Climate Change’s Dead Parrots

Being middle aged, I am a Monty Python’s Flying Circus devotee. It’s struck me about how similar those who will never admit the evidence for anthropogenic caused climate change resemble the Michael Palin character from the “Parrot Sketch”. The shiftiness, the blame-something-else-no-matter-what, the hidden agenda, and the outright lies – it’s all there. There are still a lot of interesting questions about where the change will take us or what we may do to prevent it but too many are still stuck in the rut of cherry picking data, blaming solar cycles, marvelling at how the troposphere seems to contradict evidence (it doesn’t unless you expect every layer to warm up), misunderstanding that in fact warm = open waters = more snow (ironically), and trying to sue Michael Mann (or who’s next - Joe Romm, or whoever else is handy; Andrew Weaver was last heard fighting back and good for him). My favourite, being a techie, is still about how people want to debate use of PCA (principle components analysis) – a debate that was fresh when I was in undergrad. Indeed, someone threw that at me during the summer because I do say, in general ecological work, one avoids PCA for complex models but that is because ecological models are not subject to major drivers or forcings in most cases. PCA can be used if data are linearly or at least closely related to one or a few variables. In my work (mostly ecological restoration), that is rarely the case. In atmospheric climate modelling, it is usually the case. One reason why you should never assume you have the whole story for a powerpoint slide downloaded without the actual benefit of the whole lesson – in other words, parroting a slide without the context or actual thinking 

Will it go away? Nope. The Koch Brothers appear to be financing a major push to repeal the key California’s climate laws related to energy use and somewhere you will find people like Chris Monckton flailing away at data that contradict his arguments but ignoring that fact. The Big Lie does work and people can be incredibly lazy and childish (go subscribe to the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson – he’s really coming on strong as a columnist and had much to say on that topic). Should we despair? Perhaps - but only in the sense that the fight is still there. It will be a long one; unlike acid rain or smog or ozone holes, the effects of climate change are too gradual for most to notice – unless you are living near the Murray River in Oz, parts of Pakistan, and several isolated islands. Then you notice. Too late. For most, it is not too late.