Tuesday, September 19, 2017

#E) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (28-36 and fini)

“No, Michael Mann, Global Warming Didn't Cause Hurricane Harvey's Devastation”  (8/31/2017 - Investor's Business Daily at investors.com)Written by someone unwilling to put their name on this libelous cowardly act of defamation.

I have no idea who's behind Investor's Business Daily or this editorial, but I know fraud and libel when I see it.  I have spent the past few days dissecting this particular example of calumny crossing over into what seems to me felonious  criminal vandalism on Professor Mann’s professional reputation - not to mention we the citizen's right and need to honestly hear about what climate scientists are learning!

To spell out my case I have quoted the entire editorial in five chapters (nothing left out, nothing added) talking point by talking point, in chronological order, broken down into bite-sized chunks.  Here we examine the final Points of Contention 28 to 36, what can I say, there was more fodder here than the 24 points of contention I initially spotted.  Investors Business Daily quotes are in Courier font
Investor's Business Daily POC#28 - “In short, it's part of a long-term weather pattern — not climate change. 
_______________________________ 

Well yes, it’s part of a long-term climate pattern which gets reflected in the increasingly extreme weather unfolding before our eyes.  

Think of weather as the agent that transfers the broiling heat and atmospheric moisture of the tropics into the colder polar regions.  Increasing heat will increase the amount of energy and moisture weather patterns need to transport.  Quite simple.  Quite inevitable.

Incidentally, for the record, “climate change” is a result and tells us nothing.  Think physics, it’s “Global Warming” that is driving all these transitions.  Increasing heat, energy and atmospheric moisture is what’s changing our climate, along with the weather patterns that spawn out of this energized weather engine.  

Compounding interest working in the natural world.  Simple physics.

Investor’s Business wants us to ignore  
 
that we know for certain that greenhouse gases are Earth’s atmospheric insulating medium.  We know for certain that humanity has been injecting increasingly gargantuan quantities of greenhouse gases (read insulation) into our atmosphere.  Think about it, in a year we burn up the amount of hydrocarbons it took a million years to accumulate, and now we’re returning the CO2 back into our atmosphere.

For a fun digression, the accumulation and conversion process is amazingly fascinating.  For the curious:

The Fantastically Strange Origin of Most Coal on Earth
Robert Krulwich -  01/7/2016
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Crude - The Incredible Journey Of Oil  (2007)
_____________________________________________________

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WPT University Place: Natural Atmospheric CO2 and Human History
David Archer, Professor of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, explains the relationship between the use of fossil fuel, the natural concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the ability of human society to recognize and understand anthropogenically triggered climate change.   Published on Dec 15, 2016.
____________________________________________________________

Investor's Business Daily POC#29 - “And a look at the number of hurricanes by decade shows conclusively that the number and severity of hurricanes have mostly declined in recent decades, not risen.”
_______________________________ 
Hmmm,
Trend Analysis with a New Global Record of Tropical Cyclone Intensity

JAMES P. KOSSIN, TIMOTHY L. OLANDER, KENNETH R. KNAPP
(Manuscript received 2 May 2013, in final form 17 July 2013)
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~kossin/articles/Kossin_et_al_2013_JClim.pdf

Concluding remarks

... Our analyses using a new homogenized record of tropical cyclone intensity suggest that the stronger tropical cyclones, globally, have become more intense at a rate of about 11 m s21 decade21 during the 28-yr period 1982–2009, but the statistical significance of this trend is marginal. (but the common sense physics is not!)

Dramatic changes in the frequency distribution of lifetime maximum intensity (LMI) have occurred in the North Atlantic, while smaller changes are evident in the South Pacific and South Indian Oceans, and the stronger hurricanes in all of these regions have become more intense. ... 

Hurricane Development: From Birth to Maturity
A Hurricane’s Energy Source: The Ocean 
(and ocean surface temperatures certainly continue rising)
____________________________________________________________
Investor's Business Daily POC#30 - “"There is no reason to be debating Harvey and climate change in the context of an unfolding disaster, other than political opportunism and attention-seeking,” 
_______________________________ 

Nonsense, we've been ignoring too many alarm bells already.  We better start discussing this because these onslaughts will continue and we are not prepared to deal with them, thanks to the kind of willful ignorance Investor's Business is peddling in this editorial.  Turning a blind is simply going to make things that much more horrendous.  

Beside this is supposed to be a constructive important dialogue not some petty political debate game.

Unless we honestly face what's coming, more and worse, and discuss it and get in touch with down to earth realities we'll have no chance of coping.
____________________________________________________________ 
Investor's Business Daily POC#31 - “said climate scientist and University of Colorado Professor Roger Pielke.”
_______________________________ 

Pielke is an example of “confirmation biasrun amok.  I’ll let more informed individuals share the Roger Pielke story. 

First Climate Article On Nate Silver’s Data Website Uses ‘Deeply Misleading’ Data, Top Climatologists Say
EMILY ATKIN - March 19, 2014,

“The crux of Pielke’s article is this: Extreme weather events are costing us more and more money, but that is not because climate change is making extreme weather more frequent or intense….”

“It’s ludicrous to say that extremes have not increased, and they have certainly increased in ways that are completely consistent with expectations based on atmospheric physics and climate model projections in response to increasing greenhouse gases,” Jennifer Francis, a research professor at Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Science who specializes in the connection between climate change and extreme weather, said.”

“Dr. John Abraham, a thermal science professor at the University of St. Thomas famous for his formation of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, criticized Pielke’s assessment of the IPCC’s report. “You should know that we have already detected significant increases in Atlantic hurricane intensity, in extreme heat waves, large precipitation events and regional droughts,” Abraham wrote in an e-mail”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

CSPW: A Program of the 
Government Accountability Project

In a replay of the argument he’s made for years, political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. attempts to dismiss the wide array of evidence linking climate change to extreme weather. Pielke’s selective use of data, an approach that has brought him … Continue reading
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Obama science adviser John Holdren would not normally draft a 6-page rebuttal to statements about climate change impacts by a non-climate-scientist academic and blogger. But in this case Holdren was challenged in prosecutorial tones at a recent Senate Environment Committee … Continue reading
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Climate Nexus: In a new Guardian post, Roger Pielke Jr. criticizes recent portrayals of extreme weather in the media, ignoring evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). Specifically, he argues that the AR5 offers no evidence … Continue reading
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In a blog post, Roger Pielke Jr. strongly implied a connection between his earlier critical post about a climate change paper and his subsequent dismissal from the editorial board of Global Environmental Change, the journal to which it was submitted. … Continue reading
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Posted on June 1, 2009 by Rick Piltz
In his presentation, “Considering the Human Influence on Climate,” on May 14 at a Marshall Institute luncheon in Washington DC, Prof. Roger Pielke, Sr. argued that the climate change issue is more complicated than the seemingly almost exclusive focus in … Continue reading
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Posted on March 8, 2016 by admin
(Part One of Three) Climate Science & Policy Watch is keenly interested in recent developments regarding various investigations into ExxonMobil Corporation, spurred by a growing concern that the company has chronically and grossly misrepresented to its investors and the public … Continue reading

There’s more, just gotta poke around.
____________________________________________________________ 
Investor's Business Daily POC#32 - "It's not a good look for scientists or journalists who are promoting this issue.”
_______________________________
What’s even worse is when scientists hyper-focus on trivial uncertainties and use statistical gamesmanship as a smoke screen to hide from the very real certainties of the geophysics of our warming water world.
____________________________________________________________ 
Investor's Business Daily POC#33 - “Pielke destroys the notion that global warming has made hurricanes or tropical storms worse by noting that from 1926 to 1969, a period of 44 years, there were 14 category 4 hurricanes that made landfall. From 1970 to 2017, or 47 years, there have been just four.” 
_______________________________ 

Precious, Investor’s Business once again underscores their juvenile lack of appreciation for this planet we depend on for everything.

Pielke “destroys” geophysics with statistical gamesmanship.  POW, BAM, ZAP.  Why am I not impressed Roger?  

Too much Hollywood on the mind fosters profound disconnect from the real physical world we depend on.
____________________________________________________________
Investor's Business Daily POC#34 - “If anything, if you were a global warming advocate and being honest, you'd have to say that higher temperatures have caused the number of severe hurricanes hitting the U.S. to decline by 70%.”
_______________________________ 

"global warming advocate"  
What an amazing term, George Orwell would be impressed.

Pielke conclusion means believing in science fiction.  It also implies Pielke must love playing Russian Roulette with real bullets.  Incidentally, physics trumps faith every time.

Here’s a simple demonstration of the physics involved.  Put a pot of water on the stove.  Turn the burner to low and wait for the temperature to stabilize to that low-ish heat level.  Toss in a big spoonful of rice.    Watch the behavior of the rice a few moments then increase the heat, wait a few moments, then a little more, wait a few moments, then a little more heat, let it boil.  Observe. Perhaps continue observing after you turn the heat off, or not, that produces some mighty amazing deniable, but unavoidable results.  Watch and ponder.

Question:
“Warmer = more energetic rice movement.”  Right or wrong?  

That there is the first fundamental law you need to grasp before any of the fancy complexities and statistics and patterns people can find can make any rational sense to begin with.  Some evolutionary perspective on our atmosphere also helps.
____________________________________________________________
Investor's Business Daily POC#35 - “All of the news shows, newspapers, news websites and magazines will be peddling the same shamanistic nonsense:” 
_______________________________ 

Talk about nonsense, this ability to reduce critically important complex competent science into voodoo is pure malicious Lord of the Flies ignorance in action.  Nuf said.

A touch of reality for the interested:

IOOS - Integrated Ocean Observing System 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
NASA's Earth Observing System Project Science
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Global Warming Science
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Global Seismographic Network

Yeah, yeah, I know EPA is also on the, must hate, must ignore, must reject list of information sources - yet, for those interested in learning, you’d be amazed at what you can learn about this our one and only environmental life support system.   The entity that enables and sustains all we have. 

Environmental Monitoring & Assessment Program

Why hold all that in contempt?  Where’s all that hatred coming from?  What makes the GOP and its parrots such as this Investor’s Business astro-turfer want to scrap the whole thing?

What’s up with Trump and friends working furiously to cripple our Earth understanding capabilities?  All the while the good rational Children of the Intellectual Enlightenment continue slumbering and waiting for some cavalry to come riding in and save the day.  Nope, ain’t gonna happen, last chance this time and it's in your hands.

A healthy Democracy demands an informed and engaged citizenry, that means all of us, YOU too.
____________________________________________________________

Investor's Business Daily POC#36 - “Global warming is to blame for everything nasty in the natural world, but especially for the brutal hurricanes that occasionally rip into our coast. But the facts show it just ain't true.”
_______________________________ 

Get a clue!  Have these people ever stopped to think about what our planet is all about in the first place?  

Have they no notion of how much we depend on moderate predictable weather patterns in every aspect of our lives and economy from general wellbeing, to infrastructure, food production, power production, industry, construction, transportation, etc., etc.?   

Allow me to introduce you to our Earth, our mother and sustainer in every sense of the word.

It never ceases to flabbergast me, how many hold our life sustaining environment in such deep contempt.  It’s the worst kind of ignorance and it’s what has allowed ourselves to heat up this planet so much that the horrors some feared and warned about in the 60s and 70s (and '80s, and '90s, and '00s) are now actually unfolding across our globe, with worse around the corner. 

Most of us have spent the past decades satisfying our imaginations with Hollywood fantasies and other distractions.  Thus, we doomed our future to the most difficult of times.  Now, even given all the horrors we're watching go down, these GOP dunderheads and astro-turfers are still at it.  Hypnotizing themselves and conning others to continue believing nothing is going on and that we shouldn’t take any responsibility for anything.  

They want us not to even think about it.  
These guys are criminal in every sense of the word.  
Hopeless is as hopeless does.  

I thank Michael Mann for his valiant efforts to inform We The People about past climate history and his other contributions to serious climate science - with grace under enemy fire no less.  While detractors have fallen he has the satisfaction of continuing to produce top notch important science.

Still, if no one listens?  

I weep for my children.  


But rejoice at being finished with this contemptible piece of trash talk.

_________________________________________________________________________



Message to interested readers, 

I'm just an outside life long observer and my writing is done in fits and starts with constant short and long work interrupts and related distractions, thus my projects never surpass the 'grandma moses' level.  

But, my information is solid and my reasoning is solid and I welcome anyone with more time and focus, to take anything at WUWTW and use it as a starting point for better efforts that reach more people.  

Of course, if anyone were interested in helping me work on this, my obvious passion, to see what I could accomplish with the luxury of full-time focus on my side, please do let me know.  Thank you, Peter aka citizenschallenge


P.O.Box 56 - Durango, Colorado, 81302 - citizenschallenge at gmail


___________________________________________________________

Investor's Business Daily Character Assassination Attempt on Michael Mann 
8/31/2017 - investors.com

An examination - 36 points of contention.

September 15, 2017
#A) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (1-3)

September 17, 2017
#B) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (4-9)

September 17, 2017
#C) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (10-14)

September 18, 2017
#D) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (15-27)

September 19, 2017
#E) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (28-36 and fini)

No comments: