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MIT is one of the nation’s leading sources for technological innovation with amazing faculty, amazing students, and often amazing output.  Sometimes, however, it seems that their press releases are a good example of that amazing output in terms of their ability to make noise when noise might (MIGHT!) not be merited.

More than one person sent me, excitingly, news from MIT about a breakthrough on generating electricity cleanly using natural gas. And, this has gotten blogger attention with many excited comments about the great advance and how it heralds a perfect world to come.

A new type of natural-gas electric power plant proposed by MIT researchers could provide electricity with zero carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, at costs comparable to or less than conventional natural-gas plants, and even to coal-burning plants.

Absent any price for carbon emissions, [Postdoctoral associate Thomas] Adams says, when it comes to generating electricity “the cheapest fuel will always be pulverized coal.”

Weird confidence in stating “always” along with a blunt factual error.  That sort of comment certainly undermines my ability to trust these researchers to know what they’re talking about.

• Clearly, “cheapest fuel” is already well known: solar (wind, waves), water (tidal, gravity based), geothermal heat, other renewables.  Clearly, these systems have other costs, but they are cheaper “fuel” than coal. (So, by the way, is uranium for nuclear power plants if I recall numbers correctly.)
• “Always”, if we want to be generous and say that he meant to say “cheapest way to generate electricity”.  Well, already paid off nuclear power plants, renewable systems (hydro, geothermal, concentrated solar power) produce cheaper electricity than coal plants. There are many different renewable technologies with plausible paths to being cheaper than coal before the end of the next decade. Just as you ‘never say never’ you should ‘never say always’ without utter confidence in what you’re saying. And, if they had utter confidence in this comment, than I am utterly without confidence that their work should be trusted.

Now, of course, this is just press release material and the items above which are questioned could be out of context in terms of the entire work — or not. But, just as we should be careful not to attack a body of work based on a summary of (press release about) it, we should be cautious about getting too enthusiastic based on that press release.

Sigh …  all too often, it seems, we have exciting ‘the problem is solved’ headlines, often suggesting that some form of Silver Bullet solution to all our problems is on our doorstep. While I have great passion for technology and possibilities (every see any of my Energy COOL pieces?), overhyping of items that might be years or decades from deployment (if ever to deploy) help foster a ‘technology will solve everything’ (or ‘solution is just around the corner’) mentality (subconsciously, if not consciously) that undermines the ability to understand that we have things, in hand, to run with to help solve problems.

PS: This is absolutely NOT an anti-technology, anti-university laboratory, anti-research posting as we  absolutely agree should massively support research in energy arenas. See, for example, the call for including $4 billion/year in the jobs program for this: Clean Energy Jobs fill labs.

Linked from CNN.com’s home page, David Frm weighs in with a disingenuous discussion of ClimateGATE (SwiftHack) with The Distorted Global Warming Debate that is a combination of truthful insight and distorting truthiness.

Frum’s argument that the United States (and, well, likely elsewhere) is descending into self-ghettoization intellectually, with people seeking ‘facts’ that support their beliefs rather than allowing facts and knowledge to influence their beliefs, seems a truism.  Whether internet or cable news or email chats, Americans no longer have the Walter Cronkite’s voice to provide a common undermining to water cooler chats.  As From notes, however, this ghettoization is not entirely new:

Maybe customers always wanted to have their pre-existing opinions confirmed. Notice how often 19th century newspapers had names like the “Clay County Whig” or the “Jacksonville Democrat.” What were these old county papers if not the Fox News and MSNBC of their day?

Frum’s discussion also factually (perhaps less truthfully and certainly less insight) examines how Republican Party members acceptance of the science on Global Warming has plummeted over the past two years.

Gallup has recorded an amazing 20 point drop since summer 2008 in the number of Republicans who believe that global warming is occurring. Among Republican conservatives, the drop is slightly smaller — 13 points — but that’s because so few of them believed in the reality of global warming in the first place.

When it comes to ClimateGATE, Frum highlights how ‘environmentalists’ seem to be ignoring it (blowing it off as meaningless) while:

on the right, the story is the biggest scandal since the leak of the Pentagon Papers.

From is correct, this is an issue ignored by the scientific community, environmentalists, and reality-based politicians at the risk of undercutting our ability to develop sensible policy to mitigate climate chaos.

In the posting, Frum reinforces that “biggest scandal” via distorting, misleading, and simply false (out of context) statements related to the hacked emails.

The whole global warming debate has been distorted from the start by intellectual self-ghettoization. Suffused by self-righteousness, the East Anglian scientists felt entitled to twist the evidence and delete the counter-evidence.

Quite simply, Frum’s talking point relies, it would seem, on the simplistic quoting of material entirely out of context.  If he is an honest man, watching this 10 minute video providing factual context (easily sourced context) of two of the critical emails (as an example) would lead Frum to rewrite that sentence and other material in this post. If he is …

Frum writes:

Everything important about global warming remains disputed:

How fast is it happening? How much of it is attributable to human activity? How dangerous is it? How much should we pay to avert or mitigate it? Who should do the paying?

Yes, all of these points are ‘disputed’.  And, they should be ‘disputed’.  However, this is an utterly deceptive construct as the opening line of this quotation is utterly misleading.  When it comes to the most “important [items] about global warming”, there is little dispute within those who are open to science and the scientific process. What are those ‘most important’ items:

1. The earth is getting warmer
2. People are causing this
3. If GHG emissions continue, the warming will continue and indeed accelerate
4. This will be a problem and we ought to do something about it.

These “most important” items are not in serious dispute even while there is real (and legitimate) dispute about the sort of questions that Frum raises.

A fundamental problem, which Frum ignores, is that the growing Republican Party questioning of global warming reflects the growing power of anti-science syndrome advocates in the base and the leadership. This does not bode well for the Party or the nation or, sadly, the prospects for humanity’s future prosperity globally.

A note about anonymous sourcing … if there is a source

From quotes an unnamed “knowledgeable environmentalist” as follows:

I asked a knowledgeable environmentalist earlier this week: “How big a story is the CRU scandal in your community?”

“The what?”

“The e-mails hacked at the Climate Research Unit at [the British] East Anglia University?”

“Ah.” He smiled. “It says something that I didn’t immediately recognize what you were talking about. I suppose on my side we’d take the same view that the Pentagon took of Abu Ghraib: a few bad apples on the night shift.”

Several questions and issues with this:

1. What justifies this to be an unnamed source?
2. This quotation is not what a truly “knowledgeable environmentalist” is likely to have said. Someone knowledgeable would have emphasized truthful analysis, rather than speaking from what seems to be ignorance. As examination continues, it really doesn’t seem to be “a few bad apples” somehow analogous to “Abu Ghraib”, but propagandistic distortions of material systematically quoted out of context. A context that is easily derived from someone interest in truthful, rather than deceptive, discussion of scientific issues.

These points combine.  What is the likelihood that Frum simply invented this ‘knowledgeable environmentalist’ out of whole cloth to have a false strawman to attack?

Note: Frum is a resident fellow American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which has a financial skin in the game of global warming denial.

The Times of London had a blockbuster of an item in its reporting of ClimateGate:

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

This is serious, isn’t it? One of the key government institutions, globally, on climate issues is, according to The Times stating that ClimateGate has “shattered confidence in the science on man-made global warming” and has committed to a three-year effort to reexamine the data.

In fact, it is serious. It is a serious example of a serious traditional media outlet making a serious misrepresentation of what is actually going on.

The Times report led me to query the Met Office.

I have looked at your website and press releases. Nothing there suggests any Met Office “admission” or statement about public confidence. Is there such a statement?

And, your press release seems to discuss plans to release data, as you are authorized to do so, rather than any fundamental plans to “re-examine” the data. Did the Times story accurately reflect your plans?

Here is the response that I just received:

The Met Office has no plans to re-evaluate the global temperature climate data.

The Met Office is totally confident that the global temperature record is valid. It is supported by two independent analyses, NASA GISS and NCDC, and all clearly demonstrate the rise in global temperature over the last 150 years. This is supported by other observed changes such as melting Arctic sea ice, glacier retreat and rising sea levels.

The Met Office is planning to release station temperature data records from over one thousand stations that go to make up the global land surface temperature record We are completely confident that this subset will show the rise in global average temperatures.

I assume that while The Times has issued a correction (oops, no, they haven’t, at least not as of 2 pm in London … we can expect they will, can’t we?) we will see none of the denialosphere outlets trumpeting that correction.

A note re ClimateGATE / SwiftHACK

SwiftHack.com – Reality-based news and analysis related to the ClimateGate story. The site will serve as an informal clearinghouse for pushback against the rapidly developing ‘SwiftHack’ smear campaign against climate science.

Over recent months, R L Miller has increasingly impressed me with thoughtful, informed, insightful, and passionate writing. This guest post, on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit, is visually and intellectually a piece of beauty and pain.

The Washington Post has a sad record of Faux and Balanced when it comes to Global Warming. Sunday’s opinion pieces provided yet another textbook example. Today’s paper has two authors, both enemies of ‘green’ … from utterly different angles. [Read more →]

It’s under ten minutes … And, for any rational person, that ten minutes will shatter any chance of belief that there is a substantive basis for concern about climate science’s foundations due to ClimateGate (SwiftHack).

Several moments of particular skill in this takedown of McExperts making noise about ClimateGate

• 7 minutes in there is the simple point, based on Rush Limbaugh rantings, of the irrationality of the climate denier community. Limbaugh is, with a straight face, arguing that it is somehow impossible to fake material in these 1000 or so emails while, at the same time, fervishly asserting that there is some form of global cabal of scientists who have worked together to fake data and manipulate analysis to represent something 180 degrees out from reality. At times, you really have to wonder about the Oxycontin …
• 8 minutes in starts the conclusion. “Before you get too excited, too late for that, investigate … check it out …” This video explores just two, the most cited two, emails. The basic point, however, is that a few moments of checking context and what seems to be a smoking gun turns out to be anything but.

This comes from “Potholer54”

The main purpose of this channel, for those who don’t know, is to explain in simple terms the conclusions of scientific research and correct some of the unsourced crap you get fed on the Internet.

An international criminal conspiracy?

Now, questions should be asked by Interpol. Is there an international criminal conspiracy at play here? There is the hacking of the CRU in the UK. Now, there are reports of efforts to access illegally Canadian climate research centers’ data systems.  Some good material on this: Impersonators attempt to access Canadian governmt Centre for Climate Modeling; Break-In, Thieves Target Another Top Climate Scientist; and Watergate Redux: Break-ins Reported At Another Top Climate Research Center.

Note: Hat tip to Demsmogblog for the video.

The old adage: A picture is worth 1,000 words.  Does this apply to graphics as well?

Today’s Washington Post has a front-page article on ClimateGATE (more appropriately, perhaps SwiftHack) In e-mails, science of warming is hot debate. Showing the heat of the debate, the article already has 255 comments as of 7:55 on a Saturday morning. Expect there to be more.

While the words of the article merit examination, something jumped out visually with the article. That is, the graphic to the right. For any normal observer, this graphic shows bluntly that temperatures seem to have been relatively flat. Even though there are words that say otherwise (“nine of the world’s hottest years have occurred this decade” and, in the graphic itself, “2001 to 2009 among 10 warmest”), the clear message of this graphic: temperatures have been relatively stable.

However, there is no (NO!) serious person working in the climate world (whether scientist, activist, bureaucrat, economist, etc …) who would state that the Scientific Theory of Global Warming mandates that temperatures rise year-in, year-on, on a straight-line path. While the nature of modeling, with smoothing function might create an impression otherwise, there is a very (VERY) clear understanding that there are a multitude of contributing factors, with extremely complex interactions that mean that there will be variations in the pace and nature of changing climate even as, writ large, global temperature averages (both air and sea) will continue to mount due to the forcing functions of human activities (from fossil-fuel burning to land-use patterns (notably deforestration)).

Now, writ large, a general rule of thumb is that, when it comes to climate, a decade might be interesting, but you’re not really appropriate in discussion if you’re not speaking in the context of at least 30 years and, well, preferably longer.

The Washington Post chose to publish a graphic for a 15-year period, which seems to suggest (strongly) for those who won’t really absorb the 18 caveating words (after all, a picture is worth 1000 words, no?), that would lead casual readers (after all, who really has the time to study seriously all the serious issues on the table at any one time — thus, most are ‘casual’ readers when it comes to Climate Change) to have their suspicions increased as to whether there is Global Warming. Oh, that’s right, a graphic accompanying an article about the ‘ClimateGate scandal’.

Now, if a graphic is worth a thousand words, might Washington Post readers have come away with a different impression if the story had also had (updated to 2009) the graphic below?

Source: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences.

With this graphic, the 18 caveating words are no longer caveating, dissonant with the message the graphic sends, but are reinforcing. Looking at this, does “”nine of the world’s hottest years have occurred this decade” seem discordant with the image? When image and words battle, images typically win.

In the case of this graphic, in full substance The Washington Post is accurate. The question is whether, even though true, this is truthful.

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Representative John Linder (R-GA-7) has issued an “editorial” entitled “Climate Challenges” (reprinted in full after the fold) which provides a textbook example of what should be an adage of modern American political culture: truthiness is easier than truth. In short, those who are willing to distort and deceive  (and enthusiastic about distorting and deceiving), unconcerned as to whether their words and statements are truthful, can come out sounding ever so convincing as they declare their truthiness with such forceful confidence.

This sort of denialist piece is so painful to deal with, because the honest response and dissection takes about 10 times the effort as it takes to write. (Again, truthiness is easier than truth.)  And, providing a scientifically sound, footnoted (linked in case of web) response might take 100 times the time.  Sadly (perhaps happily), I don’t have a couple weeks to devote to the monograph detailing each of Linder’s errors, deceptions, and partial truths. I do, however, have time to point to a few. [Read more →]

Sarah “Energy Exert” Palin has weighed in on ClimateGate, using Facebook to jump in with her perspective on SwiftHack.  Let’s take a moment to parse this statement.

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Sadly, we need to spend time on the anti-science syndrome sound machine’s efforts to spin and promote ClimateGate / SwiftHack as something meriting focus rather than recognizing that every serious piece of work in the field is highlighting that the situation of climate change is getting more dire (essentially) on every front of the climate crisis. While we should be spending our intellectual capital figuring out best mitigation paths, necessary adaptations, and determining (and moving forward with) the best paths to execute them, we need to deal with escalating distortion machine falsehoods asserting that the hacked CRU emails supposedly undermine the science as opposed to giving deniers a tool to further muddy the conversation and inhibit necessary action.

Sigh …

Time to give some more attention.

In this case to give attention by highlighting some very thoughtful voices around the web providing insights on SwiftHack.

Let’s start with a scientist’s comment from Slashdot (hat tip Stoat / William Connelly) which, while a bit heavy in the ‘how dare amateurs criticize experts’, seems quite truthful:

there’s virtually *nothing* in the way of criticism that a beginner would be able to think of that an expert hadn’t thought about already. You’re just not going to find a professor of physics having made a mistake of forgetting the first law of thermodynamics.

Now I’m happy to defend my science against legitimate, good, criticism. But a scientific debate is *NOT* where anybody should be TEACHING anybody science. What kind of ‘debate’ is it if every answer amounts to “That’s not what that word means, read a damn textbook.” It’s not the scientists who are being arrogant then. Hell, since when didn’t scientists bend over backwards to educate the public? We write textbooks, and popular-scientific accounts. Research gets published in journals for everyone to see, etc. It’s not like we’re keeping it a big secret – The problem is that some people are simply unwilling to learn, yet arrogant enough to believe they should be entitled to ‘debate’ with me, and that I should be personally burdened with educating them in the name of ‘open debate’!

(Just to pick one out of the climate bag. How often haven’t you seen someone say “Yeah but climate change is cyclical!” – What? As if _climate scientists_ didn’t know that?! Refuting someone’s research with arguments from an introductory textbook)

The fact that these climate-skeptics were prepared to take these e-mails, pore over them for some choice quotes (which didn’t even look incriminating to me out of context), blatantly misinterpret them without making any kind of good-faith effort to understand the context or the science behind it, and trumpet it all out as some kind of ‘disproval’ of global warming (which wouldn’t have been the case even if they were right), just goes to show that they’re simply not interested in either learning the science, or engaging in a real debate. And it’s in itself pseudo-scientific behavior in action: Decide there’s a big conspiracy of fraud behind climate change, and go look for evidence to support your theory, and ignore all other explanations.

Follow after the fold for some more.

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