Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and director of the Natural History Museum’s Hayden Planetarium in New York City. He is also the host of Fox Networks’ new science series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Last Sunday, Tyson appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources program and spoke with Brian Stelter. During the program, Tyson talked about “the hypocrisy of people dismissing scientific theory while simultaneously embracing the fruits of scientific discovery ‘that we so take for granted today.’”
Tyson said that our civilization “is built on the innovation of scientists and technologists and engineers who have shaped everything that we so take for granted today. So some of the science deniers or science haters, these are people who are telling that to you while they are on their mobile phone. They are saying, ‘I don’t like science. Oh, GPS just told us to go left. So it’s time for people to sit back and reassess what role science has actually played in our lives. And learn how to embrace that going forward, because without it, we will just regress back into the caves.”
Stelter asked Tyson if he felt that the news media should feel a responsibility to portray science correctly—especially with regard to controversial issues such as climate change. Tyson said he thought the news media was wrong to give equal time to the “flat-earthers.” He thinks the media “should stop trying to ‘balance’ the debate on scientific issues by hosting people who deny science.”
Tyson said, “The media has to sort of come out of this ethos that I think was in principle a good one, but it doesn’t really apply in science. The principle was, whatever story you give, you have to give the opposing view. And then you can be viewed as balanced.” He continued, “You don’t talk about the spherical Earth with NASA, and then say let’s give equal time to the flat Earthers. Plus, science is not there for you to cherry pick.”
Tyson added, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it. Alright? I guess you can decide whether or not to believe in it, but that doesn’t change the reality of an emergent scientific truth.”
The great American science divide (CNN)
Recently, Tyson spoke about the new version of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Tyson said that science and religion should not be painted as being “diametrically opposed to each other.” He said there were many scientists who believe in God. He added, “The issue there is not religion versus non-religion or religion versus science, the issue there is ideas that are different versus dogma.”
Tyson explained, “If you start using your scripture, your religious text as a source of your science, that’s where you run into problems, and there is no example of someone reading their scripture and saying ‘I have a prediction about the world that no one knows yet because this gave me insight.’” He continued, “Enlightened religious people know this, and don’t try to use the Bible as a textbook.”
Chris Mooney of Mother Jones said that Tyson has emphasized that the stance of the science series Cosmos is anti-dogma—not anti-religion. Tyson was quoted as saying, “Any time you have a doctrine where that is the truth that you assert, and that what you call the truth is unassailable, you’ve got doctrine, you’ve got dogma on your hands. And so Cosmos is…an offering of science, and a reminder that dogma does not advance science; it actually regresses it.”
Katie Valentine of ThinkProgress noted that Tyson had spoken previously “about the need for the public to accept scientific facts rather than the talking points of politicians.” According to Valentine, the astrophysicist said in 2011 that climate change deniers should “be mature enough to recognize something can be true even if you don’t like the consequences of it. That’s what it means to be a mature adult.” Valentine also reported that while appearing on CNN in February, Tyson said that “he hopes America doesn’t wait until climate change has drastically changed the Earth’s landscape to realize that our policies haven’t done enough to prepare us.”
Tyson said that he doesn’t know what to say “when politicians start analyzing the science. “Are we going to wait until the coastlines get redrawn as the glaciers melt off of Antarctica and Greenland?”
Good question, Mr. Tyson, good question.
SOURCES
Neil deGrasse Tyson tells CNN: Stop giving ‘equal time to the flat Earthers’ (Raw Story)
Neil DeGrasse Tyson To Science Deniers: ‘Science Is Not There For You To Cherry Pick’ (ThinkProgress)
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: ‘Enlightened Religious People Don’t Use The Bible As A Textbook’ (Huffington Post)
This Mark Fiore video if from August 2012:
On the Michael E. Mann libel case, there are a couple of things the article did not seem to cover. 1) the defense to libel is the truth 2) Mann’s standing in the Global Warming community may make him a public figure. If so, the standard for libel is a lot higher and the burden is on him.
Elaine M. – we have pretty much beaten this topic to death for now. You have a new one for this weekend?
paul,
I went through ten pages of the spam filter–and retrieved three of your comments that got stuck there.
*****
Nick,
You have no knowledge of how much crap gets snagged by the spam filter. Unfortunately, comments that aren’t truly spam get stuck there too. Many of mine have. At the moment, there are nearly 2,000 comments there.
Elaine M. – thank you for your Herculean effort. Chuck was complaining about what a pain it was. I hope you got your wayward comments out. 😀
Darren is righteous and professional retrieving comments. If he sees it he will do it. Or, after this exchange, maybe even the malcontents will. We’ll see. Sometimes the comments are indeed eaten, Darren will be straight.
Paul, Comment retrievals are not always conducted professionally or righteously. I have stopped requesting, they never get retrieved since January. You must be on the shitlist.
Elaine – now I have three in the spam filter. Evidently the spam filter does not like criticism of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Did they build the filter?
annie – I am sending it to you since it is stuck in the spam filter. Wouldn’t want you to miss out on the fun.
http://www.activistcash.com/organizations/145-union-of-concerned-scientists/
Elaine – now I have two in the spam filter. Tried the other and it did not publish.
Elaine M – just for you 🙂
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/14371-leaked-ipcc-climate-report-shows-un-overestimated-global-warming
Sorry this is the link
http://www.activistcash.com/organizations/145-union-of-concerned-scientists/
Elaine M –
this is the link to the article that is missing. Actually this is more valuable since it covers the Union of Concerned Scientists funding sources. BTW, they are flush. 🙂
I know Chuck is a moderator, are you, Elaine? I would love to get that Article on the Union of Concerned Scientists freed up.
Elaine M – I think you will find they are fairly balanced in getting reactions from both sides – both sides, not just one side.
I have a comment caught in the filter. Could I please get a moderator to free it up. Thank you very much. 🙂
Paul,
All this information you’re posting for us–I’m sure it’s all from unbiased sources…right? Why not include links to the articles/reports?
nick – rts had one stuck yesterday and chuck got it out, so I am thinking it is not personal. 🙂 At least I hope not.
Union of Concerned Scientists
OVERVIEW
Committed to an “open-minded search for truth,” and armed with “unrivaled scientific expertise,” the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) “doesn’t say anything [it] can’t back up with solid evidence.” At least, that’s what its fund-raising letters say. The reality is quite different.
UCS embraces an environmental agenda that often stands at odds with the “rigorous scientific analysis” it claims to employ. A radical green wolf in sheep’s clothing, UCS tries to distinguish itself from the Greenpeaces of the world by convincing the media that its recommendations reflect a consensus among the scientific community. And that’s what makes it so dangerous. Whether it’s energy policy or agricultural issues, UCS’s “experts” are routinely given a free pass from newspaper reporters and television producers when they claim that mainstream science endorses their radical agenda.
Here’s how it works: UCS conducts an opinion poll of scientists or organizes a petition that scientists sign. Then it manipulates or misconstrues the results in order to pronounce that science has spoken. In 1986 UCS asked 549 of the American Physical Society’s 37,000 members if Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was “a step in the wrong direction for America’s national security policy.” Despite the biased wording of the push-poll question, only 54 percent disapproved of SDI. Even so, UCS declared that the poll proved “profound and pervasive skepticism toward SDI in the scientific community.”
More recently, UCS pulled a partisan, election-year stunt in 2004 aimed at the Bush Administration. The group rounded up 60 scientists to sign a statement complaining that “the administration is distorting and censoring scientific findings that contradict its policies; manipulating the underlying science to align results with predetermined political decisions.”
On issue after issue, UCS insists, the White House fails to embrace global scientific “consensus” — and that automatically means it has “politicized” science. But UCS itself is frequently guilty of that exact sin. For instance, it works overtime to scare Americans about a whole host of imagined environmental problems associated with genetically modified food. But every authoritative regulatory agency, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization, declares that biotech food crops are perfectly safe.
UCS routinely abuses and politicizes science. Its crusade against farm animals receiving antibiotics presents guesswork as scientifically rigorous analysis, and is calculated to scare the public about risks it admits are groundless. UCS helped initiate the vicious attacks on Danish scientist (and “Skeptical Environmentalist”) Bjorn Lomborg, only to be repudiated by the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology, and Industry. And in 2003, the group dressed up its “strong opposition to the US invasion of Iraq” as an exercise in science.
Like many environmental activist groups, UCS uses the twin motivators of cheer and fear. A giggly Gwenyth Paltrow and a catty Cameron Diaz headlined a series of short appeals about energy conservation that UCS produced. The two mega-stars crow that they turn the water off while brushing their teeth, switch off the light when they leave their bedrooms, and keep the thermostat at 65 degrees. “Its time for us to band together and really make every effort to conserve our natural resources,” chirps Diaz. That’s the sunny side.
But UCS is more adept at producing horror stories than chick flicks. They are fear-mongers of the first order — turning the sober science of health and environmental safety into high drama for public consumption. For example, UCS recently warned that by 2100 the U.S. might suffer 50-80 million more cases of malaria every year if the Senate fails to ratify the Kyoto treaty. Such racy statistics are based on clumsy modeling of worst-case scenarios, and assume — against all evidence of human behavior — that no countermeasures whatsoever would be employed. “Not considering factors such as local control measures or health services,” in their own words. Of course, you won’t find those caveats in the press release.
Genetically Modified Science
Among UCS’s many concerns, “the food you eat” is at the top of the list. More than a million dollars went to its food program in 2001. Genetically enhanced foods — dubbed “Frankenfoods” by opponents — have caused worldwide hysteria even though no reputable scientific institution can find anything to be afraid of. But that doesn’t stop UCS’s “experts” from playing cheerleader to these unfounded fears.
They warn that biotech foods could result in the “squandering of valuable pest susceptibility genes,” “enhancement of the environment for toxic fungi,” and the “creation of new or worse viruses.” They scream about “Poisoned wildlife” and “new allergens in the food supply.” Biotech foods, they claim, might “increase the levels of toxic substances within plants,” “reduce the effectiveness of antibiotics to fight disease,” “contaminate foods with high levels of toxic metals,” “intensify weedy properties” and cause the “rapid evolution of resistance to herbicides in weeds,” leading to “superweeds.”
Rigorous scientific analysis led UCS to this list of horrors, right? Wrong. That was merely a “‘brainstorming’ of potential harms.” So how likely are any of these to occur? “Risk assessments can be complicated,” UCS says, and pretty much leaves it at that. In other words, they have absolutely no idea.
In contrast, more reputable authorities have a very good grasp of the potential risks of genetically enhanced foods. The U.S. Environmental protection Agency says that genetically enhanced corn “does not pose risks to human health or to the environment.” The World Health Organization says that biotech foods “are not likely to present risks for human health” and observes that “no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population.” Even the European Union, which has gone out of its way to stifle food technology for political reasons, notes: “The use of more precise technology [in genetically enhanced crops] and the greater regulatory scrutiny probably make them even safer than conventional plants and foods.”
The Food and Environment Program at UCS is headed up by Margaret Mellon and her deputy Jane Rissler, both of whom hold Ph.Ds and have held positions at prestigious universities. So what do a couple of highly trained research scientists, armed with nothing but guesswork, ideology and a million dollar budget, do? They fight biotech food every step of the way.
Although UCS claims that it “does not support or oppose genetic engineering per se,” Mellon and Rissler in fact have never met a GM food they didn’t mistrust. That’s because they hold biotech foods to an impossibly high standard.
In 1999, UCS joined the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and the Defenders of Wildlife, in petitioning the EPA for strict regulation of corn modified to produce large amounts of the bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin. Bt is a naturally occurring insect poison that protects plants from pests like the European corn borer. UCS’s letter was part of a major scare campaign to convince the public that Bt corn posed a risk to the Monarch Butterfly.
Both the USDA and the EPA later concluded that Bt corn caused no harm to the Monarch. This reinforced the findings of federal regulators who had performed a comprehensive safety review of Bt corn before it was allowed into the marketplace. UCS remains unconvinced, even though the safest place for a Monarch larva to be is in a Bt cornfield. Rissler argued there was “insufficient data” to make such a conclusion.
Precautionary Nonsense
Of course, “sufficient” data can never exist for zealots like Rissler. She continued: “Do we assume the technology is safe… or do we prove it? The scientist in me wants to prove it’s safe.” It’s impossible to prove a negative, to absolutely demonstrate that there are no dangers whatsoever for any given product. The scientist in her knows that too, but she and her colleagues at UCS continue to be guided by the “Precautionary Principle.” This misguided maxim argues that, based on the fear that something harmful may possibly arise, we should opt for technological paralysis.
The Wall Street Journal editorialized in 2000 that The Precautionary Principle “is an environmentalist neologism, invoked to trump scientific evidence and move directly to banning things they don’t like.” It’s a big hit among anti-technology activists because it justifies their paranoia and serves to bludgeon technological progress.
Martin Teitel, who runs another misnamed activist group called the Council for Responsible Genetics, admitted as much in 2001. “Politically,” Teitel said, “it’s difficult for me to go around saying that I want to shut this science down, so it’s safer for me to say something like, ‘It needs to be done safely before releasing it.’” Requiring scientists to satisfy the Principle by proving a negative, Teitel added, means that “they don’t get to do it period.”
It should come as no surprise that UCS joined Teitel’s organization and other die-hard opponents of biotech foods in an activist coalition called the Genetic Engineering Action Network. While acknowledging that “we know of no generic harms associated with genetically engineered organisms,” UCS consistently opposes their introduction to the market on the basis of purely hypothetical risk.
Confronted with the real-world benefits of biotech foods, UCS simply changes the subject to its anti-corporate, socialist leanings. Rissler’s appearance on the PBS show Nova – on a program called “Harvest of Fear” — is a case in point. When the interviewer suggested that “genetically modified crops are arguably much less harmful to the environment” Rissler responded: “It depends on where you want to compromise. There’s another issue here with corporate control of the food supply.”
UCS’s knee-jerk reaction to biotech foods is matched only by its animus towards agribusiness. A 1994 press release condemning FDA approval of biotech foods complained that some of the data used by the oversight agency was provided by private enterprises.
In her zeal to decry increased food production from the corporate adoption of biotechnology, Mellon has argued that it’s “not clear that more milk or pork is good.” And UCS supports a radical vision of “sustainable agriculture.” That means no pesticides or herbicides; no fertilizer (other than E.coli-rich manure); and eating only “locally grown” produce. If it’s not clear under this plan where New York City would get its rice or how Chicago would scrounge up any bananas, there’s a reason for it. They wouldn’t.
Pigs, Chickens and Cows, Oh My!
Hogging It, a UCS report published in 2001, argues that the use of antibiotics in farm animals could result in human diseases that are resistant to conventional treatments. The report received a great deal of press attention, and UCS is not afraid to brag about it. “We developed the numbers that everyone uses when talking about… overuse of antibiotics,” trumpets a fund-raising letter. But how did they go about developing those numbers? “Rigorous scientific analysis”? Hardly. While the livestock industry actually calculates the amounts of antibiotics administered to farm animals using hard sales figures, UCS guesses at average drug dosages and then multiplies by the total number of animals. That’s “brainstorming.” Not science.
The real experts, like David Bell, coordinator of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s anti-microbial resistance programs, aren’t impressed by Hogging It. Interestingly, UCS admits the weakness of its evidence. The executive summary of Hogging It complains about a “gaping chasm” in the data. Nevertheless, the authors are proud to produce the “first transparent estimate” of livestock antibiotic use in America.
Estimate? That’s right. “The numbers everyone uses” are just estimates. Moreover, UCS measures antibiotic usage in total tonnage. But is that relevant in any way? UCS concedes that it’s not. The activist group wants the FDA to track antibiotic usage by “type,” since most antibiotics used in animals are unlike those used in humans.
Consumer Reports quotes Margaret Mellon saying, “We know nothing. We are flying blind.” No wonder the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Coalition for Animal Health also reject Hogging It’s findings. But none of that stops UCS from scaring the wits out of the public. Mellon warns of an “era where untreatable infectious diseases are regrettably commonplace.” That might be worth getting “Concerned” about, if only it were based on good science.
Unfortunately, political science masquerading as real science can have real-world consequences. In July 2003, identical bills introduced in the U.S. House and Senate threatened to ban the routine use of eight entire classes of antibiotics in livestock. Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW), a slick PR coalition of activist groups, was especially pleased with the news because its favorite statistic became the legislation’s main factual “finding.” Namely: “An estimated 70 percent of the antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs used in the United States are fed to farm animals.”
Guess who “estimated 70 percent” for KAW? The Union of Concerned Scientists, a long-time coalition member. UCS admits that this estimate was created from mere guesswork, saying on its own website that “data to answer [the following] questions are not available”:
What is the total amount of antibiotics used each year in the United States?
How much of this is used to treat human disease?
How much is used in animal agriculture?
How much is used to treat sick animals and how much to promote their growth?
How much of each major class of antibiotics is used as supplements to animal feed or water?
Is agricultural use increasing? By how much?
Which agricultural uses are most likely to contribute to problems in treating human disease?
For a group facing so many unanswered questions, answers seem to come remarkably easily. While freely admitting that no good science exists to determine the effect (if any) of livestock antibiotics on human health, UCS managed to convince members of Congress otherwise. At the same time, UCS activists protested outside fast-food restaurants, holding giant “pillburgers” (prop hamburgers stuffed with oversized drug capsules) and chanting “Hey hey — ho ho — Drugs in meat have got to go.”
BLACKEYE
By any real scientific yardstick, the Union of Concerned Scientists has a lousy track record. Their predictions are often laughably, and sometimes tragically, wrong. A few examples:
In 1997 UCS organized a petition that warned of “global warming” and advocated U.S. ratification of the Kyoto treaty. It was signed by 1,600 scientists, and so UCS declared that “the scientific community has reached a consensus.” But when a counter-petition that questioned this so-called “consensus” was signed by more than 17,000 other scientists, UCS declared it a “deliberate attempt to deceive the scientific community with misinformation.”
UCS invested significant resources in “a multiyear effort to protect Bacillus thuringiensis, a valuable natural pesticide, by bringing high visibility to a preliminary report on the toxic effect of transgenic [biotech] corn pollen on the Monarch Butterfly.” Unfortunately for them, both the USDA and the EPA have concluded that Bt corn is only a threat to the crop-devastating insects it’s supposed to kill.
Based, we suppose, on some “science” or other, UCS’s Margaret Mellon predicted in 1999 that American farmers would reduce their planting of genetically enhanced seeds in the year 2000, saying it “probably represents a turning point.” What happened? Just the reverse. Planting of biotech crops has increased in 2000, 2001 and 2002 — and shows no sign of slowing down.
In 1980 UCS predicted that the earth would soon run out of fossil fuels. “It is now abundantly clear,” the group wrote, “that the world has entered a period of chronic energy shortages.” Oops! Known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas have never been higher, and show every sign of increasing.
To improve fuel efficiency, UCS argues for lighter tires on SUVs. But lighter tires are blamed — even by Ralph’s Nader’s Public Citizen — for tread separation. 148 deaths and more than 500 injuries were attributed to tread separation in Firestone tires alone.
UCS apparently hasn’t learned from its many, many mistakes. But if at first you don’t succeed, scare, scare again.
MOTIVATION
The Union of Concerned Scientists was born out of a protest against the war in Vietnam. In 1969, a group of 48 faculty members at MIT — the original “union” — sponsored a one-day work stoppage of scientific research. A conference that coincided with the strike included appearances from such notables as Noam Chomsky (who is now recognized as a leader of the 21st Century “hate-America left”); Eric Mann, who led the 1960s terrorist Weather Underground; and Jonathan Kabat, who argued: “We want capitalism to come to an end.”
Later that year, when the founding document of the Union of Concerned Scientists was formalized, the United States’ relationship with the Soviet Union was featured even more prominently than environmental issues. Three of the five propositions in the founding document concern political questions of the Cold War — a topic about which even the brightest physicists and biologists can claim no particular expertise.
UCS continues to involve itself in issues where scientific credentials carry little weight. For example, the group opposes urban sprawl, disputes a war in Iraq, and supports abortion. While these positions may be perfectly legitimate in themselves, they are hardly the product of “rigorous scientific analysis.”
An early petition from UCS argues: “A new ethic is required — a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth… This ethic must motivate a great movement.” So activists with lab coats are now presuming to instruct us on matters of ethics and politics.
Among its ethical appeals that have nothing to do with science, UCS’s approach to farming stands out. The activist group advocates “a sustainable approach, based on understanding agriculture as an ecosystem.” They call it an “agroecosystem,” and label it “holistic.” They call it “science”; the rest of us call it Zen.
At UCS, politics drives science — not the other way around. “We undervalue our scientists and agriculturalists if we accept today’s productive, but highly polluting agriculture,” UCS claims. Of course, UCS advocates organic-only agriculture, the widespread adoption of which (at today’s anemic levels of production) would result in mass starvation. So in this instance, some form of technology will surely have to save the day, even for organic farmers. But when it comes to something UCS opposes — like missile defense — they argue that the technology will never work.
Respectable scientists operate by considering a question, developing a methodology to answer that question, and only then arriving at a conclusion. They disdain political interference, and go to the media only when their conclusions warrant immediate public attention. The Union of Concerned Scientists stands this process on its head. It develops a press strategy first, and then conducts politically tainted and methodologically flawed analysis. After all, it’s getting harder to convince the media that your environmental scare is more lurid than the next guy’s. You need good PR. That’s why UCS partners with slick Washington PR firms — to get attention, whether or not there’s good science behind the sound bites.
Wednesday, 30 January 2013 13:37
Leaked IPCC Climate Report Shows UN Overestimated Global Warming
Written by Brian Koenig
Not scheduled for publication until next year, a leaked report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents evidence that fear-mongering over the magnitude of global warming may be a little too ambitious.
The preliminary report, which is available for download online, was leaked this month by an individual directly involved in the agency’s review process. After sifting through the analysis, critics found a chart comparing four separate temperature models, each of which has overstated temperature rises that the Earth has actually realized.
“Temperatures have not risen nearly as much as almost all of the climate models predicted,” Dr. Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told Fox News January 28. “Their predictions have largely failed, four times in a row… what that means is that it’s time for them to re-evaluate.”
The IPCC graph highlights various midpoints reportedly validating that the Earth would warm by about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit to 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit between 1990 and 2012. However, actual warming was significantly lower than projected, with the world warming a mere 0.28 degrees, according to IPCC data.
But other critics contend that this evidence doesn’t necessarily mean the IPCC models are wrong. “It’s important to keep in mind that there are natural short-term variations in global temperature that happen right alongside human-induced warming,” asserts Aaron Huertas, press secretary at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “For instance, it would have been impossible for the IPCC to predict if a volcanic eruption might temporarily cool the Earth, as the Mount Pinatubo eruption did in 1991.”
Huertas claims that criticisms of the IPCC report are simply “an attempt to obscure the bigger picture,” and that global warming skeptics are blowing the leaked report out of proportion. “Climate change is happening,” he insists, “it is due to human activities, and the emissions choices we make today will have the largest influence on the extent of future climate change.”
The climate report notes that “the model projections … do not fully account for natural variability.” Natural deviations including solar variability and basic weather patterns, such as the El Niño southern oscillation, can present arbitrary anomalies in the data. Climatologists generally feature a “margin of error” in their analyses to account for inadvertent variations such as volcanoes and other weather activity.
Still, one IPCC model overshot the warming pattern, with the actual temperatures outside the analysis’ “margin of error.” The other three models presented a warming trend in the very lower levels of what they predicted.
Stefan Rahmstorf, a Potsdam University physics professor who recently published a report asserting that the IPCC models are very accurate, now contends that it is likely unfounded. “The IPCC graph you refer to is just a draft version which still has a number of problems that will be ironed out,” he affirmed. “The IPCC’s claim is that they are 90 percent sure that humans have ‘contributed to’ the observed warming. Hell, even I would agree with that innocuous statement,” he told Fox News.
However, Rahmstorf acknowledges that greenhouse gases are having a lesser impact on climate change than the agency predicted. “It is evidence that CO2 is not nearly as strong a climate driver as the IPCC has been assuming. This is the possibility they do not allow to be considered, because it would end all of their policy-changing goals,” he noted.
Critics who have targeted the draft IPCC report note that the models combine analyses from partisan advocacy groups such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an issue that prompted third-party auditors to scrutinize the UN’s last report. “You’d think that the IPCC would have learned its lesson, that it would have told its authors not to rely on these sorts of publications,” Donna Laframboise of nofrakkingconsensus.com told Fox News. “The report currently includes, amongst its list of references, nine separate publications produced wholly or in part by the WWF.”
There are numerous questions as to whether the WWF and other similar groups can present objective science, as they often push ideological agendas. The WWF, for example, invites people to join its “environmental campaigning community,” therefore characterizing it as an activist group. Yet the IPCC relies on the group’s so-called “objective” research.
Such evidence has brought a number of critics out of the woodwork, as they challenge the UN’s assessment in determining the effects of so-called global warming. And the leaked IPCC report only solidifies this notion. “This one chart is all we need to prove, without a doubt, that IPCC analysis methodology and computer models are seriously flawed,” notes Ira Glickstein, writing for Wattsupwiththat.com. “They have way over-estimated the extent of Global Warming since the IPCC first started issuing Assessment Reports in 1990, and continuing through the fourth report issued in 2007.”
Critics Dispute Global Warming Assertions Made by IPCC
Skepticism warranted by past failures, global warming skeptics say
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Head of the IPCC,Rajendra Pachauri, and co-chairman Thomas Stocker / APHead of the IPCC,Rajendra Pachauri, and co-chairman Thomas Stocker / AP
BY: Lachlan Markay Follow @lachlan
September 30, 2013 5:00 am
Critics of a new United Nations report on global warming say their skepticism is based on discrepancies between the UN’s climate models and actual, observable conditions.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release its full report on Monday. It expresses 95% certainty that human activity is primarily responsibly for an observed rise in global temperatures over the past century. Environmentalists have said that even mild criticism of such reports on global warming as science “denial.”
Skeptics have already pointed to what they say are flaws in the report’s methodology and resulting problems with its findings.
Past discrepancies between the IPCC’s models and either subsequent environmental conditions or contradictory scientific work at the time demonstrate why those models should not be taken at face value, the critics say.
The IPCC predicted in 1995 that global sea levels would rise by up to 55 centimeters by 2100 “for the range of emissions scenarios.”
“Sea level rise is one of the most visible effects of climate change and the report found that sea levels are increasing more rapidly than in previous decades,” wrote Andrew Freedman of Climate Central about the IPCC’s new report.
But recent peer-reviewed work has cast doubt on the linkage between global temperatures and sea level rise.
“Confidence in projections of global-mean sea-level rise (GMSLR) depends on an ability to account for GMSLR during the 20th century,” according to a July study published in the Journal of Climate.
That study found “small or no acceleration, despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing.”
The rhetoric coming from global warming alarmists is inconsistent with actual findings, said Chip Knappenberger, assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute.
“There is a growing discrepancy between what real world observations are telling us about the evolution of the climate under increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, and climate model simulations of that evolution,” said Knappenberger.
Knappenberger noted that despite the panel’s climate models, the earth does not appear to have warmed over the past 15 years.
A peer-reviewed study by John C. Fyfe, Nathan P. Gillett, and Francis W. Zwiers of the Canadian Center for Climate Modeling and Analysis, published in the prestigious journal Nature Climate Change in August, faulted IPCC modeling for failing to account for the trend.
“The evidence … indicates that the current generation of climate models … do not reproduce the observed global warming over the past 20 years, or the slowdown in global warming over the past fifteen years,” the study found.
IPCC authors cautioned against reading too much into that data point, insisting that 15 years is too small of a window to draw conclusions about climate modeling. Natural phenomena such as solar cycles and volcanic eruptions can account for temperature fluctuations in the short term, they note.
Fyfe, et al., acknowledge that possibility, but stand by their conclusions.
“Although these three natural variations account for some differences between simulated and observed global warming, these differences do not substantively change our conclusion that observed and simulated global warming are not in agreement over the past two decades,” they wrote.
IPCC’s failure to adequately account for these facts, Knappenberger insists, represents a fatal flaw. “This is why I cave called the report both obsolete and misleading,” he wrote in an email.
“We have a situation in which the latest science on two key issues – how much the earth will warm as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions, and how well climate models perform in projecting the warming – is largely not incorporated into the new IPCC report,” Knappenberger explained.
Other recent phenomena have cast doubt on predictions by IPCC models.
Its 2007 climate change report predicted that Arctic sea ice would continue a decades-long trend of reduction as the Earth continued to warm.
“Satellite data indicate a continuation of the 2.7 ± 0.6% per decade decline in annual mean arctic sea ice extent since 1978,” the report predicted.
While Arctic sea ice remains below levels of the last decade, it has recovered about 60% of its mass this year, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
IPCC’s 2007 report also predicted that Antarctic sea ice would continue to decline. But according to a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Climate in March, that may also have been based on faulty modeling.
“In contrast to the satellite data, which exhibit a slight increase in SIE [sea ice extent], the mean SIE of the models over 1979–2005 shows a decrease in each month,” the report explained.
“The negative SIE trends in most of the model runs over 1979–2005 are a continuation of an earlier decline, suggesting that the processes responsible for the observed increase over the last 30 years are not being simulated correctly,” it concluded.
Why a Climate Scientist’s Libel Case Matters (Op-Ed)
Seth Shulman, Union of Concerned Scientists
February 12, 2014
http://www.livescience.com/43332-why-libel-matters-to-climate-science.html
Excerpt:
Back in 2012, after the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review each published pieces that likened climate scientist Michael Mann to a child molester and called his work a fraud, Mann fought back with a lawsuit, charging them with libel. Now, in a preliminary ruling, a Superior Court Judge has sided with Mann, paving the way for the case to move forward and potentially setting an important precedent about the limits of disinformation.
The ruling, in essence, reinforces the wise adage attributed to former New York Sen. Patrick Moynihan that, while everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, we are not each entitled to our own facts. But first, some background.
Hockey stick, lightning rod
Michael Mann, a world-renowned climate scientist at Penn State University, is perhaps best known as the author of the so-called “Hockey Stick” graph. Some 15 years ago, in 1999, Mann and two colleagues published data they had compiled from tree rings, coral growth bands and ice cores, as well as more recent temperature measurements, to chart 1,000 years’ worth of climate data.
The resulting graph of their findings showed relatively stable global temperatures followed by a steep warming trend beginning in the 1900s. One of Mann’s colleagues gave it the nickname because the graph looks something like a hockey stick lying on its side with the upturned blade representing the sharp, comparatively recent temperature increase. It quickly became one of the most famous, easy-to-grasp representations of the reality of global warming.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change featured Mann’s work, among similar studies, in their pathbreaking 2001 report, concluding that temperature increases in the 20th century were likely to have been “the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years.” But while Mann’s peer-reviewed research pointed clearly to a human role in global warming, it also made Mann a lightning rod for attacks from those, including many in the fossil-fuel industry, who sought to deny the reality of global warming.
Years of attacks
In the many years since Mann published the Hockey Stick graph, his research has been subject to an extraordinary amount of scrutiny. Despite the fact that the U.S. National Research Council endorsed Mann’s “hockey stick” findings in 2006 and subsequent research has substantiated them further, Mann has still faced a steady stream of personal attacks on his credibility, death threats and even a simulated anthrax attack.
Many of the attacks Mann faced are chronicled in his recent book-length account, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. Among these, in 2009, scientists’ emails were hacked — including Mann’s — and a trumped-up controversy ensued. Mann’s employer, Pennsylvania State University, along with multiple governmental committees, upheld his research and conduct. Still, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, another climate contrarian, sued the University of Virginia, Mann’s former employer, to gain access to his private emails. After the Union of Concerned Scientists organized a letter from Virginia academics protesting the investigation, the university stood up to Cuccinelli in court and won. Another demand for his emails — this time from a group called the American Tradition Institute — is still working its way through the courts.
When disinformation crosses the line
Against this charged backdrop, Mann’s libel case stems from two particular articles that appeared in 2012. At the time, news had recently surfaced that officials at Penn State University had ignored or concealed evidence that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had allegedly molested children. That July, Rand Simberg, an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), wrote a post for the organization’s blog likening Mann’s work to the Sandusky case. Simberg called Mann “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data.”
Several days later, CEI deleted the passage, acknowledging that its publication was “inappropriate.” But Mark Steyn, a long-time contributor to the National Review magazine, quoted Simberg’s comments on the magazine’s blog. Steyn said that, while he might not have made the comparison, “Mr. Simberg does [have] a point. Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey-stick’ graph.”
A ruling that matters
The recent preliminary ruling in Mann’s libel case is blunt and clear. It is also surprising: in rejecting the motion to dismiss the case and opening the way for a trial, Washington, D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg gave the defendants something of a pass for likening Mann to child molester, noting that, “opinions and rhetorical hyperbole are protected speech under the First Amendment.”
However, the judge ruled that erroneously and publicly accusing a scientist of fraud is another matter. As he put it: “Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently, manipulating his data to achieve a predetermined or political outcome, or purposefully distorting the scientific truth are factual allegations. They go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable.”
Protecting speech, protecting science
The distinction in the ruling is an important one. As a journalist who has written about the intersection of science and politics for three decades, I am a staunch defender of free speech. But libel is a special case. In the United States, the bar is set high — as it should be. A writer or publication can only be found guilty of libel if they knowingly publish false information that damages someone’s reputation.
There’s little question that Mann’s public reputation has been damaged by the many spurious attacks against him. But the problem in this case is bigger than claims about one man’s maligned reputation. Attacks against Mann, after all, are mostly intended to further confuse the public about the importance of Mann’s scientific contribution to our understanding of global warming. Other scientists have faced similar legal attacks and a new Climate Science Legal Defense Fund is helping them respond.
What makes this case so important is that science, like free speech, needs protecting too.
Sadly, we have been living in a period during which many parties — often with funding from the fossil-fuel industry — have knowingly spread disinformation about climate change. They have sown confusion about scientific facts and damaged our discourse on the topic just as they have — in the personal smears Mann has endured — arguably harmed his reputation. In so doing, there is no question that this disinformation has been used to knowingly and seriously erode the public’s understanding of an issue with immense consequences for society’s future.
“Some folks have almost as many aliases as they do lies.” -Nick the dick
Projection, methinks.
Or personalities.