They're Cherry Picking Again

And by that I mean the Tribune-Review editorial boards recurring (and yet always failing) science denial.  From this past Thursday:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says 2012 “was among the 10 warmest years on record.” But as climate blogger Pierre Gosselin notes, the report fails to mention that last year was one of the coolest of the decade. “(T)he report gives the ... impression that warming is galloping ahead out of control. But (NOAA's) data show just the opposite.” There's “science” and then there's science.
[Bolding in original.]

Before I get to deconstructing the braintrust's "conflict" I'd like to point out a bit of "gee, maybe I dunno, Wally" plagiarism.  Take a look at this from CNSNews:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released its “State of the Climate in 2012” report, which states that “worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record.”

But the report “fails to mention [2012] was one of the coolest of the decade, and thus confirms the cooling trend,” according to an analysis by climate blogger Pierre Gosselin.

“To no one’s surprise, the report gives the reader the impression that warming is galloping ahead out of control,” writes Gosselin. “But their data shows just the opposite.”

How much closer could these two passages get?  But is this really plagiarism?  Considering the fact that it's from the "Cybercast News Service" and that the "Cybercast News Service" used to be the "Conservative News Service" and that the "Conservative News Service" is owned by the Media Research Center and Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife is a huge financial supporter of the CNS, I suppose that even if it is plagiarism, Barbara Hollingsworth (writer of the CNS piece the braintrust filched) probably can't protest about it that much.

Back to the  braintrust debunking.  Let's look at Gosselin's blogpost first.  It's a typical case of cherry picking the data as you can see from his first chart:

See how it just goes back to 1998?  That's the first clue there's selective data choosing going on.  Gosselin goes on to say that the NOAA report actually "confirm(s) precisely what the skeptics have been claiming all along" ie that "The Earth has stopped warming."

Except that it doesn't.

We've dealt with this "no global warming since 1998" myth before.  If you focus on the last decade and a half it certainly looks like a stoppage in the warming.  But if you expand the view and take a rolling average, this is what it looks like:

See the upper right hand corner? That's just about all the data from the last decade or so (more or less exactly what Gosselin's basing his "the warming stopped" story on).  Looking at more than a century's worth of data, how anyone can say the warming's "stopped" is beyond me.

Indeed, there's no conflict between the two statements the braintrust wants you to think are in conflict.  It is possible for 2012 to be "among the warmest on record" and for it to be "one of coolest of the decade."

How?  Well, as NOAA says on the page describing the report:

Including the 2012 temperature, Earth is warming at a rate of 0.06°C (0.11°F) per decade since 1880 and a more rapid 0.16°C (0.28°F) per decade since 1970.

Ah...

So only by a careful selection of the data can you show that "the Earth stopped warming" in 1998.

So the braintrust is right, there's "science" and there's science.  Too bad they're wrong in thinking they're quoting science - when they're quoting non-climatologists (oops, did I fail to mention that he's not actually a climate scientist?  My bad.) like Pierre Gosselin, they're only dabbling in "science."

On the other hand, the data used by the NOAA report is actually "peer-reviewed."

So you can decide which is more scientifically reliable.

Meanwhile, Outside...

From the State of the Climate Global Analysis page for April 2013:

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for April 2013 was the 13th warmest on record, at 0.52°C (0.94°F) above the 20th century average of 13.7°C (56.7°F).

That's out of 134 years, by the way. We just had the 13th warmest April in 134 years.

Then there's  the YTD:

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–April period (year-to-date) was 0.56°C (1.01°F) above the 20th century average of 12.6°C (54.8°F), tying with 2009 as the eighth warmest such period on record.

And the 8th warmest January to April.

Yea that's right, the planet isn't warming up.

Meanwhile, Outside...

From the most recent NOAA "State of the Climate" report:

The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for November 2012 was 0.67°C (1.21°F) above the 20th century average of 12.9°C (60.4°F). This is the fifth warmest November since records began in 1880. Including this November, the 10 warmest Novembers have occurred in the past 12 years.

And:

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January–November 2012 was the eighth warmest such period on record, at 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average.

Something to think about the next time a climate denier tells you that global warming "stopped in 1998."

More Anti-Science At The Trib

In this editorial.

And it was only yesterday when we posted this story about how one climate science skeptic has concluded that   "Global warming is real."

But what does Scaife's braintrust have to say today?

First, I think I found a mistake - no really.  A simple sourcing mistake rather than an anti-science mistake.  Take a look at this:

Since the meltdown two years ago in Copenhagen on carbon curbs that would clobber developed nations, the Church of Global Warming has been unable to draft a credible creed. Chief EU climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger says he doubts one will materialize at the U.N. climate conference scheduled Nov. 28 in Durban.

But Mr. Runge-Metzger tells the International Business Times that conference delegates should "formulate a road map that points to a global legal framework" because the Kyoto Protocol -- a case study in climate extremism -- runs out next year.

Except I wasn't able to find any mention of it at International Business Times.  If you load "Runge-Metzger" into IBT's search engine, you get this recent article.  It tells roughly the same story, but you'll note the quotation above ("formulate a road map...") isn't found within it.

What I think they meant was this article in the Bloomberg Business Week:

A failure by climate envoys worldwide to extend emissions-reduction goals under the United Nations Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 may lead to a “complete meltdown” of global talks, Europe’s negotiator said.

More than 190 nations will discuss climate-protection rules for when the current greenhouse-gas targets for developed nations expire in 2012 when they meet at a summit in Durban, South Africa, starting Nov. 28. The European Union is open to the so-called second commitment period under Kyoto under certain conditions, said Artur Runge-Metzger, the bloc’s envoy to the talks.

“If there’s no continuation of the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period I think it’s a deal breaker,” Runge- Metzger said in an interview in Brussels today. “Then we would see a collapse of the negotiations in Durban,” he said. “You start from scratch then probably.”

The quote is even here - in the 7th paragraph:

“What we need to have is a roadmap for negotiations, a work plan for the coming years on when do we want to decide about a new legal framework, what could be the elements in there,” Runge-Metzger said. “In the meantime, you’ll need to have the implementation of the Cancun agreements plus probably the second commitment period of Kyoto, which is then kind of transitional arrangement.”

Yea, I think that's right. It's a minor point, to be sure. But if you're going to be sitting at the big-boy table and you want your braintrust to be taken seriously, the least you can do is to make sure all the simple facts (like where you're taking your info from) are verified.

Makes you look less silly when a blogger looks to deconstruct your editorial, you know?

Now onto the big stuff.  Here's what the braintrust says:

In other words, forget all the mounting evidence that disputes man-made climate change and its unrealized predictions.

What "mounting evidence"? They don't say.

Aside from yesterday's Berkeley study, hows this for mounting evidence?

A new method of crunching climate data could make it possible to put a figure on climate change’s contribution to freak weather events, something that’s been difficult to do with empirical precision.

The debut subject: the Russian heat wave of July 2010, which killed 700 people and was unprecedented since record keeping began in the 19th century. According to the analysis, there’s an 80 percent chance that climate change was responsible.

Here's what they did:

The new method, described by Rahmstorf and Potsdam geophysicist Dim Coumou in an Oct. 25 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study, relies on a computational approach called Monte Carlo modeling. Named for that city’s famous casinos, it’s a tool for investigating tricky, probabilistic processes involving both defined and random influences: Make a model, run it enough times, and trends emerge.

“If you roll dice only once, it doesn’t tell you anything about probabilities,” said Rahmstorf. “Roll them 100,000 times, and afterwards I can say, on average, how many times I’ll roll a six.”

Rahmstorf and Comou’s “dice” were a simulation made from a century of average July temperatures in Moscow. These provided a baseline temperature trend. Parameters for random variability came from the extent to which each individual July was warmer or cooler than usual.

'After running the simulation 100,000 times, “we could see how many times we got an extreme temperature like the one in 2010,” said Rahmstorf. After that, the researchers ran a simulation that didn’t include the warming trend, then compared the results.

“For every five new records observed in the last few years, one would happen without climate change. An additional four happen with climate change,” said Rahmstorf. “There’s an 80 percent probability” that climate change produced the Russian heat wave.

There's still the problem of NOAA.  From the 2010 State of the Climate report:

The year 2010 was among the two warmest years globally since the start of the surface instrumental record in the late 19th century, although the range makes it impossible to call the ranking definitively. It was also the second warmest year in tropospheric records since the mid-20th century. Glaciers very likely experienced the 20th consecutive year of negative mass balance.

NOAA's on record as saying that climate change is "undeniable."  This was more than a year ago.

To date, as far as I can tell, the Trib has yet to even mention the report.  Not even a peep.

Tell me again about this "mounting evidence"?

Scaife's braintrust continues to embarrass itself and all the hard working rational people who get a paid for working at the Tribune-Review.

For The Climategate Files

Way back in late November 2009, Republican Senator James Inhofe announced on (of course) Fox "News" that he was calling for an investigation into the so-called Climategate emails.

Take a look (the announcement is about 3 minutes in):


And in late May of 2010, he sent a letter to the Inspector General of the Department of Commerce requesting an investigation. He also requested an investigation into Dr. Jane Lubchenco. You remember Lubchenco, right? She was quoted recently by the editorial board of the Tribune-Review. Inhofe was apparently unhappy about her testimony to Congress when she said:

The [CRU] emails really do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus and the independent scientific analyses ofthousands of scientists around the world that tell us that the earth is warming and that the warming is largely a result of human activities. "

Which is the truth, apparently, but apparently annoyed Inhofe nonetheless.

So what happened with the investigation? You guessed it. From The Hill:

A Commerce Department inspector general investigation into the “Climategate” controversy finds that government scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did not manipulate climate change data.

It’s the latest investigation to clear scientists of manipulating climate data after thousands of e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit were leaked in 2009.

“Climategate” has become something of a rallying call for climate skeptics, who have pointed to the e-mails to suggest there is a conspiracy among the world’s scientists. But a slew of investigations into the e-mails have cleared scientists of any wrongdoing.

Something we probably won't be seeing anytime soon on the Trib's Op-Ed page. The same Op-Ed page that only last November published:

If the work of blame-mankind climate "scientists" were unimpeachable, they wouldn't be gearing up for a charm offensive.

Seven hundred global-warming doomsayers have agreed to defend their dubious "science" publicly under the auspices of the American Geophysical Union. And 39 Chicken Littles have signed up for a separate "climate rapid response team" organized by a professor at Minnesota's St. Thomas University for deployment to radio and TV talk shows.

Both efforts smack of increasing desperation fueled by the blame-mankind crowd's credibility crumbling beneath the weight of the scandalous Climategate e-mails, which show data manipulation, and greater public recognition of their leftist big-government agenda. That's why skeptics of global-warming orthodoxy make up half of the new GOP members just elected to Congress.

But I digress.

Here's the report Inhofe requested. And the jackpot:

In our review of the CRU emails, we did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data comprising the GHCN-M dataset or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures. In addition, we found no evidence to suggest that NOAA was non-compliant with the IQA or the Shelby Amendment.

And let me write that again: No evidence NOAA inappropriately manipulated the data.

Will Senator Inhofe be making an announcement to that effect on Fox "News"? Will Scaife's braintrust?

We won't be holding our breath.

The Trib's Editorial Board FINALLY Quotes NOAA

But now in the way that you think.

First here's what Scaife's Braintrust posted today:

A Valentine's Day solar flare -- the largest since Dec. 5, 2006, and part of an expected upswing in the 11-year cycle of solar activity -- is cause for legitimate concern. But don't shoot Bruce Willis into space or bet the farm on solar-flare shields just yet.

Solar flares' charged particles crash into Earth's atmosphere 20 to 30 hours later. Resulting electromagnetic disruption affects radio, satellites, power grids and high-tech marvels such as GPS -- on which humanity depends far more today than during the last solar upswing about a decade ago.

Some scientists now warn of a potential $2 trillion "solar 'Katrina.'" The head of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the Financial Times: "Predict and prepare should be the watchwords."

The strongest flare ever recorded wiped out much of Earth's then-new telegraph network in 1859, yet occurred during a "weak" cycle. So the threat can't be dismissed, despite NASA dubbing the Feb. 14 flare "rather weak." Whatever steps can be taken to minimize that threat should be taken.

Still, whatever countermeasures mankind can employ surely are puny compared to the forces that solar flares unleash. Yes, the sun does bear watching. But we must be prepared to understand that the limits of our defenses can be sobering.

Now, let's unweave. The quotation in the third paragraph leads to this article in the Financial Times. And this quotation:

“Predict and prepare should be the watchwords,” agreed Jane Lubchenco, head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And now we have a name. So who's Jane Lubchenco? From her NOAA webpage:

Dr. Lubchenco has studied marine ecosystems around the world and championed the importance of science and its relevance to policy making and human well-being. A former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the International Council for Science and the Ecological Society of America, she served 10 years on the National Science Board (Board of Directors for the National Science Foundation). From 1999-2009 she led PISCO, a large 4-university, interdisciplinary team of scientists investigating the large marine ecosystem along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California. She has a special interest in Arctic ecosystems, with recent work in Svalbard, Greenland and the Alaskan arctic.

Dr. Lubchenco has provided scientific input to multiple U.S. Administrations and Congress on climate, fisheries, marine ecosystems, and biodiversity. Dr. Lubchenco served on the first National Academy of Sciences study on ‘Policy Implications of Global Warming’, providing advice to the George H.W. Bush administration and Congress. In 1997 she briefed President Clinton and Vice President Gore and Members of Congress on climate change.

Her scientific contributions are widely recognized. Eight of her publications are “Science Citation Classics”; she is one of the ‘most highly cited’ ecologists in the world. Dr. Lubchenco is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and four international academies of science: the Royal Society, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, Europe, and Chile. She has received numerous awards including a MacArthur (‘genius’) Fellowship, twelve honorary degrees, the 2002 Heinz Award in the Environment, the 2005 AAAS Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology and the 2008 Zayed International Prize for the Environment.

So I guess she's an expert. Genius Award, too. Frickin impressive.

Now that Lubchenco is deemed worthy to quote but, oddly not worthy enough to be named on the Trib's editorial page (I won't go so far as to wonder whether it's because she's a she), will we be seeing any reference to any other quotation from her?

Like these?

Being a proud UConn grad it pains me to reference anything with the name Yale in it, but considering where I am going with this, this is a good place to start:

Yale Environment 360: My first question is about the climate impacts report that you all came out with very recently. What is the message that you were hoping people would take from that?

Jane Lubchenco: I think the take-away message is that the evidence is in: Climate change is real, it’s causing changes in our own backyard, many of those changes are increasingly challenging to society, and therefore there is urgency in moving ahead with reducing heat-trapping pollution as soon as possible.

Or this quotation:

Jane Lubchenco: Climate change is happening now. It’s not a theory. It’s a set of observed facts. It’s affecting many of the things that people care about

Marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco is head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Dr. Lubchenco told EarthSky that global climate change from fossil fuel burning is impacting Earth’s oceans today.

Jane Lubchenco: Climate change is already affecting oceans. It’s making them warmer. It’s making sea levels rise. And it’s making them more acidic. All of those change both the beauty and the bounty of oceans.

Or this one:

“For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming,”

And the report she mentions? It's this one.

Where NOAA says Climate change is UNDENIABLE.

Will the Trib ever get to that?

State Of The Climate (2010)

Since you won't see this in The Trib, here's some of NOAA's Global Highlights from 2010:

The year 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year since records began in 1880. The annual global combined land and ocean surface temperature was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average. The range associated with this value is plus or minus 0.07°C (0.13°F). The 2010 combined land and ocean surface temperature in the Northern Hemisphere was also the warmest on record, while the combined land and ocean surface temperature in the Southern Hemisphere was the sixth warmest such period on record. The annual globally averaged land temperature was 0.96°C (1.73°F) above average, which tied with 2005 as the second warmest year record. The range associated with this value is plus or minus 0.11°C (0.20°F). The warmest year was 2007, at 0.99°C (1.78°F) above the 20th century average. The decadal global land and ocean average temperature anomaly for 2001–2010 was the warmest decade on record for the globe, with a surface global temperature of 0.56°C (1.01°F) above the 20th century average. This surpassed the previous decadal record (1991–2000) value of 0.36°C (0.65°F).

Huh. Warmest decade on record. Imagine that. Wait - you don't have to. It really happened.