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."

Comments

A mini ice age? Really?

[DavidRawling]

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).

Re:A mini ice age? Really?

[Barsteward]

They "might" not believe it but they will throw it in your face as "proof" that there is no climate change. I think this is a fantastic idea, it should become mandatory on all media articles about anything not just climate change. I'd like to see it used on claims made in religious articles.

Re:A mini ice age? Really?

[bunratty]

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.

Re:A mini ice age? Really?

[Layzej]

if no reputable scientists are saying that climate change is a death sentence, why do articles like the one below keep appearing?

Probably because they are written by the media, not by scientists. That is why this new initiative is so great. Scientists can weigh in on the claims of an article and give you a clearer picture of where there is hyperbole and where there is a real concern.

Re:A mini ice age? Really?

[phantomfive]

Climate change is not a death sentence. There aren't any reputable scientists saying it is

Yes there are. James Hansen surely has as high a reputation as any scientist, plenty of papers, was the head of a national research center. He says: ".........it will be gameover for climate.......Civilization would be at risk........If this sounds apocalyptic, it is."

James Hansen has never been afraid to warn of the dangers of climate change.

Nothing new here

[Chrisq]

We have been able to annotate media for ages.

there is no climate change ? who said that?

[ishmaelflood]

"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.

Re:there is no climate change ? who said that?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Oh, the answer to your "non anthropogenic GW" is CO2 still.

Actually it's water vapor, that 'other' greenhouse gas, that is doing most of the warming on Earth. Yes, CO2 is also a greenhouse gas, but its contribution to GW has been greatly exaggerated.

To see this consider the planet Mars, where the concentration of CO2 is 950,000 parts per million! Of course you can't compare that number to Earths 400 ppm because the Martian atmosphere is very, very thin. Yet, if you do the math to compute the actual weight of CO2 above each square meter of surface area, you'll find that Mars has about 28 times more CO2 per unit of surface area than Earth.

So how much warmer is Mars now, compared to its theoretical black-body temperature? Well, the black-body temp is 210K. The measured average temp is also 210K. So CO2 is not doing any warming of the Martian atmosphere, even though it is a greenhouse gas.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/pla...

On Earth, the BB temp is 255K, but the average temp is 288K. So Earth's atmosphere raised the temp by 33K, almost entirely due to the ubiquitous water vapor which blankets the surface of our planet.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/pla...

The main CO2 absorption band is 15microns, smack dab in the middle of Earths longwave radiation spectrum. So there will be some absorption and mechanical heating due to "Earthshine". But heated air at the surface most likely will rise due to convection which tends to have a cooling effect. That's why scientists have not actually measured the actual warming effect of CO2 in the atmosphere (note that I didn't say 'estimate' or 'model', they haven't measured the CO2 contribution to GW with a thermometer). It's like peeing in the ocean. You know it made the sealevels rise, but it can't actually be measured because of other climate 'noise'.

Re:there is no climate change ? who said that?

[msauve]

"He's talking about people who deny climate changed in the past twenty years, or even in the past 100."

That applies to both sides. When people point to a 15 year stabilization of temperatures as evidence in the climate change debate, the frequent response is "that's not climate, that's weather" or "that's normal variation." Or when they point out evidence that it was just as warm 1000 years ago as today, it will be derisively dismissed.

But then there are those on the same side who will mention a 20-100 year period because it suits their argument.

Re:there is no climate change ? who said that?

[silentcoder]

This argument of yours have been completely debunked by science over and over. The main thing you're ignoring is how long things stay in the atmosphere. If your reasoning was correct we would already be boiling because water vapor leads to greenhouse, leads to more evaporation leads to more greenhouse etc. etc.

We aren't because there is a massive negative feedback system that counter-acts the effect of water vapor as a greenhouse gas almost entirely. That system is called "rain". Water has a relatively high boiling point and returns to liquid form fairly easily, so water doesn't stay in the atmosphere for very long before it rains (or snows) down again. The average time a water molecule spends in the atmosphere is only about 11 days.

On the other hand CO2 has a much lower boiling point - it does not return to liquid form in the atmosphere, it doesn't rain down - and the average lifetime of a CO2 particle in the atmosphere is decades - but centuries are not at all unknown.

A small effect over a very long time will always have a bigger total impact than a large effect over a very short time.
Of course, just to throw your argument into even further debunked teritory - CO2 warming increases evaporation as well as increasing the lifetime of water in the atmosphere (hotter air means it takes longer before it rains down again) - so the impact of water vapor on temperature is aggravated by CO2 - not independent there-off.

Source:
http://scholarsandrogues.com/2...

Re:there is no climate change ? who said that?

[tbannist]

That applies to both sides.

Potentially, but not as much as you seem to think

When people point to a 15 year stabilization of temperatures as evidence in the climate change debate, the frequent response is "that's not climate, that's weather" or "that's normal variation."

The problem is those responses are actually reasonably true. In a noisy data set like yearly temperatures, we expect there to be periods of slow temperature growth and periods of fast temperature growth due to short term variability so "that's not climate, that's weather" is true, 30 year averages are generally used to minimize year-to-year variability that can drown out the long term trend. We have had a confluence of natural factors working together to slow the surface air temperature growth over that period. Perhaps more importantly it's important to look at more than just the air temperature since the atmosphere only contains a small fraction of the heat content the earth can store.

Or when they point out evidence that it was just as warm 1000 years ago as today, it will be derisively dismissed.

That's a northern hemisphere temperature reconstruction, so it only covers half the world, and one of the authors of that paper, F. C. Ljungqvist, doesn't agree with your analysis:

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”

But then there are those on the same side who will mention a 20-100 year period because it suits their argument.

Potentially, but those are periods that are long enough to cancel out year-to-year variability, though, I can't actually remember seeing anyone use a period that was longer than 30 years. Maybe it's not that the period suits the argument but that when you look at periods longer than 20 years, the evidence strongly supports one side in this debate? If that's the case, then the people who look at and accept the evidence have little choice but to end up on the same side of this debate?

Re:there is no climate change ? who said that?

[hey!]

When people point to a 15 year stabilization of temperatures as evidence in the climate change debate

An oldy but moldy, taken straight from the "How to Lie with Statistic" playbook: cherry pick your baseline to produce the trend (or lack of trend) you want.

Climate deniers like to say "there has been no significant warming since 1998", although strictly what they mean is "there has been no significant warming *compared to* 1998." Why 1998? BECAUSE 1998 WAS BY FAR THE HOTTEST YEAR EVER ON THE INSTRUMENTAL RECORD. It's like saying, "My income hasn't gone up significantly since 1998," when 1998 was the year your hit the PowerBall. If you use five year moving averages the "stabilization" effect disappears.

Or when they point out evidence that it was just as warm 1000 years ago as today,

FTW: two other forms of cherry picking in one assertion. First, there's the kind of geographic cherrypicking that says "If Europe was warm in the middle ages it was warm everywhere," or "if there's snow in Washington DC it's cold everywhere", or "If there is unseasonal summer pack ice in western Hudson Bay then there must be unseasonable ice everywhere in the Arctic," all of which are trivial to refute but rely on the fact that most people won't bother to look up what's happening elsewhere.

Second form is cherry picking papers that sound like theysay what you want to hear. It's not that papers aren't important but science isn't like theology; it deals in contradictory evidence, which is abundant if you're trying to extrapolate global climate from local climate. That means you can prove anything by picking the right paper; you need to read the literature in a field as a whole. Since most of us don't have time to do that, let me suggest a more convenient way to get yourself up to speed on a topic: find a review paper in a journal that is (a) relevant to the question and (b) in the top quartile of journals in that field by impact factor.

What a review paper does is summarize all the significant and contradictory evidence that has been published on a question. It's a convenient and highly efficient way to go straight to the horse's mouth on a question, rather than relying on scientifically illiterate reporters. Choosing a top journal by impact factor eliminates what are essentially vanity press publications where authors can pay to get whatever they want into a "scientific journal". When some anti-vaxxer crackpot cites "their science" it's always in one of these pay-for-play "predatory journals".

Re:there is no climate change ? who said that?

[hey!]

You missed the forest for the trees. "Cherry picking" occurs on both sides of the debate, which is political, not scientific.

Well, we have a different view on what the forest is. Mine is that when you remove the cherry picking, the notion that climate has stabilized is clearly false. All people make mistakes, but that doesn't make everyone equally right.

Re:there is no climate change ? who said that?

[BCGlorfindel]

That applies to both sides.

Potentially, but not as much as you seem to think

When people point to a 15 year stabilization of temperatures as evidence in the climate change debate, the frequent response is "that's not climate, that's weather" or "that's normal variation."

The problem is those responses are actually reasonably true. In a noisy data set like yearly temperatures, we expect there to be periods of slow temperature growth and periods of fast temperature growth due to short term variability so "that's not climate, that's weather" is true, 30 year averages are generally used to minimize year-to-year variability that can drown out the long term trend. We have had a confluence of natural factors working together to slow the surface air temperature growth over that period. Perhaps more importantly it's important to look at more than just the air temperature since the atmosphere only contains a small fraction of the heat content the earth can store.

Or when they point out evidence that it was just as warm 1000 years ago as today, it will be derisively dismissed.

That's a northern hemisphere temperature reconstruction, so it only covers half the world, and one of the authors of that paper, F. C. Ljungqvist, doesn't agree with your analysis:

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”

But then there are those on the same side who will mention a 20-100 year period because it suits their argument.

Potentially, but those are periods that are long enough to cancel out year-to-year variability, though, I can't actually remember seeing anyone use a period that was longer than 30 years. Maybe it's not that the period suits the argument but that when you look at periods longer than 20 years, the evidence strongly supports one side in this debate? If that's the case, then the people who look at and accept the evidence have little choice but to end up on the same side of this debate?

Oh how I wish people would stop quoting skepticalscience as if a blog is a scientific resource.

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 and really does not belong in your exhibit of evidences. This is is what is WRONG with the whole 'debate'. Way too many folks believe themselves to be protecting and promoting the science while waving their hands at blogs and re-hashing the summaries from them. :(

One of the scientists that started RealClimate is Michael Mann, here is his latest article on historic temperatures. Mann is (in)famous for the hockey stick graph. In his latest work here he's gone a long ways to trying to improve upon his original paper and although he only graphs the NA trend(citing that the SA data is of much lower quality), it very clearly shows temperatures as measured by proxy records matched or exceeded todays temperatures on multiple occasions in the last 2k years. He tries to down play this, but the data speaks for itself. Mann even notes himself that However, in the case of the early calibration/late validation CP

Re:there is no climate change ? who said that?

[phantomfive]

The worst are the fanatics who claim that climate scientists are never wrong. They can think of a justification for everything. They use statistics the way a drunk man uses a lightpost: for support, rather than illumination. For example, at this point, it's pretty clear that the climate models overestimated the warming. It's no big deal, science will eventually correct itself, but watch as so many people can't accept that.

Re:This is important

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

I clicked on that link to NOAA

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Catastrophe [Re:A mini ice age? Really?]

[Geoffrey.landis]

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."

Who Watches the Watchers?

[argStyopa]

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).

Models [Re:Humidity feedback]

[Geoffrey.landis]

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?