Category Archives: Climate science disinformation

National Post’s Lawrence Solomon touts global cooling, part 1: Hiding the decline in Arctic sea ice

Posted on May 5, 2010 | 16 comments

Lawrence Solomon at the Frontier Centre

As Canada’s newspaper of record for climate science disinformation, the National Post is home to many climate “skeptic” voices, all drawing on the same standard (and repeatedly debunked) memes, but each with his own distinct style. I’ve often examined the stylings of Lorne Gunter, who specializes in hyperventilating attacks on climate scientists, complemented by repackaged press releases from the likes of Marc Morano (as seen in Gunter’s recent, um, discussion of the work of Mojib Latif).

Lawrence Solomon, National Post columnist and  head of the “free-market environmentalist” lobby group Energy Probe, has received less of my attention (although his weirdly paranoid “analysis” of Google’s supposed censorship of “climategate” was certainly a classic).

That’s an oversight that I intend to rectify, starting with a dissection of Solomon’s recent misrepresentation of the latest Arctic sea ice extent data, said to “augur” coming “global cooling”. Incredibly, Solomon even claims that the latest data “acts to disprove” models projecting continued decline of Arctic sea ice. That assertion flies in the face of the relentless downward trend in sea ice extent that has continued unabated, or possibly even accelerated, since the release of the last IPCC report in early 2007.

Continue reading →

16 Comments

Posted in Climate science disinformation

Tagged , ,

Open Thread # 3

Posted on April 23, 2010 | 32 comments

Here’s another open thread for general discussion. Comments not related to specific posts should be posted here. (If there’s enough interest, I’ll have a new open thread every month).

32 Comments

Posted in Climate science disinformation

Wegman and Said on social networks: More dubious scholarship

Posted on April 22, 2010 | 108 comments

Today I continue my exploration of the dubious scholarship in the contrarian touchstone known as the Wegman report, this time focusing on the report’s background section on social network analysis. As many readers may recall, Wegman et al used a simplistic analysis of co-author relationships to speculate about supposed lack of independence between researchers in paleoclimatology, accompanied by lapses of rigour in the peer review process. This, of course, echoed similar accusations by self-styled climate auditor Steve McIntyre.

In both the original Wegman report and a subsequent follow-up paper by Yasmin Said, Wegman and two others, the background sections on social network research show clear and compelling instances of apparent plagiarism. The three main sources, used almost verbatim and without attribution, have now been identified. These include a Wikipedia article and a classic sociology text book by Wasserman and Faust. But the papers rely even more on the third source, a hands-on text book that explores social network concepts via the Pajek analysis software package – the same tool used by the Wegman team to analyze “hockey stick” author Michael Mann’s co-author network.

Not only that, but the later Said et al paper acknowledges support from the National Institutes on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, as well as the Army Research Laboratory, raising a host of new issues and questions. And chief among those questions is this: Will George Mason University now finally do the right thing and launch a complete investigation of the actions and scholarship of Wegman and Said?

Continue reading →

108 Comments

Posted in Climate science disinformation

Tagged , , , , , ,

McKitrick gets it wrong on IPCC

Posted on April 5, 2010 | 47 comments

The latest climate contrarian meme appears to be (baseless) accusations of scientific “gatekeeping” and “censorship”. Ross McKitrick provides an example of this unmistakable trend, with a blow-by-blow account of difficulties encountered in publication of his  upcoming paper on the supposed contamination of the surface temperature record. The new paper purports to debunk a single statement in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, one denigrating the conclusions of a previous paper by  McKitrick and Patrick Michaels.

McKitrick criticizes the IPCC assertion that “locations of greatest socioeconomic development are also those that have been most warmed by atmospheric circulation“. He  claims that other sections cited to support that statement do no such thing. But it turns out that McKitrick himself has it completely wrong, as he cites a passage concerning regional warming over the 21st century, instead of the actual relevant passage  concerning the period 1975-2005.

Moreover a review of the relevant scientific literature reveals substantial flaws in the previous analyses of McKitrick and Michaels. That, rather than any close-mindedness or “censorship”, is the real reason why McKitrick’s analyses have become increasingly marginalized in the scientific literature, if not in the right-wing press. Continue reading →

47 Comments

Posted in Climate science disinformation

Tagged , , , , , ,

Climategate investigations, round 1: CRU exonerated

Posted on March 31, 2010 | 38 comments

As most readers who have been following the “climategate” controversy will know by now, the U.K. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has released its report entitled, The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

The findings are crystal clear on the most crucial points: The committee found absolutely no evidence to support accusations of scientific dishonesty, even going so far as to state that there  “was no case to answer”. And it also rejected accusations that Phil Jones and other CRU scientists had attempted to pervert the peer review system.

Graham SpringerContrarians took comfort in maverick Labour MP Graham Stringer’s objections to some of the findings. But even here, there is little for the contrarians to cheer about, as Stringer appeared at pains to avoid any appearance of endorsing the plausibility of any of the specific accusations of dishonesty. That’s just as well, because it turns out that Stringer appears to be relying for his understanding of the issues, not on the submitted evidence, but rather – wait for it – the “quickie” book on Climategate written by  Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller.

Continue reading →

38 Comments

Posted in Climate science disinformation

IOP Energy Group founder is featured speaker at upcoming Heartland conference

Posted on March 18, 2010 | 107 comments

The controversy over the Institute of Physics biased submission to the U.K. Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee’s  investigation of the stolen emails from East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit is about to get a whole lot hotter.

Terri Jackson, IOP Energy Group “founder” and a key proponent of various IOP pro-skeptic initiatives, is using her past association with the group to advance her new career as a “climate realist”.  Her IOP affiliation is hammered in every interview and profile, and was listed with her signature to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Challenge open letter to the U.N. Not only that, it’s  the sole affiliation given for her upcoming stint as featured speaker at – wait for it – the upcoming Heartland Institute sponsored climate conference in Chicago, where Jackson will join U.K. contrarian heavyweights like Piers Corbyn and Lord Christopher Monckton.

Meanwhile, disturbing indications have emerged that the IOP submission may have been leaked in advance to Monckton, raising new questions about the legitimacy of the submission and the process behind it. It’s high time the IOP stopped clinging to the pretense that all is well and started cleaning up this mess.

Continue reading →

107 Comments

Posted in Climate science disinformation

Tagged , , , , ,

McClimategate continues: Yet another false accusation from McIntyre and McKitrick

Posted on March 10, 2010 | 66 comments

How do they get away with it? That’s the inevitable question as I examine one of the most specious – and despicable  – “climategate” allegations from contrarians, namely the oft-repeated claim that climate scientists at East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit inappropriately adjusted certain tree-ring temperature proxy data to provide a better match with instrumental temperature record.

In an extraordinary interview with FoxNews in December of last year, economist Ross McKitrick alleged that scientists were “faking the match” between proxy and temperature data. McKitrick averred this was “not being honest with the reader” and even invoked a comparison to  falsified experimental medical research.  Stephen McIntyre of  ClimateAudit recently claimed that the “artificial correction” seemed “to have entered the CRU toolkit” (in his submission to the U.K. parliamentary committee examining  allegations arising from stolen CRU emails, no less).

Yet a close examination of the computer code and ensuing research bears out the key contention of the firm rebuttals from East Anglia University, as well as CRU scientist Tim Osborn, namely that the specific adjustments in question were for private exploration only and never incorporated into CRU scientists’ subsequent published research temperature reconstructions. So, once again, McIntyre and McKitrick have made odious and unfounded accusations, based on non-existent evidence. They should withdraw these specious allegations immediately.

Continue reading →

66 Comments

Posted in Climate science disinformation

Tagged , , , , , ,

Open Thread # 2

Posted on March 8, 2010 | 31 comments

Better late than never …

Any topic or issue reasonably related to climate change is fine, but be forewarned this is not a forum for debating the basics.

Thanks!

31 Comments

Posted in Climate science disinformation

Round and round we go with Lindzen, Motl and Jones

Posted on March 2, 2010 | 59 comments

[Update, March 3: Lindzen’s original 2008 chart showed the HadCRU surface record, not the UAH satellite record. The piece has been corrected accordingly. ]

As I predicted two weeks ago, there has been a media and blog frenzy over the statement by climatologist Phil Jones that  global warming since 1995 has not been “statistically significant”.

Now might be a good time to reflect on the origins of this latest variation on the “global warming has stopped” meme. And it turns out that the originator of the “no significant warming since 1995” variation is none other than climate contrarian Richard Lindzen, ably assisted by blogger Anthony Watts (of WattsUpWithThat fame) and physicist Lubos Motl. Indeed, the history of this meme points up a disturbing symbiosis between the U.K. media and the contrarian blogs.

Continue reading →

59 Comments

Posted in Climate science disinformation

Tagged , ,

Lorne Gunter – again (and again)

Posted on February 22, 2010 | 17 comments

The headline and deck from Lorne Gunter’s op-ed piece in Sunday’s Edmonton Journal say it all.

Climate alarmists feeling more heat

But discredited data-fudgers have too much at stake to give up now

Lorne GunterOnce again, columnist Lorne Gunter, Canada’s answer to George Will, has launched an outrageous, libelous attack on climate science and climate scientists. And, once again, his diatribe is remarkably free of any actual facts, and contains several clearly erroneous assertions and accusations. Gunter does manage to maintain balance in one way, however; he gets off a number of whoppers about each of the two most cited global temperature repositories, the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia (CRU), and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA.

The only surprise is that this tripe has appeared in the Edmonton Journal, rather than Gunter’s usual haven in the anti-science newspaper of record, the National Post.

Continue reading →

17 Comments

Posted in Climate science disinformation

Tagged , , , ,