Stephen Schneider Award - Dec. 4, 2012

This is the second such award, the first went to Richard Alley (an ice-core guy) last year.

Bob has not given the podcast links above, but they must be available somewhere.

AustinG has already vaccinated us that this year' recipient James Hansen is 'way out there', and that anyone who uses the words "climate dice' is not to be trusted. I'd say that these vaccinations offer a lot of cheetos and not much cheese, but as always it will be for our canny PC readers to sort all that out.

We could travail, but maybe it would be better to decide whether undefended coastlines and current agriculture should continue on their current paths. If not, how to change, at what cost, and who pays, and how?

Or, how fast? The most interesting question of all. Mojo keeps us up to date here with affinity websites proclaiming the answer to be 'never'. Other, opposed affinity websites much more extreme than SkS proclaim that it is too late to fix the earth's energy balance and we're all doomed (these lack a PC acolyte but I'll leave that alone).

Instead I try to steer a middle course where we have some time, we'd do better to reduce fossil-C emissions in ways that reduce costs (see Icarus, McKinsey, etc.) and gradually phase in some sort of carbon tax. I believe that this could be done in a way that does not make Al Gore the Richest Man in the World, and does not reduce the Koch brothers to requiring food stamps. But some with wisdom would have to devise such plans.

Happy New Year to those observing the western calendar! Good we're not dead eh? I like it.

 

Listening to the podcasts now, they seem 'old news' to me. But not to all perhaps; the blogs have had >3 weeks to chew on these now so we might expect more vaccinations and so forth.

Death threats against the loudest voices? I guess they are used to that.

Still lookin' for the middle...

 

I happened upon this also which is small miracle since just about never watch C-span.

Correct if wrong, but Hansen kept saying 'there needs to be a price on carbon emissions' (is that how he worded it?).

Earlier, did he not say that carbon (energy) producers ought to pay out to consumers?

Hansen did seem a bit out there which made the presentation a little scary. I mean the part about 'we need to get off carbon like, now'.

I don't do well thinking about these things too much. I just try to conserve myself. The country is so divided on climate change issues. Forbes and WSJ say we are but a gnat on elephants rump and could hardly affect the climate. My very successful sibling and family don't worry about climate change and they follow the WSJ take on things.

 

It's unfortunate that so many scientist that understand climate change do not understand either economics or politics. Loud complaining is not a solution. One exception is the Rocky Mountain Institute where they fully understand that progress in sustainability needs to be aligned with successful economic solutions. I find their "solutions" to be real, even if they take some time to implement.

 

^while I don't disagree, there are SOME things that are more important than either politics or economics!

The bottom line is, if you are facing what might well be a catastrophic outcome in a matter of a few decades, a small(ish) hit to todays economy and or today's poltical leaders is w small price to pay. I would posit that choosing to do nothing is going to cost more, politically and economically. One could make a rational argument that efforts to curb GHGs would be a boon to the enonomy rather than a drag, but even if not true in the short term, it surely is true in the long term.

Icarus

 

We are definitely in agreement that slow reactions cause more problems than expedient actions. The reality is immediate economic incentives work vastly better compared to fear incentives, short or long term. (How many Prius drivers bought the Prius just for it's CO2 reduction capabilities?) That is not what I like, but the world does not operate according to what either of us likes.... even if it involves great future pain. So the best path I know of is to get the economically rewarding technologies fielded as fast as possible.

 

These "Scientists"
are deceitful and you all eat it up.
Hanson says Sandy was accentuated by GW .Yet Temps along its entire path were average.
The meme is water vapor will hypothetically increase, and caused Sandy to be more extreme.PURE BULLSHIT when there is no actual increase in water vapor.
Mann the PHONEY Nobel Peace Prize winner (Whom the Nobel representative has stated Mann is NOT a recipient)
claims his use of the word "trick" is out of context , gave the most bullshit answer I could ever imagine.
He said because the tree rings were known to be inaccurate after 1960 (because they showed temps dropping which he and everyone knows is inaccurate)
He explains why he performed the "trick" of hiding the decline by splicing on instrumental data after 1960.
But what he doesnt say is revealing.
Why use a tree that is known to be inaccurate after 1960?
Are there no trees that accurately reflect temp data after 1960?
Yes there are, but Mann chose this particular tree despite known contemporary defects.
Did he choose this particular outlier tree because it did not indicate a Medieval
Warm Period?
Its should be obvious to any idiot that a tree which is not not accurate for the past 50 years is not going to be accurate for the past 1000 years.
Is Mann is too stupid to understand that?
I doubt that very much.

 

BTW shooting dishonest scientists is a little harsh.I wish I could plant cream pies on both Hanson and Mann.

 

Everybody, no matter how successful, is wrong about something. Just because something is scary doesn't mean it's impossible. Just because you don't understand it or believe it doesn't mean it isn't happening.

 

Coincidental that I was watching a video today.He seemed like a very nice fellow .Then I realized he was full of BS .Then I realized it is none other than Stephan Schneider the subject of this thread.
Smooth LIAR.One of the best liars Ive ever seen.
Excellent con man.
Watch video at about 20 min 30 secs.He talks about how the Hockey Stick graph uses the recent past of tree rings to "calibrate " with the instrument data.
PURE UNADULTERATED LIES.
Now I agree Hansen deserves the Schneider LIAR award.

 

My only science background is Gemology.
Gem identification is stressed.
Most gemstones are fake,man made synthetic or cheap substitute imposters.
Basically I have 30 years experience in spotting and identifying bullshit.

 

I like how the new board reacts when the last person posting in a thread doesn't add anything to the discussion:

 

The global water vapor literature I recently linked to nearby seems 'manageably' small - about 10 studies linked, probably less than 100 overall. A fella could get his hands around that with a realistic effort (not that such an effort has been expressed here...)

In contrast, studies linking tree rings (width or x-ray density or stable isotopes) with climate are numerous in the extreme. Hard to pin down with google scholar, but I will suggest it is in the 10,000 to 100,000 range. This seems far beyond what anyone outside the field would attempt to summarize. But, there they are, and to me it stretches credulity that a few (well- or ill-) intentioned practitioners could bend the entire field of study to support their personal agenda. There are simply too many people coring, analyzing and publishing data from too many trees.

Beyond that, there are are obvious similarities in 'dendro' climate reconstructions with ice cores, sedimentary varves, cave speleothems, coral 'cores' and several other lines of evidence. So we would be obliged to stretch credulity quite a bit further, and suppose that many more scientists are in on the hoax.

Then you have the biological, ecological, and other observations (like lake and river ice-out dates and glacial retreat histories) that present strong similarities to 'dendro' climate reconstructions. The hoax we are conjuring up here would be of epic proportions.

As well as I understand dendroclimatology, the records since about 1960 (which can be compared conveniently with instrumental temperature records) correspond poorly with the much older (now out to about 10,000 years) which can only be compared to climate proxies. In the literature, this is called 'the divergence problem'. Which is about as sanitized name as could possibly be applied

But, there it is. One can read about it for example here:

http://webcenter.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/trl/downloads/Publications/divergence2007.pdf

or anywhere that pops up on google scholar searching on divergence and tree ring. Anybody can read about it, and decide for yourselves about dendroclimatology. We are not obliged to take anyone's ideas at face value. Nifty eh?

Among the many possible explanations that have been advanced for divergence, one I would bring to your attention is atmospheric CO2. This is because because trees do love that molecule so, and its concentration during the 'divergence era' have been higher than at any other time during the 10,000 years I mention above. Y'all know that.

So, as interested bystanders, we could disregard dendroclimatology because of divergence. But I'd like to suggest that anyone who recognizes CO2 as plant food (two examples here would be mojo and myself) would probably not do so. It would not be rational.

I have mentioned elsewhere that trees are sucking down about 2 petagrams of fossil-CO2 per year net. Herbaria around the world contain tree leaves collected 100 years ago (for example), and those leaves have more stomata then the same species alive now. Trees are lovin' the CO2! Yet, we are to suppose that these trees now respond to climate signals just as they did 100, 1000 or 10000 years ago. Doesn't work for me.

 

In case the horse is not quite completely dead I will beat it a bit more. Poor thing.

This review/essay is reader friendly (as such things go...)

http://coast.gkss.de/staff/zorita/Frank_etal_WIRESCllmChange_2010.pdf

So have a look. I find it to be a pretty balanced assessment of strengths and weaknesses.

This one:

Dendroclimatology: extracting climate from trees - Sheppard - 2010 - Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change - Wiley Online Library

we'd have to request from the author because it is not free access at Wiley.

 

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."

But in practice ,not so much, sorry to say.
,mojo

 

Updating my #17, I have the Sheppard 2010 dendro review now, in case anyone would like to have a read.

The (large) question of where and by how much environmentalists overstate impending doom. We beat the climate-related ones regularly here, but there are others that might be just as interesting to discuss. Depends on the intersts of PC participants.

 

For the record.

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double 'ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."