The media influence public opinion about climate change, but not as much as national politicians and the state of the economy do, according to a new analysis of eight years of polling data.
Over time, activists have pointed their fingers in many directions while trying to explain society’s failure to address the threat of climate change. Scientists, policymakers, captains of industry, advocates, and the weather have all been blamed for the nation’s general indifference to the matter, but journalists seem to shoulder a particularly large share of blame.
Take a recent a statement by James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the country’s preeminent climatologists, who has become a vocal campaigner for reducing heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.
“Public doubt about the science is not an accident,” he wrote in a personal letter posted online at the end of January. “People profiting from business-as-usual fossil use are waging a campaign to discredit the science” by manipulating the news:
Today most media, even publicly-supported media, are pressured to balance every climate story with opinions of contrarians, climate change deniers, as if they had equal scientific credibility. Media are dependent on advertising revenue of the fossil fuel industry, and in some cases are owned by people with an interest in continuing business as usual.
Such comments typify the slapdash scapegoating of journalists that is so popular these days. Though the dilemmas Hansen cites are important, “false balance” is not the problem it used be. And while I haven’t seen a breakdown of the media’s latest revenue streams, I’d guess that news outlets are also less financially dependent on the fossil fuels industry than they used to be. That’s no excuse for the poor reporting and conflicts of interest that do exist, but focusing on these flaws to explain the lack of action on climate change distracts attention from more important factors.
That’s the suggestion, at least, of an analysis of public-opinion trends published in the journal Climatic Change on February 3. Using the results of 74 public-opinion surveys conducted between January 2002 and December 2010—which asked a total of 84,086 people 14 questions about their perception of climate change—researchers created a “Climate Change Threat Index” that allowed them to map the swings in public opinion over the course of eight years.
Following stable, tepid concern from 2002 to 2005, apprehension began to climb in 2006, peaked in late 2007, and then fell back to where it was in 2002. But the team of three sociologists, led by Drexel University’s Robert Brulle, wanted to know why, so they gathered data on five likely influences: extreme weather events, scientific information, media coverage, congressional attention, and advocacy groups on both sides of issue. They also looked at four control variables: unemployment, gross domestic product, war deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the price of oil. The team then compared that data to changes in the Climate Change Threat Index.
They found the most important factors that influenced public concern were public statements by Democrats in support of addressing climate change; anti-environmental votes by Republicans; unemployment; GDP; and the number of times The New York Times mentioned the film, An Inconvenient Truth.
Media coverage was an important, second-order influence on people’s perception, but like public opinion itself, it too was “largely a function of elite cues and economic factors,” according to the analysis. The researchers gauged media coverage measured by the number of stories about climate change on the three major broadcast TV networks and in The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, and US News & World Report. Other, minor influences also reflected some media activity, however. For instance, in addition to peer-reviewed papers published in the journal Science, the “scientific information” category included climate change coverage in 15 popular science magazines. And the “advocacy” category included climate change coverage in 12 major environmental magazines and six conservative magazines.
You may find this story published in our February issue of use too.
Climate scientists not cowed by relentless climate change deniers
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.1431
#1 Posted by Paul Guinnessy, CJR on Wed 8 Feb 2012 at 01:47 PM
I think the biggest single reason that the public generally places "global climate change" about three tiers lower in import than say, prairie dog eradication... Is that the global climate isn't changing.
If and when the climate actually, you know... changes or something... Then I think the public's interest might pick up a tad.
As it is... Sea ice isn't shrinking... Global temperatures haven't increased, at least in any scientifically significant sense, in the last 15 years... Hurricane intensity - the once ballyhooed and inevitable consequence of AGW - isn't happening. The polar bears aren't dying - their numbers are increasing to nuisance levels in fact...Etc..Etc.. Etc...
The public simply isn't buying the notion of a "scientific consensus" regarding the global warming schtick anymore than it is buying the corrupt and plainly anticapitialist BS from the IPCC.
#2 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 8 Feb 2012 at 02:35 PM
I agree that media is a convenient scapegoat for the continued shift towards scepticism of global warming which has been seen in several multi-year polls. Especially when there hasn't really been much media coverage of any other perspective than that of Hansen and his followers. I am finally beginning to see that changing and the media is actually covering science that speaks to the numerous uncertainties in climate science outlined in IPCC AR4. For instance in Germany they are giving great coverage to a new skeptical book written by two former warmists who were leaders in the German "green" movement. The book is #1 on the charts. German TV has sponsored climate debates which you never see in the USA. Canada's parliment just broadcast testimony by numerous skeptics of gobal warming. The reality is that skeptics are just being welcomed to the microphone to have their say. The question is why now?
#3 Posted by Sundance, CJR on Wed 8 Feb 2012 at 03:54 PM
Thanks for this story. The problem with media studies is they rarely include the the news media surveys say most people consume...local (mostly TV, god help them), and online. Without those, these findings are suggestive, but hardly as informative as we'd all like them to be.
#4 Posted by David Ropeik, CJR on Wed 8 Feb 2012 at 05:38 PM
It isn't that people aren't learning more about "climate change"... It's just they aren't buying the Warmist silliness DESPITE be better informed.
"DURHAM, N.H. – Americans’ knowledge of facts about the polar regions of the globe has increased since 2006, but this increase in knowledge has not translated into more concern about changing polar environments, according to new research from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire."
This falls into the "truth hurts" category for the anti-corporate Warmingist types.
#5 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 8 Feb 2012 at 05:59 PM
The problem is partially due to media, but the media reflects the greater problem of pseudo-science and anti-science ignorance and superstition that is the hallmark of uneducated people who make their presence known all throughout public forums.
There's no "two sides" to the discussion about reality; either there is AGW, or there is not. With +98% of scientists saying AGW exists, there's no doubt.
No matter how many trolls post comments and act as amplifiers for dangerous foolishness in popular culture to the addled the minds of a barely conscious public, the facts and truth about Human Caused Global Warming, primarily through the use of fossil fuels and other chemicals, changes to landmasses and how biological life is managed, remains the same.
#6 Posted by UV, CJR on Wed 8 Feb 2012 at 07:20 PM
"The reality is that skeptics are just being welcomed to the microphone to have their say. The question is why now?"
Dear lord.
The reason is because faux controversy such as "climate gate" has given coverage for governments to do what they really want, work in the interests of the industries they're paid by, instead of what they should want, work in the interests of the population and the species based on what the scientific data has produced.
The world has used the arguments and words of discredited people working for oil interest hired pr firms to call into question - not the science, but the people doing the science to make the public distrust their work.
It was hard for elites to just ignore science when scientists were respectable and were advising people to either make hard choices or face harsher consequences. Now, it's easy. So Canada is doing its oil sand thing and America is doing its hydrofrack thing and Germany is doing its Lomborg thing because "doing the right thing is expensive and we elites know that none of our countries have any money. There's a financial crisis".
Of course these were the elites who listened to bad economists from the pr industry instead of good ones when they wanted to do stupid things which created the financial crisis and listened again to bad economists over good ones when it came to what to do about the financial crisis so it is no surprise that elites are listening to bad science over good science when it comes to climate change.
They benefit from systems left as is. When it comes time to change those systems, they procrastinate or they fight the change. If we leave monied elites in charge of our societies, nothing will change until it affects them - by which time it will be too late.
These elites want to be deaf. They just need to have an excuse not to listen.
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 8 Feb 2012 at 08:24 PM
That "98%" claim is nothing but Warmingist BS.
Consensus doesn't make science. 98% of doctors believed in bleeding at one point. And phlogiston. And alchemy.
The fact that Newton practiced alchemy didn't make him right about it.
There is simply no such thing as "consensus science" regarding predictive conclusions based on data, absent a practical model.
Just Warmingist nonsense.
You guys give me the name of an algorithm that can (i) produce Mike Mann's "Hockey Stick" AGW, (ii) account for the Medieval Warm Period (when, as no less than IPCC Warmingist-in-Chief Phil Jones concedes, the average global temperature could have been significantly warmer than it is now) and (iii) also account for the fact that there has been no scientifically significant global warming since 1995... And you'll have a potential convert on your hands.
Alas... There is no such magical mathematical construct.
The ONLY way that people like Mann can publish their AGW nonsense is by employing sleight of hand -a la the Mannian "Mike's Nature Trick" - ignoring part of the tree ring data you don't like and substituting it with data you do like to "hide the decline" in the temperature that the tree ring data would otherwise indicate.
This kind of fraud is why these guys fear scrutiny and openness. This is why they collude and conspire to retaliate against critics. This is why they write that they would like the Earth to cooperate with their AGW predictions by rapidly warming in order wipe the "smug grins" off the faces of their critics. This is why they fight FOIA requests and conspire to destroy emails.
Shining a light on their work will expose these biased, grant-sucking pseudoscientists for the frauds they are.. And they know it better than anyone.
Here in Realityland, the consensus (also acknowledged by no less than Phil Jones) is that there has been no scientifically significant global warming in the past 15 years... PERIOD.
This is just the data, dudes. Deal with it. Or don't. It isn't going anywhere.
As a Nobel laureate physicist recently noted:
1. It is not possible to even accurately measure an "average global temperature".
2. Assuming the Warmingists are right, the average global temperature has increased from 288 K to 288.8 K in 150 years - a negligible 0.27% increase that is certainly within the margin of error of measurement of 19th century thermometers...
3. This warming, if it is happening, has coincided with the single greatest advancement of the human condition in all of human history.
The screwy anti-capitalist leftists have been forced to play semantics - going from "Global Warming" to "Global Climate Change" and finally now to "Global Climate Disruption".
The whole silliness is nothing but a commie shakedown and the people of the developed world are on to it.
#8 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 8 Feb 2012 at 09:09 PM
CJR has studiously avoided the most obvious reasons for global warming skepticism. Someone who has been alive for a few years has heard apocalyptic predictions from the same enviro sources all his/her life. They don't seem to have panned out. Health threats, for the average news consumer, are in this category.
Another reason is that the 'global warming' campaign comes conveniently with a political program. Like its predecessors, global warming seems to demand political control of mass consumption and production by a self-conscious administrative elite.
#9 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 9 Feb 2012 at 12:39 PM
"They don't seem to have panned out. Health threats, for the average news consumer, are in this category."
You'll have to be specific. In terms of atmospheric threats like acid rain and the ozone, the reason those real problems have not produced apocalyptic results is because we were able to take international action to mitigate these effects. We realized uncontrolled emissions caused harm, so we controlled those emissions through technological innovation and regulation.
If you are talking about habitat destruction, that is an ongoing problem and, aside from the occasional la times report on the plastic gyres in our oceans, there isn't a lot of coverage of this problem since the scale of the problem is beyond the scope of a newspaper article to affect. Journalists don't like to write fatalist copy.
But I find it interesting that conservatives, who are supposed to be the realists in the discussion, when confronted by a problem which demands attention run away from the evidence of the problem and complain about supposed "demands for political control of mass consumption and production by a self-conscious administrative elite".
Are these the same folks who made torture and mass survailence tools of the security state in the wake of terrorist attacks? Who spent trillions and American lives in an attempt to reshape the global political structure more towards their liking? After all that we're supposed to be afraid of what the environmentalists might accomplish?
Okay, I'll accept that. We must be afraid of regulations which "demand political control of mass consumption and production by a self-conscious administrative elite". We'll avoid those. Now, you tell me, how do we solve the problem? What is the conservative solution? Making a bunch of propaganda and pretending the problem isn't real isn't going to do the trick. Give us a suggestion of what should be done if you don't like the strategies suggested.
Because, one way or another, the problem will need dealing with be it in the cost of climate instability prevention or the cost in climate instability catastrophy.
#10 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 9 Feb 2012 at 02:29 PM
Thimbles wrote: Now, you tell me, how do we solve the problem? What is the conservative solution?
padikiller responds: What "problem"?
There isn't any problem. The Earth isn't warming - at least not at anything close to the rate claimed by the alarmist-AGW crowd. For Pete's sake, even Phil Jones says so, Dude. That's just the R E A L I T Y here. It's called DATA.
So now we're moving on from global warming to global climate change to global climate disruption to the latest and greatest leftist eco-gripe - acid rain and the "gyres"of capitalist-rendered trash that are plaguing the tuna and squid... In other words, The Ole' Liberal "Bait and Switch" Two-Step we see all the time. Nothing to do with the global warming silliness, of course, but it makes for a nice anti-capitalist dodge.
Which is precisely what Thimbles and his ilk are orchestrating.
Thimbles has made clear his belief that the proper job of the Gubmint is not just to regulate, not just to abandon, and not even just to hinder... But to actually oppose (his word, not mine) anyone engaged in business. To him (as he plainly stated here at CJR) anyone engaged in "business" (the process of creating wealth) is presumably engaged in "criminal activity" and so should be thwarted and vetted by the Gubmint's minions.
THIS is the kind of plain silliness that keeps Americans (and now Europeans) from buying into the AGW stupidity. The more they learn about... The more the corrupt and paranoid inner workings of the tight-knit AGW cabal are exposed.. The less people believe it.
Go figure.
#11 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 9 Feb 2012 at 03:17 PM
"There isn't any problem."
Aren't you due back at your kindergarten? The other children are wondering where you are.
#12 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 9 Feb 2012 at 03:22 PM
The Earth isn't warming - at least not at anything close to the rate claimed by the alarmist-AGW crowd. For Pete's sake, even Phil Jones says so, Dude. That's just the R E A L I T Y here. It's called DATA.
#13 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 9 Feb 2012 at 03:46 PM
So sad to find murmurs of sleeping people. For these awaken ones count on the blessing by staying away from hurting any beings. That is, to live on a plant-based diet.
#14 Posted by Ranee Sullivan, CJR on Thu 9 Feb 2012 at 11:50 PM
I have an idea which plants are in the diet, here...
#15 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 10 Feb 2012 at 12:36 PM
To Thimbles, my intent was to contend that in the eyes of consumers, the apocalyptic predictions of enviros have not panned out. They haven't. I'll stick to my other contention, that the enviro movement is nowhere stronger than among the affluent classes who seek to protect their status.
For illustrative purposes, in my lifetime, I've heard that the 'carrying capacity' of the earth was approaching the breaking point for half a century now. Are there more famines? No, there are not - and where famine exists, it is in sparsely-populated parts of the world. The prices of vital raw materials and resources have not gone sky-high, as was predicted by the limits-to-growth crowd. Life expectancies continue to rise - and they were rising significantly before the environmental movement metastisized among the (white) children of the professional classes.
Throw in the AIDS hysteria of the 1980s, various overstated health threats from toxic chemicals to H1N1, and even the campaign to convince people that Reagan's arms buildup was going to end with a world conflaguration, and what you have is a lot of consumers with 'here we go again, pardon me if my eyes glaze over' in their heads when rich people tell them that the world is doomed unless power over their decisions and producers and consumers is given to some self-consciously enlightened administrative elite. Even western European countries, who are run by such elites, haven't been able to meet their global-warming targets. 'Global warming' reminds me of a religion to which everyone pays solemn lip service, but in whose fundamental details nobody really believes for the purpose of living their lives.
#16 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 10 Feb 2012 at 12:38 PM
Mark Richard wrote: "'Global warming' reminds me of a religion to which everyone pays solemn lip service, but in whose fundamental details nobody really believes for the purpose of living their lives."
padikiller responds: It's like Twain wrote: "Faith is believing what you know isn't true".
And faith it is... And like many faiths, Warmingists are not motivated by any true concern for the common good, but instead upon leftist jealousy and avarice.
The leftist attacks on capitalism based on notions of economic justice (i.e., snatching other people's stuff) were put to rest by the abject failure of collectivism and by the unbridled success of capitalism in elevating the human condition. And so the lefties were forced to switch gears...
It's no longer an economic matter - it's an environmental matter - and of course capitalism is spoiling the world.
Same screwy liberal commie agenda, different name.
They don't really give a hoot about the environment. Just separate their public from their private communications and this hypocritical indifference becomes clear and undeniable. For example, Phil Jones, the Chief Architect of the Warmingist Doctrine, wrote privately that he wished the world would rapidly warm in order to have the personal satisfaction of seeing the "smug grins" wiped from the faces of his critics..
So publicly, these Warmingists warn of the irreversible deleterious effects of runaway global warming, but privately they hope for it... Indeed, they yearn for it in order to fulfill a warped personal vendetta. And in order to oppose capitalism - to help further the "cause" (as Mike Mann calls it).
Here in CJR-Land, just look at the correlation between the most ardent Warmingists and their anti-capitalist agendas.
Thimbles, for example, is a dyed-in-the-wool Warmingist who has made plain his belief that the proper role of the government is to actually oppose business. Indeed, he equates "business" with "criminal activity".
The arguments you get out these kind of people are precisely the arguments you get out of True Believers on the subject of religion...
Ad hominem... Evasion... Obfuscation... Prevarication.. Etc...
When one hammers away at the plain facts (as I do here) by noting for example, the rather dispositive little truism that there hasn't been any statistically significant global warming in the last 15 years... The response is either "nanny-nanny boo boo" or evasion.
When you state a related truism - namely that there is no computer model that can recreate Mike Mann's "Hockey Stick" runaway AGW while simultaneously accounting for the recent 15 year lack of scientifically significant warming and the elevated global temperature of the Medieval Warm Period... You get "are you a kindergartener?" in reply.
Instead of global warming, they start talking about trash in the oceans, acid rain, or some other purported evil upon which they believe they can rely in their anticapitalist attacks.
What else can these Warmingists do? They can't make the data change. They can't make the Earth get warmer when it isn't warming. And they aren't about to deal with facts.
#17 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 10 Feb 2012 at 03:10 PM
"I'll stick to my other contention, that the enviro movement is nowhere stronger than among the affluent classes who seek to protect their status."
Fine, though your contention ignores the people who are living and raising their children within the wake of environmental destruction - for instance the people who live in Virginia towns where the children have black tap water to drink after the mountaintops have been blown off. I know, it's easy to think of environmentalists as hippies enabled by their affluence to think beyond bare sustenance, but it goes farther than that. When society defecates where you eat, drink, and breathe, you might find yourself taking up the environmentalist mantle yourself.
"For illustrative purposes, in my lifetime, I've heard that the 'carrying capacity' of the earth was approaching the breaking point for half a century now."
Yes, based on the limits of farming at the time, it was projected that population would exhaust carrying capacity. Through the copious use of fossil fuel in food production and the cultivation of commercial crops, we have averted the massive famines that would have taken place otherwise. Is that some funny leftist-hippie apologist talk I'm speaking? No. That's Norman Borlaug, father of the green revolution and no friend to environmentalist nor hippie:
http://reason.com/archives/2000/04/01/billions-served-norman-borlaug/3
"Reason: What do you think of organic farming? A lot of people claim it's better for human health and the environment.
Borlaug: That's ridiculous. This shouldn't even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have--the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues--and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.
At the present time, approximately 80 million tons of nitrogen nutrients are utilized each year. If you tried to produce this nitrogen organically, you would require an additional 5 or 6 billion head of cattle to supply the manure. How much wild land would you have to sacrifice just to produce the forage for these cows? There's a lot of nonsense going on here."
And here is where today's conservatives fail in comparison to yester-years thinkers and doers. Norman Borlaug didn't claim the circumstances didn't exist and stick his head in a paper bag, he faced them and changed them using the best methods and technology available at the time. Your solution is to allow global warming to remind you "of a religion to which everyone pays blah blah blah."
The greenhouse effect doesn't care what it reminds you of. It is a proven scientific process which you must live with either through the steps we take to prevent it or the unstable consequences we choose to suffer. Borlaug took steps to prevent his catastrophe. Are you going to suffocate yourself in a paper bag or are you going to take the effort to understand the problem and propose solutions? Courageous conservatives need to face real problems, not run away from them in denial.
I expect better from you.
#18 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 10 Feb 2012 at 05:55 PM
"Thimbles, for example, is a dyed-in-the-wool Warmingist who has made plain his belief that the proper role of the government is to actually oppose business. Indeed, he equates "business" with "criminal activity"."
On the other hand, I don't expect better from you.
#19 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 10 Feb 2012 at 06:00 PM
The usual suspects will hate the mankrug link, but in reference to my comment "The world has used the arguments and words of discredited people working for oil interest hired pr firms to call into question - not the science, but the people doing the science to make the public distrust their work.":
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/jonathan-chait-is-mean/
"There are just a lot of people out there exerting significant influence over the political debate who are totally unqualified. The dilemma is especially acute in the political economic field, where wealthy right-wingers have pumped so much money to subsidize the field of pro-rich people polemics that the demand for competent defenders of letting rich people keep as much of their money as possible vastly outstrips the supply. Hence the intellectual marketplace for arguments that we should tax rich people less is glutted with hackery."
Same goes for the intellectual marketplace for arguments that we should do something, anything, about climate change.
#20 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 10 Feb 2012 at 08:09 PM
In fact the quoted article by Chait mentions:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/02/jonathan-chait-why-im-so-mean.html
"A similar problem exists, perhaps to an even worse extent, with climate change denial.
Most people don’t follow these issues for a living and have a hard time distinguishing legitimate arguments from garbage. I don’t mean this patronizingly: I certainly would have trouble distinguishing valid arguments from nonsense in a technical field I didn’t study professionally. But that's why there’s a value in signaling that some arguments aren’t merely expressing a difference in values or interpretation, but are made by an unqualified hack peddling demonstrable nonsense."
ps. By my wording:
"Same goes for the intellectual marketplace for arguments that we should do something, anything, about climate change."
I mean that the intellectual marketplace is "glutted with hackery" that we shouldn't do a thing about it. The denialist side not just glutted with hackery, hackery has become the price of admission.
#21 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 10 Feb 2012 at 08:22 PM
Four posts by Thimbles...
And not a single fact presented in any of them to support the AGW nonsense.
Why?
Because the facts don't support the crumbling AGW narrative.
padikiller: There hasn't been any scientifically significant global warming in thce last 15 years...
Thimbles: Crickets chirping
padikiller: There is no AGW computer model that can produce Mike Mann's "Hockey Stick" runaway global warming prediction and simultaneously account for the recent lack of global warming and the Medieval Warm Period.
Thimbles: Crickets chirping
padikiller: Phil Jones, the Chief Author of the IPCC's AGW silliness, stated that the IPCC authors were chosen not on merit, but in order to appease developing nations and that consequently, in his estimation, half of these authors were incapable of writing papers.
Thimbles: Crickets chirping
padikiller: The increase in the average global temperature claimed by the Warmingists (from 288.0 to 288.8 K over a period of 150 years - an increase of 0.27 percent) is negligible and within the margin of error of both the measuring devices and the protocol).
Thimbles: Crickets chirping
See?
Nothing but invective ad hominem, evasion and senseless redirection out of these guys.
Just like talking to a religious fanatic.
#22 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 10 Feb 2012 at 09:16 PM
"And not a single fact presented in any of them to support the AGW nonsense.
Why?"
Search the archives;
http://www.cjr.org/search.php?&q=padkiller+climate+gate
Lemme know when you've posted something new.
#23 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 10 Feb 2012 at 10:50 PM
When the subject of climate science comes up, you can always count on padislayer to regurgitate his anti-global warming dogma. This thread mimics a hundred other threads on this site, and will be repeated whenever another climate science article is posted. It's like padi is a robot - just push the button, and out comes the invective.
#24 Posted by Rick Sullivan, CJR on Sat 11 Feb 2012 at 09:35 AM
On both the economy and climate why oh why can't we have a better press corps.
#25 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 11 Feb 2012 at 10:49 AM
Unbiased research has demonstrated that change to the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide has had no significant influence on average global temperature. Google ‘sunspot “time integral”’ and follow the links to discover what has.
#26 Posted by Dan Pangburn, CJR on Sat 11 Feb 2012 at 12:12 PM
Hi Dan.
If you are claiming that recent change in atmospheric CO2 has had no effect on average global temperature then perhaps one can debate that.
If you are claiming that change in atmospheric CO2 has never had an effect on average global temperature then that claim is wrong.
And as far as the simple equation goes, for a start, you cannot claim you have a predictive equation, and show graphs where your equation matches the instrumental record, while leaving 4 coefficients TBD.
"a, b, c, and d are coefficients to be determined."
Whaa?
#27 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 11 Feb 2012 at 02:34 PM
You notice the only person posting those "fact-thingies" here is me, right?
I suppose the truth hurts..
That's why we get juvenile name-calling and silly ad hominem from the fanatic anti-capitalist AGW crowd.
They can't change the facts. They can't make the earth start warming when it isn't. They can't take back Phil Jones' admissions.
So they bitch and whine that I'm repeating myself...Which I am, to be sure.
It takes many tolls of the Reality Bell to deal with the silly obfuscation of the left on this issue.
But one thing you won't find in any of the repetition in the archives... Is any refutation of the reality.
These guys just don't like hearing it.
#28 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sat 11 Feb 2012 at 04:38 PM
"But one thing you won't find in any of the repetition in the archives... Is any refutation of the reality."
Actually, all you find are refutations of your reality, which you've admitted is based off the predicative power of ouija boards when you're not confusing the basic principles of causality to claim other people are wrong.
After many attempts, it's become clear one would have a more productive discussion with a chicken - or as productive with this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4od4QQVK1o
than with you.
If you want more of those "fact-thingies" that you've ignored in past threads, here's something for you which will hopefully not be too far above your level:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDHcNR-J6A8
Other than that, I've got nothing for you. You're boring. Good day.
#29 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 11 Feb 2012 at 07:02 PM
Thimbles,
Nearly 4 years ago I demonstrated that climate change is NOT driven by change to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (Google Dan Pangburn Middlebury). I have corroborated that finding several times since.
In my recent work, the coefficient ‘d’ turned out to be insignificantly different from zero. That leaves 3 coefficients in an equation that calculates average global temperatures since 1895 with an accuracy of 88%. When calibrated using measurements up to 1990 it predicts temperatures since then which can be compared to actual measurements. The standard deviation of the difference between prediction and measurement is less than 0.1C. No one else has done anywhere near that well.
#30 Posted by Dan Pangburn, CJR on Sat 11 Feb 2012 at 10:39 PM
> padikiller, CJR on Wed 8 Feb 2012 at 02:35 PM
>
> - the global climate isn't changing.
> - Sea ice isn't shrinking...
> - Global temperatures haven't increased, at least in any scientifically
significant sense, in the last 15 years...
> - Hurricane intensity - the once ballyhooed and inevitable consequence of AGW - isn't happening.
> - The polar bears aren't dying - their numbers are increasing to nuisance levels in fact...Etc..Etc.. Etc...
Everybody - don't feed the troll!
---
@Thimbles
Look at those bullet points. He's a troll.
You keep feeding him so he stays around. He's become like a bear that's forgetting how to forage. I bet one of the highlights to his day are your replies
If you ignore him - he'll get hungry and get his nourishment elsewhere.
Dan Pangburn seems like a nutcase - I'd ignore him too.
#31 Posted by F. Murray Rumpelstiltskin, CJR on Sun 12 Feb 2012 at 12:23 AM
"Look at those bullet points. He's a troll."
I know. I know. On the one hand "you should never feed the troll", on the other hand if you leave the site full of unrebutted idiocy, how many people will read the site work idiotic than when they started?
I've gotten better. I made a decision to rebut only new arguments.
"Dan Pangburn seems like a nutcase - I'd ignore him too."
I try to give people a chance.
#32 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 12 Feb 2012 at 03:53 AM
Thimbles blithers: "if you leave the site full of unrebutted idiocy, how many people will read the site work idiotic than when they started?"
padikiller responds: There has been no scientifically significant global warming in the last 15 years... PERIOD.
Rebut that.
Good luck.
#33 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sun 12 Feb 2012 at 10:07 AM
In the spirit of "science"... Let's stay away from opinion, and look at the "raw" data - namely the words of the "dispassionate climate scientists":
*************************************************************************
"We've picked up a number of people from developing countries so IPCC can claim good geographic representation. This has made our task harder as CLAs as we are working with about 50% good people who can write reasonable assessments and 50% who probably can't." - Phil Jones
"I think the notion of telling the public to prepare for both global warming and an ice age at the same creates a real public relations problem for us" - Ray Pierrehumbert
"What do you think would be the most effective way to radicalise the UN agenda and protect the climate from our current economic and political systems?" - David Viner
"I seem to be getting an email a week from skeptics saying where's the warming gone. I know the warming is on the decadal scale, but it would be nice to wear their smug grins away." - Phil Jones
"I must say I find myself in sympathy with much of what Will Hutton writes. In particular his conclusion that the debate around climate change is fundamentally about power and politics rather than the environment seems undeniable. There are not that many "facts" about (the meaning of) climate change which science can unequivocally reveal" - Mike Hulme
"I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” - Phil Jones
"It would be nice to try to "contain" the putative "MWP", even if we don't yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back" - Mike Mann
"There will doubtless be an undercurrent of suspicion that WG II authors are not qualified to make such judgements on climatological matters"; "we could finesse the problem of consistency by NOT including a table at all in the SPM, but rather use some appropriate (weasel?) wording" - Timothy Carter
"Socio-economic assumptions. This is a really difficult issue, to which
there are at least three solutions (see below).... Solution 1: fudge the issue. Just accept that we are Fast-trackers and can therefore get away with anything." - Mike Hulme
"Tuning may be a way to fudge the physics" - Milind Kandikar
#34 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sun 12 Feb 2012 at 11:31 AM
A few of us can actually do the engineering/science, have discovered the deceit promulgated by the IPCC, and have made the analysis, source data and results available to others. Some can only kibitz and make ad hominem attacks.
#35 Posted by Dan Pangburn, CJR on Sun 12 Feb 2012 at 11:43 PM
Dan, I appreciate that you may have put a lot of work into your formula, but you cannot claim a forumula is predictive and record matching if one cannot use your formula to make a single calculation because 3 coefficients are made up on the spot.
There is no simple formula to predict global climate anomalies just as there is no simple formula to calculate a global climate anomoly. These are not mathematical transactions we're looking at, they're interactions between systems who's processes can be described with mathematical models, but who's interactions change the inputs. So like if the sun's radiance increases, that will affect the amount of evaporation from the ocean creating more cloud cover, which will affect the amount of radiation reflected back into space (because clouds are white) and the energy retained (because water vapor is a greenhouse gas) in away that is dependant on previous ocean temperature. All of these factors can combine in a way to produce a climate temperature anomoly and there's no simple way to model global climate without 3 or 4 magical fudges. There are complicated ways, which is why people run complicated programs on super computers to try and best simulate what is creating observed climate anomolies and predictions of anomolies we will see in future.
The Carbon dioxide green house effect does play a huge role within our climate in past and present. Usually it is a feedback created by solar or other such conditions. Other times it has been a driver, such as when volcanic activity has been active enough to produce climatic shift. Now co2 is a driver because humans are driving suv's - sports utility volcanoes. Denying the relationship between carbon and global temperature? Tsk tsk....
#36 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 13 Feb 2012 at 04:03 AM
In the dens of academia the self-annointed intelligensia roar their growls of liberal paradigms. Among the most insidious are growls and whines of "the sky is falling." Thousands of these howlers let themselves be herded to the songs of propagandists and ass-kissers, like Al Gore, who seek fame and fortune at the expense of science, claiming again and again that a survey of the beliefs of pre-selected scientists constitute scientific proof of the falsehood of global-warming-now-named-climate-change. And liberal media repeat this falsehood. This liberal paradigm of faux intellectualism comes out again and again in the Columbia Journalism Review, such as your current story that assumes there is a "threat" from climate change, negating any rational discussion of the issue and presenting only those "facts" that support your assumption and reinforce the paradigm.
#37 Posted by Charles Wood, CJR on Mon 13 Feb 2012 at 11:16 AM
Thimbles,
Weather is complex, addresses the movement of energy about the planet and requires super computers to address the problem. Some climate scientists think that if you don’t have access to a super computer, you can’t address the issue. I commend them for their accomplishment which can predict weather for a few days.
They appear to be oblivious to the fact that the type of program that they have been using (I have read that the IPCC has more than 20 of them) looses accuracy the longer it runs. After a few days, the output is little more than mathematical noise. The so-called GCMs are actually weather models. It is woefully naïve to believe that all that is needed to turn a global weather model into a global climate model is to run it longer. I have documented some of the mistakes made by the ‘Consensus’ in the pdf made public in August of 2010.
The determination of average global temperature, however, is a problem in radiation heat transfer and a fairly simple one. It is well within the capability of a desktop computer. It is a problem that is fairly easy to comprehend for an engineer.
Of course, to make a prediction, one should use all of the data that is available at that time. That is what I did to determine the coefficients to predict what the average global temperature would be after 1990. I determined the coefficients using temperature measurements that were made prior to 1990. With the equation thus calibrated, I used it to predict temperatures after 1990. Since actual measurements are available, the prediction could be compared with them. The standard deviation of the difference between the predicted temperature and the measured temperatures for over 20 years is less than 0.1C. Much of this standard deviation is a result of artifacts of the measurement process which are obvious from an understanding of heat-transfer/thermodynamics. This is discussed further in the pdf made public in November, 2011.
The validity of the equation is the demonstrated by the observation that it works. No one else has come up with anything that works.
The ‘consensus’ made the assertion that warming was caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide because, by their own admission, they couldn’t find anything else as the cause. I did not deny that CO2 was a factor and, in fact, set out to find out how much influence CO2 had. In the process, I discovered that the complete trajectory of average global temperatures since about when they first began to be fairly accurately measured could be calculated with an accuracy of 88% without considering any influence from CO2 at all.
#38 Posted by Dan Pangburn, CJR on Mon 13 Feb 2012 at 12:27 PM
Shorter Charles:
"Liberal liberal LIBERAL liberal LiberaL liBeRAL LIbEral.
I hate liberals because of the stupid things their scientists say."
The End.
#39 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 13 Feb 2012 at 12:34 PM
Oh hai Dan. Didn't see you there.
"Weather is complex, addresses the movement of energy about the planet and requires super computers to address the problem. Some climate scientists think that if you don’t have access to a super computer, you can’t address the issue. I commend them for their accomplishment which can predict weather for a few days."
No, sorry Dan. We're not talking about meteorology. We're talking about climatology, climate modeling, year to year simulations based on physical knowledge of how these systems behave and the trends within. It is that complicated.
And it's being done pretty accurately without magical coefficients:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Un69RMNSw
Global temperature is a measure of ambient heat energy. Even if you were measuring the ambient heat energy correctly, and I doubt you are, you are not measuring the total thermal energy retained in the system. This is because you are not measuring the energy used to produce physical changes, such as melting sea ice. By not measuring the heat energy required to make changes to a system, you cannot accurately measure the magnitude of future system interactions. As sea ice gives way to the less reflective ocean, changes in solar radiance will have a greater effect than predicted because you don't account for the darker, therefore hotter, ocean. You cannot predict what the effect of the increased humidity from a hotter ocean will be. You cannot predict what feedbacks are triggered because the temperature has risen more than you've anticipated destabilizing Siberian methane deposits. You're not looking at the interaction of systems, you're looking at sunspots.
"The validity of the equation is the demonstrated by the observation that it works. No one else has come up with anything that works."
That is as an unscientific a statement as one can get. Newtonian physics worked, they described phenomenon near accurately described the physical world on the scale within which we lived. Do we still use Newtonian physics to calculate the passage of time on orbital satellites? Do we still use Newtonian physics to understand the building block particles of the proton and neutron? Should we, since newtonian physics works pretty well within a limited context?
If your equation does not describe the full climate, then we must try and find better math that does so. An equation that attempts to describe climate while discounting the physical properties of CO2 in the amounts we have in our atmosphere is flawed. Instead of begrudging the work of climate scientists from an amateurish level, why don't you do as the critic Richard Mueller did and learn enough about climate science to check their work?
Good day.
#40 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 13 Feb 2012 at 11:32 PM
Just in case you were really interested in sunspots:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQHqgdvXTxE
or sea level / ice level changes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHrVOnLKjuQ
#41 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 14 Feb 2012 at 09:11 PM
The fact that many climate scientists have failed miserably to predict the climate for over a decade demonstrates two things: 1) Most of the stuff that they are considering has no significant influence and 2) They haven’t yet figured out what is important.
The equation, when calibrated to measurements prior to 1990, has accurately predicted since 1990.
Since 2001 the atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 24% of the total increase from 1800 to 2001 while the average global temperature has not increased. I wonder how much wider the separation will need to get between the rising CO2 and not rising temperature for some to realize that maybe they missed something.
What does it say about climate scientists when a lowly, unpaid engineer discovered what they couldn’t find after decades of looking?
The scientists in the Consensus apparently don’t understand some of the science very well, arrogantly refuse to acknowledge some science or may not even be aware of some relevant science. Some of the mistakes of the Consensus are discussed further in the pdf made public in August, 2010 at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true
#42 Posted by Dan Pangburn, CJR on Wed 15 Feb 2012 at 12:57 AM
You're dealing with a wet noodle, Dan...
He'll just move the goalposts on you.
What you are claiming isn't especially hard to understand.
You are claiming that you have created a mathematical model that is more successful at predicting the average global temperature than any other model.
What you don't understand is that Thimbles isn't interested in R E A L I T Y.
He exists only to further the screwy leftist agenda, and to the extent you claim to have shown that the CO2 concentration has a negligible effect on the average global temperature, Thimbles has only one objective - to berate and belittle you.
What I would like to see is a chart showing your equations predicted average temperatures (calibrated to 1990's conditions) alongside the actual temperatures. If the results are as you claim, I would love to see a plot.
#43 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 15 Feb 2012 at 12:33 PM
"The fact that many climate scientists have failed miserably to predict the climate for over a decade demonstrates two things: 1) Most of the stuff that they are considering has no significant influence and 2) They haven’t yet figured out what is important."
Hottest decade on record containing the hottest years on record during one of the deepest and prolonged solar minimums on record = miserable failure.
*shoulder shrug*
Again, we are dealing with complex systems, all with their own properties, all interacting. Solar, atmospheric, ocean.
Atmospheric warming is a dimension of the global warming problem, but the ocean is also a huge system which has a huge influence on climate. Ocean circulation takes place on decades long scales and heat slowly percolates through it,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP4QTyVQTUo
If you were expecting CO2 to increase temperature in a linear fashion, that was silly. That expectation ignores the effects of multiple non-static systems. It would be similar to a person who expects their car to run since the gas tank is full. If the other systems within the car are working, then yes the car will run. If the battery has died because of an short in the alternator, then no it won't run until these systems are working again. You can't use a non-running car to disprove a full tank's contribution to a car's motion.
CO2 increases define a trend of increasing temperature due to energy retention, but it does not define the magnitude or the shape of the pattern since it is a contribution to a whole, not the whole.
You need to examine each of the parts, each of the systems, like the ocean:
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/216859/20110920/global-warming-deep-oceans-trap-missing-heat-creating-hiatus-periods.htm
If you don't, you are not being a scientist.
#44 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 15 Feb 2012 at 12:47 PM
Padikiller,
The prediction and measurements are co-plotted on the graph on page 12 of the pdf made public 11/24/12. The graph looks the same when measurements through Dec. 2011 are added.
#45 Posted by Dan Pangburn, CJR on Thu 16 Feb 2012 at 07:15 AM
Noticing that temperatures have been warm the last decade or so is about as profound as saying that you drove 10,000 miles last year and the last 10 days were among the greatest distance traveled since the beginning of the year. Saying they are the warmest on record can be misleading since the ‘record’ starts with the planet emerging from the LIA.
You have now revealed that you have little, if any, understanding of thermodynamics or heat transfer. Average global temperature is a thermodynamics/heat transfer type of problem.
Apparently you overlooked this “Since 2001 the atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 24% of the total increase from 1800 to 2001 while the average global temperature has not increased. I wonder how much wider the separation will need to get between the rising CO2 and not rising temperature for some to realize that maybe they missed something.” Projecting that temperatures increase in response to CO2 increase is a miserable failure.
If you had actually looked at the pdf made public 11 24 11 you might know better than to make erroneous assertions of what I did or did not consider.
#46 Posted by Dan Pangburn, CJR on Thu 16 Feb 2012 at 08:05 AM
Hmm, the story above was about what drives public opinion on climate change. I suggested that overlooked elements are (1) past hysteria-mongering by the mainstream media over threats to health and environment, and (2) the conjunction of the term 'global warming' with a political program that happens to coincide with what the aspiring elite administrative classes in the US have been demanding of the public for decades. I'd say 'nice try' at any attempted disputation of these arguments, but nobody really tried.
If 'global warming' had arrived without Hollywood and leftish politicians in its van, it would be taken more seriously than it is. If journalists had been more skeptical of assertions of apocalyptic punishments awaiting the sinful, consuming masses over the past decades, that would have helped, too. Global warming policy advocates can believe in the threat and still concede (and learn from) the above tactical missteps.
#47 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 23 Feb 2012 at 12:32 PM