In March, the Discovery Channel, teaming again with the BBC, plans to present “Life” — a “breathtaking ten-part blockbuster [that] brings you 130 incredible stories from the frontiers of the natural world … This is evolution in action.”

And again, viewers will be astonished by the remarkable videography done by the best pros in the world under arduous, even dangerous conditions. Viewers will park themselves in their Barcaloungers, appropriate beverage and salsa and chips in hand, and revel in the breadth and depth of the series. But are these series the most accurate portrayals of the state of the natural world? And do they desensitize us to reality?

Yet again, television will fail to remind viewers that the vast pollution and environmental degradation brought on by the needs and wants of those viewers and the industries that satisfy them are threatening to destroy much of what the viewers see.

In fact, viewers are hard-pressed to find videography of pollution anywhere on scheduled series on basic cable. Out of sight, out of mind. Check the lists of programming at National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. At least Nat Geo offers “Six Degrees,” but it’s a what-if, worst-case, disaster scenario special.

Pollution is ugly. It does not make for breathtaking television. Nor is televising the pollution of air, land, and water profitable. Corporate sponsors do not support programming of a topic whose root cause could often be laid at the sponsors’ doorstep.

In 1970, I was hired as an environmental writer, three weeks before the first Earth Day. Six weeks later, after the blush had faded from the environmental rose, the paper “promoted” me to full-time sports writer. But on every five-year anniversary of Earth Day, editors placed Denny back on the green beat for a few weeks. In those days, the green movement prompted newspapers to undertake science and environmental pages — and full pages at that. But such commitment to the cause faded, like my paper’s dedication to the environmental beat, because advertisers don’t like stories that paint consumerism as a root of all environmental evil.

As a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists for two decades, I’ve seen first-hand the decline of dedicated science and environment pages in the nation’s newspapers. Christine Russell, a former science reporter for The Washington Post and the president of the U.S. Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, lamented that those dedicated pages peaked at 95 in 1989 and dropped to 34 in 2005 — and they’re still declining. I’ve watched the number of members of SEJ working in print environmental journalism decline as members lost jobs or beats.

Every editor I ever asked about the fate of his or her paper’s science or environmental page said the same thing: “No advertiser support.” What companies would want to put their ads for airline travel deals or SUVs on a page dedicated to depicting accurately the consequences of both purchases?

We know, of course, that corporatists can’t control all breaking environmental news — especially if good video can be had. Spill oil on a highly visible beach, dump toxins into a river and kill thousands of fish, let a dam holding 2.6 million cubic yards of toxic coal sludge break and inundate hundreds of acres, and by god you’ve got a public relations environmental disaster guaranteed to sit on the front page or lead the nightly news … for how long? Modern news media generally have the same attention span as their corporate owners — short.

Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum wrote “Unpopular Science” for The Nation. In that well-argued piece, they lamented the need for more, not less, critical writing about science and scientific issues, such as the environment:

We live in a time of pathbreaking advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology, of private spaceflight and personalized medicine, amid a climate and energy crisis, in a world made more dangerous by biological and nuclear terror threats and global pandemics. Meanwhile, advances in neuroscience are calling into question who we are, whether our identities and thought processes can be reduced to purely physical phenomena, whether we actually have free will. The media ought to be bursting with this stuff. Yet precisely the opposite is happening: even in places where you’d expect it to hold out the longest, science journalism is declining.

When Ted Turner was the financial muscle behind CNN and TBS, its environmental unit, led by Teya Ryan, Barbara Pyle, and Peter Dykstra, produced ground-breaking coverage. But that legendary green DNA has evaporated from CNN. Two years ago CNN whacked “its entire science, technology, and environment news staff, including Miles O’Brien, its chief technology and environment correspondent, as well as six executive producers.” Here’s the explanation from CNN’s flack:

We want to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand alone unit. Now that the bulk of our environmental coverage is being offered through the Planet in Peril franchise, which is produced by the Anderson Cooper 360 program, there is no need for a separate unit.

Sure. More free-diving with great white sharks by the Silver Fox himself. O’Brien was a first-rate science reporter; Cooper isn’t. CNN has long since lost its moral compass regarding editorial decisions about content.

The New York Times still has its Tuesday “Science Times” page, but it’s an island in an uncovered ocean of environmental issues. So where does the public turn for science and environmental coverage if traditional media are bailing out? NPR’s Ira Flatow suggests that blogs and social media are filling the void. Perhaps, but where are they? Can viewers just point the remote and click and get environmental and science news they need? How is the credibility of online-only environmental and science writing unsupported by traditional media assessed? By whom?

Corporations that pollute without consequence the public goods of air, water, and land are no doubt pleased by the absence of serious, frequent, and thorough environmental and science news coverage. Between the newspaper industry’s self-implosion and the long-term lack of corporate advertising support for news and programming that depicts Nature as Soiled rather than Nature as Discoveryized, pollution will continue unabated.

Throw in deregulation. Throw in underfunding of federal and state staff needed to detect, correct, and regulate air, water, and land pollution. And throw in the Supreme Court of the United States:

Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.

In their Times story, part of a series called “Toxic Waters,” reporters Charles Duhigg and Janet Roberts trace the demise of the definition of “navigable waters” in the Clean Water Act. Supreme Court decisions may lead to exclusion of waters protected by Act from which 117 million Americans obtain drinking water. The pollution threat to water supplies is real — and ought to be far more compelling as a series topic for Nat Geo and the Discovery Channel. According to Duhigg and Roberts:

Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years. [emphasis added]

Try to keep this in mind as you park your fanny on that Barcalounger to watch the first episode of “Life” next month.

Ponder, too, the sources of the water and crops used to make that appropriate beverage and
your salsa and chips. Still taste good?

There has been much comment on the fact that Tilikum has been involved in two other human deaths. He is also a cash cow of sorts for Sea World, being their most successful breeding male orca. Both of these facts are relevant in one sense, but irrelevant in another, although the latter fact probably means that Tilikum, unlike a dog or bear that kills a human, will probably not be put to death. But it’s clear that there a whole raft of ethical issues here as well. Not least of which is the fact that Tilikum was 30, and had spent most of his life in captivity.

This is not unusual. The majority of dolphins of various species in captivity at this point are probably born there. This is different from the aquarium world of 30 years ago, when I used to hang around Sea World in San Diego at their Research Institute (named after the late and great ichthyologist Carl Hubbs), when Sea World and other aquaria in the US had to get all sorts of permits and whatnot to capture a live animal. There is less need for this now. But it also has given the world a new generation of show animals who know no other existence, and are virtually incapable of surviving in the wild. We should just refresh memories here on the fate of Keiko, the star of Free Willy, who a lot of people thought should be set free after he was more or less abandoned by film-makers, and who was eventually sent to Iceland—where he died, after numerous attempts to get him to survive in the wild came to failure.

Because there is no question that for many types of mammals, particularly predators, being raised in captivity is a disadvantage, usually a potentially fatal one. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has programs to reintroduce predators into areas where they were previously removed, such as wolves—and it’s a process, with uncertain results, and not always successful. With marine mammals, this can be even more problematic. If the animal has been captured in the wild, it’s often impossible to find the pod the animal came from to return it to. And even that is no guarantee of success. And an animal raised entirely in an aquarium has, frankly, a dubious chance of survival in the wild. For one thing, it’s probably received its food from the human hand for most of its life—would it have any of the predator skills it would need for survival? Would it even have any idea what it was supposed to eat? For all dolphins, like other toothed whales, are carnivores, and they’ll eat lots of stuff, but still, it’s not necessary instinctual, as it is for fish.

There is a broader issue here too. As any dolphin trainer knows, he or she is dealing with a collection of individuals. Yes, trainers have training techniques that they use but they also know that some techniques work better on some animals than on others. Because most dolphin species are individuals—for all we know, all of them. It’s just that some have more, shall we say, personality than others. Tursiops truncatus, the North American Bottlenose dolphin, is the one we’re mostly familiar with from dolphin shows and movies (like Flipper). And leaving aside the issue of whether these animals are smart (and if so, what does that actually mean?), there’s no question, following fifty or more years of research and training with these dolphins, that they are individuals with their own personalities. Some are likeable, some are not—just like chimps, or people. And they have cultures as well—learned behaviours that are transmitted form one generation to the next.

This constantly gets borne out by various studies that come along from time to time, and over the past decade, more frequently. Most recently, some clever research by Diana Reiss of Hunter College has shown that dolphins, like any number of other mammals (mainly primates), can recognize themselves in mirrors. (I had the same idea years ago, but with penguins, which I tried out at the penguin house at Sea World in San Diego—and guess what? Penguins don’t respond to mirrors at all. Who would have possibly guessed? I was trying the wrong species, obviously, but it’s not likely that the folks who ran Sea World at the time would have let me drag a mirror into one of the dolphin tanks.) We now have all sorts of evidence, both anecdotal and more recently experimental, that when we deal with many species of dolphins, particularly the Bottlenose dolphin and the killer whale, that we are dealing with individuals with personalities and cognitive skills and shared (but probably species specific) cultures. We’re not quite at the level of ethical complexity as we have gotten to with chimps who have been taught (or more properly, have learned) sign language, and in that respect may no longer be just “chimps”—but if that’s true, just what are they? But for dolphins and orcas that have been in training with humans for years, if not decades, are they really still “just” dolphins and orcas? Or something else?

So now we get to the nub. Are these animals that should be kept in captivity? These are two arguments here. The first leads to “no.” And it relies on some of what we have discussed—these are intelligent and highly social animals, and keeping them in captivity deprives them of that sociality that they have evolved. And the more we learn about them, the more unjust it seems to keep them trapped in these small enclosed acoustically barren spaces. This last point is critical—these are highly acoustic animals, who live in an acoustic world that we can only try to imagine (the blind among us probably have a better idea than the rest of us), in a world hat is three dimensional in ways we can only try to imagine as well. And we confine them in environments that are shallow, and bright, and small, and probably quite sterile compared with what their natural environments would be.

The counter argument is the educational one—this is the only real opportunity to study these animals, who are extraordinarily difficult to study in their natural environments. And the educational advantages of bringing these animals in contact with large portions of the population (as they traipse through the gates of the various Sea Worlds around the country) does much to raise public awareness of the natural world, and of the various threats that are posed to the survival of marine mammals.

To some extent I want to believe these arguments. I still remember wandering around the petting pool in the San Diego facility, where there were five separate species of dolphins and porposies, and they would swim together, and chase each other, and do what in any other context was classical play behavior in an enclosed setting. But this was inter-specific play, which was (and still is, for that matter) quite rare in the academic literature. And, yet, there it was, day after day, just there, providing delight to thousands of children a day. And to the occasional itinerant scholar who was sufficiently unencumbered by baggage to notice what was actually going on.

But, frankly, I’m no longer persuaded by these arguments. The American public appears completely unable to understand scientific arguments any more, and appears completely uninterested in the health and survival of the oceans. Yes, kids love Free Willy, but that hasn’t translated into a deeper understanding of the importance of marine ecosystem protection. As sad as it is to admit it, the American public looks unlikely to be able to view these animals as anything other than entertainment—much as it regards the rest of the natural world. Yes, there are worthy organizations out there still trying to save what’s left, and yes, I support them, but I’m not optimistic, frankly.

So we have a problem. What do we do with these animals (and there are a lot of them) even if we should decide that they should no longer be kept in captivity? Well, since it’s pretty clear that many of them would not actually survive in the wild, it seems like a cruel fate indeed. But what then? I’m not sure that I have any reasonable answers here. But I imagine that if we don’t come up with some sort of solution this time around, there will undoubtedly be another incident at some point in the future, and we can go around the same set of questions again.

The above stamp is from the Faroe Islands, way up there in the North Atlantic where there are lots of whales, and was issued in 1998.

Shortly thereafter, PSU started being accused of risking its reputation by “whitewashing” the inquiry with a cover up designed to protect Dr. Mann. The accusations came in form of press releases from think tanks, blog posts from media pundits, as well as some traditional media outlets. A typical example was the Fox News report that Republican Represntative Darrell Issa had called for freezing all federal grants to PSU and Mann until PSU “settled all the charges” against Mann, suggesting that perhaps money was the reason that PSU was allegedly covering up Mann’s supposed research misconduct.

S&R decided to investigate the “whitewash” claims to determine if they had any substance. Here’s what we discovered.

The first question we asked a number of experts was about the overall reputation that PSU has, and whether or not its reputation was good enough to warrant protection. The PSU College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (CEMS) (of which the Meteorology program is part) was ranked #5 for graduate schools by US News and World Reports in 2009, the Geosciences programs were ranked between #2 and #11 when US News ranked geosciences in 2006, and was ranked #8 and #10 by US News for Materials Science and Engineering graduate and undergraduate programs respectively in 2009. Furthermore, the National Science Foundation has twice ranked the CEMS as #1 in the country for research in the last 15 years, and CEMS faculty were ranked #7 in the country for the impact of their published papers from 1997-2001 by Science Watch.

In addition, PSU as a whole was ranked #1 in 2009 for research performed on industry-paid research grantst. Clearly, both the CEMS in particular and Penn State as a whole have an excellent reputation.

According to Dr. Gary K. Ostrander, Vice Chancellor for Research & Graduate Education of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, “[t]he most valuable component of a research university is its reputation.” Because reputation is so critical to attracting grants, donors, faculty, students, and more over the course of years, he said “it has been my experience that universities take allegations of research misconduct very seriously.”

Dr. James W.C. White, Director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, agreed with Ostrander . “We live and die by our good name. We must be quick to identify problems, and thorough in correcting them.” This is why, when the CRU emails were released and accusations of misconduct by Mann began flowing into PSU’s administration, PSU formed an inquiry committee and immediately looked into it. During his S&R interview, Ostrander also pointed out that it was unlikely that any university would be willing to engage in a cover-up: “It is far better to deal with the fallout of the mistakes of one faculty/staff member (if that occurs) than to deal with the fallout of having been involved in a cover-up.”

Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a co-blogger with Mann at the climate blog RealClimate, felt that it was “extremely unlikely” that any university would be involved in a cover up, asking “[w]hy would a university ruin their reputation by attempting to cover up misconduct?” And Dr. Philip W. Mote, professor at Oregon State University and Director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, said “I’m sure universities try first and foremost to protect their reputations above those of individual scientists and wouldn’t be inclined to whitewash.”

When this wide a variety of academics and administrators all feel that a university’s reputation is sacrosanct, one has to wonder how likely it is that any inquiry into research misconduct would be covered up. In Ostrander’s experience, “universities take allegations of research misconduct very seriously and are very responsive to such allegations.” White feels that there’s “no chance at all” that any university would cover up research misconduct, adding that “[l]ying in science is a death penalty, certainly for the scientist, and to the extent that the institution is also culpable, the institution itself.” Clearly, neither man believes that the charges of a whitewash are credible.

Rahmstorf made the point even more strongly during his interview, calling into question the motives of those accusing PSU of a whitewash:

These people would have cried “whitewash” regardless how thorough and objective the inquiry was – they just dislike the outcome. Their response is entirely predictable and has nothing to do with the quality of the inquiry.

So what about the claim made by Fox News and others that PSU’s administration has a financial motive to “whitewash” the Mann inquiry? Ostrander thinks very little of it, saying that “it does not make sense that a top research university would “whitewash” an inquiry when their reputation and millions of dollars in future funding are at stake.” White agreed and pointed out that

we live and die by our good name with reviewers and funding agencies. Why risk the whole institution for one investigator?

White also claimed that Mann’s contribution to PSU’s overall research budget was tiny. S&R decided to verify that claim and investigated the total value of all the research grants that Mann brought into the PSU coffers as compared to the total research money that PSU has earned while Mann’s been a member of the faculty.

According to a list of grants at The Free Republic, Mann has brought in a total of $4.2 million since he joined PSU in 2006, with a significant portion of that money to be spent over the next several years. From 2006 to 2009, Mann’s grants totaled about $1.8 million. In that same period, PSU’s total research income was $2.8 billion ($2,804 million). As a percentage, Mann’s grants represented 0.06% of the total research money that PSU was granted between 2006 and 2009. Clearly, as White pointed out, “[i]t makes no sense that [Mann's] grants could corrupt the whole system.”

As for the allegations of misconduct made against Mann himself, Rahmstorf had this to say:

I don’t think there ever was any serious basis for an official inquiry. Rather, the allegations are part of politically motivated character assassination attacks aimed at individual climate scientists, by people who don’t really care about science at all, but who dislike climate policy and the idea of reducing emissions. However, a university has little choice but to properly investigate if such allegations are raised.

None of these points fully address the accusations that the entire PSU inquiry process was a “whitewash,” however. S&R asked Ostrander, the Vice Chancellor for Research & Graduate Education, to describe what a typical university inquiry process is like:

The typical process when an allegation of misconduct is brought to the administration is for a responsible official to conduct a preliminary assessment to determine if this allegation has any credibility. If there is reason to believe any inappropriate behavior may have occurred the matter is referred to a committee (usually made up of faculty and sometimes administrators) to conduct an investigation. The first step is designed to weed out frivolous claims. The second step is typically a detailed analysis of the allegation. In my experience they take a lot of time and reflect a vast amount of work on the part of the faculty to get to the truth and make sure that everyone involved/related to the allegation is heard.

Depending on the outcome of the investigation the faculty member may face discipline to include, in the case of the most serious offenses, termination from the university and having the matter referred to the criminal justice system.

According to the PSU inquiry committee report, the completed inquiry roughly equates to the first phase of the process described above by Osteander, the phase designed to “weed out frivolous claims.” There have been complaints by a number of Mann’s accusers (such as Steve McIntyre of ClimateAudit) that the inquiry committee ruled without consulting anyone outside of PSU. If it was the inquiry committee’s opinion that the first three allegations against Mann were obviously incredible, then the lack of contact during this phase is not necessarily unreasonable or unexpected, and claims of a whitewash would therefore be premature. However, during the investigation phase of the process, it would be entirely reasonable to assume that Mann’s accusers would be contacted during the course of the investigation and given an opportunity to have their say.

S&R contacted a number of other representatives of research universities and asked their opinion of the accusations of “whitewash.” Many of them claimed that they hadn’t been following the issue closely enough to be willing to comment. When asked why that might be the case when so many bloggers and media have been accusing PSU of a “whitewash,” Ostrander replied that he had “grown to appreciate that [he] will not know what really happened” unless it was an investigation of someone on his faculty. Instead, Ostrander chose to leave the details of such allegations to the individuals involved in the investigations.

Penn State University is a tier-1 research university with an excellent national reputation. There is no reason to believe that the PSU administration would risk the university’s excellent reputation for any single faculty researcher, and especially not for such a small monetary gain as a few million dollars over the last four years. Ostrander said that “[i]f universities and justice systems have fair and transparent processes it should be possible to arrive at something approaching the truth in most cases.” To this point, the PSU inquiry appears to have been fair and transparent. If the investigation of the one remaining allegation remains as fair and transparent as the inquiry itself was, then there is every reason to believe that the results of the investigation will be accepted by scientists and academics around the world, whatever the results may be. However, if Rahmstorf’s opinion on the political nature of the allegations against Mann is correct, then there will be a group of so-called climate change skeptics who will only accept the results if they convict Mann of misconduct. If that happens, then the skeptics will have proven that they are not actually skeptics according to any accepted definition thereof.

Image Credit
Pennsylvania State University

Thanks to Dr. Ostrander, Dr. White, Dr. Rahmstorf, and Dr. Mote for taking the time to be interviewed by S&R.

After the CRU emails were released in November, 2009, there was widespread accusations of misconduct against most of the scientists mentioned in the emails. Today, the Penn State University (PSU) inquiry committee investigating accusations made against Dr. Michael Mann publicly released its findings. The committee found that, with respect to the most serious three accusations out of four, “there exists no credible evidence” that Mann had committed research misconduct. The inquiry committee empaneled an investigation committee to look into the last accusation – that Mann had “seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community” – because they could make a determination about this and because

Only with such a review will the academic community and other interested parties likely feel that Penn State has discharged its responsibility on this matter.

According to the report, neither the inquiry committee nor the University received any formal allegations of research misconduct before or during the inquiry, so the committee generated four allegations after “[reducing] to allegation form the many different accusations that were received from parties outside of the University.” The accusations were reduced down to the following four:

• Did [Mann] engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?
• Did [Mann] engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
• Did [Mann] engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to [him] in [his] capacity as an academic scholar?
• Did [Mann] engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities?

After reviewing all the CRU emails that Mann sent, received, or even discussed Mann’s work, and after the inquiry committee researched other relevant information from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), science journal articles, OP-ED columns, and even internet blogs, the committee interviewed Mann. Several days after that interview, the committee also interviewed Dr. Gerald North, the lead author of the NAS paper that exonerated Mann’s research and the so-called hockey stick temperature graph in 2006, as well as the former editor of Mann’s Science Magazine associated science article. And the outcome of all the research and interviews was that there was no substance to the first three allegations above.

The inquiry committee specifically pointed out that the “trick” email that has drawn a lot of attention used the word “trick”

to describe a mathematical insight that solves the problem. For example, see in a classic text on quantum mechanics by David Parks: “The foregoing explanation of the velocity paradox involves no new assumptions; the basic trick, the representation of a modulated wave as the superposition of two (or more) unmodulated ones, has already been used to explain interference phenomena…”

This is a point that has been made repeatedly ever since the CRU emails were released last November.

The fourth and final allegation will be reviewed by an investigation committee because the inquiry committee wanted a group of professors (the inquiry committee was composed of administrators) to determine if Mann’s private emails cast doubt on his professionalism and because of the risks to PSU’s public reputation. In addition, the administrators didn’t feel that they could judge what qualified as “accepted practice” for Mann and his field of climatology when accepted practice can vary from one scientific discipline to another.

Overall, however, the PSU inquiry committee found that the three allegations of research misconduct were all without merit and that they were unqualified to determine whether the final allegation had merit or not.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the news of Mann’s exoneration on three of the four accusations has been met with spin from partisan media, accusations of bias, and even claims of conspiracy.

While there’s been a number of media sites that spun this story in a fashion that focused exclusively on the investigation while downplaying the fact that the three most serious allegations were all found to be without merit, this Washington Examiner piece went a bit too far with their spin. They wrote that PSU officials were investigating “at least one charge of professional misconduct.” Given that the inquiry report found exactly one potential problem, the “at least one” is unjustified and represents blatant spin.

Update: World Net Daily commits as great a sin of spin as the Washington Examiner does, claiming that “[e]ven colleagues want ‘warming’ scientist investigated” and “[a] panel of fellow faculty members at Penn State University has recommended further investigation….” Make that University administrators, not fellow faculty. There’s also no mention of the fact that Mann was exonerated on three of four allegations, an attempt to show that Mann is out of step with mainstream scientists by comparing him to the thoroughly debunked OISM Petition Project, and pointing to the biased and flawed work of Icecap’s Joe D’Aleo.

Paul Chesser at the American Spectator blog has forgone the spin and flat-out accused the University of bias. Chesser says that the PSU committee’s reference to the CRU emails as “stolen” casts doubt on the committee’s objectivity, that the administrators can’t be objective given the fact that Mann’s reputation reflects on theirs, and he accuses PSU of committing a “whitewash.” Tobacco and Big Oil shill Steve Milloy also accused PSU of bias in a press release that accuses the committee of not being thorough and essentially calls them liars with respect to whether or not Mann deleted emails under an FOI request from the UK. And here’s another example, from Pajamas Media, where the common “whitewash” and “greywash” memes of Milloy and American Spectator are again repeated.

Update: More accusations of supposed “whitewash” by Green Hell, and Andrew Bolt (with grand conspiracy claims in the comments).

But the posts get really interesting at blogs like Michelle Malkin’s and Big Government, where the commentators claim outright that this is an example of a leftist/socialist/statist plot, or that PSU is beholden to the money that Mann has brought into the university, or that Mann is guilty of fraud and deserves to be imprisoned. James Delingpole at the Telegraph is perhaps the most extreme, claiming that “Michael Mann is as innocent as OJ” and repeating false claims about Mann’s work on the pre-industrial temperature record.

And, given the history between Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit and Mann, as well as the climate disruption denial stoked by both McIntyre and Anthony Watts of Wattsupwiththat, it’s not surprising that both blogs illustrate spin, bias, and paranoid conspiracies.

Thankfully, Mann has his defenders as well, among them Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog and the Huffington Post, Pete Altman at the NRDC Switchboard blog, climatologist and science blogger Eli Rabett, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, to name just a few.

And there are a number of other observers of this investigation who view it as a partial exoneration because they take the PSU inquiry committee at their word barring proof of misconduct by the committee itself. In fact, most of the traditional media falls into this category, such as James Broder of the NYTimes, The Canadian Press, The Seattle Times, even Ars Technica.

Update: Some more examples of good reporting on the PSU finding include The LA Times, the Catallaxy Files blog, and The Great Beyond blog at Nature.

This story isn’t over. Mann said as much in his statement:

Three of the four allegations have been dismissed completely. Even though no evidence to substantiate the fourth allegation was found, the University administrators thought it best to convene a separate committee of distinguished scientists to resolve any remaining questions about academic procedures.

This particular chapter in the Climategate saga won’t be closed until after the five faculty investigation committee completes their investigation into the last allegation sometime in the next 120 days. And if the response of the denialosphere to this partial exoneration is any indication, the Mann saga won’t be over even then. What will probably happen with respect to Mann is what has happened repeatedly with respect to climate disruption science over the last decade or more – self-described skeptics and climate disruption deniers will claim that this time it’s the end of climate disruption.

No, this time.

No, this time….

Disclosure: I attended PSU for my BSEE back in the 1990s.

Thanks to Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog for posting this over at HuffPo, where I initially came across it.

Unlike gardens and crops, wild plants lack human caretakers providing fertilizer. Wild plants have to scrounge for their soil nutrients wherever and however they can get them, and it is often the case that soil nutrients, especially nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, limit how fast forests, grasslands, etc. can grow. A paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters shows that the availability of soil nutrients will probably limit how much human-emitted carbon dioxide (CO₂) plants can absorb. This limit will prevent plants from absorbing as much CO₂ as climate scientists have modeled, and so global warming will likely be worse than current projections.

Even though the bulk of the atmosphere is nitrogen, plants are not able to make use of that nitrogen directly. Instead, most plants rely on bacteria known as “nitrogen fixing” bacteria to convert nitrogen in the air into the nitrite and nitrate that plants then use to grow. Nitrogen-fixing plants such as peanuts, soybeans, and alfalfa form symbiotic relationships with nitrogen fixing bacteria, and it’s this relationship that is the reason farmers rotate crops like corn with soybeans – the corn uses the nitrogen in the soil while the soybeans put at least some if the nitrogen back.

According to the paper, most nitrogen fixing occurs in the tropics (defined by the GRL paper as between 30°N and 30°S latitude, roughly between New Orleans in and the country of Uruguay in South America), where temperatures are nearly optimal for nitrogen fixing bacteria. Areas outside of the tropics produce about 1/10^th of the fixed nitrogen that is produced in the tropics, largely because of cooler temperatures. As anthropogenic CO₂ emissions drive up global mean temperature, the paper projects that nitrogen fixing outside the tropics will rise, but the increase will be more than offset by a reduction of nitrogen fixing in the tropics. As a result, the total amount of available soil nitrogen will drop as a result of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.

Without increasing the amount of fixed nitrogen in the soil, plants will not be able to convert the anthropogenic CO₂ into growth. As a result, recent estimates of CO₂ absorption are too high. The paper estimates that insufficient soil nitrogen will lead to between 16 and 149 Gigatons of unabsorbed carbon (GtC) by 2050 under best case model parameters. The worst-case parameters produce between 158 and 253 GtC unabsorbed carbon by 2050.

A couple of different climate research groups have tried to determine how much CO₂ human activity can emit into the atmosphere without exceeding 2° C temperature rise by 2100. Their “carbon budget” is no more than 750 or 1000 GtC by 2050. However, these budgets do not appear to include the likely reduced absorption by plants globally.

If CO₂ absorption by plants is too high by as much as the GRL paper suggests, then it will be even more difficult to stay below the projected danger threshold of 2° C warming. In fact, if emissions grow at an annual rate of approximately 2.4% (2.4% is the average global growth from 2004 to 2008 as calculated from the Energy Information Administration), then human activity will emit 750 GtC by 2029 and 1000 GtC by 2035. Removing about 250 GtC from the carbon budget means that human activity exceeds its budget approximately five years earler, 2024 and 2030 respectively.

The paper’s authors also estimate the warming potential of the unabsorbed anthropogenic CO₂. The authors estimate that global warming will increase between 0.38 and 0.72 C by 2050 over the approximately 1.0-1.5° C warming estimated by the IPCC AR4 WG1, Chapter 10. Put another way, the warming could be between 40% and 50% greater than currently estimated by climate models, depending on what model scenario is used for comparison. Right now, CO₂ are greater than the high emissions case (A2) model from the IPCC AR4.

This paper shows that plants are not just going to grow because of an abundance of CO₂ like some people claim. In fact, the claim that CO₂ is “plant food” is based on greenhouse farmers who increase CO₂ concentrations in their greenhouses in order to grow larger crops. But greenhouse farmers don’t just add CO₂ – they also fertilize their crops with abundant soil nutrients like nitrogen. And as this paper shows, nitrogen-limited natural ecosystems will not respond to elevated CO₂ in the same way that nitrogen-rich greenhouses do.

Thanks to Dr. Ying-Ping Wang of CSIRO for the providing me a copy of his paper for this post.

Image credits:
vivergreen.com

If Watts were correct, this would be a major problem. If the entire US temperature record was unreliable, then conclusions drawn from the temperature record could also be similarly flawed. At a minimum, the scientific papers using the temperature record would have to be revisited. So a thorough investigation of Watts’ conclusion by scientists was warranted. And now a new peer-reviewed paper by scientists at the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) have analyzed the temperature record and found that Watts’ conclusion of a flawed temperature record runs contrary to the actual data.

Let’s start by looking a little closer at how Watts’ reached his conclusion that the US temperature data was unreliable.

According to Watt’s white paper, 89% of the surveyed temperature stations in the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) do not meet new NOAA standards for proximity to heat sources, location away from shade and the crest of hills, and so on. Watts chose a station in Bainbridge, Georgia, as his main example (pictured at right). It shows that the thermometer is located about 9 feet from an air conditioning unit and in the shade rather than the desired 100 meters from any heat sources. Furthermore, the original thermometer enclosure can be seen just above “14.3′” distance indicator in a much better, but still not ideal location. Given the photographic evidence, it’s impossible to claim that the new thermometer location is ideal. As Watts points out, “the new station may report higher temperatures than the old station even if ambient temperatures remain unchanged.”

But this statement presents a problem. Watts says that the new station “may” report higher temperatures. But do we know for certain that it will? Determining what effect the AC unit and shade tree have on the temperature measurement requires an actual analysis of the temperature data from the new thermometer and location. Watts’ white paper has no such analysis. In fact, in the entire paper, Watts presents a brief analysis of only a single station’s temperature record, and it’s not this station. One station out of a total 865 stations that had been surveyed at the time of the white paper’s publication, and out of a total of 1221 USHCN stations in the continental United States, is not enough to cast doubt on the entire network no matter how bad the analysis turned out.

Watts uses words like “may” and “likely” and “could have” throughout his white paper. In fact, just about the only firm conclusion that Watts reaches is that the temperature record is unreliable. But he’s based that conclusion entirely on qualitative information known as “metadata” (information that may or may not affect the accuracy of a measurement) rather than on quantitative (mathematical) data analysis. With respect to thermometer measurements, the proximity of the thermometer to a heat source like an AC unit or an electrical transformer is metadata. So is the type of thermometer used. And the time of day that the temperature measurement was taken. And the color and composition of the thermometer enclosure. And whether or not the thermometer moved from one place to another. And so on.

The problem is that metadata is a tool to determine if there might be a problem in the real data, but it takes actual data analysis to establish if there’s a problem. And analyzing a single station (Watts used Lampasas, Texas) isn’t enough to draw any statistically valid conclusions, such as reliability or unreliablility, about any other station or about the temperature monitoring network as a whole.

Watts makes a number of other mistakes in his white paper as well. One of the larger errors is that he claims, based exclusively on qualitative metadata, that “89% of the stations surveyed produce unreliable data by NOAA’s own definition (emphasis original).” It’s not possible to make that claim without a detailed mathematical analysis of the temperature record for the supposedly unreliable stations, and Watts shows no such analysis. Watts also claims that “the reported increase in temperature during the twentieth century falls well within the margin of error of the instrument record,” but doesn’t take into account the simple techniques that can be utilized to reduce error in a measurement – techniques like averaging multiple samples, correcting for known biases in equipment, filtering, homogenization of station errors, and so on.

Watts does, however, make a couple of good recommendations in his white paper. One of them is that “a pristine dataset should be produced from the best stations and then compared to the remainder of the USHCN network to quantify the total magnitude of bias.” While this is something that Watts himself probably should have done before making a blanket declaration that the US temperature record was bad, it’s still necessary to quantitatively assess the impacts of all the metadata on real temperature measurements. And that analysis is what the NCDC team undertook in their new paper titled “On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperate Record”.

What the NCDC scientists found was that, contrary to Watts’ claim of unreliability, the difference between good and poor sited thermometers was small and thus the US temperature record is reliable.

The NCDC scientists reached this conclusion by looking at thermometer stations scattered around the continental US that were in the surfacestations.org database and broke them up into two groups, one each for good and poor thermometer siting. Then the scientists calculated the monthly temperatures at each station and compared the results of the good stations to the poor sited stations, both before and after adjusting for discontinuities (aka “homogenization”) in the records. When they did this, they discovered that, contrary to what Watts expected, the unadjusted data showed that poor sites showed cooler maximum temperatures and only slightly warmer minimum temperatures, while the adjusted data showed almost no difference whatsoever. This is shown in the image below.

Furthermore, when the scientists continued their analysis, they found that the vast majority of the difference in the unadjusted temperature came not as a result of the location of the thermometer as Watts had claimed, but rather from changes in the technology used to measure temperature (liquid-in-glass thermometers vs. electronic) and from a widespread change from taking measurements in the afternoon to taking them in the morning. In fact, these two changes represented 90% of the adjustment required for good sited temperature stations and 72% of the adjustment needed for poorly sited stations.

The fact that the two transitions mentioned above represents so much of the overall adjustment disproves another claim of Watts’, namely that the homogenization process itself transferred hot temperatures from poorly sited stations to good stations. Had Watts’ claim been correct, then the time of day adjustment would account for a much smaller percentage of the total adjustment. In fact, the data shows that time of day adjustments account for less of the adjustments made to poorly sited stations (72% vs. 90% for good sited stations), suggesting that the good stations are actually correcting the poor ones.

Watts also claimed that the transition from LiG thermometers to electronic thermometers took too long to correct and wouldn’t show up in the data. The analysis in the NCDC paper shows that this claim is also incorrect. In fact, the transition occurred mostly in the mid 1980s, and the transition is clearly visible in the maximum temperature graphs of the figure below where the “adjusted maximum” crosses the red line (0.0 degrees C).

In addition, Watts’ surfacestation.org project classified USHCN temperature stations by using criteria developed for a new generation of climate monitoring stations, known as the United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN). The USCRN stations and the criteria by which they’re gauged as “good” or “poor” are newer and significantly more restrictive than the quality criteria for the USHCN. So Watts’ use of the CRN standards for USHCN stations is something of an apples/oranges comparison. However, the USCRN has 60 months of good data that can be compared to the most recent 60 months of USHCN data. The result is a statistical correlation (r²) of 0.998 and 0.996 for the maximum and minimum monthly temperatures respectively. While this is a short period of correlation, it shows that, at least recently, the USHCN data is clearly reliable. As the NCDC scientists point out,

the value of the USCRN as a benchmark for reducing the uncertainty of history observations from the USHCN and other networks will only increase with time.

The image below visually illustrates the close correlation of the USCRN (black dashes) data to the USHCN data.

Finally, Watts claimed that if the US surface temperature record was unreliable, then by extension, the entire global surface temperature record must be similarly unreliable, since “the U.S. temperature record is widely regarded as being the most reliable of the international databases.” While Watts offered no documentary support for this statement, if we accept his logic, then the results of the NCDC paper clearly show that the international records must be reliable because as the US records have been shown to be. However, it’s certainly possible that the international databases are less reliable than the US database, and so the accuracy of Watts’ original statement is questionable at best.

Ultimately, the paper’s conclusion represents a clear rejection of Watts’ conclusions:

[O]ur analysis and the earlier study by Peterson 2006 illustrate the need for data analysis in establishing the role of station exposure characteristics on temperature trends no matter how compelling the circumstantial evidence of bias may be. In other words, photo and site surveys do not preclude the need for data analysis, and concerns over exposure must be evaluated in light of other changes in observation practice such as new instrumentation.

The NCDC scientists directly acknowledge Watts’ effort at documenting and categorizing the USHCN sites via the surfacestations.org project. And even though Watts’ conclusions in the Heartland Institute white paper cannot be supported, the work he organized and accomplished via a legion of volunteers at surfacestations.org represents a significant contribution to climate science and the surface temperature record in the United States. Unfortunately for Watts, he rushed his white paper to print before he had verified that his conclusions were justified by the measured data.

Ever since Watts and the Heartland Institute published Watts’ white paper, a large number of self-described climate disruption skeptics have been using the white paper as “proof” that that temperature records are riddled with errors. These so-called skeptics claim that the qualitative metadata about the surface stations make strong conclusions about the state of the global climate impossible. The new paper authored the NCDC scientists shows those claims to be wishful thinking. The temperature record clearly shows that the U.S. climate has warmed significantly over the last 130 years, and this paper serves as yet another proof of the robustness of that observation.

Other voices discussing this paper:

• Eli Rabett
• Skeptical Science
• DeSmogBlog
• Joe Romm
• Deltoid
• Wunderblog
• Robert A. Pielke Sr

Image credits:
Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres
surfacestations.org

Back in 2007, Working Group 2 (WG2) of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) put together a large list of what climate disruption was likely to impact around the world. One of the impacts was reduced availability of fresh water due to rapidly melting glaciers around the world, and especially in the Himalayas. One of the specific claims was that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, an amazingly and likely unrealistically fast rate of melting. After an Indian government minister questioned this claim, scientists looked into it and found that the date was incorrect and that internal procedures for vetting references weren’t followed in this particular case. As as result, the IPCC has issued a formal statement of apology for the error.

And if this were about any other topic except climate disruption, that would be the end of it.

But given the denial echo chamber, that’s not the end of it. Instead, we have Patrick J. Michaels. We have conservative columnist Lorne Gunter of the National Post essentially claiming that the IPCC has failed utterly due to this single error. We have Peter Foster, also of the National Post, claiming that this “is further evidence that the entire IPCC process has been corrupt from the start,” even as he acknowledges that the error represents a mere 300 words in a 3000 page document. Rick Moran of the libertarian blog American Thinker says this is “simply one more indication that the proponents of AGW don’t care about the science and are promoting a political agenda.” And that from a blog that starts with a complaint that climate activists want “to use this information to steal trillions from the world’s most productive nations.” Pot, meet kettle.

I’d like to see anyone write 3000 pages of scientific data and technical detail without messing up a few times. That this relatively minor point is being proclaimed loudly around the land as the a death blow to the IPCC’s AR4 conclusions means that all the other supposed death blows since 2007 have failed to take. Ben Webster of the Times Online makes a very good point when he says

Climate sceptics around the world have spent two years scrutinizing every claim made by the panel. So far they have identified one serious error; it seems unlikely that they will find many more.

So yes, the IPCC made an error here. But the general conclusion that glaciers are melting hasn’t moved a micrometer as a result. Tibet’s glaciers have still melted so much that scientists can’t detect the radiation from US and Soviet nuclear tests in the 1950s. Glaciers around Juneau, Alaska have still melted so much that the land is rebounding amazingly quickly. Glaciers in Switzerland are still melting fast enough that previously stored organic pollutants like DDT are being re-released into the environment at dangerously high concentrations.

This contrived scandal is fated to go the way of all the other climate scandals that have been created out of the ether – it’ll become just another “fatal blow” to anthropogenic climate disruption that is steamrollered by actual climate science and data. Soon, this too will become a “scandal” only in the minds of the truly reality-challenged climate disruption deniers.

The worst distortion is that Heartland says that the survey is more widely applicable than it actually is. In different parts of the article, Heartland claims that the survey applies a) to all American Meteorological Society (AMS) broadcast meteorologists, b) to all AMS members, and c) to all scientists. Here are the three applicable quotes:

Only one in four American Meteorological Society broadcast meteorologists agrees with United Nations’ claims that humans are primarily responsible for recent global warming….

The survey of AMS meteorologists shows only a small minority of AMS members agree with the AMS bureaucracy’s position statement….

The survey results contradict the oft-repeated assertion that a consensus of scientists believes humans are causing a global warming crisis. (emphasis added)

These three claims are not only incompatible with each other, but they’re also in opposition to what the paper reporting the 2008 survey results actually says.

According to the BAMS paper, “Opportunities and Obstacles for Television Weathercasters to Report on Climate Change”, the 2008 survey actually applies only to the 121 meteorologists who responded to the online survey. As such, the survey is self-selected and isn’t statistically valid for all AMS broadcast meteorologists as Heartland claims. In addition, the survey was only sent to AMS weather forecasters who have a college degree in meteorology, and the AMS membership is over “14,000 professionals, professors, students, and weather enthusiasts”. For that reason, the survey can’t say anything about the larger AMS membership’s views on climate even though Heartland makes that claim too. Finally, 60 self-selected respondents rejecting the science behind anthropogenic climate disruption says precisely nothing about scientists – physicists, chemists, geologists, climatologists, et al – in general. The claims in the Heartland article are clearly incorrect.

In another distortion of the BAMS paper, the Heartland article fails to provide critical context for a claim it makes. Heartland points out that “a prior survey of all television weather forecasters – including ones without meteorological training – produced a heavy percentage of skeptics,” but neglects to mention that the 2002 survey in question found

widespread ignorance of and misinformation about basic climate change science is evident, and as the data describe, much of that can be connected to the values and beliefs that weathercasters hold about the topic….

The results of this survey indicate that many television weathercasters have created dissent in areas in which scientific consensus exists. Their misunderstandings of the basic principles of meteorology, which also apply to climate change, are baffling and ultimately can be explained in this sample by their own politicizing of the science.

In other words, the weather forecasters are guilty of making climate change a political issue because they ignore the actual climate science. Yet Heartland neglects to mention this context.

Heartland also interviewed one of the weather forecasters responsible for politicizing the science of climate disruption, ICECAP’s Joe D’Aleo. D’Aleo guessed incorrectly about the purpose of the recent survey and BAMS paper, saying

This survey likely was conducted in an attempt to isolate a “more scientifically trained” subset of broadcast meteorologists that could be touted as more scientifically knowledgeable than television weathercasters as a whole. The survey shows, however, that such an attempt has backfired.

If D’Aleo had actually read the BAMS paper, he’d know that his guess was not the purpose of the survey. Instead, the BAMS paper points out that these individuals were surveyed specifically because

they are the primary targets of the new online instructional course that will count toward AMS professional development credits.

And the purpose of that course is to educate weather forecasters about how climatologists have attributed climate disruption to human influences and how climate models work and differ from weather models, as well as to provide a reference list of recent information for forecasters to use on a day-to-day basis.

The BAMS paper’s conclusions are that meteorologists need more education into the differences between climatology and meteorology, between climate and weather. From the paper;

In his blog, John Coleman makes many reasonable assertions, but one in particular relates to the distinction between climate and weather (or climatology and meteorology). “Global warming is not a religion, it’s not something you believe in, it is science, the science of meteorology,” he says. While he’s absolutely correct that it’s not something to “believe” in, he’s incorrect that climate change is just the science of meteorology. It is the science of climatology, and while the two share many common foundations, the scale and scope of the two are quite different and reflect the need for further education to build on the commonalities while elucidating the distinctions.

And Heartland? They ignore this critical distinction entirely, instead quoting the meteorologist D’Aleo as saying “from my observation, the opinion of broadcast meteorologists on this is issue (sic) is similar to the opinions of all fields of practicing meteorologists.” As far as Heartland is concerned, there is no difference between climatology and meteorology, just as they maintain that there is no difference in expertise between 32,000 people with bachelor of science degrees and thousands of actual, practicing scientists.

The Heartland Institute has a long history of distorting facts to serve the economic interest of their donors, and they continue their campaign of misinformation with their ongoing denial of human-caused climate disruption.

However, today it appeared that Judicial Watch and number of large climate denier blogs didn’t get the memo. Judicial watch issued a press release that claimed

“This email traffic ought to be embarrassing for NASA. Given the recent Climategate scandal, NASA has an obligation to be completely transparent with its handling of temperature data. Instead of insulting those who point out their mistakes, NASA scientists should engage the public in an open, professional and honest manner,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Apparently, neither Anthony Watts of Wattsupwiththat.com nor the aforementioned Steve McIntyre were aware that the emails had been released, since both deniers put up fresh posts repeating the Judicial Watch press release in the last couple of days. Furthermore, Telegraph blogger (and one of the more vocal Climategate pundits) James Delingpole also got caught by the press release, even going so far as to ask

Has Climategate moved to the US? Looks like it from this story at Watts Up With That.

After reading the emails myself, it’s clear to me that Delingpole must have come unmoored if he seriously thinks that these emails show anything even remotely like another climate non-scandal. And while neither Watts nor McIntyre have made the same claim that Delingpole made, both men did link to the Judicial Watch press release and both have been content to permit the comment threads to claim “scandal!” on their behalf.

Put simply, the emails show the GISS scientists acting professionally and in and open and transparent manner with reporters and McIntyre himself. To illustrate, let’s read some of the emails ourselves.

Gavin Schmidt wrote, in reference to responding to McIntyre:

I would suggest being more specific about what was assumed and what you will do now. The stats you had for the number of stations which had positive and negative offsets would be appropriate. You might also want to thank him for bringing this to our attention. The first because he’ll ask you anyway or work it out himself, the second since it doesn’t hurt to be gracious.

Reto Ruedy, in his email response to McIntyre:

..and I’d like to thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Ruedy also contacted the National Geographic Society to make sure that they updated their maps:

I checked what this correction does to your map and it does change the colors somewhat over parts of the US; the rest of the world is unaffected. Even the change over the US is way within the maring of error (0.5 C). So there is little need to make any changes.

Ruedy wrote several emails to Leticia Sorg of Redacao Epoca which show him patiently explaining how McIntyre’s overblown claims about the US have no impact on global climate (a point I made myself back in 2007). Sorg asked “Considering [the 1934/1998 ranking change], would it be possible to say that the planet is becoming hotter and hotter?” to which Ruedy replied

To answer your question, given the existing sampling error (.1-.2C): No – we cannot draw any conclusion about our planet from the US data (much less from the rankings you show below)

In other words, the emails show the scientists discussing their work, politely explaining things to journalists and to McIntyre, and generally being normal people.

McIntyre, however, doesn’t exactly come off nearly as well as the GISS scientists in these emails. McIntyre asked on August 4, 2007,

In addition, could you provide me with any documentaiton (additional to already published material) providing information on the calculation of GISS raw and adjusted series from USHCN versions, including relevant source code.

Ruedy points out that, as of McIntyre’s request, all the source code is already publicly available:

The software we spend close to 100% of our time in developing and which is the real basis or [sic] our work (in addition to general physics and chemistry), is openly available (giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE) to anybody.

And yet McIntyre, in a later email on August 8, 2007 (four days after his initial request and a day after Ruedy pointed out that the source code was publicly available), asks again for source code:

I would like to assess the impact of these modifications on the US and global averages for myself. I would appreciate a copy of the source code used for these calculations.

Reto Ruedy, responding to a request from a NASA press officer about McIntyre:

The blog [Climate Audit] you attached is a prime example of what gives bloggers a really bad name….

[McIntyre] omits that the global mean time series (which is generally considered the standard measure for global warming) is unaffected [by the small errors in the US record that McIntyre discovered].

He concentrates on US time series which (US covering less than 2% of the world) is so noisy and has such a large margin of error that no conclusions can be drawn from it at this point; showing the plot of annual means before and after the correction would have made the whole article a joke since the differences are barely visible.

He had to use the device of ranking the years rather than showing the plots to make any point at all. The problem with rankings is that there are large clumps of years which are equal within the margin of error and rankings within these clumps are purely accidental.

He finds it astounding that years 1934 and 1998 reversed ranks, not remembering that the corrections only affected years 2000-2006, hence that there is no possible connection there.

And McIntyre had been using a ‘bot to download every bit of data from GISS and complained when his IP was blocked (a point that McIntyre made today in the comments at climateaudit.org). Schmidt wrote on August 16, 2007

Reto and Rob Schmunk have the details. [McIntyre] was using a robot to automatically download pages that robots weren’t allowed to (because of the server demands of interactive scripts) and Rob blocked the IP. After a couple of emails back and forth, he was allowed to continue on weekends/evenings.

The webmaster’s account of McIntyre’s actions goes like this:

On about May 16, around 10:30 or 11:00 p.m., as I was getting ready to leave GISS for the night, I belatedly checked the error logs on the two web servers and discovered that there were several thousand errors in the log on Web2. On a normal day there would be about 500…..

Further investigation revealed that someone had been firing off requests to Web2 since about 2:00 that afternoon for the station data and by the time I looked into the situation, there had been at least 16,000 requests. Perhaps half of these had gone to addresses in the CGI directory, which means that activating CGI scripts to extract data, etc….

Plainly this activity was from an “automated” agent, which in rough parlance is usually called a “robot”….

As the robot on may 16 came from a generic ISP address rather than, say, an academic address and further because it’s “user-agent” tag provided no further information about who was running it, and _also_ because the GISS websites have “robots.txt” files which instruct all well-behaved web robots to stay out of the CGI directories, I cut off access to the ISP in question to the websites on Web2.

The next day I received e-mail from McIntyre asking what was up. He did not identify himself or on whose behalf he was acting….

All I know is that my first contact with him came because he was blasting umpteen thousand requests at the webservers.

I have no idea how much traffic McIntyre’s website gets, and I don’t know that I havve ever even looked at it. His tone in his e-mail was on the arrogant side, so I had no desire to prolong communication with him any longer than was necessary.

In other words, McIntyre created a ‘bot to scrape all the GISS data up and download it and did so in a way that a) interfered with the operation of GISS’ server, b) ignored instructions that the GISS webmaster had put in place to prevent overloading the servers, and c) he got annoyed when he was shut down. If that had been me (and I’ve managed websites from time to time), I’d have suspected an attack and done exactly what the webmaster did.

Columnist Mark Steyn doesn’t come off very well either, given the actual email responses McIntyre got. A Steyn column is quoted at length in a GISS email dated August 13, 2007, from Stephen Volz. The quote says in part:

So why is 1998 no longer America’s record-breaker? Because a very diligent fellow called Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.com labored long and hard to prove that there was a bug in NASA’s handling of the raw data. He then notified the scientists responsible, and received an acknowledgment that the mistake was an “oversight” that would be corrected in the next “data refresh.” The reply was almost as cool as the revised chart listings. (emphasis mine)

All in all, the emails show McIntyre being a jerk, the GISS scientists responding politely even to repeated, unreasonable requests from McIntyre, and the GISS scientists managing quite well under the stress of a media circus based on statistically insignificant differences that had no bearing on the actual error that McIntyre corrected.

So this isn’t Climategate 2.0 (Climategate 1.0 wasn’t Climategate either, for that matter), even though Judicial Watch and James Delingpole both seem to think so. And while Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre aren’t personally claiming that this a new Climategate, they’ve done nothing as of the writing of this post to correct the record at their websites, making any misperceptions of a scandal by readers Watts’ and McIntyre’s responsibility.

Furthermore, the content of the actual emails shows that the GISS scientists did engage McIntyre and reporters in an open and professional manner. GISS also openly and transparently permitted McIntyre to continue scraping all the data off the site after getting him to agree to do it on off-hours so as not to overload the GISS servers. Amazingly enough, GISS acted in 2007 just as Judicial Watch’s president, Tom Fitton, demanded last week.

Thanks to Eli Rabett for pointing this out, albeit indirectly.

• Item: Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino says “we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.”
• Item: GOP apologist Mary Matalin says President Bush “inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history.”
• Item: Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani says “We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we’ve had one under Obama.”

There are a number of problems with these assertions, not the least of which is that when Saudi terrorists started flying hijacked jets into large buildings on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush had been president of the United States for the better part of eight months. The lapses in memory noted above are all striking, but especially so in the case of Giuliani, who was, from September 11 until he dropped out of the presidential race on January 30, 2008 (a span of roughly 2,332 days, if my math is accurate), unable to say so much as “hello” without somehow shoehorning “9/11″ into the conversation. (He sounds even more clueless when he gets called out and tries to backtrack.) At the time of the attacks Perino was living in San Diego and working in “high-tech public affairs,” so it’s possible she missed the story. Still, when she was hired as Press Secretary, you’d think some mention of 9/11 would have been included in her orientation packet. And Matalin – wasn’t she working for Vice President Cheney at the time?

In any case, it seems safe enough to classify 9/11 as a “terrorist attack.” But the problems with this chicanery don’t end with the fall of the World Trade Center towers. A second wave of revisionism asserts that the US was a terror-free zone after 9/11. For instance:

• The New York Post’s Michael Goodwin claimed that former President Bush had “a record of zero successful attacks on America after 9/11.”
• Just last week Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour told Neil Cavuto that “one of the things the American people appreciate about the Bush administration, after Sept.11, not one time did the terrorists who tried to kill us and end our way of life, not one time were they able to attack the mainland United States again.”
• FOX News harpy Monica Crowley said on Bill O’Reilly’s show that after 9/11 Bush and Cheney had a “100% perfect track record in keeping the homeland safe from an Islamist terrorist attack.” The quote is in the video, but is not not mentioned in the linked post. (For bonus fun, note Crowley’s assertion that Obama cares more about terrorist rights than American lives. It takes some effort to make BillO look like the rational one.)

Other prominent noise engineers have been beta-testing the meme for awhile. The Dick is on record with this rhetorical misdirection: “The important thing is whether the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the past eight years.” And, as Dave Neiwert and Blue Texan point out, Peggy Noonan was pioneering the meme in late 2008.

Of course, these claims are objectively, demonstrably false. While history teaches us to have low expectations for honesty when it comes to FOX News mouthpieces, Southern Republican governors, former Reagan speechwriters and Dick Cheney, Goodwin’s column would be an on-the-spot, no-appeal, have-security-escort-him-from-the-premises-right-now firing offense at a real newspaper.

The facts, please?

2002 attack against El Al ticket counter at LAX. In July 2002, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet opened fire at an El Al Airlines ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport, killing two people and wounding four others before being shot dead. A 2004 Justice Department report stated that Hadayet’s case had been “officially designated as an act of international terrorism.”

2006 UNC SUV attack. In March 2006, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill graduate Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove an SUV into an area of campus, striking nine pedestrians. According to reports, Taheri-azar said he acted because he wanted to “avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world.” Taheri-azar also reportedly stated in a letter: “I was aiming to follow in the footsteps of one of my role models, Mohammad Atta, one of the 9/11/01 hijackers, who obtained a doctorate degree.”
…
2001 Anthrax attacks. A March 2004 State Department report on “Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2003″ quotes then-Attorney General John Ashcroft saying of the letters containing anthrax mailed to various targets: “When people send anthrax through the mail to hurt people and invoke terror, it’s a terrorist act.” Five people were killed as a result of those letters in the autumn of 2001.

2002 DC-area sniper. The state of Virginia indicted Washington, D.C.-area sniper John Allen Muhammad — along with his accomplice, a minor at the time — on terrorism charges for one of the murders he committed during a three-week shooting spree across Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Muhammad was convicted, sentenced to death, and subsequently executed for the crime.

Then there’s the hundreds of cases of domestic terrorism aimed at women’s health clinics during the Bush presidency.

Bob Cesca has compiled an extremely detailed record of terrorist attacks for the last three presidencies, and suffice it to say that the facts of the matter do not support the hype emanating from the right-wing noise machine.

(By the way, given how Matalin is trying to frame these “issues,” she shouldn’t have any problems with us chalking the underpants bomber and Fort Hood up to Bush’s account, since Obama “inherited” those attacks. Right?)

Bring in da Noise

So what’s really going on here? Giuliani, Matalin, Perino, Noonan, Barbour, Crowley, Cheney and Goodwin might be fork-tongued apparatchik tools of the first order, but they are not unacquainted with the facts. On the contrary – they’re very familiar with the facts. They just don’t like them. At all. So they hit the media trail with malice aforethought. They had a plan, and the plan was to lie like a cheap toupée.

Why?

“Because they’re congenital liars” isn’t enough, even if it’s true. Check their lineages. Review their résumés. Trace their connections and study the organizations that fund their activities and the activities of their allies. Remind yourself about the political and rhetorical landscape of the Bush years, when official speech came once and for all unhitched from fact, from truth, from any sense of decency or shame. These were the years when the words spewing from our official organs (and let’s include FOX News and the transcriptionists working for most other mainstream media outlets in this formulation, because the message couldn’t have been distributed without them) ceased serving any master other than desired outcome. You didn’t worry about telling the truth. You figured out what you wished the truth were, what you wanted the truth to be, then you looked at the camera, said it with a straight face, and kept on saying it no matter what. (NOTE: Technically speaking, you didn’t have to lie. It was perfectly acceptable to tell the truth so long as it worked as effectively as a lie.)

It wasn’t about the facts. It was about the narrative. And in the end, the decade of the ’00s saw the ultimate triumph of spin over journalism. From here on out, if you assume good faith on the part of our official political and “press” institutions ever again you well and truly deserve what happens to you.

No, the truth is that these people don’t go to the fridge for a beer without an agenda, and they all play their parts in the Long War Against America. The foundation for our current predicament was laid in the 1960s by players who cared more about the war than the battle and who were willing to lose a few games along the way in order to establish a long-term right-wing dynasty. If you’ve been paying attention since, oh, 1980 or so, it may have occurred to you that the brains behind the “conservative” revolution were pretty good at it, too.

So it would be sheer stupidity to assume that the recent parade of revisionism headed by Perino, Matalin and Giuliani was an accident or a coincidence. It makes infinitely more sense, given what we know about the Right’s meme machine, to see these bald-faced assertions as the leading edge of a coordinated propaganda campaign.

But to what end?

Ahhh, That Newspeak Smell

The short answer may look something like “to make Bush’s record look better,” but that’s hardly of long-term value in and of itself, even if it’s correct. He served his two terms and isn’t currently eligible to run again…although brother Jeb continues to lurk like a jackal just out of rock-throwing range. Regardless, we’d file “making Dubya look better than he really was” under “means,” not “ends.” Remember, the only goal that matters is long-term Republican hegemony. In that context, a literal reading of terrorism during the Bush years is a negative, and is something that a crafty opponent might be able to exploit. If everyone believes that Bush was hell on terrorists, on the other hand, that meme serves future electoral and policy goals. In the shorter term, it becomes a stick that can be used against Obama in 2012 (and against all Dems in this year’s mid-terms). In the long term, it strengthens the perception that Democrats are pussies and Republicans have balls that drag the ground. In combination with the “world is a scary place” meme, this makes for a powerful campaign platform.

The problem is that it’s not always easy to burnish the image of someone whose record is replete with inconvenient facts. Imagine, for instance, that you were hired by the descendants of Josef Stalin to polish his legacy. There are lots of strategies you might employ, but there is that unfortunate little genocidal maniac problem – he did, after all, kill way more people than Hitler, and you can only smear so much lipstick on a war pig. But what if, instead of working around the facts, you could change them? Perception is reality, especially in an era where words are not intended to signify actual objective facts. Turns out Stalin didn’t kill 20 million people – Lenin and Khrushchev did that. Sure, Stalin inherited a bit of a mess, but he was pure hell on the genociders while he was at the helm.

All of which is fun to contemplate, but how would you actually do it?

A Blueprint for Bushevik Revisionism

If I were going to do it, here’s the strategy I’d employ. Don’t worry if it seems like the plan may take a long time and cost a lot of money – as it turns out, my GOP backers have plenty of both.

• First off, I need a gullible audience. Too many brainiacs will kneecap the entire project. The best way to optimize my audience is to dumb down the education system as far as possible. In particular, we’ll need to shift the emphasis away from programs that foster analytical skills and self-reliance and toward programs that teach people to follow instructions. “Empowering” parents and students and insisting on “accountability” by the runaway bureaucracy that is the public school system (fueled by “overpaid” teachers and “corrupt” unions) will be extremely helpful.
• Next, I need a powerful strategy machine. This is easy. We just pour money into “think tanks” that attract bright minds and develop conservative “ideas.” Money is the most compelling attractor in the world, and we can absolutely outspend our opponents.
• Now that I have the meme-generation engine set up and the audience primed, we need a medium by which to transmit the message. Our chances are going to be slim in a society that relies on a hard-nosed press that takes its watchdog responsibilities too seriously. So we need a strong offensive against the Fourth Estate. If media institutions see themselves as guardians of the “public interest” we’ll get chewed up and spit out in little pieces; however, if media institutions are businesses, then the goal is profit, just like any other business. To that end, we’ll lean heavily on the already dominant ideology of free enterprise in promoting ownership and taxation structures that corporatize the press. We’ll also promote the (also well-established) ideology of self-determination, which makes clear that people know what’s best for themselves (no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary). Those who would suggest that the public can’t be counted on to know what’s good for it we’ll dismiss as paternalists and elitists and socialists. There’s tremendous power in telling people that they’re right. The public interest, by god, is what the public is interested in, and an appropriately undereducated populace can be counted on to ignore complex news in favor of splashy entertainment.
• Now we’re in great shape. Citizens Consumers know they’re right no matter what, so there’s no reason to respect education. They sneer along with our noisemakers at the elitists. All opinions are equal. Their self-worth is a function of what they can buy. Their attention spans are insanely short. They don’t know history nor do they see any need for it – history is only relevant insomuch as it validates their immediate purchasing decisions. Life is good.
• Once we have destroyed, though weakened educational programs and the noise media, the ability to critically evaluate data and to distinguish between information and disinformation, we begin working through a variety of channels to socialize the idea that “controversial” “issues” should be “debated.” Since all opinions are equal and we have carefully crafted and distributed veritable libraries worth of disinfo, these debates become never-ending shoutfests that lead to more and more confusion (although, ironically, increased public certainty that ill-informed opinions are fact). A couple of “ideas” that should be “debated”: ubiquitous research demonstrating that our climate is warming and that human activity is in part to blame is part of a genocidal conspiracy and millennia-old superstitions are science. Remember, the refusal to respect all opinions as equally valid is arrogant and elitist.
• At this point we can begin shaping history a little more aggressively (because “facts” are now in play and the insistence on their preeminence is de facto evidence of elitist condescension). We’ve won a number of battles over getting the “creation” “debate” into textbooks so students can “consider all the facts” and “decide for themselves.” Ditto for the climate “debate.”
• Now, time to codify the Newfacts. Having softened up the textbook beachfront through a consumer-friendly treatment of manufactured controversy, we’re ready to take the final step. We rewrite history – literally. Even if we have to include events like 9/11, we now have the freedom to structure those lessons so that it looks like Bush “inherited” the attacks from Clinton and that Bush then became a warrior hero. Over time, well, it’s like they say – the winners write the history books. And not all wars are fought with guns. Our final co-option of the official textbook version of history will be significantly aided if we can call on long, cozy family relationships with powerful publishing interests.

Someone is guaranteed to read this scenario and cry “conspiracy theory.” When that happens, you’re encouraged to take a long, hard, critical look at how the person leveling the charge fits into the process outlined above.

The truth is that this blueprint involves no speculation at all. It points to real events and draws logical conclusions about motives. For instance, certain wealthy interests pour millions and millions of dollars into conservative think tanks that work in documented ways to shape public policies that are in the best interests of their donors. No conspiracy theory is required to reach the obvious conclusions here. In fact, any credible conservative will tell you that it’s essentially American for people to invest their resources in ways that benefit their interests – that’s what the free market is.

When people speak and act they do so for reasons, and many times we can figure out what these reasons are without too much trouble. When a lot of people who are known allies say and do things that seem obviously coordinated – especially when they have a history of acting in concert toward common goals – we’re well advised to pay attention and ask ourselves what’s really going on.

Our future depends on the answers.

____________________

Thanks to those who helped me find resources for this story: Brandon Hersh at Media Matters, Matt Browner Hamlin, Julia at The Voice, Clifford Schecter, Ellen at Newshounds, Spencer Ackerman, Wendy Norris and David Neiwert.

Let’s see how our 22 articles of foresight are holding up, one at a time.

1: Researchers will develop either a vaccine or a cure for AIDS by 2020. However, it will be expensive enough that the disease will plague the poor long after it has become a non-issue for the rich and middle classes (although this is one case where political leaders might fund free treatment programs). The end of AIDS will trigger a sexual revolution that will compare to or exceed that of the 1960s and 1970s (unless another deadly sexually-transmitted disease evolves, which is certainly a possibility).

Too soon to tell on the cure, although I suppose it’s still possible. We have treatments that can extend the HIV victim’s life indefinitely and any number of research programs are working on the problem so let’s call this a maybe. As for part two of the prediction, that one’s looking pretty likely, isn’t it? Part three I stand by, no matter when the disease is finally cured.

2: The first quarter of the century will see the assassination of a professional athlete during a competition.

Hasn’t happened yet, but there’s no reason to think it unlikely. Fans still have unprecedented access to athletes in some sports (in most NBA arenas front-row fans might as well be sitting on the bench) and it seems to me like it’s only a matter of time.

3: By 2015 a major corporate executive will be assassinated. As a result, top executives of American companies will have to live with security precautions we once associated only with top political leaders.

Again, hasn’t happened yet, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. Lay, Skilling, Ebbers, Madoff, Nacchio, the Rigas, Koslowski, half the bankers on Wall Street – it’s damned near unfathomable how none of these deserving pillagers have been whacked by one of the people whose lives they ruined.

In any case, put me down for “when, not if,” even if I miss my 2015 target date.

4: By the end of the 21st Century humanity’s evolution into posthumanity will be all but complete. We will be bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, and our average life span will approach (and perhaps surpass) 100, all as a result of technology’s colonization of the flesh. These changes will result from medical advances (including pharmaceuticals, genetic engineering, and gene therapy, and possibly even nanotech) and computer interface innovations designed to link our minds more closely with the boundless information resident in the Internet. We will be fundamentally different from humans born 200 years ago – CyberHumans in the year 2100 will have less in common with humanity at the turn of the Millennium than we now have with Cro-Magnon humans from 10,000 years ago.

This is a long-term, too-soon-to-tell item, but I can’t imagine that it won’t come true. The impact of technology on the human physiology and human cultures proceeds at an insane pace, with the innovation curve being nearly vertical. So let me get on record as being more confident now that I was even a decade ago.

5: Columbine-type outbursts of school violence will continue to strike large, middle-class suburban schools. Intermediate steps to increase security will turn schools into armed compounds, and will deter all but the most serious conspiracies. However, these measures will only intensify the core disease infecting these environments, and unless major steps are taken to reduce the size of these schools (and hence the anonymity factor), some student or students will eventually succeed where Harris and Klebold failed, killing hundreds of their classmates.

We haven’t had a case that surpassed Columbine (although if we broaden the scope to include universities, Virginia Tech is comparable). We’ve seen no move to address the school size issue, so on the whole I’d say that I’m on track with this one.

6: The popularity of professional baseball will continue to slip. The pace of the game, already slow by late-20th Century standards, will fail to win over younger fans, who are increasingly attuned to video-game levels of sensory stimulation, and the continuing divide between big market and small market franchises will deprive fans in all but a handful of cities of the ability to emotionally invest themselves in the hope of winning. If Major League Baseball adopts a serious salary cap and revenue sharing structure in the first decade of the century the decline of the game can be delayed. But by the year 2100 America’s Pastime will be the third or fourth most popular spectator sport in the U.S., at best.

Ratings and attendance appear to be trending downward. A lot can happen between now and 2100, of course, but for the time being this prediction looks like a strong one.

I’m not terribly happy about it, either. I’ve played a lot baseball in my day and watched a lot more, and I love the game. I hope I’m wrong and that the game thrives in the future. But there are so many obstacles. The steroid scandals hurt the credibility of the game (although baseball has bounced back from scandal before), but nothing poses quite the threat of the rich/poor gap – and I say this as a fan of the Red Sox, the second-worst offender behind the Yankees. As long as supporters of 80% of the teams know they have damned near no chance to win, the sport is going to struggle.

7: The explosion of technological innovation and development we witnessed in the 20th Century (especially during the latter half) may plateau in the second half of the 2000s. Whether the leveling off occurs sooner or later will hinge on the feasibility of nanotechnologies. If nanotech proves as viable as many researchers (and science fiction writers) currently think we could continue to see the development of technological marvels we can barely imagine, and the plateau predicted here might not occur until late in the century, or even early in the 22nd. Otherwise, the nearly vertical innovation curve we’ve seen in the past few decades should be flattening out substantially by the middle of the century.

Perhaps more than any other item on the list, this one I’m not sure about. We could see a plateau – that has been the lesson of history – but our current pace is so explosive and shows no signs of doing anything except picking up more steam, so this prediction may wind up in the Nostraslammy’s loss column when all is said and done.

8: Artificial life will evolve, although not as a result of Artificial Intelligence projects. Instead, the massive growth of computing power, coupled with the development of the global communications web, will result in a ubiquitous network of connected information, and Information Life will occur when the concentration of information reaches critical mass, in a process not unlike the spontaneous eruption of organic life billions of years ago. Two things to note: first, given the non-physical, non-organic nature of this InfoLife, humanity may well not recognize it when it happens; and second, it may not recognize humanity as a life form, either.

This hasn’t happened yet, as far as we know, but I continue to believe this the most likely path to the evolution of AI/A Life. Not everyone agrees with me, including my friend and colleague Anne Foerst, who knows a frightening amount about AI and is convinced that it must arise within an embodied context. My counter is that the path I’m theorizing is the one that’s most like the evolutionary spurts we’ve seen throughout history.

We won’t know until we know, but mark me down as still confident in this prediction.

9: Public rhetoric about the democratizing power of the information economy notwithstanding, the rich-poor gap will not close, but will instead widen. It is unlikely that anything short of a major revolution will alter the underlying structures of power and wealth, which are robustly self-perpetuating.

Damn, this prediction is looking good. Of course, this was probably the most obvious one on the list.

10: The Neo-Luddite Movement will become increasingly violent. Cultural dislocations resulting from the rapid pace of technological innovation and deployment in the next 20 years will fuel increasing levels of resistance against “progress.” The Neo-Luddites, already well established and with spiritual leaders firmly in place, will eventually feel compelled to abandon rhetoric in favor of drastic action. At first the technoresistance will focus its energies in terrorist strikes against machinery and facilities, but will eventually graduate to widespread terrorism against technologists themselves.

We have not had outbreaks of violence tied directly to any overt neo-Luddite movements, but I’d argue that a lot of the terrorist acts we’ve seen have had at their core the same reaction to technopoly that characterizes our self-identified neo-Luddites (like Kirkpatrick Sale, Mark Slouka and others). For instance, I’d file any and all terror by religious fundamentalists under this heading, including 9/11. Fundamentalisms are ultimately about the displacement of religious institutions as the final arbiter of morality and ethics in a culture (and a hefty fear of the rampaging change brought on by technical innovation). Take something like abortion (or any question of reproductive rights), for instance. Isn’t abortion a direct artifact of the world of medical technics? And what happens to our ability to intervene in affairs on the other side of the globe if we strip away our technological superiority?

I believe this neo-Luddite impulse goes even further – I think there’s a great case to be made that the violence of the Unabomber (read his manifesto) and Harris and Klebold are essentially reactions against a technological society run amok.

So I’m declaring victory on this prediction and believe that the problem is only going to get worse so long as our technology evolves more rapidly than our ethics.

11: The Red Sox and Cubs will each win a World Series.

We knocked half of this one out in just a couple of years. Can the Cubs win it all in the next 90 years? I think so. They’ve shown signs of life in the last decade and I think it’s only a matter of time before they win one despite themselves.

12: Despite the growth of the Internet and other interactive modes of entertainment, the film will survive and thrive in its current form for the foreseeable future. Prognosticators who point to the power of interactivity and suggest that traditional one-way media are doomed may be right with respect to home-based media like television, but these dynamics don’t apply to film. First, it serves as a vital locus for social interaction (it’s an ideal activity for a date, for instance); and second, our thirst for the power and mystery of storytelling is in no danger of being extinguished (the most successful videogame authors have figured this much out already).

Anybody seen Avatar? It just cleared the billion-dollar mark over the weekend. Yes, we’ve seen an explosion in gaming and home-based entertainment offerings, but the movie biz looks stronger than ever.

13: By the year 2010, major universities will notice that their graduates lack many basic skills and will begin questioning the value of computers and the Internet in higher education. Some (but not all) will conclude that educational technologies place unproductive layers of machinery between student and teacher. This will spur a renewed emphasis on traditional educational strategies and basic literacy, organizational, and critical thinking skills.

Looks like I missed this one big time, didn’t I? In fact, it seems like precisely the opposite is happening at every turn.

Which is sad, because what I describe in the prediction is much needed. Our educational complex is in the worst shape it’s ever been in, and in so many cases technology is part of the problem, not the solution.

14: The U.S. population will migrate northward during the second quarter of the century. Rising average temperatures will fuel a move to milder climes. Air conditioning will insure the comfort of indoor living, but many people place a high importance on outdoor activities, especially during the summer months.

Too soon to tell, but if our scientists are right about climate disruption (and I think they are) this looks likely.

15: During the 21st Century we may finally learn that we are not alone in the universe. If intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, which seems plausible at least, humanity should soon reach the point where our technology will either allow us to find it (the Contact scenario) or encourage it to find us (the Star Trek: First Contact scenario). Hopefully our first meeting will be more like Close Encounters of the Third Kind than Mars Attacks!, and if we get really lucky our new friends might have technologies for scrubbing the atmosphere, purifying vast bodies of water, and curing male pattern baldness.

We haven’t found alien life yet, but we have found a lot more evidence of worlds with the conditions to sustain life (like recent discoveries concerning water on Mars). It seems like we hear a new report on alien worlds that are very Earth-like every month or two. As a result, I remain bullish on item #15.

16: The U.S. will elect its first female and minority Presidents. Sadly, they will prove as corrupt as the white males they replaced.

One down, one to go.

17: American media will become more vapid and less reliable early in the century, but the long-term impact could be positive. Between corporate ownership and the drive to maximize ratings at all costs, most major news outlets will be all but useless for the purpose of informing and educating the public by 2020 (with the exception of news services covering financial markets). Ironically, this could lead to a new age of subjective journalism. With the once-mighty press institutions either gone or discredited, and the ideologies of objective journalism along with them, a new breed of reporter may arise. This new journalist will be openly committed to advocacy, and will make his or her biases clear at the outset. The advocacy reporter would intersect perfectly with local populations whose disgust with the corruption and unresponsiveness of national (and even state) politics have driven them to seek involvement closer to home. It is possible that these dynamics could usher in a new golden age of civic engagement.

This one is a mixed bag at present. The first element is a gimme – this is worst moment for journalism since the days of Pulitzer, Hearst and Twain – and while I gave the legacy J establishment until 2020 to complete it’s full meltdown, it only seems to have needed half that much time.

The rest is unsettled. We could see the rise of a responsible, ethical advocacy press movement (see my series on the rise of “subjective” journalism), but there’s been no movement so far.

18: As hard as it is to imagine, commercial radio and the corporate music industry will suck worse in the next 25 years than it did in the last 25 years. The Internet will make it possible for unknown musicians to distribute their work, but in doing so it will massively increase the clutter of a media landscape that’s already over-saturated, making it harder for any particular artist to break through into the broad public consciousness. Since people love music, and since music will continue to serve as a gravity well for cultural and sub-cultural identification and bonding, mechanisms for sifting good from bad will become even more important. A service that fills this role will emerge on the Net. It may look like one of the currently developing music Web sites, or it may be a Web-based music journalism outlet, or it could be a type of service we haven’t imagined yet, but something will fill the void once occupied by commercial radio, and probably by 2010.

Part one of the equation – it would have been hard for me to be more right, huh? The part at the end looks like a miss – we’re still seeing all kinds of attempts at providing a reliable center, but so far most of our energies have been devoted to delivery systems (and it seems like it’s only a matter of time before Spotify or something very like becomes that all-songs-available-all-the-time uber-channel for us all). The filtering problem remains. Net radio and satellite are doing a nice job in places, but the only mass national music outlets are things like godforsaken American Idol, which really is the talent show at the Fall of Rome.

19: Killer storms will increase in number and intensity. Whether set in motion by industrial pollution or resulting from natural meteorological cycle, heavy weather is getting nastier, and the trend will continue. By the midpoint of the 21st century Category 5 hurricanes will hit the U.S. fairly frequently, and the mythical F6 tornado (which almost occurred for the first time in recorded history in 1999) will become commonplace. A Category 5 will hit a major coastal urban center in the next 25 years, resulting in near-total destruction of the city’s infrastructure. During the same time frame a city in the Lower Midwest will take a direct hit from an F6 or a strong F5 and will be annihilated.

Katrina was a lot closer to that Category 5 than we like to think about, and where destructive damage is concerned let’s remember that it missed New Orleans. All that damage happened on the back side of a Cat 3.

As with item #14 above, there seems every reason to believe that this prediction will come true, although it’s too early to put it in the win column.

20: Faced with mounting damage at the hands of increasingly sophisticated hackers, corporations will begin to see “black ops” (both online and real-world) as a necessary cost of doing business. The shift from “corporate security” to all-out “Info War” footing will accelerate by 2010, when it is revealed that a major online attack against an American company was sponsored by a foreign government. The U.S. government will be strategically, tactically, and morally unprepared to deal with this crisis, and the absence of policy leadership will result in the online equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis, only instead of three players there will be hundreds with the ability to spark a full-blown cyberwar. Needless to say, world stock markets will react negatively. When the dust settles, world governments and corporate interests of all sizes will work together to develop safeguards against activities that threaten the global economy. The most significant result of this accord will be to transfer most real power from public to private institutions.

This one is a mixed bag at best because there’s so much we don’t know. There is plenty of evidence that large corps have been hit in the way predicted (and an analyst like Winn Schwartau would tell you that foreign governments have provided all kinds of supports for the perpetrators). The problem lies with my prediction that this would all become public knowledge – that hasn’t happened, and in large part it’s because the companies involved have every incentive to keep it a secret. Further, if said companies (perhaps even with the help of our government) have launched black ops activities, that’s something else you’re not likely to hear about in a daily White House press briefing.

So all I can really do at this point is say that I failed to account for the need for secrecy, but at the same time I suspect most of the prediction was on the money. I may never be able to point to evidence that I was right or wrong, although I’ll be watching and listening with interest.

21: Sometime before 2075 a genuinely deserving artist will win a Grammy Award. Okay, so I’m out on a limb here…

This was mostly snark, but the underlying point is more valid than ever. The Grammys are almost as big a joke as the Rock & Roll Hall of Product Sales Fame.

22: Some form of nuclear fusion will prove technically and economically viable by 2015. If fusion and nanotech both happen by 2020, the year 2101 will bear no more resemblance to 2001 than 2001 does to 2001 B.C., and the specifics of the changes to society are nearly impossible guess at.

I have another five years before I have to admit defeat, but at this stage my chances look dim. I do believe that we’ll see widespread nanotech and commercial fusion in this century, but my timetable was too optimistic.

So there you go. A few wins, a couple of losses, some too-soon-to-tells and partial successes. On the whole Nostraslammy is doing better than the grandpappy of predictification, Nostradamus himself, and that ought to count for something, right?

See you in 2020.

According to the 2009WEO [World Energy Outlook], global emissions in 2020 are projected to be about 5 Gt for the reference scenario. According to the 450 ppm scenario, global emissions peak around 2015 at the level of 43.7 Gt and remain broadly stable at that level before starting to decline in 2020.

The UN Secretariat’s “reference scenario” puts the global emissions peak at or above 550 ppm, occurring after 2020, and at least 3 °C.

Most scientists studying climate believe that 2 °C is relatively safe for avoiding abrupt climate transitions, but that the higher you go above that, the more likely things are to get really bad really fast.

According to The Guardian:

The analysis seriously undermines the statements by governments that they are aiming to limit emissions to a level ensuring no more than a 2C temperature rise over the next century, and indicates that the last 24 hours of negotiations will be extremely challenging.

Other voice on this news:

• The official COP15 news site quotes Greenpeace:
  

  “The UN is admitting in private that the pledges made by world leaders would lead to a three degree rise in temperatures. The science shows that it could lead to the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, crippling water shortages across South America and Australia and the near-extinction of tropical coral reefs, and that’s just the start of it,” Greenpeace campaigner Joss Garman tells the newspaper.

• 350.org, a group advocating for emissions cuts to 350 ppm, not 450 ppm, says
  

  So if someone–Barack Obama, for instance–tells you that this agreement will hold temperature increases below 2 degrees (itself an unsafe level), just show him this document.

• A. Siegel at Get Energy Smart Now! claims that the “leaked UN documents show that current proposals would lead to a CO2 concentration of 770 ppm by 2100.” This analysis is from Climate Interactive’s Climate Scorecard.
• Democracy Now! has an interview with the journalist who received the leaked document.
• Andy Revkin at the NYTimes blog DotEarth said that “United Nations officials confirmed the document’s authenticity but declined to discuss it.” In addition, he points out that
  

  [3 °C] is far above the thresholds for dangerous warming being debated at the meeting and accepted in recent statements by the major economies of the world.

I’ll update this story as more information is available.

Two recent studies measuring different changes on the Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves have added more evidence that sea levels are going to rise higher and faster than the IPCC estimates. One used highly accurate measurements of the changes in ice sheet thickness to estimate how much ice was exiting the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica via glaciers dumping ice into the ocean. The other used the GRACE gravity measurement satellites to estimate the total amount of mass being lost from Antarctica. Both found significant losses in ice, but GRACE found something more significant – a loss of ice mass from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, a mass of ice that was previously believed to be stable or even adding ice mass.

Laser altimetry bounces a laser off the surface of the earth to measure how far the surface is from the satellite, and as the satellite passes over the surface, changes in surface’s height can be tracked over months and years. The first study, published in the journal Nature, use laser altimetry to determine whether the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica were getting thicker or thinner, and the results revealed significant thinning of the ice sheets along their edges.

The Greenland data revealed that the majority of the ice cap’s edges showing significant thinning, with those areas feeding fast-flowing glaciers thinning the most. Only a few areas showed thickening, and most of those were in the interior and/or above 2000 m altitude. As the ice thins, the total mass of ice going into the ocean increases and sea level rises. However, the authors couldn’t estimate how much ice was being lost due to thinning because most of Greenland is thinning at a slow enough rate that it didn’t exceed the detection limit and so wasn’t considered significant. Even so, the fast moving glaciers thinned dramatically, and in three areas the thinning has penetrated deep into the ice sheet – at the outlet glaciers Jakobshavn Isbrae, Helheim, and Kangerdlugssuaq, where thinning is detectable 120, 95, and 100 km inland. Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier is one of the largest outlet glaciers, draining 6.5% of the Greenland ice cap. Helheim and Kangerdlugssuaq are known for having accellerated unexpectedly and retreated from the coast rapidly in the 1990s and 2000s.

The Nature study’s conclusions on Antarctica provide another independent confirmation of what scientists have known for a long time – the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is thinning dramatically. In addition, there are areas of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) that are thinning as well, although the bulk of the EAIS appeared to be relatively stable between 2003 and 2007. And the authors found that some parts of the WAIS were actually thickening, even as the outlet glaciers were thinning.

These results led the authors to conclude that air temperatures are less a factor in the loss of ice mass than changes in ocean temperature and currents. The areas that thinned the fastest were those where the outlet glaciers ground out into the ocean in areas where warm water can melt the bottoms of the glacier, speeding it up by reducing friction on the sea bottom. The authors say

This is an apparently widespread phenomenon that does not require climate warming sufficient to initiate ice-shelf surface melt. (emphasis mine)

Furthermore, the authors conclude that the thinning of the ice sheets at their edges is “more sensitive, pervasive, enduring, and important than previously realized.”

While the laser altimetry study had difficulties determining the mass lost to thinning and melt, the GRACE satellite measures mass directly, albeit over a much larger spatial area than a reflected laser beam. And according to the study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, not only has there been significant mass loss from the WAIS, the previously stable EAIS is apparently losing mass as well. If the EAIS were to melt significantly, it would add a massive amount of water to the oceans and dramatically increase sea level rise, especially since melting of the EAIS has not been included in the climate models.

Something to notice is that the two studies agree with each other qualitatively – the areas that are the reddest in the image above are the areas with the most thinning. They match the bluest areas in the figure at right, which have the greatest mass loss.

According to the GRACE study, the WAIS lost 132 ± 26 Gt of ice per year while the EAIS lost 57 ± 52 Gt per year over the period from 2002 to 2009. According to the paper, the large error in both regions is largely a result of limitations in the model of post-glacial rebound in Antarctica, but the larger EAIS error is a result of barometric pressure problems that occur over the EAIS but not over the WAIS. Regardless, the error is still smaller than the estimated loss of ice mass, and the combined total (190 ± 77 Gt per year) shows that the Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass.

Furthermore, the EAIS data from two areas where there’s been the most change show a potential breakpoint at around 2006, as seen below

If a breakpoint really did occur, then the ice loss from 2006-2009 would be greater than the average over the period of 2002-2009. Instead of 190 ± 77 Gt per year, the actual loss could be as high as 220 ± 89 Gt per year.

Taken in combination, these two papers support the conclusion that sea level rise is very likely to be greater than the IPCC estimated in 2007, and may in fact exceed recent estimates. Combined with another paper that suggests ice sheets and sea level are more tightly coupled to climate changes and carbon dioxide than previously believed, these papers should probably be read as a serious warning about the future of the world’s coastal areas.

Thanks to Dr. Pritchard and Dr. Chen, primary authors on the two papers discussed above, for providing review copies of their work.

Image Credits
Nature
Nature Geoscience

The world would be a much poorer place without the work of these institutions, whether that work is preserving fine art or wildlife habitat or educational outreach. However, there isn’t much that can be done without financial support. Consider giving a gift of membership. Typical membership benefits include free admission for a year and a guest pass or two, sometimes a bit more. You’ll need to check out the local community, and don’t overlook some of the smaller, less flashy places.

Here in Denver, not only do we have the Denver Zoo, Denver Art Museum, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, but you’ll also find Denver Botanic Gardens, Butterfly Pavilion, Colorado Historical Society, Denver Firefighters Museum, Wings Over the Rockies, and many more. What’s in your area?

According to Kevin Grandia at DeSmogBlog, climate disruption denier Lord Monckton was talking with a number of youths when he was approached by a couple of other youths he recognized from the Americans for Prosperity event that was temporarily taken over by youth climate activists yesterday. When he was asked to shake one of the activists’ hand, he responded

No, no. I’m not going to shake the hand of Hitler Youth. I’m sorry.

The activist in question, Ben Wessel, is Jewish, and his grandparents escaped the Nazis. Furthermore, Monckton’s remarks yesterday could have been considered intemperate as they were made in the heat of the moment. That Monckton would repeat the charge today when he’s not being shouted over suggests that he truly believes the youth activists to be equal to the Hitler Youth.

Here’s the video:

Some key quotes from Monckton:

World food prices have doubled. That is because of the global warming scare. You won’t look at the science. As a result of that, millions are dying in third world countries because of the biofuel scam, because of the global warming scare.

And you people don’t care. And until you start caring I will call you Hitler youth if you ever again interrupt any meeting I am present, where we are trying to have a private conversation.

So now you know what it looks like when you do robotic chants of the sort which the Hitler youth used to do in Copenhagen when they occupied this city.

So I think you should all just chill out and accept that if you ever behave like that again I will call you that again in public. You’re already now known and your faces around the world are known as members of the Hitler youth.

You people do as much damage to the poor as the Hitler youth did.

Monckton’s charge is false. The youth climate activists were certainly rude, but their actions didn’t rise anywhere near the level of being “Hitler Youth.” Some of the more glaring examples of discrepancies between Monckton’s characterization of the activists and the actual Hitler Youth include:

• The climate activists didn’t engage in violence. The Hitler Youth did.
• The climate activists didn’t behave in militaristic manner. The Hitler Youth did.
• The climate activists showed no sign of anti-Semitism. The Hitler Youth did.
• It’s not mandatory for all youths to be climate activists. It was mandatory for all German children to be members of the Hitler Youth.

Clearly, as I said yesterday, Monckton is as ignorant of the history of Nazism as he is of climate science. Furthermore, Monckton has no expertise in climate or any other hard science whatsoever – his diploma is in journalism and he’s educated in classics, not science, engineering, or mathematics. He is a member of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) delegation to Copenhagen, and he’s on record as believing in a New World Order/global government conspiracy that climate disruption is a tool for the UN to create a global government:

“I read the Copenhagen treaty,” says Lord Monckton. “And what it says is this; that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity.”

CFACT is an oil company and mining interest-funded fake-grassroots (aka “astroturf”) organization that is one of the more powerful forces in climate disruption denial.

Two other members of the CFACT delegation include S. Fred Singer and Steve Milloy. Singer is a scientist who was paid by the Tobacco Institute to write a paper that cast doubt on the connection between second hand smoke and cancer and who has a connection with the widely discredited Petition Project of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine that falsely claimed an overwhelming number of scientists as disbelieving in climate disruption. S&R examined the OISM petition’s claims and found that the OISM petition signatories, at most, 0.3% of all US scientists even when using the OISM’s own expansive definition of “scientist.”

Milloy is a non-scientist who presents himself as an expert on climate and other controversial scientific topics and who formed and ran an organization that was created using Philip Morris money for the express purpose of denying the dangers of smoking. S&R ran an investigative series on Milloy in December, 2007 that focused on his anti-climate disruption propaganda “survey” from DemandDebate.com, his background with various libertarian think tanks and working for Philip Morris, and his current financial backers and associates including at least one man who offered bribes to scientists who would write op-eds against the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

Given the background of Monckton’s current associates, it’s perhaps not surprising that he would resort to falsely accusing climate activists of being “Hitler Youth.” After all, Singer and Milloy have no problem distorting science and outright lying to enrich themselves and protect the profits of their backers.

Until he drifted off message and said:

You are listening now to the shouts in the background of the Hitler youth.

The following YouTube video has Monckton saying “Hitler youth” twice, but you can skip to the last 20 seconds or so if you aren’t interested in sitting through the entire thing.

As someone who’s studied the Nazis, I think we can safely add the history of Nazism right under climatology on the list of things Monckton is ignorant of.

However, the more interesting point is that Monckton publicly cracked. It’s one thing to say intemperate things about your ideological opponents in private email correspondence that you never intend to make public, but it’s something else entirely to do the same in a public forum. Clearly, when being badgered, even a practiced speaker like Monckton can get frustrated and publicly say things that are intemperate at best.

The way I see it, climate disruption deniers have only two courses of action they can take. Either they can condemn Monckton’s intemperate public remarks just as they have condemned the private intemperate remarks of climate scientists in the illegally-obtained CRU email archives. Or they can forgive Monckton his public remarks and similarly forgive the climate scientists their private remarks as well.

Forgiving Monckton but condemning the CRU climatologists would be hypocritical.

I’m greatly troubled by the content of Chapter 5, but only partly because of the many factual errors that L&D made. What troubles me the most about Chapter 5 is its arrogant tone, fed partly by a group of smart Seattle-based entrepreneurs, and the major inconsistencies that arrogance engendered. It is one thing to believe that you know more about climate disruption than everyone else when you’ve studied the field for years. It’s something else entirely to believe you know more than everyone else without verifying it first. And not only did L&D fail to verify their own knowledge about climate, they also failed to determine whether the entrepreneurs they interviewed knew more about climate than the real experts. The result was a fatally flawed Chapter 5.

L&D set the tone of Chapter 5 in the first 11 pages. They give a six-page explanation of the economic concept of an “externality” (the effect of an action that benefits the actor, but the costs affects someone else) that could have been explained as well in a couple of paragraphs. They claim that driving isn’t as bad for the global climate as eating locally-ranched beef, allegedly disproving both the “drive less” and “eat locally” green memes at the same time. And L&D label climate disruption as a “religion,” complete with a high priest (James Lovelock), a patron saint (Al Gore), “true believers” and “heretics,” and a quote from the mayor of London saying

the fear of of climate change is like a religion in this vital sense, that it is veiled in mystery; and you can never tell whether your acts of propitiation or atonement have been in any way successful.

And L&D naturally set themselves apart from those suffering from what they label as religious zeal.

L&D go on to toot their own horns when they claim that economists like Levitt

are trained to be cold-blooded enough to sit around and calmly discuss the trade-offs involved in global catastrophe….

They might as well have said “we’re better than you are because you’re ‘excitable’ and prone to ‘believing’ in global warming. We’re better than that.”

But it’s when we’re introduced to the entrepreneurs of Bellevue, WA-based Intellectual Ventures (IV) that the arrogant tone of Chapter 5 gets turned up to 11.

L&D extensively interview IV co-founder Nathan Myhrvold and former astrophysicist (and IV employee) Lowell Wood, building both men up to be larger than life. Myhrvold is described as “so polymathic as to make an everyday polymath tremble with shame” and L&D quote Bill Gates as once saying that he didn’t “know anyone [he] would say is smarter than Nathan.” With such a glowing recommendation, L&D’s statement that “Myhrvold thinks Wood is one of the smartest men in the universe” lends Wood intellectual gravitas. So does the listing off of Wood’s achievements during the development of the Star Wars missile defense system and how Wood trained under renowned physicist Edward Teller. But just because both men are smart doesn’t mean that either has any credible expertise in the field of climate disruption – Myhrvold is the former chief technology officer for Microsoft, not a climate modeling expert. Wood is a former astrophysicist who worked on lasers, not a climatologist. Yet L&D elevate both men to being the equal of an actual climate expert like Stanford climatologist Ken Caldeira.

I mention Caldeira because he’s also an IV consultant, and he is presented by L&D as the climate expert that he actually is. But L&D’s purpose in interviewing Caldiera appears to have been to burnish of Myhrvold’s and Wood’s climate credentials. Caldeira’s work is only briefly mentioned , and in a way that either fails to provide the necessary context or, in some cases, even is applied to the wrong context. For example, Caldeira is quoted as saying that trees planted in the wrong place can increase climate disruption because tree leaves may be darker than the ground was. The context of this quote in Chapter 5 is that “many climate disruption memes are wrong,” but L&D didn’t bother to point out that planting trees in other places would reduce climate disruption. Doing so would have reduced the impact of L&D’s preferred, and opposing, frame.

The other way Caldeira’s reputation is used to burnish the qualifications of Myhrvold and Wood is by lending credibility to their climate engineering ideas. L&D point out that several years ago, Wood proposed pumping sulfur dioxide (SO₂)into the stratosphere as a way to cool the Earth, and after running simulations, Caldeira admitted that it might work and that additional research was warranted. L&D use this apparently unimpeachable recommendation as the jumping-off point for proclaiming throughout most of the rest of Chapter 5 that climate engineering is the wave of the future. What L&D neglect to mention is that Caldeira has actually come out against geoengineering using SO₂ at this time for reasons entirely unrelated to global temperatures – it only treats one of the symptoms (rising global temperatures), does nothing for ocean acidification and other carbon dioxide (CO₂) related problems, and is therefore too risky. And it doesn’t help that L&D baldly misrepresented Caldeira’s actual statements and beliefs regarding climate engineering, as the prior links illustrates.

But based on Caldeira’s presence at IV, L&D remake Myhrvold and Wood into experts on geoengineering and climate. And so Wood’s statements on climate modeling are given the same weight as Caldeira’s using guilt by association. Or rather in this case, expertise by association.

Wood is quoted by L&D as saying that climate models are

crude in space and they’re crude in time. So there’s an enormous amount of natural phenomena they can’t model. They can’t do even giant storms like hurricanes.

Wood also claims that the models are all tuned in a similar fashion in order to keep the research money flowing and that current models don’t know how to handle water vapor. Wood’s claims have several problems. They’re presented in a way that’s misleading, they’re not given any actual scientific context, or they’re outright wrong. And because Wood, the former astrophysicist, is a “climate expert by association,” we’re led to believe that these claims are reasonable.

First, while L&D point out that computing power limitations drive climate modelers to make simplifications including lower spatial and temporal resolution than the modelers would prefer, those limitations don’t make the models “crude.” Neither does the fact that the scientists doing the modeling admit that they don’t yet agree on the best ways to model clouds and aerosols (two areas that scientists have made significant advances in since the publication of the IPCC AR4 in 2007). But neither of these issues mean that the latest models are crude. In fact, a quick analysis of the models illustrates that, contrary to Wood’s claims, the existing state-of-the-art general circulation models (GCMs) are quite sophisticated given the computational limitations.

The spatial resolution of an average IPCC AR4 climate model is about 55,350 square kilometers, or a square 235 km on a side (the highest resolution models resolve areas as small as 100 km on a side). For comparison, this is about one fifth of the state of Colorado, which has at least two different climatic zones. Sampling theory (Shannon’s sampling theorem) says that, in order to perfectly reproduce a signal, you need to sample it at twice its frequency. Applied to an average GCM from the AR4, the smallest spatial pattern that could be accurately resolved without help would be 470 km or larger. While there are regions around the globe where you can move through multiple climatic zones over the course of 470 km, they’re not exactly common. And while the average GCM wouldn’t accurately model these areas, climatologists have developed what are called “parameterizations” to represent small scale effects like cloud formation, aerosol effects, and convection that vary locally within the model spatial cells. And generally speaking, it’s not the spatial resolution that presently limits the models’ accuracy (or increases the models’ uncertainty), but rather how the GCMs handle these intra-cell parameters.

The GCMs don’t yet have enough spatial resolution to handle multiple major climatic transitions in small areas, but the models are presently accurate enough to draw conclusions for large climatic regions like “the desert Southwest,” or “the Great Plains,” “the Indian subcontinent,” or “the African savanna.” And while it’s unlikely that any model will ever be able to predict microclimate variations that can change from one kilometer to the next, there is no reason to believe that such high spatial resolution would ever be required for a climate model. So from my perspective, the word “crude” applied to the models used in earlier IPCC Third assessment reports rather than to the latest generation of GCMs. The figure below illustrates how the latest models compare to earlier generations.

Furthermore, sampling theory suggests that Wood is also wrong with respect to the temporal resolution of climate models. Climate models attempt to project the climate, which is itself a long-term average taken over years or even decades. Sampling theory says that we only need to model at twice the frequency of the fastest changing event we care about. One of the fastest changing climate events is El Niño/La Niña, but even at its fastest, it takes weeks to change significantly. This suggests that that sampling once a week or so would be enough, but due to noise and other limitations on sampling, it is usually best to sample more often than the minimum rate. Most climate models sample every 12 hours. If El Niño/La Niña is one of the fastest major climate changes that climate models need to model, then sampling twice a day represents 28x oversampling (assuming that El Niño/La Niña doesn’t pop up any faster than over the course of two weeks). It’s unlikely that the temporal resolution of climate models will need to improve much beyond where it is today. As a result, it’s clear that GCMs are pretty refined with respect to their temporal resolution.

Second, climate models don’t need to model any single storm, not even a hurricane, in order to be broadly accurate. Any individual storm has such a short term effect, and the effects are so localized, that they’re essentially weather, not climate. Four years after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the city is recovering and the parts of Louisiana and Mississippi that were damaged are physically different, but not so much that it qualifies as a local change of climate. The aggregate energy transfer from all hurricanes is important to climate disruption, but no single storm is going to transfer so much energy from the tropics to the subtropics to be critical. Remember – climate is an average over decades, not years or months or weeks. So the fact that no climate model presently models even the largest hurricanes is a distraction, not a real criticism.

Finally, Wood’s claim that models are tuned alike for research funding reasons runs counter to a social dynamic in the scientific community that values original research and intellectual competitiveness over the “same old, same old.” Most scientists live for discovering something new and having the opportunity to research it. Most scientists also enjoy finding errors in another scientist’s work and correcting the error. This is especially true of scientists at the top of their fields. As a result of these dynamics, most scientists would be more likely to tune their models to be different in order to garner attention from their scientific peers – if there was a physically legitimate way to do it. Furthermore, given that climate disruption will very likely become a nightmare for billions of people, discovering that climatologists had got it all wrong would greatly boost the scientist’s, the host organization’s, and the host nation’s prestige. So climate modelers have an incentive to tweak their models as much as scientifically justified in order to generate something new, publishable, and in opposition to the prevailing scientific understanding of climate disruption. The fact that all the models function similarly and reach similar conclusions suggests that, even with this social dynamic at work, scientists and labs haven’t been able to find anything major wrong with the science embedded in each other’s models.

There’s an irony here, though. Myhrvold and Wood, “experts by association” with Ken Caldeira, don’t think that climate modeling is accurate enough. Yet Caldeira’s climate expertise is based significantly on his experience modeling the effects of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases on plants, the ocean, and global climate in general. L&D only implicitly acknowledge this fact:

Caldeira ran a climate model to test Wood’s claims [about geoengineering].
…
Caldeira’s study showed that doubling the amount of carbon dioxide while holding steady all other inputs – water, nutrients, and so forth – yields a 70 percent increase in plant growth, and obvious boon to agriculture.

It is, after all, Caldeira’s models of the effects of pumping tons of SO₂ into the stratosphere to cool the globe that forms the basis of L&D’s main focus in Chapter 5 – geoengineering as a cheaper alternative to slashing CO₂ emissions.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, geoengineering is essentially using a technological, engineering-based solution to solve climate problems that were created by human civilization. L&D believe that geoengineering is the cheapest and most effective method to addressing climate disruption, and it’s this belief that drove them to talk to Myhrvold and Wood at IV. The two IV men believe that, for less than a billion dollars, they can built a big straw that would deliver tons of SO₂ directly into the stratosphere. Once there, the SO₂ would chemically react to form aerosols that scatter and reflect solar energy back into space before it could be absorbed by the Earth. The basic science underlying this idea is pretty solid – large volcanic eruptions blast SO₂ into the stratosphere where the sulfur aerosols naturally cool the globe for a few years. So it’s reasonable to believe that it would work.

Except as Myhrvold and Wood point out, there are a few problems. Minor problems, if you believe L&D. For one, it’s not possible to know at this time what effect all that extra sulfur in the stratosphere would do. Myhrvold and Wood also worry that it would make people complacent about continuing to emit GHGs instead of using the sulfur straw as a short-term solution. And they are worried that the technological solution is so cheap that it would be a political problem – could a country with a straw hold the world hostage by threatening to turn it off, or could it get turned up higher in order to cool and dry the climate of another, rival nation? These are potentially serious issues, but L&D largely ignore the broader political implications, giving the problems only three paragraphs after spending ten pages building the case for geoengineering. And L&D don’t even mention a problem that a sulfur straw would do nothing to fix, and what Caldeira is perhaps best known for – ocean acidification and the associated damage to marine ecosystems.

The bulk of Chapter 5 is spent talking up geoengineering – how it’ll work, how it’s “harmless” because the climate would just revert to its prior state if the straw were turned off, how it’s cheap. But there’s another irony that L&D don’t appear to recognize, and this one cuts to the bone of the geoengineering argument. Myhrvold and Wood, and by extension L&D, are proposing that we pumps megatons of SO₂ into the stratosphere in order to cool the Earth, but the only way to make this plan politically viable would be to rely on projections from climate models – the very same climate models that have been dismissed by the authors and the IV crowd.

At this point, scientists don’t know what pumping hundreds of kilotons of SO₂ into the stratosphere continually for decades or even centuries would do to the atmosphere. With less energy falling on the Earth in general, the water cycle would change and as a result, rain and snowfall patterns would change and would create water winners and losers. Projecting how and who would fall to climate models.

Stratospheric chemistry isn’t a straightforward science – it relies on atmospheric concentrations of ozone, oxygen, hydroxyl radicals (which are also necessary to convert methane to CO₂, among other things), CO₂, nitrogen, the availability of solar radiation in various wavelengths, humidity, prevailing winds, and so on. Projecting how the atmosphere will react to all that SO₂ being dumped continuously into the stratosphere will fall to climate models.

A separate chemical effect that needs to be considered is the effect of SO₂ on ozone depletion around the world. Lower ozone levels in the stratosphere may result in more skin cancers, cataracts, and may result in higher incidence of certain diseases. In addition, more ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface will have an effect on ecosystems and species as well as agriculture around the world. Climate models would be necessary to determine how these effects will vary seasonally as well as regionally.

Even the claim that the sulfur straw would be “harmless” because it could be turned off requires verification – and the only way to verify this claim before turning the straw on is with climate models.

If the models truly are as bad as Myhrvold and Wood claim, then we can not rely on them to project the effects of geoengineering. And if the models are good enough to accurately model the effects of geoengineering, then perhaps we should trust what they tell us about addressing global climate disruption, namely that cutting greenhouse gas emissions is the best way to curtail overall climate disruption.

Finally, Myhrvold claims to be advocating for a go-slow approach to creating his sulfur straw, opting for more research and development. He claims that

it’s like having fire sprinklers in a building. On the one hand, you should make every effort not to have a fire. But you also need something to fall back on in case the fire occurs anyway.

The problem is that Myhrvold dismisses the GHG-emission cutting goals of climate disruption activists so vehemently that it’s hard to take seriously his claim that he just wants more research and development. He says that

[global warming activists] are seriously proposing a set of things that could have enormous impact – and we think probably negative impact – on human life. They want to divert a huge amount of economic value toward immediate and precipitous anti-carbon initiatives, without thinking things through. This will have a huge drag on the world economy. There are billions of poor people who will be greatly delayed, if not entirely precluded, from attaining a First World standard of living.

Myhrvold apparently hasn’t heard how seriously climate activists are pushing for technology transfers and direct financial assistance to poor countries so that they don’t have to use high-carbon energy sources to improve their standards of living. Nor has he apparently read about the many studies that say the costs of addressing climate disruption will not affect the global economy as much as he seems to believe. Myhrvold instead seems to be more motivated by money than by research. The fact that IV has been accused of being “patent trolls” doesn’t help his case – IV is Myhrvold’s company, after all, and L&D mention the “patent troll” issue themselves.

It’s clear that Levitt and Dubner are both smart men and that they found other smart men in Myhrvold and Wood. The problem is that all of them are so convinced that they’re the smartest people around that they can’t seem to realize that they’re mired in myopia. Levitt and Dubner are certain that Myhrvold and Wood have come up with “The Solution^TM” in the SO₂ geoengineering project that they don’t notice, or don’t care, that the arguments in favor aren’t logically consistent and don’t stand up to basic scrutiny. Myhrvold and Wood are so sure that they’re right about climate models and geoengineering that they seem to blow off the serious problems and ignore the experts who actually know what the hell they’re talking about – experts like Ken Caldeira and his fellow practicing climatologists. And none of the men – not Levitt, not Dubner, not Myhrvold, and not Wood – seem to realize that they’re making statements that are counter to the best available science and, in many cases, could have been detected as wrong with some simple and basic fact checking.

Climate disruption is a huge issue, and geoengineering can’t be ignored as a potential insurance policy. But it’s presented as the first line of defense against climate disruption instead of a fall-back plan. And as much as Levitt and Dubner try, their arrogance wrote checks that their intellects couldn’t cash.

“Trust us – we’re smarter than you” doesn’t work when you make it so abundantly clear that you’re not actually smarter after all.

———-

There are legions of critiques of the climate disruption chapter of Superfreakonomics on the Web. Here’s a short list of some of the better ones:

• Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate.org
• Paul Krugman at his NY Times blog has both a critique and an explanatory note, plus some additional links and commentary.
• All of economist Brad DeLong’s many posts on the subject
• Union of Concerned Scientists
• Raymond T. Pierrehumbert of RealClimate and the University of Chicago (Prof. Levitt is a professor at Chicago as well)
• The Union of Concerned Scientists lists a large number of general errors
• Tim Lambert’s 10 major errors
• Brad at Think Progress’ The Wonk Room has a bunch of posts about this, chronicling errors big and small
• A Siegel at GetEnergySmartNow has a number of good links.
• And the best compilation of all the sites criticizing the book I could find

Image Credits:
SSEC
Stanford
UCAR
Accuweather

[T]he Administration is allegedly curbing Federal scientists from presenting scientific findings that are at odds with its policies. Before we start screaming “McCarthyism,” we should examine how little merit these accusations actually have. (Source)

and

These e-mails betray the true thoughts and motives of many leading climate scientists. It shows a pattern that’s closer to scientific fascism than the scientific method.(Source)

The first was Sensenbrenner defending the Bush Administration from accusations (later proven) that scientists were being pressured and their work interfered with for political reasons. The second refers to the Swiftboating of CRU scientists (aka Swifthack – see here for the best roundup of links on this subject I’ve found on the Web).

Care to explain your apparent hypocrisy, Rep Sensenbrenner?

Also, two different journal publishers have publicly said that the contents of the emails are not sufficient justification to open an investigation into scientific misconduct.

The journal Nature:

The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers’ own papers. One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a ‘trick’ — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature’s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.

The American Meteorological Society (and publishers of eleven different journals):

AMS Headquarters has received several inquiries asking if the material made public following the hacking of e-mails and other files from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia has any impact on the AMS Statement on Climate Change, which was approved by the AMS Council in 2007 and represents the official position of the Society.

The AMS Statement on Climate Change continues to represent the position of the AMS….

For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited.

It’s now clear that “Sir” Isaac Newton and a series of co-conspirators were guilty of several crimes against science, including:

• Conspiring to avoid public scrutiny
• Insulting dissenting scientists and equating them with holocaust deniers
• Manipulation of evidence
• Knowingly publishing scientific fraud
• Suppression of evidence
• Abusing the peer review system
• Insulting their critics

As this analysis makes clear:

If you own any shares in companies that produce reflecting telescopes, use differential and integral calculus, or rely on the laws of motion, I should start dumping them NOW.

We’ll keep you posted on this breaking story…

The advantage to humans of being able to organise, teach and use weapons to catch food may initially have been slight.  That marginal advantage has allowed a single species to migrate, settle and dominate their entire planet; something unprecedented in all of Earth history.

The study of human evolution covers a period of six million years, during which a semi-upright-walking woodland ape eventually developed tools, learning, and culture, and survived ice-ages, earthquakes and climate disruption.  Adding to the complexity of this epic tale is that there appears to have been overlap between at least two intelligent species of human-like creatures in the last 50,000 years.

Dr Chris Stringer leads the Department of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum in London’s research into human origins. “Very soon, we will have the genome for Neanderthals.  That will then allow a three-way comparison between humans, chimps and Neanderthals.  This will give us a better view of the six million year split between humans and chimps, and of what made us and the Neanderthals different from each other,” he says.

“The Neanderthals were really unlucky.  When modern humans moved north into Europe about four to five thousand years ago, the climate was at its most unstable.  The North Atlantic regularly switched between being frozen over and thawing, and some data suggest that these events sometimes happened in less than 10 years.”

“The Neanderthals had survived previous ice ages by simply giving up territory and moving down south.  Now they met early Cro-Magnon humans.  So, just a slightly different timing of events could have led to Neanderthals surviving, and perhaps our species going extinct instead.”

The Middle East was the biggest area of overlap between the two species as they moved back and forth, along with climate change.  Neanderthal relics there that are 120,000 years old show burial traditions.  There is also evidence that Neanderthals cared for each other.

“Archaeologists found the skeleton of a Neanderthal that shows signs of healing from an injury. His skull was damaged and he would have been quite seriously disabled, but he survived for years afterwards.  Now for a Neanderthal living in the mountains of Iraq to survive with that sort of disability implies a level of complex organisation and social support.”

Part of the reason for looking after the elderly is simply that – in a world without writing and libraries – they act as a store of knowledge from the past to the present.  Caring gives a survival advantage.

There is a debate as to whether Neanderthals died out because of environmental change, or because of being outcompeted by modern humans.  The reality is probably something in-between.

Neanderthals are believed to have lacked complex symbolic language skills and our species was just that little bit more intelligent.  “The concept of symbolic language, of understanding and planning for the past and the future, that – I believe – is a modern human invention.”

Both modern humans and Neanderthals developed the use of weapons for hunting, but these were hand-held spears.  When one band of humans developed throwing weapons they were therefore able to hunt better and also achieve victory in any conflict with other humans such as the Neanderthals.  Perhaps modern humans were able to retain, transmit and develop this knowledge better than the Neanderthals could?

Dr Stringer points out that chimps and gorillas do overlap, but tend to ignore each other in the wild even though they fill similar biological niches.  Chimps and gorillas are, in evolutionary terms, many millions of years apart.  Humans and Neanderthals are perhaps only 400,000 years apart, and it is uncertain how they would have interacted.

Whatever happened, though, Neanderthals couldn’t change fast enough to keep up with both the fluctuating climates and the newcomers, and after more than 10 thousand years of coexistence they became extinct leaving us as the only human species in most of the Old World.

The study of human origins challenges the closely held beliefs of the widest possible group of people: from extreme racists, nationalists, and religious fundamentalists, to ordinary people who wish to hope that the universe offers more than the random and chaotic.

The movement of humans out of Africa and the continual process of climate change means that humans would stretch out, and die back, repeatedly.  Yet modern human political and social groups are determined to fix origins in their modern borders.  They want to be British, or Aryan, or African.  In evolutionary terms, we’re just human.

Racism brings people into conflict with science.  But so does religion and, more recently, opposition to the impact that climate change could have on the nature of life on earth.

Even those who support science like to point out that nature gets there first.  A recent paper in Nature Photonics shows that Stomatopod crustaceans are able to sense the difference between left and right circular polarized light with an accuracy of just ±2.7 degrees over the visible range.  The best human-made device clocks in with an accuracy of ±9 degrees.

Maybe, but it probably took the Stomatopod millions of years to develop its solution.  Humans developed their solution in mere decades.  And, more importantly, science-based investigations are allowing us to unlock the mechanisms behind just about any natural solution we require.  The combustion engine is now approaching its theoretical efficiency.  Solar energy panels are a long way from that point, but it is happening.

Science may not have all the answers, but it does know how to go about finding them.

Professor Chris Stringer will give the Nelson Mandela Science Lecture at University of the Western Cape on Tuesday, 24 November as part of the observance of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species”. The lecture will start at 1pm. Enquiries visit AfricaGenome.com