Climate Etc. has now attracted a critical (and growing) mass of “regulars.” I would like to try what Jeff Id did over at the Air Vent on his Reader Background thread. I will eventually provide a button for this thread on the top bar (next to blog rules), so it is easy to refer to (and add to).
I hope that each of you will post something on your background, how you became interested in climate science, and what/how you have been learning. You might want to briefly discuss your stance on an issue that you regard as important (or provide a link to your “defining” blog posts). If you have a blog or a professional web site, please provide a link. Its up to you what you want to post
Anonymice: I fully understand why many posters are anonymous, and will do everything I can to protect your anonymity.
A message to “lurkers,” especially to those of you that have been sufficiently motivated to write me long emails: I hope you will post on this thread and share your story (anonymously is fine.)
I look forward to finding out more about you!
Moderation note: keep your posts to 500 words, and maximum of 6 links (more than 6 will land you in moderation, to await manual approval). Don’t reply to anyone else’s post, to keep some semblance of organization to this. The Open thread is the place for discussion.
Barely a regular, but here goes: AB in biology, PhD in toxicology, but with a research project that was more immunologically-based. Pre-grad school work in toxicology. Publications in cellular immunology, vaccine research, radiation research (animal models, including pharmacokinetics). Positions in industry and government. Apparent short attention span.
Started reading about climate around 1980 – Science News & Views. Learned a great deal through reading the primary and secondary literature and sites like Real Climate and Open Mind. Oh, and Rabett Run, books like Kolbert, Romm, Schmidt, Archer.
Brief bio:
MSc in Chemistry, Russell Group uni (passed) – Specialist subject: computer modelling of high atmosphere reaction kinetics (failed – pesky experiments did not match my theories..bloody universe must have been malfunctioning that year :-) ).
30+ years in IT – technical, sales and management. Extensive experience of organising IT for effectiveness, and of project management. Lots of good projects and a few bad ones.
Now : semi-retired. Apart from part time work, devoting time to indulging my interests in a lot of different things. History, art, photography, gardening ..and of course, trying to understand climatology.
First seriously interested when I heard that the ‘Science is Settled’. And remembering my days in Atmsopheric Chemistry, I thought this was very unlikely. So I went looking for the proof. And the more I looked the less true it seemed. IMO there are huge problems with data collection and accuracy, an enormous and unproven logical leap to take from Arrhenius to CAGW (mysterious and unmeasurable ‘forcings’ that multiply the effect by 4 or more??) and a completely unjustifiable reliance on models with very limited (or no) verification of them by observation of the real world (see my bio above).
I concluded that the edifice is very very very shaky, and nothing that is predicted has much basis in fact.
And that was all before Climategate led me to the conclusion that there had been some very dodgy behaviour by a number of leading climatologists.
Poor proffessional behaviour, dreadful standards of data quality, reliance on untested models and a mysterious fudge factor .. is it any wonder that I am a sceptic?
Greetings, and thanks for the opportunity to share our views on your blog.
My background is that of an interested lay observer, with a libertarian political view. Given the ‘climate’ of the current debate (no pun intended), I would prefer to remain semi-anonymous, but anyone who wants to know my identity won’t have much trouble figuring it out, so… my name is Michael Curry. And no, as far as I know, we’re not related :D
My main concern regarding the present AGW/ACC issue is the appearance of close relationships and sympathetic belief systems between the most visible proponents of AGW/ACC theory, ‘main stream media’, and governmental policy makers.
The apparent presumption that aggressive state action must be taken, that it is the only ‘reasonable’ approach to addressing any AGW/ACC actually taking place, is one of the key elements that makes the pro-AGW/ACC position so repugnant to some (if not many) of the ‘outside’ observers. We’re not all statists, you know. Some of us do think that we’re capable of adapting without being forced to do so. Being insensitive to and dismissive of that viewpoint reeks of elitism and arrogance, and creates resistance to pro-AGW/ACC viewpoints.
The apparent presumption of the necessity for aggressive state action (and the regulatory schemes and taxation that comes with it) has elevated suspicions and concerns among opponents. Yes, I’m sure that organized opponents have taken advantage of and fed those concerns, but again, it seems the most vocal AGW/ACC proponents have opened the door for their opponents to exploit concerns.
The other concern: the use of doom-and-gloom scare tactics to sell the public on the need for coordinated state action, regulation, taxation, and what-have-you, also raises a red flag for many observers. If scientists and policy makers want to ‘educate’ people (honestly, without tricks or distortion) so they can make informed decisions, that’s fine. But the ‘sky is falling’ story line is getting old, some of us are old enough to remember the many predictions of looming disaster, and we’ve grown skeptical as a result — The ‘boy who cried wolf’ analogy, though tired, seems appropriate. People are tuning out. Please, let’s take a break from the impending disaster story line…
Lurker, occasionally uttering some nonsense here and there, still banned from WUWT from very mild sarcasm and no insult whatsoever and still listening or reading how “WUWT is so different from RC’s totalitarian regime” (yeah, right’o).
Architect, once-to-be a physicist, even reached 6th place on portugal’s olympiads despite knowing nothing about thermodynamics (only had physics, not chemistry like all the other blokes had), but had the misfortune to be able to draw very well and was thus redirected towards something between art and useful.
Trying, as you, to get a grip on the overall picture. It’s a mess, mostly because it’s so dependent on so many small details, and in that particular point, it’s very similar to a very difficult architectural design process… (iterate! iterate!).
Sensing some bitterness from Judith Curry lately, and thinking out loud that it is what happens when one tries to build bridges between polarized enraged brats. Largely agreeing with Pielke Jr. in most of his thinking, and secretly hoping that some genius creates a magical energy device that turns all this huge conversation completely obsolete.
I am a software engineer with degrees in general engineering and engineering science, including a thesis program for complex piping system simulation. I have decades of experience in mechanical engineering design, analysis, and engineering software development.
I am concerned over the politicization of science in general and climate science in particular. However, Climate Etc. has made me more optimistic. I believe the approach and technology that Dr. Curry and many of her Climate Etc. denizens are taking to address my concerns represents the state of the art. I applaud their efforts and wish I could be of more assistance.
I am a retired medical scientist with an MD/ PhD. In my latter years of academia I became interested in the methods of science particularly as they applied to disease and its treatment. One of the banes of this area is confusing correlation with causation. Having been raised on a farm, I have always been interested in weather and it was not too much of a stretch to become interested in climate. In browsing the internet it became clear that the same problems bedevil Climate Science that interfere with decision-making in Medicine i.e., sound data, models and distinguishing correlation from demonstration of causality – hence my occasional comment on this site.
Jim Cripwell. Graduated in Physics from Cavendish Labs, Cambridge at the end of WWII. My mentor was Prof. G.B.B.M. Sutherland, who was one of the pioneers of infra red spectroscopy. I did a short stint with him as a post-graduate. Learned about the IR absorption spectra of water and CO2.
When I first heard about CAGW, maybe 12 years ago, I knew it was wrong. In the intervening years, I have learned a great deal, and everything I have learned, confirms my initial reaction.
Gary Mirada is an A Class American RV currently living in the UK. A former believer having been indoctrinated by the BBC and the Times. Booker opened my eyes and I did not much like what I saw. To me we are all living in an age of madness! We need to go back to square one and start again. The science is not science and the policy based on the non-science is worse than the non-science.
Otherwise I think mankind is doing ok.
BSME, Professional Engineer, trained as a mechanical operator on Naval Nuclear power plants, worked at Texas Instruments as a research technician while I got my college degree, worked now as a lead mechanical engineer specializing in data centers/telecom.
Became first interested with the Ozone crisis; fully supported the elimination of CFC’s just to find out that this science was not fully developed. After reading more, got moe and more discouraged that my industries had spent huge sums to eliminate a non-problem, and now global warming proponents were proposing even more global schemes. Lack of openness, use of politicians as spokespersons, claiming the science was “settled” all aggravated my senses. Over marketing of things that are supposedly “Green” didn’t help either.
Love the environment, love saving energy, but believe AGW is missing the target for both. And no, I am not some Intelligent Design believer nor do I hate Democrats or the Obama administration nor do I believe the fluoride in the water is a government scheme etc. etc.
I like Dr. Curry’s blog because of the tone – more academic, less contentious (usually).
BSc Applied Chemistry, Msc Information Systems Engineering (cybernetics)
15 years plus in IT, Product Manager, Product Support Manager, Project Manger, European Customer Support Manager, and many other roles. All in the telco and banking world, working with multi million dollar, business critical and 99.999% availability systems (in theory ;) telephone banking, mobile phone pay as you go system, voice response system of all sorts)
Lot’s of very demanding customers, who, if they had seen the equivalent climategate emails or harry_read_me file, would be raising hell.
Did the US unfreeze their annual 6 figure funding of CRU yet?
I just stumbled across all this on the 20th November – 2009 on a uk news forum that linked to Watts Up (I was stuck at home for a week with swine flu – and followed it from the start), being pretty much lukewarm in the past. I was admittedly shocked how the MSM totally ignored it – even span against it.
That and the Copenhagen tidal wave video, engulfing a small child, manipulating a recent memory of the deaths of 250,oo0 people a few years ago caused by an earthquake(tsunami) was a shocking piece of political propaganda, repeated on the BBC uncritically.. sea level rises were ‘predicted’ to be 59cm by 2100.
So a shocking lie aimed at closing down debate.
And it made my 5 year old daughter have bad dreams asking about whether the girl was ok.. Also my daughter coming home from school turning of all the lights, because the ‘polar bears are dying, because of humans’
The blatant scare mongering by the BBC at the time and Gordon Brown (PM) calling me a ‘flat earther’ ‘anti science’ and ‘deniars’
Ed Milliband – Minister of State – Energy and Climate – saying ‘Climate Sabatouers’ (very close to ‘terrorist’)
The Greenpeace ‘Angry Kid’ video, 10:10 ‘No Pressure’ video, Uk Government ‘Bedtime Stories’ Act on CO2 video, Green peace – the ‘We Know Where you live’ incident. The Guardian and Realclimate just deleting any comment that challenged them or they disaproved of in their comments. Many other things, like the madness of windfarms in the UK, that will cost billions and fail to deliver power for the coming UK Energy Gap..
But mainly motivated now, by the relentless ‘global warming’ and ‘global citizen’ propaganda being aimed at children in the schools in the UK
(and that is not being over the top – google – Operation Climate Control – an online key stage 4 schools resource, for an example – funded by the UK government)
Brit with a Bsc. in zoology, followed by three years postgrad research in electronmicroscopical parasitology that never got written up due to illness followed by the need to make a living.
Done allsorts, but the main threads were 15 years in commercial computer development as far as project leader, later a switch to getting a teaching qualification, then a brief research post developing computerised earning materials that enabled me to get a fully-funded MPhil in education on the side (if you don’t have MPhils in the USA, they are masters’ degrees entirely by thesis – sort of a mini-PhD). All my subsequent teaching done online, now semi-retired.
Can’t remember exactly how I heard about climategate, but that was the start of my interest in the ongoing soap opera that still has me hooked. As I’ve mentioned in a number of postings already, I’m an agnostic with sceptical leanings.
Not fully sure why it fascinates me so much, but suspect it includes the philosophy and psychology of the thing. I’ve learnt quite a lot about polar bears, polarisation and perhaps principally people’s passion for polemics. At times, I’ve been drawn into that myself, but after a good slapping of my own wrist, usually managed to veer back into some semblance of sanity.
The climate issue could be a defining point in western civilisation. We could be looking back at it in fifty years and discussing why it led to its decline, or, alternatively, its revival; but I’m definitely with Buckminster Fuller when he said expectations usually turn out at right angles to expectations. Things are probably headed where we least suspect in this cybernetic spaghetti world, but I’ll probably be dead and gone when some resolution is reached. Never mind; in my next incarnation I’ll be back to wonder at past generations and play out whatever hand they – come to think, *I* as well as they – have dealt for me.
IMO, this venue is shaping up to be a balmy island in the bizarre and bitchy blogosphere. Surprising, given such scepticism as I still claim; but fair does, sanity is as sanity does, and there appear to be far fewer frontal lobotomies in evidence here than in some of the competition. I’d grant honourable exceptions to WUWT on its good days, as well as Bishop Hill. Climate audit is, sadly, a little too rarefied for my capabilities, but on the rare occasions I can actually divine what the heck Steve McIntyre and his amazing dancing acolytes are actually talking about, it looks good to me.
The thing about Judy’s place, if I might be forgiven for lapsing into doubtless inappropriate familiarity (but what the heck, I respect and admire the lady as a human being based on what I’ve read and seen here and elsewhere on the Web) is that I’ve noticed my thinking is actually evolving.
This always excites me when I notice it – wee-hee!: there’s life and a few brain cells in the old dog yet!
Hi Judith
I’ve just watched the panel discussion at Purvue. Yours was a brilliant and brave contribution to the debate.
My background is mainly in finance and I started taking an interest in climate science over a year ago. From a position of belief in AGW, I moved rapidly towards scepticism. Climategate confirmed what my research revealed and I was convinced that the AGW theory would collapse. When it didn’t, the refusal of politicians and the media to engage with me on the subject increased my determination to understand the breadth and complexity of the current state of climate science.
In the financial world, structural incentives often cause people to sustain unethical behaviour. The recent sub-prime crisis is a classic example. In view of the extraordinary amounts of money invested to prove and promote “human induced” climate change, it is not surprising that the science has been corrupted in the political process. Politics is a game of short term self-interest often conducted in soundbites and simplified messages. Life threatening climate change is a seductive call to arms and appeals to disparate constituencies each with their own motivation. Whatever their stance in the past, the traditional corporate opponents of environmentalism have joined the AGW cause and the sceptical voices, in the main, are those who’ve looked for the evidence and found it wanting.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere a presentation I gave recently to a London City audience of investment and securities professionals. Only one person in the room knew of the controversy over the missing hotspot in the troposphere or the hockey stick (his daughter attends UEA). What surprised me was that about a dozen people (out of 54) changed their mind on AGW as a result of the event, in spite of me explaining that my only goal was to demonstrate that they couldn’t rely on the IPCC or media for the truth about the current state of climate change.
I’m an irregular blogger at http://www.outersite.org
Following months of frustration at the way the establishment has closed ranks to repel “deniers”, it’s so great that you’re prepared to speak out where so many are reluctant to do so.
I am a 29 year old fossil fuel secret operative on the payroll of both Russian oligarchs and the Koch brothers. I generally spend my days surfing the web making skeptical comments under different names on news stories related to AGW to give the public perception that many people are unconvinced by the threat of climate change. I also enjoy twirling my moustache and laughing maniacally when I see polls that public concern about the threat of climate change is dissipating.
Our evil plan would be a lot further along if not for that pesky Joe Romm!
I am a semi-retired engineer with a B.S. and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Ga Tech. I have 30 years of experience in the aerospace industry most often doing analysis in orbital mechanics, and computer modeling and analysis of aircraft structures.
I lurk mostly, as I do not have the time away from my other activities to do the legwork necessary to do worthwhile technical analysis on the subject (although that has not stopped some people has it?). I became interested in the global warming issue when I learned of the tremendous costs that many were proposing as mitigation to CAGW. After a short while reading on the subject, I found the most important sites associated with global warming (climate audit, WUWT, Realclimate, DotEarth, etc), and read them extensively in the evenings for a few months. I was appalled at what I found. I have studied the issue extensively for the past 2 and a half years. Beginning with the Wegman report, how with the hundreds of thousands of mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and other scientists in the world, the proponents of CAGW can get away with such shoddy math and science is beyond me. President Obama is proposing spending $100 billion a year for the next 10 years to fight climate change. I can think of a million better ways to spend that much money in such challenging times, when so many are in a desperate situation. We will have to spend hundreds of billions more to correct what he is proposing now. Until we know to a much better extent than we do now about the uncertainties of what the climate will do, and what effects any change will have on the environment, any drastic action is unwise. History has shown that warmer weather is beneficial, colder weather causes stress and hardship.
My area of professional expertise is – ultra, super specialized, at the moment – my guess is that there must be about 200-400 people in the world doing what I am doing right now. That means you can infer that I have an advanced degree. I have a handful of peer-reviewed papers – I am working to increase that number.
I followed the climate debate tangentially – via studying papers in environmentalism, deep ecology and ecofeminism (don’t even ask ) going back about 15 years when in college. Then I dropped out, becoming a part of the ‘dozing consensus’. Usually when something is really hyped, I studiously avoid paying attention to it – and in this way I ‘saved myself’ from the ‘An inconvenient Truth’ movie. I wish I had seen it then.
I got sucked into this when I asked a question to Gavin at RealClimate – on Climategate weekend. I got a crazy answer which pissed me off. Thanks Gavin. Now I’ve read the emails, Montford’s book, Mosher and Fuller’s, Chapter 6 IPCC WG1, Chapter 13 WG2 bits and pieces of Spencer Weart, David Archer’s, Roger Pielke Jr, and many, many other books on climate. I’ve read papers by Boykoff and Boykoff, Miller, Beck, Giddens, Nisbet (yech), Leiserowitz (yech), Maibach (yech again), McWright and Dunlap, Hulme, and of course Sheldon Ungar.
I recently tried read Schellnhuber’s ‘Earth system analysis’ – I had to run out to avoid a violent reaction and I do have a strong stomach. Warning there.
I dont have a car (but I would sure like to have one).
The most-eye opening moment was with Richard North – without question, the unacknowledged architect of the downfall of the IPCC’s aura and the scientific facade of its alarmism. AGW is a social movement, with its own internal logic and dynamics, similar to those in environmentalism and public health – if you have a headstart in these areas, it puts you miles and miles ahead of the rest of the observers – which is where North is. Now of course, he comes in a certain package and you should know what to do with, with the stuff he says.
My blog is at http://nigguraths.wordpress.com.
I first got interested in climate change by the book, “State of fear”, by Michael Crichton, which I read in 2005.
I’m a history undergraduate. My main interest are history of science and the first world war. I should either do a master in history of science related to climate change, or the phenomenon of violence in wars.
I’m very cynic about climate scientist mainly the hockey team who seems inspired by the 1970s teams from Philadelphia, nicknamed the Broad street bullies. But I do have respect for some of them, prof Curry, Roger Pielke sr, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Mike Hulme, and some others.
I particularly dislike the use of people suffering (Myanmar, Darfur) around the world to advance the climate agenda.
My position is that climate change is largely natural with an anthropogenic component related to land use. Although co2 is a ghg, it is not a pollutant and it is not the main driver of climate change.
I have a Degree in Electrical Engineering (’98). I’ve always been a weather hobbyist and have always been a skeptic of CO2 driven AGW, at first due to the lack of long term data that would prove the lack of precedence for 20th century warming (read MWP). During a period of unemployment during the hightech meltdown in the early 2000’s, my online weather investigating/learning (at Env. Canada, NOAA, Accuweather, Intellicast sites) grew to be hours daily. I grew to mistrust GCMs due to the performance (or lack there-of) of short term weather models with the reasoning “if they can’t forecast the weather 3 days out (or less), how can they forecast the climate 50 years out”. In the mid 2000’s I started reading the skeptic blogs that were starting to sprout up, starting with ICECAP, Climateaudit , Wattsupwiththat and the like and followed the discussions (contributed a little) on tree rings, surface stations, GISTEMP, HADCRUT, NOAA, hurricanes, etc. etc. I saw the machinations of the Hockey Team et al, long before Climategate confirmed them. I’ve seen the leaps of logic that the likes of Tamino, Romm and Tobis perform in their discussions on their and other blogs. Then in 2007, with the encouragement from friends, I started my own little blog focusing primarily on weather, but touching on Climate issues.
Thanks for starting this blog. It is a breath of fresh air. Pay no attention to Romm and his ilk.
AB Chem, MBA Finance, worked 30 yrs in finance , mostly on IT, Semiconductor and Aerospace firms.
Am keenly conscious of the damage done when senior supervisors do not step up to their responsibilities. That was the origin of the 2000 tech crash as well as the current ongoing banking crisis.
If the numbers are adjusted, it is essential to keep a record of the reason for it and also of the original data, because otherwise one is quickly left in a fog.
Saw these phenomena up close at NASA and on Wall Street.
See similar trends in play in the climate debates, where the past is subject to revision and where it is career limiting to deviate from the AGW line set by the political leadership.
Fear more serious consequences as bad science drives bad investment decisions. ( In Germany, an extension of the life of the existing nuclear power plants was agreed along with a big nuclear tax increase to help smooth the huge cost jump resulting from the growth of green power. There will be a painful reckoning when the nukes go cold.)
Given the politics, think Dr Curry has more professional courage than most. She is providing a real service in offering a platform for politically incorrect views.
I put a version of this at AirVent. Like many others here, I’m sort of retired. I started as a history major, then a PhD in pol science, then a PDF at Oxford and Ann Arbor, then an academic in pol sci. In th early 1980s I got pulled in to become a judge of proposals for funding research in my area and others in the humanities and social sciences, became the chair of that and then of the whole body, then established a new body with more money and a wider remit (the Australian Research Council), then became a university president for twelve years, while being a member of the prime minister’s science and technology council. At the end of my term I was asked to help in Canada, a country I am very fond of, and have worked for CFI, CERC, NSERC and SSHRC, in areas familiar to me, including peer review.
I have written a dozen books and a couple of hundred articles and chapters. I got into science policy in the 1980s, and have been in it ever since. I was researching a new book on the next fifty years (after one that looked at the last fifty years, which was well received) when I began to realise that the chapter on the environment was going to be a big one. That was in 2007. Since then I have become absorbed in the AGW story, and consider myself agnostic on the hypothesis and deeply sceptical of the notion that ‘combating climate change’ is either possible or a sensible approach. In the past I have given public addresses, spoken on radio and corresponded widely. Since I now hold a government position (in an area that has nothing to do with AGW) I keep my interest ‘private’.
My email address is donaitkin@grapevine.com.au, should anyone here wish to read what I have written. I believe in learning as a way of life, and I am grateful for Judith’s inception of this site. I have learned more here than at them standard-bearer’ sites like RC and CA, and have discovered many more useful sites here.
I worked at Mount Stromlo Observatory on Earth rotation, precision timekeeping, double stars, and lunar laser ranging. Now retired. I once thought of being a geologist and have no doubt that Earth has had changing climates for billions of years – the record shows this so clearly that I still wonder that many people think that humans can change climate all by themselves. Pure hubris leading to fanatical AGW belief.
Mostly a lurker, I do software engineering (30+years). I have no opinion on AGW per se but have violent opinions on the apparent lack of scientific rigor on the part of the IPCC and its proponents. Can’t quite get myself to call the IPCC / AGW process a grand conspiracy … Ockhams Razor says probably there are simpler reasons why 1000’s of people would all jump on the IPCC bandwagon. Cap and Trade is simply a bad idea that transfers money from the first world into various rent seekers pockets. Carbon Tax might not be terribly bad if the tax stays local where it will at least be used to benefit the tax payers in some fashion, but unless a Carbon Tax was prohibitively high it is unlikely to actually do much.
Judith, semi-retired, but once a scientist always a scientist. Ph.D. in theoretical pharmacology, heavy background in medicine, math/statistics. Was involved directly with the introduction of over 12 new chemical entities (i.e. novel drugs ) with over 5 billion sales/year. Agree with Pielke Jr. in the linear model of science-policy. First get the science/facts right, then allow politicians to develop policy. My issue with climate science is with the facts. I am particularly disappointed with Mann and Schmidt, as well as Jones. I believe one day that McIntyre will be lionized by all as one of the most gifted logical thinkers of the 21st century.
I received a PhD in Chemistry from Cambridge, started a post doc, but then moved into a career in scientific/systems software for the past 35 years. I now work as a consultant. Clearly I have no specific knowledge of climate science.
I had had vague doubts about AGW for some time, but felt that if it inspired better fuel efficiency and house insulation, it was pushing in the right direction. However, talk of carbon capture sounded totally absurd, and made me start to doubt the sanity of the whole movement.
When I heard on the radio that Wikkileaks had the climate emails, I naturally downloaded them to explore. I soon found there were sites springing up with all the information neatly organised! Reading the worst of those emails, I thought a large scandal would erupt. We all know what is in them – no need to repeat here.
I found RealClimate, and quickly realised that discussions there (and on the BBC and elsewhere) were quite unlike normal scientific discussions. If the content or methodology of a paper was challenged, a typical response would be, “Ah but there is a lot of other information pointing in the same direction!”. This was just exasperating – the data and methodology in a paper must stand by itself, or the paper should be withdrawn!
I also came across the set set of HARRY_README programmers notes from the CRU. I am only too aware that much academic software is poorly written by new graduates with no experience of serious software design, but I was naive enough to expect that an important, well funded research project like climate research would have a systematic record of all data sets, and a clean way to access the information. At one point Harry has to guess whether he is looking at data tabulated in longitude -180 – 180 or 0 – 360 – it is that bad!
I don’t need to go on – you all know the mess which is climate science – but I have been truly amazed by the censorship that has been applied to journalists at the BBC, and the way New Scientist has carefully managed to avoid the real scandal. What has happened to the freedom of the press? There was a Panorama program (BBC TV) on the subject, which managed to miss the point completely.
I feel very angry, particularly for all the well meaning people who have been mislead into the current obsession with CO2. Greenpeace used to be a movement that campaigned about real issues such as nuclear weapons (which haven’t gone away!). WWF used to campaign about issues like forest destruction (the forests are still burning!). Now both have been subverted into supporting a total scam.
I am also curious as to how many other areas of science have been corroded in the same way – isolated groups that manage to referee each other’s papers, and kid themselves that statistical validity doesn’t really matter. From various private discussions, it would seem that the problems of climate science are far from unique.
BSEE, BA German, MA Education, Doctor of Education. I teach math in a small rural middle school to kids who are either either immigrants or hippie kids. I have been interested in Climate Science and Global Warming, Climate Change, etc. since I happened on Still Waiting for Greenhouse a long time ago. I am a confirmed skeptic at this point based upon a lot of things but strongly upon the hypocrisy of advocates who jet thousands of diplomats and bureaucrats to various garden spots several times a year and then discuss how they will limit our use of this or that while dining on watercress salads and lobster bisque. That the dicussion so often comes down to how much will be paid some entity or other makes me want to nail a few theses of my own to the appropriate door. I think if it was really bad, people would stop doing it and do the carbon credit stuff anyway. That they do not tells me it is not a problem and they are not serious. I think that too much is uncertain about this discussion to advocate for major changes in any direction.
I have been following the global warming debate for the past 2 years. I’m drawn to it because of the clash between science, politics, and the environmental movement. I consider myself a conservationist, but have always felt the Green movement uses hyperbole to push their agenda, often distorting the science. My formal education includes a B.S. in biology with a minor in chemistry, Master’s degree in Public Health with much training in statistics and epidemiology, Medical Doctor degree, residency training and board certification in occupational medicine and preventive medicine. My area of medicine is on the forefront of “evidence based medicine”. This is where I feel my training can be practically applied to the policy debate regarding global warming. Medicine has a long history of “best practice” that was based on so called expert opinion and consensus. As medical science advances, much of this so called expert opinion has been demonstrated to be false. Modern medicine is going through a transition from expert consensus to evidence-based. I see climate science making many of the mistakes that the medical field has made. The alarmism of AGW is now making its way into my field of public health. I am very concerned by the way climate change “facts” are being cherry picked to push various public health political agendas while ignoring uncertainty and other facts that argue against the agenda.
Howdy!
Texas State Climatologist and Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University. S.B. (Earth and Planetery Sciences), S.M. (Meteorology), and Ph.D. (Meteorology) from MIT. Had both Emanuel and Lindzen on my Ph.D. committee. Specializations: synoptic and mesoscale meteorology, data assimilation, air pollution meteorology, and applied climatology.
I came late to the climate game, and didn’t become convinced of cAGW until about seven years ago, after having boned up on the relevant science. I remain convinced, but also am continuously frustrated by the misinformation made available for public consumption on both sides of the “aisle”. My goal is to be completely honest, fair, and intelligent in my public outreach, thereby guaranteeing that there’s at least one of us. (But, to be fair, fairness is in the eye of the beholder.)
I’m a full-time professor, without all the spare time that comes with being department head (!?!), so I only have time to blog about once a week or so. My current blog, Climate Abyss is hosted by the Houston Chronicle, as was my previous blog, Atmo.Sphere. Someday I’ll help write a book.
BSc Chemistry 1980. About 15 years industrial chemistry experience. Have loved science since grade school. Still do, but now program for a living. Am skeptical about 3-(6-9) C warming due to feedbacks. Would like someone who thinks CO2 is the main driver of climate to explain correlation of global temps with ocean cycles and galactic cosmic rays (see the presentation on the CLOUD experiment web site for the correlation charts). Don’t trust the computer climate models.
So far I have been lurking. I am a chemist degreed at the University of Delaware. A love for science is imbedded in my very bones which is why I became interested in climate science twenty years ago. The field was new in the 1960’s and it is my understanding that no papers on climate change were published prior to 1988, yet reputable scientists were making big forecasts for climate change and using flimsy evidence. I wanted to find out what they knew about science that was different from what I knew. So I dove in. Since I have studied this thing almost every day for twenty years I now consider myself an amateur climatologist. Like our host I have gone back and forth from denier to a warmer to lukewarmer and now denier again. Freeman Dyson, Roger Pielke Sr., James Lovelock, are my mentors.
I love and roam in nature but dislike environmental activists and political ideologues. I am convinced that AGW was from the beginning a political issue that hired scientific support. I believe the need for energy independence and freedom from the real pollutants of coal and petroleum is an urgent societal need. The means to do this is at hand with a hundred years of clean natural gas discovered in the USA and more coming all around the world. Convert coal plants to gas and plug your electric car into the grid. No more soot, mercury, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, etc…. and at minimum cost as a new program here in Colorado will demonstrate.
I do not like the extremely costly and land eating solar and wind even though it appeals to my romantic soul. Oh yes, for the passionate, gas emits 50% of the carbon dioxide of coal.
Professional firefighter in Toronto for 22 years, now retired. Wrote software & designed databases (self taught) for small and medium business for 20 years (mostly retired).
Love science, taken part time courses (evolutionary biology) at UofT in the 70’s. Was part of the battle against creation science in the 1980’s. Solved a geological enigma that was being promoted as evidence of instant creation and a young earth: http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/gentry/tiny.htm. My paper was published in the May 1988 issue of the Journal for Geological Education. (no formal training in geology, had to teach it to myself)
When AGW started, I accepted and assumed that the scientists knew what they were doing. The day I rejected AGW was the day it was claimed “the science is settled.” Well, that made me think, what the hell are they hiding! So I checked and have come to the conclusion that AGW is not only false, pseudoscience, but a politically motivate scheme to kill modern civilization and impose a one world government (Strong and Soros).
I have three blogs which I use to bring out evidence and expose the flaws in AGW and the effects of AGW on the economy. My Canadian Surface Temps analysis: http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com/ shows what is happening to TMax and Tmin since 1900 for stations across Canada.
My wind turbine analysis: http://ontariowindperformance.wordpress.com/ exposes the reality of wind output, that Capacity Factor is a meaningless number and that the Capacity Value of wind is near zero. Output in the summer is less than 7% name plate 50% of the time. 30% of the time, they produce nothing at all.
And my fight against smart meters and the high costs of power in Ontario (caused by government swallowing AGW hook line and sinker): http://h1ripoff.blogspot.com/
I post as much as I can on newspaper articles defending science and challenging AGW dogma. It’s a tough task, but it looks to me that we are finally winning.
Great work here Judith!
Degrees in Applied Science to Master level; over 30 years hard experience world-wide in actually applying Earth Science to real problems (occasionally successful); my own Consultancy for the last 14 years with moderate success (at least I haven’t gone broke); now on the transition into retirement
The Earth Science group in a very well known (and revered) Aus R&D organisation dubbed me a “BS detector” … admit I quite like that backhander
Became interested in the gathering storm over AGW in the early to mid-1990’s because I knew from real experience that economic renewable energy technologies for powering major cities did not then exist (and still don’t) but energy from nuclear power was an impossible political powder keg. This obvious conflict made me look carefully at the hype about AGW
I found that aquiring the raw temperature data over a lengthy time period (simply to be satisfied that the hype had a real basis) was impossible for a curious outsider. Alarm bells rang very loudly (see the backhander above) … where was the base data ? My son gave me a copy of Crichton’s State of Fear for a birthday present – and in the back pages Index was a web address for some obscure NASA site to view temperature recordings. Except most of the data groups inexplicably stopped in various stages from about the 1960’s to the early 1990’s. The alarm bells now sounded like Tschaikovsky’s Overture
So I started digging. I’m now at the point where I have no issue with doubled atmospheric CO2 levels increasing global temperature logarithmically by about 1C. The “feedbacks” from that are a huge issue for me … the “hot spot” isn’t there. Telling me the MWP was insignificant raises the BS level to unscalable heights (hundreds of peer-reviewed papers disagree with the MWP/LIA insignificance notion. The well-known “divergence” issue creams it)
Then the combination of hype groups like Greenpeace with never-ending populist MSM scarey-bear headlines (deliberately uncorrected by knowledgeable scientists) convinced me that the AGW case likely had huge holes in it. My deep cynicism about the MSM is informed by very long and real experiences. Webland (blogland) gives one the chance to examine data and argument in detail, even ask questions, without requiring belief
Judith C’s recent post on the circularity of the IPCC stance was one of quite a few pin-point moments. Climategate emails did not surprise me. The “we don’t debate in public” stance drips constantly from hypocritical cowardice. So here we are
I’m not a climate scientist but have been an avid student of both the science and politics of the debate for the last five years.
My interest, beyond disinterestedly accepting the ‘consensus’ position, was originally piqued by an article I read in the MSM some five years ago that claimed melting arctic ice would cause major flooding disasters (there was no mention of Greenland etc in the article). I remembered my primary school physics – that ice is less dense than water and could not, therefore, contribute to sea rise by itself by melting. From there I began to research the science behind the CAGW hypothesis and gradually became aware that there was much more uncertainty about the science than the IPCC and much of the media would have us believe. I can’t say that the ‘Climategate’ emails were much of a surprise to me. I think anyone reading the subject in an objective manner could see that the gatekeepers of the IPCC were trying to control the debate in an overbearing manner….to say the least. What was really great about the “hide the decline” revelations was that it brought the uncertainty of the subject firmly into the mainstream and helped to undo much of the damage to reasoned scientific debate that was done by Al Gore’s film: “An Inconvenient Truth”
My own focus of interest is specifically on the the subject of positive vs negative forcings, required to create the CAGW that our news media are so fond of promoting. Also I share your interest in the – I suggest – absurd levels of ‘confidence’ ascribed to the IPCC’s predictions regarding future climate change.
Broadly speaking I would describe myself as a “Lukewarmer”, in that I fully accept the settled science both that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that humans have probably caused some of the warming over the last century. As to whether this warming is in any way harmful to the environment, or out of control, or likely to become catastrophic unless we drastically change the course of human civilisation, I’m very much a sceptic. I’m very interested in the idea of broadening both peer review and the cross-discipline opportunities for climate science afforded by modern online technologies, such as your wonderful blog. I’m also interested in new Nuclear fission technologies and, of course, fusion reactors.
Other sites I regularly follow are WUWT, CA, Bishop Hill, RC, Tamino, Steve Mosher, Lucia, Jeff Id and both Pielkes.
By the way, “Saaad” is an acronym for Einstein’s famous dismissal of Quantum Entanglement as “Spooky Action at a Distance”…..I’m not actually ‘sad’ at all!
Canadian Contractor -Specializing in Log Homes and Timberframes.
I found many challenges in creation and problem solving.
Challenged myself to solve a problem completely out of my field and knowledge base. Hydro power generation and the claim of being 92% efficient when there was far more then 8% energy left in the water after the turbine blade.
Inverted a turbine and it went all the way to the board of Directors at Manitoba Hydro. Needed a proto-type and manufacturer. Major German manufacturer thought it was “Absolutely interesting” but company is perfectly happy with the current client base. Did a great deal of research into turbines and followed every angle into the past. Researched water density and salinity significants and found anomalies.
Learned a great deal of science off this turbine and found a striking relationship to planetary rotation. A great deal of the current science and physics clashed with the mechanics. Found many errors in theories in researching past planetary motion changes. Studied Ice Ages and tracked the start of planetary evaporation. Studied planetary mechanics and found that science totally missed motion and rotation in it’s correct form.
What can I say.
I love researching for correct knowlege and finding answers.
PhD in chemistry, coming up to 30 years in R&D. I was flirting with a climate related project idea, so thought I’d look at the data. Oh. That’s funny. That’s not what the IPCC is saying. Hmm, this looks suspicious. Etc.
When you spend your career analysing and scientifically explaining data it is disgusting to me to read some of the stuff which comes out in the CAGW headspace. Any reasonable empirical analysis would show a lot of statistically significant variables contribute to the last century of temperature variability, including CO2, but with CO2 being at most a modest contributor. To inflict real harm on ordinary people based on a politically convenient erroneous interpretation of this data is indefensible.
During my honours year we had to present on a paper from the literature each Thursday. One day the lecturers pulled a swifty on one victim (fortunately not me). Victim gives a good presentation on the paper, all is sweet. Then one lecture stands up and says ‘Do you realise that paper is fraudulent and has been discredited in these later papers?’. I never forgot that lesson.
Not deeming myself a “regular”, I’ve hesitated to respond to Judy Curry’s invitation to wax autobiographical, but I’ll proceed, although with trepidation. One reason for responding is that several participants in the Engage Skeptics thread inquired about my background, and I don’t want to slight their request.
A more important question I considered was whether I could accomplish anything by telling others about myself. My answer – “probably very little, but possibly enough at the margins to warrant the small effort entailed.”
What follows must be prefaced with a disclosure of my objectives. I believe that evidence from thousands of independent sources converges to justify the firm although not unalterable conclusion that we humans are substantially altering the climate through our emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and that a continuation of this trajectory poses serious threats to our future welfare. My objectives are twofold. The first is to describe my background sufficiently so that others can judge my qualifications to arrive at that conclusion. The second is to invite any interested participant to discuss specific items of interest with me. I would prefer those conversations to be carried on via email to avoid the distractions attendant on blog exchanges. My email address is fmoolten [at] gmail.com. I won’t necessarily refrain entirely from blog commentary, but the more personal nature of email discourages argumentation in favor of productive dialog.
I am not a climatologist or geophysicist. I have enormous respect for those experts who do this sort of thing for a living – individuals such as Isaac Held, Raymond Pierrehumbert, Richard Alley, and many others. Rather, I have characterized myself as a “knowledgeable non-expert”. I am currently a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. My scientific career has been in biomedical research with a focus since the 1980s on cancer gene therapy until my recent semi-retirement from active research. Among my contributions is the concept of “suicide genes” (genes sensitizing cells to therapeutic agents), which has been applied clinically with some success, particularly in certain leukemias. My many dozens of research papers have been published mainly in the cancer research literature, but with a few in more general science journals (e.g., two in Science and one in Nature).
About six years ago, sensing the potential importance of climate change as a scientific issue with societal implications, I began a process of self-education in climate science. Since then, I have immersed myself in this area thoroughly – some might say obsessively – but with an unrelenting attempt to derive conclusions on the basis of evidence. My immersion has included attention to relevant Web sources and IPCC reports, but each of these sources has been peripheral to my understanding. Each is also a potential source of misinformation, inadvertent or deliberate.
The following educational processes have been more significant in shaping my perspective.
1. I have started with a strong background in science, with access to relevant literature. I’m familiar with how scientists approach problems. I have submitted grant applications (both successful and unsuccessful) and have reviewed grant applications. I have submitted papers for publication and reviewed papers submitted by others. I have served on journal editorial boards.
2. I read Dennis Hartmann’s “Global Physical Climatology” textbook as a standard in the field. More recently, I have waded through the 500+ pages of Raymond Pierrehumbert’s long and detailed “Principles of Planetary Climate”. The print edition won’t be available until January 2011, but I have a near-final draft version that I’ve wrestled with. This required me to refamiliarize myself with some of the mathematics of differential equations that I had forgotten, and there are additional derivations in the text that I have taken on faith, but the experience has been extraordinarily edifying and has helped me to put my understanding of geophysics principles on a sound theoretical basis.
3. I scrupulously follow the relevant climatology/geophysics literature in the following journals (in addition to the general science journals Science, Nature, and PNAS): J. Climate, Earth Interactions, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Geochemistry-Geophysics-Geosystems, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Geophysical Research (subsections on Atmospheres, Biogeosciences, Earth surface, and Oceans), Review of Geophysics, Nature Geoscience, Int. J. Climatol., Tellus A and B, Climate Research, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Society. J. Atmospheric Sci., J. Applied Meterol. Climatol., Atmospheric Sci. Letters, J. Physical Oceanography.
In some cases, I’m limited to abstracts when I lack access via the University, but with clearly seminal papers, I have almost always been able to find a full length copy to read.
My purpose in listing all the above items is not to propose that the education I describe makes me an expert, but that it doesn’t. In other words, even this level of immersion qualifies me to judge conclusions in climatology at only a tentative level, and with a recognition that my lack of more comprehensive knowledge can easily lead me astray. I would argue, however, that anyone who hopes to be capable of informed judgment in this area should at least acquire a background similar to mine, and perhaps go even further. Based on my comparison between published papers in climatology and challenges in the blogosphere, I will go further and state that to me, it is evident that one cannot become an adequate judge of climate science through expertise in a different discipline, with “different” to include engineering, statistics, model construction in a different field, and computer programming. Examples on the Web of inappropriate application of principles from these field to climate science appear in my view to outnumber the appropriate applications.
A word about conflict of interest is relevant. I’m not referring to a political or commercial conflict but a psychological one. Imagine that after intensive study, you have concluded that a particular phenomenon is dangerous and have publicly stated your conclusion on many occasions. At that point, evidence is presented purporting to show that the danger is greatly overstated and we have little to worry about. If that is true, your public position and privately held beliefs are invalidated. What do you wish for – do you hope you are right and the danger is great, or that you are wrong and we are safer than you claimed?
There is no use pretending this conflict does not affect our thinking. There have been challenges to current mainstream perspectives on climate that have evoked in me a reflexive desire to disbelieve them because they conflict with my own carefully developed set of conclusions. I have struggled to evaluate these objectively, my conscience telling me I should want them to be right and my ego hoping they are wrong. I will end this long disquisition by stating that I have been as rigorous and objective as it is within me to be. I have ended more or less where I began. I believe the danger is real. I believe the danger is serious and requires more than meager attention. I also believe I could be wrong, and I would welcome a dialog with well-informed individuals who can enlighten me.
Finally, for those who visit my website, all the songs from my four CDs are available for download online at less than a dollar per song. (For those who mistake that message for something other than a bit of frivolity, I will add that fortunately, I don’t have to earn my living from songwriting.)
Above, I’ve invited emails from individuals interested in rational discussion. A number have taken me up on that and I’ve responded every time. I want to expand on that invitation.
One of the frustrations of these threads is the frequency with which arguments that some of us have already addressed thoroughly are raised again, often when the topic of the thread is about something else. I’ve never figured out exactly how best to respond – should I repeat the previous extensive discussion, should I ignore the argument, or should I simply point out it has already been dealt with?
When it’s easy to retrieve past links, I will often opt for the repetition, but in my disorganized style of keeping track of things, I can’t always do that quickly, and besides, it often remains a distraction from the topic that was posted at the top of the thread. When it seems to me, therefore, that someone mainly wants to argue – and if in particular, it appears to be someone who has persisted in certain points although aware they had been addressed already, I now think I will invite that individual to email me instead of continuing the exchange online. That will particularly be true when I think that other readers are aware that the topic has been well covered previously. If it’s something new, and substantive, I will always respond online and never substitute an email invitation. I appreciate the chance to participate in public disagreements about conflicting views, and I often hope to learn from them (and perhaps help others learn as well). That doesn’t extend to interminable repetition of previous points, accompanied by accusations that if I don’t respond every time, I’m dodging the issue – that is something I have never done, and I hope those familiar with my participation in this blog know that. My position on this may not please everyone, but I’ve given up hope of doing that while remaining true to my own perspectives.
An email invitation will probably discourage some partisans intent on arguing, but it may also encourage those who accept the invitation to participate in a more rational way than is possible when online comments are conducted as a form of public combat rather than issue resolution. I think the email exchanges I’ve engaged in so far have borne out those expectations, and I hope that continues. In any case, I promise to respond to any emails from participants.
I do ask one other thing – all emails should provide the true full name of the respondent rather than a pseudonym, but I won’t disclose that name without permission to do so.
Retired from a career in Australian public service mainly as a social welfare policy analyst.
Main interests these days are science, philosophy of science, economics, politics.
My politics are slightly to the conservative side with a libertarian streak.
In all the things I take an interest in, I am most interested in pursuing what actually works, and what the real outcomes of policy changes are as opposed to their objectives. I find this to be one of the great shortcomings of most political debate – few politicians like to follow the outcomes of their policies beyond the initial impact.
A Brit. Went to work straight from school. Then took a degree in Electronic Engineering. Experience of working with IBM helped me realise PC design/testing would probably bore me to tears (and drink) after a few years…so left that to be a mature student again. Honours degree in arts, and been in teaching ever since, which I find very rewarding. (I know some pure science bods look down their noses at “soft” arts graduates, but having done both engineering and literary/philosophical subjects at uni, I’ve seen snobbery on all sides! :-) I’ve been using Climate blogs to self-educate over the last couple of years. Have remained mostly a lurker, usually until something I’ve read-up on is mentioned, or someone’s grandstanding annoys me.
I was happy to believe the AGW stuff for years, but now a doubter. And somewhat alarmed to remember that I talked sceptic friends into the AGW position a few years ago, after the Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast on British TV. Having always leaned naturally to the left (Guardian reader and sometime Monbiot fan), the seeming shadowy presence of right-wing think-tanks and ex-Tory ministers behind that film set me ranting, and disseminating links by email to what I believed was the robust science, in response to this “propaganda” documentary.
First realised my grasp of the specifics was shaky during a heated discussion with a family member who works in the earth sciences. (I remain anonymous, as the aforementioned kin has been mentioned in print (in a minor way) in some of the Hockey Stick fallout, and I don’t want to be labelled as defending family honour or some such BS. Also he doesn’t know I post on these blogs.) Anyway started looking at the blogs about two years ago. Whilst there is propaganda on both sides of the issue, the shifting positions on The Hockey Stick, the closing of ranks at Real Climate, Climategate, the IPCC “mistakes“, the overstating of confidence, the intolerance of the likes of Joe Romm…all brought back to me an intuition, that I realised had always at the back of my mind, which is: climatology is a relatively young science, and it is becoming more obvious every day that in studying climate we are taking on one of the most complex, chaotic natural-systems known to man.
Could these guys really, in a matter of 40-50 years, have got to the critical-mass of core understanding that precisely manipulates all the variables in climate modelling?; Understood the relevance of all “unknowns” to achieve the correct historical interpretations of temperature data? My answer is not “no”, or “they are charlatans” – but “I doubt it“! When one sees the apparently rather amateurish data collection/archiving and code-writing methods employed by the likes of Mann & CRU, one’s faith is eroded further. Although I am well aware that this whole debate hinges on much more than mere Hockey Sticks, the Climategate emails and reading THSI were important moments that pushed me firmly towards the sceptic camp.
I am an Independent Consultant on matters concerning energy and the environment based in the UK whose present work mostly consists of providing commissioned advice to politicians.
I was the Senior Materials Scientist of the UK’s Coal Research Establishment (CRE) until 1995 when the completion of the UK’s coal industry made me redundant having worked there for nearly 3 decades.
Being a staunch socialist of the old-fashioned British kind, I was much involved in Trade Union activity throughout my employment in the coal industry and in the 1990s I rose to be the Vice-President of my union (the British Association of Colliery Management: BACM). While fulfilling that elected office I was also a Member of the Executive of the Federation of European Energy Industry Executives. So, in the annual elections I was in one case attacked as being a ‘tool of big business’ and in the other ‘a rabid left-wing revolutionary’ (but I kept getting re-elected).
In 1980 BACM commissioned me to investigate if there were any potential ‘environmental’ scares that could be as damaging to the coal industry as the ‘acid rain’ scare that was then raging. I interviewed as many people as I could determine who could give me information that seemed pertinent and produced influence diagrams from the information I thus gleaned. Of the many potential issues I discovered I determined that two were potentially significant; viz. micro-dust and anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
I presented my report to BACM in 1981. It concluded that AGW would become a major issue powered by political influences which was likely to displace all other ‘environmental’ issues whether or not it gained any scientific evidence to support it. BACM rejected that report because at that time BACM had not heard of AGW so decided that my report was ‘extreme’ and ‘implausible’. Since then AGW has displaced all other ‘environmental’ issues but has not gained any scientific evidence to support it, so others can judge if my 1981 report was ‘extreme’ and ‘implausible’. However, towards the end of the 1990s the late John Daly asked me to provide an update of the part of my 1981 paper – including the influence diagrams which provided the ‘extreme’ and ‘implausible’ – pertaining to the origin of the AGW scare. I did and he published it on his web site where it can still be seen at
http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
Following that investigation for BACM, my position at CRE required me to investigate the ‘acid rain’ scare then raging in Europe. It was then being said that sulphur and nitrogen oxides (SOx and NOx) from coal-fired power stations in the UK and Germany were increasing the acidity of rain with resulting waldsterben (i.e. forest death) in Germany and Scandinavia. My investigation led me to conclude that the pattern of sulphurous precipitation across Northern Europe was not consistent with the sources of the increased sulphur in rain being power stations: indeed, it was physically impossible. The greatest concentrations of sulphur in rain were in regions near outflows of major rivers. Emissions from power stations would have to cross these regions to reach Scandinavia. Furthermore, Sox is very water soluble and the highest sulphur concentrations in rain should be near power stations if they were the major cause of the enhanced sulphur in rain. But there was no discernible increase to the sulphur in rain near the power stations, and trees were not being affected adjacent to the power stations. So, I suggested that the real cause of the enhanced acidity of rain was most probably an acceleration of the natural sulphur cycle being induced by excess phosphate and nitrogenous agricultural fertilizers transported to the North Sea by rivers and fertilizing phytoplankton so enhancing DMS emissions. This suggestion was supported by the fact that phytoplankton were washing up as toxic algal blooms on the shores of the North Sea. Upon investigation this suggestion proved to be correct. Now, of course, we now that waldsterben was not happening and that the forests were increasing at the time. But, as a result of my investigation of ‘acid rain’ I began my great interest interest in the environmental effects of energy production and usage.
Also, I served as a Technical Advisor to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). This and my trade union activity had given me contacts with politicians in the UK and other EU countries. So, upon the conclusion of my employment at CRE I capitalized on that and used my knowledge of the environmental effects of energy production and usage to create my Consultancy.
I have been called as an expert witness by the UK Parliament’s House of Commons Select Committee on Energy and also House of Lords Select Committee on the Environment. The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) invited me to be an Expert Peer Reviewer for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and I accepted that. In November 1997 I chaired the Plenary Session of the Climate Conference in Bonn at the joint request of the European Academy of Science, the Science and Environment Project (USA), and the Europaische Akedemie fur Umweltfragen e.v. (Germany). In June 2000 I was one of 15 scientists invited from around the world to give a briefing on climate change at the US Congress in Washington DC, and I then chaired one of the three briefing sessions.
Having been the contributing Technical Editor of CoalTrans International, I am now on the Editorial Board of Energy & Environment.
I am also an Accredited Methodist Preacher. And I am a founding Member of the Christ and the Cosmos Initiative that explored the interactions of religious and scientific ideas. The Initiative started in the UK and became active in 28 countries.
From an occasional contributor: I have a Ph.D. in the humanities and a certification in high school Earth Science. But I started as a weather forecaster and lab instructor for the U.S. Navy, and a Meteorological/Radiosonde Technician for the National Weather Service. More recently, I was the head of the science department for Orthodox Christian Schools of Northeast Ohio. I write science curriculum, publish articles, and conduct science camps.
My views on climate science are aligned closely to those of Roger Pielke Sr. and I have posted a few articles on his blog. Of primary interest to me is the question of confirmation and falsification of the IPCC hypothesis, especially regarding issues of attribution.
Having virtually no background in climate science, I was surprised the first time I read the 2007 IPCC report by the level of confidence and lack of humility. The supporting evidence does not warrant the high level of confidence exhibited by its authors.
My articles on climate science include:
– “Large Scale Climate Modification”
– Unsettled Climate of Science
– The Three Hypotheses of Climate Science
– Could Climate Science Survive a Legal Cross Examination?
– Six myths about “deniers”
– AP Analysis Overlooks Scientific Implications of Climategate
– Have Changes In Ocean Heat Falsified The Global Warming Hypothesis?
A Glimpse Inside the Global Warming Controversy – Why You Need to Consider Both Sides
Man on the street for the most part, got draft notice for military service so I enlisted in USAF 1967. Trained for communications equipment repairman, went to Spain for duty as a microwave and Tropo Scatter maintenance tech. Most of the traffic on the 46L system was the weather data needed for nuclear retaliation consideration. Spent 25 months on a mountain top in the Balearic Islands, my off time I spent in Palma, conversing with tourists and members of several national Navies. Got to know well the personalities of Europeans, and international stances on value systems, expanded my prospective as a “kid from Kansas.”
Spent the first year out of the service back packing and hitch hiking around the USA, first job installing X-ray equipment in VA Hospitals, then moved to office equipment of several types. Changed to in hospital biomedical equipment tech, for 5 years then industrial medical equipment overhaul facility for another 2 years, then got recruited to join the Tool and Die prototype shop, for another 3 years while I put my 2nd wife through medical school. When she graduated (1992) as an M.D. Psychiatrist we moved back to her home town, where I worked in her practice as her complete office staff, receptionist, manager/accountant, insurance filer, and assisted with group and martial therapy, for 9 years, until her death.
Went to work as a machinist again with the local coal power plant parts manufacturing firm, raised the three kids by myself, until I retired June of 2008.
When in Kansas City (1978-1982) I developed an interest in reading the synopsis of research in the Journal of Geophysical Research, at the local research Library, and was starting to develop a driving interest in trying to figure out the logical puzzle that is weather forecasting. (So far the most interesting logic puzzle I have come across) read the research synopsis of articles from about 1955 on to 1982, copied whole articles of ones I found interesting, before I left town for central Kansas.
Working with the local NWS offices in both KC and Concordia Kansas, I set out to sort weather data by cyclic patterns as had been done for lunar phases with out good results, but by lunar declination instead. I have over the years found that the astronomical interactions of the sun/earth/moon system, are the effects that are driving the Rossby wave patterns.
I would like to be able to present the whole picture of how the long term cyclic patterns of the orbital interactions of the entire solar system, is modulating the weather and climate to produce almost all of the weather patterns that we see. I am still working at solving the interacting relationships between the variations in the solar wind electromagnetic couplings that result from the long term interactions of the solar system with the rest of the Galaxy, to extrapolate into climate prediction.
I have found inner planet cyclic periodicities that when coupled with the Lunar declinational tides in the atmosphere can be used as a long term weather forecast, with punctuation by outer planet / Earth heliocentric conjunctions driving the most severe episodes of extreme global weather.
Like the heat waves in Moscow, the floods in Pakistan, monsoons in India and Bangladesh, and the timing of hurricanes globally.
I have a degree in economics and am in investment manager/administrator, 52 yrs old.
Temperature increase in the past 50yrs has never approached the rates predicted by the IPCC (around three degrees C for the next century as a midpoint). Since there has been virtaully no increase over the past decade, that gap is just getting wider.
Since eveyone seems to accept CO2’s direct greenhouse effects (about a degree C for a doubling), one has to assume it is the amplifying feedbacks in those models that are not working – at least not yet.
Can you explain how the water vapour (WV) amplification is supposed to work in some detail? Particularly at what levels in the atmosphere it is supposed to occur at – and how that relates to the apparently missing “troposheric hot spot”? I realise you may have to generalise as there are numerous different models, but they are said to all have a strong positive feedback for WV.
I have never read a discussion on the WV amplification that I felt at all confident was even broadly correct. Since that WV amplification is supposed to provide much of the warrming its validity does seem crucial.
Grateful if you could help with that.
The following is a modified version from tAV:
BSc (Imperial) and PhD in physics in the UK. I retired from working in the commercial nuclear industry about 4 years ago.
I had accepted AGW as scientifically correct until I saw “The Great Global Warming Swindle” and had the time to examine the science for myself. I was interested in what Piers Corbyn had to say because I was at college with him and he was one of the really bright students of the year.
Having worked for many years with complex thermal-hydraulic computer models, which were thoroughly verified and validated against a vast array of experimental data, were well documented and used under strict QA ruless, I had no faith whatsoever in the predictions (projections) of GCMs, given their lack of validation, their unsupported feedback assumptions and generally poor quality control. The more I have looked into the physical processes in the climate system, the more sceptical I have become of the role of CO2 in the climate, our understanding of the climate and the worthlessness of GCMs.
My experience at RealClimate, with its censorship of my questioning comments, was an eye-opener into what appeared to be the censorship of dissenting opinion and the apparently corrupt world of much of climate science.
ClimateAudit, WUWT, Bishop Hill, tAV, JoNova, this blog and many others are a world of sanity with their openness and debate. Thank goodness for the internet and dedicated amateur (but thoroughly professional) bloggers .
Since retirement, I have been campaigning against the “settled science” of climate change, giving evidence to Government consultations and to the Climategate inquiries. I have been opposing the harmful impacts of CO2 reduction measures, such as wind farm and solar farm developments in the UK. I am appalled at the climate change propaganda machine active in the UK, particularly through the education system. A whole generation of scientifically illiterate and propagandised “climate activists” is emerging from the education system in the UK.
At heart I am an “environmentalist”, in that I am a member of several environmental charities. I try to influence them in their behaviour towards climate change issues, the dogma of which is deeply embedded at the head of all of them. I have my own wildflower meadows, woodland and stream etc, which I manage at some personal expense.
I would like to Judith for this blog. I am glad to read an open-minded assessment of what went wrong with climate science.
I am not a climate scientist, just an engineer interested in science. I actually became interested in the subject just after climategate. I didn’t want to accept what the press was saying without doing some research into what the scientists were saying, and what the facts were. I’m like that – a skeptic.
What I found shocked me, and upset me; A totally non scientific information war. Claims of tempering with data, which were only countered with ad hominem attacks, hiding of data from other who wanted to check the facts, claiming only IPPC inner circle scientists are capable of understanding the science, claiming “the science is settled” when several scientist were openly questioning key points of the “consensus view”. I actually found a website for PR-people in the sector that only gave advice on how to make ad hominem attacks on skeptical scientists with dirt on all the prominent skeptics. People asking questions were labeled as “flat earthers” and compared to “holocaust deniers”. All this with a religious fury.
I didn’t understand why scientists working on climate change were divided into:
1. Climate scientist
2. Skeptics
This kind of classification alone tells me something is wrong. Skepticism is, and should be a virtue in science!
Even without looking at the science one could not avoid seeing something is seriously wrong. Science does not work like this.
I am also very skeptical of Homeopathy, bending spoons with the power of the mind, electrical allergy, the 9-11 conspiracy, and many other things. I’d like to take Climate Science off that list one day.
My background is in the life sciences, dentistry. More recently IT and Systems Analysis have been added.
For me, individual action has moved the “certainty” around global warming to strong scepticism. Steven McIntyre has raised detailed questions on the data which has seen stonewalling by the team – not a good sign. Judith Curry has stood in the middle of the debate and been demonised by the team – another bad sign.
The recent Climate Clash website has attempted to bridge the gulf between both sides but Republican political influence may provide the quickest response. Longer term, we will see the proof, or otherwise, of AGW, as well as other doom mongering, like 2012.
My academic past in no way qualifies me to speak to Climatology as anything but a layman with a smattering of tangential courses or designations in Chemistry, Computer Science, Development Economics, Management Science, Mathematics, Physics, Predicate Calculus and Statistics.
That is, as a layman. Period.
I did longwindedly debate a bit in university, write for a school newspaper, participate in student government, tutor, and utterly fail to achieve any sort of athletic distinction. More recently I also spent several years volunteering with international development-oriented groups.
My early career involved database development.
Consulting work since took me as an IT analyst to HQs for companies from Delaware to Dearborn, Torrance to Piscataway, and government offices from Ottawa to Minneapolis-St. Paul. I have been a senior member of teams responsible for successfully increasing ROI and helping IT managers meet external mandates on very large n-tier systems outside of routine business practices.
I have occasionally had the good fortune to work closely with scientists from various fields.
I belong to no political party or philosophy, but do believe most politicians are well-meaning, sincere and hard-working people who sacrifice much for their best convictions.
I believe in leaving the world better off for having been in it, better understood, and no worse off too. This gives me a neutralist bias with regard to atmospheric impacts.
Certainly there must be a budget limit to how much the raw parts of the world can be altered by our use before we cannot claim to be leaving to our posterity what was left to us by our forebears, nor to have bettered it either. I am cynical that any argument can unseat that simple fact.
Be nice to know where such limits rest; Climatology appears vested with the power to resolve somewhat that question, so it matters.
If the measure of the time one has stayed is whether people are glad he’s been, or glad he’s gone, something in me seems to aspire to both.
I think Policy ought precede Science, if Policy is more on the ball than Science. Call it a race.
Some Climate discourse is at a level beyond my layman’s skills and simplistic philosophy, sometimes freeing me to be aligned with neither one side nor the other, sometimes to very much polarize my views restrained only by long habits of seeking to understand.
Much of what is said about Climatology from outside and a little from inside, however, is understandable. Some of what comes from inside seems to want a skeptical eye. On the other hand, like what is said about anything by outsiders, most lay opinion is infuriating nonsense.
I believe Dr. Curry has shown as a Climatologist that lay opinion is not all nonsense and science is the responsibility not just of scientists, which also agrees with my own conclusions.
I’m a Physical Geography PhD from Uppsala 1989, living in Denmark though. I stopped being an actively publishing scientist, then in marine organic matter transport, as I grew more interested in Environmental Management. Still, back then, I pursued a CO2-related hypothesis (deep-sea export), tried doing integrated numerical modeling, and had a near-group/team dynamics experience in connection with nitrogen-phosphorous politics. My interest in climatology has been renewed in the last four years, and I’m now interested in coming clear on how geographers lost out, in whether not models could be much improved using them, and in how the Environmental Management field should/will handle unsettled science.
In all seriousness, I am an aviation weather briefer, so while I certainly understand the fundamentals of meteorology I would never pretend to be remotely close to being a climatologist.
I grew up being a left wing kid and took catastrophic global warming to be a given seeing as it essentially took my political beliefs to their natural conclusion(capatalism was evil and destroying humanity/earth). As time went on I came to realize what a complicated situation it was. How could an ordinary citizen make a genuinely informed opinion about this without spending years in school? Watching a documentary and concluding you’re prepared to have a view on the subject seemed ridiculous to me.
As time went on and I became trained in my profession I had an accelerating suspicion of the more hysterical claims that were being made. When I started hearing terms such as “consensus” and “science settled” my skepticism continued to grow. When climategate happened I felt like many of my suspicions were vindicated; the rampant gatekeeping, fudging and self-righteousness led me towards concluding that the politics were preceding the science and many advocacy groups and scientists were attempting to use science as a means of moral authority. The so-called “consensus” members holier than thou treatment of any view that even mildly dissented from orthodoxy was to me a red flag of deep seated insecurity. In the wake of climategate, hearing Gavin Shmidt tacitly approve of gatekeeping and pressuring papers out of journals because they were “wrong, bad science, etc” as if it was the job of the “team” to do so, betrayed an unbelievable arrogance but also insecurity. In the words of Reinhold Niebuhr:
“Fanatic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It
is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure.”
Ultimately I find the whole subject more fascinating than anything. It is a curious intersection of politics, science and the historical underlying patterns of human belief.
Ken Coffman, BSEET, 1985. Electrical Engineer, libertrarian (not a typo), writer, publisher (Stairway Press), co-author of six patents (mainly in digital signal processing). I get angry when progressive-activists irrationally molest scientific principles to promote self-hating collectivist nonsense.
A brief bio:
i became interested and involved in the environmental movement many decades ago upon hearing the phrase “you can only shit in your nest just so long before you start nesting in your shit”.
Academic background: Graduated from Union College in Schenectady N.Y. January ’69, BSc in Physics. [Refused diploma because Union signed an agreement with to exchange Computer Science Dept. expertise with General Electric.]
Career path [in chronological order]: caddy, pool hustler, computer programmer, garbage collection technician, firewood entrepreneur, furniture moving technician, truck driver, union organizer, pulp mill employee, home designer and builder, small organic farmer, heritage seed saver and distributor, RV renovator, website designer and publisher, blogger editor –
The Mud Report
Keywords: father, organic farmer, iconoclast, carpenter, political bridge builder, writer, publisher, avid reader, pantheist, web developer, outlaw
Every seed is awakened and so is all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being and we therefore yield to our animal neighbours the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land. -Sitting Bull
Semi-retired, BS Geology, MS Applied Geophysics, lifelong interest in weather/climate but no academic qualifications. Worked mostly in the mining industry, specializing over the last 20 years in ore reserve estimation and assay data base verification (excellent training for reviewing climate data bases, which are analogous to assay data bases).
Set out in 1998 to prove that global warming was a hoax. Couldn’t do it. Began to move from the Skeptic to the Warmist camp. Then after further reviews began to move back again. Have now settled somewhere between Lukewarm Skeptic and Skeptical Lukewarmer, but am prepared to move again, in either direction, if there is a scientific basis for doing so.
Where I’m coming from: No science can be better than the data it’s based on, so I look first at the data. And I find that the time series used to support global warming claims (surface air temperature, sea surface
temperature, sea level rise etc.) are heavily tweaked by “corrections” that range from suspect to obviously wrong. In many cases these corrections” seem to have been applied simply to make the data
match the theory. This is a fundamental source of uncertainty in the global warming argument, and we need to resolve it. It also raises questions as to how objectively the global warming issue is being treated, and we need to address this too.
So I will be posting on data-related issues as soon as Prof. Curry begins to raise them.
Retired
Became interested in rocket science since watching “Captain Video and His Video Rangers” on TV, 6″ CRT with 12″ magnifying face.
Interested in air flight while truant from school and reading “They Fought For the Skies” and the development of aircraft during WW II.
Interested in weather as a lifelong sailor on the Great Lakes facinated by the interface of wind and water.
Was informed that I did not understand global warming by my college educated California children who had just seen “An Inconvienent Truth” and an interview with Al Gore.
Introduced to blogospher via Newsvine having been entertained by the jostling of Space Guy and Roxanne until I realized they were serious. Moved onto RealClimate and found it wanting except that I was introduced to the “bad boys” McIntyre, Spencer & Watts whom I have since enjoyed as well as learned, particularly in the comments portions. Plunked down onto ClimateEct as a regular read.
I am impressed by what I have learned so far particularly as commentators provide links which challenge me. An example: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
I find that my children were right, that I did not understand global warming, only not as they had surmised.
I’m a lurker here, due to time constraints – this has rapidly become my favourite CC related blog. I’m an Anglican Priest, living on a small island not far from London; I have two degrees in philosophy (from Oxford and London), mainly interested (here) in questions around philosophy of science and the way in which religious themes get reproduced in supposedly secular spaces. I accepted the AGW ‘consensus’ until stumbling across Steve McIntyre’s work, and then reading Montford’s book.
People might find these of interest:
Time for a Reformation of Science – prompted after reading the Montford book, and comparing what is happening now in science with what happened with Luther at the time of the Reformation
The Holiness of Stuart Staniford – which is about the importance of scientific integrity – I might do a follow-up on ‘The Holiness of Judith Curry’ ;o)
Back to lurking…
My field is the logic of complex issues, where I have studied the climate change debate since 1992. My work began in 1973 when I discovered the issue tree, while on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon. I have a textbook on issue trees: http://www.stemed.info/reports/Wojick_Issue_Analysis_txt.pdf
At the time I was busy helping to develop both the new Department of Philosophy and the soon to be Department of Engineering and Public Policy. My Ph.D. is in Philosophy of Science, with an emphasis on logic and conceptual confusion. I also have a BS in civil engineering, so I basically do applied philosophy.
In 1976 I left CMU to work on confusion in federal regulatory programs: http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html. This work led to my helping form the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in OMB in 1980, with oversight of all US regulatory programs. In the 1980’s I worked on confusion in defense (the wacky world of weapons) but I returned to environmental issues in 1992. I did a lot of climate change policy analysis work until 2005 when I segued into scientific communication, where I am today, doing research by contract.
I do not publish scholarly works, but I have kept up my basic research program into the structure and dynamics of complex issues. See http://www.bydesign.com/powervision/Mathematics_Philosophy_Science/index.html
I regard the climate change debate as one of the most important debates in history, with lots of confusion. For over a decade I have run a listserv (now a Yahoo! group) at http://www.climatechangedebate.org, where we both debate and discuss this issue. All are welcome.
David )
Norwegian, degrees in law and economics. Environmentally minded, and doing some courses in environmental economics, environmental law, etc. I still believe in real-world environmentalism, but lost faith in climatism when the second wave of the climate scare hit in the early 2000’s. Seeing the blatant exaggerations and the lack of real information in local media, I turned to the web in annoyance, and found a whole community thinking along the same lines as I had.
My stance today rides mostly on one point: attribution – the missing link in climate science. Fine. It may be warming, co2 is increasing, ice is melting, but so what if it can not be attributed to human activities?
So far I have seen nothing but blind faith in climate models as “proof” of the anthropogenic climate signal. And to base trillion dollar/life changing decisions on early results from such a young and highly uncertain science seems at best naive.
Is climate modeling even a science? It doesn’t fit any definition I have ever seen.
I hold a B.S. in Civil Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering. I have more than 30 years of experience as an engineering consultant, cleaning up past problems and prevent new ones. As a graduate student in the mid-1970s, I participated in research projects into alternative energy sources. As those types of projects have now morphed into clean energy projects, I watch – first in amusement, then concern, then alarm – as the current rounds of government-funded research follows the same path as the old. Using the old timeline, we are now in about 1981, when energy policy changed, and interest in alternatives waned.
The climate change controversies have been side-shows for me. But I was similarly amused, concerned, and then alarmed at the conflation of “global warming,” “man-made global warming,” “carbon dioxide-caused global warming,” “man-made, carbon dioxide-caused global warming,” “catastrophic, man-made, carbon dioxide-caused global warming,” etc. The meme seems to be that if you believe in the first, you must believe in all the rest with the same level of certainty, to the exclusion of all alternatives, or you are characterized as a knuckle-dragging “denier.” I have published in peer-reviewed journals and understand the give-and-take of the process. But the actions on display in the climate-gate emails are shameful.
I don’t trust computer-based models to provide numerical predictions with the accuracy that has been portrayed. Richard Hamming, in the preface to his 1962 book on numerical methods, stated, “The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.” I’ve built computer simulations of some fairly complex systems. Modeling an anaerobic digester requires simulation of physical parameters such as mixing and dewatering, chemical balances of carbon dioxide and nutrients, biological nutrient uptake and growth rates, etc. If I had wanted to do so, I could have tuned that digester model to achieve extraordinary (and completely unrealistic) performance levels, using assumptions that were each completely plausible and defensible, when taken one-by-one. But that’s not what we did. We mostly used it to identify sensitive parameters and control methods. For example, it turned out that controlling alkalinity was a key to maintaining stability of the bacterial growth in the digester.
Finally, my major concern with the whole climate change issue is that some seem to think that we can take actions that have an acceptable “downside” but that these actions can resolve the perceived catastrophic danger. The need for urgent action is not clear, the downside risks and costs are likely understated, and the benefits of the actions proposed are highly suspect. In plainer terms, the models are not precise enough to say, “We must act now!” The negative impacts of self-inflicted constraints on energy production could be severe, especially on less-developed countries. And expecting China and India to stop building fossil-fueled power plants is naive, at best.
I have a BSE engineering degree (chemistry minor) making me a chemical engineer. I also have a BS biology degree with math minor. The few papers I have that are noteworthy are proprietary in nuclear and environmental. For 25 years I have designed, built, and operated treatment systems, when I was not doing proprietary research. Most of the systems, research, and rebuilds were for remediation sites. For the past 13 years I have run boilers as well, after the Clean Air Act Amendments were passed. I thought AGW was inarguable. I still think it has the potential to be dangerous, and/or beneficial. However, the measurement methodology, and attribution are too poor to support the claim of 90%, or even 50/50 for that matter, with the methodology utilized, IMO. About 4 years ago, I started reading and was interested in how they separated the natural response from the anthropogenic response for attribution. It still amazes me how many on both sides have not read or understood what the IPCC say in terms of their methodology. I have articles at JeffID’s site where I examined attribution wrt what the emails revealed. I agree with Gerald Quindry in particular, since we have similar backgrounds, and have reached similar conclusions. As both an environmental and energy professional, the only thing I can say about our energy policy is that it is naive, meaning without much explanatory power, and, gullible and unsophisticated.
Slightly O/T, Judith, the Purdue talk was one of the most interesting AGW seminars I have read or listened to. You did well IMO.
Undergrad in Biology, graduate study in evolutionary biology and genetics. During the 1990s, the prime ecological/environmental interest of biologists was habitat destruction and loss of species diversity. I don’t remember anyone talking much about global warming at the time – it didn’t register.
Over time, I kept seeing seeing articles in the press describing scientific papers that discussed habitat and species threats due to global warming. Good enough. But after a while, I started finding it puzzling that ALL such studies were about projected harm that would be caused by a warmer world. If you had asked me beforehand what the effects of a slight increase in average planetary temperatures would be, I would have said ‘some good, some bad.’
The universal negative results coming out of such studies, combined with the apocalyptic nature of many media reports, set off my scientific BS meter. Nature doesn’t work that way. Unfortunately, I know from the inside that science – a very human practice, by definition – really does work that way. Scientists are people, with all the foibles of the species. As the language of extremism entered the discussion, and debate was obviously being suppressed,
I started looking for reliable sources of information, and found Climate Audit. S. McIntyre’s careful, thorough work, together with his stand for openness, sold me that something, at least, was very wrong in the world of climate science. I could have accepted that this was just a few naughty boys among the world’s climate science community, except for the fact that on one among the ‘good climate scientists’ seemed to be willing to speak up for the very fundamentals of proper scientific practice that I was taught as an undergraduate. Sometimes, guilt by association is a reasonable thing.
All this leaves me a luke-warmer. I am not convinced that the claimed connection between increased atmospheric CO2 and current warming is more that correlation, as I question whether measured warming is accurate in degree, and whether natural variation has been ruled out. However, I don’t doubt the possibility that the effects of CO2 may have a less-than-apocalyptic effect on global temps. I do have serious doubts about the value of GCMs for decadal predictions. I follow Pielke Sr’s assertion that warming should be measured in terms of heat content of the oceans – this seems elementary to me. And I believe that there is very little difference between the current social phenomenon that has become Global Warming and other mass movements of folly of the past.
Brit – long term lurker and infrequent commentator on this and other climate sites.
Yet another engineer (Elec. Eng.) who ended up running and finally owning technology businesses, providing equipment to research groups in academia and the microelectronics industry.
No climate related expertise, but making business decisions based on advanced technology gives you an extremely sensitive BS detector – and a particularly jaundiced view of narrowly focused IT folk who keep telling you that the next software version is DEFINITELY going to be bug-free.
The idea of crippling the planet’s most successful economies to accommodate the output of a few contentious computer models fills me with alarm and despondency.
My career has been devoted to construction cost analysis and estimation in the power plant field. As part of my duties, if I write the numbers for the winning bid, I usually end up running the construction job for the parts of it I bid, which is exclusively the mechanical (power plant and piping) phase.
To date, I have done costs for and/or slammed in as project manager over 200 power boilers up to 200,000 lbs/hour and 950 psig capacity, over a dozen aeroderivative gas turbine installations, principally Rolls Royce units (501 KB5’s, Mk 1901 Speys, and an Avon 1533 or two), and a half dozen steam turbogenerator projects, both installation and decommissioning up to 120 MWe, plus maybe 200-300 miles of power process piping total, and perhaps 150 industrial burner changeouts.
As a routine part of my duties, I have had to pull air permits for the respective jurisdictions so I know what combustion analyses and stack gas proximate and ultimate analyses are about, and have had to sign off on a number of plants’ emissions operating profiles. For me, the chemistry of applied thermodynamics (which is entirely all that “climate issues” are about) is not a nifty, trendy, edgy, gauntly epic, sexy fashion statement which positions a guy to be able to boff that cute hippie chick in Biology 110 in the too-tight green bustier. This is my livelihood and that of the workcrews of welders, pipefitters, millwrights, machinists, stationary operating engineers, boilermakers and riggers whom I serve.
University for me consisted of three years at Monteith College, Wayne State University in Detroit. My Website is http://www.transactionsmagazine.com It describes what can be done in detail from a practical and commercially acceptable standpoint to address climate issues using engineering tools many of which have been at hand and used continuously for the past 150 years.
My stance is that whether or not AGW is a complete fraud or gospel truth, a carbon dioxide molecule is a terrible thing to waste if you can make a buck off it, and that today’s scientists are so featherbeddingly ignorant and arrogant they do not know what commercial options are out there nor do they even know how to use a Thomas Register to look up the availability of off the shelf technologies. There is no need for underground sequestration nor was there ever, as there have been industrial uses for CO2 for the past 150 years, and 500 million tonnes of industrial grade and purity are intentionally manufactured for chemical engineering uses annually worldwide.
For amusement, I blog on this topic. You might enjoy the following article at Our Man In Sichuan, where we are having a Cancun Climate Conference Week.
http://ourmaninsichuan.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/the-cancun-shuffle-our-man-in-sichuans-cancun-week
My bottom line is that vague abstractions make me quite angry when we are discussing physical phenomena that negatively impact working people’s livelihoods frivolously, and that if one has P.E. or P. Eng. after their name or if like me they have worked 30 years for those sorts of people directly, then and only then one is truly in a position to talk about applied thermodynamics. This viewpoint is based on the theory one does not go to a rent-a-clown birthday party service for brain surgery.
Maybe it’s me. Sigh.
Hi! Thanks for the opportunity. My degree is in Genetics (1984). My work in IT, from computer operator to consultant. My focus now is in bringing the value of ICT to sub-Saharan Africa (for example, and ).
My interest in AGW emerged slowly as a result of reading around the blogosphere a few years ago. I sometimes post on my blog about what I’ve read, for example and . I’m sceptical of AGW arguments, not because I can understand every detail of the arguments on PCs and bristlecones, but mainly because my scientific training makes me doubt that climate scientists are doing science.
Martin Clauss, BS Aero. Engrg Technology from Arizona State U. in 1982 (a very good combination of the math/science/theory of aeronautics combined with practical application in lab courses.)
28 years in the aerospace industry, starting in the design of system components (hydraulic pumps, pneumatic valves) followed by the last 2o+ years in design/engineering support (including structural/fatigue analysis and materials evaluation) of the AH-64 ‘Apache’ rotor system. I also hold a private pilot’s license. Am interested in weather/meterology as a bit of a ‘hobby’.
With the release of the IPCC report in 2007, where the claims were suddenly that “the science is settled, the evidence is solid, we must do something to reduce CO2”, as with many others here, my ‘BS’ meter went off. Learning more involved google searches on global warming, facts, fiction evidence, etc. Learned about the scientists, their reports, history of climate variations, and so on. Visited lots of websites and blogs. Learned about the temperature record, and ‘adjustments’ being made (granted, some probably valid, but others likely not . . . )
As mentioned by others, found out quickly which websites that, in my opinion, were being for the most part open and honest (Icecap, WUWT, Climate Realists , Climate Audit) to mention a few ) , and which ones had an agenda . . . (Real Climate, Joe Romm). Other sites somewhere in between.
Very quickly I became fairly certain that it was being over-exaggerated. Not that CO2 couldn’t cause some warming, but I questioned the catastrophic nature and all the claims being made. Couldn’t understand why there weren’t more ‘debates’ or ‘forums’ where the leading experts on BOTH sides of the issue would debate, present, etc. Was astounded by the ‘slamming’ and ‘attacks’ of anyone who disagreed (it’s clear to me now why . . . ).
Topping it off was the ‘Climate gate’ issue, and the names involved didn’t surprise me in the least. Was concerned (and still am) about how very influential people were involved, and still trying to prop it up, especially from a financial standpoint (G Soros, Obama, the CCX issue, Mr. Gore of course , to name a few. . . ) . Sure hope to see it continue to crash down on them
I enjoy going to these various sites today, in order to stay abreast of latest research , reports, and analyses.
Eugene Zeien, BS Applied Physics 1991. 19 years experience in programming, data analysis & IT support.
Rejected the catastrophic aspect of global warming as soon as that storyline appeared. The longest paleoclimate records show a temperature record that resembles a driven harmonic oscillator. Earth’s temperature is currently near the upper bound. There’s not much room for global catastrophe in +2C.
My (casual) interest lies in “Why has the temperature been dropping for the past billion years?” If the Sun was less energetic in its youth, either the Earth had more atmosphere, the composition was dramatically different, or (this is a bit “out there”) our orbit was closer to the Sun. I favor the thick atmosphere hypothesis at the moment.
BS in Physics, 1969. I spent my working life in the design and management of the design of computers. I got interested in climate science as an intellectual hobby. I was shocked to discover that there was no falsifiable experiment or observation to demonstrate the feedback effects of CO2. The appeal to scientific authority, the claim of consensus, the statement that the “science was settled” gave me cause for alarm. The cry that we had to “act now” made me deeply suspicious. It is a trick as ancient as man. If there is convincing evidence “out there”, I haven’t seen it. I keep reading the papers and trying to cut through the smoke, looking for data that clearly confirms one thing or the other. I disagree entirely that the problem is communication. The problem is science.
Occasional poster
British
Retired
BSc Geology, MSc Applied Micropalaeontology and Palaeoecology
Initially worked as micropalaeontologist on early North Sea wells, then spent bulk of career as petroleum exploration geologist and geological manager in US oil exploration companies, latterly exploration and development consultant , UKNS and international.
AGW was off my radar until I started getting suspicious, around 2005, of what appeared to me to be propaganda on the BBC and in the media. While basically sceptical, aware that climate variability is the geological norm, it puzzled me that warming and CO2 enrichment should be viewed negatively, which to me turned geological logic and historical evidence upside down. After all, common sense dictates that warmth generally means lush growth, good crop yields, general fertility and even thick tree rings, but cold equals hardship, and maybe even death if you’re coldblooded or a plant hit by frost. I started surfing for information, and found some online US course notes. I went through them carefully, considering the logic put forth, and found it less than convincing.
My scepticism deepened in the face of what had now become an obvious barrage of one-sided media promotion. More significantly, there seemed to be no clear-cut consistency in the relationship between temperature and CO2 in differing geological epochs, and in the Quaternary ice cores CO2 trailed warming.
Since that time, I have read a lot and learnt a lot, and if AGW has a benefit, it is an educational one, galvanising thousands into an energetic quest for more knowledge, whichever side of the fence one is on. I take the view that despite the genuine strides made so far, the study of climate is still far too immature to make future predictions, up or down.
AB in Mathematics, BS in EE, MS in EE with a concentration in Communications and Information Theory (also an MBA from Harvard, but that’s mostly to pay the bills). Spent about a decade working with signal detection in the presence of heavy noise before moving into more financial matters.
Like many, I got into climate science about 5 years ago reading realclimate and climate audit. After trying to post a couple of comments on realclimate when it drifted into an area where I thought I had some expertise, I was shocked at the level of censorship (I was simply naive about their practices about opposing views). Quite a difference from the practices at climate audit. This started me on the process of skepticism, because if you have to eliminate skeptical views something is very wrong.
My views are that of a lukewarmer (or my preference mAGW, mild Anthropogenic Global Warming.) Mostly because that’s the best fit to the existing empirical data. However, I hold the field of climate science in extremely low esteem, so there is much uncertainty in the evidence that underpins my views. The quality of science as evidenced by the Hockey Stick fiasco, the HarryReadMe saga, the perversion of the peer review process, and the politicization of the field has me extremely skeptical of anything that is published these days. But I will struggle to keep an open mind…
Not as much of a regular here as I would like on Judith’s blog. Here’s a copy of what I posted on Jeff’s blog.
Ph.D. physics. My graduate work was in experimental gravity (mostly phenomenological, but I’ve got a couple of experimental papers under my belt). Since then, after a short stint in high energy physics with the aborted SSC, I’ve mostly been involved with acoustics related topics (hearing research, outdoor sound propagation, infrasound), including modeling, phenomenology and measurement.
One of my creations.
3 Hobo met stations, 2 Campbell Scientific CSAT-3 and 16 B&K 4191 mikes, part of a nocturnal boundary layer experiment. The tower is a ’tilt up’ prebuilt. Data collection on a Macintosh computer using 2 daisy chained MOTU-828 firewire audio interfaces. Software for data collection was written by me (fun problem–16 channels at 44100 samples/second @ 24 bits each channel). Shown are my colleagues Roger and Rick. That was a cheap Walmart-grade table, and yes it is bowing “slightly” under the weight, LOL.
My degrees are in aeronautical engineering with a Ph.D in supersonic aerodynamics. I have been an active research scientist for nearly forty years, working in several aspects of combustion. I have over ninety peer-reviewed papers, am on the editorial boards of journals, been elected Fellow of learned societies, have active collaboration with many universities including visiting/adjunct/part-time professorships …. I have remained anonymous and do not express my “skeptical” views publicly because it would be massively counter-productive since I work in the oil industry! In any case, had I gone public, I think my previous employer would have fired me! However, I do discuss these issues privately with scientific colleagues and almost always find them to have similar views. My political instincts are left/liberal and I believe the government has a role to play in society to protect the poor and the weak, ensure equality of opportunity, uphold the rule of law, regulate imperfect markets…. Had I been an American, I would certainly support Obama.
I was initially intrigued by the apparent certainty of the predictions from climate models. About three years ago I discovered RC. I was initially surprised and then disgusted by the arrogance, condescension and tribalism at that site. I then discovered CA and other blogs which I now read regularly. I have enormous admiration for Steve McIntyre. I am a lurker but can’t resist a comment very occasionally (http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/11/10/the-upside-to-alarmism/#comments). The shenanigans described in the Hockey Stick Illusion and the attitudes displayed in the CRU e-mails, and the defence that this was normal behavior, have appalled me. I also find the misanthropy that lies at the heart of a lot of environmental thinking distasteful. I find I agree with most of what is said on this topic on spiked-online.co.uk .
My views on climate change were formed by reading the essays of Tennekes, Lindzen, Pielke Sr. and Freeman Dyson. Obviously CO2 is a greenhouse gas and is increasing because of man’s activities. I am sure everything mankind does affects climate (a la Pielke Sr.) not just CO2 but natural variability could overwhelm these effects. In fact I think in the coming decades CO2 concentration will rise faster than ever before because of increasing energy demand and carbon intensity of the energy mix. I do not think that the climate models have sufficient skill, because of the uncertainties, to make reliable predictions about future global temperatures. The predictions about the resultant consequences are even less reliable. I am an optimist and believe that mankind can and will adapt to changes in climate which will not necessarily be detrimental. Energy policy, and hence CO2 will be driven by energy security issues. Sensible things like improving energy efficiency and diversification of energy sources will happen but at a pace determined by economics and politics. I find Pielke Jr.s arguments generally persuasive in this regard.
Finally, Prof. Curry, I greatly admire the courage and tenacity you display on this blog. “Climate science” could still evolve into a proper science because of people of integrity like you! All the very best in your endeavour to highlight and discuss the uncertainties in this infant science.
Hello: Going through the above posts, I notice a fairly large amount people with advanced degrees as well as those that have taken the time to learn on their own. Kudos to you all. As for me….
BS in Geology (1981). I have spent most of my geological career working in oil and gas exploration. Currently logging wells in the Marcellus Shale in PA. I first got interested in AGW about 3 years ago. My training in geology means I can understand deep time and the deep history of the earth. What got my antennae quivering were the phrases ” the scientific consensus” and the “the science is settled”. My reaction was along the lines of: “Hogwash!!!!!”
I remain unconvinced about the catastrophic part of GW. I hear comments from some of my former professors and geology classmates that that we are already overriding natural processes. Earth has been much hotter and CO2 levels have been much higher in the past. It appears as though we may be CO2 deficient in the present day. An interesting look at this can be found at: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
My day job (academic department head and biomedical research) keeps me from commenting very often, but I really like this blog. It is one of the few where pro-CAGW, anti-, and agnostic commenters interact. My background is a B.S. in Microbiology a Ph.D. in immunology, and a sabbatical leave to learn toxicology. My research goal is to understand the mechanisms by which drugs, chemicals, and stress suppress the function of the immune system and to identify targets for therapeutic interventions to prevent this or counteract it. I have a degree of empathy with climate scientists, because I know funding agencies don’t just throw money at anyone, and having your career depend on competing with people at top institutions to be one of the 8-10% to get funded (this is the number for NIH, I don’t know the number for NOAA, NASA, DOE, etc. but I don’t think it’s much different).
I became really interested in climate science after reading about climategate then following up mostly on RealClimate and WUWT. I am not an expert, but I have done some modeling with biological data sets, so I have some familiarity with some of the methods (e.g., I have done principle components analysis). The climategate emails and other documents (particularly the the one in which “Harry” attempts to make sense of a climate data set and adjustments that had been made) caused me to wonder if the near certainty expressed by the climate science community was warranted. The response of the community (defending “hide the decline”, refusing to release data and code, etc.) further suggested that something just wasn’t quite right. I haven’t seen evidence of a grand conspiracy, but evidence of groupthink seems sufficient to me to conclude that there is a problem. I am not leveling a personal criticism here, because this happens in most fields at one time or another (the T suppressor cell saga in immunology is a great example), but the climate science groupthink is tied so closely with advocacy and politics that I believe it will damage the credibility of all science for years to come. Politicizing science needs to be avoided like the plague. It is extremely telling that the major errors in the IPCC reports have all favored catastrophism. This gives the public good reason to doubt the objectivity of climate scientists. This was reinforced by some very questionable papers and opinions expressed in PNAS. My advice to climate scientists, for what little it may be worth: When you find yourself in a hole, first stop digging.
John M. Whitman:
Sporadic participant at Judith’s blog, mostly hang out at Anthony’s place.
BSc in Engineering Science with focus on nuclear; University at Buffalo (SUNY).
Mostly semi-retired from nigh on 39 years in various areas of the nuclear power industry; primarily in the Asian market. Some active business ongoing in Asia.
Longtime lover of philosophy and history of philosophy from age of 13. : ) It still motivates my fundamentals .
Skeptic? No, independent thinker with a consistent intentional strategy of being out-of-phase with all popular intellectual fashions.
Climate science: from the first I really did not see the data clearly/conclusively supporting the public messages.
John
I’m a lowly B.A ( economics ) and an M.B.A. ( a “name” school ). By pure serendipity, in 1973 I picked up a copy of “The Limits To Growth” and ended up writing a rebuttal as a senior thesis. I was fortunate to have been exposed to computers from their early days ( remote terminals and time-shared BASIC ) and have strived mightily to keep current ever since. I have spent a lifetime observing their analytical use and abuse; I’ve seen more “GIGO” than I care to recall but have always been astounded by the imprimatur and patina of science accorded their output by the the uninformed, the credulous and the gullible.
A professional career spent attempting to persuade a massive database to spit out “truth” solidified my axiom that it’s not wise to trust anything that comes out of a computer unless you fully understand “what’s under the hood.”
I was fortunate to have a best pal/lifelong friend who became a physician/scientist (a geneticist ) thus providing me a window into the world of bench science. Notwithstanding my enormous respect and admiration for the majority of persons engaged in the “increase and diffusion of knowledge” I am well aware that they are also quite human and subject to all the sociological, cultural and biological imperatives and responses that govern behavior.
My career as an analyst eventually instilled a wariness of consensus, decision-making by committee and popular opinion. Knowledge of the history of Judah Folkman’s “adventures in angiogenesis” and the story of H. pylori taught me to be extra careful whenever smug peddlars loudly and foolishly proclaim, “The science is settled.”
As H. L. Mencken so delightfully put it, “The iconoclast proves enough when he proves by his blasphemy that this or that idol is defectively convincing— that at least one visitor to the shrine is left full of doubts. The liberation of the human mind has been best furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe— that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.”
I figured I should fill this out, having been semi-lurking here (ie. very sporadic comments) since you started! This is a bit of an edited version of my input at The Air Vent on the same topic.
I graduated as BE (Elec) and have some completed and non-completed post-grad studies in a range of areas – but it’s engineering that’s been my livelihood.
I’ve also studied some economics and statistics along the way – but I bow my head in awe to some of the stats work we see over at Jeff Id and Steve Mc’s places. I’m also a pilot (fixed multi and rotary) so have a high level of practical interest (as well as modest education by way of qualification for commercial piloting) in weather/meteorology – which I fully understand is NOT climate.
I’ve been practicing in the engineering space for over 35 years (scary)… I own a small busines (about 70 employees) working mainly in communications and security engineering as well as project management and providing training in most of those areas.
My typical day starts with a check/read of CA, TAV, Watts, Pielke Jr, Pielke Sr, Lucia (Blackboard), the Bishop’s place, Joanne Nova, occasionally MOSHTEMP and now (regularly) Climate etc! In order to maintain some balance in my life, I sometimes look at Realclimate to see what they are up to, but have very serious problems with their attitude.
While I’ve never worked in academic/government research, and occasionally find some of the “niceties” there a little bizarre, we do some R&D (mainly D) in my company – but it’s all my own money that’s on the line there so we are usually trying to achieve something in the short to medium term!
Thank you, Dr Curry, for allowing your readers this opportunity to explain their views on the Global Warming/Climate Change debate.
I am not a scientist. I am, however, interested in science and hold the ethos of science in high regard. I consider myself to be reasonably balanced and I am always capable of seeing the other point(s) of view. I have made a few posts on the Blackboard and WUWT.
I am a professional pilot and, as such, work in an environment where science, data interpretation and an understanding of the atmosphere blend together with a logical and practical approach to the application of scientific theories.
In my opinion, there are several illogicalities with the CAGW theory which demand clarification and which, so far, have not been fully explained by those that support the CAGW view. One of these illogicalities stems from the basic theory of a CO2-attributed increase in global temperature. In particular, the use of radiative forcing from greenhouse gasses (which total less than 0.04% of the atmosphere) to explain a potentially ‘catastrophic’ increase in global temperature remains highly dubious.
In spite of a barrage of warnings of the ‘dire consequences’ of increased CO2, the fact remains that the measured rise in global temperature since 1850 is less than 0.8 deg C. At the same time, the measured increase in CO2 levels is about 40%. There is no unambiguous evidence that any causation exists between these two facts but they certainly seem to defy the ‘9-26%’ contribution to the Greenhouse Effect stated by many supporters of the CAGW theory.
That there is likely to be some sort of contribution to global warming from an increase in greenhouse gasses is not, in my view, in any doubt. It is the scale of that contribution which is debatable. To my layman’s mind, a falsifiable scientific theory is only validated when the evidential data supports that theory. There is no such evidential data to support the CAGW theory. Models don’t count. This effectively puts the current pro-CAGW stance firmly in the realm of politics, not science. As a non-scientist, I would venture to suggest that ‘climate science’ needs to take a long hard look at itself in order to obtain any sense of integrity and respect.
Regards,
Arfur Bryant
These posts have been fascinating, and it’s nice to meet you all. Here’s mine.
I am a PhD chemist, studied at four universities. I have also spent a lot of time in physics, mathematics, materials science, and biology, by learning from those who knew a lot more, and were willing to teach. Geology is a hobby science. What pays the bills is consulting in turning basic science into commerce; I work with venture capitalists, established corporations and start-ups.
As I have written elsewhere on this blog, the malign influence of ideology on science has been a long time interest, but I won’t give the background in case someone chooses to “Godwinize” me, again.
I have no formal training in climate science, but I believe I am quite capable of understanding it; I understand science and how it is supposed to work. I have been following the CO2 global warming hypothesis for more than 15 years. I was impressed from the outset by what appeared to me to be outright absurdities (why, for instance, is the middle twentieth century assumed to be a climate optimum?) and by the tone of the public debate – a mixture of the usual misanthropic environmentalism, catastrophic pronouncements and arrogance, with no tempering caveats or doubt. This all led to further scrutiny of the science, the data, the logic. All are lacking. That significant policy decisions are taken based on these weak grounds disturbs me. That attempts at discussing this at various universities, with otherwise rational people, have been met with notable hostility disturbs me more.
I have tried the “warmist” blogs, am disgusted, in general, at the behavior there. WUWT was seminal with the surfacestations project (marvelous work!), and I continue to lurk there, although encroachment of political stances makes me wary sometimes. Climate Audit has set the objective standard, in my opinion. Judy Curry is a close second, and I value this blog enormously. I also like Montford’s acerbic humor…climate science needs more of that.
Ph.D. in natural resource management. 127 publications in modeling, forestry, evolution, statistics. New book on time series and climate coming out spring 2011.
I have always questioned everything. I find that for most topics, if you look at it from different angles you can learn something new. When I see that certain questions are not asked about climate, and that there is an attempt to shut down debate, I find this alarming. When I find that critical assumptions on things like the hockey stick are not verifiable (or are false), I also find this alarming. If your assumptions are proven false you need to reevaluate, not attack the messenger. I am a detail person, and have observed that the “story” about something (or big picture if you wish) is often not valid when details are examined, and this is true in all fields of science. Many subjects have been hijacked by a story, from the “noble savage” in anthropology to nutrition to studies in education or gender studies. I’m not interested in such stories. It is also clear that people are very bad at logical reasoning, and thus it is good to follow the practice of always asking “how do we know that?”
BA(Joint hons) History and Philosophy of science, Registered Engineer.
Combining previous theoretical and hands on working knowledge of fluid mechanics, heat engines and materials science with a degree filling out my knowledge of the development of science through the past 2000 years and study of the way the scientific community organises, executes and evaluates research, I have always maintained an interest in the cutting edge of knowledge and the way theories are supported, oversold, and occasionally falsified.
Became interested in the climate debate some years ago and have been following the main blogs with interest. Have my own hypotheses on various aspects of climate causation and have been trying to get some quantification into my pontification.
Over the last year my blog has been getting lively, with some interesting contributions on a diverse range of topics from greenhouses to interplanetary dynamics from a wide ranging group of participants.
In my spare time I blog, backpack in the mountains, maintain my allotment and rainwater filtering system, rebuild old motorcycles and other old transports of delight, and chop wood for the stove we cook on, make hot water with, and keep warm next to in the winter.
Hello everyone! It’s interesting to read about all your roads to Climate Etc.
I started my journey with a first class honours in Physics followed by a PhD in Fluid Mechanics and Measurement. Several years ago I was asked to deliver a lecture course on the environment and being a diligent academic I set out to find some proof of CAGW to present of my students. The more I looked for proof the more I became convinced that the proponents of CAGW were exaggerating the facts. The uncertainties in the hypothesis are just too big to be ignored. The ridiculous claims that the “science is settled” appear to me to be an attempt to silence proper scientific scrutiny of the issues.
I have learned a lot from Climate Audit and greatly admire Steve McIntyre’s forensic skills. I hope that Climate Etc. will become a forum for genuine open minded debate as there is surely a need for such a facility.
Hank McCard: I am retired having worked nearly four decades for a for-profit company in the aerospace/defense industry. I have BSEE, MSEE and SMMS (nope, not a typo, “=masters in management science.”) degrees.
I grew up on a farm in ME and graduated from high school in 1950 a month before the Korean War started. I joined the US Navy and served as a cross-trained radarman and electronic technician for the next four years. That experience (and the GI Bill) led to my interest in design engineering and the aerospace/defense field. While I was completing my undergraduate studies, the USSR launched Sputnik 1 and I became fascinated with the prospects working in a field beyond the reaches of the earth’s atmosphere. After completing my undergraduate studies, I joined one of the two companies that the USAF had selected to solve the reentry physics problems associated with their objective to develop a nuclear ICBM weapon system. Sputnik 1 triggered the Space Race and the Missile Race was underway. JFK started the Moon Race soon thereafter. Little did I know at that time where my career path would lead; I had no thoughts about spending my entire career with the same company! I retired in 1996 when I reached the mandatory retirement age of 65.
I spent the first half of my career in various system engineering assignments on a number of different programs and became the chief engineer for the company in 1978. I also served as the president of the company for more than a decade. During the first half of my career I was primarily involved in engineering and science-related matters. During the last half I became increasingly involved in policy- and political-related matters.
I never thought of the pursuit of the goal to achieve a sustainable nuclear deterrence as a ‘wicked problem’, nor did I consider the Moon Race to be a ‘tame’ problem, especially, my company’s responsibility to protect the Apollo Command Module during reentry of the earth’s atmosphere at a velocity of 1 km/s. I suppose, depending upon one’s perspective, the terminology may apply.
I paid no attention to AGW before I retired. After I retired I heard about the Kyoto Protocol being adopted in 1997 but didn’t give it much thought. Later, I became aware of the claims about CO2 being the bogeyman and I started wondering, “How did they arrive at that conclusion?” I then became aware of the IPCC and their TAR in 2001. Some of the claims that were made didn’t make sense to me and seemed to be inconsistent with some of the things that I thought I understood about the atmosphere from being involved in hypervelocity reentry physics. My doubts lead me to searching the internet for answers and by skepticism merely increased. I revisited the Kyoto Protocol and decided that it made no sense and would have serious negative consequences.
As regards the internet, consider it to be a treasure trove for instant access to information that I wish that my “former life.” Although it annoys me to find so much peer-reviewed literature to be behind pay walls, there is much more available than I can possibly find time to read. I also visited most of the blogs that other denizens above reported that they visit. I’m especially interested in the content of the blogs since Climategate and Dr. Curry’s decision to enter the blogosphere with this site. For example, along that line, I’m impressed with the response of several bloggers to Anastasia Makarieva’s article. I find the Makarieva’s interaction with Judith here and Lucia at The Blackboard and Jeff Id at The air Vent and the various commenters at each website to be interesting and inspiring. IMO, the ongoing discussion of Makarieva’s Eq. 34 at The Blackboard is both quite rigorous and respectful. Here’s a thought:
Could this be model for augmenting current peer review practices or even creating a new model for the review of scientific articles?
If so, it would require several paradigm shifts by authors, reviewers, technical journal editors and professional societies. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to be able to have open access via the internet to scientific articles, including research data and computer codes, with fully transparent details of the reviewer’s findings and interactions with the author(s).
Oh well, who knows what may happen in the future?
Whoops! Reentry velocity from the moon should read 10km/s, not 1km/s.
Background – live in Sydney, Australia. Masters in Economics & Statistics, also a CPA. Worked as a financial analyst and in executive positions. Now run my own business.
Philosophy – politically conservative, believer in small government. Have always been skeptical of extreme claims of environmentalists and doom-mongers eg the Club of Rome scares of the 70s.
AGW – have followed the debate for several years, with my interest particularly sparked by the statistical analysis of Steve McIntyre in his Climate Audit blog. Follow the other major blogs, bought the books and have attended skeptic conferences.
Current conclusion – I think the AGW movement is now falling apart with startling rapidity eg the latest Scientific American readership survey result is that nearly 80% now believe that climate change is caused by natural processes.
Looking at all the other posters here, it would seem my only claim to fame is my age. I’m a 24 year old nobody with excessive curiosity and a desire to learn. My first serious introduction to the subject was shortly after RealClimate’s birth, when I began following both it and ClimateAudit. While my initial reaction was idle curiosity, it has since developed into morbid fascination.
There has been little in my life more surreal than sitting in a high school class, realizing I could do more legitimate scientific work than a group of people with advanced degrees.
I’m a semi-retired Electrical Engineer, BSEE 1970 Texas Tech Univ. I’ve acquired an updated Physics book to help me get back up to speed with the physics of this issue. I’ve bookmarked a fairly large number of blog and web sites on this issue. I’ve been visiting these sites now for a couple of years.
The most informative ones have been:
http://theresilientearth.com/
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
http://scienceofdoom.com/ (I highly recommend)
http://rankexploits.com/musings/ (Lucia)
http://www.cmmap.org/
http://www.climate.gov/#climateWatch
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/ccsm3.0/
As an digital system design engineer I’m familiar with the use of model software for design of electronic devices. It’s a wonderful tool as long as the user knows the limitations of the models be they analog or digital devices.
My problem with AGW is it’s primarily being driven (85%) by climate models that are seriously deficient in capturing the enormous complexity of the Earth’s climate system. Also, because the climate scientists building the models don’t know what they don’t know apparently.
I for one find it inconceivable that they have not modeled a climate system with cloud forcing opposite what they are assuming(positive). Especially when they mostly admit they don’t really know whether cloud forcing is positive or negative.
My name? Hilary Ostrov. Not a scientist, but I did have the benefit of a pre-post-modernist university education and succeeded in earning a BA in Psychology and English. I’ve had several careers, including CEO of a non-profit society and as a government “policy analyst” – which means that I’ve learned how to write (and read between the lines of) bureaucratese.
Nowadays, in order to keep my cat in the style to which she’s become accustomed, I’m doing something completely different! Web application and database design and management, computer training, and other computer-related “stuff”.
Some years ago, I was involved in combatting the lies put forth by the real “denial industry” (i.e. David Irving, Ernst Zundel et al); so it was quite a shock to my psyche, a little over a year ago, to find that merely questioning the hypothesis that human generated CO2 is the primary cause of global warming (aka climate change, aka whatever the nomenclature/branding of the week might be) was sufficient to earn myself the label of “denier”.
There are probably three major issues that got my “this doesn’t sound right to me” detectors into high gear. The first was the discovery of the appalling non-responsive behaviour of CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Ombudsman in “reply” to complaints about the airing of AIT.
The second was the (to me) surprising fact that in climate science, peer-review does not include any verification or validation of data and methodology. Where’s the due diligence, I asked myself?
And the third eye-opener came last January when I was perusing the reviewer comments on the Second Order Draft of AR4. This resulted in what has become the most frequently viewed post on my blog: “The climate change game … Monopoly: the IPCC version”
Quite possibly everything I’ve read since those early days could be attributed to “confirmation bias”. But somehow I doubt it. I was involved in Donna Laframboise’s Citizen Audit – which demonstrated that the IPCC’s “all peer-reviewed” claim is far from accurate, as was confirmed by the IAC’s recent review of the IPCC.
Since March, I have been working with Peter B., an Australian programmer, who has been developing what will be a phenomenal tool for self-directed research on AR 4 and the relationships between authors, the Climategate emails, the extent to which papers have been authored/co-authored by IPCC authors and contributors, citations linked to their reference and much, much more!
The initial product of this work is FAR_OUT (Fourth Assessment Report – Objectively Uniformly Tagged) and a companion database with which it will eventually be seamlessly integrated. For the last few weeks, I’ve been “cracking the whip” in the hope that we can go “public” with this in observance of the first anniversary of Climategate ;-)
It is my firm belief that what the world needs now is not the complicity of acquiescence by silence, but clarion calls for clarity. I appreciate the clarity that Dr. Curry is striving for here – and which she demonstrated during the recent Purdue debate, Beyond Climategate.
I’m a Handsome Brit with a degree in microbiology, buy have since trained in biochemistry and am currently training (rather painfully) in chemistry. I have 8 years of direct laboratory based experience. Currently I lead client-based research projects. I have a working background in cGMP manufacturing, research and commercial biotech and recently got thrown into the deep end of technical/engineering work during a facility set up.
My interests lie, rather specifically, around virus’ and even more specifically, around the HIV strains. Planning to do a pHD on this subject in the next few years, finances willing (about to become a dad, so not holding my breath!).
The background for my concerns over the cAGW theory started when the scientific establishment started shutting out dissent and questions. I was originally pro-consensus, but this set alarm bells ringing. Having looked into various aspects of the theory at some detail, I have been worried most about the abject quality of the data/equipment/proxies used and the number of assumptions the theory seems to based on.
I find that given my cGMP background that the quality of the data is so poor that it is very difficult to make ANY conclusions from it, either way (with the obvious qualifier that the ‘newer’ the data, the ‘better’ MOST of it seems to be). I’m very much a ‘bottom-up’ scientist (insert joke here), when handed a theory or proposal I’ll go straight to the data- if that doesn’t hold or support, I discard the entire theory until its ‘fixed’- a hangover from my cGMP days, but it’s served me well so far.
By default I’m leaning towards scepticism, not out of any ideology but simply because I don’t find the cAGW theory scientifically compelling. I also find that many of the generalisations or evidence used to support the theory do nothing of the kind (i.e. melting ice does not prove co2 drives climate, only that the climate is warming around the ice).
I’d happily change my position were the evidence to improve.
The key issues for me are:
-climate sensitivity wrt co2.
-clouds
-the temp data / UHI effect
I’m aware that I can sometimes come across as forceful in my posts- but this is just down to my very-straight forward (i.e. limited) writing style and nothing is ever meant by it. I’m usually just eager to get to the crux of an issue.
Finally, I’ve opted for anonymity because although I’m quite happy to stick my own head above the parapets as it were, it seems a bit much to make my wife do the same. I’m not expecting any kind of backlash of course; it just seems the correct thing to do at present.
I now live in London but grew up in Denmark with an intermezzo in the Caribbean (so I am used to hurricanes :o) and I am still clinging on to my thirties. 1 year of Economics and 2 Law degrees (Danish and English), there is a Master in there somewhere. I work as a lawyer for a charity, mainly employment law, representing people who would otherwise not have anybody to represent them. What I like about my work (and blogs) is that you never, ever know what comes through the door, so most days there is a chance to laugh (or cry) and to think. I previously worked in City, mainly M&A and PE (much better money but less fun). I would probably label myself as a lukewarm-layman-lurker but scepticism-out-of-principle would also fit (probably a consequence of my day job :o). I am happy to accept AGW, CAGW (hmmmm, don’t know enough, so further and better particulars, please), I am leaning towards a pragmatic approach when it comes to response but don’t think we need to know everything for certain before becoming more efficient or looking into switching to less carbon-intensive sources of energy makes sense. First became interested? Lomborg’s first book. Lomborg was a bit of a pinup at the time (!) and a girlfriend of mine was rather besotted. I told her that I thought she might be wasting her time ;o) but I read the book. Later, of course, came Copenhagen and people insisting on telling me that we are all doomed and then Climategate. I read HSI and started to pop around Bishop Hill from time to time which then took me to other blogs incl. this one. I guess it really boils down to me being extremely curious and interested in the world and the people in it. My interest is mainly in the policy (I frankly haven’t got the brains for the hardcore science) so the last book I read was “The Climate Fix” by Roger Pielke Jr. I find some of the response to climate change utterly silly. For instance my charity now has an environmental policy which says that I shall conduct meetings with clients over the telephone if at all possible and if I absolutely have to see them in person then I should encourage them to use public transport. Now, there may be good reasons for dealing with clients over the telephone but climate change isn’t one of them and I wouldn’t dream of telling people what transportation to use. I am afraid that I sent a rather naughty email reply to the CEO asking him if he also wanted me to put up a small notice in the loo requesting that my clients use both sides of the toilet paper (luckily the guy is a friend with an excellent sense of humor). Come to think of it my interest probably also ties in with my interest developing countries particularly India, East Caribbean and Africa (think The Kaya Identity :0). My family has been involved with business/aid in Africa for the last 25 years and the amount of money wasted on ill thought through aid is frankly such that it makes you want to weep and when people in London spend tons of time and money turning their houses in recycle bunkers then it reminds me of that and I find it immensely annoying that if you question the wonderfulness or usefulness (considering China/India etc) of what they are doing then you are treated like some sort of horrible person who do not care about the Earth. I do care, I walk to work, don’t own a car and I rather like penguins and polar bears!:o) A scientist friend of mine recently sent me an email attaching an interview he had done (he is doing some seriously cool stuff within physics) humorously adding “Please note that I seem to be speaking directly to God in this article” This is why I like this blog. Judith does not claim to speak directly to God so there is room for uncertainty, doubt and discussion.
East European origins .
My specialization was in Quantum Mechanics and I worked both on fusion (Tokomak) and fission (PWR) for a time.
Did also some work about quantum diffusion of protons in crystals (fragilisation of metals by hydrogen).
Decided that the academical way of life was not interesting and switched to industry where I still work on energy related fields (strategy , research and developpment).
Began to be interested by climate after an unpleasant experience with Greenpeace activists in eastern Germany where I was caught up in a “manifestation” end of the 90ies without my consent.
By discussing with the activists, I realized that these people were just as brainwashed and intellectually handicapped as the people who had governed the former eastern totalitarian regimes.
As the Greenpeace action was directed towards the “Fight against the global warming”, all my internal alarms and BS detectors went on.
I have read then everything from the IPCC reports, through peer reviewed litterature to economical considerations.
To comment on the latter, I have noticed that somebody here has mentionned Schellnhuber and indeed this guy is an absolute horror.
If anybody has still any doubts about to what the AGW believers want to coerce us, read Prof. Dr. Schellnhuber – it’s worse than the Friday 13 movie.
As in the later part of my carrier I have studied non linear dynamics and chaos theory, my ideas about the climate are rather clear in my mind.
1) What I call the climatic system (hydrosphere , atmosphere , cryosphere , litosphere , biosphere) is governed by spatio-temporal deterministic chaos.
2) Observation clearly shows that both on small time scales (weather) and on long time scales (ice ages).
3) As no deterministic prediction of the system’s trajectory is possible, the only alternative is to find probability distributions of future states of the system.
4) There will only be an invariant probability distribution function if the system is ergodic. If the system is not ergodic then the probabilities of future states depend on the initial conditions. Most climate scientists behave like if it was a given that the system is ergodic. It is not and I will not believe it unless I see a proof.
Having experience with this issue, this proof is out of our reach and if analogies are any guide then it is more likely than not that the system is not ergodic. People who maintain that they can predict the system over long periods of time are badly uninformed.
5) So while CO2, H20 etc are just some variables affecting the trajectory in a certain direction, there are many others who affect it in different directions. It is a property of non linear systems that variables don’t separe and that it is impossible to extrapolate everything else being equal.
These systems are also permanently out of equilibrium what makes them roam all over the allowed region of the phase space. Therefore I attach no quantitative validity to numerical models who do not and cannot solve the equations describing the system.
6) Positive feedbacks never exist for a long time because they destroy the system. As our system has not been destroyed in 4 billion years, it is very likely that like almost every natural long lived system, it is dominated by negative feedbacks. The trajectories are still unpredictable but they are constrained to a small region of the phase space.
7) What is left is the short term (a century or so) estimated effect of CO2 increase and it is negligible. So a kind of AGW exists but it is just a negligible transitory noise inside the vast pseudo periodical oscillations that make the climate on all time scales. A link to this kind of analysis is https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kswanson/www/publications/2008GL037022_all.pdf
B.S. Mathematics 1986, Ph.D. Software Engineering 2008.
Worked full-time as a software developer and eventually researcher from ’83 to 2000, then pursued (and completed!) a mid-career Ph.D.
Out in industry, I worked on optimizing compilers for embedded platforms. Most of our customers were writing safety-critical and/or mission-critical software. Very little of *my* code was safety-critical, but I learned a lot from the customers whose programs really had to work right. (Aside: safety-critical has two meanings, depending on context. #1: people will die if the software fails. #2: The *wrong* people will die if the software fails. The reliability and correctness issues are pretty much identical for both cases.)
My original position on Global Warming was to believe what I heard in the main-stream media. I assumed both that the reporting correctly reflected the science, and also that the underlying science was good. I first started paying closer attention in when I heard a report describing multiple climate model runs as “an experiment.” This would be anathema in the aerospace world many of my customers were in. Flight tests are “an experiment.” Wind-tunnel tests are “an experiment.” Simulations — even with with well-calibrated models working directly from well-understood underlying physics — fail to rise to the level of “an experiment.” At best, they tell you what experiments might be interesting to perform.
So I went looking to find out what was so special about climate science that allowed them to know enough that a computer simulation could be considered an experiment. Perhaps I was a bit naive, but I fully expected to find well-understood physics and validated models whose output was well-calibrated against measurable reality… complete with tested, falsifiable predictions that had held up on examination. I was sadly disappointed!
Now that I’ve looked “under the hood” I see the conventional “main-stream” position as being based on largely unwarranted claims of certainty. Everyone seems to agree on the direct effect of CO2 warming (radiative transfer, everything else held equal) — that’s great! But:
* We can’t hold everything else equal
* We don’t know the complete list of forcing and/or feedbacks with any certainty
* We don’t know either the sign or the magnitude of some of the most important effects (clouds, anyone?)
* There appears to be significant and respectable argument about CO2 sources (anthropogenic vs. natural), although this *appears* to be a smaller issue than the above
* The climate models are unvalidated (and may be unvalidatable, given the extreme difficulty of doing actual experiments). They certainly *DO* *NOT* work entirely from the underlying physics — this is not yet computationally feasible at scale. Further, a fair amount of the physics remains unknown
* Aerosols as a fudge factor? WTF?
* Vast differences between models in assumed feedbacks and “climate sensitivity.” This is prima facie evidence that the models fail to reach the level of calibration seen in those aerospace simulations (for example)
I failed to note, above, that I’m primarily a lurker. My present job requires that I avoid controversial public opinions, due to the possibility that my opinion could be construed as that of my employer. Sigh. So I mostly read and don’t post.
My current position is that the available science falls far, far short of reaching the level of understanding or certainty that would be required for building an aircraft, or releasing a new medicine. But we’re being asked to spend vast quantities of money to attempt to mitigate an uncertain problem, based on science that would fail to motivate far less expensive and less consequential decisions in many other areas of political and regulatory life.
My position on AGW is now twofold:
#1: We don’t know what to expect. More science needed, to gain greater understanding.
#2: Given #1, we should consider ONLY those actions that are truly “no-regrets.” That is, actions that are financially justified on the basis of *fully* *known* costs and benefits. Everything else can wait for greater certainty.
Note that there are many no-regrets actions we could take, both individually and collectively. But that’s a topic for another thread.
I recently retired from academia after 42 years where, although teaching in Mining, my main effort was directed at developing the applications of high-pressure waterjet streams as a cutting and cleaning tool over a wide variety of industrial applications.
Five years ago a colleague and I founded the web site The Oil Drum which discusses issues relating to energy supply. (Peak Oil if you want the more dramatic term).
One day I picked up Singer and Avery’s “Unstoppable Global Warming – every 1,500 years” to read on the way to an energy conference. I reviewed the conference on the web site, and in the last post of that series included a book review, as much as a filler as anything else. (I had neither position nor knowledge of the subject at the time). I was somewhat taken aback by the virulence and ad hominem attacks that came in comments to that post.
So I started reading other material and including the odd comment in some of my other posts to the site – all with the same result, lots of “ad hominem” but very little scientific fact to rebut, which all came to a head in a post that I wrote about the issue in December 2008 which led to my leaving the site as a direct writer/editor and founding a different site, Bit Tooth Energy.
At BTE I mainly still write about energy issues (and TOD picks up the occasional story from there) but also I digress more into climate issues. For example, most Saturdays I am currently looking at what affects records of state temperatures. The latest was a look at New Hampshire on Nov 13th.
Most of my posts still relate to energy (since that crisis is much more imminent) but I do occasionally write also pointing out, for example, that a lot of the problems now being reported in Alexandria have little to do with global warming, and much more to do with the presence of the High Dam at Aswan.
I am a patent attorney. I have a BSEE, and then went to law school.
I first got involved with the climate change issue by trying to learn how the climate models worked.
This led me to RC, where I posted a couple of times.
Eventually I was banned from RC, and can no longer post their (although I stopped trying a year or so ago).
I do believe in AGW, but am not convinced that the increased temperature due to AGW exceeds natural variability.
I don’t think we have a really good handle on the proxies, let alone how much temperature increase is due to natural variability.
Therefore, I am very suspect of the climate sensitivity number of 2.5 to 4.9 C increased temperature per CO2 doubling (the range is from memory so I may have it wrong).
I think we need to gather global data, of all types, for 30 to 60 more years, so we can tease out the natural variability signature.
Then we will be in a better position to fix the models and have a better chance to forecast climate.
I think our current models have no better chance at predicting the climate than simply drawing a straight line from the existing trend (i.e. 1.2 degrees C increase by 2100).
I have a BS and an MS in Chemical Engineering, and 25 years experience developing cryogenic cycles for the liquefaction and separation of gases, and hold over 30 patents in that field.
Over the last few years, I have become increasingly skeptical of many aspects of the AGW theory in general and the quality of measurement of the “global temperature” (whatever that is..) in particular.
Judith, I commend you for your courage in speaking openly. I’m wondering however, how long it will be before you attain the status of “denier” like Richard Lindzen. :)
I have a degree in Biology and am a DDS.
My occupations have included air defense artillery officer, production supervisor in the automotive parts industry, and dentist.
I’m not positive how I ended up in the climate change debate. Perhaps it is the same as what I often told my dental school classmates: I got hit in the head and woke up here. I argue the skeptic’s side of the argument since I find that to be the more convincing position. I have no emotional attachments to my arguments and am perfectly willing to abandon my position should the evidence indicate I should. As of right now it appears to me the evidence is piling up in the direction of those supporting a low climate sensitivity.
I have always been interested in sceince. I have a PhD and I am an active academic.
Until 3 or 4 years ago I was a ‘lukewarmer’ – I thought that most of the climate change story was correct but that some of it was exaggerated by the media, but I knew little about the subject.
I decided I ought to learn more, and started with Wikipedia where I was confronted by an aggressive activist (since banned) who would delete everything that did not conform to his opinion. Worryingly, this person claimed to be a scientist, and ran the RC blog with some other scientists who were little better, denouncing anyone who dared to question them in McCarthyite style.
Suspicions raised, I started to read IPCC AR4 WG1 carefully and found numerous examples of bias, exaggeration, misleading presentation of data, selective reporting of literature, and claims that were either demonstrably false or unsubstantiated (see my site for a collation of examples).
Climategate did not change my views – it merely confirmed what I already knew. The most shocking aspect of it was the way other climate scientists ‘rallied round’ and tried to defend the indefensible, pretending for example that the trick to hide the decline was a standard acceptable data-handling procedure.
Of course, this does not prove that AGW is all wrong, as I keep reminding myself. But the fact that so many climate scientists behave in this way suggests that they have little firm evidence, that they suffer from “groupthink”, and that they are not behaving as objective scientists should. So their claims should be subjected to a healthy skepticism. And all this is their own fault, they have brought it on themselves.
Influence: early experience of grape vines cultivation, wine making and brandy distillation.
Education: nearly irrelevant (Dipl Ing. Electronics, followed by MSc University of London, UK).
Hobby: looking for correlations that science ignores:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NAP.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PDOc.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETng.htm
and more.
Expect: GW would be good for humanity.
Concern: Damnant quod non intelligunt!
I’m a recently retired anaesthesiologist, who has always read popular science e.g.Lovelock, Gribbin, Monbiot as well as physics and chemistry. I was a ‘warmist’ until about 2005-2006 when I became suspicious of the ‘science is settled’ mantra and the ‘disappearance’ of the MWP and the LIA.
The turning point for me was the first Heartland conference with presentations from Lindzen,Easterbrook, Gould, Singer and other speakers. I then discovered
C.A., WUWT and the many other excellent blogs including Pielke Snr and Jnr., Spencer, Bishop Hill, Claes Johnson, Motl etc.
I have learnt a great deal about the science and about the clear political pressure groups driving the ‘alarmist’ position. It is extraordinary that politicians in the Western world are prepared to commit economic suicide by following completely unworkable energy policies based on such shaky science and flimsy, or non-existent evidence.
The science boils down to climate sensitivity to CO2 and the data so far suggests this is less than 1c for a doubling of CO2 and I suspect <0.5.
Computer predictions have been discredited and the less said about the disarray in the temp. record the better.
The complete failure of the proponents of AGW to openly debate with those who disagree , the Climategate e-mails and the "mistakes" in AR4 show that AGW is a political cause rather than an attempt to understand the science.
I'm afraid there will be many embarrassed Scientific Societies, politicians and
journalists around the world over the next few years as temps. cool in response to the sun, clouds and ocean currents. Great fun!
BTW I am Welsh and worked at the Karolinska, Stockholm and Townsville and Sydney in Australia as well as Wales.
I failed to mention Bob Carter and Jo Nova.
Where have all the ‘faithful’ gone then?
Academic Background:
1. PhD in Nuclear Chemistry: Mentor, Paul Kazou Kuroda
http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2005/PKKAutobiography.pdf
2. NSF Postdoc in Space Physics: Mentor, John H, Reynolds
http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/jreynolds.pdf
Major Findings
1. Earth’s climate is controlled largely by the Sun – a variable star:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.0704
2.. Neutron repulsion is the energy source that powers the Sun and the cosmos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXNyLYSiPO0
3. The interior of the Sun is mostly Iron (Fe), Oxygen (O), Nickel (Ni), Silicon (Si), Sulfur (S), Magnesium (Mg) and Calcium (Ca) – just like Earth and meteorites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLjQSSHIe6k&feature=related
4. The Sun itself exploded 5 Gyr ago and gave birth to the Solar System:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQZe_Qk-q7M&feature=related
Honors and Awards
1964 – NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship, UC-Berkeley, Physics
1968 – Outstanding Research Award, UMR Alumni Association
1979 – Special Recognition from NASA as Principal Investigator for Apollo
1980 – Plenary Lecture, “Isotopic and elemental heterogeneities in meteorites: Evidence of local element synthesis”, Eighth National Symposium on Isotope Geochemistry, Vernadsky Institute Geochemistry & Analytical Chemistry, Moscow, USSR
1983 – Fulbright Award, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research
-1984 – Astrophysics Division, Mumbai, India
1999 – Organized and co-chaired ACS Symposium with Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg on “Origin of Elements in the Solar System: Implications of Post-1957 Observations”
2002 – Plenary lecture, “The standard solar model versus experimental observations”, Third International Conference on Beyond Standard Model Physics – BEYOND2002 in Oulu, FINLAND, June 2-8, 2002.
Author of more than 100 scientific papers, including book reviews, chapters in books, and research papers published in peer-reviewed literature and presented at national and international science conferences in the United States, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland, the USSR and Wales.
Oliver K. Manuel
http://myprofile.cos.com/manuelo09
I’m a software engineer with a BS in Computer Science. I’m working full-time right now, but also attending university part-time to get my MS in Computer Engineering.
I can’t recall hearing much or having any interest in the global warming debate prior to “Climategate”. When those stories broke, I stumbled upon this world of climate science blogs. I’ll admit that at first the whole thing seemed like a soap opera and my interest was primarily with how the drama played out, but eventually the more technical posts (from what I could understand) became more interesting to me.
The idea of the citizen scientist was intriguing, and I liked reading over this type of work. Recently, when I became curious about some specific issues that I didn’t want to wait for these citizen scientists to look into, I figured I could just whip up a few programs myself to test it out. It’s been a learning experience, but I’ve been putting up some of the results at http://troyca.wordpress.com
Autobiography: “A Journey to the Core of the Sun”
The Start of the Journey: Chapter 1
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Chapter_1.pdf
The Conclusion: Chapter 2
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Chapter_2.pdf
I was taught weather and a bit about climate in pilot training and watched the practical effects of both at first hand, being particularly delighted to fly through the ITCZ for the first time. By the late ’70s I noticed that we were often coming back on dirty nights onto the ‘wrong’ runway, the one without the best instrument approaches. Highs were sitting over eastern England for weeks, blocking the incoming lows and giving us easterly winds instead of westerlies. I thought about it and decided that the North Sea was behaving more like land — obviously the oil sheen visible everywhere was making it so. Problem solved and I forgot about it.
But my eye is tuned to look for pollution smoothing of water surfaces and I see them everywhere, particularly in the Med, but I’ve seen one small town on Tenerife sending a smoothed ribbon out all the way to the setting sun. I wondered what the Kriegesmarine offensive during WWII would have done to the Atlantic. And so I found the ‘blip’.
I’m a lukewarmer and my guess is there are many forcings, with CO2 being just one of the players. Tackling the problem by reducing CO2 emissions is like driving in screws with a hammer — it’s the wrong tool.
JF
USA – I am a highly interested amateur and a “weather geek” according to my 20-something children. BA Economics and after many years, am back in school pursuing an MFA-Writing. I am a CoCoRAHS observer and closely follow WUWT, Climate Audit, Jeff Id, Pielke Jr amd Sr, Roy Spencer, ICECAP, Steve Goddard, and Wm Briggs, among others. I am proud to have been “banned” from Tamino and Romm’s blogs, and have noticed that few of my posts make it through moderation at RealClimate
Politically, I tend toward being Libertarian having developed a distrust of authority growing up in the 60’s and 70’s. I am all for alternative energy sources if it makes sense economically and wish that enviromentalists would let us drill for oil and gas and build nuclear plants so we do not have to depend on oil from countries that for the most part (Canada excluded) dislike our country and our way of life.
BSEE designed military hardware for Magnavox, Texas Instruments, and E-Systems. for about 25 years then became an IT person and a teacher. The end of the Soviet Union was the end of my design engineering career so I switched to IT .
I have designed positive and negative feedback electrical systems and am familiar with how they work but I am told Climate scientists mean something else than an Electronic Engineer does by the term. I have also worked for a few years as a programmer designing and testing computer models.
I have enough professional experience designing computer models that I am very skeptical of mankind’s ability to predict 100 years in the future with any accuracy. The model pretty much tells you what you tell it to tell you. If you misunderstand the science or the interactions it will fail to match the real world.
I am a lukewarmer. I believe CO2 may make a minor contribution to observed warming but it is a passenger at most not the driver. I do not believe there is a grand conspiracy of scientists called AGW but I do believe people will do what is in their best interest. Defying the hockey team etc is a dangerous career move for someone without tenure.
The” debate is over” attitude when that is obviously a fib is what pushed me into the skeptical camp.
PhD Phys. Chem., 35 yrs basic research in chem/phys, 15 beyond the $-wall. Became interested in AGW theory a couple years ago after hearing it was well-understood. Preferences for variational analysis, gardening, photography and first base.
Q
No distinguished education, other than four and a half years of science-related general university study during the very troubled late 1960’s, and all that that implies. Dedicated follower of science-related news since my youth. Hosted an early 1990’s website entitled The Bad Science Times (long since defunct) covering issues of poorly done science and even more poorly done science journalism.
My main interest is in mis- and/or poorly-applied scientific method resulting in conclusions unsupported by the data and the more general issue of ‘press release science’ in opposition to science journalism. Actually concentrate more on medicine/health/public health related issues, but have been following the climate wars since the 1980’s.
Mining Engineer, MBA, retired now. Impatient of political correctness and being told what to think. Like to get to the truth of the matter, while recognising that life has taught me that we live in an extraordinarily complex world and most of the time the honest position is that I don’t know.
Prepared and reviewed many feasibility studies for development projects – some large (up to $2 billion capex), some small (around $25m capex). In feasibility studies, the financiers/approving authorities expect every significant point to be fully substantiated with evidence. Independent assessors are used to examine the veracity of every significant claim, demanding proof. If not provided, the project cannot access finance.
Financial models (relatively simple) are audited line by line by specialist audit firms.
Followed the climate ‘debate’ closely for the past decade. Amazed at the unwillingness of the advocates of CAGW to engage, provide supporting information, address sceptics. Amazed at the barefaced statements by the likes of Stephen Schneider and Al Gore that it is OK to exaggerate, coz it is vital to get the population alarmed. In their eyes, the end justifies the means.
Followed CA since inception. Followed RC, TOM etc. Amazed at RC’s moderation “policies” which seem designed to foster a certain view, and to suppress alternative views.
Appalled at the poor quality of the ‘science’ being presented to the Oz Govt by CSIRO, Professor Will Steffen, David Karoly, Tim Flannery etc.
Have followed the trials and tribulations of Judith Curry and congratulate her on the clear success of her website. This is one of the very few sites where those from each (all?) sides of the discussion can meet and explore real points of difference.
PS. Of the various participants in the debate I have been most impressed by Roger Pielke Sr. I agree with his position that man is having many impacts on the local and regional environment, mainly through various land-use issues, interference with natural hydrological cycles, practices leading to desertification and the like. Not convinced by ‘evidence’ that CO2 is a serious problem. Certainly not convinced about the assumptions of positive feedback required to show rising CO2 levels can lead to uncomfortable warming.
I’m a radio frequency engineer (mostly dialects of 802.11, some WiMAX and proprietary licensed microwave) living in New England, 44, affianced, no kids (voluntarily sterilized), one very large German Shepherd.
I’m mainly drawn to how belief and understanding swirl around each other with regard to non-scientists’ understanding of this issue. My own guess is that the broad outlines of climate change are fairly well understood, with a lot of known and unknown unknowns about the likely extent of the changes, but this is based in a fairly shallow reading of both mainstream and dissenting science.
Politically, I am a radical minarchist with a distrust of large institutions, be they private (corporate) or public (government). As such, I’m one who sees little difference between US Democrats and Republicans on big-picture issues, but who will occasionally vote defensively for a Dem or Green or Libertarian.
I believe people can disagree without being disagreeable. The occasional thrown elbow can be fun, but if you find yourself getting worked up about an argument on the Internet, you’re doing it wrong.
My Climate Thoughts or Theory is at almost 4,000 words.
I worked at NASA-Johnson Space Center 1963-2007
I went to Virginia Tech and worked at NASA as an Aerospace Engineer, Computer Engineer, Safety person, Facility Manager and more.
I have used computers to simulate and model since 1963.
I believe that Manmade CO2 is not causing any significant amount of Global Warming and I think the consensus climate scientists are on the wrong track. I think that some meteorologists, engineers and scientists, outside the consensus group, should look at their theory and models. Their theory is badly flawed. They are building the ice sheets for an ice age during the cold part of an ice age. There is little water exposed in the northern latitudes to provide the moisture because most of it is frozen over so ice melts and sublimates faster than the snow can replace it. When the Arctic Ice is melted and the water exposed, Ocean Effect Snow causes more snow than can melt. The consensus climate theory and models do not do this.
I have posted my thoughts on NOAA’s Facebook since October 28 of this year. I have emailed NOAA and tried to engage them in discussion and debate since Feb 2009.
If you like, I could email my almost complete Theory. It is almost complete because if keep finding things to add or change.
Pope’s Climate Theory is now online at:
http://popesclimatetheory.com/
see this updated posting:
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/12/the-denizens-of-climate-etc/#comment-161456
EE doing software almost exclusively these days. Spent first half of career working with high precision measurement equipment and robotics. Believer in AGW basics re GHGs, skeptical re sensitivity. Extreme skeptic re political ramifications (read: solution vectors.)
I’ve been lurking for a while and reading posts with interest but mostly not contributing because I don’t have enough of a grasp of the complexities of the science. I’m most appreciative of the respect shown to sceptical commentators and warmist commentators alike – I see this as healing and constructive engagement.
By way of background, I was born in West Africa in 1958 to Polish parents displaced by Hitler and Stalin in 1939. We migrated to Australia in 1970 – I qualified as a doctor in 1982 and as a psychiatrist in 1989. I started to take a serious interest in climate science just when Climategate broke. Climategate resonated very strongly with me because of the similarity of some of the issues that arose with my own extensive experience of medicolegal reporting (mainly civil claims) and the extraordinary dishonesty of reporting by some experts qualified by insurance companies. Moreover, the shonky research churned out by some of my colleagues in academic psychiatry seemed depressingly familiar to what the emails seemed to show. My reaction was one of ‘Why am I not surprised by this?’
Oddly enough, I started off as an uninformed sceptic who gradually shifted into a lukewarming stance whilst floating around various blogs. My background in psychiatry has paradoxically resonated with many of the issues in climate science. The brain is an extraordinary complex organ whose functioning is but cursorily understood (though we don’t like admitting it). You need to have great tolerance of ambiguity to do psychiatry well with a humble acceptance that oftentimes linear models of causality are of little service. Climate science seems to embrace similar levels of complexity with intricate forcings and feedbacks – hence, I can’t help but feel wary of the extreme certitude of both the ‘alarmist’ and ‘denialist’ camps.
At the same time, it’s been a wonderful learning curve acquiring a nodding acquaintance with fascinating concepts such as radiative transfer, climate sensitivity, and all the rest.
PhD in Atmospheric Sci. from Colorado State. Worked at NASA GSFC for 25 years, now retired. I’m a boundary layer meteorologist. For my dissertation I developed a parameterization of land-atmosphere interactions that has found its way into climate models, within which it was tested and compared with dozens of other similar parameterizations in international intercomparison projects. So I learned a lot about the inner workings of climate models–the good, the bad and the ugly.
I was a pure skeptic of AGW until 2002, since then my position had become more parsed. My big-picture synthesis of all my experience is that the rate of warming seems out of proportion to changes in known natural forcings. But I’m equally skeptical of both the alarmists and the deniers. And most importantly, I view climate change as being far from the most important socio-economic challenge confronting humanity at this time.
I spent some time posting on RealClimate five or so years ago, then lost interest. I’m an ardent (evangelical even) advocate of open-mindedness, and did not find many with that mindset there.
When I found this blog, I had no intention of re-engaging in the discussion actively–the issue is even more polarized now; and the disputants are, on average, more interested in ranting than before and less interested in gathering, processing and synthesizing new input.
But I am finding Dr. Curry’s tutelage and choice of thread topics refreshing and even handed. So I’ve stayed and ocassionally participated.
I am not yet a regular but have posted occasionally and I will post more in the future.
BA, MDiv. I’ve had a varied business career, including serving as an executive in a drug development company for a time. I currently own a small healthcare company. I’m not a scientist but they work for me and as I result I have to read lots of research papers. Occasionally I get to read research papers on climate as well.
I first heard of the greenhouse effect on a news report in 1983 or so. I was fascinated for a very short period of time until I learned there were no papers that really supported it. AGW did not get on my radar again until about 1998, mostly because of a warm summer and Al Gore. I was surprised the theory had survived that long and assumed it got a boost from warm weather. I got interested in CAGW again in 2005/6 and it has held my interest since then.
I began to edit articles for Wikipedia. One of the first articles I helped on is now titled ” List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming.” It is a terrible title and needs to be changed, but it is difficult to reach at times. I did a lot of research trying to find credible scientists who fit the very narrow qualifications to be listed in the article. The article is still not great but is much improved. I’ve learned a great deal from Steve McIntyre. Because of his influence, I started articles on “Scientific data archiving” and “Data sharing.” I also started articles on Anthony Watts, Petr Chylek, Stephen E. Schwartz, Nicola Scafetta, George Kukla and Christopher Landsea.
I have been very pleased to see Judith Curry engage with skeptics on ClimateAudit and pleased to see a transformation to a more scientific attitude toward the debate.
One of my biggest surprises is to see people grant GCMs credibility in predicting the future. The ability to hindcast is not the same as the ability to predict. I once bought some expensive software to help me predict the stock market. It had lots of parameters and you could use any subset you chose to hindcast a particular stock or a market index on different timescales. I only needed three or four parameters to create a perfect hindcast. But it had no predictive value and I lost a ton of money. Any software that is “tunable,” as all GCMs are, have zero predictive value. I don’t understand why people do not see this. If validation and verification were done properly, GCMs would be extinct by now.
Degree in Business Admin. with a minor in Chemistry. My day job for over 30 years is in the field of water resources management. I have studied wind, water, and waves my entire life with no formal degree in the disciplines of Climatology or Meteorology. As I grew older I became keenly interested in astronomy, astrophotography and optics. I studied the heavens and the instruments that made observing possible including testing mirrors, eyepieces, and adaptive optics. This background made the concept of RT from GHGs obvious to me.
Over the years I simply accepted the scientific consensus regarding AGW and attempted to use this information in my own forecasting. When Al Gore’s now infamous science fiction thriller was released I was stunned. The over the top alarmism including “The science is settled” ran counter to everything I knew about climate science and my BS meter rang out. I began digging deeper and found a concerted effort to control the message that reminded me of my visits to China and Eastern bloc countries. There was a stink about all of this that could not be covered over. I have now read a great deal of the science within IPCC AR4 and compared it to outside research in and out of peer reviewed literature.
I believe that AGW is real. Increased GHGs must cause increased warming at some level. I also believe that the foundation of AR4 is built on very broad paleo assumptions, vast uncertainties regarding sensitivity, and gives us very little clue as to what our future holds. In the absence of a lot of hidden heat in the oceans or invisible volcanic aerosols, our current observations and measurement indicate a climate sensitivity per doubling of CO2 in the 1-1.5C range as I understand it. I think the sun drives the oceans, and the oceans drive climate. Ever rising CO2 is certain to have an impact and increase warming but at this point it’s impact is far below natural variability.
I also believe this quiet sun has been grossly underestimated in terms of climate sensitivity. Another 20-30 years of low/no sunspots will make rising CO2 levels irrelevant or even welcome over the next 50 years. Ice core records indicate a much more variable NH climate in the past than presented in AR4 with a strong solar/oceanic correlation. If the sunspots go dormant for an extended period, I think we are in for a serious NH cold snap (-2C).
http://westinstenv.org/wp-content/postimage/Lappi_Greenland_ice_core_10000yrs.jpg
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/solanki2004/fig3a.jpg
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/20climsolar.html
Thank you Dr. Curry for giving us a place to exchange ideas regarding climate science. Whether discoveries are made by leading climatologists within the field or lowly Swiss patent clerks, a free and open exchange of ideas benefits us all.
Some quick background since I seem to be posting here a bit. Anonymous because the GW issue is controversial and might effect commercial relationships.
Misspent youth many years ago led to post grad study and some qualifications (non-doctorate) in a range of areas: maths/app math; logic/automata/formal systems theory; management/accounting/policy analysis/operations research/time series analysis.
All now safely forgotten.
Worked in education research (policy not pedagogy), public administration (senior positions with a policy orientation at varying times in welfare, crime, health, land use, science and infrastructure), national industry representation, policy and strategy adviser to a center right government, and for the last decade have run my own business working on strategy for businesses based on physical and engineering sciences (including taking risk, shareholdings and directorships) and advising related research organisations on science and commercial strategies (as well as the ever present issue of funding strategies).
Among other things in doing the latter I have the pleasure of working with a recognised world class team of material scientists, research engineers and companies getting a significant technology with global impact away.
Got interested in climate science when looking at the way uncertainty and spatial and temporal autocorrelation seemed to be ignored in developing homogenized gridded temperatures in the early Hansen work and it was all downhill from there. I have a strong interest in the methodological issues because my sense is that it is here that the big mistakes are being made (and perhaps because that’s all I really know much about).
As to AGW and all that I frankly don’t have the faintest idea. I have a feeling based on what I currently see as the limitations and misuse of GCMs that it’s more likely to be a 50% problem, but that’s only a hunch, and I suspect the GW bit may well prove to be more important than the A bit.
But we need to do more work, and definitely not just on better GCMs or cleaning up the data.
My education in 1969’s was characterized as “Technical Physics”, which means some engineering, but more physics, mathematics and systems analysis. Then I did research in theoretical particle physics for about 10 years, switched to energy related systems analysis and economics including large scale energy system models, which typically include environmental issues like acidification and now CO2-emissions.
Over the years I have also lectured numerous different courses on physics (Quantum Mechanics some thermodynamics etc.), mathematical methods and energy economics. Climate change and climate policy has been one important issue in several of these courses as it has been in the systems analysis based modeling work, I have been involved in in my research.
Now I have retired and spend much of my time in learning more about climate science and all issues pertinent to climate and energy policies. Participating in discussions here on Judith’s blog and elsewhere is a part of this learning process. I hope to contribute somewhat more in the area of environmental economics and policy at least here in Finland. My own blogging has so far been almost exclusively on the Finnish language side of my pages, but perhaps more also in English in the future.
My own attitudes are only mildly critical concerning actual climate science (I perceive some bias, but not much purposeful misdeed), but much more strongly so in issues of European climate policy, which I consider to be in many ways seriously unrealistic leading to little help in combating climate change, while the costs may turn out to be large both in monetary terms and in terms of human well-being in Europe and elsewhere.
I am a meteorologist (BS and MS degrees) and have worked in the air quality industry for over 35 years. Originally I worked for consultants doing air quality modeling work for EPA and then went to work with an electric utility. Before retirement my time was spent about equally doing regulatory analysis of air quality regulations and doing day to day compliance with cap and trade programs. Based on that background I am certain that CO2 cap and trade would be a serious mistake and that if we have to do something a small carbon tax is all that is warranted.
While I have no disagreement that the “science is settled” that global climate is warming. However, I think that statement is frequently mis-used to imply all aspects of climate science are as settled, most notably suggesting that we absolutely know why the global climate is warming, to what degree and what will happen to regional climate as a result. Nonetheless, I also think that a long-term energy policy that includes doing the research necessary to cost-effectively de-carbonize the world’s economy funded by a small carbon tax is appropriate. I believe the mis-use of the science unfortunately is used as a rationale to change society by people and organizations with ulterior motives for a different agenda than altruistically only addressing climate change.
My expertise is air pollution meteorology and with that background I am very uncomfortable with the GCMs. The basis for that is work I did evaluating the performance of air quality dispersion models. Complexity-wise those models are orders of magnitude simpler than climate models and they are simple enough to be directly verified. Field studies have been done injecting tracers into stack effluents, measuring the downwind concentrations in a test array and comparing those measurements to model predictions. The frightening result in my mind is that it was not uncommon for the model to predict a maximum concentration close to the maximum observed value but the meteorological conditions for the prediction would be different than the meteorological conditions for the observed maximum. How can we ever be sure that the parameterizations in the GCMs don’t similarly get the right answers for the wrong reasons for models that can never be fully tested?
I am also a Certified Consulting Meteorologist in the American Meteorological Society and have concluded that organization needs a code of conduct that incorporates much of the Oregon Chapter of the American Fisheries Society code of ethics(http://www.orafs.org/pdfdocs/ORAFS_codeofethics.pdf ) and especially this statement:
“I recognize that my deeply held, professional convictions may conflict with the interests and convictions of others. I am obligated to be clear and honest in distinguishing between reports of results from rigorous study and my professional opinions based on observations or intuition. My professional opinions clearly so identified have value, but must not be put forward as fact. In addition, the temporal, spatial, and contextual limits of my facts and their confidence limits must be clearly acknowledged.”
I got interested in the climate in the mid 70’s when it was getting cold and snowy. I got more interested a few years later by Dr. Hansen’s theatre presentation to Congress on one of the hottest days of a hot summer with the momentous message that the climate was getting warmer(<.5 deg C in 12 yrs or so) and would soon get disastrously warmer.
With a B.Chemistry degree from the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology(very tough) and a degree in Food Science a year or so later( much easier) I've spent 30 yrs. or so using statistics and designed experiments to try and develop new food products. Having gotten bitten on the a## many times by the long tail of a Gaussian distribution I really couldn't see where climate scientists could become so certain of their results. With climate change presented as barely a 1 deg F rise in a hundred years in temperatures that fluctuate 20 or more times that daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and sometimes hourly the prognostications seemed more than slightly improbable.
So I've followed the various threads of global temperature measurement, the papers describing how temperature readings were averaged, blended, filled in, and manipulated. Learned a lot more about statistics, modelling, feedback controls, computer science, information science, and humility.
Anyway, I am very pleased to find a openly scientific blog on the subject. Thanks Dr. Curry.
Feel like a dwarf in a land of giants with my lowly BSc. in Wildlife Biology. My ‘eureka’ moment was while watching An Inconvenient Truth. Remember the part where the poor mama polar bear is swimming in open water with no ice in sight, growing more and more tired, because sinister mankind has warmed up the oceans to the point that all the ice has melted? Then (gasp!) she slips beneath the surface and drowns. Bullpucky! Biology lesson for the day children. Polar bears are surrounded by guard hairs that are not only translucent, they’re also HOLLOW. You know… like the cells of a cork? And what kiddies (besides witches and very small rocks) floats on water? That’s right… Polar Bears! Next time you visit the zoo, watch the cute little critters. Sure, they can dive and swim under the surface, but if they stop swimming… then glub, glub, glub they bob to the surface. This is probably their best adaptation (amongst a very long list of attributes) to living in a marine ecosystem. They have been documented swimming >100 miles nonstop. Maybe I’ve fallen into the dream scenario of every defense lawyer ever to take the stage by asking the age old question, “If they’re lying to me about this, what else are they lying about?” It wasn’t until I researched and found out that Gore had taken the finding of a couple of bears found drowned after a huge Arctic Ocean storm, and magically transformed this into a tragedy based on AGW, that I totally lost my faith. Since then, thanks mostly to Anthony and his crew at WUWT, I’ve learned to be critical of what I’m fed. I’ve learned one basic truth over the last couple of years: If it smells bad, don’t eat it. It’s probably not good for you.
Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Western Ontario. Dynamist. Expertise in Environment, Perspective and Change with a focus on Sustainability, Environmental Policy, Ideology and Change, Leadership Development, Empowerment and Instructional design. Successful publisher of the blog Ecomyths since May 2006: http://ecomythsmith.blogspot.com/
Facts don’t change your perspective: your perspective changes your facts. Grateful recipient of numerous and significant teaching awards for excellence in undergraduate teaching.
Not yet a recipient of any large sums of money from industry, oil companies or organized misinformation campaigns: will consider all offers that remove mortgage, life debts and put daughters through university. (Oh, and an Aston Martin).
Although I haven’t been a regular commenter here I have been following this blog and discussion closely since the start. So I throw in a small description:
A former student of informations technology science and currently studying structural engineering. Therefore according to climate, I am just a layperson but who has been following the debate closely (both sides) for the last couple of years. As some might have noted, I am quite highly skeptical about climate change (haven’t always been), but I am open to new ideas when properly presented and carefully analyzed.
My paid work has been primarily as an economic policy adviser to the governments of the UK and Australia – in both cases mainly for a body headed by the Prime Minister – and Queensland, including for the Premier and the since-PM Kevin Rudd. I had a gap from 1972, when I left work to travel to India, until 1985, because of what I found there – on a voluntary basis, I’ve helped to organise and run Vipassana meditation courses and centres in several countries since 1973.
I’ve also been, inter alia, a newspaper and radio journalist, a building labourer, a forestry-feller, a social security clerk and a casual school-teacher.
As an economist, I’ve mainly been concerned with that drives economic growth – this has taken me into many related fields. I was briefed on AGW in 1989 0r ’90 by the IPCC’s long-time chief scientist, Sir John Houghton. At that time I proposed economic research into the potential costs of AGW – not accepted. I’ve followed the debate closely since then, including preparing Cabinet submissions in the ’90s. I soon realised how complex the issue was, having been open to the evidence I’ve become increasingly sceptical. I briefed years ago on the Castles-Henderson critique and Bjorn Lomborg’s work, and have been a CA regular for several years. I often have cautionary letters published in The Australian
I also use the nom-de-net Genghis Cunn.
I’m currently a research scientist in (and from) North Carolina. I have a BS in Business Administration (minor: English and Art). After a few years, I went back to school for Computer Science, completed an MS, and then finished my PhD last year. (So, yeah … recent enough so that it still seems strange to describe myself as a “research scientist.”)
My area of specialty is Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), which is why I am interested in climate research. (Not professionally, at this point – I consider myself just a well-informed amateur.) I find CAS to be fascinating – random systems with simple components that magically produce amazingly complex patterns. I’m particularly interested in such patterns that connect vastly different disciplines in fundamental ways.
I used to be very worried about AGW, during the late eighties, early nineties. I don’t remember what first turned me around. Crichton’s book was a big influence, but I had already started to question quite a few things by then. Maybe it was when I discovered the MWP. Or it could have just been the first time I looked beyond some article in the press to the actual paper described, to find out more. After a few examples of discovering a disconnect between what the research paper said vs. how it was described – not to mention reading subsequent articles that continued to get the science wrong – I became quite skeptical. So, it was simple curiosity that led me to first revise, and then reverse, previously held beliefs.
Now I don’t worry about AGW in the slightest. It is, in my view, an insignificant blip in a system dominated by negative feedbacks and natural variability. By 2000 I was convinced that global warming would stop for 30 years or so, and I really thought 10 years of stable-to-declining temperatures would be enough to expose the hyperbole and put an end to ridiculous claims of catastrophe. (And I told everyone who asked that temperatures would stop going up. Happily, I was right.)
Well, the hyperbole has been more resilient that I suspected. But fortunately, temperatures will remain level or go down for the next 20 years, so I reckon there’s still time. Yes, that is a prediction. Please feel free to hold me to it.
BTW – I’m a life-long Democrat and self-described liberal (the good kind, not the bad kind). This helps keep me grounded in regards to the traditional “tribes,” and the ideological blinders that tend to crop up in the AGW debate. It also leads to some hilariously wrong ad-hominem attacks, which is always fun.
After some lurking, and having now started posting, I better hand in my resume as well …
With a B.Sc. in Zoology and a Ph.D. in Cell Biology, after a long, mis-spent youth dabbling in politics of the more left-leaning variety, and working to earn a crust in libraries – more reading that putting books back on shelves – I’ve not been that interested in climatology. Yes, it was somewhere there in the background, but with a good grounding in evolution and a bit of palaeobiology thrown in, garnished with debates about extinction events I took and still take the long-term view.
Came the hockey-stick and all the uproar,so I took a closer look and thought to meself, hmph – so what about the clouds then? Oh, they don’t know … then it can’t be serious.
A bit later people started attacking Plimer’s book ‘Heaven and Earth’ – so, being of a somewhat contrarian nature, got and read it. Didn’t understand why it was so bad – it was what I’d call a literature review, so why was he reviled? Then someone said I mustn’t go and read WUWT because the owner was ‘a bad person’. Huh? So I went and read there, naturally – and thus started my education in climate science.
Being sort of luke-warmish, and not knowledgeable enough to be a sceptic at first, Climategate set me off. I simply could not believe the way these people had done their work, and the HARRY_READ_ME files did the rest. Then came the Hockey Stick Illusion, Climate Audit – it was one jaw-hits-floor moment after the other.
Having had some grounding in Field Biology, and some – old-fashioned, by now – pretty fierce teachings about lab conduct, presentation of results, note-keeping and setting up of experiments I could not then, still cannot believe that there are people who call themselves scientists and are unable or incapable of showing that their models predict an event actually happening in nature. I could not and still cannot believe that people who call themselves scientists will not show their work, cannot or will not show how they manipulated their data nor, especially, why – but wave all objections aside.
I am grieved for the injury done to the natural sciences by these people. And I am very angry that such indefensible practices are seen as praiseworthy and taught to our coming generations of scientists. I am horrified by the way pal review allows papers to be published in journals which for us were the top standard, and which have now sunk to a place where Ph.D. theses of questionable quality are being published.
And I am saddened that so many scientists who are not climate scientists are still keeping their mouths shut.
That is why I am grateful for this blog, because you, Dr Curry, are taking a lonely and hard way here – but it is the right way. I pray you succeed in getting more scientists currently working to find the courage, like you, to raise their heads above the parapet.
Brief Bio:
BS Physics – Univ. of Southwestern LA 1963
MS Mechanical Engineering, Univ of Houston 1967
PhD Mechanical Engineering, Univ of Houston 1970
Rice Univ. – Graduate studies in Space Science 1963-64
Univ of Houston at Clear Lake, Graduate Studies in Management 1978-79
Experience Summary: 48 years experience in modeling complex space flight and oil field drilling tool mechanical and fluid systems and validating models with verification tests.
NASA Johnson Space Center 1963-1979
– Apollo Program – Developed and used computer simulation models to predict touchdown dynamics of the Lunar Module and to guide landing gear development, landing site selection, and piloting landing techniques
– SkyLab Program – Perform docking dynamics computer simulations to determine docking capture performance, determine acceptable spacecraft docking sequences and control systems authority, and compute dynamic loads.
– Space Shuttle Program – Organized and led NASA-industry team to ensure Space Shuttle would be designed to be free of coupled structural/propulsion instability, “pogo”.
Reed Tool Company Division of Baker International 1979-87
Manager of various Departments in Marketing and Engineering for :
– technical training and technical sales support for oilfield drilling bits
– identify strategic research objectives and and new product acquisition strategy for company
– manage diamond drilling bit engineering and manufacturing division of company
– manage technical training, technical sales support, product failure investigations, and experimental drill bit testing for conventional roller cone drill bits natural and synthetic diamond drilling bits.
Manager Loads and Dynamics – McDonnell Douglas Space Systems 1988-97
– Develop structural dynamic models for on-orbit configurations of the International Space Station (ISS)
– Develop mathematical models of dynamic forcing events such as Shuttle docking, Russian spacecraft docking, reboost, EVA, flight attitude, control, crew exercise, etc. and apply to on-orbit dynamic models to simulate in-orbit dynamic response and define maximum design limit loads and fatigue load spectra for structural design and verification requirements.
– Model dynamics of various Space Shuttle flight systems and components and perform root cause analysis of flight anomalies in various Space Shuttle flight systems
VP Engineering, InDyne Inc. 1997-2008
– Provide consulting support to NASA, and NASA contractors, USAF contractors and American Petroleum Institute for modeling, analysis and assessment of various mechanical and fluids systems, including rocket engine testing, and coupled fluid/structural instability (pogo) assessments of several different launch vehicles.
Current – semi-retired consultant to former customers. 2008-present
My knowledge of the atmosphere, weather and weather systems is based on my formal education, work experience, and 51 years as a private pilot of primarily single engine airplanes. My interest in climate change science began about 1999 when I began to hear about a “scientific concensus” regarding AGW and signed a petition along with 22,000+ other scientists and engineers at the time that disagreed that CAGW was “settled science”. There were just too many unanswered questions about climate models and their predictions, that didn’t seem to reach the high standards I expected (and had experienced in my extensive computer modeling career) for model accuracy whe the results of those models were used in decisions that had major affects on human life and public safety. The more I read and investigated, the more I became skeptical of the claims of CAGW.
I do not plan to become a climate scientist. But, I would like to share my experience and knowledge in complex systems modeling, and particpation in many successful (as well as some unsuccessful) complex projects, and general understanding of factors involved in climate change mechanisms, to make sure the decisions our government makes in reaction to concerns about CAGW, are reasonable, common sense, and practical; and, that will achieve the desired result with high confidence using resources available to affect outcomes.
My major interest in this forum is to convince climate change scientists that the accuracy and confidence in current climate change model predictions fall far short of the levels required for ethical decisions regarding public welfare and safety. First, the decisions our government makes should with high confidence, Do No Harm! The potential unexpected consequences of attmepting to control the climate need to be carefully examined before implementing any plan of action. Because of the current state of climate change model prediction inadequacies, I believe the science should be allowed to develop much further and verify root cause of the “problems” envisioned, before expending significant resources on trying to “fix” the “Problems” envisioned. As we become more confident in our concerns about CAGW, without knowing precisely and confidently how to reverse the climate change trends, we should spend the bulk of our resources on higher confidence payoffs allowing us to adapt to the climate change trends we foresee, rather than gambling all of our resources on a futile effort to significantly alter the trends. I am not arguing that CO2 is n ot a greenhouse gas without some effect on global average temperatures. However, there are many factors involved in “global average temperatures”, as well as known data and climate trends from the past, that lead me to believe that CO2 is not the key parameter we need to control to change recent trends in the metric of “global average temperature”. I don’t even think we have an agreement on how to define this metric. I believe the more important metric is the daily and seasonal variation in temperature at a given location on earth. The outside temp gauge at my home often varies more than 1 deg C in a two minute period, often varies more than 15 deg C during a 24 hour period, and more than 42 deg C in a typical summer-winter cycle. It is hard for me to get excited about a 2.5 deg C average temp change in 100 years with all the controversy and uncertainty surrounding this number. I am not willing just yet to vote for and encourage legislators that would spend trillions of taxpayer dollars with a low confidence outcome of reducing this 2.5 C number by half. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to reverse the trend and have the earth get cooler…I believe colder from current levels will be more harmful to humanity. And, I am very skeptical of the common sense and/or ethics of insiders in the climate change research community who did not speak-up and protest when our government has tried to prevent CAGW for all mankind with their half-baked, unvalidated and extemely costly ideas of controlling CO2 emissions.
Ph.D. in mathematics, author of forty papers in leading scientific journals, mainly in the fields of computational fluid dynamics, and chaos and bifurcations in prototypical nonlinear dynamical systems. I worked for a few years in the 90s on baby steps applying dynamical systems approaches to climate proxy data. I was fortunate enough to be invited to two Paclim meetings, where I learned to doubt that ice cores show CO2 driving temperature (the opposite causation was assumed very early by some at least), and marveled at the disconnect between meteorologists and geologists on the impact of solar cycles (meteorologists scoffed because there was no mechanism, geologists had no doubts because they knew so much evidence in rocks)
a.k.a. Steve A Morris
I am a Systems Architect specializing in a product called SAP. I originally intended to get some kind of engineering degree, but went into IT for the money. As it turns out, my career closely relates to Manufacture Engineering, and I specialize in problem solving.
While I went into IT instead of a physical sciences field, I did take great interest in my physics, chemistry, and biology coursework. I just like to know how things work. I’ll also mention that I dropped out of College to go straight to work.
I took interest in Climate Change because it was problem that I felt I could tackle as a hobby. The reason that I became an ardent skeptic is; first I am always a skeptic, and second is the loads of misinformation and shoddy science, if you can even call it science, that ‘climate scientists’ are peddling, namely Peer Review. Peer Review is no substitute for Critical Review.
Now the PhD’s and Graduate Students out there may like to dismiss my understanding of physics, being a drop out, but I will follow up that my education has been ongoing for nearly 40 years. It does not take a PhD to solve this debate. The Laws of Thermodynamics and the Ideal Gas Laws are enough to properly describe Climate Change.
My main issue with ACC is that it does not properly address Convection and Evaporation. When it comes down to it, trapping Radiation is in practice simply reducing the Earth’s surface emissitivity. Convection is in no way impeded and entropy states that if a reduction in emissitivity does increase the surface temp, then the rate of Convection will also increase.
The main issue in resolving this debate comes down to skeptics falling into the trap of chasing all the Red Herrings the ‘climatologists’ are peddling at an increasing rate. We need to force them to address Convection. Gravity and variable air mass density play a far superior role in cooling the Earth’s surface than does Radiation.
With that, I’ll be adding my two cents.
Welcome aboard! Looking forward to your contributions.
Electrical Engineering drop out from the University of Florida. Started working in HVAC test, adjust and balance to make the cash to finish my degree, but kept getting raises every time I tried to go back to UF. Certified TAB engineer by both AABC and NEBB based on JOT. TAB involves direct measurement of air and liquid flows, temperatures and determining heating/cooling capacities and energy use. In addition to TAB I also performed Indoor Air Quality testing and proposed adjustments to improve indoor air quality. Devised and performed on location HVAC energy efficiency testing including developing site specific digital monitoring systems (in the mid ’80’s you had to.) Dropped out of society in 2000 and became a fishing guide/charter captain by accident.
When the Medieval Warming Period went missing I researched Mann et al 1998 and found it overly optimistic in terms of confidence based on limited spacial coverage and quality of data. Happened across Real Climate and Climate Audit finding McIntyre often addressed real issues where Real Climate did not. Note: Often, both tend to wander into the surreal at times.
Started blogging about fishing and http://www.ourhydrogeneconomy.blogstop.com about 2007 when the economy went to crap.
I’m a professor of chemistry in a major UK university. I’ve always been interested in a broad range of science, albeit in an amateur way, so I’ve followed the Global Warming story for a long time. I also seem to remember that I’ve been mildly sceptical about it for years, perhaps because my instinct has always been that together with pursuing very just causes, environmentalism seems to have a streak of quixotic romanticism in it, and I was picking that up in discussions of Global Warming. I read Bjorn Lomborgs Skeptical Environmentalist when it came out, and loved it. But then, still following the story from afar, I started to get less and less skeptical about AG Warming as the facts seemed to add up. Then came climategate. I started reading all sorts of blogs – foremost, climateaudit, bishop-hill and more recently Climate Etc. I have to say I’ve become very much a lukewarmer now and am not happy with the way the scientific community as a whole is standing up for the worst practices that seem to go on in climate science. I also sense that adaptation to warming as and when it happens seems a far better solution than CO2 emissions minimization. I’m mostly a lurker, though I now sometimes comment at Bishop Hill.
I have only recently started posting here (started lurking during the “Hide the Decline” thread). Was aware of Judith Curry from reading about climate issues on the web.
I earned a BA in Chemistry from Wittenberg University in 1988 and then moved on to earn a PhD in Physical Chemistry from The University of Cincinnati under the direction of Bruce S. Ault in 1993. My dissertation was on the study of reaction intermediates formed by pyrolytic reactions of diborane with lewis bases. We used a method called matrix isolation to capture the reactive intermediates. Matrix isolation allows one to capture a reactive intermediate in frozen inert Ar gas at cryogenic temperature. We used IR spectroscopy to characterize their molecular structures, used semi-quantum mechanical modeling to verify observed absorptions and proposed reaction mechanisms as to how the intermediates were formed. We published 9 peer reviewed papers on the research. I have not published anything peer reviewed since.
I am now Chief Operating Officer and Director of Research in a small company that specializes in surface coating engineering. Our main business is hard chromium electroplating. This process is not considered “environmentally friendly” as it uses hexavalent chromium. As such, we are developing alternative electro-chemical processes. Development involves optimizing the electro-plating process to give the best physical/mechanical characteristics of the coating followed by understanding how to maintain the chemistry to repeatedly produce the desired coating (process control).
My interest in AGW started with the “hockystick” graph. The absence of temperature variation along the shaft and then the rapid increase did not match other graphics I had seen before. It showed no natural variation. I new this to be false. I further became interested when the “The Science is Settled” and “The Debate is over” slogans appeared (Inconvenient Truth) along with scary NPR stories purporting CO2 will be causing lots of problems in the future. Since then, I have spent more and more time over the years educating myself as best I can. As a scientist, I am naturally skeptical about most everything. I am also a pragmatist. I fully understand the challenges of research and development of relatively simple chemical reactions, and as such, have a hard time believing we have a complete and certain enough understanding of our chaotic climate system to the extent we need to be taking action to abate pending disasters. I am not a denier that CO2 may be impacting our environment, it is a question of “how much” for me. I am leery of the climate elite who purport to know it all, especially with the revelations of climategate. I believe climategate has done extreme harm to the credibility of climate science as a whole, whether it is justified or not, and look to those in the field with open minds, who look at all the issues in a balanced way, to tell me what their best thoughts on the matter are. hence my attraction to this site.
trained in science and mathematics. career in computers and business. avid outdoor enthusiast. semi-retired world traveller. 15 years’ experience forecasting high-seas weather. 15 years’ experience living “off the grid” using solar and wind power. no interest in climate science prior to climate-gate. climate-gate files revealed bad science to achieve a political end. bad science = bad policy. this directly harms me, my family my country and the world.
Worked in Engineering, as a senior designer and project engineer, principally in automotive, after some early time in aeronautical, and most recently in machine tool design. In all of those roles I routinely referred to research literature for information, which instilled a keen appreciation of the imperative for sound data, complete objectivity, and thoroughness and checks at all stages. Now long retired, but applying the same philosophy to the study of the climate. I am mostly a lurker, here to continue learning.
My interest in climate science dates from just after the time the IPCC TAR was published. I became curious about the foundations for an increasing number of critical comments appearing on the web and even in the press. Study of papers referenced by the critics, and many of those referenced by the authors of the TAR, confirmed significant and worrying differences in emphasis on uncertainties and certainties between the quoted scientists and the Summaries for Policy Makers. From the outset I seriously doubted the IPCC attribution of causes. Something did not seem to add up, so for the last ten years I have been attempting to sort out the real message from the multitude of claims, counter claims and rebuttals as they have emerged from the IPCC AR4, innumerable research papers and on going discussions.
During that journey I have sought information from many disciplines, over forty at the last count. A little from most of them, but a lot from some, including various branches of physics, meteorology, geology, oceanography and glaciology to name a few. Climatology seems to draw from, and have influences upon, almost everything we study and do. Since the early days of sites such as Climate Audit, the number of data sources and high quality web sites and blogs has expanded enormously, providing access to rich sources of information to anyone with serious intent. Linking and cross linking has reached such a level that little of relevance can pass notice for very long.
Complexity and uncertainty are the pervading issues which have brought me to the point where I feel very uncertain indeed if we can ever define with an adequate degree of confidence what will happen in the future. At the policy making level we have for years heard the mantra about Climate science that “The results are in, and the science is settled.” Indeed, the sum of our knowledge of the physical details is immense, yet every topic opened for discussion results in hundreds of comments, detailed criticisms and alternative interpretations, sometimes down to the very fundamental physics on which our understanding of the field is based. The true nature and extent of the role of CO2 within the climate system remains as just one of the outstanding questions, notwithstanding our comprehensive understanding of it’s behaviour in isolation.
I see there are still many challenges ahead of us.
BS, MS, PhD, UCLA Engineering, Department of Systems Science, specializing in electronics, applied mathematics, digital systems, applied physics, communication and information theory. Hughes Staff Doctoral Fellow. Electro Optical Systems scholarship. Masters Thesis: Effects of Digital Computer Parallelism in Solving for the Roots of a Polynomial. Doctoral Dissertation: Efficient Processing of Electroencephalographic Data. Mathematician B, Northrop Corp., performing analog computer circuit analysis, environmental stress and missile reliability studies. US Naval Aviator, aircraft commander, flight instructor, maintenance test pilot. Helicopter bush pilot in Alaska. Hughes Aircraft Company, Division Chief Scientist for Missile Development Division and Microelectronics Systems Divisions, responsible for engineering; engineering development; manufacturing methods and transition to production, on-shore and off-shore; IR&D; and division, product line, and technology investment planning. Cross-trained engineers in basic science, and physical scientists in engineering. Since retiring from Hughes, consulted in various high tech fields, including expert defense witness on communication satellite anomalies in Astrium v. TRW, et al., and CDMA instructor at Qualcomm. Lecturer, Math and Science Institutes, UCI. Member, Science Education Advisory Board. Author, Evolution in Science, Hollowbrook, New Hampshire, 1992, ISDN 0-89341-707-6, a reference on science for educators. Expert modeler of diverse physical phenomena, including microwave and millimeter wave detection and propagation in the atmosphere and in solids; ballistic re-entry trajectories; signal processing; multi-sensor target tracking; missile navigation and guidance; solar radiation; thermal modeling of avionics and microcircuit devices; infrared communication; broadband and secure wire communications; analog and digital signals; large scale fire control systems; molecular diffusion in solids; sonar propagation and target tracking tactics; and real-time orthonormal decomposition of electroencephalographic signals. Inventor, radar on-target detection device, stereo digital signal processor. Author, A Generalization of the Fast Fourier Transform, IEEE Transactions on Computers, 1972. Taught detection and estimation theory, probability theory, digital signal processing, orthogonal transform theory. Peer reviewer, Microwave Journal.
While aware of the Keeling Curve from its inception along with the coincidental rise in global temperatures, my interest in climate peaked with the publication of IPCC’s Third Assessment Report, a semi-scientific document directed to World politicians for action, and sounding a public alarm based on immature models. I considered this document ethically challenged. It promotes public action based a scientific model that is less than a theory, lacking validation. It was promoting a model that was less than a hypothesis (1) lacking any prediction for validation other than the ultimate catastrophe, and (2) not fitting all the data in its domain. On inspection, this document revealed incredible naiveté in physics, in data processing, and in system modeling, aggravated by a pattern of misrepresentation of technical information. This professional opinion is equally valid for IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report.
What I have learned from my climate studies is too extensive to list here. The facts are documented and discussed at length in my Rocket Scientist’s Journal, a repository for technical papers, specializing in climate since October, 2006.
http://rocketscientistsjournal.com/2010/03/sgw.html
I have a BA in Mathematics, with an unofficial minor in Physics, and a lifelong interest in science, especially Physics, Geology, and Astronomy, the philosophy of science, and economics. My career was in the insurance business, working as an actuarial analyst and in creating and managing large-scale information systems. Some of that experience involved developing models of complex investment/annuity products, so I know a bit about the complexities and difficulties of validating computerized models and using Monte Carlo methods.
While generally aware of global warming issues for quite a while, and as a libertarian being generally concerned about the way the claims were being used to argue for less human freedom and more wealth redistribution, I don’t think I got really involved in studying the subject of climate until Gore’s movie. Then I read Lawrence Solomon’s The Deniers, followed by Marcel Leroux’s Global Warming: Myth or Reality? At that point I started seriously following some of the various blogs and reading a jumble of other books, focusing as much as possible on ones that dealt with scientific facts rather than just making political claims. I also sought out (by inter-library loan – it’s expensive!) and read Muller and MacDonald’s Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes, which gave me great respect for Dr. Muller, and also by the way his Physics for Future Presidents. Having studied McIntyre and McKitrick’s debunking of Mann’s invalid hockey stick methodology, and by the time the CRU emails were released, I was thoroughly in the skeptic camp, wondering how had science come to such a state.
Having some years ago read Naomi Oreskes’ The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science, which recounted how the recognition of plate tectonics was held back for decades by an establishment locked into certain approaches and explanations, I was quite distressed to learn of Orestes’ role in the early promulgation of the “scientific consensus” claim about global warming, having expected better of her. In some respects, her actions reminded me of my disappointment 40 years ago with C.P. Snow’s novel, The Search, in which the main character decides to ignore a major scientific error, supposedly for humanistic reasons.
I am thoroughly of the Feynman philosophy when it comes to the importance of the integrity of the scientific process, and of course that is the greatest concern to me about the whole global warming/climate change debacle – the seemingly total ignoring and ignorance of proper methods for achieving genuine knowledge and the apparent attempt to make all the results support an anti-freedom, anti-market, anti-technology (and what I regard as thoroughly anti-human) political agenda. I am also a libertarian, having been involved in the early years of organizing the Libertarian Party in my state. My favorite non-science, non-climate blog is Cafe Hayek, which makes cogent free market arguments on current political-economic issues.
I only became aware of Dr. Curry’s blog a couple of months ago, and now regularly follow it, hoping for the best in her efforts to bring some appropriate sanity and skepticism to the subject, while still recognizing that there is a lot nobody yet knows about the subject of climate. I want real science to be done in that subject, science that is honest and open, subject to genuine validation or falsification.
I am an associate professor of ecology at a small(ish) Canadian university.
As a field ecologist, my attitude towards climate change has undergone a 20 year evolution – from “well, its probably going to happen but there are many more pressing issues” (what you might call the Lomborgian approach) – through “hmmm, this is looking serious and it could directly affect the ecosystems that I study” – and finally – “OK already, we have to deal with this – now”.
As a field ecologist, my attitude towards climate change has undergone a 20 year evolution – from “well, its probably going to happen but there are many more pressing issues” (what you might call the Lomborgian approach) – through “hmmm, this is looking serious and it could directly affect the ecosystems that I study” – and finally – “OK already, we have to deal with this – now”.
Along the way I have tried to become increasingly educated by reading original (peer-reviewed) literature, and by becoming an active follower of the political debates and shinnanigins around climate communication.
My own research is taking on a climate flavour as I begin to devote more attention to the adaptation of forests and forest trees to a level of warming that seems to be all but inevitable.
As an academic, I try to maintain my integrity and dispassionate evaluation of the data. As a citizen, I have been fairly active trying to raise interest – including helping to organize a 350.org rally in my home city.
I look forward to contributing to this Blog. HOWEVER, AT THE OUTSET I HAVE ONE QUESTION: HOW DO I GENERATE AN ORIGINAL POST – AS OPPOSED TO COMMENTING ON OTHER POSTS
andy, send me an email curryja at eas.gatech.edu
I’m a maths lecturer, mainly probability and statistics, at a UK university. Unusually for an academic, I’m a smoker. When the UK smoking ban was announced in 2006, I began to investigate “passive smoking” and came to the conclusion that the claimed harmful effects were largely based on statistical fraud and junk. Until then, it had never crossed my mind, during any of the hundreds of seminars I had attended through my job, that scientists would deliberately deceive and that politicians would base policy decisions on these deceptions. That now must sound very strange. In 2006, I didn’t have much interest in global warming but was constantly being told that only odd-balls and cranks denied it was taking place. My suspicions had been aroused by my passive smoking investigation and so, in an idle moment I attempted to find just one eminent denier with impeccable academic credentials. I had vaguely heard of Lindzen at MIT, thought that idiots don’t get Chairs at MIT, and so looked him up in WP. There was a section about his attitudes to tobacco – an attempt to discredit, by association, his climate science. Furthermore, I found that this section was created by one of the half dozen controllers of the WP passive smoking page. That was a red rag to a bull.
That’s how I set off towards becoming a climate sceptic and eventually happening upon AV, Climate Audit and recently, your blog. I have enjoyed looking into the subject. I get angry and emotionally involved with the smoking ban and passive smoking issue, so that isn’t fun; but reading about climate science is. I have no children, don’t care a fig for the future of the planet; and so don’t care who “wins”. I am able to look at all the evidence dispassionately. I started off with Climatedebatedaily and in my determination to be objective, started to read RC, supposedly the most scientific of the AGW sites. Their attitude to my questions was poor and there was an unrealistic lack of any criticism in the comments. One question I asked was, “ CO2 and temperature have been higher in the past. Why did they not continue to increase and the earth not become more like Venus.” This was a genuine and, I thought, reasonable query. I got a smug response, but no attempt at an answer. I still don’t know. Any offers?
Maths degree (1970s, Oxford), MBA, CEng
Career in IT – commercial applications design, build, implement, maintain Lifelong interest in statistics
Very widely read, interested in ‘everything interesting’
Key points for me:
– Denying the Medieval Warm Period (Viking graves in permafrost, formerly ploughed fields on Northern English hillsides turned over to moorland, vinyards north of the Trent – these things don’t calibrate to 0.1 degree C but they are more real than a ramshackle framework of statistics based on unverified assumptions about how trees react to variations in heat, light, moisture, and soil nutrition)
– Read Me Harry (This demonstrated the complete absence of a culture of quality commensurate with the gravity of the issues to be decided on the basis of the output of the process)
– Anthony Watts’ surface station project (Garbage in, garbage out. Chain is only as strong as weakest link, etc. Again, quality of raw data demonstrably not commensurate with etc etc)
– RealClimate behaviour in face of Climate Audit criticisms (Quality-seekers are grateful when faults are identified, and amend their procedures and conclusions as necessary, it all helps make the product better. Children, on the other hand, often won’t accept that there is almost always someone who can teach you a few things you didn’t know. )
– A little knowledge of catastrophe theory and chaos theory (Given the quasi-periodic recurrance of Ice ages, as well as the major shorter term oscillations, it seems to me implausible – that is you have to make a full, explicit, and watertight chain of logic before I will buy in – that, for some x and y, an increase of x percent CO2 will cause a rise of y deg C in global average temperature. )
B.Sc. (Physics) and doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford followed by post-doc research work at Imperial. I am now working in another fairly public academic field and because of the strength of what I have to say below I am not inclined to give my real name – on issues of science and fact I am happy to post under my actual name.
I used to think CAGW was probably correct and never checked it out until I saw a mention of the “hockey stick” somewhere which I googled and then found and started reading Steve McIntyre’s blog. This was a revelation. What shocked me more than anything else was not the inconclusive nature of much of the science (mistakes get made, this area may not have historically attracted the very best minds …) but the arrogance, deceipt, hubris and sheer dismissive sneering tone of Mann and especially Gavin Schmidt towards anyone who questioned their work. These may be strong words, but I would wager that any intelligent and curious scientist who spends a few weeks reading up about climate science at realclimate would come away quite disgusted.
The climategate emails were not a revelation for me. They were a confirmation of what I already suspected – that scientists had become strident advocates of a scientific position that was far from solid and that they privately knew the science was much less solid than they publicly proclaimed.
It is a shame that there are not more Judith Curry’s out there and I admire and respect what you are doing.
I’m a consulting geologist, based in northern Arizona and New Mexico. I earned a B.S. in geology and chemistry at Rice University, and a M.S. in geochemistry at UNC-CH. I’ve been interested in paleoclimates since student days, am well-read on the subject, and have considerable experience applying statistical analyses to geological data.
Cheers — Pete Tillman
I’m a greybearded software engineer, with a shady past in mining engineering, geology and a little geophysics. At one time I did a lot of work with geophysical computer models — mostly transient EM with a little gravity and magnetic. If you’ve ever seen Siroex, EMVision or ModelVision, you’ve seen my work. (I didn’t do all of them, but made significant contributions).
That, however, was many years ago.
These days, I tend to specialise in complex real-time software. I’m currently involved with the development of a Railway signalling and control system.
I live in Sydney, Australia.
I first became interested in AGW after Nature did their hatchet job on Bjørn Lomborg. Anything that can make so many people angry has got to have something going for it.
I remain “skeptical” in the true sense: not yet convinced of either truth or falsehood but looking for more evidence on which to decide.
It may be possible from the above, to deduce with whom I am currently employed. Let me emphasise that my employer probably doesn’t even know that I have opinions and certainly does not endorse any of them.
Semi-retired, with a very early background in industrial chemistry, living as a small farmer in the great southern region of Western Australia. Became interested, now absorbed, by the AGW proposition some five years ago.
The political menace and mendacity of the IPCC and some of it’s academic supporters such as Jones et al, together with a group-think approach by Australian media in general and the ABC in particular is a disturbing reality. We have any number of rent seekers and enviro-lobby groups who gain easy access to media outlets, while opposing views are disparaged.
I was once referred to as a fossil by one local ABC presenter but was quick enough to accept the honour and described life in the Permian seas as a bi-valve whose shells may been seen today as solid calcite! So much for acidified oceans.
When asked what would change my mind I cited honesty, evidence and integrity.
I enjoy telling the PC elitists that when I grow a crop of oats I harvest some 60 times the amount of CO2 that was sown. We need more CO2 to make the most of the rainwater we receive to improve crop grades, pest resistance etc.
I am a power station engineer in New Zealand (but one of the “good guys” as ours are geothermal). We get a lot of modelling done to predict future reservoir management strategies. From this, I have a good undestanding of GIGO and how models are biased to follow artifacts. Even the modellers are quite open about the lack of accuracy but the general trends have value. The models are mainly needed to satisfy regional government about our operations.
From my knowledge of power station and grid operation, I am horrified of the stupidity of some of the advice given on alternative energy generation. People have no understanding of either the engineering risks or the cost implications of their hobbyhorses.
One thing of interest is that among the workforce, the geologists/ chemists are “alarmists” and the engineers are the “denialist”. I don’t know if this qualification split is cause or effect.
Outside of my work, I have spent time in Antarctica and used to do a lot of mountain climbing so know the firsthand effects of glacial recession and advances.
I put myself in the warmist lobby, with mankind damaging a lot of the environment through the profligate use of resources but there isn’t a runaway catastrophe on the doorstep.
Primarily a lurker, occasional poster.
B.Sc. Math and Physics with a couple of “Executive MBA’s.”
Ran autonomous branch plants for major corporations for most of my career. Had a ten year stint as a “Senior Environmental Consultant” for a global firm. This taught me the huge gap between environmental regulation and enforcement – if all the “feel good” regulations were enforced, the world would grind to a halt! Still dabble in consulting work, although very much a part of the geezer class.
Played a minor role in helping the newly independent Czech Republic to choose type of environmental enforcement regime – Do we go with the Canadian let’s be nice and negotiate, or with the U.S. lets sue the piss out of everyone style .
As a Canadian, I’m very proud of the two M’s – they both are national treasures!
I was expelled from School at the age of 16 as ineducable. Following a catch up period of part time study I obtained my UG degree in Analytical Chemistry then masters in the economics of technology before training as a chartered accountant. I entered academic life in 1974 at the University of Manchester but without a doctoral degree. However, as I am now on my 24th completion (no failures, none lost) I suspect I have redeemed myself. My early research areas for tenure were in catastrophe theory modelling of corporate distress and in the methodological issues in financial modelling.. In latter years I have developed expertise in financial analysis and the valuation of equity. I have a number of books in print and a very long list of publications in both the refereed and professional literature.
I have acted as the director of three UK business schools and I have been honored with the FRSA for services to higher education. My happiest achievement in recent years has been the award of the LRPS which is the first distinction of the Royal Photographic Society. I specialize in wildlife and some of my photographs can be found at http://www.wanderinglightphotography.com.
Although convinced that CO2 emissions have some impact I would class myself as a ‘chilly lukewarmer’. Environmental concerns for me revolve around what I refer to as the 4P’s: population, poverty, pollution and politics. My main concerns are to do with the unbalancing of the environmental debate and how we respond to environmental issues effectively. Having a ‘just’ sufficient understanding of the science and of the more general ‘political’ issues surrounding global warming I have come to the view that the case for draconian action to reduce emissions has not been made out but that our efforts to conserve fossil fuels should lead us to seek out alternative sources of energy particularly in electricity generation.
The GW debate has become highly politicized in my view. I do believe that at the political level and in the media this debate has allowed old foes to reengage old disputes. It’s not as simple as ‘left’ and ‘right’ by any means but the arguments are as fierce as any I have come across in politics. However, one area of climate science has connected strongly with my own work and that is in the philosophy and practice of modelling. The attempts to resolve uncertainty through ensemble testing, simulation and old-fashioned triangulation has had immediate application in the valuation of equity and equity based instruments.
Finally, congratulations on an excellent blog and some really interesting and thought provoking work on uncertainty. I try not to comment unless I am pretty sure of my ground so you may not see too much from me Judith but I do regularly read and think about what you write. Many thanks.
Robert, thanks much for posting here.
PhD in Chemical Engineering, Post Doctoral Research Fellowship in Chemical Reaction Engineering followed by a stint in corporate R&D. Holds seven patents and many publications and presentations.
Moved to marketing and business strategy mid-career. Executive with Fortune 50 company.
Greetings. Many thanks indeed to Judith Curry for running Climate etc – and braving the hostility from some other climate scientists that doing so brings. I very much welcome the relatively neutral forum that Climate etc provides, where interested parties whose views are sceptical, lukewarmist or in-line with mainstream climate science (IPCC like) can have a civilised debate and all, hopefully, learn both from Judith’s interesting posts and from a number of the comments made in response thereto. I particularly hope that many mainstream climate scientists will at least follow the posts and ensuing debates at Climate etc, and that in time an increasing number will post occasional comments themselves. I am mainly a lurker here myself.
I fully accept that, as a result of basic radiative transfer physics, CO2 warms the planet, However, my present view is that the observational evidence for climate sensitivity being 2–4 times its base level, as a result of net feedbacks, is fairly weak. I also think that the politicized and dogmatic nature of the AGW debate has led to bias in the scientific process and to some extent compromised its integrity. I would particularly like to see, as a matter of routine, climate research papers make easily available all data and methods information in the detail required to replicate studies. I also think that the peer review and publication process is biased against papers that challenge mainstream views, and should be reformed.
Brief bio: I spent much of my childhood on electronics projects. My academic background is mathematics, with a minor in physics, at Cambridge University (UK). My career has been outside academia. Two or three years ago, I returned to my original scientific and mathematical interests and, being interested in the controversy surrounding AGW, started to learn about climate science. I discovered Climate Audit early on, and benefitted greatly from Steve McIntyre’s technical posts and his provision of working R computer code. I concentrated on aspects centring around mathematical and statistical methods. The first peer-reviewed study that I looked at in detail was that by Eric Steig et al. on the Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since 1957, published in Nature in 2009. Doing so led to my co-authoring a paper that revealed serious flaws in Steig’s paper, with the main temperature trends being overestimated by a factor of two (Ryan O’Donnell, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre and Jeff Condon, 2011, Improved methods for PCA-based reconstructions: case study using the Steig et al. (2009) Antarctic temperature reconstruction, Journal of Climate – print version at J.Climate or preprint here).
Just an occasional contributor. BSc Physics (Upper Second) , MSc (solid state electronics). I know a lot more about Semiconductors and Maxwell’s Laws than Climate science!
Tempterrain is an anagram of my real name for anyone who likes a bit of a puzzle.
Politically slightly left of centre. Support mixed economy, government role in Health services, free education (which gave me a good start in life), some though not all industry etc, Keynsian economics. Strongly pro-democratic but if elections don’t go my way I can sulk!
The AGW ‘debate’, I would suggest, is largely driven by politics, an instinct or ‘gut-feeling’, rather than any intrinsic scientific doubts or uncertainties, and for or the simple reason that at least 99% of us would have insufficient understanding to be able to decide one way or the other. Most ‘skeptics’ would deny that. However Jim Cripwell is candid enough to admit “When I first heard about AGW, maybe 12 years ago, I knew it was wrong. In the intervening years, I have learned a great deal, and everything I have learned, confirms my initial reaction”. Er, well Jim, I can see you studied Physics, just like me, but I’m sure we would have both been taught to look at the evidence first and then decide later!
I’m sceptical of the things I think I should be sceptical of: UFOs, homeopathy, crystal healing, 911 conspiracies etc. However, I to go with mainstream science on AIDs/HIV, smoking/cancer, human evolution etc. Neither is the science settled on any of these issues but I wouldn’t use any doubts as an excuse to restart smoking cigarettes or to indulge in unsafe sex !
I’m a regular lurker and only sometime commenter named Blair King. I am a Registered Professional Chemist and a Registered Professional Biologist and earned my PhD in Environmental Studies and Chemistry from the University of Victoria (UVic). Minor trivia here, I was lucky enough to take a graduate course partially taught by Dr. Andrew Weaver (a man I respect and admire take that as you will) and shared a coffee room with his and other graduate students from the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences (SEOS). They gave me an education in the science behind, limitations of, and theories supporting the early global climate models (GCMs).
My research was in QA/QC systems and the use of scientific information in environmental decision-making. I developed tools to establish the reliability of information to be stored in the early environmental information management systems being proposed by our provincial and federal governments to archive the data collected by government scientists. Over a decade ago I moved into the private sector where I now work as an environmental consultant developing investigative and remedial plans for contaminated sites. This reduces my time to read blogs and limits my commenting to brief spurts during breaks and lunch and in the evenings after the kids are in bed. My preferred blogs tend to skirt the middle where the interesting discussions and links are found places like Lucia’s, Dr. Curry’s place and Collide-a-scape. I also read Climate Audit, WUWT and used to read Real Climate and Desmog but ultimately was turned off by their mean-spirited nature. As a parent and taxpayer, I care deeply about the quality of the science being used to inform policy decisions.
My interest in this field dovetails from my academic research. As part of my Doctoral research, I tested the tools developed in our research with the outputs from a variety of widely differing “scientific fields” from the highly-speculative (cryptozoology) to the deeply-empirical (toxicology). One case study was in climate science as it seemed to be a well-established empirical field. What I found concerned me. When we looked at data collection efforts we considered how much “process knowledge” was involved in developing the collection methodology. This allowed us to rate whether the data collection efforts were more observational in nature or more experimental and what secondary (or value-added) uses could be made of the data. What surprised me was the absence of underlying theory in many of the data collection efforts. Much of the observational data seemed unfit for secondary uses in developing policy. What concerned me even more was that rather than working harder on addressing the limitations of the data collection effort the resources were being poured into the policy end. The basic research was being neglected while magnificent policy structures were being created.
Well, Blair, I offer my sincerest respect for your courage and candor in passing on your data quality observations. I hope this does not prove to be a career-limiting act, given Dr. Weaver’s influence. Having watched government, media and (God help us) children cower into fear, thanks to his writings, armwaving and hyperbole, it didn’t take me long to dismiss him from my list of credible sources. I’m grateful that at least ONE scientist has emerged from that cesspool of corruption. Thank you from a gulf islander.
I’m a political scientist, and a lapsed neo-Malthusian, having been in my formative years a candidate for election to the Parliament of New Zealand for the Values Party, arguably the first green party in the world. I’m also a lapsed medical student, having flown through Med Intermediate (Physics, Chemistry and Zoology) with straight As, and making it into medical school, only to find the experience immensely – and disappointingly – boring. I won a Medical Research Summer Scholarship to research the post natal histological changes to the ductus arteriosis in rabbits, but left it all behind for an arts degree in political science (with a minor in anthropology) and then honours, followed by a PhD.
My career has been mostly built on energy and environmental politics and policy, with books such as Transforming Power: The Politics of Electricity Planning (Cambridge, 1996), International Toxic Risk Management (Cambridge, 1999), International Environmental Policy: Interests and the Failure of the Kyoto Process (with Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, Edward Elgar, 2001), and Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science (Edward Elgar, 2007). My most recent book (also published by Elgar in June 2011, with Peter Carroll) is a major study of the OECD.
Science and Public Policy looks at the reliance of environmental science on modelling rather than observation, and the noble cause corruption of of such research. I deal with the species-area rule (recently confirmed as entirely spurious in working backwards to project species extinctions) the sliming of Bjorn Lomborg, and (in climate change) the Hockey Stick controversy and the improper use of market exchange rates rather than Purchasing Power Parity measures in the IPCC’s SRES in producing the emisisons scenarios driving the GCM models (the Castles and Henderson critique).
I was an expert reviewer for the WG2 chapter on ‘Key Vulnerabilities’ in IPCC AR4.
I’m an agnostic on dangerous climate change. I accept that a doubling of carbon dioxide will produce a degree or so of warming (most of which we’ve had) but see an absence of evidence to support the positive feedback from water vapour that catastrophic change depends upon. The issue is one of uncertainty, which means a tax rather than cap-and-trade is the appropriate response, since we do not know what size the cap should be. (I wrote a paper on this for the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, alongside Warwick McKibbin and John Zillman – former WMO President – in 2005 and available on the ASSA’s website.
I welcome the contribution Judith Curry and others make to (polite) debate across disciplinary boundaries. I am in awe of the likes of her and Steve McIntyre’s ability, persistence and politeness in the face of severe provocation, but have too little time to keep up with developments!
I see you are interested in water vapour. Pielke Sr had a post today about a new inexpensive way of measuring that, plus a bunch of interesting links related to that problem.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/new-paper-measuring-total-column-water-vapor-by-pointing-an-infrared-thermometer-at-the-sky-by-forrest-m-mims-iii-et-al-2011/
I’m a founder of XCOR Aerospace, we’ve designed 25 different rocket engines in the last decade, ten of them completed in hardware, two flying rocket planes (Ez-Rocket and X-Racer), and we’re working on the Lynx suborbital vehicle. I did the primary design of all those engines, heat transfer analysis, hydraulic design of coolant passages and injectors, as well as all the process controls (valves, piping, tanks, control sequencers) for the engine test stands and the vehicles. I selected and analyzed the thermodynamic cycle that the pumps for the Lynx engines will use. I’d like to think I’m a pretty good plumber and thermodynamicist at this point… and much of the climate research I’ve seen does not impress me.
One advantage an engineer has over a scientist is the deep, in-the-bones knowledge that if I screw up, people can die, including my friends and coworkers or myself. I’ve flown six times on rocket power, including the first four flights of the X-Racer, and I heard the explosion and saw the fireball from the mishap that killed three people at the next rocket test site. This instills some humility that I fear many climate researchers don’t share.
Engineering research demands accurate, trustworthy data, with calibration of sensors, identification of confounding effects, and reduction of noise in signals absolutely essential- while keeping one’s prejudices at bay and being willing to amend theories in the face of evidence. Again, traits I fear are lacking in many climate researchers.
simon abingdon (age 67)
Bsc Applied Mathematics (1963). Incurably pedantic re spelling/grammar.
20 years software programming. (Much influenced by Edsger Djikstra’s GoTo considered harmful 1968).
20 years airline pilot (B727, MD83, B757, B767, A320, A321). Total hours 14,303 (1000 singles, 1000 light twins, 12000 jet transports).
Retired 2008. Current (2011) retirement job HGV driver and car driving instructor.
Hobbies: The Times crossword, elegant puzzles, science generally and reading climate blogs.
wrt CAGW, ambivalent after 3 years attentive interest.
I am only a very occasional denizen. I am also an accidental climate researcher thanks to Al Gore. My original field many years ago was spectrochemical analysis. I was with Grumman, prime contractor for the Apollo Lunar Lander program, when Nixon came in and cancelled the last three moon shots. As a result Grumman had to lay off ten thousand people. I was among them and made a career change to teaching. By the time I saw Al Gore’s movie I had been retired from teaching for more than ten years. When he spoke of a twenty foot rise in sea level and showed a map of Florida under water I knew something was not right. It sounded like an alternate universe to me and I had to investigate. Fortunately the Internet gave me information resources that formerly only a large research university could possess and I was able to access the relevant literature. I did not like what I found. This forced me into doing some original work to clarify the mistakes and omissions I found. I sent a paper about it to Science and to Nature but was turned down. The research spread out to cover related topics and pretty soon I had more information on climate than could fit into any research paper. The only way to keep it together was in a book and this is what I opted for. The book is called “What Warming?” and is currently out on Amazon. To better understand satellite temperature measurements I introduced an innovative loss-less technique that uses colored overlays on temperature curves. A major empirical fact revealed by this technique is that satellite global temperatures and ground-based global temperatures absolutely do not agree. Ground-based measurements feature a late twentieth century warming in the eighties and nineties which is not observable in satellite records. From detailed high resolution comparisons of satellite and ground-based measurements I could see that the warming in ground-based data is entirely bogus and that data tampering is present. Which makes Hansen’s 1988 testimony false. But this highly-publicized testimony is one of the foundation stones of today’s global warming movement. Nobody in the movement will admit that Hansen’s claim was not true. And this can mislead researchers when they try to fit their data to a non-existent warming trend
I am not sure that I technically match up with many of the physical scientists and engineers on this blog. I had the luck to attend two first rate universities – Cambridge and Harvard where I read economics and then organizational behavior. I spent most of my career as a management consultant designing and validating surveys, psychometric instruments and analyzing large data-bases. I seem to have a knack for numbers. I have also had the good fortune to work on consulting projects that involved detailed discussions with and interviews of research scientists, engineers, IT professionals and a goodly number of academics and government scientists – including in-depth interviews with Nobel Prize winners, McArthur fellows and the CTOs and founders of numerous high technology firms. I have also worked on reviews of various research institutions and with the NSF. I enjoy biographies of scientists – though many, IMHO, fail to really identify how scientists actually think and achieve their breakthroughs.
I became intrigued with the global warming debate about 6 years ago. I explored various blogs starting with Physics Today (I think). When I found Real Climate I was initially impressed by the apparent mastery of the material of the contributors but I soon became stunned and disillusioned by the arrogance and rudeness of both the principles and many of the commentators. By contrast, Steve McIntyre’s site was equally hardnosed and rigorous but far more open and polite. Steve also championed the basic principles of solid science – transparency and replication. I enjoy personally finding and examining the available raw data, brushing up on my multivariate stats, contacting authors of research papers to politely ask questions and discuss issues, and generally following the technical and philosophical arguments that are an essential part of any field that has the potential to impact all of us.
I enjoy this site. Judy’s selection of posts covers both technical and philosophical issues. The commenters are for the most part polite and well-informed. While there are a few pot bangers from both sides, most comments are constructive and there are numerous very helpful comments from very knowledgeable folks. I particularly value contributions of authors when their own papers are under the microscope. Favorite sites also include WUWT, Blackboard, Matt Briggs, Pielke Jnr, and Pielke Snr.
I thoroughly despise Al Gore’s dishonest and charlatan approach to the global warming issue. If anything, I am in the Pielke, Snr. camp. We do impact the climate, particularly local and regional climates but the whole system is more complex than reflected in GCMs and that we are ingenious enough to adapt to almost anything that is likely to occur over a period of decades. Demonizing the use of fossil fuels without embracing a genuine source of base power generation is too stupid for words.
Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry, have spent most of my professional career in the pharma industry. Learned and still use much about kinetics, thermodynamics, photochemistry etc. to understand the chemistry and physics of climate.
Started off as a geology major at UM (Go Blue!) and learned at an early age that the 10s of thousands of lakes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc. are ephemeral remains from our most recent of the many major and minor glacial epochs of the past few million years. Glaciers over every town where I have owned a home, including my current locale in Rhode Island- that’s real climate change for ya!
I am a 34 year member of the American Chemical Society and (1) have been dismayed by the official policy position the ACS has adopted and maintained and
(2) have been around the innards of the ACS long enough to know how this comes about. Rather than resign from the ACS (as Prof. Lindzen has suggested for those of us that find ourself at odds with our professional societies) I have chosen to wage the battle from within. The recent symposium/wwebinar that Prof. Curry so graciously participated in has been the most recent skirmish. I am sure there will be more.
PhD Atmospheric Science, satellites a specialty. Strong belief in collecting data, skeptical of the use of statistics used to fill in poorly sampled data. Not a big fan of global climate models but believe that they can be used effectively as tools.
Self-employed. Learning R so that I can understand and reproduce results that are showing up on blogs.
I believe science and politics should not be mixed.
Retired professional poker player and freelance writer with two Pushcart Prize nominations for personal essay. Married, 3 step-grandkids. Thanks to Dr. Curry for a great blog.
Retired accountant, economist and financial analyst with wife of 44 years and 3 children and 6 grandchildren.
I have an open mind on climate issues but would prefer a greater focus on the technical issues surrounding the AGW hypothesis, because the science is far from settled IMO.
I appreciate the time and courtesy generally shown by the contributors to this blog and in particular acknowledge the input of Dr Curry, who is willing to listen to all POVs and she facilitates ongoing debate through efforts to steer contributors toward the advancement of climate science generally.
I strongly believe that the establishment of wikis should be commenced on a selected number of issues to which a few volunteers could contribute using an agreed praxis. This may lead to advances in the state of climate science (in gradual increments) and prevent the same issues from being constantly recycled with no consensus ever seemingly being reached.
Dr Curry could act as a facilitator for these wikis, which BTW will be restricted to just the few volunteers. The end object will be the eventual publication of papers for the consideration and criticism of all denizens in an open forum.
My email address is peterdavies@oceanbroadband.net and all contributors to Climate Etc are welcome to use it if they wish to get my attention quickly but I would prefer to place all my thoughts in the open forum of the blog.
My facebook page is
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1387180889
OK, I feel a little bit nervous tooting my own horn, but apparently credentials are important, and that’s understandable. I’m a Ph. D. in mathematics from University of Colorado at Boulder and yes I did sit in on seminars by Robert Richtmyer of Los Alamos fame and the chairman of the department was Stan Ulam whose autobiography is fantastic concerning the Los Alamos endevour and people like Von Neumann. I’ve spent 30 years in computational fluid dynamics and have a sparse but visible publication record. Suffice it to say that a mathematician can be a veritable pain for modelers, but they ignore us at their peril. When you can rigorously prove something, its hard to argue with.
You are not addressing the issue. Look at Williams’ material. I am not going to respond to this kind of thing. If there are large errors in the models, its pointless to go further. Fix the models and then we can talk about science. This is about consistency, not proof. There are hundreds of examples of bad numerical methods leading to spurious results. Look for them if you don’t know this already.
The models should be viewed as tools. They are constantly being compared to data and improved. Perhaps there is too much confidence in their predictive power. But they can be useful.
Bio: Grew up on a 4000 acre rice and cattle plantation in Southwest Louisiana that gives me a farm boy’s perspective of weather, climate, and respect for environmental issues. I also have studied aviation weather since obtaining my private pilot’s license in 1960 and have used my knowledge and observations of developing weather patterns for safety critical flight decisions in over 50 years of safe flying experience.
My formal educational training includes: BS. Physics/Mathematics, Univ. of LA-Lafayette 1963, MS and PhD, Mechanical Engineering, Univ. of Houston 1967 & 1970, Other graduate studies in Space Science, Rice Univ. 1963-64 and Management, Univ of Houston-Clear Lake 1978-79.
I have extensive experience in modeling complex dynamics systems where design and operational descisions based on model simulations have human safety-critical consequences. This experience includes 16 years of my early career with the NASA Johnson Space Center developing the Apollo Program Lunar Module (LM) touchdown dynamics simulation to study toppling, energy absorption, flight control and landing techniques issues; Skylab Program Docking Dynamics studies to define spacecraft docking sequences and Skylab attitude control system requirements to achieve successful docking capture and to define docking loads; and simulation of Space Shuttle coupled structural/propulsion system dynamics instability (pogo instability) to eliminate such instabilities from the Space Shuttle Design. I also have 20 years experience with NASA contractors managing fluids and structural dynamics modeling and simulation for launch vehicle and rocket engine development, Space Station on-orbit dynamic loading events such as docking, berthing and re-boost to define structural strength and fatigue life requirements, and root cause investigations of Space Shuttle flight anomalies.
I also spent over 8 years in the international oil and gas drilling industry (1979-87) as a mid-level manager for Reed Tool Company in various capacities in drilling tool R&D, technical training, technical product support for marketing, field engineering and product development testing; and diamond drilling tool engineering, manufacturing and marketing.
Since July 2008, I have been semi-retired and a part time consultant and mentor to NASA and aerospace industry engineers in my fields of expertise. I first became interested in the AGW issue about 2000 when I signed a petition declaring my position that I was not convinced that AGW was settled science. I have studied the issue in more depth since my semi-retirement in 2008 and I find my formal education and complex systems computer simulation background to provide a good foundation to understand the physics and modeling issues involved. I find my own position on climate change issues to be closely aligned with the Conclusions stated by Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. on his website at: http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/main-conclusions-2/
In numerous conversations with my Apollo era NASA colleagues, I find that the vast majority are AGW skeptics. We just don’t see the kind of empirical evidence for the AGW theory nor computer simulation validation that was required of us in reaching design and operational decisions for NASA launch vehicles and spacecraft and navigation through the solar system. We were trained to question everything and to be prepared to defend any of our technical positions with overwhelming and unassailable, convincing evidence. We just don’t see this happening in AGW climate science and don’t believe it is ready for prime time decision making. Therefore we vehemently disagree with attempts by public policy makers, and their climate research technical advisors, to use such questionable results of unvalidated computer models to make policy decisions with such potentially harmful consequences for the US public.
My recommendation is that climate scientists focus on a more complete and accurate understanding of ALL of the complex natural phenomena affecting the long history of the earth’s climate change as recorded in ice cores, before reaching too far with un-substantiated predictions of doom. Continue to improve the models based on understanding of the physics involved, and stop using them for so many costly and useless studies. If you can’t believe the model, of what use is it? If you do believe in the accuracy of the model, prove to me with convincing evidence why it is correct and be prepared to answer all of my penetrating questions about its assumptions in modeling and data input. Once you have correctly predicted in advance and publicly what will happen in the next 20 years, in all key areas of natural and man-made phenomena involved in the simulation, then we can evaluate if the model is ready for public policy guidance.
The model isn’t a useful tool until it is validated against experiments and/or empirical data. Of what use is a model if you can’t confidently believe its output or know how close to the truth its predictions will be? If the model isn’t validated, its use can be very harmful. It could easily suggest you take the most harmful possible action. How would you know what to do based on the unvalidated model’s output and questionable input data? If you don’t compare its predictions to experiment or empirical data how will you know how far off it is in its predictions? Of what use were models 10 years ago when the IPCC model concensus predicted a monotonic increase in global average temperatures for the next 10 years and next 100 years? The global average temperatures did not increase as predicted over the last 10 years. So tell me again…why are today’s models more useful?
The models are constantly being compared with measurements. The NASA satellite programs, such as ERBE and CERES, produce global maps of outgoing infrared and visible radiation. The models can estimate these values also. They match pretty well on large scales. They are terrible at regional scales. There are a lot of issues with models, but saying that they are useless is unhelpful. I am reading an paper entitled: “Tracing the upper ocean’s ‘missing heat’” (Katsman and van Oldenborgh). A model is used because there are few deep ocean measurements.
Rose
The climate change models have not been successful at predicting climate trends on the time scales they are intended for. They missed global average temperature trends of the last 10 years by the sign of the trend. This cannot have been useful or helpful. It is time to call time-out and improve the modeling of physical processes considered by the models, and perhaps some critical physical processes they are not considering, and to apply the disciplines of model validation that are routine in other scientific disciplines, before publishing unscientific results of unvalidated model predictions.
Rose, I agree that models can be useful, but the analysis of models is a field of growing importance. This analysis has a long history going back to Von Neumann and Richtmyer. However, what concerns me about climate science is that they still use methods such as the leapflog scheme that have been replaced in more advanced fields by more modern and accurate methods. I don’t have the time to go into details here, but Paul Williams video at the Isaac Newton Institute shows some of the problems with the leapfrog scheme. My problem is that just correcting this scheme as Williams does is not the best solution to the problem.
Bio: Grew up on a 4000 acre rice and cattle plantation in Southwest Louisiana that gives me a farm boy’s perspective of weather, climate, and respect for environmental issues. I also have studied aviation weather since obtaining my private pilot’s license in 1960 and have used my knowledge and observations of developing weather patterns for safety critical flight decisions in over 50 years of safe flying experience.
My formal educational training includes: BS. Physics/Mathematics, Univ. of LA-Lafayette 1963, MS and PhD, Mechanical Engineering, Univ. of Houston 1967 & 1970, Other graduate studies in Space Science, Rice Univ. 1963-64 and Management, Univ of Houston-Clear Lake 1978-79.
I have extensive experience in modeling complex dynamics systems where design and operational descisions based on model simulations have human safety-critical consequences. This experience includes 16 years of my early career with the NASA Johnson Space Center developing the Apollo Program Lunar Module (LM) touchdown dynamics simulation to study toppling, energy absorption, flight control and landing techniques issues; Skylab Program Docking Dynamics studies to define spacecraft docking sequences and Skylab attitude control system requirements to achieve successful docking capture and to define docking loads; and simulation of Space Shuttle coupled structural/propulsion system dynamics instability (pogo instability) to eliminate such instabilities from the Space Shuttle Design. I also have 20 years experience with NASA contractors managing fluids and structural dynamics modeling and simulation for launch vehicle and rocket engine development, Space Station on-orbit dynamic loading events such as docking, berthing and re-boost to define structural strength and fatigue life requirements, and root cause investigations of Space Shuttle flight anomalies.
I also spent over 8 years in the international oil and gas drilling industry (1979-87) as a mid-level manager for Reed Tool Company in various capacities in drilling tool R&D, technical training, technical product support for marketing, field engineering and product development testing; and diamond drilling tool engineering, manufacturing and marketing.
Since July 2008, I have been semi-retired and a part time consultant and mentor to NASA and aerospace industry engineers in my fields of expertise. I first became interested in the AGW issue about 2000 when I signed a petition declaring my position that I was not convinced that AGW was settled science. I have studied the issue in more depth since my semi-retirement in 2008 and I find my formal education and complex systems computer simulation background to provide a good foundation to understand the physics and modeling issues involved. I find my own position on climate change issues to be closely aligned with the Conclusions stated by Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. on his website at: http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/main-conclusions-2/
In numerous conversations with my Apollo era NASA colleagues, I find that the vast majority are AGW skeptics. We just don’t see the kind of empirical evidence for the AGW theory nor computer simulation validation that was required of us in reaching design and operational decisions for NASA launch vehicles and spacecraft and navigation through the solar system. We were trained to question everything and to be prepared to defend any of our technical positions with overwhelming and unassailable, convincing evidence. We just don’t see this happening in AGW climate science and don’t believe it is ready for prime time decision making. Therefore we vehemently disagree with attempts by public policy makers, and their climate research technical advisors, to use such questionable results of unvalidated computer models to make policy decisions with such potentially harmful consequences for the US public.
My recommendation is that climate scientists focus on a more complete and accurate understanding of ALL of the complex natural phenomena affecting the long history of the earth’s climate change as recorded in ice cores, before reaching too far with un-substantiated predictions of doom. Continue to improve the models based on understanding of the physics involved, and stop using them for so many costly and useless studies. If you can’t believe the model, of what use is it? If you do believe in the accuracy of the model, prove to me with convincing evidence why it is correct and be prepared to answer all of my penetrating questions about its assumptions in modeling and data input. Once you have correctly predicted in advance and publicly what will happen in the next 20 years, in all key areas of natural and man-made phenomena involved in the simulation, then we can evaluate if the model is ready for public policy guidance.
Giving “climate scientists” the benefit of the doubt, we can assume that they understand the need for such proofs. And know they haven’t a snowball’s of providing them. So they invoke the Precautionary Panic Principle, by maximally overstating both possible negative consequences of warming and its likelihood. (And, of course fudging the costs of ‘mitigation’ and, if called to account on its ineffectuality, piously insisting ‘even a little is better than nothing’!)
reposted from ‘Climate scientists are different(?) from the general public’ thread (FWIW – INTJ)
BSc(Hons)(Chemistry), BCom (Economics, Mathematical Economics), MBA
Retired (was Regional Technical Director of [very] large software firm – no, not them), but also have worked as Industrial Chemist, CEO, Modeller (on what were then called supercomputers), Programmer/Analyst/Team Leader/etc.
History: always somewhat skeptical of ‘doom & gloom’ apocalyptic stories – I’ve seen too many over a long and eventful life. Looked deeply at the science – now a confirmed Skeptic – might be a skeptical lukewarmer if I didn’t think the fox(es) had been left in charge of the hen-coop(s) at HadCRU, GISS, etc.
Engineering Physics and Business. Software professional on mostly government projects for almost 30 years.
I too agree with Pielke Sr. I have long been a proponent of decarbonization for non AGW reasons. Like many, I started in the 90s as vaguely concerned about AGW and thought it, with geopolitical issues around oil, would guide the USA to a rational energy policy. Never happened.
Like many others who do not have the time to reactivate long dormant physical chemistry, differential equations and physics skills to dig deep into the details of the current state of the science – I form my current views around less sophisticated analysis:
The corrupt processes:
— The IPCC process appears to be corrupt
— Paleoclimatology appears to (now) be corrupt
.
The apocalyptic outcomes: My thought experiment is – “..what if all of the ice in the world melted.” We know that this would take at least hundreds of years under the most catastrophic warming scenario. More likely thousands. Despite my love of low lying coastal cities like Vancouver, Seattle, Portland/Vancouver, San Fransisco, San Diego, New Orleans, Charleston, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Wash D.C. etc – this would provide us an opportunity to rebuild along massively more sustainable lines over a period of time that matches with the replacement and renovation cycles of the engineering marvels that make these wonderful cities work.
The schizophrenic programs: Some of the major alarmist groups are as opposed to nuclear power as they are to carbon combustion. IMHO, decarbonization == nuclear. It did in the 70s, it does now.
So, IMHO, the precautionary principle drives us to an aggressive nuclear program to include a crash program to validate thorium as a power source. Whatever the reality of greenhouse gas forcing becomes, a few excess terawatts of generation capacity could go a long way toward brute force sequestration. [I believe that we will discover more elegant approaches to sequestration]. A singular focus on creating clean energy for the next decade or so would give us a break from the carbon wars and allow the science to mature.
IMHO, There is a chance that the positive feedback hypothesis can be laid to rest in this decade.
I’m an engineer, so I look at the earth as a big heat model – Heats in and heats out. I really wanted to know how much heat is trapped by CO2 (if any) because my doubts were pretty strong that manmade heating is much greater than than heating provided by the sun.
So I did some calculations for the UK to compare how much heat arrives at the surface of the UK from the sun and have come up with 5.5 x 10^14 BTU per year – and then how much heat is realised from everybody’s homes and power stations, the shopping malls and the factories of the UK.
The heat produced by the activities of mankind in the UK approaches 2.2 x 10^21 BTU per year. In other words, almost 1 million times as much heat is produced by people than is imparted to the earth’s surface by the sun.
I checked my figures twice.
I don’t think I have seen any model by any AGW authority which includes this fact. Does this mean it is an insignificant fact (or an inconvenient one even) and heat does not cause global warming ?
I’ve been a regular lurker on this website for a couple of years. I’m a graduate in English Literature, but a qualified accountant by trade. My employment situation gets tossed back in my face in any discussion on global warming -I work for a major oil company. I don’t have the necessary scientific or statistical background to contribute to technical threads so I restrict my very few posts to threads were opinions are asked.
What started my interest in AGW? I watched Al Gore’s film The Inconvenient Truth and thought this is something in which I should develop my knowledge, so I did! Using Google I found the Heartland website and then Anthony’s website. Politically I am right wing so tend to become irritated by left wing enthusiasm on any subject. However, I dislike being misled by anyone or anything, and well, WUWT & the Heartland don’t necessarily provide a balanced debate. An observation not a criticism, it is not their job to provide a balanced debate, it should be the job of the BBC. I was happy when I found Climate Etc because the debate was more balanced.
I visit many of the sites from Anthony’s blog roll, I like the way he splits them out. I occasionally visit Real Climate & Skeptical Science, but tend to get turned off when I do. I wish Lucia would make more posts, I also wish I paid more attention in my statistics classes. I’ve read The Hockey Stick Illusion, The Great Global Warming Blunder, An Appeal to Reason, got but not read the Chilling Stars & the Climate Fix (a bit dry Roger!). Looking forward to reading the Delinquent Teenager, although I suspect I won’t learn anything new!
As you can see my choice of reading makes me a sceptic or maybe a look warmer. My choice of spelling of sceptic makes me a Brit! I’m Scottish & live in Scotland and, if anything would look forward to a little global warming.
Ph.D. Geology with Walter Alvarez, Rich Muller and Paul Renne (advisors) at UC Berkeley. Worked with Rich as post-doc, then as Asst. Research Scientist in Physics Dept. at Berkeley. Became Professor and Dept. Chair of Geology at Sonoma State University. Recently retired. Always been an outsider looking in on paleoclimate and climate science. Firm believer that same rigorous standards of scientific proof expected of other scientific disciplines (such as 95% confidence on data and a thorough statistical assessment of cause and effect models) should be expected of paleoclimate and climate science. Was consistently disappointed by publications (such as IPCC Reports) with lower confidence levels being used as proof of causality. Was consistently disappointed by younger generations of scientists NOT being critical of their mentors’ ideas. Been labelled a climate skeptic for questioning the soundness of interpretations made by others whose statistical studies fell short of the mark. Learned a heck of a lot about data analysis by working with Rich Muller and Frank Asaro (nuclear chemistry, LBNL). Always wondering if there is a component of the climate system that’s yet to be accounted for. Resigned to the fact that human response to adverse climate change will occur no earlier than the last possible opportunity. Have been out of the research loop since 2003, but have started back in recently (starting, of course, by questioning everything put out by the BEST group!).
BFD in economics, U. Chicago 1992. However I studied about as much cognitive psychology as economics, mainly in the area of JDM (Judgment and Decision Making), the part of psych that spawned Kahneman and Tversky and ultimately “Behavioral Economics.” So I am bidisciplinary. At the time I got my BFD, I was described by someone else as a “theory-oriented experimental economist.” For those of you who don’t know what experimental economics is, I like Charlie Holt’s webpage since it is relatively centrist and non-dogmatic and even has web-based experimental software you can enter into and experience for yourself:
http://people.virginia.edu/~cah2k/home.html
The arc of my academic career, however, has taken me in an increasingly statistical direction. Today my colleagues think of me as the departmental econometrician. At my previous academic gig, my colleagues thought I was a theorist. I have been accused of being a behavioral economist but I resist the label. If pressed, I usually say that I am interested in empirical methodology, whether that involves lab mechanisms or research design or the properties of estimators.
Topically, I work on stochastic models of choice behavior and learning behavior, and especially on testing theories of social learning and theories of individual choice under risk and uncertainty. I have even made a theoretical contribution to stochastic modeling of choice under risk, but I don’t think of myself as a theorist.
Today the thing I care most about is research design and experimental design, because I have a growing conviction that much of what is wrong in my own topical areas flows from insufficient attention to the design of data collection efforts, whether lab-based or field-based.
I first became aware of the theoretical notion of the greenhouse effect a very long time ago. I remember discussing hard choices with anti-nuclear activists in the late 70s, when I was in college, largely because of my awareness that fossil fuels might eventually cause a greenhouse effect. So I have been aware of the idea for a long time, and naturally started to follow the debate when it publicly resurfaced in the 1990s. About a year before Climategate, I happened to start following Climate Audit on a regular basis. I remember well the whole blow-up of Climategate in real time…one of the more interesting academic experiences I have had, on a par with following the Sokal Hoax in the 1990s. I read some of the empirical papers in climate science, but cannot pretend to any depth in climate science. I hope I will occasionally have some helpful things to say from the viewpoint of research design and statistics, and that is probably all I have to offer. But having grown into statistics from a very different start, I do think I have some helpful (though maybe not unique) things to say about the useful role of statistics and statisticians in the scientific process.
David,
Those are hard issues, and frankly, I feel a little bit sheepish about trying to talk about them. Mainly because the grant money issue is less quantitatively important for the social and behavioral scientists than the physical scientists, so I have less direct experience of that particular kind of pressure. It isn’t wholly absent, it just isn’t nearly as big. Partly, that is personal, because the arc of my own research career has taken me further afield from the pressure of funding. I do have many colleagues who depend a lot more on external funding than I do. Stil, it isn’t remotely proportionate to the funding equations in the physical sciences.
I will think more about it.
In the meantime your thoughts reminded me of this funny observation from George Stigler:
“The publicly acknowledged benevolence of academic instituions and personnel is a source of wonder to me. The public’s attitude is illustrated by the fact that a federal judge may teach at a university, but is denied other forms of nonjudicial employment. Could this attitude have survived from the time when the chief function of colleges was to train you clergy. The attitude has survived the obvious self-serving eagerness of the physical scientists to spend half of the nation’s income if given the chance. The social scientists would settle for what the physical scientists are already getting, thus displaying proportionate greed.”
–from George Stigler (1982 Nobel laureate in economics), Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist (1988, p, 125).
Hm. Hadn’t noticed this before. Aggregating what I’ve already written elsewhere on this site:
Bachelor of Science (biology), Medicinae Doctor from a U.S. school, postdoctoral clinical training leading to board certification in family medicine – which, to a Sicilian-American – sounds goddam strange; I prefer to call myself a “general practitioner,” as did my preceptors before me.
A lifelong student of history (chiefly military history, the history of warfare and therefore the “breaking things and killing people” activities of governments), a lifelong reader of speculative fiction (see Heinlein, The Saturday Evening Post, 8 February 1947) with a broad contempt for “mundanes” in general, a professionally necessary student of both quackery and self-interestedly entrenched ignorance, and – chiefly out of an understanding of methodologically honest and therefore sound political economics forced upon me by having to practice my profession during the “Carter Malaise” – a libertarian in the political sense.
And always and evermore, as the result of evaluation undertaken since having first been advised of the preposterous bogosity that is the CO2-driven anthropogenic global warming (AGW) contention by way of correspondence with the late Petr Beckmann in 1981, a properly skeptical critic of what is undoubtedly the greatest single fraud (not even barring the divine right of kings) in the history of industrial civilization.
I just noticed this as well.
BA History
MS Environmental Science & Engineering
MS management of Science & Technology
6 month intership with USGS
4 years US Navy, (submarine qualified)
10 years commercial nuclear power industry
15 years wireless communications industry
20+ year volunteer involvement with education (from Head Start to TA’ing grad students)
16 years as science mentor and Board member of science education non-profit
Not sure if I can recall the exact moment I became interested in the climate debate, but An Inconvienent Truth was what most likely kick started it. Along the way things like finding out the EPA lists only one reference on the subject – the IPCC – being told the debate was over and the science was settled when I was taught that one continuosly questions one’s assumptions and conclusions (not to mention having read just enough papers to know that most researchers ever make flat out declarations), and seeing how people who disagreed with the moderators of the “real” climate sites were talked down to or deleted, helped me to the conclusion that something more was at play than a discussion about climate.
PS – when I started following this debate I went back to my Atmospheric Physics text book to refresh my memory on GHG’s. I was about 15 years removed from the class and wanted to make sure I understood correctly just how a gas acts as a GHG. What I learned back then was that a GHG absorbs IR within a certain incidence or bandwidth of the IR spectrum, with the amount of absorbtion dependant on the chemical makeup of the gas molecule. The molecule vibrates as it absorbs this energy and radiates it back to the atmosphere. There is the extent of what I remember of GHG physics. One thing I haven’t figured out is what happened to the theory that at some point gas will reach a saturation point with regard to the portion of the spectrum it absorbs in.
Joe Hunkins / Joe Duck. Travel and Tech entrepreneur. Lightly informed in the climate sciences. Have an old B.S. in Botany and an M.S. in Social Sciences.
Compliments to Dr. Judy on providing a breath of fresh in our globally warmed up air.
Andre, retired fighter pilot
Military academy with a degree equivalent to engineering level for electronics and system control.
Got obsessed with climate after seeing the Discovery documentary Raising the Mammoth about the recovery of the Jarkov Mammoth mummy of Arctic Siberia in 1998. Since 2002 I look closely over the shoulders of Dick Mol trying to figure out why mammoths and horses were walking around in high Arctic areas on productive megafauna steppes during the last glacial maximum. This would suggest that there is something fundamentally wrong with paleo climatics, which got really serious when seeing the hockeystick in the SPM 2001. I knew that it couldn’t be right. Since then I have been looking in all corners of paleoclimate to find a lot of conflicts, which haven’t hardly been noticed by others, since everybody tend to specialize, avoiding to look into the holes that others dig.
Also due to my profession, I was rather familiar with meteorological fundamentals and in my time the atmosphere was heated by convection and advection, not so much by radiation. Nowadays it seems to be radiation only. I wonder why the physics had to change.
DeWitt Payne,
BS Chemistry Caltech, 1965
Ph.D Analytical Chemistry University of Texas, Austin 1970
I spent most of may career in industry doing composition analysis from ultra-trace on up using atomic spectroscopic techniques, wavelength dispersive x-ray emission spectrometry, flame emission, flame and graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma emission and mass spectrometry.
I started looking into climate science and the atmospheric greenhouse effect after retirement from a highly skeptical point of view. After study using references like Grant Petty, A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation and Rodrigo Cabello’s Lecture Notes on Physical Meteorology, I would describe myself as a lukewarm fatalist. I don’t think that the estimate of 3 C/CO2 doubling is high and the IPCC’s SRES scenarios of future emissions are way to optimistic about human ability to extract fossil fuels from the ground, not to mention being basically flawed by using monetary exchange rates to compare national economies rather than purchasing power parity. The fatalist part comes from my belief that even if the climate sensitivity is on the high side, nothing significant will be done for decades.
Posts:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/explaining-ice-core-co2-lag/
.http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/molecular-radiation-and-collisional-lifetime/
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/where-has-all-the-carbon-gone/
Presently working on experiments based on Wood’s greenhouse experiment. Preliminary results: Wood was wrong. A box with an IR transparent window exposed to direct normal solar radiation that is reasonably well insulated will have a significantly lower temperature than an identical box covered with an IR opaque window.
Herman A. (Alex) Pope
Retired Aerospace Engineer
MSC – Manned Spacecraft Center (1963)
BS Engineering Mechanics VPI/Virginia Tech 1967
NASA – Johnson Space Center (to 2007)
Home >
I am a Retired NASA-JSC engineer (1963 – 2007). I began my NASA career as a Co-op student at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston Texas in 1963 and earned a BS degree in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech in 1967. I worked on Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle, Space Station, X-38 and other missions and projects.
I have been using computers to model or simulate or calculate since 1963.
I have used computers and I have helped others use computers.
I have run the simulations and in some cases written the codes for the NASA programs listed above. I am considered, by many, to be a computer expert.
I am now trying to become a self taught Climate Scientist.
It is difficult to be recognized as knowing anything about climate because they only let you in if you come through their Consensus Taught Schools. I do have a huge advantage. Their Theory is wrong and my theory is right.
I do challenge all of you to prove my theory to be wrong with real evidence. Up front, I do not consider Model Output to be real evidence. I do not consider Consensus Climate Theory to be Real Evidence. I only consider actual data to be real evidence.
In 2008, I attended a lecture at the Gilruth Center at NASA, Johnson Space Center that was hosted by the NASA Alumni League. The speaker was Tom Wysmuller. His website is: http://www.colderside.com
Latter, I attended another lecture by Tom at a Climate conference at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. Tom did teach about the climate theory of Maurice Ewing and William Donn. They developed their theory in the 1950’s and it is still much more reasonable than modern, consensus, climate theory to explain Ice Ages and Global Warming. I have spent much time since then reading and learning as much as I can about climate and have developed my own climate theory. I do believe that Ewing and Donn were right, but earth has changed and modern temperature is in a different stable cycle in a different narrow range and this has lasted for ten thousand years.
In September of 2011, the Johnson Space Center NASA Alumni League sponsored a Climate Symposium. I was one of the speakers. These Speakers were not Consensus Climate Scientists.
The other speakers were: Walter Cunningham, Leighton Steward and Tom Wysmuller. Dr Harold Doiron made opening remarks that should be recognized with the other talks.
In October of 2011 the Alumni League sponsored another Climate Symposium with three Consensus Climate speakers. They were: Dr. Andrew Dressler, Dr. Barry Lefer and Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon.
I am communicating with Multiple Climate Scientists and Meteorologists and Others and trying to improve my knowledge and get every positive and negative feedback to my theory that others will provide. For those who will not discuss skeptic opinions, if you think you are really right, talk to us, but you also need to listen and debate our opinions.
One Consensus Climate Scientist, Dr. Judith Curry, has jumped ship. I don’t mean to say she has changed her opinion about manmade CO2 warming the earth, I mean to say she recognizes uncertainties and she is ready and willing to listen to other opinions and make them available on Dr. Judith Curry’s “Climate Etc.”
Thank you Dr. Curry!
I became interested in climate change after visting Svalbard and Greenland. I was amazed at how much the glaciers had retreated in such a short time in comparison to Admiralty charts ten years ago. Clearly the polar regions were warming but there seemed to be much debate about the cause.
I have never understood why this should be. Many satellites have infra red detectors and, given the potential for harm, it would seem cost effective to even launch more satellites in order to measure the heat radiated from the planet at many points around the globe over a decade and determine if the radiated heat is reducing or increasing. I am sure the radiation from the sun is already constantly measured.
If it is reducing then the planet is warming because radiated heat is increasingly unable to escape due to greenhouse gases increasing. So in ten years we would know if we are causing the gases to increase. Well we could have done. Now, with permafrost melting and giving off methane, we will only be able to establish the rate at which heat is not escaping. The radiation budget I have heard it is called.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can tell me whether or not this measurement has been or has been done.
Much of the argument seems redundant. If the warming is natural it doesn’t stop it being potentially damaging to human beings so why speculate about the cause, why not put that energy and debate into determining what to do about it. Of course, if the radiation monitoring establishes that the radiation budget does not change much over time then we don’t have to do anything but it seems to me that it is crucial to know one way or the other and the only way to know is to take measurements.
Should we take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? If we use it as an opportunity to develop new technologies and new economic activity that seems perfectly reasonable to me. If we subsidise people to create inappropriate technology that cannot recover the greenhouse gases it took to make them let alone reduce the total emissions (something we in the UK are doing now) then that is just lunacy.
As suggested by Professor Curry I am bringing my comments about Martin Lack and his ilk over from the “Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons” thread http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/27/lindzens-seminar-at-the-house-of-commons/) to this thread as being more appropriate for such exchanges.
This is part of my comment of March 7 at 2:23 pm. that Professor Curry “snipped” and suggested that I post here QUOTE: Martin (ref. March 7 at 4:48 pm.) I consider that I was quite correct in stating that you ARE not a scientist. You clearly declare that you are an unemployed AGW Activist/Lobbyist (http://www.blogger.com/profile/10920084847131073355). You may have worked as a scientist in the past but state on your LinkedIn page that you are “ .. Current: Environmental Advisor &/or Lobbyist (incl. Climate Change Mitigation) at n/a – currently unemployed .. ”. According to your LinkedIn entry you were at University from 2010-2011 studying Environmental Politics and your work from 2007 – 2010 was preparing Environmental Statements (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/martin-lack/5/170/801). None of that sounds to me like being employed as a scientist and I can find no papers that you have authored and had published in any respected scientific journal
In my opinion all of that suggests to any reasonable person that you are not a scientist but I am happy to be proved wrong and if so I will apologise. The ball’s in your court.
UNQUOTE.
In response to your comment on the “Lindzen .. ” thread “ .. Shall I start trawling the Internet to see what I can dig up on you? .. ” (http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/27/lindzens-seminar-at-the-house-of-commons/#comment-182904) be my guest and trawl away my friend – nothing too damaging out there. Here’s your starter for 10, try Googling – “Peter Ridley” “S. R. Walker Prize” “outstanding” – or – “Peter Ridley” “Northern Electric” “KTS” – or – “Peter Ridley” “EMC” “IEE” – for a few titbits. Now can you give me some starters.
Latimer Alder said (http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/27/lindzens-seminar-at-the-house-of-commons/#comment-182999) “ .. Martin may once have had scientific qualifications, but is not acting scientifically here .. ”. What is more to the point, I can find no evidence that suggests you have ever undertaken the kind of research that I would expect of a scientist, despite your having obtained qualifications over 20 years ago in the scientific disciplines of Geology and Hydrology. I can’t find evidence of you having been involved in any scientific research in those subjects so if you can then please provide a link or reference to any of your scientific works (but not your evangelical blog comments or articles.
All that I could find were a few items which in my opinion contain no science whatsoever:
– a Wardell-Armstrong Ltd. document that you prepared in 2010 “UK COAL MINING LTD Treated Water Discharge Procedure Guidelines” (www.leics.gov.uk/downloaddatabasefile?file=12025) which, as far as I can see, is purely about procedures for compliance with standards relating to discharges into rivers (e.g. the UK Drinking Water Standards) not about any scientific aspects.
– a Geological Society note in “Know your limits!” (http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/page10834.html) which, once again, does not contain any science.
– a couple of Amazon reviews, of the excellent book “Heaven and Earth” by Adelaide University Professor Ian Plimer a well-respected geologist with a track record of achievement (http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3B8QLP9ORXKV0), the other of “Watermelons: How Environmentalists are Killing the Planet .. ” by James Delingpole (http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RIPY4SVUF092A?cdPage=2).
So come on Martin, prove me wrong by providing some links to some of your scientific works, or at least a “Google” that won’t just take me to your numerous evangelic comments. There is a big difference between a scientist and an evangelist and I shouldn’t need to explain to you what it is, but I’ll give you a hint – scepticism.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
JC comment: i will let this stand on the denizens thread, but i will delete any further comments by you on the subject of Martin Lack (other than a substantive scientific argument).
BSPE (Petroleum Engineering) from Colorado School of Mines. Specialize in “reservoir engineering”: A large part of my job is to forecast future behavior (performance) of hydrocarbon reservoirs based on indirect and incomplete data. One of the key skills for my trade is the communication of uncertainties and their ultimate impact on the end result.
I’ve over 30 years experience, in multiple roles and around the globe, but I still can say that I’m still learning. I count myself fortunate in that I work for an employer which values ‘pure technical’ staff and provides opportunities for advancement without having to cross over to management.
B.A.(math) and former Fellow, Society of Actuaries
Thanks in part to sub-clinical Asperger’s Syndrome I am a natural skeptic, preferring a search for truth over anybody’s, including my own, emotional comfort. Accordingly, I have substantial experience changing my mind in the face of evidence. Four decades ago I was a leftist anarcho-syndicalist and a Richard Dawkins style scientific materialist. These days I’m a libertarian conservative and a traditional Christian.
My interest in the climatological debates goes back to attendance at the environmental teach-in at a local university way back on the first Earth Day in 1970. I have been watching the green movement produce pathological science in favor of environmentally destructive policies for half a century now, and I no longer have much patience for the fools that are responsible for it.
In a sense, I’m still stuck in the 1970s. I worry more about the next Ice Age than CAGW. I HOPE mankind has been warming the planet. If not, we are going to be in big trouble sooner rather than later. Only a high energy density economy can save us.
As a mathematician, my main areas of interest are the squishy nature of the mathematical methods evident in climatology and the failure to address the full implications of the non-linear nature of the climate. If the climate is really non-linear, as seems true, than prediction is in principle impossible. Differences in initial conditions which are smaller than our ability to measure could mean the difference between catastrophic warming and catastrophic cooling. And, we would have no idea in which direction to change our behavior. That is the nature of chaotic systems.
\Tom
Just to keep the moderator happy, here’s my short bio. I’m a retired Chartered Electrical Engineer –MIEE with a 40-year career involving in electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), telecommunications, computer and control engineering.
In 2007 I started researching the doctrine being pushed by the UN and environmental activists (that our continuing use of fossil fuels will lead to catastrophic global climate change/disruption) after reading a review of propaganda booklet “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet” by staunch environmentalist Mark Lynas. In my opinion the book was pure scare-mongering, with deliberately distorted facts presented and which omitted others that would have completely changed the interpretation of those that were included in the book. Mark made no effort to refute the challenges that I made on his blog.
Looking into the science and the reporting of it soon opened my eyes to the manner in which the science was being politicised (http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=374&Itemid=1).
I soon came across the 1992 paper “Do Glaciers Tell A True Atmospheric CO2 Story?” by Z. Jaworowski, T. V. Segalstad and N. Ono, along with several more recent papers by Jaworowski. Since then I have become increasingly interested in his concerns, especially after reading Andrew Montford’s excellent exposé “The Hockey Stick Illusion”, which set me wondering if the CO2 hockey stick might also be simply another illusion.
Of particular interest to me is the relevance of collision and kinetic diameters during the compaction process.
I have discussed this extensively with “experts” in the field, most recently with Professor Eric Wolff of the British Antarctic Survey on a University of Cambridge’s Science Forum (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=38675.50) but remain sceptical of the validity of those attempts to reconstruct past atmospheric CO2 content from air allegedly “trapped” in ice for decades, centuries and millennia. I have a “work-in-progress” page on my Web-site (http://globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/smogbound-on-molecular-fractionation-in.html) if anyone would like to share their expertise in the movement of different gas molecules in micro and nano-porous media, where kinetic diameter becomes of significance rather than collision diameter.
As Professor Wolff said on 2nd May 2011 “ .. I think that none of us has a definite molecular-level understanding of the physical process occurring at closeoff, and it would be great if someone can do the experiments in the lab to understand that better .. ”.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
BSc (math), PhD (theoretical solid state physics), MBA (accounting), CMA. I now pretend to be an accountant (Research Professor of Accounting, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand). Had a short career as a scientific programmer in the 1970s. Research interests in modelling the factors that affect audit fees, modelling the way numbers in corporate financial statements evolve over time, and recently in some of the general weaknesses of research methods in accounting (poor models, poor measurement of concepts, weak tests of hypotheses – sound familiar?)
I first heard about CO2 and the greenhouse effect at high school, when the first routine measurements were being made at Mauna Loa – it was cool when our Chemistry teacher said CO2 levels could be measured to better than a ppm, and the effects of the industrial revolution could be seen in the data. Next conscious of the issue a few years ago, when I heard that Paul Ehrlich was very worried about it. Ehrlich has been wrong about everything (except butterflies) his whole public life, so that reassured me that there was nothing to worry about and the fad would soon pass.
My wife introduced me to ClimateAudit, and I was very impressed with Steve McIntyre’s careful and persistent attempts to reconstruct the analyses in the face of systematic obstruction. I hung around RealClimate for a bit to learn about the science, and discovered that the characteristic form of explanation (to paraphrase freely) was “if you weren’t such a stupid troll, you would have read the paper I referred you to and then you would know!” Curiously, I did not find that style of explanation greatly enlightening.
Climate etc has been a breath of fresh air. There are scientists who explain (and debate) the scientific evidence, engineers and computer scientists to critique the data and models used, economists and social scientists to analyse the policy. With a range of expertise and perspectives, debates get heated but generally respectful, and the signal to noise ratio is fairly good. It has a family atmosphere, with some ongoing feuds and a few slightly batty relatives. (It is strangely comforting to know that, no matter what the question, Oliver K Manuel will always be there to tell us that the answer is the sun.) I have learned a lot about science, the IPCC, engineering concepts of quality, and lots more. In return, I try not to post unless I have something constructive to offer (besides which, I am often too busy for weeks at a time). I often draft a post and leave it overnight to reconsider before posting, so I don’t really get into extended debates – not a good blogger.
I have come to think that the group at the centre of climate science proper (roughly the “hockey team”) are just not very good scientists. Obvious mistakes like the hockey stick get defended and renewed indefinitely, there is a reluctance to bring in real experts from outside (good statisticians are routinely treated as enemies), mathematical modeling is weak so that evidence does not seem to be analyzed incisively, and big climate models are used as though they can answer every question. Fortunately, we don’t have to wait for the scientists to get their act together: Dr Curry has correctly named her site “Climate etc”. The climate science is interesting to discuss and to understand, but it is the “etc” that is of the immediate wider importance.
Pure Maths, Masters Stats. Medical Research. Motivation, I saw little evidence that could not easily be something else. The null could not be rejected and Man seemed off the hook to me.
My background.
I’m a chemical engineer. Worked several years for large companies in the chemical industry, in production, capital project management and marketing and general management assignments. Left the corporate world to set up my own small specialty chemicals company with partners. After several years, sold out and retired. Then took on several consecutive management consultancy assignments.
Got interested in the global warming issue around the time of IPCC’s AR4, at first accepting essentially all of the IPCC claims. The science behind the basic GH theory made sense to me.
As time went on, however, I felt that the IPCC message of CAGW was overhyped, especially by the media. As I discovered the many open questions and the inherent scientific weakness of the IPCC “consensus process” itself, I became more skeptical of the IPCC projections, so I started digging a bit more deeply into the matter.
Al Gore’s “AIT” movie did not help, as there were too many exaggerations and outright fabrications in it. It was a blatant sales pitch.
I must admit that my first reaction was emotional: anger, that I had been duped. Climategate and the other ensuing revelations of data manipulation were additional insults for me.
But then I decided to approach the issue rationally rather than emotionally.
I consider myself a “rational skeptic” (in the scientific sense) today. If someone can show me empirical data, based on real-time physical observations or reproducible experimentation, to provide scientific evidence in support of the CAGW claims, then I am prepared to accept these claims. Until this is done, I will remain skeptical of the modeler’s ability to reproduce reality in their projections.
I have blogged on the “warmist” sites, such as Grist, RealClimate, etc. on more “skeptical” sites, such as Climate Audit, WUWT and Harmless Sky and (of course) on this site, which I consider to be neither “warmist” nor “skeptical”.
To date it appears that the empirical data are not supporting the IPCC’s CAGW claims and projections. The most recent “lack of warming” despite IPCC model-based projections of rapid warming over the early decades of the 21st century raise serious doubts regarding the forecasting ability of the IPCC climate models. Uncertainties regarding natural climate forcing remain great and unresolved. And it also appears that an increasing number of scientists and engineers are raising skeptical questions regarding the “consensus” CAGW premise (as we can witness on this and other blog sites).
As far as the “climate policy” discussion is concerned, I believe that this is secondary. Before we really know that human GHG emissions are causing a perceptible change in our planet’s climate, and we know that this change will, on balance, be detrimental to human life and to our environment, it is premature to consider any “climate initiatives”.
I have seen no specific actionable proposals for climate initiatives backed by cost/benefit analyses. If we cannot even show that these specific actionable initiatives will have a perceptible impact on our planet’s future climate, and we have no clear evaluation of their costs or unintended consequences, we certainly should not undertake ANY “climate initiatives”..
Besides, China is the largest CO2 emitter today, and will soon surpass the USA in per capita CO2 emissions. India is not far behind. Neither China nor India are interested in slowing down their industrialization and economic development to address what they consider to be a “rich white man’s folly”. Nor does the USA, nor Japan (if China doesn’t). As all the climate conferences have shown, a global “climate initiative” is DOA, and whatever the EU, Australia and New Zealand do, it will have no impact on our climate.
That’s my background and these are my thoughts.
Max
Peter Lang is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy projects throughout the world, including managing energy R&D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes: hydro, geothermal, nuclear, coal, oil, and gas plants and a wide range of energy end use management projects.
Some recent contributions to energy and climate debate are listed here:
http://bravenewclimate.com/renewable-limits/
http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/
http://jennifermarohasy.com/author/peter-lang/
I’m Toby White, or Augustus T. White if I’m trying to impress someone. I earned a Ph.D. (well, maybe not earned — they gave me one, anyway) in biology years ago; but I make my living as a lawyer, practicing an eclectic mix of employment and international law. I used to be the owner of, and largest contributor to, a paleontology site called palaeos.com. I spend a lot of time these days studying North American prehistory to no particular end and for no discernable reason.
In truth, I have only a moderate interest in climate studies and tend to change my mind frequently. I started following the area mostly because one of my kids is an academic in a related field. If I don’t keep up, he’d snowplow me into his strong alarmist position. I have to put up at least credible resistance or lose all filial respect, although he may be right in the end. I have a much stronger interest in the climate wars as an episode in the history and philosophy of science. This site is strong on that aspect of the issue. I’ve also been very impressed with the clarity and intelligence of both the articles and the comments.
Hello, I am Eric Hein, I manage third party aircraft maintenance vendors for an airline, my technical expertise is in avionics. I have no formal science training beyond high school and what is involved in electronics, I am a true lay-person. I have been interested in the climate change debate since 2006 and became interested because the alarmism reminded me of the ozone hole scare, the spotted owl, the Klamath Lake sucker fish etc. where the alarm was never equal to the threat. I also became very skeptical of any environmental advocacy after subscribing to Popular Science in the 90’s and viewing the science learning objectives of my children’s classes where environmental issues were a priority over the actual science. I have learned much the last few years about the climate and some of it’s physical properties although I do not claim to know anything well. Currently I have been interested in the effects of clouds on the climate and the last few weeks I have been looking at how CO2 heats the ocean and how clouds effect ocean temperature. Having an electronics background I am also interested in feedback circuits and am completely puzzled by the claims that an increase in temperature would trigger a positive feedback in the climate system. I have been reading Judith’s blog for about six months now and I really like her insight and enjoy reading the comments when I have the time to get through them. You all are usually talking above my head but I try to research what you are saying as much as possible and learn from it. I usually only lurk here but you may see me add a comment or two on occasion. As for my political leanings (which I believe are fueling this debate as much as the science), I am a registered independent, fiscally conservative and socially liberal (mostly).
“Having once had an interest in climate studies, I lost touch with them for nearly 3 decades. I felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle a few years ago when I realised just how big a deal climate had become. I have mainly worked as a consultant in statistical methods for industry. Previous work included spells in nuclear physics, and as a forecaster for wind and sea states for industrial operations. I have degrees in Physics with Theoretical Physics (St Andrews), Atmospheric Physics (Imperial College), and Applied Statistics (Sheffield-Hallam). A couple of years ago, I started a blog called Climate Lessons: http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/
A few words on ‘my stance’.
My view is that the effect on the climate system of additional CO2, from whatever source, seems to be so small that we have great difficulty is discerning it in any reliable way. The computer models which use the programmer’s trick of ‘forcing’ as their preferred way of adding causal factors have not been impressive as aids to climate prediction, and I suspect we may have to wait until they are able to model the CO2 more directly as it emerges from or near the surface in relatively large concentrations, with dramatic temporal and spatial variations on a global scale, and then in due course is spread throughout the troposphere by turbulent mixing, convection and advection. Whether that would be worth the effort and dedication of computing resources will largely depend on how long the stranglehold of the alarmist view stays on the body politic.
The brutish manners and methods revealed by the hockey-stick aftermath, the climategates, the dealings of the IPCC, and in the ill-natured petulance and censorship at websites such as RealClimate, does not speak to me of noble seekers after truth. Quite the reverse. They come across to me as zealots, desperate to win the day for their cause. Since they may well see that cause as saving mankind, they are not liable to be easily diverted. Who would once launched on such a crusade?
I welcome the calmer and more open approach epitomized by the hostess of this website, and by many other admirable participants in the study of climate – whether they be focused on causes or consequences. Political decisions of great import, such as the UK’s Climate Change Act, have been made apparently by people in panic. As someone who had not found the arguments in support of such panic to be at all convincing, I looked on in great dismay and resolved to get back into the study of climate, and in particular to learn more about the kind of materials being pushed at children. Some of that seemed awful with their glib talk of greenhouses and a blackmailing mentality urging kids to turn off lights or a polar bear would die. That was a few years ago, and I am still studying away, plodding along at my own slow pace . I have still not been convinced by the case for alarm, and nor have I been able to find an admirable alarmist.
Chemical engineer. “Broke too much glassware early on” to stay in the lab. Process design engineer, production supervisor, project manager, founder and CEO of chemical startup company, management consultant in process improvement and business management, now semi-retired. Lived and worked in USA, Germany, Belgium, France, China (Hong Kong), Switzerland.
First got interested in the climate debate in 2006. Studied IPCC’s TAR, which I found credible.
First major disillusionment came with all the media hoopla and hysteria that surrounded the AR4 report, so I started taking a more rationally skeptical stance to the claims being made. The very first thing that struck me was that, according to IPCC, almost all of the projected impacts of AGW were going to be negative for mankind and our environment. This just didn’t make sense. There had to be “winners” as well as “losers” from a slightly warmer world. In fact, it appeared very likely to me that the winners would outweigh the losers, based on past periods of warmer and cooler climate.
That’s when I started blogging on climate sites. Spent some time debating with the true believers on RealClimate, Grist, etc. before that got too repetitive and boring. Also lurked and posted on Climate Audit, Harmless Sky, WUWT, Skeptical Science, Bishop Hill, etc. before discovering Climate Etc.
The obvious errors and exaggerations in Al Gore’s film, the “hockey stick” fiasco, Climategate, plus subsequent revelations of IPCC fudging the data, all just confirmed my skepticism of the “consensus” position. Moreover, I observed that climate science, itself, had been corrupted in order to sell a political agenda.
Like the balanced approach here and am (hopefully) learning a lot in the process.
Am holding out on my “buy-in” until it can be demonstrated that the CAGW premise of IPCC (based on a model-derived mean climate sensitivity of 3.2°C) can be supported by empirical scientific evidence (Feynman) and someone can tell me how it can be falsified (Popper).
Max
PS Just realize that this is a “repeat” of an earlier thread, which has been combined, so I have sort of repeated myself [June 22, 2012, at 7:32am] (at least I’m consistent).
I am M.Sc. in metallurgy, including both process and physical metallurgy. I was graduated in 1959. During the most of my career I was – one way or another – responsible for solution of metallurgical process problems, mainly in the Finnish copper industry. These problems were very multi-scientific, including all the spectrum of metellurgical processes: pyro- and hydrometallurgical processes and processes of metal working. As challenge there always was the devolepment of both product quality and productivity of operations.
Climate problems are analogous to the metallurgical problems stated by me above. They both are multi-scientific and need a cross-disciplinary aproach to reach a working solution. The cross-disciplinary approaches mean to learn pragmatically the reality of process well enough in order to find potential causes of problem. Thereafter you can direct your scrutiny properly to make working solution possible. Without any cross-disciplinary approach it is coincidental to find a working solution for a multi-scientific problem.
As a son of farmer I have very early learned that the welfare of mankind depends on climate conditions. Already during 1980s I listened to some presentations on the era of glacials and interglacials, where temperature changes were claimed to follow changes of CO2 content. Thereafter even I regarded as possible, though not certainly, that anthropogenic CO2 emissions may cause global warming, as it was declared in The Rio Conference 1992, too. As about 10 years later ice core analyses proved that changes of CO2 content in atmosphere follow changes of temperature, I began to scrutinize the problem by myself. As I have already presented nowadays I am convinced that even recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere is dominated by the global warming and not vice versa. In the comments of mine on the blogs here I try to make even politicians as decision-makers understand that the recent warming is controlled by natural factors where an influence of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions is indistinguisable.
Doug Proctor:
Dropped out of Astrophysics when I discovered math and me only fit where we touched. BSC Geology, hard rock went to oil and gas. Field work included lot of interest in glaciation, landforms and timing. 34 years as geologist, exploration, start-ups, consultancy business. Oriented towards practical, economic activity based on actual results vs predicted results. Concerned much about outcome bias in analytical research. Was liberal, less believing in the natural goodness of Man towards his fellow creatures vs his personal interests.
Climategate, fall of 2009 brought me into the fray when the obvious tricks to benefit the pre-determined, desired result came to light. Did my own digging, found the “sniff test” made me suspicious of what I was hearing. Did one original research, posted on Tallbloke’s, on the relationship between Max. Daily Temps and Bright Sunshine Hrs, Central UK 1930-2010; found cloud cover changes and AMO-PDO heat exchange correlation accounted for both rises and falls of UK temps. Only 0.1C/century left for CO2.
Object to villification of foes on both sides of debate. See now that Suzuki, Hansen et al are modern social and political revolutionaries, armed with the tax code rather than bandoleers. See that the CAGW fight is going to be tight, as science is a tool, not the object. Believe that the internet has opened up the Citizen Scientist to an undesired but important component of modern governing dialogue. The responsibility to Know is not limited to knowing, but to Saying, and saying in public.
I worked for a government agency for more than 30 years, mainly in NWP model development. I got interested in climate issues, when I became a manager. At first, I thought climate modeling is to solve externally forced (CO2 increase) quasi-equilibrium problem, and thought it’s relatively easier than dynamical seasonal forecasting. However, as I studied deeper in to the problem, I found the problem much complicated, containing many unknown processes and vast timescales from less than a day to more than centuries.
I found your blog is well balanced and educative. In particular, I agree with your statement that we do not fully understand climate( there are many known unknowns and unknown unknowns). I am a regular reader, although
I may not comment on your articles (My mother tongue is not English).
Thanks!
BSc in Civil Engineering
MSc by research in hydrological models.
Author of peer reviewed papers on hydrology. The hydrological model I developed has been used 3 European Universities to study climate change impacts. I have also studied climate change impacts in three continents.
As a hydrologist I have been working with climate data all my life. I have worked in more than 50 countries and am aware of the poor quality of much climate data.
I believe that GHGs were responsible for most of the underlying increase in temperature over the last 150 years but that the influence of the AMO, which was not taken into account by AOGCMs, has led to projections overestimating the future increase in temperature.
BS in physics, PhD in math from Berkeley in nonlinear dynamics. But that was a _long time ago_, and by the time I got it I knew I didn’t want to do math for a living, and haven’t really followed it seriously since then. I have a nice simple job computer programming for a very big hospital, pathology database, MUMPS.
Recently I decided there are so many free courses available I should learn some of the new stuff in my spare time, so I’ve taken Coursera and edX courses (one at a time) in Quantum Computing, R, Data Analysis, Solid State Chemistry, and Machine Learning. They were a lot of fun.
As for climate science, I have the math background but not the time nor inclination to read through the published literature. So I would normally take the scientists’ word for it. But as I am politically conservative, I start with a pretty big activation energy to people who want to tax the whole world. I continued to drift into some skeptical blogs more-or-less at Climategate time. But if someone is interested in the truth, and he reads one of Steve McIntyre’s posts, and just follows all the links, and then reads the responses at RealClimate and elsewhere, and then reads McIntyre’s responses… Well, it just doesn’t take long before a reasonable person will conclude that he is trying to post complete information and they are trying to hide stuff. There is so much erasing people comments, editing them, banning them, making misleading statements about what McIntyre said or claimed, refusing to respond to points and responding to others instead…, all in contrast to McIntyre’s total provision of all the information, code, data, emails, links that he has.
I don’t know if RealClimate and other Team blogs are aware how much they have alienated a lot of people who might have trusted them.
Angech GP recently retired, enquiring mind, love discussing problems . Suspicious of salespeople.
I’m mostly a lurker, but I am guilty of sending emails to Dr. Curry. I am a paleoclimate scientist, who got there by way of ecology and paleoecology. I’ve spent my career (recently retired) studying (and publishing extensively on) climate change throughout the Phanerozoic. Climate change happens, has always happened, and has done so on a variety of time scales, from human-length to tens of millions of years, throughout the last 600 million years (and probably before, though it’s harder to study that far back). Some very large and abrupt changes occurred for reasons that remain somewhat mysterious long before humans evolved.
I was around when “climate change” first became a buzzword (it actually preceded, as well as post-dated, “global warming” as the catchphrase) about 25 years ago, and my alarm about the politicization of climate science started then. What has come to pass in this regard has exceeded my wildest and deepest fears; the first time I heard the term “settled science” applied to this most complex of systems, I went ballistic. I always welcome voices of reason.
Hi Judy, I am also a lurker on this blog. I enjoy what Judith Curry posts but I find it dfficult getting through 300 non-scientific comments to find the interesting ones. I do not doactive research now but I worked with the radiation budget satellite data in the 80s and 90s. (Any study using satelllites should start out with the fact that we have only been measureing since 1970’s). The evidence I have read seems to indicate that there are measureable regional changes occurring on our time scale. I am uneasy about how scientists interpolate data over large expanses of ocean. I think climate models can be useful tools but have doubts about their ability to predict future climate. But the models seem to get the most press and attention. I’m a big fan of paleontology.
Rose
Dr. Parrish:
You might consider writing a guest post for Climate etc. on the State of the Art in paleoclimate reconstructions. My own feeling is that the paleoclimate stuff is cool & reasonably trustworthy; the paleotemp reconstructions much less so.
Peter D. Tillman
Professional geologist, advanced-amateur paleoclimatologist
Yes, this would be most welcome !!!
Hello all. I have never done a blog before, but this one may hook me.
I am 67yrs. old and retired after a 30 yr. career with Exxon working in the area of offshore oil and gas development projects. That means we conceived, designed, built and installed offshore platforms, pipelines, drilling rigs, subsea production systems etc. I began at Exxon in 1977 in the early days of deep water exploration and production. I now live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, just down the road from Los Alamos National Labs.
I attended NYU in the mid to late 60’s and received BS and MS degrees in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography. NYU had some of the first courses on spacecraft oceanography and air/sea interaction in academia. Life (a wife, 2 kids and Vietnam) led me to a career working as an engineer, first at Bell Labs and finally at Exxon, as opposed to going on for my PhD. at Scripps or MIT.
I have been intensely interested in the climate change aka global warming debate for a long time and have always been skeptical of the so called consensus. I find the vilification of those who are skeptical as “deniers” and worse to be particularly unproductive. Most people that I meet dismiss my views simply because I worked for a big bad oil company.
The recent IPCC report and SPM are the first I have delved into (since I am retired now I have time to do stuff like that). My reading and searches led me to Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry and this blog. Man, am I energized! I have read the transcript of the Jan. 8 APS meeting and am eagerly awaiting the outcome of the APS initiative. My take away is that the APS attendees had some eye opening as a result of Drs. Lindzen, Curry and Christy presentations and discussions.
I am also keenly interested in the appointment of Dr. Lindzen by the Cato Inst. to a distinguished position, and his intention to do research on big picture scientific institutional and funding issues.
I intend to follow this blog regularly and will participate when I feel I can contribute. As an aside, my eldest grand daughter recently decided to attend Georgia Tech (probably computer science) and will be starting next fall. I was very happy with her decision before finding Dr. Curry, and I am even more sure now that she has made the right decision.
Great Blog,
Me – BS in Physical Science (USNA), MBA (FIT), private pilot with instrument rating (associate degree in weather?) and a father of two intensely bright young women who continue to challenge me. Couple this with a life long love of all things scientific and I’m not a happy camper being lumped with the 1% of scientist who think man’s ability to predict global weather 100 years in the future is asking two much of our computer models.
My research has concluded nearly all glaciers have significantly retreated since 1850. That sea levels have risen about 8 inches, temps have gone up about 1.33 degrees and CO2 is up 100 ppm since 1900. That this 33% increase in CO2 is man made.
What’s lost on most is CO2 going from 300 ppm to 400 ppm represents a 1 in 10,000 increase. Stack 20 reams of paper and the entire increase in CO2 is a single sheet. Drop 10,000 super balls and you got it… one super ball is the entire increase:
http://blog.sfgate.com/culture/2005/07/29/in-case-you-were-wondering-what-10000-bouncy-balls-going-down-a-san-francisco-hill-might-look-like
It would seems common sense has simply died. It’s accepted that 99.964% of our atmosphere is N, O and Ar. That everything we are talking about is happening in the very, very small fraction left over. Don’t get me wrong, I understand just how thin our atmosphere is. I’ve flown for long enough and get that our atmosphere is not this thick dense mass but actually a very thin veil of gas shrouding our planet.
But man’s releasing of ancient, anaerobically sequestered CO2 back into the atmosphere is likely the equivalent of the quintessential squirrel to a dog.
All my best,
Dave
PS I think it’s funny that greenhouses buy CO2 generators and target daytime CO2 at 1500 ppm.
Lastly, for my daughters sake, I take great solace knowing that the next 100 years will likely be like the last 100 years and science will figure much of this out:
1913 The discover of the atom’s structure
1920 First radio broadcast
1924 Edwin Hubble discovers the first new galaxy besides our own
1927 Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe
1928 Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
1929 Edwin Hubble puts forward the theory of the expanding universe
1931 Cyclotron invented to study accelerated particles
1932 James Chadwick describes the nucleus of the atom
1942 Enrico Fermi demonstrates the first controlled nuclear reaction
1945 The first electronic computer
1947 William Shockley invents the transistor
1953 The double helix structure of DNA discovered
1957 The Soviet Union launches the Sputnik satellite
1960 Stephen Hawking publishes Grand Unified Theory
1964 Murray Gell-Man predicts the existence of quarks
1969 Man walks on the moon
1975 US university campuses linked by computer network
1971 Intel makes the first commercial computer microprocessor
1990 The World Wide Web is born
1990 Hubble space telescope launched
1996 Dolly the sheep cloned
1997 Scientists accurately predict El Niño
2003 Completion of the Human Genome Project
2004 Facebook founded mainstreaming social media
2005 Predictions of Peak Oil adjusted… again
2010 The Large Hadron Collider’s first high power collisions
2012 Physicists statistically demonstrated the Higgs boson
2013 Private companies resupply the International Space Station
2014 United States energy self-sufficient… (not yet but close)
Michael Edwards: 40 years Chem Eng in the energy business (no, not Exxon, but 20 of those years with Mobil). First followed Climate Cooling, eh, climate warming, eh, climate change, eh climate disruption, back in 1970’s when doing 5 years at Oak Ridge National Lab, working on alternative fuels. Years reading Climate Audit, many others, with plenty of dissenting opinions, even SKS (no dissenting opinions that I could find). And the fine gentleman who died some years ago in Australia – great work from him on ocean level Facts – not models, I am old now, and sadly do not immediately remember his name – wonderful blog. Salute your bravery, see you looking for truth rather than acceptance. And the trolls on your comments! Wow! Have read many of your articles but only now reading through the comments part. Total 20 of this 40 years outside of country (twice German, England, Spain, China, Singapore, India, now moving to Nigeria to help them build new refinery). I remember numbers from 38 years ago at ORNL that said ethanol was nonsense – still is. I go to help where it will help the world. I am not climate warmist, nor denier, nor sceptic (I am engineer not scientist – want to see what works), only realist. If our models failed over 17+ years to predict the chem engineering equivalent of no temperature increase, we would long since have been fired. Reactors can blow up and kill people with errors like this. Still waiting for a theory of climate change that explains it better than sun cycles and the weather.
Mostly a lurker, I am a semiretired scientists with PhD in Human Genetics with my speciality being genetic epidemiology, biostatistics and more recently bioinformatics. I have long wondered about things in climate science that didn’t make a lot of sense to me. In particular I have been absolutely gobsmacked and flabbergasted to have an innocent question about a lack of error bars on a graph being answered with an accusation that I am in the pay of big oil and should be shot for endangering mankind by daring to question the truth of the global warming consensus. After several incidents of this kind of response I just stayed out of the debate, figuring it was not my field and I therefore had no right to comment. I am mostly a lurker here because I have a lot to learn. I lean toward accepting C02 as a contributor to global warming but I haven’t decided if that is actually such a bad thing or that it is occurring at a rate that is worth getting all upset about. I live in Canada. I migrate as a snowbird to the USA. I am writing an embryology book with my husband who is also a scientist. I have found this blog invaluable in teaching me about the field. I eagerly await each blog and I read them through and I often follow all the comments and go back and read the original literature cited.
Recent denizen…
For three decades was heavily involved (and a leader) in another highly politicized endeavor – nuclear waste management. Was technical guru for the nation’s first and free world’s largest facility converting nuclear waste to glass. As such, have a rather unique perspective on the interplay of science, politics and public perceptions. From 2005-10, was Science Advisor (sort of like Chief Scientist) for Savannah River National Laboratory. While there, became involved with a resilience program – am now working with communities and college campuses to enhance their resilience – and also blogging on resilience – http://www.resilientus.org.
I have been a lurker since I discovered Climate, Etc. At this point, I am mostly a software person, as my technical background is computer architecture, programming languages, and artificial intelligence. I have been appalled at the intrusion of a certain brand of politics into science and university life, often with the intent to squash non-conforming views. I like to read Climate, Etc., E.M.Smith, and Lucia’s blog, when she can take the time.
I became a Twitter follower of Judith just last month. And, as a result, I ended up on Climate Etc when the topic interests me. But first of all my interest was in Judith who interested me as a courageous and, what I consider to be, true scientist.
My background is a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington. But I was always interested in computers since I graduated in 1976. I remember seeing the very first Macintosh on display in a store window and saying, this will change the world. As a result I am a self taught software engineer and that is what I do for a living.
My interest in what was called global warming was sparked when I saw a comment in a news publication at least 7 years ago on the topic of global warming that said something very close to “It’s too important to be wrong.” Wow! I had never heard of such nonsense embraced by supposedly smart people and have noticed the argument hasn’t really changed much over the years.
My background has made me particularly suspicious of “consensus” thinking both in its predilection of being wrong on so many occasions and by the inability of those involved to critique themselves. What is my background? I’m LDS (Mormon) and, can I say lightheartedly, that I have suffered, in a manner of speaking, by a lot of non-Mormon consensus thinking over my lifetime. In addition, I remember my wonderful Chem E professor giving his last piece of wisdom to the graduating class: “Fully 1/3 of the literature is wrong.” He was inviting us to be skeptics of the scientific cannon. The bottom line is that out of the gate I tend to be skeptical of consensus thinking.
Being a skeptic about anthropogenic climate change, I’ll admit it up front, is partly a matter of faith. Being a person of faith I recognize it’s hand in other groups as well such as those very public proponents of AGW. We have in our LDS cannon: “Behold, the Lord hath created the earth that it should be inhabited; and he hath created his children that they should possess it.” (1 Nephi 17:36) If the earth were in fact created to be inhabited it seems unlikely that it would be deleterious to us or the biosphere to use the coal and oil that have been oh so fortuitously placed underground to take our live beyond mere drudgery.
At the same time I’m interested in reading about arguments both for and against AGW—after all, I could be wrong—and that is why I am here.
Been following the blog for awhile. Never noticed this was here.
I’m a software engineer that’s worked in applications, AI and automated process control. The latter, as applies to real time, in situ measurement of coating processes (i.e. glass products, various films, various types of thin film solar production and a lot more).
I developed an interest in chaos and unpredictability while working in AI almost 20 years ago, supporting telephony engineering. When I encountered the climate debate, looking just briefly at different data, it hit me that everywhere I looked I saw noisy signals of varying amplitude over time. This is the DNA of unpredictability. It should I think inform us to approach “knowing” in this discipline with a degree of humility…that stands in direct opposition to social idea of consensus. Consensus by definition puts a premium on a definite conclusion as opposed to a careful examination of evidence.
I come to software engineering through the back door of philosophy, literature and logic. I was a teaching assistant and tutor at Los Angeles City College for a year in the Philosophy department. My B.A. was from Cal Poly in literature. I have published poetry…which is a great way to starve. Particularly when you write poems about philosophy.
Out of college, I hired into a tech firm in silicon valley doing eduction, configuration and testing. In the course of testing, I became frustrated by seeming to see the same errors over and over. So, I did what any good literature major would do. I started taking the programming and computer manuals home and reading them.
It was the early days of tech, (IBM released their first PC within a couple years of my graduation) and “computer scientists” that could program were rare as hen’s teeth. (CS was very EE centric during this time.) The company I was working for realized they could bill out my programming time for more $$ than my training time, so I they made me a full time programmer/engineer.
Robert Johnson-Taylor
I’m the eternal student, started life as a lab rat in the Pathology Labs, at Birmingham General Hospital, specialising in Haematology; migrated to medical informatics at University College Hospital; migrated to quality assurance at The British Standards Institution; since which I have worked at Glaxo Smith Kline, Nestles, Ford, BMW, VW, Mars, MacDonald Douglas, Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK.
I gave up full time employment to look after an elderly disabled relative who’s tenacity for hanging on to life has amazed all, I just put down to her sheer bloody mindedness, but I still feel it’s a privilege.
Currently studying for a BSc in Environmental Management & Renewable Energy, and starting a MSc in Systems Thinking in the coming semester.
Currently hold a MSc in IT; and Chartered in both IT and Quality.
I find the doom mongers of both global warming and cooling a joke; once people tell me everything is settled and certain, I know these positions must be wrong. There is no absolute certainty, for the more one learns the more new things come into view and then you come to the realisation of how little is known.
The world faces much more immediate problems than climate change, assuming that it is, e.g. availability of fresh water, increased resistance to antibiotics etc.
I’ve been lurking the blog since your Russ Roberts interview. My background a engineering undergrad (University of Florida ’05), though I’ve migrated over to program management in the aerospace industry.
My personal point of view is that climate change is happening and that it is triggered/encouraged by human activities. I’m convinced that we don’t understand how we will adapt or how the planet will react to this over any period of time, so I’m skeptical of all policy recommendations. To the extent that we do implement policy, I strongly believe that this is an economic issue, not a moral issue. Thus actions should be evaluated in a time value of money framework, not a doomsday scenario framework.
Mechanical operator on Naval Nuclear power plants, Reactor Operator and Senior Reactor Operator in commercial nuclear. Bachelors in Industrial Technology. Operations instructor with focus on emergency operations training in classroom and simulator.
Several years ago, I was not knowledgeable on climate change, had some doubts at one time, but figured there must be something to it since the company I worked for was taking significant actions related to AGW. Then a co-worker questioned me on it and I didn’t have an answer. I went back and reread Michael Crichton’s “State of fear” and then found Steve Millroy’s Junk Science site. Growing more and more skeptical about AGW, I came across the IR absorption characteristics of CO2. That convinced me more than anything else. Several months before Climategate, I was reading everything I could get my hands on about climate. I found most “warmist” sites and blogs condescending and insulting to anyone who dared question the consensus. For a time, I even had a climate blog, but it was too much to keep up with and there were far better efforts out there.
While I may not be a scientist, nuclear power plant operators are required to have a good grasp on the fundamentals of thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid flow, which, to me, is a large part of what climate and weather is, though highly chaotic.
Thanks for all that you do here. I may not understand a lot of the in depth science, but I’ll of scroll to the “JC comments” to get your take on the particular topic.
Matthew R. Marler, PhD (statistics, Carnegie-Mellon University)
I have experience modeling multivariate biological time series using “standard” time series methods and non-linear differential equations. More here:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew_Marler?ev=hdr_xprf.
Like everyone else I used to think that most scientists who were familiar with most research believed the standard theory that more CO2 will produce more warming. I read an article on effects of solar variation on the upper atmosphere, and it struck me that the role of the sun might be under-appreciated. With that I started reading climate science, beginning with the blog RealClimate, and books and articles recommended by denizens there. From that I branched out and have read books and articles recommended by lots of people.
Lawyer, conservative, and practicing Catholic. Began as a math major, but switched to political science and philosophy. Worked between semesters, sometimes for extended periods, in construction and factories to pay for school (back when that was possible). Served in the Army before attending law school, and served again after working for a large law firm in Chicago. Went from conservative Catholic to agnostic while attending a putatively Catholic university for undergrad. Stayed an agnostic for 25+ years before returning to Catholicism upon re-analyzing my thought processes regarding theology.
Began as a moderately progressive college student. I believed that it was best to alternate control of the federal government between the Republicans and Democrats, because Republicans seemed much better at creating wealth, and the Democrats better at redistributing it. Was approached in undergrad by a “community activist” group started by a founding member of the SDS to do some retail fundraising. The group was focused on organizing around issues like generic drugs, increasing the number of paramedics on ambulances and general aid to the elderly and poor.
Within a couple weeks, they wanted me to take over the fund raising program. But before giving me access to the “inner sanctum.” they wanted to make sure I was one of them. Whereupon I was given a stack of books to read, including Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky and the writings of the organization’s founder, . I read them over the weekend, went in on Monday, and quit. Which began my journey to genuine conservatism.
All of which is relevant to my status as a denizen because I have been following progressive politics and advocacy ever since. And while the tactics have been refined, modernized and adapted to new technology, they are still essentially the same.
The CAGW movement is indistinguishable from other aspects of the progressive movement. The tactics are the same – focus on some issue that will get the attention of the proletariat, and use that to organize them into a political force that you, the activist control. Then and only then, do you pursue your real agenda. (In the climate debate, this happened in the run up to Copenhagen.)
I comment almost exclusively at this blog, because I already know what my fellow skeptics and conservatives think on most issues, and warmist blogs have strict moderation policies. Why waste my time composing a comment if there is little chance anyone but a moderator will read it?
I also find it more interesting to engage those with whom I disagree, even though they often resist real engagement.
Occasional commenter, when I think I can add some value or can be humorous. Educated to MSc in mathematics specialising in maths for physics so done all the Quantum, Fluid Mecahnics, General Relativity type basics and what that entails, 40 years ago. Retired from career in commercial IT so delivering real solutions upto a few years ago. So gives me a perspective on what climate science should be doing versus a lot of the eco based babble that a lot of it seems to be. Had assumed that the AGW theory was essentially correct until I retired and started to think about it, research on the internet and discovered it wasn’t in anyway as straightforward as the mass media presented it. Was familiar with group think from my IT work and saw it staring me in the face along with political shenanigans. Then Climategate happened in a timely way and I was from then a full blown sceptic, but lukewarmer if I had to put money on it.
Bottom line is I see the earth system as an open, chaotic system with loosely coupled ocean and atmosphere and many perturbing physical factors like soot, aerosols, gravity, sun, cosmic rays, biosphere and many perturbing factors associated with data adjustment, UHI, politics and tortured statistical theory.
Anyone who suggests to me they can predict the future climate is a charlatan as far as I’m concerned.
Keep up the good work Judith.
Recent denizen, “discovered” Prof Curry after hearing a podcast of her interview on EconTalk. Background in solid state physics: PhD from Minnesota, post doc at Illinois, Fellow at the Center for Nonlinear Studies (CNLS) at Los Alamos National Lab. Left academia in 2000 to join Wall Street, where I still work as a quantitative portfolio manager.
While at CNLS I became interested in large scale nonlinear phenomena, including climate change and weather simulations. What particularly struck me was the high sensitivity of weather patterns, or ice sheets melting to even small amounts of impurities.
My view on AGW: based on my Wall Street experience, where uncertainty looms everywhere and everything is “noisy,” one should not ignore the strong historical correlation between high CO2 levels and the global temperature. As for what causes what, I am much less convinced: it seems the CO2 just adds a strong positive feedback effect, it does not cause the warming (I tend to agree with Brad Marston on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUNCQB4nql0). I also understand the economics of the proposed solutions and how difficult it would be to do anything effective. On the other hand, given how nonlinear the climate is and the fact that the recent increase in CO2 is mostly due to human activity, I would not be surprised if the CO2 concentration increased dramatically in the near future as a consequence of the warming, making things much worse for the planet.
Personally, I do not like the popular focus on just CO2: it appears other gases and impurities are much more dangerous (like Methane, N2O and a number of synthetic compounds). For all you know, our consumption of beef and cell phones may do much more harm than our use of fossil fuels, yet nobody’s talking about it.
Yes, Judith, I am a LURKER. I never comment (I am not qualified) but I find your blog refreshing. I sent you an e-mail once and I received an almost immediate response. Thank you.
I first started reading because of your affiliation with TECH – my Alma Mater (B.S. Physics 1974). I was a mediocre student but I managed to finish on-time and go on to earn an M.S. in Computer Science from Indiana University. When the “climate debate” started heating up (sorry for the pun) shortly after the release of “An Inconvenient Truth”, a close friend of mine reminded me of the “global cooling” panic of the 1970’s. Reading your own comments reinforced those memories.
The first time I shared your position with another friend. He immediately conferred with a physicist at IU who argued strongly in favor of AGW. When I referred the physicist to your blog though, he affirmed your caution regarding conclusions (especially regarding AR5).
When I hear “environmentalists” rail on about tipping points with the fervor of Chicken Little (The Sky is Falling!) It helps to look back on your posts.
Lots of discussion is about CO2 concentrations and little else. Your curiosity about the current hiatus brings it all back into perspective.
The span of AGW impact is generally consider to be over the span of the Industrial Revolution (roughly 1800 – 2000 AD) but it seems to me that period of time carries with it another important fact. It took roughly 1800 years for the world population to grow from around 300 million (First Century) to 1 billion. It has only taken 200 years for that world population to grow to over 7 billion! How can human activity NOT be a factor in these discussions?
Mitigation of climate change needs to be measured in the context of good science, without the influence of politics.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Hello,
My name is Philip Nord. I own an orthodontic laboratory. I have three orthodontic patents but only one was manufactured.
I don’t remember exactly when I became interested in Climate Science but curiosity and frustration with not knowing how to decifer info I found on the web eventually led me to Judith Curry and Climate etc.
I don’t have any really solid formulated beliefs regarding most of the controversies. Since I don’t watch TV this is a great escape from the daily grind. Keep up the good work Judy and thanks a bunch for this forum.
I’m a long-term “weather watcher” and student of meteorology. At the ‘micro-level’, I’ve spent many hours inside thermals chasing buzzards and hawks in sailplanes in GA, NC, and TN. On the ‘macro-level’, I worked in the airline business for 40+ years, with much of the time relating to aircraft performance, flight planning, etc. My academic background is primarily aero/astro….BS, MIT, 1961. Also have an MBA/Finance, Ga.State Univ. 1973.
With regard to AGW issues, my view, based on reading on this topic ranging from Al Gore’s book to this blog and dozens of other sources, is that climate sensitivity to CO2 is at the low end of the IPCC scale…..maybe one degree per doubling. Hence it is ‘false prophecy’ to claim that curtailing carbon-based fuel consumption will achieve any discernible effect with regard to 21st (or 22nd) Century climate variations.
In closing, may I say that I decry the media characterization of folks with my views as members of a right-wing Republican Clonehood….
I’m a Democrat….have voted, best I can recall, for every Democrat running for President, beginning with Kennedy. (Didn’t vote for any of them to be “Climatologist in Chief”, however…..)
Please keep up this valuable work, Dr. Curry!
Buzzards and hawks
Have got it knocked.
===============
I’m English, I have a BEng in Engineering and Engineering Systems from the University of Portsmouth. I’ve worked in a number of fields: toys (seriously), quite a lot of avionics and recently meteorological systems.
I’m a very very lukewarmer: I accept CO2 must cause some warming but think it extremely unlikely that it will cause damaging climate change. I had my 15 minutes of fame when an email I sent to Anthony Watts became a post at WUWT.
Basically, like so many others I became a ‘sceptic’ because of the certainty that was expressed about the science behind global warming. As someone who loves science, I had previously been very unquestioning about any mainstream viewpoint. But I remembered an episode of the excellent BBC science series ‘Horizon’ from the 1980s, where they interviewed a physicist and asked him if anything in science was certain. After a great deal of hesitation he suggested that the Second Law of Thermodynamics was generally reckoned to be as certain as any science could be, but even that could perhaps one day be, if not overturned then at least refined. I was extremely impressed by his honesty.
But by the late 1990’s the TV was full of people telling me that there was no doubt at all that global warming was real, and man-made, and would certainly lead to disaster. And when I thought back to that physicist, my BS detector went off the scale. The undisguised political affiliation of many of the most vocal alarmists was also a warning. So I started looking into the science for myself, and was horrified at what I found. If I, a humble engineering graduate, could see so many gaping holes, then there was no way I could support any of it.
I write my own blog, Various Scribblings, which is linked through my name on my comments here. It is mainly populated by tumbleweed (and occasionally William Connolley), and I write it largely for my own sake, as a way of marshalling my thoughts. I fail Mosher’s test of the True Scientist spectacularly as I put forward no theories of my own, I just write about aspects of climate change (and life in general) that I find interesting. I write under my own name as I think climate change is a very important topic and people need to stand forward and publicly state their views on it.
Politically I’m a libertarian, but in quite an English way, so I think the government should basically just leave people alone, but I don’t think we should be allowed to run around carrying guns just because we feel like it.
I am a fairly recent denizen, and have made only a handful of comments on CE.
I hold a BS in chemical engineering and worked 25 years or so worldwide in that field mostly with oil refineries and petrochemical plants. I also am an attorney practicing in Science and Technology, also engineering law. I advise and represent companies and individuals in civil matters related to climate change, process safety, environmental regulations, engineering malpractice and other matters. As an attorney who understands engineers, I also work with other attorneys in dealing with expert witnesses and lay witnesses. I also make public speeches on climate, and legal aspects of engineering and science.
My involvement with climate change began in 2006 when California passed its infamous AB 32 law, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. I heard the bill’s author, Mr. Nunez, speak about the law’s creation. This law changed the way almost everything works in California, from industry to commerce to transportation to residential living.
I have a blog with many articles on various aspects of global warming. My views are put forth there as a skeptic (anti-warmist) in the two most-read articles:
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/from-man-made-global-warmist-to-skeptic.html
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/warmists-are-wrong-cooling-is-coming.html
I have had almost one dozen guest posts on WattsUpWithThat, with a few covering legal topics and others on climate issues. My position on long-term energy supplies is controversial because I hold that nuclear power for commercial power plants is inherently uneconomic and unsafe. I have a 30-part series of articles on The Truth About Nuclear Power beginning with:
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-truth-about-nuclear-power-part-one.html
My considered view is that renewable energy is the energy of the future, especially with grid-scale storage and on-demand generation for intermittent renewables such as wind. My views are expressed in:
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/forecasting-future-hubris-or-honesty.html
It is sobering, to me, to know that the Earth’s coal reserves are rapidly running out, yet coal provides almost 50 percent of the world’s electricity. An article on CE recently featured the impending coal shortage. While I almost certainly will not live to see the coal-exhaustion-day, it is important to me to help guide policy and practices to finding low-cost, reliable, safe replacements not only for our current coal-based power, but increases in electrical usage for the future.
Finally, ensuring the world has sufficient supplies of clean, fresh water is important to me. Engineering has the answers, but water policy must be guided to the right solutions. We have more than plenty of fresh water, but it is in the wrong places and at the wrong times.
Best regards, Roger Sowell.
Education background: B.S. Biology/Economics; M.S. Economics, Post-Graduate work in Engineering and Economics.
Professional: Agriculture Crop & Soil Science; Engineering (IGCC Biomass Gasification, Ethanol production); New Project Development.
Publications: ~12 Published Papers (primarily with the U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge National Lab, University of Florida (Schools of Engineering & Agriculture).
Recognition: Numerous awards from the U.S. Departments of Energy (biomass project innovation); Agriculture (soil carbon sequestration); and EPA (voluntary program on greenhouse gas emissions). Testimony before U.S. Congress on Renewable Energy.
What I enjoy most on CE: Dialogue between Dr. Curry and Steven Mosher (and resulting thread discussion).
Current Beliefs: I believe AGW is occurring per established chemistry and physics. I do not believe we have the current knowledge or tools to determine the amount or timing effect of AGW.
Hot Button: Use of the Bible by Politicians to deny that Global Warming is occurring.
Scientists I Especially Admire: Dr. Curry of course! Dr. Molina, Dr. Mueller, Dr. Hayhoe (in her refuting Bible based deniers).
I do have a Blog which I occasionally post to. Example post: Where President Obama is wrong on coal http://www.greenenergy.blogspot.com/2013/11/where-obama-is-wrong-on-coal.html
Started as an Ocean Engineer, hired and retrained as petroleum engineer by large oil company. As an undergraduate worked aboard a NOAA vessel, we were dropping XBTs and tracking currents using drogues, mostly to understand Gulf Stream eddies. Posting the data by hand made me memorize the 3D shape of the ocean in the areas we were surveying.
In the early 1980s I was trained in the use of 3d dynamic model simulators, used to model multiphase flows within oil and gas reservoirs. These grew in size and complexity over time, and by the 2000s the technology had evolved to use very large parallel processors. We also realized the upscaling to a reasonable size, and the plain lack of ability to describe the initial conditions led to large prediction errors. Having had almost 30 years to hindcast the early predictions I made taught me a lot about a model’s limits. I also had to develop models for the human responses to events we had to introduce in the larger 3D models of nature (I used I Think software).
In the 1990s I was leading a small project team studying whether to produce oil in the Arctic, and we had to interface with a group of ice and climate experts. The project lasted almost a decade, and we saw was the regional warming trend and the gradual ice loses. This was easy to spot in the USA military satellite data we had obtained, which had coverage from the 1960’s.
After I retired I started reading about this global warming controversy, and saw a lot of gaps and problems in the way the IPCC was doing its work. I also think climatologists have lost their place. The solutions have very little to do with climatology as such. If we decide the GHG effect warms the planet and this warrants some action then the people who contribute the most to making good decisions aren’t climatologists.
I am not qualified in the field of ‘climate science’, or any science for that matter! But I am very interested in it, mainly because the ‘alarmist’ side of the debate shows signs of cult-like influences. These influences appear to be when the scientific method, and the scientific need for extraordinary evidence, are often largely ignored. The technical term for this is ‘cognitive dissonance’. The alarmists feel uncomfortable when they discover that their beliefs don’t match up with reality. One of the ways they reduce the cognitive dissonance is by ignoring or denying any information that conflicts with their existing beliefs. Also, they may justify the behavior by changing the conflicting cognition (eg. the warming has just paused and is sure to return at a later date, or the missing warmth is hiding in the deep oceans – where we can’t measure it). .. A parallel with this in the dark world of apocalyptic religious cults is when the world does not end on a certain date, and it is assumed that the calculations were wrong, or the deity has decided not to punish mankind after all.
I was also interested in many of the scientific discussions that concentrated on what was really happening in the world, including the discussions that explained the extremely complex and chaotic nature of the climate system, and the very large number of internal and external variables.
In New Zealand, there is/was a talkback host on NewstalkZB that convinced me and many other listeners to research the topic, and not just blindly *believe* what we were being fed by the mainstream. … (Note that the history of science shows that a new hypothesis and new papers are not necessarily incorrect if they don’t follow the ‘mainstream’ theories.)
I often try to remember the wise words of our old teachers :-
~ note the scientific need for extraordinary evidence;
~ ensure that the hypothesis agrees with the experiments and real-life observations;
~ recall the story about Kepler preferring the most precise observations, rather than his dearest illusions;
~ remember that science isn’t based on consensus or belief, and correlation does not prove causation;
~ remember that the ‘claim of consensus’ is used only in situations where the science is not solid enough.
One of my blog posts that I think is relevant is here :-
http://foresight-of-hindsight.blogspot.com/2012/01/evidence-shows-no-global-warming-for.html
Since the post is dated Jan 28, 2012, it might have been one of the first blog posts to mention the lack of overall global *warming* for a significant number of years!
I am a self employed CPA in Mound, Minnesota. We do a lot of form 1040s similar to the H &R Block model. I am the volunteer Treasurer of a small 501(c)(3) non-profit park. One of my small plans in progress is an attempt to introduce some native wildflowers and/or prairie grasses.
If I have a relevant area expertise it would be reading financial statements. I graduated from the U of Minnesota with an accounting major.
In 2013 I took an interest in trying to figure out what was going on with Global Warming? It’s been an interesting journey. I’ve been introduced the concepts of the non-linear, of bistable systems, of chaos theory, and of regimes. My physics and math skills are not much beyond a high school level, though I had some basic programming classes and business statistics classes.
So I have to rely on things like concepts, and to try to fit nature into income statements and balance sheets. Occasionally in my readings I’ll see, On all size and time scales. Are things many orders of magnitude apart, similar? In my short so far journey, I’ve started to conclude, maybe that’s how nature is put together and how it works.
I’m a retired casualty actuary. I’m experienced in models and predictive modeling, but not in physics. My opinion in climate change is
1. A lot of scientific work is bogus
2. The earth has been warming for over 200 years, so it seems likely that it will continue to warm.
3. I think a sensible predicted long term rate of warming would be the rate of warming of the lower troposphere from 1979 – present, namely a little above 1 degree C per century
David in Cal
Alexander Biggs
1940 RAAF wireless operator/air gunner, 20 squadron – Catalina flying boats.
1950 BE (Hons), University of Western Australia
1951 Scientist, Weapons Research Establishment, S. Australia..
1952 Attached to RAE, Farnborough, Hants UK.
1954 Stay in UK extended so could take up SPSO position in Dynamic Analysis division.
1959 Report SAD20 First ever complete 3D mathematical model of a guided missile and the start of a new method of evaluating such.
1961 Presented four papers on Australian development at Third International Conference on Analogue computers at Opatija, Yugoslavi
1961 Presented (with A R Cawthorne) Royal Aeronautical Society, London ‘Bloodhound Missile Evaluation’
1961 WRE Principal Research Scientist.
1961 – 1981Australian National Leader, TTCP Panel D9 Guided Missiles, Australian National Leader Electronic Warfare. With S. Allison and W R Dickson invented Nulka Countermeasure missile.
1982 Established AGB Computer Art with Simon Biggs and a new Coprocessor for the S-100 bus.
http://members. iinet.net.au/~alexandergbiggs
2000 Joined world wide Oxford Hadly experiment on modelling of climate.
I have a BS and PhD in chemistry and a quarter century of research experience, patents and publications. I became interested in climate science after my children watched “An Insignificant Truth” and a school report on climate change. A Google search led me to RealClimate, where I read a positive review of AIT that insulted my intelligence – it was not scientifically excusable to confuse correlation between CO2 and temperature in ice cores with causation. The authors of RealClimate seemed to show frequent disdain for work somebody named McIntyre. Being somewhat of a contrarian and preferring scientists who didn’t think it was acceptable to confuse correlation with causation, I had a look at what McIntyre. McIntyre later pointed me towards ScienceofDoom. I’ve now got a modest collection of books on climate, and pdfs of papers.
Hi there. I left university without taking a degree. I had a double major in anthropology and journalism. I was trained fairly rigorously in electronics and physics by the U.S.Navy.
I am a market researcher. I worked intensively in the renewable energy field after 15 years as a high tech researcher. I am familiar with online surveys and how they can be used and misused.
As a market researcher I am used to being around marketers, which is good preparation for a lot of the consensus material put forth. I am convinced that most of the really bad stuff written about climate change (polar bears, No Pressure video, etc.) comes from the marketers working for the large environmental NGOs, and the rest comes from people like Lewandowsky, Gleick, Jim Prall and John Mashey. I think most climate scientists are honest, hard-working and conservative in their approach–people like Bart Verheggen, for example. There are exceptions, of course, like Michael Mann.
I am also co-author with Steve Mosher of the book Climategate: The CRUTape Letters.
I have no idea why it has taken me so long to put this in the Denizen’s corner. I actually thought I had done this years ago. Oh, well.
I wrote this in 2010 on Jeff’s thread [1], and it’s still good enough:
Hello,
BA in philosophy, specializing in epistemology. MA in argumentation theory. Teached methodology and critical thinking; assisted in philosophy of mind and modal logic. Doctoral studies completed in cognitive science. Dissertation is a pet project (case-based-reasoning system that teaches chess) and should be finished when the kids will be grown ups. My actual job is unrelated, but is well-enough paid and leaves me with lots of time. Sooner or later, I’ll switch in translation studies or [technical] writing.
***
David Stove once wrote something worth noting here:
Source: http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/whyhave.html
I am certainly not one of the philosophers Stove refers to, but I met enough to have a good idea of the depth and the soundness of someone’s posture in writing. I also read enough Oxonians to recognize what kind of game is played around the so-called “debates” that I can read. In fact, what I think happens most of the times has been well symbolized by Stanley Kubrick:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNzuF33tZo
All in all, I’d say that the environment is evolving and becomes more openly political. This is a good thing, as the climate wars have mostly been proxies for libertarian piffle. Not that libertarianism can’t make sense (even though Chomsky disagrees). [I]t just happens that most of the times it does not.
[1]: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/reader-background/#comment-30924
I’m an old COBOL developer from Canada.
My views on Climate Change have gone from alarm, to denial, to lukewarmishness.
I believe the IPCC’s estimate of ECS is ok. They could possibly adjust the low end of their range to a zero feedback scenario of 1.2C. Based on the observed changes in Central Asia though, I think the feedbacks are likely to be positive, so a range between 2C and 3C doesn’t seem unreasonable. I note that this number is hard to constrain so I don’t really have a strong opinion on it.
I agree with Nic Lewis’s assessment of a central value for TCR of ~1.3C. I note the uncertainty regarding aerosols, so this number has a wide range a well.
My business as usual scenario has a temperature increase of between 1.0C and 1.5C for this century. I haven’t seen any compelling evidence that sea-level rise has been accelerating in recent decades, so a rise of close to a foot over the 21st century doesn’t seem unreasonable.
The region where I live is a wet place that is becoming wetter and I expect this is much the same in other mid-latitude locations. If the tropics expand I would also expect an expansion of tropical rainforests and a poleward shift in some deserts.
I think the prospect of hurricanes becoming more powerful or more frequent reasonable, but there isn’t a lot of evidence to support this position, so I think any change will be slow to reach significance.
As far a public policy, in the grand scheme of things, it’s hard to know if any regulations will be of net benefit. As part of their ROI analysis, I favor utilities and operators of large fleets to cost CO2 at a rate of ~$20/tonne.
MS in Meteorology back in the 80’s when I only knew one climate scientist and he had never heard of “global warming”.
Professionally, I’m involved in statistical forecasting and modelling.
My interest in climate science has grown since the issue has become so politicized. I’m amazed how much regular folks have such strong opinions yet know nothing about the science. I’m determined to be the opposite…have a great deal of knowledge and be careful of my opinions.
My academic background in climate science is limited so I’m trying to learn from the give and take.
Claim to fame? Had dinner with Ms. Curry once…back in the day…LOL
I have mostly worked as a technical analyst for beltway bandits in chemical and nuclear risk assessment. Formally educated in chemistry and chemical engineering including a postdoc in physics I had my perspective as a scientist turned upside down three decades back when getting sent for training in decision analysis and then turned loose on a few problems. Success and failures there provided indelible lessons on the quirkiness of human endeavor at the interface of technology and society. One of those quirks is we tend to do what we know how to do instead of finding out what we really need to know* and do to solve the problem.
—–
What we need to know includes a clean characterization of the actual problem at hand.
Another influence at the same time was exposure to concepts kicking around in the golden age of AI . Glad I did not miss that; like decision analysis AI offered new and interesting ways to address problems–I was dealing with in chemical and nuclear risk assessment. IMO the classic AI of that short era still much to offer…not everything is solved by crawling over massive quantites of data or increasing grid size. Lesson learned–explore your conceptual toolbox.
Initially curious about the climate squabble I naively started looking at climate change blogs a couple of year back after retiring. Like many I found my way here and at Lucia’s. [I can’t remember the specifics but at first ‘Fortress Blackboard’ scripts continually stopped me at the gate, but a I made a quick appeal to JC and she helped me gain entry. That was my introduction to JC. How can I not be a fan?]
My view of climate whatever? As far as the debate goes I started out pretty detached and arrived back at the same state. Initially I just had not paid that much attention to the topic. After spending a couple of years being exposed to the political facets I see little prospect of rational resolution of the science and policy in my lifetime. But if one steps back and tries to look at the numerous science problems embedded in the big debate/problem there seems to be some really fun stuff that could be done.
Finally, IMO the rampant abuse of labels like skeptic, alarmist, warmist(a), and denier is one of the biggest detriments to resolution of climate issues. Unfortunately I do not that we can retract all the damage done and the debate is immutably formed. So it goes.
I graduated in chemistry in 1972 and was due to start a PhD involving laser raman spectroscopy but I was tempted into industry by a head hunter. I remained in industrial R&D ever since, in fields such as aero engines, agrichemicals and speciality paper manufacture.
I have been involved with many different aspects of chemistry including specialist areas such as microencapsulation, nano pigments and photochromics as well as the more industrial technologies of papermaking, coating and digital printing. My career has involved product development, process development and the management of a few dozen researchers mainly, at PhD and graduate level. I have served as R&D director at divisional level in a multinational company. I have a couple of dozen patents filed worldwide.
I first became aware of the controversial nature of climate science when news reports started my scientific alarm bells ringing. Our planet has witnessed hot spells and ice ages yet scientists were claiming unprecedented warming. Carbon dioxide was claimed to be driving global temperatures though in fact the atmospheric proportion of CO2 mainly follows sea temperatures.
Today, I am recently retired and I follow a number of climate sites on a daily basis. It is difficult to sum up my views of such a complex issue in just a few crude sentences, but here is my attempt.
I think that climate science has been hijacked to suit a number of different agendas; mankind does influence the climate, but natural drivers are powerful too and not really understood. I hope to see the day when real scientists sort out the truth from the froth but that could take rather a long time.
I have 52 years of post-doctoral experience. I am a true generalist. I am 50% scientist and 50% engineer. I have worked on an extremely wide variety of technical problems over the years and I have wide knowledge of things technical. I have a solid grounding in chemistry and physics and did fundamental work in these sciences for many years, publishing numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals. In the second half of my career I worked on more applied problems, particularly in space technology and space mission design. I have surveyed the wide field of global climate change and its relationship to energy consumption and I am familiar with the entire literature of climatology. I am also knowledgeable on energy systems and thermodynamics. I was proposal manager on two major winning spacecraft proposals (Genesis and Deep Impact) that brought in $500 million. I also wrote a number of winning smaller technology proposals.
B.S. Chemical Engineering, Cooper Union, 1955
M.S. Chemical Engineering, Princeton, 1956
Graduate study, California Institute of Technology, 1957
Ph.D. Chemical Physics, University of California (Berkeley) – January, 1960
2008-2010, JPL Interim Employee on call
2005-2008, JPL Contractor through Skillstorm, Inc.
2003-2004, JPL Contractor through QSS, Inc.
1979-2002, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA; Senior Research Scientist and Division Chief Technologist, Mechanical Systems Engineering and Research Division; Retired February, 2002
1969-1981, University of Texas at Dallas:
1981 Resigned
1979-1981 On Leave of Absence while at JPL
1973-1979 Full Professor of Physics and Environmental Engineering
1969-1973 Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics
1965-1969, Polytechnic Institute of New York: Associate Professor of Chemistry
1959-1965, Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory: Senior Staff Scientist
Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, 1974
Referee for the Journal of Chemical Physics, the Physical Review, the American Journal of Physics, the Journal of Physical Chemistry, and other journals on over 300 occasions.
Book reviewer for Physics Today and other journals.
Two articles chosen as a “Citation Classics” by Citation abstracts with over 350 citations each.
Listed in Who’s Who in the West
Listed in Who’s Who in Frontiers of Science and Technology
Listed in Who’s Who in America
Listed in Men of Achievement
Listed in International Who’s Who of Contemporary Achievement
Listed in International Who’s Who of Professionals
Listed in Personalities of the Americas
Listed in Who’s Who in Technology Today
Listed in Who’s Who in Technology
Listed in Who’s Who in California
Listed in Who’s Who of Professionals
Listed in Two Thousand Notable Americans
Listed in Dictionary of International Biography
Listed in Strathmore’s Who’s Who
Received Exceptional Service Award from NASA October, 2002
Associate Editor of the Mars Journal 2006 – present
I went back to see what I had written four years ago, and add only that since then I have written four essays for Judith, and started a website of my own , which does from time to time comment on more than global warming and ‘climate change’!
I have a BS in Biology with a focus in Aquatic Ecology.
I have spent the last 15 years working in the Pharmaceutical industry, as a scientist in new product development.
I grew up wanting to be a scientist and an environmentalist, but realized that the movement was totally disconnected from science right around my third year of college. I fully support the idea that man affects the climate, including but not limited to CO2. I do not consider CO2 to be a pollutant. In the 90’s, I supported the “warmists.” In the early 2000’s I switched camps when I realized that the science community (in which I include science foundations, non-profits, and actual climate researchers), were not doing anything to temper the cries of “warmest ever” and “most CO2 ever” and “carbon pollution.” Paleo-history has always interested me. I often read books and papers on ice-ages and other significant periods just for the fun of it. So, I found it insulting that these periods, in which there were dramatic climate and other changes, had to be minimized in order to make AGW seem really, really bad. My first contact with the climate-blogosphere was a link to the Surface Stations project that I saw on my local weatherman’s blog. Eventually I frequented WUWT and Real Climate about equally. I went to Real Climate thinking that it was Real Science, but the comments made me sick. I did a lot of reading and researching on my own, and eventually became a regular reader of Climate Audit, Climate Etc., The Blackboard, The Air Vent, R. Pielke Jr.’s site, and WUWT. I don’t always agree with everything on any of these sites, but I believe they are the best resources for getting educated about the climate debate.
Though I have been a “lurker” here for years, I have never introduced myself because of my background. I have an M.A. in Philosophy, with special emphasis on the medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Before then, I achieved a B.A. in Philosophy, Theology, and Latin. This is not the sort of background that equips someone for in depth scientific discussion.
But those without a scientific background are citizens upon this earth as surely as are the top scientists, and we too are called upon to have educated opinions.
I grew up as part of a conservative minority within a politically liberal city. I was exposed to skepticism about global warming at the beginning of high school. I never felt qualified to deny the purported consensus on AGW, but the ridicule of those around me was enough to keep me from fully embracing it. In High School, we learned the basic mechanism termed the greenhouse gas effect. It was simple, elegant, and compelling once I understood it. Thus, though I never became an alarmist, I felt worried. I wondered whether my political preferences for individual liberty and free-market economics would have devastating side effects upon the environment.
To the end of educating myself, I read many things on the internet from many perspectives. Everything I read seemed to contradict everything else. I looked for credibility among the various sources, and I found that I was not even qualified to ascertain credibility.
It was with great relief that I stumbled upon Climate Etc. years ago. Judith Curry projects a non-dogmatic reasonableness that does not appear to be connected with political advocacy. As I have read this blog for years (sometimes more skimming than reading), I have begun to understand more of the depths of the questions and uncertainties in climatology. It is now apparent to me that the science of climate cannot be reduced to a political position. Though I am well-under-qualified to take part in this conversation, I learn a lot by seeing it in action.
Thank you to everyone who contributes.
PhD in Electrical engineering.
South african, working in electrical power quality and electricity regulation. This includes the development of regulation and policies related to renewable generation. My main interests relate to the link between existing policy positions/ incentives for renewables by state agencies in relation to the benefits attributed to them. Also the study of financial impacts on utilities and countries to make recommendations for policy in SA.
I am a physicist who has been working in the field of underwater acoustics for my entire professional career since 1981. I am currently the senior vice president and Chief Technology Officer of a 100-person company in the Washington DC area, i.e. a beltway bandit. :-) My views are not necessarily those of the company, so I will leave the company out of this.
So why am I interested in Climate Science? I will try to stay as politically neutral as possible, though it is difficult.
Energy production, particularly cheap fossil-fuel-based energy, is what has afforded Western Nations the lifestyle they currently enjoy. It has enabled the production of inexpensive food and it’s transport, protection from debilitating heat and killing cold, and many other benefits both obvious and too numerous to mention. We find ourselves at the cusp of a potential two-pronged worldwide catastrophe. The looming end of cheap fossil fuels “i.e. peak oil” and the potential threat of “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.” The timing and seriousness of both of these things is not certain – and this is not just my opinion, many scientists agree. However, because energy production costs and CO2 production (and it’s possible affect on climate) are intimately entwined it is perhaps THE issue of our current age. For issues so globally important I am not about to simply “take the word” of politicians and their paid scientists who may or may not be operating in my best interests. History is replete with examples of manipulation of the masses for personal political gain at great cost to the masses and great benefit to the chosen few. Constant vigilance by us all is the only way to protect our countrymen from those who would exploit them.
And that’s why I’m so interested in understanding climate science.