Brian Angliss: Heartland Institute’s latest climate-related media advisory filled with the usual distortions [on the BEST temperature results]

Heartland Institute’s latest climate-related media advisory filled with the usual distortions

by Brian Angliss, Scholars & Rogues, October 21, 2011


The Heartland Institute has a history of distorting peer-reviewed papers, lying in newspaper editorials and Institute blogs, and claiming extensive scientific expertise where little actually exists with respect to climate science and the reality of human-driven climate disruption. Given this history, the distortions in the Heartland Institute’s latest media advisory regarding the results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project are only to be expected.


BEST analyzed more surface temperature data than any other study had previously and concluded that the established global temperature records were accurate. In this way, BEST confirmed what every climate realist already knew from three surface datasets and two satellite datasets – that the globe is warming and that the best available science indicates that the urban heat island effect has a minimal impact upon the measurements. However, the Heartland Institute’s media advisory claims that “the paper is seriously flawed,” attributing that statement to James M. Taylor, senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute.


It’s at this point, the second sentence of the media advisory, that the distortions start. The problem here is that Taylor is a lawyer, not a scientist. According to his bio at the Heartland Institute, he has no scientific or mathematical training, and so he lacks the necessary standing to claim that the BEST paper is flawed.


The advisory goes on to quote Taylor as saying that the BEST results are “quite irrelevant to the global warming debate” because “[s]keptics don’t dispute that temperatures have been modestly rising since the end of the Little Ice Age approximately 100 years ago.” This is entirely false, as there are a great many so-called “skeptics” who have, in fact, rejected that the Earth has warmed at all. Some climate disruption deniers claim that the illegally hacked and published CRU emails (aka “climategate”) showed that climate scientists fudged data even though multiple independent investigations into this issue found the claim to be totally without merit. Other climate disruption deniers claim that the entire global temperature record is nothing but an artifact of the urban heat island effect (aka cities are hotter than the areas around them because the buildings and roads retain heat) even though this has been disproved by NOAA, BEST, and Anthony Watts of WattsUpWithThat blog himself. As a senior fellow in environmental policy and the editor of the Heartland Institute’s Environment & Climate News magazine, Taylor has to know that climate disruption deniers make these claims all the time. That Taylor has chosen to ignore this is deceptive at best.


Similarly, Taylor is quoted as saying “Temperatures have naturally risen and fallen many times during the past several thousand years without creating a global catastrophe.” While technically accurate, Taylor ignores the regional catastrophes that did accompany such changes – civilizations rose and fell as a result of regional climate changes, massive numbers of people migrated from one place to another, and wars were fought over natural resources. In this case, Taylor is downplaying the risks from forces that the United States military considers to be a serious threat to US national security.


Taylor is right about one thing, however – the BEST study doesn’t attempt to attribute the observed warming to any particular cause. However, the best science available today is unequivocal on the issue – greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere as a result of human activity (burning fossil fuels, clearing land for agriculture, and the like) are the dominant cause, something that Taylor has rejected based on faulty arguments and misrepresented data.


The Heartland Institute has denied science that it considered inconvenient to its libertarian, pro-big business ideology since its inception, starting with denying the risks of secondhand smoke. Taylor, by way of this media advisory, continues that long and disgraceful history.


http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2011/10/21/heartland-institutes-latest-climate-related-media-advisory-filled-with-the-usual-distortions/

Brian Angliss: Watts wrong with this picture?

Watts wrong with this picture?

by Brian Angliss, Scholars & Rogues, October 20, 2011


What’s wrong with this picture:


Anthony Watts published a post today titled “The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project puts PR before peer review” and complained that BEST didn’t peer review the four papers they pre-released today. This is the same Anthony Watts who published a paper with Joe D’Aleo titled “Is The US Surface Temperature Record Reliable?” two full years before he published the associated peer reviewed paper. Oh, and the peer-reviewed paper came to the opposite conclusion of the Heartland paper.


And the BEST papers? Pre-release versions of the papers they’ll be submitting shortly for peer-review at real scientific journals. The Watts/D’Aleo paper? Published by the climate disruption denying Heartland Institute. 


Watts has so much invested in the US surface station temperature record being wrong that he can’t seem to admit that his own research proved it was right, never mind accept that anyone else’s analyses might show the same.

Related posts (automated):

1. New analysis shows US temperature record is reliable, rejects 2009 claims by Anthony Watts
2. What’s wrong with this picture?
3. Why scientific peer review matters
4. Editor-in-chief resigns as a new paper identifies errors in “fundamentally flawed” climate paper
5. Most speakers at the 6th International Conference on Climate Change misidentified as scientists

http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2011/10/20/watts-wrong-with-this-picture/

It's lookin' like a case of pal review for Roy Spencer's disastrous paper in Remote Sensing -- maybe Roy would like to let everyone know who got to pick the reviewers

Editor-in-chief resigns as a new paper identifies errors in “fundamentally flawed” climate paper

by Brian Angliss, Scholars & Rogues, September 6, 2011

 

Roy Spencer

Last Friday, Wolfgang Wagner of the journal Remote Sensing resigned as editor-in-chief. He took this extraordinary step because he felt that it was his responsibility that Remote Sensing published a “fundamentally flawed” climate paper by Roy Spencer and William D. Braswell, both of the University of Alabama – Huntsville (UAH). In response, Spencer wrote on his blog “If some scientists would like do demonstrate in their own peer-reviewed paper where *anything* we wrote was incorrect, they should submit a paper for publication.” The first published response appeared this morning in the journal Geophysical Research Letters by Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M, and Dessler’s response points out multiple severe deficiencies in Spencer and Braswell’s paper titled “On the misdiagnosis of surface temperature feedbacks from variations in Earth’s radiant energy balance” (hereafter SB2011).




Wagner wrote an editorial in Remote Sensing to explain why he felt that SB2011 was “fundamentally flawed.” He wrote that “as a minimum requirement, [peer review is] supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims,” but that SB2011 “is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published [emphasis added].” Wagner went on to point out that while he initially felt that SB2011′s controversial conclusion (that satellite data showed that clouds, not humans, were the dominant cause of climate disruption) deserved publication, he changed his mind because SB2011′s conclusions were not new and because Spencer and Braswell had ignored the challenges to those other conclusions when they wrote SB2011. Wagner wrote

In other words, the problem I see with [SB2011] is not that it declared a minority view, but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents.

Barry Bickmore of Brigham Young University and John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas State Climatologist, both observed that Remote Sensing has a policy of allowing paper authors to suggest their own reviewers, a policy that can have serious consequences for a journal like Remote Sensing that may lack climate expertise. Bickmore noted that if a journals’ editors “don’t know who would be better, or that the suggested reviewers are all buddies of the authors, [the editors] might just ask the suggested reviewers.” Nielsen-Gammon speculated “You don’t suppose the managing editor simply chose three referees from the list that Spencer and Braswell provided? Well, I do.”

Wagner wrote in his editorial that “the editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors.” Given the small number of “skeptics” among climate scientists, the probability that three randomly selected, qualified reviewers would have all turned out to be Spencer and Braswell’s brothers-in-arms is very, very small. In fact, recent data indicates that only 3% of climate scientists have serious concerns about humanity’s dominance regarding climate disruption, so the probability that three like-minded scientists would be selected at random is 0.03³, or about once out of every 37,000 tries.

This is a problem with any journal accepting papers in areas with which the journal’s editors are not familiar. Peter Gleick, President of the Pacific Institute and currently on the editorial boards of three different journals (and previously on the editorial boards of two more), wrote in an email to S&R

We regularly turn down journal articles, even good ones, that are not appropriate for the journal based on subject. Journals are often focused on a particular area of science, and we build up lists of reviewers competent in those areas. Receiving off-topic articles
dilutes that focus and complicates reviewing.

Gleick is not on the editorial board of Remote Sensing and wrote that he “cannot judge whether the S&B article was suitable” for that journal. “Only its editors can speak to that.” In resigning, Wagner has done so.

While Wagner’s resignation as editor-in-chief casts a shadow of impropriety over SB2011, Dessler’s new paper titled “Cloud variations and the Earth’s energy budget” goes to the core of the paper’s scientific arguments and finds them deficient. First, Dessler finds that SB2011′s first equation appears to violate conservation of energy (“energy can never be created or destroyed”), one of the most fundamental laws of physics. The problem is that the way Spencer and Braswell wrote their equation permits the ocean to change temperature without additional energy, a situation that is analogous to a cup of coffee sitting on a desk top suddenly warming up for no reason.

The bulk of Dessler’s paper is devoted to the second error in SB2011, namely that they dramatically underestimated a critical ratio in their equation because they didn’t constrain their equation using measured data from the real world. SB2011 assumes that the ratio in question was about 0.5, but real data requires that the ratio be closer to 26, an error of about 50x. When the constrained ratio is used in the equations in SB2011, the paper’s results are suddenly right in-line with the very models and papers that SB2011 was supposedly disproving.

Dessler also points out that Spencer and Braswell commit one of the cardinal sins of science, cherry-picking data. They wrote in SB2011 that they analyzed 14 models, but they only plotted the 6 models that agreed with their conclusions, ignored the models that agreed with the measured real world data in favor of the models that agreed with their conclusions, and neglected to mention that their analysis matched up well with three models that realistically model El Nino/La Nina cycles. Skeptical Science produced the following graph from Dessler’s Figure 2 that shows the cherry-picked information more clearly.


For comparison, below is SB2011 Figure 3a (which Dessler reproduced), from Barry Bickmore’s post on this subject:



As bad as all these errors are, Dessler saves the most serious for last. Dessler points out that the analysis in SB2011 assumes that the sea surface temperature is independent of changes in other climatic effects such as El Nino/La Nina, clouds, and changes in global wind patterns. In reality, all of these effects affect each other.

It’s unclear whether Spencer and Braswell have attempted to corrupt the peer review process by using the new and inexpert journal Remote Sensing to publish a paper that, as Wagner wrote, “should never have been published.”

Only Spencer and Braswell know for certain, and it would be a breach of ethics for Remote Sensing to publish the names of the anonymous reviewers without their permission. But what is clear is that Wagner felt that peer review had failed in this case and that Spencer and his allies are hypocrites for throwing about accusations of “pal review” as if they were stones thrown about glass houses. It is also clear from Dessler’s new paper that SB2011 has a significant number of major errors that cast into doubt every one of the paper’s conclusions and may cast into doubt the scientific integrity of Spencer and/or Braswell themselves.

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5. The Weekly Carboholic: David Evans’ climate facts hardly factual

http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2011/09/06/spencer-braswell-paper-editor-dessler/

Brian Angliss: Canadian Embassy emails reveal Canadian, US lobbying on tar sands-derived oil

Canadian Embassy emails reveal Canadian, US lobbying on tar sands-derived oil

by Brian Angliss, Scholars & Rogues, January 6, 2011

Recently released emails written by employees of the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC and other Canadian government workers show that the Embassy directly lobbied the Bush Administration and Congress in an attempt to influence regulations and legislation that could restrict exports of Alberta tar sands-derived bitumen and petroleum. The emails further reveal that the Bush Administration had asked the Canadian Embassy to lobby Congress and to use its influence with key oil companies to convince them to lobby on Canada’s – and the Bush Administration’s – behalf.

In December 2007, then President Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). It contained a section that was added by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) that prevented the federal government from contracting to buy alternative fuels with high lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as coal-derived synthetic fuel, oil shale, and bitumen from tar sands. When the Canadian government realized that Section 526 could apply to bitumen extracted from Alberta tar sands and exported to the United States, energy experts within the Canadian Embassy and the government exchanged a flurry of emails between January and March of 2008. Some of the embassy emails have been obtained in a redacted format by the Pembina Institute via the Canadian equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act.

The embassy emails reveal how seriously Canada took Section 526 and its possible application to Alberta tar sands–derived bitumen. The emails show that diplomats within the Canadian Embassy were involved in a multi-prong effort to influence legislation and regulations through oil industry lobbying and by directly lobbying the Bush Administration and Congress.

On January 22, 2008, Paul J. Connors (then Energy Counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC) composed an email in which he indicated that the Canadian government had already brought up its concerns regarding Section 526 with the US Department of Energy (DOE) and that the DOE planned to determine the section’s implications “in the coming weeks.” This email was sent not to another government employee, but to Susan E. Carter of ExxonMobil. [Hello! and see the paragraph below!]

In another email sent to government colleagues two days later, Connors said that he had not only contacted ExxonMobil, but also the American Petroleum Institute (API) and other bitumen-importing oil companies. Connors specifically mentioned BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Encana, and Marathon. Connors indicated that the API formed a working group to pressure Congress and an alternative fuel working group on the Section 526/bitumen issue as a result of his communication. He also wrote in the email that the oil companies themselves were not concerned because they didn’t feel that Section 526 had broad enough scope to apply to bitumen.

The emails also revealed that the Canadian Embassy had been asked by the Bush Administration to “help [the Bush Administration] to interpret Section 526 in a narrow manner” by saying the restriction on bitumen might run counter to NAFTA trade requirements. Jason Tolland, then the Canadian Embassy’s Counsellor on Energy and the Environment, wrote on February 8, 2008, that “[t]he US government – read administration – is looking to us to provide support for their work to kill any interpretation of this section that would apply to Canadian oil sands.” In an email on February 14, 2008, Lynda Watson of Canada’s National Contact Point trade committee, wrote

It is true that the Administration relies up on other countries to point out these actual or potential inconsistencies with trade agreements, to open the door for the Administration to press its point (“see, even Canada says this runs contrary to…”).

On February 22, Michael Wilson, Canada’s Ambassador to the US, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Gates in which Wilson said that “Canada would not want to see an expansive interpretation of Section 526, which would then include commercially-available fuel made in part from oil derived from Canadian oil sands.”

By February 25, Connors wrote that the Bush Administration is “proceeding with a definition of conventional fuel which would include oil sands–derived fuel as conventional fuel, not as an alternative fuel, for purposes of Section 526.” In the same email, Connors also wrote that the Embassy was communicating with the Chair of the US Government Interagency Working Group on Alternative Fuels, then Paul Bollinger of the USAF, and that the Working Group had met the previous week “to consider the US Administration’s response to Section 526.” There is no indication in the emails what that response was.

Ambassador Wilson’s letter to Secretary Gates is only the most public of Canada’s direct lobbying efforts directed at the Bush Administration. The released embassy emails show that there was also a great deal of behind-the-scenes lobbying of Bush Administration officials.

Canada didn’t just lobby the Bush Administration – they directly lobbied Congress, too. In Connors’ January 24, 2008, email to Helene Viau and Peter Stokoe, Connors wrote that the Embassy “will call on key Democratic energy staffers, including the author of the provision on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (Chair is Rep. Henry Waxman D-CA).” In the February 14 email, Watson pointed out that “the time to influence legislation is during the legislative cycle (now).”

Furthermore, Connors' email of February 25 mentioned a “backlash” from pro-biofuel and “security-comes-first” members of Congress who wanted “to see Section 526 neutralized.” In the last released email on March 18, 2008, Connors wrote that “Canada appears to have won this battle” but that “ongoing advocacy in the United States will be critical.” Connors also wrote that he was continuing his advocacy by speaking directly with Democratic staff members of the Senate Energy Committee, the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, and with Bollinger of the US Interagency Alternative Fuels Committee.

The first of many legislative attempts to explicitly repeal Section 526 was submitted on March 31, 2008. In a May 2, 2008, letter from Waxman to Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, Waxman wrote that

section 526 does not bar federal agencies from purchasing generally available fuels that may contain incidental amounts of fuel from tar sands. The provision would block a federal agency from using government contracts specifically to promote or expand the use of fuel from tar sands.

On June 26, 2008, a section was added to the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act of 2008 that would amend Section 526 to match Waxman’s claimed intent in his letter to Levin and McCain. This amendment did not exit the Senate Armed Services committee.

The embassy emails also reveal some inconsistencies between what was being said by Bush Administration officials publicly vs. privately . For example, the emails state that the Bush Administration wanted to narrowly interpret Section 526, and they imply that the decision had been made by March 18, 2008. Yet prepared remarks by Department of Energy Acting Deputy Secretary Jeffrey Kupfer for a speech before the C.D. Howe Institute in Calgary, Alberta, contradict this. Kupfer’s prepared remarks state

I can tell you that the U.S. Government has made no decisions that would affect the use of oil sands feedstocks. Our experts continue to analyze the implementation of this provision.

In addition, an Executive Secretariat Executive Commitments System Congressional Report on the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 said that the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office of the DOE “will issue guidance on incorporating consideration of lifecycle GHG emissions in all Federal contracts” by August 1, 2009. A detailed search of the DoE and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office website in December 2010 turned up no published guidance on how to comply with Section 526. If a decision had actually been made in March 2008, it was kept hidden behind closed doors even after President Obama took over.

On August 19, 2009, the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) released its Interim Implementation Plan Regarding Section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 where tar sands–derived crude oil was defined as “conventional” petroleum based on the ASTM standard for refined petroleum. The interim plan also pointed out that nearly all of the petroleum in the US was partly derived from Canadian bitumen, a point made in the embassy emails and Ambassador Wilson’s letter to Secretary Gates. In response to the interim plan, the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) filed a federal lawsuit on June 18, 2010, to overturn the plan based on allegations that the DESC did not follow the federal rulemaking, that the DESC should have ruled tar sands–derived petroleum as “nonconventional,” and that the DESC failed to perform an Environmental Assessment and write an Environmental Impact Statement. The DESC interim plan was the only published rule on whether or not Section 526 applied to tar sands–derived bitumen since the law was signed by Bush in December 2007.

The Sierra Club/SACE lawsuit may have been rendered moot on December 19, 2010, when President Obama signed into law H.R. 3237, the Charles 'Pete’ Conrad Astronomy Awards Act, in which Section 526 is amended. The changes to Section 526 permit federal fuel contracts so long as they (a) don’t require alternative fuels, (b) aren’t specifically to buy alternative fuels, and (c) don’t help pay for refinery upgrades to process alternative fuels. H.R. 3237 passed the House by voice vote and the Senate by Unanimous Consent, both without amendment, resulting in no recorded votes in either Congressional body.

These changes appear to meet the goals of the two different Congressional groups identified in Connors’ March 18, 2008, email, namely to “neutralize” Section 526. As for the status of the federal lawsuit, SACE did not respond to a request for comment.

Put all together, the released embassy emails illustrate how a foreign government lobbies both the US Administration and the Congress for changes – via direct contacts, via staff members, and via proxies in friendly industries. But the emails also reveal how the US government can use third-party actors to influence its own internal politics, both foreign governments (Canada) and private parties (oil companies and a petroleum industry association).

Link:  http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2011/01/06/canada-us-lobbying-tar-sands/