by Judith Curry
On the other hand, serial climate disinformer Judith Curry (Georgia Tech) announced “Consensus distorts the climate picture.” – Michael Mann
What, exactly, is a ‘disinformer’?. From the Wikipedia:
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth. Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false.
Unlike traditional propaganda techniques designed to engage emotional support, disinformation is designed to manipulate the audience at the rational level by either discrediting conflicting information or supporting false conclusions. A common disinformation tactic is to mix some truth and observation with false conclusions and lies, or to reveal part of the truth while presenting it as the whole truth.
Ok, Chasing Ice arguably qualifies as ‘propaganda.’ But what, exactly, is information? Again, from the Wikipedia:
Information is any kind of event that affects the state of a dynamic system that can interpret the information. Conceptually, information is the message (utterance or expression) being conveyed. Therefore, in a general sense, information is “Knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance”, or rather, information is an answer to a question.[citation needed] Information cannot be predicted and resolves uncertainty. The uncertainty of an event is measured by its probability of occurrence and is inversely proportional to that. The more uncertain an event, the more information is required to resolve uncertainty of that event.
Huh? Then what exactly is ‘false’ information? Let me try again; here is what the dictionary says:
information: knowledge that you get about someone or something: facts or details about a subject
In case you are confused, fortunately our favorite social psychologist, Stefan Lewandowski, has a paper which explains all:
Misinformation, disinformation, and violent conflict: From Iraq and the “War on Terror” to future threats to peace.
In the most basic sense, a scientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation, in contrast with a hypothesis or theory, which is intended to explain or interpret facts.
Various scholars have offered significant refinements to this basic formulation. Also, rigorous scientific use of the term “fact” is careful to distinguish: 1) states of affairs in the external world; from 2) assertions of fact that may be considered relevant in scientific analysis. The term is used in both senses in the philosophy of science.
In terms of actual scientific facts in climate science, we have the infrared emission spectra of CO2. The rest of what passes for ‘information’ in the parlance of Lewandowsky, Mann etc. is really hypotheses or theories.
Disagreement with someone’s hypothesis or theory, or not being convinced, does not make them a misinformer, disinformer or denier.
People discussing misinformation and disinformation in the context of a scientific debate are commonly doing so in context of frustrations and failures in their own propaganda to stimulate a policy response based on their view of what ‘science says’.
Accusations of misinformer, disinformer, denier are frequently made in context of criticisms of Michael Mann’s research. Some of the primary examples:
- Richard Mullers criticism of ‘hide the decline’ (and my agreement) [link]
- My suggestion at RealClimate to read Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion [link]
- Rob Wilson’s recent declaration that Mann’s reconstructions were a ‘crock of xxxx’ [link]
Note, each of these criticisms was made in the context of an argument made in a presentation (or in the case of Montford’s book, by my referring people to Montford’s arguments), and were not ‘namecalling’ but referred to specific elements of Mann’s work.
Mann’s ‘charming’ response to Rob Wilson, with heavy use of the ‘D’ word, is described in this thread at WUWT.
David Rose tweeted an amusing response:
.
There is no climate mis/disinformation campaign
What would a climate mis/disinformation campaign look like? Trying to convince the world that CO2 greenhouse effect doesn’t exit? Skydragons have tried that; no one pays attention to them.
Those unconvinced by the IPCC assessments merely have to say the assessment is overconfident, there are large uncertainties, etc. It comes back to the null hypothesis issue: the burden of proof is on the IPCC. A mis/disinformation campaign isn’t needed to counter the IPCC assessments.
I was struck by this recent tweet from Bill Chameides:
Somebody needs to write a book on “Merchants of Heartfelt Overconfidence”
At this stage of the hoax, serial fearmonger Michael Mann does exactly what is expected of him.
by Judith Curry: “What would a climate mis/disinformation campaign look like? Trying to convince the world that CO2 greenhouse effect doesn’t exit?”
==========================================
A climate mis/disinformation campaign would look like this in the first place: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-1-1-figure-1.html, where the Earth surface warms itself with twice as much power it itself produces.
And, of course, the IPCC reports and all the press campaigns based on those.
“On the other hand, serial climate disinformer Judith Curry (Georgia Tech) announced “Consensus distorts the climate picture.” – Michael Mann”
Mann is obviously projecting. See here:
I expected Richard Tol to get a mention here since he accused our host of disinformation on this very blog. I expect he simply didn’t think about what the word means, and I bet the same is true for Michael Mann.
“Unprecedented recent summer warmth in Arctic Canada”
Gifford H. Miller Scott J. Lehman, Kurt A. Refsnider, John R. Southon, Yafang Zhong
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/t/5zb46.jpg
Is this Chasing Ice?
post on this coming tomorrow
Accusations of disinformation from morons who believe 1 tree out of millions can be used to disprove the existence of the MWP are hilarious.
You know that there are reconstructions that don’t use tree rings that show the MWP was a regional phenomenon. Saying it is based on one tree is classic misinformation, sounds straight from the serial misinforming abuser of the Y-axis.
Oh yes what are they?
Really?
Loehle C, 2007 A 2000 year global temperature reconstruction based on non-treering proxy data.
But there are better ones.
Hey, but that ones good because it proves all us warmists wrong if we say E&E doesn’t do peer review!
Here is one, just an example, and it is from one location.
Bernabo, J. C. 1981. Quantitative estimates of temperature changes over the last 2700 years in Michigan based on pollen data. Quat. Res. 15:143–159. CrossRef
But Michigan is a cold place now as it was during the MWP. Or it was colder in Michigan during the MWP than it is now.
You don’t expect me to find all of them, do you?
Bob, I’m not sure I would throw away historic information in favor of tree ring proxies or pollen proxies. They all paint a picture of the past.
M. Hastings,
I don’t think I have advocated discarding any information, but I may have come out in favor of Loehle over Mann on reconstructions, just to further the conversation, but It didn’t work.
On the historical record of say wine growing in England. How do the MWP and modern times compare in this regard with respect to Hadrian’s wall?
Yeah the MWP was regional in the same sense that not every region in the world today is warming at the same time and rate either. Some are cooling. I’m afraid you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Bob,
How is it possible to use the same argument in two totally opposite ways? With the MWP, it is dismissed as a regional warming, so therefore unimportant. Of course there are many papers that say it was not simply regional, but more widespread but let’s leave that aside for now.
In current times however, a regional warming of the arctic and portions of northern hemisphere are used as evidence of global warming and a potentially dangerous greenhouse effect.
Seems like a contradiction to me. That would imply an error somewhere.
bob droege
All temperatures are local.
Put ’em all together and average them globally and annually (and hopefully do this right, without any manipulating or fudging), and you’ve got a “globally and annually averaged temperature”.
This is now being measured.
We know, however, that while most locations are warming today (forgetting the current “pause”), there are some that are not doing so – some are even getting slightly cooler.
Yet it is correct to say that the current warming is “global”, despite local anomalies.
The same is true for the MWP.
There are many independent studies using different paleo-climatological methodologies, from all over the world, which all confirm that the MWP was a bit warmer than the current warm period.
There are historical records from all over the civilized world at the time, as well as physical evidence, all of which point to the same conclusion.
So it is clear that the MWP, like the current warming, was a “global” phenomenon, even if there may have been exceptional locations that were not warmer (as there are today).
Max
Fact:
Prof Lewandowsky made a substantial error in his paper – Nasa faked the Moon Landing, therefore climate science is a hoax. – paper
and published despite knowing about it 5 months prior to publication..(misconduct, lying to peers?),And UWA, APS, Psychological Science and not least the authors will do anything about it..
so why should we ‘trust’ anything he does…. might be some peoples perception..(when it is climate related, as he is an activist on this topic)
Email sent to all the above below, (authors/journal first):
———————————–
Dear Stephan
I wish to formally report to you (as lead author and contact) a substantial factual error in the methodology of one of your papers –
“NASA faked the moon landings – Therefore [Climate ]science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science” by Stephan Lewandowsky, Klaus Oberauer, Gilles Gignac – Psychological Science [LOG12]
I have also reported this factual error to the Chief Editor of Psychological Science.
The factual error is:
The LOG12 methodology states that the survey was posted at the SkepticalScience website, when in fact the survey was not posted at the Skeptical Science website.
This has the following implications for LOG12, which will require corrections to the paper:
1) The methodology of LOG12 states that the survey was posted on the website http://www.SkepticalScience.com (1 of 8 websites) This claim appears to be falsified.
2) The methodology also states that the survey was potential visible to 390,000 visits from readers, including 78,000 sceptical visits at the http://www.SkepticalScience.com website. This is a key claim of the paper that the survey was potential viewed by a large, broad audience, (with a 20% sceptical audience) representative of the wider general public. As the survey never appeared at the http://www.SkepticalScience.com website this claim is falsified
3) Additionally, the content analysis of http://www.SkepticalScience.com is used to assert that there was a diverse representative audience across the other 7 blogs that linked to the survey. As the survey was never show at http://www.SkepticalScience.com the claim of diverse and wide readership for the whole survey, based on a content analysis of http://www.SkepticalScience is now unsupported by the evidence in the supplementary material.
New content analysis will be required for the other 7 blogs, including readership traffic volumes as well.
Tom Curtis a Skeptical Science regular author and contributor [and moderator] (like yourself) appears to have established beyond doubt that the survey for LOG12 was not posted at the Skeptical Science website.
Tom Curtis wrote to Steve McIntyre (who had made a similar analysis ) publically confirming this in April 2013, following the publication of LOG12 in the Psychological Science journal. To put the importance of Skeptical Science into context, the Skeptical Science website, is by far the most well known, with the highest traffic of the all blogs surveyed.
If you recall, I requested evidence that the survey had been linked at Skeptical Science on July 31st 2012, and at the time you stated to me that you had had the url for it, but had lost it, and perhaps that John Cook had deleted it, (this would also be against UWA policies for data retention I believe)
Between UWA and the LOG12 authors, I hope somebody will just make the appropriate corrections..
—- end email – —-
before any casual reader thinks this is just a partisan issue.
Tom Curtis, a co Skeptical Science moderator contributor and like Professor Lewandowsky, a regular author at Skeptical Science, has now written on his own blog (previously he informed Steve Mcintyre) about the fact the survey was not shown at Skeptical Science.
Tom Curtis makes this statement:
Given this evidence, I must conclude, as did McIntyre that,
“In my opinion, the evidence is overwhelming that SkS never published a link to the Lewandowsky survey. In my opinion, both Cook’s claim to have published a link and Lewandowsky’s claim to have seen it are untrue.”
————–
Tom Curtis blogged about it on his own blog (besides Skeptical Science):
http://bybrisbanewaters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/skeptical-science-and-lewandowsky-survey.html
he previously sent Steve Mcintyre an email about it, when LOG12 was published..
http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/03/tom-curtis-writes/
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/28/lewandowsky-doubles-down/
On topic as ..
Lewandowsky publishing his paper, whilst knowing about the substantial factual error in the methodology, is surely ‘misinformation’ at least..
in fact knowingly doing this makes it ‘disinformation’ – by the definitions above? –
And John Cook (Skeptical Science – who call’s Judith a misinformer- url)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Judith_Curry.htm
When John was asked about the LOG12 survey by Geoff Chambers, and saying that he posted Lewandowsky’s LOG12 survey, was presumably covering up for Lewandowsky’s error.
Lew clearly at the time thought John had posted it (2 years previoulsy), so presumably John Cook in indulging in some ‘misinformation himself?
My comment is also here:
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyFAQPLoS1.html#3108
Mann believes modernity is, “an unprecedented, uncontrolled experiment with the planet,” and unless we tax ourselves into socialism, “We will be leaving our children and grandchildren a fundamentally different planet.” How can have a serious discussion with anyone who talks like that? Would he really rather live in a pre-industrial world? And, is it really rational to infer the planet will change for the worse if we do not strip our children of their god-given right to individual liberty? People like Michael Mann, Al Gore… they’re simply using their god-given right to smear those who see through all the hypocrisy.
Well, if he were to live a pre-industrial existance, at least he would stop tweeting.
This sounds every bit as defamatory as Steyn’s use of “fraud”. Probably more so.
Would “Mike’s trick” qualify as disinformation?
Yes
Judith,
It seems you are letting Mann get under your skin. He’s a dud and a troll*. Most people know that. You can be far more effective at improving the integrity of science and pursuing your other goals by not reacting (yes, I recongise, who am I to make such a comment, given I frequently respond to trolls and take offence).
Troll:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)
While the personal hook for me to look into the mis/dis issue is mann’s ‘disinformer’ statement about me, there are much broader issues here in the framing of the climate debate which I try to address, and much of the framing has been to protect against Mann’s loudly proclaimed injustices. All this has sent the climate debate down a hugely stupid and unproductive rabbit hole.
Oh, I think the rabbit hole is very productive. That is exactly where Mannian style climate polemics disguised as science belongs. CAGW might be doing even more damage today if it were not for his bush league statistics, climate gate, the IPCC’s dishonesty, etc.
Mann is the gift that keeps on giving.
It seems a lot of your posts are pretty far from climate science. You should stick closer to church-oriented social activities.
Gosh, I am crushed. I may never post another comment again. Oh the horror!
My comment was for Judy.
A lawyer should know better than to read the climategate emails, no?
What was wrong with Mann’s statistics again?
A lawyer would know better than to attempt fraud or Identity theft. However a lawyer is free to review all material given to him – regardless of the method that was used to obtain it. As long as he played no part in the acquisition.
My apologies. I thought you were being rude. when you were just being stupid. My bad.
If it is rude and stupid to ask for more discussion of climate science rather than the social crap, then so be it.
How about an answer as to what Mann did that was wrong, and the legality of the climategate fiasco, or do you plead ignorance or the fifth.
This one’s for Gary, lest anyone be confused.
When I watch those videos, I wonder what today’s kids think of them. But that was the 60/70s.
Ahh, bob, is this the old “Edward Snowden is a traitor, therefore nobody tapped Angela Merckel’s phone” argument?
If you want to know how sloppy and wrong Mann was google McIntyre and/or McKittrick. Start with Yamal, descend to Tijlander, sink to hide the decline, and just keep working your way down.
As for climategate, who said anything about illegal? It’s primary value was showing the mendacity and small mindedness that grew out of the rabid advocacy of the climatologists.
bob droege
You are seriously still asking:
Read Andrew Montford’s book for the gory details, but here is a synopsis.
– Mann’s statistics were shown to be flawed by McIntyre and McKitrick
– A panel, led by statistician, Carl Wegman, and including David Scott and Yasmin Said, confirmed the M+M critique under oath before a US congressional committee
– A NAS panel chaired by climate scientist, Gerald North, and including statistician Peter Bloomfield, confirmed that the Wegman conclusion was correct, also under oath before a US congressional committee
So much for evidence that the statistics were “wrong”.
Now, if you want to know what was wrong with Mann’s statistics, read the M+M critique, the Wegman panel report or Montford’s book.
Max
Gary and Max,
I wasn’t asking for you to tell me where to go, I wanted to see if you understand what M&M”s findings on the hockey stick were and apparently neither one of you can put it in your own words, so I can only conclude that neither one of you understand what was wrong with the hockey stick.
Try again, if you don’t understand it learn some statistics.
But I know Max continues to refuse.
I’ll just address one, the Tiljander crap. Mann did the reconstruction both using the Tiljander series and not using it, and got the same results both times. In other words the Tiljander series wasn’t important to the result because it ranked so low PCA wise. And in the statistical method used, it did not matter whether the series was upside down or not, even if it was a highly ranked PC.
The whole publication of the climategate emails was illegal. They were stolen, remember?
“I wasn’t asking for you to tell me where to go, I wanted to see if you understand what M&M”s findings on the hockey stick”
So you weren’t dialoguing in good faith, you were *testing* them? That’s beyond obnoxious, bob. You have an inexplicably high opinion of your own company if you actually expect people to jump through hoops for the privilege of talking to you. How’s that working out for you, as a social tactic?
Actually, no one knows if they were stolen or not (the Climagegate Emails). All we know is they were released to the public. Whether by an inside guy (not stolen, leaked) or outside guy (stolen) has yet to be determined.
Perhaps instead of fumbling over Tiljander, you should learn about the emails. And we do not know if Tiljander makes a difference since Mann refuses to allow anyone to check his work. But he did initially use the sample upside down. That much we do know.
Lovely Rita, Ian Jolliffe.
========
bob droege
Of course I understand what M+M found was wrong with Mann’s study.
It’s there for everyone to read.
And it was confirmed twice under oath before congress by two independent bodies.
This is all before “hiding the decline”, which was just the icing on the cake.
If you also know what was wrong, you don’t need to ask the question:
If you don’t, read M+M and the subsequent confirmations plus Montford’s book.
Then you’ll know.
Max
Bristlecone, the dog who didn’t split bark, but spit bark and tiljander tea leaves. Meens skol, dins skol, all the chakra flickers skol.
==================
Brad Keyes,
High opinion of myself?
I just want to see if some of the denizens of this blog are capable of higher thought than Mannomatic statisics, Mann fudged the data, hide the decline, upside down Tiljander series etc.
In fact, I have read both MBH 98 and MM05 and found McIntyre’s work to be 100% unconvincing.
Mann has made significant contributions to climate science and pointing that out here hasn’t made me any friends but I do get a fair number of responses.
Other reconstructions have confirmed the results.
So, BD, you deny that Mann’s Hockey Stick code selected for hockey sticks? I think that this was the case was amply demonstrated by more than one person. His code selected series that matched the instrumental record. If they didn’t match, the code turned the series upside-down and tested for the instrumental record again. This process is guaranteed to create a hockey stick chart, since the various proxies before the instrumental period tend to cancel and smooth each other out. Are you denying this is so, Bob Droege? Or, should we believe you simply because you say it’s not thus?
“So, BD, you deny that Mann’s Hockey Stick code selected for hockey sticks?”
Even Mann has admitted this. Continued denialism of it is bound to get a laugh out of me.
And i believe Judith this exactly the intention, to distract what is really going on. Models vs reality is getting right out of hand now and they do not want to concede.
And given what most people think is coming, more La Ninas and a cold AMO on the way, the decline will accelerate to the point where the situation is untenable.
Carry on with showing what reality is doing, thats what they are trying to hide.
bob droege,
As for the stupidity of your comment about Dr. Curry, this is the statement of purpose, if you will, for her blog (the operative word there for you, and other whiners about her choices of topics, being “her”):
“Climate Etc. provides a forum for climate researchers, academics and technical experts from other fields, citizen scientists, and the interested public to engage in a discussion on topics related to climate science and the science-policy interface.”
The substantial majority of my comments are on the politics of the debate, and to a lesser extent the frequently horrific logic, and sometimes mendacious obscurantism, of those who argue the consensus “science”. Which is why I assumed your earlier comment was directed to me.
By comparison, Dr. Curry’s posts and comments are substantially more science directed, though I suspect that an analysis would show a fairly substantial minority directed to the politics – in line with her description of the intent for her blog.
AGW is political. It’s been political from the very beginning. Mann received grants of taxpayer money, yet he will not release his research to those of us that paid for his research. Sorry, but that make it pretty darn agenda driven and political to me…
———–
Bob Droege – “posts are pretty far from climate science”. Yeah, you’re right. And dropping polar bears from planes to go splat on NY streets is right on point… ..clean up your own house first.
Did you really read “a number of papers” on misinformation by our favorite social psychologist? Mein Gott! You merit a special award.
But your reasoning is spot on, of course. All this stuff about “settled science”, deniers, disinformation, and so on, is now working against the hooligans themselves.
> Ok, Chasing Ice arguably qualifies as ‘propaganda.’ But what, exactly, is information?
Good question.
But what is, exactly, a question?
Depends on what the definition of “is” is.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
More interesting, perhaps, is the definition of bigot:
a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group with hatred and intolerance.
> More interesting, perhaps, is the definition of bigot: […]
Perhaps, David44, but then you’d have to define what is hatred and what is intolerance.
Also note that using the word “bigot” might get you in trouble:
http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2012/sep/16/nick-clegg-bigot-debate
Perhaps you ought to prefer “your argument is pure bigotry”.
***
How To Recognize The Bigot In The Argument:
http://truthbasedlogic.com/bigot.htm
What was the question?
“… no controlling legal authority.”
@David44: More interesting, perhaps, is the definition of bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group with hatred and intolerance.
Has there ever been a bigot who recognized that he or she met these criteria?
(Deafening silence.)
I thought not.
No one here is a bigot, of course. It stands to reason.
Vaughan –
“Has there ever been a bigot who recognized that he or she met these criteria?”
Left foot or right foot, if the shoe fits wear it; but first you have to be willing to try on the shoe.
Just to make it clear, “you” means the general you, not anyone here. The thought was only in reference to the subject of Dr. Curry’s post.
> first you have to be willing to try on the shoe.
A condition which is never fulfilled.
I thought this was Vaughan’s point, David44.
Willard
You ask
The answer is, “yes”.
(“What” is a question.)
Max
I would be most grateful if someone, anyone, could demonstrate the supposed “fact” that a body can, at the least, be prevented from cooling by surrounding it with a mixture of gases containing CO2.
The cult of Warmism is faith based. Some of its senior practitioners appear to satisfy the diagnostic criteria for delusional psychosis. Unfortunately, such people, throughout history have demonstrated the ability to influence those in power. They can outwardly be charming, and very persuasive, similar to the snake oil salesman of old.
They really deserve compassion, rather than condemnation. Pandering to their delusion by providing access to vast sums of taxpayers’ money, merely reinforces the delusional behaviour.
In addition, money wasted in the pursuit of the non existent “warming effects” of CO2, could, no doubt, be well used for the alleviation of various forms of suffering within the wider population.
This is of course, anathema to the psychotically deluded. The tantrums would be epic.
In the absence of demonstrated fact, anything issuing from the mouths of the deluded needs to be initially treated as misinformation or disinformation, even if honestly believed by the provider.
Conflict can be avoided by refusing to find delusional beliefs. No influence, no conflict!
I wish!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Lewandowski is an expert on providing misinformation, disinformation and promiting conflict. See the 13 part series he put together on The Conversation . The articles were written by him and other prominent Australian climate scientists. The title of the final article (by Lewandowski) is: “The false, the confused and the mendacious” The series was endorsed by 87 professors and leading climate scientsts (see the list)
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-real-an-open-letter-from-the-scientific-community-1808
Lewandowski is a hypocrite as are Mann, Cook and many other climate scientists.
Lets see: Lewandowski has 87 professors and leading scientists endorsing what he is saying, and you call him a hypocrite?? I’ll go with the 87 credentialed endorsers, thank you.
Walter Carlson,
So appeal to authority works for you, does it? And especially if it supports your pre held views? And especially if it supports the far left ideological beliefs common amongst Australian academia.
Why do you go with the 87? Have you actually read the 13 contributions they’ve endorsed?
If so, can you refer me to where there is any convincing argument that AGW or man’s GHG emissions are dangerous? I am not looking for a repeat of the standard hand waving and baseless scaremongering. I am looking for a persuasive case, because I can’t see it.
[As a reminder, temperature change is not a measure of costs and benefits or damage. It is essential to provide a convincing case that man’s GHG emissions would be dangerous or catastrophic. So, whey in this pile climate academics writings is the case made that GHG emissions are dangerous or catastrophic.
Part Four: “Our effect on the earth is real: how we’re geo-engineering the planet” by Mike Sandiford should be the part that describes the damage function and the projected benefits and damages per degree of GW and projected at various times in the future. But there is nothing about that other than emotional writing and scaremongering. He sinks into emotional clap trap and ideological nonsense about plastic bags and the evils of humans. Plastic bags and (non AGW) habitat destruction are irrelevant to the justification for GHG emissions and mitigation. It’s an emotional rant.
Then look at the titles of the 13 parts. It is obvious it is neither balanced nor impartial. Look at the titlers of the last five for example:
Once you’ve read these, please tell me you justification for trusting the ‘authorities’ that are sprouting such emotive, biased, ideological nonsense?
Should we really be placing our trust in academia that has been so strongly infiltrated by ideological beliefs and ‘progressive’ partisan politics?
I believe this series of 13 articles by the leading Australian climate scientists is an excellent example of what is so wrong with climate scientists, especially in Australia.
Argumentum ad verecundiam. I am sure you chew that gum that 4 out of 5 dentist recommend for just that reason.
Walter,
Counting the numbers of endorsements and their pedigree’s is not the best method of science inquiry.
If you have read his papers and followed the commentary, there is no other conclusion to reach about Lewandowski other than he is far out of his depth with regard to statistics and formulation of a rigerous scientific analysis. In other words, his papers are crap.
timg56…really?? Would you care to show something SPECIFICALLY which he has stated and has since shown to be in error??
“A common disinformation tactic is to mix some truth and observation with false conclusions and lies.”
Anyone who makes some case, but makes a mistake–or says something debatable–can be labeled a disinformer. It doesn’t sound like this definition rules much out, from an observational perspective, since intentions aren’t easily observed.
Bad word, bad concept. Junk.
NW
Provided he/she mixes “some truth and observation with false conclusions and lies“, it is “disinformation” (as this term is defined).
When IPCC cites all the many thousands of climate studies, which have been made recently in an effort to bolster its CAGW narrative, that is providing “information” (provided the individual reports, themselves, are not “misinformation” or “disinformation”).
When it claims, based on all these reports, but without a full knowledge of all the possible natural influences on our climate, that human GHGs have been the principal cause for late 20thC warming, this is “misinformation”.
When it projects exaggerated CO2 forecasts and climate sensitivity estimates to project 5C warming by 2100 in order to frighten “policymakers” into “taking action”, that is “disinformation”.
Max
Max, the problem with misinformation and disinformation is that they require us to know intentions. I understand that our legal system thinks we can infer intentions from various circumstantial evidence, but personally I think our legal system is, how shall I say it, epistemically medieval. Intentions are invisible theoretical doohickeys we use in telling stories about human behavior; they are not facts in the sense that a breadbox is (that you and I can uncontroversially believe a breadbox is on the kitchen counter). So in my opinion, at the end of the day, distinguishing misinformation from disinformation is only theoretically possible: In practice, it is not. So rather than using these labels, I suggest we just argue about whether some part of a position or argument is false, and once we determine that we can say that a person has spoken (or written) a falsehood without demeaning their motives.
My understanding is that “disinformation” was a term of art used by intelligence professionals to describe the activities of one of the KGB’s directorates that was in charge of planting false stories and anti-American memes in non-Soviet media. The distinction from propaganda was that the source of the stories was disguised so as to give them more credibility with the audience. While lies and deception about information content were often involved, as with propaganda, that wasn’t really the key; disinformation could be truthful or mere opinion. The key was that the message falsely appeared to be independent of the Soviet Union.
Steve, today some might call that astroturfing, I think.
Astroturfing is creating the impression of widespread popular support for something that is really only being promoted by a small group. Disinformation might be a tactic in an astroturfing campaign, but the two are distinct. Note that astroturfing is only effective in political systems that grant legitimacy to popular opinion (the term is a play on faking “grass roots”). In a system where only elite opinion legitimately counted, astroturfing would be pointless but disinformation might still be useful.
NW
You are absolutely correct that “intentions” are not always easy to discern when trying to separate intentional “disinformation” (with intent to deceive) from ordinary “misinformation” (simply bogus data).
But let’s take the example of the “snake oil salesman”, who promises that his product will cure all sorts of otherwise incurable ailments.
One can generally conclude that he is spreading “disinformation” in order to sell his product.
The same goes for IPCC, when it “sells” its CAGW premise by spreading frightening “disinformation” about temperature rise by 2100.
Whether or not this interpretation would hold up in a court of law is a moot point.
But it probably does hold up in the court of logic.
Max
I wouldn’t mind if the snake oil was bogus if it were cheap, but my wallet’s been lifted, and I writhe prone and in pain.
=============================
kim
Agree it’s bad news when the “revenooers” get their hands on “snake oil” so ordinary serfs can no longer afford an oil job.
Please don’t tell my folks I work in the Oil Patch; they think I’m a piano player in a whorehouse.
=============
Gittin’ so a snake oil salesman cain’t make an honest livin’.
The IPCC likewise!
> You are absolutely correct that “intentions” are not always easy to discern […]
NW says something stronger than that. And he’s not alone:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality/
Thanks Judith – it remains the case that the first casualty of war is truth. But understanding the temperature record doesn’t seem all that complex. Excluding extreme ENSO variability in 1976/1977 and 1998/2001 – we get about 0.2 degrees warming over a couple of decades late last century. At least half of this was natural – leaving some 0.05 degrees C/decade for greenhouse gases.
This is not at all scary and wouldn’t be an issue at all over this century if it were not for the ‘fact’ that the idea of an ordered climate response is utterly misguided. The future is unpredictable and potentially dire – outside the limits of ordered responses on both the cool and warm side and happening in as little as a decade. This includes the clear and present climate state – après the 1998/2001 climate shift – that suggests cooling for decades yet at least. This latter fundamentally changes the parameters of the debate and creates the potential for the worst possible outcomes – little action for another generation at least and abrupt and substantial climate shift.
The preferred policy response – the most effective and pragmatic ways forward – is predicated on ways to address emissions in the context of environmental and economic progress.
All of the above is well outside of the simple memes of AGW groupthink – and so is nominally disinformation in the terms of the believers – who after all have an absolute monopoly on climate truth. There are a number of scientists who have paid a price for challenging their climate truth and it seems that you are the latest target. It seems probable that things will get worse before it gets better. Don’t expect good faith from Mann and others – but you do have friends.
Looks to me that you got it just about right, Dr. Curry. You might continue to ask those who call others “disinformers” what they believe the role of criticism in science is exactly. Apparently, they wish to limit criticism of scientific claims.
JC wrote: “Rob Wilson’s recent declaration that Mann’s reconstructions were a ‘crock of xxxx’”
Rob Wilson never said Michael Mann’s reconstructions were a ‘crock of poo’.
He said his Mann’s most recent hypothesis (re. missing tree rings) was rubbish.
Please correct your error.
he said Mann recent work was a crock of xxxx, publically in a lecture,,
but agree he did not say all..
but at the same lecture he did point out other issues, maybe not quite at the XXXX level ;-) !
“Lastly, the “crock of xxxx” statement was focussed entirely on recent work By Michael Mann w.r.t. hypothesised missing rings in tree-ring records (a whole bunch of papers listed below). Although a rather flippant statement, I stand by it and Mann is well aware of my criticisms (privately and through the peer reviewed literature) of his recent work.
Rob
> Please correct your error.
Crickets.
Message in a bottle of Scotch.
=======
Is that Josh’s secret?
Judith,
We are in the middle of a battle. It is called information or political warfare.
Our opponents are skilled in this type of warfare.
It is an espionage/intelligence art. The Soviets called it Active Measures, Americans call it Covert Action.
There are different tactics, including Disinformation or Deception, Covert Influence, Denigration, Propaganda, Assassination, and more.
Our opponents come from the political movement, Politically Correct Progressivism, that is based on lies and deception, and a fundamental commitment to destroying modern America. Details of their roots are in my book, Willing Accomplices. http://www.willingaccomplices.com
Because of their commitment to destroying the economic system that made America great, they have latched onto the most powerful weapon to destroy American exceptionalism–AGW. With their mendacity, they aim to dismantle the American economy, and reduce us to medieval levels of energy usage.
To further their goal, they employ Active Measures–the political toolkit of PC-Progressives. Deception, Denigration, Covert Influence, and more. While they haven’t yet gotten to assassination, don’t think that they haven’t thought of it. The game they are playing is not academic give and take. They are playing for blood and, in their minds, the future of the world. They will use any and all tactics–and they are particularly skilled at Active Measures: see Mann, L’ski, et al.
For a Taxonomy of Active Measures, see pp 100-110 of Willing Accomplices.
The bottom line is that you are not dealing with honorable or upright debate opponents. We are engaged in a struggle to win the right to our future. Will it be a technology enhanced, oil-fueled modern life; or will it be short, brutish, cold and dark–a medieval existence lit by candles?
Thanks for all you do.
Think positive.
OMG – watch out for the black helicopters.
Passe. Drones now.
============
+1
Can’t wait for the movie…
“Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth. Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false.”
____
So the question would be…was Mann spreading disinformation or misinformation about Curry? One would be much more serious, and the other a simple act of ignorance. Maybe in comes down to, did he make a wrong word choice out of ignorance, or an intentional word choice?
R Gates,
And your preferred answer is . . . ?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
RGates, IMO His tweets would appear intentional.
I’m not sure which would be worse. It’s not like Michael Mann uses the word disinformation infrequently. He uses it all the time. If he doesn’t know what disinformation means, that’d mean he’s leveling accusations against people and groups on a regular basis without even understanding what the accusations are.
And it wouldn’t just be him that doesn’t know what the word means. It’d likely even include his colleagues at RealClimate as he’s made such accusations there. And it’d definitely include tons of people who read what he writes (see the same accusations made by those commenting at RealClimate).
It is possible tons of people level accusations of dishonesty against people and groups out of ignorance. It’s possible they’ve done this for years and have never figured out they’re wrong. The level of willful blindness required for such would just be embarrassing.
The high priest of climate science has spoken a lot of bulldust and the acolytes never twigged, because they are true conservationists …… of the consensus.
Ignorance or arrogance or may be both?
mann is simply mis using terms he doesnt understand. What he means is
“I disagree with Judith” however he doesnt have the balls to put it that simply.
Perhaps so – although Mann’s performances over the years would strongly suggest that these are not the only terms he uses that he “doesn’t understand” (or at least pretends not to). He may or may not lack “balls”, but he has repeatedly demonstrated that he definitely lacks integrity and intellectual honesty.
IOW, as I have noted elsewhere, Michael Mann has repeatedly proven himself to be the David <I see you, I sue you> Irving of “climate science”.
Consider the simple fact that Mann lacks the seichel to even figure out for himself that he had absolutely no right to call himself a “Nobel laureate”!
Consequently, I would suggest that, balls or no balls, Mann’s opinions – not unlike those of Pachauri – deserve nothing less than to be thrown … Into the Dustbin ;-)
Steven Mosher
Naw Mosh
Mann’s NOT simply saying:
“I disagree with Judith”
He is saying:
“Judith is lying”
Max
“Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false.”
Wikipedia, as is all too often the case, is wrong. Misinformation is false or misleading information, regardless of intent. Innocence is not a prerequisite.
There are still quite a few denizens here who still believe there is no greenhouse effect.
“What would a climate mis/disinformation campaign look like? Trying to convince the world that CO2 greenhouse effect doesn’t exit? Skydragons have tried that; no one pays attention to them.”
Looks like a campaign has convinced a few.
Any of you skydragons want to deny that you are skydragons?
I know who you are.
bob droege,
I am sure you can show how surrounding an object with CO2 can stop it from cooling.
Oh wait, I forgot – you can’t! You just “believe” it is so.
Good luck with that. You can’t fool Nature. Canute’s advisers convinced him he could hold back the tide. Who convinced you that the Earth will stop cooling if you add more CO2 to the atmosphere?
If you paid for the advice, you’ve been had, old chap.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
You are right, I can’t show that, no one is making that argument.
No one convinced me that the earth will ever stop cooling.
That is not what the greenhouse effect is.
The argument is that if you add CO2 to the atmosphere of a planet illuminated by a star, holding all other parameters constant, the surface temperature will rise.
Maybe a basic text on planetary astronomy will help.
Bob, I thought it was all GHG’s not only CO2 that have that effect?
bob droege,
Oh, I see. The Earth is still cooling, but its temperature would be a lot lower without the CO2. But if, as you acknowledge, you can’t stop stop the Earth cooling, doubling the amount of CO2 can’t warm anything, because you have to arrest the cooling of the Earth before you can start warming it.
Regardless of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the Earth continues to cool.
Now you have accepted that you can’t stop anything cooling by surrounding it with CO2, you have to figure out out how you can warm something while it’s cooling. Nobody has managed it so far. That explains why nobody has yet managed to stop a body cooling, let alone cause it to heat up, by surrounding it with CO2.
It’s nonsense, piffle, and balderdash, unless you have any facts to the contrary.
If you can’t understand what I am saying, let me know, and I’ll try to use simpler language.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn | October 25, 2013 at 9:20 pm said: ”The Earth is still cooling, but its temperature would be a lot lower without the CO2”
That means: the big polluters should be rewarded for preventing global cooling.
Mike,
Now you are being ridiculous, of course something can be cooling and warming at the same time, you see it is radiating IR photons at the same time it is being warmed by radiation, conduction and convection. It is a heat balance.
Whether you are heating something or not, it is still cooling radiatively based solely on its temperature. Newton figured this out a long time ago.
Seems your basic science education is lacking.
Try this page form dare I say it but wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation
M. Hasting,
Of course there is H2O and other greenhouse gases, I never said otherwise. And most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, but the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is somewhat affected by the amount of CO2.
“I am sure you can show how surrounding an object with CO2 can stop it from cooling.”
Mike Flynn, do you know how home insulation works? Have a try explaining it, or maybe you don’t believe in that either. Then imagine CO2 as an insulator.
Mike, as a half-Dane, may I enter a defence of King Knut? He was not “convinced” by his advisers – he went along with his courtiers’ daft plan precisely because he knew it was nonsense, and in the hope that he might thereby procure better advice in future. Their hypothesis was disconfirmed by observation. Fortunately, Knut had a daily opportunity to do demonstrate their fallacy. We CAGW sceptics are not so fortunate.
bob droege,
If we define something with a higher temperature than before “warmer”, and something with a lower temperature than before “cooler”, then that something cannot simultaneously “warm” and “cool”.
Now, at this stage, a Warmist would perform a lateral arabesque, and try to confuse the issue, preferably by introducing something that sounds scientific like “IR photons”. Ooooh, scary!
Then try for the slam dunk of conflating “heating” in the sense of providing a radiative source, and “cooling” in the sense of temperature change. Ah, the wonderful vagaries of the English language! If you wish to debate the intricacies of what I would refer to as quantum electrodynamics, be my guest. You’ll lose.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Tom Forrester-Paton,
A thousand pardons! I grovel in mortification! I meant no offence, good sir!
You are correct, of course.
As you are no doubt aware, there are several versions of the story. I used the one that suited me. My bad, as they say.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Jim D,
Yes. What has home insulation got to do with anything?
The best insulator of which I am aware has an R value of some 2500. It is known as a Dewar flask. There may be better insulating materials, and I am sure you will let me know if this is the case.
But I digress. Boil some water. Place it in a Dewar flask. Now convince me it is not cooling. If you don’t believe me, come back in a week, and measure the temperature. It has fallen. That is the usual definition of “cooling” – a fall in temperature. Similarly “warming” is a rise in temperature.
Now imagine an atmosphere composed of 100% CO2. It is special Warmist CO2, and has an R value of 10,000.
What do you think the Earth’s temperature will do, surrounded by such a wonderful (though physically impossible!) insulator?
1. Increase?
2. Decrease?
3. Remain the same?
If you aren’t sure, I suggest that 1. is incorrect. Otherwise, your Thermos flask would boil your initially warm water.
3. is similarly incorrect. Otherwise, the insulator’s R value would be infinite, and Unobtainium is unobtainable.
So now we are down to our last alternative. You are right, the temperature will, obviously, decrease.
If you need further information about insulators, please let me know.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn
So tell us Bob, what other parameters are being held constant? And while you are at it, can you give us a comprehensive list of all the parameters that might affect our climate system?
Mike Flynn, I am fairly sure you are one of those who don’t think the earth would be 33 C cooler without the GHG insulation effect, but that is the quantified effect. Insulation works by preventing heat from escaping as easily, which builds up a gradient across the insulation, which is the whole atmosphere in this case.
Mike,
You want to make up your own definitions, that is fine.
You want to have a discussion on what you call quantum electrodynamics and you think that you would win. I can only conclude that what you think is quantum electrodynamics is different from what Feynman thinks is quantum electrodynamics.
Since you are not even getting basic thermodynamics right, bring it on.
Everything is cooling. That’s what Planck said.
Somethings are warming, Humans can cook food.
Therefore Mr. Spock logically concludes that somethings are both cooling and warming at the same time.
We don’t have to imagine a planed with an atmosphere of 100% CO2, we have two very close.
Both Venus and Mars have atmospheres that are 96% CO2.
Why are their temperatures so different?
Yes Mike, the warmists don’t understand that entropy always works and that the ultimate decay of natural systems are inevitable. My reference? The 2nd Law of TD.
“There are still quite a few denizens here who still believe there is no greenhouse effect.
“What would a climate mis/disinformation campaign look like? Trying to convince the world that CO2 greenhouse effect doesn’t exit? Skydragons have tried that; no one pays attention to them.”
Looks like a campaign has convinced a few.
Any of you skydragons want to deny that you are skydragons?
I know who you are.”
I don’t think CO2 has measurable effect upon global temperature.
And the effect of increasing CO2 levels on Earth has not been
measured.
So, if we had problem of cooling world, increasing CO2 would be a solution for this problem, in my opinion.
I think doubling the amount of Nitrogen in the atmosphere has larger affect than doubling Earth’s a trace gas. So having 1/2 of the nitrogen or twice the amount of nitrogen in our atmosphere would have larger effect than doubling or halving say 400 ppm of CO2- 800 ppm or 200 ppm of CO2.
I don’t think most people would regard a 1/2 or doubled of Earth atmosphere as having no effect upon Earth temperature, Whether 1/2 of earth’s atmosphere would result in cooling or warming would different matter of debate- but rather it’s seems few would assume there no effect on global temperature.
In other words, I think one could easily measure the effect on global temperature if there was a halving or doubling of Earth’s atmosphere. Whereas it seem more doubtful could easily measure the effect of 1/2 or doubling of CO2.
But unlike what most skydragons seem to say, I don’t think the atmosphere itself has much effect upon global average temperature [other than fact that global average temperature on Earth normally measured as temperature of air rather than the surface itself].
So for instance an ocean of water which given 14.7 psi of pressure by some other mean other than an atmosphere would be as warm as Earth’s oceans.
And Earth’s ocean is most of the cause of so called Greenhouse Effect.
And that the actual significant aspect of a greenhouse affect is reducing the loss of heat, rather than causing it to be hotter.
Or the moderating effect of the ocean temperature upon air temperature is most of what the Greenhouse Effect is.
As general rule far away from effects of liquid ocean less greenhouse effect, and at coastal regions more of greenhouse effect.
Coastal regions aren’t hot, but they also don’t get as cold.
Doubling the amount of Nitrogen in the atmosphere would increase temperature a little due to the pressure broadening effect. But not as much as doubling CO2.
Your post is really incoherent, just what are you trying to say.
Couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
bob droege,
Could you please let me know how you come to the conclusion that changing the composition of the atmosphere will raise the temperature of the Earth – “pressure broadening effect” notwithstanding. The Earth continues to cool. To raise its temperature, you first have to stop it cooling.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
“Doubling the amount of Nitrogen in the atmosphere would increase temperature a little due to the pressure broadening effect. But not as much as doubling CO2.”
I think it would tend reduce average temperature.
So in that sense, I am not skydragons and you are.
I do agree that it would moderate air temperature, though.
It would increase the greenhouse effect, but wouldn’t increase average temperature. cooler, but less cold.
But I think you are in agreement with most climatologist- including less reputable sky dragon slayers.
The main uncertainly for me, regarding doubling N2 is the possible effects upon global evaporation.
I think increasing CO2 would would increase temperatures a little.
And I think 1/2 the N2 would increase temperature more than doubling CO2. As with less nitrogen more sunlight would make it directly to the surface, and would significantly allow the ground surface to become
warmer- you probably could fry eggs on a sidewalk.
So less Nitrogen would lead to hotter days, and other part is what affect it would have at night. It seems could get a colder, coldest night or polar
winter.
But it seems the ocean in general would get warmer, and that is larger factor in terms of preventing colder nights- globally.
So the immediate of 1/2 N2 effects would be warmer days breaking current records on hottest days, and immediate effect would cooler nights, but long term effect would be warmer ocean and thereby warmer
nights.
Long term effect 1 C or more of warming.
Though I think doubling CO2 may be also be around 1 C.
Or a little bit.
Meaning I not certain CO2 doubling will be measurable, 1 C would be obviously measurable but so far perhaps from other factors it has not been measurable.
But I think the most important aspect of all this is that amount of N2 in atmosphere is NOT accounted for in the greenhouse effect of the greenhouse theory, in which it is claimed that only greenhouse gases [N2 isn’t one] cause the “33 C of warming”. So:
” water vapor, 36–70%
carbon dioxide, 9–26%
methane, 4–9%
ozone, 3–7%”
Of 33 C. So methane of 4–9% would be 1.3 to 2.97 C.
What is nitrogen of the 33 C warming?
Does it warm, does it cool. Which way and how much?
If I were to guess, here my guesstimate:
Bodies of water: 50% 5%+/-
Atmospheric mass: 15% 5%+/-
H2O gas and water droplets: 30% 5%+/-
Other greenhouse gases: 10% 5%+/-
And I think warming effect of 33 C is less than 33C:
so say, 20 C 5 C +/-
-So, if we had problem of cooling world, increasing CO2 would be a solution for this problem, in my opinion.-
Should have been:
So, if we had a problem of cooling world, increasing CO2 would not be a good solution for this problem- in my opinion.
While I am here. I think greening Sahara Desert. Or merely flooding it with sea water, would have some effect in terms of creating warmer global temperature.
But not a lot. A lot regionally, but little globally.
Covering advancing glaciers with carbon soot would cause snow/ice to melt faster and thereby prevent this kind of regional cooling effect [a runaway effect].
Otherwise don’t see any other relatively easy solutions, but it possible these could at least delay the cooling of a glacial period. Not that I believe or I am suggesting that such cooling is a threat within next few centuries.
And that any possible cooling in next couple a decades will be somewhat minor. Minor could include worse consequences as compared any headline news has claimed has been the consequences of global warming.
So, lack of crop production due to cooling weather could have global effects of food prices [possibly much more than government ethanol programs has had].
Have you ever spent a day in a desert? Why it get so cold at night? Why it stay so warm on cloudy night in Jamaica, mon? Dipole moment.
http://www.nku.edu/~hicks/CHE%20120/The%20Greenhouse%20Effect%20alpha.htm
You people need to catch up and stop embarrassing yourselves and giving the alarmists ammunition.
I think your “quite a few” is misinformation, or possibly disinformation. There are (a) few, to be sure.
bob droege
That a “greenhouse effect” exists is pretty much incontrovertible.
That it represents a significant factor in determining our planet’s climate is very much in doubt (as there are no empirical scientific data supporting this premise).
That it could lead to potentially catastrophic warming (as outlined by IPCC in AR4 and AR5) is even more doubtful, as it is purely speculative.
Get your arguments straight.
Max
Thanks Max, I was just fishing for skydragons, and I found a few.
Would you like to try convincing them?
“Thanks Max, I was just fishing for skydragons, and I found a few.”
I have nothing to argue about what Max said:
“That a “greenhouse effect” exists is pretty much incontrovertible.
That it represents a significant factor in determining our planet’s climate is very much in doubt (as there are no empirical scientific data supporting this premise).
That it could lead to potentially catastrophic warming (as outlined by IPCC in AR4 and AR5) is even more doubtful, as it is purely speculative.”
I might say it’s impossible for it to lead to catastrophic warming.
But I am happy enough with “purely speculative”
This is for all the warmists. The quote by Mann typifies the kind of quotes I read 4 years ago by him and dozens of other so called esteemed “scientists” of the consensus crew that set off my BS meter and made me begin to question global warming. I had no reason to question it prior to that. In my eyes, scientists were always held in high regard and above reproach. A little naive, I guess but that was how I was raised. And then I began to take a peek under the tent and it smelled like week old boiled muskrat. Mann and his band of fakers are not worthy of the moniker of scientist. Had their conduct been a little less low brow, I would still have been giving them the benefit of doubt.
Michael Mann has done more to fuel climate science skepticism than anyone.
“Michael Mann has done more to fuel climate science skepticism than anyone.”
Yes. I think Mann could said to cause me to look at the issue, more than the blow hard Al Gore. I just assuming everyone knew Gore was a politicians, and Gore’s loud clanking was circus act performance to gain the attention of more morons.
Whereas Mann was denying science and he was suppose to be a scientist- so that was interesting.
My epiphany was when I read years ago that the earth had warmed by .8c in the last hundred years or so, and people were fearful of this.
Never ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence.
Begging the question, does this make Rose competent?
Really, competence: what’s that?
Michael Mann is the Guru of ”disinformation”
Mann pot kettle black calling the – rearrange this well known phrase.
Need anything else be said?
So disinformation amongst other things would be deliberately promoting a position that has been shown to be incorrect – such as extending the time window on believing erroneous models or clinging to a hockey stick that is in fact made up of two disparate data forms. That is, deliberately ignoring the march of information or making out that new findings don’t matter.
I suppose that has always been the way in science. Eventually though, the truth will out.
Serial climate disinformers, Michael Mann?
Ahemm …
http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_Part1_PreHistoricalRecord.htm
Overview of Ross McKitrick’s in-depth study of Michael
Mann’s data used to produce the hockey stick graph.
What he found was that Mann used a data analysis
method that essentially forced the data, (mostly tree-ring
proxies) to take the shape of strongest shapes found in
any data set.Most of the data sets exhibited no trend
but those that did were weighted unrealistically.
Oh and don’t fergit Jones’ email ter Mann: “I’ve just
completed Mann’s Nature trick of adding in the real
temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981
onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
Ahemm agen …
https://twitter.com/argumentalist/status/393887799637573632
Definitions
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms. 6th Ed.:
Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School
LIBEL DEFINITION
DEFAMATION DEFINITION
Any statement, whether written or oral, that injures a third party’s reputation. See, e.g.Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259 (1993). The tort of defamation includes both libeland slander.
To establish a prima facie case of defamation, four elements are generally required: a false statement purporting to be fact concerning another person or entity; publication or communication of that statement to a third person; fault on the part of the person making the statement amounting to intent or at least negligence; and some harm caused to the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.
SLANDER
From these definitions, I see Mann as committing libel against Curry as harming her professional reputation as a climate scientist.
PS for an extensive discussion of information seeWerner Gitt (2000 ISBN 3-89397-255-2):
As for the Mann vs Steyn case is Judith a public figure? Its always best to ignore ad homs and snark because I truly believe that its never personal and in most cases illustrative of the state of mind of the perpetrator.
I don’t know if that would be the problem? there are four things listed here:
http://injury.findlaw.com/torts-and-personal-injuries/elements-of-libel-and-slander.html
I think #4 is the hard one proving damages:
“Fourth, in some cases, the plaintiff must prove special damages.”
I think 1 thru 3 is covered.
This explains Mann vs Steyn pretty well (and the incompetent Judge)
http://www.volokh.com/2013/08/20/mann-v-steyn-mann-wins-round-one/
Re: “illustrative of the state of mind of the perpetrator”
All the more reason it fits.
Dr. Curry is at least a “limited purpose public figure” because, by maintaining this website and posting on these topics, she has inserted herself into the public debate on the subject of climate change. That means (like Mann, if the court follows the law) she couldn’t recover for libel unless she proved “actual malice”…as long as the subject of the defamatory speech was climate-related.
Sadly, if Mann ever was a reputable scientist, those days are long past. Now he is merely the Torquemada of the climate inquisition.
There are three struggles occurring that involve the controversy about climate change.
The first is scientific. This struggle between competing paradigms is being conducted more or less as other scientific controversies have over the past 150 years. The major difference is a larger audience due to Internet publication of papers, responses and commentary.
The second is political. Competing visions over the responsibility of industrialized nations to assist the developing world, whether out of a sense of moral obligation or as simple reparations for past injustices have led to multinational efforts to oblige the richer west to decrease emissions and assist the developing world to find a less carbon intensive pathway for the future. This is just as contentious–but no more so–than other grand projects involving taking money away from one group and giving it to another.
The third is the least publicized, but probably most important. It is between three camps of modern industry. Traditional fossil fuel developers and their infrastructure, the nuclear power industry and green power sources. The stakes they play for are very high–primary fuel provision accounts for more than $5 trillion a year in spending worldwide. The actors are high profile and are used to getting their own way and each have spent decades establishing access to influential parts of governance structures. The prize is enormous.
When a scientist veers from science to politics, as has Michael Mann, it doesn’t mean he’s been bought. It does mean he has bought into one of the other struggles as being more important than science.
Which leads him down the path of folly,which he has taken repeatedly over the past few years. As with Stephan Lewandowski, he has now taken to pimping science out. Kind of a shame, really, but those two are not the first and will almost certainly not be the last.
Some breadcrumbs:
http://glossarium.bitrum.unileon.es/Home/desinformacion/disinformation
But what really is a breadcrumb?
A critique of Floridi’s theory:
http://www.idt.mdh.se/~gdc/work/ARTICLES/04-MBR-Pavia/background/info-true.pdf
Does information really have to be true?
Just a cautionary note that not all Mike Flynns are the same person.
But really what is a person?
What would Einstein do?
Don’t know about Albert, but here’s what Richard would do:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62346357@N00/1444965179
R2.
Ye Olde Statistician,
If I am not me, then who am I?
Am I just an inferior copy of myself? Or maybe a superior copy?
How would I know? Help, please!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Like it!
Questions by Judith Curry, answers by FOMD.
Judith Curry, it is a pleasure to answer your questions and assist your understanding!
That’s pretty funny I must admit. lmao
FOMD,
What fresh nonsense is this? It appears to link to a journalistic report? Is this the climate mis/disinformation campaign itself, or reference to one?
Can you perhaps just say what you think, and provide some facts to support your case?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Hang on just a second….
Dr. Curry wrote;
“In terms of actual scientific facts in climate science, we have the infrared emission spectra of CO2. The rest of what passes for ‘information’ in the parlance of Lewandowsky, Mann etc. is really hypotheses or theories.”
Is this the same Dr. Curry that testified before the US Congress that (paraphrased somewhat);
“Everything else being equal, more GH gases should cause a higher average temperature” ???
Perhaps that should have been more like;
“Everything else being equal, THE WORKING HYPOTHESIS (STILL UNPROVEN) is that more GH gases should cause a higher average temperature”.
Perhaps an alternative hypothesis is that the “GHE” merely delays the flow of energy through the Sun/Atmosphere/Earth’s Surface/Atmosphere/Universe system by a miniscule amount, Sort of a like a great big hybrid Optical/Thermal delay line, the energy just bounces back and forth and forth and back at the speed of light before continuing it’s journey onwards to the “void of substantial energy” vacuum of space (no, not “the cold vacuum of space”; the correct description is: “void of substantial energy vacuum of space”).
Given the distances involved (miles) and the speed of light this delay amounts to a few tens of milliseconds. This simply causes the gases in the atmosphere to warm/chill more quickly when energy arrives/departs (sunrise/sunset). An effect that the historical temperature record can never demonstrate, let alone tree rings for Gawd’s sake.
I must have read that wrong, for a moment Dr. Curry sounded like a “slayer”.
Cheers, Kevin.
Kevin,
What Judy stated is correct. It is not a theory, the optical spectra of CO2 make the Physics well defined. However, she qualified the statement with “Everything else being equal” as being necessary, and that is where the difference between the direct CO2 effect and reality occurs. Feedbacks can be negative or positive, and in the real world they appear to be negative on average, reducing the CO2 alone effect. The speed of light has nothing to do with this effect.
Leonard,
Why do you say it’s not theory? Judy didn’t say “…must be higher…”, she said “…should be higher…”. The available scientific evidence to support her statement is entirely circumstantial. No controlled experiments have been conducted to back up your claim that it is somehow more than just a theory.
I could just as well say ““Everything else being equal, more GH gases should cause a reduction in the atmospheric lapse rate resulting in a lower average surface temperature”. That CO2 and other GH gases are much better absorbers and emitters of thermal radiation than nitrogen and oxygen is also “well-defined Physics”. Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will change its thermodynamic properties, increasing heat transfer and lowering atmospheric thermal resistance. It is “well defined Physics” that a lower thermal resistance will act to reduce the temperature gradient between the Earth’s surface and the effective radiating level, “everthing else being equal”.
Until some controlled experiments are performed to demonstrate the effect of GH gases on the lapse rate, I agree with Kevin that Judy’s statement is just a working hypothesis.
Willb,
More CO2 decreases the heat transfer rate and increases atmospheric thermal resistance. It does that by shortening the mean free path of photons. That has a larger effect than the opposite effect from increased rate of emission.
“That has a larger effect than the opposite effect from increased rate of emission.”
How do you know Pekka?
Physics is a mature science that tells many things reliably enough for all practical purposes. That’s enough for me, but I’m sure that the well known formulas for the thermal conductivity by radiation in gases opaque to IR have been tested also empirically and used in practical engineering applications in good agreement with theory.
Pekka,
If there are no GH gases, there are no photons in the IR band. Are you suggesting that adding CO2 to a pure nitrogen environment will increase the thermal resistance of the gas?
This sounds like something that could be demonstrated in a lab. Are you aware of any experimental data to support your contention?
Willb,
Yes, with no absorption the resistance is zero, i.e. all IR from a surface passes unhindered through the gas.
Willb incorrectly said:
“If there are no GH gases, there are no photons in the IR band.”
—-
If you learned this from a school, please proceed directly to the business office of that institution and demand a full refund of your tuition. Or perhaps you picked it up, like so many bit of mis and dis information out there, from a “skeptic” web site?
Wherever you got it, a full brain purge is urgently suggested.
I would agree RG.
There will be IR photons simply from the earth’s soil, water, etc emitting infrared radiation.
As Richard Alley said, the climate zombies keep coming back no matter how much you pound sense into them.
R. Gates,
Oops! my bad.
Pekka,
So are you saying a vaccuum will transmit heat better than a CO2 environment? Then why is a thermos bottle insulated using a vaccuum rather than with CO2?
Vacuum will transmit IR with zero resistance, but it does not convect heat by flows between surfaces. The conductance does not depend on the pressure until it’s very low but it’s less important than convection. At low enough pressure (below 0.1 mb in a vacuum bottle) also the conduction is reduced. Cooling by IR can be reduced by making the surfaces that phase the vacuum out of material of low emittance, i.e. of polished metal.
Having additional sheets of polished metal between the surfaces inside the vacuum would reduce heat flow further, but that’s usually not necessary.
I wrote “phase”, should be “face”.
“Pekka,
So are you saying a vacuum will transmit heat better than a CO2 environment?”
In terms of electromagnetic radiation, such as Infrared light, a vacuum has less things for it to interact with.
But heat loss from conduction and convection losses are significant higher, as compared radiant [electromagnetic radiation] losses in most circumstances.
A environment with say 100% CO2 and where CO2 gas’s temperature
was -100 C would cool faster than a vacuum environment with “sky”
or background of 2 K [-271 C] but this has to do convection of heat with the CO2 gas. Now if stop all the heat loss from conduction and convection losses, and only radiant losses, then, the vacuum with -271 C background would cool a bit faster. It depends on temperature of what is
radiating.
If whatever is cooling is close to -100 C, then there is significantly more energy loss with vacuum with background of -271 C.
[Though all cold objects obviously radiate less energy.]
And something at -100 C in a gas of -100 C, is not going to cool lower than -100 C gas [the “room temperature” is -100 C] whereas with -271 C
background things- if given enough time- will cool to -271 C.
For an example. Say you are in a dark crater on the Moon. The Sun never shines in. The terrain in crater may be around 30 K. Whereas the terrain outside crater [anywhere which the sun does shine] maybe about 100 K though- though such terrain has not seen the sunlight for over a week [or two weeks].
So you in a spacesuit in dark crater. The fact that the terrain is 30 K is only significant to how warm you are, if you are in physical contact with it- so that a conduction of heat can occur. As living creature you generating
heat, you will over heat if the only way to lose heat is from radiating heat.
If have wrench which is not generating heat, it can cool down somewhere
around 30 K. But it will take a long time to cool to such temperature- safe to say more than a week. Unless the wrench is put in contact with the 30 K environment than the time involved is maybe a hour of less. The warm wrench would of course warm whatever environment it came on contact with.
So if put wrench in the sunlight on the Moon, and it warm up in hour or so to over 100 C [373 K]. And if then put the hot wrench into the shade
it could loses 100 C in a hour or so. But it progressively takes longer to lose the next 100 C of heat. Btw, since we don’t need things very cold for refrigerating soda [or whatever] on the Moon a umbrella, is a refrigerator. Or the shadow from a rock is a refrigerator. No air, no “room temperature”
“Then why is a thermos bottle insulated using a vacuum rather than with CO2?”
Because thermos bottle largely insulates the heat loss from conduction and convection. And generally has water [coffee] in it
which has a high specific heat. Meaning 1 ib of water at 60 C has more
than 4 times the heat energy as 1 lb of iron at 60 C.
And thermos bottle also has reflective coating, and reflective coating emit less radiant heat. Which depending on the temperatures involved
can significantly say as much as added 20% to the time it requires to
cool- or if keeping a cool liquid, warm something in the thermos.
KevinK: “Everything else being equal, more GH gases should cause a higher average temperature” ???
Nothing wrong with that. The followup questions are:
1. What are all the other things?
2. Will they be equal?
3. Where will the temperatures rise?
4. By how much will the temperatures rise?
5. Which effects of temp rises will be good?
6. Which effects of temp rises will be bad?
7. What are the other effects of increased CO2?
8. Will those other effects of increased CO2 be good or bad?
9. How much of the rebound in temps since the lows of the LIA were caused by increased CO2?
Except for extremely simplified models, the computations are intractable, and the results of the GCMs have been demonstrably too inaccurate to support policy decisions. For some people, answering those questions has become a distraction from the important task of converting others to the belief in the simplified theory (people who insist that the questions are unanswered and that the answers are important have been called “Merchants of Doubt” and worse), and a belief in an extreme prediction from that theory — namely that the temperature increase will be great, fast, and catastrophic everywhere.
> the GCMs have been demonstrably too inaccurate to support policy decisions.
Where can we find this demonstration?
I don’t know,. Do we really need to rethink the definitions of “fact” and “information” just because a rabid partisan like Mann slings a false charge of “misinformer?
Ever since Clinton committed perjury by trying to redefine the word “is”, progressive activists have been mangling the language with reckless abandon. But that doesn’t mean we have to indulge them.
“Ever since Clinton committed perjury by trying to redefine the word “is”, progressive activists have been mangling the language with reckless abandon. But that doesn’t mean we have to indulge them.”
By law we indulge lawyer.
So, actually we do.
And the more laws we make [and have been doing this furiously]
than the more we must indulge them- by enforcement power of
a government [which has thoroughly demonstrated can be selective
towards what laws different people must follow [not equal under law,
we get meaningless/valueless “equality” but less equal under law].
See, “US Government Afraid of American People”
http://coto2.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/us-government-afraid-of-american-people/
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/michelle-obamas-princeton-classmate-is-executive-at-company-that-built-obamacare-website/
Judith,
I suspect you have a reasoable chance of winning a defamation case against Michael Mann.
Into the OODA loop:
http://www.dodccrp.org/events/10th_ICCRTS/CD/papers/051.pdf
But what is a side effect, really?
> Let } { , , , A= a1 a2 L am
Rather, “let A = {a1, a2, …, am}”
Let us note that the authors express the wish to develop a Desinformation Evaluation Assistant.
This might come handy.
The OODA loop is common knowledge among situation theorists.
I think Office already has one of those.
hat tip moshpit any time you mention the OODA loop. col boyd taught us well
http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/25/misinformation-disinformation-and-conflict/#comment-404238
misinformation – denier – CAGWer sour grapes. Case closed.
> Lewandowsky has published a number of papers on misinformation. While reading all this […]
Really? When?
google lewandowsky misinformation. its not hard
Sorry:
> Lewandowsky has published a number of papers on misinformation. While reading all this […]
Really? When?
> [E]ach of these criticisms […] and were not ‘namecalling’ but referred to specific elements of Mann’s work.
What really is namecalling?
calling someone a ‘denier’ or ‘disinformer’. This is different than criticizing someone’s arguments. Mann somehow doesn’t get the difference.
And his “history” suggests that this may be the least of what Mann “doesn’t get”.
But what I (an admitted latecomer to this party) still don’t “get”, is how on earth did MM (aka Mediocre Mann) ever get as far as he did?!
Criticizing arguments aka debate, has not occurred in the public forum wrt AGW.
How bizarre.
We’re left with rude and infantile activism.
feh
> Mann somehow doesn’t get the difference.
Really?
Not that this is relevant to this:
> This is different than criticizing someone’s arguments.
Calling an argument such-and-such is not exactly criticizing it in a way that renders justice to the distinction invoked.
But what really is criticism anyway?
***
Let’s also note that Judy failed (H/T Senior) to refer to this:
https://twitter.com/curryja/status/392677460937932801
And this response was in defense to this:
https://twitter.com/curryja/status/392694623153291264
What is dishonesty, really?
I dunno. What is a shtick?
“But what I (an admitted latecomer to this party) still don’t “get”, is how on earth did MM (aka Mediocre Mann) ever get as far as he did?!”
Noble prizes or UN appointment aren’t given by people who are particular smart as much as being politically correct [though if you regard being political correct and years brown nosing is the same as being a genius, then, they were geniuses].
He got international recognition same way Obama got a peace prize.
Mann hockey stick’s caused tingle in some select group’s leg.
Simple version:
He got his job and degree because his hockey stick graph supported the global warming cause.
But as Gore predicted, this would have ended in 5 years.
Maybe the next fad will government pretending they don’t engage in spying on other countries.
And always good laugh when France gets involved in this stuff.
If we lucky the French will lecture us on morality of giving governmental bribes, as encore. Or lessons in how to stop a Hitler and don’t sell out the Jews.
Money goes a long way. After all, what has any of the Kardassians or Paris hilton ever done?
I remember being both amused and bemused when Dr. Curry had the courage to call the hide the decline graph “dishonest”, but refused to say its creator was dishonest. I understood the reluctance to cross the line that clearly, but there really is no difference.
It was a distinction without a difference. There was no way Mann, or his supporters, would not see it as being the same as calling Mann dishonest. And frankly, they were right.
Dishonesty requires intent. A graph, being an inanimate object, cannot of itself be dishonest, because it cannot have intent. It can be incorrect, or misleading, or blatantly false. But dishonest requires knowledge that the graph is false. And the graph, needless to say, has no knowledge at all.
It is the creator and/or publisher of the graph who is/are dishonest, if they know it to be false or misleading. This is why my reaction to the attempt to criticize the graph, but not the grapher, was amusement.
I was also more than a bit bemused because once it became clear that Mann and Co did not get the subtle niceties of the attempted distinction, Dr. Curry persisted in refusing to say the presentation was false, and the presenter knew it, therefore the presenter was dishonest. Her initial statement was a sea change in the debate from an until then still mainstream member of the climate science community. Her attempt to draw that fine distinction muted the impact of her statement, without buying her the peaceful acceptance of her peers I think she hoped for. But I suspect she still did not really understand the nature of her peers at that time.
Michael Mann was dishonest because his graph was intentionally misleading. Easy. If one is going to get hammered for the truth of an accusation, one might as well just come out and make it.
I think he does… as he usually links it to some Koch conspiracy… or other suitsbly evil fossil fuel company. Mentioing the same techniques as the tobacco industry.
Mann knows precisly what ‘disinformation’ means :(
> If one is going to get hammered for the truth of an accusation, one might as well just come out and make it.
All we have is more whining about what Mike should have said, i.e. something more like “Judy’s activist products are serially disinforming”.
This coming out ought to create some sea change in ClimateBall.
willard seems deaf to what Michael Piltdown Mann does have to say. It’s inaudible, it seems.
=============
use an example willard. Chewbacca comes to mind you old bully you
> you old bully you
A successful word:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling
We ought not somehow conflating name calling and nicknaming, unless we wish to construct an argument that may be criticized as a crock of stupidity.
But what is nicknaming, really?
to conflate or not to conflate? what is conflation.. come on willard we miss your old bullying ways, nicknames name calling. you’re quite the master of personalizing. thats the larger issue.
> thats the larger issue.
The issue is the distinction between “mike’s dishonest” and “mike’s presentation is dishonest”.
Hint:
https://twitter.com/nevaudit/status/393373971195764737
***
Then there will be the issue about the commonality between “disinformation” and “dishonesty”.
You’re an expert in it and you claim you don’t know. Just another example of your dishonesty, eh?
Now, wait for the name calling! Then look at it and you’ll know what it is.
Your tu quoque is a crock of tar, baby.
There you go. I knew your wouldn’t be able to resist your childish, name calling behaviour. You’ve demonstrated you knew all along what ‘name calling’ is. So again, you’ve demonstrated what you demonstrated so many times before – you are dishonest at heart. Let me join in, you are a compulsive liar.
I look forward to your continuing demonstrations.
peter you can insult people without calling them names or giving them nicknames.. you can mock them without mocking them. watch how willard does it. it looks like logic but in the end its the same game, played by different rulz, but to the same effect. That is what makes it especially evil. Its why you should respect him.
Mosher,
I dodn’t understand how your last sentence applies? Respect someone who is beneath contempt, lacks integrity, lacks decency and whose moral and ethical values are repugnant?
Perhaps you mean respect a dishonest person like you respect a thief, a murderer, a scumbag or an enemy. If that’s what you mean then I understand, but I have no respect for Willard, and little for many of the people I could name but won’t that behave in similar vein on this (and other climate) web sites. Kent Clizbe gave a pretty good description of these people, their motives and modus operandi in an earlier comment here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/25/misinformation-disinformation-and-conflict/#comment-404103
> you are dishonest at heart. […] you are a compulsive liar.
Do you mean these in a name calling way?
You might prefer “your arguments are dishonest at heart” or “your arguments are compulsive lies”.
That ought to make all the difference in the world.
Yep, Coming down to you level of kindergarten behaviour to make the point.
> Coming down to your level […]
You dominate that level, Peter. I can recall the incessant vitriol that inspired MattStat your nickname. New Denizens might ignore how often you went nuclear.
Please return to your policy of ignoring my comments and focus on your recurring monologue that ends up with nuclear.
Willard,
Please return to your policy of ignoring my comments and no doubt you will continue to focus name calling, vitriol, and dishonesty.
But who is Willard, really?
Mosh
There is no doubt that Josef Goebbels was a master of the German language, in particular the use of this language to evoke emotions (mostly hate and fear).
This is not necessarily a positive or constructive trait to be admired or respected.
Max
But who is John Galt, John?
But really… who is Willard? And what really is an audit? And really, why are we here? Really…..
> Why are we here?
What is to be here, really, John?
You sure it was here?
What?
That we were to wait.
But what is?
What’s what?
What is there?
Everything:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_What_There_Is
Very good Willard. Everything is happening.
Too bad for Mister Jones.
Judith;
Edit: “effect doesn’t exit? ” exist
‘Disinformation’ has political roots, as a term, I believe. It requires knowingly inserting faulty interpretations into public media to block acceptance of more rigorous ones. It is thus quite distinct from mere “error”.
you wont get to the bottom of what mann meant by looking at a dictionary or by applying any analysis. You find out what he meant by asking him,
Mike, what did you mean?
Give him more rope.. err more charity..
Good way to end up with a blown fuse.
Steven,
Mike made a big reputation by his early work. It turned out he made some serious errors (in data and procedures, and his behavior to questions for more details), but his entire reputation was on the line. Under these conditions, he felt people were attacking him and he responded poorly. His entire technical life is under threat. He is throwing out claims (including choice of words) he has not carefully considered, in desperation, to negate the threat by making the people that make claims seem incompetent or unreasonable. I would feel more charity toward him if he had not trashed almost everyone who just wanted to clarify facts. Initially he was not attacked by fact seekers. His responses and collusion with a small group to smash the skeptics led to the bitter responses later.
And the Earth continues to cool.
Slowly, relentlessly, remorselessly.
Anyone disagree?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
The indescribable light-weight-ness of being
Michael Mann.
The hockey stick Mann is a serial liar. His sole talent is spewing lies and fabricating data. For this professor, cheating is a career. I wonder how he can keep a straight face in front of his students.
Rhetorical point scoring is not science and it is not debate. The reader is constantly affirming their confirmation biases or disaffirming them, depending whether a sufficient number of their hot buttons have been pressed or not pressed.
Unfortunately, the courts have not been very accommodating to people who wish to take the legal path and in any case, if a person in public life chooses to ignore their financial advisors by not protecting their assets through the use of trusts, then there is some prospect that a court judgment might just become enforceable.
“A fact is something that has really occurred or is actually the case.”
Someone should explain this to the Forecast The Facts cult:
http://forecastthefacts.org/contact_us/
Steven Mosher:
“watch how willard does it. it looks like logic but in the end its the same game, played by different rulz, but to the same effect.”
I remember a willard who used to sign off with “thank you for your non-responsive concerns”, “thank you for your infelicitous concerns”, and such like. I wondered at the time why the warmists darkly warned/dared me about getting into a tete-a-tete with him. Was this supposed to be devastating rhetoric, I wondered? But I suppose to people like “Lotharsson” and “bill”, whose knowledge of logic comes from wikipedia, “willard” must have seemed like a god.
Same guy?
Cf.
http://rabett.blogspot.ca/2013/03/laughing-at-those-who-laugh-at-science.html
But what really is logic?
Unless you go with narrow definitions which try to exclude natural language, it’s discourse that hangs together and makes sense to the sensible, whether or not they agree with it.
But, really, what is a definition?
Oh, so you are the same Willard. (Who’s Tony Willard, or Willard Tony? Who or what am I thinking of?)
‘Sup Willard.
Yes, I also recommend that everyone in the world read that classic thread you link to. To repeat, that’s:
http://rabett.blogspot.ca/2013/03/laughing-at-those-who-laugh-at-science.html
It has bilateral endorsement, folks.
I gave a description rather than a definition. Definitions are provided by the wise. Since wisdom is the domain of the Wis (by definition), which is extinct (according to the late Frank Zappa), we’re left with post-Wis-woollyness.
I thought you were saying something about narrow definitions, Tall One.
Your description is along these lines:
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Logi/LogiBoge.htm
But what is a description, really, anyway?
***
As to Brad’s question, here would be Willard Tony:
http://rabett.blogspot.ca/2012/08/cognitive-dissonance-and-good-advice.html
Pearls, Brad. I got as far as Susan not seeing herself in the mirror, which displayed willard removing his dentures, but couldn’t take any more.
==================
Thanks Kim! Sometimes I question why I bother on those sites, knowing that the majority of my audience will inevitably consist of humorless cultists. But then, once a year or so, I bump into a fellow infidel who reminds me that the occasional reader does exist who actually understands what I wrote, and that makes it all worth it! Well, almost worth it. Say… 50% worth it, ranging down to about 15, 20% or so. That’s a bit optimistic, it’s prolly in the single digits. 2 to 3% worth it, something like that. Anyway I always enjoy your work. We may be an army of Davids but it’s important to lend morale to each other when the opportunity arises, I think.
I was wont to go alaruming at alarmist sites, but I’m all stove up from trying to fit in, so now fit firewood and novel warfare into the stove, thrilled, chilled.
================
More hope for an occasional reader:
> Otherwise I shall be forced to teach you the difference between a catastrophic anthropogenic warming disbeliever and a dolphin.
http://wottsupwiththatblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/okay-roger-an-acknowledgement/comment-page-1/#comment-7183
“But what is a logic/definition/description, really, anyway?”
Willard reminds me of something my philosophy of mind tutor said:
The philosophy of language is a bit like going to a good restaurant;
And eating the menu…
Eating menus sharpens teeth, and then they lacerate the tongue.
===========
It seems to me that this thread harks back to the one entitled “The ethics of framing science”. In a discussion, it one’s opponent is merely misinformed, then a reasonable discussion is entirely feasible. If, however, one’s opponent is using disinformation, this provides a reason why any discussion can be considered impossible.
So I suggest this ploy of the warmists claiming skeptics are providing disinformation is merely another example of how warmists are trying to avoid having a proper scientific debate with the skeptics.
Steyn’s and NRO’s lawyers could win the case in all of five minutes if they understood how science works—which would be very lucky—and had a judge who understood same—which they apparently don’t.
What non-scientists may not realize is that there’s no need to prove Mann’s hockey-bacilliform vision of thermohistory wrong.
To demonstrate the fraudulence of his work is much simpler than that.
His paper was unreplicable. Occult. Faith-based. It withheld ‘enabling detail’, to use the language of patent law.
And Mann will have a very hard time pretending he didn’t know this. He spent years defending his work from decryption by outsiders, which demonstrates an intent that was, shall we say, other than scientific. This is all public knowledge by now, isn’t it? Those interested should read the WSJ article in which Mann is quoted as saying—seven years after his paper came out—that “Giving them the algorithm would be giving into the intimidation tactics these people are engaged in.” With that one sentence he surely earns himself a unique place among all, ahem, “scientists” in modern history.
Ergo, there is no known way to include the infamous HS paper in the genre “science.”
Yet Mann was tirelessly complicit in passing it off as a work of science.
At the risk of obviousness, there is a word for the misrepresentation of non-science as science: pseudoscience. Which is a species of… you guessed it… academic fraud.
Case dismissed.
Note that the temperature in the Middle Ages is completely uninformative. Mann fanboiz waving around subsequent “confirmations” of the HS need to appreciate that no such finding can ever validate Mann’s document, or rehabilitate it into the world of science, because agreeing with does not constitute replicating. (Nor does replicating entail agreeing—as McIntyre found when he finally became the first person on earth able to retrace Mann’s statistical [mis]steps—but that’s another story.)
Even if some vaguely bacilliform drawing turns out to be historically veridical, Mann’s paper remains an exemplar of parascientific creative writing. After all, with apologies to Professor Wegman,
correct result + secret methods = not science
But hey, for all I know, information reminiscent of junior-school algebra would only cause Judge Coombs’ eyes to glaze over in confusion and boredom.
A lovely fantasy but it runs up against some serious problems. The question of whether Mann engaged in good science is a question of fact. That means the judge does not get to decide it on a motion to dismiss. The jury gets to decide it after a trial. And a D.C. jury comes from a place that voted 85% for Gore for president…and has gone to public schools that teach “the cause” uncritically.
The issue that the judge gets to decide (and I believe she decided it wrongly) is whether Mann has alleged enough to even get the case to the jury…in terms of whether Steyn had “actual malice.” And the only thing he alleged in that regard was the “investigations” that cleared him — i.e., if you don’t believe the government when it says I’m good, then you must be malicious and I can soak you for damages.
The question I’d love to ask, if I appeared in the case, is this:
What if George Wallace had “investigated” Sullivan? What if he’d had three independent investigations…one by Bull Connor, one by Robert Patterson, and one by, I dunno, Clancy McClanclan…and they’d all said Sullivan was pure as the driven snow. Would the Supreme Court have had to affirm in New York Times v. Sullivan? Because that’s what the judge’s ruling seems to imply here.
(Okay, technically, if the Supreme Court in Sullivan had thought like Judge Combs-Greene here, they’d’ve remanded instead of affirming or dismissing…but it’d’ve amount to the same thing, because an Alabama jury in the 60’s was just as eager to find for their own man against the out-of-state paper as a D.C. jury will be to find for Captain Planet versus the evil conservative…my slogan version remains the same: “What if Wallace had ‘investigated’ Sullivan?”)
“A lovely fantasy”
Thanks—I thought it was pretty good too! :-p
“the judge does not get to decide it on a motion to dismiss. The jury gets to decide it after a trial.”
Oh. It’s looking like more than a five-minute hearing. :-(
” And a D.C. jury comes from a place that voted 85% for Gore for president…and has gone to public schools that teach “the cause” uncritically. ”
All the more reason not to dispute the Hockey Stick thesis itself (the idea that denies historical climate change and asserts unprecedented modern warming) but simply point out its sordid, pseudoscientific, and therefore intellectually-fraudulent provenance. In the WSJ article, it’s on public record that methodological information needed to reproduce the graph was still being prised out of Mann 7 years later! The non-scientific public may think that’s more-or-less forgivable so long as the graph is “correct”—a pretty intuitive argument!—but put any scientist on the stand and they’d be happy to explain that no, science doesn’t, and can’t possibly, work that way.
“if you don’t believe the government when it says I’m good”
The twist here, I think, is that if Steyn didn’t believe PSU or the government, then, by definition, his criticisms of Mann were sincere and non-malicious. They can’t simultaneously argue that Steyn knew, and that he should have known but didn’t know, that Mann was god’s gift to science.
So it’s (surely?) not even necessary to argue that the farcical investigations were farcical. Isn’t it sufficient merely to show that Steyn himself didn’t take their findings seriously?
“The issue that the judge gets to decide (and I believe she decided it wrongly) is whether Mann has alleged enough to even get the case to the jury”
This reminds me, Rand Simberg has tweeted me an encouraging correction:
“Combs is no longer the judge in the case. The new one understands the law.”
What I want to know is if the new one understands science. If so, the judge will understand why the adjective “fraudulent” was not only protected rhetoric, but accurate. And that just leaves the jury…
“What if George Wallace had “investigated” Sullivan?”
These people you speak of… I do not know them. In my country we do not have these people. I shall do some reading. The principle you’re getting at is appallingly obvious though, to me at least.
Anyway Joseph, thanks for auditing my fantasy!
Regards
Brad
Joseph,
The other reason I’d argue that no reasonable person is under any obligation to take (say) the government’s investigation of Mann seriously is:
even with the best and most incorruptible and disinterested intentions, why would government officials be expected to be competent to investigate a question of scientific propriety? The scientific method is not at all intuitive, and most non-scientists really don’t know how science works and why it works that way, even though (to compound the problem) they seem to think it’s guessable. Was Mann investigated, judged and acquitted by scientists? (That’s not a rhetorical question: was he?) If not, why should anyone bother reading their findings?
Mann is a government-funded climate scientist, who produced papers supporting the case for more government.
Any government-funded investigation of him is bound to acquit.
A bit like police investigations into police brutality are. Or Climategate-implicated universities investigations into themselves did. In their own words, UEA’s Exoneration committee, funded by taxes, “played a blinder”.
Given the extremely liberal demographics of the probable jury, a useful analogy might be: You have reason to think your son or daughter is being felt up by the local Catholic priest; would you trust Rome to investigate?
Judith Curry,
I agree with you that knowledgeable people such as yourself need to keep speaking up:
“broader issues here in the framing of the climate debate which I try to address, and much of the framing has been to protect against Mann’s loudly proclaimed injustices.”
Peter Lang’s suggestion: do not kick a skunk has merit only if there is someplace for you to hide. Currently I don’t see any place where you can continue your own advocacy to address uncertainty in the climate science realm without directly confronting those who have the ears of the press and the ayes of the Government.
It seems to me that the theme of recent Climate Etc posts has been to revisit honesty and integrity as displayed (or not) by climate researchers.
I applaud your efforts by addressing dis/misinformation where it appears, for I believe that developing a climate of honesty and integrity in climate science requires practicing every day in every way the steps towards honesty and integrity. Your speaking out does not necessarily give pause to the likes of Mann & Schmidt &…, but what your speaking out does do, it encourages others, also knowledgeable to remain involved.
It seems to me that climate change as a political/economic movement becomes less engaging and less relevant when the science being discussed is in response to current observations, such as the pause.
The camel’s nose under the tent may have begun at the time of Climategate. The pause and lack of its explanation, plus the reintroduction of the concepts of abrupt climate change makes the Mannian name calling more likely than not reflecting his own intellectual panic.
Somebody needs to write a book on “Merchants of Heartfelt Overconfidence”
Excellent!
Books like that have been written, such as “When Prophets Fail”: failure and scorn from others reinforces the faith of the faithful. We saw that in IPCC where increased evidence of inaccuracy produced increased confidence. It’s why when you debate the faithful, your goal should not be to persuade the faithful. If you have a mind to persuade someone, you should think of persuading the uncommitted.
“Merchants of Credulity” ?
Not exactly original, I know, but I call Oreskes’ and Conway’s novel
Merchants of Venice
Because, well, Singer, Seitz, Nierenberg, … nudge nudge… tight-knit cabal …. wink wink ….
“Merchants of Heartfelt Overfidence”
Is it really heartfelt though? Does Mann actually believe in algorithms that find hockey sticks in red noise? Or does he, like most alarmists, merely like the boost it gives to totalitarian ideology? (And his grants) .
Matthew R Marler
Yeah.
“We were once 90% certain that 2xCO2 ECS lies between 2.0 and 4.5 degC, but we are now 95% certain that it lies between 1.5 and 4.5 degC, giving us greater confidence (95% versus 90%) that most of the late 20thC warming was caused by AGW.”
Huh?
But I also believe that increased evidence of inaccuracy of past forecasts has produced more “fogging up” of the reports (comparing AR5 with AR4). Things are much less transparent with each report. This latest one is a disaster.
Max
Watching well-known alarmist Phil Plait addressing a JREF convention (“Don’t Be a Dick.”
), I found it more interesting than his advice about being polite when debating your opponents on the internet, the presumption of right and responsibility of Phil and his voluntarily associated, athiestic “rationalists,” for the reeducation and political conversion of other groups (religious believers, climate “deniers?”) to their point of view. To them, the need for correction of the other group is not in question. They clearly believe that their authority to perform this correction is natural and self evident. In Phil’s mind, only their tactics are in question. His message in a nutshell is be polite and kind to your inferiors and they’ll more likely accept the reeducation they so richly deserve.
You can see the same sort of self-designated superiority in the work of Lewandowsky, where it’s perhaps nowhere LESS deserved, Michael Mann, Peter Gleick, David Suzuki, Paul Erlich, Tamino, Greg Laden, Joe Romm, and others. There passion and “caring” for the environment, combined with their assumption of their own objective understanding, create a false sense of moral superiority in their own minds.
It’s a short step from this sort of hubris to becoming outright fascist oppressors, IF the requisite political power eventually lands in their laps. I wish the climate alarmists could grasp this point. They’ve taken some very dodgy statistical manipulations of a complex physical system, and with their eco-warrior troops, claimed a non-existent moral superiority. This imaginary superiority leads them to presume the right of political domination over we “deniers.” I think this is a big part of the opposition to their oppressive solutions.
I sincerely beleive that one day not too far in the future, Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt and Tamino and all these other would-be fascist alarmists are going to be reviled as propagandist deceivers and liars. Climate alarmism will be an athropological case study in the manipulation of populations by “expert” bureaucratic agents of government.
That is my fearless prediction. Let’s wait a hundred years and see if I have analysed this correctly.
http://www.craigellachie.us/powervision/Mathematics_Philosophy_Science/information.html
Just a thought.
The “American Psychologist” catapulted a now-discredited theory of “Positive Psychology” (Fredrickson, Losada, 2005) to fame. It takes 300 years to build a tradition: keep up a good work with peers who won’t admit that they don’t understand convoluted mathematics.
Judith – This is the key quote from your post:
“People discussing misinformation and disinformation in the context of a scientific debate are commonly doing so in context of frustrations and failures in their own propaganda to stimulate a policy response based on their view of what ‘science says’.”
Hansen and Mann may have been scientists at one time, but they have long since become activists who manufacture pseudo-scientific information (model outputs) based on models carefully designed to produce pre-defined outcomes in service of their activist agenda. In other words, where they may once have actually sought to understand how things work, they long ago gave up on that, built a model of how they think the world works (which is catastrophic climate change) and they just keep re-cranking the models every few months to keep the panic going and the grant money flowing.
> keep the panic going and the grant money flowing.
What is a grant, really, and who is Kenneth Green?
Here is one:
http://www.aei.org/scholar/kenneth-p-green/
Joseph might not need to search in obscure forums anymore.
“In terms of actual scientific facts in climate science, we have the infrared emission spectra of CO2.”
The facts are:
1. the year
2. the QBO
3. the solar-terrestrial-climate weave
“Lewandowsky”
I don’t know how many times I have heard on other message boards that AGW is a socialist (or UN) plot to destroy capitalism. There is also the strain of thinking that climate scientists are colluding together (e.g. through peer review) to promote a hoax. And that politicians are colluding to promote that hoax to the public. That might not be the majority opinion here, but I don’t think it can be denied there are large numbers of people among the general public who believe that it is some vast conspiracy or hoax.
“there are large numbers of people among the general public who believe that it is some vast conspiracy or hoax”
Ya think?
I wonder why?
Andrew
I agree Lewandowsky is on to something.
I think so, too.
Now what do we do about it?
Andrew
http://newzealandclimatechange.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-and-corruption-of-peer-review/
Decide for yourself if they are colluding to promote a hypothesis. It’s a bureaucrat ‘plot’.
The alarmists’ desperate “Conspiracy” Strawman
Once again this pathetic argument has been dragged out, this time by Joseph. A clear act of desperation, like sending 12-year-old boys to fight in battle.
The basic idea is to try and tar as conspiracy theorists, those who do bother to follow the money, and – unlike the likes of Joseph – decline to systematically blind themselves to obvious vested interest at work biasing government-funded climate science, that just ‘coincidently’ ends up recommending more taxes and power for its paymaster.
The truth is almost 180 degrees away from this. IOW, it would require a conspiracy for sorts – a conspiracy of honesty – for government-funded climate scientists to not have a bias towards alarmism. There would need to be some sort of secret pact where integrity somehow displaced government’s vested interest, and government climate science was oriented towards truth and objectivity, ignoring the ideological and financial imperatives that now characterize it.
The (mostly implicit) claim that anything even remotely approaching such objectivity exists, is the the only conspiracy theory afoot here. The reality of government climate science being Climategate, and the ensuing lack of any repentance over it. Our friend Joseph really is in cloud-cuckoo-land on this.
“The truth is almost 180 degrees away from this. IOW, it would require a conspiracy for sorts – a conspiracy of honesty – for government-funded climate scientists to not have a bias towards alarmism.”
Or! Or…. now hear me out for a second: a conspiracy of time-travelling Jewish weapon scientists on a desparate mission to retrospectively win the Tobacco Wars using the Climate Wars as a proxy.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: I’ve just described the plot of a certain well-known alt-history thriller by those enfants terribles of the paranoid style in American literature, Oreskes and Conway. Ha ha, very funny, Brad.
But here’s what Joe Camel doesn’t want you to know:
It’s all true!
“Gail: government-funded climate scientists to not have a bias towards alarmism”
I thought the claim is (and often is) that climate science is a fraud. The results are made up. This would require other scientist to ignore this fraud. There is a difference in being wrong (as science often can be) and intentionally committing fraud. So this would involve a conspiracy not only among climate scientists but among them and ALL of the major scientific organizations who accept the theory.
On another subject we test how long it take for Wikipedia Guardian of the Truth to cancel a citation.
few days ago a corporate published an article which claim something that some guardian of the truth dn’t like (the self appointed watchdoc that are described in wikipedia groupthink article).
This article is published by a serious swedish research consortium, managing serious project, funded by the big energetic utilitities of Sweden and by clients, and and mostly in charge for the energetic policy research… No doubt it is a credible source, even if you can criticize that article as a mistake, like when AIEA says something. (they also published on arxiv, …)
some optimistic contributor added that citation to that public corporate magazine.
2 minutes later the update was canceled
that is disinformation.
those people don’t even realize they are digging the tomb of wikipedia.
The projection is plain to see. Pure hypocrisy.
The “climate scientists” need to be sidelined, ignored.
The skeptics need to appeal to moral and ethical arguments rather than empirical ones because the faithful are incapable of scientific analysis.
Mannn et al are misanthropic genocidists, for that is the actual result of the policies they promote. Malthusian, social Darwinist and racist supremacism.
Call them out.
You mean their arguments are genocidal.
Thankgod for the skeptics and their calm rationality.
“You mean their arguments are genocidal.”
Aletho said nothing of the sort.
Are you a mind-reader? Perhaps you should try being a word-reader.
Try to keep up Brad.
Michael,
Brad’s right. Aletho said:
> Mannn et al are misanthropic genocidists.
Aletho has not said
> Mannn et al’s ARGUMENTS are genocidal.
Bear in mind that it makes all the difference in the world.
Congratulations! You’ve now excelled even yourself in sleaziness, willard.
I once cut off a (solecistic) exclamation mark when quoting a question you asked. This omission was perfectly excusable because questions are supposed to end in question marks.
You’ve repaid my innocent omission with a crime of commission by dishonestly REPLACING aletho’s comma with a period!
This, in a clumsy and transparent attempt to pretend that aletho’s clarification does not exist:
for that is the actual result of the policies they promote
Did you really think this would go undetected? Then I’ve overestimated your intellect as well as your morals.
You are ridiculous.
> You’ve repaid my innocent omission with a crime of commission by dishonestly REPLACING aletho’s comma with a period!
I could have used “[…]” to make it a direct quote. The paraphrase is perfectly sound, as it suffices to make the distinction with the second sentence, which was an hypothetical sentence, and not a even a quote. There are different usages of quotation marks, more than ten in fact.
But what is a quote, really?
***
For memory’s sake, Brad is referring to this comment:
> We know how you love Doritos, Brad. And just in case you do wonder: no, I’m not really talking about Doritos.
http://wottsupwiththatblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/okay-roger-an-acknowledgement/comment-page-1/#comment-7234
Readers should see that Brad’s “questions are supposed to end in question marks” misrepresent my remark. It was not a question, but an exclamation!
***
Of course, Brad ropes-a-dopes from the main point, which was that Michael’s observation about the Denizens’ calm rationality holds whether aletho refers to arguments or persons.
And in fact Brad completely missed Michael allusion, e.g.:
> You might prefer “your arguments are dishonest at heart” or “your arguments are compulsive lies”.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/25/misinformation-disinformation-and-conflict/#comment-404246
Perhaps Brad should stick to Doritos. We all know how he loves them.
Neverending Willard, caught quote-doctoring, retreats to:
“But what is a quote, really?”
But what is truth?, asked Pontius Pilate. Jesus Christ!
I suppose it depends on what your definition of “Bill Clinton” Bill Clinton.
But who is Lionel Hutz, Marge, if you know what I mean?
Willard never ends:
“I could have used “[…]” to make it a direct quote.”
Yes. If by “direct” you mean “honest”.
“The paraphrase is perfectly sound, as it suffices to make the distinction with the second sentence,”
Your “paraphrase”—if that’s what you call it when you take a verbatim quote but mutilate the punctuation so as to hide the original author’s intent—is perfectly unsound, as it suffices to, well, hide the original author’s intent.
Try calling that kind of trick “sound” in any academic department of any university.
Other than a climatology department, I mean.
“And in fact Brad completely missed Michael allusion, e.g.:”
In which case I apologise to Michael for the honest mistake of missing “Michael allusion.” I don’t follow these threads as obsessively as perhaps I should. I will “[t]ry to keep up,” personal schedule permitting.
But we were talking about your dishonesty, Willard.
Brad,
Michael may have been right. Try to keep up.
Asking “what is a X, really?” was a theme of the thread. It echoed Judy’s rhetorical question, which introduced some definitional efforts. If you “read the blog”, as bender implored, you’d know where Judy borrowed the genre, i.e. parsomatics.
I know what is a quote, Brad. Just as I know what is a claim. And aletho’s claim was that Mike et alii (whoever to whom that open list refers) are genocidists. That aletho justified his claim (by what followed his “for”) does not change that claim, Brad, however hard you’d try to wave your arms around a dot.
Telling aletho that he should tell that the ARGUMENTS should be called genocidal alluded to another theme of the thread, a theme that echoed a distinction by Judy which even GaryM argued cuts no ice.
So please try to keep up, Brad. If you prefer to armwave about dots, I think Mark asked Judy to issue a correction a while ago. It was met by an army of crickets. The error seems to have confused Josh, whose cartoon now misrepresents what Rob said.
No, Scott.
Godwin cannot be applied to discussions about actual genocide where it is entirely appropriate to utilize the term.
This is not an example of hyperbolic name calling. I am describing the real-world outcomes of raising the price of energy: misery, starvation, disease and large scale deaths.
Disinformation in IPCC AR5 RCP8.5 as seen by this “rational skeptic”
IPCC’s “worst case business as usual scenario RCP8.5” is being framed as “what will very likely happen by 2100 if we do not begin mitigating human GHG emissions (i.e. CO2) now”.
This scenario ASS-U-MEs:
– CO2 will increase from the 2012 concentration of 394 ppmv to a 2100 level of 1120 ppmv
– At “80% of equilibrium”, this will result in radiative forcing of 80% of 8.5 W/m2 and 3.7ºC warming, using an ASS-U-Med mean 2xCO2 equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3ºC
It is a “high-coal, high forcing, high end climate change” scenario.
The 1120 ppmv CO2 concentration used as the basis for the projected warming is essentially the same level obtained by using a straight exponential formula by “curve fitting” the past increase, ignoring future changes in human population (the ones emitting the CO2 in the first place).
This seems silly, but how realistic is it?
The rate of human population growth is projected (UN, US Census Bureau) to slow down significantly over the 21stC (it already has started to slow down from rates seen in the 1970s to 1990s), with human population reaching a bit more than 10 billion by the end of the century (compared to around 7 billion in 2012).
From 1970 to 2010 the per capita emission of CO2 increased by 10%.
If we project a future 30% increase in per capita CO2 emissions over the 21stC, we arrive at a total cumulative increase of around 250 ppmv above today to 650 ppmv CO2 by 2100.
To reach the RCP8.5 level of 1120 ppmv, the added CO2 would have to be around 720 ppmv, or a global average per capita CO2 emission level higher than that of the USA today, or around four times the current global level (rather than 30% higher). This is obviously absurd.
So IPCC has exaggerated the ASS-U-Med CO2 increase by a factor of around three.
In addition, IPCC still uses its previously ASS-U-Med 2xCO2 equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3ºC. Based on several recent independent, observation-based studies, this 2xCO2 ECS is arguably exaggerated by another factor of at least 1.5:1.
So the total RCP8.5 prediction is based on ASS-U-Med parameters that are exaggerated by over four times
If we correct the ASS-U-Med IPCC parameters to something more realistic, we end up with “business as usual” warming to 2100 of well under 2ºC.
Studies indicate that the first 2.2ºC warming above today’s levels will have a net beneficial effect for humanity and our environment.
So the whole RCP8.5 scenario can be written off as contrived disinformation with the intent of inciting fear, and the resulting CAGW hysteria as unrealistic.
Max
The major change between IPCC’s AR4 and AR5 reports was the new “information” on increased projected SL rise from today to 2100.
Instead of a projected max. SL rise of 59 cm, we now have 82 cm (or even a meter, if you believe Gavin Schmidt on RealClimate!).
The big difference is allegedly due to projections of more rapid decline of the two major ice sheets (Greenland, Antarctica) than previously assumed, based on some preliminary GRACE data. A significant part of this is attributed to “rapid dynamics” (rather than melting), but confidence levels are low on this.
But, as another denizen commented here, IPCC is missing a key piece of the puzzle in its projections (I lost the link to his comment, but have the link to the study he cited).
The key missing piece is the net contribution to SL rise from groundwater depletion worldwide.
http://www.waterworld.com/articles/wwi/print/volume-25/issue-5/groundwater-development-flow-modeling/groundwater-depletion-linked-to-rising.html
This is an interesting study, and (if it’s valid) it does, indeed, show that SL rise resulting from net groundwater depletion is significant.
If we take the cited net groundwater depletion figures since 1960, these would result in somewhere between 0.35 and 0.8 mm/year SL rise since 1960.
Tide gauge records show us that SL rose by around 1.8 mm/year on average since 1960, so this factor could explain a significant portion of the rise.
As a check, IPCC tells us in AR5 that all landed glacier melt (including estimates for Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets) contributed a total of 621 km3/year or around 1.7 mm/year SL rise since 1990.
No estimates exist for the period 1960-1990, but if we assume the annual glacial contribution was half that of the 1990-2012 period, this would mean that SL rise resulting from groundwater depletion represents around one-third to two-thirds of the estimated SL rise from glacial melt.
So, if IPCC ignores this factor (and the cited study is valid), IPCC is either overestimating the amount of SL rise resulting from glacial melt or from thermal expansion.
Which is it?
Max
“The rate of human population growth is projected (UN, US Census Bureau) to slow down significantly over the 21stC (it already has started to slow down from rates seen in the 1970s to 1990s), with human population reaching a bit more than 10 billion by the end of the century (compared to around 7 billion in 2012).”
Let’s say a billion or more people from the developing world begin living more western lifestyles by 2100. How much more energy will we need to accommodate those lifestyles?
There is no climate mis/disinformation campaign
That is a tough hypothesis to support.
For it to be true, there must be no combination of two or more people that are:
attempting to cherry pick data,
hide analysis curves in plain sight,
apply pressure to get journal editors fired,
to have conflicts of interest in peer review,
to acknowledge conflicts of interest and promise to address them — in two years,
moving the goal posts
multiple web-sites catagorized as “warmist” or “denier”.
etc.
Now, if the hypothesis is rewritent slightly:
“There is not ONE climate mis/disinformation campaign”
I’d have no objection. Given the number of combinations of people in fallout zone of climate science, the probability that is ZERO or ONE campaign is fanishingly small.
correction:
Given the number of potential combinations of people in climate science and its political fallout zone, the probability of as few as ONE mis/disinformation campaigns is vanishingly small.
-“There is not ONE climate mis/disinformation campaign”
I’d have no objection.-
But I could say there has never been “ONE climate mis/disinformation campaign”. There isn’t one campaign to elect one president for one party
each year. It’s congressional races. It’s people involved furthering there interest. No shortage backstabbing within a party. And there legal and organized effort to make it about electing one dude president.
Speaking political all this mis/disinformation is “proper” way to run any campaign. And it’s exactly what is meant by politicizing the science of climate science.
There proof of this- climategate. Another proof just concrete is lack of much progress in climate science over last 50 years.
It’s recipe to make people very stupid.
Hypothesis:
If there were no mis/disinformation conspiracies, there would be no Advocates wearing camouflage as scientists.
Mentally consider the Venn Diagram involving:
Misinformation
Disinformation
Advocacy
Where falls the circumstance of deliberately withholding (editing out) valid information that harms an Advocate’s case? This is part and parcel to Advocacy. Is that also misinformation? Is it disinformation? Even though it is withheld truth rather than falsehood, because it is an intentional act to sway or convince, I argue it falls in the disinformation domain.
A (Legal) Advocate may not proffer information or evidence known to be false., but an Advocate hired by a client is expected to not disclose truthful evidence that harms the client’s case.
The ABA Code of Ethics goes farther. By Advocate rule 3.3, a “lawyer may refuse to offer evidence, …. that the lawyer reasonably believes is false,” but does not know it to be false. So an Advocate “may” offer evidence without disclosing its untrustworthiness.
Would the proffer of dubious information be “misinformation”, “disinformation”, or just a socially acceptable part of advocacy? I can make a case it is an intersection of all three domains.
Contract that with an honest estimate of uncertainty. That is not mis/disinformation. While it could be used by an Advocate, voicing of uncertainty is not an act of advocacy per se.
JC,
I am delighted with this comment:
“In terms of actual scientific facts in climate science, we have the infrared emission spectra of CO2. The rest of what passes for ‘information’ in the parlance of Lewandowsky, Mann etc. is really hypotheses or theories.”
I can only wish that the various climatologists and the people here would print this out giant sized and paste it on the wall in front of them.
The next step is to realize a computer model is not proof of a hypothesis, but the encoding of the hypothesis as a model, and that you can’t confirm the models by running your data, and the model output through a blender and declaring it a statistical match.
This alone would have saved the global economy trillions of wasted money.
For Bob Droege –
http://climateaudit.org/2013/10/28/the-ipcc-southern-hemisphere-reconstructions/#comment-445124
Dear Dr Curry
You are Mann’s intellectual superior he has no defence to this other than to squeal as loudly as he can.
He has no value as a scientist and though sticks and stones may break our bones Mann’s words will never hurt us.
Nos da
magnificent post, very informative. I ponder why the other specialists of this sector don’t understand this.
You should continue your writing. I’m sure, you have a huge readers’ base already!