Yes, but How Many Empire State Buildings Is the World Losing?

Yesterday, I estimated how many Empire State Buildings fit into the volume of sea ice lost by the Arctic each decade and year (3 million and 3 hundred thousand, respectively).

Today, I want to attempt that same calculation with the entire world.

Now, I am going to take a massive shortcut by using IPCC AR4 sea level rise (SLR) contribution data, and a simple conversion formula (1mm of global SLR = ~360 Gt ice, and 0.92 tonnes of ice ≡ 1 m³ of ice).

		Rate of SLR (mm per year)
Source of sea level rise		1993–2003
Glaciers and ice caps		0.77 ± 0.22
Greenland Ice Sheet		0.21 ± 0.07
Antarctic Ice Sheet		0.21 ± 0.35

Adding those together, and using the conversion formula above, we get 1.19mm/yr and 11.9mm/decade SLR from those three sources, or 4,656,521,739,130 m^3 global land ice volume lost every ten years. Divide that by the volume of the Empire State Building, and, for the sake of perspective once again, we have an additional 4,656,522 famous skyscrapers to tack onto yesterday's figure. That's the volume of approximately 7.6 million Empire State Buildings lost in ice worldwide each decade, and seven hundred and sixty thousand lost each year. Also, that's the volume of about 1.5-2 Mt. Everests lost each decade by my admittedly wanting estimation of the space taken up by the notorious peak.

How Many Empire State Buildings Does the Arctic Lose Each Decade?

Image source.

Right around this time last year, we started hearing an awful lot of crowing from deniers about Arctic sea ice extent making some record recovery they dreamed up. It's really difficult for me to understand how the 6th lowest minimum on record is something to celebrate, even if you pretend the climate isn't changing at all and/or due to our emissions. I mean, I know deniers are screwballs and everything, but I thought maybe they'd at least have enough common sense not to intentionally defeat their own ignorant purposes by trumpeting the sixth lowest minimum like it proves the planet stopped warming or something.

Obviously, they try to cherry-pick the ice conditions at either pole which suit their strange denial-fest, and the challenge appears a bit beyond them anymore. They have to pretend the realities of the downward trend in global sea ice extent don't exist, and stick their fingers in their ears especially aggressively over the volume of land and sea ice lost in the Arctic and Antarctic annually. Volume, to my mind, is a much better gauge of the effects of global warming, because ice can spread thin, have greater coverage (extent), and look like it's increasing overall due to many factors, some of which are caused by climate change itself (scroll down to the "Antarctica’s positive trend in sea ice extent" section of this NSIDC link for further explanation).

Personally, I try to pay more attention to volume data, and here's what sea ice volume has been doing in the Arctic for the past 35 years or so:



Look at the "Anomaly Trend" figure in the lower left of that image. 3,000 km^3 +/- 1,000 km^3 lost every decade. Approximately three thousand cubic kilometers of ice vanishes every ten years. That's three trillion cubic meters. To give you some perspective, the Empire State building is about 1 million cubic meters in volume, so the Arctic loses 3 million Empire State Buildings worth of sea ice each decade, or three hundred thousand per year.

To further illustrate how much ice goes missing, let's very roughly approximate the volume of Mt. Everest using the formula for the volume of a cone (I did say very roughly):

3.1416 * 22km^2 * (9km/3) = 4561.59 km^3

The Arctic loses around two-thirds to three-quarters a Mt. Everest worth of sea ice every ten years.

Something Everyone, Deniers and Realists Included, Should Avoid

While certainly pertaining to climate change and online conversations about the topic, this post is really more about free speech, and how critical thinking and scientific, rational, and skeptical discussion cannot exist without it.

I listen to a lot of podcasts throughout the course of my week; at work, the gym, doing chores, running errands, shopping, etc. I just posted and boasted about donating to my favorite, Big Picture Science (BPS). I'm also a fan of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe (SGU). Both are pretty popular and successful shows, but within the skeptical/rational/atheist community, SGU might edge out BPS, whereas BPS maybe has greater appeal among a more generally science-minded audience. I should point out that there is not a drastic difference between fanbases, however, which is probably best exemplified by the fact that Seth Shostak from BPS has appeared on SGU, and Steven Novella from SGU has been interviewed on BPS.

OK, those somewhat trivial hairs now plucked/split, onto the point of all this...

If you listened to this week's episode, you learned that SGU Productions is being sued. Apparently, Dr. Steven Novella was very critical of another medical practitioner, Dr. Edward Tobinick, who uses a rheumatoid arthritis drug for several things it's not intended to treat, such as Alzheimer’s disease. I won't get into the gory details of Dr. Novella's criticism in this post, because I'm not a doctor, and I don't play one on the Interchutes either. Also, I'm more interested in why Dr. Novella has a right to be critical (even harshly so) without fear of being sued, rather than whether or not his analysis has legs. But you can read all about it here, if you would like to learn more.

As Dr. Novella points out in that link, Dr. Tobinick's motivation is silencing opposition, pure and simple. That's the real reason he initiated an absurd case that will hopefully get thrown out of court sooner rather than later. If there's any sanity left in the world, that is. Tobinick was hoping Novella would buckle under the pressure, and take down the scathing opinion-piece, rather than pay legal fees to defend itself, and it's sad that our justice system entertains such slimy intimidation.

Look, people, the point I want to make regarding this and similar lawsuits that target free speech is we need to preserve our ability to verbally dissect one another at all costs. It is crucial to getting at the truth. It is crucial to logic, reason, and science, and it is a vital part of our open public discourse. If you care at all about honest debate, then you will never do what Tobinick has done. Just because lawyers like to get paid does not mean we need to provide them a new boat or vehicle every time someone confronts or questions us. We all need to sign a pact in blood or something that we will never do such things to each other, even our archenemies. Novella is either right or wrong about whether or not Tobinick is engaging in some form of malpractice, and we cannot get to the bottom of it all, if we are all too scared to weigh in on the matter, because it will cost us tens of thousands of dollars for attorneys. It is of no consequence that we are not nice when we criticize each other's words and actions. We need the freedom to be as cold and calculating with one another as possible, because our fragile egos and self-interests are less important than the dangers posed by deception and charlatanry.

Wait a second...do the rest of you hear that growing rumble off in the distance? It's the sound of deniers rushing in and stumbling over one another to be the first to complain about Mann's libel case. Now, I am essentially a free speech absolutist, so I do take some exception to Mann's suit. However, if you deniers do not see a clear difference between what Dr. Novella is doing, and what the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute were in reality attempting, well, I'm here to slap the dope outta ya and clear things up. You're welcome in advance.

Things Are Looking Up (or at Least They Should Be)

So, almost a couple months ago, I found myself in the strange position of having to agree with Anthony Watts and Roy Spencer. Yeah, I know. I'm still trying to shake the creepy feeling. In my defense, however, I only agreed to a degree, and drew a clear line exactly where they started acting like the King Trolls they truly are (you'll need to click on the link for further elaboration/clarification).

In that post, I also referenced a very lucid takedown of solar roadways by Thunderf00t. Sorry, solar roadway fans, but they ain't what they're cracked up to be (pun definitely intended). Interestingly, in that video, Thunderf00t estimates that if we cover all of America's roadways in these proposed hexagonal solar panels, the tempered glass component alone will cost close to what I estimate the present price tag for space-based solar power (SBSP) to be ($20 trillion vs. $10-$300 trillion). Now, forgetting for a moment that a recent NASA-funded research project came up with a much lower total than I did, let's just assume the two ideas would cost roughly the same. With the amount of either bill being essentially a wash, and assuming no show-stopping deployment/feasibility issues, we are only left deciding which is a more productive and beneficial concept (i.e.: which gives us more bang in the form of energy for our buck).

To start the decision-making, we should first consider perhaps the most important factor: efficiency. The solar roadway folks claim about a 15-20% efficiency. Nice, but once you remove/polish away the snow/dirt/dust/opaque scratching/etc., get your solar panels above the shadowing/interference caused by cars/trees/buildings/clouds/weather/other atmospheric disturbances/etc., you might just find the biggest issue is transmission difficulties, and even detractors put the worst-case RF/microwave-beaming scenario at about 50% efficiency. What are your most problematic power production levels in space can't even be achieved in the best of situations on good ole terra firma.

Secondly, that efficiency estimate for solar roadways will NOT hold in higher latitudes and/or during the winter due to the fact that the sunlight is less direct and has to travel through greater stretches of scattering atmosphere resulting in further attenuation of its strength, as Thunderf00t points out in his video. In space, however, you need not worry about your distance from the equator or seasonality. The sun shines with equal power all the time, which is nice.

Finally, though I said the cost of either shouldn't weigh into the decision here, I really meant initial investment, because, when the price of maintenance is considered, I don't think there can be any doubt that the wear-and-tear of vehicle traffic will far surpass anything the vacuum of space can throw at properly-designed, autonomous satellite systems. To the best of my knowledge, once SBSP is up in geosynchronous orbit, it will be well beyond most of the corrosion issues faced in low-earth orbit, as well as threats from man-made space junk. If I'm wrong about that, I welcome the schooling, so let me have it. Fair warning, however, I'm not terribly interested in long dissertations about the dangers posed by micrometeorites. I never claimed SBSP was perfect and invulnerable (in fact, systems like the one proposed by John Mankins are biologically-inspired, modular, no-single-point-of-failure designs whereby broken components are replaced, if necessary, rather than repaired...see section "3.3 Concept Description" of the SPS-ALPHA final report), and, I think we can all agree, no power system we make ever will be.

Thunderf00t makes a snarky and rather valid point toward the end of his video about existing parking lot solar panels. For good reasons, you don't find them under the cars, where the solar roadway folks would have us put them. Well, I'm just asking that we take that point to its logical conclusion and place our solar panels in the ultimate "above it all" location: 35,000km over our heads.

Let's go, solar roadways folks, before all that money you received gets wasted on R&D for a less practical, less productive idea, donate it to SBSP projects which promise to deliver more energy per dollar invested. Instead of looking down, start looking up, because, like it or not, that's where we're headed, anyway.

One of the Few in Washington Who Actually Gives a Damn about Us

Sometimes I think he's the only one left with the guts to cut the crap, stand up for us, and tell it like it is. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bernard Sanders.



"Our job is to transform our energy system, work with countries around the world to reduce carbon, and to help save the planet, so that these young people will have a habitable nation and a habitable world in the years to come."

Transform our energy system...hmmmm, where have you heard that before?

My Space Pom-Poms Pale in Comparison

I've been trying to make a strong case for space-based solar power (SBSP) recently, but I got nothing on this guy. Meet the real SBSP cheerleader, President of Artemis Innovation Management Solutions LLC, John C. Mankins.

Mankins has had a distinguished technology innovation career in and out of NASA, and he has written a book which argues the case for SBSP.

You can get a good idea where Mankins is coming from by watching his TEDx talk. Notice how he dives right in and starts the presentation by mentioning the challenge of overcoming SBSP's present astronomical cost (OK, fine, pun intended).



SBSP has been in the research pipeline for decades, and, only a couple years ago, Mankins spearheaded an effort funded by NASA to address many of the issues raised by previous studies.

From the program's final report:

The vision of delivering solar power to Earth from platforms in space has been known for decades. However, early architectures to accomplish this vision were technically complex and unlikely to prove economically viable. Some of the issues with these earlier solar power satellite (SPS) concepts – particularly involving technical feasibility – were addressed by NASA’s space solar power (SSP) studies and technology research in the mid-to-late 1990s. Despite that progress, ten years ago a number of key technical and economic uncertainties remained. A new SPS concept has been proposed that resolves many, if not all, of those uncertainties: “SPS - ALPHA” (Solar Power Satellite by means of Arbitrarily Large Phased Array).

In other words, this latest SBSP research effort attempts to fix the remaining "technical and economic uncertainties."

SPS-ALPHA incorporates a number of critical new technologies, including: (1) WPT using a retro-directive RF phased array with high-efficiency solid-state amplifiers; (2) high-efficiency multi-bandgap PV solar cells, employed in a concentrator PV (CPV) architecture with integrated thermal management; (3) lightweight structural components, applied in various systems/subsystems; (4) autonomous robotics in a highly structured environment; and, (5) a high degree of autonomy among individual modules. However, no “breakthroughs” are required, and the key innovation is at the architecture level.

I made that last sentence bold text, because I think it's important. We don't have to invent anything new to make SBSP a reality. We have all the tech required in our hands already, and SPS-ALPHA takes it into the fold. The only innovation necessary is how we design it, or how we assemble it, the architecture.

As for the seemingly insurmountable economic issues of SBSP (I personally estimate present costs of satisfying all US energy demands at $10-$300 trillion...yup, trillion), this report will knock yer spaceboots off.

The study concluded that the SPS-ALPHA concept could – with needed technological advances – make possible the economically viable deliver of solar energy to markets on Earth. In particular, it appears that a full-scale SPS-ALPHA, when incorporating selected advances in key component technologies should be capable of delivering power at a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of approximately 9¢/kilowatt-hour...Although no breakthroughs in technology appear to be needed to realize SPS-ALPHA, transformational changes in how space systems are designed are needed. Additional research and development (R&D) will be required for confirmation of this very promising finding.

9¢/kilowatt-hour. Even if the true cost turns out to be double that, wow, just WOW. As Mankins mentions in his TEDx talk, today's US market prices range anywhere from 10¢ to 40¢/kilowatt-hour. No emissions and an eventual cost less than terrestrial production.

That settles it. I gotta buy bigger pom-poms.

Mann Alive! 700 Additional Hockey Sticks

We can add the NHL to the list of communists (could Goddard's desperate reaching become anymore pathetic and ridiculous?) who acknowledge the danger to our way of life represented by anthropogenic global warming (AGW). In a recent sustainability report, which details the things the league is doing to reduce its carbon footprint and environmental impact, commissioner Gary Bettman recognizes what climate change means to a sport that requires winter weather.

"Our sport can trace its roots to frozen freshwater ponds, to cold climates. Major environmental challenges, such as climate change and freshwater scarcity, affect opportunities for hockey players of all ages to learn and play the game outdoors."

That dirty communist, Bettman. He must want to avoid contract negotiations with fair market value-minded players. Obviously, his real goal is to turn the NHL into the Soviet Hockey Championship League. Negotiations will start going his and his Kremlin-Krony owners' way much more often, when KGB agents serve as the arbiters, and getting sent down to the minors takes on a whole new meaning.

It turns out the NHL contributes only a fraction of our annual global CO2 output (34Gt): approximately 530,000 metric tons during a full 82 games/team season. Whereas emissions reductions within the league may not go a long way toward reducing planetary totals, the attention this initiative will bring to the AGW issue could be tremendous. Kudos to Bettman and the NHL for doing this, and may it encourage many other professional sports to do likewise, whether or not they play on ice. I'm talking to you, FIFA, NFL, MLB, etc. If all leagues across the globe issued such reports and carbon reduction goals, our global emissions might see a somewhat noticeable impact. An all-encompassing, multi-sport report would be a very interesting read indeed.

Growing Pains

This is an upstart, snot-nosed, pesky blog with little hope of surviving in a digital universe drowning in two-bit, "here today, gone tomorrow" sites, right?

I started this irksome project to get under your skin only a couple months ago, deniers, and I'll likely lose interest and be gone in a few months like "all the rest," yeah? No comments to date, and no real reason to pay me any mind, ain't that so?

See, problem is, Google's stats feature is telling me you are paying me mind (in minor daily increments, to be sure). Each and every day, I see more traffic than the day before. Enough to where I might just take some pride in the attention, thank you for the somewhat involuntary generosity you seem unable to get under wraps, and stick around to further irritate you. :)

Also, I've been linking to your gods in posts where I cut them down to their true, small-minded size (for example...), and traffic-sourcing reports being what they are for blog administrators, I am quite certain that at least a few of them know what I am up to while lacking the guts to call me out, or, like you, figuring I'll just go away. Now, you may see this as arrogance. I, however, see it as a glorious tribute to critical thinking skills all those hard-working teachers (you know, the ones you call "liberals on the government take") over the course of a fine, well-rounded, public education, ending in a college degree, have managed to cultivate in me.

The short of all that talk-is-cheap boasting? I'm not going anywhere.

So let me issue you a challenge (something I've done before), and see if you have the backbone to come out of the inky, lurker shadows and respond...

What is your best argument against the undeniable reality that our emissions have warmed the planet and are changing the climate for the worse and to our own detriment?

Let's go. Find your spine and step up, because I'm more than willing to tell you what my best argument is for why you're all a bunch of pseudoscience-worshipping fools. Spoiler alert: it's in my blog header.

Down with Disease

This is a highly-technical but engrossing talk given at Yale about infectious disease and climate change. Before watching this, I would have expected a more direct correlation between increased temperatures and increases in diseases like malaria, but it turns out the story is much more complex. For one, it seems malaria is not quite so happy to see higher temperatures as previously thought. Now, that would be good news for the broiling hot tropics (what little good news these areas can hope for), but possibly bad news for higher latitudes where the temperatures approach malaria's sweet spot. Also, wealth leads to less exposure to the natural world (indoor climate control, screened doors and windows, etc.), and therefore less exposure to vectors of transmission like mosquitoes, so, as the continent's economy improves, Africans may remove themselves from conditions which facilitate the spread, leading to a decrease in malaria, even were it the case that it preferred 40+ °C. But that reduction assumes climate change will not negatively impact the region's economic growth, something Kevin Lafferty points out in the video is rather presumptuous. See? Like many things in science, it gets complicated quick. We can be thankful dedicated professionals like Lafferty take the time to conduct field research and draft complex analyses in an effort to quantify and understand all the factors and variables involved. We can also be thankful scientists like Lafferty appreciate that computer models greatly aid the effort, rather than disparage them. Notice how heavily Lafferty relies on them for predictions in his basic parasitology research and for understanding climate change impacts such as disruptions of host/parasite populations. Splitting the baby in situations like this must drive deniers mad. After all, in order to maintain the denier delusion that computer models of the climate are inherently flawed and worthless, they have to willfully ignore their usage/efficacy elsewhere in science, such as parasitology.

Goddard Math: Eyeballing Pretty Graphics Gives Better Mean Calculations Than Real Data

I'm beginning to think Steven Goddard drinks before blogging. His posts are now so bizarre, incoherent, and devoid of any clearly stated point or purpose, you are left to guess at whatever it is he's getting at.

Today, in this post, he has somehow come to the conclusion that climate experts have to work hard to achieve their levels of fundamental stupidity.

Let's see if we can follow his "reasoning," shall we?

"According to the experts at the University of Colorado, everyone agrees that sea level is rising 3.2 mm/year"

That's how he begins the post, and then he shows a screen capture of these sea level rise (SLR) estimate links from a University of Colorado site (they're in the left-hand margin)...

GMSL Rates
CU: 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/yr
AVISO: 3.3 ± 0.6 mm/yr
CSIRO: 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/yr
NASA GSFC: 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/yr
NOAA: 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/yr (w/ GIA)

He then follows that link list image with this petty, dimwitted swipe at educational standards and climate science...

"They are using that new kind climate math (Common Core inspired) where almost all locations are below the mean."

And shows these two graphics from NOAA's SLR trend site...





After engaging in all that rigorous research, he somehow magically imagines that he has done enough hard work to declare the following...

"Like I always say, you simply can’t make up fundamentally stupid like climate experts. They have to work hard at it."

That's it. That is the post.

What.

The.

Hell?!

If you're stumped, you're not alone. I honestly can't claim to know for certain what this demented and confused troll is trying to say here, but I'll take a stab at it, anyway. I think his "point" is that he sees a lot of diamonds and arrows in those two graphics which have colors indicating they are below the ~3.2 ± 0.4 mm/yr global mean SLR that CU, AVISO, CSIRO, NASA, and NOAA all estimate, so therefore the calculations they used to derive those means are wrong. To calculate global mean SLR more accurately, Goddard doesn't need to crunch the real data like those various agencies have. Nope, he can just eyeball the pretty, colorful shapes which indicate 0-3 mm/yr SLR or less, miraculously intuit what the actual number within that range is for each location, and know just by gazing at the pictures that their populations are too high for the stated global means to be right. To further illustrate Goddard's Bizarro World superpower here, if I posted the following graph...



...told you that green lines represent a number from 0-4, yellow 4-10, and red 10-20, and then told you that the mean of my data set is 4, our strange little denier blogger would claim to know whether or not that number is accurate.

I welcome any corrections if I'm wrong about his intended point, because, again, I admit to being thoroughly bewildered. You can't make up fundamental inanity like Goddard posts. He works hard at it.

Spending Lotsa Money, or Experimenting More with the Climate

A couple days ago, I used the Moon landing anniversary as an excuse to post a patriotic, hoorahrah, pom-pom-waving rallying cry for space-based solar power. Well, I think it was patriotic, anyway. Fifty-some years ago, we decided, as a nation, to spend a lot of time, money, and effort to accomplish what seemed like to us at the time a vital, if not dire, space-faring goal that could not have come about any other way (i.e.: without the full resources and commitment of the American people and the federal government).

I am asking that we do the same again, not for hundreds of billions this time (the cost of the Apollo program in today's dollars), but many trillions. I estimate the cost of satisfying all of America's power needs (not just electricity!) to be anywhere from $10-300 trillion. Yup, ten to three hundred trillion dollars.

Now, when you recover from collapsing onto the floor, let me give you some reasons why you still need to take space-based solar seriously, despite the sticker shock.

Firstly, climate change, unlike communism, truly threatens our civilization and maybe even our very existence. As bad as Stalin was, something tells me even had his flawed vision of running a nation or the world triumphed, we'd have been much worse off, but not teetering on the brink of self-destruction due to Marxist policies alone. So we need to do something again, this time for a true threat, and it needs to be impactful.

Secondly, we appear hell-bent on answering the final frontier's call. Are we doing this merely to impress any aliens we might meet? Or to benefit from the things space has to offer such as a virtually limitless, 24-7-365 power source?

And, lastly, conservative denier think tanks won't come right out and say it, but they are scheming to profit from a problem they won't admit exists. We are pretty sure dumping sulfur into the stratosphere would cool the planet, but we have no firm sense of what other effects it would have. We have no idea what the true costs of that action would be. And the worst part is it does nothing to reduce our emissions. It's a Band-Aid, not a cure, and a Band-Aid that could cause other sicknesses.

Nothing meaningful we do to combat climate change will be inexpensive. NOTHING. Cheap, quick fixes will most likely make things better in the short term, but worse in the long run, if for no other reason than they kick the can down the road, as with lacing the atmosphere with aerosols. Space-based solar, though monstrously expensive, is a real solution. We know the costs, what to expect, and that it will work as intended. It would reduce our emissions dramatically, and it has the added benefit of coinciding with our space-faring goals. And as launch costs decrease so will the jaw-dropping price tag.

Biological Evidence for Climate Change from the Pacific Northwest

This is an informative and entertaining talk about the impact of climate change on the forests of the Cascades and Olympic Mts. given by University of Washington professor Dave Peterson. I especially liked the mention of corroborating, interdisciplinary evidence. While we sometimes hear about a consensus of expert opinion, we don't hear often enough about the complimentary nature of the data from different scientific fields. One could argue this agreement is the most convincing bit of proof we have for the effect our emissions are having on climate. And it doesn't hurt when the speaker has a good sense of humor and an infectious passion for the subject matter. Have a watch.

Not Because They Are Easy, but Because They Are Hard

"And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

-John F. Kennedy

Top-down inspiration got us to the Moon before the USSR, proving to the world that we were the ones with the superior nuclear warhead delivery system. That was the true goal of the Apollo program, if you care to evaluate it dispassionately and logically, as Neil deGrasse Tyson does.

"Notwithstanding the sanitized memories so many of us have of the Apollo era, Americans were not first on the Moon because we're explorers by nature or because our country is committed to the pursuit of knowledge. We got to the Moon first because the United States was out to beat the Soviet Union, to win the Cold War any way we could."

We were motivated predominantly by aspirations of becoming the greater global power; the ones demonstrating the superior economy, government, and technology. Now, you may have philosophical problems with such militaristic nationalism, and you may feel the "Red Threat" was a classic case of us chasing ghosts that led to more problems than benefits. America's paranoid, Cold War-era imperialism rearing its ugly head, and all that. I won't argue. All I ask is you consider that, at one time, we had the ability to recognize a threat, real or imaginary, come together as a nation, pool our energies into a successful, unifying effort, and triumph like no other country, kingdom, empire, etc., has ever triumphed before, despite the unknown dangers and daunting obstacles.

Only America, which created what is arguably the most influential secular legal document the world has ever produced, the US Constitution, with its codification of individual human rights, separation of powers, and of church and state, and so on, has sent humans to another world.

We are the only ones.

Think about that for a moment, because it should not be taken lightly. If I ever succumb to fleeting moments of foolish national pride, they are due to achievements like that. We have our problems, no doubt, but we can accomplish astounding and wonderful things when we set our minds collectively to the effort. And we have at least some right to be proud, because of these victories and despite our flaws.

OK, I'll set down the red, white, and blue pom-poms now, and explain why I picked them up and waved them about so frantically, if my injection of bold text into that famous Moon speech above didn't provide a large enough hint.

In stark contrast to JFK's enthusiastic call to charge blindly and eagerly into a challenging difficulty fraught with unknown perils and lacking any solutions, deniers offer us bottom-up despair. They do not even want public discourse regarding or mention of a problem unless proven fixes and technologies can be provided immediately.

"The purpose of our analysis and policy proposals is to create the political and economic conditions that foster the needed technologies. But there is no assurance that this will happen, and much time and money may be invested in futile and wasteful efforts...Our climate-change debates confuse more than they clarify...The central truth for public policy is: We have no solution."

There ya have it, folks. Deniers choose not to do things because they are hard. And they also apparently prefer those things don't get discussed. Just fucking swell that. Following such "reasoning," we can't contemplate or debate cancer, AIDS, poverty, hunger, etc., unless we have a cure ready to go, because we will only confuse matters. Ya got that?



But, fine, I'll play their silly little demanding game here for a moment, and offer my preferred solution which, unlike going to the Moon forty or fifty years ago, requires no new technology be invented: space-based solar power (SBSP).

Now, the reason I brought up JFK's speech (above and beyond the anniversary) is because I'm not interested in listening to bellyaching about the price tag or difficulty of doing it now (hence the bold text). Just not interested in changing denier diapers over something that can be nullified by determined national or international effort. That's whiny, defeatist crap which directly contradicts lessons we learned from the Apollo program, even in the face of SBSP numbers like anywhere from $3 billion/gigawatt to $100 billion/gigawatt (I added $80 billion to that higher launch estimate for material/R&D/labor and huge, kilometer-wide, ground-based receiver station construction costs). With total US power consumption (not just electricity!) in 2005 at 3.34 terawatts, that could mean a total SBSP bill of $10-300 trillion, which is a hefty sum considering our GDP, but, again, we are satisfying total US power needs, not just electricity. The electricity-only bill would be less, obviously. Also, in contrast, we presently pay $2 trillion each year for our current total energy needs, and the fossil fuel externalities that hardly ever get factored in. And, since those externalized fees shouldered by the American people instead of energy companies only consider health impacts, what are the additional annual costs of extreme weather events, rising seas, freshwater scarcity, and so on? And should a reasonable person expect those expenditures to go up or down in the coming years, hmmmm?

Just like with the Apollo program, we will certainly need to develop cost-cutting measures. Unlike Apollo, however, we will not be pulling as many rabbits out of our hats, or, perhaps more importantly, chasing ghosts. We know we are confronting a real environmental and security threat, not a contrived "Red Threat." So go cry somewhere else about the check we'll need to write and/or silly obstacles like opposition to microwave beaming, getting the ITU to agree to geosynchronous orbit, or what have you.

Every effort to reduce emissions by a significant amount while preserving our modern civilization will include some sticker shock and technical/political hurdles.

Every.

One.

And, unless I'm screwing up the math here, the carbon footprint of all those launches is arguably manageable, despite what you may think at first. At 30 tons CO2/launch, and assuming a head-spinning, worst-case maximum of approximately 150,000 launches to orbit ~3 terawatts worth of solar satellites, we still only get about 5Mt CO2 emitted. Not bad, because, remember, if all countries managed to put solar collectors up there, we will not only start dramatically reducing our energy production emissions, but, assuming much greater electric car usage as a consequence, our transportation GHGs as well. Eliminating 39% of 31Gt CO2/year is an annual reduction of 12Gt. The Earth would go from 31 to 19Gt CO2/yr. That's an accomplishment that would make Kennedy and Khrushchev proud. And, again, it would be marshaled in response to a more concrete and dangerous threat than those imagined on both sides during the Cold War. If spending hundreds of billions (in today's dollars) proving to the world you have better nuke-delivery tech than your perceived enemy is worth it, then a few trillion dollars spent confronting the greatest known existential threat to human civilization is more than worth it.

Besides, I've already mentioned that Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute is my copilot, and he often sticks his neck out defending SBSP, and you and I, mere mortals, are not allowed to disagree with Seth.

So there. :)

I Have a Nerdy Smile from Geeky Ear to Geeky Ear

Time to take a little Friday night break from antagonizing all those silly little deniers out there, because recently I donated to the best podcast on the Web and, frankly, in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, Big Picture Science (BPS), and received the following reward via old-fashioned snail mail.





A photo of the BPS crew, signed by everyone, and a letter with a note from Seth about how much he loves Jersey (one can only assume he didn't leave the nice Princeton area much while studying here...I kid, I kid).

Nerd achievement unlocked. G'head, I dare you to try to tell me you're not jealous. :)

If you don't know, or haven't listened to BPS, and you have any interest in science at all, then shame on you. All joking aside, it really is one of the best science programs you can listen to on the Interchutes. And, no, just because it's produced at the SETI Institute does not mean it's all about finding signals from little green men, though they certainly go there now and then. They cover just about any and every research field and topic you can think of. The best part: it's free. Well, until you realize like I have that donating to such a well-produced, well-researched show is worth every last penny. Seriously, just go there, and have a listen to some of the archived episodes. I guarantee you BPS will become a regular part of your science podcast regimen. Seth Shostak is my personal copilot, and a science promoter on par with Carl Sagan (yup, I said Carl Sagan). Molly Bentley has one of those soothing, knowledgeable voices you just can't help but want to listen to. And her deadpan responses to Seth's barrage of silly puns are almost worth the listen all by themselves. Gary Niederhoff is a talented goof who will get some sincere laughs out of you. And the quality of the show should have Barbara Vance swimming in Net awards.

Yup, I'm a fan, and you should be, too. Go listen. Go donate.

My selfish interest is you helping ensure that I have a great show to listen to indefinitely, in case you were wondering why I'm promoting so heavily.

If anyone provides proof of donation in the comments, I will fess up and admit how much I donated. It's been blacked out in the letter image above, if you didn't notice.

Oh, and, yeah, they definitely do programs on global warming. Just go to the site and type in "climate change" in the search bar. Every last one is worth a listen.

Climate Change Is Not Real Bcoz Liberals Hate GMOs

Before I started this blog, I used to comment a lot over at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy site. Phil's articles are great, and I still read them, but I mostly save my posting energy for here anymore. Phil is a climate realist, so, as I'm sure you can imagine, he gets more pseudoscience-loving denier trolls in his comment section than you can shake a hockey stick at.

If you lurk or contribute there, you very quickly see the same denier canards raised again and again. This steadfast dedication to ignoring the scientific rebuttals to these absurd talking-points can only be a sign of the troubling pervasiveness of serious mental disorders, or the fact that Phil's site has been targeted by shameless paid shills because of his modest fame and climate science advocacy.

One of the more popular shiny object distractions I noticed bandied about by climate deniers is GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, and more specifically GM crops. For some odd reason, deniers quite strongly believe that unless everyone hearts GMOs then climate science is automatically wrong, human-induced warming is not worth addressing, and all conversations involving it and its remedies must come to an immediate halt.

Not too long ago, Phil used the debate between Nye and Ham as an excuse to investigate what the Answers in Genesis (AIG) Web site had to say about global warming, and it elicited this strange retort in the comment section:

bcs89 Mar 24, 2014

bill nye is anti-science when it's convenient for his world view:

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/03/24/bill-nye-anti-gmo-guy/#.UzBKhoVWhEM

so is he for or against gmos?

If it turns out Nye is truly anti-GMO (which I doubt), it's so important it had to be brought up in a climate change discussion, because, you know, views expressed on an unrelated subject affect the scientific veracity of the topic at hand somehow magically.

Phil's post on the IPCC AR5, prompted this comment:

Roger M. Wilcox Apr 1, 2014

Here's what bugs me. If the impending climate change is going to have such a negative impact on crop production (due to droughts and whatnot), then why is the public at large so averse to the use of genetically-modified food? If we can bioengineer wheat or corn that's more drought-resistant, won't that be to our benefit?

Right, because the impact of climate change on crop production is all we need to worry about. If GMOs save our food supply from more severe droughts (which they probably won't), then (***smacks dust off hands***) problem solved. We can continue to burn fossil fuels without a care.

An analysis of Fox News' opinion on global warming brought about this contribution to the discussion:

Mark S. Apr 8, 2014

How do other networks do on scientific topics not related to climate. Like, say, GMO...

Who cares if Dr. Oz is wrong when he says acupuncture has real medical benefits, because over on channel 237 an infomercial is selling magnetic therapy wristbands, right?

Wot?

And an article on the acceleration of Antarctic ice melt produced this gem:

HAL-9000 May 20, 2014

Huh? Then what's the deal with lefties and the whole 'organic food' movement and their rabid-stupid anti-GMO antics?

Its quite pick-and-choose from the science (organic!) salad bar in lefty-land.

You might also notice my farewell comment somewhere in that discussion. :)

Even if silly GMO-trashing is mostly a "lefty" thing, the fact of the matter is liberals can line up around the block at every Whole Foods and Trader Joe's on the planet, buy all the organic produce they want till the free-range, grass-fed cows come home, and IT WON'T RAISE SEA LEVELS ONE SINGLE MILLIMETER MORE, INTENSIFY HURRICANES, OR CAUSE ADDITIONAL GLACIER MELT, FLOODS, DROUGHTS, WILDFIRES, ETC., ABOVE AND BEYOND THE PURCHASE OF EQUIVALENT AMOUNTS OF GM CROPS.

In other words, carrying on incessantly about liberals' nonsensical objections to GMOs is as pointless as their personal choice to avoid them.

The Climate Does Not Care That We Are in Denial

The more we stick to business as usual — and our fingers in our ears — the more the climate finds ways to show us how our emissions have altered and intensified its patterns for the worse. There's the obvious stuff that we'd all probably expect from a hotter planet without having read a single climate research paper like melting poles, ice sheets, and glaciers, wildfires, droughts, floods, etc., and maybe the more creative among us could even have imagined swell double whammy-style combinations of some of the above. But other outcomes that don't necessarily come to mind right away when you think of climate change nonetheless can impact our lives tremendously. A contributor over at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog, tokodave, brought mines to my attention not too long ago. Yup, mines. Would they have otherwise entered your thoughts, like, uh, ever, while contemplating global warming? National infrastructure is another unlikely subject for climate change discussion it might seem. That is, until you watch this video...



The climate is going to incorporate greater amounts of trapped solar energy and go about its more extreme, powerful business whether or not we decide to repair an aging national infrastructure, and update it for a present and future of more frequent and/or severe events. It doesn't care if we prepare and protect ourselves and our critical, oft-forgotten systems, but we should care.

Are You Sitting Down?

You're never gonna believe this, people, but just like Steven Goddard, Anthony Watts goes in for this "NASA-GISS is doing something spooky and secret to the data" crap, too. Back in 2012, Watts felt the need to uncritically mirror-blog an article by Randall Hoven, where he reveals himself to be an impatient, impetuous fool:

I thought I’d update that analysis to include July’s and August’s temperatures. To my surprise, NASA’s entire temperature record, going back to January 1880, changed between NASA’s June update and its August update. I could not just add two more numbers to my spreadsheet. The entire spreadsheet needed to be updated.

NASA does summarize its "updates to analysis," but the last update it describes was in February. The data I looked at changed sometime after early July.

In short, the data that NASA makes available to the public, temperatures over the last 130 years, can change at any time, without warning and without explanation. Yes, the global temperature of January 1880 changed some time between July and September 2012.

Well, no Obama mind control accusations this time, unlike with Goddard, which is a relief, but we still seem to be stuck with the now predictable denier wet diaper bellyaching about NASA changing things "without warning and without explanation," so let's investigate, shall we?

Looking at the GISS update announcement page that Hoven links to, and that I've linked to numerous times now myself while addressing Goddard's extreme paranoia, we do see an update in February, 2012, and then nothing until September, 2012.

February 17, 2012: The analysis was redone on Feb 17 after learning from NOAA/NCDC that the operational version of GHCN v3 was only made available that afternoon.

September 26, 2012: NOAA/NCDC replaced GHCN v3.1 by GHCN v3.2. Hence the GISS analysis is based on that product starting 9/14/2012. Version v3.2 differs from v3.1 by minor changes in the homogenization of the unadjusted data. A description of the modifications in the adjustment scheme and their effects are available here.

Well, gosh, Hoven is moaning and groaning about changes that happened from June to August, 2012, and that September GISS bullet says the analysis began using the GHCN v3.2 on Sept. 14th, 2012. That means he's onto something, right? Let's see where that "description of the modifications" link takes us...

The software used to perform operational updates and reprocessing of GHCN-M version 3 was modified to correct coding errors and to improve its run-time efficiency. In particular, coding errors were corrected in the Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm (PHA) that had been identified during the course of a project led by Mr. Daniel Rothenberg in July 2011...These software changes were combined with other minor changes to improve debugging and processing efficiency. A total of eight software modifications were made...With v3.1.0, the adjusted annual global land surface air temperature trend for 1901‐2011 was 0.94°C/Century. Using data from version 3.2.0 this trend is 1.07°C/Century.

OK, no timing indicators per se, though the error corrections apparently started in 2011 well before the public release date in September, 2012, but there is a "Where can I obtain additional information about the changes that were made and their impacts on global temperature trends?" section which takes us to a NOAA/NCDC technical report dated August 1, 2012, which again mentions software bug fixes for the September release of v3.2.0. Another dead end? Well, no, not really, because interestingly enough, with a little online digging, you can learn here that on the same day, August 1, 2012, NOAA released another technical report regarding fixes made and implemented in GHCN-M v3.1.0...

The software used to perform operational updates of GHCN-M version 3 was modified to improve its run-time efficiency...The impact on annual means resulted in a change in century-scale global and US trends of less than 0.002°C/Decade. The software modifications are incorporated into a new release of GHCN-M, version 3.1.0.

There ya have it. Nothing mysterious and secret taking place anywhere. There were ongoing code corrections since July 2011, some of which were applied to calculations in v3.1.0 before September, 2012, and some to v3.2.0 during and after September, 2012.

Hoven couldn't be bothered to research GHCN-M v3.1.0 technical reports, or wait ONE DAY for the helpful v3.2.0 mention to appear on the GISS update page (his article is dated 9/25/2012, and the v.3.2.0 explanation was posted on 9/26/2012), and, plain and simply, Watts and Goddard are nothing more than two paranoid peas in a pod.

Funny Thing about Steven Goddard's Conspiracy Paranoia...

Steven Goddard is the author of a blog called Real Science, and a conspiracy theorist nutcase. He believes that, because the GISS surface temp records for the US have been updated since 1999 (something that's done quite often and openly with good reason and clear public disclosure), the Obama administration is sending in the Matrix agents to make it happen. From his batshit insane blog post:

"These alterations are being made by government employees with a strong vested interest in global warming, who should recuse themselves because of their overt conflict of interest. Their boss, the President of the United States, has made it clear that he will not accept any data which does not promote global warming theory. That is pretty strong motivation to generate warming data."

Yup, you read that right, folks. NASA-GISS is generating false warming data because Obama likes that. I guess Bush liked false surface temps, too, hence the 2001 updates included in his animated gif image above.

Once again here at whac-a-troll, you probably find yourself, like me, regretting having only one face to palm.



And the evidence Goddard offers to prove that this conspiracy exists...?



When Goddard says a conspiracy exists, PRESTO!, it exists. Nice superpower, if you can develop it. Musta been bitten by a radioactive ufologist, or something.

Weird thing about this conspiracy-declaring superpower of his is that NASA corrects its data all the time in other areas of research, and, in these instances, Goddard never reaches for his cape to swoop in, rescue everyone from the evil presidential mind control and puppet-mastery at work behind them, and save the paranoid day.



Why, the diabolical research agency once had the temerity to attempt updating precipitation data too!

The GPM mission will provide unprecedented data on rain and snowfall. The science instruments on the GPM Core Observatory will provide data that will yield the greatest clarity on rain and snow yet gathered from orbiting spacecraft.

And the supervillains at NASA also threatened the safety of the world by drastically altering X-ray astronomy data!

The Legion of Aeronautics and Space Doom once even dared to embark upon improving data and understanding of space weather!

SDO is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun and its dynamic behavior. It will provide better quality, more comprehensive science data faster than any NASA spacecraft currently studying the sun and its processes.

My goodness, the shockingly dishonest and deceptive manipulation of data at NASA never ends! And, gosh, I wonder why these other examples of data correction bother Goddard not at all. Hmmmm, I'm oh so terribly stumped about that.

On a less sarcastic note, Texas state climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon provides a rather plain and obvious explanation which requires no conspiracy theory at all.

“It is reasonable to expect the adjusted data record to change over time as the technology for identifying and removing artificial changes improves. If there are any biases, they are caused by the quality of the underlying data, not by any biases intentionally introduced into the adjustment process.”

But, don't worry, I imagine Goddard explains away all of the experts who disagree with him by saying they are just unwitting (and sometimes witting) agents of the vast climate change conspiracy. Obama's little foot soldiers. Gee, where have we heard such circular argumentation before?

This data-cooking delusion really is Goddard's personal Roswell or Area 51.



There are strange craft flying around out there, so...so aliens! The US surface temperature numbers have changed, so...so evil government forces! In both cases, the logical, pedestrian explanation is discarded, because it doesn't fit the cockamamie conspiracy narrative.

Creationism and Climate Change Denial, Perfect Together

Recently, after a National Science Teacher Association conference attended by over 10,000 educators from across the nation, twenty six states, the National Research Council, and the National Academy of Sciences worked together to develop a framework for teaching science to public school grades K-12.

After navigating that highly-linked paragraph above, you're probably saying to yourself, "Big deal. How else would we draft national science education standards besides involving teachers from around the country and the academies?"

While I agree completely with the common sense and logic of that sarcastically-rhetorical question, it appears the legislatures of several states do not.

The main objection to these Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) expressed by dissenting politicians in these states is that man-made climate change will be taught as established scientific fact, rather than an ongoing debate among climate experts.

The standards “handle global warming as settled science,” State Representative Matt Teeters, a Republican from Lingle, told The Casper Star-Tribune. “There’s all kind of social implications involved in that, that I don’t think would be good for Wyoming.”

Of course the distracting lie of preserving "parental choice" is also given as an excuse.

“We question this whole idea of standards reform and the whole idea of nationalized standards,” said Amy Edmonds, policy analyst at the Wyoming Liberty Group. “We believe at the heart that it continues to take away parental choice.”

Parents have the right to raise stupid kids, didn't ya know?

But the obvious truth is that passages like the following have these fossil fuel industry-supported and supporting politicians shaking in their well-heeled boots:

...it is clear not only that human activities play a major role in climate change but also that impacts of climate change—for example, increased frequency of severe storms due to ocean warming—have begun to influence human activities. The prospect of future impacts of climate change due to further increases in atmospheric carbon is prompting consideration of how to avoid or restrict such increases.

Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming).

Global climate models are often used to understand the process of climate change because these changes are complex and can occur slowly over Earth’s history. Though the magnitudes of humans’ impacts are greater than they have ever been, so too are humans’ abilities to model, predict, and manage current and future impacts.

In other words, we're warming the planet and our climate models not only work but represent the best hope for predicting the future and informing how we should act.

BAM! Teachers deliver the climate change denier's most feared smackdown. Gotta love it.

Of course the elected shills for energy companies are going to recoil from lessons like that reaching the ears, eyes, and thoughts of future generations. You know, kinda like how they try to prevent one other scientific fact from being taught to kids, so that they can short-circuit their critical thinking skills, and brainwash them with woo in order to maintain tyrannical mind control over them. This similarity between creationist and climate change denier tactics is not coincidence. It is a symptom of the one truly debilitating societal mental disorder of which we must cure ourselves. As I've stated before, the pervasive influence of irrational religious belief is softening human brains to the point where this great, advanced society we have built, full of grand medical and technological wonders, is under constant, unnecessary threat, such as not being able to teach kids the truth about the world around us and how we affect it.

Think about how ass-backward and demented one of the first lessons of the Bible is. Knowledge is bad and makes us evil.

Jaezuz.

Fooking.

Wot.

Thah.

FOOK?!

Right off the bat, Western, monotheistic religions declare themselves the enemies of rational thought. Great. Just fucking swell that.

In stark contrast to the "morals" found in Genesis, casting knowledge (science) aside is in fact the real fall from grace.

Unless you want to plunge humans back into the Dark Ages (you know, so priests can take over society again and start animal sacrifices, executing heretics, burning witches, and all that fabulously brutal, Stone/Bronze/Iron Age stuff, like Hitchens mentions in the video of my previous post linked to above), shut up and listen to scientific consensus.

And teach it to your kids, instead of the pathetic fairy tales you're allowing to drastically damage your own failing logical faculties. You wanna continue to believe that brain rot? Fine. But your kids will be taught REALITY in our schools. Don't like it? Simple. Don't have kids, or home-school them if you do.

Steven Goddard Continues to Prove He's an Idiotic Troll

NASA's lying to us, folks, according to Goddard.

I apologize for forcing NASA to do this 15 years ago, via my evil retroactive witchcraft.

Updating data with a over a decade of findings is something caused by or equivalent to "evil retroactive witchcraft." And it just can't be a case of Goddard botching the numbers/sources/graphs, if he made this animated gif image, because he never screws up or anything, ya know?

I suppose, in Goddard's warped opinion, there must also be UFOs on the Moon that NASA doesn't want you to know about. I mean, if you think NASA is cooking the temperature books rather than correcting them, why would you not believe the agency lies about other things?

There's an informative (and humorous) parody of Goddard's trash site called Really Sciency that's well worth a look. And I showed what a paranoid wingnut he is in a previous post.

But, really, all you need to do is apply a dash of common sense here. Doesn't even take much. After all, do you really believe NASA is manipulating the data in a willfully-deceptive manner? Or, instead, this one, strange, Internet troll needs to remove the giant tin foil hat he's been wearing, and leave his dark and scary conspiracy cave more often?

Tough choice, I know.

Who Is This Person, and Why Is He Pretending to Stand in Front of an Audience?

After about a minute of this guy's overacting...



...it hit me that he's standing in front of basically NO ONE. Well, besides the dope with the camera and maybe his mom and dad who probably still have to do his dishes, laundry, and clean his room for him, and a smattering of other relatives who got reluctantly dragged along. Don't videographers at talks usually point the camera at the audience every now and then? Jussayin.

So I figured I'd try to find out who he is, and where the hell he gave this nonsensical talk. I mean, he got asked to give a dissertation on climate change in front of an (LOL) "audience," uh, somewhere, right? So he must be someone with serious credentials, right? Checked the vid description. Nothing on him or the location. So I went over to the Suspicious0bservers site, and found out that his name is Ben Davidson, he has a low-level "Juris Doctorate" law degree, a BA in economics, and was on the Denison U. golf team. The location is indicated not-so-clearly on the podium in the video, and with a little more description in the credits. Something called the "The Thunderbolts Project: 2014 EU Conference Forum" which took place in a hotel in Albuquerque, NM, USA. No, I don't understand the "conference forum" redundancy in the title, either, but "EU" stands for "electrical universe" apparently, and not the European Union, as I'm sure Ben Davidson was hoping people would think when he posted the video on YouTube with no event details (you know, like he got called over to some IPCC review in Copenhagen, or something). This is from the project's about-synopsis page (more inexplicable redundancy):

Planetary Science

In the recent history of the solar system, its electrical environment changed. Under changing electrical conditions planetary orbits changed as well.

Close approaches of planets led to powerful electric arcing between planets and moons. All rocky bodies in the solar system show the massive scars of these kinds of electrical events.

Electric discharge scarring is occurring even now on Jupiter’s closest moon, Io, and on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.

A half-baked lawyer who knows where to find the cheapest golf courses gave a climate change talk in front of nutcases who think planets get close enough to shoot lightning bolts at one another and their moons, and Io was scarred by lightning bolts from Jupiter (he was the Roman thunder god, after all) not volcanic activity. You can't even make this crap up, people. Is there no end to the pseudoscience insanity out there? No wonder the hall was so "packed" the camera person opted to not show it. Oh, brother.

And I swiped this really precious pic off good ole Ben's site:

Yup, you got it, folks. "Climate change expert" and amateur golfer, Ben Davidson, would like you to know that if anyone tells you the Earth has a climate, IT'S A LIE. And people wonder why I call all you bozos "climate deniers" from time to time, leaving the "change" part out. It's because you either deny we have the climate we have presently and in reality, or, when you're really feeling demented, you evidently make images that deny we have any climate at all. Gotta tell ya, that last part was news to me. I had no idea you went this far.

Oh, and the rest of us have to remember that we need to pump CO2 into the atmosphere to save us from the impending cosmic ray ice age, or whatever screwball nonsense the Suspicious0bservers are trying to get at in this absurd video:



Look, if you mentally-unhinged deniers are going to pull embarrassing shenanigans like faking a serious climate change talk and putting it on YouTube, I'm gonna stop confronting you directly here in this blog, and start calling out your parents instead. It's well past time the whole lot of you got kicked out of the basement, and sent out into the real world to face the music.

And learn how to use the washer machine, and cut Mom a break, huh? You're out of college now and getting invitations to speak in front of five people at "electrical universe" conferences in Albuquerque hotels for cripes sake.

A Little Advice for Deniers

There's no shame in being ignorant. We are all of us, even the most learned, aware of but a fraction of the entire wealth of human understanding, and that knowledge base is itself a woefully inadequate, vanishingly small, infinitesimal fragment of what the universe has to teach us.

Not knowing every last fact about the climate and how we are changing it for the worse is not a crime, or even an urgent problem per se.

But here's the catch. Here's where you screwball deniers go terribly wrong all the time...

When the vast majority of people who do understand climate change explain the undeniable facts as they stand, and you start running your mouths and keyboards saying and posting all kinds of "contradictory," cherry-picked hogwash, instead of listening to and absorbing the lessons, you go from being forgivably uninformed to obnoxiously idiotic trolls.

That behavior is an urgent problem, because it's not innocent, understandable ignorance, it's premeditated science denial. Rather than opening your mind to what you were being told, you were gearing up for a pathetically inept tirade of illiterate, retaliatory blatherskite.

So the advice, in short, is for you to shut yer flappin' yaps, which race about in constant, mindless overdrive, and pay attention when the adults are talking.

It's that simple. And you're welcome.

There Goes the Last Shred of Judith Curry's Credibility

David Rose is an abject moron, and the Daily Fail is a rag. We all know this, so no surprise that Rose and the Fail are still working the Antarctic sea ice canard like a footballer rolling around on the ground faking an injury. In other words, much ado about nothing.



Refutations of Fail trash and fake science pieces are hardly even necessary anymore, but if you're interested, Nuccitelli provides a thorough takedown.

However, what still shocks me (and I suppose it shouldn't at this point) is that Judith Curry has so little shame she would eagerly encourage and contribute to such rubbish.

First of all, if David Rose calls you for an interview, hang up. Have some self-respect, huh?

Secondly...

[Curry] said it was becoming increasingly apparent that long-term cycles in ocean temperatures were responsible for a significant proportion of the ice decline in the Arctic – a process that may be starting to reverse.

Ummm, no. Just no. Curry expects us to take her seriously after spouting this specious crap for David Rose of the Daily Fail?!

And, lastly...

Prof Curry also revealed that because of the ‘pause’, in which world average temperatures have not risen for more than 16 years, the Arctic ice decline has been ‘touted’ by many as the most important evidence for continued global warming.

Could Curry really have her head shoved that far up her ass? Is this even possible? Or did Rose misquote her? I sure hope for her sake she's been misquoted, because the warming of the Earth over the past 16 years would be what many tout as the most important evidence for continued global warming.

You can hang up on Rose next time, or "wave" bye-bye to your credibility, Judith.

Quick Fixes

An initial disclaimer is in order here, I think. Being that the "Discovery" account is most likely anything but an official, sanctioned, online representative of the National Geographic Channel, and I therefore have no idea how long it will be before a DMCA complaint removes this video or the YouTube channel itself, I will provide a more authorized link to the program here, which, with a registered account, may let you watch it in its entirety.

Disclaimer now fully disclaimed, onto my review of the video...

Quite honestly, I was prepared to cringe the whole time I watched it, but I should have known Nat Geo would do a better, less sensational job with the topic than, say, the Discovery or History Channel. The cameo by Ken Caldiera, someone who truly appreciates and understands the science of climate change, was a welcomed surprise, and the cons of each technological fix were at least mentioned in brief, in contrast to what I anticipated going in. Still, the cons needed more elaboration, because their costs and dangers are greater and more extensive than what was depicted, but in an hour-long show with ads how much detail can one expect? If you need an overview of the mad-scientist-style remedies for global warming being cooked up out there, it's worth a watch.

When Pro-AGW Studies Disagree on Timing and Methodology

Two recent studies are at odds over when human-altered climate will emerge from historic variation, Mora et al, and Hawkins et al.

A few essential diagrams from the studies (apologies for the rough fit within my blog's layout, but further minimization would have resulted in text that's impossible to read)...

Mora et al, Figure 1:


Mora et al, Figure 2:


Hawkins et al, Figure 1:


These images pack a lot of info into a small area, not unlike the studies themselves, so let me briefly summarize.

Maybe I should first explain some abbreviations. RCP45 is one Representative Concentration Pathway, or greenhouse gas prediction, used in the latest IPCC Assessment Report (AR5). Here's an image which might better elaborate.



Both papers use the RCP45 projection in their research.

Hawkins et al lists the specific climate models used in abbreviated form (CSIRO Mk3.6 GCM, HadGEM2-ES, NorESM1-M, etc.) in the upper right of Fig. 1a, whereas Mora et al mentions the general use of CMIP5 models, while only singling out GFDL-ESM2G, as far as I can tell.

The authors of Hawkins et al believe the methodology of Mora et al is flawed, leading to an early man-made signal emergence from natural variability. Seems like a damning accusation, right? Something deniers could howl and rage over, and use as evidence that climate modeling is bogus or useless, or both, one might assume. But it's not the case, really, when you step back and look at the larger picture and how they both agree. Notice that each paper clearly agrees that climate will eventually emerge from background thanks to human emissions, and that it will happen on average soonest in the tropics, but have the greatest temperature anomaly at the poles. In other words, the papers agree to a large degree on several aspects of climate change, and with IPCC AR5 findings.

They merely disagree over timing of the emergence. It's a classic case of scientists arguing amongst themselves in order to expand the limits and specifics of our knowledge, and, while this frontier debate will continue and may have serious implications for policy and adaptation, it has little or no impact on the viability of climate models or the well-established reality of man-made climate change in general. Claiming otherwise is standard denier ignorance and tosh.

Thanks to contributor tokodave over at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog for bringing these interesting studies to my attention.

Denierworks on the Fourth of Deny

For some among us, patriotism takes on a curious, bile-spewing, vitriolic form.

"Many Democrats and Western Europeans believe rising temperatures are caused by man and a greater menace to Western Civilization than Islamofascism. Rather, Taliban global-warming religionists may indeed be as great a threat to Western prosperity and freedom as resurgent Islamic ideology."

-Eric Grover

"This same practice of Lysenkoism has long been under way in western science in regard to the politically correct theory of man caused, catastrophic, global warming. That theory serves the political fashions of the day in promoting vastly increased government powers and control over the private economy...Those who promote the theory are favored with billions from government grants and neo-Marxist environmentalist largesse, and official recognition and award."

-Peter Ferrara

"Without question, the greatest security threat of an international climate treaty is that it would make the economies of the U.S. and its allies less competitive, depriving them of the capacity to defend themselves and aid other nations."

-James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.

"At stake are hundreds of billions of dollars that will come from your 401(k), show up in your energy bills, and will result in the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs. Al Gore’s profit-making enterprise – the selling of billions of dollars in so-called “carbon credits” – is based on fraudulent science and a politically driven environmental extremist agenda bent on destroying the American economy.

The climate change crisis is the single most dangerous domestic issue facing America."

-Southeastern Legal Foundation

"Help us get the word out that global warming is not a crisis...Obama’s war on affordable energy is one of the biggest threats our nation faces."

-Americans for Prosperity

[Limiting carbon emissions] "is a dagger in the heart of the American middle class, and to representative democracy itself."

-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

Remember, folks, if you care about the future of your fellow citizens and humanity in general, you are a greedy Marxist (figure that one out) and/or a dangerous traitor, and, whatever the case, you threaten the safety of our country!

Ya got that?

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

Steven Goddard is a Conspiracy Theorist Nutcase

Steven Goddard, or whatever his real name is, is the author of a wordpress blog called Real Science.

I'll pause a moment here to allow that blog title to sink in. Its rich irony, if not already evident, will become clear shortly.

As the DeSmogBlog link above points out, Goddard has initially tried to deny and then ultimately succumbed to reality before:

"Dr. Walt Meier at NSIDC has convinced me this week that their ice extent numbers are solid... It is clear that the NSIDC graph is correct, and that 2008 Arctic ice is barely 10% above last year – just as NSIDC had stated."

You would figure Goddard learned his lesson, but he didn't. He just changed targets. Now, rather than accusing the NSIDC of cooking the books, he's trying the same awful horseshit with NASA and NOAA:

"Over the past 15 years, NASA and NOAA have turned a long term US cooling trend into a warming trend. But it is even worse than that, because almost every year they make the past cooler and the present warmer."

Yup, you got it, folks. If at first you don't succeed, deny, deny again. With other agencies, of course, so you can pretend your previous face-palming failures didn't happen.

"Real science" to Goddard is apparently some strange process that would not allow over a decade worth of findings to update the data. In his mind, helpful, well-intended, scientific self-correction like that must be due to – drumroll, please – some conspiracy, maybe like the one above that didn't exist at the NSIDC:

"These alterations are being made by government employees with a strong vested interest in global warming, who should recuse themselves because of their overt conflict of interest. Their boss, the President of the United States, has made it clear that he will not accept any data which does not promote global warming theory. That is pretty strong motivation to generate warming data."

For people like Goddard, tin foil alone doesn't offer enough protection.



He presents no proof of this conspiracy other than the numbers have changed, so therefore there must be something pernicious at work behind the alteration, and he dismisses the reasonable explanation out of hand, because it doesn't fit with his Looney Tunes narrative:

"NOAA does have discussions on obscure web pages describing their thought process behind the alterations, but few people know about this. The alterations are highly subjective, and could just as easily go the other way – making the present cooler due to urban heat island effects."

Updating data and alerting the public you have done so is an "obscure" and "subjective" trick. Oh, brother. In reality, NOAA and NASA are careful to rather explicitly and clearly annotate public release of data sets with update/alteration reminders like the following:

Because these data are primarily intended for the study of climate variability and change, observations have been adjusted to account for the artificial effects introduced into the climate record by factors such as instrument changes, station relocation, observer practice changes and urbanization. Some of the more current data provided by the Climate at a Glance system are preliminary and may be modified after appropriate quality control has been performed. As a result, some values available on this site differ from the official observations.

In fact, the notifications are damn well near bloody fucking exhaustive. You'd just have to be a paranoid dipshit of epic proportions to miss and/or dismiss such obvious and honest attempts at full disclosure.

Maybe tin foil hats, or whatever Goddard wears, trap false-positive conspiracy theory frequencies. Dunno, just trying to think of reasons why he'd be so confused. Just trying to help, ya know?

And it's Goddard's opinion that the obligatory denier "urban heat island effect" canard just just hasn't had its lifeless corpse dragged around enough yet, I guess.

This is the abysmal lack of logic and evidence that all screwball conspiracy theorists offer. The "government" (NASA and NOAA receive daily propaganda and marching instructions from the Obama administration, which is a de facto den of liars, didn't you know?) is hiding things, because, well, because Goddard says so, that's why.

Oh, and this infantile "reasoning" as well:

Progressives say there are no government conspiracies, which explains why Edward Snowden rocked the world with his disclosures.

We're dealing with someone who has the intellectual capacity of your average 7 year-old. And my apologies to 7 year-olds who, unlike Goddard, understand why this batshit insane comment is UTTER BULLSHIT. According to Goddard, because federal agencies like the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the White House, etc., which all have obvious and stated obligations to secrecy for the sake of national security (whether or not you agree with those imperatives), can and will lie to us from time to time, this means that research and exploration divisions of the government, like NASA, NOAA, GISS, etc., which have little or no strangling commitments to our nation's defense and security, and quite the opposite have policies of public outreach and disclosure (when budgets allow, of course), will also purposefully seek to deceive us as well. Guilt by lack of significant association, or something

It follows that NASA must be lying to us about the UFOs, too, I suppose.

Steven Goddard is a vile and ridiculous troll, who wouldn't recognize real science if it drove up on a Mars rover, slapped him across the ignorant face with a stack of updated sea and surface temp print-outs, and knocked the wind out of him by jamming a copy of The Feynman Lectures on Physics into his gut.