Tom Harris' Latest Deception About Coal

Tom Harris, the fraud and paid shill of the fossil fuel industry, recently posted a letter to the editor in the Durango Herald, "N.M. lawmakers should question utilities’ coal exit."

Here is my response to this latest bit of deception:

I wish to respond to the letter of August 1, “N.M. lawmakers should question utilities’ coal exit” to inform the readers of the deceptions of the letter. The International Climate Science Coalition is not “non-partisan” as claimed. It is a fossil fuel advocacy group and is heavily associated with climate changer denier organizations. The writer has a long employment record of working as an advocate for the fossil fuel and tobacco industries. His job is to place pieces in the news media undermining climate science and promoting fossil fuels, especially coal.

Coal is called an “affordable supply of energy.” But, the only way coal can be affordable is if everyone else pays for the pollution. Mercury pollution, coal sludge, sulfur dioxide leading to acid rain which destroys wildlife and lakes and streams, particulate pollution that causes lung disease and other health issues, CO2 leading to climate change. These are all problems associated with burning coal. The only possible way for coal to be affordable is if someone else pays for the damage.

Meanwhile, jobs in renewable energy in New Mexico are booming with thousands of jobs already created in the state. The job market is expanding at double-digit rates, creating jobs for the people of New Mexico and increasing the tax revenue for the state. Strange how the fossil fuel advocate never mentioned that.

I am a professor of physics and have conducted research in planetary geophysics, including climate science, for over 25 years.

Dr. Christopher Keating

ISIS and Climate Change Viewed as World's Greatest Threats

An international poll, conducted between February and May of this year, asked 42,000 people in 38 different countries about what they viewed as the greatest threat from among eight threats. Choices were: ISIS, climate change, cyberattacks, global economy, refugees coming from Iraq and Syria and lastly Russia, America and China’s power and influence. On a worldwide basis, ISIS was the number one threat among 62% of respondents. Climate change came in second - at 61%! The third biggest perceive threat was cyberattacks and global economy tied at 51%. A drop of 10 percentage points.

In other words, the world views climate change to be essentially the same threat as a group of merciless thugs who commit unbelievable atrocities.

In the US, 74% viewed ISIS as the biggest threat. Climate change came in third at 56% (cyberattacks were second). So, a majority of Americans view climate change as one of the major threats to our society. And, if you view it as a threat, that means you have to view it as real.

This is surely a troubling signal to the fossil fuel industry and it's supporters. As it should be.

How Bad Will Climate Change Be?

There is quite a bit of debate concerning the effects of climate change and global warming. The anti-science group likes to claim there will be no effect and, even if there is, it will be good for us. After all, CO₂ is plant food, right? Therefore, there'll be more plants and that means more crops. Good for everyone. Unfortunately, that logic is completely flawed and there is no sense discussing it here. I could do a long posting on just how wrong it is, but I'll merely refer you to this link, if you're interested in the topic. The fact is, according to studies, climate change is already causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people every year, is costing us over $1 trillion per year, and is lowering the standard of living worldwide. So, yes, there is no doubt about it - climate change is bad.

But, 'bad' is a relative term and encompasses a broad range, going from barely anything to making the world uninhabitable. What do we mean by 'bad'? There was a very interesting a well-written article that recently appeared in the magazine New York. The author, David Wallace-Wells, compared the effects of different temperatures increases, each of which is a possibility (albeit, diminishing), as compared to today's temperatures. Some of the topics discussed were:

• Trillions of tons of methane gas trapped in the tundra is now beginning to be released and is 86 times more potent as a greenhouse gas, per volume, than CO2;
• There is only a small chance that we will control our emissions enough to keep temperature rise to under 2 degrees Celsius; 
• With only one exception, previous mass extinctions were caused by climate change and we are changing the climate at a much higher rate than seen in any of those events. Even the impact event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs did so by changing the climate;
• The temperature is rising so high in some parts of the world that it is now dangerous, even deadly, to work for extended periods of time outside. Workers in some of the poorest regions are already exhibiting the effects of a slow heat death where you suffer cumulative effects over a period of time as opposed to a quick death from heat stroke or heat exhaustion;
• There has been a 50-fold increase in the number of places experiencing dangerous heat levels since 1980. The five hottest summers since the year 1500 have all occurred since 2002;
• Even if we meet the 2-degree target, many of the hottest places on Earth will become nearly uninhabitable. This number will, of course, increase as temperatures go even higher;
• Food supplies will decrease at the same time the world population increases. There are already large parts of the planet with malnourished populations - about 800 million people worldwide;
• Diseases will spread and there is a risk of deadly diseases which have been locked up in the polar ice of being released. While most of these diseases would not survive and don't present a risk, it is entirely possible some will and people have already died from diseases being released in this way;
• Air pollution will get even worse. Forecasts are that approximately 2 billion people will be breathing air polluted beyond the 'safe' level by 2090;
• 10,000 people are currently dying every day due to particulate air pollution, partly due to an increase in the wildfire season which has increased by 78 days since 1970;
• Increased temperatures lead to increases in violence, including crime and warfare;
• One Celsius degree of temperature increase costs the world economy 1.2 percent of the GDP. That would be $6.3 trillion per year, based on 2013 figures for the world's GDP;
• The rate of sea level rise will increase; 
• Ocean acidification will devastate ocean populations, threatening this critical food supply.

This article painted a grim picture. But, how accurate was it?

Basically, the science in the article is accurate and the writer has his facts straight. I can personally attest to the effect of working in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It is brutal for even limited periods of time.

The other depictions of things as they are today are correct. But, that doesn't mean things will play out as a disaster. And, I don't mean to say the article paints a worst-case scenario, because it doesn't. Truthfully, it's a middle-of-the-road scenario. The extreme end is that we are doomed. One climate scientist, Dr. Guy McPherson, has been quoted as claiming the human race will be extinct by the year 2030. He maintains a blog on human extinction at Nature Bats Last. How likely is that scenario? In my opinion, practically zero. Just do the math.

The human population is currently (as of April 2017) about 7.5 billion. There are, currently, about 135 million births every year and around 56 million deaths, resulting in a net increase of about 79 million people per year. That's an increase of over 216,000 people every day.

Now, kill them all in the next 13 years. You would have to decrease the world population by an average in excess of 570 million people every year. That doesn't mean to kill off  that many because we have to get rid of the extra 79 million we're adding. To reduce the world population by 570 million this year, we would have to kill about 650 million people. In case you're wondering, that's an average of about 1.8 million people every day.  To put that into perspective, the Ebola epidemic caused worldwide panic. People were obsessed by the death toll and kept a running count. The total? 11,300 in 24 months. That's 470 people per month, fewer than 16 per day. To wipe us all out, we would need to kill 112,500 times that many every single day, day in and day out, for 13 years. I can't imagine a scenario where that could occur.

To put the size of the human population in perspective, imagine reducing the size of the population by 1 million people every single day. That is the size of a large city. It would still take over 20 years to kill us all at that rate. 

So, I am not concerned with human extinction. However, that does not mean we won't see a lot of human misery. I feel it is highly likely we will see a point in the coming decades where the population begins to decrease. This is based on the fact that so many people are already dying as a result of climate change and the factors responsible for killing people are getting continuously worse. That means the death rate will increase from the current 150,000 people per day to greater than 370,000 people per day. And, that is to merely reach the zero population growth mark. It would have to increase even more to achieve negative population growth. If my estimate is correct, then we'll see a lot of people dying in the years to come.


The New York article also discusses the idea of limiting our emissions to avoid temperature increases of 2 degrees Celsius. It appears we have already passed that point. Two independent studies published in Nature Climate Change this past week have shown we have locked in temperature increases exceeding the 1.5 degree goal of the Paris Treaty. Here is a plain language article about these papers.

The first study (Less than 2◦ C warming by 2100 unlikely, by A.E. Raftery, et al.) used a country-by-country analysis to examine economic growth based on population predictions. They found there is a less than 5% chance that we can limit temperature increases to 2 degrees. The most likely increase, based on their analyses, is between 2 and 4.9 degrees with a median of 3.2 degrees. 

The second study (Committed warming inferred from observations, by Thorsten Mauritsen and Robert Pincus) used heat non-equilibrium and heat momentum to calculate we have already passed the point where we can achieve the 1.5 degree goal of the Paris Treaty.

My take? After studying climate change for over 35 years and been involved with researching planetary geophysics for over 25 years, this is the way I see it playing out: Bad things are coming. Many people will die and that isn't even a forecast. Hundreds of thousands are dying every year due to climate change already. But, that number will increase in the coming decades. The quality of life will decrease for nearly everyone in the world. Places that are more affluent and less populated will suffer the least. The U.S. and Europe will do well. Canada will experience a flood of immigrants. Poor and heavily populated areas, especially those near the equator, will experience the worst. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, many countries in Africa and South America - these countries will bear the brunt of it.  

So, why don't we do something about the emissions? Because there is a well-funded group of people working hard to prevent any actions from being taken. They are paid by the fossil fuel industry to convince people that climate change isn't real and we don't need to do anything about it. And, large numbers of people believe them. Why would anyone believe these charlatans that can't produce even one iota of science to support their claims? If I knew the answer to that one I'd win the Nobel Prize. 

This topic has been discussed at great length. Climate change deniers aren't the only ones who simply reject the facts in favor of their pre-chosen beliefs. People who claim the Moon landings didn't occur, that 9/11 was a government conspiracy, the Sandy Hook shooting didn't occur, there was no Holocaust, evolution is false and the world was created in accordance with the Bible, there's an alien face on Mars, that vaccines cause autism, the world is flat. How many more are there? I remember having a discussion with someone who nearly got violent with me when I said the science showed conclusively that cigarette smoking was linked to lung disease. This person didn't even smoke but was very upset that I would state something contrary to what he wanted to believe in. Some how, the brain gets shorted-out and doesn't think properly on some issues any more. 

I read an article in Science News (which referenced the New York article) making the case that communicating 'gloom and doom' turns people off from the science and increases the numbers of people who deny climate change. The logic is that this causes them to feel there's nothing they can do about it, so why worry? I disagree very strongly with this line of reasoning. It does no good at all to communicate some Polly-Anna scenario or to not accurately inform the public of the facts. And, the facts are this: Things are bad and getting worse. We can't do anything about the 'bad.' That's locked in. If every human on the planet were to suddenly disappear, the amount of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere would continue to change the climate for centuries. But, we can address the 'getting worse' part. We can start reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce our emissions. Along the way, we might even find some things that might help the situation. 

But, we have to act in order to achieve that goal. Bad is coming. Worse doesn't have to.

 






http://www.ibtimes.com/what-caused-worst-mass-extinction-earths-history-not-what-you-think-2572585

Russell Cook Deceives Again

If you follow opinion pieces on climate change you quickly recognize a pattern that appears over and over: Tom Harris will lie and Russell Cook will show up to be his pit bull when Harris is challenged. We recently were privileged to observe this tag-team at work in the Duluth News Tribune.

Tom Harris, if you aren't familiar with him, is a paid shill of the fossil fuel industry and it's his job to place anti-science pieces in as many news media outlets as possible in a campaign to undermine climate science. Harris has a long resume of association with the fossil fuel and tobacco industries, which he tries to hide, but the Internet doesn't forget and his track record is well documented. You can read about Harris and his record at TomHarrisPaidShill.

Harris placed one of his misinformation pieces in the Duluth New Tribune, a news media that is an unfortunately friendly place for the anti-science crowd. In this letter to the editor, Harris proposed that scientific theories are nothing more than opinions. Interestingly enough, the original letter has disappeared but was at this link here (in case it reappears at some future time). You can read the response Terry and I made here.

If you read our response, you'll be able to see just how fraudulent Harris' claims are and readers responded accordingly. Here is one response. Sure enough, when Harris was challenged, he ran and called in Russell Cook to do one of his attack pieces. Read it here. In case it also disappears, I've made a copy of it for future reference.

Russell Cook is a hatchet-man for the Heartland Institute who gets paid thousands of dollars to obsess over Ross Gelbspan. Gelbspan was an accomplished reporter and won the Pulitzer prize while with the Boston Globe, but he has since retired. [CORRECTION: Gelbspan conceived, directed and edited a series of articles in the Boston Globe that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984. But, he was not named on the prize.] Today, he writes an occasional blog post. So, Cook is either obsessed with a retired guy or a blogger. Take your pick. Either way, it doesn't reflect well on Cook. My first run-in with Cook was several years ago when he made a poorly-disguised threat on this blog to sue me if I didn't stop criticizing the Heartland Institute. I showed it to two lawyers who both agreed it was an effort to intimidate me. He picked the wrong guy. I not only laughed at him, but begged him to sue me. I still am. It would be so much fun to get him in court. He quickly backed down and claims I over reacted. Again, two lawyers agreed with me.

One of Cook's traits in his attacks is to simply proclaim nothing is evidence until he says it is. If he doesn't like the facts, he merely declares they aren't facts and moves on. In this way, he creates an alternative universe where he's always right because he says so. For example, examine his latest letter in the Duluth News Tribune in response to the letter of July 5th which criticized Tom Harris.

In the first line, Cook states, "Letters like the one July 5, "Don't believe climate deniers," that describe cataclysmic-sounding situations as evidence of the certainty of man-caused global warming..." Wait a minute. Go back to the July 5th letter and show me where the author describes "cataclysmic-sounding situations" anywhere. The fact is, she doesn't. She references some events that are actually occurring and suggests the deniers are creating an alternative universe (they're good at that) that could be disastrous for us in "25 to 50 years." That's it. If she isn't making those claims, then why is Cook? Maybe it's to attack the author of that letter and make it sound as if she doesn't have any credibility.

But, he continues with, "...are often livid at the mere mention of famous-name climatologists and climate-denier organizations which doubt it." Wow! Twice in just the first line! Once again, the author of that letter said NOTHING about being 'livid' and Cook provided NO climatologists who doubt it. One of the things people like Cook hate is the fact that essentially every climate scientists in the world who is active in the field acknowledges manmade climate change is real. This has been firmly established by multiple studies, including by the deniers themselves. Read about it here. So, we know why Cook didn't produce the names of any of these "famous-name climatologists." It's because he can't.

I think you probably already see the pattern of the Harris/Cook tag team. But, let's continue.

Cook goes on to claim there is no evidence that the fossil fuel industry has been funding the anti-science community to protect it's profits.

Far worse, there's been no media revelations about Exxon or any other fossil-fuel industry being caught with secret material proving it conspired with "industry-bought scientists" to create and orchestrate a deception campaign where all agreed to spread lies and fabricate reports to the public in order to save the profits of the industry.

Really, Russell? Do you expect anyone to believe that? At least, anyone who isn't in your alternative universe? Let's see, try reading this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Just for starters. And, by the way, this evidence includes internal documents from the Heartland Institute detailing their efforts. These documents were so damaging Heartland threatened to sue anyone who posted the documents and then, when they couldn't get them removed, changed strategies and claimed they were fakes, despite the fact that they were received directly from Heartland. Additionally, word analysis showed they came from the same source as other Heartland documents.

Of course, Cook will just tell you this isn't evidence. Welcome to his alternative universe.

Update on the 2017 Arctic Melt Season

I made a posting on March 22 where I made a way-too-early forecast on the Arctic sea ice melt season. In that forecast I calculated the sea ice minimum extent for this year would approach 3 million square kilometers, which would easily be the minimum extent ever measured. The season is well advanced, so I thought this would be a good time to update that forecast and see how things are panning out.

To start with, this is the Charctic graph from NSIDC for July 4:

Source: NSIDC

As you can see, the current extent is competing with the lowest extents ever recorded for this date.The actual extent NSIDC reports for July 15 this year is 7.857 million square kilometers, which is more than 1.7 million square kilometers below the 1981-2010 average extent of 9.564 million square kilometers for that date.

This is the sea extent as shown by the Climate Change Institute (click on the image to view a larger version):

Source: CCI

The light blue line shows the 1979-2000 average sea ice extent. The ice-covered area is designated with a white-to-gray coloration. The more gray it is, the more broken-up the ice is with solid ice shown as pure white. As we can see, none, or very little, of the sea ice is shown as pure white. It is almost all some shade of gray. It also easy to see that areas that were historically ice-bound this time of year are now ice free. Take a look at Hudson Bay. It is almost entirely ice free (and has been for several weeks now), but historically would still have extensive amounts of ice. The Northwest Passage across northern Canada and Alaska is almost open, which would be a historically early occurrence for this rare event.

Here is the map of the sea ice extent from the Danish Polar Portal:

Source: Polar Portal

Again, the shade of the ice indicates the amount of coverage with sold ice being pure white. We can see, once again, that there is very little area that is pure ice. Most of the Arctic sea ice is broken up to various degrees. This is important because breaking the ice up into smaller pieces increases the surface area and makes it easier for it to melt. Broken ice will melt faster than solid ice.

But, extent isn't the only factor we need to consider. We also need to look at the ice thickness. This is the sea ice thickness as provided by the Polar Institute with the scale shown on the bottom of the image:

Source: Polar Portal

The cooler the color, the thinner the ice. This shows the ice is not only breaking up, but is also very thin.

Comparing these graphs makes me believe we will see all of the dark blue, purple and violet areas in the above graph melt by the end of the melt season in September. The red and white areas will survive. At this time of year, I think the green areas will, too, but in a much thinner state. Which leaves the light blue areas and I think about half of those areas will melt. On the map above, I estimate the minimum extent will still cover about half of the circular area around the pole and fill approximately two of the 10-degree blocks south of that circle. Using the same math I used in my March 22 posting, this comes out to be about 2 million square kilometers for the northernmost circle and about 325,000 square kilometers for each of the squares. This comes out to a total of approximately 2.7 million square kilometers.

A major factor is the weather. The Arctic weather started the year much warmer than average, but it has been mild-to-cold this summer and not as conducive to melting sea ice as in previous years. Here is a graph from NSIDC showing the cumulative freezing days starting on July 1 of the previous year and continuing to July 1 of the current year. The shaded areas show the percentile ranges (as listed) over the period 1981 through 2010:

Source: NSIDC

We can see the 2017 season has been significantly warmer than any other year and has been far outside of the percentile ranges. But, we can also see the difference from the base-line has decreased in recent weeks.


The weather factor is discussed at length in this PIOMASS posting. In particular, take a look at the graph of the Daily Average Arctic Sea Ice Thickness From PIOMASS located at the bottom of the posting, right before the comments section. This graph shows the thickness is not only historically low, but it has been all year. But, one of the things documented in this post is that the difference between 2017 and 2012 (the year of record low extent) is closing, where 2017 was much lower than 2012 to begin with. Using this input, let's postulate that the ice melt will not occur quite as severely as I speculated above. Based on that input from PIOMAS and NSIDC, let's bump the minimum extent estimate up to an even 3.0 million square kilometers.

This estimate is consistent with my March estimate and would be dangerously lower than the previous lowest minimum extent of 3.4 million square kilometers that occurred in 2012.

Guest Post: If they only knew

I recently engaged in a long debate with a denier who came across as being a little sophisticated and who used quotes from various research papers (mainly about the fact that often, insufficient data renders definite conclusions hard to arrive at), yet the fact that almost all of these research papers also discuss AGW as being a well-known fact, meant nothing to him.

Being a layman with enough knowledge of science to know that mainstream arguments (such as on the skeptical science website) make a great deal of sense, but without much technical know-how at my disposal, I usually focus on the inherent absurdities in the horrendous conspiracy theories people like him support-which are really not supportable i.e. the claim that Climate scientists only do research to make money and are afraid to reveal "the truth," lest they be destroyed by powerful administrations, or, that they are secretly plotting to gain control of the world's future energy economy.

I can only respond by mentioning that ordinarily research done by academics employed in our universities is compensated to cover only the costs involved in doing research, or, for lost wages when they are unable to teach (for example). I also like to point out that the vast majority of climate and earth scientists have continued to make the same projections no matter which administration happens to be in power, yet have ignored many opportunities like those available during GWs tenure, when the man most responsible for refusing to sign the Kyoto Accords, and who expressed serious doubts about man's role in AGW-could have gladly removed the yoke of coercion which liberal Democrats had supposedly placed scientist's backs?

Then there's the fact that the data about climate change, has remained basically the same, during ANY administration, and that what is happening today, was projected by climate scientists long ago, (in the 1980s and before). So previous scientists must have had access to a time machine which enabled them to know what the future would bring? I also like to point out how reasonable it is to assume that the very powers that cling to the sources of their wealth, such as large oil and/or coal companies, are the ones who are obviously spending a fortune just to create doubts about AGW, and that, scientific researchers make nowhere near the big bucks earned by executives and CEOs or others, from either running their businesses or being lucratively employed by mega companies like Exxon Mobile? However, my opponents almost never address these issues in their responses, and rely instead on using red herrings and ad hominem attacks. So, I have concluded that deniers like these are just not interested in the truth, or in having a rational debate-however well-formed and logical that debate may be.

One of the people I exchanged comments with, had a habit of demeaning and insulting me, or at the very least, using very condescending language while trying to enlighten me with more of his speculations about, and denials of, the mountain of evidence that supports the reality of AGW. Just before I quit commenting to him, I tried to bring to his attention the fact that he had used some pretty ugly insults and antagonistic comments while making his responses to me, (which he continued to deny)? I actually tried to prove my observations by copying one of his most nasty diatribes about me, and then posting it right below my comment about the many nasty things he had said, which thus affirmed his own verbal abuses. What was his response? He just doubled down on denial and claimed that his own caustic use of insults did not even exist-even though the proof that thoroughly disputed this fact, was right there in plain print and in front of his nose???

Obviously, many deniers are not even focused on using persuasive or rational arguments to prove or disprove points. All they need to do is create doubts in the minds of those who can be fooled by pseudo-science and then see nothing wrong with voting for politicians who spread blatant denials in order to block crucial climate legislation. As my mother-in-law used to say, "It's so stupid that it stinks!"

What deniers are currently doing is spreading falsehoods under the protection of the 1st amendment, while opinion page editors everywhere, refrain from correcting the many lies and bits of misinformation that deniers commonly use! Most of these editors think there are still good reasons to "continue the debate," just because (as in any scientific endeavor), there continues to be many things that are not yet known, and thus, this fact can be used by deniers to claim that the science itself, is still not settled. Still, I have tried in vain to make one editor who frequently publishes my comments aware that the 97% or more consensus, is really about two things-that global warming exists and that man is its major cause. And, all the while those of us who know the truth, feel like we are pushing back on a huge bolder composed of lies and deceptions, while it rolls slowly towards an abyss-because we are unable to persuade the people who count the most, about the fact that they are being conned!

The sad thing is that, under their version of the 1st amendment, scientists and educators could be accused of denying the rights of a teacher to dispense easily debunked facts, (like claiming that 2+2=5)? But if anything, all of us are being denied the simple right not to be taken in by lies, while our local newspapers refuse to edit letters filled with lies and falsehoods-something completely within their own powers and rights to do? And the real sadness is that as the climate becomes more and more unstable, and causes more and more extreme weather, deniers will continue to dispense lies and misinformation that will probably still be believed by many of us. However, as the saying goes, you can believe in your own opinions but not in your own facts!

Peter W. Johnson

Superior WI.

Tom Harris Deceives About Science

Tom Harris, the fossil fuel industry paid shill, has another letter where he tries to portray science as nothing more than an opinion. If that wasn't bad enough, he quoted Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry as an authority. You can imagine that it didn't go very well - and it didn't. Read it here. I collaborated with commenter Terry on a response, which was published in the Duluth News Tribune here.  A more direct response is shown below.

*****

Regarding the June 26, 2017 “Scientific theories aren't truth, but educated opinions,” this article is designed to deceive the reader. This isn’t a surprise considering the author, Tom Harris, is paid to place articles for the purpose of undermining climate science.

It is deceitful for Harris to claim science is an opinion. Gravity isn’t an opinion. It isn’t an opinion that humans must breathe air. The greenhouse effect isn’t an opinion. All of these are conclusions, supported with scientific evidence and reached via the scientific method.

As for his “experts” questioning climate science, the truth is that in excess of 97% of all climate scientists agree that manmade climate change is real. If 97% of engineers said a bridge was unsafe, would you drive over it because someone who isn’t even an expert in the field insists that science and engineering are opinions?

Concerning ‘skeptics,’ Harris isn’t one. A skeptic examines the facts with an open and questioning mind. Harris doesn’t fit that description. He has rejected science and has a long resume of advocating for the fossil fuel and tobacco industries. See more at http://tomharrisicsc.blogspot.com/2016/12/tom-harris-paid-shill.html

We also note how Harris quoted DoE Secretary Rick Perry concerning having an ‘open discussion.’ So, let’s have an open discussion concerning Secretary Perry.

Perry has received considerable funding from oil and gas interests, was a board member of Energy Transfer Partners — owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), is a former chairman of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), and received funding for his presidential campaign from the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners. Perry even advocated eliminating the DoE during his presidential run.

Once the facts are presented, the picture is not as painted by the highly deceptive Harris. And, that is not an opinion.

Dr. Christopher Keating and Terry Buchanan

The Hockey Stick and Breitbart

There are few things that will get anti-science climate change deniers in a froth more quickly than bringing up the hockey stick. Maybe it’s because the hockey stick shows, without question, that global warming is real. The graph even leads to the conclusion, with no other data necessary, that it’s caused by humans.

For a review, the hockey stick is a nickname given to a graph produced my Dr.s Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes (NorthernHemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations)

The nickname is a result of the shape of the graph showing average global temperatures for the last several centuries. There was a gradual downward trend following the end of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) in the 14^th century until a very large upturn in the late-19^th century. Here is the original graph:

Source: Mann, Bradley and Hughes, 1999

As you can see, there is no comparable uptick in temperature anywhere else in the graph and this change occurred as our industrial complexes were expanding, strongly indicating this uptick was caused by us. Of course, further research was needed to confirm this result. That research has been done and the hockey stick has been confirmed by multiple studies.

Source: Mann, et al, 2008

Interestingly, this paper has been scrubbed from the NOAA website. The science haters in charge of the government are trying, and failing, to hide the science.

You can read a good discussion concerning the hockey stick here.

With confirmation of the hockey stick comes confirmation of the conclusion. Yes, the science is settled – manmade emissions are causing global warming and the associated climate change.

So, it isn’t surprising to find deniers go into a tizzy every time someone mentions the hockey stick and to produce any number of arguments to try and discredit it. The latest was an article in the Notrickzone: Scientists Increasingly Discarding ‘Hockey Stick’ Temperature Graphs

[UPDATE: For an excellent review of how completely false the Notrickzone article is go here. I particularly like the summary:

We rank the claims made by both Breitbart and No Tricks Zone as false, because they dramatically misrepresent the findings of the scientists who conducted the research and utilize poorly-articulated straw man arguments to further misrepresent the significance of the work of those scientists. These studies were local in nature, narrow in scope, meant to address how the climate system functioned in the past, and pose no threat to the tenets of anthropogenic climate change.

Thanks to jmac for providing the link.]
 

It doesn’t take long to see what the problem is with this article, namely cherry picking. Cherry picking is selecting data to support your predetermined conclusion and ignoring data that doesn’t. Take a quick look at the article and you’ll see graphs for the western Mediterranean, the Spanish Pyrenees, northern Spain, Arctic summer temperatures, South China Sea, Alberta, Scotland, and more. In other words, the author of this piece went and found scientific papers that discussed some aspect of temperature for some given region and he then expanded it to mean global warming.

There’s two huge problems with this. The first is that we are discussing ‘global’ warming, not ‘Alberta’ warming. There’s the cherry picking. Given global warming, it is a fact of the laws of thermodynamics that some areas will actually see a cooling trend. As more heat is stored in the atmosphere, more work will be done. Weather can only occur when there is a temperature difference between regions. So, as more work is done in the form of weather, it is required that some areas be warmer than others. That is why we focus on global averages. We want to know what is happening to the entire planet. What is happening in the Spanish Pyrenees is important and is a worthwhile thing to study, but it doesn’t fall under the definition of ‘global’ warming.

The other problem is that some of these graphs, showing temperature trends for limited regions instead of global averages, still show the hockey stick is present, even for the isolated region in question. The author of this article is trying to prove the hockey stick isn’t real by showing examples of it actually existing. And, I’m sure he has no problem with that logic.

I’m not the only one to find this article doesn’t pass any kind of scientific muster. You can read a much better review, conducted by five scientists, here.

I also refer you to this comment that was submitted:

jmac

This is just another giant cherry pick by "nottickszone" of the earths average annual air temperature. These cherry picks are typical of "notrickszone" and other denier blogs. Nobody has said that every region of the earth will warm at the same rate.

“Global warming” means Earth's average annual air temperature is rising, but not necessarily in every single location during all seasons across the globe.

"Temperature trends across the entire globe aren’t uniform because of the diverse geography on our planet—oceans versus continents, lowlands versus mountains, forests versus deserts versus ice sheets—as well as natural climate variability. When you’re zoomed in on a particular place, you may not be able to see the overall trend.

It is only when scientists calculate the average of temperature changes from every place on Earth over the course of a year to produce a single number, and then look at how that number has changed over time that a very clear, global warming trend emerges. In other words, it’s only when we “zoom out” to the planet-wide scale that the trend is obvious: despite a few, rare areas experiencing an overall cooling trend, the vast majority of places across the globe are warming.
https://www.climate.gov/sit...
Observed trend in temperature from 1900 to 2012; yellow to red indicates warming, while shades of blue indicate cooling. Gray indicates areas for which there are no data. There are substantial regional variations in trends across the planet, though the overall trend is warming. Map from FAQ appendix of the 2014 National Climate Assessment. Originally provided by NOAA NCDC.

The reason a “zoomed out” view makes the long-term trend so clear is that Earth's annual average temperatures from year to year are found to be very stable when nothing is forcing it to change. Today, though, every decade since 1960 has been warmer than the last, and the last three decades each have been the warmest on record. Relative to geologic time, the warming that has occurred—1.5°F (0.85°C) over a span of 100 years—is an unusually large temperature change in a relati vely short span of time.

However, not all land masses and oceans have experienced or will experience a constant, identical rate of warming. Natural variations in our climate system cause temperatures to vary from region to region and from time to time, leaving sporadic fingerprints in the long-term temperature record. When you consider the global map above, you can see that in a few parts of the world temperature trends were basically ”flat” over the last century."

https://www.climate.gov/new...

In conclusion, I have to wonder why this guy would write an article that is so easily debunked. I guess there are people who will believe anything that affirms their hatred of science, but why would you be willing to make such a fool of yourself in the process? But, then again, I guess that's what they specialize in at Breitbart.