Betroffenheitstroll

Jörg Zimmerman has an excellent article about concern trolls on his blog. It is not exactly kind to the three amigos, Pielke Jr., Tol and von Storch, but the post makes some excellent points about theses self styled "honest brokers". Since it is in German, Eli asked Jörg for permission to translate and post. As they say, these issues have, as they say, come due, so here it is. You can play with Richard Tol over at Climate Progress

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Concern trolls

In internet jargon, there is the English term "concern troll". A troll is someone who disrupts discussions by provoking others. Through excessive, improper, aggressive or irrational behavior, the troll attempts to drive the discussion off the rails and cast doubt on accepted ideas. The "concern troll," which I occasionally translate as Betroffenheitstroll, is a special variant. He acts as if he accepts the group consensus but places it indirectly in doubt by pretending to find problems in what he claims to be his own position, creating reasons why one should worry that the consensus is false. In truth, the concern troll does not agree with the consensus, but he tries to hide that.

The concern troll is also found in the climate debate among people who show up saying that they themselves believe in global warming and also believe that human emissions of greenhouse gases are to blame, but do not understand certain things. And then, by and by, the classic objections of the denialist scene emerge one after another. It is difficult to ascertain the motives of others on the Internet because they have to be inferred indirectly. Thus, it can be difficult circumstances to separate a real skeptic who wants to deal with a few issues from the "concern troll". A true skeptic will be satisfied with answers, a "concern troll" never. It can be irritating for the casual reader when an experienced person recognizes and attacks a "concern troll" after one or two comments, because in the opinion of the naive reader the "concern troll" had justified doubts that one should have dealt with politely. The polite answer, of course, ultimately wastes time that could be spent more productively and that thievery is a concern troll goal.

There are several varieties of internet "concern trolls" as in any public debate. It can be scientists who ostensibly want to promote scientific inquiry by questioning existing results. If, however, all they do is ask questions without ever producing any results, leaving only unfinished projects, one is probably watching a "concern troll" at work, one whose only concerned is insuring that no conclusion is ever reached. McIntyre and his blog Climate Audit are fine examples of this, where as self-appointed "Auditor", he only seeks to discover errors in climate research. Naturally, in almost all cases he only finds fault in the IPCC and research that points to global warming being due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. And, of course, all the faults he finds are ultimately rebuttable or details which have no effect on the results. His discovery, together with McKitrick, of errors in the temperature reconstructions of Mann et al 1998, for example did not change the so-called hockey stick shape of the global temperature curve for the last 1000 or 2000 years, as has been confirmed by all subsequent research. Further, an error in the United States temperature records reconstructed by NOAA and GISS, were totally irrelevant to the global temperature curve and did not alter the relative order of years for U.S. mean annual temperature. While McIntrye and his blog have produced a big zero of meaningful results his annoying and persistent requests for information have cost those he pursues considerable time. No wonder that some of the targeted, such as the Climate Research Unit, regarded the requests for information as a sabotage attempt and talked about how they could defend themselves against McIntyre and others of his ilk who are using requests for information as ammunition for further attacks.

As word about such discussions burst onto the public scene in the stolen CRU emails, they provided other concern trolls the opportunity to complain about the politicization of scientists, as if this was produced not by the attacks on the science, but by the scientists who were under attack. Among those who volunteered, what a surprise, appeared the "honest broker" von Storch. In the U.S. there are others who claim the mantle of "honest brokers" for themselves itself, and use it to troll. There is Roger Pielke Jr., an environmental political scientist and economist who generally has adopted the view that while there is global warming, we do not know exactly how damaging it will be. Since dealing with global warming would cost money, one should weigh the costs of damage from global warming and dealing with it against each other. Of course, if Pielke Jr. deals with the issue, the costs of warming are low and the cost of fighting it high. The cheapest option in the opinion of Pielke Jr., is to wait until new technologies are developed which will make the cost of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions cheaper. Until then, it is better to do nothing. This mind set has lead to economic losses of at least 100 billion Euro in the period between 1979 (JASON report) and 2007 (4. IPCC AR4). It would have been at least that much cheaper to have begun limiting greenhouse gas emissions around 1980. Pielke Jr. is a special form of denialist according to environmental activists such as Joe Romm of Climate Progress, who calls him a delayer, one who does not deny climate change but collects arguments for delaying any action. This too is a tactic to maximize profits in the energy industry and to prevent tax increases.

Roger Pielke Jr., should not be confused with his father, Roger Pielke, Sr. Pielke Sr. is a meteorologist who is active in a number of climate research areas. And he too is an "honest broker" who claims to want to mediate between denialists, whom he calls skeptics and the scientists or the group of them that he politely describes as "alarmists". This mediation is not neutral. He asks, in a very concerned trollish way, whether we can trust the surface temperature measurements, or if they are distorted by the urban heat island effect. He is the eminence grise behind the SurfaceStations.org project, whose official front man is the weather newscaster Watts, who also runs the denialist blog Watts Up With That. They work hard to show that besides the actual urban heat island effect associated with growing cities, above all "micro-site" issues lead to small scale errors in the measurements. This includes, for example, air conditioners at the weather stations. According to the people at SurfaceStations.org it is obvious that such errors at the weather stations can only produce increased warming trends and they really push this view very strongly. Even if the measurements were contaminated in the U.S., that would be virtually meaningless for the global temperature trend. The temperature increase over the oceans dominates, where urban heat island effects certainly play no role. It is also seen in trends measured from satellites, which are also not affected by the urban heat island effect. That station quality had no effect on the temperature trends was also seen in an early study from that compared the temperature trends of good and bad stations, categorized according to Watts, and found no significant differences. A further re-analysis by Menne et al. 2009 showed that there were negligible differences in temperature trends for stations classified best and worst by Watts, or shall we say ostensibly so characterized by Watts, with Pielke Sr. hunkering in the background..

Concern trolls pretend to belong to a group, pay attention to what is being discussed, critically and carefully to consider the conclusions of the group, and then try to create doubt or to push their own agenda, including polishing their reputation as a critical observers and gaining a reputation as an independent commentator. As a side benefit this is also useful for selling books (if you will really want to find other motives).

Examples of concern trolls include two of the aforementioned individuals and a third, von Storch, Roger Pielke Jr. and the third amigo, Richard Tol, who have written an article in Spiegel Online "Save the IPCC", which at least for Pielke Jr. is hardly anything he would like to save, but rather hinder as much as possible. At root, this comes down to that in the more than 2000 pages of the three reports by the IPCC Working Groups, details in two paragraphs are in error or misinterpretations. Errors are inevitable in such a report, von Storch quickly adds, only then to argue as if they are avoidable. In the face of this contradiction one asks if this is the real reason they are demanding the IPCC chairman's resignation?

The concern trolls see several problems. First it is the fault of the IPCC that someone has stolen and made the Climate Research Unit Emails public. A ludicrous line of reasoning. If anything, an indiscreet glance at these emails shows first, that contrary to endless assertions by the denialists, no data was distorted by the CRU. Second, based on these Emails there is not a single scientific statement that has to be altered. Indeed, were it otherwise that would have happened already. Third, it is clear from the Emails that the CRU scientists were indeed put on edge by the McIntyre inspired concern trolls, and therefore wished to delete certain Emails. The circus after the publication of the stolen Emails showed that the CRU-scientists were right. Nevertheless, they are legally obliged to provide relevant information even when that demand is part of an apparent sabotage action by McIntyre.

Still, an investigation into the incident in the United Kingdom found misconduct by the CRU scientists who could not be charged because too much time had passed, and therefore this was inconsequential. Von Storch believes that this is especially important in proving a scandal but in my opinion, his theatrical display of dismay and demands for consequences is disproportionate. Anyway, no matter what you want to complain about CRU, what does the IPCC have to do with it? That is one question that burned out von Storch's logic switching units, but also those of many journalists. Fourthly, in the stolen e-mails, several scientists talked about how they could keep certain papers out of the IPCC reports. What is not featured by the critics, however, is that this concerned papers that individual scientists wrote to influence policy, introduced faulty or erroneous information into journals, something that peer review can often, but not always, prevent. In concrete terms, this included studies in which global warming was attributed to heat island effects on the basis of questionable correlations (McKitrick and Michaels 2004), a clear example of how denialists use pseudo-science to influence policy. Although as these scientists find, the strongest warming is found in areas which are the centers of socio-economic development, one must simultaneously recognize that these centers are on land in the northern hemisphere which according to theory, is the place where global warming will be most pronounced. This typical spurious correlation slipped through the dirty work of refereeing in a professional journal. Something like this should be sorted out in a review article as was discussed in the emails. Von Storch, who wants to be known as the "honest broker" thinks it awful that bad papers were not be treated seriously in the IPCC report, leaving one to question what is it that he really wants?

The next criticism of the three who allegedly are trying to save the IPCC by cleansing it concerns alleged conflicts of interest. They state that the IPCC chairman, Pachauri, has personally benefited from the fact that it was stated in the IPCC Working Group II report on social, environmental and economic consequences of climate change, that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035, if climate change continues its dramatic progress. This claim arises because an institute that Pauchauri is involved in, TERI (Energy and Resources Institute), has received a research contract based on the erroneous paragraph in the IPCC report. It is true that Pachauri is chairman of the Institute and this Institute has received a major research contract to study the consequences of a melting of the Himalayan glaciers. Roger Pielke Jr's guess is that TERI would not have been considered for the research mission, if the said paragraph was not in the IPCC report. In fact we definitely know that the glaciers in the Himalayas, and worldwide the majority of glaciers (with some exceptions), are sharply declining and this has long term consequences for the local water balance. Even if the Himalayan glaciers decline only partially by 2035, by 2100 serious impacts on water supplies in parts of Asia are possible, and a study of these effects is a relevant issue for India. Pielke Jr. 's insinuation is based on a very shaky assumption: namely, that Pachauri had an opportunity to instruct the scientists writing Chapter 10 of the IPCC Working Group II report to exaggerate the risks involved in the Himalayan glaciers melting [ and then used this to snare a grant from the Indian government - ER added]. Pielke, Jr. makes no effort to make this libel plausible. He leaves it to the imagination of the audience for whom the background is not quite clear. In this context it is probably meaningless when Pachauri points out that he personally does not receive any payment from TERI and therefore according to the rules of the IPCC there is no conflict of interest.

Indeed scandal after scandal, shakes the credibility of the thousands of climate scientists, the IPCC and the thousands of pages of its reports - if you want to believe the "honest brokers". Apparently there was no mechanism in place to deal with errors in the IPCC report, as if the rounds of corrections, and the referees assessments for the IPCC report did not take place. Perhaps one could ask in the future that the scientists who worked on the WG I report of the IPCC look at WG II more closely, which would have prevented the errors about the Himalayan glaciers. Exactly this reform is on the IPCC's radar, even without the three star "honest brokers".

Meanwhile, something is happening, which is typical for the media: the law of the series. If a bug in the IPCC reports shows up, then the reader will be fascinated by a series of mistakes. Therefore, bad journalists (the rule) are always happy to report the Himalayan glaciers error as the second breakdown in climate science, (IPCC is just too boring to write, better throw it all in one bag) after covering the stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit, although the two events have nothing to do with each other. Strange when stealing from someone is described as a scandal of those stolen from and curiously, journalists cannot distinguish CRU, IPCC and climate research from each other- such a lack of selectivity might be forgiven for Betty Blueyes and Johann Six-Pack, but not in the media. And so, after Emailgate and Himalayagate (in the sense of Watergate, that is somewhat like comparing a tax increase to the 3rd Reich) now we have Hurricangate and Amazonasgate. What's behind that? I will analyze it in another post.

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