Category Archives: "Political" Science

NASA’s Hansen asked to account for outside activities

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“NASA’s Hansen asked to account for outside activities“ (June 21st, 2011). Here’s another whopper from Christopher Horner of that home of scientific inquiry, the American Tradition Institute (an arm of the Competitive Enterprise Institute). Anthony Watts naturally jumps to endorse the accusation that “taxpayer-funded global warming activist” James Hansen receiving a “prize” is an ethical violation and that government scientists are clock-punching shift-workers…

Sez Anthony, “Gavin Schmidt’s time spent on editing realclimate.org during working hours apparently was the trigger for a broader investigation.”

Tip to Anthony: scientists are salaried employees, not hourly assembly line workers. The “broader investigation” Anthony tries to imply is simply think tank thug Christopher Horner speaking out of both sides of his mouth at once. Previously, Dr. Hansen’s involvement with the RealClimate website was decried as “advocacy” on government time, now it’s an “outside activity” that must be “accounted for”. Which is it? Do he really care?

ATI seeks to learn whether NASA approved Hansen’s outside employment, which public financial disclosures and other documents reveal to have brought him at least $1.2 million in the past four years. This money comes on top of and, more troubling from an ethics and legal perspective, is all “related to” and sometimes even expressly for his taxpayer-funded employment, all of which outside employment commenced when Hansen stepped up his “global warming” activism from his perch at NASA. – ATI press release.

I guess the attempts to undermine Hansen’s scientific claims are running out of steam; the harassment and personal attacks will continue though, they’re pretty much reflexive.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress has a more detailed look (who would have ever thought that Fox News would jump on a story like this?): Fox News Compares James Hansen’s Prizes for Truth Telling to Big Tobacco Paying a Doctor to Deny the Risks of Smoking.

UVA to supply Mann emails/documents but you can’t look (yet)

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“UVA to supply Mann emails/documents but you can’t look (yet)“ (May 25th, 2011). Anthony Watts’s friends at scientific cornerstone the American Tradition Institute have won their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legal battle against Dr. Mann and the University of Virginia! They’re going to get everything Dr. Mann, or anyone that even knew him, ever wrote while at the University of Virginia! It will be full of instructions on how to fake global warming evidence! Also Anthony now knows what in camera means.

Chris Horner from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (American Tradition Institute is just one of many sock-puppets) gloats about his FOIA demands:

“In short, the University was forced to part ways from supporting the PFAW/ACLU/AAAS/AAUP demands [damn commie libruls all of them!] and Mann’s interests, and start working to make itself look less bad to a court.” and “we get it all“. (emphasis mine)

Actually, no. But I suppose this is as close to scientific victory as the denialists will ever get.

The material in question is sealed and the only documents that will be unsealed is the fraction that is confirmed to contain correspondence relevant to specific research supported by public grant money. The unrelated material that Horner wanted to sweep up and snoop through will presumably remain excluded.

Chris Horner’s maneuverings are a partisan continuation of the frankly outrageous legal assault on Dr. Mann by the Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, built on the flimsy excuse that state funds may have somehow been misused. The University of Virginia’s position on these sweeping FOIA demands has always been that correspondence not directly connected to a legitimate FOIA would not be provided.

Funny how denialists and libertarians consider anything to do with themselves inviolably private but anything to do with their targets unquestionably public domain. People who receive work for government are apparently right-less slaves.

When this tactic first came up many denialists were uncomfortable with the invasion of privacy aspects, but they seem fine with it now. Steve McIntyre, the Great Auditor, was against it, but now he’s for it. Even Anthony himself was once merely tepid on this tactic. I guess principle is failing to overrule expediency.

Five years of “An Inconvenient Truth”

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Five years of “An Inconvenient Truth” (May 24th, 2011). Anthony Watts wears his fingers down to tiny nubs hammering out Yet-Another-Criticism-of-An_Inconvenient_Truth, this time a true opus:

Executive Summary: Science Fiction

After-all Julia A. Seymour of the Business and Media Institute (staff of four) says so. And if you can’t trust an organization “devoted solely to analyzing and exposing the anti-free enterprise culture of the media“ then who can you trust? No-one, that’s who.

Denialist fixation with Al Gore and his documentary film has been both obsessive and compulsive since the first screening of the Oscar-winning documentary, and five years on it’s still “inconvenient”. Denialists have leveled every insinuation and nit-pick they can, but it still stands unbowed. As a rational person though I have to say “so what?” Even if it was proven beyond a doubt that it was filmed on the same soundstage as the Apollo Moon Landings, the abundant evidence and knowledge that supports scientific concern over Global Warming will remain. An Inconvenient Truth is simply a popular presentation of that concern.

So what do we find in 5 Years After: Networks Celebrate Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth,’ Ignore Scientific Flaws, Criticism? A sullen regurgitation of denialist attempts to undermine a popular documentary and teach them scientists a thing or two. Empty-headed gum-flapping. Here’s a few highlights:

  • Personal attacks on Al “Apocalypse Al” Gore as a “movie star”, etc.
  • Allegations that Gore predicted 20 ft sea-level rise by 2010 (he didn’t).
  • Climate Depot’s “lengthy list of more than 1,000 scientists who dissent in some way from those claims” (classic fake survey).
  • The claim that Gore’s “mentor” oceanographer Roger Revelle had “second thoughts” about CO2 and climate change late in life (misrepresenting a dead man. Read his own words).
  • Accusations that the media buried a High Court of London ruling that there were “nine significant errors” in AIT (but primarily ruled that it was clear that the film was substantially founded upon scientific research and fact).
  • Climategate!
  • A pitch for next month’s Heartland Institute conference on “Restoring the Scientific Method.”

Scientific American’s interview with Dr. Richard Muller

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“Scientific American’s interview with Dr. Richard Muller“ (May 23, 2011). Anthony Watts has long resented Scientific American’s general scientific rationality. Just a few months ago they labelled his blog as a “well-known climate denier site” after-all. However, as we have seen across the popular press, the pretense of “balance” sometimes enables sloppy reporting of controversial topics to allow anti-scientific positions to gather support. Popular support fpr the disproven claim that the MMR vaccine triggers autism offers an excellent example.

Here we find Anthony practically wriggling like a puppy over his mention in Michael Lemonick’s lazy Sci Am interview of physicist Dr. Richard Muller about climate change science.

Both Steve McIntyre and I are mentioned prominently in the article, and once again Dr. Muller thanks us for our contributions to the debate.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress covers the Scientific American article at length, exposing Muller’s statements for their lack of both knowledge and integrity.

The otherwise inactive Dr. Muller injected himself into the Global Warming debate when he started the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. Denialists licked their chops at the thought of a temperature reconstruction that appeared impartial but came from a politically aligned source, but howled of betrayal when Dr. Muller’s first analysis reluctantly confirmed the existing science.

Still, Dr. Muller enthusiastically embraces the irrelevant nitpicking of citizen-scientists such as Steve McIntyre (contradicted in Scientific American itself back in 2009 “Novel Analysis Confirms Climate ‘Hockey Stick’ Graph“) and freely libels both long-standing climate experts such as Dr. Michael Mann and commentators such as Al Gore. Muller acknowledges the existence of “denialists” but fails to name any so it’s hard to know just how crazy you have to be for Muller to step back. You’re safe, Anthony!

New Aussie skeptic movement

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“New Aussie skeptic movement“ (May 16, 2011). Anthony Watts promotes the comical Galileo Movement, founded by Australian “retirees Case Smit and John Smeed”.

Although once “they simply accepted politicians’ claims of global warming”, they were so “incensed” to discover that “climate claims by some scientists and politicians contradict observed facts” that they felt they had to “[risk] their personal finances” and bring Lord Monckton, “famous for explaining the scientific data, the statistics and the UN bureaucracy’s political fabrication of global warming alarm”, to tour Australia. Their background page is a sea of ad hominem claims, straw-men arguments and libertarian paranoia.

The purpose of “Case’s and John’s apolitical public campaign”?

  • Protect freedom – personal choice [the hell with everyone else] and national sovereignty [because no country’s climate is related to another’s];
  • Protect the environment [by doing nothing];
  • Protect science and restore scientific integrity [two words – Lord. Monckton.];
  • Protect our economic security [by impeding rational preparation for climate impacts on same];
  • Protect people’s emotional health by ending Government and activists’ constant destructive bombardment of fear and guilt on our kids and communities [instead bombarding them with right-wing conspiracy theories].

Famous climate denialist. From Wikipedia.

Why invoke Galileo Galilei? Well, apparently he “stood up publicly… to ensure [that] objective science replaced superstition, ideology, ignorance and state control.” Just like them, bravely espousing the radical new idea that CO2 has no climate consequences! Except of course that they are really defending an old idea that has been progressively replaced by new knowledge (gosh, CO2 increases do have climate consequences). Um guys, this analogy makes you the Catholic Church not the courageous scientist... You’re resisting change in your own short-sighted self-interest.

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

Get a load of the Galileo Movement’s collection of “independent advisers”, which apparently “includes diverse opinions”. It’s a Who’s Who of denialists and their apologists: Professor Tim Ball, Warwick Hughes, Professor Fred Singer, Professor Dick Lindzen, Professor Bill Kininmonth, Professor Bob Carter, Professor Ian Plimer, David Archibald, Professor Peter Ridd, Professor Garth Paltridge, Dr Vincent Gray, Dr Jennifer Marohasy, Jo Nova, Des Moore, John Nicol, David Flint, Andrew Bolt, John McLean, David Evans and Viscount Monckton. Don’t forget to include Alan Jones, whose “innate[?] expertise straddles the fields of politics, sport and the media.”

2011-08-15 Update: Scientific American has take notice of these bozos, posting Why Carbon Dioxide is a Greenhouse Gas.

In making a case against CO2 as a greenhouse gas, the Galileo Movement relies on irrelevant facts while omitting pertinent ones.

Canada finds climate sanity

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“Canada finds climate sanity“ (May 19, 2011). Anthony Watts seems to think that the recent Canadian election was all about libertarianism and climate policy. Ordinary Canadians want an end to intrusive government climate change regulations! Nope, although environmental issues should definitely have been an issue, they took a backseat to ordinary political wrangling.

The Conservative party had under 40% of the popular vote but in a flawed “first past the post” multi-party system, won a majority of seats. Several “progressive” parties shared 60% of the popular vote. Hardly a consensus, although much like the Republicans in America the Conservatives are enthusiastically implementing a “business-friendly” agenda.

However it has ended global warming forever.

Face palm: EPA bureaucrat tap dances during testimony

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“Face palm: EPA bureaucrat tap dances during testimony“. (Revised for clarity.) I’m back from the Boston Marathon and I found a note in my inbox from a website supporter. A new example of Anthony Watts’ enthusiasm for Republican politics has landed, this time as a post by Ryan Maue. Ryan, who must spend a lot of time learning science from Congressional hearings, thinks the Republicans ‘scored one’ by rattling an EPA witness with some political posturing over coal ash.

Ryan’s scientifically skeptical mind swallows the Republican rhetoric whole and sees only the “job-killing nature of the EPA’s regulations” and “how in-the-tank the media is for [Obama’s] ’12 re-election.” He thoroughly approves of the fact that “the GOP wants to eliminate the EPA’s current attempt/ability to regulate greenhouse gases (CO2) and, here, coal-ash”. Damn the torpedoes! Unleash the country’s economic engine! Science has no place in our economy!

So what happened at the Environment and Energy subcommittee hearing? Rep. Cory Gardner (R – Colorado) squawked Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! when questioning EPA Deputy Administrator Mathy Stanislaus after his testimony, which concerned the uses of coal ash. Coal ash, as noted approvingly by Republican organ The Daily Caller in EPA official says jobs don’t matter, is “used to make concrete stronger and longer lasting, make wallboard more durable and improve the quality of roofing shingles.” The EPA prepared testimony was that they were not concerned with such encapsulated uses.

Coal ash is also used in unencapsulated ways. That’s the stuff that can leach toxic metals such as arsenic, selenium, cadmium, lead, and mercury into drinking water and which, unsurprisingly, is an environmental concern that the EPA is obligated to address.

“EPA does not consider… sand and gravel pits, quarries, and other large fill operations to be beneficial use. EPA views this as disposal and would regulate”

“EPA believes that the great bulk of beneficial uses, particularly in an encapsulated form, like in concrete and wallboard, do not raise concerns and offer environmental benefits.  However, some questions have been raised about the use… in an unencapsulated form”

The idea of encouraging corporations to give away their coal ash waste for use in structural fill arose during George W. Bush’s administration with 70 million tons of predictable consequences.

Stanislaus did indeed seem “visibly dumbfounded” by Gardner’s apparent belief that coal ash somehow creates jobs, that the impact on employment is the only factor in a cost-benefit analysis, and that of course no-one should stand in the way of jobs. Ryan Maue declares that Stanislaus’ response is “cringe-inducing as he spun like a top attempting to deflect the very pointed, and basic yes-or-no questions” but it seems more like a polite attempt to gloss over the questioner’s ignorance. Like for instance that job creation would be a perfectly conventional benefit in a cost/benefit analysis and that job losses would be a cost. Could Rep. Gardner really think that the impact on employment is the only factor in a cost-benefit analysis, and that some weird EPA version of that process of analysis specifically excludes it? I suppose it’s easier to shout, regardless of actual consequences, about protecting American Jobs.

That is the “face palm” here.

It seems to me that Gardner’s posturing was designed to protect power company profits, not jobs. Proper disposal of coal ash would be an extra cost to the power companies, and any replacement for coal ash in structural uses would entail new extraction and processing jobs… But that’s just me getting sidetracked by the apparent subject of the exchange.

Ryan’s quotes from The Daily Caller end with the statement that the “EPA official’s testimony has generated negative reactions from pro-business advocates who say Stanislaus’s testimony shows the agency is out of touch with reality and is indifferent to job creation.” If you consider Superfund coal ash decontamination projects as instances of job creation then Rep. Gardner is right. The towns of Pines, Ind. and Chesapeake, Va are two such lucky recipients…

Zeroed out: NOAA Climate Service funding axed in budget CR

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“Zeroed out: NOAA Climate Service funding axed in budget CR“. Anthony Watts and his readers gloat over successful Republican maneuvering to cut funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s new Climate Service. Funny, until they managed to grasp the levers of power the denialists chorus sang constantly of the need for more and better information. This of course required prolonged waiting.

Suddenly, ignorance is again bliss.

Next up, those communists at the EPA. How dare they tell us what’s safe? If we want lead in our drinking water and gasoline, or prefer to chew our air, we’ll do it! It’s how we raise new Republican voters.

Climate models go cold

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Anthony illustrates Evans' science with cartoon of a CO2 molecule (or maybe deadmau5).

Climate models go cold. Hey, we’re golden! Anthony Watts assures us that “Carbon warming [is] too minor to be worth worrying about”! After-all, there’s a paranoid right-wing opinion piece by Australian crank David Evans in Canada’s Financial Post newspaper that proves it.

David Evans tells us that he’s “a scientist” (although not a climate scientist as he likes to imply) who used to be an “alarmist”. But he learned that the “whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s”? Wow! Did someone just hit the That Was Easy button?

Evans is mainly interested in muttering about political corruption, gravy trains and “the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome”. But here’s the core of Evans’ claim (note his inability to solve the equation 1 + 3 = x):

For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.

So… if Evans can disprove the implied relative contributions to warming, which he has already got wrong, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down I guess. Evans sets to work. No tropospheric “hotspot”, as posited by climate science, was found in the upper atmosphere! [Except it was.] Evans says all that water vapor was turning into clouds that offset the warming. [Except it didn’t.] Those corrupt climate scientists never noticed the clouds, so they’re wrong! [Except clouds have always been part of climate modeling.]

With this very shaky underpinning, Evans proceeds to assure us that the reason climate scientists won’t admit their error now is because they want to keep their “well-paying jobs with lavish research grants” and are slavishly eager to offer “political power to their government masters.” Why, they “ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence” [nope], and they  are playing tricks with “the way they measure temperature” [a lame invocation of Anthony’s discredited science fair project], and they ignore the satellite record [you know, the ones they put up there].

Kind of confusing until you realise that this whole dissertation was made at an Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally, probably from Evan’s Perth, Australia front porch. The only science in his entire rant is Anthony’s addition of a Wikipedia CO2 molecule cartoon. There could be some nasty backlash over his inconvenient admission that CO2 has even a slight warming effect though…

2011-04-13 Update: Michael Tobis highlights Evans’ flim-flam at Only In It For The Gold.

Rising From My Long Winter’s Nap

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Yawn… Hey, the sun came back! It warm again! (Note to self: the junk calories at Watts Up With That are no foundation whatsoever for a proper hibernation; Anthony gamed that stupid internet popularity poll! He is not the handsomest man in school.)

As I dozed off in January the global (i.e. my neighbourhood) temperature trends (for a few weeks at least) indicated the clear return of a new ice age. How I wept bitter tears as I shuffled into the den I share with Al Gore, knowing I had been fooled by those climate scientists and their greedy self-interest!

Yet I was already too sleepy to beseech forgiveness from the noble citizen-scientists who had so bravely rejected the alleged evidence and the so-called physical science. The warming had stopped, just like Henrik Svensmark had said it would. Snow was falling (somewhere), just as Anthony Watts was always pointing out. The Arctic sea ice was piling up anew just a Steve Goddard had promised. CO2 was plant food! I knew I was in for more than the usual number of hibernation dreams in which I found myself in public without my fur on.

…

So what’s happened during my nap? Let’s gather a list of Anthony’s winter whoppers in the comments. I hear that Anthony has been encouraging his readers to drown out scientist’s voices. And did Watts really try to wriggle into the spotlight and falsely pre-announce the results of Dr. Richard Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project’s “skeptic” dream-team reexamination of global temperature trends, only to misrepresent their initial findings and declare that they were dead to him because it, err, matched the published scientific consensus?

Here are some entertaining (or infuriating if you are Anthony Watts) quotes from Dr. Muller’s 2011-03-31 Testimony to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, who was brought in by the controlling tea-party Republicans as a dependable tame scientist:

“Many US stations have low quality rankings according to a study led by Anthony Watts. However, we find that the warming seen in the “poor” stations is virtually indistinguishable from that seen in the “good” stations.” and later, “Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming? We’ve studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no.”

“In our preliminary analysis of these stations, we found a warming trend that is shown in the figure. It is very similar to that reported by the prior groups: a rise of about 0.7 degrees C since 1957.”

“The Berkeley Earth agreement with the prior analysis surprised us” [Must suck when your boasts of transparency prevent you from jigging things to match your personal biases, eh Dr. Muller? Don’t worry, your Republican pals will legislate the Earth’s temperature, along with the value of pi and that annoying evolution thing.]

Which brings us to this website… As much as I try to have fun with Anthony Watts’ malicious website, I can’t keep this up by myself. Getting inside Anthony’s head is not only time-consuming but corrosive and claustrophobic, and my Significant Other is much more fun to interact with. In the Fall I had some research help from a few readers, which I greatly appreciated. I need to find a way to facilitate this more directly and where appropriate recognize contributions. Put your thinking caps on and look for a post here discussing some options.

In the meantime, I’ve finally got e-mail working here and you can contact me privately at ben@wottsupwiththat.com.