by Judith Curry
I have been traveling this week, so I haven’t been keeping up with everything that has been going on, but here are a few topics for discussion. I hope that you will bring up others.
Heartland Conference
The 6th Heartland International Climate Conference was held last week. It is billed on their web page as
Dozens of think tank cosponsors and hundreds of scientists will gather in an effort to “restore the scientific method” to its rightful place in the debate over the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change.
The theme of the conference, “Restoring the Scientific Method,” acknowledges the fact that claims of scientific certainty and predictions of climate catastrophes are based on “post-normal science,” which substitutes claims of consensus for the scientific method. This choice has had terrible consequences for science and society. Abandoning the scientific method led to the “Climategate” scandal and the errors and abuses of peer review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The scientists speaking at this conference, and the hundreds more who are expected to attend, are committed to restoring the scientific method. This means abandoning the failed hypothesis of man-made climate change, and using real science and sound economics to improve our understanding of the planet’s ever-changing climate.
The program is much smaller than the 2009 Conference, I guess the funding has decreased? There was live streaming available of the conference, but apparently no videos that you can replay. I was hoping that the ppt presentations would be available, but I haven’t seen them. I would appreciate being pointed to interesting presentations. There is some discussion on WUWT, where the commenters thought that Bob Carter’s talk was good.
Joe Romm disses the conference here.
FOI
Some interest FOI issues this past week.
The AAAS has prepared a statement entitled “Statement of the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Regarding Personal Attacks on Climate Scientists” . The statement is concerned by both death threats and FOI requests against scientist, which could have a chilling effect on the scientists willingness to conduct research.
The AAAS didn’t see too concerned about the Greenpeace FOI requests that uncovered substantial oil company funding for skeptic Willie Soon.
Andy Revkin makes these remarks:
However challenging and time consuming it may be to respond to such requests, scientists and their institutions, when working under federal or state grants, shouldn’t get special consideration because the workload might discourage them from doing work on contentious questions.
That doesn’t mean scientists and their associations shouldn’t loudly complain about it. The public should know just how much taxpayer money has to go into responding to document fishing expeditions.
Fred Pearce has an article entitled “Oxford academic wins right to read UEA climate data.”
Jonathan Jones, physics professor at Oxford University and self-confessed “climate changeagnostic”, used freedom of information law to demand the data that is the life’s work of the head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones. UEA resisted the requests to disclose the data, but this week it was compelled to do so.
Still, very little thought given as to whether, “Aliens Cause Global Warming.”
“There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd… Let’s think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horse****?” (Michael Crichton)
The entire climate scandal is crumbling tonight!
Thanks, Judith, and congratulations.
Oliver K. Manuel
Today Science even posted my comments on the unfolding climate scandal!
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/331978/title/Science_%2B_the_Public__AAAS_board_defends_climate_scientists
All is well,
Oliver
Probably nothing can now save the world leaders who inadvertently shot themselves in the foot by having federal bureaucrats direct climate scientists to fudge experimental observations:
a.) In setting boundary conditions for
the results of scientific investigations,
b.) Politicians have inadvertently made
honest science a defiance of government.
What a heck of a mess! Thanks, Professor Curry for your role in exposing this affair.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
IUGG 2011 Conference: Earth on the Edge Science for a Sustainable Planet is on this week.
http://www.iugg2011.com/
List of papers looks interesting – lots of scientific research happening:
http://www.iugg2011.com/pdf/IUGG2011_FinalEntireProgram.6June.pdf
We thank Don Keiller and Jonathan Jones for professing science.
================
Crowns of olive leaf
Don Keiller, Jonathan Jones.
Oxoniensis.
========
the climate story is so dead, not even Heartland can get enough funding any longer.
In June, 2011, the NIPCC provided summaries for 50 articles relevant to the global warming debate, ranging from rainfall records to medieval warming to CO2 fertilization.
Roy Spencer posted: More Evidence that Global Warming is a False Alarm: A Model Simulation of the last 40 Years of Deep Ocean Warming. He provides an excel diffusion model with a best fit for a low feedback.
(Next week Spencer wil correct two counteracting errors in the spreadsheet.)
At ICCC6, Nicola Scafetta noted his next paper (hopefully out in the next week or two) will show a major impact of solar cycles on climate.
Bob Carter’s new book Climate: The Counter-Consensus – A Palaeoclimatologist Speaks was available in the UK in May, in Australia in June, and in the US in July.
While we wait for Carter’s ICCC6 presentation, you can watch his Dec. 2010 presentation.
He gives a delightful a geoogist’s perspective.
e.g., Temperature change with elevation is 6 deg/km = 0.6 deg C / 100 m. i.e the century global warming of 0.6C is equivalent to a 100 m change in elevation.
Across Australia south to north there is 18 C increase in temperature across 3000 km. i.e., Moving 150 km towards the equator gives 1 C increase in temperature = twice the probable change from 1 century warming.
See 4000-5000 ppm CO2 in the geological record ~ 500 million years ago. Plants reduced that below 1000 ppm.
Doubling CO2 from 280 to 560 ppm is still CO2 starvation. Commercial greenhouses grow plants above 1000 ppm CO2 because they grow much better. etc.
He focuses on preparing for natural hazards. e.g. They had 1 m rain in 6 days = 6″/day from monsoon trough sitting over Queensland.
Earthquake fault runs through Wellington.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. The Bob Carter stuff is great and soemthing I can show my kids to help them resist the fear they are constantly bombarded with.
Chip
ICCC videos will be posted at Heartland’s Environment & Climate News under Multimedia.
While you wait, you can watch Past ICCC Conferences e.g.
4th International Conference on Climate Change
Since the alarm over “anthropogenic global warming” is assumed to be primarily driven by fossil fuel, see also the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO). e.g. ASPO Conferences
ASPO 9 2011
ASPO-USA 2010 Peak Oil Conference
“He gives a delightful a geoogist’s perspective.
e.g., Temperature change with elevation is 6 deg/km = 0.6 deg C / 100 m. i.e the century global warming of 0.6C is equivalent to a 100 m change in elevation.”
Why on earth is that a geololgist’s perspective? That’s just an irrelevant fact.
Carter’s arguments suck. He considers scientists’ properly graphing of the global temperature record to be “graphmanship” and trickery. Meanwhile he’s showing a graph of global temperature at 6:53 in the video that seem to be cut off after the Pinatubo driven low in 1991, conveniently hiding warming since then.
He emphasizes changes in the past but doesn’t explain how they fit in with low climate sensitivity.
He downplays warming over the 20th century even though it’s warming over the next century that’s the issue.
And he neglects the issue is the rate of CO2 rise, not the absolute amount. In fact CO2 being at such low levels today makes it much easier to double it. This may be the fastest rate that CO2 has ever risen logarithmically in Earth’s history. Carter doesn’t address any of this.
lolwot
re: “global warming of 0.6C is equivalent to a 100 m change in elevation.”
That is an important perspective – the total century change for a century can be accommodated by a 100 m (300 ft) change in elevation or about 120 km (~75 miles) in latitude.
Lay off the ad hominem attacks and address the scientific substance.
Carter is putting the magnitude of the change within the context of annual and geologically known temperature changes.
Carter shows that the warming over the next century is small compared to previous temperature changes.
Carter explicitly addresses both the rate of temperature and CO2 rise.
With higher CO2, plants would love it and increase growth. With logarithmic response, doubling from current gives a small change. Miskolczi finds evidence of H2O changes onto the global optical depth, but not of the CO2 signal over 61 years of available data.
See also Nicola Scafetta’s July 2011 presentation
Scafetta shows 96% of the temperature changes are from solar impact of a 60 year oscillations on top of long term trends. That does not leave much room for anthropogenic caused panic!
Dr. Curry, wouldn’t it behoove you to set the record straight? I understand, you’re a busy person. Perhaps you weren’t aware, but the FOI requests weren’t necessary. Dr. Soon and colleagues were upfront about their funding.
I quote, “Acknowledgements. This work was supported by funds from
the American Petroleum Institute (01-0000-4579), the Air
Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant AF49620-02-1-
0194) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(Grant NAG5-7635). The views expressed herein are those of
the authors and are independent of the sponsoring agencies.
We have benefitted greatly from the true and kind spirit of
research communications (including a preview of their
thoughts) with the late Jean Grove (who passed away on January
18, 2001), Dave Evans, Shaopeng Huang, Jim Kennett,
Yoshio Tagami and Referee #3. We thank John Daly, Diane
Douglas-Dalziel, Craig and Keith Idso for their unselfish contributions
to the references. We also thank the Editor, Chris
de Freitas, for very helpful editorial changes that improved
the manuscript. We are very grateful to Maria McEachern,
Melissa Hilbert, Barbara Palmer and Will Graves for invaluable
library help, and both Philip Gonzalez and Lisa Linarte
for crucial all-around help.”
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2003/23/c023p089.pdf
That’s not all that interesting. This is something, that anyone that has cared to know already knows.(My goodness!!! He put it in the paper!!!)
Apparently, Dr. Curry, what people don’t know, is how much funding “big oil” does for the alarmist side. Do you have any insight to such? I mean, is NASA typically in bed with big oil?
I’ve a feeling FOI is going to get real interesting real Soon.
I wasn’t criticizing Soon at all; he has been up front about his funding, and when the FOI request was received by his employer (Harvard-Smithsonian), they immediately comply. I included this example because of its counterpoint to the AAAS complaints about FOIs.
Just out of curiosity – does anyone have any sense about how many of the speakers at this conference on climate change have ever published papers on any topics even remotely related to climate change?
In the science sections?
Anthony Watts, Pat Michael, Roy Spencer and Denning ( the warmist)
I’m not sure about Idso and Ball.
So, there were two science tracks, with 6 speakers, and 4 of the 6 are published in the peer review as far as I know. Why the moronic question?
According to Desmog – Denning is absent from the list.
So (if Desmog is correct), that would leave a grand total of 3 speakers who have published scientific papers on topics related to climate change in peer reviewed journals?
At a conference on climate change….
Thanks for the answer. It was quite instructive.
More information here.
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2011/06/29/6th-iccc-speakers-mostly-not-scientists/
But this is not a scientific conference. The issue is assessment, which is not a science. The speakers are among the leaders in skeptical assessment, presenting their latest findings. Collectively they have probably published thousands of original articles. Is that not enough to qualify them as experts?
I’m not sure what you mean by “skeptical assessment,” and I’m not sure how you determine that “the issue is assessment.” The conference title says that the conference is on climate change – and the promotional statement says that it’s about “restoring the scientific method.”
I’d say that the promo statement is a bit hyperbolic given that a minority of the speakers are scientists, and only a minority of that minority have published papers on the science of climate change.
OK – it’s a promotional statement – not that big a deal if it’s somewhat misleading. Just tweaking y’all’s noses a bit.
But I would say that the low number of scientists speaking who have published papers on the science of climate change is reflective of the larger balance of scientific opinion on the topic of climate change. Of course, if I were prone to conspiratorial thinking, I could say that it is reflective of the power of the cabal to enforce silence my making any scientists who doubt the science fear for their livelihoods.
The real question is why isn’t Judith speaking at the conference?
Joshua, you speak as though you did not know what is going on, which I doubt very much. (Why you do this is an interesting question in itself.) Just to be literal, the conference is on the failure to properly apply the scientific method in recent climate science. It is not about climate per se, but rather about how climate science is being conducted. The speakers are experts on this topic. As am I by the way.
David –
I think that the conference specifically attempts to downplay the advocacy – political advocacy as well as scientific – that undergirds the conference and its focus on science. That is the point in questioning why a minority of the minority of speakers at the conference have published papers on the science of climate change.
Are there speakers at the conference who have published on the topic of how science is conducted independent of the context of climate change?
Are there speakers at the conference who have published on the topic of how science is conducted from a wide range of perspectives on the topic?
Are there speakers at the conference who have published on the science of climate change from a wide range of perspectives on that topic (my understanding is that Denning is not speaking).
Are there speakers at the conference from a range of political perspectives?
Are there speakers at the conference from a range of perspectives on the political and/or economic ramifications of climate change policy?
How many conferences do you go to where you will hear speakers from an exclusive band of perspectives on topics of vast complexity?
Joshua, I believe the answer to every one of your questions (except the last) is yes. As I said, these people have published thousands of articles on this topic. As for your last question I think most conferences fit this picture.
You should stop playing the “babe in the woods” or “clinically neutral armchair psychologist” card. State your position and defend it, like the rest of us.
David, have more respect; Joshua is the best that could be found. But your characterization is correct; he’s got nuttin’.
=============
David – my impression is that the answers to those questions (excepting the last one) would be no. You are more familiar with the conference than I. If you feel like taking the time, I would appreciate any references that would help me to understand how you derived your answers.
I must day, David – you are the first person on this forum who has accused me of “playing” neutral – or of not stating my perspective. It’s an interesting perspective.
My suggestion is that although most times I express my opinions sardonically, they are abundantly clear to people with the analytic skills characteristic of those who read this forum.
In case you need further, non-sardonic clarification, allow me to very briefly summarize my perspective: I see basic validity and fundamentally important points raised by those on the skeptical end of the “skeptical un-convinced/denier” spectrum. (I believe the same to be true from the “skeptical convince” end of the “skeptical convinced/believer” spectrum). When I come to a forum such as this one, and see an ill-defined conflation of the two ends of that (skeptical “un-convinced/denier”) scale presented in what seems to me to be wide-ranging and/or specious arguments, respond accordingly. I think that the science is done a disservice by extremism and tribal influence on both sides of the debate.
At any rate – I would like you to tell if you’ve determined that I’m “playing” when I say that both sides should stop doing things like making tacit assumptions about a scientists work on the basis of his/her funding.
Relatedly – I find it quite interesting that yesterday, my comment “A pox on both your houses” was deleted from a WUWT thread. My understanding is that contrary to the “warmist” websites, WUWT is a shining example of open-mindedness on the “skeptical un-convinced/dener” side of the climate debates. Not that you anyone else besides Anthony needs to answer for WUWT – but I have read at this forum many times about how his site relative to Real Climate, let’s say, is proof of some sort of vast asymmetry in the politicization and mixing of advocacy and science.
I find it quite ironic that of all things to delete, on a site where regularly tens of thousands of scientists are called communists, Stalinists, frauds, and analogize to Eugenicists, etc., “A pox on both your houses” is what was deleted.
“The speakers are experts on this topic. As am I by the way.”
No, David, you’re not. You’re a humanities major that promotes science denial by lying about your credentials. It could be argued that the Heartland conference speakers (and you) are experts in lying, distortion, and misrepresentation, and their “thousand of articles” are certainly a testament to that.
You aren’t an expert on any aspect of climate science, and you embarrass yourself when you indulge in this fraudulent self-promotion.
Truth told, Robert – I’m not sure what purpose you see served by that type of argument.
Although one could certainly ask the same question about my “type of argument.”
And one could certainly ask the same question to the vast majority of people who spend time arguing about climate change on blogs.
It’s an interesting phenomenon.
Sit back down, Robert; Joshua is much better at this than you.
================
kim – my snark skills aren’t terrible (if I might humbly say so), but Robert is more familiar with the science. That’s why I wish he’d narrow his focus a bit.
Everyone arguing on climate blogs feels they have something to say: but not everyone claims to be an expert, not everyone claims to be a scientist.
It is the fraudulent assertion of expertise, the misrepresentation of oneself as a scientist or an expert in science, that I think demands a response, because like any other “Big Lie” it gains momentum when it is endlessly repeated and never contradicted.
When a person makes an argument from evidence, you will never find me saying “but you’re not a scientist.” When they assert authority, or make assertions (without a clear argument) that imply authority (such as claiming that such-and-such is obviously a bad scientist and not doing real science) then I will sometimes point out the obvious. I think it’s important context for those kinds of claims. YMMV.
Ok – I got your Robert.
Maybe tony’s point about the nesting problem explains kim’s comment about appeal to authority? Maybe his comment was actually directed at David?
Robert,
I am not a scientist. But I follow and study science and scientific method enough to know that replicability of scientific experiment and/or analysis is critical to the enterprise. So when you say:
When a person makes an argument from evidence, you will never find me saying “but you’re not a scientist.”
I respond that there is ample evidence at this point about the failure of many if not most of the climate change notables to follow proper scientific method in making their data and methodology completely transparent so that independent critique is possible. (Do you deny that evidence of this exists?) On that basis I think that it is reasonable to conclude that there is a failure to do proper science and therefor ample reason to question conclusions reached by the “official” climate scientists, your so-called “experts.”
So if they are not following proper scientific procedures, why should we think their results have greater validity than any of those speakers at the Heartland conference, say, or the many scientists quoted in Lawrence Solomon’s book, The Deniers, or any of the other skeptics that you so deride?
I don’t need to deny it, because you haven’t shown any evidence for it. Cite your sources, carefully define what you mean by the scientific method and show that it is the generally accepted definition, and provide examples sufficient to prove that “many if not most” climate scientists fail short of the generally accepted standards.
Joshua, “Skeptical assessment” means evaluating the uncertainties and fallacies in the arguments for AGW and CAGW. How can you not understand this? The climate change debate is about assessment, not specific scientific results. If you do not understand the huge difference between the scientific research and the assessment of that research then you truly do not understand the situation.
Assessment is assessment, David. When done thoroughly, all assessment implies skepticism. Not to say that it is always done correctly, but the notion of “skeptical assessment” speaks volumes.
As I suggested above – the conference promo speaks about “the scientific speakers and…those in attendance. The implication there, although it isn’t stated explicitly, is that “the speakers” are “scientists.” In fact, a minority of the speakers are scientists. Additionally, it is interesting that only a minority of the minority of those scientists have published science on climate change. One would think that if you’re going to be “assessing” the “scientific method” in the specific context of climate change, you would have more than a minority of a minority of speakers who are working scientists in the field.
Mind you – I’m not suggesting that the conference is without merit. I’m saying that the conference should be more accurately described. If the conference sold itself as a group of political and scientific advocates on the “anti-consensus” side of climate change, then the scientific grounding of its speakers would be far less germane.
“Mind you – I’m not suggesting that the conference is without merit.”
It has one merit; the power points invariable turn up hard evidence of fraud, dishonesty, and shoddy scholarship. They are wise to try and keep them under wraps, but they will out eventually.
My assumption is that there is probably some material at the conference that doesn’t result in such tribal reasoning and specious conclusions.
I could be wrong about that, however.
David Wojick,
You should be grateful that Joshua is taking time out from his busy schedule of telling Dr. Curry how to run this blog, to tell Heartland how to run its conference. Where would we be without the comment auditors?
Thanks for reading, Gary.
I can always count on you to do so.
Joshua See my response following:
I do believe Denning did appear and he did speak.
There were science tracks and non science tracks.
I would not expect scientists to speak on the political tracks
so desmog would do better just to report the facts as they are.
If you report the facts as they are you see a couple things.
1. they did have speakers published in the field.
2. Those speakers have rather thin publication records.
The trying to make an issue out of the “not a scientist” meme has been a failed strategy.
1. some of those you want to convince tend to trust engineers more than academics.
2. Peer review has lost its luster.
Desmog and others need a new set of memes. Trust the experts has always been a bad approach with the audience you are trying to convince. It was when ” the science is settled” meme was tried. It was when the ‘consensus” meme was tried. Having spent more face to face time with skeptics than most people who believe in AGW I can tell you that these arguments do not work and will never work. Time for a different approach. And no, Kerry emmanuel is not a good option.
The Romm link above had a quote from Denning at the ICCC6. Interesting that he could say this there. There are some videos posted now, but I haven’t got to the Denning one yet. Romm also shows an interesting poster by Heartland Institute. Looks like they have finally “jumped the shark”, and will be fading out in the future. From the video I have seen, Romm is correct that it is mostly old white guys there..
Denning:
“There’s definitely paranoia here. Look, I’m a capitalist, I don’t want to take away people’s cars, I don’t want to tell people what to do. I’m not the enemy. If I were in it for money and fame, would I want to be the one who published the 11,000th paper that came to the same conclusion as everyone else? No. I’d want to be the person who published something new and groundbreaking. But the molecules don’t care who you are — if you’re a capitalist, or a socialist, or a libertarian. Politics don’t change the fact that CO2 emits heat and every time we double CO2, we emit four watts per meter squared all day, every day for a long time. That’s scientific fact.”
Speaking as an old white logician, the Denning quote is incoherent. But if CO2 emits heat maybe we can use it instead of oil.
Presumably he was using concepts that his audience would be able to understand.
Steve
Re “some of those you want to convince tend to trust engineers more than academics.”
For good reason. When people’s lives are at stake, the “peer review,” due diligence, verification and validation requirements on engineers are far greater than on “climate scientists”.
NASA actually has a stringent Verification and Validation group
Now if NASA could just apply this expertise to their climate modeling!
I dunno, David. NASA engineers blew up two shuttles’ worth of astronauts in the space of a few years, lost a nine-figure-priced satellite because they forgot to convert feet to meters, and so on. But as far as I know the theory of relativity has never been shown to be wrong, and certainly Darwin never sent a crew of Air Force officers to a fiery death through sheer incompetence.
But the “who is better” debate really ignores of the obvious: engineers are trusted to do engineering, while scientists are trusted to do science. They have different skill sets, as the different names imply. For whatever reason, engineers seem more apt to think they know all about science than scientists do to think they can go out and build a jet or design a sewer system. But however grossly inflated some engineers’ egos may be, I trust people who have been selected and trained to do a given job to do that job more than I do self-appointed amateurs.
Joshua
Be very careful over relying on Argumentum ad Ignorantiam (argument from ignorance).
See the short bios of Speakers
See:
Robert (Bob) M. Carter with more than 100 publications:
Research Publications
COMMENT & INFORMATION ON CLIMATE CHANGE including
I1. VIDEO LECTURE – The global warming fad: climate context as a better basis for policy Sydney Mining Club, Invited Lecture (4 part video), Sydney, April 7, 2011
I2. SLIDE-SHOW – The global warming fad: climate context as a better basis for policy Sydney Mining Club
“Just remotely”!
See Dr. Willie Soon at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Q & A with Willie Soon:
Willie Soon Index
Search of Publications
Interview: Dr Willie Soon on Global Climate Change
Dr. Tim Ball, one of the first Canadians to hold a Ph.D. in climatology, wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of London (England) using the remarkable records of the Hudson?s Bay Company to reconstruct climate change from 1714 to 1952.
Scott Denning, Ph.D., is a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University.
Publication search
etc. etc.
Furthermore, your question: “published papers on any topics even remotely related to climate change?” is poorly framed. The topic was “Restoring the Scientific Method”. Consequently, every scientist, engineer, economist, lawyer, mathematician, statistician, logician and mining consultant, familiar with the scientific method with basic understanding of the scientific method is able to understand and address fallacies in the scientific method.
Try applying the scientific method, searching for fallacies in its application, and restoring the scientific method.
“SLIDE-SHOW – The global warming fad: climate context as a better basis for policy Sydney Mining Club”
Is that supposed to be a rebuttal — Bob Carter gave a denialist slideshow for his mining industry paymasters?
David, your homework is:
1. Learn what a scientific publication is.
Robert
I have a MSc in Chemistry, PhD in engineering. I review and have published scientific papers.
Your remedial learning task is to read at least one of Robert Carter’s
over 100 Research Publications
Engage brain before opening mouth.
You know the diplomas you print out over the internet don’t count, right?
Robert
You have not yet learned your lesson.
Your remedial learning homework is now 2 of Carters research publications.
A mining industry slide show is not a research publication.
Your homework assignment is still to learn what a research publication is.
Evidently you are worried you may not succeed, since you are trying to wriggle out of your mistake by making arguments from authority and changing the subject.
Drop me a line when you’ve done your homework.
Uh…. yes, Josh. Why would you think otherwise?
BTW – you might be interested in this –
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/carbon-death-threats-go-cold/story-e6freuzr-1226071996499
And you might tell Robert about it.
At what point did it become logical to compare and discuss the oil and gas industry as if they were drug cartels involved in illegal activity? “Big oil”?
Why is the paranoid and delusional alarmist messaging on this topic accepted without laughing? How many skeptics are smeared in this way and why is there little or no general condemnation from what we hope are rational warmists and agw supporters?
Why wouldn’t carbon related interests be concerned about carbon regulation and the hyperbole of agw? The greater irony is the oil and green restrictions while downsizing the industry production (especially in North America) actually increase profit margins by inflating wholesale costs. The fantasy that this is the root canal road to making alternate and renewable energy economic being as much a folly as agw itself.
When faced with declining support for agw the left always attacks the general population as science “ignorant” but of course the opposite was true. Only the pro-regulate culture (socialism) overshadowed the loss of economic and science logic these many years. During headier economic times our society (western) also declines rather quickly into Utopianism which can traced back to wealthy aristocrats sympathizing with the rise of communism itself in the later 19th century or for that matter greater Europe permitting the excesses of the French Revolution for many of the same reasons from a rapid economic improvement; especially in the upper classes. AGW very much fit this historic pattern, dissent from economic growth and nostalgic regret that isn’t really rational. Would you really like to use 19th dentistry for example? This is exactly what the agw movement wishes to force or confine “others” but not themselves to.
Why oil and gas industries greenwash and pander to this is depressing but then again you can look at them cynically and realize their profits have been increased by declining and restricted oil and gas production, reduced competition. The public following the green movement dogma are largely to blame, we must fix stupid for the sake of all those whose lives remain in the primitive state of low energy use. Then again, the wealthy and better educated can afford stupid and choose to live with the agw delusion as it panders to the general statist solutions that agw supports, this isn’t 30% a science debate in the past decade. “Big oil” should be in the face of eco-Utopian’s instead of playing the current game in the way that they do. Regardless what is stated by greens in these debates and defamation of legitimate industries that greatly enhance the modern life draws little defense even if privately and quitely many see the same hypocrisy. Why does this condition exist and how can the root condition of agw alarmism go uncommented upon? Agw didn’t grow off the grass, it wasn’t a singular conspiracy of junk science but fit a broader narrative that is seldom challenged or linked. Likely we will be forced to repeat the event over and over given the political concentrations that exist in the current science community. Potential risks will used to promote endless regulations to reduce public rights, for the “common good” and to fit the same statist narrative again and again. Fertility management, bio diversity, the war on “fat”, sugar regulation to name a few all being filtered in established centers of political influence such as public schools. Orwell is blushing in his grave and agw is the gold standard of science abuse that is being emulated.
Basically I agree, “Orwell is blushing in his grave and agw is the gold standard of science abuse.”
Although encouraged that Science magazine allowed a skeptic like me to comment on their story about the global climate story, I fear that those who led us into this mess have no idea how to led us safely out of it.
Thus, the immediate future may not be calm.
Well spoke. The “greenwashing” includes about a 100:1 disparity of funding from Big Oil in favour of the AGW hypothesis and its fantasmagorical solution set. My suspicion is that Big Oil knows full well such ideas are nonsense, and that when Reality Bites fossil fuel will be the de facto survival fallback.
The irony being that oil and gas get a price support from agw and green activity.
Socialism is hardest on the lower class that the rhetoric panders to. The average elite agw advocate is usually better funded and will not carry the burden for the policy pain they advocate. This is a consistent pattern with liberal policy making.
Also, how is being “progressive” essentially supporting steady state world view where “preservation” of everything as it was and is the driving virtue? The elite left reminds me of English aristocracy from the 17th to 20th century wondering why the tennants or low paid factory workers could possibly be unhappy with the current conditions. Eco-elitism is far more a gentry culture than advocating “change”.
This can be seen in economic policy as well,Keynesian policy is designed to keep the current order going no matter how short-term the results may be. Again, this isn’t new or forward thinking but it dominates progressive thought as a religion. Just like AGW and anti-industry rhetoric. Both ideas kill people (other people of course, more of the lower classes in the end) and are self-serving dressed as concern for others.
Go to any Sierra Club meeting and think about what is really being suggested. The Earth as closed condo subscription, give everyone not in a bus ticket and send them away. That’s what carbon rationing and taxation is all about. Worse the elite all stand to make a profit while they administrate saving the world. Rather than guilt they feel pride and want to be thanked and be rewarded with more power for their efforts.
I’m interested in how oil and gas get support from green energy. Unless you mean that Obama is tying up in red tape exploration and drilling, including by banning drilling in so many places. The government did too much of that before him also, but he has been worse.
If you restrict production, prices increase. Exxon is a processor with little stake in actual wholesale oil production. It’s amazing how many on the left don’t ever get this in particular. They are a supermarket wholesaler of finished products. If the price of the raw materials rise so does the gross margin in actual dollars. I think you can find honest people associated to Exxon far more than say the IPCC who understand how the world really works and would in fact be a little less weathy in a stronger western world that is growing rather than the politics of rationing and defeatism that AGW certainly represents.
Green policy raises prices by cutting off supply on domestic sources. There is a tight inflection point on energy and we lost it long ago.
Advocates claim that the higher price will support green renewable but this is nonsense. What really is boosted is higher cost shale and tar sand etc. On all sides we are creating massive malinvestments and again it is tied to fiat money that maintained the energy inflations and imbalances in particular since the early 70’s. We could never have sent this much gold overseas which is why the currency is completely fiat at the moment. It’s the #1 reason in fact.
Yes the Obama policy drives traditional energy higher but what was really desired was a layer of rationing and tax capture to support cronies (green industry) but they would have received only a small portion. Keynesian economics is a war time economy during peace time. The real story in energy is about social control and advancing the states interest and restricting individual choice. A good chunk of the population has bought the anti-industry, classwar, pro-government condition and they are currently eco-green base that must be eliminated from control. AGW was simply another arrow in the quiver.
Again, I think oil interests pander to green to avoid further regulations. I don’t think they control the delusions of the agw supporters and alternative energy fantasy. They play the game and their profits are higher short-term. The society is weaker and declining growth in real terms part of the cycle. Eventually they move toward rationing fertility
and food for nobel authoritatian purposes, agw is just a card in the same game.
Socialism at its best! I agree with you about companies pandering to the government. They do so to avoid regulation and get laws favorable to their industry or even their specific company. Companies shouldn’t have the status of a citizen. They shouldn’t have to pay taxes and it should be illegal for them to lobby, and pay others to do it, except as individuals, just like the rest of us. They can testify before Congress if Congress needs their input – in public.
Right now we have the crazies running the asylum. Hopefully, that will change in 2012. There has been progress at the state level. Gov. Walker of Wisconsin implemented a controversial plan, but it is working. One school district saved 2 million dollars and went from a deficit to a surplus. By 2012, there will be a lot of success to use as a good example for how to tame the Federal budget.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/06/union-curbs-rescue-wisconsin-school-district
http://www.wispolitics.com/index.Iml?Article=240875
Seems to me that the flap over Dr Soon’s funding is largely hypocritical since it wasn’t that long ago that the AGW crowd was falling all over itself to point out the “oil” connections to the IPCC Renewable Energy report.
Seems to me that the “outrage” about Soon being criticized for his funding is largely hypocritical since on thread after thread at this blog and others like WUWT we see tacit assumptions being made that the work of thousands of scientists is fraudulent because they receive government funding (and must, of course, therefore be part of the AGW cabal that distorts science to promote a root and branch transformation of society into a “one-world government”).
Maybe both sides would be better off if they didn’t make specious assumptions about the work of scientists on the basis of their funding – and instead focused on the viability of their scientific analysis?
That won’t stop the ‘big pharma paid for it’ wailing that some people think discredits some medical research. Or big Oil. They could switch to Big Apple and Big Google to find the next batch of evil folks to blame. The who funds who is important for politics.
Before someone mentions Big Tobacco bought their science, then you’d have to admit science is for sale.
Drug companies pay for research in order to sell their drugs. They are not doing it to selflessly push back the borders of our scientific knowledge. They can and do distort the process of medical research to sell more drugs. I would never totally discount a study based on who funded it, but you do have to look at those studies very critically.
do you know what the funding effect is?
the effect applies whereever there is funding. Answers dont change, Questions do.
Depending on the level of control exercised by the funder, both answers and questions can change, even if the studies are designed flawlessly and conducted ethically. For example, until recently drug companies were under no obligation to submit for publication or release to the public all the studies they funded. That meant that for an important drug, pharma could conduct study after study until they found one whose results they liked, and publish that study and that study alone. As a result you had studies published that showed a new treatment worked better than the old, without the necessary context that there were ten other studies gathering dust in a drug company exec’s drawer that found that the treatment was no better, or worse.
Joshua, first of all you are characterizing skeptics based on the most extreme views, which is a common fallacy.
As for government funding it is very important, well worth looking at. The research is not fraudulent, it is just biased. Research that assumes AGW is not helpful in resolving the basic scientific issues. It is therefore mostly wasted money, no matter how excellent the work. Even worse is that genre of funding that merely produces scary stories.
I didn’t say that funding isn’t worth working at. I said that tacit assumptions about the influence of funding in corrupting science do a disservice to all involved.
I am not characterizing all skeptics based on the most extreme views. I am characterizing, specifically, the “skeptics” who post conspiratorial rants based on tacit assumptions about how government funding = corrupt science, and who then are “outraged” when people on the other side of the issue make tacit assumptions about how corporate funding = corrupt science.
I think it is just as unfortunate that the “skeptical un-convinced” fail to distance themselves from such weak thinking as it is that the “skeptical convinced” fail to distance themselves from such weak thinking.
The elephant in the room are the incentives of agw advocates politics and incentives. Since the science is speculative, nothing like”gravity” and the general population somewhat niave on the motivations that do exist or their own self-confidence to reject “experts” we have reached the fork in the road.
Government or industry can be corrupt. They can even work in concert and certainly there are huge industrial winners in the agw game. There is nothing “weak thinking” and there certainly are other explainations about the political divide that is linked to the agw incentives as well. The angry anti-markets and industry crowd should be better understood and exposed but then again many in the media harbor similar resentments. Are you trying to say this isn’t a defendable observation and only a conspiracy theory?
That’s crazy by a long-shot. Many in the eco-green agenda, the IPCC inner circle, the U.N., state funded academia, government agencies in particular often share similar world views and politics. It’s a central subsection of the agw divide. If you think the “science” will settle this given the poor tools, records and histories of spinning the data you are wrong. The science argument about rejecting co2 regulations is overwhelming and only a giant emotional green block managed to get agw near the goal line. It’s a sad and pathetic story for the history books but it’s no conspiracy theory.
I have written many proposals and gotten gov grants. More and more of the RFPs are framed as “study impacts of climate change” — assuming climate change is real. No RFPs allow one to study beneficial effects of climate change, these only come out when your study of “impacts” shows a positive effect. The incentives are bad. Many vocal sceptics are retired or independent (e.g. Watts) because then no one can get them fired. People respond to incentives.
At the 18th Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, in Rome on July 1st, Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of IPCC WG3, argued that climate policy does not create jobs. He even challenged an EU official on exactly this point.
The substance of Edenhofer’s claim is unremarkable: There is a vast literature that shows that climate policy would create jobs in some sectors but destroy them elsewhere; and that these effects are probably dominated by the deleterious effect of dearer energy on job growth.
Our modest contribution to this literature is here: http://ideas.repec.org/p/esr/wpaper/wp329.html (now accepted for publication in the Energy Journal).
Nonetheless, Edenhofer’s remarks are noteworthy, for he was one of the authors of IPCC AR4 Ch10 that argued the opposite. See http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch11.html
I discussed that IPCC chapter at Pielke Jr: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/03/bias-in-ipcc-wgiii-guest-post-by.html
Edenhofer did a U-turn. There may be hope for the IPCC.
Richard –
We’ve been told that terms like “probably” have no place in analysis of the impact of climate change. I’m afraid to satisfy the readers here, you’ll have to attach a much more precise quantity to the amount of jobs lost due to the deleterious effect of dearer energy. In looking at your abstract – it seems your paper doesn’t supply those data, and we wouldn’t want anyone to accuse you of hiding the uncertainty.
Joshua,
how many polar bears have died from Goreball Warming again???
Joshua: The paper has the standard errors of the four indicators for each sector.
Richard,
Do you know about the Joint WGII / WGIII Expert Meeting on Economic Analysis, Costing Methods, and Ethics (Lima, Peru), 23-25 Jun?
The proposal mentioned interesting issues, but I have no knowledge on, what happened at the meeting?
Dr. Tol, do any of these economic model evaluate the potential health gains from reducing fossil fuel burning? This article for example, estimates the secondary benefits of reducing carbon emissions:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/5/1/014007/erl10_1_014007.pdf
I have never been very excited by the prospect of “green jobs,” but it does seem to me that there are potential gains in multiple types of negative externality associated with fossil fuel burning, not just climate change: reduced burden of lung disease, including asthma and lung cancer, less water pollution, less damage to the landscape from mining, and so on. These savings may provide gains in economic productivity over and above mitigating the harms of climate change.
The eco-fantasy at work. Go at directly and stop making up science as you go to achieve the indirect results you seek. AGW was always dishonest on this point.
It was always politics with a splash of abstract science to become an 80 billion dollar WPA program for academia and most leftist interests. Dissent is cottage industry as well but much smaller.
Robert: This is a common misconception. If you worry about the health impacts of fossil energy use, then there are much cheaper and more effective ways to do something about that than through carbon dioxide emission reduction.
I’m not sure that speaks to the question I asked. Take a carbon tax, for example. If you make it more expensive to release carbon dioxide into the air, you make it more expensive to burn fossil fuels. If you make it more expensive to burn fossil fuels, people will burn less of them. If people burn less of them, there will be benefits to human health as well as reductions in other kinds of pollution like coal ash and smog. So my question is whether any of the models incorporate those benefits in the total cost-benefit analysis.
Whether or not there may be cheaper and more effective ways to reduce the health impacts of fossil fuel use, it seems as though as one of several benefits to an emissions strategy, it ideally would be part of the model.
In short, state run rationing for the common good managed by the usual suspects. If it takes a big lie along the way, so much the better.
AGW is a big lie. Rather than slog over so2 agw was a play for massive regulatory power with a hundred subplots to enhance green authority. Of course the huge costs of lack of investment confidence, the decline of individual rights and a declining growth rate seldom make it accurately to green or Keynesian models.
If air pollution is properly regulated,the co-benefit of carbon dioxide emission reduction is probably small. The sign is unclear: One may, for instance, be inclined to turn off scrubbers (which use a lot of energy).
The “co-benefits” of CO2 emission reduction are large only if air pollution is not adequately regulated, and in that case one should focus on air pollution regulation first as the local benefits are much larger.
I use “co-benefits” rather than co-benefits, because it is inappropriate to count overcoming government failure in a related area as a benefit in policy advice. The proper advice would be set things straight in the related area first.
Robert
I presume the primary variable is comparative $/GJ or $/kWh. ie. whether the “green” technology is cheaper or more expensive then the comparative fossil fueled energy.
More importantly is that our economy is currently critically dependent on liquid transport fuels. Wind farms or photovoltaics do not cost effectively provide transport fuels.
Pakistan also depends on oil for power generation. Consequently:
See also NIPCC’s Climate Change Reconsidered
Chapter 9 Human Health Effects PDF (0.5 MB)
“More importantly is that our economy is currently critically dependent on liquid transport fuels.”
The beauty of a carbon tax, David, is that it avoids any and all potential chokepoints in an economy, such as the lack of a similarly energy-dense substitute for hydrocarbons. If the cost of doing without a given source of emissions is too high, people will simply pay the tax, and not alter their behavior. Meanwhile you have increased the incentive to research and develop such an alternative and to implement it once it is available.
In many parts of Europe, they pay twice to three times what Americans do for gas, and their economies continue to grow. They simply, as one would predict, drive more fuel-efficient cars, and drive them less.
Since we have taxes already, it is not clear to me what harm would result from substituting energy taxes from taxes on some other necessary input. Property, for example, is like energy in that we all use some of it, and producers use a lot of it (in the form of offices, factories, warehouses, etc.) So taxing property, which we do routinely, must theoretically be a drag on economic activity, as well as distorting the market by discouraging property ownership.
I don’t see any reason why replacing property taxes with carbon taxes would slow the economy.
They simply, as one would predict, drive more fuel-efficient cars, and drive them less.
No. We just go without other things, like food.
Riiiiiiiight. I’ve often thought those BMW drivers looked a little gaunt. Mystery solved.
You have no idea, do you!
Robert
Thanks
The problem with carbon tax is that it assumes catastrophic anthropogenic global warming – which, as the Scotts say, is not proven. Furthermore, politicians can’t be trusted with the funds, as evidenced by giving the US congress the power to tax income.
See Ross McKitrick’s T3 tax as a solution which cuts BOTH ways depending on variation of the tropospheric temperature from GWM predictions.
“I don’t see any reason why replacing property taxes with carbon taxes would slow the economy.”
That’s because you have know general idea how things work. Certainly new taxes never “replace” they only enhance and increase taxes. Restricting energy production and consumption beyond the market force isn’t the business of government at all. ”
“In many parts of Europe, they pay twice to three times what Americans do for gas, and their economies continue to grow.”
What a joke, if you like living in a pigion hole society that is on an even faster road to demographic extinction with ever declining individual freedoms you should move there. The grim pessimisim of zero growth results and statism are clearly evident.
We should futher tax productive industry in order to add another subside to inflated real estate culture? That’s sad reasoning all around.
Claiming that new taxes are never compensated by reductions in other taxes is just political propaganda that is totally false also in practice. The political fight on the level of taxes never ends and the total taxation depends always on the relative strength of political forces that favor low taxes and lesser government expenditure and those who value some forms of the expenditure enough to accept the necessary higher taxes.
Europe has a very long history of high gasoline taxes, many times higher than the maximal price level we have seen on the European CO2 emission permits market. The oil crisis of 1970’s brought these high gasoline taxes to those European countries that had lower taxes before, but many had essentially the same tax level even before. The high gasoline tax is certainly one of the reasons, why European cars have had a better fuel economy for long, another reason is in the narrow streets of many old cities, and there are more.
Introducing a carbon tax will certainly have some influence on the use of fossil fuels. Driving habits are not the most sensitive factor. Various energy sector choices of technology and also choices in how to heat the home may be more sensitive. Major changes require anyway a high level of tax, and introducing a too high carbon tax will make the economy less efficient as high cost alternatives are taken into use to replace lower cost high carbon technologies, and as in addition perfectly operational plants and devices are abandoned.
If we would really be capable of calculating the external costs that correlate strongly with carbon emissions, introducing a tax of that size or lower would be beneficial for the well-being, but estimating that external cost is very difficult. Exceeding the right level significantly might lead to a worse outcome than no tax at all, and there is no upper limit on, how badly we can overshoot.
Richard Tol
Thanks for the paper link.
Transport fuels have very high inelasticity. e.g. about a 5% reduction in fuel supply caused about a 400% increase in fuel prices during the 73 OPEC oil crisis. Oil price increases have contributed to 11 of 12 economic declines.
Currently fuel from wind and solar PV would cost more than petroleum. Consequently I would expect that to reduce GDP and employment.
However, if we could drop the cost of solar transport fuels below OPEC / controlled / shortage driven oil costs, I am thinking that this high leverage would generate much greater benefits to the economy than the direct impact of employment in making and operating the solar fuel system.
See also Gail Tverberg addresses the issue of systemic risk due to declining Energy Return On Investment (EROI) and potential rapid decline in transport fuel availability. e.g. see: Steep Oil Decline or Slow Oil Decline – Expanded thoughts
Do you have any suggestions on papers addressing such multiplier effects from changing technologies?
Will the IPCC return its Nobel Price for its invalid interpretation of “accelerated warming” claim?
http://bit.ly/b9eKXz
This interpretation is invalid because it compared the global warming rate for one warming phase with another longer period that consists of this warming phase and previous cooling phase and declared “accelerated warming”.
As “accelerated warming” is based on invalid interpretation of the data, there is no evidence of AGW:
Five times increase in human emission of CO2, but little change in the global warming rate of about 0.15 deg C per decade: http://bit.ly/lUQBhX
Shame on all that claim the evidence for AGW is solid when it is not supported by the data.
sorry
Will the IPCC return its Nobel Prize for its invalid interpretation of “accelerated warming” claim?
Probably not until after President Obama returns his Nobel Peace Prize.
Revkin says,
“That doesn’t mean scientists and their associations shouldn’t loudly complain about it. The public should know just how much taxpayer money has to go into responding to document fishing expeditions.”
And the rest of us should be pointing out that any scientist, engineer, politician, teacher… who cannot keep their information organized and, if necessary, loaded into a well indexed data base for easy retrieval, should consider finding private employment where they can argue this subject with the boss who can fire them on the spot for sloppy, inadequate work!!!
Is it normal practice for senior academics to insist on putting their names on student papers because they provided the funding and administrative support? Why isn’t this a form of plagiarism? Does anyone else consider this practice morally questionable?
The issue arises from the comments posted by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg Director, Global Change Institute at University of Queensland, in a piece he wrote on peer review for The Conversation.
(via http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/07/ove-s-right-it-speaks-for-itself)
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
“I am surprised that you are not aware the last author position on publications in many fields (such as marine and molecular biology) goes to the head of the laboratory or research group. This is to recognise the effort that these individuals put into the science, but also as recognition of the funding, experience, and infrastructure that invariably goes into a project. In our field, this is not insubstantial and my calculations have revealed that studies involving molecular biology or field work can often require substantial costs in terms of materials and supplies required to do the science. Obtaining that funding is not an easy task as I’m sure you know.
Life is too short to keep justifying myself to you Marc. Despite your continual insults, my track record and the cohesion of my research group ( some of the finest young biologists in Australia) does speak for itself.
Anyway, enough of this – I have a lab group to run, papers to write, and an institute to direct.”
I believe if you actually read anything you talk about you’d have noticed it was Stephen Lacey “dissing” the Heartland War on Science Crusade, Dr. Inaccuracy. But you don’t.
I look forward to your defense of phlogiston and Flat Earthism again this year as you did in your subservient role to Heartland last year. Please rise to the challenge again.
You know Marion, ol’ pal, I’ve read some of your other comments on other blogs. And each and every time they’re nothing but one tedious, brain-dead booger-flick after another. And, in addition to everything else, you flick your boogers like a girl.
Give us a break, guy.
Golly, that was soooooo funny my sides still hurt :) It takes quit an intellect to redress in such a manner. Thanks Mike, made my day :)
It’s at Romm’s website. You know, in the link provided. You can read for yourself in-between your juvenile insults.
Here is where Trenberth stated in 1997 that more frequent El Nino’s just had to be caused by global warming. (After all, what else could it be?) This illustrates the “faith” and “true believer” aspect of global warming.
“But even though we can’t trace the link between the changes in ENSO and NAO and global warming, Trenberth believes, “There’s got to be a connection. The very unusual nature of what’s happening now is an indication of that. The ambiguity arises because we can’t quite sort out which is the natural part and which is the global warming part. If we continue to do this experiment with our climate for the next 20 to 30 years–which we will–presumably the global warming signal will be the thing that we will continue to see.””
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/winter97/connection.html
What bothers me about this is that in the late nineties when Trenberth said this and Hansen was saying Manhattan would be under water in 20 years (from the late nineties), neither of them said anything about ocean cycles. Now that there is a real possibility of 30 years of cooling due to ocean cycles, we now here that there will be Hell to pay when the cycles turn warm again. It seems like this stuff is made up as climate scientists go along. I see no reason to trust their gut feelings now any more than then. More proof is needed for their extraordinary claims.
What bothers me about this is that Trenberth didn’t mention ocean cycles being a main contender for the warming. It is as if it was completely off his radar. The same goes for Hansen when he was predicting around the same time that Manhattan would be under water and there would be new bird species in 20 years due to global warming. Now that it appears we may be in for 30 years of cooling, climate scientists are telling just to just wait when the cycles heat up again. We’ll be much hotter due to CO2. Why should we believe them now when they forecasted a pretty constant warming? They didn’t know what they were talking about then and probably don’t now. The need more proof to convince me of their extraordinary claims.
Joshua, you mock Richard because he doesn’t provide figures for the loss of jobs due to deleterious energy costs.
If I told you that introducing Ebola virus into the population would probably kill many people, would you discount my predictions unless I could tell you how many would die?
I suspect strongly that increasing energy costs will benefit only an elite few while causing despair and worse for the overwhelming majority.
Of course my arguments are irrelevant to you, I’m not giving any figures unlike the peer-reviewed sources whose Delphic computer models can print out as many decimal places as they are asked to and up to any desired date in the future.
Get a grip laddie.
I think that it’s safe to say that every study that has concluded that actions about climate change are beneficial to the economy even excepting the potential damage of climate change are based on questionable and almost certainly wrong assumptions and models. The would be true only under very exceptional conditions where exactly those resources are underutilized that are used in the additional activities and that costs related to these activities are small. These assumptions are certainly wrong.
The positive results are always obtained by cherry picking everything positive and neglecting all indirect negative consequences.
This is not the first time that people favoring some activities miscalculate economic benefits that result from the activity. The error is usually the same: neglecting the indirect negative consequences, which are in most cases larger than the positive ones unless the the activity is such that its benefits are exceptionally large.
I think the determination of the economic consequences of global warming (let’s drop the meaningless meme ‘climate change’ how about? The climate is always changing) is fraught with even more difficulty than proving global warming will be catastrophic and that catastrophe hinges solely on the man-contributed portion of CO2. You can’t deny that CO2 is beneficial to plants, for example, but that isn’t the entire story.
I assume you meant “even accepting” there instead of even excepting?
Just to clarify – does this mean that you think it’s safe to say that every study that has concluded that actions about climate change are deleterious to the economy even accounting for the potential damage of climate change are based on unquestionable and almost certainly correct assumptions and climate models?
I mean that there may be negative consequences from the changing climate and reducing those may justify certain acts, but not without including these benefits in the consideration. In other words, the acts are not justified, if these benefits based on warming are excluded.
Many reports claim that acts would be good for economy even without the inclusion on climate related benefits (or other similar benefits from reduced use of limited natural resources). This is overselling and dishonest, but unfortunately very common.
Thanks for the clarification – sorry I didn’t get your meaning the fist time.
Actually, RoyFOMR –
I’m not mocking Richard: I’m mocking the “un-convinced skeptics/deniers” who write all those posts stating that words like “probably” have no place in the analysis of climate change and its impact.
Can anyone provide a link to the peer-reviewed published paper that demonstrates how mankind’s contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is a major driver of global climate? I assume it was published around 1988 when Hansen gave his sworn scientific testimony to congress about global warming, but I haven’t been able to find it.
I’ve found lots of papers that assume this is true, but I haven’t been able to find the original paper that demonstrates it.
Thanks.
I assume the reference would be the IPCC TAR to WG1, The Basic Science (or something like that) published in 2001. You can download this from the IPCC web site. However, IMHO, on the issue of whether the science in this publication actually proves what you are looking for, is in serious doubt. You really need to look at both the science the IPCC claims has proven that CO2 is a major driver of climate, and all the reasons why I, and many others, think that this science is seriously flawed. And that is a really major effort.
Dan – I recommend that you read Spencer Weart’s “The Discovery of Global Warming”“The Discovery of Global Warming” to get an idea of why climate scientists have concluded that mankind’s contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is a major driver of global climate. You might then read such papers as Wally Broeker’s (1975) “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” and other early, important papers in context.
My understanding is that the IPCC was put together to recommend policies to deal with the problem of global warming, so I assume that the problem was already well established in the scientific literature before the world woke up to take action on it. The science is settled and all that.
So I guess I’m asking for links to the peer-reviewed paper(s) that settled it, which I assume are what prompted the creation of the IPCC in the first place.
No The IPCC is primarily a scientific rather than a policy forming body. It’s remit is to provide a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, notably the risk of climate change caused by human activity.
The IPCC assessment reports do themselves reference hundred of papers – this is the place to start looking:
http://www.ipcc.ch/
The IPCC is not “a policy forming body?” Somebody needs to tell Pachauri.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was jointly established in 1988, by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the mandate to assess scientific information related to climate change, to evaluate the environmental and socio-economic consequences of climate change, and to formulate realistic response strategies.” (This is the very first sentence of the forward of the Summary for Policy Makers in AR4.)
Now, I’m no climate scientist, but “formulate realistic response strategies” sure sounds a lot like “policy forming” to me. I wonder how they got the title of WG III’s section of AR4, “Mitigation of Climate Change,” not to mention its contents? I particularly liked this statement of scientific principle from the WG III Executive Summary: “Addressing environmental impacts usually depends on the introduction of regulations and tax incentives rather than relying on market mechanisms.”
Okay, but if it had not already been established in the science journals, how would the IPCC know in advance that human activity is a major driver of global warming?
Are you saying they established the IPCC before they knew that from the peer-review process?
Arrow flying, feather first;
Policy, then some science.
Cart before the horse.
=========
“Okay, but if it had not already been established in the science journals, how would the IPCC know in advance that human activity is a major driver of global warming?”
It seems like what you need, Dan, is a basic class on climate change. There should be one at your local university, or, if you’re feeling ambitious, just get a basic textbook from amazon (here’s a good one: http://www.amazon.com/Global-Warming-Science-Climate-Publication/dp/0340653027) and start at page one.
The push for the IPCC began BEFORE most of the science had been done. Climate models in the early 1980s were crude toys. Only the basic idea that CO2 would cause warming was established, not any magnitudes or impacts.
What absolute rot. The IPCC does not science. It is not a scientific body by any stretch of imagination. It is supposed to review science and give a summary to policymakers and it’s final reports and summaries are written by politicians and bureaucrat. The contents of WG 2 and 3 are totally political in nature.
It is amazing that anybody can state that the IPCC is a scientific body.
That’s an excellent query. It is the shakiest of legs which CAGW stands, and the most oft ignored.
I’m of the opinion that a warmer world is generally a better world for mankind. History is rife with examples of mankind thriving in warmer environments……. colder….. not so much.
This week, HAD/CRU gave it’s May 2011 global temperature anomaly; 0.322 C This blog has had major discussions of the V&V of climate models. To recap, very briefly, in Smith et al, Science, August 2007, a model was “validated” by hindcasting data, and then used to predict 10 years into the future from 2005. We are just coming to the stage where we can see whether one of the predicitons is coming true; that at least half the years following 2009 will have global temperature anomalies greater than 1998; 0.54 C. This is one of the very few predictions we can actually check up on in a reasonable time.
We know 2010 did not exceed 1998. With 5 months of data from 2011, if my arithmetic is correct, the rest of the year must have anomalies exceeding 0.71 C if 2011 is to exceed 1998. This seems to be unlikely, particularly as satellite data indicate that June 2011 will have a lower anomaly compared with June 2010, which ln turn was less than 0.54 C.
The Smith et al prediciton still has a 75% chance of being just plain wrong
It took a very strong La Nina months to narrowly derail 2010 from exceeding 1998. 2010 was the hottest year on record for GISS and NOAA, and the 2nd hottest year on record for HasCRUT, UAH, RSS.
NOAA:
January 2011 – 17 warmest
Jan thru Feb – 16th warmest
Jan thru Mar – 14th warmest
Jan thru Apr – 14th warmest
Jan thru May – 12th warmest
Jan thru Jun – soon to be announced (will it bust into the top ten?)
June 2011 – hotter than June, 2003, 04, 05 , 06, 07, 08, and 09, and narrowly cooler than 2010.
Not the quickest death of GLOBAL COOLING in history, but it’ll do.
La Nina has become the climate’s full moon – the crazies come out to play ice-age scientists and poets. The extremely strong La Nina with extremely short coattails is history, and 2011 is going into the oven.
Bake, baby, bake. We’ll check this carbonized pie in December.
JCH writes “La Nina has become the climate’s full moon – the crazies come out to play ice-age scientists and poets. The extremely strong La Nina with extremely short coattails is history, and 2011 is going into the oven.”
Where this comes from, I have no idea. From all I have read, no-one has shown any consistent capability of predicting El Ninos and La Ninas. If you know of such consistent predictions, I would love to know who is making them.
What do we actually know? As of the beginning of July 2011, we are in ENSO neutral conditions. The SOI is still, just, positive. The PDO is still firmly negative. What is going succeed the recent La Nina, I suspect no-one knows. Certainly I know of no-one who has made a firm forecast. So where you get your idea of “Bake, baby, bake” I have no idea.
What will succeed the current ENSO conditions? And where do you get this forecast from?
Global Cooling: http://bit.ly/jo1AH4
On a planet with a centuries long, slow warming trend, following the end of the last ice age approximately 10,000 years ago, wouldn’t it be rather common to have the current year be the “warmest in our lifetimes?”
I suspect 1298 was probably “one of the warmest years in centuries.” Probably could have said the same thing in 598, and even in plain old 98 (meaning 98, not 1998).
“Warmest Year on Record” makes for a great headline, but it doesn’t really tell us much does it?
Start With IPCC 2007 WG1 AR4
This graphic shows the contributions of various drivers which are from a variety of souces rather than one single paper. The IPCC reports do a pretty good job in referencing them all.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/ipcc2007_radforc.jpg
Above was in reply to Dan Lee.
Dan Lee
I found:
TIMOTHY M. O’DONNELL, Of loaded dice and heated arguments : Putting the Hansen–Michaels global warming debate in context, Social Epistemology, 2000, vol. 14, nos. 2}3, 109–127
He cites:
Hansen, J. E., 1988b. Testimony before US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Greenhouse Effect and Global Climate Change: Hearing before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, 100th Cong., 1st sess., 23 June.
and
Hansen, J., Fung, I., Lacis, A., Rind, D., Lebedeff, S., Ruedy, R., Russell, G. and Stone, P., 1988a. Global climate changes as forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies three-dimensional model. Journal of Geophysical Research, 93, 9341–9364.
Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near James Hansen
“My presentation today is exactly 20 years after my 23 June 1988 testimony to Congress, which alerted the public that global warming was underway. . . .Now, as then, I can assert that these conclusions have a certainty exceeding 99 percent.” (not bashful on certainty!)
Searching James Hansen 1985-1988
Hansen, J., I. Fung, A. Lacis, D. Rind, S. Lebedeff, R. Ruedy, G. Russell, and P. Stone (1988), Global Climate Changes as Forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies Three-Dimensional Model, J. Geophys. Res., 93(D8), 9341–9364, doi:10.1029/JD093iD08p09341.
“2) The greenhouse warming should be clearly identifiable in the 1990s; the global warming within the next several years is predicted to reach and maintain a level at least three standard deviations above the climatology of the 1950s.”
Hansen & Lebedeff 1988 note “Temperature changes in mid and high latitude stations separated by less than 1000 km are highly correlated” That appears to be Hansen’s basis adjustments for missing data.
Also interesting to see Christy on “Is Jim Hansen’s Global Temperature Skillful?”
Thanks David, interesting links. I’m just a carpenter, I build furniture for a living, but I remember the stats and science I learned in college well enough to follow the discussion, and I’ve always been skeptical of those tipping points. Gore’s movie at first scared the crap out of me, but then ended up having the opposite effect, once the adrenalin subsided and now a few years later my house near the coast appears to be in no danger of being submerged any time soon. (Its under water in a different sense :-/ )
But I love science and I don’t want to believe it has been corrupted as bad as they say, I guess that’s why I asked my initial question. Will keep reading, this is a great site.
Thanks.
Interesting, Dan. I used to be a carpenter (did a little bit of cabinet making also). Nothing like trying to install 12″ crown molding with making only one cut.
I didn’t study much science in high school, but early in my post-carpentry career I was involved in the study of the use of computer in education, and saw over and over how people tended to over-estimate the power of computers within the field of education (specifically, related to the speed and depth to which artificial intelligence would enable computers to simulate the complexities of language and human thought). As a result, I have always been fairly agnostic about computer modeling – until I started reading some of the specious arguments presented by many on the “skeptical un-convinced/denier” side of the debate. One would expect that a movie made by a bloviating politician would make an overtly political and hyperbolic move, and I suppose I am still agnostic about AGW, but I am having a hard time reconciling the political advocacy I see so rampant on the “anti-consensus” side of the debate.
Anyway, I remain interested in the science, and absolutely fascinated by the inability of people on both sides to recognize the tribal influences on their thinking.
Measure twice, cut once. The IPCC should measure once.
=====================
The IPCC?
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/01/week-in-review-7211/#comment-82115
You know, I always find it amusing when people claim that stated measurements of uncertainty are, in fact, ignoring uncertainty, as compared to absolute statements that don’t acknowledge any uncertainty whatsoever.
Do you find that amusing, kim?
For a tone specialist, I don’t see why you find those statements so absolute. Mirth bubbles through my blindness.
===========
The Demon loosed
By Albert Gore
Frightens children
More and more.
But where’s the warming,
Where’s the storms?
Demon’s influence
Is on the wane.
========
Just checking –
Is that a joke? Are you taking extreme poetic license?
Here – let’s take one at random to examine:
There is no acknowledgement of uncertainty in that statement.
Now – maybe viewed in full context, there was acknowledgement of at least some level of uncertainty – for example: “As long as we allow for unforseen forcings such as an exponential increase in the output of solar radiation, strong negative climatic feedback prohibit catastrophic warming.”
But even a statement such as “There is evidence that indicates that strong negative climatic feedbacks may prohibit catastrophic warming”
But the problem is that when members of the “climate establishment” makes statements with those kinds of caveats they are frequently either ignored, or the statements are denigrated as non-scientific because they contain words such as “may.”
And when people say that the “climate establishment” doesn’t admit any uncertainty, they need to take statements out of context. 90% probability is an acknowledgement of uncertainty (even if it is less uncertainty than many feel is accurate).
These types of specious arguments are not exclusive to those on the “skeptical un-convinced/denier” side of the debate. But there are many, many examples emanating from that camp that simultaneously refuse to acknowledge statements of uncertainty that are made, even as they denigrate “consensus” science for acknowledging uncertainty, even as they make absolutist statements that fail to acknowledge for uncertainties.
Quite a trifecta, that.
Joshua, that’s a fine comment. I, too, find great irony in the political divide, because this controversy will eventually settle incontrovertibly, one way or the other, and then where will the wrong half(tribe) be? I find ‘rampant’ political advocacy on both sides, but find much greater strength to it on the consensus side.
The irony comes with regrets, though; the political divide does not serve science, except again, ironically. The bitterness of the controversy, necessitated by the politics, has certainly sharpened the questions, and will probably shorten the path to the truth.
=====================
I think about that question quite a bit. My guess is that nothing much will change. I’m not sure I agree that there will be an incontrovertible settlement. It will depend on who you ask. By definition, the tribal extremists will never admit defeat. There will be a massive amount of “Look! Squirrel!” shouting – or the questions will be answered, for the majority, in some way that is sufficiently ambiguous so as to allow the tribes to move on to another battlefield.
I have a very similar view of the irony, with a similar bag o’ regrets. But at least the Phillies are in first place.
Remember Andujar? CAGW is in a critical inning.
I regret that I have to agree with you that the situation might not change, these tribes have been around since the climate has. But I also believe that nature, and our inquisition, will settle the CO2 debate.
Personally, I believe that because of the apparent weakness of CO2 warming, because of the concatenation of cooling phases of the oceanic oscillations, and because of the oncoming solar minimum, we will cool for two decades at least, and possibly for as long as a century. I desperately hope, such as to pray, that we’ve the sense to sort out the CO2 question in the meantime. Unfortunately, given the complexity of the problem, it may take a long and deep cooling before we find the truth. If it warms instead, the human propensity to wallow in guilt will take the blame, and we’ll never find out the truth.
Now, what do you believe? It’s fair to claim to be a climate agnostic. Relatively speaking, compared to complete understanding, we’re all climate agnostics.
We are cooling, folks; for how long even kim doesn’t know.
============
You’re asking an agnostic (well, somewhat agnostic) what he believes?
I know that I don’t know.
I believe that tribalism confuses the science, significantly, on both sides of the debate. I think that valid criticisms have been raised about degrees of uncertainty. I think that the spinning of how that uncertainty has been portrayed has been highly politicized.
I know that I am incapable intellectually, and not coincidentally insufficiently knowledgeable technically, to have a solid opinion with respect to the science. I am inclined to think that the prevalence of people much more smarter than I, and much more knowledgeable than I, on one side of the issue as opposed to the other – simply based on laws of probability – suggests that dismissing theories that CAGW is highly probable would be ill-advised. That does not mean that I think that examining the science from an a priori doubting perspective (I reserve the appropriate use of “skeptical” for both sides of the debate) should be suspended. The difficulty that I have is that when the vast, vast majority of work done from that a priori doubting perspective is so obviously fused with political ideology – and to make it even worse, so many of those who claim to be focused exclusively on the science refuse to acknowledge the degree of infused political ideology. It defies credulity (and no doubt, it happens on both sides).
That’s a start.
Heh – more smarter.
There are truly an infinite number of ways that I can screw my posts.
Naw, that’s just argument to authority, which is fallacious when your authorities are wrong. Perhaps you can’t tell that, but use your skill, look at the tone.
And please, Naomi was so Twentieth Century.
===============
The “appeal to authority” is ubiquitous on both sides of the debate.
You can reduce it to that if you’d like. If you knew anything about me personally, then you’d know that I actually have an allergy to “authority,” and have spent much of my life resisting the power bestowed upon incompetents by virtue of unjust “authority.” And I mean that at multiple levels – not the least of which is with specific reference to “academic” authority.
So you can call it that if you’d like, but I’ll repeat nonetheless.
I give some merit to the the intelligence and knowledge of many scientists in a variety of fields. I also give great merit to the intelligence and knowledge of many carpenters I’ve worked with. And also to many who doubt the likelihood that we’re experiencing climate change, or climate change that is anthropogenically driven. I don’t see knowledge and intelligence as being hierarchical in nature (for the most part). I believe in theories about multiple intelligences, and I respect many different types of knowledge.
I don’t put climate scientists on a pedestal.
However, I believe that a prevalence of extremely intelligent (in the limited sense of the common vernacular use of that term – as I said I believe in multiple intelligences) and knowledgeable experts who believe that climate change is likely anthropogenic in nature provides a certain heft within balance of the debate. That heft isn’t dispositive. But it exists, and it affects how I evaluate the probabilities.
Obviously, the probabilities are influenced by political context. If I were a rightwing conspiracy theorist, then I would probably believe that the political influence overwhelms the natural balance of what is probable and what isn’t. As a lifelong pissant leftist, from a family of pissant leftists who did things like fight against authority to get civil rights established for all members of our society – my experience tells me that much (but not all) of the theories from rightwingers about the influence of leftist ideology on the climate debate do not comport, even slightly, with reality. In fact, I see evidence every day at this here Climate etc., that many folks who espouse such theories have a highly delusional viewpoint on the ideology of most leftists. The notion that I, as a leftist, “appeal to authority” to tell me how to evaluate complex issues is one of those delusional viewpoints.
Unfortunately, (well perhaps unfortunately) the spam-catcher seems to have eaten up my long response.
Here’s an attempt to re-write at least part of it.
If you knew me personally, you would know that much of my life has been spent resisting “authority” – often to a fault.. As a pissant leftist, who comes form a long line of pissant leftists that directed much of their lives to fighting unjustly bestowed authority – I am certainly not the least bit declined to defer to “authority” to determine how I should think or what I should do – and importantly, that applies to academic authority perhaps more than many other types of authority.
I believe in theories of mulitple intelligences, and I respect a great many types of knowledge. I don’t put climate scientists on a pedestal. I think that there is no exclusive relationship between intelligence and/’or knowledge and the belief that climate change and/or anthropogenic climate change is occurring. However, I give a certain heft to the % of intelligent and extremely knowledgeable (in the field of climate science and related fields of science) who think that AGW is highly probable. I do not think that the heft is dispositive – but I think it deserves due consideration.
Now that “heft” could certainly be attributed to political factors, but as a pissant leftist from a long line of pissant leftists, I know for a fact that the conspiratorial mindset that leads to a categorical dismissal of that proportionality of smart experts who think that AGW is probable – is largely based on misconceptions about the power of leftists ideology and indeed, the ideology of most leftists.
A notable example would be the misconception that “the left” is ideologically driven to accept an “appeal to authority” as being dispositive in settling a debate.
So you can reduce it to an “appeal to authority” if you’d like. From my perspective, a tendency towards appealing to authority occurs in variant forms on both sides of the debate. If you think that my belief that a prevalence of knowledgeable and intelligent experts on one side of the debate is worthy of due consideration but not dispositive, can be reduced to my appealing to authority – you’re certainly entitled to do so. If you think that it is because I personally, or as a leftist, am inclined to appeal to authority – then you are just wrong.
VERIFYING AGW
Increase in human emission of CO2: http://bit.ly/izaWBU
Corresponding increase in global mean temperature trend: http://bit.ly/lUQBhX
An about 5.7-times increase in human emission of CO2 from 111 to 632 G-ton causes little change in the global mean temperature trend of 0.15 deg C per decade.
According to the data, AGW is a fraud.
The AGW scientists have not conclusively proved the CO2 case, neither have the sceptics natural causes. Lot of talk on both sides with little to show.
Have a good time but remember
See you in September
See you when the summer’s through…
Big differences is that skeptics did not advance any theory and ask billions to spend and world economies and life to change based upon a dodgy theory backed by bad science.
There’s a huge difference there.
Science isn’t based on “proving” a theory wrong, it’s about proving a theory correct. This is basic warmist twaddle that only flies in a society with very limited understand of the sciene method. Again there is the irony that warmist claim the high ground of “elite” and “consensus” while making horrible claims like “prove us wrong” as if we are at 5th grade level of reasoning.
There is a similar blunder (fraud) when human co2 gets compounded under the argument that this would not be there if not for man. The sink isn’t even remotely understood in math terms and concept of compounded human contribution which about 3% of total co2 input is absurd. It doesn’t pass the laugh test but have you ever seen JC or many ever point this out? It’s all designed to obfuscate how little man is really impacting and contributing.
Total non-science arguments.
This is what I said:
The AGW scientists have not conclusively proved the CO2 case, neither have the sceptics natural causes.
not what you implied.
False quivalence, exactly my point. Natural causes is assumed until other evidence becomes decisive. It hasn’t.
Gore’s carbon footprint alone has changed the climate. Prove it hasn’t.
==================
Anthropogenic or solar, more science and less politics is required.
It appears only Milankovic is settled, and that was decades ago.
Actually it is not settled, Vukcevic. The Milankovitch cycles are merely a correlation with the ice ages, hence an hypothesis of causality. No mechanism has yet been found to connect these gradual orbital changes to the abrupt onset and end of ice ages. Even worse, the M-cycles are as old as the earth but the ice ages are extremely recent, just a few millions of years old. A blink of the geologic eye. As a result there is no way to connect the ice age causality to recent climate change. This is perhaps the biggest uncertainty of all.
There is a good reason for that. First glacification was dated, as far as I remember about 2.4 billion years ago, coinciding with proliferation of oceanic plankton creating atmospheric oxygen, which combined with then predominantly methane atmosphere mostly eliminating this powerful ghg that held the Earth’s temperature high.
Fast glacification is driven by a strong positive feedback of high snow/ice albedo, which in the reverse part of the cycles slows down the process, since the albedo of 1m of ice is the same as albedo of 1000m of ice. Milankovic cycle is only a trigger for reversal of the process from one direction to the other.
Global tectonic movements, by altering patterns of the ocean currents, make for the irregularities from one cycle to the next.
Regarding Joshua’s question of the Idso’s credentials, they run the most complete skeptical science assessment site that I know of: http://www.co2science.org/
They are heroes. Senator Al Gore beat up father Sherwood (an expert on CO2 and plant growth) in the late 1980’s. So the sons, Craig and Keith, have taken up the skeptical cudgels, and then some. When the history of this scientific fiasco is finally written the Idso’s should loom large.
I didn’t question Idso’s credentials, or those of any individual speaker at the conference. I questioned the balance of the conference, and the overall scientific content as compared to political and/or advocacy content.
Now that you brought up Idso, however – I found these statements attributed to him over at Desmog.
Now – assuming that the attribution is accurate – I have a question for you and/or for Judith.
What happened to the uncertainty?
I thought that of the scientists who publish climate change science, there is a “vast asymmetry” related to perspective on levels of certainty?
Joshua, I presume the “him” in question is Sherwood Idso? In any case I assume the “vast asymmetry” in certainty you constantly refer to is that over AGW, as between AGW proponents and skeptics. Otherwise I do not know what you are talking about. To my knowledge you have never actually explained it.
Individual skeptics may well be certain about specific aspects of the debate. For example, I am relatively certain that the UAH temperature record falsifies AGW. I am certain that AGW is primarily a political movement. I am absolutely certain that you are trying to play a game here, as opposed to taking and debating a position.
David – it’s all just a diversionary tactic. I’m trying to prevent the “skeptics” from uncovering the truth. The longer I can delay the process, the more time me and my pals have to implement our root and branch transformation of the global society into a one world government.
Nazis, Stalinists, Eugenicists, and eco-Nazis have learned such tactics from Saul Alinsky.
It all goes back to Saul Alinsky.
I realize my efforts are most likely futile when matched against those like you – who aren’t pursuing political goals but only interested in taking and debating a position – but as I’ve been told many times, my fellow “warmists” and I are desperate at this point.
You’ve found me out. I feel so exposed.
Gad, you’ve thrown it into the stands.
============
I went to a talk Saul gave, once upon a time. I don’t remember what he said, but I was intrigued enough to pose him a question afterwards. I don’t remember my question or his response. It’s probably a good thing.
========================
Well said, Kim. Into the stands is exactly right, to the extent that metaphors can be exact. (I don’t suppose you do custom work? The term “ballistics” comes to mind, especially the early stuff.)
Having found the button I need to dry my hands.
Hey, you’ve got a knack for this. ::grin::
==============
By the way, how’d you guess? Cabless Massey 410 and some hand sickling. I can separate the kernel from the chaff.
====================
I’m a Deere man myself. Same grist, no wrist.
Joshua, if you can’t be honest you could at least be serious. Irony is a bad plan in blog posts. Try actually saying something, for a change.
What makes you think I wasn’t being honest or serious, David?
Did you have the same doubts about honesty and seriousness all the time that I have been similarly characterized by “skeptics?” There was nothing in my characterization that wasn’t consistent
David – when you make the statements about me like the ones you’ve made above z(and as you’ve made many times in the past) – I respond in kind. If you don’t feel that I merit a serious attempt at discussion, then don’t bother. If you want to engage me in a discussion without telling me that I’m not serious, then just let me know and drop the ad homs.
eh – I should have written – there was nothing in my characterization that wasn’t consistent ….with how I’ve been described by “skeptics” many times on this blog.
Joshua, I think you were neither honest nor serious because you invoked all kinds of weird extremist stuff that I never referred to, using an ironical voice. Your response was not addressed to me at all.
Sorry but I have not followed your career here. What I have noticed is that you like to ask loaded questions instead of making honest statements. You also invoke the extremist stuff a lot. I have repeatedly asked you to explain yourself and you have repeatedly failed to do so.
Isolate.
====
I’m lovin’ the ad homs, David. And repeating them really adds to their value.
David at 2.22
Perhaps Joshua was being ironic to you but I do wonder if the nesting system used here plays a few tricks? A number of times I have followed early comments that go through a linear logical sequence then you go back and all sorts of additional comments have been inserted. This makes it look as if person A is insulting person E when they had actually been referring to comething that person B had been saying.
in the absence of a numbering system it might help if people actually made direct reference to the person and time of comment so we can follow the sequence better. Just a thought.
tonyb
Joshua, criticism is not an ad hominem. An ad hominem is when someone claims that something said must be false because of who says it. My point is that you work very hard not to make explicit statements. There is no substance to ad hom about. Saul Alinsky?
Actually, tony.
The sarcasm was definitely directed towards David – in response to his first in a series of ad hom posts.
Not to say that the nesting feature of this blogging software doesn’t leave a lot to be desired.
David – you have stated with absolute certainty that I’m “playing games here,” not taking a position, not serious about the debate, and you’ve gone on to say that I’m not being honest.
If you want to distinguish between such statements and ad homs, be my guest.
Once again Joshua, criticism is not an ad hominem. An ad hominem is when someone claims that something said must be false because of who says it. My point is that you work very hard not to make explicit statements. There is no substance to ad hom about.
Unlike many skeptics, I do not believe my opponents in the debate are dishonest. You are an exception. Mind you I have seen this before, because as a logician I study the debate as a debate. It is a rhetorical trick where you never actually take a position on the issues. You use leading questions rather than honest assertions. When challenged you can always say you did not actually claim anything.
For example, this thread began when you invoked DeSmogBlog and asked how many speakers were published in the climate science literature. You made no actual claim but the implication was clear. It is a rhetorical trick and you play it constantly.
David – perhaps it’s just me – but when someone says that I’m not being honest, or that I”m not being serious, or that I’m “playing” rather than saying what I believe – I consider that to be a personal attack, with the purpose of showing that because some personal attribute, my opinions are not of merit.
Now if you want to distinguish between that and an ad hom, that is certainly your right – but if you in fact do want to engage me in serious discussion, then saying that I’m being dishonest, or “playing,” etc., is not a place to start, or a place to continue.
I have no wish nor need to change your opinions about me. Your opinions about me are of no significance to how I live my life. If you think that you can determine from my blog posts that I am “dishonest,” etc., IMO – that is much more descriptive of your mindset than it is of anything about me.
Now I absolutely despise blog arguments about what does or does not comprise an ad hom. As I said, if you want to distinguish between the comments you made to me and ad homs, please be my guest. But in the future, when you say things like I’m being dishonest, or not being serious, it is highly likely that I will respond in the way I did on this thread – with a sarcastic response. It is not unlike how I’d respond to hunter or someone else who substitutes their personal assessment about my character, motivations, or intent on the basis of not knowing anything at all, really, about my character, motivations, or intent.
If you get some benefit from engaging with someone that you consider to be dishonest, “playing,” not being serious, etc, then please feel to do so. It seems highly illogical to me, and probably driven by some distorted belief system – but I guess since you are an expert in rhetoric and how people formulate their beliefs, as you’ve explained numerous times on this blog, no doubt you have much greater insight into those issues than I, and I defer to your expertise.
Anyway – have a nice rest of the day. I’ll look forward to your determinations about my honesty, seriousness, and game-playing on future threads.
Revisiting Dr. Tol’s lament that the IPCC constitutes a knowledge monopoly, an important report on the state of the science from a non-IPCC source this week:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2010.php
The AAAS, another non-IPCC voice, weighed in on the harassment of scientists:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CDEQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aaas.org%2Fnews%2Freleases%2F2011%2Fmedia%2F0629board_statement.pdf&rct=j&q=aaas%20harassment%20scientists&ei=Z0kPTqHoK8vViAKG1YDgDQ&usg=AFQjCNFFvH0ytpACGQZNiaHCXXsioUxI9w&sig2=88HnNkzibLU0_m44WMajhg&cad=rja
Regarding the so-called “state of the climate” report. This demonstrates what I have long said, namely that the USGCRP is worse than the IPCC when it comes to AGW propaganda. NCDC is Tom Karl’s domain. He is the defacto leader of the USGCRP. Reader beware.
Heh, ask Antnee about Tom.
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That’s quite a non-falsifiable belief system you have there, David. The IPCC’s summary is propaganda, and if other independent reviews of the science come to similar conclusions — well, then they are all propaganda too.
Three guesses what David thinks of the National Academy of Sciences’ review of climate change science. I’m guessing it begins with a “P.”
The suggestion that the USGCRP is “worse” than the IPCC hints at an important fact: the IPCC’s science is conservative. As one would expect of a high-profile, bidecadal review overseen by scores of governments, its conclusions are modest and its projections sedate compared to the implications of the best science available.
What makes you think other government reports are “independent”? I have been in those offices as part of an advisory panel on land use change and the IPCC reports are the bible of the people writing them. The Royal Society makes a habit of defending bad behavior by IPCC. EPA simply took IPCC as gospel in their endangerment finding. Independent? I think not.
VERIFYING AGW (worse than we thought!)
Increase in human emitted CO2: http://bit.ly/lEPc3P
Corresponding increase in global mean temperature trend: http://bit.ly/lUQBhX
About 8.8-times increase in human emitted CO2 from 111 to 975 G-ton caused little change in the global mean temperature trend of about 0.15 deg C per decade.
As a result, according to the data, AGW is a fraud.
From the morning bell when schoolteachers labeled Wm Grey a ‘denier’ and accepted the politics of Al Gore as a legitimate means to accomplish what the secular, socialist establishment considerd to be the nobel ends of marginalizing capitalism and the principles of individualism in America — up to the present jihad on all skeptics of AGW theory — academia’s role in promoting global warming alarmism has been a crime in progress.
When they call us deniers, why don’t we call them fraudsters?
In the Left’s war on reason, awarding Al Gore and Dr. Rajendra Pachauri the Nobel prize was a crime against humanity that all of those who stood by and let happen are now loathe to admit.
As a skeptic, I find your extremism ridiculous, hence unhelpful. The Nobel prize was the Peace Prize, often given for environmentalist activism. This is an honest debate, not a “crime against humanity.”
I would say the debate is becoming more honest. And there’s less criminality because there’s a cop on the beat.
================
For me, the last straw, even more than the statement that Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035, what I found repugnant was the “accelerated warming” conclusion and graph of the IPCC.
http://bit.ly/b9eKXz
For this fraud, IPCC must return its Nobel Prize.
The Medium is the Message: dead and dying old Europe has been waging a secret war against Americanism since the days of J.P. Sartre and all of the rest of arrogant, self-defeating nihilists of Western civilization who live only to tell others what to do.
The two most prolific tone trolls seem to be spam commenting in tandem today. I wonder if this is this a joint effort to to derail all the threads, or just two self absorbed guys with too much time on their hands.
To paraphrase Churchill: “Never before was so much said to so many, by so few, with so little content.”
OK, I gotta take a break anyway.
============
You’re a guy? Who knew. But no, not you.
kim flies from the heat
visions of leftists dancing
to return with verses
impudent haiku
so much worse than just free verse
don’t lose your day job
Thanks for reading, Gary.
I can always count on you. Particularly since I pointed out that when you attacked Muller’s credibility, you were, um…… attacking Muller’s credibility.
Why Scarlett, whatever gave you the idea I was talking about you? Perish the thought.
Just an educated guess – seeing as how you’ve been obsessed with me ever since the aforementioned event that obviously gave you a….er, put a bee in your bonnet (I’ll stick with the more polite expression).
What bothered you on the Muller thread wasn’t what I wrote about Muller, but about calling you out for lying on a later thread about what I had written.
I criticized you twice for falsely representing what I wrote. That is what got Miss Scarlett’s knickers in a bunch, where they seem to have remained ever since.
This is the series of comments in which you repeatedly misrepresented my comments, and I pointed it out.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/04/13/scientists-often-pigeonholed-by-political-debates/#comment-61857
Why not get over it and, oh, I don’t know, start making substantive comments?
And really, Gary – you shouldn’t about David and kim that way.
It isn’t nice.
Why do we give J Romm any time? Because he keeps issuing such erroneous and purposely wrong statements.
I will have trouble putting anything in his tin cup when I see him in the street.
This IPCC fraud is perpetrated by comparing global mean temperature trend for one global warming phase with a trend for a longer period that consists of this warming and cooling phase and declaring “accelerated warming”
http://bit.ly/b9eKXz
Another fraud is they don’t call me “Man Made Global Warming denier”, but they call me “Climate change denier”. As climate always changes (Holocene maximum, Medieval climatic optimum, Little ice age etc), I cannot deny that the climate changes. But they smear me with a “climate change denier” tag, which I am not.
This is a war for the truth. Now the gloves are off from me, and whenever they use the denier tag, I will use the fraudster tag.
Sorry Judith.
Re: ICCC6, Denning’s second talk was on an interesting panel with Scafeta and Soon. Here his science was very well presented as he is an expert on the carbon cycle. He listed points on which everyone would agree, which seemed obvious the way he put them. Towards the end he went into politics, and he is in the interesting position of an AGWer on the political right. Therefore his main point was put very strongly that unless the right propose “free-market” solutions to climate change (I am not sure what he means by that), the left, Greenpeace and governments will make the plans for everyone. Interesting perspective, but not popular with the audience. Soon said in response the right have a plan and it is to do nothing, which he was applauded for.
I haven’t seen the conference, but if I heard someone say “the plan” was to do nothing, I would assume that that meant no government plan imposed upon everyone. Free market supporters would know that individuals and private organizations within the market make the only legitimate plans – ones that they implement of their own free will, without the expectation of using government power to force others to accede to their demands. Of course, there are always those rent-seekers who hope to use the power of government to achieve their personal goals, but they do not represent the free market at all.
The difference between market supporters and those who are anti-market is not whether plans are made, but whether individual, voluntary plans are pursued, or whether some elitist’s plan is imposed on everyone.
I have thought a little more about what a “free market” solution might be, and I suspect it would look something like the oil industry is already doing. That is, private companies would sense that a profit is to be made in, for example, wind energy and grow that area with large government subsidies, making profits for their managers on tax-payer subsidies. But that is just my interpretation of “free market” as seen by today’s right. A true free market would be one that grew without government help, but that could only occur through profit-making off the public’s energy bills and creative financing (think Enron).
Those who say thing like “we have to propose free market solutions” usually don’t really get the free market concept. Anyone can “propose a free market solution” – in the free market. It’s called starting a business.
What most people mean when they say “conservatives have to propose free market solutions” is that conservatives have to propose alternative central plans to be implemented by the government, that are disguised as free market processes.
The only “free market solution” that involves government is reducing government interference in the market, such as by defunding the EPA’s rush to take control of the energy economy, and eliminating market distorting taxes, regulations, and subsidies (yes including tax breaks that are unique to a given industry).
Too many who call themselves conservatives just want to substitute their central planning initiatives for those of the admitted progressives. The Republican Party is full of them. Hopefully their ranks will be thinned in or around November 2012.
Sadly, the “free market” appears to mean:
a. you can make as much money as you like from private investment and paying customers, but if you get really big and do a really bad job and lose a lot of money, the government will give you cash for free
b. if you can’t find enough investors for a risky new business and you sell it as good for the environment, the government will give you cash for free
c. no matter if a company makes money or loses money, management always walks out with a lot of cash
The “free market” could work if:
1. governments put in law that they won’t fund bailouts
2. governments invest in shares in corporations just like any other investors and expect a return on investment on behalf of the taxpayer and are accountable for their choices of investment
2. governments put in law that corporations and management have enforceable responsibilities and liability which is not limited
Too bad nobody in power cares.
BLouis79,
Your “definition” of the “free market” is way off.
a. and b. have nothing to do with the free market. They are examples of government interference in the market, making it much less free.
c. is only sometimes (not “always”) true. First, most “management” are employees and are paid compensation. But the most prominent, the ones you read about, get much of their compensation in the form of stock options. When the company tanks, the values of their shares and options goes with it. Some, like the formed heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, big time Democrat party donors, do walk away with huge compensation packages intact, but they are the exception.
As for your solutions:
1. would be an excellent reform.
2. would make the problems worse. When the government buys shares in companies, it gains the right to control them. Government ownership of industry is not going to make the free market freer, or more responsive to market demands. Think of the Chevy Volt as an great example.
2. (should be 3) already exists. Corporations and management are already subject to tort law. Management have fiduciary duties to their companies and their shareholders, and both are already liable for any tortious conduct they engage in that harms others.
Government interference in the free market is no reason for rejecting the superiority of that system over the alternatives.
(Clearly, what I said was commentary on dysfunction of the “free market” rather than definitional.)
2 was to address the notion that economists argue innovation generates “public good” and that is a rationale for government subsidies of certain industries. A subsidy is free cash, which is way worse than a publicly funded investment. Government should not be taking majority shareholdings in companies – if that is justifiable, then the business should be publicly owned. It is not good for society for government to hand out free cash to any corporation. I still think it’s better for governments to buy shares and get a return than to give away cash in hope of generating a public good.
re 3 – the present problem is that corporations have too many rights and not enough social responsibilities, and that in the main doing good for shareholders does not have to correlate with doing good for society.
The “free market” does need to be freer, but corporations need to be more responsible and the law need to reflect increased social obligations rather than that being optional and used as a warm and fuzzy by some corporations.
“(Clearly, what I said was commentary on dysfunction of the “free market” rather than definitional.)”
I understood that to be your point, and that was what I disagreed with. Government interference with the free market is not “dysfunction of the ‘free market.'” It is dysfunction of government. Blaming the damage caused by creeping socialism on the free market is the rhetorical ploy of those who wish ever more government control over the market. The negative effects of harmful regulation are used as the excuse for more regulation.
“the present problem is that corporations have too many rights and not enough social responsibilities, and that in the main doing good for shareholders does not have to correlate with doing good for society.”
Thiscomment simply shows you don’t understand the nature of a free market, or why it is the best system for running an economy. The whole concept behind capitalism is that keeping government out of the way, allowing people (including through the corporations they form), to pursue their own self interest, ends up being the best for everyone in the long run.
Whose environment is better? The Russians, Chinese, Koreans and others where government tells corporations what to do, or the (more) capitalist economies of the west? Where do the technological innovations that feed the world and created the internet come from? Where do the “miracle drugs” come from? Where is the poverty less grinding? Yet none of these were demanded of corporations by government for the “social good.” They are all the product of the investors and managers of corporations doing what was in the best economic self interest of those shareholders. Doing good for shareholders, subject to laws and regulations governing safety and honesty, will also inevitably produce a better result in the long run for society in terms of social policy.
“The ‘free market’ does need to be freer, but corporations need to be more responsible and the law need to reflect increased social obligations rather than that being optional and used as a warm and fuzzy by some corporations.”
The market needs to be freer, except it needs to be less free. And who precisely is it who will decide what these increased “social obligations” are? Forget the Russians, Chinese and Cubans, do you want to follow the Greeks, Spanish, Portugese and Italians off that particular cliff?
Your comment as a whole is a perfect reflection of the complete lack of understanding of the difference between a free market economy and a command and control one, that is the norm today. It is the product of the influence progressives have had on education, the media, and popular culture. And this misshapen view of the two systems is at the very core of the climate debate, because it accurately reflects the arguments made by those who wish to use “the common good” as an excuse to force this society into one where they get to define that common good is, and to exercise the control that comes with that authority.
Thanks, but no thanks. I would not feel any safer with you defining the “social responsibility” of corporations, than I would allowing Obama, Clinton, Cameron, Blair, Putin, or Fidel to do so. Government control makes things worse, just look around the globe.
I think this is really insightful, and I hope Denning’s perspective becomes more widely accepted. Really, it is a historical accident that environmentalism is associated with the left, when in other times and places conservatives have strongly supported conservation. Because of that historical accident, many people on the right see the left as “owning” the issue of global warming, and have come to see recognition of the problem as akin to defeat for their own political and social outlook.
You can see a similar phenomenon at work over the many decades in which the left refused to confront the problem of underperforming public school teachers. Supporting educational funding and supported by teacher’s unions, they saw recognition of the problem as a threat, and denied it, despite the fact that the people most negatively impacted were the socioeconomically disadvantaged, whose interests the left was ostensibly championing.
Mitigating global warming has to involve some degree of international cooperation, and some significant costs for some business interests, but that’s no reason conservatives can’t ask themselves the question: “If global warming proved to be a very serious, destructive process, what strategies of mitigation would I advocate? What strategies are consonant with my values (limited government, low taxes, minimal regulation, etc)?”
THE MIDDLE AGES
Broadly speaking, the tenth to twelfth centuries featured what is called the medieval climatic optimum, which, in Europe, consisted of temperatures similar to those of today.
This favorable climate assisted the colonization of Iceland and Greenland by the Vikings, as well as the burgeoning of European civilization between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.
As the thirteenth century came to a close, the climate changed again. There were dreadful cold, wet summers in 1315 and 1316 and succession of cold summers thereafter. The failure of the Norse colony in Greenland and the privations of Iceland in the following years are clearly linked to this poor weather.
In Europe, the cooling of the climate may have triggered population decline (which began even before the Black Death Plague of the late fourteenth century). However, there were also a number of human factors involved. These included a rapid population growth, the extension of agriculture into less fertile land, and the occupation of vulnerable coastal sites.
THE LITTLE ICE AGE
We are uncertain about the historic impact of the Little Ice Age-a cold period from about 1450 to 1850 that include many harsh winters. London’s River Thames often froze over and was the site of frequent frost fairs. Series of cold, wet summers (such as in the 1590s, 1690s, and 1810s) were reflected in food crises throughout Europe and surges in Alpine glaciers.
The Little Ice Age is an elusive phenomenon and may not have been a single long term episode at all. Recent studies suggest that it consisted of several cold intervals of up to 30 years each at the ends of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and from 1800 to 1820, interspersed by warmer periods.
Weather
Burroughs et al
The Five Mile Press
Another non-event that is happening, is the absence of hurricanes in the North Atlantic. I know it is early days, the peak for such hurricanes is in September. But the USA is enjoying a long period of having no hurricanes make landfall on it’s territory. Long may this continue. And let us hope that a lack of hurricanes continues, and gets noticed by those who still support the failed hypothesis (hoax) of CAGW.
Enjoy your weekend.
http://www.naturalnews.com/032883_Independence_Day_government_tyranny.html
I have some incredibly sad news to report. My colleague at Georgia Tech Kurt Frankel http://www.eas.gatech.edu/people/Kurt_Frankel
was killed in a bicycle accident this weekend, he was 33 years old.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/28434197/detail.html
Kurt was a superb geophysicist, a wonderful teacher and mentor and a great friend. He was also a superb communicator, you may have caught him on CNN discussing earthquakes. One of his interviews on CNN made it onto the Daily Show, a classic (Kurt shows up later in the clip)
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-1-2010/the-uninformant
This sad news. 33 is too young. Thoughts and prayers for Kurt and his family and friends.
“Remember, LORD, your great mercy and love,
for they are from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth
and my rebellious ways;
according to your love remember me,
for you, LORD, are good.” -from Psalm 25
Mark Lynas has a new article entitled
“You mustnt believe the lies of the Green zealots. And I should know – I was one”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2010981/You-mustnt-believe-lies-Green-zealots-And-I-know–I-one.html#ixzz1R7Tu9FjG
Mark Lynas seems to be an opportunist. When CAGW was all the hype, he profited from it big time. Now that it’s falling apart, he’s looking to jump off the bandwagon.
One problem with his logic is the belief that the only opposition to nuclear power comes only from greens. Nevada is not populated with a large number of greens (~2/3rds oppose,) and Nevada has stoutly rejected its being used as the national waste dump.
Support and opposition for nuclear power regularly crosses political lines.
He’s a pie thrower: a spectacular drama queen. Reminds me of Brett Favre.
Judith – you’ll link to any kind of nonsense that says bad things about greens, won’t you?
OK – so only environmentalists object to nuclear power (being fearful about the dangers and waste), and that’s the (only?) reason why many people don’t like the Greens?
Great logic, that.
No, that’s not the only reason. Greens and other bureaucrat environmentalist are damaging our environment.
Good point, Edim. I hadn’t thought of that.
Rightwing extremism, obsessive hatred of libz, red-baiting, etc., have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
That too. Joshua, don’t forget, there are many liberal sceptics. You are missing the mark!
IMO, liberals should have never jumped the Carbon bandwagon. Another damage and such a shame. Road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.
That too. Joshua, don’t forget there are many liberal sceptics too. In my opinion, leftwing/rightwing dichotomy is mostly false and a distraction. The problem is corruption, huge bureaucratic systems and hypocrisy. These cause social injustice and social/political oppresion. This will have to change, sooner or later.
Regarding liberals, they should have never jumped the Carbon bandwagon. Another damage. Road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.
Edin,
Assuming that Greens are responsible for some, (if not a great deal), of corruption, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and hypocrisy, I think that it is also still safe to assume that there are many other causes of social injustice/political oppression – and IMO, many of them are equally if not more causal to those phenomena.
That’s not to excuse the negative ramifications of overly zealous Green ideology – but to point that that demonizing Greens via selective “outrage” is not likely to produce much positive, and in fact isn’t likely to produce anything other than additional tribalism.
Arrgghh! “..but my point is that demonizing Greens via selective outrage….”
Joshua, I understand you and agree partly.
I think the truth (about anything) will out and I always try to take it’s side. I don’t calculate. I think humans cannot really “model” the world and know what will produce what. It’s always a speculation and it can lead to hell.
If it ain’t those commie Greens, then it’s those “statist” government bureaucrats.
Because, you know, the Greens rig the elections and all. All non-Greens that are elected into office are actually secret double-agents who only pose to be from other parties.
I must say Joshua, you are making remarkable progress.
Thank you, Tom.
I’d like to take credit, but in all honesty I can’t (and David gets so upset at my “dishonesty”). Even someone as stupid as I (as so artfully pointed out by steven, gary, stan, hunter, Jim Owen, and not a few other “denizens), can learn when exposed to such masterful teachers.
Joshua, If the AGW crowd, ever get around to writing a history of their raise & fall. Perhaps they should consider you, for their Historian.
Joshua fought the battle of Climate Etc
And the walls came tumblin’ down
Can’t wait to read about it. ;)
Andrew
Since I’ve done two threads on Mark Lynas, which generated substantial interest, I am following up with his latest piece. My logic is not yours, and vice versa.
“OK – so only environmentalists object to nuclear power (being fearful about the dangers and waste), and that’s the (only?) reason why many people don’t like the Greens?
Great logic, that.”
Two “only”s in your sentence, yet I don’t see even one in the article itself.
“The objection of environmentalists to nuclear power — fears about the dangers of nuclear waste and the cost of decommissioning it — are overblown, which explains why many people don’t like the Greens.”
There are two statements in that paragraph:
1. The dangers of nuclear power have been overblown by greens; and
2. The greens have exaggerated those fears and many people don’t like them for that.
One could try to disprove either of those claims (or other factual assertions in the article), and maybe even present evidence in opposition to the author’s claims. Show that the dangers of nuclear power publicized by greens have been reasonable; or that their numbers on the deaths from Chernobyl (like their numbers on deaths from CAGW, second hand smoke, etc.) are accurate. Maybe show that affection for greens has increased as they have saved the world from nuclear energy.
But it is so much easier to rewrite what an author says, then argue with the “poor logic” of the reconstructed misrepresentation.
Terrible logic that.
Though I must admit I would love to see examples of “Rightwing extremism, obsessive hatred of libz, red-baiting, etc.,” that have damaged the environment.
Gary –
If you don’t see a problem with the logic of saying…”… which explains why many people don’t like the Greens.”.. – in the sense that it is woefully insufficient as an explanation for “why many people don’t like the Greens,” well, um, I guess I can see why, when you attacked Muller’s integrity, you didn’t think you were attacking his credibility.
As a result – we’re left with that ol’ “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
Sorry “…..didn’t think you were attacking his integrity.”
As always, your inability to cite to any evidence is as enlightening.as your misrepresentation of what the author writes.
More brilliance from your link, Judith:
The Greens “forced” the country’s government?
“The Green party has taken power from Angela Merkel‘s conservatives in one of Germany‘s richest states, preliminary results from the Baden-Württemberg elections show.
The chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union party, or CDU, had ruled the region’s state legislature for almost 58 years, but found itself on the wrong side of the nuclear debate following Fukushima…..The Green vote was helped by the argument in Germany over its 17 nuclear power plants, heightened by the Fukushima disaster.
In the aftermath, Merkel performed an 180-degree policy change by announcing the closure of seven stations built before 1980. She also said she was committed to speeding up total withdrawal from nuclear power.”
http://nuclear-news.net/2011/04/28/green-partys-victory-as-germans-reject-nuclear-power/
Bingo!! Have you ever shopped at a farmer’s market? Ever looked around at who shops there? Lefty/commie eco-Nazis, one and all. Every single farmer’s market. It’s incredible.
In the old days, locavores were malnourished by Spring.
=====================
I started shopping at a (now closed) farmer’s market some 20 years ago (it had been in existence for decades prior to that).
Pennsylvania Dutch selling fresh produce, meat, and poultry to predominantly poor, minority customers.
Just goes to show how devious those Greens/commies/lefties/eco-Nazis are – and just how long-standing and far-reaching is the AGW cabal.
I knew a woman once, widowed with twelve children, fortunately the older ones able bodied and helpful, who lived through the Depression, and half a century later still refused to ‘go on the county’, as she had then. She had plowed with a mule. I once asked her how she made it and her reply was ‘I just pulled the food up out of the ground.’
======================
Am I property?
Forty acres and a mule.
The troubles I seen.
=============
Yes indeedy. That massive power monopoly held in the seventies and eighties by those autocratic Greens is precisely what undermined the advance of nuclear power. Larger public concerns about nuclear safety? Issues related to safe disposal of waste? Inefficiencies and incompetence from the nuclear industry? Massive costs involved beyond those attributable to legal opposition from Greens? Never existed.
Those millions and millions of Greens and duped non-Greens kept electing Greens and those Green secret agents pretending to be from other parties into office so they could prevent the growth of nuclear power.
Lynas really has the explanations for it all.
Joshua
Certainly in the UK we desperately need new sources of reliable power-preferably cheap. What do you suggest we use if nuclear AND Coal AND Oil AND gas are ruled out. Serious question.
tonyb
I’m fairly agnostic about nuclear. I see merits in arguments on both sides of the issue – probably tend to lean towards increased nuclear energy.
Here are the problems I see in the current debate about nuclear energy.
It has become a proxy for ideological/tribal battles (on both sides). On these very Climate etc. pages I have seen gross distortions of how the current state w.r.t. nuclear energy was reached in the U.S. – blame placed exclusively on “environmentalists” even though: (1) Concerns about safety are shared by a large % of Americans; (2) cost-overruns and inefficiencies, and corruption, and incompetence have afflicted the nuclear energy for decades (as, indeed, they afflict any large-scale entities in both the private and public sector); (3) there were dramatic slow-down in nuclear facility development well prior to TMI and the reaction of environmentalists to TMI; (4) given the long horizon for ROI and the massive infrastructure costs involved, the feasibility of dramatically increased nuclear development would require massive government subsidization – as indeed it has received in every country where there has been significantly greater development of nuclear energy – yet many of the same people finger-pointing at “environmentalists” are the same to write polemic screeds about government involvement in energy policy; (5) anyone who thinks that we shouldn’t have strict regulatory oversight of nuclear energy is flat out crazy; (6) anyone who thinks that the public won’t demand strict regulatory oversight of nuclear energy is flat out crazy; (6) legitimate concerns about the current state of nuclear waste technology are politicized unethically.
Not a few prominent “environmentalists” have outwardly advocated for increased nuclear energy. In addition to being factually wrong historically, categorical finger-pointing at environmentalists for a lack of nuclear facility development certainly doesn’t reflect the current state of affairs.
IMO – people who do such finger-pointing (on either side), based on such facile reasoning, are simply manifesting their tribalistic instincts, and aren’t interested in serious debate about the real economic and environmental concerns.
Joshua,
Finland is one the countries building presently new nuclear plants and planning to start further projects. No significant public support is given, but private companies have been competing on the right to build their plants (the parliament must give an approval, and that is limiting the possibilities to initiate projects).
Our four existing units have all been economically very successful producing power at total costs well below the market prices.
Fair enough, Pekka – I haven’t read much about the nuclear industry in Finland.
What is the nature of the regulatory process in Finland?
To what extent has public support been a part of the development of the industry to allow it to reach the current state?
If the finger-pointing at environmentalists for the lack of nuclear facilities in other countries is correct, what is it about Finland that has enabled it to effectively neutralize those evil environmentalists?
To what extent might the “socialistic” nature of Finland, e.g., the tax structure, be explanatory for the private sector development of the Finnish nuclear industry?
Are you saying that there is no governmental subsidization for the cost of nuclear Energy in Finland (including waste disposal)?
And Pekka – if you get a chance.
I haven’t seen reason to doubt your opinions on these pages – as such, I’d ask you to explain to me how the claims made at this source (obviously written by advocates) are inaccurate.
http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/reports/Nuclear_Subsidies.pdf
Also – can you point to a not overly-technical, at least reasonably non-partisan source that discusses the financing of the Finnish nuclear industry?
One last question and then I’ll leave you alone – at least for now:
I came across this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/53706880/2/SECURITY-OF-SUPPLY
It seems that including nuclear R & D could move the relative % of GDP spent on research could go either way. Can you tell me whether it would increase the relative % of GDP or reduce it (my assumption is that it would reduce it).
What you found refers to VTT. I was working there 1980-99, and most of my involvement with the economics of nuclear power is from that period. Part of that time I was working in The Nuclear Engineering Laboratory of VTT, but more with economic and other general issues than technology. Later my position was in another unit, but the work for the Government on issues related to nuclear energy continued also during that period.
VTT is a governmental laboratory, not exactly similar to US National Laboratories, but something in that direction anyway (I have worked earlier also at Argonne National Laboratory as a post-doctoral scientist).
The regulatory requirements are similar to most Western countries, and the regulatory process is not very different. The operating experience has been the best of all countries with the highest average availability (well over 90% and the gap to 100% is mostly due to planned maintenance). The high availability has naturally been a major factor in good economics of the plants. The smallness of the country has helped in attitudes to safety requirements. When the regulator complaints on something, the first thing is not to call the lawyers, but to solve the problem. This has helped in maintaining the good reliability record.
It’s clear that the opponents to nuclear energy have tried to invent, how there would be public support, but not very successfully. There really is practically none of it. The cost of regulatory control is also largely charged from the company by the government. The cost of nuclear waste disposal is included in the cost, as the companies must put aside funds that are estimated to cover all future costs. Estimating the costs of waste disposal is possible, because the plans for the disposal are well advanced and the construction of the disposal site has also proceeded to a rather advanced stage. The actual disposal of spent fuel has not yet been started, because it’s safer and at least less costly to have a long intermediary storage period (around 40 years) before its put deep into the bedrock. (The remaining radioactivity produces heat, and the power of that should be low enough before final disposal.)
Earlier in the nineties I was somewhat involved on behalf of the Government in verifying several cost estimates. I did also write the first analysis on the realized economics of the nuclear plants in the early part of their operation. That was also commissioned by the Government.
There are certainly more problems with the present construction project. The French company Areva has not performed well in many specific details, and the regulator has forced them to redo some construction and much more paperwork to convince that the plant is of highest quality, when it’s taken finally in use after several years delay compared to the original schedule. Thus Areva will certainly make a major loss in the project.
The smallness and other specific attributes of Finland have helped in many ways. People have in general more trust in Government than in most larger countries. There is little corruption compared to most other countries (while it certainly exists also in Finland in some areas of economic activity). Specifically these features have helped in gaining just enough support to continue, while there have been also periods, when the Parliament was not ready to accept construction of new nuclear plants.
Finland has only little own nuclear technology industry. Thus all plants are of foreign construction. Two oldest ones, which have main components from Soviet Union are very different from their relatives in Russia having a lot of technology from Finland, Germany and USA. The two other existing units are from Sweden with less technology from other sources. The oldest ones will be retired within 15 years, but the next ones may remain operational much longer.
All available material describing the role of Nuclear Power in Finland has probably some connection to either the Nuclear Industry or antinuclear movement. Some of the material supported by the industry may be pretty objective, but the connections is still there.
tony –
As for what do we do if all three are ruled out:
First, I see that as a political non-starter. It won’t happen – although I see merit in pricing energy in ways that reflect the true costs of negative externalities to the extent that their costs can be fairly assessed through balanced attention through negotiation among an equitably representative groups of stakeholders – and I think that could be a political reality and hope to live to see it happen.
Second – the basic problem I have with the debate as I see it is that in order to reach viable solutions, if anyone overtly states the view that solutions will require greater sacrifice among those who have the highest standards of living and who live lives that are the most consumptive of energy, they are forcefully demogogued as commie, leftist, socialist, Stalinist, statist, Eugenicist-loving, death from malaria-causing, eco-Nazis. In order to solve the problem, IMO – we at least need to be able to consider the possibility that sacrifices, at some level, will have to be made. Reduced energy usage by those who consume disproportionate amounts should be on the table as an option.
So – I don’t think that it is realistic to believe all three will be ruled out (despite that it can be documented that some notable stakeholders advocate for such – as you documented in the work you posted at Air
Vent). What I hope is that in the least, two of the three might be reduced – at least to the extent that through reasonable levels of sacrifice among those who currently consume disproportionate amounts – they can be substituted for other technologies (probably including nuclear) that are currently less cost/effective and logistically viable.
I think a starting point is to find a way to discuss these issues without tribal loyalties wiping out any potentially productive discussion. But maybe that’s a non-starter also?
Joshua
It doesn’t get away from the basic question though does it? Certainly in the UK-and I can’t comment on other countries- nuclear has been put on the back burner for 13 years by a govt who had clear anti nuclear inclinations.
The present govt has a minister for Climate change who all his life has been vehemently against nuclear but seems to have done an about face today after realising his green ambitions can’t be met otherwise.
We will start to suffer power cuts within three years as our existing fossil fuel stations are phasd out to meet our carbon reduction plans. With the considerable emphasis on electric cars and the need to generate electric in general for more people/more industry/more travel we require MORE power stations not fewer.
Wind is woefully ineficient, solar is not a sensible option in this country. As an island we should be going for wave/tidal power but there is a very sorry history behind all that. If you are interested I have a peer reviewed article I wrote on wave energy that you can see. It is depressing to think that it will be at least 20 years before it makes a contribution.
You seem to be suggesting rationing-I wrote about carbon rations in the article and it is still on the agenda- if hidden from plain view. Is that really what we have come to-rationing either by price or by quota? Why should we when the vast majority of the rest of the world will continue to build the power systems that suit them?
The UK is irrelevant in carbon emissions terms and the US increasingly so.
Back to the question, what do we use for grown up power stations or/and do we ration it-if so how? I’m still looking forward for you to identify the significant (and influential) ‘naysayers’ that you seem to believe we have in the UK that can effectively counter balance the prevailing orthodoxy.
Ps I am a member of the fusion society-perhaps that might be a source in the next decade or two.
tonyb
Thorium is cheaper and safer for nuclear power production.
Dr. Curry,
I request you add Climate Sanity to your blog roll. I just came across the blog today but have found it to present some very good math work, including a rather lengthy series destroying Vermeer and Rahmstorf 2009.
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/rahmstorf-2009-off-the-mark-again-part-12-a-mathematical-comedy/
Ron thanks for the link, i will add this to the blog roll
steven –
Because I assume that my posts will be deleted from the most recent thread, I will re-post my response to your latest response to me here in case you happen to stumble across it.
(It will be interesting to see which, if any, of the comments I quoted below will be considered as non substantive.)
I find it interesting that there are quite a few other commenters who believe that there was an implication in nic’s post of deliberate misuse of the data – yet my interpretation of his implications seem to be uniquely incorrect: Here are just a few from among the first group of posts.
and
and
and
and
and
Beyond that (less importantly), there is a very line line or posts where it isn’t necessarily clear that they think nic implies deliberate misuse of data, but there is a clear belief that nic’s article justifies a view that the data was deliberately misused:
and
Now nic can’t be held responsible, necessarily, for whether other people (including me) think that his article documents deliberate misuse of data – but if he wished to avoid such an outcome, and limit whether the arguments become overwhelmed with a “fight over personality,” it would seem that he could easily take steps to do so.
I will repeat a post I wrote to nic much earlier in the day (which remained unanswered, quite possibly due to the nesting problems iwth this blog or simply his interpretation that the questions don’t merit an answer) – with a slight edit for clarity:
Note to Judith – assuming that you determined that my posts in the previous thread were non substantive, then why do you suppose that people responded to them?
LOL
You can run but you can’t hide. She will track you down Joshua!!
This is a better place for this discussion
That’s fine. It’s your blog. You have your work cut out for yourself. Well, depending on how you define “substance.” I suppose that only my posts would meet that criterion. But many of the posts intermix discussion of the technical aspects with discussion of the whole AGW cabal thingy. How will you decide?
You used to identify technical threads, and I will not post “non substantive” comments on such threads identified as such in the future.
Not sure what your point is. Confirmation bias as well as other types of bais can be systematic.
I think that confirmation bias is – absolutely – systematic (as well as ubiquitous). My starting assumption is that most of what we believe to be “true” is greatly influence by confirmation bias. (which, of course, is influence by my confirmation bias – heh).
How does that relate to what I wrote?
Joshua
You speak frequently of confirmation bias and tribalism and are always seeking motives.
Why don’t you write up all this into a coherent article that says something meaningful and profound about the state of climate science-presumably along the lines that anyone involved in it can’t be objective-and see if Judith will give it a whirl.
At the moment I imagine you sitting in coffee shops along the shoreline to shelter from the rain, having what might be profound thoughts without really thinking them through to a meaningful conclusion. You have a starting assumption, why not work on that?
best regards
tonyb
tony-
What I am intending to do is to look for confirmation bias or tribalism.
Seeking motives? I actually try not to do that (although I suppose I sometimes fail) – it’s awfully difficult to determine people’s motives. But you have to admit – that to the extent that I do fall into the trap of seeking for motives, it pales in comparison to the myriad comments obviously and overtly attributing nefarious motives to “consensus” scientists on each and every thread, each and every day, at Climate etc.
You do see that, don’t you tony?
Even assuming that I do sometimes fall short of my goals, why do you suppose that the “outrage” about motive attribution is so selective?
It’s similar to what I showed in the comment above – poster after poster made it clear that they identified an implication in nic’s post that the errors he discussed were intentional so as to deceive – yet steven, and a few others, were only concerned with my assertion that he made such an implication. Interesting, don’t you think? A few posters took the time to clarify, for my benefit, that nic didn’t imply intentional misuse of data so as to deceive – yet although asked directly, nic, himself, didn’t see fit to clarify that I was mistaken?
As for writing a coherent article for Judith to post – I have yet to see her have any post at Climate etc. that wasn’t primarily focused on advancing a “skeptical un-convinced” agenda. Not one. So I highly doubt that my efforts (which would not fit with such an agenda), would result in a post, even if I could write something coherent enough that i’d think it was post-worthy.
And besides – are you suggesting that I forego the constant and guaranteed adoration from Climate etc.’s “denizens” – in order to gamble on an unsure big payoff? You can’t be serious. That would be far, far too big a risk.
“I have yet to see her have any post at Climate etc. that wasn’t primarily focused on advancing a “skeptical un-convinced” agenda.”
You see bias everywhere except in your own comments. I won’t bother going over all the past posts on this blog generated based on consensus article and arguments. I’ll just use the last couple days as an example.
Read the An Explanation (?) for Lack of Warming Since 1998 post, or the Climate Change, Extreme Weather Linked (?) at Last post. Read the articles if you haven’t. Consensus articles frequently form the basis for posts and are quoted at length by Dr. Curry. But if you are expecting Dr. Curry (or any one else) to argue in favor or positions she does not agree with.
I am not assuming you haven’t but I really don’t know. You so rarely comment on the substance of any post. You comment on comments. You comment on commenters, You comment on Dr. Curry. You comment on other people’s bias. And you do it more frequently it seems to me than any other commenter on this blog.
Which is fine. You write what you choose, Dr. Curry has never objected to you commenting, no matter how repetitive and snide your remarks to her, so no one else has the right to tell you not to.
But this latest comment of yours is a classic example of your myopic focus on what you apparently see as scoring debating points. Dr. Curry not only airs views in her main posts with which she disagrees, she allows commenters like you free reign to criticize and complain to your hearts content. Short of her giving you control of her blog, precisely is it that you think you should be able to expect?
I believe Dr. Curry has described her position as AGW convinced, but she just doesn’t accept the certainty of CAGW proponents, and is not willing to turn a blind eye to the misuse of science or misbehavior in its pursuit. I don’t expect that to change any time soon. So I would suggest you just get used to it.
I’m just curious. How often do you post multiple comments complaining about the one note symphonies that are RealClimate, Skepticalscience, ThinkProgress?
Joshua
GaryM at 1.22am has summed up your contribitions perfectly. Its a shame because ‘off camera’ you seen a thoughtful sort of person, but in debate you come over in exactly the manner Gary describes. I thought your comment here was interesting;
“.. it pales in comparison to the myriad comments obviously and overtly attributing nefarious motives to “consensus” scientists on each and every thread, each and every day, at Climate etc.”
Personally I dont think that climate science is a hoax or a scam and I doubt very much if the players in it have any nefarious motives. They have however painted themselves into a corner with their strident assertions based on the most flimsy of observations. Can’t you see the utter absurdity of political policy being set because someone has taken it into their head that bristlecone pines or throwing buckets over the side of a ship provide an extremely accurate version of land and sea temperatures?
I can’t possibly comment as to whether Judith would print an article you wrote along the lines suggested, but she is much more open than you think, hovering as she is in that nether world between faith and scepticsm.
The consequences of breaking the faith would be an interesting article in itself.
All the best
tony
I’ll take that under consideration as I respect your assessment. But I will offer a few comments in response.
From Gary’s post::
I’d like to look at that a bit by discussing what happened with nic’s post. In response to his post, I put up two, pointed but relatively benign posts asking him questions. The rest of my posts were in response to responses (some containing rather typical insults, in other words comments on me as a commenter)- not from nic but from other readers.
I don’t agree that my original comments were not “on the substance of the post” – although they were not on the technical aspects of the post they were directed, very specifically, at nic’s wording in the non-technical aspects of what he wrote. It seems that you and Gary think I am accountable for spin-off discussions that take place because other readers respond to my posts. This is something that happens frequently – when I am accused of “distracting” or “diverting” people’s attention. I assume that people are adults, and honestly, I have no secret powers that force people to respond to my comments. They are free to choose to ignore my comments as they so desire. I have no intention of “diverting” anyone. I am using this blog as a forum for exploring what is of interest to me about the topics at hand.
The point about scoring debate team points is well-taken, but I hardly think that characteristic is unique to my comments. With certain notable exceptions, I think that the “scoring debate points” attribute is pretty descriptive of many of the comments in disagreements in blog discussions. I don’t offer that as an excuse – but to again point out that I think that the standard of judgement being used seems quite flexible.
Finally:
And in that, you stand apart from a great deal of the commenters on this blog – or at least from the viewpoint expressed in many of their posts. I would hope that you would acknowledge that fact. I asked you to do so in my previous response, and I note that you didn’t.
If I agreed with your categorical assessments, then I would agree that it would be absurd; however, from what I’ve seen the situation, while potentially as you have described, is somewhat more ambiguous. For example, while you have done a good job in describing the highly variable and unscientific methods used to measure the temperature of water samples – it seems to me that the question of whether there were systemic biases that resulted from that lack of uniformity remains open. As I see it, it puts conclusions about sea surface temps on shakier ground – but doesn’t invalidate concerns about global warming based on observed trends in sea surface temps (mitigated with an acknowledgement of potential errors in the measurements).
No – I don’t expect that. Her opinion is her opinion. And I’m not saying that I think that she deceptively argues for opinions she doesn’t think are truthful.
When I say that Judith’s posts are always from a “skeptical un-convinced” perspective, I mean that Judith consistently puts up posts that reflect her view that the “consensus” is over-stated, as is the confidence about the rate of warming, confidence in the magnitude of forcing and/or sensitivity, demonstrable manifestation of climate change (such as surface sea temps), political influence on the “skeptical un-convinced/denier” side of the debate. Although I recall one critical reference to an “anti-consensus” blogger matched against a critical reference to Romm, I have yet to see her focus a post to “bad behavior” on the “skeptical un-convinced/denier” side of the debate but I have seen posts focused on “bad behavior” from the “skeptical convinced/believer” side of the debate. I am not saying that she doesn’t excerpt from or link to material that represents different perspectives – not at all. She clearly does that on a regular basis.
I don’t “expect” anything other than what Judith does. It’s her blog. I certainly don’t expect her to turn a blind eye to the misuse of science or “misbehavior” – on either side of the debate. But I don’t see why I should censor my reaction.
I don’t agree with all the monitoring policies of certain other blogs. I think they are counter-productive, ill-conceived, short-sighted, and a product of tribal behavior. I don’t see why poor monitoring policies of other blogs – including the decision at WUWT to censor out my statement of “A pox on both your houses” – should change my judgement as to whether Judith puts up posts that are consistently advocating for one point of view – a view which is different in many respects from my own.
“Judith consistently puts up posts that reflect her view…”
Why would you expect anyone to do anything different? How many skeptical posts has Gavin Schmidt posted. How about Joe Romm? Or whoever the teenage debate team captain is who runs SkepticalScience?
Dr. Curry, contrary to those leading lights of the consensus side of the climate debate, airs opposing views, in full, fairly and objectively, in her main posts.
“I don’t agree with all the monitoring policies of certain other blogs.”
I wasn’t asking about the comment policy on those other blogs, I was asking whether you personally had ever posted comments regarding bias and “presenting both sides” on those blogs. I note that you mention having a comment deleted at WUWT (A point which to me only suggests that Dr. Curry has the patience of Job, not that WUWT is “unfair”), but you did not respond to my question regarding consensus sites. Did you even try to post “A pox on both your houses” on any consensus blogs? Ever? And if not, why not?
Let me suggest that if you were as fair and forthright about opposing views in your comments, as Dr. Curry is to those she disagrees with in her posts, you would get a lot less grief from other commenters. And it might even make for a much more interesting discussion.
SkepticalScience type polemics may be fun to read when you already agree with them. But they don’t convince anyone who isn’t already convinced, and they certainly don’t advance the debate.
Confirmation bias is not deliberate.
I agree. How is that relevant to what I wrote?
because you used the systematic and fudged quotes to show people were saying it was deliberate. I can see they could be interpreted that way but don’t think they are necessarily word that mean a deliberate intention. Anyhow, it’s probably inconsequential.
“fudge?” I don’t see how that could be interpreted in any way other than to mean intent to deceive.
As for “systematiic” – as I interpret that word, it means in a planned or methodical manner – implying intentionality.
So – “necessarily?” Perhaps not – but I think that there is sufficient reason to conclude that the comments implied intention.
Hi Joshua
You certainly have your own confirmation bias and it is sometimes difficult to pin you down as you seem to like going onto the new topics that roll round every few days. :)
This is not helped by this nesting system which makes it difficult sometimes to follow a conversation and can make it appear that a response hasn’t been given.
You highlighted my coment and remarked;
“Personally I don’t think that climate science is a hoax or a scam and I doubt very much if the players in it have any nefarious motives.”
…And in that, you stand apart from a great deal of the commenters on this blog – or at least from the viewpoint expressed in many of their posts. I would hope that you would acknowledge that fact. I asked you to do so in my previous response, and I note that you didn’t.”
Perhaps I didnt see your original comment or perhaps I didnt realise the importance you attahed to it-there are so many points that need answering from a variety of people and I don’t always see them or have the chance to respond.
But for what its worth I endorse those comments I made and also believe that Hansen and Jones were fine scientists in their day- but do not appear open to new information that might contradict them
As for Michael Mann, he was a brand new phd at the time of the hockey stick and perhaps relied more than he should on theoretical/academic sources than those from historic sources. He was shot to fame by the hockey stick and its awfully hard to retreat from that high.
By the way it may well be that SST’s have risen since 1850-after all we were emerging from the LIA, ditto with land temperatures. What irritates me though is this idea that we have such an accurate and scientific grasp of GLOBAL temperatures when we struggle so much to extract a temperature accurate to 1 degree C from LOCAL land stations.
For what its worth I think the climate has been warming since 1880. …and 1850…and 1800…in fact I think it extremely likely that we have been generally warming since the depths of the second phase of the LIA in 1607 albeit with numerous advances and retreats. I intend to cover this period in a future article.
By the way, I posted a great deal of material in response to your comments on SST’s and my political article.
With regards to the first if I recall correctly you piled in asking why I had not explicitly referenced a rebuttal of the supposed Argo cooling. I pointed out several times that my link was explicitly chosen to put the official side of the story and askeed why you didn’t read it before accusing me of bias. Perhaps you could clarify why you didn’t read the link which very clearly put the whole Nasa side of the argument? I for my side would have explictly told people to read the article if I had realised that some would choose to ignore it-I have asked Judith if she can slightly reword it so anyone reading the article in future (readership tends to be greatest in other venues AFTER the event than during it) will be made explicitly aware of the subsequent turn of events as regards the Argo saga.
With my political article you also accused me of bias and went away to look for ‘significant naysayers’ (to which I added the caveat that they ought to be ‘influential.)
I haven’t heard anything further from you so assume you are now aware that the British political establishment is virtually 100% ‘ Green’ and there are considerable repercussions arising from that, not the least of which is the cost and availability of energy.
Do think about writing that article…
All the best
Tonyb
Carrick –
I don’t think that nic has committed some “unpardonable offense.”
1) I inferred from his post an implication of intent to deceive on the part of the IPCC authors. If you look at the post I made above, you will see that I excerpted other responses that make it clear that I am far from being the only one who made such an inference. I asked nic directly if my inference was correct. He either didn’t see my question – which I judge as somewhat unlikely as I have repeated the question and made other comments that refer to those questions in subsequent posts that others responded to – or saw fit to not respond (I don’t presume to interpret why he didn’t answer).
Assuming that my inference is incorrect, I think that nic should assume some responsibility for the likelihood that people would read into what he wrote an implication of intent to deceive. Someone as smart as nic seems to be, and someone as knowledgeable about the context of the debate about climate change as he obviously is, could easily have anticipated that some of the fairly ambiguous terminology he used could lead to an incorrect interpretation. I could certainly be found at fault for incorrectly inferring an implication on his part – but he could easily have corrected my mistake very shortly after he made his post, and that would also have prevented others from making the same mistaken inference. Further, I will repeat that it is very interesting to me that although numerous people made a similar inference, I am the only one who is being admonished for having done so. Admonishing me may be appropriate; in which case it would be correct to admonish others as well, would it not?
Assuming that my inference was correct, nic could just simply acknowledge that he did, in fact, imply an intent to deceive.
2) I am not ascribing “motivations” to nic. I have never met him, and I have no idea about what does or does not motivate him. I was surprised that he would write this post without including a response from Forester and Gregory – so I asked him if he had contacted them regarding his analysis prior to putting up this post. He said that he hadn’t – and offered the reason that he didn’t want to put them in a difficult situation. I don’t think that his answer was plausible, because as I explained, it seems to me that if anything, the course of action that he took would most likely result in putting them in an even more difficult situation than if he had contacted them prior to putting up the post. I don’t know if my explication of my thinking on that has been deleted from the other thread – if it has and you’d like to know my thoughts, I’ll write another post.
Nic wrote that he presumed that Forester and Gregory (tacitly) accepted a misuse of their data and findings. I think that is a fairly serious statement to make particularly given that as far as I can tell, he made that statement without having done due diligence in fully investigating, as well as he might have, all the related context (i.e., contacting them to ask for their input). He may, in fact, be absolutely correct in his statement. In which case the implications are quite troubling to me. But again, the act of making such a statement seems to run counter with his statement about choosing a course of action so as to avoid putting them in a difficult situation. Please note – I am not saying that he should necessarily allow concern about putting them in a difficult situation to prevent him from making such a statement. They are adults – I assume they can handle it. But I would offer this further comment on that topic: In order to reach a state of clearer interpretation of the science, I think that it is imperative for people on both sides of the debate to make careful consideration of tactical choices as they balance the importance of correcting scientific errors with exacerbating (what I see to be largely) counterproductive antagonistic behaviors. To be clear – I am not saying that I know that nic didn’t make such a careful consideration. I am interested in investigating the question.
Regarding nic’s motivations: My assumption is that nic is motivated by correcting potential mistake re: estimations in the dynamics of global warming. My assumption is also that nic is potentially subject to influences such as confirmation bias and personal biases – as anyone is. My interest is in evaluating how biases affect how people interpret the science – on both sides of the debate. So I asked him questions to ascertain, for my own edification, to my own measure of satisfaction, whether or not some elements in his post reflected biases.
I don’t think Nic’s time would be well spent if he were to comment on every flippant comment and were to start navel-gazing.
I want to change that to:
I don’t think Nic’s time would be well spent if he were to comment on every flippant comment and were to engage in omphaloskepsis.
that word is way cooler ;)
It seems that he agrees – and clearly others do also others. But then again, still others feel it is important to correct me on the issue – and strangely, including yourself.
“Assuming that my inference is incorrect, I think that nic should assume some responsibility for the likelihood that people would read into what he wrote an implication of intent to deceive. ”
That is retarded. My own experience with Climategate is rather instructive. you CANNOT control how people will respond. That is basic semiotics. For example, Stop signs do not force drivers to stop.
In my case I explicitly argued that the science was still correct and that the deeds committed were not fraus etc. AND STILL, people misinterpret what I said.
There is no controlling how people respond to signs. We have known this for centuries. We have tried all manner of technologies to force responses to signs to be univocal with no success.
You are responsible for your reaction to the text. Nothing in the text warranted your reaction. Your reaction was driven by your conception of this fight. That there are two side. There are not two sides. There are people who take no side. people who care only for the math and who dont express opinions on motive. If you hung around the places that carrick I hang around and have watched Nic over the YEARS, you would not say the things you say. So, I will tell you what I was told.
Go read CA. read every post and read every comment. Then read RC, then read airvent and Lucia.
read more comment less.
No doubt. But you have to admit that I make up for my mental handicap with perseverance in the face of witheringly frank observations on my disability.
I didn’t mean to suggest that nic can CONTROL how people respond. I mean to suggest that he can anticipate potential responses and take steps to mitigate the likelihood of incorrect inferences.
Mosher, I guess they just haven’t had the right sign/symbol yet. But it looks like Bill Gates has solved another problem!
http://scienceblogs.com/guiltyplanet/2009/06/emoticon_do_for_energy_use.php
“My assumption is also that nic is potentially subject to influences such as confirmation bias and personal biases – as anyone is. My interest is in evaluating how biases affect how people interpret the science – on both sides of the debate. So I asked him questions to ascertain, for my own edification, to my own measure of satisfaction, whether or not some elements in his post reflected biases”
Do you read much?. Nic is saying nothing different than Annan said in his comments to the writers of the chapter. Nic is saying it more clearly and with more detail and background. Have you read Annan on this same issue.. It’s at least a couple of years old. And yes Annan is a expert on this specific area, and a believer in AGW.
Further, the lovely thing about math is that personal bias is hard to argue when you have the formulas in front of you.
You keep thinking that you have some magic formula for determining bias from context. You might consider questioning that belief.
I did read Annan’s recent comments and found them very instructive (to the extent that I could understand them).
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2011/07/priors-and-climate-sensitivity-again.html
I actually need more explanation here: What I’m struggling with is whether there’s anything he says there refutes the contention (as described in the reader comment) that the views on this issue are “inherently subjective.”
Steven, here is a quote from one of Annan’s AR4 review comments which elucidates your point:
To me this seems much stronger language than Nic used.
suyts –
Josh, they put themselves in that spot. Nic is being very gracious to them. Fact is, this is exactly the conflicts that the IPCC were forced to address because people were either too stupid to understand this isn’t appropriate or their ethical sense has no foundation.
I don’t really disagree with what you say here, with one caveat – most certainly if it is true that as nic presumed, they (tacitly) accepted the misuse of their data and findings. As to the caveat – I don’t know if nic is being gracious or not. That would seem to me to be interpreting a motivation to be gracious (I would imagine that he has multiple motivations) and I don’t have enough information to make that determination. My presumption is that least one of his motivations is to establish more accurate estimates regarding the dynamics of global warming. Beyond that – I wouldn’t hazard a guess.
That doesn’t change, however, what I see as a discrepancy between how nic described the reasons behind the course of action that he took, and my estimation of the likely outcome of his course of actions. Obviously, I have god-given ability to know for sure the relative impact of various hypothetical outcomes. But I do have an opinion, and I like to explore my opinions. If you are interested in my views on the relative strengths and weaknesses of different actions nic might have taken – I’d be happy to tell you and consider your response.
Another note after having read nic’s update on responses to his post.
I realized that I need to be more careful about how I use the term “misuse.”
Nic said that he presumed that the authors tacitly approved the “treatment” of their data and findings. He characterized that treatment with a number of adjectives, including “invalid” and appearing as “justifiable.” It seems that he did not describe it as “misuse.” I acknowledge my error.
sorry – “….appearing as “unjustifiable….”
Anyway – I will give you all a break now from being forced to read my posts. I’ve got a trip to the left coast coming up, and need to prepare. I’ll be observing Pacific ocean sea levels and temps in various places in CA – and also snow levels of snow remaining at Kearsarge Pass. Not of it official or scientific in any way, and all of it with a cold beer in hand (or at least waiting at the end of the trail).
Will try to check in if possible. As always, thanks for the polite discussion.
er… “None of it official or scientific in any way……”
Maybe I’ll learn how to preview on my trip.
Joshua
Have a good trip
tonyb
Thanks tony.
I just hope I can avoid all those eco-Nazis crawling all over the West Coast.
Denis Rancourt interviews Richard Lindzen http://trainradio.blogspot.com/2011/07/professor-richard-lindzen-on-global.html
… and provides an interesting perspective including:
* effect of earth axis tilt on long-term climate and ice ages
* ice mass changes with cooling which don’t have much effect on albedo
* warming reducing the difference in temperature between equator and poles, which apparently is also reflected in GCMs, which should reduce weather extremes
* positive vs negative hydrological cycle feedbacks – which are supported by historical evidence
* alarmist publication bias
* satellite data supports existence of negative feedbacks, when GCMs are dominated by positive feedbacks
* gaps between theory, data, and models which need filling and reexamination