Bishop Hill Abraham and Leveson
Aug 19, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Climate: other Media Leo Hickman pointed me to John Abraham's submission to the Leveson Inquiry and somewhat jokingly suggested I should be fact-checking it. Always seeking to oblige, I took a look. It's rather interesting.
The general theme is the wickedness of right-wing people in general and of right wing journalists in particular. Singled out for particular mention are David Rose, who writes at the Mail, and Christopher Booker.
Rose's article 'What happened to the warmest year on record?' was on the theme of 'global warming has stopped', which is a subject that is endlessly bickered over and I don't propose to go into it again here. Abraham took the obligatory pop at the idea and left everyone no further forward. However there were some more interesting differences over the Medieval Warm Period too. In his article Rose had said:
Earlier this year, a paper by Michael Mann - for years a leading light in the IPCC, and the author of the infamous 'hockey stick graph' showing flat temperatures for 2,000 years until the recent dizzying increase - made an extraordinary admission: that, as his critics had always claimed, there had indeed been a ' medieval warm period' around 1000 AD, when the world may well have been hotter than it is now.
This seems fairly clear to me: Mann had changed his story on Medieval warmth. But here's how Abraham represented the Rose article:
He claimed...that scientists misreported a period of warmth during the middle ages...
A surprising interpretation, I think you will agree.
Now people make mistakes, so we should try to give the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, however, there is another instance of the same thing when he talks about Booker's article 'What happens when great fallacies, like wind power or European Union, collide with reality?'.
This contained a relatively innocuous sentence about concern over AGW:
Recent events show us two huge examples... One is the belief, which took hold 20 years ago, that the world was in the grip of runaway global warming, caused by our emissions of greenhouse gases.
...which Abraham explained to the Leveson inquiry as follows:
[Booker] claimed that the concept of human-caused global warming is merely 20 years old. In fact, research on this topic stems back to the mid 1800s with the work of John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius.
Abraham also takes issue with a claim that temperatures in 2007 fell by 0.75° C, although there seems to have been a fall of that size in temperatures between January 2007 and January 2008, at least if you believe the GISS figures at the time.
I don't know about you, but I'm not getting a warm feeling from this.
Reader Comments (39)
Abraham is surely the most cognitively impaired member of the scientactivist community.
Here's an extract from an interview with him on supersmug warmist Pete Sinclair's site. Observe the finely honed logical thought processes and the clarity with which they are expressed (compared, for instance with his pet hate Monckton):-
The future is where our possibilities lie. The future presents opportunities as well as challenges. It challenges us today and it provides opportunities in the future. What can we do today to ensure that we have the greatest possibilities for ourselves and for coming generations, so that we can live fulfilled and happy lives in the future?
I firmly believe that the actions we take now will have direct consequences in the future. We can make things better or we can make things worse.
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/07/19/john-abraham-on-climate-science-and-evapotransporation/
This is what passes these days for scientific thought - God help us.
Link for Abraham submission-
http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Submission-by-Dr-John-Abraham-University-of-St-Thomas.pdf
This Abraham dude is junior to swathes of commenters, say, on Bishop Hill, to the climate debate, is ignorant of the debate's contours, and is yet one more to climb on the "biggest bandwagon on the planet" (omnologos). But we are supposed to take him seriously because he uses his real name (Drake) and he is a warmie?
Dear Bish,
I know this is a he said/he didn't really say kind of article.
But you should know better than thinking Mann's data says anything significant about that period - medieval warmth or otherwise, lol
I read his submission and it is pretty poor as a convincing piece of essay writing. To be taken seriously any such needs to show the evidence for the claims. Instead Abraham relies on the implicit 'Trust Me, I'm a Climate Scientist' story, which is unlikely to find favour in legal circles.
So when he criticises a journalist for a particular remark, he should give the direct quote for all to see, then his discussion of it. Instead he only asserts (seemingly wrongly) what they have said and then delivers his remarks. He also claims that the organisations he lists 'exist to advance an agenda', but provides no supporting evidence or examples.
As a barrister for 41 years and a QC for 25, I am sure that Leveson will have little truck with this piece of vapourware. I get the impression that Abraham wrote it just to make up the numbers. If this is really the best he can do it demonstrate a shocking lack of maturity and judgement.
At one point in the submission, John Abraham refers to the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund as: "my organization."
Abraham's crusade according to his devout seminary
http://www.stthomas.edu/news/2012/03/01/john-abraham-takes-a-stand/
More Abraham:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20110731_mn
I think both the "Defense Fund" and the "Rapid Response Unit" are basically just Abrahams and his equally dim buddy "Supermandia".
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/23/supermandia-and-the-most-supersilly-climategat
The heavyweight "team" members seem to stay at arms length.
Why do climate scientactivists publish such creepy photographs of themselves?
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/11/12/abraham/
http://www.conservationminnesota.org/profiles/dr-john-abraham/
"The future is where our possibilities lie."
Um...well...yeah. Better than in the past.Present OK, even zen-like.
If my 11 year old (12 tomorrow!) wrote such a thing I would be distraught at the wasted years and money educating him
From Mr. Abraham's submission: "My main research emphases are in the area of developing sustainable and clean energy supplies for the developing world and in monitoring the Earth’s climate to detect global warming."
...and you know what?... I have a sneaking feeling that, come hell or high water, by hook or by crook, as night follows day, as Dolly Parton sleeps on her back, he IS going to detect global warming, whether he monitors the Earth's climate or not.
It is probably part of his definition of "clean energy", which seemed not to be defined in any of the science text books I ever read.
Foxgoose
The quotation you posted: that's from someone in TOWIE, surely?
John Abraham refers to the rapid response unit has 'his organization', not the legal defense fund.
That probably is supermandia's organization...
----- No drinks with keyboard alert -----
http://climatecrock.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/abraham.jpg
Alex Cull quotes:
"Now let's say you go to a doctor and you've got a tumour and they do a biopsy. And 97 doctors say you've got cancer."
I paraphrase:
"Now let's say you go to a witch doctor and you've got a large, persistent knot on your forehead and they do an investigation. And 97 witch doctors say you are possessed."
Climate science is in its infancy. To compare it to modern medicine is altogether wrong headed. The various sciences that support modern medicine's understanding of cancer have earned their respect because of millions of hard won successes over a period of more than a century. In a few decades, climate science might be where cancer research was in 1930.
Foxgoose quotes:
"The future is where our possibilities lie. The future presents opportunities as well as challenges. It challenges us today and it provides opportunities in the future. What can we do today to ensure that we have the greatest possibilities for ourselves and for coming generations, so that we can live fulfilled and happy lives in the future?
I firmly believe that the actions we take now will have direct consequences in the future. We can make things better or we can make things worse."
This blather is typical of a freshman in a communications program which produces hype artists. Reminds me of the solicitation letters I get from my local Parents-Teachers Association.
From http://climatecrocks.com/2012/07/19/john-abraham-on-climate-science-and-evapotransporation/
"Climate is long term trends in the weather over wide areas." - Dr John Abraham.
I've never set foot in a university, and I can see two things wrong that sentence.
"And it's funny how much trust we put into science, in some areas like our car or our cellphone, or a stent put into our heart to open up a blocked artery. But something is strange with this science, that somehow - look, 97% of the world's best climate scientists agree we have a problem. Now let's say you go to a doctor and you've got a tumour and they do a biopsy. And 97 doctors say you've got cancer. Two say "We don't know, let's wait and see." And one says "Go home and play with your kids." Now what would you do? You'd go with the strong consensus. I mean, there's - it is incredible how we dismiss climate science, where we don't dismiss other sciences."
This is a totally false analogy, the climate science is in its infancy, there is no body of work with test cases that can be referred to by the practitioners. We know cancer is dangerous and we know some of its causes because we have literally millions of failed attempts at curing it. Don't forget if you had gone to a stomach specialist with an ulcer 20 years ago he'd have told you, with absolute certainty, that it was caused by stress. This despite the fact that duodenal ulcers were most common in men between the age of 15 and 25. Can there be anything less stressed on the planet that a man between 15 and 25?
geronimo,
Yes, classic instance of begging the question. Is it like, for instance, a skin cancer or breast cancer, where the diagnosis and prognosis are known and the result of treatment well predictable? Or is it like prostate cancer, where for many cases, treatment is at best totally ineffective? Or is it like high cholesterol readings, whose connection to future heart attackes is not entirely clear, and where the effect of the various treatments on prolongation of life is also unclear.
The real analogy is probably whether we have enough evidence to dose the entire male population over 50 with statins, in the interests of preventing heart disease. The statistic we would use in medicine would be lives saved per 100 treated. In the climate case of course, as in the statins case, its complicated by the uncertainty of scientific understanding.
So much of this argument is just complicated ways of assuming we know more than we do, and urging actions of various sorts without proving in advance that they are prudent and effective.
The old cancer analogy again. I've mentioned this before, but here it is with more detail. It is a true story, it happened to me five years ago. Skip it if it seems too person-centric.
I had a set of symptoms, weight loss, digestive bothers, which fit any number of llnesses. The docs tried for a long time to diagnose it. It was easy to get to the pancreas as the seat of the problem, but slow beyond there. I had various tests over three years 04-07. Eventually I was invited into a little room with a surgeon and an oncologist. The surgeon told me I had pancreatic cancer. This will usually kill you within a year of detection, and the only treatment is the Whipple procedure, where they pretty much take out everything, duodenum, gall bladder, pancreas, lymph nodes, intestinal bits etc and leave just enough to live on in pain and discomfort. The surgeon was keen to sign me up for this. The oncologist had found a count of the cancer marker Ca19-9, an indicator of pancreatic cancer. The count was 300. I checked this when they took the blood, so I already know the count is usually zero but it needs ten thousand or so to denote cancer. So right there in the room I told them I hadn't got it, that they were wrong and I wasn't about to be whippled. (Being told you have terminal cancer is usually supposed to be shocking. I went straight to the denial stage, in their eyes). I based my opinion on having had symptoms for far longer than the 99th percentile survival time and the low count. No trauma, never believed it for a minute.
So, as it turned out I had chronic pancreatitis, a major op fixed most of the uncomfortable symptoms, pretty much better now. But the parallels..
The surgeon was like a green NGO, determined to plough on with the drastic solution for his own agenda (If you can do without, whip it out).
The oncologist was like a climate scientist, seeing conclusive evidence in a not-very-scary number.
I was like a true sceptic (or a mad denier, you choose).
The solution did not require any sort of ongoing suffering to avoid disaster.
There's your cancer analogy. All true, pretty relevant.
Bish, snip this if it's too personal.
I am much more at home in the 1500s, and I suspect that climate science is about as advanced now as medicine was then.
Cancers had been recognised for a long time - certainly during the early Egyptian civilisation, so diagnosis and treatment in, say, 1550 was fairly advanced. At that time the prevailing opinion amongst 97% of physicians was that a cancer was due to an excess of Black Bile, and arsenic pastes were the prescribed remedy. There was a consensus about this....
If you study the development of science, it is amazing how frequently incorrect ideas are taken for truth. The textbooks only print the successes, giving the impression that science proceeds by a careful wall-building exercise, only putting one brick onto another when it has been confirmed as correct. In reality it's like a jigsaw where many of the pieces have been forced into the wrong place, and every so often someone finds a corner piece which requires a whole section to be undone. And when that happens, all the other people working on the jigsaw complain bitterly, and try to prevent the work that they had thought was finished from being dismantled.....
Dodgy
"If you study the development of science, it is amazing how frequently incorrect ideas are taken for truth. The textbooks only print the successes, giving the impression that science proceeds by a careful wall-building exercise, only putting one brick onto another when it has been confirmed as correct. In reality it's like a jigsaw where many of the pieces have been forced into the wrong place, and every so often someone finds a corner piece which requires a whole section to be undone. And when that happens, all the other people working on the jigsaw complain bitterly, and try to prevent the work that they had thought was finished from being dismantled....."
Excellent analogy. Of course the people who have as they thought completed a section have to face up to having nothing to show for years of work.
Mike Fowle
Risking going over old ground, what we have in Abrahams is a closed mind. In my experience, every professional process engineer trained in the days before computer-based science stopped people thinking and who sees the Trenberth Energy Budget immediately blurts out 'How could they be so stupid'.
It really is that bad and those like Abrahams who have had this scientific prefrontal lobotomy have the gall to flock together and impose their perpetual motion machine and imaginary feedback on the rational.
Ah, the "cancer doctor" story gets another airing. Abraham is obviously another warmist "climate communicator" recycling the standard stuff. He doesn't mention death threats anywhere by any chance?
It would be interesting to know who is writing the stuff they are so keenly disseminating to anyone who will listen.
As Steve McIntyre said, "you need to watch the pea under the thimble"
I will add - with particular reference to climate scientists and their alarmist advocates.
The words lying, cheating, selective, arrogant and self-interested also apply.
"Why do climate scientactivists publish such creepy photographs of themselves?"
Blimey. It's Harry Hill.
Now, I do like the opportunities that the future presents. But I also like the challenges as well. Which is better? There's only one way to find out...
@NW
"...It would be interesting to know who is writing the stuff they are so keenly disseminating to anyone who will listen..."
These are memes. Ideas which spread around the web and get picked up by people who don't really think, but just repeat.
I have several that I am trying to spread round. I think people should push the 'Piltdown Fraud' as an example of when science consensus was wrong, because the parallels are close - there were scientific 'deniers' of Piltdown, who were silenced by the establishment at the time.
I am also trying to explain that there is no such thing as a 'Water Shortage' - we do not consume water, it passes through us in a cycle, so it can never be 'short'. What there frequently is is an 'infrastructure shortage'. The point of this distinction is that it makes sense to think of using less water if it really is being 'used up', but this is silly if the problem is infrastructure. In that case we should be thinking 'how much money do we want to spend on infrastructure to provide us with enough water?'
If people like the 'jigsaw' analogy, I shall try and push that as well. If anyone else wants to join in, be my guest....
Meanwhile, due to one hot weekend, we in the People's Republic of Cambridge read in our local paper a revelation by the head of the Plant Biology Department at Cambridge University, who has stated that by 2060 (the time frame's are getting shorter), the average temperature hereabouts 'could' rise by 6-7 degrees Celsius - a climate much like Madeira.
This statement, you'll be astonished to learn, comes in a GOVERMENT FUNDED study on 'plants and climate change'...
Shub:
No, because he uses his real name he pays a large reputation price for his misrepresentation of Rose and Booker. This is exactly as it should be. Which makes my point.
Dodgy
"I am also trying to explain that there is no such thing as a 'Water Shortage' - we do not consume water, it passes through us in a cycle, so it can never be 'short'. What there frequently is is an 'infrastructure shortage'. The point of this distinction is that it makes sense to think of using less water if it really is being 'used up', but this is silly if the problem is infrastructure. In that case we should be thinking 'how much money do we want to spend on infrastructure to provide us with enough water?"
Excellent point again. I keep thinking this and wonder is it me? It seems so self evidently correct.
David -
There was some earlier discussion here at BH on this BBC "Costing the Earth" video which promotes the Madeira theme. Richard Betts later tweeted
Kudos to Richard and others who attempt to tone down the exaggerations and misrepresentations. But as Mark Twain didn't quite say, "a meme can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." Have some Madeira, m'dear?
David, I supervise (some) Cambridge University students in this subject area and one of the essays I make them write is titled "According to IPCC and Global Circulation Models, Temperatures Will Increase By 2.5°C to 5.5°C for a Doubling of Pre-Industrial Carbon Dioxide Levels. How Will Plants Cope?"
Needless to say I make sure that it is done from a "skeptical" viewpoint.
If the cancer story was told accurately they would admit that having surveyed 10000 doctors and specialists with questions like and starting with "Do you believe in cancer?" and "Do you think cancer is bad?", they whittled that lot down to 75 of 77 people who rely on cancer research funding for a living who think you might have cancer and want you in their next research project.
Actually, I love it when weapons grade lunkheads like Abrahams or Gleick or Monbiot or Mandia (etc etc etc) pitch in.
Excellent recruiting sergeants for the skeptical cause, every one.
Heaven knows I have scant respect for either the honesty or the intellectual capacity of the likes of Mann, Hansen, Jones, Briffa, Schmidt.
But they must grit their teeth and clench their buttocks when they see that Abrahams or Gleick have put their heads above the parapet once more.
Martin, you might be overestimating the intelligence of the public at large who would much rather believe that white coated genius scientists can fix this terrible climate problem if only they make a few sacrifices (which they think will probably only affect other people anyway) rather than face the unpalatable fact that humans are insignificant to the earth. So often when the warmist runs out of rational arguments you end up with "but we're Spewing all this Pollution into the atmosphere - Big Scary Numbers are involved; we MUST be having a significant effect!" Because the alternative is that they just don't matter, and they can't cope with that.
These are the same ones who are feeling fulfilled this week because someone they don't know who claims to represent their country ran faster or jumped higher than some people from other countries.
If the original Severn Barrage screen was as wonderful as some correspondants suggest why was it turned down by Chris Huhne on enviromental grounds?
[Booker] claimed that the concept of human-caused global warming is merely 20 years old. In fact, research on this topic stems back to the mid 1800s with the work of John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius.
"Tyndall is celebrated as the scientist who proved the "Greenhouse Effect" when in actual fact, his work on the infrared absorption of gases failed to address absorption as opposed to opacity. Moreover, his speculations on climate were hypothetical and rooted in his own aethereal heat transfer mechanism, which was refuted in 1887". http://geologist-1011.mobi/
Has Mann really now admitted there was a MWP ?
Where/when ?