Anti-science long-range forecasts can cost people billions of dollars

Accuweather’s “expert long-range forecaster” Joe Bastardi has apparently issued some sort of a challenge to his critics.  Let’s see if he has the nerve to back up his unscientific claims with two real bets, which I will lay out below.  He ought to, given that if any of the industries who rely on such long-term forecast actually believed Bastardi, they could lose millions of dollars.

According to a National Review Online piece, “Bastardi’s Wager:  A meteorologist has a challenge for climate scientists“:

Bastardi is in a position to change the conversation. He’s a meteorologist and forecaster with AccuWeather, and he proposes a wager of sorts. “The scientific approach is you see the other argument, you put forward predictions about where things are going to go, and you test them,” he says. “That is what I have done. I have said the earth will cool .1 to .2 Celsius in the next ten years, according to objective satellite data.” Bastardi’s challenge to his critics “” who are legion “” is to make their own predictions. And then wait. Climate science, he adds, “is just a big weather forecast.”

… Bastardi has done the thing that could make or break his credibility “” offer a way to test his theory. We’ll see if his critics, so certain of the authoritative consensus on global warming, do the same.

I think it is safe to say that I am one of Bastardi’s biggest critics (see links below).   But I’m not merely going to offer my predictions.  I’m going to propose two bets to see if Bastardi will put his money where his mouth is, as they say.  If he won’t, then I think we can safely say his predictions are just what the critics say — anti-scientific BS, just so much bluster and hot air.

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Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is an opportunity to learn from his strategic thinking and mastery of rhetoric.

Consider King’s powerful words about the civil rights struggle, which echo today in the climate battle:

We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’

Note how King repeatedly uses key figures of speech — alliteration, metaphor — and extends the metaphor of another master of rhetoric, Shakespeare (Julius Caeser), all of which are classic oratorical strategies (see “How to be as persuasive as Lincoln, Part 1: Study the figures of speech and Shakespeare“).

I think science has mostly told us what it can about the fiercely urgent need to act swiftly to avoid adding the bleached bones and jumbled residues of our civilization to the pile (see “A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice“).  Our urgent need now is for much more persuasiveness (see Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1 and Part 2: Why deniers out-debate “smart talkers”). I have a dream that progressives will some day have the winning words to match their vital ideas.

King’s most famous speech illustrates the rhetorical principle of foreshadowing, as I discuss in my unpublished book on rhetoric, excerpted below:

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You can’t make this crap up.   KERA Dallas reports (with audio!):

Texas is the only state that has refused to establish a greenhouse gas permit process….

[Texas AG Greg] Abbott:  “Congress did not authorize the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. One of the key greenhouse gases the EPA is regulating is carbon dioxide. It is almost the height of insanity of bureaucracy to have the EPA regulating something that is emitted by all living things.”

So the EPA shouldn’t regulate the discharge from living things.  I guess the Texas AG just wants crap all over the place.  Literally.  [Insert your joke about sewage treatment here.]

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Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition

Our report, “Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine,” exposed Charles and David Koch, the billionaire oilmen who control Koch Industries, as a chief source of funding for the climate denial machine. As it turns out, doing everything possible to delay the clean energy revolution is something of a family business. We’ve released a dossier on Bill Koch, David’s twin brother and the principal funder of opposition to Cape Wind, the project to build the nation’s largest wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts.

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Calcars.org founder Felix Kramer describes the cornucopia of plug-in hybrids in this re-post. For background, see “Plug-in hybrids and electric cars “” a core climate solution.”

2011 starts with many more announcements of plug-in cars, and an industry that’s beginning a major transition globally. It’s still too slow to have an impact soon enough on global climate and energy security crises, but it’s what we need. Here’s a rundown of the new PHEVs, a listing of top auto industry leaders supporting plug-ins, and a link to a new California organization and report.

Here are the new plug-in hybrids, most announced at the Detroit Auto Show:

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