Category Archives: Climate Change

New Book by Michael Mann and Meg Herbert

Books, Climate Change
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The Tantrum that Saved the World is a kickstarter fueled campaign to produce a children’s book about climate change.

The book will come in two parts. the first part is the story about a small girl child who finds out about, and attempts to address, global warming (more or less … you’ll have to read the book to find out the details!). the second part is about the science of climate change, expanding on the first part.

According to Michael Mann, “We wrote this book because, in our view, nothing like it exists. It educates by entertaining kids. It encourages action by inspiring them.” For her part, illustrator Megan Herbert wanted to turn her “frustration about climate inaction into something positive, to tell myson that I care about the world that I’m passing onto him. I want all kids to understand the challenges ahead and to be inspired to act positively rather than be overwhelmed.”

The book will be printed in an eco-friendly way, especially the eVersion of it!

Click HERE to visit the Kickstarter page and get in on this during the first hours of the campaign, which just started!

Check out the video:

Other books by the same authors:

GRANDMOTHERS CHAIR by AH

The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy by MM

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines by MM

Dire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change by MM


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Tragic and Unprecedented California Deadly Fire

Climate Change, Severe Weather and Other Disasters, , , ,
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The news is bad, and is being widely covered. Here I just want to make a remark or two about the link between big fires and global warming.

As of last report, there are 15 known dead and 150 or more missing. Hopefully they are only virtually and not actually missing; there is a lot of confusion and communication resources are in many cases down.

Wild fires are tricky in more ways then one. It is easy to get caught in one (I’ve manage that myself), and it is hard to predict or fully understand why some years have more than others. There has been a long term trend nationally towards fewer wild fires, for several reasons, most of which have to do with human activities. The most significant part of that trend is that humans caused many, huge, often deadly wild fires in the past. The worst wildfire ever in Minnesota, in terms of Death toll, was during World War I and had mainly to do with farming and railroads being a bad mix. Cutting lots of land to farm provides the fuel, and in those days, railroads were travelling tinderboxes sparking fires everywhere they went. Continue reading Tragic and Unprecedented California Deadly Fire →


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Climate and energy are becoming focal points in state political races

Climate Change, Energy, Politics, , , , , ,
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Just a pointer to my colleague John Abraham’s current post in The Guardian:

The latest example, Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto has a strong clean energy proposal

As soon as Donald Trump won the presidential election, people in the US and around the world knew it was terrible news for the environment. Not wanting to believe that he would try to follow through on our worst fears, we held out hope.

Those hopes for a sane US federal government were misplaced. But they are replaced by a new hope – an emerging climate leadership at the state level and a continuation of economic forces that favor clean/renewable energy over dirty fossil fuels. In fact, it appears that some states are relishing the national and international leadership roles that they have undertaken. Support for sensible climate and energy policies is now a topic to run on in elections.

This change has manifested itself in American politics. One such plan stems from my home state, but it exemplifies work in other regions. I live in the state of Minnesota where we are gearing up for a gubernatorial election, which is where this plan comes from.

My state is well known as somewhat progressive, both socially and economically. The progressive policies resulted in a very strong 2007 renewable energy standard, which helped to reduce carbon pollution and create 15,000 jobs.

As an aside, it is really painful for me to…

Click here to find out about John’s pain!


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An Interesting New Graphic Showing Climate Change

Climate Change, , ,
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This graphic, by Boggis Makes Videos and put on YouTube just a few days ago, breaks all the rules of how to make effective, understandable graphs for the general public. However, if you follow all those rules, it is difficult or impossible to get certain message across. Therefore, this graphic is necessary if a bit difficult. I would like you to watch the graphic several times with a prompt before each watching so that you fully appreciate it. This will only take you six or seven minutes, I’m sure you weren’t doing anything else important. Continue reading An Interesting New Graphic Showing Climate Change →


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Rebecca Otto’s Clean Energy Plan for Minnesota

Climate Change, , , , , ,
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Earlier today, Minnesota Gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto released her energy transition plan. It an ambitious plan that puts together several elements widely considered necessary to make any such plan work, then puts them on steroids to make it work faster. To my knowledge, this is the first major plan to be proposed since the recent dual revelations that a) the world is going to have to act faster than we had previously assumed* and b) the US Federal government will not be helping.

Here’s the elevator speech version: Minnesota residents get around five thousand dollars cash (over several years), monetary incentives to upgrade all their energy using devices from furnaces to cars, some 80,000 new, high paying jobs, and in the end, the state is essentially fossil fuel free.

About half of that fossil fuel free goal comes directly from Continue reading Rebecca Otto’s Clean Energy Plan for Minnesota →


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Harvey The Hurricane: Truly Climate Change Enhanced

Climate Change, Falsehoods and Skepticism, Severe Weather and Other Disasters, , , ,
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Harvey the Invisible Rabbit: Did not exist.

This is a picture of some men.

Since they are men, they have some abilities. They can, for example, knock each other over, and they can play with balls. This is what men do, and this is what these men can do.

This is a picture of some professional NFL foodball players.

They are also men. They can also knock each other over, and they can also play with balls. But the NFL football players are much better at knocking each other over, and you wouldn’t believe how great they are at playing with balls.

They are NFL enhanced. They are trained, embiggened with special diets, and they are clad with armor and vibrant, often scary, colors.

This is a picture of a hurricane from 1938.

It was a big one; It did lots of damage when it slammed into New England and New York.

A hurricane is a large storm that forms in the tropics, and sometimes hits land. The energy from a hurricane comes from a combination of the earth’s spin, trade winds, and so on, but mainly, from the heat on the surface of the sea. The rain that falls from the hurricane also comes mainly from the sea surface indirectly, and any water that evaporates into the atmosphere.

This is a picture of Harvey the Hurricane, the remnants of which are still circulating around in Texas.

Harvey is a lot like the 1938 hurricane, in that it formed in the tropics, in the Atlantic, and was a big spinny thing. It got its energy in the same way, and formed in the same way, and both slammed into land and scared the crap out of everybody.

But they are different, the 1938 Hurricane and Harvey the Hurricane. How are they different? Have a look at this map:

The pairs of photos above show “then” and “now” for two different things (men and hurricanes). This map shows both then and now in the same graphic. This map represents the current sea surface temperature anomalies, meaning, how much warmer or cooler the current sea temperatures are compared to the same time of year but at some time in the past, averaged over a long period, in this case, from 1971-2000. Global warming was well underway during that period, so present sea surface temperature readings that are above that baseline are not only high but are actually very high, because the baseline is high.

In this map, red is more, blue is less. Look at all the nearly ubiquitous more-ness in sea surface temperatures around the world. That causes the atmosphere across the entire globe to potentially contain much more water vapor than it could have contained during that that baseline period. Look at the sea surface temperature anomalies for the gulf of Mexico, where Harvey formed. They are high. This means that any hurricane that formed over that extra warm water will be stronger, and any tropical storm system that occurs pretty much anywhere on this map (or round the other side of the Earth as well, for that matter) will contain more water, than it would if it existed and all else was equal several decades ago.

This is a picture of a Unicorn.

A unicorn poops rainbows and pees mimosas. Or so I’m told. This is another view of Harvey the Hurricane.

What is the difference between the unicorn and Harvey? Harvey is real, and the unicorn is not.

I won’t quote you or give you links. Why? Because I find this whole thing a bit too embarrassing. But here is the thing. Otherwise intelligent and well informed individuals have stated in various outlets, including major media, and including twitter, that it is simply inappropriate to claim that Harvey the Hurricane is in any way global warming enhanced.

This is wrong. There is no such thing as a storm of any kind that is not a function of the current climatology. The current climatology has widespread and persistent, and in many cases alarmingly high, sea surface temperature anomalies. There will not be a tropical storm, including hurricanes, that escape the physics and poop out rainbows and pee mimosas. They will all be real. They will all have greater power and more moisture than they otherwise would have, had they formed decades ago before the extreme global warming we have experience so far.

There was a time when Harvey was a rabbit, an invisible rabbit only seen by a delusional character in a movie, played by Jimmy Stewart. Today, we have Harvey the Unenhanced Storm, playing that role. It is a fiction, something seen by a few but that is no more real than the above depicted unicorn.

As I was writing this post, Michael Mann posted an item in the Guardian that makes this case.

He says (click here for the whole story):

Sea level rise attributable to climate change – some of which is due to coastal subsidence caused by human disturbance such as oil drilling – is more than half a foot (15cm) over the past few decades … That means the storm surge was half a foot higher than it would have been just decades ago, meaning far more flooding and destruction.

… sea surface temperatures in the region have risen about 0.5C (close to 1F) over the past few decades from roughly 30C (86F) to 30.5C (87F), which contributed to the very warm sea surface temperatures (30.5-31C, or 87-88F).

… there is a roughly 3% increase in average atmospheric moisture content for each 0.5C of warming. Sea surface temperatures in the area where Harvey intensified were 0.5-1C warmer than current-day average … That means 3-5% more moisture in the atmosphere.

That large amount of moisture creates the potential for much greater rainfalls and greater flooding. The combination of coastal flooding and heavy rainfall is responsible for the devastating flooding that Houston is experiencing.

… there is a deep layer of warm water that Harvey was able to feed upon when it intensified at near record pace as it neared the coast….

Harvey was almost certainly more intense than it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming, which means stronger winds, more wind damage and a larger storm surge…

Mann mentions other effects as well, but I’ll let you go read them.

The extra heat at depth Mann mentions is now recognized as responsible for the extra bigness and badness of some other famous hurricanes as well, such as Katrina and Haiyan. Harvey might be a member of a small but growing class of hurricanes, deep-heat hurricanes I’ll call them for now, that simply did not exist prior to global warming of recent decades. Further research is needed on this, but that’s the direction we are heading.

Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth recently noted that “The human contribution can be up to 30 percent or so up to the total rainfall coming out of the storm,”

Aside from Michael Mann’s Guardian article, he has this facebook post making the same argument.

Harvey the Hurricane is real, and so was the 1938 Hurricane. Climate change enhancement of Harvey is real, but unicorns are not. Sadly.

I really thought we had stopped hearing this meme, that “you can never attribute a given weather event to climate change.” But, apparently not. That is a statement that is technically true in the same way that we can’t really attribute an Alberta Clipper (a kind of snow storm) to the spin of the Earth. Yet, somehow, the spin of the Earth is why Alberta Clippers come from Alberta. In other words, the statement is a falsehood that can never be evaluated because it is framed incorrectly. Here is the correct framing:

Climate is weather long term, and weather is climate here and now. The climate has changed. Ergo … you fill in the blank. Hit: Unicorns are not involved.


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Michael Mann Did Not Sabotage His Law Suit, But Deniers Are Sabotaging The Planet

Climate Change
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It starts with a very simple question: Is global warming real and human caused? It ends with a very simple answer: Yes to both. But in the middle we have, like every other good story, sex, intrigue, and intriguing sex.

In the beginning, there was a strong theory that said, “If we add greenhouse gasses, such as CO2, the byproduct of burning fossil fuels, to the atmosphere, the planet will warm.” But direct observations of this warming actually happening were sketchy. Widespread systematically collected and curated temperature records only went back a few decades, and as we were to learn later, the warming that was indeed happening was undergoing a quiescence. Such slower periods are interspersed with periods of rapid warming as part of the natural variation in the Earth’s climate system. In short, there is a natural component to variation in the Earth’s surface temperature, and a human-caused component, and at the time the human component was not yet the dominating force it would soon become.

Eventually, the record of surface temperatures was pushed back decade by decade through the diligent collection, critical evaluation, and cleaning up of data that had been sitting around in hand written form in myriad locations. The direct measurements of surface temperatures was extended back over a century, and at the same time, because that took a while, a decade or two of actual time passed by, during which thermometer and satellite data were collected. Now, we can look back to 1850 or 1880 (depending on the database) up to the present, and we see a warming trend.

A lot of research was being done those days, in the 1970s and 1980s, in paleoclimate and climatology. In particular, proxyindicators were being developed and contributing significant data. I remember as a young pre-graduate student sitting in a class where the professor was carefully explaining what a “proxy” was, as though no one had ever heard of them before (and we hadn’t). A proxy is a signal obtained from some natural material such as glacial ice, the sediment at the bottom of a pond or an ocean, or the pattern of growth rings of trees. This signal is linked via a model of some sort to a desired measurement (such as sea level, or temperature, or something) to imitate an instrument over the time covered by the proxy.

Just two years later, I remember an impromptu conference organized by my advisor, with a half dozen of the key paleoclimatologists, in which they provided updates to current research coming out of oceanography, and it was pretty amazing. Suddenly, using ocean cores, Oxygen isotopes, and theory, it was possible to make a reliable and remarkably precise estimate of how much water was missing from the ocean at any given time. Since most of that missing water was trapped in glacial ice, this proxy became the first accurate tracking of the comings and goings, and patterns of, Pleistocene ice ages. At first the record only went back 500,000 years. Then 800,00 years. Now, it is being extended back further.

Roughly ten years or so later, by the time 1998 rolled around, the world of climate science was ready for one of those pivotal moments to come along, and it did. This was the publication by Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, of research linking long term records of the Earth’s surface temperature with more recent data, showing a clear signal of recent human-caused warming. Subsequently, that result, sometimes referred to as the “Hockey Stick Graph” because it looks somewhat like a hockey stick, has been confirmed over and over again. The best place to get a review of that research and its subsequent verification is in a post by climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf called “Most Comprehensive Paleoclimate Reconstruction Confirms Hockey Stick.”

(Added: See also the reference to Jones et al in this blog post pertaining to the history of all of this, by John Mashey.)

There have always been science deniers. God was a denier (“…you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge…”). Galileo was harassed by deniers. I recently read a quote from a late 18th century, of a British soldier, referring with derision to the “bible-faced Americans” and, certainly, the American Christian churches have found anti-science activism and rhetoric to be excellent, um, fertilizer, to enhance their own growth.

The deniers of climate change didn’t just get the gas for their cars from Big Oil; Their entire movement was, and is, fueled by the likes of the Koch Brothers, deep pocketed one percenters and corporations harboring the unfortunate delusion that if we pretend climate change is not caused by the burning of fossil fuels, everything will be fine and they’ll keep getting rich.

The publication of the Hockey Stick research became a focusing point for these deniers, and Michael Man, the lead on that research, became a target on which they have fired continuously since then. No living scientist, no recent deceased scientists, and perhaps no scientist in history, has experienced such a sustained violation by so many deniers over such a period of time as Mike Mann. You can read all about the first phase of this relentless attack in this book by Mann himself.

You can disagree with a scientist. In fact, please do. Maybe the scientist is wrong about something. Chances are, if you are not a scientist and your disagreement is about something the scientist is an expert on and you are not, there is a different problem. Perhaps the science has not been explained clearly, and that is a problem, a reasonable thing to ask about. That can also be fixed. If, however, the science has been explained, and you maintain your disagreement not because the scientist is wrong, but because you want the scientist to be wrong, or because it is in your financial or political interest to disagree or cause confusion or sow doubt then … well, you can still do that because this is a free country.

In America, you can be an asshole.

But, if you publicly claim of anyone, in this country, that they have committed a crime, and they didn’t, especially if you make this claim with nefarious intent, then it is you who have potentially committed an offense, perhaps a civil offense, perhaps libel. In Canada they have similar rules. Lots of countries have that rule.

As the number one target of climate deniers world wide and for decades, Michael Mann has been defamed a number of times. On a couple of those occasions, with the support of various groups, Mann has pursued his legal and ethical right to fight back, and has filed suit.

I know Michael Mann well enough to know that this is not libel tourism. This is not Mann trying to make a fast buck. Mann would probably be fine in each case if the defendants had simply withdrawn the libel. (Given the nature of court costs and such, and the tenacious and obnoxious nature of the defense pretty much universally as I’ve seen it, I have no idea what the status of possible settlement is at this time and I’m sure everyone involved is under legal recommendation to not speak of such things at this time.)

One of these cases is against Tim Ball. Who is Tim Ball?

Ball has a PhD from the University of London (1982). According to the DeSmogBlog database on climate deniers,

Tim Ball was a professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1988 to 1996. He is a prolific speaker and writer in the skeptical science community.

He has been Chairman to the now-defunct Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP), “Consultant” to the Exxon-funded Friends of Science (FoS), senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP), and has connections to numerous other think tanks and right-wing organizations.

Tim Ball is member of Climate Exit (Clexit), a climate change denial group formed shortly after the UK’s decision to leave the EU. According to Clexit’s founding statement (PDF), “The world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade. Man does not and cannot control the climate.”

…

Ball and the organizations he is affiliated with have repeatedly made the claim that he is the “first Canadian PhD in climatology.” Ball himself claimed he was “one of the first climatology PhD’s in the world.”

Many have pointed out that there have been numerous PhD’s in the field prior to Ball.

Ball was a former professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1988 to 1996. The University of Winnipeg never had an office of Climatology. His degree was in historical geography and not climatology. [12]

…

A search of 22,000 academic journals shows that over the course of his career Ball published four pieces of original research in peer-reviewed journals on the subject of climate change.

According to Google Scholar, his most recent peer-reviewed article on climate change was published in 1986, titled “Historical evidence and climatic implications of a shift in the boreal forest tundra transition in central Canada.”
…
Tim Ball is a prolific writer of newspaper articles, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor questioning the existence of climate change. [51]

Ball is also a lead author of Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory, a book published in 2011.

In 2011, Michael Mann filed suit against Ball and a Canadian think tank for claiming that Mann carried out criminal fraud. The nature of the fraud claim is a little complex and muddled, but it was part of the ongoing attack on Mann discussed in the above mentioned book. Ultimately this has to do with a bunch of innocuous private emails that had been exchanged among colleagues, then stolen by nefarious actors, cherry picked to make it look like bad things had happened, and widely publicized. In relation to this alt-news now known as “climategate” Ball said, “Michael Mann at Penn State should be in the State Pen, not Penn State.”

This is not the only law suit against Tim Ball. He has made similar accusations against others as well.

Now, that is all very interesting. But here is where it starts to get strange.

Libertarian Bisexual Prostitutes In My Blog

I am happy to have a wide range of commenters on my blog, and I trust my regular readers to handle those with racist, sexist, or anti-science tendencies. But I was a little shocked the other day to get a comment by someone I had never heard of before, ranting about Michael Mann and making claims about the Mann vs. Ball lawsuit that I knew were false.

The commenter used the name “Starchild.” I’d heard of Starchild, but I was suspicious that an alien hoax was commenting on my blog. So, I contacted this Starchild chap and asked if he was for real. Turns out, his real life name is none other than Starchild, and he is a famous San Francisco based bi-sexual sex worker Libertarian. Like this:

Starchild, in his comments, was essentially parroting a guy named John O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan runs a really nasty anti-science blog, and is well known for a wide range of shenanigans.

Sullivan was making legal claims about the Mann vs. Ball law suit, and I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, who is John O’Sullivan?

John O’Sullivan: Not a lawer

Sometimes John O’Sullivan claims to be a lawyer, but sometimes he backs off that claim.

According to himself, John O’Sullivan is not lawyer, but “… just some Brit with a brain who can go live with his American wife in her country and kick ass big time around a courtroom.”

He is the author of “Vanilla Girl: a Fact-Based Crime Story of a Teacher’s Struggle to Control His Erotic Obsession with a Schoolgirl.” This is an online book of some kind (I looked, it is not on Amazon).

O’Sullivan was successful in winning an acquittal when he was personally charged in England as a high school teacher accused of sending lewd text messages and assaulting a 16-year-old female. Given the acquittal, it would not generally be appropriate to bring up this sordid and unproven bit of history, except that O’Sullivan himself went on to write an “erotic” “novel” with a startlingly similar storyline: Vanilla Girl: a Fact-Based Crime Story of a Teacher’s Struggle to Control His Erotic Obsession with a Schoolgirl.

[source]

O’Sullivan claimed that he was an experienced attorney with an excellent record in New York and US federal courts. He isn’t. He identified a major law firm that he worked for. He didn’t work for them. He claims a fairly imporessive writing resume including some major outlets such as Forbes. None of that was true. He claims to be a member of the American Bar association but isn’t. He may or may not have a fake law degree from an on line alt-degree mill.

(See this for background.)

Starchild Speaks

To focus this line of thoughtlessness on the issue at hand, I’ll replicate Starchild’s comments here (combined into one):

Now that Michael Mann is in danger of being held in contempt of court for failing to release his research data, who’s the climate science “denier”? Hmm…

In his blog entry at http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/08/15/electronic-frontier-foundation-messes-up/ , Greg Laden wrote, “I’ll add that Mann’s research is all open source or open access with respect to data, methods, software, and results.”

It is, is it? Maybe that’s what he wanted you to think, until the time came when he actually had to produce:

“Prominent alarmist shockingly defies judge and refuses to surrender data for open court examination…

“(Climatologist Dr. Tim) Ball explains, ‘We believe he [Mann] withheld on the basis of a US court ruling that it was all his intellectual property. This ruling was made despite the fact the US taxpayer paid for the research and the research results were used as the basis of literally earth-shattering policies on energy and environment. The problem for him is that the Canadian court holds that you cannot withhold documents that are central to your charge of defamation regardless of the US ruling.’”

Let’s begin right away with the data that is supposedly being held secret. They are HERE They have always been there. Anytime anyone says “where’s the data, Michael Mann” just send them there, where the data are.

Regarding the rest of O’Sullivan’s claims as echoed by Starchild, this is a statement by Michael Mann’s attorney:

Contrary to the nonsensical allegations made by John O’Sullivan in his July 4 posted on climatechangedispatch.com and elsewhere, plaintiff Michael Mann has fully complied with all of his disclosure obligations to the defendant Tim Ball relating to data and other documents.

No judge has made any order or given any direction, however minor or inconsequential, that Michael Mann surrender any data or any documents to Tim Ball for any purpose.

Accordingly it should be plain and obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense that Mann could not possibly be in contempt of court.

Just to be clear: Mann is not defying any judge. He is not in breach of any judgment. He is not, repeat not, in contempt of court. He is not in breach of any discovery obligations to Ball.

In this context, O’Sullivan’s suggestion that Ball “is expected to instruct his British Columbia attorneys to trigger mandatory punitive court sanctions” against Mann is simply divorced from reality.

Finally, a word about the actual issues in the British Columbia lawsuit.
If O’Sullivan had read Ball’s statement of defence, he would immediately see that Ball does not intend to ask the BC Court to rule that Mann committed climate data fraud, or that Mann in fact did anything with criminal intent.
O’Sullivan would have noticed that one of Ball’s defences is that the words he spoke about Mann (which are the subject of Mann’s lawsuit) were said in “jest.”

The BC Court will not be asked to decide whether or not climate change is real.
So there is no chance whatsoever that any BC Court verdict about Mann’s libel claims against Ball will vindicate Donald Trump’s perspective on climate change.

Roger D. McConchie

Also, the data are here.


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A Letter To The Logging Company That Is Suing Greenpeace

Climate Change, Environment, , , ,
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This is interesting.

It is a letter from Hachette Livre, a major international publisher, to Resolute Forest Products, the group that is trying to sue a number of environmental groups into submission. (See these posts: Taking The Axe To The Environmental Movement: Resolute v. Greenpeace and Freedom of Speech, Resolute Forestry, Stand.Earth, Greenpeace: New Developments) Hachette Livre uses Resolute, and seems to be a significant customer of the tree cutting pulp giant. And, they are giving Resolute a little what for:

HACHETTE LIVRE’S COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Richard Garneau Produits forestiers Résolu

Vanves, June 8h, 2017

Dear Mr Garneau,

My company, Hachette Livre, is a customer of Resolute, and has been for many years. Our US subsidiary, Hachette Book Group, buys substantial quantities of FSC-certified ground wood paper from your Canadian mills.

We enjoy a healthy and mutually beneficial relationship. As you probably know, Hachette Book Group, as its parent company Hachette Livre, has very high environmental standards that both companies advertise in their corporate brochures and web sites. We have a history of working productively with various environmental NGOs such as Rainforest Action Network, for instance.

Greenpeace has recently attracted our attention to the conflict between it and Resolute that has erupted into a significant legal battle.

I have no intention of getting involved in the dispute, for as publishers, we have neither the expertise nor the resources to forge an educated opinion as to who is right and who is wrong in what seems to be a complex set of highly technical issues.

I would simply like to respectfully make two points.

The first is that our commitment to FSC is the cornerstone of our Social and Environmental Responsibility policy.

As such, it cannot suffer exceptions to suit a particular situation or a specific vendor. I therefore urge you to do everything in your power to retain the FSC certifications you have in Canada and more specifically, those that are necessary to meet our environmental requirements. It is of vital importance to us.

The other point I would like to make, not as a customer but as a publisher and a citizen, is that the vigor of your legal response to Greenpeace under RICO statutes strikes me as excessive. It is a very disturbing turn of events for publishers like us, who cherish public debate as an essential dimension of our activity and include many conservationists and environmentalists in our list of authors. Indeed, an escalation of the legal dispute could cause some authors to decline having their books printed on Resolute’s paper, further complicating the situation.

Needless to say, we cherish just as much the rule of law and respect the right to seek legal remedy, but I wonder whether there might not be other ways to respond to Greenpeace’s claims.

Let me put it this way: At a time when the United States has decided to turn its back on climate change by reneging on its commitment to the Paris Accord, we believe we need more than ever independent NGOs such as Greenpeace. Without them, who will speak up for the environment in the future?

I hope these suggestions will give you pause, if not meet with your approval.

This letter will be posted on our company web site after you have received it.

Thank you for your attention, and I hope you are able to resolve this dispute soon.

Sincerely,

Arnaud Nourry

I do want to go back to this sentence:

I have no intention of getting involved in the dispute, for as publishers, we have neither the expertise nor the resources to forge an educated opinion as to who is right and who is wrong in what seems to be a complex set of highly technical issues.

That is utter bullshit, embarrassingly stupid, and I have no idea why they would say this. I want to know how much this guy pays for his milk. But otherwise, it is a good letter.


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The New Climate Alliance

Climate Change, Environment
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Screw the so-called Federal Government, once part of a great democracy, now a great joke run by an insane clown and his posse.

Most of the hard work in the energy transition needs to be done at the levels of the state and the individual anyway. So, with Trump taking the so-called Federal Government, which most of us now recognize as illegitimate and an annoyance at best as is slowly disappears bit by bit and becomes nothing other than a way to transfer tax money to rich people (until we stop paying our taxes), let’s just get on with saving civilization, the planet, our children, and all that good stuff on our own.

And, at the state level, I’m proud to announce that Minnesota has joined the new “Climate Alliance.”

From MPR:

Gov. Mark Dayton on Monday joined a group of governors who are committing their states to upholding the Paris climate deal’s emissions cuts despite President Trump’s decision last week to withdraw the U.S. from the pact.

Organized as the U.S. Climate Alliance, member states aim to reduce emissions by at least 26 percent from 2005 levels and meet the federal Clean Power Plan targets.

“President Trump’s withdrawal will cause serious damage to our environment and our economy,” Dayton said in a statement. “Nevertheless, Minnesota and other states will show the world what we can achieve by working together to conserve energy, to use cleaner and renewable energy, and to leave a livable planet to our children and grandchildren.”

There’s over 12 other states in the group now, last count.

Of course, this is all for naught if we dont’ elect a Democratic governor here in 2018. For information on that, see this.


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Michael Mann Endorses Rebecca Otto for Governor of Minnesota

Climate Change, Politics, , ,
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State Auditor Rebecca Otto is running for Governor of Minnesota. She will seek the DFL (Democratic Party) Endorsement. There are several other candidates either declared or likely to run, but Otto stands head and shoulders above all the others, especially in three areas:

1) Honesty and integrity in government.

Otto has been recognized nationally by the auditors around the country, and this is for good reason. In fact, she’s recognized internationally. The Minnesota Auditor’s office, under Otto, is one of those places the US State Department sends people from other countries to figure out how they should set up their own Democracy. (I’m not sure if the State Department will still be doing that ….)

2) Eschewing the false balance and finding real common ground between desperate parties.

This is Rebecca Otto’s super power. I’ve seen her do this right before my eyes.

The whole state saw her do it in Minnesota. There is a large mining region here, and mining companies want to start a new phase, extracting copper. Have you heard of the Environmental Movement? The US Environmental Movement has multiple roots, including my own home town Hudson River, with the sloop Clearwater and all that. But it also started in Minnesota, with the mining companies up on “The Range” (a place in Minnesota) where the miners were killing Lake Superior with their effluent. There has always been a fight on The Range between those who want more jobs and those who do not want to kill the Great Lakes and other natural wonders.

A couple of years ago, Rebecca cast a principled vote on a committee the Auditor serves on, the only vote among her fellow Democrats, to put environmental considerations on equal footing with jobs and other issues. She didn’t want to see the big mining companies leave The Range in the same sort of mess, with respect to local costs of cleanup, lost jobs, etc., as they have in the past, and like mining companies tend to do. That move got all the Republicans and some of the Range Democrats mad at Otto, and they have been viciously attacking her ever since, because they want all those Range votes for themselves.

Meanwhile, Rebecca went to The Range, talked to people, helped all the parties find common ground, and on voting day, she outperformed the Democratic Governor, and the Congressional candidate in counties and precincts she should, according to common wisdom, should have lost. Twice.

(See this analysis of the elections.)

3) Rebecca Otto is a true Climate Hawk

And this is why climate scientist Michael Mann endorsed her. Among other things, Mann said:

… Otto is a shining example of the kind of integrity and leadership we hope for in our elected leaders but too rarely see: someone who puts their money where their mouth is. I’m proud to support Rebecca Otto for Governor of Minnesota, and urge everyone who is concerned about climate change and clean energy to join me in supporting her. … As the Minnesota State Auditor, Rebecca issued a nationally award-winning report on how local governments can reduce energy costs dramatically by switching to clean, carbon-free energy sources…

Go HERE to read the entire endorsement.

I asked Professor Mann why a climate scientist working in Pennsylvania would worry about a governor’s race in Minnesota. “In climate change, we face a threat that knows no boundaries—continental boundaries, national boundaries, or state boundaries,” het told me. “We must support politicians everywhere who are willing to act on climate. Rebecca Otto has demonstrated that she places great priority on science-based policymaking on climate change and I am happy to support her candidacy.”

Make sure, when you visit that site, you watch Rebecca’s one minute video. See those solar panels she’s sitting in front of? I helped install them!


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Rebecca Otto: by far the strongest and most progressive candidate for Minnesota Governor in 2018

Climate Change, Politics,
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Here’s why: All the available data strongly indicates that Otto will beat all the other contenders across state in the upcoming Governor’s race.

Democrats have two major problems to face in 2018 and beyond. First, how do we win elections? Second, how do we remain true to our progressive and liberal roots?

For Democrats, 2018 is a must-win election, and Minnesotans have a lot at stake. Will the state remain the shining star of the North, or will it go the way of Wisconsin, and sink into a Republican dark age of union busting, environment polluting, professor bashing, service slashing, and economic activity destruction?

Of all the candidates running or suspected of running for Governor in 2018, Rebecca Otto is the only one who can most clearly win and at the same time preserve and advance core, human based, Democratic ideals, in my opinion.

The following text was added on December 17th

One of the arguments I make here is that party “insiders” should avoid jumping out of the gate to “endorse” candidates early on in a process like this. I put “insider” i quotes because it has no definition. I put “endorse” in quotes because it has a precise definition (one regulated by the Federal Election Commission in some cases) but is used widely to mean “like,” “give the thumbs up to,” “Publicly Support” and that sort of thing. At the time I wrote this piece I did not specify what I meant by party people supporting a given candidate, Tim Walz, too early, but it has recently come to my attention that my arguments is being seen as invalid because in fact there were no such endorsements.

And that is true. Technically, there were none.

Except, that there were. To give an overall gestalt of what I mean, consider this item form MinnPost from last April, written during the time of the flurry of excitement that Time Walz was running for governor.

One step at a time
For now, many DFL insiders consider Walz the de facto frontrunner in the governor’s race. That may or may not change should he be joined by another candidate, such as 8th District Rep. Rick Nolan or Attorney General Lori Swanson.

But Walz is moving to lock up support from influential Democrats around the state. Before Walz made his bid official, 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson reportedly announced his endorsement at a party dinner in his district. (Peterson confirmed on Tuesday he’ll be backing Walz.)

“The congressman has a good amount of steam at this point,” Broton said, “at this point, you could probably classify him as being the front-runner. But Democrats are fickle people.”

On April 19th, the Pioneer Press reported and endorsement that wasn’t an endorsement by a man who is arguably Minnesota’s top democrat, since he is from Minnesota, represents a congressional district in Minnesota, and is Deputy Chair of the national party, Representative Keith Ellison.

Rep. Keith Ellison expects Rep. Tim Walz will be Minnesota’s next governor

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison predicted Wednesday that his fellow Minnesota Democrat, Congressman Tim Walz, will be Minnesota’s next governor.

“I’m not advocating; I’m simply predicting,” Ellison said of Walz during an appearance at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. The event was co-moderated by political science professor Larry Jacobs and Pioneer Press Capitol Bureau Chief Rachel Stassen-Berger.

Knowledge is knowing that is technically not an endorsement. But a wise person refrains from putting tomato in the fruit salad.

The Star Tribune reported, about the same time, the following:

U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, officially in the governor’s race, won the endorsement of former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. Walz needs help in the Twin Cities, where he is less known, so this was a key endorsement if Rybak is active.

RT Rybak was mayor of Minneapolis, and after leaving that position, became a director at large for the national party. I’m told this is not an official endorsement. Yet …

Anyway, long after I wrote this post, partly in response to the above endorsements and similar, Congressman Walz, anointed, found himself between a rock and a hard place as more than one tragic mass shooting caused the big giant spot light that seeks out NRA supported candidates and shines all over him. Walz’s pro-gun (and anti-environmental) positions may indeed help him out state in a general election, but he is essentially done within the party, in my humble opinion.

End of the added text.

The smart move for the DFL in 2018 is to turn to a candidate that has won several times statewide and has strong name recognition, positive feeling among the voters engendered by her commitment to widely held values, and a strong base of support. State Auditor Rebecca Otto is the only candidate with that resumé. Otto has racked up several historic victories, including the largest upset of an incumbent in 112 years, and is positioned to do it again in 2018. Her statewide electoral prowess far outstrips her nearest competitor, Tim Walz, who is largely unknown outside of his first district, and is untested statewide. Beyond that, Otto stands for strong for Democratic values, while Walz has shown himself to be a DINO-style Democrat. Walz enjoys a very high rating from the NRA, for example, and in February of 2013 was one of only six Democrats in Congress to vote to expand gun sales to the severely mentally ill, over the objections of senior generals including David Petraeus, Michael Hayden and Stanley McChrystal.

On the environment and climate change, Walz again voted with Republicans on anti-environmental bills progressives strongly opposed. He voted with Republicans in favor of building the Keystone XL pipeline. He introduced a bill, siding with Eric Paulsen, to expand offshore oil drilling. Walz refused to provide voters with positions on several other key issues covered by the 2016 Vote Smart Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests. Historically, candidates have failed to complete the test in part due to “fear of negative attack ads,” according to that group. In contrast, Rebecca Otto opposes unrestricted gun sales and supports common-sense, reasonable measures to prevent mass shootings by mentally ill individuals. Otto is also the acknowledged statewide leader on environmental issues, and cast multiple courageous votes against multinational corporate interests, in an effort to protect the environment even while being harshly attacked by industry advocates. Indeed, she and her husband live in a solar home they built with their own hands.

So why are some party elites pushing Walz over the far more progressive, experienced, and courageous, and environmental Rebecca Otto? Because they think we need a DINO to win, and appear to have lost touch with the party rank and file, just as they did in 2016. Walz is a talented but glad-handing politician, and older DFLers, the kind that promoted Hillary Clinton despite the rank and file’s strong preference for Bernie Sanders, find an old white traditional male politician to be a safer, steadier choice when the stakes of losing run high. But that is EXACTLY the kind of thinking that loses elections, because it disenfranchises party activists, it is reactionary instead of visionary, and it selects candidates from on high who are less able to capture the imagination of voters as something new and different. Considering that Democrats have never won the Governor’s seat two administrations in a row, that lack of contrast and imagination is a major concern in contemplating a Walz candidacy.

In their fear, the party elders who have endorsed Walz are willing to overlook Walz’s anti-progressive, anti-environmental voting history, thinking a DINO is what voters want. But they’re wrong. Hillary Clinton was anointed by the same party elites, and she underperformed Barack Obama in Minnesota by 180,000 votes. Hillary Clinton had many good qualities, but last cycle, Minnesotans showed they were ready to embrace bold, progressive leadership, the kind of leadership that they believe, based on track record, won’t sell them out on key issues when the going gets tough. They want a candidate who runs outside strict party affiliation, who thinks independently, and who takes stands for ordinary people instead of the wealthy elite or big corporations even if it means the corporations will mount attacks. They want the kind of principled, fearless leadership shown by Bernie Sanders and Rebecca Otto, not the calculating, fearful, history of Tim Walz.

But what about Trump? Didn’t Greater Minnesota go heavily for Trump? Didn’t the Minnesota Senate go Republican and the House go even more Republican? Considering all this, don’t we need a more conservative and calculating Democrat from Greater Minnesota to bridge the so-called “urban-rural divide”? That’s what some party elites argued when pushing Tim Walz. But Rebecca Otto is the only candidate who resides at the intersections of urban, suburban, exurban, and rural, on a small farm outside the Twin Cities. This means everyone can claim her as theirs.

But more importantly, the “urban-rural divide” appears to be a Republican myth that Democrats should not buy into. The evidence shows that Donald Trump received almost the identical number of votes in Minnesota as Mitt Romney did in 2012, so the notion that Donald Trump surged in Minnesota is false. Rather, Hillary Clinton underperformed Barack Obama’s 2012 Minnesota numbers by nearly 180,000 votes. The congressional districts that went the most heavily for Donald Trump in the general election (7, 6, 8, and 1) also largely went the most heavily for Bernie Sanders in the primary.

Clinton’s underperformance meant that 180,000 Democrats stayed home not just from her race, but from all races. That meant there were fewer Democrats out voting while Republicans were out in their usual numbers, so despite the DFL spending record dollars, Democrats lost every close race. Some portion of this has to be laid at the feet of party elites who, for all her advantages, interfered in the process by backing Clinton too early and loudly, lining the machine up behind her as “the front runner” and disenfranchising Sanders voters who, the above numbers show, stayed home. Some of these same elites are making the same costly mistake in 2018 by backing Walz.

The results of the 2016 election can more accurately be interpreted as an anti-establishment vote and not reflective of an urban-rural divide — and that is a reading which favors Rebecca Otto as the DFL candidate for governor.

Unlike Walz, Otto has always run largely without the support of the party kingmakers and big money players, focusing her energies on rank-and-file grassroots activists, in the style of Bernie Sanders and Paul Welstone. In so doing, she has always outperformed the DFL candidate for Governor, racking up historic victories in election after election. This approach also led her to an historic victory in the 2014 primary, when a self-financed candidate outspent her 4 to 1, and she beat him 81%–19%.

Rebecca Otto does very well on the Iron Range, and understanding why that is so leads to a full appreciation of her standing with Minnesota voters. Otto voted to protect the BWCA and Lake Superior watersheds from copper-nickel mining until we get better financial assurances from multinational mining companies. Many assumed this would hurt her on the Range and cost her the election as governor, but the facts show just the opposite. Indeed, the “done on the range” argument is from the Republican, not Democratic, playbook.

Otto vastly outperformed both Governor Mark Dayton and Congressman Rick Nolan in every county on the Iron Range and across the entire 8th Congressional District in 2014, improving her margins after her vote. To see if Otto’s brave and thoughtful stand on nonferrous mining cost her any votes, we can compare her margin of victory in the 2010 and 2014 races in the Iron Range counties. (Note: The margin of victory is recognized as the best way to compare across counties, etc., because of differences in ballots across different precincts or elections. These data are from the Secretary of State’s office.)

Otto grew her margin in every Iron Range county in 2014 by an impressive average gain of 9.51 points, for a 72% bigger margin across the Iron Range as a whole. Remember, this happened after the controversy on the range, in which Rebecca Otto took what many thought would be the less popular stand, knowing it was the right thing to do. This happened after Otto explained her position and helped people see, through an examination of long term goals and shared values, that her position was the right one for the people of the state in general and the Iron Range in particular. This is a reality that her Republican (and other) detractors on the range do not like to hear about and tend to react rather poorly to, in my experience.

The most important thing DFLers need to realize is that Rebecca Otto was the only Democrat to actually vote for Democratic values on this issue, while others were afraid to. Otto can rightly borrow Paul Wellstone’s phrase, “I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party,” when others cannot. If Democrats don’t stop compromising on their key values they will continue to lose like they did in 2016 because there will be no reason for DFLers to vote for them. I believe voters are well aware of this, this and appreciate Rebecca Otto for it.

Was it a fluke? Maybe Otto just had an easier race in 2014. Let’s look at Governor Dayton’s Iron Range performance and see if there is any difference.

Here again, Otto’s 2014 margin of victory on the Iron Range was 1.54 points higher than Gov. Mark Dayton’s and 4.41% higher than Dayton’s across the 8th CD as a whole. While Otto performed better in every county in 2014 than in 2010, Dayton lost points in 5 of 7 Iron Range counties and across the 8th CD as a whole.

When comparing Otto’s margin to Nolan’s margin, Otto’s outperformance becomes even more striking. Here, Otto completely trounced Nolan’s performance in his own congressional district, to a truly stunning degree.

Otto outperformed Nolan by 12.15 points on the very Iron Range that was supposed to cost her re-election. And Otto’s margins were even better on the Iron Range than they were in the 8th CD as a whole, where she outperformed the Congressman’s margin by a stunning 10 points. Otto’s strong popularity is why Nolan asked her to headline or speak at events. Often, she was the only statewide elected official or party officer there for him at these events.

The evidence is absolutely clear and abundant that Rebecca Otto’s courageous stand on nonferrous mining earned her votes on the Iron Range. Suggestions to the contrary are not backed up by the facts.

What about Otto’s appeal in urban and suburban areas? The candidate with the best chance of winning the Governor’s race can appeal to voters in both Greater Minnesota, and in urban and suburban areas. So, let’s look at Otto’s performance in the state’s most liberal, urban, and populous area, Congressional District 5, home of Minneapolis. We’ll use its high-profile Congressman Keith Ellison as our benchmark.

Rebecca Otto and Keith Ellison both began their terms in 2003 as State Representatives. In 2006 when Otto was elected State Auditor, Ellison won the DFL endorsement for a rare open seat in Congress, making him the shoe-in in the general election because of the CD5 DFL index.

The following compares Rebecca Otto’s CD5 performance to the Ellison benchmark in each house district in the congressional district:

It turns out that Rebecca Otto is also an exceptionally strong performer in urban/suburban areas, outperforming Congressman Ellison’s margins in 14 of 20 house districts, and across the 5th CD as a whole. Note that Ellison’s performance in his own district is stellar, so Otto’s comparable but better performance is stellar-plus.

Rebecca’s urban and suburban support is not limited to CD5. In CD4, Rebecca outperformed the benchmark Congresswoman McCollum’s margin in 13 of 21 House districts in, and across the congressional district as a whole.

Because of her strong performance and experience in urban, suburban, exurban and rural areas, Rebecca Otto outperformed the margins of every gubernatorial candidate she has been on the ballot with — Tim Pawlenty, Mike Hatch, and Mark Dayton — in 2006, 2010, and 2014.

Rebecca Otto also unseated an incumbent, and she did it by the largest margin in 112 years, in a race for a seat that had been occupied by Republicans for 134 of its 149 years. This was an enormous and historic upset — on a level that Walz can only dream of.

Otto then made history a second time when she won a tough re-election against the same opponent while being heavily targeted by the Republican Party, and without help from the DFL Party, becoming the only Democrat to be re-elected to the Auditor’s post in Minnesota history. Otto is now in her third term, and made it a third time with her absolutely crushing defeat of Matt Entenza in the 2014 DFL primary.

There is only one candidate with both the electoral experience and the track record of standing up for what’s right without fear or favor, and it is Rebecca Otto. Rebecca is authentic, warm, humble, yet tough, willing to fight for what is right, and these aspects of her character are already widely known. She is widely recognized by State Auditors around the country, winning every major award and serving as president of the national organization of State Auditors. She has Republican support as well as Democratic. In fact, it was former Governor and State Auditor Arne Carlson who first asked her to run for State Auditor. She has strong executive experience at the state level, and she knows how to manage the legislature. On all these measures, Governor Otto would be one of the most qualified new governors on her first day in the State House.

This is a year in which voters are looking for a truly progressive candidate, and it is right that they do so. Voters want a candidate who actually contrasts with Republicans instead of voting like one of them, a candidate who has powerful statewide executive and electoral experience and yet has demonstrated that she won’t sell out progressive values. Rebecca Otto is exactly that candidate.

In a year when so much is at stake, it is time to give voters a strong contrasting choice instead of a Democrat In Name Only practicing familiar old-style politics. It is a year when Minnesota is finally ready to elect a populist female governor, and we have such a candidate with the state executive and electoral experience to make that a reality. With only stunning and historic victories behind her, Gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto is in ready to make history yet again.


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Roger Pielke Junior, I forgive you for this one thing

Climate Change, Uncategorized, , , ,
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Hi there, folks. This post should have been a tweet in response to Roger Pielke Jr (@RogerPielkeJr), professor of political science at the University of Colorado Boulder, the guy who got fired by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight for, as I understand it, his anti-science positions on climate change. This is a response for a tweet by Junior designed to offend, nay, attack, both Professor Michael Mann and moi. But Roger blocks me (and everybody else) on twitter, so this has to be a blog post.

Roger is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I suppose I can’t blame him for getting every single thing that he gets wrong wrong. When someone gets a specific thing wrong it is sometimes hard to say if it is because of base ignorance, nefarious intent (willful ignorance), or just one of those things someone didn’t happen to know. Since I am an anthropologist as well as a self-described expert (sub guru level, class II) on The West Wing, and Roger is neither, I will assume that he is not likely to get a West Wing reference even when it bites him in the face, even when West Wing references are dernier cri.

Refer to this post for background.

Having read the post, you understand that Judith (and Roger, but more Judith, because she is an actual climate scientists) rogered themselves — screwed themselves over — by leading Congress to the edge of the cliff, the metaphorical cliff you push federal funding programs off of, then asking to get pushed off the cliff before realizing what they were doing. I think that is clear.

Now, have a look at this brief scene from the West Wing.

See how the dairy farmer got rogered by President Bartlet back before he was running for president?

Now, have a look at some of Roger’s latest twittering.

So, Roger is accusing me of making a rape joke. I forgive you, Roger, because you are not up to this conversation and I understand that.

Now, I’m off to be interviewed for a local show on Minnesota’s Science March, coming up, then we’ve got a birthday in the family and gotta get ready for that!


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Mann, did Judith Curry ever get Rogered!

Climate Change, Uncategorized
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I was just thinking about Roger Pielke Jr. and Judith Curry, and the interesting situation they have found themselves in.

The hole they dug and climbed into. The corner they’ve painted themselves into. The metaphor that mightily mired them.

I’m talking about the situation they’ve created for themselves over the last few years as they’ve sunk into various states of denial of the reality or importance of global warming and its effects. Don’t confuse the two of them, they are very different. If anything, Roger is a true believer warmist who has a particular ax to grind that blinds him to the bigger picture, while Curry has gone pretty much all the way down the rabbit hole insisting that we can’t know anything about global warming because we don’t know everything about global warming.

The recent Congressional hearings at which the two of them testified (along with a full on denier whom I’m ignoring right now, and actual scientist Michael Mann) exemplify this problem they have. There they were, tooling along with their denial or uncertainty or ax grinding, questioning the science and the appropriate policy, sucking up to the Republicans on the committee … until suddenly, near the end of the hearings … WHAM!!!!! Game over. Like the hovering lake fly that believes the trout to be a benevolent god right up to the moment the trout sucks the fly into its gut. (Apologies to Terry Pratchett.)

These thoughts were coming to me as I listed to Ira Flatow interview Mike Mann on Science Friday. I wasn’t quite sure if I would write up my thoughts, when I suddenly noticed some activity on Twitter. Apparently, Roger Pielke Jr was also listening to Ira interview Mike, and he had a reaction.

Screen Shot 2017-04-08 at 1.24.32 PM(Note: I had to sneak on an twitter sans-account to see Roger’s comments, since he blocked me long ago. Oddly, his dad, Roger Pielke Sr. recently started following me on Twitter, so I suspect the Pielkes are spying on me. Anyway, since Roger avoids direct communication with me, ever since I criticized some of his work, if you know him, do send him this post because I’d love to hear his response!)

Anyway, Mike said some stuff and Roger’s hair caught on fire. Then, Judith Curry jumped in to egg Roger on. And now her hair is on fire too. I am not going to respond here to that particular fight; Rather, I want to relate the thoughts I had prior to the Twitternado. But, for your edification, I provide the following links and documentation.

Here is where you go to listen to the Science Friday podcast. (Listen to all of it, both interviews are quite interesting!)

Then, here are the tweets that I know of:

It occurred to me that my thoughts are best demonstrated via the medium of speculative fiction. Or, more exactly, a speculative fiction screenplay.

SETTING

A Congressional Hearing Room. Congressman Smitty Lamar, a conservative anti science Texan, is running the hearings. The topic is, “Climate Change and Why Science Is Always Being Done Wrong By Scientists.”

The witnesses include Jane Curry, a retired professor of climate science who is now well known for her belief that scientists don’t know anything about science, and Roger Pielke III, a political scientist who is well know for his assertion that climate change is not a bad thing, no matter how bad it is, because we can adapt to anything, and once we’ve adapted to something it is no longer bad, right?

Both witnesses have had a fairly comfortable life in academia, living off the largess of the US Government, who has funded nearly 100% of their research. They hope to continue to get grants, or to work on government funded projects. They also do accept that climate change might be an important problem, though Jane believes we can never know and Roger believes that it can never matter, and they would like the government to acknowledge it just enough to keep funding work on it.

Smitty Lamar, on the other hand, along with his colleagues on the Committee of Science, believe that the government should not spend another dime on climate change research, and that the academic structure in which this research should be done needs to be disassembled, possibly made illegal. He feels that scientists should no longer be in charge of deciding what is important, or what research to do, or what the research means. This should all be decided by the Committee of Science of the Congress. Lamar and his colleagues see this as part of a general shift in the US towards accepting Russian and Soviet cultural, political, and economic themes, like Oligarchy and Giant Propaganda Machines. (Little known fact: Smitty Lamar’s recently acquired pet schnauzer is called “Lysenko.”)

A third witness for the hearing is the famous climate scientist Michael Person, who is a well established figure in the earth system science community and is there to represent the 97% of the other climate scientists, who clearly, according to Smitty Lamar, have it all wrong.

DIALOG

Lamar: Dr. Person, could you please tell the Committee why the American People should believe you when you say that climate change, global warming as some call it, is real, and why we should care?

Person: Well, for one thing, we can see it. Global surface temperatures have been going up for decades…

Lamar [interrupting]: So the only thing you have to offer us is “consensus” [The term “consensus” stated with saccharine voice]. Let me tell you something, Dr. Person. Science is NOT a popularity contest. The simple fact that every scientist agrees on the same basic facts means nothing to this body. Dr. Curry, what do you think about climate change?

Curry: Well, I’m here to tell you that I just don’t know, and nobody else does. Even the IPCC has said that there is a 0.00002% chance that global warming is not actually happening, and furthermore, a 0.000000456% chance that it is not related AT ALL to human activities.

Lamar: Very well, thank you Dr. Curry. Now, Dr. III, what is your opinion about climate change?

III: Well, yes, the Earth is warming, and yes, things have changed, and yes, humans have something to do with it, but my research shows that nothing of any importance has actually happened. For example, if we take all the hurricanes, and ignore the vast majority of them because they happen in other countries, and then take all the ones that threaten us and ignore them because they happened to not hit us even if they did wipe out some Caribbean islands, and then take the remainder that happen to occur on land and ignore one or two of the biggest ones on technical grounds, then, really…

Lamar [interrupting]: Thank you Dr. III, I appreciate your comments. Now, I would like to propose to you that we change the way we do science, so that this crazy idea of consensus is cast aside and that we allow the opinions of the minority rule, pay attention only to the few who believe something entirely different from the rest of the community, that this would be a good thing. Dr. Person, your thoughts?

Person: Well, that is exactly the opposite of how science works, Congressman. Consensus is not a beauty contest as you call it, but it does involve …

Lamar [interrupting]: Thank you Dr. P. Dr. Curry, what do you think?

Curry: Yes, indeed, we are a repressed minority, and the rest of the scientific community treats us very badly, they are all bullies …

Lamar [interrupting]: Thank you Dr. Curry, Dr. III, let’s hear your feelings on this matter.

III: I agree with my colleague Dr. Curry. Dr. Person is one of the worst. They are always telling us that our data are no good, or our conclusions are wrong, and they are constantly being mean to us by insisting that our work is subject to review and analysis of the rest of the community of…

Lamar [interrupting]: Thank you Dr. III. Now, I think the American People deserve the red, white, and blue truth here, and they need to be given a break, and we need to stop spending valuable time and energy learning things that we already know are highly inconvenient. So, I’m proposing that all federal funding for climate change research, and research in all cognate fields, be terminated, and the federal agency NOAA be terminated and all climate change related work at NASA and EPA be stopped, and also, since a mere majority of highly biased climate scientists believe in any of this anyway, that we purge all the data and make it against the law to spend public money on any of this, just like we did with firearms related morbidity and mortality research.

Dr Person, what do you think about my proposal?

Person: Well, that would be the exact opposite of what we should…

Lamar [interrupting]: Actually, Dr. Person, I wanted to ask you a different question. Are you now or have you ever been a tree hugging hippie?

Person: Um … I don’t think so. Well, I did go to a conference at Berkeley once, but I never had long hair or anything…

Lamar [interrupting]: Dr. Person, I expect you to provide proof for the record as soon as you can, over the next few days, that you have never had hair. Now, Dr. Curry, what is your response to the termination of all funding for science and illegalization of all science related activities????

Curry: Um…. gulp….

Lamar [interrupting]: Thank you Dr. Curry. Dr. III, I ‘m sure you agree with me?

III: Well, um, actually … gulp …

Lamar [interrupting]: Thank you Dr. III. That is all the time we have for today. Besides I have to rush off to a meeting with my friend Alec….

I’ll leave you with this:


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Clay Higgins: McCarthyism

Climate Change, Uncategorized, , , , ,
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Scientists are now being subjected to unbridled McCarthyism.

Eventually the transcript will be available, but for now you’ll have to just trust me on this. Congressman Clay Higgins, Republican on Lamar Smith’s alt-Science committee, demanded today to know if climate scientist Michael Mann (author of The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, and By Michael E. Mann – Dire Predictions, Second Edition: Understanding Climate Change“>this book) is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. It turns out that Mann is not. I wonder what would have happened if he was?

Anyway, after Mann answered the question, Higgins demanded that Dr. Mann provide proof that he is not a member of the Communist … er, I mean, Union of Concerned Scientists.

I’ve heard that the only way to prove that you are not a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists is to be tossed in a pond, and if you float, you are a member. (Or do I have that backwards?)

Anyway, I made a nice card for Mike Mann to send in if he likes:
Screen Shot 2017-03-29 at 1.28.08 PM

And, of course, the obligatory Monty Python video:


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