(Click on the image for a slightly larger version.)

I can't be the only one who perceives that, by releasing his birth certificate now, Obama is trying to wedge the US Republicans.

The timing was crucial, you see. The "birther" conspiracy theorists have had years to consolidate their ironclad counter-reality belief that Obama was born in Foreignstan. They are not going to be convinced by anything so trifling and mundane as a complete, unambiguous, authoritative, factual refutation of their case. They have invested too much time and effort. Their reaction can only be to push further into denialism and suggest ever-wider and more elaborate conspiracies.

The longer this story lives, the less news converage there will be of "serious" Republican presidential candidates, and presumably therefore the less interested everyone will be in voting Republican. This cannot be lost on Obama.

This isn't the way it should be, of course (in case you thought I was gloating). I'm not heavily invested in US politics, but democracy is not served by having denialism steal the limelight, even when it is self-destructive. It's hard to blame Obama for the lack of a credible opponent, of course, but a credible opponent there should always be.

You knew it was coming, at the back of your mind at least. After the devastating Victorian bushfires on Black Saturday last year, the media was awash with abuse. "Greenies" were held to be responsible for stopping controlled burns and preventing the clearing of bush around homes. It's quite reasonable to debate the extent of controlled burning; it's a complex issue. It's not reasonable to assume either (a) that unmitigated benefits follow from controlled burning, or (b) that all environmentalists are blindly opposed to it. Of course, that's precisely what happened, and more. It was not enough for Miranda Devine to advocate for more controlled burning. It was not even enough for her to chastise the entire green "ideology" as being wrong. This is what she had to say:

…it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.

This time, we'll be told that environmentalists are responsible for preventing the construction of more and larger dams. Dams, dams, dams. Again, this has a passing element of truth to it - the proposed damming of the Mary River (the Traveston Crossing Dam) was delayed and then abandoned, partly due to the efforts of environmentalists concerned about the extinction or vulnerability of particular fish species. Of course, this was certainly not the only reason; some upstream communities and farmland would have been inundated, and there were also concerns about the dam's efficiency (with respect to leakage and evaporation). The Mary River did flood in the last few days, affecting a couple of towns along its length, but this certainly was not the epicentre of the disaster, and it's not clear to what extent the proposed dam would have helped*.

It would also be wrong to attribute the dam's demise just to the "environmentalists". Many local residents did not want it. Despite Tony Abbott's new dams epiphany, the state and federal Coalition have been firmly opposed to it. Only the state Labor government backed it.

Let's be clear that dams do have flood-mitigation capabilities, but we're talking mitigation, not prevention. By carefully managing outflows, dams can "spread out" flood flows over longer periods of time. The same total amount of water flows downstream as normal, but at a lower rate. Sometimes this is sufficient, and sometimes it is not. If a dam is full when the flood waters hit, or becomes full, there's no controlling the excess. Further, flash flooding might occur almost anywhere, and we're not about to start building enormous concrete dam walls across every valley in the country. (For reference, the Traveston Dam would have costed $1.7-1.8 billion; over $100,000 for each of the 16,454 people living in Gympie. Surely we can come up with more economical flood defences.)

So, you might think that nobody could seriously entertain the notion that greenies are responsible for the flood crisis, but just you watch**. It matters not that no dam could have contained the flood waters seen by Queenslanders. It matters not that a number of dams are already there and have demonstrably failed to hold back the flood waters. What matters is that "greenies" have tried to stop dams being built, and so by reverse psychology dams must be a good thing. What matters is the inevitable slander and innuendo from small sections of the media, wherein this issue is not one to be reported so much as fought and won.

One of my favourite fruitcakes, James Delingpole, is hot off the mark with a guest post by one of his regular commenters. Delingpole tries to juxtapose the plan to dam the Mary River against the Toowoomba/Lockyer Valley flash flooding. The strong implication is that lives were lost due to attempts to save the Mary River cod. This is utter nonsense - Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, where the deaths occurred, are nowhere near the Mary River. Nevertheless, Delingpole says of his commenter "Memory Vault":

He’s understandably upset about the Australian floods, which may have claimed more than 70 lives. But what really upsets him is that this disaster could have been prevented.

"Memory Vault" mumbles something about levees and dams, and about their not being finished, but never quite gets around to saying exactly what should have been done. His/her piece is mostly a rant against "CO2 AGW madness", filled with strained advocacy of the "theory of the cyclical nature , ocean and atmospheric [sic]", whatever that is supposed to be.

Thus, the fight is against climate science and its implications. It has long been predicted that increased global temperatures will lead to more extreme weather events. No single disaster can be definitively attributed to climate change, but at some point we must acknowledge that climate change has probably contributed.

It's unfortunate, but probably unavoidable, that people will perceive each new natural disaster by itself as evidence of climate change. This is not evidence per se; evidence for climate change comes in the form of hard numbers - temperatures, sea levels, frequency of cyclones, etc. However, while this unscientific reaction unfolds, there's an even more dubious counter-reaction determined to drown it out. Delingpole and others are utterly convinced that the environmentalist movement is the new communism; that green is the new red (hence the derogatory term "watermelon" for greenies assumed to be closet commies). It's not strictly important whether any of that environmentalist stuff is right or not. The important thing is that the greenies cannot be allowed to appear to be right, because then their secret communist ideals will permeate the establishment by stealth.

Nobody in Australia really thinks that dams are a magic bullet, but as long as environmentalists argue against them, the anti-environmentalists will argue for them.

** Not here though. I've escaped the wrath of the winged monkeys thus far, because this blog is a fairly small target.

Here, Ambler focuses on a report written for the American National Academies, called Advancing the Science of Climate Change. He is apparently responding to an article in the Washington Post by Sherwood Boehlert, who quotes a key line from the report's summary:

A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.

This is the official, considered position of the American National Academies, and closely resembles a Q&A document released by the Australian Academy of Science:

The Earth’s climate has changed. The global average surface temperature has increased over the last century and many other associated changes have been observed. The available evidence implies that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause. It is expected that, if greenhouse gas emissions continue at business-as-usual rates, global temperatures will further increase significantly over the coming century and beyond.

Ambler doesn't (here, at least) address the Australian statement, or any of the other statements issued by other national science academies and other scientific organisations around the world. We'll set that aside for now.

His point appears to be that the Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change (presumably responsible for the first quote) is stacked with advocates* of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). He goes into great detail about the nefarious activities of various board members, such as being IPCC authors, members of NGOs, members of advisory boards, having links to the United Nations and being either corporate- or government-funded. Scandalous, I know.

However, Ambler's entire argument rests on the notion that the aforementioned organisations have already somehow been discredited. That may be true in his head, because the IPCC says all the things he doesn't like to hear. However, there is no objective reason to think that the IPCC is not essentially fulfilling its intended function: the careful, objective assessment of the science behind climate change and its implications. His argument also relies on the assumption from the outset that the AGW consensus does not exist. If consensus is real, then it's hard to imagine what could be wrong with having such a panel "stacked" with those who've poured their energies into addressing the problem.

Ambler's other complaint is one I've heard repeated for other advocates of climate action - that they're not climate scientists:

I doubt a dissenting voice on “the science” is ever heard in their deliberations. As can be seen, climate scientists are very much in the minority. It seems that a mix of economists, social scientists, engineers, NGO’s and corporations in receipt of government funding, form the main strength of these particular committees.

I doubt a dissenting voice on "the science" would ever be heard no matter how many climate scientists you added (Ambler has tried to argue against the existence of the consensus, but not too successfully.) Nevertheless, at first glance, it might seem common sense that climate change panels ought to be populated entirely by climate scientists, until you realise that climate science only identifies the existence of the problem. Climate science says nothing about the humanitarian, economic, or even environmental effects of climate change, and it certainly does not say what we might do, as a society, to prevent or mitigate them. This is not a problem with climate science - it simply reflects the cross-disciplinary nature of climate change.

Climate change denialism does not appear to recognise the distinction between all these facets. It does not accept, for instance, that someone can be qualified to talk about reducing CO₂ emissions unless they can also convincingly explain the data used to establish the effects of CO₂ in the first place. To an armchair "sceptic", these two discussions belong in the same discipline. Except they don't. There is a very good reason why the Stern and Garnaut Reviews, for instance, were written by economists rather than climate scientists. Modeling economic costs just isn't part of climate science; the issue transcends disciplines.

In setting out to undermine all work on climate change**, climate denialists become Jacks of all trades and masters of none. They perceive the entire concept of climate change as being the domain of a single discipline (climate science), because they don't realise the depth of analysis that underlies each part of that picture. Analysing the effects of greenhouse gases on temperature could be a life's work, for instance. Analysing the effects of temperature increases on agricultural practices is another life's work, as is modelling the economic costs and benefits of reducing CO₂ emissions, and so on. The true experts each spend their time on a relatively small part of the problem, but paying enormous attention to detail. They rely on other experts to fill in the gaps where needed, because no single person can be an expert in everything. Meanwhile, denialists skip lazily across the entire scope of the problem and engage only in shallow commentary and nitpicking. It would be difficult to comprehend just how many different disciplines are crossed when you naïvely believe that you (and/or those you follow) possess the entire range of necessary expertise.

Thus, the many genuine scientific, humanitarian, political and economic debates regarding climate change are, in denialist circles, mashed crudely into just one big issue, adjudicated solely by climate scientists (except for all the ones who write those terrible papers about hockey stick graphs; they don't count).

Just for fun, let's examine the scientific credentials of some SPPI contributors, starting with Dennis Ambler himself. Ambler puts his name to 14 of the last 100 articles (at the time of writing), and thus appears to be the most prolific recent contributor to the SPPI collection. However, try as I might, I cannot find any biographical information on the man at all. Even SPPI's own Personnel page neglects to mention him. There are no details of his history, qualifications, accomplishments, collaborations, involvements with other organisations, or even interests. "Dennis Ambler" might as well be a pseudonym for all I can tell.***

Next in line is Christopher Monckton, named as the author of 10 of the last 100 articles. Fortunately he is mentioned in the Personnel page, as being an expert on virtually everything, despite not possessing any qualifications at all on anything remotely resembling science or economics. It's worth a read.

Then there's Ross McKitrick, with 4 out of 100 articles. He's an economist, which I hope doesn't put him offside with Ambler.

The remaining articles were contributed by a slew of authors with (I presume) only a tangential relationship to SPPI itself. I won't discuss them, except to note that the current President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus is among them. Doubtless he too specialises in climate science. It's all about expertise, you understand.

** Climate denialism, in aggregate form, opposes every facet of the science on climate change - virtually every finding of every paper - which would be quite a remarkable occurrence if we held it to be intellectually honest. Individuals may accept certain parts of the science to varying extents, and often claim that "nobody" seriously disputes those parts (e.g. that the Earth is currently warming), but in reality every single detail is disputed in some corner or other. (The only exceptions to this are the occasional papers written by denialist champions like Steve McIntyre.)

*** To be fair, it would be hypocritical of me to suggest that all this information is a pre-requisite for making public comments. However, I'm just a pseudo-anonymous blogger, while Dennis Ambler is backed by an "Institute", conferring a facade of expert credibility.

Two years ago (January 2009), Doran and Zimmerman (D&Z) published a paper based on Zimmerman's masters thesis. Unsurprisingly, they found that the vast majority (97%) of climate scientists think climate change is real and human-induced. This kind of thing really, really irritates climate change denialists, and so we have Dennis Ambler from SPPI launching into a blisteringly woeful attack on the survey.

He sets the tone with this:

[The survey] was roundly de-bunked at the time by several commentators and it would have been forgotten and consigned to its proper place in the dustbin, if it hadn't been continually

quoted by activists as fact.

If you're going to claim that a paper has been "roundly debunked", a little elaboration would not go astray. Some of us might just be curious about just what arguments were put forth, and you're not giving us much to go on. Also, if we're going to lend it such credence, I would expect some sort of expertise to be involved in this debunking, not just a vague reference to unspecified "commentators".

He then bemoans the surveying of experts as a means of assessing scientific opinion:

This is not arcane knowledge for the select priesthood, this is science and we can read scientific papers and apply quality judgements to them, whether we be specialists or not.

No, Ambler, you really can't. I know this for two reasons:

The remainder of Ambler's article demonstrates his unique inability to "read scientific papers and apply quality judgments". I say "unique" because D&Z's paper is actually quite short and accessible. Given a modicum of education and common sense, there really isn't much of an excuse for not understanding it.

Is there some significance to the 5% figure? The survey was a broad look at the opinions of Earth scientists. Climate scientists just form an important subset of that population, and it's hardly the fault of the authors or anyone else if the proportion happens to be 5%.

Moreover, Ambler knows he can estimate the number of respondents from each country, but he seems not to understand that the very same mathematical device is the reason you don't need to ask everyone in the world. So long as you have a representative sample (and consulting a database of Earth scientists, as D&Z did, would seem to be perfectly acceptable), you can generalise your findings. If 97% of your sample believes X, and your sample is representative of a given group (e.g. climate scientists), then you infer that about  97% of the overall group believes X as well. This is the entire basis of surveys. If this statistical logic did not hold, surveys would not exist.

Why so few non-American climate scientists? That's just a result of the database used by D&Z, coming as it did from the American Geological Institute. There's no reason to think that American and non-American climate scientists are likely to have any specific, major points of professional disagreement, so this shouldn't be a problem.

Newman says:

My view on any of these topics is to keep an open mind and I still have an open mind on climate change, I have an open mind on a whole range of issues because I think that to have a closed mind leaves you in a position where if you take a strong stance you are likely to be wrong-footed.

And I've just made the point that I've been around long enough to know that consensus and conventional wisdom doesn't always serve you well and that unless you leave some room for an alternative point of view you are likely to go down a wrong track.

This is all fine and good as far as platitudes go, and presenting alternative points of view is all very democratic. One can never be completely certain about scientific outcomes, after all.

However, there is a line, somewhere, beyond which we must accept that an assertion (e.g. that we are changing the climate) is sufficiently well-supported to be considered true, and that alternative view points (however well meaning) are so implausible as to be wrong. The truth is not absolute, but neither is it a matter of opinion, and providing "balance" in such situations is grossly misleading.

Newman's mistake, perhaps, is in assuming that a consensus among scientists is just like a consensus among any other demographic. This rather misses the point of science. Scientists have fought long and hard  - certainly, a lot harder than anyone else - to understand the truth. Science does not just systematically invent evidence and stories to support pre-determined conclusions, as so often happens with political interest groups. Science exists so that we can have at least some people who don't do this, so that the whole world isn't just a fantasy land where the laws of physics can be amended by popular vote. Observers of politics may have difficulty swallowing the idea that anyone cares about the actual, real truth, because in politics it's such an alien concept. This is really a terribly cynical and blinkered view point.

I think that there are points of view supporting what you've just said, there are other points of view which will discount that and they come from also eminent positions; these are not cranks. Many of the people who have a different point of view on the climate science are respectable and credentialed scientists themselves.

So as I said, I'm not a scientist and I'm like anybody else in the public I have to listen to all points of view and then make judgements when we're asked to vote on particular policies.

Here Newman betrays something of an unwillingness to properly investigate the issue. Most of the people who have a different point of view on climate science are most certainly not eminent scientists. Most of them are bloggers (like me). And yes, there are cranks - Lord Christopher Monckton being a particularly spectacular example. Some scientists do fall into the dissenters' camp, but most of them are not involved in climate science.

It's interesting to note that, while denialist opinion is usually contrasted against the views of the IPCC, the IPCC's reports themselves are based on the broad spectrum of views permeating the scientific community. If you're after some sort of balance, you would do well to remember that alternate views have already been factored in by the IPCC. The only real debate is over the magnitude of climate change and its effects. Those who argue that it isn't happening, or that we aren't responsible, or that we can't change anything, tend to be very light on relevant scientific credentials.

I am an agnostic and I have always been an agnostic and I will remain and agnostic until I've found compelling evidence on one side or the other that will move me. I think that what seems fairly clear to me is that the climate science is still being developed. There are a lot question marks about some of the fundamental data which has been used to build models that requires caution.

There are not a "lot of question marks" over this data. There's simply a lot of hot air coming out of those who read and believe the things that Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts write. Newman has apparently bought into this sort of disinformation.

It's highly unlikely that he would even recognise "compelling evidence" if it were presented to him. And why would he expect to, after all? What would he, as a layperson, accept as "compelling evidence" that anthropogenic climate change is real? Does Newman need to personally assess the evidence for other scientific theories as well? What would he accept as compelling evidence that quantum theory accurately describes the universe? What would convince him that a newly-discovered hundred-thousand-year-old skeleton represents a previously-unknown species of human? There is expertise involved in making such judgments. Laypeople like Newman, or indeed myself, cannot presume to be equals in this respect.

In other words, the reason Newman hasn't seen any compelling evidence is that, in all probability, he doesn't know what he's looking for.

This is the subtle, deranged beauty of climate science denialism. Everyone is an expert! It doesn't matter whether the denialists themselves win over any actual supporters. What matters is that they bring the credibility of science down to the level of punditry, in the eyes of their audience. The denialists succeed by creating agnostics who feel they are above the fray, who don't even bother to distinguish between scientists and bloggers. I wouldn't hold this against most laypeople, but for those who should know better, this is outright intellectual laziness disguised as a form of neutrality. Surely the chairman of the ABC has a duty to be better informed.

An article in The Register (by Lewis Page):

Agricultural brainboxes at Stanford University say that global warming isn't likely to seriously affect poor people in developing nations, who make up so much of the human race. Under some scenarios, poor farmers "could be lifted out of poverty quite considerably," according to new research.

The Stanford University report on which it was (purportedly) based:

The impact of global warming on food prices and hunger could be large over the next 20 years, according to a new Stanford University study. Researchers say that higher temperatures could significantly reduce yields of wheat, rice and maize – dietary staples for tens of millions of poor people who subsist on less than $1 a day. The resulting crop shortages would likely cause food prices to rise and drive many into poverty.

But even as some people are hurt, others would be helped out of poverty, says Stanford agricultural scientist David Lobell.

(My emphasis.)

The Register's article is a transparent and spectacular case of selective reading. The Stanford report briefly discusses a complex set of effects, some of which are actually positive. The rose-tinted spectacles at The Register apparently have a problem seeing the opening paragraph, and instead treat the report as though it were some sort of vindication of climate inaction.

Climate researchers really can't win in the face of such wilful distortion. If their research shows that the effects are all negative, they are portrayed as "alarmists". If their research shows some mitigating factors, then these will be trumpeted as proof that climate change is a "scare".

The title and subtitle of The Register's article hint at the underlying attitude:

Global warming worst case = Only slight misery increase

The peasants aren't revolting - they've never had it so good

The world's poor have "never had it so good", eh? I'm glad to see such overflowing concern for the less fortunate.

Courrielche argues that peer review is kaput and is being replaced by what he calls "peer-to-peer review", an idea that brings to mind community efforts like Wikipedia. This has apparently been catalysed by "ClimateGate", an event portrayed by the denialist community as something akin to the Coming of the Messiah.

Courrielche asserts that peer review is a old system of control imposed by the "gatekeepers" of the "establishment", while peer-to-peer review is a new system gifted to us by the "undermedia". Courrielche has very little time for nuance in the construction of this moralistic dichotomy, and clearly very little idea why peer review exists in the first place.

It should be noted from the start (and many an academic will agree) that peer review is a flawed system. It's well known that worthwhile papers are rejected from reputable journals from time to time, while the less reputable journals have the opposite problem. Nevertheless, there is a widely-recognised need for at least some form of review system to find any weaknesses in papers before publication. It seems obvious that the people best placed to review any given piece of work are those working in the same field. Peer review acts both as a filter and a means of providing feedback (a sort of last-minute collaborative effort). The reviewers are not some sort of closed secret society bent on stamping their authority on science, as Courrielche seems to imply. Anyone working in the field can be invited by one relevant journal or another to review a paper, and it's in a journal's best interests to select the best qualified reviewers.

Courrielche sticks the word "review" on the end of "peer-to-peer" so that it can appear to fulfill this function. The premise seems to be that hordes of laypeople are just as good, if not better, at reviewing a given work than those who work in the relevant field. This is really just thinly-veiled anti-intellectualism. How can a layperson possibly know whether the author of a technical paper has used the appropriate statistical or methodological techniques, or considered previous empirical/theoretical results, or made appropriate conclusions?

That's why papers are peer-reviewed. Reputable journals get their reputation from the high quality (i.e. usefulness and scientific rigour) of the work presented therein, as determined by experts in the field. Barring the very occasional lapse of judgment, the flat earth society, the intelligent design movement, the climate change denialists, and any number of other weird and wonderful parties are prevented from publishing their dogma in Science, Nature and other leading journals. There's no rule forbidding such publication; that's just what happens when you apply consistent standards in the persuit of knowledge. Ideologues are frequently given an easy ride in politics, and it clearly offends them that science is not so forgiving.

However, Courrielche appears to be more interested in describing how the "undermedia" is up against some sort of vast government-sponsored conspiracy to hide the truth. His tone is one of rebellion, of exposing the information to the media, and doing battle with dark forces trying to prevent its disclosure. Even if such a paranoid fantasy were true, it has nothing to do with peer review. Peer review is not a means of quarantining information from the public, but simply a way of deciding the credibility of that information. In reality, the information is already out there, and in fact it's always been out there (just not necessarily in the mass media). The problem is not the lack of information, but the prevalence of disinformation. We are all free to ignore the information vetted by the peer review system, but we don't because it's intrinsically more trustworthy than anything else we have.

Courrielche makes mention of the "connectedness" of the climate scientists, as if mere scientific collaboration is to be regarded with deep suspicion. Would he prefer that scientists work in isolation, without communicating? This is quite blatantly hypocritical, because his peer-to-peer review system is based on connectedness.

Well, sort of. I also suspect that most of the many and varied denialist memes floating around have not resulted from some sort of collective intelligence of the masses, but from a few undeserving individuals exalted as high priests by certain ideologically-driven journalists. There is nothing "peer-to-peer" about that at all.

From my point of view, what Courrielche describes as the "fierce scrutiny of the peer-to-peer network" is more like ignorant nitpicking and groupthink. There are no standards for rigour or even plausibility in the many of the discussions that occur in the comments sections of blog sites. Free speech is often held sacrosanct, but free speech is not science.

The denialists are up against much more than a government conspiracy. They're up against reality itself.

He says given a 5 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will cost Australian taxpayers $120 billion, the cost of the emissions trading scheme's 10-year aim of a 25 per cent reduction will be much greater.

"The Federal Government has never released the modelling," Mr Abbott said.

"Now if there is modelling that shows the costs of a 15 per cent and a 25 per cent emissions reduction, let's see the modelling, let's release the figures.

"I think it's reasonable to assume in the absence of other plausible evidence that five times that reduction, a 25 per cent reduction in emissions, might cost five times the price - half a trillion dollars, 50 per cent of Australia's annual GDP."

I'm no economist, but I suspect the experts might shy away from confidently predicting that 5 times the reduction implies 5 times the cost. We're talking about billions of dollars flowing through all the intricate structures that make up the economy. There are feedback mechanisms, economies of scale, and the little fact that a "5%" reduction in CO2 is relative to 2000 levels but the projected cost is based on 2020 levels (because that's when it's happening). Even a "0%" change from 2000 levels represents a substantial cut in what our 2020 CO2 emissions would have been, but according to Abbott's model this scenario would cost nothing.

Why even have economists if a constant factor is all it takes to convert a percentage CO2 reduction into a dollar amount? If Tony, our alternative Prime Minister, thinks it's "reasonable to assume" such things, perhaps we can get him to try out this approach to economic modelling in a controlled environment where he can't hurt anyone else. Say, in a padded cell with Monopoly money.