Times have changed. The paranormal claims of the 70’s and 80’s no longer infest the zeitgeist as much as they once did; UFOs mysteriously vanished from the news with the increasing ubiquity of personal video cameras and the end of the X-Files, Uri Geller has long since been discredited, and televangelists no longer hold such sway on late night television. Pseudosciences like homeopathy, antivaccination hysteria and intelligent design have come to the fore, making the task of distinguishing between science and pseudoscience critical work.

I’d come to be involved with skepticism after an entirely unsatisfying undergraduate course on the philosophy of science. That was no fault of the professor teaching the course, as he was an excellent instructor; rather, it was unsatisfying because it was just too short. That one hour a week for six weeks sparked a lifelong desire to understand how and why we know what we know, and skepticism provided a hands on way to answer those questions. Working in plant sciences had given me a tangential interaction with the topic of global warming, but it was from a practical, scientific perspective: the effect of shifting climate zones on crop production, for example, and the effect of increasing CO2 on plant growth. The science wasn’t in question among my peers; we accepted the data that was out there and just got on with things. My introduction to climate science denial was through involvement with the skepticism / critical thinking movement.

Skeptics rely on the scientific method and the findings of science to resolve the demarcation problem, in particular between what is science and what is pseudoscience. Homeopathy, for example, is scientific-like. Proponents really can draw upon peer reviewed literature that appears to support its use. Yet homeopathy fails on replication, it fails to be supported by high quality trials, and it is entirely implausible, requiring the suspension of well established principles of chemistry and is founded in sympathetic magic. It is pseudoscience, not science, and on that there is a clear consensus in the skeptical – and scientific – community. On global warming, however, consensus in the skeptical community is much more elusive. A lot of skeptics – able to clearly identify pseudoscience in so many other topics, and otherwise accepting of scientific consensus in any other field – have become convinced that the science of global warming is suspect. It is a testament to the effectiveness of decades of disinformation, and susceptibility to the cognitive biases that affect all of us, that organised skepticism on the whole does not hold a clear position on the science of global warming – although there are a few exceptions, both among individuals and organisations, such as CSI. James Randi, a leading light in skepticism, is rather confused on the topic, while Michael Shermer only recently came to terms with the reality of global warming. It is a puzzle that skeptics will push back against anti-vaccination pseudoscience, homeopathy and chiropractic, and are in fact some of the loudest voices on these topics, yet hold little opinion on the science of global warming, despite this branch of scientific endeavour clearly being under sustained attack. That global warming comprises such a vast blind spot for skepticism was a great surprise to me, and I still find it extraordinary that skeptics can be among the most fervent climate science deniers.

So I’m delighted to see Skeptical Inquirer, the magazine for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), pushing back against climate “skeptics”. They have taken a stand on their Facebook blog, with the Credibility Project, and with numerous articles on the subject in Skeptical Inquirer. Predictably, there’s been blow-back, as outraged readers have cancelled their subscriptions to the magazine. How refreshing then to read this robust defence, from Kendrick Fraser, the editor of Skeptical Inquirer:

This is the third SI reader who has cancelled his (it’s always a male) subscription over our climate change pieces in the current SI (not to mention the at least six who did so after our first round of articles several years ago). Boy, they don’t want to hear anything they disagree with, do they.

It is clear the anti-GW science crowd have their minds made up, and nothing anyone is going to say, no appeal to scientific evidence, no attempt to place things into an accurate context, no attempt to point out that many media and blog portrayals are not always fully accurate, no facts, no explanations, no attempts to show they themselves are being manipulated, nothing is ever going to change their minds. Very much like the evolution/creationist controversy, except that these are some of our longtime readers.

They do not want to engage forthrightly with factual, science-based statements or arguments. They only want their own views reinforced. There is no attempt at open-minded discussion or even fair argument. Just a determination to maintain their ideological purity and not have it be contaminated with any scientific information and perspective that doesn’t support their presuppositions. They want to draw a don’t-tell-me-anything-I-don’t-want-to-hear cocoon around themselves. Unfortunately, that cocoon is growing ever larger. And they know they are punishing us, because, even more than most publications, which have advertising, we depend mostly on subscription revenue.
Guess we should just go along with the crowd, the lynch mob. Hop on the bandwagon. Slam those damned ignorant climatologists coming up with all that nonsense about changing climate and a warming planet. Who needs science anyway?

Kendrick Frazier
Editor, Skeptical Inquirer: The Magazine for Science and Reason

So thank you, Mr. Frazier, for taking on the important task of defending climate science and illuminating the vacuity of climate science denial. Would that more skeptics would do the same.

And you know, that reminds me: it’s past time I subscribed to Skeptical Inquirer myself.

“When I went to the school of hard knocks, we were told to be fair and balanced,” Duffy was quoted from his speech in yesterday’s issue of the Amherst Daily News. “That school doesn’t exist any more. Kids who go to King’s, or the other schools across the country, are taught from two main texts.”

According to Duffy — a former CTV News journalist appointed to the Senate last year by Prime Minister Stephen Harper — those two texts are Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky’s book on mainstream media, and books about the theory of critical thinking.

“When you put critical thinking together with Noam Chomsky, what you’ve got is a group of people who are taught from the ages of 18, 19 and 20 that what we stand for, private enterprise, a system that has generated more wealth for more people because people take risks and build businesses, is bad,” Duffy is quoted as saying.

Teaching Chomsky? I don’t care about that. Teach it, don’t teach it, whatever. But boy, do journalists need to learn about critical thinking. Take the journalist’s perennial inability to identify credible sources, and the demand for ‘balance’; as Richard Dawkins put it: “When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.”

And it turns out Duffy is, in fact, wrong. King’s don’t teach from Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, and the King’s School of Journalism makes no apologies for teaching critical thinking:

“We’re trying to teach people to have critical thinking skills, to hold accountable anyone who is in any way in authority,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the Conservatives, the NDP, the Green party, they’re all fair game in the sense that they have to be able to be transparent.”

The Onion.

His motivation:

"We’re putting the FOIs in just to find out what is happening with vivisection at the universities. If they’ve got nothing to hide, then it’s not a problem for them to put the information out there."

The researchers are nevertheless concerned. 

"The way these questions are phrased, I don’t think this is an exercise in openness," said Syed Khawar Abbas, veterinary officer at the University of Leeds. "This information can be used for intimidation. In the wrong hands, this information can cause problems for our scientists."

An information officer at a different university, who did not want to be identified, said: "This has caused a great deal of concern among our staff who are worried about receiving threats or worse. Most scientists faced with FOI requests are happy to put stuff into the open and welcome the scrutiny, but in this case they are having to second guess the motives of people who might use this information."

Oh yes, and this sounded familiar:

One university scientist said: "The most likely motivation here is that they want to catch somebody out. If they can find some bad wording in minutes from a meeting, then they can use that to claim we are up to no good."

I think we can go ahead now and add ‘harassment by FOI’ to the activist handbook.

Winter 2009/2010:

• 4.0°C above normal
• Warmest winter since records began in 1948
• Driest out of the past 63 years, 22% below normal
• Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan had 60% less precipitation than normal

It really has been extraordinary. Says David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada:

"I think it’s a combination of a strong El Nino and the shrinking and disappearance of the ice at the top of the world," says Phillips, adding that changing "pressure spots" in the Arctic and Atlantic also played a role. "They’ve all been working in cahoots to create this unbelievable winter."

Oh yes, and it looks like the tulips are coming up already. That could mean poor timing for the Tulip Festival here in Ottawa, May 7th to the 24th. We usually have snow coverage on the ground until early April, which would delay growth, but not this year. As far as the tulips are concerned, it feels like spring.

From the Republicans for Environmental Protection website:

‘A Climate for Change:’ A Presentation by Katharine Hayhoe

Katharine Hayhoe, a research associate professor at Texas Tech University and expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, gave a presentation on climate science to REP members via conference call on March 9, 2010. REP members from across the U.S. participated in this call.

This is one of the best presentations I have seen on climate change. Do check out the pdf [link], even if you don’t have time to listen to the audio [link], for an excellent example of science communication. This really is good.

First, a promise about creating The Economy of Tomorrow [p.55]:

In designing Canada’s Economic Action Plan, the Government incorporated measures to help create the economy of tomorrow. In 2010–11, the Action Plan will invest almost $1.9 billion in post-secondary education, infrastructure, research, technology innovation, and environmental protection. This builds on 2009–10 investments of over $2.1 billion to support these strategic investments.
In 2010–11, the Government will provide $1 billion to support deferred maintenance, repair and construction at Canada’s colleges and universities. This investment will help keep Canadian research and educational facilities at the forefront of scientific advancement and will help to ensure that high-paid jobs are maintained and created in Canada.

New shiny labs, jolly good. Operational funding would be even better.

Funding to create the economy of tomorrow will also extend access to broadband Internet in remote communities, develop carbon capture  and storage technology, and fund other strategic investments in science, technology and research.

That’s a bit vague. CCS gets a mention: a technology investment that promises to mitigate the tar sands. Never mind if it doesn’t work.

The Canadian High Arctic Research Station gets a push:

Canada’s Economic Action Plan laid the groundwork for delivering on the Government’s commitment to build a world-class Canadian High Arctic Research Station by providing $2 million over two years for a feasibility study for the proposed facility. Budget 2010 is taking a further step by providing $18 million over five years to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada to commence the pre-construction design phase for the station.

So that’s still more infrastructure funding, and it is still some time away from even being constructed.

“Arctic research infrastructure” overall has $35 million committed under the 2009-2010 economic action plan, and $52 million committed for 2010-2011 [p.247].

There’s “$126 million over five years to strengthen the world-leading research” at TRIUMF, which is something for the operational funding side. And for more like that: the research councils NSERC, CIHR and SSHRC get an additional $32 million per year [p.79]. It breaks down as follows:

• $16 million per year to the CIHR to support outstanding health related research and development.
• $13 million per year to NSERC, including $8 million per year to strengthen its support for advanced research, and $5 million per year to foster closer research collaborations between academic institutions and the private sector through NSERC’s Strategy for Partnerships and Innovation.
• $3 million per year to SSHRC to support world-leading research in the social sciences and humanities.
• $8 million per year to the Indirect Cost of Research Program. This enhanced funding will help institutions support the additional research activities enabled by the new resources provided to the federal granting councils through Budget 2010.

Small dollar amounts compared to what is going in to infrastructure, and this after last year’s budget cuts.

Genome Canada gets a mention, after being omitted from the previous budget; they get an additional $75 million in 2009-2010 “to launch a new targeted research competition focused on forestry and the environment and sustain funding for the regional genomics innovation centres.”

The Economic Action Plan directed funds toward “Clean Energy and the Environment” [p.245]. And by funds, I mean a staggering $1 billion for the Clean Energy Fund, which includes “$150 million for clean energy research and $850 million for clean energy demonstration projects.” These include the following:

• $120 million for a Shell Quest CCS demonstration project
• $315.8 million for the TransAlta Keephills Project to attach CCS to a coal-fired power plant near Edmonton
• $30 million for the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line project.

I remain to be persuaded that these are good investments. A better investment was made through the ecoENERGY Retrofit-Homes program, which disbursed $205 million under the Clean Energy Fund to finance 120,000 retrofits for Canadian homeowners.

Notable omission from the budget: The Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS). Their funding ends in 2011 and research projects are already being dismantled.

There’s a good argument to be made that with this budget, the government is trying to pick winners, rather than the hands off approach of letting the research councils direct funds. The emphasis on funding practical research with profit potential rings alarm bells; the UK is heading down a similar path, and the scientific community rightly has concerns.

Lorrie Goldstein in The Sun:

Ten uses of the label “warmists”, including three “global warmists” and one “Canada’s warmist media”.

More verbose:

• “…intellectual heirs of Chicken Little”.

Lorne Gunter in The Edmonton Journal:

Six uses of “alarmists”, including one “climate alarmists” and one “IPCCs alarmists”.

One use of “True Believers”.

Accusatory:

• “…key climate scientists and the United Nations IPCC have corrupted the scientific process”.
• “NASA’s climate scientists have hardly more credibility than the CRUs or IPCCs alarmists”.

Rex Murphy in the National Post:

Garrulous:

• “…the Al Gore contingent of The Science is Settled and The Himalayan Glaciers are Toast Church of Global Warming (pre-Climategate Division)”
• “…post-Climategate-desperate campaigners of the tattered global warming crusade”
• “…preening carbon-footprint eco-priests”
• “…carbon footprint heresiarchs”
• “The IPCC has less prestige now than the Golden Globes”
• “The IPCC chairman is a rude, busy man who writes erotic novels”.

This is the quality of our public discourse on climate change: name calling and flinging accusations and insults, by commenters with a wicked anti-science streak. Edifying and enlightening, it is not.

And how ridiculous that Goldstein would call the Canadian media ‘warmist’, when it prints articles like these almost every single day, in newspapers all across the country. ‘Warmist’? Not from where I’m sitting.

Here’s a question Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, who could become our next PM, should ask the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

To wit: How could it possibly get the amount of land in the Netherlands that’s below sea level wrong by a factor of more than 100%?

Goldstein could ask the IPCC directly. Journalists are allowed, you know. But maybe he imagines its a privileged access thing and only Harper and Ignatieff can do it, say when they next meet with the IPCC at Bohemian Grove.

Regardless, Goldstein already knows the answer:

(The inaccurate sea level data originally came from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, meaning, apparently, nobody checks this stuff.)

Which just doesn’t strike me as being a big deal. Small error, doesn’t change the science, the Dutch provided the erroneous statement in the first place, and nobody in the Netherlands has put their home on stilts because they learned from an IPCC report that they were in fact living underwater. And besides, surely this isn’t even relevant to me, here, in Canada.

The relevance for Canadians is that this is such a basic, stupid, mistake, it raises concerns about what else the IPCC has wrong.

Oh.

Go on…

Pointing out the growing list of IPCC blunders isn’t some climatic version of Trivial Pursuit, as warmists claim.

The IPCC has enormous influence on politicians poised to spend billions of our dollars, allegedly attempting to “fix” man-made global warming.

IPCC reports on climate change are a major reason Canada and the U.S. plan to set up a cap-and-trade market in carbon dioxide emissions, despite the fact it’s been a disaster in Europe that has (a) raised the cost of living for ordinary people (b) funnelled undeserved profits into giant energy corporations and hedge funds (c) incubated massive frauds and (d) done nothing to help the environment.

One IPCC ‘error’ on the geography of the Netherlands, and Goldstein starts ranting about economic apocalypse?

The IPCC, assuming it ever was a scientific body, has now become a lobby group whose “science” advocates central planning run amok and massive wealth redistribution from the developed world (us) to the developing one, using schemes, like cap-and-trade, we already know don’t work.

Now that is just incoherent. The IPCC has a handful of paid, full time employees, and most of its labour is done, for free, by scientists. Who there even has time to lobby? Further, the work that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change undertakes is decided with the world’s governments, with which it is in partnership. The goal of the IPCC “is to provide policy-relevant but not policy-prescriptive information on key aspects of climate change”, which is what the governments involved want; if the direction of the IPCC had been changed to lobbying, it would have to have been decided in plenary by the governments involved. It wasn’t.

But never mind all that. There’s a bigger problem here, one for which The Times of London has invented all the evidence Goldstein needs to believe:

The IPCC responded to this latest blunder, as it has all of them, by arguing: Hey, stuff happens, but the science remains “robust,” so no biggie.

Except former IPCC chairman, Robert Watson (1997-2002) says the growing list of IPCC errors is worrisome, suggesting an inherent bias.

The problem, he told the U.K. Times, is that all the errors uncovered to date exaggerate the problems of man-made climate change. If they were all innocent mistakes (as claimed by IPCC apologists), some would likely understate the problem.

“The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact,” noted Watson, now chief scientific adviser to the U.K.’s environment department.

“That is worrying. The IPCC needs to look at this trend in the errors and ask why it happened.”

He said the IPCC should adopt a more open position towards climate skeptics in future reports, and verify its source material.

Except Watson didn’t say that. When asked if The Times had accurately reported his views, he replied:

The article distorted my statements – I was interviewed for an hour and it was obvious that the reporter wanted me to say that the authors were biased – I said I did not believe that.

If an error on Dutch geography and a fabricated quote in The Times is all it takes for Goldstein to fear ‘drowning in climate stupidity’, then I sincerely hope this guy always wears a lifevest when he goes outdoors in the rain.

Michael Ignatieff comments:

“An Arctic strategy can’t be only a military strategy.” Spot on. A couple of new icebreakers to keep the rowdy Danes in check would be nice and all, but there’s a lot more to the Arctic than sovereignty issues. As for that: “We have to directly involve Arctic people… we have to reactivate Arctic diplomacy.” The circumpolar region is a culture unto itself and with the ice melting, there’s going to be a lot more marine communication. Let’s keep it friendly.

“We are stewards of the global refrigeration system.” A fascinating line to use, and not all that outrageous, although I had to stop and think about it for a bit. The phrase ‘Global refrigeration system’ appears in An Introduction to Geographical Hydrology, ed. Richard J. Chorley, 1969, so it’s been around a while. Ignatieff first used it in speeches back in 2006. For example:

“The Canadian Arctic is a crucial piece of the global refrigeration system. This system is breaking down. The science is clear. Global warming is happening. Working with other nations in the Arctic Council, we must take leadership in stabilizing the global climate system.

In understanding Canada’s place in the world, we need to think of ourselves not just as defenders of our own sovereignty, but as stewards of the global commons.”

Back to the present: it was gratifying to hear a politician connect the dots on the Arctic. Ignatieff also said: “the Arctic is globally significant. We need to stop going to international conventions on climate change and having nothing to say. We are the stewards of the global refrigeration system. We need to have something to say!” Agreed. At the very least, I would like us to be informed on climate change related perturbations in the Arctic and be in a position to report on them. Permafrost melt, carbon and methane release from land and ocean, changes in boreal forest, tundra, etc. etc.

Also mentioned during discussions:

The Arctic, and Canada, need policies for climate change adaptation. All well and good to offer money for developing countries for adaptation, but the Arctic is already experiencing the effects of climate change. In 2008, a flash flood split the town of Pangnirtung on Baffin Island in two, separating residents from essential services that took days to restore. Tuktoyaktuk is experiencing the fastest rate of coastal erosion in Canada, losing 2m of shoreline every year. The effects of climate change have begun to be felt, and it is the height of irresponsible governance to ignore it right here in our own country.

CFCAS on research in the North:

It is cheaper to get to New Zealand than to Resolute. That poses some logistical problems…

Climate change is significantly affecting the Mackenzie Delta, where there is a lot of infrastructure. We need more knowledge to be able to plan for further changes.

Killer whales will be able to enter the Arctic once the ice barrier is gone. That should make life interesting.

All of CFCAS research ends in 2011, and there’s no more funding in the pipeline.

Food prices:

Food costs a lot more in the North. $10 for a bag of flour, for example. Average price of a basket of food: 44% higher than in Ottawa. Country food remains important in the North, but I think we can count on climate change to bugger up that food supply.

Ghost stations:

As someone mentioned afterwards, lots of infrastructure funding available for building shiny new Arctic research stations, but not a lot of money available for researchers to actually go there and research. Oh well. The ghost stations could be used instead for annual remakes of The Thing.

John England of the University of Alberta had a piece in Nature on Arctic research: we need an overarching research policy, like the States have, and better integration between NSERC and PCSP. Researchers who do get funding to work in the North run into serious logistical problems when it comes to actually conducting their research. Worth a read.