Diary 8/11/2017 - Center for Inquiry Forum, Cracking the Contrarians' Code.

... Unfortunately they are pros at these rhetorical devices, so though they are incapable of defending with substance - they constantly win the public argument game.  Too few serious rational folks are willing to put up with the grief of confronting their venomous onslaughts.  

Our only hope is in more people understanding the oligarch's game and the modus operandi of their minions.  Stop ignoring the trolls, use real facts to expose them, reduce them to running away - you'd be amazed at how easy it is - once you crack the code of their malicious farce. 

If you want to learn more about it, I have a sloppy draft (yet to be completed project) of this lay-person's lesson plan that may be of use. 
Then to be willing to stand up to them every time they comment, who knows what could change within a society facing ever increasing pain and challenges, if more informed citizens actually got involved and made their reasoned voices heard.

LandscapesAndCycles 

In a nutshell Jim Steele proposes that landscapes and natural cycles are more powerful drivers of global warming driven climate change than the atmosphere that lies between Earth and frigid outer space. 

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/p/landscapesandcycles.html

. (Sorry, can't make these quotes work the way I want)

#A - Considering the Republican Disconnect From Planet Earth. (Where EM's debate started.)
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-republican-disconnect-from-planet.html

#3 EM has his say. Debating the Republican Disconnect from Earth's realities.
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2017/01/3em-his-say-debating-gop-disconnect.html

#4. Debating Republican Disconnect From - Climate Science History
#5. Debating Republican Disconnect From Climate Science - Model Uncertainty
#6 Debating Republican Disconnect From Climate Science - Model substance + contrarian scientists
#7 EM Debate - How about, An Essay Concerning Our Weather?
#8 Debating GOP Disconnect From Climate Science - It’s The Economy Stupid!
#9 Debating GOP Disconnect From AGW - Astroturfing Repost, Scott Church
#10 Debating GOP Disconnect From AGW - Who's doing the politicizing?
#11 Debating GOP Disconnect From AGW - Difference of Opinion. Not Even!
#12 Debating GOP Disconnect AGW - Science Economy Should Compromise. Say What?!

Christmas Eve I posted an essay:

What's Up With Republican disconnect from planet Earth?

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/12/republican-disconnect-from-planet-earth.html

It received an interesting comment that I decided to turn into a couple stand alone posts.  

In one I repeated my standard invitation of a guest post, if he could rationally explain himself.  Well EM took me up on my invitation and sent me an organized 4,000 word response, although a chunk of that is quoting me.  It was thoughtful and polite and I posted his comment complete and unadulterated with any commentary, except for a short introduction. 

#3 E.M. has his say. Debating the Republican Disconnect from Earth's realities.

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2017/01/3em-his-say-debating-gop-disconnect.html

I've responded with.

#4 Debating Republican Disconnect From - Climate Science History

#5 Debating Republican Disconnect From Climate Science - Model Uncertainty

#6 Debating Republican Disconnect From Climate Science - Model substance + contrarian scientists

(Seitz, Singer, Lindzen, Spencer, Christy)

and more to come.  I keep trying to refine my writing, I like to think I'm bringing up some important ideas, but that's for others to figure out.

....... the sad part is that the circle of potential interesteds seems frightfully tiny.

Yes I know we're supposed to be concerned with climate science and communications issue and politics per se, still somethings need to be said while there's still a small window of opportunity for something substantive to happen, that would be other than just more arm waving and ...

YO, December19.US Protesters, you forgot something.

What about demanding, Merrick Garland get his Supreme Court Vote January 3rd?

What about drawing attention to,Trump’s Russian obligations and him surrounding himself with “friends” of Russia?

What about drawing attention to Trump’s myriad business entanglements with enemy nations?

What about drawing attention to the fact that Trump’s win was hinged on a campaign of malicious wanton smears based on deliberately fabricated lies?  (With Russia doling out the PR, through the Alter-reality of Bannon and Breitbart’s lie factory).  WHY HAS THAT BECOME ACCEPTABLE?

What about demanding that this election get nullified if it turns out Putin played a decisive role in electing Trump his new obligate, the President of the Corporation of Amerika? 

What about spotlighting that self-interested Faith Based rejection of Objective Facts and Constructive Learning is an obscenely self-destructive way to operate our government?

What about demanding that “Evaluation of the Objective Facts trumps Personal Faith-Based decision-making” ?  What about ethics and honesty?
How about asking the question: Does American deserves a full time president, who's fully focused on leading his/her country - or a hobbyist?

How about asking the question: 

"Do we want a Russian Obligate President?"  

“Are we the United State of America or the Corporation of Amerika?”

What about demanding, Merrick Garland get his Supreme Court Vote January 3rd?

What about demanding, Merrick Garland get his Supreme Court Vote January 3rd?  What about demanding, Merrick Garland get his Supreme Court Vote January 3rd?  Over and over again!  In some way that is the single most important and doable thing.  If we can’t pull off that, … I shutter at the thought.

A List of CO2 Science Dependent Modern Marvels proving climate scientists know what they are talking about.

 Recently I got sucked back into my real passion, defending serious climate science against the cynical malicious lie dependent attacks it's been under for decades. It was an odd exposition by Dilbert's Scott Adams aptly titled, "The Non-Expert Problem and Climate Change Science." Although rather than discussing the silliness of under-informed non-experts thinking they are smarter than real experts, Adams launches into a truly delusional attack on the validity of serious scientists and their work. It wasn't a great surprise to find that Adams seems to be a Trump supporter, thus it explains his easy disconnect from objective evidence and facts when they doesn't suit his paranoid outlook.

 Besides writing my own review, "Profiles in Self-delusion - Dilbert's Scott Adams," I also participated in the discussion over there and was again amazed at how many people can in total seriousness claim that there's no valid evidence that CO2 causes our current global warming. As one of the climate science non-experts, (although with pretty near 50 years of interest and active learning under my belt, I like to think I understand it better than your average bear), how do I know that I haven't been lied to for the past fifty years?

 How do I, a man who is incapable of comprehending their formulas or the details of their climate models, be so certain that what they are telling me is true? Well it comes down to acknowledging reality.

 On two levels, for one, having listened to many, many scientists giving talks about their work, I know that they are full-spectrum skeptics. They put themselves under as sharp a microscope as they do others. It is a huge active community of intelligent competing individuals always checking and cross checking each others work. It is the best humans are capable of, sure beats basing your beliefs on Faith and then bending all facts to fit your personal beliefs.

 The second level is the physical reality of being able to master one's numbers and understanding to practical purposes. I believe it is tragic how many citizens don't have the first clue that our precise CO2 science was acquired by Air Force scientists, working independently from many countries, foremost USA, Australia, Russia and others. Everyone came up with the same results - that ought to tell a skeptic something!

 Of course, there is also the physical reality of what we are observing throughout our planet.

 Even more telling is that fundamental understanding out of which all other Climate Science flows, has been transformed into an incredible number of modern marvels that would be utterly impossible if the scientists were bluffing it.

Here, let me show you with a reprint of something I put together a while back.

This post is an interesting sort of one way collaborative effort. You see, over the years I've communicated with a number of scientists and grads. Asking straight forward questions and often receiving informative replies. I try not to over do my welcome, after all these are very busy people with more important things to do.

 But for this post I sent out a grand shout to a number of my correspondence pals and received more responses than I expected including some informative surprises for me. I have taken great liberty slicing and dicing their responses. Rewriting some, leaving other quotes untouched and giving all of it some order.
 
I mention this because I want to be clear the following List of "CO2 science dependent" modern marvels is not my own cleverness and I want to send out a big Thank You! to my informed anonymous heroes!

 Also see: February 21, 2016 Archive, Hanscom AFB Atmospheric Studies, Cambridge Research Lab http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/02/archive-usaf-atmospheric-studies-afcrl.html

For the list, link to http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2016/12/nonexpert-problem-why-we-can-be-sure.html

The 2016 Global Carbon Budget paper was published this week. The report is by sixty-seven people from all around the world. It is described as the "11th annual update of emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and their partitioning among the atmosphere, land, and ocean. This data synthesis brings together measurements, statistical information, and analyses of model results in order to provide an assessment of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties for years 1959 to 2015, with a projection for year 2016".

What the authors found was that carbon emissions dropped slightly in 2015, and are likely to increase only slightly this year. Over the last three years there has been almost no growth in emissions, which might be a sign that the world will soon see a decline in emissions - or not (if Donald Trump has his way).

Read the full article here - which has some critique of the WUWT comments from deniers and conspiracy theorists.

For a break from the mass insanity that's taken hold in the USA, here's a short article about some insanity in climate conspiracy land.
Anthony Watts seems to be having some trouble getting enough people to pay him to go to this year's AGU Fall Meeting.  He begged his readers to dip into their pocket again not once, but twice now. Other years he's got people giving him big amounts, but not so much this year when the average gift is around $20. (If you want to help him out you can donate by PayPal.)...

According to GISS NASA, the average global surface temperature anomaly for September was 0.91 °C, which is just 0.01 °C higher than the previous hottest September in 2014.
The average for the eight months to the end of September is 1.03 °C, which is 0.23 °C higher than the previous hottest January to September period in 2015, which with the latest data had an anomaly of 0.80 °C.

There are lots of charts. Here's the one tracking whether it will be another record hot year - almost certainly it will:

A few days ago an astute reader wrote to me, asking if I knew why the RSS historical temperatures for the lower atmosphere varied month to month. I in turn asked Dr Carl Mears, who is the scientist behind the RSS temperature analysis (among other things).
To see what changes month to month, compare the charts for RSS TLT v3.3, which is just of the lower troposphere. The data is from that provided in November 2013, March 2016, July 2016 and October 2016:

I call woo. BS. More batshit crazy from Anthony Watts and Christopher Monckton.

Christopher wrote, hinting in his conspiratorial fashion that he just knows there must be nefarious goings on in the world of climate science:

It remains to be seen whether the public authorities, as they gradually awaken to the reality that “global warming” is not a global crisis but a global scam, will follow up reports they have received of fraudulent misrepresentation by climate “scientists” in academic papers.

Anthony Watts has posted a puff piece at WUWT (archived here). In it Andy May says how he wants a world without nature, or at least that's the subtext. What puzzles me is what on earth is it that deniers find so enticing about ridding the world of the abundance of amazing, wondrous flora and fauna? What is it that makes people so irate about having to share the planet with other species?

• it's not really warmed, or not significantly.
• it's the sun (based on cumulative TSI - what the heck did they do there?)
• it's El Nino (based on cumulative MEI - what the heck did they do there?).

• Climate Science Denial: A rational activity built on incoherence and conspiracy theories

• Is there any difference between Willis Eschenbach's head and his feet?