by Judith Curry
I’m having another “Alice down the rabbit hole” moment, in response to the Scientific American article, the explication of the article by its author Michael Lemonick, Scientific American’s survey on whether I am a dupe or a peacemaker, and the numerous discussions in blogosphere.
My first such moment was in 2005 in response to the media attention associated with the hurricane wars, which was described in a Q&A with Keith Kloor at collide-a-scape. While I really want to make this blog about the science and not about personalities (and especially not about me), this article deserves a response.
The title of the article itself is rather astonishing. The Wikipedia defines heresy as: “Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma.” The definition of dogma is “Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from.” Use of the word “heretic” by Lemonick implies general acceptance by the “insiders” of the IPCC as dogma. If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic. The story should not be about me, but about how and why the IPCC became dogma.
And what exactly is the nature of my challenges to the dogma? Lemonick made the following statement: ““What I found out is that when [Curry] does raise valid points, they’re often points the climate-science community already agrees with — and many climate scientists are scratching their heads at the implication that she’s uncovered some dark secret.” This statement implies that I am saying nothing new, nothing that climate scientists don’t already know. Well that is mostly true (an exception being my recent blog series on uncertainty); I am mostly saying things that are blindingly obvious to everyone. Sort of like in the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” A colleague of mine at Georgia Tech, a Chair from a different department, said something like this: “I’ve been reading the media stories on the Georgia Tech Daily News Buzz that mention your statements. Your statements seem really sensible. But what I don’t understand is why such statements are regarded as news?”
Well that is a question that deserves an answer. I lack the hubris to think that my statements should have any public importance. The fact that they seem to be of some importance says a lot more about the culture of climate science and its perception by the public, than it says about me.
The narrative
Why am I being singled out here? Richard Lindzen and Roger Pielke Sr. have been making far more critical statements about the IPCC and climate science for a longer period than I have. And both score higher than me in the academic pecking order (in terms of number of publications and citations and external peer recognition).
The answer must be in the narrative of my transition from a “high priestess of global warming” to engagement with skeptics and a critic of the IPCC. The “high priestess of global warming” narrative (I used to see this term fairly frequently in the blogosphere, can’t spot it now) arose from my association with the hurricane and global warming issue, which at the time was the most alarming issue associated with global warming.
The overall evolution of my thinking on global warming is described in the Q&A at collide-a-scape (the relevant statements are appended at the end of this post.) My thinking and evolution on this issue since 11/19/09 deserves further clarification. When I first started reading the CRU emails, my reaction was a visceral one. While my colleagues seemed focused on protecting the reputations of the scientists involved and assuring people that the “science hadn’t changed,” I immediately realized that this could bring down the IPCC. I became concerned about the integrity of our entire field: both the actual integrity and its public perception. When I saw how the IPCC was responding and began investigating the broader allegations against the IPCC, I became critical of the IPCC and tried to make suggestions for improving the IPCC. As glaring errors were uncovered (especially the Himalayan glaciers) and the IPCC failed to respond, I started to question whether it was possible to salvage the IPCC and whether it should be salvaged. In the meantime, the establishment institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere were mostly silent on the topic.
In Autumn 2005, I had decided that the responsible thing to do in making public statements on the subject of global warming was to adopt the position of the IPCC. My decision was based on two reasons: 1) the subject was very complex and I had personally investigated a relatively small subset of the topic; 2) I bought into the meme of “don’t trust what one scientists says, trust what thousands of IPCC scientists say.” A big part of my visceral reaction to events unfolding after 11/19 was concern that I had been duped into supporting the IPCC, and substituting their judgment for my own in my public statements on the subject. So that is the “dupe” part of all this, perhaps not what Lemonick had in mind.
If, how, and why I had been duped by the IPCC became an issue of overwhelming personal and professional concern. I decided that there were two things that I could do: 1) speak out publicly and try to restore integrity to climate science by increasing transparency and engaging with skeptics; and 2) dig deeply into the broader aspects of the science and the IPCC’s arguments and try to assess the uncertainty. The Royal Society Workshop on Handling Uncertainty in Science last March motivated me to take on #2 in a serious way. I spent all summer working on a paper entitled “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster,” which was submitted to a journal in August. I have no idea what the eventual fate of this paper will be, but it has seeded the uncertainty series on Climate Etc. and its fate seems almost irrelevant at this point.
Monster creation
There are some parallels between the “McIntyre monster” and the “Curry monster.” The monster status derives from our challenges to the IPCC science and the issue of uncertainty. While the McIntyre monster is far more prominent in the public debate, the Curry monster seems far more irksome to community insiders. The CRU emails provide ample evidence of the McIntyre monster, and in the wake of the CRU emails I saw a discussion at RealClimate about the unbridled power of Steve McIntyre. Evidence of the Curry monster is provided by this statement in Lemonick’s article: “What scientists worry is that such exposure means Curry has the power to do damage to a consensus on climate change that has been building for the past 20 years.” This sense of McIntyre and myself as having “power” seems absurd to me (and probably to Steve), but it seems real to some people.
Well, who created these “monsters?” Big oil and the right-wing ideologues? Wrong. It was the media, climate activists, and the RealClimate wing of the blogosphere (note, the relative importance of each is different for McIntyre versus myself). I wonder if the climate activists will ever learn, or if they will follow the pied piper of the merchants of doubt meme into oblivion.
A note to my critics in the climate science community
Let me preface my statement by saying that at this point, I am pretty much immune to criticisms from my peers regarding my behavior and public outreach on this topic (I respond to any and all criticisms of my arguments that are specifically addressed to me.) If you think that I am a big part of the cause of the problems you are facing, I suggest that you think about this more carefully. I am doing my best to return some sanity to this situation and restore science to a higher position than the dogma of consensus. You may not like it, and my actions may turn out to be ineffective, futile, or counterproductive in the short or long run, by whatever standards this whole episode ends up getting judged. But this is my carefully considered choice on what it means to be a scientist and to behave with personal and professional integrity.
Let me ask you this. So how are things going for you lately? A year ago, the climate establishment was on top of the world, masters of the universe. Now we have a situation where there have been major challenges to the reputations of a number of a number of scientists, the IPCC, professional societies, and other institutions of science. The spillover has been a loss of public trust in climate science and some have argued, even more broadly in science. The IPCC and the UNFCCC are regarded by many as impediments to sane and politically viable energy policies. The enviro advocacy groups are abandoning the climate change issue for more promising narratives. In the U.S., the prospect of the Republicans winning the House of Representatives raises the specter of hearings on the integrity of climate science and reductions in federal funding for climate research.
What happened? Did the skeptics and the oil companies and the libertarian think tanks win? No, you lost. All in the name of supporting policies that I don’t think many of you fully understand. What I want is for the climate science community to shift gears and get back to doing science, and return to an environment where debate over the science is the spice of academic life. And because of the high relevance of our field, we need to figure out how to provide the best possible scientific information and assessment of uncertainties. This means abandoning this religious adherence to consensus dogma.
Addendum: reproduced from my Q&A at collide-a-scape
” Circa 2003, I was concerned about the way climate research was treating uncertainty (see my little essay presented to the NRC Climate Research Committee).
I was considered somewhat quixotic but not really outside of the mainstream (p.s. the CRC didn’t pay any attention to my essay, they went off in a different direction that focused on communicating uncertainty and decisionmaking under uncertainty). During this period, I was comfortably ensconced in the ivory tower of academia, writing research papers, going to conferences, submitting grant proposals. I was 80% oblivious to what was going on in terms of the public debate surrounding climate change.
This all changed on September 14, 2005, when I participated in a press conference on our forthcoming paper that described a substantial increase in the global number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes. The unplanned and uncanny timing of publication of this paper was three weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. While global warming was mentioned only obliquely in the paper, the press focused on the global warming angle and a media furor followed. We were targeted as global warming alarmists, capitalizing on this tragedy to increase research funding and for personal publicity, a threat to capitalism and the American way of life, etc.
At the same time, we were treated like rock stars by the environmental movement. Our 15 minutes stretched into days, weeks and months. Hurricane Katrina became a national focusing event for the global warming debate. We were particularly stung by criticisms from fellow research scientists who claimed that we were doing this “for the money” and attacked our personal and scientific integrity. We felt that one scientist in particular had crossed the line and committed a series of fouls, and this turned the scientific debate into academic guerrilla warfare between our team and the skeptics that was played out in the glare of the media. This “war” culminated in an article published on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, “Debate shatters the civility of weather science” on Feb 2, 2006 . . . This article became a catharsis for the hurricane research community, that engendered extensive email discussion among scientists on both sides of the public debate. We did an email version of a “group hug” and vowed to stop the guerilla warfare.
I had lost my bearings in all of this, and the Wall Street Journal article had the effect of a bucket of cold water being poured over my head. I learned several important lessons from this experience: just because the other guy commits the first “foul” doesn’t give you the moral high ground in protracted academic guerilla warfare. Nothing in this crazy environment is worth sacrificing your personal or professional integrity. After all, no one remembers who fired the first shot, all they see is unprofessional behavior.
I took a step back and tried to understand all this craziness and learn from it. I even wrote a journal article on this, “Mixing Politics and Science in Testing the Hypothesis that Greenhouse Warming is Causing a Global Increase in Hurricane Intensity.” This paper got quite a bit of play in the blogosphere upon its publication in Aug 2006, and at this time I made my first major foray into the blogosphere, checking in at all the blogs where the paper was being discussed. See esp realclimate and climateaudit (but I can no longer find the original thread on climateaudit).
At climateaudit, the posters had some questions about statistics and wanted to see the raw data. I was pretty impressed by the level of discussion, and wondered why I had not come across this blog before over at the realclimate blogroll. Then I realized that I was on Steve McIntyre’s blog (I had sort of heard of his tiff with Mann, but wasn’t really up on all this at the time). I was actually having much more fun over at climateaudit than at realclimate, and I thought it made much more sense to spend time at climateaudit rather than to preach to the converted at realclimate. Back in 2006 spending time at climateaudit was pretty rough sport (it wasn’t really moderated at the time). When I first started spending time over there, the warmist blogs thought it was really funny, and encouraged me to give ‘em hell.
I was continuing my overall thinking on how to better deal with skeptics and increase the credibility and integrity of science. I gave an invited talk at Fall 2006 AGU meeting, entitled “Falling out of the ivory tower: Reflections on mixing politics and climate science.” This is where I first started talking about circling the wagons, etc. I don’t think this was quite what the convenors had in mind when they invited me to give this talk, but at the time I still had pretty solid status as a survivor of vicious political attacks during the hurricane wars and was a heroine for taking down Bill Gray.
When the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was published in 2007, I joined the consensus in supporting this document as authoritative; I was convinced by the rigors of the process, etc etc. While I didn’t personally agree with everything in the document (still nagging concerns about the treatment of uncertainty), I bought into the meme of “don’t trust what one scientist says, listen to the IPCC.” During 2008 and 2009, I became increasingly concerned by the lack of “policy neutrality” by people involved in the IPCC and policies that didn’t make sense to me. But after all, “don’t trust what one scientist says”, and I continued to substitute the IPCC assessment for my own personal judgment [in my public statements].
November 19, 2009: bucket of cold water #2. When I first saw the climategate emails, I knew these were real, they confirmed concerns and suspicions that I already had. After my first essay “On the credibility . . .” posted at climateaudit, I got some emails that asked me to be sensitive to the feelings of the scientists involved. I said I was a whole lot more worried about the IPCC, in terms of whether it could be saved and whether it should be saved. I had been willing to substitute the IPCC for my own personal judgment [in public statements], but after reading those emails, the IPCC lost the moral high ground in my opinion. Not to say that the IPCC science was wrong, but I no longer felt obligated in substituting the IPCC for my own personal judgment.
So the Judith Curry ca 2010 is the same scientist as she was in 2003, but sadder and wiser as a result of the hurricane wars, a public spokesperson on the global warming issue owing to the media attention from the hurricane wars, more broadly knowledgeable about the global warming issue, much more concerned about the integrity of climate science, listening to skeptics, and a blogger (for better or for worse). . . People really find it hard to believe that I don’t have a policy agenda about climate change/energy (believe me, Roger Pielke Jr has tried very hard to smoke me out as a “stealth advocate”). Yes, I want clean green energy, economic development and “world peace”. I have no idea how much climate change should be weighted in these kinds of policy decisions. I lack the knowledge, wisdom and hubris to think that anything I say or do should be of any consequence to climate/carbon/energy policy.”
Judith,
Is this the thread you are looking for?
http://climateaudit.org/2006/10/05/hurricane-data-compilation-thread/
Wow, thanks for spotting this.
this isn’t quite the thread. the discussion was on my mixing politics and science paper, circa Aug 2006, and bender was involved in the discussion.
Dear Judith, a nice text. (See The Reference Frame – click my name – for a text about you and Peter Thiel’s theory of scapegoats in religions haha.)
Isn’t the discussion on Climate Audit you’re looking for this one?
http://climateaudit.org/2006/08/23/benders-plot-of-hurricane-count/
This one got heated.
http://climateaudit.org/2006/10/11/bill-gray-presentation/
i remember this one. RP Jr and I went at it. Interesting pieces of climate blogospheric history :) still haven’t spotted the thread I am thinking of tho
and more interaction here.
http://climateaudit.org/2006/12/28/unthreaded/
You can delete any of these comments if they don’t help.
With some offline help from jeez, we finally found the first thread that I posted on over at climateaudit, a real piece of climate blogospheric history :)
http://climateaudit.org/?p=790?
I will never forget the debate that bender and I arranged between you and lucia and Dr. Browning. That was great.
For me the whole issue of “tribalism” became clear when we were discussing Kristin Byrnes.
Eli as usual was berating a child to fix her chart. I admonished Her to fix her graph and I think you joined in as well. At some point you invited her to visit Georgia Tech before deciding on college. That one act of kindness spoke volumes Judy. And then some skeptic called you the “wicked witch of the west” and it all became clear.
Certain people have become symbolic in this debate and its important for each side to turn key figures into memes. I saw that with Kirsten, Steve, Dr. Mann, and you. They need to stick you into a box :heretic or dupe. Nothing does the trick like a false dilemma
I just always figured you were a kind and smart soul.
steve, that exchange was definitely fun. interesting that a lot of people have been linking to the old CA threads, some interesting stuff
We wont mention the one where I insulted one of your students. That was a class act on my part. Nice guy, very sharp and acerbic. writing had a definite european flavor, french I recall.
You guys gonna hug?
Dr. Curry –
I’d be interested in knowing to where you would refer a member of the general public for the best available overview of the state of the science regarding climate change. Despite the problems with the IPCC, my overall opinion based on my independent assessment is still the same as it was three years ago: “The Working Group 1 reports are quite good overall, and amount to the best available overview of the state of the science. They are generally reliable, but as a general rule I would suggest ratcheting down the certainties one notch or so.“
John, the IPCC WGI report is a good summary of the overall state of the science, but it is not really understandable in this way unless the reader has a lot of context. So there are two elements here: helping a technically educated non-expert understand the science, and providing a summary assessment for policy makers. I don’t think that the IPCC WG1 scores very high on either element. Sounds like you need to write a book :)
It is an interesting side story that Dr. N-G was actually the first scientist accepted by the AGW community to poke a real hole in the IPCC, yet he is not (yet) declared heretic by the opinion leaders. Dr. Curry is declared heretic for simply voicing legitimate question and allowing discussion by the unwashed.
I wonder how much of this disparate treatment has to do with outrage in the AGW community that a female would dare disturb the dogma?
John N-G
For the short “red team” version on climate change, see JoNova for
The Skeptics Handbook
For the long version, see:
Climate Change Reconsidered, the 2009 report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change
Have you read the following viz.
The Hockey Stick Illusion
Climate Change Reconsidered
The Climate Fix
?
It seems to me that the IPCC have ignored/excluded a huge volume of peer-reviewed evidence which does not support AGW.
Moreover, in some cases, they have actually misrepresented the work of authors they have cited e.g. Pielke Jr, Idso
John N-G
My view differs diametrically from your view. Persistently, Working Group 1 fails to identify the statistical population by which the conclusions of Working Group 1 might be falsified. This places the speculations of Working Group I outside science.
Hi Judith,
Thank you for your courage and integrity. Like you, I had accepted the “concensus” at face value, until I started looking in detail behind the IPCC pronouncements (a few years ago).
However, so far as I can see, the “man (woman) in the street” in Australia (where I am) is still accepting of that “concensus” – primarily because our media is solidly backing that point of view. The average citizen is totally unaware of the vigorous debate that has been going on since November 2009.
In the meantime, other critical issues (global hunger, poverty, disease, and “real” pollution, etc) are deprived of the political attention, funding and research that could really make a difference to the lives (and deaths) of millions.
And yes, Science has been the loser.
Dr. Curry,
No doubt, you’d be interested in the cognitive science aspects of governance, and the strong interests that corporations have in making science as ineffective as possible in the forming of public, and legislative opinion. I’m a little perturbed by your dismissal of the role of negative memes about science promulgated by corporate-funded 527 and 501 c4 non-profits.
Thanks for your dedication. Please don’t return to your ivory tower of experimentation and theorizing without applying your no doubt formidable intellect to the gross problem of human misery caused by anti-science attitudes.
Ormond Otvos, BS 1961 Molecular Physics
“What scientists worry is that such exposure means Curry has the power to do damage to a consensus on climate change that has been building for the past 20 years.”
Dr. Curry if you and Steve McIntyre can pull down a climate change consensus (which seems to me the scientific method) then it would fall down eventually. Science is not, and never should be, majority rule.
Yes, the consensus seems fragile indeed if they are threatened by the likes of myself and McIntyre
Erm, you are making an error of logic here.
The consensus is not as fragile as you believe that it seems: the overwhelming majority of professional, expert scientists maintain exactly the position* on AGW that they always have. Your involvement and McIntyre’s does nothing to threaten the profession’s understanding.
What “the likes of [your]self and McIntyre” do is to mislead and confuse the laity’s impression of the state of climatological science. In so doing the global community’s response to human-induced global warming is compromised, and this certainly “threatens” the professional body of scientists who constitute the “consensus”, because they – more than anyone – understand and appreciate the consequences of inaction or of insufficient action.
It is entirely possible, and looking increasingly probably, that the actual scientific consensus will remain as stong as it has always been, and that it is the public’s understanding and the polity’s wills that are the fragile entities in this saga. This might serve the ideologues and the vested interests in the short-term, but in the long term is is an own-goal againsat the fragility of the global ecosystems upon which humans and countless other species rely.
(*Your response to this might be a claim of “groupthink” or of “tribalism”, but perhaps Ockham’s razor is the best option – parsimony says that a collection of competitive people who employ the scientific method to all reach the same conclusion, do so not because they necessarily want to agree with each other but because impartial assessment of the data lead them to do so.)
John N-G
A number of our colleagues have concluded there are fundamental problems with the 2007 IPCC WG1 assessment. As one example, all of the authors of the article which wrote on this subect in EOS are Fellows of the AGU. In this article
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/12/r-354.pdf
we wrote
“Unfortunately, the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
assessment did not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of these other human climate forcings in altering regional and global climate and their effects on predictability at the regional scale.”
Do you disagree with this conclusion? If the above statement is accurate, than “the best available overview of the state of the science regarding climate change” is not WG1 of the 2007 IPCC reports.
Roger – I do not disagree. But “best available” does not equate to “best possible”. The WG1 is incomplete, but I haven’t seen anything else with as much solid information, as far as it goes.
When it comes to predictions of future warming, “best available” does not translate to “good enough.”
Two comments – That the title of the article calls you a “heretic”does not mean the IPCC position is dogma, and nor is it evidence that it is. Rather, it is evidence that journalists use eye catching titles and headlines in order to draw you in to reading the article. Hardly news.
Second, it appears to me that your story is that, having been unjustly accused on being ” … targeted as global warming alarmists, capitalizing on this tragedy to increase research funding and for personal publicity, a threat to capitalism and the American way of life, etc.”, you became willing to believe the same sort of accusations against other scientists by the same people on scant evidence.
Tom, not even close.
Tom,
In reading about the actions of AGW promoters, and in reading the defenses of the AGW community, it is striking that time and time again religious concepts are invoked by those supporting AGW.
Many observers of the AGW phenomenon have noticed the striking similarities in behavior between the AGW opinion leaders and defenders and religious movements.
‘Heretic’ was the best word available for Lemonick because that is the way he and his intended supportive audience view the situation.
I was unaware that Scientific American had a theology section. Can you explain why ‘heretic’ was used outside such a context?
I really enjoyed this post, even if it’s not really about the science. I particularly liked the turn of phrase “…this is my carefully considered choice on what it means to be a scientist and to behave with personal and professional integrity.”
Just a small note, the second paragraph before the addendum seems to have a small error “..to the reputations of a number of a number of scientists, the IPCC..”
The timing of your response is good. ‘Everybody’s searching for a brand new meme…’ If you have concrete proposals for work procedures (a la IAC) or WG directions, now’s the time to lay ’em out… Seriously, if you have ideas, get them in front of the world now, as opposed to next year, if you can.
It’s nice to see someone move past their 15 minutes of fame and continue to contribute.
Umm, Mr. Curtis, are you blaming Dr. Curry for what was written about her or about something she has in fact written herself?
Hi Judith, IMO the heat you are feeling from the establishment, and its intensity compared with that directed at other “heretics” such as Dick Lindzen, is mainly due to your being seen as an apostate, rather than merely a heretic. Some in the mainstream camp clearly feel betrayed.
Judith,
The word “insurgient” would also be appropriate. The science community feels betrayed and affended that their authority is challenged, when it is the work that is challenged and NOT the authority.
“What I want is for the climate science community to shift gears and get back to doing science, and return to an environment where debate over the science is the spice of academic life. And because of the high relevance of our field, we need to figure out how to provide the best possible scientific information and assessment of uncertainties. ”
Judith, thank you for your insider perspective. As an interested consulting scientist I have been following this issue since about 1995. Since then, it has only been in the last year that some real scientific studies have been getting some attention. There was 10 to 15 years where the “science” was settled and everything (almost) coming out was some way or another to confirm the settled “science”. Some real science is just now starting to get through the cracks, thanks to some of the so called sceptics not buying into the dogma. I am hopful it will continue. I think there are some great scientists out their, given the freedom to take the science where it leads them, will make some great discoveries to move the science forward.
“Some real science is just now starting to get through the cracks, thanks to some of the so called sceptics not buying into the dogma.”
I call bullshit. What is this ‘real science’ that is ‘starting to get through the cracks’?
And Dr. Curry, as someone who claims to believe that global warming is occuring, and that humans are significantly contributing to it, why do you continue to pounce mainly on claims from the ‘mainstream’ and let claims like the above go unchallenged?
Because statements like that don’t mean anything. And people ignore them. And I want to spend time on the interesting arguments that some people are making.
On the technical threads, i keep it fairly tight. on an etc. thread like this, that kind of a comment is arguably fair game, if not particularly interesting or illuminating.
Judy,
Thank you for writing such an excellent, heartfelt essay.
Mike
Here’s Freeman Dyson on scientific heresy:
“I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. Since I am a heretic, I am accustomed to being in the minority …” –Dyson, HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html
I think you are in good company, Judith.
“Among Dyson’s gifts is interpretive clarity, a penetrating ability to grasp the method and significance of what many kinds of scientists do. His thoughts about how science works appear in a series of lucid, elegant books for nonspecialists that have made him a trusted arbiter of ideas ranging far beyond physics.” — “The Civil Heretic ,” NY Times profile of Dyson, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html
I’m looking for the bit where Dyson says he’s the wrong guy to be the Climate Change heretic-gadfly — he’s too old & doesn’t know the field that well. Looks to me like Dyson’s looking at you, Judith….
“My objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.” — “Freeman Dyson Takes on the Climate Establishment”, http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151,
Can you guess he’s one of my scientific heroes?
Best wishes,
Pete Tillman
Historically, many of those branded as heretics more closely fit the definition of a reformer – challenging not the “faith”, but the actions of those in positions of leadership.
One can recognize the extent to which climate science is dogma in the reaction of fear and anger when flaws are pointed out. All scientific work is flawed and the job of scientists is to improve it, little by little, data point by data point. but the idea that McIntyre has the power to pull down the climate edifice shows how brittle it is and how the normal mechanism of finding flaws and fixing them is broken.
Except that McIntyre doesn’t have the power to pull down the “scientific edifice”.
The having of the “idea” is not in any way an indication that the scientific consensus is in fact “brittle”. I have an idea that you might be a reptilian clothed in a human skin – this does not mean that your perceived humanity is “brittle”.
Your logic is flawed.
“I guess one thing I don’t want to do is to spend all my time arguing this business. I mean, I am not the person to do that. I have two great disadvantages. First of all, I am 85 years old. Obviously, I’m an old fuddy-duddy. So, I have no credibility.
And, secondly, I am not an expert, and that’s not going to change. I am not going to make myself an expert. What I do think I have is a better judgment, maybe because I have lived a bit longer, and maybe because I’ve done other things. …”
“it is definitely a tactical mistake to use somebody like me for that job, because I am so easily shot down. I’d much rather the job would be done by somebody who is young and a real expert. But unfortunately, those people don’t come forward.”
— Dyson, http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151
–Cue Professor/Heretic Curry…
Mr.Tillman,
The system does not allow free thinkers as the same bad science is being taught until it becomes tradition.
“If it ain’t got math, it ain’t science”. Is the going theory.
So are you an expert?
Your probably more superior are your brain is not locked into bad science.
I’ve only known and read you for a few months, so my impression of you is
SCIENTIST
There can’t be dogma or heretics in science.
“What the world needs is young heretics. I am hoping that one or two of the people who read this piece may fill that role.” — Dyson, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html
Not to be pushy, or anything …. More reinforcing the path you’ve already chosen. If you haven’t read Dyson’s thoughts on heresy and climate change, well, you should.
“I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models. ” –Dyson, op. cit.
The Climate War being what it is, a bevy of posts and comments will shortly be written that decry Judy and her various transgressions of various norms of scientific conduct and moral behavior. Many of these will be amusing to read. Alas, I predict that few will foreswear strawmen, sarcasm, and hyperbole to grapple sincerely and intelligently with the core issues that Judy raised here.
I hope that the best of the thought-provoking essays from the pro-AGW Consensus establishment get linked in this thread, and serve as the jumping-off point for productive and informed dialog.
This is a very human and humane piece, by a woman of plainly high intelligence and convictions who became disappointed by where the “hang together” mantra led. It would be helpful, as a next step, for her to place herself in the spectrum of the policy discussion. She seems to be neither a skeptic nor a catastrophist. So what do we DO? There are lots of experts out there with ideas to assess. What, Dr. Curry, speaks best to you?
A fair question but then again NOT. In the area you ask about we are all experts and entitled to our own opinions of ‘solutions’ (or more precisely, how much we’re willing to pay;-), as I’m sure you agree. I’d really like to read less about what others think are the political ways to proceed. Seems that’s the venue that caused so much trouble for Climate Scientists –latching onto political positions and BIG global solutions to save us all from a fate worse than a mideval plague.
Personal integrity and scientific honesty seem to have become rarer commodities in this world. Hopefully, your stand on these issues will be contagious.
I can’t think of a better way to start restoring a balance in determining the genuine possible impact we may be creating in the world. Maybe, if the IPCC can also be convinced to honestly assess both the positive and the negative effects, we could move forward in taking whatever reasonable (and practical) action may be needed without the coercion currently engendered by the activist extremist elements.
Thank you for having the courage to make this happen.
(Just delete this comment if you think it detracts from the flow, but sometimes I find working from specific example to general end up helping the understanding of the big picture).
Thanks for the link to “Mixing Politics and Science in Testing the Hypothesis that Greenhouse Warming is Causing a Global Increase in Hurricane Intensity.”
It seems like nature has showed her sense of humor with relatively low tropical cyclone activity over the last few years. At the same time, most people do believe that it is very reasonable to expect warming ocean temperatures to increase storm intensity and/or total activity.
After a few more years of data and apparently having looked a bit at model uncertainties, are you more or less certain that the 3 step “central hypothesis” of
Writing as both a libertarian (a person whose political philosophy is guided by those principles of methodological individualism which lead to the primacy of individual human rights in both society and civil government) and a clinically experienced physician necessarily trained in the sciences, I have to observe that it is all but impossible for me to conceive of any intellectually honest and genuinely educated person not to be a libertarian, and not to have noted that the carbon dioxide forcing mechanism of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis had never passed the “sniff test” from the moment the notion first began to gain widespread currency in the 1980s.
Even to an ex-Biology major and a practicing family doctor, the methods by which the blundering “climatologist” charlatans of the AGW fraud and the colluding politicians and bureaucrats of both the United Nations and the various levels of government in these United States had put before the public – by way of the complicit and unskeptical “if it bleeds, it leads” catastrophe-mongering media – highly suspect categorical statements about a realm of scientific investigation fraught with confounding factors long acknowledged to impose nonlinear responses on each other as well as upon the outcomes of their interactions….
Well, hell. How could your personal bullpuckey detector not have been triggered, Dr. Curry?
When so very many people known to practice duplicity for profit and power take up the cudgels and start bashing in the skulls of dissenters in this “settled science” suppressive fashion, advocating punitive taxation and invasive regulation to force upon the “common people” lives of constraint, sacrifice, and poverty while the Prominenten among the alarmists not only gathered in enormous wealth as the result of their fraudulences but also enjoyed the benefits of broad, deep “carbon footprint” quality in their daily lives, just what the hell escaped your notice about all this?
As a scientist, can a malpractice lawsuit be brought against you for failure to have maintained that proper level of diligence required to diagnose the malignant criminality of the IPCC and the other parties complicit in the “man-made global warming” fraud long before you could no longer avoid the inescapable reality you found in that “FOIA2009.zip” file last November?
Hm. Probably not.
I suppose that’s why a primary care grunt like me picked this up more than two decades before you did.
—
Tell us how you really feel!
I suspect you still smoke, since the evidence against tobacco was not iron-clad…
I’m not a libertarian, since religion isn’t my bag. Try reading a copy of “The dialectical necessity of morality” before you make any more foolish statements about individuals.
Oh, of course you’re not a libertarian. Neither genuine moral nor intellectual integrity in you, obviously, and absolutely no idea whatsoever about the non-aggression principle and how it bears upon (for example) freedom from as well as freedom of religion.
I wonder why all “environmentalist” authoritarians seem to be so reliably suckered by the notion that libertarianism – which is as replete with atheists like me as it is with anarchists (“It’s not the law, it’s just a good idea”) – is a manifestation of the religious right, and think it somehow witty to condemn the defense of individual human rights as if it were borne entirely of credence in some kind of ineffable Sky Pixie.
Plain to see that you’re one of those wonderful people who know so much more than any of us who don’t share in your enlightened vision of what hoi polloi can be made to do if properly chained and whipped to the tasks chosen for us by our betters.
And one of those whips, of course, will be in your hand, won’t it, Ormond?
Just to comfort you in your welter of silly pointlessness and argumentum ad hominem (you never did do debate in high school or college, did you?), I’ve never been a smoker of any sort. As a child, I got the chance to review photomicrography of pulmonary histopathology induced by such suicidal practices (as well as a look at some gross specimens of chronic pulmonary emphysema) and came to what is obviously a more thoroughly studied and well-reasoned appreciation of “the evidence against tobacco” (and other inhalant irritants, carcinogens, and vasospasm-inducing substances) than you yourself are ever likely to attain.
Must be some kind of warmist fixation on Dr. Lindzen, I suppose. You’ve got to give it to the psychosis of authoritarian environmentalism. It is most assuredly a mass delusion.
—
@ Ormond Otvos
“I’m not a libertarian, since religion isn’t my bag.”
Don’t believe in liberty and don’t know what you believe in?
Then you are no-one and are welcome no-where.
Sad.
Thank you, Professor Curry, for having the courage and the integrity to put scientific principles ahead of the generous grants and awards that follow consensus opinions.
Let me echo Peter D. Tillman’s comment: You and Professor Freeman Dyson are definitely on the right side!
The problems you witnessed in climatology occurred in other popular areas of science in the past, as politicians moved public tax funds from:
_a.) Nuclear science to
_b.) Space science to
_c.) Environmental sciences.
Climatologists didn’t have a chance to figure out the causes of climate change because of the misinformation that they inherited about Earth’s heat source from nuclear and space scientists.
President Eisenhower warned us of the approaching danger in his farewell address on 17 Jan 1961: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
“It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Mr. Manuel,
This type of science ideology generated traditions being passed down through schools and not allowing any questioning. From one discovery, a blanket theory was put into many areas. Not to be questioned as funding had them the authority to the science.
I question everything as I have found much of science is complacent with generality of science and not looking for absolute accuracy. An extremely complex system like the atmosphere and all it’s different interactions cannot be covered by individual areas of science that are arrogantly advocating their theory.
Such a thing as working together for answers is out of the question.
Except on some of the blogs that are interested in this area.
Judith,
There are two uncertainties to consider. First, the cause and effect relationship between atmospheric CO2 and global temp. Second, global temp. data that shows global warming trend. I would share two of the best articles I’ve seen about these topics.
CO2 and global temp.
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01resources/climate_of_belief.pdf
Global temp. data
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf
For the lack of anything profound or particularly eloquent to say, let me just say it simply:
Thank you, Ms. Curry.
Dr C
I dont know whether this has been posted here before.
From John Rennie’s blog – former Scientific American editor:
Scientific American has now published an ‘editorial’ on its website – (with input from you?). In that they include all their propaganda they have published ever on global warming.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=want-to-learn-more-about-climate-change
Dr Curry, You and Keith Kloor popularized the notion of climate tribes. As an outsider, it seems to me that the whole climate establishment and its various arms, like Sci Am are much more tribal and deferential to its totem-pole and wellspring of community goodwill – the IPCC worldview, many times over.
The Sci Am family contribution has now been a poll, a blog post by Lemonick, two posts by John Rennie, and now an editorial and with a global warming URL spam list.
All of this in reaction to their own article and criticism which remains secret and was offered behind-the-scenes.
One can surely be excused to thinking we are dealing with the mafia or some sort of a gang. Why can’t those who protested about Lemonick’s article come out in the open?
When we obtained our results on condensation-induced dynamics, which did appear to us significant, we hurried to share them with people who, in our opinion, would be most excited — the meteorologists, the atmospheric scientists. At that time I did not know anybody in the field, such that the words Trenberth, Pielke, Curry, Holland, Emanuel etc. were just English words to me (my apologies to the real people). I contacted several people, but invariably the discussion faded soon with advice to contact someone else or with a phrase “I share X’s concerns and have nothing to add”. Sometimes people responded enthusiastically first, then there was silence.
From the uniform reactions I was receiving and uniform behaviour I was observing, I got an surrealistic feeling that I am contacting one and the same person all the time. I called him the-very-well-respected-meteorologist. He disliked us and our results and was bothered by our existence. Sometimes he was very rude (it pertained anonymous reviews). But the key point that there was no lively interest from his side. No interest in science.
There was one remarkable exception. Dr. Judy Curry. She was not afraid of discussing things and saying that she is not sure of one thing or another. She did not say that we already know everything in models, go away. She showed persistent interest in our work, true scientific interest.
Scientists do science. When a result is obtained, it is in human nature to share it with others, it is a sincere move of human soul. Like a child when finds a flower shows it to his mum with affection and looking for emphathy. In the same way scientists need to share their results with their brethren. It is like breathing, it is an inherent component of scientific productivity. My colleagues and I are owing Dr. Curry the fact that we are now having an opportunity to breathe, after all.
Anastasia: Between you and Judith, you have encapsulated all that is wrong with the “climate science” mantra and groupthink. The circling of the wagons.
We need more like you.
Anastassia,
A beautiful post – especially the last paragraph. Yes, it appears many in the climate science arena have stifled the natural human tendency to want to share – in both directions – what is, in its essence, our human joy of discovery.
I believe that to be the source of all true and noble science and art. I get it from reading poetry and literature or listening to fine music as much as from coming to understand a new concept, or convey successfully a concept I understand to someone else.
Shame on those who would not entertain you!
Anastassia,
A wonderful and insightful post.
“Scientists do science. When a result is obtained, it is in human nature to share it with others, it is a sincere move of human soul. Like a child when finds a flower shows it to his mum with affection and looking for empathy. In the same way scientists need to share their results with their brethren. It is like breathing, it is an inherent component of scientific productivity.”
What you have written here is pure truth with the beauty of poetry.
The politicization of climate science (shamefully prevalent in English-speaking countries and elsewhere) is nothing short of tragic when considered within the context of your post.
Everyone’s a “specialist” these days and so few really have the ability to discuss anything outside their own limited area of special interest. Time’s money! Money talks! Nobody walks! Run! Run! Run! (There really does need to be something above ‘PhD’ that identifies those with true genius among us –who once were but have moved beyond being “specialists”.)
I wish there was some accurate polling company that could assess the pre/post climategate opinions of scientists and engineers.
My very non representative sampling suggests that most physicists and engineers opinions of AGW theory fell drastically with the revelations of the climategate letters and the disturbing truth of how much scientific process had been corrupted.
Since then, I find comment after comment about how the climate scientists at RC are their own worse enemy, in terms of their bullying, in terms of their defensiveness at all costs.
Still, I think the most amazing aspects are their insistence of how they are correct, their refusal to actually investigate the science, and their spinning that as corroboration of the science.
Best wishes Ms. Curry. And thank you.
Jerry,
Interesting poll. I am an engineer and didn’t give my thought to Global Warming pre-Climategate – I thought of it as the Al Gore thing and figured he was make a mess of it but that there was a consensus of qualified, hard-working scientists of great integrity and character working on the problem and eventually everything would be fine.
Then Climategate and everything has changed for me. I now consider the argument that man-made CO2 is irreversibly heating the planet borderline ridiculous considering the paucity of evidence and the fallibility of GCM computer models. Perhaps man-made CO2 is a problem – so far I see nothing that proves it to the point of certainty that a scientific consensus can be declared.
Dr. Curry,
I don’t post too often ( I enjoy reading the discourse between those who do), but I am compelled to this time. It is scientists like you that we need A LOT MORE of. In all fields of science, and much more in climate science.
I learned about you from postings at WUWT. I admit, I thought of you as a ‘warmist’ but was interested to listen to what you had to say, because of the ‘civility’ in the discussions . When you started this site, I was interested in learning more about what you had to say, including from all those who comments on your postings (and if you recall, I replied to the ‘No consensus on consensus’ post, with my ‘learning journey’ I had been doing concerning CO2 after the 2007 IPCC report ).
I have greatly enjoyed your postings so far, and your efforts to honestly evaluate the IPCC reports and the latest happenings in the climate science community. I look forward to more.
And it now doesn’t matter whether you might believe strongly in ‘CO2 increases are a serious problem’ or not; your posts and discussions have shown me the integrity you have in wanting to arrive at ‘scientific conclusions’ regarding CO2. Whatever that might be, if we ever definitively reach that point . . .
You have gained my respect ten fold.
Martin Clauss
(. . just a mechanical/aeronautical engineer who enjoys learning more about climate science . . .)
Judith,
Amen. I could write a similar kind of statement, that showed acceptance of the orthodoxy until a moment where, for good reason, I needed to look closely at it. And then my critical faculties, honed by years of reading applications for funding, rose up and said, Hey!…’
Keep going.
When you say, “The spillover has been a loss of public trust in climate science and some have argued, even more broadly in science” you hit the nail squarely on the head.
I will not presume to render judgment on the science, but rather comment upon the politics involved. And anyone who denies that politics are part of this debate is simply deluded.
The problem, as I see it, is not conclusions of objective science, it’s how those conclusions are injected into the sociopolitical affairs of man.
I don’t think it’s going too far to say that the perception, if not the reality of the corrupting influence of money upon the science of AGW, is what drives popular skepticism. It’s not so much science saying “here is the data that supports the objective conclusion of X” it’s the political narrative that flows from that statement.
I’ve been an “environmentalist” since I was a boy, and I still clearly remember the overheated rhetoric of the “greenhouse effect” climate alarmists way back in the 60s and 70s. I remember the hysteria about “peak oil” and the claims that we would run out of oil by…well…a decade ago. And yet every time someone predicts peak oil and the end of civilization as we know it from the oil running out, some oil company discovers an as-yet undiscovered reservoir of oil that rivals that found in Saudi Arabia, usually somewhere on the narrow margins of the 70 percent of the planet that has NOT been explored for oil. And this doesn’t even address the theory that oil is not a “fossil fuel” but that it is actually a renewable resource that’s created by chemistry far underground, as indicated by the occasional refilling of depleted oil reservoirs.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Suffice it to say that many of my generation twigged to the hysterical “Chicken Little” prognostications of climate alarmists decades ago, so we no longer give them any credence when they reappear with new dire predictions of our imminent demise as a species.
It is the co-opting of legitimate climate science by politicians, and the extreme measures they propose to inflict on the people of this planet without the slightest idea what they are actually doing that particular infuriates me, and causes a backlash reaction against the science that is often MIS-used to support the political agendas and power-mongering that’s going on using AGW science as the excuse for consolidating Progressive power and elite, one-world government rule.
One of the things that induces me to disbelieve the science, as it’s presented not by the scientists, but by the media and the politicians (which includes the IPCC, which is a politically-controlled body, not a scientific one), is the complete lack of any coherent plan to ADAPT to changing climate conditions, rather than the utterly useless notion of beggaring the world economy and driving us all back to grubbing for roots with pointed sticks while living in wattle-and-daub huts as a rational solution to AGW.
As a climate scientist, surely you know that the climate has been substantially warmer in the recent geologic past than it is now, and that life managed to flourish and survive. Life did not do this by the wringing of hands and pointing of fingers about who’s to blame or by lamenting times gone by and attempting to turn back the clock of time (to the last ice age in this case…not exactly what I would call a good idea), but rather life survived by adapting to change.
This is the universal rule of evolution: Adapt or Die.
And yet I see almost no argument or suggestions forthcoming about how we, as human beings, need to adapt to the existing increases in CO2 in the atmosphere that, according to climatologists, will be with us for a century or more no matter what we do. All I see are political plans to make money for the intelligentsia and the elite, like Al Gore and the other owners of the Chicago Climate Exchange, who will reap hundreds of billions of dollars as a result of the politically-imposed wrong-headed reactions to the findings of science.
Where are the committees dedicated to relocating the poor of Bangladesh and other low-lying areas that will be inundated? Where are the engineering plans for the sea-walls and dikes outside of New York City, London or any other seaboard city that will preserve the infrastructure from sea-level rises? Where are the plans to take advantage of climate warming to increase food production using the fertile and newly-unfrozen muskeg of Canada and Russia? Where are the regulatory bodies prohibiting the building of new infrastructure and buildings in areas that will be flooded if the ice caps melt?
Where is the PLANNING? All I see is panic reaction and attempts to reverse course, rather than attempts to steer the vessel through the shoals to a safe harbor, albeit a new one.
Humanity is not immortal, nor are cities entitled to perpetual existence. The Minoan civilization appears to have been all but wiped out by a single catastrophic geological event; the eruption of Santorini. Why do we assume that London or New York has any “right” to survive climate change, particularly one that takes place slowly, over decades or centuries, if no one is willing to plan for the unthinkable in order to save it?
This, I think, is what drives most of the opposition to the science involved. Politics, and money, not science is what’s driving the AGW industry, and as it turns out, we, the People, are not quite as stupid as the Progressive elite would like to think we are, and we see through the political charade. But what we see behind the curtain appears to be, and sometimes is, the duplicity, mendacity and cupidity of global warming science that, to our eyes, is complicit with the political agenda of world political and economic domination by the political and economic elite, like, for example, George Soros and Al Gore. By lying down with swine, science has acquired the stink of politics and money. That’s most unfortunate.
Thus, it is the debasement of the objectivity and independence of the climatological scientific community that is evident in their cooperation with the forces of Progressive politics, and the evident pandering for government funding that is obvious to those of us standing outside the pale, that drives much of the skepticism.
For climate science to regain any credibility, first it must wean itself off the teat of government funding, because government funding is never provided without strings attached, and in the case of AGW, the primary hawser is that the science be massaged so that it fits the pre-determined political agenda of power and control.
That, I believe, is why you are a Pariah, because your candor and your skepticism threaten not the scientific community, but rather it threatens the power of the political and economic elite who are attempting to twist the science to their own ends.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but when you threaten the power elite, things will go badly for you, sometimes very, very badly. So be careful, because there is nothing quite as dangerous as a banker or a politician threatened with a loss of money or power. They will, in general, do anything to preserve their own privilege and position, and those who have invested in the AGW “fraud” have invested enormous amounts of political and economic capital, and they will not be balked without at the very least extracting some measure of revenge.
This is Progressive/Alinsky policy in fact, so your position as anathema to science is entirely predictable.
But, keep up the good fight anyway, and know that there are people out here in the darkness of ignorance who actually do understand what you’re trying to tell us. As a result of skepticism such as yours, my mantra has become “adapt or die,” and I believe that adaptation is where we need to focus our attention, since the time we have to adapt is far less than the time it will take to reverse the effects of AGW, if it exists, and if it’s even possible to do so without causing a worse catastrophe for the human species in the process.
Seth
As a post-script, I would appreciate an answer to this question: One scientific figure that I never hear quoted is how the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted by all of humanity compares to the greenhouse gasses emitted by volcanic eruptions? Would one or more major eruptions wipe out all the reductions that we could achieve by beggaring our economy and reducing CO2 emissions to zero in the next century? Do you know what the impacts of volcanism are in this regard? In other words, is there any real point in trying to reduce our CO2 emissions if all we can possibly do will amount to a drop in the ocean, and one that might be rendered completely worthless by a volcanic eruption?
Seth Volcanic eruptions? That one I know.
Volcanoes 242 million tons a year. Us 29 billion tons a year. We put out more than 100x what volcanoes can. So much that even the huge Pinatubo eruption made barely a blip in the CO2 graph. The aerosols made an obvious difference to temperature, but you need a magnifying glass to see the effect on the CO2 levels.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming-intermediate.htm
Thank you for that information.
Seth
Recommend you reexamine the issue of resource depletion – aka “peak oil” or “plateauing oil”. See data at the Oilwatch Monthly where crude oil production plateaued in 2004. This drove up the price of oil, and precipitated the world’s worst oil driven economic crunch.
The issue is not “running out” but “rate of supply” with the necessity of converting coal, bitumen and shale “oil” to liquid transport fuels.
For a reality check, see Robert Hirsch “The Impending World Energy Mess”.
For details, see the detailed 745 p thesis by Steve Mohr:
More important is the rapid drop of light oil exports.
Now how did you plan to get to work?
Oil Watch Monthly e.g. for August 2010 especially chart 6 world crude oil production.
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/2010_August_Oilwatch_Monthly.pdf
“Rate of supply” and logistical problems with transport are mere technical issues that are resolved by the free market. The actual problem is political, not physical.
In the United States, for example, no substantial new oil refineries have been built in decades because of the oppressive regulatory political atmosphere and bans on domestic drilling, particularly offshore.
The same applies to nuclear power.
Given the political will to increase production, delivery, exploration and research into fuels conversion, all will increase in direct proportion to the market demand for fuel. Government need only get out of the way of technology.
The ban on drilling after the Deepwater Horizon accident is a classic example of bureaucratic obstruction intended to stifle domestic oil production, and it was imposed for political, not technological reasons.
1. A “plateau” in oil production is not necessarily causally related to exhaustion of the resource. Most often, oil production levels are part of a complex geopolitical and economic matrix of supply and demand.
As I said, new discoveries of oil are made every day, and I see no credible evidence that the supply of oil is going to run out any time soon.
2. With all due respect to Mr. Mohr, there is no emergency going on that requires intemperate, hasty, panicked reaction. Not only are we not in any immediate danger of running out of oil, there are several other existing and potential fuel sources available, some of which remain essentially unexploited, specifically methane hydrate ice nodules on the sea floor.
The markets will bring those alternative petrochemical resources to the fore in a natural, timely manner as the technology improves and the need develops.
In other words, there is no “20 year imperative” at all. Such alarmism only feeds the panic and prevents ADAPTATION to changing circumstances, usually for political reasons having nothing whatever to do with either science or the availability of resources.
Further to David L. Hagen’s posts, “environmentalist” Seth might assuage his disdain about being fooled about peak oil by looking at these data.
As an aside, the claim that oil is created abiotically in a way that will ensure that it never runs out is rendered a fallacy by US oil production over time.
Funny, the data table you provided shows a steady increase in oil production from 1960 to 2009, from 20 to 72 bbl. How does this lend credence to the notion that we have discovered and depleted all the oil resources on the planet?
As for abiotic recharge, I didn’t suggest that it would provide substantial recharge in the near term, merely that the theory suggests that biotic processes may not be the only source for oil, which suggests that oil may be found in places where biotic production would not be expected.
Further, the existence of methane hydrate slush on the sea-bed awaits only appropriate recovery technology, and, as I understand it, is sufficient in quantity to serve the fuel needs of the planet for some time to come.
Again, all the data presented here does not suggest that we have reached “peak oil,” much less that the demise of civilization due to exhaustion of petrochemical fuel resources is imminent.
This provides rather a lot more time to deal with adapting to climate change, and a lot more fuel with which to do it.
The primary complaint that I have with the political side of the AGW issue is the strident urgency for half-baked, ill-considered, ineffective POLITICAL “solutions” that have little or nothing to do with actually dealing with global warming.
For example, there is absolutely no imminent disaster going on that requires the imposition of cap-and-trade economic regulations in the US, as proposed by the Progressives. If such things are even necessary, which is doubtful, there is a century or more during which we can make careful, thoughtful, economically-sustainable plans and decisions about how to shift our world energy sources to renewable sources.
The big hurry, and all the IPCC and other hysteria about AGW are politically motivated, and are based in the desire of Progressives to ram through whatever they can while they are in power, in order to consolidate power and control, create global governance, and provide massive profits to people like George Soros and Al Gore by using the force of law to directly benefit organizations like the Chicago Climate Exchange.
Science, and scientists should be ashamed of the way their efforts have been co-opted by the radical Progressive left in its quest to consolidate Progressive power and ideology. If AGW is indeed a problem, nothing we do in the next year, or two years, or ten years will have any real effect, positive or negative, on the existing trends.
Therefore, there is adequate time available for careful consideration and planning to achieve economically realistic goals that will not, as the current rush to judgment will, enrich the political alarmists and one-world-government advocates at the expense of wealthy nations, specifically the United States.
You see, AGW is being used as a Progressive/Socialist stalking-horse in its quest to destroy America to benefit 2nd and 3rd world nations, which the Socialists and Progressives feel are entitled to redistribution of the wealth of America, because they feel America is a bad place that owes the rest of the planet compensation for being prosperous.
And that, my friend, is politics, not science.
Please reread my previous post. You are badly misrepresenting me, because I did not say that all oil resources had been discovered, nor did I say that they had all been depleted. What I did do was to guide you to data that show that production appears to be peaking.
No more, no less.
And by all appearances it is peaking. Despite your claim of a “steady increase in oil production from 1960 to 2009, from 20 to 72 bbl [sic], an actual graph of the data indicates what is essentially a plateau for the last six years, and this is despite the taking over of Iraqi oil fields by the US and its allies in the illegal Gulf war.
One can easily pick on the graph the previous periods in history when embargoes and earlier Gulf wars affected production, but today, with greater demand that ever, more wells that ever, “better” technology than ever, and more Western control of Middle East oil fields than ever, that graph just stubbornly refuses to go up. And to top it off, if memory serves me correctly current annual global consumption is around 82 million barrels per day, so what does this mean when compared to the production figure…?
Erm, just look at the graph, if you can’t deconstruct a table. Exactly when would you predict that the curve would reach 80 million barrels per year? And how long do you predict that it will remain above this volume?
On what analytical basis do you make any such statements?
Far more likely than the development of “appropriate recovery technology” is the likelihood that warming oceans will cause large-scale dehydration of clathrates, with a resultant addition of a huge bolus of methane to the atmosphere.
There are many CO2-is-a-“greenhouse”-gas denialists here, but only an idiot would claim that methane is not a greenhouse gas. Those here who also deny that the atmosphere and the oceans are currently warming might be able to smugly ignore the phenomenon, but if and when the undersea clathrates are tipped past their current solid phase, there will be little cover under which to hide…
I rather think that it is ill-information, or even paranoia, more than it is politics.
Peak oil puts an end to the speculated effects 100 years from now:
http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/IPCC_article.pdf
2004 report on USA shale oil – states that N. American oil from shale & Canada’s tar sands is greater than the current known oil reserves worldwide… that the USA shale oil is sufficient to cover all of our projected needs for the next 100 years and at comparable prices…. that the technology for recovering it is largely proven, including near commercial scale working plants….
That was, I believe, before the massive natural gas find in the eastern USA….
Then of course there’s nuclear, which could easily remove some of the strain on fossil fuel use…
Somehow I just can’t get myself too worked up over peak oil as a actual physical supply threat. Political problem that could have huge fallout on all of us? Sure – the way our policies are and have been, its not terribly promising. And why do I suspect very little will change in that regard until after there’s another major price or supply FUBAR? Not to mention the problem with lack of newer refineries….
Strategic Significance of America’s Oil Shale Resource
Volume I Assessment of Strategic Issues
March 2004 Final Report
Prepared for:
Office of Deputy Assistant Secretary
for Petroleum Reserves
Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves
U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, D.C.
Forward:
It is generally agreed that worldwide petroleum supply will eventually reach its productive limit,
peak, and begin a long-term decline. What should the United States do to prepare for this event?
An objective look at the alternatives points to the Nation’s untapped oil shale as a strategically
located, long-term source of reliable, affordable, and secure oil.
The vast extent of U.S. oil shale resources, amounting to more than 2 trillion barrels, has been
known for a century. In 1912, The President, by Executive Order, established the Naval Petro-
leum and Oil Shale Reserves (NPOSR). This office has overseen the U.S. strategic interests in
oil shale since that time. The huge resource base has stimulated several prior commercial at-
tempts to produce oil from oil shale, but these attempts have failed primarily because of the his-
torically modest cost of petroleum with which it competed. With the expected future decline in
petroleum production historic market forces are poised to change and this change will improve
the economic viability of oil shale.
It has been nearly two decades since meaningful federal oil shale policy initiatives were taken. In
that time technology has advanced, global economic, political, and market conditions have
changed, and the regulatory landscape has matured. As America considers its homeland security
posture, including its desired access to diverse, secure and abundant sources of liquid fuels, it is
both necessary and prudent to reconsider the potential of oil shale in the nation’s energy and
natural resource portfolio.
Commercializing the vast oil shale resources would complement the mission of the Strategic Pe-
troleum Reserve (SPR), by measurably adding to the country’s energy resource base. Addition of
shale oil to the country’s proved oil reserves could occur in a manner similar to the addition of
175 billion barrels of oil from Alberta tar sand to Canada’s proved oil reserves. As a result of the
commercial success oil from tar sand, production now exceeds 1 million barrels per day. U.S. oil
shale, which is as rich as tar sand, could similarly be developed and become a vital component in
America’s future energy security.
Oil shale and tars sands are to Middle Eastern crude what cow dung is to old-growth timber.
A drop is US oil production is pretty meaningless with regard to the abiotic question. Functioning wells have been capped off, and production has been a matter of economics, public policy, and the effect of regulations.
A drop is US oil production is rather germane with regard to the abiotic question.
If there was any significant abiotic source of oil recharge, the need for the US to “cap off” its wells would be moot.
The reality is that no-one has ever identified a recharging source of oil, and the need for the US to husband its domestic supplies is far, far from moot.
I’m neither an abiotic skeptic or believer – I don’t know enough about it and was only mentioning that its an existing theory.
The point I was making is that oil production in the US has not been a function of availability – far from it. Its been a function of regulations putting the majority of areas that could provide oil off limits.
As to capping off wells – its my understanding that there are wells off the coast of California (and perhaps elsewhere, I don’t know one way or the other) that were capped off not because they were no longer producing or even no longer producing at competitive rates/costs, but because of regulatory changes forcing them to shut down. Those wells could supposedly be reopened and producing again in just a few years, if desired and, of course, the regulations allowed it. Other wells that were capped because the oil worth recovering at the time was pretty much used up, could now be productive wells again because of advanced technology that allows far more recovery of oil.
These factors apparently have everything to do with why oil production has peaked in the USA – and that peak has little to do with any lack of supply.
http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/GOF_decline_Article.pdf
http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf
http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/PeakOilAge.pdf
http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/IPCC_article.pdf
http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/tiki-index.php?page=Global+Oil+Depletion
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50234
https://www.msu.edu/~ralsto11/PeakOil.pdf
Abiotic oil has been well discredited:
http://static.scribd.com/docs/j79lhbgbjbqrb.pdf
Let’s start more simply – can methane be produced abiotically?
The “discredited” part of abiotic oil, as I understand it, is an argument that although the process *can* happen, they doubt that it can happen at any significant rate. It seems like a promising area of research (determining the rate and significance), however, I’m unaware of any current studies or research in progress – as an ironic flip of the coin, abiotic oil skeptics control the terms of debate here :)
To see the parameters within which oil is formed look up the “oil window” then you will see that abiotic oil can’t happen.
Since carbonate rocks get subducted it is not unreasonable that small carbon compounds like methane accumulates inside subduction zone areas. But there is no evidence from any Precambrian rocks of any kind of oil or other higher carbon molecules forming.
Plus, kerogen, the precursor for oil, has very close chemical compositions to that of animal lipids.
Plus, almost every single oil field has a source formation. Identified by the unique chemical compounds in oil.
Plus, there is no way for oil to penetrate shale formations, such as the Bakken field, which is far too tight for the oil to seep into. It’s considered in situ oil formation sitting in the originating rock.
You’re applying rigorous skepticism to the concept of abiotic oil, which is great. However, you need to be more specific about *what* falsifiable hypothesis you’re trying to attack – if the question is whether or not abiotic oil is *possible*, nothing you’ve stated renders that assertion incorrect (“almost every single oil field” isn’t *every* oil field, for example). You may have a point about whether or not abiotic oil is *common*, but you’ve got the same difficult path AGW skeptics have – you simply cannot prove a negative.
All that being said, I wonder – what evidence would convince you that abiotic oil was the source of a specific formation? If it lacked specific unique chemical compounds? If it was extraterrestrial on a planet we know did not support life?
Understanding what would change our mind on a given topic gives us greater insight as to whether or not we’re doing science or religion.
Of course all theories have the potential to be falsified. Should an oil field be found that is definitively not from a biological source rock that would do it, say found in Precambrian rock of Archean age (not one). I see a potential of possible locations in posts below. But proving a non-biological origin would be most difficult. How one would prove that an oil deposit on another planet is not biological would be even more difficult.
Just because the Deccan Traps might have oil does not mean it is not biological. Subsequent tectonic events may have obliterated the source. If it wasn’t for a meteorite impact the Cantarell field may have never formed oil from its biological source rock.
There is one great hindrance to getting the information and that is oil companies are not keen on making their discoveries public because of competition. It’s sad because they have made some great and interesting discoveries that rarely get public.
I know very little about the subject, but do think its interesting. If one goes to google scholar, puts in:
natural abiotic hydrocarbon production
then using the advance search options limits to the selections that include enviro science, chemistry, & physics/planetary science, further limit to articles only, and only those since 2000…. you get just over 7K returns. I’m certain many of them not relevant to this discussion. I only looked at a few of the first returns on the first couple of pages, and who’s summary looked possibly related. One was the following, and note it states both “…a handful of sites convincingly suggest that abiotic organic synthesis occurs within the geosphere.” and “…currently there is no foolproof approach to distinguishing abiotic versus biotic organic synthesis.” So it certainly sounds as if they have decided that naturally occurring abiotic production of hydrocarbons is possible:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p41m041236k5753j/
Handbook of Hydrocarbon and Lipid Microbiology
2010, Part 3, 215-231, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-77587-4_14
Abiogenic Hydrocarbon Production at the Geosphere-Biosphere Interface via Serpentinization Reactions
G. Proskurowski
Abstract
The production of hydrocarbons via mechanisms not associated with biological processes has far reaching implications to the fields of petroleum geochemistry, astrobiology, and the study of early life and life in extreme environments. Despite an intense focus on discovering abiotic hydrocarbon sources in natural settings, only a handful of sites convincingly suggest that abiotic organic synthesis occurs within the geosphere. Although experimental studies in aqueous settings clearly demonstrate the potential for abiotic synthesis, the scope of abiotic hydrocarbon production in natural settings has yet to be defined. As theoretical and experimental studies indicate that abiotic hydrocarbon synthesis is maximized in highly reducing environments, it is not surprising that the strongest evidence for abiotic organic synthesis in natural settings is associated with the alteration (serpentinization) of reduced mantle rocks. The crux of this topic is that currently there is no foolproof approach to distinguishing abiotic versus biotic organic synthesis. Thus, it is especially important to be cognizant of the possibilities and limitations of abiotic hydrocarbon production when considering a deep subsurface biosphere where the organic matter may be synthesized by both abiotic and biotic processes.
~~~~~~~~~
Another was:
GENERAL ARTICLE
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 98, NO. 6, 25 MARCH 2010
772
J. Marvin Herndon is in the Transdyne Corporation, 11044 Red Rock
Drive, San Diego, CA 92131 USA. e-mail: mherndon@san.rr.com
Impact of recent discoveries on petroleum and
natural gas exploration: emphasis on India
J. Marvin Herndon
Two recent discoveries have greatly impacted understanding relevant to the origination and
emplacement of petroleum and natural gas deposits. One discovery, pertaining to hydrocarbon
formation from methane broadens significantly potential regions where abiotic petroleum and natural
gas deposits might be found. The other, discovery of the physical impossibility of Earth-mantle con-
vection, restricts the range and domain of geodynamic behaviour, and leads to new insights into the
formation of petroleum and natural gas deposits. This article highlights the impact and implica-
tions of those discoveries, especially as they relate to petroleum and natural gas exploration in
India and throughout the world. From the reasoning developed here, the generality of the consid-
erations involved, the understanding developed with respect to the East African Rift System, and the
experience garnered from the larger and older Siberian Traps, the prognosis and potential for the
region beneath the Deccan Traps of India to eventually become a major source of petroleum and
natural gas seems quite favourable.
~~~~~~~~~
I don’t know if a link this way will work for a google scholar search, but assuming it does & for your convenience, here’s the search I used:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=natural+abiotic+hydrocarbon+production&btnG=Search&as_allsubj=some&as_subj=bio&as_subj=chm&as_subj=phy&as_sdt=2000000001&as_ylo=2000&as_vis=0
Published in 2008, already has at least 70 citations:
Science 1 February 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5863, pp. 604 – 607
DOI: 10.1126/science.1151194
Prev | Table of Contents | Next
Reports
Abiogenic Hydrocarbon Production at Lost City Hydrothermal Field
Giora Proskurowski,1,2* Marvin D. Lilley,1 Jeffery S. Seewald,2 Gretchen L. Früh-Green,3 Eric J. Olson,1 John E. Lupton,4 Sean P. Sylva,2 Deborah S. Kelley1
Low-molecular-weight hydrocarbons in natural hydrothermal fluids have been attributed to abiogenic production by Fischer-Tropsch type (FTT) reactions, although clear evidence for such a process has been elusive. Here, we present concentration, and stable and radiocarbon isotope, data from hydrocarbons dissolved in hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the ultramafic-hosted Lost City Hydrothermal Field. A distinct “inverse” trend in the stable carbon and hydrogen isotopic composition of C1 to C4 hydrocarbons is compatible with FTT genesis. Radiocarbon evidence rules out seawater bicarbonate as the carbon source for FTT reactions, suggesting that a mantle-derived inorganic carbon source is leached from the host rocks. Our findings illustrate that the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in nature may occur in the presence of ultramafic rocks, water, and moderate amounts of heat.
1 School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
2 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
3 Department of Earth Sciences, ETH-Zentrum, Zurich, Switzerland.
4 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)–Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Newport, OR 97365, USA.
Judith,
Agree totally with Martin and Don-the-Aussie(?) above. It is easy to accept dogma/orthodoxy and exceeding difficult to challenge it. I know of no “establishment” that actually welcomes an iconoclast, no matter how much they need them…
Love your work, a fine article and one that I can only hope your detractors will actually spend the time to read before criticizing it.
Prof Curry,
Welcome to the dark side.
It seems that in climate science one must endorse the entire doctrine to be a respected member of the community. If anyone dares challenge any part of that doctrine, even when it was proven wrong, for example the Himalayan glaciers, they are automatically banned from respectability. The fall is even harder for the people that were considered as being insiders of the movement.
Roger Pielke jr makes a very good argument that there are other reasons to decarbonize the economy, he endorses the IPCC report but the simple fact, that he dared challenge model projection and pointed out the obvious flaws of cap and trade, has put him on the bad side of Joe Romm and realclimate who seems to believe that they must annihilates anyone who don’t agree with them through slander and mud fight.
After all, as Al Gore as pointed out, the science is settle. There is nothing that we can learn that could change the IPCC conclusion. Even Gavin Schmidt suggested that the working fine. If the science is settle and the model are working fine, the hockey sticks is holding etc. Maybe it is time that the government stop funding climate science and start funding other science that are not settled. I’m not sure Gavin would agree, even though he is not in it for the money.
Sturm und Drang are not the authors of a paper redefining climate sensitivity….
In the Scientific American link above, McKitrick is quoted as warning us that we are all non-expert in climate change. The field is broad and our own knowledge is so narrow. I feel that particularly since I teach a class called Climate Science and Policy. I keep looking for the Achilles’ heel in the IPCC argument because the conclusions are truly inconvenient, but I do not believe that I found it on this blog or on Spencer’s or on Watts’ or on … I found that if I wanted to be sure that I was not misleading students that it was useful to troll the blogs for leads to papers that would address the current disputes. But the blogs themselves never provided anything that actually upset any scientific apple carts. No one discredited the temperature trends or upset the water feedback or accounted for the warming with internal variability or galactic cosmic rays. And whats more, they never provided pointers to papers that achieved these feats. What else is there? Dr. Curry says “Not to say that the IPCC science was wrong, ……” Wait a minute. Isn’t that the only question?
Many who believe that climate is warming, that humans are causing a significant part of that warming and that it can be mitigated want to steer policy in that direction. When they act on this desire they step into an environment where lots of people disbelieve in evolution, think that the earth is 10000 years old, and believe the President to be a native of Kenya and a Muslim. The climate activists have been pretty badly beat up, but mostly by invective. How many solid punches have been landed on Working Group I of AR4? Have the temperature trends been turned into a cooling? Certainly not on Roy Spencer’s blog. Has the link between CO2 and temperature been broken? Certainly not in Lindzen’s papers. In the recent ‘debate’, Professor Lindzen seemed to allow up to 0.8C in climate sensitivity. I am waiting for his promised rewrite of the energy balance paper just like I waited for Dr. Curry’s final estimate on the certainty that most of the recent warming was anthropogenic. Experience tells me that neither will require me to shred the syllabus. You know, the first law, sigmattothefourth, olwr, albedo etc etc. And particles.
Of course the science is not settled. IPCC gives us climate sensitivity ranging from 2C to 4.5 C for a doubling of CO2. How the hell settled is that? Policy makers have indigestion over that range. Lindzen seems to be sneaking up on the lower end. Certainly Schwartz got there. So is Lindzen’s rewritten paper (the earlier one took some heavy hits in the literature, he said and is being revised to address them – did I hear that right?) likely to take sensitivity close enough to zero so that CO2 emissions are not an isssue? He claimed to have done that in the E&E paper of 2007, but that did not carry the day. Up to 30% of recent warming was traceable to CO2 he allowed – but even that sensitivity matters. Will the PDO and AMO and whatever else turn into the Spencer et al. paper that finally lays the need to mitigate to rest? I will read it in the literature when it is published and tell the students about it. Will the Curry reanalysis expand the error bars to include zero sensitivity to CO2? And if it did, would that overcome the recent published findings in the studies of the energy balance? You know the first law without models (Murphy et al 2009, JGR)….. I do not think so. I think that even if IPCC AR4 went out on a limb on attribution, that the revised satellite radiation data and revised ocean heat content data show us that CO2 is the real monster. And that our real challenge is dealing with the longlivedness of CO2 and the uncertainty in sensitivity. It will require adulthood out of people who have become accustomed to succeeding in debunking climate change by pointing out that 2008 was the warmest year.
The refereed literature is the best place to play out the arguments. I have followed the Trolls for years on dotearth and know that they are a persistent lot – maybe even heroic in their resistance to fact. The Republicans may win and may defund climate science. Certainly money disappeared in 2005 from CMDL’s agreed upon budget in conference. (Mooney would like to get the emails on that, I bet.) But that does not change the fact that the science has been done in the literature for a long time and progress has been made for a long time and has been ignored by lots of people for a long time. The blogs have not changed that.
If climate science is wrong and CO2-driven warming is not a threat, then a bunch of pointy headed academics have historic egg on their face and will die in deserved obscurity. If climate science is right and hundreds of millions of our posterity are at risk for increased water stress, then there is no shame in losing while saying so.
Regards,
Chuck
Chuck,
Could you accept the proposition that the science is inadequate?
Don,
I actually do inadequate science for a living. It seems to be a condition of my existence. I work very hard to make measurements and they are not accurate enough, not representative enough or not complete enough to answer the questions that I want to answer. So, in the literature, I answer the questions that I can answer. Because I experience this discipline on a day-to-day basis, I appreciate the role of refereed publishing in disciplining the discourse.
So yes, it occurs to me all the time that the science may be inadequate. Accepting it requires that it be demonstrated. And I go to meetings (AGU, Gordon Conferences), read papers and troll the blogs looking for that demonstration. Dr. Curry linked to Dr. Spencer in an earlier post. A few years ago, Dr. Spencer showed the temporal relationship between the PDO and the AMO (I think) and the 20th century bumps in global mean temperature. I do not believe that these correlations have made it into the literature as purported causes of that warming. When it does, I will read it carefully. Until then, “Nice graphs, Roy.”
Regards,
Chuck
“If climate science is wrong and CO2-driven warming is not a threat, then a bunch of pointy headed academics have historic egg on their face and will die in deserved obscurity.”
If the climate science is wrong but carries the day politically, the lives and livelihoods of billions are at risk. That is what is driving the humane political opposition. I suspect you have a dozen other non-climate related policy positions that would lead you to contradict that statement, but your unwillingness to concede the existence of that argument suggests a political affinity for the cure to which AGW is the disease.
Kasmir,
Actually I am not unwilling to acknowledge that possibility. I teach it a couple of times a year. If we pull money out of the global economy and stunt economic growth, then the consequent losses in food and medicine will lead to hardship and death.
So dueling economists get their due (Nordhaus projects 30 trillion in climate damages but finds that it is only efficient to mitigate 14 trillion). We are all market economists now. The wall came down and blew away the planned economies. Even SO2 is controlled in the US with cap and trade and not best-available-technology regulation. Carbon tax, cap and trade are market based strategies.
The real ideologues here are the so-called free market folks who accept, in principle, the existence of externalities, but who refuse to acknowledge that any actually exist because they do not want to justify the obvious remedy (regulation).
Regards,
chuck
Chuck: Perhaps, then, you could point out the exact place in AR4, WGI, Ch. 9 — the attribution chapter, the only relevant section of the entire report — where there is any actual evidence whatever that the 1975–98 warming was due to CO2. I’ve read it twice (the style is horrible) and can only find wordy paraphrases of Dr. Jones’ “Well, if it’s not CO2, I can’t think what else it could be.” After two decades and tens of billions of research dollars, do you honestly expect the world to dismantle industrial civilization on such a feeble basis?
[Dr. C, another excellent essay. Welcome to what is actually the light side. The climate dogma has badly damaged science, but with goodwill and intellectual integrity it may recover.]
the assumption craig, is that the mitigation of climate change is equivalent to dismantling industrial civilization. I strongly doubt that. Costs of low-carbon alternatives are coming down and energy storage is a serious development project in lots of places. I know an entrepreneur who thinks that climate change is a crock but is developing a storage medium with the energy density of gasoline. If that works, a lot of your worries disappear.
There is real money to be made here. Get out there and invent! Of course, if your 401K is invested in tar sands, you won’t like that either. Diversify, diversify.
Cheerfully,
chuck
Opps, I forgot the feeble basis.
The basis is actually the First Law of Thermodynamics. It is implicit in the climate models, they do a good job on radiation heat transfer. I thought some years ago that Dr. Lindzen had the Achilles heal when he blogged that the outgoing longwave radiation from the models did not match the satellite measurements. It did not turn into a paper because the satellite retrievals were revised (as often happens in satellite science) and the newer values were much more confirming of the models (more grist for the conspiracy mill here). His latest paper involves an energy balance in the tropics – First Law again.
Professor Lindzen published in 2007 in Energy and Environment that human impact on climate in the period you mention is limited to 30% of the change. In 2001 he doubted that the warming was established (wsj editorial – inspite of signing an National Academy of Sciences report that affirmed the summaries of the IPCC third assessment.) Now he finds that the evidence of a warming and the contribution of humans to it to be ‘trivial.’ If the most renowned skeptical scientist finds that up to 30% of the 1960 to 2000 warming is caused by agw, then your use of the word feeble is a too flip.
If you want to wade into a non-climate model first law analysis, read Murphy et al 2009 in JGR. they provide plenty of energy – starting with CO2 to accomplish the warming.
Regards.
Chuck
Chuck,
Please read the two studies I posted above and tell me if this is the Achilles’ heel you’re looking for? If not, see these two papers below.
On the 1st law of thermodynamics and Stefan-Boltzmann law of radiation, read Dr. Gerlich
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
On global temp. data showing warming trend, read this CRU paper
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT3_accepted.pdf
See page 21 bottom chart. It shows the global temp. anomaly from 1850 to 2005. Note that given the margins of error, one cannot conclude a definite warming trend until 1990 to 2005. How can anyone attribute a cause such as anthropogenic CO2 when the effect itself (global warming) is uncertain?
Btw, Dr. Richard Alley also postulated the possibility of global cooling in the National Geographic program “Big Freeze.” He also said that the present stable climate is odd compared to the wildly fluctuating temp. changes in the past in short periods of 20-30 yrs. Apparently nature is capable of drastic climate change in short periods of time without man’s help.
Strangelove,
Thanks for the references. I kept a copy of a few of these for use in class. However, none of them pass muster for a Achilles’ Heal for Climate Change Science.
1. Watts is classic Watts. His objections have been disposed of in the refereed literature (see the NOAA paper on the stations). And he quotes UAH to debunk warming when UAH data clearly show warming.
2. The Gerlich and Ts… paper was such hash that I really wonder about the journal in which it was published. They started with a proof that CO2 could not change the thermal conductivity or diffusivity of air which is uncontested and unimportant. They moved on to an analysis of greenhouses (the kind you grow plants in) which is also completely irrelevant to climate. Then they completely misstate the argument that the atmosphere is responsible for 33C warming (true) because of greenhouse effect. They get so much wrong that I doubted that it was really published where they said it was and I moved on. I would check that the article was really published.
3. I do not understand your interpretation of the figure on page 21 of the HadCrut3 paper. They clearly show that their data and their estimates of errors support the conclusion of warming. I think you may have misunderstood the bottom graph. It shows the difference between the land and ocean data, not the overall trend.
4. Please see Dr. Alley’s 2009 Bjerknes presentation at AGU where he argued that CO2 was very important throughout the paleoclimate record. “The Bigest Control Knob”
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
I am afraid that the stuff you cite does not show what you think that it shows. I recommend that you look at The National Academy of Sciences Climate Choices series.
http://dels-old.nas.edu/basc/climate-change/
Regards,
Chuck Wilson
Chuck,
I understand the bottom chart is land and sea data. If you look at the top and middle charts for land and sea, they also show definite positive anomaly starting 1985-90 onwards. There is warming based on median values but the error range must be above the zero anomaly bar to remove the uncertainty.
I also thought Dr. Gerlich argument against atmospheric greenhouse effect is quite weak. I think the strong points of the paper are the inadequacy of climate models and the inaccuracy in computing global temp. averages.
Thanks for the link to Dr. Alley’s lecture. I’ve already seen it last year. I think Dr. Patrick Frank’s article on climate models is pretty strong.
I think all these show climate is quite unpredictable even if we have a good theory and accurate past data. We still don’t have a set of equations that link global temp. and CO2 to make accurate forecasts. What we have is a correlation with a large error.
Regards.
Chuck,
Btw, I disagree with Dr. Alley. I think there are 3 control knobs: cloud, water vapor, ocean. Compared to these 3 giants, CO2 is miniscule. It took 250 yrs. of dumping anthropogenic CO2 in the air to produce a radiative forcing of 1.7 W/m^2. Clouds can produce the same radiative forcing by a mere 1% decrease in cloud cover. 250 yrs. of anthropogenic CO2 increased atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 384 ppm. Water vapor, the most abundant greenhouse gas, can put the same amount of H2O molecules in the air by a mere 1% increase in humidity.
100 yrs. of anthropogenic CO2 increased global temp. by 0.6 C. The oceans have enormous heat capacity that it can produce the same air temp. change by heat transfer equivalent to 0.0006 C change in ocean temp. This is so small, it’s probably undetectable. The influence of oceans may be significant to the atmosphere yet undetectable in the ocean.
Given the uncertainties in global temp. data, even with 6,000 thermometers spread all over the world since 1850, we still cannot ascertain global warming at least until 1990 onwards. Therefore, all arguments for or against AGW using limited regional proxy data such as ice cores, tree rings, fossil records, historical accounts, etc. are speculative. They do not pass as hard evidence in the burden of proof required in physical science.
Thanks for that, Chuck. I keep looking for papers that undercut, overturn or at least ameliorate what the already published science tells me.
I’ve even accepted the repeated assertion that sensitivity is in the 2 to 4.5 degree range. Then, every now and again, I have a bit of a brain choke.
2 degrees, 4 degrees! Are you mad? The LIA was only 1 degree below the long term average – what on earth are we thinking.
And then I just keep trudging on, hoping for a sign of better things. I wish, how I wish, someone would offer some real, hard facts or some brand new science to change the big bad picture. All I find is invitations to ‘debate’ or ‘discussion’ or ‘another point of view’ when I’m really looking for data or graphs or analysis or a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g concrete to justify a different conclusion.
Spencer & Braswell 2010 is published and available at Dr. S’s site. Their data provides evidence that climate feedbacks are strongly negative, which in turn indicates a climate sensitivity well below 1 degree. Be of good cheer.
Adelady re papers – see Climate Change Reconsidered
I’m always troubled by First Law questions that maybe others see more clearly than I do.
The greenhouse effect produces heat, not temperature rise.
Temperature rise is a result of and proxy for heat production.
But so too are atmosphereic chemical energy, air pressure, energy in lightning, wind speed, structural change in the atmosphere, state change in precipitation and surface or subsurface ice to water, biochemical energy increase, ocean current speed and volume, wave height and intensity, ocean acidity, and equilibrium shifts in all of the above, and probably more.
Does the energy of all of these quibbling little nuissances add up to a significant portion of the energy of air temperature rise? I’d believed at one point that the energy of the sum of all non-temperature changes must approach the energy of temperature changes in a closed system, but then it’s been a long time since I could pretend to be conversant in the topic.
Do the temperature sensitivity calculations include these non-temperature effects, or are they as a net unimportant?
I’m just wondering whether I’m supposed to be looking for 2C-4C, or 1C-2C plus more high pressure cells, faster winds, altered pH in water and soil, shrinking polar caps, retreating glaciers, more frequent and dangerous lightning strikes, more energy radiated to space from lightning (whatever wavelength that is), thinner atmosphere but more of it, and so forth too?
Bart, people think I am crazy when i say it is not obvious how the 4 W m-2 actually translates into a surface temperature increase. And then the cite the simple formula which is an algebraic relationship between the net radiative flux at the top of the atmopshere and surface temperature. Not convincing at all. Then they cite the results of a general circulation model run in perpetual January mode (a month where there is virtually no snow melt because of the asymmetries of the northern and southern hemispheres. I regard this as a basic issue, and whenever I make this point it is used to demonstrate that my brain has become addled by talking to skeptics.
People are clearly wrong.
I was at least this addled long before talking to any skeptic. ;)
At most 2 W m-2 can translate into surface temperature increase on a 4 w m-2 heat increase without violating the Thermomechanical Principle, if I understand crazyese.
This is not good news, as the temperature half is the more nearly benign one, in crazy talk.
Judith, it is not obvious how 4 w/m^2 IMMEDIATELY translates into a surface temp. increase. But eventually in the long run, it would be obvious bec. the specific heats of water in the oceans, air in the atmosphere and land on solid earth are fairly constant. I don’t know how long, maybe decades. Where will earth put all that solar energy if not radiated into space? Mechanical energy? Stronger winds and ocean currents? Eventually it would show up in surface temp.
But conversely , it is possible for surface temp. to increase even without net radiation flux by heat conversion and transfer in earth’s energy system. Is there an upper limit to surface temp. increase via this mechanism? So we will know if global warming is caused by net radiation flux or not.
Let me answer my own questions. How long will it take to raise temp. by 1C with 4 w/m^2 ?
Atmosphere = 1 month
Land = 2.5 months
Oceans = 84 yrs!
If this energy is converted to kinetic energy, how much stronger winds and ocean currents?
Wind = 550 kph
Current = 35 kph
If heat is transferred from oceans and land to atmosphere, how much increase in air temp.?
1C from land = 2.5C air
0.01C from oceans = 10C air
So it’s plausible to have global warming without net radiation flux.
Bart,
First, we are not going to find out the stabilisation temperature increase for any amount of forcing is, stabilisation occurs on a centenial/millenial timescale, so who cares.
Of more interest is the temperature trajectory and that is initially governed by the abilities of the systems to increase their stored energy and that does I think include all systems, as the temperature rises disipation into space will become more significant and eventually (sometime never) at stabilization it is the forcing/disipation balance that determines the temperature.
Regarding the trajectory some guestimation can and has been done and that can be represented in the form of an impulse response function and likely candidates are known, but as far as I am aware they are guestimates and you will see them in some old papers where they exhibit the long tail (stabilisation slower than exponential approach) and in some CO2 instant doubling model runs, (again long tail).
I am increasingly puzzled as to why such emphasis is put on stabilisation temperatures, they are neither calculable with any accuracy, nor observable in any timescale, hence somewhat unscientific. The trajectory is of interest and you are I think correct to suspect that all the methods whereby heat can be stored are in play.
Alex
When you started this blog I wrote: “I have a good feeling about this one”.
I hope more of your colleagues will put AGW again on the test test-stand and re-evaluate the knowledge gained thus far, and modify assessments accordingly. It’s field where findings keep popping up almost daily.
That process applies for both sides.
It’s because the pro-CAGW scientists has stopped being scientists and instead become activists. They believe that man must change his evil ways or perish, and hence a lot has come to believe that the goal is more important than science. When that happens they stop being scientists, because this is not compatible with what science is, with scientific principles. However they still hide behind the cloak of science.
If this was about the science, any criticism would be welcome because it advances our knowledge. But knowledge is no longer the issue, no longer the holy grail for climate science. Only science (no matter how flawed) that support the dogma is welcomed.
I hate to write this, but when I look at the IPCC and CAGW, it has more and more in common with religion. Stigmatizing heretics and former believers is quite known for religious groups. Thou should not question the dogma, being that god created man or the modern version: man causes his own destruction by his materialistic ways.
And this is why you’re on the receiving end more than Steve McIntyre – he has never belonged to the believers, whereas you have.
Rgds. Troels
Hello Alice, welcome to Wonderland.
I can sympathise with you Judith. My scepticism is mainly surrounding the policy choices being made by politicians with the encouragement of certain scientists pushing a social agenda. That worries me for a number of reasons, not least the lack of protection against unexpected climatic shifts given that we are talking about a chaotic system. I have tried to discuss what a climate-robust society looks like (i.e. a society which can cope with climate change in all directions – warmer, colder, wetter, drier etc) but even this prompts howls of derision as it goes against the narrative being pushed.
Regardless of whether there is a serious problem (and I suspect its considerably smaller than being promoted by the IPCC), policy has to be effective and socially-cohesive especially given the uncertainties. This picks up another of your points in your essay. Like you, I don’t believe that the scientists advocating a specific policy platform have the understanding of what consequences arise from implementing them. I agree with Roger Pielke Jr that there’s a lot of magical thinking in current policy and this is being championed by activist-scientists.
For me, scientist-approved policy decisions is almost equivalent to those health adverts which preach morals using children acting sad. Its a cynical political gesture which allows politicians to abdicate their responsibilities by appeals to authority and guilt. If you want a disentanglement of science from policy then there needs to be a renegotiation of the relationship between science and politics and that’s going to be painful and difficult however it occurs.
Its a difficult road you have placed yourself on Judith and I appreciate your honesty in this blog. And your mentioning of the ‘power of McIntyre’ and the ‘power of Curry’ leaves me with an entertaining image of Max von Sydow crying “the power of McIntyre compels you; the power of Curry compels you”. Perhaps this can be seen as the start of an exorcism…
My own troubles are nothing to Dr. Curry’s, though an apostasy in my long ago past gives me a sense of empathy with her current adventures in Wonderland, and I’d like to share it.
I made myself tremendously unpopular with some students of History at a small university (well, actually the tavern adjacent) one evening, when I imprudently said, “there is no such thing as a historical movement.”
‘Historical movements,’ I argued, were perceptions of events linked by projections of a historian’s beliefs, as likely as not to have no objective connection, more likely to be a mere convenience, or a proxy for a hidden agenda of the historian.
Formalized by my opining further that proper History has neither synthesis (else it would be fiction) nor analysis (making it anthropology) so was more like a college technical study than a university subject, perfected my historical heresy and would have had me excommunicated from the gathering were it not for the history professor at the bar looking over to speak up and agree with me. (I believe he was giddilly drunk.)
I did still find myself closely grilled on details of the War of 1812 by a grad student in an attempt to prove my ignorance, so I could be dismissed as a know-nothing (hardly difficult, as History is not my field), but at least no one gave me cause to worry they would destroy my career, nor threatened my income.
Historians, from the sounds of it, have a lot to learn from Scientists in that regard. Or possibly, undergrads a lot to learn from professors.
The blogosphere is rife with opportunity to balance so many weaknesses within academia.
More important than fixing the credibility of science, or intrinsic to that work, I think is building a community of contributors setting an example, blog-mentoring in method, presentation, style, logic, formalism, experimentalism, critical thinking, and those thousand other elements that are the real hidden treasure kept by cliques and secured behind firewalls of closed ranks.
I know I need instruction and guidance in these areas.
This blog provides by flaunting peer-review, for example, an excellent set of lessons in what one may need to know to be publishable by peer review.
I expect that those who have struggled through the process have more empathy with those who struggle, and a better sense of the value of it too.
I don’t expect to have a paper published, but I’m all about seeing someone else’s point of view.
By enlarging the community of discourse, extending it, improving it and giving willing participants the tools to improve their own contributions, maybe this blog will elevate the debate.
You wouldn’t believe how much I learned about the War of 1812 that night. Most of it probably wasn’t even fiction.
Dr Curry:
I write to thank you for your honest and sincere post in the article which heads this thread.
You remain convinced that AGW is a real problem and I remain convinced that it is not. The real world will reveal to what degrees each of us is right and wrong. But that reality is separate from the disparagement you can expect from zealots on both sides of the ‘climate war’.
As a ‘heretic’ you can expect treatment similar to that which has been given to ‘unbelievers’ like me for years. And that treatment is why so very many people who have tried to put their ‘heads above the parapet’ have rapidly climbed down.
Science is about seeking the best ‘truth’ we can uncover about the world. It is not about defending a position, but requires the gleaning of new data and assessing the variety of possible interpretations of all available data.
Unfortunately, much of science – especially climate science – has become subservient to political and monetary influences. And, sadly, this has induced a few climate scientists to abandon any attempt at assessing the variety of possible interpretations of all available data. Instead, that minority (who pretend to be a majority) of scientists have attempted to force acceptance of a single view. And, as the ‘Climategate’ emails prove, they have often used nefarious means to force that acceptance; i.e. subverting the peer review process, attacking journals and journal editors, manipulating which research findings will or will not be included in IPCC reports, etc..
It is easy to see this as being a corruption of science, but I do not think it is.
There has always been a minority of scientists who have behaved improperly. Indeed, some of the best scientists have behaved improperly in attempts to advocate their view (e.g. Michael Faraday fabricated data). But that does not mean the generality of scientists or the bulk of the practice of science is corrupt.
As I see it, the problem with climate science is two-fold.
(a)
Politicians have seen the AGW hypothesis as a useful tool so established the IPCC to promote that hypothesis while throwing money at research which supports the hypothesis. But climate science which is independent of the hypothesis has received little or no funding.
(b)
The mass media have a need for good ‘stories’ and assertions of impending doom are good ‘stories’ so worst case scenarios are presented to the public as being probable outcomes with resulting public concern.
Politicians respond to public concern so these two effects provide positive feedback to each other.
In your article you say:
“When I first started reading the CRU emails, my reaction was a visceral one. While my colleagues seemed focused on protecting the reputations of the scientists involved and assuring people that the “science hadn’t changed,” I immediately realized that this could bring down the IPCC. I became concerned about the integrity of our entire field: both the actual integrity and its public perception.”
I reached the same conclusion long before then. I addressed a side-meeting organised by Fred Singer at an IPCC Meeting I attended in London in 2001. In that address I said;
“When ‘the chickens come home to roost’ the politicians and the media won’t say, “It was all our fault”. They will say, “It was the scientists’ fault”, and that’s me, and I object”.
Richard
Dr Curry,
It is heartening to read the piece above and one can only hope that more scientists ‘come out’ the way you did.
As Richard above, i am currently convinced that cAGW is a none-issue, or more accuratley i am not convinced that it IS an issue, however i couldn’t care less who ends up being right (from an ideological/political etc view). I just want to learn more about the climate.
I’m a relatively ‘young’ scientist, with only ten + years experience, but it still amazes me that many of the entrenched ‘expert’ scientists seem to have abandoned all pretence of scientific method in order to support their positions; specifically, shutting out contrary views. It ‘almost’ made me question my career choice, politics should be kept at arms length.
All i and (i hope) many others are interested in is learning more. I take the attitude that if i’m ‘proven’ wrong then great! I’ve learnt something let’s move on and find out more. Until recently i was of the belief i was increasingly alone in this view of the scientific process. It would appear not. Thank you.
I think i would see these articles against you (and you have exactly the right attitude by the way) as signs that you are doing something right. It matters not whether your work proves/disproves cAGW, but only that you and others, manage to shatter this consensue attitude that blocks out free discussion and with it any hope of scientific progress. Only then can we, in my opinion, make any progress in this issue.
Hopefully the signs are already there of change, but we shall see.
You are the sign of change. You and your generation will “settle” this issue (not the science) and many more, I’m sure.
PS: You will also have your own “AGW-issue” one day, beware!
Dr. Curry,
I really applaud your bravery and willingness to use your own common sense – and I do wish more people in the climate science field would start remembering they are _scientists_ rather than policymakers.
(I’m just a passing reader of the various climate blogs after I had my eyes opened fully by AW Montford’s book – no scientific credentials on my behalf, just a skeptical member of the general public)
The survey was very leading in it’s expected responses, but the results are interesting and may have suprised the Scientific American.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=ONSUsVTBSpkC_2f2cTnptR6w_2fehN0orSbxLH1gIA03DqU_3d
1. Should climate scientists discuss scientific uncertainty in mainstream forums?
73% Yes, it would help engage the citizenry
2. Judith Curry is:
42.1% a peacemaker
9.0 % a dupe
7.2 % both
41.7% never heard of her
Fred Pearce – The Guardian has drawn very similar criticism to Judith Curry (ie because he is an consensus, environmental journalist media insider..)
Like the Scientific American’s author who has drawn this criticism:
“Simply by giving Judith Curry’s views a respectful airing, I’ve already drawn accusations of being irresponsible — and it’s valid to raise the question of whether giving her any sort of platform is a bad idea.”
Fred Pearce (all journaklist that allow question) was also accused of being
irresponsible at the Guardian Climategate debate. Interestingly by, Fiona Fox, the Director of the Science and Media Centre (UK).
Fred Pearce response: “compared to how reporting MP’s expenses was referred as attacking democarcy initially, but long term better for democarcy (cf climate science)”
(Their was huge expense scandal in the UK, which brought ALL UK politicians into disrepute, the media parallel is intersting.
As the MP’s response was do NOT read the stolen/hacked expenses, nothing to see.. (this tactic seems to have worked in the MSM media for the climategate emails) The media made hay with it for nearly 2 years. The publics views of UK politicians was at an all time low because of it.. ( a very large number did not seek re-election because of it, many lost their seats)
Dear Judith,
I have to confess that when I read your first entry at CA I was repulsed and thinking that the climate scientists should stay away from the sceptic pages and stop obstructing the truth finding process . . (not that I acutally disagreed with what you wrote)
Well at least I came a far way from there and not only your recent analysis of the IPCC-science finding process is unique and essential for the next step.
Regardless if the scientists continue to ignore the sceptics or not, they will have to think about the points your raised in your article leading to a better awareness of what is known and not.
Anyhow I just wanted to tell you that you move people on both sides of the fence and people like you, while being a rare species, are the only way to get rid of the barrier between science driven sceptics and scientists.
And like the posters before me I am looking forward to more essays from you and about you . .
Sincerly,
LoN
“the barrier between science driven sceptics and scientists.”
I think you will find that many of the sceptics are scientists, who understand the scientific methodology far better than the “consensus scientists”.
So the barrier is between two sets of scientists.
Chuck Wilson — if you were to have a peek at Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s site you might find that his simple question regarding temperature precision ought to give you something to think about. You haven’t found anything to upset the IPCC’s position; Dr. Pournelle hasn’t found anything that substantiates IPCC claims of 0.01 degree precision. To wit: how do we know the temp of the earth in say 1876 or 1927 to a hundredth of a degree when measurement devices of the day were accurate to a degree or less? This is a deceptively simple question, and it’s not been adequately answered.
Meanwhile a number of people want to base future policy on a claimed 0.8 degree change in the intervening time period. This is less than the resolution of the devices used to take the measurements. I think by now we all are aware of various proxies and approximations, but Dr. Pournelle’s observation “the map isn’t the territory” is insightful. One could easily conclude that in reality, no, we do NOT know the temperature of the earth in any given prior year to the degree of precision claimed.
When they act on this desire they step into an environment where lots of people disbelieve in evolution… [snip]
Seriously? Is this sort of comparison now a required obligation, similar to gratuitous nudity in films?
G.L.
I actually teach Mechanical Engineering Laboratory I and II. I know something about precision, accuracy, calibration and temperature sensors. I am confident that IPCC authors of the trends sections do as well. And apparently we know pretty well the trends in temperature. If you want to claim that the whole ball of wax is goofy because your thermometer is not good to 0.01 C, then you ought to read up on how the instrumental record was compiled and what claims are being made for it. Dr. Pournelle does not appear to be a reliable informant. Try IPCC, or Hansen (GISTEMP), or NOAA, or the Japanese Meteorological Service or HadCrut. You could look at Roy Spencer’s blog for the satellite trends. Although he is a skeptic, you won’t find any support for your position there. Dr. Spencer sees warming.
Anti-science beliefs are not the only threat to the quality of the discussion.
Lack of preparation is another one.
Regards,
Chuck Wilson
P.S. I left my shirt on while typing this reply.
It’s been about thirty-five years since last I spoke with Dr. Pournelle, and I’m not familiar with the subject in which he took his undergraduate degree, but his two Master’s of Science (M.S.) degrees were awarded in experimental statistics and in systems engineering, after which he went on to a Ph.D. in psychology and another doctorate in political science.
So, yeah, I suspect he’s got a pretty robust grounding as a “reliable” reviewer of how limits of instrumental accuracy work, especially with regard to the compounding of error in the process of statistical interpretation.
What Dr. Pournelle had written on the limits of accuracy in the global temperature database entries centered upon
…
I find it altogether remarkable that someone who teaches mechanical engineering should express confidence in the IPCC processes and outputs when so dreadfully much error has been repeatedly demonstrated in that body’s inputs and utterances.
Mr. Wilson’s tolerance for inaccuracy must produce the kinds of engineers who are finding employment only in the growing service economy.
Flipping burgers and not designing or building anything upon which people’s lives depend.
—
Burger flipping indeed. I will have to make sure that I do not teach anyone about buildings.
Repeating Pournelle’s arguments under his degrees does not make them true. I suggest that you read the HADCRUT3 paper recommended to me by Strangelove above. Then you will know how they deal with it. Then you can move on the NASA GISS. Their website provided copies of the key papers which explain how they deal with their uncertainties. It is interesting that groups using different approaches arrive at similar results.
A little reading will show you that Pournelle’s objections are not correct.
Try it.
Chuck
Mr. Wilson, you had impugned Dr. Pournelle on no basis other than your unsupported assertion that “Dr. Pournelle does not appear to be a reliable informant.
I simply cited information freely available online (i.e., to which you had ready access at the time you posted your obviously thoughtless dismissal of the man’s qualification to hold an opinion, apparently for no reason other than the fact that said opinion confounds your personal fantasies) to attest to Dr. Pournelle’s academic qualifications.
But even had Dr. Pournelle no such qualifications, your vague endorsement of warmist-dominated sources which have been shown throughout the past year and more to be suspect (and I use the word “suspect” in undeserved charity) does nothing to vitiate your failure to address the man’s argument itself, which I had taken the trouble to quote to you and to support with an active link to the specific Web site.
Were you to fulfill the duty of an honest disputant, whether Dr. Pournelle has a postgraduate degree in experimental statistics or not would not matter in the least. He has raised a point and you have deliberately refused to offer anything at all in the way of logical rebuttal.
The reliable conclusion to be gotten here is that you do not have any reasoned or supported counter to offer, and that Dr. Pournelle is correct in his appreciation.
Thanks ever so much.
—
Thank you for speaking up in this way. If what you are saying is obvious to insiders, then I think it needs to be made obvious to the rest of us as well. Alarmist statements seem endlessly repeated by activists, politicians and worst of all scientists doubling as activists. Neutral outsiders – especially those with solid scientific backgrounds – who have tried to understand the issues are bound to end up thinking that something very odd has been happening for there to be such a strong disconnect between the statements of obvious experts like Lindzen or Pielke and typical media and institutional statements. It is easy to sympathise with a desire to get back to doing science, but I think at the moment it is important that far more experts working in the field do speak up with their own viewpoints. An obvious and public distance needs to be created between doing science and doing activism. Until this happens, I think there is a valid concern that sensible moderate environmental policies – those that actually help people – will continue to be sidelined.
Judy, thank you very much for this piece.
It’s always interesting the extent to which we are ‘duped’, using your somewhat unfair terminology. As Dawkins has said in his assaults on parents ‘indoctrinating’ religion, we are programmed as children to believe what we are told, obviously, and that continues, with gullible people carrying on longer and tricky awkward people refusing to ever take anything at face value.
There are in general three reasons why we continue to accept things as true:
a) they possibly are
b) herd instinct
c) kicking against the pricks is hard work and makes us unpopular
Point c) is very important – it’s harder work than it looks. Take, as a family example, the infantilising of children, the over-protection against imaginary (in my view) dangers. We advise them against picking berries and eating them unwashed, it’s dangerous, we don’t let them bicycle to school, it’s dangerous, and so on – even objecting to the over-application of these untruths makes one unpopular, with one’s wife and one’s peers. So we take the easy road.
(As an aside we should value tricky awkward customers VERY highly – it doesn’t make them happy or rich, we may disagree with their convictions, style, or politics, but they do such a great job, the McIntyres, the left-wing journalists, the Amnesty people, yes, the Rainbow Warriors – right or wrong they are fabulous testers of received wisdom.)
Roddy
I think we are programmed by evolution to accept the voice of authority.
Gary
Dr Curry
Thank you for another thoughtful article. I think it is obvious who is attempting to do real science and who is a stonewall advocate (on both the warmist and skeptic sides of the argument).
I have a question regarding your 2005 hurricaine paper and more specifically the media coverage, which I hope I can articulate reasonably.
In my experience of University science, I never remember a journal paper being published with a press release and a news conference, and I’m sure your experience up to that time had been reasonably similar. I accept that publishing a paper suggesting a link between increasing hurricaine intensity and the observed warming trend a few weeks after the catastrophe that was Katrina would attract more media interest than say a paper on why there are no significant precious metal deposits in Devon and Cornwall (my PhD topic), but my question is really how do you get from your journal article to a press release and press conference? How much involvement did you and your co-authors have in this, how much involvement did your University(s) have and how much was there an external party (e.g. PR company) involved?
You no longer have a scientific problem when Wall Street invents a solution.
I’m not sure if there was a question to be answered by this post, but I see 3 rough classes of sceptic (regardless of their degree of warmness, they are the ones who question the consensus).
Most hardline are the politically ideological, an example would be Jeff Id – he seems to feel his entitlement to drive an SUV is at risk, and this drives his analytical work.
In the middle ground are those who looked at the arguments and posturing, and found them lacking in substance (e.g. Steve McIntyre). Maybe combined with some disregard for the ideology that came with the original message, but basically unconvinced by the evidence.
At the other end of the spectrum are those who believed the original message (for various reasons) and have over time come to question it. Even without a need to have a position on the past 10 years warming, they may now feel they have been mislead. This seems to be a much harder position to reach (since it involves at least a private admission of a mistake), but is a much more difficult position for the believers to argue against.
I guess the significance of this tale is that as people see it is possible to question the dogma, more of the believers will start to become at least a little sceptical in their own way. I am not sure if this will ‘help’.
I think it will.
If you can’t openly question your own position/motives, what hope do you have of questioning someone elses?
In science it’s OKAY to be wrong, there’s no shame/stigma to it, or at least there shouldn’t be.
My take on Jeff ID is that he sees weakness in the CAWG argument and goes after it. Isn’t that how science is supposed to work?
Your attempt to marginalize Jeff Id via the SUV reference speaks volumes about your own open-mindedness. How shall we classify you, and with what perjorative label?
I am not marginalising him, he choses to disclose his political ideologies through his blog. My point is that he appears to have become interested in the issue through a specific desire to find faults. I have great respect for his technical posts, much less for some of the other things he makes states. He can still be correct, but his stance makes it easier for some people to dismiss his opinions.
My point is not about how science is ‘supposed’ to work, it is about the different emphasis that different personalities bring to the discussion – and most specifically how they are likely to influence others. I think Jeff ID only really gains the attention of the believers (that it’s a con), wheras an ex-believer is maybe (so my theory goes) more likely to prompt other believers to question what’s going on. (leaving aside the question as to our host here fits that label)
I repeat, the SUV reference is perjorative and marginalizing in the extreme. But if you must be right, as opposed to doing the right thing, carry on.
I’m a little speachless at your implication here…. Science is all about finding fault. Any decent scientist ought to be rigorously trying to punch holes in their own assumptions, their own work. They also ought to be welcoming attempts, honest, hard attempts, by others to find flaws with their work. Everyone likes it when they turn out to be correct, so they may not like it when flaws are found, but if they don’t welcome that attempt and aren’t grateful when actual flaws are found, then they’re not functioning as a scientist. The sooner any problems are found, the quicker one can incorporate that new knowledge, reformulate the hypothesis, and begin testing again. Its how knowledge is moved forward, its the very basis of science, to test that hypothesis, look for flaws, look for any and all possible confounding factors, etc.
So I don’t know what to make of the implication that someone becoming interested or looking at someone else’s research specifically to find flaws is somehow a problem, or bad, or not as admirable as someone who came to it differently?? It seems to me that if someone comes to it looking for possible errors, it ought to be ‘have at it, see what you can find, do your best!’
I agree. If your paper is important, people should and will try to punch holes in it. It is only by surviving such attacks that a hypothesis can be elevated to a theory. And if there is a mistake or a better way to do something, a scientist should welcome the contribution. I agree that the quicker all this proceeds, the greater the scientific progress. The internet has the potential to massively speed all of this up.
There is another category of sceptic. One who has cause to be suspicious of do-gooders who want to change other people’s lives.
“They’re often points the climate-science community already agrees with” but of which the public, the media and politicians were, and still largely are, totally unaware.
Even if members of the public don’t know much about climate science, many have the underlying feeling that they’re not being told the whole story and of course they’re right. Those presenting the science would claim that they are just simplifying things, leaving out unimportant details so as not to confuse the low intellect masses they have to convince. The public won’t understand probabilities or risk assessment, they say. In less charitable terms it’s called lying by omission.
Of course, as with any glossy ad campaign once the public realise that the inconvenient truths have been left out they begin to wonder where the reality starts and stops. I’m not sure anyone knows. That’s the real danger to climate science. If people feel that you only tell the truth when it suits you, they can actually assume that you’re lying or exaggerating when you’re not. Eventually they treat everything you say with distrust.
The attitude to you Dr Curry is a bit like pagan superstition, if you name a thing you bring it into being. By pointing out the uncertainty they feel you create uncertainty. Of course it was always there and if not you, then someone else. Climate change is not some dodgy product or politician that can be peddled onto the public, those things have a limited lifespan. If CO2 is a genuine problem then it’s for life. The public have to trust the science and those creating it implicitly. It has to stand the test of time and not jerk along in a series bloopers and revelations that shock people into rebellion against it.
But climate scientists are human, of course they are, they can’t be expected to be perfect. Well neither can pharmaceutical companies or chemical businesses or builders so how do they operate? By being subject to regulatory bodies, inspections and standards. Yeah, horrible and largely a waste of time but sadly necessary.
Ideally climate science wouldn’t need those things. Voluntary standards are always more sensible and less arbitrary, but they’ve got to be realistic. Insiders invariably know where the bodies are, far better than an inspector who can only randomly dig. So it’s better to surrender the dead before outsiders start to look for them.
So Dr Curry you’re doing the right thing, drilling into the bad tooth hoping to save it. The question is, will the rest of climate science realise it’s got to suffer short term pain for long term success?
Judith, along with everyone else, thank you for your article. However, I have a different point of view from most other comments. What I am afraid of, affects my wallet, and I desperately want to see out politicians completely disregarding anything to do with CAGW. So what I want to see is the IPCC, RealClimate, etc being brought down, and thoroughly discredited. How best to accomplish this?
One way is to have people like yourself to “come over to the dark side”. If you could be persuaded to not just distrust what the IPCC has written, but to activley say that it is just plain wrong, then this would keep the process of completely destroying CAGW, going, and even accelerating.
So let me try once again on the subject of models. There is absolutely no uncertainly about the models used to support CAGW. They are a vastely, completely, overwhelmingly, etc. simplistic representation of our chaotic atmosphere. The outputs are, and always will be, just plain wrong. If only we skeptics could get you to see that this is true, I think it would be an enormous step forward in bringing down the house of cards that is CAGW.
Dont underestimate what your influence is. Hal Lewis has done this, and the MSM has ignored it. If you do it, and others like you, sooner or later the MSM will not be able to ignore what is happening. And when the MSM takes notice, our politicians will not be far behind.
But again, a great big THANK YOU, for this article.
Everyone, thank you so much for your comments. Traffic at the blog is very heavy the last few days, and I am tied up most of today, i look forward to catching up with all of your posts later today.
Please read the two studies I posted. They are the best. Keep up the good work! Thanks.
Thank you Dr Curry, for this site and particularly this post. The IPCC can never find out the truth, if any, about AGW, because it was founded on the belief that it was all true. They have lost the debate, because they were never prepared to debate, only attack and isolate anyone who dared question. Pachuri’s voodoo science remark being a good example.
The job description “climate scientist” is set to become a term of ridicule, but all science is going to suffer the backlash, by way of mistrust and loss of funding.
If the top job at the IPCC becomes vacant, would you….?
Perhaps someone could post a link to some of Josh’s cartoons of you, which seem to get more prophetic by the day.
Judith
“But this is my carefully considered choice on what it means to be a scientist and to behave with personal and professional integrity.”
I am a science graduate. I learned science meant the truth. Stick to the truth and objective reality will prove you right.
Thanks a million Judith.
I’d also like to add my thanks to you for speaking up!
Reading about climate science has lead me to wonder how many areas of science have been infected by a peculiar malaise in which science has become about doing what the boss requires and keeping “on message”, rather than discovery. Although I could give examples, I won’t side-track the debate. Certainly talking with two scientist friends of mine, I was amazed how readily they added further examples!
It is a long time since I did actual science research, but in those days, it was accepted that some research groups were exceptionally weak, but that the man in charge (invariably a man) had good connections or was particularly successful at obtaining grant funding. I left science as such as a post doc because I took incontrovertible evidence that the apparatus we were using, was picking up stray signals, and had other faults. The response was to do nothing because several students were still collecting data for their PhD’s!
Such people (and the groups they ran) were nearly untouchable, but nobody cared that much – they ‘merely’ drained away a little research money. I wonder if groups of this sort have gradually spread and become frighteningly good at politics!
I also feel that the ready availability of computers has sadly encouraged an attitude in which no data set is too polluted that it cannot be cleaned up and used to ‘prove’ something. Thus, the sorry state of land temperature data could be ‘fixed’ by simply adding some extra data processing – nothing to worry about!
Computers have also brought about a situation in which people can effortlessly try any number of statistical tests on their data, recording only the one that produces the ‘right answer’!
Another problem seems to be that ‘science’ is supposed to study a problem and come up with definite answers in a timely fashion. Uncertain answers aren’t acceptable, and politicians will turn to others who claim to offer certainty! This locks scientists into supporting conclusions even when they no longer seem valid.
“Computers have also brought about a situation in which people can effortlessly try any number of statistical tests on their data, recording only the one that produces the ‘right answer’!” – this is the one of my objections to referring to models as “experiments”, with or without qualifiers. The discarded runs you refer to would surely count as “data” in any true experiment. That is not to say that any number of true experiments may not be used to design the model, just that neither the model that emerges, nor any number of runs of it, can be an “experiment”, however qualified.
Judith,
I want also to congratulate you on this piece and thank you for having the courage to be a real scientist in what has become an ideological battle. More particularly I want to thank you for the private support you gave me when Russell Review refused to publish my evidence submission which explained what one of the issues at the epicentre of Climategate was all about.
I also want to remind all readers that at 09:20 UK time tomorrow (27 October) Sir Muir Russell, Professors Edward Acton and Trevor Davies are due to appear before the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, which is looking into the Climategate enquiries.
A live feed will be here:
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=6785
An archive feed will be available later.
David
I’ll be watching with interest, but with…err…low expectations.
Dr Curry wrote:
quote
The enviro advocacy groups are abandoning the climate change issue for more promising narratives.
unquote
and Peter Pond wrote:
quote
In the meantime, other critical issues (global hunger, poverty, disease, and “real” pollution, etc) are deprived of the political attention, funding and research that could really make a difference to the lives (and deaths) of millions.
unquote
Here is a major problem. If those espousing a particular scientific view are prepared to use bullying, lies, ganging up, suppression of contradictory papers and facts, and elevations of non-facts to iconic status, then all science is dirtied and reduced. Any bad science is an affront to all scientists and diminishes them all.
The drift in MSM is away from the horrifying thought of a .8 deg C/50 yrs increase in global temperature and towards species extinction, forthcoming ecological collapse, a loss of the planet’s ability to sustain us. Well, yes, but are these the same people who told me a few years ago that by now the streets would be flooded and hurricanes would be devastating the east coasts of major land masses, that the Gulf Stream would slow down and we would freeze in the dark? And if they aren’t the same, why did they watch bad science and say nothing? And if they are the same, why should I trust them again?
Ecological damage is, to me, a far more worrying scenario than anything proposed by climate science, but unless that is tested rigorously by people of integrity then the chance of making people take anything else seriously is dangerously diminished. For the good of science, AGW theory must be questioned by those eminent in the field — one is tempted to use the phrase ‘think of the grandchildren’ — because later generations will have to live with the consequences if bad science is allowed to slip past unquestioned.
Anastassia Makarieva wrote
quote
Like a child when finds a flower shows it to his mum with affection and looking for empathy. In the same way scientists need to share their results with their brethren. It is like breathing, it is an inherent component of scientific productivity.
unquote
Dr Makarieva, that metaphor gives me hope: as long as there are scientists who see such joy in truth-seeking then all is not lost.
JF
(BTW, Chuck Wilson, the best place to rehearse your above arguments is probably Lucia’s The Blackboard. She is methodically (ha!) working through predictions and how they are panning out.)
Dr Curry-
I am a second year science student in Wellington NZ and I cannot tell you how much I admire your position of truth seeking and integrity in all of this.
If hope that I can become even a shadow the scientist you are.
Thanks a lot, Judith, for your courage and for this excellent blog.
Rid the world of the IPPC – it has now gone down with man and mouse already (read the book “The Hockey Stick Illusion”) byA.W. Montford, and you see why. I was taught meteorology by Dr Carl Ludvig Godske, in 1966 – 1969, and he was the last of the big ones from the famous “Bergen School” of Wilhelm Bjerknes, in Bergen. They made up modern weather forecasting by analysing Dynamic Meteorology, just before WWII. I am sure that if the professional statistician Carl L. Godske had been alive today, he would possibly have been able to prevent the hockey stick to happen in the first place.
However, what do we need instead of the IPPC? – It has all to do with the Earth’s vital environment and does not have to do so much with climate change. There is no way that we can simulate the future climate development anyway, we are in control of too few of the necessary parameters. Whereas Mother Nature has perhaps several hundred essential parameters to play with in Her climate change toolbox, our numerical models only rule over 20 or 30 or so…
Many of us think that the carbon cycle and the water cycle and albedo changes are the most important parameters in the heat budgets of the Earth. But then we forget that the real Master of our planetary heat-engine is the Pacific Ocean and whatever lurks underneath its fragile oceanic crust, at an average depth of over 3.6 km. Have any of you heard about the Ring of Fire, and the biggest discovery of the last century, when Lonsdale et al., dove on the East Pacific Rise, to find and document the very first hot vent. – It is a Balck Smoker type, sulfide chimney, where superhot seawater comes gushing out of the seafloor, after having been in contact with the top of the mantle only 8 km down… Well, this is where the main heat of our planet is lurking, and we do not yet have any idea of how it links to the upper portion of the ocean, which is in constant contact with the atmosphere…
I suggest we exchange the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change with the IPPA: Intergovernmental Panel for Planet Assessment, which would aim at restituating faith in the natural sciences, and which would only hand out money to scientists and projects that had passed through a rigorous peer review system of independent scientists. Perhaps we could then get somewhere when it comes to finding out more about, for example the methane budget in the atmosphere, the interaction between seawater and mantle, and what effect not only aerial volcanoes have on the atmosphere, but also undersea volcanoes, of which there are about 800.000, below the waves of the 72 % of the planet covered by water…
I know your heart is in the ‘right’ place, but I really hope that members of the UN never again make the terrible mistake they made with the IPCC and go on to form more of these worthless panels. It’s only natural to assume that such would help, but –alas– the truth is very different from the perception. Much of the problem we have today with the “issue” and “science” of climate is the result of the this pathetic and counterproductive, good-faith, bone-headed, “political” panel. UN panels are just like Washington, London, Peking, Tokyo, and Moscow government panels, a lot of hot air and a huge waste of time and money.
You will probably recall that I don’t much agree with you, but I do appreciate your efforts. Thank you.
Here we have virtually the only comment that is in disagreement with the others in this thread, but sadly it happens also to be virtually the only one without providing an argument of any kind. Is this a coincidence?
I am afraid there is a lot more conformity in science than scientists recognize. Government grant programs often have an agenda and if you don’t sound suitably enthusiastic about that agenda you won’t get funding. No funding, no tenure. I think when there was no gov $ and less mass media and no internet so that scientists were a little more isolated it was easier to be independent, just by chance.
The extreme reaction to criticism in climate science also reminds me of the reaction to criticism of gender studies or post-modernism–since the arguments are arbitrary they are not robust to criticism.
You are on the right path. An open discussion of the science is exactly what is required. Imagine a doctor that didn’t relate to you the uncertainties and differential diagnoses. Would you trust that doctor? If the doctor told you a test means one thing and you found a paper written by that doctor that stated it may mean something completely different. Would you trust that doctor then? If the doctors told you to leave the room because they had important things to discuss and you could never possibly hope to understand them. How would you feel about your doctors then? Once the climate scientists came up with conclusions that will affect our lives in significant ways they became our doctors. So far every action they have taken has been inviting a malpractice lawsuit. I do not consider you a heroine for taking the right path. I do consider those that attack you for doing so as villians. Do not lose your confidence or your patience Dr Curry. It sounds like you may have trying days ahead.
As an Engineer who has keep nuclear power plants running, (including sophisticated fracture mechanics analysis, use of state of the art mathematics to model stress fields in large bodies…stress intensity factors, stochastic modeling of random flaw distributions, etc.), I find “Dr.” Curry’s opinion of herself …alas…way to elevated.
Despite this encouraging shift in attitude, it should be remembered by all these folks feeding at the public trough, that they are “observers” not “makers”. They are consumers not creators.
In point of fact, if they all DISAPPEARED tomorrow, life would go on.
I defy everyone to TURN OUT THEIR LIGHTS, flatten their auto tyres, and use no gas for domestic heating this week…and see if “life goes on”.
In many cases, as food spoiled, supplies were not delivered, and sanitation failed, LIFE WOULD NOT GO ON.
The threatening part of all of this is that as resources and funding ARE drained from the productive to the non-productive, indeed the things that make “life go on” can and will be “threatened”. Their is a local mental health clinic that boasts aid for those plauged with “worry and ‘what if’ thinking”.
It used to be a good thing, but then the CRU over ran the clinic with new patients. Sad, really sad…
Sorry, that’s reality.
The greatest asset a scientist can possess – and the hardest one to hang on to – is an open mind. Bravo, Dr. Curry.
I would worry if “Religious American” would call me a heretic. The term is meaningless in science.
True the word ‘heretic’ is meaningless in science. But in this debate about AGW dogma it is in context as Dr. Curry describes in the opening paragraph.
The original term “Global Warming” was a properly formed name for a scientific hypothesis. The new term “Global Climate Disruption” is aptly named for religious dogma; as in climate disruption is due to the hand of God. No experiment could be designed to invalidate that dogma.
Dr. Curry is right to fight against the consensus because consensus is meaningless in science.
Sure. Lemonick used that word (not tongue-in-cheek) and “Scientific” American decided to print it. That disqualifies both as serious commenters on scientific matters.
Personal and professional integrity is everything.Congratulations on an excellent essay. Discussion and dispute is what science is about and in the end the data will decide.
None of this would matter except the politicians in the ‘Western’ world are embarking on economically suicidal policies.Statements you make about ‘uncertainty’ may make them think again.
Conflating AGWH with more general environmental concerns is common but mistaken. Anthony Watts sets a very good environmental example for instance.
How much does this apply?
“Black-sheep effect refers to the the tendency for members to evaluate a disliked ingroup member who performs an offensive behavior more harshly than an outgroup member who performs the same offense. ”
source: http://www.psychology-lexicon.com/cms/glossary/glossary-b/black-sheep-effect.html
The IPCC and the “Church of Man-Made Global Warming” have committed themselves to the consensus, saying “Yes… besides, the science is settled”!
‘Skeptics’, on the other hand, have acted cautiously, saying “No… the science is not settled, the consensus is not right, and the issue is extremely far more complex…”
Judith Curry, well done. It is always better to err on the side of caution.
Dr. Curry
I’ve criticised some of your articles in the past because I felt you were often creating a ‘debate’ when it seemed blindingly obvious there wasn’t one. Alluding to your “Emperors clothes” analogy, I couldn’t understand why you would make a debate about whether there were in fact any clothes or not – when it seemed bloody obvious the Emperor was stark raving naked. There was just shoddy science and intellectual obfuscation supporting a flawed ideology …… which you pandered to in the name of creating a debate.
However, here, I finally sense that the gloves have come off. You are calling a spade a spade and its absolutely bloody brilliant. The Emperor is indeed naked and its great that someone with your intellectual authority is saying so – and in such blunt and brutal terms. Absolutely bloody brilliant.
Judith, the great shock for me when I became a sceptic was that I never realised how much I relied on the integrity of people talking about science. I had after all spent a great deal of time talking about global warming without once actually checking the original papers and facts and figures as my scientific training told me to do.
People like Mann used people like me to spread their malicious lies (about the certainty of climate/man-made change) and until I read your own piece regarding the need for proper debate, there was not a hope in hell of me ever trusting another climate “scientist”.
If there is a real disaster out there regarding the climate (and that’s a big if, given the abysmal instrumentational record and the “group-think” that has prevailed in the climate-arts), but if there is a real disaster then someone like you is a million times more likely to be listened to, than an idiot like those we saw scheming away in the climategate emails.
Thank you, Mike, for your message. You will be in for a much greater shock if you realize that the corruption of science extends far beyond the boarders of climatology:
Almost every well-funded astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, nuclear and solar scientist repeats the SSM line [Standard Solar Model] as gospel, ignores experimental observations that directly falsify the SSM [1,2], and accepts the federal research funds that NAS directs to NASA, DOE, NSF, etc. for their services.
As mentioned earlier, President Eisenhower warned of this development in 1961: “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
1. “Scientific Genesis: The origin of the Solar System”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQZe_Qk-q7M
2. “Solar abundances of the elements from neutron-capture cross sections”
http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2005/LunarAbstract.pdf
Oliver, your point about all science being “corrupt” is an interesting one. I used to think that the reason that scientific discovery had petered out in recent years (in most subjects), was a natural limit in the sense that there were a few major progressions in the 19th century that enabled science to explore some areas, and now that the areas freed up by unblocking these fundamental conceptual blocks have been largely explored, there will naturally be a lessening of the rate of new discoveries.
However, following the climategate expose and the way the scientific “elite” simply backed the “status quo” even though it was patently obviously absurd to do so, I think it is just possible that the reason scientific exploration has so diminished is the closed mind of the “elite”. Could it be that so much of scientific “orthodoxy” is just a load of bull and that the public and science community are being forced to accept the “status quo” in order to protect the scientific elite from accepting they can be wrong. And is the result that many potential avenues of exploration are being closed down to maintain the “orthodoxy”?
Obviously you can’t just say that all science needs re-examination, but even in my own small way, I’m still not convinced by some things I was told in University physics were the “gospel truth” – they just don’t ring true and I can see much better ways to put the same concepts.
Mike, I do not know nor claim that ALL science is “corrupt.”
I know that the Galileo probe entered Jupiter’s atmosphere in 1995 and observed excess Xe-136 there, as had been predicted in a controversial paper [“Solar abundance of the elements”, Meteoritics 18, 209-222 (1983)]: http://tinyurl.com/224kz4
The data were finally released in 1998, in response to a request directed to NASA Administrator (Dr. Dan Goldin) when he was being interviewed by C-SPAN.
Isotope data from the Galileo probe confirmed that the Sun is not a ball of Hydrogen [“Isotopic ratios in Jupiter confirm intra-solar diffusion”, Meteoritics and Planetary Science 33, A97, abstract 5011 (1998)]: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc98/pdf/5011.pdf
I also know that experimental measurements had directly falsified three popular models of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, nuclear, solar and space sciences before the 32nd Annual Lunar Science Conference in March 2001:
a) Formation of the Solar System from an interstellar cloud,
b) The Standard Solar Model of a Hydrogen-filled Sun, and
c.) H-fusion as the source of solar energy.
See: “The Sun’s origin, composition and source of energy,” Lunar and Planetary Science XXXII, Abstract 1041, available as 1041-pdf from Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX (CD-ROM, 2001)
http://www.omatumr.com/lpsc.prn.pdf
Physical Review Letters received a manuscript three months later, on 18 June 2001 and published it on 25 July 2001 by one hundred and seventy-eight (178) coauthors, “Measurement of the Rate of νe+d→p+p+e- Interactions Produced by 8B Solar Neutrinos at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory” [Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 071301 (2001)]: http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v87/i7/e071301
Many science news reports claimed that the solar neutrino puzzle had been solved and the SSM (Standard Solar Model) verified by the above measurements at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.
I personally doubt solar neutrino oscillations, but it will be as difficult for government research agencies to admit that mistake as it will be for them to admit that CO2 did not induce global warming.
Again, Mike, I thank you for your question.
You are right: Much scientific “orthodoxy” is a load of bull that the public was forced to accept in order to protect the inflated egos of the scientific elite.
Thanks to the kindness of Fate, I managed to survive and enjoy 50 years (1960-2010) of joyful discovery! Thanks to the Climategate scandal, the next generation may be able to break free of the tyranny of government science.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, nuclear and solar scientist
Re: creation of monsters. In certain areas of physics it is very hard to test an idea experimentally. Areas such as dark matter, string theory, singularity theory (black holes), and the big bang are very problematic, with opposing camps. These opposing camps have strong views, but they don’t demonize opponents (maybe they call them crack pots…). Why? Because they are working as hard as they can to make their theories testable, and because there is no political movement that cares about dark matter. Heretics and monsters are only needed when you mix in religion and/or politics (and in the climate debate we get both). Getting the “wrong” answer or questioning the consensus then makes you a “bad” person, as bad as asking if little boys and girls might actually be different.
Please Dr. Curry keep up your integrity, just because you refused the Kool-aid doesn’t make your voice any less worthy.
Ma’am, you have my deep and sincere respect.
I first heard of CO2 caused AGW way back, (I think in the early ’80s), as an engineer, I dismissed it as an idea that wouldn’t fly. (How wrong can you be?)
I came back to it in mid to late ’08. I do disagree with you if you think it’s an issue but at least you recognise that refusing to talk to sceptics and hiding of data and methods is hardly the way to gain trust and confidence.
There are many things wrong with the science, not least of which is an adherence to the idea that atmospheric temperature is even relevant. RP Sr recognises that OHC, (I prefer OEC as heat is in my view a verb,) is a more relevant metric. We simply don’t have enough data on that and even if we did, if it warms slightly, back-radiation from CO2 is an unlikely candidate.
DaveE.
Dear Prof Curry
You are neither on the light or the dark side – you are the very model of a true scientist. Thank you for being the light on the hill.
Politically, the warmists should be very very careful how they treat you. Public can’t tell science, but they can tell when a pack turns onto one of their own and draw the obvious conclusion.
Judith,
This is an interesting article to me because of your description of the Ivory Tower. I think a lot of people have a difficult idea understanding the pace of life in academia. After I graduated I worked in R&D in industry for 11 years before going back and visiting. When I spoke to the professors in the field I am in they were still locked into the papers and the journals, but had no idea what the industry was actually doing.
There are a variety of blinders that have developed in academia. It takes a certain courage to stick your neck out like you have. It is a difficult path for one used to being part of the group to step out and go it alone. For being willing to do you should be commended.
I have enjoyed reading some of your views on the AMO. I have learned a bit about it from you. I do appreciate the step you have taken.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
Judith, the paradox of climate “science” is that it largely hasn’t been controlled or run by the “scientists” for yonks (a scientific term!)
As you have found out, the agenda has been controlled by the media’s lust for alarmist stories and the environmental lobby groups desire to tell everyone how badly we are treating the environment. I’m sure people like Phil Jones always intended to be good scientists, but somehow they just got caught up with the needs of the “global warming movement” which cared not a jot for scientific integrity (come on, half of them believe in holistic medicine, paganism and withcraft!)
I too was part of that “group think” in that I went along with the “consensus” because I assumed that people better than me had done the basic science and that what I was telling people was therefore based on sound science – and I even believed that anyone who questioned the “science” must be in the pay of the massively hugely funded oil-lobbying anti-science lot.
What I finally learned was that far from there being a massive well funded group trying to thwart real science, the situation was that the real scientists were keeping quiet and the whole “consensus” was the fabrication of the enviro-politicos. Moreover, the propaganda push was entirely the other way: far from the oil industry massively funding the anti-science lot, I’ve yet to find anyone except the green groups who are being funded by the oil industry. This has really been a David and Goliath struggle, except Goliath was pretending that he was the underdog struggling against a massive David!
The result was that we had in effect, this was a one-party state, pretending that there were two parties, and worse, that it was the minority party struggling to have it voice heard against the virtual bogeyman opposition that only existed in any meaningful way in the minds of the single-state elite.
Like all one-party politics, there was no debate, anyone who even dared to question the orthodoxy was labelled as “in the pay of the bogeymen” and now the people have revolted, the one-party Berlin wall has been knocked down and now scientists like you and people like me are able to move freely back and forth across the wall without some big-brother idiot trying to force us to belong to the one “true” camp or go join the “heretics”.
mike, that sums it up quite well. For saying things like this, that is why people think i am a “dupe”, that i have been totally brainwashed by talking to skeptics that are in the pay of big oil.
For saying things like what? “the real scientists were keeping quiet and the whole “consensus” was the fabrication of the enviro-politicos?” that “the propaganda push was entirely the other way… green groups who are being funded by the oil industry?”
You’re obviously well within your rights to embrace this narrative, but it would be helpful if you made it clear whether you did or didn’t, rather than cautiously vague responses to blog comments.
Truly an amazing story. Except for the CRU emails we would have been taxed back to the pre-industrial status, all in the name of saving the planet.
What Real $cience hasn’t yet realized is that Real Money has moved on. China has rapidly moved into first place ahead of the US as the largest producer of CO2. With this the political opportuity has been lost. Goldman et al have bailed, sold the CCX and moved on to the next Big Opportunity.
The tragedy of this thing is that if it turns out to be true, that CO2 is really dangerous, and is driving the climate out of control and safe limits, then the ones who will be most responsible for it not being believed in time will be the ultras.
Mann, Jones, RC, Tamino, Stoat, Rabbett, Ladbury, all those guys with their hysterical rages and spin and attempts to suppress any questioning, and their endless personal attacks, paradoxically, these guys are doing more to promote general cynicism and disbelief than any sceptics like Watts and McIntyre could possibly do.
Any way you look at it, right or wrong, these guys are not helping. Isn’t it funny that people who supposedly are so devoted to a cause should be the main ones undermining it? But its happening.
If you are thinking of those making McCarthyesque attacks on people willing to speak up –attacks on people like Judith — please don’t leave Joe Romm’s name off the list of Joe McCarthy wannabees!
Thanks to Dr. Curry for the courage and integrity to publish this posting.
I second Michel’s opinion that the real tragedy of the current situation is that the response from the community will “promote general cynicism and disbelief than any sceptics”. As a result we are not debating what can be done to develop a long-term energy policy that includes de-carbonization but does not affect the economy.
Although I am not a climatologist I am a member of the American Meteorological Society and I also hope that Dr. Curry’s post spurs action in the Society to: ” figure out how to provide the best possible scientific information and assessment of uncertainties”. Furthermore I think that a code of ethics to insure that members follow the guidelines is necessary.
Roger Caiazza
BS, MS Meteorology
Certified Consulting Meteorologist
yes, the debate is unfortunately occurring over the minutia of the science such as tree rings, rather than over what can be done to develop a robust energy policy. the science has become a proxy for what should be a political/policy debate
The reason Big Oil is supporting the CO2 tax is two fold:
1) Taxing CO2 makes oil/natural gas more attractive for primary power production, because oil/gas emits less CO2 per BTU than coal.
2) CO2 is routinely pumped underground to recover oil. A tax on CO2 would pay oil companies to do this.
Both these would make oil production more profitable.
Ge0050 – isn’t it much simpler! Big oil only care if taxes discriminate against their company and taxing everyone only has the effect of putting up the price for everyone without making any one oil company less attractive.
But, if you can make 1% on a $1 barrel of oil, or 1% on a $100 barrel of oil, which do you think they would prefer? You can easily hide a $1 increase in a barrel to cover “administration costs” but you can’t do the same on $1 barrel, and wouldn’t you much prefer to cream off the profits on a few very expensive barrels of oil, than do all the hard work to supply a much larger quantity of oil and a much reduced price & so profit/barrel?
To be frank, I know oil companies love the idea of carbon taxes because they rake in a hell of a lot more money without having to sell so much oil … more money for doing less, why on earth wouldn’t they like Carbon taxes?
… so is it any wonder that some of the biggest investors in the renewable energy scam and the lobbyists who promote global warming are oil companies?
Global mean temperature trend for 120 years is shown below:
http://bit.ly/96nokt
Is it hard to predict what the trend will be for the next 20 years?
Actually it is hard to predict.
I started my professional career in forecasting for a telephone company. The data we had was of high quality and every sudden change or outlier in the data series was well documented and understood. But we still couldn’t predict the future with any more accuracy than plus/minus 10% (not a very high quality forecast given the quality of the input data).
There are many laws of forecasting, such as: – if you don’t forecast well, forecast often; – (s)he who lives by the crystal ball, soon learns to eat ground glass; – given them a date or give them a number, never give both.
The point being, forecasting appears to be easy until you try it yourself.
Dear Professor Curry:
The fact is that it seems that everybody has chosen not to know, not even to ask for the most simple issues on climate. Though it has been demonstrated by another UN’s organism, as the FAO organization:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/
Where it is shown the close relation between LOD and climate, and while this study is practically applied succesfully by fishermen all over the world.
While it has been shown an effective correlation between Magnetic fields and temperatures:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC19.htm
“Warmologists” keep on playing, like kids, with the latest of their Wee-like models.
This has reached so far, as to provoke Prof.Khabibulo Abdusamaton, the head of the Pulkovo Observatory, to opine in their respect: “That’s Hollywood science”.
It is a fact fields are related, and ignoring it won’t change reality:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38598073/Unified-Field
ttp://www.scribd.com/doc/39961403/Eccentricity-Field
http://www.scribd.com/doc/40159888/Unified-Field-Explained-2
I am doing my best to return some sanity to this situation and restore science to a higher position than the dogma of consensus. You may not like it, and my actions may turn out to be ineffective, futile, or counterproductive in the short or long run, by whatever standards this whole episode ends up getting judged. But this is my carefully considered choice on what it means to be a scientist and to behave with personal and professional integrity.
[stands]
[clap clap clap]
It is disastrous for science. Every one is implicated in looking the other way: fellow climate scientists, journals, the media and the politicians. It is extremely hard to retreat form the certainty of man made global warming. The only face saving route is to embrace uncertainty. Welcome to uncertainty and precaution, not the “science is in”
No, Girma, it WAS disastrous for science until the Climategate scandal exposed widespread corruption in the once proud scientific establishment of the “Free West.”
We are now beginning to see that the corruption extends far beyond the boarders of climatology and includes astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, nuclear, particle, solar and space sciences. As President Eisenhower warned in 1961:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
Dr. Curry,
There are only a few people that have the courage that you have in honestly discussing one of the most important issues of our time.
I still am not sure why honesty is such a rare commodity among environmental scientists – I suspect it’s the amount of money available to anyone who can attribute a species dying out, or other phenomenon to global warming. A suggestion that Dr. Lindzen made at an MIT forum.
The reward for espousing disaster is not money in most cases but smugness: “I know more than you and I am more virtuous”
Tom, I suspect that honesty is no more rare among environmental scientists than it is among scientists of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, nuclear, particle, space and solar science.
Computer memory, the internet, and e-mail helped expose the “Big Brother” that computer memory, the internet and e-mail used to control and corrupt science.
I agree that this is not only pertains to environmental scientists – but I think what happened here was that the amount of money involved for research in what was a relatively obscure field accelerated exponentially and a lot of otherwise honest people lost perspectiveand inadvertantly(put the blinders on, don’t look a gift hores in the mouth etc.) subscribed to a dogma that was more religion than science.
It takes a person (Judith C. Dr. Lindzen, Steve M. etc.)with high integrity to ignore large sums of money especially given the competition for research money.
Craig, Tom
A further consideration is that many of the students who have gone into Environmental Science (as a general term) over the last 20 years or so have tended to already be quite ‘activist’ anyway, so start from the premise that humanity is doing significant damage to the environment. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that most results confirm this opinion.
Because of this, it is likely that the intellectual challenges to the Global Warming theory are likely to come from parallel fields that don’t have the same political (small p) bias – so areas like meteorology, geology (or more specifically geochemistry and biogeochemistry), physics and chemistry.
@Robert | October 26, 2010 at 5:38 am
Kudos Robert
Dear Judith Curry
Thank you very much for this post.
You are a true scientist :-)
Best regards from Iceland
Agust
The work “heretic” is only used in the headline, and headlines usually are not written by the same people who write the articles. They are designed to be catchy, and as such the headline works if you take the word “heretic” figuratively. A similar headline could be used for any scientist questioning some established truth in science. I think you make far too much out of it.
Dear Dr. Curry: When I wrote this essay in August I had you and others in mind. Like all these things the definitions are more important then the words used. If the truth be spoken and we would all want that right? None of this is about science. It is about ego, money and power.
What is a Scientist?
What does that title Scientist mean anyway? Many call themselves scientists and many are called scientists but just what does that name or title imply. We have touched on this in several other essays. Here I would like to focus in on that specific topic. Let’s look at me for example. I have graduated from a recognized university, having majored in Geology. I have been employed for over 45 years as a geologist or in some management capacity that is directly related to the earth sciences and the science of them. I have been a full Member or Fellow of several geoscience associations. I am a Registered Professional Geologist (P. Geol.) or Geoscientist (P. Geo.) with three provincial registration associations, British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
I assume I can call myself a scientist and that others would also call me a scientist. I checked a dictionary and found: scientist |ˈsīəntist| noun, a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences.
Wikipedia says:
“A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science… Until the late 19th or early 20th century, those who pursued science were called “natural philosophers” or “men of science”.
I qualify. That said, for me to pronounce as a scientist, on any subject not related to Geology or Earth Science, would be questionable. That does not mean I have no opinion. It means my opinions must be separated from the facts, so others can take it for what it appears to be worth.
In a previous essay I mentioned this natural philosopher name and my personal preference for it. That preference is greatly related to my avocation to explore the Philosophy of Science, in addition to my chosen discipline, to my fondness for several historical geoscience figures of the past, that called themselves natural philosophers and frankly it just sounds better. Alias this is the 21st Century and I am a modern man, in all but my imagination. My vanity will need be set aside.
When anyone says or writes that “scientists say” or some other such generalization, my personal B.S. dictator rings an alarm. Who is this person? What is his or her claim of title? What exactly was said, not some interpretation of it? In what capacity was the speaker or writer conversing? Is this opinion, interpretation or fact? What is being left out? Does the speaker/writer have an agenda and if so what is it? It goes further of course. In other essays I have complained about authors saying things in press releases that are not conclusions drawn from the paper or study being referenced. To my mind this in poor behavior and if I were king……however, I am only a scientist, pseudo philosopher and blogger.
It is clear that if one wishes to be known as a scientist he should have some credentials behind that desire. If otherwise, that person is a pseudo scientist just as I am a pseudo philosopher. While I have studied formally and informally, though about, read widely and deeply about, the Philosophy of Science and Philosophy in general, except for this blog I have never written or published on the subject. I may be a lover of wisdom or seeker of knowledge i.e. a philosopher in general terms, I am not qualified to use the tittle Philosopher, which suggests some academic expertise in the subject.
In this I envision myself as someone not unlike Eric Hoffer, who refereed to himself as a longshoreman and by some other authors as “longshoreman philosopher”. Society has granted the title Philosopher to Hoffer in recognition of his work’s quality. We differ, in that he wrote 10 books and a newspaper column. Unlike him, my voracious reading is somewhat less so and split between earth science, science in general and everything else. He tended to spend much more time on the everything else. I have not read all 10 of his book either. It would be self dilution of the highest order, to class myself in Hoffer’s league. I do not do so.
Hoffer penned many wonderful quotations I will use two here: “The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.” and “We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.”
Now the true philosopher and the true scientist, both seekers of knowledge, can never be a fanatic or an absolutist. By definition these behaviors are incompatible with that seeking and logically inconsistent. I pointed out in the essays: “When Scientists act like Politicians do Politicians act like scientists?” and “Expert Credibility”, when this happens they should forfeit the nobel title. Don’t hold your breath, it hasn’t happened yet.
When any person of science, in speaking or writing about that science, becomes fanatical, dogmatic or absolute, he forfeits the rights to that title. To paraphrase from the essay, “Man At the Center, Not Man In the Center”, a scientist may be at the center of some research topic or another, he is not the center of it. The philosopher in me will say, we scientists do not understand and do not know, far more then we do know and understand. The only person qualified to use the title Scientist is the one who will admit this fact, to himself and to everyone else.
Dr. Curry, by my definition you more then quality you show us how.
My son, the academic social psychologist in the family, has taught me much about the dynamics of cognitive dissonance. Most people, scientist or not, react to new information that contradicts a deeply held paradigm by rejecting it, ignoring it, or finding a way to discredit it. In this case the paradigm is strong AGW, and we have had many opportunities to observe this dynamic. It is rare that someone considers that the paradigm might be wrong or incomplete, and indeed the typical trajectory is for believers to become more strident, more convinced they are right, and to prosletyze more aggressively (see the work of Leon Festinger who developed the concept and did a great deal of research on it). It is rare for an individual to actually challenge his or her deeply held paradigm, and perhaps it was not held that deeply to begin with. In any case, THIS is why you are considered more threatening than people such as Lindzen or Pielke Sr.
Just dropping over from WUWT.
Great read.
Reasonable discussion that doesn’t always confirm my prejudices. A great day is one when going to bed you know something you didn’t know when waking.
Thanks
Card carrying heretic, though not an apostate (the punishment is the same!)
Dr. Curry,
I’d like to suggest that in the future, when considering response to an expected increase in CO2, that we no longer use the two choice model of “Stop or limit human generated CO2 production” vs “Do Nothing. This is not a rational set of choices for real human endeavors. There are very few problems presented to us that have only binary decision choices.
The should always be at least a three way set of choices: “Limit CO2 production”, “Do Nothing”, “Adapt to change.” Failing to express this range of choices when discussing the implications of a scientific presentation feeds into a polarized set of interpretations by people outside the field of climate science.
Of course, not all discussions of climate science end up lead into debate about what impact it has on human endeavors, but when they do, don’t accept “Fix it or Die” vs “Sit on our hands” as rational choices for dealing with weather. Climate is merely weather averaged over time. We pull out our umbrellas when it rains, not because the local climate is described as having an average of one meter of rain per year.
Your blog is probably a good place for the an open discussions of adaptation to probable ranges of climate shifts based upon realistic climate science, not rather wild worst case scenarios.
The should always be at least a three way set of choices: “Limit CO2 production”, “Do Nothing”, “Adapt to change.”
This sounds good, but there is a significant disconnect in the last option, namely: adapt to what change? Some would say there will be no change. Others disagree about the magnitude of the change, and there is very little agreement about the specific changes that will happen in specific places. This is the reason why “climate disruption” is gaining increasing currency: the result of adding energy to a dynamical system is very difficult to predict with specificity.
Absent any information about what will change, the “adapt” option could be roughly analogized to waiting for the rain to start before deciding whether or not to buy an umbrella.
Adapt to WHATEVER change – warming or cooling – migrate to “Green”land, grow grapes in England, or ice skate around fairs held on the frozen Thames.
The practical challenge in “adapting” is to develop alternative renewable liquid fuels cheaper than conventional petroleum.
Is there such a thing? Say more.
That’s not adaptation. That’s just reaction, which will obviously happen in any case, which means that “adapt to change” is precisely equal to “do nothing.”
It sure is convenient to move the goalposts from a requirement of ‘global warming’ to a requirement of simple ‘climate disruption’. Of course, odd weather events hardly ever happen and this really clarifies the issue with respect to attribution.
I find this whole shift in strategy to ‘disruption’ absolutely hilarious. Colder than usual? Climate disruption. Warmer than usual? Climate disruption. What a fantastic catch-all now that it appears possible we’re moving into a cooling period.
Since there is no reason to believe the climate is changing or will change at a markedly greater rate than in the past, why not rely on mankind’s proven capacity to adapt, and stop fretting about it?
If what we call “rain” were something that no living person –nor anyone in recorded history in fact– had ever experienced, we might have a suitable analogy for “Climate Change”. Now we have some people running around saying it’s going to be catistrophic and we need to make major changes in “everything”; and other people running around saying it’s not going to be too bad and we don’t need to do anything; and others saying to anyone who’ll listen that we just don’t know yet what rain is and what’s going to happen.
But think about it, if we go and get some stupid politicians worried about it (or anything really) what do you think is going to happen? You guessed it! It’s going to cost a bundle to put a roof made of pure gold (it don’t rust) over every town and village on the planet.
Perhaps you are looking at this too narrowly. My spin is this: if you claim there will be a damaging change in climate in some area, provide a description of what the effort and cost might be to adapt to the change. Using that as a basis, compare the effort and cost of preventing that climate change.
The point of this as an exercise is to try to bring perspective to those who truly believe potential warming will be harmful. The old saw “A stitch in time saves nine” does not always apply to the real world. If adapting to a climate problem costs $1 and ten minutes worth of work but prevention costs $10 and a lifetime of work, most of us would chose adapting. Further more, if that climate change doesn’t actually occur, all of the $10 cost and that lifetime of work would be avoided.
This approach, of course, will not change many “Believers” minds about AGW but at least it might help get the argument out of the “we are good because we want to save the planet; you are bad because you want to do nothing” mode. :-)
My spin is this: if you claim there will be a damaging change in climate in some area, provide a description of what the effort and cost might be to adapt to the change.
Right. And this “spin” is exactly what I replied to. We don’t know what the exact consequences may be: what “damaging change” will occur in what area, and in what duration. You could prepare for drought in an area that then experiences torrential rains, for example.
The idea is not that we should stop monkeying with the climate because we know for sure what will happen. It’s exactly the opposite.
I agree, its an impossible choice. this will be the topic of the next series of posts.
Judith, not for the first time I wonder what a recently-retired actuary with career experience in climate related risk would have to say about these questions.
Re: Chuck Wilson
I take issue with several things in your post but I would like to get your opinion on just one. If CO2 is the primary driver of global temperatures why have temperatures not spiralled out of control when CO2 levels were 10 times what they are today?
Mike,
See Richard B. Alley’s Bjerknes Lecture at the 2009 AGU meeting for an entertaining and compelling look at “The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History” He is at the Pennsylvania State University.
I am sure it is available somewhere on the web. It was videoed.
I do not know what spiralled out of control means. The largest negative feedback for any warming is emission of thermal radiation by the warming body. As the earth/atmosphere/ocean warms, more radiation escapes to space since bodies radiate proportionally to the 4th power of their absolute temperature. So if you warm a body, its heat loss by thermal radiation goes up. In the case of the Earth and CO2, when CO2 is increased, outgoing radiation is reduced because it is “trapped” by the CO2 and radiated both downwards and upwards. And (for the moment) incoming radiation exceeds outgoing and the system warms. As it warms, it radiates more until the balance is restored. So eventually a new, warmer equilibrium is restored.
Regards,
Chuck Wilson
Dr Curry,
An excellent article
Judith,
When I argue at the pub for an unpopular point of view, the backlash against me is pretty mild and forgotten by the next pint. That’s why I appreciate the courage it takes for someone prominent to argue what they truly believe when the stakes are much higher. I don’t always agree with you but your commitment to honesty and integrity is most respectable.
Dave A
“This means abandoning this religious adherence to consensus dogma.”
EXCELLENT POST! About bloody time someone spoke up and faced the music. The longer the establishment ignores you and this return to sanity the worse it will get for them down the road.
Global mean temperature trend for 120 years is shown below:
http://bit.ly/96nokt
Is it hard to predict what the trend will be for the next 20 years?
————–
That’s average temperature. Means NOTHING! What is causing the average to increase? CO2? No. The winters are becoming less cold, summers are cooling. That’s what is driving the average up. The yearly range of temperatures is narrowing. Since they are converging, at some point in the future that must change and the two start to diverge to colder winters and warmer summers. That 120 year “trend” is just a portion of a longer, quite normal, cycle.
summers are cooling
No. They’re not.
Yes they are:
http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/02/southern-ontario.html
We have 1/3 fewer days above 30C today than we did in the 1920s. This paper confirms that summers have not warmed http://www.cmos.ca/Ao/articles/v380301.pdf
That link of yours shows the monthly AVERAGES not the daily highs and lows. Download the daily data and plot what happens with TMax since 1900. It’s dropping.
Um.
It makes me uncomfortable to be the one to have to explain this to you, but Canada is not the whole world. I can only assume this is news to you, as you attempted to refute a statement about global temperature using only Canadian temperature data.
It is a scary world out here, but I believe we have better bacon.
http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/07/other-parts-of-world-also-getting-less.html
Check the daily high and lows in other places in the world, if you can find the data. If Canada is cooling in the summer, I can bet so is the rest of the temporate world. What mechanism of AGW would allow Canada’s summers to cool? Only in Canada? Not the upper US that boarders us? Please explain it.
Will it hurt your feelings if I point out that Canada + one observatory in Northern Ireland + some portion of Australia ≠ “the world?”
You asserted “The winters are becoming less cold, summers are cooling. That’s what is driving the average up.” I understand that this is hard for you to grasp, but you can’t refute global data that shows summers are getting warmer merely by cherry-picking local data sets. I’m sorry, these are not my rules, just elementary logic.
Where does that data of “summers are getting warmer” come from? Measurements of what?
You could have followed the link yourself. GHCN plus sea surface temperatures from HadISST1 to 1981 and Reynolds/NOAA OI.v2 thereafter.
Judy,
I think part of the problem (and, frankly, the retrenchment among some scientists) is how monochromatic climate science has been cast. You are either a warmest or denier; you either believe every word of the IPCC or believe all of climate science is a scam. Any flaw or criticism gets trumpeted as “bringing down the house of cards” or “driving the final nail in the coffin of AGW”, and this tends to create an environment poisonous to good skeptical science. These strawmen do not reflect the way the majority of scientists think (or people in general, I would hope), but tend to be overwhelmingly present in blog discussions.
Its quite possible to criticize parts of the IPCC (hello working group III…) or how uncertainties have been systematically understated by media reports and advocacy groups while still being concerned by the facts that doubling CO2 would increase radiative forcing by ~3.7 watts per meter squared and that the vast majority of evidence we have collected to date suggests that climate sensitivity is positive.
The lack of a basic foundation of agreement to argue upon has the unfortunate effect of making many blog discussions something of an exercise in futility.
Zeke,
Just out of interest:
“… and that the vast majority of evidence we have collected to date suggests that climate sensitivity is positive. ”
Should one seriously question whether it be positive?
Alex
Alex,
Of course its a serious question, just one that we have a number of lines of evidence for (paleo evidence, physics-based modeling, etc.) that suggests that the Earth’s climate responds strongly to (relatively) small perturbations in external forcings. Its rather difficult to explain ice ages without positive sensitivity, for example. That said, there is plenty of uncertainty as to how positive it is, and whether the base 1.2 C per doubling of CO2 ends up being magnified to 1.5 C, 3C, or 4.5C. It could even end up being negative, though that would be somewhat difficult to reconcile with the evidence to date.
Zeke,
“It could even end up being negative, though that would be somewhat difficult to reconcile with the evidence to date.”
Negative? Are you sure you mean climate sensitivity? Would not a negative value, imply instability?
Or do you mean that the feedbacks could be negative.
Alex
Zeke (& Alex):
Zeke, I think it would be worth your while to do a review of Climate Sensitivity for your Yale review site. From my informed-outsider viewpoint, it does seem that the IPCC (et al.) have likely overstated the likely range. For sure they have, empirically, from the recent historical record. It’s a critical question.
Obviously, in the very long (geologic) term, the feedbacks have to be negative, or we’d be Venus. Then again, in the (we hope) long term, we’ll all be dead… ;-]
I always learn something from your Yale pieces. Thanks & keep up the good work..
Cheers — Pete Tillman
Consulting Geologist, Arizona and New Mexico (USA)
Agreed. My relative small criticisms have been amplified into heresy, which is driving me towards apostasy. This is an insane situation. The consensus seems fragile indeed if I am deemed a threat.
Other than Lemonick, who has spoken in such terms? You talk about “dogma” and McIntyre makes dark references to “fatwas.” Is there a serious voice who is saying “Curry has the power to do damage to a consensus on climate change?”
PDA:
You ask:
“Is there a serious voice who is saying “Curry has the power to do damage to a consensus on climate change?”
Answer, of course not. No “serious voice” could possibly make such an assertion.
Either “the consensus” is right or it is not. Reality will demonstrate the matter with the passage of time. And the words of any person or group of people cannot affect that.
But Dr Curry has called for a return to integrity and honest dealing by the self-named Team. All who value science will applaud that whatever views they have of AGW.
Richard
No “serious voice” could possibly make such an assertion.
Dr. Curry seems to be saying that someone has. Is she wrong?
the self-named Team
“Self-named?” Do you seriously mean to state that the “Hockey Team” epithet was invented by the scientists themselves?
yes.. Afraid so.. they don’t use it much these days.
Evidence of this?
climategate e-amils.
sorry but it is so.
cheers,
Curious much?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22hockey+team%22+%22michael+mann%22+motherjones
read much?
The reference to the “team,” for those of you with short attention spans, refers to the number of different reconstructions that all converge on the same result, not the people.
But nice try. I like that animation too, I’m so stealing it.
hockey sticks do not make a team. The Manniac formed their team to keep the hockey stick illusion alive.
That true believers have to belabor every single point, no matter how obtuse and contorted they must become to do it is amazing.
I’m sorry PDA, I missed something. I assumed you were wondering as to the origination of the term, “The Team.” Heaven forbid someone other than Dr. Mann use the same term to apply to the originators of those sticks rather than the sticks themselves.
What’s your question again?
“the self-named Team.”
Hmmmm….. read RC, for starters.
They attack in no uncertain terms Dr. Curry for challenging the consensus.
You are not going to succeed at what you are trying to do.
As RP Jr points out, he’s careful not to name names.
earning Curry epithets from her colleagues ranging from “naive” to “bizarre” to “nasty” to worse. Which colleagues? Nobody but Lemonick knows.
Curry’s charges are misleading, her critics say. “We’ve seen a lot of strawmen from Judy lately,” Schneider said. “It is frankly shocking to see such a good scientist take that kind of a turn to sloppy thinking. I have no explanation for it.” Oh, I guess he did name a name…of someone who is recently deceased!
What scientists worry is that such exposure means Curry has the power to do damage to a consensus on climate change that has been building for the past 20 years. Which scientists? Again, only Lemonick knows…
This is a classic hatchet job. “Some people say…” “I’m just asking questions…” All the insiders can maintain plausible deniability, and doubt is successfully sewn against the apostate’s credibility. No politics to see here, this is Scientific American, move along folks, move along.
Brilliant summary :)
I meant Judith’s comment:
“Agreed. My relative small criticisms have been amplified into heresy, which is driving me towards apostasy. This is an insane situation. The consensus seems fragile indeed if I am deemed a threat.”
BRAVO!!!!!!!!! Without integrity, none of the rest matters. Ron P.
Another remarkable post, and a fascinating story.
It should be compulsory reading for “the team”, but they probably have their eyes closed and their fingers in their ears.
You are absolutely right that they lost.
Will they ever learn? I think not. I told some of them about two years ago that they were their own worst enemies and yet they continue to behave in the same way (groupthink, defending the indefensible, attacking anyone who doesn’t follow the line, etc).
I haven’t commented here before because although I’ve worked on global-warming for decades, I’m not a climate scientist. However, I suspect there’s a core failing.
It concerns ‘aerosol cooling’. Kiehl argues AGW is buried in ‘aerosol noise’ but in time it’ll emerge: GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L22710, doi:10.1029/2007GL031383, 2007 . AR4 shows the correction is 75% of the ‘signal’.
The direct effect is proven but NASA funded work to find why the cloud part isn’t: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/113944/polluted_clouds_cool_earth_less . So, the incorporation in AR4 of the latter must have been justified because Twomey proved it for thin clouds and there is credible theory predicting it for thick clouds.
Intuitively, when all photons lose geometrical information, as many must exit the top of a cloud as the base yet real clouds can have albedo >>0.5. NASA extends Twomey’s idea to thick clouds by claiming more surface area increases reflection: http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sgg/singh/winners4.html . But there’s no such physics.
The models apparently use eq. 19: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1974/1974_Lacis_Hansen_1.pdf , a zero absorption form of Sagan and Pollack’s ‘two stream’ model. However, you can’t use this semi-empirical relationship to predict albedo without proof it works, and I can’t find any.
I believe the only way to explain albedo>0.5 is a second optical process. A thick, non-absorbing slab cloud, 0.7 albedo, transmits 30% diffuse energy; the same is emitted as diffuse albedo; the remaining 40% retains directional information hence the observed directionality of albedo, inconsistent with Lambert’s law for diffuse emitters.
The maths is hideous but it’s easy to show the second effect is strongly dependent on droplet size. So, real ‘cloud albedo effect’ may be heating, another firm of AGW. That means present predicted AGW should be reduced by >= a factor of 3, i.e. no water-cycle amplification, and much further if part or all the temperature ‘signal’ is from another process.
Also, an upper bound calculation predicts that if you reduce droplet diameter from 15 to 5 microns, a cloud initially with 0.7 albedo would transmit 60% more energy. Has much recent AGW has been from increased light transmission by tropical clouds over oceans due to the ‘Asian Brown Cloud’ and has the cessation since 2003 of ocean heating been because this AGW is self limiting- thick cloud albedo asymptotes at 0.5?
In theory, clouds can be characterized by albedos close to 100 percent, although not under circumstances in which they exert a cooling effect. The basis for this conclusion resides in the fact that depending on droplet size, scattering can be strongly forward peaked. Under this circumstances, light from the sun at a zenith angle close to pi/2 (i.e., very close to the horizon) will be directed by a cloud at some altitude above the Earth’s surface in a direction mainly parallel to the surface, so that most of it escapes to space.
Agreed.
However, what I am referring to is a sharply peaked extra contribution to albedo from large droplets/unpolluted, thick clouds which in effect shields the interior. It’s why rain clouds are dark.
Measure the transmitted energy and you get high apparent tau but it’s an artefact. The Hansen-Lacis formulation used apparently in all the models predicts an increase in albedo on polluting thick clouds when the reverse is the case.
Therefore ‘cloud albedo effect’ cooling correction in AR4 is mythical and CO2-AGW is wildly exaggerated, possibly completely absent with the real AGW being from the clouds, self-limiting and reversible if aerosol pollution in Asia is cleaned up.
Why does NASA put out a false scientific explanation of the extra reflectivity of polluted clouds? Is it that the true physics is known but has been kept under wraps otherwise it would destroy the CO2-AGW hypothesis?
Climate scientists have apparently fallen for this. Hansen is an expert on Mie scattering so must know ‘reflection is very wrong physics.
Alistairmcd:
You say:
“Why does NASA put out a false scientific explanation of the extra reflectivity of polluted clouds? Is it that the true physics is known but has been kept under wraps otherwise it would destroy the CO2-AGW hypothesis?
Climate scientists have apparently fallen for this. Hansen is an expert on Mie scattering so must know ‘reflection is very wrong physics.”
No, it is simpler than “false scientific explanation of the extra reflectivity of polluted clouds”.
The microbehaviour of clouds is far, far too small a scale for it to be modelled in the GCMs so emulations of assumed cloud behaviour are input. And the emulations do not work.
Ron Miller and Gavin Schmidt, both of NASA GISS, provide an evaluation of the leading US GCM. They are U.S. climate modelers who use the NASA GISS GCM and they strongly promote the AGW hypothesis. Their paper tiltled ‘Ocean & Climate Modeling: Evaluating the NASA GISS GCM’ was updated on 2005-01-10 and the last time I looked it was still available at
http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/research/ppa/2001/oceans/
Its abstract says:
“This preliminary investigation evaluated the performance of three versions of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies’ recently updated General Circulation Model E (GCM). This effort became necessary when certain Fortran code was rewritten to speed up processing and to better represent some of the interactions (feedbacks) of climate variables in the model. For example, the representation of clouds in the model was made to agree more with the satellite observational data thus affecting the albedo feedback mechanism. The versions of the GCM studied vary in their treatments of the ocean. In the first version, the Fixed-SST, the sea surface temperatures are prescribed from the obsevered seasonal cycle and the atmospheric response is calculated by the model. The second, the Q-Flux model, computes the SST and its response to atmospheric changes, but assumes the transport of heat by ocean currents is constant. The third treatment, called a coupled GCM (CGCM) is a version where an ocean model is used to simulate the entire ocean state including SST and ocean currents, and their interaction with the atmosphere. Various datasets were obtained from satellite, ground-based and sea observations. Observed and simulated climatologies of surface air temperature sea level pressure (SLP) total cloud cover (TCC), precipitation (mm/day), and others were produced. These were analyzed for general global patterns and for regional discrepancies when compared to each other. In addition, difference maps of observed climatologies compared to simulated climatologies (model minus observed) and for different versions of the model (model version minus other model version) were prepared to better focus on discrepant areas and regions. T-tests were utilized to reveal significant differences found between the different treatments of the model. It was found that the model represented global patterns well (e.g. ITCZ, mid-latitude storm tracks, and seasonal monsoons). Divergence in the model from observations increased with the introduction of more feedbacks (fewer prescribed variables) progressing from the Fixed–SST, to the coupled model. The model had problems representing variables in geographic areas of sea ice, thick vegetation, low clouds and high relief. It was hypothesized that these problems arose from the way the model calculates the effects of vegetation, sea ice and cloud cover. The problem with relief stems from the model’s coarse resolution. These results have implications for modeling climate change based on global warming scenarios. The model will lead to better understanding of climate change and the further development of predictive capability. As a direct result of this research, the representation of cloud cover in the model has been brought into agreement with the satellite observations by using radiance measured at a particular wavelength instead of saturation.”
This abstract was written by strong proponents of AGW but admits that the NASA GISS GCM has “problems representing variables in geographic areas of sea ice, thick vegetation, low clouds and high relief.”
These are severe problems.
For example, clouds reflect solar heat and a mere 2% increase to cloud cover would more than compensate for the maximum possible predicted warming due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the air. Good records of cloud cover are very short because cloud cover is measured by satellites that were not launched until the mid 1980s. But it appears that cloudiness decreased markedly between the mid 1980s and late 1990s. Over that period, the Earth’s reflectivity decreased to the extent that if there were a constant solar irradiance then the reduced cloudiness provided an extra surface warming of 5 to 10 Watts/sq metre. This is a lot of warming. It is between two and four times the entire warming estimated to have been caused by the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. (The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that since the industrial revolution, the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has had a warming effect of only 2.4 W/sq metre).
So, the fact that the NASA GISS GCM has problems representing clouds must call into question the entire performance of the GCM.
Importantly, the abstract says; “the representation of cloud cover in the model has been brought into agreement with the satellite observations by using radiance measured at a particular wavelength instead of saturation” but this adjustment is a ‘fiddle factor’ because BOTH the radiance AND the saturation must be correct if the effect of the clouds is to be correct.
There is no reason to suppose that the adjustment will not induce the model to diverge from reality if other changes – e.g. alterations to GHG concentration in the atmosphere – are introduced into the model. Indeed, this problem of erroneous representation of low level clouds could be expected to induce the model to provide incorrect indication of effects of changes to atmospheric GHGs because changes to clouds have much greater effect on climate than changes to GHGs.
Richard
Richard,
“a mere 2% increase to cloud cover would more than compensate for the maximum possible predicted warming due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the air. ”
That’s a very interesting hypothesis. Can you cite a scientific paper that supports it? What’s the radiative forcing of doubling CO2? What’s the variability and radiative forcing of cloud cover?
Thanks
This may be what you are looking for – IPCC report AR4 1.5.2 : “Clouds, which cover about 60% of the Earth’s surface, are responsible for up to twothirds of the planetary albedo, which is about 30%. An albedo decrease of only 1%, bringing the Earth’s albedo from 30% to 29%, would cause an increase in the black-body radiative equilibrium temperature of about 1°C, a highly signifi cant value, roughly equivalent to the direct radiative effect of a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration.“.
Thanks so much. I looked the radiative forcings at IPCC AR4 FAQ 2.1 Curiously there is no mention of cloud cover and overall water vapor (humidity). These two give the highest radiative forcing and hence greatest impact on global temp.
The effect of doubling CO2 is equivalent to a mere 2% decrease in cloud cover or a 3% increase in humidity (considering there are 30x more H2o molecules than CO2 in the air). It seems IPCC attributed global warming to CO2 by simply ignoring the two most likely candidates.
While discussion of the state of science and the integrity of scientists is enormously worthwhile (and I applaud Dr. Curry’s contribution to it), let us not lose sight of the fact that the AGW movement is ultimately not about science — it’s about politics! It is about the acquisition and application of political power in a grand attempt to alter the course of human history. Society can recover from a temporary abuse of the scientific method, but I fear the impact on human liberty of losing the political battle is of much greater consequence.
There is always the ‘Solution of Last Resort’. Wipe the blackboard clean with sponge with water, let dry, and start all over.
PS: Water seems to be involved in everything and we call this place “Earth”. Hummmmm…
Without a blush:
Realclimate are discussing archiving and availability of climate code.
On the whole a sensible article with the issues discuused quirte sensibly in the comments..
Climate code archiving: an open and shut case?
Filed under: Climate Science— eric @ 26 October 2010
Gavin Schmidt and Eric Steig
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/10/climate-code-archiving-an-open-and-shut-case/
So positive progress.
If Michael mann had done this how many years ago now, and P Jones, what would have occured
good signs!
Then we would have seen the problems with Mann, realized there is not a hockey stick shaped crisis, and moved on to actually helping people.
And Mann may have been able to build a career that will not serve as an example of how not to do science.
That’s a start, but they fail to see why code should be consistently archived. It is for the same reason mathematicians provide proofs. If the code is public, it can be perused for validity. Other people can still apply other algorithms to check the results, but an examination of the code should be the first step towards validation of a result involving computer code.
Yes, Judith.
Sooner or later, on this subject, if the mind is still independently functional we all come to the “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment.
Judith, my take, which suggests that a third storyline is responsible for enduring interest:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/10/26/curry-the-apostate/
Judith,
Widespread use of phraseology like “religious adherence to consensus dogma” is not going to put you in a place where you can play the mediator role you want. And the fact that virtually all of your commenters are far more critical of AGW and the IPCC than you shows that if you want to play the role of mediator, you have not succeeded. I posted here and ended up debating somebody who ended up saying that there is absolutely no proof at all of AGW, a response that resulted in my not wasting time here any more, until I saw something about this post elsewhere. Those who are members are your proclaimed consensus dogma are avoiding this place. I leave it to others to debate whether that is fair to you or not.
And in case you haven’t figured it out, my guess is that your “heresy” has more to do with calling other scientists religious dogmatists more than it has to do with your published work. Like it or not, you’ve staked out your terrain, and it isn’t in the middle.
Dean, you are seeing monster creation in action. I have never referred to other climate scientists in the context of dogma until this statement. I started out voicing concern for the integrity of science and worry that the IPCC was taking a hit from this. The reaction from the climate scientist activist wing of the climate science community is pretty clear from Lemonick’s article and follow up explanation. And the complete silence from them. Note, a very small percentage of climate scientists spend any time at all on the blogs (a few of them are spending time here, you may not recognize their names). I have given up trying to play mediator with the activist wing of the climate science community. I am more interested in seeing climate science get back on course. The activist wing has created the heretic, and if this gets much worse, apostate.
“The reaction from the climate scientist activist wing of the climate science community is pretty clear from Lemonick’s article and follow up explanation.”
I only see one other scientist quoted in Lemonick’s article. How does it therefore represent any viewpoint of the “climate scientist activist wing of the climate science community” much less do so “clearly”?
“And the complete silence from them. “
Why is any scientist supposed to be commenting on your interview? Offhand I can’t think of any instance where I’ve seen science based blogs post about someone being interviewed.
“The activist wing has created the heretic, and if this gets much worse, apostate.”
I was under the impression your stated motivations were with regard to communicating science, I don’t understand where the actions of this unnamed “activist wing” fits into that or how they can modify your judgement on scientific topics.
Of course they don’t modify my judgment on scientific topics. They may modify the extent to which i engage in any way with the IPCC.
The reaction from the climate scientist activist wing of the climate science community is pretty clear from Lemonick’s article
Come on now. He’s a minor blogger, how do you figure Lemonick is the go-to for the entire “climate scientist activist wing,” whatever that is?
he seems reasonably well connected with the climate activist wing, the people that think policy first and science second.
There’s an old saying in science, and a few other disciplines I’m told: “It’s not what you know but who you know that counts.”
What does “reasonably well-connected” mean? To whom is he connected, and how do you know this?
Dr. Curry, if people thought you were a heretic, don’t you think you’d have been called that by now? Especially by the pseudonymous bloggers?
I’m genuinely sympathetic to the real discomfort you must feel at times. You’ve become a lightning rod for a lot of hostility on the internet, and personal abuse which I find unforgivable. I do honestly think, though, that you’re veering awfully close to a persecution complex here.
I don’t feel persecuted at all. At the moment I feel a bit overwhelmed with the Sci Am article appearing (I knew it was coming at some point but had no idea when), an obligation to respond with a huge spike in blog traffic, in the midst of what is a very busy week for me in terms of my day job. But your second question raises an interesting point. Other than Roger Pielke Sr., I haven’t seen other climate scientists or other pro AGW bloggers defend me from this label (the closest was Joe Romm, who said that Sci Am should apologize to me over the survey question over whether I was a dupe or peacemaker.) In the overall scheme of things, this isn’t very important, but the article illuminates some very weird thinking, and it can’t be totally Lemonicks imagination or this wouldn’t have gotten published by the Sci Am.
Once this kerfuffle dies down (they rarely last more than a week), I can get back to what I have been doing. On last weekends post “state of the blog”, i felt that things were going very well.
p.s. I have have had many disagreements with Michael Mann, but i spoke out publicly against the Cuccinelli witch hunts, in an interview with Tom Fuller.
It may be the first time you’ve used that specific language, but I’ve seen posts from you elsewhere that I felt strayed into that region of discourse. Maybe it would be better if everybody involved had thicker skin, but they don’t.
And blaming this division on climate activists when many of the commenters on your own blog either don’t think that CO2 can even cause warming or doubt other well-established aspects of the science that you accept, strikes me as a rather strong bias on your part.
If your goal is to get climate science back on track from however it has come off, I would suggest that at this point this blog probably doesn’t have a role to play. Blogs can play a role in explaining somebody’s point of view, but I don’t think they play any role in resolving disputes in science. Maybe you should do a post about detecting a rational signal in blogs – that’s the hardest signal to find (but it does exist!).
I will be my usual pain in the ass but I have yet to find any Creditable experimental evidence that the “greenhouse gas effect exists”. Experimental data is necessary to prove a hypotheses! This is the Scientific Method. Having referenced physicists from Angstrom,R.W.Wood, to Gerlich and Tscheuschner, to Dr. Charles Anderson and many others that have looked at the physics. There will never be any experimental data that “proves that the ghg effect exist” it is a fairy-tale. This is the biggest Scam in the history of the world yet. Why the Climate alarmists continues to show their ignorance must mean that they prefer to keep stealing from the public coffers rather that admit that they have been fouled by a bunch of politicians and corrupt scientists!
Dr. Curry you have started to open the door just a crack, but its time to open the door all the way and a lot of heads will roll When the people realize that “billions if not trillions of dollars, E U’s and Pesos” have been flushed down a rat hole, by the whole green movement!
The group at http://www.climatedepot.com would be happy to have you on the “right side” rather than trying to be a “peace maker” when one side is so wrong that it is a crime.
It is a shame that Anastassia Makarieva has done a great job of identify an area of weather information only to spoil it by implying that CO2 has anything to do with the weather.
It’s time that real scientists get out there and begin reeducating the politicians , the Supreme Court Justices, and the public that have been lied to for the last 30 to 40 years by the IPCC,the Al Gore’s the Jim Hansan’s and the Joe Romm’s.
Lets look at facts with true documents instead of the fairy-tales.
Cleanwater.
If you require an elegant and simple demonstration of the infrared absorption capacity of carbon dioxide you should consider the implications of Iain Stewart’s video.
“Greenhouse” is a misnomer, but the “effect” is real.
I am laughing through this so far. I am to this:
We all remember Benedict Arnold’s name much more than the names of the British generals, too… LOL
I reiterate: The consensus was NOT built. It was unilaterally declared 20 years ago. Once declared, people were beat over the head with it. And, like you, Judith, they were “duped” by the idea of “don’t trust what one scientists says, trust what thousands of IPCC scientists say.” Those who didn’t know enough about it accepted that those “on the inside” of the issue were being honorable and noble in their leadership.
Judith, you are going through some of the same steps that many of us “skeptics” went through, those who didn’t start out as skeptics. And I believe that would include Steve McIntyre and perhaps John Pielke Sr. Richard Lindzen was knowledgeable to oppose it from the beginning.
Hahaha – you probably would have a helluva discussion with him right about now.
Good for you for taking a balanced approach. I do not read the article as strongly as you did–i just thought they wanted to sensationalize the issue by personalizing it somewhat. Unlike some scientific issues, this issue has serious political and economic issues involved. I see a cost benefit approach as the only reasonable solution with serious steps like conservation and efficiency likely the most effective first steps. Keep speaking out to add rationality to the debate.
One more thing…
Judith: “This sense of McIntyre and myself as having “power” seems absurd to me (and probably to Steve), but it seems real to some people.”
It is INFLUENCE, not power, they are addressing.
They have had all the influence for 20 years, and they are jealous of that influence. They feel it being threatened. Steve M made them feel threatened, simply because he called them on some of the things they didn’t do well. For them to have been brought up short about their handling of statistics – that was NEW to them. They’d had a monopoly on pontifications. All of a sudden, they had a chink in their armor.
And now you come along, after Nov 19,2009, and threaten the beginning of a tide of others. That tide WILL have begun with one or two. They are trying to stem that tide, before it becomes a tidal bore.
Since Nov 19, everything they’ve done is disaster mitigation. Their forward progress has been thwarted. Their mojo is lost. You foretell of a catastrophe for them.
It would not be so, not if the science was solid, and not if they had not let hubris puff out their chests. They honestly did not think they would have to produce their data and methodologies, especially not because some retired stat man audited what they did.
But now one of their own is lost to them, driven out by their own actions and words.
Of COURSE they are scared.
Lemonick is just a soft-pedaling hit man/junk yard dog – trying to look civilized while savaging, killing you softly with his song… While trying to appear even-handed, the innuendo you recognize is designed to NOT LOSE ANYONE ELSE.
But all of the actions depicted in the Nov 19 files were for that reason, too. They keep shooting themselves in the collective foot.
“It ain’t personal,” they say, as they slip the sheave a bit deeper…
Dr Curry,
I hestitate to post this link but hopefully it takes you directly to your comment.
Let me ask you this. So how are things going for you lately?
I find that to be a strange question. As a climate scientist I find it difficult to relate to much of what was stated in your post. I have never felt pressured to conform to any consensus regarding climate change, nor in my publications or my grant work. I understand that a considerable amount of uncertainty remains in climate science and a lot of our work focuses on trying to reduce that uncertainty and better understand the processes behind the changes we are observing, like the Arctic sea ice cover in my case. I regularly engage with climate skeptics on blogs, trying to answer their questions.
So as for me, things are going well. I am happy with my research and the outreach work I engage in. It’s not about politics, but about improving our understanding of our planet’s processes and it’s about education. I certainly don’t feel betrayed because you don’t feel the IPCC process worked the way you feel it should have. It is unfortunate that mistakes were made, but I believe the IPCC can learn from their mistakes and do a better job summarizing our understanding of climate in the future, an understanding that continually evolves as more information is gathered.
Since the compliments/criticisms concerning the various approaches scientists use I’d like to point out Julienne Stroeve’s is one I very much favour.
I mentioned on the water vapor thread I’m nowhere near skillful enough to evaluate that paper so I rely instead on the back-and-forth between experts. The same was true of arctic ice conditions so when wattsupwiththat.com began running weekly updates I had to wait for an expert to engage the specifics and lead me to a greater understanding of what was going on. Certainly I could see many flaws and irregularities in what was being posted each week but recognizing a flawed argument through logical inference is nothing like having them exposed with actual knowledge of the topic.
I hope Dr Stroeve’s efforts are replicated by other scientists. The literature of climate science is large and foreboding so when various claims are being made it’s at least nice to have some pointers on where to start on forming a judgement.
Hi Julienne, I’m glad to hear that things are going well for you. If you aren’t one of the people thinking that I have been duped or that I am damaging the IPCC consensus, then that note wasn’t intended to mean anything to you.
No, I certainly don’t feel that way, and I haven’t heard talk of it among my peers either. In fact it’s only in the skeptic blogosphere that I’m hearing of it at all. That’s not to say that it’s not happening, but I don’t get the feeling, at least in the Arctic science community, that you are regarded as a heretic.
Julienne, I am delighted that this has not pervaded the arctic community. I have heard this a lot, including scientists that have personally contacted me. Their argument is that i am damaging the consensus which is essential for the preferred policies, and because of the policy impact, I can only have been duped by big oil or the libertarians. Insane, I know, but there is alot of this going around. A little in the blogosphere, but more from the people that move “in higher circles.”
The most bizarre one was a visitor to Georgia Tech who found out after he had arrived that Steve McIntyre had been invited to give a seminar here. This person (a member of the NAS but not part of the IPCC to my knowledge) was so incensed that he said he would not have come to GT if he knew that we were the sort of place that would have Steve McIntyre for a seminar. This was at a dinner party reception, and he kept haranguing me about this for several hours. Had I lost my mind, did I realize how I was misleading the students, how damaging and traitorous this was to the entire climate community, etc.
This is the kind of craziness that I encounter all the time, so if my reaction seemed an overreaction to you, I’m glad to hear that you are not exposed to this craziness!
Were his/her initials (appropriately) BS perhaps?
Nope, but no more guesses :)
Dr Curry,
Great article. You were made welcome into the cult of AGW probably without your knowing it even happened and not until it was too late. But with membership comes obligations. I am afraid your article clearly shows that you are not meeting them. So when a person of high stature within a hierarchy questions the established dogma, and when they follow up by questioning the structure and authority of the hierarchy itself, they place themselves at great risk of being accused of being an apostate and of being ostracized as a result. Being excluded from the cult can have very real and personal implications. I urge you to be very careful with the way you proceed. You may not be aware of this but you are rapidly approaching apostate status. If you would publicly repent and turn back from your wicked ways then you *might* be able to retain your position in the AGW hierarchy. If you repent, then there would be some loss of your current prestige, privilege and power as punishment for your obviously temporary and misguided heretical ideas but the AGW cult will find a way to help you back into the fold so that you don’t feel as though you’ve had to compromise too much and so that the hierarchy can save face. However, if you do NOT repent then you will feel the full force of being ostracized from the AGW community. You will lose all of your current privileges, power and prestige. Your road back into the fold will be made even more loathsome than if you had simply repented now. As an apostate, your ability to communicate and associate with AGW proponents will be made so difficult as to be considered impossible. Those that you once called your friends will become your enemies such that your former friends will recoil in your presence and they will accuse you of gross wrongdoing. They will claim that you willingly associate with the enemies of the cult and you will suffer the consequences of guilt by association. Your status as a willing and unrepentant sinner will make you abhorrent to your former friends. Are you sure you want to continue down this path of self destruction? Are you ready to be shunned by those that you once called your friends?
I applaud your courage to question and also, do I detect some soul searching regarding your induction into the fold post Katrina? I hope that the AGW cult has less power than it appears to have. I truly hope that you and your family prosper and do well as you step into the uncertain future.
Upon reading your passive – aggressive peace (intended), for some odd reason the “No Pressure” video began playing in my minds eye.
Good, the thought reform is working.
Judy – At this point nearly 200 comments down in the thread, I don’t know how much attention additional commentary will receive, but I’ll offer a few thoughts.
First, reviewing what has already appeared suggests to me that many commentators perceive what you have written as a useful weapon in their own battles against adversaries, and are spinning your perspective for purposes that may not be identical to yours. That is probably inevitable, but it might be useful for you occasionally to remind readers of what you think, as opposed to what others claim you think. “Others” includes me, and I might be wrong in my perception, which is that you accept most of the basic principles underlying the conclusion that we are probably warming the planet, and that this may portend significant adverse consequences. Your emphasis on the need to acknowledge the uncertainty surrounding these conclusions is salutary, and I have no quarrel with it, although my own assessment of the evidence – which is as independent of IPCC groupthink as is yours – leads me to assign a high probability to the reality of significant anthropogenic warmng. This point has been reargued too often already to belabor it again here, and I won’t try.
I’ve read the SciAm article, and I find it to reflect well on your judgment an integrity. You deserve the praise you’re enjoying here. I do, however, feel troubled by two words associated with the article – one chosen by the author or editors, and one attributed to you. If your intent is not to demolish the edifice of climate science, but to preserve it by replacing weaknesses with elements less vulnerable to attack, you are a “critic”, and perhaps a severe one, but not a “heretic”. I believe the article clarifies that point, but it may get lost amid discussions of the title.
You conclude, I believe, that the IPCC can be characterized as insular, arrogant, biased, and resistant to criticism, and those characterizations can easily be defended. The word that troubled me, however, was “corrupt”, which implies something worse and more nefarious than the other adjectives. That term, in association with your stature, will surely be used by those intent on destroying the edifice, and so I wonder whether it is the most accurate word choice. If the IPCC, as an institution, is corrupt, in addition to all those other flaws, that charge should be thoroughly documented. Can it be? If so, I believe you should offer specific evidence. If not, I wonder whether you would want to qualify your description, so that it is not misused for destructive ends that you don’t wish to see transpire.
Fred, there was a discussion somewhere in the blogosphere on my use of the word corrupt in the context of IPCC, probably at collide-a-scape, it was discussed ad nauseum if i recall. The word corruption has many many meanings and nuances. It was used in the context of corruption of the IPCC process (violations of their rules of procedures). It can used in the sense of changing the meaning, in the sense of broken down, to degrade with unsound principles. In terms of the IPCC corrupting the science, the intended meaning is to degrade with unsound principles by focusing too much on single line of research that presupposes a substantial global warming with substantial impacts. The connotation also of corruption with criminality is unfortunate and not an intended use of the word here. Better words to use, I’m sure. But that is the meaning, and I certainly won’t throw that word around loosely any more. Note that interview occurred last May.
“To degrade with unsound principles…” is bad enough, and covered by my preferred word: incompetent.
Dr. Curry,
Thank you very much for some lucid thought on this much-tangled subject.
You have shown that the “deniers”, or “climate outsiders” as Lemonick has called us, are not ravening, two-headed monsters leaking coal-smoke and oil wherever we might venture.
I firmly believe that this planet’s meteorological systems have never been in a state of stasis; they are always changing. I also am of the belief that there is very, very little that mankind can do to alter the march of our ever-changing climate.
That you have had the courage to speak out and express your own mind makes you, to date, unique. The “sceptics” need a sceptic of their own; you bring to the discussion a much-needed tempering attitude which is backed by the respect, grudging or otherwise, which you so richly deserve.
Bravo for being so brave!
Judith says
‘curryja | October 25, 2010 at 7:40 pm | Reply With some offline help from jeez, we finally found the first thread that I posted on over at climateaudit, a real piece of climate blogospheric history’
Well, this is another.
Climatology is not a ‘monster’, just a giant octopus with many tentacles, irradiance, clouds, albedo, UV, GCRs, jet-streams, methane, CO2.
Most of these tentacles in one way or another propel this giant forward, but none of them is in charge, but it is his two eyes
one in the North Atlantic ( NAP )
and the other in the Pacific ( PDO-G ). .
Understanding these two is the ‘Alexandrian solution’ of the climate.
Ignoring these two is yet another failure at the Phrygian puzzle.
It is not an octopus. It is a squid that obscures itself with ink!
“The activist wing has created the heretic, and if this gets much worse, apostate.”
I wonder if you could clarify, Dr. Curry. Does this mean that the activist wing has LABELLED you heretic, and may go on to label you apostate, OR, that it has actually CAUSED YOU TO BECOME a heretic and may go on to cause you to become an apostate?
Well actually this whole thing is silly. If people insist that the IPCC is dogma than I want no part of that. The label heretic was provided by Mr. Lemonick. This is all in the eyes of people who think the IPCC should be dogma. I prefer to ignore the whole silliness and get on with science and challenging and assessing it, which i plan on doing tomorrow.
This is, indeed, silly. Who is “insist[ing] that the IPCC is dogma?” I mean, isn’t this a straw man?
no. this was discussed on another thread in the context of hassles that Jim Hansen had received in 2000 in response to a paper that suggested managing other trace greenhouse gases and black carbon, rather than CO2. This incensed the cognoscenti who viewed this as distracting from CO2 mitigation policies (editorials in nature and science, etc). I ran into this also back in 2005 when i was getting exposed in those circles. And I heard it again last fall prior to Copenhagen.
And yes this whole situation is silly but that doesn’t make it less real.
Dr. Curry, can you point me to this thread please? I couldn’t find any discussion on Hansen 2000 on your blog.
Again, could you point me to these editiorials in Nature and Science? Thank you.
I will try, i think it was on state of the blog thread, the discussion involved Michael Tobis. I will try to come back to this. So many comments, I am also having problems finding things.
Correct – massive strawman.
Judith has taken a word out of this headline, and then made massive leaps of logic to suggest that the IPCC is some sort of dogma.
I’d suggest a heavy dose of perspective when assessing what journalists write.
Rubbish. Just as the church is not bricks and mortar, it is the faithful congregation within, so the very behaviour of your consensus scientists and their reaction to those whose words threaten the advancement of policies actively promoted by that loose consensus, exposes the IPCC dogma for what it is.
That was a very pretty speech, but you’re still running from the question. Who is “insist[ing] that the IPCC is dogma?
Are you and I again about to embark on a lengthy sequence of point and counterpoint? I think others tire of that.
Running from? I haven’t addressed the question of “who is insisting that the IPCC is dogma”. I am observing that the behaviour of IPCC scientists is consistent with the behaviour of fundamentalist defenders of ideologies. I am observing that that behaviour is both entirely consistent with and strongly indicative of the existence of such dogma. Whether the cry is “heretic”, “witch”, “anti-science”, “big oil shill” or “in league with the devil”; whether the call is to disassociate, to “ignore the Fraudit” or “burn ’em at the stake”, the behaviour of far too many in the “consensus” is wholly religious in tone, fanatical in some quarters, and expressly for the purpose of suppressing or ex-communicating those in dissension.
Thank you for your reply, Dr.Curry. I agree, it’s all very silly, but I think you need to be mindful how your words might be interpreted – there will be people who wish to cast them in the worst possible light!
I’m not sure I’m any wiser what you really meant. I’d hazard a guess that you are saying, disregarding any labels applied by them, that others (possibly including some climatologists?) are adopting a dogmatic approach. You want nothing to do with that, and the more dogmatic they become, the more that will alienate you.
Actually, I’m sick of this whole thing.
Let’s assume a cold world, no CO2, just O2 & N2. Yes we still have the oceans but here’s the start.
Anyone who can say the oceans won’t warm under insolation is a fool! From there come the greatest ‘greenhouse’ gas we know
You may or may not subscribe to GHG theory, I don’t give a toss! Why are extra <b<insulative layers of glazing more effective than IR mirroring technologies?
Surface IR losses have long been overrated.
DaveE.
Dr Curry,
You talk about “loss of public trust in climate science” but surely you should level most blame at the skeptics.
Download and read the NIPCC report for example. That and other things skeptics regularly publish (including blog posts) are positively dripping in public trust destroying junk. This stuff is spread over the internet, some of it even makes it into the media. It deserves the strongest condemnation if you are interested in restoring the credibility of science.
It makes me wonder why the skeptics haven’t policed their own output themselves. I know skeptics such as Roy Spencer have done some excellent work trying to correct misconceptions regarding the greenhouse effect and engelbeen with the cause of recent co2 rise. But they aren’t my concern. They are actual skeptics. What I am more concerned about is the bulk of the group referred to as “skeptics” who I think are feigning concern about the science while in fact they don’t want it to be credible so long as it’s results aren’t what they want to hear.
As for the other side – the scientific community. It’s not perfect but it’s nothing near as misinforming as the skeptics. AR4 is not perfect is it, but it does contain a good overview of climate science as of about 2007. Possibly it’s the best overview that exists on the subject. Certainly I doubt many other fields could boast such a quality report.
Yet skeptics will tell us that AR4 is junk. As if it’s completely worthless because of a major error about glaciers in 2035, a conclusion that’s possibly wrong about the amazon, a mistake about sea level of the netherlands and the financial background of the chairman of the IPCC.
Yet how is it that none of those things make me lose credibility in the report, yet skeptics on the otherhand conclude it is therefore total toss?
Who is right? Or perhaps I should say – who is more right? Me. By far. And that’s why I know the problem is the skeptics.
The loss of credibility of science is a self-fulfilling prophesy of the skeptics. They warn about it as they gleefully wave it on.
There is a chicken and egg problem here. Who struck the first blow, and how it all accelerated from there. The consensus trying to marginalize scientists like Roy Spencer motivated much more militant and widespread skepticism. The loss of credibility is not just a self fulfilling prophecy of the skeptics, but also owing to the attempts to establish and enforce a consensus by marginalizing dissenting voices.
Oh, come off it, Dr. Curry. The skeptisphere you laud didn’t exist in a vacuum consisting only of itself and climate scientists. Grow up and realize that forces are in play here that *want* to obstruct. It wasn’t just because someone on RealClimate called Spencer a crank, or just because Al Gore made a movie.
Yes, the next fallacious appeal is always to the big oil and the Koch family conspiracy.
way way before RC and Al Gore came on the scene.
This debate should not be about ‘forces in play’, but about scientific standards. Let’s just take one example. The IPCC claimed that the Himalayas would lose their glaciers by 2035. Since all the IPCC assertions are based on refereed papers, it should have been easy for someone to check when this claim was questioned. It actually took several attempts before the IPCC admitted that this claim was a ‘mistake’ – based on no refereed papers whatsoever!
Can such a thing really be a mistake? Can someone assess and re-assess a claim, and not notice that there actually isn’t any supporting evidence?
Does it make any sense to call the IPCC a scientific organisation if it can behave like this?
Bzzzt, wrong.
I was a believer in AGW until I started noticing the similarity between leading AG opinion leaders and televangelists, unscrupulous salesmen, politicians and others of low character.
The blame is entirely on the promoters of AGW/global climate disruption for taking a science of climate and turning it into a sales tool claiming we are facing a dangerous tipping point that will spin our climate out of control into a Venusian hell. It was the promoters that rigged Hansen’s debut playing the the thermostat in the hearing room. It was Schneider who rationalized the ends-justifies-the-means tactics. It was cliamte scientists who wrote the CRU e-mails.
Who cares if someone who doesn’t understand the physics of CO2 claims AGW is wrong? The problem is that people who claim to understand CO2 and should no better claim we are facing a climate crisis and have a supine press unwilling to ask tough questions because selling the next apocalypse is great for business.
“Who is right? Or perhaps I should say – who is more right? Me. By far. And that’s why I know the problem is the skeptics.”
That doesnt sound very humble. Just because you have chosen a ‘side’ doesnt mean either you or the papers and blogposts written by your ‘side’ are right. If many claims of the consensus (like the future warming or climate sensitivity) cannot be verified using the scientific method yet people shout something “will happen” and “is proven”, it should alarm a bell.
On top of that, if critisism is being suppressed that usually means the consensus isnt robust on critisism.
If you are a true skeptic, then you will carefully look on Roy Spencer’s work, for example. And there are many other recent papers troublesome on the so called ‘consensus’ as well.
Surely, there are many skeptic which write a lot of rubbish. But same works in opposite direction aswell, good examples are Joe Romm or Al Gore. Neithers claims have any kind of scientific scrutiny.
Cthulhu: There is a broad range of skeptic opinions. Some of them I find outlandish too.
Count me as a person who defended AGW until Climategate became public last year. You are deluding yourself if you believe that it is just the skeptics that have eroded the credibility of climate scientists.
For the serious “Climate realists” perspective see “Climate Change Reconsidered” which summarizes published science ignored by IPCC or since AR4. Read and compare!
cthulhu – Also, it could be because climate scientists don’t stand up and denounce all the loony stuff attributed to global warming by other scientists and journalists. I just don’t hear a peep out of them on this nonsense.
There are about 700 “live” articles on this link attributed to global warming. After all that, the AWG scientists continually challenge skeptics to show where they predicted catastrophe, all the while maintaining silence on this garbage. They are to blame for their own fate in this and the many other ways highlighted on this blog. Give me a break already!
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
All the AR4 authors were nominated by the various Government Depts of Climate Change from people in full time employment by University Depts of Climate Change to write a document that justifies the existence of all these departments which are all government funded. AR4 is not a balanced review of the state of climate science. The IAC report commissioned by the IPCC lists all these problems and more. The IPCC has decided not to make any meaningful changes based upon the report, so AR5 will be the same useless compilation of enormous conflict of interest.
The problem with the IPCC is that it is a political organization that is first dedicated to its own survival and expansion of influence. The powerful left-bias of climate scientists regularly misses the corrupting influence of government.
Glaciers were not the lesson, errors here and there were not the lesson, regular bias to the high end of the extreme is the lesson of the IPCC. Preferred “more extreme” scientists are given the front page for political reasons, but again the left leaning climate community doesn’t consider that a bad thing. It is absolutely a political left-right issue that has corrupted the science. Individually you don’t see it, but how many conservatives do you really find in your community. Unfortunately, I doubt that most climate scientists know what that means well enough to identify one.
AR4 was junk, but only because of the blatant bias, and you can rest assured AR5 will be junk too — and I believe in global warming. (I hate that I have to add the obligatory AGW prayer).
Jeff, you’re referring to what Dr. Jerry Pournelle (psychology and political science) has termed “The Iron Law of Bureaucracy,” which states that
…
Sounds about right for the IPCC and the United Nations as a whole, I opine.
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cthulu, you are completely wrong. The reason for the distrust in climate science and rising levels of skepticism is because of the widespread exaggeration, distortion and overstated claims made by some of the loudest climate scientists. As Judith puts it very succinctly, ‘they lost’. If they had not done this, the skeptic movement would be very much smaller.
Yep! It’s that “Old Diversion” all over again. Doesn’t matter who’s telling the truth, who’s right, who’s more humane to who, who’s the good good guys and/or who’s the bad guys, it all boils down to who’s the winner and, as we all know, that’s what matters most. Life’s a war of sorts. On second thought, ain’t no sorts about it, life’s war! Sometimes there’s battles where everyone fights fair and sometimes there’s battles when nothings fair. Science is about truth. But not much else in life regards it as a very important ingredient. (Men are not Angels!) Of course, when life’s all over, truth seems to count for an awful lot –or so I’m told. Guess St. Peter was into ‘science’ (fishermen are funny people) and he, apparently, still thinks it really matters when he weighs our poor souls.
I am re-posting a comment initially made over at Bishop Hill’s on Aug 4 when the discussion was over Judith Curry on Collide-a-Scape. The discussion then was very similar to the one occurring now and loosely paraphrased was “Does JC deserve a medal for standing up to the consensus opinion more than McIntyre”
(http://bishophill.squarespace.com/contributor/10258899)
I still think the comments are relevant now, and although it is possibly poor blog etiquette to re-post comments, I do so because at least now I know that the subject of the post will have read the piece.
“My take on Judith Curry is that she does not yet deserve a place in the Pantheon along side McIntyre. Her claim appears based on her publicly standing aside from the Establishment to defend the scientific principal of open, honest discussion of ideas. What troubles me is that as a tenured academic, a departmental head and ostensibly secure in her career why has she and so many people like her taken so long to stand up and defend the scientific method. Why is she receiving credit for doing something so late in the game and something she should have been defending in the first place?
The climate science debate is a symptom of a much larger sickness infecting the academic industrial complex. Why have there been so few junior scientists unwilling to make a name for themselves asking difficult questions? Is their silence from fear for future advancement, is it a lazy pursuit of easy funding, or is it the politicization of science?
If Judith Curry is to be important it will be as a representative of the open science side of the debate. Against her as the totem of the Establishment are the Manns and Schmidts, who at present define the public path to success for junior scientists – post-docs spawned from an incestuous family of researchers, bred to attack any perceived threat to your bosses and science fiefdoms. To be raised in time to a tenured den, safe with groomed publications and fattened by citations, ready to only reproduce the next generation of like-minded scientists. Such an opposition will continue to argue from authority, to petition for closed access and to restrict data to self selected experts.
The debate has now moved beyond the shouting over the actual science of paleoclimate reconstructions – it has become a much larger question of how science will be permitted to evolve into the future. How science results are published, the review process, how data is made available are some of the many questions before us. The internet age has smashed existing industries of publishing, retailing, and communication – why should science be removed from the revolution? The academe has featured prominently in the climate science debate and to date it has not come out well. I hope Professor Curry accepts the mantle of academic science reform before her, for if successful her contributions could have a far greater and lasting significance that the skirmish decisively won by Stephen McIntyre.”
nvw “… spawned … incestuous … fiefdoms. …den, …groomed … fattened ..”
I find this a bit intemperate, some might say offensive. I often read a couple of medical research blogs – this sounds very much like the themes of the anti-vaccination and pro-homeopathy brigades. The constant referring to research being biased “against” certain things, when in fact those things have been tested and either included in some way or entirely excluded on the basis of particular experiments or because the proposal violates known evidence. It’s a pretty accurate parallel.
*All* scholarship is based on the work of earlier scholars. In the case of the sciences, new observations and evidence requires revisiting or revising earlier work – as does unearthing long-lost documents in library basements for historians. “Junior scientists” have to earn their stripes just like new entrants in any other field. An opera singer may break through almost overnight (after 10-15 years of training) because of the beauty and power of the voice. For scientists, lawyers, joiners, doctors, this option is pretty well off the table – they’re not performing artists or sportspeople. All these occupations require qualifications, training and varying versions of apprenticeship – it’s possible to show aptitude early, it’s much more difficult to demonstrate mastery early.
Are you saying Steve McIntyre is an opera singer? :)
Good grief, no. I’m talking about the kind of spectacular thing that can *only* be done in sport or performance.
If we want to run this opera singer analogy all the way through, someone would have to have been lead author on 2 and co-author on at least 3 every year for more than 2 years to make an equivalent scientific splash. A huge, totally unforgettable, contribution to that world.
(Remember Joan Sutherland just died, she did that spectacular thing in the opera field. My hero!)
I have wandered through these posts and responses and find a universe which is quite different from the one I inhabit. This page is full of fulminations against the fixers who have lied and made a mockery of science and reduced the honor and utility of climate science to zero.
It reminds me to register for the fall meeting of the AGU. Around 16000 scientists will gather in San Francisco where the vigorous give and take that is the practice of actual science occurs for all to see. It is a vibrant, energetic meeting where the discourse is scientific, the argument is intense and the grim, totalitarian atmosphere implied by a great deal of what is written above is no where in evidence. How could that be? the largest section of the American Geophysical Union is the Atmospheric Science Section (I think). And according the the narrative here, they are all zombies out to munch Dr. Curry’s brains on the orders of of the evil IPCC (which must be run from North Korea or somewhere according to the prevailing meme above).
It will be interesting to see how many have read this blog or even have an opinion concerning Dr. Curry’s writings. Of course, my sample will be small – I can only devote a little time to such things since there is so much to be learned and so much pleasure to be taken from the scientific interactions (that the writers here deny are occurring).
Enjoy
chuck
Chuck, the last few days have been unusual at Climate Etc. Already today have 12,000 hits (typical day is 3,000), I’m getting a lot of people checking in whose main source of climate info is climatedepot. so checking out the more technical threads gives a better overall picture of the things that go on here. The climate scientists with a public face probably number something like 50, and it is not a typical sample.
Chuck
AGU per your description is exemplary. In the other universe, obtaining information is like pulling hens’ teeth and engaging scientific “discourse” with the “other” side is rare. e.g., See ClimateAudit, especially Hockey Stick Studies. For another AGU participant, see Don Easterbrook
David,
The information is in the refereed literature and in the presentations and in the questions and answers. Based on arguments I have read elsewhere, I will make a guess at what you are getting at and respond to that guess. When I make measurements of aerosol for NASA, I post my final data on NASA’s public access website (www.espo.nasa.gov). When I have something to report, I write papers for the refereed literature. If I am successful, they are published and read. That is the custom in our universe. I do not provide my raw data which consists of particle detection events and pulse heights and voltages output by the pressure sensors, flow sensors and temperature sensors. I do not provide that information because it would be meaningless to any reader who has not spent many weeks understanding the data reduction programs. Nor do I provide the data reduction programs. (In my case I am using a language that is so long out of date that most would find it incomprehensible – I am an old guy.)
If I were do make that core dump public, people would waste huge amounts of their and my time in trying to make sense of it. “How do we know you are not lying or in error?” you might ask. “Maybe you used 3.14 for pi instead of 3.14159!” Actually, the way to know that my numbers are not in error is to compare them with data of others who measure the same thing in the same places. This is called independent replication, and it is the strongest form of validation/invalidation. Often we publish papers together so that the comparison is easy. It is even better if the other measurements are done with different methods. So lets compare measurements made from satellites and airplanes with different techniques. All of that is in the literature.
The current roar for the raw data and the data reduction code is misplaced. It imposes a weak form of validation when independent replication is a strong form. In my opinion, that conclusion is so obvious, that it is difficult to see these requests as being anything other than harassment (except possibly in some special cases).
Regards,
Chuck Wilson
David,
This post is full of reports of people excoriating Dr. Curry and calling for her scalp for heresy. I actually think it is overblown. There aren’t many climate scientists engaging in this behavior. And the criticisms leveled against climate science and climate scientists as a group on this blog seem to be pretty extreme and non-discriminate. You are making claims about scientists refusing to engage in discourse with the ‘other side.’ Of the thousands of geophysical researchers attending AGU, how many know what Dr. Curry has written or said that is supposed to be heresy? Of the thousands, how many think it is heresy? Of the thousands, how many refuse to participate in discourse with the ‘other side’?
I think that you completely under estimate the scale and and overestimate the homogeneity of the enterprise. There will be thousands of atmospheric scientists at AGU who understand that CO2 is heating climate and that it is a matter of some concern. There will be tens who are aware of the Dr. Curry flap (we do not read Scientific American or the Pielke blog a lot – its about the real work going on). Ok, maybe there will be dozens. Very few will have formed an opinion of Dr. Curry apart from the opinion they hold based on her papers. According to reports, that opinion will be favorable.
As an example of discoursing across chasms of disagreement,
I have seen S. Fred Singer at AGU in discourse with well known scientists who understand that CFC emissions drive ozone loss. Maybe Fred got a senior discount or something. Maybe you could as well.
So, take a walk on the wild side and pay the registration fee, hang out in the hall and button hole the scientists and ask them questions. Go to the sessions and note the level of civil disputation (opposite of group think).
Some advice: Do not believe everything you think.
REgards,
Chuck Wilson
We all live somewhere.
Cthulhu: You blame sceptics, but when Gore and others claimed 20 feet of sea level rise and Hansen and others talk about the end of life on earth, that isn’t in the IPCC report but all the advocates seem ok with it–are you?
Are people here really OK with having a poster use terms like “charlatans” and “fraud”? Perhaps expectations of what constitutes civil dialog were a little high.
Actually this post was borderline feisty, but the post was long and generally well written, doesn’t technically violate blog rules. Also this thread is a rather exceptional one, most of the “regulars” are spending time on the technical threads.
As I’d mentioned in that post, I’m a physician. We get people in the pharmaceuticals and medical devices industries lying to us for a living, and as a result we keep our bullshit detectors tuned on “high” all the time. I learned more than thirty years ago that Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 202 (21 CFR 202) does not guarantee that what we get from the pharma manufactures is ever going to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
I suspect you’d like to think that your physician is a conscientious “skeptic” about everything pertinent to your medical care and that of your family members. We try like hell to be, NPR and ProPublica propaganda to the contrary, and to the extent possible in the diagnostic and therapeutic arts (’cause we’re not inductive logic scientists but rather deductive logic clinicians) we do a pretty good job of it.
In spite of the health “insurance” bureaucrats, the federal and state politicians, and the plaintiff’s bar.
I do not characterize as anything but a “charlatan” someone who alleges credentialed authority to speak on his research while denying such access to his observational data and methodologies as proves eventually – with particular reference to the Climategate information package which was composed preponderantly of data files and computer climate modeling code – that he had so deviated from standards of professional conduct in his work as to render the presumption of deliberate duplicity absolutely inescapable.
I’m very much reminded of Merck’s suppression of rofecoxib (Vioxx) safety data in their VIGOR clinical trial (said mendaciously redacted information reported – much to the favor of this “blockbuster” selling drug – in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2001), which mendacious ablation came to light with a bang in 2004.
I don’t think that the word “charlatan” is too strong to apply to the corporate suits at Merck. Do you, Deech?
Nor is the word “fraud” when it comes to the submission of grant applications for the allocation of funds mulcted from the taxpayers to conduct “climate change research” predicated upon the presumption that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere comprise the primary forcing mechanism for global climate warming (or do you prefer “change” in spite of the fact that it’s a greenhouse gas induced warming which is the supposed means by which such man-made CO2 allegedly affects the world’s climate?) when even the most basic knowledge of atmospheric physics, oceanography, astrophysics, and allied disciplines requires the honest acknowledgment of those multivariant “confounding factors” I’d mentioned in the post to which you take such particular exception.
To seek public funds on the basis of information deliberately left either incomplete or known to be false seems to fall within the definition of “fraud,” doesn’t it? Theft of value by way of deception.
Or would “peculation” fit as well?
As for matters “civil,” shall we discuss tort actions aimed at recovering from these charlatans both compensatory and punitive damages?
Might as well put the members of the plaintiff’s bar to some proper use.
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Rich, you completely missed my point, which was more about the lack of any discouraging words from the host or the posters here.
So is medicine practiced the same way it was 100 years ago? No – medical science marches on, and those medical researchers are no different from those who research climate for a living, yet (I hope) you use the results from one field of study in your work but reject another field of study and insult its practitioners.
Deech, “ the lack of any discouraging words from the host or the posters here” regarding my studied and wholly justified use of the words “charlatans” and “fraud” in the post to which you have objected might have any number of reasons, but chief among them – I strongly suspect – is that even the “True Believers” in the AGW fraud have been forced to acknowledge that this staggering bogosity is precisely what scientist Hal Lewis had recently characterized as:
…
And, yeah, medicine is “practiced the same way it was 100 years ago,” particularly in that the methodologies of differential diagnosis and treatment remain very much the same as had been established by valiant, principled, and intellectually honest men like Dr. Semmelweiss.
(You fling a phrase like “100 years ago” at somebody who was obliged to take and pass a course in History of Medicine and you’re in a helluva lot of trouble, Deech. )
It is emphatically not that “the science marches on” but rather that the technology does. The art of medicine can (and often must) be practiced on the proverbial flat rock in the jungle with nothing but the doctor’s bare hands and whatever he can improvise.
As we say in the profession, “A good physician never gives up.”
As for our propensity to “reject another field of study and insult its practitioners,” Deech, have you ever sat in with doctors in clinical disciplines ranging from neonatology to geriatrics when we’re speaking frankly our opinions of psychiatrists?
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Rich, you don’t prescribe antibiotics for infections? I do know a bit about medical research, having done so myself for big pharma and biotech companies.
One point that could be made is that despite the complexity of the human body and limitations of animal models, we have learned enough about how things work to some up with useful treatments and certainly enough to advance public health.
Glad to see others chiming in.
Sure, I prescribe antimicrobial agents for infectious disorders. Sometimes I even manage to hit the bug with something to which it’s sensitive right off the bat.
But if I were to wait for the culture and sensitivity (or retroviral genotyping) studies to come back before starting chemotherapy, all other things being equal the patient’s condition is going to get a helluva lot worse before it gets better.
And better it might damn well not get if there’s too much delay.
This means that doctors commonly have to act on the basis of imperfect knowledge, and we tend therefore to reason into each particular case on the basis of general knowledge of precedent cases and prevailing epidemiology.
Deductive reasoning, not inductive. You “horseback” a helluva lot, which is why when I refer patients to secondary specialists I pick guys who have a lot of wear and tear on ’em. Ceteris paribus, the more they’ve seen and done, the better they’ll be at making the correct diagnosis before they start the high-tech workup to confirm same (and rule out other stuff), and the more likely it’ll be that they will apply the correct mitigatory measures before the pathology grinds along past the point of remediation.
But throughout the past thirty-mumble years I’ve found that there are specific situations where the antibiotics don’t work. The bugs prove resistant to the latest gosh-wow miracle drug. And to what was “gosh-wow” five years ago. And ten years ago.
And I’m looking through my antique 1948 edition of Christopher’s Textbook of Surgery at long-abandoned pre-antibiotic era approaches to grisly infections and wondering to what effect I can adapt this or that trick of my old med school preceptors to handle something that today’s cutting-edge technology can’t address.
So you “know a bit about medical research, having done so myself for big pharma and biotech companies,” eh? Great. No irony at all here. I’ve done some of that myself, entirely in Phase III and Phase IV, but its in the daily grind, playing musical exam rooms and juggling patients’ calls, and getting buttonholed in the supermarket for an Aisle 12 consultation about a neighbor’s trick knee that honest-to-Hippocrates clinical medicine gets practiced.
Its all very, very, basic when you get right down to it. When you think about it, in the real world (which sure as hell isn’t the world of pharma and biotech research, as any CRA or clinical investigator will tell you if you can get his/her confidence), the high tech is precisely worthless if the front-line “health care provider” doesn’t pick up the pathology with eyes and ears and the proverbial high clinical index of suspicion.
Y’know, I still make house calls. Something I’ve found for more than three decades is that whenever I arrive in somebody’s home late at night and diagnose an acute infectious disorder, I can always find antibiotics in the medicine cabinet to initiate treatment.
Lots of antibiotics, of various spectra of activity, in all sorts of dosing forms, you name it. Never fails.
Now, as somebody who understands at least something about pharmacology, Deech, I’m sure you know that the SOP with all antibiotic prescriptions is “Take ’em until they’re all gone.”
Nobody does that, of course.
And so I can always find remnants (pretty substantial remnants) of old antibiotic prescriptions in the medicine cabinet. And why should anybody ever throw ’em away? Except for the tetracyclines, all they can do is lose a bit of potency.
So how does high technology in medicine – all this “dazzle ’em with science” stuff – ensure that a patient prescribed for one of your bang-zoom bleeding-edge antibiotics will either fill the prescription in the first place or take the stuff as instructed once he’s gotten it home?
Little though I wanted to believe it when I was going through med school, it really is an art, not a science. We’ve gotta keep tightening up the wiggle room in every aspect of clinical practice, and that’s going to continue.
But until our Mombasa Messiah and his co-conspirators make it utterly impossible for human beings to function voluntarily as either patients or physicians (and they’re sure as hell working on it), the necessary and beneficial element of art is going to be present in the interaction.
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You’re a little out of touch; we’re in a post-change world. It’s now known as Climate Disruption. As for everything else, I wish I could articulate my rants with such aplomb :p.
I quote libertarian economist Walter Block’s reminiscences of the late Murray Rothbard:
…
Let the fascisti flip their descriptors however they might, “this particular bit of idiocy” will not stand.
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Dr. Curry, my grandfather fled Italy to escape the fascists. I find this reference offensive.
I feel like anyone who referred to the skeptic side as fascists would have been immediately smacked down, but perhaps I’m mistaken. If you find this level of snarling invective improves the quality of debate around here, I remove my objection.
Thanks for spotting this. I agree this needs to be toned down,
My own grandfathers left il Mezzogiorno to avoid starving to death. The fascisti came down from the socialist north about two decades after my antecedents had departed for greener – and freer – pastures, and my grandfathers were already settled and raising their families here in these United States.
You find that “offensive,” too, ragazzo?
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non darmi fastidio, stronzo. questa polemica non me ne frega un cazzo.
Ah, wonderful. We’ve got reason now for this “PDA” specimen to get hammered with an outright ban.
He whines about my use of the word “fascisti” and then responds with terms which are – when translated into common American vernacular – obscenities customarily forbidden in all such fora.
Dr. Curry, do you intend to respond to this violation of your rules of comportment, or does sympathy with the obvious political inclination of this zoticone go without your consideration?
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MODERATION NOTE: PDA, i don’t understand italian, but this doesn’t sound good. Sounds like the pots are both calling the kettles black, this isn’t helping. Both you and Rick please tone it down
MODERATION NOTE: Rich, words such as fascist are out of bounds, they add nothing to the dialogue.
Point taken, Dr. Curry. It’s your “house.”
Though avoiding precise taxonomy does nothing to alter factual reality.
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Rich,
I contest your descriptions of climate science. I contest your description of the fraudulent and charlatanous behavior of climate scientists. You have the facts wrong, and your interpretations are in error. For proof, I refer you to the real world.
Fortunately for you, you did not stray into the realm of radiation heat transfer. It can be dealt with efficiently.
We find the socialists, Nazis and Libertarians all called into play in a scrum on a website devoted to the science of climate change. How funny.
Political Economic Ideologies arose from the same impulse that led to science – the desire to understand. Fortunately for science, it wed itself to repeatable observations of the natural world. Unfortunately for ideologies, they are doomed to fail. They can not accurately describe a social economic scene having far too many variables for the average ideologue to handle – that number exceeds 3. (The Great Greenspan told us that he never thought that the companies would fail to manage risk. Imagine that, Rand.)
Ideologies try to limit the domain of science to findings that are not harmful to the party line. When observations carry scientists to truths that contravene the ideological apriories, heads role in totalitarian states and insults are hurled in more liberal settings. (Although the rage of the ideologues leaves little doubt about the construction of mental guillotines – )
Groucho Marx should have asked when the duck came down
“Is there a split hairs difference between Leninism, Maoism and Rushlimbauism?” the answer is “Yes, the Libertarians are more genteel.”
We are all free marketeers, Rich. The carbon tax and even cap and trade utilize virtues of competitive markets. However, you will never have to deal with these modest intrusions if you can successfully deny the externalities associated with carbon emissions. Unfortunately here we return to radiation heat transfer. And to replicable observations. Where you lose.
That rub explains most of the rage against a progressing science practiced by many, many more humans that can be named and slandered on this blog.
Regards,
Chuck Wilson
Tsk. Dr. Curry permits this unsubstantiated screed of Chuck’s to stand without either condemnation or admonition to moderate his venom, and removes what I had posted in the way of response.
Permit me to observe – if Dr. Curry will allow – that in the final paragraph of his rambling fumble we see Mr. Wilson write of “…a progressing science practiced by many, many more humans that can be named and slandered on this blog” thereby to demonstrate yet another fallacy of formal logic, this one commonly called “bandwagon” or argumentum ad populum.
This is obviously what is to be expected in lieu of reasoned argument from someone peddling the agenda of the authoritarian environmentalist left. There is no evidence of any other inclination on the part of people like Mr. Wilson, who claims of his co-religionists that “We are all free marketeers” (hoo, boy!) and then instantly goes on to allege that the armed extortion of “The carbon tax and even cap and trade [will somehow] utilize virtues of competitive markets.”
Markets? A market is a venue of voluntary – which is to say uncoerced – exchange. The levying of punitive taxation (for the overt purpose of any “carbon tax” is not to raise revenue but to punish people for certain behaviors and thereby constrain those activities) is a market activity precisely…how?
What’s the exchange here, Mr. Wilson? What are you offering the people of America? Ever-reduced access to energy and other resources, ever-increasing poverty, hunger, and other suffering, never-ending reduction in the average person’s quality of life, and for this we get in “free” exchange precisely…what?
Let us presume that the individual human being has rights, based first upon the right to a property in his own person, then to his productive action, and finally to the goods and services he creates or otherwise acquires without violating the equal rights of other human beings, largely by way of voluntarily exchanging his labor for the material products and purposeful efforts of other people.
To get voluntary cooperation from these human beings, they must be persuaded by means of appeal to their reasoning capacity or their emotions.
Persuasion is the vehicle by which “free marketeers” achieve their objectives.
Coercion is not.
Clearly, in America an increasing majority of human beings – who conceive themselves to have rights to their own lives, to their liberties, and to their alienable properties – are no longer moved either by “scientific” arguments in support of the man-made climate change hypothesis or by the emotional “Chicken Little” appeals alleging oncoming catastrophe to give up their immediate and prospective material well-being as Mr. Wilson fervently wants them to do.
So, Mr. Wilson, having failed of persuasion, your drive now is to put your fellow human beings under compulsion – by means of “The carbon tax and even cap and trade” – in order to achieve your objectives. In so doing, you are emphatically not any sort of “free marketeer,” and it takes a peculiar sort of critter to try to pass himself off as such under these circumstances.
Not so? Well, let’s see if Dr. Curry will let this response to Mr. Wilson’s incoherency pass to the eyes of other readers.
—
Rich,
Thanks for the “authoritarian, environmental left” characterization. It is clear that anyone who struggles for years with the implications of the First Law of Thermodynamics and the emission of long-lived greenhouse gases and concludes that the signal of the Anthroprocene has emerged from the noise between 1960 and present must be some kind of leftist.
The real irony here is that I was trained by conservative voting, church going engineers who worked with the EPA to characterize the airborne particulate that was ultimately reduced under the Clean Air Act. The result of that, as you surely know, was a measurable increase in the longevity of Americans. Look at the Six Cities Study and follow-ons and you see that airborne particulate shortens lives and cleaning the air has lengthened them. This life-lengthening was surely an act of the government, which you characterize as coercion. An act that has been reviewed by the Supreme Court and found to be constitutional. “Promote the General Welfare” is the phrase (from the preamble of the US Constitution).
The wild-eyed rejection of the Clean Air Act and other science-based government actions by the ascendant (in the media anyway) right wing has led to the irony that I referred to. When I was young, engineering departments were largely staffed by conservatively inclined, Republican voters. Now they are staffed by conservatively inclined voters who can not bring themselves to pull the lever for the tancredos and the odonnels and the pauls who abandon science for ideology. So the media cries the the universities are liberal – well the Republicans have embraced dogma and ideology with such fervor that the empirical-minded in the institutes of technology have been left behind and can no longer vote for the GOP. Some odd kind of leftists these nerds make.
The Montreal Protocol is doubtless another act of coercion in your mind. Mandating reductions in emissions of CFCs was coercion in your mind when the proper action would be to convince the public to put them down. Well, Ronald Reagan disagreed and provided conscious global leadership in actions which his Council of Economic Advisors concluded would save 5,000,000 american lives and 10 trillion greenbacks in the long run (I think the analysis ran out to 2165). Another tyrannical application of the Welfare Clause of the preamble of the constitution, eh Rich.
When the dust settles, I think that the prudent promotion of the general welfare will extend to protecting climate. The Libertarian Encyclopedia defines externality. The restrictions on smoking, pollution (and, soon I hope, on actions that alter climate) are straight forward exercises in dealing with those externalities which caused the markets to be inefficient. That is why the doctrinaire Libertarians are forced to deny that the First Law applies to the atmosphere. If they could see the science, they would see the need for more governmental regulation. Its a tough corner for someone who loves their dogma. Maybe there is a 12-step program for that.
Regards,
Chuck
I just took the SciAm poll on Dr. Curry.
I must say that it was simply the worst, the most biased poll I have ever seen. The choices were mostly “Yes, I believe in climate change” or “Yes, I am a mindless climate change denier.” There was never a “None of the above” option for this complex subject.
That SciAm would allow such a terrible poll to represent SciAm and climate science to the public is as vivid a testament as one could need as to how much the climate change agenda has debased science in our time.
I held my nose and checked all the “Yes, I am a mindless denier” options. When I looked at the survey results, I realized that SciAm has a nasty surprise coming — the mindless deniers are winning by a large margin. Serves SciAm right.
yes, its unbelievable, sci am has lost its bearings, at least uncertainty is getting a lot of votes! It seems they are getting a lot of heat for that article, which then needed to be justified by a 900 word essay, and then bolstered by the survey. The dupe narrative isn’t doing too well.
Dr. Curry,
If you assume that the poll was intended to gauge the opinion of the public then yes indeed the SA has lost their bearings.
If you assume that the poll was intended to show that people who think you are a peacemaker are a bunch of mindless skeptics holding the most extreme views then the poll was well conceived and will be effective.
When I see intelligent people doing something stupid I assume they are running a hidden agenda.
$ciAm is $ciAm. Follow the money.
Huxley
I held my nose and checked all the “Yes, I am a mindless denier” options. When I looked at the survey results, I realized that SciAm has a nasty surprise coming — the mindless deniers are winning by a large margin. Serves SciAm right.
So did I.
This poll is so mindbogglingly stupid that I am at a loss how to characterize it.
Are such people real? One wonders.
Never read SciAm but this tabloid seems to be at the scientific level of an oyster.
Wow! Just clocked on to see all these positive comments! I think we have a “consensus” Judy: you’re an oasis of hope in a desert of non-communication, advocacy in place of science, and deafening silence from too many climatologists who lack the courage or the principles to speak out. Thank you for your integrity and willingness to step back and say “wait a minute” (in public) in a way that you must have guessed would bring you personal and professional derision.
I can only re-visit my first post on Climate etc of a few weeks ago to echo the sentiments here.
================
Dr Curry
Congratulations on the obvious success of your new, balanced and informative Climate blog. Having followed many of your postings on other forums for the past couple of years, I have always found your contributions unfailingly polite, informative and free from the sort of ill-mannered snark, impatient mud-slinging, and automatic gain-saying of “the other side” that marks so much of what goes on in the Climate blogosphere. Your rebuttals are uniformly pertinent, without malice and delivered with reference to facts or citations, even in response to those who seem intent on baiting you into some sort of emotional faux pas (which actually would probably be quite justified, given some of the vilification to which you have been subjected). Neither do you flaunt your experience or obvious academic credentials in the field, in response to some of the more ardent ranters, hinting (not so subtly) as they often do, of relevant experience and superior intellect, glittering academic achievement and arcane knowledge of the science (though rarely telling us straight what they actually do for a living!)
For all these reasons, I believe the setting up of your site is certainly the most important thing that has happened on the blogosphere this year, and I thank you for finding the time (how do you do it?) to contribute so regularly and thoughtfully whilst also pursuing a full-time academic career. You are an inspiration, and give me hope that some common sense will prevail in this debate!
Of course everyone — whether convinced or not about the existence of man made global warming — has his or her own reasons for belief. Personally, if I had to point to the factor most important in ending my acceptance of AGW and moving me firmly into the sceptic camp, it would be the analysis done by E. M. Smith on the software and data selection choices made by GISS to calculate global temperatures and trends.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/agw-and-gistemp-issues/agw-gistemp-specific/
It is difficult to ascribe the actions of GISS to dispassionate scientific judgement.
Judith, Perhaps this H.L. Mencken quote best sums up the entire issue: “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule the world.”
There is another quote by Eric Hoffer that also fits the bill regarding the politics of global warming. “The readiness for self-sacrifice is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life…All active mass movements strive, therefore to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth, no certitude outside it…To rely on the evidence of the senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.”
Enjoy
Your “monster” status derives from your obvious honesty and integrity, that’s why many see you as a danger. You say what you think and ask difficult questions, that makes you unpredictable and beyond their control.
Although I may disagree with
manysome of your conclusions and the tortuous way that you reach them, I trust both you and your motives . There are not many in the climate debate I could say that of.Hello, Judith. Here’s a question, in case you’d like to take a five-minute break from the kerfuffle: Wwhat is the most intriguing science question in climate science today? In other words, if you had a long uninterrupted week to do nothing but read and think, what climate science issue would you choose for your week’s focus?
Sorry for the OT excursion but you may need a breather.
David
While I not not support the hypothesis of human CO2 emissions causing significant climate problems, I have a lot of respect for the way in which Judith Curry has gone about addressing the issue as described in the article above. De-politicizing the issue is the motivation behind our Climate Scientists’ Register as well – see http://tinyurl.com/2es3rqx so, philosphically, we are on base with Dr. Curry, even if we are not scientifically.
Tom Harris
Executive Director – International Climate Science Coalition
Ottawa, Canada
Can someone clear up something for me.
The term “climate scientist” is used but seems ill-defined, to me at least.
There seem to be very few people with the role of professor of climate science. I can only find about a dozen or so. A couple in the UK and the rest mostly in the USofA.
There are much larger numbers of professorships in Atmospheric Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography and some Climatologists, plus other specialities.
It may only be a small point of personal interest, but when someone is described or self-described as a climate scientist, what interpretation am I to put on that?
Is it symptomatic of anything? I mean, is it a hat that some choose to put on, where others doing the same general work would not?
Is it job, a self-description, or media tag?
Would people say things like: “Well he/she calls his/herself a climate scientist but really is just a jumped up …”. Do some, so described, think: “I wish they wouldn’t call me that?”
Sorry to be a bit unknowledgable, but I am not sure what I am meant to understand by the term. Which is a bit fundamental really.
Alex
This has been addressed before, and will no doubt be again. Climate science is an umbrella term for scientists working on climate-related matters. Typical degrees include geography, atmospheric sciences, physics, oceanography, but could also be biologists, environmental scientists and others. Climatology degree programs are actually quite rare.
Alex, I think it’s something that may just ‘grow like Topsy’ when a scientist working in a particular discipline finds that their area of interest is affected in some way.
I suppose glaciologists and other people involved in cryology would be a prime example. As would agriculture scientists and hydrology experts. Entomologists, forestry experts, meteorologists ….. you get the picture.
In the end, they’re all scientists. Climate is not just about physicists and models, it’s about observations and data from all the physical and biological sciences. If there’s a “pure” climate scientist, it’s likely to be either a physicist or a meteorologist, but it’s a broad church encompassing a host of other disciplines.
An excellent question. Not only is ‘climate’ a vast domain, but almost all of those who have status in it hold their PhDs, or whatever their background is, in something else altogether: physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, statistics — you name it. As a university field leading to a degree, climate science is very new indeed. Others besides me have argued that there is no accepted body of theory and no ancient luminaries of consequence.
To me ‘climate science’ is rather like most of the social sciences: at the moment it resembles a quarry which people mine using whatever tools they are happy with and know how to apply. It is not strange that they often disagree with each other.
Hmph. I’m reminded of David M. Hoffer’s “The Physicist and the Climatologist” (see http://tinyurl.com/3abptrs), one of Mr. Hoffer’s humorous takes on the co-optive gathering power of the extremely lucrative anthropogenic global warming fraud, a hypothetical exchange in which the conscientious Physicist blandly dismisses each and every argument voiced by the Climatologist to support the nonsense notion of man-made CO2 emissions causing climate change until:
“Climatologist: Blasphemer! Unbeliever! The temperature has to rise! I have reports! I have measurements! I have computer simulations! I have committees! United Nations committees! Grant money! Billions and billions and billions! I can’t be wrong, I will never explain it! Billions! And the carbon trading! Trillions in carbon trading!
“Physicist: Gasp! How much grant money?
“Climatologist: Billions. Want some?
“Physicist: Uhm…
“Climatologist: BILLIONS.
“Climatologist: Hi. I used to be a physicist. When I started to understand the danger the world was in, though, I decided to do the right thing and become a climatologist. Let me explain the greenhouse effect to you…. ”
That’s kinda how it happened, isn’t it, Don?
—
Not seeing a few key disciplines mentioned above yet I can’t help but add mathematics, paleontology, meteorology, computer science. In reality “climatology” is a truly cross-disciplinary subject. I am skeptical of the idea that such a thing as a “climatologist” exists without expertise in at least several of the fields named in these replies. By “expertise” I mean something deeper than exposure to an introductory course — perhaps something more like a pre-master’s education plus some field experience. This may be why some “climate amateurs” come across as better informed than some “climate professionals” — general knowledge and genuine interest goes farther in this “field” than sanitary book-larnin’ too specialized to see the forest for the one tree at which it stares.
My thanks to Zajko, adelady, Don Aitkin and R. Craigen.
I think I can comprehend all that. I understand that the field is very broad and it seems that Climate Science itself has not really developed a core.
If that be the case, does it make structures such as the IPCC vital in order to get an informed overview. This is not a totally trivial question. If it is the case then the statements by individuals can be preceived as viewpoints of which one should be wary, unless they address their area of excellence.
Perhaps it would have be better not to developed the climate scientist tag altogether. As a matter of interest can anyone recall where the came from, the media, the IPCC, or a particular group or individual scientist?
Alex
I’m really not sure where the term first originated, and I would be grateful to anyone who could trace it’s early use as well. Because of the disunity of climate science, I think there is a good argument for a body or process such as the IPCC to attempt tie it all together. Whether the IPCC does a good job of this is another question.
On a related note one of the recurrent points for the consensus is the thousands of people involved in climate science. As part of the American Meteorological Society annual renewal process there is a survey form that asks members for three areas of expertise. I asked the AMS if they could tell me how many members claim the following categories as specializations: Climate Variations; and Global Change; Paleoclimatology; for the climate expertise and Atmospheric and climate dynamics; and Numerical analysis and prediction for the meteorological modeling expertise.
A total of 7,360 members indicated one or more areas of expertise. The numbers of members who listed climate expertise related to global warming were 919 members for Climate Variations; 340 for Global Change; and 87 chose Paleoclimatology. The numbers for the modelers were 692 for Atmospheric and climate dynamics and 740 for Numerical analysis and prediction. None of the members who selected either of the modeling areas chose the global warming areas of expertise.
While this is admittedly unscientific there are a couple of points. There aren’t thousands of meteorologists in this field. I also find it a little unsettling that the experts in modeling don’t claim any expertise in the global warming categories.
I read the article and thought it did you a disservice. Years ago I remember lay person “knowledge” being defined as realty that is taken for granted until further notice. Scientific knowledge was taken for granted as reality once it was proved the particular recipe worked, repeatedly. And philosophers and skeptics are professionally obligated to take nothing for granted–apparently this uncertainty–I know that I don’t know– is no longer appreciated.
Cheers Judith, I’ll be uncharacteristically brief.
You have respect among us “skeptics” because of your candor and honesty. Few (but a growing number) on the AGW side are ready for collegial discussion. You’re not merely one of these, you are the very epitome, a model for all of us. Really, “skeptic” is not the best word, I also prefer “heretic”, which would land me in your court, though our heresies differ significantly.
I don’t have the hubris to put myself in your class in terms of climate-specific background, though as a scientist I claim some expertise in judging scientific matters of a general nature: “colloquium-level” material. It is my view that MOST contemporary policy proposals can be weighed intelligently by reasonably literate non-scientists who can read a graph and follow a logical argument consisting of two or more syllogisms, if the information comes to them unspun. This conviction alone is all I need to understand that the educated fools at RealClimate are full of hot air. You, on the other hand, are neither dismissive, censorious, propagandous nor patronizing and you respect the common sense approach of talented amateurs. Ergo you’re worth listening to.
Sorry, that was longer than I intended. Hang in there, a lot of us are rooting for you!
Climate science, like many other sciences, involves scientists from many of the major disciplines.
Chemists, geologists and physicists were major players in the study of meteorites, lunar, solar and planetary samples. There were even a few astronomers and astrophysicists like Don Clayton of Rice and the late Harvard Professor A. G. W. Cameron.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Can you spot the flaw in the opinion?
“It is my view that MOST contemporary policy proposals can be weighed intelligently by reasonably literate non-scientists who can read a graph and follow a logical argument consisting of two or more syllogisms, if the information comes to them unspun.”
Who decides what’s spin?
Ms. Curry,
Along with many people my age, I grew up almost worshipping NASA as the epitome of can do scientists in action. As a voter I would have supported any budget request NASA made – whatever NASA said was gospel. That kind of loyalty is hard earned and super rare. However, the political activism of current NASA scientists and climate scientists in general has destroyed my trust in them, in NASA, and in scientists of all stripes. I am exactly the kind of citizen who would normally be most supportive of government funded science, but because of the activism of so many climate scientists I will never again support government funded science to the same degree. Your colleagues seem to have no idea how much damage they have done to the reputation of science. I assume you see something they don’t and you are concerned – as well you should be. At this point I would happily see most of government science defunded because of the abuse of trust I have witnessed. Good luck in bridge building – you will get no appreciation from your colleagues for your peacemaking efforts; whose jobs would all disappear if I had the say in the matter. Words can hardly describe how disgusted I am with the actions of so many rent seeking scientists and I should be their natural ally – I am a secondary level math teacher. You probably can’t even imagine what my friend the iron worker has to say about “those lyin guvmint scientists” and he votes in every election.
Bill Powell
Yes – I felt exactly the same about NASA, and indeed science in general. Organisations such as the UK CRU, which managed to investigate the climategate emails without ever addressing the real issues, will ultimately pay a heavy price for their loss of honesty.
Somehow I missed the relevance and experthood of Judy Curry in all this blogofying. Arguing over public relations and personalities is pointless but apparently satisfying to some. Data will accumulate, hypotheses will be erected and demolished. Eventually the paradigm(s) will shift. If people are honest and rigorous in their work, don’t engage in data winnowing, and do attempt to falsify their hypotheses, all will be well in the science world. How that affects the socio-politico-economico-ecologico system dynamics will take some time to know and too much time to respond to. Big problems occur from the multiplicative effect of ignored little problems. (There’s willful ignorance and “science doesn’t know this” ignorance.) The creation of big problems is exponential, with a long, slow, barely apparent development at the beginning, and then the hellzapoppin’ finale.
Now we’re trying to reverse engineer the causes of global climate change with an imperfect set of data and a poor understanding of the mechanics. Everyone should chill and get used to it.
Congratulation Judith!
88% of voters support you!
http://bit.ly/cRqdqL
Do what you think is right!
There, you see. I knew that would be the result. Once the blogosphere (particularly the sceptic blogosphere) gets hold of a poll like this, it really doesn’t stand much of a chance. Remember the Science Museum poll? Or the many “best blog” polls with Watts and CA involved?
Apart from RC and the Guardian, the only other place I see Alarmists exhibit flocking behaviour is on slashdot.
As one of the other posters said, apostacy is the worst possible advertisement for any cause. In Islam, the punishment for apostacy is death. A great deal of effort has gone into marginalizing people like Pielke, Lindzen, and Spencer. The problem with people like you is that you come off as much too middle of the road. It’s hard to argue with someone who’s position is, “Let’s talk to each other and try to do good science”. As the SA article points out very clearly, they want to engender a sense of emergency – not a moment to loose – etc. So on the one hand SA gives you credit for having arguments that are valid, on the other they don’t want us to listen because it might remove that sense of emergency. But then if some of your arguments are true, and if some of the skeptics other arguments are true, then there is no emergency. For SA it is a big disappointment that the glaciers are not going to melt in 30 years because it reduces the pressure on the sense of emergency.
I admire your courage, fortitude, and integrity – you can’t buy those; however they do make you golden. Don’t let them sear or even so much as scorch you in that fiery furnace you’ve been thrown into.
The most insane thing is the questionnaire and the preamble to it.
My goodness, is this the level to which the Scientific American has fallen? There was a time when scientists would read it to inform themselves of developments outside their field of specialty and expect to get an informed systematic account. I was aware of its deterioration, but to find it is employing such intellectual zeros, and publishing such complete vacuities as this, its quite shocking.
The more you read of this stuff, the more you feel that the real puzzle about AGW is a social one. How did it happen that a scientific hypothesis which is at bottom a very simple one, turning on a couple of propositions, ever get itself associated with this level of feeling, and with this huge heap of political and social attitudes which are in any logical sense irrelevant to it.
After all, the hypothesis turns on the issue of climate sensitivity. This is a problem we should surely be able to find the answer to? If the high end estimates are right, we have a real problem. Never mind big oil, the Tea Party, the Hockey Stick, Climategate, all that stuff. This is the core of the problem. You don’t have to have the IPCC write thousands of pages of irrelevancies to address this. Hurricanes and extreme weather events and the Polar Bears are irrelevant to that.
What I see is people who have bought into a collection of beliefs and attitudes which they associate together, but which have little or nothing now to do with the real scientific question.
It reminds me a bit of the question of inheritance versus environment. There was a time when any suggestion of inheritance playing any role in human ability differences was to mark oneself as a eugenicist neo-fascist. Yet the evidence is that genetics are important to many human abilities and characteristics, to some more than others, and it became clear later that to oppose that on a knee jerk basis actually achieved the reverse of the goals people allegedly had.
You did not, in the end, improve regard for humanity by pretending that there are no inherited differences between populations, when the evidence is so plainly that there are. You improved regard for humanity by making the sound argument that these inherited differences, though real, were immaterial to how we should value them. The reason was, you simply brought the scientific field into disrepute, and that left people to continue believing the wildest and most racist fantasies.
Its rather similar with AGW. The fierce denials of the evidence against the IPCC, and the continued hysterical assertions of certainty about scale and probability of disaster do us an enormous disservice. It is possible that CO2 emissions are damaging. The degree to which they are, if they are, is very important to what action if any we should be taking. Its also important to those of us who value the environment, because it determines how we should prioritize our efforts and our spend.
The refusal to have a skeptical discussion of these kinds of issues is in the end going to destroy regard for the environment. Its also, as I said above, going to destroy any chance of a sensible program to deal with any climate change that is being caused by CO2 emissions. If you cannot discuss how bad it really is, and what combination of lowering emissions and mitigation of warming effects is cost effective, you will end up scrapping the whole thing and putting it down to hysteria.
But, there may actually be a real problem, if only the advocates would permit proper discussion of how serious it is.
Dr. Curry,
Long, long ago, when I was in high school and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, we read selections from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ in English class. I was particularly impressed by, “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” I’m grateful that you’re following Polonius’ advice.
You are performing a great service to science, to America, and to the free peoples of the entire world. God bless you, and give you the strength you need to persevere in the midst of adversity.
The problem is, if you make acceptance of a particular set of scientific hypotheses associate with particular political prescriptions, you’ll turn acceptance or skepticism into a political issue too.
So if we had separated the two, and conducted the debate in two parts, one is anything alarming happening, and two, if so what should we do about it if anything, we’d have avoided all this.
As it is, the advocates moved instantly to a total program of belief and particular prescriptions for action. Those to whom the prescriptions were objectionable then moved to disbelief.
The result is, Republicans are mainly skeptics, Democrats mainly believers, and the struggle is about carbon limitation. In fact, what should be happening is two debates, one is whether its happening at all, and how badly, and the other is whether carbon limitation, and if so on what scale, and combined with other action programs, is the right thing.
It is perfectly rational to think cap and trade is idiotic, and that windmills are not an effective source of energy, and also to believe CO2 emissions are a threat and produce warming. But in the present climate, you cannot get a hearing for this perfectly logical point of view.
What its turning into is, the ultras have lost the Republican Party, when they did not have to. Its a bit like 50 years ago, when you were either for the Kuomintang, or if in any way critical of it, you were for Communism. In fact however, it was the supporters of Chiang who really ‘lost’ China.
The question we should be asking now is how on earth Hanson and so on lost the Republican Party.
Michel
At least in the US you get a choice based on politics. In the UK, the issue is entirely non-political as all the mainstream parties are committed to the low carbon policies already introduced as part of the Climate Change Bill (passed into legislation in 2008 on the first October day to have laying snow in London for over 80 years – not science, but definitely irony). What are the policies?
Conversion to non-emitting power generation sufficient to lead to a 50% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050 (partly by renewal and increasing capacity of nuclear [no Government funding currently] and by development of major wind farms mostly off-shore [with heavy Government subsidy])
Introduction of a ‘carbon levy’ on big business – initially this was to be used to promote low carbon technologies, by most big companies paying in to a centralised pot and then getting paid back bonuses for improved performance wrt CO2 emission cuts, but as part of the recent spending review this levy is now going in to the Government coffers.
…
It being understood that I look upon the two factions of the big, permanently incumbent Boot-On-Your-Neck Party in much the same way that I regard cholera and metastatic bowel cancer – which is to say, as two different types of pathology causing death, one a bit more subject to remediation than the other – I have to observe that the Republicans differ from their nominal opponents on the matter of the anthropogenic global warming fraud principally in that most of them have not yet found ways in which to exploit this “Cargo Cult Science” for the sorts of promotion, pillage, power, and publicity as have what we’ll call the “Democrats.”
(Their “screw you” response to the majority of their constituents in their states and districts on the matter of Obamacare – to which that majority of the U.S. population was and continues to be vociferously and angrily opposed – proves that there is no longer even the illusion of “Democratic” about them.)
There are plenty of nominal Republicans (supposedly fiscal and constitutional “conservatives,” though in truth the Republican Party has never embraced such restraint in all its history) who have latched onto the AGW fraud with great enthusiasm, and have found ways in which to achieve personal and political gain by supporting the perfidies of their more explicitly socialistic brethren across the aisle in this regard.
The majority of the Red Party thugs, of course, have since Climategate seen an opportunity both to differentiate themselves from their Blue Party rivals and to engage the enraged hatred of those Americans who have correctly discerned the great “global warming” fraud as what it truly is: a pretense to tax the end consumer of all goods and services (’cause all such economic activity results, in one way or another, in the release of CO2 into the atmosphere) into poverty.
As with the “Tea Party” movement, it is not that the Republicans are (or have ever been) truly skeptical of man-made global climate change and the wonderfully bogus greenhouse gas forcing mechanism of the AGW hypothesis, but rather that they have perceived a tide on the flood which promises to drown those against whom they are competing for opportunities to screw the private citizenry of this nation.
And this year’s campaign is rather more of a “Surf’s up!” phenomenon for America’s party of the political right.
—
Michel ” So if we had separated the two, and conducted the debate in two parts, one is anything alarming happening, and two, if so what should we do about it if anything, we’d have avoided all this.” I’d have restated this another way.
The first part contains the possibility that the alarm is unwarranted. So the second part should be reframed along the lines of “What technological, economic, political steps should we take that would benefit us in *both* cases?” Looked at that way a few actions become high value. Energy efficiency has got to be a boon no matter what. Good public transport is also a win/win. Getting started on a program of introducing renewables into the energy mix gives us a head start for all 3 reasons. (Because positioning yourself as an innovative supplier boosts economic activity at home and gives you the chance to get some kudos in the developing world if you can supply distributed generation equipment in difficult terrain / circumstances. ) And both courses of action would have given us the basis for faster, further action when evidence of damage and danger became evident.
If we’d embarked on this sensible path 20ish years ago, and some time discovered the need to step up the pace, the prospect of carbon taxes or somesuch would be much less daunting. We’d already have the technology and the programs in place ready for expansion and further development. Climbing a mountain is a great deal easier if you’ve trained for it for a while and you’ve got well-tested equipment already on hand.
Judith:
The Character Harold Hill sez:
No wide-eyed, eager, wholesome innocent Sunday school teacher for me.
That kinda girl spins webs no spider ever–
Listen, boy–
A girl who trades on all that purity merely wants to trade my independence for her security.
The only affirmative she will file refers to marching down the aisle.
No golden, glorious, gleaming pristine goddess–
No sir!
For no Diana do I play faun.
I can tell you that right now.
I snarl, I hiss: How can ignorance be compared to bliss?
I spark, I fizz for the lady who knows what time it is.
I cheer, I rave for the virtue I’m too late to save
A sadder nut wiser girl for me !
From Music Man (1962)
Real pity that when Oscar time rolled around there was a wee bit of competition for The Music Man–something about airplanes vs. fish was involved, IIRC…
Judith – I have at last put aside the time to read this post. I haven’t been able to read all the comments, but I hope that you have at least paid attention to the excellent comments by Richard S Courtney. I echo his statements “.. thank you for your honest and sincere post ..“, and “Science is about seeking the best ‘truth’ we can uncover about the world. It is not about defending a position ..“.
Regarding some of the specific statements in your post :
jc: “The spillover has been a loss of public trust in climate science and some have argued, even more broadly in science.“.
Back in August 2008, I wrote an article for a local paper entitled “Global Warming – Just another scare campaign” in which I pointed out that this was not the first climate scare, and that the case for this one was very weak. There were then some vitriolic and intimidating letters to the editor, citing the Holocaust, tobacco companies and flat earthers, and castigating the editor for having published a letter critical of the consensus position. My reply to these letters ended with “My greatest fear, in this climate debate, is that if the AGW case collapses from the weight of contrary scientific evidence, then there is a huge risk that all the excellent environmental and energy initiatives will collapse too, because they are being promoted as ways of cutting CO2 emissions. And if that happens then there is the risk in future that when scientists try to warn the world of a genuine hazard, no-one will listen because of the way that incorrect climate science was pushed so hard today.
We need to allow an open climate debate, and see where the scientific evidence takes us.“. Not a lot has changed in the 2 years since then, but I do welcome your attempt to open up the debate (even if I don’t always agree with you).
jc: “In the U.S., the prospect of the Republicans winning the House of Representatives raises the specter of hearings on the integrity of climate science and reductions in federal funding for climate research.”
Is it really such a spectre? Maybe it is the only way of getting some sanity.
jc: “What I want is for the climate science community to shift gears and get back to doing science, and return to an environment where debate over the science is the spice of academic life.” and “I was continuing my overall thinking on how to better deal with skeptics and increase the credibility and integrity of science.”
The way to increase the credibility and integrity of science is indeed to get back to doing science. Probably the best way to start would be to throw the entire IPCC report open to review and analysis, with absolutely nothing in the report being accepted until it had truly passed such review and – most importantly – been substantiated by actual testing.
jc: “Yes, I want clean green energy, economic development and “world peace”.”
So do we all, but let’s first get this straight : “clean” must actually mean “clean”, that is, absolutely nothing to do with the presence or absence of CO2. Now, once you have got “clean” right, what does “green” mean? Does it mean “clean”, or does it mean “renewable”, or does it mean “ideologically correct”. Whatever it means, there is a price above which it is non-viable. And then “economic development” really must mean just that, so that it includes all energy sources at the right price. Pushing ideologically-driven “economic development” will be destructive – as per Bastiat’s Window.
The Close Correlation between Earth’s Surface Temperature and its Rotational Velocity as well as the Close Correlation between the Planetary Orbital Periods and the Periods of the Solar Cycles Prove that Climate Changes are Driven by Galactic Gravitational Waves
Dr. Gerhard Löbert. Munich. September 24, 2009.
Physicist. Recipient of the Needle of Honor of German Aeronautics
Abstract: In a previous Note (see Ref.) it was shown that climate change is driven by solar activity which in turn is caused by the action of galactic vacuum density waves on the core of the Sun. Irrefutable proof of the existence of these super-Einsteinian waves is given by the extremely close correlation between the changes in the mean global surface temperature and the small changes in the rotational velocity of the Earth – two physically unrelated geophysical quantities – in the past 150 years (see Fig. 2.2 of http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y2787E/y2787e03.htm or Ref.). In the present Note it is shown that the orbital periods of the planets of the Solar System provide further evidence. All periods are very close to integer fractions and multiples of the periods of the Hale and the Gleissberg solar cycles.
In an excellent paper by the late Dr. Theodor Landscheidt (see http://www.schulphysik.de/klima/landscheidt/iceage.htm) it was shown that the Sun’s Gleissberg activity cycle is closely correlated with the oscillations of the Sun around the center of mass of the solar system. The first and second space derivatives of the gravitational potential of the planets in the vicinity of the Sun are, however, so minute that it cannot be envisaged how the extremely slow motion of the Sun about the center of mass of the solar system could physically influence the processes within the Sun. It is much more likely that a common external agent is driving both the Gleissberg cycle and the related oscillatory barycentric motion of the Sun.
The small motion of the Sun is, of course, determined, almost entirely, by the motion of the large planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune that revolve around the Sun with periods of 11.87, 29.63, 84.67, and 165.49 years respectively. Note that the sunspot cycle (Hale cycle) has a mean period of 22.14 years (see T. Niroma in http://www.personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspot4.html) and in my previous Note “A Compilation of the Arguments that Irrefutably Prove that Climate Change is driven by Solar Activity and not by CO2 Emission” of March 6, 2008 (see Ref.), I pointed out that in the past 150 years the mean surface temperature of the Earth changed in a quasi-periodic manner with a mean period of 70 years, approximately, in accordance with the Gleissberg cycle. If one considers all of the documented sunspot cycles, the mean Gleissberg cycle length is 78.5 years (see T. Niroma). If we stipulate for the moment that there exists – in addition to the 78.5-years wave – a galactic vacuum density wave of 22.14 years period that is driving the Hale cycle, then the addition of both waves leads to a periodic amplitude modulation with a period of 2/(1/22.14 – 1/78.5) = 61.68 years.
If two galactic gravitational wave trains of 22.14 and 78.5 years period were to pass through the solar system, the gravitational action of these waves on the revolving planets would slowly relocate these celestial bodies until the orbital periods were close to 22.14, 61.68, and 78.5 years (the periods given by the combined wave train) or integer fractions and multiples of these values. The orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn are 1% higher, and 4% lower than one-half of 22.14 and 61.68 years, respectively. The orbital period of Uranus is 8% higher than the period of the Gleissberg cycle. The orbital period of Neptune is 5% larger than 2 times the mean Gleissberg period and that of Pluto is 7% larger than 3 times Gleissberg.
Note that if the period of the long-term Gleissberg cycle were 7% higher, the three basic periods would be 22.14, 60.13, and 84.0 years and the orbital periods of all outer planets would agree with integer fractions and multiples of these basic periods to an accuracy of 1.5% or less.
Now to the remaining planets. The following table shows the ratio of the mean Schwabe sunspot cycle period of 11.07 years to the planet orbital period.
Mars = 6 – 0.11 Earth = 11 + 0.07
Venus = 18 – 0.01 Mercury = 46 – 0.04
With an average error of 6% of an orbital period, the orbital periods are whole-number fractions of the mean Schwabe sunspot cycle period.
As can be seen, the 22.14 years and the 78.5 – 84 years galactic wave trains have brought good order into the Solar System.
In my opinion, the orbital periods of the planets provide — in addition to the extremely close temperature-rotation-correlation — further evidence for the existence of galactic vacuum density waves with mean long-term periods of 22.14 and 78.5 – 84 years.
Ref.: http://www.icecap.us/images/uploads/Lobert_on_CO2.pdf
Gerhard. Your position is supported by Nicola Scafetta, Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (2010),doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2010.04.015
See post at: Scafetta on 60 year climate oscillations
If you include the periods of the lunar declinational atmospheric tidal effects on the global circulation you will have an alternate explanation for the patterns of long term and short term global temperature changes that needs very little input from CO2.
This is the null hypothesis of natural variability that is responsible for the 179 year patterns of heat peaks as seen in the period from 1993 to 2008, with the synod conjunction of Neptune with Uranus in 1993 with the Earth passing them occurred in NH late spring, by 1998 NH midsummer, peaking the heating effects of the ENSO driven by lunar declination, then as the lunar declination angle at culmination peaked in 2005, there by giving rise to the surge in global hurricane production, as a result of the global circulation turbulence at the turning of the atmospheric tide, as the polar jets came back toward the equator, the hurricane and severe weather patterns have decreased considerably.
Now in 2010 the earth’s synod conjunction with Uranus and Neptune are occurring in fall about 30 days apart, the effect is causing more intense fall type weather patterns, in a few more years the peak precipitation will be in the form of heavy winter snows in the NH. The peak heat effects will no longer come at midsummer, and the “CAGW” “Hansen modified” GISS temperature signal will disappear, although the plant food CO2 levels will increase, thanks to China and India helping to support the growing global population.
Thank you for this eloquent response. I am not a published scientist, just a computer programmer who once did a small stint at the BoM. I bought into the consensus until the email leaks. The content was fairly shocking by itself, but what convinced me there was something seriously fishy was the response, the blatant coverup by the concerned parties. The clincher was visiting the various blogs to discuss the issues. Only the so-called deniers were engaging in real debate and not just screaming into an echo chamber.
I’m still a commited environmentalist, but I’m now optimistic about the next hundred years, confident that humanity and all life will thrive as it empirically has, not collapse like disingenious computer models designed to predict disaster and the doomsayers proselytizing with them would have me believe.
Thanks again for engaging in honest debate, and best of luck for the future.
This just gets weirder.
So Judith thought she was one of the “masters of the universe” until discovering that having public spats with fellow scientists wasn’t very clever.
As penance, she decides to engage in ‘kumbaya’ dialogue with people who wish to deny basic physics.
A correction to the former was probably in order, but why is it that people often jump from one extreme to another. And in this case, very probably a most unhelpful one. Well informed scientists yelling at each other is at least likely to generate some insight.
And equating the IPCC as “dogma” and posing as a victim just because a journalist chooses the word “heretic” in a headline (and a note of warning here – the article itself never uses such wording, strongly suggesting it was thrown in by an editor) says absolutely nothing about the “insiders”, only about journalists. Looks to me very much like someone’s getting a little too keen to make themsleves the story.
“then count me in as a heretic” – what self-indulgent nonsense.
Wow. So many ad homs, misleading assertions, omissions of fact and demonstrations of ignorance in one post. Great going, Michael.
Claims of ‘ad hom’ are rapidly becoming one of the greatest misuses of logic on the intertubes.
Criticism does not equal ‘ad hom’.
Between the nuns in high school (who decreed that I would be on the debate team, like it or not) and the Jesuits in college (where, science major notwithstanding, I had to minor in philosophy and theology), I got hefty and recurring doses of formal logic, particularly as it is to be employed in structured “points-taken-off-for-screwing-up” public discourse.
Argumentum ad hominem is concept familiar to anyone with such education and experience, and you’re quite correct that it has nothing to do with “Criticism” – or contumely, or insult, or the deployment of pejoratives (whether truthful or not).
Argumentum ad hominem constitutes failure to address the subject under discussion, substituting for substantive disputation a focus upon the person of the opposing speaker. Whether the approach is nasty (“You suck, and your grandmother smells of elderberries!”) or nice (“I’m so sorry to hear about your cirrhosis, buddy, and I hope your esophageal hemorrhage wasn’t too bad”), it’s an evasion of responsibility to stay to hellangone on topic.
Frankly, I like incidental insult. Most of the moral degenerates and intellectual wastoids whom I regard as worthy of such accurate characterization don’t have opinions I consider valid, and therefore their sputtering substitutes for responsory fulmination amount to nothing more than a Fourth of July backyard sparkler next to the flamethrower I happily turn upon them.
And I stay on-topic while I’m amusing myself upon them, too. Couldn’t do that in front of the good Sisters during my debate team days, more’s the pity.
—
Ahhh, ever so much better than s simple-minded and shallow two-word rejoinder. Pity they won’t quite realize what you just said. I’m with you all the way!
Rich, with your background I think you will find Climate Etc. really interesting and you can be a significant contributor, but pls keep your focus on the arguments and not the person, and snark and insults aren’t appreciated here.
I have a feeling that what frightens you and the inhabitants of the planet that you are from more than anything, is that we can understand you but that you cannot understand us. Yes?
Hhmm, you got me there.
Please show me where the question of comparing current temperatures to the paleo record has anything to do with physics. Also, physics does not show how to solve the problem of characterizing clouds properly (and how do you test your cloud parameterization scheme)? This notion that the models are basic physics is an attempt to give the GCMs unwarranted infallibility. We could equally say modeling earthquakes is “just” physics, so where are the accurate earthquake predictions? Heterogeneity confounds simple physics.
Have a read of this thread Craig.
Co2 doesn’t cause warming, Venus isn’t warmer than earth due to GHGs etc are here, as usual.
The S/N is so low that applying a Wegmanian analysis would conclude that the Hockey Stick of ‘Skepticism’ (ie. that there may be an incease in useful skepticism on this blog) is an illusion
MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE DATA
The theory of man made global warming states that human emission of CO2 causes global warming.
The relationship that has to be verified is between human emission of CO2 and mean global temperature. The data for the first variable is not required as it is obvious that human emission of CO2 has been increasing as we use fossil fuels to protect us from freezing in winter, from sweltering in summer, from the pitch black darkness at night, to visit our loved ones, to earn our living and support our family, and to supply us with all the pleasures of modern life in contrast to the life of the cave man.
The second variable is the mean global temperature and one dataset exists at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. These data shows the following trends for 120-years from 1880 to 2000:
http://bit.ly/cVmNsu
These data shows the globe is warming at an overall rate of 0.5 deg C per century (shown by the overall trend line).
In addition to this overall warming, there is an alternative global cooling and warming phases as follows:
For 30-years from 1880 to 1910=> global cooling
For 30-years from 1910 to 1940=> global warming at a rate 0.15 deg C per decade
For 30-years from 1940 to 1970=> global cooling
For 30-years from 1970 to 2000=> global warming at a rate 0.15 deg C per decade
If these pattern, that was valid for 120 years is assumed to be valid for the next 20 years, it is reasonable to predict
For 30-years from 2000 to 2030=> global cooling
This data clearly shows the global mean temperature has a pattern. Because of this pattern, in the 120 years data, there is no evidence for the effect of human emission of CO2 on global mean temperature.
In summary, man made global warming is not supported by the data.
Hi Judith
I’m a bit confused about your views against the scientific AGW consensus. As far as I see it there is a consensus that:
carbon dioxide is an excellent absorber of longwave radiation;
atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have increased over the past few decades, largely driven by human activities, and that this must have had a warming effect;
the earth has warmed;
climate sensitivity must be higher than 2C;
future warming is likely to lead to negative consequences for life on earth.
Why is any of this controversial?
You ask why can’t we go back to discussing science. Well, we do. There is vigorous debate about a whole load of issues around the timing, magnitude and effects of impacts. The idea that we scientists are just cosily enjoying the consensus, spending grant money and not debating the science is just ludicrous.
You don’t really believe that, do you?
Monty, I regard the following statement to be controversial:
Climate sensitivity must be higher than 2C
Any climate variations (warm, cold) undoubtedly lead to negative consequences for someone, “danger” has not been well defined or convincingly argued for.
Individual climate scientists are working very hard. It is how the whole thing gets framed into a consensus that concerns me, and how activists (some climate scientists, people from advocacy groups, etc) are using this in ways that hurt the science and the reputation of the science and the scientists. There is insufficient debate about some of the very broad issues, and there is too much focus on embellishing the IPCC narrative.
My shtick has been about inadequate characterization of uncertainty by the IPCC. How this became translated into Curry is a heretic sort of speaks for itself as to what the problem is.
As a retired scientist/engineer with a professional interest in climate matters, I’ve approached the palaeo issue from a different approach.
The evidence for CO2-AGW is extremely weak because aerosol ‘global dimming’ in AR4 is 75% of median net AGW yet the main part, from clouds, ranges by 6. Insiders cross their fingers and hope the CO2 signal will rise. So, the paleo argument is all they really have but to counter it you have to provide an alternative forcing. I think it comes from thick clouds.
The story is interesting. In the ’60s, various physicists tried to explain why albedo from aerosols/liquid sols was higher than the 0.5 you would intuitively expect for a non-absorbing medium with high optical depth. In Holland Van de Hout was the man. In the US it was Sagan. The latter clearly influenced Hansen through what happened to Venus.
What they did was to lump parameters, Mie asymmetry factor, optical depth, and fitted to data. The relationship looks impressive but it’s just a curve fit with fancy Greek letters to impress. Been there, got the tee-shirt. Put radiometers under clouds, plug in tau and g and by definition you get albedo. The problem is that the curve cannot predict the effect of pollution because for thick clouds a second optical process can dominate.
So, originating in the 1974 paper by Hansen and Lacis, ‘cloud albedo effect’ prediction in the models is probably very wrong. NASA claims polluted clouds have enhanced ‘reflection’ from droplet surfaces: fake physics.
The real process is probably stronger geometrical backscattering from larger droplets as directional information is lost: assume two processes with symmetrical diffuse scattering and you don’t go far wrong.
So, aerosol pollution decreases cloud albedo and there may be no need for CO2 [Miskolczi]. As the planet wakes up from an ice age, vegetation etc. gives more aerosols. The leverage is very substantial. I suspect we’ve seen it with Asian industrialisation, the fast rise in ocean heat content from the 1980s to the early 2000s. This AGW saturates though. Of course, I could be completely wrong but as there has been there has been an attempt to drown my views, I think I may be onto something…….
Regarding the Venus greenhouse effect, see my question to Judith and the link she gave in reply.
Essentially, the temperature in Venus’ atmosphere corresponding to 1 Atmosphere pressure, is only modestly higher than on Earth – which you would expect since it is closer to the sun – the real problem is that the temperature goes on increasing as you continue down to a pressure of 90+ atmospheres!
Yes, it’s just the lapse rate, not global warming.
I think the optical physics’ mistake in the models has to have been noticed by others because it’s so obvious: all you need is the right physics’ knowledge and to just look at clouds for a while. However, you also have to have an open mind and if you were taught the works of Sagan, you don’t dispute them easily.
If I am right, the mistake may have been hidden to save face. If so, that would be the biggest scientific confidence trick since Piltdown Man.
“… As far as I see it there is a consensus that:
carbon dioxide is an excellent absorber of longwave radiation;
atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have increased over the past few decades, largely driven by human activities, and that this must have had a warming effect; …”
The warming effect is insignificant if you look at it with energy magnitude in mind. How much long wave radiation that CO2 can absorb in the 390ppm concentration? CO2 also dissipates energy mostly to the space. Can 0.04% CO2 change 0.996% air temperature at all?
Thanks for your reply Judith.
You know as well as I do that the vast majority of observational, modelling and (most importantly) palaeoclimate reconstructions shows that low sensitivity is highly unlikely. How would you explain glaciations if climate sensitivity was low?
Of course there will be winners and losers with continued warming. But are you arguing that rapid climate change with associated impacts will be beneficial for most people/ecosystems? If you are, most scientists I know would disagree with you. Of course it’s not easy to define ‘dangerous CC’…what would be dangerous for one person might not be for another. But the impacts, some likely irreversible, will surely rise as T rises. The palaeo record is quite clear that very rapid change has occurred in the past.
Is this not a consensus position? Do you agree or disagree with it?
As for uncertainty….well a lot of my colleagues spend their entire working lives assessing and trying to understand uncertainty in models and projections. You’re surely not trying to claim that this is somehow neglected by scientists!
Finally, a quick read through the comments on this post shows many of the usual mad sceptic talking points (no warming, CO2 has little effect etc). Why aren’t you debunking these?
Consensus on a complex subject like climate change is political, not scientific. There is too much uncertainty in most aspects for there to be a meaningful scientific consensus with high confidence levels. I think the community, and esp the modeling community, hasn’t done a very good job in characterizing uncertainty and accounting for it in its experimental design, especially the attribution experiments where each group picks the forcing data they like best (and adjust the really uncertain ones like aerosol), without any systematic investigation of how the uncertainty in forcing influences the attribution argument. This is just one example that was discussed at length in Part II of the detection and attribution series.
On technical threads, we keep close to the topic and argue against weak points. On threads that are more open like this one, everyone can have their say as long as they don’t violate blog rules. I have a limited amount of time to deal with blog traffic that has been particularly high this last week. Debunking a broad range of skeptical talking points is not what I do here; that is done at other blogs.
“Consensus on a complex subject like climate change is political, not scientific. “
I rather think that depends on the question you’re asking.
The question “Is it necessary to reduce fossil fuel emissions?” is surely a question which is political and outside the remit of science even if there existed a consensus among scientists as to the answer.
The question “Is C02 a greenhouse gas?” is a scientific question for which there exists a scientific consensus. You may say “But nobody says that it isn’t” and on that note I’d direct you to Dr Roy Spencer’s blog
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/08/comments-on-miskolczi%e2%80%99s-2010-controversial-greenhouse-theory/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/08/help-back-radiation-has-invaded-my-backyard/
There are other posts on wattsupwiththat.com which run to hundreds of comments debating the existence of the greenhouse effect.
I think when you make statements like “Consensus […] is political, not scientific.” you need to tread carefully lest you find yourself being quoted in support of positions you do not hold.
Challenging consensus is one of the engines propelling science forward. To paraphrase my old prof. Leventhal: ‘science is built on reasoning of an individual’.
p.s. My comment on WUWT
“Occasionally I read Dr. Curry’s comments on her blog.
She may be thinking of going to Damascus but ain’t on the road yet.
But let’s be generous, it takes time.”
@vukcevic
“Challenging consensus is one of the engines propelling science forward.”
I agree. The consensus is simply (or should simply be) “This is what the majority of experts in the field think based on the available evidence”.
New evidence will of course lead to new theories which overturn the previous ones.
However “challenging consensus” is not in itself inherently noble or desirable. For example challenges on the consensus on vaccines has served only to damage human health while attacks on the consensus concerning biological evolution have been deeply worrying in their implications for scientific progress.
Challenges should seek to provide better explanations and expand knowledge not simply be “is not”. I don’t think those who try to argue that the greenhouse effect is thermodynamically impossible are doing very well on this metric.
Shapiro, yes, I have a better alternative to CO2, and physics of it is far more sound, but academia is not yet ready even to look at let alone consider it.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PDOc.htm
Well there is always a hope, even Dr. JC may one day wander ‘what are the data this bloke is plotting?’; on the other hand she rather not, that would be really serious heresy.
Monty @ 10:09am —
If one is to hand, could you cite a recent review that expands on this point (what interglacial/glacial transitions teach about climate sensitivity)?
The strong form of the argument (“neglected”) is surely untrue. Even watered down, the concern is still very important — given the public policy implications of AGW science. This has been discussed in detail in prior threads.
Sisyphus.
Hi AMac
For the palaeo argument, you could try Annan and Hargreaves 2006 in GRL.
Thanks Monty. A draft of Annan & Hargreaves, “Using multiple observationally-based constraints to estimate climate sensitivity,” GRL 33 (2006) is available on James Annan’s homepage. The paper was also discussed at on RealClimate and Annan’s blog.
“For the palaeo argument, you could try Annan and Hargreaves 2006 in GRL.”
Interstering paper. I am a bit confused as to the statement :
“If, for example, we were to broaden the
volcanic and LGM likelihoods to the point at which they are equivalent to the 20th century
warming constraint (ie cube this gamma distribution), then we obtain the pdf indicated by
the thin red dashed line. Even in this case, the probability of climate sensitivity exceeding
6C is still below 4%. In order to justify such a wide likelihood for the volcanic constraint,
we would have to claim either that a climate sensitivity of 10C allows a rapid recovery of
the surface temperature following a volcanic eruption (contrary to all the evidence from a
range of models), or that natural variability has happened to strongly oppose (and never
augment) the forced response for numerous individual eruptions.”
It appears to my untrained eye that they are trying to further constrain the upper limit of climate sensitivity by going through an exercise which they do not believe to be true. Yet it is this exercise that is used to justify the lower boundry of climate sensitivity in their graph at about 2C. The 3 boundry range shows the lower range of sensitivity to be about 1.5C but this appears to be constrained by volcanic forcing studies. I find this rather odd since in the text it gives the lower boundry from these studies as 0.3C – 1.8C. I’m not a scientist but how did they go from volcanic forcing studies giving a lower constraint of 0.3-1.8C to what appears in their graph where it is the bracketing factor at approximately 1.5C?
I’m a bit confused as to your reasoning…..maybe you can clarify. There’s quite a lot of new research out which uses geological data that suggests that climate sensitivity is higher than 3C. See Lunt et al. 2010 (Nature Geoscience), Pagani et al 2010 (Nature Geoscience), Hansen et al 2007 (Open Atmospheric Science Journal) and of course Dave Stainforth’s high estimates in Nature (2005). I don’t believe the latter, but the high estimates from the previous authors seem credible.
I’m not sure what confuses you so it would be rather difficult to elaborate unless you get more specific. As far as other studies that show a higher climate sensitivity based on geological records, yes I’m sure there is. Could you perhaps find some empirical evidence from the modern era which is based on the best data available. They have yet to disprove any of the extinction hypotheses because the data is so poor it is virtually impossible to disprove anything. Since the quality of data dealing with climate must be of the same quality I don’t place a high degree of confidence in paleoclimate data nor would I ever consider it a convincing counter argument to current data.
Well, for obvious reasons you can’t use the current amount of warming in response to CO2 concentrations as evidence for climate sensitivity so the palaeo record is extremely valuable. Sceptics always dismiss the palaeo record as it’s always rather inconvenient for them! I’d be intrigued if you can explain how we had repeated glaciations throughout the Quaternary in conjunction with low (ie below 2C or so) sensitivity.
Why exactly couldn’t you use the current warming to determine the climate sensitivity? Lag time from the oceans? If the oceans have stopped warming then the lag time must be rather short. If the lag time is long, say 30 years as I have often seen cited, then either all the forcing of the early 20th century was around 1910 or there was still an equilibrium to be achieved after mid century to the previous forcing. Can you specify what may have happened on or around 1910 that produced the warming for the next 30 years? If not how much of the warming of the 2nd half of the 20th century can be attributed to the forcing from the first half finally reaching equilibrium?
As far as paleo data goes, I’ll be happy to argue that with you when you can show me the paper that tells me the case of the dying dinosaurs has been settled once and for all and everyone agrees. In the meantime, since you seem to have an interest in paleoclimatology, I have been searching for a paper that takes into account the irrigation that would occur as the world left glaciation. Happen to know of one?
Why not? Because you don’t know that something that might be a cycle is over till it’s over. Paleo’s the only resource (however weak or faded it may be) to look at events that we can observe as having started, progressed and finished.
Current warming. Are we at the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? We don’t know.
As a matter of fact _we_ will never know how current events fill out the picture of climate. Our grand-children’s grand-children probably will.
Dear Dr. Curry,
Kudos on your ‘conversion’ to open-mindedness. (I’m sorry if that seems harsh or a misrepresentation—hear me out and you’ll see why I describe you that way: we met in the late 1990’s at NASA GSFC.)
Dr. Curry, I agree with you that this discussion, and particularly your post here, is not about you and should not be. For me it is about critical thinking, something to which I’m an ardent, even evangelical, advocate. We must never believe we ‘know the truth’. We must always take personal responsibility for assessing the ever-evolving stream of evidence and the related stream of fellow colleagues’ opinions based on their critically-thought-out interpretations of the evidence (and our assessment of whether they’ve remained diligently open-minded or have sunk into ‘group-think’.)
I agree with you that a majority of the IPCC ‘powers that be’ and adherents seem to have begun to accept their own findings as dogma, and I agree that the danger lies in what people, even responsible scientists, do when they forget to continue to evolve their thinking.
Now … my perspective on your ‘conversion’: I am now retired, formerly a Research Meteorologist who worked at NASA/GSFC. My main area of expertise was one that put me in frequent contact with Pielke, Sr.—modeling the interaction of the land surface with the lower atmosphere, and developing parameterizations of those processes for climate models. In the late 1990’s I was working on a result that my model found, which I rather dramatically dubbed ‘The Icehouse Effect’. My work never went to a peer reviewed journal because I couldn’t convince myself that there was enough good quality climate-time-scale high-vertical-resolution near-surface temperature data to test the results that clearly show up in my model. A summary paper is still on the web at http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20010083083_2001137319.pdf
There was an occasion when you were visiting NASA GSFC in the late 90’s, and you were kind enough to agree to come to my office to talk. I presented you with the results of this ongoing research into an Arctic counter-feedback effect to global warming. I don’t expect you to remember this meeting – it was just another of those typical sit-and-chat sessions that visiting scientists ‘endure’ as they make the rounds of the institution being visited. And perhaps it was a bad day. But my reaction to our meeting was that I had been talking to a ‘brick wall’ (sorry). I had hoped for some feedback, even if critical, because I knew of your interest and expertise in the area, but I didn’t even get that. I felt as though my ‘crackpot’ ideas had been dismissed out-of-hand simply because they were superficially contrarian to the standard position on Arctic warming. (Indeed, the continuing depletion of Arctic sea ice—something which is not incompatible [in fact is expected] with the ‘Icehouse Effect’ theory I describe in my paper—made any theory of a secondary cooling mechanism seem dubious, at least without delving into the physics of the mechanism being proposed.)
So … I came out of that meeting with the *impression* that you were one of the closed-minded dogmatic ‘toe the party line’ IPCC scientists. Thus my perception of a conversion on my part – a delightful and most welcome one, may I add.
Dr. Curry, I fully support your efforts to clear away the crust of dogma that has begun to solidify around this important issue … on both sides. As you say, the outcome of all this is far from certain. I hope it results in a revitalization of the IPCC, a return to its original reflective mission, and an advancement in public understanding of the climate trends we are experiencing. All of my TV meteorologist friends are global warming skeptics. If I may say so, I think it is hard for them to recognize the difference between the weather that is their daily fodder, and climate. The general public is strongly of the belief that global warming, if it exists at all, is either of no consequence and/or not man’s doing. I don’t fret too much about this state of affairs, because, as you hint, there may be other socio-political and economic factors that present a greater immediate danger to society. And when climate change mixes in with those other factors, it’s hard to deconstruct cause and effect.
Someday things may get serious. But at present the climate impact on humanity is analogous to the old ‘frog in the frying pan’. It could be too late before we try to jump out.
You weren’t addressing me, but I was in the same room and you knew it, therefore — I enjoyed everything you said! Re: your closing comment, from one old frog to another, we may not be able to jump when we feel the heat but the kids will; not to worry, they’ll be fine. And, judging from what you’ve said, I don’t get the feeling that you’re as concerned for them as you are about the kitchen. I wouldn’t worry about the kitchen, they can build their own. It will probably be better than ours anyway. You know, it is a little warmer today.
Well, thank you for responding. I have a feeling that Dr. Curry is rather overwhelmed with the attention at the moment, so, though I was addressing her, it’s nice to have your feedback.
Dr. Wetzel, have you thought of doing a guest post on this topic over at WUWT? I have a feeling that Anthony would give it a go.
Slightly OT here but,
Dr C
How is it that ‘coherence’ of ideas – a apparent observation that many things apparently fit together well – serves to strengthen the hand of the consensus
but
flaws in the very things that supposedly fit well together, cannot detract from the consensus?
How is that, in regular peer-review, reviewers have significant vetoing power and decision-making abilities,
whereas
in the IPCC version of ‘peer-review’, authors get to do what they want with reviewer comments and get to decide what goes into a chapter?
Why is the system inverted?
Politics?
Heresy and the creation of monsters
Nothing more heretical than TRUTH!….so, as the great George Carlin said:
Pack your sh**s folks….we are leaving!
You have made very proper comments on the need for professionalism in climate science that will resonate throughout the wider scientific community. Congratulations.
I have produced medical devices that have to undergo regulatory approval before they can be used. The level of documentation is absolutely mind blowing – everything has to be documented in extraordinary detail, including the make of ink used to sign off documents. Computer programs have to be verified by static and dynamic analysis and a hostile code walk through by sceptical regulators. This is OK, medical devices should be shown to be well designed and as safe as one can make them. Similar regulation is applied to new drugs.
Anyone who has been through this process can only be amazed by the total shambles underlying various “gold standard” temperature records such as NASA and CRU. They are adjusted. How? We can’t tell you -we’ve lost the programs and this is already described in a footnote in our 1997 paper……. How does the adjusted data compare with the original? We don’t don’t know because we destroyed the original data. What are the likely effects of adjustment on the overall temperature record? An improvement!
You are absolutely right in your statement about rediscovering professionalism. Keeping accurate experimental records and being able to defend one’s analysis might be a good place to start.
Keep on going – You are absolutely correct in what you are saying.
In the modern world there are two BIG computer issues: one is SPEED, the other is STORAGE. There is a third “BIG” that is NOT often discussed in polite company. It is reported to have something to do with being able to SECURE every bit from man-made and natural disasters (the ‘on’ and ‘off’ planet kind). One school seems to think we need to build a giant pyramid or three and store a record of everything humans ever measured, thought, did, or knew inside big, safe, secret compartments. Wonder how much that will cost?
Um. Who is in this “pyramid school” and where did you hear about them?
MODERATION NOTE: some of these conversations are getting too heated. Because of very high blog traffic it is difficult to keep up. Please check the blog rules.
Most of the Climate Etc. regulars have probably abandoned this thread by now. I hope to have a new thread up tomorrow to focus discussion in a more useful way.
And if i miss something that is objectionable, please send me an email.
Dr. Curry — the regulars may have abandoned this thread, but the SciAm article is attracting a new generation of ‘regulars’, including myself. Evolution proponent Richard Dawkins touts his web site as a ‘Clear thinking Oasis.’ In the area of Climate change, I believe this blog has the potential to serve the same function.
With regard to a “Clear thinking Oasis” in the area of climate change, there’s already a Web site that has been serving the purpose admirably.
It’s called “Watts Up With That?” and it aggregates not only scrupulously skeptical science on the subject but has also been maintained in a manner open to the comments and even the contributions of those who persist in pushing the utterly untenable AGW fraud.
Much of the focus in the warmist camp seems to be on purely political sites like Marc Morano’s Climate Depot (which is presently pushing the daylights out of this Web log of Dr. Curry’s) while avoiding acknowledging or even visiting those virtual venues where the scientific and technologically literate critics of the global warming scam gather to present information and comment upon matters pertinent to the study of climatology.
I suppose that the religious True Believer types on the “watermelon” environmentalist left have to do what they can to avoid confronting lucid appreciation of their delusions.
—
WUWT pays homage to the adage that you can open your mind so much it falls out. It doesn’t educate people, it’s like a teacher in a classroom telling the kids there is no right answer. 2+2 can equal whatever they want. Hence it does nothing to convey the certainties in the science.
That and it just copies, pastes and misinterprets scientific news which you could get more accurately from sciencedaily.com
WUWT is one of the places that Judith Curry should be attacking. Along with Climate Depot. And Icecap.us. The whole stinking lot are a festering source of misinformation.
I would suggest that you are wildly out of touch with the actual situation at WUWT.
I would say that you are so misinformed as to be from a different reality.
I wonder if you represent the quality of thinking that goes into falling for the AGW extremist position or if you have helped form it?
From what I understand, Dr. Curry’s scientifically literate colleagues and regulars tend to ask for supporting citations when assertions of fact are advanced, and so – just for the heck of it – let’s see if this “Cthulu” critter has any real examples of what he claims to be glaring defects in the items presented on Mr. Watts’ site.
PPR, as the acronym goes, or….
Meanwhile, I have to wonder what you might use in lieu of a reasoned opinion of physicist Jeffery D. Kooistra, who had also arrived at a considered skeptical opinion of the flagrant fraud to which you’ve plighted your frothing little troth. It was one of his columns in Analog (“Lessons from the Lab,” November 2009) that introduced to me Mr. Watts’ work on the Surface Stations Project and sent me thence to regular review of Mr. Watts’ Watts Up With That? Web log.
That column came considerably in advance of the wonderful Climategate information release, and predicated on nothing much beyond the instrumental unreliability of the global temperature datasets imposed by factors as straightforward as a change in the paint used upon the Stevenson Screen thermometer shelters (not to mention the location of the very best of these thermometers in places next to obvious artificial heat sources), concluded:
…
Surprise me, Cthulu. Tell me that you have any training or experience whatsoever in the principles of instrumental analysis and limits of accuracy in scientific observation.
—
Those who are so emotional about shutting up opposition have something to hide. If AGW is so strong it should survive any criticisms, if it has the evidence. Only those who dogmatically hold on to AGW for non-scientific reasons object to counter arguments.
Judith,
When you title the section ‘A note to my critics in the climate science community’ are you referring only to criticism of the actual existence of your outreach? Or to broader criticisms of your statements about scientific matters. This isn’t so clear from the text. I would characterize myself as a scientist that disagrees with you on scientific issues. For instance, in your post on doubt you assigned a relatively low level of scientific evidence that GHG forcing would dominate global temperature changes in the 21st C. This, to my mind, implies that you believe in a low value of climate sensitivity. I believe there is ample evidence, excluding models, to place such low values of climate sensitivity in the unlikely range.
Can you also clarify some statements made in the post:
“This means abandoning this religious adherence to consensus dogma.”
Can you explain specifically who (n.b. this is in a section addressed to climate scientists that criticize you) has taken a religious position adhering to consensus dogma. Judith, you have addressed this to ‘you’ given the rather inflammatory nature of this statement it would be best to be specific rather than painting all your critics with this brush. As noted I have specific disagreements with your scientific position that have nothing to do with dogma and everything to do with evidence. Discussions with colleagues regarding your position also lead me to believe they hold similar positions to my own based on evidence and not dogma.
“I am doing my best to return some sanity to this situation and restore science to a higher position than the dogma of consensus.”
Again, more references to dogma, please clarify who ‘you’ is and what you mean by ‘you’.
“All in the name of supporting policies that I don’t think many of you fully understand. ”
Can you explain who has been supporting policies? Jim Hansen, for instance, has been publicly vocal about pursing policies to reduce coal consumption, but has he been a critic of yours, do you refer to ‘you’ when you mean Hansen, or do you have other climate scientists in mind?
I’m interested who you can classify as being a religious adherent to consensus dogma, a critic of yourself (unspecified on what subject), and someone who has openly supported policies on energy. Think of a Ven diagram with each clause above being a different circle, who can you place in the middle in each circle?
I have another unrelated query. You have made reference to the ‘Merchants of Doubt Meme’. Can you elaborate on what you mean by this. From the context in sentences you appear to disagree with the meme, but what do you specifically mean by name? Monied interests spreading doubt? Finally, given that it shares the title of a recent book are you referring to the book in some way?
PaulH, I can quickly point to two people who fit within your Venn diagram–Michael Tobis and Joe Romm, both of whom classify themselves as climate scientists, both of whom promote policy, both of whom have not only swallowed consensus dogma but have become vigorous disseminators of it.
They also have adopted as their pet chore the sliming of Dr. Curry, and have been gleefully pursuing said chore since long before Dr. Curry started this blog.
thomas,
Romm is classed as a ‘climate expert’ according to wikipedia. According to Web of Knowledge Romm has published 5 peer reviewed articles regarding energy policy and no articles on actual climate scientist. I don’t think this classifies him as a climate scientist unless you’re using an un-specified and very broad definition.
Michael Tobis has made various criticisms of Judith and is a climate scientist. From my limited reading of his blog these criticisms are limited to various substantive issues that Judith discusses on Climate Etc. If you’re aware of any posts Michael has made where he claims that Judith is a “big part of the cause of the problems [he is] facing” I’d re-assess my position.
Paul, i was going to declare myself finished with replying to questions about my heresy post; I am consumed with playing blog cop and trying to prepare my next post. but you ask good questions, so here is a quick reply.
In the note to the climate science community that is criticizing me, they know who they are, these are people who look at the scientific evidence and the discourse in terms of what it means for their preferred energy policy. The dupe part comes in where the assume that i can only be criticizing the science and the IPCC because I have been duped by oil companies or ideologues (this is the merchants of doubt meme). Any deviation from the IPCC consensus and the preferred policy option is greeted by subtle or not so subtle pressure from these people.
Note, i do NOT include Jim Hansen here. He thinks for himself, and has not criticized me to my knowledge for thinking for myself.
I can understand that you’re very busy and realize that you may not have a chance to respond. With respect, I do find it slightly bizarre that you would write a note to anonymous critics especially as it was only clear to me after reading the passage that you were referring to a specific kind of critical scientist i.e. one who is a scientist that disagrees with your public engagement on climate science and disclosure of uncertainty rather than a scientist that simply disagrees with some of your opinions on scientific matters. I am aware of scientists in the latter category but I need further poking with a clue stick as to the identities of the former.
I’m not sure it is a good idea to label some of your critics criticisms as Merchants of Doubt memes i.e. (as you characterize it) the criticisms being that you’ve associated with ideologues or oil shills. I say this simply because the book ‘Merchants of Doubt’ actually presents a very persuasive case that several prominent and influential conservative leaning scientists abused their position of authority to influence policy on scientific issues. I wouldn’t want to characterize an argument of a critic, that I believe to be specious, as something that is analogous to being well argued. Also, Merchants of Doubt alleges the scientists in question favored certain policy decisions because of their own ideology rather for their associations or for money. As a response to critics, I would stick with unfounded and wrong and possibly ad hominem depending on whether the cart is coming before the horse.
I think the disclosure of uncertainty in the debate is very important and can serve to highlight the difference between scientists and policy advocates. For instance, I recommend a recent debate between Andrew Dessler and Richard Lindzen in which Andrew Dessler highlights the importance of uncertainty and its presence in the science he presents. Andrew, imo, makes good use of this in his criticism of Lindzen since Lindzen virtually excludes any reasonable discussion of uncertainty from his conclusions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Sh1B-rV60
I’m not sure if this is true but perhaps the more policy minded advocates at the various levels of the debate in the pro-camp are wary of uncertainty because it weakens their rhetorical tools such as “the debate/science is settled”, and because in the past uncertainty has been egregiously abused in a unidirectional manner by skeptical ideologically driven advocates of do-nothing policies (and, yes, I urge you to read Merchants of Doubt, as Fred Singer is exposed doing this in his role in the acid rain battles). So, some legitimate and illegitimate concerns there to mull on.
Paul H – you say “This, to my mind, implies that you believe in a low value of climate sensitivity. I believe there is ample evidence, excluding models, to place such low values of climate sensitivity in the unlikely range.”
Subject to your definition of “low values of climate sensitivity” (see next para), I would like to see such evidence. From everything I have seen thus far, including the IPCC report, the arguments in favour of a higher climate sensitivity seem to be based on the assumption that selected observed temperature changes have been caused by CO2, with other possible causes being ignored or dismissed. In other words, a formal argument from ignorance.
I have seen papers (Schwartz, Hansen, eg.) putting climate sensitivity at around 1.2, and others putting it lower but none higher without added guesswork (IPCC, eg.). I am surmising that you consider <=1.2 as "low", and therefore that you think there is evidence that climate sensitivity is higher. If I surmise correctly, then I would like to see your evidence.
Dr. Curry, my husband and I are both engineers, and therefore are skeptical about nearly everything (it’s an engineer thing). One of the sayings we have coined is “The error bars on our knowledge are much larger than our knowledge.” We question everything, and have complex conversations about very trivial subjects, as an attempt to get at root causes and true signals. I am sorry, but it sounds like you might be on the road to becoming an engineer.
MODERATION NOTE: some of these conversations are getting too heated. Because of very high blog traffic it is difficult to keep up. Please check the blog rules.
It seems impossible to discuss climatology on a pure scientific base between peers and scientific collegues and proves once more that climatology is not a science anymore, it’s scientology.
Advise for Dr.Curry; from this moment on do NOT explain or, worse, excuse your moves anymore. It will only contribute to more discussions with the usual and unusual suspects. Quotes will be used selectively and out of context. Waste of time, brain cells and peace of mind.
Ignore the flak, just follow your scientific heart and concentrate on science, science, science.
H.P. I’m afraid the days of discussing climate science without political influence are long gone. When climate scientists decided to let the United Nations sponsor the definitive international scientific treatise on AGW (the IPCC reports), climate science became intimately intertwined with world politics. This situation will not be easily undone, even if there is a will by the climate scientists to do so. I believe this was a huge mistake by this area of science to professionally marry itself to the most powerful international political organization.
We are seeing examples posted here of exactly what Judith is complaining about. Dogmatically holding a position without considering all the evidence, and resorting to insults to attempt to belittle anyone who presents contradictory evidence.
I posted that in Canada the daily data shows that summer temperatures are dropping. Instead of taking that information as something to seriously consider, I was accused of cherry picking and insulted.
Science must look at all the data, not that which only fits the dogma. This is precisely why AGW is looked at as a religion and not a science. It is incumbent upon any good scientist to look at the data from every possible angle. Otherwise, you are practicing psuedoscience.
If the average temperature is increasing, one MUST look at the context within which that trend in average is increasing. Average is a calculation not a measurement. There are many ways the raw data can make an average move up and down. Just stating that the average is increasing doesn’t mean anything unless one looks at the raw data to see what it is doing to get that average. TMax can be dropping, while TMIn is increasing more to give an over all increase in average. Even within the summer months. The day time highs can drop and the nighttime lows can be increasing to give an increase in the summer average (and that is exactly what is happening here).
Then there is the logical part of this. If Canada’s summer temps are dropping, then so too must the US, unless someone can explain how a political boarder can influence temperature trend differences. Same with the case of Ireland and Australia. Assuming these are somehow some “anomalies” to the trend, AGW must explain them. That’s what proper science does, right Judith? Not dismissed as “cherry picking”.
Any small bit of data that does not fit the theory can bring a theory down. Unless it’s dogma, a belief system, a pseudoscience, then no amount of evidence will shake those who wish to believe it for non-scientific reasons.
This whole issue of what the heck is going on with the temperatures needs lots more exploration. We are taking a look at some this at Georgia Tech. Seems to be alot of activity over at the Air Vent. And yes, you really need to look at the raw data. This is a perfect crowd sourcing exercise to get people to look at all this in detail. Then somebody needs to assess what all this means in some sort of an integral sense.
Looking at the temperature raw or corrected data is not enough. What is needed is a good look at the critical fundamental physical processes beside the CO2. Here is one with the 400+ of solid and reliable record. You would not have even heard of it, since no one bothered to look at before.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
That is still just averaged data. What needs to be shown is the full year’s range of temperatures, such as this example:
http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/2010/03/specific-stations-4333-ottawa.html
jrwakefield you may have totally misunderstood
Blue line NAP is not any kind of averaged temperature, even it is not something that current science recognises as anything to do with the temperatures. It is a well known fundamental physical process, which appears to be at the root of the North Atlantic temperatures changes, as demonstrated here with an apparent and direct link to CETs.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
I have most of Environment Canada’s raw data, took a long time to download it. It’s all in a number of access databases and text files. You are welcome to it all. Though I suspect if you ask them, EC will send it to you on CD.
JR, I’m sorry if my teasing offended you, but you come off with a bit of arrogance. You made a flat claim that “The winters are becoming less cold, summers are cooling. That’s what is driving the average up.” Not a hunch or a question or a hypothesis, but an assertion of truth. When confronted with global temperature data showing that summers were in fact getting warmer, you pointed to regional data. That’s the definition of a cherry-pick.
It is simply not possible to blankly assert that “If Canada’s summer temps are dropping, then so too must the US.” The Dominion of Canada and the United States are two large regions, and warming is not uniform in different parts of the globe.
However,there’s no reason to assume what you say either is or is not true. Why not look up the data? It’s not hard to do.
Look up the data? I have downloaded millions of bytes of records of daily temperature data for 1300 stations from 1900 to 2009 from Envrionment Canada. Yes, I have looked at the data, where do you think my graphs were made from, out of thin air?
It’s a mathematical truth. The average is calculated from all the stations daily temps of highs and lows, those regional records. I’ve check many stations across the country, and they are ALL doing the same thing. Not just one or two all of them. Don’t believe me, think I’m wrong, then download the data an look yourself.
You are missing the point entirely. Average is NOT a measurement, it’s a calculation, a number that has no basis in reality. All you are showing is the average is increasing, not what is physically making that average increase. Answer this. The year has summer and winter temps, is the average calculated from those measurements? Of course it is. Does the average have a physical meaning? No it does not. Average by itself has no meaning. You will note in my graphs I also include the upper and lower standard deviations as well as the TMax and TMin (including the average which is increasing). Average without that range of numbers is meaningless, void of context. When you state these averages, what is the full range of numbers used to get that average? Why is it always left out?
It seems you do not want summers to cool, as that is going to be a big thorn in AGW theory. What’s the problem of looking at the specific range of data? What are you afraid of? Isn’t science about looking at things from as many different perspectives as possible? Fixating on just a trend in average is ignoring what is physically going on.
As for the US. Since this trend is all across Canada, then at the least those states that boarder Canada must be doing the same thing. Or can you explain how Windsor’s temperature trend would be different from Detroit’s.
The year has summer and winter temps, is the average calculated from those measurements? Of course it is.
No, it is not.
The data table I linked way up there breaks seasonal temperatures out. It does not show summers are cooling. This is the difference I am having with you.
I did not realize, because you did not explain, that the graphs you link were all done by you. It’s an impressive bit of work. I was only able to look at the Belleville analysis so far, but I do note that you conclude “the planet is not heating up at all, it’s seeing warmer and shorter winters.” If you can explain to me how “warmer and shorter winters” does not mean “heating up,” I would be obliged.
Don’t you think that it would be interesting to plot US temperatures as well, in addition to locations outside Canada? What is your reluctance to use global data to address a global question?
Which begs the question of if there is actually any meaningful trend at all in world data, and if the metric itself offers much useful about the present and especailly about the future.
There’s a pretty significant trend. Why won’t anybody look at the data? The guys at GISS will be sad.
Seriously, though, this gives the lie to the refrain that “skeptics don’t disagree that temperatures are increasing.”
How is the average calculated?
Please explain why the number of days above 30C have been dropping.
Graphs by me, yes. I have been doing data anlysis like this for more than 25 years. It’s simple to plot the highs and lows on a graph, a highschool student can do that. Are you implying I’m incapable of doing a simple graph?
I’d plot global temps if I could get the daily raw data, with the highs and lows. You know where I can get it? I’d love nothing more than to show this is world wide.
As for “warming” in the winter. That depends on how you look at the data. It’s a glass-half-full vs glass-half-empty. Cold long deep winters could be the abnormal state, and the “warming” of winters is just returning to the normal state of short mild winters. Thus this winter warming is supposed to happen, part of a normal 1000 year cycle. It’s interesting that the default position is that this warming MUST be because of us. It’s never even considered that this warming trend spawned, provided the ability, for us to build a modern society. Advanced civilization didn’t cause this warming, this warming caused this advanced civilization. Just like the RWP and the MWP allowed for humanity to advance then. Longer growing season.
It’s simple to plot the highs and lows on a graph, a highschool student can do that. Are you implying I’m incapable of doing a simple graph?
Mercy. I meant nothing of the sort. Calm down. I only said that I didn’t know that the links you posted were your own work. It could have been anyone’s for all I knew.
I’d plot global temps if I could get the daily raw data, with the highs and lows. You know where I can get it?
Not a clue. Google is free. Also, Watts and the SurfaceStations guys may have more information on where the raw data is.
Cold long deep winters could be the abnormal state, and the “warming” of winters is just returning to the normal state of short mild winters. Thus this winter warming is supposed to happen, part of a normal 1000 year cycle.
That’s an interesting hypothesis. What ideas do you have about how one could support or rule out this hypothesis?
I always get people who wish to discredit what I do claim “you did this, not a scientist” all the time, so yeah, i get a bit defensive. It’s one of the ploys used to deflect the issue.
“That’s an interesting hypothesis. What ideas do you have about how one could support or rule out this hypothesis?”
Other than getting a time machine? Taking more readings for the next 1000 years? No. There isn’t. However, there are two important aspects of evidence within science. First, descriminatory evidence is what supports a theory, not evidence that can have mulitple explanations. I just posted a very possible explanation for the current warming trend, this means that the current warming trend cannot a priori be used as prima facia evidence of human involvement. There are other possible, yet to be verified, purely natural explanations for what is happening.
Second, what is the default position? Is it man-causing the changes or natural? Since we know that such climate we are seeing today existed in the past, both recent and much longer, how can you possibly know what we are doing today is causing this trend? Short of rewinding the clock remove humans and let the planet unfold with out us as a baseline to compare, there is no way you can discriminate what is happening now belongs to us. Computer models tell us nothing, they are not evidence.
Since we know that such climate we are seeing today existed in the past, both recent and much longer, how can you possibly know what we are doing today is causing this trend?
I think more emphasis than is warranted is placed on the “unprecedented warming” piece. What I find compelling is that there’s a discernible warming signal that can’t be explained as adequately through any of the alternatives I have seen (solar variation, orbital patterns, etc. etc.)
I’m not saying I am a master of the science, or that it’s an open-and-shut case, but the skeptic argument that it’s all based on smoke and mirrors is just not credible to me.
Yes, but the canadian region is higher latitude which means it should warm more of the past 110 years. shrugs.
Doesnt mean anything, but if it were old proxies we’d say the proxies robustly represented the NH.
funny that way. when we have sparse proxy’s we think one way about spatial variability, but point to a cool region and suddenly sparseness matters.
just an observation on argumentative styles
“I posted that in Canada the daily data shows that summer temperatures are dropping. Instead of taking that information as something to seriously consider, I was accused of cherry picking and insulted.”
No you claimed “winters are warming and summers are cooling” as if that was a global phenomenon (how does that make sense anyway, summer and winter are hemispheric). PDA didn’t seriously consider your suggestion because he knew why it was wrong and posted data showing it was wrong.
Less of the “AGW is religion” and “dogma” talk if you want to take a high ground about insults.
@Cthulhu,
Less religious-esque behaviors if you do not want the striking similarities of the AGW community to that of religious communities to be pointed out by outside observers.
Perhaps counselling Hansen to stop using imagery about ‘saving the planet’ would be a good start?
Cthulu, another idea appropriate for someone with your name would be for AGW promoters to stop demonizing skeptics.?
fhtagn!
Please show me where Environment Canada’s data is wrong. Please show me why it is wrong to plot the number of days above 30C (heat waves the AGW claim should increase). Please show me where it is wrong to plot the highs and lows along with the averages.
EC data has three numbers for each day. Max, Mean, Min. The mean is the average of the hourly temps. Plotting those averages for the year shows it is increasing since 1900. But the TMax is decreasing. There are fewer hot days now than in the 1900. That is a FACT, not conjecture, not pulled out of thin air. It is a FACT from the raw data.
What on earth are you talking about?
No one – certainly not I – has said you are “wrong,” just that you can’t make any statements about global climate from Canada-only data. It’s you who has intimated that the GHCN + SST data is wrong. I’d ask you to back that up with some evidence.
I didn’t say the GHCN + SST is wrong, I said it was meaningless unless it is in context to what the planet is doing through its seasonal swings. Yes the average is increasing, but because the winters and not getting as cold as they were in the 1900s, while the summers are not getting as hot.
And yes, I will claim that what is happening in Canada is very likely happening elsewhere in the world. Otherwise someone has to explain why we are seeing this trend just here. Only daily temp data from elsewhere will show that, but unfortunately it’s not freely available on line like EC data is. In the UK it is somehow a “security risk” to make it public.
That said, it is not just here, it’s no co-incidence that Ireland and Australia also see this same trend. What are the odds of these three being the only places this is happening? Zero.
The question for you and AGW supporters is why not accept this? Why all the attempts to ignore it, or dismiss it?
A good scientist would look at my evidence and say “Gee, we didn’t consider looking at the data that way, very interesting. Now how do we explain this within AGW?” Instead I get the reaction I have here. No desire to look at the data this way for fear it discredits AGW.
You do agree that
1) AGW never predicted cooler summer max temps
2) If it’s world wide it is a severe problem for AGW theory.
Yes the average is increasing, but because the winters and not getting as cold as they were in the 1900s, while the summers are not getting as hot.
Richard, I don’t know how many times I can say this. You are mistaken. The global data shows ummers and winters are getting warmer. It’s fine if you see some problem with the data, but you need to explain it, not just merely repeat the same unproven assertion over and over.
jrw:- “TMax can be dropping, while TMIn is increasing more to give an over all increase in average. Even within the summer months. The day time highs can drop and the nighttime lows can be increasing to give an increase in the summer average”
But I thought that would be consistent with standard theory. More warming at night than day, more warming at the poles than the tropics, (cooling rather than warming the stratosphere can’t apply to a place of residence.)
I have no idea why Oz would be anything like Canada. We’re *the* only OECD country so close to the equator – neatly positioned between the Pacific and Indian Oceans to ‘benefit’ from their frequent surprise packages. My city has never, not once, recorded an official minimum temperature below 0C.
jrwakefield you totally misunderstood
Blue line NAP is not any kind of averaged temperature, even it is not something that current science recognises as anything to do with the temperatures. It is a well known fundamental physical process, which appears to be at the root of the North Atlantic temperatures changes, as demonstrated here with an apparent and direct link to CETs.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
Where do these numbers come from? Are they measurments or calculations (averaged measurements)?
Second, what physical evidence that this is connected to our CO2 and not part of a normal cycle? Is the default position that this is man made or natural?
Just so you know, Judith: SA is getting slaughtered in the comments for both this and the shorter climate policy survey linked to on that page. You probably won’t approve of many of the comments, but it establishes that you are widely respected for your stand by people across the whole spectrum of the so-called “climate debate”, and that most visitors are shocked at the impropriety and poor formulation of this survey and the accompanying article. SA will either eat humble pie, or (my guess) they’ll make the author of this piece into a sacrificial lamb. I give 50% odds that the whole page will be wiped from their site within another 24 hours or so. I’d recommend caching it for posterity.
R. Craigen: That’s my impression too.
Some commenters here and at WUWT believe that the poll was calculated to make skeptics look like wackos and hence dismissible. Maybe so.
I think climate change advocates like Lemonick really do believe that skeptics are wackos. These advocates are blind to their own irrationality when it comes to climate skepticism; hence, this terrible poll. A bright high school student could have put together a better, fairer poll.
In any case it’s clear that the poll and the results are so embarrassing that, whatever their intention was, it has blown up badly in their faces.
I suspect that climate change advocates are experiencing a profound psychological crisis as the public turns away from them, and their political allies are about to lose badly in the US midterm elections. To climate advocates it looks like the world has gone mad. They don’t know what to do and in their frustration they make things worse as with this poll and the 10:10 film.
Thank you, I haven’t checked lately. I mainly hope that “uncertainty” is winning big in the second question :)
Seems to me the whole greenhouse gas and climate change brouhaha has wasted a lot of valuable time and money while completely missing the big picture.
In order to flourish, mankind needs reasonably affordable and reasonably clean energy. Key word is “reasonably”.
To the extent that funds are diverted towards inordinately expensive forms energy that have no meaningful emissions reductions value, pseudo science or ill conceived political adventures, then we are collectively less well off while the actual problem only grows worse.
Energy needs to be efficiently used as well as efficiently and affordably produced. Such an approach inherently solves the climate change issue, regardless of whether or not it is a real or imagined problem.
The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is
a corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda say 82% of voters!
http://bit.ly/cRqdqL
Have you looked at Donna Laframboise’s research into the credentials of the IPCC authors? You weren’t deferring to the collected wisdom of a bunch of PhDs. You were deferring to the collected wisdom of a bunch of grad students in their early to mid twenties.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration- but seriously:
The IPCC’s youngest lead author was 25, had just earned his Master’s, had no Ph.D, but had spent at least a year working for Greenpeace.
In 1994 Sari Kovats was one of only 21 people in the world chosen to work on the IPCC’s chapter on health. She would not publish an academic paper of her own for three more years. She did not earn her Ph.D. until last year.
“…in the 15 years prior to earning her PhD, Kovats served once as a contributing author and twice as a lead author for the IPCC.
Which means governments around the world have been relying on the expertise of grad students when they make multi-billion-dollar climate change decisions.”
This young man was a lead author before he’d earned even a Master’s Degree.
Then there’s:
Alexander was chosen as part of a team whose purpose was to form your opinion (and that of governments around the world) ten years before she got her doctorate.
Johnathan Patz, lead author on the Health chapter, was chosen for that position before he’d ever published a peer reviewed paper in the field. He’d only had his Master’s for two years, and he was lead author with only 8 other people. That’s the infamous health chapter which contained large chunks of material passed off as original, but in fact, lifted directly from a book called Planetary Overload, authored by a man Patz credits as his most respected mentor.
“That’s an interesting hypothesis. What ideas do you have about how one could support or rule out this hypothesis?”
As part two if you will, there is evidence to support that the planet does not tollerate winters. Most of the planet’s 400 million year history saw very few ice ages. 55myo tropical forests to the Arctic Circle. Only during this ice age have winters returned. There is also evidence that recent (past 200k years) of interglacial periods warmer than today. “warmer” in the sense that summers the same as now, but almost no winters. The planet is trying to get out of the ice age and back to its normal state of no winters.
It appears that the planet can only get so warm in the summer and then events happen that keep it from “boiling over”, like a glass can only hold so much water, it over flows, so is the summer climate. It can only get so warm. Is there any evidence that the tropics Tmax is changing? There is little data to know. Most countries in Africa didn’t take daily temperature readings since the 1800s.
Winters on the other hand, have no lower limit except absolute zero.
Figures are actual records, possibly most accurate records, going back to 1600 and before, of a well understood natural physical process, nothing to do with CO2.
I am in process of writing a short article, the graph is here to draw attention of the scientist dealing with climate on the failure to consider one of the most fundamental reasons for climatic changes.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
Dr. Curry, you rock. And somehow, you have become a rock star of science. I am totally overjoyed that this has happened. You have been granted what Teddy Roosevelt called a “bully pulpit” in a time when “bully” meant “very good.” Your interviews and now your blog have been a potent force in the revitalization of climate science.
In that regard, your recognition of uncertainty as the huge wave looming over the IPCC report is extremely insightful. And your series on the matter is fascinating. I have argued in the past that classic statistical uncertainty alone is inadequate in assessing past climate records. I am glad to see this issue getting the attention you are drawing to it.
Thanks Willis
Dear Dr. Curry;
As a Georgia Tech alum (MSEE 1981), I am sad to see the level that GIT has fallen too. I am somewhat encouraged that you may have finally woken up and realized that the “state” of “climate science” is in fact DISMAL. In most of the “hard” disciplines (engineering, chemistry, physics, etc.) the final proof is the alignment of predictions with actual observations (aka THE PUDDING). In the last three decades I have been modestly successful with the engineering skills I honed at GIT. A large part of this success is due to being humble enough to know when to admit “I don’t know”. This in fact makes my assertions’ that “I’m sure of this” much more valuable to my employer and customers.
Good for you admitting that “We just don’t know”. Best of luck with your future endeavors.
Kevin Klees, MSEE GIT, 1981. Currently in upstate New York (still quite a bit colder than Atlanta).
Dear Judith,
Since you are merely a mild climate sceptic concerned by matters of process internal to the scientific community, could you please make it clear to the world that you are not a denialist advocating inaction; rather that you believe that an urgent reduction of emissions is indicated, if only as a precaution.
Some people seem to be getting the wrong impression.
Thanks
AlanDownunder: Another of my posts in this thread describes how the global warming threat has been exaggerated. The problem is therefore much smaller than you think. The precautionary principle is a very effective way of making very bad decisions, so there are a number of conditions that must be met if using it. One is that the risk being averted is of high potential and high probability, another is that not too much time and effort is to be spent on the ‘remedy’. In the case of global warming and its proposed remedy, neither of these conditions has been met.
Thanks for the denialist creed, Mike, but I was asking Judith, who appears not to be a denialist, to confirm appearances. I was not asking for beyond-the-fringe assertions that vastly underestimate potential and probability and vastly overestimate cost.
AlanDownunder : “confirm appearances“? You said you wanted Judith to state she believed “that an urgent reduction of emissions is indicated, if only as a precaution“.
BTW, what is the cost?
Mike, I just want to know whether Judith is a sceptic or a denialist. I know where you stand, and I notice a bunch of other denialists hitching themselves to her wagon, but I’d like us all to know where she stands. I get her critique and her modesty. I doubt that unscientific denial is any more attractive to her than unscientific exaggeration, but I would be good if such doubt could be allayed one way or the other.
(Just to be clear about the sceptic/denialist distinction: I don’t think my house will burn down. I’m a house fire sceptic. I insure against house fire. If I were a house fire denialist, I wouldn’t waste money on insurance premiums. )
Alan see the earlier post Doubt
Thanks for getting back. From your earlier post, I see that I’m way more of a house fire sceptic (maybe 0.1% chance) than you are an AGW sceptic (about 50% chance) .
So what kind of insurance against AGW would you propose (broadly speaking)?
Will discuss some broad frameworks for thinking about this issue next week in the decision making under climate uncertainty series.
I agree, Mike. The “hurry up and do something” climate alarmists are playing into the hands of the Progressive/Socialist elite who are intent on creating an artificial “emergency” that will justify draconian, economy-destroying regulation that has no intent to actually do anything about “global warming,” but which is instead intended to enrich the climate-alarmist elite.
This is a POLITICAL emergency, not an environmental one.
I agree Seth. Denialism is a political stance. Good of you not to pretend otherwise.
AlanDownunder, maybe you can explain why we have to mitigate against a changing climate that is good, and one that is naturally changing? Milder winters, not as hot summers, longer growing season, more CO2 for crops. Humanity has always done better in “warmer” times than colder times.
No, I can’t explain because the premise is unacceptable, even if it is possibly correct. Because I’m a sceptic, not a denialist, I am not 100% certain that the warming is natural, good or tolerably bad. There’s a fair chance it is happening at an unnatural rate that will defeat natural capacity to adjust. That’s why I want insurance. The good news is that even if the insurance is wasted because AGW is over-amped, it will still mean cleaner industry and a better environment.
“There’s a fair chance it is happening at an unnatural rate that will defeat natural capacity to adjust.”
You have evidence to back that up? No, you don’t. There is ample evidence from geological history that what is happening now has happened in the past and the planet did very well, all on its own. “Unacceptable” is a human emotion, not evidence. It makes no sense to destroy Western Civilization over a whim. Unless that is your goal to begin with.
Evidence to back it up? Not that it’s a certainty but there’s a fair chance? Lots – a scientific near-consensus. Evidence that it’s certain that adaptation can keep up? Zilch. No more than a definite maybe.
Also, the natural planet will cope in time. It always does. It’s what could happen to humanity and its structures that is our immediate worry.
As for your “emotion … whim … destroy … goal”, there we go again — stunning hyperbole and denialism revealed once more as the political construct that it is. You guys are really giving us sceptics a bad name. No wonder the mainstream scientists are circling their wagons.
Comparing a “fair chance” to a “definite maybe” seems a bit fuzzy. Billions of people believe in an all powerful deity – one might even go so far as to say that there is a “fair chance” that there is a God. Evidence that it’s certain that there is no God? Zilch. Can’t prove a negative. No more than a “definite maybe”.
I’ll duck the theology.
For me it’s simple. If there’s no chance that AGW is a major problem, then don’t take out insurance against it (ie don’t reduce greenhouse emissions).
Give me certainty and I’ll stop worrying. (which makes somewhat more sense than ‘give me certainty and I’ll start worrying’).
The theology is simply a direct analogy – what fits for one should fit for the other.
So, if there’s no chance that God exists, we just don’t believe (i.e., “take out insurance” by worshipping God in a way that is pleasing to him).
Give you certainty that God doesn’t exist, and you’ll stop worrying, and stop believing.
We all know that you can’t prove a negative, so the question “Does God exist” is significantly different that the question “Does God not exist”. This is exactly the same as saying “Does catastrophic anthropogenic global warming exist” and “Does catastrophic anthropogenic global warming *not* exist”.
Asking for certainty of a negative is distinctly un-scientific, as shown clearly by our God-As-AGW analogy.
There is much worthwhile discussion above,and much interesting linking to outside threads to discussion elsewhere in space and time..
My tiny contribution is this: in addition to “other critical [environmental] issues (global hunger, poverty, disease, and “real” pollution, etc) [that] are deprived of the political attention,” let me put management of our depleted oceans at the top.
This is the problem of over-exploitation of the seas, which economist’s know we can solve by instituting workable property-rights management schemes. There are known solutions for any commons tragedy. There are far fewer unknowns here, unlike climate science, and the human as well as natural world benefits are much more easily measured and treasured by our still-growing planet, hungry for natural resources.
Therefore, in my estimate, it belongs at the very top of world-wide planetary environmental problems. AGW can wait another decade while the science corps gets its together – again.
A good point, Orson. However, once again we find that modelers have stuck their noses in to fisheries management, so far with embarrassing results. Try reading Pilkey and Pilkey-Jarvis, “useless arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future” for some insights into modeling disasters in areas other than climate science.
Many of the posts here remind me of growing up in fundamentalist church where evolutionists were evil people with a godless agenda, the earth was young, and all evidence to the contrary could be easily discarded as it was not produced by “Christians”.
Fortunately, I read both “Christian” scientists and non and realized the vast majority of the evidence was firmly on the side of an old Earth and evolution. The fight over tobacco was another awakening as industry fought hard to belittle the scientific evidence of the harmful effects of cigarettes. Both of these attempts to dismiss the evidence had some success because we didn’t want the science to be true.
In both cases, dismissing the dominant scientific viewpoint would require dismissing a large amount of science in related fields. In order to overturn evolution, we would need to overturn vast areas in molecular biology, anthropology, genetics, etc.
Sure, there are times when the accepted scientific view is wrong. Read an overview of the progress of natural science like “A Short History of Nearly Everything” and that becomes clear. Read Hawking on quantum mechanics and you realize there’s still a lot for us to discover. Sometimes fields are massively changed by a individual like Newton or Einstein. But most of the time, the accepted view is such for a reason: multiple lines of evidence from multiple disciplines all pointing to a similar conclusion.
If you want to overturn the accepted view in climate science, you’ll need to overturn plenty of disciplines. Which is to say, all the evidence presented in the thousands of peer-reviewed study which point to climate change being caused by greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution is probably right, and if you disagree you’re most likely wrong. But by all means, provide the scientific evidence that this view is wrong. That’s how science progresses, after all. Not by hand-waving away every major scientific organization in the world from the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, NOAA, and the national/royal academy of nearly every nation in the world. If you take a step back for second, do you really believe that everyone working in the field is wrong? Now that is dogma. And I’ve had my share already, thanks.
“If you want to overturn the accepted view in climate science, you’ll need to overturn plenty of disciplines. ”
This is a typical tactic of the believers of AGW. Try and paint skeptics as fundementalist creationists or those nasty tobacco company hacks. It’s a tactic to try and deflect what is actually going on, that climate science is grossly flawed. It doesn’t work any more. Climate science is in no way on par with evolutionary theory, not even close.
All that counts in science is evidence, not who says what, which organizations claim this or that “consensus”.
In no other discipline of science is there a UN body that dictates consensus. There is no Intergovernmental Panel on Medicine, there is no Intergovernmental Panel on chemistry, Intergovernmental Panel on evolution. Only in climate is there a global decree of imposed consensus on government policies. That’s why AGW is dogma. That’s why AGW is NOT science.
As for your “peer reviewed papers” you mean all the ones that are done with computer models, because not one peer reviewed paper has linked CO2 to any change in climate. Every climate event has a natural explanation http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html, and not one of the speculations of future climate have come true.
notunique : “If you want to overturn the accepted view in climate science, you’ll need to overturn plenty of disciplines. Which is to say, all the evidence presented in the thousands of peer-reviewed study which point to climate change being caused by greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution ..”
There are very few such peer-reviewed studies [JRWakefield: they do exist, but read on]. The “thousands” which you refer to are papers that accept the concept not study it. The main paper quantifying the effect of changing CO2 levels on climate, as cited by the IPCC, is by Stephen Schwartz, and it puts climate sensitivity (deg C increase caused by doubled atmospheric CO2 concentration) at about 1.2. A paper by James Hansen gives almost the same figure. Papers by some others put the figure lower or much lower. I have not seen any papers which put it higher.
There is therefore some argument about the size of the effect, but little argument about its existence. The real argument about its size, however, comes from the IPCC putting climate sensitivity at 3.2 – more than 2.5 times larger – with no scientific basis whatsoever. Their figure is based on a circular argument, in which they assume that global warming is caused by CO2, then calculate from that what the climate sensitivity must be, then parameterise their computer models to give that effect.
That is not science as I understand it.
There are papers on what “should” happen (the theory), but none that empirically shows any connection between CO2 increasing and changes in the climate or weather. There is no “smoking gun.”
The main paper quantifying the effect of changing CO2 levels on climate, as cited by the IPCC, is by Stephen Schwartz, and it puts climate sensitivity (deg C increase caused by doubled atmospheric CO2 concentration) at about 1.2. A paper by James Hansen gives almost the same figure. Papers by some others put the figure lower or much lower. I have not seen any papers which put it higher.
Well there is one mentioned above – Annan and Hargreaves. Of course there are many more if you can be bothered to look – the IPCC didn’t just pluck their figure 0f 2 – 4.5C out of thin air.
andrew adams : “the IPCC didn’t just pluck their figure 0f 2 – 4.5C out of thin air”
Thin air is exactly where they plucked it from. They state that they used fiddle factors (they call it “parametrization”). See IPCC report AR4 8.6.2.3 (extract given below) and Box TS.8 “parametrizations are still used to represent unresolved physical processes such as the formation of clouds and precipitation“.
from 8.6.2.3 , where they start from Stephen Schwartz’s climate sensitivity of 1.2: “Using feedback parameters from Figure 8.14, it can be estimated that in the presence of water vapour, lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks, but in the absence of cloud feedbacks, current GCMs would predict a climate sensitivity (±1 standard deviation) of roughly 1.9°C ± 0.15°C (ignoring spread from radiative forcing differences). The mean and standard deviation of climate sensitivity estimates derived from current GCMs are larger (3.2°C ± 0.7°C) essentially because the GCMs all predict a positive cloud feedback (Figure 8.14) but strongly disagree on its magnitude.“. [My emphasis]
So you see, it comes from climate models and fiddle factors, not from anything supposedly scientific like a peer-reviewed paper.
I know I haven’t been paying close attention, but when did parameterization become a fully deprecated method?
There are numerous peer reviewed papers based on multiple independent lines of research which support climate sensitivity being in the range of 2-4.5C.
This paper provides a good summary.
provides a good summary.
andrew adams : Page not found.
Bart R : If you “parametrize” “unresolved physical processes” then by definition you are using fiddle factors.
Slightly redundant in context.
If you don’t have unresolved factors, why would you parameterize? (Other than to simplify overwhelmingly complex calculations when parameters can be demonstrated to satisfice?)
Ambiguous.
Using fiddle factors can have two meanings, and by your context you clearly imply the perjorative sense of altering a result to get the desired figure, rather than the more neutral sense of satisficing and getting on with it.
I see no evidence that this particular fiddle was intended to produce a desired figure.
Contrafactual.
If anything, this passage has almost exactly the place and range one attempting a subterfuge would fudge in any other way than this. It’s too wide a range to completely satisfy policy makers, and too high a range to meet the minimum objective of alarming readers. The intention you impute would require not only a broad conspiracy of people cunning enough to carry off an almost undetected international fraud spanning decades and of which no trace can be found even in the CRU leak, but also foolish enough to conspire to do something signficantly against their own interests. They could have dropped the cloud feedback entirely and gone with the lower 1.9°C ± 0.15°C and still been pretty compellingly.
Inconsistent.
It’s odd to use “thin air” as a perjorative in a forum called ‘Climate Etc.’ and a misrepresentation to attempt to contrast parameterization with peer-reviewed papers. Perhaps if anyone who has ever peer-reviewed, been peer-reviewed, or read a wide range of peer-reviewed publications could lend some insight into how and when parameterization is used in that context?
I’d been under the impression it was far from a forbidden practice.
Generally, a reasonable author, hoping to be most convincing, and reviewed by experts in their field, will go with the most apt parameterization available. Their choice of talking to GCMs as their source expresses reliance on the appropriateness of using such figures in such ways.
Unclear.
Are you stating that this particular use of GCMs is in error, and can you expand on the mathematics of that claim?
Is it some abstract Bayesian-Frequentist thing?
Bart R : There is more, much more, but it isn’t reasonable to put it all into a single comment here – it would end up about as long as the IPCC report. But here is some more, which I hope will show that there is a sound basis for what I said. If not, then hopefully it will be enough to allow you to spell out where I have got the science wrong.
IPCC report AR4 1.5.2 Model Clouds and Climate Sensitivity “The strong effect of cloud processes on climate model sensitivities to greenhouse gases was emphasized further through a now-classic set of General Circulation Model (GCM) experiments, carried out by Senior and Mitchell (1993). They produced global average surface temperature changes (due to doubled atmospheric CO2 concentration) ranging from 1.9°C to 5.4°C, simply by altering the way that cloud radiative properties were treated in the model. It is somewhat unsettling that the results of a complex climate model can be so drastically altered by substituting one reasonable cloud parametrization for another, thereby approximately replicating the overall intermodel range of sensitivities.”
This shows that (a) the work is done inside the models not in proper scientific experiments, and (b) they simply do not understand how clouds work and are just trying different numbers for them to see how they pan out [note that the word “experiments” refers to experiments with models]. It also supports the statement I made earlier regarding the range of ECSs.
There is a fuller explanation in Box 10.2, and it seems from this explanation that they were constraining their results to those which matched observed temperature increases, eg. “.. uses the historical transient evolution of surface temperature, upper air temperature, ocean temperature, estimates of the radiative forcing, satellite data, proxy data over the last millennium, or a subset thereof to calculate ranges or PDFs for sensitivity ..“.
You said “I see no evidence that this particular fiddle was intended to produce a desired figure.“. This I think is the core of the matter. By constraining their parameters so that their results matched observed temperature changes does exactly that. Note that these constraints removed the lower possible ECSs (which were arrived at with the same level of reliability as all the others) from the process. A more proper approach would have been to recognise that the lower ECSs were just as valid and that therefore there might be some other factor which they had not yet identified (or which they had incorrectly ignored or dismissed) that was responsible for the rest of the temperature changes.
Finally, when you say “.. a broad conspiracy of people cunning enough to carry off an almost undetected international fraud ..” please note that there have been many occasions in history where scientists have stuck to wrong positions long after contrary evidence has appeared, without those scientists ever having been accused of fraud. Stomach ulcers / bacteria, for example, took 20 years and all they had to do was look. Let’s get the facts straight first, later on we can work out whether it was a fraud (which depends on what is in people’s minds).
1. You said, “it comes from climate models and fiddle factors, not from anything supposedly scientific like a peer-reviewed paper.”
You then note that the climate models in question are Senior and Mitchell (1993).
When I do a web search, I find not only a staggering number of peer-reviewed papers which cite these climate models, but also that even checking on a handful of the papers shows that they themselves are cited scores of times.
Whether the science of the models is right or wrong, or has serious questions, your statements on their face are flat out misleading on this basis alone.
In the field of pure mathematics, I know of at least one proof arrived at by computational methods similar enough in nature to climate models that I cannot as you do dismiss the validity of models out of hand.
One beauty of experiment is reproducibility of results. If you dispute an experiment, show me that the results aren’t reproducible, or aren’t relevant, or are superceded by a better experiment and explanation of the difference. And why shouldn’t constraints for success be used? I’d certainly remove the results where the beaker broke in a lab. If your model/proper experiment objection held, one hopes you’d be able to produce a reference to a better ‘proper’ experiment or a mathematical disproof of the computer models — best of luck on that, I await your results. Until then, the only unscientific course of action is yours, to dismiss results without cause.
You say the values come out of thin air. They say the figures are from, “historical transient evolution of surface temperature, upper air temperature, ocean temperature, estimates of the radiative forcing, satellite data, proxy data over the last millennium, or a subset thereof ..”
They may be wrong, but if so, they are wrong on data and methods well within the domain of routine practices of science, and in some way you have not detailed.
Let’s cut to the core of this issue. Explain to me why the lower ECSs were rejected. If they were rejected because the models could not reflect observed temperature changes when using these lower ECSs, then my point is proved.
Mike
I can only refer you to http://judithcurry.com/2010/10/03/what-can-we-learn-from-climate-models/ for a more nuanced statement of some of the issues with models that are valid-sounding concerns, and to the original authors of the work you cite to furnish your answers.
I still don’t see the proof you claim, but perhaps I’m a bit slow of mind.
I’d think that if the beaker is broken, anyone would agree with moving those results to an appendix and not contaminating the conclusions with an experiment that cannot be completed.
I also can’t experiment faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, below 0.0 Kelvin, or on a perpetual motion machine.
Bart R Oct 31 3:11am : We seem to have run out of reply levels, but hopefully this will appear in a reasonable spot.
The judithcurry.com article you cite doesn’t really throw any light on this aspect, as it deals mostly with the handling of uncertainty only at a general level. Perhaps the relevant bit is the quote from Heymann “Why .. did scientists develop trust in their delicate model constructions?“.
BTW, your broken beaker example isn’t a “constraint for success”, it’s an experiment that executed incorrectly. A “constraint for success” is where you reject tests that don’t match your desired results, as in these climate model experiments. My favourite example is the lab test of the Mpemba effect, where the experimenter (who thought it was false) said that his first test confirmed it but “we’ll keep on repeating the experiment until we get the right result”. http://www.desy.de/user/projects/Physics/General/hot_water.html
It’s an interesting story. What is relevant about it, to my mind, is that it addresses a vastly simpler phenomenon than global warming, yet “Today, there is still no well-agreed explanation of the Mpemba effect”.
(So that’s what became of Dr. Kell’s experiments. Interesting update.)
If indeed the experiments were as you suggest, or even if other flaws dominate the results, then it is possible that what you say now — that the basis of the estimate of climate sensitivity is the result of a named error of a specific type — is true. That would be a scientific conclusion, and everyone would welcome a precise statement and supporting evidence, because that’s useful and moves the science forward.
But I notice that it differs from the thin air attribution we started with, so my quibble ends.
I have to leave proving and specifically naming that particular supposed error to those more closely engaged in the field than myself, seeing as even a brief reading of Dr. Curry’s blog entry on the topic and the associated links still has me processing its content.
Good work, Mike.
Thanks for clarifying for me what you mean.
Mike Jonas.
It appears that you did not look very carefully.
The correct url is plainly embedded in the link:
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
Unmangled.
Mike, if you’d rather persist in your mistaken belief that climate sensitivity is estimated based on computer models only, go for it. If you want to at least know what you’re talking about – even if you don’t end up finding it convincing – the Knutti article isn’t a bad place to start.
First off, please leave out the personal abuse and stick to the matter in hand.
I have read the Knutti article. It is all about climate sensitivity in the climate models, and apart from early reference to CO2 and IR (which is the area addressed by the Schwartz paper cited by the IPCC) it has nothing in it of the actual science of climate sensitivity.
Now, since you obviously believe I am mistaken, how would you like to point out the precise (scientific) basis upon which I am mistaken, by explaining the following : the Knutti article states “These studies still identify low-level clouds as the dominant uncertainty in feedback.
Requiring that climate models reproduce the observed present-day climatology (spatial structure of the mean climate and its variability) provides some constraint on model climate sensitivity.”
The two points arising directly from this which require explanation are:
1. The IPCC – which also states repeatedly (over 30 times) that they do not understand clouds – uses cloud “feedback” to increase climate sensitivity (ECS) from 1.9 to 3.2 (it’s in AR4 8.6.2.3 which I quoted in an earlier comment). Since they do not understand clouds, and the Knutti article confirms this, there is no scientific justification for this raising of ECS.
2.The second part of the above quote (“Requiring that climate models reproduce..“) puts us into the realm of circular logic. If you match the models to the observations, then you cannot use the models as an explanation of the observations.
Reading the rest of the Knutti article shows that all of the studies that it cites are based on the hypothesis that global temperature changes have been caused by atmospheric CO2, and attempts to quantify ECS from those observations. At no time is it considered (except to dismiss the idea, eg. cosmic rays) that global temperature might be driven mainly by something else. To my simple mind, the most likely reason that there is still such a large range of ECSs after all this work is that the underlying hypothesis is wrong.
Returning to my first sentence in this comment : you say “if you’d rather persist in your mistaken belief“. This is the first offensive component of your comment. I am trying very seriously to understand the IPCC report and the science of climate change. I have quoted statements from the IPCC report which show where they obtain their ECS, and I have explained why their method is flawed. These are not the only flaws that I have come across, either by reading the IPCC report and scientific papers or by reading comments on the various climate science websites from both “sides”. At all times, I have to be prepared to change my mind if I come across new evidence. If you can provide evidence that I have misunderstood the IPCC’s ECS, then please present it. I will take it seriously, and I will be prepared to change my mind if it shows that I have got things wrong.
But please, don’t just give me a barrage of links to articles and papers. Extract the relevant information and give it to me in your own words. By all means provide the links too, of course. But what you have to show is that there is proper scientific evidence that a doubling of CO2 delivers a ~3 deg C global warming. In particular, you have to show that there is no reliance on things which are not understood, for example, the formation of clouds.
They didn’t just say 3.2, they put error bars around that. Could be as low as 1.5, could be as high as 6C.
Some of the work going on now, esp since the collapse of the Arctic sea ice numbers, is firming this up to say the lower sensitivities are becoming less likely. But as far as I know, there’s not been a recent paper saying that it cannot possibly be lower than 2C. Papers tend to say what they do find and leave it to others to confirm or to say some other number is better. After a few years of analysis and further observations, they tend to converge on the ‘best fit’.
The salient question is not whether they are wrong about global warming, it’s whether they (and by “they” I mean those who buy into the political side of the “solution”) are right about either the urgency or necessity of taking action, and in what time frame, and at what expense to the world’s economy.
It profits us nothing to destroy technological civilization in a panicked quest to bring down CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
I don’t care how high the sea level gets (I live in Colorado), nor do I care if they can grow tomatoes and bananas in Calgary, I’m not going back to living in a mud hut and grubbing for roots with a pointed stick. Not gonna happen.
I think I represent the sentiment of the vast majority of people on the planet who will simply adapt to the climate, whatever it becomes, without taking hysterical, precipitate and ultimately useless “emergency measures” that are not founded in science to begin with, but rather are artificial political emergencies meant to enhance the power and control of the intellectual elite.
Is Bangladesh going to be underwater in a hundred years? Well then it’s time to start making plans to move people out of Bangladesh I’m afraid.
Adapt or die.
I have a different view Seth. Remember The Jetsons? Unlimited power for all sorts of wizard gadgetry, Mr J flying off to the office in his personal air vehicle. (Not a good idea – seeing what drunks and hoons can do now, I’m not thrilled about seeing their antics with more room to move.)
Most importantly, he flew off quietly into a clear sky. Yes! I’m absolutely fascinated by the notion of solar-power-generating windows and all those technological gadgets. The idea of super quiet, subtle, on the spot power generation is my personal preference – I see any technology that burns stuff as primitive, (and I enjoy a log fire in that obvious way).
“Is Bangladesh going to be underwater in a hundred years? ”
That’s a delta region that has continuously shifting lands, some areas are building up, some are erroding away. Nothing to do with sea level rise.
Any one who looks the global mean temperature trend for the 120 years from 1880 to 2000 will conclude that there is a pattern in the climate, and based on this pattern we will have a slight global cooling from 2000 to 2030.
http://bit.ly/96nokt
The above plot also shows that the globe had two warming phases. The first was from 1910 to 1940, and the second was from 1970 to 2000. The global warming in both periods was about 0.45 deg C. This shows that human emission of CO2 for 60 years has not increased the global warming in the second period, contradicting the claim that human emission of CO2 causes global warming.
There is no evidence for man made global warming in the temperature trends so far. According to the pattern, if we see global cooling until about 2030, man made global warming will be completely disproved.
The solar physicists also look at some cycles of greater length, and I understand them to be saying that a longer cycle kicks in now as well as the ones you have observed, which will give us rather severe cold over the next few decades. But then, in a century or so, the sun will provide a perfect situation for another cooked-up global warming scare. And a while after that … well, just tell your descendants to pass the message on : move nearer the equator.
I guess research grant and funding only goes to advocates of AGW – making most climate scientists silent on issues or be defamed. Grants and funding inappropriately spent tend to corrupt sciences when there is a hidden/non-hidden agenda from grant and funding approving authorities.
The integrity of IPCC climate scientists appeared to be low. Thank you Dr. Judith Curry for trying to bring back climate science integrity on track.
You are definitely my new hero. I’ve been watching and admiring you for some time, but wow, the fact that you are standing strong and clear in the midst of this is fabulous. Hurrah!
The earth is in a period of slight warming. We aren’t certain as to the primary cause–or if there is a primary cause. We cannot be sure how long the current warming trend will last or the extent of the warming. We do know that prior warming and cooling cycles are scientific facts. What we don’t know at this juncture out weighs what we do know. Legitimate science conducted properly over time will give us more answers. Let’s go there…
The earth is in a period of slight warming. We aren’t certain as to the primary cause–or if there is a primary cause.
Who is “we”?
I salute Dr. Curry and wish her the very best in her battle against corruption. However, I’d like to point out that she needs more than our expressions of respect for her heroism. The observational data of the Australian social scientist Brian Martin suggest that usually the career of the “whistleblower” is destroyed while the corrupution continues unabated. Martin ( http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/05overland.html ) provides guidance toward avoidance of fruitless martyrdom.
Dear Dr. Curry,
I write this letter out of respect to you and to your knowledge and position at a distinguished institution.
Having read your posting: Heresy and the Creating of Monsters, I’m glad to find out that you that you acknowledge that science is not a matter of consensus, rather, it is supposed to be within the scientific method, and there could be right or wrong in every theory, regardless of how many people support it.
I wrote to you back in January, after reading your opinion at Anthony Watts’ website.
At that time I was disappointed that you did not go all the way, and see that the whole theory of “man made global warming” is a false theory from the scientific perspective.
In this posting, I still don’t see a clear admission in this fact, but at least you don’t blindly accept it because of the consensus.
The point I was making then was that your research about Hurricanes although it is very important, cannot and does not prove that if there is any warming pattern – it is man made.
So the section in the beginning of your posting dealing with Dr. Gray, in the context of “man made global warming” is irrelevant.
The whole letter I wrote you in January (which you might not have read), is even more correct today. Take for example the fact that there were no meaningful Hurricanes this year, and that the last decade has less Hurricanes then any decade before it in the 20th century, how does this fit into the fact that CO2 levels are constantly rising?
I will be waiting patiently and watch for your future articles.
Respectfully,
Gad Levin
Gad, see the hurricane thread which addresses your questions.
no meaningful Hurricanes this year
Nineteen named Hurricanes, including five above cat 3, making this the third busiest Hurricane season on record, even though Hurricane season doesn’t end until November 30. That seems meaningful.
Unless of course, you think the only meaningful Hurricane is a Hurricane that hits a city. That would certainly be an interesting classification, though not a measure of frequency or intensity.
The IPCC concluded that there was no global warming signal in the hurricane record. There is plenty evidence that there has been no unusual hurricane activity or trend in the last 30 years, just normal variation. This is evidence against AGW when they predict more hurricane activity and it doesn’t materialize.
Actually this is not what the IPCC concluded, see my earlier hurricane thread.
That was in their previous assessments. Glad to see that you are at least questioning some of the involvement of AGW towards hurricanes. However, I wonder why only that very short period since 1980 was chosen.
There is a major gap of data missing from historical hurricane activity, say prior to the 1800’s. Only hurricanes that hit land leave behind evidence. Those that never hit land don’t. So we have no idea how many hurricanes or how intense they were back before there was scientific instruments to accurately measure them. Thus you are making a claim in a void with out historical evidence to compare it to. It is unreasonable to think that there are not cycles within cycles in the hurricane profile over hundreds and thousands of years. Your appearent increase since 1980 is just part of a cycle. Proclaiming any kind of AGW influence on hurricanes is unscientific. Just because the SST is warming doesn’t mean we are causing it. Correlation is not evidence of causation.
The IPCC is a political organization, created to promote the idea of AGW. Its decisions are made in a fraudulent way (see the climategate e-mails).
Therefore we should not seriously consider what it says or recommends as a scientific guidline.
Obviously there is a correlation between water surface temperatures and Hurricane intensity, the unresolved question is what is causing the increase in temperatures when it happens.
No research did ever prove a connection between AGW and anything, unless you assume that there really is AGW.
The IPCC is a political organization, created to promote the idea of AGW. Its decisions are made in a fraudulent way (see the climategate e-mails).
Therefore we should not seriously consider what it says or recommends as a scientific guideline.
Obviously there is a correlation between water surface temperatures and Hurricane intensity, the unresolved question is what is causing the increase in temperatures when it happens.
No research did ever prove a connection between AGW and anything, unless you assume that there really is AGW.
An observation on how out of touch to logic AGW supporters are.
In a criminal court people are aquitted when there is sufficient doubt in the evidence.
In the Climate Science court, any doubt at all is dismissed, and even when the evidence in support is flimsy at best, the ruling is convict humans and impose harsh economic hardship.
Also, it would seem to me that if there is evidence to discredit AGW, any reasonable doubt about it, any rational person would embrase it with “Whew, glad we were wrong!” Instead what we get is this hard and fast trek down the road to economic ruin. Hope the IPCC is wrong is replaced with the IPCC must be right. Why is it you supporters are unwilling to see any doubt, any alternative, as a sign that you are very likely wrong and willing to reconsider? Why this stead-fast, unswerving, ignore everything else opinion that we are guilty?
JRW
In your experience of criminal courts, “people are aquitted when there is sufficient doubt .”
This principle — which I believe is guaranteed only in criminal courts affecting a minority of the world population, and in civil courts not at all — exists because it is said in courts it is better to let 100 guilty go free than to convict one innocent. (For all that, no small amount of evidence exists that the number of innocent convicted is high enough to appall any holder of that principle.)
I do not regard myself as a supporter of the IPCC. I sceptically examine every IPCC claim I can as evenhandedly as I can, just as much as I examine the many doubts and alternatives you mention within the limits of the time I have.
If I hope to be steadfast and unswerving, it is in that raging sense roiling within me that everything that cannot be supported by mathematics, strict reason and careful experiment belongs only to the dubious realm of faith, fiction and opinion.
By this standard, as a juror, the defense to my mind has yet to establish reasonable doubt. Were this a civil trial, much less a trial in a totalitarian state, I concede grudgingly that the prosecution case is extremely compelling and must win. Though I personally worry about what the tabloids say about the personal lives of the prosecutors, it is the duty of a juror to rise above opinion of this sort.
If the case for a hard and fast trek to economic ruin had one percent of the support the IPCC has set out for its case, I’d evenhandedly look at the mathematics, strict reason, and careful measurement of such a report. Can you point me to it?
Are we guilty?
We have altered each others’ and our posterity’s climate, without explicit consent and in the face of longstanding and vocal complaint, virtually without control or limit, and for our own profit or mere habit of libertine wastage. In tradition and in law, the liability to us is not to merely demonstrate our belief that we do no harm by this trespass on our neighbours or that we worry about our own ruin, but that we do no harm by reasonable gauge of the sensibilities of those trespassed against, or at least substantively return their interests to substantively their original condition.
If you really want to introduce paradigms from law into the discourse, I think you only strengthen the IPCC case.
“We have altered each others’ and our posterity’s climate, without explicit consent and in the face of longstanding and vocal complaint, virtually without control or limit, and for our own profit or mere habit of libertine wastage.”
Sounds to me very much a socialist rant on how we are destroying the planet. We are here, we evolved as part of the biota, we have a much right to be on the planet as any other organism. This advanced civilization has pulled billions from poverty and starvation. I feel no guilt in what we have achieved as a species. Of course we can always do better, but to rain down severe restrictions on us because of our “sins” is nothing more than a political motive, not environmental. Change happens, period. We make some of those changes as part of an advancing society. Or maybe you would rather we return to hunter/gathering at 1% of current population.
If those that support AGW are so convinced they are right, then let’s take it to a court of law. Creationists have had to do this and lost every time. What are the climate scientists afraid of? Getting exposed as the fraud they are? If you have nothing to fear about your position then you have nothing to fear about being questioned and counter evidence presented. This has not been the case with AGW. Unique in all of science, climate science has gone out of their way to make sure discent is crushed. You only do that when you have a poistion that cannot withstand scruteny. Unique in science is a UN organization that dictates science consensus to governments and the world.
jrw “Or maybe you would rather we return to hunter/gathering at 1% of current population.”
No. There will always be differences between the richest and poorest countries. Rather than hunter gathering, I envisage a future where those of us in the rich countries live lives that look like magic to outsiders. Our buildings, roads and other structures generate their own heat and power by silent invisible means. Less developed countries are not enveloped in clouds of choking gases but they have to settle for obvious, visible, power sources like , shock, horror, windfarms and the like rather than their buildings, factories and communities being constructed with methods and materials that generate power, heating and cooling without such old-fashioned concepts.
You want modern? Abandon the stone age concept of burning stuff to get your heat and power. Go modern all the way.
I did. Put in a ground source heat pump two years ago. Best way to heat and cool a house.
Socialist?
I wan’t referring to the vocal objection of bugs and whales, but of other people.
You make it sound like everyone must be on board with you changing the composition of the atmosphere just because you believe it does them no harm. Which would be the hallmark of a totalitarian argument.
If you use your neighbor’s well as a latrine, they suffer a harm. If you chop down their orchard for firewood, they suffer a harm. That’s not socialism.
Unlimited use of a limited (therefore one with the property of scarcity) shared resource will result in its depletion.
The economical response to this situation is to put a price on that resource (in this case the budget of CO2 emission the biosphere can handle). That’s free market capitalism, comrade.
AGW has been put on trial more than once both in the USA and the UK, among others, and in these cases AGW was substantively upheld by the court, and no such decision pending appeal to my knowledge.
Socialist. As if.
Bart said:
Such is the stuff that witch hunts are made of. Shall we burn at the stake? I believe even in civil court one much have a clear preponderance of evidence to win. Otherwise, working from your premise above that one must satisfy the sensibilties of the party supposedly trespassed against… well, the weather was really atrocious today, it must have been THAT neighbor casting a spell, she never liked me much! My cat died, it had to be THIS person, they made a funny sign as they walked by. Crop failed? Had to have been those Jones’s on the competing farm nearby, they had a hex put on my crop!!!
This is the sort of thing science was created to get us away from. If the IPCC has any scientific credibility, the onus of proof is on them, and the proof had better be very scientifically solid. And I mean solid when the full body of research is considered, not just cherry picked and favored research.
That’s hilariously flippy!
I’m the one arguing against applying the standard of civil courts, remember?
Where such cases as you mock have been argued and won.
Scopes Monkey Trial ring no bells?
But if you insist, your model of IPCC having an onus to prove anything but trespass runs contrary to the traditions of common law until one reaches the question of liability for damages.
If you’re demanding proof from the IPCC, aren’t you suggesting too that reparation and punitive awards are due someone?
You want to examine how much the countries that have produced the most CO2 owe those who have produced less? Nice can of worms to open.
“You make it sound like everyone must be on board with you changing the composition of the atmosphere just because you believe it does them no harm. Which would be the hallmark of a totalitarian argument.”
Do you say that to the AGW Priests? They just argue the same thing from the opposite side. But you have no problem with the IPCC totalitarianism.
Imposing a price on carbon emissions (as opposed to carbon consumption which already has a price, it’s the price of a barrel of oil) means you are charging for that energy twice, once in and once out. Since in a capitalist state the price of an object is based on supply and demand, what would set the price of CO2 since there is no demand? Governments? Yeah, right. Just another tax that leaches on society. Such taxes are already making required energy prices too expensive, a whole class of energy poor that have to be subsidized by governments. AGW has caused electrical prices on Ontario to triple in the past 8 years, with additional increases coming due to our FIT program of wind and solar. Electricity prices are so high here that people are being cut off from power and losing thieir homes.
That’s the consequences of your pricing carbon. Socialism is all this is.
“Do you say that to the AGW Priests?”
If someone makes a totalitarian argument from any side, point me to them, or them to me.
If instead they simply resort to name-calling to make specious and unfounded arguments void of logic or basis, for example your tirade against Pigouvian carbon pricing, then it isn’t totalitarian I call them.
Ontario has for decades had a failing and horribly run energy infrastructure, has repeatedly started and then aborted energy projects on a monumental scale, allowed Toronto’s population growth to far outstrip its resources, and is a mess of debt and incompetence dressed up with arrogance and self-congratulations. This has nothing to do with carbon pricing, and everything to do with demagogues getting voted in by an intellectually lazy electorate.
British Columbia, to go with another comparable and illustrative Canadian example, introduced a carbon tax that covers every carbon fuel in the marketplace so acceptably that its government (despite a leader convicted of drunk driving with his mistress, and a huge debt from hosting the locally then unpopular Olympics) was re-elected with an increased majority in an election fought solely on the carbon tax. These are BC electors who hate tax with a black vitriol, as demonstrated by the non-carbon-related BC HST debacle, compared to Ontarians’ bleating acceptance at the same time of the higher and more badly implemented Ontario HST.
What do we learn? Carbon tax is widely acceptable where done right, but incompetence is incompetence anywhere.
“If someone makes a totalitarian argument from any side, point me to them, or them to me.”
The IPCC, The CRU, Mann, Hansen, Schmidt, etc, etc.
“This has nothing to do with carbon pricing,”
65% of the coming increases in electrical pricing will be from the Green Energy Act (solar and wind) http://www.rds.oeb.gov.on.ca/webdrawer/webdrawer.dll/webdrawer/rec/212072/view/CME_Intervenor_EVD_20100831.PDF
The GEA is because of AGW.
Carbon taxing is just that a tax. All taxes are a leach on wealth creation. The monies obtained by governments on a carbon tax will just to into general revenue. Nothing capitalistic about that. Everything socialist about it.
You’ll have to be clearer in which passages from that vague list qualifies in some way as totalitarian, or else the best I can do is remonstrate, “Tut-tut you vague group of unenumerated, loosely affiliated people and or institutions; at some point in the past I cannot identify and in some way I cannot name, I’ve heard you were to some degree authoritarian-sounding and hurt poor JR Wakefield’s feelings, possibly third-hand.”
Perhaps if I write the note on a slip of paper and put it in a bottle and toss it into the Atlantic, it will reach the right hands in time for the invention of a mind-scanning device so they can read your thoughts and figure out what you mean.
The Ontario GEA is just the latest in a long line of abominable management decisions that have nothing to do with their stated objectives. Remember Maurice Strong scrapping reactors to appease the anti-nuclear movement? The Bill Davis decision to go with the spectacularly awful Candu bids out of misguided nationalism and no small amount of donations to his party’s coffers? If Ontario had the least sanity to its energy infrastructure since the 1950’s, it would be a debt-free energy-rich powerhouse, and this little windmill blip wouldn’t even show up on the radar, folded in under R&D.
Back to the British Columbia Carbon Tax, which represents an actual tax cut, as all Pigouvian taxes are intrinsically. It is a matter of record that British Columbians have paid less tax since the introduction of the Carbon Tax. Under the BC Carbon Tax Act, it is a matter of law that the government must give directly back to the people at least as much revenue as it collects, not to general revenue. By every credible economic theory I know — many of which have several arguments for the wealth creating power of tax at some level for the general population — the BC Carbon Tax is wealth creating across all economic levels.
Every stable free market system in the world has tax and recognizes the necessity and benefit of tax.
Calling all tax socialist displays jaw-dropping ignorance.
Calling a tax CUT socialist is just absurd.
“Remember Maurice Strong scrapping reactors to appease the anti-nuclear movement? ”
That’s the same communist who gave us the IPCC as a mechanism to bring down Western civilization, currently living in China telling their government how to screw the USA.
As for BC, their taxes dropped is why the Liberals are at 20% in the polls and Campbell is about to be thrown under a bus.
The same Maurice Strong. Wasn’t aware he was a communist. I mean, he’s not even on the party membership list.
As for BC, you’re behind on your reading.
The BC government is at 9% (not a typo, nine percent), not 20%, and the opposition leader is the one on her way to being thrown under a bus, because she’s led her party to its all time peak popularity.
If you can explain why people would go insane about having their taxes dropped (42% in under a decade for income tax, business taxes lowest in North America, net revenues from consumption taxes lower last year and this year), then you’ve got more insight into crazy than I can offer. Which is saying something.
All I can tell you is that what you’re bringing up is going off topic, as it’s about a different issue than the BC Carbon Tax (which takes money from people as they buy carbon based fuel, by carbon content, and pays it out directly per capita).
The basic problem now extends far beyond climatology.
Western science and Western forms of government now face a self-inflicted crisis: Loss of public confidence caused by unbridled greed and selfishness and by the abuse of federal science as a tool of propaganda.
It is time to eliminate the concentration of power without accountability in:
a.) Anonymous reviews of research proposals and papers, and in
b.) NAS (National Academy of Sciences) control over federal research
agencies (NASA, DOE, etc) by annual budget reviews for the US Congress.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Judith,
Heresy isn’t the problem. Accommodation is. You’ve gotten in bed with some of the worst type of slanderous charlatans there are.
The sort of folks who never admit to error when they’re wrong, continue to repeat it even after correction and continually attack scientists for errors long after they themselves have corrected them.
The dogma is within the “skeptic” crowd. Only we who believe differently aren’t called heretics, we’re called socialists. It doesn’t matter if one is like me and has a strong libertarian streak, I’m still called a socialist for accepting the science, even though I advocate to the extent possible, free-market and capitalistic solutions.
“Only we who believe differently aren’t called heretics, we’re called socialists.”
You’ve missed an important point – the science part is a question of “what is happening”, the part that labels one a “socialist” is the policy part, and the question is “what should we do”.
Regardless of what you may think about the “what is happening”, whether or not you want to blame CO2 emissions, Milankovich cycles, or sunspot activity, the question here should be about *science*, not *policy*. The fact that many pro-AGWers insist that there are good *policy* recommendations we should act upon, even if the science isn’t complete, definitive, or certain, belies the true nature of their position – for them, it’s *policy* first, *science* second.
Put another way, if the science were to show tomorrow that we are heading into a cooling cycle that will decimate the human population, and the only way to stop it was to dramatically increase CO2 emissions to counteract the cooling, would you then support policies to create quotas for each nation, *requiring* them to emit certain amounts of CO2, and penalizing them if they failed to do so?
The fatal problem here is that the people advocating for certain policies are willing to justify them no matter what the science says – and if they’re tarred with the brush of “socialist”, it is with good reason.
“Good reason!?”
You’ll have to explain the sense in which you mean ‘good,’ or ‘reason,’ in this context.
Polarizing any Policy issue that has no natural political basis is inherently inefficient, if we’re in the realm of public administration as you assert. So neither good, nor reasoned.
If in science, then surely political science, where mistaking a libertarian for a socialist is by any measure an error, and by strict observation of the lists of the contributors to the IPCC reports so ham-fistedly inaccurate as to be absurd.
Morally? Hardly. The Judeo-Christian imperative, “Thou shalt not bear false witness..” nicely crystalizes the universal censure against this sort of practice in moral systems of good vs. evil. Even in perverse moral tribal systems with such a the rule as, “the enemy deserves only lies,” clearly would find this sort of rampant name-calling irrational, and would reprove it for making the clan look bad.
Logically? No.
Historically? Inaccurate and ignores context.
Lyrically? Not very poetic then, is it?
This undefensible and transparent playground bullying is just the first resort of sloppy thinkers who lack the spine to enter either policy or science discourse on a level playing field.
And they even congratulate themselves for it.
By “good reason” I mean there is a rational basis for identifying someone as a socialist when their policy proscriptions are independent of the science. We can judge them as socialist or non-socialist by their avowed policy advocacy, simple as that. The weak claim of “oh, but look at the science” is a red-herring on the part of socialists -> their position is simply not dependent on science, and asserting it as some sort of defense for socialist proscriptions is simply not a rational argument.
So where does this fit in with the AGW/socialist trope? There are essentially three choices here – choice one, the science is right, and we need a massive socialist structure to fix the problem. Choice two, the science is *wrong*, and we need a massive socialist structure *completely opposite* of the one we’re proposing now. Choice three, whether or not the science is right or wrong, a massive socialist structure, in either direction, will cause more harm than good.
A scientist could be both socialist and science based, but the risk there is that they’re pointing in the wrong direction (see Ancel Keys/Gary Taubes). There is real harm that has been done to society based on the precautionary principle in the past, and there is rational reason to be worried of its application in the future.
A scientist can also be libertarian and science based, and proscribe nothing to the masses. While perhaps not as satisfying to those who wish to save the world, it at the very least preserves a modicum of neutrality and objectivity.
So, this substituting new words to repeat the same error you’re doing, does that work out well for you?
Under your definition, the US Constitution is a socialist document, and Joe McCarthy a socialist.
Any libertarian must uphold the equal rights of all others or else they are simply an opportunist with pretensions. The libertarian’s right to swing his fist except for self-defense ends before the tip of anyone else’s nose, perhaps moreso than for any other political philosphy because Libertarian teaching is so elegant in its sparisty and intolerant of hypocrisyand doublespeak.
This would include the noses of future generations, which no libertarian can claim the right to force to breathe waste products at the imposed will of the libertarian.
Neutral or objective as a scientist, the libertarian would still be bound to defend that future right, or becomes what libertarians most disdain.
The US constitution is a document of limited government and enumerated powers – how do you assert that my rationale (that we should judge someone as socialist by their policy advocacy, rather than their purported scientific position), somehow turns the US constitution into a document of socialism? You seem to have either chosen to misunderstand, or not spent enough time trying to understand what is being said.
“Any libertarian must uphold the equal rights of all others or else they are simply an opportunist with pretensions.”
You need to define what you mean by “rights” – the idea central to libertarianism is that the government must *treat* all people equally, and that government cannot do what would be illegal for an individual to do, such as redistribute wealth. The idea that government may proscribe any sort of limitation on freedoms of *today* in order to preserve freedoms of *tomorrow* is sophistry at its worst, I’m sure you’d agree.
Taken to the extreme, your position that we must hamper ourselves today to preserve the nose rights of the future, can justify *any* sort of tyrannical action. Should we stop all scientific research today, to preserve the rights of future generations to have mystery in their lives? Should we stop all eating today, to preserve the rights of future generations to eat the food we have in our hands at the moment?
Projecting certainty into the future in any complex system is a sisyphean task, and even if you could predict the future, I would still assert that basic morality sets limits upon how we behave – if we knew for certain that the only way to preserve the world was to kill billions of people, the ends simply could not justify the means.
Jere, you say, “We can judge them as socialist or non-socialist by their avowed policy advocacy..”
The Preamble says, “..in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..”
Note advocacy of social policy, including for posterity.
I’m sure there is the whiff of sophistry about, but you’re either flatly calling the US Constitution a socialist document, or you’ve never read it.
The government must treat posterity equally to the present, by your own words. You’re trying to argue the slippery slope in a room that’s too hip for that trick, when you go to preserving the mystery. My right to breath is real. My right to ‘mystery’ is safe. All I have to do if I want to remain ignorant is become a political extremist.
The advocacy is for “the Blessings of Liberty” – that is not a mandate for establishing socialist involuntary redistributions of wealth.
You’re flatly misreading the US Constitution, ignoring what is plainly there. Justice, domestic tranquility, and common defense are all quite clearly negative rights – the right to use force in defense of liberty. The general welfare is exactly that – general, not specific. It is not about promoting specific welfare to specifically and specially chosen people, it is about limiting the obstacles that can be put by force (either by individuals or by government).
The only thing there that is “secured” is Liberty, for ourselves and our posterity. Liberty is not a guarantee of food on the table, nor a guarantee of a lawn in your backyard. Liberty is not a guarantee of a job, nor is it a guarantee for health. Liberty is a guarantee of freedom from the tyranny of those who would force their choices upon you.
Remember, it was the *pursuit* of Happiness that was an unalienable right, not the *attainment* of Happiness. You seem to be trying to suggest that Liberty is impossible, since one must always be constrained by the shackles of innumerable future generations – the very actions you’ve taken this very day have by their very nature, spoiled an otherwise perfect world for your progeny. In fact, even *having* progeny will spoil an otherwise perfect world for your progeny!
I can hardly imagine how life must pain you, knowing that everything you do today must and will violate your future generations :)
Oh, I get it.
If a scientist advocates any action to protect negative or general rights, that’s okay, and they’re only socialists if they advocate actions that cost you money.
As for what I’m trying to suggest is impossible is for you to hold the views you’ve stated in plain language and for you to uphold the US Constitution. The two are mutually exclusive.
Going to the same well of the same fallacious argument doesn’t make it any more convincing. The joke wasn’t funny the first time.
“they’re only socialists if they advocate actions that cost you money.”
Yes, that’s it in a nutshell. If you advocate an action that will take money away from me without my consent, you’re a socialist trying to engage in legal plunder.
I think you might finally understand.
One only has to look at the state the EU PIGGS countries (all socialist) are in due to excessive theft from private wealth creation. Debt so enormous the IMF is very very worried of global economic collapse. The days of socialist experiment with deficit spending is over, welcome to the next Depression it caused.
“Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski! Condolences! The bums lost! My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?”
There’s the nutshell I was looking for.
If it costs you money, you’re against it.
Not if it costs you money you ought not pay.
Not if it costs someone else, whom ought expect equal treatment from the goverment, money they ought not pay.
If it costs you money at all.
What if it turns out by fair and reasonable just determination of an impartial and duly represented process that you really owe that money?
If you have a well in your lawful possession, and your neighbor finds it to be a convenient place to begin to dump his latrine, over your vocal objections and despite your posting notices, against local tradition and without asking your permission, then wouldn’t you say you had a valid case against him?
What’s the difference between that case, and the case of emitting GHGs into the air?
I have to breath it, it would be costly for me to take on the burden of remediating what you have done to return the air to its original condition.
Under what political philosophies other than socialist or tyrannical ones would the conduct of forcing others to absorb the cost you inflict on them against their will be acceptable?
I don’t need to prove a material harm is known or believed in a trespasser’s mind to know it’s a trespass.
That’s the problem with scientists getting involved in Policy. They’re so naive, they think they have to prove everything.
All that needs proving in Policy is that there is a competing claim of rights, and the need for decision as to how policy is to resolve the conflict.
Oh, I get it.
Apparently not.
You are stuck with a rational mindset. Each way of thinking has advantages and limitations. ‘Perception’ is not physics. That is the genuine tragedy.
Wow,
To be granted by Raving a rationalist mindset is a gift indeed. I’ll need a second head to keep it in, as an absurdist mindset is running around the current and the two would just make a mess crammed in together.
I’m at best a rationalist of convenience, with no true loyalty to it.
The second it becomes an inconvenience or costs me any money, I’ll abandon it.
I’ve got to love the absurdists. They are so madly rational!
:-)
I have real problems working out where the tyranny and the socialism come into play. Libertarians must surely agree with deprivation of liberty not just prisons for criminals but homes and hospitals for quarantine during rampant disease outbreaks.
How is an individual redistributing wealth illegal? If you mean theft and other peculations, fine. But the concept of redistribution has nothing to do with immoral and illegal acts.
Liberty is limited, by definition. Only self-sufficient hermits who refrain from any and all contact with other people and do not use society’s shared resources have unlimited freedom. But it is a highly circumscribed life – to call it freedom is a bit of a misnomer.
All the rest of us are limited and constrained by our social circumstances and obligations.
“How is an individual redistributing wealth illegal?”
Well, you mentioned theft – the unwilling transfer of wealth from one person to another. If it is immoral for an individual to take your money away without your consent, and give it to someone else (Robin Hood), it should similarly be immoral for the government to do the same. Bastiat does a great job talking about “legal plunder” and its dangers in “The Law”.
Liberty may indeed be limited, but the power of government should similarly be limited – granting the power of force to government actions that would be seen as patently immoral if done by an individual creates a incongruity that is visible to even a child.
No, you’ve missed the important point,
I’ve argued the science and have refrained from advocating policy. But for arguing the science, I’m called a socialist.
Scientists et al are tarred with “socialist” because the “skeptics” find it’s easier to do that then actually address the flaws in their understanding of the science.
These are your words:
“I advocate to the extent possible, free-market and capitalistic solutions.”
That’s not an argument of science, that’s an argument of policy. Either you don’t understand what you’re saying, or you don’t understand what I’m saying.
In this conversation, yes I said that. But other than stating I do not support “socialist solutions” after being called a socialist in other discussions on the science, I do not discuss policy and try to re-direct the topic to the science.
And you may indeed have a valid issue in your other conversations where you’re not making policy arguments. However, I would hope you understand that your enlightened approach, to talk about science rather than about policy mandates, is not common amongst the AGW crowd – the whole *point* of the science for the leaders of the movement is that it serves to promote a very specific, and very socialist policy agenda.
You stated earlier that skeptics were “the sort of folks who never admit to error when they’re wrong, continue to repeat it even after correction and continually attack scientists for errors long after they themselves have corrected them.”
Why doesn’t this critique resonate for you when leveled against AGW supporters? Recent warming is not unprecedented – but hockey stick proponents continue to repeat it, even after correction, and continue their attacks on skeptics when confronted with falsification.
My apologies for being trite, but pot, meet kettle.
Recent warming is not unprecedented …
In what time frame? 50 years? 100? 1000? 100,000?
You also seem to be under the impression a hockey stick has been falsified (it’s another one of those errors you guys keep repeating). Which one? How? And how does that falsify all the other independent hockey sticks?
“In what time frame? 50 years? 100? 1000? 100,000?”
Any of them. Over all those time periods, we’ve had both warming periods and cooling periods, none of them unprecedented in rate.
“You also seem to be under the impression a hockey stick has been falsified”
Google for “hide the decline”, MWP or Holocene Optimum. Then check out the “travesty” that is the “lack of warming” from 1998.
Seriously, you’re going to assert that there are independent hockey sticks that show that there was no MWP, and that temperature promises to rise at an exponential rate from here on out? Even though the analysis was shown that the algorithms used *always* created hockey sticks?
I think it’s plainly obvious that Mann’s hockey stick was falsified – give me a few other “independent” hockey sticks, and we can talk directly to them as well.
I’m most certain current warming is unprecedented for past 100 years.
I believe it’s highly likely current warming is unprecedented for the past 1000 years.
After that, it’s anyone’s guess.
I know what “hide the decline” is w/o Googling. Influences on a proxy caused it to quit tracking with – to diverge from – temps. In the context of the email it was about a graph for a presentation.
It certainly doesn’t falsify the hockey stick.
MWP – all evidence points to a regional phenomena.
Holocene optimum – seasonally warmer and seasonally colder than present.
And as is obvious here, if there is disagreement on these facts, the hockey stick cannot be considered falsified – at least between you and I – until these issues are “settled”
And no, if 2C is the climate sensitivity, there will be a 2C increase for every doubling (eg 400 ppm, 800 ppm, 1600 ppm = ~6C increase) – it’s not exponential.
Let’s examine your statement a little closer, and understand what falsifiable hypothesis you’re trying to assert:
“I’m most certain current warming is unprecedented for past 100 years.”
A more specific statement would be “the warming that occurred between 19xx and 19xx was a higher rate of warming than any other time between 1900-2000.”
Let’s take the warming from 1970-2000 as your “unprecedented rate”. Now look at 1910-1940, and 1850-1880. Same rate. Not unprecedented. (and btw, this is from the IPPC’s own graph).
Can you refute that scientific argument?
Doug, how about all of the studies identified in the article below, which show one or more periods in the last 10K-ish (e.g., since the end of the last ice age) that were warmer than present day temps?
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/12/fraudulent-hockey-sticks-and-hidden-data/
How are these addressed in the IPCC reports and how much weight are they given relative to Mann’s hockey stick? This is something that I honestly don’t know – berate me if you will for not having read through the latest IPCC report to find out – but honestly would like an answer to. From the general media reports, posts on realclimate (who I have no respect for because of the censorship they regularly employ), it seems that Mann’s hockey stick gets credit and all of these other studies are utterly ignored. Is this actually the case?
Its something I would love to hear Dr. Curry’s take on. If we have had or even may have had multiple periods in the recent historical record that were warmer than present day temps (as appears is the case), and we know that the rate of temp increase often is as steep or steeper than the present climb – then how does man generated CO2 get credited rather than natural cycles? This is one of the major problems I’ve got and would really like to understand how scientists who are AGW proponents view the issue. The only thing I’ve heard from them is that it wasn’t warmer in the past and all of this is unprecedented…. and if that’s actually the case, then I’m heading over to the AGW side…. but what of all these contrary studies from many different reputable sources?
If there are as many other proxie studies, using as many different types of proxies from as many different locations (all relatively speaking) as these showing higher temps in the past – well, then, it seems to me we’re spang in the middle of the exact “uncertainty” problem that Dr. Curry has discussed. Its all the “what we don’t even know we don’t know” issues – or issues where we know a little about the mechanisms or at least that cycles exist and that sort of thing, but very little about what actually drives them…
Or am I off base, and none of these other studies are reputable, at least not compared to the hockey stick?
It seems to me as if there is massive uncertainty associated with climatology at this point because of a number of issues like this. How do AGW proponent scientists square this with advocacy?
Apologies for the poor wording of my last post – I should have edited a bit instead of just slapping it down and posting. If you’ll bear with that, however, I think you’ll still get what I meant and am asking….
See reply below (column is getting narrow).
The rationale used to accommodate and legitimize the imposition of dogmatism is the Precautionary Principle and rule of Do no Harm
How can it be harmful in getting people to be more green efficient? What is the mistake in mitigating in a proactive manner?
Harm is injected because the essential argument is a personal life style choice.
Consider a Western family with high double incomes and accumulated assets and a large disposable income. They are well positioned to take up a passion for the unspoiled splendors of nature. They can afford to indulge in communing with nature, taking many vacations to exotic unspoiled places consuming vast resources to indulge their love of nature.
A different Western family living a day to day struggle in poverty to make ends meet is apt to make a different lifestyle decision altogether. Comparably those living in the developing world have their own priorities and passions. Many of those might even prefer to accept uncomfortable temperatures and stink for the sake of other an more personally important items.
The world is a rough and tumble place. It has always been so. There is no universal natural law which commands all of humanity to be passionate about the environment.
Use dogma and emotional coercion to accept a personal opinion because it is divine truth sets the stage for Do Much Harm and Glaring Unrestrained Excess
When some parts of this world realize they have been fooled into adopting a universal truth which other people mock and disregard because they have their own homegrown personal universal lifestyle choice that is very different, there will be chaos and conflict and deep feelings of betrayal.
Going green is a noble choice. Being told and forced to go green because it is a universal truth that everyone must morally adopt is a ruse that deliberately sews falsehood. Sooner than later the artificial falsehood will savage. It cannot prove true.
“How can it be harmful in getting people to be more green efficient? What is the mistake in mitigating in a proactive manner?”
Google “Ancel Keys” and “Gary Taubes”. The same precautionary principle was applied to the lipid hypothesis, and because of that, we have been encouraging people to eat a low-fat/high-carb diet that has caused the past 40 years of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and other chronic diseases.
To answer your direct question, though, I’ll offer this harm – anything that increases the cost of energy reduces the ability for people in desperate poverty to improve their quality of life, leaving them susceptible to disease, disaster and suffering. If you can increase efficiency and mitigate carbon without subsidies, or raising the price of energy, anywhere, then fine – you’ve done no harm. Otherwise, the money you’re using to assuage your conscience is coming at the expense of the poorest of the poor. Also see “Not Evil Just Wrong” for a more thorough discussion of this point.
That would be because the person is coerced with emotional blackmail to accept what appears to be ‘universal truth’ but is merely ‘personal lifestyle choice’.
Most people on this planet would prefer to put up with inclement weather because they have more important and more immediate priorities.
So what’s the harm in a little white lie? The harm is when the multiple repercussions of many little white lies come home to roost.
As they are lies and not truths, the dissonance accumulates.
“Richard Lindzen and Roger Pielke Sr. have been making far more critical statements about the IPCC and climate science for a longer period than I have.”
— Judith Curry
______________
It isn’t only Lindzen and Pielke Sr. that have offered up eye-opening gems. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, formerly the founding Director of the International Arctic Research Center (IARC), had the following to say:
“When people know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.”
In that regard, below is a link to a recent piece by environmental chemist Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiseron on “The Carbon Cycle and Royal Society Math” (such as its math woefully is) —
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/28728
Ya think so huh.
Perhaps a bigger outrage will develop than those which emerged from the multiple debacles and exposures over the years with regards to conflict of interest and pharmaceutical trials.
There is no scandal.
People are interested in making money. There are no percentages in biting the hand which feeds you.
I’m a person who published a paper on the ‘Hawk Dove’ dynamic but am a climate skeptic flake for posting to this blog.
My former retired PhD supervisor and myself had a parting of the ways recently. The crux of our irreconcilable dispute is that he feels that ‘dogmatic indoctrination’ is fully justified.
I am unable to agree with such an attitude. I am unable to freely discuss intellectual thoughts under such circumstances. Foolishly I completely trusted my supervisor to lend credence to my own efforts.
It leaves me SOL, without credibility and devoid of contact in scholarly pursuit.
I have stated what I can about the subject of AGW on this blog and will not expend further effort and accumulating insecurity bleating to be taken seriously.
If you think that the scientific community is so high and mighty as to be outraged by political infighting in the halls of academia you should think again.
Prof. Curry talks a good line about being indifferent to all the criticism that comes her way. When it comes time for grant application and peer review, it’s very easy to slough off with an “I simply ignore such nonsense.”
Prof. Curry has lost her mind and ended up going native …
*Actually* I would have preferred saying that about my former and now retired supervisor. Unfortunately he is deeply entrenched on the side of Environmental Science
This “flake” says goodbye and good luck.
I retire.
Judith,
As you know, I agree with some of your points (e.g. your critique of the circling the wagons strategy), and disagree with others (e.g. your equal likelihood for anthropogenic vs natural factors driving current and future centennial time scale climate change). I’ve detailed my responses to these points on my blog.
( http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/judith-curry-on-climate-science-introspection-or-circling-the-wagons/
and
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/judith-curry-anthropogenic-versus-natural-causes-of-global-warming/ )
But when you say things like “religious adherence to consensus dogma”, it is getting very hard for me to take you seriously. Frankly, I find it offensive and/or stupid to see comparisons of the scientific process to dogmatic religion.
See also my comment on an earlier thread here ( http://judithcurry.com/2010/09/30/frames-and-narrative-in-climate-science/#comment-2747 ) about the relevance of a scientific consensus which has been reached by following the scientific methods. As Keith observed ( http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/10/18/the-narrative-vacuum/#comment-22393 ), you haven’t really countered my point there.
Bart, I’m swamped, i agree this deserves more discussion. I’m flagging this, hope to get back to it sometime in the next day or two.
This is simple enough to test right now. I have shown through looking at the actual physical data for temperatures that TMax in Canada (and at least two other places in the world) is dropping. The average that all you AGW supports claim is increasing is not because the planet is heating up. It’s because winters are less cold and summers less hot. That’s what’s driving the average up. This trend has to be part of a normal cycle. This trend for not as cold winters is returning the planet to its normal state. Deep long cold winters (such as the LIA) are abnormal. The increase in CO2 and increase in winter temps is a coincidence, the one is not causing the other. Unless that is, this “warming” trend allowed humanity to build this great civilization because of the longer growing season.
Now that is just as much a valid possible explanation as the IPCC’s. Yet it is not even considered as possible. Do you?
Richard, I’m sorry, but what you’ve done is just not enough to conclude that the “trend has to be part of a normal cycle.” It’s an interesting hypothesis, and deserves further study, but it’s incomplete.
Measurements from a number of stations in Canada, Northern Ireland and Australia is not sufficient to draw conclusions about a trend. Would you accept it if NASA or someone else used data from a handful of stations and claimed it as evidence of global warming? Of course you would not.
However, let’s assume the trends you point to in your analyses hold over the entire planet. On what basis do you justify such statements as “Deep long cold winters are abnormal,” or that “the increase in CO2 and increase in winter temps is a coincidence?” What have you done to falsify these hypotheses?
“Would you accept it if NASA or someone else used data from a handful of stations and claimed it as evidence of global warming? Of course you would not”
But that is EXACTLY what they are doing. Example. How many stations are there in the tropics that have reliable measurement data back to the 1900’s? Very few. Yet the claim is this region is increasing in temp, with only a few stations to go on. Even in Canada there were once 1300 stations, peaking in the 1980’s. Today there are a few dozen, and EC makes temperature change maps of Canada based on what? A few spotty stations!! They extrapolate by thousands of miles.
The question isn’t what have I done to falsify my hypothesis, the question is why hasn’t the IPCC considered that hypothesis as viable. Seems to me you are rejecting this very possible scenario, which I will argue is just as likely to more than likely what is really going on, out of hand without serious consideration. Science must look at all possibilies, rejecting those that do not fit the evidence. Problem is my scenario fits too. Just as much explains what is going on, all purely natural. Are you willing to conceed that AGW is likely false? Your answer will dictate if dogma is involved or not.
EC makes temperature change maps of Canada based on what? A few spotty stations!!
As do you. QED.
Are you willing to conceed that AGW is likely false?
Certainly, if the case is made rigorously, and falsifies the various lines of evidence showing anthropogenic influence on climate, I will most graciously “conceed.” However, you seem to be under the mistaken assumption that the scientific conception of climate is akin to a house of cards, and that if you show evidence that tends to contradict one of the premises, then the whole thing collapses. It’s not so. This is a logical fallacy, like denying the antecedent, as this reasoning fails to recognize that there are multiple lines of evidence all showing the same dynamic in effect.
So merely asserting, as you do, that “the increase in CO2 and increase in winter temps is a coincidence” is not rigorous. In addition to showing that the local effect you have documented is global, you’ll also need to show evidence rejecting the understanding of infrared absorption and radiative transfer which causes CO2 and other so-called “greenhouse” gases to trap and radiate heat.
There’s nothing dogmatic about it. The only person making statements that must be accepted on faith, without evidence – such as “Deep long cold winters are abnormal,” and “trend has to be part of a normal cycle” – is you.
“However, you seem to be under the mistaken assumption that the scientific conception of climate is akin to a house of cards, and that if you show evidence that tends to contradict one of the premises, then the whole thing collapses. It’s not so.”
All science theories are a house of cards, because all it takes is one bit of evidence to bring down ANY theory.
So let’s have a look at contradictory evidence against your precious theory shall we? CO2 emissions are a growth curve of about 3% per year. That’s a doubling period of 25 years. This means in the last 25 years we have emitted as much CO2 from FF as in all the previous 150 years combined. Yet in those 25 years the last 12 has seen no increase in the average temp.
Plus, that ATemp increase started at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when our CO2 emissions from FF (coal) started and was at small places on the planet, and far less than the CO2 emitted world wide from burning wood. Yet some how that FF CO2 magically pulled the climate out of the LIA. For 100 years ATemp increased, yet by 1945 our CO2 emissions was a mere 15% of today. Then when CO2 emissions increased by FOUR TIMES between 1945 and 1975 ATemps DROPPED.
Seems to me your premise that CO2 is changing ATemp has indeed been brought down.
“This is a logical fallacy, like denying the antecedent, as this reasoning fails to recognize that there are multiple lines of evidence all showing the same dynamic in effect.”
What evidence? Computer models? Give me a break. What PHYSICAL evidence do you have that CO2 is doing anything at all except making plants happier?
All science theories are a house of cards, because all it takes is one bit of evidence to bring down ANY theory.
No. This is simply not the case. If I say “If it’s raining, then the streets are wet,” and you tell me it isn’t raining, you have not proved that the streets aren’t wet.
Yet in those 25 years the last 12 has seen no increase in the average temp.
False.
What PHYSICAL evidence do you have that CO2 is doing anything at all except making plants happier?
Satellite measurements, surface measurement of downward infrared radiation, measurements of the heat content of the ocean down to 3000 metres, the surface, the troposphere, and land and sea ice.
Again, all you have to counter this is mere assertions.
Your dogma is starting to show.
“Satellite measurements, surface measurement of downward infrared radiation, measurements of the heat content of the ocean down to 3000 metres, the surface, the troposphere, and land and sea ice.”
There is no physical evidence that these changes are from CO2 and not just normal variation. All you have to claim this is CO2 causation is mere assertions.
All you have to claim this is CO2 causation is mere assertions.
This is nonsense. You can’t just parrot my terms as if they don’t have specific meaning.
There is no “normal variation” that can suddenly cause more infrared thermal radiation to appear in the night sky at the exact wavelength at which CO2 absorbs and re-radiates it. There is no more compelling evidence possible than that. A molecule of CO2 is not going to drop out of the sky and announce “tell Richard Wakefield I am absorbing and re-radiating thermal energy.”
I am providing evidence for my assertions. You are not providing any evidence to counter them. And yet you somehow call me dogmatic.
“EC makes temperature change maps of Canada based on what? A few spotty stations!!
As do you. QED.”
And yet you accept them as being gospel? Why?
I do not, as I said. The evidence of increased heat content comes from multiple, independent observations. Links to relevant findings are in the reply to your post above, currently in the moderation queue.
And show nothing but normal variation, there is no link to CO2 changing these. Explain how ATemp increased from 1850 to 1945 with virtually no significant increase in FF CO2. Explain how CO2 emissions would make summer TMax decrease since 1900. Which means TMax and TMin are converging. Some 700 years from now summers max temp and winter min temps would be the same at 18C. Since that is not physically possible, at some time in the future they must change direction and start to diverge regardless of what CO2 does. Hence a cycle, a normal cycle. Or do you not think the planet has such cycles, it should be by default the same as a house, constant non-changing temps.
What is the default position when changes are seen in the climate, it’s human caused? Or natural caused? Which one is the default position?
As I have noted time and time again, your analysis only looks at a few locations, and thus has no information on the presence or absence of global trends.
Yet you cling to it with the zealotry of a Puritan gripping a Geneva Bible.
More evidence, please, and fewer assertions.
Interesting ou refuse to answer my questions.
Oh, and someone in Australia has access to world data for other locations, inspired by my analysis he is now looking at the TMax and Tmin of as many stations as he can get. The questions for you will now be, this will be found to be world wide, how then are you going to react?
When presented with evidence, I’ll respond. What would you have me do when presented with assertions without evidence? I can neither agree nor disagree.
jrwakefield :
“What is the default position when changes are seen in the climate, it’s human caused? Or natural caused? Which one is the default position?”
It’s an interesting question.
How should one firt try and interpret the apparent “stagnation” in the new millenial global temperatures and oceanic heat content.
Some possibilities are that it is artifact, non-event, natural variation, random, fluctuation, or man made.
I wonder if the last is so far fetched, but it is seldom cited as a possibility. Perhaps we are all too narrow in our tendency to reach for a default position. I am not saying it is man made, but I do have my hunches, and that was not my default position.
I really doubt that it is possible to know for certain which of my five is uniquely, or collectively involved.
But it does interest me as to why the man made option is not commonly considered and were it to be considered what that might imply.
One one side it might be that the default is that man has little or no affect on the climate, on the other that the affects due to man are well understood, and somewhere in between that it would simply be an unhelpful thought that pleased nobody.
Alex
Cite me any other science that the default position is man is the cause of an event without prior evidence to back that ascertion up. There isn’t. Only in climate science is man considered, assumed to be, the cause of all climate/weather events until shown otherwise. It’s a classic God-of-the-Gaps where God causes everything until a natural explanation is found (still alive and well in the Intelligent Design creationist movement). In climate science man is the cause until shown otherwise.
Meanwhile I have been monitoring the poll that Scientific American issued following the discussion of Judith Curry, being a peace angel or a “dupe” here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=ONSUsVTBSpkC_2f2cTnptR6w_2fehN0orSbxLH1gIA03DqU_3d
Seeing the distinct direction the poll took on the first day, 27 Oktober, I worried about possible robots taking over the voting. So I started monitoring the progress of the poll by saving the results every few hours.
I graphed the results here.
http://i55.tinypic.com/2w658yd.jpg
The first graph shows the rate and accumulation of votes. You can see a strong general increase of the voting rate (in votes per day) in the beginning as the news spreads and then a gradual distinct decay as it’s getting old news. This result would suggest a natural course, natural progress, rather than a robot injecting votes at a constant rate.
I also checked the course of the voting behavior for all questions, since an abrupt change in trend could also indicate a robot at work. So all next graphs are merely showing the trend in the voting at that time.
Especially interesting are question 2 about Judith Curry, question 3 about the likely cause of the climate changes and question 4 about the integrity of the IPCC in percentage rates.
Notice that the reluctance to mark Judith as ‘dupe’ remains basically trendless whereas the peace angel status decays, apparently the rate of voters increased, who had no idea who she is.
Also interesting to observe that the last voters were considerably milder for the IPCC while they favored an increasingly bigger role for science.
However these votes are only an opinion, but it’s good to see that my
personal opinion is now shared by the majority of the voters.
Data and calculations available for scrutiny
At 12:03 PM on 1 November, jrwakefield had written about
…
Socialism is economically non-viable (as well as inescapably a festering violation of individual rights to life, liberty, and property), got that. Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain – got that, too – but what’s the second “G” supposed to signify?
—
Sorry, typo. Should have been PIIGS, Italy.
Not Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Greece, Great Britain, Spain?
And how about Patient Zero, the USA?
That a socialist country too?
Tsk. No background in epidemiology, have you, Bart?
“Patient Zero” is the first to manifest a contagious disease in a population. Socialism began as a European pathology, appearing more or less simultaneously in Britain and France, with its first rise to political power in the latter nation.
It took most of the 19th Century before the debilitating horror of socialism to get itself established in these United States, chiefly by way of the populist and progressive manifestations in the 1890s.
—
Patient Zero of the real source of the IMF’s concerns at the present moment, if not the USA — where it is generally agreed the housing, mortgage and bank collapse in 2008 triggered the worldwide meltdown — then what?
If we’re going to have to explain ourselves slowly and in small words.
As for the possibility of considering the USA Patient Zero for Socialism, isn’t the epidemiological assumption not that the patient was merely first to manifest symptoms, but also the most significant early vector?
Wasn’t the US War of Independence the great inspiration of the later French Revolution? What could be more socialist than the French Revolution?
Didn’t the framers and signers of the Declaration of Independence have a voluminous and influential correspondence with British radicals and free thinkers throughout Continental Europe?
Wasn’t the American Revolutionary example repeated countless times throughout the tropics and in Africa, Latin America up to the time of Che Guevera? Hasn’t Fidel Castro been accused of calling himself the George Washington of Cuba?
Weren’t the ideas of Paine, Jefferson and Franklin trumpeted among the forerunners of socialist philosophers in Europe in their day?
Wasn’t the Knights of Labor an American institution, claiming so many members before its forced dissolution as to dwarf any political party of Bastiat’s day?
So in the USA, the germ mutated one way and in later generations, it mutated differently. The trajectory of the contagion, however, has been well documented by, among others, Dr. Jonathan Miller.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making pro-socialist arguments. I’m just making anti-contrafactual ones.
Political philosophies are generally just excuses any more for people who like Al Bundy peaked at seventeen and spend their adult years reliving their glory days in high school debating clubs; philosophies that are discarded by most the moment they become an inconvenience.
Real political philosophies have been replaced by sound bites, mindless cheerleading, and demagoguery.
It’s a popular notion that if not for stand-up comedians, there’d be almost no people of real principle in the arena of political philosophy left.
Who am I to say that notion is mistaken?
I enjoyed this post, had to chuckle at Al Bundy
Dr. Curry, unlike Al Bundy – or his spiritual manifestation in this forum, our friend Bart – I haven’t peaked yet.
And I’m about to become a great-grandfather.
Doing any chuckling about that?
—
Congrats on great grandfatherhood; i just became a grandmother for the first time a few months ago.
I am deserving of no congratulations whatsoever.
The conception was an inadvertence, and had my grandson sought my counsel on such matters, I would have advised barrier methods and spermicidal agents at the very least.
If, as the result of my advice, he had he managed copulation without putting his leman in a “delicate condition,” I would then be worthy of congratulation.
As it is, not.
—
Your friend Bart couldn’t peak in high school at 17, as I was in University at sixteen.
Or do you mean some other Bart? The blog is well-stocked with them.
Though I thank you for the compliment, and will spare you congratulations in accord with your wishes, instead offering double congratulations to Dr. Curry.
Barty-boy, it’s plain that you didn’t peak at age 17, so much as you’d burned out.
Evident enough in your silly effort to conflate the American Founders with the early European socialists when the Founders were – if anything – either laissez-faire free-marketers or (much less laudably) Hamiltonian mercantilists. Sympathetic to socialism? Those guys? Heck, that’s a lot funnier than anything written for the character of Al Bundy.
Your writhing in defense of authoritarianism in this forum seems reliably the mark of a burn-out. Anybody else picking up that indication?
—
And I get free psychoanalysis too!
If only I had that the first seven times I burned out.
Please, tell me Doc, why do I see scarecrows flipping about in a cherry orchards, straw flying out of their sleeves with hidden aces as they beat dead horses, poisoning the well and chortlingly derail trains?
And while you’re polishing your wit with happy little drops of Jesuit venom, could you maybe take a moment to stop, and appreciate with me the special irony of accusing a burn-out of defense of authority, while you ad hom your way merrily along in your arguments from authority?
There’s no shame in burning out of faulty and pointless programs of dogmatic indoctrination. You should try it.
There’s no virtue in clinging to toxic habits of reactionary spleen. You could give up that addiction, with a decent twelve step method.
Nobody’s impressed by those old tricks.
The dog and pony show of yesteryear’s rhetoric and too-clever barbs, trotting out malicious playthings put away many generations since by people who outgrew them with the advent of the cathode ray tube, except the few who didn’t know they were buying into a lifeless paradigm of argument.
Why do you bother with that stuff, Doc?
Hasn’t anyone else pointed out it’s lost on people who don’t have time to waste being messed around by second-rate manipulations?
Can’t you learn to maybe do something new, like speaking plainly to what was actually written, instead of making up something to fear and putting it in other people’s mouths, and then hating them for it?
Why would you, claiming as you do to have read what I’ve posted, think to draw me into an off-topic (and really silly) debate about historical movements, when you must know I don’t think they exist as anything more than lazy contrivances?
You’ve tried smart. Yawn. I recommend kind.
Bart, your arguments are not only “contrafactual” but also contrary to common sense.
For example, the European “British radicals” with whom “the framers and signers of the Declaration of Independence [had] a voluminous and influential correspondence” were men like Richard Cobden, John Bright, and other members of the Anti-Corn Law League, many of whom were active in the Manchester School movement.
In the early and mid-19th Century, before the term “liberalism” was co-opted as a duplicitous and contrafactual name for socialism, it signified “radical liberalism/libertarianism in economic policy: laissez-faire, free trade, government withdrawal from the economy, and an optimistic stress on the ‘harmonious’ effects of free enterprise capitalism.”
Any effort to conjure some kind of substantive connection between the American Founders and the germination of socialism in western Europe or on this continent during that period is either mistaken or a deliberate effort to deceive.
Having some familiarity with your prior posts on this thread, Bart, I’m profoundly disinclined to credit any possibility that your address of this subject has thus far been anything but duplicitous.
Even your defense of the “Patient Zero” term as defining these United States “the patient [who had been not] merely first to manifest symptoms, but also the most significant early vector” fails utterly.
As those of us familiar with the history of both capitalism and its invidious antithesis, socialism, quite satisfactorily realize.
You got references to support your out-of-your-tochus bogus assertions, Bart?
Didn’t think so.
—
So, here’s where I have special trouble following your logic:
You’re either arguing that every Founding Father universally had the power to divine which of their correspondents would at some future time become involved in some future intellectual movement, and scrupulously avoided dirtying their hands with such an indignity;
or
You’re declaring that the formation of the USA was not one of the most significant events in global political and philosophical discourse of its day or since, to the point where only those people whose views you personally approve of ever heard of America, or were ever able to convince any American political philosopher of note to so much as reply to a letter.
This is magical reasoning, at best.
It seems I ought have not offered so much an anti-contrafactual argument in anodyne to the galloping illogic of this thread as offered an antiperistaltic.
Cite a source to support your blatherskite, Barty-boy. Thus far you have not so much as named a single one of the Founders who had engaged in “a voluminous and influential correspondence ” with any of the unidentified “British radicals” you’d so breezily mentioned.
Except, as I’d mentioned, Cobden, Bright, and the other members of the Anti-Corn Law League.
Just how the hell much British history has flashed past you without comprehension, anyway, Barty?
I would not argue “that the formation of the USA was not one of the most significant events in global political and philosophical discourse of its day or since,” but to whip from your personal cloaca the notion that simply because the American colonists took Dr. Locke’s Two Treatises into political expression on the battlefield and in the charters of civil governments (first at the state level, and then in the federal Constitution) they inspired the socialists of Europe to enslave their countrymen and destroy their national economies is a stretch as odious as it is malodorous.
—
MODERATION NOTE: Some good points here, but lose the slags on Bart, violating blog rules
Heh.
He said, “cloaca.”
Nuh. Uh.
He said, “colonists.”
Heh. Heh.
I think he’s got, like, a fixation.
Surely someone with a name like yours, Rich, must have figured out that someone with a name like mine became immune to preschool japes and insults, well, pre-school. Or did you never overcome that sensitivity, yourself?
Prithee, don’t let that stop you. There’s a certain entertainment value in watching a great grandfather peak in the arts of the sandbox.
Heh.
He said, “tochus”.
Heh-heh.
“And how about Patient Zero, the USA?
That a socialist country too?”
It was trying to be. The Great Obama (remember the great fan fare 2 years ago, he was going to save the USA?) is now the Bombed Obama, especially after today. 12 trillion in debt and counting, doubled in those same 2 years. According to the IMF deficit spending is coming to an end world wide one way or another, voluntary or forced, and so ends the world’s obsession with the great socialist experiment. Busted and bankrupt like the former USSR.
What is it about Canadians?
Attacking US presidents, gloating about US hardship, worshipping IMF opinion like manna from the heavens, lumping the USA in with the former USSR?
A Canadian calling America socialist.
Give yer head a shake!
Jere,
Had you actually examined my statement, You would have noticed I said nothing about rate. Move those goal posts back.
So if you’re not talking about an unprecedented “rate” of change, what are you talking about? What would you assert was unprecedented? The absolute temperature? That begs the question regarding the end-point fallacy, since you can pick almost any arbitrary time period and make an assertion of “this is the hottest year since 19xx”, or “this is the coldest year since 19xx”.
The whole point of the hockey stick was to assert that while change happened in the past, our CO2 emissions have done something to dramatically change the *rate* of change. Moving the goal posts behind you doesn’t yield much of an argument for your position.
How about the last decade was warmer then the previous 10 decades. How about the past two decades were warmer than the previous 50 decades.
Your assertion could be said of any rebound after an ice age. Nothing about your statement gives us any reason to believe this kind of change, historically, is unprecedented.
If you’re not arguing that there is an unprecedented *rate*, you’re not really making a hockey stick argument – which is fine, if you accept that the whole *point* of the hockey stick is rate of change.
Do you really understand the hockey stick argument?
Your rebound comment might be relevant except the last ice age ended ~15,000 years ago,
And yes, the argument is that the warming trend and temperatures over the last few decades are unprecedented over at least the last 600 years.
I’m assuming you haven’t heard of the Little Ice Age (LIA).
That being said, establishing an unprecedented trend over even the last 600 years, hardly makes the case for AGW – after all, looking at the last 700 years, you refute the link between temperature and CO2, since there wasn’t an industrial revolution 700 years ago.
Let’s ask the question another way – would you believe in AGW and CO2 being the primary driver of climate if it was only unprecedented for 500 years? 400 years? 200 years? 100 years? What is the cut off point for you to see the data as falsifying your hypothesis, versus confirming it?
You mean the cool period that wasn’t an ice age at all, yes I’ve heard of it?
I don’t believe CO2 is the primary driver of climate in the first place. That was easy.
CO2 isn’t the primary driver? Excellent! We may put that pesky AGW thing to rest then! :)
As for rebound, you think it only applies to cooling periods that are ice ages, but not natural cooling periods that are not as intense?
Why don’t you specifically posit your falsifiable theory of AGW, so we both know what you’re talking about.
Don’t get too froggy.I don’t believe volcanoes or aerosols are the primary drivers of climate either, but I accept the fact they, just like CO2, influence climate.
I’ll repeat it again:
Why don’t you specifically posit your falsifiable theory of AGW, so we both know what you’re talking about.
If your position is simply that CO2, volcanoes and aerosols influence climate, you’re not really making any sort of prediction, are you? Butterflies influence climate, but their effect is marginal, at best. If you’re admitting that CO2 is *not* a primary driver of climate, then you’ve cut the feet out from under the whole AGW theory – any possible AGW CO2 signal is going to be secondary to the primary drivers, and lost amongst the noise.
Be specific, and be scientific, and we can continue the conversation.
“cool period that wasn’t an ice age at all,”
The period with long deep cold winters, short growing season, crop failures, millions starving and freezing to death, the end of the Vikings in Greenland, the end of grapes in Scotland, yes that “very cold” period that was abnormal. Now we are returning to a more normal state of the climate, cool summers, short mild winters, and a long growing season. Sounds wonderful.
Rational Debate: “…[I] would really like to understand how scientists who are AGW proponents view the issue [present warming v. those of earlier perioids].”
Start here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
Be sure to follow up with the “Further Reading” recommendtions on that page.
You are going to find a lot of statements that contradict joannenova. But you will see how most climate scientists view the iussue.
Observation isn’t good enough for you huh?
Don’t see the end of the tunnel in ? ….
“anything that increases the cost of energy reduces the ability for people in desperate poverty to improve their quality of life, leaving them susceptible to disease, disaster and suffering”
What a fantastic idea! The *green solution* is to work poor people to death.
Jere,
If you’re admitting that CO2 is *not* a primary driver of climate, then you’ve cut the feet out from under the whole AGW theory – any possible AGW CO2 signal is going to be secondary to the primary drivers, and lost amongst the noise.
What scientist states CO2 is the primary driver of climate? I’ll answer for you – none. (I also noticed your change from the to a as well, but no matter) And Pinatubo swamped the CO2 signal and the extended solar minimum may not of swamped it, but it surely masked it. But when those events “go away”, the CO2 is still there.
And I don’t have a different theory.
The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) adopted this letter as their official position statement:
“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.”
If you’re not going to argue that human CO2 emissions are the primary driver of climate change, then I think at heart, you’re a skeptic.
A skeptic in particular or a person who who grew up inundated by commercial advertising in general?
You don’t see a distinction between the primary driver of climate and a primary driver of a phenomena? I do. They’re not saying the former and are saying the later.
No, I don’t see the distinction. You’re reading meaning in obtusely when what they’re saying is very plain – “greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver” of “climate change”.
You’ve already admitted that CO2 is *not* a primary driver of climate change, which places you firmly in the skeptic camp.
Now, you may decide to parse words, and try to assert that you’re talking about “climate” not “climate change”, but that would simply be a dishonest syntactic argument. The argument of the hockey stick is an assertion of an unprecedented rate of change (which we’ve already falsified). You seem on the precipice of actually understanding that you’re really a skeptic at heart – take the next step, it gets easier once you admit you were wrong.
Again, saying it’s the primary driver of the current change and saying its the primary driver of climate (your original claim, but it’s evolving) are not the same thing.
If we had Pinatubo-sized volcanoes going off every year and cooling the planet, we would say volcanic aerosols were the primary drivers of that change.
Ah, so CO2 is only a primary driver of climate change when we say so?
The question here is about climate sensitivity to CO2 – if it is highly sensitive to CO2, then CO2 is a primary driver of climate. The infamous hockey sticks are supposed to prove that CO2 is the primary driver of climate (i.e., climate is highly sensitive to CO2), by plotting temperature changes post-industrial revolution, making the statement that we are seeing an unprecedented rate of change because of it.
Except we’ve already established that CO2 is not a primary driver, and we’ve already established that the rate of change isn’t unprecedented.
So what else do you have to hold on to? Even your claim that volcanic aerosols were “primary drivers” is tenuous, if you require a Mt. Pinatubo going off every year.
Go ahead, put a stick in the ground. Make a specific assertion, like “doubling CO2 to 500ppm will cause global average temps to rise by 6C” – simply asserting that there is an unspecified theory out there that matches your beliefs, without actually *stating* it, isn’t really an argument, is it?
“Ah, so CO2 is only a primary driver of climate change when we say so?”
No, it’s only the driver when it’s at the wheel, so to speak. I hate to break this to you, but more than one thing influences climate.
“The question here is about climate sensitivity to CO2 – if it is highly sensitive to CO2, then CO2 is a primary driver of climate.”
Define “highly sensitive”? And why must it be “highly sensitive”? Any sensitivity at all would perturb the system, no?
The infamous hockey sticks are supposed to prove that CO2 is the primary driver of climate (i.e., climate is highly sensitive to CO2), by plotting temperature changes post-industrial revolution, making the statement that we are seeing an unprecedented rate of change because of it.
No, the hockey stick was meant to show our place historically wrt temperature. The drivers of that change could be multiple different forcings.
“Except we’ve already established that CO2 is not a primary driver, and we’ve already established that the rate of change isn’t unprecedented.”
No such empirical results have been established, just a bunch of wishful thinking.
“So what else do you have to hold on to? Even your claim that volcanic aerosols were “primary drivers” is tenuous, if you require a Mt. Pinatubo going off every year.”
You have to be trying to be deliberately obtuse. Volcanic aerosols would be the driver of that change. It’s really not that difficult of a concept to grasp and I do not understand your difficulty.
“Go ahead, put a stick in the ground. Make a specific assertion, like “doubling CO2 to 500ppm will cause global average temps to rise by 6C” – simply asserting that there is an unspecified theory out there that matches your beliefs, without actually *stating* it, isn’t really an argument, is it?”
So I take it from your responses that you’re a sun worshiper and reject the concept of a greenhouse effect too (the one where ~1% of the atmosphere is responsible for 33k of temp) and believe any perturbation of those gasses has no effect?
And I’ve already stated I don’t have a different theory. It’s the same theory. If you hung out at more science sites, rather than “skeptic” sites, you would know that.
” I hate to break this to you, but more than one thing influences climate.”
I believe that, which is why painting CO2 as some all powerful driver that can overcome all other cycles and influences seems particularly unfounded.
“Define “highly sensitive”? And why must it be “highly sensitive”? Any sensitivity at all would perturb the system, no?”
That’s your definition to make – I’m not making an assertion here. That being said, the system certainly is sensitive to butterfly migration patterns, but that perturbation is hardly worthy of worry, is it?
“No such empirical results have been established, just a bunch of wishful thinking.”
The most ardent skeptic couldn’t have said it more succinctly :)
“And I’ve already stated I don’t have a different theory. It’s the same theory”
State your theory then. You’ve written pages of comments without actually defining “the same theory”. If you’re not willing to put your theory into specific words, you’ll simply keep asserting that refutations given to you were for some other, less robust theory. That’s not science, that’s argumentum ad avodium :)
”I believe that, which is why painting CO2 as some all powerful driver that can overcome all other cycles and influences seems particularly unfounded.
Who says it’s “all powerful”? Show me one front-line scientist who believes CO2 forcings can’t be swamped by aerosol forcings? (Again see Pinatubo, or Hansen’s ’88 scenarios which included volcanic aerosol forced cooling, inspite of the CO2 forcings.)
”That’s your definition to make – I’m not making an assertion here.
No, that’s your idiosyncratic language, you define it.
”That being said, the system certainly is sensitive to butterfly migration patterns, but that perturbation is hardly worthy of worry, is it? What are the radiative properties of butterflies again? Oh nada? Red herring.
”The most ardent skeptic couldn’t have said it more succinctly :)” Thanks, glad to have you aboard with us true skeptics. I’m glad we’re in agreement there’s been no such falsification.
“State your theory then. You’ve written pages of comments without actually defining “the same theory”. If you’re not willing to put your theory into specific words, you’ll simply keep asserting that refutations given to you were for some other, less robust theory. That’s not science, that’s argumentum ad avodium :)”
More deliberate obtuseness. I’ve told you I do not have a personal theory. I accept the same theory as Schmidt, Mann or Hansen et al – the same one of which you seem to know very little.
Empirical evidence supports the fact CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
Empirical evidence supports the fact mankind has increased its concentration by ~1/3 since the Industrial Revolution.
Empirical evidence supports the fact CO2’s radiative properties combined with the other non-water vapor GHGs (~1% of the atmosphere) contributes to a warming of the planet by 33K – allows life as we know it to exist.
Empirical evidence supports the fact increased CO2 in the atmosphere slows the rate by which radiation leaves the planet.
Empirical evidence supports the fact that given the above, the surface must warm.
Okay, let’s take your science:
“Empirical evidence supports the fact CO2 is a greenhouse gas.” – Okay, no problem. Missing any sort of magnitude here, so it’s a fluff statement, but we’ll let it slide.
“Empirical evidence supports the fact mankind has increased its concentration by ~1/3 since the Industrial Revolution.” – Not sure if that’s entirely true – we’ve certainly increased it, but CO2 is a dynamic little molecule, and atmospheric concentration as an effect of, say, ocean outgassing in response to temperature changes, might be of greater impact than human CO2 emissions. You may be able to put a number on how much CO2 you think we emit, but it’s not a simple assertion to say that that CO2 simply adds directly to the system.
“Empirical evidence supports the fact CO2′s radiative properties combined with the other non-water vapor GHGs (~1% of the atmosphere) contributes to a warming of the planet by 33K – allows life as we know it to exist.” – Citation for excluding water vapor, please – that seems to be a significant part of the GHG effect.
“Empirical evidence supports the fact increased CO2 in the atmosphere slows the rate by which radiation leaves the planet.” – And the empirical evidence also shows there is a logarithmic absorption spectrum, limiting the maximum amount of slowing that CO2 can do.
“Empirical evidence supports the fact that given the above, the surface must warm.” – Again, kinda fuzzy here – not assertions of how much the surface must warm, or how long it takes to warm, or what level of CO2 you’re talking about.
McGee – I think in the end, you’re really not understanding what people are skeptical of. Each individual statement of yours may be somewhat debatable, but for the most part, nobody is really arguing over that. The argument is when strung together with the most tenuous of rope, do these individual statements lay the blame on human CO2 emissions for the majority of temperature change for the past 100 years. The data simply don’t support that final assertion.
Okay, let’s take your science:
“Empirical evidence supports the fact CO2 is a greenhouse gas.” – Okay, no problem. Missing any sort of magnitude here, so it’s a fluff statement, but we’ll let it slide.”
I don’t know. I think deep down a lot of “skeptics” like to ignore that fact, or don’t believe GHGs really do anything.
“‘Empirical evidence supports the fact mankind has increased its concentration by ~1/3 since the Industrial Revolution.’ – Not sure if that’s entirely true – we’ve certainly increased it, but CO2 is a dynamic little molecule, and atmospheric concentration as an effect of, say, ocean outgassing in response to temperature changes, might be of greater impact than human CO2 emissions. You may be able to put a number on how much CO2 you think we emit, but it’s not a simple assertion to say that that CO2 simply adds directly to the system.”
You should put more effort into seeking the answers to your confusion, rather than accepting answers which satisfy your biases. You should probably start with research on the trends in the ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere.
“Empirical evidence supports the fact CO2′s radiative properties combined with the other non-water vapor GHGs (~1% of the atmosphere) contributes to a warming of the planet by 33K – allows life as we know it to exist.” – Citation for excluding water vapor, please – that seems to be a significant part of the GHG effect.
Yes, water vapor is an important feedback, but a feedback none-the-less. See Halpern, J. et al. (2010).
This will hopefully help clarify some of your confusion as well:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/11/more-on-feedbacks/
“Empirical evidence supports the fact increased CO2 in the atmosphere slows the rate by which radiation leaves the planet.” – And the empirical evidence also shows there is a logarithmic absorption spectrum, limiting the maximum amount of slowing that CO2 can do.
Odd that you reject this emerical evidence to which you allude. Having your cake and eating it too, as it were? So it all comes back to climate sensitivity, for which we’ve already eliminated the lower end. And if there truly is no “hotspot” it’s going to be more than the 2-3C increase for doubling. The uncertainty in sensitivity is in the higher range, not the lower.
“Empirical evidence supports the fact that given the above, the surface must warm.” – Again, kinda fuzzy here – not assertions of how much the surface must warm, or how long it takes to warm, or what level of CO2 you’re talking about.” Any level is going to perturb the system and warm the surface.
McGee – I think in the end, you’re really not understanding what people are skeptical of. Each individual statement of yours may be somewhat debatable, but for the most part, nobody is really arguing over that. The argument is when strung together with the most tenuous of rope, do these individual statements lay the blame on human CO2 emissions for the majority of temperature change for the past 100 years. The data simply don’t support that final assertion.”
The only way your last sentence would be be supported and true, is if CO2 was refuted as being/having the properties of a GHG. It either does, or it doesn’t. We can either quantify what it does, or we can’t. The evidence shows we can.
From your citation:
“In conclusion, water vapor is the dominant feedback on our planet and is also important for understanding the evolution of planetary climate.”
How do you square that with your assertion that 33K of GHG effect excludes the effect of water vapor?
” I think deep down a lot of “skeptics” like to ignore that fact, or don’t believe GHGs really do anything.”
There you go, speculating again :) I think you’re projecting some animosity against skeptics that is totally unfounded. Asserting that GHGs don’t do anything is different than asserting that they don’t do anything dangerous, or imminently dangerous.
“So it all comes back to climate sensitivity, for which we’ve already eliminated the lower end.”
How so? You’ve made no assertion about climate sensitivity in terms of magnitude – are you ready to actually stake a claim?
“The only way your last sentence would be be supported and true, is if CO2 was refuted as being/having the properties of a GHG.”
That’s not true at all. CO2 can be a GHG, with a logarithmic absorption rate, and a very tiny impact compared to other drivers, and then the whole catastrophic AGW edifice crumbles to pieces. It’s like saying that we can only eliminate the effect of butterfly migrations on hurricanes if we can refute butterfly wing flapping as having any effect on the air.
It seems, McGee, that you’ve gotten yourself wrapped around an axle – you’ve got nothing but vitriol for the skeptics, but you’re actually much closer to their position than you’re giving yourself credit for.
From your citation:
“’In conclusion, water vapor is the dominant feedback on our planet and is also important for understanding the evolution of planetary climate.’
How do you square that with your assertion that 33K of GHG effect excludes the effect of water vapor?”
That’s not what I said. I said that without the non-water vapor GHGs, the planet would be 33C cooler – there would be no water vapor feedback. The last ice age was only an avg of 5C cooler at ~8C, so think what the planet would look like w/an avg temp of -20C. Can you say ice albedo?
” ‘I think deep down a lot of “skeptics” like to ignore that fact, or don’t believe GHGs really do anything.’
There you go, speculating again :) I think you’re projecting some animosity against skeptics that is totally unfounded. Asserting that GHGs don’t do anything is different than asserting that they don’t do anything dangerous, or imminently dangerous.”
No projection. A conclusion based upon multiple and varied statements – “look, the sun”, “CO2’s plant food”.
“’So it all comes back to climate sensitivity, for which we’ve already eliminated the lower end.’
How so? You’ve made no assertion about climate sensitivity in terms of magnitude – are you ready to actually stake a claim?”
Scroll up. A doubling of CO2 will result in 2-3C temp increase. – low estimate.
“’The only way your last sentence would be be supported and true, is if CO2 was refuted as being/having the properties of a GHG.’
That’s not true at all. CO2 can be a GHG, with a logarithmic absorption rate, and a very tiny impact compared to other drivers, and then the whole catastrophic AGW edifice crumbles to pieces. It’s like saying that we can only eliminate the effect of butterfly migrations on hurricanes if we can refute butterfly wing flapping as having any effect on the air.”
Are you an entomologist? You seem to have an inordinate fondness for butterflies. We already know the impact of CO2 at just equilibrium is far greater -~50% of non-water vapor GHG forcing – then any impact of a fluttering butterfly.
“It seems, McGee, that you’ve gotten yourself wrapped around an axle – you’ve got nothing but vitriol for the skeptics, but you’re actually much closer to their position than you’re giving yourself credit for.”
Now you’re projecting.
“I said that without the non-water vapor GHGs, the planet would be 33C cooler – there would be no water vapor feedback”
That’s clearly false. Water vapor, in and of itself, is also a GHG. This isn’t controversial at all.
“We already know the impact of CO2 at just equilibrium is far greater -~50% of non-water vapor GHG forcing”
Citation please.
“A doubling of CO2 will result in 2-3C temp increase”
Very well, an actual prediction. Now, let’s ask this question – when a doubling of CO2 doesn’t create a 2-3C temp increase, either in the future or in the past, does this falsify your hypothesis?
More importantly, let’s work backwards – if doubling of CO2 results in +2-3C, would halving result in -2-3C? How many halvings before we eliminate the 33K of GHG effect entirely?
“I said that without the non-water vapor GHGs, the planet would be 33C cooler – there would be no water vapor feedback’
That’s clearly false. Water vapor, in and of itself, is also a GHG. This isn’t controversial at all.
You not following. There would not be a water vapor feedback and no water vapor GHG forcing, because there would be no GHGs to cause the feedback. The planet avg temp would be a balmy -20C.
“’We already know the impact of CO2 at just equilibrium is far greater -~50% of non-water vapor GHG forcing’
Citation please.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiative-forcings.svg
“ ‘A doubling of CO2 will result in 2-3C temp increase’
Very well, an actual prediction. Now, let’s ask this question – when a doubling of CO2 doesn’t create a 2-3C temp increase, either in the future or in the past, does this falsify your hypothesis?”
Yes, it will falsify the hypothesis that a doubling of CO2 leads to a 2-3C increase in temps. It could just as well be a 4C increase, and the former is still falsified.
“ More importantly, let’s work backwards – if doubling of CO2 results in +2-3C, would halving result in -2-3C? How many halvings before we eliminate the 33K of GHG effect entirely?”
That effect doesn’t include just CO2. It includes all the other GHGs plus feedbacks.
“There would not be a water vapor feedback and no water vapor GHG forcing, because there would be no GHGs to cause the feedback. ”
You’re not following. Water vapor *is* a GHG. It is not just some mystical GHFG (greenhouse feedback gas), it is a GHG. This is very, very basic to the science, and I’m surprised you’d hoist yourself on this particular petard.
“Yes, it will falsify the hypothesis that a doubling of CO2 leads to a 2-3C increase in temps. It could just as well be a 4C increase, and the former is still falsified.”
Okay, let’s be even more specific – what is your baseline CO2 level and temperature? Based on current CO2 levels, what should our increase in temperature be at this moment? What about next year? If the temperature to CO2 level ratio doesn’t fit, will you also accept your hypothesis to be falsified?
“That effect doesn’t include just CO2. It includes all the other GHGs plus feedbacks.”
You were the one making the statement that a doubling of CO2 yields an addition 2-3C to global average temperature. If your assertion is instead that doubling CO2, with other parameters X, Y, and Z present, is necessary to have that doubling, you need to be more specific about what those other parameters are.
Furthermore, you’ll have to explain why we’ve had CO2 levels in the past, more than double of what we have today, and temperatures that do not match your 2-3C prediction.
Doug McGee : “it all comes back to climate sensitivity, for which we’ve already eliminated the lower end.”
We haven’t eliminated the lower end. What happened was that the climate models were tried with a range of different factors to see what values for climate sensitivity they came up with, and they came up with a very large range. The results were then compared with the observed temperature changes, and it was found that the lower sensitivity values (which were just as probable as the higher values) did not give as much temperature change as had been observed. At this point, it should be obvious that some of the temperature change might be caused by other factors, but instead they simply dismissed the lower factors. In other words, the results are all based on the premise that the observed temperature changes were caused by the CO2 increase. You can’t use that to argue that the CO2 increase caused the temperature changes- that’s circular logic.
A simple explanation, with references, is given in the pro-AGW Skeptical Science blog : http://www.skepticalscience.com/detailed-look-at-climate-sensitivity.html
Whereas they ignore the possibility that (a) there could be “feedbacks” associated with natural causes, and (b) there are factors that they have not considered, there is a heavy reliance on “feedbacks” in order to get the high climate sensitivity that they require (see IPCC report AR4 8.6.2.3).
NB. The “feedbacks” associated with natural causes might be different to the “feedbacks” from CO2, but they do not allow for this. They consider that only the radiative forcing is relevant, and that everything is a reaction to that, whereas in reality other factors and other mechanisms may be involved.
An approach to this issue using real-world observations rather than computer models is described in http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/05/16/determining-climate-sensitivity-from-volcanoes-observations-vs-models/
In other words, the results are all based on the premise that the observed temperature changes were caused by the CO2 increase.
Not at all. [PDF] When will this meme die? There have been many estimates of climate sensitivity based on the instrumental record (eg – the past 150 years).
Really, guys … the fact that this is friendly turf doesn’t mean that you don’t have to bring your “A” game.
That’s it, go and spoil my brilliant (IMHO) reply … :-)
Sorry man! I saw you getting double-teamed, and the low-hanging fruit was too enticing not to pick. ;-) I’ll back off…
Jere Krischel: Furthermore, you’ll have to explain why we’ve had CO2 levels in the past, more than double of what we have today, and temperatures that do not match your 2-3C prediction.
I think this is answered in this study by Royer et al. which independently arrives at a best-fit 2.8C per doubling within the range of expectations based on 400 million years of evidence.
… of all other factors affecting CO2 in the long-term
carbon cycle. Such factors include solar evolution, changes in palaeogeography,
palaeolithology, palaeohydrology, global degassing,
organic and carbonate burial rates, and land plant population.
Your link to Skeptical Science showed the same thing as the one I cited. They are looking only at radiative forcing and its “feedbacks” : “So the combined evidence indicates that the net feedback to radiative forcing is significantly positive“.
They are looking only at radiative forcing and its “feedbacks”
(Blinks.)
Um, yeah.
They looked at what actually happened in the past to determine climate sensitivity. That means “what happens when CO2 doubles,” by the way. Which is a forcing. They are taking into account other forcings, such as “the Maunder Minimum period of low solar forcing.” The various <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/Empirical-evidence-for-positive-feedback.html"feedback mechanisms are pretty well understood, again from looking at what actually happens in the real world.
I guess I’m having trouble understanding how you think this can be determined without looking at the various forcings and feedbacks.
They state explicitly that they are looking at “The equilibrium sensitivity of the Earth’s temperature to radiation changes” and that when they talk about feedback they are talking about “feedback to radiative forcing“. So what I said is correct : “They are looking only at radiative forcing and its “feedbacks”“.
So, for example, when they look at solar influence, they look only at the sun’s direct radiative forcing, and feedbacks to the radiative forcing only. But what they have not considered is that other features of the sun’s activity, or reactions to them, could influence temperature.
Let’s look at CO2 release and the Arctic temperature during the last 100 or so years:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-Arc.htm
Ignore the green line and concentrate on the blue (CO2) and red (Arctic temp).
1900 – 1950 CO2 rises slowly (low rate of rise) the temperature shoots up.
1950 -1980 CO2 suddenly takes off at the fastest rate ever, temperatures drop.
1980 -2000 CO2 rate slows down temperatures go up again.
Thus, CO2 is really crucial element in the Arctic temperature change, not the absolute level of CO2 but it is its rate of change that drives the temperature change, or to put it in numerical terms:
d(Vco2)/dt + dT/dt = const
Well that appears to be a new ‘incontinent truth’.
Hence, to prevent the rapid melting of the Arctic ice, we need to pump CO2 into atmosphere at an increased rate, i.e. doubling of CO2 emissions every 20 years, as it was case from 1950-80, when temperatures actually droped.
Any thoughts ?
CO2 emissions from FF burning does double every 25 years now (3% growth rate). I fail to see how a mere 1% of today’s emissions of FF (as opposed to CO2 emissions from burning wood for 2000 years) back at the beginning of the industrial revolution some how had the power to reverse the LIA trend. The first 100 years of FF consumption was a very slow progression rate, by 1945 we were still at a mere 15% of todays emissions. Yet it saw the most increase in average temperature (less cold winters).
Then in the past 25 years when we have emitted as much CO2 from FF as in all of the rest of history, the last 12 years saw temps level off. CO2 emissions or rate of emissions does not correlate to temp changes, a natural, returning to its normal state, of short mild winters and cooler summers.
When did industrial aerosols peak?
There is no aerosol data prior to the 1960’s, so no way of showing they had any effect at all to trigger the decrease in ATemp after 1945.
Oh, and in Ontario, 1950-1980 didn’t see temps drop. Summer TMax didn’t change, what changed was TMin was more cold in the winters.
There has been some discuss above regarding science, socialism, and constitutional rights.
I thought that I might like to say that it may be not the science but the process that irks.
It amazes me from afar that anyone might have imagined that the IPCC/UNFCCC process would be broadly perceived as legitimate by the US citizenry.
This is just a view from afar, but there does seem to be something profoundly unamerican about the process. If not as a matter of substance, definitely of preception.
Personally I doubt that there is all that much wrong with the formation of the IPCC but it might benefit from being formally divorced from the UNEP. I do not hear much clamour against the WMO so perhaps they are fit for purpose in their current role. By formation I only mean its structure of governence not its methods or decisions.
The UNFCCC/COP process is a different matter, it is a bit of a train wreck. The actual convention seems incredibly ambitious. At its heart it seems to be a framework for setting up emission treaties but contains articles that cover much more diverse topics e.g. Article 6 (EDUCATION, TRAINING AND PUBLIC AWARENESS). Which is very noble. The convention does however set up the COP process.
Now the COP seems to be were the real action (sic) is. It along with various subsidary and other agencies beavers away and stages spectacles. It comes to decisions (mostly about itself) and makes declarations.
It seems to lack fitness of purpose if it is in the business of supporting progress towards emission treaties. Perhaps that is the point.
All in all, I cannot see that the IPCC/UNFCCC/COP process represents any real threat to sovereignty or to US constitutional rights. The COP and subsidary bodies share that strange other worldliness typical of UN framed institutions. From the outside it appears that COP15 ran into the buffers not due to anything to do with the science or the scientists but due to its fundaments and perhaps its naivete.
I really do doubt that its structure is in anyway complementary to the actual decision making process which is a political one involving powerful sovereign states.
There is a wonderful statement on the UNFCCC’s COP15 main page:
“Governments engaged at the highest political level, and the outcome of that engagement was reflected in the Copenhagen Accord.” Indeed it was.
When governments engage at the highest politcal level, the bottom falls out of the UNFCCC/COP process and you get a train wreck.
Perhaps Copenhagen’s greatest achievement was to set a new attendance record with 24,000 participants, to crash and burn in front of 3000 of the media, and somehow not see it coming.
This is no way to eat an elephant.
Alex
I just got permanently banned from forums.treehuigger.com – for trying to post this artcile for comment.
Krischel ,
“There would not be a water vapor feedback and no water vapor GHG forcing, because there would be no GHGs to cause the feedback.”
You’re not following. Water vapor *is* a GHG. It is not just some mystical GHFG (greenhouse feedback gas), it is a GHG. This is very, very basic to the science, and I’m surprised you’d hoist yourself on this particular petard.
And again, there wouldn’t be any water vapor to be a GHG if we removed the other ~1% of the gasses in the atmosphere that are GHGs, because water vapor is a feedback and would not exist w/o those other gasses. The planet would be more or less an ice ball w/real high albedo … You got it yet? For this exercise, we’ve created a planet w/no CO2, CH4, etc, so almost all radiation bounces off of the ice and escapes back to space. Granted, there would be some sublimation, but not enough to matter.
If you still don’t get it, try this mental exercise; For how long would you have to pump water vapor into the Arctic atmosphere, to turn it into a tropical paradise?
“Yes, it will falsify the hypothesis that a doubling of CO2 leads to a 2-3C increase in temps. It could just as well be a 4C increase, and the former is still falsified.”
Okay, let’s be even more specific – what is your baseline CO2 level and temperature? [~260ppm and ~13.6C] Based on current CO2 levels, what should our increase in temperature be at this moment? [somewhere between 0-1C] What about next year? [same] If the temperature to CO2 level ratio doesn’t fit, will you also accept your hypothesis to be falsified?
For that particular sensitivity, yes.
“That effect doesn’t include just CO2. It includes all the other GHGs plus feedbacks.”
You were the one making the statement that a doubling of CO2 yields an addition 2-3C to global average temperature. If your assertion is instead that doubling CO2, with other parameters X, Y, and Z present, is necessary to have that doubling, you need to be more specific about what those other parameters are.
There are two different issues here. One is the 33K greenhouse effect (all GHGs and all feedbacks), the other is only CO2 + feedbacks.
”Furthermore, you’ll have to explain why we’ve had CO2 levels in the past, more than double of what we have today, and temperatures that do not match your 2-3C prediction.”
RB touched on this quite well. You still seem to be under the erroneous assumption CO2 can’t be swamped by another signal. I’ve already shown you an example within the last century of volcanic aerosols masking CO2’s influences. Or, do you equally not accept volcanic aerosols can cool the planet?
But we can’t count on volcanic eruptions every three years or so to mask it. We can’t count on solar forcing (axial tilt, precession, orbital precession, inclination or shape) changing to do likewise, not near term (next 200 years) anyway.
“there wouldn’t be any water vapor to be a GHG if we removed the other ~1% of the gasses in the atmosphere that are GHGs, because water vapor is a feedback and would not exist w/o those other gasses. ”
So remove all other GHGs, except water vapor, and the water vapor miraculously disappears? What happens to all the H2O molecules, do they just blink out of existence? Sorry McGee, but you’ve left the tracks on this one.
“For how long would you have to pump water vapor into the Arctic atmosphere, to turn it into a tropical paradise?”
Same question, but with CO2. Show your work :)
[~260ppm and ~13.6C] – fair enough, we’ll give you that baseline. We’re currently at 386.80ppm – what’s the current average global temperature?
“For that particular sensitivity, yes.”
Okay, so at least you admit that the sensitivity could indeed be much lower. Follow up question – what sensitivity is a dangerous sensitivity, and what sensitivity is not so dangerous? Be explicit about *why* you choose your number, and exactly *what* dangers you can empirically quantify.
“You still seem to be under the erroneous assumption CO2 can’t be swamped by another signal.”
Oh, I’m actually of the opinion that CO2 can be swamped by nearly every other PDO/ADO/ENSO/milankovich cycle signal that exists in our chaotic system. Assuming that CO2 is going to overcome all other signals, and produce marked warming based on increases in concentration measured in *parts per million*, seems to be the stretch here.
Krischel,
“there wouldn’t be any water vapor to be a GHG if we removed the other ~1% of the gasses in the atmosphere that are GHGs, because water vapor is a feedback and would not exist w/o those other gasses. ”
So remove all other GHGs, except water vapor, and the water vapor miraculously disappears? What happens to all the H2O molecules, do they just blink out of existence? Sorry McGee, but you’ve left the tracks on this one.
How does water behave at -20C? What is the albedo of ice?
“For how long would you have to pump water vapor into the Arctic atmosphere, to turn it into a tropical paradise?”
Same question, but with CO2. Show your work
Avg Arctic temp is ~-14C
Avg Tropical temp is ~30C
Needed increase is ~44C
CO2 would need to double ~22 times at 2C sensitivity (not counting other CO2/CH4 feedbacks) to a total of (back of the envelope) 6,543,114,240 ppm which would be fatal levels (give or take some). Of course the equatorial temps would rise as well and be ~ 74C or 165F. Your turn.
[~260ppm and ~13.6C] – fair enough, we’ll give you that baseline. We’re currently at 386.80ppm – what’s the current average global temperature? [~14.5C]
“For that particular sensitivity, yes.”
Okay, so at least you admit that the sensitivity could indeed be much lower. Follow up question – what sensitivity is a dangerous sensitivity, and what sensitivity is not so dangerous? Be explicit about *why* you choose your number, and exactly *what* dangers you can empirically quantify.
What do you mean by “dangerous”? It calls for a rather a subjective POV.
“You still seem to be under the erroneous assumption CO2 can’t be swamped by another signal.”
Oh, I’m actually of the opinion that CO2 can be swamped by nearly every other PDO/ADO/ENSO/milankovich cycle signal that exists in our chaotic system. Assuming that CO2 is going to overcome all other signals, and produce marked warming based on increases in concentration measured in *parts per million*, seems to be the stretch here.
Unless the forcing is negative, it doesn’t matter because the CO2 is still doing its business in the background.
And yet again, those ppms when combined with the other ~1% of the atmosphere = 33k and are responsible for life as we know it. Nobody besides Gerlich & Tscheuschner has challenged that number.
“How does water behave at -20C? What is the albedo of ice?”
Take yourself a vacuum chamber. Fill it with some of earth’s atmosphere. Measure the water vapor content. Now take another vacuum chamber, and fill it with water vapor, without all the other gases. Did it all turn solid magically? The idea that it is impossible to have a water vapor atmosphere without any other GHGs is absolutely unsupportable.
“6,543,114,240 ppm”
So, exactly how do you squeeze 6,543 parts together to make that bit of math work? :) I’m not sure if you can create a 6500% CO2 atmosphere :)
“What do you mean by “dangerous”? It calls for a rather a subjective POV.”
I was asking you to let me know what your definition is. But hey, you’re right, it’s subjective, and speculative, so it’s probably not a good thing to bandy around the word “danger” when it comes to CO2 levels. Given that those in the skeptic camp are skeptical of *catastrophic* AGW, maybe you fit into that camp just perfectly -> the globe is warming at a certain rate, human CO2 emissions contribute to that, and it’s terribly unlikely that the change in climate is really all that different compared to other historical changes.
“Unless the forcing is negative, it doesn’t matter because the CO2 is still doing its business in the background.”
It doesn’t matter if the forcings at any given point in time are negative or positive, if CO2 is a bit player, it can do all of its business it likes, and it’ll never overwhelm the other changes in climate.
“And yet again, those ppms when combined with the other ~1% of the atmosphere = 33k and are responsible for life as we know it.”
No, those ppms, and the other ~1%, *AND* the water vapor in the atmosphere are responsible for life as we know it. Excluding the most abundant GHG in the mix is simply bad analysis.
Take yourself a vacuum chamber. Fill it with some of earth’s atmosphere. Measure the water vapor content. Now take another vacuum chamber, and fill it with water vapor, without all the other gases. Did it all turn solid magically? The idea that it is impossible to have a water vapor atmosphere without any other GHGs is absolutely unsupportable.
The scenario is that the other GHGs have never existed. The planet’s avg temp is -20C. How is water going to behave?
“6,543,114,240 ppm”
So, exactly how do you squeeze 6,543 parts together to make that bit of math work? I’m not sure if you can create a 6500% CO2 atmosphere
Exactly.
“What do you mean by “dangerous”? It calls for a rather a subjective POV.”
I was asking you to let me know what your definition is. But hey, you’re right, it’s subjective, and speculative, so it’s probably not a good thing to bandy around the word “danger” when it comes to CO2 levels. Given that those in the skeptic camp are skeptical of *catastrophic* AGW, maybe you fit into that camp just perfectly -> the globe is warming at a certain rate, human CO2 emissions contribute to that, and it’s terribly unlikely that the change in climate is really all that different compared to other historical changes.
“[C]atastrophic” is subjective as well and I would think that meant human extinction. I don’t think anything near that will happen. Even if the human population were to crash, emissions would fall as that was happening and then return to lower levels before the population could rebound.
The tangible problems will be shifting and changing climate zones. Hits on agricultural production and the potential for repeats of 100-year weather events annually, like some of what we’ve witnessed this year.
“Unless the forcing is negative, it doesn’t matter because the CO2 is still doing its business in the background.”
It doesn’t matter if the forcings at any given point in time are negative or positive, if CO2 is a bit player, it can do all of its business it likes, and it’ll never overwhelm the other changes in climate. “
No a positive forcing may exacerbate or just hide CO2’s forcing but it’s not going to reduce it. Negative forcings can cancel it out, but those forcings have to be in play, and they’re not.
“And yet again, those ppms when combined with the other ~1% of the atmosphere = 33k and are responsible for life as we know it.”
No, those ppms, and the other ~1%, *AND* the water vapor in the atmosphere are responsible for life as we know it. Excluding the most abundant GHG in the mix is simply bad analysis.
See above.
“The scenario is that the other GHGs have never existed. The planet’s avg temp is -20C. How is water going to behave?”
You’re making two assertions there, not just one. Asserting the other GHGs are gone is assertion #1. Asserting that the planet’s average temp is -20C is assertion #2. The second assertion does not follow from the first.
Now, you grant me you can’t create a 6500% CO2 atmosphere to turn the arctic tropical, so why would it be useful at all to back of the napkin pretend that adding water vapor would turn it tropical? The question you’re asking there has no relevance at all to the idea that H2O is a powerful GHG in its own right, and does not provide its greenhouse effect only because other GHGs are around.
“The tangible problems will be shifting and changing climate zones.”
You can have shifting and changing climate zones even while keeping the average global temperature steady. Moving from “average global temperature will increase” to “region A will change from X to Y, and region B will change from Y to Z” is a leap of monumental proportions. You’re moving the pea under the thimble.
“Negative forcings can cancel it out, but those forcings have to be in play, and they’re not.”
Of course they’re in play – without negative forcings, the earth would have already had a runaway feedback effect. What makes you think negative forcings don’t exist, and aren’t significant in relation to the effect of CO2 concentration?
Krischel,
“The scenario is that the other GHGs have never existed. The planet’s avg temp is -20C. How is water going to behave?”
You’re making two assertions there, not just one. Asserting the other GHGs are gone is assertion #1. Asserting that the planet’s average temp is -20C is assertion #2. The second assertion does not follow from the first.
Yes it does. Without the radiative properties of those GHGs, the planet snowballs.
But I was wrong. Apparently all you have to do is remove the CO2:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/11/more-on-feedbacks/comment-page-1/#comment-189962
It’s been out for a couple of weeks, and I may have missed citations of it here, but even so it’s worth citing again:
Andrew A. Lacis, Gavin A. Schmidt, David Rind, and Reto A. Ruedy, 2010: Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature. Science 15 October 2010: 356-359.
This differentiates clearly between forcing and internal feedbacks and quantifies the effects of the two quite nicely. Those results, with explanations such as the one here, may just help people understand all this better.
[Response: This short note provides a convenient and concise summary of the essentials of water vapor feedback, but it should be recognized that there is nothing there that hasn’t been said already innumerable times in various review articles on water vapor feedback, or other prior publications. In particular, the result that the Earth turns Snowball if you take out all the CO2 was published earlier by Voigt and Marotzke. See Voigt A and Marotzke J 2009: The transition from the present-day climate to a modern Snowball Earth. Climate Dynamics DOI 10.1007/s00382-009-0633-5 . Still, given all the confusion surrounding these issues they bear repeating. –raypierre]
Now, you grant me you can’t create a 6500% CO2 atmosphere to turn the arctic tropical, so why would it be useful at all to back of the napkin pretend that adding water vapor would turn it tropical? The question you’re asking there has no relevance at all to the idea that H2O is a powerful GHG in its own right, and does not provide its greenhouse effect only because other GHGs are around.
Because you obviously believe water vapor is a forcing that could turn the Arctic into a tropical paradise or at least cause the temps to remain where they are now without the other GHGs. It can’t. It’s a feedback.
“The tangible problems will be shifting and changing climate zones.”
You can have shifting and changing climate zones even while keeping the average global temperature steady. Moving from “average global temperature will increase” to “region A will change from X to Y, and region B will change from Y to Z” is a leap of monumental proportions. You’re moving the pea under the thimble.
I just said it’s a problem. Agriculture will have to follow those zones and/or adapt with GM crops and hope precipitation remains beneficial.
“Negative forcings can cancel it out, but those forcings have to be in play, and they’re not.”
Of course they’re in play – without negative forcings, the earth would have already had a runaway feedback effect. What makes you think negative forcings don’t exist, and aren’t significant in relation to the effect of CO2 concentration?
What negative forcings are currently swamping out CO2?
Doug, in addition to reading the Lacis et al paper, you should read Roy Spencer’s post on it http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/10/does-co2-drive-the-earths-climate-system-comments-on-the-latest-nasa-giss-paper/.
As well it is worth reading the comment by Andy Lacis (about 10 comments down) and Roy Spencer’s response.
The issue is more nuanced than you are attempting to pretend.
Roy failed to even address the issue in his reply, so I’m not sure why you think it was important.
He went rambling down a side road pontificating about ocean currents.
I don’t think there’s much that’s nuanced about the physics and am not “pretending” anything.
Plus, everyone knows the sun is the main driver of climate and without it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. So the claim scientists are trying to prove CO2 is the main driver of the climate system is pitifully weak. Such subterfuge doesn’t serve anyone well.
Doug, the post by Roy Spencer that I suggested you look at doesn’t even mention ocean currents. I suggest you are confused.
The title of the Lacis et al paper is “Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature.” So much for the weakness of the claim that scientists are trying to prove CO2 is the main driver of the climate system. I gather that, according to you it should have been “The Sun: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature.”
Anyway, IMO it should have been called “Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing GISS ModelE’s ‘Temperature’.” Their modeling exercise proves nothing about the behavior of the real Earth.
“Without the radiative properties of those GHGs, the planet snowballs.”
That’s your hypothesis, not a given.
“See Voigt A and Marotzke J 2009: The transition from
the present-day climate to a modern Snowball Earth. Climate Dynamics DOI
10.1007/s00382-009-0633-5”
That’s Voigt and Marotzke playing with a computer model – again, mistaking a hypothesis for a given.
“Because you obviously believe water vapor is a forcing that could turn the Arctic into a tropical paradise or at least cause the temps to remain where they are now without the other GHGs. It can’t. It’s a feedback.”
I believe water vapor is a GHG. I believe GHGs account for some measure of our experienced temperature beyond tinker toy black box radition calculations. I do not believe that some GHGs behave in arbitrary ways compared to others, with some relegated to “forcing” and others relegated to “feedback”, or with some changing from “forcing” to “feedback” depending on the particular time period. I do understand that some GHGs reduce our radiation more than others (or in different spectra). I have not been convinced that H2O is such a minor GHG that without CO2 in the atmosphere, temperatures on earth would crash to the point where gaesous water was not possible.
“I just said it’s a problem. Agriculture will have to follow those zones and/or adapt with GM crops and hope precipitation remains beneficial.”
It’s a problem that occurs regardless of whether or not there is AGW. Are you going to make the argument that AGW will somehow accelerate regional climate changes and transitions?
“What negative forcings are currently swamping out CO2?”
Clouds. Plant growth. I’m sure we could think of others.
“Without the radiative properties of those GHGs, the planet snowballs.”
That’s your hypothesis, not a given.
“See Voigt A and Marotzke J 2009: The transition from
the present-day climate to a modern Snowball Earth. Climate Dynamics DOI
10.1007/s00382-009-0633-5″
That’s Voigt and Marotzke playing with a computer model – again, mistaking a hypothesis for a given.
Right, running the physics is a hypothesis … Not, it’s an experiment.
“Because you obviously believe water vapor is a forcing that could turn the Arctic into a tropical paradise or at least cause the temps to remain where they are now without the other GHGs. It can’t. It’s a feedback.”
I believe water vapor is a GHG. I believe GHGs account for some measure of our experienced temperature beyond tinker toy black box radition calculations. I do not believe that some GHGs behave in arbitrary ways compared to others, with some relegated to “forcing” and others relegated to “feedback”, or with some changing from “forcing” to “feedback” depending on the particular time period. I do understand that some GHGs reduce our radiation more than others (or in different spectra). I have not been convinced that H2O is such a minor GHG that without CO2 in the atmosphere, temperatures on earth would crash to the point where gaesous water was not possible.
What have you read to educate yourself on the matter? Or are you just operating off of biased intuition? What makes you believe the behaviors described are “arbitrary”?
Can you show me a paper or research which indicates tropospheric water vapor warms frigid air and doesn’t precipitate out? How do you explain rain and snow?
And, BTW, I did say that there would probably be some sublimation.
“I just said it’s a problem. Agriculture will have to follow those zones and/or adapt with GM crops and hope precipitation remains beneficial.”
It’s a problem that occurs regardless of whether or not there is AGW. Are you going to make the argument that AGW will somehow accelerate regional climate changes and transitions?
Well obviously if the projected temperature increases occur, there would be acceleration above and beyond the norm. Changing rainfall patterns, drought areas etc. One projection I’ve observed is Oklahoma and Kansas would need to grow something other than winter wheat.
“What negative forcings are currently swamping out CO2?”
Clouds. Plant growth. I’m sure we could think of others.
From the latest I’ve read, clouds are a net positive forcing. Most plant growth’s uptake of CO2 is limited by available N and it’s not a given that plants will increasingly remove more and more CO2, not that plant removal of CO2 from the system, swamps the effects.
That’s your hypothesis, not a given. :-)
“Right, running the physics is a hypothesis … Not, it’s an experiment.”
Computer models are a *thought* experiment, not an empirical one. If I build a computer model that will predict a snowball earth with the removal of water vapor, and run that model and it shows a snowball earth with the removal of water vapor, I’ve only shown that I can build a model that behaves like I want it to. A real physics experiment is running something like the LHC.
“Can you show me a paper or research which indicates tropospheric water vapor warms frigid air and doesn’t precipitate out? How do you explain rain and snow?”
My dear McGee, whatever are you ranting about? Are you saying that any GHG that precipitates magically goes from being a “forcing” to a “feedback”?
“Well obviously if the projected temperature increases occur, there would be acceleration above and beyond the norm.”
That doesn’t follow. Projected average temperature increases can occur without accelerating change of regional climate, if those temperature increaseses are distributed in any number of combinations. Since you’ve given us no reason to believe you can predict either the location or timing of regional climate changes, why should I accept your assertion as a given?
“From the latest I’ve read, clouds are a net positive forcing.”
And from the latest I’ve read, clouds are a strong negative forcing. How would you develop an experiment that would falsify either hypothesis? A model, perhaps? :)
“Most plant growth’s uptake of CO2 is limited by available N and it’s not a given that plants will increasingly remove more and more CO2”
Well, we can put boundaries all over the place (like the absorption spectrum of CO2), but you asked for a negative forcing, and I gave you some :) I don’t have the details on exactly how negative either clouds or plants may be, but it’s at least reasonable to believe they must be taken into account before any vaguely realistic model is available.
And if climatologists do carry malpractice insurance, is it most commonly claims made or occurrence-based?
—
In response to Bart R‘s comment edging off the screen above (upon whom “smart” is obviously “wasted” and whose idea of “kind” is government coercion in order to forestall a global climate change that continues to fail of proof with regard to anthropogenicity), it might be remarked that I have not succumbed to “faulty and pointless programs of dogmatic indoctrination” because the intellectual integrity that arms one with the sort of skeptical attitude that the alarmists have forsworn reliably preserves one against burn-out.
Heck, no wonder Bart R embraces the mendacities and malfeasances of civil government gone juramentado. Hoffer had The True Believer pretty well taped, didn’t he?
Look, Bart R, if my “barbs” are “too-clever” for you, and you’re so bereft of “the art or study of using language effectively and persuasively” (number one definition of “rhetoric“) that you can’t essay a supported position in a public forum, you need no longer wonder why the Luddite environmentalist authoritarians bent upon using “man-made climate change” as an excuse for condemning humanity to poverty, starvation and death continue to fail in putting their case convincingly before increasing majorities of your fellow Canadians as well as the citizens of these United States.
The average layman – bereft of familiarity with scientific method and previously paralyzed by the doublespeak of the alarmists – are gaining increased insight into the blatant mendacity of the “Cargo Cult Science” [PDF] behind the AGW fraud, and they’re not only not buying this garbage any more but they’re really, really angry about the massive rip-off that’s been inflicted upon them thus far.
Forget Mr. Cuccinelli in Virginia. I’m waiting for the membership of the ATLA to pick up the scent of warmist blood in the water.
I wonder what kind of professional liability insurance coverage one finds among climatologists?
==
Addendum: There are members of the Plaintiff’s Bar who have announced online their intention to bring suits for both compensatory and punitive damages against climatologists participant in the AGW fraud, with particular attention paid to the C.R.U. correspondents exposed in the Climategate information release.
Hadn’t picked that up when first I submitted this post. Does this not add considerably to the discussion, Dr. Curry?
****RICH I like your content, just lose the slags on bart.
—
Doc
This is very improved. Like an open slate. Good idea. You like a wide stance, so I’m all for the new thread.
Now if we could clear the air a bit, you very much mistake my position, and possibly confuse my identity.
I’m as anti-authoritarian in my sympathies and philosophies as one can get, and far more sceptical than most. Which may be why I find you so entertaining to chat with online.
(It’s okay, you don’t have to worry about taking personal responsibility for not being able to understand what you read. It’s well known the style of rectitude practiced in parochial schools produces more the ability to ape than to apprehend.)
So, as we’re agreed in our sceptical opposition to ‘government coersion’ (though I find that term an intellectually lazy contrivance, since you like it, I’ll let that go for the sake of friendship), perhaps I could impose on you, in friendship, to help a fellow anti-totalitarian out with another thread on the Disagreement page.
You see, there I’m trying to argue against ‘government coersion’, but stephen has made a point I’m not sure how best to address.
Perhaps if you’d be so kind as to peruse the Disagreement page, look at that thread, and let us know with your best intellectual integrity how Locke et cie might reply?
Bart R, you can credit Dr. Curry with what you perceive to be the “open slate.” While allowing you to enter impertinent (and I use the word precisely) personalities, she withheld my posts for allegedly “slagging” you in kind. This kind of slanted simulacrum of politesse, however, is nothing more or less than what is expected in warmist Web sites. Dr. Curry has proven less inclined to foreclose rejoinder than the great majority of such folk, though I am not at all familiar with her practices before the Climategate revelations finally struck home.
Be advised, however, that I give not a damn for your so-called “approval,” nor do I accept uncritically your qualification to speak one way or another about (for example) the character and qualities of parochial school education. Make a case regarding your own experience and other bases for claiming a fund of knowledge on that subject; otherwise it’s yet another of your argumentum ad hominem impertinences.
That civil government is an agency of armed coercion is not really to be argued against, and I note that you do not offer reasoned argument to that effect. Merely the naked assertion that you subjectively “find that term an intellectually lazy contrivance.”
The essence of “global climate disruption” alarmists’ political policy positions is the use of active government coercion in pursuit of reducing their fellow citizens’ collective and individual “carbon footprint,” the amount of carbon dioxide emissions caused by the goods and services which these people access. The proposals voiced by these mock-environmentalist authoritarians are not designed to persuade – as I have observed before – but to compel compliance wholly against their fellow citizens’ consent, all in pursuit of an objective which is not even theoretically incontrovertible in any real sense.
As for “the Disagreement page,” a quick but thorough scan thereof indicates that your protestation of an “anti-totalitarian” inclination (above) is not supported by what you have posted in that forum.
With particular reference to this post of yours, moreover, I find reason sufficient to conclude that your appreciation of economics lacks that base of knowledge required to lead you to valid conclusions.
For example, for you to write as you had there of “This subsidy of suburbanites by inner city occupants, of oil companies and auto makers by pedestrians and train riders” is … surprising.
Well, actually, its got me flummoxed. Where the heck did you come up with that, anyway? I’ve just spent some time wrestling through Howard Gillette’s Camden After the Fall (2006) recounting what purports to be a historical analysis of the economic devastation that has swamped the city in and around which I’ve lived all my life, and only in such a politically purblind and utterly “contrafactual” compendium of half-truths and wholesale fantasies could I find an assertion such as the one of yours I’ve just quoted.
For one thing, to assert that the “inner city occupants” have provided any sort of “subsidy of suburbanites” implies that the former have some kind of productive advantage which can be (and has been) leveraged to the benefit of the latter when in fact the de-industrialization – and to some considerable extent the depopulation – of the urban centers over the past half-century and more has resulted in precisely the opposite condition, with the “suburbanites” propping up the decaying “inner city” by way of taxation of various kinds.
This is not an effort at distraction on my part, Bart R. If your support of the various policies stridently advocated by the “global warming” alarmists is predicated upon a similarly … surprising … perception of factual reality, then much has been provided to explain why you and I differ so sharply in this forum, and are never likely to come to any kind of happy kumbaya moment of agreement.
—
QED
Krischel,
“Right, running the physics is a hypothesis … Not, it’s an experiment.”
Computer models are a *thought* experiment, not an empirical one. If I build a computer model that will predict a snowball earth with the removal of water vapor, and run that model and it shows a snowball earth with the removal of water vapor, I’ve only shown that I can build a model that behaves like I want it to. A real physics experiment is running something like the LHC.
And that’s not what they did, but it’s obvious now it’ll never be a valid model to you unless it shows what you want it to show.
“Can you show me a paper or research which indicates tropospheric water vapor warms frigid air and doesn’t precipitate out? How do you explain rain and snow?”
My dear McGee, whatever are you ranting about? Are you saying that any GHG that precipitates magically goes from being a “forcing” to a “feedback”?
You are either being deliberately obtuse, or this conversation is way over your head.
“Well obviously if the projected temperature increases occur, there would be acceleration above and beyond the norm.”
That doesn’t follow. Projected average temperature increases can occur without accelerating change of regional climate, if those temperature increaseses are distributed in any number of combinations. Since you’ve given us no reason to believe you can predict either the location or timing of regional climate changes, why should I accept your assertion as a given?
Do your own study.
“From the latest I’ve read, clouds are a net positive forcing.”
And from the latest I’ve read, clouds are a strong negative forcing. How would you develop an experiment that would falsify either hypothesis? A model, perhaps?
Which clouds? Upper level? Yes they are.
“Most plant growth’s uptake of CO2 is limited by available N and it’s not a given that plants will increasingly remove more and more CO2″
Well, we can put boundaries all over the place (like the absorption spectrum of CO2), but you asked for a negative forcing, and I gave you some I don’t have the details on exactly how negative either clouds or plants may be, but it’s at least reasonable to believe they must be taken into account before any vaguely realistic model is available.
I understand. A realistic model only being the one which conforms to your biases. Gotcha! You’re in paralysis mode. Good luck to you. I’m done trying to talk to a brick wall.
BTW, I asked for negative forcings which were currently swamping CO2.
“And that’s not what they did, but it’s obvious now it’ll never be a valid model to you unless it shows what you want it to show.”
It is what they did, and the whole *point* is that is shows whatever they want it to show – they *programmed it that way*. When they manually program in that clouds and water vapor are no more than feedbacks on temperature, of *course* they’re going to get the results they intended.
“Well obviously if the projected temperature increases occur, there would be acceleration above and beyond the norm.”
That doesn’t follow. Projected average temperature increases can occur without accelerating change of regional climate, if those temperature increaseses are distributed in any number of combinations. Since you’ve given us no reason to believe you can predict either the location or timing of regional climate changes, why should I accept your assertion as a given?
“Do your own study.”
So, we’ll take that as an admission that so far, nothing in the AGW research has shown any relevance to regional climate variations, and neither the details nor the rate of regional climate variations can be predicted by the models.
“I understand. A realistic model only being the one which conforms to your biases. Gotcha!”
Wow. That’s *exactly* the critique I’m trying to make about the models you’re putting forth.
You are a skeptic at heart :)
You’re right. I’m a skeptic. I skeptical of your ability to gain a third grader’s understanding of the world around you.
How apropos – the catastrophic AGW hypothesis *does* compare rather well to a third grader’s understanding of the world :)
Me, I be a college graduate, and I can critically look at uncertainty bars in graphs and tell a bad argument when I see one :)
Kiddy Kollege grad huh? Nap major? Well done.
Ask your first grade teacher why water vapor precipitates out of colder air rather than heating it up and why that is a reason it is a feedback, rather than a forcing.
Then, someday when you’ve taken off your training wheels you can learn about the very much non-arbitrary radiative forcing and climate and model physics.
Have your teacher explain this to you:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/water-vapour-feedback/
“Ask your first grade teacher why water vapor precipitates out of colder air rather than heating it up and why that is a reason it is a feedback, rather than a forcing.”
McGee, poor man, have you no knowledge of thermodynamics at *all*? Precipitation is an exothermic process – precipitation of water vapor into rain does *not* make the air colder, it heats it up. Precipitate enough water vapor, and yes, my child, it will heat up the air.
Want to reconsider that feedback/forcing fallacy?
You both risk not participating in the same argument.
Condensation releases latent heat but occurs in a saturated environment accompanied by a falling temperature. In a super-saturated environment it can occur with a rising temperature.
The intent of words like colder, heats, make, heating, etc., can be ambiguous in this context so you can both be right in your own terms, likewise I think I am right in my own terms.
Perhaps I should have written:
We all risk not participating in the same argument.
Alex
Agreed, Alex. Here’s McGee’s sentence:
“water vapor precipitates out of colder air rather than heating it up”
This is in defense of his position that CO2 is a GHG, but H2O is not (a position I haven’t seen taken by anyone in the AGW argument anywhere else). Now obviously, if you have a big fat balloon of water vapor, and release it into an atmosphere that is below freezing, as the water vapor precipitates, it will heat the atmosphere. Perhaps not enough to stop all the water vapor from precipitating, but water in gaseous form has energy, and that energy has to go somewhere when it solidifies.
Now *maybe* what he’s trying to say is that H2O may in fact *temporarily* warm the atmosphere through its state change, but it will eventually completely precipitate out and turn solid, and then be unable to have any greenhouse effect.
That all being said, the real issue here started with the running of a model, with certain assumptions on what is a “feedback” and what is a “forcing”, and it got results that were entirely predictable – after all, it was programmed that way.
From Dr. Spencer (http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/10/does-co2-drive-the-earths-climate-system-comments-on-the-latest-nasa-giss-paper/):
“After assuming clouds and water vapor are no more than feedbacks upon temperature, the Lacis et al. paper then uses a climate model experiment to ‘prove’ their paradigm that CO2 drives climate — by forcing the model with a CO2 change, resulting in a large temperature response!
Well, DUH. If they had forced the model with a water vapor change, it would have done the same thing. Or a cloud change. But they had already assumed water vapor and clouds cannot be climate drivers.”
Building a model that assumes water vapor and clouds cannot be climate drivers is prejudging the conclusion. Asserting that water vapor and clouds cannot be climate drivers because H2O precipitates, is tenuous, at best. Citing a one paragraph blog post on RealClimate that has no citations for their own assertions certainly doesn’t help either.
McGee started his entry into the conversation originally with, “You’ve gotten in bed with some of the worst type of slanderous charlatans there are.” I’d argue that his subsequent behavior, and inability to focus on the science, is at odds with his original statement.
I never said water vapor is not a GHG, I said it is a feedback, not a forcing.
The model is accurate because it is based on the physics and is supported by the observations. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is controlled by and dependent on the temperature. The atmosphere doesn’t first fill with water vapor, and then warm. So for there to be water vapor, or clouds for that matter, in the atmosphere, something must first trigger warming and that trigger is the other 1 percent of the atmosphere known as GHGs.
Here’s your statement:
“there wouldn’t be any water vapor to be a GHG if we removed the other ~1% of the gasses in the atmosphere that are GHGs, because water vapor is a feedback and would not exist w/o those other gasses. ”
You’re saying here that without the existence of other gases, water vapor cannot exist – as if it’s GHG properties are dependent upon the existence of these other trace gases. So it’s a “magical” GHG that only exists if other GHGs are there to prop it up. Asserting that water vapor is such a special beastie (“feedback” vs. “forcing”), is an *assumption*, not a proven.
“The model is accurate because it is based on the physics and is supported by the observations. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is controlled by and dependent on the temperature. ”
They’ve obviously got it wrong, because water vapor in the atmosphere also has significant effects on the temperature, cloud formations being particularly tricky (sometimes warming, sometimes cooling). The model is not an accurate reflection of reality by *any* stretch of imagination -> at best, it’s a stick figure drawing of the Mona Lisa. It’s a tinker toy, not an empirical experiment.
From Dr. Spencer:
“Just because water vapor responds quickly to temperature change does not mean that there are no long-term water vapor changes (or cloud changes) — not due to temperature — that cause climate change. Asserting so is a non sequitur, and just leads to circular reasoning.”
Let’s get down to brass tacks though – if you remove the assumption that H2O is simply a “feedback” and cannot act as “forcing”, how would you engineer an experiment that would falsify the hypothesis “H2O is a feedback and cannot ever be a forcing”
If cloud formation can undergo long term formation changes due to extra-terrestrial input (cosmic rays), we can falsify A, perhaps? http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/influence-of-cosmic-rays-on-the-earth.pdf
How much water vapor is there going to be at -20C?
It depends on the pressure.
PV=nRT
How about this question – how many clouds in any given area are there going to be at -20C? Is cloud formation driven primarily by temperature?
The water vapour greenhouse effect occurs throughout the entire troposphere (Manabe and Strickler 1964 figs 8b, 8c.), and is strongest at the top around 8-10 km altitude where the temperature is about -50 C.
Not sure why you’re bringing up clouds, which you say are always a negative forcing, in to a discussion about water vapor warming -20C temps.
I’m not sure why you’re ignoring clouds. Do you think we can reach a better understanding of the complex system of climate by ignoring context, and instead focusing on artificially and arbitrarily bounded questions without enough detail?
List out your givens. Like:
Given – 1000ft^3 of an atmosphere at -20C and 1atm pressure
Given – a 100ft^3 thermally isolated box filled with 50lbs of water vapor at 1atm pressure (I’ll let you calculate out what the temperature of that ends up being)
Given – the isolated box is placed in the 1000ft^3 atmosphere, and opened
All other things equal, does the temperature of the 1000ft^3 atmosphere increase?
Be specific, McGee, otherwise you’re talking right past everyone – we don’t all see your mind movie.
Given you can’t account for 33K of warming with just water vapor, it’s a given you’ve given up trying.
McGee, you mistake uncertainty on one person’s part into some sort of proof that your assertion is correct – it is a logical fallacy. Just because you can’t account for all the drivers of cloud cover does not mean that someone else’s theory of underground leprechauns controlling it is true.
I’ve challenged you to be specific with your “water vapor cannot heat an atmosphere unless other GHGs are there”, and thus far, you’re failing to step up to the plate. For a man who accused skeptics of doing things “easier to do then actually address the flaws in their understanding of the science”, you’ve sidestepped any sort of specificity time and time again.
So what is the problem, McGee? Is the challenge of being specific simply beyond your superficial understanding of the issue? Is your self-perception that of a person cheering on the experts on their side, instead of actually trying to comprehend the issues? Your “us vs. them” mentality clouds your ability to be coherent, and makes your protests against those you would label “skeptics” and “deniers” particularly hollow.
Of course, I’m more than happy to be corrected in my assessment of you thus far, if you do surprise me and choose to be specific in your assertions. The choice is surely yours.
Specificity? I provided two citations. What have you provided other then the assertion water vapor is a forcing that can magically warm the air w/o precipitating out. Oh, you performed a hand wave towards clouds, but they don’t help you with warming the planet since you assert they’re a net negative.
“I provided two citations.”
Neither of your citations did anything to support your bald, and unspecific, assertion that H2O vapor will not heat an atmosphere that starts at -20C. Your unwarranted jump from the contents of your citations, to your blanket statement, is simply that. Here’s your statement again:
“Ask your first grade teacher why water vapor precipitates out of colder air rather than heating it up and why that is a reason it is a feedback, rather than a forcing.”
Your setup in this scenario is lacking specificity. As Alex pointed out, because you’re not being specific, the implications and definitions of “heating” can have ambiguous meaning. I’m asking you to support your assertion with specifics on how you would demonstrate your assertion.
If I ran a first grade experiment, and added Xft^3 water vapor to a -20C atmosphere of Yft^3 at 1atm, I guarantee you that as the H2o precipitated, it would heat the atmosphere. Obviously, you’ve got some other idea in mind, with perhaps other caveats that you haven’t stated, and I’m simply trying to give you the opportunity (again and again), to either admit your error, or clarify your specific intention with your statement.
I commend this article to the debate:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/09/five-reasons-why-water-vapor-feedback-might-not-be-positive/
Thanks, if accurate, it’s another nail in Krischel’s coffin.
Krischel,
When I say warming, I’m not talking about 0.001C warming. I’m talking about warming and keeping the planet to an avg temp of ~13C without the ‘non-condensing” GHGs.
McGee, you do realize that if it’s accurate, it’s a nail in the whole “H2O is a positive feedback” proposition, a key tenet of the AGW issue. If H2O is a negative feedback, then its negative feedback is going to overwhelm any minor effect CO2 could possibly have. AGW only works if you assume that H2O is only a “positive feedback” and not a “forcing”, and that it only takes a small change in CO2 “forcing” to generate an even greater feedback in H2O.
You are a skeptic, aren’t you?
P.S.: Still waiting for your specifics on what you meant by your first grade experiment…
Hogwash.
The point to the entire exercise is that it doesn’t really matter whether water vapor is neg or pos, or both on short timescales.
FYI, a feedback can also be a forcing – neg or pos.
Mr. McGee, you fail to understand one of the basic claims by AGW supporters.
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/WaterVapor.htm
“According to the models, as the Earth warms more water evaporates from the ocean, and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere increases. Since water vapor is the main greenhouse gas, this leads to a further increase in the atmospheric temperature. The models assume that changes in temperature and water vapor will result in a constant relative humidity (i.e. as temperatures increase, the specific humidity increases, keeping the relative humidity constant. This is one of the most controversial aspects of the models. Studies have contradictory findings regarding this. Models that include water vapor feedback with constant relative humidity predict the Earth’s surface will warm more than twice as much over the next 100 years as models that contain no water vapor feedback. The water vapor feedback issue is a crucial one since without the feedback, not only are the models wrong, there can be no significant warming.”
“FYI, a feedback can also be a forcing – neg or pos.”
That’s exactly what I’m trying to explain to you – H2O can be both a feedback (+ or -), and a forcing. You’re trying to assert that H2O can only be a positive feedback, and never a forcing.
Pay attention. I said it was the point of this exercise, not the point for AGW or whatever distortion you’re attempting.
I never said it could not be a forcing. It’s a feedback wrt the other GHGs. And without them, it’s just surface ice.
You’re not very good at being consistent. Here’s your prior statement:
“Because you obviously believe water vapor is a forcing that could turn the Arctic into a tropical paradise or at least cause the temps to remain where they are now without the other GHGs. It can’t. It’s a feedback.”
So what is it, McGee? Are you finally correcting yourself and admitting that H2O can be a forcing? WRT to surface ice, did you see the other post by Nullius about the temps of water vapor in the upper atmosphere?
You started your comments here with ad hominem attacks against skeptics, and you’ve continued to avoid becoming explicit in your assertions, instead doing more of what you call “hand-waving”, as if the simple repetition of your assertions make them more true. This is hardly the case.
So far, you’ve vacillated back and forth, but we have you on record:
1) asserting H2O can only be a feedback, not a forcing
2) admitting H2O can be a forcing
3) admitting H2O could be a negative feedback (the nail in the coffin of CO2 based AGW)
4) asserting that H2O in the atmosphere is solely controlled by temperature
5) defending the hockey stick by Mann that creates hockey sticks out of white noise
6) asserting that the rate of change we’re seeing isn’t unprecedented
7) asserting that CO2 is not the primary driver of climate
8) asserting that those skeptics who do not believe CO2 is the primary driver of climate are “slanderous charlatans”
9) asserting that global temperature increase necessarily increases regional climate variability
Did I miss anything? Half of what you assert puts you firmly in the skeptic camp, but you still see yourself as a defender of the scientific consensus as put forth by the IPCC? Really?
Just for the sake of accuracy and completeness – “defending the hockey stick by Mann that creates hockey sticks out of white noise”: actually, Mann’s methods can’t create hockeysticks out of white noise, but they do create them out of red noise over 90% of the time.
(Unless you was referring to the fact that you can construct red noise out of white noise by filtering – which is technically true, although no statistician would use the phrase that way.)
I stand corrected, thank you for the clarification Nullius. My experience with red and white noise is from the background of a MOOG analog synth (well, actually they have pink noise and white noise), not a statistician, so I had not realized there was an important distinction there.
It’s well worth playing with, if you have the time and a spreadsheet package.
If you construct a sequence such that the first term is zero, then each term thereafter is 0.99 times the previous term plus a random number centred on zero, then the result is one example (from an infinite family of more complicated cases) of red noise.
s(0) = 0
s(n+1) = 0.99 * s(n) + random
(If you happen to use Excel, a suitable formula would be something like [A2] = 0.99*A1+NORMSINV(RAND()) which gives a normally distributed random number of mean zero. You need to graph a few thousand terms to see the behaviour.)
The mean of the distribution of every term is zero, so there is no actual trend, but if you look at short sections of it there often appears to be; a property that has led many an analyst astray.
I would recommend to anyone who has never seen it before actually performing this experiment. Understanding the pitfalls of this type of data is at the heart of a lot of the debate about trends and statistical significance.
somehow this got caught in spam filter
I also commend this article to the debate:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/09/why-33-deg-c-for-the-earths-greenhouse-effect-is-misleading/
“But what many people don’t realize is that the 33 deg. C of surface warming is not actually a measure of the greenhouse warming – it represents the balance between TWO competing effects: a greenhouse warming effect of about 60 deg. C (the so-called “pure radiative equilibrium” case), and a convective cooling effect of about 30 deg. C. When these two are combined, we get the real-world observed “radiative-convective equilibrium” case.
This has been known since at least 1964 (Manabe and Strickler, 1964). It was also discussed in Dick Lindzen’s 1990 paper, Some Coolness Regarding Global Warming, which is when I became aware of its significance.”
So, not so simple after all.
Kristalballs,
WRT to surface ice, did you see the other post by Nullius about the temps of water vapor in the upper atmosphere?
The question was “how much” and would it be enough to trigger the 33K greenhouse effect when the entire planet was avg -21C.
1) asserting H2O can only be a feedback, not a forcing
2) admitting H2O can be a forcing
It is a forcing in the stratosphere. And IMO, should be considered a forcing once the feedback is initiated.
3) admitting H2O could be a negative feedback (the nail in the coffin of CO2 based AGW)
No such admission. I didn’t even read the link. I just said if accurate, it didn’t help your argument.
4) asserting that H2O in the atmosphere is solely controlled by temperature
Rightfully so. You’ve provided no evidence of the amount increasing as temperatures cooled. OTH, Pinatubo showed water vapor decreased with temps, as expected.
5) defending the hockey stick by Mann that creates hockey sticks out of white noise
The only white noise around here is you. While Mann et al may be your hobby horse, and an “icon” that must be crushed, the rest of the planet has moved on after witnessing it being supported by multiple other researchers.
6) asserting that the rate of change we’re seeing isn’t unprecedented
I’ve corrected you on this once, which now reveals you as an intentional liar.
7) asserting that CO2 is not the primary driver of climate
asserting that those skeptics who do not believe CO2 is the primary driver of climate are “slanderous charlatans”
I don’t know of anyone who believes CO2 is the primary driver of climate. They all know the sun is. Without the sun, there would be no climate.
The fact they are slanderous charlatans has nothing to do with what they believe, but is based on their actions and behaviors.
9) asserting that global temperature increase necessarily increases regional climate variability
I will agree this may not be the case as you’ve put it. A 0.002C increase isn’t going to make much of a difference, but of course I was speaking of a 2-4C increase.
FYI, if you’re going to use the phrase “ad hominem” you should probably look up the meaning so in the future you use it accurately. I could say you were an anarcho-libertarian scum bag and that wouldn’t be an ad hominem. It would be an ad hominem if I said your arguments are wrong because you were an anarcho-libertarian scum bag.
“It would be an ad hominem if I said your arguments are wrong because you were an anarcho-libertarian scum bag.”
The lady doth protest too much. You’re obviously getting emotional about the subject, are unable to focus on the details of the science, and are behaving poorly because of it. While not explicitly ad hominem, nobody is missing your implicit ad hominem attack -> your retort to well founded argument is not a measured, rational response, but juvenile name calling, “slanderous charlatans”.
Please, calm yourself down before joining the conversation again.
“No such admission. I didn’t even read the link. I just said if accurate, it didn’t help your argument.”
LOL! I *knew* there was a reason you’re not following along – you’re just not reading! It is only a speculation on my part, of course, but something tells me that this is typical of AGW apologists – you simply don’t take the time to read the skeptic arguments, and dismiss them on faith alone. Bravo for providing us with a prime case example!
“The fact they are slanderous charlatans has nothing to do with what they believe, but is based on their actions and behaviors.”
Wouldn’t we be correct in applying that label to you, based on your actions here? You’ve both slandered people, and you’ve been practicing quackery by arguing *without even reading things you think support your position*!
Does the shoe fit McGee?
1. I didn’t read it because it wasn’t relevant to the argument. Buy a clue.
2. People who insist on calling others frauds are “slanderous charlatans” no matter how you try to spin it. But this discussion with you is proof you care not about ethics nor honesty.
Mr. McGee, you’re embarrassing yourself. At least be man enough to admit that you didn’t read it because your superficial look indicated a possible rebuttal to me, and that was enough for you to pounce on it without further investigation. If you can’t be honest with yourself, you can’t be honest with anyone.
“this discussion with you is proof you care not about ethics nor honesty.”
Actually, to my chagrin, I’ve been focusing on your ethics perhaps a bit too much – your hypocrisy and dishonesty is a distraction from discussing the actual science, and I apologize for belaboring the point that is painfully obvious to anyone reading your posts.
Back to the science, you claimed:
“I don’t know of anyone who believes CO2 is the primary driver of climate. They all know the sun is.”
Here’s an example for you:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/lacis101015.pdf
“From the foregoing, it is clear that CO2 is the key atmospheric gas that exerts principal control over the strength of the terrestrial greenhouse effect.”
and
“Of the climate control knobs relevant to current climate, those on the solar side of the energy balance ledger show only negligible impact. Several decades of solar irradiance monitoring have not detected any long-term trends in solar ir- radiance beyond the 11-year oscillation associ- ated with the solar sunspot cycle.”
Now, perhaps you want to more clearly quantify what you mean by “driver” or “climate”, in order to reconcile your position to the plain statements by Lacis, Schmidt, Rind and Ruedy. More specificity on your part will move the conversation forward, ad hominem attacks will only solidify the poor perception of AGW supporters we already have. I hope you choose your response wisely.
P.S.: Oh, and one last correction I forgot to make to you – the phrase “ad hominem attacks”, as I used to describe your name calling, is distinctly different than “argumentum ad hominem”. I can understand how you would confuse the two, and apologize for not being clearer in my critique of your behavior. Neither ad hominem attacks, nor argumentum ad hominem are appreciated or useful to this discussion.
I didn’t read it because it has no bearing on your claim that water vapor can maintain the 33K greenhouse effect. If it had said water vapor is 100 times the forcing CO2 is, I would have read it.
Any concern I had for how you feel about AGW or people who accept reality left me long ago.
Not one of those quotes claims CO2 is the primary driver of climate.
“Not one of those quotes claims CO2 is the primary driver of climate.”
Explain, don’t just assert.
“If it had said water vapor is 100 times the forcing CO2 is, I would have read it.”
How would you have know what it said without reading it?
Look, it’s fairly obvious you see yourself as in some sort of competition, and “scoring points” is more important to you than trying to understand what the other person is trying to say. Only you can change your attitude on that.
P.S. You’re a clueless tool. That’s an observation, not an “ad hominem attack”.
Mr. McGee, please, control yourself and your emotions. Personal attacks sarcastically characterized as “observations” aren’t helpful.
Scientists are often called upon to deliver testimony to congress. Under what circumstance was it ever the intent of any politician to acquire an educated perspective on the science rather than statements they could apply to serve their special interests? Really? What else could possibly have happened?
Science and politics do not mix because in science you must interpret the data and make the best possible explanation, in politics you count the money and the votes and construct the best possible story to serve the interests you represent. In politics the truth is irrelevant when inconvenient and as such ignored. In science there is only data and reasoned explanation in relentless pursuit of the truth. In science being skeptical is a positive force that drives better science. The exact same statement in politics is a tool to be wielded to divide and conquer, to achieve some political purpose.
What were you there to accomplish?
TL:W
The story goes something like this:
A sea captain was talking to a cabin boy about marine charts in old times. The captain explained that uncharted regions were often captioned “Here there be monsters.”
The cabin boy scoffed at the ignorance of the ancient cartographers.
“Ah”, said the captain, “but there always were.”
:-) Present company excepted, of course. For current charts, see:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/15/attribution-of-extreme-events/#comment-32870
Dear Judith
I recommend you to read the book of the French climatologist Marcel Leroux:
“Dynamic Analysis Of Weather And Climate” (Editor : Praxis).
In this book is presented the MPA model (Mobile Polar Anticyclon – Anticyclones Mobiles Polaires)
This model explains the transfer of heat and energy from the poles (N and S), and it has been validated by a very important project : FASTEX, with french, american, Canadian scientists. It is easy by observing satellites pictures, to see it is true. Of course, this model causes a lot of problem to the IPCC, because it “kills” their CO2 model!… For that reason, it has been rejected by the IPCC scientists as well as the meteorological institutions.
Sorry for my bad English…
Best Regards
Jean-Pierre
Dear Judith
Here you can find a synthetic presentation of the MPA model (working document of the French Academy of Science – it is in French-sorry about that…)
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/Echanges-meridiens-Chang-clim.pdf
Yours faithfully
Jean-Pierre
Dear Judith:
Thanks for fighting the good fight against dogma and political propaganda in science, and expopsing the errors of the GHG scaremongers as you have.
Again the bottom line is that the human role in carbon dioxide activity is infinitesimal compared even to such unsuspected contributors to CO2 in the atmosphere as animal respiration (30 to 60 times as much as fossil fuel burning, and that’s only one tiny part of naturally produced CO2 – human breathing alone accounts for a substantial portion of CO2 emitted, and is in turn a tiny percentage of the total emissions from animal respiration).
And the impact of CO2 on climate is iinfinitesimal compared to solar luminosity, the rate of heat transfer from the earth’s interior, and above all the role of water vapor, which constitutes anywhere from 30 to 140 times as much of the atmosphere as CO2 (and if anyone doesn’t think H2O is a heat trap, why does 100 degrees feel so much hotter at 90 percent humidity than it does at 10 percent humidity?)
The anthropogenic climate change theory can be blown completely out of the water by some very simple observations and even simpler arithmetic. The GHG scaremongers are twice wrong – dead wrong about the human contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere, and just as wrong about the effect of CO2 on climate.
And one should not forget the bullying tactics engaged in by the GHG scaremongers — everything from blocking puplication of skeptical scientific papers to shouting down skeptics at conferences to actual threats of bodily harm to skeptics. Those sorts of tactics are pretty good evidence that these people are acting on political agendas and know fulkl well their “science” is garbage. And there is the unbelievable hypocrisy and effrontery of Al Gore whining about oh, the poor folk in Third World countries and criticizing John Q. Public for driving an SUV, while he consumes 10 times as much electricity in his house (most of it from coal-fired power plants!) as the average American household, and flies hither and yon in a private Boeing 727 — while crying all the way to the bank with the millions he is making by profiteering from people’s fears.
Alice down the bunny opening time in reaction to the Medical United states content the explication of the content by its writer.Scientific American’s study on whether.Dupe or a peacemaker, and the several conversations in dunia ngeblog.First such time was in reaction to the press interest associated with the natural disaster conflicts, which was described in a Q&A with Keith Kloor at collide-a-scape.
Hi, I log on to your blog on a regular basis. Your humoristic
style is witty, keep up the good work!
I’m a retired clinical psychologist and now conflict expert…I enjoy very much getting involved in other people’s conflicts and give
tools and ideas to solve them. Conflicts are great to foster our self-growth!
so, if you haven’t thought about it before, I’m inviting you to go out and get
yourself a good enemy. Then, you can get to know yourself,
what are your goals in life, your values and how to manage real
anger in a productive way. What else can you wish for?
Appreciate your enemy today, for teaching you so many things.
… And, if you manage to solve the dispute and reconcile, its time to find another enemy!
Outstanding post,I will invest more time looking into this subject matter.
I was disappointed that the links to the articles and blogs referenced could not be accessed; except the original article post Katrina suggesting that global warming was causing an increase in the intensity of hurricanes. Apparently most of Prof. Curry’s original sources have been removed. Prof. Curry’s arguments are not new, please see the footnotes to Michael Creighton’s novel “The State of Fear” to understand the lucrative global warming fear mongering industry. Mr. Creighton speaks for me when he concludes in the author’s message; “Before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of climate models, I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of 10 years. 20 would be better.”