The Jig Is Up For A Global Climate Change Denier On Steroids

[George] Oh, I'm telling you, the jig is up. [Jerry] It was a bad jig to begin with. We never should've started this jig. [George] It was a good jig. [Jerry] It was a bad jig, a terrible, terrible jig ~ Conversation between George and Jerry from the 19th episode of the third season of the American sitcom Seinfeld titled The Limo (original air date: 2/26/1992).

Libertarians (as far as my observations go) are heavily into Global Climate denialism. Most likely because acknowledging the reality of global climate change would mean we have to do something about it. Libertarians strongly believe that the wealthy "job creators" should be able to do whatever the hell they want with minimal government interference. But the fact is that nothing will ever be done regarding global climate change UNLESS government takes the lead.

The reason for this is because it's easier making money using old technologies instead of innovating new ones. Yes, companies will plan for the future and spend some money innovating, but not at the expense of dropping old technologies or energy sources. There is still plenty of oil in the ground and the "free market" will never leave it there voluntarily. The Libertarian, ever a believer in the free market fantasy, clearly can not acknowledge the facts concerning global climate change, as that would require an acknowledgement by them that the free market can't solve this problem.

And it would also require that they support the government take the lead (via regulations and subsidies) to push the "free market" to develop the energy technologies of the future. A Libertarian wouldn't be a Libertarian if he (or she) did that. Thus the Big Oil funded global climate change industry, an industry that a Libertarian-leaning blogger that I've refuted here before subscribes to strongly.

This is an individual who has dedicated his blog (in large part) to "refuting" the claims 97.5 percent of climate scientists say their research supports (or points to as being very likely). But this fellow to whom I refer says it's the "skeptics" who have it right. In fact he goes as far as to say that the 97.5 percent of climate scientists who disagree with his point of view are anti-science. This "anti science" claim is one he made in a recent post...

Willis Hart: The most reliable measurement of ocean temperature that we have is the ARGO system and according to that there has been ZERO ocean warming since 2003. That, and for the CO2 theory to be the correct one, the tropsosphere temperatures would have to increasing at a faster rate than the surface site temperatures AND THEY ARE NOT. The jig is up, Jerry. (10/15/2013 at 1:49pm).

(Argo is a network of over 3000 floats scattered across the globe that measure temperature and salinity of the upper ocean. Argo data indicates a cooling trend from 2003 to 2008).

Despite Mr. Hart having his facts correct regarding Argo data, his conclusion is way wrong. Regarding the slight ocean cooling over a period of five years, Skeptical Science says...

Skeptical Science: Claims that the ocean has been cooling are correct. Claims that global warming has stopped are not. It is an illogical position: the climate is subject to a lot of natural variability, so the premise that changes should be monotonic – temperatures rising in straight lines – ignores the fact that nature doesn't work like that. This is why scientists normally discuss trends – 30 years or more – so that short-term fluctuations can be seen as part of a greater pattern. (Skeptic claim addressed: Does ocean cooling prove global warming has ended?).

A graph (included with the Skeptical Science article referenced above) that charts ocean temperature since 1955 shows the oceans are CLEARLY warming. So, pointing to five years of a little cooling and saying that disproves AGW is dumb. In any case, the Argo data only measures ocean temperature down to 2000 meters... or the surface of the ocean. In regards to that, a commentator to Will's post pointed out that Argo (and the ocean's surface) is not the whole enchilada...

Jerry Critter: Perhaps you should tell the oceans [that the warming stopped in 1998]. They do not seem to have got the message.... the whole ocean, not just the surface. (10/15/2013 at 11:00pm).

What Jerry is talking about (I presume) when he says "the whole ocean, not just the surface", is the research that finds the "Deep Oceans Warming at Alarming Rate" (the deep ocean is water from below 3000 feet and is 90 percent of ocean's volume). Concerning the deep ocean, a 7/11/2013 article from Discovery News (A website run by the Discovery channel) reveals the following...

Larry O'Hanlond writing for Discovery News: Despite mixed signals from warming ocean surface waters, a new re-analysis of data from the depths suggests dramatic warming of the deep sea is underway because of anthropogenic climate change. The scientists report that the deep seas are taking in more heat than expected, which is taking some of the warming off the Earth's surface, but it will not do so forever. (7/11/2013, Discovery News).

The source of the information cited in the article from Discovery is a research paper from the National Center for Atmospheric Research published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters (The National Center for Atmospheric Research is managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Geophysical Research Letters is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal of geoscience published by the American Geophysical Union that was established in 1974).

According to the paper's co-author, the "heat of global warming is going to different places... [and what this research shows is that] global warming is continuing even though it's not always manifested as a strong surface temperature increase. It's... manifesting itself in different ways".

As for Hart's second claim, this is from the skeptics (or "luminaries", as he calls them) John Christy and Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama. These two individuals "published a series of papers starting about 1990 that implied the troposphere was warming at a much slower rate than the surface temperature...".

Skeptical Science notes that "from 1978, a series of satellites have measured atmospheric temperature in the troposphere and stratosphere" and that the conclusions reached by Christy and Spencer were wrong because they made an "algebraic error" and because they failed to account for diurnal drift. Diurnal drift, as explained by Skeptical Science is...

Skeptical Science: The satellites orbit the earth from pole to pole. The satellites possess no propulsion so slowly over time, the local equator crossing time (LECT) changes. This is exacerbated by decay of the satellites orbital height, dragged down by the thin atmosphere. As a satellite's LECT changes, it takes readings at changing local times, allowing local diurnal cycle variations to appear as spurious trends... the word trend designates a change, generally monotonic in time, in the value of a variable. (Skeptic claim addressed: Satellite measurements of warming in the troposphere).

According to Christy HIMSELF, the "discrepancies [between surface and atmospheric temperatures in the troposphere] no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected". So he acknowledges the errors in his original calculations (but remains a skeptic for other reasons). Someone alert Willis that the "luminary" he cites does not stand by his original assertions. Assertions the Hartster cites (I'm guessing, as he just throws the assertion out there as if it were fact, but does not cite Christy as the source of the discredited assertion).

So, when Willis says "the tropsosphere temperatures would have to increasing at a faster rate than the surface site temperatures AND THEY ARE NOT" he is WRONG. Skeptical Science says that the satellite data (the data Christy and Spencer used to conclude that there was a "warming trend of only 0.09°C per decade, well below the surface temperature trend of 0.17°C per decade"), when corrected (via removal of Christy and Spencer's algebraic error and correcting for diurnal drift) "are in good agreement with models". That would be the models that show global climate change to be REAL and OCCURRING. The denialism jig is up, in other words.

I'm not going to say that the luminaries Mr. Hart admires (or even Willis himself) are anti-science as Willis does in his post (a post in which he claims that Barack Obama is anti-science), but I do think Christy and Spencer are wrong. And, if Barack Obama were to disregard the fact that "97.5% of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change [say] human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures" and suggest we do nothing to combat this very real threat (because there are those who are skeptical)? THAT would be anti-science, as well as anti-logic.

(The 97.5 percent figure comes from "a survey of 3146 earth scientists [who were] asked the question Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?". Skeptical Science says that "more than 90% of participants had PhDs, and 7% had master's degrees. Overall, 82% of the scientists answered yes.

However, what are most interesting are responses compared to the level of expertise in climate science. Of scientists who were non-climatologists and didn't publish research, 77% answered yes. In contrast, 97.5% of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change responded yes".... so we're talking about 2579 people who agreed with the consensus position, not 75 people... as Willis claims).

Update 6/9/2015: Willis Hart does not read this blog and is therefore unaware that Christy and Spencer's research has been discredited. Although he could have found that information elsewhere... but he also does not read ANY website where such information might be found (ANY website where info rebutting change denialism might be found). I did attempt to bring this up on the blog of rAtional nAtion, due to him posting on the topic, but my comment so frightened Willis that he pretended not to see what I wrote. I am sure he decided it a better course of action to keep his head buried in the sand. In any case, the details regarding this matter (my revealing this info on the blog of Mr. nAtion and Willis Hart ignoring it) can be found via my commentary on the incident, SWTD #288.

SWTD #211, wDel #38.