The Consensus Project

A lot of hard work went into it, no doubt. The mountain has laboured and brought forth a mouse.

Many venues have already written about the Cook et al Consensus project. The thing is, you can completely accept every single finding in the paper. Yet, it falls flat.

What did the authors find? First, that about 32% of climate papers expressed a position on the cause of global warming. Fine. Second, of the papers that expressed a position, 97.1% ‘endorsed’ human-caused global warming. Accepted again.

Put two and two together. What does it tell us? That about 30% of climate papers ‘endorsed’ human-caused global warming.

This, after counting up every climate paper over the past  twenty-two years – more than eleven thousand of them.

Nice ‘consensus’ you’ve got there guys.

Global warming denier! Vaxxer! …etc

One of the ways of detecting you’ve entered a scare campaign domain, is that you suddenly become stupid. You are just getting along swimmingly, and all of a sudden, you will either get the strange feeling, ‘oh, this looks like something I should have known or been concerned about’. or, you will be told directly, ‘you ought to have known this!’. Or, even laughed at: ‘you don’t know this? hehe’.

The second feature is, you’ll find yourself in the presence of fake experts. I know the warmers have preemptively cornered this explanation as though it works in their favor but we’ll ignore it for now. When a strong orthodox line is made accessible and attractive, it becomes easy for noisy busybodies to speak with authority, whereas under normal circumstances, anyone but genuine experts and knowledgeable amateurs would be moved open their mouths. Good examples are Keith Kloor and John Cook, a journalist and a cartoonist, respectively, bloviating on vaccines, and Mark Hoofnagle spreading pronouncements on ‘denialism’. There are numerous others.

Examine in this light a recent article by Peter Doshi in the British Medical Journal. The introduction characterizes how the influenza vaccine is currently presented:

Today around 135 million doses of influenza vaccine annually enter the US market, with vaccinations administered in drug stores, supermarkets—even some drive-throughs. This enormous growth has not been fueled by popular demand but instead by a public health campaign that delivers a straightforward, who-in-their-right-mind-could-possibly-disagree message: influenza is a serious disease, we are all at risk of complications from influenza, the flu shot is virtually risk free, and vaccination saves lives.

But, Doshi says, the real situation is different:

Closer examination of influenza vaccine policies shows that although proponents employ the rhetoric of science, the studies underlying the policy are often of low quality, and do not substantiate officials’ claims. The vaccine might be less beneficial and less safe than has been claimed, and the threat of influenza appears overstated.

The evidence on benefit from influenza vaccination in reduction in elderly deaths is non-existent. This is observational studies in such journals as The New England Journal of Medicine notwithstanding, where high figures for percent reduction in mortality from vaccination (mindbogglingly at 27-50%) have been published.

Though known for a while, Doshi summarizes how these high numbers are the product of bad statistical inference making, owing to the healthy bias effect. Of course, if you had asked questions about it, you will be given the ‘you-must-be-crazy’ look.

Remember again, the main reason influenza vaccination came into practice is protection of the elderly and children. Influenza mortality can strike any age group (the 1918 epidemic is a good example, though infected individuals likely died owing to an immune overreaction that is not usually seen). The extremes of age, however, are more commonly affected in serious or potentially fatal disease. This is where the evidence is weak.

Now, where have we come across similar situations before?

Global warming, a fossil fuel funded conspiracy … Why not?

Through Lubos Motl comes news of Novim, the group got BEST together, having won a $40,000 award. For making an app for the ipad. Funny you should make something of which there are close to 50 billion of, and win awards for it.

It is natural for interest groups to pat on the back those who help them for performing their role. Novim’s Michael Ditmore (pictured) picked up the award from a American Clean Skies Foundation, an outfit promoting natural gas. I’ve linked to the Board of Directors page. You can see they are either (a) natural gas and/or oilmen, or, (b) lawyers. The other thing is, if you want to be all green and kitsch … you’ve got to have a Burning Man-like icon as your logo.

A natural gas promoter would like millions of people learning about the global land thermometer record, wouldn’t it? Because natural gas is a ‘solution’ for global warming, right?

Lewandowsky et al 2013: surveying Peter to report on Paul

In 2012, Stephen Lewandowsky and co-authors submitted a paper to the journal Psychological Science, generating widespread publicity. Here, I address a simple issue/question that has hovered around the paper from the time it made its appearance. The issue is at the heart of Lewandowsky’s first ‘Moon Hoax’ paper and the in-limbo second paper in Frontiers in Psychology.

The ‘Moon Hoax’ paper (a.k.a LOG12, LOG13 etc) draws a number of conclusions about climate skeptics (called ‘deniers’). A major portion of the data and analysis is devoted to ‘rejection of climate science’. The paper’s title advertises its findings about ‘deniers’.

So the question is: how did Lewandowsky and co-authors study climate skeptics?

The paper draft (pdf) stated simply that authors ‘approached’ 5 skeptic blogs to post a survey, but ‘none did’. This led to a hunt to find who exactly these bloggers were (Lewandowsky wouldn’t tell). Lewandowsky spread significant amounts of distraction and smoke on the matter, raising hue and cry that he did email skeptical bloggers:

First out of the gate was the accusation that I might not have contacted the 5 “skeptic” bloggers, none of whom posted links to my survey. Astute readers might wonder why I would mention this in the Method section, if I hadn’t contacted anyone.

What matters however, is not whether or not Lewandowsky contacted skeptics but what came of such contact. The whole point of contacting the bloggers was to get surveys posted on their websites to ensure skeptic participation. This never took place. Through the noise, the question of non-sampling of skeptics remained unresolved‡.

As a way of providing answer, the paper itself appeared in final form about a month back. When examined, the authors appear to have settled on a remarkable method of addressing the defect. In the supplementary information, Lewandowsky et al (LOG13) make a startling claim. They state the blogs that did carry their survey have a broad readership ‘as evidenced by the comment streams’:

All of the blogs that carried the link to the survey broadly endorsed the scientific consensus on climate change. As evidenced by the comment streams, however, their readership was broad and encompassed a wide range of view on climate change.

The authors claim to have analysed reader comments at one venue to determine this. They state:

To illustrate, a content analysis of 1067 comments from unique visitors to http://www.skepticalscience.com, conducted by the proprietor of the blog, revealed that around 20% (N = 222) held clearly “skeptical” views, with the remainder (N = 845) endorsing the scientific consensus.

Extrapolating, the authors infer further that close to eighty-thousand skeptics saw Lewandowsky’s survey on Skepticalscience alone (see below). Owing to such broad readership, enough skeptics are said to have been exposed to the survey.

Readers of climate blogs will at once see several things that are off. However, these are the assertions forming the basis on which Lewandowsky et al 2013 rests.

Analysis

To start, the authors’ premises are accepted. It is deemed that comment streams can be analysed to determine whether a blog has a broad readership, or a more polarized one.

Comments on six blogs where Lewandowsky et al’s survey was posted were analysed. Commenter names and comment counts were obtained from web pages using R scripts. Following the authors’ method, this was carried out for the entire month the survey was posted. For each blog, duplicates were removed.

Commenters were classified as (a) skeptic, (b) ‘warmist’ (c) ‘non-skeptic’ (d) lukewarmer, (e) neutral, or (e) indeterminate. Regulars whose orientations are familiar (e.g., dana1981 – ‘warmist’) were tagged first. Those with insufficient information to classify, and infrequent posters with singleton comments were tagged ‘indeterminate’†.

The results are presented below. A total of 614 commenters contributed 4976 comments to six blogs in the month the survey was posted (range: 2 – 2387 comments/blog). An estimated 111 commenters posted across blogs, with 504 unique commenter aliases from all blogs.

The results show a skewed commenter profile. As a whole, there are 59 skeptical commenters, amounting to about 9.5% of total. Individually, skeptics range from 5-11% of commenters between blogs, with one venue (Hot Topic) showing 19% skeptics. Closer examination shows this to be made up by just 10 commenters. Non-skeptics are close to 80%, i.e., 480 of 614. Neutral posters are 9%, and indeterminate 3%. Of the 59, more than half are from comments posted at one blog (Deltoid).

The same pattern can been seen to repeat by blog:

The marked difference in comment number between the blogs obscures underlying similarities. When commenter proportions are made equal, these become plain:

From the data above it is evident these blogs are not places where readership is “broad” or encompasses a wide range of views on climate. To the contrary, these are highly polarized, partisan blogs serving their cliques. One half of the blogs hosted comments from all of 6 skeptical commenters in total (Scott Mandia, A Few Things Ill Considered, and Bickmore’s Climate Asylum).

The non-surveyed Skepticalscience.com

What about Skepticalscience’s comment stream? Lewandowsky et al state that John Cook at his website analyzed 1067 comments to identify 222 skeptics and use this to buttress claims of broad readership in survey blogs. One wonders how Cook got the fantastic figures! When commenters for Sept 2010 are analysed, there are 36 skeptical voices of a total 286. Cook’s estimates are inflated six times over. In reality skeptics form 12.58% of commenters for that month, and a mere 0.03 fraction of John Cook’s 1067 unique commenters.  These results verify with independent analysis performed by A.Scott.

Furthermore, close to 90% of commenting viewers are not skeptics. Contrary to Lewandowsky et al, Skepticalscience is not a place where readership is “broad and encompasses a wide range of view on climate”. In fact Skepticalscience exactly matches Deltoid, a virulently anti-skeptic website, in commenter profile.

Importantly however, John Cook never posted the survey at Skepticalscience (see here and here). In the face of this false claim, the authors’ post-hoc exercise of computing skeptic exposure becomes counterfeit.

How would the picture have been had Lewandowsky et al actually obtained survey exposure with a skeptical audience? As a comparative exercise, I pulled comment counts from widely read skeptical blogs Wattsupwiththat, Bishop Hill, Joanne Nova and Climate Audit for the same period. Traffic figures provided by Anthony Watts indicate close to 3 million visits in August 2010. The results ought to be eye-opening:

Conclusion:

A number of things can now be confirmed. The authors of Lewandowsky et al 2013 did not survey skeptical blogs. The websites that carried the survey have neither a broad readership, nor represented skeptical readers and commenters. The authors did not survey any readers at the website Skepticalscience, but represent their data and findings as though they did. Lastly, the authors’ calculations in assessing survey exposure, which they base on the same Skepticalscience, are shown to be wrong.

With the above, conclusions drawn about skeptics by Lewandowsky et al by sampling a population of readers and commenters who are not skeptic can be termed invalid. At best the study’s skeptic-related analysis is meaningless, arising from non-representative sampling. At worst the possibility of false conclusions owing to flawed survey exposure arises. The above data combined with Lewandowsky et al 2013 survey results, in fact, show one possible outcome of displaying loaded questions relating to climate skeptics to a non-skeptical audience. Conclusions about non-skeptical ‘pro-science’ commenters and their psychology are probably more appropriate.

Notes:

‡ The list of surveyed blogs (from Lewandowsky et al 2013 SI):

Skepticalscience – http://www.skepticalscience.com
Tamino – Open Mind http://tamino.wordpress.com
Climate Asylum – http://bbickmore.wordpress.com
Climate change task force – http://www.trunity.net/uuuno/blogs/
A few things ill considered – http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/
Global Warming: Man or Myth? – http://profmandia.wordpress.com/
Deltoid – http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/
Hot Topic – http://hot-topic.co.nz/

Note that (a) there is no record of Skepticalscience having posted the survey, and (b) the Climate Change Task Force entry is available on the Waybackmachine (for e.g., here)

† Batch Google searches (e.g., http://google.siliconglobe.co.uk/) and keyword searches on scraped HTML blog posts were used to search for commenter output. Multiple entries were frequently required for each commenter to be satisfactorily classified. Wherever possible (which was so in almost all instances), results during August and Sept 2010 were employed. Comments supportive of consensus, critical of ‘deniers’ and ‘skeptics’ and/or unequivocally appreciative of article (e.g., “great post, now I can use this in my arguments with deniers”) were classified as coming from ‘warmists’. Comments approving of main thrust of a ‘warmist’ blog post, but with no further information available were classified as ‘ns’ – not skeptic. Commenters questioning basic premises of blog post, being addressed to by ‘denier’, ‘denial’ etc, whose stance could be verified by similar mode of behaviour in other threads, were classified as ‘skeptics’. In most instances they were easily recognized. Those, in whom no determination could be made, owing to various factors, were classified as ‘indeterminate’. Commenters explicitly professing acceptance of consensus but posing relatively minor question, etc – classified as lukewamers. Entries required reading at least two different comments for almost every commenter, except in instances commenter orientation was known from prior experience. Certainly there will be errors to a degree, and subjectivity is involved. It is unavoidable that infrequent (and singleton) commenters, and those with non-unique names (‘tom’, ‘john’) are resistant to classification. Validation of method was available when blogger A.Scott arrived at similar results working independently on portions of the data.

This article was published at WUWT.

The New Left Project: Deniers vs Zombies

Through a series of accidents, I ended up at ‘The New Left Project‘, Britain’s latest addition to ‘high quality comment and analysis’ for ‘lively, inclusive culture of left-wing discussion’.

That means sitting in street-side cafes, like Mark Steyn’s Eloi from After America, sipping coffee and chatting lightly about Hugo Chavez, Simon Singh, Egyptian lady cartoonists, Earth Day celebrations and climate change. I think that’s how they thought it will be.

One such staged chit-chat was on climate and zombies. “Global warming roams the streets in incipient zombie form while world thinks it has time for 2°C gong to set it loose” – was the story. Only this thread invaded by a horde of ‘deniers’, offering the usual stupid suggestions about not building solar panels and windmills, and using fossil fuels. Contact was initiated gently by a few ‘veteran deniers’, skilled at these maneuvers. But this was quickly followed by Ben Pile, brownedoff, and yours truly.

Soon the climate zombies retreated to Moderation Cove, with their dear leader holding the fort.

This is how one finds Dear Leader doing it – with this little gem about climate change and its effect on the poor:

And where it is well understood that it is the world’s poorest who stand to suffer the most if serious action [on climate change] is not taken now.

One feels compelled to deliver a message of sorts at this juncture.

Dear Leader of the climate zombies, the poor stand to suffer the most because they live in the lap of nature, in direct contact with the ‘environment’. There is nothing in between.

Want to protect the poor from climate change? Take them out of their environments. Put food, cloth and distance between the two. Well, they’ll do it themselves, just stay out of the way.

Postscript: Dear Leader is one David Wearing, a PhD candidate in foreign relations, with graduate degrees in European philosophy, literature, and international public policy. His name appears on roughly 50 articles on the New Left Project ,  3 articles in Huffington Post UK, 14 in the Guardian, 3 in the New Statesman, 1 in Liberal Conspiracy, 1 in openDemocracy, and 1 in Le Monde Diplomatique. Not a single one of these relates to climate change. Yet he is able to glibly use shopworn material interjecting himself into areas he has little hold of. The New Left Project syndicates articles from a fairly wide range of authors. It carries audio recordings. Yet, it is run by ‘volunteers’ who struggle to keep things going in their ‘spare-time’. Yet, there is no detail on who funds it.

Webcite is running out of money

You know how every now and then, Wikipedia runs ads asking for funding to keep their website running. Sometimes I am not sure I want to give them money. At others, I feel they deserve to stay on.

But here’s a service that is definitely, one-hundred percent useful and deserving of Internet users’ support: WebCite.

WebCite is in need of funds. I’m sure they’ll be happy if we help. As will anyone who uses an online archival service.

Lew and Cook: recursion in the climate ghetto

One of the main indicators of the ‘ghetto-ization’ of climate blogging is a complete lack of response to criticism one encounters. John Cook’s Skepticalscience is a prime example in this regard. These people won’t respond to criticism even if their lives depended on it.

But, on occasion, they will, If they think such criticism might reach important ears, or if they feel there might be blowback

Cook is currently in the middle of one such episode. He has had to respond to Bishop Hill revealing (via Barry Woods’ work), that he and his fellow author Lewandowsky identified Richard Betts, Chief of Climate Impacts of the Met Office UK, as a ‘conspiracist’.

Cook claims on his blog that Betts is not a conspiracist. Betts’ comment on the other hand, made it into the main data table in the supplementary information of his peer-reviewed academic paper.

How does he explain this?

The paper’s methods are quite clear on what was done.

1. Authors define ‘recursive hypothesis’ - “…any potentially conspiracist ideation that pertained to the article itself or its author, unsubstantiated and potentially conspiracist allegations pertaining to the article’s methodology, intended purpose, or analysis “
2. Authors use Google searches, Alexa rankings and direct site visits and gather recursive hypotheses
3. Authors excerpt ‘blog posts’ that published recursive theories into a master table with, and this is key, ‘each excerpt representing a mention of the recursive theory’

Examine point#3 again, just in case. The authors claim that “all recorded instances” of recursive theories are in their supplementary data table. Betts’ qualifies under a specific conspiracist idea – ‘didn’t email deniers’.

The thread with Betts’ comment focused entirely on Lewandowsky’s data and has over one hundred comments. The table contains 9 entries for “didn’t email deniers” excerpted from the thread. All excerpted comments meet the authors’ criteria for ‘recursion’, i.e., express some judgement about Lewandowsky’s method, purpose, analysis or motive. This includes Richard Betts’ comment.

Lewandowsky and Cook now claim

1. “we are certainly not claiming that [Betts] is a conspiracy theorist”
2. Betts’ name being in the table “attests to the thoroughness of  daily Google search”
3. the supplementary table just represents “raw data”. 

None of the above can be correct.  It is not possible for the table to just be “raw data”, as their own description of method shows. The comment selection does not reflect on the thoroughness of Google search; rather it does on the faithful identification of comments/posts with recursive conspiracist ideas as defined. As a result, this does imply that Betts is a conspiracy theorist.

If we accept that Betts is not a ‘conspiracist theorist’, then the same would apply to other contributors found by the authors’ searches as well. The Betts comment is qualitatively no different from the others.

It would be interesting to see how Lewandowsky and his co-authors show this not to be true.

Expecting standards of academic probity from Lew psychology

On his blog Skepticalscience, esteemed doctoral fellow John Cook writes of a commenter’s reaction to his colleague Lewandowsky’s as yet unpublished paper:

“LOG12 was fundemenatlly [sic] flawed from the start, and throughout. It offered no valuable insight or understanding as a result. It is clear to any rational outside observer it had one purpose – to be used to promote the authors advocacy of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming – and to demean and denigrate those who do not believe as he does. The fact this paper has never been published, as Lewandowsky’s repeatedly claims, confirms this finding.”

Cook laughs at this commenter as a ‘conspiracist’ for thinking non-publication confirmed how bad the paper really was.

It will be interesting to see whether this commenter resists the “Something Must Be Wrong” urge when LOG12 is published or continue to assert that the research is “a fraud”.

No, Cook.  That’s not the ‘something must be wrong’ urge, that’s the ‘any serious academic would see right through this’ type of wishful thinking.

Thinking your colleague’s paper didn’t get published, because of how bad it is, is placing faith in the academic peer-review process, yet. Where one hopes reviewers and editors would see questions and criticism raised about the paper. Your commenters and critics come from a place where higher standards reside.

The story of the Frank Luntz Memo

One of the tropes of environmentalism is that the (evil) Republican party used mind-altering framing techniques gleaned from Frank Luntz, a political strategist, to delay, disrupt or negatively affect in some form climate-related policy action in the United States.

This idea is has been so politically convenient, and useful, for environmental groups (who like to moan about their ‘failures’ and blame someone even as they mark off notch after notch on their policy totem-pole), Democratic Party supporters (for obvious reasons) and others , that Luntz’s name is invoked simply as an self-evident example of a black-ops framing hit carried out on the climate movement. Known simply as the Luntz memo, it was a 16-page pamphlet with which he’s supposed to have done this.

I offer two examples. First, you can catch from this clip, of the ho ho BBC’s Earth: The Climate Wars, what’s is pinned on Luntz (starting ~2 min in):

The essential bit transcribed (emphasis mine):

“But what was a secret was the strategy the Republicans used to get the American public on their side. That is, until a revealing document came to light in 2003. […] Frank Luntz was a pollster and political advisor with an impressive reputation. When an internal campaign memo he wrote in 2003 was leaked, it was revealed that it was the issue of the environment on which Republicans felt most vulnerable.”

[...][investigative gestures by narrator]

“Its pretty obvious that the aim of all this is to avoid taking action on climate change.”

Another one here, by the CBC:

Again, the point in question transcribed:

Underlying it all was a simple concept. The public can’t understand the complex science of climate change, [Luntz] argued, so convince them that scientists don’t fully comprehend it either. Then persuade them that without sound science it makes no sense to take preventive action at a huge economic cost. […] From Luntz’s lips to the President’s ears, that advice became George W Bush’s mantra …

The real question

Conspiratorial fear-mongering aside, what did Luntz really do? What tricks did he teach the Republicans? And why did he do it?

To answer these questions the first thing of course, is to find the Luntz memo and read it. This is important because you might notice is that it is not easy to get a hold of. You’ll also realise, there are any number of excerpted exegeses of the memo which push their inverted view by quoting selective passages from it. So, the next thing is to read it fully. Here it is.

What you’ll see, contrary to widespread rumour, is a document that is primarily concerned with strategies to connect to a majority whose views, as discovered by Luntz, were already favourably disposed toward the climate cause and the environment.

That’s right. Its about what Luntz found existing in the public, and his ideas for appealing to such an audience. The same thing has been turned on its head and blamed on him for having caused to come into existence, and nurtured to full growth.

For instance, Luntz found via his focus group methods that members of the American public believed “there [was] no consensus about global warming in the scientific community”. His recommendation, arising from what he found, was to make this lack of consensus an issue and defer to science, in order to win over such individuals.

The second famous item, the rebranding of ‘global warming’ into ‘climate change’, is even better. In the memo, Luntz is seen providing the insight that ‘environmentalism’ and ‘global warming’ invoke images of extremism and alarmist dogma, both of which turn off neutral voters who found ‘climate change’ more palatable.

How have the above been turned on their heads? Luntz is directly blamed for (i) trying to induce the American public to think there was no consensus about global warming. and (ii) attempts to rebrand ‘global warming’ to detract from its urgency. Quite the opposite of what he set out to do.

Consider how the environmental movement has used the Luntz memo. Firstly, it paints a picture of a nefarious conspiracy hatched by ‘industry’ to lull the population into sleep using clever slogans. Such characterization neuters Republican party attempts to gain a foothold in the climate debate arena. Secondly, it fixes blame for creating something he just found already existed. Lastly, even as it slams Luntz, it has borrowed and implemented ideas present in his report to advance its own cause.

Consider what has happened since the memo was written. Per Luntz’s focus group findings, a majority of the American public ‘believed in global warming, believed that humans were likely causing it, were not interesting in the science, but interested in positive solutions to the problem, wanted jobs, end to dependence on foreign oil, and a shutdown of outsourcing’. Correspondingly he came up with a number of words and phrases to be used by any political party to advance its case.

Last heard, he had just finished work for the pressure group Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

Postscript: Luntz is just another pollster who has consistently worked toward ending real debate over climate issues. His advice on environmental issues in the Luntz memo is virtually indistinguishable from what is in the current US administration playbook.

Skeptical Chicken

The Skepticalscience Team, usually prompt in jumping on to any study or a sneeze that confirms their biases, is very quiet about Marcott et al with the 11,000 year hockey stick. Why? Are they worried the study would tank after they stick their necks out for it?

So things sit, dumb. But as a resident hack attempted to work up froth about ‘denier’ Anthony Watts, the itch had to be scratched and discussion of the Marcott paper broke out.

Now, these comments, coming almost entirely from Skepticalscience contributors’ are ‘off-topic’, violate ‘comment policy’ and ought to be deleted right? Nah. That’s not how it works. It is one rule for the in-house boys and another for the rest. So the comments stayed up.

Along comes A.Scott, asking pesky questions about Marcott’s paper trying to join the discussion that was already on. Can you guess the response?

Moderator Response: [DB] This thread is about Watts Interview – Denial and Reality Mix like Oil and Water. Much of your challenge is beyond the scope of this thread – and thus off-topic. FYI.

So this Team can talk about a dangerously wobbly piece of work like Marcott et al but only with each other. The moment someone from outside asks tough questions, they shut everything down.

If you look at the thread, A.Scott began just as instructed by the moderator ‘DB’, with a lengthy comment about [Anthony] Watts’ denial business. The result? Comment butchery by the same moderator: snip, and further snip, snip.

So, not only can there be no lateral movement whatsoever, these guys won’t stand their ground and defend their own threads from questions that are on-topic.

Good luck to A.Scott.

Anne Jolis asks questions to Michael Mann

Can you guess what might happen if you ask a climate scientist a tough question?

He will set his pals on you, that’s what.

Post-Climategate 3.0, emails between a journalist and a climate scientist came to attention (again). In the exchange, you can see Anne Jolis of the Wall Street Journal asking a handful of questions to Michael Mann, a climate scientist of very high repute. Who wouldn’t? Too many questions keep coming up about the same person’s work, people get curious.

This is what Michael Mann did. First, he informed the journalist that all her questions were wrong, and she was committing an ‘offense’.

…premise of essentially everyone of your questions is wrong, …

Misrepresenting the work of scientists is a serious offense, …

Second, he threw a whole bunch of material – links to reports, newspaper clippings, Congressional hearing gossip, and Realclimate blog posts – at Jolis. Funnily, most of the material was dated and irrelevant to her questions.

Stuff flung at journalist by a climate scientist. Note the kitchen sink in the middle.

Third, Mann copied the following people into the conversation:

Joe Romm
Media Matters’ Erikka Knuti
Dan Vergano
Bud Ward
George Monbiot
AJ Walzer
Paul D. Thacker
Chris Mooney
Stephen Schneider
Gavin Schmidt
Stefan Rahmstorf
Phil Jones
Tim Osborn
Andy Revkin
Henry Pollack
Gabi Hegerl
Benjamin Santer
Richard Littlemore
Someone called ‘DarkSydoftheMoon’

A scientist here and there one can understand, but half the activist world? Chris Mooney? And Richard ‘ we’re all about PR, not much about science’ Littlemore?

Littlemore’s answers are funnier. In response to Jolis’ queries, Littlemore asserts the ‘unprofessional, haphazard or amateurish manipulation of data’, ‘machinations’, ‘motivations’, and ‘professionalism’ of Steve McIntyre, tries to sell his book, and offers to set up an interview with … himself or Jim Hoggan.

Anyone left with doubts about the intellectual bankruptcy of the climate movement at its highest levels?

Incidentally, Anne Jolis won the Bastiat Prize for journalism for 2012. Surely someone who knows to ask good questions.

Holy buckets

I am looking at this at Tom Nelson right now:

I think our friend the saint gets almost everything right. It is heartening to know that there are those in the West who are kind enough to keep in mind folks who are trying to climb out of their holes.

Long live the Internet.

Why is John Cook not responding?

This relates to Skepticalscience‘s John Cook who has co-authored a academic peer-reviewed paper in the Frontiers in Psychology journal with Stephen Lewandowsky.

There are two simple, yet serious questions about his paper. Question number one: where is the ethics approval section of the paper?

Now, I might be mistaken. The section could be in the paper. After all, the paper is 57 pages long and ethics review section could be hidden someplace. On top of it, I am a ‘denier’. So I might be not seeing what’s there.

On to question number two. Why are there what appear to be fabrications and falsifications in the paper?

Again, this has to be clearly understood. People make all sorts of mistakes in research. The kind of errors that are considered serious enough to constitute scientific misconduct are hard to pin down. As a shortcut, the US NSF for instance makes the determination that any act that constitutes fabrication, falsification or plagiarism, would qualify.

The kind of usage of comment material Stephen Lewandowsky, Cook and others appear to have employed in their paper seems to fall squarely in the falsification and fabrication territory. Brandon Shollenberger’s post is published at a prominent outlet WUWT.

Shollenberger’s evidence doesn’t rely on interpretive grounds to support this conclusion: the excerpted quotes and the full quotes with their context are provided in the open.

Cook usually does not answer to criticism. But this is about a scientific publication in the public domain. Of the questions above, the second one, is serious. It requires a response.

Is this the same scientist that created the hockey stick?

The Michael Mann Show has turned into a hoot. The reluctant, accidental public figure that he is, there is now virtually no pause.

Here is the latest from Mann:

The disinformation machine finally appears to be going into full gear now to discredit latest study striking a critical blow against the industry-funded climate change denial campaign.

[...]

I mean, the guy even carries a picture of a little pyramid, courtesy his favorite Sourcewatch. Only the all-seeing eye is missing from the top.

Quote fabrications from Australian academic climate communicators Lewandowsky and Cook

Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook are two extremely well-respected academics. The former operates out of University of Western Australia and the latter, from University of Queensland in addition.

This post by Brandon Shollenberger shows Lewandowsky and Cook to have fabricated quotes from material left by commenters on blogs. The quotes were then used to imply entirely different meanings from what the original comments intended, in their peer-reviewed climate communication paper in the prestigious Frontiers in Psychology stable.

How is this possible? The peer-review process usually has a strong track-record of trapping errors such as the above.

Lewandowsky and Cook’s paper, a draft of which is available, also lacks description of an institutional review process or approval for their study. Usually reviewers are prompt in asking for such things and rarely, if ever can anyone get past them. Even the lowliest of studies involving human subjects entails an ethics board or an institutional review board examination.

How did this happen? Maybe, there is a simple explanation. Perhaps Lewandowsky and Cook obtained institutional review via proper channels but failed to mention them in their paper.

The climate debate is over

A couple of days back I was at Ben Pile’s Climate Resistance blog. Ben was taking Paul Ehrlich to the cleaners and on the way, I saw this:

[...], it is notable, then, that there has been no ‘situation of open debate, with experts weighing in, and with interactions between the public, experts, and political decision makers’ that Norton et al speak of, not in the case of recycling or climate change and energy policy in the UK. Indeed, the entire point of constructing supranational political organisations and panels of experts to lead policymaking on climate change has been to circumvent the problem of democracy.

Wait, wait, what? Read that again:

“…there has been no… open debate … in the case of climate and energy policy in the UK”

Well, blow me down! Is Pile suggesting that an open debate about climate change never took place in the UK? Looks like he is.

Would you believe that a couple of brilliant academics and skeptics would actively censor and shut down anyone for saying … the same thing?

Roger Pielke Jr asked to leave the board of Global Environmental Change

He attacked a paper written by Naomi Oreskes and Michael Oppenheimer which showed that climate scientists err on the side of least drama.

Faced by the criticism, the powers that be went behind his back. And he was removed from the journal’s editorial board the paper was published in. Or so he thinks.

Pictured above is a zebra in the Serengeti, as it rolls on the floor laughing.

Why burn coal? Why not chemically combust it?

There is an unscientific and misleading story released by Ohio State University that has been carried at WUWT. It is getting a good clobbering in the comments.

The Ohio professor behind the research wants you to know that burning coal is bad. Specifically, he wants you to know that he thinks it is bad. More specifically, he wants you to think, when it comes to coal, it’s the burning of it that is evil.

None of the above are true. Burning coal and chemically combusting coal, … are the same. This type of research, it seems, is prompted by a spineless attitude toward a regulatory monster that seeks to choke off production of energy by squeezing down on the exhaust. Stand up and fight.

Instead of Chamberlaining “CO2 is bad for the environment”.

Circular reasoning in temperature adjustments

You’d think that the average weather of a location is climate? You’d be wrong. The real deal goes like this: there is something called climate which influences weather the effect of which we see in everyday readings such as temperature.

Speaking from a climatologic sense, both statements may be true. From a standpoint of measurement however, the second one makes no sense. It is false. The ‘climate’ is unknowable to us except via measurement of the weather points that constitute it.

This distinction is lost in several climate discussions and even amongst brilliant scientists. An outcome of the distinction, and a basic principle one might add, is that measurements need to be performed independent of effects the generated data are used to infer. Measurement precedes inference.

Standard climate thinking however has proceeded in opposite directions when it comes to creation of temperature series. Under this method, a local station will be ‘adjusted’ if it is deemed, by some metric, to not reflect underlying climate. (Whereas you might  think underlying climate is inferred by a measurement of a given station)

I am stating nothing new here. David Stockwell presented the same basic earth-shattering logic (for climate science practitioners, that is) in this elegant write-up: Circularity of homogenization methods

He writes (emphasis mine):

If S is the target temperature series, and R is the regional climatology, then most algorithms that detect abrupt shifts in the mean level of temperature readings, also known as inhomogeneities, come down to testing for changes in the difference between R and S, i.e. D=S-R. The homogenization of S, or H(S), is the adjustment of S by the magnitude of the change in the difference series D.

When this homogenization process is written out as an equation, it is clear that homogenization of S is simply the replacement of S with the regional climatologyR.

H(S) = S-D = S-(S-R) = R

While homogenization algorithms do not apply D to S exactly, they do apply the shifts in baseline to S, and so coerce the trend in S to the trend in the regional climatology.

Stockwell further states (emphasis mine):

I would think the determination of adjustments would need to be completely independent of the larger trends, which would rule out most commonly used homogenization methods

There is proof confirming this diagnosis. Censorship-meisters Realclimate published a post by Zeke Hausfather on his paper co-authored with an US federal government NOOA employee.

They state the rationale underpinning the paper’s methodology:

Any major changes over time in individual stations that are not reflected in nearby stations are likely due to local (rather than regional) effects such as station moves, instrument changes, time of observation changes, or even such things as a tree growing over the thermometer stand. By removing any artifacts of individual station records not shared with other stations in their region, we can get a more accurate estimate of regional climate changes.

I read this thread (with 620 comments), where Hausfather explains the thinking, more directly:

anomalies only work well IF the station records are not subject to localized changes due to non-climatic factors. In practice, at least over time spans of decades, this is rarely the case. So additional work (e.g. homogenization) must be done to remove any local perturbations that are not reflected in the regional climatology. Again, because longer-term climate changes occur regionally (not locally), and perturbation of a local record not reflected in other nearby stations is likely a non-climatic factor and should be removed if your goal is to calculate an unbiased estimate of regional climate changes over time.

This is circular.

An unbiased estimate of ‘regional climate change’ should emerge from well-curated, unadjusted temperature records of stations. Hausfather thinks the signal of climate change should be teased out by the guiding hand of adjustments made to stations.

What adjustments you do to a station, should have nothing to do with climate. Any reasoning that violates the above fails. Such adjusted series may per chance be representative of regional climate. But we would lack the means of knowing them to be so.

It is sobering to realize that most homogenization methods in use could be afflicted by this logic.

Here’s a nice little story

A group of people met together, and discussed global warming, or the lack of it. One of the group told the outside. The rest got on his case right away. Everything was taken back. Now no one knows anything about it.

350.org. This segment was brought to you by the Rockefellers

Almost three years ago, I wrote about climate change propaganda websites. The first exhibit was the one shown below:

William McKibben’s ’350′ organization has received $10 million in funding over the past 8 years. These are people who make it their business to speak about your money, all the time.

McKibben ideas – which he has for about $25,000 a year – are to deceive people into thinking that fossil fuels are dangerous and should be given up.

McKibben’s hypocrisy, it appears, was well-known. This is David Kamp ‘doing the math’ on his first book (the one with the dead bird on the cover) in Spy magazine, in 1989:

When asked what he wants to do with oil companies, McKibben reportedly said: “I don’t think financially we can cripple them. They’re so big and so rich,”

A while back, he parasitically attached himself to the ‘Occupy’ movement. Get that. A paid shill of the Rockefellers, protesting against the ’1%’.

Activist trash going down the way of the activist trash.

Kenya’s climate change exercise

When I see this, there is a brief heart-crushing moment. These people did nothing to deserve this. Imagine being fooled into thinking that ‘climate change’ is your ticket to the big time.

We are led to believe Kenya thinks climate change is important. More precisely however, it is Kenyan top dog climate change pressure group Climate Change Working Group, or KCCWG, who thinks so. In fact, it thinks climate change is so important, that it worked tirelessly to draft a climate change bill that even passed through the Kenyan Parliament last December.

But the Kenyan president had other ideas. He sent the bill back to the house, saying there wasn’t enough public participation in its drafting (I guess he forgot to ask Roger Pielke Jr how badly the Kenyans want governmental tackling of global warming).

The KCCWG expressed shock at the decision. But its own internal documents admit that the climate bill was just a private member bill, helped on by Franklin Bett, a man dropping off from the election race for being Kericho‘s governor.

So much for top-down, activist-driven, global warming legislation.

The organizations that fund KCCWG are Trocaire, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Heinrich Boll Stiftung, Norwegian Church Aid, Cordaid, and Cafod.  Many of these are Christian organizations. What are they mucking about in climate change in Africa?

KCCWG also worked with the State University of New York in the drafting of the climate bill. The money? It is from USAID, DFID, AFD, DANIDA, etc.

Donna’s dug up the trail from a nonexistent conference report to the same Christian Aid which became the source for the BBC to claim that Africa is heating up rapidly. The source of the error turns out to be the same Kericho’s. Contrary to the ravings of Carbon Brief, it was likely just a single individual who caught the BBC glibly passing off a 3.5 celsius temperature rise in Africa.

The Kenyan climate bill has tanked. Perfect time to take potshots at those who worked hard in pushing the climate bill in Kenya, eh? Go Hickman.

Incidentally, why does Kenya want a climate bill, one wonders. It turns out, that it wants to ‘reduce’ greenhouse gas ‘emissions’. The aborted law had a provision to throw you in jail, for five years, if you flouted it. Not kidding.

Skepticalscience and John Cook’s vaccine misinformation

John Cook is doing a fellowship at the University of Queensland. He has recently released a presentation that spreads vaccine misinformation on the propagandist website Skepticalscience

The Cook co-authored presentation includes a slide about a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) flyer on flu vaccines. It claims that attempting to correct a ‘myth’ can familiarize readers to the myth.

To illustrate, Cook and co-authors show the flyer which lists ‘myths’ about influenza vaccines and provides correct information beneath each item. Item #3 is “The side effects are worse than the flu”, which is countered by “The worst side effect you’re likely to get with injectable vaccine is a sore arm”

From the CDC flyer on influenza vaccines

Cook and authors believe this approach is wrong. Instead, they insist that only correct information (‘facts’) be provided. The authors advocate saying: “–The vaccine is safe! The worst side effect would be a sore arm.”

Presentation slide by Cook and co-authors on message about flu vaccine

This is outright false information. There are several adverse effects associated with an injectable flu vaccine, the least harmful of which is a sore arm. Far worse adverse events are possible, ranging from fever to severe allergic reactions. Fortunately, these are rare. What vaccinees need is to be informed in an appropriate manner about the probabilities of these events.

Cook gets rid of key phrases, adds new words and an exclamation point to the CDC’s careful language. An optimistic statement about probabilities has been mutated into a false categorical declaration about absolute risk from a vaccine.  What one hears now sounds like a burger sales pitch by a marketing team. It is the Susan Joy Hassol brand of ‘science communication’.

The live-attenuated vaccine administered as a nasal spray can result in a mild flu-like illness. In a given season, it is quite possible and likely that individuals note their mild symptoms following the vaccine and contrast them with unvaccinated members who show no visible illness. The origin of the misconception likely lies in this specific context. The CDC text addresses these points.

Cook’s approach, instead, is to label the whole thing as just a ‘myth’.

Yeah. That should clear up all confusion.

Postscript: Cook and Lewandowsky’s conclusion that repeating a so-called myth will reinforce it, comes from their colleague Nobert Schwarz’s presumptuous “Skurnik, I., Yoon, C., & Schwarz, N. (2007). Education about flu can reduce intentions to get a vaccination”. We learn, from a Schwarz review article in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, that Skurnik et al showed subjects two leaflets one being the CDC flyer and the other a simple ‘facts’ sheet. Those who saw the CDC flyer misremembered more myths as facts on a true/false questionnaire, after a time delay. How such a study design can reflect either the intentions or the true state of knowledge of potential vaccine recipients than rather the test-taking strategies of experimental subjects is beyond me.

Incidentally, ‘Skurnik, Yoon and Schwarz (2007)’ is…unpublished.

Consider what Cook does on his website. He takes a purported ‘myth’ which is usually a caricatural simplification of an original question and start off confidently pretending that there is a clear-cut refutation. The refutation is constituted by an  answer that is often over-simplified to the point of falseness. When all messy questions that arise from reality are ‘myths’, all answers are simple.

Cook should keep his shenanigans to climate and stop spreading false information on vaccines and matters of public health and safety.

Shub Niggurath Climate

Dear Reader,

This has been a while coming. The blog will go into hiatus now. All available articles will remain accessible.

When I started, I wanted to do in-depth work. Among the articles I wrote, those on electric car manufacturer Coda, wind turbine manufacturer Suzlon, the Amazongate scandal, data availability in science, the IPCC SRREN, Skepticalscience and finally, the WWF, would qualify. Many of these were picked up by prominent outlets.

It is not easy to gauge one’s own contribution to the climate debate.

Speaking of which, will I stop work in the climate area? No. I’ll be around.

I know my regulars who are a handful. Thanks to them for their support. A special note of thanks to the readers and commenters at Bishop Hill and Tom Nelson.

I can be reached: nigguraths AT yahoo.com. Comments, suggestions and contributions are welcome.

Heartland: What is Judith Curry talking about?

Free speech is not a crime. Only when Greenpeace speaks

I don’t know. I am having a hard time understanding what she is saying.

How does one trust an Australian climate scientist?

Let us get this:

1) A certain number of climate scientists in Australia receive emails. These are characterized as ‘death threats.’ The alleged threats are publicized worldwide in Nature and the Guardian

2) Much after the news is disseminated and public sympathy garnered, the threatening emails are released under FOI to the blog owner of Australian Climate Madness

3) The emails contain no threats. Understandably enough, those at the centre of the event, still, do not want to be seen condoning any form of abuse. Discussion is stultified by reaffirmations of the virtues of civility.

… but …,

4) There do not seem to be any death threats.

Worstall and the carbon tax: Have you boiled your head yet?

earnshavian’s photostream

Imagine you are new to town. As you drive to the gas station, you are told that gas prices are 20 dollars a gallon.

Heartland: The billboard conversation

There are several levels to this. What did Heartland do? Was it a nice thing, or the right thing to do?

Tim Worstall, why did you impose the carbon tax? “I assumed that …”

A lot of people like climate change, mainly because it presents them with a platform for doing things they like to do. Of course, they will tell you they have come to do it because it needs to be done. So you see often – experts seriously discussing ins-and-outs of a ‘policy’ even as you blink about the need for the whole thing. Tim Worstall, provides us with an example. Tim likes the idea of a carbon tax thinks a ‘carbon’ tax  just needs to be done. Apparently he’s been yammering away about it for years.

So it begins …

So it begins