GWPF | 16 Feb 2015
Unwilling To Debate, Scientists Face Crisis Of Trust
In my opinion no one … should close the road to free philosophizing about mundane and physical things, as if everything had already been discovered and revealed with certainty. Nor should it be considered rash not to be satisfied with those opinions which have become common. No one should be scorned in physical disputes for not holding to the opinions which happen to please other people best. –-Galileo Galilei’s timeless warning in his famous Letter to Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany (1615)
1) Study: Climate Sceptics Know More About Climate Science Than Believers – Fox News, 12 February 2015
2) Reality Check: Conflict Deaths And Global Warming – The Lukewarmer’s Way, 13 February 2015
3) David Whitehouse: Unabated Planetary ‘Warming’? – Global Warming Policy Forum, 10 February 2015
4) Unwilling To Debate, Scientists Face Crisis Of Trust – Editorial, Mercury News, 13 February 2015
5) Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments Of Teaching – The New York Times, 16 December 1951
6) And Finally: Feckless Climate Accord Likely In Paris, Top IPCC Official Predicts – Associated Press, 15 February 2015
Are global warming skeptics simply ignorant about climate science? Not so, says a forthcoming paper in the journal Advances in Political Psychology by Yale Professor Dan Kahan. He finds that skeptics score about the same (in fact slightly better) on climate science questions. The study asked 2,000 respondents nine questions about where they thought scientists stand on climate science. On average, skeptics got about 4.5 questions correct, whereas manmade warming believers got about 4 questions right. –Maxim Lott, Fox News, 12 February 2015
Scientists are facing a crisis of trust. Increasingly, Americans believe that what’s called science is actually political posturing. —Editorial, Mercury News, 13 February 2015
Global warming has been blamed for the Arab Spring, the current conflicts in Syria and Sudan, etc. They haven’t said anything about what’s going on in the Ukraine yet. A paper published in PNAS in 2009 bluntly declared that “Warming Increases The Risk of Civil War in Africa.” The problem is that the conflicts that are cited as examples of the phenomenon are located in areas known for both frequent conflict prior to the current warming period and for historical patterns of extreme climates similar to those seen today. It would appear that those believing that climate change is a contributor to conflict may be intuitively making sense, but they do not appear to have numbers on their side. —The Lukewarmer’s Way, 13 February 2015
There is much uncertainty in estimates about ocean warming and its changing heat content. Sea surface temperature (SST) have shown no significant trend since 1998 and possible explanations for it are many. Once – when it was rising between the 1970s and the 1990s – SST was one of the prime metrics to measure ‘global warming’ deemed important because the greater heat capacity of the oceans would mean it would absorb more heat than the flighty atmosphere. When it became obvious that surface temperatures did not show the increases some expected it was replaced by ocean warming. –David Whitehouse, Global Warming Policy Forum, 10 February 2015
Encouraging progress at climate change talks points to the likelihood of an overall accord being reached at the Paris conference in December, but the deal is unlikely to adequately fight global warming, a top IPCC official said Sunday. Jean-Pascal Van Ypersal, the Belgian deputy vice president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told AFP: “I am optimistic. We will have an accord in Paris.” But the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to just two degrees Celsius remains elusive, and Van Ypersal said it appeared the world is not ready to do what is needed to deliver that essential target. –Christian Spillmann, Associated Press, 15 February 2015
1) Study: Climate Sceptics Know More About Climate Science Than Believers
Fox News, 12 February 2015
Maxim Lott
Are global warming skeptics simply ignorant about climate science?
Not so, says a forthcoming paper in the journal Advances in Political Psychologyby Yale Professor Dan Kahan. He finds that skeptics score about the same (in fact slightly better) on climate science questions.
The study asked 2,000 respondents nine questions about where they thought scientists stand on climate science.
On average, skeptics got about 4.5 questions correct, whereas manmade warming believers got about 4 questions right.
One question, for instance, asked if scientists believe that warming would “increase the risk of skin cancer.” Skeptics were more likely than believers to know that is false.
Skeptics were also more likely to correctly say that if the North Pole icecap melted, global sea levels would not rise. One can test this with a glass of water and an ice cube – the water level will not change after the ice melts. Antarctic ice melting, however, would increase sea levels because much of it rests on land.
Liberals were more likely to correctly answer questions like: “What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures to rise?” The correct answer is carbon dioxide.
The study comes on the heels of a 2012 study that found that global warming skeptics know just as much about science; the new study specifically quizzed people on climate science.
Climatologists who are skeptical about the extent of man-made global warming say the results don’t surprise them.
“It’s easy to believe in the religion of global warming. It takes critical thinking skills to question it,” Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told FoxNews.com.
Groups that are concerned about global warming say the study results really show that politics is blinding otherwise-reasonable people.
“Climate contrarians know what scientists have found but they’re choosing to reject those findings, usually for political reasons,” Aaron Huertas, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told FoxNews.com.
He added that things would get better if people heard more from conservatives who worry about climate.
“The public just doesn’t hear often enough from conservative politicians and advocacy groups that are engaging in constructive debates on climate policy,” he said.
The study’s author, Kahan, also says that the global warming debate has become so politically polarized that people pick their side based on politics rather than what they know about science.
“The position someone adopts on [global warming] conveys who she is – whose side she’s on, in a hate-filled, anxiety-stoked competition for status between opposing cultural groups,” Kahan writes in his paper.
Kahan says that if global warming believers really want to convince people, they should stop demonizing and talking down to their opponents, and instead focus on explaining the science.
“It is really pretty intuitive: who wouldn’t be insulted by someone screaming in her face that she and everyone she identifies with ‘rejects science’?”
2) Reality Check: Conflict Deaths And Global Warming
The Lukewarmer’s Way, 13 February 2015
It would appear to me that those believing that climate change is a contributor to conflict may be intuitively making sense, but they do not appear to have numbers on their side.
It has been claimed for more than a decade that global warming will contribute to increased conflict, primarily due to competition for scarce resources.
Global warming has been blamed for the Arab Spring, the current conflicts in Syria and Sudan, etc. They haven’t said anything about what’s going on in the Ukraine yet. A paper published in PNAS in 2009 bluntly declared that “Warming Increases The Risk of Civil War in Africa.”
The problem is that the conflicts that are cited as examples of the phenomenon are located in areas known for both frequent conflict prior to the current warming period and for historical patterns of extreme climates similar to those seen today.
Attribution is everything. If places with frequent droughts have frequent conflicts, you might be able to make the case that more (and stronger) droughts will lead to more conflict. But you would have to be very careful with the numbers.
When Egypt experienced its short-lived version of the Arab Spring, people attributed it in part to climate change causing food shortages. A bit of closer examination showed that their agricultural output had increased during the years before the conflict–that perhaps population growth was a more effective explanation.
Similarly, looking at climate change as a primary contributor in Sudan, given the civil unrest, religious differences in regions, competition over large oil resources, etc., seems a bit unwise. It also would be a bit foolish not to look at the historical periodicity and intensity of drought in the region–the same being true in Syria and other places.
Some of those who have written on the subject have been suitably cautious, saying that global warming may have been a contributor along with many other factors.
However, others have been more simplistic–perhaps far too simplistic. In 2007, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region as the world’s first climate change conflict. He was not alone. Rebecca Solnit’s article in the Guardian is headlined, “Call Climate Change What It Is: Violence.”
Tom Friedman wrote about climate change as one of the causes of conflict in the Middle East, but apparently didn’t read one of the experts he quoted in the article. “Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, the executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development in London, writing in The Beirut Daily Star in February, pointed out that 12 of the world’s 15 most water-scarce countries — Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel and Palestine — are in the Middle East, and after three decades of explosive population growth these countries are “set to dramatically worsen their predicament.”
One of the problems is that both conflict and weather extremes are rare, so looking at regional patterns can’t provide adequate numbers to justify authoritative pronouncements.
So let’s look globally. The current warming period had a strong period of temperature climbs from 1976 through the present, with many claiming that 2014 was the warmest year on record. And it does seem clear that 14 of the warmest 15 years in the past 500 occurred since 2000.
What has happened to conflict during this period? Here is a chart that shows conflict from 1946 to 2013.
Here is what happened to temperatures:
It is difficult for me to spot a positive correlation between rising temperatures and armed conflict.
What about deaths in conflict? This chart shows trends:
Again, deaths begin to decline around 1987.
3) David Whitehouse: Unabated Planetary ‘Warming’?
Global Warming Policy Forum, 10 February 2015
There is much uncertainty in estimates about ocean warming and its changing heat content.
To appreciate that one only has to look at the differences between OHC (Ocean Heat Content) graphs given in the IPCC AR4 and AR5 reports. In the 20th century the sampling of ocean temperature at depth was sparse in both space and time and biased towards coastlines, shipping routes, the Northern Hemisphere and summer. Various measuring devices were used that had their own, usually time-varying, biases and knitting all this disparate data together was problematical.
In my view the only conclusion that could be drawn is that it was probable that the OHC has increased over several decades but the error on estimates of that increase are of the same magnitude as the ‘signal.’ Go much further and one risks imposing preconceptions on the data.
Sea surface temperature (SST) have shown no significant trend since 1998 and possible explanations for it are many. Once – when it was rising between the 1970s and the 1990s SST was one of the prime metrics to measure ‘global warming’ deemed important because the greater heat capacity of the oceans would mean it would absorb more heat than the flighty atmosphere. When it became obvious that surface temperatures did not show the increases some expected it was replaced by ocean warming.
The introduction of the Argo array of some 3,750 submersibles has allowed a new look at OHC changes by providing a more coherent data set and in a new paper published in Nature Climate Change Roemmich et al use three statistical methods to group Argo data in grids to extract OHC data. They conclude that for the 0 – 2,000 m layer between 2006 – 2013 the ocean heat gain was equivalent to 0.4 – 0.6 W m-2 .
They maintain that the net 0 – 500 m global average temperature increased by 0.005°C between 2006 – 2013 and the 500 m to 2,000 m by 0.002°C per year over the same period. However none of those temperature estimates has been given an associated error. Some previous papers have suggested that between 1971 – 2010 the 0 – 700 m layer increased by 0.015°C!
The accuracy to which some Argo temperature measurements are made has always worried me. Sea-Bird electronics who make the thermometers say that under laboratory conditions they have an accuracy of +/- 0.002 when treated carefully in a calibration bath. Clearly, the sea is not laboratory conditions.
Roemmich et al claim to see significant bottom-intensified, multi-decadal warming, as detailed in their figure 2a. You will notice that in 2009 bottom-warmed water rises. But without an associated error in the temperature readings Fig 2a is meaningless. The temperature difference that could separate a temperature reading in any two adjacent bins, such as the yellow and the light green bin could be as little as 0.002°C and if the error on that measurement is of that order (I suspect more) then the presence of the ‘bottom-intensified, multi-decadal warming’ is in doubt. (Click on the image to enlarge).
There is a wider point to be made. The quoting of errors and the use of error bars on graphs should be the norm. Currently there are many papers that do not follow this practice. It’s important especially for OHC measurements where the changes observed are still about the same as the errors.
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4) Unwilling To Debate, Scientists Face Crisis Of Trust
Editorial, Mercury News, 13 February 2015
Scientists are facing a crisis of trust.
A Pew Research Center poll released Jan. 29 shows a huge gap between the views of scientists and the general public on a range of issues — not just climate change but also genetically modified foods, vaccinations, the use of animals in research and the threat of overpopulation. Furthermore, as scientific theories evolve, today’s instant mass communication of each step forward and back undermines belief in facts that are proven, like the ability of vaccines to all but eliminate a disease.
Lecturing people isn’t the answer. Alan Leshner, the outgoing CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, made that clear Wednesday when he met with this newspaper’s Editorial Board. Scientists instead need to engage the public in a forthright conversation about the importance of science to society, he said.
Thousands of scientists are gathered in San Jose this weekend for the AAAS annual meeting. We hope they’re grappling with how to begin that public conversation. Silicon Valley’s science-based economy should be an inspiration.
Federal funding for R&D in areas such as energy and medicine has dropped 10 percent in the past six years — and these are areas people consider important. Overall, R&D as a percentage of total federal spending is at its lowest level since 1956.
America’s changing attitudes toward science and diminishing funding for research are not entirely a cause-and-effect phenomenon. Americans believe in roads and bridges but don’t want to pay to maintain them, either. And like declining infrastructure, the decline of scientific research and the consequences for Americans’ lives and economic advancement are worrisome.
Increasingly, Americans believe that what’s called science is actually political posturing. For example, only half of the adults surveyed by Pew said climate change is mostly due to human activity, while 87 percent of scientists believe it is; 37 percent of Americans think genetically modified foods are safe, compared to 88 percent of scientists; 68 percent of adults say childhood vaccines should be required, while 86 percent of scientists think so.
And 82 percent of scientists believe world population will be a major problem, while only 59 percent of Americans agree.
In a January editorial in Science magazine, Lesher wrote that only 52 percent of scientists say this “is a good time for science,” down from 76 percent as recently as 2009. The disparity not only puts future funding for science in danger, Leshner said, but also carries the risk that America’s best young minds will no longer want to pursue research as a career.
5) Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments Of Teaching
The New York Times, 16 December 1951
Perhaps the essence of the Liberal outlook could be summed up in a new decalogue, not intended to replace the old one but only to supplement it. The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:
1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
6) And Finally: Feckless Climate Accord Likely In Paris, Top IPCC Official Predicts
Associated Press, 15 February 2015
Christian Spillmann
Encouraging progress at climate change talks points to the likelihood of an overall accord being reached at the Paris conference in December, but the deal is unlikely to adequately fight global warming, a top IPCC official said Sunday.
UN talks in Geneva ended Friday with a framework pact that scientists said at least identified enough common ground to foster hopes for success in Paris.
It is the first-ever proposal with buy-in from all the world’s nations.
Jean-Pascal Van Ypersal, the Belgian deputy vice president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told AFP: “I am optimistic. We will have an accord in Paris.”
But the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to just two degrees Celsius remains elusive, and Van Ypersal said it appeared the world is not ready to do what is needed to deliver that essential target.
“A deal in Paris will at least allow us to continue the work, but I fear time is passing and we have to make decisions by consensus,” he said.
“I do not think today that we have the consensus to aim higher.”
The Geneva talks produced an 86-page text that listed a variety of alternative approaches on most issues, reflecting conflicting national priorities.
