Global Warming Presentation to Utilities Board 7/19/17

Source: Continuous Improvement Associates
http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/globalwarmingutilitiesboard.shtml

Politics
Global Warming Presentation to Utilities Board 7/19/17
By Bob Powell, 8/3/17

Exchanges on this article that follow:

Mr. Pico's Response, 8/4/17, 2:28p
My Response to Mr. Pico, 8/4/17, 3:54p
Mr. Pico's Response 8/4/17, 4:27p
My Response to Mr. Pico, 8/9/17, 11:50a

______________________________

Here's the link to my 3 minute PowerPoint presentation to the Colorado Springs Utilities Board on 7/10//17. Global Warming brings Climate Change - Deniers Deny Reality (PPT), Slides in "Slide Sorter View" pdf. The PowerPoint file contains links to sources.

It responds to David Pico's portion of Point/Counterpoint: Was President Trump right to withdraw from the Paris climate accord? By: Dave Gardner and David Pico, The Gazette, 6/10/17.

Mr. Andy Pico (on the Utilities Board & City Council) took my presentation as being a "personal attack". Those who hold his misguided views on this issue have attempted to make it "politically incorrect" to call them "deniers" instead of "skeptics".

It is not a "personal attack" to address
1. False statements in the local daily about Global Warming,
2. False views that the need to combat Global Warming is a subterfuge: "a power-grab on an international level, ... a step toward a one-world socialist government ... a vehicle for control."
3. That we must attack every problem at the appropriate level -- be they local, regional, national or world -- without fear-mongering about the word, socialism. Any economic system can have an authoritarian governing system.
4. The physics of the global climate system.
5. Misguided views on economics.

Mr. Andy Pico characterized my presentation as being a "personal attack". He is certainly free to take it that way, but I attack statements and views addressed in his son's commentary, not him personally.

This fear of "dreaded one-world socialist government is fear mongering of the worst kind. It's a prescription for economic collapse that denies the failures of "free market" theory. Worse, it obstructs taking action against Global Warming's Existential Threat to Life on Earth.

Mr. Andy Pico did not rebut any of the facts I stated, but instead appeared to attempt to intimidate with his comments, that is, maintain that's it's a "personal attack" for me to have the temerity to speak on an issue covered in the local daily because it's his son who wrote the opinion piece.

Mr. Andy Pico seems to view City Council and Utilities Board meetings to be "safe spaces" from criticism of his views.

They are not.

The fact is that we are all ignorant on some things ... no, on a lot of things ... no, on the vast majority of things. I sure am. Calling out the ignorance of views in the media that detrimentally affect public policy, maintaining there's a imperative for the city to proactively address Global Warming's Existential Threat to Life on Earth, is not a "personal attack".

As I understand it, one is not allowed to ask questions of Utilities Board members in these meetings and expect a response; they are, ostensibly, there to only listen to the views of customers. Yet, Mr. Andy Pico used his position to make statements to which I was given no opportunity to respond.

Mr. Andy Pico made a statement to the effect that those who understand the threat do not have the courage to debate the issue. It appears he wants to be invited to falsely promote doubt about the reality of the threat. He stated that "thousands of scientists refute global warming". That is propaganda designed to obfuscate the threat:

Not All Climatologists, snopes.com

Claim: 30,000 scientists have signed a petition arguing that there is no convincing scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change.

Rating: Mostly False

More than 30,000 people may have signed a petition challenging the veracity of anthropogenic global warming, but you don't have to be a climate scientist, or even a practicing scientist, to sign that document.

Aside from the potential political motivations behind the petition, the misleading tactics employed to gather signatures, and the lack of verification regarding those signatures, the fact remains that the petition is open to anyone with an undergraduate background in science to sign, and a vast majority of the signatories are not climate scientists.

While some of those who deny the problem are true believers in the magic of the "invisible hand" to solve all problems, many are paid to do that: Climate Denialism’s Star Scientist Exposed, Paid $1.2M By Oil Companies To Deliver Friendly Results, 2/22/15. The New York Times summarizes the findings. Scientists, with extensive political connections, are paid to deny well-established scientific knowledge, mislead the public, and sow doubt.

So-called "conservatives" are so afraid of the term, Global Warming, that "conservative" strategist, Frank Luntz, in a controversial memo advising "conservative" politicians on communicating about the environment, advised changing the term from 'global warming' to 'climate change', because the former seems too threatening and the latter more normal. The fact is that both terms apply: Global Warming Brings Climate Change.

The many arguments against the reality of Global Warming are rebutted in detail at Skeptical Science, including the one about how "There is no consensus". More on this below.

The time for "debate" is over! There is, of course, uncertainty around modeling of temperatures, past and present. But the Physics of the System is as settled as fully as Gravitational physics is settled ... as I explain in The Physics of Global Warming. The fundamentals of both are sound even though there are aspects yet to be "settled".

Note, I am not a "climate scientist"; I am a physicist. The physics of the climate system is the ground on which I stand. The physics is not that complicated. This is profoundly different from typical arguments, pro and con, about Global Warming that get lost in details.

I've been fortunate in my life to obtain a Ph.D. in physics and an MBA; I've also had the opportunity to study and learn about many issues from the systems thinking/system dynamics perspective, including business/organizational dynamics, economics, the "invisible hand" theory of economics, "free market" failures, and specific issues like Global Warming.

The "Invisible Hand" feedback structure of markets. Figure 5-26 of Business Dynamics, Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World by John Sterman, Director of the MIT System Dynamics Group.
This diagram shows price as the mediating factor between supply & demand. One can draw similar structures showing product/service quality and product/service delivery as mediating supply & demand.
This is valid theory for microeconomics, to which the "invisible hand" theory is appropriate, but it is not valid for macroeconomic issues.

Because I've been so fortunate, I have the right -- nay, the obligation as a citizen of this nation and as an inhabitant of the planet who values Life on Earth -- to point out facts to the Utilities Board to rebut commentary in the media, such as that by Mr. David Pico, that deny reality.

Denial of the reality Global Warming, denying its Existential Threat to Life on Earth, and false aspersions on the science, painting it as a "power grab" to install "one-world socialist government", will not go unrebutted.

The Picos also do not understand that there's more than one kind of "socialism." The lesser-known kind is that so-called "free market" theory allows the redistribution of costs of pollution, injury, sickness and death onto the public at large to increase profits. That "freedom" to impose costs on others is the "free" in "free market". That "cost redistribution" is the other kind of "socialism" that's an integral aspect of "free market" capitalism ... socializing costs, privatizing profits. So-called "free market" capitalism is the "other kind of socialism."

On scientific consensus on Global Warming

However, research has also shown that the public is misinformed on the climate consensus.

For example, there's an enormous "consensus gap" between the public's perception of how much agreement there is among scientists that humans are causing global warming (red distribution), compared to the actual 97% consensus among scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature (green line) in the image below. Less than half of Americans thought that scientists agreed that humans were causing global warming.

One contributor to this misperception is false balance in the media, particularly in the US, where most climate stories are "balanced" with a "skeptic" perspective. However, this results in making the 3% seem much larger, like 50%. In trying to achieve "balance", the media has actually created a very unbalanced perception of reality. As a result, people believe scientists are still split about what's causing global warming, and therefore there is not nearly enough public support or motivation to solve the problem.

The Picos both deny the threat and, of course, oppose doing anything about it. That is a threat.

Several studies have shown that people who correctly perceive the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming are more likely to support government action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. This was most recently shown in McCright et al. (2013),recently published in the journal Climatic Change. People will defer to the judgment of experts, and they trust climate scientists on the subject of global warming.

However, research has also shown that the public is misinformed on the climate consensus. For example, a 2012 poll from US Pew Research Center found less than half of Americans thought that scientists agreed that humans were causing global warming. One contributor to this misperception is false balance in the media, particularly in the US, where most climate stories are "balanced" with a "skeptic" perspective. However, this results in making the 3% seem much larger, like 50%. In trying to achieve "balance", the media has actually created a very unbalanced perception of reality. As a result, people believe scientists are still split about what's causing global warming, and therefore there is not nearly enough public support or motivation to solve the problem.
Such false balance has long been the goal of a dedicated misinformation campaign waged by the fossil fuel industry. Just as one example, in 1991 Western Fuels Association conducted a $510,000 campaign whose primary goal was to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)." These vested interests have exploited the media desire to appear "balanced."

-------------------

Mr Pico's Response 8/4/17, 2:28p

Mr. Powell,

As I said in my remarks the public comment is for public comment and I do not usually respond. But public comment is not for personal insults and attacks.

The very term "Denier" is an utterly dishonest term which is used to deny discussion and demonize your opponent. (logical fallacies) The very use of that term is a dishonest and personal attack. The use of the term displays both scientific and economic illiteracy, and an utter lack of intellectual courage and academic ethics.

That is what I objected to as well as a personal attack on my son who published a factually accurate article on the climate change non-treaty. Your presentation was a means to silence someone from their right to express an opinion and I find it not credible that you did not know who you were attacking.

Your presentation is nothing but propaganda that denies the very existence of any dissenting opinions and demonstrates scientific and economic falsehoods presented as facts.

If you really want to have a debate, I am quite open and prepared to do so if you have the guts.

In my opinion, the Utility Board Meeting is not the appropriate venue for such. That meeting is for the Board of Directors to address the pertinent issues appropriate to a board of directors' meeting.

Regards,
Andy

----------------------

My Response to Mr. Pico, 8/4/17, 3:54p

Mr. Pico,

Of course, you are deniers, not "skeptics". That is an utterly dishonest characterization of those who deny the reality of the threat of Global Warming.

I similarly characterize the one-quarter of Americans who think the sun revolves around the earth to be "deniers." Both beliefs are equally absurd. You have no right to force the use of the deceitful term, skeptics, which in your view is "politically correct."

Deniers have also pushed the use of the term, climate change, instead of "global warming." So-called "conservatives" are so afraid of the term, Global Warming, that "conservative" strategist, Frank Luntz, in a controversial memo advising "conservative" politicians on communicating about the environment, advised changing the term from 'global warming' to 'climate change', because the former seems too threatening and the latter more normal. The fact is that both terms apply: Global Warming Brings Climate Change.

I attacked your ideas, not you personally as a "personal attack." But as I wrote, you're obviously free to take it any way you wish.

Your son's article is the opposite of factual; it is nothing but propaganda and contains obvious economic falsehoods as I explain in my post on my website.

The time for debate is over. But, if you have the guts to refute the physics, I'd love to hear it.

See The Physics of Global Warming, which contains a link to Cloudy Skies: Assessing Public Understanding of Global Warming by John D. Sterman and Linda Booth Sweeney, System Dynamics Review, 18(2) 2002. John D. Sterman is the Standish Professor of Management and Director of the System Dynamics Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Also see:
The Carbon Bathtub, by Professors John Sterman (MIT) and David Archer (U of Chicago)
Understanding complacency about climate change, John Sterman, director of the Systems Dynamics Group at MIT Sloan, and Linda Booth Sweeney, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
John Sterman on UN climate change negotiations 11/10/15, MIT Sloan School of Management. "SCIENCE IS NO LONGER THE BOTTLENECK. THE CHALLENGE IS POLITICAL AND SOCIAL."

The threat of Global Warming to Life on Earth is totally pertinent to the Utility Board making policy about its use of coal and natural gas. Asserting that the Utility Board Meeting is not the appropriate venue to raise Global Warming as an issue is an obvious attempt to silence opposition to the use of fossil fuels. Obviously, my presentation silenced no one.

Do put my money where my mouth is? Instead of a new vehicle, I installed solar panels on my roof in 2011; see the interactive site. In 2016 I produced 84% more electric power than I used.

Sincerely,
Dr. Robert Powell

----------------------

Mr. Pico's Response 8/4/17, 4:27p

Wow!

Not even most of the Thermaphobes advocate all that.

Your mischaracterization of an article in a liberal magazine as "conservative" is absurd.

The shift to "climate change" instead of "global warming" was a Thermaphobic strategy shift as the average global temperature has not changed in almost 20 years. That is a documented fact that even the more scientifically literate Thermaphobic doctoral scientists have admitted. (We have their emails).

The term "denier" is an intentional and deliberate insult which is intended to deny discussion and silence the freedom of speech and resorted to by those who have neither the intellectual courage or academic integrity to allow a discussion. It is the 21st century version of book-burning and McCarthyism rolled together.

You had your time to speak and will have again. So do I and so does my son and so does everyone else who believes in Freedom.

Regards,
Andy

Andres Pico
Councilmember, District 6
City of Colorado Springs

----------------

My Response to Mr. Pico, 8/10/17 [Under Construction]

It's clear you've well-absorbed the propaganda. Your comments clearly show that.

Sections in this response
- you don't know that Republicans popularized the "climate change" terminology
- your view of the concept of "freedom" is myopic
- you don't understand why your "free market" theory produces failure
- you falsely deny that global temperature has changed drastically over 20 years
- you don't understand that the fossil fuel industry lied about what was in the e-mails about adjusting data
- you are Not a "skeptic", you are a "true believer" denier

Frank Luntz, Republican Party operative, promulgated "climate change" to replace "global warming"

OMG, I included a link to a portion of a memo produced by Frank Luntz that I found at the (OMG, "liberal") Mother Jones site. Regardless of where I found it, it's by Frank Luntz.

Frank Luntz is a "Republican Party strategist, communication consultant, and political pollster" "best known for developing talking points and other messaging for various Republican causes."

In order that you need not sully your browser with such a link, here it is from Page 142 of "The environment: a cleaner, safer, healthier America" by Luntz Research Companies - Straight Talk, 2003, that I downloaded from this site. Here are the leaked photocopied pages. See p. 142 for Luntz' advice:

"Climate change" is less frightening than "global warming." As one focus group participant noted, climate change "sounds like you're going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale." While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.

George Lakoff points out the objective of this obfuscation: Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment.

Luntz' memo was the beginning of the use of "climate change." The idea was that "climate" had a nice connotation -- more swaying palm trees and less flooded-out coastal cities. "Change" left out any human cause of the change. Climate just changed. No one to blame.

Currently, Republican deniers in government are again attempting to change the terminology! From Global Warming to Climate Change to Weather Extremes. Talk about denial and suppression of facts ...

USDA office told to use ‘weather extremes' instead of 'climate change' BY DEVIN HENRY, The Hill, 08/07/17

Officials at a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) office told staffers to avoid the term "climate change" in their communications and use language like "weather extremes" instead, The Guardian reported Monday.

According to emails obtained by The Guardian, officials told staffers in the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to change the way they discuss climate change in their work.

According to the office, climate change would become "weather extremes." Climate change adaptation should instead be "resilience to weather," and efforts to "reduce greenhouse gases" should instead be deemed as ways to "build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency." ...

It is not clear whether the NRCS's use of "weather extremes" instead of climate change is part of a broader shift within the USDA. An official said the directive was designed to allow the office to continue its climate change work while presenting it in a way that would better resonate with the new administration and the agricultural interests with which it works. ...

There have been other signs of a shift from climate change within the administration.

The Environmental Protection Agency in April removed the climate change page from its website, and the White House also deleted its page dedicated to the U.S.'s work on climate change. [emphasis added]

Trump does not believe in the scientific consensus behind man-made climate change, and his administration has taken steps to move away from its messaging on the subject.

As far as "freedom of speech", I haven't noticed anyone shutting down deniers' ability to spread doubt about the clear science. So-called "conservatives" (on the irony) are very active in spreading their misinformation to shift from "global warming" to "climate change" to "weather extremes."

But please, have the "intellectual courage", to explain why the physics, as I have described and in the papers I reference, is wrong. But no, those like you obfuscate by nitpicking at details you do not understand ... as I explain below about the "We have their emails".

Your view of the concept of "Freedom" is myopic

Freedom is not simply about "individual freedom", it's also about being free from system failure.

Libertarians and "conservatives" have no idea what "freedom" even means. They have the typical "conservative" mentality that government is bad and that trying to do anything about the problems inherent in "free market" theory capitalism will just make things worse. It's a knee-jerk mantra about government.

That's exactly the 16th century thinking of Niccolo Machiavelli. He wrote:

When a problem arises either from
within a republic or outside it,
one brought about either by
internal or external reasons,
one that has become so great that
it begins to make everyone afraid,
the safest policy is to delay dealing with it
rather than trying to do away with it,
because those who try to do away with it
almost always increase its strength and accelerate
the harm which they feared might come from it.

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses, 1519
Quoted in Sterman, John, "Learning in and about Complex Systems", System Dynamics Review 10, No 2 - 3, Summer-Fall 1994, and in Sterman, John, Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2000, p. 8.

Sterman's paper on "Learning in and about Complex Systems" is a must-read for those who wish to even begin to understand the difficulty we have dealing with the behaviors of economic systems. See Sterman's reaction to Machiavelli's assertion at Government Dysfunction: it's now the 21st century and we know how to do better.

Freedom seems a simple concept, but there are different and opposing views of freedom. For some time I've realized that, if people are to be truly free, it's necessary to have a broader view of freedom. True freedom is about more than the ability to take action; it's more accurately about the ability to take effective action.

Unless we understand the structures creating the behaviors we observe, we don't understand reality and are helpless. We are in effect prisoners, "prisoners of our own thinking."

"Free Market" theory failure ... illustrated

When the system fails, many individuals fail through no fault of their own. Individuals are "free" in a limited sense, but not free to be effective.

A major focus, in both business and in government, must be to create systems that don't set people up to fail, but instead systems that make it easier for individuals to succeed.

From NASA: How is Today's Warming Different from the Past?

As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.

Models predict that Earth will warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius in the next century. When global warming has happened at various times in the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster. This rate of change is extremely unusual.

We must think of our economy as a garden to be cultivated, not one in which fast-growing weeds limit the ability of the garden to produce. This story illustrates what "free market", "invisible hand" theory promotes: failure.

This Gardening Analogy conveys another view (from Freedom? Liberal vs. Conservative):

A man was walking by a church parish one day and saw a priest tending the garden beside it. He remarked to the priest what a beautiful garden he and God had created. The priest stood back and looked around, saying, "You know, you're right; it is beautiful. But you should have seen it when God had it all to Himself."

Find versions of this story on the internet.
Google "you should have seen it when God"

This is what it means to "promote the general Welfare".

True freedom is about the ability to take effective action. Libertarians and economic conservatives would rather have someone who wants to exit a room be free to run into walls than be truly free and able to find the door.

"Global temperature has not changed"?

You wrote: "average global temperature has not changed in almost 20 years. That is a documented fact that even the more scientifically literate Thermaphobic doctoral scientists have admitted. (We have their emails)."

Of course global temperature has changed. Saying otherwise is total nonsense and serious denial. See the graph and what NASA says.

Adjusting different data sets is not fudging.

Regarding: "We have their emails." Deniers, who don't understand the science, treat the term 'adjusted' as being a synonym for 'fudged.'

The propaganda by those like Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who are well-compensated by way of campaign donations (bribes) to spread doubt, reveals their profound ignorance and willingness to lie. The well-funded propaganda they spread is paid for by fossil fuel industries, as I documented earlier in this exchange.

The irony of these attacks is that the adjustments being questioned actually have the net effect of showing a slight reduction in the amount of long-term warming that the world has experienced.

Thorough, not thoroughly fabricated: The truth about global temperature data by SCOTT K. JOHNSON, Ars Technica - 1/21/2016

Nefarious scientist plots to falsify data.

How thermometer and satellite data is adjusted and why it must be done.

"In June, NOAA employees altered temperature data to get politically correct results."

At least, that's what Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) alleged in a Washington Post letter to the editor last November. The op-ed was part of Smith's months-long campaign against NOAA climate scientists. Specifically, Smith was unhappy after an update to NOAA's global surface temperature dataset slightly increased the short-term warming trend since 1998. And being a man of action, Smith proceeded to give an anti-climate change stump speech at the Heartland Institute conference, request access to NOAA's data (which was already publicly available), and subpoena NOAA scientists for their e-mails.

Smith isn't the only politician who questions NOAA's results and integrity. During a recent hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) leveled similar accusations against the entire scientific endeavor of tracking Earth's temperature.

"I would note if you systematically add, adjust the numbers upwards for more recent temperatures, wouldn't that, by definition, produce a dataset that proves your global warming theory is correct? And the more you add, the more warming you can find, and you don't have to actually bother looking at what the thermometer says, you just add whatever number you want."

There are entire blogs dedicated to uncovering the conspiracy to alter the globe's temperature. The premise is as follows -- through supposed "adjustments," nefarious scientists manipulate raw temperature measurements to create (or at least inflate) the warming trend. People who subscribe to such theories argue that the raw data is the true measurement; they treat the term "adjusted" like a synonym for "fudged."

Peter Thorne, a scientist at Maynooth University in Ireland who has worked with all sorts of global temperature datasets over his career, disagrees. "Find me a scientist who's involved in making measurements who says the original measurements are perfect, as are. It doesn't exist," he told Ars. "It's beyond a doubt that we have to-have to-do some analysis. We can't just take the data as a given."

Speaking of data, the latest datasets are in and 2015 is (as expected) officially the hottest year on record. It's the first year to hit 1°C above levels of the late 1800s. And to upend the inevitable backlash that news will receive (*spoiler alert*), using all the raw data without performing any analysis would actually produce the appearance of more warming since the start of records in the late 1800s.

So how do scientists build datasets that track the temperature of the entire globe? That story is defined by problems. On land, our data comes from weather stations, and there's a reason they are called weather stations rather than climate stations. They were built, operated, and maintained only to monitor daily weather, not to track gradual trends over decades. Lots of changes that can muck up the long-term record, like moving the weather station or swapping out its instruments, were made without hesitation in the past. Such actions simply didn't matter for weather measurements.

The impacts of those changes are mixed in with the climate signal you're after. And knowing that, it's hard to argue that you shouldn't work to remove the non-climatic factors. In fact, removing these sorts of background influences is a common task in science. As an incredibly simple example, chemists subtract the mass of the dish when measuring out material. For a more complicated one, we can look at water levels in groundwater wells. Automatic measurements are frequently collected using a pressure sensor suspended below the water level. Because the sensor feels changes in atmospheric pressure as well as water level, a second device near the top of the well just measures atmospheric pressure so daily weather changes can be subtracted out.

If you don't make these sorts of adjustments, you'd simply be stuck using a record you know is wrong.

[... the article is long and goes on to explain the adjustments.]

Scientists aren't inventing global warming through adjustments. They're just being thorough.