Brendan O'Neill and Hate

From The Australian, September 19 2008

Snow-roots campaign a form of green self-hate

Brendan O'Neill September 19, 2008

Article (in Blue)

At first it seemed like a joke. Unsolicited forumemails informed me I could buy badges (or buttons, as Americans call them) with the slogan Polar Bears for Obama. Then I heard there was a T-shirt, available from the CafePress online store for $26.99, that said Polar Bears for Obama-Biden beneath a picture of a sad-looking polar bear cub. You can also buy shopping bags, bumper stickers and mugs that celebrate the polar bear-Obama love-in. There is a website called PolarBears ForObama.com, which describes itself as a snow-roots campaign against Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who is a big meanie.

Comment: You can buy all sorts of rubbish that use Polar Bears as mottos. Have a look at Bundy ads in Australia for a start.

Good one, I thought. Sometimes elections need to be shaken up with a bit of quirkiness, and if it can be snow-coated, animal-related quirkiness, that's all the better. Only now I'm not so sure it was a joke after all. The polar bear issue - or what we may call, for want of a better and less insane phrase, the polar bear vote - has become big news. Serious newspapers have published articles titled "Love polar bears, loathe Sarah Palin". MSNBC analysed the differences between Palin and her boss, John McCain, on the polar bear issue. Palin is referred to as a polar bear hater, and at an anti-Republican rally in Alaska last week one protester wore a polar bear suit and wielded a sign saying: Polar Bear Moms Say No to Palin.

Comment: I put this down to the nuttiness of US politics and media

No doubt some will put this down to the nuttiness of US politics. In fact, it reveals more about the nuttiness of the politics of climate change. The politicisation of the polar bear in the US presidential campaign is hinged on Palin's opposition to the listing of polar bears as a threatened species. In May this year, Palin, as Governor of Alaska, said she would sue the federal Government for labelling polar bears as officially threatened. She argued that giving special protection to polar bear habitats would cripple oil and gas development off Alaska's northern and northwestern coasts. She also said there was not enough evidence to support the listing of polar bears. On this basis, she is known as a polar bear hater and campaigners are claiming that if polar bears had the vote they would definitely support Obama because, as one baby polar bear says, "My daddy says Sarah Palin doesn't like us."

Comment: Why shouldn't polar bears be part of the political landscape? If polar bear habitat and oil and gas leases are co-extensive, then it is reasonable to examine the impact of such development on polar bears. This is especially the case if polar bears are a threatened species. Sarah Palin is not an expert on polar bears and would need to listen to experts about the status of this animal and its habitat. In May of 2008 the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear as a threatened species: http://alaska.fws.gov/fisheries/mmm/polarbear/issues.htm

They state:

Final Rule Listing the Polar Bear as a Threatened Species Under the Endangered Species ActOn May 15, 2008, the Service published a Final Rule in the Federal Register listing the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This listing is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat. This loss of habitat puts polar bears at risk of becoming endangered in the foreseeable future, the standard established by the ESA for designating a threatened species. The Service also published on May 15, 2008, an Interim Final Rule for the polar bear under Section 4(d) of the ESA.

For Sarah Palin to claim that she knows more about polar bears than the best available science is complete hubris. It is no wonder that some people, perhaps some of them Obama supporters, think that Palin does not like polar bears or at least sees oil and gas as more important than biodiversity.

Call me a polar bear hater (actually, some people already have), but it just so happens that Palin has a point. There is not exactly a groundswell of evidence that polar bears are going extinct. In fact, experts claim global polar bear numbers have increased during the past 40 years.

In 2001, the World Conservation Union found that of 20 polar bear populations, one or possibly two were in decline, while more than half were stable and two sub-populations were increasing. Its more recent study in 2006 found a somewhat less rosy picture, but it wasn't that bad: of 19 polar bear populations, five were declining, five were stable and two were increasing (there wasn't enough data to judge the fortunes of the remaining seven populations). The global population has increased from about 5000 in the 1960s to 25,000 today.

Comment: In western Hudson Bay, Canada, where recent studies of polar bear numbers have been undertaken by qualified scientists, they found that the population has reduced by 22% from 1194 to 935 between 1987 and 2004. Another population in Alaska that has been studied also show reduced numbers and lower adult weights and increased cub mortality. Populations that have increased in number (only two have been reported) are in areas where numbers are recovering from hunting pressure and where protection is now being provided. The US F & W state:

The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group reclassified the polar bear as a vulnerable species on the IUCN's Red List of Endangered Species at their most recent meeting (Seattle, 2005). They reported that of the 19 subpopulations of polar bears, five are declining, five are stable, two are increasing, and seven have insufficient data on which to base a decision.

Today's widespread polar bear concern is shot through with myth and misinformation. One of the nine scientific errors found in Al Gore's horror film An Inconvenient Truth, following a case brought in the British High Court last year, concerned his claims about polar bears. Gore claimed a scientific study had discovered that polar bears were drowning because they had to swim long distances to find ice. Yet the only scientific study Gore's team could provide as evidence was one showing that four polar bears had recently been found drowned because of a storm. According to Bjorn Lomborg, the sceptical environmentalist, the international tale about polar bears suffering at the hands of ruthless mankind springs from this single sighting of four dead bears the day after an abrupt windstorm.

Comment: Concern about polar bears is based on solid empirical evidence. Al Gore is not a polar bear expert so cannot be used to as a reference on their status. If the story of drowned bears is ambiguous then Gore should acknowledge this. The use of Lomborg to justify any empirical claim about the status and fate of polar bears is likely to be risky. He knows less about polar bears than Gore. See:http://healthearth.blogspot.com/search/label/polar%20bears

It may be true that as a result of hunting and human intervention around the North Pole, polar bears will suffer. But the politics of the polar bear is not a scientific, fact-driven phenomenon: it is a morality tale. It is an anthropomorphic story every bit as daft as Bambi in which the polar bear has become a symbolic victim of man's wanton destruction of the planet.

Comment: If global warming is removing the sea ice habitat of polar bears then it is reasonable to see them as a symbol of what is happening to the world under climate change. An iconic animal in a part of the world that is warming faster than any where else is threatened by the loss of its habitat. Bambi was part of Disneyland, polar bears are part of the high Arctic.

The polar bear has become the poster boy of the green lobby. It featured heavily in An Inconvenient Truth. Leonardo DiCaprio posed with one on the front cover of a special green issue of Vanity Fair. The bear he posed with - Knut from Berlin Zoo - is having his life story turned into a blockbuster movie, with Suri Cruise (daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes) reportedly lined up to provide his voice.

Comment: If celebrities wish to publicise the polar bear and its status as threatened then so be it. If celebrities wish to be green advocates and make money out of it then so be it ... in a free society its a free market!

Leaflets inviting people to join green movements now come with photos of stranded (or allegedly stranded) polar bears. So do adverts for low-energy light bulbs.

Comment: In Australia we use a polar bear to promote a popular brand of rum. Is O'Neill suggesting that our beloved Bundy bear should be banned?

It was not scientific fact that elevated the polar bear to this privileged status of Bambi-style victimhood; it was the human self-loathing of the environmentalist moment.We are expected to believe that our most simple everyday activities, from what light bulbs we use to how many cups of tea we drink, are directly and terribly affecting polar bears thousands of kilometres away. So now you find serious green commentators saying things such as: The idea that turning on your kettle helps to drown polar bears has never really sunk in with many people. Yes, there's a reason for that: because when I turn on my kettle it has absolutely no effect whatsoever on any polar bear anywhere in the world. And that is a fact.

Comment: The claim is made that "human self loathing" is the ultimate cause of the current status of the polar bear and that everyday activities are the cause of its decline. O'Neill tries to make fun of the idea that the power that he uses from his kettle has no effect on any polar bear any where in the world. As at the time of writing this response, there are 6,724,531,388 people on planet earth. O'Neill is so egocentric that has has forgotten that there are a lot people turning kettles on all over the world. And that is a fact.

On the basis of some twisted or at least questionable facts, and conveniently cropped, heart-rending photos, the polar bear has come to represent human guilt and self-doubt. In the past, we Catholics were told not to misbehave because God would be displeased. It was said that if we wasted our food, then a little black baby would die. Today we are told that if we don't watch our energy use, trim our carbon footprint, follow Gore and make regular donations to various green groups, then polar bears will die. The great white bear of the north has taken the place of God in the clouds as the barometer of human behaviour and morality.

Comment: The only religious thinking present on this topic is O'Neill's refusal to examine the facts about polar bears, global warming and their loss of habitat. As a result, he is in much the same position as those in fundamentalist religions who deny the evidence for the evolution of species and the age of the earth.

The political promotion of this animal represents the denigration of human desire, the subordination of the human will to the animalistic fearmongering of environmentalism.
In a more profound sense, then, the politics of the polar bear represents the disavowal of human interests, which come to be seen as grubby, greedy and destructive.

Comment: It is reasonable for people to see the potential loss of Arctic sea ice and hence, the polar bear as symbolic of much that is going wrong with the human-nature relationship. It is not misanthropic to be concerned about the foundation of all life on earth, life that supports human social and economic existence.

The intervention of the polar bear even into the US election is striking. That many Democratic Party supporters and radical activists are claiming to act on behalf of the polar bear, even dressing up as bears for anti-Palin protests, shows the extent to which environmentalism threatens to empty politics of its human, self-interested, democratic component. Some people are not representing themselves in the election but are speaking for the cute (eh?), voiceless polar bear. Polar Bears for Obama does not spring from the typically dumb Disneyfication of US politics but from the misanthropic, people-less politics of being green.

Brendan O'Neill is editor of online magazine Spiked.

Comment: O'Neill has revealed himself to devoid of empathy to life forms other than humans. If people wish to raise the ethical issue of interspecies equity at the same time as raising issues of intra and inter-generational equity in the context of an election campaign, then this is an extension of democracy, not a contraction.

What is truly misanthropic is the position so clearly put by O'Neill that all that matters on this earth is human self interest and that human interests have no connection to the rest of life on earth. People who are green have understood that humanity lives on a foundation provided by the richness and productivity of nature. It is plants (greens) and their ability to convert sunlight into usable energy that inspires people to become environmentalists.

Only people who truly hate humanity could allow the deliberate destruction of the earth's ability to support life (including human life) via global warming and climate change. Only a person devoid of any form of empathy could fail to see the polar bear as a symbol of what is currently going wrong.

Glenn Albrecht 19 Sept 2008

Anti Marohasy

We need to take a good hard look at the type of ‘facts’ Jennifer Marohasy (JM) presents before signing on to her view of the world.

Also, take a good hard look at the above photo supporting the article. It shows a river with many dead trees (river red gums?) on its edges. The caption says “Catastrophe averted: Salinity levels in the Murray have halved, but you won’t hear that from global warming zealots”. Is Marohasy/The Australian actually suggesting that the landscape in the photograph shows a system in recovery? It looks more like a catastrophe to me.

Case of the warm and fuzzy: Jennifer Marohasy August 23, 2008
(Jennifer Marohasy is a senior fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs)
The Article: See http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24224964-11949,00.html

Article Text (in Blue)

When Nicholas Stern released his influential British government report on the economics of climate change in October 2006, it said that the east coast of Australia had suffered declining rainfall. In the same year, the Howard government pledged an additional $500 million to stop the trend of rising salinity in the Murray River.

Comment: Stern is an economist, not a climate scientist. No climate scientist has made the claim that a decline in East Coast rainfall is causally linked to salinity levels in the Murray River. Most scientists accept that salinity levels are connected to land clearing and poor land management. The purpose of the implication is to confuse the reader about causal connections and suggest that getting facts wrong in one domain is equivalent to getting facts wrong in another.

Three claims have been repeated so often they are accepted as fact: global temperatures are rising, we have less rainfall and so water is becoming scarce, and salinity in the Murray River is rising.

Comment: All three issues need to be examined very carefully to establish the facts. Claims about global rising temperatures have nothing necessarily to do with claims about less rainfall in Eastern Australia and rising salinity in the Murray Darling Basin

Of course there is the old adage: lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. But we can keep it simple and just consider data from observations of the real world and from the most reputable institution since records began for the particular issue in which we are interested. It is important to not confuse real-world data (also known as observational data) with output from computer models because computer models generate scenarios that may or may not come true.

Comment: A reasonable point, but models are partly constructed by using data from past observations and projections based on them into future scenarios. It is not either/or. Let’s look at both the real world data she chooses to present and the models and see how they fit ... good or bad.

Observational data on rainfall for the entire east coast of Australia is available from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology with yearly averages for all the sites back to 1900.
But, contrary to the Stern report, this chart does not show declining rainfall; rather, it indicates that rainfall was very low in the early 1900s, that there were some very wet years in the late '50s and early '70s, and overall the trend is one of a slight increase in rainfall during the past 107 years.

Comment: JM claims that the trend is slightly increasing from 1900 – 2007. Given that 1900 was within the time of the Federation Drought, then the graph is likely to be biased by this low rainfall starting point. However, if we look at the trend from 1970 – 2007, shown in the diagram below produced by the same ‘reputable institution’ the picture is very different. It is abundantly clear that in this period the rainfall trend has declined significantly in Eastern Australia, particularly in most of eastern QLD, Southern NSW, Victoria and Northern Tasmania. Of course, JM would not wish to include the real- world data shown in this diagram in her article.

Stern got it wrong, perhaps because he was confusing output from computer models with the real-world data. There are a lot of computer models that foretell dire environmental catastrophe that may not eventuate.

Comment: Stern might have been badly advised but if his advice was that in the last 40 years the east coast of Australia has had significantly declining rainfall, then the advice was correct. This is especially so if the focus is on the southern half of NSW and Victoria. Declining rainfall in eastern Australia is consistent with some climate science models (CSIRO) of the impacts of climate change for eastern Australia. Computer models are used for all sorts of purposes, however, if they predict “dire environmental catastrophe” the people behind the model are usually trying to warn us to avoid such a catastrophe.

Rainfall data for the Murray-Darling Basin is also available from the Bureau of Meteorology. The overall trend is one of increasing rainfall since 1900. The past few years show below-average rainfall for the region and indeed there has been drought. The low river inflows have been exacerbated by more groundwater pumping, more plantation forestry, including in the upper Murrumbidgee, and more salt interception schemes along the Murray River.

Comment: As with rainfall for eastern Australia generally, the story from 1970 to the present on the MDB is one of major decline in rainfall, prolonged drought periods and record high temperatures.

Salt interception schemes evaporate water to trap the salt. In the '80s, computer models predicted that Adelaide's drinking water soon would be too salty to drink because of declining water quality and rising salinity levels in the Murray River. Measurements of salinity are recorded from many different sites along the Murray River, including at Morgan, which is immediately upstream from the offshoots from Adelaide's drinking water. The data from Morgan enables us to get an idea of how salt levels are trending in the real world, as opposed to computer-generated scenarios.

Concerns with salinity have resulted in levels being tested from the '30s. Salinity levels rose dramatically during the '70s and peaked at Morgan in 1982, which was a drought year. Then the Murray-Darling Basin Commission implemented a catchment-wide drainage management plan and started building salt interception schemes, and since then salinity levels have more than halved.

Comment: All this is likely to be quite correct. Some good environmental management solved a potentially serious problem. However, salinity levels are rising in parts of the catchment, particularly in the southern part. In addition, in times of very low flow, it is generally agreed that salinity levels in the Murray decline. None of this is, however, relevant to long-term climate change. It is also possible that the salinity problem has been displaced from surface water to ground water. Research is under way to find out what has happened to salinity levels in MDB ground water. Salinity levels in the total MDB are not the same issue as salinity levels in the Murray River as measured at one point (Morgan) in South Australia. Salinity is a red, salty herring in the climate change and global warming debate.

Measuring global temperatures is much more contentious than measuring salinity or rainfall. Issues include how to combine the data from all the weather stations across the globe and the data is usually presented as a temperature anomaly rather than, for example, just a global average. A temperature anomaly is derived from the average temperature for a specific but arbitrarily defined period and usually emphasises the extent to which temperatures have increased. The Bureau of Meteorology relies on the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in conjunction with the Hadley Centre of the British Met Office for its information on global temperatures. This information is available on the internet going back as far as 1850 and shows the deviation from the period 1961 to 1990.

But when global temperatures are presented just as a simple average with a vertical axis that spans the range of temperatures experienced in a place such as Ipswich (west of Brisbane) during a single year, the global rise in average temperatures is not that obvious because the mean temperature since 1850 has increased by less than 1C.

Comment: The reason for presenting data in terms of anomalies is given by Hansen:

Anomalies and Absolute Temperatures

Our analysis concerns only temperature anomalies, not absolute temperature. Temperature anomalies are computed relative to the base period 1951-1980. The reason to work with anomalies, rather than absolute temperature, is that absolute temperature varies markedly in short distances, while monthly or annual temperature anomalies are representative of a much larger region. Indeed, we have shown (Hansen and Lebedeff, 1987) that temperature anomalies are strongly correlated out to distances of the order of 1000 km. For a more detailed discussion, see The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature.

Further, according to the CRU:
29 April 2008

The recent fall in global temperatures has led to increasing speculation that global warming is a thing of the past.
Despite this fall, a look at global average temperatures reveals a different picture. It shows large variability in our climate year-on-year – warmer some years, cooler in others - but what is very clear is an underlying rise over the longer term, almost certainly caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.
There are a number of natural factors contributing to this interannual variability, the single most important being the El Niño Southern Oscillation or ENSO.
The global climate is currently being influenced by the cold phase of this oscillation, known as La Niña (see Expert speaks on La Niña). The current La Niña began to develop in early 2007, having a significant cooling effect on the global average temperature. Despite this, 2007 was one of the ten warmest years since global records began in 1850 with a temperature some 0.4 °C above average. Indeed, the years 2001-2007 recorded an average of 0.44 °C above the 1961-90 average, which is 0.21 °C warmer than corresponding values for the years 1991-2000
Another way of looking at the warming trend is that 1999 was a similar year to 2007 as far as the cooling effects of La Niña are concerned. The global temperature in 1999 was 0.26 °C above the 1961-90 average, whereas 2007 was 0.37 °C above this average - 0.11 °C warmer than 1999.

In addition, while a rise in temperature of less than one degree over the last one hundred years might seem insignificant to a lay person, climate scientists have pointed out that the greater part of this warming has been in the last 50 years and that the overall upward trend is of great concern. Again, the Hadley Centre says:

Global average temperatures have risen by nearly 0.8 °C since the late 19th century, and risen at about 0.2 °C per decade over the past 25 years.
Warming in the last 50 years is unprecedented in, at least, 1,300 years, and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1995.
This does not mean that next year will necessarily be warmer than last year, but the long-term trend is for rising temperatures.

The graph provided by JM, Global temperature anomaly (1850-2008), clearly shows a warming trend, particularly from the mid C20 onwards.

The data from the CRU is generally accepted as accurate by those who subscribe to the idea that carbon dioxide is driving dangerous man-made global warming. In contrast, many sceptics of man-made global warming argue that the only reliable measure of global temperatures is from satellites.

Comment: The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that carbon dioxide is driving anthropogenic global warming. The implication that acceptance of data accuracy is tied to particular views on the causes of climate change is invalid. Climate scientists generally agree that sea temperature, surface temperature and satellite data are all important. Sea temperature is particularly important because the ocean is a heat sink. In the US, the Goddard Centre uses air and ocean data from weather stations, ships and satellites to depict temperature trends. Their graph shows “2007 was warmer than 2006, continuing the strong warming trend of the past 30 years”. See: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

It seems that JM picks only data sets that might support her particular view about global warming and climate change. The argument that satellite data supports a trend of global cooling over the last decade is at best controversial.

Ross McKitrick from Canada's University of Guelph argues that 50 per cent of global warming measured by land-based thermometers in the US since 1980 is due to local influences of man-made structures, also known as the urban heat island effect. There also have been issues with the additions and losses of weather stations; for example, many weather stations were lost in places such as Siberia with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Thermometer temperature data has been collected in the polar regions only since the '40s and calculating the mean temperature at the poles is still difficult.

Comment: Ross McKitrick is an economist, not a climate scientist. It is well documented that he has connections to Exxon-Mobil funded think tanks such as the Fraser Institute in Vancouver and the George C Marshall Institute in the US. This does not invalidate his position, but it should make us cautious about it. There is a considerable body of material extremely critical of McKitrick and the methodological foundations of his work. The impact of the heat island effect has been debunked by numerous studies. See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm

James Hansen, from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has explained the general difficulty of measuring surface temperatures.
"Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 feet (1.52m) above the ground and different again from 10 feet or 50 feet above the ground," he says. "Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rainforest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation.
"A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 feet of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT (surface air temperature) we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted."

Comment: Hansen immediately continues in the quoted section to explain the use of SAT:

Q. If the reported SATs are not the true SATs, why are they still useful?A. The reported temperature is truly meaningful only to a person who happens to visit the weather station at the precise moment when the reported temperature is measured, in other words, to nobody. However, in addition to the SAT the reports usually also mention whether the current temperature is unusually high or unusually low, how much it differs from the normal temperature, and that information (the anomaly) is meaningful for the whole region. Also, if we hear a temperature (say 70F), we instinctively translate it into hot or cold, but our translation key depends on the season and region, the same temperature may be 'hot' in winter and 'cold' in July, since by 'hot' we always mean 'hotter than normal', i.e. we all translate absolute temperatures automatically into anomalies whether we are aware of it or not. See: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html

Given these difficulties, an alternative is to use temperature data from satellites. Since 1979, orbiting satellites have measured temperature in a completely different way from the traditional method of using thermometers.
The satellites measure microwave radiation and the research focus has been on getting a broadly representative measure of lower atmosphere temperature.
The satellite data is available only since 1979, but it does give a good overview of how global temperatures have been trending during the past 30 years. Global temperatures peaked in 1998, associated with an El Nino warming event, then dropped quite dramatically before stabilising for a few years and dropping again recently. The satellite data on global temperatures indicates we presently have a global cooling, not a global warming, trend.

Comment: In 2006 in the USA, a National Research Council panel report concluded:

The report states that the 20-year period monitored by satellite-mounted microwave sounding units was too short to indicate long-term climate behaviour. Wallace says that if earlier tropospheric temperature data from balloons are taken into account, and the record is examined over 30 or 40 years, the discrepancy between the surface and the troposphere disappears. (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v403/n6767/full/403233a0.html)

Since 2004, publications have argued that the troposphere is warming at a rate predicted by climate models. From Nature 2004:

For years, climate researchers have struggled with an apparent discrepancy in the data on global warming: temperatures in the lower atmosphere have been rising far slower than models predict, given how fast the Earth's surface is heating.
The discrepancy has been central to the arguments of sceptics about global warming. But according to a study in this issue of Nature1 it can be explained by interactions between the troposphere - the first 11 km of the atmosphere - and the stratosphere above it.
In the study, a team from the University of Washington at Seattle and the Air Resources Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), based in Maryland, analysed microwave emissions from the atmosphere. The emissions were recorded between 1979 and 2001 by NOAA's polar orbiting satellites. The data can be used to deduce temperatures in different layers of the atmosphere. And the study finds that stratospheric cooling, a known effect of greenhouse gases, appears to account for discrepancies between temperature trends on the ground and in the troposphere.[My emphasis]
The team, led by Qiang Fu, an atmospheric researcher at the University of Washington, subtracted the impact of such cooling from data on the stratosphere and performed a statistical analysis, which found temperature trends consistent with observed warming on the surface and the predictions of climate models.
The finding is "a stunningly elegant and accurate method of clarifying global trends", says Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder,Colorado.
See: http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=4660&method=full#b1

The claim that recent trends show a marked cooling are also contradicted by data that combines global land and ocean temperatures. From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (USA):

The combined average global land and ocean surface temperatures for June 2008 ranked eighth warmest for June since worldwide records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Also, globally it was the ninth warmest January – June period on record.

Global Highlights
· The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for June 2008 was 60.8 degrees F, which is 0.9 degrees F above the 20th century mean of 59.9 degrees F.
· Separately, the global land surface temperature was 57.2 degrees F, which is 1.3 degrees F above the 20th century mean of 55.9 degrees F.
· The global ocean surface temperature was 62.2 degrees F, which is 0.7 degrees F above the 20th century mean of 61.5 degrees F.
· For the January – June period, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 57.1 degrees F, which is 0.8 degrees F about the 20th century mean of 56.3 degrees F.

Also, from NOAA:

Global Temperatures

For 2007, the global land and ocean surface temperature was the fifth warmest on record. Separately, the global land surface temperature was warmest on record while the global ocean temperature was 9th warmest since records began in 1880. Some of the largest and most widespread warm anomalies occurred from eastern Europe to central Asia.
Including 2007, seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1995. The global average surface temperature has risen between 0.6°C and 0.7°C since the start of the twentieth century, and the rate of increase since 1976 has been approximately three times faster than the century-scale trend.
The greatest warming has taken place in high latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Anomalous warmth in 2007 contributed to the lowest Arctic sea ice extent since satellite records began in 1979, surpassing the previous record low set in 2005 by a remarkable 23 percent. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, this is part of a continuing trend in end-of-summer Arctic sea ice extent reductions of approximately 10 percent per decade since 1979.

The joint authors of the ‘satellite data reveals cooling trend’ hypothesis, Dr Roy Spencer and John Christy, conceded in 2005 that their research was flawed. In a NY Times article in 2005 it is stated that:

The scientists who developed the original troposphere temperature records from satellite data, John R. Christy and Roy W. Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, conceded yesterday that they had made a mistake but said that their revised calculations still produced a warming rate too small to be a concern.
"Our view hasn't changed," Dr. Christy said. "We still have this modest warming."
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/science/earth/12climate.long.html?ex=1281499200&en=2588a631b8c5cc5d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Dr Roy Spencer is a well known CC sceptic and the source of the graph that JM uses in The Australian. His views should be treated with great caution. Below are his connections to right wing think tanks in the USA, all substantially funded by fossil fuel interests:

Spencer and the Heartland Institute
Spencer is listed as an author for the Heartland Institute, a US think tank that has received $561,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
The Heartland Institute has also received funding from Big Tobacco over the years and continues to make the claim that "anti-smoking advocates" are exaggerating the health threats of smoking.
Spencer and the George C. Marshall Institute
Spencer is listed as an "Expert" with the George C. Marshall Institute, a US think tank that has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
Spencer and Tech Central Station
Listed as an author for Tech Central Station daily (TCS), an organization that until recently was owned and operated by a Republican lobby firm called DCI Group.
See: http://www.desmogblog.com/node/1397

Finally, there are acknowledged problems with satellite data and as with other forms of measurement and modelling it is wise not to found an argument about global warming solely on them.

An "Executive Summary" by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, co-authored by John Christy of UAH concludes:

"Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde [weather balloon] data have been identified and corrected. While these data are consistent with the results from climate models at the global scale, discrepancies in the tropics remain to be resolved.This difference between models and observations may arise from errors that are common to all models, from errors in the observational data sets, or from a combination of these factors. The second explanation is favored, but the issue is still open."
See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-troposphere.htm

Many scientists, environmental activists and politicians have staked their reputations on the idea that global temperatures are going to keep steadily rising, so it is not surprising that they are ignoring the past few years of data from the satellites. But the stakes are very high.

Comment: Many people, including climate scientists and environmental activists, are paying close attention to all temperature data, including satellite data. Most wish that temperatures would show a trend downwards because they do not wish to see a runaway greenhouse event and climate chaos. By ignoring the overwhelming body of all types of evidence about long-term warming trends, the close fit between such data and models, JM seems to have a vested interest in perpetuating falsehoods about the world cooling.

The Australian Government is planning to introduce an emissions trading scheme, also described as a carbon pollution reduction scheme, on the basis that that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels is contributing to dangerous global warming.
Many people assume that such a drastic action is premised on good evidence establishing a proven causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and global warming.
But it is not, instead relying on computer models, claims of a scientific consensus and the belief that global temperatures continue to creep higher and higher. Many false claims are made about the state of our environment on an almost daily basis but, because most Australians are illiterate when it comes to science and maths, they are mostly just accepted.

Comment: Yes there is evidence … but is it good? JM answers, “But it is not”. She states that there is no good evidence. JM claims that computer models, scientific consensus and a “belief” that global temperatures continue to rise are not good evidence. Her argument goes that many Australians just accept this so-called evidence because they “are illiterate when it comes to science”.

It is an act of extreme hubris to claim that one person (JM) knows better than a consensus of the rest of climate scientists and meteorologists about how to understand and model the global climate and the Australian meteorological history. Climate science accepts that global temperatures do not show a continuous “creep higher and higher”. They agree that although big picture climate factors such as El Nino and La Nina play critically important roles and generate peaks and troughs in the global temperature over time, the overall trend is higher.

It is true that false claims are made about the state of the environment. It is also true that many true claims are made about the state of the environment. The claim that “most” Australians are illiterate with respect to the science and data on the environment is insulting to most Australians.

The issue of scientific illiteracy must surely apply to JM as she systematically ignores the weight of scientific evidence about global warming in the international peer reviewed scientific literature.

Most Australians rely on television and newspapers for information about environmental issues. If this reporting incorporated some charts, in the same way business reporting does as a matter of course, then there might be at least some quality control.

Comment: The compilation of charts, even in business, relies on quality data. Given the unanticipated global fiscal meltdown under the sub-prime fiasco, we might wonder if business graphs in the last 10 years have provided us with well compiled information (data). Presumably, the economists and business data crunchers were ‘sub-prime’ in their information gathering and dissemination? Charts might reflect the interests that compile them, irrespective of the domain. Selective use of historical rainfall data, presented in a graph to establish misleading claims about rainfall trends in Australia, is a classic example of sub-prime environmental education.

But, ultimately, good policy is going to require that a much larger percentage of Australians having a higher level of scientific literacy.
The alternative is important policy continuing to be decided on hearsay rather than evidence because you just can't trust the environmental advocates. Indeed, they may care more about the environment than the truth.

Comment: Increasing levels of scientific literacy in the Australian community is a good thing. There is no evidence to support the claim that good policy in Australia is made on the basis of hearsay. There is no evidence to support the assertion that environmental advocates operate only on the basis of hearsay rather than evidence. Such a claim seems to be based on hearsay. People who argue the case for potable water, clean air and fertile soil are environmental advocates, but why should we feel that they cannot be trusted? The ‘truth’ and the ‘environment’ can logically occupy the same space and people of good will can care about both.
JM wants us to believe her, and to agree that environmental advocates will deceive us (not tell the truth) in order to care for the environment. Advocates of all sorts may lie to promote their causes and climate change sceptics are quite capable of lying in order to protect the interests of those who pay for their activities.

MANY people want to save the environment, but few people are confident of interpreting a chart or graph of scientific information on, say, water quality or global temperatures. So, when it comes to environmental issues most Australians just believe what the experts say. After all, people who care about the environment are the good guys, caring and trustworthy.

Comment: Yes it is difficult to compile accurate graphs and give expert interpretation of them. Experts are often useful in these tasks. JM presumably is claiming to be an expert in the compilation and interpretation of graphs.

The implication that people who care about the environment are the experts and that they are good, caring and trustworthy … is meant to be ironic. JM wants us to think that although she is an expert, she is not part of a conspiracy to deceive and lie to the rest of us illiterate people. Only environmentalists and people who “care about the environment” do that.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that many so-called experts are non-caring and not trustworthy. Many experts produce data without being environmentalists or any other kind of ‘ist’. Meteorologists, for example, produce expert data on weather without being normally considered ‘environmentalists’.

JM is attempting to confuse readers by putting ‘experts’, ‘environmentalists’ and ‘caring’ together for the purposes of subjecting the nexus to criticism. No such nexus necessarily exists. Despite this, there are many scientific experts who are good people, are concerned about the environment and who are happy to be called environmentalists.

Furthermore, when it comes to issues such as global warming, we are told there is a consensus, that most scientists agree about most things and this should make us feel even more secure believing what they tell us about the sorry state of planet Earth. But who should check what the experts are saying about environmental issues, and at what point? When it comes to business issues, whether interest rates or commodity prices, we are shown charts, hard data, and people who are interested in the business issues would expect no less.

Comment: JM’s implication is that if environmental experts were subject to the same discipline as business experts, then we would get better information about the environment. Note the point made above about so-called business experts and their graphs in the context of market failure. Her implied view that the business model of information gathering and analysis is superior to the scientific model needs a great deal more argument before it would be even remotely convincing. Without such detailed argumentation and evidence, it appears to be based on hearsay from biased sources.

Environmental issues are very much like business issues: they are about numbers and trends. For example, business analysts are interested in whether the price of oil is going up or coming down and Al Gore tells us that global temperatures are going up. But if your next stock investment depended on what Gore was telling you the business market was doing, wouldn't you also seek information from other sources to be sure?

Comments: Environmental issues are about much more than numbers and trends as per business. The biophysical environment is the foundation for all productive capacity on earth, including human economic activity. Businesses can fail and nothing much happens except the loss of large amounts of money, but if the biophysical foundations of life fail, then we lose the ability to sustain ourselves.

Al Gore is an ex-politician and a published author on environmental matters. He is not an expert on climate change but relies for his information on climate data, the IPCC and other scientific bodies that research the climate and produce the expert data. The scientific community tells Gore and the rest of the world that the world is on a trend of rising global temperature.

If your next environmental decision depended on what Jennifer Marohasy was telling you the environment was doing, wouldn’t you seek information from other sources to be sure?”

Overall Assessment

The article, in Australia’s only national newspaper, reveals much about the motivation of Jennifer Marohasy. At first glance, one could be forgiven for thinking that her ‘line’ is a form of religious faith or zealotry erected as a defence against all the evidence to the contrary. Like flat earthers and the Church at the time of Copernicus and Galileo in the face of evidence of a heliocentric solar system and imperfect heavenly spheres, a closed system of belief is created where all counter-evidence is reinterpreted as proof of the truth of her own position. Data is then manipulated to defend the indefensible. Graphs are produced to show misleading and erroneous ‘trends’ and advocacy misrepresented as science.

However, like the many climate change sceptics she relies on for her data and graphs, JM is intimately associated with a privately funded think tank. She is an employee of the Institute for Public Affairs, a think tank funded by commercial enterprise. As such, she is expected to provide value for money and deliver messages that are supportive of the corporate interests. She is not a dispassionate or disinterested commentator on global warming and climate change; she is an advocate for the interests of those who fund the IPA. It should come as no surprise that the major bodies funding the work of JM include BHP-Billiton, the Western Mining Corporation, Monsanto, Clough Engineering, News Limited (publisher of the Australian Newspaper), Caltex, Esso, Shell, Gunns and companies in the electricity generation industry (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_of_Public_Affairs ).

The evidence for the long-term warming of the planet is now overwhelming and that JM has resorted to the use of distraction with irrelevant issues such as salinity, over-reliance on dodgy satellite data and short term changes in recent weather patterns (not trends in long-term climate) in order to make her case is revealing.

The argument that Australia should not implement a greenhouse gas reduction scheme because of a lack of evidence has empirical and ethical faults. I hope the scientific community can further take her to task on the lack of scientific credibility of her case.

On the ethical front, the hypocrisy of arguing that Australians are scientifically illiterate and easily manipulated by vested interests and then, in a calculated manner, contributing to that illiteracy and deliberately manipulating them with poor data, misleading graphs and confusing argumentation is unforgivable.

The issue of global warming and climate change is far too important to leave to paid representatives of a particular set of vested interests in Australia or elsewhere. If, because of the ‘work’ of sceptics such as JM, individuals, businesses and governments delay action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming, then these people must be held especially responsible for the hugely negative changes that are now taking place to the foundations of all life, agriculture and economies.

We must resist the anti-global warming zealots and corporate lackeys and put our trust in those who, without vested interest, are telling us that we must act now to avoid a very nasty future.


Glenn Albrecht 07/09/2008