That break-in

There are reports today that there has been a break-in at the offices of global warming scientist Andrew Weaver.

In one incident, an old computer was stolen and papers were disturbed. In addition, individuals have attempted to impersonate technicians in a bid to access data from his office.

Do you know what I find odd? In none of the reports is there any mention of when these alleged break-ins happened and there are no statements from the police either.

Hmmmm....

Perhaps someone should contact the police in Victoria, Canada, to see how their investigation is coming along.

Update on Dec 7, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Update: Lucia in the comments says the breakin appears to have been last year.  Clearly a conspiracy then.

Climate of fear

I've had some correspondence over the last few days with a well-known writer. We've been discussing people who might want to review my book, but it has not been an easy task.  I thought his comments on this problem were illuminating and I'm reproducing them here (with permission). As you will see, as well as not being able to name my correspondent, I have had to redact a name from the quote as well to protect the identity of the person named. Here's what my contact said when asked for suggestions for reviewers:

Asked for names of potential writers, I feel like an early Lutheran asked to identify his fellow readers of English bibles and knowing that Sir Thomas Gore, sorry More, is reading my letters and tightening his thumbscrews in Chelsea. In other words, like you, I know lots of people who are on side privately but daren't say so publicly. The other day I bumped into ************** at an event and said something about his global warming views (sceptical) and he froze and said `I don't do that stuff now - people would not touch me if I did'.

What can one say to that? I now live in a country where people are afraid to state their opinions on a scientific question. They will have their livelihoods taken away from them if they do.

I sometimes have to pinch myself to ensure that this really is happening and I'm not just living in a bad dream.

The language of the left

The problem with trying to alter the meaning of words to suit your political programme is twofold. Firstly, ordinary people don't have a flaming clue what you're talking about. Secondly, you can get yourself in a right pickle.

You remember that there was a bit of a kerfuffle some months back when an opinion poll of published climate scientists found that a quarter of them reckoned the whole global warming thing was being overstated. Lots of people on the sceptical side of the debate then started jumping up and down and hooting like lovelorn monkeys (I include myself in this), and asking "where's your consensus now, greenies?"

To which the inevitable response was that, although the greens had for years been talking as if there were only two or three scientists on the whole planet who disagreed with the AGW theory and that they had been sectioned in 1968, the word consensus actually didn't in any way imply anything like unanimity and so their new position (that some scientists disagreed) was entirely consistent with the old one (there's a consensus).

Got that? It's nonsense of course. But wait for this: they're at it again!

Today's linguistic gymnastics revolves around the meaning of the word "most". A pretty simple word, you might think; one that a moderately literate schoolchild could use with ease? You'd be wrong. According to our green friends, "most" is a (ahem) most interesting word, full of subtlety and nuance.

First a little background. In the last edition of Climate Cuttings, I wrote about the shenanigans around the American Physical Society's invitation to Lord Monckton to write a piece supporting the sceptical position on AGW. Today, a chap called Arthur Smith has written a rebuttal of the Monckton piece which he has posted at his website here. He has many criticisms of Monckton, but the one that concerns us relates to Monckton's statement that:

[IPCC, 2007] concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the global warming of the past 50 years

His objections to this statement are as follows:

The relevant statement from the IPCC AR4 WG1 SPM is "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." (p. 10). Note Monckton has substituted "more than half" for "most" (English language implication is a lesser amount), "CO2" for "greenhouse gas" (incorrect but irrelevant), "probably" for "very likely" (strong reduction in implied certainty), "past 50 years" for "since the mid-20th century" (inconsequential) and "global warming" in scare-quotes for "observed increased in global average temperatures" (appears to discredit the observations of warming).

(My emphasis)

The statement I've bolded is simply not correct. "Most" can mean less than half, but when it is used in this alternate sense, the usage is quite different to the way the IPCC have used it.

By way of a non-climate example, we might say,

Tony Blair won the most votes in the 2005 election.

a statement which is true, and psephological nerds will also know that TB secured a share of the vote which was well short of half. But we'd also say of the same election (and again, quite correctly) that,

Most people didn't vote for Tony Blair.

The difference in usage is quite different. When used as a pronoun at the start of a sentence, the word "most" only ever implies more than half. The implications of a contrary view are amusing. Let's look at Arthur Smith's own rebuttal of Lord Monckton. He criticises Monckton's statement that climate models don't predict El Nino, La Nina, and so on, saying.

most of the models used by the IPCC exhibit significant oceanic oscillations of these sorts

[Not that many of them, eh? Less than half?]

He also tells us along the way that

I have recently been closely involved in several email and online discussions on climate and thus have become quite familiar with most of the issues involved.

[Doesn't he think he should be familiar with more than half of the issues before launching his rebuttal?]

Really, guys - with the best will in the world, you'll find life so much easier if you just stick to the everyday meaning of words.

Lord Lawson on Five Live

Nigel Lawson is on the Simon Mayo show on Radio Five today at 2pm, discussing his new book on global warming.

A new scale on global warming

Lucia Liljegren is formulating a new scale for measuring how hot you think things are going to get. Lucia comes in as a lukewarmer. James Hansen is presumably a Hell fire and brimstone warmer. Make your suggestions here.

Another global warming sceptic

Professor Laurence I Gould, a physicist from the University of Hartford writes an opinion piece of the newsletter of the New England section of the American Physical Society:

The world has been inundated with claims about dangerous anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Such claims continue to be advocated by a number of scientists, believed by frightened citizens, prominently featured in the mass media, urged to be acted on by many politicians, held to be true by a variety of business people, and spread through educational institutions. As a result, there has emerged a predominant AGWA [my acronym for AGW Alarmist (or Alarmism)] point of view. That point of view probably stems from a confluence of interactions explained through sociology, psychology, philosophy, politics, economics, the media, and science. Only a few of those issues can be treated here — and then, only briefly.

I think it urgent that members of the scientific community should know about some of the issues being propagated. It is urgent because of the dangers to physics in particular, and to science and, consequently, to civilization (depending so heavily as it does on science) in general.

The global warming enthusiasts have been known to call, from time to time, for sceptics ("denialists") to be tried for crimes against humanity. Those of us on the other side of the debate might wonder what steps the scientific community will take against those who have promoted the scam with such vehemence, once the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

Via Greenie Watch. 

Another global warming sceptic

Dr Joanne Simpson is a very important climatologist. See for example this summary of her career:

In 1983, the American Meteorological Society bestowed on her its highest honor "the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Award" and then named her president a few years later, a notable achievement given the fact that no other woman had ever won the job. NASA, too, has weighed in with many awards and commendations, including its coveted Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award.

Having recently retired, she has announced that she is rather sceptical of the case for catastrophic global warming.

[T]he main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system. We only need to watch the weather forecasts.

It is an indictment of the state of fear in climatology that she hasn't felt able to speak out before.

Another sceptic

Jennifer Marohasy points us to another climate sceptic- Anton Uriarte of the University of the Basque Country, who is a geographer and climatologist and the author of a book on paleoclimate. He also has a blog if you happen to speak Spanish.

By way of finding out a bit more about him, I've translated an interview he gave to a Spanish newspaper. I've reproduced this below for anyone who is interested. (This comes with the major caveat that my Spanish is very ropy, but between me and Babelfish, I think the gist of it is there. If you can help with the bits I've not been able to translate, or if you see anthing wrong, do let me know.)

ANTÓN URIARTE, Geographer and climatologist: Earth is not becoming desertified, it’s greener all the time

Luis Alfonso Gámez

URL: http://www.diario-elcorreo.es/vizcaya/pg050323/prensa/noticias/Sociedad/200503/23/VIZ-SOC-054.html

(Interview originally published in the newspaper El Correo)

Luis Alfonso Gámez / Bilbao

Antón Uriarte has studied the climate for more than a quarter of a century and believes that it has not been demonstrated that human activity has been the cause of global warming. Tomorrow, he will take part in a scientific conference on climate change in Bilbao.

A few days ago we were all wrapped up, and now we’re in shirtsleeves. Has the weather gone crazy?

We’re not talking about any madness. There’s a logical explanation.

Which is?

For the planet as a whole, February was a warmer month than normal. We received masses of cold polar air, but the Arctic wasn’t left empty. Warm air from Greenland filled the Arctic. Greenland has had one of the warmest Februaries in its history. The air moves, the Earth is round and continually interchanges air masses between the tropics and the poles.

Here it’s cold, but in other parts of the world it’s hot; and vice versa.

Yes. In August 2003 we suffered a heat wave because of the arrival of air from Africa; but in the Atlantic and Russia they were quite a lot colder than normal.

Is the climate changing ?

The climate has always been changing. It’s in imbalance.

It’s unforeseeable.

The Earth being spherical, the tropics always receive more heat than the poles and the imbalance has to be continually rectified. They changes places because of the tilt of the earth’s axis. And, moreover, the planet isn’t smooth, but rough, which produces perturbations in the interchange of air masses. We know the history of the climate very well and it has changed continuously.

Yes, but now it’s said that the main cause is man

The discussion is about to what extent the climatic change is the product of human activity. There are 6 billion human beings on earth, and that’s well known.

Enough to show how we’ve changed the landscape.

Yes. And this also has repercussions for the climate, not just industry. It’s evident that the Earth is a human planet, and that being so, it’s quite normal that we influence the atmosphere. It’s something else altogether to say that things will get worse. I believe that a little more heat will be very good for us. The epochs of vegetational exuberance coincided with those of more heat.

On a geological scale, the last glaciation ended not long ago.

About 11,500 years ago.

And now we’re in a warm interglacial period.

Yes. Since then, there have been changes in the climate but they have been less pronounced. This is another thing which people are not clear about: in warm periods, when there are more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – more CO2 and water vapour – climate variability is less. In these periods greenhouse gases, which act as a blanket, cushion the differences between the tropics and the poles. There is less interchange of air masses, less (temporales???) storms. We’re talking about a climate which is much less variable. There is another (malentendido??) misunderstanding: they augment the extremes, the waves of cold and heat

Isn’t it so ?

Let’s take the monsoons. The data that we have, which go back about 120 years, show that there is no tendency to increase or decrease. For tropical cyclones, if anything, there is a slight tendency to a decrease. The fact that this year has been a major one for cyclones doesn’t impact this tendency.

Glaciers and deserts

There is alarming news, such as the disappearance of the perpetual ice of Kilimanjaro

The ice of Kilimanjaro occupies two square kilometres. It’s not much. It’s minute, compared to the 16 million square kilometres of snow spread among the continents. It’s been calculated that in 1912, there were 12 million square kilometres, which is still quite a lot. And we know that it has diminished over the twentieth century. But it’s not certain that it’s due to a rise in temperatures. Satellite measurements in fact indicate a cooling. Some believe that humidity might have diminished, others that solar radiation has increased. At planetary scales, it appears that glaciers have retreated, but with some exceptions.

And what about desertification ?

To believe that the Earth is desertifying is totally erroneous. Satellite images show the opposite to be true: the Earth is becoming greener. Firstly, because there is more CO2 and this has augmented photosynthesis. Secondly there is nothing to say that warming should be accompanied by drought. At the moment we are suffering a major drought in Spain because winter has been affected by the situation in the North, by the cold. In Spain it rains more in warm weather than in cold; and in the situation of the planet too. In climate history the warmest epochs have always been the most rainy.

But there are islands and coasts condemned to disappear under the sea.

Not so. The sea is not flat, nor is its level the same everywhere. Changes in salinity mean that in some places, sea level is higher than in others: the north Baltic, with fresher water, is 40cm higher than the south. In the Atlantic, there are differences of metres. With phenomena like El Niño, it will rise in some places and fall in others. The south pole is at -40^oC. With a warming of two degrees, very little is going to change. Moreover, in Antarctica, the tendency is towards cooling.

Can we relax then ?

Yes, there’s no need to be worried. It’s very interesting to study it, but there’s no need to be worried. There are a minority of scientists, among them myself, who believe that to say that man is causing a climatic change is a fairy tale.

Original spanish text here. 

Updated 17/9/07 with a couple of answers to missing Spanish words. For these, thanks to Ex-pat Alfie in the comments. 

A lie flies half way round the world....

....before the truth has got its underpants on. Or something like that.

The Great Global Warming Swindle appears to be issue du jour on many blogs today, and there have been a lot of interesting contributions on both sides. Unoftunately a fairly blatant attempt to discredit some of the contributors has been wending its way round the LibDem blogs, and I have done what I can to nip it in the bud, but it may be too late now.

In a comment on Liberal Polemic, Thomas Papworth stated that some of the contributors to the programme were "not what they seemed". This appeared to be based on this comment at a blog called Ballots Balls & Bikes made by another LibDem blogger called Joe Otten.

Apparently they had fake academics from non-existent departments in that programme.

I left a comment at Joe's blog, asking where this had come from. The source was this thread at Bad Science. Comment 43 stated:

What I found most infuriating however, was the use of so-called experts with non-existing university affiliations. For example, Philip Stott is not a professor at the “Department of Biogeography ” at the “University of London”. No such department exists. He used to be a professor at the Geography Department at SOAS (an institution better know for its cultural studies than climate change research).

Equally, Tim Bell can’t be affiliated with the “Department of Climatology” at the University of Winnipeg, because this department does not exist, nor does he work at the University of Winnipeg. Apparently, he left in 1996 to become a consultant.

As far as Philip Stott goes, I knew this to be absolute nonsense. Professor Stott is well known to anyone who follows science in the UK, particularly bloggers, and he is a regular commenter on BBC programmes about science. To suggest that he is a "fake" in this way strikes me as potentially libellous. I would have thought BB&B would want to consider removing the comment. Philip Stott's Wikipedia page is here.Can anyone really suggest that labelling him as Professor in the Department of Biogeography is a misrepresentation?

Tim Ball (not Bell), I hadn't come across before, but he also has a Wikipedia page which is here. There seems to be some doubt as to whether he was the first Canadian PhD in climatology but it is undisputed that he was a professor at the University of Winnipeg and did research into the historic climate. He is clearly qualified to speak with some authoritaty on the subject of climate change. Again, calling him a fake appears somewhat risky, particularly as he appears to know his neighbourhood libel lawyer's telephone number.

This all looks to me like an attempt to play the man rather than the ball. Given that one of the central claims of the programme was that climate heretics were persecuted, this rather proves the point, doesn't it?