Teddy Bears' Picnic

Hat tip to Sou at HotWhopper.

Denier David Archibald posted some stream of consciousness stuff about Google in which he admitted watching this video.

Well, here's a rebuttal...

Nice to see the female character actually being the intelligent one after all.

Crimes against humanity - a [climate] reality check

CAUTION: this post will be calling out some stupidity.  It is not a Holocaust denial post or anything like it.  My aim here is to show some sloppy thinking about climate change to be exactly that.

There is a book that is most illuminating: Atrocitology that I heartily recommend as a palliative to the ignorance meeted out by some climate change deniers.  I won't use my own words when those of some commenters on WattsUpWithThat can do it for me nicely:

Bruce Cobb says:

August 16, 2013 at 1:53 pm

The IPCC are nothing but a gang of criminals, guilty of crimes against humanity.

and

milodonharlani says:

August 16, 2013 at 2:20 pm

Margaret Hardman says:
August 16, 2013 at 2:08 pm

There is abundant evidence in support of Mr. Cobb’s statement, although “all” might not be as robustly supported. There might still be some real scientists involved in IPCC, who haven’t yet given up all hope in its plainly anti-scientific endeavor.

Really.  Abundant evidence.  That pair thinks so.

I did a Google search and beyond the fake conspiracy story that was Climategate, I can't turn up any real evidence.  A day in court on the thin gruel that the deniers claim is abundant won't be a very long one.  I can't see a judge, faced with one side of double spaced typing on A4, to spend too much time listening to arguments. It doesn't add up to so much as a bean, let alone a hill of them.

Yet this is something that the deniers like to state time and again.  Here is James Delingpole having to defend himself against a similar accusation earlier this year when, to be fair, he only makes himself look foolish once again. It is easy to put up the accusation, much, much harder to provide any evidence.  Which is why they don't, because there just isn't any.

On the other hand, the top ten atrocities committed by humans in history are listed here: I won't spoil it for you by revealing the number one but I am pretty certain you can work it out for yourself.

Anyway, there is a technical definition of crimes against humanity and the work of the Independent Panel on Climate Change is hardly likely ever to come close to meeting it.  Even the Climategate fuss has been thoroughly debunked, trashed and shown up for what it was.  A fuss over nothing.  But deniers aren't bothered by the truth or such niceties as evidence.  Otherwise there wouldn't be clips like these:

For the second one, you can scroll to the last five minutes or so for Lord Monckton's unevidenced statements on scientific fraud.

And these are some easily found examples. 

As for evidence that global warming is being caused by human induced changes to the atmosphere.  Milondonharlani won't read this but go to skepticalscience.  Linky on the right.

To sum up: crimes against humanity are serious matters.  Real fraud is also a serious matter.  The aim of the deniers is not to create a scientific case for their version of events, but to create doubt.  If the public is persuaded to think perhaps there is something in this, then perhaps I shouldn't believe the science either.  As Professor Iain Stewart says at the end of the Climate Wars clip (the second one), if you hear these sorts of charges, you know the scientific argument has been won.  So little of the reason for climate science denial seems to rest on the actual science.  It so often seems to rest on the "fear" of a new world government, a socialist conspiracy, extra taxes or something else that is neither science nor, very often, more than a fog of paranoia.

 

Learning math with Anthony Watts

OK, children.  Today we are going to do a simple exercise with percentages.  What does 95% actually mean?

Let me give a bit of context first.  Here is a sentence with the number 95% in it?  We need to try to work out what that means in this sentence.

Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the U.N. panel of experts, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities – chiefly the burning of fossil fuels – are the main cause of warming since the 1950s.

Does it mean:
  a) 95% of scientists think human activities are causing global warming, or
  b) there is a 19 out of 20 chance that observed warming is the result of human activities.

You're ahead of me, of course the answer is (a).  At least it is if you are Willard Anthony Watts.   Why else would you conflate a 95% probability with an observed 97% consensus in this headline@

The IPCC’s new certainty is 95% What? Not 97%??

Because Willard doesn't read, doesn't take time to consider what he's writing and doesn't stop to check.  And the duck in an echoic chamber that he operates prattles on without thinking too. Or is it so his Wattbot commenters can just make the usual head nodding murmurs and give their assent to his jottings.  For the best science site in the world, it sure is sloppy.

Just in case you didn't get the point, here's Willard's worked example (for those that also missed it, Riger Pielke Sr dissented from the AGU statement the other week, the only one of the 15 who signed it off):

That “squeeze out” is about right, look at Dr. Roger Pielke’s minority view with the AGU:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/05/pielkes-response-to-agu-statement-on-climate-change/
His minority view was one of 15 people that made the statement.
That works out to about a 7% minority view (or 93% majority) on that panel

No, Anthony.  It's not about the numbers of people who believe global warming is caused by us.  It's about how sure we are that global warming is caused by us. 

Will Willard post a correction when someone points out his schoolboy error?  Don't bet on it.  Bet instead on Essex in the T20 finals tomorrow.  You won't win your money back but at least you will have made someone else slightly richer.  One is a number as well.  Eventually, climate change denial will fizzle because the evidence, already overwhelming, will reach into the grey cells of even those hardest cases.  And of course, Orwell knew what a minority of one meant.

By the way, Italy was ruddy hot.  Hotter than average.  I haven't seen too many posts on the skeptical sites mentioning the European heatwaves this summer.

Takes one to know one

Our educated friends over at WUWT are making merry with a piece at The Daily Caller (nope, I'd never heard of it either) that calls Michael E Mann AB, MS, MPhil (phys), MPhil (geology), PhD a charlatan. That's someone who claims more knowledge or expertise than they actually have. Totally unlike, for example, Willard Anthony Watts who never seems to have finished his bachelor degree. Or Christopher Monckton who claims to have developed a snake oil derivative that can cure any number of diseases. Amongst a whole litany of other things, including claiming to have been a Nobel Prize winner, a sitting member of the House of Lords and so on. Or Willis Eschenbach, whose qualifications lie in massage and psychology. Or any number of other guest contributors to Watts's anti-science site. But, as he said only a few weeks ago, argue the science, not the man. Nice one, Anthony. If you did only argue the science then I might have more respect but you don't. Isn't that hypocrisy?

The Return Of Lord Monckton

Bow before your master, plebeians, Lord Monckton, the 3rd viscount in the long dynasty going all the way back to the 1950s, has returned from his self-imposed exile in wherever and has decided to tell the learned folk of the American Geophysical Union where they have gone wrong. I am sure they are quaking in their boots. I am sure they are scared witless to be lectured by the extremely learned (classics something from Cambridge) peer whose previous error strewn pronouncements have been eviscerated well by those with the ability and time to track down the references (although he is pretty good with references, Monckton sometimes has to have them prised from his sticky fingers). But isn't that typical of deniers? They feel they have the right to lecture those scientists who do spend their time working on this problem, discussing it in the coffee breaks and dinner queues, attending real as opposed to phoney (Heartland?) conferences and becoming real experts. Sorry, Lord Monckton, I don't listen to a word you say unless I have checked it. Even the rounding up of pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide betrays a sloppiness, at best, with the facts. Read the AGU statement on climate change for the real thing, supported by evidence and reason. Not the phoney version on WUWT rewritten by Monckton.

Willis Eschenbach has a plan

I link you to Sou at Hot Whopper because I can't say it any better. Willis Eschenbach, regular guest poster at Watts Up With That, has taken it upon himself to lecture the new editor at science, one of the top scientific journals in the world. PZ at Pharyngula also has his take. The whiff of condescension is overwhelming. You'd think that a fully qualified masseur has every right to tell a highly qualified scientist how to run their new job, if you were delusional. But in the real world I sniff a new line of attack. If the deniers can get the climate scientists to shut up explaining their science and its implications to the public, it leaves the field free to dismal Oxbridge English graduates, former weather presenters, peers who sell puzzles on the side, economists and who knows what other self-taught climate science deniers to get on and explain without ANY informed counter-argument. You see, boring facts, which is what scientists deal with to test their hypotheses, don't support the climate deniers. Ice melts in the Arctic, many parts of the world are suffering high temperatures (including here in the Bay of Naples), the sea becomes more acidic (or for those pedants, less alkaline) while its level rises and it absorbs huge amounts of energy. I am not a climate scientist. My scientific interest has long been evolution. The arguments over evolution denialism are in many ways academic, although I would hate to see the ignorance of intelligent design being taught in a school as an alternative to natural selection. But climate change has the potential directly to harm and kill individuals and to prevent a debate on its implications is malicious, in outcome if not in intention. That is a denier meme and has long been so. Keep the debate to what we want it to be, not what the truth is, say the deniers. I don't know if Tamsin Edwards, a genuine scientist, really wants the system loaded against climate scientists in the way she suggested in a Guardian article the other day, but that would be lovely for the deniers. Hence Willis's open letter. He'd gladly have the debate shut down and climate scientists muzzled. But it won't happen. Dr McNutt, as she puts the photo of her cat on her desk, opens the drawers to see what her predecessor left behind and looks through her emails will, if she even bothers, give Willis Eschenbach a polite reminder to, how shall I phrase it, get on with his job and she'll get on with hers. Science, both the field of knowledge and the journal, are better off without the pesterings of someone like Willis. It won't happen for another reason. Scientists, get this, are human beings. They have passions and interests, sometimes outside their professional ones. They sometimes have children. They are not Mr Spock (ignore the reboot JJ Abrams shenanigans with Uhuru). If they see something that they feel is likely to impinge on their children's futures, they have every right to say so. Scientists should be concerned about the future, be it disease or climate or war that is the threat. And scientists should open their mouths. So in one hundred years time, in the new Willis world, I can see the headline "why didn't they warn us?" That's because the deniers wanted the debate shut down. And on other pages: CO2 reaches 800ppm, New York Central Park now one big boating lake, say goodbye to the Netherlands...

A short history of denial

I'm sunning my weary, pale self in sunny Italy at the moment. Yesterday was Pompeii and it was scorching hot, 38C I was told. More than enough for me. No doubt someone will ascribe the recent heat wave here to global warming. The deniers will say, in slightly different words, one swallow does not make a summer. Until, that is, it gets a bit chilly when the deniers will claim that global warming has been disproved. QED.

Denialism comes in lots of flavours and each one aims to undermine its chosen field, often with a political or financial motive. Many climate deniers seem more interested in taxation than melting ice caps. For them it is the take over of the planet by some shady and ill defined world government that is the problem. Look for a conspiracy and usually you can find one. Actually, you don't need to look beyond a denier's nose because the script that most denier memes use is the one that has been used for decades.

First, undermine the science by doubting it or claiming there is a debate amongst scientists where there really isn't one. Those of us old enough to remember the days when creationists would pick up on the debate about punctuated equilibrium as a description of evolutionary change and magnify it into "scientists argue about evolution" are probably bored by seeing the same old thing pop up on more recent denier sites. If those creationists bothered to read what Eldrede and Gould were saying in support o their PE idea, they would have seen that there was no debate in evolution. In a phrase that is insultingly flung about by climate change deniers, the science is settled. At least to the extent that science is ever settled.

The play is simple. If scientists are unsure about something, then why should the rest of the public believe it? Problem is, the creation of false doubt is disingenuous. Scientists studying the field under denial don't usually doubt the big picture although they may disagree about the small details. The so called Dawkins-Gould debate wasn't about natural selection. That science was settled by the Second World War.

Talking of simple, deniers like to make the debate as simple as possible. If they can, they will make it a simple straightforward dichotomy. Either what the scientists say is true or what we say is true, is their aim. Creationists have worked on that aim for years. Either evolution gave us the huge variety of life or it was God, specifically the Christian one. Of course that is too simplistic, because there are a great many other creation stories and myths that could equally be true, but like Find The Lady, creationists don't let you choose which theory you want. They will give it to you.

Or deniers make it complicated. By taking on the trappings of science you can be as complicated as you like, since the average person is likely to be impressed by your erudition and your science. Most people don't have the maths to check formulas presented so they have no real way of finding out if what the denier says is true. This is part of the find the lady idea - make the game incomprehensible to most people and they have to rely on the bits that the average person can understand. This happens a lot at WattsUpWithThat, when complicated graphs are presented along with editorialising explanations that leave you in no doubt what you are supposed to think.

Playing with numbers, cherry picking data, graphs and the like, is an important denier game. The recent measles outbreak in Swansea was accompanied by anti-vaxxers playing with numbers.  Numerate folk demolished the denier maths but for the deniers the doubt is enough. One more person lacking the maths skills to understand the fallacy who starts to think perhaps the science might be wrong beginning to doubt is the aim.

But anti-vaxxers have another weapon. Fear. They can create fear that your child could be injured by the vaccinations. Their arguments are based in some reality but exaggerated beyond reason to create a fear that is unnecessary. Once again maths comes into it, but the argument is based on assuming most people are ignorant, not only of the science but also how to search the Internet. Page one of your Google results is not the only page you have to look at.

Anti vaxxers have had two centuries of denial to get their arguments well polished. But you cannot shine a turd, as they say. The arguments against Jenner began as soon a Jenner made his vaccination method public. Darwin ran into denialism almost as soon he published On The Origin Of Species. There have been relativity deniers, quantum deniers, cancer deniers, species deniers even. Some are part of the proper scientific debate, others are well outside it, looking in but trying to mislead the rest of the public. When deniers simplify the science they do it the disservice of undermining it by characturing it. Science is complicated and difficult to understand. Deniers don't underestimate the ignorance of their core audience - they ensure that their audience doesn't have to understand any science because they will tell you how to think. Deniers don't like that. Heaven forbid that their audience thinks for themselves. The bottom line is that science deniers have been around for many decades and they will always be with us. It is human nature to agree n a sort of tribal level and disagree with virtually everything else. In our modern world we belong to many tribes. Think posters, sports teams, authors, tv shows. We will defend our favourites and decry the others. But science has been so powerful (think of all those subjects that try to take on the trappings of science) because it has the checks and balances that allow the tribalism to be minimised. The behaviour of the deniers is not always that of scientists. In a perfect world, everyone would be Mr Spock, logical, cold and science based - not. I wouldn't want that world. Scientists are human are prone to the temptations that humans are prone to. They defend their corners and act badly at times and when they do they get found out if the evidence goes against them and their ideas. In science, after all, evidence is all. Wel, back to sun cream and lasagne duties. Someone has to sample them all.