A Longwinded Nitpick for Dr. Steven Novella

I love, love, LOVE me some Skeptics' Guide to the Universe (SGU) podcast. Along with a regimen of other science/skeptic/atheist podcasts, it makes it onto my MP3 player every week, and I look forward to it reducing the mind-numbing monotony of errands/chores/shopping/walking to the gym/etc. Yup, you got it, I'm a dork, and, obviously, a big fan of SGU (maybe that's redundant).

So, while doing some yard work a few days ago with ye ole earphones stuck in my head, I cringed jeeeeyust a little bit while listening to this part of last week's show:



Now, I, like Novella, wish to tread very carefully here. He is clearly not a climate change denier, and I am not an anti-GMO crackpot. That being said, GMO food and the science behind its safety have only been around for a few decades. Science which establishes the inarguable role of human emissions in our changing climate, on the other hand, has been around for well over a century. I know Novella was only expressing his opinion, not some precise quantitative measurement that he made in the lab, or something, and I know he probably likes to research/read about GMOs more than global warming, unlike me, but the idea that 30 years or so of findings behind something that hit the grocery shelves only 20 years ago can compare, and even outshine, the veracity of the century-old physics and science underpinning man-made global warming does not sit well with me.

Again, this is not to say that GMOs are in fact dangerous to us; it is only to establish the equally-solid footing, in my opinion, that both areas of study share. And if one could be said to possess a stronger and sturdier set of scientific "legs" under it, it would have to be anthropogenic global warming, because it has stood the test of time for much longer. If I were forced to list the three scientific fields mentioned in the episode excerpt above from greatest to least reliability of evidence, it would be evolution first, man-made climate change second, and GMO safety last, though, once again, I wish to stress they are all pretty much inarguable at this point.

Here's where I extract some quotes from the excerpt and probably really come across as a nitpicking churl...

"I actually think our evidence for the safety of GMO is more robust than our, you know, models about climate change...There are degrees of robustness; I think, like, the notion that evolution happened is far and away the most robust scientific conclusion that's out there."

Honestly, I think Novella just misspoke in the first part of this quote here. I don't think, or at least I hope it's not the case, that he is falling for the classic denier false dichotomy which ignorantly compares the predictive capacity of climate models to the core findings in other fields. This is comparing apples to oranges. If you want to compare robustness between fields, you have to compare the science to the science, not the models to the science, so a fairer comparison would be the contrasting of research which has all but eliminated natural causes being behind the observed modern warming against the evidence for GMO safety. Would Dr. Novella find it fair if I compared the accuracy of models in his own field that attempt to simulate neural networks and the brain to the body of work in another research discipline, and then say the robustness of neuroscience is inferior to those other discoveries because the simulations are far from exact? Another way of stating this, while addressing the second part of the quote, would be to challenge someone to make computer models that predict what animals will look like hundreds, or thousands, or even millions of years from now. G'head. What? Your evolutionary biology is not strong enough to manufacture precise model outcomes? Frogs won't stand upright in 124,997 CE like your models indicate?

"Even the IPCC is saying 95%. Yeah, that's pretty good, but 95% is 95%, whereas evolution is like 99.9999... whatever percent that that's the explanation for the diversity of life."

This one's easy. Technically, the IPCC said 95% or greater. Leaving that last part out fails to accept that its conclusion allows for, but does not guarantee, "99.9999... whatever percent." Also, I think if he researches climate change science as fastidiously as he does GMOs, he will soon come to the realization that IPCC declarations of any kind regarding climate change are conservative to a fault.

From the Real Climate link (bold text to distinguish it from Novella's quotes):

"That the IPCC often needs to correct itself 'upward' is an illustration of the fact that it tends to produce very cautious and conservative statements, due to its consensus structure – the IPCC statements form a kind of lowest common denominator on which many researchers can agree."

When you get away from the IPCC and start looking around the climatology field itself, you find out quite quickly that it is more like a "99.9999... whatever percent" consensus anymore.

However, as Novella rightly points out by specifically referencing this GMO crop study and bringing up the larger body of scientific work which all but absolves them of causing any serious or significant side effects in humans and livestock, we need not fear their consumption. My main issue with GMOs is that their proponents are as determined to exaggerate their benefits for "saving humanity" and the potency of the "greenies-gone-wild" war against them, as opponents like Jeffrey Smith are to play up imaginary health impacts. Sure, that's not the fault of the GMO industry, but I think it provides some necessary perspective.

Reinforcing the idea that GMOs receive way too much credit, I would even go so far as to say that they owe the lion's share of their success to the impressive efficacy of the newest generation of neonicotinoid insecticides that are commonly used in conjunction with them. At the risk of getting my atheist membership card revoked, these newer insecticides were a, well, godsend. We desperately needed something effective at killing pests without poisoning vertebrates, which was one of the unfortunate side effects of organochlorides (DDT), organophosphates, and carbamates. Presto, right about the time GMOs were being perfected/patented, along came neonicotinoids which had little or no toxicity in higher vertebrates, but sure as heck did a number on pesky, parasitic invertebrates.

Oops. Turns out, maybe they do too good a job, and maybe it's fair to make GMO crops share some of the blame, because, again, they owe a great deal of thanks for their success to neonicotinoids, if you ask me, but that discussion, dear blog readers, does not change what was stated above (in a vacuum, and by themselves, it can rightfully be argued GMOs are safe...that is, if neonicotinoids and their dangers are ultimately eliminated, you can bet your booty GMOs will still remain in use), and is maybe for another time...

And thanks, SGU, for all the awesome podcasts! Continue to make like a buh-zillion more, please! I would like to remind all five of my readers that SGU is still being sued for no good reason. If you care at all about free speech and the ability to criticize charlatans without legal repercussions, you can help out here.

/nitpick

Simulating Glacier Loss in the Lab

Physicists at Emory University are designing scaled-down models...oops, I forgot...climatology is the only area of scientific research forbidden by deniers to utilize models. They are using simulations to help calculate the size of glacier chunks that break off from larger flows and ice sheets.



I'll go ahead and use this post as an excuse to ask if anyone reading this has seen it yet. I haven't (yeah, yeah, I know, I'm way behind in the times), but I'd be interested in reading a thoughtful review in the comments.

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.

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.

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.

As Our Island of Knowledge Grows, so Does the Shore of Our Ignorance

The title of this post is a thought-provoking quote by John Archibald Wheeler which can be found behind a paywall in Scientific American, 1992, Vol. 267. It really sums up an inherent characteristic of all science quite nicely. In a vast, possibly infinite universe, the more you learn, the more you discover there is to learn and the more questions you raise. Unless humans achieve omniscience — something I'm sure we can all agree ain't likely to happen anytime soon or ever for that matter since we are, after all, human — there will always be a growing number of things we do not know, thanks in large part to what we keep discovering.

For scientists, it's an exciting reason to get out of bed each morning.

For climate change deniers, it's an opportunity to prove to the world that they're idiots.

"With a system as complex as climate, there is no limit to the number of ad hoc theories which can be generated to support any point of view."

-Steven Goddard (I guess he's hinting at conspiracy idiots dreaming up fantasies of all kinds, including ones about NASA "cooking the books" like...)

"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."

-Steven Goddard (tin foil conspiracy hat firmly in place...I mean, they couldn't just be incorporating NEW KNOWLEDGE or anything, folks)

"Now, I’ve got to do this because the global warming agenda is just really despicable in trying to claim the increase in Antarctic sea ice, opposite of what they said several years ago, and now they are trying to deny they said that, is a sign of global warming."

-Joe Bastardi (see the Antarctic sea ice link in last paragraph below for why Bastardi is plain lost)

"Hey, as long they used a sophisticated climate model, and it is reportedly “based on true physics” in the best Hollywood tradition, what’s not to like?"

-Willis Eschenbach (another dope who doesn't get that computer modeling of the climate eagerly embraces new discoveries and improves as a consequence)

"Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean. However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans."

-Richard Lindzen

When viewed properly (you have to be in a really good mood to see it this way, admittedly), this is nothing more than an exercise in self-torture on the part of deniers. As our island of knowledge rises above the seas of ignorance that surround us, if climate change deniers wish to keep pointing to what we haven't explained yet, and ha-ha'ing like five year olds about it, they must remain within sight of those same seas. They must chase after the waters to remain on an ever-expanding shoreline, and pretend the glorious heights behind them are not on the inexorable rise. They have sentenced themselves to an eternal hell of perpetual exodus and limbo. It's an attempt to eke out a petty intellectual existence on the margins, as it were. And most if not all science deniers engage in this very same bewilderingly asinine behavior. Well, only when it comes the particular area of study about which they have rather senselessly chosen to obsess, that is. They all but ignore the "incriminating" expansion of knowledge in other scientific fields, unless they wrongly believe it can be turned on their pet area of research, of course. Creationists perhaps have it a bit easier than other science deniers, because they need only apply the "God of the gaps" reasoning. The more fossils you find as an evolutionary biologist, the more gaps in the record you dish up for the unreachably devout to attribute to God. You can't win with magical thinking like this, no matter the breed of ignorant science denier that is the source, nor the level of difficulty or ease they encounter distorting your findings.

Then again, who am I fooling? Rather than bother with the unending hard work of moving your climate denier camp to new "fertile" ground, you could just stay right where you are, beating a dead horse that was put to rest years ago. Over at wattsupwiththat, scientific explanations that have been around for some years now are considered "excuses." Should we be surprised? I think not. This is the only nonsensical option left to you, if you've given up the equally ridiculous effort of keeping pace with and belittling new scientific discoveries. When denying science, your choices seem to be staying back among the enlightened and sticking your fingers in your ears, or wallowing and basking in the ignorance found at the water's edge. Either way, apparently, the idea is to act like you're achieving something important, instead of conceding that you're missing the point entirely.

People Listen to This Awful Crap? Like, uh, Daily?!

Like a lot of idiots, Rush doesn't understand the difference between foundational and frontier science:



Here's a livescience.com article on the study. I just gotta chuckle at how stupid Rush and his listeners are. Some of the most ignorant and predictably arrogant examples of the Dunning Kruger effect we, as Americans, have the "pleasure" of bumping into each day. Unfortunately for us, they're so numerous they're difficult to avoid. In this sound bite, Rush demonstrates why his terrible show is a misinformation-fest. He'd have us believe that because a computer model simulating the nascent universe — most likely 10^−33 seconds after the universe's birth, a time when we know so little for sure about the state of the cosmos study of it represents the very epitome of frontier research — needs refinement, it doesn't incriminate cosmological science, nope, it incriminates climate science.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Figure that one out, folks.

If Rush had more than two functioning brain cells, he'd realize that when a scientist puts it out there that an ambitious simulation needs more work, it doesn't even affect the reputation of his or her own area of study, let alone the unrelated one Rush has ignorantly chosen, for no good reason, out of the blue, to obsess over. Why the hell choose climatology as the field that needs to shoulder the "blame" for how models attempting to expand the borders of human knowledge work? Frontier theories are in constant need of tinkering. That's why they're called frontier theories, and not established science. This is THIRD GRADE shit. Eight year-olds fully comprehend the difference between scientific fact and things we don't yet know to a high degree of certainty, Rush, you senseless twit.

And the Godidit crap at the end is just priceless. God didn't need a model, huh? Take a look around at how f'd up the world is. Disease, terrorism, war, starvation, natural and man-made disasters, etc. A supreme being made this chaotic mess of a planet we live on? Seems to me like He did in fact use models, and they were a whole hell of a lot worse than Hogan's.

Listening to this radio brain rot on a regular basis has to shave IQ points. No wonder all you Rush fans are so bloody fucking stupid. Just a total national embarrassment every last one of you.

Ridiculously Good

An excellent and informative series of videos from the NRC and the NAS.



And I just love, love, love that they disabled comments, so deniers can't pollute the videos with their idiocy. See, the NRC and the NAS are nice, polite people, so they don't wanna bother addressing and correcting your unscientific stupidity, deniers. They do you the favor right from the start of not giving you a chance to humiliate yourself. I, on the other hand, am not so nice. I welcome the opportunity to hang you from my castle walls as a lesson to other numbskulls. So g'head. Spew your toothless bromides below in my comment section, so I can turn you inside out. Thanks in advance, you idiots.

Shut up and Watch It

Have you seen any Origins Project videos? No?! What the hell have you been watching instead? Dancing with the Stars? The Voice? Fox News?!

Jaezuz Cheeeeeeeeroist, people, shut off the idiot box for a while, and start filling your head with something other than vapid trash. You pay for your Internet connection, so get something worthwhile out of it. YouTube is loaded with interesting, mind-expanding stuff. Far more interesting than what J Lo, or Gwen Stefani, or whoever, has to say about dancing or singing or whatever frivolous nonsense that should entertain you not completely consume your every waking moment, conversation, and last drop of mental energy. You can go back to flatlining in front of reality TV and after you've eaten your intellectual peas.

Really, you should watch all the Origins Project videos on YouTube. They're great, and Krauss is a science-promoting champ. If you haven't seen any yet, you might as well start with one that pertains to the greatest known threat we face as a species.

Part 1: Part 2:

Never Meta Cherry Pick They Didn't Like

Surely, you are familiar with the intellectually-dishonest practice of "cherry-picking." If you're not, Shirley, then take a moment to brush up here. With nearly equal certitude, I will assume you have seen deniers cherry-pick the bits of climate science they like, while sticking their fingers in their ears over the stuff they don't like. Of course, even the stuff that's cherry-picked often turns out to be flat-out wrong and/or incomplete research, because they're ignorant idiots who fall for just about any unscientific nonsense, but that's not important right now (you can find the appropriate, overused Airplane! clip on YouTube yourself this time, so there).

What I'm gonna bet you have not considered is that climate deniers' fascination with climate science alone is in fact a massive cherry pick. Let's call it a meta cherry pick, to coin a term which should indicate a level of abstraction above cherry-picking data from within one field of science.

Think about it. How many scientific fields have humans developed? Hundreds? Thousands? I honestly don't know the true number, but I know it's too many to become fixated on one. If you've become incurably entranced by and critical of one area of research, the problem most likely lies with you and your own childish preconceptions/misconceptions/biases/etc., not the science.

That brings us to modeling the climate using computers. If you pay attention to the idiots, which you shouldn't other than maybe for laughs, you'd think climate science was the only branch of study which uses computer models. Look at all the articles in that keyword/tag search I just linked for you. And that's only one screwball misinformation site out of many. Climate deniers' sheer fascination with climate modeling is matched only by their level of misunderstanding about how the process works. Oh, and maybe their undying love for Grandpa Al, but we've covered that already, haven't we?

How many other scientific fields use computer modeling? Again, I don't know the number, but by now it's probably the majority. Do you ever see these harebrained deniers going ballistic over computer models used to simulate and predict how galactic collisions work? Or screaming and bellyaching that biologists use them? Where are the cries of denier anguish that computer models used to simulate the brain ARE NOT COMPLETELY INERRANT AND EXACT SO THEREFORE THEY ARE USELESS?

Do you ever see climate deniers commenting about models at such a frenzied pace in online articles for astronomy, biology, medical research, etc.? Why is that, hmmmm? Why do they ignore these other fields? Does anyone have a quote for me from one of the idiotic denier Boss Trolls like Anthony Watts which assaults the use of computer models elsewhere in science?

...cricket...cricket...cricket...

Gosh, shucks, and gee willikers, I just can't figure out why dipshit deniers only despair senselessly over computer models used to predict the climate, while completely ignoring their usage in other fields. Oh so stumped here. How about you?

Shut up and Watch It

Climate models aren't useful or accurate, my ass.



Perhaps the most important statement from the video:

"If we had observations of the future, we obviously would trust them more than models, but unfortunately observations of the future are not available at this time."

-Knutson and Tuleya

When you hear or read clueless denier trolls demanding smugly that climate models be exact or perfect, ask them one simple question, "What do you offer the world as an alternative for predicting climate, hmmmmmm?"

And sit back and watch the awkward, scrambling, question-dodging troll ballet. At best, they'll just respond with idiotic, unhelpful things like, "Duh, tea leaves are better than climate models," because they're ass-backward crackpots who lack the mental acuity to absorb lessons about modeling accuracy like Schmidt's video above.

Oh, and, deniers, if you're not too childish to understand this issue and have something worthwhile to add, then here's your chance. Do tell, what is the great, wonderful, unerring alternative to climate models you've been keeping secret all these years while senselessly bellyaching about them instead?

And make it good, because we've all had enough of the mindless, infantile tea leaves comments, mmmmkay?