Global Warming Battles On The Blogs

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Over the last few weeks, there has been quite a bit of discussion on the Blogosphere about certain global warming related issues. Denialists have come on strong with two major and widely disseminated distortions of scientific reports and consensus, and scientists and those interested in saving the Earth and who love puppies have countered with numerous well thought out and well done responses.

But it is hard to keep track of all this chatter. Pursuant to making that job easier, I’ve assembled a bunch of links that will help you track this discussion. There may be missing items, and if so, send me a link and I’ll see if I can fit it in. I’m not likely to link to very many denailist posts (against blog policy) but I’ll consider such items. Just don’t hold your breath (though doing so would reduce your carbon footprint for a moment or two).

In order to keep things simple, I’ve listed the links in order with just the title of the blog post and a very brief pull-out, usually just the first paragraph.

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2012-01-04 Met Office ’12 annual global temperature forecast ~ 2012 is expected to be around 0.48 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14.0 °C, with a predicted likely range of between 0.34 °C and 0.62 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.

2012-01-23 Decline in solar output unlikely to offset global warming ~ New research has found that solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years but that will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases.

2012-01-27 Whacking 16 moles … ~ A major challenge exists: it is far easier to dispense truthiness (and outright deceit)than it is to have to run after and rebut it. When it comes to anti-science syndrome suffering climate deniers and delayers, the whack-a-mole campaign of dealing with deceit, deception, and diversion is a never-ending and utterly exhausting process. And, that exhaustion is one of the powerful items in the quiver for serial deceivers — eventually the exhausted truthtellers run out of energy (and other resources) to respond. And, the deceit lives on without serious challenge.

2012-01-27 No Need to Panic About Global Warming; There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy. ~ The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article: A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed….

2012-01-27 The Wall Street Journal, Again ~ We’re happy to see a headline in the Wall Street Journal that matches our slogan, via the Hitchhiker’s Guide of course, with a hat tip for the idea to Scruffy Dan. “Don’t panic” we urge. “Things could get worse, and it’s best if we keep a level head.” That’s what we mean. So we should be gratified that today, the Wall Street Journal feature sixteen prominent people, who have cosigned an article entitled “No Need to Panic About Global Warming!” … It turns out, if you read the article carefully, that it means next to nothing at all. It’s all spin meant to justify policy inaction.

2012-01-27 The 16 concerned scientists: Who they are ~ No Need to Panic About Global Warming say sixteen scientists. Judge for yourself how many are qualified to opine on climate science.

2012-01-27 Two incontrovertible things: Anthropogenic Global Warming is Real, and the Wall Street Journal is Political Rag UPDATED ~ The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists.

2012-01-27 Remarkable Editorial Bias on Climate Science at the Wall Street Journal ~ The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, on Friday they published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to be of special significance because it was signed by 16 “scientists.” … Serious doubt has been cast on the actual expertise on climate science of the signers and on the accuracy of the content …

2012-01-27 An open letter to Burt Rutan, regarding his WSJ commentary on human-caused climate disruption ~ Dear Mr. Rutan … Ever since you won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 you’ve been a minor hero of mine. I’ve felt that the development of private human spaceflight was the critical next step toward moving humanity off our small blue marble since I was in high school, and SpaceShipOne was the first major step in that direction. The commercialization of space travel is a large part of why I work in aerospace myself designing satellite and space vehicle electronics. … This is is why I was disappointed to find that you had co-signed a Wall Street Journal commentary regarding human-caused climate disruption along with …

2012-01-29 The Daily Mail Prints Climate Nonsense ~ Here’s a rule of thumb for you. If you ever read anything about climate change in The Daily Mail, the odds are excellent that it’s nonsense. Anyway, here is what I told my student….

2012-01-29 Met Office in the Media: 29 January 2012 ~ Today the Mail on Sunday published a story written by David Rose entitled “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about”. This article includes numerous errors in the reporting of published peer reviewed science undertaken by the Met Office Hadley Centre and for Mr. Rose to suggest that the latest global temperatures available show no warming in the last 15 years is entirely misleading.

2012-01-29 New British Studies Confirms Climate Change Consensus, Daily Mail Gets It Totally Wrong ~ Since the Daily Mail is a British thing and the latest form of entertainment in Britain is Libel Tourism, I won’t say to you that the Daily Mail is a rag full of lies and deceit. Instead, I’ll let you be the judge.

2012-01-29 Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again) Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years ~ The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

2012-01-30 While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower ~ Over the weekend, two amazingly bad articles were published about climate change. Both were loaded with mistakes, misinterpretations, and outright misinformation, and are simply so factually wrong that they almost read like parodies. … The first was in the Wall Street Journal.

2012-01-30 A Flawed Global Warming Analysis in the Wall Street Journal ~ Last week, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by a few scientists and engineers who believe man-made climate change will have less impact on the environment than the vast majority of the scientific community has concluded it will. … Debate is normal and necessary in science — it occurred even on such questions as whether smoking causes lung cancer — so this disagreement is part of the process. However, people considering this issue should not lose sight of the fact that thousands of scientists studying decades of data have established an extremely strong link between carbon dioxide emissions and rising global temperatures. The underlying physics is well understood.

2012-01-30 Scientists Challenging Climate Science Appear to Flunk Climate Economics ~ An op-ed article signed by 16 scientists rejecting the need for “drastic action to decarbonize the world’s economy,” published Friday by the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, has been widely and thoroughly fact-checked and challenged elsewhere.

2012-01-30 The Journal Hires Dentists To Do Heart Surgery ~ After reportedly rejecting a climate change essay by 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences in 2010, the Wall Street Journal has published a flawed op-ed by 16 scientists and engineers instructing public officials not to fight manmade global warming. But most of these individuals do not actually conduct climate research, and their credibility is further undermined by the misleading and unscientific arguments presented in the op-ed.

2012-01-30 On Global Warming, Should You Trust the Wall Street Journal, or Chevron, ExxonMobil and the Defense Department?? ~ The Wall Street Journal has published a letter that makes an emotionally persuasive case about why we should not “panic about global warming.” The authors, 7 engineers and 9 scientists (4 of whom are climate scientists and 1 biologist), have assembled convincing arguments based on their opinions of climate science. The question is, should we trust them?

2012-01-30 Tehran Times: No need to panic about global warming ~ Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

2012-01-30 In Which Climate “Skeptics” Drop the Lysenko Bomb. No, I’m Not Kidding…. ~ There has been a much justified uproar over last week’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, in which a group of scientific “skeptics” reiterate the old line that we don’t have to worry about global warming, and that those who do so are engaging in climate “alarmism.” Ample refutations have been penned; in some ways best of all, my friend Jamie Vernon showed that even hotbeds of leftwing extremism like Chevron, ExxonMobil, and the Pentagon are now concerned about and taking action on global warming. … The Wall Street Journal is, indeed, completely out in the cold on this matter.

2012-01-31 Meteorologist Exposed as Scientific Fraud (And a really cool graphic) ~ The earth has actually been warming since the 1990s, and the first decade of the present century is the warmest on record, but will almost certainly be exceeded in global temperature by the present decade, I write from my home in Minneapolis where temperatures on this fine January day stayed well above 40 until just moments ago when they plunged to a chilly 39 degrees F.

2012-01-31 The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars ~ Michael Mann, famous climate scientist, has released a book called The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines(also available as a Kindle edition). I’ve not read it yet but I thought you’d like to know about it.

2012-01-31 AMS Certified Meteorologist Mark Johnson Claims ‘Earth Hasn’t Warmed In 15 Years’ ~ Cleveland television meteorologist Mark Johnson, one of the anti-science weathermen exposed by the Forecast the Facts campaign, is now claiming that the “earth hasn’t warmed in 15 years.” … Cribbing from a mendacious Daily Mail article, Johnson deliberately misrepresents the findings of the UK Meteorological Office that show the 2000s are the hottest decade on record…

2012-01-31 Fox News: With sun’s activity set to diminish, is global cooling coming? ~ The debate over global warming may be heating up again amid new scientific evidence that the sun’s activity is cooling down — which will cause temperatures to fall on planet Earth, scientists say.

2012-01-31 Climate science discussion between Burt Rutan and Brian Angliss ~ On January 27, I wrote an “open letter” to Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer and former CEO of Scaled Composites, expressing my disappointment that he would co-sign a commentary in the Wall Street Journal that contains incorrect and misleading information on climate science and economics. On January 28th, Rutan responded in the comments.

2012-02-01 Setting the Record Straight on Climate Change: Experts Respond ~ Do you consult your dentist on your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field, and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations…. On January 27, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed on climate change by the climate science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields, most of these authors have no expertise in climate science.

2012-02-01 William M. Briggs has misunderstood a high-school level data graph ~ And I suspect he’s done so willingly. Well, you know what they say about statistics and liars.

2012-02-01 William M. Briggs: Numerologist to the Stars ~ William M. Briggs, numerologist to the stars, has posted the claim that we don’t know whether temperature was cooler in the 1940s than in the 2000s…. Apparently Briggs thinks that computing an average means using a “statistical model,” and that entitles him to smear the result by association with the evil of “models.” That’s stretching the definition of “model” to the breaking point…

2012-02-01 “Like dentists practicing cardiology” – Climate scientists respond to Wall Street Journal disinformer op-ed. When you’re talking about planetary life suppport, it really matters what your credentials are. ~ In a letter to the WSJ, 38 climate science experts call down Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper for publishing an op-ed (“No Need to Panic About Global Warming”) “by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields,” the climate scientists’ letter says, “most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert.” As Stephen Schneider told us in an interview on his climate science expert credibility study, “It really matters what your credentials are. We’re talking about planetary life support. That’s why it’s so important to understand who’s credible.”

2012-02-01 38 climate scientists respond to error-filled Wall Street Journal commentary ~ One of the many factual errors, misunderstandings, and misleading claims (I counted at least six) in a Wall Street Journal commentary denying human-caused climate disruption was that only four of the 16 co-signers had published on climate science, and only one has published anything significant on the topic recently. Many of the others were not even scientists (including celebrity aerospace engineer Burt Rutan), but rather …

2012-02-02 A case study of the tactics of climate change denial, in which I am the target ~ OK, first, here’s the scoop: a few days ago, I wrote a blog post taking apart two intellectually bankrupt climate change denial articles, one in the Wall Street Journal, and the other in the UK’s Daily Mail. Both were claiming that global warming appears to have stopped in the past few years, a claim which is trivially easy to show wrong. In fact, I linked to two articles doing just that: one at Skeptical Science, and another I myself wrote. Finding actual scientists destroying that claim is not hard at all; those two links have many more links therein. … In my post about the WSJ and DM, I included a graph.

2012-02-02 Ruh Roh. A crazy nutbag is saying scary things to me. Again. ~ “There is enlightenment coming, it will be a cleansing wind throughout academia. This is just the tip of an iceberg, that is going to sink, the titanic of AGW, and all those on board. They are of the dark ages.”

ADDED:

2012-01-30 The Wall Street Journal could find only 16 ~ The article has 16 signatories, claimed by the editor to be scientists. The piece itself is a whiny, soap opera-type yarn detailing the horrors supposedly faced by the “growing” number of scientists who disagree with: the overwhelming consensus within the scientific community that global warming is ongoing, and that it is primarily the result of human greenhouse gas emissions. The story rambles from that of Dr. Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate in Physics who resigned from the American Physical Society in disgust at its embrace of the global warming consensus, to the lack of warming over the past decade (never mind measurement to the contrary), to a defence of carbon dioxide as “not a pollutant” (reminds me of Arnold in that movie with the kids). One could spend some time picking at these well-worn stories for their personal myopia, abuse and distortion of empirical data …

2012-02-05 Whacking Moles: A SmörgÃ¥sbord of Sanity About “The WSJ 16â?³: ~ As noted in Whacking 16 Moles, flaring anti-science syndrome suffering climate denier and delayer inanities often divert people from valuable and productive activities. Prominent eruptions of this malady, however, drive white-cell like effort to respond and dampen the damage. With the publication of “No Need to Panic About Global Warming”, “The Wall Street Journal 16â?³ sparked such an effort. Here is a selection of responses to that travesty of a publication…

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4 thoughts on “Global Warming Battles On The Blogs

  1. When it comes to resources for fighting climate contrarain nonsense my personal favourites are found in this link here :

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/02/02/a-case-study-of-the-tactics-of-climate-change-denial-in-which-i-am-the-target/#comment-475359

    & also here :

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/02/02/a-case-study-of-the-tactics-of-climate-change-denial-in-which-i-am-the-target/#comment-475388

    (I post under the astronomical pun moniker Messier Tidy Upper there, btw.)

    Skeptical Science, RealClimate, the Greenman 3610 “Climate Crocks” series & Potholer54’s excellent one debunking climate contrarianism.

    Plus I’d strongly recommend NASA’s climate change page here :

    http://climate.nasa.gov/

    as a good source of information.

    Hope this helps and is interesting /useful for folks here.

  2. This is an extremely useful compilation; many thanks.

    Please allow me to offer a resource I have generated over the past two years. Since January 1, 2010, I’ve written a daily LTE on climate change to newspapers & magazines all over the world (I’ve been published in WaPo, NYT, LATimes, BostonGlobe, TIME Magazine…as well as lots of smaller papers). The letters are all available on my website; there are also some how-to tips for anyone who’s interested.

    Thanks again for this resource; it is much appreciated!

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