by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
We haven’t done a post on the climate soap opera lately, here are a few items to discuss.
The Michael Mann saga
The big news, as per the WaPo, is Penn State climate professor sues think tank, National Review. Excerpts:
In a 37-page complaint filed Monday in D.C. Superior Court, Michael Mann and his attorney John B. Williams, charged the National Review and the Capitol Hill-basedCompetitive Enterprise Institute with six counts including libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Michael Mann has been discussing this via twitter, one statement in particular is creating a stir:
“IPCC certificate acknowledging me ‘contributing to Nobel Peace Prize. Do they want my birth certificate too?”
Mark Steyn, who is the focus of the lawsuit, strikes back with this statement in the nationalreviewonline Nobel Mann Takes on Revolting Peasants. Excerpts:
I’m still working on my formal, bland, carefully lawyered official response, so for now just let me do cheap ad hominem cracks.
I was intrigued to see in Dr. Mann’s press release of his suit the following biographical detail:
Dr. Mann is a climate scientist whose research has focused on global warming. In 2007, along with Vice President Al Gore and his colleagues of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for having “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.”
I confess I wasn’t aware Dr. Mann “was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” The official Nobel site makes no mention of him; there are no speeches, no citations, no pictures of him with the King of Norway, no namecheck on the 2007 Nobel diploma.
Well, the fact checkers have taken a look, examiner.com has an article entitled Professor Mann claims to win Nobel Prize; Nobel committee says he has not. Excerpt:
Geir Lundestad, Director, Professor, of The Norwegian Nobel Institute emailed me back with the following:
1) Michael Mann has never been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
2) He did not receive any personal certificate. He has taken the diploma awarded in 2007 to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and to Al Gore) and made his own text underneath this authentic-looking diploma.
3) The text underneath the diploma is entirely his own. We issued only the diploma to the IPCC as such. No individuals on the IPCC side received anything in 2007.
Lundestad goes on to say that, “Unfortunately we often experience that members of organizations that have indeed been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize issue various forms of personal diplomas to indicate that they personally have received the Nobel Peace Prize. They have not.”
So it would appear that not only did Mann not get awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but that the “text underneath the diploma is entirely his own.” This calls into further questions of what else may not be factual in the legal suit over the highly publicized hockey-stick graph and defamation suit.
And finally, Michael Mann says attacks on climate science could weaken next IPCC report. Repeated attacks on climate scientists could lead to the true impacts of global warming being ignored in the next major international assessment scheduled for 2014.
“I see this with individual scientists, I know this is happening because I talk with colleagues – they are afraid to talk to the media, afraid to weigh in on the side of climate change being a problem, because they know they will immediately be the subject of attack from right-leaning websites, subject to a slew of orchestrated, angry and nasty emails and calls to departments calling on them to be fired”.
JC message to Michael Mann: Mark Steyn is formidable opponent. I suspect that this is not going to turn out well for you.
PBS climate of doubt
After interviewing ‘skeptics’ Richard Muller and Anthony Watts (with a very brief cameo by JC), now it is the consensus turn to trash the skeptics, with a Climate of Doubt. Heartland, Climate Depot, etc trash the PBS special. All this is so predictable that it is boring, and I don’t have much to say about it.
One interesting article emerged: PBS Frontline cites bogus consensus. This is well worth reading. Excerpt:
When one eliminates reviewers with clear vested interest, we end up with a grand total of “just seven who may have been independent and impartial”, according to Australian climate data analyst, John McLean (see his report). And, two of those are known to vehemently disagree with the statement. Prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider Dr. Mike Hulme even admits that “only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies”, not thousands as is commonly asserted by the IPCC and others, “reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate” (p. 10, 11 of Hulme’s April 12, 2010 paper in “Progress in Physical Geography” at http://tinyurl.com/2b3cq3r). It is travesty that the UN permits this misunderstanding to continue uncorrected.
To meaningfully assert that there is a consensus in any field, we need to actually have convincing evidence. And the best way to gather this evidence is to conduct unbiased, comprehensive worldwide polls. Since this has never been done in the vast community of scientists who research the causes of global climate change, we simply do not know what, if any, consensus exists among these experts. Lindzen concludes: “there is no [known] consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them.” Frontline did a disservice to the public telling them otherwise.
Frankenstorm
I’ll do a post next week on this storm, but you knew this one had to be coming: God’s latest warning
Perhaps this weather scare that may well be much more than just a scare is God’s revenge for the refusal of the U.S. government to take action on the climate crisis.
Or maybe this is His way of inserting the climate issue into a Presidential election campaign that, astoundingly, has refused to discuss it. The words “global warming” and “climate” were not spoken by anyone, by the moderators or by the candidates, over the course of all four Presidential and Vice Presidential debates.
Michael Mann, meet Microsoft Paint. Oh, you’ve already met?
It is intriguing that the Professor Geir Lundestad, Director of The Norwegian Nobel Institute is belatedly trying to distance that once-prestigious institution from Michael Mann and the Nov 2009 Climategate scandal.
This is testimony to the effectiveness of those like our hostess, who kept this issue alive for the last three years.
However, the roots of Climategate have now been traced back to the establishment of the United Nations sixty-four years earlier, on 24 Oct 1945: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
Youse guys really need to read Rabett Run. The text and the certificate are from the IPCC, and were given to all lead authors. The Nobel Institute guy was speaking out of frustration about who created the text and admits it.
Eli has the Email to prove it.
Thanks, Professor Curry, for your patience and tenacity in addressing the underlying issues exposed by the Climategate emails in Nov 2009.
“Clearly, Houston, we’ve got a major problem !
Can we get to the bottom of this before the upcoming presidential election?
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-1581
Sunday 28 Oct 2012: (Nine days before the election) Our political leaders have not yet heard the response when Job challenged God (the force):
“Who is this that darkens my counsel with
words without knowledge?” Job 38: 2
“Where were you when I laid the
earth’s foundation?” Job 38: 4
Or the song of St Francis of Assissi in 1225
http://tinyurl.com/9ma8u5p
Another item of the week: the Washington Post piece (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/post/lookalike-cato-report-on-climate-misleads-scientists-say/2012/10/25/9712d888-1eb6-11e2-9746-908f727990d8_blog.html) critical of Cato’s update to the 1999 U.S. climate assessment will be rebutted on Monday at MasterResource by Chip Knappenberger.
Micheal Mann said:
““I am worried abut the effects of the attacks and the fear of being attacked,” he said.
“I see this with individual scientists, I know this is happening because I talk with colleagues – they are afraid to talk to the media, afraid to weigh in on the side of climate change being a problem, because they know they will immediately be the subject of attack from right-leaning websites, subject to a slew of orchestrated, angry and nasty emails and calls to departments calling on them to be fired”.
_____
This concern is certainly shared by many scientists (and politicians), as the Frontline program pointed out quite well. Those who orchestrate or align themselves with these attacks will one day be seen as either Hero’s or Ignorant Bullies, Saviors or Fools, Champions of Science or Merchants of Doubt, with little room in between.
Meanwhile, Dr. Curry seems to be putting her bet on where it will come down as she says to Michael Mann:
“Mark Steyn is formidable opponent. I suspect that this is not going to turn out well for you.”
FrankenMann says, Hey, what me worry? I got Frankentenure
Truth is a formidable opponent, especially truth about the force [1] that
a.) Made our elements
b.) Birthed the Solar System
c.) Continued bathing Earth with energy
d.) To start and advance the evolution of life
e.) Endowing mankind with certain inalienable rights that
f.) Jefferson acknowledged in the US Declaration of Independence
g.) Now exerting dominant control over everything within its 100 AU range
http://www.nature.com/news/voyager-s-long-goodbye-1.11348
[1] “Neutron repulsion,” The Apeiron Journal 19, 123-150 (2012) http://tinyurl.com/7t5ojrn
Poor ol Professor Mann lookin’ more credible every day ! eh..
“…angry and nasty emails and calls to departments calling on them to be fired.”
Now that’s something Mikey is an expert in, co-ordinating “angry and nasty letters” to departments calling for sceptics to be fired.
Believe me R. Gates if any such letters had been received about any of the Hockey Team they would have been plastered all over the MSM. It’s a figment of the “Nobel Prize winner’s” fevered imagination.
Well, let’s put this to music on 1-2-3-4…
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/27/children-of-the-future-blame-mom-and-dad-for-electing-mitt-romney-sing-about-romney-letting-sick-people-just-die/
who loves you now baby?
R. Gates
After reading your “black and white” sermon on “science versus the bullies” (as portrayed by self-acclaimed “victim”, Michael Mann) I almost forgot that he was the author of one of the boldest and most transparent scams in the since tarnished field of climate science – the “hockey shtick”.
It was bad enough that IPCC hopped on it like a fly on a fresh horse dropping without doing due diligence, but even worse that it took an outsider to expose his fraud, while climate scientists stood on the sidelines quietly rooting for Mann until the scam was completely discredited.
A bad chapter for climate science, written by our self-proclaimed victim.
I know that some of his colleagues have spoken out, but am amazed that other climate scientists, who have been indirectly tarnished by this charlatan, have not pilloried him.
“Birds of a feather…?”
(I’d like to think better.)
Max
R Gates please do not align yourself with Mann. That he is a loser, in the sense my teenage daughter use to use it, is plain for all to see. And you can do better. Take a tip from our gracious hostess and raise your game.
Align myself with Mann? I only ever intend to be aligned with the scientific truth of things, and is this truth that is often obscured by zealotry, pride, money, and politics. Time, patience, and continued hard scientific work will fully reveal which side of the issue is actually doing the most obscuring.
R. Gates, you are a credible voice, on the other ‘side’, but your subtle statement about whether or not you are aligned with Mann is dishonest.
==============
Heh, and obscure.
===========
Please define what you mean by “aligned”. Do we both think that human activities are altering the climate, and thus we are “aligned” on this issue? Probably. Do I support or condone any unethical or dishonest behavior that he (or any climate scientist) may or may not have done? Of course not. Again, scientific truth about the true nature of things is to what I am ultimately aligned to.
It’s clarifying. Do you think the publication of the hockey stick was ‘unethical or dishonest’ behaviour. How about the defense of the hockey stick after it’s been debunked. Is that ‘unethical or dishonest’ behaviour.
The Piltdown Mann is a litmus test. Choose wisely, my friend.
================
Respectfully Kim, the Piltdown hoax is a poor analogy to anything going on today with climate science.
Robert.
Piltdown is nearly perfect for the HS. except that one was outright fraud and the other was just plain wrong.
The similarities ( I covered them in late 2007) are profound.
Steven, respectfully, I just don’t see the two as all that similar at all– unless you are in possession of actual facts not presently known to the public.
Robert the similarties are striking. Ill link to my work on it. hint i dont think the HS is a fraud. that not the core similarity.
let me ask you. do you think the piltdown artefacts were made available for examination?
why did it take 40 years?
think about the sociology
think about why it was so hard for the science to correct whem there were doubts from the start. and understand the science survived the final admission
While the hockey stick is similar to Piltdown Man in many respects, Piltdown Man is primarily known for one thing – fraud. So the danger of making a statement like “the hockey stick is very similar to Piltdown Man”, even though it’s true, is that many listeners will hear that as a claim the hockey stick is fraudulent.
Steven,
Probably best you clarify for me (through links or otherwise) exactly which ways the HS and Piltdown Hoax are similar, and then we can discuss those directly.
Tony,
Interesting perspective on the HS. As I highly respect your opinion, I’ll have to consider this perspective, however overall I would like a few more details to come to light before I am willing to make such a judgement.
Ok, Robert. Let me provide a little background. The time frame was Nov 2007 and a fight was underway of the 2007 blogger awards and the movie AIT. I could not see why people could not just admit some of the minor errors in AIT and move on. So, the question was rattling away inside my head “what is the source of this resistance?” And at the same time PJ Meyers was slagging mcIntyre. Fair enough. But as I started thinking about the science of evolution ( covered by Myers) I thought.. Evolution survived it’s little episode with outright fraud, why can’t climate science just admit that the HS is a bit sketchy and move on? Why the unhinged attacks from skeptics? and why the “blind” defenses of what is clearly inferior methods and some rather sketchy behavior WRT to data and method sharing.
It’s clear to me that the war fought over this chart is not commensurate to it’s scientific importance. In short it’s a symbolic fight over an icon. Which leads to the question of how it gained such a central place in the polarized debate, and then to how it remains central even though its not.?
Make no mistake the HS is not a fraud like Piltdown was. I’m more interested in how it functions in the debate, and why it stays a center of focus when it shouldn’t be.
First and foremost Piltdown Man represented in the minds of some what amounts to the equivalent of a “critical experiment”, that is a piece of evidence that could make or break a theory. At least that is how it was represented. As you know opponents of evolution think they actually have some arguments. They thought, wrongly, that the absence of a transitional form was evidence against the theory. Finding such a link, thus, would shut down that line of attack. The “link” thus takes on a centrality that has nothing to do with the science, but everything to do with the public and polarized debate. That is the first level of similarity: How this evidence functions in the science versus how it functions in the polarized public debate. My position is that the HS operates the same way the “Link” discover does. It is positioned as a defeater of a main skeptical argument, namely the argument from natural variation, which really isnt much of an argument at all.
Its because of the role the the “link” and the HS both played in the public debate that allowed both of them to persist in the science. Its that role that makes correcting the errors of the HS so damn difficult. Skeptics think that AGW relies on the HS. It doesnt. But as long as Skeptics think that, nobody wants to admit even the slightest flaw in Mann or his early approaches.
If that’s where the similarities started and stopped, it would be a pretty thin comparison. So I looked into the history of the Piltdown Man, to try to figure out how it came to be and why it lasted 40 years in the science.
Here are some notes, cribbed from a history of the hoax.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html
Let me start with lessons of the hoax:
“”It has been argued that this is a good example of science correcting its errors. This argument is a bit roseate. As the Daily Sketch wrote:
Anthropologists refer to the hoax as ‘another instance of desire for fame leading a scholar into dishonesty’ and boast that the unmasking of the deception is ‘a tribute to the persistence and skill of modern research’. Persistence and skill indeed! When they have taken over forty years to discover the difference between an ancient fossil and a modern chimpanzee! A chimpanzee could have done it quicker.
Far from being a triumph of Science the hoax points to common and dangerous faults. The hoax succeeded in large part because of the slipshod nature of the testing applied to it; careful examination using the methods available at the time would have immediately revealed the hoax. This failure to adquately examine the fossils went unmarked and unnoticed at the time – in large part because the hoax admirably satisfied the theoretical expectations of the time.
The hoax illuminates two pitfalls to be wary of in the scientific process. The first is the danger of inadequately examining and challenging results that confirm the currently accepted scientific interpretation. The second is that a result, once established, tends to be uncritically accepted and relied upon without further reconsideration.”
What were the conditions that allowed this hoax to work and survive?
1. Credentials: Dawson, Woodward, Teilhard had excellent credentials. The existence of credentials keeps people from asking certain tough questions.
2. Incompetence. Although the team had good credentials none was actually an expert in the field of homind fossils and the only expert
was silent about some of the errors. Here think of Mann’s lack of expertise in stats. Think of the slience of some ( like osborn) around the issues with uncertainties in the early HS work ( privately osborne explained Mann’s errors to him )
3. Primative analytical tools. Early Piltdown had no advantage of dating tools. In Mann’s early work he was effectively inventing and using methods without doing tests on synthetic data.
4. It met theoretical expectations.
5. restricted access to the actual fossils.. although there is some fascinating debate on this. Some were allowed access but apparently those allowed access never thought to do some tests.. ( see point 1 about credentials )
It is odd that Mann continues to defend the indefensible. Better to admit error and Move on
Steven,
Thank you for the excellent and comprehensive explanation. I hadn’t really thought about the HS from this perspective before and given your clear caveats ( i.e. Make no mistake the HS is not a fraud like Piltdown was, Skeptics think that AGW relies on the HS. It doesnt. etc.) I would agree with your overall analysis. Thanks again taking the time to clarify.
Whilst only the one actually started out as fraudulent, isn’t it at least bordering on fraud to continue to promote something even after it’s been shown to be wrong, especially when the stakes are high?
Steven Mosher-
That comparison of the “hockey stick” to Piltdown was excellent, very thoughtful. I was particularly taken with Harter’s “the hoax admirably satisfied the theoretical expectations of the time.”
The IPCC process seems to have resulted in attempts to accelerate (force) consensus in many areas, rather than waiting for it to emerge naturally. “Theoretical expectations” have thereby been magnified in importance, relative to observation-based conclusions.
@steven mosher et all
AGW may not depend on the Hockey Stick. But ‘unprecedented’ warming does.
If it cannot shown that today’s AGW is ‘unprecedented’ it is hard to convince people that it is something to be scared of. Hence the (perhaps apocyphal) reamrk ‘we have to get rid of the Medieval Warming Period’ just before the Hockey stick made its dramatic (and timely??) appearance from nowhere. If the MWP had been warmer and no real bad things had happened (indeed for many it had been a time of unprecedented prosperity) why should we be at all frightened of a repeat?
The real significance of the HS was not the blade, but the flat shaft. And its arrival was very very conveniently timed to bolster the alarmist narrative….
Latimer:
“AGW may not depend on the Hockey Stick. But ‘unprecedented’ warming does.”
yes. “arguments from unprecedented”, are another class of weak AGW arguments that can effectively backfire on the science. I wihs people would not make weak arguments.
Let me explain for you the structure ( from a high view ).
The argument for AGW rests on known physics. We know that GHGs retard the escape of LW radiation to space. We know this is how earth cools. The cooling starts at the surface, but in the end there is one way and one way only that energy is returned to space: radiation.
We know that if the atmosphere filters or is relatively opaque in the IR regime that the earth can only respond by cooling less rapidily than it would otherwise. This has been referred to as “warming” . GHGs dont warm the atmospshere or the Oceans. They slow the rate of cooling.
We know this without looking at a single thermometer. We know this even when it cools for many years. We know this without looking at a single ice cap, glacier, tree ring, 018 record. This is known physics. We use it every day.
All the observational evidence we have confirms this physics. No evidence disconfirms this physics. So, its rather silly for skeptics to fight against known science or to encourage kooks that do.
We come then to the observational evidence. What else can be learned from it? The main goal here is to see if the observational record can give us any insight into “How much of the warming we see is due to man and how much is due to “unknown natural variation.”
On this matter I think the science is far less than certain that it purports to be. I also think that skeptical attacks on the record are not very well thought out and they largely overplay their hand.
At this stage of the game some on both sides are overplaying their hands.
Man contributes almost nothing: Man dunnit all. Nobody wants to come to the table. They can’t really. You could, but the extremists on both sides cant. So very simply, take your seat at the table. Take your seat. That seat looks like this: “I accept AGW. GHGs warm the planet. The question is how much? ” watch who will sit down to join you and watch who will not.
I don’t think we know that the current warming is unprecedented and I dont think it matters. What matters is this: Given a constant set of forcings it is clear that the climate “oscillates” over a many time spans. Its also clear that these variations must integrate to zero. They cannot create energy. If we add GHG forcing to the fix we will be imposing a trend on this base. The question is how much. And then the question is “can we do anything about that and should we.”
They are not oscillations but chaotic bifurcations. This is the fundemental mode of the complex and dynamical system that is climate. Climate shifts do not ‘integrate to zero’ over any time frame of interest because albedo is not constant.
Steve, you left out of other points that are visible from a height – as I read your otherwise excellent summary – aspects of the carbon cycle that are important to determining what our influence on climate may be. Just two considerations are 1) just how long is CO2 resident in the atmosphere, 2) how do plants, including marine algae respond to increased CO2? The first question seems to have been broadly debated with figures ranging from something like five years to over a century bruited about, but it has dropped off the radar lately without any clear conclusion. The second is vital to understanding just what an anthropic effect might be. If planetary biological productivity has increased by an amount that roughly equals the amount of tonnes of CO2 being released by humans, then there may be no discernible evidence of an anthropic effect on climate. The only anthropic effect might be a shift in carbon isotope mix. Since the planet is or has been recovering from the LIA, the increases in CO2 measured at Mauna Loa may be due to changing climate, rather than causing it. The present debate is unjustified by the available data and science.
Is R. Gates really NOT the “skeptical scientist”?
Is he REALLY “Piltdown Man” in disguise?
Will the REAL R. Gates please stand up?
Max,
My position has been consistent. Look at the facts and look at the data as broadly as possible, both in time and in space. Avoid the cherry orchards and those who like to pick them and entice you to eat them. They may be sweet for the ideologically motivated, but they are psychotropic and will lead you astray.
R gates
Is the HS a fraud? no. A scam? no. hoax? no.
Misguided and incorrect? Yes
But Mann writes some good papers including on the map and lia as I referenced in my article ‘the long slow thaw.’
Tonyb
Steven
The first is the danger of inadequately examining and challenging results that confirm the currently accepted scientific interpretation. The second is that a result, once established, tends to be uncritically accepted and relied upon without further reconsideration.”
Thanks for a good post.
On the contrary, I hope every AGW extremist aligns themselves with Mann, etc. Let them all share in the trough Mann and pals have built and filled.
“Et tu, Gates? Then fall, Science!”
R. Gates,
I would say that the bulk of the “attacks” are from the other side. The warmists thus far have the support of most of the MSM as well as PBS, BBC, etc. And one political party and many climate scientists are true believers. I only see one side writing that anyone who does not buy into CAGW hook, line, and sinker could one day face jail time and are most likely crazy conspiracy theorists. So I am surprised that you don’t at least realize that it comes from both sides. Or maybe that is what you meant by saying many scientists and politicians, if so it is not clear.
I certainly realize that both “sides” have made their share of “attacks” and the whole issue has become polarizing on a broader level. When I occasionally hear friends or even a few family members (whom I know have very little understanding of the actual science) quoting talking points from either side as though they’d personally done the research themselves and it had passed some six sigma level of certainty, then I know how far and wide the mud has been slung, and everyone has it clinging to them– their own, and that slung by the other side.
This larger war over anthropogenic climate change and what to do (or not to do) about it, has now gone on for many decades. Both sides have had their victories in battle, but the recent momentum and latest battle certainly goes to the skeptical side– for the objective was to slow down the momentum toward enacting policy. They accomplished this, as the Frontline program clearly demonstrated. One of their biggest allies in this battle has been the natural variability of the climate itself– a cool phase of the PDO, a sleepy sun, a bit more natural and anthropogenic aerosols, etc. Where the war goes from here will also be largely be a matter of natural variability, combined with what I feel will be increasing signs of new climate “regimes” beginning to take hold and making their impacts more clearly felt at the level of more frequent and more extreme weather events. I feel Dr. Jennifer Francis is likely on to something with her studies at Rutgers. This is an extremely interesting and rapidly evolving area of research, and can be combined with other research showing that changing climate regimes can impact the weather (shrinking Arctic Ice, increasing frequency of sudden stratospheric warming, alterations in deeper ocean currents, the MJO, etc.).
Robert:
Prof Mann’s work has never been very good. Not only his work on temp reconstructions, but his work on sea level etc as well. He ignores many well known proxies that would make his arguements very weak.
The shoddy papers show that rather than science, he is agenda driven. By his outspoken nature, he has set climate science back by dedades.
He slanders anyone who shows that he is out of his element, instead of acknowledging his limitations. He is a genius in his own mind, but his work shows he is mundane at best.
R. Gates: ““I am worried abut the effects of the attacks and the fear of being attacked,” he said.
Escalating the attacks to the level of a libel suit strikes me as self-defeating. That his attorneys previously represented the hated and anti-scientific (so it is claimed) tobacco companies makes it looks even worse. That he claimed to have won a share of a Nobel Prize will display to everyone a lack of attention to critical detail (of the sort that has been asserted in scholarly criticism of his work.) As others have commented, this suit displays an Oscar Wilde like naivete about courts and libel law, and an arrogance that can be perceived by everyone.
Frankensturm may make for an interesting weekend for a number of us. It also might make for a nice lead into model ensembles–weather and climate. Also Bill Hooke http://www.livingontherealworld.org/ has a good post on Frankensturm today.
Judith,
I’m disappointed…..SSDD!!!
It is almost like we have a new substitute curse word. Like, FrankenMann’s graph is essentially telling humanity they can stick it and the Frankensnow this Frankenwinter must be proof of deep and disastrous climate change disruption instead Frankenthermageddon.
Poor ol’ Professor Mann look like he’s fallin’ under a bus …
How many more’en nine lives do ya think he’s got !
Well, he lost his tail long ago (when Mc + Mc, Wegman, NAS panel before US Congress trashed his shtick).
His “m-e-e-e-e-ow” sounds a bit whiny of late.
Looks like he’s lost a bunch of his teeth, as well, although he still has a very strong jawbone and a mean bite.
And his once-shiny fur has gotten splotchy and moulty-looking.
It’s true that he probably won’t contribute anything significant to scientific knowledge, but don’t count him out completely. He’ll wiggle and squirm to stay in the headlines.
Max
“fallin’ under a bus …”? That sounds accidental.
Mann is hubristically throwing himself under a bus.
“Lindzen concludes: “there is no [known] consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them.”
Lindzen is a climate expert who is also an insider who is well placed to make such a statement. To challenge the IPCC, you need to:
(a) list its mistakes, and
(b) provide a credible narrative of 20th and 21st global climate that explains the changes.
On my website: http://members.iinet.net.au/~alexandergbiggs I do both. You will note that I am not disputing that the burning of fossil fuels caused early global warming (Ignored by ihe IPCC) , but I do dispute that it will cause further rises in the global equilibrium temperature, a prediction that is supported by the lack of climate change during the last decade or so.
Does that also mean that the citizens of the EU can’t claim a Nobel Peace Prize this year? That is a shame.
@jim d
As a Brit and therefore (I am assured by our masters in Brussels) a citizen of the EU, I have a new signoff for formal communications
‘Latimer Alder, Mannian Laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize, 2012’.
But seriously, folks.
Misleading people about one’s qualifications and awards seems to be about the most serious offence an academic can commit.
McSteve reminded us of the dodgy cancer researcher who was finally unglued not for fiddling his data to the deteriment of terminally ill patients (about which the academic community was entirely sanguine) but for falsely claiming to have been a Rhodes Scholar some years before
http://climateaudit.org/2012/10/16/forensic-bioinformatics/
That the latter should be seen as a great sin while the former wasn’t even considered a misdemeanour says a lot about the warped system of values in academia.
But maybe this time it will come and bite Mikey in the bum. He has already plenty of enemies in the field and this will be manna from heaven.
And I wonder how many other IPCC AR4 members have been falsely claiming to be Nobel Laureates?
“And I wonder how many other IPCC AR4 members have been falsely claiming to be Nobel Laureates?”
A dude called FranktrenBerth. But he as got a really nice tash.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth-cv.html
“Nobel Laureate (shared) for Nobel Peace Prize 2007 (as part of IPCC)”
Oh dearie me. Another academic falsely claiming an award to which he is not entitled. I’ve taken a screen shot in case this suddenly miraculously disappears.
Latimer
I have already appropriated that title (or similar) when this came up on WUWT last week. You can perhaps call yourself an associate or even an assistant but I am the Chief Laureate and therefore am looking forward to receiving the cash prize from the Nobel organisation. Any attempts to steal my glory will mean I may have to set Mark Steyn on you.
I may of course buy you a drink from the proceeds if you are ever in the South Devon area.
Tonyb
Chief Laureate of the peace prize for the EU 2012
@tonyb
My profound apologies. I defer, of course, to your priority in this area.
Sadly my busy schedule of drumming up apathy about ‘Global Not Very Much Happening At All to the Climate’ does not allow an imminent visit to South Devon. But maybe next year. Thanks for the offer,
To properly address the 97% consensus meme, it would be wise to conduct an authentic robust survey. Then report with great fanfare how far the consensus has *** dropped *** since the 97% number was taken.
This would lead to predictable knee jerk responses from advocates, but likely they would start attacking the 97% number themselves as invalid. it puts them in a catch-22.
Act v Scene1:
How beauteous mann-kind is! O brave new world
That has such people in it !
The Tempest !
What a piece of work is Mann ….
Hamlet
… but not woman. The Australian Prime Minister recently abused the Opposition Leader in Parliament as a misogynist for referring to her with the Shakespearean phrase “a piece of work.”
The Descent of Man(n) – Charles Darwin
At risk of being redundant…
Mann proposes, God disposes.
So Mann caught lying again stating h is a Nobel Prize winner. Trenberth also claims to be a Nobel Prize winner in his CV.
What a bunch of liars!
Girma’s global mean surface temperature prediction until 2100
http://bit.ly/TIVGEJ
Increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is caused by the long-term warming trend, not by human emission of CO2 => http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1978/derivative/mean:12
Look at the trend for the change in CO2 concentration:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1978/derivative/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/from:1978/derivative/mean:12/trend
Girma, you are making the same error as so many before you: the derivative of a variable does say next to nothing about the cause of a trend. In this case, it is quite clear that humans are the cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere: if you plot the year by year emissions, these are in average double the increase. Thus nature is a net sink for CO2, not a source. The variability is caused by temperature variability, which influences the sink rate in land vegetation and oceans. But both are actually sinks for CO2…
Temperature has a small influence on CO2 levels: over glacials/interglacials not more than 8 ppmv/°C, thus maximum 8 ppmv since the LIA. The rest of the 100+ ppmv increase comes from us.
See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html#The_mass_balance
But that says nothing about the influence of the increased CO2 levels on temperature…
Both natural sinks, and the volcanos and the recycling doesn’t seem to keep up. What a vast benefit this anthropogenic effort to make the cycle a bit more robust. Are we easing the cork out slowly enough? Probably, it’s properly chilled and hasn’t been shaken about.
===============
I was wrong.
Differentiation just zeros the constant term. As a result, CO2 concentration is also affected by human emission of CO2.
Your 2 degree rise assumes the CO2 level will stay below 450 ppm, it seems. However the amount added in the 21st century will be five times that in the 20th, so you need to take an acceleration into account.
It is 1.5 deg C.
It started below zero.
It is climbing steadily, jimmy, but temperatures have flatlined the last 15 years. Or are you going to tell me that .03 degrees per decade is somehow ‘right on target’ with the models?
Hold on right there Otter, you are being deceptive. It is 0.034 +/- 0.011 (95% confidence). You wouldn’t want to misrepresent the significance of the trend would you?
Not so for land temperature and ocean heat content. When they stop for even a decade, we can talk, but currently both are still rising.
JimD, “Not so for land temperature and ocean heat content. When they stop for even a decade, we can talk, but currently both are still rising.” Isn’t the objective to predict instead of post dict?
Very true, the flatliners are postdicting, and ignoring the future.
@jim d
‘Very true, the flatliners are postdicting, and ignoring the future’
That is a truly bonkers remark. Any observation of what has actually happened will always be ‘postdicting’ and ‘ignoring the future’.
But if you don’t take ‘postdicted’ real world observations as the heart of your work then whatever you are doing isn’t ‘science’. It might be religion or soothsaying or astrology or just plain old hustling…but it ain’t science.
LA, so your response to cap’n’s remark would be what? I was just answering and agreeing with his preference for talking about the future. If you want to talk about only the recent past, this is also shortsighted in the other direction.
If the green fascists would quit lying about fracking the world would switch to NG and CO2 output would drop 40%.
But no …. you idiots convinced Germany to burn more brown coal and shut down its nukes.
Frontline’s “Climate of Doubt” video is not designed to “trash the skeptics”. It largely shows their views in their own words, and is more akin to holding a mirror up to them. If they don’t like what they see, they need to reconsider what they are part of, which is well described here.
It might help your case that they hadn’t chopped words out of the skeptic’s mouths, to make it sound like they were saying something else.
The AGW cult runs from every debate. And then lies about it.
They had freedom to say what they wanted. They looked like they meant what they said. Their own words make them look foolish, so they can “stew in their own juices” by just speaking. It doesn’t need anything but to show them talking to a reporter. They may be even more extreme when talking among themselves.
I was right. NO honesty from jimmy.
Jim D:
Climate of doubt was not about skeptics. It was about deniers and their political connection to tea-party republicans, right-wing *think*-tanks and their corporate sponsors.
The one-sided smear-job presented no interviews with responsible, publishing scientists that disagree with the *consensus*. It was a smear-job because they only looked at the lunatic fringe and the political opportunists who use them to implement a bigger right-wing agenda.
The program was about why ‘doubt’ was successful. This is completely money and politics, because the skeptic science by itself was a non-starter in the scientific community, and it needed these other efforts to even gain traction.
What money? The money funding doubt is miniscule compared to the monies funding the “consensus”. The program studiously avoids making any comparison between levels of funding in order to promote the message that money and politics are the primary drivers of skeptical inroads. Just maybe “doubt” was and is successful simply because there is legitimate doubt.
From your answer you probably didn’t look at the video. It started with Exxon and continues with the Kochs, even as Exxon dropped out due to the resulting negativities in their image. Heartland is completely donor-driven.
I feel sorry for Heartland, who can barely rent a conference room once per year and afford a few billboards. Why don’t they get any money, ask yourself, and who do they get the little they have from?
Jim D:
They only presented the kooks and their political manipulators, not skeptical scientists. You are correct, the consensus is about politics and grant money. This is why skeptical science and any deviation from the politically constructed *consensus* was a non-starter, as you say.
You are labeling Monckton, Willie Soon, James Taylor and the leadership of Heartland, and Pat Michaels as kooks. Let’s note that as a possible agreement, although I wouldn’t quite use that description. These are the people that go out and promote the skeptics’ science, even though there are others that actually produce it, and the program didn’t focus on them.
Yes Jim D, you are starting to get my point. Obviously, deniers can no longer be considered straw-men as they wield the most political power over the subject at the moment. It always seems the political pendulum swings between the extremes, in this instance from AIT and Nobel prizes to WUWT and a tea-party congress.
A much more interesting show would be a detailed examination of the major scientific consensus that promotes policy now versus the various non-consensus scientists that promotes uncertainty and the possibility of negative to near neutral feedbacks.
Jim D
NB: I’m using the NorCal definition of Kook. A Kook is someone who thinks they are an expert, have some limited legitimate skills, but ultimately, they blunder into situations they can’t handle and put other people in danger. Kooks should be called out and heckled at every opportunity.
IMO, Mike Mann is a Kook and his peers fail to call him on it in public. Some of the stolen emails demonstrate their concerns and fears of crossing him. This weakens all of the consensus scientists and has ultimately given power and *credibility* to the denier Kooks.
Howard, yes, a science show would be good. For representativity of the climate science community you would have at least nine pro-AGW scientists for each skeptic. Perhaps they might include experts in the carbon cycle, climate models, tree rings, paleoclimate, current climate, satellite observations, etc., and the skeptic would be one of the three that are publishing (Spencer, Pielke Sr., Lindzen) challenging all of them on their expertise. Good idea.
Jim D says:
“From your answer you probably didn’t look at the video.”
Incorrect assumption: I watched the whole thing. The levels of funding were not mentioned, only the identities of two evil funders. Without a comparison of funding levels, skeptic versus consensus, the presentation shows Frontline’s bias.
Kock and Exxon et al are hopelessly outspent in climate science by government, by at least three orders of magnitude.
That’s funny because the skeptical balance on the Frontline show was about the same balance as I see on this comment area. For the skeptical side you have some 40+ crackpots with alternate theories of climate science mixed in with a bunch of politically opinionated types that are upset about the lack of civility, and otherwise just make assertions and ambiguously quote from something Feynman once said.
The amount of real skeptical scientists with good analysis is about zero. You have perhaps Willis Eschenbach, MattStat, and a few others that have something interesting to say from the skeptical side, but that’s about it. So the bottom-line is that the Frontline show accurately represented the one-sided level of skepticism that exists in social forums.
I’m glad you feel at home with your fellow kooks. Anyone who conjures up Feynman to make a point needs a blankie and a cup of warm milk.
Webhubbub,
“you have some 40+ crackpots with alternate theories of climate science”
A clear case of the crackpot calling the kettles black.
The truth hurts.
To tomcat, all psychologists and psychiatrists must be loons because they call the kettle black.
To tomcat, a profeessor that fails half an engineering class because half the students can’t deal with the math must be a crackpot.
For some reason tomcat thinks this site is free from the weirdness and mediocrity of the real world. I have to admit that immersing oneself into this circus isn’t for everyone.
Your crackpot ‘analysis’ says it all.
Kooks are the Keepers Of Odd Knowkedge Society. Mann probably qualifies.
That Michael Mann’s Nobel Prize claim is exaggerating his contribution to that of the IPCC as a whole comes to me as no surprise. The Hockey Stick paper remains a prime example of motivated reasoning the sort of thing that seems to have ascribed by AGW supporters as the sole province of sceptics generally.
Regarding consensus, you only have to look at the PNAS Anderegg et al. (2010) study that looked at the 1000 or so most active scientists actually publishing papers in climate science, 97% of which are convinced by the evidence of anthropogenic climate change. This isn’t a survey, except to look at their contributions where an opinion was already given. It is very easy to tell from climate papers where the authors stand on the issue, just from their introduction, reviews of previous work, or concluding remarks.
@jim d
The Anderegg survey is even less scientific than the survey of the 78 or so guys who supposedly make up the original ‘consensus’.
Anderegg et al did not even ask the 1000 for their opinions. Just made an assessment of how the researchers though they felt based on the researchers’ interpretations of their papers.
That’s about as convincing as articles in the tabloid press with titles like ‘What does the colour of your tie tell us about your character’.
To borrow a phrase ‘voodoo science’. But good enough for sociology I guess.
Jim D | October 27, 2012 at 1:37 am
There is no possible point of view wherein PBS is merely functioning as a mirror. They have a clear point of view and agenda, which shines through in their work. Not a negative thing, everyone has a point of view … but a mirror, they are not.
w.
More than half the interview time is given to the skeptics, and they are not given hard questions either, just freedom to speak out. This is a good thing and very revealing.
They may have been given freedom to speak out, but then Frontline used their freedom to edit what was broadcast. I’ll use a section with Fred Singer as an example.
At the 19:25 mark Hockenberry talks with Fred Singer. The Oregon petition is discussed and a petition form is shown with Edward Tellers signature blurred out. They took the petition form off the main page of the Oregon project and evidently didn’t want show a widely known name had signed the petition. When called on it the next day they admitted they shouldn’t have done it.
At the 21 min mark Hockenberry rattled of a series of questions to Singer. Singer said he’d be happy to answer them, but when he started to answer Frontline left his responses on the cutting room floor and switched to Andrew Dessler saying what Singer’s position was on the questions.
You can’t honestly say they didn’t present a biased view of the skeptical side and expect any reasonable person to believe it..
‘You can’t honestly say they didn’t present a biased view of the skeptical side and expect any reasonable person to believe it..’
Waiting for jimmy D’s honesty.
Any day now.
….. any day now…………….
Yes, I would also like to have seen Singer express his views on disbelieving the acid rain, ozone hole, and lung cancer scares, but it was off-topic, even if true.
Jim D,
What BS. The questions were scripted for the show. They can’t be off topic. Not alowwing him to answer but instead having an extreme warmist put words in his mouth was extremely biased.
I notice you avoided saying Frontline was not biased. Evidently you agree they were biased.
Oops. allowing
No, they were not biased. The main message was how the doubters were winning in the public and political forum and how the skeptics were reveling in that. I think they went too much in that direction with not enough science to counter it, but that was their focus.
Jim D,
I guess that D initial stands for dishonest. No honest person could view that Singer portion of the show and claim they weren’t acting in a biased manner. I see no reason to continue this exchange.
I’ll bet Jim D thinks Dan Rather was an honest journalist who only presented the facts…
“The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I?ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” Phil Jones, “climate scientist” (http://www.di2.nu/foia/1107454306.txt)
Did you see the part of the video about the North Carolina politicians who got an opinion from a science panel that the sea-level rise would be 1 meter, and decided to legislate that this should be ignored in any planning while they look for a new panel with a more convenient conclusion. Serving their citizens? Not. Dishonesty to them? Yes.
I had not seen it but I clicked on the link just now. Just from the title and the first 30 seconds they already have declared that everyone believed it 4 years ago (not true) and basically said that people are being paid to create doubt about climate change. It is completely biased from the very beginning. Sorry. I have seen some episodes of Frontline in the past that were very interesting but this look like partisan journalism from the start. The fact that this is part of an election year special also tells me they care more about influencing the election than the truth.
By the way, this whole climate change meme is about the most asinine thing I have ever seen. It’s a strategy that allows them to frame almost anything as an alarming event due to man’s actions. Silly and sad.
I found the PBS frontline report enlightening – I’m awaiting to see if David Rose gets found guilty of misleading the Sunday Mail readers in the Press Complaints authority. Seems climate belief is often heavily aligned with ones political view. Pity that an international body of leading climate scientists can’t put out a consensus report themselves.
@robert bristow
‘Pity that an international body of leading climate scientists can’t put out a consensus report themselves’
I hope you are kidding? Or have you not heard of the IPCC?
I have heard of the IPCC but all these groups of skeptics/denialists seem not to recognize IPCC NASA, U.K Met and the like, whom I am supposed to believe. It seems to be cloaked in sinister politics, it should be an open and crystal clear subject to even a mere layman idiot like me . Judith Curry seems to believe in climate change but not influenced by mankind.. it is very hard to form a definitive opinion with all the confusion and conflict of views Most people I know are completely apathetic to it because of all the conflicting reports. If it is true it should be stated clearly by a non political statement direct to the people…not by people like David Rose or even Al Gore…
Robert you are not supposed to be confused. You are supposed to accept the voice of authority from the likes of the IPCC and the other august bodies that you name. Or on the other hand you can do what most skeptics do and you can think for yourself.
And on that topic I would agree with you that if you are to think for yourself you have to be as skeptical of words uttered by David Rose as you are of those uttered by his eminence Nobel Laureate Albert Arnold Gore.
Robert, question everything. Especially anything written by Dolphinlegs.
Congratulations, Robert, you have nailed an important insight without being a sophisticated connoisseur of the controversy; the IPCC proclaims a consensus that no longer exists.
====================
“it should be an open and crystal clear subject to even a mere layman idiot like me”
Climate science is not “crystal clear” to the alleged experts so do not feel inadequate if you are confused. Indeed, confusion is actually a sign of wisdom.
Well Guys,
As a mere layman, so far I believe that the Arctic ice caps are melting fairly dramatically, Inuits and polar bears are threatened, thousands dying in China because of industrial smogs, South Pacific Islanders threatened (Islands sinking and sea level rising). Ken Ring and David Bellamy seem to be blind and deaf. I believe the NASA measurements on sea level rise and temperatures, so no doubt that we are on a steady rise (with occasional (10-15) plateaus and pauses), part of this is due to man’s pollution (though there are other reasons as well). A part of society with vested interest are trying to suppress this, and another part (with equal vested interests) are trying to exaggerate and exploit it. Am I anywhere near the truth ?
“Am I anywhere near the truth ?”
No.
So I’ve been wasting my money on National Geographic Subscriptions all these years
Robert Bristow,
You are closer to the truth than many others. A few additional tips:
Avoid the psychotropic cherries picked by both sides, keep focused on a long-term perspective, remember we’re dealing with nonlinear system that has displayed an affinity for sudden jumps to new regimes during times of change, remember the climate models are always wrong but that doesn’t detract from their usefulness in looking at climate dynamics, the ocean is the largest heat repository on the planet but also the hardest to reliably and fully measure (but we’re getting much better at it).
Finally, keep all “truth” as provisional, looking first and foremost at any data that might refute it. You might take that provisional “truth” to the grave with you, but keeping it provisional is better than being guilty of confirmation bias.
@robert bristow
A few remarks.
1. The general remark ‘xyz is being threatened’ is a lovely phrase. But unless you can be more specific it is essentially meaningless emotiveware. By what are they thereatened?…how much? when?
2. All the available recent data on polar bear populations show that they are at an all time high of about 25,000. Up from 5.000 thirty or forty years ago, It is difficult to show argue convincingly that AGW is a significant problem for them when their numbers have increased 5-fold during the period of warming up until 1997.
3. ‘Thousands dying in China because of industrial smogs’. Maybe so. But there is no direct connection between industrial smogs and AGW or CO2. My own city, London, was notorious for smog until fifty years ago (think Sherlock Holmes). But they have effectively disappeared by action on smoke, not on CO2. While CO2 consistently rose, our smogs consistently disappeared. Different things.
4. Sea levels rising.
Sure. Sea level is going up. Just like it has been doing for hundreds of years. The question is not ‘are sea levels rising’, but ‘are they rising at a rate that will overwhelm our ability to cope’. The current rate is about 3mm/annum which translates to 1 foot very century. Since in London the tide already rises and falls 20 feet every 6 hours, I really cannot see how an extra foot per century will prove to be beyond our capabilities.
Well according to National geographic, Inuits are now experiencing much more illness due to G.W affects on their local drinking water supplies, also they are finding it a lot harder to catch game, because of diminishing numbers. Also there does appear to be some tie up with Asian smog and G.W such as carbon being deposited on Arctic snow and therefore not reflecting sunlight.
O villain, villain, damned villain.
My tables – meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain –
(Hamlet. Tsk! His mother married his dead father’s murderer!)
climatereason,
hey tony,
I was present when u were awarded yer Chief Laureate Award and am willing ter testify ter same. Does that mean that I, like Latimer, also qualify fer a complementary drink? )
These Nobel prizes for PC. What do I need to say to get one ?
Looks like there is an expectation that the next IPCC report is not going to be alarmist enough for the likes of FrankenMann “And finally, Michael Mann says attacks on climate science could weaken next IPCC report. Repeated attacks on climate scientists could lead to the true impacts of global warming being ignored in the next major international assessment scheduled for 2014.”
Didn’t Franktrenbeth whine something similar in Oz?
Dont know if this is good news or bad but by 2014 when the next issue of Michael Mann’s favourite comic comes out there will likely have been another year or so of no rise in global temperatures (unless el Nino makes a surprise return on behalf of natural variability).
Plenty for the true believers to whinge about.
America need to go back to Readin, Writin and Knowin Leftist Frankenomics is a detour on a bridge to nowhere in dead and dying Old Eurotopia and Frankenfornia.
Curry:
This will make a great excuse for why the IPCC report doesn’t come out as alarmist as some want. It’s basically saying the IPCC report will fail to accurately report the science because of non-scientific reasons.
Amusingly, this argument offers support for criticisms of the IPCC that said its reports exaggerated threats because of non-scientific reasons. After all, if the IPCC process allows bias in one way, it’s natural to believe it would allow bias in another.
I suspect that point will get ignored, meaning Mann will be saying:
Brandon, Michael Mann is saying that political opinion is the control knob of IPCC responses. When politics demanded certainty of heat and disaster, they delivered the product.
He’s right.
He isn’t saying that directly, but it is pretty easy to get that message from what he did say.
It’s Time for the 99% to Start Supporting the 1%
October 17th, 2012
A persistent misconception about our economy is that the same amount of stuff is going to be produced, no matter what government policies are implemented. If that was indeed true, then the political debate only becomes one over how all that stuff is divided up. And that is indeed what many people spend their time debating.
But economic productivity can vary tremendously between countries, and even within a country over time. In fact, there are many poor countries with much lower unemployment than the United States…yet they remain poor.
What really matters for a prosperous nation is what is produced for a given amount of labor. We could have near-zero percent unemployment tomorrow if the government mandated that half the people should dig holes in the ground and the other half fill them up again. But we would be a very poor country, with a very low standard of living.
A high standard of living requires efficiency of production of goods and services that the people want, which in turn requires large investments in facilities, machinery, raw materials, etc. In a competitive free market economy, those investments involve risk…risk that your investment will be lost if someone else figures out a more efficient way to build 10 million smartphones than you figured out.
Now, why would anyone choose to invest large sums of money? Only if they have some hope of receiving much more in return if they are successful. If that incentive provided by the hope for profit is lost, then they will not invest in new business enterprises. No business enterprise for them means no jobs for you.
Our number one priority should be to ensure that producers are allowed to produce, and that they are not penalized for their success. Jobs happen from the top-down (not from the middle-out) when businesses with the money to hire people are allowed the opportunity to succeed.
Yes, a few of them will become rich in the process…but their riches pale in comparison to the greater riches enjoyed by society as a whole through the higher standard of living the good ideas of the rich have enabled. And those profits aren’t kept under a mattress…they are reinvested in the economy, either through expanding the business, hiring more people, or even just buying more stuff which supports other businesses.
Demonizing the rich is demonizing the driving force which elevates the standard of living of the whole country. If you want prosperity, allow the producers to produce. Make it easier for them, not harder.
Not only does this raise our standard of living, it also increases tax revenue, because revenue is a percent of the action, and the more economic activity there is, the greater the tax revenue which is collected to support government services.
And this is how the budget “arithmetic” really works. Balancing the federal budget is not a matter of either (1) increasing tax rates or (2) decreasing spending. That erroneous view mistakenly equates tax rates with tax revenue. Tax revenue (the total number of dollars taken in by the government) is the tax rate multiplied by economic activity. Lowering tax rates, especially on businesses, stimulates economic activity, which then increases tax revenue.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
How often do we see that someone “admits” when he or she is well known to have critical views and has even written books on those like Mike Hulme. I don’t think that there’s anything here for Hulme to “admit”.
FREEMAN DYSON
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cJRkNwfJIk
I will discuss the global warming problem in detail because it is interesting, even though its importance is exaggerated. One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas. To understand the movement of carbon through the atmosphere and biosphere, we need to measure a lot of numbers. I do not want to confuse you with a lot of numbers, so I will ask you to remember just one number. The number that I ask you to remember is one hundredth of an inch per year. Now I will explain what this number means. Consider the half of the land area of the earth that is not desert or ice-cap or city or road or parking-lot. This is the half of the land that is covered with soil and supports vegetation of one kind or another. Every year, it absorbs and converts into biomass a certain fraction of the carbon dioxide that we emit into the atmosphere. Biomass means living creatures, plants and microbes and animals, and the organic materials that are left behind when the creatures die and decay. We don’t know how big a fraction of our emissions is absorbed by the land, since we have not measured the increase or decrease of the biomass. The number that I ask you to remember is the increase in thickness, averaged over one half of the land area of the planet, of the biomass that would result if all the carbon that we are emitting by burning fossil fuels were absorbed. The average increase in thickness is one hundredth of an inch per year.
The point of this calculation is the very favorable rate of exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil. To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass, [Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this. If we plant crops without plowing the soil, more of the biomass goes into roots which stay in the soil, and less returns to the atmosphere. If we use genetic engineering to put more biomass into roots, we can probably achieve much more rapid growth of topsoil. I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management, not a problem of meteorology. No computer model of atmosphere and ocean can hope to predict the way we shall manage our land.
http://bit.ly/2hejgy
If we plant crops without plowing the soil, more of the biomass goes into roots which stay in the soil, and less returns to the atmosphere.
Why?
Girma,
Many scientists including this one fail to calculate out what they are spewing off. 100th of an inch a year over 4.5 billion years would be massively more soil than what we actually have on the ground.
Again, they are using the averaging method, so that means even the poles would have vastly more soil. Huh???
Good point, but when erosion is factored into that equation, one can understand the reason for the “missing” soil, a well understood phenomena in the agricultural world.
If is true marine biomass contributes most atmospheric Oxygen, why do we not include the sea as a CO2 source? Not considering oceans’ component may not invalidate your computations, but it must be addressed.
Girma, the amount of CO2 buried in more or less permanent carbon storage in land and sea deposits can be calculated from the oxygen use: every fossil fuel burned has its specific need for oxygen. The inventory of fossil fuel use is reasonably accurate, so the oxygen use is known. By measuring the real change in oxygen over time, one can calculate the amount of carbon stored (or lost) in the biosphere. The main problem: the accuracy of the oxygen measurements needed (less that 1 ppmv on 200,000 ppmv!). The results can be read here:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Probably Dr Curry did not watch the presidential debates, or something that did not happen did not catch her eye. But I remember her calling AGW “the most important problem of our time”. So the fact that nobody in politics is interested anymore should be mentioned.
Two question, Alex:
When did she say that?
And
What has happened to change that, since?
Alexej Buergin
Even if our hostess did say at one time that “AGW was one of the most important problems of our time” (I’ve not seen this quote), it would depend on the “time”, of course.
There were the heady days for the AGW scare, culminating around 2007 with the media ballyhoo surrounding the publishing of IPCC’s AR4 report, award of Al Gore’s Oscarfor “AIT” and the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore plus the IPCC, when it really seemed as if “AGW was one of the most important problems of our time”.
Spreading Christianity to the pagan warrior tribes of northern Europe was once “one of the most important problems of the time”, as well.
But, “tempus fugit” = time flies and “merda cedit” = s**t happens (such as hockeyshtick exposé, Climategate revelations, Copenhagen/Cancun catastrophes, etc.).
And AGW has slipped in the “ratings” and off the chart (as the US Presidential debates showed).
Max
I dont remember this, and frankly can’t imagine ever saying this
Actually, the whole shebang may well be the most important problems of our time, but for the politicians the ‘problem’ has become taboo. For the climate scientists, debate has become taboo.
Even Pekka’s dodging obvious and sincere questions on the ‘God’ thread.
====================
New book out:
‘Hiding the Decline’ Andrew Montford (aka – Bishop Hill)
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/10/26/hiding-the-decline.html
I wonder how many excuses, reasons, etc ,some people will come up with not to read it..
My reason so far is that i don’t do paypal, doesn’t seem to be any other way to order it?
Heh, I just told him to send you a free copy. er, ‘asked him’.
============
“I wonder how many excuses, reasons, etc ,some people will come up with not to read it.”
Maybe some people have seen enough in the opinion-ripe discipline of climate science to answer the questions they had. For example, my essential question revolved mostly about the status or condition of ‘climate science’ particular regarding current debate. They have been answered to my satisfaction. I will note that I bought and read Montford’s first book as an aid to bootstrapping my introduction to the subject of climate change. It served that purpose admirably.
Then there is the practical side already pointed out–some of us eschew paypal.
Then some of by habit prioritize our expenditures.
usw.
BTW, if you do read or have already read the book and like it, then do a review or two on your take. If you haven’t read it yet, then you are jumping the gun on castigating people for their future actions.
Hi Judy
I don’t think you need an existing paypal account, anyone can just use a guest one off payment with a debit/credit card.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/hiding-the-decline/
You can pay via PayPal with a credit/debit card. PayPal is just there to handle the transaction; it doesn’t require you have an account.
But as for me? I’m not planning on reading it as I don’t feel like spending the money. So sue me. I’m feeling cheap.
No, Judith, but you did say under oath to a US congressional committee:
Anthropogenic climate change is a theory whose basic mechanism is well understood, but whose magnitude is highly uncertain.
The threat from global climate change does not seem to be an existential one on the time scale of the 21st century even in its most alarming incarnation.
and:
Which seems to me to be something totally different from calling AGW “the most important problem of our time”.
Max
Max, thanks for reminding us of what I actually said
To find the precise quote on this blog, I need a way to find my own remarks (there are not that many). I remember beating omanuel to the first answer. My opinion was that the most important problem was to not ruin the economy in order to save the earth. It was maybe about a year ago.
But the main point is, of course, that everybody NOW agrees that AGW is not a very important problem. Can’t be so bad after all.
Do a Google search on the following …
alexej buergin site:judithcurry.com
Speed, thank you.
It was the posting about climate change cartoons (May 3, 2012), and I stand corrected:
Dr Curry mentioned “one of our time’s greatest challenges”, not “the most important problem”.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/05/03/climate-change-cartoons/
Those were not her words but from here
http://blogs.sweden.se/sustainability/2012/05/03/making-fun-of-climate-change/
as indicated by the use of italics.
Now I get it: Dr Curry does not believe, that “climate change is one of our time’s greatest challenges”; that is from the original author of the text, Sara Jeswani (not mentioned in our blog). “By JC” only means posted by JC. Therefore JC thinks it proper, that the presidential candidates ignore this not very important non-problem.
I am glad we agree, and that was my point at the beginning.
OK.
Michael Mann DID receive a “Nobel Prize”.
Well, sort of.
It was a Nobel PEACE Prize handed out by a Norwegian committee, for example for such achievement as getting elected US President (Obama shortly after his election), and not to be confused with a REAL Nobel Prize, awarded by a Swedish committee for outstanding achievement in science or the arts.
And then he got it in what the inventive German language would call a “Sammelauszeichnung” (the prefix “sammel” indicating “collective”, “Auszeichnung” meaning award) along with other luminaries, such as Rajendra Pachauri, “2,500 climate scientists” and former US VP turned filmmaker, Al Gore.
In its announcement, the committee stated:
“Knowledge”?
Ouch!
Max
Seeing that Michael Mann’s upcoming court case has drawn what seems to be the worse possible judge in the U.S http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/michael-mann-gets-most-biased-judge-for-key-us-global-warming-trial/ how will this effect the court case?
Michael Petterson
Send it to properly stacked Italian civil court – they know how to slam scientists.
Max
If Judge Greene is on record repeatedly affirming her belief in green policies, wouldn’t this be grounds for a change of venue? I don’t know. Does anybody know?
PBS’ “Climate of Doubt” broadcast cites overwhelming “consensus of seven</strong" supporting AGW
Huh? Did I hear that right?
(Sounds like the "gang of five".)
Max
The Portland Oregonian online edition gave space to someone who equates exporting coal with heroin dealing, and says, therefore, one should not vote Republican! Unbelievable.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/my-portland/2012/10/pro_coal_heroin_dealers_and_cl.html
Frontier makes the following statement “To meaningfully assert that there is a consensus in any field, we need to actually have convincing evidence. And the best way to gather this evidence is to conduct unbiased, comprehensive worldwide polls. Since this has never been done in the vast community of scientists who research the causes of global climate change, we simply do not know what, if any, consensus exists among these experts.”
The mistake that is made are the words “consensus in any field”. There are some fields where a consensus of ideas makes sense. In law, judges interpret what the law, written by politicians, actually means. And this is based on opinion. However, in science, opinions are meaningless, unless and until they are supported by empirical data.
This does not mean that opinions are valueless; quite the contrary. In physics theory and data are opposite sides of the same coin . Neither has any meaning without the other. But no physicist worth his/her salt will ever make a claim that something has a scientific basis, unless and until both the theory and the empirical data are firmly in agreement.
I do not care what qualificatins any particular scientist has, or what fields she/he may specialize in, when it comes to what weight I give to just their opinions. As has been noted over and over again Nullius in Verba. A scientific consensus based solely on the opinions of a group of people is absolutely meaningless. The opinion must be backed up with empirical data.
A consensus exists in science only when the empirical data supporting the theory is overwhelming. Until the empirical data is firmly in place, no-one should claim that a scientific consensus exists.
Beg to differ Jim.
The consensus is generated by the “peer-review” that accepts of rejects material generating a bias system.
Anyone NOT of that system will be rejected no matter how good or important that science is.
So is there a consensus…not by actual polling, but there definitely is.
This announcement is supported and paid for by government grants and government appointments to positions of power and advisements.
Joe’s World “Beg to differ Jim.”
That is what makes a ball game. It is good to have disagreements. What matters is the why of the disagreement. You seem to feel that in physics, a consensus can have a meaning if it is merely based on opinion. I would suggest that the history of physics shows conclusively, that only those consensuses that have the support of overwhelming empirical data, have stood the test of time. Any consensuses, based purely on opinions, have perished…. miserably. Just name me one consensus in the whole history of physics, that was based solely on the opinions of the experts available tat the time, that is accepted today as a scientific fact. Just one will do.
Jim,
What does physics say our planet was like 4.5 billion years ago?
And how was it created?
I have a very different opinion and path based on the tracking of salt and understanding centrifugal force with liquids to solids and finding (surprise…) it is in ice in space which has the same composition as our oceans. Also time lines of decay and life through carbon dating…
Joe’s World “What does physics say our planet was like 4.5 billion years ago?
And how was it created?”
Sorry, Joe, you have completely lost me. I caanot see how your whole comment has anything to do with what I am talking about. How on earth does your contribution have anything whatsoever to do with my request? Which was “Just name me one consensus in the whole history of physics, that was based solely on the opinions of the experts available at the time, that is accepted today as a scientific fact.”
JIm Cripwell
“A consensus exists in science only when the empirical data supporting the theory is overwhelming. Until the empirical data is firmly in place, no-one should claim that a scientific consensus exists.”
I could not help but think of the well-used quote attributed to R.Coarse (and sometimes to Demming):
“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.”
Then there is that consensus which is coerced in one way or another, e.g., peer pressure, funding, tenure, promotion, etc. Given that in modern times science is largely practiced as a matter of livelihood and not as an passion there is significant hazard to science in this regard. Finally I wonder, if technology is viewed as applied science which often carries some sense of ‘good enough to accomplish the task at hand’, then what are the ramifications in regard to scientific consensus? Nice post leading to a little reflection.
mwgrant, you write
“I could not help but think of the well-used quote attributed to R.Coarse (and sometimes to Demming):
“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.”
Then there is that consensus which is coerced in one way or another, e.g., peer pressure, funding, tenure, promotion, etc. Given that in modern times science is largely practiced as a matter of livelihood and not as an passion there is significant hazard to science in this regard. Finally I wonder, if technology is viewed as applied science which often carries some sense of ‘good enough to accomplish the task at hand’, then what are the ramifications in regard to scientific consensus? Nice post leading to a little reflection.”
Good points. Let me try and craft an answer.
As to data being “tortured”, I suppose this has some validity. But, in the end, if the “torturing” is invalid, then the resulting data and conclusions will be invalid.
The second point of peer pressure is precisley what I am against. Any sort of consensus that is arrived at by peer pressure, is not, IMHO, a scientific consensus.
The third point of the data being “good enough” is certainly a sound basis for some decisions. There are occasions where time is of the essence, and a decision has to be made. If the data is good enough, then the decision maker may well have a sound basis on which to make a decision.
But for CAGW, I submit, that none of these conditions ought to apply. There is not any sort of single decsion maker. It will require the consent of just about all world governments to bring about a reduction in the amont of CO2 we are producing. The attempt by the IPCC to pressure world governments into agreeing to a reduction in the amount of CO2 we produce, on the basis of a hypothesis, with completely insufficient empirical data to support that hypothesis, is what I am fighting against as hard as I can
Jim Cripwell
I agree very much with all of your points. The reference to the torture of the data was in reference to some of the machinations that have appeared in recent years and had undue impact. I hope to come back to this later today, but for now ‘Sandy’ beckons. Regards.
So come on all and put yer hands together fer
that Doctor of Data Doctoring ex – straw – din – aire!
A self – made – man, he mann – u – fac – tured
Hockey Sticks galore and a Nobel Prize Award
out of thin air …
that magical mann ex -straw – din – aire!
“The words “global warming” and “climate” were not spoken by anyone”
No surprise there. It doesn’t matter much to Mr. Romney, and it’s a subject that will only lose votes for Mr. Obama (think Solyndra and a half dozen other green boondoggles). Beaides, even if he wins reelection, Mr. Obama knows that the House will never go along with new legislation, so he will continue to pursue his green agenda via administrative rules, regulations, and refusal to issue permits for fossil fuel production and infrastructure. Of course should he lose control of the Senate he may be forced to curtail some of his green efforts.
JC: Go a little further into your fact checking ….you might once again be asking for a little sauce with that crow….:)
I agree with Judith that the PBS special was boring. When one knows the entire theme of the show even before it starts with its one sided presentation, it does get a little tedious. I wonder if PBS knows how to present an issue with some non-biased thought provoking elements rather than a predictable, almost self-parody of themselves.
Climate Etc Denizens
Have a look at the following graph for the rate of change of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere:
http://bit.ly/RamVBN
We see that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere depends mainly on El Nino and La Nina, and therefore on the long-term GMST trend. There will be a warming trend when there are more frequent El Ninos than La Ninas. There will be a cooling trend when there are more frequent La Ninas than El Ninos. For example, look how the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere suddenly increased when the GMST increased during the 1998 El Nino. Look also how the amount of CO2 released suddenly decreased when the GMST decreased during the 1992 Pinatubo volcano. The CO2 concentration is the cumulated sum of the annual changes in CO2 concentration. This observation indicates that the observed increases in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is due to the long-term warming trend, and not due to human emission of CO2.
AGW has arrived at an extremely shaky ground: the observed increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere may not be due to human emission of CO2. This makes accurate estimation of climate sensitivity irrelevant, as the CO2 concentration will decrease when the climate moves to a long-term cooling GMST trend similar to that after the MWP.
I learnt the above after watching Salby’s brilliant and passionate presentation:
http://bit.ly/QuwRth
Do you believe the CO2 change was negative before 1983, or is there something wrong with your scale?
From WfT help:
Normalise – Scales and offsets all samples so they fall into the range 0..1
Actually it seems to mean “into the range -0.5 .. 0.5.
Girma is incurable. The nonsense of that interpretation has been explained on this site by at least ten different people in more than 10 different but consistent ways without any effect.
Pekka
I did the normalisation to show the correlation.
Here is the correlation without the normalisation:
http://bit.ly/PbeD0g
That’s more like it. Note the offset from zero. That is the anthropogenic part. Thanks.
Girma,
I know, but it seems tha you refuse to understand that the correlation tells absolutely nothing about the source of the increasing trend. The variability and related correlations are one thing, the trend is another. The analysis does not tell anything on their possible connection. That’s the fundamental error in Salby’s argument that you promote repeatedly. The logical faults of that argument were demonstrated in the discussion that followed Salby’s earlier presentation.
Salby was supposed to publish the justification but I haven’t heard even of a manuscript. The reason is obvious: There’s nothing correct to tell.
Pekka
On the other thread I asked you to clarify something when you said,
“Oceans act as a sink where roughly half of the anthropogenic releases go.”
(Full comments start here)
http://judithcurry.com/2012/10/25/playing-god/#comment-260067
After several emails from you I replied;
“did you literally mean that oceans are always a sink for co2, or that taking outgassing and intake into account the net result is that they are a sink?
tonyb”
You replied
“Pekka Pirilä | October 26, 2012 at 2:05 am |
Of course I’m am considering the net effect. In this connection that’s the only one that counts. The gross transfer of molecules between atmosphere and oceans has been taken up only to confuse the discussion and to promote untruths.”
What sort of date would you put on the time that the oceans became a net sink?
Does that imply that at some point the oceans may have had a greater effect on the co2 concentration in the atmosphere because of outgassing i.e they were a net source?
tonyb
tonyb, I would agree with Pekka. I would answer the oceans became a net sink when the atmosphere became a net source (which of course was ultimately man being a net source). This is about equilibrium ratios.
Jim D and Pekka
Thanks for responses to my query
http://judithcurry.com/2012/10/26/week-in-review-102712/#comment-260908
However neither of you have actually given a date. The probable decade would be fine. Presumably before that the ocean might be a net source or net sink depending on other factors?
tonyb
tonyb, the date would be when fossil fuels started being burned. That is as close as I can get.
Tony,
I haven’t much effort thinking on the date. What’s enough to me is that the human contribution has certainly kept the atmospheric CO2 level above the equilibrium level over the whole period of Mauna Loa measurements and for a few decades before those measurements. It’s possible that the net flow has been from atmosphere to the oceans much longer but the latest date of an opposite net flux may well be in early 20th century (perhaps even at the peak temperature of 1940’s). It could also be back in 18th century as far I can judge.
My own estimate for the date when the addition to the CO2 concentration reached 10 ppm is around 1925. It was about 15 ppm, when temperature peaked in 1940’s. The effects of such imbalances might perhaps still be reversed temporarily, but not those of the latter half of the 20th century.
Someone at one of those great Sydney universities that Salby also calls home decided on awarding Girma a PhD. That was a mistake, and one not curable by any known means. Something may be in the water down there.
Jim D
The scale is arbitrary because of the normalisation.
Here is the data without the normalisation and the correct scale:
http://bit.ly/XzHg9q
You will find that there is a positive decadal trend in CO2 and that trend has been doubling on scales of a few decades. This is the anthropogenic fingerprint. Derivatives, of course, exaggerate the noise at the expense of the signal.
In this case the oscillatory behavior seems to be real, but it’s just oscillatory fluctuation around the unrelated trend. We don’t have data from times before CO2 emissions grew significant, but I’m sure the oscillations were similar then. They have nothing to do with the trend.
Yes, the correlation can be, and has been, explained in terms of the effectiveness of the natural sinks decreasing in warmer years. This is not a comforting thought.
What the above results shows is that increase in GMST => Increase in CO2 Concentration.
Increase in GMST => Increase in sea level rise
IT IS NOT: Increase in CO2 concentration => Increase in sea level rise
Pekka
We agree that El Nino increase CO2 concentration and La Nina decrease it.
Now if we have more frequent El Nino than La Nina, we have a warming trend that increases CO2 concentration.
If we have more frequent La Nina than El Nino, we have a cooling trend that decreases CO2 concentration.
These results are shown by the data during the 1998 El Nino and the 1992 Pinatubo.
As the global mean temperature data has an overall long-term warming trend that resulted in an overall sea level rise, the CO2 concentration has also been increasing.
Girma,
The correlations that you have reproduced cannot tell anything about the trends. The trend reconstruction that Salby presents is not given by the data, it’s produced by the totally subjective choices that Salby made without help from the data. More specifically he had choose the neutral level of the temperature scale to make a graph. Moving the neutral level down increases the size of deviation from the neutral and moving the neutral level up reduces that deviation and ultimately makes if change sign. Playing with this neutral level the two trends (CO2 and temperature) can be made to agree or disagree. They can be made to have the same sign and opposite signs and their rates can be made equal or different. There’s nothing in the data that tells, what the right level is.
Salby used this freedom to choose a level that resulted in his graphs but nothing in the data tells that the explanation is correct. Therefore the data tells nothing about the connection between the two trends. It’s absolute truth in the sense of a logical truth that Salby cannot justify his conclusions by this analysis.
As Salby’s analysis tells nothing about the origin of the trends or their relationship we must to look elsewhere for valid arguments. Looking elsewhere it’s easy to find out that the explanation of Salby is not credible. That would require both a huge source for CO2 somewhere and another even more huge additional sink elsewhere to restore the balance. Such a source and such a sink cannot hide anywhere on the Earth. They cannot exist. Salby is totally wrong.
Keep it up Girma. Your credibility is sinking fast.
If there is one measure in climate science that is completely free from noise, shows a nearly monotonic trend, and has a significant theoretical basis, it is the anthropogenic-based rise in atmospheric CO2.
The signal is in fact so strong that one can actually look at the second-order fluctuations caused by seasonal and multi-seasonal changes. That is what a derivative of the signal will bring out. But you have to first isolate the main seasonal signal from the primary signal to see the multi-seasonal change. Which is what you did by using the isolate function on your WFT plot.
What is left is a residual on top of the main rise in CO2 level.
You and your Australian pal Murry (sic) Salby are essentially taking advantage of this clear instrumental record and burying yourself into a deeply embarrassing situation. But then again, I really don’t think Girma has any shame.
Neither does Salby, as her apparently can’t be bothered to respond to a serious takedown of his analysis shown here:
http://skepticalscience.com//news.php?f=salby_correlation_conundrum
Here is a Keeling paper on the subject:
http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/tsalmas/Biol%20420/Readings/Bacastow%201985.pdf
So Girma, please keep on pointing out Salby and his shoddy work. Less work for the climate scientists to show how little claim that the climate vigilantes have on practicing solid science.
Tonyb
The annual change in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has been positive since the Mauna Loa record begun as shown
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/compress:12/derivative/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.0001
In a warming world, most of the oceans cannot act as a sink. It has been pumping out CO2 into the atmosphere during the more frequent El Nino of the last 30 years.
Hope to see a deceleration in the increase in the CO2 concentration to validate the skeptics position of little warming in the next 20 years.
Web
Thanks for the link to skeptical science URL on Salby.
I will read it carefully.
Web & Pekka
Thanks for the information. Now I have found that human emission of CO2 is GREATER than the CO2 concentration increase due to ENSO inferred from Mauna Loa, so the observed increase in CO2 concentration is partly due to human emission of CO2.
Here is Spencer’s result that shows the above relationship.
http://bit.ly/OyWzLj
The correlation between GMST and CO2 concentration (http://bit.ly/RamVBN) shows that the concentration increases with increase in GMST and decreases with decrease in GMST.
So it appears that both human emission and global warming are contributing to the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
So accurate estimate of climate sensitivity is necessary to predict future greenhouse warming.
Web, you don’t need to call people names in this great climate debate. You need to just point out the mistake as clearly as you can, and leave it at that. Please stop your name-calling. It is just unnecessary.
What is important is the change in CO2 concentration has been positive, which means the oceans are releasing CO2 as a result of the warming. As a result, claim of ocean acidification as a result of CO2 absorption is not supported by the data.
Here is the positive rate of change of CO2 concentration =>
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1978/derivative/compress:12
Here is the correlation between GMST and CO2 concentration =>
http://bit.ly/RamVBN
No Girma, the net emissions (natural + human) have been positive. Human is positive, natural is negative.
Girma,
It is true that warming the water releases CO2 when the concentration of CO2 is kept constant in the air. On the other hand increasing the concentration in the air leads to additional CO2 in the water.
Studying these effects in laboratory tells about the strength of the two mechanisms. Such a study is made difficult by the complex chemistry of oceans (all the carbonates (both dissolved and not dissolved), bicarbonates and other ions have their effect. The pH value is one important parameter controlled by this chemistry.
In spite of the complexities and related uncertainties it is clear that the influence of the changes in ocean surface temperature have had a much smaller effect than the increase in atmospheric concentration. The concentration has increased by 100 ppm while the change has had an effect that’s only few percents of the effect of the change in atmospheric concentration.
Warming of the oceans has resulted to a slightly higher atmospheric concentration than what we would see without the warming, but only a few ppm out of the 100 are due to that. All the rest is due to other reasons. Furthermore the net flux has been continuously from the atmosphere to the oceans all the time for more than 50 years (probably much more than 50 years).
Because the SST has such a weak effect on the atmospheric concentration the variability that you have presented is also almost totally due to variability in land vegetation. Only a small fraction of the variability is due to variations in the CO2 flux from atmosphere to the oceans. The land vegetation reacts much more strongly to the changes in weather that ENSO causes. Most of that occurs in the tropics where carbon is not accumulated in soil but the amount of carbon in vegetation and soil oscillates between maxima and minima without any longer term trend.
The increasing trend is due to anthropogenic influence, the natural processes remove about half of that amount every year, a little more in some years, a little less in others. The oceans are always a receiving reservoir, land vegetation acts in both ways. That’s the oscillation.
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Sure , when the discussion is rhetorical. Get him in a scientific setting and the guy is completely clueless. How can it be otherwise?
But this will be a courtroom. And the case is libel. Rhetoric is very relevant here.
Latimer you are right.
Dr Mann will finally be dragged out of his bubble. And he wont like it, not one bit.
DOnt forget in the ATI case it is reported that the judge was hugely unimpressed with Dr Mann and made some very pointed criticism of him. I await the transcript becoming available.
What I can tell you after over 20 years as what you in the USA call a “trial lawyer” is that Mann will crash and burn unless his lawyers have him well coached and on a very very tight leash.
So a sensible defence approach would be to tempt him into one of his paranoid ‘Denier’ tirades and make a complete arse of himself?
Shouldn’t he hard to do.
I think there is zero chance of Mann being actually made to crash and burn. I wager there will be an attempt to limit the scope of discovery, and a request for a protective order. If both fail, then all Mann has to do is dismiss his claims before anyone can take his deposition.
His lawyers made an inspired choice by filing in the D.C. district court, rather than any federal court. They avoided giving any of the defendants the advantage of removing the case to federal court, and made sure to get the furthest left jury pool available in the country.
I don’t expect his attorneys to expose him to the type of questioning so many (including me) would love to see. One thing about clients with huge egos, you can prepare them all you want for testimony, but they then tend to think it is a game of intellectual chess with the other lawyer, and all that prep work can go down the drain in a heartbeat.
There is one huge chance that the case could actually go forward, with Mann subjecting himself and his teammates to full discovery. That is an issue discussed on an earlier thread here. The almost complete inability of progressives to engage in critical analysis of their own positions. If Mann’s lawyers are infected with the same blindness, they may not realize the risks. (Like the pro-Obamacre attorneys who argued before the Supreme Court and were blind sided by the questions they received.) Now that would be fun.
Yes because the ATI case went so well….face it, Mann slaughtered ATI and he’s just forced Morano to issue a correction.
Mark Steyn should be afraid in other words.
Either Mann is remarkably astute and legal savvy, or he has a weight of truth behind him. Wonder which one.
My understanding was that Mann’s various claims that FOIA did not apply to his emails were rejected by the court, but the court agreed with UVa that the emails were “proprietary,” an argument Mann did not make.
“The judge rejected all arguments by Intervenor Michael Mann whose intervention, the Court said from the bench, unnecessarily complicated matters, and without impact.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/18/statementupdate-on-ati-v-uvamann/
This comes from the WUWT analysis of the ruling, so if there is another source indicating that Mann’s arguments (not UVa’s) were accepted, feel free to post a link. The ThinkProgress article on the issue seems to say the same, as far as whose issues the trial judge ruled on.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/17/862571/mann-power-court-rules-deniers-have-no-right-to-the-emails-of-uva-climate-scientists/?mobile=nc
But this will have nothing to do with the Mann v. Steyn litigation. The trial court in the ATI v. UVa case was interpreting an exemption form FOIA for proprietary information. There is no similar exception to discovery in a libel case. This does not mean that the apparently extremely progressive judge presiding over the Steyn case won’t try to limit discovery as well (I will be astounded if she doesn’t), but the UVa case provides no justification for doing so.
I will start referring to these fake skeptics as climate vigilantes. They either ignore or violate fundamental scientific laws to get what they are after.
And ignore what GaryM says, as he admitted to being a lawyer. A lawyer holds no sway when it comes to scientific laws.
Judith, I think your timeline on the Mann saga is slightly wrong but thats not surprising since it has moved quickly.
What concerns me is that academics like Mann and Trenberth have been claiming for years that they are Nobel Laureates when they are not.
Mann has recenlty opined that it has been “found” that the certificate of involvement he received from the IPCC subsequent to the award to the IPCC of the 2007 Peace Prize has been “translated” to a statement that he share in or won the Prize. Weasel words that seek to put the scandal as far away from him personally as he can. The fact is that Mann describes himself on his Penn State bio as having shared the prize, the statement appears in the sleeve of his new book, and there have been many talks he has given over the last 5 years where he has ben billed as a Nobel Prize receipient, without him apparently correcting that error. IN adition he is described in his new defamation litigation as a Nobel Prize recipient – in those pleadings the statement is used deliberately to highten the court’s understanding of his reputation and the esteem in which he is held – all entirely relevant to the amount of damages he might receive.
It amazes me that this flasehood has been perpetuated by Mann and Trenberth for years without any consequences.
Judith, I know you to be an honourable person. What do you think about a fellow academic who apparently has taken no responsibility for the accuracy of his own bio/CV for years, has specifically described himself as a Nobel Laureate (its in the sleeve of his book and on his Penn State website), and then, when the issue is raised and the claim is found to be false, he glosses over the issue by seeking to say it has been £found” that his certificate of involvement from the IPCC Has been “translated” and moves immediately to say to his followers that this is all to do with climate “deniers” and KOCH Brother funded minions acting on their “instructions”. Whilst, at the same time in the last 24 hours records about Mann on the internet are being silently changed to remove the claim without any announcement.
I find the whole thing despicable to be honest.
Well, at Georgia Tech we had 3 people contribute to the AR4, and thus have some connection to the Nobel Peace Prize. The reaction of the Georgia Tech administration was to give each 1 year free parking on campus (worth several hundred $$) in recognition of their contributions. That is about the right scale of recognition for this; billing yourself as a Nobel Laureate in this context is incomprehensible to me.
At least he is consistent: Dr. Mann never misses an opportunity to hoist himself on his own petard.
1 year free parking
That’s dear. I can see it on a cv in the section of “Honors and Awards.” That’s in addition to the work of actually writing the AR4, listed in “Service to the Scientific Community.” It’s better than the 1 free meal for my wife and me that I earned for exceptional performance once for the company that employed me — about $80, as memory serves.
The pingback “Listening to what can’t be said” above brings up something I thought was interesting in the Frontline program. They can’t get most Republican politicians to state their view on global warming in either direction on the record. They know that any sign of agreeing leads to political payback. The story of one otherwise very Republican victim who dared to agree with the scientists is very clearly laid out. It is interesting they can’t say no to AGW either. It is almost as if they know saying that would be proven wrong, so they can say neither yes nor no when their hands are tied by political interests. They are in a real pickle.
Politicians prefer to talk about issues the public is interested in- the economy for example. The slow economic growth and huge public debt, and high unemployment are properly a matter of significant public interest.
MSM and liberal biased PBS, want Republicans to address issues which really not considered significant by the general public, and if they have any significant it’s something consider important by “progressive”.
At same time, details of issues of “progressive” are not dealt with in any significant detail- real debate about them, is lacking. Instead talking points are repeated, in lieu of of any serious discussion.
It seems the only avenue, to have progressive issues discussed is by having Republican talk about them.
You can claim that, but in the documentary, they demolished Republican Bob Inglis’s career when he strayed from the denial party line. It looked like they took it seriously enough. It goes on to show that other former supporters like Gingrich and McCain are more careful what they say now even compared to a few years ago.
“according to Australian climate data analyst, John McLean”
Is this the same john mclean who made a ridiculous and failed climate prediction?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/year-after-mclean-review-of-2011-global-temperatures.html
Yep think we can safely default anything he claims as being highly suspect.
hMMMMMM
So it was Rajenrda Pachauri who manufactured the “certificate” that Mann used as his basis for falsely claiming to have won the Nobel Peace Prize.
I guess that means that Mann actually did win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Wait, no it doesn’t.
But I suppose it does serve to divert attention from Mann’s clearly false claim of having won the award, to the issue of who typed his name on the certificate that he used to support his false claim. At least for people who aren’t paying attention.
“But I suppose it does serve to divert attention from Mann’s clearly false claim of having won the award”
Why should Mann’s trivial error be the center of attention and not Morano’s trivial error?
Of course concern trolling skeptics have a reason, but why should I share that disingenuous reason?
If it was Manns statement was clearly false as you claim why did they need to ask the Nobel Institute? Surely they just needed to post Mann’s claim *with no more explanation given* and everyone would have gone OMG DOESNT HE UNDERSTAND THE NOBEL PRIZE SYSTEM LOLZ!!!!
The strong possibility is that Mann, like me, was simply unaware of the difference between winning a nobel peace prize and being part of an organization that wins it. In which case you’ve got nothing.
Mark Steyn of course desperately tried to excuse the utter pathetically thread-bare relevance of the subject by writing “This calls into further questions of what else may not be factual…”. Are we to believe Mark Steyn previously trusted everything Mann wrote to be factual and only now, because of Mann’s error about Nobel Peace Prizes is having second thoughts? LOL. It’s one thing to believe that yourself, it’s quite another thing to expect ME to believe it!
It’s laughable really, but if you want to play the concern trolling game knock yourself out. Just don’t expect me to join in!
Unless Mann continues making errors about his status in conflict with the body that oversees that status (Monkcton, House of Lords *cough*) it’s nothing but a non-issue.
I forgot to add that the charge that Mann had deliberately altered a certificate was the most serious (sounding) of the charges. In fact I bet that if Mann hadn’t put it to rest as quick as he did, it would have become the primary smear of the concern troll skeptics. Note for example the first comment in this thread which references it.
So even accepting this whole non-issue deserves attention, which it doesn’t, it could hardly be a diversion from that attention to note that skeptics got the most serious charge wrong (which according to Mark Steyn’s logic means it raises “further questions of what else may not be factual” :D)
I heard that the European Union got the Nobel Peace Prize just this past week or so.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2012/
Lots of people lining up to take partial responsibility for that achievement I suppose.
“If it was Manns statement was clearly false as you claim why did they need to ask the Nobel Institute?”
Maybe to keep progressive drones like yourself from arguing that it is a matter of interpretation, rather than a simple, demonstrable fact that Mann never won a Nobel.
I checked Mann’s CV on the Penn State website, and it shows it was modified October 27, 2012. I wonder if Mann has been including it on his CV all this time?
You know what would be even more fun to find out? Whether he made the false claim in support of applications for government grants.
Falsely claiming to have won is just pompous bloviating, unless the claim was made in pursuing some benefit.
This could be just the first of many self-inflicted wounds to arise from Mann’s latest vanity suit.
Mann’s updates of his own wording where he changes the claim, from sharing it with hundreds of other scientists, to sharing it with lead authors, shows that he incrementally laurels himself, till in some mentions he is just “Nobel winner”.
.
Where did steyn say, “this calls into further question…”? Methinks you think steyn takes Mann a lot more seriously than he does. He’s laughing at the absurdity of defaming a Nobel laureate who’s not. That’s all. This isn’t about the science. It’s about the first amendment. Mann doesn’t know that yet. He will. The case will probably be thrown out by the judge due to lack of reputation to defend if Mann continues at this pace.
Is it reasonable to state that regardless of one’s conclusions regarding AGW, most everyone who has an interest in the matter welcomes the law suit because it will cause much more to be put on the table?
Pingback: Breaking: Mann has filed suit against NRO (now the laughing begins) | Watts Up With That?
FrankenStorm
Watching the storm track, it looks like a “right hook” in boxing lingo caused by a “blocking high” over Greenland impeding the normal Northeastern course of Hurricane Sandy. We have seen blocking highs over the past few years, infamously in 2010 and the Russian heatwave. For cold waves over Great Britain and Europe. This year in the USA, a blocking high was suppose to be the cause of our hot July. My query. Has anyone been able to attribute blocking highs to rising levels of CO2 as measured by Moana Loa?
Climate of Doubt
And this is where my money went? How do I separate “News Hour” money from “Frontline” money? Anyone know? Or do I just give less?
The Mann Saga
Academia has the “tenure” system and government has “civil service” system to protect workers from capricious and political interference of the necessary work of academics and government. This process of protection has resulted in the public awareness that the individual holding the job is more important than the service/product of academia and government. The developing assault upon school teachers’ tenure, public sector service workers’ unions which in collaboration with civil service make the employee most important, will now spill over to academia. Michael Mann is safe from assault as long as he screams his lungs out from his academic protective fortress. As this saga illustrates, he has entered the world of lawyers and other ruffians; he sheds his immortality cape. Now I think Gary M is correct that this current foray by Mann invoking the District’s judicial system will leave him untouched. However, the lesson for science from Italy is the forewarning. The assumed protection of academia will soon be breached. Academia is next in line for a more general assault on the wisdom of academic tenure. We may see tenure positions disappear from states’ legislatures’ budgets for which we will hear from academics: “Thanks also goes to….Michael Mann.” Maybe the academic science community can award him a certificate that he can display prominently: the “Ignominious” award.
Frankenstorm is unusual mostly because of its interaction with a trough associated with a cold front. Their interaction draws it west as it is engulfed by the trough extending to its southwest. Note that this is the third successive year with at least 19 named storms: something that used to be unusual. It is also the first time the name Sandy has been reached, and the names come back in a 6-year cycle, unless they are retired.
JimD, you write “Note that this is the third successive year with at least 19 named storms: something that used to be unusual. ”
True. But from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy I find the following table
2010 19 named storms ACE value 165 ACE/number of naled storms 9.16
1995 19 named storms ACE value 228 ACE/number of named storms 12.0
2005 28 named storms ACE value 248 ACE/number of named storms 8.86
2011 19 names storms ACE value 121 ACE/number of named storms 6.36
2012 19 named storms ACE value 118 ACE/number of named storms 6.21
Yes, Sandy has not finished yet, so the number of 118 will increase until Sandy has dissipated. So, while it is true we are having a lot of named storms, their intensity seems to be getting weaker. Sure you can cherry pick the data, but I expect scientists to note what the whole picture is.
If we go back to 1961, there were 11 named storms, the ACE was 205 and ACE/number of named storms 18.63. I could go on, but I hope you get the picture.
Jim D
What I am mindful of: satellite coverage has allowed more storms to be documented; better recognition. So, the numbers game doesn’t resonate with me.
When I used the boxing metaphor I was thinking in terms of a powerful punch. The trajectory of the storm’s energy is being diverted, abruptly. I thought, deflected by the blocking high over Greenland. As for the target, New Jersey’s shore, there is no particular reason why the Hurricane will suddenly veer to the West. The Westerly cold front is a slow moving continuous band North to South which might “bend” the Hurricane to the West as the cold from moves to the East. That is, Hurricane Sandy should be “easing” towards the West, coming ashore say South Carolina and easin’ up Appalachian country. To get a vector with power to move one direction or another, we should see some Newtonian applied force, in this case, an immovable chunk of air over Greenland.
If the basis of your explanation is…models. Then I re-iterate…all models are wrong…
I would think it unlikely that Mann has tenure. Does anyone know ?
Mann is tenured full professor at Penn State
Is Mann still on sabbatical from PSU? It started early part of this year, I think.
John
Well, I guess if we enter a prolonged and deep cool phase the University can afford the $ to retire him early. Probably their only way out. Mann may not pay with his job or income, but ultimately perhaps senior management at Penn State might.
Prof Curry: “Mark Steyn is formidable opponent. I suspect that this is not going to turn out well for you.”
I do not see how Prof. Mann can possibly win. Not only will this consume more of his time than he imagines, but a much larger number of people will become familiar with the exact wording and remarkable parallels of the exonerations of the Penn State Football Program and of Michael Mann, including the evident role of money. What looked to most people like an arcane academic matter will now look sordid to a much larger public. Besides that, Mark Steyn earns his living writing sharp, clever, basically accurate editorials and reviews. This is grist to his mill. Everything that is said in court, or in discovery, or in motions, that he likes or doesn’t like will appear in his columns, with sharply worded ironies, contrasts and parallels. When it is all settled, he’ll earn a mint of money off the book he writes.
And that’s if the court rules in favor of Mann. I do not see how Mann can possibly win a libel suit in the US, based on what has been published so far. The contest should be riveting, for those of us who like reading and rereading details about contests. I can hardly wait for more.
To be fair to Mann, he is pretty much guaranteed to “win” in some regards. In any informed discussion of Mann and his work, there is an enormous amount of polarization. If Mann’s case draws a lot of publicity, that polarization will likely spread. That’s bad for Mann in that he’ll drive away many people, but it’s good in that those who support him will be die-hard about it.
What worries me is Mann has largely been supported by the scientific community and media. If this gets big and they don’t withdraw their support, they’ll basically be stuck supporting him no matter what. Given the rampant biases that exist in both communities… it seems like a possibility.
But to be blunt about it, Mann is becoming a cult leader.
Brandon Shollenberger: Given the rampant biases that exist in both communities… it seems like a possibility.
You might be right. I grant you that.
In the long run, scientists don’t en masse stray far from the data that they know; among other things they have to contend with are newcomers, graduate students, post docs who review the evidence with fresh minds and bring disparities to the attention of their teachers. I did say “in the long run” and “en masse” and “from the data that they know.” Mann may become a cult leader, but grant administrators and reviewers have less and less money to throw around, and he’ll lose his funding (while retaining tenure) if his work remains as sloppy as it has been to date, and if he spends so much time on his lawsuits that his publication rate declines. You saw from the emails that scientists who seem to support him in public can be harsh in private, and the struggle for grant money is intense. Also, they are not going to like what Steyn writes about them and Mann that they cannot refute, and there will be a lot of that.
But as I wrote, you might be right. I make the contrary case knowing I might be wrong.
The biggest problem is the scientific community as a whole can support Mann even if almost all the members of it don’t. All that needs to happen is for those who don’t support him to keep quiet. Like they’ve been doing for years. If that happens, and Mann manages to keep enough support from some people…
The only thing I find reassuring is Mann’s incompetence. If he weren’t so stupid, I’d think he could actually pull this off.
“But to be blunt about it, Mann is becoming a cult leader.”
He already is a cult leader. But he will not match Al Gore
in terms of being a significant cult leader. Nor even equal
James Hansen.
And It seems more likely than a leader, Mann will attempt become a martyr- at least that seems to be the spin direction.
Story being spun is Mann is scientist [not scientist being a politician]
who was *somehow* drawn unwilling into a public maelstrom.
So punchline is all you scientists out there busy doing your work, you could be next innocent victim of unwanted public attention.
So he is the innocent victim rather than someone who was attempting to muscle editors to reject papers he didn’t want to get published. And etc.
DarrylB: Is it reasonable to state that regardless of one’s conclusions regarding AGW, most everyone who has an interest in the matter welcomes the law suit because it will cause much more to be put on the table?
I think that little of AGW will be brought into court because this is a libel case. Consider Mann’s claim that his work has all been reproduced: in defense against libel, Steyn and NRO need only point to the existence of a large dissenting publication record, without resolving any technical details about Yamal, Tiljander series, bristlecone pines, how many principle components to retain. LASSO etc. So the existence of an intellectual basis for doubting AGW may become more widely known, but that’s about all.
So, yes I welcome the law suit. It is a step in the right direction, afaict.
It’s a minor point, but LASSO isn’t an issue for Mann’s work. He never used it. McShane and Wyner used it.
I think the case could be won simply by arguing nothing said was defamatory, but if not, I’d argue there are simple justifications for calling Mann’s work fraudulent. The important thing would be to stress the word was not used to mean criminal fraud, so it can cover many things. With that established, ask these three questions:
It is easy to demonstrate the answer to each of those questions is yes. All you have to do then is argue promoting positive results while hiding adverse results is fraud. That shouldn’t be hard.
To make things worse for Mann, one could also show Mann later lied about not having calculated the r2 verification scores.
Brandon Shollenberger: It’s a minor point, but LASSO isn’t an issue for Mann’s work. He never used it. McShane and Wyner used it.
Mann and Schmidt argued that McShane and Wyner’s use of LASSO meant that McShane and Wyner’s disconfirmation of the hockey stick was invalid.
As I said, the evidence against libel is the existence of the scholarly debate published in Statistical Science, not the appropriateness of LASSO or the inclusion/exclusion criteria of time series, or the Supporting Online Material and the debate therein.
Same with R^2: whether Mann did this correctly is not the issue in a libel suit; what’s at issue in the libel suit (based on my understanding of the written complaint) is that a bunch of scholars esteemed at least as much as Mann thought he didn’t do what was required. That’s because of the claim in that filing that Mann’s work has always been corroborated.
Hm. I suppose the argument over LASSO might matter for whether or not Mcshane & Wyner’s work counts as a “replication” since Mann did say every replication showed his work was perfect, or some such rubbish.
Anyway, whether or not there is “a large dissenting publication record” has little to do with whether or not Mann’s work was fraudulent. It matters only because Mann said his work has been supported/cleared by so many people and groups. Even if it is pointed out that not everybody who has “replicated” his work says what he claims, he’ll still have a strong position as long as he can say seven (or however many it is up to) investigations have cleared him and his work.
The best defense in any defamation suit is the truth. If the defendants can say they had a legitimate reason to call his work fraudulent (beyond rhetorical purposes), such as examples like I provided above, they have a basically guaranteed-to-win affirmative defense.
From Merriam-Webster:
fraud
…
b : an act of deceiving or misrepresenting : trick
Hmmm, maybe Phil Jones, the author of the climategate email referring to “Mike’s Nature trick…to hide the decline…,” should be called as a material witness for the defense.
Being a non practicing lawyer, I went and read Mann’ complaint out of curiosity. Paragraph two states that he is a Nobel Peace prize winner. The degree of self-delusion is unfathomable. And you don’t need to be a lawyer to know that starting a legal complaint with a blatant falsehood is generally not an astute move.
With regard to cases involving climate science US judges don’t have a good record and are far from neutral. co2 a pollutant for instance, also Mann won the last case to the surprise of the sceptics.
The judge will no doubt find some way to disregard the Nobel prize thing and produce an unexpected ruling in favour of the plaintiff.
On the other hand perhaps this is an attempt by Mann to influence the US election, once the election has been held he will then withdraw the case.
I wonder what the students at his University are going to think about him once the news spreads about his inflatable Nobel.
Hopefully Steyn will prevail and get awarded costs, but presumably that’s a no risk situation for Mann as no doubt the University will be covering any costs.
“On the other hand perhaps this is an attempt by Mann to influence the US election, once the election has been held he will then withdraw the case.”
Because Obama [or Romney] want to discuss climategate and/or global warming?
Because Mann thinks he can.
The best we can hope for is the the in coming Administration will demand a thorough review of climate science related expenditures specifically and of how institutional science funding is controlled and accounted for in general.
But AGW is the Cold War of our era, and its narrative is too compelling and the money to great to be easily halted over clownish antics by Mann. Mann is an Edward Teller like character in this dysfunction and Teller lived a long life very well funded after ironically causing many of the problems he destroyed others over and of course his character and carer destruction of Oppenheimer is eerily similar to Mann’s outrageous behavior today.
Only until the protagonists, Mann, Hansen, Revkin, and the many many other promoters are either thoroughly discredited or leave the scene due to retirement or health will this wind down.
OT. Is there a tips or suggestions page, where one can paste an off topic link that might be interesting ?
Mann (and many of the inner circle) are the skeptics’ best friends. The following has been key for me. YOU DON”T HAVE TO BE A SCIENTIST TO RECOGNIZE A LYING JERK. It was the hockey stick shenanigans along with Climate-gate that turned me into a skeptic. FOr that I’m forever in theri debt.
I agree, PokerGuy! I ignored the debate not being qualified to evaluate the science. An article in the London Telegraph about UEA denying Steve McIntyre caught me up: that’s just not cool, I thought! Then, Climategate…. whew. I’m also not a programmer, but reading the frustration buried in the released Harry_ReadMe files was beyond nuance, too sad — but funny — to seem real. ….Lady in Red
On the last item, Frankenstorm and “God’s latest warning” I am quite confused. Wasn’t Roy Spencer shunned from the Community of True Scientists because he questioned the completeness of the Theory of Evolution, preferring to keep an “Old-Time” Creator in the mix? So, is God back on the side of CAGW hystericals again, now that he is intervening directly in US elections and government policy decisions? Does this new acceptance of an interventionist deity by the God-denialist left mean that Dr. Spencer can get back in the Club of Truth Seekers?
Lindzen has also put it about that he’s a Nobel prize winner! Even though he largely disagreed with the work , and conclusions, for which it was awarded!
http://motls.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/bbc-interviews-nobel-prize-winner.html
tempterrain
Don’t be silly.
BBC (not Lindzen) said that the interview was was “Nobel prize winner, Lindzen”.
(Read the blurb again.)
Max
You obviously haven’t listened to Lindzen’s interview with the BBC. He makes the claim himself just after 10:20 on here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p009yfwl/One_Planet_Climate_change_pot_plants_and_small_frogs/
PS You might notice that he says the Earth has warmed by “just a few tenths of a degree” ( does 60 count as just a few?) since the last ice age: and, yet he berates others for failing to check basic facts on the science of climate change.
tempterrain
Transcript of the segment to which you refer:
Moderator: …John Houghton – you may know him
Lindzen: Oh, yes!
Moderator: He used to chair the panel [IPCC] and shared a Nobel Prize for his work there
Lindzen (chuckling): I did, too!
Announcer: You certainly did.
Does this sound like Lindzen was bragging that he was a Nobel Prize holder (as Mann does)?
[Of course not.]
Sorry, tempterrain. Lindzen is only making reference to the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to all contributors of the IPCC report, including John Houghton and himself, after the announcer stated that John Houghton had received one for his work there.
Max
Ice Age, Little Ice Age, blah blah.
Give up on that one, TT
Richard Lindzen is a knowledgeable climate scientist who knows what he is talking about. He just happens not to share the same opinions on the severity of AGW with another climate scientist and former co-chair of the IPCC, John Houghton (as was pointed out in the BBC interview)..
You see, the science is NOT settled and Lindzen is living proof of that (despite John Houghton’s claim several years ago that it was).
Max
“Richard Lindzen is a knowledgeable climate scientist who knows what he is talking about.”
Does he? He doesn’t seem to have got this right!
http://www.skepticalscience.com/lindzen-illusion-1-should-have-seen-more-warming.html
tempterrain
He got it right (Cook didn’t)
But then Cook isn’t a climate scientist, but just a blogger (kinda like you and me).
And the discussion was about Mann’s use of his “Nobel Prize” in his CV -can’t find that in Lindzen’s CV, can you?
Max
PS Because Lindzen does not “need” it, while Mann apparently feels he does.
If you listen to the BBC interview, just after the 6:30 point, you’ll hear Richard Lindzen say that the Earth has warmed by “a few tenths of a degree since the last ice age”. Note: that’s not the little ice age.
So, its interesting to hear a climate denier (Richard Lindzen says its OK to use that word) invoke an argument from authority, but what authority is that?
During the last ice age , or more correctly ‘glacial period’, sea levels were several hundred feet lower, and glaciers covered most of present day Europe and North America.
Now I may not be a climate scientist but I have to question whether that’s been caused by a “few tenths of a degree” of warming. I don’t believe it has. Do you?
“Lindzen has also put it out that he’s a Nobel prize winner!”
Lindzen has a CV online, and I don’t see any claim of a Nobel.
Googling “lindzen claims Nobel” returns nothing indicating he has ever claimed to win the Nobel.
Oh, and your link, has the BBC identifying him as a Nobel winner, not Lindzen claiming the honor for himself.
So where does has Kindzen claimed he was a Nobel Prize winner ala Mann, who has done so over and over and over?
See answer to Max above.
Tempterrain
The link to the BBC says ‘service not available’ I note it’s bbc world service so perhaps it’s for overseas consumption only
Tonyb
Lindzen does say, in response to a claim that “John Horton shared a Nobel Prize,” – “I did too.”
That’s not the same caliber as making a claim on your CV or in a verified complaint that you “won a Nobel Prize.”
But it does muddy the waters a bit.
Gary M
Listen closely.
Lindzen is chuckling when he says it.
The (not too bright sounding) announcer thought he could give John Houghton some extra credibility points by mentioning that he had co-chaired the IPCC and received a Nobel Prize (sic) for his work there.
Lindzen popped that balloon by chuckling “I did, too!”
(And it’s true – he did.)
But he doesn’t go around bragging about it or putting it on his CV (he doesn’t need to, whereas Mann does)
Max
Max,
I heard the chuckling, to imply that his “sharing” in the Nobel through his participation in the IPCC AR4 was not that big a deal.
But I don’t agree that he “shared” a Nobel, any more than Mann “won” one. Mann’s claim is demonstrably false, but Lindzen’s apparent agreement that he “shared” one, while different in scale, is not really different in kind. You can differentiate the claims, but only with an extended semantic argument. That was why I said it muddied the waters.
I don’t put Lindzen’s self deprecating, humorous, off the cuff response to be anything like Mann’s vainglorious serial claims. But it would have been better had he simply said…No, Horton did not. Period.
Now we will get arguments ad nauseum that “sharing” is no different from “winning.”
And I must say, I am impressed by the rapid responsive team finding such a relevant quote, in the middle of an obscure BBC interview, in such a short time.
My compliments to the foot soldiers of big government.
It looks to me that Lindzen and Mann, and probably others too, are trying to big themsleves up by association to the IPCC’s Nobel prize. That’s unfortunate, and human nature I suppose, but it doesn’t alter the fact that the IPCC, consisting of several thousand people, received its prize for scientifically answering the question it was asked.
If there were a Nobel prize for exaggeration, a prime candidate would be that well known climate sceptic ( or is it OK to call him a denier? Richard Lindzen says there’s nothing wrong with the term), Christopher Walter Monckton, the third Viscount Monckton of Brenchely. Not only has he claimed to have applied his great intellect to the science of climate change and declared it to be a scam, and he too has claimed a share of the the IPCC’s Nobel prize, but he’s also, or so he says, invented a cure for AIDS. He’s also claimed to be a member of the British House of Lords, but they say he isn’t.
tempterrain
Lindzen: NO
Mann: YES
(As discussed up-thread).
Look again, TT
Max
Max,
I’d just give Lindzen some praise, by way of pointing out that his argument of CO2 climate sensitivity being low, 1 deg C or less, and therefore there is no need to be concerned about reducing emissions, does make a lot more sense than saying climate sensitivity is uncertain ( 1-6 deg C) and therefore there is no need…..
These are the arguments which matter. Climate sensitivity will be what it is regardless of whether Nobel prizes are awarded, and regardless of who claims a share of them.
In my research of the climate’s natural variability causes, I need a correct interpretation of a particular problem as outlined in here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CAM-LOD.htm
REMOVED ! (due to a possible reference contravention)
Just a point for discussion– Could the “Frankenstorm” be one of those “When Weather Changed History” moments in terms of impacting the election? Which candidate might it benefit or hurt and why?
R gates
I suppose it depends on whether it actually happens and if so, where. Not a lot about it on the mms here in the uk but no doubt if it turns out to be big we will get reports here.
Tonyb
Certainly Tony if it doesn’t happen it won’t impact the election…, or maybe just a “near miss” could alter certain people’s psychology? But if it does happen on a scale anywhere close to what is forecast, it could have both practical and psychological impacts on voters. I’m simply wondering what people think those might be, why, and which candidate might it benefit? It might seem cold and heartless to discuss it in these terms, but you can believe that if the storm does happen in the way currently forecast, these will be topics more than a few will be discussing, if they aren’t already.
Wow, that’s certainly the first thing that comes to my mind when I consider a storm that has the potential to devastate the lives of tens of thousands of real people’s lives – what will be the impact politically.
Gary,
You miss the point. The outcome of the election has the potential to devastate (or improve) the lives of millions of people as well. Big weather events have altered the course of history many times, and so certainly a storm with the potential of the Frankenstorm deserves watching. It certainly comes at a key moment in U.S. history, so the coincidence of the effects of the two happening near each other in time makes for interesting conjecture. Discussing this is hardly cold-hearted. From a practical perspective– if you live anywhere in the path of this storm be on alert and make preparations now.
Oh, the storm certainly deserves watching. Particularly by those unfortunate enough to be in its path.
And I take a back seat to no one in my interest in all things political.
But it just strikes me as too typically progressive to think of harm to people as an opportunity to seek political advantage. Never let a good crisis go to waste and all that.
It’s just a bit unseemly to me to try to start politicizing it before the people have even been killed, or rendered homeless yet.
One correction Gary– “people” have already been killed and rendered homeless by this storm. Maybe just not Americans as of the time of this posting…unless you don’t think those who aren’t Americans are not “people”. You could always do what others have done and simply label them as “collateral damage” I suppose.
I am sure FEMA’s response will be watched closely and second-guessed at the first opportunity by the Republicans. Witness the Libya incident and FBI/CIA/State Dept.
Funny, when you wrote about the impact of the storm on the outcome of the election, I assumed you were talking about the impact of the storm in the United States.
Or are you operating under the impression that Obama is running for president in Haiti and Cuba?
Jim D,
Gee, you and Gates are the ultimate humanitarians.
He looks at impending destruction and can only think of the potential political ramifications. And to you, a hurricane on different from the Obama administration refusing the requests for military support from two ex-Seals who died defending US citizens from terrorist attacks.
How dare anyone question the abandonment of Americans, and the serial lies that followed. (And I wager fifty percent of you don’t even know what I am talking about, given your reliance exclusively on filtered “mainstream” media.)
You progressives are becoming truly unhinged at the coming end to the One’s political career.
And there it is. You are doing exactly what you objected to.
Jim D,
Someday, you have to try thinking for yourself. Seriously.
The Obama administration politicized the Benghazi attacks WHILE IT WAS ONGOING. They refused to provide assistance to the ex Seals who requested it, and in fact ordered them not to help the US citizens under attack in the embassy. Those heroes disobeyed those direct, political, orders and went to defend their fellow citizens. And died in the effort.
I said nothing about the issue until you raised it in a false effort at moral equivalence. Those men had already died, and the Secretary of State lied about the cause of their deaths, while standing over their coffins, long before this discussion.
Rejecting that type of rapacious political posturing, after the fact, is nothing like Gates rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of potential political advantage that may come as a result of a hurricane devastating the lives of thousands of Americans.
Google Charlie Woods, father of one of the dead ex-Seals, and Benghazi. Then tell me who politicized that tragedy from the start. My complaint about Gates is that he is trying to politicize Hurricane Sandy before it even impacts the US.
You all have been so busy preaching moral equivalence for so long, it seems you have no moral compass at all any more.
In a completely unrelated development, in the three days since the Obama administrations’ refusal to provide aid to Americans under attack became public, his approval rating has dropped 7 points.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gallup-obamas-job-approval-drops-7-points-3-days
Gary M, that story does not stand up to credibility. What possible motive is there for the administration ignoring an attack on their own appointed embassy staff? Clearly the Republicans are trying to put together a jigsaw with missing pieces to their advantage. Romney made the first political remark on this by complaining when the US consulate in Egypt condemned the inflammatory video that was leading to attacks on them. Romney distorted that as an attack by Obama himself on free speech, and was later considered to be way off the mark.
Anyway, you probably will be closely watching FEMA over the next few days to see if you can blame Obama for something else now. However, with Gov. Christie (R-NJ) on the firing range for Sandy too it may make for a tricky target.
Read up, Jim. The October Surprise happened on 9/11/12 when bin Laden’s followers took out Obama.
==============
Jim D,
The motivation is simple. Obama’s entire re-election campaign has been based on his claim that “bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive.” Leaving aside the fact that GM is still on the verge of bankruptcy, Obama had been claiming for months that al Quaida had been “decimated.”
Then, on the anniversary of September 11, after the administration had refused repeated requests for additional security in Benghazi and Tripoli, and after receiving repeated reports from the State Department, the CIA and the Libyan goivernment of growing threats to our people in Libya, a branch of al Quaida launched a coordinated, planned, intense assault on the American embassy in Libya.
During the attack, the White House was in direct telephone contact with the Americans in Libya, and had a live feed from a drone above the embassy, relaying pictures in real time. During the initial hours of the attack, two CIA personnel, former Navy Seals, requested permission to go to the embassy and rescue the Americans there, and they and the embassy staff requested military and security assistance.
All requests were refused, and the CIA operatives were ordered to “stand down.” Those heroes disobeyed those cowardly orders, saved 30 Americans from the attack, and gave their lives in the effort. One of the ex-Seals had the mortar position attacking them in his line of sight, and had them “painted” with an infra red targeting device. He requested support to attack the position, and was refused. He was later killed by a mortar round, presumably from the position he had targeted.
Four Americans died because your hero refused to take action that would have defined the “incident” as a terrorist attack, at a time when he was bleating around the country that he had decimated al Quida as a threat.
His lust for re-election combined with his general incompetence to cost four Americans their lives.
GaryM, yes, I see Fox News going apoplectic on Benghazi, pretending they know what all the real-time information and options were. Would other options have led to less than four losses? How close was military support? What could F16’s have done to help in a close-quarters combat situation? These are the questions.
After over a month of lies, a miracle happened; whistles are blowing, probably by friends of Ambassador Stevens, from the CIA and the Dept. of State.
===================
“It certainly comes at a key moment in U.S. history”
We Canadians are watching this election with great interest but do Americans really think that this is a key moment? I guess my skepticism extends further than CAGW.
GaryM
Get a rope.
GaryM,
Please do continue.
The truth is out there.
“Maybe just not Americans as of the time of this posting…unless you don’t think those who aren’t Americans are not “people”.
Just on a point of information: America, or even North America, isn’t just the United States of America. It is a geographical term to describe the whole continent. The area of America does include other countries too.
You ‘Americans’ should listen to us Aussies more. We reckon ourselves to be good judges of character and according to a recent online poll 72 per cent of Australians would (even though we know we aren’t eligible) vote for Obama, and just 5 per cent for Romney. That’s about 14 to 1 !
I’d say that was pretty much right. Even my more right wing friends have come out in favour of Obama. I don’t know anyone who would prefer a Romney victory.
I’d be surprised if it were much different in Europe or the UK..
http://www.smh.com.au/national/australian-voters-would-deliver-obama-landslide-victory-20120827-24wpp.html#ixzz2AdYvDEx8
I think it was something like 22 out of 23 major countries preferred Obama. The one that didn’t like him was Pakistan, perhaps because he stepped on their territory to get bin Laden.
Watching all the CAGWers try to defend Mann’s false claim to winning a Nobel reminds me of all the similar contortions used to justify the garbage statistics behind the original hockey stick, the magic strip bark proxies, and my favorite, upside down Tijlander.
I once wrote a comment that imagining that Gavin Schmidt, alone in the middle of the night, fantasizes chasing after Mann smacking him about the head and shoulders with a tree corer.
Maybe now he can fantasize doing it with a Nobel trophy.
Michael Mann, the gift to skeptics that keeps on giving.
In the UK the BBC has recently faced widespread criticism for systematically protecting and covering up persistent (decades long) child sex abuse by one of its star presenters a man by the name of Jimmy Saville.
Imagine now, an organisation that has for instance committed itself and its output to one side of a scientific debate which cannot easily be disproved (or for that matter proved).
Now if a publicly funded organisation is prepared to cover up hundreds of instances of child sex abuse; actual ‘criminal offences’, to save its face and maintain its reputation of integrity…imagine what lengths it will go to to save face over something like a dodgy scientific posture it has adopted.
A Committee at Penn State University cleared serial Paedophile Jerry Sandusky of sexual misconduct allegations…then in an eerily similar statement, a committee at Penn State University cleared Michael ‘hide the decline’ Mann of any scientific wrong doing with regard to Climategate.
R Gates and his chums should bear in mind that great and good organisations are not infallible and are often incapable of admitting that they were wrong about very important issues.
Like WMD in Iraq, Lance Armstrong being the greatest cyclist in History, the Dotcom bubble, the ‘new economic paradigm’ of endless growth etc etc…ad nauseam.
Charles said:
“R Gates and his chums should bear in mind that great and good organisations are not infallible and are often incapable of admitting that they were wrong about very important issues.”
____
I’m hardly a naive schoolboy Charles. I fully recognize that any human created institution, organization, or affiliated group can be blind (intentionally or otherwise) to their own sins, and will go to great lengths to ignore them, hide them, or explain them away. This is human nature and is tied closely to the hubris that all humans are guilty of. I tend to side with Dr. Trenberth on at least one point (where it seems even Judith agrees, though for different reasons) that the IPCC in it’s present form has outlived its usefulness. But again, to your point– I have not defended the actions of anyone, nor would I, in the case of the facts of science being distorted, twisted, cherry-picked or falsified. Both sides are capable of these behaviors. But this issue and this war has many battles left and much to be discovered.
R. Gates
We are all honorable men and women here, so you do not need to get on a soap box about not defending anyone who would distort, twist, cherry-pick or falsify science.
But the sad truth of the matter is that climate science has become politicized.
It did so from the creation of the IPCC with its political brief to find out about the possible negative effects of human-induced climate change and its potential impacts on humanity and our environment.
Bingo!
You had a political advocacy group.
Books have been written about this and the “consensus process”, which forced a myopic fixation on human GHGs (principally CO2) to the essential exclusion of all other (natural) causes of climate change.
Climategate, whitewash attempts and later revelations of exaggerated and outright fabricated claims by IPCC further eroded the credibility of climate science, itself, with almost 70% of US poll respondents saying they believed that climate scientists fudged their data.
So standing up and telling us that you do not support such shenanigans is good.
Bravo!
I also do not support such shenanigans. Nor do any of the people I know who share my rational skepticism of the IPCC CAGW premise.
Max
Max,
So according to your argument, any body tasked with the investigation of a possible problem will inevitably report in the affirmative?
tempterrain
Huh?
Say that again so it makes sense.
Max
In other words, they’ll always say ‘yes there is a problem’ rather than ‘no there isn’t’.
I kind’a understand how he probably feels because I wouldn’t want to be compared to a Frankendataphiliac like Michael Mann.
A couple weeks ago, there was discussion on another thread about presidential polls being reported with 10% more Democrats than Republicans.
Just out from Gallup about how likely voters self-identify by party:
Republican 49%, Democrat 46%.
“For example, the largest changes in the composition of the electorate compared with the last presidential election concern the partisan affiliation of voters. Currently, 46% of likely voters identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 54% in 2008. But in 2008, Democrats enjoyed a wide 12-point advantage in party affiliation among national adults, the largest Gallup had seen in at least two decades. More recently, Americans have been about as likely to identify as or lean Republican as to identify as or lean Democratic.”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/158399/2012-electorate-looks-like-2008.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=Government%20-%20Political%20Parties%20-%20Politics
All those polls out now showing a close race, still have Democrat +5-6% sampling. The oversampling of Democrats is lower now than the +10-12% that was common at the time. (And the pollsters, in the next several days, will likely begin adjusting their sampling even more to avoid looking like total fools on election day.)
The real news of the week – the coming election is shaping up to be not a wave elections, but a tsunami.
With the trashing of the culture the psychology of behaviorism is taking on new meaning. For example, if you need someone to lead a scout troop on a weekend mountain hike you don’t pick Sandusky you want the guy who doesn’t volunteer–i.e., you try to talk the guy into it who needs to be home that weekend to watch the Chargers play the Jets. And, that is the problem with polls: they’re based on those who play with polls.
If the election turns out to be a Big Republican victory, I think I will start watching MSNBC, CNN and all the other Liberal Mainstream Media just to watch them cry in their beer. What a great way to spend a winter, while I mark time for next golf season.
The election is likely to be won by turnout, not electoral majority.
So if all polls agree that the Republican’s have say 60% of the peoples vote and the Democrats 40%.
The election will still be won by the Democrats, because turnout by voters for the Democrats (black and hispanic) will outweigh turnout by the Republicans (whites).
J Martin,
I guess that would be why the Democrats had such a great year in 2010.
Oh wait….
As a Brit I have no idea what happened in 2010. But I’m pretty sure Obama wasn’t standing for re-election then.
I think my election guess will stand.
Personally I’d prefer to see Romney win as I believe that would be better for the World economy.
The election is likely to be won by turnout, not electoral majority.
Why not make them one and the same?
In Australia turnout is over 95% , largely because it is considered a civic duty to at least attend the polling station or make arrangements for a postal vote. Non voters can be fined for not turning up. You don’t have actually vote for anyone though. Many do write some obscenity on the paper, and that seems fair enough to most of us.
Random late-night thoughts:
If Gore’s film making led to his Nobel Prize, I really think Edward D. Woods has been overlooked in this department. He should have won something for services to Angora sweaters.
So far the main result of Mann’s lawsuit is that a whole load of ‘Nobel prizes’ (including those of Mann and Trenberth) are disappearing from Wikipedia. I trust his colleagues are grateful to him for this. Perhaps some of these colleagues could have a quiet word with him, in a similar vein to the comments by fellow alarmists to Greg Laden after an famously ill-judged blog post, eg: James Annan: “You utter moron.”
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/12/15/computers-of-criminal-cyber-th/
Never underestimate the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’.
The IPCC ‘Nobel’ certificate should not be washed, as it may expose the words underneath: ‘Swimming Certificate, Issued to P. NOOBES, form 3A’.
If Mann’s lawyers are getting paid by the hour, then Nature will supply an answer to all of this many years before before a court gets around to it.
R. Gates—Then would you agree with the following statement which many have stated regarding climate science. ‘We are in a period of negative discovery’ –Coming to realize that there is an ever increasing amount of uncertainty due to an awareness of a greater amount of unknown.
The worst statement may be the one that began with the wholly unscientific—- There is irrefutable evidence—
DarrylB,
The assumption of all good science is that there is always much more to be learned and that whatever is held as “truth” or “known” is provisional in nature, with the best scientists looking for any evidence or data that might refute what they hold as provisionally true. It is by looking for the exceptions the science can progress.
Yes, absolutely!!. However, too many have actively tried to eliminate differing opinions let alone inviting any ‘exceptions’ and in doing so have generated much of the skepticism.
One of the worst outcomes will be that other environmental concerns will be overlooked in part because so much emphasis is being placed upon what may be a none issue and also because the public will have gained a distrust in scientists in general..
In the United States, one major problem IMO is water. Where it is.
Where it isn’t and what is in it.
As I understand it, a lawsuit can be withdrawn at any stage of the process, though I might be wrong about that. (Unlike most warmists from the illustrious M.M. right down to our very own beloved lolwot, I admit that I can be wrong about things.) Unfortunately, I do not believe that Mann will continue on with this exercise in self-destruction for very long. To actually see this thing through to what will almost certainly be a bitter end for the man, would be equivalent to dousing himself with gasoline then lighting a match.
Mann blathers:
“I see this with individual scientists, I know this is happening because I talk with colleagues – they are afraid to talk to the media, afraid to weigh in on the side of climate change being a problem, because they know they will immediately be …”
… asked to support their silliness with reference to data and scientific reasoning. And they know that those things are currently running strongly against their scary stories, and people know it. And that is why they will be reluctant to tell them.
It won’t stop the likes of Mann and Hansen, but the rats are prepared to abandon the SS Alarmist, even if the crew is heart set on riding that baby to the bottom, looking for the missing heat.
I doubt Mann will heed your advice, JC. He’s got quite the God complex.
JJ,
Priceless. I’ve never heard of any of Mann’s colleagues “afraid to talk to the media.” It’s as if some of them – Mann included – are part of the media.
Just for the hallibut I did a quick google search on “MIchael Mann NObel Prize.” It’s very bad news for Professor Mann. The fallout from his suicidal lawsuit has already begun. On the eve of hurricane Sandy here in the Boston area, it’s a welcome diversion.
Being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has become the mark of the devil. Mann would have been a good pick to share it with Gore and Pachauri in ’07 or with Obama in ’09.
I agree, Wagathon.
Self-identification through the Nobel Prize Committee and the Bilderberg group helped trace the roots of the 2009 Climategate scandal back sixty-four years, to the establishment of the United Nations on 24 Oct 1945 and the removal of constitutional limits on national governments.
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-1581
Thanks for “Climate of Doubt” video – I missed it originally. Looking at it now I found the repeated reference to the consensus distracting. Another thing they did was to try to stick the warming opponents with tainted funding by ExxonMobile and by Koch brothers and paint them as former tobacco company boosters. This follows the line of Naomi Oreskes and Conway’s hate-filled book “Merchants of Doubt.” That book itself is the first to introduce ad hominem attacks against dead people, in this case three dead climate scientists whose sin it was to have been supporters of the Star Wars project during the Cold War. If PBS talked about funding for opponents they should also have mentioned the NGO funding of warmist causes by WWF with its 237 million dollar budget and Greenpeace with its 360 million dollar bank account. Greenpeace has been so outrageus that they lost their tax-free status in Canada and in New Zealand. WWF is active all over the world. In Chile they blocked the Patagonian hydropower project. The present UK Climate Change Act is based upon a draft proposal by WWF, passed to a friendly MP when it was first considered. These are just examples of what is happening without the public knowing anything about it. PBS did mention Climategate but very briefly and insisted that all investigations have cleared them. How can you clear someone when they admittedly did all they could to keep opposing views out of scientific literature, even to the extent of getting rid of a journal editor and trying to get his university to fire him too? These are criminal acts that these “investigators” refused to investigate. And they have a chilling effect not only on what gets published but also on what defines climate science to the unsuspecting public.
As you might remember Wag, I confess to being a liberal democrat despite my climate beliefs. That said,I think Obama’s accepting that award was a colossal error in judgment. Just one of many these past 4 years,
GaryM said he checked Mann’s CV on the Penn State web site for the claim about the Nobel Prize — he must have missed this one http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/about/cv/cv_hyper.htm which has:
Honors and Awards
2013 Inducted as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society
2012 Awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union
2012 Inducted as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union
2008 Profiled in American Environmental Leaders From Colonial Times to the Present
2008 Website �RealClimate.org� (co-founded by M. Mann) chosen as one of top 15 �green� websites by Time Magazine (April 2008)
2007 Co-awarded (with other IPCC report authors) the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
2006 American Geophysical Union Editors� Citation for Excellence in Refereeing (for �Geophysical Research letters�)
2005 . . .
Note the 2013 honor.
I had looked at this version.
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/about/cv.php
Which now provides:
“2007 Contributed (with other IPCC report authors) to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.”
Which raises the question, how does one not a member of the Nobel committee contribute to the award of a Nobel Prize?
My father has a Navy Unit Commendation. He’s unnamed. They’re all unnamed. An officer accepted the commendation. They all get to wear the ribbon. He was one of the unit’s corpsmen. It was a seaplane scouting squadron.
Has anyone yet coined “Nobel FrankenPrize” ?
You have first dibs. I’m sure it will be popular with skeptical whackos.
I also voted for Obama in 2008. Less than a year into his presidency, in late Nov 2009, Climategate emails and documents revealed ~ 30 years of fraudulent global temperature data.
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/climategate-30-year-timeline/
Obama did not order his bureaucrats to investigate and stop spending public funds to deceive the public. He and his administration tried to justify misuse of public funds for propaganda under every Democratic and Republican administration over the previous thirty (30) years!
Misuse of science funds to support deceptive government propaganda has since been traced back sixty-four years (2009 – 1945 = 64 yrs) to the formation of the United Nations on 24 Oct 1945.
Today, only ten (10) days before the 2012 Presidential election on Tuesday, 6 Nov 2012, public debates have ended and I am not certain if . . .
A. The United Nations is the modern, one-world version of USSR’s tyrannical communism under Stalin before WWII, and AGW is part of this Nobel-prize winning scam, like
_ 1. The SSM model of H-filled stars
_ 2. Yukawa’s model of attractive neutron-neutron forces
_ 3. The belated discovery of oscillating solar neutrinos, . . .
_ 4. just after the force of neutron repulsion was reported in 2001 [1]
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-1581
Or if . . .
B. Either of the two major candidates seeking election as President of the United States will order and immediate end to the illegal use of public funds to deceive the public and uphold the US Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the US Bill of Rights.
That is the sad situation we face today, ten (10) days before the election.
With deep regrets,
– Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
[1] “The Sun’s Origin, Composition and Source of Energy, 32nd LSC (March 12-16 2001) http://www.omatumr.com/lpsc.prn.pdf
I do not consider that I am a vindictive person, but hafta say,
i hope that Michael Mann gits his come uppance :-(
Mark Steyn
http://tinyurl.com/9bq97fw
Pielke Jr
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ca/2012/10/what-is-wrong-with-embellishing-science.html?m=1
Translating Mann : he wants criticism of the endemic bias and corruption in government-funded climate science ended, for fear the IPCC’s pre-committed conclusion of alarmism will be weakened.
Why are scientists so keen to have a Nobel price that says absolutely nothing about their qualifications as scientists?
Brent and Tomcat, in short, ‘yes’ and ‘yes,’
Fergive me I’m in smilies’ mood in absentum
Fan of *more * discourse. :-) :-)
It is October 28, and in the valleys of Central Europe there is white stuff on the ground. The children, who have never seen it, wonder what that might be.
Dear children,
Come and play in the snow! O, we will make a snowman! …
See, dear children, two stones fer his eyes and a carrot
fer his mouth …
Hi Beth
We are getting our first big snow in the “flat-lands” here in Switz as we speak.
Break out your snowboard and your long underwear.
Max
Questions arising from an earlier thread, re: shortwave-in / longwave out
How much is the earth warmed by the sun’s IR, and how much by its visible light ?
Is is possible for shortwave (visible) to be absorbed by the earth, and be radiated out as longwave (IR) without in the process warming the earth ?
Montalbano, visible light is responsible for more of the warming than IR, and no that’s not really possible. When shortwave radiation gets absorbed, that causes warming, no matter how temporary.
Montalbano,
You need to very clearly define what you mean by “Earth”. Remember that a great deal of visible light falls onto the ocean where, if it is not reflected back to space, it is either is absorbed and thermalized to be re-emitted to the atmosphere later as LW radiation, or brought back to the atmosphere through convection, conduction, or absorbed by the biosphere in the ocean (i.e. algae) through photosynthesis. Visible light striking the land areas acts in a somewhat similar manner, where it can be thermalized when striking the soil and rocks and re-emitted later as LW radiation, and brought back to the atmosphere through conduction and convection or absorbed by the biosphere through photosynthesis. An interesting sidebar, a very small fraction of sunlight that is absorbed by the biosphere is remitted later back to space as visible light later on. The amount is of course quite tiny, but it still helps to remember that energy is being conserved. Where does this occur? Think of Fireflies and other photoluminescent living things. Also, here’s an excellent paper on the behavior of visible light that falls in the worlds ocean:
http://biology.duke.edu/johnsenlab/pdfs/pubs/oceanus.pdf
Reading the exchanges between to proponents and opponents of CAGW on this, and other similar, threads shows precisely what is meant by a “dialogue of the deaf”. Sorry, Judith, your brave attempt to provide a forum where the science behind both sides of the debate can be discussed calmly, is not working. Neither side is paying any attention to what the other is claiming. Both sides are merely repeating, ad nauseum, what they think is relevant, but there is no real discussion. I am probably as guilty as anyone else, but I find it diffiult to find any actual science in the case being made by the proponents of CAGW.
Speak for yourself Jim. I have learned a lot here and I see a scientific debate in progress.
Tom Harris’s “bogus consensus” piece is very good. For those who do not know Harris his website is http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/. Well worth tracking.
My one quibble is that he passes over the fundamental distinction between AGW and CAGW too quickly. He says correctly that polls showing merely that people believe that humans are having some effect on climate are meaningless. The key point is that such beliefs are taken to support CAGW, which is actually false. False is worse than meaningless.
David Wojick
Interesting video clip of Professor Bob Carter. He makes the distinction between AGW and CAGW very clearly, in his closing sentence
Seems pretty straightforward to me: AGW=yes; CAGW=no.
Max
AGW=yes; CAGW=no.
That’s what the IPCC say too.
Or rather I should say, one is very likely the other is possible but unlikely.
Recall my warning about Mark Steyn, see his latest article Mike’s Nobel Trick
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/331829/mikes-nobel-trick-mark-steyn#
A young climate guru named Mick
Gained his fame with a strange hockey stick
Wiping out years of history
Peer review was a mystery
‘Til they found that it all was a trick
Now he’s battling to still save his name
And he’s betting on Nobel Prize fame
But the folks up in Oslo
Say, “Nobel Prize? Oh, no!”
And his argument looks pretty lame.
Dr. Curry,
Re-reading “Dark Sun”, Richard Rhodes history of the hydrogen bomb, has strong lessons for the AGW conflict. Rhodes demonstrates that much of the Cold War nuclear arms race, debilitating, corrosive, and expensive was driven by scientists-turned-advocates. They enabled politicians to spend the equivalent of $4 trillion on nuclear arms in the US alone. The cold war hawks were bewitched by their models and fears and took the most extreme views and sold a solution to the fear (at a very high price and personal benefit) to the nation. The parallels are not perfect but they are disturbing. Mann is very much an Edward Teller figure in this.
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684824140/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351426990&sr=1-1&keywords=dark+sun+richard+rhodes
lurker
I think the Teller – Mann comparison is interesting initially, but in intellect, credentials, productivity and contribution to science you just can not put the two side by side. Teller was among the elite 20th century physicists. Related–it is funny that you pull Teller out as a parallel found in nuclear weapons history and I have sometimes thought that the internal debate on possibly igniting the atmosphere as a result of detonation has some parallel in the climate debate. Regards.
I imagine that was a viral thought and may have catalyzed the fear of our poisoning our atmosphere that is a HallmarkTM of the Catastrophic end of the belief spectrum about AGW. I don’t think we can put out enough of this plant food to successfully buttress us against the next glacial, but it’s worth putting up the sand castles. Sorry, biologists, littoralists, and literalists.
=========================
kim
“that was a viral thought and may have catalyzed the fear of our poisoning our atmosphere that is a HallmarkTM of the Catastrophic end of the belief spectrum about AGW.”
Nah, I don’t care one way or another about that stuff. My interest here is as simple as the idea that in both situations we have people wrestling with whether to do or not to do something that might have unintended global consequences. One is history and the other is current ‘debate’. Sometimes insight is gained by looking at analogues, but that doesn’t mean that an analogue is the same thing as the object/subject of interest.
“I don’t think we can put out enough of this plant food to successfully buttress us against the next glacial, but it’s worth putting up the sand castles. Sorry, biologists, littoralists, and literalists.”
There is a lot of fertilizer flying around.
BTW, don’t just imagine. Go read Rhodes–his books are interesting. And drop the inflated rhetoric. I fear that if you persist in using it you may burst one day.
Gee, you’re no fun. Nice point about the analogues, making the specific general.
Well, how do you you shape up our store of fossil fuel as a possible geo-engineering effort against the next glacial? It’s enough to make me wish the warming effect of CO2 were stronger.
=============
kim
Yeah, I probably am not much fun–I have become too weary of controversy and argument so I just like to poke and prod and look at the texture of things. Sorry that.
Your question is very interesting–good poking for texture material–and leads me down the primrose path. I have not looked at that question before now. If I was to take it on, the sorts of things I would initially research might be:
As far as “fossil fuel as a possible geo-engineering effort against the next glacial”… Its seems we already have an ongoing experiment, but it is not a controlled experiment in the sense experimental design: Inputs are not actively controlled in the experiment but are driven ‘external’ fuzzy factors like economy and output measures are ad hoc and may or may not be effective measures What if any global co2 and temperature determinations are appropriate? is there a significant causal relationship between co2 and the global temperature(s) and if so what is the direction of the causality? what are the detailed mechanisms involved? and so on…
That is, we are burning fossil fuels for energy and making observations along the way–geoengineering the climate is not an objective in the effort. But I guess we could change the way we do things.
“It’s enough to make me wish the warming effect of CO2 were stronger.” Given the time span of glacial events is there even enough energy content in the fossil fuels to make dent? We all have seen comments to the effect that we have a hundred to a few hundred years of coal in the US–that isn’t a dent when contrasted with the length of time ice ages hang around. Then there is the question of best use of a resource. Currently something on the order of 10-20% of petroleum is applied as feedstock to non-fuel uses and one wonders about increasing value there. Some coal of course is also used as feedstock, e.g., coke production, and I suspect its value in the regard will only increase. I imagine some material and energy flowsheets touching on this are kicking around.
BTW I know I should read!!! From my comment:
“BTW, don’t just imagine. Go read Rhodes–his books are interesting.”
I fear I shall burst from hypocrisy and now nurse a self-inflicted wound.
Was that more fun? ;o) Regards.
Forgot to include: I would look at the environmental costs, e.g., human health and ecological impacts of the different uses of the coal, petroleum, etc. Probably missed some other big picture stuff.
Intriguing comparison, mwgrant.
During WWII, while opposing forces raced to detonate the first atomic bomb, both sides knew the potential danger to mankind and to all forms of life on Earth.
Francis William Aston first pointed out the possibility of igniting Earth’s atmosphere with a nuclear explosion in his Nobel Prize lecture on 12 Dec 1922.
“Should the research worker of the future discover some means of releasing this energy in a form which could be employed, the human race will have at its command powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction; but the remote possibility must always be considered that the energy once liberated will be completely uncontrollable and by its intense violence detonate all neighbouring substances. In this event the whole of the hydrogen on the earth might be transformed at once and the success of the experiment published at large to the universe as a new star”.
See autobiography of Paul Kazuo Kuroda, My Early Days at the Imperial University of Tokyo, pp 7-8
http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2005/PKKAutobiography.pdf
In 1922, Nobel prizes were awarded for advancing knowledge, instead of advancing the political agenda of world leaders.
Hi omanuel
Thanks for the additional early material. I was aware of the debate within the Manhattan Project from Rhodes and a couple of books on Oppenheimer, but not aware of the Ashton remarks–curiously made before the discovery of the neutron and nuclear fission, and before the development of ‘modern’ quantum mechanics (and it application to nuclear structure.) This illustrates part of the beauty of the work of scientists from then–they were very creative working in their science, abstracting core concepts and re-applying to new endeavors. They were interdisciplinary before that idea was delineated. Over time we tend to dismiss the work of those that came before us–smug in our ‘modern’ knowledge.
“In 1922, Nobel prizes were awarded for advancing knowledge, instead of advancing the political agenda of world leaders.”
Even a little wider the just the Nobel Prize, I look at the work of those in Asimov’s thirty years and some like Boltzmann and just shake my head at the current state of affairs.
Hi Max,
I’m comin’ over, lol!
Frankenstorm …natural disaster.
Then there’s the other kind. This song, so beautifully played
and poignantly filmed, symbolizes the suffering of millions.
Historical Frankenstorm. Enough ter make yer weep.
Calling Sandy a “Frankenstorm” is inflammatory bs. Sandy is not that unusual. It is a late season marginal hurricane that may make landfall.
The historical illiteracy and fear mongering that the hypesters seem to rely on in dealing with weather events is dangerous and childish. Anyone calling this “God’s last warning” either does not know history or is a cynical liar.
And has yet to read their Bible.
Radar…
http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=DOX&product=NTP&overlay=11101111&loop=yes
storm total to date.
“Calling Sandy a “Frankenstorm” is inflammatory bs.
Hype is definitely a part of modern life and ‘Frankenstorm’ is a bit much. From the perspective of the media hype garners market share. From the perspective of those charged with public safely, however, there is always the problem of engaging the public when there is a credible risk. Communication of risk is just a tough nut to crack. Are there maybe a few lessons in New Orleans? Of course if one irrationally aspires to a society where science-related matters would be discussed with the public in a rational manner, hype could eventually prove to be a significant impediment.
“Sandy is not that unusual.” Well the storm hasn’t been here yet, has it? And the forecasters continue to describe it as more than “a late season marginal hurricane that may make landfall.” [It is important to recognize that they have been presenting different scenarios and associated probabilities.]
When the derecho swept through the mid-Atlantic states this past July the damage that it caused–particularly east of the mountains–was a big surprise. The stability of that tight relatively little line of storms and the speed at which it traveled across almost half of a continent were incredible. Also much of the area’s infrastructure was (and remains) vulnerable. Many people here in metro DC appear to be acting on the information. If ‘Sandy’ is a fizzle maybe that will rightfully or wrongfully damage credibility of the forecasters or maybe it will provide a teaching moment to a large audience on the nature of risk. (We could hope.) We will know more in a day or two. But for now Sandy still has the potential to be something special.
Sandy is a unique storm with an unusual confluence of meteorological circumstances, I expect that it will break several records.
Yes, I am not a meteorologist but I can recogniZe a train coming down the track.
I suspect the fall in records will occur–I saw a projected Tuesday AM (I believe) graphic this morning showing at that one time the areas still having significant winds. The area covered essentially went from south Florida to near the Mississippi Valley up into Canada and all the way to the Atlantic. Still, when commenting I try to take a guarded approach consistent with a risk-based philosophy. Risk communication is an important topic for me and I really like the way risk has been handled overall by the Sandy forecasters on TV–graphics, probabilities expressed in % chance and/or odds, and using very clear language. They’ve learned their lessons over the years.
I lived 20 years in Buffalo before moving here to metro DC six years ago and they have learned their lessons well on communicating the special risks that their winters bring–and coping with it. The game in DC seems to have visibly improved since I’ve been here. Hold your breath on NYC.
Buckling up.
curryja | October 28, 2012 at 3:00 pm |
Sandy is a unique storm, I expect that it will break several records.
As usual the weather prognosis is not nearly as bad as the storm warnings (I assume the WX-men have taken into consideration that it should make a curve to the left, soon). A lot of rain, winds not so bad, soon to be just a tropical storm. But I would not rely on that, either.
Big storm surge and waves, prolonged wind and rain
This morning the forecast for Atlantic City has winds of less than 40 MPH for tonight and tomorrow, no mention of tornados. The satellite picture shows decreasing definition, the turn left not yet made. It is a big hurricane, but “only” cat 1. So there will be a lot of damage to things due to waves and inundation, but people should be able to care for themselves.
The song of the British soldiers in the first world war was memorable also, and the incomparable Mark Steyn (yes, him) wrote an article about it:
Google “Roses Of Picardy”.
My preferred version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WIQAtyM-60
(Sidney Bechet)
“Perhaps the most amazing case of rediscovery has to do with Sidney Bechet, the New Orleans Negro whose talent on reeds had become something of a legend, due to the limited number of records on which he played……..Nevertheless, Bechet was making a modest living in Harlem not as an expert on reeds but as a tailor!
One day a friend called at his flat. A little black and white kitten that knew the taste of creole gumbo was doing a flying trapeze act on the portieres. Bechet seemed worried. ‘I’ve got to find a home for this kitten,’ he said. ‘I’m going on the road with Noble Sissle.’ That was something of a surprise, the visitor observed, since not long ago the primary concern seemed to be the last installment on a soprano saxophone. What had happened? ‘I used to work with Noble,’ Bechet said, ‘and this boy who owned the sax was in the band; I wrote Noble about it and he said he had been wanting to get in touch with me.’ ”
from ‘Some Like It Hot’, by Charles Edward Smith, Esquire Magazine April, 1936.
=============
So, right on the first stroke, Mann is shown to have been a liar about his being awarded a Nobel Prize and is busy erasing his lies. And we have a bunch of syophants here like R.Gates, Jim D etc. supporting this liar. Wonder what stories and justifications they’ll come out for this airburshing now.
And Mann must be getting ready to sue Briffa now for authoring a new paper with the infamous Tornetrasek three ring chronology now showing a MWP. The same chronology that did not show a MWP in MBH 98, MNH 99, Mann and Jones 03 and many other papers.
This is that new paper
http://hol.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/10/26/0959683612460791.abstract
That MWP is sure a pesky little rascal to keep up with.
From the abstract:
The new MXD and TRW chronologies now present a largely consistent picture of long-timescale changes in past summer temperature in this region over their full length, indicating similar levels of summer warmth in the medieval period (MWP, c. CE 900–1100) and the latter half of the 20th century.
Versus 2007 work:
The late-twentieth century is not exceptionally warm in
the new Tornetra¨sk record: On decadal-to-century timescales,
periods around AD 750, 1000, 1400, and 1750 were
all equally warm, or warmer. The warmest summers in this
new reconstruction occur in a 200-year period centred on
AD 1000. A ‘‘Medieval Warm Period’’ is supported by other
paleoclimate evidence from northern Fennoscandia,
although the new tree-ring evidence from Tornetra¨sk suggests
that this period was much warmer than previously
recognised.
In the Cold War, many sincere cold warrior hawks accepted lies and deception as their duty to the larger cause of saving the world. Those who doubted the risks of the cold war and questioned the strategies were marginalized and even had careers destroyed. AGW is the Cold War of our era, and the AGW promoters are the cold warrior hawks.
How much of the Cold War did you experience? Is this first hand knowledge, book knowledge, movie knowledge. Not yanking your chain, but just curious where that perspective took root.
Mann is getting his ass kicked by Steyn and the trial hasn’t even started yet!
The fraudulent Nobel Laureate:
http://www.steynonline.com/526…..l-laureate
Ah, the irony of it all. The bully becomes the bullied.
Poor transmission so music quality is lost. The song was popular on both sides in the war and transcended war messages of the political leaders.
Today, nine days before we elect the next President of the USA
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-1581
I awaken to news reports of a major earthquake off the west coast of North America, from a private blogger (E.M.Smith),
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/10/28/quake-british-columbia-7-7/
While the news media is filled with politically-driven reports of AGW-induced storms sweeping the Northeastern parts of our country:
http://news.yahoo.com/superstorm-could-impact-60-million-people-us-coastal-064340262.html
What a sad, sad turn of events for our society and its once proud, publicly-financed scientific community
With deep regrets,
– Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Pingback: Mark Steryn on little mann | The Wellington Street Post
Beth,
That video was beautifully chosen. As always, impeccable taste.
Below is press release for 2007 Nobel Peace Prize award to Al Gore and IPCC:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/press.html
The release specifically mentions Al Gore plus the ”Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries [who] have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming”.
Michael Mann was one of the “thousands of scientists and officials” indirectly cited in the release, but I don’t see his name mentioned specifically.
Max
Show some respect here, please, for the mann who clearly did win
( Nobel Prize/2 ) / manythousands
Re quote from from Steve Mosher above:
“3. Primative analytical tools. Early Piltdown had no advantage of dating tools. In Mann’s early work he was effectively inventing and using methods without doing tests on synthetic data.”
Primitive analytical tool. I think that one stands up on its own.
:)
Thank you, pokerguy. When i first saw the word “Frankenstorm’
it made me think of WW11. We have often watched the ‘World
at War’ BBC Laurence Olivier narrated series, with its the black
and white grainy film footage and sad opening music. It’s the most powerful documentation of human tragedy i think I’ve seen.
They also had color film. Much of the Pacific War was filmed in color. The Army always had first dibs: the USMC got the 2nds; in this case, color film. When they made the documentaries for theaters, they usually converted it to black and white.
Beth, I’ve not seen that series. I suppose it’s hard to portray massive, grand scale human suffering in an artistic sense, because the topic is so inherently powerful on its own… it hardly needs an assist. Probably best for the artist/director/narrator/painter/poet/novelist to in some way stand aside and let the story tell itself. I’ll most definitely see if I can hunt that series up. Just want you to know how much I enjoy your highly literate contributions, along with your humor. Adds much to the proceedings. Don’t know what we’d do without you, and Kim too. Enjoy you both very much.
Salud 2U2!
=======
Mark Steyn’s latest:
http://www.steynonline.com/5264/the-fraudulent-nobel-laureate
Pielke Jr has much to say about this:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/10/what-is-wrong-with-embellishing-science.html?m=1
Hi judith
I’d not really read much of Mark Steyn before. He’s quite good isn’t he?
I noted this;
“Mann’s embellishment has placed him in a situation where his claims are being countered by the Nobel organization itself. Mann’s claim, rather than boosting his credibility actually risks having the opposite effect, a situation that was entirely avoidable and one which Mann brought upon himself by making the embellishment in the first place. The embellishment is only an issue because Mann has invoked it as a source of authority is a legal dispute. It would seem common sense that having such an embellishment within a complaint predicated on alleged misrepresentations may not sit well with a judge or jury.”
Dr Mann wrote a number of interesting papers-which in parts were quite good- but ’embellished’ the importance and accuracy of his work. Someone somewhere should have asked him 15 years ago how tree rings could so accurately depict a historic global temperature when tree rings are much affected by their micro climate and only grow for a few months of the year, thereby missing out any signal for the majority of the record.
Looking at a tree ring analysis I found in the archves of a Cathedral it was clear that at the time (1998) they considered tree rings as good for approximately recording the date of timbers-such as those used in buildings. They made no other claim
At some point the science became over inflated. I dont know whether Dr Mann was responsible for this or just hitched a ride on its already expanding credibility.
tonyb
I know the answer and it has to do with the chicken egged on to cross the road to get the Chinese newspaper.
===================
Oops, forgot ‘Do you get it?’ Nothing like tripping in the middle of a busy joke.
===========
tony, like I said, Steyn is a formidable opponent, ‘rapier wit’ is a good description
Pingback: The Blackboard » Mike’s Nobel Embellishments.
Earlier on this thread, The Progressive Warmist (aka R. Gates) engaged in some wishful thinking that former hurricane Sandy would affect the November 6 election. It turns out he was just regurgitating the party line (surprise surprise).
“Hurricane Sandy Could Be Obama’s October Surprise”
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/10/26/Hurricane-Sandy-Could-Be-Obamas-October-Surprise.aspx#page1
“’Any time a president is put in such a difficult situation, you have a real chance to show presidential leadership,’ said Jim Manley, a Washington political strategist and former press secretary to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. ‘It’s always difficult to discuss these kinds of natural disasters, but the fact is – depending on what happens – this has a chance to show the president once again in command, and showing leadership as the country tries to deal with the impact of the storm.’
John Hudak, a presidential and governance scholar with Brookings Institution agrees: ‘If there is a serious disaster in the next few days anywhere on the Eastern seaboard, no one talks about Romney then. Romney is no part of any story, except, of course, I’m sure he’ll hold a press conference to speak on the tragedy, as anyone would do as the challenger. But all eyes are on the president. It’s something money can’t buy.’”
Besides devastating millions of people to provide photo ops for Obama, the writer if this disgusting article also sees reason to hope the storm will keep people from getting to the polls to vote on election day, favoring Obama.
“The storm will be hitting in the last full week before the Nov. 6 election, and early voting is already underway in many states, notably Ohio and in-person balloting in Florida, where Democrats hope to gain a decisive lead before Election Day. Political scientists have long studied the effects of inclement weather on voter turnout and – far from surprising – found that people would rather stay home than brave bad weather to vote.”
Death and destruction on a massive scale, the kind of political opportunity that “money just can’t buy.”
Using predictions of imagined future catastrophes to push your political agenda is bad enough. But hoping for actual devastation for some perceived political advantage is abominable.
Disgusting. Just simply disgusting.
Heh, someone’s gonna tell him to get the Hell out of the way of relief efforts.
==================
Gary M.:
Weather changes history…always has and always will, especially when weather disrupts human activity on a large scale.
BTW Gary, I never used “wishful thinking” in terms of this storm, so please be accurate about what I say and don’t state things that can be twisted to your own high political viewpoint. I merely opened the point up for discussion. Either candidate might benefit from this storm, and with the race overall very close anyway, whatever that assistance is brought, could be the difference that changes history.
Gary M said:
” But hoping for actual devastation for some perceived political advantage is abominable.”
_____
Yes it would be if someone had done it, but as no one seems to have other than you bringing it up, the source of the abominable thought seems to be your own mind.
At this point in time in Western psycho-social development humans interact with their global warming toy like apes play with a physical object: finger and smell it, beat it on the ground, on the head, gnaw at and suck it, make up stories about it and quickly set it aside if something important happens.
Michael Mann vs. Mark Steyn…Makes me think of a really one sided UFC ground and pound.
Michael Mann would not have a chance peddling AGW junk science in court, if . . . .
The judicial branch of government retained its integrity, following the agreement to abandon constitutional limits on governments and unite nations into the UN on 24 Oct 1945.
That is why the court’s decision on this case will be informative.
– Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
So many global warmings… Spot the ‘global warming’:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/melvin_etal_fig5.jpg
Just as a side note, it was just this “Mannian” type stuff writ large….the jerky behavior by many in the inner circle, the arrogance, the rage, all as encapsulated by climate-gate,that turned a well-behaved, goody two shoes, swallow the party line liberal democrat like me, into a full on climate skeptic. I’m certainly not alone. This stuff matters, even if this particular incident had no legal significance. Mann is a prevaricator. How can you trust him or his fellow liars on anything they sayn?
That pathetic band of half insane prima donnas driving policy
decisions for the whole world with the assistance of the IPCC? How frightening. How very, very wrong. And yet if they had their way…
They will not have their way, pokerguy, any more than others who have opposed the force that controls the world throughout recorded history.
The Force does not compromise with would be tyrants:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-1581
“Truth is victorious, never untruth.”
Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.6; Qur’an 17.85, etc., etc.
+10
So let me get this straight:
Mann files a legal claim against Stein claiming that he’s suffered from ‘false and defamatory’ statements. The content of which contains an embellishment of Nobel proportions that has made Mann a global laughingstock?
Hilarious. Talk about an own-goal.
Since Mikes Nobel trick Laureate claims are disappearing fast all over the place. Too funny.
Slander, slander, everywhere;
Why this octup ’round my neck?
=============
There’s gotta be a line in there somewhere about ‘burning Gergis dreck’.
===============
Gore/IPCC, the EU – it’s the new Hockey Stick – a distinct uptick in the Nobel ‘Peace’ prize being awarded for a triumph of Political Correctness over actual correctness. The Nobel PC Prize.
And poor Mikey is still languishing on the shaft, even though even his revolutionary methods identify himself as a Principal Component blade-type.
In the great progressive tradition of trying to turn children against their parents for political advantage (practiced with relish by the former leaders of the Soviet Union and East Germany), we get the latest expression of climateporn from our friends on the “socially conscious” left.
Zombified children of the future sing to their parents – “We blame you.”
This is a disgusting little bit of propaganda. It is reminescent of the choirs of children singing praises to great leaders like Mao, Stalin, the N. Korean dynasty, and others that I am sure will come to mind. As well as this stuff being a clear warning to the parents that their children are not theirs, but the great leader’s. The dysfunction and bad faith that would put out this sort of histrionic trash is awe inspiring. That this is not the first attempt by this particular candidate to steal our children for his political goals is just another reason to distrust him completely.
Let me bring this out of the current set of replies, as I feel it is of significant import.
Steven Mosher | October 28, 2012 at 2:46 pm |
you write “The cooling starts at the surface, but in the end there is one way and one way only that energy is returned to space: radiation”
This is the statement that I find to be very misleading. It is, of course, absolutely true. However, it misses out one very important step. Between the surface, and where the energy is radiated into space, the energy must make it’s way through the atmosphere, which is where, of course, the CO2 is impeding it’s passage. As you so rightly observe “This has been referred to as “warming” . GHGs dont warm the atmospshere or the Oceans. They slow the rate of cooling.” It is estimated that for a doubling of CO2, the extra forcing imposed on the atrmosphere is around 3.7 Wm-2; this figure is also not in dispute.
What I feel is in dispute, is how this extra forcing is countered by the atmopshere. The assumption for the so-called Planck method of estimating no-feedback climate sensitivity is that the forcing is only mitigated by radiation effects; “the structure of the atmopshere does not change”, or the lapse rate does not change. This, I am sure, is simply not true. The lapse rate will change, and provides an alternate way in which the 3.7 Wm-2 is dissipated. So to claim that the no-feedback climate sensitivity is 1.2 C for a doubling of CO2 is simply wrong. It is a lower figure, but how much lower, no-one seems to have estimated. To do the estimation, we need to know in detail, how the effects of conduction, convection and the latent heat of water work to overcome the 3.7 Wm-2. I would dearly like to know how much the 1.2C no-feedback climate sensitivity is affected by a change in lapse rate.
Jim – Many of your questions are answered in David Randall’s excellent book “Atmosphere, Climate and Clouds” (Princeton U Press). See particularly chapters 5 and 6.
Thanks, Pat. I will try and find it.
The lapse rate is defined by convection that includes latent heat release. The dry and moist adiabatic lapse rates can be assumed to be unaffected by the CO2 effect, but they define the difference between the tropopause temperature and surface temperature. so this is how the forcing affects the whole tropopause, which is the layer affected by convection.
That last one should have said “troposphere”.
JImD, you write “The dry and moist adiabatic lapse rates can be assumed to be unaffected by the CO2 effect”
One simple word, Why? I see no reason for making this assumption. As Steven has written, the greenhouse effect is caused by CO2 inhibiting the rate at which energy is transferred from the surface of the earth to where it is radiated into space. Some of this energy of transferred by raditaion effects; some by lapse rate effects. So when the forcing caused by increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmopshere has to be mitigated, both effects must be considered.
Convection is a fast process. It just defines its own mixing profile (these adiabats). The primary effect of CO2 is its slow one on the surface temperature, and convection responds to that and defines the lapse rate by itself.
Jim its pretty simple.
Radiation escapes to space at an altitude known as the Effective radiating level. The concentration of GHGs above this level is such that the nergy escapes to space.
When you add GHGs to the atmosphere, this altitude increases. It increases until the concentration of GHGs above it is such that the radiation escapes.
because temperature drops with altitude the result is predictable. Raise GHGs, you raise the ERL. raise the ERL to a higher altitude and the earth radiates from a colder higher place.
The rate of energy loss from this colder higher level means that the loss rate is reduced. the entire system cools less rapidly that it would otherwise. that is also called warming.
Want to know that the warming is due to GHGs? look at the stratosphere.
Many thanks.
Steven Mosher :
Radiation escapes to space at an altitude known as the Effective radiating level. The concentration of GHGs above this level is such that the nergy escapes to space.
When you add GHGs to the atmosphere, this altitude increases.
Why – because the overall volume of the atmosphere is thereby increased, and so the necessary sparseness of greenhouse gasses necessary for radiation to escape, now occurs at a greater altitude ?
If the answer is Yes, would this not apply too, to a lesser extent, to adding non-GHGs of a similar volume to the atmosphere ?
With more GHG’s the atmosphere becomes more opaque. By that radiation from lower altitudes (including the surface) is more and more often absorbed in upper layers and less and less often escapes to outer space.
While radiation from low levels escapes less and less the radiation from upper levels increases. The increase from upper levels does, however, not fully compensate the reduction in radiation that escapes from lower levels, because the temperature decreases with altitude and because the overall intensity of emission is reduced by the lower temperature.
When we have less radiation from lower levels and more from the upper levels the (effective) average altitude of escaping radiation goes up. This is the effect Steven Mosher wrote about.
Taking on board this concept of an Effective Radiation Level, above which IR from CO2 can escape to space, and below which it cannot, is there a matching ‘Effective Heating Level’ below which (back) radiation can heat the earth, and above which it cannot ?
( And does this have any bearing on whether it is back-radiation that warms the earth (land and seas), or cooling conduction/convection to an atmosphere that is itself cooling more slowly due to the presence of additional CO2 ? )
The situation is more complex at surface as radiation is only one of several mechanisms for energy transfer while radiation is the only way energy can leave the Earth (excluding some really weak mechanisms that don’t have noticeable effect on the energy balance).
It is true at surface that back radiation comes from shorter distance (i.e. lower altitudes) when added GHG’s make the atmosphere more opaque, but what changes in radiative energy transfer is partially compensated by changes in convection and evaporation.
The Huffington Post just found a clip from the GOP debate where Romney wanted FEMA to be replaced by individual state organizations, or “even better” the private sector. I think this would be an effective way to multiply bureaucracy, while also allowing profit-making contractors in on the government money.
How could anyone think that individual states could perform as well or better than a large federal bureaucracy. Thats just silly. Central planning, that’s ticket. All these car companies, phone companies, computer companies. What a waste of multiple bureaucracies. And profits, imagine how efficient those companies could be if we could eliminate profit, just like the government. How fricken beautiful. .
Yes, why use taxpayer money for one central bureaucracy when you can duplicate FEMA efforts in each state? Why pay government wages when you can bid it out and pay a middle man and contractor twice as much? Efficiency at its best. Some things are best left to government. Not everything, but some things.
Efficiency and government should never be used in the same sentence. If you really believe that government will do anything more efficiently and at a lower cost then whats the point of having a private sector. I know “some things”. I would submit that history does not bear this out. You don’t think there are any “middle men ” in government projects? From my experience there are more. And as to government wages vs private sector do you know what ” prevailing wage” is.. And have you looked at government pensions vs private. This is built into the costs too. I could go on and on listing additional restrictions and requirements and mountains of duplicative paperwork.
Yes government is necessary but in my opinion it is never more efficient. The motivation is not there. And as the the government endeavor becomes more centralized it actually loses efficiency.
The Republicans tried to downsize FEMA once before, but that ended with Katrina. National scale agencies have the funding to deal with these types of emergencies. Imagine New Jersey using its own state taxes to fund its little in-state “NJEMA”, likewise NYEMA, etc. Would the states share money with each other? Who decides how much they share? I don’t think Romney thought it through, and was just ideologuing off the top of his head. Anyway, that was said in the GOP debates, so you should search for his current view (if any) before defending it.
I’ve seen the video of Romney’s statement at the debate that has caused the left to go apoplectic. My take is that he was speaking of a general philosophy of minimizing federal involvement. Of course I’m biased to give him the benefit of that interpretation. Others interpret his remarks as a desire to starve the poor and take away womens rights. I guess we see and hear what we want to see and hear.
It is not clear how private enterprise replaces FEMA. Do individuals pay them protection money for their service, or is it just the states?
As is typical, it is Obama who is going to downsize FEMA when his sequestration law kicks in, in less than 90 days. Obama is also the President who refused to respond to Nashville’s massive floods in 2010, and the Texas wildfires and forest fires in 2011 until months had passed.
Obama has said sequestration won’t happen, so it will take some determination by the Republicans to make it come to pass. I think they will fail, don’t you.
Again, I don’t interpret his comments the way you do. Also I have news for you. Private enterprise is and will be very involved in all aspects of disaster relief. We, or should I say I am talking about structures of the bureaucracy. More local control less centralized. Not zero,less. I didn’t hear him say he wanted to eliminate Fema. That’s my take on Romney’s remarks. Some,including you apparently have heard something else.Or you think more centralized control is needed. Either way I’m sure we’ll never agree.
One last thing Jim. Do you suppose if Fema didn’t exist we would just sit and ignore the victims of this or any other disaster? Do you think no one would step up to coordinate efforts? Now I’m not suggesting this, there is no private Coast Gaurd or police , fire and rescue, but a void usually gets filled. The problem with big government. It can always take credit regardless of how screwed up things are and if things are screwed up we just need a little bigger government
I don’t think emergency management falls into the class of things where profit-making is moral. People should not be able to make profits from taxpayer money in order to provide emergency management. It should be just paid government jobs, like police, firemen, teachers, military, and hopefully healthcare that serve everyone equally for free. This is how it is in advanced countries. Call it a safety net.
As I said, we see and hear things differently. You see profit as a cost we can eliminate. Or profit as a pollutant reducing the nobleness of a project. I see profit as a tool to increase efficiency.
Only Blue Jays squawk loudly about the time value of money.
=========
Each state already has an emergency response function infrastructure in place. FEMA ideally would be very small, offering speciallized management and working resources, and very little overhead.
chucker, sometime profit conflicts with the mission. Witness health insurance companies looking for ways to deny coverage to maximize their profitability. You can imagine cost-savings in emergency response would follow similar reasoning.
The way to decide between government and citizens doing a job like this, is to put the job out to open tender, with no special privileges for government.
The problem is, since government puts out the tender, there is always a bias ifo government, so we pay government twice as much as a contractors would charge. Or, government gives the tender to companies owned by friends of politicians. Just as bad.
It should be obvious that there are advantages and disadvantages to both centralization and decentralization. It should be obvious that there are advantages and disadvantages to private and public sector management. The point is to carefully evaluate specific entities and to carefully assess what is most appropriate, and where.
As one example, we can talk about the problems with public schools ’till the cows come home, but history has shown us that privatizing education – for all the problems in our public education system and the the potential advantages privatization might bring – has not proven to be any more effective at educating our students than traditional public schools – nor have they proven to be any more cost-effective.
Fetishizing the private sector is no more useful than government worship – and despite the claims otherwise so often seen in the blogosphere, I’d say that the first is more common than the second.
That is simply laughable Joshua. Only a blinkered state-worshipper could say that public schools are better or cheaper than private ones. If it was true, state schools would be able to compete on a level playing ground – using a voucher system if you like – instead of relying as now on privileged access to tax funds.
Tomcat –
You might start by looking more closely at what I actually said instead of your fantasies about what I said. I can’t argue against your straw man.
Then you might look at the research that compares charter schools (that rely on tax funds) to traditional public schools.
Once you’ve done those two things get back to me. We’ll talk.
Joshua
OK, so you agree you can’t argue for the idea that state schools are cheaper / better than private ones.
Next you need to explain why state schools cannot compete with private ones on a level playing field, and instead get special treatment from the state to keep them going. Then we’ll talk.
Tomcat –
In terms of educational outcomes, the research shows that charter schools (for profit of otherwise) perform no better than traditional public schools – on average. There are examples where large-scale attempts to turn over public education to for-profit entities have failed rather miserably. When demographic of students and other factors are controlled, private schools do not perform better on average than public schools.
I’m having trouble figuring out what your point was. I don’t know what you mean by “special treatment” or “can’t compete.” State funded schools educate many students that flat-out wouldn’t be admitted to private schools, or who would not be admitted for the amount of money provided to educate them in public schools.
Yes despite all this (no-doubt government-funded) ‘research’, government schools can only compete from their privileged position of getting government handouts etc, they cannot go head to head in equal competition in an open marketplace.
Joshua
“It should be obvious that there are advantages and disadvantages to both centralization and decentralization. It should be obvious that there are advantages and disadvantages to private and public sector management. The point is to carefully evaluate specific entities and to carefully assess what is most appropriate, and where.”
As you know I never said that there are no advantages to centralization. And I completely agree with your statement here, the part on education, not so much. We need to evaluate all levels of government and decide how much the fed needs to control. I would say in most cases less would be better. Fema is a great example. The notion that the president, for example, would be sitting in some situation room coordinating rescue and relief efforts is laughable. Locals know what is happening and what is needed. Governors and mayors know there areas and the local capabilities. The president can disburse the funds, he’s good at that.
Also as you know I never said that the private sector could or should completely handle these situations. What I said was less federal control, more local…. federal assistance when asked. Private sector where possible.
Finally back to schools. Charter schools are not private and unless you torture the statistics Manian style private schools do better for less. I will never understand how anyone could doubt that competition would make schools better.
chucker –
Evidence, please – controlled for student demographics such as SES and % of special needs, level of services provided, etc. I have looked at (at least some) data and certainly not seen anything that supports the contention that you state as unambiguous. Even if you do provide such data of the sort I haven’t seen, then you have to consider the private vs. public question in the full context. If we’re trying to improve education, we have to consider return on investment. How would you compare the advantages you see in privatization versus a 10-1 or 20-1 return on public investment in early childhood education. My point is that in addition to not being supported by data, the advocacy of privatization of public schools is a red herring.
This suggest bias on your part – argument from incredulity; because you can’t conceive of a differing viewpoint, therefore no valid differing viewpoint can exist. Unless you have evidence to support your contention, it seems that you are starting with an assumption and reverse engineering your argument in support.
And “competition” can mean a variety of things besides increased privatization. The data I’ve seen show that charter schools on the whole do no better than traditional schools.
While individual charters have certainly had success, there are downsides associated with increasing charter schools. If you haven’t done so already, please read what Diane Ravitch (a strong proponent of the movement originally) has to say on the subject as a starting point. Get back to me and we’ll talk.
And chucker –
Please reconcile this statement:
With this statement:
They seem to be contradictory. Independent of the problem with the lack of specificity that accompanies “in most cases,” never cannot be consistent with any cases.
Joshua
What I’m discussing here is an overall philosophy . Yes not many if any specifics. Guilty. With all I’ve written on this thread I’m sure I’ve made some contradictory statements. Probably more of a semantical issue. Not precise enough in my language. Again guilty. By “efficiency” I meant cost and quality. There are cases that those issues are not the top priority. You may find a situation where government performs the task more efficiently but I would be surprised. Not if we compare apples to apples, no subsidies etc.
As to the schools. Yes I’m biased, largely due to my own experiences ( long story). I’ve read a lot of studies too . Both ways. I’m not going to get into this war with you. It’s to much work. So I guess you can claim victory on all counts
Certainly fits the pattern : government-funded climate research argues for more government action, government-funded education research says government schools are good.
What is needed is open competition in the market for schools, with no legal privileges or state favors for any of them. You can have all the ‘research’ you like, but the bottom line is they should be answerable to parents, NOT politicians, government bureaucrats teachers unions.
If state schools can survive under these fair conditions, good luck to them. If not then justice says they should be turned over to the public.
The two main aspects of state schools that their supporters most prize are :-
(a) the inculcation of state-worship, and general leftwing/totalitarian indoctrination
(b) robbing the rich to pay the poor via taxes (socialism)
Society will clearly be better off without (a).
And as far as (b) is concerned, a far better approach would be for the state to issue education vouchers for use at schools of the parents’ choice, rather than have and run schools itself.
I would think that Romney’s suggestion is born of his experience rescuing the lost daughter of one of his employees. Are you familar with that episode
Yes, people should know about that story and others but it’s not in his nature to boast about them. Can you imagine Romney bragging how ” he” got Bin Laden. I can’t.
Sorry. It’s political season. I’ll go back in the woodwork now
Pokerguy, Frankenstorm ‘World at War.’
http://www.bbcshop.com/history/the-world-at-war-the-ultimate-restored-edition-dvd/invt/fhedwar2/
Mosher : “I accept AGW. GHGs warm the planet. The question is how much? ”
Yes. But how many here do NOT go along this ?
Hmm, perhaps its is time for a new pole?
It appears to me that “most” agree that doubling of CO2 can have a no feedback impact of between 1 and 1.5 C.
The questions are how much, if any, positive feedback will be felt at the surface and how large is that with respect to the range of natural variability and other antropogenic causes?
That’s a fair statement. Make that statement more often. Quite simply, the more people who voice the “consensus” a doubling will have a no feedback impact of 1-1.5C. the more the debate will change. It takes the denier meme out of play..
I make that statement every time I post. 0.8 +0.2 would be 1.0 if natural variability does zero out, Since the underlying long term trend is 0.4 per century, up to half of the apparent warming could be related to long term natural variability and/or land use. That doesn’t take the denier meme out of play since the “believers” deny natural long term variability like their careers where at stake :)
The problem is that the no feedback number is an irrelevant abstraction. The only relevant issue is what is likely to happen. Cooling is a real possibility as is no warming.
Is it plus or minus? If it’s ±, then I agree too.
CO2, sensitivity has to be plus because of the definition of sensitivity. That does not mean that CO2 forcing has to be greater than the range of natural variability or other anthropogenic factors. In fact, CO2 forcing would amplify other impacts to some degree making the teasing out of purely a CO2 impact a pretty challenging problem.
So just say, “YES! I have seen the light! CO2 does have a radiant impact!” Then keep pointing to the unanticipated amplification over land masses that are less than pristine and the total disregard the Antarctic has for Climate Science.
CO2 does have a radiant impact, it increases the emissivity of the atmosphere. I don’t know how significant this is.
here is what I am suggesting.
I am suggesting that skeptics overtly and plainly join the consensus and define it. From the inside.
Right now their dominate tactic is to.
1. Attack the notion of a consensus
2. Attack that there is a consensus.
3. redefine the consensus as CAGW.
Those tactics all play into the polarization of the debate. It’s far more effective to
1. Accept the fact that there is a consensus.
2. Define that consensus broadly as possible to include their position.
Agreeing with one’s enemy. black belt required. definately not the mainline. Sharp play required, and sometimes sacrificing the exchange.
i have no vague idea what you are talking about. Consensus is presently code for CAGW. Skeptics cannot change that.
The “consensus” has calculated “backradiation/blanket” from a model which has no direct input of heat from the Sun. Ergo, there is no upwelling of longwave infrared from a heated Earth’s surface so nothing to “backradiate/blanket”.
Panic over.
Pass them the smelling salts.
Right, so the sun doesn’t warm the earth now??. Best *you* start smelling those salts real quick.
Mr Myrrh, do you have any plans to reveal any support for your claim that shortwave cannot warm the earth, or do you plan to leave it forever as a figment of Myrrh-physics, that no physicist anywhere has ever heard of?
Myrrh has been touting the idea that visible light cannot warm, it is only IR that can do that.
Should be easy enough to establish by experiment, by using an IR filter (as someone suggested earlier).
BatedBreath | October 31, 2012 at 5:36 am | Right, so the sun doesn’t warm the earth now??. Best *you* start smelling those salts real quick.
I didn’t say that. The Sun certainly warms the Earth I live on, I get the direct heat from the Sun, thermal infrared, longwave infrared.
Those who promote CAGW/AGW both, are of the consensus that this direct heat from the sun doesn’t warm their Earth. Instead they have given the power of heating to shortwave, mainly visible.
Since shortwave can’t warm the land and water of the real Earth I’m on, I’m saying they have nothing to worry themselves about, because “backradiation/blanket of carbon dioxide” requires there to be upwelling heat from the Earth and clearly their Earth has none.
Have you followed that? They’ve taken the real direct heat from the Sun out their Greenhouse Effect energy budget and shortwave can’t heat the Earth – they have no problem of “greehouse gases backradiating or blanketing heat”, because they have no heat at all from the Sun on their imaginary Earth.
Problem solved.
Above Myrrh produces the laughable strawman that in the general consensus explanation, the IR from the sun has been REMOVED.
And also repeats his mantra that the energy from visible light simply vanishes.
And sums it all up with “Problem solved”. Hoo boy.
Myrrh does not understand that light is electromagnetic radiation, and all electromagnetic radiation when absorbed by anything, is rapidly converted to heat (there are few exception, one being when it is immediately re-radiated via fluorescence).
Let us start deMyrrholizing this place by asking what distinguishes IR from UV/Vis light? The anthromorphism inherent in Myrrh (no not the spice) is obvious when you realize that the difference is the spectral sensitivity of the human eye.
For those of you interested in science, Eli heard a talk a couple of weeks ago by Dave Yarkony from Hopkins, which pointed out that the process of conversion starts with a crossing from the electronically excited state back to the ground state, e.g. a universal, non-adiabatic process without which we would not be here, but one of which we have only recently realized the importance.
Eli Rabett | November 1, 2012 at 10:54 am | Myrrh does not understand that light is electromagnetic radiation, and all electromagnetic radiation when absorbed by anything, is rapidly converted to heat (there are few exception, one being when it is immediately re-radiated via fluorescence).
So how much is visible light from the Sun heating the atmosphere? Because, visible light is absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen which results in reflection/scattering, that’s how we get our blue sky.
Photosynthesis is not conversion to heat, it conversion to chemical energy, sugar, not heat energy. Sight is not visible light cooking, visible light converts to nerve impulses.
Visible light does not have the POWER to heat matter.
Which is what is claimed.
Visible light is a lighweight, it can’t move the molecules of matter into vibration which is what it takes to heat up matter. This is what radiant heat from the Sun does, thermal infrared is heat transfer from the Sun to us.
Thermal infrared, the Sun’s real heat, has been taken out of these models and visible light substituted for it , which means, because visible is not capable of heating matter, there is no heat at all from the Sun in them!
Prove that visible light from the Sun heats the land and water at the equator to the intensity which gives us the great wind and weather systems we have.
In the real world this is acheived by the direct radiant heat from the Sun, thermal infrared, longwave infrared, the Sun’s thermal energy in transfer.
For those of you interested in science, Eli heard a talk a couple of weeks ago by Dave Yarkony from Hopkins, which pointed out that the process of conversion starts with a crossing from the electronically excited state back to the ground state, e.g. a universal, non-adiabatic process without which we would not be here, but one of which we have only recently realized the importance.
He’s describing electronic transition, as in reflection/scattering, this is not creating heat, it isn’t moving the whole molecule into vibration which is what it takes to heat matter. It is moving the electrons into exciting states which return to ground state and release the same energy as they took in. Non-ionising, ionising knocks the electron completing out of orbit, the different kinds of UV example here. There’s nothing new in that.
Ask him how does visible light physically heats the land and water at the equator to the intensity these are actually heated which give us our huge equator to poles winds and dramatic weather systems.
Do let us know his reply…
The climate modellers are betwen a rock and a hard place – either they have to admit, if applicable, that they know the garbage in is garbage because they know what the real world physics is, or they have to admit that they have been putting garbage in because they didn’t know the real world physics basics. Either way, they are perpetrating a massive science fraud against the people of all nations.
I have never, unfortunately, won a Nobel Prize, but I was Time’s Person of the year in 2006.
What a coincidence, so was I!
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