What coral is that? A practical way to learn coral identification.

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Distinguishing between the multitudes of different reef-building corals is a struggle that coral reef ecologists are well familiar with.  Fortunately, coral biologists such as Professor Charlie Veron have produced comprehensive taxonomic works designed to help decipher this important group of organisms. But these taxonomic treatises are by nature voluminous and are not designed to be taken underwater.

All that has changed now with Russell Kelley’s Indo Pacific Coral Finder.  Russell, a well-known biologist and communicator, has produced an ingenious guide which can easily be carried underwater and allow anyone to identify corals on the spot.  This is an enormously important tool for the biology and conservation of coral reefs.

For the diver / snorkeler interested in corals the Indo Pacific Coral Finder is unlike anything you may have seen or used before for coral identification.

In simple terms its a robust underwater book with a visually driven key that overcomes the variation in shape / form that corals show due to environment. After making a simple visual choice of a “Key Group” e.g. is it “branching”  and then answering a plain language question about scale or texture, the user is sent to a “Look-Alike” page with the top 5 or 6 best bets as to what the coral genus might be. Typically, the user then “sees” the answer because the eye and brain are very adept at separating similar things. By using visual cues and greatly reducing the reliance on text you are able to get the correct genus name of the coral. The Coral Finder then connects the end user directly with the relevant volume / page number in Charlie Veron’s Corals of the World and suddenly you are in the learning business!

The Coral Finder lets the early learner get a foothold where previously confusion reigned due to the bewildering number of species and their environmental variation. This tool offers a great opportunity for people to know their corals better. It captures around 70 genera (including the stony non-scleractinia) and works anywhere in the Indo-Pacific.  More advanced users will also find it a useful revision, learning and teaching tool. The Coral Finder is published by Russell Kelley and was supported by Dr Charlie Veron and the Australian Coral Reef Society. It is available from www.byoguides.com

These training movies give a sense of how the Coral Finder works.  You can find these movies here and here.

There is a supporting website of free audiovisual training resources (The Coral Hub) under construction by the Coral Identification Capacity Building Program and is due for release later this year.

Clive Hamilton and the Global Change Institute: It’s all in your head

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Dr Linda Tonk and I attended a seminar on Wednesday night- actually the inaugural seminar of the “Insight Seminar Series” organized by the UQ Global Change Institute– given by Clive Hamilton about his new book, Requiem for a Species. I found myself nodding and sometimes laughing at his description of the exact emotions that I had felt over the last few years in dealing with climate change. I was so happy to finally understand the natural human response to “death”. Of course, it starts with denial. I went through this stage as an undergraduate student whilst writing critical essays which looked at both sides of the argument. As an amateur scientist with little climate change knowledge, it was easy to be swayed after reading a handful of peer-reviewed articles for my assignments and I always liked to argue for the sake of arguing (just ask my dad).

Towards the end of my undergraduate degree I did start to see the bigger picture and I had read quite a few more papers at this stage and so I moved to the next stage, Maladaption. Maladaption is a dangerous place to be and it is probably where most of the population sits at the moment. Depression leads to the inability to do anything so I had to pull myself out of that one. Blameshifting also gets you nowhere. Even if China is building a coal power plant every week, we can’t pretend we don’t play a part when we sell them the coal. Australians can lead by example. Up until last night, I was using a part of this Maladaption phase where I would just change the subject whenever climate change was brought up. I cannot answer every question on climate change but ask me specifically about ocean acidification and corals and I can talk all day. So now I am going to move to the final phase where you control your emotions and act. I am no longer going to change the subject in these conversations (but I’ll probably still steer the conversation to my area of expertise).

The other great part of the seminar was the description of the driving force behind the climate scientists (science) and the skeptics (power, money and not the least politics). Even if you can’t understand all the climate science enough to critically dissect the arguments, it makes it easier to pick a side if you understand their motives. Climate scientists are simply presenting their work and understanding of the forces of nature. Climate skeptics, on the other hand, are ultimately annoyed that humankind cannot conquer nature and that unrestrained capitalism does not lead to sustainable living. Linda also liked this part of the seminar:

“My main concern is the widening divergence between the actual climate science and the way it is perceived by the general public. Clive Hamilton’s lecture reminded me about this topic.

As a scientist, I also get confused about all the information and misinformation that exists on climate science. All I want is to know the truth. However, on more than one occasion, my efforts to find simple non -biased answers to my questions on the web has led me straight into the hands of climate denialists propaganda. Not knowing what I’d stumbled upon I feel confident to claim I read these documents with an open mind and I am not ashamed to admit they even had me going in the wrong direction for a few sentences. Because they are good! And this is what scares me the most. It’s all about taking advantage of situations, twisting words and even blatantly lying, but it looks very professionally done!

Of course the general public is confused. On the one hand we have the climate scientists, who by nature just aren’t the best in explaining complicated things and more importantly not prepared for the rules of the game turning dirty. On the other hand there is a seemingly well-organized and professional movement who are obviously very willing to play dirty.

Now we have to rely on media to provide us with neutral information. But how can we when it all just seems to shift towards the opinions of the people with the money and the power. This is the driving force behind climate skeptics and denialists and it IS very powerful. So during last night’s seminar I was reminded by all this and once again confronted with the difficulties of getting the truth out there for the public to understand and establish a well-informed opinion. The one question I was left wondering is who will to step up to the plate and provide the missing link.

My little moment of hope sprung from the realization that by providing clarity on the psychological issues of dealing with climate change and moreover providing insight in the driving forces behind both sides (climate science and denialists) we are a step closer to uncovering true motives and therefore a step closer to understanding the real climate science.  Now all that’s left is to find papers and people that are willing to inform the public.”

Afterwards there was a great Q & A section. My favourite part from this section was discussion about the Emissions Trading Scheme and specifically the buying of carbon credits overseas (For example, by saving a rainforest in Papua New Guinea). Hamilton’s response was that this scheme has “loopholes so big that you could drive a hummer through it.” However, when looking to alternatives we need to consider the time and lobbying that will occur before a new idea reaches parliament.

There were so many important concepts brought up at this seminar. It was a great free, public event and I recommend that people attend the future seminars in this series. There is only one thing left to do now: act!

Atrazine in Australian waters

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Atrazine is in the news again (e.g. ABC 7.30 Report Thursday 25th March, 60 Minutes, 21st March) and is being found in more and more water bodies in Australia, and notably Queensland in recent times.  Here is where it has been found so far:

  1. Rainwater at a few ng/l (unpublished data from Atherton, Qld), in streams in almost all of eastern Queensland at concentrations of between one and 50 ug/l (Lewis et al 2009; Packett et al 2009),
  2. Great Barrier Reef lagoon waters as far offshore as we have looked (outer reef waters) at ng/l concentrations (passive sampler work, Shaw et al 2010)
  3. Wet season discharge conditions in the lagoon at ug/l concentrations (Lewis et al 2009),
  4. Groundwater of the lower Burdekin at a few ug/l (as far back as 1976 (Brodie et al 1984) and
  5. Tap water in Rockhampton, Mackay, Ayr, Home Hill, Innisfail at 1 ug/l (unpublished and suppressed data)
  6. Noosa River associated with the infamous ‘two headed fish’, fish kills and human health problems (along with other pesticides) (Matt Landos’s work),
  7. Victorian tap water and in streams in Tasmania.

You might say this isn’t ‘everywhere’ but that’s only because we haven’t looked ‘everywhere’. Everywhere we have looked we have found it.

All I can say is that obviously current management (i.e. APVMA federally) is not working. Given this failure of management the only solution left is to ban atrazine. This is unfortunate for farmers as atrazine is a valuable product and possibly could be kept in use if there was a competent management regime. The part on the 7.30 Report story where APVMA notes that atrazine use was banned along watercourses says it all. This will have no effect in losses from sugar application where atrazine leaks from sugarcane via drainage (sugarcane is always drained due to dislike of wet roots) and is not used in watercourses anyhow!

This is the telling point against APVMA as their review (2008) does nothing whatsoever to reduce loss of atrazine from sugarcane crops. So a review that took 13 years produced no actions which had any effect on losses from sugarcane (and I suspect other crops as well), yet the problems of loss from sugarcane were well known by then and published in the open scientific literature.

Meanwhile APVMA continues to ignore the evidence and cannot provide a satisfactory management regime for these pesticides to keep them out of our waterways. Currently the role and scope for action of APVMA is being reviewed but it unlikely any major changes to make APVMA more effective will occur.

McLean et al respond and the saga heats up

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Following this weeks earlier revelations of data fudging, the authors (John McLean, Chris de Freitas and Bob Carter) have responded to the debunking of their paper by Foster et al (Grant Foster, James Annan, Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Jim Renwick, Jim Salinger, Gavin Schmidt and Kevin Trenberth).  The paper was shown to be rubbed and a good example of statistical trickery nearly immediately after it was published (more on the background at Climate Shifts and Skeptical Science).

Oddly, the response was posted to the ICECAP website (click here for a direct link to the pdf) and not on either authors hompages. In fact McLean’s web site still says “The informal nature of the Foster et al critique makes it inappropriate for me to respond in detail to it here, but should the criticisms be published in the normal manner we authors will respond as appropriate”.

The document is titled “Censorship at AGU: scientists denied the right of reply”. Is there a “right of reply” in academic science?  No.  There is a tradition to allow authors whose work is being criticized to respond – a tradition that was followed in this case. However, the response has to go through peer review; you don’t have any kind of right to publish in any journal.

The McLean et al response was peer-reviewed and was rejected.  Looking at it, or at least what they claim was what they submitted as a response, we can see why.  The response contains the same errors as the original article. The point of a reply isn’t simply to repeat the statements in your original paper. McLean et al largely miss the nature of the debunking by Foster et al 2010. Contrary to blog science, this is not a mere difference of opinion; the original McLean at al 2009 paper was shown to be fundamentally flawed and the analysis was likely intentionally skewed to produced the desired result. The paper should be retracted by the authors. In scientific publishing, when your work is show to be flawed (and in this case probably fraudulent), there is no automatic “right of reply”.

One thing worth noting: this whole affair is hosted on the “IceCap” blog; AKA International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project. Interestingly, the people listed on experts page include de Freitas and Carter, and wait, also Sallie Baliunas of the notorious (and debunked) Soon and Baliunas paper. Wasn’t de Freitas the editor of that much-maligned paper?  Sure enough. So he edited Baliunas’ paper even though they are members of the same small ideologically-oriented organization?  Isn’t that a conflict of interest?  Yup. And it is ironic given McLean et al‘s complaints about Foster et al suggesting a reviewer whose name shows up in an (illegally obtained) email of one of the authors:

In response to this request, the Foster et al. group suggested the following persons as possible reviewers for their submitted critique: Ben Santer, Dave Thompson, Dave Easterling, Tom Peterson, Neville Nicholls, and David Parker (with Tom Wigley, Tom Karl and Mike Wallace also mentioned but regarded as doubtful). Phil Jones commenting “All of them know the sorts of things to say – about our comment and the awful original, without any prompting.”

A search of the Climategate emails for each of the names suggested above shows that all six of these persons were reasonably well known to Phil Jonesm

At the end of the day, the truth of the matter largely rests with AGU and we look forward to their perspective on all this.

Despite all the song and dance about how:

Science is best progressed by open and free discussion in which all participants have equal rights of contribution.

(which is complete nonsense: all participants, don’t have equal right of contribution in any science),  McLean et al seem to have spent more time documenting how they were wronged by AGU and criticising the scientific process than they did trying to rebut and correct the errors highlighted out by Foster et al (which are still valid).

Coral bleaching leaves Lord Howe reef ‘on knife-edge’

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ABC News, 24th March 2010

Parts of the world’s most southerly coral reef are under threat after it suffered its largest-recorded bleaching event.

Lord Howe Island is well known for its pristine environment and natural beauty.

The island’s isolation has allowed it to develop unique and endemic marine life and the waters contain an unusual mix of tropical, sub-tropical and temperate corals.

But since January the waters around Lord Howe have experienced unusually warmer temperatures. The average rose by two degrees Celsius and the corals are showing the first signs of extensive bleaching. (Read More)

John McLean still manipulating data

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Still waiting for John McLean and Bob Carter to comment on the Foster et al response published in JGR outlining exactly how they manipulated their dataset to give a false conclusion. According to McLean’s website, although the authors were well aware of the Foster response before it was published:

The informal nature of the Foster et al critique makes it inappropriate for me to respond in detail.

Right. Apparently the long delay between the original McLean et al publication and the Foster et al critique was in part due to the fact that the McClean et al were invited to respond to the critique prior to it being published in JGR, but ultimately declined.

So, while we wait for a formal response, here’s another lie from McLean’s own homepage: sea surface temperatures (SST’s) along the Great Barrier Reef are not increasing. In recent times, climate scientists have been blasted for using ultra-secret ‘tricks‘ to manipulate their data. It seems that McLean has gone one up on this in his analysis of SST’s, using statistical averaging to hide the any possible trends:

The data is in form of values for grid cells of 1 degree latitude by 1 degree longitude.  From it I extracted the data applying to the GBR Marine Park and calculated the average across the park for each month.

The GBR covers over 200,000km2, from 11’S to 24’S. By averaging surface temperatures across the entire region, McLean effectively destroys any warming trend, and presents the data as an average, with no indication of error or confidence intervals. In fact, here’s how spatially variable SST across the entire GBR Marine Park really can be (from Lough 1994):

Here it is again, this time using SST’s over the past 105 yrs (De’ath et al 2009):

Considering the seemingly obvious with latitudinal temperature gradients, why did McLean ignore spatial variability in SST’s and reach the conclusion that sea surface temperature isn’t increasing on the GBR?

These graphs make it abundantly clear that the sea surface temperature along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are not increasing at an alarming rate. The people who say otherwise have no evidence whatsoever to support their claims. These sea temperatures might rise in future but the historical evidence suggests that this will most likely be due to the natural forces of El Nino events.

In case you missed it, here it is again: “The people who say otherwise have no evidence whatsoever to support their claims“. Really? Instead of relying on website science*, let’s go to the published literature. Using mean annual sea surface temperature (SST) records were obtained from the HadISST1 for 1° grid cells, between 1900 to 2006, De’ath et al (2009) found clear temporal trends across 2° latitudinal bands:

We’ve tried replicating the results from McLean’s website results, but the methodology is (deliberately?) vague. Considering John McLean is an employee of “Applied Science Consultants” in Victoria, Australia, we can’t bombard him with FOI requests to show us his methods and data, so it seems only fair to ask McLean to be a little more transparent in his analysis. Otherwise, the conclusion that “.. people who say otherwise have no evidence whatsoever to support their claims” seems particularly disingenuous. Should we expect a retraction on McLean’s behalf? As David Horton pointed out the other day: “This was never a scientific debate, always an ideological one, or, rather, it was always science versus ideology.”

Scientists have discovered 12 species of caterpillars that can survive for weeks underwater without ever breaking the surface. They don’t have gills and they don’t hold their breath.

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Here’s an interesting one: Hawaiian scientists discover a terrestrial caterpillar (that eats tree snails) has an innate ability to survive underwater for weeks at a time. It seems that this isn’t a survival mechanism (just in case they fell out of a tree and into a stream whilst munching on tree snails), but a deliberate mechanism and possibly part of their lifecycle. What’s even more interesting – scientists have no idea how they do it:

Rubinoff and co-worker Patrick Schmitz of the University of Hawaii did not find any water-blocking stopper over the caterpillars’ tracheae or evidence of gills. The animals drowned quickly when kept in standing water, so they seem to need the higher levels of oxygen present in running water, and probably absorb it directly through pores in their body, the scientists said.

The trait appears to have evolved more than once, Rubinoff said. After analyzing the DNA of the 12 amphibious species, the scientists found that three separate lineages of moth had developed the ability to breathe underwater at different points in the past.

“When the pressures on an environment are released, what crazy things are animals capable of doing?” said John W. Brown, a research entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“You just wonder . . . do all animals have that potential?”

Via reddit (link to PNAS article)

How Bob Carter diddled his data

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“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century.”

That is how Bob Carter described the implications of the paper he coauthored last year (McLean et al. 2009). But a new rebuttal to the paper (Foster et al. 2010) describes how McLean et al diddled their data to create a bogus and very strong positive relationship between the ENSO index and global atmospheric temperature. Scientists have long known that ENSO cycles, El Nino and La Nino events, can drive short-term (year to year) fluctuations in global climate and temperature.  But Foster et al McLean et al argued that there was an extremely strong relationship between the two variables, and moreover, that an increase in the ENSO index explained 80% of the observed global warming since, i.e., they argued that ENSO caused global warming.

Foster et al. 2010 is currently in press at the peer-review journal Journal of Geophysical Research but a PDF preprint can be downloaded here. Some aspects of it are technical, but most of the paper is quite readable.

The primary problem Foster et al. 2010 identified in the McLean et al. 2009 is how they transformed or filtered their data before analyzing how related the two variables were.

their [McLean et al] conclusions are seriously in error because their analysis is based on inappropriate application of filters to the data used. It is well established that ENSO accounts for much of the interannual variability in tropospheric temperatures (Trenberth et al. [2002] and references therein). By filtering they have reduced the time series studied to a narrow frequency band, thereby exagerrating what is already well-known. Consequently, their estimates are at marked variance with essentially every other study of the connection between ENSO and large-scale temperature variability, particularly with regard to the role of ENSO in any long-term warming trends, that has been carried out over the past two decades. – Foster et al

It is only because of this faulty analysis that they are able to claim such extremely high correlations. The suggestion in their conclusions that ENSO may be a major contributor to recent trends in global temperature is not supported by their analysis or any physical theory presented in that paper,especially as the analysis method itself eliminates the influence of trends on the purported correlations. – Foster et al

Here Foster et al describe the diddling, in technical terms, that led to the bogus result:

For all monthly time series (the global and tropical MSU temperature estimates from UAH and the SOI from the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology), the analysis of MFC09 first takes 12-month moving averages of the data, then takes differences between those values which are 12 months apart. The first step filters the high-frequency variation from the time series, while the second step filters low frequency variation. The latter step is perhaps the most problematic aspect of their analysis. It approximates taking the time derivative of the smoothed series, and therefore any linear trend which may be present in the original data will be reduced to an additive constant. Since additive constants have no effect on the correlation between time series, any subsequent correlation-based analysis of the processed time series can tell us absolutely nothing about the presence or causes of trends in the original data. – Foster et al

McLean et al justify the filtering by stating:

“To remove the noise, the absolute values were replaced with derivative values based on variations. Here the derivative is the 12-month running average subtracted from the same average for data 12 months later.”

But as Foster et al point out:

taking the derivative of a time series does not remove, or even reduce, short-term noise. It has the opposite effect, amplifying the noise while attenuating the longerterm changes. Thus, the use of the differencing filter has not been justified, as it has precisely the opposite effect to that invoked by the authors. The noise due to short-term “forces” has already been reduced by the moving-average step. Yet even this noise should not have been removed if the authors truly wish to estimate how much of the total variation in GTTA is due to variations in the SOI.

—

In spite of the extreme distorting effect of their filter, MFC09 consistently refer to the correlations and fractions of explained variation they derive as between the SOI and tropospheric temperature, both in the abstract and the conclusions. They make no attempt to draw attention to the fact, let alone emphasize, that the reported correlations are between heavily filtered time series, or between estimated derivatives of time series. This failure causes what is essentially a mistaken result to be misinterpreted as a direct relationship between important climate variables. – Foster et al

The second problem with McLean at el is their stitching together of temperature data from two sources in their Figure 7, as a way to suggest their statistical findings are also evident in the raw data trends.  Two aspects of this are fishy.  One, they failed to correct for an offset in one of the datasets, which effectively reduced a recent observed warming trend (see Foster et al’s discussion of this just below).  Two, they effectively hid this stitching wiith vertical lines in their graphic.

In Figure 7 of MFC09, the authors plot actual GTTA (not filtered versions) against the SOI (using different axes) to illustrate the quality of the match between them. However the GTTA signal they plot is a splice of RATPAC-A data through 1979 followed by UAH TLT data since 1980. RATPAC-A data show a pronounced trend over the entire time span, which is visually evident from Figure 4 in MFC09, the temperature line rising away from the SOI line. It is especially misleading simply to append one data set to the other because there is a zero-point difference between the two. The mean values of RATPAC-A and UAH TLT data during their period of overlap differ by nearly 0.2 K, so splicing them together without compensating for this introduces an artificial 0.2-degree temperature drop at the boundary between the two. Unfortunately this is obscured by the fact that the graph is split into different panels precisely at the splicing boundary. – Foster et al

John Cook has a clear explanation of this problem too:

Another interesting feature of McLean et al 2009 is a plot of unfiltered temperature data (GTTA) against the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) to illustrate the quality of the match between them. However the temperature signal is a splice of weather balloon data (RATPAC-A) to the end of 1979 followed by satellite data (UAH TLT) since 1980. RATPAC-A data show a pronounced warming trend from 1960 to 2008 with the temperature line rising away from the SOI line. This warming trend is obscured by substituting the weather balloon data with satellite data after 1980. It is especially misleading because the mean values of RATPAC-A and UAH TLT data during their period of overlap differ by nearly 0.2 K. Splicing them together introduces an artificial 0.2-degree temperature drop at the boundary between the two. Unfortunately, the splicing is obscured by the fact that the graph is split into different panels precisely at the splicing boundary. This splicing + graph splitting technique is an effective way to “hide the incline” of the warming trend.

McLean et al first author John McLean is an Andrew Bolt pal, who often gets Bolt into trouble by sharing misinformation with him. Second author Chris de Freitas has an ethically challenged reputation as well; as an editor at Climate Research he published the notorious (and debunked) Soon and Baliunas paper.  The lead editor and several additional editors at Climate Research resigned over the de Freitas flap (see a round up of this saga here in Scientific American). And third author, Bob Carter is a skeptic media darling, frequently appearing on right wing American talk shows like the Glenn Beck show and speaking at Heartland Institute conferences.

There was already a fair amount of analysis and discussion of the mis-deeds of McLean et al. 2009 even before the Foster et al. 2010 paper was published. Many think some of the anonymous bloggers who first noticed the problems with the study, e.g., Tamino, are indeed authors on the new Foster et al rebuttal paper. Brian Bahnisch has a recent roundup here, including:

Tamino’s explanation of the errors in the analaysis

Greenfyres list of a range of ethical lapses and other problems with the paper

Deep Climates very deep analysis of the problems with the analysis:

Finally, see John Cooks post Foster et al overview of the problems with McLean et al here

References

McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter (2009), Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637.

Foster, G., J. D. Annan, P. D. Jones, M. E. Mann, J. Renwick, J. Salinger, G. A. Schmidt, K. E. Trenberth. Comment on “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature by J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter. In Press at Journal of Geophysical Research (download the PDF preprint here)

Bjorn Lomborg on why we shouldn’t act on climate change.

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Bjorn Lomborg has again been given prime space in The Australian.  Reading the article, one is struck by  Bjorn’s oversimplification of the issues perhaps exemplified by his claim that a sea-level rise of 5m would not be so bad.  For whom?  Is it just coastal people in developing nations? The recently released Department of Climate Change report on sea level rise points out that “Up to $63 billion (replacement value) of existing residential buildings are potentially at risk of inundation from a 1.1 metre sea-level rise, with a lower and upper estimate of risk identified for between 157,000 and 247,600 individual buildings.”  and that’s just residential buildings.  What about the fact that Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne airports will be inundated as well and have to be moved?

Why are such clear impacts ignored by Bjorn?  The book from Yale University Press (“The Lomborg Deception“) should be useful in outlining in detail Lomborg’s long and pathological history of deception.

Here is the article in The Australian.  Make sure you read the responses from some readers – they reveal that most Australians are not taken by such simplistic and downright deceptive garbage.

The Australian (March 19 2010)

FOR the better part of a decade, I have upset many climate activists by pointing out that there are far better ways to stop global warming than trying to persuade governments to force or bribe citizens into slashing their reliance on fuels that emit carbon dioxide.

What especially bugs my critics is the idea that cutting carbon would cost far more than the problem it is meant to solve.

“How can that be true?” they ask. “We are talking about the end of the world. What could be worse or more costly than that?”

They have a point. If we actually face, as Al Gore recently put it, “an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale preventative measures to protect human civilisation as we know it”, then no price would be too high to stop global warming. But are the stakes really that high?

The answer is no. Even the worst-case scenarios proposed by mainstream climate scientists, scenarios that go far beyond what the consensus climate models predict, are not as bad as Gore would have us believe. For example, a sea-level rise of 5m – more than eight times what the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects, and more than twice what is probably physically possible – would not deluge all or even most of mankind.

READ ON

Sharon Begley on why scientists are their own worst enemies

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I have been sort of collecting these essays about how scientists are mucking up our attempts to communicate with the public.  This is, so far, my favorite.  Sharon Begley is a longtime and very talented science writer who recently returned to Newsweek.

I love a few of her lines. Read the full essay here.

Another factor is that the ideas of the Reformation—no intermediaries between people and God; anyone can read the Bible and know the truth as well as a theologian—inform the American character more strongly than they do that of many other nations. “It’s the idea that everyone has equal access to the divine,” says Harper. That has been extended to the belief that anyone with an Internet connection can know as much about climate or evolution as an expert. Finally, Americans carry in their bones the country’s history of being populated by emigrants fed up with hierarchy. It is the American way to distrust those who set themselves up—even justifiably—as authorities. Presto: climate backlash.

One new factor is also at work: the growing belief in the wisdom of crowds (Wikis, polling the audience on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire). If tweeting for advice on the best route somewhere yields the right answer, Americans seem to have decided, it doesn’t take any special expertise to pick apart evolutionary biology or climate science. My final hypothesis: the Great Recession was caused by the smartest guys in the room saying, trust us, we understand how credit default swaps work, and they’re great. No wonder so many Americans have decided that experts are idiots.