(Sd3) Mr.GOP don't buy Jim Steele's Fraud - Steele debate #3

My upcoming column at the Four Corners Free Press is a response to a Letter to the Editor that complained about my "one-sided" approach to telling the climate science story.  The writer, whom I’ll refer to as Mr. GOP, then steps into a steaming pile when his suggested alternative expert turned out to be my old pal Jim Steele.  

As it happens I’ll bet I’m as familiar with Jim Steele’s LandscapesandCycles fantasy as anyone.  Having spent easily a couple hundred hours studying his words and working on nearly fifty posts unraveling and exposing Jim’s many malicious deceptions regarding honest competent wildlife biologists the world over.   

My FourCornersFreePress column wasn’t the place for a line by line response, but I did want to write one up to help me gather my thoughts before composing my column.  I’m sharing it here, because this version gives me another opportunity to share all sorts of valuable supporting evidence.  I’ll be posting the FCFP column itself in a week or so.

Climate Science isn’t Settled, by Mr. GOP 

Four Corners Free Press - Letters to the Editor, March, 2018 

Mr.GOP takes issue with “We need real dialogue about climate” by Peter Miesler. 

1. It seems that the "science" is settled.  

Damned straight, the fundamentals are as settled as the promise of tomorrow morning's sunrise!   I wonder what the scare-quotes are for?

The fundamentals of our global heat and moisture distribution engine and society’s influence are well understood!  The explainable known physical certainties far outweigh the remaining uncertainties!  

Tragically the well understood certainties are constantly being deliberately ignored or lied about by contrarian types, thus our Mr. GOP winds up profoundly ignorant of down to Earth physical processes. Here’s a sampling of that climate science.

‘Climate models are unproven’ ?    

Actually, GCM’s (Global Circulation Models) have many confirmed successes under their belts.  

By Coby Beck on Nov 20, 2006

(Sd2) Need a Real Dialogue About Climate - FCFP, January 2018 - Steele debate #2

I've been finishing up my line by line dissection of Mr. GOP's March Letter to the Four Corners Free Press Editor.  Since he was complaining about how I presented climate science I figured I should include the column he was taking issue with.  It appeared in the January 2018 Four Corners Free Press.

We need a real dialogue about climate.  

by Peter Miesler, January 2018, Four Corners Free Press.

Early in December U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told lawmakers he intended to organize a “Red team v Blue team” exercise to debate climate change.

Pruitt is being willfully blind to the fact that the scientific aspects of global warming have already been thoroughly debated by experts. It’s expected that Pruitt will orchestrate a lawyerly winner-take-all debate. One that’s based on rhetorical trickery and a ruthless disregard for facts.

It’s a shame, since we Americans needs a constructive educational dialogue. A debate where honestly representing your opponent’s arguments and data is as important as honestly representing your own data. One where objective learning is the goal, and where truth matters.

Speaking of honestly representing the science, on November 9th Dr. Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and a lead author for IPCC’s Scientific Assessment in 1995, 2001, 2007, a giant in the field of climate assessment, gave a talk at the Fort Lewis College Climate Symposium explaining what scientists have learned about our planet. It sounded to me like a potential Blue team opening statement.

I am an Earth Centrist.

I've finally found a label I can wholeheartedly embrace and explain and defend.  I am an Earth Centrist !

The reason I'm posting this is because it's some thoughts I've been working on for decades and I'm finally getting close and I want to share even if it's far from finished.  Curious to see if anyone wants to bounce it around.

I am a fiercely independent guy and feeling more like H. Haller all the time so I don't make great internet intros, but feedback and networking is a requirement of life.  It's fine and poetic to be the sound of one hand clapping, but I'm concerned with finding out if any of this resonates with any one of the few who'll read it. Some of you folks know many people within the climate science communication and politics interface, one of them is looking for me.  Please help us connect.  

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated in comments or email.

Thank you.   citizenschallenge at gmail com

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( revisited and revised 7/31/2018, 12/30/2020 )

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I've finally found a label I can wholeheartedly embrace and explain and defend.

I am an Earth Centrist !

Meaning that Earth and her physical processes and the pageant of her Evolution are my touchstones.  Understanding Evolution, and the biosphere I'm part of, and how we got here, is the foundation of all I know. 

Religions, political beliefs, science, art, god they are all products of the human mindscape, generations of imaginings built upon previous generations of imaginings, all the way down.  

Something real and to be reckoned with, yet in the end, it's only our mindscapes at work.  While the real creation, physical reality, keeps on unfolding outside of our minds regardless and we are left to hang on for dear life as time speeds us through our day to days.

In a way that mindscape is a product of Earth's evolution, yet it's certainly distinct and slightly separate from Earth's physical biological processes, something unique, ineffable, yet with the power to manifest personal gods and Earth shattering physical events.  

I suggest most people are unaware of the Map v Territory Problem, thus society commits the same ME FIRST self-destructive errors that it has repeated for thousands of years, never learning a god-damned thing.  

Just as mega-corporations that have grown big enough to destroy governments, so too our mega-species has become big enough to destroy our life sustaining biosphere.  

That evolving creation that has existed since Earth bounced back from the last big comet strike about 65 million years ago.  

The one that had achieved a splendid plateau 8-10 thousand years ago, but that now humanity has reset to something the likes of which Earth has not experienced in hundreds of millions of years.  It’ll take a few decades and centuries to fully blossom, but it is as down to Earth physically certain as tomorrow's sunrise.  Such a tragedy, yet that is where we find ourselves in 2018.  

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Then there's the God v Science question.

Knowledge of God is the ultimate in personal intimate relationship, your experience cannot be transferred to, or replicated for, others.  

Religions are human constructs for enabling people to reconcile themselves with the seasons and hardships of their lives and to enable human societies to function in a civil organized manner. 

A God if there be one is All Things to All People, well beyond all human* understanding as the Holy Books warn us (* read petty, fearful, greedy, self-serving humans) individuals.  

If you are fortunate enough to be touched by God, that is your gift alone, something for you in your unique life.  It is not a recipe for your neighbors or the world.

Science on the other hand is humanity’s recipe for learning about the physical world and its processes as honestly as possible.

Science is:

Learning is the goal.

Fidelity to physical facts is the gold standard.  

Free Speech doesn’t mean it’s okay to lie and slander with malicious intent.  

Informed constructive skepticism is the rule.

Mistakes are for learning.   

Dishonest bluster and bullying is a crime.

(Sd1) Revisiting Jim Steele's LandscapesAndCycles Fraud - first an index of past research - Steele debate #1

This month my Four Corners Free Press submission considers a Letter to the Editor in March which accused me of presenting a one-sided opinion about our manmade global warming reality.  Worse, Jim Steele got held up as some authority who’s opinion must be considered on a par with serious scientists, which he certainly is not.

Ironically, I know all about Jim Steele’s LandscapesandCycles scam and welcome the challenge to resurrect this bit of unfinished business.  That’s why I’m posting this index of my extensive research into Jim Steele’s dubious thesis as supporting evidence for the couple of related posts that will follow in the next couple weeks.

You see, in a nutshell, Jim Steele proposes that landscapes and natural cycles are more powerful drivers of global warming than our insulating atmosphere and humans profligate fossil fuels burning. 

His intellectual underpinning is a self-certain, but never explained, rejection of CO₂ science. He maintains it's a hoax with political underpinnings. Something his Republican-libertarian audiences want to hear so he’s never asked to justify his super-natural assertion.

Steele has parlayed his general environmental studies background to travel around the world learning about various wildlife studies with an eye towards finding errors to exploit, that is, to use as "proof" that global warming is a hoax.  A most bizarre train of logic indeed.  

I've tried debating with him numerous times, but Jim isn't interested in a serious constructive debate where learning is the goal; where opponents' words / evidence are honestly represented; and where objective physical truth and facts carry the day.

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By way of setting the stage:

Earth Centrist ponders, polite or honest?

I've been too busy to do much with my project to dissect JohnSmith's crazy-making, but our exchange at YouTube continues and I believe this particular response is worth sharing with like-minded 'Children of the Intellectual Enlightenment' and rational fact-based thinkers and humanists.

{ More than ever we need to step up and engage with the childish tenets of faith-blinded delusionals, not to mention we need some serious networking between each other.  Alone we are impotent, together we have potential.}

You see I've hurt JohnSmith's feelings again, guess I'm too busy pointing out the fallacies he's perpetrating, rather than dancing with him.  Since I seem to have a reputation as a rough kinda guy, although I prefer "up front'n honest", it's worth discussing in more detail.  

For instance in my defense, instead of responding to my thoughts and queries, the guy reaches for the Whack-A-Mole gambit, which I'm not happy about, though I (and others) am willing to use the opportunities for sharing valid information on any angle of AGW that contrarians care to toss at us.

After sleeping on it, I've decided to share my improved and expanded response.  For the original and more of our exchange, check out: 

Kristin Mink on GOP's Civility Double Standard

Given the Trump Administration Fire Hose of atrocities, this is already old news, still it belongs in this collection dedicated to provoking some deeper thought about what we are doing to ourselves and how we Children of the Intellectual Enlightenment will confront the attack on Democracy, our way of governing and rational thinking that is currently underway.

Teacher Who Confronted Pruitt Responds To Calls For Civility 

The Beat With Ari Melber

Published by MSNBC on Jul 3, 2018

Teacher Kristin Mink, who confronted Trump EPA Chief Scott Pruitt in a restaurant over his mounting scandals and asked him to resign, joins The Beat. Ari asks Mink to defends her actions,

At 6:00 Kristin Mink responds:  

Let me say this first is that I think that this whole debate about civility is a waste of time.  I wish that that the left would stop talking about it because civility is not the issue here!  

You have people who are speaking up there's no violence involved you know this is literally people voicing what it is they care about, to the people whose salaries they pay.  

Right, so if they want to then turn that conversation away from the issues and to, oh it's not the right time, it's not the right place, you're not doing your job.  If you're doing your job properly as a civil servant you want to hear from the people who are paying your taxes.  You want to hear from the people who you're supposed to be supporting and taking care of.

( note - Keep in mind Pruitt’s many secret meetings with powerful industry leaders, all the while evading and stonewalling the public; and our press (USA’s Fourth Estate); and science, as much as possible.  Then there’s Pruitt’s Kremlin level passion for secrecy.  Why did he need all that secrecy? We know, so that he could vandalize the E.P.A. out of sight.  

Our environment is more than an externality!

This ME FIRST cult  proudly despises environmental protections because it cuts into profits.  Collectively they are so myopic as to believe our society lives by profits alone - never appreciating that it’s a healthy environment that provides our life support systems along with all we hold near and dear. 

E.P.A. was created to protect the common health - but now it’s been given over to a gang for whom profits are more important that people or honesty or ethics. )

Kristin Mink continues:  So the issue here is not civility and the whole idea obviously this shouldn't even need to be said but the whole idea of talking about civility is ridiculous considering who we have as our president who has done so many things that are outside the box of civility and kindness and goodness.

It's ridiculous to even spend time on this, you know and I know that.  Representative Maxine Waters you know made some comments about this and that some people on the Left have not been supportive of her.  I think that’s ridiculous.

We should not be spending time nitpicking people who want to criticize others for simply speaking out about what they believe in and I thinkthat it's my it's my right (and duty) as a citizen, it’s my responsibility as a mother and the same thing goes for everybody else in America. …

Saying No To Reality (Four Corners Free Press)

The following appears in the July issue of the Four Corners Free Press
Working title was: Explaining the Geologic Column to the Faith Blinded Psalm1Tree. 

Colorado's Grand Staircase's Geologic Column - Wayne Ranney

(click on image for a better view)

https://earthly-musings.blogspot.com/2013/08/ancient-landscapes-of-colorado-plateau.html
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Recently, I was minding my own business listening to a fascinating talk on YouTube titled, “Rooted in Earth History: the Devonian transition to a forested planet.”  It was about strategies that Earth’s first ground-hugging plants adapted to escape the confines of Earth’s surface.  They did this in order to reach closer to our sun and further away from plant-eaters. 

This led to Earth’s first forests, which in turn led to an explosion of new environmental niches for life to radiate into. 

I learned some fascinating details regarding questions I’d been wondering about for a long time.  The lecture increased my understanding of evolution on this fantastic planet of ours, which has been a lifelong passion for me.

But my pleasant reverie was shattered by a YouTube comment that blind-sided me.  One ‘Psalm1Tree’ wrote in all seriousness: 

“There never was a Devonian period, just as there never was a Cambrian, Jurassic, Triassic etc. period. That's because there never was a Geologic Column. That is a 19th century construct that has no data whatsoever to support it.”

Besides avoiding the topic of the video, the comment is such an ignorant statement on so many levels that most who know anything about geology and evolution would simply clamp on the head-vise and back away. 

Unfortunately, decades of ignoring such belligerent ignorance about important aspects of our life and planet have led to its becoming so insidious and commonplace that our government is controlled by Republicans who disregard obvious physical realities on personal whim.   Justified only by a hubristic conceit that they are doing “God’s duty,” they are in fact all about pursuing their own EGO’s bidding.

I decided to engage Psalm with a short video that rationally explains what the geologic column is all about.  Then came my second shock.

John Hyndman and the handy dandy character assassination strategy

I’ve been in a dialogue with one John Smith under an old YouTube video about aspects of the CO2 cycle understanding ca. 2001.  I have some posts about highlights almost, but not quite, ready to put up.  However there was this odd tidbit that occurred which I believe is worth quickly posting because it gets to the heart of GOP’s ruthless ME FIRST mentality in action and how it needs to stifle constructive learning dialogue.  The very thing I’m trying to expose and hopefully to help force into the public discourse this election season.

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John Hyndman, July 2, 2018 writes: citizenschallengeYT LOL! I never even watched the video, it just appeared on my playlist one day. YT's algos sometimes offers totally irrelevant videos. Example: Teenage make-up application tips or how to braid hair. WTF does a 60 year old man give a shi_ about that stuff for?

Notice the tactic, focus on the messenger, study, invade, look for anything, not finding, make it up, who cares.  Trashing is the goal.  Winning is all that matters in this new GOP world of ME FIRST.

Hyndman’s actions/words underscore the punk nature of his myopic worldview.  Avoid the real issues and questions, trash all messengers, stifle, or out scream every attempt at constructive educational dialogue.  

Create a storyline out of one’s own filthy imagination, give it wings.  John Hyndman and pals this is supposed to be about understanding our living planet and the biosphere all of us depend on.

Science is about studying and learning, but all you want is a mud fight in order to ignore reality.  { I’m told I’m rude, okay Smith, talk about rude, what about Hyndman here and his thuggish attempt to derail the discussion??? }

This is the sort of stuff that serious science communication has been dealing with for decades.

Think Seitz, Singer, Lindzen god-fathers of science by slander and rhetorical misdirection who started all this. 

Uncertain about Climate Models? Why? Can you Explain???

I'd like to start with this short reality check, "How temperature has changed in each country since 1900" - 
notice nation names listed on the outside ring.

Published by Carbon Brief on, Aug 2, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yIHxOui9nQ

I've started a short engagement with one John Smith a YouTube Climate Science "Skeptic" of the glade hand persuasion.  In preparing an examination of his game, I got to thinking a review of Climate Model success stories would make a good preamble.  Not to mention perhaps encourage him to unload some anti-climate-model nuggets to look at in detail.

If John or anyone else out there disputes the veracity of the following information - please do share your thoughts - focused on real world details, specifics, concise explanations, supporting evidence.  I'm always up for a Constructive Debate.

Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming?

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming

ZEKE HAUSFATHER, May 10, 2017

{  The following screen shots are of CarbonBrief’s fascinating ‘interactive’ graphs that were created with  "Highcharts 6.1.1" - I recommend linking to their webpage if you want a closer look. }

Scientists have been making projections of future global warming using climate models of increasing complexity for the past four decades.

These models, driven by atmospheric physics and biogeochemistry, play an important role in our understanding of the Earth’s climate and how it will likely change in the future.

Carbon Brief has collected prominent climate model projections since 1973 to see how well they project both past and future global temperatures,