A DENIER ESSAY, WITH REMARKS

Jan W. Dash, PhD September 2012

INTRODUCTION: Below is my response to a contrarian/denier essay sent to me by someone who wanted help in responding. Almost every assertion in this essay is wrong or irrelevant. I do not know the identity of the author. It is a tactic to use pseudo-science like this denier essay by right wing media and fossil fuel interests to confuse people and oppose sensible climate risk management action. This is as unethical and immoral as previous disinformation by the tobacco industry against the scientific evidence that tobacco is harmful. We must not have future generations say, of us: "They refused used to learn" or "they knew but did not act." References: http://www.skepticalscience.com/; more technical: http://realclimate.org/; general: http://climate.uu-uno.org/.

DENIER ESSAY WITH MY REMARKS IN BRACKETS [red italics]

It's clear [wrong; nothing in this essay is clear] now that a small and very influential group of people (AKA 'that hockey team' [there is no hockey team; author incorrectly wants to associate research into the last 1000 years of climate with the much wider body of climate research]) fabricated data [wrong, independent investigations showed no data were fabricated, yet deniers continue to parrot this false and malicious accusation], controlled the peer review process [false, peer review provides general quality control by peers and is not controlled by anybody], attacked critics [critics is the wrong word for deniers and attacks imply that the deniers have credibility] and even critical publications [wrong occasional contrarian publications have contributed nothing critical. On the contrary published contrarian papers often left a trail littered with low quality and abuse of the peer review process. Still, reference to some contrarian papers did appear in the latest 2007 IPCC science report. Most contrarian papers are not actually published at all, but simply appear through right-wing think tanks or rightwing media and denier blogs], bullied opponents [false, deniers are impervious to criticism, and the bullying goes the other way with right-wing politicians paid by the fossil fuel industry (like Inhofe and Barton) attacking climate scientists; even some death threats were sent in emails to climate scientists] and conspired to hide data [wrong - no conspiracy; no data were hidden and on the contrary most data are in the public domain as far as legally possible] and resist FOIA requests [denier FOIA requests are largely irresponsible fishing expeditions of scientific incompetents, right-wing lawyers, or politicians looking for attack material; these requests do not advance science and moreover waste the time of scientists - who nonetheless have largely complied with them]. They happen to be in charge of two of the world's 4 major temperature records (HadCRU and GISS) [false, these are independent bodies], were all recruited for [the IPCC uses hundreds of experts to write the reports] and very influential in the IPCC's reports [the main reports are written a few pages of text at a time by experts in the specific area of the text] as well as the Hockey Stick fabrication [false - the Hockey Stick was not fabricated, it is the output of many independent investigations] and the subsequent coverup proxy reconstructions [nothing was covered up] that use the same data and the same flawed methods [the only flawed methods were used by contrarians: he

may be referring to a mathematical technique called principal component analysis, which was incorrectly applied by contrarians, and is in any case irrelevant]. As anyone with two brain cells to bang together would know [insulting], it's difficult to get a consensus on anything that's not proven [he misunderstands science: science proves nothing; scientific proof is a label used by contrarian deniers to attack science by demanding impossible precision] by repeatable experiment [we are now performing a huge experiment on the earth that is indeed not repeatable and which we will regret. However there is information - we look at geologic history to get an idea of the impacts and progression of current climate change; that is where 350 ppm originates. Physicsbased climate models provide a laboratory for testing] between even 10 people [irrelevant] let alone 'the scientific community' [we do not need general agreement of the scientific community including people that have no expertise in climate, any more than cancer research needs agreement of non-cancer-experts like dentists; nonetheless many scientific societies have issued statements in agreement with the fact that recent global warming exists and humans are largely to blame, and AFAIK no scientific society has issued a statement to the contrary]. There are thousands of scientists [he may be referring to the flawed Oregon petition issued under false pretenses and mostly signed by people with only Bachelor degrees, all of whom deniers insist are scientists] that have expressed skepticism at the alarmist [alarmist is a right-wing term applied to anyone who asserts climate change is a problem] view [not a view - the increasingly severe impacts of climate change are being reported weekly by reputable groups of researchers around the world from laboratories and universities] of climate change, and the IPCC's reports, which are a proxy for this 'consensus' [the IPCC reports mostly summarize published literature], represent no such consensus at all [false, the IPCC reports constitute the consensus of the experts of the present state of knowledge on climate]. The chapter summaries are written without acknowledging objections that are buried in the report [false, the chapter summaries fairly summarize the chapter contents], the SPM is then written by bureaucrats not scientists [false - the scientists write the SPM. The bureaucrats have to agree line by line on the SPM. In a few cases politicians have tried to change usually water down - some wording; any wording changes require agreement by the scientists] and the chapter summaries are then re-written in the absence of all earlier contributors to agree with the SPM [totally misleading only occasional and minor rewordings have occurred AFAIK] - this is done by the lead coordinating authors who are selected in secret [lead authors are among the highest recognized experts in the field] by the IPCC [this attack is a complete distortion of the IPCC process, which is very transparent]. This is not a consensus view and cannot even be called a majority view [wrong and irrelevant]. More than 30% of their meticulously peer reviewed sources in the last report have been traced to Greenpeace and (the grand-daddy of Big Green) The World Wildlife Fund [totally false; he is referring to a small number of grey literature papers in Volume II - which is in any case not the science volume I] which has basically co-opted the IPCC [false, the IPCC is not co-opted]. And what is there a 'consensus' on? The few small polls that have to exclude all but the most zealous alarmists [totally false, there are filters to get the climate scientists who are in the field and have recently published in peer-reviewed climate journals, see Mary Zimmermans thesis The Consensus on the Consensus] to reach one find that 'the globe is warming and man is a contributor' [there is overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that global

warming exists and that humans are causing it; even the fossil-fuel Koch funded BEST study basically came to the same conclusion]. No consensus on how much man has contributed [attribution studies say most of recent global warming is caused by humans], no consensus on how much warming is natural [no natural cause of recent global warming exists; the sun has not been heating up] and no consensus on how much warming their [sic] will be [yes there are uncertainties in future warming, and these uncertainties are documented and presented up front]. In other words, they agree on the unimportant part of the theory and not on the important part [nonsense; the really important part is to act sensibly on climate risk]. Global warming has produced no testable hypothesis [wrong increased heating at night is one fingerprint and there are others; contrarian deniers ignore all information inconvenient to their claims], so the only recourse is to wait and see what happens [incredibly dangerous; shows complete misunderstanding of risk management. Indeed some global warming impacts are being seen now; the global warming signal is rapidly arising out of the noise. There are documented impacts of global warming in reports that come in every week by experts on increasingly severe effects on health, crops and food, water, political instability (the US Defense Department considers effects of climate change a US national security risk), extreme weather, sea level rise, species extinction]. In 1990 the IPCC's FAR said the globe would likely warm .3 degrees C per decade and at least .2 degrees [the amount of projected warming is scenario dependent and there are many scenarios with uncertainties, most of which being what we humans do. BTW a favorite contrarian trick is to misuse a badly labeled 1990 IPCC graph]. Since then it has warmed .15 degrees C per decade and none in the last 12 years [the denier claim of no warming in last 12 years is false 2010 and 2005 are the hottest on record; also subtraction of La Nina and El Nino effects reveals the global warming trend since 1975 clearly]. There is a word for predictions like that wrong [there is a word for essays like this - wrong]. The predicted upper troposphere hot spot is missing [this is a complicated story and contrarian claims are incorrect, see RealClimate.org]. The IR radiation going back into space is higher than predicted [what? He gives no sources in this essay. Contrarians routinely misquote scientific papers but quote unreliable unpublished sources]. The positive feedback effects from which 3/4ths of the predicted warming are supposed to come have never been observed before [wrong] and the only 'evidence' for them is runs of complex computer models that have proven wrong time and again [False - The computer models have certainly not been proven wrong, on the contrary they agree with back testing of temperature data, including drops with volcanoes, on a continent-bycontinent basis, and there are other model verifications within the uncertainties. Contrarian deniers malign climate models simply because they dont like the conclusions]. Now to explain that lack of warming [wrong - there is no lack of warming] the IPCC has come up with the explanation that aerosol sulfates are masking the 'true' warming [aerosols do mask warming, which would have been greater without aerosols], even though the IPCC admits [the IPCC doesnt admit to anything, the IPCC reports accurately characterize research] to having a 'very low' understanding of this contributor [global warming exists outside aerosol uncertainties]. Gravity is demonstrated in repeatable lab experiments [red herring. Deniers who have no expertise in physics often quote physics out of context]. Plate tectonics became accepted only after the spreading of the ocean floor was observed [red herring]. [General] Relativity was not

accepted until the light from a distant star was observed to bend as it passed near the sun during an eclipse [red herring; he also forgets that a variety of cranks have attacked relativity over the last 100 years, and also attacked Einstein personally]. Evolution was demonstrated by the building up of the fossil record and observing adaptation in the wild [he forgets to mention that a variety of cranks regularly attack evolution just as cranks are attacking climate science now]. Global warming has no such 'eureka' moment to it's [sic] credit [misunderstanding on how science works. Mostly science doesnt have eureka moments, but relies on steady confirmation from many sources and different areas. He may be criticizing attribution on a statistical basis, which however can indeed yield information, e.g. smoking producing cancer] and there's not even a plan on how one might be provided [Wrong - there are hundreds of projects underway, hundreds of papers]. One might as well tout the agreement among medicine men on the effectiveness of different dances in delivering rain [!}. Climatologists may be the most expert people in their field [by definition], but they ain't expert enough [climate is difficult, but if we wait for certainty we ignore the risks of huge climate impacts to our grandchildren].
Original essay: It's clear now that a small and very influential group of people (AKA 'that hockey team')
fabricated data, controlled the peer review process, attacked critics and even critical publications, bullied opponents and conspired to hide data and resist FOIA requests. They happen to be in charge of two of the world's 4 major temperature records (HadCRU and GISS), were all recruited for and very influential in the IPCC's reports as well as the Hockey Stick fabrication and the subsequent coverup proxy reconstructions that use the same data and the same flawed methods. As anyone with two brain cells to bang together would know, it's difficult to get a consensus on anything that's not proven by repeatable experiment between even 10 people let alone 'the scientific community'. There are thousands of scientists that have expressed skepticism at the alarmist view of climate change, and the IPCC's reports, which are a proxy for this 'consensus', represent no such consensus at all. The chapter summaries are written without acknowledging objections that are buried in the report, the SPM is then written by bureaucrats not scientists and the chapter summaries are then re- written in the absence of all earlier contributors to agree with the SPM - this is done by the lead coordinating authors who are selected in secret by the IPCC. This is not a consensus view and cannot even be called a majority view. More than 30% of their meticulously peer reviewed sources in the last report have been traced to Greenpeace and (the grand-daddy of Big Green) The World Wildlife Fund which has basically co-opted the IPCC. And what is there a 'consensus' on? The few small polls that have to exclude all but the most zealous alarmists to reach one find that 'the globe is warming and man is a contributor'. No consensus on how much man has contributed, no consensus on how much warming is natural and no consensus on how much warming their will be. In other words, they agree on the unimportant part of the theory and not on the important part. Global warming has produced no testable hypothesis, so the only recourse is to wait and see what happens. In 1990 the IPCC's FAR said the globe would likely warm .3 degrees C per decade and at least .2 degrees. Since then it has warmed .15 degrees C per decade and none in the last 12 years. There is a word for predictions like that - wrong. The predicted upper troposphere hot spot is missing. The IR radiation going back into space is higher than predicted. The positive feedback effects from which 3/4ths of the predicted warming are supposed to come have never been observed before and the only 'evidence' for them is runs of complex computer models that have proven wrong time and again. Now to explain that lack of warming the IPCC has come up with the explanation that aerosol sulfates are masking the 'true' warming, even though the IPCC admits to having a 'very low' understanding of this contributor. Gravity is demonstrated in repeatable lab experiments. Plate tectonics became accepted only after the spreading of the ocean floor was observed. Relativity was not accepted until the light from a distant star was observed to bend as it passed near the sun during an eclipse. Evolution was demonstrated by the building up of the fossil record and observing adaptation in the wild. Global warming has no such 'eureka' moment to it's credit and there's not even a plan on how one might be provided. One might as well tout the agreement among medicine men on the effectiveness of different dances in delivering rain. Climatologists may be the most expert people in their field, but they ain't expert enough.
ClimateDenierResponse_DASH_final.docx; 9/16/12 2:30 PM