About that Daily Mail “mini ice age story”

The Daily Mail has published a pretty miserable piece claiming that we’re about to undergo some extended cooling, which has been making the rounds on message forums and email chains. Mojib Latif and Anastasios Tsonis are cited as refuting the mainstream view of climatic change, specifically with regard to the influence of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions. Given the way that Latif’s words have been twisted in the past to claim he was predicting global cooling, alarm bells immediately went off. Sure enough, Latif seems to have been quoted out of context [h/t BD] for the purpose of making it sound like he believes virtually the opposite of what he actually does.

The Tsonis quotes seem similarly implausible. You can read more about what Latif and Tsonis have actually written and how their work is being spun here and here.

[UPDATE: See Climate Progress for more on misrepresenting Latif and the NSIDC. Also, The Great Beyond.]

The “smoking gun” Darwin station temperature adjustments

[NOTE: Please see the update at the bottom of the post for a more detailed explanation]

The denialosphere and the ‘winger echo chamber would like you to believe that a weather station in Darwin, Australia is Undeniable Proof of Something Nefarious regarding the global temperature record. Their evidence is that the GHCN raw station data have been *gasp* adjusted.

Here is the “smoking gun” graph that is currently causing all of the pearl-clutching:

Don’t you see? The GHCN has taken the raw station data and adjusted them to create a false warming trend! In the words of the post’s author [frothing, breathless emphasis in original]:

indisputable evidence that the “homogenized” data has been changed to fit someone’s preconceptions about whether the earth is warming

Got that? Some nefarious individual or group responsible for the GHCN has deliberately and fraudulently inflated the Darwin station temperature record to produce warming, not based on what has actually been occurring but in order to buttress claims of global warming.

After all, if these kinds of adjustments were actually justified, you would see the warming reflected not just in the GHCN-globalwarmspiracy-adjusted data, but in the official station record as well!

What?! This can only mean one thing: BOM is in on it, too! The conspiracy is even bigger than we ever imagined.

In all seriousness, if you’d like to read about the homogenization adjustments, you can do further reading here, here, and here.

[Via RC]

[UPDATE: From Nick in the comments, Blair Trewin from Australia's National Climate Centre gives a detailed explanation of siting issues with the Darwin station.]

SwiftHack meme watch: National Review edition

Following up on the very ARTIFICAL outrage post.

From the preeminent conservative media outlet the National Review, we’ve got a lovely demonstration of exactly what I was talking about. As I wrote (all following emphaeses mine):

The code in question appears to “test the sensitivity of certain calculations to the presence or absence” of the post 1960 divergence problem in Briffa’s MXD archive. It does not appear to have been used in any published paper, figure, or data set… In spite of this, if you’ll find claims that this bit of code is in fact… fabricated warming in the global surface temperature record

This post really is quite perfect, as it also cries “hockey stick”, which I also discussed:

It’s odd how some (sticky? viral?) memes propagate through the denialosphere. The classic example is how “hockey stick” lost all of its original context, and soon there was very little that was not a “hockey stick” according to the denialosphere: from the temperature projections in the AR4 to pre-industrial vs. current CO2 levels. And through an apparent belief in sympathetic magic, all it took was the labeling of something as a “hockey stick” in order to discredit it in the eyes of a certain audience.

These geniuses have no idea what they’re looking at, but they are convinced, absolutely convinced, that it’s undeniable proof of Something Nefarious.

From the “Al Gore is fat and lives in a house” department

Your daily dose of tu quoque:

Attending the Copenhagen negotiations will create greenhouse emissions.

At least the media believes in recycling…

“Honest Broker” at Prometheus attacks Hansen over claim he never makes

[UPDATE: Zimmerman is issuing a retraction of sorts. I remain unimpressed, and do not agree that Roger bears no responsibility for what he prints in his columns on Prometheus. Especially given that Roger himself had already posted about Hansen's article (accusing him of "megalomania" in the process) and therefore was well aware when he ran Zimmerman's post that his claims were patently false.

LATER UPDATE: Roger has promptly and courteously responded, noting that the post is being pulled and Michael Zimmerman "will be rewriting it in light of comments from [me] and others”. I sincerely thank Roger and Michael for the way they are handling this.]

[Via Coby] Why look, it’s Prometheus- once again misrepresenting other people’s positions and statements [all following emphases mine]:

For Hansen, as for Heidegger, coal plants that produce power desperately needed by hundreds of millions of people are the same as-at least this is one way to parse Hansen’s phrases-the death trains that carried Jews and other undesirable “degenerate” races to their death at Auschwitz and other death factories. Burning coal can be equated with burning human beings. Why? Because coal plants shorten lives today, and may kill many more people in decades to come because of the climate change induced by burning coal.

Here is the Guardian article cited at Prometheus. Hansen explicitly states that coal as the “largest fossil fuel reservoir of carbon dioxide” threatens other species with extinction. Note the sentences immediately following the ones Pielke and Zimmerman have [in a manner George Will would appreciate] deliberately taken out of context:

The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. When I testified against the proposed Kingsnorth power plant, I estimated that in its lifetime it would be responsible for the extermination of about 400 species – its proportionate contribution to the number that would be committed to extinction if carbon dioxide rose another 100 ppm.

[Note: Hansen's use of this metaphor as a description of the likely fate of some non-human species has been consistent. There is nothing new about this.]

Roger and his guest can’t attack Hansen’s actual position so they tilt at strawmen. The false claim is repeated later

George Will and The Washington Post – Reputations gone up in smoke over global warming denialism

This is my response to Will’s pathetic attempt to defend his climate change denial offal [you can see more reactions here]:

Few phenomena generate as much heat as disputes about current orthodoxies concerning global warming.

While it is true that deliberate disinformation campaigns regarding climate change are met with some hostility in science circles, this “dispute” has become about Will’s serial falsehoods and moreover his and the editorial board of The Washington Post’s refusal to correct them. This story has become a poster child for the decline of print journalism. Rather than correct his untruths and own up to his dishonesty, Will is ignoring the real issue and enjoys the full backing of Fred Hiatt in doing so- showing that in the pages of The Washington Post, “facts” are what op-ed writers claim them to be and there is zero accountability for deceiving the public. It is sad but fitting that this is the route The Washington Post wants to go as the demise of traditional newspapers looms on the horizon.

This column recently reported and commented on some developments pertinent to the debate about whether global warming is occurring and what can and should be done. That column, which expressed skepticism about some emphatic proclamations by the alarmed, took a stroll down memory lane, through the debris of 1970s predictions about the near certainty of calamitous global cooling.

This is a blatant lie. There is no argument to be made about this. Will leaves himself no wiggle room and touts the cooling myth as reality. Not once, but twice- calling it a scientific “consensus” at the end of his column. The Washington Post is happy to not only print lies, but reprint them with the blessing of Fred Hiatt.

George Will and Washington Post redouble attacks on own credibility

Here it is: George F. Will, Washington Post – Climate Science in a Tornado [2/27/09]

Updates to follow, prior coverage here.

[QUICK UPDATE: Early reactions:

Wall Street Journal editorial board sinks to new depths of conservative ludicrousness

While we’re on the subject of conservative pundit idiocy regarding climate change (and the WSJ editorial board generally) it sure was nice of Holman Jenkins to Godwin his ‘critique’ of Obama’s renewable energy goals and spare serious people the need to read the rest of his stupefying denialist nonsense:

Put away the “energy independence” conceit. This notion, a favorite of Tojo and Hitler, was debunked by Churchill, who reasoned that true energy security came from a diversity of suppliers, not the foolish pursuit of self-sufficiency.

The things wrong with these two sentences alone are legion. The rest of the op-ed is- if you can believe it- worse. I don’t have time to get into it tonight. But I truly, truly understand why John Cole created the category “Clown Shoes”.

[UPDATE: Hah. Perfect timing. I look forward to the WSJ "diversifying" its commentary with future Antichrist, pimp, bisexual, etc. comparisons.]

Stephen Moore at it again

Here (h/t TPM) is the Wall Street Journal’s ever-respectable Stephen Moore on Glenn Beck’s show, prophesying 95% tax rates by 2014 due to current efforts to avoid a financial meltdown. Of course he cites the Heritage Foundation as his source:

It was classy of Moore to leave it to his co-guest to claim that the result of Obama’s presidency would be violent revolution and cities run by “gangs” and “motorcycle marauders”.

[UPDATE: Oh, FFS. Really?!]