Marco Tedesco: Greenland Glacial Melt Cycle Could Become Self-Amplifying, Making it Difficult to Halt

Glacial Melt Cycle Could Become Self-Amplifying, Making it Difficult to Halt

The Greenland ice sheet can experience extreme melting even when temperatures don’t hit record highs, according to a new analysis by Dr. Marco Tedesco, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The City College of New York.  His findings suggest that glaciers could undergo a self-amplifying cycle of melting and warming that would be difficult to halt.

Marco Tedesco standing on the edge of one of four moulins (drainage holes) he and his team found at the bottom of a supraglacial lake during the expedition to Greenland in the summer of 2011. (Credit: P. Alexander)

(click thumbnail for larger-size image)

 

“We are finding that even if you don’t have record-breaking highs, as long as warm temperatures persist you can get record-breaking melting because of positive feedback mechanisms,” said Professor Tedesco, who directs CCNY’s Cryospheric Processes Laboratory and also serves on CUNY Graduate Center doctoral faculty.

Professor Tedesco and his team collected data for the analysis this past summer during a four-week expedition to the Jakobshavn Isbræ glacier in western Greenland. Their arrival preceded the onset of the melt season.

Combining data gathered on the ground with microwave satellite recordings and the output from a model of the ice sheet, he and graduate student Patrick Alexander found a near-record loss of snow and ice this year. The extensive melting continued even without last year’s record highs.

The team recorded data on air temperatures, wind speed, exposed ice and its movement, the emergence of streams and lakes of melt water on the surface, and the water’s eventual draining away beneath the glacier. This lost melt water can accelerate the ice sheet’s slide toward the sea where it calves new icebergs. Eventually, melt water reaches the ocean, contributing to the rising sea levels associated with long-term climate change.

The model showed that melting between June and August was well above the average for 1979 to 2010. In fact, melting in 2011 was the third most extensive since 1979, lagging behind only 2010 and 2007. The “mass balance,” or amount of snow gained minus the snow and ice that melted away, ended up tying last year’s record values. 

Temperatures and an albedo feedback mechanism accounted for the record losses, Professor Tedesco explained. “Albedo” describes the amount of solar energy absorbed by the surface (e.g., snow, slush, or patches of exposed ice). A white blanket of snow reflects much of the sun’s energy and thus has a high albedo. Bare ice – being darker and absorbing more light and energy – has a lower albedo.

But absorbing more energy from the sun also means that darker patches warm up faster, just like the blacktop of a road in the summer. The more they warm, the faster they melt.

And a year that follows one with record high temperatures can have more dark ice just below the surface, ready to warm and melt as soon as temperatures begin to rise. This also explains why more ice sheet melting can occur even though temperatures did not break records.

Professor Tedesco likens the melting process to a speeding steam locomotive. Higher temperatures act like coal shoveled into the boiler, increasing the pace of melting. In this scenario, “lower albedo is a downhill slope,” he says. The darker surfaces collect more heat. In this situation, even without more coal shoveled into the boiler, as a train heads downhill, it gains speed. In other words, melting accelerates.

Only new falling snow puts the brakes on the process, covering the darker ice in a reflective blanket, Professor Tedesco says. The model showed that this year’s snowfall couldn’t compensate for melting in previous years.  “The process never slowed down as much as it had in the past,” he explained. “The brakes engaged only every now and again.”

The team’s observations indicate that the process was not limited to the glacier they visited; it is a large-scale effect. “It’s a sign that not only do albedo and other variables play a role in acceleration of melting, but that this acceleration is happening in many places all over Greenland,” he cautioned. “We are currently trying to understand if this is a trend or will become one. This will help us to improve models projecting future melting scenarios and predict how they might evolve.”

Additional expedition team members included Christine Foreman of Montana State University, and Ian Willis and Alison Banwell of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, UK.

Professor Tedesco and his team provide their preliminary results on the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory webpage. They will will be presenting further results at the American Geophysical Union Society (AGU) meeting in San Francisco on December 5 at 9 a.m. and December 6, 2011, at 11:35 a.m.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the NASA Cryosphere Program. The World Wildlife Fund is acknowledged for supporting fieldwork activities.

On the Internet:
2011 Melting in Greenland report: http://greenland2011.cryocity.org
Cryospheric Processes Laboratory: http://cryocity.org/
Professor Tedesco Tracks Life and Death of Greenland Glacial Lake
http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/advancement/news/Tedesco-Greenland-Glacial-Lake.cfm
Map of expedition location: http://tinyurl.com/66h67so
Expedition Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cryocity/124269854300408
Expedition Twitter Feed: http://twitter.com/#!/Cryocity
Marco Tedesco profile: http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/prospective/gsoe/ese/directory/profile-record.cfm?customel_datapageid_1237265=1252241

John Mashey: Curious Coincidences at George Mason University: Ed Wegman, Milton Johns and Ken Cuccinelli

Curious Coincidences at George Mason University: Ed Wegman, Milton Johns and Ken Cuccinelli

Nearly two years ago, Canadian blogger Deep Climate found the first few pages of plagiarism in the Wegman Report.  Since then, he and others have found many more, whose chronology is graphed in Plagiarism chains involving Edward Wegman and/or students, 10/07/11, going back to 1996.

After 17+ months beyond the first of many formal complaints, and despite exhortation from a Nature editorial in May 2011 to move faster, George Mason University (GMU) is still reviewing the situation.

Dan Vergano of USA Today reported on 05/16/11 that:

"Neither Dr. Wegman nor Dr. Said has ever engaged in plagiarism," says their attorney, Milton Johns, by e-mail. In a March 16 e-mail to the journal, Wegman blamed a student who "had basically copied and pasted" from others' work into the 2006 congressional report, and said the text was lifted without acknowledgment and used in the journal study. "We would never knowingly publish plagiarized material," wrote Wegman, a former CSDA journal editor.

But who is Milton Johns, to be so confident of his firm statement?

A quick search finds Milton C. Johns, Attorney at Law, whose motto seems to be:

When Experience, Integrity and Understanding matter most…

His About Me notes he has published both fiction and nonfiction, and shows:

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, Arlington, VA, Juris Doctor with High Honors, December 1997

GMU J.D. Wesley Russell is the actual filer of Civil Investigative Demands against the University of Virginia. His boss, GMU J.D. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli  has been well-funded by coal and utilities.  He has also received funding from the Koch brothers,  long-time givers to GMU and its various institutes.

Their latest CID relies heavily on the Wegman Report, and like it, is filled with errors. As the CID's detailed climate material seems unlikely to be covered in law school, it remains to be seen if unacknowledged help was provided by others, perhaps VA residents well-connected with GMU, like Fred Singer or Pat Michaels.

Milt Johns has a page at the Red Dog Express, RPV Network, where Crescendo to Climategate Cacophony, p.115 had  found Jerry Coffey, who in 2005 contacted Wegman, starting the work that led to the Wegman Report.  One of John's "friends" there is Cuccinelli, unsurprising as they were contemporaneous at GMU.

Actually, the relationship was much closer, as in  ~2008, Milt Johns was a partner in a 4-person law firm, Cuccinelli & Day, LLC, so  Johns was Cuccinelli's law partner.

Coincidences happen.

Image credit: Audrey Burmakin/Shutterstock

Related Profile(s) : 

Edward Wegman

S. Fred Singer

Patrick Michaels

 

http://www.desmogblog.com/curious-coincidences-george-mason-university-ed-wegman-milton-johns-and-ken-cuccinelli 

Right-wing money feeds attacks on climate scientists -- American Traditions Institute backed by Scaife, Koch, ExxonMobil goes after Dr. Michael Mann with frivolous FOIA request, seeks to stiffle academic freedom and research on global warming

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: Who's behind the 'information attacks' on climate scientists?

This week, in a courtroom in Prince William County, Virginia, a hearing will take place that could have implications for the privacy rights of scientists at colleges and universities across the country.

It's part of a lawsuit brought by the American Tradition Institute, a free-market think tank that wants the public to believe human-caused global warming is a scientific fraud. Filed against the University of Virginia, the suit seeks emails and other documents related to former professor Michael Mann, an award-winning climate scientist who has become a focus of the climate-denial movement because of his research documenting the recent spike in earth's temperature.

By suing the university, the American Tradition Institute wants to make public Mann’s correspondence in an effort to find out whether he manipulated data to receive government grants, a violation of the state’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.

But a Facing South investigation has found that the Colorado-based American Tradition Institute is part of a broader network of groups with close ties to energy interests that have long fought greenhouse gas regulation. Our investigation also finds that ATI has connections with the Koch brothers, Art Pope and other conservative donors seeking to expand their political influence.

'A Hostile Environment'

The controversy involving ATI began in January, when the group submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to U.Va. seeking documents connected to Mann (photo at left), who now directs the Earth System Science Center at Penn State. After the school was slow to produce the materials, ATI along with Virginia Del. Robert Marshall (R), another global-warming skeptic, filed a lawsuit in May seeking to expedite the documents' release. This week's hearing will consider Mann's motion to intervene in the case in order to protect privacy interests he does not think will be adequately protected by the other parties.

A physicist and climatologist with advanced degrees from Berkeley and Yale, Mann’s research contributed to the "hockey stick graph," which shows a sharp rise in the earth’s temperature in recent years. He was also among those caught up in the so-called "Climategate" controversy, involving emails hacked from a British university that climate skeptics claimed showed global warming was a fraud. Multiple investigations by Penn State, the National Science Foundation's Inspector General, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and British parliament have cleared Mann and others of misconduct and determined that the content of the emails in no way changed the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity.

Despite those exonerations, however, Mann became the target of a separate ongoing investigation launched last year by Virginia Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a global-warming skeptic who issued civil subpoenas for Mann's emails and other documents. A Virginia judge dismissed the investigation, but Cuccinelli -- who previously challenged the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that greenhouse gas pollution endangers public health -- is now appealing that decision to the Supreme Court of Virginia. ATI is seeking the same documents as Cuccinelli.

ATI's lawsuit has been widely condemned by science, academic and civil liberties groups, who describe it as a politically motivated intrusion into academic freedom. The board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science said that such legal challenges "have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas." Earlier this year, public-interest groups including the American Association of University Professors sent a letter to the U.Va. president noting that the Virginia public documents statute expressly exempts scholarly data of a proprietary nature that has not yet been publicly released, published, copyrighted or patented.

"While we need freedom of information laws to hold public officials accountable, the law has exemptions for good reason," said Francesca Grifo, director of the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the letter's signatories. "Scientists should be able to challenge other scientists’ ideas and discuss their preliminary thinking before their analyses are complete and published."

But ATI has fired back against the scientists and academics, accusing them of taking part in a conspiracy to mislead and defraud the public.

"Once again these self-interested groups -- who hope to protect their billions of dollars in government funding of dubious, unsupportable research -- accuse ATI of 'harassment and intimidation' of scientists," ATI Executive Director Paul Chesser said in a statement. "It shows how blind they are to the fact that ATI has acted in the interest of sound, verifiable science and for the protection of the hard-earned money that taxpayers are forced to relinquish for such research."

ATI's Western roots

The American Tradition Institute’s foray into the Virginia case marks the expansion of a controversial group already known for its fierce advocacy on behalf of oil, gas and coal interests in Western states.

The American Tradition Institute was launched in Colorado in February 2009 as the nonprofit Western Tradition Institute, changing its name to ATI last year.  WTI, in turn, was a spinoff of the Western Tradition Partnership (WTP) -- a 501(c)(4) political advocacy group backed by energy interests.

"They are offshoots from the same poisoned roots," said Peter Fontaine, the attorney representing Michael Mann in the ATI lawsuit.

WTP, which has since changed its name to American Tradition Partnership (logo above), describes itself as a "no-compromise grassroots organization dedicated to fighting the radical environmentalist agenda." It was first registered as a Colorado nonprofit in 2008 by Scott Shires, a Republican operative with a checkered past: He was fined over $7,000 for campaign finance violations in Colorado, pleaded guilty in a scheme to fraudulently obtain federal grants for developing alternative fuels, and was tied to an illegal gambling ring. WTP was active on behalf of oil and gas industry interests in the 2008 commissioners race in Garfield County, a center of Colorado's energy industry.

Last year, the then-Western Tradition Partnership also backed a Colorado ballot initiative that would have allowed voters to opt out of the state’s renewable energy standard, which requires 30% of the electricity produced by investor-owned utilities to come from renewable sources by 2030. WTP missed the filing deadline to put the measure on the ballot, but ATI is picking up the slack: The group has sued Colorado over the standard, and is targeting similar renewable energy promotion programs in Delaware, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico and Ohio.

The groups have not only been fighting on behalf of the energy industry: They’ve also been targeting laws that restrict corporate money in elections and that require disclosure of contributions. In 2009, Western Tradition Partnership sued the city of Longmont, Colo. over their local Fair Campaign Practices Act. The city eventually settled the suit and agreed to drop requirements that political donors have their identities disclosed on campaign advertisements.

And in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, WTP successfully challenged the constitutionality of the Montana Corrupt Practices Act of 1912, which prohibited independent expenditures by corporations to influence political campaigns -- a law originally aimed at powerful mining and railroad interests in the state.

But even while it has fought to weaken election laws, WTP has at times run afoul of them. A decision issued last year by the Montana Commission of Political Practices found that the organization had broken state campaign laws by failing to register as a political committee or properly report its donors and spending. The investigation discovered that the group had solicited unlimited contributions to support pro-mining, pro-logging and pro-development candidates in Montana and avoided disclosing the contributions by passing them along to a sham political action committee that in turn ran attack ads against Democrats.

As Commissioner Dennis Unsworth said in his decision, the group's wrongdoing "raises the specter of corruption of the electoral process."

A window into the climate-denial industry

In the Western Tradition Partnership's Winter 2010 newsletter, the group announced that it changed its name to the American Tradition Partnership. It also reported in an article datelined North Carolina that it had launched the American Tradition Institute, a think tank that would be "battling radical environmentalist junk science head on."

The group would be led by Paul Chesser, who they described as a "noted climate scholar." In fact, Chesser (photo at left) is not a scientist but has long worked in what environmental advocates call the "climate denial machine": a network of organizations, many backed by energy interests, that work to create doubt about the science of human-caused global warming.

According to his bio, Chesser grew up in Rhode Island and worked as an accountant in Los Angeles. He launched his reporting career in North Carolina, where he edited two weekly conservative Christian newspapers, The Raleigh World and The Triad World. Now defunct, the papers were owned by World Newspaper Publishing, whose stated purpose is to "bring journalism informed by a distinctly Christian worldview to major cities across America."

From there, Chesser moved to the John Locke Foundation (JLF), a free-market think tank based in Raleigh, N.C., that has been a leading voice of climate denial in North Carolina. The Locke Foundation decries what it calls "global warming alarmism" and promotes the views of global warming skeptics like Patrick Michaels, who left the climatologist's office at the University of Virginia in 2007 over controversy about his funding sources and fringe views.

The Locke Foundation was founded and is largely funded by Art Pope, a North Carolina millionaire and leading conservative benefactor. As a national director of the free-market advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, Pope has close ties to the Koch brothers, the billionaire owners of the Kansas-based Koch Industries oil and chemical conglomerate and leading funders of global warming denial efforts. The Koch Family Foundations have also contributed at least $70,000 to the Locke Foundation.

It was at the Locke Foundation that Chesser began his crusade against the growing scientific consensus about climate change. He served as an editor of Carolina Journal, the group’s monthly newspaper that relentlessly attacks the science of global warming in its climate coverage. While there he also began working with Climate Strategies Watch, an initiative that sought to discredit the Center for Climate Strategies, a nonprofit group that helps states figure out ways to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

Climate Strategies Watch was a joint project of the Locke Foundation and the Heartland Institute, a corporate-backed think tank in Chicago where Chesser also served as a special correspondent. Heartland has received at least $676,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. Between 1997 and 2008, they also received $30,000 from foundations connected to the Kochs and another $50,000 from Pope's family foundation. One of Heartland's government-relations advisors also served as Exxon's senior environmental advisor.

Chesser was soon fully immersed in the climate-denial network. He became an associate fellow for the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative think tank heavily funded by the Scaife Foundations, which are controlled by the family that owns Gulf Oil. He blogged for the Cooler Heads Coalition, an industry front group led by the Competitive Enterprise Institute -- a fierce opponent of greenhouse gas regulation that has taken over $2 million from ExxonMobil as well as funding from the American Petroleum Institute, Texaco and the Koch, Scaife and Pope foundations. (ATI’s director of litigation, Christopher Horner, is a CEI fellow.)

Now at the American Tradition Institute, Chesser again finds himself speaking for a group largely bankrolled by fossil fuel interests. According to its most recent filing with the IRS, ATI last year received $40,000 from its sister group ATP, which in turn is supported by oil, gas and coal interests. It received another $5,000 from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a Virginia-based think tank that since 1998 has received over $1 million in funding from Exxon Mobil; between 1997 and 2008, Atlas also received $122,300 from the Koch foundations and $735,000 from the Pope foundation.

But ATI's biggest funder is Montana businessman Doug Lair and his Lair Family Foundation; they contributed $5,000 and $135,000 respectively to the group last year -- over 75% of its total income.

Lair’s fortune comes from Lair Petroleum, the family business that was sold in 1989 to William Koch, the lesser-known brother of Charles and David Koch. As recently as 2010, Lair Petroleum was listed as Lair’s employer in state campaign finance reports, although now he’s also an investor in commercial and agricultural real estate.

Along with the American Tradition Partnership, Lair and another Montana resident recently filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Montana campaign finance laws, arguing that limits on donation amounts and corporate contributions are impermissible under the First Amendment -- a suit similar to others filed by the group. The plaintiffs are represented by James Bopp, Jr., a prominent conservative attorney who worked as a legal adviser to the group behind the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that successfully challenged strictures on corporate money in elections.

"The Supreme Court has ruled that corporate political speech is protected by the First Amendment, and you cannot ban political speech just because the speaker is a corporation," said Bopp.

A chilling trend for academic freedom

The hearing on the American Tradition Institute's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the University of Virginia seeking Michael Mann's records is set for Tuesday, November 1, 2011, before Judge Gaylord Finch in Prince William County Court. The hearing was postponed from September after Finch said he wanted to allow more time for arguments because of the case's significance.

"If it wasn't clear before, it should now be clear to everybody," David Schnare (photo at right), pro bono director of ATI's Environmental Law Center, said at the time. "This is an extremely important case, and we appreciate Judge Finch’s careful attention to detail as we proceed."

Critics say the case not only symbolizes the industry attack on climate science but is part of a growing trend of using public information requests to target academics for political reasons.

Earlier this year, the Republican Party of Wisconsin filed a records request seeking materials from University of Wisconsin history professor William Cronon after he criticized Republican Gov. Scott Walker's push for legislation to weaken public-sector unions. Soon after, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy -- a free-market think tank based in Michigan -- submitted Freedom of Information Act requests seeking materials related to the Wisconsin union battle from labor studies faculty at the University of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State.

In the Cronon case, the University of Wisconsin's Faculty Senate passed a resolution arguing that open records laws are abused when they become partisan tools. "What was begun as a classic notion of sunshine being the best disinfectant has turned into a law that's used as a weapon to target not government officials and offices but individual public employees," said professor Howard Schweber, one of the political scientists who helped craft the resolution.

In the end, the university released some Cronon emails but withheld others, including exchanges with students protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and what it considered private exchanges among scholars. In the Wayne State case, the think tank's action led the university to take down some pages of its Labor Studies Center's website and investigate whether they had violated state campaign finance laws.

The American Tradition Institute is also using open records law to target another prominent and award-winning climate scientist: James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In January, ATI filed a federal FOIA request with NASA seeking information on how Hansen "has complied with applicable federal ethics and financial disclosure laws and regulations, and NASA Rules of Behavior." An outspoken advocate for limiting greenhouse gas pollution, Hansen has long been a target of global-warming skeptics for his research and activism. ATI has sued NASA for withholding documents over concerns about Hansen's privacy rights.

In the upcoming hearing on the U.Va. case, Mann's attorney, Peter Fontaine (photo at left), told Facing South that he will argue his client should be permitted to intervene in the ATI lawsuit because of his personal interest in protecting his private email correspondence with other scientists -- what Fontaine calls the "raw materials of scholarship" that lead to finished science.

"If this information is disclosed and allowed to be cherry-picked, distorted and mischaracterized, it will result in a terrible chilling of the rights of scientists to exchange their ideas," said Fontaine, co-chair of Cozen O’Connor’s energy and climate change programs and an EPA air pollution enforcer in the early 1990s. "It would be a blatant violation of my client's copyrights to his private emails, as well as his First Amendment rights and the right to academic freedom."

Fontaine faces a formidable adversary in ATI’s Schnare, who holds advanced science degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked as an attorney with the Department of Justice and Virginia Attorney General before serving in the same EPA air-pollution enforcement job as Fontaine from 1999 until his retirement four months ago. Schnare dismissed the idea that the lawsuit is targeting Mann or his scholarly position on climate science, and said he plans to argue that the professor should not be allowed to intervene.

"This case is about FOIA, not Mike Mann," Schnare said. "If he had wanted to protect himself from embarrassing emails, he should not have pressed 'send' to begin with."

(PHOTOS: Michael Mann by Greg Grieco via Wikipedia, Paul Chesser via John Locke Foundation website, David Schnare from ATI website, Peter Fontaine from Cozen O’Connor’s website.)

http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/10/special-investigation-whos-behind-the-information-attacks-on-climate-scientists.html

Seth Borenstein, AP: Skeptic Richard Muller finds he now agrees global warming is real [and is viciously attacked by the usual wingnut deniers]

Skeptic finds he now agrees global warming is real

An iceberg melts in Kulusuk, Greenland, near the arctic circle in a file photo. (John McConnico/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

by SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer, October 30, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) - A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly. 

The study of the world's surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of "Climategate," a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.

Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

He said he went even further back, studying readings from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. His ultimate finding of a warming world, to be presented at a conference Monday, is no different from what mainstream climate scientists have been saying for decades.

What's different, and why everyone from opinion columnists to "The Daily Show" is paying attention is who is behind the study.

One-quarter of the $600,000 to do the research came from the Charles Koch Foundation, whose founder is a major funder of skeptic groups and the tea party. The Koch brothers, Charles and David, run a large privately held company involved in oil and other industries, producing sizable greenhouse gas emissions.

Muller's research team carefully examined two chief criticisms by skeptics. One is that weather stations are unreliable; the other is that cities, which create heat islands, were skewing the temperature analysis.

"The skeptics raised valid points and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago," Muller said in a telephone interview. "And now we have confidence that the temperature rise that had previously been reported had been done without bias."

Muller said that he came into the study "with a proper skepticism," something scientists "should always have. I was somewhat bothered by the fact that there was not enough skepticism" before.

There is no reason now to be a skeptic about steadily increasing temperatures, Muller wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, a place friendly to skeptics. Muller did not address in his research the cause of global warming.

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists say it's man-made from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Nor did his study look at ocean warming, future warming and how much of a threat to mankind climate change might be.

Still, Muller said it makes sense to reduce the carbon dioxide created by fossil fuels.

"Greenhouse gases could have a disastrous impact on the world," he said. Still, he contends that threat is not as proven as the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it is.

On Monday, Muller was taking his results - four separate papers that are not yet published or peer-reviewed, but will be, he says - to a conference in Santa Fe, N.M., expected to include many prominent skeptics as well as mainstream scientists.

"Of course he'll be welcome," said Petr Chylek of Los Alamos National Lab, a noted skeptic and the conference organizer. "The purpose of our conference is to bring people with different views on climate together, so they can talk and clarify things."

Shawn Lawrence Otto, author of the book "Fool Me Twice" that criticizes science skeptics, said Muller should expect to be harshly treated by global warming deniers. "Now he's considered a traitor. For the skeptic community, this isn't about data or fact. It's about team sports. He's been traded to the Indians. He's playing for the wrong team now."

And that started on Sunday, when a British newspaper said one of Muller's co-authors, Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry, accused Muller of another Climategate-like scandal and trying to "hide the decline" of recent global temperatures.

The Associated Press contacted Curry on Sunday afternoon and she said in an email that Muller and colleagues "are not hiding any data or otherwise engaging in any scientifically questionable practice."

The Muller "results unambiguously show an increase in surface temperature since 1960," Curry wrote Sunday. She said she disagreed with Muller's public relations efforts and some public comments from Muller about there no longer being a need for skepticism.

Muller's study found that skeptics' concerns about poor weather station quality didn't skew the results of his analysis because temperature increases rose similarly in reliable and unreliable weather stations. He also found that while there is an urban heat island effect making cities warmer, rural areas, which are more abundant, are warming, too.

Among many climate scientists, the reaction was somewhat of a yawn.

"After lots of work he found exactly what was already known and accepted in the climate community," said Jerry North, a Texas A&M University atmospheric sciences professor who headed a National Academy of Sciences climate science review in 2006. "I am hoping their study will have a positive impact. But some folks will never change."

Chris Field, a Carnegie Institution scientist who is chief author of an upcoming intergovernmental climate change report, said Muller's study "may help the world's citizens focus less on whether climate change is real and more on smart options for addressing it."

Some of the most noted scientific skeptics are no longer saying the world isn't warming. Instead, they question how much of it is man-made, view it as less a threat and argue it's too expensive to do something about, Otto said.

Skeptical MIT scientist Richard Lindzen said it is a fact and nothing new that global average temperatures have been rising since 1950, as Muller shows. "It's hard to see how any serious scientist (skeptical, denier or believer - frequently depending on the exact question) will view it otherwise," he wrote in an email.

In a brief email statement, the Koch Foundation noted that Muller's team didn't examine ocean temperature or the cause of warming and said it will continue to fund such research. 

"The project is ongoing and entering peer review, and we're proud to support this strong, transparent research," said foundation spokeswoman Tonya Mullins. 

Andrew Gelman: Skepticism about skepticism of global warming skepticism skepticism [re: Richard Muller and the Berkeley results confirming global warming]

Skepticism about skepticism of global warming skepticism skepticism

by Andrew Gelman, Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, 31 October 2011

 

A group of University of California professors headed by physicist Richard Muller recently released a report confirming global warming. Then geophysicist Judith Curry, a coauthor on the papers produced by the Muller group, turned around and said that their data actually show that global warming has stopped. (Also see clarification here.)

Curry is described in the news article as the second author on the papers, but the authors are listed alphabetically so it’s probably more accurate to describe her as one of the ten authors. Muller’s one, Curry’s another, . . . now I want to know what 7 of the other 8 authors think! (One of the authors is Richard Muller’s daughter Elizabeth, so maybe we shouldn’t count her as an independent view.)

Some enterprising reporter should really interview the other 7 authors of that report. Just a quick question like, “Is there scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped?”

To add some fuel to the fire, let me repost what my physicist friend Phil Price wrote after seeing Richard Muller speak at Berkeley:

On Friday, I [Phil] saw a seminar by UC Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller. He is famously smart; he wrote the excellent book “Physics for Future Presidents”; and he and has been in the news recently for testifying to Congress that Yes, the earth really is warming, based on initial analysis of a bunch of temperature data (for some reason many people were surprised that he would say that).

Here’s the abstract of his talk: “Because of its huge economic and political implications, Climate Change is rarely presented without spin. This will be an attempt to do that. I’ll discuss the physics of the greenhouse effect, and the data that indicate global warming. Among key topics are: Copenhagen — why did we fail to get a major treaty? Climategate — what really happened? IPCC standards — and why they are undergoing major revisions. What are the top prospects among the many choices for alternative energy? What kind of example can the U.S. set that could be followed by the rest of the world? I’ll also report on new results of our “Berkeley Earth” project — a detailed re-analysis of the evidence for global warming; see http://www.BerkeleyEarth.org."

I was not the only one to roll my eyes at the first lines of the abstract: does he really think nobody gives talks about climate change without “spin”? I’ve seen quite a few talks about the science. But maybe Muller hasn’t. Whatever.

But then…the talk was absolutely terrible. The abstract was presumably a mistake, since Muller made no effort at all to do any of the things he said he would do. (He did not discuss the physics of the greenhouse effect, did not discuss Copenhagen, did not discuss Climategate, did not discuss IPCC standards). He made one good point about the difference between predicting something before the fact and explaining it after the fact (and how easy it is to fool yourself that you are doing the following). And he did present a very cursory sketch of some of the data about global warming, including a list of difficulties in interpreting/analyzing land-surface data. But that’s it. Almost a content-free talk.

Almost the whole rest of the time, he took a page out of Charlie Sheen’s book: he bragged about how fair-minded and smart he is compared to everyone else, complained about a variety of behaviors by other people (some of which were indeed bad, but many of which weren’t), and just generally held himself up as an exemplar of all that is right and fair and true, while oozing ill will about everyone else. Lots of pontificating; no technical content. And through it all, he dropped the name of Louis Alvarez — a Nobel Laureate physicist with whom he worked decades ago — about every five or ten minutes.

It was really an astonishing talk, and left most of the audience in stunned silence. It did have a certain train-wreck fascination, though, and I (and many others) stayed for part of the Q&A, in part to see if anyone would take him on about his attitude. (Nope.)

Some colleagues and I spent a while discussing the talk: how does something like this happen? I mentioned the old saw that the flaws that are most irritating on others are the ones that one has oneself, and that I saw some application here. I have sometimes started talks by pointing out ethical transgressions by others, or by showing plots and results from the literature and discussing the ways in which they’re wrong. And I’ve sometimes intentionally implied or stated that people were distorting scientific results, or the ways in which those results are presented (i.e., “spun”). . . .

(Phil’s report came in the midst of a heated discussion of Charlie Sheen.)

Muller being an obnoxious speaker doesn’t invalidate global warming (any more than the silliness of Daily Mail article is evidence in favor of it). For reasons I’ve discussed elsewhere on this blog, I go with the scientific consensus on climate change, and I’m speaking as someone who’s worked (a bit) with climate models and knows about their weaknesses.

In any case, this is an ideal Halloween post: climate change is scary!

http://andrewgelman.com/2011/10/skepticism-about-global-warming-skepticism-skepticism/

Climate Zombies Threaten “Collapse of Society”

Study: Climate Zombies Threaten “Collapse of Society”

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, October 31, 2011

Bombshell epidemiology analysis finds, “Only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario”

A must-read study in Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress, “When zombies attack!: Mathematical modelling of an outbreak of climate zombie infection” concludes:

In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to attack hard and attack often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.

As has been widely reported in the NZM (non-zombified media), a growing portion of the GOP political class has fallen victim to a zombie apocalypse (see “Attack of the climate zombies!” and “Dawn of the brain-dead Senate” and links below that I repeat in the event that our efforts fail and the distant descendants of the survivors try to reconstruct the course of the epidemic in order to save humanity using time-travel a la 12 Monkeys).

The question all uninfected Americans are asking is, what is the best way to deal with the climate zombies?  Thankfully, some Canadian mathematical modelers have analyzed the situation and offered their optimal strategy.

First, some background on zombies.  I recommend starting with the new AMC TV documentary series, The Walking Dead.  Shrewdly, AMC no longer runs stuff like Casablanca and Shane, but focuses on what really matters to humanity now. Wikipedia explains in its entry on zombie apocalypse:

A zombie apocalypse is a particular hypothetical scenario of apocalyptic theory that customarily has a science fiction/horror rationale. In a zombie apocalypse, a widespread rise of zombies hostile to human life engages in a general assault on civilization.

Hypothetical no more!  See, for instance, Know your zombies: Sensenbrenner, picked to lead House attack on climate science, says, “I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do.” If the climate zombies succeed, human civilization as we know it is likely to be destroyed, according to the recent scientific literature (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).

The best evidence suggests the climate zombie outbreak began in the fall of 2009 with a series of stolen British emails containing a virus that turned otherwise rational human-beings into zombies who spout the most inane and unintelligible things. In December 2009, the Canadian Medical Journal released its, “A report on the zombie outbreak of 2009.”

The infection resulted in a new species of human, classified as nonmortuus contagio, but known in the popular press as “zombie”, from the Congolese nzambi, meaning “spirit of a dead person.” As the name implies, the outbreak resulted in a resurgence of the previously deceased. Clinical signs included discoloration around the eyes, open wounds and rotting flesh, with organs and bodily functions operating at minimal levels.

Initial studies reported that the zombies did not feel pain, but these findings could not be verified because of the zombification of the researchers in question. When asked for comment, the lead author of one such study said, “Grrrnn, aaarghhh, huuuuuungry!” When questioned in more detail, he replied, “Braaaaiiiinnnnsss!” No further information is available from the interview.

The cause of the virus remains unknown. Anecdotal evidence suggests that zombies can be defeated by guns, the army, eventual starvation or Dire Straits records.

New diseases are generally investigated using experiments on infected people, clinical trials or medical observation. Unfortunately, because of the rapid zombification of scientists, epidemiologists and doctors, society was left with only one group of technocrats who remained uninfected: mathematicians. Fortunately, during the time at which the outbreak occurred, members of this group had not been invited to parties and thus remained entirely uninfected.

Interestingly, climate science bloggers also appear uninfected — though not their pro-pollution counterparts, who were among the first victims (apparently anti-science syndrome makes one especially predisposed to zombification).

Unfortunately, the mathematical analysis found:

The model showed two equilibria: the disease-free equilibrium (with no zombies) and the doomsday equilibrium (where everyone is a zombie). The application of a linear stability analysis showed that “” in the absence of further interventions “” the disease-free equilibrium was unstable and the doomsday equilibrium was stable. This finding was not promising.

Simulations based on a city of roughly 500,000 people demonstrated that an entire such city would be replaced by zombies [rapidly]. Were this mass replacement of a population to occur in a city such as Washington, DC, it may be unlikely anyone would notice.

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the basic mathematical model (black arrows). Humans can either die naturally or be converted into zombies, which is not terribly pleasant, but does come with that nifty jacket and tie. Zombies can reanimate the dead or be killed by humans (although it must be said that the latter doesn’t bother them too much). Possible intervention include quarantine of the zombies (green arrow), a potential cure (blue arrow) or impulsive attacks (red arrow).

I had originally feared that the rest of the world would chose the quarantine option, given that the infection has stayed mostly localized to the United States (see National Journal: “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones”).

But the study suggests that option simply won’t work:

In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to blog hard and blog often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.

Interestingly, this is very similar to the strategy recommended by the prestigious journal Nature (see Nature: “Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight with climate zombies”).

Happy Halloween!

Related posts:

• Climate zombies now run House of Representatives
• Dawn of the brain-dead House: Politico reports GOP stuffing Energy and Commerce with ‘Climate Zombies’

• Holdren finds a pony: Obama science advisor says GOP climate hearings will dezombify some members
• What we’re up against: Polluter-funded Tea Party climate zombie astroturfing

Note:  I have made remarkably few wording changes to the original studies.  Who knew Canadian mathematicians were that funny?  This is a repost.

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/31/356867/study-climate-zombies-threaten-collapse-of-society-2/

The Caped Climate Crusader: Battling the evil forces of global warming deniers

Global Warming: Man or Myth?

Scientists can also wear their citizen hats

Happy Halloween from The Caped Climate Crusader

with one comment

The Caped Climate Crusader: Battling the evil forces of global warming deniers. "Faster than global T rise, more powerful than a stranded polar bear, able to leap over rising seas in a single bound."

http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/happy-halloween-from-the-caped-climate-crusader/

The 1% Have a Stranglehold on Politics: New Lee Fang Documentary Sheds Light on the Koch Brothers

The 1% Have a Stranglehold on Politics: New Al Jazeera Documentary Sheds Light on the Koch Brothers

by Stephen Lacey, Think Progress, October 29, 2011

Al Jazeera released a new mini-documentary yesterday on the Koch Brothers — the multi-billionare energy tycoons who have spent over $50 million on campaigns to tear down the science of climate change and clean energy policy.

The documentary features a lengthy interview with our colleague Lee Fang, an investigative reporter with Think Progress, who has played a major role in uncovering the strong “web of influence” of the Koch Brothers on state and federal politicians. The film touches on the Koch role in everything from health care to energy policy. It’s worth the watch. (Note: much of the energy and climate stuff is in the second half, after about 15 minutes.)

This is exactly why “the other 99%” of Americans are protesting in the streets.

Join the 19,000 people who follow Climate Progress on Twitter.

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/29/356067/the-1-has-a-stranglehold-on-politics-new-al-jazeera-documentary-sheds-light-on-the-koch-brothers/

Bill McKibben, Grist: Where did Obama's mojo go?

Where did Obama’s mojo go?

BY BILL MCKIBBEN, grist, october 11, 2011

Photo: DavidThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission.

For connoisseurs, Barack Obama's fund-raising emails for the 2012 election campaign seem just a tad forlorn -- slightly limp reminders of the last time 'round.

Four years ago at this time, the early adopters among us were just starting to get used to the regular flow of email from the Obama campaign. The missives were actually exciting to get, because they seemed less like appeals for money than a chance to join a movement.

Sometimes they came with inspirational videos from Camp Obama, especially the volunteer training sessions staged by organizing guru Marshall Ganz. Here's a favorite of mine, where a woman invokes Bobby Kennedy and Cesar Chavez and says that, as the weekend went on, she "felt her heart softening," her cynicism "melting," her determination building. I remember that feeling, and I remember clicking time and again to send another $50 off to fund that people-powered mission. (And I recall knocking on a lot of New Hampshire doors, too, with my 14-year-old daughter.)

It's no wonder, then, that I'm still on the email list. But I haven't been clicking through this time. Not even when Barack Obama himself asked me to "donate $75 or more today to be automatically entered for a chance to join me for dinner." Not even when campaign manager Jim Messina pointed out that, though "the president has very little time to spend on anything related to the campaign ... this is how he chooses to spend it -- having real, substantive conversations with people like you" over the dinner you might just win. (And if you do win, you'll be put on a plane to "Washington, or Chicago, or wherever he might be that day.")

Not even when deputy campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon offered to let me "take ownership of this campaign" by donating to it and, as an "added bonus," possibly find myself "across the table from the president." Not even when Michelle lowered the entry price from $75 to $25 and offered this bit of reassurance: "Just relax. Barack wants this dinner to be fun, and he really loves getting to know supporters like you." Not even when, hours before an end-of-September fund-raising "deadline," Barack himself dropped the asking price to $3. God, have a little self-respect, man! Three dollars?

Here's the thing I'm starting to think Obama never understood: Yes, for most of us, the 2008 campaign was partly about him, but it was more about the campaign itself -- about the sudden feeling of power that gripped a web-enabled populace, who felt themselves able to really, truly hope. Hope that maybe they'd found a candidate who would escape the tried-and-true money corruption of Washington.

None of us gave $50 hoping for a favor. Quite the opposite. You gave $50 hoping that, for the first time in a long while in American politics, no one would get a favor. And the candidate, it must be said, led us on. His rhetorical flights were dazzling -- to environmentalists like me, he promised to "free this nation from the tyranny of oil once and for all," and pledged that his administration would mark the moment when "the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

Once in office, it was inevitable that he'd disappoint us to some degree. In fact, we knew the disappointment would come and braced ourselves for it. After all, our movement was up against the staggering power of vested corporate and financial interests. It's hard to beat big money. Still, we didn't mind thinking: Yes, we can. We'll work hard. We've got your back. Let's go!

What we completely missed was that Obama didn't want us at his back -- that the minute the campaign was over he would cut us adrift, jettison the movement that had brought him to power. Instead of using all those millions of people to force through ambitious health care proposals or serious climate legislation or [fill in the blank yourself here], he governed as the opposite of a movement candidate.

He clearly had not the slightest interest in keeping that network activated and engaged. Though we had brought him to the party, it was as if he didn't really want to dance with us. Instead -- however painful the image may be -- he wanted to dance with Larry Summers. (Fund-raising idea: I'd pay $75 to be assured I never had to have dinner with Summers.)

As the months of his administration rolled into years, he only seemed to grow less interested in movements of any sort. Before long, people like Tom Donahue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, were topping the list of the most frequent visitors to the White House. And that was before this winter, when -- after they'd been the biggest contributors to GOP congressional candidates -- Obama went on bended knee to Chamber headquarters, apologizing that he hadn't brought a fruitcake along as a gift. (What is it with this guy and food? At any rate, he soon gave them a far better present, hiring former Chamber insider Bill Daley as his chief of staff.)

Now, his popularity tanking, Obama and his advisors talk about "tacking left" for the election. A nice thought, but maybe just a little late.

Increasingly, it seems to me, those of us who were ready to move with him four years ago are deciding to leave normal channels and find new forms of action. Here's an example: By year's end, the president has said he will make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry crude oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. The nation's top climate scientists sent the administration a letter indicating that such a development would be disastrous for the climate. NASA's James Hansen, the government's top climate researcher, said heavily tapping tar-sands oil, a particularly "dirty" form of fossil fuel, would mean "game over for the climate." Ten of the president's fellow recent Nobel Peace Prize laureates pointed out in a letter that blocking the prospective pipeline would offer him a real leadership moment, a "tremendous opportunity to begin transition away from our dependence on oil, coal, and gas."

But every indication from this administration suggests that it is prepared to grant the necessary permission for a project that has the enthusiastic backing of the Chamber of Commerce, and in which the Koch Brothers have a "direct and substantial interest." And not just backing. To use the words of a recent New York Times story, they are willing to "flout the intent of federal law" to get it done. Check this out as well: The State Department, at the recommendation of Keystone XL pipeline builder TransCanada, hired a second company to carry out the environmental review. That company already considered itself a "major client" of TransCanada. This is simply corrupt, potentially the biggest scandal of the Obama years. And here's the thing: It's a crime still in progress. Watching the president do nothing to stop it is endlessly depressing.

For many of us, it's been an overdue wake-up call, a sharp reminder of just who the president was really listening to. In midsummer, several leaders of the environmental movement, myself included, put out a call for nonviolent civil disobedience at the White House over the upcoming Keystone pipeline decision. And more people -- 1,253 in total -- showed up to be arrested than at anytime in the last 40 years. (One reason Obama's emails stink this time around: The guy who used to write many of them, Elijah Zarlin, not only isn't working for the campaign anymore, but got hauled off in a paddy wagon.)

Bare months have past and already that arrest record is being threatened, thank heavens, by the forces of #OccupyWallStreet, a movement that includes plenty more of the kind of people who rallied so enthusiastically behind Obama back in 2008. 

Obama had mojo when he knew it wasn't about him, that it was about change. But when you promise change, you have to deliver. His last best opportunity may come with that Keystone Pipeline decision, which he can make entirely by himself, without our inane Congress being able to get in the way. So on Nov. 6th, exactly one year before the election, we're planning to circle the White House with people. And the signs we'll be carrying will simply be quotes from his last campaign -- all that stuff about the tyranny of big oil and the healing of the planet.

Our message will be simple: If you didn't mean it, you shouldn't have said it. If you did, here's the chance to prove it. Nix the pipeline.

We don't want dinner. We want action.

Bill McKibben is founder of 350.org and Schumann Distinguished Professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. He also serves on Grist's Board of Directors.

http://www.grist.org/election-2012/2011-10-11-where-did-obamas-mojo-go