Climate Change – The Intellectual Dishonesty of the Climate Alarmists

It is frequently quoted, that the “Science is Settled” when it comes to climate change. However, the nature of science is that it is never really settled – with good science, each question that is answered leads to three or more new questions. It is perhaps more accurate to say “the Politics is Settled”. As skeptics ruefully acknowledge, they may be winning the skirmishes, but the alarmists are winning the war.

Some examples of intellectual dishonesty from the climate change propagandists are:

• Changing the name from “anthropogenic global warming” (AGW) to “climate change”
• Cherry picking weather events as evidence of AGW
• Changing criteria for claims of global warming
• Predictions that don’t materialize swept under the carpet
• Computer models used for predictions which don’t match the historical data
• Using animal population changes as evidence of global warming

With Climate Change, there are four related, but separate questions, each of which will be addressed in future blogs:

• Is the earth’s temperature rising?
• Is the change in temperature man-made?
• Are the consequences of climate change harmful to humanity?
• What should be done to avoid ill-effects?

The “dishonesty” claimed in the title is clear in the climate change propagandists rather than the scientists. The propagandists include:

• the media
• celebrities
• politicians
• “environmentalists”

 

Changing the name from “anthropogenic global warming” (AGW) to “climate change”

It is not clear to me when the name change occurred. AGW is well defined – some agree, some disagree. However, it is difficult to disagree with “climate change”. The phrase is so vague that it can be interpreted as:

• The climate changes, as proved by the existence of ice ages
• The climate is getting warmer
• The climate is getting warmer due to human activities
• The climate is getting warmer due to human activities and something must be done about it now

The change seems to have occurred when it became clear that the rise in the earth’s temperature was slowing (aka the “pause” or the “hiatus”). By changing the name, effects other than temperature rise could be invoked, e.g. acidification of the oceans, which could be the next alarmist scare.

However, acidification of the oceans was shown to decrease the population of one mollusk – further examination showed that the decrease was due to increased predation by another mollusk. So preventing acidification of the oceans would be to champion one mollusk over another. The health of coral reefs may also be a factor, but this does not seem to have been proved.

For the rest of this blog, I shall refer to AGW and this is the only form of climate change I shall consider.

Cherry picking weather events as evidence of AGW

Several examples of this are:

• The recent flooding in Louisiana has been cited by Paul Krugman (Nobel laureate in Economics, columnist for the New York Times) that this is evidence of global warming and such events are going to be more frequent (“The Water Next Time”, NYT 22 August 2016).
• In the same article, Krugman states ” lately we’ve been setting global temperature records every month. Remember when climate deniers used to point to a temporary cooling after an unusually warm year in 1998 as “proof” that global warming had stopped? It was always a foolish, dishonest argument, but in any case we’ve now blown right through all past records.” Looking at the hadCRUT4 temperature data the “temporary cooling” lasted at least from 1998 to 2014. 2015 was an exceptionally hot year, but that has been attributed to el Nino. It is unclear whether 2015 is the start of a new trend or will the trend reverse to the previous 16-year trend. Furthermore, what does “lately” mean? I looked at the temperature records for Canada and found that the five highest temperatures ever recorded were in 1937, 1936, 1941, 1937 and 1936. The five lowest temperatures recorded were in 1947, 1911, 1975, 1936 and 1947.
• An article in the Economist about a heat wave in Australia stated that this was evidence for global warming. On the same page there was an article about a cold spell in India – no mention was made of the implications for global warming.
• Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the UN, claimed that the storm which lashed the eastern coast of North America in 2014 (?) is evidence of “extreme weather events caused by global warming”
• Hurricane Katrina caused a lot of damage in New Orleans. The Climate Alarmists confidently predicted that such hurricanes would become more frequent. This did not happen.
• Newspaper reports that such and such a month was the warmest since whenever, “proving” global warming, calmly ignoring the fact that the previous months had been cooler than usual. (apologies, I failed to note a proper reference).

Changing criteria for claims of global warming

In their special section on Climate Change, the Economist (Hot and Bothered, Nov 28, 2015) make much of “the hottest year since records began was in 2014”. One year was taken as sufficient evidence of global warming. Yet the “global warming hiatus” when,  between 1998 and 2012, “the global temperature barely rose”. When the slowdown was first noticed, the initial comment was that a year or two of no rise does not define a trend and does not contradict the climate models. To define a trend, at least a decade was required. When the “hiatus” lasted for over a decade, the concensus shifted to two decades are needed. However, when 2013 was warmer and 2014 was hotter still, two years were considered enough to make claims that global warming was back on track. As previously stated, the recent warming was attributed to el Nino and no-one knows whether this constitutes a new trend or whether the “hiatus” will continue.

Looking at a longer timescale, the Economist states “average surface air measurements so far this decade are 0.9 C higher than in the 1880’s”. As I always told the engineers reporting to me – “look at the data!”.  The hadCRUT4 data show that this is clearly so, but this fact tells you nothing about the future trend.

Predictions that don’t materialize swept under the carpet

In 2006, Al Gore, in his film “An Inconvenient Truth”, confidently predicted that the Arctic ice cap would disappear within 5 years. This has clearly not happened. There have been similar predictions made by others, documented by Matt Ridley (“Ice scares aren’t all they are cracked up to be”, The Times, August 29 2016).

Similarly, the claims that extreme weather events will become more frequent, e.g. hurricanes like Katrina, have not been correct. It appears that these events are more frequent, but this is only because they are reported more extensively, due to public interest. Proper statistical analysis does not show any increase in frequency.

In most cases, predictions which are proved wrong lead to questioning of the original methodology. However, the Climate Alarmists simply ignore these failures and carry on as if nothing had happened.

Computer models used for predictions which don’t match the historical data

In computer modelling, it is usual to calibrate the model by “history matching”, where the model is run for a previous period with some parameters fixed and then comparing the results to actual historical data.

To the best of my knowledge, this has not been achieved. If a model cannot match the historical data, then it cannot be used for reliable predictions.

Econometric models have been able to history match past performance, but their predictive capabilities have not been successful, showing that even when a history match is achieved, there is no guarantee that the model can provide a useful guide to the future.

The climate is a very complex system. So it is not surprising, that with our current understanding, none of the models can provide a match to the historical data. Nevertheless, the results of these models are used to paint nightmare scenarios for the planet.

Furthermore, the “worst case” scenarios are often used as “the most likely” for scaremongering purposes. An example of this is the series of images of cities if the sea level rose by 6m. The models predicted a “most likely” rise of 2m, but with a 4m uncertainty. In other words, the rise was predicted to be 2m +/- 4m or a range from -2m to +6m. Showing the effects of a 6m rise is extremely dishonest.

Using animal population changes as evidence of global warming

Much has been made of the plight of the polar bear. As Arctic ice disappears, the polar bears will not be able to hunt for seals on the ice and they will starve to death. This is highlighted by an iconic image of an emaciated polar bear on a small ice flow.

An article in MacClean’s (Canada’s equivalent of Time magazine) a few years ago discussed polar bear numbers. The greatest surprise is that the estimate of polar bears in the wild at that time was 25,000, while in the 1950’s it was about 5,000. This seems to negate the idea that polar bear numbers are decreasing due to global warming. Of course, the explanation of the increase in population is that hunting restrictions and conservation measures since the 1950’s have allowed polar bear numbers to recover. More recent data suggests that numbers in Western Canada and Alaska may be increasing, while those in eastern North America are decreasing. Is this decrease due to global warming or is there an over-population of polar bears? One study estimated how large a hunting area a polar bear requires and then concluded that there is indeed an over population of bears on the eastern shores of Hudson’s Bay.

As for the picture of an emaciated polar bear – it’s rear leg is lifted, suggesting it may have suffered an injury. This could be the reason why it cannot hunt successfully.

This illustrates that our understanding of animal populations and their changes is inadequate to make any conclusions as to cause and effect.

The extinction of the passenger pigeon in eastern North America is still unexplained satisfactorily. Our understanding of evolution and its timescale is still in its infancy:

• The blackcap warbler summers in Scandinavia and Germany and usually winters in Spain. It was found that some are now wintering in Britain. This was attributed to the English love of bird feeders. The surprise was that in a very short time (a decade or two), the two populations had developed significant physical differences.
• The European blackbird shows physical differences between those that live in cities and those in the countryside, again showing that evolutionary changes can occur much faster than anyone had expected. (“Evolution Is Happening Faster Than We Thought”, Menno Schilthuzen, NYT, July 23, 2016)

Any “evidence” for the effects of global warming in animal populations should be simply disregarded – there are too many variables and we cannot make any reliable conclusions as to cause and effect.

Alarmist Propagandists

The Media

At one time, there was an attempt to show even handed reporting of climate change. Over the last few years, there has been a concerted bias towards only showing the Alarmist viewpoint. For example,

• “The editor of this newspaper (London Times) received a private letter last week from Lord Krebs and 12 other members of the House of Lords expressing unhappiness with two articles by its environment correspondent. Conceding that The Times’s reporting of the Paris climate conference had been balanced and comprehensive, it denounced the two articles about studies by mainstream academics in the scientific literature, which provided less than alarming assessments of climate change.”
• In 2013 The Los Angeles Times said it would “no longer publish letters from climate change deniers”
• In April, 2016, “the attorneys-general of 16 US states issued subpoenas against a think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in an attempt to silence its climate dissent”.

These examples are taken (nearly verbatim) from “Climate change lobby wants to kill free speech”, by Matt Ridley, April 25 2016, 1:01am, The Times

Celebrities

A number of celebrities are active environmentalists who publically promote the Alarmist narrative.

These come in two flavours:

Arts and Entertainment:

• Leonardo di Caprio
• Neil Young
• James Cameron

To this list we can probably add the “usual” activists such as:

• Sting
• Bono
• Bob Geldof
• Vivian Westwood

These can (and should) be totally ignored. It is amazing to me that anyone would be influenced by their views.

Scientists in the Public Eye:

• Richard Attenborough – English, naturalist
• David Suzuki – Canadian, geneticist
• Brian Cox – English, physicist

Climate change is primarily concerned with the physical sciences. As such, only Brian Cox has the background to evaluate climate science. All three however, are hosts of popular TV shows and specials and are seen as “scientists” by the public, who are unable to distinguish between different types of scientists.

Politicians

The clearest example of a politician who serves as a Climate Alarmist propagandist is Al Gore. His 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth” resulted in a Nobel Peace prize for him. He majored in English before switching to Government at Harvard. He took a class with oceanographer and global warming theorist Roger Revelle, who sparked Gore’s interest in global warming and other environmental issues (Wikipedia). However, he has no scientific credentials.

Of course, all Green Party politicians are Alarmists. A peculiar issue is that Climate Alarmism has become associated with left-wing political orientations, while Climate Change Denial is regarded to be right-wing.

Paul Krugman writes”What’s happening, I suspect, is that climate denial has become a sort of badge of right-wing identity,..”. What seems to be equally true, is that climate alarmism has become a badge of left-wing identity.

I will discuss this further in a later post.

“Environmentalists”

Finally there are the self-styled “environmentalists” who will seize on any evidence and blow it out of proportion or take “worst case scenarios” as “inevitable”. The previous IPCC report was full of such “evidence”, which on further scrutiny had no validity. An example is the claim that the Himalayan glaciers will disappear in 20 (or was it 30?) years. This was traced back to an off-hand remark by an Indian scientist who had no data to back his claim.

One of the worrying aspects of this group is that they do not seem ot care about people, and wish to see the destruction of modern industry (which implies lower living standards all round). A couple of quotes (taken out of context) illustrates this:

• “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
• “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

 

In future posts, I shall look at some of these issues in more detail, however, I shall concentrate on investigating the climate change models is some detail, since computer modelling is my area of expertise.