Bishop Hill A good day to bury bad science
May 7, 2015 Climate: Sceptics The University of Bristol has a high tolerance for hoary old tosh, but you have to wonder if they have not been just a bit embarrassed by Stefan Lewandowsky, whose oeuvre could best be described as "Goebbels with graphs". How else do we explain the fact that they have elected to do the press release for the great man's latest psychological petard on the day of the general election? A good day to bury bad science?
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, from Bristol’s School of Experimental Psychology and the Cabot Institute, and colleagues from Harvard University and three institutions in Australia show how the language used by people who oppose the scientific consensus on climate change has seeped into scientists’ discussion of the alleged recent ‘hiatus’ or ‘pause’ in global warming, and has thereby unwittingly reinforced a misleading message.
What insight! What erudition!
What a waste of money.
Bishop Hill
Observations about the UK election don't apply to this paper published today, which is written by two Americans, but it's just as bad as Lew's by the looks of it:
Environmental communication researchers have focused on the role of media frames in the formation of public opinion. Yet, little is known about how citizens incorporate such frames into everyday conversations. We address this issue by examining the stream of Twitter conversations about climate change over two years. We demonstrate that hoax frames that question the reality of climate change prevail in the US, particularly in “red states” compared to the UK, Canada, and Australia or “blue states” in the US. We also investigate the use of terms, “global warming” and “climate change.” We find that red states prefer “global warming” to “climate change” compared to blue states and “global warming” is particularly associated with hoax frames
Reader Comments (108)
@Barry Woods
What would have happened if the following exchange had taken place:
...Stocker: "Majority of warming is in the ocean. During warming pause, the ocean has been…absorbing all that heat:"
...Naomi Oreskes... Good work but why are you using the "pause" meme? Please rethink. I realize this is a quotation but...
Doug McNeall.... Quite correct! Scientists should not try to predict the future when reporting on data - we should dispassionately describe exactly what is happening. How does the following sound? "Now the warming has stopped and we believe that the ocean may have been absorbing heat, though our data is insufficient to claim this..."
...
My mother paused away 18 years ago. We fully expect her to recover soon.
Will ther be a pause in global warming propaganda? It just seems to be increasing faster and faster, the more the globe does not warm.
There really ought to be some research into this phenomenon, but I can't see how funding could be approved to investigate something that 97% of experts say is impossible.
Barry Wood
Tamsin – Cern TedX
The MO is now on record that they do in fact make predictions. Also, as JamesG noted above, there is no timeframe; how long is a "temporary blip?" With no time limits, even the MWP and little ice age could be considered temporary blips. I guess predictions about the future are easy after all.
97% baby.
Rabett's Law, similar to Godwin's, but an admission of defeat by mentioning 97% without sarcasm
Eli Rabett
97% of vulture owners who expressed a preference say their vultures prefer rotting flesh to any other type of food.
RIP global warming
Rabett confirms his mental capacity once more.
Eli, why not let a little sceptic language seep into your posts. all the best scientists are at it
One half are denying the pause while the rest are running around looking for an explanation for it.
Yes, local as in locality and not a reference to the local pubs, though they probably benefited more than any other business group!
old grumpy, global warmists are more interested in arguing which of the two halves is bigger, than the actual science.
This parrot is NOT dead. It is pausing indefinitely..........
Is the reason that global warming has not been mentioned in the election because 97% of politicians don't want to put their career at risk, by being associated with a bunch of losers, or that 97% of politicians have realised that 97% of the electorate are not as stupid and gullible as Green Luvvie propaganda insists?
A good day to bury bad science, but beware toxic Green shoots of recovery. Greens shoot at anything, they perceive to be a threat.
These papers have a post-modern feel to them, where reality takes second billing to narrative.
rabbit, in climate science, billing is everything. There would be no point in it otherwise. It is not the second billing that is the most important, it is the perpetual billing, for the same failed, recycled garbage, year after year, that demonstrates the difference between genius and honesty, in climate science.
Barry raises a good point. How will climate scientists react to being told by Lewandowsky and Oreskes that they are doing things wrong because they've been misled by the deniers? The words 'lead' and'balloon' come to mind. I haven't noticed any response so far.
Paul Matthews, how could any climate scientist possibly challenge Oreskes and Lewandowsky? It would be financial and professional suicide to question their political judgement. The scientific debate was over years ago, who needs scientists?
Unless of course any scientists know any better ......... ?
"Goebbels with graphs"
It is not clear who originated this brilliant phrase. The quotation marks possibly suggest that it was not a Bishop Hill original.
Kudos to whoever thought it up.
I think we're seeing further evidence here that climate change is predominantly an Anglophone obsession.
Not that other people don't have an interest but they don't scratch the itch to the same extent that the Brits, Yanks, and Aussies do. Is it something to do with the way research is funded in those countries, I wonder.
Field for psychological study there, I would have thought.
Mike Jackson - Interesting point. I have no evidence to suggest that other cultures are more or less worked up by the controversial nature of climate change.
Supposing you are correct, could it be our attitude to authority? We usually trust the experts but when we think we are being conned it becomes a fight worth having. Other cultures may believe the experts every time or, alternatively, completely ignore them.
what Lysenko Spawned.
Mike Jackson, the French carbon footprint is lower, but this is due to their nuclear power. So I have always assumed that the French had less to emotionally blackmail each other about, and could watch the rest of the EU get in a mess, whilst profiting out of their nuclear surplus, especially to the UK.
Are French Green Luvvies in their electric cars, proud to be driving a nuclear powered car? Or is that not mentioned very much?
So the poor scientists have been brainwashed into thinking there's a pause and it's all the evil deniers' fault?!
Carbon credits down by 98% since 2008
http://www.thegwpf.com/another-green-flop-as-carbon-credit-values-tumble-98/
No wonder they're panicking ...
Personally I don't know any French green luvvies. Round here it's almost all farmers trying to earn a living (and if you mention the EU and the CAP be prepared to run for it — if you think the EU is any more popular with the farming community here than anywhere else you're mistaken) and signs saying "Eoliennes, non merci", eolienne being the French for windmill.
Hollande is anti-fracking but then he's a Socialist and (mistakenly) thought he needed to be in bed with the Greens to get a majority.
I wouldn't suggest that the feeling for or against climate change is necessarily any different here (or in Italy, my daughter tells me); it's just that it doesn't seem to matter in the quite same way. I doubt more than a dozen of the über-fanatical on mainland Europe have even heard of Lewandowsky and Cook and probably would consider their output slightly weird. I doubt any reputable university would give them the time of day let alone a post.
WUWT now has a post on this. Still no sign of the actual paper, just the press release. Propaganda.
JamesG
"We’re confident the climate is still changing, because the ocean is still warming, the land losing ice, sea level rising, and we predict the atmosphere will start to warm again after this temporary blip"
We can be confident the climate is still changing because climate is always changing. It can always be proven using some metric that "The Climate" is changing. It's an argument that would be very difficult to lose. "Global warming" is a testable hypothesis. "Climate change" is not.
Global warming, which one might consider THE fingerprint and most easily testable hypothesis, of increasing CO2, became a "hoax frame" when it stopped being true, implicit acknowledgement of The Pause.
Mike Jackson, thank you, Green "rent a mob" seem to catch the attention of UK news-media editors, out of proportion to the general publcs interest.
Perhaps it is more an anglophone disease due to the internet's american language.
Could we have a good YEAR to bury bad science? Global warming alarmism has had 30 years burying good science.
The press release says
The most extreme case of smoothing out the 'pause' came from a climate science paper last year, for which Stephan Lewandowsky did the statistical analysis. I worked out how he managed to show warming is continuing largely unabated even though it has stopped.
Kevin Marshall, "Lewandowsky did the analysis" is how to bury any science, in a single phrase.
Eli Rabett,
97% baby
Full stop.
(I think the other 3% is blancmange.)
Tamsin's comments, as reported by Barry Woods, are interesting. I don't think any sceptic would disagree with them. I reproduce part here for your convenience.
"For example, over the past 17 years or so there has been a slowdown, even a pause, in the rate of warming of the atmosphere. We’re confident the climate is still changing, because the ocean is still warming, the land losing ice, sea level rising, and we predict the atmosphere will start to warm again after this temporary blip"
Perhaps the period between the 1940's and 1970's was another blip when warming ceased and cooling took over. The early 20th Century warming could not be blamed on CO2. By the same logic, the post 70s warming could also be natural. Natural warming has taken place since the LIA.
The climate scientists in their arrogance (or poor science) assumed that only CO2 could change the climate. This is obviously total drivel. They need to learn about natural climate drivers before they start blaming other factors. They also need to understand that earth's climate is dominated by negative feedbacks. Life would not have survived this long if positive feedbacks governed our climate.
Somebody asked about a new word to describe the pause. I figured 'AGW' is a perfectly good acronym for it.
'Attenuated Global Warming', anybody?
In my post from earlier I made reference to an earlier paper written by Dr Naomi Oreskes. It is from a book published in 2000 and is a collected work of essays called “The Earth Around Us: Maintaining a Liveable Planet”, and her essay was called “Why believe a computer? Models, Measures and Meaning in the Natural World”. It was about the use of computer models for predicting the climate in the future and it was actually very well written – objective, balanced and a very fair assessment of the validity of the models, the uncertainty associated with them and their limitations.
Given the objectivity and quality of her earlier work, I have to wonder what has happened to her to descend to this level of nonsense over the past 13 years.
"Multiple lines of evidence indicate that global warming continues unabated, which implies that talk of a ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ is misleading"
I keep hearing about these multiple lines but no one seems to be able to point me to them!
Perhaps he meant to say " multiple lines of computer code"
May I in passing just say how lucky we all are to benefit from Barry Woods' hard work. His database of climate-related papers, press releases, articles and comment streams is second to none, and he shows no sign of slowing down.
Barry, when the final bell tolls there's a book to be written. I for one will buy it (and I'll offer to spell- and grammar-check it for free :-)
Thank you.
A good day to bury bad science you say? Except it isn't clear what science this is referring to .... ho hum
Not surprising from all you folks who on this site at least spend all the rest of the days trying to bury good science...:-DD
Indeed it makes me smile. Global warming is a hoax frame. Phew.
I borrowed this from WUWT, ref Prof Lewandowsky:
"So here is someone objecting to the phrase ‘the pause’ in climate discussions yet uses the term ‘Climate change denialists’ in the opening of his press release. Wow!"
Barry Woods
It's not the cause of the pause,
Or the size of the lies,
But the wasted money,
That's not very funny
Onbyaccident, it's not our fault you don't recognise that Dr Lew's work is supposed to be science. Though to be fair he disguises it really well as a pile of sh...
TinyCO2, wide recognition of Lewandowsky could be a factor in any trial. It seems to be an issue in courts in the USA, allegedly.
golf charlie
Why on earth do you think it would be "financial and professional suicide" to criticise this (or any other) paper? If you seriously think the lead author has influence over climate scientists' careers, he'd be right to describe this as "conspiracy ideation"…. ;)
Phil Jones..dirty science denier ?
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 5th July, 2005 “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant….” Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009 "Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried."]
0.12C per decade is not enough to trigger any political action.
The BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics. The questions were put to Professor Jones with the co-operation of UEA's press office.
Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.
Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I've assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm
Richard Betts, it seems that those scientists who have had the nerve to stray from the party line, get savaged by the true believers. I am aware that you do get a hostile response here sometimes but I do welcome your contributions!
I am not sure what feedback you get, formally, or informally in your work environment, and I am not a climate scientist, but surely there must be acceptance by now that all the fear stories of doom were wild exaggerations?
Isn't it time that the Met Office Scientists spoke?
I have worked under the restrictions imposed by the Official Secrets Act, office politics and elected Politicians, so I have some understanding of the constraints!
golf charlie the Met Office Scientists pay cheques get signed by Slingo , who has made it very clear indeed what position she takes , so you can see why some on them do not speak out. while others are very much enjoying the ride CAGW has given them .
Ask yourself this , if tomorrow you could press a button that meant the whole CAGE thing came to an end , do you think that would result in the MET Office , gaining and money and status , loosing money and status or no change at all? . When you done you will see why turkeys do not vote for Christmas .
knr, yes I do appreciate that, plus as a yottie I am aware how much better weather forecasts are now, than in october 1987 for the hurricane that wasn't, and I was in the Met Office HQ in Bracknell in the summer of 1987, and saw the brand new sooper dooper Cray computer, just months before the Met Office didn't see the hurricane that wasn't. On the 16 october 1987, at another Met site, I did see the prototype rainfall radar etc, which showed what had happened.
So I am not naive about progress achieved by the Met Office, nor by the skills. But silence can be frustrating .....
Is it a good day to curry left over greens?
"Execrable", "offal-filled", "derivative" "childish" "poseur": All results of Oreskes and Lewandowsky collaborating on how to control people's thoughts by way of combining their shallow reactionary twaddle.