The classic mark of antiscience thinking is the cherry picking of sciency-sounding bits of data to support a rhetorical argument designed to convince someone of a predetermined conclusion. Rhetorical arguments are OK and are the way most of us navigate life to get what we need. But they become antiscience when we use them to attempt to refute data-based arguments by only presenting the data that support our position, instead of also considering the data that do not support it.
The urban heat island effect was first noted in 1833 by Luke Howard, an amateur meteorologist, who noticed that urban London was at night about 3.7o F warmer than the surrounding countryside. One of the favorite arguments of climate change deniers is that the urban heat island effect is unduly biasing global temperature readings.
Because of this, climate change deniers have been especially excited about the prospects for the BEST project (Berkeley Earth Surface Group, a part of the Novim Group, which is friendly to the idea of geoengineering) headed by physicist Richard Muller. Judith Curry is also involved, as is 2011 physics Nobel laurate Saul Perlmutter. It is funded by, among others, the Koch Brothers. The project's goal is to create a separate global temperature estimate, and to carefully examine whether urban heating has had any impact on global temperatures. To do this, they analyzed temperature data from 39,028 meauring stations around the world.
The bombshell is that this Koch-funded group has not been able to show that the urban heat island effect has had any influence on temperature measurements of global warming. In fact, the group found in a paper just released that both urban and rural areas "show significant warming."
This is significant because the BEST group was widely expected to take a contrarian stand.
Another favorite climate change denial argument bites the dust.
Get Shawn Lawrence Otto's important new book: Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, "a gripping analysis of America's anti-science crisis." --Starred Kirkus Review. An "incredible book" -- Starred Publishers Weekly review. Like him on Facebook. Listen to him of Science Friday. Join ScienceDebate.org to get the presidential candidates to debate science.
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Global Warming- Science - The New York Times
For more information, see http://berkeleyearth.org/
Anywho, the next IPCC meeting starts next month and there is ZERO chance of getting anyone to take these folks seriously so they needed something to take with them to show that they aren't 100% wrong.
Well, even if it is just a press release of a bunch of guys with excel spreadsheets using questionable math practices to massages a corrupt set of data to come up with a preconceived conclusion.
But no need to worry, I'm sure this press release will be highligted in the next IPCC report instead of all the published science that shows that there really isn't any signifigant warming trends based upon things like sattelites and such nonsense like that.
By the way, is the planet warming? Sure.
20,000 Years ago Canada was 97% ice year round. Now it's not. So sure, the planet is warming.
All I can say is that it is VERY odd (and not very scientific) that folks like you, the the HP, and many other liberal "I Hate Humans" media outlets are heralding a paper on climate science that HASN'T been peer reviewed or published.
Now I can say, that this paper also states that according to the data, temps have flatlined since 2000 which is a REAL problem for you warmists.
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That would indicate that Canada warmed in the past, it says nothing of current temperature trends.
That seems a little self centered to me.
Oh, and by the way, this study also concludes that temps have flatlined since 2000.
Now that is a trend that'll leave a mark. OUCH!
Anything this long-time PR spin doctor, whose career highlights include shilling for big oil and big tobacco says must be taken with a salt mine's worth of salt.
Any book, research or paper that he endorses must be immediately brought to the most thorough of reviews, because he has entirely lax standards about the kind of "science" and "journalism" he will accept.
Case in point his ongoing support of Dr. Bob Carter, the man who thinks it is ok to draw fictitious plot lines through graphs to make a positive trend appear negative. Tom Harris has so far refused to address this issue, nor has he renounced Carter's de facto fraud publicly.
One must only ask why?
http://deepclimate.org/tag/tom-harris/
la Framboise is a hack who understands almost nothing about climate science. Doesn't stop her from writing a book attacking the science. la Framboise could not pass a freshman physics exam, nor could Orkney. Does anyone else see the similarities?
Watts is the operator of an alternate, junk science anti climate web site. No matter what science is published, Watts will twist it around in order to slam climatology.
Flagged for contumelious, aggressive denier behavior.
You got nothin'.
The problem with these denial canards, is not only do they have to bite the dust, they need to be beheaded, staked in the heart, and burned in an industrial incinerator. And even then, we're going to have to keep seeing them repeated over and over again by liars and fools.
And the price of food wouldn't be steadily and rapidly rising, Texas wouldn't be turning into a desert, and northerly agricultural lands wouldn't be washing away due to flooding.
A sensible course of energy capture has not been possible as long as the long line of fossil fuel plutocrats have had the power that they have had for over a century. Digging crud out of the ground and burning it has proven to be a highly lucrative business for those shrewd enough or just lucky enough to help build or manage the infrastructure needed to make it happen. But now it is time to put away childish things and the fossil fuel fire worshippers need to realize that they have to find other ways to be a burden on the planet. The fire worshippers will kick, scream, and deceive, but science is against them and, short of destroying science, they cannot hold out forever. We've run out of storage capacity for their waste. The age of fire is about to come to a close, with or without the consent of the fire worshippers.
You are not going to change anyone's mind by calling them "deniers" or "science deniers".
If you want to convince the American to spend trillions of dollars on c02 reduction, name calling is not the way to do it.
According to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, it's a “settled fact” that “the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.” Every science academy in the world agrees with them and so does the shrinking and cooling of the upper atmosphere, the nights which are warming faster than days, the winters which are warming faster than summers, the higher latitudes (toward the poles) which are warming faster than lower latitudes ... all evidence pointing to us.
2. "The cost of significantly reducing co2 isn't worth the benefit."
You mean the benefit of ensuring a livable planet? The cost of inaction is overwhelmingly worse than the manageable costs of reduction. Also historically, technological innovation has been one of the primary drivers of economic growth.
3. "We as likely to be better off in a warmer world..."
Tell that to your grandchildren.
They are very similar to climate denialism and denialists in that regard.
Meteorologists cannot predict next Sunday's weather with much certainty, but climatologists can predict with great certainty that January in the northern hemisphere will be colder than July.
Want to bet on it?
What all of this really displays is the shocking ignorance of statistics and percentages (and math in general) in the American public.
People literally look at the one in three number for cancer as good odds they will not develop it, but think that buying 100 lottery tickets in a lotter where the odds are 123 million to one, that they have a great chance of winning.
It is breathtaking ignorance.
that is all. Carry on.
Tell me what the crystal ball sees for the climate 6 month from now, and 1 year, 2.5 years, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. If the data matches your predictions, then we know that predictive modeling is right and I'll never say another word against so-called "global warming".
The Antarctic sea ice extent has been at or near record extent in the past few summers;
The Arctic has not rebounded in recent years but instead, the overall volume of ice, and the amount of old ice is steadily decreasing. The status of polar bears is a constant nearly irrelevant distraction constatly thrown up by the Fossil Fuel Fire Worshippers. The sea level has been steadily rising since 1900 at a rate of 1 to 2.5 millimeters per year. In fact, since 1992 new methods of satellite altimetry using the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite indicate a rate of rise of 3 millimeters per year. Cholera and malaria levels are influenced by a multitude of factors besides temperature, so it is a perfect red herring for denialists to use to hide their trails. Scientists now say Mount Kilimanjar¬o will be ice free in 30 to 40 years. Global temperatures have been steadily rising. Last year tied for the hottest on record. Still, right wing denial extremists insist that it is cooling. The Mueller study shows that the temperature is rising. Still the denial extremists insist that it is cooling.
In fact, denial extremists seem to be nearly incapable of recognizing truth, or spreading truth. They are very good at spreading mud, innuendo, slander, and all sorts of evil. Truth, however, is not their strong point.
We need to Phase out Fire. We are too numerous as a species to be relying on fire for our energy.
The Antarctic sea ice extent has been at or near record extent in the past few summers; the Arctic has rebounded in recent years since the low point in 2007; polar bears are thriving; the sea level is not showing acceleration and is actually dropping; cholera and malaria are failing to follow global warming predictions; Mount Kilimanjaro-melt fears are being made a mockery by gains in snow cover; global temperatures have been holding steady for a decade or more as many scientists are predicting global cooling is ahead; deaths because of extreme weather are radically declining; global tropical cyclone activity is near historic lows; the frequency of major U.S. hurricanes has declined; the oceans are missing their predicted heat content; big tornadoes have dramatically declined since the 1970s; droughts are neither historically unusual nor caused by mankind; there is no evidence we are currently having unusual weather; scandals continue to rock the climate fear movement; the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been exposed as being a hotbed of environmental activists; and scientists continue to dissent at a rapid pace." Marc Moreno in the Washington Examiner
The above links to an influential essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons", written in 1968 by Garrett Hardin. In it he describes how overexploitation of resources can ruin things for everyone.
The atmosphere is the ultimate commons, in this sense. A power plant operator, or motor vehicle driver, suffers zero immediate consequences from the tiny amount of CO2 they produce, but taken as a whole, civilization proves to be on a dangerous course. The only way out is through some kind of collective action that is regulatory in effect, if not necessarily in structure.
Extreme libertarian and free-market ideologies -- so commonly held today -- depend on the existence of an infinite pool of common resources, so that expansion and exploitation can continue indefinitely. They find the very existence of a problem of this nature to be offensive in ideological terms, and fight like tigers to show that it's not really there, wishing it away with one spurious talking point after another.
Nice try. But wishing won't make it so. The physical world knows nothing of our ideologies. Conservatives often accuse liberal types of living in la-la land, and ignoring reality; in this case, it is the conservative ideologues who are deliberately blinding themselves to facts they don't want to see.
That's ok. We can always make up some new ones. Orkneygal is in charge of that. It won't take her very long.
She deserves our allocades.
.....Graphs, books, arguments.
Julia Child got nothin on her...