by Judith Curry
Sociologists and journalists are writing articles about understanding AGW skepticism and denialism. This latest article from Nature makes me think somebody needs to study these people who think that:
Study 2 examined whether framing climate change action in these ways (increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development) may be a more effective approach for motivating action in deniers than the more traditional focus on the reality and risks of climate change.
Here is the abstract for the Nature Climate Change paper:
Promoting pro-environmental action in climate change deniers
Paul Bain, Matthew Hornsey, Renata Bongiorno, Carla Jeffries
Abstract. A sizeable (and growing) proportion of the public in Western democracies deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change. It is commonly assumed that convincing deniers that climate change is real is necessary for them to act pro-environmentally. However, the likelihood of ‘conversion’ using scientific evidence is limited because these attitudes increasingly reflect ideological positions. An alternative approach is to identify outcomes of mitigation efforts that deniers find important. People have strong interests in the welfare of their society, so deniers may act in ways supporting mitigation efforts where they believe these efforts will have positive societal effects. In Study 1, climate change deniers (N=155) intended to act more pro-environmentally where they thought climate change action would create a society where people are more considerate and caring, and where there is greater economic/technological development. Study 2 (N=347) replicated this experimentally, showing that framing climate change action as increasing consideration for others, or improving economic/technological development, led to greater pro-environmental action intentions than a frame emphasizing avoiding the risks of climate change. To motivate deniers’ pro-environmental actions, communication should focus on how mitigation efforts can promote a better society, rather than focusing on the reality of climate change and averting its risks.
Keith Kloor’s reaction
Over at Collide-a-Scape, Keith Kloor writes:
But the way the authors go about it–by using the loaded “deniers” term as a catch-all reference–is akin to a public health expert slapping this title on a study: “Promoting a healthy diet for fatsos.” And then characterizing overweight individuals as “fatsos” all through the paper.
So far, reaction from climate scientists ranges from puzzlement to consternation. On Twitter, Doug McNeall, a climate researcher at the UK’s Met office, wondered if the paper “was actively courting controversy” and added:
I struggle to believe that the authors don’t know the impact of the word ‘denier’, given the subject matter.
Richard Betts, a fellow Met Office climate scientist, chimed in:
“Denier” is an unnecessarily inflammatory label, and only causes distraction by getting people worked up. Bad move.
Unsurprisingly, climate skeptics are worked up over the Nature paper. Bishop Hill writes:
it certainly looks as if the authors intended to generate offence and controversy rather than truth and light. Hilariously, the authors are writing about how to convert people to the green cause!
Indeed, the irony is hard to miss.
JC comment: I view this pretty much as the green equivalent of the unabomber billboard. I find this kind of stuff in a high impact journal to be offensive: what was Nature Climate Change thinking when they published this?
Somebody needs to research the sociology and psychology of people that insist that anyone that does not accept AGW as a rationale for massive CO2 mitigation efforts is a “denier.” The complexity of skepticism (ranging from multiple aspects of the science, to the impacts that can be attributable to AGW and whether or not they are “dangerous” to the policies proposed for CO2 mitigation) seems to be completely missed by all of the “scholars” writing articles about ‘deniers’. The argued point “A sizeable (and growing) proportion of the public in Western democracies deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change” should provide a clue to these people that something is fundamentally wrong with their thinking.
So ‘deniers’, tell me: will “increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development” work for you?
Truly genuine “increasing interpersonal warmth” could at least open up a two way conversation. The unintended result may the discovery that the skeptics may have something valuable to contribute.
It has happened before somewhere…
Nothing creates interpersonal warmth like labeling someone a denier.
And societal development makes me think of brain-washing children and “re-education” camps under totalitarianism.
I applaud Professor Curry for having the courage to post, and discuss openly, propaganda moves like this and the unabomber billboard.
The frequency and intensity of such attacks will increase, . . . if
a.) AGW promoters continue to lose ground, and
b.) World leaders catch a glimpse of reality beyond the well-funded, Orwellian curtain of propaganda.
A great deal is at stake for leaders of the scientific community, especially those in the UN, EU, US NAS, UK’s RS, Nature, Science, PNAS, MNRS, etc.
According to a report published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) on 19 June 2112, President Barack Obama himself has already requested information on space weather !
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2012EO250003_Space-Weather.pdf
This is an encouraging sign that Orwellian pseudoscientists may no longer be able to ignore the fountain of energy that Copernicus discovered at the center of the solar system in 1543.
Here’s the rest of the story: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-132
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
But “increasing interpersonal warmth” would be yet another upward pressure on global temperatures …
Does “increasing interpersonal warmth” involve getting laid by easy eco-hippie chicks? If so, that’s an angle I hadn’t considered yet…
Scott,
If you decide to pursue this angle further, I suggest you first find out if they are the sort that believes in bathing. Not all do.
Scott,
timg56 makes a good point, Scott. Probably best to stick with the NGO babes, I’d say. Though I imagine they’re all pretty much “tied up” at the moment working the executive suites in Rio. But the party there’s over in a day or two.
In 2009, when Australian Prime Minster, Kevin Rudd, was heading off to the Copenhagen Climate Conference with 120 public servants, minders and spin doctors in tow, I asked what they would be doing. A blogger answered:
Well, I enjoyed it, for its absurdity, and for its lumping together genuine AGW deniers with impact and policy sceptics, and adaptationists.
Curiously, if you take out the word ‘deniers’, this sentence makes some sense:
‘To motivate …….. pro-environmental actions, communication should focus on how mitigation efforts can promote a better society, rather than focusing on the reality of climate change and averting its risks.’
I’m all for a better society. Now we can argue what ‘better’ means! And ‘society’ for that matter.
As the lead author of the paper, I’ve made a comment on the “denier” label below. But I appreciate your response. We defined society as nation, but the better is definitely up for debate. In terms of Judith’s “will it work for you” question, it won’t work for eveybody. And the point of Study 1 was not that it works as a rhetorical strategy, but that it exists as a view held by some sceptics. All we did was ask people to make some ratings about what the effects of taking widespread action on climate change would be. Now some said it would be bad, as expected, but perhaps surprisingly some said it would be good, even though it wouldn’t affect the climate. The views most reliably related to their intentions to support action related to creating a society where we cared about each other more (warmth), and where it would promote economic/community development. Parts of it may sound a bit “hippy” to some, but this is just what the measures showed.
Now that certainly doesn’t mean all people thought this, and there may be other types of consequences that sceptics might accept as good outcomes, e.g. reducing pollution, reducing reliance on foreign oil. But it does suggest that if both sides of the debate paid close attention to the social consequences of policies, rather than the present intractable debate on the reality of AGW, then we might get to a point where we can agree on some action – you might think it is pointless with regard to the climate (but a substantial proportion of people think it will), but if it produces some other good outcomes it might be ok. If it all sounds like a pipe-dream, one of our reviewers pointed us to this example, which illustrates the general point: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/earth/19fossil.html?pagewanted=all
Paul, you and your co-authors may want to read this:
http://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/5095.html
The late Elinor Ostrom was a specialist on Commons and Public Goods problems. You can find her Nobel lecture here, which is good background for her World Bank paper above:
http://bnp.binghamton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Ostrom-2010-Polycentric-Governance.pdf
It puzzles me that Ostrom isn’t better known among Social Psych folks but the Academic walls are funny that way.
Dr. Bain linked to the NY Times article:
In Kansas, Climate Skeptics Embrace Cleaner Energy
That is what we’re talking about. Most people in policy positions understand we have a powerful 1-2 punch going in terms of risk mitigation. There is the high-risk, low-probability outcome of AGW, and the medium-risk, high-probability outcome of fossil fuel depletion. The risk mitigation strategies for combating each of these outcomes share much in common. Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and moving to alternative or renewable energy supplies works to mitigate both AGW and FF depletion.
The risk mixture of a bad AGW outcome and FF depletion certainty makes the mitigation strategy a no-brainer. It’s the old killing-two-birds-with-one-stone approach. Yet, you will find some people that treat both issues with equal disdain.
There is no–I repeat no–advantage to moving away from fossil fuels absent an environmental rationale. Hence, any policy that burdens these fuels is an instant regrets policy resulting in lower amounts and qualities of just about every good there is for just about every person in the world.
Fossil fuels are and will continue to be cheaper, easier to use, more portable, and more dense than any combination of solar/batteries or wind/batteries. And they are much easier to site, build, operate, and maintain than nuclear power systems, at least under current regulatory and political conditions. You almost need brain damage not to see these facts, easily found in EIA statistics, back of the envelope calculations, or the overwhelming market evidence.
Ah, you say, but what about depletion? Well, if and when fossil fuels become so depleted that their extraction cost starts to rival the next-best alternatives, their prices will rise and people will switch. Just like they did form whale oil to petroleum, etc., etc. Forcing the switch before fossil fuels become more expensive destroys wealth and lowers everyone’s standard of living.
If you want to argue for streamlined regulation of nuclear power to bring closer the day when its cost curve goes below fossil fuels, I won’t complain about that. But please, no more force feeding of losers like windmills and solar panels and no more myth-making about how tomorrow they’ll be able to compete on an even basis with fossil fuels if today we just keep subsidizing them.
@webbie
Windmills can be erected in a matter of weeks, Solar panels the same. They are pretty much commodities. They do not need R&D and guys in white coats in labs …they need carpenters and earth movers and concrete pourers and guys in hard hats. These are ten-a-penny.
If and when we are forced to move to these power sources because the fossil fuels have really run out, we can build them all in less than a decade.
What is the logic of getting all the disadvantages of these pathetic energy sources now when we don’t need to? Eventually we all know we are going to die. That is not a very good reason for committing suicide at age 20.
Demand destruction is occurring as we speak, oilers are going to low EROEI resources as the good stuff dwindles, previously net exporting countries are keeping the oil for themselves, statistical reports are “hiding the decline” as they try to substitute other liquids for crude, and then you have that article that Bain linked to anecdotally.
So the people have spoken and by their actions you can watch this transition play out.
I am not sure we have a difference of opinion.
So those people in Kansas are committing suicide?
Could have fooled me, it looked like they were having a nice candle-lit dinner.
Then he says we are all gonna die anyways. What’s up with that?
Latimer comes across as very anti-social.
Or are these just straw-man arguments because he has nothing else to add? His own country is in a world of hurt after the booming 1980’s. All solutions are pathetic to him.
“What is the logic of getting all the disadvantages of these pathetic energy sources now when we don’t need to? Eventually we all know we are going to die. That is not a very good reason for committing suicide at age 20.”
But it is good reason to find an even cheaper source of energy than fossil fuel.
Fusion is going anywhere [the guys doing that have pretty much proven that] so taking a different approach to fusion is warranted [involve more player in research]..
Much effort towards beamed energy.
And better focus on space exploration.
Let’s start with known fact. Socialism does not work.
This means in terms of government effort, one focus on
exploration which could find markets in space.
We already have a clue, to one market. Making
rocket fuel in space. If this market is developed, it will
lower NASA’s cost, and private sector satellite business.
If it did lower cost- it not a market. The lowering of cost defines
it as viable market. No lower costs- no market.
NASA might had said that rocket fuel is worth $20,000 per
lb on lunar surface. It’s not. But in near term it’s worth somewhere
around $5000 per lb. It will known more precisely once any market
starts. If rocket fuel is worth say $1000 per lb then mined lunar water
is worth around $500 per lb. Million lb mined- 1/2 billion dollar or somewhere around swimming pool worth. An Olympic swimming pools
is 2,500,000 liters [2500 tons] or 2 1/2 billion dollar. There probably
millions perhaps a billion tons of water which may be minable on moon.
Easily trillions of dollars assuming a steep drop from $1000 per lb.
So high cost in beginning, price lower like silicon chips and computers as time and demand increase. In a century or two or three water in space could cheaper than water on earth. As there is far more water in space than on earth.
The price of rocket fuel in space does not need to lower much, the issue having rocket fuel market in itself lowers costs of doing anything in space.
One reason is with rocket one can reuse spacecraft [instead throwing if tens of million if hundreds of million worth of space vehicle]. Or NASA spent hundreds billions on the space shuttle, it was suppose to be reusable [was mostly failure in this regard], if there rocket fuel in space, it’s easier to reuse space vehicle in space.
So start markets in spaces and one mines lunar water, which needs a source power to make into rocket fuel. So another market- electrical power in space.
And like water in space, electrical in space can get to the point where electrical power is cheaper in space than one earth. Both solar and nuclear are easier in space than earth. radiactive waste and containment less problem. Solar energy has higher density in space than one earth.
At the point on had market for electrical power in space, and it was still say 10 or 100 times what costs on earth, it will cheap enough to attract industry [which with addition demand drive electrical lower].
So cost will cascade lower.
Unlike earth, solar energy works in space. In space, there is no lack of space or real estate. What would cover earth in solar panels could put near earth and you need a telescope to see them.
Space is an ocean. Transport not going to planetary surfaces require little energy. And if there enough traffic the cost getting to space from planets could made cheaper than taxi ride in New York City. And getting tonnage to earth surface from Space is no energy [you use aerobraking].
WHT,
Your comment reveals you do not have an understanding of even the most basic concepts of risk.
Risk = consequence x probability, not
Risk = risk x probability.
You direct a lot of pejorative remarks at those who do not agree with you about AGW, and you try to make out they are ignorant and you know all, yet you make statements revealing your ignorance of the most fundamental concepts needed for making policy.
It shows that your contributions to discussions about climate policy should be discounted.
Peter Lang has a problem because the concept that he talks about can not be quantified. Probability is a quantity, but something multiplying that turns it into an effectiveness, which is at best a relative measure.
It is high risk and low probability to parachute out of a plane.
It is low risk and high probability to not win the lottery on a $100 bet.
How many people think it is stupid to do one or the other? How many people think it is stupid to do both?
That is the point I am trying to get across. To take evasive action to avoid doing something stupid based on the possibility of bad outcomes.
Everything that Peter Lang says should now be discounted.
WHT
You are adding to your display of ignorance about risk. You’d think, if you were a researcher, you’d check before writing more nonsense. They admit your error, something I’ve noticed you never seem to manage to do.
You said:
This shows you haven’t a clue about risk assessment, analysis or about other component of risk management.
Probability as you correctly state is quantifiable.
You clearly do not understand what “Consequence” means. Consequence is a quantity. It can be cost, fatalities, work days lost, or just other quantifiable consequence of an event or a condition. Here is a simple explanation or risk; in this case it is the fatalities per TWh of electricity supplied (see figures 1 and 2 and the accompanying text) http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/07/04/what-is-risk/ .
If you see any errors please point them out.
WHT’s credibility is further reduced. I wonder if he has the integrity to admit he is talking through his ass, hasn’t a clue about this matter, and admit it.
Paul, in my personal life and as a voluntary worker, I’ve been taking “action related to creating a society where we cared about each other more (warmth),” for 40 years, and in my professional life since 1964 I’ve worked mainly on promoting economic development – my broad focus has been drivers of economic growth. My attitude to CAGW derives in part from looking at evidence regarding it for over 20 years, and at the costs and benefits of CO2 emission reduction policies. I would support such policies only if I were convinced (a) that there were good grounds for them and (b) that the returns would exceed those from alternative use of resources. Anything else would leave me unmoved.
Paul, your report would have more credibility if . . .
1. You labeled the two sides deceivers and deniers.
2. You did not label only one side, and not the other.
3. You acknowledged serious flaws in the scientific evidence of AGW.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
Paul, Your approach is not productive. It’s part of a general societal tendency to use name calling to achieve some end result.
I would direct your attention to the recent editorial in Nature (May I believe) about the “creeping bias” in science characterized as “positive results bias.” There was also an excellent article in the New York Times in April about the same problem in medical fields. The problem here is that climate science is not particularly high on the scale of honesty and rigorous standards. One has only to look at the recent exchange of papers in Annals of Statistics (McShane and Wyner) on paleoclimate or the recent withdrawl of a paper claiming an “Australian hockey stick” caused by a blogger (Steve McIntyre) who had the gaul to approach the results skeptically to see what the problem is here. Using the term “denier” is a classical smear much like the attempt to characterize someone as a “socialist” or a “communist” or a “right wing taliban” when the target is explicitly no such thing. These are all cheap tricks designed for propaganda and not scientific discourse.
This is a pure example of a logical fallacy. You have attempted to justify social policies on their outcome alone. One might suggest then that the needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, and that putting to death all incurably psychosexually disturbed people would prevent us from having to have to jail or track them at all. I hope I’m not losing you in the hyperbole, for I admit I’m doling it out in large dosages. The example sticks though since you’re simply saying, “well, but, these policies might do good, so lets just focus on the political policies proposed and not on the original flim-flam job used to bring them up in the first place.”
The argument over policy should stop until the time a rock-solid case for action can be made. You don’t debate action for action’s sake or you’re simply justifying politicians running your life. With the rationale you’re using in making a case for policy, it would be appropriate for me to start a gigantic scare over an earth-asteroid collision to boost NASA funding 100-fold. Then later when it is shown that my math in demonstrating a collision was based on bad statistics and a total lack of hard evidence, I would simply say, “Focus on the possible good policy, because it will surely do humanity good in boosting our space travel technology.”
You are making a huge logical mistake. I hope you can see it.
There are two things driving the psychologising of dissent. The first is the increasing need for academics to prove their ‘relevance’, which has long been drawing the academy closer to the policy-making process. The second is a related, but broader and deeper problem — it seems that there being no adequate definition of ‘good’ forces individuals in these relativistic times to play the part of planet-saving super-heroes.
This reaches its ugly epitome in the disciplines which study the human mind. See for instance, Prof. Moffic’s argument for psychiatrists to assume a role in the climate change debate – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcWn3b3h3sQ .
Individual psychology has little to do either with scepticism/’denial’, or the pseudo-scientific attempts to understand their brains such as Chris Mooney’s. It’s the ideas in currency — the ideology — which allows people to see other people in this way.
I can’t wait to see by what contorted logic I will be convinced that turning off the lights, throwing up useless windmills, covering the land with PV cells, parking my car, skyrocketing my energy prices and, I suppose, growing my own food, will ever increase “…interpersonal warmth and societal development.” I rather think those ends are gained by increasing global interdependence and trade, as follows from Matt Ridley’s analysis in The Rational Optimist.
This was today’s winner phrase: “…the likelihood of ‘conversion’ using scientific evidence is limited because these attitudes increasingly reflect ideological positions.” In my case all it took was a bit of scientific evidence to see the glaring inconsistencies of the AGW position. That was back when I still voted for Democrats!
They start by stating that the definition of “climate change denier” includes people who accept that climate is changing. How much more wrong can a science paper be? Sorry of course they attach the qualification that these people don’t agree that humans substantially influence climate change – so they are clearly “deniers”. No further discussion of what is understood by substantial is offered though. Could an interpretation of the IPCC at the lower end of its statements fit this denier category? Apparently it’s all in their heads; an ever movable definition that only the “believer” faithful can match. Why would anyone want to be in the same room as people like this let alone read their papers or the journal they are printed in?
First, the study appears to be an introduction to indoctrination. IN other words, if you cannot convince them with science, you have to then fool them with words. As such, I am a bit surprised (perhaps I should not be in light of CGI and CGII) that it would appear in a supposed “Science” journal.
Second, it also shows a decided lack of understanding of Skeptics. It is not about a denial (the pejorative word), but about questioning the science, which is the basis of science. Other studies have shown that skeptice appear to be much more informed about the science of AGW than do the adherents. My personal opinion for this reality is that Skeptics have studied the science and have very basic questions – questions that have yet to be answered. While the adherents are just part of the “in-crowd’ that like to be thought of as intelligent, regardless of any demonstration to that effect.
While I am, as many others, concerned about the problems the authors invite with the term “denier” I am in no way less horrified by the authors’ use of the word “believer”.
I might as well be reading a Jehovas’ Witness committee meeting to discuss how to attract more of the great unwashed to their faith. That this is what passes for a peer reviewed paper, published in one of the most well-respected scientific journals, is mortifying.
The distinction between religion and science is gone, thanks to “climate change science”. How very extraordinary that this is allowed to happen, and that so few scientists stand in the way of it.
This is EXACTLY the point!
The world of the AWG theory supporters is (mainly) referred to in terms of “belief” and “denial”.
They forgot altogether this is ALL about science. We want evidence, not models; facts, not theories.
And when weighing between observations and models, the former trumps every time.
There’s nothing particularly different about climate science in this respect. For instance there are still those who argue against Einstein.
See for example http://www.anti-relativity.com/
Most sensible people would accept Einstein’s theory even though they may not fully understand it. Would you call that ‘belief’ or sensible acceptance?
PS Note they, just like many so-called climate sceptics, say relativity is “hotly contested in scientific circles even after 100 years of supposed acceptance” . Its not true of course. You’ll always find a few people who disagree with just about anything and try to create the impression that scientific disagreements are much more than they really are.
@tempeterrain
But there is extraordinarily powerful experimental and observational evidence that relativity is ‘right’. Even better it can make accurate predictions that, when tested in the real world, turn out to match the observations.
‘Climate science’ has none of these characteristics. The best that can be managed is – in some cases – observations that ‘are not inconsistent with’ AGW theory’. Which is really pretty crap after 30 years of trying.
tempterrain says
“There’s nothing particularly different about climate science in this respect. For instance there are still those who argue against Einstein.”
Well funnily enough there was the recent debate about whether Neutrinos could travel faster than light.
The experimenters making this claim provided all the evidence they could to substantiate their conjecture.
Both sides of the debate worked collectively to resolve the question.
It turns out that all now agree that Einstein was correct.
At no time did the prospective ‘skeptics’ get labelled as ‘deniers’.
So yes, there is something different about climate science!
“At no time did the prospective ‘skeptics’ get labelled as ‘deniers’.”
That’s because the participants in the discussion were genuine skeptics (on both sides of the argument) rather than deniers! The ones who were skeptical of any faster than light travel have, or so I understand, now been shown to be correct to the satisfaction of all concerned.
The deniers are to be found on the link I gave previously and also on this one.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Counterexamples_to_Relativity
They say ” It [Relativity] is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world. Here is a list of 39 counterexamples: any one of them shows that the theory is incorrect…..Despite wasting millions of taxpayer dollars searching for gravitational waves predicted by the theory, none has ever been found. Sound like global warming?”
Are they deniers on relativity but skeptics on AGW? I’d say they were deniers all round, wouldn’t you?
With all the respect due someone who has recently passed, I think this is what Rodney King was driving at. That was 1992, so perhaps the novelty of this research should be reexamined.
‘increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development’
Top of my list Jude. Absolutely the numero uno. My watchword and guiding light. The sine qua non of my entire existence. Not a second passes without it being my aspiration.
Every morning when I wake my first thought is that my mission for the day is to increase interpersonal warmth and societal development.
And then I think of ways of achieving these goals. Publicly Roasting A Greenie over an open fire is often my preferred method – it not only provides warmth but society develops in a positive direction overall.
Another way is to harness all the the wishful thinking and unrealistic dreams of the Gaia worshippers, set fire to it and use it to turn turbines to make electricity.
But seriously, do they really think that those of us who are clever enough not to fall for the AGW con are just going to develop a seriously gullible streak because the same conmen put on a smiley face and witter on about ‘interpersonal warmth’
All these psychologists who so propose need their heads examining, their bumps felt and their arses kicked from here to ‘Green’land. They really must think we are stupid.
I love ya Latimer (even though you’re a pommy)
Thanks, Dad.
“They really must think we are stupid.”
Well I must admit that the thought does cross my mind from time to time!
Funny, when I think about the people on this subject i disagree with the words that come to mind are foolish or arrogant, perhaps true believer, but not stupid.
“Somebody needs to research the sociology and psychology of people that insist that anyone that does not accept AGW as a rationale for massive CO2 mitigation efforts is a “denier.”
Exactly – it’s important to do that at this time in response to these onslaughts, because otherwise we are accepting the paradigm of skepticism as predominantly a symptom.
I’ve tried in a small way to engage with Adam Corner to suggest a debate on the lines of “Understanding the Psychology of AGW belief”, without much success:
http://quidsapioclimate.wordpress.com
but maybe JC you’d be much more credible and effective in setting up such a thing?
You want to look into Jonathan Haidt’s work. He has done this kind of research. Look for The Righteous Mind. His results are quite interesting and don’t particularly favor any particular position.
Strangely, Joe Romm writes a piece at Climate Progress renouncing the term ‘deniers’ (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/21/485848/climate-science-disinformers-are-nothing-like-holocaust-deniers/) and then as editor lets Stephen Lacey uses the term (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/23/489452/lack-of-funding-forces-heartland-to-end-climate-denial-conference/) and then starts using the term again himself (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/30/492114/yes-deniers-and-confusionists-the-iea-and-others-warn-of-some-11f-warming-by-2100-if-we-keep-listening-to-you/).
What are we to think about this?
Sounds like a good candidate for POTUS. He’s mastered the flip-flop.
That some strange existential crisis is brewing in their ranks?
Theory and Models fail to match real actual data. That should make everyone a Skeptic. Real Actual Data spikes up and spikes down. Model Output is Smooth. I am an Engineer. I worked for NASA in the Space Race to the Moon. If the Model produces output that does not look like the Data, It is WRONG. Anyone and Everyone should see that and be A Skeptic about if they know what they are doing. We should not ruin our Economy and Energy Production over Model Output that looks nothing like Earth Temperature. The Model Output looks nothing like Real Earth Temperature Data, the king has no clothes on.
Consensus Climate Scientists keep giving excuses for missing the short term forecasts and keep saying the really understand and are right about the long term. That is bull. If they don’t get the short term right, there is no way that they are on track for the long term. The need to understand why they don’t get the short term right. It is really difficult for many engineers to look at model output that looks nothing like real data and being told it is right. I am really tired of that. Some in congress have listened to us and did fail to pass the Cap and trade. Yes I am rightfully a Skeptic of bad Theory and Modeling.
“So ‘deniers’, tell me: will “increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development” work for you?”
Only if there is enough interpersonal warmth to keep the models in the 95% once the AMO goes negative.
ROFL. Clever and Funny
According to the Nature link, the authors of this bizarre effort are affiliated with “School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St Lucia Queensland 4072, Australia” and it is noted that “This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (DP0984678) to the first author.”
As an Australian I suspect some inspiration from the “head spinning” contributions ( I hope Judith has recovered ) of Professor Stephen Lewandowsky over on our west coast at the School of Psychology , University of Western Australia. Professor Lewandowsky is a research psychologist who seems obsessed with the psychological state of “deniers” among other things.
I am moving towards the understanding that this sort of raving nonsense is just what you have to do to attract attention and funding for a School of Psychology at a time in history when the damn climate scientists have got everyone’s attention.
And of course none of this is about psychology in the sense of a disordered thought process by “deniers” rather it is about the appearance of disordered thoughts and outright dishonesty by the AGW lobby to a large portion of the community who recognize a pattern of arrogance, dissembling, abuse and contempt for others who express alternate views that screams abuse of process, fit up and generally bearing false witness.
It is pretty simple really, the issue is not the theoretical truth of the matter rather it is the assessment of the evidence as presented by the witnesses as it is only after the presentation of evidence that the community can make its judgement. If 97% of climate scientists do believe that AGW is real but the people who convey that information are perceived as liars, frauds, nut jobs and self interested rent seekers then the case is hardly made, in fact the truth ( if that were the truth) is utterly discredited.
After “repressed memories” and “assisted communication” I do not think psychology is an authoritive discipline to come out in support of AGW.
If these shrinks want something topical to research they could look back at the Azaria Chamberlain case ( “Evil Angels” with Meryl Streep) whose parents were recently (finally after 30 odd years) exonerated in Law of her murder and the conclusion that a dingo killed the poor child set in stone. There are some awful parallels in the media witch hunt of Mrs Chamberlain to the AGW scare campaign and vilification of “deniers” and of course Mrs Chamberlain was convicted on the utterly brainless and bogus forensic “science” that got a false positive from rust inhibitor and concluded it was foetal blood in the family car.
Even Professor Tim Flannery of endless drought in Australia infamy and now this nation’s chief climate commissar was a dingo denier back then. Oh the irony.
So this is happening just a three-minute ferry ride from me! I live in the most left-wing and Green constituency in Queensland, now I find I’m just across the river from psycho-babblers! It’s amazing that I remain equanimous. :-)
(Disclosure: my children have science, arts, engineering and medicine degrees from that fine institution UQ, and a UQ emeritus professor attended my recent 70th birthday party.)
Don’t forget that our government here in Oz now has a Climate Tax to sell, and any hired propagandist who can help them keep their seats and ensure that the Prime Minister retains her job can name their price in terms of government sinecures, honours and awards. I suspect this is all about jockeying to be the next Lord High Science Propagandist.
Thanks, Judith. It should be a treat to run through the comments on this thread later in the day.
The paper is inconsequential. But what it reveals about the journal and its editorial board, advisors and reviewers is huge.
I see things in the comments at Jeff Condon’s “the air vent” subject “Sometimes they forget’’
The veneer is falling away from the Real Climate team with the defenders of the faith trying to make a valiant effort, but notching up a huge fail in the face of some pithy comments. The team frame has folded, in a heap,and it seems obvious the whole issue needs to be recast in a different light, i.e. finding a way to soften the image and re-frame a progressive aim “to fool the peasants”.
Just as is reported at Anthony Watts site, its this re-frame, presented at the United nations Rio+20 Earth Summit.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/19/sustainable-justice-redistribution-of-scarcity/#more-65900
“Just this week, the Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives released a new report to the United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit on Sustainable Development. The executive summary of No Future Without Justice begins with the heading, “The World Is in Need of Fundamental Change.” The document then offers “solutions,” which include “universal fiscal equalization” and a “massive and absolute decoupling of well-being from resource extraction and consumption.”
Now all we need is the Psychobabble to adapt the language. to fit the ism frame.
http://www.reflectiongroup.org/stuff/no-future-without-justice
Who needs Climate science when we can just re-frame the debate to the real agenda.
Dr. Curry,
Again, it is the AGW true believers and those promoting AGW who are demonstrating the pathology.
This Nature article is more like a group of mental health patients getting together and writing a paper about why those who doubt their mental health are wicked conspirators who refuse to agree to their grand delusions.
This is how a hoax dies. It dies when everyone sees what the true motives of the Left are and how spurious the Climatists’ claims have been. Al Gore didn’t win Florida. Bush said nyet to Kyoto. Highschooler Kristen Byrnes (Ponder the Maunder) said nyet to the Gore-type truther-crockumentaries from the Left about rivers around the globe running red like lava from the heat caused by Americans simply going about their business of earning a living. And, Mother Nature didn’t cooperate either. Nothing happened as the Climatists designed in their minds. Their planning has been as worthless as their filing cabinets full of global warming pseudo-science and their cash for clunkers economics. Movements come and go and now we see that it is sociologists, psychologists and philosophers who are most interested in studying the effects of the Left’s monomaniacal pursuit of Ayn Rand’s industrial man, with a malice aforethought in their hearts.
http://evilincandescentbulb.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/skepticism-of-climatism-focuses-on-the-lefts-motives/
Do you really believe that Kristen Byrnes makes any contribution to the debate with her Ponder the Maunder essay?
That essay uses a crappy sports analogy to deny that there is a greenhouse effect. There is more science in G & T. The term denier is appropritate to that essay.
Unlike Al Gore Kristen Byrnes personally checked out the locations of many of the official thermometers that are improperly sited and corrupted by UHI (Urban Heat Island) effects. Byrnes shared her “photographs of the seriously contaminated temperature stations” back in 2007. No country deserves to survive that disses instead of celebrates the iniative and tanacity of any of its youth who demonstrate the courage to seek and tell the truth..
Guess what? The world didn’t listen to Bush back then either. Now that we see the earth cooling and that a 14-year old was capable of debunking A. Gore — the oracle of Democrats and Leftists — and, after the liberal fascists have been exposed as purveyors of a hoax, you have to ask the question …
Why was George Bush so much smarter than all of the Democrat-supported Leftists and liberal fascists back in 2001?
The answer is really simple. Unlike the Left’s Saint Gore and all of the communists/socialists, tin pot dictators and UN-approved science in authoritarians in academia and around the world — and all of the Soros / Michael Moore / MSM-Hollywood / Unibomber-Eco-whackpot / Ward Churchill types — George Bush was not anti-America nor anti-business and anti-capitalism..
01I wasn’t referring to Kristen’s pictures, I was referring to her Ponder the Maunder essay in which she supposedly proved the greenhouse effect to be bogus by using a sports analogy.
Wasn’t there a study recently that showed that there was no difference in the temperature trends when you select them based on their suitability ratings?
The earth is cooling you say, have you seen the latest numbers from GISS, you are right, it has cooled 0.01 degrees from May 1998 to May 2012.
I would like to keep the politics out of it, and I am certainly not anti-American, nor anti-business, and certainly not anti-capitalism.
By Kristen Byrnes (in Ponder the Maunder)
Follies in Measuring Global Warming IV: Competence
…
[Example]
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/globalwarming_images/newspost_images/follies_IV/weather_station_6.jpg
Finally we get to Durham New Hampshire where an interesting study was done that compared the temperature station with a nearby reference station. The study found that the Durham MMTS (in the photo below) was about 1.5 degrees warmer in the summer only. It was slightly cooler during the winter and no difference during spring or fall. The study concluded that the problem must be a malfunction in the equipment. Obviously they never actually went to the location to figure out the problem.
…
So what’s the problem here? … Do the people who install, monitor and study climate equipment even know what they are doing?
Hansen acknowledged there may be flaws in the weather station data. “But that doesn’t mean you give up on the science, and that you can’t draw valid conclusions about the nature of Earth’s temperature change,” he asserted. (Taken from the NASA GISS website)
A fitting sports analogy might be–e.g., who cares if athletes use drugs — we can simply adjust for the effect of the drugs after the event has taken place and draw a valid conclusion based on the adjusted times about the identity of the real winners, right?
Wagathon, you don’t seem to remember Kristen’s Ponder the Maunder sports analogy.
Something like Mann’s sycophants like to play with their hockey sticks.
How can you bring up her essay and not be familiar with it?
Conflagulating to promulgate even greater misogyny against a teenager — even if she is a genius — is outrageous… or, worse. What’s next?
No hatred for women and I work alone and I do try to make the world a better place.
One of the projects I was involved with was on the CBS news last night. You can now get a PET scan to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease.
Ponder the Maunder is still drivel.
Understood — global warming alarmists find Al Gore to be far more salacious. But still, you are not intimidated by strong women. Got it.
Some of the denizens here like to call themselves sceptics, while at the same time repeating the same old canards that are inconsistant with the evidence over and over again.
The liberals and progressives that think along the same lines as I do, do not want a totalitarian one world government, do not want to abolish capitalism and free enterprise, nor completely destroy the economy.
If you are to call yourselves sceptics, you need to be sceptical all the time, and stop swallowing whole all the denier rubish that is published on this and other websites.
I’ll give just one example, there are many more, any one who claims that the AGW science is wrong because it violates the second law of thermodynamics deserves to be called a denier because they are denying basics scientific principles.
It’s too bad you take offense to the term, but if the shoe fits, you have to wear it.
The shoe doesn’t fit. And quite frankly, it plays into the idea that all conservatives are stupid, a time-worn liberal rant (and tactical mistake on their behalf).
There is a world of difference between the legitimate science of climate science, and the hysteria that we all just lived through. That it quickly became a tool for money and power grab completely destroyed its credibility, which is a shame, because I really thing people need to study this stuff. Then again, the credibility of the entire environmentalist movement wasn’t exactly enhanced either, and as people like me recall the dire predictions of 10-15 years ago, and wave them in people’s faces, it won’t recover for a while either.
I don’t think all consevatives are stupid, but why do they keep saying stupid things, like AGW is just a tool for a money and power grab? What hysteria did we all just live through in regards to AGW?
And how did that destroy the credibility of all the evidence for AGW?
Wave some of those dire predictions in my face please.
Not stupid. AGW is a tool for a money and power grab. The hysteria created powerful dogma and anybody being sceptical was demonized and called stupid or whatever. Such was the suppression.
Come on, I am the one being sceptical of the claims that AGW is a money and power grab.
Just repeating it over and over is not evidence, and that is what I was saying in my first post.
Someone’s forgotten about Ottmar Edenhofer (Joint Chair,IPCC Working Group 3 at the time), who in 2010 pointed out that the IPCC wasn’t really about the environment at all but was rather an economic redistribution scheme. A huge redistribution of wealth from developed to developing countries and from fossil fuel suppliers to the rest of the world.
Of course, that’s being generous to the Copenhagen crowd, because a straight redistribution wouldn’t also destroy vast chunks of world output.
“why do they keep saying”?
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, intelligent people call it a duck.
Bob,
Everybody says stupid things, some more than others. Neither political Conservatives or Liberals have any monopoly on doing so. (Although I do have to give credit to the folks who self identify with being green and environmentalists for trying hard to do so.)
As for your contention that AGW is just about a grab for money and power, yes that is a very narrow view and leaves out a big chunk of the motivations of people studying it or pushing policies because of it. But to deny that money and power are not intricately intertwined is to turn your blind eye to something you would rather not see.
“I don’t think all consevatives are stupid, but why do they keep saying stupid things, like AGW is just a tool for a money and power grab?”
Why is stupid to say something which is accurate?
The only way this stupid, is the idea that anytime someone says something very obvious, it is stupid.
A: It’s raining outside.
B: Yes, I see that it is raining outside.
A: It’s raining outside.
B: Yes, I know.
A: The rain is sure coming down.
B: Yes I see that.
But if B doesn’t want the fact of it raining be said:
A: It’s raining outside.
B: No it’s going to be sunny day.
A: Cars are floating down the street.
B: No, they are driving down the street.
A: They standing on top of their cars.
B: They are skilled drivers.
“What hysteria did we all just live through in regards to AGW?”
There is long list. How about chairman of IPCC and the Himalayan glaciers:
“The inclusion of this statement has angered many glaciologists, who regard it as unjustified. Vijay Raina, a leading Indian glaciologist, wrote in a discussion paper published by the Indian government in November that there is no sign of “abnormal” retreat in Himalayan glaciers. India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, accused the IPCC of being “alarmist”.
The IPCC’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, has hit back, denouncing the Indian government report as “voodoo science” lacking peer review. He adds that “we have a very clear idea of what is happening” in the Himalayas.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18363-debate-heats-up-over-ipcc-melting-glaciers-claim.html
There much much more, but I don’t want to be overly redundant.
Is soi-disant “climate science” legitimately a science?
What is empirical about it? What testable hypotheses does it posit and then test? If “global warming,” or “climate change,” or whatever the Big Lie is being called this week, is indicative, it is almost entirely an exercise in appeal-to-authority, appeal-to-celebrity, proof-by-agitprop, proof-by-handwaving-and-shouting, moving the goalposts willy-nilly about the field, and drawing the bullseye after the arrow lands.
Meteorology is science, as it makes testable predictions. “Climate science” appears to be about as scientific as “library science,” or, more to the point, “political science.”
We know you don’t, Bob, but articles like this one make your side look bad and you can see that this could lead to repression, right?
Can you give any evidence from the “Sceptical” side that looks good?
Bob care to show how your ‘skeptical’ about AGW ?
I am very skeptical about these climate models:
Herman Alexander Pope’s model — too qualitative
M.A.Vukcevic — too obscure
Fred H. Haynie — bad premise
Oliver K. Manuel — whacko
Harry Dale Huffman — double whacko
Girma Orssengo — trendology does not make a model
Tony (climatereason) Brown — reliance on anecdotal info
David Postma — bad physics
Arno Arrack — bad writing makes it inscrutable
Nasif Nahle — bad experimentation
Chief Hydrologist – appeal to authority model
Joachim Seifert — if I have to pay for it , it’s not worth looking at
Stephen Wilde — a lawyer’s model
Nicola Scafetta — use enough variables and one can fit anything
Alexander Biggs — a half-way-there model
The SkyDragons — say no more
“Joe’s World” LaLonde — an idea written with crayons
Stefan “TheDenier” Mikitch — a crazed Chewbacca Defense model
David Wojick — some sort of anti-model that teaches “controversy”
Doug Cotton — a SkyDragon acolyte
Paul Vaughn — Pay him some money please so he can work his ideas out
So I am a skeptic about many long-term climate models, and these 20 are just the models that get posted to this blog, and I am not counting the scads of alternative models (Salby, etc) that get posted elsewhere.
However, I am not skeptical about the 100+ year-old GHG theory model, because it is based on good physics and it seems to explain everything that I am curious about, with much better predictive ability.
Tubhead,
You misunderstand the appeal to authority fallacy. It implies an appeal to a biased authority. On the other hand if I appeal to the NAS, WHOI, the Royal Society and many other peer reviewed, accomplished and lauded scientists in the field it is not an appeal to authority but legitimate fruits of the study of natural philosophy. I have often lamented the undisciplined appraoch shown to data – chief amongst these disciplines is not straying too far from the data and recognising the limitations of the data at hand. What can it really tell you? If I were as brilliant as Albert – I could start with the speed of light and end up at time and mass dilation. Alas I am not.
You on the other hand are the Procrustes of data – cutting off appendages until it fits a particular scheme.
My best wishes to your mother.
Chief Captain HydroKangaroo:
Defensive, eh? I am not alone, as Chis Colose below also noticed your appeal to authority — as if anyone is impressed that you throw in an arbitrary WHOI acronym. You actually don’t have a model of your own, but essentially cherry-pick quotes from who knows where. So it’s kind of a cheat that I added you to the list, better to think of it as an example of a bum-rush attack of vaporware modeling.
BTW, I should add Cap’n Dallas to the list of 20. He has a model of sorts, but it is such an artistic mess of hunches built on top of intuition that I get the feeling that no one but Cap’n can follow it. As Colose responded below to Dallas:
The 20 climate models I listed above are essentially bottom-of-the-barrel junk. A discontinuous step function exists between these models and team-driven, peer-reviewed models generated by scientists that know what they are doing. That is the real missing point — why is there not one competing model that the skeptics can latch on to and then work out an alternate prediction? Answer is that they don’t want to. The minute they try, some enterprising climate science student would rummage through their code and point out egregious errors or incorrect premises. Bottom-line, there is nowhere to hide in that world.
Of course the skeptics can defend not working on a model by saying that they never did believe in models in the first place. I tell you what, the life of a skeptic these days is sooooo easy. You just get on your Climate Etc Twitter feed and create a fake narrative, thankful that you have more than 140 characters to spew at a time.
@webbie
Good to know that you’ve got a new hobby. I guess even you got bored with just parroting ‘oil depletion’ at every opportunity since the birth of christ.
So what is it today? A Top 20? Yep – I was interested in the Top 20 once. Around about the time I was 14 yo.T Rex and George Harrison and the Rolling Stones. But I grew out of it. No doubt you will as well. But for the moment..good stuff.
And it is good to see you making progress on the ‘critical’ front. At least it shows that you are developing those ‘receive’ abilities rather than just ‘transmit ‘oil depletion’, ‘peak oil’, ‘my algorithm’, ‘I have shown’.
Latimer, Funny that I spend more time talking about climate science than oil depletion in this forum. You just don’t pay attention, or perhaps have problems with knowledge retention. Like always losing track of your posting handle. Stirling, Wilma, .. can’t even keep track of your gender.
WebTubTelescope
Re GWM, see Ross McKitrick’s latest paper. Most of the GWM regional “evidence” appears to be not significant, while socio parameters are.
So mckitrick is saying that the overall forcing is more important than any climate model. That’s what Hansen and Lacis say as well.
Good that mckitrick has figured out the difference between radians and degrees, and has gotten over the T-Rex monster bit. After wailing over the fact that temperatures can’t be averaged, he is now averaging temperatures. He is a slow learner, but learning nonetheless.
“Can you give any evidence from the “Sceptical” side that looks good?”
I think the satellite record from 1979 to present is evidence which is good and produced by people who have been called skeptics.
Here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
The trend for that period for that metric is +0.137 +/- 0.070 C which is in line with the IPCC projection of about 0.2 C per decade.
The trend for that period for that metric is +0.137 +/- 0.070 C which is in line with the IPCC projection of about 0.2 C per decade.
Well I think we could have increase of 1.37 +/- .7 C per century.
Not expecting a 2 C increase or higher in 100 years. And not expecting
less than .6 C.
Or by 2100 have about the same increase as had in 20 century.
And had this view for quite a while [more than 10 years]..
Don’t think will have .3 C or more per decade. And of course +0.137 +/- 0.070 isn’t .2 per decade.
If wasn’t for the sun’s activity and Pacific Decadal Oscillation .2 C decade might seem closer. If temperature rises within the next decade, I might be persuaded that all this CO2 that China is pumping out is having more effect that I thought it would. So I could be wrong, but seem quite unlikely wrong by much.
Don’t think after a decade it will be too late or the end of the world.
Obviously if I am wrong [the science supports it] there would more political support for doing something. But the action to solve the problem should be to use more nuclear power [which support without such need].
But at the moment China is doing twice as CO2 emission as the US and the rate of emission continues to increase.
I think it would better if China were to be more aggressive in switching to Nuclear energy. India has better policy.
But rather increase hostility to China, it seems this adds to need of US developing more nuclear power [to reduce CO2, and be in a better position in regards to energy policy for country].
Bob,
could you pls elaborate on how you got the trend of 0.137 +/- 0.070 from that graph?
I see a lower value. Perhaps I miscalculated. But if you could tell us how you got 0.137 +/- 0.070, that would help.
Roy Spencer stated that excess atmospheric CO2 is not generated by man’s burning of fossil fuels, but instead mainly by the earth warming.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/global-warming-causing-carbon-dioxide-increases-a-simple-model/
That is the premise that everything on AGW is pinned on, and if Roy Spencer can not get that part right, then his entire argument falls apart. He is therefore simply a contrarian with no interest in establishing any kind of scientific truth.
Roy Spencer would fit on my list of 20+ bad climate modelers but be does not post here.
bob droege, gbaikie and WHT
Minor correction (to bob’s post)
The trend for UAH is 0.13C per decade (not 0.137C)
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Since the end of last century (January 2001) the trend to date was around -0.10C per decade.
So if warming resumes at 0.13C per decade over the remaining 88 years, we should see a net overall warming of right around 1.0C by year 2100.
For various model-based storylines and scenarios IPCC AR4 WG1 models estimate an increase between 1.1 and 6.4C, so this is just outside the lowest end of the IPCC range (and nothing to worry about).
Just to clear this point up.
Max
Shiv,
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
Max, just to clear things up, the error bars on the trend for UAH from 2001 to 2012, are about 5 times the trend, and the trend to date is now positive at
0.057 +/- 0.347 C per decade
But that’s the kind of numbers you get when you use too short of a time period.
WHT
You opined
I’m sure Dr. Spencer couldn’t give a fiddler’s f*** how you rate his climate modelling skills.
But he is generally recognized as one of few truly knowledgeable climate scientists, especially with regard to measurement of the temperature of the troposphere.
Whereas you are, well…(’nuff said).
Max
bob droege
Your comment on error bars over short time periods makes sense, but the UAH record would tell us that 21st century total warming would be around 1C, if past trends continue (and that was the point I wanted to make).
Max
“manacker | June 20, 2012 at 9:27 am |
bob droege, gbaikie and WHT
Minor correction (to bob’s post)
The trend for UAH is 0.13C per decade (not 0.137C)
Since the end of last century (January 2001) the trend to date was around -0.10C per decade.”
And If started year January 2000 to January 2010 what is tread for first decade of 21st century?
“So if warming resumes at 0.13C per decade over the remaining 88 years, we should see a net overall warming of right around 1.0C by year 2100.
For various model-based storylines and scenarios IPCC AR4 WG1 models estimate an increase between 1.1 and 6.4C, so this is just outside the lowest end of the IPCC range (and nothing to worry about).”
Or that would a slight increase from warming of 20th century.
And if 22nd century increase another 1 C or even 1.2 C it still would not be a problem. Nor it 23rd century warmed by 1.5 C.
Or a 3 C in warming is only problem if it occurs in a brief period of time- say less than 50 years. Such rapid warming is problem [mostly] because it tells something about global warming we don’t already know- it’s unexplained [or indicates that some kind runaway effect could be possible]. But even in this fantasy model of 3 C warming within 50 years,
it still would not cause significant changes in global climate- it would be the end of world [millions people dying or thousands of animals dying] in 50 year, nor in 100 years.
Compared this with fantasy model of 3 C decrease global temperature- that would result of an “end of the world” type result- millions of people dying and animal and plants dying.
Now, it matters *where* the increase or decrease is occurring in the world.
The focus on global temperature, leads some people to imagine world
could actually uniformly warm or cool. It doesn’t.
The uniformity of warm or cooling can be somewhat true if one looking long periods of time. 50 year is not long period of time, nor is 100 years.
So in these fantasy models of 3 C warming or cooling, it matters where this warming or cooling is mostly occurring.
The tropics are the heat engine of planet earth. Few people should expect much change in the tropic. So if such temperature changes were to occur in the tropics. It would be “more wow!”. Or no one has clue of what is going on. But actual effect on the world would less, it have less effect in the 50 year period, but paints a dire future.
And this related the disproving of the theorize “hot spot” in atmosphere of tropics. That was a nail in the CAGW coffin.
So small barely detectable changes in tropic can larger effect in future
and obviously something like 3 C in tropics would be huge as compared to 3 C in arctic is easily within “climate variation”. And isn’t predictive of future.
So if we had 3 C increase in 3 centuries [and by that time we assume fossils such as coal are depleted- who knows what technology have been developed] and should be regarded as given but should regarded as warm as it could get. But the temperature increase will reduced glaciers, and warmed ocean. Or if have a 3 meter rise in sea level [again most that one could assume] than that is a lot ocean warmed and glaciers melted. And that is possible over time periods of centuries.
But I don’t see high CO2 level as insurance against cooling. I think warmer oceans is far more significant in term of some kind of buffer against cooling. And it seems as likely to have -2 C in three centuries as +3 C in three centuries.With +1 to +2 C as most likely possibility.
Tubhead,
Always a pleasure. Having quoted both sources in the past – and in the context of abrupt climate change felt it was evident and not really worth repeating again. I did however again quote from both sources when asked and this is an example of how science is discussed in civilised circles. That is – by means of reference to peer reviewed or reputable sources. I am sure that the NAS Committee on Abrupt Climate Change and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute qualify.
I must admit that the concept of a personal climate model I find most odd – but that seems par for the sycophantic Tubhead course. I have looked and looked and I find that I have water quality and hydrological models but not, unfortunately, a climate model. So I have turned to peer reviewed science to amend that deficiency. The analysis of the inner workings of climate models I have got the most from is that of James McWilliams – http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full – eminent climate scientist and not a noted skeptic. The model I find most compelling – having studied these indices for some time – is that of Anastasios Tsonis. Another eminent climate scientist and not a notable skeptic. One of the reasons I find this model so compelling is that it analyses for deterministic chaos and doesn’t experience deterministic chaos during runs.
‘We construct a network of observed climate indices in the period 1900–2000 and investigate their collective behavior. The results indicate that this network synchronized several times in this period. We find that in
those cases where the synchronous state was followed by a steady increase in the coupling strength between the indices, the synchronous state was destroyed, after which a new climate state emerged. These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of the size and complexity of the climate system.’ A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Tsonis et al 2007
The indices are important for other reasons being well known predictors for rainfall around the globe. This leads to my mysterious ability to predict drought for the US and flooding in Australia – for instance – over the next decade or three. Anyone can do this if they know what they are looking for and understand the statistical correlations with regional rainfall.
Does that count as a climate model? You will find that when Captain Kangaroo is posting the sarc is set high and the physic defenses are in place. This is typically aimed at you because I find you an especially ignorant, noxious and repellent climate warrior – but is sometimes inspired by an especially partisan thread. Now really if you would stop cyber stalking me I can join a rational and informative discussion. That is one you are not invlved in.
Best regards
Captain Kangaroo
It’s always good for a laugh to listen to someone like you prattle on about climate science and your denigration of skeptics such as Kristen Byrnes, as if you know something about science at all.
Care to explain to us all about how entropy in the climate system is simply waste heat in the atmosphere again?
I was not denigrating Kristen Byrnes, but her Ponder the Maunder essay is drivel, why dont you find it, post it, and we can discuss it.
If you have even read it, I have.
What is Entropy again?
Gil Grissom,
What no discussion of entropy?
Reminds me of the time when I asked someone what pressure the triple point of water was, and a drive by posted “LOL that’s a partial pressure”
@bob droege
I do not claim that ‘AGW science is wrong because it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics’. But neither do I believe that the world is going to end if sealevels rise by a foot or two every century. Most particularly I do not see any need for urgent dramtic action to make major economic changes.
Am I a denier. a non-denier, a sceptic or just Jnother example of Joe Public? .
PS I also think that a lot of what is said to be ‘climate science’ is disgracefully shoddy work done by disgracefully bad ‘scientists’ and unquestioningly accepted by gullible fools.
I don’t think sea level rise is linear, also I don’t an analysis that just relies on past performance is reliable for future predictions. I think the best predictor for sea level rise are measurements of the mass loss rates and the acceleration of those mass loss rates for the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. Also valid are paleo temperature measurements when there were much higher sea levels than now.
So my conclusion is that you have blinders on with respect to sea level rise, so you are not a sceptic there. Since you agree that AGW does not violate the second law, then you would not be considered a denier on that basis. I may have you confused with someone else, but I think you have coal interests close to your vest, so you are not Joe Public.
Since I think that AGW can be prevented with only a modest expenditure, I think you are climate change economic alarmist.
Which science do you think is so shoddy? It can’t be all bad can it?
Be specific so we can discuss, if you are up to it.
‘I think you have coal interests close to your vest’
Dude, we gave up on coal in the UK about 35 years ago. We got North Sea Gas and the use of coal for heating died out. Then in 84/85 we had the miners strike and almost all UK coal production came to an end.
The last time it was even possible to buy an interest in UK coal was in 1947 just before the industry was nationalised after WW2. It may be different in your country, but coal is not a big issue here.
So the answer to your accusation is ‘no’. I do not have ‘coal interests’ close to my heart. For the record I am self-employed in IT and my very small portfolio of stocks and shares is largely invested in technology and pharma. The rest in FTSE100 tracker funds.
But I do wonder why you alarmists can only imagine that the only reason somebody could possibly disagree with you is that they have financial interests n the oil or coal or gas industries. You have been listening to far too much mike mann.
Please show your workings about sealevel, My assessment is based upon the last IPCC report, If you have a different one, please share it with us all. For example you could show the mass loss rates for the icecaps you mention..along with the associated sea level rise resulting.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110118_MilankovicPaper.pdf
Has the discussion of sea level rise as a non linear response to forcings and acceleration of mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps.
Hansen much more than Mann. I find little real difference between Mann and Loehle as far as reconstructions of the MWP and Little Ice Age temperature.
Alder said:
Of course the latter, because Latimer uses “Joe Sixpack” as one of his many sockpuppet handles. Don’t you see what kind of rubes he takes us for?
Have enough sockpuppets and you can create a virtual consensus.
@bob droege
I read Hansen’s paper. The stuff about mass loss was deeply unconvincing. Just an illustration that if you only have a very few data points it is possible to draw a curve of almost whatever shape/gradient you want through them. And that if you want to do some scare-mongering you choose the scariest. I was soundly (and rightly) criticised my Master’s examiners for doing the same thing and attempting equally ‘adventurous’ predictions.
But the actual data was interesting..It seems to show (fig 8) that until 2006, the ice mass in both Greenland and Antarctica was increasing overall. Which rather begs the question..where was it coming from? For if decreasing mass means sea levels are going up, the converse is also true, If the ice is accumulating, the sealevel should have gone down. Is this visible in the sealevel record anywhere? If so, I haven’t seen it
@webbie, dude
Can you show a single piece of evidence from all my postings that I am at all interested in creating ‘consensus’?
It does not feature even in my top 10 of things to worry about.
One of the delights of being self-employed after many years of working in larger and more structured organisations is that I am ultimately responsible to nobody but myself. No boss, no formal appraisals, no worries about ‘being seen to do the right thing’ or ‘representing the company’
If I’m offered an interesting job that fits in with all the other things I want to do, then I’ll take it. If it isn’t or doesn’t, I won’t. And if the client likes what I do he pays me at the end of the month. If he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t pay. It is very simple.
Consensus doesn’t feature anywhere.
Your case fails.
It’s your actions that count. You may resume pouting LA.
@webbie
Your case has still failed.
This is getting tedious. Here are the rules.
1. WHT says something ridiculous
2. I ask him to show evidence for his assertion
3. WHT witters on about something irrelevant
4. I ask him again to show evidence
5.–>3
Continue until ennui or narcolepsy sets in.
I accuse Latimer of taking us for rubes. He therefore wants evidence.
Upthread he claims that all I talk about on Climate Etc is oil (“… parroting ‘oil depletion’ at every opportunity since the birth of christ.”). Yet he then acts surprised that I actually spend more time discussing deeper climate science topics (“Good to know that you’ve got a new hobby. “). After all, Latimer is just your average Joe, always plain talking and filled with common sense.
Again, does he take us for rubes?
@bob droege
Shoddy science? Just one example: Harry_Read_Me.
The guys at CRU couldn’t organise their way out of a paper bag. let alone be entrusted with processing a very important dataset. I’ve managed large datacentres in the past, and to call CRU’s processes and practices ‘shoddy’ is being over generous with my praise..
A shameful lack of professionalism. seems to be typical of what I learn of ‘climatology’ in general
Was that from the Climategate emails, sorry I dont read those.
Yes, by all means stick your head in the sand bob. Nothing to see here.
Let me ask this: what is the motivation of Al Gore in your opinion? Nothing to do with power or money I suppose? And the motivation of the UN? Income redistribution?
scott,
assuming you are raising the issue as one of principle, you must have some thoughts as to the motivation of deniers. Power and money too?
@bob droege
Here’s the link to Harry_Read_Me
‘http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/HARRY_READ_ME.txt
As somebody once said:
‘Real climate science from real climate scientists’…….
…In all its glorious ineptitude.
I would not employ these guys to top up the water coolers in data centre, let alone entrust them with processing an important data set. Worse, nobody outside their own organisation has ever ever checked their published work (Phil Jones, author of 200+ papers, answer to Parliament *). And we are supposed to base major policy decisions one these guys output?
You may be naive and trusting and in awe of self-declared ‘climate scientists’. But I bet you refused to read any doubts about Enron and still think that Mr Madoff is a nice guy who loves his mother and is just trying to earn an honest buck.
I’m a wee bit more suspicious than that and am inclined to believe that if people present as incompetent fools, they probably are.
*Fred Pearce, writing in the Guardian
* ‘Jones’s general defence was that anything people didn’t like – the strong-arm tactics to silence critics, the cold-shouldering of freedom of information requests, the economy with data sharing – were all “standard practice” among climate scientists. “Maybe it should be, but it’s not.”
And he seemed to be right. The most startling observation came when he was asked how often scientists reviewing his papers for probity before publication asked to see details of his raw data, methodology and computer codes. “They’ve never asked,” he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/01/phil-jones-commons-emails-inquiry
@Michael
Yes, “deniers” want to keep their power and money out of the hands of the alarmists. Nice of you to recognize that.
bob,
you didn’t read them, but you know all about them…you offer typical mindless drivel like any other true beleiver.
“Since I think that AGW can be prevented with only a modest expenditure” …
As an economist, I’ve seen only evidence that minute reductions in warming (if CAGW is real) will be achieved by radical and costly restructuring of westen economies. What is the basis for your thinking?
This paper serves at least two purposes:
(1) The flood gate is opened. If Nature Climate Change accepts this style of scholarship, then this (and other Nature) hard-science journals will be inundated with social science. This is smart business for the publishing outfits.
(2) This is the “mainstream” thought put into print in the advocacy oriented climate science community which includes researchers (very small number) and environmental organizations.
Why would anyone be “shocked” to see this paper? It is simply the first major paper to be published that puts into print the bias of “progressive” climate science for the past decade.
Inundated with social sciences? Isn’t Climate Science a social science already? “3.7 Wm-2 of additional forcing due to a doubling of CO2 will cause 1.5C increase in temperature IF ALL THINGS REMAIN EQUAL.”
This mantra refers to a complex non-linear dynamic system with annual variation in forcing greater than 80Wm-2 (20Wm-2 for the guys that can only think in terms of averages) repeated by “scientists” so inept at thermodynamics and statistics that they confuse confidence intervals based on temperature anomalies with actually uncertainty of energy flow based on T^4 relationship of the real T not the imaginary T anomaly. 1.5 C in the tropopause at -55C does not equal 1.5C at a surface at 21.1C, the oceans.
To make things work some of the “scientists” create data to support the theory in places where the correct theory should predict the opposite.
The “climate scientists” selected a moving thermal boundary, at a temperature inversion, for the most complex thermodynamic problem imaginable as a frame of reference. That is social scientists playing with the hard sciences and they are in way over their heads.
Why do I get the mental image that many in leftist causes look at conservatives (or at least, people who disagree with them) in the same way that Jane Goodall used to look at her chimps? You know, something very interesting, showing signs of intelligence and early evolution, but not nearly on the same level as the observer?
It’s a well-worn liberal belief that all conservatives are stoooooopid, until of course, they are evil. At the point that they are evil, they are then deemed to be evil geniuses.
Doc C,
I used to bug you about being more activist, though I’ve come to realize that by keeping a somewhat low profile you’ve in some important ways increased the power of your voice if and when you choose to use it. Maybe this is the time? Someone credible has to speak up in the name of decency. I continue to believe that if this (what amounts to ) hate speech continues to become ever more mainstream, some unbalanced individual going to take a potshot at some prominent “denialist” in the name of “:saving the planet.”
“So ‘deniers’, tell me: will “increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development” work for you?”
I would settle for well defined terms of discussion:
1. Anthropogenic induced climate change –> believer
2. The science is settled –> denier
3. Catastrophic anthropogenic induced climate change –> skeptic
To the true believer to accept the first is to accept the second and third.
Walking along the beach last night
Who do you think I spy?
A girl with ebony fire eyes.
Soft and low do she cry.
Now what could be such a source of pain?
I so boldly inquire.
Pointing finger Havana-way,
These three words which transpire:
She told me that
“Only in Miami
Is Cuba so far away.
Only in Miami.
My story, she goes this way.
Fish may fly through the purple keys,
Golden birds take to air.
I am bound to the earth, it seems.
My life can be so unfair.
Only in Miami is Cuba so far away.”
[. . .]
Standing on the shoreline waiting
Everyone anticipating
I can hear the broken hearted say:
“Only in Miami
is Cuba so far away.”
– Max Gronenthal and Scott Delawanna
For me, the defining trait of denialism is only peripherally related to mathematical or scientific truth.
Rather, the defining trait of denialism is the restriction of discourse by authority … and both the dogmatic far-left and the dogmatic far-right similarly embrace this practice.
The toolset of denialist restriction-by-authority is always the same: rudeness, abuse, anger amounting to rage, personal profiling, selective enforcement of arbitrary rules, legal threats, enemy lists, and outright censorship of threatening ideas — always with a view toward sustaining a ‘protected bubble’ for denialist beliefs.
A canonical example of denialism-in-action is the following comment blocked from WUWT’s recent essay NASA: Study Finds Ancient Warming Greened Antarctica:
Above all else, denialists despise tolerant humor … and that is why I like to end my comments with plenty of these … :) ;) :)
@Fan
I checked
Your comment was disallowed for coming from a fake proxy server. Not for its content. Your case fails.
‘[snip. Fake proxy server. ~dbs, mod.]’
Latimer,
“A physicisy/fan/etc” supports the most intolerant of sites without pause, like RC and Romm’s place (before it imploded).
He is just projecting his hypocrisy.
And his humor? lol.
And WUWT is a fake science blog. And Latimer Alder uses fake sockpuppet handles. The truth hurts. Perhaps not as much as jumping on a bicycle with the seat missing, but it hurts (FD NG 2½).
Web,
You offer comic relief like clockwork.
Thanks as always,
Then time for clown town: http://bit.ly/wyxkgy
“the defining trait of denialism is the restriction of discourse by authority”
Funny, I thought that the “skeptic” crowd was the one being silenced by scorn, ridicule, and in many cases, job loss? And that the “true believer” side gained, what, $117 billion in US Fed funds out of the deal?
With respect, your post is wrong-on-the-facts, Latimer. Because, in a classic display of denialist practice, WUWT practices selective enforcement of its terms of service.
If WUWT likes a given post, then its own rules aren’t applied. Whereas if WUWT dislikes a given post, then it is prudent to be prepared for WUWT to implement any-and-all elements of the denialist protocol described above: rudeness, abuse, anger (amounting to outright rage), personal profiling, selective enforcement of rules, legal threats, enemy lists, and censorship of threatening ideas.
In particular, in the past WUWT has not scrupled to unilaterally release any-and-all personal information that WUWT can read from your browser.
Are you curious to know how much personal information your webbrowser is transmitting to websites like WUWT? Simply visit any diagnostic website (one highly-rated site is JonDonym’s ip-check.info) to find out.
Is it prudent to entrust denialist organizations with personal information? This is for each citizen to decide. And very fortunately for every citizen, the choice is yours, not theirs! :) :) :)
When you’re spending University time on blogs, Johnny, yeah, it’s a bad idea for websites to know who you are. That was double-plus uncool that Charlie Martin knew who you were, huh, Johnny?
@A Fan…..
Lots of irrelevant wittering and handwaving does not change the simple fact that your post was not shown because it came from a fake proxy server, The moderator made this very clear. Had he just not wanted to see it he could have simply deleted it entirely. You still have the opportunity to resubmit from a legitimate address.
The rest of your remarks are simply evidence-free spleen. And the whole episode reflects very badly on your intellectual ability to examine a case dispassionately.
I very much hope that you are not a ‘climate scientist’, but rather fear that you are.
Worse. He’s at the med school.
Latimer,
A fan’s claim is that:
“WUWT/Watts enforces their policies selectively, not uniformly”
Regardless of whether there was a valid reason from the blog policy for removing Fan’s post, Fan’s point is that other posts that break the rules such as the ones you write under the names “Latimer Alder” and “Stirling English” are allowed through because “WUWT/Watts enforces their policies selectively”. So your example helps prove Fan’s allegation.
Many websites, including WUWT, have rules about sock-puppetry, for obvious reasons. It is irritating to have discussions with people who are playing the game of having multiple personalities. When you (whoever you are) sit down at your keyboard to send a message to Anthony or Bishophill or Judith’s blog, you decide on a particular personality whether it is “Latimer Alder” or “Stirling English” or whatever. And one presumes you make conscious decisions that each of these separate “sock-puppets” should be perceived as separate people by readers.
Now one pseudonym is relatively normal. But when you have two or more, people spend their time speculating as to your motives rather than reading what you say – are you bored so posting twice as much fills more of the time? Are you hoping to add numbers to your side (ie. build your “consensus”)? Are you simply bonkers and on your way to being like that bloke who had a go at Louise Mensch? You should not be surprised that people speculate as to your motives, and you should not object when they do so (in my opinion).
Latimer, your post is wrong-on-the facts.
WUWT/Watts enforces their policies selectively, not uniformly … seemingly in those instances that WUWT judges it to be in their interest (maybe a business interest? or a political interest?) to do so.
For example, a follow-up comment that documented more than two thousand instances on WUWT of the words “warmista*” and/or “eco-fascist*” never saw the light of day. WUWT, indeed?
It’s not clear why a website that freely deploys the terms “warmista” and “eco-fascist” should be exercised about the term “denialist”.
If you care to offer an reasoned opinion, Latimer, this would be very welcome.
So what’s the big deal? Aren’t you proud to be a warmista ecofascist?
PE, your question has a simple answer:
That is why forums that pursue ideological ends by selectively interpreting their own terms of service are unworthy of any citizens’s respect.
Summary Disrespect for process is characteristic of denialism’s restriction of discourse.
—————–
PE, thank you for asking. What is your next question?
Since you didn’t answer the question (and to my recollection never have)…
* A fan
Please show some evidence of your accusations. I am not inclined to accept your statement without some backup. After your previous accusation was so easily shown to be false, your credibility is not high as a witness.
Latimer Alder,
In the WUWT thread below you posted as “Latimer Alder” and also as “Stirling English”. This is in breach of WUWT comment policy against “sockpuppetry”. I submit that because you were supportive of WUWT position your sock-puppetry did not result in your comments being removed.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/25/they-had-to-burn-the-village-to-save-it-from-global-warming/
@steve milesworthy
‘A fan’ has been shown to have no documented evidence for his accusations, other than his testimony..for which he has presented no foundations.
And I do find it weird that to back up his story of posts being disappeared you try to rely on an example where, you claim, a post was *not* disappeared.
‘Look children, here’s an example of the exact opposite of what is being complained about. So there! The complaint must be true’
Ummm……….run that one past me again…..lost me somewhere……
Latimer Alder/Stirling English I replied above – in the wrong place.
Sceptics are full of tolerant humour.
Apparently, in 2007 Natalie Portman “designed a line of vegan shoes for Te Casan (profits were donated to environmental organizations).”
Vegan shoes?!?
Nonetheless, if Ms. Portman wishes to assist me in “increasing interpersonal warmth”, that would be just fine. (This friendly invitation does not extend to Ed Begley Jr.)
Meanwhile we can look forward to Nature articles on the psychology of anti-semitism, white supremacy and militant feminism. The words in those should be a hoot!
Awww, now, com’on Fan of More BS; we haven’t been all that bad to you. You’re still a bit of a Drama Queen.
bob,
Anyone who denies the second law of thermodynamics should not call themselves a scientist. True scientists are skeptical about new ideas, until enough data is gathered and research performed to validate the concepts. Models are fine to depict the real world, as long as scientific data supports those models. When the data fail to support the model, then the model needs adjusting to adhere to the observed data, rather than vise versa. Those who support the concept of AGW should also be skeptics, until enough data can be gathered to support their contentions. The problems with AGW science are two-fold; first, we are trying to confine nature into a scientific test, when we still do not know all the variables, and secondly, we are trying to extrapolate the data and models far beyond the current measurements and understanding.
Personnally, I refrain from both the term ‘denier’ and ‘alarmist’ as they are presented as terms to protray the individual as an extremist, who adheres to a particular ideology, rather than science.
Alarmist is fairly accurate and is not ad hominem and does not have the historical baggage.
Right, but the skeptics are not denying the second law, some are claiming that AGW violates the second law.
The current models actually do a decent job modeling climate but it is a bit harder to predict future trends in climate since you also have to predict future trends in emission as well as future trends in the natural drivers.
I think we know all the variables, the problem is modeling them at the resolution and precision that would satisfy the skeptics in terms of getting the exact same trends as the historical data. Which I think just is not physically possible, no matter how good a model you have. Both the model and the real world are going to be somewhat noisy, and they are never going to match exactly.
I don’t mind the term alarmist, as I actually find the evidence alarming.
But not many here want to discuss any evidence, anyone want to prove me wrong?
The some skeptics saying that AGW violates the second law can be directly attributed to Kevin Trenberth help with the Earth energy budget which did indeed violate the second law because his budget missed 20Wm-2 of energy absorbed by clouds. In order for there to be as much DWLR as indicated on the K&T cartoon, 20Wm-2 of energy had to be created, a violation of the second law. Some of your heroes seem to have math issues :)
Are you sure you are not getting the first and second laws of thermodynamics mixed up?
The accounting error you are pointing out would be a violation of the first law, where is your evidence that there is 20 W/m2 of energy being absorbed by clouds that Trenberth missed?
Is that 20 W/m2 of short wave incoming or long wave outgoing?
Bob, by all means we should discuss the evidence. What line of evidence do you find convincing enough to cause alarm? What line of evidence doesn’t either contradict the models or require more data? I looked for a line of evidence that I could find convincing and came up empty handed. Perhaps you know of one I missed?
Steven, mostly for me are the lines of evidence that indicate that in the past it was about 3-5 C warmer than now, several different times, and sea levels were much higher than now during those times of warmth.
The vinca vine we have on our deck in pots, now survives the winter due to the change in hardiness zones.
http://gardenerscott.blogspot.com/2012/01/changes-to-usda-plant-hardiness-zone.html
Bob, that only indicates climate can change. I don’t doubt climate can change. I don’t doubt the change in climate could be catastrophic should it happen in a particular manner. For instance I am fairly confident a repeat of the youger dryas would be quite catastrophic. I don’t see the evidence that anything we are doing will bring about such catastrophy so perhaps evidence towards a climate sensitivity which would bring about such a catastrophy would be more of what I had in mind.
Just to clarify, I am not asking for a change as large as the YD. Just some clear evidence that the IPCC mean of 3C is close enough for government work.
Steven,
Try this,
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110118_MilankovicPaper.pdf
And I will disagree with you on which would be more catastrophic, a Younger Dryas type drop in global average temperature of 3-5 degrees, or an increase due to anthropogenic causes of 3-5 degrees.
Warmer would be much worse. The effects of warmer would be manifest in the highly populated lowlands while colder would be more in the north (NYC is frozen but the Sahara is green).
Bob, before I spend too much time with this I seem to remember it being mostly paleo in content. Is that correct? If climate sensitivity is a variable and not a constant what can we really learn from paleo data other than what the climate sensitivity was, on average, over an extended period of time? It wouldn’t tell us what it is. Do you believe climate sensitivity is a constant and if so, why?
As far as warmer would be worse, maybe. Wouldn’t be too good for the world’s food supply to have it colder in most the nations that currently can produce surpluses. But this is so speculative I’m not sure it is worth our effort unless you have some literature to share so we have a basis to agree or disagree.
Bob, that doesn’t seem right.
This vegetation map shows the world during the last glacial maximum. Note: The Saharan expansion to approx. 50% of Africa. And most of the earth’s surface was ice or desert.
More likely the Sahara has been basically uninhabitable for the last 100,000 years except when global temps were significantly higher than now (i.e. during Holocene Climatic Optimum). Then, the Sahara had “well established human settlements”.
bi2hs
blue ice
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=ENSO11000.gif
We can see a shift to El Nino about 5,000 odd years ago.
http://medias.obs-mip.fr/www/Reseau/Lettre/12/en/elnino/impacts_afr_ouest.html
Cheers
steven,
Good luck with a serious discussion with bob the bigot.
I don’t have a problem with people that have a different point of view from me. I find the conversations more interesting that way. There is plenty of animosity from both sides so I pretty much go by who has been rude to me rather than who has been rude in a general manner. If I only talked to peole that had never been rude I wouldn’t have anyone left to talk to, perhaps including myself since I don’t recall everything I have ever said.
Hunter has no evidence of any bigotry on my part
With regards to whether 3-5C warmer or colder would be worse, paleo data indicates that colder would result in dimished crop production in much of the mid latitudes, while warmer would lead to expanded production in the Sahel region. Warmer would result in higher sea levels, greater precipitation, and flooding. Severe cold tends to result in higher animal deaths than warmth, but reduces insect infestations. Severe cold tends to cause greater disruptions to civilization than warmth. Given all the data, I will take warmth over cold.
bob said “it is a bit harder to predict future trends in climate since you also have to predict future trends in emission as well as future trends in the natural drivers.”
I’m fine with conditional forecasts, that is, forecasts that are conditioned on future values of strictly observable and exogenous things, such as the time paths taken by emissions, aerosols, solar variability of all sorts and volcanism after the conditional forecast is made.
Do any of the climate modelers make such conditional forecasts? I think they do, a little bit, but not enough. A whole lot of observers would be happier if the modelers could prove that even such conditional forecasts have skill at a decade or two out. Otherwise, observers get the feeling that there’s always some deus ex machina lurking to save the day when the future is now.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
Re-tread thread.
Andrew
Retread comment
A statist propaganda rag smears political opponents. Slow news day. ;)
Andrew
Touche, Dr. Curry.
@Judith Curry “I view this pretty much as the green equivalent of the unabomber billboard.”
Probably the worst analogy I’ve heard in a long time. On one side there’s a taboo word (“denier”), on the other there’s a serial killer.
one was a billboard, paid for by an advocacy group; the other was published in a very high impact journal.
I think it is more the magazine version of the 10:10 video.
It’s a group-think brain-fart. Far from the first or the last from this particular group. Expect many more. What makes this so funny is the obviously high esteem Curry held (or perhaps still holds) for Nature Climate Change. You could practically hear her jaw hitting the floor when she discovered what they’d published. For us deniers it’s just one more demonstration of what happens when a bunch of libtards get wound up in a group think orgy. As “the cause” continues to be further maginalized and mocked by the voting public expect them to get more and more wound up. Eventually the cognitive dissonance hits the resonant frequency of their mostly evacuated brain casings and they implode. 10-10 indeed.
Does this mean scientists who read that journal have a BS filter inferior to that of the general public viewing the billboard? Just askin’.
If you concentrate on the word denier long enough, a murderer of a different scale might come to mind.
The fringe of one side is saying that by not accepting their claims whole we are abetting death and destruction on biblical scales, the fringe of the other put up stupid billboards for a week. Most are just saying the models are poor and evidence lacking for such claims.
Studies arguing that conservatives are brain damaged are all the rage in the academy. See e.g. the long list at Briggs’ http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=5588
These studies are priceless for their comedic value. The academics who are comfortable with this type of insanity should be expected to widen their efforts to climate deniers (especially since slandering global warming deniers is even more likely to bring in grant money than just simply slandering conservatives or Republicans).
At first, these ‘climate social science’ articles were like bad satire. Now they’re flat-out farce. Bring on the clowns.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/new-phrenology_644420.html?nopager=1
Started to pull a quote. Better to just read it all.
Oh no, I insist …. Allow me …. ; )
As it happens, the liberal personality, as psychopunditry describes it, is a perfect representation of those traits that liberals say they most admire. Liberals are “more open, flexible, curious, nuanced.” Conservatives are “more closed, fixed, and certain in their views.” But don’t get the wrong idea: Mooney insists he is not saying “conservatives are somehow worse people than liberals.” That would be judgmental, and Science is clear: Liberals aren’t judgmental. “The groups are just different,” he goes on amiably. Indeed, he warns that the truths he reveals in his book “will discomfort both sides.” Fairness requires him to be evenhanded. On the one hand, conservatives won’t like the scientific fact that they tend to deny reality and treat their errors as dogma. On the other hand, liberals won’t like the scientific fact that all their well-meaning attempts to reason with conservatives are doomed.
These academics are comfortable making broad statements about all human psychology based on their bizarre, artificial studies of their students who are almost all W.E.I.R.D. — Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.
Hundreds of thousands of veterans are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, not only in the USA, but in dozens of western nations that belong to the NATO-ISAF coalition.
Very many of them are returning to college, and by the hugely regrettable standards of “Stan”‘s post, our brave veteran/students one-and-all are “WEIRD”.
Yes our brave veteran/students are Western, yes they are Educated, yes they are Industrialized, yes they are Rich (compared to Iraqis and Afghans especially), and yes they are Democratic — indeed these veteran/students have put their lives on-the-line for Democracy.
Everyone who is privileged to teach these veteran/students understands that they deserve our appreciation and gratitude, not thoughtlessly abusive labels. Moreover, these veteran/students have already learned harsh lessons regarding the inefficacy of ideology-first nation-building strategies; lessons that are exceedingly valuable in the class-room.
Stan, if you had thought for ten more seconds about what your “WEIRD” post implied, you would not have posted it.
Oy vey, Johnny.
So university types get bent out of shape with “WEIRD” but not “denier.” Gotcha. Bonus points for the drama and talking about the troops — liberals always need drama so that their brilliance and enlightenment can rise to the occasion.
BTW, while not using that “WEIRD” thing, I have pointed out for the last decade that so-called university “diversity” is anything but diverse — and yeah, it’s all western-educated, Industrialized, rich (by world standards) and Democrat. And liberal. Hardly diverse — in fact, the definition I use is that “diverse” means “we don’t have too many white guys, and no conservatives.”
Which of course goes to the heart of the entire discussion — universities are not place of academic freedom generally, and get really nasty when you say so.
The preceding posts of “PE” and “geek49203” very nicely illustrate how denialism manifests itself in public discourse … and these posts illustrate too, denialism’s fundamental insubstantiality.
Where’s the beef? In denialism, there is no beef. :)
Judging by the other responses here to your posts, I have mistakenly posted a reply to you. I seek intelligent discourse, and with you, there is only your opinion it appears.
Geek49203, please allow me to recommend to you Gen David Petraeus’ Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance (2008).
Dr. Petraeus’ short guidance (and yes, Gen. Petraeus is a PhD historian) — with its 23 quintessentially liberal service objectives — will help you to an in-depth appreciation of why our returning troops receive a warm welcome at America’s educational institutions.
As Gen. George Marshall said to returning veterans of WWII:
As then, so now, eh? Fortunately, every American university appreciates this! :)
You’re going to get your ass kicked by one of them if you try dishing out that patronizing drivel in person.
Dave, please let me commend to you MARINE CORPS PROFESSIONAL READING PROGRAM LIST.
As respectful and thoroughgoing appreciation of its contents and its principles will reduce your risk of “butt-kicking” to zero. :)
I was a sergeant in the Marines 35 years ago, dummy. I get along famously with anyone who’s worn the uniform. You know, Band of Brothers and all that. No wait, I guess you wouldn’t know.
Yer really just wetting your panties because one of your liberal ilk, Janet Napolitano, classified homecoming veterans as being at high risk of joining up with domestic terror groups. Now here they come by the hundreds of thousands, volunteers who love their country and have demonstrated a willingness to kill those who stand against it, with college tuition they earned in the service of their country. The very epitomy of all that’s loathed by you and yours. It must be a real bitch to be you.
In fact *I* went to school on the GI bill. Like how I turned out?
Imagine a million of me descending upon the sacred learning grounds of liberal academia with pre-paid tuition. Will it survive? Will YOU survive? I can tell you what you need to do to survive. I can spoon feed the 411 to you if you’d only stop making faces and spitting it out.
Dave, your spirit, pride, and service all are commendable, and I join with every American in honoring you for them.
As a sincere gesture of respect, here is a passage by Mark Twain from Roughing It, which your posts call to mind:
Dave, in the spirit of Twain, henceforth I shall regard it as an higher honor to receive ‘personal commentary and instructions’ :) from a USMC sergeant —albeit,a sergeant who might perhaps be a little slower in jumping to conclusions — than praise from a “less efficient person.” Semper Fi! :) :) :)
Great. Whatever. The point remains that if you patronize or preach your unsolicited liberal pap to veterans inevitably one of them will bend a pool cue over your pointy little head.
With sincere respect, Dave, nowadays most younger Marines are way more familiar with iPhones and game controllers than pool-cues. As for new ideas, the USMC is all about embracing them:
The author of the preceding guidance? Gen. James Mattis.
Is it any wonder that today’s veteran Marines are proving to be, at any university, the most outstanding & demanding & challenging students? And good for them!
fan,
Sorry, dude. You guys decided we skeptics are denialkst scum. Now you 2-d game playing gets turned back on you and your lazy, derivative, group thinking extremists.
Fan, have you read Jonathan Haidt’s ‘Rightous Mind’ book? Do you know he uses the WEIRD label extensively in his book? Do you know he is a liberal? Do you know he actually took the time to understand how the conservative mind works? Check it out, you might find it interesting.a
Fan,
I’ve thought about my post, and the two which immediately precede it, and I think you have lost your mind. Psychology professors, e.g. at Berkeley, enlist a bunch of liberal students to take part in a study. They set up some strange, artificial experiment and then have the hubris to tell us that their weird experiment using a group of W E I R D students has produced universal truths about the psychology of all humans. Note, the experiment is weird. The students are from a country that is western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. Only a complete moron ensconced in his own hermetically sealed ivy covered academic cocoon could possibly think that such a study would reveal findings about the brains of Nigerians or Turkish peasants.
Perhaps if you had actually read the links I provided and read what I wrote with any comprehension, you wouldn’t have launched that weird response. Get a grip.
Stan, idea-wise you’ll catch bigger fish if you start fishing in deeper waters. :)
America’s soldiers are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan armed with ideas that are gonna cause plenty of discomfort for the pundits of *both* the ideological far-left *and* the ideological far-right.
Good! :) ;) :) ;) :)
fan,
Grow up. This is pathetic.
Fan,
Nice try, but a big fail on the “rich” classification. Your average welfare receipient is rich by Iraqi or Afghan standards.
Your post is borderline disgusting, trying to paint someone as slandering vets when there was no attempt to do so.
As a vet who used the GI Bill to put him through college, and as someone whose son was a Marine and who has four family members currently serving, two of which are in Afghanistan, I can’t say I’m impressed by your style (or lack there of).
When a leader like the USMC’s Gen. Mattis asks “unleash us from the tether of fuel“, then it’s time for everyone to pay attention.
Because it is Gen. Mattis’ profession to foresee both the near-future and the far-future interests of our great nation … and the General is extraordinarily good at it.
That is why Gen. Mattis’ strategic objective of fuel-independence, in the long-run, is equally Marine-green and Eco-green.
Besides avoiding the topic fan, you also manage to show us another subject you don’t have a clue about.
First off, Gen Mattis’ statement was a throw away line. Every General or Admiral would love not being constrained by logistics. Every one of them also knows this is a pipe dream.
Secondly, bio fuels are only “Eco-green” in branding, not in fact. You don’t reduce your “carbon footprint” using biofuels. If anything you increase it, while at the same time spending 4 times as much to get it. (That’s how much more a gallon of bio jet fuel costs verses regular JP-8.)
Why don’t you try reading the DOD’s own report on biofuels. Here are a couple of finds:
At present, these fuels command a price premium, but it is anticipated to decline significantly as the market develops over the next decade. Despite this reduced premium, the Services’ renewable fuel goals could still impose $2.2 billion in additional estimated annual fuel costs by 2020.
There also are questions of renewable drop-in fuel availability relative to demand. DoD would require more than 40 percent of the total projected U.S. drop-in renewable fuel supply (regardless of fuel type) in 2020, just to meet the military Services’ stated demand for 745 million gallons.
Drop-in renewable jet fuel production is not likely to meet the Services’ goal-based demand for more than 570 million gallons in 2020.
EISA’s RFS2 excludes jet fuel, DoD’s primary operational fuel, from vo-lumetric production mandates, reducing private-sector incentive to produce renewable alternatives to conventional jet fuel.
Camelina appears to be a promising renewable feedstock for producing hydrotreated renewable jet (HRJ) fuel, but annual production capacity for camelina-based HRJ is projected at only 68–98 million gallons by 2020.
Third generation renewable fuels production systems, such as photosyn-thetic algae, are unlikely to supply significant quantities of feedstock oil by 2020 and may involve consideration of the water requirement tradeoffs.
The additional costs and potential adverse effects of creating a new DoD commodity class outweigh the potential benefits.
You might want to stick to a topic you know about. And that certainly isn’t anything related to the military.
“Paul Bain, a psychologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.”
Psychology = the field of post-normal science that teaches, “The Art of Selling Those Used Car Clunkers”
With enough “increased interpersonal warmth” given by the right person, I can be convinced of many things, at least until the next morning. I am ready to participate in the next study from those authors – depending on sending the picture of the other participants prior the experiment, of course ;-)
Depends on your Doctor…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000-elderly-patients-year.html#ixzz1yK7gbr7D
& remember over time, many people were convinced of many things.
Too many.
Judith
As a “climate realist”, this appeal for “increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development” by one who calls me a “denier” motivates me to more greater action to counter their ignorance, superficiality, foolishness, and gullibility. Such actions further motivate me to expose the scientific, policy, and moral fallacies perpetrated by such climate “alarmists”:
1) in corrupting the scientific method,
2) in imposing “mitigation” without fully evaluating and debating “adaptation”, and
3) in coercively imposing tyrannical totalitarian government to worship “Mother Nature”.
Their rhetorical excesses show an abysmal ignorance of how to persuade people. Their efforts to force us to bury our wealth by “carbon sequestration” is abominable stewardship, an affront against Heaven, and steals resources from the poor.
They could begin redressing these foolish abhorrent practices by:
1) Quantifying the “null hypothesis” of natural trends and variations, including ocean oscillations, cosmic and solar variations and historic Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics;
2) Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution distinct from this null hypothesis;
3) Including ALL evidence, including climate sensitivities evaluated by empirical evidence;
4) Validating models against long term evidence;
5) Comparing ALL global and regional models by statistical goodness of fit;
6) Incorporating full bias (Type B) evaluations, (including allowing for unknown unknowns);
7) Evaluating prospects of global cooling as well as global warming and their corresponding dangers;
8) Fully evaluating adaptation options as well as mitigation measures;
9) Provide policy measures with full accountability to We the People by ALL government and regulatory agencies.
10) Restore foundational principles of sound stewardship of the earth and mutual caring for one’s neighbor, especially the 3 billion living on less than $2.50/day.
More importantly, I will refocus on making sustainable liquid fuels from renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels to make the issue moot!
PS “Climate realists” never “deny” that the earth has been warming since the Little Ice Age. They acknowledge that all human activity affects climate. The critical issue is quantifying both anthropogenic vs natural causes, validating models and prudently weighing policy alternatives.
David L. Hagen | June 19, 2012 at 12:03 pm | Reply
“More importantly, I will refocus on making sustainable liquid fuels from renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels to make the issue moot!”
Oh wow!
You’re going to work for J.Craig Venter at Synthetic Genomics, Inc.!
I’m jealous!!!!
LOL … for once Dave and I agree 100% :)
Craig Venter is a terrific example of (1) a veteran returned from a long tough war, (2) who trained as a scientist, and (3) appreciated the economic and ecological downside of a carbon energy economy, and (4) rather than retreating into denialism, has set about to do something about it.
In every large city, there are university-based research groups who are busily inventing the new scientific/engineering discipline called synthetic biology. Almost always, these synthetic biology lectures and group meetings are open to the public and mighty fun to attend. So download a copy of FoldIt, attend a few local lectures, and thereby enlist as a Jeffersonian citizen-soldier in a genuine scientific revolution.
Because the best cure for denialism is to embrace the future (even the sobering bits) and thereby help create that future … not deny that future! :) :) :) :)
You left out the really critical part of Venter’s CV. He bailed out of academia and only then did he begin any noteworthy accomplishment.
And Venter was drafted, you fool. He was against the Vietnam war and was forced to put on a uniform. The boys and girls returning today are all volunteers. You really don’t have much of a clue how average your intellect is, do you?
“You really don’t have much of a clue how average your intellect is, do you?” you grant fan far too much credit.
A significant percentage of the boys returning from Iwo Jima were drafted.
David, your post’s reflexive smear of Craig Venter’s military service amply illustrates a fundamental principle: the defining trait of denialism is the restriction of discourse by authority.
After all, what purpose is served by the personal smears, abuse, and enemy-listing that are so broadly characteristic of ideology-driven denialism?
That is, aside from denialism’s perennial objective of deterring open discourse?
How’s that working for yah, David? :) :) :)
Look Fang, I don’t deny the need for something to replace fossil fuels. But I’m not willing to settle for something more expensive. If it doesn’t have the potential to beat $15/bbl equivalent then I’m not interested. I’m looking for economic progress not surrender and retreat. What I’m seeing is price fixing in the oil market bringing the price up to $100/bbl+ which then inspires low-hanging fruit alternative energy sources which can come in under $100/bbl but have no potential for doing much better. Then before that alternative is deployed in any significant way the price of oil is reduced and the alternatives quickly drown in a sea of red ink. We’re being played like a fiddle. The illustrious green movement who killed nuclear power in 1970s and brought about global warming by scrubbing shade-producing particulates from smokestacks and tailpipes are now bent on using a ginned up catastrophic climate change scenario to keep the price of oil elevated in order to keep the profit incentive alive for stupid expensive alternatives like windmills and ethanol from corn. What this actually does is makes money tight everywhere and stops the flow of funding into everthing non-essential to immediate needs. The global economy is a house of cards, the oil cartel is milking profits from it in a brinkmanship game of keeping it just on the teetering edge of collapse, the U.S. is a key support pillar holding up all the rest of it, and here are you and your ilk trying to kick it down. You’re cutting your own throats. Not that I object to that, mind you, it’s just that you’re cutting mine at the same time.
“Ilk” … now there’s a word I haven’t heard in a long time! :)
Your passion is evident, Dave, but your logic is murky (to say the least). How exactly is it, that Craig Venter and his “ilk” are to blame?
Gee … maybe it’s better if folks just let Dr. Venter speak for himself? Yah think?
Johnny, don’t you have some course to teach or something? What are the taxpayers of Washington State paying for, anyway?
Some folks prefer *MORE* discourse … and other folks prefer *LESS* discourse.
PE, we’ll just mark you down for “less”, OK? :) :) :)
Fan
I read your link through to the end. Its very long. I wonder if anyone else will?
tonyb
I’ll take that as “screw the taxpayers”, Johnny.
fan teaches at Washington State?
Wonder if my son had him. He ended up with a Sociology degree so its possible.
————————–
A Poem
Denialists seek him/her/them here,
denialists seek him/her/them there,
denialists seek him/her/them everywhere.
(S)he’s enemy-listed,
for free-thinking of course
that charming … mysterious
Fan of *MORE* discourse!!! :) ;) :)
————————–
And a big tip-of-the-hat to all Climate Etc. Blackadder fans!
Springer
Re: “work for J.Craig Venter”
Nope – too expensive and too iffy.
Solar thermo chemical conversion.
You get what you pay for.
Springer
What you get is still constrained by the 1st & 2nd laws of thermodynamics now matter what you pay for. Venter is foundationally limited by insolation, conversion efficiency, feedstock costs, and container costs.
In contrast with the foolish unscientific rhetorical effort of Bain et al. above, for concrete quantitative hard science and commercial reality see Alan W. Weimer, “Solarthermal chemical processing challenges and commercial path forward.” Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 2012, 1:1-7.
Now that is doable.
Springer
Similarly contrasting the very questionable “science” of Bain et al., for further hard realistic science see James Trainharn et al, “Whither solar fuels?”, Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 2012, 1:1-7. Any Venter venture will have to compete with solar biomass gasification currently estimated capable of providing $1-$1.3/kg H2.
Hagen, as soon as you approach being competitive with $100/bbl oil and can produce in any reasonable quantity you’ll get your legs kicked out from under you by oil price decline. The price of oil didn’t shoot up from $20/bbl to $100/bbl in less than ten years because of production expense. It went up because that’s what the market will bear, at least temporarily, and if something, anything comes along which threatens it then there’s plenty of room to lower price and plenty of oil to flood the market thereby strangling any alternative in the crib.
There is abundant insolation and unutilized land available for collecting it but it just isn’t cost effective doing it with mechanical concentrators to generate high quality heat or PV to generate electricity. If you could grow mirrors or PV panels like weeds I’d be singing a different tune but you can’t and thus the economics are dependent on all the alternatives being more expensive. Dumping happens in the fossil fuel market. Dumping is supposed to be a violation of international law but no one tries to enforce the law in the oil market. So any newcomers that are only marginally competitive (you) with $100/bbl oil will get forced out of the market by say $30/bbl oil which is still a profitable price for the producers. We’ve seen it happen before. More than once. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Dave Springer
Appreciate the caution. Yes the switch away from oil and increased production after the first OPEC oil crisis did drive prices back down to < $10/bbl. However see the major regime change in inelasticity at 2004.
Understanding Crude Oil Prices*James Hamilton 2008
Regime Change In The Oil Market: Is There Evidence of Critical Slowing Down in Oil Price Series? David Comerford 2011
The mideast states and Russia appear to have adjusted their budgets to require $90 to $115/bbl. Politics suggests it will be difficult to chose much below that.
The long run solution is to make renewable liquid fuels for ~$30/bbl with a good profit. Thus the pragmatic goal of setting a cost budget substantially below that!
See the presentation Peaking at Peak Oil Kjell Aleklett, ASPO 2012; Book
He cites:
Colin Campbell & Jean Laherrere, The End of Cheap Oil, Scientific American 1998, predicted a max of crude oil ~ 72 million bbl/day in 2006. (Cited by 1004)
International Energy Agency reports ~ max of crude oil of 70 million bbl/day in 2006.
I think the bigger picture problem is we are graduating thousands of people with what we call ‘science’ degrees, but they are more arts courses dressed up. There is nothing wrong with the arts, but science courses shouldn’t be based on core beliefs. Lacking skills, people can end up righteous and manipulative, thus suited only for advocacy.
The saddest thing, to me, is how trivial and boring the Nature article is.
For instance, all the conclusions are based on hypotheticals about future behavior: In fact reports of intentions. Elicited intentions are notoriously poor predictors of future actions: Not necessarily because of lazy or unmotivated reporting, but for very good statistical reasons (see Manski 1990, JASA).
The study is trivial in the sense that no one I know of thinks that valuations multi-attribute alternatives ARE NOT conditionally monotone in the level of valued attributes. So what does the second study do? In the final analysis the treatment says to the subject “This alternative (pro-environment action) has a higher level of attribute j (say warm and fuzzies, or scientific and technological progress) than you might have thought.” Surprise, surprise: People choose more of that alternative (or rather, are more likely to express an intention to choose it) than when you don’t highlight the higher level of some attribute j.
Utterly boring and trivial.
NW, would appreciate the full reference to Manski. thx
Not a problem:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2289590?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21100862287321
The money quote from the conclusions:
“The use of intentions data to predict behavior has been controversial. The analysis of this article suggests that at least some of the controversy is rooted in the flawed premise that divergences between intentions and behavior show individuals to be poor predictors of their futures. Diver- gences may simply reflect the dependence of behavior on events not yet realized at the time of the survey. Divergences will occur even if responses to intentions questions are the best predictions possible given the available information. The lesson is that researchers should not expect too much from intentions data (p. 940).”
Apparently also just stating a goal makes it less likely you will do it (it goes something like, you get a certain amount of satisfaction and status from just saying it, giving you less drive). Another small -1 for stated intentions being predictors.
http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gollwitzer/09_Gollwitzer_Sheeran_Seifert_Michalski_When_Intentions_.pdf
The Use of Intentions Data to Predict Behavior: A Best-Case Analysis
Charles F. Manski 1990 Journal of the American Statistical Association
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2289590
The Use of Intentions Data to Predict Behavior: A Best-Case Analysis is online at
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/89-23.pdf
And lets not forget what scientist was using ‘denier’ in the not too distant past.
Andrew
The worst thing about the term ‘denier’ is it in some way suggests the main evidence for the Holocaust comes from computer models that project events from the 1920’s. It isn’t just hurtful to the skeptic side – take a trip to Dachau, then find a different term.
What about the moon landing deniers?
You like to be called sceptics, yet as a group those against the science of AGW show very little scepticism.
I googled to check if that was actually a phrase people use, interestingly the first link to use the term also mentioned Buzz Aldrin and Harrison Schmidt (who both went to the moon) signed the letter saying “We feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate”.
I know this is sort of mathy, but if you find one group that disagrees with you is wrong, it does not mean that all groups that disagree with you are wrong – even if you append the same derogatory term to them.
I know trying to paint warrantable criticism as anti-science is easier than explaining away over reliance on somewhat amateurish computer models, or how only certain tree rings matter, or how clouds and oceans can be discounted if we don’t really understand them… but hey, those are just details. Keep the faith.
You show your lack of depth when you refer to “somewhat amateurish computer models” and “how only certain tree rings matter” etc.
Can you explain why you think the computer models are somewhat amateurish?
Only certain tree rings do matter, as we want only the ones that show a good relationship to temperature. Those that show greater growth with moisture, sure we dont want to use those. Of course we dont want to use any tree ring series that doesnt show a hockey stick in the instrumental period for temperature reconstructions, because they dont exhibit increased growth with increased temperature.
When the grid cell size of the models gets smaller than clouds, your criticism of how climate scientists do not understand clouds might have some merit.
What about the oceans getting a lot warmer do you not understand?
Until then you are just demonstrating your lack of understanding of the issues.
How are the models amateurish?
1. We live on a planet 70% covered with salt water. The models should be water based and consider the latent energy transfer first, sensible second.
2. The radiant portions of the models, which should be step two, not step one, should consider the energy flows within the radiant boundary envelope. GLOBAL average temperature is meaningless in regard to the RADIANT envelope since a significant portion of the surface of the Earth is outside of the RADIANT envelope.
3. The impact of atmospheric chemistry changes inside of the RADIANT envelope would have some impact on the SURFACE where most folks seem to prefer living. If the radiant forcing occurs outside of the RADIANT envelope, the impact on the surface is negligible.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/nothere.png
Other than that, the models are just peachy :)
What do you mean by RADIANT envelope? And how is the surface of the earth outside of the radiant envelope? I am not a modeler, but I had been understanding that they modeled the energy transfers between each cell of the models as well as between each layer of the atmosphere and ocean.
Don’t they calculate the average global temperature from each processing step in the models?
The addition of greenhouse gases, CO2 included, would impact the effective radiant temperature of the Effective Radiant Layer. A layer of equivalent radiant energy created by the internal energy of the Earth. The value of the ERL can be arbitrarily chosen or it can be determined so that it has some physical meaning to the climate system. Since the Earth radiates approximately 240Wm-2 of energy which has an effective temperature of 255K degrees, 255K to 249K is often chosen. A more reasonable choice IMHO is 240.2K 188.8Wm-2. That happens to be a temperature of -33C degrees. That temperature is low enough that the latent impact of water would be minimal, so it would be a solid radiant reference temperature/energy. At certain times of the year areas of the Earth are below that temperature so they would not benefit from the energy restricted by the ERL, the Antarctic that is not warming comes to mind.
“How are the models amateurish?”
I’ve have looked at models at different times, here is a quick review:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/04/15/assessing-climate-model-software-quality/#comment-192966
and a review of how they do code audits in the same thread:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/04/15/assessing-climate-model-software-quality/#comment-192966
I’ve been programming for 20 years or so, always love talking about code, so feel free to rebut any of that — or explain in your own way why you think climate code (or ModelE if you want to be specific) is ‘high quality’.
Clouds, eg CLOUD experiment at CERN is very interesting and has potentially large implications on climate.
Oceans, warming a lot? Can you quantify that? Here is a random graph, do you mean since 2008?
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2009/09/record-warm-sea-surface-temperatures/
Tree rings, does that technique work in the stock market too?
bob,
They lied with the trees.
The Hockey Stick is bunk, Bob.
As Dr. McCoy says, It’s dead, Jim.”
The models aren’t as much amateurish as they are toys IMO. Like trying to predict how a Space Shuttle will perform by throwing lawn darts. The software itself is composed of modules some of which were written decades ago by people who knew what they were doing layered on and around newer code written by novices who don’t know what they are doing. But we’re not talking Space Shuttle flight control software so novice mistakes can be corrected on the fly with no real harm done and so even if it isn’t pretty it probably works within the bounds of the larger problem of trying to model a space shuttle by throwing lawn darts. Just one thing has to wrong, like how clouds are modeled, and the toy is worse than useless.
The larger problem in this whole charade is talking about things like global average temperature of 255K absent GHG’s because on average the earth surface receives ~240W/m2. That only works out to a global average temperature for a massless superconducting sphere. In fact the sphere in question gets 500W/m2 at the equator and essentially nothing at the poles and the two are connected by a thin skin of slow moving water and air. The thing of it is that temperature is not linearly related to power so a Watt more or less at the pole moves a thermometer reading a whole lot more than a Watt more or less at the equator. In point of fact it’s physically impossible for the entire earth to ever be more than 10C everywhere at equilibrium as that would have it emitting more power than it receives from the sun which would violate conservation. So the whole idea of an average temperature or what it would be without GHGs is utter bullsht. There seems to be this common wisdom going around that some magical greenhouse effect can cause a body at equilibrium to emit more power than it absorbs. I cringe every time a physicist tries to defend it and lately, instead of trying to point out Kirchoff’s Law of Radiation, I just tell them they’ll own the world if they can invent a non-centrating solar collector able to boil water at sea level. It can’t be done but they somehow think a column of air with greenhouse gasses can somehow cause an object on the surface to emit more energy than it receives at equilibrium. Engineers certainly know better. We’re in the business of trying to squeeze as much as we can within the limits of the laws that nature imposes on us and one of those laws is conservation of energy.
Bob, here’s an example of an effect that can’t possibly be included in cloud models incorporated within GCMs because the effect was discovered just this year. It was recently discovered that photons passing within a wavelength of a water droplet can quantum tunnel into the droplet and emerge on the other side of the droplet in exactly the opposite direction. This is impossible with classical optics as 180 degree reflection inside a single water droplet is well beyond the maximum angle of refraction.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-the-glory
Sorry if you can’t read the whole thing online. I subscribe.
So the models, which only reflect light based on droplet size and density and maximum angle of optical refraction, are allowing more photons to pass through to lower layers that what actually make it through in nature. The difference is probably enough to transform clouds from having a slight positive feedback to a slight negative feedback which in turn would lower climate sensitivity to CO2 doublings from 2-5C to 1C. 1C agrees with pencil whipped observations. I suspect it’s not 1C over all the globe but just over relatively dry parts of the globe (higher latitudes over continents) where conduction (and hence surface temperature) has to increase make up for the higher impedence through the radiative path because there’s no latent path (and hence no rise in temperature) to make up the difference.
You can read about this recent discovery here:
Robin,
Why go back only to 1998, and why only specify sea surface temperature,
why not look back further in time and deeper into the ocean? And why not use official sources rather than some blog?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009-time-series/sst
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009-time-series/ohc
Cosmic rays and the CERN experiment, sorry there is so much wrong with that
There is no correlation of the temperature with the sun, so even if cosmic rays have an effect modulated by the sun, it is not showing up in the data.
If it is from gamma ray sources from supernovae, there is even less evidence of correlation.
Basically that theory sinks because there are already plenty of cloud condensing nuclei available in the atmosphere that any additional caused by the amount of cosmic rays available will not have any effect. And if there were, the radiation levels on the ground would be much higher and if anyone asks I can show you how to do the calculations.
Besides that, the CERN experiment is just recreating Wilson’s work when he invented the cloud chamber, yeah, cloud chambers work, we knew that already.
If I had any insight into what the stock market would do in the future I would share it with you, but no the hockey stick has no correlation with the stock market.
The real interesting thing I point out about cosmic rays, global temperatures and so-called skeptics is that so-called skeptics never produce or show graphs comparing cosmic rays and recent warming. It’s the elephant in the room.
“Only certain tree rings do matter, as we want only the ones that show a good relationship to temperature.”
Right. So you will draw 200 cores from a stand of trees, screen them for correlation to temperature from some series of instrumental temperatures, hopefully taken at more or less the same altitude within 100 miles of the stand of trees, and claim that tree X is a good treemometer because it correlates with the temperature record while tree Y which grew 20 feet away is a bad treemometer because it correlates less well, and throw away 60% of the cores accordingly, and then claim that you can extrapolate what the temperature in that stand of trees was doing 500, 700, 1000 years earlier based on the 40% you retain? All the while ignoring the palpable fact that you have no clue why that 40% “show a good relationship to temperature”, during the calibration period (because if you did have such a clue you wouldn’t need to screen), and also no clue whether that “good relationship” remains good throughout the extrapolation period? Good luck with that.
There is correlation, lots of it in fact – why else do you think they are doing the experiments? People aren’t leaping to the conclusion that it is causation, instead they experimenting, measuring, refining in a long cycle. It may turn out that there is little causation, or that there is lots, or something in the middle. That is how science is supposed to work.
I listed that as an example of something we don’t know much about. You seem sure it’s nothing though, maybe you could show CERN your calculations – you might be on to something.
HOw are the computer models amaturish?
To start, they fail every time to predict future outcomes. That could mean they are simply grossly incompetent. Or Amaturish.
The problem with the models is they are using linear equations to try to graph hyperbolic systems.
And that is amaturish.
So Phil,
I take it that you have analyzed the out put of every published climate model run?
How many have you looked at?
Bob,
Here is a recent tree ring studies from a Briffa portogee:
http://people.su.se/~hgrud/documents/Grudd%202008.pdf
Of particular interest is the higher sensitivity to temperature in the 20th century.
Dan H.
That paper does make some interesting contributions.
It may offer a solution to the divergence problem, but it also demonstrates the importance in selecting trees that are most likely to show a growth dependence with temperature.
It also provides evidence that at that location, the MWP was a bit warmer than the late twentieth century. I can accept that.
“There is no correlation of the temperature with the sun, so even if cosmic rays have an effect modulated by the sun, it is not showing up in the data.
If it is from gamma ray sources from supernovae, there is even less evidence of correlation.”
Where else does get gamma ray or cosmic rays other than from effects of supernovae?
And it doesn’t have to do with rays or radiation, other high speed particles are loosely called cosmic rays, ionizing radiation, simply radiation. Proton or other parts of matter traveling near light speed may associated with gamma ray as both are related to supernovas- and not associated with your Sun.
Or magnetic fields of the sun, aren’t going to effect gamma rays, a magnetic field will affect charged particles whether slow or near light speed.
gbaike,
are you aware that there are plenty of gamma radiation sources that are not from supernovae?
Cosmic rays are specifically defined as high speed atomic nuclei, mostly protons and alpha particles, but other heavier particles can be found as well.
You don’t seem to be too familiar with the cosmic rays modulate climate theory. It is not my theory, but the Sun does have something to do with it.
Check with Svensmark.
Moon landing deniers? You’ve got to be kidding space cadet.
Are you denying that there are Moon Landing Deniers, Captain?
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=216531&highlight=moon+landing+hoax
I am denying that it has any relevance to any sensible climate discussion – space cadet.
I am a Lieutenant Colonel in the Confederate Airforce, not a space cadet.
Who are you kidding?
Bob,
CAF? Really? Then I may have seen you fly. Attended Oshkosh several times. Have you been to Paul Allen’s museum at Payne Field? Two weeks ago I watched a rebuild Zero and a P-40 fly.
http://books.google.com/books?id=GfQDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover
With enemies like Nature Climate Science the deniers don’t need any friends. ;-)
All science, even the soft, social sciences, have to start every experiment or study without prejudice, without a predetermined outcome, without already having decided what the results will be.
Bains et al fail as scientists before they even begin, taking a strongly prejudiced a priori position. Just imagine if one substituted for ‘denier’ any of the more offensive racial epithets — and did the study on some other social issue. Discovering why Blacks or Jews or Pollacks or Old White Male Americans just can’t seem to understand why they are inferior, for instance.
It is simply and foremost scientifically unethical to start a study of why so many Americans don’t buy into CAGW with this premise:
‘A sizeable (and growing) proportion of the public in Western democracies deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change. It is commonly assumed that convincing deniers that climate change is real is necessary for them to act pro-environmentally. However, the likelihood of ‘conversion’ using scientific evidence is limited because these attitudes increasingly reflect ideological positions.’
It is scary in a ‘1984’ newspeak’ sort of way that Nature Climate Change would publish the piece in its present form. They can not do so and continue to claim to be a science journal.
Kip Hansen | June 19, 2012 at 12:53 pm | Reply
“All science, even the soft, social sciences, have to start every experiment or study without prejudice,”
Unfortunately that’s no more than a suggested best practice. Sort of like traffic signs, signals, and lane markers in Taipei. It used to be that at least science *students* were expected to follow best practice but I don’t they’re paying attention to them anymore either.
“what was Nature Climate Change thinking when they published this?”
From the Urban Slang Dictionary:
ass clown
What you meant to say, Dr. Curry, is which ass clown(s) at Nature Climate Change put the stamp of approval on this.
Maybe big oil has some insiders working there. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the ticket.
Q: What do you get when you cross an actuary with a pop psychologist?
A: Climate science!
Don’t insult actuaries. They are guiding the one industry that is making real profits off of AGW hype.
Some actuaries are further quantifying warnings of the fuel & resource shortage cliff we are heading over while Bain et al have their heads in climate fiction. See Gain Tverberg at http://www.ourfiniteworld.com
Is Nature Climate Change pulling some kind of elaborate troll?
An early version of Poe’s Law states (with my apologies to Arthur C. Clarke):
Any sufficiently advanced troll is indistinguishable from a genuine kook.
welcome to the International Stupidity Stakes
the UK made an early burst with its monumentally crass Climate Change Act but coming up on the outside we now have the Commonwealth of Australia, about to implement an economy crippling and entirely pointles carbon tax and being spurred on by a bunch of brain dead nob-jockeys from Brisbane
but the EU are still so far out of sight that there is no chance of anyone catching them
Throughout history it is undeniable that it is the creators of fearful environments and not the targets of their anger and hatred that ultimately doom the people. Such fears most often are born of deception and the end is always the same: the fearmongers lead their followers down the path of misery, poverty, destruction and death.
When “The Team” (Jones, Trenberth, Mann, Hansen, Santer, et al) call you a denier you may rest assured they are projecting.
Dig it:
The Team tried to erase the Little Ice Age from climatology. The LIA was an event in history which killed millions of people.
The term “denier” is associated with people who want to erase the Holocaust from the history books. The Holocaust was an event in history which killed millions of people.
I’m not the one who denies the Little Ice Age. I’m not the denier.
Can you link to a paper by the “team” that tried to erase the LIA from climatology?
I heard the same accusations about the MWP, but found the accusations to be absurd.
JCH
re team & LIA, see ClimateAudit.org, especially papers discussing the Hockey Stick. A manipulating statistics to show long flat “handle” erases both the LIA and MWP.
The infamous hockey stick erases both MWP and LIA making, as Hagen pointed out, a long flat handle. This is equivalent to producing a graph that shows annual number of deaths of Jews in Europe and no bump on the graph during WWII to indicate anything out of the ordinary happened.
http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
Pay close attention to figure 1, IPCC 1990, past 1000 year temperature graphs and compare with figure 4, IPCC 2000, the same 1000 year history reworked by Michael Mann.
David Springer,
You are incredibly off base in your remarks. The notion that Mann and “the team” tried to “erase” the LIA from climatology is simply pure BS on your part and you probably well know that you’re blowing very foul smoke. In fact, it seems some of the denizens here are simply not aware that Mann and Gavin Schmidt, et. al teamed up in a paper attributing at least some of the cooling from the LIA to…wait for it….to…
The Sun.
See: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/294/5549/2149.short
Warmist
Check your facts and read the history. See: Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ claims of the MWP and LIA being local were refuted years before it was published.
1816 became known as the “Year Without a Summer” because the eruption of Mount Tambora (Indonesia) affected North American and European weather. Agricultural crops failed and livestock died in much of the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in the worst famine of the 19th century.
27 proxies used by Gergis et al., in their reconstruction of the Southern Hemispheres temperature.
In how many of these 27 proxies do we witness a drop in temperature in 1815-16 and then a recover?
The Little Ice Age lasted over 500 years. Tambora eruption was near the tail end of it.
Point taken though. Antarctica hasn’t been getting any warmer. According to the logic I think is coming from you that means the recent Arctic melt is just a regional thing, right?
Caution: Be sure brain is engaged before putting mouth in gear.
.
“According to the logic I think is coming from you that means the recent Arctic melt is just a regional thing, right?”
In 1815 a 800 Mt explosion ejected 160 km3 of minerals into the the atmosphere and this caused widespread starvation in the Southern Hemisphere due to crop failures.
My position, which I believe to be somewhat logical, is that biotic markers of temperature would show some evidence of this event.
If a postulated temperature proxy fails to show some signal of the largest known temperature event in the past 1,500 years, then I would hazard a guess that the postulate is at least unproven.
If a series of proxies fail to record this event, and other large southern hemisphere eruptions, then I believe the study to be invalid as a temperature reconstruction.
I postulate that your use of the words ‘I think’ is erroneous.
Your point was unclear and I took it the wrong way. The lack of clarity is why I wrote “I think”. Yes, it’s sometimes rare when I have to think. Usually I know and knowing doesn’t require thinking. Thanks for the clarification.
Volcanics have different temporal periods of persistence.The relaxation oscillators respond over periods where interference from similar perturbations operate,are problematic for empirical parameters eg Stenchikov et al 2009
Radiative forcing produced by explosive volcanic events that have occurred in the historic period lasts for about 3 years. The volcanically-induced tropospheric temperature anomalies reduce below noise after approximately 7 years. The sea ice responds on the decadal time scale. Deep ocean temperature, sea level, salinity, and AMOC have relaxation time of several decades to a century. This suggests that the Tambora subsurface temperature and sea level perturbations could last well into the 20th century, interfering with the effects of the devastating Krakatau, Santa Maria, and Katmai eruptions which occurred respectively in 1883, 1902, and 1912, producing a cumulative impact on the deep ocean thermal structure in the 20th century.
Question:
If an eruption like Tambora happened today would it be less devastating due to the climate being warmer than average when it happened?
That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. :-)
Rhetorical, but actually a good question for the guys that think all volcanoes are created equally. Thermal inertia is an interesting subject.
I wonder if “The Team” would have the law require us deniers to sew some symbol on our clothing so that we can be more easily identified and scorned.
Maybe something like this international symbol for oil & gas:
http://www.safewayhyd.com/images/bigSymbol-oilGas.gif
Is is just my imagination or does that symbol have the same number of triangles as a Star of David?
Dave,
The logical progression of AGW mania does not end well.
I count 13 in your symbol, yet only 8 for a star of david.
Only six for a Star of David and if you want to get nitpicky it can be formed by placing two equilateral triangles atop each other on a common center with one triange rotated 60 degrees. I wrote it as a literary device not a literal question, by the way.
“So ‘deniers’, tell me: will ‘increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development’ work for you?”
If Angelina Jolie and Ashley Judd want to increase my personal warmth and societal development, sign me up. If it’s Michael Mann and James Hansen, fuggedaboutit.
Careful now, Alicia Silverstone may have to get naked on ya :0
So ‘deniers’, tell me: will “increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development” work for you?
If the general idea includes some dancing and wine, maybe yes.
“How about framing an argument about why AGW is wrong?”
No need to. Those who claim AGW should show how they know it’s true. If they don’t we can continue to classify it as a fraud.
Andrew
“How about framing an argument about why AGW is wrong?” this is a typical political ploy. Wrap enough things up in a package and then you can defend the warm and fuzzy part and look like a hero while slipping in the pork. The CO2 part of AGW is grossly over stated and that is the issue attempted to be discussed. Land use and water management are grossly under stated and the true issue, but CO2 warm and fussiness creates an impasse. Then the CO2 proponents blame the rational for being skeptical or “denying” the truth while the “truth” has been manipulated. For good measure, use “Merchants of Doubt” to deflect any serious discussion.
Wasn’t too long ago that MSM was still arguing there were “objective” and non-partisan.
Seems like a eon ago, but was actually only been a few years. Nature the mag and it’s ilk is simply following the trend.
It’s not so much a change, as an acceptance that they are indeed diseased and dying.
They may fear they have reputation to lose, and they sort of right, but the reputation they had was mostly matter of delusion.
Demier, and proud oif it.
The people who will repeat the Holocaust are not the climate skeptics, but the AGW tyrannists. Millions will die as the result of economic difficulties imposed by chasing the CO2 bogeyman.
I accuse the AGW crowd of intending this consequence of their program. They are no better than Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
“Millions will die as the result of economic difficulties imposed by chasing the CO2 bogeyman”
Now that is a falsifiable hypothesis and prediction as well.
Got any evidence for how that is to come about?
“Now that is a falsifiable hypothesis and prediction as well.”
Which makes it much better than the AGW theory?
“Now that is a falsifiable hypothesis and prediction as well.
Got any evidence for how that is to come about?”
How about what the DDT ban and what did in regards to poorer countries
with a malaria problem?
How about the lack of evidence of increasing state power, having done anything regarded as good or useful for the majority of the people.
Explain EU.
Define how much as been spend so far which related to issue of “global warming as a problem”. Or simply find one study on this effort, the costs and benefits from it.
An example is you can find say study on impacts of Iraq war for instance. They might poor and biased studies, but point is, there was some effort to look at it. And it was a brief period of time and not water has gone under the bridge since that time. Whereas “global warming” was concern during the Carter years. Lot’s water under the bridge, regarded vastly more important than Iraq war, and what examination of this effort as there been?
The DDT ban had unintended consequences (not accepting some of the absurd claims seen on the internet.)
The Holocaust was not an unintended consequence.
My father was in charge of spraying his company’s bases on Guadalcanal and other Solomon islands with DDT. They soaked themselves and their clothing and their bedding and their tents and the jungle with the stuff, and they still came down with malaria.
“My father was in charge of spraying his company’s bases on Guadalcanal and other Solomon islands with DDT. They soaked themselves and their clothing and their bedding and their tents and the jungle with the stuff, and they still came down with malaria.”
Right we did not get rid of malaria in the US, by having citizens soak themselves in DDT.
Instead we systematically exterminated the disease with DDT.
“The Panama Canal (1905-1910)
The construction of the Panama Canal was made possible only after yellow fever and malaria were controlled in the area. These two diseases were a major cause of death and disease among workers in the area. In 1906, there were over 26,000 employees working on the Canal. Of these, over 21,000 were hospitalized for malaria at some time during their work. By 1912, there were over 50,000 employees, and the number of hospitalized workers had decreased to approximately 5,600. Through the leadership and efforts of William Crawford Gorgas, Joseph Augustin LePrince, and Samuel Taylor Darling, yellow fever was eliminated and malaria incidence markedly reduced through an integrated program of insect and malaria control.”
“he U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) and Malaria (1914-1942)
During the U.S. military occupation of Cuba and the construction of the Panama Canal at the turn of the 20th century, U.S. officials made great strides in the control of malaria and yellow fever. In 1914 Henry Rose Carter and Rudolph H. von Ezdorf of the USPHS requested and received funds from the U.S. Congress to control malaria in the United States. Various activities to investigate and combat malaria in the United States followed from this initial request and reduced the number of malaria cases in the United States. USPHS established malaria control activities around military bases in the malarious regions of the southern United States to allow soldiers to train year round.”
“he U.S. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) – The Integration of Malaria Control with Economic Development (1933)
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill that created the TVA on May 18, 1933. The law gave the federal government a centralized body to control the Tennessee River’s potential for hydroelectric power and improve the land and waterways for development of the region. An organized and effective malaria control program stemmed from this new authority in the Tennessee River valley. Malaria affected 30 percent of the population in the region when the TVA was incorporated in 1933. The Public Health Service played a vital role in the research and control operations and by 1947, the disease was essentially eliminated. Mosquito breeding sites were reduced by controlling water levels and insecticide applications.”
http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/
It was a combination of things that nearly eradicated malaria in the U.S.
You have to consider all its weaknesses. Two most relevant ones off the top of my head:
1) it needs both a human host and mosquito host to complete its life cycle
2) it has difficulty surviving sub-tropical winters
If you have things that keep humans from becoming infected and/or you isolate them from mosquitos if they are infected then you break the life-cycle chain. In third world countries there’s little in the way of isolating infected people so they get bit by mosquitos allowing the parasite to reproduce. Parasite reproduces asexually in humans, sexually in the mosquito.
Getting rid of mosquito breeding grounds close to people. DDT helped a lot doing that. Limiting the number of people getting infected combined with isolating people after infection so mosquitos can’t take it back up in a blood meal is a one-two punch.
Killing carrier mosquitos arriving aboard ships from tropical countries. The parasite has a hard time surviving even sub-tropical winters and is re-introduced by tradeships arriving from tropical ports. DDT is useful for that too.
DDT was not the only factor in eradicting malaria from north America but certainly played a large role in it.
“It was a combination of things that nearly eradicated malaria in the U.S.”
If you can say polio was nearly eradicated in the US.
“Polio was one of the most dreaded childhood diseases of the 20th century in the United States. Periodic epidemics occurred since the late 19th century and they increase in size and frequency in the late 1940s and early 1950s. An average of over 35,000 cases were reported during this time period. With the introduction of Salk inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) in 1955, the number of cases rapidly declined to under 2,500 cases in 1957. By 1965, only 61 cases of paralytic polio were reported.”
…
From 1980 through 1999, there were 162 confirmed cases of paralytic polio cases reported. Of the 162 cases, eight cases were acquired outside the United States and imported.”
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/polio/dis-faqs.htm
“CDC received 1,691 reported cases of malaria, including 1,688 cases classified as imported, one transfusion-related case, and two cryptic cases, with an onset of symptoms in 2010 among persons in the United States.”
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6102a1.htm
From the above, one can say that Malaria in US is mostly/almost all due from the disease being acquired outside the US. Whereas Polio has less to do with importing the disease.
Btw, the scale of problem of malaria:
“During the past decade, malaria incidence and mortality rates have been cut in all regions of the world, according to the report. In 2010, there were an estimated 216 million cases of malaria in 106 endemic countries and territories in the world. An estimated 81% percent of these cases and 91% of deaths occurred in the WHO African Region. Globally, 86% of the victims were children under 5 years of age.
There were an estimated 655 000 malaria deaths in 2010, which is 36 000 lower than the year before.1 While this 5% year-on-year decline represents significant progress, the mortality figures are still disconcertingly high for a disease that is entirely preventable and treatable. ”
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2011/malaria_report_20111213/en/index.html
While malaria has been considered by some to be a tropical disease, the incidents in Northern Europe persisted due to the mosquitoes residing indoors.
http://www.malariajournal.com/content/8/1/94
Malarial epidemics have reached as far north as the Arctic circle.
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/vietnam/GenMedVN/Ch11.html
Take that chain off of them goalposts so Chad can answer the question:
How are the economic difficulties resulting from chasing the CO2 bogeyman going to kill millions of people?
“Take that chain off of them goalposts so Chad can answer the question:
How are the economic difficulties resulting from chasing the CO2 bogeyman going to kill millions of people?”
Did the Great Depression cause millions to die?
It’s not a fluke that millions of children died as the result Malaria.
It’s not a fluke that Al Gore wants to control world population.
Millions have already died because we have failed to address world poverty..
What country has done the most to stop world poverty?
As guess I say China. It had lots of starving people and it did something to change that. Yes, china still has problem with poverty, and previous policies may caused it, but at the moment they doing a lot improve that situation. India is also doing a lot in this direction also, but it’s my guess China has done more.
But either India or China could arguably be the answer to the question.
Sounds like Re-education Camps.
Funny how it’s right in line with the prevailing political proclivities of the AGW crowd.
What’s not funny is that these people currently at the helm of the State.
Gut reaction: Rubbish…but telling. At the 30,000 foot-level,what does this snapshot tell us about the state of and status of ‘science’ in the ‘western democracies’? Here’s a clue. It ain’t good, but that’s another day and another thread.
More measured: [Nothing new in these comments, but they bear repeating.] IMHO one should not lose focus by reacting to distractions like this article. Ultimately, there are real risks at play here–if ignored AGW that possibly occurs could lead to catastrophic results, and if acted on in the most vigorous manner actions taking in regard to a AGW that does not occur could lead catastrophic results. Both not acting on AGW and acting in the extreme on AGW carry risks, and somehow this ‘decision process’ and attendant debate has to be moved to a point where non-extreme alternatives also have an active, visible place at the table. [Please note I am referring to alternatives and their associated risks, and am not referring to the reality or non-reality of AGW. If the ‘collective we’ knew the answer(s) to that, then of course, the decision(S) would be trivial.] In decision analysis (DA) parlance, the ‘collective we’ should be defining/structuring the decision(s)–that will tell us about priorities and what we need to know and what we do not need to know.* And start simple**–there is lots of time for retreading and complexity down the road.
It’s ironic, but this is an area (DA) where the psychologist has much more to contribute, compared to fanning the flames.
* After several stints on proverbial ‘crisis teams/committees’, I happen had an DA instructor out of the SRI school start off with with: ‘When are a faced with a decision, we immediately assembly a committee of various experts, who [at our direction] start to do what they know how to do–and not what needs to be done.” At that middle stage of my hard sciences career that observation hit me like a thunderbolt. And for the second half of my career I beat the hell out of people with that.
** JC — can not help thinking of deep ignorance. Interesting blogs.
The worst case is vigorous acting AGW where the AGW happens but the vigorous acting doesn’t work then you’re up the creek with no paddle whereas if you hadn’t acted you’d still have a paddle.
I have seen no mitigation plan that stands a snowball’s chance in hell of actually lowering global average temperature enough to mitigate the problem so the best course of action is to keep your powder dry until you have something specific to aim at that you know you can kill i.e. adapt to higher temperature instead of trying to reduce it.
Between global warming being exagerated (a la Schneider) and its effects actually being a net benefit through increased production of primary producers in the food chain, the chance that the earth is going to cool (Little Ice Age, end of Holocene Interglacial, Tambora II) I think it’s absolutely nuts to worry about it at all. We’re more at risk of global cooling whose consequences are pretty dismal from every angle.
Hi Dave,
“I have seen no mitigation plan that stands a snowball’s chance in hell of actually lowering global average temperature enough to mitigate the problem so the best course of action is to keep your powder dry until you have something specific to aim at that you know you can kill i.e. adapt to higher temperature instead of trying to reduce it.”
I just want emphasize that the thought is to spend more intellectual capital on the identification and examination viable alternatives. That would include not only approaches to mitigation (one class of alternatives) but to staged alternatives as well, e.g., dry powder. From where my ‘fresh’ eyes view things, the reality is that government and quasi-government institutions are/will be/will-be-forced into taking actions; and like it or not, there is already a certain momentum toward mitigation.
At the present, this is occurring prematurely from the perspective that the problem/decision* has even not been cleanly defined vis-a-vis something akin to a clairvoyant’s test. [Yes, that is a simplification, but perhaps useful.] Nothing ‘good’ is likely to happen until this occurs. If one can not formulate the problem* (hindered here by deep ignorance?) how does one devise alternatives?
* Of course a problem for many of the readers of this blog is that it is occurring prematurely, period.
mwg,
You make an excellent point. The non-rational reactions of the AGW faithful are a facet of a much larger problem. It seems as if the true believers are unable to function unless they can demonize, deceive and impose their non-solutions on the world. This seems to be part of a larger breakdown- one where the multi-decade lies of Ehrlich and Schneider were toelrated (and even rewarded) and where the the fraud and deceipt of the likes of Gleick have been ignored or even rewarded, and Hansen’s failures and lucrative rent seeking have been ignored.
Hi hunter
I can neither agree or disagree with the particulars of your examples–I am new to this ‘debate’ and frankly don’t expect to last long–it is not a low-stress retirement activity:o). In truth, I have been bowled over with some of the shenanigans that apparently has occurred, and at times I asked is this conspiracy, ambitions, arrogance, and/or second-tier minds? Or how much of the written word is ‘true? Those few times in my life when I have had any first-hand knowledge of a reported event, the reports had errors.
But for progress that ‘bad vibe’ stuff has to be shoved into a dark corner, and attention more properly turned to working with the real-world puzzle and not the personalities. And for the real climate change debate, at the core it is the uncertainty and ignorance that shape things–perhaps more than any science. This to me is what prejudices me toward use of DA tools–tools that both quantitative and psychological aspects, and can be scaled (simple to complex) to fit context. Besides an ultimate goal should not be to prove a particular view/approach wrong but to arrive at a rational approach or manifold of rational approaches to GW or AGW. There no guarantees, and I am not optimistic. I give you Shirley’s Dictum and Michael Law, both of which may come into play:
Shirley’s Dictum: Never underestimate the ability of a person to destroy themselves.
Michael’s Law: If you want to kill a good idea go public.
Is the Judith Curry who has just written:
“Somebody needs to research the sociology and psychology of people that insist that anyone that does not accept AGW as a rationale for massive CO2 mitigation efforts is a ‘denier’.”
the same Judith Curry who previously wrote? :
” In addition to critiques by well-known global warming deniers, the issue of hurricanes and global warming has been debated intensely within the meteorological community, identifying clear differences in the prevailing views on this subject……………”
“The influence of global warming deniers, consisting of a small group of scientists plus others that are motivated to deny global warming owing to the implications associated with any policy to control greenhouse gas emissions”
So you’re basically telling Curry, “Doctor, heal thyself” ?
Good one.
tt, please date the latter two quotations. My perception is that Dr. Curry has both become sensitized to language issues over time and also has gained a measured of respect for (some) “deniers” over time. Without dating and context, there seems to be a (so far unjustified) insinuation of inconsistency at best and, at worst, the “H” word.
I think these two quotes date from 2006 and 2009. You’re suggesting that Judith has disowned these statements? She’s admitting she was wrong then and right now? If so let her say that for herself.
If she has disowned previous statements along these lines, why is the old Judith Curry still being referenced on her home personal page.
See for example her expressed sentiments in her 2007 article in the Washington Post. Fifth link down on this page:
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/climate/policy.htm
NW,
What was that dreadful word you were hinting at? Surely you don’t mean ‘hypocrisy’? Perish the thought!
“If she has disowned previous statements along these lines, why is the old Judith Curry still being referenced on her home personal page.”
I don’t know, but I do know that if they were gone, someone–I can’t say who–would be complaining about how Dr. Curry hides her past opinions rather than owning up to them. At any rate, some people will spin either the presence or absence of evidence, at their whim.
Well maybe you should try to find out. Judith is quite careful not to be pinned down to anything too specific. She likes putting (?) in the middle of any sentence which may sound even slightly controversial. Nevertheless she certainly knows how to create a certain impression on this blog. If you read her peer reviewed scientific papers, including the recent BEST one, you wouldn’t think the same at all. The impression is quite different. Quite mainstream even.
Yes some of them aren’t that recent, but, even so, she should stand by any paper with her name included or publicly state she now thinks she’d got it wrong at the time.
Judith is suffering from the over-zealousness associated with Recent Convert Syndrome.
Like those ‘born-againers’ who suddenly realise how wicked they previously were, and then go around bothering everyone for doing the things that they themselves were doing just yesterday.
They most annoying thing about them is how they just can’t believe that you don’t find their arguments utterly compelling.
Here is how a nice democrat congressman talks to skeptics and builds consensus:
http://www.rollcall.com/news/democrats_rip_gop_energy_package-215455-1.html?pos=hftxt
So according to the nice democrats, Republicans are out to literally kill people with their environmental policies.
Bad, bad republicans. Why can’t they agree the Henry’s and Bob’s of the world and just do as they are told?
The warministas need therapy. Not just the once a week session with a physchologist but in Vienna with an around the clock team of therapists for however long it takes.
This is likely to be much cheaper and less disruptive than massive mitigation – aka people are a plague on the world, degrowth, suspension of democracy etc.
There is talk of a new holistic therapy centre opening in the Sahel. There will be the daily group therapy sessions plus as needed private sessions. The more unique concept is the communal field therapy emphasis.
In field therapy the patients will work together to save their world by using manual labor to desal water and then use human powered pumps provided by the Gates Foundation, LLC, move the desal water to garden patches in the interior of the compound, where they can grow totally organic corps for communal meals.
I total support the program to send all climate alarmists to the new Centre for the Warm and Fuzzy so they can get the help they so desperately need.
Support Help the CAGW today
Yes, I hear the therapists are former Ghaddafi mercenaries who, having tired of sacking northern Mali, now want to try their hand at re-education.
Yes, but they are still having karma issues, hopefully with enough transcendental mediation they will find inner peace. They are not really bad people, they just do bad things.
Doubtless, Captain. Doubtless.
One more:
““I reserve the word “deniers” for people that are explicitly associated with advocacy groups that are politicizing this issue (CEI comes immediately to mind). Skeptics that are doing analysis and publishing their research (in journals or the blogosphere) deserve to be called skeptics, even if their analyses and research provides fuel for the deniers. It is the failure of the many in the climate community to draw this distinction between deniers and skeptics that has resulted in this problem.”
tt, from the Nature paper:
“From an overall sample of 488 people, a screening item asked whether participants (1) believed humans were contributing substantially to climate change, (2) believed climate change was occurring, but that humans were not contributing substantially to it, or (3) did not believe the climate was changing. Those who chose (2) (n=119) or (3) (n=57) were classified as climate change deniers (n=176; 36% of total sample) and completed the survey.”
Would you say that a person who “believe[s] climate change [is] occurring, but that humans [are] not contributing substantially to it” should be called a “denier?” Those are more than two-thirds of the subjects in study 1 who the authors classify as “deniers.” Would your answer change if the word “believe[s]” means “attaches a subjective probability greater than [some critical p] to the statement ‘humans contribute less than half of the variance of global temperate since year X’?”
I should say that the above quote is Judith’s.
I wouldn’t label everyone in the way you suggest. Many of the participants in the survey would probably never have expressed an opinion unless asked. Many are probably quite ill informed apart from the constant stream of misinformation they hear and read on the subject.
Judith herself is quite well aware of the effect of “misinformation” having herself written ” Some of the things that I’ve tried in my quest to understand skeptics and more effectively counter misinformation include posting at skeptical blogs, such as climateaudit…..”
tempterrain
That most likely excludes a significant majority of the denizens here who have expressed skepticism regarding CAGW.
So let’s just refer to them as “CAGW skeptics”.
And, to differentiate, let’s call the other group: “CAGW believers”.
And let’s agree: “it’s the science, stupid…”
Max
Max, I’m not sure about that! Climate etc itself has become an advocacy group peddling the message that the science is all just too uncertain and therefore there is no case for action to mitigate climate change.
Any denizen who doesn’t make it clear they don’t go along with this is “explicitly associated”. Wouldn’t you agree?
You’re getting to be as annoying as Cwon14 was, with this pointless metadiscussion and hostess baiting.
Well I’m sorry if I’ve annoyed ‘your highness’! I just think its a bit rich that Judith should present herself as a model of propriety , the way she does, when just a few years ago, in a previous personality, she was using the exact same language herself!
BTW To say that can’t be correctly described as ‘metadiscussion’ whereas I would say your ‘annoying’ comment probably can.
“Max, I’m not sure about that! Climate etc itself has become an advocacy group peddling the message that the science is all just too uncertain and therefore there is no case for action to mitigate climate change.”
I would say that Judith Curry is quite interested in the uncertainty monster, though would not say Climate etc is advocacy group peddling this message. But rather she see this a big problem in climate community and many in climate community would agree this is a problem. It’s mostly a policy matter. And since it’s a policy matter, I doubt I would have much interest in her blog. Someone would have to paid me a lot money in order to endure endless and seemlying pointless policy discussions.
But her blog is much broader than mere policy.
Of course since you seem fascinated in policy regarding mitigation, one think you would enjoy this part of it, and you know say something vaguely intelligent.
@tempterrain
1. I do not agree that
‘Climate etc itself has become an advocacy group peddling the message that the science is all just too uncertain and therefore there is no case for action to mitigate climate change.’
2. But whether I do or not, the force of your logic would lead to the conclusion that everyone who claims to be a ‘climate scientist’ is explicitly associated with the disgraceful behaviour shown in climategate. If not, why not?
Oh damn and schadenfreude.
Space Cadet – n. ‘A person who leads people to believe they are from a different planet or dreaming of ancestry in other areas of the universe. The person does not respond when directly spoken to, performs odd food rituals and displays complete disregard for commonsense. A space cadet is not necessarily refering to a person of low intelligence or a heavy drug user, but rather a person who typically focuses on all aspects of life except the one currently at hand…
The exact origins of a space cadet are unknown but rumor has it that their home planet was destroyed due to pollution caused by poor house keeping. Following this disaster they proceeded to disperse themselves throughout the universe and litter the gene pool. Space cadets are known for their poor skills in common sense areas such as coordination, food preparation, basic cleaning and processing simultaneous coherent thoughts.’ Urban Dictionary
Judith
You ask (jokingly):
Not really (as you already know).
Someone should tell these folks: “it’s the science, stupid”.
“GW”: yup (at least for the period 1970-2000)
“AGW”: maybe partly, but the evidence is inconclusive
“CAGW”: most unlikely
(And “CAGW” is the message IPCC is trying to sell.)
Max
I’m the lead author of the Nature Climate Change paper you’re referring to. Your comments about the use of the denier label is a fair criticism. We did have a rationale for it, but in hindsight I suspect the negatives of using this term may in the end outweigh the positives, which I regret. But let me at least explain what we were trying to do…
The main readership for this journal is climate scientists, most of whom hold the view that climate change is real, and this was who we saw as our target audience. By using the term “denier” we wanted to start with something that would activate the strongest confirming stereotypes in this audience, to maximize the contrast with our data which shows that “deniers” disconfirm some of these stereotypes (such as being anti-environmental and contrarian, by showing that at least some would support action if it produced other good outcomes for society, even if it made no difference to the climate). By maximizing this contrast we hoped to create a greater shift in their attitudes towards sceptics, in line with our goal to find common ground. So the intention was to undermine some of the stereotypes of those who don’t accept AGW that are held within the climate change community. But in hindsight I suspect we overestimated the impact this approach would have in the intended audience, and underestimated the effect the label would have on sceptics who read it.
I really hope you can look beyond this label to the rest of the paper, where we were trying to find points of common ground for those who both accept and doubt anthropogenic climate change, that hopefully would help promote policies that would produce outcomes that both sides of the debate could accept.
“…view that climate change is real,”
Skeptics are pointing out that climate change is real, warmists deny it.
Common ground should be that climate change is real. That’s how it was taught in schools before AGW.
Paul, thank you so much for posting. My struggle with the paper starts with the second sentence: “….since 2008 the number of deniers of anthropogenic climate change has climbed to one-third or more of the population in high-carbon-emitting countries such as the United States and Australia1, 2, 7.” I could not follow the reference links.
It appears that the study focuses on “deniers of anthropogenic climate change”. My reading of the comments in this thread is that there are few, if any in that group who commented here. As I posted earlier, I firmly believe in anthropogenic climate change, I deny that the “science is settled” and I am skeptical toward catastrophic anthropogenic climate change (CACC or more popularly CAGW)). I would have as many disagreements discussing climate change with a “denier” as I would with a firm believer in CAGW or someone who shares my general beliefs but is a firm believer in the precautionary principle which roughly states the even if the science is not settled, we should treat CAGW as a real threat and focus on preventing it rather than living with it.
“I would have as many disagreements discussing climate change with a “denier” as I would with a firm believer in CAGW or someone who shares my general beliefs but is a firm believer in the precautionary principle which roughly states the even if the science is not settled, we should treat CAGW as a real threat and focus on preventing it rather than living with it.”
I believe a small amount resources could expended on CAGW threats.
Such as experimental seeding of ocean with plant nutrients.
So not more than, somewhere around less than 100 million dollars per year. There secondary benefits that would nearly or wholly pay for such costs.
Also think studies of nature environments to high levels of CO2 are worthy of the cost involved.
The Argos program could related to possible CAGW concerns, and again has other benefits
And probably many other projects I am not mentioning- many are involving satellites use.
But it seems we wasting money on programs have little benefit, and far exceed the costs of such programs which have value.
Robert-in-AZ, you said “I could not follow the reference links.” Me neither. I finally found them: Download the PDF.
The study’s definition of ‘denier’ was anyone who didn’t “believe humans were contributing substantially to climate change”, so I think you might find one or two in the comments here : ).
Interestingly all three options use the word ‘believe’. Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask something like ‘The state of climate science is advanced enough to know with virtual certainty that the climate is warming dangerously, mostly (75%+) due to the CO2 from fossil fuels, and the results will be catastrophic within this century.” ☐ agree ☑ disagree
Ooops – found it. Thanks. .
Given that the study included CAGW skeptics in the denier group, the terms used in the narrative are interesting. I’ll point out what I consider to be imprecise wording without further comment.
“…deny the existence ….” instead of “…deny the significance..”
“..anthropogenic climate change is real ..” instead of “…anthropogenic climate change is significant …”
“…reality of anthropogenic climate change ..” instead of “…significance of anthropogenic climate change ”
“..evidence for climate change …” instead of “…evidence for significant anthropogenic climate change..”
“..rely on accepting climate change science.” instead of —OK, I cannot think of anything pithy to put here other than “…accepting CAGW theory..” and this is not a term used in the paper.”
“Interestingly all three options use the word ‘believe’. Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask something like ‘The state of climate science is advanced enough to know with virtual certainty that the climate is warming dangerously, mostly (75%+) due to the CO2 from fossil fuels, and the results will be catastrophic within this century.” ☐ agree ☑ disagree.”
Few think it has to do with CO2, but rather some believe it has to do with not known elements which may cause a runaway effect.
Or the belief is that CO2 significance is because it causes some warming. Anything which caused some warming “would work as well as CO2”. In terms of causing a runaway affect,
No runaway effect, no possible catastrophic future.
This runaway affect has no evident of it existing.
“By maximizing this contrast we hoped to create a greater shift in their attitudes…”
So is that a common thing in climate science, to dress a ‘scientific’ study up so it has more of an impact on attitudes? This is a theme that comes up over and over in climate science, and now you are doing it to each other.
Honest question, why do you feel your opinion so much more important than your data?
A fellow Kicad user. :)
Kicad’s da bomb.
Yes it is sir! :)
“We did have a rationale for it, but in hindsight I suspect the negatives of using this term may in the end outweigh the positives, which I regret.”
Thanks for being honest about that, I suspect you are right.
Paul,
It seems you’ve realized that, as you said, “we overestimated the impact this approach would have in the intended audience.”
The denier label most assuredly should not be associated with those skeptical about AGW. As a “warmist”, but a skeptic at heart, I am offended when I am called an “alarmist”, which is really the psychological equal of the denier. Both the alarmist and denier are 100% convinced of their position, which a true skeptic never is.
Most importantly, there is no real rationalizing with either the alarmist or denier. They will not be persuaded by reason, as their position has become one of emotion and/or ideology. It is actually best that no time is wasted with convincing these types or finding common ground. You do not compromise with True Believers (or True Un-believers!). Thus, trying to reach out to deniers (or alarmists) to find common ground is doomed to failure.
In the true skeptical camp, there are those skeptics, like myself, who have studied, looked at the data and provisionally accept the truth of AGW. There are also those, who have done the same, and cannot provisionally accept it as true. Both groups are open to reason and persuasion (by rational means). Some common ground for action may be found, but, for example, even for someone like myself who provisionally accepts AGW, there are limits. For example, I am currently strongly opposed to any sort of geoengineering. The risk of unintended consequences in tampering with a chaotic system is far too great IMO. So all skeptics will have some reasonableness and rationale to their limits and it is finding those limits that is the basis for finding some common ground.
Paul,
It is astounding that any educated person could use “denier” without realizing what a deeply offensive term it is because of its obvious Holocaust-denier allusions. I can’t prove it, but I’d bet good money that the term “climate denier” was concocted by someone as a deliberate strategy, just as we’ve seen a deliberate shift from “global warming” to “climate change,” and just as political and special interest groups will try to develop emotive labels to win debates at a visceral level (e.g., in the U.S. we have an estate tax that opponents call “the death tax”). Use of the term “denier” is not always deliberate, in that some people mindlessly repeat it, but that doesn’t make it less offensive.
If you want to know how to get us “deniers” to be more open to AGW and associated theories, then for starters don’t insult us by putting us at the intellectual level of Holocaust deniers.
Your very paper’s — purportedly innocent — conceit has only done further harm, as far as I’m concerned.
The word denier was in existence long before WW2 so it is factually incorrect to link its every use with the denial mass murder.
The term denier, as used with AGW Skeptics, was directly tied to the holocaust by the warmists themselves. There is no equivocation.
No. The word denier is someone who denies something. A person can be said to be in denial when receiving some uncomfortable information if they choose not to accept it. It’s probably best explained as a psychological defence mechanism against disturbing ideas.
temp,
I’m sure the word dick was also in existence long before WW2. Doesn’t mean someone can’t come along and give new meaning to it.
timg56,
Instead of working blue, you might have pointed out that the name “Adolf” was quite popular in Germany before WW2, but today if you name your kid Adolf that will mean only one thing to most people.
Maybe so, but It still doesn’t mean that every ‘Adolf’ is a mass murderer, any more than every use of the word denier is linked with one particular Adolf.
Removing words from the acceptable use of language is a bad practice. It’s particularly bad when no good alternatives exist.
It remains possible that a person denies something. What’s the acceptable noun for such a person?
Why should one look beyond a label that you consider(ed) sufficiently accurate and descriptive that it warranted such egregiously frequent usage throughout your paper?
Would it not be preferable to speak to the editor and request that the paper be, well, “put on hold” while you do a re-write ( a la Gergis and Karoly et al)?
Perhaps in such a re-write process you might consider:
a) the extent to which AGW (as opposed to CAGW) is even a reasonable point of divergence on which to hang the rest of your thesis.
b) how might you more accurately reflect the wide spectrum of views of those you have chosen to label as “deniers”
c) the extent to which “motivated reasoning” on the part of you and your co-authors might have biased your study, thereby weakening the validity of your results.
d) sharing with your readership the empirical evidence you and your co-authors examined prior to establishing the underlying premise (for the sake of brevity, let’s call it: “it’s happening faster than we thought, and action is required, now … so how can we best communicate this?”) of your study.
Other denizens may have additional suggestions as to how your paper might be improved.
And if you should decide to do a re-write … bearing in mind that “words do have meaning” … you might also consider incorporating far less jargon – and far more common sense :-)
This might make your paper somewhat more accessible – if not acceptable – to the ever-increasing wider public who (perhaps unbeknownst to you and your co-authors) are choosing to think for themselves – rather than trusting the word of self-declared “experts” who have developed the rather unfortunate practice of appealing to their own “authority” – and that of their like-minded pals!
But hey, no pressure … just a few Helpful Hints from Hilary
+1
Thanks for this, Scott :-)
It’s good to know that someone thought my suggestions warrant consideration! Reading the lines of the E-mail Paul Bains asked Anthony to post at WUWT (and reading between ’em!), I’m inclined to think that he may have missed my comment. Because if he’d actually read what I wrote, he certainly didn’t seem to think any of my suggestions warranted any consideration at all!
Bains seems to think that the only important part of their paper was “the message” or “point”.
I wonder if it’s occurred to him that their “message” (or point) might have been lost in the … uh … medium they chose to select.
Then again, perhaps Bains is striving to be the Myles Allen of (post-normal) psychology!
Actually it’s +100.
Professor Bain gets a +1 for coming here to comment. Your score is based on quality of comment.
Well now, Paul. An assumption underlying your paper seems to me to be that the case for CAGW is proven.
I want you to consider, if only theoretically, that that might not be so. What if, in the fullness of time, it indeed was proven not to be so? Would that indicate your need to increase your interpersonal warmth and societal development? Would you expect your fellow psychologists to produce a paper labelling you something derogatory–say a latter-day Lysenkoist? Would you expect them to label you that even if you protested that you weren’t consciously implying that sceptics necessarily were wrong?
Repeat this to yourself ten times first thing in the morning and last thing at night: “I’m human. I may be wrong. I may sometimes accept things that are wrong based mainly on authority”.
I don’t need to do that–I KNOW I May be wrong in my opinions, which currently lean in favour of scepticism. There are many people like me–agnostics who lean the same way as I do based on researching the science as best they can. They aren’t in need of patronising academics who indulge in psychobabble. It could be that you are in need of a course in humility and humanity. Shame on you.
Paul,
Were you really that clever. Did you and the other authors really discuss using a word other than denier? And who exactly thought up the clever trick of calling them deniers as a set up for the climate scientists reading it.
Because it appears to me that someone clever enough to think that up, would be clever enough to understand how “skeptics” would respond.
Unless I’m mistaken, they were looking for a response from sicentists.
It’s more than a little amusing to see the libertarians and conservatives demanding more ‘PC’ language.
Yes, they were trying to trick the scientist greater shift in their attitudes than their little experiment would normally warrant. They underestimated the effect the label would have on sceptics, and now Paul assures us their goal was to build common ground in spite of everything it said.
So they think climate scientists are stupid, skeptics are stupid, and now the readers of this blog are stupid. I’d say just stop digging already.
We’re not saying (or thinking) that climate scientists (sceptical or not) are stupid, and we’re not trying to “trick” or “set up” anyone. It would be a trick if we made people believe “deniers are x or y” without an evidential basis, but we didn’t do this. Instead, we invoked one of the common labels of sceptics held by our target audience – we did not create it. Referring to deniers/denial is used in the climate science community, increasingly even in published papers in environmental journals. But we did choose from the available labels the one we thought was in most need of addressing in terms of the stereotypes. I can’t see how I can do more than explain this, but I accept that I can’t make you believe that this is how I got there or convince you to accept the rationale. Steven Mosher, clearly I should’ve been cleverer about this, but I don’t believe the term invalidates the point of the paper.
As for CAGW being proven being an assumption of the paper, it would be more accurate to say that the paper assumed that enough people believe in CAGW to want something to be done about it, and enough people don’t believe in CAGW/AGW to succesfully oppose mitigation actions. I see this as a social/societal problem (as a social psychologist) rather than as an “AGW/CAGW reality” problem (on which, like most others, I am not an expert).Two groups have different views on the facts on an issue with widespread policy implications – how do you find a workable solution? Climate scientists who endorse AGW/CAGW often assume that the way is to convince skeptics they are wrong to persuade them that action is needed, and I think it’s clear that this is not going to work. Similarly, I don’t think sceptics will convince the those who endorse AGW/CAGW anytime soon. So, if a policy is going to be put in place (as many governments are proposing), what kinds of outcomes would make it acceptable to people who don’t accept CAGW/AGW (and I’m not talking scientists here, but everyday people who are typically not engrossed in the science)? Warmth and development were the dimensions that mattered to them.
“So, if a policy is going to be put in place (as many governments are proposing), what kinds of outcomes would make it acceptable to people who don’t accept CAGW/AGW (and I’m not talking scientists here, but everyday people who are typically not engrossed in the science)? So, if a policy is going to be put in place (as many governments are proposing), what kinds of outcomes would make it acceptable to people who don’t accept CAGW/AGW (and I’m not talking scientists here, but everyday people who are typically not engrossed in the science)? Warmth and development were the dimensions that mattered to them.were the dimensions that mattered to them.”
Could give example of when any government as done this “Warmth and development “. And failing that, anytime, done by anyone/any entity.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Paul. You’re drowning, not waving. Look, I’ll spell this out to you: the only thing that will convince true sceptics is the science. None of the psychobabblers currently jumping on the bandwagon get that. You think we should all hold hands and come to some kind of cosy agreement. Maybe there’s something to be said about that when it comes to spousal conflicts, but this is a SCIENTIFIC matter, yes? You know, that science you admit you aren’t an expert in, and if you’re not, what the hell are you doing trying to interfere? It’s completely counterproductive.
If you feel at all offended by my reply, all I will say is, what does it feel like to be held in the same contempt as you hold sceptics?
“Look, I’ll spell this out to you: the only thing that will convince true sceptics is the science. None of the psychobabblers currently jumping on the bandwagon get that.”
Exactly! Unfortunately it will take a global cooling to shift the paradigm. Nothing else will work. Too much is at stake for them to just stop believing in AGW.
Paul
Re: “don’t believe in CAGW/AGW to succesfully oppose mitigation”
Your logic ignores those who may “believe” (be convinced evidence exists for) CAGW/AGW, but who oppose “mitigation” for one or more of economic reasons, humanitarian, and moral reasons. Thus I think your survey conflicts responders over unquantified parameters and is poorly framed.
e.g., See Jesus’ declaration that burying resources in the ground was “wicked”. Matthew 25:14-30
See Christopher Monckton: Why mitigating CO2 emissions is cost-ineffective
See the Copenhagen Consensus (2012) on humanitarian priorities.
Paul
Gallup poll similarly poorly frames the question as belief in “global warming” without defining what that means or over what period it asks.
Global warming views steady despite warm winter
It is critically important to define the period involved. E.g. there are very different statistics for temperature trends from now to the next glaciation (cooling?); since 2000 (warming very much less than IPCC models trending towards cooling), vs since 1980 (warming ~ 2 sigma less than IPCC models), vs since 1800 (warming) vs since the Medieval Warm Period (cooling? or warming?) vs since the Holocene Climatic Optimum (cooling), and since the last glaciation (warming), vs 400 million years (cooling). etc.
Depending on the period, your survey would variously categorize me as a “believer” or a “denier”. That does NOT apply the scientific method with a reproducible methodology. Furthermore, Bob Carter observes that the very usage “belief” is contrary to science where scientists are comment based on objective evidence.
I’ll accept that explanation. Fair enough.
Paul,
If this was the early 1960’s in the US, and you were trying to communicate to leaders of Atlanta, Birminham, Jackson and other southern cities about how they think of african americans, would you have used the term, “ni**er”?
Utterly beside the point I am making. I have asked Paul a simple question.
From my standpoint it beggars belief that someone crafty enough to play this trick on the scientists who read it would be dumb enough to not expect a bad reaction from “skeptics”
Your observation about libertarians, while amusing, is not on point.
Given the target group is scientists, they probably didn’t spend a huge amount of time worrying about it.
And let’s face it, the pearl clutching over the term is more than a little calculating.
Just look at the response to the emails that were sent to CRU – a lot of excuse making and even acceptance that these were appropriate.
Let’s shift this into a different context.
We’re going to make the New Yorker crowd reexamine their attitudes by talking about ‘rednecks’.
We’re going to make the Klan reexamine their attitudes by talking about ‘n——‘.
We’re going to make certain religious people reexamine their attitudes by talking about ‘fags’.
Etc.
Am I the only one missing the cleverness?
On the contrary Micheal, Paul makes it sound like they spent time planning and choosing this word. He makes it sound like it was the result of a deliberative process. My question was “how could some so clever, be so stupid.” And Paul has now accepted that he wasn’t clever enough.
Fair enough. Of course some people will believe that the choice of the word was not the result of a deliberative calculated process. Some people will believe that this explanation is bollocks. I prefer to accept Paul at his word and leave it at that.
“But because we were focused on our target audience, it is true that I naively didn’t pay enough attention to the effect the label would have on other audiences, notably skeptics. Although I hope this helps explain our rationale for using the term, I regret the negative effects it has had and I intend to use alternative labels in the future.”
Dear Dr. Bain,
it just shows how sick is your target audience (and how politically driven, that is, un-scientific is the social science literature on climate change). If your current post means you have honestly quit identifying yourself with this target audience (as opposed to only focusing on them), a feeble sorry would never suffice.
The least you should do at this point is
1. Have the editors of Nature Climate Change publish an opinion piece of yours ASAP about your change of stance as expressed above
2. Start fighting actively to eradicate the d-word from both social science publications and the public discourse
In other words, give hell to those climate chauvinist pigs.
Please imagine, just for the sake of the argument try to imagine for a moment what would happen, if in the long run climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere turns out to be much lower than implicated by some current computational climate models. On face value this is a cool, purely scientific question and at this point in history it is an entirely possible outcome, as it does not depend on basic physics, but on the relative strength of various feedback processes that are admittedly poorly represented in such models. But then consider the case the d-word is still in use and is accepted in this context when it happens.
What collateral damage would it entail by re-fueling specifically the Holocaust Denial industry and revisionist history in general? Would not they say look, here is a field of eminent political importance where the denialist approach was well justified from the beginning, even against overwhelming opposition at times, so please consider the possibility of our cause also being a just one. Don’t you feel how offensive is this nasty business with the d-word to the offspring of holocaust survivors?
So my advice is that if you are serious, don’t wait, take action immediately. This is the only way to restore the credibility of your character.
So … you are saying …
“By using the term “denier” we wanted to start with something that would activate the strongest confirming stereotypes in this audience”
you wanted to maximise the pre-existing bias in your chosen audience, it would seem to me. Whether or not you achieved that I do not know, however going about it in such an offensive way is appalling. Shame on all of you.
Sorry, I meant anthropogenic climate change, and substantially anthropogenic at that.
Dr. Curry,
No, “increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development” will not alter my position on AGW. The only thing that has changed my opinion has been openly available empirical observation by objective scientists to answer criticisms about climate models. Kudos Dr. Curry on changing minds of this ‘denier.’
My biggest criticism of the models is that they don’t predict the FUTURE !
From 2001 to present they predicted .36 Degrees of warmng and what happened was COOLING !
That is thousands of % of error !
Sounds like you don’t want a model, but a crystal ball. Such predictive certainty is impossible with a chaotic system. Being 100% right and predictive is not the function of models, but that doesn’t mean that can’t be exceptionally useful. You might want to go visit:
http://allmodelsarewrong.com/
A most excellent site…
Warmist,
A model is thoroughly useless (indistinguishable from clairvoyents) if it cant predict anything worthwhile. There is no way to show it actually models any of the processes involved with any remotely reasonable accuracy. An error of 5% or 10% might be acceptable. Actually in other fields 10% is unacceptable. Lets say climate science is too difficult to model with less than 10% MoE. But 1000% error (assuming the poster is right. I havent checked it) is simply not a model. It is not even a good guess work. It is entirely worthless to even discuss that. If it is inherently impossible to predict what the climate will be 10 years from now by these models, why should we trust 100 year predictions and turn the economic models of the planet upside down?
I am not sure climate system as a whole is chaotic. Weather is. Climate system as a whole moves/changes within some boundaries as observations show. So maybe parts of the system are truly chaotic but the whole system doesnt seem to be, although I am no expert on either chaos theory or climate science.
Shiv,
With all respect, I don’t believe your analysis of judging the usefulness of climate models is quite on target to how models actually work and why they are useful. Let’s go back to 2001 and imagine that a model is predicting some certain degree of global warming based on factors and dynamics included in the model such as greenhouse gas increases and some related feedbacks. What models don’t include and can’t possibly include are natural variability and other inputs to the climate system that occur after the model runs. So the model run in 2001 could not possibly include the very low solar minimum of 2008-2009, or the increase in human aerosols from Asia, natural aerosols, or the trend of more La Nina’s over the past decade, etc. These factors which cause a negative forcing to global temperatures certainly impacted the accuracy of any model run in 2001 and would tend to hide the underlying forcing from greenhouse gas increases. Does that inaccuracy make those models worthless? Hardly! In fact, there usefulness (and yes, relative accuracy) can be seen when you run the models again in 2012 and include the NOW known negative forcings described above that countered the known positive forcing from CO2, N2O, and methane increases during the previous decade. When these factors are included, we see that the models were pretty accurate. Studies that do this, such as Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 and many others are of course quickly discounted by some as some kind of “trick”, but the justification for accounting for these negative forcings is quite solid scientifically, and show the models are actually quite good at telling us what the underlying forcing from greenhouse gas increases amounts to, though they are still not good at many other things. So the models are useful, but you just need to understand what they can and can’t do. Can they be better? Of course, and they are constantly being improved as such is the nature of the advancement of climate science.
But the models are presented to Joe Public as crystal balls. And therein lies a huge problem.
Gates
Imo, you are taking a very popular but invalid position regarding the use of climate models.
You write- “What models don’t include and can’t possibly include are natural variability and other inputs to the climate system that occur after the model runs.”
My response- your comment is true, but not actually germane to the issue of accurate climate modeling. Natural variability is simply the system operating and it is not changing after the model runs. There is only very rarely a change in the system that is significant enough to impact a models output. (Things like volcanoes do not happen very often.) In my opinion, GCM’s do not produce accurate results because the modelers do not correctly understand the system and the various weighting that should be applied (or the timing of the interactions) of each of the variables.
In my and many others opinion who are experienced in model development, it is inappropriate to claim that there is “too much noise in the system” or “natural variability” to develop accurate models. Are you aware of any other discipline where the outputs of models that are shown to be inaccurate are used to justify massive actions?
‘They’ predicted that every decade would be between 0.15 and 0.2 degC warmer than the previous decade. So far ‘they’ have been right!
So far, “they” have not. For whatever reason (and skeptics actually are doing the work to figure out why), temperatures have flatlined.
Well it doesn’t look very flat to me!
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/208488main_global_temp_change.jpg
Sorry temp, you said “every”. YOu are not showing “every”. Try looking at the temperatures on a graph in the last 15 years.
Your graph is a non sequitur, based upon YOUR claim, now isn’t it?
Philjourdan,
Yes, I should have said that each decade since the 1960’s , not every decade, ever.
Each future decade will be about 0.15 – 0.2 deg C warmer than the previous decade unless atmospheric CO2 levels are bought under some control.
Temp-thank you for the qualification. I will accept your premise based upon a mere 5 decade run. But as an statistician worth his salt knows, 5 is not a valid sampling size. Indeed, temperatures have shown they are not cooperating now. I doubt the debate of 2008-2017 will be warmer than the decade of 1998-2007. But you have 5 years to prove me wrong.
And we know they are hopeless when applied to the past.
How do they do with regard to the present? Oh? They don’t work there, either (see Met Office, passim)
The issue is not whether it will convince you to alter your position on AGW, but whether policies that plausibly had these outcomes would be something you might support, even if they were intended by policy-makers primarily to mitigate AGW.
This sounds suspiciously like the technique used by Ted Heath in UK in the 1970s. We were sold the ‘Common Market’ but got ‘The European Union’.
No deal. Like the Who says ‘We Won’t Get Fooled Again’.
If your policies are so f***g unpopular that you need to lie about them to get them adopted, you need better policies, not better lies.
Oops, should be:
“Your concept of labeling as deniers those of us who see CO2 reduction and a global socialist economy as counter productive is badly faulty.”
Sorry Lat – chose the wrong “Reply” thingee.
Paul,
Actually this is a good point. While I am one of those you label as “denier”, I am certainly willing to entertain ideas stemming from an AGW perspective as solutions to expected future problems. I am amenable to including reasonably well founded projections of possible impacts of climate warming in plans for dealing with weather related problems.
The problem comes in when AGW becomes a single focus with a single solution. First off, climate and sea level is always changing. Bad weather events always happen. The question becomes: to what extent do theorized global warming impacts change planning for events from other causes? Will a focus on AGW reduce our ability to prepare for impacts from other non-AGW problems? Is that reduction justified?
Secondly, protection of developing world countries from the impacts of AGW is a sticking point. The lower the economic status of an area, the more temporary its infrastructure. What is in place now will likely be replaced, changed, or abandoned within a decade. Folks with temporary infrastructure are more mobile than folks in developed parts of the world. Their basic problem is poverty and lack of resources to ride out temporary emergencies without outside help. Decreasing poverty improves their ability to obtain those resources. AGW mitigation plans that do not provide for undeveloped regions to improve their agricultural and industrial infrastructure to be able to compete in the modern world are counterproductive. Even worse, reducing the economic strength of the developed regions certainly reduces their ability to assist undeveloped regions.
Deciding if AGW is a potential is a scientific question. What to do about it is an engineering problem. Climate scientists are simply not equipped to make major engineering decisions. Your concept of labeling those of us who see CO2 reduction and a global socialist economy as counter productive is badly faulty.
Let me try again to put this in the right location.
Oops, should be:
“Your concept of labeling as deniers those of us who see CO2 reduction and a global socialist economy as counter productive is badly faulty.”
Paul, I think you’ve missed the point. You asked if there is some common ground solutions we can all accept. The answer is no. Because our climate isn’t what the warmists are after.
Everyone of their “solutions” entail global governance and the destruction of our industrial base. And, without exception all solutions entail a wealth redistribution scheme or another.
In case you haven’t noticed, climate doesn’t even get top billing anymore. Oddly, the
goalssolutions to our ecological difficulties remain the same. If their worried about social justice or food inequity, or our fresh water or the climate, the solutions are the same. Wealth redistribution, global governance, and the destruction of our industrial base.They’ll be satisfied with nothing less.
Paul
Thanks for trying to engage.
However, it appears to me that you were so eager to push your point that you lost the “science” part. What is your “null hypothesis” and what are you trying to show? E.g., by categorizing “denier” as those rejecting “that climate change is real”, you failed to even define your terms “climate change” “real”, and “denier” or check the logic of your position. You appear to be using a definition of “climate change” that is contrary to common English and contrary to historical science. You fail to define any of the magnitude, the cause, or the time period. You are not even using the UN’s definition:
Thus even by the original UN (self serving) definition, “real” could be interpreted as anyone who acknowledges there is an observable increase in CO2, or any statistically distinguishable anthropogenic influence on climate, including converting forests to farms, and creating the “Urban Heat Island”.
You appear to define “climate change” as anthropogenic cause for greater than 50% of global warming in the latter half of the 20th century.” Consequently your logic is that you define as a “denier” anyone acknowledging CO2 warming, the UHI effect, or even < 50% anthropogenic warming contribution. As such, your study is not even reproducible on its face.
You further presume that it is essential to “mitigate” climate change which by default castigates as “denier” all who accept your anthropogenic majority global warming, yet who find the economics of “mitigation” incredibly bad and the concept morally reprehensible.
You further denigrate as deniers and anti-environmental all who disagree with your caricature. These are illogical / unscientific presuppositions if you examine them.
For further issues, see my post above.
How do you plead?
With the weather all around us still we are too close to the specter of the phenomenon of global warming alarmism to fully appreciate what is happening. The last chapter in the saga of Western civilization’s great global warming hoax may well be written in another society, by another generation, and in another language. Fear of global warming will be the preoccupation of scientists around the world and drawing the most interest among sociologists, psychologists and philosophers who study the effects of mass manias on dying societies.
http://evilincandescentbulb.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/dead-societies-dead-gods-bronzed-heads-and-mass-manias/
Although, given that I still doubt the need for ‘Climate Justice’ to prevent a ‘Critical Transition’ of ‘No Return’ I think I still qualify as a ‘denier’
In general, the labeling of broad groups of people leads away from clarity and away from fostering better communications. What leads to clarity is to clearly understand exactly where individuals are coming from and then to communicate with them based on that individual position. Associating the label of “skeptic” with “denier” is no different than associating the word “warmist” with “alarmist”. Both associations are unhelpful for fostering communications.
As a Skeptic (fundamentally about all scientific theories, not just about AGW theory) is would highly resent being called a “denier”, mainly, because I’m a “warmist”. I hold as provisionally true, that humans are warming the planet. I’ve studied the science, looked at the data, and decided that AGW is very likely happening. Other skeptics have looked at the same science and same data, and decided that for them, there is still not enough there to accept AGW as provisionally true. It doesn’t mean they aren’t honestly looking at the data and willing to change their minds, it just means they’ve not got enough to convince them yet. I completely respect that. The importantly thing here is that honest skeptics NEVER accept any theory as 100% certainty. It is always taken as provisionally true– meaning of course that as new data or information comes in they retain the right to reject or modify a theory as needed. This process, of keeping your acceptance of a theory at a “provisionally true” level, never beyond, is the heart of skepticism and really the heart of scientific advancement. Theories are maps of reality, never complete, and like all maps they can be refined and improved or even rejected outright. But once a skeptic accepts a theory as provisionally true, it is essential that they continue to look at the data to find anything that would falsify it. This prevents the common confirmation bias from occurring. Furthermore, focusing on data that might prove a theory false at the very least will reinforce the confidence in the theory and perhaps provide data that might help to modify and refine it.
For those who, without further question, either 100% accept a theory or 100% reject it, they are no longer skeptics, but cross over into the category of the True Believer or True Non-Believer. They aren’t examining the data any more, but either believing or not believing, based on an emotional or ideological position rather than reason which is attached to a true skeptical mindset. In this regard, there are the True Believer’s in AGW, who don’t just accept it as provisionally true, but as “gospel” truth, without question. The complete opposite belief (but same psychological type) would be those who reject AGW without further review or question. They are 100% certain it is not occurring. This group (who most assuredly are not true skeptics) can appropriately be labeled as deniers, but one ought to be careful when using this label, for it is the complete opposite psychological type as a true skeptic.
R. Gates,
We fall on opposite sides, but I welcome you as a fellow sceptic. I could do business with a person like you, and that is what the psychobabblers don’t get. The climate establishment, the media and governments, being believers, aren’t people with whom business can be done. They amply demonstrate that they don’t understand the underlying principle of science that hypotheses (like AGW), and even strongly supported theories, are never finally proven.
I respect your right, given the same data as me, to hold a different opinion. I feel no emnity towards you. If all on both sides were like us, then Paul and his ilk would see productive and genuine debate enjoined.
R Gates,
You are obviously going out of your way to be nice to those who you describe as skeptics, but others would describe as deniers, but, really, just what are you saying that the IPCC aren’t? They aren’t saying they are 100% sure either. Just 90% sure.
I don’t think you’ll find any of us so-called “warmists” who are critical of the 90% figure, so we are all skeptics by your definition. And of course it’s a correct definition.
However, it’s not a correct definition for someone who froths at the mouth at the mention of their name, and start to rant about UN conspiracies to establish a new world order etc etc.
You can call them cranks, as Judith does from time to time, but denier sounds as good a word as any to me.
I’ve got no problem with using the word denier when the shoe fits, for certainly there are those who are 100% convinced that AGW is not happening at all or 100% convinced that even if it is it happening, it will never be a problem to worry about. My point is about the using the term denier as a blanket to cover those true skeptics who honestly don’t feel there is enough data to support accepting AGW or even CAGW. There is a stark contrast between true skeptics and deniers, and the apparent failure of some to see that distinction causes some of the issues we have.
I think a simple realization by some that there is a spectrum of psychological types related to the issue of AGW, and that at the extreme ends we have “alarmists” on one end and “deniers” on the other which are more similar to each other psychologically because they are emotionally attached to the issue or ideologically attached and 100% are certain of their position. Here’s one way at looking at this spectrum of positions:
Alarmists – 100% convinced CAGW is happening (emotionally or ideologically attached, no longer skeptical and no longer really looking at new data.)
Skeptical Catastrophists (Accept CAGW as provisionally true, but still open to data that might alter this position)
Skeptical Warmists (Accept AGW as provisionally true, but still open to data that might alter this position. No position on whether AGW will be significantly beneficial or harmful)
Skeptical Neutral (Uncertain about AGW, but still open to data that might alter this view.)
Skeptical “Tracer” (Accept as provisionally true that CO2 is just a trace gas or some variation of this thought and that anthropogenic increases will have no noticeable affect on the climate in comparison to other natural affects such as solar, cosmic rays, etc. but still honestly open to data that might alter this view.)
Denier – 100% convinced AGW is either not happening or not important to the climate if it is (emotionally or ideologically attached to this position and no longer skeptical and no longer really looking at new data.)
The point here is that Alarmists and Deniers are more like each other, and neither is really open to reason or new data. There is a wide variety of honest skeptics in the middle ranges, and that, so long as they are true skeptics (and only they know if they are or not), they all have the characteristic of only provisionally accepting their position, and therefore are still honestly open to new data that might alter their position, and in fact, seek it out.
“Denier – 100% convinced AGW is either not happening or not important to the climate if it is (emotionally or ideologically attached to this position and no longer skeptical and no longer really looking at new data.)”
A denier could also believe that governments are no more capable of dealing with weather or climate as compared to more obvious and immediate concerns, of which as governments. these governmental bodies are entrusted by the public to with deal with.
No known government has been elected to deal with global climate.
No politician has ever regarded global warming so essential as to warrant campaigning on the issue, and place matter to the public in order to gain the political power to enact policy to would address the problem.
Whereas many politicians throughout history have campaigned on matters which are regarded as important and arguably very costly.
So, is it the deniers which are a problem, or all politicians?
And it should forgotten that Al Gore was vice president for 8 years, and he ran a campaign for president, and it was never a MAJOR part of campaign or something he could convince Bill Clinton to do much about.
Now, we have Obama and Obama [and dems] had both houses of congress.
I like the tracer skeptic. They should make a video to counter the drops of ink in the beaker video. Let’s see, they could take two rectangular aquariums filled with water. Set one in front of the other so camera can look through. Put one drop of black ink in each and look though. Then put another drop of ink in each to show the difference. Cool! A doubling of ink makes a difference! Then put 1785 drops of red ink in the front aquarium. That makes a difference too! Then have the camera pan around to look through the side of the aquariums.
Might be a touch controversial though :)
R Gates,
You’ve still not explained how you’re interpretation differs from the IPCC’s interpretation.
Or is it just that you feel that Global Warming might be a good thing? There’s enough scientific evidence to suggest that it won’t be. Its not something that you can have “no position” on, unless of course you don’t feel you know enough to comment. But what value is an opinion based on a lack of knowledge?
Yes, it is possible to be genuinely sceptical, and to reach a different conclusion to the mainstream. You have to be very able, very knowledgeable, and have the right evidence to back up those conclusions though.
tempterrain,
I’ve not reached any solid level of confidence to accept CAGW as provisionally true. It is not for lack of constantly looking at the data. I certainly have serious concerns about some of the potential effects, but these concerns are more tied into the general footprint of humans on the planet rather than specifically related to AGW (over fishing the oceans and the depletion of ground water for example). But I try to dissect out that which is caused by AGW versus resource depletion, pollution, etc.
Suppose, for example, that, because of AGW, that we send the Earth’s climate back to what it was during the Miocene period? This is sort of a worst case scenario for what AGW might bring about. Tell me exactly why this would be catastrophic for humans or for life on Earth for that matter. Yes, some species would go extinct and others would thrive, but this is the way it has always been on this planet. Honestly though, tell me exactly why a Miocene type climate would be “catastrophic” for humans? Please reference scientific study, facts, data, etc. Yes, the oceans would rise and many cities would need be abandoned, but would this migration be “catastrophic”? To be catastrophic would mean the food chain would have to collapse, wouldn’t it? Would this happen just because the Earth went back to a Miocene-type climate?
Nice comment, RG
I do not deny Climate Change,it is natural and has been occurring for 4.5 Billion years.What I object to(deny) is the so called cause “me”.To blame “me” for 4.5Billion years of Climate Change is really pretty stupid,I must be a little older than 61. around 4,500,000,061 years old ?THE Climate Changes get over it and get a life,The only thing I DENY is the intelligence of AGW Fanatics.Climate Change is Natural and CO2 is Life anything else is rubbish.
Thanks for demonstrating why denier is the right word
Chris,
You must not have realized that Ron was talking about AGW true beleivers in this little bit.
No matter how much class time you spend, no matter how smamry your arrogance, you will still be stupid for buying into AGW extremist garbage.
Exactly agwnonsense, you make sense. The first thing to get over is the Orwellian, linguistic-hockey-stick ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’ etc.
“AGWnonsense” ,
So because the Earth was much warmer many millions of years ago and the Earth’s climate has naturally changed due to asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions, changes in the solar flux, the emergence of plants which produced ~20% oxygen content in the air and which in turn allowed animals to evolve, there’s just no way that 7 billion humans can cause any problem at all. And especially not you! You just contribute a tiny tiny proportion of the Earth’s CO2 yourself!
And Judith wonders, or pretends to, just why we don’t consider the term ‘sceptic’ to be the most appropriate for those, like yourself, who don’t think rationally.
tempterrain, NO! There’s probably a way, but that’s not the point. The point is that climate changes. Is that so difficult to understand? Climate changes, just like it always has.
So you’re saying that because climate has always changed naturally, it is just not possible for any current or future change to be other than natural?
Strawman. No one said anything (except you) about “impossibilities” as that is for simpletons and religious fanatics.
Again, NO. We’re not talking what’s possible but what’s being observed. Like I said, it’s probably possible for humans to change global climate, but I don’t really know.
Nothing unprecedented is happenning with global temperatures
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/climate/images/pcm_ensemble.png
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/files/2010/05/natural_anthropogenic_models_narrow.png
The alleged human impact (AGW) started in ~1960 (significantly). This would be plausible if human CO2 had a significant effect, but even before AGW there was almost the same global warming in the early 20th cenrtury.
The difference between ‘human’ and ‘no human’ from those plots should increase in the next decades, but I am almost 100% convinced that the ‘no human’ will have to be ‘cooled’ continuously to keep the difference growing or at least flat. Now that will be interesting. I wonder what new natural cooling forcings (epicycles) will the consensus come up with.
http://davidappell.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/global-warming-skepticism-to-be-over-by.html
World Is Not Cooling
Despite La Ninas.
Despite Quiet Sun..
Hint Hint.
HUH?
El Ninos are “ANTHROPOGENIC”?
(Duh!)
Max
Wow.
The climatologists have got a lot to do if they are going to end scepticism by Christmas. Here’s just a random list of some of the things that they need to do to sort out their field of work. Not meant to be comprehensive
1. Make some models that accurately forecast future climates and can be repeatedly shown to do so.
2. Experimentally prove that trees really are ‘treemometers’ and not just trees.
3. Provide some theoretical and experimental basis for the idea of ‘teleconnections’
4. Allow and encourage external auditing on all climate-related papers. Provide the materials (code, data, processes, procedures etc) to actively enable these processes
5. Install a robust and independent Quality Control process to replace ‘peer-review’
6. Demonstrate throughout that their IT practices are world-class. To include, but not limited to: data archiving and curation, metadata, version control, software validation and verification, change control, auditing….
7. Show that they actively solicit advice from recognised world experts in related fields (eg statistics, physics, data collection and calibration, Design of safety-critical processes etc etc). Demonstrate that they incorporate such advice in their work, and explain any exceptions
8. Replace paper publishing and grant farming as the sole criteria for career advancement in climatology. This system works against the need for robust, meticulous and independent work.
and so on
These would be quite a task fro a decade, let alone six months.
But Appel thinks they can be done. Good on him.
But on a technical note…how come a purely natural phenomenon can be taken as evidence of AGW? Is it something like a thunderclap being proof of the voice of god?
You do know it’s recently been published that the effects of the Sun are lagged by one whole solar cycle, right?
By treating scientific skepticism as problem to be adressed on a sociological basis, true believers in AGW hope to marginalize their critics. But they wind up only revealing the lack of gravitas in their hyperbolic claims.
Interesting…hyperbolic claims from a closed space? ;oO
John S.,
The problem is not “scientific skepticism.” The problem is that there is a lot of disinformation concerning very elementary points concerning climate and climate change. People who continue to call into question the basic radiative transfer physics, people who continue to cherry-pick selected pieces of information without understanding it, etc are not acting like “skeptics.”
I think you have pretty much been shown to be wrong – the new paradigm is abrupt change rather than warming. Just ask the NAS and WHOI. However, the important issue is the response and not whether this or that is ‘correct’. Except of course where there is a need to link imminent disaster to suspension of democracy and economic ‘degrowth’.
After all – if we all lived the lifestyle I would like to become accustomed to we would need 163 worlds.
Huh? Ask the “NAS” or “WHOI?”…
paradigm for what…?
‘Thinking is centered around slow changes to our climate and how they will affect humans and the habitability of our planet. Yet this thinking is flawed: It ignores the well-established fact that Earth’s climate has changed rapidly in the past and could change rapidly in the future. The issue centers around the paradox that global warming could instigate a new Little Ice Age in the northern hemisphere.’ http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=83339&tid=3622&cid=10046
‘The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.’
ttp://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309074347
Again – the science fascinating as it is to an old natural philosoher like myself – the social response is most crtitical. In an era of high fuel costs – emphasis shifts from peak supply to peak demand as efficiencies and alternatives progressively come into play. As 4th gen nuclear fuel processing moves onto an industrial basis it becomes by far the cheapest supply of standing power. Barring any left field development such as Eric Lerner’s plasmoid fusion. The energy mix in the 2050’s will be much different to that of today. As well – there are farming methods that increase productivity by adding organic material to depleted grazing and cropping soils that have immense potential to sequester carbon, are proceeding by people power and are unstoppable. What me worry?
What I have started worrying about is pissant progressives who advocate suspension of democracy, centralisation of power, curtailing of free market, economic ‘degrowth’ and re-education camps for deniers. The real definition of deniers is failure to believe in caps or taxes as an effective, humane or practical solution.
Seriously – what side are you on?
The fact climate can change ‘abruptly’ is rather well-known, and has been documented for over a decade, regardless of how well-known it is to the general public.
It is certainly “a paradigm,” but I take issue with the wording that the idea of slow changes is flawed. There are many things that can affect climate on many timescales. Some of those processes operate only over millions of years, some operate over years-to-decades. These aren’t mutually exclusive.
You simply resort to tired platitudes – the NAS report is from 2002 and the discussion was a decade old then. You asked who the NAS and WHOI were. I assumed that any American sientist shlould be familiar with the acronyms – but we all have our little foibles.
Climate itself cannot both move abruptly at timescales of years to decades, centuries and millenia – and evolve slowly. The new paradigm is that the system as a whole is a dynamically complex system and the reduction to components is unwarranted.
Tsonis for instance used indices of major modes of NH climte variability to identify 3 climate shifts last century. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
This emphasises if needed the interconectedness of the climate system. Each component is part of a complex and nonlinear mechanism that in concert acts in ways consistent with the behaviour of a broad class of deterministically chaotic systems.
Now you may disagree – but you would be on very shakey scientific ground indeed. Not much removed in fact from narrative unsupported by theory or literature.
Again – interesting as all that is – the question you fail to answer is what social and policy prescriptions you would adopt. We on our side have been clear for the most part that we accept that greenhouse gases are thermoactive – but really not much else is crystal clear. Regardless there are pragmatic ways to address many of the problems of the world some of which I have canvassed in this thread. It seems much more practical to go down these paths than argue caps or taxes for another 20 years.
//”Climate itself cannot both move abruptly at timescales of years to decades, centuries and millenia – and evolve slowly. The new paradigm is that the system as a whole is a dynamically complex system and the reduction to components is unwarranted. “//
You need to take a course in elementary logic.
//”the question you fail to answer is what social and policy prescriptions you would adopt. “//
It was never asked of me, and not one I’m qualified to answer.
Seriously? In complex systems – such as Earth’s climate – there are control variables and non-linear responses. Not sure how that fits with ordered forcing but to suggest a logic deficit is any number of logical fallcies.
You were asked repeatedly about a policy take. It is the most important issue and one in which everyone has a stake. I sugget that qualification in this consists of being a free agent in a western democracy.
“..call into question the basic radiative transfer physics…” For me, the physics are not the issue. The issue is the positive feedback theory that turns AGW into CAGW.
Robert-in-AZ,
The problem is that the “C” is not a scientific term, and there’s no room for debate, only disagreement, on what it means. It’s a value judgment. When people tell you a 1 degree rise is not significant, but a 2 degree rise is, that is a value judgment. Some insect or farmer or person on a low-lying island might find a 1 degree rise in temperature or a half meter rise in sea level significant or “catastrophic.” Other people might not care.
Science can only inform on the relative likelihood of various concentration/emission scenarios and their impacts. And from a scientific perspective, it is very easy to criticize people who think sensitivity will be one degree per doubling of CO2. It is also easy to criticize people who think it will be seven degrees per doubling, and that methane hydrate feedbacks will lead to some sort of imminent catastrophe. The media tends to amplify the extremes in the debate, and it is all too often the case that the public (or people on blogs) don’t even have an idea what the “mainstream scientific view” is.
Chris, the problem is “there’s no room for debate”. For the true believers, any AGW is too much and this notion is reflected in their rhetoric. Look at my description of the imprecise terminology in the paper up thread. Was that deliberate on the part of the authors? Or did it reflect an underlying cognitive bias in how they perceive those with whom they disagree on this issue?
“don’t even have an idea what the “mainstream scientific view” is.”
Hansen, ” Aerosol climate forcing today is inferred to be -1.6±0.3 W/m2, implying substantial aerosol indirect climate forcing via cloud changes. Continued failure to quantify the specific origins of this large forcing is untenable, as knowledge of changing aerosol effects is needed to understand future climate change. We conclude that recent slowdown of ocean heat uptake was caused by a delayed rebound effect from Mount Pinatubo aerosols and a deep prolonged solar minimum. Observed sea level rise during the Argo float era is readily accounted for by ice melt and ocean thermal expansion, but the ascendency of ice melt leads us to anticipate acceleration of the rate of sea level rise this decade.”
A slowdown in ocean heat uptake could also be due to the oceans approaching an equilibrium. A 0.2C over estimate of what “average” SST is would case a 0.8C underestimate of global “average” temperature.
“Trenberth and Fasullo (2010a) show that most models
reflect too little solar radiation in the southern storm tracks and misrepresent in one fashion or another the structure of
the tropical convergence zones (cf., Lin, 2007). Most models reasonably represent the poleward increase of reflected
shortwave radiation in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, presumably because part of this is carried by the
influence of specified surface features such as the Saharan desert and Tibetan Plateau. The models also tend to accurately
represent the remarkable constancy in the globally averaged values, and even the year to year variability within latitude
bands, but almost all fail to properly capture the near equality of the hemispherically averaged values” http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/staff/stevensbjorn/Documents/StevensSchwartz2012.pdf
Hmmm? More ocean in the SH, more land in the NH, water absorbs more solar, more warming over land, land use impact?
So what is the consensus again?
Huh?
Chris, you have Hansen musing on a delayed Pinatubo aerosol impact on ocean heat uptake, Trenberth and gang noting that the models are missing cloud feed backs. Paleo placing more emphasis on “volcanoes dun it” for the little ice age. If the surface temperature of the oceans was below normal from 1250 to 1400 AD until 1910, it just might take more than 100 years for the OHC to recover to “normal”. As I said, a 0.2C underestimation of what “average SST should be would result in the appearance of 0.8C of warming due to something anthropogenic. So what is the consensus? CO2 done it or the more correct answer, “we got no clue?”
capt. dallas…you’ll get answers when you ask the right (and relevant) questions
Chris, if they are not acting like skeptics, pulling apart your dubious hypotheses, what are they acting like? This is science in action.
Er no david this is not science in action. This is words on a blog.
This is writing in action. Not a bit of science to be found.
Chris Colose
If I asked you to reference me just one article that most closely mirrored your view of the past climate back through the Holocene what would you point me to? (note the entire IPCC Ar4 does not count)
As a supplementary question do you believe that now is the warmest time in post holocene history?
tonyb
And all this time I thought science was Bill Nye/Bunsen Honeydew/Beaker in their fabulous nerd glasses and lab coats.
David, with respect, we have fundamentally different ideas about what constitutes “science in action.”
Personally, I’m not sure blogs have really contributed anything to the advancement of science. There are always new fads of the week on the blogosphere and twittersphere; but from a broad perspective, what about atmospheric science has changed in the last decade as a result of blogs?
The “science in action” is being done by scientists. It is being accomplished by people launching satellites like AIRS to monitor global water and energy cycles. It is being done by the people who launched the Kepler satellite to detect small dips in the brightness of distant stars in order to detect the presence of now ~1000 new planets in the last several years, completely re-writing the textbooks on the parameter space of planetary atmospheres, solar system formation, etc. It is being done by people who travel to Greenland and Antarctica that help drill 2+ mile ice cores under harsh conditions. It is being done by modelers who spend their lives developing and checking hundreds of thousands of lines of computer code in an effort to improve our understanding of climate process interactions, and then interacting with people on field campaigns. Interaction is done at scientific conferences like AGU where new ideas are discussed, criticized, evaluated, and checked by new groups.
What “science” has not been done by are people who don’t bother to even read an elementary climate textbook, watch a few youtube videos, and then rant on blogs about their new pet theories of radiative transfer, why oceans are causing the CO2 rise, how Venus’ temperature is caused by pressure, why lack of warming since last week is disproof of AGW, or why “models” are all crap without having actually looked at a single line of model code in their life. The only thing these people accomplish is getting a self-esteem boost by throwing their “on the cutting edge physics” on WUWT or similar blogs and watching fellow bloggers go “rah rah!” When asked to publish, these people say publishing is not important, or that the ideas will be “suppressed.” When asked to build a model that generates explanatory or predictive ability, they don’t, instead appealing to rhetoric or strawman attacks about CAGW alarmism.
There are some exceptions. I can think of a few papers that have been developed as a result of blog interactions. The Steig/O’Donnell “debate” developed into some interesting debate in the literature. The Schmidt et al (2010) paper on partitioning the greenhouse effect I believe came a result of some RC dialogue. A couple people at CA have a few papers in real journals (I’m not talking E&E here). These are all interesting, but there are dozens of new papers that come out every week in several journals. Moreover, the impact that they have had is extremely small and largely confined to a very specialized group of people.
Scientific skepticism and debate is a fundamental component of the literature, if people actually read it. But what is being “debated” are usually much different questions, and have much different implications, than the “undergrad textbook” stuff debated on here. The closest thing to a “science blog” may be Isaac Held’s blog at http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/blog/isaac-held/ but there are others. It does not have a large audience at all because it’s mildly technical, which automatically eliminates many of the self-taught pseudo-skeptics that are so confident they possess hidden knowledge but may have never taken a science course out of high school. It is also not a forum for people to ramble about whatever is on their head that day, or what new unified climate theory they developed after going out on saturday. Other blogs are just to communicate results. Others are to discuss philosophy of science, news, etc.
“David, with respect, we have fundamentally different ideas about what constitutes “science in action.”
Personally, I’m not sure blogs have really contributed anything to the advancement of science. There are always new fads of the week on the blogosphere and twittersphere; but from a broad perspective, what about atmospheric science has changed in the last decade as a result of blogs? ”
Science obviously involves experiments. And experiments could seen as only action involved in science.
It seems to me that blogs are good places to learn things.
Not that someone will teach you something but that they provoke you to look into an issue. Or it’s place to explore different points of view.
And exploration in terms going to different lands, is part of science.
And exploration of ideas is similar to going to a different land.
One bit science you didn’t mention was examination of weather stations, this was enabled by use of a blog. And one part of that lead Best [Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature].
Maybe there is uncertain elements regarding blogs in terms of value in regard to science. But there doesn’t seem to be a negative aspect about them, and there are sometimes fun.
gbaikie
I agree blogs can be fun and exploratory. But there’s a risk for people who actually want to learn things but don’t have the background to evaluate the subtle arguments that sound convincing but may be completely off-base. Believe it or not, most of the general public recognizes that they need to turn to expertise on matters they are not trained in, despite this being seen as an inherent fallacy in blog wars. By contrast, most bloggers think they know much more than they actually do.
So how then does one discriminate between the quality of a post by Isaac Held and a post by Anthony Watts? Again, most people recognize the importance of credentials and credibility, whether or not bloggers appreciate that fact of life. But the casual onlooker may not know about any of this; they may not check the publication record of the presenter, or be aware of how that individual is viewed by the broader community. It’s even worse when a few minority scientists are amplified on the internet as being representative of the scientific community, or at least one half of the scientific community. The peer-reviewed literature is not often a great resource for such people to, because the scientific literature is intended for a trained audience. An enlightening quote from Gavin Schmidt is:
//”A scientist reading a paper can often appreciate whether it is interesting or important from a quick skim of the methodology, a figure or two and the principal results. Their experience teaches them to pay little attention to the occasional piece of overreach in the last paragraph and to fill in the sometimes understated background. By contrast, a lay person might focus much more on the easy-to-understand ‘throwaway’ comments, and spend little time evaluating the usefulness of the technique, or the implications of any missing context…This is where blogs can help. Much of the information in any field of science is tacit. The latest climate papers do not generally explain why five ensemble members are used in a particular climate model experiment, or what the ‘wiggles’ in the curves mean, or why water vapour is treated differently from carbon dioxide even though they are both greenhouse gases. Scientists generally absorb this background knowledge through a kind of osmosis in graduate school. They continue to pick it up at coffee and over dinner at conferences and workshops as they discuss the latest results.”//
@chris colose
I am finding your postings increasingly difficult to distinguish from
‘nobody without a degree in radiative physics is even qualified to have an opinion about AGW’
and
‘trust us you little uneducated and stupid people. we are ‘climate scientists. we know best’
which are infuriatingly arrogant and do your cause no good.
It may be different in your country but the natural reaction to such pomposity in the UK is deeply unfavourable.
We are not all stupid and we are definitely not convinced that ‘climate scientist’ know best. Many of us have been around the block a few times in our careers (see denizens thread), and do not share your view of climatologists as fearless seekers after truth to be set upon a pedestal with their every utterance revered.
But rather as just a bunch of tekkies paid by the public to help understand what might be a problem. And proving to be remarkably bad at adopting and using even basic processes and procedures to do so convincingly. To persuade people, you need to sharpen up your act considerably.
Latimer,
I’m not really here to win your favor. My general impression is that people tend to ask questions about things they are interested in but don’t have knowledge about. It has nothing to do with being “intelligent” or “stupid,” and it most certainly doesn’t have anything to do with scientists being arrogant. People aren’t born with a natural intuition about most of this stuff. Instead, they go through years upon years of graduate school, attend conferences, read papers, work out problems, and learn this stuff. I fully recognize that most people don’t have the ability to do this because they have other obligations be it work, family, etc. Those people can still play a role in science, and engaging in dialogue. But the people who create toy models and declare with absolute confidence that the mainstream science is all wrong or corrupt are the arrogant ones, and should be treated as such.
I don’t go up to an astrophysicist and tell him that decades of work on black holes are all wrong because I did a quick thought experiment in my head and decided none of it made sense. No one is treating people stupid because they don’t know something or are asking questions. They are treating them stupid because they are acting stupid.
“But there’s a risk for people who actually want to learn things but don’t have the background to evaluate the subtle arguments that sound convincing but may be completely off-base. ”
I don’t see the risk.
I could see the risk if students were forced to be in class.
First we assume most are adults. But even if there were
all children I still do not see a risk.
Reminds of joke. Wait honey, someone is wrong on the internet
http://xkcd.com/386/
And about about all 120 chars of less in twitter which flooding
all kinds “wrong ideas”
Or in the older days, chat rooms. Do they still
have those [anyone? Never liked them.]
The only problem with such things as: Mars: “Evidence of Life and Past Civilizations?”
http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa060302a.htm
Is there a waste of time. And boring.
Nope. We don’t need minders.
But if worried about it create FAQ or something that answers common question or misunderstand. And then give the link.
Chris
You ask:
– Start by reading the post: what message is it trying to convey?
– If a scientific claim is involved, check for empirical evidence to support this claim: is the claim supported by actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation? Or is it only based on theoretical deliberations and/or model simulations?
In other words, rely on “argument from evidence” rather than on “argument from authority”
Max
Chris Colose
There are reasons that there are thousands of concerned people blogging about Climate Science and hardly any blogging about Astrophysics.
IPCC style Climate Science predicts catastrophe in pretty short order unless we dislocate the economies of the industrialized world.
Climate ‘Science’ is the only branch of science where data is routinely withheld and where the FIA has to be used to prise it from reluctant ‘scientists’ .
The climategate files show a shocking disregard for the normal modes of science.
Where else but in Climate Science would you find cut and paste graphs “to hide the decline “.
People who dare to ask questions about the CO2 greenhouse gas theory are insultingly labelled “deniers”
Im sure if I asked an Astrophysicist about dark matter I would get an informed and civilized reply.
This has forced thousands of scientifically qualified people to look more closely at the practises and theory underpinning the IPCC recommendations.
For instance I have in the past noticed that you do not have a clue about thermodynamic heat.
So please excuse us for daring to question what the IPCC proposes.
After all we are the schmucks who have to pay for the IPCC and Climate Science through our taxes.
Bryan, you are perhaps unaware of the Big Bang vs Steady State rows, the rows about existence of black holes, the rows about the causes of active galactic nuclei, the current rows about inflationary theory (which touch on your reference to dark matter). I suspect one would get a polite answer about dark matter up until the point that one claimed that it’s all a fraud to get grants for new telescopes to search for non-existent objects.
@chris colose
Bryan, above, almost answers for me about the reasons why many are deeply suspicious of climatologists.
Simply put, you are all working a problem said to be ‘the most important humanity has ever faced’. And yet whenever we look in detail at the way in which you guys go about the business we employ you to do for us we see sharp practice, dodgy dealing and total amateurism everywhere.
It is rampant in climatology. Lets take some examples:
Data processing – in its widest sense – is a very important part of much of climatology. There is a lot of data and it undergoes lost of processing before being published. Professional IT has developed ways and techniques to guarantee that we know how to do this. That we know what our data is, where it is, what it means, how to process it, how to prove we did it right and how to put it away and get it back. You might think that mastering such basic stuff would be among the first thing that anyone who claims to be a professional climatologist would do. Like a doctor being able to use a stethoscope or a geologist a hammer. They might turn to the outside world guys and get some help about how to do it right. They might gain some basic IT qualifications.
But no. We need only read about poor Harry’s experiences at the CRU to realise that they can’t even get that far. Things such as organising a simple file structure – that any windows user can do – are beyond them. And it s worth noting that ’eminent’ climatologist Phil Jones cannot actually manage to use Excel without handholding. As a professional IT guy I an safely say that the IT standards are a joke.
Let’s turn to statistics. There is a thriving academic discipline and a big constituency of statistical practitioners in the real world. Here, for example, is a link to today’s statistics jobs on offer in London. There is a lot of statistical expertise around. Doing statistics on climate data is a big big part of climatology. One might expect that they would get some professional statistical advice about their methods.
But no. Just like IT. they don’t bother.They do their own amateur thing. And when it all goes t**s up and a pair of professional statisticians eventually get to look at the work it is torn to shreds.
Let’s look at Quality Control. Here’s a field which suddenly had a hosepipe of money thrown at it. Lots of new people, lots of new ideas …some good, some bad, some plain daft. It is pretty clear that a rigorous QC function is needed.
But no.Instead we have ‘peer review’. And we can read about its many deficiencies in Climategate…it is weak, it is very prone to cronyism and it is often superficial (‘I see if it feels right’).
So if QC fails, at least we have auditing. We know the work is good because at any point the work can be audited by anybody and deficiencies exposed.
But no. It has been a general practice in the field to actively prevent anybody from auditing (or even seeing) the details of the work performed. When obliged to by law consent is given reluctantly, with ill-grace and with the urgency of a snail’s pace. It is difficult to imagine louder or brighter signals that there is something to hide. Jones (again) admitted in Parliament that in over 200 published papers, nobody had ever checked his arithmetic or programming. (And apparently not his Excel either)
Let’s try your field – modelling. To 99% of the human race a model is judged by the success of its predictions. Einstein’s work on the orbit of Mercury – successfully predicting tiny changes in its position – was a tremendous boost to belief in relativity for there was actual experimental evidence that it worked. One might think that climate modellers would relish in displaying their predicitive abilities and showing how well their models match nature. Rightly or wrongly, if you can show that you predict the simple things right, people are much more inclined to believe in your abilities with the more complex ones.
But no. You guys run a mile from ever doing anything so testable as a prediction. But you assure us that – though you score negative on recent global temperatures ..they didn’t match up …we can be assured that you are right about things in the far distant futur beyond the time when we will all be dead. Yeah right.
So in five areas we have looked at in important pieces of climatology (there ain’t really much left that isn’t covered), we have:
Completely inadequate and unprofessional DP/IT.
Bizarre, unusual and inadequate statistics.
Ineffective/corrupted Quality Control
Non-existent and actively resisted Audit
Modelling that has no proven predictive skill
Now tell me again about how a bunch of climatologists – all of whom seem to think that this litany of organisational and structural disaster is just part of the natural way of things.- sitting around telling each other what a splendid job they are all doing, and writing ‘independent’ reports praising each other to the skies, are doing such a fantastic job?
Show me the truly independent reports on their data collection, their IT , their QC, their auditing, their statistics, their modelling that tell me that not only do they use these techniques to their own satisfaction, but that they match up to the best professional standards available anywhere in the world…in academe or commerce or safety-critical operations.
Because if ‘climate change’ truly is the most important problem humanity has ever faced, we should be adopting those best standards throughout the work. Not being satisfied with playground imitations of what the big boys do. Where publishing the paper to game the system is more important than being right, Where ‘why should I show you my data? You’ll only try to find something wrong with it’ is considered perfectly normal and acceptable ‘professional’ behaviour.
So Chris – and colleagues – if you want me to revise my opinion that there is a great deal wrong with the structure and organisation of climatology – the answer s in your hands. Reform it.
And if you want me to stop thinking that there are a lot of shysters involved, persuade them to stop acting like shysters.
Latimer Alder rather pompously states:
You see, people have “natural reactions” to scientific discussion and that reaction is “deeply unfavourable”.
More in keeping with the discussion is to talk about Uncertainty Monsters, Delinquent Teenagers, T-Rex (McKitrick/Essex/McIntyre name for temperature devouring the planet), Sky-Dragons, the Iron-Sun, and all these bogeymen wielding hockey sticks threatening to club us over the head with.
Way to go Team Skeptic!
Boy scientist in training Chris Colose tells us one more thing he’s not sure of:
And yet here he is blogging away and even leaving a link to his own blog. Anyone surprised at the irony?
You’ll have to excuse Lati – a bad case of i’ve-got-a-hammer-so-every-problem-is-a-nail.
In his case; I’m an IT professional, so climate science is a joke.
I’m convinced!!
@michael, michael
Did you not comprehend the summary I so helpfully gave? Here it is again;
‘Completely inadequate and unprofessional DP/IT.
Bizarre, unusual and inadequate statistics.
Ineffective/corrupted Quality Control
Non-existent and actively resisted Audit
Modelling that has no proven predictive skill’
So, though I certainly included IT (it would be hard not to), my criticisms extend to four other fundamental areas as well. Only space limitations prevented a longer essay.
You can, of course, try to persuade us all that there is something so very special about climatology that inventing its own brand of statistics is absolutely essential, that having unknown data lying uncatalogued and not understood in a data centre is acceptable in climatology where it wouldn’t be in (say) medical records or a bank.
And best of all – how active resistance to any form of audit/scrutiny enhances rather than diminishes the credibility of the whole ‘profession’. We all know that self-assertion of probity is a fine and spectacularly successful way to ensure honesty and integrity in other fields. ‘I did not have sex with that woman’, ‘The President is not a crook’ etc
Fire away…I’m listening.
Chris Colose said:
“Personally, I’m not sure blogs have really contributed anything to the advancement of science.”
____
Agree, but that is not their function. These are social gatherings…public discussions of things that interest those who read and post here.
The only advancement of science is made by research and experiment and the gathering of new data (i.e. information) which in turn helps to confirm or refute a specific hypothesis or even an entire theory. Thus, advancement of science is an information intensive proposition, and specifically it is NEW information that drives science forward. Those of us who appreciate the advancement of science owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who tirelessly are in the field gathering data or in labs conducting experiments and gathering data. This raw new information is the fuel that eventually propels science forward. Mind you, this is not to slight the those who create theories, but those theories are just just the wispy stuff of dreams until someone (usually not the creator of the theory) makes the effort to actually gather data that confirms or refutes the theory. I’m thinking specifically of Eddington’s 1919 confirmation of Einstein’s prediction of the deflection of light by the sun. Einstein was obviously brilliant, but without Eddington’s data, Einstein’s theory would be empty, though lovely dream-stuff. Kind of like modern String Theory.
While blogs certainly produce a lot of information, it is not new information added to the whole. Blogs are the modern version of the corner pub. Some of us are smart and spend time at both. :)
Chris
You’re missing the point entirely.
The issue is precisely “scientific skepticism” (or “rational skepticism”), as defined by Wiki:
The key here, Chris, is the empirical data to support the claim.
In the case of the CAGW claim (made by IPCC) there are no empirical data based on actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation to support this claim.
Ergo, there are those who are “rationally skeptical” of the CAGW claim until such empirical evidence is provided.
It’s just that simple and we can forget all the psychobabble about what makes “deniers” behave as they do.
Max
The surface is cooled predominantly by non-radiative heat transfer, while on the other hand the atmosphere is cooled exclusively by radiative transfer to space. Basic heat transfer physics requires this to be solved properly, which it hasn’t. If anything, increased CO2 will enhance emissivity of the atmosphere. Basic ‘radiative transfer physics” doesn’t magically means AGW. Furthermore, the change in atmospheric CO2 seems to be dependent on climatic factors mostly, so when the warmth declines, the growth in CO2 will reduce and eventually become negative. The CO2 emissions reduction/trading business is just a bureaucratic verbiage and no reduction will really occur, and even if it does, it will reduce the global temperature by an insignificant amount, according to the official sensitivity estimates.
Everything that Edim said is wrong. It is not worthwhile to correct unless one prefaces each statement with a “not”.
Grade: F-
Nature’s phenomena will decide what’s wrong.
And nature will give final grades. For the consensus scientists I expect F-.
Web Hub Telescope: Everything that Edim said is wrong.
That is not true. Consider this: The surface is cooled predominantly by non-radiative heat transfer, while on the other hand the atmosphere is cooled exclusively by radiative transfer to space.
That’s basically correct. The exact balance of the energy transferred from the surface via radiative and convective processes seems not to be accurately known (as far as I have read to date), but non-radiative processes dominate. If you have some good measurements from some studies somewhere, I would sure like to read those studies.
Most of the rest of what Edim wrote has solid evidentiary support.
MattStat also gets an F- grade for agreeing with the sentence “If anything, increased CO2 will enhance emissivity of the atmosphere.”
Translation: MattStat asserts the GHG effect is incorrect.
And that grade is confirmed for agreeing with the sentence “Furthermore, the change in atmospheric CO2 seems to be dependent on climatic factors mostly, so when the warmth declines, the growth in CO2 will reduce and eventually become negative. “
Translation: MattStat asserts that excess CO2 is not caused by burning of fossil fuels.
WebHubTelescope: MattStat asserts the GHG effect is incorrect.
You can’t read.
First it is really child’s play to debunk a contrarian simpleton such as Edim.
Second, why stick up for the guy?
You know and I know the guy would have been flunked out of any decent engineering school.
WebHubTelescope: Second, why stick up for the guy?
I am sticking up for the propositions that he wrote. Consider this one: Basic ‘radiative transfer physics” doesn’t magically means AGW. That’s correct: to get AGW you have to assume that nothing else happens. Try this one: The CO2 emissions reduction/trading business is just a bureaucratic verbiage and no reduction will really occur, and even if it does, it will reduce the global temperature by an insignificant amount, according to the official sensitivity estimates. Each half of the sentence is certainly defensible.
And this from you: Everything that Edim said is wrong. Everything that he wrote is defensible, and does not become true simply by prefacing it with “not”.
Paraphrasing what I wrote to Chris Colose: basic radiative transfer physics does not describe all of the energy transfer in the environment. The theory of energy transfer in the environment is neither complete nor demonstrably accurate enough to rely on for long-term planning.
There is, of course, scientific ineptitude on both sides of the debate. But the burden falls upon those who make the claim of “settled science.” Even the most eminent of them often show no capabilty of distinguishing between coherent signal transmission through a semitransparent atmosphere (a well-undersood problem) and diffusive transfer of thermal energy through all mechanisms, including moist convection (a poorly understood problem). And there is scarcely a more egregiously biased data base than that of station records, which come overwhelmingly from urban locations throughout much of the world. That covers the main pillars of scientific skepticism on theoretical and empirical grounds.
Chris Colose: People who continue to call into question the basic radiative transfer physics, people who continue to cherry-pick selected pieces of information without understanding it,
For myself, I call into question not the “basic radiative transfer physics” but the completeness and accuracy of the atmospheric models: all of the equations are approximations, the response of clouds to CO2 increase and warming are not well known, yet AGW proponents act as though a slight increase in temp following a long increase in CO2 is a sure thing. Also, my “cherry-picking” consists of drawing attention to the data that the cherry-picking AGW proponents deny; that is, I aim to complete the picture. When all the models and all of the evidence are surveyed, the knowledge is not sufficiently complete or accurate for the global warming alarmism to be taken seriously.
You recommended the book “An introduction to Dynamic meteorology” by James R. Holton that you recommended. It is ideal for me for right now. Thank you. I also ordered the book by your professor that you recommended, but it has not yet arrived. I thank you for that recommendation as well.
Holton’s book has very few comparisons of equations to data, but he does preface a few derivations with words such as “qualitatively” and “approximately”. It seems to be hard to understand that a scientific theory may be mostly right, yet not accurate enough or complete enough for a given purpose. Scientists still routinely use Newton’s laws for guiding the rockets in space research: they they proved inadequate for modeling the precession of the perihelion of Mercury; that leaves some people wondering whether they are “true”. The knowledge that was invested in building bridges enabled the construction of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge, and those bridges stand as testimony to the reliability of the knowledge; but the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed because the very same knowledge was shown to be incomplete. Science is replete with this sort of thing: scientific principles that work well right up until they fail.
Picking up on Web Hub Telescope’s frequent refrain: fossil fuel depletion and AGW together are sufficient threats that humans should continue to develop alternative energy supplies and be prepared to deploy them more massively than we have to date. Indeed, continued investments in solar, wind, biofuels and nuclear energy are proceeding. Costs of solar, wind and biofuels are decreasing (construction of new nuclear reactors of new designs is progressing.) They might very well become cost-competitive with fossil fuels without subsidies (and they already are in some locations.)
I think it is reprehensible that some supporters of AGW continue to write and speak as though the knowledge is complete and accurate. The most obvious message in the books and articles that I have read is how much is not known about energy transfer in the atmosphere.
oops: You recommended the book “An introduction to Dynamic meteorology” by James R. Holton that you recommended.
I meant that I have purchased it.
A collection catalogue:
A cluster of stars
A swarm of flies
A congestion of traffic
A gathering of tribes
A congress of senators
A gaggle of geese
A pod of whales
A flock of sheep.
A multitude of queries
A crusade of climatologists
A heap of uncertainties
A psychobabble of alarmists.
A Cain of Denizens.
An arrogance of believers.
Lolwot, I sometimes get the impression you’re all of 14 years old.
I’m curious. When you’re not doing your troll act on the Internet, how do you occupy your time? Do you work? What line are you in?
I manage and distribute carbon credits and sell solar panels and wind turbines. You?
vested interests then
I have a dear friend who up until recently was in the renewable energy credit field. Like you she passionately believes human kind is threatened by global warming. Her passion doesn’t make her right, nor do her opinions on the matter make her any less of a friend. It does make for some good arguments.
Manage and distribute carbon credits? That would seem to be a difficult sale in the current market.
Thus the “up until recently” phrase.
‘…I firmly believe in anthropogenic climate change, I deny that the “science is settled” and I am skeptical toward catastrophic anthropogenic climate change…’
Failure of the imagination I say. With abrupt climate change – the new paradigm to replace AGW – the stage is set for radical change within as little as a decade possible at any time from natural causes – let alone with the interesting experiment of anthropogenic emissions in the mix (NAS Committee on Abrupt Climate Change 2002, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Abrupt Climate Change Page, Royal Society 2010). Oddly and despite being dynamically complex systems themselves – the models (and most of the scientists) have missed this element of dynamically complex behavior. In the models – that has more to do with post-hoc model plausibility evaluation than actual model behavior (James McWilliam 2007).
Frankly I think that the failure to believe that caps or taxes provide a sufficient, humane or practical solution is the real crime. How often have you heard that we accept that climate change is obviously the norm but think that there might be better solutions than those necessitating the suspension of democracy and economic ‘degrowth’. Indeed, I get the impression that reducing western incomes to that of an African small hold farmer or the urban impoverished of Kolkata is the main aim of many warminista – aka pissant progressives. I mention the potential for a lack of liquidity in a depauperate global market to lead a chaotic economic death spiral just to rebalance the picture.
Ultimately the real solutions involve technological innovation. I had an idea. There are toys that have turbines arranged around the edge of a disk or at the end of cross arms which is then capable of stable flight. There are helium cooled nuclear engines that can run turbines in a closed cycle – these have been in development since the 1960’s. With due regard to limits to growth – let’s use nitrous oxide instead of helium and scale up. I’m envisaging high altitude launch platforms, floating cities, battle cruisers in the sky (for search and rescue of course), mobile hotels, etc. I only mention this because my second to last idea was for cameras on little helicopters. Now the damn things are everywhere.
You know how people sometimes say things that seem to bear no relation to your reality at all? My penultimate idea was that this is because people reach a tipping point and spontaneously shift into an alternate universe. So we are all shifting between alternate universes all the time. It explains much about the current debate. Unfortunately I am having a little difficulty in believing the many worlds interpretation of wave/particle duality and shall have to count this as provisionally untrue.
In the interim the best and cheapest solution involves people power and conservation farming. We have farmers at Rio able to increase small holder productivity by 100% – as well as sequester huge amounts of carbon. How much this will be listened to by the government types and pissnat prgressive is another question. I am a bit over people who want to save the world but don’t have a practical bone in their bodies. There are many other solutions that are based on economic growth and democratic institutions. I am for solutions that ensure that this is the century that humanity comes of age.
Best regards
Captain Kangaroo
“Analyzing people who talk about AGW denialism”
After myriad Margaret Mead style musings on the psychology, brain structure and pathology of conservatives. a brief foray into the study of the workings of the warmist mind.
Will wonders never cease. Now if only we can get a post psychologically analyzing those with a desperate need to always be in the muddled middle.
“Moderates and Independents on Climate Change: A Case Study in Decision Avoidance – Coping Mechanism or Chronic Congenital Irresoltution?”
I wonder if I could get federal funding.
“Moderates and Independents on Climate Change: A Case Study in Decision Avoidance – Coping Mechanism or Chronic Congenital Irresolution?”
Too funny, GaryM.
@numbnut
I guess you get all your ‘facts’ from ‘scepeticalscience’?
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/AAIndex.htm
The muddled middle … neither out far nor in deep?
neverendingaudit,
A train of thought.
Beth Cooper,
A rose bud.
Chris Colose “The problem is that there is a lot of disinformation concerning very elementary points concerning climate and climate change.” I guess his focus is on having the right message; maybe winning a PR war of words. So AGW is a message that people need to “de-” something, de-growth, de-economic development, in other words, cut back, restrict, reduce consumption, capitalism, whatever.
Chief mentioned it in passing, more people need more energy to grow crops, to invest in infrastructure, to turn the wheels of progress with electrons instead of muscle power.
Only when electrons are cheap and free flowing, can the human mind turn from subsistence to imaginative plans, hopes and dreams for a future.
People who emphasize de-ing something do not appear to me to be hopeful or optimistic people. Rather, like Eeyore, gray-bodied, sad and forlorn, they mope around the forest having lost, or, maybe never really had, a vision of a bright future.
I characterize skeptics as optimistic and advocates for CAGW as pessimists. Judging by the life expectancy of optimistic people vs pessimistic people, it looks like the skeptics will be around long enough to see whether the world goes belly up or not. Pessimists won’t be around to collect any wagers they may have made.
“It is commonly assumed that convincing deniers that climate change is real is necessary for them to act pro-environmentally. However, the likelihood of ‘conversion’ using scientific evidence is limited because these attitudes increasingly reflect ideological positions.”
Self righteous arrogant morons…….it’s time to tell it like it is.
I do wish those who continually accuse me of ‘having an ideological position’ would explain exactly which ideological position I am supposed to have.
It seems to be the successor to the Big Oil Well Organised And Funded Anti-Science Denier Conspiracy that is dying a slow death since the revelation that Bad Boys Heartland took something like $25K dollars from the Evil Koch Brothers to do healthcare research.
It is hard to make charges of slavering global conspiracies to bring down the masses of ‘hard working climate scientists, seekers after objective truth etc etc’ stick when the annual budget involved is only about that of three comfy return tickets from Heathrow to Rio. (£5,202 each with BA, Business Class)
So having, at long last, given up on the BOWOAFASDC schtick on the basis that it was making them look increasingly stupid, they now come out with instalment 2….’ideological position’.
Upthread some daft guy accused me of ‘having coal interests close to my vest’. The accuser clearly has no grasp of UK history nor of the place of coal in it now and formerly. It is true, I could be a mine owner, living in the big house and forcing poor defenceless peasants to work in hellish conditions in the dark for the rest of their natural lives. Pausing only from counting my bags of gold and giving Burns-like cackles to rejoice that I was destroying humanity at the same time. For some of my late father’s uncles, life was indeed like that. And I just about remember them working at Cynheidre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynheidre_Colliery
But the coal industry in UK was nationalised 64 years ago. It has just not been possible to take a ‘coal interest’ even if I wanted to.
So come on all you guys who say I have ‘an ideological position’ Show some evidence. You will find as much as you did for the BOWOAFASDC theory. Put up or shut up.
I’ll oblige.
I’m waiting.
Don’t forget to put in some evidence to back up your assertions.
A few common themes from the conservative play-book (you know, tax, big govt, self-interest, ‘elites’, yada yada yada……),
“some taxpayer funded asshole”
“our burden under the warmist yoke”
“your ivory tower musing and speculating….But if you and your colleagues want to continue your paid employment at my expense….”
“not going to support the demolition of our existing economic system because of fears over sealevel rise “
“I don’t really give a toss about whether future generations may or may not have to put another brick or two in the NYC sea wall…..”
And the ever-popular anti-environmental reflex;
“Hilarious. The Great and the Green gather in Rio to ‘Save the Planet’…….I hope that hurts the smug self-righteous bastards”
“So look back in a couple of years, and I think/hope that you’ll find that the worst days of the Green Terror are behind us. It won’t come by victory in one big battle, but by the gradual but persistent erosion of the lunatics’ power base”
But you know who has enabled this Great Green Menace, don’t you?
“Our government explicitly add to our energy prices (electricity) to pay huge subsidies for windmills and solar panels. It is a national scam, and they would not be doing it without an obsession with ‘carbon emissions’. Climate science is a direct cause of this…..”
Yes, those evil climate scientists…….the bastards!
And so they are fair game for the usual denier abuse and vitriol…err…..dialogue;
“I wouldn’t trust those shysters to go to the end of the road and post a letter for me. Let alone use them as advisers on ‘the greatest problem facing humanity today’. They sacrificed their credibility as anything other than rent-seeking charlatans a long long time ago.”
“Team Daily Orders or Books by our Great Leader Jim, The Autobiography of Mike – the World’s Greatest Living Scientist (and ever so modest with it) or The Thoughts of Chairman Gavin at RC”
“But it also makes Mike Mann’s continued ranting about it make him appear even more of a dickhead than I thought. And that is saying a lot.”
“if climatologist aren’t a total bunch of shysters”
“I have absolutely no desire to be told t ‘f**k off asshole. We are Climate Scientists and don’t you forget it scumbag’ by Schmidt, Mann or or their minions once again.”
Ideology? Surely not!
A few common themes from the conservative play-book (you know, tax, big govt, self-interest, ‘elites’, yada yada yada……)
“some taxpayer funded asshole”
“our burden under the warmist yoke”
“your ivory tower musing and speculating….But if you and your colleagues want to continue your paid employment at my expense….”
“not going to support the demolition of our existing economic system because of fears over sealevel rise “
“I don;t really give a toss about whether future generations may or may not have to put another brick or two in the NYC sea wall…..”
And the ever-popular anti-environmental reflex;
“Hilarious. The Great and the Green gather in Rio to ‘Save the Planet’…….I hope that hurts the smug self-righteous bastards”
“So look back in a couple of years, and I think/hope that you’ll find that the worst days of the Green Terror are behind us. It won’t come by victory in one big battle, but by the gradual but persistent erosion of the lunatics’ power base”
But you know who has enabled this Great Green Menace, don’t you?
“Our government explicitly add to our energy prices (electricity) to pay huge subsidies for windmills and solar panels. It is a national scam, and they would not be doing it without an obsession with ‘carbon emissions’. Climate science is a direct cause of this…..”
Yes, those evil climate scientists…….the bastards!
And so they are fair game for the usual denier abuse and vitriol…err…..dialogue;
“I wouldn’t trust those shysters to go to the end of the road and post a letter for me. Let alone use them as advisers on ‘the greatest problem facing humanity today’. They sacrificed their credibility as anything other than rent-seeking charlatans a long long time ago.”
“Team Daily Orders or Books by our Great Leader Jim, The Autobiography of Mike – the World’s Greatest Living Scientist (and ever so modest with it) or The Thoughts of Chairman Gavin at RC”
“But it also makes Mike Mann’s continued ranting about it make him appear even more of a dickhead than I thought. And that is saying a lot.”
“if climatologist aren’t a total bunch of shysters”
“I have absolutely no desire to be told t ‘f**k off asshole. We are Climate Scientists and don’t you forget it scumbag’ by Schmidt, Mann or or their minions once again.”
I think you’ve successfully shown that I don’t have a lot of time or respect for ‘climatologists, and those alarmists who follow them. No surprises there.
But I don’t think that you can claim that as ‘an ideology’.
If so then your claim of ‘ideological conviction’ would be circular,, viz –
‘Those who criticise climatologists do so because they don’t have much time or respect for climatologists’. Well, yes already, but that hardly adds very much to the discussion
In case you missed it. here are my latest observations on why I think climatology has some fundamental flaws.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/06/19/analyzing-people-who-talk-about-agw-denialism/#comment-211022
They are asked to do a grown up professional job yet stubbornly refuse to use adult tools. Preferring to stick with those of the playground. Not to acknowledge that the adult world even exists.
And thanks so much for helping me with the first draft of
‘The Wit and Wisdom of Latimer Alder’
(order now for Christmas..available at all good booksellers, Kindle edition soon)
Nice try Lati, but no banana.
You hate the climate scientists from a political standpoint- they enabled the “Green Terror”.
The rest is just fluff and nonsense.
@michael
I’m flattered and delighted that my rhetorical flourishes made such a deep impression. But I think you are still a long way away from proving an ‘ideology’.
I am no great fan of Southend United FC in the UK either and have been known to write disobliging things about them too. But I doubt that you’d describe my dislike as based on an ideology. No more than an Arsenal fan dislikes Spurs.
For ‘ideology’ you need to try harder..or redefine the word. Lmme guess. You’ll redefine the word. These are the days of the New GreenSpeak.
I agree with you Latimer/Stirling. You don’t have an ideology. You are an armchair expert with time on your hands, a wish to get a reaction from other people and a desire for everything to be just like the olden days.
Your desire to get other people believing the same as you is secondary as you are able to root out like-minded people for any persuasion on the web (so I’m told). Running multiple personalities on a range of websites is done to double or treble your options for a “hit” rather than extending your reach. I have friends who play fruit machines for similar reasons.
It’s possible that you are a robot, in which case I have to admit you are a much more sophisticated model than hunter.
@steve milesworthy
Its just a shame that the reaction from insiders like yourself is to try to shoot the messenger, rather than deal with the message.
If you spent half as much effort on a moral crusade to clean up climatology as you do in berating other bloggers for their supposed moral failings, then we’d all have better science.
But no. you prefer to spend hours analysing and theorising other’s motives rather than saying ‘F..k me…a whole ‘science’ where there is no effective quality control or auditing cannot be right. We must do something to correct it’
I believe it is called ‘seeing the wood for the trees’
Latimer,
I’m not shooting a messenger. I’m attempting to tackle a peddler of incorrect information who point blank refuses to do the research he could easily do to prove that he is wrong and can’t do any better than to bring up harry_readme.
For example, I’ve just searched to see if any of your handles had bothered to make enquiries at, say, http://www.easterbrook.ca, who researches into quality control of software including climate modelling software, and couldn’t find anything. I happened then to look at allmodelsarewrong where your one input is to match Easterbrook’s abrasiveness with your own – I’m sure you could both manage to be relatively civil to each other if you really are someone who has software engineering experience.
So I suggest you spend more time investigating and less time inventing new pseudonyms. One is enough.
Please allow me to commend to everyone — Latimer and Mike especially — the well-reasoned and respectfully expressed analysis that was posted by The Skeptical Warmist (aka R. Gates).
As anyone can verify for themselves, Gates’s comment conveys 10X more information, in 1/10X the words, than Latimer’s and Mike’s.
Latimer and Mike, please take a lesson from The Skeptical Warmist! :)
Steve,
So now you’re letting fan, of all people, and her smiley-face flash-mob do your fighting for you! Have you no shame, Sir!
mike, I’ve not followed the thread too closely, so I don’t know who you are calling a cockroach. You’ve got a nasty way of talking so I stopped reading your post after the first couple of paragraphs.
At least Latimer chooses memorable names. Michael/Mike are too common to remember who they are/what they posted in the past.
Steve,
Yr: “…I don’t know who you are calling a cockroach.”
To quote the famous Christ Colose: “Huh?” So where in this thread did I call someone a “cockroach”? Show me.
You’re gettin’ delusional on us, guy. I mean, like, Steve, seeing imaginary “cockroaches” is not a a good sign. No siree!
“I’m flattered and delighted that my rhetorical flourishes made such a deep impression. But I think you are still a long way away from proving an ‘ideology’.”
Lati,
Yes, it’s just rhetoric from you.
Political deniers haven’t much else.
My previous: “To quote the famous Christ Colose…”
Oopsy-daisy! Of course, that should read “To quote the famous Chris [no “t” at the end] Colose with the messiah complex…”
@steve milesworthy
Thanks for your remarks about software quality control. I haven’t even begun to look at that yet since the problems identified in Harry_Read_Me aren’t even that complex. They are simple data control/IT management ones. What have I got? where is it? and what does it mean?.
A very simple, but useful , definition of data processing is that programs work on files to create new files. You need both bits. If you can’t even manage your files, whatever you do with the programs is immaterial.
Harry shows us that CRU do not have any consistent or reliable way for dealing with these fundamental data management tasks. That they should be entrusted with the most important dataset in the history of humanity – or some such bollocks – beggars belief. If the manager of the local convenience store at the end of the record kept his files in such a state he would be fired for gross incompetence. And possibly investigated for fraud.
Steve,
Fruit Machines:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/25540695794
Thanks,
willard
Then mike flat-out lies when he says:
Lower-case mike is basically a first-class liar, no different that all the other lying fake skeptics that infest this blog’s comments section. He thinks he can lie with impunity because he (just like Latimer does) takes us for a bunch of rubes and gullible fools.
He thinks the comment is gone (“Show me.”) because it got deleted, but voila, here is a link to mike’s comments to vindicate what Steve Milesworthy claimed:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47301326/mike_comment_etc.txt
That particular comment got deleted but not before I saw it in my feed. And no wonder it got deleted, as he used the words f*cal pellets, p**per, w*enie, and limp d*ckhead, and the *roach smear.
As scientists, our credibility depends on our honesty. I am not going to let Mr. Milesworthy get smeared by the liar mike.
WebHub,
Hey, guy, thanks for bringing my deleted comment back from the dead! And, yeah, I did kinda enjoy a little goof at Steve’s expense, exploiting my comment’s deletion and all. But, unlike you, Web–Mr. Literal-Minded-Pompous-Ass, himself,–Steve Milesworthy got a big kick out of my little prank. I mean, like, Steve has a sense of humor and doesn’t take himself all so serious, and all. You know, you could learn a thing or two from Steve, Web.
I mean, like, you are such a dreadfully self-important, up-tight weirdo, Web. Really!
@A fan
I did indeed read R Gates’s piece about modelling. And a very respectful document it is. But I wonder if you really grasped what it respectfully says.
The first part is a lengthy explanation of all the difficult things that happen and aren’t taken into account in the models…and uses this long list of woes to explain why we are all so super horrible nasty to expect that models will ever be able to provide accurate testable predictions.
And in the second part – like the hapless shop assistant in Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch – he gallantly attempts to distract our attention with some stuff about all the other things that they might be good for.
But all his distractions do not remove the Elephant in the Bathroom, or resurrect the Norwegian Blue. It is still dead, and the models still fail to do what we need them to do. They do not provide reliable predictions of future climate. We have spent billions of dollars and many man-years to get something that does not work.
They are predictive models that cannot predict. And R Gates tells us – in very respectful terms – some of the reasons why.
@steve milesworthy
And what is so wrong about ‘bringing up Hary_Read_Me’?
It is a most revealing document since it shows how the CRU actually works and illustrates the huge gulf between the public image that climatology likes to present of cool and diligent searching after truth and the unhappy reality of poor, ill-trained Harry searching through the disorganised chaos that is their ‘data centre’ and trying to make some sense of the junk left behind.
The background is even more interesting because of the contemporary events. Phil Jones ill-fated attempts to evade his FoI responsibilities – which led in part to Climategate. His inability to provide 196 confidentiality agreements (lost in an office move? – more like lost in his own data centre…much like everything else) and still giving out the illusion that these are fit and proper people to manage ‘the most important dataset in the history of humanity.
Climategate and Harry_Read_Me are the equivalent of undercover Panorama reports for climatology. They show the unprofessional, disorganised shameful reality as compared with the public image.
And remember – in over 200 papers, no peer-reviewer has ever asked to see their programs, files, data or calculations.
‘The most startling observation came when he was asked how often scientists reviewing his papers for probity before publication asked to see details of his raw data, methodology and computer codes. “They’ve never asked,” he said’ (Fred Pearce in the Guardian on Jones’s appearance in Parliament)
Latimer,
Now that your minder has been put in his place by WHT:
“And what is so wrong about ‘bringing up Hary_Read_Me’? ”
Where did I say it was wrong to bring up Harry_readme. I said that that is *all* you ever do, and then pretend that this microcosm is reflective of the global reality when it isn’t. I said you need to spend your energies in extending your research instead of recruiting new personas.
Take me. I obviously have a particular point of view, but rather than share love-ins with like-minded folk I try to understand other people’s point of view – mostly by lurking as I don’t have the time to engage often enough. I do it in my own time and off my own back, but I like to think that someone somewhere will occasionally believe me rather than you when I say that your and other’s characterisation of software quality in climate science is inaccurate.
The sole reason I am still targetting you though is not for the reasons “mike” put in his sadly departed comment, but because by putting on multiple personas such as Stirling English you are unhelpful to my cause (of finding out what sceptics really think) because in the back of my mind I will always be wondering whether (to use a bit of “mike”-style psychological gamesmanship) you really are just a bored and perhaps lonely man, or whether there is more to your method.
I’m hoping you’ll have the decency to explicitly own up and agree to drop the sock-puppetry so we can hear what the real “self-employed former chemist” believes. I’m sure everyone else would be no less entertained by your pronouncements if you did.
@steve milesworthy
I have no ‘minder’. Not sure why you think I have.
As to my ‘method’, I use pretty much exactly the same technique as I do on IT audits – and i have conducted (and been paid for) plenty.
Being prepared to believe what people tell me, but wanting to see the proof as well. A modification of ‘doveryai, no proveryai’ (Trust but Verify).
So if, for example, somebody comes up with a new method that seems to wipe out a lot of details of contemperaneously-recorded history, uses non-standard statistical methods and refuses to release the data on which it is based, I do not immediately claim the author to be the greatest scientist since Newton and grab his work to my (metaphorical) bosom with little squeals of girlish delight. I raise my sceptical eyebrow and speculate that we need to do a lot more work before we can accept this.
If I see a whole field of endeavour actively resisting any external scrutiny of their work, I am just as suspicious of them as I was of the chef programmer who worked alone nights on the organisation’s core financial system, had complete change control authority and turns up to work in a car way beyond his pay grade (true story – I caught him fiddling the subcontractor’s payroll ledger)
Or of the strange case of the shift pattern where the entire computer system failed at random. Until I looked and found that one operator was always there. And he was the guy who ‘rescued’ everybody by spending hours and hours getting the systems back and working. It only took a wee bit of covert surveillance to find him briefly disconnecting and reconnecting crucial cables. From hero to zero – and a jail term fro criminal damage – in three days.
Out in the real world, we try to put together processes and procedures to prevent these frailties of human nature jeapordising our work.
For example public companies need to have their books independently audited and the results made public. This provides protection to both the shareholders (who have some protection against abuse by the directors) and the public – who can have some confidence that doing business with the company will not cause them loss through imminent bankruptcy of their counterparty.
It generally works well. But is absolutely shunned as a technique in climatology. The nearest we get is ‘peer-review’ and we need only peek behind the Climategate curtain to see how corrupted that can become. And the classic case of the audit process breaking down was Enron. The problem was that Arthur Andersen – the supposedly ‘independent’ auditing company had become far too friendly – personally and professionally – with the Enron board and so failed to ask the hard questions. Ring any bells in peer-review? Jones’s infamous remark ‘they never asked’ spring to mind?
So when you tell me – in all good faith no doubt – that the software quality stuff at your institution is tip-top, I don’t doubt your sincerity. But without that independent report verifying that this is the case, I fear you are no more convincing than anybody else who is proud of their work and their colleagues.
The real tough stuff starts when you compare yourself nit against what you are used to …but what others around the world do in different fields. How do you compare to Nuclear Safety Installations? Or Air Traffic Control Systems? Or Emergency Response Teams? Or the big financial systems? Or if you think that such comparisons are inappropriate..why not? You guys are working on the ‘biggest problem humanity has ever faced’ and yet you actively resist even the basic level of external scrutiny that the local takeaway food shop is obliged to endure by law.
So go figure why I am sceptical about climatology and climatologists. Your processes and procedures might (and that is a big ‘might’) be appropriate for a purely academic subject. But – like it or lump it – it is no more such. It is a big big industry with literally world-wide implications. You cannot manage yourselves in the same way as an aged don writing obscure unread papers about 11th century porcelain or whatever.
And your collective failure even to acknowledge this – let alone fix it – does you all no credit in the eyes of anybody with much experience of the world outside.
Latimer at 5.17am
Hope this lands somewhere near your post which was basically about not believing what you are being told, but looking for evidence.
.
As you know I went to a great deal of trouble in comparing Dr Manns methodology with that of Hubert Lamb in my artice here;
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
I am trying to do a follow up during which I have carried out research at a number of places. I found this in the library of Exeter Cathedral- my words, taken from my notes made at the time;
“Tree rings-Saw two reports from English Heritage undated but probably from around 1999/2000
Tree rings in Cathedral to be dated and measured against English template from Midlands dated from 882 to 1810
Two graphs drawn. Earliest records 1810-low and 1820 high. Great peaks-favourable weather around 1825 to 1855
Low points around 1860. Similar sets of peaks 1875 to 1890. Little variation from then until the last record taken from trees around 1975. (see my hand drawn graph)
All above taken from timbers from Law library and 2 buildings on the Close. Similar set taken from timbers of Archdeacons house dates from 1186 to 1404. The report seems primarily concerned with dating of timbers but mentions broad and narrow rings as representing climatic conditions-but notes younger trees such as oaks grow differently to older ones and local conditions affect them. Also depends on growing season-April to October in Exeter but differs elsewhere.
Good growing seasons have relatively wide rings, poor growing seasons have very narrow rings and average rings in average years. Accurate to around 40 years.
See books ‘Tree ring dating and archaeology (bailie 1982) or ‘A slice through time’ (bailie 1995) ”
Obviously around that time tree rings were considered primarily as a tool for dating timbers and the climatic information was secondary and imprecise.”
——- ——— ——-
I thought the report-dating of the timbers- was interesting as I think they are fit for purpose for that-albeit they are a little imprecise. Similarly they provide some broad record of precipitation.
However, whilst this report saw its limitations, the one being carried out at the same time on the other side of the atlantic drew much bigger conclusions.MBH98/99
I have come to believe that the tree ring science has been wildly over promoted in terms of its accuracy and acquired celebrity status, which the scientists of the time should have queried. Believing a tree can be an accurate NH tree nometer is wrong on so many levels, not the least its short growing season (no winter signal) and its susceptibilty to its own micro climate.
Was its inclusion in the IPCC assessment a deliberate signal by someone in order to elevate tree rings to their unwarranted pinnacle?
Someone where must have written a piece about the ascendancy of this branch of science over the past dozen years. It would be interesting to see it and to try to understand why Dr Mann’s scientific peers didn’t point out tree ring shortcomings.
tonyb
Lovely little anecdotes, but if an ATC system crashes on a busy day, people’s lives are at risk whereas if a climate model crashes (due to a system or process error rather than a numerical error), it can be re-run – as long as the error doesn’t cause different results to occur, ie. that the results of a given simulation are reproducible it’s not a problem.
So you are comparing apples with oranges and showing your ignorance as a result (of course that doesn’t mean that regularly crashing models aren’t an irritation and waste of resources that need to be resolved).
“And your collective failure even to acknowledge this…”
You are accusing me of being part of the “collective failure” but I have pointed you to a person who has done some of the external diligence that you have requested (no doubt not to your standards, but that’s an entirely different accusation and you should know that).
So your avoidance of the evidence that disputes your position accompanied with your continued avoidance of any acknowledgement of your habit of posting under multiple names will mean I and others will continue to question your motivation or interest in the subject (other than a desire to be a pain in the backside by avoiding all the inconvenient facts).
When will the real Latimer Alder/Stirling English come out of the closet?
Steve said:
With those three words, Latiner and climatereason are made to look like complete fools, which is what they are, Latimer even more so because he applies not only anecdotes but anecdotal *analogies*. This is an example of building up rhetorical flourishes at the expense of scientific evidence, just like we have come to expect from Team Skeptic.
Consider the isolated anecdotal evidence:
Anecdotes are not quantifiable.
Anecdotes don’t follow statistical distributions.
Anecdotes don’t have margins of uncertainty.
Anecdotes can’t be treated with the null hypothesis.
Anecdotes can’t be modeled stochastically.
If you start collecting data systematically and pull the quantifiable parts of the anectdotes out, then you have a start. If we take the example of *collected* anecdotal data of reservoir sizes from the North Sea, something which both these Brits should be familar with :), you will find that they can be modeled with a fat-tailed probability distribution. This model follows rather cleanly from long-term stochastic processes of geological origin. One then can look at the distribution and estimate where the trends are heading. The reason this works is that there are substantial amounts of previously considered historical anecdotal data that was collected and disseminated by the taxpayer-funded government of the United Kingdom (see the Department of Energy and Climate Change). Thank you, UK.
And Latimer will now comment that my example is an anecdote itself, and I will respond that anecdotally Latimer has never shown any evidence that he has the skill to do any kind of statistical analysis himself. He much prefers to do back-seat driving and criticize others for his own inadequacy.
Web
What an unpleasant and foolish comment you made at 8.18. What makes you say such things? Steves post appeared at the same time as mine and as you will see is totally related to Latimers comments.
You have displayed your complete lack of knowledge of historical climatology on numerous occasions-a branch of climate science that has been going for far longer than computer modeling or reading tree rings in the manner they currently are.
Not that you ever appear to read anything that conflicts with your dogmatic and narrow view of climate and how it is derived, but those interested in learning something of the nature of the subject- and how material is compiled- might find this comprehensive article on the subject interesting.
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~rjsw/papers/Brazdil-etal-2005.pdf
When sufficient data becomes available –as in part 1 of the long slow thaw- ‘anecdotal’ information is translated into data following the methods detailed by Van Engelen et al of the Royal Met office De bilt and described in the book ‘History and Climate’
Why don’t you give us your own take as to why tree rings warrant their elevation from approximate dating to precise thermometer?
tonyb
@steve M
You say
‘if a climate model crashes (due to a system or process error rather than a numerical error), it can be re-run – as long as the error doesn’t cause different results to occur, ie. that the results of a given simulation are reproducible it’s not a problem.’
No disagreement there. But, apart from giving some an opportunity to publish papers about them, climate models aren’t very useful anyway. So whatever they do is pretty irrelevant.
But the basic datasets like HADCRUTn *are* very operationally important, They are used in so many different ways that they *have* to be right. I imagine that they are used in your modelling efforts. In ‘validating’ (or not) the Hockey Stick. They are the basic data of all of climatology. If they are wrong, *all* the rest of it is wrong. And as I understand it they are a compilation and pasteurisation and cleansing and adjustment of a lot of different observational datasets.
A lot of stuff goes in, CRU ‘process’ it. And a HADCRUTn pops out. Simple data processing (file merge) followed by manual/automatic ‘adjustments’. Stuff that has been done since the birth of commercial computing in the 1950s. No climatology needed. All you need is to be able to keep track of your input and your output, make sure you are processing the right one and keep an audit trail of the adjustments in case some go ‘t**s up’ and you need to back them out. In the old days, you’d have seen a bank of reel to reel tapes all wizzing about to do this.
But It seems that CRU don’t even have the skills to do this simple stuff right. Hapless Harry was sent into the Stygain gloom of their disorganised data to try to find some of the input files and to understand their data. They hadn’t even managed to label it up correctly and keep a record of what it meant. This is junior IT 101 stuff. Day 1. Between coffee and lunch. Make sure you know what you’ve got, where it is and what it means.
I read Steve E’s paper about software development at Hadley. But, interesting though it was, I’d much rather read a similar critique of the IT at CRU…where the results actually matter.
Sorry that you feel I am a ‘pain in the arse’. I prefer ‘the grit in the oyster’. Helping you guys to eventually produce pearls. If the only perspective you ever get is from other climatologists (eg Easterbrook) telling you all how wonderful you all are, you will never learn anything new from ‘the outside world’. And I have rarely seen a ‘profession’ so isolated behind its own drawbridge and thick high walls. A general categorisation of all from outside as ‘deniers’ (see lead article here) does nothing to dispel that impression. (To clarify,,,meant as general not necessarily personal remarks)
Richard Betts, who I believe is a colleague of yours, makes a point of visiting and commenting on various sceptical blogs as he wishes to avoid ‘groupthink’. I congratulate you on following his good example.
Climatereason,
When you have enough data and you can start processing the numbers, post something. Until then, it is vaporware, and people get unpleasant when dealt vapor.
@web hub telescope
‘Latimer has never shown any evidence that he has the skill to do any kind of statistical analysis himself’
And nor have I ever claimed to be a stats expert. My qualifications and experience are in Chemistry and IT. But – especially in IT – I have spent a lot of time in assesssing whether the sausage matches the sizzle ..whether the talk the talk merchants can actually walk the walk..and whether the evidence matches the claims.
When you are running an decent sized IT shop you are almost literally besieged by dodgy salesman trying to sell you even dodgier products. ‘Show Me’ is a good riposte…and it works just as well in climatology as it does in IT Sales.
So if sensible seeming people carefully explain their statistical methods and rationale and show me their working, I tend to believe them a lot more than self-proclaimed stats wizzzes who merely say ‘I have shown…’ and expect instant reverence and respect. No deal, Webbie.
Web
As my comment was entirely about tree rings I can only imagine that when you refer to vapour you are referring to that subject and have therefore answered the query I put to you as to what you thought of tree rings as thermometers. Thanks for clearing that up. I agree with you.They do leave a lot to be desired don’t they.
tonyb
Latimer,
“But the basic datasets like HADCRUTn *are* very operationally important, They are used in so many different ways that they *have* to be right. I imagine that they are used in your modelling efforts.”
No they are not!!! I cannot believe that you have been commenting for so long and you still think that! Models are validated against CLIMATOLOGY. That is average climate such as ERA40. Even I know that and I’m not a climate scientist.
Talking dodgy analogies, I think you’ll find that the grit in the oyster doesn’t do the oyster any good.
I suspect also that two or three separate bits of grit in the same oyster will produce a less good pearl than one larger bit – so apply your analogy to yourself and stick to one pseudonym.
@steve Milesworthy
So what are the HADCRUTn really used for? Why does the US DoD pay Phil Jones north of $200K per annum to produce it? The HAD bit refers, I believe, to your own centre…what is the value of it? What does HAD contribute ..and why?
If it doesn’t matter the US could save $200K per annum.
Latimer,
It seems that you have certain expectations of what the models should be able to do which they do not meet. Have you considered that the problem may be with your expectations rather than the models?
@andrew adams
I have expectations that a decent model, like a decent scientific theory or a decent horse race tipster has testable predictive capability. And when tested is found to have good skill. Otherwise it is just a waste of time and effort. Like a wrong weather forecast.
If it cannot provide testable predictive capability we (the public) might as well spend the money on something else.
HadCRUT is a dataset that assesses climate/temperature change based on multiple sources of info around the world.
ERA40 is a dataset of weather obs over 40 years assimilated into a coherent global dataset. From ERA40 you can extract various climate *average* statistics against which you compare your model. Eg. variability of sea level pressure over the Pacific etc.
You’d be bonkers to think that if you tuned your model to produce temperature rises matched to HadCRUT3 that that would be a validation of your model. On the other hand, trying to “fix” say the climatology of Australia while avoiding wrecking the climatology of North Africa is a rather more difficult thing to tune without going back to valid physics principles.
@steve m
OK. Simple question. Why two datasets? The temperature at any given place can only have had a single value at any given time (it cannot be both 21.4C and 17.6C simultaneously in my back garden). So how come you have two or more temperature compilations? They cannot both be right.
Latimer, because one is a useful tool for weather and climate model research and the other is a measurement of average global and regional temperature which is a useful metric to assess “global warming”.
I’m not an expert, so probably you need to read around this a bit. It’s a good beginner question though (I don’t intend to be rude by saying this as I am most certainly not an expert).
@steve milesworthy
By amazing coincidence, Judith posts on this very topic
http://judithcurry.com/2012/06/21/three-new-papers-on-interpreting-temperature-trends/
Layman’s summary:
Depending on which dataset you choose and how you process it, you can get just about whatever answer you want about past climates.
Yet another shaky foundation of climatology.
By an amazing coincidence Judith Curry posts a thread on temperature trends which helps Latimer/Stirling divert attention from the fact that he did not realise that temperature trends do *not* provide the metric for validating climate models and thereby somewhat undermines your determination to focus on the code quality of harryreadme.
I have only briefly read the temperature trend thread as I am about to enter an internet-free wilderness for my annual holiday of Quorn (TM) harvesting (the wet weather has been good for it this year). But it seems that the focus of the papers is a meta-analysis of the trends rather than a trend critique.
Anyhow, your lack of ability to focus must surely be due to the fact that you are trying to remember which personality you are trying to be today.
@steve milesworthy
Thanks for you remarks. And for the admission that climate models do not even bother to try to predict temperatures.
Since the only reason we are all supposed to be scared witless of ‘climate change’ is because it will get hotter,…and all the supposed bad things that flow from that, you seem to have provided conclusive testimony that they are all a complete waste of time and effort.
As I have long suspected.
To paraphrase Monty Python:
‘What did climate models ever do for us?’
‘Er, umm, ahh, ohh’
‘So that’s nothing at all, then? An utter waste’
‘Er umm ahh ohh’ etc
‘Zip, zilch, nada, les climatmodels zero points…..’
Exeunt omnes. Fade to black
Enjoy your hols. Catch me a nice fat haggis for eating and a little tame unicorn as a pet. I know climatologits love to believe in fairy tales and wishful thinking……
@steve milesworthy
I’m also reminded that the HADCRUT3 which you so strongly dissociate yourself from, is used as the reference yardstick throughout the IPCC reports.
So, though errors in it may not affect your work directly, they sure as hell have important consequences elsewhere. I doubt many senior policy makers pay much attention to your models, but – rightly or wrongly – they pay a lot of heed to IPCC reports.
If Phil Jones cocks it up (perish the very thought :-( ), it goes around the world. If you do, it is not too disrespectful to suggest that very few care.
“To paraphrase Monty Python:
‘What did climate models ever do for us?’”
Exactly the right analogy Lati.
And just like in MP the answer was….actually quite a lot.
@michael
‘And just like in MP the answer was….actually quite a lot.’
Yes, sure I understood the joke when it first came out, And my little playlet above was a riff on that original …only ending differently. The original worked because it subverted one’s expectation. Mine, I hoped would resubvert those who thought they knew what was coming next and instead would see the vast existential emptiness at the heart of modelling.
But you say that there are indeed a lot of things. List them please.
BTW The numero uno absoluto big big problemo Elephant in the Bathroom ‘oh f..k!’ hurdle you have to overcome is that not one has ever been show to have any predictive skill. And some suggest that their skill is negative… i.e you would get better with random numbers.
And apart from that Mrs. Lincoln..how did you enjoy the play?
@tony b
You got your post spot on…both in position and in content.
I think that you don’t need to be an intellectual giant to accept that trees grow better in good seasons than in bad. And I’ve long thought that tree rings are a neat and smart way to give approximate dates to old buildings. Let’s hear it for dendrochronlogy!
But it is one heck of a leap to go from those general propositions to assert that you can measure local average annual temperature – and temperature alone – to within less than a degree by doing the same.
Upthread I gave the example of the Enron auditors who didn’t ask the hard questions. The sad tale of the Hockey Stick is a reprise.
Was there really nobody at all in climatology who raised a sceptical eyebrow and wondered if this new technique was stretching the data well beyond its validity? Nobody who cared to question mike mann a bit more? Nobody who asked to see his method and working and thought to bounce it off a stats guy before they all went a-whooping and a-hollering down the street like the crowds in ‘Life of Brian’? Nobody who knew enough history to wonder how to reconcile the disappearance of the MWP with the well-documented contemporary records of its existence?
It seems not. Nobody in climatology raised a finger. Not a peep. One can only speculate that the results were so welcome (the abolition of that pesky MWP as so long desired by the CAGW advocates) that they suspended all their critical and scientific faculties in their headlong rush to promote it to headline status. One has to wonder if they ever started them up again?
Back then there was no real blogosphere. I think we can be certain that f such a paper were ever published again, its few seconds of fame would be as brief as Gorgeous Gergis’s recent cockup. That it had nearly ten year before even ardent warmists accepted that it is a crock of s**t, is an indelible stain on their credibilty and gullibility.
And that I can even write such heretical words and expect them to remain uncensored is a good indication of how far we’ve come in the few years since, say, Climategate.
Steve said:
With those three words, Latiner and climatereason are made to look like complete fools, which is what they are, Latimer even more so because he applies not only anecdotes but anecdotal *analogies*. This is an example of building up rhetorical flourishes at the expense of scientific evidence, just like we have come to expect from Team Skeptic.
Consider the isolated anecdotal evidence:
Anecdotes are not quantifiable.
Anecdotes don’t follow statistical distributions.
Anecdotes don’t have margins of uncertainty.
Anecdotes can’t be treated with the null hypothesis.
Anecdotes can’t be modeled stochastically.
If you start collecting data systematically and pull the quantifiable parts of the anectdotes out, then you have a start. If we take the example of *collected* anecdotal data of reservoir sizes from the North Sea, something which both these Brits should be familar with :), you will find that they can be modeled with a fat-tailed probability distribution. This model follows rather cleanly from long-term stochastic processes of geological origin. One then can look at the distribution and estimate where the trends are heading. The reason this works is that there are substantial amounts of previously considered historical anecdotal data that was collected and disseminated by the taxpayer-funded government of the United Kingdom (see the Department of Energy and Climate Change). Thank you, UK.
BTW, That’s the way we weirdos do things.
@webbie
For somebody who refrains from commenting on oil depletion this is a ‘surprising’ post.
And I’m hard pushed to see how it in itself differs from an anecdote.
‘I, webbie, am a very clever chap and have done some clever sums about oil depletion that are really very clever’
Seems pretty anecdotal to me..unless you show the working and the conclusions. And some reason for us all to believe that they are relevant.
Well, I am a much more clever chap than you when it comes to getting motivated, and actually lifting a finger.
Working and conclusions? You have to be kidding me?
See Chapter 4, p. 27 for a complete derivation and analysis applied to the North Sea.
If you want to see how understanding oil production leads to application to CO2 and climate science, see Chapter 30.
And I am now working more exclusively on climate science topics with occasional forays into energy analysis on a spin-off blog.
And how are your non-statistical anecdotes about working as a database dweeb in the IT industry at all relevant?
@web
I was not a ‘database dweeb’. IT management and consultancy, technical sales and technical support were my general areas. Database dweebing is a particular speciality…and not one I find very interesting or congenial.
And if you think that I am going to waste my valuable time posting at your new blog where you hold the delete and/or edit button, then you are really away with the fairies. I somehow think that I will not be alone in this view.
Good one, ‘Gorgeous Gergis’.
The ‘Manner’ in which the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Optimum were ‘vanished’ guaranteed that they would come back to haunt us.
We’re in ‘Dawn of the Dead’ kountry and there’s ‘Restricted Access’ signs on all the doors. Aren’t they trying to sell us something?
================
Latimer pulls a tantrum by crying that he is not a dweeb.
Unlike this place, my blog is actually indexed by Google , which suits me just fine.
Climate etc is like a low-rent Twitter feed where one can engage with the bat-crazy.
Latimer,
I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
About the coal interests being close to your vest, I did have you confused with someone else.
My sincere apologies.
Thanks Bob. Your apology, of course, accepted. Cheers.
Anyone with a conscience has stopped defending by now the use of the global warming hoax and scare tactic to raise taxes on the productive to fund the Left’s liberal Utopia. That’s half way the truth and now we need to acknowledge the whole truth.
“… for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” (Winston Churchill)
Spot on – the use of denier is such a logical trap
because, as you note, it reduces the multiple questions, aspects, and degrees of a global system to a simple ( and simplistic ) inappropriate dichotomy – namely ‘do you believe?’ in global warming.
Can we reframe the questions
How much global warming will there be?
To what extent might other aspects of the climate change?
How does this change compare with, for instance, the Holocene when civilization was founded and when solar loading gave those civilizations much more extreme climate.
How much warming is beneficial?
Why have Hansen’s and the IPCCs predictions failed on the high side?
Evidently, these questions are too much for Nature and those who can’t get past ‘deniers’.
Leaving aside the PC issues associated with labeling people, I don’t think their main premise that motivating skeptics by framing the issue in terms of the welfare of their society, instead of focussing on risks of climate change, works. Or at least it is not well thought through. If the society was not perceived at risk, what is this welfare issue? And furthermore, with many skeptics being politically individualist rather than socialist, I don’t think they care much except for people of their own status, while the welfare of whole societies is not a high priority with them. Indeed societal welfare is a signature of a leftist view that they would go in the opposite direction to almost on instinct. Unlike our experience here, I think these authors have been too closed off from the real skeptics to come up with these ideas that won’t work. It is good to look for things that might motivate individualists, such as economic risks that might affect their lives or profits, but I don’t think the answer is anything like societal welfare.
JimD, there is a little misconception there. Individualists are actually quite generous and caring. They are realists though. “Mandating” a societal welfare removes flexibility. When things work great, when they don’t change them, with Government, change that decreases “entitlements” is awfully slow. The problem is not “societal welfare” it is the idiots than mismanage and misapply the carrot and forget that sometimes sticks are handy on occasion.
So, for example, what would motivate an individualist to help a farmer somewhere who needs more irrigation as a result of climate change unless it threatens their own vegetable, meat or wine supply?
Jim D, a person can have a relatively other-regarding value orientation, as regards their preferences for allocation, but still believe that top-down, macroscale institutional arrangements are relatively lousy ways to build consensus toward, and effective action in favor of, what they value.
The “individualist” and “socialist” designations are rather vague, but I think they have to do with beliefs about the relative performance properties of different kinds of institutions rather than personal value orientations about the allocation of goods.
Put differently, there’s a descriptive and important social science sense in which questioning other people’s motives is, maybe, beside the point.
We can take the examples of food production or fresh water or energy production. A nation needs a certain amount of each, but some ways of producing these are more expensive than others, depending on the regions for farms or on the source for energy supply. The free market would make less efficient production fail, and the supply would not meet demand. The government can equalize the field to maintain the stability of the supply, and this involves subsidies and incentives. In a changing climate, these support mechanisms have to shift to meet changing demands, costs, and supplies. This is something only a government can do with a top-down perspective of things.
Jim D, move your economic thinking into at least the late 20th century or the early 21st. Read Ostrom’s Nobel lecture that I linked below for you. You are making all kinds of theoretical assumptions about collective action that are empirically dubious and behaviorally outdated.
Who preserved or restored more wetlands globally in the past 30 years, the US government or Ducks Unlimited?
Which group preserved more woodlands in the past 30 years, the Sierra Club or a disorganized band of outdoors folks, AKA hunters?
Which group has invested more time and money protecting and conserving estuaries and marine environments, green peace or anglers?
Which group provides the majority of financial aid to the “rural health network” which has a growing “urban” presence?
NW, I replied to that below. The Ostrom article is good, and polycentric methods may work for some local needs, but will it work in a large country with diverse needs and challenges, and where subsidies may be needed to allow some regions’ food or energy providers to survive. This is all theoretical economics, however, and I am just trying to illustrate that someone needs to have the big picture for a country. It won’t work by a patchwork of competitors.
capt. dallas, if you don’t like nature conservation, say it? That’s an opinion. Some would like everywhere opened up to building things, like we have a lack of space elsewhere or something.
capt. dallas, on second reading I am not sure I understood your point. Do you think nature conservation should only be done when it benefits small groups, or is the government allowed to do it too to benefit the general public?
JimD, those small groups are huge. Recreational anglers provide more money to state fisheries management than commercial fishing organizations and are the hardest hit by national regulation to protect fisheries. In the Florida Keys, there is a closed season for one fish species that caused the closure of all similar species, where the endanger species by-catch in the keys is negligible. Here’s the funny part, the new endangered species is in danger because another species was protected and never managed. Now the original federally protected species has over populated and the cause of their endangerment banned by the state, but the federal regulation never reconsidered.
That is the problem with big government Jim, it sucks at regional governance. That is why there is “local” and “state” governments. Small groups and government are generally more in touch with local needs.
Jim D,
Capt’s point is very simple – grassroots organizations whose livelihood or recreational preferences have done far more in conservation work than government or big name environmental organizations.
Most of the time people do not need someone else telling them what they should or should not be doing. They can figure it out for themselves. Unfortanuately thi seems to piss off the o so bright folks wanting to do the telling.
Knowledge of the need, nothing more. The main problem is that we are inundated with claims of need. Individualists will help anyone to help them selves but individualists are not particularly gullible or naive. Just because they don’t support every warm and fuzzy do good idea, doesn’t mean they are not willing to do good. There is a huge difference between appeasing your conscious and actually caring.
“And furthermore, with many skeptics being politically individualist rather than socialist, I don’t think they care much except for people of their own status,”
How can you know this?
Is lack of caring a group people not doing anything but watch while a person is murdered.
How do measure caring? How much percentage or amount money they give to charity?
Or does have to do with voting for a politician that has a slogan, “I care for you.”
See my question to capt. dallas above. Does the free market solve that problem, or might this be somewhere the government could help?
A free market sells the produce of a farm. A free market can loan money secured by any land owned. With money [money is vehicle of free market]
it can used to build little dams or Hoover Dams.
Government is what Soviet Union did for farmers.
The solution Soviet Union farming was free markets- it’s in the history
books.
You’re asking farmers to build their own water systems with no government subsidies, so that they would just have to raise their product prices to do it, and make them less competitive with farmers in other areas. I don’t think this is a sustainable model. However, they would be free to abandon their worthless land and try some other way of living, but it wouldn’t be your problem, would it?
The late Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel lecture:
http://bnp.binghamton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Ostrom-2010-Polycentric-Governance.pdf
“Of the 47 irrigation systems included in the analysis, 12 were managed by governmental agencies of which only 40 percent (n = 7) had high performance. Of the 25 farmer-managed, over 70 percent (n = 18) had high performance (Tang 1994: 234). Rule conformance was a key variable affecting the adequacy of water over time (Tang 1994: 229).”
NW, this looks like a good article and exactly on point, but the role for government is also clear when regions become unsustainable by themselves (as I mention above).
As a water professonal, an environmental scientist and a conservationist – I suggest strongly that water be priced at or above cost and not be subsidised and that farmers and private engineers are much more efficient than government at building these things. Subsidies simply encourage wasteful water practices.
And polycentric people power is well on the way to transforming global agriculture and sequestering 500 Gt of carbon in grazing land soils.
What is the polycentric view of dam building? Is it regulated at least? Does the reservoir become private water, or still public in that it competes with or deprives downstream users?
We haven’t built a major dam for 30 years. Apart from anything else all the good spots are taken. I presume all the usual laws would apply – including common law rights for access and not to cause nuisance flooding and environmental laws. If I don’t need it I don’t want to pay for it.
Chief Hydrologist | June 20, 2012 at 1:22 am |
“We haven’t built a major dam for 30 years.”
Yabbut the Army Corps of Engineers has been raising the 100-yr flood plain on mine with almost decadal regularity which effectively increases the capacity of the reservoir and squeezes out the older residences along the shore who built at the lower level. It started out in 1940 at 690’MSL and just a few years ago was raised from 715’MSL where it had been for quite some time to 722’MSL. So no new structures can be built below 722’MSL. Conservation pool level has remained at 681’MSL since day one however so capacity for flood control is unchanged. The higher 100-yr flood plain is IMO leaving the option open to raise the conservation pool level. Fortunately for me I built at 780’MSL and before I get flooded the city of Austin will be floating somewhere near Houston on its way out to the Gulf. Top of the spillway is 714’MSL and top of the dam is 740’MSL. It’s designed to survive water going over the top. Since I bought some waterfront 13 years ago there have been 3 “100 year floods” if we go by the original 691′ flood plain. My neighbor’s house, which has a sunken living room at 705’MSL was literally sunken in the 2007 flood. A nearby city in the watershed got an amazing 19 inches of rain in 24 hours in 2007. The lake here rose a foot an hour for the next 36 hours afterward. I slipped on my boatramp whilst pulling my dock in and broke my wrist making it a doubly memorable flood for me.
Apart from anything else all the good spots are taken. I presume all the usual laws would apply – including common law rights for access and not to cause nuisance flooding and environmental laws. If I don’t need it I don’t want to pay for it.
Jim D | June 20, 2012 at 1:02 am |
“What is the polycentric view of dam building? Is it regulated at least? Does the reservoir become private water, or still public in that it competes with or deprives downstream users?”
On Lake Travis (a 20,000 acre impoundment with average depth of 60 feet created in 1940) where I live the water’s surface is public and most of the lake bottom is private. I own 6 acres beneath the conservation pool level and 2 acres above it. The impounded water is controlled by a non-profit public entity called the Lower Colorado River Authority. They have various contractual obligations to water purchasers such as the City of Austin, and to holders of older water rights on the pre-impoundment river channel. I’m currently having a go with them as they want to bill me for 1-acre/ft per year for the right to put a water pump on lake bottom that I own. My contention is they may own the water but they only hold an easement to store water on my land which doesn’t deprive me of the right to also store water on my land. I have 8 acres including 6 acres under conservation pool level which receives 33″ of annual rainfall. The lake authority doesn’t own the 18+ acre/feet of rain which falls on my land and since I don’t use but a tiny fraction of that and they use the excess instead to generate electricity and sell to downstream customers when they sent me a bill for 1 acre/foot I sent them a bill in return for 17 acre/feet.
JimD, wanting have a measure of caring is a problem. Most use the biblical guidelines whether they are religious or not, they give as they have prospered. Generally, that is time and money. The time part, mentoring, has more value than any government can provide. Habitat for humanity is the finest idea of our worst president. Rural electric authorities are another example. There is something about having skin in the game that changes attitudes.
There is a homeless shelter down the street. A homeless guy, displaced by Katrina was in charge for a while. Having been there, he was pretty good figuring out who needed a help up and who was just playing the system. The place did good things. Then he got canned and replaced by a guy that was caring, generous and naive that lasted less than a year. The new guy didn’t live there, couldn’t relate had all the good intentions in the world, but no experience in the culture he was “helping”. The simple moral is top down don’t work if the bottom don’t work, there has to be skin in the game.
So what price tag do you place on experience and common sense?
gbaikie,
The eugenicists trotted out this ‘indivualist’ critique of eugenics resistors in an attempt to marginalize them back in the day as well.
… add to collection catalogue
A plane load of Rio bacchanalists.
H/t Mike.
“I view this pretty much as the green equivalent of the unabomber billboard. ” – JC
This is calling them “murderers, tyrants and madmen” as Heartland did referring to scientists??????
That’s nuts.
Michael,
Didn’t the “team” get the word to you, Michael? “Interpersonal warmth” is the new party-line deal, you know, and your wonted, “doofus screw-up pest” act is, henceforth, “out.” Word to the wise, Michael,–need to show you’re ever the good comrade and get with the new program, like pronto! You know what I mean, Michael?
And while we’re on the subject, and all, Michael, I want you to know I’m truly looking forward to your nice-cootie, touchy-feeler, personal version of the hive’s new charm-offensive. I anticipate some rare entertainment, there! At the same time, Michael, I want to make it perfectly clear, in no uncertain terms, that I expect you to keep your comically-obscene, segmented body-appendages well away from my personal space, at all times. Savvy?
mike,
That was almost brief!
Back to your pearl-clutching.
Michael,
“Pearl clutching”? Hardly. Though, in all fairness, I could be accused of casting my pearls before eco-shoats.
The proof that the AGW scaremongers’ proigram will lead toi millions of deaths is simple: by squandering capital and other resources on chasing the CO2 bogeyman, less resources will be available to improve health conditions in poorer countries. People will die needlessly because of that waste. And that isn’t the only way it will cause deaths. Those wasted resources could have been used to clean up pollution, such as from coal-fired electric power plants. Because of the AGW agenda, the air will stay dirtier than it needs to be, and plenty of people will die as a consequence of that. And there are any number of other examples that could be given. You can start with the atrocities that will certainly follow the establishment of the totalitarian state that the reactionary leftist AGW crowd is seeking.
It seems simpler than that. In Australia – a carbon tax translates as a couple of percent lost GDP in 2050. There are a couple of billion economically marginal people in the world – 150 million with insufficient food. At the margins there is a price to be paid in human lives if maximum economic growth is not achieved. In my mind the choice is stark. We can maximise growth in global markets, we can foster freedom and deomcracy, or we face a bleaker 21st century than anything experienced during the immense horrors of the 20th century.
It seems we have forgotten so soon.
Don’t forget that according to ICLEI, ‘sustainability’ is in and ‘climate change’ is out. An axiom of ‘sustainability’ is that the ‘sustainable’ human population is between 5e8 and 1e9 and that it is imperative that we transition to a sustainable world immediately, if not sooner. Since we are currently at around 7.5e9 I think that CAGW does indeed pose an existential threat, but for reasons entirely unrelated to the weather or the Temperature of the Earth. At least to those of us who can expect to be made ‘redundant’ as soon as the political-green-climate change complex achieves the power (coincidentally, ALWAYS a critical feature of climate change amelioration strategies) to ‘make it happen’.
As far as I am concerned, it is not me who is denier. It is the IPCC that is the denier of the oscillation in global mean temperature. For the IPCC to say we will have 0.2 deg C per decade warming in the next two decades is denying the cyclic nature of global mean temperature shown=>http://bit.ly/Mf0Xi1.
When we have global cooling like the 1970s in the next decade or two, IPCC will be caught out.
Judith, in a recent e-mail to you I wrote that “I think that Climate Etc is making me a “social science sceptic.” So many social science papers you blog on seem to begin with false assumptions.” Here’s yet another example. “How not to make friends and influence people” might be a better title.
I know. I’m inclined to think this Nature Climate Change article is a troll and Poe’s Law should be applied to it:
“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.”
I think Nature Climate Change left out a winking smiley at the end of the paper. It’s either that or the editor is a blithering idiot which in my estimation is an equally likely possibility.
Dear Paul Bain : you still haven’t understood Kloor’s “Fatso” criticism. If you have, withdraw the paper and resubmit it without any mention of “deniers”.
‘We can foster freedom and democracy or we face a bleaker 21st century….It seems we have forgotten so soon.’
Well yes, Chief Hydrologist, and many of our young people have little awareness of this past and our open society heritage, that fostered innovation and economic growth. Many educationalists are hostile to it. What do we do?
Beth
I view history as a single continous golden thread connecting up random events that otherwise we couldnt undertsand if viewed in isolation and out of context.
For example the fact of the treaty of Versailles and its impact on Germany should not be lost but is, in a Europe trying to force Greece and others into paying debts that are beyond them. That same treaty explains Germanys desire to be a good european and cast away its strong Deutsche mark and the overarching EU desire to integrate dozens of sovereign countries, many of whom dont want to throw away their sovereignity and pool debt they didnt incurr in the first place.
Similarly, in climate, the fact of ever changing conditions throughout the centuries are lost on scientists and politicians who merely see where we have ended up, not where we have started from. The irony is that not a dozen miles from the met office in Exeter are some astounding sites demonstrating climate change in action as people colonised then retreated from these hills as the climate changed. Its hard to believe this era is exceptional with its climate when you can see that it isn’t
So its not just ‘young people.’ Tony Blair famously said he didnt do history and I think that the knowledge of the narrative of sequential events (rather than just learning blockbuster one offs like the Romans and Normans) that each impact on the thread that follows them, is lost on many people under 50.
Whats to be done about it? Its obvious from the popularity of History programmes on Tv (time team amongst others) that there is a great interest in the subject.
However, without knowing the trivia of sequential events the golden thread of history is chopped up into tiny pieces and the means to understand the present and the future by understanding the past is diminished. Undoubtedly teaching history in schools in a sequential narrative would help, but there are so ,many much ‘cooler’ activities that vie for a schools time.
I suspect our knowledge of who we were and how we got here-with special reference to climate- will continue to fade as we treat the world as one vast computer game where different scenarios can be played out at the click of a mouse .
tonyb
“Tony Blair famously said he didnt do history”
Don’t think he did. Are you confusing with Alastair Campbell said that No10 didn’t do religion (which led some people to *suggest* that they didn’t do history either).
Steve
You are right in that it was said he didnt do god, but that doesnt get away from the problem that Tony Blair had no interest in, or knowledge of, history.
.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2091248/Peter-Hain-memoirs-reveal-Tony-Blair-given-Gibraltar-Spain.html
tonyb
Steve
Speaking of history I cam across this which amused me because of its inherent truth
“There is a Polish proverb: “Only the future is certain. The past is always changing.” (Like most so-called Polish proverbs I suspect it isn’t Polish at all but an Albanian proverb made up by Miles Kington, late of The Independent.”
Amongst other climate books I have read recently is ‘Improved understanding of Past climatic variability from early Daily European Instrumental sources’ where every early european insrumental record is comprehensively amended, courtesy of a large EU grant.
tonyb
If The Daily Mail says it, it must be a lie.
About that Polish saying that the past is always changing…..
Is Jim Hansen Polish?
I am a “denier” because I found that the suppositions of the ice ages do not match other paleo data, as I started thinking about this stuff in 1998 due to the discovery of the Jarkov Mammoth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhwd1waacuE
From that moment on I layed hands on every scientific publication related, and I had numerous discussions with the explorers, to find ultimately that the ice core story does not match at all. But it is the fundament of the global warming truthiness, so there is no scientific basis in paleoclimatology. So the status of “denier” is nothing more than logic.
The aggressive profileration of AGW however is very well explainable as a combination of Groupthink and Moral Panic, the “deniers” being the folk devils.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_devil
The take-home message I got from the head post and the author’s subsequent comments is that ‘a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down’.
Strangely enough, being treated like a recalcitrant child does not incline me to change my mind about anything, including whether or not I should take the medicine. And, you will not persuade me to take the medicine that you prescribe by telling me that it also contains a vitamin supplement or that it will help to support a local small business (the pharmacy).
I find this kind of diversionary tactic demeaning and insulting. Stick to the facts and be honest – is that such a big ask?
But do you find it surprising? I don’t.
Well said johanna
Judith,
Why did they no label the deniers as “insurgents” and then get the military involved rounding them up?
Joe’s World | June 20, 2012 at 6:38 am | Reply
“Why did they no label the deniers as “insurgents” and then get the military involved rounding them up?”
Because the constitution forbids using the military for domestic law enforcement. I’m sure they would if they could but shredding the constitution without a 75% majorityof the states going along with it is a difficult and time-consuming endeavour. SCOTUS basically needs to be loaded up with liberals who don’t respect the constitution but even that’s probably not enough when it comes to something as serious as using military for domestic law enforcement. The military itself would not obey those orders as the officers are sworn to uphold the constitution first and obligated to disobey orders in violation of it. So while you might get a liberal president to issue illegal orders the military is conservative by nature and the generals would tell him to go pound sand.
David Springer,
“I’m sure they would if they could but shredding the constitution without a 75% majorityof the states going along with it is a difficult and time-consuming endeavour.”
Not so. Obama does it with the stroke of the pen. You can’t decarbonize the economy because congress refuses to ignore the will of the American people? Shazzam! Get the EPA to find CO2 is a pollutant. You can’t get your revamping of immigration policy through congress? Presto chango! An executive order does the trick. You may have been caught lying to congress about an insane government scheme to get high powered weapons into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels so you can demagogue against second amendment supporters? Abracadabra! A faux claim of executive privilege on an hour’s notice.
See? It’s easy.
Thiss issa my Precious.
========
climatreason 20/06 @ 5.12 am:\Hi Tony,
Thx for your response. I am going to get back to you re yer comments because I want to consider my reply.
I think I am fortunate to converse with friends here who have done the hard yards in their fields of endeavour, (tho’ they are only clowns and crackpots:-) ) whereas I have spent too much indulgent time in reading classical literature, listening to music, dancing and star gazing.( My one virtue, … give yerself the verdict, is realizing how little I ‘know.’
lolwot | June 19, 2012 at 8:58 pm |
“The real interesting thing I point out about cosmic rays, global temperatures and so-called skeptics is that so-called skeptics never produce or show graphs comparing cosmic rays and recent warming. It’s the elephant in the room.”
Really? Okay, let me fix that situation. I’m a skeptic. Here’s the graph:
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/SvensmarkTrop-CosmicRay.jpg
The elephant is still in the room. You know why? Because lolwot will not be able to force himself to click on your link, and if he actually does, he will not change his mind, but will reject it first, and maybe ask a rhetorical question later.
I know. I’m the eternal optimist and always hold out the hope that something extraordinary and wonderful might happen such as loltwat pulling his head out of his ass long enough to get a glimpse of the real world.
troposheric?
I love when people post graphs with misspellings and with zero references to the underlying data. A while back I tried to see if Forbush events led to more cloudiness. They didnt. theory falsified. all it takes is one look at real data to kill that theory.
Mosh
This is the link to your stuff on forbush events.
http://stevemosher.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/forbush-events/
Did you ever do a follow up?
tony
Mosh, you’re not seriously giving anyone a hard time about spelling, are you?
The top graph shows cosmic rays do not rise over the period (or rather decline), but temperatures do increase.
The lower graph is cosmic rays vs detrended temperature. Ie the temperatures have been reduced by 0.14C/decade, plus ENSO events and volcanoes have been removed.
What is left after removing ENSO, volcanoes and the longterm trend is a solar cycle signal. Not necessarily cosmic rays. That’s in line with the Foster and Rahmstorf paper then.
In other words this is evidence that cosmic rays can’t explain the recent warming.
The correlation coefficient for CO2 vs Temperature is either almost two or almost three times higher than the graph you posted. Depending on which graph you are looking at.
Does that mean that CO2 is a better explanation for the temperature increase than cosmic rays?
Hey Robin, is -0.31 or -0.47 lots of correlation? How about 0.31 or 0.47?
As I would say this is the “usual” minimization of the abusive culture of the AGW advocacy and green culture. Again Dr. Curry could focus on harder subjects that are far more illustrative of green fascism in general;
http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/20/professor-fired-after-expressing-climate-change-skepticism/
A sea change in opinion with a nice ocean view perhaps…
http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/
like they had in 500 BC.
I think this sums up the whole controversy.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/latest-higgs-rumors/
So what’s the threshold in climate science? Half sigma? Quarter sigma? Buhler?
Off topic, but 444 posts into the thread….
What we could use is a post analyzing the Orwelization of the language by progressives who think reframing a stupid, barbaric policy will make it more palatable.
Submitted for your approval (apologies to Rod Serling):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000-elderly-patients-year.html#ixzz1yK7gbr7D
You want to starve old people in the hospital to death? Fine. Just call it the Liverpool Care Pathway.
Actually, the term could be made perfectly accurate by adding a couple words. The Liverpool Care Pathway to the Morgue.
Withholding food and water from a brain dead patient is one thing. Such a patient is dead anyway. But letting as aware patient die a death of dehydration, even if they are terminally ill, is barbaric. Let alone doing it to elderly patients who are ill, but not terminal.
But hey, this is one way of reducing the infestation of the Earth that is humanity.
Well, I’ll not return to the land of my birth if my health is temporarily poor. Perhaps Dr Bain should assess the effectiveness of “framing hospital medical treatment action as increasing consideration for others” in order to reduce the UK’s annual 130,000 deaths from withholding treatment.
I like Keith Kloor’s analogy of a health expert writing a paper called “Promoting a Healthy Diet for Fatsos” And then characterizing overweight people as fatsos throughout the paper.
But I would take the analogy further and say that you could read the paper and find that they define fatso based on BMI at which point you realize that there are many people who have a high BMI based on large muscle mass and not body fat. And those people tend to know much more about healthy diet than the author. And you would also consider that there are many people with a normal BMI but with very poor diet.
Then you wonder about the silly, unscientific language in the paper and you realize that the “health expert” has no knowledge of nutrition science all and wrote the paper in hopes of selling nutrition supplements on a late night infomercial.
Jo Nova posts a thought provoking letter to Bain in which she seeks clarity on “deniers” and what evidence they “deny”:
Nature — and that problem of defining homo-sapiens-denier. Is it English or Newspeak?
See <a href=http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/nature-and-that-problem-of-defining-homo-sapiens-denier-is-it-english-or-newspeak/ full letter.
“leaders of the denial movement”
Wait what? Denier “movement”? So it is a movement is it? And you have leaders too?
Oh golly I am sure when I have described skeptics like this before you guys on here have claimed skeptics don’t work like that, you’ve tried to convince me you are all decentralized with different views etc. If that’s the case then Nova’s argument here collapses because she can’t represent you all and claim you are not denying anything.
“They are happy to accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes warming, that humans produce CO2, that CO2 levels are rising, and that the earth has warmed in the last century.”
Of course several denizens on this board have denied CO2 is a greenhouse gas (by denying the greenhouse effect) and have denied that Earth has warmed (by claiming global temperature is meaningless concept) and denied that rising CO2 has a warming effect.
Also just look at Nova’s interesting choice of words. Humans produce CO2 and CO2 levels are rising. But not “humans are causing CO2 levels to rise”. What a dodge. But then Jo Nova has reported that CO2 rise is not due to humans before…
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/08/blockbuster-planetary-temperature-controls-co2-levels-not-humans/
lolwot
For more evidence on what drives CO2 variations see
FUTURE OF GLOBAL FUTURE OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE Fred Haynie
Use of the label ‘denier’ proves the point.
This is the politics of personal destruction.
It is a tactic that is practiced by liberal fascists to stifle truth.
The tactic in this matter is—e.g., to marginalize the significance of anyone who see Al Gore and notice that the king of the Left has no clothes.
And, all who are in league with those who use the ‘denier’ label are playing the ad hominem attack game. They are not engaging is science.
This behavior is used to avoid the truth and ‘denigrate’ those who are a threat to them and their political message.
Denigration is what the Leftist did to William Gray by trying to associate legitimate scientific skepticism with denial that the Holocaust ever existed.
That is when it began: it began with the attempted marginalization of William Gray when the Leftists employed the rhetoric of `Holocaust denier’ to compare skeptical scientists to Nazis, right?
When we hear of a consensus we are being treated to the collectivists’ form of truth `finding,’ truth `making,’ and ultimately the enforcement and control of `truth.’
Liberal fascism is using the monster of liberal tyranny against democracy from within and from without only, instead of Hitler’s Brownshirts here with the ‘denier’ meme we have AGW insult commie Pinkshirts.
Dr. Gray is supposed to SHUT UP AND GO AWAY. When it was first used against Dr. Gray it was Kafkaesque! Now—and especially after we see that the EPA is attempting to criminalize the business of living—it is your government at work.
Global warming only nominally was ever about the science. In reality, it has been an international conspiracy against America with some of its deepest roots in America itself.
Global warming is a movement that has been taken over by the liberal wing of the Democrat Party in America with its collectivist creed: deny the existence of personal responsibility and employ any means to bring about the Left’s imaginary Utopian ends.
JC said “So ‘deniers’, tell me: will “increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development” work for you?”
I think they need to try increasing availability of their raw data and computer manipulations of that data. Then they need to start valuing observational data ahead of models and theories that don’t match the observations. It also will probably require ostracizing the hockey team members who have conspired to prevent science from upsetting the consensus needed for political grant funding to flow too.
Acknowledging that the UN-IPCC is a political not a scientific orgainization works for me.
Thanks PE! Wonderful link … very instructive.
The Higgs signal is seen against a large background of well-understood processes, and it is important to appreciate that the
signal stands out against background processes.
Similarly in climatology, the AGW signal is seen against background processes.
With reference to Figure 5 of Foster and Rahmstorf’s review Global temperature evolution 1979–2010, it is easy to estimate that the AGW is
or more.
This is why the overwhelming majority of climatologists are as convinced of the reality of AGW, as particle physicists are similarly convinced of the correctness of the Standard Model.
Rational skepticism is (of course) evolving rapidly toward the same conclusion: AGW is real, serious, and (so long as our energy economies are carbon-burning) accelerating toward an unknown-but-exceedingly hot planetary ecology.
Needless to say, this sobering scientific reality presents both challenges and opportunities to the STEM community.
What is your next scientific question, PE? :) ;) :)
Dang, Johnny. The best QA/QC practices are only 6σ. You’re surer than the quality of a Toyota. I’m impressed. :lol:
You really should try to write more succinct and relevant comments.
Yes, almost all climate scientists agree that AGW is real. What there is not agreement on is the rate of warming, or that this warming is bad overall or that we know with any reasonable degree of certainty what countries will be harmed more than they benefit.
Perhaps most importantly:
1. There is no agreement worldwide to reduce the growth of emissions and to ensure nations comply with what was agreed upon.
2. Mitigation actions seem to not be a cost effective use of resources as compared with actions to adapt to a changing climate.
Do you have any idea how absurd his claim of 7σ is? 7σ is 1 / 390,682,215,445.
He’s that sure of the A signal in AGW.
This is a psychiatric matter.
“Yes, almost all climate scientists agree that AGW is real.”
In last hundred years or so, there been decade long periods of
warming, cooling and over long term trend is warming by about than 1 C with last decade not having significant additional warming.
That land changes over this period may have slightly increased temperature, and has had regional affects upon climate, and multitude
undefined possible effects.
That during this period what appears to significant increase of CO2 and
a far more significant human emission CO2 from fossil fuels. And the human emission and rise in global CO2 not appearing to have a measurable affect on global temperature, and is it guessed by some that perhaps a large fraction of late 20th century warming was due to increased CO2 levels. Many have concluded that “natural variability”
is responsible for a significant or most of warming in 2oth Century.
“What there is not agreement on is the rate of warming”
Not so much in regards to the recent historical record. But there little in agreement in future projections of possible future warming.
Among the report by IPCC, the largest disagreement is on the theorized
amplification due to CO2 “forcing”. It is a disagreement on model perimeters.
Many regard this entire model construction as deeply flawed. Or
there is does not exist a type of model which vaguely accurate enough to
provide adequate long term or short term projection of regional or global temperatures.
“Perhaps most importantly:
1. There is no agreement worldwide to reduce the growth of emissions and to ensure nations comply with what was agreed upon.”
This was dead before it started. The rot of decaying carcass is reaching unbearable levels of stink.
“2. Mitigation actions seem to not be a cost effective use of resources as compared with actions to adapt to a changing climate.”
Real mitigation, is not discussed. Nor has any real solution to reducing
CO2 emission been discussed.
Probably an accurate description or “the work” has discussions about how discussion should be discussed and with main goal being the message of the discussion. Basically mental torture in holiday retreats by people who imagine they are saving the world.
For PE’s benefit, perhaps my comment should have mentioned that the high confidence of climatologists and particle physicists arises from their mathematically sophisticated yet experience-driven appreciation of statistical inference.
For a plain statement of this appreciation, consult the standard textbook by Press et al. “Numerical Recipes”, where we read
(italics as in the original)
Needless to say, this celebrated textbook is highly recommended to skeptics (and, it can be downloaded free-as-in-freedom).
What is your next scientific/mathematical question, PE? :) ;) :)
A fan of *MORE* discourse | June 20, 2012 at 6:42 pm | Reply
“What is your next scientific/mathematical question, PE?”
Thanks for asking. It’s a nature/nurture question. Were you born with a penchant for prevarication or was it an acquired taste?
Dave, here is an answer to a question that someday you may ask: “How is it that scientists really acquire confidence in their understanding?” Again Numerical Recipes supplies a crisp real-world answer:
The Left fears a free man. And there is nothing the Left hates more than a free man with property. The Left is impelled by its ideology to centralize all credit and energy and by extension all means of production into the hands of the state.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore,which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production. (The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engles)
http://evilincandescentbulb.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/skepticism-of-climatism-focuses-on-the-lefts-motives/
Who knew stone age people knew how to walk a stone?
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/easter-island-statues-may-walked-iconic-location-182902034.html
Not I. Seeing is believing.
But without proof can we simply dismiss the theory that aliens may have played a role? More funding is needed.
Dr Curry,
While I agree with your comments, I personally can’t get too worked up over name calling. My parents taught me the little ditty about sticks and stones at an early age and – despite what some socialogists and pyschologists might tell us, I’ve since nothing in subsequebnt years to prove they had it wrong. Name calling has the effect of identifying the caller as a bully, boob, or boor and little else. (b’s in honor of the lead author Paul Bain who is one of those fortunate people to have a comfortable job and not have to worry about producing anything of substance.)
Seeing “research” such as this helps to confirm two things for me.
1) Sociology is not the most useful of fields – i.e. if you can’t do anything else, try your hand at being a sociology major.
and
2) If stuff like this is what the purveyors of AGW come up with, it won’t be long before most people equate them with a clown named Bozo.
To equate Bozo to the AGW crowd is an insult to Bozo. At least Bozo was mildly entertaining.
“Personally, I’m not sure blogs have really contributed anything to the advancement of science. ”
IMHO, this exemplifies a fairly narrow view of the advancement of science. It implies that the “advancement of science” is the purview of a small group of practitioners. The uninitiated have nothing to offer. The role of the uninitiated is apparently to accept the pronouncements of the practitioners without argument or comment.
I’m old and cynical and I have seen to many cases in which science and its practitioners have been corrupted. This is not a great article, but it has some good points. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicization_of_science
Gould – “The Mismeasure of Man” is a good and (the first edition was a) quick read.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man.
I believe that blogs and other distributed media are an important check on errors- including scientific errors.
JC says:
“I find this kind of stuff in a high impact journal to be offensive: what was Nature Climate Change thinking when they published this?”
By using terms like “denier”, Nature has confirmed its activist bias. Nature has further confirmed what I already believed about the politicisation of the science journals, the politicisation of the activist scientists and the corruption of science (or at least climate science).
Analyzing people who talk about AGW denialism
========================================
This is easy. This term has an insulting connotation, so the AGW people using this term insult their opponents. By doing this through the press they probably also hope to create a negative public opinion about the opponents.
Judith,
“Somebody needs to research the sociology and psychology of people that insist that anyone that does not accept AGW as a rationale for massive CO2 mitigation efforts is a “denier.” ”
No research is needed. Theirs is the dominant socialist view: all who disagree with what they believe are declared to simply deny reality. And no, it is not possible that any view but their own is correct. And no, you don’t have the right to disagree under any circumstances. It would be humorous if it were not so sad. Pompous arrogance practiced by narrow minded fools. The “paper” passed muster for publication because the editors at Nature believe exactly the same as the authors; none of them is able to take a wider view of the world, and none can imagine that they could possibly be mistaken about anything. If anybody wonders why there are some who call for no public funding of climate science, they need only read this paper Utter rubbish..
Those who are paying the bills have no say in the matter. That should tell you something. It’s already too late. First Greece followed by all of dead and dying Old Europe and certainly the US dragged down by the likes of California and all of the blue states that manufacture nothing but b.s. What you observe is the Fall of Western Civilization. Students in intro Econ classes in the early 70s understood the social security system was a ponzi scheme. With the level of risk today the interest rate should be >12% but it is kept artificially low by government edict. We already have a fiat currency. We’re robbing from ourselves to pay ourselves.
Notice how with the schoolteachers of global warming alarmism that the Left has just as they always do: no one expects these schooteachers to actually do anything about. They will be the first to admit they cannot actually do anything contstructive or they wouldn’t be schoolteachers.
RiA,20/06 7.20pm:
Re blogs versus the small group of practitioners. Taleb in The Black Swan. Ch 10,, cites evidence that experts do no better than non experts in prediction. There’s a distinction between experts knowing ‘how’, (surgeons, aircraft pilots etc) and knowing ‘what’, economists, climate scientists and other fields involving rediction.) Think financial collapses that economists didn’t predict, think lengths of wars, Lebenon, The Great War, which those in the know predicted would be over quickly.
Re the experts and scandal of prediction,Taleb argues that you can’t ignore self delusion.’
The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know. Lack of knowledge and delusion about the quality of your knowledge come together, the same process that makes your knowledge also makes you satisfied with your knowledge.’
Think of computer models with ‘everything’ relevant set out on the screen.and the projection taking on a life of its own,
‘losing its vagueness and abstraction and becoming what philosopherscall reified, invested with concreteness, it takes on a new life as a tangible object.’*
Say, does this remind you of any climate scientists we know?
On the labeling issue, as he makes clear here and at WUWT now, Paul Bain’s use of denier is to separate it from skeptics. Skeptics would be people who are not sure whether they agree with AGW or not due to insufficient information, while deniers are sure they don’t agree. We don’t see that distinction made here, but there is one. If we don’t call them deniers, what are they? It is like agnosticism and atheism. They are very distinct classes of people.
“If we don’t call them deniers, what are they? ”
That tough, at first I didn’t think would be hard pick some other label.
But if you think about it, I became sympathetic to problem.
The problem is you have so many people who are these “deniers”
I think “normal” may best.
If wanted to show your solitary with all the Marxist brothers you call people who are normal, “the masses”.
You started off by making sense. It is a word with no synonym that I could find in a quick look online. We are stuck.
However, there is a series of synonyms for deny from which we can get rejecter as a synonym of denier. Also contradicter, disaffirmer, etc.
disaffirmer is more of a skeptic however, as they are saying you can’t be certain.
Contrarian might be good.
But it’s little too obvious, as it’s plain there isn’t a majority of people who believe in CAGW .
Among the school children who see Al Gore’s movie, you might have a lot kiddies scared to death. But they will grow out of it.
They always do.
AGW is science, CAGW is social science.
gbaikie | June 21, 2012 at 12:28 am |
I think the focus here may be a bit too narrow.
A skeptic ought be only one thing: loosely, a person who practices a standard of critical and analytical appraisal of all propositions before accepting them.
A denier can be many things:
1. A skeptic who has come to the conclusion they do not based on the evidence find the proposition at this time acceptable.
2. A motivated, biased or impaired reasoner who due some obstacle to logic has failed to come to a procedurally rational outcome for the sincerest of causes, and cannot distinguish themselves from #1. (Note this doesn’t necessarily make their outcome wrong, merely their path to it.)
3. A Dunning-Krugeresque incompetent who overestimates their faculties as an analyst and is just plain wrong in method. If their outcome resembles a reasonable argument, it is generally through mimickry or coincidence, or failure of their own critics to be properly skeptical of them.
4. A truly disturbed individual, whose processes are compromised at a psychological level. These are rarer than the general tone of discussion would lead one to believe, if we listened to everything we said about one another ad hominem. Probably.
5. A mercenary who sees a payoff and expects they will be rewarded by interfering in the process in some way. Again, rarer than the general tone of discussion would lead one to believe.
6. A troll who gets their kicks out of stirring things up.
7. A dismissalist, who’s first gut instinct in reaction to something, however small — possibly even unrelated — turned them into an evangelist crusading against the thing they dismiss and everything associated with it, or even seemingly sympathetic to it. This is pretty much the position I start with about everything I hear; I have to claw my way through logic and reason and evaluation of my motivations step by step to come out in favor of anything. So when I am in favor of something, it’s because it’s earned it through the best tests I can throw at it. Most dismissalists don’t bother; then again, I doubt many dismissalists’ first reaction to every idea they hear is, “NO! THAT’S WRONG! THAT CAN’T BE RIGHT!”
I would add the Kubler-Ross category of denialist on the first step to acceptance via anger, bargaining and depression.
Contrarian implies having an actual contrary theory. Few have that, but Lindzen is often described that way.
“AGW is science, CAGW is social science.”
I would agree that CAGW is closer to social science.
So you claiming the issue we focusing on is AGW.
Now, UHI is part of AGW, yes?
And all that involved with human action is part of
AGW.
What about someone who think UHI and land changes
is perhaps more significant than rising CO2 levels?
Is that part of the science?
Suppose someone considered that farming and other land develop such as urban centers, and natural variability was bigger effect on global temperature than CO2?
Or if they put all human activity [except CO2 emission] in one group, and human CO2 emission in another group. They consider everything other than CO2 emission is having a larger effect
A question for this science of AGW.
What is the feedback of 1 C of global warming- meaning
with some element of forcing increases temperature by 1 C.
This complicated question so, I will simplify it. What if oceans were quickly warmed up by 1 C. [zillions of nuclear reactors doing this warming- and thereafter constantly making the temperature exactly 1 C warmer than they are right now.] So in terms of average global temperature what is the result of such warming?
And is CO2 forcing different?
If the zillions nuclear reactor warmed the oceans by 1 C. Would there need more energy output from the reactors to equal the warming which is to result from increasing the CO2 levels which causes 1 C increase in global temperature?
In other words, after warmed ocean to 1 C.
This takes a certain amount of thermal heat from the nuclear reactors. Now we want to mimic what CO2 does. Is more energy required, and how how much and long before it reach equilibrium that equal how CO2 would do?
gbaikie, the reason they call it a projection rather than a prediction is that the human-controlled changes have to be specified in advance. Given those specifications, the projection is what would happen. So they say CO2 will rise at a certain rate, albedo changes from deliberate land-use changes including urban growth may or may not be specified, but given their assumptions, that is the projected change. “Skeptics” may not like the assumptions, but even for the assumptions made, they certainly don’t like the results. The projection goes with these assumptions. They have several scenarios to bracket the uncertainty with the assumptions.
Jim D says
“Paul Bain’s use of denier is to separate it from skeptics.”
Why use the word ‘denier’ when there are thousands of words that are not inextricably linked to an outrageous insult.
Of course its meant as an insult!
To deliberately link people who are skeptical with a strong causal link with increased atmospheric CO2 with significant temperature rise as racist Nazis is a mendacious lie.
Its meant to shut up rational debate.
Paul Bain and others of that ilk are the real inheritors of Doctor Goebbels propaganda methods.
Jim D you say the
‘denier’ label is appropriate because of the certainty of the proponents’ views, sceptics, at least express uncertainty. But what about the certainty of the science claimed by the climate scientists that you support? Is that certainty’ ok? Don’t yer jest love irony…
The opposite of denier is affirmer, but I don’t think many are in that class because science doesn’t have that level of certainty in theories, so a better word might be supporter or believer or convinced. Skeptics are often described as unconvinced, but this is distinct from denial which is being convinced of the opposite.
Clearly Dr. Bain is the sort of well meaning but ultimately foolish folk who treat rhetoric as magical thinking, that if they come up with the right magical incantation, that their opponents will suddenly go, “OK, sure, here’s my property, free speech, and other natural rights, silly me, what was I thinking, because you MEAN WELL.”
Dr Bain, you need to realize that it is BECAUSE we know the sort of policies you and your kind want to implement that we know your AGW arguments are full of bogosity, and are only meant to bamboozle the gullible into surrendering their freedom to global socialist government. There is NOTHING you can say or do to make us buy into allowing any of that. AGW is pseudoscience invented as a vehicle to push pre-agreed policies, not the reverse, and we know that you know that we know that.
mikelorrey | June 21, 2012 at 12:23 am |
And you started out so well, before spiralling into paranoiac alarmism.
I pretend I don’t know or care what Dr. Bain’s policies are. If he has a kind, I make sure I don’t know it, too, at first. I want to hear out any argument on its own merits, brushing rhetorical devices aside where they are impediments to critical reasoning, and keeping them where they clarify the relevant points of the proposition.
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic
Simply, no one who thinks they are as cagey and critical as you would buy your argument if they were being honest with themselves. They’d brand you as the sort of person who is full of bogosity and means to bamboozle the gullible through fear and rhetoric.
Good luck with that bed you’ve made yourself.
Bed? You mean the Agenda 21 bed that the UN designed and the rats are scurrying to give themselves diplomatic immunity over so they cant be prosecuted for their treason when they go home?
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/
It isn’t paranoia when they really are out to get you.
mikelorrey | June 21, 2012 at 12:59 am |
It isn’t paranoia when they really are out to get you.
Yeah, it generally is. Paranoiacs are often annoying, dangerous and persecuted even if they aren’t among the violent criminal type.
And sorry, but ranting about treason is a pretty good symptom, too.
Bart R,
Well said.
Joanne Nova on her website has a letter to Nature on the Bain letter and it is first rate putting the deniers side of “the science” exactly in my view. On the website 21st June, 2012.
“Overall, the findings suggest that if there was closer attention to the social consequences of policies, rather than continuing with seemingly intractable debates on the reality of AGW, then we might get to a point where there could be agreement on some action.”
==
How about that! How convenient Dr. Bain to move from the science to some supposedly responsible action affecting the social realm. Science contrary to your assertion does not support AGW, that is, observation science not post modern science made from computer simulations geared to show only one scenario. In fact science has yet to establish that we live through an unprecedented period on the climatic scale. The Gergis at al. 2012 affair is yet another demonstration that the same tricks are used every time to produce the desired result. Yet every time, these are exposed and debunked. The recent post at WUWT showing the Danish maps of Arctic Sea Ice showed clearly (uncertainties accounted for) that Arctic sea ice shrinking is not a proxy of Global Warming. We could also insist on the mode of atmospheric circulation as described by Marcel Leroux demonstrating the fallacy of the Global warming argument through the understanding of meteorological data. Finally, if anything Climategates have exposed nefarious behaviors that would have no reasons of exist had the science been clean and obvious.
Since science is still debated, in a climate of intimidation, monopoly despite having been told a long time ago that it was settled, force is to admit that the entire pyramidal scheme that was supposedly backed up by AGW science has no foundation. It is only propped up by the billions of vested interests in all derivatives of the CO2 scheme and now that post modern science has been unmasked for what it is -a pretext-, the true face of political activism, the social sciences in which you pulled your “denier” term, is showing up, eagerly expecting that after years of brainwashing, fear mongering, propaganda spewed on the masses through main stream media -often linked to vested green interests Thomson Reuters for instance-, that “action” will come thanks to uneducated zealots, incapable of understanding the science, eagerly parroting arguments of authority and willing to serve their new masters. Science is either right or wrong but morals can be conveniently argued. Anyone having read the Red Wheel by Solzhenitsyn would instantly recognize the signature of a manufactured revolution and the role of the media in conditioning the populace.
My dear Dr. Bain, your article participates of this shameful submission to the green powers and nothing in your letter here can excuse your complicity in helping establish this increasingly totalitarian society. You want action regardless of science being debated: the mere idea of science, the approximation of science is now enough and despite waving excuses hiding behind soft social and political sciences, you wish to enable the program. Granted, you try to divide in order to conquer, between the good skeptics, portrayed as a reasonable person ready to collaborate if they can be convinced there is something for them and the bad deniers… The very same techniques were used during the Occupation 1940-1944, Doctor to turn people in, to recruit people… After reading your prose, it looks as if the question is not “if” but “when” are we going to see coercive measures to “convince” skeptics should they resist the first wave of enticement?
No Dr. Bain you insult our intelligence by thinking our opposition is a matter of vocabulary. You try to make a career at it, gain some brownie points in the publication index while putting your name on the proper side of the equation for the future. It is the low key servility message of your paper that is disgusting, hiding behind policies that governments want to introduce as if these were a “fait accompli”–when in fact it was the very IPCC goal to help governments formulate these policies, quite a vicious circle-. If “non climate” policies are now the mediated goal you’d like to see emerge, you basically expose your friends backpedalling: no more catastrophic global warming, no more climatic goals, just societal change, the catalyst being at will Earth climate, Biodiversity, Water etc… switching them as the plan is implemented or exposed.
I’ll finish by quoting Giuseppe Tomasi in Principe de Lampedusa: “If we want everything to remain the same, let’s work at changing everything”. Indeed, forcing a well crafted change upon others is the best way to control them, hardly a surprise when one considers the quality, names and ranks of those who are mobilizing to “save the planet”.
Journal of UnScience? Surely this whole paper is not based on a name-calling assumption, a confusion about an illusory sub-species, homo sapiens denier? How does Nature define this group? They imply that deniers deny science, but can the researchers, editors or reviewers name any peer reviewed paper with empirical evidence that the deniers deny? We shall see…
Nature — and that problem of defining homo-sapiens-denier. Is it English or Newspeak?
Posted By Joanne Nova On June 21, 2012 @ 12:15 am In Big-Government,Global Warming | 32 Comments
This week Nature Climate Change published the Bain et al letter. Could Nature now be the
I have written to ask the lead researcher Dr Phil Bain:
Dear Dr Phil Bain,
Right now, it’s almost my life’s work to communicate the empirical evidence on anthropogenic climate change.
I can help you with your research on deniers. I have studied the mental condition of denial most carefully. There is a simple key to converting the convictions of people in this debate, and I have seen it work hundreds of times. Indeed, my own convictions that lasted 17 years were turned around in a few days. I can help you. It would be much simpler than you think.
Firstly, to save time and money we must analyze the leaders of the denial movement. I have emailed or spoken to virtually all of them.
They are happy to accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes warming, that humans produce CO2, that CO2 levels are rising, and that the earth has warmed in the last century. According to Hansen et al 19841, Bony et al 20062, and the IPCC AR4 report3, the direct effect of doubling the level of CO2 amounts to 1.2°C (i.e. before feedbacks).
All they need is the paper with the evidence showing that the 1.2°C direct warming is amplified to 3 or 4 degrees as projected by the models. Key leaders in the denial movement have been asking for this data for years. Unfortunately the IPCC assessment reports do not contain any direct observations of the amplification, either by water vapor (the key positive feedback4) or the totality of feedbacks. The IPCC only quotes results from climate simulations.
Since science is based on observations and measurements of the real world, it follows that a denier of science (rather than a denier of propaganda) must be denying real world data. I’d be most grateful if you could explain what “deniers” deny. Deniers repeatedly ask for empirical evidence, yet must be failing badly at communicating that this is the crucial point because none of the esteemed lead authors of IPCC working Group I seem to have realized that this paltry point is all that is needed. All this mess could be cleared up with an email.
The evidence for anthropogenic global warming is overwhelming, so the observations they deny must be written up many times in the peer review literature, right? After five years of study I am still not sure which instrument has made these key observations. Do deniers deny weather balloon results, or satellite data, or ice cores?
When you find this paper and the measurements, it will convince many of the key denier leaders. (But being the exacting personality type that they are, deniers will also expect to see the raw data. So you’ll need to also make sure that the authors of said paper have made all the records and methods available, but of course, all good scientists do that already don’t they?)
As a diligent researcher, I’m sure you would not have described a group with such a unequivocally strong label unless you were certain it applied. It would be disastrous for an esteemed publication like Nature to mistakenly insult Nobel prize winning physicists, NASA astronauts, and thousands of scientists who have asked for empirical evidence, only to find that the Nature authors themselves were unable to name papers (or instruments) with empirical evidence that their subject group called “deniers” denied.
If those papers (God forbid) do not exist, then the true deniers would turn out to be the researchers who denied that empirical evidence is key to scientific confidence in a theory. The true deniers would not be the skeptics who asked for evidence, but the name-calling researchers who did not test their own assumptions.
The fate of the planet rests on your shoulders. If you can find the observations that the IPCC can’t, you could change the path of international action. Should you find the evidence, I will be delighted to redouble my efforts to communicate the empirical evidence related to climate change.
Awaiting your reply keenly,
Joanne Nova
—————–
REFERENCES
1 Hansen J., A. Lacis, D. Rind, G. Russell, P. Stone, I. Fung, R. Ruedy and J. Lerner, (1984) Climate sensitivity: Analysis of feedback mechanisms. In Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity, AGU Geophysical Monograph 29, Maurice Ewing Vol. 5. J.E. Hansen and T. Takahashi, Eds. American Geophysical Union, pp. 130-163 [Abstract]
2 Bony, S., et al., 2006: How well do we understand and evaluate climate change feedback processes? J. Clim., 19, 3445–3482.
3 IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8.6.2.3. p630 [PDF].
4 IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8. Fig 8.14, p631 [PDF] see also Page 632.
——————
+1
Bain is out of his league completely.
@Paul Bain
I won’t object to being called a denier if you don’t object to being called a phuckstick. Deal?
Why choose Denier when there were so many to choose from he should have used ‘Flat earthers’ and be done with it
/sarc
Tom Rude 21/06 1.18 am re yr overview on subservience to the shamen of totalitarian movements, amen.
Thank you
I sympathise with the Brisbane Group. Their article is a crie de coeur from a threatened species, the sociological baggage which accretes on the outside of a gravy train, a bit like the Indian poor on their way to Mumbai.
So, they latch onto the term ‘denier’ as a code word for the group they all wish to despise because they threaten their morally-fraudulent livelihood.
And for those who wish to understand my stance, there can be no present CO2-AGW because if you look in the Metallurgical Literature, Hoyt C. Hottell, replicated later by Leckner, showed experimentally that the absorptivity/emissivity of CO2 in air levels off at ~200 ppmV in an infinite physical optical path.
This is the phenomenon of IR self absorption. Furthermore, the recent Mylar balloon experiment of Nahle proves, as predicted in 1993 by Happer, that thermalisation is mostly indirect!
The Nahle experiment is bogus. He used 3 mil Mylar balloons. 3 mil Mylar is not transparent to far infrared.
Mylar is biaxially-oriented PET ~ 1/13th the thickness of a typical PET bottle and its IR spectrum ** doesn’t overlap the main 2400/cm CO2 peak, also the absorbance at 900/cm isn’t strong***
** http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijs/2011/810936/.
*** http://science.widener.edu/svb/ftir/ir_co2.html
So, it transmits most of the relevant IR.
+1 I am Spartacus.
Paul,
You claim of your readers that ” …most of whom hold the view that anthropogenic climate change is real.”
Exactly what is the single key piece of actual evidence to support the view that “anthropogenic climate change is real” ?
With no evidence, what justification is there for supporting your true believer readers’ nonsense and pandering to their distaste ?
neverendingatdit, thought yer said;Cain; not Kane.
Quite right, Beth,
But I mentioned a rose bud, not a sled.
The sound of Rose, and the purity of Cain I like
For the bouquet of comments.
To the shrewdness of metaphors.
Reading over this reinforces my views that the warministas are characterised by smugness, conceit and the glib, the superficial and the smarmy. Have I missed anyone out? It is accompanied by unbounded idiocy. Do they for instance really think that the grossly inadequate characterisation of climate models by Gatesy really bears any resemblance at all to how these things actually work? I would suggest a peer reviewed alternative from an acknowledged leader in the field – http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full – but I fear not so much that the concepts are intrinsically beyond them (although that may be the case) but that cognitive dissonance will prevent the internal processing of information not in accord with the warminista world view. It is there but they simply can’t see it and this is not so much the fault of science or the result of science or valid at all scientifically but because so much of their self worth is tied up with this communal world view.
Part of the communal world view is the ideas of limits, of austerity needed to redeem ourselves, of the single minded and pure idealist charged with saving the world. It has both echoes of religious excess of the past and that of socialist fervour. Both have proved immensely dangerous to society and to dissenting individuals. Dissent as in not agreeing with every conformist detail of the world view. It leads to calls for suspension of democracy to enable changes to be made to productive systems. As F.A. Hayek said – from a sincere idealist to tyrant is but a step. And they seek to assure us of their benign intent. I would rather trust my knowledge of history and enlightenment thought. As is well known – the price of liberty is vigilance and they are certainly under surveillance. This is not paranoia Bart but the responsibility of free agents in western democracies.
The warminista world view is simple and climate is complex – one would think they would notice a discrepancy there. They claim to be champions of science but systematically disparage and dispute – or simply not see – science that cannot be incorporated in the world view. Is it any wonder I call them space cadets.
Chief,
There is nothing in the excellent PNAS Article that is at all at odds with anything I stated about models. Even the bottom line conclusion of this article in regards to the climate sensitivty question is quite in line with the 3C + or – 1C number. What your comments do indicate however is your extreme bias against those skeptics such as myself who accept AGW as provisionally true and your rather arrogant general attitude which begins to reveal an emotional attachment to this issue, calling into question your own objectivity.
‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation.’
‘AOS models are members of the broader class of deterministic chaotic dynamical systems, which provides several expectations about their properties (Fig. 1). In the context of weather prediction, the generic property of sensitive dependence is well understood (4, 5). For a particular model, small differences in initial state (indistinguishable within the sampling uncertainty for atmospheric measurements) amplify with time at an exponential rate until saturating at a magnitude comparable to the range of intrinsic variability. Model differences are another source of sensitive dependence. Thus, a deterministic weather forecast cannot be accurate after a period of a few weeks, and the time interval for skillful modern forecasts is only somewhat shorter than the estimate for this theoretical limit. In the context of equilibrium climate dynamics, there is another generic property that is also relevant for AOS, namely structural instability (6). Small changes in model formulation, either its equation set or parameter values, induce significant differences in the long-time distribution functions for the dependent variables (i.e., the phase-space attractor).’
Demostrates my points really.
‘AOS models are therefore to be judged by their degree of plausibility, not whether they are correct or best. This perspective extends to the component discrete algorithms, parameterizations, and coupling breadth: There are better or worse choices (some seemingly satisfactory for their purpose or others needing repair) but not correct or best ones. The bases for judging are a priori formulation, representing the relevant natural processes and choosing the discrete algorithms, and a posteriori solution behavior.’
Irreducible imprecision from dynamical complexity can only be asessed by a systematically designed family of models. As this is not done because the computer power is not available – we are left with qualitative a posteriori selection of a solution from a unknown range of possible solutions. That’s right folks – they pull it out of their arses.
And then we are left with simplistic argument from the true believers and accusations of arrogance and bias. Everything is imprecise simply shows how far they are from nuanced understanding. These guys are space cadets.
Spot on. +1
Bears repeating. So I did:
Chief,
That paper is very nice,
Though to say that ther is irreducible imprecision in Climate Models is stating the bleeding obvious.
There is irreducible imprecision in everything ever measured.
A common theme in the debate is that since models cannot make accurate predictions on regional and decadal scales, then they cannot make accurate predictions on global or century scales.
That is complete bunkum, as you have to wait until the magnitude of the trend is bigger than the magnitude of the noise and the natural variations.
The paper does however, support the notion that even if models do not produce good short term predictions, they can be reliable on longer timeframes.
Good spot, but I had seen that paper before.
So the paper is nice but the content trivial? Ya think ya got a problem there somewhere? You may have seen the paper – it has certainly been there for viewing in the PNAS and I have linked to it often enough. But you clealy show no signs of understanding but merely repeat platitudes proving again my points.
The question is, does McWilliams go as far as you do? All the models forecast warming. You don’t. He appears to agree with those models, and not with you.
You wound me. I suggest that decadally warming is decidedly contraindicated as the Pacific cool decadal mode intensifies. Indeed that most recent warming occurred as ENSO dragon kings in 1976/77 and 1998/2001 and that the satellite evidence suggests that cloud radiative forcing dominated in the interim in a secular pattern negatively correlated with sea surface temperature. This is clearly not an extreme view or indeed in contradiction to modern scientific understanding. As climate is a dynamical complex system – beyond that scientific angels should fear to tread.
Let me hark back to McWilliams for a moment however. ‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable.’ Structural instability and sensitive dependence are properties of models intrinsically by virtue of the underlying Navier-Stokes partial differential equations and equally of uncertainty in inputs. There are limits to the precision possible with inputs that result in solutions exponentially diverging with time. This is shown schematically in Fig 1.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=sensitivedependence.gif
We come then to ask what the range of solutions is consistent with the range of plausible inputs and that is a question we don’t know the answer to. The only way to approach that question is with systematically designed model families. This has not been done because of the computational expense. Computers thousands of times more powerful are needed to better capture the physics of the climate system – but this will again leave the systematic evaluation of ‘irreducible imprecision’ lacking.
So if we look at McWilliams plausibility criteria again. ‘The bases for judging are a priori formulation, representing the relevant natural processes and choosing the discrete algorithms, and a posteriori solution behavior.’ We are admittedly lacking in the first and the second I have uncharitably characterized as pulling it out their arses. I suggest that you are guilty of the same procedure.
And again that seems to prove my point on space cadets.
I would like to thank Paul Bain for engaging here. It is this kind of engagement that helps depolarize this situation, which is at the heart of what I think he is trying to do.
Me too. Thank you, Paul Bain. :)
curryja,
Mr Bain is being pressured by his Chancellor to minimise the damage his paper has caused to the funding of the Queensland University’s School of Psychology and the threats of de-funding by the Premier of Queensland within the spectrum of education that the State Government is responsible for.
The Federal Government’s Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has bankrolled academic institutions in an effort to change the political landscape in Australia for the promotion of the Carbon Tax.
The Queensland Government is diametrically opposed to the scheme and is in a political scrap with Canberra. Mr Bain has added fuel to their fire, hence his apologies and attempts at justification.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/03/queensland-to-dump-green-schemes/
I’m sorry, Dr. Curry, but I must have missed where Bain apologized for using the loaded term “denier” to characterize a large fraction of my fellow U.S. citizens. All I saw from him was prevarication and rationalization in defense of it. This isn’t going to depolarize jack diddly squat but rather serve to heighten resentment and firm the resolve to remove people like this from any positions of authority they’ve managed to acquire.
Dr. Curry,
I think it is safe to say that good Dr. Bain’s charm offensive is not being well received.
His insincerity and cynical smarminess is tough to hide. He does not really seem to be able to achieve the level of manipulative deception his research seems to show will be required to actually get people to believe AGW extremism.
Perhaps if he simply tried to apologize and asked “Nature” to withdraw his paper for a rewrite…but being an AGW true believer means never having to say your sorry.
Numerous comments here on Climate Etc. show plainly that for a considerable number of people, “depolarization” is what they *least* desire. That is why (as I posted above):
Highly recommended is Trish Roberts-Miller’s on-line essay Characteristics of Demagoguery, in particular the section titled “Polarization”, and also the section titled “Motivism”.
For me (and for many folks), denialism is characterized by an insistent — and in some cases even compulsive — embrace of polarization and motivism, typically accompanied by rudeness, abuse, ideological litmus-testing, scapegoating, enemy-listing (etc.).
When we identify denialism by these traits, we arrive at a better appreciation that denialism has nothing at all to do with rational skepticism.
Fan
You posted the Trish article yesterday, which is when I commented on it.
So, you believe every denier is;
“The toolset of denialist restriction-by-authority is always the same: rudeness, abuse, anger amounting to rage, personal profiling, selective enforcement of arbitrary rules, legal threats, enemy lists, and outright censorship of threatening ideas — always with a view toward sustaining a ‘protected bubble’ for denialist beliefs.”
Whereas by contrast I assume that you think every warmist is as pure as the driven snow?
Poppycock to both propositions
tonyb
Wow
AFOMD has described Martin Lack – the guy who was going to ‘bring down Richard Lindzen and end his career’ – perfectly.
Last I heard Lindzen is still there and there is a lack of Lack.
Latimer,
I had forgotten about good old Martin Lack. The obnoxious idiot with the worthless degree. I must say that he was rather entertaining.
For what it’s worth, about once a week I pull up Martin’s “Lack of Environment” blog to see what the ol’ sport is up to.
A while back there was some good stuff where one commenter tormented poor Martin with taunts of carbon-piggie hypocrisy directed at Martin’s frivolous, self-indulgent trips to the Himalayas and France and a fantasized jaunt to the Grand Canyon. Martin’s response? Well, Martin indignantly explained that since he is working to make the sort of trips that he so craves for himself way too expensive for the hoi polloi to afford, then it was O. K. for Martin, with his expectations of an income twice that of the average Brit family, to enjoy his little carbon-spew junkets in good conscience. I mean, like, talk about disarming candor! I mean, like, that’s what I like about Martin. I mean, like, I give Martin, for all his doofus weirdness and for all his somewhat off-putting stylistic preference for a heavy load-up of creepy, embarrassing, over-familiar, confessional, compulsive, autobiographical, blog-flasher revelations, in everything he writes, credit there.
Better still was the episode where one of Martin’s few (maybe only) regular commenters stomped off Martin’s blog in a huff never to be seen again. And I mean, like, Martin and this stompin’ ‘n huffin’ guy had been on a big-time, buddy-buddy, good-vibes, first-name basis and all, until right up to then. The source of the tiff between Martin and his former chum? Well, it seems that Martin was re-writing his pal’s posts and ol’ palsy-walsy didn’t like it. The justification? Well, as Martin patiently explained to Stupid, his good friend’s comments were so inept in terms of style, spelling, punctuation, and grammar, Martin was actually doing him a favor with his re-writes. Needless to say, Martin’s erstwhile, boon companion wasn’t satisfied with that explanation, to Martin’s innocent bewilderment, and a little door-slamming departure-scene ensued.
But Martin’s best is his latest post “When in Hole Keep Digging”. Here’s the money shot, “We will have to re-cycle metals when there are no more left in the earth to dig up…” So you wondered what eco-scare the greenshirts would come up with next to replace their totally failed, sinking, loser-ville CAGW bogey-man? Sitting down? Dare I say it? PEAK ORES!!!
Hey, Web, you cranky ol’ coot, yah got competition now, guy!
mike,
++1
When I feel strong enough I too will drop by over there. Sadly I am barred from commenting because of some imaginary transgression of one of ML’s arbitrary rules. His favourite phrase is ‘my blog, my rules, goodbye’. And then he wonders why it is ever so quiet ……..
The story of mateyboy getting into a huff and bailing ..and ML’s bafflement as to his reason has tickled me greatly. His lack of self-awareness is truly boundless.
A few years down the road and one can see how a country like Japan has really started to reduce its petroleum consumption.
http://i777.photobucket.com/albums/yy52/TheDudePeakOil/JapanPetroleumConsumptionbyStream.png
It is partly a conservation squeeze as they are reducing the non-gasoline forms of oil to keep their cars running.
Why is it that FOMD plays the old “guilt by association card”.
Its a well tried propaganda method refined by Doctor Goebbels.
What has a reasonable doubt about the link between increasing atmospheric CO2 and temperature to do with the holocaust?
Nothing of course but if ideologues like FOMD think that if they repeat a lie often enough then gullible people will be taken in.
Well it ultimately backfired for Goebbels and Senator Joe McCarthy and all the signs are that this despicable tactic will fail again.
Fan
“Discourse” is fine (as long as the message being conveyed is based on facts).
Let’s take the globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly per HadCRUT3 (used by IPCC in AR4 as the yardstick).
This shows us that over the past 180 months (15 years) temperature has decreased very slightly (a statistically insignificant -0.02C over the 15-year period).
Yet atmospheric CO2 increased from 364 to 391.6 ppmv over the same period.
Using the IPCC 2xCO2 CS =of 3.2°C, we should have seen warming of 0.34°C over the 15-year period.
[ln(391.6/364) * 3.2 / ln(2) = 0.34°C]
Let’s have more DISCOURSE on what happened here.
Are the CO2 values from Mauna Loa wrong?
Or is the surface temperature record flawed?
Or is the IPCC climate sensitivity assumption wrong?
Awaiting your DISCOURSE on this matter.
Max
Max,
I look at the sources and get different facts.
The trend I get is slightly warming, not cooling, but the error bars are big enough that they neither exclude cooling nor do they exclude warming at the IPCC pace of about 0.2 C per decade.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1996.6/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1996.6/to:2012/trend
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
Mauna Loa agrees with other CO2 measurements, so it’s not wrong.
All diamonds are flawed, except for the ones in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” so why do you insist on using HADcrut 3 when there are less flawed data sets out there.
The IPCC climate sensitivity is not an assumption.
And you are judging a transient response using an equilibrium calculation, you do know that’s wrong.
Bob
When you wrote- “The IPCC climate sensitivity is not an assumption” what is it better described as? An opinion? A belief? A theory?
Clearly, climate sensitivity to additional CO2 is not known with a reasonably tight margin of error. Clearly, temperatures have not rised at the rate it was expected based on the change in CO2 over the last 15 years
Rob,
The IPCC climate sensistivity is a relgious tenet, not an assumption.
It is revealed wisdom, and cannot be challeneged without risk of being declared a heretic or, worse, a denialist.
Bob, if climate sensitivity is a variable and not a constant, how constrained is it? The IPCC climate sensitivity is an assumption and a rather large one: that the climate sensitivity is a constant or at least a near constant value. If I am wrong you have evidence besides paleo data that would constrain it to the IPCC values.
Rob Starkey,
I think it is in the IPCC reports where they get the estimates from.
For example, the Charney no feedback sensitivity is calculated.
Paleo recontruction of temperature and CO2 levels give another estimate.
Transient climate sensitivity can be determined from a regression analysis of CO2 vs Temperature using the historical data and CO2 from Mauna Loa, you could even do that yourself using Excel.
More like measured, estimated and calculated.
And it may be a while before we have more precision than 1 significant figure.
@bob droege
Hi Bob
‘less flawed datasets’?
Please explain. How can different datasets give different results?
At any one time the temperature in my back garden can have only one value. Ergo there can be only one correct average annual temperature.
Why do you need different datasets? This had better be good………….
Steven,
I think whether it is a variable or a constant, it is poorly constrained.
I think it is a variable.
THere are dozens if not over a hundred papers published wiht estimates of climate sensitivity.
You can do it yourself, download the Mauna Loa data and compare it to any of the global temperature series using Excel, you will probalbly get a value between 2 and 2.5.
That would not be paleo.
It wouldn’t be paleo but it would still be packed full of assumptions. For instance it would assume the climate was in equilibrium once the data started being compared. It would assume there have no trends in heat transport. It would assume that solar forcing became negative at mid century despite all the arguments for long periods of time to equilibrium. It would assume that ocean oscillations have had a chance to balance out. I will try to remember some more assumtions later since I have more pressing duties at the moment. I assume these are enough assumptions anyway.
Latimer,
All temperatures are averages.
What if I measure the temperature in your garden in several different places, say one in sunlight, one in shade, one by your magnificant Koi pond and one at the top of your beautiful tree. What if I used different brands of thermometers of varying levels of precision, and say I used one mercury thermometer, one alcohol, one thermocouple and one infared?
The data sets give different results because they are all flawed and always will be, but that doesn’t mean they can’t give results of acceptable precision. HADcrut 3 is known to have gaps in coverage.
You are right, there is only one true value for anything humans have ever measured, but it is just as true that humans never know the actual one true value.
I take it it has been a while since you studied the dark arts.
Steve,
In a way you are right in there would be some assumtions made, but not the ones you suggest.
I would not assume the climate was in equilibrium.
The solar forcing at mid century is irrelevant since time is not one of the variables we are regressing. Just temperature and CO2. You could make sure that you have a long enough series of data to encompass several PDO cycles as well as many solar cycles, so that those effects cancel out for the most part.
But that is why you do regression, to tell you how much the CO2 affects the Temperature, and that analysis tells us that CO2 is the main driver.
That’s what the data tells me anyhow, untill someone can do a regression analysis comparing something else to temperature and getting a higher R value, I am going to stick with CO2.
@bob droege
Sure. No problems with any of that stuff. I could probably have written it when I was about 13. Learning about measuring stuff is quite important in physics and chemistry. I did quite a lot of both. Measured a lot of different variables with a lot of different instruments and machines. Calibrated them too. So I am no stranger to that side of the house.
But you are talking about the difficulties of individual measurements. My question was about datasets. Datasets are collections of measurements, not the measurements themsleves.
Why do we have more than one dataset of measurements? Why do they differ? What do you mean by HADCRUT3 has ‘gaps’? Why don’t you merge all the individual datasets into one universally agreed ‘master dataset’? Why is some item of data included in one dataset but not another? What possible rationale is there?
(And if I hear that you can’t tell me because of confidentiality agreements or intellectual property or because McSteve is a very bad man or any of the usual juvenile academic drivel I swear I will scream the house down)
Seems to me that climatology already has enough problems without stumbling over the elementary one of not even having a single agreed set of basic measurements. A ‘common language’ of data.
But then this is climatology. Expecting any degree of rational organisation or systematic approach to the ‘greatest problem facing humanity’ seems well beyond the grasp of their ‘great intellects’.
PS – great insight into my garden btw. Do you live locally? But they are goldfish, not Koi.
Bob
Let’s take your points one by one.
First, you pulled the old “sleight of hand” trick on me, by changing the data series from the past 15 years (May 1997 through April 2012), to the past 16 years (starting May 1966 instead).
Here’s the past 15 years’ HadCRUT3 record, which shows slight (if statistically insignificant) cooling, as I wrote:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5
I have not questioned the Mauna Loa readings at all.
IPCC uses HadCRUT3 extensively in its AR4 report; I just did the same.
The IPCC climate sensitivity is based on assumptions, which have been fed into computer models to arrive at estimates. GIGO?
IPCC has told us that the anthropogenic warming of the early decades of the 21st century would represent 0.2C per decade (transient). This equals 0.3C over 15 years (transient). The calculation I made shows the same 0.3C theoretical rise over the 15-year period. In actual fact, however, there was very slight cooling over this period instead. That was my point, which you have been unable to refute. The whole “transient” versus “equilibrium” discussion is one that is highly theoretical, in the first place, but –as you see – IPCC has figured 0.2C per decade as a transient response.
So you see, Bob, that all your points are invalid and you have been unable to explain the major discrepancy beyween the IPCC modeled projections and the observed reality.
Max
Bob, I think everything I mentioned probably does matter if you are trying to quantify the value. Since I never bothered to learn statistics I will just rely on my logic for now. I don’t have a problem with you being satisfied with co2 as the main driver. I just want to see what happens when the primary known contributors aren’t all heading in the same direction before I make up my mind. The good new is it looks like we will get to see what happens in a reasonable amount of time.
bob droege
Yes.
And this calculation results in a TCS of between 0.8 and 1.4C, depending on whose estimate one uses for past solar forcing: IPCC (at 7% of total) or several solar studies (at around 50% of total).
Max
Max,
1. You are cherry picking the start time for your temperature trend. And you know that.
2. The IPCC places no preference on Hadcrut3. And you know that.
3. Estimates of climate sensitivity predate both the IPCC and the development of computer models. And you know that.
4. And you are still hung up on saying that you can claim there is slight cooling for the past 15 years when that is not statistically significant, try 30 year trends which are statistically significant and in line with the IPCC’s about 0.2 C per decade trend.
5. And never forget the about, otherwise you are misquoting the IPCC and you flunk climate science for that transgression.
6. And you have failed to demonstrate that there is any discrepancy between reality and any of the published climate model projections.
7. A regression analysis of CO2 vs Temperature only uses those two variables. You don’t use any solar data in the calculation. Of course you could do a regression analysis of solar and temperature and see what kind of R value results. Someone posted a regression analysis of cosmic rays vs temperature on this thread, and the R value there was unconvincing to say the least. If one did regression analyses of temperature vs all the variable that could have an effect on temperature, you could rank them, and so far CO2 beats the Sun which beats cosmic rays. I am a couple stat courses short of a Math degree, so I am unqualified to teach you any statistics, but you could use a primer.
Fan,
Yeah right. Not. You’re troll-quotient is going to drop if you keep with the stupid act.Good trolls can get farther into a topic before their limitations start showing.
It was a member of the ‘team’ in one of the climategate e-mails who was fantasizing about how to beat up skeptics he did not like.
Shall we list the calls for war-crimes, the slander and abuse and rudeness and out-right firings that skeptics have received from you nice true-believers?
So bob, you always look at the bottom of the baseball standings to find out who is at the top? I usually zero in on the leaders to find out who is at the top, but if you want to work by a process of elimination, that is your choice.
So, no, I do not have to analyze the performance of the worst to understand the best. And analyzing the best shows they are far short of anything that is predictive or accurate. If I have missed one due to NOT zeroing in on models that are 100% off that is actually predictive, you are more than welcome to point it out to me. But since I want to maximize the productivity, I only evaluate ones that are in the ballpark.
And left field is not home plate. So far, the closest any have come is left field. But you are free to prove me wrong.
Phil,
Which models have you looked at and by what metric do you consider them to have failed?
Lets just look at the ones that meet the following criteria.
Published long enough ago to have a predicted trend that is larger than the noise and expected natural variability.
And if you have read this entire thread, you might have an inkling of what I consider sceptics using sports analogies to be worth.
And how do you know if they are in the ballpark if you have not evaluated them.
You did say that they all failed, and one would assume by that statement that you had indeed looked at all of them.
And indeed there are so many of them, there is bound to be one that looks PFG just by luck.
@bob droege
I think we can safely assume that if there was even one model that showed anything like a reasonable agreement with observations the alarmist propaganda machine would have made sure that it was on the front page of every newspaper in the land and at the top of every news bulletin.
As it is, they are reduced to trying to pretend that Hansen’s prediction from 1988 has some skill.
That we haven’t seen such headlines or heard such bulletins is powerful circumstantial evidence that such models have not been made.
Latimer,
They wouldn’t do that because they know better.
?? Please explain. I have yet to see much of a sense of humility or self-effacement among climatologists.
But maybe their recent history of continuous PR disaster upon PR disaster is at last inducing a hint of caution?
If a climate model gave the same output on two successive runs, I would say something is wrong with it and I trust the pro climate modelers would do the same.
If climate modeling group A tried to publish a “perfect” model run, their harshest critics would be modeling grouops B, C and D.
I would like to see any projection of future global temperature which expected CO2 to have a significant effect on future temperature.
I would like to see any projection that predicted the 1998 spike in global temperature and the trend after this event.
It seem if they missed this El Nino event, they would missed something rather important, and if the projection including something like it and resulting global temperature after this event, it would be impressive.
But I would also expect fraud is involved, because as far as I know no one has claimed that level of skill.
It seems to me the most important project of the distant future, should be 50 years. And I would to see some of those which has done recently.
Because I think policy maker should aware near future- like say 20-30 years and adding the 20 years beyond this point is also useful.
gbaikie,
The PDO and the El Nino. la Nina cycles are part of natural variability, and as far as I know, predicting those events well enough to include in climate models are outside our capabilities right now.
Read the article on irreducible imprecision.
Ergo we cannot use climate models to predict future climates.
Great,
Stop wasting your time and my money on pretending we can. Scam over.
“The PDO and the El Nino. la Nina cycles are part of natural variability, and as far as I know, predicting those events well enough to include in climate models are outside our capabilities right now.”
I agree. But we could make it within capabilities. i simple terms you more brains on it. Somewhere around a million brains. And probably sixteen year old kids might have best chance.
So I would suggest dollar value prizes for limited and definable goals in this regard.
Much wiser and more useful than brainwashing students with Al Gore propaganda. And if want teach kids something, more effective.
The McWilliams article is not at all about the breadth of couplings or the representation of physical characteristics. Irreducible imprecision springs purely from the nature of the underlying equations and the limitations in precision in input data and is entirely an internal property of the models.
ENSO and the PDO, on the other hand, reflect more or less upwelling of cold, nutrient rich and carbon super-saturated water in the eastern Pacific. This is influenced by cold water pushing towards the equator in the Peruvian and Californian Currents respectively and displacing the warm surface layer. The strength of these currents is influenced by the location of the polar fronts as determined by sea level pressures in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes. This in turn is modulated by solar UV/ozone interactions in the polar vortices.
Do I get a prize?
“Irreducible imprecision springs purely from the nature of the underlying equations and the limitations in precision in input data and is entirely an internal property of the models. ”
So it is possible it is perhaps considerably easier than creating Artificial intelligence.
“Do I get a prize?”
We wants shiny graphics.
Latimer,
Just because we can’t predict ENSO doesn’t mean we can’t predict climate.
@bob droege
‘Just because we can’t predict ENSO doesn’t mean we can’t predict climate’
I agree that it may not be the only reason. Maybe thetre are a hundred others. Please lay out your choice of reasons..
Because after 30 years, tens of billions of dollars, as much computing power as it is technically possible to give you and a great deal of belief in ‘just another 100 million dollars and all will be well’, there is absolutely no evidence that you have ever successfully predicted anything at all about climate. Nor is there any evidence that you are ever going to be able to do so.
So, in times of financial stringency. please persuade me that the whole climate modelling industry isn’t just a great boondoggle pouring public money into a big black hole. Like a beautiful expensive aeroplane that has just one fatal flaw – it cannot fly – climate models do not do what they say on the tin.
Latimer,
Pleaqse explain how you can support your contention that there is absolutely no vidence that climatologists have made any sucessful predictions.
In 1988, Hansen predicted it would get warmer, it got warmer.
@bob droege
Arrhenius made the same prediction in 1907.
But for both Svente and Jimbo it was only about a 3/1 shot ..warmer, colder, the same are the only possibilities. And ‘the same’ is pretty unlikely so maybe 9/4
If the best evidence you can come up with is Hansen’s ‘it got warmer’, then he is guilty of plagiarising Arrhenius’s work.
Hansen actually made some more precise predictions on various emissions scenarios and what the resulting temperature changes would be. They have all been shown to be very inaccurate…the actual observed temperatures are a lot less than he predicted would happen. But then..that’s JImbo all over..never let the facts get in the way of a bit of scare-mongering.
And just using Arhhenius predictive method (log paper and a ruler)
has shown better results than all the climate models and supercomputers since his day.
Latimer,
I am just trying to get you to put a number on your assertion that models have failed in their predictive ability.
Now you have admitted that Hansen made a prediction with some precision, which is backpedaling from your previous assertions made with no evidence to back it up.
If you took an objective and fair look at what Hansen has actually predicted, you would say he underestimated the temperature trend in 1980 by 30%, but overestimated the trend by 50% in 1988.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/evaluating-a-1981-temperature-projection/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/simply-wrong-solheim-hansen-88.html
Both numbers are not zero and show some measure of precision in the prediction.
But you keep talking about accuracy and we cannot know what the accuracy is unless we know what the true value is.
@bob
I fear you are indulging in childish logic chopping.
I can predict with some great degree of confidence that the sun will rise tomorrow. No doubt Hansen could as well.
But I doubt you’d consider either of us to be very good soothsayers for such a trite remark.
Latimer,
You are being closed minded and refusing to put a number on it.
You just want to stick with your preconceived notions.
As a practicing chemist, and I may never get good at it, of the analytical kind for the most part, so I want to put a number on any judgment of the worth of any models predictive worth.
Since you won’t, your opinion has no value.
Well sorry bob, I do not usually read your posts. I look for learning and enlightenment, not indoctination. I thought a sports analogy would be simple enough for you to comprehend. Apparently I was wrong. I was not using sports to model the weather, but to model human wisdom. I guess you missed that nuance.
But I will make it easy for you. This thread started by you claiming models were gods. I made (perhaps foolishly) the unequivocal claim that no models were accurate for predicting future weather (and/or climate).
So you merely have to find one that has not to disprove me. As I tried to make clear to you, I do not waste my time studying failures, only potential successes. And I admitted that. I will make it again so you can debunk me (see how easy I make it for you) with NO SPORTS analogies (for the analogy impaired).
There are no models that have any sucess (better than random chance) at predicting future weather patterns or climate. That is not to say there never will be. If, at some future date, scientists start doing science again, and actually start researching what goes into creating climate, there very well may be (and I firmly believe it will happen once we get out of this dark age of religious superstition and fear mongering by the faux scientists of today).
So have at it! No sports. Just a claim. And you can easily debunk it. I know you like things easy.
Phil,
In using a sports analogy, you judged models to be failures without even bothering to examine them, to me that smacks of a predudicial attitude. Can you make an argument without using a sports analogy?
And now you are putting words in my mouth claiming I said models were GODS, when I said nothing of the sort, I just challenged you show proof of your opinions that models are worthless, and you failed miserably.
In 1988, Hansen made three predictions, all three had temperatures going up, if that was done by chance there would be a 87.5% chance that at least one of the predictions would be for temperatures to decrease, temperatures increased, therefore Hansen did better than chance, at least to 87.5%.
And you don’t study failures?
You don’t think failures are interesting?
Galloping Gertie comes to mind
And you don’t win arguments throwing insults.
I don’t have a problem with them, I’m just challenged not to respond in kind.
So bring it.
But, please spice up your insults with a little evidence.
Bob, for a man who claims to be learned, you clearly are trying to be obtuse.
I judged nothing. If the weather forecaster calls for snow, and it is 80 degrees outside, I do not judge. I note he is wrong.
If the model says we are going to warm by 2 degrees per year, I judge nothing. I evaluate the data and either accept or reject the model as being predictive.
You judge, and that is why you are a lousy scientist. You judge and that is why you cannot accept the fact that you are wrong. You judge a lot.
I have yet to insult you. If you find sarcasm and statements of facts to be insults, then you judge it so. And you are wrong. But that is not the first time apparently you seek refuge in denial.
next time, do not judge. Try a simple exercise. Take a thermometer outside and measure the temperature. Compare it to what they weatherman predicted. Then OBSERVE whether he was accurate or not.
A simple test. And no judgement involved.
This paper would have been consigned to the obscurity it so richly deserves had it not been for the inflammatory label applied to those who conclude there’s no sound reason for alarm over carbon dioxide emissions.
Well played, Bain. Well played.
Scientists may not like this cite either…
Jud 1:4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
so ask yourself this question, who denied who first? Same as it ever was.
Play on
IMPORTANT INTERPRETATION OF GLOBAL MEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE (GMST) DATA
Effect of trend period on global mean surface temperature trends for Hadcrut3 => http://bit.ly/MkdC0k
Conclusion:
Global mean temperature trends are cyclic with the amplitude of oscillation dependent on the trend period. For the 30-years trend, the amplitude is about 0.1 deg C per decade. This 0.1 deg C per decade must be removed from climate’s trend calculations.
In view of this result, we can respond to IPCC’s claim as follows.
1) IPCC: “For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios.”
No IPCC. Because the GMST trend for 1970-2000 is about 0.2 deg C per decade does not mean that this trend will continue. This is because the 0.2 deg C per decade trend includes an oscillating warming rate of 0.1 deg C per decade as shown in the above graph.
2) IPCC: “Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected.”
No IPCC. We will move to 0.1 deg C per decade when the cyclic component of the global mean temperature trend moves from its peak to its neutral position as shown in the above graph, and this movement to 0.1 deg C has nothing to do with either greenhouse gasses or aerosols.
AGW is not supported by the data.
The bottom line metaphorically and in this case literally too. Well placed, sir.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch once again…
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/06/20/godfather-global-green-thinking-steps-out-shadows-at-rio-20/
after leaving his home of fifty years in China.
My error. Five years. Too long a commute to sign those WH log books.
Ah, a Man of the People. Well everything’s alright then.
And now.
=====
Strong, an avowed life-long socialist
It is all about ideology, not AGW
Girma
Changing the topic a bit from the lead post psychobabble on “understanding AGW skepticism and denialism”.
This lecture by German Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt at recent GWPF meeting underscores your point about climate cycles in the temperature record.
http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/6005-the-2012-annual-gwpf-lecture-by-professor-fritz-vahrenholt.html
He also discusses influence of sun, NAO, PDO, folly of “hockeystick” and IPCC fixation on CO2, historic cold and warm periods tied to solar activity, other solar influences on climate beside TSI, solar/cosmic ray work at CERN, futility of European fear-based renewable energy planning, etc., concluding:
Worth watching.
Max
Thanks Max.
Hey, Paul Bain. The globe is cooling; for how long even kim doesn’t know.
=========
is is nice that good Dr. Bain has let us know how none of the denier stuff was meant as bigotry dressed up in a science paper. Perhaps this hard working social scientist will do another project and explore the mind of the AGW true believer and let us now how enlightenment in this anthropocene age of climate catastrophe functions.
Let’s try,
“It is nice that the good Dr. Bain etc.”
R.A. Gates,
So if they are exactly alike, why does only one get studied?
Do you have any evidence, beyongd your assertion, that they are in fact exactly the same?
Losers on the left always seek out equivalence.
Of course the mindset of the AGW true believer and mindset of the AGW true-denier are exactly the of the same type and it has already been studied by Hoffer quite well. Both are driven by emotion and ideology, closed to reason, blind to anything the would alter their world view, prone to see things in black/white, us/them, good/bad terms, and exact opposite of the true skeptic.
Going right back up to the top where I think “Paul” and his group fail miserably is distinguishing between “deniers”. Ultimately, As Dr. Curry notes the field on the “skeptic” side of the ledger ranges from the Senator Inhofe “it is all a load of crap” to the lukewarmers who accept AGW (say 1.2 degrees C or so) but challenge the tenets of CAGW and suggest that further heating is tolerable and can be addressed through mitigative measures rather than upending international development and potentially throwing a generation in the developing world back into a world of uncertainty and hunger.
Moreover, Dr. Bain fails to acknowledge the real difference in opinion amongst the modelling community as to the effects and magnitudes of feedbacks to be included in the GCMs.
Personally, I doubt that Dr. Bain was nearly as naive as he has led us to believe in his comments above but rather suggest he was taken aback by the ferocity of the reply from the skeptic community. Perhaps he should contact Richard Michaels to see how badly it turns out when you try to stir up a hornet’s nest and ultimately succeed.
A faux pas is when a progressive politician says what he really thinks.
From outgoing Congressmen Gary Ackerman (D-New York)
“I think the people have gotten dumber.”
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/31860-a-congressional-exit-interview
Translation – I’m quitting politics because those stupid voters are too dumb to realize I am so superior to them, they should let me run their economy.
And what was this rocket scientist’s record on CAGW?
“Ackerman cosponsored H.R. 1590, the Safe Climate Act of 2007, which would require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop policies to reduce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions, which are largely responsible for global climate change, by 2% every year from 2010 until 2050.”
http://ackerman.house.gov/2007-statements-remarks/ackerman-cosponsors-major-climate-change-legislation/
That’s an 80% reduction in GHGs over 40 years. And this is mainstream, consensus, “climate change” politics.
And the VOTERS are getting dumber?
Thanks to all those who posted something that was on-topic. The problem I had reading through the thread was that the on-topic posts were drowned out by all the off-topic posts. Could I suggest that future threads have two parts. An A part where people comment on the thread topic and a B part were the same-old same-old can be re-hashed for the umpteenth time. (And yes I do appreciate the irony that this post is itself off-topic.)
So far, no other Climate Etc. poster (save me) has joined Prof. Curry in extending appreciation and thanks to Paul Bain.
To the contrary, many posters have responded to Paul Bain’s and Judith Curry’s outreach efforts by redoubling their output of criticism, personal abuse, conspiracy theories (etc.).
This outcome is strong evidence that a substantial contingent of Climate Etc. commenters individually prefer — and deliberately foster — a climate-change debate environment that is ideologically polarized & personally abusive. WUWT?
See guys – he’s back on ‘ideological’. Once the Well Funded Big Oil Anti Science Denier Conspiracy schtick folded the new accusation from the self-declared cognoscenti is ‘ideological’.
Fan..would you care to define your understanding of ‘ideology’ for us? Last time it seemed to be that simply that I didn’t show due reverence to climatology and climatologists. Have you a super duper approved and updated version with go-faster stripes..as your previous attempt was pathetic to the point of intellectual absurdity?
I would also like to thank Paul Bain for engaging here.
There is nothing like having someone politely lecture me with more of the BS on a forum such as this after publishing the same in a so-call “scientific journal”. Snake oil from a smiling and half ass apologetic salesman is still snake oil. My heart just melts from his sincerity and warmth.
Fan
You are right. We should give our thanks to Paul Bain for his efforts. Its not easy to write an article let alone appear in a hostile environment to defend it. Some of the comments are over the top. Reasoned discussion is better than vitriol
tonyb
Thank you, climatereason, for concisely stating the the principle that chiefly distinguishes rational skepticism from demagogic denialism.
I would also extend a genuine thanks to Paul Bain for engaging here. He even graciously made some genuine concessions as to how he might have done things differently. I would hope he would at least consider the concept that true skeptics are the polar opposite mindset of both deniers and the “true believers” in CAGW, and that true skeptics can both provisionally accept AGW and/or CAGW as well as reject either. Just that recognition alone would give potential opportunity to have more productive dialog and even the possibility of finding some common ground in terms of policy.
There are 2 alternatives. The tired paradigm of a slowly evoliving climate subject to ordered forcing. The old world of simple causality, transient sensitivity and explicable feedback. In the new paradigm of abrupt climate change the ‘global coupled atmosphere–ocean–land–cryosphere system exhibits a wide range of physical and dynamical phenomena with associated physical, biological, and chemical feedbacks that collectively result in a continuum of temporal and spatial variability. The traditional boundaries between weather and climate are, therefore, somewhat artificial.’ Hurrell et al 2009
One of these paradigms is simple minded, limited, nonsensical, unphysical and absurd. One is cognisant of the range of positive and negative couplings possible in the real world of a humungously complex system. Guess which.
The policy question is what if the first of these is just dead set wrong (difficult as is for space cadets to imagine – and remembering that models can’t help us here) and the planet resolutely refuses to warm for a decade or three more at least?
Where do you go then? Is it still worthwhile not adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as we undoubtedly do? What sort of policies can we implement that recognises the political realities in a non warming world as well as the development and economic needs of people? Is it a policy that enthusiatically embraces economic growth, social development, political and economic freedom and democracy? Or it it one that emphasises limits to growth, supension of democracy and centralised control of economies? Because if it is the latter – Gatesy – the battle lines are drawn and you are the enemy.
It goes from the latter to the former. Hurrell was talking about predicting the next decade, which is subject to random variability of about the size of the change (most of you say the PDO is about 0.2 degrees). Longer term changes due to forcing (several degrees) are ten times this random variability, and relatively much more predictable. Conflating the issues of decadal predictability with century predictability under a strong forcing change leads to the kind of contradiction and confusion you show in your post. Hope that clears it up a bit.
Jim D.,
Well and accurately stated.
‘It goes from the latter to the former’????
Hurrell was talking many things – but primarily seamless forecasting for which some 3 orders of magnitude more computing power is required. ‘The accurate representation of this continuum of variability in numerical models is, consequently, a challenging but essential goal. Fundamental barriers to advancing weather and climate prediction on time scales from days to years, as well as longstanding systematic errors in weather and climate models, are partly attributable to our limited understanding of and capability for simulating the complex, multiscale interactions intrinsic to atmospheric, oceanic, and cryospheric fluid motions.’ Climate as an initial value problem limited in scope and range much as a weather forecast is limited to a week or so as a result of dynamical complexity. Limited by our woefully inadequate understanding of couplings and feedbacks as well. Beyond that the models are intrinsically unstable – as discussed by McWilliams- so how can we tell?
Much as your thinking is limited by the pardigm of slow change in the climate system as a response to ordered forcing. ‘Thinking is centered around slow changes to our climate and how they will affect humans and the habitability of our planet. Yet this thinking is flawed: It ignores the well-established fact that Earth’s climate has changed rapidly in the past and could change rapidly in the future. The issue centers around the paradox that global warming could instigate a new Little Ice Age in the northern hemisphere.- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Deeply flawed thinking both theoretically – in ignoring the number and influence of of potential feedbacks – and in terms of real world data satellite that suggests that grennhouse gases were by no means anywhere near the dominant cause of warming between 1976 and 1998. It is in fact ENSO dragon kings at climate shifts in 1976/77 and 1998/2001 as discussed in the 2 papers referenced in this realclimate post – http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/ – combined with low level stratocumulos cloud changes inversely correlated with sea suface temperature in the Pacific (e.g. Burgmann et al 2008, Clements et al 2009, Zhu et al 2007, Dessler 2010). If you google chief hydrologist and decadal cloud variability – you will find links.
We shall think about the title of the realclimate post for a moment – warming interrupted: much ado about natural variation. Says it all really. So it will be cooler (not warming?) for a decade or three (read the papers not just the post)? On what basis I would wonder would it then warm again? I must admit I find the free ranging possibilities of the WHOI more congenial.
So it appears you are not interested in any policy I would be interested in. It is just a pseudo scientific sham, a pursuit of values I detest and which you refuse to acknowledge openly or disown and which entirely is based on a shallow and appallingly incompetent appeal to the authotity of science. You resort to smug and smarmy at the last – your only talent.
Well done space cadets – I give you the one fingered salute that is all you deserve.
This reminds me of the first time Judith Curry came to Climate Audit.
I recall being very nasty to her, apologies followed.
In any case, I would like to thank Dr. Bain for showing up and running the gauntlet. I got to ask my question. he answered it. I accept his answer.
Next.
You and I have one thing in common. We’re both banned from WUWT for being assholes. One thing we don’t have in common is I’m well aware of my own assholiness while you are in denial of yours.
I would like to thank Paul for coming here. I hope he accomplishes his apparent goal of preserving his cush job and state funding.
I would also thank him if he would be less cynically deceptive and would also study the AGW beleivers and see what motivates them.
Paul
Similar deep misunderstandings of both the people, the science and the scientific method are shown by Andrew J. Hoffman in Talking Past Each Other? Cultural Framing of Skeptical and Convinced Logics in the Climate Change Debate and his equivocation by using “climate change” for “anthropogenic climate change” or “catastrophic anthropogenic climate change” etc.
As an engineer and scientist, it is hard to reconcile this with “objective science”.
Problems with climate models and problems with computer codes. Check out Chiefio, EMSmith, post at WUWT, June 21/2012.
Chiefio examines, compares, analyses GHCN data, Version 1 and adjusted Version 3 , on which CRU, GIS NCDC are based, to query evidence of AGW. He is critical of the increased warming trends of the the adjusted version computer program that is unaudited and non validated, unlike computer programs in banks and drug companies. Yet these climate computer programs are the basis and justification for global economic policies with major political, financial and social consequences.
Coming to the Globe,
The Tempest with a star cast.
Mann as magician.*
* Acts 1 and 2: manoeuvering, manipulation and sea-change.
Act 3: Tipping point.
First, lets look at the main message (as Paul called it) of this paper ( includes also the original paper).
There are also skeptics insisting that the issue is ONLY about the state of the science – whether AGW is real – but on this point I disagree.
In other words, the truth is irrelevant, you don’t even care if AGW is true, you specifically “disagree” to care whether it is true. Then you go into a long article about how you can get policies implemented do deal with a problem that you have specifically stated you simply do not care is true or not. Conclusion, you clearly wish to implement it not due to whether it is true or not, but because of some other reason. What is that reason?
Now some said it would be bad, as expected, but perhaps surprisingly some said it would be good, even though it wouldn’t affect the climate. The views most reliably related to their intentions to support action related to creating a society where we cared about each other more (warmth), and where it would promote economic/community development.
But it does suggest that if both sides of the debate paid close attention to the social consequences of policies, rather than the present intractable debate on the reality of AGW, then we might get to a point where we can agree on some action – you might think it is pointless with regard to the climate (but a substantial proportion of people think it will), but if it produces some other good outcomes it might be OK.
The operative word here is “we“, you have specifically identified yourself with these people, twice, and stated the reason, you think it is a “good outcome” to support “ the social consequences of policies” specifically ” to support action related to creating a society where we cared about each other more (warmth), and where it would promote economic/community development“. In other words, you have specifically and repeatedly stated in no uncertain terms that you are not pro AGW policies because AGW is true, but only because you are trying to “support action related to creating a society” (not only here but in the original article as well). When I look at your words, I see “cared about each other more“, what exactly, related to AGW, does this mean? AGW means things like charge more for power, and raise taxes to pay for that much more expensive power. AGW means “carbon credits”, IE a tax, and a big one. AGW mean a huge government bureaucracy to regulate every production and use of power by anyone anywhere, and the taxes to pay for all that. AGW policies essentially mean a complete government takeover of every human activity, while requiring us to pay for it. AGW simply means socialism.
And what is socialism, or “cared about each other more” really? In reality, it is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul, supposedly because we “care’ about Paul. The problem it has always had, and always will, when you allow someone to rob Peter to care for Paul, once they can get Peter’s money, why give anything to Paul, why not just <keep it? Why? Because you can. Example, check out your local newspaper, see how your government is “caring” for you? See how now a huge and rapidly growing amount of your tax dollars are going to pay for bureaucrats pensions, salaries (30% more than average Americans make and growing), pensions, big fancy offices with sculptured lawns with ugly artwork out front, pensions, cheap or free health care, pensions, and oh yes, mustn’t forget pensions. Big pensions, early pensions, spiked pensions, pensions which often pay them, for the next 20 years or more, more money not working then they ever made while working. And not just one pension, TWO pensions, because they also get Social Security, and often have demanded that we pick up the tab for that as well.
Socialism is really nothing new and modern, it is simply Feudalism rebranded. We are told we need to give all money and power to the nobles, to protect us from some threat, like the noble over the next hill, or the threat of AGW. We give our money and all authority, and they take it and keep it. When the threat actually arrives (if ever), such as the Baron over the hill invading, the peasants who payed for the castle are expelled as “useless mouths” and the nobles keep all the food they took. The people who tell us that we need to give all authority to them to tell us what kind of power, how much, when, and where we may use it, thus controlling, in this modern world, everything we do and all aspects of our lives are angling for nothing less than to become the new nobles. They are attempting to return the wold back to the way it was, with a few privileged nobles while everyone else lives as serfs in abject poverty and powerlessness while paying for the privilege to do so, and away form this newfangled idea that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. No, you no longer are equal, or have rights, we, the new nobles, will tell you what you may do or not do in any aspect of your life (any aspect that uses power, IE all of it) to “protect” you from AGW. And if you disagree with this, this is the verdict of ALL history, further shown by your local paper to be happening NOW (look up “pensions” in your local paper). If you disagree with all history, even as reported by your local paper, are you not “a denier”?
So lets sum it up:
You have stated that you don’t care if AGW is true or not.
You have thus stated you don’t care about truth.
So why should I believe even one single word you say?
So I don’t
You have admitted you have “an agenda” more important to you than truth.
You have stated that you support AGW, even if not true, to support AGW policies, ‘to create a society’.
You cannot claim not to, since the article is specifically about HOW to support these policies.
These policies give all power to the bureaucrats to regulate and tax ALL aspects of modern life.
Thus, I lose all liberty and become nothing but a serf, or in other words, a slave.
How does my enslavement make me more “caring”?
How does giving bureaucrats absolute power make them more “caring”?
What is it that they say about absolute power again?
“What is it that they say about absolute power again?”
We get agency, while bureaucrats wet their beaks at the public trough.
Same as it ever was.
Legatus and Tom, you said it )
‘Same as it ever was’… Hmm ‘Talking Heads.
I’m reminded, on rereading Keith Kloor’s comments, of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peVDbqai1wg
Darn! Joke time, jest when I’m going out :-(
I’m reproducing here a comment direct at Paul Bain found on Watts Up With That. The author of the comment is Robert G. Brown, a physicist at Duke University. Robert is a nice guy and I’ve exchanged fair number of emails with him arguing about how and why the ***Dwagon Slayah hypothesis is wrong and the best way to communicate what’s wrong with it. But I digress. Here’s what he says to Bain:
***i think the correct spelling of dwagon swayer is a blacklisted phrase so I’m trying to post this again without it
Dr. Brown’s response is spot on. Wonder of Bain will respond.
You can only ‘deny’ something if is a truth … an absolute truth. Disregarding the appalling association with Holocaust denial, it is just utterly irresponsible of a scientific journal to use a term which implies an absolute truth. How can there be an absolute truth in climate science ?
“So ‘deniers’, tell me: will “increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development” work for you?”
Well Judith here it is my take of the story:
“D-words” does not positively impress me. It tells more of the users then of the designated. I learned the “believers” and it defines the CAGW group well, I fear I see them as a new type of cultists.
It is amazing how low consideration do these believers have for my and other skeptics opinions and understanding.
They try to bring down my throat solutions that I see and know will not work and use my money for it and insult me for not doing it?
I found E.M. Smiths’ answer one of the best so I will link it here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/cheifio-e-m-smith-responds-to-bain-et-al/
He took the time to explain how he became a skeptic – pardon denier – and also why the solutions proposed do not work and do not find acceptance.
I understand myself as pro-human and pro-environmental and I learned to see the pro-climate folks – the true climate deniers, who deny natural variability – being contra productive on both issues.
Willard,22June, 8.51am:
A rosebud? Think I git the connotations of ‘sound of rose’ and bouquet’ but ‘purity of Cain’ …nope. (
Sure if the hockey team would show some interpersonal warmth on Realclimate towards critical questions, that would be a start certainly. So far skeptics have been approached in a very hostile way.
Judith,
“It is this kind of engagement that helps depolarize this situation, which is at the heart of what I think he is trying to do.”
I must respectfully disagree. The way to depolarize the situation is to 1) simply apologize for the use of an offensive and demeaning term, 2) retract and re-write the paper, and 3) try (and this is by far the hardest part) to have a measure of respect for people who disagree with your politics. I suppose it is better that Paul engages here than not, but only marginally better. He clearly STILL does not get it.
Beside, the entire thesis of the article (if you can get past the offensive name calling) is old hat. Roger Pielke jr. has been saying that “no regrets” public policies are the only practical way forward, and has been saying it for years. So nothing new; just another stoooopid global warming article in Nature to joint all the others that have been published there.
Based on the authors’ choice of ‘denier’ in a formal publication, I can only conclude that people like Paul live in an insular world, cut off from anything which resembles reality. Sad, very sad. Paul: You really need to get out more.
The article reminds me a bit of the story of the liberal New Yorker who could not understand how Ronald Reagan won two presidential elections: “I don’t see how it is possible, I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
But I can feel them in the blogosphere.
=============
Use of “Denier” (courtesy of Al Gore) is reminiscent of Alinsky’s Rule 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it”
The Pro CAGWers have this stereotype of a “denier” that is at odds with reality. Until they see beyond their illusions they will never understand why we as a group no longer believe what we are being told. They like to fantasize that we are anti-science and believe in a god that will protect the earth from harm no matter what.
The truth is that ‘97% of all skeptics’ ;) were led there by the science itself. It is a science based interpretation of available evidence. Not a religious belief.
As with most stereotyping, it simply leads to misunderstanding. ‘Deniers’ are not some monolithic block that can be analyzed as a group. That’s a very simplistic view that unfortunately anyone using the term ‘denier’ has completely bought into. It puts their true ignorance on full display for everyone to see and for the internet to remember in perpetuity. They will regret all of this soon enough.
Weighed in the balance, where is the beef?
=============
Is there an accepted collective noun for a group of climate sceptics?
If not then how about a ‘denial’ ?
A Barbage of Skeptics.
========
A ‘free-thinking’ of sceptics has a nice ring
An ‘independence’
A ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’
A ‘Chilling’ – as in ‘chill out’
A ‘Calmness’
Perhaps a corp. of AGW space cadets.
I wasn’t expecting agreement, but I was thinking that you’d be arguing that the word ‘collective’ wasn’t part of the right wing vocabulary and therefore any such noun was undefinable. :-)
I DENY
that CAGW is happening.
…where’s the temperature out of control anomaly? – h/t Steve Mc re problems with the Hockey Stick …fergit it.
I DENY
that investing TRILLIONS in carbon taxes and on again off again renewable energy technolology by guverments, in order to reduce CO2 emissions will amount to a hill of beans, other than diverting funds from clever technological innovation by non government , non hidebound, problem solvers.
I DENY
we need increasing guvernment controls on our freedom of action, by bureau mandarins (spelling? what the heck) who never created anything themselves but think they know it all.
@beth
I BELIEVE….
that you are probably right :-)
Sustainability rather than global warming is now the focus of debate.
Gas supplies from fracking offer several more decades of cheap energy.
But is it being used in the most effective and sustainable way?
Most proposals seem to envisage power stations using gas to produce electricity for the grid.
The efficiency of this energy transfer is at best 40%.
Contrast this with the use of gas for domestic heating which is in excess of 80%.
Would it not therefor be more rational to use gas mainly for domestic heating and use coal for power station use?
There are several examples of good practice used in design of coal fired power plants.
Contaminants such as Sulphur should of course be removed to produce environmentally friendly discharges.
Further to
A Collection Catalogue:
A multitude of queries
A crusade of climatologists
A heap of uncertainties
A psycho-babble of alarmists.
PS:
A train of thought
A cain of denizens
A ship of fools
A plane-load of bacchanalists.
A corps of space-cadets
A chill of deniers
A barbage of sceptics
An arrogance of believers.
So what are the good reasons people might have to talk about denialism?
(Defining ‘good’ in this case as ‘even in part serving some edifying, enlightening or uplifting purpose.’)
If talking about denialism is meant to point out that denialism itself is neither an argument nor a counterargument, and thus has nothing to do with the science, then that’s good.
As for the various historical, social, rhetorical, religious and other ‘good’ reasons to talk about denialism, I see no point in pursuing those, given I’m really only interested in the science.
Bart R
Examples of those who “seek to influence policy processes and outcomes accordingly” by :
– rejecting the historical evidence demonstrating the existence of the Medieval Warm Period, which was slightly warmer than today across most of the civilized world at that time
– denying that the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” (HadCRUT3) has cooled slightly over the past 15 years (since May 1997)
– denying that the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” (HadCRUT3) record since 1850 has shown multi-decadal cycles of warming and slight cooling of ~30 years each, which bear no correlation whatsoever to human GHG emissions
– denying that the tropospheric land and sea temperature anomaly (UAH) has warmed more slowly than that at the surface (HadCRUT3) (although it should warm more rapidly according to the GH theory) and even stating exactly the opposite
– etc., etc.
Is that what you mean by “denialism”?
Max
manacker | June 25, 2012 at 8:25 am |
Gee, let’s see how your supposed examples align with your definition (from wordnik, was it?):
“..strongly supported by scientific or historical evidence..”
Conventionally, to be considered ‘strong’ a confidence level of 99.95% or significance of 0.05% is about right?
Can we accept your examples at these levels?
“..rejecting the historical evidence demonstrating the existence of the Medieval Warm Period, which was slightly warmer than today across most of the civilized world at that time..”
A historian could accept the existence of MWP. And the paleo data tends to suggest at about a 15% significance the existence of at least one, and possibly several, candidates for MWPs. Do you have any studies with better information? I’d love to see them. Cite, please?
“denying that the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” (HadCRUT3) has cooled slightly over the past 15 years (since May 1997)”
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.4/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.4/trend
slope = -0.00194743 per year
Mathematically ‘cooled slightly’ is possible on this cherry-picked, sub-17-year signal/noise line. But it’s not “STRONG”, by a long shot. It falls below 80% confidence; however, it is well-known that multidecadal warming trends associated with AGW frequently have cooling trends, so it’s quite plausible that slight cooling did happen within AGW.
“denying that the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” (HadCRUT3) record since 1850 has shown multi-decadal cycles of warming and slight cooling of ~30 years each, which bear no correlation whatsoever to human GHG emissions”
That’s a cute one. Here’s how a scientist would use graphical analysis to test that assertion:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:179/mean:181/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:113/mean:179/isolate:359/plot/esrl-co2/normalise
The period between peaks in the Isolates curve is about 22 years, corresponding with the Hale cycle, and showing zero indication of a 30- or 60-year periodicity. The correlation of the CO2 level with the smoothed HadCRUT3 curve is compelling, however. (You can look for the R^2’s yourself to work them out.)
Your claim fails to even find weak support by conventional analysis.
“- denying that the tropospheric land and sea temperature anomaly (UAH) has warmed more slowly than that at the surface (HadCRUT3) (although it should warm more rapidly according to the GH theory) and even stating exactly the opposite..”
UAH.. is that the satellite thingie that doesn’t agree with the other two satellite records, and that has refused and rejected all attempts to clarify the disagreements from outsiders? I’d have to call that a weakly supported contention, at best, though of course don’t deny that it’s possible. Though I remain skeptical of the claim, without denying it.
There you go. I accept the formation of your definition, but reject your examples as insufficient.
“A historian could accept the existence of MWP. And the paleo data tends to suggest at about a 15% significance the existence of at least one, and possibly several, candidates for MWPs. Do you have any studies with better information? I’d love to see them. Cite, please?”
There is only one MWP [Medieval warming Period] as there is only one Medieval time period: “The Middle Ages (adjectival forms: medieval, mediaeval, and mediæval) is the period of European history. encompassing the 5th to the 15th centuries;” wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
Again from wiki:
“The Medieval Warm Period (MWP), Medieval Climate Optimum, or Medieval Climatic Anomaly was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region, that may also have been related to other climate events around the world during that time, including in China, and other countries lasting from about AD 950 to 1250”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
Other periods of warming:
“The Roman Warm Period has been proposed as a period of unusually warm weather in Europe and the North Atlantic that ran from approximately 250 BC to 400 AD.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Warm_Period
And a really big warming period:
“The Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) was a warm period during roughly the interval 9,000 to 5,000 years B.P.. This event has also been known by many other names, including: Hypsithermal, Altithermal, Climatic Optimum, Holocene Optimum, Holocene Thermal Maximum, and Holocene Megathermal.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
And that was warmest time during this current interglacial period.
There also other notable warm periods, but again, none exceeding the Holocene Climate Optimum.
And in terms of cool periods, since the Holocene, I believe the Little Ice Age was the coolest, or at least the most significant: in terms coldest and longest.
It was also cooler during the Dark Ages. A period between the Roman Warm period and the Medieval Warm Period.
They should stop laying about: ”if GLOBAL warming happens”
Should start disusing: about the length of jail therms, when GLOBAL warming doesn’t show up. How can they compensate for the ”extortion money” under the banner of stopping the climate off changing / and the even bigger lie, the phony GLOBAL warming??!
how can ”better society” be, based on the most destructive lies?! Paul Bain and his mob are against building dams, to save storm-water, for dry months in the year; on the driest continent. Dams IMPROVE THE CLIMATE, prevent droughts and floods!!!
Bigots as Paul, traitor of his own country Australia; is promoted even by the Yanks; when I tell the complete truth – silenced. Is that a ”healthy society” where the truth is a taboo?? Yankees, what happen to the truth, justice and the American way? If Paul Bain and similar, come to America, put them to make company to Bernard Madoff.
Interpersonal warmth from a Warmist? Uk. Sounds irredeemably sleazy.
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