A Rashomon update on climate betting

So 2015 is coming in hot, .75C in January and .79C above base period in February, and nothing indicating that March is cooling. The rest of the year can be slightly colder than 2014 and still end up a record, the first time since 1998 that we had record years back-to-back.

While short term data on climate isn't especially meaningful, I have a particular interest in this - in addition to the minor issue of human and environmental welfare, I've got $9,000 riding on it. David Evans and I made a series of bets in 2007, and 2015 is the first year that starts counting against the baseline. David has the details here, but to sum up it's comparing 5-year averages, and we're betting both on temps warming either somewhat less than IPCC projected for the next few decades or much less (David acknowledges some warming is possible). I need temps to increase .13C/decade over the 2005-2009 baseline to win one bet and not lose/void the other one, and .18C/decade to win both.

The Rashomon aspect comes from whether the bet looks like good news or bad news depending on your focus. I'm winning the first two months of the five year period from 2015 to 2019, which is good for me but not all that definitive. Prior to 2015, comparing years that didn't count, I was losing the bets, and prior to 2014 I was losing them badly.

One way to view it:  if you focus just on the stats and forget all your priors about the science, and if you ignore the stats for the many years preceding the baseline period, then I think you'd rather be in David's shoes than mine, despite my little head start. If 2015 stays warm at the end of this year then you might feel differently, even retaining this constrained viewpoint.

I think it's a reasonable perspective, but too constrained. If you look at a longer period and consider reasonable scientific priors about what you expect to happen, then I think I still have good bets. There's also what I said in 2007 that I "at worst lose one bet, win most of them, and void the rest." I also said I had the best chance of losing the early 10-year bets as opposed to the longer 15 and 20 year bets. Not so different from my expectation.


The other interesting bet to look at is James Annan's, where he's over halfway through the determining period for his bet. He's coy about it but he's trouncing his betting partners who thought temps would actually decline compared to 1998-2003.

A perspective I think would be interesting to hear from is the two men he's betting with. While their economic interest would be to wait and hope for a miraculous change, they have other reputational interests. Rather than continuing to be wrong this year and for the next two years and then finally paying up, I'd end the period of being wrong now if I were them, write James a check, and start being right.

The Future for Popcorn Is Bright

Some time ago, back at the beginning of time, Eli pointed out that the Obama administration was offering Republicans in Congress a choice between the lady and the tyger on passing laws regulating CO2 emissions, and of course, as everyone knows, the Republicans chose the tiger. 

About a week ago, Mitch McConnell told Republican governors to blow off the EPA and not bother to file a state plan to limit carbon dioxide emissions.

Today, the Federal Emergency Management Administration named the price

 Starting next year, the agency will approve disaster preparedness funds only for states whose governors approve hazard mitigation plans that address climate change.

and as the song goes,

There's hurricanes in Florida and Texas needs rain.
Takes money to plan for that.
If you don't want it, don't complain

This takes effect in March of 2016, before the next general election in the US.  The thing that Mitch and his friends don't appreciate is that Obama does not get mad, ask Osama.  Oh wait. . .

Planning Your Winter Ski and Skate Party

The winter is over, none too soon for some, and ho-hum for others.  Naturally when something is over, the Rabett household turns to planning for the next.  Where shall we have our ski and skate party next winter, Ms. Rabett inquires in that start saving for the expedition voice of hers.  Ms. Rabett is quite fond of travel which she regards as the only up side, besides plumbing, of Eli's vocation.

What about visiting your sister in the far north of New England Eli replies in the fond hope of perhaps coming in under budget.  Too much snow she says and besides it is cold.  Well, the Rabett points out, we hear that that is not too much of a problem in Sweden.  Eli's friend RayP writes that Vasaloppet week is on life support with the 15,800 cross country skiers hot on the trail of  King Gustave Vasa dependent on artificial snow being trucked in, and it is getting too warm to make the snow.

Last year the race was nearly canceled because key parts of the track were too boggy to allow passage of the equipment used to deliver snow and maintain the track. The race was rescued only at the last minute through rescued only by artificial snow.
I was not one of those 15,800 lucky ones to get a bib and doubt if I could have finished the race if I did, but I did ski a considerable portion of the track back in February. 

It was a vacation—a quaint idea that still exists in Europe—and I was prompted to think of what the future holds for the course just as the temperature crept past the upper range of my “universal” silver  ski wax and I started sliding backward down the hills. By the time I was heading home, things were pushing the 12-degree C top range of the KR70 Aqua klister ski wax. (Any warmer than that and you’re not skiing, your waterskiing.)

Sounds good she said, Swedes are rich, they can afford the snow, but wait, I hear that Canada is the place to go.  Well, maybe Eli said, it's so warm there these winters (places in Eastern Canada may demur) that they took the outdoor skating rink off the fiver.  Future Canadians will say of the long winters that they lived in the school, the church and the indoor rink.  Outdoor rinks are disappearing earlier and earlier and in some cases never appearing.  Where will you skate young Wayne Gretsky is the question on all frozen lips? But the backyard rink ain't one of the places given current trends unless granddad is some sort of mining investor with big pockets for the cooler and a blog.

Simon Donner knows, and he is not happy.

in an understated Canadian sort of way.  Andy Skuce on Skeptical Science has a more complete discussion with a link to a Globe and Mail article on bill redesign with leaked documents.  In the discussion is a statement from the design consultants that anything with snow would be risky because global warming.  So they got the robot arm on the space station.

Well, Ms. Rabett said, there is always Alaska.  Bad news Eli said, Alaska is so warm that the Iditerod has to move considerably north to find enough snow and you can practically go out in shorts most populated places this January (Rabetts are tough beasts but maybe not that tough).

We could go to California said the apple of Eli's eye.  Well, if you want to broil in LA with nothing to drink that would be a good place.

The South Sea, the Antipodes, Ms. Rabett offered.  Big cyclones downered Eli

Ms. Rabett played here last card?  Well where can we go, Antarctica?  Stay away from the coast said Eli

If Not the Fire Then the Freezer

Some bunnies have noticed that Matt King Cole, Bjorn Lomborg and the ignorati from the Breakthrough Institute and yet others are crocadiling about how Africa needs coal to generate electricity, never mind that right now the majority of the countryside and small villages would do better with solar or wind.  As Eli has pointed out, this is mostly because the costs of building out the distribution network is not zero, far from it, and small village based solar powered grids are less expensive.

Of course, none of these folks figure in the costs and difficulties of maintaining an electrical, gas or electric transmission network in these countries, where people have the habit of borrowing power, power lines and gas.  There is a reason that the Niger delta lights up at night and it ain't LEDs.  There is a reason why even in rapidly developing countries, that everybunny has a diesel generator and the generator cuts in more than now and again.

Most frustratingly to Eli is the fact that the cost of solar is a capital cost, which once paid, does not require buying fuel, the major cost of fossil energy

Any bunny serious, rather than self serving, would look at this and figure out that developed societies, if they wished to help the underdeveloped, would help them set up solar, wind, or hydro on minigrids.  Better, faster and even cheaper.

But no, listen to Matt King Cole

Still, more than a billion people on the planet have yet to get access to electricity and to experience the leap in living standards that abundant energy brings. This is not just an inconvenience for them: Indoor air pollution from wood fires kills four million people a year. The next time that somebody at a rally against fossil fuels lectures you about her concern for the fate of her grandchildren, show her a picture of an African child dying today from inhaling the dense muck of a smoky fire.

Of course, bunnies could always look at pictures of Lagos in the Smog, or Mumbai, or Shanghai.  Coal is so tasty when burnt.   Or we have Bjorn Bunny in the New York Times,

they should not stand in the way of poorer nations as they turn to coal and other fossil fuels. This approach will get our priorities right. And perhaps then, people will be able to cook in their own homes without slowly killing themselves.

Anyhow, this reminded Eli of something, but he could not remember quite what, until while writing yesterday's post on how the Montreal Protocol Insurance Co was working out to the benefit of all, he kind of remembered and went looking for Fred Singer's rants on how the Montreal Protocols were the devil incarnate and he came across Fred quoting from  The Spectator, March 12, 1994.

"..the consequences of banning CFCs will certainly be disastrous./. The proposed replacements are less efficient and some of them are toxic, endangering the health of fridge workers and people nearby.  In Afria, refrigeration saves lives, not only by protecting food against decay and disease, but by preserving medicines, notably vaccines.  Anything that makes refrigeration more expensive or more difficult will cost lives in Africa and add to poverty, and anything that adds to poverty in Africa increases the destruction of the African environment. . .Somehow it is all right for people in the West to benefit from modern technology but wrong for poor people in Africa and Asia.  It is more wholesome for black Africans to die in infancy of "natural" agents such as maleria and food poisoning than to be safeguarded into healthy old age by unnatural agents such as pesticides and CFCs.  The outstanding feature of their victims is that they are poor.

Just a perfect rant, and perfectly wrong on all points.

In the Beginning

Old timers will remember sci.environment back in the days when it was all strat and polar ozone.  A rather simple tweet from Judith Curry today

A Reagan approach to climate change - by George Schulz http://t.co/rGeGAJevae
— Judith Curry (@curryja) March 14, 2015

and a reply from Turcano

@curryja How did that "insurance" work out? The so called ozone hole continues to expand and contract quasi-periodically as before treaty.
— Tucano Blogger (@Tucano238) March 14, 2015

brought Eli back to days of yesteryear, so he went and looked at the latest data on the area of the  Antarctic ozone hole

A minor historical note.  Gavin and Tim Osborne had a side discussion about whether this was absolute or an anomaly.  It is absolute.  The first TOMS was launched in late 1978.  The ozone hole was first noticed from ground observations in 1984 by Farman, Gardiner and Shanklin of the British Antarctic Survey, at which point the TOMS team went back and looked at the data from 1979 on.  As can be seen in the figure, the first three years, 1979, 1980 and 1981 are pretty consistent, it is only in 1982 that the hole appears for the first time.

The ozone column depth shows the same story.  As Tim Osborne points out, this leads to the definition of a "normal" Antarctic Spring ozone column being 220 DU (Doppler Dobson units, another story).

showing that the polar ozone is recovering.

Eli, being Eli, pointed out that this meant that the Montreal Protocol Insurance Co. was doing a fine job.

Well, in for a penny and in for a pound, so the Bunny also went and read parts of the 2014 Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion and it appears that the overall decline in stratospheric ozone has also been arrested.  While it is not quite ironclad, it sure looks like the recovery has begun, and the year when the healing begun was also roughly 1997, as with the Antarctic ozone hole

The Montreal Protocols have lead to a decrease of chlorine and bromine species in the atmosphere which has in turn lead to an increase in stratospheric ozone, but in addition, the increase in greenhouse gases, principally CO2 is cooling the stratosphere and this slows up the catalytic conversion of ozone by chlorine and bromine, also resulting in higher ozone.

Eli's Government At Work

Eli was driving today listening to CSPAN radio when he heard something that almost made him cough up his teeth (Eli is an old bunny).  It was at a hearing on medical innovation of the US Senate Education Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Senator Lamar Alexander who was questioning Francis Collins, head of the NIH, when this occurred.

Collins wins the support of every scientist and engineer in the US government who has had to endure endless paperwork justifying trips to the bathroom, and oh yes, grant agency panel members who can't even get a donut and coffee at meetings.  Drug Monkey sends love.

No doubts about Merchants of Doubt

I saw a sneak preview of Merchants of Doubt on Saturday - it's very good and very professionally made. Incredible how many of the merchants of doubt were willing to speak on camera about what they're doing, Marc Morano in particular. I knew only some of the tobacco issues and very little about flame retardant, so how that ties to climate is definitely worth watching.

I remember that a Stoat had issues with the book that inspired the movie, but this is footage and interviews, so while I haven't read the book I think the movie's pretty different.

Good piece in the trailer where Morano says "we're the negative force, we're just trying to stop stuff." He's right. Remember that's a good position to be in, when you can get it, like with Keystone.

It's scoring 83% at Rottentomatoes, you can check there for availability but is opening this weekend in some cities.

Okay, how about "global warm-hugging" or "climatic kitten snuggles"?

Florida is making use of the power of positive thinking by banning governmental use of the terms "global warming" and "climate change". Not quite as direct as North Carolina's banning the ocean from rising faster than a certain rate, but still innovative. Governor Rick Scott is apparently a big fan of The Secret.

All they need is another, more positive term. I kind of like global warm-hugging, but maybe something else works. "Planetary Florida-doesn't-need-all-that-land-anyway Effect" is a little long.

Analysis: Soon's disclosure of non-controversial funding supports the conclusion that he deliberately omitted fossil fuel disclosures

In the storm of controversy surrounding Willie Soon's failure to disclose that his academic papers were funded by fossil fuel companies, the background question is whether Soon deliberately concealed the funding. The fact that Soon and his co-authors did publish their noncontroversial and prestigious funders while consistently omitting the fossil fuel funder supports the conclusion that omission was deliberate.

Lisa Song from InsideClimate News has reported details about 11 papers funded by Southern Company, a massive corporate utility with more carbon dioxide emissions than any other American utility, and Donors Trust, a shadowy charitable foundation that allows donors to climate denying efforts to conceal their identities by giving money to the foundation that they can count on giving grants for climate denialism.

InsideClimate News summarizes the 11 papers, including whatever financial disclosure information was included, and in 5 of the papers the non-controversial funders that add prestige to the paper were listed, while Southern and Donors were not. No explanation has been offered by Soon or anyone else for this discrepancy in disclosure.

The 5 papers where the funders other than Southern and Donors were disclosed are (full list at InsideClimate):

1. "Centennial Variations of the Global Monsoon Precipitation in the Last Millennium: Results from ECHO-G Mode," Journal of Climate (2008) 

Disclosures omit Southern Company while listing Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Basic Research Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, US National Science Foundation and NOAA/OGP.  

2. "Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public-Policy Forecasting Audit," Interfaces (2008) 

Disclosures omit Southern Company while listing funding from the State of Alaska. 

3. "Multiple and changing cycles of active stars", Astronomy & Astrophysics (2009)

Disclosures omit Southern Company while listing multiple funding agencies related to astronomy. InsideClimate notes the paper does not discuss climate change on earth. This raises the possibility that Soon "padded" the deliverables he provided to Southern. 

4. "Temporal derivative of total solar irradiance and anomalous Indian Summer Monsoon: An empirical evidence for a sun-climate connection", Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (2011) 

Disclosures omit Southern Company and Donors Trust while listing National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi and the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa. 

5. "Indian summer monsoon rainfall: dancing with the tunes of the sun", New Astronomy (2015) 

Disclosures omit Southern Company while listing Indian Space Research Organization, Government of India.

Soon was a co-author in all of the 11 publications. One possibility in these cases of partial disclosure is that his co-authors disclosed their funding while he did not. Regardless of whether that was the case, the issue of deliberately failing to disclose is emphasized especially by these cases. The remaining 6 publications where no disclosures were included at all include some co-authors whose institutions have been asked by Representative Raul Grijalva to provide information about them potentially receiving fossil fuel funding.

Following exposure in the news media, Soon made a statement via the climate-denying Heartland Institute that asserts "In submitting my academic writings I have always complied with what I have understood to be disclosure practices in my field generally...." Smithsonian has promised an investigation of Soon's behavior - it is unclear whether this statement's accuracy itself should be considered when Smithsonian decides whether his behavior meets acceptable standards.  Soon goes on to indicate that unless disclosure standards will somehow change from what they currently are, then he need do no greater disclosure than he had in the past. In other words, his past behavior on disclosure will be his future level of disclosure.


Dr. Donald Prothero at Skeptic.com draws the following conclusion about Soon's general omission of disclosure:

This is not a simple slip but a deliberate effort to not reveal the obscene amounts of money he was getting paid, and where it came from.

To only reveal non-controversial funding while consistently failing to reveal his fossil fuel funders further reinforces the conclusion that the omission was deliberate.

Defend to the Death and Use the Toilet Brush

Recent giggles in the blogs and news releases include the defend to the death posturing of various bags of wind, such as Rich Lowry, Richard Lindzen and Joe Bast.  Don Prothro at Skeptic has a useful take on what Willie Soon is and has done.

Much of the attempted push back on Soon and the Grijalva seven or eight, who remembers, has been meta (it's cruel, it's McCarthy) and according to John Fleck, Eli is all about meta.  In this case allow the Bunny to outsource to  Roy Ederoso's take on Steven Hayward, one of the seven or eight, but it will do for all of them and Willie Soon

I'm constantly being asked if I hold the Voltaire defend-to-the-death position on people I disagree with, but I am seldom offered a for-instance where the subject isn't just entirely full of shit.

April 22, 1915

April 22, 1915 was the day when gas weapons were first used in WWI.  Chemical and Engineering News has unflinching articles written by Sarah Everts, as the editor says, not to celebrate but to remember, for it is easier to repeat mistakes if they are forgotten.  There is no paywall.  The testimony of two eyewitnesses is available and enough.  Willi Siebert, one of the German infantry who opened the gas cylinders, left this account for his son and us

Finally, we decided to release the gas. The weatherman was right. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining. Where there was grass, it was blazing green. We should have been going on a picnic, not doing what we were going to do. …

We sent the infantry back and opened the valves with the strings. About supper time, the gas started toward the French; everything was stone quiet. We all wondered what was going to happen.

As this great cloud of green grey gas was forming in front of us, we suddenly heard the French yelling. In less than a minute they started with the most rifle and machine gun fire that I had ever heard. Every field artillery gun, every machine gun, every rifle that the French had, must have been firing. I had never heard such a noise.

The hail of bullets going over our heads was unbelievable, but it was not stopping the gas. The wind kept moving the gas towards the French lines. We heard the cows bawling, and the horses screaming. The French kept on shooting.

They couldn’t possibly see what they were shooting at. In about 15 minutes the gun fire started to quit. After a half hour, only occasional shots. Then everything was quiet again. In a while it had cleared and we walked past the empty gas bottles.

What we saw was total death. Nothing was alive.

All of the animals had come out of their holes to die. Dead rabbits, moles, and rats and mice were everywhere. The smell of the gas was still in the air. It hung on the few bushes which were left.

When we got to the French lines the trenches were empty but in a half mile the bodies of French soldiers were everywhere. It was unbelievable. Then we saw there were some English. You could see where men had clawed at their faces, and throats, trying to get breath.

Some had shot themselves. The horses, still in the stables, cows, chickens, everything, all were dead. Everything, even the insects were dead.

The account from the other side, from a Canadian soldier, A.T. Hunter, is equally searing.

Why Willie Soongata May Be But the Start

With Willie Soongata going great gums Eli turns to his friend Jules, nonono, not the photosnapping Jules (Eli has some suspicions about what she has been up to) but Jules of the Klimaat Blog who has been tip toeing through the Legacy Tobacco Archives where he has discovered the source of all astroturf.

Of course, that is the tobacco industry, but in light of what has come to light in the last weeks it is eerily like the tip of today's iceberg, except that Jules has explored the underwater bulk, not completely, but enough to explain the current push back.

This is a long story, the short version that Jules has published takes fifteen pages with more to come, and there is supplementary material.  Oh my, there is supplementary material, but let us simply look at the summary

The recent case showing how climate skeptic Wei-Hook 'Willie' Soon was heavily funded by the fossil-fuel industry has once again drawn attention to the 'tobacco strategy' of casting pseudoscientific doubt on a scientific topic.

The tobacco industry used a series of scientists in so-called 'truth squads' to deny the harmfulness of second-hand smoking.

Lesser known is how the industry handed out well over 1 million dollars to a secret network of over 100 American economics professors, known as the "economists network".

The aim of the network was preventing the government imposing higher excise taxes on tobacco to cover social costs related to smoking. The economists were hired to spread economic doubt on the effectiveness of social cost related actions by the government.

The network, lead by George Mason University professor Robert D. Tollison and tobacco consultant James Savarese, engaged in different activities.

This paper will prove how the economists were:

-Targetting the media in well organized op-ed campaigns.
All op-eds had to be cleared by the tobacco industry's lawyers before publication The economists earned up to $3,000 per op-ed they managed to get published in newspapers

Testifying at political hearings
The economists earned up to $10.000 per hearing Some economists defended arguments they knew were flawed

Producing 'scientific' papers that were approved by the tobacco industry.
The economists earned up to $40.000 per scientific paper they published Some economists "authored" reports actually written by the tobacco industry Every single scientific paper was cleared - corrected by the tobacco industry's lawyers

Producing pro-tobacco books 
Robert D. Tollison and Richard E. Wagner wrote/edited at least 5 pro-tobacco books
The books were promoted in well organized media-tours funded by the industry all over the USA, the authors receiving media training organized by the tobacco lobby on how to deal with tricky questions Positive book review were sent to newspapers by other members of the network 

The economists consistently forgot to mention they were paid by the Tobacco Institute.

Details at the Klimaat Blog

A member of the US Congress,  Rep. Raul Grijalva sent letters to a number of universities asking for information on Prof Utonium 

Prof. Utonium being one of  David Legates at UDel, John Christy at UAlabama Huntsville, Judith Curry at Georgia Tech, Richard Lindzen at MIT, Robert Balling at ASU, Roger Pielke Jr. at UColorado Boulder and Steven Hayward at Pepperdine.

In light of this it is perhaps, well really clear instead of perhaps, why Rep. Raul Grijalva thought there might be fire under the smoke that some have covered his committee with.  Many, including the AMS and AGU and some who comment at Rabett Run have had problems with these letters as being intrusive and discouraging free interchange amongst scientists and between scientists and the public.

Eli submits that given the history of these folk, remembering that Heartland at the core of the opposition to climate change legislation was one of the public relations operations that the Tobacco Lobby used to oppose regulation of tobacco and, of course that Heartland did budget to fund at least one Utonium, Prof. Balling perhaps, Rep. Grijalva was not operating right off the wall.

The letters inquired, not too politely about

1. What is your university's policy on employee financial disclosure? Please provide a full copy of all applicable policies, including but not limited to those applying to Prof.Utonium.

The letter was sent to the president's of the universities and this information is public.  however, Grijlava went too far, as he himself now admits, when he asked for

2. For those instances already mentioned and others that apply, please provide:
a. all drafts of Utonium's testimony before any government body or agency or that which, to your knowledge, he helped prepare for others;
b. communications regarding testimony preparation.

However, in light of what we know about the tobacco and other industrial astroturf operations it certainly was reasonable to ask for

3. Please provide information on Prof. Utonium’s sources of external funding. “External funding” refers to consulting fees, promotional considerations, speaking fees, honoraria, travel expenses, salary, compensation and other monies given to Prof. Utonium that did not originate from the institution itself Please include:

a. The source of funding;
b. The amount of funding;
c. The reason for receiving the funding;
d. For grants, a description of the research proposal and copy of the funded grant;
e. Communications regarding the funding. 

4. Please provide all financial disclosure forms filed by Prof Utonium in which MIT is listed as his professional affiliation, even if it is only stated for purposes of identification.  

5. Please provide Prof Utonium’s total annual compensation for each year covered here.

 and these are all documents that are in the possession of the University.

Photo from Climate Social on Twitter

Under the Dome

Crowd sourced English subtitles for Chai Jing's Under the Dome. The video starts off in the middle, it can be reset to the beginning simply by moving the slider bar at the bottom

A valentine to those pushing coal

The silence of the Roberts

Brief excursion into law-blogging here, following the morning Supreme Court hearing of the ridiculous challenge against Obamacare. Good summary, as usual, at SCOTUSblog.

The only reason the Court granted the appeal was because at least four justices thought they at least might want to overturn the Affordable Care Act. Four is enough to get a case heard, and you need to five to win. As SCOTUSblog notes, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas are almost certain votes to destroy health care for millions of people, while Kennedy asked questions critical of both sides (I'd guess he's leaning in favor of nonidiocy, he takes his federalism seriously).

The normally inquisitive Roberts wasn't inquisitive. Judges other than Thomas like to ask questions. If they've pretty much decided their view already, they still like to ask questions partly based on the self-delusion that they'd change their minds if given a good enough response, and partly to start jousting and convincing their fellow judges. If they haven't decided because they have unanswered questions, then they also tend to want to ask their questions.

One possibility for Roberts' silence was that he hasn't decided and hasn't even figured what questions he'd like to ask. I think that's unlikely. More likely was that he does have a viewpoint or questions but other justices were expressing them adequately, so he saw no need to pipe up. Seems most likely that Kennedy would be his doppelganger. If Roberts is going to tick off his side yet again over Obamacare, maybe he'd prefer to see Kennedy be more visible.

I'm guessing a 6-3 ruling in favor of sanity. I could be off by two votes though.

Where is Horatio When Eli Needs Him

Eli has been searching for the right song for Soongate and he thinks he has found it

The lyrics just scream out for a rewrite by Horatio Algeranon, but Eli will not go there.  No indeed, the Bunny has been a lot harder in this mess on the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics than on the good Dr. Soon, who, as Eli has pointed out and Dr. Soon has said, has had a hard time keeping body and soul together since his mainline grant funding disappeared before the end of the last century.

Now Eli is not going to link to the many, many comments, posts, and newspaper articles on this issue, nor is he going to discuss much who and why Rep. Raul Grijalva sent letters to various worthies' institutions.  That is been best left to others, but a few words on Rep Grijalva's motivation.

From many sources, it is well known that science obfustication has been well funded by industries who have found research conclusions uncomfortable.  As shown by the Tobacco Legacy Archive, this funding has been both direct and indirect.  Astroturf was invented by those guys well before the Astrodome opened.  For such issues as lead, tobacco, asbestos and of course tobacco, advertising agencies, public relations companies, think tanks and various other pass throughs have been used.  There is no doubt that the hiding of such connections has become more professional, the latest variation being Donor's Trust,

So one may ask, who has been paying the academics testifying before Congress, state legislatures, and local government organizations on these issues and what have they bought?  Further, what are the ethical issues about accepting the Exxon's shilling?  What about other writings designed to influence public opinion such as op-eds or reviews, should a conflict of interest be declared when the writer has been monetarily encouraged?

Based on past history, Rep Grijalva is right to ask these questions. Did he ask for too much?  He agrees

The communications back-and-forth is honestly secondary, and I would even on my own say that that was an overreach in that letter," Grijalva, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, told National Journal on Monday. "I want the disclosure [of funding sources]. Then people can draw their own conclusions.

Does the funding of testimony given by academics have value?  The funders think so.

Krugman on Climate

Or at least the climate of discourse in these days, expressing perfectly the differences between Eli on one side and, and, . . . . well others.

I see three choices: 

1. Continue to write and speak as if we were still having a genuine intellectual dialogue, in the hope that politeness and persistence will make the pretense come true. I think that’s one way to understand Olivier Blanchard’s now somewhat infamous 2008 paper on the state of macro; he was, you could argue, trying to appeal to the better angels of freshwater nature. The trouble with this strategy, however, is that it can end up legitimizing work that doesn’t deserve respect — and there is also a tendency to let your own work get distorted as you try to find common ground where none exists. 

2. Point out the wrongness, but quietly and politely. This has the virtue of being honest, and useful to anyone who reads it. But nobody will. 

3. Point out the wrongness in ways designed to grab readers’ attention — with ridicule where appropriate, with snark, and with names attached. This will get read; it will get you some devoted followers, and a lot of bitter enemies. One thing it won’t do, however, is change any of those closed minds. 

So is there a reason I go for door #3, other than simply telling the truth and having some fun while I’m at it? Yes — because the point is not to convince Rick Santelli or Allan Meltzer that they are wrong, which is never going to happen. It is, instead, to deter other parties from false equivalence. Inflation cultists can’t be moved; but reporters and editors who tend to put out views-differ-on-shape-of-planet stories because they think it’s safe can be, sometimes, deterred if you show that they are lending credence to charlatans. And this in turn can gradually move the terms of discussion, possibly even pushing the nonsense out of the Overton window. 

And the inflation-cult story is, I think, a prime example. Yes, you still get coverage treating both sides as equivalent — but not nearly as consistently as in the past. When Paul hyperinflation-in-the-Hamptons Singer complains about the “Krugmanization” of the media, who have the impudence to point out that the inflation he and his friends kept predicting never materialized, that’s a sign that we’re getting somewhere. 

It really would be nice not having to do things this way. But that’s the world we live in — and, as I said, there’s some compensation in the fact that one can have a bit of fun doing it.

Chu 'n' tobacco

Last night I went to Palo Alto High School's Great Minds lecture by Steven Chu on climate change. For those unfamiliar with Palo Alto public schools, billionaires send their kids there - they're pretty well decked out.

Chu is all in on using tobacco as the analog for climate, which he did at great length during the discussion (including comparing the corporate disinformation tactics). He did a good job overall, being a professor has made him a good speaker. He said the 500-1000 year period to mostly recover from the effects of GHG emissions is an imposition on costs on umpteen future generations, "500 to 1000 years of future generations breathing our second-hand smoke."

The kindly professor showed some steel at two points during Q&A, sharply correcting two people who misstated something he'd said previously. Guess you need that to survive at a high level in DC.

Few other random notes:  very bullish on wind and solar, believes the business world has really seen the light. He's also bullish on battery technology and has his own business venture in the area. I hope he's right. For all that he still sees a long-term future for fossil fuels - I can't remember quite what he said and don't want to get sharply corrected, but it seemed like 20% of energy to come from fossil fuels well into the second half of this century.

He's supportive of nuclear power but not in the US, saying we take too long to make it happen, and that utilities keep messing around with designs instead of turning out cookie-cutter plants like they do in South Korea and did in France (EDIT - he's pessimistic about near term prospects in the US, but still supports nuclear power). He also supports carbon sequestration and is doing research in that area. I tried to ask a question about the economic failures in that area but didn't get the chance.

He made fun of his fellow physicists for believing they can understand anything in science, but then attempts to do the same thing himself.

New fact:  he was the first scientist ever appointed to a Cabinet-level position, and was replaced by another scientist (Ernest Moniz). He gives Obama a lot of credit for appointing scientists against the advice of people surrounding him, who don't think scientists play well in the DC pool.

EXTENDED REMARKS (Eli)  From YouTube, a talk by Chu at the Stanford Business School.

MOAR EXTENDED REMARKS (Brian) The YouTube clip is pretty similar to his Paly talk. He gives an extended version of the second-hand smoke allegory 15 minutes in, although I think he was pithier with the high school audience.

Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Hi-Jinks 5

Think it could not get stranger young bunnies.  Well, four days ago Brendan Montague was lovin it on Desmog UK, reporting on a strange interlude at the 2012 Heartland Climate Science Roast that he had with Willie Soon, something that was so good that he was holding it for a forthcoming (still book).


Willie was on a role, throwin' everyone under the bus, Exxon Mobile, and CfA.  According to Montague he said

The process is we have to go through my centre I am working for, where I get a paycheque, so it goes through our grants office and of course the director has to approve it. My previous director was very friendly. He loved what we do. Then the new director is somewhat, very not friendly so I’m in a bit more trouble. 

Now Eli is the RTFR type of bunny so he went and looked up who the previous director was, Irwin Shapiro, and then Eli looked for some connection between Shapiro and Soon, when this 2013 gem from the Boston Globe popped up

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center’s former director, Harvard astronomy professor Irwin Shapiro, said there was never any attempt to censor Soon’s views. Nor, he said, was Soon the subject of complaints or concern among the 300 scientists at the center.

“As far as I can tell,’’ said Shapiro, “no one pays any attention to him.’’

True enough and obvious enough for science, but in his own way, as the Globe points out, Soon science has been useful for his funders.  Testimony in its own way to the obliviousness of astronomers.

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Hi-Jinks 4

It just keeps on coming.  Anymore of this and Eli will have to be hospitalized for acute giggles. Chris Mooney at the Washington Post does everyone a service by calling out Willie Soon's research as the fantasy that it is, but buried deep at the top of his article are some interesting quotes

According to a statement from the Smithsonian, Soon is “a part-time researcher at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory,” and the institution is “greatly concerned about the allegations surrounding Dr. Willie Soon’s failure to disclose funding sources for his climate change research.” The acting secretary of the Smithsonian, Albert Horvath, “has asked the Smithsonian Inspector General to review the matter.

A twofer.  Last, the real auditors are being called in, and when they get their hands on the budgets Eli suspects that Charles Alcock, Director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is going to have an interesting time explaining how indirect cost money that was originally going to be used to cover institutional operating expenses got converted to discretionary donations under his control.

But that's not all folks.  First, after looking at the grant awards and budgets, Eli was thinking that even with the Koch money and the Southern Money and the Donors Trust money, Willie was not covering his salary, and indeed here is proof.  They list him as part time.  Worse, anybunny with a calculator can see that his institutional base salary was not much at all, a bit less than 100K.  Each grant/contract was for three, four months at max and anybunny can do the math on that.  With overhead and fringes the Smithsonian was actually pulling in more money that Willie Soon.  Were there other non-Smithsonian sources that Dr. Soon was taping?  $50-75K is not much to live on in the Boston area.  Perhaps speaking fees?

From the Smithsonian Facebook page, where such things are found

The Smithsonian is greatly concerned about the allegations surrounding Dr. Willie Soon’s failure to disclose funding sources for his climate change research.

The Smithsonian is taking immediate action to address the issue: Acting Secretary Albert Horvath has asked the Smithsonian Inspector General to review the matter. Horvath will also lead a full review of Smithsonian ethics and disclosure policies governing the conduct of sponsored research to ensure they meet the highest standards.

Wei-Hock (Willie) Soon is a part-time researcher at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. He was hired to conduct research on long-term stellar and solar variability. The Smithsonian does not fund Dr. Soon; he pursues external grants to fund his research.

The Smithsonian does not support Dr. Soon’s conclusions on climate change. The Smithsonian’s official statement on climate change, based upon many decades of scientific research, points to human activities as a cause of global warming.

Of course, they were quite happy to accept the funding, but now the Smithsonian has tossed Willie Soon under the bus.  Will he have the company of those who thought it was a good thing?

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Hi-Jinks 3

More fun and games at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics featuring Eli's heroine Amanda Preston.  So Willie Soon sets up some funding for his salary with Exxon Mobile.  Well that's what soft money people do and Eli would have not been too hard on our Willie had he not at an AGU conference long ago been subjected to the single stupidest poster talk through ever by said Soon.

But be not concerned because once the money was in the bag, Amanda Preston lower (or rather raised) the boom indirect cost rate on Exxon-Mobile in a small Email

I am attaching a proposal for your review and a request for payment. You may recall that I mentioned the adjustment in our indirect costs upwards from the 15% that Walt Buchholtz and I negotiated when he was still in your position. You will see in the attached that the project cost increases to -$76.000. 

The adjustment was to 43% of salaries and wages.

Eli is only a few pages into the document dump but he is laughing so hard that a pause is needed

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Hi-Jinks 2

More hi-jinks from the crew in Cambridge.

Amanda Preston was hip deep in the financials of Willie Soon's support network.  As the Advancement and External Affairs Officer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics she negotiated the terms for his support from Exxon Mobile among other things.  Today she has moved on to be Executive Director of the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard University, where, amongst other things she works works with faculty to squeeze out more dimes.

Looking at the FOI document dump Eli reads this interesting bit in the first Email, from Amanda Preston to various people at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

You will see that $22,181.00 was allocated to task 40301770IS50AP. This amount is equivalent to the indirect costs that would have been charged if the gift had been a grant. on instructions from Charles Alcock, I asked ExxonMobil to allow us to reclassify that amount as an unrestricted contribution. Judith Batty assented to our request (see attached email). 

Charles Alcock is the Director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Email continues

I have the following questions and comments: Charles Alcock agrees that this money should be used to defray any shortfall in development funding. Do we move it from 301770 to 101600? Or to the DDF

The DDF is the Director's Discretionary Fund, which is a fund that is dispersed at the, guess what, discretion of the director.  These funds in research centers are used for program development, bridge funding when a soft money person is out of grant/contract funding, or for tea.

Now Eli, maybe Russell, does not have a clue of how money from indirect cost accounts flow at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, but he expects that as the norm, some of it flows to the PI as a reimbursement for undividable costs, some to the PI's department for same and some to the institution director, but the lion's share goes to things like electricity and heating costs, and oh yes, to make sure that the toilet's flush and that the library maintains subscriptions.  Moving the money to development or the DDF means that it was totally available to the director for other stuff.  Oh yeah, and probably that Willie did not get his cut.  This cut is important to defray many costs including travel to conferences.

One of the gotcha's in research institutions like the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is that you cannot use federal grant money to support applications for federal grant money.  What this means in practice is that if someone is completely supported by federal grant money, at least in the audit sense, they cannot spend time writing further grants.  The out for this is to allocate a small amount of a researcher's time to general support from the institution, which, so the argument goes, covers the time and effort of the researcher and the support staff in applying for further federal funds. Coming up with non-Federal money to do this is a bit of a problem.

Charles Alcock is one of the principles in the Origins of Life Initiative which was seed funded by Harvard in 2005.

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Hi-Jinks1

Justin Gillis has lit the fuse on the interesting funding received by Willie Soon from hither and yon.  Eli had done some digging early on into that pile of offal, but admittedly did not follow through as he should have.  However, the results of the FOI requests by the Climate Investigations Center are telling

One of the fuses in this controversy has been the neglect, rather perhaps the purposeful admission of who funded that in particular with respect to Soon's latest provocation, a rather silly article co-authored by Monckton and two guys to be named later.  The Weasel summarizes this as

I’m not sure it’s coherent enough to count as drivel. There’s quite a bit where I had no hope of working out what it means or what the point of saying it was.

and then goes on to shortly summarize why it was drivel.  Jan Perlwitz provides a more measured discussion (e.g. he provides the reasoning why Soon and Monckton were spitting up, in short, they model the response of the system to a 150 increase in greenhouse gas concentrations as if it was a single pulse and other things and calls the paper drivel after providing the reasons rather than in the opposite order).

Much of the commentary on the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics hi-jinks has concerned how one of Dr Willie Soon's sponsors the Southern Company had the right to examine and review any manuscripts that Dr. Willie Soon submitted for publication.

Even before the Gillis piece appeared, Paul Thacker was been hot on pointing out that this paper does not acknowledge Soon's support from various sources including the Southern Company and had noticed that the contract between the Southern Company Services and the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics contained the unusual clause

Publicity. Smithsonian shall not publish and utilize the name or otherwise identify SCS or its affiliate companies in any publications or other advertisements without the express written consent of SCS. As further consideration to SCS, Smithsonian shall provide SCS an advance written copy of proposed publications regarding the deliverables for comment and input, if any, from SCS. 

Eli would guess that even had permission been requested, it might have been, well, not given.

But there is much more in the pile.  Consider the Amanda Preston two step in Hi-Jinks 2 to follow

First Oslo, then the world

Obviously no gas engines when there are no gas stations. In 2013 I argued that each percentage of vehicle sales that EVs take away from gas engines is a percent that will not be maintaining the gas engine infrastructure, and that loss of infrastructure support may make a difference in the near future in some places.

Norwegians are currently buying EVs for about 15% of vehicle sales (admittedly with a lot of incentives that may be gradually reduced). Obviously the existing vehicle fleet composition is different from the new vehicle fleet. Per the video above, a gas engine car bought 20 years from now could still be around 20 years later. Still I think the correct reference for when the gas infrastructure will start becoming spotty and inconvenient uses the percentage of vehicle miles traveled in a given time done by EV. People with two cars generally drive more with the newer one, and with electricity always costing less than gas, it will make sense for people to choose their EV when they can. That 15% will translate into 15% less gas revenue, not today but soon, and gas stations are going to notice it. If I were a young businessperson in Oslo today, I don't think I'd view a gas station as an attractive long term investment.

I don't expect range anxiety for gas vehicles so much as range annoyance as they have to go further and plan more to refill their cars. Mechanics and the rest of the infrastructure that support gas cars will also be less common and more expensive.

The above is obviously true at some large percentage of vehicle miles coming from EVs, the question is whether it can and will happen anytime soon at some smaller percent, say 10%. We could see that in Oslo in 5-10 years.

And FWIW, I don't think gas stations will completely disappear everywhere. There will be some vintage/hobby cars tooling around, maybe retrofitted to run biodiesel or other biofuels, and there will be some businesses that service them.

Black Swans, Black Cats

A couple of days ago, when describing the incoherence of the Luckwarmers, Eli cribbed from the Idiot Tracker  (v. 2010) about those wide eyed optimists

So the critical question then becomes: what is the lukewarmers' range? Consensus scientists estimate climate sensitivity at about 3C, but concede that it might be 1.5C, 4.5C or even higher (and very unlikely to be much lower). What range do lukewarmers think is plausible? 

So far, to my knowledge, no self-identified lukewarmer has been persuaded to answer this question. They will find it difficult. Because they have positioned themselves as participants in the scientific debate, they can hardly claim 100% confidence in X climate sensitivity, no error bars. If they are reasonable, they have to accept they they are as fallible as the rest of the scientific community, and although they think the climate sensitivity is 1.5C (say) it might be 1.0C, or 2.0C, or even (gasp!) 3.0C (where the consensus puts it).

Time has moved on Tom Curtis pointed out in the comments

Being fair to the lukewarmers, some including Nic Lewis and Steve Mosher have indicated uncertainty ranges (sort of). The first problem is that Lewis' uncertainty looks an awful lot like dogmatism given how tight his uncertainty interval is relative to that of the IPCC. The second problem is that Mosher's range looks more like a con job. 

Specifically, Mosher has said:  "ECS is not less than 1.2C ( or basically a no feedback value however you want to calculate it And the probablity of it being less than 3C ((Hmm I’ve prolly said 3.2 in a couple places) is greater than 50%." 

The IPCC does not give a PDF, but from their statements it is clear that any distribution maximally coherent with their claims must have a strong right skew. Assuming that their likely range is centrally placed, ie, that it is as unlikely to be below the range as it is above it, that means the modal value is around 2.5 to 2.8 C and the median is likely to be very close to, and possibly below 3 C. So, in an attempt to give a range for a purportedly distinct position, Mosher appears to simply redefine the IPCC as "lukewarmers".

Today, the twits guided Eli to a piece on skepticism by Nassim Taleb, keeper of the black swans. Black swans keepers are, of course, the opposite of Luckwarmers, who, in their way are the Émile Coués of the science blog world

Taleb looks at the effect of ignorance on estimates of probability

The introduction in general in any field with potential iatrogenics of any new element without available track record (hence model uncertainty) fattens the left tail. 

Some straight applications 

• Skepticism about climate models should lead to more precautionary policies in the presence of ruin. It is incoherent to doubt the mean while reducing the variance. 

Which pretty much kills Nic Lewis's squeezed prior and

• "Mitigating" policies aiming at reducing risks –say geoengineering– in fact are likely to increase such risk. 

• Conservatism is a dominant strategy in the tails.               

Taleb elaborates

In thin-tailed domains, an increase in uncertainty changes the probability of ruin by several orders of magnitude, but the effect remains small: from say 10⁻⁴⁰ to 10⁻³⁰ is not quite worrisome. In fat-tailed domains, the effect is sizeable as we start with a substantially higher probability of ruin (which is typically underestimated).

He also makes an interesting point about such issues as GMOs

For standard statistical theory doesn’t allow "acceptance", it only allows "failure to reject". Even when someone in prose says "accept that" he mathematically means "failed to reject at some significance level...", i.e., baring a tail event. Similarly, when someone is indicted, he is treated as innocent unless proven otherwise. This principle is adopted by scientific journals (remember from section 1.3 that statisticians are the "evidence" police and their evidence is "up to" a tail event that is not specified in impact). This is a very big thing and it is ironic. 

For the majority of biologists involved in the GMO debates against the precautionary principle don’t appear to be aware of the central fact that

evidence = ”barring a tail event”

and argue they have "evidence there can’t be a tail event".

Tea Time

The coal divestment and oil divestment arguments are the same

Some people make a qualitative distinction between divesting from coal businesses versus divesting from oil. I'll concede at the start that coal is the worst, so if you choose to only divest from one sector then it should be coal. That doesn't serve as a reason to oppose oil divestment.

The main reason I hear for distinguishing coal and oil is that we can live semi-normally without coal but not without oil. Depending on the time frames, though, we arguably can't live without coal and we can live without oil.

Two hypotheticals:

First, the one thing that changes tomorrow is that the political willpower suddenly exists worldwide to stop using coal, completely, and the question you get to decide is when to implement that decision to maximize human benefit. I think it's pretty clear that while immediately ramping down coal use is a good idea, ending all coal use literally tomorrow would not be a good idea. The energy grid would collapse in many countries and take months and years to reconstruct, causing a deep global recession.

Instead you'd want to use a time frame - I'd guess the best balance of reducing emissions with minimizing economic disruption would mean 5 to 15 years for eliminating coal use in developed countries, and add five years for developing countries.

Second hypothetical is the same as the first except the political willpower also suddenly exists worldwide to stop using oil, and you get to choose whether and when to get to zero. In this case an appropriate time frame does allow us to live without oil. We switch the power grid to near-zero emission sources and switch transportation systems to electricity, maybe with some use of biofuels (managing land use impacts) and hydrogen. Maybe very limited, continued use of oil balanced by carbon-negative practices. All you need is time, maybe 30-50 years.

So no, we can't live semi-normally without coal tomorrow, but if that doesn't keep you from supporting coal divestment then it shouldn't stop you from supporting oil divestment. We can get to a point of living without oil, so it's not wrong to use oil divestment to push us in that direction.

I haven't talked about natural gas divestment, which is a little trickier. While the time frame arguments apply to it, there's also the fact that natural gas competes with coal at the same time that it competes with renewables. I think it's a close argument and I'd welcome the natural gas industry reaching a deal with renewable energy, but in the absence of that deal then I'd rather pressure the natural gas industry as well through divestment.

Finally, some other folks may lump in tar sand oil with coal divestment. I agree that tar sands are the worst oil option so it's a start, but not the place to stop.


UPDATE:  thought I'd add that Palo Alto City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling on the state agency CalPERS, which manages Palo Alto pensions, to divest from fossil fuels. Palo Alto has done some pretty good work on limiting their own emissions, so that's evidence that divestment is compatible with direct emission reductions.

Fish in the Milk

There is an old story about how finding a fish swimming in your bottle of milk is an indicator of something or other.  Now over the past couple of weeks, the fish swimming in the climate bottle has been a provocation published by Christopher Booker in the Telegraph.  Any bunnies who are not up to date on the quality of Booker's writing, well what John Nance Garner called a bucket of warm spit (well, he really called it something else, but the else could not be printed in those days), can read up at Real Climate, ATTP, Climate Etc, and etc.  Of course, this quickly entered the right wing food chain.

Now some, not Eli to be sure, have wondered about the Telegraph.  Today we need not wonder any more.  Peter Oborne the chief political commentator of the Telegraph has resigned, (yeah yeah not Osborne) and pulled back the curtain from that corner of oz.  Although as he writes, things have always been a bit off at the Telegraph, they have become downright suspicious ever since the paper was bought by the Barclay Brothers.

Who?

Well, think the Koch brothers, but with less of a sense of shame and more of entitlement.

Oborne details many stories where the commercial interests of the papers advertisers determined what did or did not appear in the paper.  The recent treatment of HSBCs troubles with the tax authorities in several countries but particularly the UK and Switzerland was the last straw but

The reporting of HSBC is part of a wider problem. On 10 May last year the Telegraph ran a long feature on Cunard’s Queen Mary II liner on the news review page. This episode looked to many like a plug for an advertiser on a page normally dedicated to serious news analysis. I again checked and certainly Telegraph competitors did not view Cunard’s liner as a major news story. Cunard is an important Telegraph advertiser.

The paper’s comment on last year’s protests in Hong Kong was bizarre. One would have expected the Telegraph of all papers to have taken a keen interest and adopted a robust position. Yet (in sharp contrast to competitors like the Times), I could not find a single leader on the subject.

At the start of December the Financial Times, the Times and the Guardian all wrote powerful leaders on the refusal by the Chinese government to allow a committee of British MPs into Hong Kong. The Telegraph remained silent. I can think of few subjects which anger and concern Telegraph readers more.

On 15 September the Telegraph published a commentary by the Chinese ambassador, just before the lucrative China Watch supplement. The headline of the ambassador’s article was beyond parody: ‘Let’s not allow Hong Kong to come between us’. On 17 September there was a four-page fashion pull-out in the middle of the news run, granted more coverage than the Scottish referendum. The Tesco false accounting story on 23 September was covered only in the business section. By contrast it was the splash, inside spread and leader in the Mail. Not that the Telegraph is short of Tesco coverage. Tesco pledging £10m to fight cancer, an inside peak at Tesco’s £35m jet and ‘Meet the cat that has lived in Tesco for 4 years’ were all deemed newsworthy.

Oborne continues and Eli ends

I duly went to see the chief executive in mid-December. He was civil, served me tea and asked me to take off my jacket. He said that I was a valued writer, and said that he wanted me to stay.

I expressed all of my concerns about the direction of the paper. I told him that I was not leaving to join another paper. I was resigning as a matter of conscience. Mr MacLennan agreed that advertising was allowed to affect editorial, but was unapologetic, saying that “it was not as bad as all that” and adding that there was a long history of this sort of thing at the Telegraph.  (emphasis added)

I have since consulted Charles Moore, the last editor of the Telegraph before the Barclays bought the paper in 2004. Mr Moore confessed that the published accounts of Hollinger Inc, then the holding company for the Telegraph, did not receive the scrutiny they deserved. But no newspaper in history has ever given an unfavourable gloss on its owner’s accounts. Beyond that, Mr Moore told me, there had been no advertising influence on the paper’s news coverage.

There are bridges to be sold in Brooklyn, and evidently buyers.

Rotating Eyeballs

Confessions of deniers at Judith Curry's blog @curryja #denierweirdness #notreally #climate http://t.co/UIB7ACJLzH
— Sou from Bundanga (@SouBundanga) February 16, 2015

@rgrumbine @SouBundanga The advanced degrees makes it fairly ludicrous to refer to them as science 'deniers'
— Judith Curry (@curryja) February 16, 2015

.@curryja @SouBundanga Being in denial is a matter of psychology. Degrees do not change psychology.
— Robert Grumbine (@rgrumbine) February 16, 2015

@rgrumbine @SouBundanga Sorry, I deny that line of reasoning is worth pursuing. If U can't convince such people, failure is with u
— Judith Curry (@curryja) February 16, 2015

@curryja Except you deleted comments that pointed out huge flaws in these people's "science." @rgrumbine @SouBundanga
— David Appell (@davidappell) February 16, 2015

@davidappell @rgrumbine @SouBundanga I am deleting all comments on the Denizens thread. Argue on the open thread.
— Judith Curry (@curryja) February 16, 2015

Eli would not even try to make this up.

Eli's Position on This Is Ghandi's on Western Civilization

File under how did Eli miss this.  While looking over the toos and fros of the APS Climate Change Statement enhanced review committee, Eli missed the bottom line, found at the POPA web site

On Oct. 10, POPA reported out a draft statement for consideration by the APS.

The APS Council will review the statement in November, followed by the APS Board of Directors. Consistent with APS by-laws, all APS members will be given an opportunity to review the statement and provide input during a comment period. The Climate Change Statement Review is a deliberative process. As a membership organization of more than 50,000 physicists, APS adheres to rigorous scientific standards in developing all its statements.

Can't wait for the October meeting minutes to be posted.

Nice place to rest

Walking back through Stanford campus yesterday, I decided to detour through the New Guinea sculpture garden and came across this simple memorial. I had no idea it was there.

The inscription on the top just reads "Teach your children well."

Luckwarmers

The current outrage of the week, or maybe it was last week, things move so fast here abouts, is what do you call the folks who deny the truth of scientific results.  Deniers, denialists, whatever.  There has been considerable posting and commenting on this, but there has been always been a constant undercurrent even back into the days of USENET.

Matt Ridley and David Rose touched this flare up off.  ATTP has been a willing participant with Richard Betts as guest blogger.  Of course, Mother Kloor had his say and today Justin Gillis at the NY Times has a piece up which will appear in dead trees next week

..the fight about what to call the various factions has been going on for a long time. Recently, though, the issue has taken a new turn, with a public appeal that has garnered 22,000 signatures and counting. 

The petition asks the news media to abandon the most frequently used term for people who question climate science, “skeptic,” and call them “climate deniers” instead.

The petition was organized by Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Labs and Forecast the Facts.  Gillis points out that while climate scientists may have fist fights about the details there is essential unanimity that climate change is an extraordinary risky thing.

As a first step, it helps to understand why they so vigorously denounce the science. The opposition is coming from a certain faction of the political right. Many of these conservatives understand that since greenhouse emissions are caused by virtually every economic activity of modern society, they are likely to be reduced only by extensive government intervention in the market.

So casting doubt on the science is a way to ward off such regulation. This movement is mainly rooted in ideology, but much of the money to disseminate its writings comes from companies that profit from fossil fuels.

and goes on to describe how the tree tries to distinguish itself from the nuts to maintain some credibility

Some make scientifically ludicrous claims, such as denying that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas or rejecting the idea that humans are responsible for its increase in the atmosphere. Others deny that Earth is actually warming, despite overwhelming evidence that it is, including the rapid melting of billions of tons of land ice all over the planet.
Yet the critics of established climate science also include a handful of people with credentials in atmospheric physics, and track records of publishing in the field. They acknowledge the heat-trapping powers of greenhouse gases, and they distance themselves from people who deny such basic points.

“For God’s sake, I can’t be lumped in with that crowd,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a former University of Virginia scientist employed by the libertarian  Cato Institute in Washington. 

Contrarian scientists like Dr. Michaels tend to argue that the warming will be limited, or will occur so gradually that people will cope with it successfully, or that technology will come along to save the day – or all of the above.

Eli has agreed in the interests of comity to call those who deny climate science, rejectionists.   OTOH, how to describe those fiendishly trying to define climate sensitivity down?

No one ever did a better job of this than the Idiot Tracker, using the then current term of art, lukewarmers and describing their tactic as jimmying the Overton window by minimizing climate sensitivity while acknowledging the greenhouse effect.

The real contrast here is not between "activists" and "skeptics" but between deniers and everybody else – between the science and the right-wing lunacy. But lukewarmers are exploiting the shift in the Overton window brought about by voluble climate deniers to position their radical views as a sane middle ground.

In part two, the Tracker points out the incoherence of the lukewarmer position because, if they want to play scientist, they simply cannot pick a value for climate sensitivity, or future warming, or whatever, but need to assign a range, in Baysean language a prior, in frequentist terms a distribution, but then you would need a few dozen Earths, so let Eli stick with the Rev. Bayes and his alter boys James Annan and Andrew Gelman.

So the critical question then becomes: what is the lukewarmers' range? Consensus scientists estimate climate sensitivity at about 3C, but concede that it might be 1.5C, 4.5C or even higher (and very unlikely to be much lower). What range do lukewarmers think is plausible?

So far, to my knowledge, no self-identified lukewarmer has been persuaded to answer this question. They will find it difficult. Because they have positioned themselves as participants in the scientific debate, they can hardly claim 100% confidence in X climate sensitivity, no error bars. If they are reasonable, they have to accept they they are as fallible as the rest of the scientific community, and although they think the climate sensitivity is 1.5C (say) it might be 1.0C, or 2.0C, or even (gasp!) 3.0C (where the consensus puts it).

When that is done the argument becomes not one about certainty or uncertainty but about risk.  What is your attitude towards risk, how much risk are the lukewarmers willing to take? And there are serious risks from climate change out there, sea level rise, crop failures, heat waves and the like.

Once you've acknowledged the greenhouse warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases, even a ludicrously low estimate of climate sensitivity will not save you from the iron logic of risk assessment: "maybe not" and even "probably not" are unacceptable for the kind of impacts we're talking about. Even 1% is too high. But, absent a new data set allowing a much, much more exactly calculation of climate sensitivity than we have been able to provide to date, there is no way even the most Pollyanna estimates of climate sensitivity and future emissions can provide any acceptable level of assurance that "business as usual" is anything but a road to ruin.

So how to describe this position?  Eli suggests that the proper description of this luckwarmers.  They feel lucky and are betting the house on it.  Unfortunately it is our house.