Posting Without Comment

Via this neat site which I only just discovered:

Mr Roberts said climate change science had been captured by “some of the major banking families in the world” who form a “tight-knit cabal”.

Mr. Roberts in this case is Malcolm Roberts, a prominent Australian climate denier associated with the "Galileo Movement" (because climate denial is just like being persecuted by the Pope for proposing the Earth is not the centre of the universe).

They're really "sceptics" who just want honest science to win out, don't you know.

Set of Actual Climate Sceptics Approaches Null

Physicist and now officially relapsed climate sceptic Dr. Richard Muller of Berkeley is making some waves today with his NY Times op-ed about his conversion to accepting the reality of human induced global warming.  This actually isn't really much "news" at all, since Dr. Muller's Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) group released preliminary findings confirming the overall accuracy of climate science last October.  Even at the time, actual climatologists were nonplussed as they felt the whole effort was superfluous, a giant study that could only confirm the already obvious and reeked of attention seeking by a contrarian.  As for the deniers, their reaction was as expected.   Anthony Watts, runner of the popular denialist site "Watts up with that?" had previously declared of Muller's work that he was "prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.”  Instead of keeping his word, he has doubled down on denial, now releasing his own ridiculous hastily cobbled together counter-study that claims global warming is actually some fiction of NOAA adjustments to raw temperature figures.  I guess he's got to keep the cheques from Heartland flowing somehow.

On another significant front, the most prominent organization of sceptics, the US Skeptic Society has put out their July magazine issue with a front page article titled "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused." 

The Heartland Institute is pretty put out by the whole thing.  They even got Monckton to personally write a rebuttal (where he essentially goes Godwin right out of the gate complaining that anyone using the term "denier" is equating someone to a Holocaust Denier).

See, a few years ago, the most famous sceptic of all, James "the Amazing" Randi seemed for a moment to join the ranks of climate sceptics.  As many noted at the time, his post on the subject was uncharacteristically ignorant for Randi, most especially buying into the fraudulent Oregon Petition.  He caused a storm of response, and followed up with another post where he (mostly) backed down and admitted "I do not deny the finding of GW. AGW, to me, is less clear, though I accept that it is likely true."  It was in a way, a testament to how effective climate denial propaganda is that even a renowned sceptic could be fooled.  Still, it was clear that in the world of self-identified sceptics, people who generally focus on rebutting nonsense medicine like naturopathy and homeopathy (Randi's TED talk is particularly amusing on this), that there was still some reluctance to accept climate science's findings regarding AGW (not for nothing but sceptic ranks are heavy with libertarians who are almost always climate deniers).  Now even this refuge of the denier-damned is being exposed to the light of reality.

Where can deniers hide and still claim some mantle other than sheer denial?  What fig-leaf of legitimacy can a movement led by Viscount "Not a Member of the House of Lords" Christopher "Claims to have cured Grave's Disease" Monkcton possibly have?  And no, deniers, Al Gore is not even in Monckton's league when it comes to this.   Gore's movie was generally accurate and Gore, unlike Monckton actually did do the "crazy" thing he supposedly claimed in that yes, he really does deserve credit for the creation of the Internet.  Really though, Gore is just a popularizer and proponent of the science, he never claims to be a scientist.  You can accuse him of hypocrisy for flying in planes and living in a house (if you can, you know, show where he tells anyone else not to fly in planes or live in a house), but hypocrites aren't wrong they just don't practice what they preach. 

It's really becoming clear that ludicrous characters like Monckton lead the climate denial fight because there is no one more credible to do so.  Frauds, fools and charlatans are all that remain.  Will the last sceptic remember to turn the light off when he or she leaves?  Those remaining won't miss it, they weren't using it anyway.

Climate Deniers Deny Law of Supply and Demand

The recent spate of bad climate news has of course been hotly debated in the comments sections of many a site.  For my own part, I'm seeing a form of climate denialism that I guess shouldn't surprise me, but still somehow does; deniers actually mocking the idea that a carbon price could reduce carbon emissions.

We're now at the point where right wingers (as almost all deniers are) are so mixed up that they're actually arguing that government making some economic activity more expensive will not have any impact on the amount of that activity that takes place.   It's hard to say for sure, deniers are generally something between incoherent, incohate and incomprehensible, but despite my initial surprise, I really can't muster much shock at seeing conservatives debate against supply and demand itself.  That is what you're saying when you take the position that a carbon pricing mechanism will reduce the climate problem, which can only make sense if you're saying that it won't reduce emissions.

It has typically taken the form of comments reacting to news like the above stories about heat waves, droughts and surprising ice melts that don't address the substance of the news, but simply say "Don't worry everyone, the econuts will fix it all with a giant global tax!  Har har, because taxes will really fix everything!" or "Well if we all pay Al Gore lots of money, I hear glowbull warming will go away."  You'll also see them on cap and trade say "businesses will simply pass these costs onto consumers" as if those businesses won't feel any incentive to try and reduce their operating emissions in order to find a competitive advantage over their peers.  It's very strange.

Admittedly I am so far only seeing this directly from wingnut commenters, but it's frequent and palpable and it of course comes from somewhere in the denialosphere.  When I went looking, I do find the Weather Network's Denier-In-Chief is giving a tirade against California putting a price on carbon (via Watts), however he's making the more usual denialist "It's unnecessary because climate change isn't a problem" style argument. 

My optimistic hopeful spin on tihs is that we're seeing an inflection point, where even deniers are increasingly distressed at what they're seeing, and instead of making the usual denialist arguments about the various weather phenomena, they jump right to "well whatever the problem is, putting a tax on carbon won't fix it."  It's a tacit admission that there is a problem to be solved, and we've switched from arguing about the problem to debating possible solutions. There's still plenty of the regular forms of denial, I'm not saying they've given up, but maybe I'm seeing something worth mentioning.  I can't find any recent polling on climate for the US, hopefully a good one comes out soon.

Responsible Gun Owners

It's not "news" but it's news to me:

In 2002, [NRA President David] Keene’s son David Michael Keene was driving on the George Washington Memorial Parkway when, in a road-rage incident, he fired a handgun at another motorist. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for “using, brandishing, and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence.” I asked Keene if this private tragedy had left him uncertain about what the N.R.A. had wrought. He said no: “You break the law, you pay the price.”

(emphasis added)  I wonder if the other driver agrees with Keene? 

That incident is far from the focus on that (excellent) New Yorker piece, but let's be clear, Keene was trying to shoot the other driver:

[Police] said Keene allegedly shot a bullet into another car Dec. 1 while traveling along a stretch of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, shattering the car's rear window.

The bullet lodged in the driver's seat and came within inches of striking the driver, police said.

So he's probably lucky he wasn't prosecuted for attempted murder.  The other driver is lucky not just to not get shot, but that he didn't panic and crash, and that he was able to get Keene (Jr)'s license plate.  For all we know, this wasn't the first time Keene had shot at someone over sheer petty rage.

Anyway, all this really adds an anecdotal highlight to something that there is statistical evidence for, that so called "responsible" gun owners too often turn out to not be very responsible at all:

Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments and are both socially undesirable and illegal

We analyzed data from two national random-digit-dial surveys conducted under the auspices of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.  Criminal court judges who read the self-reported accounts of the purported self-defense gun use rated a majority as being illegal, even assuming that the respondent had a permit to own and to carry a gun, and that the respondent had described the event honestly from his own perspective.

Hemenway, David; Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah. Gun use in the United States: Results from two national surveys. Injury Prevention. 2000; 6:263-267.

Keep that in mind when you hear gun proponents citing their ridiculous inflated statistics on the number of "defensive gun uses" per year.  Much like "Stand Your Ground" incidents, these are typically based on one party's side of the story.  Yet even their own naturally personally biased accounts of the incidents are very often themselves actually crimes!

My main point here is to back up what I was getting at with my other recent post on preventing gun deaths, that this crystal clear distinction some have between hard core career criminals and decent, law abiding people just doesn't hold up.  James Holmes is really a strong example of what I was getting at, a person who had no criminal track record, and yet for some reason (and mental illness is a pretty decent theory) decided to engage in a horrific one.  Few gun owners will do what he did, but there's a range of lesser, but still serious crimes they can and do engage in, often without realizing or acknowledging that they've done so. 

Guns: Recap

From what I'm seeing in the debate at other sites, many of the usual bad arguments against gun control are still very popular.

Here's some of my past writings in reply to these:

Why guns aren't like knives and arguments to regulate or ban the former don't have to make sense against the latter:

The argument to regulate or ban guns rests on guns being especially amenable to restriction due to their very specialized use cases, and to the high degree of inherent risk to life and limb from any use of them.

Why criminals don't necessarily find it that easy to get guns under stricter gun control laws:

It turns out that many, possibly even most guns used in mass murder events were obtained legally.  One definite problem here is we don't know how many would-be mass murderers couldn't get ahold of guns, and gave up on their schemes.  Japan suffered a rare mass murder event not perpetrated with a gun, and it's worth asking if many more than 8 children would have died that day if the mentally disturbed killer had found it easy to obtain a gun in Japan.

Why "criminals" are not really the sole reason to ban or restrict guns:

You can't neatly segregate people as "criminals" and "law abiding" as if these were immutable attributes that cannot change through a person's life.  It's true that people who earn their incomes legally don't often become "professional" criminals or mobsters, but taxpaying citizens do commit violent crimes.  You also can't forget that the problems with guns do not end with deliberate crime, but also includes accidents and suicide.

Finally, why Switzerland and Canada are really bad examles for pro-gun rights people to cite:

This arrangement is often portrayed as "every Swiss male has a fully automatic weapon at home" which clearly is not the case.  Signficant numbers of Swiss males are excluded for physical (like say having very poor vision which isn't something that even comes up in context of US gun laws but really should - if you can't see well enough to know what you're aiming at, how can you possibly use a gun responsibly?) and more importantly psychological reasons.  You also have to pass a variety of handling and aptitude tests to prove you are able to handle that weapon safely.  Would the NRA ever get behind forcing US would-be gun owners to undergo anything like this?  When they already oppose requiring criminal background checks for guns sold at gun shows, it's hard to imagine them supporting psychological screening and extensive training requirements.

Hoping I can do my small part to put away some of the tiredest canards of the pro-gun position and maybe they can at least surprise us with some fresh material if not some actual fresh thinking.  Hearing yet more "if you ban guns they'll just use knives" stupidity is one of the more depressing feaures of this debate.

Cross Border Gun Tragedies

As both sides of the Canada/US border have been struck (Denver) by large incidents of gun violence (Toronto) within a short time span, I suppose it is natural that many (at least in Canada) are connecting the two events.  There are obvious similarities (large numbers of victims, the pointlessness of it) but important differences too (most of the victims in Toronto were unintentional, the result of cross fire between fighting parties, whereas in Denver we are talking about a lone shooter intent on deliberately killing as many as he could).

But to the extent they are similar, I have two comments for the gun-proponent crowd: 

• Is there anything that would have been better about either shooting if more people in those crowds had been armed?  Is there any realistic chance an armed "law abiding citizen" could have done anything but add to the mayhem and victim count by drawing yet another weapon and opening fire?  In Toronto you already have multiple (possibly 3 or more) shooters firing at one another.  Who are you going to shoot?  What  In Denver, you're in a crowded and dark movie theatre, and there is some kind of tear gas or smoke grenade making it very difficult to understand what is going on.      

• Where is the deterrent effect?  In both cases, the shooter(s) had a pretty reasonable expectation that one or more of his targets could or would have a gun to shoot back.  Colorado is not a strong gun control state.  Obtaining a concealed carry permit is easy.  Open carry of handguns is even legal. This was not a school or some place which searches patrons to prevent guns getting in.  Why didn't this dissuade the shooter?  For that matter, where were the armed civilians to save the day?  Where are these supposed anti-crime benefits of lax gun laws?  Gun proponents suggested the Virginia Tech shooting might have stopped if not for a campus rule prohibiting guns, what's the excuse here?   At what point do we start asking when at least one of these mass murder situations will actually be stopped by an armed civilian?  As for Toronto, the (as yet uncomfirmed) rumour is that the shooters were gang affiliated and if so, had every reason to expect their targets were armed.  Which is generally the case for "gang" shootings:  If gangsters are not scared off engaging in gun fights with their fellow "hardened criminals" known to both possess and be willing to use guns, what makes anyone think criminals are much afraid of armed civilians when contemplating crimes?  Where is this supposed deterrence effect of an armed populace?   

If anything, it appears the shooter in Colorado simply accounted for the possibility of return fire from his victims by wearing armour and using some kind of smoke/gas grenade to create confusion.  Is this the "benefit" of an armed populace, simply better armed and prepared mass murderers?

And while it's true Canada's gun controls did not prevent the Toronto shooting, by the numbers there's just no comparison to US gun crime or general violence levels.  Is there any reason to expect that Canada relaxing its gun laws would lead to anything but more such shootings, without any of the promised upsides of widespread civilian gun ownership and carrying?

Global Warming vs Climate Change

Probably the single most trite and inane climate denialist talking point:

Remember how it used to be called "Global Warming" but then the temperature started decreasing after 1998 so they switched to "Climate Change" yuk yuk yuk?

There are variations, but the basic pattern is to claim that there was some great meeting of "they" (the nebulous, rarely defined conspiracy who are orchestrating the world's greatest scientific fraud for reasons that escape any rational understanding) where perhaps some Frank Luntz-like evil marketing genius conviniced the conspirators that "Climate Change" polled better and so everyone should switch. 

NASA has a good history piece on the scientific uses of both terms, and Skeptical Science has a more direct rebuttal piece to the talking point, including an amusing link to a Frank Luntz document where he explicitly advised American right wing politicians to use "climate change" because it's less frightening to average voters.  As is typical of denialist conspiracy theories, the theory that "warmists" changed the terms doesn't even make sense on its own internal merits since it only decreases the urgency for action in the minds of the very people we "alarmists" are trying to alarm.  We're apparently now accused of yelling quietly stating "fire!" "oxidation reaction" in a crowded theatre. 

If anyone is sincerely interested in understanding the real difference, you can read the NASA or Skeptical Science pieces, but basically "global warming" is primarily used in reference to the increasing average global temperatures (particularly surface temperatures) and "climate change" refers to a host of other climatic impacts that are not in themselves "warming" - such as changing wind and ocean current patterns, ocean acidification, changes in precipitation levels (flooding, droughts) and sometimes colder weather in places not used to it.  There really isn't anything complicated here, scientists use warming in reference to warming and change in reference to changes where the primary effect is something other than hotter temperatures.  The hotter global temperatures are generally the cause of these changes, but in many cases the biggest concerns about Global Warming come not from the explicitly warmer temperatures, but the secondary effects (floods will kill more people than a couple extra degrees on the thermostat). 

Really though, anyone making this sort of argument can be understood to be insincere about the whole subject and only worth engaging in so much as other, actual persuadable readers might be helped to understand the mendacity of the denialist set.  Underlying the factual wrongness of the argument as described above is a kind of childish pedantry where the name given to the phenomena is somehow an important point of debate in understanding what consequences it will have and what to do about it.  Who cares what "they" call the changes to the climate caused by increasing atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases?  Call it "worldwide greenhousism" or "international gas traps sunheat and does other stuff too" for all anyone sincere about this issue cares - just get to the imporant parts of the issue, where the fates of potentially billions of lives will be decided. 

I somehow doubt if a climate change denier feels chest pains, they spend a lot of time worrying about whether to call it a "heart attack" or "cardiac arrest" before dialing 911.  But that is about what this sentiment asks us to do when dealing with the Earth's growing warning signs of a major biosphere health event.