Pseudosceptics are at it again – misrepresenting and attacking climate scientists

I have already mentioned the irony of a failed politician attacking climate scientists, accusing them of treating science like a religion while declaring his own faith that:

“The world stopped getting warmer 17 years ago. That’s incontrovertible.”

(See “Incontrovertible” is it, Rodney? and Confusion and distortion – has global warming stopped?).

But another factor in this sordid little story was the way that Rodney Hide attempted to portray New Zealand climate scientist Dr James Renwick as a religious fundamentalist in his science. Basically he did this by misrepresenting Renwick – Hide told a porkie.

Hide claimed that Renwick “was in no doubt that man-made global warming was causing the summer drought” and went on to give this quote as “proof;”

” . . climate change, global warming. Put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and things warm up.” The host Corin Dann double-checks: “And you’re of no doubt of that?”

“Oh, no, no. There’s no other explanation that’s remotely plausible.”

Hide then went on to declare:

“That’s religious zealotry in action. Science is never that certain.”

Creating the impression that Renwick had “no doubt” that greenhouse gases were responsible for New Zealand’s recent extreme drought.

Problem is – at this stage of the interview the drought had not even been mentioned.

Interview transcript

Here’s the transcript of the interview from its beginning to Hide’s quote:

CORIN DANN: Good morning, Dr Renwick. How are you?

DR JAMES RENWICK: Good morning, Corin. Very well.

CORIN: Listen, thanks for coming on the show. I know you’re literally just back off the plane this morning. Tell us what is happening to NZ’s climate. Paint us a picture of what’s going on.

JAMES: Well, like the rest of the globe, NZ’s climate is warming up gradually. Temperatures have risen by the best part of a degree in the last century, and they’re set to rise by two or three degrees or maybe even more over the course of the coming century.

CORIN And this isn’t some normal- What is this? Is this climate change at work?

JAMES Yeah, it is. Yeah, climate change, global warming. Put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and things warm up.

CORIN And you’re of no doubt of that.

JAMES Oh, no, no. There’s no other explanation that’s remotely plausible.

Full transcript available at: Lack of govt leadership on climate change – Renwick

Simply a clarification that New Zealand’s climate is part of the global climate and that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming. The New Zealand drought had not even been mentioned at this stage.

The informal confidence Dr Renwick expressed was  consistent with the current understanding of the role of greenhouse gases in global warming – not, as Hide and fellow pseudosceptics and climate change deniers have claimed, that greenhouse gases were the direct cause of our recent drought.  That claim was a complete misrepresentation, clearly motivated and knowingly dishonest as the perpetrators also had access to the transcript of the interview.

Should Renwick have any doubts on role of greenhouse gases?

Dr Renwick did display, informally, a high degree of confidence that greenhouse gases are contributing to climate change. But that is hardly surprising because that is the current understanding of most climate scientists. Consider what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said.

The figure below shows the results of simulations of global temperature from 1900 to 2005. Figure a included all the natural and anthropogenic influences.  The black line is the actual measured global temperature anomaly (obtained by subtracting the average temperature for 1901 to 1950).  The individual simulations are shown as thin yellow curves. The red line is the multi-model ensemble mean (see Figure 9.5 – AR4 WGI Chapter 9: Understanding and Attributing Climate Change).

Figure b is a similar plot using simulations which consider only the natural influences on climate. The individual simulations are shown as thin blue curves. The thick blue line is the multi-model ensemble mean.

So, climate scientist have considered both natural and anthropogenic influences. And they are unable to reproduce the global temperature changes since 1970 unless anthropogenic influences are included.

That is why the IPCC has concluded that there is a high probability (>90%) that human influences are contributing to the current observed global temperature increase.

Notice also that the experts talk about probabilities. It’s a complex field and things are rarely cut and dried. We are more certain about some influences than others. And the IPCC doesn’t hide this fact – far from it. It doesn’t make sweeping claims in the way that some of their opponents do.

I am sure Dr Renwick accepts this – his comment “Oh, no, no. There’s no other explanation that’s remotely plausible” is simply an informal recognition  of that.

While on the role of greenhouse gases this short video provides some of the data supporting current scientific assessment – in this case not relying on computer models or the IPCC.

Was our recent drought caused by CO₂?

Later in the interview Renwick did comment on our drought. Here’s the relevant section of the transcript:

JAMES: Well, no, I don’t think panicking is very helpful.

CORIN : But it feels like that with this drought, though, doesn’t it?

JAMES: It’s a pretty exceptional event, yeah. It’s probably the first time in 50 years that it’s been this dry over this much of the country. So, sure, it’s exceptional. You know, a farmer would only see this once in a working lifetime.

CORIN: But if we’ve only seen it once in 50 years, should we not be that worried? That suggests it’s not going to happen for another 50 years.

JAMES: Well, the way the climate’s changing, the likelihood is that summers will become drier, so what’s a one-in-50 year event now will be, say, one in 20, one-in-25 year event by the middle of the century. And in some parts of the country, it might be a one-in-five year event by the end of the century, which means the farming sector’s going to have to adapt to that. We’ve got time – it’s decades we’re talking about, and farmers are very adaptable, but things will have to change.

Again, I think Renwick was just informally conveying what seems to be the current scientific assessment of the role of global warming in extreme weather events, like New Zealand’s drought and US storms. This is that one can’t prove a direct link of atmospheric CO₂ to single specific events. However, scientific analysis analysis suggests that such events will become more frequent as the planet warms.

As Dr Renwick expressed it – “what’s a one-in-50 year event now will be, say, one in 20, one-in-25 year event by the middle of the century.”

Given the informal nature of such interviews I think Dr Renwick presented the scientific assessment pretty accurately. But of course this won’t stop the pseudosceptics and climate change deniers. Most of these, and certainly Rodney Hide, have a ultraconservative political agenda. They commonly paint scientists as plotters and schemers, part of an evil world-wide conspiracy wanting to bring in a One World Government. And claiming scientists have manipulated global temperature records to create false evidence for fclimate change.

And, yes, despite the availability of the interview transcript local climate change pseudosceptics are still misrepresenting Dr Renwick’s statements. (see Hide sticks it to Renwick and Renowden a scaring warmist). They are studiously avoiding the transcript and instead interpreting reporter’s comments.

And, of course, sticking the boot in while they are at it.

Similar articles

“Incontrovertible” is it, Rodney?

I wonder if many politicians, or in this case ex-politicians, are capable of seeing the irony and contradictions in their public statements. Or perhaps porkies are just the stock in trade of politicians so irony doesn’t even come into it.

But hows this for irony – Rodney Hide is lecturing scientists about the nature of scientific knowledge (see Faith, not facts, drives global warming). Here’s what he says about claims by climate scientists that greenhouse gases like CO2 can lead to global warming.

That’s religious zealotry in action. Science is never that certain. The best-ever scientific knowledge was Newtonian mechanics. And Einstein blew it to bits. That’s the nature of science. It gets nearer the truth but can never declare the truth.

Only religious fundamentalists have certitude. Their knowledge is a belief system that’s immune to real world experience and facts.

I guess Rodney sees himself as more a religious fundamentalist than a scientifically literate person because he then goes on to declare – with the ultimate amount of “certitude:”

“The world stopped getting warmer 17 years ago. That’s incontrovertible.”

“Incontrovertible” is it Rodney? That sounds like a statement of faith.

Let’s look at some data

Firstly global temperatures: Here’s the data for the last 17 years:

Global temperature anomalies for 1996-2012 (Average annual temperature data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences),

Yeah – I know. There’s a lot of noise so all we can say from that data is the warming rate is in the range of  -0.02 and 0.17 °C/decade (95% confidence level). That’s the problem with such short time periods. Perhaps we should put that data in the context of the long-term trends:

Line plot of global mean land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present, with the base period 1951-1980. The dotted black line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean. The green bars show uncertainty estimates. [This is an update of Fig. 1A in Hansen et al. (2006).]

Still believe that “The world stopped getting warmer 17 years ago. That’s incontrovertible,” Rodney? Willing to put money on it? More important – would you as a politician be willing to commit the fate of your grandchildren on such an extreme claim?

Well, if you still think your claim is “incontrovertible” have a look at some more data. Here’s data for the change in the total earth’s heat content – storage in the ocean as well as atmosphere, land and ice.

And some more detailed data for the melting of ice – globally, Antarctic and Arctic (Click on the image if the animated gif is not changing):

(The last two figures are from Skeptical Science: A Big Picture Look at Global Warming)

Rodney assures us that “Anyone can do science. And scientists can often fall short.” Sure – but we surely expect more than this from scientists – professional or not. Rodney has simply taken a bit of non-representative data, extracted it from context, ignored everything else and declared his firmly held belief (one could even say “religiously” held belief) as “incontrovertible!”

Worse, while he is telling such porkies he is dishonestly demanding something from scientists which is extremely silly. That they just shut up with their ideas and conclusions until their data is completely “incontrovertible.” Until it can be presented with absolute “certitude.” They should STFU till they have the absolute truth – after he has already acknowledged that science “gets nearer the truth but can never declare the truth.”

He would love that, wouldn’t he? It would give him and his ultra-conservative political mates a completely clear field.

But wouldn’t it be irresponsible to gag scientists like that? Surely we want governments to use the country’s scientist to get the best current data and conclusions – even as we acknowledge that it is never the final story.

---

Footnote:

Perhaps this is what is leading Rodney Hide astray. In a comment at the climate pseudosceptic/denier/contrarian blog Climate Conversation Group Rodney acknowledged he is using that blog as a resource (a fabulous resource and mine of information“) Bloody hell, no wonder he has it so wrong. He really has to widen his reading.

Mind you, one of the resources he may have used is Richard Cummings who claims in comments on that blog he has shown that our scientific understanding of the fundamental properties of greenhouse gas molecule is all wrong! I suggested that he should present his findings at this year’s New Zealand Climate Change Conference. And this crowd could also present their analysis of New Zealand’s temperature record which they produced as an alternative to that of NIWA. However, they seemed to consider these suggestions offensive and banned my comment!

Incontrovertible my arse.

See also: Dear Rodney Hide

Similar articles

A global warming hoax meme is born – in New Zealand too!

I have said it before – these militant climate change denial/contrarian/pseudosceptics do live in a different world – or at least a different hemisphere (see Australia’s “New Normal?” and Climate contrarians/deniers are cherry picking again). But here I want to illustrate their behaviour in their denial internet echo chamber where they pass on every scrap of information supporting their conspiracy theories of the great “global warming hoax.”

The easy copy and paste key commands on computers has a lot to answer for.

Consider this latest bit of silliness at Richard Treadgold’s local blog – Climate Conversation Group. Richard Cumming, who Treadgold, or at least Richard Cumming himself, considers a very bright scientific investigator, is continually pasting links to scientific papers and other blogs in the echo chamber. Extensive quotes of abstracts and analysis.

His posting frequency is so high I sometimes think Richard Treadgold’s claim the blog receives more than 1,400,000 visits a year may be correct.*

Today he posted a link purportedly to a new paper in Nature Climate Change: Atmospheric verification of anthropogenic CO₂ emission trends by Roger J. Francey et al. It’s behind a pay wall so those without institutional access will have to make do with the abstract.

But see how Cumming presents this paper (in a comment on the ironically titled post by Treadgold “ IPCC created and controlled by activists). He implies an abstract completely different to the real abstract (see table below).

Abstract as implied by Richard Cumming at Climate Conversation Group blog

Actual abstract at Nature Climate Change, 3, 520–524, (2013)

New paper demonstrates temperature drives CO2 levels, not man-made CO2. A recent paper published in Nature Climate Change finds a disconnect between man-made CO2 and atmospheric levels of CO2, demonstrating that despite a sharp 25% increase in man-made CO2 emissions since 2003, the growth rate in atmospheric CO2 has slowed sharply since 2002/2003. The data shows that while the growth rate of man-made emissions was relatively stable from 1990-2003, the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 surged up to the record El Nino of 1997-1998. Conversely, growth in man-made emissions surged ~25% from 2003-2011, but growth in atmospheric CO2 has flatlined since 1999 along with global temperatures. The data demonstrates temperature drives CO2 levels due to ocean outgassing, man-made CO2 does not drive temperature, and that man is not the primary cause of the rise in CO2 levels.

International efforts to limit global warming and ocean acidification aim to slow the growth of atmospheric CO2, guided primarily by national and industry estimates of production and consumption of fossil fuels. Atmospheric verification of emissions is vital but present global inversion methods are inadequate for this purpose. We demonstrate a clear response in atmospheric CO2 coinciding with a sharp 2010 increase in Asian emissions but show persisting slowing mean CO2 growth from 2002/03. Growth and inter-hemispheric concentration difference during the onset and recovery of the Global Financial Crisis support a previous speculation that the reported 2000–2008 emissions surge is an artefact, most simply explained by a cumulative underestimation (~ 9 Pg C) of 1994–2007 emissions; in this case, post-2000 emissions would track mid-range of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emission scenarios. An alternative explanation requires changes in the northern terrestrial land sink that offset anthropogenic emission changes. We suggest atmospheric methods to help resolve this ambiguity.

Complete misrepresentation, or what!

Actually his implied abstract is just a blog post he has copied and pasted straight from The Hocky Shtick – a companion blog in the denial echo chamber.

A humourous aside though Richard Treadgold lapped up this brilliant bit of research copy and past by Cumming. He commented:

“A gamebreaker! The paper shows quite a different curve from the Mauna Loa graph so they must have used different data ;. . . . .this looks like dynamite.”

Poor soul. Treadgold doesn’t understand that this new paper plots atmospheric CO₂ flux – the rate of change of C – not the actual levels themselves as in the Mauna Loa graph (see below). Of course the curves will be different you fool!

So another climate change denial meme has been born – actually a double barreled one thanks to Treadgold’s little burst of joy:

1.  Francey’s paper “demonstrates temperature drives CO₂ levels, not man-made CO₂.”
2. It also proves that the classic plot for atmospheric CO₂ levels at the Mauna Loa Observatory may be a hoax!

Trouble is – both memes are completely wrong.

Let’s see if they have legs though. Which  will be the next blog in the echo chamber to pass the meme along?

As Richard Cumming commented somewhere else “The internet will do the rest.”

---

* We only have his word for that – he has never allowed public access to the statcounter he used to have installed and has recently removed it. He claimed there was something faulty with it because it gave him the wrong results!

Similar articles

Our fingerprints are all over it!

Skeptical Science has just posted A Comprehensive Review of the Causes of Global Warming. The review’s conclusion are well illustrated by this figure which attributes the inputs from human and natural causes over the last 50 years.

Net human and natural percent contributions to the observed global surface warming over the past 50-65 years according to Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), and Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange).

The different colours show the different studies reviewed. These used different and independent methods and Skeptical Science concludes they “provide multiple lines of evidence that humans are the dominant cause of global warming over the past century, and especially over the past 50 to 65 years.”

These studies considered different human and natural causes:

• Human greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,
• Solar activity,
• Volcanic activity,
• Human aerosol emissions,
• The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

GHG and human aerosol (primarily sulphur dioxide, SO₂)  are the two largest human influences, and solar and volcanic activity and ENSO are the dominant natural influences on global temperature. The figure below illustrates the breakdown of their contributions in these studies.

Percent contributions of various effects to the observed global surface warming over the past 100-150 years according to Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Stott et al. 2010 (S10, gray), and Huber and Knutti 2011 (HR11, light blue).

Clearly, human inputs have provided the largest effect on global temperature over recent years. Greenhouse gas emission have had a positive effect and aerosol emissions a negative, partly balancing, effect. This negative human factor is decreasing as humanity cleans up its act in terms of SO₂ and other aerosol pollution.

As Skeptical Science summarises these findings:

“A wide variety of statistical and physical approaches all arrived at the same conclusion: that humans are the dominant cause of the global warming over the past century, and particularly over the past 50 years.  This robust scientific evidence is why there is a consensus amongst scientific experts that humans are the dominant cause of global warming.”

Our fingerprints are all over it!

Similar articles

Christmas gift ideas: Thinking of our grandchildren

Books are ideal Christmas presents. And as I am spending some time dealing with family business I thought reposting some of my past book reviews over the next few days could be useful am repeating some of my past book reviews.

Climate change is a pressing issue – and one which attracts a lot of politically inspired misinformation. Hansen’s book provides a lot of the science, but also the history of the science..

---

Book Review: Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity by James Hansen

Price: US$16.50*
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (December 8, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1608192008
ISBN-13: 978-1608192007

Climate change contrarians and deniers love to hate James Hansen. He’s up there alongside Al Gore, Michael Mann and Phil Jones. And of course their hatred is no more justified in Hansen’s case than it is for the others.

Others criticise Hansen for his “activism.” His willingness to warn politicians and the population in general of the dangers we face if we continue with a “business as usual” approach to fossil fuel and CO₂ emissions. They suggest this could discredit his science. Scientists must always be objective and should limit their pronouncements to the scientific facts alone.

This is not an old problem for scientists – remember their activism after the first use of nuclear weapons and the beginning of the nuclear arms race. Scientists often confront ethical issues arising out of their work.

Thinking of our grandchildren

Book Review: Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity by James Hansen

Price: US$16.50*
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (December 8, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1608192008
ISBN-13: 978-1608192007

Climate change contrarians and deniers love to hate James Hansen. He’s up there alongside Al Gore, Michael Mann and Phil Jones. And of course their hatred is no more justified in Hansen’s case than it is for the others.

Others criticise Hansen for his “activism.” His willingness to warn politicians and the population in general of the dangers we face if we continue with a “business as usual” approach to fossil fuel and CO₂ emissions. They suggest this could discredit his science. Scientists must always be objective and should limit their pronouncements to the scientific facts alone.

This is not an old problem for scientists – remember their activism after the first use of nuclear weapons and the beginning of the nuclear arms race. Scientists often confront ethical issues arising out of their work.

Are they sceptics or deniers?

The recent escalation of controversy around the issue of climate change and the Copenhagen meetings has sparked another controversy. Are those people who argue against the scientific consensus that human activity most probably contributes to the observed global warming sceptics or deniers?

I say –  it depends. I certainly don’t want to call a genuine sceptic a denier. A genuine sceptic is honestly interested in the science – after all scepticism is the natural state of scientific attitudes. I expect all climate scientists are sceptics. I have heard the comment that about 70% of climate scientist accept the IPCC analysis of the situation. 15% think that it is too pessimistic and 15% think it too optimistic. Plenty of scepticism there.

“Climategate” – the smoking gun?

Some of the more extreme climate change deniers, and others who have an anti-science agenda, continue to dredge through the domestic debris of the emails stolen by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia. Their conclusions are, of course, predictable.  Meanwhile, the balanced media summary oif this fiasco is probably well represented by George Monbiot in the Guardian: “The leaked exchanges are disturbing, but it would take a conspiracy of a very different order to justify sceptics’ claims.” (see Global warming rigged? Here’s the email I’d need to see ).

I particularly liked his depiction of the email that the climate change deniers and their allies would dearly love to find. It’s a great satire and portrays some of the silliest conspiracy theories promulgated by deniers.