Let's Keep Going, Heather...

Yesterday, I wrote about Allegheny County Person-at-Large Heather Heidelbaugh's climate change skepticism/denial.

As I like Heather a great deal personally, I want to help her out of her self-imposed scientific illiteracy.

We should start, perhaps, with Businessweek:

An unscientific survey of the social networking literature on Sandy reveals an illuminating tweet (you read that correctly) from Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. On Oct. 29, Foley thumbed thusly: “Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.” Eric Pooley, senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (and former deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek), offers a baseball analogy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.”

In an Oct. 30 blog post, Mark Fischetti of Scientific American took a spin through Ph.D.-land and found more and more credentialed experts willing to shrug off the climate caveats. The broadening consensus: “Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.” Even those of us who are science-phobic can get the gist of that.

Weather on steroids that "amp up" the factors that contribute to big storms.  Hurricane Sandy is but an example.  But what's the evidence to back that up?

Back in July, NOAA released it's annual "State of the Climate" report and with it came a press release and in that press release we find this:

Worldwide, 2011 was the coolest year on record since 2008, yet temperatures remained above the 30 year average, according to the 2011 State of the Climate report released online today by NOAA. The peer-reviewed report, issued in coordination with the American Meteorological Society (AMS), was compiled by 378 scientists from 48 countries around the world. It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, sea, ice and sky.

“2011 will be remembered as a year of extreme events, both in the United States and around the world,” said Deputy NOAA Administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D. “Every weather event that happens now takes place in the context of a changing global environment. This annual report provides scientists and citizens alike with an analysis of what has happened so we can all prepare for what is to come.”

So what's in that report?  Let's go to the climate indicators for some answers.

We can ask the question: Have the oceans warmed?

Yes, yes they have.  Take a look:

NOAA says of this graph:

The temperature at the surface of the ocean has been rising over time. The blue line in the graph above shows how far above or below the 1981-2010 average (dashed line at zero) the sea surface temperature has been each year since 1950. The data shown are one of several ocean temperature records included in State of the Climate in 2011, each of which shows similar anomalies. Each year in the past decade, the sea surface temperature has been warmer than the 1981-2010 average, an indicator of long-term climate change.

And has the atmosphere warmed?

Yes, yes it has.  Take a look:

NOAA says of this graph:

Earth’s average annual surface temperature is higher today than it was when record-keeping began in the late 1800s, an indicator of long-term, global-scale climate warming. The red line shows how far above or below the 1981-2010 average (dashed line at zero) the combined land and ocean temperature has been each year since 1880. The data shown are one of several temperature analyses included in the State of the Climate in 2011, all of which show a warming trend.

So there's the evidence (rising sea and air temps) that climate scientists are now saying contribute to making big storms worse.

So unless, Heather, you can claim the evidence is wrong or how the conclusion based on them is wrong, you're kinda stuck with the idea that climate change is not a hoax.

We can keep going if you like...

Heather Heidelbaugh, Climate Science Denier

I usually try to catch 4802 Friday nights on WQED and usually it's quite entertaining.

This weekend was no exception.

For this weekend, Allegheny County Council Person-At-Large Heather Heidelbaugh reasserted something she'd said on QED way back in 2009: that she's a climate science denier.

Here's what she said in 2009. In a discussion of The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, she said with a laugh:

I'm sorry I don't buy it at all.  I think it's a complete hoax.  I think all the emails that came out - this is, this is socialism, Ok?  It's redistribution of wealth

At this point John McIntire and I both said:

It's science.

Heather continued:

It's not science.

When host Chris Moore asked whether she thinks it's an extortion plot to get money out of rich nations she said:

Yes, absolutely.

And then after that, she countered the whole of climate science with the question: Can you explain why it's getting colder in the last decade?

This is an argument scientists (real ones) like to call "going down the up escalator."  Here's a graphical explanation:

See? Going down the up escalator.  Simple.

This week, she didn't go nearly as far into anti-science but she did say:

A lot of the climatology science has been discounted as a hoax.

When it was pointed out to her that NASA disagrees, she said:

No. When you talk to a lot of very credentialed scientists, they don't believe this. Nor do I.

C'mon Heather.  You're way smarter than that!

If you need any help, you can start here.  NOAA bases it's conclusion that climate change is undeniable on 10 key indicators:

• Air Temperature Near Surface (Troposphere).
• Humidity. 
• Temperature Over Oceans. 
• Sea Surface Temperatures.
• Sea Level. 
• Ocean Heat Content.
• Temperature Over Land. 
• Sea Ice. 
• Glaciers.
• Snow Cover.

Each with multiple data sets and each pointing to the same conclusion: The Earth is warming up and we caused it.

It's not socialism.  It's not a hoax.

It's science.  And even if you don't believe it, it's still true.

Heather Heidelbaugh, Allegheny County Council Person-at-Large and Climate Science Denier.

VoterID Lawsuit

From yesterday's P-G:

Divided along party lines, Allegheny County's election board voted this afternoon to file a lawsuit challenging the state's new Voter Identification law.

Board chairman John DeFazio and county Executive Rich Fitzgerald, both Democrats, voted to sue, while Heather Heidelbaugh, the lone Republican on the three-member board, voted against the measure. Both Mr. DeFazio, of Shaler, and Ms. Heidelbaugh, of Mt. Lebanon, serve on the election board because they are at-large members of county council.

"We should be making it easier to vote," Mr. Fitzgerald said. "This legislation [the Voter ID law] is trying to deny that right and make it more difficult for people to vote."

The fact that Councilmember Heidelbaugh would vote against the measure is hardly surprising considering what's found on her election website:

Heather Heidelbaugh has been an advocate of smaller government, lower taxes and has stood up to those engaged in voter fraud around this Commonwealth.

As much as I like Attorney Heidelbaugh, she's blurring the lines here.  Her complaint against ACORN was about voter registration not voter fraud.

And there's scant actual voter fraud in Pennsylvania.

Back to the P-G:

County solicitor Andrew Szefi said the lawsuit likely would be brought on behalf of both the election board and the county.

The heart of the county's argument would be that the state constitution sets just four requirements for voting eligibility: minimum age, U.S. citizenship, residence in Pennsylvania and a specific election district.

The new requirement that voters show photo identification before they can cast ballots should have been imposed via constitutional amendment, he said.

Here's Article VII Section 1 of the State Constitution outlining voting qualifications:

Every citizen 21 years of age, possessing the following qualifications, shall be entitled to vote at all elections subject, however, to such laws requiring and regulating the registration of electors as the General Assembly may enact. 1. He or she shall have been a citizen of the United States at least one month. 2. He or she shall have resided in the State ninety (90) days immediately preceding the election. 3. He or she shall have resided in the election district where he or she shall offer to vote at least sixty (60) days immediately preceding the election, except that if qualified to vote in an election district prior to removal of residence, he or she may, if a resident of Pennsylvania, vote in the election district from which he or she removed his or her residence within sixty (60) days preceding the election.

That's right. Nothing about showing any photo ID.

We'll see how it plays out in the courts.  But let's be clear.  This bill is not about "protecting the integrity of the election system" (with only 4 prosecutions of voter fraud out of the millions of votes since 2008?  C'mon.)  It is about making it more difficult for people to vote Democratic.

Simple as that.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I know both Heather Heidelbaugh (being a fill-in guest on 4802) and Andrew Szefi (I worked in an office where he was an attorney a long time ago) but I've had no contact with him in a decade.

OffQ

For the many who missed my most recent OffQ performance, it's been posted.

Here.

Enjoy!

We talk about Fred Honsberger a bit. The fun stuff is towards the end where Heather Heidelbaugh calls global warming "socialism" and McIntire and I both try to correct her by saying (in near unison) "It's science."

Fun times!

Pittsburgh Pundits!

Let me first say that I had a blast last night at John McIntire's "Pittsburgh Pundits" show.

We arrived about 10 after seeing the PSO perform Carmina Burana (great performance, by the way) and after getting some drinks we settled down to some comedy.

Gab Bonesso did the first set. Unfortunately two things got in the way; the crowd didn't seem in the mood and Gab was fighting the flu.

Once the panel discussion (Heather Heidelbaugh, Cat Specter and me) got under way, though, things were fine.

That is, until Cat and Heather started discussing Sex ed and Abortion. It was a heated discussion to say the least. I was glad (though a tad frightful) to be sitting between them.

Ok, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.

There were some craaaaazy questions from the audience. There was an animal rights activist (who was wearing a leather jacket, by the way) who suggested that the chimp-mauling the woman in Connecticut received was "justified." I don't want to take things out of context too much, but I think she thought it was justified in light of the overwhelming amount of animal cruelty that humans commit. Somehow I doubt that the chimp in question (a 200 pound lobster-eating former TV "actor") even knew about all those mistreated circus elephants.

But I digress.

Here's me and Cat:


(Hint: DON'T ask her about the beret.)

And me and Heather:


She takes a TON of crap at these shows. I wonder how she does it.