approach. The next time someone argues that Arctic sea ice isn't vanishing after all, don't argue. Just ask... Why do you think the bordering states and big oil companies are now jockeying for position to exploit the resources of the increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean -- for the fun of it?
Follow Kelly Rigg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kellyrigg
Here is a sample of what she has has typed.
"Kevin Trenberth: The hiatus [in warming] was not unexpected. Variability in the climate can suppress rising temperatures temporarily, though before this decade scientists were uncertain how long such pauses could last. In any case, one decade is not long enough to say anything about human effects on climate; as one forthcoming paper lays out, 17 years is required
JC question for Kevin Trenberth: Please remind me of when you first thought there would be a hiatus in the warming."
Another sample-
"John Daniel: “We make a mistake, anytime the temperature goes up, you imply this is due to global warming,” he said. “If you make a big deal about every time it goes up, it seems like you should make a big deal about every time it goes down.”
JC comment: Well somebody had to finally say this, thank you John Daniel."
Link-
http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/27/candid-comments-from-global-warming-scientists/
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/216223/20110919/deep-oceans-able-to-mask-global-warming-for-decades.htm
the goal for deniers isn't to PROVE that global warming ISN'T happening. all they want to do is create DOUBT.
What a bunch of bunkum there tiredofstupid. Your comment reads like it was issued directly by the Heartland science denier Institute.
The science of global warming is strong. It is founded on over 200 years of superb science. The root cause of global warming is the excess of CO2. That CO2 is contributed by 30 billion tons every year by human oxidation of fossil fuiels.
NASA interesed in the Sun? Imagine that. Our space science agency is interested in the sun. To a denier this must mean that global warming is a hoax.
Sun pounding us with sub atomic particles? Bunkum. The sun throws off ions. Simple as that. To a denier this is a nail in the coffin of global warming.
Man made global warming campaign? This is one hundred percent a fabrication and a projection by the only campaign involved, the vast disinformation campaign run by Heartland and others, and funded by Big Energy.
By the way, if you haven't watched the video of Sen Whitehouse's excellent speech on the Senate floor, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6VQ0vYfrAw "Climate Change: 99 Second Opinions?"
I remind you that I think climate change is real, explanation of reason why it is hapen is wrong,
By the way how the best Muller data will help to change mind of climate model scientists, if they don't see another reason than carbon dioxide for that?
Maybe your statement (good one): "once minds are cast in a contrary viewpoint, the stronger the evidence proving them wrong, the stronger their contrary view becomes" is universal and climate scientists are in the same boat?
How is this any different than the general case?
If it's a foregone conclusion that it's real, then there's no further need to study it to determine if it is happening.
You study it and I'll debate it.
Actually there is no debate on the science side of it. AGW is happening and is soundly confirmed. The science community actually is at work on the problem. Part of science is at work at improving measurement and prediction. Others are at work at the CO2 reduction aspect. Engineers. Politicians. Still others are at work at alternate forms of energy.
Throughout all of this, we have the Big Energy interests. They would just love to scrape off just a few more trillion before we take a serious look at this. It is in their financial interest not to see the problem. So they fund professional PR effort to distract and confuse the issue. For example see all the climate zombies who appear here each day. They got their information from Limbaugh and Beck. From a.m. radio and from FOX. All the specific disinformation came from a source. These trolls didn't just wake up one day and think "I don't believe in CO2 absorption of infrared and I am going to speak up about it." Nope, the propaganda machine got them.
So the possible future of the species is being sold out. That is why the fuss here on HP, fresh each day.
As far as I can tell, the only climate refugees ever documented are the poor people in Uganda and Central America that have been displaced(and killed) so we can plant trees for the companies that buy carbon credits. http://www.euractiv.com/sites/all/euractiv/files/Honduras-FFM-Report-Bajo-Aguan.pdf and http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/by-their-fruit-you-will-recognize-them/
And, while this may not be your intention, here is an example of what is being done today with our energy grid...... http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/an-alarmist-version-of-efficiency/
It is the Malthusian thoughts and the misanthropist nature of the posit that caused me to engage. Personally, I don't care if people are scared of a prevalent, naturally occurring, clearly beneficial molecule. It is the draconian nature of the suggested solutions that is the problem.
In a decentralized (and far superior) system, we would already have clean, unlimited energy by use of the molten salt reactor (proven fifty years ago).
Yes, global warming is real.
If you google "Earth is cooling not warming" You get 70,000 results no 13 millions!
Isn't i obvious that google only searches pages that contain earth, cooling and warming in ANY ORDER?
This is bad journalism.
Try this one: "Earth is cooling" gets 453,000 results. Is that enough for you to agree that she has a point?
It is time to phase out fossil fuel fire economy.
It is time to leave the stone age.
Interesting that the 3l world is so focused on there being only one right answer when there are so many unanswerable questions (with todays technology and models).
They have an unshakeable faith that manmade carbon emissions will produce a hotter climate, causing multiple natural disasters. Their insistence that we can be absolutely certain this will come to pass is based not on science -- which is never fully settled, witness the recent experiments that may undermine Albert Einstein's theory of relativity -- but on something very much like religious faith.
All the trappings of religion are there. Original sin: Mankind is responsible for these prophesied disasters, especially those slobs who live on suburban cul-de-sacs and drive their SUVs to strip malls and tacky chain restaurants.
The need for atonement and repentance: We must impose a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, which will increase the cost of everything and stunt economic growth.
Ritual, from the annual Earth Day to weekly recycling.
Indulgences, like those Martin Luther railed against: private jet-fliers like Al Gore and sitcom heiress Laurie David can buy carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon-emitting sins.
.
It has nothing to do with faith. It has to do with physics. It has been proven, and reproven, and confirmed and reconfirmed. The physics and chemistry of global warming are extremely strong.
Carbon dioxide was shown back in 1859 to be an absorber of infrared heat. High schoolers now can do science demonstrations of this effect. That mankind contributes billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere should be intuitively obvious to all of us.
Yet, as we see here, the deniers have no problem exclaiming all it to be a hoax.
AGW is very real. It is proven, to those with the disciplined minds to understand the science of it.
There are others who get their science from their regular a.m. radio and from FOX and then proceed directly over here to HuffPost to dispense that science. Problem is, it was all propaganda. It sounded so convincing when Rush or Glenn told you about it. Yet it is so easily refuted out here under the harsh light of logic and scientific insight.
Poor poor misguided deniers.
I have a unshakable knowledge that man made carbon emissions will produce climate warming. I also know that a warmer climate contains more energy. I do not exactly how that extra energy will become manifest. Certainly, ice will melt, sea level will rise, some places will become more, some areas with year round snow cover will become less so. Where? when? I don't know. And so long as there is that uncertainty, iwrite2 will claim we are religious fanatics. Far from the truth, but believable to his followers.
Profits for a few. Zero benefits for the other 99%.