John Abraham, an engineering professor at St. Thomas University in St. Paul, MN., is certainly not someone who has a vested interest in climatology funding, but someone who knows how to search scientific papers and how to contact their authors. He thought that many of Monckton’s claims were rather outlandish so he took the time to deconstruct Monckton’s presentation slide by slide and verify the sources cited in them. This turned out to be a rather enlightening exercise that utterly discredits Monckton. He created an 84 minute long presentation of his findings showing Monckton’s slides and then the actual papers cited and/or communications he had with the paper’s authors. You can see this presentation here.

First of all, a large number of Monckton’s slides show graphs and data sets without attribution to the source, a dubious practice at best. Second, he makes many errors of math and consistency, often contradicting himself. But more importantly, in the many cases where he does cite the papers or authors he uses as the source of data to backup his claims, he is either misrepresenting, distorting, or outright lying about the papers and their conclusions and the paper’s authors have confirmed these misrepresentations.

It is really a stunning and undeniable point-by-point evisceration of Monckton’s presentation and it shows the whole thing is just a load of bull.

The scientists’ letter, published in the May 7th issue of the journal Science (subscription req’d), says:

“We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular.”

The scientists note that the fundamental science of climate change is sound, despite the extensive campaign by deniers and skeptics to confuse politicians and the general public:

“There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.”

Noting that denier attacks are “typically driven by special interests or dogma,” the scientists rail against the overblown attacks on the IPCC for its minor mistakes:

“Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected.

But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change…”

In a clear rebuke of the efforts of GOP climate deniers like Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK to deny reality), the scientists call for an end to the harassment of climate scientists:

“We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.”

As Peter Gleick, President of the Pacific Institute and one of the co-signers of the letter, notes:

“It is hard to get 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to agree on pretty much anything, making the import of this letter even more substantial.”

The scientists conclude with an appeal for action to address climate change:

“Society has two choices: we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively.”

The letter is available at Science (subscription required), and reprinted at The Guardian and Climate Progress for open access.

via Brendan Demelle | Esteemed Scientists Hit Back at Climate Denier Campaign In Science Letter.

A new popular sport in some media these days is “climate scientist bashing”. Instead of dealing soberly with the climate problem they prefer to attack climate scientists, i.e. the bearers of bad news. The German magazine DER SPIEGEL has played this game last week under the suggestive heading “Die Wolkenschieber” – which literally translated can mean both “the cloud movers” and “the cloud traffickers” (available in English here ). The article continues on this level, alleging “sloppy work, falsifications and exaggerations”. By doing so DER SPIEGEL digs deeply into the old relic box of “climate skeptics” and freely helps itself on their websites instead of critically researching the issues at hand.

Read the whole article…

The tragedy of climate commons