A New Scientific Study Came Out - And Deniers Immediately Lied About It

One of the more prevalent tactics of climate science deniers is to lie. They do this by cherry-picking, misrepresentation, straw men, and a number of other mechanisms of dishonesty. Sometimes they just outright lie. A case in point is how deniers reacted to a new scientific study by climate scientist Ben Santer and colleagues. 

A good review of the study and its meaning is presented in the Guardian by scientist and science writer Dana Nuccitelli. The Santer study can be see directly here. I recommend you read both, or if the science paper is too much, at least read the Nuccitelli article, which gives a great overview of how deniers have misrepresented the paper.

After discussing the false assertions of climate denier favorite John Christy, who has a habit of providing unsupported (and unsupportable) assertions in an attempt to discredit climate models (except, of course, his own), Nuccitelli notes that the Santer et al. study:

...effectively disproved Christy’s assertion that the discrepancy was due to models being too sensitive to the increased greenhouse effect. Instead, the main culprit seems to be incorrect inputs used in the climate model simulations.

Models, like any other tool used to study complex phenomena, provide a mechanism for learning. Actual climate scientists are constantly evaluating real world observations and assessing how well the models mimic those observations. Thus, models are constantly being improved. And here's one more critical point: models are used to assess projections based on known inputs. They don't "predict," and most certainly they don't predict on short-term variations. Models are designed to assess long-term trends. And evaluation of these models, as Nuccitelli notes, "are still quite accurate."

Deniers, on the other hand, take any short-term variation that seems to drift from the long-term trend and claim it means the models are worthless. That is akin to claiming we have no idea if summer is on average much colder than winter in the northern U.S. just because we get an unusually cold day in June. The deniers' claims are absolutely ridiculous, and it is incredibly dishonest to say so. While most deniers are ignorant of the science (reading Facebook and a denier blog does not make you a climate scientist), actual climate scientists like John Christy and Roy Spencer have no excuse for routinely saying things they most certainly should know not to be true.

Not surprisingly, lobbyists and their associated spokespeople like Christy and Spencer feed these misrepresentations of the Santer et al. paper into the blogosphere with the full knowledge that the falsehoods will grow into full-fledged lies. It fits the same pattern lobbyists have employed for many years - seed the paid blogs with falsehoods and misrepresentations, encourage ideological (and grossly ignorant) non-science bloggers to plagiarize and spread those falsehoods until they saturate the internet. Recent studies have also suggested that lobbyists and their cohorts (perhaps with Russian hacker help?) manipulate Google results to shift falsehoods to the top of the search display. 

All of this, of course, is dishonest. Lobbyists intentionally create misrepresentations (to put it mildly) and help spread those misrepresentations. There are lobbyist blog sites that do this directly, and there are thousands of willing ideologues who spread the lies further.

This is what they do.

Which is why scientists, science communicators, and the general public have to be aware of these tactics. Check the sources. Find the original articles. Learn the basics of climate science.

A Warning to Teachers About Heartland's Fake Climate Report Ruse

The infamous tobacco and fossil fuel lobbying firm, Heartland Institute, is again intentionally disinforming the public. This past week they sent 25,000 copies of a climate science denial propaganda report to teachers across the country. Heartland intends to send more each week until they eventually reach over 200,000 science teachers. The report is a scam.

The "report" was written by three paid lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry via Heartland. It intentionally ignores 100+ years of science and promotes falsehoods, misdirections, and fallacies that, combined, deny the overwhelming, unequivocal science.

Let's be clear. The summation of 100+ years of science is that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" (i.e., undeniable) and human activity is the "dominant cause" of the warming since the middle of the 20th century. This is the overwhelming consensus of virtually all of the world's climate scientists, every National Academy of Science, and every major scientific organization in the world. This consensus is supported by more than 100,000 peer-reviewed published scientific papers, millions of empirical data points, multiple lines of evidence, and well-understood basic physics. In short, climate change is real and humans are the reason.

So what is this "report?"

The Heartland Institute has long been a lobbying firm for the tobacco industry denying the unequivocal fact that smoking causes cancer. To this day they still take lobbying money from the tobacco industry to lobby for "smoker's rights" (i.e., smokers' right to harm others health via secondhand smoke). Heartland also has received money from the fossil fuel industry and private donors via a "smoke and mirrors" hidden money trust. They have been caught funding anti-science, climate science denial spokespeople, front groups, and propagandists.

With the anti-science Republican party in control of Congress and the White House, as well as the EPA Administrator, climate science deniers have been even more active than before, using their political leverage to disinform the populace and endanger the health and safety of all Americans.

In 2013-2014 the real IPCC came out with its latest comprehensive summary of the state-of-climate-science. Dissing the IPCC is one tactic denier organizations use to dismiss 100+ years of science. Another denier tactic is to create fraudulent "reports" to distract from the science.

The fake report was written by paid lobbyists Craig Idso, Bob Carter, and Fred Singer, all well-known paid propagandists for the climate denial industry and all paid by Heartland Institute to write the fake report. As can be seen from the deceit used in naming the group - they call themselves the NIPCC (the "N" stands for "Non" but also implies "Not" the IPCC) - lobbyists like Heartland routinely use deception to misinform, misdirect, and misrepresent the state-of-the-science. The fake report highlights minor uncertainties and lobbyist-created talking points in order to dismiss the certainty of man-made climate change.

None of this is new. Idso, Carter, and Singer have all been on the payroll for decades providing fossil fuel and political lobbyists with "deliverables" that can be used to misinform the public. Each and every one of the talking points, false equivalencies, misdirections, and outright lies they promote has been debunked thousands of times already. Nothing they say has ever stood up to scientific scrutiny. Ever.

This past election revealed to many the prevalence of "fake news" on social networks. Those of us who have combated science denial for years are familiar with the tactics used by propagandists - the talking points, paid and ideological trolls, seeding of fake news on the blogosphere, manipulation of the media, and multiple attempts of lobbyists to push non-science into the classroom. Heartland has done this sort of thing before; in 2012 they were caught paying a propagandist to create fake classroom materials to be sent to teachers across the country. It wasn't the first time.

So what can science and other teachers do? First of all, beware of anything that you receive for free and unsolicited in the mail. There is a reason these fake reports are sent directly to teachers and not vetted by the school boards and school systems. Second, make your students aware of how lobbyists employ deceptive practices and propaganda to misinform them. Third, teach your students critical thinking and how to recognize good science (and good information in any discipline). Fourth, keep abreast of the state of the science by being active in education organizations such as the National Center of Science Education and the Union of Concern Scientists.

The science denial lobbying industry has been misleading the public for decades, from denying smoking causes cancer to denying acid rain to denying CFCs and the ozone hole to denying human activity is causing the climate to warm. With the current political situation in the U.S. and elsewhere, these denial lobbyists feel they have the upper hand and are engaging more overtly in their propaganda campaigns. Make no mistake about it - these lobbyists are doing this to protect the profits of their donors, not to inform the public. Be wary, be informed, and be active in fighting against science denial.

Exposing Climate Denialism - The Series

The Dake Page has published a series of posts over the years exposing climate denialism. This post brings many of those posts together for easy access. Feel free to save this post for reference and take a look at each of the individual linked articles.

Remember, there is a consensus on the scientific consensus. As noted in the most recent IPCC report, AR5, "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and human activity is the "dominant cause" of that warming.

Of course, deniers deny this 100+ years of unequivocal science. They can't provide any scientific evidence for their denial, so they resort to employing a series of tactics fed to them by lobbyists. These are the same lobbyists and same tactics as used by the tobacco industry and every other denial of science example for the last half century. This is how lobbyists work.

Climate Denial on the Internet - Who are the Deniers?

The Well Disarmed Skeptic - How Climate Change Denialists Use Front Groups to Lie About the Science

Scientific Debate of Climate Change on Social Media Sites

Global Warming Denialists - The Art of Deception

Spotting Climate Deniers on the Internet 

How Climate Deniers Control the Message

How Climate Deniers Saturate Facebook With Fake News

Common Tactics of Climate Change Deniers on the Internet 

Collusion Among Climate Denial Lobbyists and Their Spokespeople

How Climate Deniers Create Fake "Experts"

Yes, Some Experts....and Politicians...Are Dishonest

Why Climate Denialists Argue Even When It's Clear They Are Wrong


Googling the Internet - How Climate Deniers Get Their "Science"

How the Media Keep Climate Denial Alive

Parsing the Arrogant Ignorance of Climate Denial

The Confidence of the Dumb

Climate Denial Tactic - Repeat a Falsehood Enough and Maybe it Will Become True

Dissing the IPCC and Other Scientific Organizations - How Climate Deniers Work

How the Media are Used to Intentionally Mislead the Public on Global Warming

There are more exposing climate denial posts on The Dake Page, so feel free to root around a bit. I'll add to the above list as new articles surface, so bookmark it and come back periodically to find out new tactics climate deniers use to lie about the science.

The Madhouse Effect by Michael Mann and Tom Toles

This is a book every American should read, and read now. The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy sports a "Global Warming Meets Edvard Munch" cover, but that shouldn't be taken as a lack of seriousness. The book's authors - award-winning climate scientist Michael Mann and Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Tom Toles - have attempted to bring both climate science and climate denial to the forefront. Using Toles's creative genius and Mann's scientific depth, and more than a smidgen of subtle humor, the two have succeeded masterfully.

This short book is a quick read and written in a style that is accessible to everyone. In short, it's the book I planned to write but never got around to. The eight chapters are easy to breeze through, but when you reach the end you realize you've learned a lot more than you anticipated.

It begins with a chapter on how science works, a topic that it appears most of the public hasn't yet grasped. It's also an introduction of sorts to how lobbyists and hired guns intentionally distort the science (but more on that later). Mann and Toles note that science is unique in that it is "self-correcting" by its very nature. Scientists publish their research, and other scientists challenge it. If someone got something wrong, the process is designed to find that out and correct the misconception. The chapter also clarifies the idea of skepticism. Scientists are inherently skeptical; it's what makes us tick. But most of the people who claim to be skeptical when they deny the science aren't skeptical at all.

The second chapter provides some of the basics of climate science. The first paragraph puts it all in context:

"The basics of climate science are actually very simple and always have been. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat, and we are adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. The rest is details."

They then go on to explain in general terms the "Physics and Chemistry 101" of climate change, plus some of the effects such as more extremes, rising sea levels, warmer atmosphere, ocean acidification, and melting ice. The chapter ends with a discussion of tipping points, an area of both great uncertainty and grave ramification.

Chapter 3 is perhaps the most important chapter: "Why Should I give a Damn?" In it they discuss the effects of climate change on national security, food production, water supplies, energy resources, land use, human health, and ecosystem disruptions. If none of that concerns you, how about the massive negative effect on the economy resulting from not doing anything? In short, you better give a damn because this is your life being impacted, and your children's and grandchildren's lives.

The next three chapters address the actions of climate deniers. Chapter 4 outlines the six stages of denial; Chapter 5 the war on climate science (here are those lobbyists and hired gun men mentioned earlier); Chapter 6 on the hypocrisy of climate denial. These are important chapters for anyone who believes Fox News and the conspiracy/white supremacy blog Breitbart are somehow "science" while NOAA, NASA, IPCC, and WMO are "in it for the money."

Chapter 7 hits on geoengineering, the idea that somehow we can find some technological fix. In short, it's akin to trying to find ways of keeping a bathtub from overflowing by throwing in toasters or blasting the rising water with a propane torch in an effort to evaporate it. These ideas are likely to 1) not work, and 2) have unintended consequences. Of course, the alternative is to turn off the tap and pull the plug. Duh.

The book ends on a more hopeful tone, as Chapter 8 delves into a path forward. What may come as a surprise to many folks is that we've already been working to reduce carbon emissions and shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. The world, through the leadership of the Obama administration, has taken significant steps toward righting the ship. More needs to occur.

Throughout the book are the cartoons of Tom Toles. Toles has an exceptional knack for taking the key points and boiling them down into an easily understood comic drawing. The cartoons heighten the value of the book tremendously. And don't miss the teeny toons in the bottom right corner of every cartoon; they too exquisitely capture the important moments.

This book is especially important given that the apparent incoming administration (this review was published on 12/15/16, a month or so after the 2016 election) has said it will make Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil and a long-time funder of climate denial front groups, as the next Secretary of State.

So read this book. It reads fast. It provides excellent information. And it is necessary for all Americans to understand what we are up against.

More book reviews (click and scroll down)

The Incoming Administration is Even Worse Than Expected for Climate Science

Prior to the recent U.S. election this page noted "the last gasp of climate denial groups." It seems denial lobbyists are now guarding the hen house. The shocking election result brings with it expectations of climate denial, deceit, and defunding of science organizations. And it likely will get even worse.

To begin with, the person selected to head the EPA transition is Myron Ebell, chief anti-science lobbyist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Similar anti-science lobbyists are in charge of transition for the Departments of Energy and Interior. Likely EPA administrators have been narrowed down to fossil fuel state politicians intent on gutting EPA health and safety regulations. Many senior EPA staff have suggested they won't remain in an agency led by anti-science lobbyists.

The new administration has already indicated it will abuse its political power to suppress science and push conspiracy theories. The climate science budget at NASA (and likely NOAA) is expected to be slashed. As with all Republican administrations and Congresses, their choice is always to cut funding of science research so that research can't continue to demonstrate the dishonesty of science denial.

With Republicans controlling both houses of the legislative branch, the entire executive branch, and likely to stack the judicial branch for decades to come, Americans are faced with an anti-American plutocracy in charge of the country.

All of this, of course, will hurt all Americans, including those people who voted for the Republican ticket because, well, not because they are racist or bigoted, they say, but because, well, because, um, something about the high cost of health care.

Health care costs will immediately go up as the new administration cuts out competition and throws at least 15 million people off insurance rolls.

So much for that. Congratulations, America, you got played.

Because of the ignorance of voters across the world (think Brexit, the 2016 U.S. election, and the upcoming French elections), we are now faced with significant regression of humanity. Scientists will be required to continue research with even more limited budgets, face accentuated anti-science lobbyist power, and deal with a populace that seems incapable of connecting actions with consequences. Just ask all those Republican voters now complaining that Republicans will kill their health insurance, take away their medicare, and destroy social security.

Somehow scientists have to find a way to reach out to the public. That job just got a lot harder.

Meanwhile, the climate continues to warm (2016 will set a new heat record for the third year in a row) and humans continue to be the dominant cause of that warming.

To quote Neil deGrasse Tyson, "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe it."

In other words, the science is the science. Your choice to deny the science doesn't change the science.

Time to get to work.

Common Tactics of Climate Change Deniers on the Internet

The fact that humans are warming the climate is unequivocal, undeniable, and built on more than 100 years of peer-reviewed research.

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal." "Anthropogenic drivers...are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century." - IPCC, AR5, 2013-2014

But that doesn't stop internet trolls from denying the science. We've discussed here before how there are professional denialists (lobbyists, their front groups, and their spokespeople) and amateur denialists (mostly ideologically and willfully ignorant people). The professional deniers seed the internet with falsehoods and count on the amateur deniers to plagiarize ad nauseam, thus saturating the blogosphere with crap. Amateurs do this without employing any skepticism of their sources or veracity of what they plagiarize; they gladly accept whatever idea agrees with their predefined narratives no matter how obviously ludicrous the talking point.

Let's take a quick look at some of the tactics used by amateur deniers on social networking sites, in particular, Facebook.

1) Deny: Obviously. Just deny all the science. Deny 100+ years of well-understood basic physics. Deny 100,000+ peer-reviewed published papers. Deny millions of data points. Deny all the world's climate scientists know the science they study. Deny all of this has reached a burden of proof. Deny the consensus. Deny, well, you get the idea. Deny everything. Rinse, Repeat.

When someone simply denies all the evidence, they are a denier by definition.

2) Lie: The repetition of falsehood is a primary tactic of climate deniers. Lie about the "hockey stick." Lie about the "pause." Lie about what scientists say. Lie about "climategate." Lie about even the dates of the reports. Lie about what other commenters say. A variant of this is to ignore all evidence presented by commenters; simply make believe it wasn't said. Then repeat the falsehood already debunked. Lying can also take the form of generally commenting dishonesty, for example, creating a strawman and harassing other commenters over and over to answer the strawman.

When someone chooses to comment with such dishonesty, you can understand their self-deceit.

3) Spam: Many commenters will simply spam the post with dozens of comments. Any reply gets not one response, but a series. Spammers leave multiple comments even when no one is talking to them. Their goal is to saturate the blog such that honest commenters choose not to participate. It's also a form of violence; spamming multiple comments is like beating someone with a stick over and over. Spammers are easily recognizable not just by their multiple comments in a row, but by the fact that they quickly come back to spam again if their target leaves a response even a day later.

Besides being a form of violence and harassment, it's a sign of mental insecurity, and in some cases, mental instability. It's also a trolling strategy taught by the Koch lobbying organizations to disrupt online discussions.

4) Non-Awareness of Ignorance: There is nothing more embarrassing to see than someone who repeatedly shows their shortcomings.

Most amateur deniers don't even understand how little they understand. Ironically, they believe they understand more than the scientists who study the science.

5) Reliance on Lobbyist Sources: Invariably, amateur deniers will cite lobbyist sources instead of scientific sources (assuming they bother to cite any source at all). Amateurs have convinced themselves (and lobbyists have trained them to believe) that all scientists are corrupt and part of a multigenerational global conspiracy and "Al Gore!" (Deniers usually find a way to insert Al Gore into the discussion; the name is like a bell to Pavlov's dogs). So to replace 100+ years of science, deniers rely on a series of blogs funded, supported, and seeded by lobbyists, their front groups, their spokespeople, and other conspiracy, scam, or ideologically motivated non-scientists.

If someone is citing WUWT, Climate Depot, Heartland, Laframboise, JoNova, and a slew of other non-science, lobbyist-supported, propaganda blogs, you know they haven't bothered to learn about the science. Each of these, and all their offshoots, have been shown to be wrong. Every single time. Every article or post is easily debunked, and most are simply recycling of older talking points that have been debunked many many times before. Often these blogs are so egregiously wrong it is hard to understand how any sentient being would put any weight in anything they say. But this is who deniers rely on.

Meanwhile, these same deniers dismiss NASA, NOAA, IPCC, NSIDC, and every other scientific organization as somehow incapable of understanding the science they've been researching and publishing for decades. And yet when they find it convenient, deniers will claim they are citing NASA (two breaths after calling NASA corrupt) - except they don't really cite NASA, they cite a lobbyist blog that has manipulated NASA data and/or fabricated a conclusion that isn't supported by the evidence and is often the opposite of what NASA actually said. [See #2 Lying]

Mostly these deniers are trolls. They choose not to learn, and never will. Interacting with them is mostly a waste of time, with the only exception being that when they go into spamming mode they tend to reinforce Facebook's positive feedback algorithms (think in terms of  climate science and you know what I mean).

So be aware of the tactics of climate deniers, both the professionals and the amateurs. But don't waste effort on them because they are there largely to convince themselves they aren't as inconsequential as they actually are. It's sad, but it's true.

The rest of us can focus on communicating the science to the public.

Climate Denial and Climate Fraud

We've known it for a long time, but a recent analysis of court documents has provided further proof that fossil fuel corporations and trade associations (aka, lobbyists) have intentionally worked to mislead the public about man-made climate change. From the Guardian:

Analysis of Peabody Energy court documents show company backed trade groups, lobbyists and think tanks dubbed ‘heart and soul of climate denial.’ The company has funded at least two dozen groups that cast doubt on manmade climate change and oppose environment regulations.

Peabody Energy is the euphemistically deceptive name for the biggest coal mining company in the United States (but hey, Peabody Coal sounds dirty, so voila, it's Peabody Energy). On April 11, 2016 the firm declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which meant in order to avoid paying their debts they had to file substantial financial records with the courts. Those records, like other bankruptcy filings for other companies before them, have documented how Peabody and other fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists have funded the denial of climate science for decades.

Among the deniers being funded by Peabody Energy are:

• Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (aka, CO2 Science), who routinely promotes the benefits of CO2 to plants while dismissing the warming impacts.
• American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the infamous conservative legislation-writing lobbying firm responsible for blocking renewable energy and blocking emissions control efforts.
• Americans for Prosperity chapters, which is a Koch lobbying firm and conservative lobbyist.
• George C. Marshall Institute, the lobbying group started by Reagan appointees and involved in every instance of science denial since the 1980s.

Individual denier scientists were also funded by Peabody (and others), including:

• Richard Lindzen, formerly of MIT but now paid by the Cato Institute, a libertarian lobbyist.
• Willie Soon, the infamous provider of "deliverables" to ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute
• Roy Spencer, whose recent work, like Lindzen's, seems to have difficulty standing up to scientific scrutiny. Spencer, of course, is also on the Board of the aforementioned George C. Marshall Institute.

And these are not the only ones. Bankruptcy filings by Alpha Natural Resources (another euphemism for one of the country's largest coal companies) revealed that Chris Horner, an attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (itself a lobbying firm), was being paid to protect coal interests (hence his constant misrepresentation of the science). In addition, records show another climate denier and lobbyist, Patrick Moore, has been paid by coal interests to speak on their behalf.

Peabody's reach was extensive:

“The breadth of the groups with financial ties to Peabody is extraordinary. Thinktanks, litigation groups, climate scientists, political organisations, dozens of organisations blocking action on climate all receiving funding from the coal industry,” said Nick Surgey, director of research for the Center for Media and Democracy. 

Peabody Energy and Alpha Natural Resources are not alone in funding climate denial. Records show that Exxon was well aware that fossil fuel burning was causing man-made global warming as far back as the 1960s. They initially undertook an extensive scientific program to determine the cause and effect, but after determining that the ramifications to their profit margins were significant, they shut down the program and instead invested in denying the science and funding climate denial and a broad network of lobbyists, front groups, and malleable scientists like Fred Singer and others. Collusion among the various lobbyists, key spokespeople, and media outlets also recently came to light.

The prior knowledge and then suppression of that knowledge by Exxon follows the playbook of the tobacco industry to deny smoking causes cancer. In both cases, corporate denial and subterfuge results in huge human health and environmental costs to society. The similarity to the tactics used by the tobacco industry is why once again many state attorneys general have banded together to launch investigations into Exxon's (now ExxonMobil) deceit. As a public company, stockholders have raised the questions to corporate executives of whether their knowledge and obfuscation endangers their stock holdings.

So once again fossil fuel interests have been caught paying for climate deniers to mislead the public and misrepresent the science, all to protect the profit margins of fossil fuel corporations. As these bankruptcies show, however, fossil fuels have peaked and businesses are failing due to a combination of mismanagement, fraud, and the higher and higher costs of trying to extract fossil fuels from ever more difficult locations. Still, these companies aren't going to give up their remaining profits without a fight, no matter how much deceit and collusion needed to do so.

Climate Wars - Arctic vs Antarctic Ice Melt

Arctic sea ice is melting. This is one of the most common points made whenever climate change is discussed (in addition to the obvious point that the climate is heating up). But Antarctic sea ice is growing, so it's a wash, right?

No. No. No.

This time of year climate scientists (and the informed public) spend a lot of time tracking the annual melting of sea ice in the Arctic. Climate deniers counter by exclaiming: "but the ice is growing in Antarctica." Deniers cry that the overall global sea ice total is the most important number and that Antarctica makes up for the ice lost in the Arctic.

Again. Emphatically. No. No. No.

This idea is akin to saying that a person making a billion dollars a year and a person making minimum wage (about $15,000/year) are equitable because the average income between the two is over $500 million.

In other words, it's silly.

To begin with, over the last 40 years the Arctic has lost about 21,000 square miles of sea ice per year. During that same time the Antarctic has gained only about 7,300 square miles per year. So even if "total global sea ice" was a valid measurement (which it isn't), it would show a net loss of nearly 14,000 square miles per year. That's hardly a winning argument.

The fact is that the Arctic and Antarctic are completely different systems and not directly comparable in any way. To help people understand the difference between the two poles, let's take a look at the main processes of both. 


The most obvious difference is that the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land and the Antarctic is continental land surrounded by ocean. This difference has a profound affect on how and when ice is formed, not to mention what happens when it melts.

Arctic

Every summer sea ice shrinks in the Arctic, and every winter it grows. To track these patterns we rely on several measurements, one of which is sea ice extent (others are ice volume and ice age). Sea ice extent is defined as an area of ocean covered by at least 15% sea ice.* Two key numbers are the maximum ice extent (the greatest ice extent of any given year, usually in February) and the minimum ice extent (the least ice extent of any given year, usually in September). Generally the melting in the summer is not complete, that is, there is still sea ice even at the minimum. This, however, could change as various feedback effects tend to increase melting (e.g,. more open water means more warming, which means faster and greater melting). It is expected that at some point we'll see an ice free Arctic for some period of time during the summer. For a variety of reasons, that's not a good thing at all.

Both the minimum and maximum indicators have been showing an overall decrease in sea ice extent in the Arctic. For example, the following chart shows ice extent for March 1979-2016. As can be seen, some years are worse than others, but the general trend is clearly loss of ice over time. The same pattern applies to every single month. Feel free to look at other examples on the National Snow & Ice Data Center website.

Because of short-term variations in weather, the year to year values vary, but the trend is clear - the Arctic is losing ice. [See here for a video explanation of trend and variation] By the way, when deniers claim "Arctic ice has recovered," they are falsely cherry picking one of those little peaks and dishonestly ignoring the clear overall trend to fabricate their entirely - and obviously - false conclusions. [This intentional deception is why we know that deniers are being dishonest, not merely ignorant]

Antarctic

While the Arctic is frozen ocean, the Antarctic is frozen land. While the sea ice in the Arctic grows out into the ocean and is constrained by the land, the sea ice in the Antarctic grows out from the land, basically surrounding the continent and expanding without much resistance as far as the cold water and winds can take it. Remember that sea ice extent is defined as "at least 15% coverage of a unit area," so it doesn't necessarily mean the entire area is covered with ice, but with that much unhindered space to grow, it can go a long way.

Scientists have a very good understanding of the processes driving ice gain and loss in the Arctic; for the Antarctic there is greater uncertainty. What we do know from measurements is that, like the Arctic, the sea ice in the Antarctic grows in the winter and shrinks in the summer. Unlike the Arctic, the sea ice shrinks almost completely away each year in the Antarctic. In recent years there has been a pattern of increasing sea ice extent in the Antarctic, the opposite pattern of what we're seeing in the Arctic. The reasons for this are still a point of discussion, but new data have helped clarify the reasons for the trend.


One important factor is that greater melting of land-based glaciers and ice sheets has put more freshwater into the ocean surrounding Antarctica. Since the water is so cold, and because the freshwater tends to float on top of the denser saltwater of the ocean, you see rapid freezing of this new surface water. Another factor is the wind. Unlike the land-constrained Arctic, the winds have virtually limitless ability to push any forming sea ice floes further out to sea, where the cold temperatures tend to fill in the spaces and increase sea ice extent. Studies have also shown greater and faster movement of Antarctic glaciers toward the coasts, which helps push more ice offshore. In addition, the west Antarctic ice shelf** has been collapsing, and will continue to do so irreversibly.

The graphic above comes from NASA's GRACE satellite. It shows that despite the annual winter increase (and annual summer loss) of sea ice in the Antarctic, the overall ice mass of the continent itself has been dropping. Ice mass on Greenland shows the same pattern, only worse.

All of this information tells us that while we may see short-term increases in the Antarctic annual sea ice extent, continued warming of the climate will inevitably result in a much rapider overall ice loss as the glaciers continue to move to the coast and the west Antarctic ice shelves disappear.

So we can see that the two poles are completely different in every aspect, which makes any adding of their ice masses meaningless. All the factors in the Arctic point to continued and rapid ice losses by every measurement (sea ice extent, ice mass, ice age, ice thickness, ice volume). The increased open water results in even faster warming and melting, with these effects getting worse as additional feedback mechanisms kick in. Antarctica is showing a very different pattern but one no less of concern. Sure, the sea ice extent is increasing, but the reasons for it all point to major long term problems in Antarctica that will eventually have global ramifications even coming from such a remote continent. Continued overall ice loss from the land will contribute, along with ice melting on Greenland, to rapid sea level rise. Some recent studies have suggested that we could reach a  threshold that would cause a catastrophic melting of the two ice sheets, thus resulting in huge increases in sea level in a matter of decades rather than centuries. That may not happen, but then again, it might.

As mentioned earlier, climate deniers like to talk about the Antarctic whenever the discussion is about the Arctic (especially given it is the winter growth period in the south while we're watching the summer melting in the north). But adding the two together to get some sort of "total sea ice" value is both meaningless and dishonest. The two areas work independently, both in how they are impacted by man-made climate change and how they contribute to it.

By no honest analysis can anyone say the trends are good.


Notes from text:

*The 15% threshold is a bit confusing because it doesn't mean the entire area is covered with ice or that any given area is exactly 15% - the area could have anywhere from 15% to 100% sea ice. Obviously, an area that is 100% packed with ice would have more ice than an area only 15% covered by ice, yet they would both be counted as being the same sea ice extent. This is why we also look at ice volume, ice age, and thickness.

** Ice shelves are floating ice still connected to the land. Sea ice is that which has broken off and is floating. Ice sheets are the massive layers of ice that cover huge areas of land - Greenland and Antarctica carry the two remaining large ice sheets. Glaciers can be thought of as mini ice sheets flowing down mountains.

Spotting Climate Deniers on the Internet

More than 100 years of peer-reviewed published climate science has demonstrated that human activity is warming our climate system. And yet a tiny handful of people remain climate deniers. The internet makes this tiny number seem bigger because of self-selection bias and sheer obnoxiousness and persistence of climate deniers.

As I've written before in Climate Denial on the Internet - Who are the Deniers?, it's important to be able to spot climate deniers so we don't waste too much time with them. While scientists are about the most skeptical folks around,

Climate deniers, on the other hand, are a particularly unskeptical crowd, accepting every non-science blogger's diatribe (and defending it even after it is summarily debunked) while simply denying all the actual science from actual scientists because it is inconvenient.

There are two broad groups of climate deniers: the professional deniers who are paid to intentionally misrepresent the science in order to protect the profits of their corporate funders, and amateur deniers who may be ideologues or simply desperate for attention.

The professionals are those who are paid to deny climate science. The names most associated with climate denial are the Heartland Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute (as documented in the book, Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway), a series of lobbying organizations associated with the billionaire Koch brothers, and a variety of other front groups whose names keep changing while their staff and paid spokespeople tend to overlapped considerably (denial organizations get a lot of mileage out of a very few people).

The amateur deniers come in a variety of flavors, as I previously discussed in Scientific Debate of Climate Change on Social Network Sites:

The truth is there is no real scientific debate on the issue of climate change on social networking sites. On the other hand, there is a lot of noise about the issue.

Amateur deniers can be cut-and-pasters, focused irrelevants, and posers. Often there is overlap. They engage in Gish Gallops, self-contradiction, and various other tactics that are sometimes intentional and sometimes just cluelessness. There is also the confidence of the dumb.

One brand of climate denier that may fall into either the professional or amateur denier category is the internet troll. As science writer Chris Mooney notes in his review of a scientific study:

...people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).

In short, trolls troll out of a desperate need to make themselves feel consequential. Ironically, it just makes them even more inconsequential.

In either case, whether the denier is a professional disinformer or an amateur troll, it's important to be able to recognize the traits of climate deniers. More on that in the future.

Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future by Donald R. Prothero

Periodically we review books relevant to science communication and climate change. Today is the book "Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future" by Donald R. Prothero published by Indiana University Press in 2013.

An author of over 30 books on science, Donald R. Prothero compiles a series of case studies involving denial of science and discusses how they endanger our future. Written in a conversational, colloquial style and a somewhat folksy, often condescending tone, the book lays out each chapter with the denier misinformation and contrasts these with the reality. 

The book could have used much tighter editing - he's often repetitive and overtly belittling of deniers - but provides exceptional arguments drawn from his own experience and previous books to demonstrate the utter ridiculousness of the anti-science views.

Topics covered include acid rain, ozone hole, global warming, creationism/intelligent design, anti-vaxxers (anti-vaccination), AIDS denialism, medical quacks, astrology, peak oil deniers, and overpopulation. In early chapters and in a final chapter he discusses the basis of science and why some groups more than others are prone to science denial.

Overall, the book does an excellent job of showing the lack of veracity in all science denial arguments. Anyone interested in science, and the denial of science, should put it high on their reading list.

Parsing the Arrogant Ignorance of Climate Denial

Once in a while on this page we parse the comments of climate deniers. This instructional tool gives honest people insight into the mind of deniers. The biggest thing it tells us is that deniers can be incredibly arrogant in their ignorance.

Let's take a recent example. On December 10, 2015 The Dake Page carried an article called "Yes, Some Scientists...and Politicians...Are Dishonest." The focus of the piece was on a Senate hearing chaired by Republican candidate-for-president Ted Cruz. Billed as an "oversight hearing" and subtitled as "promoting open inquiry," the hearing had only two actual purposes: 1) a showboating scam for Cruz's campaign, and 2) a dog-and-pony show trotting out the usual denier misrepresentation. The article highlighted the bizarre choice of witnesses (a Canadian right wing shock jock, seriously!) and the unfortunate fact that there are a handful of scientists who have become spokespeople for denialist industry lobbyists. You can read the full article at the link above.

One climate denier offered a rather bizarre comment in which he arrogantly suggested he knew more than all the world's climate scientists while simultaneously admitting he had zero actual knowledge himself. He then proceeds to display that ignorance with an arrogance that becomes rather hilarious, but can also serve as an illustration to help honest people see bull for bull. I'll parse it into pieces below, but the entire comment is here, in order, in italics.

It begins:

So many specific points to address. The most obvious is the conflict in the first paragraph of so of the article, which begins by saying the different opinions are okay, and then proceeds to say that anyone who disagrees with us is obviously dishonest. Disagreement = dishonesty. Really.

By "the first paragraph" he is actually referring to the third paragraph, which begins: "First, let me define dishonesty for the purposes of this essay." Needless to say for anyone who reads the actual paragraph, it says absolutely nothing of the sort the commenter has suggested. The commenter lies. Blatantly. The actual paragraph clearly states that legitimate differences of opinion or interpretation are possible with the same data, but when all the data prove you wrong and no data support your position, you have a problem. Not surprisingly, those who argue they are right despite no legitimate data in support of their position are all associated with denial lobbyist organizations.

The key point of the opening paragraph is that the commenter is immediately and intentionally misrepresenting the article. He's creating a strawman that serves his purpose even though it is blatantly false and not at all what the original article is claiming. Creating strawmen and lying are key tactics in denial.

But what really prompts me to waste my time writing here is the graph. Since I don't see any mention of it in the article, I mean that it does not seem to be something provided by the dishonest people, is it something to demonstrate that the really good people are correct?

 So the commenter feels he is wasting his time, and yet chooses to waste everyone else's time by ignoring the entire article he is commenting on and addressing a header graphic that wasn't even the focus of the article.

Distraction and deflection are also common tactics of denialists. When you can't address the topic, simply switch topics. This happens a lot in a tactic called the "Gish Gallop," in which denialists hop from one debunked point to another debunked point. They can't support anything they say so they try to keep their positions moving in the hopes people might not notice (even when their positions contradict each other).

I have now looked at it three times. The scale on the left seems to be related to temperature, is that right? It indicates that the scale is in degrees C, right? So it shows that since roughly from 1910 to recently, that is about 100 years, that the global surface temperature has gone from -.4 to +.6 C, right. There has been a change of one degree in 100 years? (I love the cute little colors, with the recent ones being red hot, gosh that is fearful!!!)

Here is the graph he's refering to. See my further responses on the above piece of his comment after the graph. To see it bigger click on it or click here.

To begin with, this is probably one of the best known graphs in the climate field. The fact that it's clear he has never seen it before and can't read it tells us all we need to know about his level of ignorance. It simply shows the global mean temperature anomaly. It's the standard graph so I won't go into detail here about its meaning; if you don't know what it means you shouldn't be commenting on it.

The goal of the commenter with his paragraph is to demean and dismiss 100+ years of published science, even though he indicates he has no actual knowledge of that science. This is yet another tactic of climate deniers - demean what you don't understand. It saves them the trouble of actually having to be informed while allowing them to convince themselves they are smarter than all the scientists in the world. 

Is that really the foundation for the hysteria and claims of doom? All of the computer models that I have seen have each predicted several degree changes in only a decade or so. Many other claims that I have seen have suggested about .6 degrees a year. Every single one of all the predictions, everyone of which has failed to occur, all suggest that the globe is getting much hotter. I think that your graph, which might be accurate or not, isn't good news to the Sky is Falling hoard. 

By now it appears the commenter is frothing at the mouth as he sputters out complete fabrication and contradicting himself so fast it's amazing he doesn't even notice. He's simply lying, fast and furious. Given he admitted never seeing the standard graph above, it's highly unlikely that he's seen any, never mind "all the models" he claims to have seen. He clearly doesn't have any clue about models, otherwise he wouldn't have said anything so ridiculously false as "all the models...each predicted several degree changes in only a decade." Seriously? Not even close.

He also ignorantly claims that every model prediction has "failed to occur," which is the standard line fed to ignorant deniers by the fossil fuel lobbyists. Given that models don't predict (they project) and those projections are for long time periods (e.g., the end of the 21st century), and that there are many short-term phenomena that give much short-term variability (see here for the difference between variability and trend), there hasn't been any "prediction" that has reached a period where it could "fail" or "not fail." That said, empirical evidence (i.e, real life observations) suggest that the climate is warming up faster than we expected.

The graph, by the way, demonstrates exactly why there is a need for action.

As to the truth of the issue of the actual temperature of the earth and if man's activities are in any way a cause, I am not a scientist and have no foundation of knowledge or method to reach a conclusion. I am knowledgeable enough to know that the world has been hotter and that change of temperature happens.

Well, at least he admits he is ignorant. That, however, doesn't stop him from claiming all the world's climate scientists, all the world's National Academies of Science, all the world's major scientific organizations, all the 100,000+ peer-reviewed published scientific papers, and physics are all wrong. Because, after all, being ignorant shouldn't stop you from telling experts they don't know their own field of study.

What I do know, based upon years of study at the U of Md, is that what passes in the political sphere today, including the disgrace going on in Paris, is not science. We are seeing political, ideological battles for control of people's lives. That can not be good for any of us, regardless of what the climate is doing. It never has been. Government control has always led to disaster, a disaster far worse than the climate can do to us.

That "years of study at the U of Md" was in philosophy, hence the lack of any understanding of climate science.

His last paragraph does, however, provide the motive for all his earlier paragraphs. The commenter is a dyed in the wool Ayn Rand libertarian, whose fear of "government control" is noticeable in virtually every comment I've ever seen. Like the current snackless anti-government ranchers in Oregon, however, libertarians seem to overlook all the "government handouts" they've enjoyed over the years, not to mention all the government handouts given to corporations, ranchers, and the hugely wealthy in direct violation of "free-market" principles libertarians claim to believe.

In any case, this anti-government paranoia, faux laissez-faire attitude is often cited as the reason why deniers claim the science is somehow "a hoax." Of course, science is published for all to see and not dependent on whether you are paranoid about the government or not. 

The science is the science. It's published, it's been scrutinized, and it's unequivocal. Human activity is warming the climate system and that warming is already having significant impacts on sea level rise, ice melting, severe weather events, the economy, human and environmental health, and national security. Those impacts will continue to get worse due to our inaction.

Luckily for this particular commenter and all the rest of the arrogantly ignorant deniers, the Paris climate agreement commits all nations to reducing carbon emissions. This will help slow the increase in global temperatures (as shown on the graph the commenter had never seen before). It doesn't solve the problem - much more needs to be done - but it's a step in the right direction.

Yes, Some Scientists....and Politicians...Are Dishonest

But very few, and that is the biggest fact here to remember.

The "oversight hearing" held by Senator Ted Cruz on Tuesday, December 8th, is a good example of dishonesty. More on that in a second.

First, let me define dishonesty for the purposes of this essay. While there may be legitimate differences of interpretation when evaluating any particular data set, what I'm talking about here is the intentional disregard of data that demonstrate your interpretation to be unsupportable. That is, when you continue to argue you are right and all the rest of the world is wrong despite overwhelming, unequivocal, and incontrovertible evidence of your wrongness. This is not to say that if your data shows something different you should just shut up and accept the consensus. Science is built on investigating results that were counter to expectations. But those data must be scientifically valid and presented through the peer-review process; and those data (and resulting interpretations) must stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Okay, now that we have a baseline, let's use the Cruz hearing as a microcosm of how the denial lobbying industry works.

First, the false premise. The title of the hearing is "Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Earth's Climate." This is right out of the denier lobbyist talking point memo. Deniers, who rarely if ever do actual scientific research (and rarely are climate scientists at all), like to claim that "alternative" science is somehow suppressed. The reality is that deniers don't attempt to publish much in peer-reviewed journals, preferring instead to publish opinion pieces in newspapers, online websites, and blogs. So here we have Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, who was elected predominantly because of support from the billionaire Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry, and who receives significant funding from fossil fuel lobbyists, abusing his position as Senator to harass scientists and science at the behest of those lobbyists.

Second, the stacked deck. As is common for Republican-chaired hearings in the House and Senate, the witnesses called tend to be from the small handful of "scientists for hire" and, well, non-scientists. This hearing was actually a significant departure from the norm in that the Republican majority actually did have actual scientists as witnesses. But the choice of scientists - and the non-scientist - is revealing.

The scientists were Judith Curry, John Christy, William Happer, and David Titley. 

Curry and Christy are actual climate scientists but clearly in the "contrarian" viewpoint. The irony is that the actual published scientific work by both Curry and Christy absolutely support the unequivocal fact that humans are significantly warming the climate system. The reason they were called as witnesses is because their blog posts and previous testimonies argues that all the world's climate scientists (and their own published work) is somehow wrong. When someone claims the opposite in their non-peer-reviewed blogs than what their actual peer-reviewed papers say, well, you can draw your own conclusions about whether their associations with denier lobbyist associations influence their positions.

Christy, by the way, is most famous as being the colleague of Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH). It is the UAH satellite record that deniers solely rely on for the false graphics Senator Cruz displayed during his hearing. This is ironic given that other scientists had long ago documented the major Christy/Spencer satellite data errors that invalidated their most famous work). The UAH data set is the most uncertain and inappropriate of any data set (and hidden, since Christy/Spencer won't reveal their "adjustment" methods), but deniers use it because it tells them what they want to hear. Deniers have to deny the existence of all the other data sets and empirical data that overwhelmingly demonstrate the failure of the UAH data in order to make claims based on UAH. This is dishonesty. Spencer is a Board member of the George C. Marshall Institute, an infamous lobbyist group at the front of every science denial lobbying activity for decades and profiled in the book Merchants of Doubt. Spencer is also a creationist, which is only relevant because it demonstrates his ability to ignore scientific evidence he finds inconvenient. Again, it's easy to draw conclusions about the influence of those lobbyists when everything presented is so easily shown to be specious.

Which gets us to William Happer. Why was Happer invited by Republicans as a witness, as he has been invited before? Happer has zero climate expertise and has done no climate change research. His specialty is atomic physics and nuclear arms. He is on the Board, and former Chair, of the aforementioned George C. Marshall Institute lobbying organization. He is associated with a variety of anti-science lobbying groups who pay him considerable sums to misrepresent the science. His credibility on climate science is zero, which would convince any honest Senator not to have him highlight your climate hearing. In fact, just this week the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace revealed a sting operation it had conducted in which William Happer and another scientist-for-hire agreed to provide "reports" supporting the anti-science views of what they thought were fossil fuel lobbyists. This is, unfortunately, relatively routine practice for these lobbyist-associated "scientists."

The final scientist on the witness list was David Titley, a PhD in meteorological sciences and retired Admiral in the U.S. Navy. Titley was invited by the Democratic minority of the committee (the only witness the minority was allowed to invite). When he was in charge of the Navy's assessment of climate change, Titley found that man-made climate change was both a real scientific issue and a significant national security issue. As we move toward ice-free Arctic summers we are exposed to greater dangers from foreign forces. Unlike Curry and Christy, Titley's presentation was consistent with actual scientific data. Once again, he was the sole witness allowed to be called by the Democratic minority. [To put this in context, Democrats generally call scientists to climate hearings while Republicans have called fiction writer Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park); the fake Lord, politician, and right wing speaker-for-hire, Christopher Monckley; and a variety of other non-scientists and lobbyists.]

To put the emphasis on the charade of Senator Ted Cruz's hearing, the other witness was a guy by the name of Mark Steyn. Steyn is a Canadian shock jock, i.e., a right wing zealot akin to Rush Limbaugh. The fact that a bloviating right wing radio talk show host from Canada was a "witness" in a U.S. Senate hearing on climate change tells you all you need to know about the farce (and dishonesty) of Cruz's side show. A nice discussion of Steyn's involvement is given here by scientist Greg Laden.

To end, let's circle back around to the first sentence of this piece. Yes, there are some scientists and politicians who are dishonest. But this is a rarity. Virtually all scientists are honest and diligently work without fanfare trying to discover the truth about scientific issues. More than 100,000 scientific research papers have been published in thousands of peer-reviewed journals in the more than 100 years of scientific research related to climate change. When questions and conflicts in the data arise, scientists delve into them voraciously to determine what is what. That is how science works. Scientists are driven by the need to understand. Mostly you never hear about scientists because their work is published in scientific journals.

There are a very small number of scientists-for-hire. Most famous are people like Fred Singer, who has in turn been paid to be an "expert" in everything from smoking to acid rain to climate change, none of which he has any significant research expertise in. For decades Singer has carried the water for whatever lobbying organization was paying him, as the climate denial lobbying industry continues to do today. There are a few others who are paid to write reports that say what lobbyists want them to say (e.g., see the linked sting piece about William Happer above). And then there are a few who just like the notoriety (and financial gain) of being "contrarian." Again, this is a tiny number of scientists.

Hearings such as the one held by Ted Cruz this week are designed not to provide oversight or fact-finding; they are designed to showcase people like Cruz to keep his base energized with false indignation. Cruz is abusing the public trust and hurting his own constituents in Texas, all because he is running for president and wants his most zealous followers to vote for him. The fact that he knows he is being blatantly dishonest is immaterial to him, as is his violation of his oath of office. In this age of cynicism we've almost come to accept such dishonesty from certain politicians. That is a shame but a topic for another post.

The scientists who participate in the charade, on the other hand, must remind themselves they have an ethical obligation to seek the scientific truth. As mentioned before, there can be legitimate differences in interpretation of data. In fact, legitimate data that seem to contradict other data are always a source of excitement among scientists because it gives them something cool to study (which, by the way, completely invalidates the premise of Cruz's hearing). But knowingly ignoring 99% of the data and relying on the 1% of already debunked data to push a viewpoint you know to be specious is another matter altogether. Those rare scientists who do this need some soul searching.

Meanwhile, science moves on. Hundreds of new scientific papers are published each week that further our knowledge of man-made climate change. Those papers, and millions of empirical data points, overwhelmingly, unequivocally, and undeniably tell us that human activity is warming the climate and that substantive action is necessary to deal with that reality. And that is why every country in the world has been in Paris these two weeks - to find a solution.

Discussing Climate Change Over the Thanksgiving Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving, along with Christmas, are a time for families and good cheer. And football. But they can also be a time of stress, especially if members of your family arriving from out of town hold divergent beliefs on politics, or religion, or climate change.

Unlike politics and religion, where differing opinions can each have validity, one can't have different opinions on the science of climate change. The science is based on, well, scientific study, published research that must go through peer-review to ensure basic validity and long-term scrutiny and testing by other scientists. Only the sum total of all of the scientific study defines the science. In many cases there isn't a clear-cut conclusion that can be drawn, which is why scientists are always doing more research and trying to identify yet another piece of the puzzle.

So when scientists finally do reach a consensus such as they have on climate change, that means the scientific data so overwhelmingly demonstrate "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and humans are "the dominant cause of that warming" that the picture on the puzzle becomes undeniably clear, even if there are a still a few tiny pieces to put together.

There aren't two sides of this. There is the science, and there is the denial of the science.

Of course, people do choose to believe one thing or another, claiming that their lack of understanding, or something they read on a blog, is somehow equivalent to the entire body of science published by climate scientists. So how do you have that "science" conversation with a climate denier?

In short, I recommend you don't.

There is no value in a group of people who aren't scientists "discussing" science when understanding of the science is dwarfed by predefined conclusions and misinformation. It just isn't worth it.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and every other family get-together, should be about family. The time should be focused on catching up on the distant lives of visiting relatives, playing with the niece or nephew or grandchild you haven't seen before (or since last Thanksgiving).

That is what Thanksgiving is for. Be there for your family.

Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. For those who desperately feel the need to ignore this advice, check out this article.

[Reposted from 2014 so we can enjoy the holiday with our families.]

How Climate Deniers Take Advantage of Science to Lie About Science

It's a recurring practice. A new climate study comes out and suddenly the internet is saturated with "reinterpretations" by climate deniers of what the study says. This is how climate denier lobbyists misrepresent, aka lie, about the science. The most recent is how they have lied about a new study released by NASA regarding mass gains in Antarctica.

Keep in mind that science is incremental. One study generally isn't meaningful by itself. Science is the compendium of all related studies. For example, one study may suggest that (under the conditions of the study) Antarctica is gaining more ice than it is losing while other studies show that West Antarctica may have gone into a state of irreversible retreat. That doesn't make any one study right or wrong, merely additional data points in the total understanding of the science. It's how science works.

A summary of this particular study being misrepresented can be found in NASA's press release. You can download the full study as a PDF file from this journal site. I highly recommend anyone wanting to understand the study read the actual paper because press releases often do a lousy job of communicating the science. Yes, I know, communicating the science is what press releases are designed to do, but my experience tells me that they  introduce confusion as often as they inform, in part because they report single studies and not the total science. I'll tackle that topic in another post.

The inadequacy of press releases for studies and the very nature of how science works results in opportunities for climate denier lobbyists to exploit uncertainties. And that is exactly what they do.

In this case we have information that may (or may not) contradict other information and the lobbyists pounced on it. As is their standard tactic, deniers take one point from the paper, fabricate an entire story line that fits their narrative, and put the false story line out on their paid lobbyist blog and media outlets. These lobbyists know that their false story will be plagiarized and repeated on every conspiracy and political blog by ideologues until the blogosphere is saturated with the false interpretation. That's how climate denial lobbyists work.

Greg Laden, a scientist who writes on Science Blogs, explains how the NASA study has been "misunderstood." [I think Greg is giving the blogosphere too much benefit of the doubt by using the term "misunderstood;" as the recent revelations about Exxon's knowledge decades ago that fossil fuels were causing climate change show, climate denial lobbyists know they are misrepresenting (i.e., lying about) the science. It's intentional.] That said, Greg notes that to begin with, the study may not be correct. While touted as "recent data" the data set used actually ended in 2008 so would miss the rapid ice loss of the last seven years. As Greg notes:

The last decade of research on Antarctica have shown, in many studies using a variety of techniques, that Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise. They have also shown that the rate of melting in Antarctic is probably increasing. Even more importantly, they have indicated that certain areas of Antarctic are current in a state of instability, suggesting that the rate of contribution of the southern continent’s ice mass to sea level rise may increase abruptly in the near future.

So the study, like all studies, needs to be placed into context with the state of the science. Deniers never do that; they cherry pick what they like and make believe all the rest of the science doesn't exist. This tactic is so prevalent in climate denial that the lead scientist of the study even predicted that climate deniers would misrepresent his work, which is exactly what they did, as reported in the above linked article:

"I know some of the climate deniers will jump on this," but "it should not take away from the concern about climate warming."

The first lesson here is that it isn't appropriate to take one study and assume it represents the total state of the science. Science is the sum total of all the relevant studies. The second lesson is that the climate denial lobbyists knowingly and willfully misrepresent single studies and then draw global "state of the science" conclusions that are inconsistent with the sum total of all the science.