By the time a team of five climate experts finished responding to the serious errors in a paper led by climate contrarian Christopher Monckton, they had more than a quick critique on their hands. In fact, the team—made up of Mark Richardson, Zeke Hausfather, Dana Nuccitelli, Ken Rice and John Abraham—had so much upon which to comment, they wound up publishing their thorough debunking in the same journal where Monckton and his co-authors published their original paper.
Continue reading Monckton’s Fundamentally Flawed Simple Climate Model
When you discuss the risks and consequences of global warming in the public sphere it will often turn to how certain it is. Which is quite strange as there’s a scientific consensus of 97%, this is the percentage of climate scientists who agree that humans are causing global warming.
This is confirmed by several peer-reviewed studies that have found the same overwhelming agreement on this. A 2009 survey of Earth scientists found that among climate scientists actively publishing climate research, 97% agreed that humans were significantly raising global temperature. A 2011 analysis of scientists’ public statements about climate change found that among those who had published peer-reviewed climate research, 97% accepted human-induced warming. The most recent one was a 2013 analysis that examined 11,944 abstracts and again found this 97% consensus.
One of the things that completely baffle me is how climate science deniers can reject evidence.
Of course I’m not referring to not taking something at face value or wanting to verify something before you accept it. What I’m talking about is that they reject evidence even when it’s very obvious that it shows that they are wrong. It also often doesn’t matter how small the mistake it, they will still reject it.
One of these examples is a quote from a recommendations document written by the KNMI IPCC delegation that contained advice for the IPCC on how it can improve its procedures. This included recommendations for improving their reports and how results are communicated. Something that the IPCC asked for and the resulting recommendations from the KNMI aren’t shocking.
However, one passage was a bit confusing as to what they meant by it:
This time I can thank Wotts for making me notice some content that was being pushed on social media by one of the usual misinformers. It was a tweet sent from the official CFACT twitter account stating “Politics always “manages” science at the IPCC“.
CFACT, short for Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, is a conservative organisation that spreads the usual incorrect claims about environmental issues and global warming. Though they claim to infuse “the environmental debate with a balanced perspective on environmental stewardship”. According to their about page (archived here) they to do this with the help of “an influential and impressive scientific advisory board” which contains Christopher Monckton (archived here).
A lot of familiar names like Sallie Baliunas, Craig T. Idso, Patrick J. Michaels, and Willie Soon advice CFACT on environmental issues and policy matters. Which doesn’t bode well for the accuracy of the materials spread by CFACT.
Continue reading CFACT’s Factless Attack On The IPCC
Trying to engage ‘climate sceptics’, or so-called sceptics as I prefer to call them, in a fact based discussion is often quite frustrating. Not because you might not convince them to your own position, but because simple basic facts are dismissed. This prevents you from having a factual discussion on how we might want to react towards the changes we are causing in our planet’s climate.
Sometimes I get email from visitors to my site in which they ask my opinion on something or sent me something interesting to watch/read. And sometimes I get an email that’s critical about something that I wrote. Most of the time I react to those message privately, but the email I received this time I found interesting enough to write a public response for.
The email in question is a response to my blog post ‘Piers Corbyn: The UN IPCC And All It Stands For Must Be Destroyed‘ and the email is quite critical towards what I said in my blog post. I’ve lifted the text as is from the email and you’ll find my responses below the quoted segments:
Continue reading Mail Call: A Corbyn Supporter Speaks Up
Sometimes I truly wonder if the so-called sceptics ever take the effort to do the bare minimum of research before they attack the IPCC. This time I wondered this thanks to the guest blog post “What would the IPCC have written if there had been 12 years of rapid warming?” (archived here) that Anthony Watts deemed worthy to be published on his blog.
In this particular blog post Stephane Rogeau proposes two situations. One situation where the IPCC readily admits that the rapid warming is in part due to natural variability. And one where the IPCC uses this as evidence for the dire impact we humans are having on the climate.
This is the text that Rogeau says could be written by the IPCC if they would honestly write about it in their report:
Continue reading What The IPCC Would Write If There Had Been 12 Years Of Rapid Warming
My opinion of that letter from Tisdale is that it doesn’t accurately represent the IPCC and their latest release. There are a lot of reasons of why I hold that position and what I wrote for ‘No, Global Warming Hasn’t Stopped‘ gives a good introduction about his mistakes about climate models. I can also recommend the article ‘The new IPCC climate change report makes deniers overheat‘ by Michael Mann for a better understanding of how the latest IPCC report often is misrepresented.
When I started on my open letter to Tisdale I knew we would never reach any sort of agreement on his points about climate research or the IPCC. That’s why I focussed on the following in his letter:
Continue reading This Is Why You Can’t Reason With ‘Climate Sceptics’
My opinion is that you’re not accurately representing the IPCC and their latest release. The reasons for that are numerous, and if you want to get a better understanding of what I mean by that I can recommend reading ‘No, Global Warming Hasn’t Stopped‘.
But we will probably never reach agreement on that point so I’m not going to focus on it. However, what I am going to focus on is the following that you said in your letter:
On YouTube I found a couple of videos about the new IPCC report that I found interesting. Especially since in 3 of the 4 videos we have the scientists that worked on the report explain what is in it.
In the first video we have several scientists explaining the context and meaning of the slow down in surface temperature increases. It’s a good and short rundown on what is happening, why, and what this all means.
By the time a team of five climate experts finished responding to the serious errors in a paper led by climate contrarian Christopher Monckton, they had more than a quick critique on their hands. In fact, the team—made up of Mark Richardson, Zeke Hausfather, Dana Nuccitelli, Ken Rice and John Abraham—had so much upon which to comment, they wound up publishing their thorough debunking in the same journal where Monckton and his co-authors published their original paper. 
One of the things that completely baffle me is how climate science deniers can reject evidence.
This time I can thank Wotts for making me notice some content that was being pushed on social media by one of the usual misinformers. It was a tweet sent from the official CFACT twitter account stating “
Sometimes I get email from visitors to my site in which they ask my opinion on something or sent me something interesting to watch/read. And sometimes I get an email that’s critical about something that I wrote. Most of the time I react to those message privately, but the email I received this time I found interesting enough to write a public response for.