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New Tool Allows Scientists To Annotate Media Coverage of Climate Change
Layzej writes: Have you ever been skeptical of a climate change story presented by a major media outlet? A new tool holds journalists to account for the veracity of their stories. "Using the Climate Feedback tool, scientists have started to diligently add detailed annotations to online content and have those notes appear alongside the story as it originally appeared. If you're the writer, then it's a bit like getting your homework handed back to you with the margins littered with corrections and red pen. Or smiley faces and gold stars if you've been good." The project has already prompted The Telegraph to publish major corrections to their story that suggested the Earth is headed for a "'mini ice age' within 15 years." The article has been modified in such a way that there is no more statement supporting the original message of an "imminent mini ice age."
This is why no-one trusts the media. I doubt even the most fervent anti-CC campaigner believes this to be true. And while I don't think climate change itself is a hoax, I'm far less convinced that it's a death sentence (e.g. as far as I know we've had higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere in the past without all life dying).
We have been able to annotate media for ages.
"there is no climate change" - I wonder how many deniers or skeptics argue that?- only a tiny %age at a guess. I'd say the evidence for climate change since the last Ice Age indicates that non-anthropogenic GW one of the stronger puzzles that needs to be worked on, even if Mann and Smith are trying to downplay the variability seen.
... tattle-tales.
It's all an attempt to consolidate the state's control by denying people access to vehicles, especially those that could have a military role like hummers and F150's with 27 lights on the roof.
It's hard to organise a revolt when you have to travel by "environmentally friendly" bus.
--
roman_mir
Well, of course people will be "attacking you" since you perceive people showing you you are wrong or telling you you are wrong as "attacking you". But you're wrong.
Heck, you're wrong when you claim you believe CC is real since that comes from this "manufacture[d the] climate change story" you think is a pernicious conspiracy. You don't know climate has changed except by the testimony of those scientists and organisations you believe are conspiring to concoct a worldwide lie.
Why did climate change in the past? Well, Arrhenius showed that solar changes were not enough by a long shot. He showed that CO2 had to make up MOST OF THE WARMING otherwise the record of past climate change could not be reconciled. That was 220 years ago.
Chemists around the world will tell you that burning fossil fuels (hydrocarbons) will produce CO2.
We burn billions of tons of CO2 for years. Just read the marketing reports of the companies selling it, and the export sheet of fossil fuel exporting countries.
And that CO2 will do the same today as it did in all those changed climates of the past: cause a lot of warming.
But you cannot abide this for political and ideological reasons, so you attack the scientists instead. Then preempt the martyr position by knowing that you deserve to be "attacked" and pretending this is only because your talk is not wanted. Yet this is EXACTLY what you yourself do to the science. And you see no hypocrisy.
How?
So they "invented a new tool"? Nope.
Sorry to tell you, but they are 13 years late to the party.
A Foresight.org project on 2002 was the release of Ka-Ping Yee's CritSuite.
It was also "invented" independently as "Third Voice" in 2004.
It's cute that they believe they've done something unique with the grant dollars (that they should probably be actually spending on dealing with climate change, rather than beating reporters over the head with foam "pool noodles"), but what they've done is far from new.
nice
Petmag -> Hrana caini, hrana pisici, hrana pasari
Usually one states that the article no longer states that there is an "imminent mini ice age."
A "climate change" propaganda tool. Very useful for activist scientists who don't like any challenge to their highly dubious claims.
Have you ever been skeptical of a climate change story presented by a major media outlet?
No, only denialist.
What is not clear from the summary and the Climate Feedback tool website is that they are using the hypothes.is platform to allow the annotation of website. It sounds a good use of hypothesis, having experts in the field of the article to fact check. It goes both ways.
The most dangerous drug
Fanatics gotta fanaticize.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Already, with just these few articles, we can see certain sites tilting in specific ways. The Telegraph shows alarmist climate changes, that score low. The Wall Street Journal slants toward climate denial and also scores low. The data set is too small though, no other magazine has more than one review. How various magazines trend will be interesting, and if we could get multiple reviews in a same issue...perhaps we could have evidence of top-down editorial manipulation. Who owns which magazines? News Corp, I'm looking at you!
... see? When Earth warms up the planet will exeperience all sorts of extreme weather. That's why no matter what happens, as a climate expert you can claim that whatever is happening weather-wise, is completely in line with your theory that the planet is heating up from man-made causes ('cause it wouldn't heat up naturally because things never change in the universe). So, mini-ice age? Well preposterous unless it really does look like it's going to happen, in which case, models can be adjusted so that it is a complete but _temporary_ manifestation of ... the planet heating up just as the models predict. Yeah! It's good to be a climate scientist because you're never wrong when you follow the party line and models.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
There is no runaway global warming so why is this a topic?
wmd on credit psychopaths... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wmd+weather .. a couple bricks short of a load still
And your claim that it shows stabilisation of temperatures is false. The temperatures are going up and down every year different from the one before. Not stable at all.
Since climate is 30 years average, a 15 year period cannot make any claim on the climate. It might not be weather, but it isn't climate.
As to "normal variation", well yes, look at other 15 year periods. Despite a definite upward trend there, there are 15 year periods with no difference from the start to the end or even dropping over that period.
Since we're now a year and a half on from the end of that graphic, what has happened since then? Was it a 17 year "stabilisation"? No. It's up again. By a lot.
Downloaded that pdf too.
For a start it only shows the northern hemisphere whereas NOAA showed both hemispheres. But it shows the end of the graph is definitely higher than any time on the graph beforehand. But it also ends before 2000, and according to your NOAA graph it got warmer since then too. Plus data since 2013 show it is even warmer now. Which means your claim of "it was just as warm 1000 years ago as today" is wrong.
Your source for your claim does not support your claim and doesn't appear in the paper you supplied, so it was your own claim manufactured in contradiction to the source of proof you had for that claim.
When people point to a 15 year stabilization of temperatures [noaa.gov] as evidence in the climate change debate, the frequent response is "that's not climate, that's weather" or "that's normal variation."
That is because we can quantify the variation. If you subtract ENSO and PDO (which are largely responsible for the variation) from the temperature trend you get a fairly monotonous rise in temperatures.
"Actually it's water vapor, that 'other' greenhouse gas, that is doing most of the warming on Earth."
Water vapor does not stay in the atmosphere, but goes in and out of the atmosphere in the form of evaporation and rain. There is a reservoir of liquid water that is, from the standpoint of the atmosphere, effectively infinite. So, the water vapor responds to changes in temperature.
It is, of course, well understood that water vapor is a greenhouse gas-- this accounted for in all the models. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere depends on the temperature. This is a feedback cycle. One of several feedback cycles.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
And don't mention that big ball of burning stuff in space. Its output is constant. Not like a star has a climate or anything silly like that.
We measure the output of the sun. We've been measuring it for most of a century, and measuring it very very accurately from satellites for many decades. We can compare the variations of solar output (which are very small variations) against climate on Earth. Variability in solar output does not account for the changes seen in the climate.
We also know a lot about the brightness of sunlike stars. Stars like the sun turn out to be pretty boring. There are some stars with a lot of variability... but not the ones that are similar to ours: main-sequence G stars that are a few billion years old have pretty much settled down.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Can you find any fault with the feedback provided by the scientists?
And to keep bullshit like this off of it.
Climate change is not a death sentence. There aren't any reputable scientists saying it is. I think you may have been listening to some sensationalist media stories, and possibly embellishing what they state. If you like, you can read some of the published effects of climate change, and "all life dying" is not one of them.
But if no reputable scientists are saying that climate change is a death sentence, why do articles like the one below keep appearing? It's about Christiana Figueres, leader of the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Figueres was trained as an anthropologist, but doesn't do anthropology professionally; she's a Costa Rican diplomat. (Being the daughter of the President of Costa Rica probably gave her a leg up here). I'm willing to add a stipulation that anthropologists who have never actually worked as scientists shouldn't be considered as "reputable scientists" on climate models.
It's titled, "The Woman Who Could Save Humanity". http://www.realclearpolitics.c...
Well, if you actually read the article, it doesn't anywhere quote her as saying that climate change will be "a death sentence". In fact, it's primarily an article about how hard it is to get diplomats to agree. The closest it gets to any such statement is the title of the article (and article titles aren't written by the reporter), and a sentence in the article saying that on the well of her office is a picture of the Statue of Liberty waist-deep in water. I'm not sure if we should judge people by the satirical pictures on their walls.
Sounds like what we really need is a tool to annotate extremists on both sides. Why does this tool do that?
I absolutely agree. Accuracy is desired in both directions. We're in luck, though, the tool discussed here does annotate both sides! Here-- from the link in TFA-- is their tool applied to the Rolling Stone article "“The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here”:
http://climatefeedback.org/eva...
--along with the reply by the author, the very first point of which was "I didn't get to write the headline; the headlines are written by the editor."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
> the Earth is headed for a "'mini ice age' within 15 years."
This is doubtful since it violates the naive "no-change" hypothesis.
That hypothesis has been incredibly accurate for the last 18 years - much more than what the "consensus" has predicted with their ridiculous supercomputers.
Well of course I expected this. An attack and a downvote to -1 because I dare to deviate 1% from the cult like narrative you guys have going. Let me repeat: I BELIEVE IN CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS CAUSED BY GREENHOUSE GASSES PRODUCED BY HUMANS. We are in 100% agreement.
However, one thing I dare to say is much of this is pushed along so that carbon taxes and carbon tax credits are introduced which will allow the rich to get even richer. In addition the scientists are on board with it to gain prestige and grant money and are more than willing to push the hype up. You know why I dare to say this? Because WE AREN'T DOING A DAMN THING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. CO2 emission levels are higher year after year (except for the US). Yet the hysteria level continues to increase and more and more money is being thrown about to attempt to "combat climate change", yet there have been ZERO serious attempts to do so. The only way to combat it is to reduce CO2 emissions, and NO ONE is doing that.
And another point: the people producing this tool are not scientists. So I am not attacking scientists, just people that continue the hype without substance.
Like any such 'auditing', this tool runs into a "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" problem.
1) granted, I didn't dig deeply into the site more than a skim of the 'about' information, but I'm not sure I understand what sort of credentials qualify someone to contribute?
2) this - and the meta-narrative - suggests that the commenters are somehow objective. Scientists (contrary to some anecdotal experience, for sure) are humans like the rest of us. They have motivations, biases, and varying levels of tendentiousness, *particularly* when it comes to a subject important to them.
3) I see that anonymous reviews are also allowed, which means that this tool is fundamentally no more credible than, say, any comment system that allows anonymous cowards. And we all know how those can suck.
To use what's probably a good example:
http://climatefeedback.org/eva...
Lomborg is a divisive figure among the Global Warming movement; a credible, well-informed, reasonably charismatic spokesman for "the enemy", his point in recent years has been consistent: YES, it appears that warming is happening; YES, it appears that humans are to blame, but NO, it's not worth addressing with limited funds and resources - not even in the top 10 'big' subjects we should try to attack.
For example, the criticisms of his article reflect this:
"The author tries to rebut the narrative âoethat the worldâ(TM)s climate is changing from bad to worseâ. In doing so, he erects a straw-man, cherry-picks studies and misrepresents current climate science. Furthermore, the logic that since things are not âworst-than-we-thoughtâ(TM), we shouldnâ(TM)t take action and do the things we would do if things were simply âbadâ(TM), is lost on meâ¦", "Tries and fails to make a convincing case for why humans need to worry about climate change less than they currently do." and "The author on multiple occasions presents blatantly inaccurate information and otherwise uses selective information to argue his point, which is highly misleading." is NOT 'scientific' criticism. That's just bitching.
Moreover, on a technical note, the shorthand 'rating' system of the tool seems to vary as well.
Other articles are rated from +2 (very high scientific credibility) to -2 (very low scientific credibility) while his strangely goes from 4 to 0 (excellent to very poor).
-Styopa
The droughts are evaporating our water supply. Our kids and their kids won't have water.
Well, Well, Well, children. Please keep a close eye on this one as it is on track to stifle entire segments of the scientific community who know the real data is in direct opposition to the liberal eco pseudo scientific agenda.
the people producing this tool are not scientists. So I am not attacking scientists, just people that continue the hype without substance.
The annotations are added by scientists. If you really are against hype and pro-science then you will be a fan of this site. You really should take a few minutes to check it out. Your preconceptions will be challenged.
Variability in solar output does not account for the changes seen in the climate.
Right. On top of that, solar output has been dropping since the 80's. To the extent that it does have an effect, it has been a cooling effect for the last 4 decades. - http://woodfortrees.org/plot/p...
Wow, that's a great graphing tool.
I would like to kvetch that by picking a 120 month average for a data set that only spans 420 months, you give a distorted view of the solar data (and you also make a graph that stops 5 years before the end of the data set, since a 120-month average requires data for ± five years).
Here is the same graph, but I removed the averaging of the solar irradiance, so you can see more clearly that the effect is primarily the solar cycle:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/p...
You can now see that the "dive" in the end of the data as you graphed it is simply the variation in solar minima-- and since there are only three solar minima in the data set, this is not significant. Most importantly, note the scale: that "dramatic" change in irradiance is a peak-to-trough change from 1365.2 to 1367.1 W/m^2. That's only ± 0.07%.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Can I come and visit you at the institution where you are housed?
I would like to kvetch that by picking a 120 month average for a data set that only spans 420 months
Yeah. There is an 11 year cycle. A 120 year moving average smooths this out so you can see the long term trend. The data only goes back to the late 70's since it is derived from satellites. You can use sunspot count as a pretty good proxy and get something quite a bit longer: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/s...
This 120 year moving average is the method that was used to promote the solar/temperature link in the 80's. You can get a pretty good match for much of the last century, but it falls apart in recent decades.
You can now see that the "dive" in the end of the data as you graphed it is simply the variation in solar minima-- and since there are only three solar minima in the data set, this is not significant.
Probably you are right. To the extent that the change in solar irradiance is significant, the recent effect has been to cool the planet. That means that the larger significance you give to changes in solar irradiance the more difficult it becomes to explain the recent warming.
It's Manbearpig.
I would like to kvetch that by picking a 120 month average for a data set that only spans 420 months
Yeah. There is an 11 year cycle. A 120
[month]
moving average smooths this out so you can see the long term trend.
You could... except that when you take a 120-month average on a data set that only spans 420 months, what you just did is compress the data down to a curve that is effectively only 2 and 2/3 points (keeping in mind that the first 60 months and the last 60 months are now truncated from the graph).
You've removed the noise... but there's not much information left, either.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
And the CO2/H2O vapor feedback coefficient is the single number they use to 'tune' the climate models to get the amount of warming they want.
In the original Manabe and Wetherald model, the "tuning" was simply an input assumption that the relative humidity remains constant.
If you think that this results in too high feedback, you are essentially stating a hypothesis that humidity goes down as temperature rises. Would you like to come up with a physical reason for that assumption?
The models fit the observed data pretty well-- not just in overall temperature, but in parameters like day/night temperature variation (which is a more sensitive probe of the greenhouse effect). If you think that this is just a coincidence, you should also entertain the possibility that the feedback in the models could also be wrong in the opposite direction, too low, which means that the predictions of greenhouse warming are too low.
But somehow the deniers never like to point out the case "if the science is wrong, that means that it's possible that the warming is actually a lot worse than predicted."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You've removed the noise... but there's not much information left, either.
Fair enough. You are right. This one goes back to 1750 and removes the noise. Best of both worlds: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/s...
This facility would be much more convenient (and more effective) if it was a browser plug-in that -- when the user viewed a target webpage -- communicated with the science site and annotated the page on the fly.
Here we go again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg (The Great Global Warming Swindle).
Sorry, but here's an important lesson for you. Memorize this simple rule:
Never get your science information from the opinion/editorial pages of Forbes magazine.
Forbes is a business magazine. It's not a science magazine. It doesn't even pretend to be a science magazine. It's a bad source for science information, because they are editorializing to make a point, not to understand how climate works.
Track down original sources. Don't rely on editorials in Forbes.
Since you get your data from business magazines and blogs, here's a blog post you might look at: http://variable-variability.bl... But, let's look at that Forbes link. The particular editorial you linked has two links... one to a graph with no source listed, and the second to a long paper... with no information on where this paper was published (or if it was) or who it was reviewed by. But-- paydirt!-- that paper does list where the data comes from: the NASA Water Vapor Project. So let's look at the data from the source.
Here's the data: https://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/p...
here's the data graphed: https://climatedataguide.ucar....
here's the data analyzed: https://www.cira.colostate.edu...
here's the conclusion of the analysis: "at this point we are unable to prove or disprove a robust global trend in total precipatible water."
So the answer is... inconclusive.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
All competent computer modelers can get the model to tell them anything they want. I'd go so far as to use that as the definition of 'competent modeler'.
You might think so. It's harder than you'd expect. The models have to match day-night temperature variation, variation with altitude, latitude and season, and-- these days-- they have to get not only the average cloud coverage, but the patterns of clouds right. The models have to be pretty darn close to correct to get all that right, and that hasn't even started looking at historical climate.
Here's an interesting thing, though. There are about twenty different groups, on four continents, running different climate models. They vary considerably in their results-- that variation is the uncertainty in the IPCC climate sensitivity. But they all show greenhouse warming.
So, here's my question. The public-relations effort devoted to casting doubt on climate science is funded at roughly $100 million per year. At that funding level, it would be simple enough for them to devote a few million to taking one of the climate models (most of them are open source) and tweaking those variables to produce a result showing no greenhouse warming.
If it's so easy to tweak the input numbers and get-- in your phrase-- "anything they want"... why don't they? Why isn't there a plausible null-hypothesis showing no global warming?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The lapse rate feedback is not unknown to scientists. While science cannot ever be considered 'settled', the range of possible values is bounded. It's about -0.8 Wm-2K-1 (Soden and Held, 2006). Uncertainty is estimated at about 0.1 Wm-2K-1 for both lapse rate and water-vapour feedback combined. (Randall et al., 2007).
Skeptical science says exactly would you did, and most of what they say is sourced against another blog(RealClimate.org) which was at least started by a pair of actual scientists, but is still itself not subject to peer review either ... That's why I think the actual science must trump blogging by scientists.
You will be happy to note that the skeptical science articles in question reference Murphy 2009 Domingues et al 2008. Nuccitelli et al. (2012), Cowtan & Way (2013), Moberg et al. 2005, Mann et al. 2008, and Ljungqvist 2010 as well as NOAA and the AGU, but do not reference realclimate. Not bad if you think the actual science is important.
Also of note, the author of the very paper that you give as proof that temps 1000 years ago were warmer than today says their paper shows: "Since AD 1990, though, average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere exceed those of any other warm decades the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period." Do you think that the analysis of your blogger is more accurate than the authors own?
Gotta make sure everyone signs upto the anti-plants plans @ paris. The doom sayers cant predict the future weather for 30 years. The rhetoric coming from those humans shows they have not spent enough time on earth. And is essentially another sad tale of people not selling out, but buying in.
2 Real time with Bill Maher's ago, Bill had Prof Mann on. You have to watch it. Not only does the most emminent figure of man made global warming make for a good guest, he also asks what do you want to hear, so he can say it to you: its worse than what we thought.
You cant make the climate agree with elegant theories because the earth doesnt know how to read. As long as the earth continues to be uncooperative with the AGW believer industry, we're all be headed for trouble and all the steps which we could do to adapt are being avoided. Its like winston churchill famously said: "America will try every option and eventually do the right thing."
Sadly we have to cut off our nose to spit our face when we could have used the last 20 years to figure out cancer or heart disease. Instead we have spent alot of money and opportunity on a fake feel-good "science" industry when people are dying today. When someone says 'think of the grand children", they know more things are more important than their pet cause. Who cares about unborn grand children when we're all dying of cancer today?!?!
I hope you realize that this:
Our two-millennia long reconstruction has a well defined peak in the period 950–1050 AD with a maximum temperature anomaly of 0.6 C. The level of warmth during the peak of the MWP in the second half of the 10th century, equaling or slightly exceeding the mid-20th century warming, is in agreement with the results from other more recent large-scale multi-proxy temperature reconstructions
does not in any way contradict this:
Since AD 1990, though, average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere exceed those of any other warm decades the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period”
In fact, the second sentence is from the very paper that you seem to want to use as proof that temperatures 1000 years ago exceed those today. it is curious that the blogger you follow omitted the second sentence... possibly not a trustworthy source.
Skeptical science says exactly would you did, and most of what they say is sourced against another blog(RealClimate.org) which was at least started by a pair of actual scientists, but is still itself not subject to peer review either ... That's why I think the actual science must trump blogging by scientists.
You will be happy to note that the skeptical science articles in question reference Murphy 2009 Domingues et al 2008. Nuccitelli et al. (2012), Cowtan & Way (2013), Moberg et al. 2005, Mann et al. 2008, and Ljungqvist 2010 as well as NOAA and the AGU, but do not reference realclimate. Not bad if you think the actual science is important.
And wouldn't you agree that referencing those articles themselves would be a whole lot more valuable than instead referencing a blogger's interpretation?
Also of note, the author of the very paper that you give as proof that temps 1000 years ago were warmer than today says their paper shows: "Since AD 1990, though, average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere exceed those of any other warm decades the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period." Do you think that the analysis of your blogger is more accurate than the authors own?
I dunno who my 'blogger' is seeing as I've never referenced one?
As for the 1990 comparison, it's the same stunt Michael Mann has pulled time and again. Moreover, as I noted in my post Mann's latest paper observes that the proxy reconstructions systematically underestimate recent warming. That is to say, the 1990 temperatures that exceed even the MWP are NOT found in the same data set. Instead, they are from using an entirely different methodology of recording temperatures from thermometers and direct measurement. If you look at the work of each of the authors you cited, none of the proxy reconstructions extend out past 1990. The argument is essentially the declaration that when you change methods and datasets suddenly their is an unprecedented change.
Go look at Mann's construction I linked. He covers the last couple of decades of his graph with a big fat red line for the instrumental record to "Hide the decline", which IS exactly the reason and meaning of the much maligned phrase. Phil Jones specifically defends the usage for this purpose this way, referencing it as Mike(Mann)'s trick.
I leave it to the reader to decide if that really is particular good practice or not...
What I decide to publish is mine. Having someone else edit it is pure crap. Comment on the article, engage in discussion on boards, but do not edit the original. Scientific consensus is not proof. Alfred Lothar Wegener went against the consensus, which was completely wrong at the time.
The only way to declare the temperature since 1990 is warmer than any temperature in the proxy reconstructions, is to go out and take data from an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT dataset!
According to your paper, the MWP was about as warm as the '50s, and possibly as warm as the '90s. It is now much warmer than the '90s. It will continue to warm as long as we continue to release CO2. None of this is controversial.
The crucial part is who's views get annotated? Just one side? Take for instance 2 scientists with similar excellent credentials, looking at 2 data sets that are almost identical but who come to different conclusions? Who gets their view published?
You say that can't happen? It already has. Dr Mears of RSS and Dr Spencer of UAH both are very qualified and look at the 2 satellite data sets showing pretty much the same data (including the 18+ year pause) and yet come to different conclusions. Dr Mears feels that CO2 does control the climate and Dr Spencer does not.
So who's views get annotated? Both would be fair and highly educational not to mention down right entertaining!
Ask, and receive! https://chrome.google.com/webs...