The deniers’ guide to convenience and confusion

My favourite denier blogger today sent me my regular email full of facepalming moments and general comic relief and the headline today was “Climate Alarmists wrong AGAIN! A new peer reviewed paper….”  Hang on! A new peer-reviewed paper? Peer reviewed? But I thought peer review was …..now what did he call it? Oh, that’s right. In an entry from February 10, 2011, he referred to peer review as a “you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours system”. What else? He refers to “the futility of peer review”. He then offers these gems, “So, was Newton peer reviewed when an apple fell on his head and he said: It’s gravity? Was Einstein peer reviewed when he said E=MC2?” That’s pure gold there. Anyway, you can read the whole post here. Of course everyone knows that the Newton apple story is a bit of a myth. While Einstein’s 1905 paper wasn’t officially peer-reviewed, there wasn’t a formal peer review system at the time, it was reviewed by the Journal’s editor and co-editor,  Max Planck and Wilhelm Wien, both Nobel prize-winning physicists. But let’s not let accuracy get in the way of a good story. That’s too inconvenient. So, on September 4, 2011 my favourite blogger also said this about peer review, “Peer review: A quasi-sacred process, biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.”  Wow. Strong words.

So why is it then, that deniers who denigrate peer review when it is says the things that kick their wilfully ignorant streaks into gear, champion it when they think it’s supporting their lunacy? Convenience? Dishonesty? Stupidity? All three? So where does the confusion I have mentioned in the title of this blog entry come in? Well, that is the confusion shown by the deniers in their understanding of not only the peer review system but also whether the papers they are alleging support their position, actually do. In that same post of September 4, my favourite denialist blogger also included a link to the “900+ peer-reviewed papers…blah blah blah” that I wrote a piece about here.

So, to the new peer-reviewed paper that shows “Climate Alarmists wrong AGAIN!” (It’s in CAPS so it must be true). The abstract is here.  A couple of researchers tested (in a lab) the ability of two species of marine algae to cope with low pH and different salinities in simulated seawater. What they found was that they could and noted in the fulltext version that there were some caveats on that but suggested that these two would do well in estuarine environments and shallow coastal areas under lower pH conditions found with ocean acidification. How this is supposed to be showing up we “alarmists” the blogger doesn’t say, probably because it doesn’t. We know that under a changing environment, generalists are going to do well and specialists are going to suffer. In my short list of papers dealing with range shifts, a number of the papers, also peer-reviewed, demonstrate this very fact.  Conceivably, what this new paper that my favourite denialist blogger is championing demonstrates, is that when all the coral bleaches and dies, the algae will be ready and willing to take over. Thanks for the heads up moron.

Climate Sceptics Party – oh dear!

In a democracy it is important that all parts of society feel they are represented by their elected officials and it seems there is a new political party on the scene. Well, they aren’t really new as they have been around for a few years now, but the demographic they wish to represent is quite obvious when you take a look at what they stand for. For a start, it is imperative that for this party to represent you, you must be stupid. I was going to come up with a long list of human character flaws that would appear to be a requirement but just leaving it at stupid will do.

My normal position would normally be to not pay too much attention to idiots like this for fear of inadvertently promoting them but I don’t think they have much of a chance at securing the 14% they need to get someone into a senate spot. They certainly have no chance of ever securing a lower house seat in any electorate…ever.  The reason, is that they are pretty much clueless about everything they stand for. So let’s take a look at what they are about.

Oh, I should probably mention who they are. They call themselves the Climate Sceptics Party. When you go to their website, the idiocy starts almost immediately with a blurb from their party president,  Bill Koutalianos. He begins

“Dear Fellow Australians,

I welcome you to the Climate Sceptics Party site. We began our party in 2008 when a number of climate sceptic bloggers and thinkers realized, there were no political parties that were standing on the principle of truth in climate science. The apparent politicization of science lead us to form a hard nosed common sense party, in order to drag Australian politics back to practical basics.”

Now, I don’t know about you but a political party formed from climate denier bloggers and “thinkers” is hardly a strong basis for a political party. Climate denial bloggers continually demonstrate a severe lack of intellect and understanding of very basic science. Most of them don’t have an individual thought of their own, merely cutting and pasting garbage from intellectual lightweights like Andrew Bolt, “Lord” Monckton and Anthony Watts. What I really appreciate though is the distinction between “sceptic bloggers” and “thinkers”. I would agree that the two are mutually exclusive. What I find amazing, is the complaint that science has been politicised when they themselves are a political party which is patently based on an anti-science platform. Hypocrisy?

 “We are not merely a one issue party. Our policies are based on true science as opposed to politicized science, we are pro small business, we are for minimal government, and we are against the extreme green religion (a belief that clouds the thinking of the two major parties and many policy areas) .”

Not merely a one issue party? Then why call yourselves the Climate Sceptics Party? This mob are so “one issue” they sit comfortably alongside the former Nuclear Disarmament Party, The Fishing Party, The Sex Party, The Marijuana Party and numerous other fringe elements in terms of their tunnel vision. Their idea of “true science” is scary because according to these clowns, anyone cutting and pasting misrepresented scientific papers can qualify as a true scientist, but more on that later.

“In short, we know there is no scientist in the world that has evidence CO2 will overheat the planet. Six scientific peer reviewed papers show that CO2 cannot cause dangerous global warming. We are not just against the carbon tax or emissions trading scheme but against the need to reduce CO2 emissions in any way that damages our economy. CO2 is plant food and the more there is in the air, the more food we can grow.”

This is my favourite paragraph because it gets to the heart of how scientifically illiterate this lot are. I’ll deal with the last sentence first. The denial meme “CO2 is plant food” is so simplistic it beggars belief. Deniers will quote this or that glasshouse study as evidence for their meme, failing to understand the fundamental rule that you cannot extrapolate a glasshouse experiment to real world situations. In the real world, increased CO2 comes with increased temperature, altered rainfall, changes in nitrification, increased pest and disease susceptibility not to mention changes in the latitudes or elevation at which plants can grow. No, it is much more convenient for these idiots to wilfully ignore these things and just spout the meme knowing that some equally illiterate members of the public will agree. But let’s get back to the “six scientific peer reviewed papers” link. Clicking this link takes you to a Senate Submission where the Climate Sceptics Party repeat a number of denialist memes. I won’t bother listing them here but here is their list of references for their assertions.

 1http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/6/31/2009/osd-6-31-2009.pdf

2http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Cazenave_et_al_GPC_2008.pdf

3http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/KD_InPress_final.pdf

4http://www.jcronline.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00141.1

5http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/jcoastres-d-10-00157-1.pdf

6http://landshape.org/enm/files/2009/07/EE-20-4_7-Stockwell.pdf

7http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/opinion0308.pdf

8http://arxiv.org/pdf/1005.4639v1

9http://www.space.dtu.dk/upload/institutter/space/forskning/06_projekter/isac/wp_501a.pdf

10http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf

11http://www.space.dtu.dk/upload/institutter/space/forskning/05_afdelinger/sun-climate/full_text_publications/svensmark_2007cosmoclimatology.pdf

12http://www.sciencebits.com/files/articles/CalorimeterFinal.pdf

13http://vixra.org/pdf/1108.0004v1.pdf

14http://www.masterresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Lindzen_Choi_APJAS_final.pdf

15http://www.legnostorto.com/allegati/Lindzen_Choi_ERBE_JGR_v4.pdf

16http://www.drroyspencer.com/Spencer_07GRL.pdf

17http://www.drroyspencer.com/Spencer-and-Braswell-08.pdf

18http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/spencer-braswell-jgr-20101.pdf

19http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf

20http://www.met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf

21http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/E&E_21_4_2010_08-miskolczi.pdf

22http://www.met.hu/idojaras/IDOJARAS_vol108_No4_01.pdf

23http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1034/j.1600-0870.2002.01382.x/abstract

24http://arxiv.org/pdf/1104.4002v1

25http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/mmh_asl2010.pdf

26http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical-temperature-trends-with-model-predictions?page=6

27http://itia.ntua.gr/getfile/850/3/documents/2008EGU_ClimatePredictionPrSm_.pdf

28http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/new-paper-illustrates-another-failure-of-the-ipcc-mullti-decadal-global-model-predictions-on-the-warming-in-the-tropical-upper-troposphere-models-versus-observations-by-fu-et-al-2011/

29http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/798817__928051726.pdf

30http://benthamscience.com/open/toascj/articles/V005/74TOASCJ.pdf

31http://landshape.org/enm/files/2010/10/Critique-of-DECR-EE.pdf

32http://www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/resources/03-07.pdf

33http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/ets-to-shrink-regional-growth/story-e6frg6nf-1225691476399

34http://www.tia.asn.au/news/media-activity/clean-energy-finance-corp-to-be-set-up

35http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/

36http://www.worldcoal.org/coal-the-environment/coal-use-the-environment/improving-efficiencies/

37http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2011/07/selling-carbon-tax-in-never-land.html

38http://landshape.org/enm/renewables-wake-up-and-smell-the-rossi/

39http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/uns-climate-bible-gets-21-fs-on-report-card/

40http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/report/Climate%20Change%20Assessments,%20Review%20of%20the%20Processes%20&%20Procedures%20of%20the%20IPCC.pdf

41http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/audit/anao-request-audit-bom.pdf

42 http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/latest/8916664/carbon-tax-billions-to-help-poor-nations/

43 http://www.tia.asn.au/news/media-activity/clean-energy-finance-corp-to-be-set-up

44 http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/113676.html

This could potentially be the most impressive list of garbage I’ve ever seen. Blogs, newspaper clippings, opinion pieces, industry websites etc. The only lists of garbage that outstrip this one for garbageness are Popular Technology’s list of 900 and the Oregon petition. If, on the off chance that there are six peer reviewed papers, I will be 100% certain they are being misunderstood or misrepresented in some way as is the usual thing when deniers meet science.

“We reject the Murray Darling Basin Plan because it is based on flawed climate assumptions. Instead, we support bringing a percentage of the freshwater that flows into the sea from Northern Australia, into our Murray Darling basin.”

That’s right, this mob seriously wants to take water out of northern flowing rivers and divert the water into the Murray Darling catchment. I can only wonder if they have considered what the effect of reduced environmental flows would have on those rivers, not to mention any important wetlands downstream? Do they even know what an environmental flow is? Would they have cease to take levels and where would they place them and on what basis would they decide on those levels? Would it be an ecological one or economical one? I think I know, but let’s pretend they got their way, how the hell would they pay for it? There’s no mention of cost or feasibility.

This is only the start of the craziness. I could go on, but I think I might make these guys a pet project and focus on one or two things at a time so consider this a teaser. I will endeavour to engage them and see if they have any actual policies they plan to implement or if their policies are just simple one paragraph statements filled with non-descript rhetoric based on false premises, as it appears on their policy webpage. Watch this space.

Does size matter?

Does size matter? Now, while I am not talking specifically about the size of a man’s penis here, I will touch on that briefly. We are all aware of the jokes about men with small penises and subsequent feelings of inadequacy driving big cars or owning big dogs or posing with photos of big fish. This particular Freudianesque hypothesis has even been used in commercials aimed at shaming young men into driving sensibly.

This brings me to the subject of big lists. What is it about some climate deniers that makes them think a big list of names of people or papers makes their position valid? It would, if they were interested in sourcing quality information as opposed to quantity. A classic example is the “Global Warming Petition Project” which currently boasts “31,487 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs “. This statement is amazing in that they are blatantly admitting upfront that 22458 of their signatories don’t have a PhD. Now, I don’t mean any disrespect to those out there who are working in scientific disciplines who haven’t completed a PhD but the fact is, in scientific circles a PhD is usually a minimum requirement to be considered an expert in any field. What’s worse about this petition is that until recently you only had to hold a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent to sign.  Now I don’t know about you but when I go to my doctor, I wouldn’t be too happy if she suddenly informed me she only had a medical degree equivalent. Anyway, there is an excellent YouTube video  from greenman3610 that explains how ridiculous this big list is.

Next is the big list of “peer reviewed” papers at the popular technology blog site  which boasts “900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm”.  This is one of my favourites, not because it is a great website, but because it is a great tool to demonstrate scientific illiteracy, ignorance and deception at its best. For a start, the person running the website is a Computer Analyst and his three contributing website authors are a Computer Engineer, a Computer Scientist and an Electrical Engineer. I’m not too sure their areas of expertise qualify them to determine good climate science from dodgy climate science. It might explain why some of these “peer reviewed” papers are published in journals like The Electricity Journal, Iron and Steel Technology and my absolute favourite the New Concepts in Global Tectonics newsletter, the editor of which recently declared that because Japanese seismologists failed to predict the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami of a year ago, that the entire Theory of Plate Tectonics is patently incorrect. One “peer reviewed” paper in the infamous 900 that appears in the prestigious New Concepts in Global Tectonics newsletter is from one Lance Endersbee, who as far as I can make out from his “peer reviewed” paper, has no professional affiliations or qualifications for that matter. Anyway, he claims that ocean warming “is not due to the influence of Man, and probably due to a change in the geothermal regime of heat flow from the fracture zones in the floor of the northern oceans.” Wow! Now there’s a claim and a half. The amount of energy required from that relatively small area to heat all the oceans by as much as…….I’m not even going to bother. It’s some simple maths for anyone reading this who might be bothered but this is too absurd to waste time on.

So, is this the kind of standard that is set for this list of “900+ peer reviewed” papers? Well, yes and no. To be fair, there are a number of papers in this list from reputable journals like Nature and Geophysical Research Letters but this raises the question, do these papers actually debunk AGW? The answer is no. The person running this blog site likely hasn’t actually read any more than the abstracts of those papers, spotted a phrase or two that could be interpreted as shedding some doubt on some minor part of the AGW or human induced climate change hypotheses for example a particular statistical technique, but that is generally all. A classic case in point is this paper on the list from Frank et al. To the uninitiated this might appear to say that climate model predicted warming is out by as much as 80% where in fact it says “~80% less potential amplification of ongoing global warming” which is of course not the same thing. Also, in light of the fact that the error bars in their p.p.m.v. CO2 per °C calculation are very large, that 80% less potential is at the maximum end anyway. Plus, the authors are only discussing the CO2 released as a result of positive feedbacks and are not dealing AT ALL with the direct input of CO2 from man-made sources. This paper supports the position that the current rate of warming as being both anthropogenic and serious in nature, which actually opposes the claim of the blog site to be presenting  “900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm”. So, why include it? There are only 2 possible reasons.

1, the blog site owner doesn’t understand climate science sufficiently well enough to really know what he’s doing, or

2. He knows enough to understand what I have just mentioned about the paper and is including it because he knows it will be misleading to laypeople.

I hope its 1 but suspect its 2. Of course, when quality isn’t as important as quantity and the intention is to deceive, the paucity of real peer reviewed papers from reputable journals that debunk AGW and human induced climate change force these people to the fringes for information or to nitpicking papers they know will be too technical for laypeople to understand. The quality doesn’t matter to these people and it doesn’t matter to that proportion of the public who wish to remain wilfully ignorant because the truth is too scary, or those who are generally anti-establishment or the plain gullible whose scientific ignorance prevents them from understanding what comprises quality science. It is easier for this last group to accept simplistic garbage than the often complex real science.

In my opinion, there must be a change in our education systems in the teaching of science and it needs to start in the early years. Of equal importance to the teaching of facts in various disciplines is the teaching of scientific conventions so that future generations are better able to recognise dodgy lists for what they are, know the difference between a climatologist and an engineer, and recognise that computer analysts aren’t well credentialed enough to compile lists of “peer reviewed papers” that actually do what they purport.