At the 
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Representative Steve King (R-IA-5) made it very clear not just that he purposefully wastes taxpayers’ money but that he takes joy in doing so.
King referred to the House office building janitors during Pelosi’s time as speaker as her “Stasi troops” — referring to oppressive secret police in East Germany until 1990 — saying they unscrewed the lightbulbs in his office to replace them with energy-efficient “curly-Q” bulbs.
“I would screw them out and send the interns out to get me some of those good Edison lightbulbs,” he said, the crowd cheering. “And those interns would come back sometimes empty-handed in tears, because they couldn’t come up with a regular Edison light-bulb.”
He said he finally decided it was “cruel and inhumane” to send the interns on that task, so he went to find “black-market” lightbulbs himself. He then was faced with a decision: buy a recyclable bag, which he at first said no to, or pay more.
“Whenever I need to put a lightbulb in the lamp, I reach into this green bag and I screw it in there and I smile,” he said. “A little bit of my liberty back, a little bit of my freedom back.”
While we are going to take up other elements in King’s diatribe against “curly-Q” bulbs” after the fold, let us address the lay down the basic scenario:
- Representative King drove to a store and bought incandescent lightbulbs (he stated that he paid for the bulbs, and the dreaded “recyclable bag” himself … but, well, does he charge mileage).
- He then used those incandescent bulbs to replace compact flourescent bulbs which the taxpayers had paid for
- To put them in lighting fixtures where the electricity by the taxpayer and where his bulbs will use about 4x as much electricity.
- Representative King’s actions cost the taxpayer money … ..
Just how much money?
For an idea of how much, here is a discussion of CFLs in a condominium
Let us take a very simple case for a light bulb pay back period. Assume that a light is on 40 hours per week. With a 100 watt incandescent light bulb, that would mean 4000 watt hours every week or 4 kwh/week. At a price of 14.5 cents per week, that translates into a weekly electrical bill of $0.58 or an annual cost of $30.37 for 208 kwh. For equivalent lighting, a CFL would use 27 watts. 40 hours of use would be 1080 watts or 1.054 kwh with a cost of $0.16 and an annual cost of $8.14 for 56 kwh. The CFL uses 42 cents less of electricity every week. For one year’s use, the CFL would cost $22.23 LESS than the use of the incandescent while using 152 fewer kilowatt hours.
That is at prices in a Maryland suburb comparable with DC’s retail electricity prices.
Here is a simple table laying out the differences based on an average electricity cost of 9.5 cents per kilowatt hour. .
|
Incandescent |
CFL |
| Watts |
100 |
27 |
| kWh week |
4 |
1.08 |
| Electricity Cost per week |
$0.38 |
$0.10 |
| kWh / year |
208 |
56.16 |
| Electricity Cost per year |
$19.76 |
$5.34 |
| # bulbs per year |
2 |
0.5 |
| Capital cost per year |
$1.00 |
$1.25 |
| 2 year bulb costs + electricity cost |
$41.52 |
$13.18 |
Remember, of course, that Representative King is likely trashing those removed CFLs — that worsens the financial return on investment case even more.
Thus, every time King pulls out one of those bulbs from his little green bag, without mentioning the cost of the increased pollution due to burning the extra electricity, he is throwing no less than $25 bucks (and likely more) of the taxpayers’ money into the trash … each and every year.
Thus, when Steve King “reach[es] into this green bag … screw[s] it in and … smile[s],” while he might think that he is getting a “little bit of liberty back, a little bit of freedom back” it is clear to anyone who knows how to use a snubby pencil for basic arithmetic that he is really screwing the taxpayer.
Of course, the issue isn’t the 1000s of taxpayer dollars that Steve King is throwing in the trash but that he seeks to impose such wasteful promotion of 19th century technology on the rest of U.S.
Related:
[Read more →]
While the Amazon is under serious threat invisible to most, this post is about yet
another ‘rating war’ (and rating abuse) on Amazon as anti-science syndrome sufferers, urged on by the Andrew Breibart of the global warming denial world and other anti-science vigilantes, are swarming on Professor Michael Mann’s just-published book
As Scott Mandia opened a discussion,
It is a shame that the science deniers are much better organized than the rational people. As of 8 AM this morning, Dr. Michael E. Mann’s latest book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines had 15 reviews, all of which were 5 stars. My review (posted below) had 58 out of 59 votes for being helpful.
Something has changed. As of the moment of writing this piece, there are now 41 reviews:
- “5-star”: 24
- “4-star”: 4
- “3-star”: 0
- “2-star”: 0
- “1-star”: 13
Sigh.
Has the books suddenly gotten worse?
No, a “Watt’s Up With That“, one of the most prominent climate science confusion sites, put up a post calling on readers to attack Mann’s book and to attack positive reviews.
Thus, a pile of 1-star reviews — essentially none with substance and the substantive ones with bad science . The ‘top rated’ 1-star review begins as follows:
221 of 430 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars assumptions are not fact., February 8, 2012
For someone who obtained a PhD, the lack of rigour and detail in areas such as greenhouse effect (he ignores the chemical fundamentals and fails to address saturation theory for CO2 and just draws a mickey mouse diagram for primary school kids), climate models (he goes into no detail about why models have been shown to be widely inaccurate according to some and spot on according to others) and the historical relationship between temperature and CO2 ( the lag argument ).
Besides the absence of “Amazon verified purchase” for a book released just today (with Kindle edition out for a little while), this doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny. As Scott Mandia responded:
This reviewer packs quite a few climate myths into the first paragraph. Can you say Dunning-Kruger? The debunking of these myths can be found by visiting Skeptical Science’s Arguments page and clicking on #71, #6, and #12.
[Note: Debunking myths is difficult and resource demanding. A very useful Debunking guide. And, an example of a recent whacking moles debunking effort.]
In addition to the posting of shallowly dismissive 1-star reviews, there was a rash of downrating of those substantive reviews that were up prior to WUWT’s post. Scott Mandia’s very substantive review now has a rating of “139 of 274 people found the following review helpful” which means that this (very substantive) review (published with permission, in full, after-the-fold) no longer appears on the front page of reviews.
This is a very open and blunt example of a conspiracy to mobilize resources to freep Amazon ratings, to drive down the visibility of seriously substantive reviews while seeking to drive down attention to (and interest in) a book through a raft of negative (even if shallow) reviews. The Amazon review system is open to all sorts of gamesmanship and unethical behavior. Such abusive behavior as seen today with Dr Mann’s work is far from isolated to climate science (see here for an interesting example of review abuse).
Thus, to the title question: “What is the right thing to do?”
Clearly, Amazon is not about to step in to provide some meaningful enforcement beyond what exists (such as “Amazon verified purchase”) to remove 1-star ratings, put meaningful reviews ‘higher’ in the queue despite the flood of ‘not useful’ ratings shortly after the WUWT call to action.
One option would be a call to action: go to Amazon and uprate all five-star reviews and down-rate all 1-star reviews. That, however, would be simply inappropriate. Another option is to simply ignore which, in the larger scheme of things, is likely a better use of most people’s time. A third option, one that would actually require far more time than option 1, would be to go to Amazon and actually read the 5 star and 1 star reviews. If you find a review helpful, no matter what the star rating, let Amazon know and do the same if you find it unhelpful. While I have a good idea what the resulting ratings would be from a reality-based community, this is an ethical way to react to anti-science syndrome sufferering swarming within the flawed Amazon rating system.
[Read more →]
A question to ponder: If you received an “award” from a shoddy institution celebrating some of your weakest work, would you go proudly proclaim the stained medallion or would you bury the award in a closet hoping to never hear about it again?
CBS faces such a conundrum …
As per Media Matters reporting, a CBS “reporter” is slated to receive an award from “Accuracy in Media” that will be presented at a the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). This is a notable event for many reasons, such as this being the first time that AIM has “honored” a mainstream news outlet in this way after, on all other occasions, presenting the award to right-wing disinformation experts like Marc Morano and Andrew Breitbart.
What has CBS “reporter” Sharyl Attkisson done to deserve joining AIM’s presentigious list of honorees?
Attkisson Has Produced Shoddy, Irresponsible Reporting Over The Past Year
Attkisson Botched Green Energy “Investigation.” In a recent “investigation” for CBS’s This Morning, Attkisson purported to reveal 11 “New Solyndras” — companies she said “are having trouble” or “have filed for bankruptcy” after receiving federal assistance. But Attkisson was counting companies that didn’t even receive federal funds, companies that haven’t actually gone bankrupt, and companies that have sold the government-backed projects to other firms, meaning taxpayer funds are not in their hands. Bill O’Reilly and CBSNews.com used Attkisson’s misleading report to spread additional false information. In announcing its award recipients, AIM specifically lauded Attkisson for her green energy report. [Media Matters, 1/13/12] [Media Matters, 1/18/12] [Media Matters, 1/30/12] [Accuracy in Media, 2/1/12]
Science Writer: Attkisson Is “One Of The Least Responsible Mainstream Journalists” Covering Vaccines and Autism. Science writer Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind The Vaccine-Autism Controversy, wrote on his website: “For years, CBS News’s Sharyl Attkisson has been one of the least responsible mainstream journalists covering vaccines and autism. Again and again, she’s parroted anti-vaccine rhetoric long past the point that it’s been decisively disproved.” Indeed, in three articles on CBSNews.com this year, Attkission has suggested that there is a major “debate” in the scientific community over whether vaccines are connected to autism, despite the lack of evidence for the supposed link. Mnookin told Media Matters that he found it “shocking that her vaccine reporting is featured on a major news” site. [SethMnookin.com, 3/31/11] [Phone conversation, 2/6/12]
- Children Who Are Not Vaccinated Are At Risk Of Serious Infectious Diseases. Vaccination rates in certain areas of the United States are decreasing, coinciding with a rise in measles cases. As Dr. Steven Weinreb wrote in the New York Times, “For each year between 2001 and 2008, the median number of [measles] cases in the United States was 56. In the first six months of this year [2011] alone, there were more than 150 reported cases — the most since 1996. A vast majority of those who were sickened had not been vaccinated or had uncertain vaccination histories.” [New York Times, 12/27/11]
Attkisson: A “New Scientific Review” Shows The “Austism-Vaccine Debate” Is Not Over. More than a year after the formal retraction of the main study upon which theories connecting autism to vaccines were based, Attkisson wrote: “For all those who’ve declared the autism-vaccine debate over – a new scientific review begs to differ. It considers a host of peer-reviewed, published theories that show possible connections between vaccines and autism.” Mnookin criticized Attkisson’s article, noting that the author of the “new scientific review,” Helen Ratajczak, had only “been the primary author of a published study” twice in the past decade, and it was “only the fourth study she’s been associated with in any capacity during that time.” Dr. David Gorski further broke down the “pseudoscience” cited in Attkisson’s article, and concluded by wondering why CBS “tolerate[s] Attkisson’s horrible reporting on vaccines and other scientific issues.” [CBSNews.com, 3/31/11] [SethMnookin.com, 3/31/11] [Media Matters, 9/16/11] [ScienceBasedMedicine.org, 4/4/11]
Attkisson Editorialized In Article About Debunked Vaccine-Autism Link. In 2010, a federal court ruled that families with autistic children are not entitled to compensation from the vaccine court because a causal link between vaccines and autism is “scientifically unsupportable.” In an article titled “The Search for Safer Vaccines,” Attkisson commented that “vaccine-injured children who end up with autism are quietly winning their cases, but only when they focus on the more general argument of seizures or brain damage rather than autism. Some victory.” [CNN.com, 3/12/10] [CBSNews.com, 1/19/11]
CBS Reportedly Had To Remove A False Paragraph From Attkisson’s Report. In January 2011, Attkisson wrote an article titled “Child Flu Vaccine Seizures?” According to an excerpt quoted by Mnookin, Attkisson’s article originally ended by stating that a new study “discusses how early life seizures ‘may contribute to the enhanced risk of IDD’s (Intellectual and Development Disabilities) and ASD’s (Autism Spectrum Disorders.)'” But the study did not “say anything about vaccine-related febrile seizures,” according to Mnookin, who noted that “when CBS was alerted to the problem,” it removed the offending paragraph without noting a correction. The article still states that “non-government medical experts differ on the issue of whether flu shots should be given to children,” even though the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the American Lung Association all recommend that children older than 6 months get the flu vaccine. [SethMnookin.com, 1/28/11] [CBSNews.com, 1/26/11] [American Academy of Pediatrics, 9/1/11] [American Medical Association, accessed 2/3/12] [American Lung Association, accessed 2/3/12]
Hmmm …
Will CBS proudly provide press releases about honoree Attkisson or hope that this passes without note?
This guest post comes from Louis A. Derry, an associate professor of geological sciences at Cornell University. It was originally posted as a comment to a post at the Dot Earth blog of The New York Times which discussed one angle of The WSJ 16’s climate disinformation OPED. RE that monstrocity, see Whacking 16 Moles and Whacking Moles: A Smörgåsbord of Sanity About “The WSJ 16? which provides links to numerous scientific (and otherwise) looks at the inadequacies, misrepresentations, errors, and outright deceits in The WSJ 16’s oped.
The recent WSJ op-ed piece by “sixteen concerned scientists” is a tired retread of the unscientific and unsubstantiated attacks against the science of climate change and the scientific community that works on climate change. The piece recycles all the usual vague but pernicious arguments of climate change deniers, using now-familiar methods. Nothing in this piece is new, nor is any of it remotely classifiable as science. But it is deeply disingenuous.
Here are the “Usual Techniques” as illustrated in the WSJ op-ed. Caveat lector:
· Prominently feature a Nobel laureate, always from another field and without any particular qualifications in climate science, who is unhappy with statements about climate change. Never once do they actually rigorously poll Nobel laureates (few of whom work in climate anyway), they just pick one of a handful who have expressed concern over climate change research and loudly trumpet his qualifications.
· Cite the “large number of concerned scientists, growing every year” without providing a shred of evidence that this is true. As is well known and well documented, the weight of the scientific literature is very clear. Only a few of the authors of this piece have ever published anything on climate change in a peer-reviewed source, and their skeptical views are heavily outweighed in the scientific literature.
· Claim that warming “stopped” over the last decade. This conclusion depends on what record you choose, and the deniers of course choose the satellite record because it gives one very warm year in 1998, making subsequent years look less notable. This is curious, to say the least, because the satellite record has, in the past, had major errors (few people realize how difficult it is to go from radiometer measurements on a satellite to an accurate global temperature record, and what models and assumptions are involved). We hope the errors are now all fixed, but can’t be sure. In other words, the 1998 satellite data T anomaly is not the same as the four different ground station records, but they pick it anyway without any objective reason to do so, apparently because it suits their prejudices.
· Talk about “smaller than predicted warming.” But, wait, a few lines before they said there was “no warming? OK guys, which is it? They are all smart enough to know that ten years is too short a time frame to diagnose a warming or cooling signal. This is very elementary time series analysis, conveniently forgotten by people who most certainly know better.
· Make a reference to “Climategate,” of course. Never mind that this is a completely irrelevant sideshow with zero influence on whether climate is actually changing or not. The mere mention of “anything-gate” can be counted on to cast the pall of conspiracy on any activity, irrespective of the actual evidence.
· Tell us how good CO2 is for plants. Not exactly a new insight, and not exactly relevant. Of course plants like more CO2, all other things being equal. But all other things are most certainly not equal, outside the controlled environment of the laboratory. Any number of field experiments to test the response of real ecosystems to elevated CO2 has shown muted and often very short-term responses. The world is not a Dutch flower greenhouse. Again, this is elementary. If the op-ed authors don’t know this they have no business opining on the issue, and if they do they’re being dishonest. The notion they advance that the Green revolution and increased crop yields over the last several decades owe anything significant to increased CO2 has no legitimate scientific basis. The claim that “part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2” is meaningless arm waving. What does “part” mean, anyway? In this case, it means “unmeasurably small.” How about “almost certainly”? Honest translation: “we wish it so”.
· The op-ed authors claim that “many” young scientists are afraid to voice their doubts about climate change. Again, a broad indictment of the field without a shred of evidence; who are the “many”, and just how many are they? Nor do the present authors mention how many people have turned away from doing climate research because they don’t want the hassle or legal and illegal threats that have been inflicted on some well known climate researchers, or the frequent low level harassment that others receive. How many of each kind there are, I don’t know, but assuredly neither do they. This is the most insidious type of accusation – vague, uncredited, lacking in any evidence, but darkly hinting of a conspiracy. Of course they also include the usual persecution story, and so they cite the case of [Chris] de Freitas, who voluntarily resigned from an unpaid editor post in the face of criticism that he has done a poor job. Funny, they don’t mention the numerous calls to fire and indict scientists who have been the public face of climate change research, including the attempted prosecution of at least one. If the worst case they can point to is someone voluntarily stepping down as a journal editor, this hardly compares with the multiple subpoenas and threats of prosecution that have been visited upon well-known climate scientists.
· Invoke Lysenko and the gulag. This is simply outrageous and ludicrous. No further comment necessary.
· Charge that climate science exists to wring money out of the government, and is some kind of secret agenda to promote government bureaucracy. Another outrageous and utterly unsubstantiated and false smear, once again invoking Lysenko. This ugly, unconscionable tactic brings Joseph McCarthy to mind. It may appeal to a subset of WSJ readers, but is pure fantasy.
· Claim that the cost-benefit analysis shows that no action on CO2 emissions is warranted. They cite Nordhaus, who is but one of many economists who have looked at this question, and, as usual, different assumptions and models give different results. [Editor’s note: Professor Nordhaus explicitly disavowed The WSJ 16’s (mis)use of his work.] The question of costs and benefits is particularly complex, because it convolves the uncertainties of climate model predictions with the uncertainties of economic models and subjective choices about how to value “costs” and “benefits.” Despite these major unknowns, the authors present Nordhaus’ analysis as simple, when the reality is anything but, and of course they don’t mention other analyses that give very different results. Go ahead and put the predictions of climate models over the last 20 years up against those from Friedman-esque economic models (speaking of Nobel laureates). I don’t think there would be much contest. Do you remember when tax cuts were guaranteed to boost the economy and lower government deficits, there was no housing bubble, and financial regulation was harmful? Compare those abject failures to the criticism of “smaller-than-predicted warming.” ‘Nuff said.
· Claim support for “excellent” climate scientists, having just compared them to Soviet apparatchiks. Once again, OK, guys, which is it? And they imply that “huge” sums are being misspent on climate research. Expenditures on climate related research are not “huge” by any reasonable definition, and in fact are almost certainly inadequate, irrespective of how effectively one thinks they’re being spent. Once again, no numbers, no specifics, just innuendo and dark hints.
This is, in my view, one of the most irresponsible and sad pieces of opinion writing I’ve seen in a long time.
It is by no means science or even vaguely scientific, despite the scientific background of its signatories. If this is where debate among scientists about climate change is headed, we’re doomed to a dark age where politics, PR, and unfounded accusations will rule and science will become irrelevant. I have come to expect that from some of our politicians and paid talking heads. But to see people with once-respected scientific credentials stoop so low is truly depressing, and bodes very poorly for the future of science as a means of finding viable solutions to the many problems faced by society. What’s worse, I know some of these guys, and have hard time believing they actually read what they signed (I may be naïve). All of them have made productive careers doing science. To see them turn on science itself in such a profoundly unprofessional, disingenuous and dishonest way is particularly disappointing.
Editor’s note: Links added by editor.
As noted in Whacking 16 Moles, 
flaring anti-science syndrome suffering climate denier and delayer inanities often divert people from valuable and productive activities. Prominent eruptions of this malady, however, drive white-cell like effort to respond and dampen the damage. With the publication of “No Need to Panic About Global Warming”, “The Wall Street Journal 16” sparked such an effort. Here is a selection of responses to that travesty of a publication:
Kenneth Trenberth, et al, “Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate,” Letter to the Editor, Wall Street Journal (As Romm noted, “the signatories of the WSJ letter … reads like a Who’s Who of Climate Scientists”.)
Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.
You published “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” (op-ed, Jan. 27) on climate change by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields, most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert. This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall that a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science.
…
Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused. It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses. In addition, there is very clear evidence that investing in the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.
Skeptical Science, The Latest Denialist Plea for Climate Change Inaction, lays out the (lack of) qualifications of “The WSJ 16” before delving into the OPED itself
IIf we boil down this op-ed to its basics, we’re left with a letter signed by only two scientists with peer-reviewed climate research publications in the past three decades, which exhibits a serious lack of understanding of basic climate concepts, and which simply regurgitates a Gish Gallop of long-worn climate myths. The letter claims that climate “skepticism” is growing, and yet only has 16 signatories, at least 43% of which have received funding from the fossil fuel industry, and not one single new argument which hasn’t been long-debunked.
If this is the best today’s climate fake skeptics can do, perhaps, as Patrick Michaels suggests, they are losing the battle. We can only hope that this is the case.
Andrew Revkin, Dot Earth, New York Times, Scientists Challenging Climate Science Appear to Flunk Climate Economics quoting the economist (Nordhaus) who “The 16” used (evidently abused) in support of arguing against investment in climate mitigation:
The piece completely misrepresented my work. My work has long taken the view that policies to slow global warming would have net economic benefits, in the trillion of dollars of present value. This is true going back to work in the early 1990s (MIT Press, Yale Press, Science, PNAS, among others). I have advocated a carbon tax for many years as the best way to attack the issue. I can only assume they either completely ignorant of the economics on the issue or are willfully misstating my findings.
Climate science discussion between Burt Rutan and Brian Angliss. This is a highly recommended set of interactions where engineer Brian Angliss seeks to engage engineer Burt Rutan about climate science … and where Rutan fails to deal, substantively, with any of Angliss’ very respectfully laid out substantive issues.
Ever since you won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 you’ve been a minor hero of mine. I’ve felt that the development of private human spaceflight was the critical next step toward moving humanity off our small blue marble since I was in high school, and SpaceShipOne was the first major step in that direction. The commercialization of space travel is a large part of why I work in aerospace myself designing satellite and space vehicle electronics.
This is why I was disappointed to find that you had co-signed a Wall Street Journal commentary regarding human-caused climate disruption along with 15 other scientists and engineers. The commentary was replete with incorrect and misleading information. So much so, in fact, that I was surprised that you, as an engineer, would attach your name to it.
While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower, Bad Astronomy, in brief: “Shame on the WSJ for publishing that nonsense”
Andrew Glikson, We do need drastic action on climate change: a response to the Wall Street Journal, The Conversation
In their article the authors claim the reason for their doubt about the reality of climate change is “a collection of stubborn scientific facts”. My response below relates purely to scientific points. Let us look at the facts. …
… [multiple issues dealt with … below is one of the examples of stubborn facts/truthful discussion at odds with The WSJ 16’s truthiness-laded assertions.]
Carbon dioxide is not pollution
The authors claim “… CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle.”
This statement reflects a misconception regarding the physiological and biological effects of changing concentrations of elements such as carbon, oxygen, sulfur or phosphorous. A corollary would be the human lungs: a small increase in CO2 can lead to hypercapnia; a rise in oxygen beyond critical thresholds result in oxygen toxicity.
Improvements in plant photosynthesis do not depend exclusively on availability of CO2 but on the availability of water and on temperatures. The intensification of the hydrological cycle associated with global warming, resulting in floods in some regions and in droughts in other, is hardly conducive for agriculture.
Perhaps the most amazing statement made by the authors concerns the evolution of plants under high CO2 levels in the geological past. They state, “Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today.”
The evolution of plants and animals occurred over millions of years, when species had time to evolve and adapt to changing atmosphere and hydrosphere conditions. When changes occur at rates to which plants and animals cannot adapt, such as the current rate of 2 ppm CO2/year, unprecedented in geological history, mass extinction of species becomes a reality.
Suzanne Goldenberg, Wall Street Journal Rapped Over Climate Change Stance
The Wall Street Journal has received a dressing down from a large group of leading scientists for promoting retrograde and out-of-date views on climate change. …
Union of Concerned Scientists, Dismal Science at the Wall Street Journal.
“While it’s entirely appropriate for scientists, like all citizens, to voice their personal opinions on public policy, the op-ed repeated a number of deeply misleading claims about climate science. To take just one example, the authors claim there has been a “lack of warming” for 10 years. Here’s what we know: 2011 was the 35th year in a row in which global temperatures were above the historical average and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record. Over the past decade, record high temperatures outpaced record lows by more than two to one across the continental United States, a marked increase from previous decades.”
Peter Sinclair, The Wall Street 16 – Hapless Happer Leads Clueless Geriatrics in WSJ Fiasco, Climate Crock of the Week
Next time someone sends you a news item from any tentacle of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp/Fox News conglomerate, you should first ask them how that search for WMDs and Obama’s birth certificate is going. Case in point:
Last week, the once-proud Wall Street Journal, now a wholly owned mouthpiece of the Rupert Murdoch empire, the dead-tree equivalent of Fox News, published yet another in a long line of turgid propaganda pieces denying the threat posed by climate change – No Need to Panic About Global Warming.
Most notable among the signatories, besides their almost to-a-person lack of climate science expertise, and their heavy ties to the fossil fuel industry, was an over-representation by the geriatric, the retired, and the gone-emeritus. The title might just as well have been, “I’m not Panicking about Global Warming, because I’ve got mine, and I’ll be dead when it all goes down, suckers…”
Media Matters for America, The Journal Hires Dentists to Do Heart Surgery
After reportedly rejecting a climate change essay by 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences in 2010, the Wall Street Journal has published a flawed op-ed by 16 scientists and engineers instructing public officials not to fight manmade global warming. But most of these individuals do not actually conduct climate research, and their credibility is further undermined by the misleading and unscientific arguments presented in the op-ed.
Chris Mooney, On Global Warming, Should You Trust the Wall Street Journal, or Chevron, ExxonMobil and the Defense Department??, The Intersection
Words are cheap. Therefore, if we are to look outside our personal trusted sources of information for an objective perspective on climate change, we might need to look at who is actually taking action to respond to the so-called threat of climate change. I believe we all can agree that someone who chooses to make a substantial commitment to curbing greenhouse gases has very likely examined the scientific evidence and reached the conclusion that the risks of inaction outweigh the costs of action. That is why it is important to consider who is responding to the projected threat of global warming and why they are doing so.
Here are some real-world examples that, in conjunction with the science, make a compelling argument for not only rejecting this Wall Street Journal article, but also taking the time to rethink whether the threat of climate change merits a response: …
ExxonMobil: “Rising greenhouse-gas emissions pose significant risks to society and ecosystems. Since most of these emissions are energy-related, any integrated approach to meeting the world’s growing energy needs over the coming decades must incorporate strategies to address the risk of climate change.”
Chris Mooney, In Which Climate “Skeptics” Drop the Lysenko Bomb. No, I’m Not Kidding….
There are many ways to refute the op-ed, but I want to focus on one not enough emphasized—the tone and some of the actual words and analogies used by its writers.
You see, when scientists provide advice to policymakers—as this op-ed purports to do—they tend to use pretty hedged, cautious, and even probabilistic language. Precisely because they don’t want to be accused of being “advocates,” they avoid using charged words like “alarmism”—as the WSJ piece does—or making political statements
…
The scientists writing in the Wall Street Journal go on to liken the “warming establishment” (another loaded phrase) to…well, read it:
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.
Here is a list of ways in which this “Reductio ad Lysenko” argument fails—fails horribly, and then some:
1. As I wrote in The Republican War on Science, Lysenko “promoted himself through party newspapers rather than rigorous experiments.” By contrast, the global community of climate scientists publishes repeatedly in the world’s leading scientific journals.
2. Lysenko convinced Joseph Stalin to ban genetics, and was of course able to do so because this was a totalitarian regime. The idea that anything like this is occurring in the United States, or in the global scientific community, is risible. The Lysenko analogy fails because of freedom of speech and democracy.
3. Yes, people were imprisoned or killed due to Soviet Lysenkoism. Which is another reason why the analogy is so inflammatory and inappropriate.
4. The scientific process, working normally, wholly discredited Lysenko. The same scientific process is the one that has affirmed, repeatedly, the idea that human beings are warming the planet.
Encountering the Lysenko analogy in this context, then, certainly tells us something. It just doesn’t have anything to do with whether we should trust the scientific community on global warming.
Rather, the Lysenko charge is self refuting—really, a lot like the charge that President Obama is a socialist. It betrays such a combination rhetorical overreach, and the failure to draw basic distinctions, that it not only flops but ends up as a serious foot-shooting exercise.
Peter Gleick, Forbes:
“The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, on Friday they published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to be of special significance because it was signed by 16 “scientists.” … the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter, from more than 15 times as many top scientists. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because some so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation. …”
Roy Grubb, The 16 concerned scientists … who are they? “Sixteen scientists. Judge for yourself how many are qualified to opine on climate science.”
Steven Hamburg, A Flawed Global Warming Analysis in the Wall Street Journal, Climate 411
Many of the specific claims in the Journal piece also have already been definitively laid to rest. As the Union of Concerned Scientists has pointed out:
the authors claim there has been a “lack of warming” for 10 years…. [yet] 2011 was the 35th year in a row in which global temperatures were above the historical average and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record.
Moreover, every decade since the 1950s has been warmer than the last.
Michael Tobis, The Wall Street Journal, Again:
“As is common regarding this and other matters, the WSJ op-ed page gives space to arguments that are egregiously irresponsible. What is most striking about this piece is not its irresponsibility. We have come to expect that. The viciousness and the palpable malice are in competition with intellectual incoherence. The deniers are reduced to what amounts to essentially senile and/or paranoid blithering, and the leading paper of the financial sector gives them space to do it.”
Greg Laden, Two Incontrovertible things: Antropogenic Global Warming is real and the Wall Street Journal is a Rag:
“The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists … The Wall Street Journal is trolling, and it is shameful. Almost everything they say in their piece is an out and out lie, easily falsified with even a cursory examination of the evidence. In fact, their piece is so bad that this is what we can say about the “16 scientists” who signed this letter: They are idiots. If any of those individuals actually read this piece as published and put their name on it, their credentials as climate scientists have just evaporated.”
Joe Romm, Panic Attack: Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal Finds 16 Scientists to Push Pollutocrat Agenda With Long-Debunked Climate Lies
I started by saying this piece had a counterfactual headline, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.”
Panic is a sudden sensation of fear which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking….
It is the authors of the WSJ piece who are panicked because they have allowed their fear of climate action to “dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking.” They have abandoned science. Climate scientists and other climate realists like the IEA are not urging panic — quite the opposite, we are urging a reasoned and logical science-based policy response.
The tragedy is that if we listen to Rupert Murdoch’s media outlets and the handful of scientists willing to push anti-scientific nonsense, if we keep taking no serious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then we make it far more likely that future generations will in fact panic, when they wake up sometime in the 2020s and realize how dire the situation is but how the disinformers have all but ended the possibility for averting catastrophe.
Rick Piltz, Climate Science Watch
In a letter to the WSJ, 38 climate science experts call down Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper for publishing an op-ed (“No Need to Panic About Global Warming”) “by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields,” the climate scientists’ letter says, “most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert.” As Stephen Schneider told us in an interview on his climate science expert credibility study, “It really matters what your credentials are. We’re talking about planetary life support. That’s why it’s so important to understand who’s credible.”
Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:
“In a world full of doubt and contention, there are a few things, other than the proverbial items of death and taxes, you can count on to be completely reliable. And one of those is the ideological mendacity of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. “
Louis A. Derry, associate professor of geological sciences at Cornell University
This is, in my view, one of the most irresponsible and sad pieces of opinion writing I’ve seen in a long time. It is by no means science or even vaguely scientific, despite the scientific background of its signatories. If this is where debate among scientists about climate change is headed, we’re doomed to a dark age where politics, PR, and unfounded accusations will rule and science will become irrelevant. I have come to expect that from some of our politicians and paid talking heads. But to see people with once-respected scientific credentials stoop so low is truly depressing, and bodes very poorly for the future of science as a means of finding viable solutions to the many problems faced by society. What’s worse, I know some of these guys, and have hard time believing they actually read what they signed (I may be naïve). All of them have made productive careers doing science. To see them turn on science itself in such a profoundly unprofessional, disingenuous and dishonest way is particularly disappointing.
Additional posts — added pm 5 February 2012
Greg Laden, Climate Warming Battles on the Blogs — Very useful chronological annotated list of posts re The WSJ 16 — much overlap with this list.
Rabett Run, Ms Affiliation, Amusing little note about the WSJ’s difficulties in providing accurate affiliations for some of The WSJ 16
Eli was reading Skeptical Science’s takedown (it should be) of the Wall Street Journal 16 letter, when he noticed that one of the signers was listed as
James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University
Now everyone knows that this must mean the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University aka Virginia Tech, which is located in Blackburg …
a thought occurred, who else had they managed to get the attribution wrong on. Well how about Roger the Elder’s good friend
Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service and
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris;
that should be the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and the Institute of Geophysics
There may be a few others, but what this has is the stink of a letter put together by the same PR shop that provided the OISM petition but this time they outsourced the work to India (naw, the Indians speak English better than the Americans), but somewhere else. It also raises the question of whether the authors actually SAW the letter before it was published. The Rabett Hole you are associated with catches your eye on a letter you signed.
Simon Donner, Who to trust about climate change, Maribo
My sister is a neurologist. She’s highly active in her field and is often asked by the media to comment about her particular area of expertise within the field of neurology.
It is great having a sibling who is a medical doctor. Though she and I do technically both have the title “Doctor”, I have zero medical expertise, outside of some wilderness first aid, and maybe little random bits I’ve gleaned from various sports-related accidents and drinking the water in the wrong village during a field trip. When something medical comes up, I call my sister. She listens, humours me, and provides general advice. But if it is anything important, or that anything is not neurological, she tells me to see my family doctor, who is better equipped to either diagnosis and treat the ailment or refer me to a specialist who can. …
What those 16 scientists did, however, was very different. They took advantage of their scientific credentials to raise questions about the evidence for climate change, using ad hominem attacks and analogies in place of math, before arguing against action to reduce emissions. Their credentials, though certainly legitimate in their fields, simply do not extend to all areas of science, just as my sister is not an expert in all areas of medicine.
Bill Chameides, Wall Street Journal’s Portrait of the Young Climate Scientist, The Green Grok
The WSJ’s “No Need to Panic” op-ed contains a number of places where the facts are twisted and turned in strange ways. One example: the statement that there has been a “smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections.”
Not really:
Temperature projections from the first three IPCC assessment reports (1990’s FAR, 1996’s SAR, 2001’s TAR) compared to observed temperatures. Note that the observed average annual temperatures (thick black line) are for the most part within the lower limit of the FAR projections, exceed SAR’s, and are near the top of the envelope of TAR’s projections. (Source: IPCC, AR4, WG-1, Fig 1.1) |
- The first IPCC climate projection was made in the First Assessment Report, or FAR, in 1990. It did not include a single trend but an envelope of trends. While it’s true that the actual observed temperature trend falls below the so-called central prediction, it falls at the bottom but within the envelope of temperature predictions.
- The 16 concerned scientists fail to mention that the observed temperature for the most part exceeds the envelope of temperature predictions from the Second Assessment Report, or SAR, from 1996.
Update, 7 February 2012
The Reality Check #178: If you prefer hearing over reading, this is an accurate and amusing (chat like) discussion of The WSJ 16’s misrepresentations.
around reasonable review processes for safety, environmental impact, and understanding of the national interest to support a pipeline to move highly-polluting Canadian tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries to feed into Chinese and other foreign markets seemingly insatiable demand for diesel fuels. And, yesterday a large coalition set a rather daunting target: 500,000 signatures, within 24 hours, to signal to the U.S. Senate that fossil-foolish lobbying doesn’t represent the will of the U.S. public (the citizens, the voters …). Some thought 250,000 would be a better target (or 350,000 to be 1,000 times over a sensible target for a carbon reductions plan of 350 parts per million in the atmosphere). In fact, the coalition underestimated the passion and reach of realism when it comes to the Keystone XL pipeline. Last evening, the Sierra Club released a press release that began:
