FM newswire for 3 December, hot articles for your morning reading

Today’s broadsheet from the FM website pressroom, with 7 sections of hot news.  Lot’s happening in the world today, mostly either overlooked or misinterpreted by the mainstream media.

1. Links to interesting news and analysis
2. Ignore the b.s. commentary; here’s all you need to know about Obama’s Af-Pak War speech
3. A story about big news, compared to which all of the rest is trivia
4. Feature article:  Nightwatch in Afghanistan, by John McCreary
5. Update:  we’re in Afghanistan to protect its women!
6. Experts’ corrective to the nonsense about tribes in Afghanistan
7. Update: will the European Union survive?
8. Plus an Afterword

Also — you can now subscribe, receiving posts by email — see the box on the upper right.

(1)  Today’s links

1. “Occupied Paris: The Sweet and the Cruel“, Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books, 17 december 2009 — A corrective to the romantic myths about occupied Europe.
2. “The Big Muslim Problem!“, Malise Ruthven, New York Review of Books, 17 December 2009 — Important and powerful discussion about Islam, and its abilty to integrate into western societies. A nice complement to the amateur analysis that dominates geopolitical websites.
3. “The great trade collapse: Causes, Consequences and Prspects“, editor Richard Baldwin, Centre for Economic Policy Research, 27 November 2009 — Long report, powerful analysis.
4. “CRUdGate – Why this can’t be swept under the carpet“, Devil’s Kitchen, 27 November 2009 — Nice non-technical and visual explanation of the climate science debate.
5. “GIStemp – A Human View“, E.M.Smith, 9 November 2009 — A clear non-technical explanation of why the US surface temperature data (perhaps the world’s best) is unreliable. It’s nothing that cannot be fixed with money, which would be well-spent. But many climate scientists would instead prefer to be the legislatures of mankind, rather than do the boring work of gathering vital data.
6. “Dilemmas for Doctors“, Jerome E. Groopman, New York Review of Books, 17 December 2009 — A doctor talks about his craft, the financial pressures, and health care reform.
7. “Global Warming And Glacier Melt-Down Debate: A Tempest In A Teapot?”, Madhav L. Khandekar, 1 December 2009

(2)  Ignore the b.s. commentary; here’s all you need to know about Obama’s Af-Pak War speech

Most of the commentary about Obama’s speech makes the absurd assumption that the President sets US strategy.  History clearly proves this false, as seen in the long-term continuity of US foreign policy.  Note the expansionistic period from the Civil War through WWII. And the Cold War.

A look at global warming written in a cooler and more skeptical time, giving us a better understanding of climate science

Introductory note:  If you have not already read them, I strongly recommend the previous posts in this series –

• Important News, still breaking, about Climate Science propaganda
• About the significance of the CRU hack, and this look behind the curtain at climate science at work

The hacked emails and papers from the UK’s Climate Research Unit reveal the underside of climate science (as the many bizarre conclusions do the same for the anti-AGW mob).  Spinning data to conceal contrary evidence, avoiding freedom of information requests, purging the profession of skeptical voices.  All familiar things to anyone familiar with the history of science.  All evidence of the most important step needed, and that most strongly opposed by most climate scientists:

Raise the standards when applying science research to public policy questions.   That means requiring full transparency of data and methods used in climate science research, and third party review of the data, analysis, and models.

The saddest aspect of the climate science debate is that this is a regression from the 1970’s, to varying degrees.  We had transparency and replication of climate science research — but lost them when climate science was politicized (which I somewhat arbitrarily date to the publication of “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions“, Carl Sagan et al, Science, December 1983 (for an analysis of this sorry spectacle see “Nuclear winter: science and politics“, Brian Martin, Science and Public Policy, October 1988).

Worse, the public debate — which sets public policy — is thoroughly corrupted.  Both sides misrepresent the facts, feeding feeding their zealot-like followers with a steady diet of lies and exaggeration.  This site has looked at both sides in the debate (albeit not with equal attention to both), finding both to be sloppy and often hysterical.

It need not be like this.  It was not always like this.  To survive, it must get better than this.

A look at science writing from the 1970’s — global cooling or warming?

Important News, still breaking, about Climate Science propaganda

This major theft and release of information from the UK Climate Research Unit has validated long-held suspicions about the AGW story.  It’s a look behind the veil at the Global Warming propaganda campaign.  More broadly, this shows the power of the Internet, and (using John Robb’s phrase) super-empowered individuals.  Information can be liberated and disseminated by a single person.  And unlike the standard Hollywood narrative, they need not run around the world pursued by fiendish agents seeking to reclaim the data.

One amusing aspect of this is watching the mainstream media attempt to whitewash this story.  And they wonder why they’re going broke!

Update:  also see the follow-up posts About the significance of the CRU hack, and this look behind the curtain at climate science at work and A look at global warming written in a cooler and more skeptical time, giving us a better understanding of climate science.

Contents

1. A Breach in the wall
2. Background:  the struggle to hide or explain the lack of warming
3. Excerpts from those covering this breaking story
4. For more information, and an Afterword

(1)  A Breach in the wall

Excerpt from “Hadley CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails“, Terry Hurlbut, The Examiner, 19 November 2009:

The University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Centre appears to have suffered a security breach earlier today, when an unknown hacker apparently downloaded 1079 e-mails and 72 documents of various types and published them to an anonymous FTP server. These files appear to contain highly sensitive information that, if genuine, could prove extremely embarrassing to the authors of the e-mails involved. Those authors include some of the most celebrated names among proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

… Some of the most embarrassing e-mails are attributed to Philip Jones, the Director of the CRU; Keith Briffa, his assistant; Michael E. Mann of the University of Virginia; Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona; and others. One such e-mail makes references to the famous “hockey-stick” graph published by Mann in the journal Nature (bold emphasis added):

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. …

Mr. Mosher offered this summary of the rest of the e-mails that he had found:

And, you get to see somebody with the name of phil jones say that he would rather destroy the CRU data than release it to McIntyre. And lots lots more. including how to obstruct or evade FOIA requests.

and guess who funded the collection of cores at Yamal.. and transferred money into a personal account in Russia[.] And you get to see what they really say behind the curtain.. you get to see how they “shape” the news, how they struggled between telling the truth and making policy makers happy. [Y]ou get to see what they say about Idso and pat micheals, you get to read how they want to take us out into a dark alley, it’s stunning all very stunning. You get to watch somebody named phil jones say that John daly’s death is good news.. or words to that effect. I don’t know that its real.. But the CRU code looks real

… As embarrassing as the e-mails are, some of the documents are more embarrassing. They include a five-page PDF document titled The Rules of the Game, that appears to be a primer for propagating the AGW message to the average subject/resident of the United Kingdom. The document suggests that it is a precis of a longer document housed at the Web site of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

(2)  Background:  the struggle to hide or explain the lack of warming

An important background factor to these papers and emails is the effort to hide the lack of warming during the lack decade.  The US mainstream media is MIA on this story, as usual.

An important letter sent to the President about the danger of climate change

An important conference was held in January at Brown University:  “The Present Interglacial, How and When Will it End?”   (The October issue of Science had a summary of the it)  As a result, the following letter was sent to the President.  The media has not reported this, but you should be aware of the letter and its significance.

Dear Mr. President:

Aware of your deep concern with the future of the world, we feel obliged to inform you on the results of the scientific conference held here recently. The conference dealt with the past and future changes of climate and was attended by 42 top American and European investigators. We enclose the summary report published in Science and further publications are forthcoming in Quaternary Research.

The main conclusion of the meeting was that a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experience by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon.

More attempts to control the climate science debate using smears and swarming

The public climate science debate (not the debate among scientists) has seen some of the most blatant info ops in modern American history.  True believers mark the boundaries of acceptable thought by pissing on those who transgress them.  These are powerful demonstrations of John Robb’s “open source networks, where like-minded people work together without central direction towards a common goal (for more about this see his website, Global Guerrillas).

In this case, to discredit any voices opposing the theory of anthropogenic global warming.  Since they’re saving the world, many otherwise evil methods are meritorious.  Misrepresentations, lies, smears, never even acknowledging the other side’s rebuttals.  In a nation of sheep, the dogs need not work too to herd them into the pen.

Today’s example is SuperFreakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt.  Deliveries begin October 20, but already the AGW propaganda machinery has revved up to discredit it.  From their first replies to these attacks, the authors appear to believe its a debate.  Posted at their New York Times blog:

• “The Rumors of Our Global-Warming Denial Are Greatly Exaggerated“, Steven Levitt, 17 October 2009
• “Global Warming in SuperFreakonomics: The Anatomy of a Smear“, Stephen Dubner, 18 October 2009

Watch them try to crayfish back to the safety of the pen.  Soon they’ll learn that only confession and penance will satisfy the believers in the Green Religion.  Otherwise their names will feature in the Green’s two minute hate sessions.

For an example of the more rational critiques of this book see “More Superfreakonomics: emails from Steven Levitt“, Yoram Bauman, at his blog, 18 October 2009 — I recommend reading it in full; the following are just brief excerpts.

An example of important climate change research hidden, lest it spoil the media’s narrative

 The big lie of the mainstream media narrative of climate science is that the issue is settled.  This is one in a series of articles showing the rest of the story, which is slowly seeping through the cracks into public view.  At the end are links to the FM reference pages about science, linking to a wide range of research, and other resources.

“Rise of sea levels is ‘the greatest lie ever told’“, The Telegraph, 28 March 2009 — “The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.” 

About the author (from Wikipedia):

Mörner is the former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University, having retired in 2005. He was president of the International Union for Quaternary ResearchCommission on Neotectonics (1981-1989). He headed the INTAS (International Association for the promotion of cooperation with scientists from the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union) Project on Geomagnetism and Climate (1997-2003).

For more information about this, see these articles by Anthony Watts at Watts Up with That, including links and pictures:

• “Sea Level Graphs from UC and some perspectives“, 6 April 2009
• “Despite popular opinion and calls to action, the Maldives are not being overrun by sea level rise“, 19 March 2009

Links to some of Dr. Morner’s publications

• “Sea Level Changes in the Past, at Present and in the Near-Global Aspects Observations versus Models“, Final Conference for International Geoscience Programme (IGCP) Project 437, September 2003
• “Estimating future sea level changes from past records”, Global and Planetary Change, January 2004 — Abstract

Excerpt

“Rise of sea levels is ‘the greatest lie ever told’“, The Telegraph, 28 March 2009 — “The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.”  Excerpt:

If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.

Although the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

A look at the temperature record of Alaska – any sign of global warming?

The public’s opinion about climate change have been shaped by the mainstream media’s highly selective presentation of climate science work.  Anything that does not fit their narrative tends to be either ignored or shown in a slanted way.  Many posts on this site show that there is a wider range of views among climate scientists, doing so by citing their actual words.  My conclusion from this:  the narrative that “the science is settled” is false, propaganda to prematurely close off further debate and force premature policy actions.  More research is needed — better funded and with third-party reviews.

Today we look at a page from the website of the Alaska Climate Research Center:

{A} research and service organization at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Our group conducts research focusing on Alaska and polar regions climatology and we archive climatological data for Alaska.

The following is their page on Temperature Change in Alaska.  The red emphasis was added.

The topic of climate change has attracted widespread attention in recent years and is an issue that numerous scientists study on various time and space scales. One thing for sure is that the earth’s climate has and will continue to change as a result of various natural and anthropogenic forcing mechanisms.

This page features the trends in mean annual and seasonal temperatures for Alaska’s first-order observing stations since 1949, the time period for which the most reliable meteorological data are available. The temperature change varies from one climatic zone to another as well as for different seasons. If a linear trend is taken through mean annual temperatures, the average change over the last 6 decades is 3.1°F. However, when analyzing the trends for the four seasons, it can be seen that most of the change has occurred in winter and spring, with the least amount of change in autumn.

Aerosols (pollutionants, like soot) as a driver of climate change

It’s common for advocates to focus on a narrative that they believe will convince the public of the urgency of their cause.  Unfortunately this can blind them to research indicating that the problem is more complex then the simple story they push — and hence that their well-intended solutions might be ineffective, or even counter-productive. 

I believe that’s become true today about climate science.  This is another in a series of articles about research showing the complexity and uncertainty in the current models of climate change.  Previous articles have focused on solar influences.  Here are a few discussing the role of atmospheric particles.  Brief excerpts appear below for these two articles.

(1)  “Impure as the Driven Snow“, Scientific American, 8 June 2007 — “Soot is a bigger problem than greenhouse gases in polar meltdown.”  This discusses “Present-day climate forcing and response from black carbon in snow”, Mark G. Flanner, Charles S. Zender, James T. Randerson, and Philip J. Rasch, Journal of Geophysical Research, June 2007 — Abstract.

(2)  “Climate response to regional radiative forcing during the twentieth century”, Drew Shindell and Greg Faluvegi, Nature Geoscience, March 2009 — Abstract, NASA’s summary.

There is a large body of research about effect of particles on Earth’s climate.  Here are a few other articles, with no expcerpts given:

• “Strong radiative heating due to the mixing state of black carbon in atmospheric aerosols“, Mark Z. Jacobson, Nature, 8 February 2001
• “Soot More Culpable in Climate Warming Than Expected“, Scientific American, 23 December 2003
• Aerosol formation and climate, Part I, Bart Verheggen (Dept of Air Quality and Climate Change , Energy research Institute of the Netherlands), RealClimate, 13 April 2009
• Aerosol effects and climate, Part II: the role of nucleation and cosmic rays, Bart Verheggen, RealClimate, 15 April 2009
• Yet more aerosols: Comment on Shindell and Faluvegi, Drew Shindell, posted at RealClimate, 21 April 2009

Of course, it’s important not to let the proles know about such research (aerosols possible role as both warming and cooling agents).  Hence Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren, was careful not to mention this during his interview with Associate Press in which he discussed using aerosols to geoengineer the Earth’s climate.  Don’t spoil the simple narrative!

Excerpts

(1)  “Impure as the Driven Snow“, Scientific American, 8 June 2007 — This discusses “Present-day climate forcing and response from black carbon in snow”, Mark G. Flanner, Charles S. Zender, James T. Randerson, and Philip J. Rasch, Journal of Geophysical Research, June 2007 — Abstract.  Excerpt:

Belching from smokestacks, tailpipes and even forest fires, soot—or black carbon—can quickly sully any snow on which it happens to land. In the atmosphere, such aerosols can significantly cool the planet by scattering incoming radiation or helping form clouds that deflect incoming light. But on snow—even at concentrations below five parts per billion—such dark carbon triggers melting, and may be responsible for as much as 94 percent of Arctic warming.

Weekend reading recommendations – part two

This week’s recommendations are a varied lot.  All worth reading in full.  Esp note the climate science articles.  Only science driving the media’s narrative gets seen by the public. Here you see the rest of the story.

Contents

1. “End the University as We Know It“, Mark C. Taylor, op-ed in the New York Times, 26 April 2009
2. “Meteorological trends (1991-2004) at Arctic Station, Central West Greenland (69º15′N) in a 130 years perspective“, Birger U. Hansen, Bo Elberling, Ole Humlum & Niels Nielsen, Danish Journal of Geography, volume 106(1), 2006 – The arctic’s weather is changing in ways similar to that of the past 130 years.
3. “Solar Cycle 24 – don’t panic yet!“, Leif Svalgaard and Hugh Hudson, 13 April 2009 — About the late start to Solar Cycle 24, concern warranted but not panic.
4. “Farewell, the American Century“, Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatch, 28 April 2009 — “Rewriting the Past by Adding In What’s Been Left Out”
5. Afterword and for more information

Announcing the end of the world! 

Nope, it’s just Lester Brown predicting doom, again.   ”Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?“, Lester R. Brown, Scientific American, May 2009 — “The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.”  No excerpt given.  For links to authoritative articles about this see the FM reference page Food – articles about this global crisis.

Instead I suggest reading some good news:  “Global warming alarmists out in cold“, Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia), 19 April 2009 — It’s a popular science article, so follow the links to more detail.  Hat tip to Anthony Watts website, Watts Up with That!

Climate myth-busting:  ”The Source of Europe’s Mild Climate“, Richard Seager, New Scientist, July-Aug 2006  – “The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth”

Excerpts

(1)  “End the University as We Know It“, Mark C. Taylor, op-ed in the New York Times, 26 April 2009 — I do not agree with all of this, but makes many interesting points.  Opening:

Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

A story illustrating one of the most important aspects of the climate science debate

Summary:  Information is power, and so elites of all kinds wish to control its flow.  One of the most important effects of the Internet is its power to force open to public view previously closed social processes, thereby stripping elites of their control of information — and thereby reducing their power.  As Glen Reynolds (the Instapundit) says, we have created an “Army of Davids.”  Elites cannot be expected to like it, and hence resist.  We see this today in climate science.  (This post gives a slightly expanded version of material from this article at Climate Audit)

The primary complaint of skeptics about anthropogenic global warmings concerns the limited availability of data and methods used to produce the results on which advocates urge major public policy changes.  Without this information replication is impossible for scientists or interested “outsiders”.

The response has been a grudging release of data, often partial and poorly documented.  The battle has been surprisingly difficult considering that most journals require release of this information at publication.  Even more striking, much (most?) of this research is publicly funded — and hence keeping it secret usually violates  regulations of the funding agencies.

As a response to this outcry the National Academies of Science Committee on Science, Engineering & Public Policy initiated this project:  Ensuring the Utility and Integrity of Research Data in a Digital Age.  A timely response on a vital topic.  Results to date?