If you think that global warming rests on a few temperature data sets and models, you are very wrong. If you don’t understand this then you don’t know enough to have an opinion on the subject, and you most likely will be treated just like any other ineducable troll.

Commenter Daniel J. Andrews at James Hrynyshyn’s Island of Doubt. James highlighted the comment in a post that is also well worth reading.

I’m withholding judgment until all of the facts come to light, but so far the “evidence” of conspiracy, wrongdoing, data fudging, etc. is pretty thin gruel. So far the claims seemed to based upon (willful?) equivocation on word meaning, excising of context, and so on. [UPDATE: See RC for more on that.] It’s also apparent that even if the worst possible spin on the allegations ended up being true, the net impact on the state of climate science would be small- certainly relative to the scope that is being claimed.

Amusingly, Roy Spencer whines (in a post referencing former President Bill Clinton’s sex scandal) that the BBC’s first report on the issue doesn’t discuss the contents of the email.

As of this writing, the BBC is the first mainstream news source to cover the story. But instead of discussing the content of any of the e-mails, the BBC is focusing on the illegal nature of the computer system breach. An expert was quoted who alluded to the contentious nature of the global warming debate, and how both sides would resort to tricks to help their side.

That’s pretty rich. If the hacked e-mails — with incriminating content — just happened to be Sarah Palin’s, does ANYONE believe that news reports would avoid disclosing the content of those e-mails?

You can probably see where this is headed…

In fact, the Beeb’s first reporting* on the Palin email hack did not discuss the email contents either.

In any event, I don’t condone misconduct, so if any substantive misdeeds end up having been committed, I’ll gladly add my voice to the chorus of those crying foul. Until then, GHGs are still rising and the paleoclimatological news isn’t getting any better.

*Though subsequent stories did superficially characterize the contents of some emails.

Cloud fraction data collected by MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite. Colors range from blue (no clouds) to white (totally cloudy).

Click to massively embiggen

The highest contrast occurs where the difference between moist ocean and very dry areas of land is greatest. Unsurprisingly South America’s Atacama, with its perfect storm of dry conditions, stands out immediately. As does Oz.

Read more at Earth Observatory’s Image of the Day.

[h/t NOVA Geoblog]

• The Superfreaks aren’t the only peddlers of c0unterintuitive best-sellers who eschew depth and rigor [UPDATE: Gladwell pushes back]
• Depressing but fascinating coverage of the sausage-making surrounding forest management under the upcoming international climate treaty.
• Little Green Footballs founder on escaping the blogospheric echo chamber
• It’s hard to read about the failure to successfully regulate the bluefin tuna fishery and not see some climate parallels
• And, related: A Memorial for Vanishing Species

Contra some in the comments all those months [edit: over a year!] ago, Sarah Palin’s memoir is unambiguous on this issue:

Elsewhere in this volume she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”

and:

“But your dad’s a science teacher,” Schmidt objected. “Yes.” “Then you know that science proves evolution,” added Schmidt. “Parts of evolution,” I [Palin] said. “But I believe that God created us and also that He can create an evolutionary process that allows species to change and adapt.” Schmidt winced and raised his eyebrows. In the dim light, his sunglasses shifted atop his hear. I had just dared to mention the C-word: creationism. But I felt I was on solid factual ground.

Although this has obviously disturbing implications re: the kind of leader millions of Americans want to see in the White House, there are two finer, interrelated points to be made which actually bring this post back on topic.

The first is that creationism and climate denialism overlap a great deal, not just among the average evangelical Christian and biblical literalist, but also at the highest levels of US legislature and amongst the “foremost” climate change “skeptics”.

The second is that this is no accident, no mere co-incidence of ideologies (i.e. Christianism and anti-regulation fundamentalism). As I wrote regarding Palin previously, people who live in a world where the ultimate cause of everything is literally “God did it” are not going to accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

Palin expresses exactly such a worldview in her memoir:

In everything that happens to her, from meeting Todd to her selection by Mr. McCain for the Republican ticket, she sees the hand of God: “My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over.”

To see how this manifests in climate policy, once again, the great Senator from Oklahoma proves to be an illuminating if disheartening example.

Inhofe:

I think he’s [a radio caller] right. I think what he’s saying is God’s still up there. We’re going through these cycles.

And of course Inhofe is neither an inconsequential figure (he was the Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for many years and is its current Ranking Member), nor alone in the US Government-

Joe Barton is former Chair and the current Ranking Member of the House of Representative’s Committee on Energy and Commerce, and argued against using wind turbines to generate electricity because it would interfere with God’s regulation of the climate:

Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about.

Representative John Shimkus is also on the Energy and Commerce Committee, as well as its Energy and Environment subcommittee. He has argued against curbing emissions because:

The earth will end only when God declares its time is over.

As I wrote previously, someone’s religious beliefs do not a priori invalidate what he or she has to say about a subject, scientific or otherwise. However, it is undeniable that there are religious sects that are clearly hostile to reality as described by science, and whose adherents have no trouble either lying about or dismissing scientific evidence when it conflicts with their beliefs. Attempting to convince the Sarah Palins, Roy Spencers, and James Inhofes, et al. of the necessity of reducing emissions simply via the merits of the science is a fool’s errand. They need to be bypassed (or co-opted through a top down religious campaign), as they will not be won over through evidence and reason.

[UPDATE: Palin is of course out promoting her book, and had this to say about climate science on today's Rush Limbaugh's radio show:

I think there's a lot of snake oil science involved in that and somebody's making a whole lot of money off people's fears that the world is... It's kind of tough to figure out with the shady science right now, what are we supposed to be doing right now with our climate. Are we warming or are we cooling? I don't think Americans are even told anymore if it's global warming or just climate change. And I don't attribute all the changes to man's activities. I think that this is, in a lot of respects, cyclical and the earth does cool and it warms.

Just in case anyone was in doubt about her climate denialism bona fides.]

Keeping up with Lomborg’s myriad misrepresentations of climate science can be exhausting, thankless work, so it’s nice to see delayed.oscillator obliterating his latest. Although I rather doubt anti-regulation propaganda organs like the op-ed section of the WSJ will stop printing his rubbish any time soon, media outlets who actually value their reputations might want to take note and avoid giving this serial obfuscator a platform to further spread his nonsense.

[Via Hank Robers in comments] I’m making my way through this:

A few first thoughts:

Dubner: “If you’re in the global warming industry, you have interests to protect.”

As opposed to a pair of authors hawking their new book, amirite? Also, does this apply to Ken Caldeira, Levitt and Dubner’s lone climate expert, who has repeatedly said that L&D have mischaracterized his views?

Next up, Levitt:

So it seems like if you really think global warming is a terrible problem, you need a solution that’s faster. Okay? And that’s more certain or easier to do. So it turns out, geo-engineering- extremely controversial- but so sensible. There are ideas out there that are cheap, they’re totally reversible- they’re totally reversible, which is incredibly important. You wouldn’t want to do anything that was irreversible because the science isn’t that certain.

Why this is bollocks: L&D explicitly present geo-engineering via sulfur aerosols as an alternative to mitigation via reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which they believe is simply a non-starter. That means in L&D’s world, emissions continue to grow unabated. And because we don’t have a viable means of drawing down enormous amounts of GHGs in a short amount of time, should the sulfur spraying ever stop- due to, oh I don’t know, the enhanced desertification of Sub-Saharan Africa raising a bit of an outcry or their “garden hose” breaking- we would get hit with all of the built up warming virtually at once. It’s pretty bloody obvious that in L&D’s version, geo-engineering is decidedly not “reversible”, as the atmospheric build up of GHGs that would occur in the mean time is not reversible.

Levitt continues:

And they don’t require massive behavior change. So no, we’re not saying we should go out tomorrow and build one of these machines- say to put sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere- but what we are saying is, “How can that not be part of the debate?” We’re just trying to get geo- engineering a seat at the table, but the interest groups out there don’t want to talk about it.

Why this is bollocks: Geo-engineering has been for years and is currently being discussed at the highest scientific and political levels- without any help from the Superfreaks.

Here’s something “delightfully counter-intuitive” for those who keep having L&D on their programs to pimp their disaster of a book-

Maybe, just maybe, the freshwater econ guy and the journalist who sat in on a venture capital investment pitch session haven’t stumbled onto the climate solution after all. Maybe all of those pesky scientists are on to something when they say we need to cut GHG emissions, even as geo-engineering is researched for a worst case scenario.

The Part Two of my criticism of the Superfreakonomics authors and geo-engineering is languishing in my drafts folder. I’m not sure how much interest remains in further debunking of their nonsense, but for those who can’t get enough, and are interested in a wonderful skewering of Levitt and Dubner’s “realism”, do yourselves a favor and read Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker piece on the Superfreaks.

One of the more common memes heard from the self-styled “skeptics” is that we should not “wreck the economy” by attempting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through programs like cap and trade or a carbon tax, based on “alarmist” predictions. Implicit in this assertion is that there is solid economic justification or at least a consensus among economists that a cap and trade solution should not be pursued.

A consensus among economists does, in fact, exist. Just not the consensus the denialosphere would like people to believe.  Earlier this week, J. Scott Holladay, Jonathan Horne, and Jason A Schwartz from NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity published a survey of economists on climate change entitled “Economists & Climate Change: Consensus and Open Questions.” Their findings support an under-reported piece by Eric Pooley from early this year about the failure of the media to accurately convey the economic position on mitigation.

Key findings:

The survey found consensus on several key questions:

• Climate change poses risks to the U.S. and global economies;
• Several domestic economic sectors, most notably agriculture, will be negatively affected;
• Uncertainty about climate change increases the value of action;
• The United States should adopt market‐based mechanisms for reducing emissions, those mechanisms will create incentives for efficiency and clean energy, and allowances should be auctioned rather than given away; and
• The United States should join a global regime to reduce emissions, with a majority of economists saying the United States should commit to emissions reductions regardless of other countries’ actions.

The survey also found that there is no consensus that the future costs and benefits of climate change policy should be discounted at a constant rate, with an equal number saying that alternative discount methodologies should be used, and a significant percentage stating that alternative moral inquires were the most appropriate way to approach intergenerational questions.

That last bit is striking. There are those who fancy themselves non-denialists who oppose mitigation on economic grounds based upon narrow readings of economists like Nordhaus- Jim Manzi comes to mind. Manzi and others’ argument against action essentially hinges on the discount rates assumed, portraying their analyses’ choices as mainstream. This survey reveals that rather than being mainstream, there is no consensus on Nordhausian let alone constant discount rates, and those favoring non-constant rates discounted the cost of climate change at a substantially lower rate (i.e. more heavily favoring expenditure now rather than passing the costs off to future generations).

The third finding listed above, though, is the one that needs to be driven home to policy makers. Politicians are fond of stating that they need more certainty before they are willing to get on board with mitigation efforts, while economists overwhelmingly conclude the opposite- uncertainty increases, rather than decreases, the value of mitigating now.

So the next time someone accuses you of being an “alarmist” who is willing to destroy the economy over emissions reductions, feel free to direct them to this report. And while you do so, let them know that they’re the real “alarmists”.

Deforestation’s contribution may be revised downward (~12% from ~20%) somewhat making such programs that much more difficult to implement, but one can always hope.

[Via Climate Feedback]