by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Heartland seizes the moral low ground
Heartland has a post “Our Billboards“:
Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too. The first digital billboard – along the inbound Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) in Maywood – appeared today.
An article in the Guardian sums up my initial reaction: It really is hard to know where to begin with this one. But let’s start with: “What on earth were they thinking?”
My second reaction was yes, Peter Gleick really did waste his bullet. On a previous Gleick post, Why Target Heartland?, I provided an argument for why I thought Gleick wasted his bullet. This latest billboard escapade reinforces my original impression, since the billboard escapade will discredit the organization much more than anything Gleick did.
After the Gleick episode, it seemed that Heartland had temporarily seized the moral high ground in the climate ‘wars’. The billboards and the blog post are on an intellectual and moral par with ThinkProgress’ article Norway Terrorist is a Global Warming Denier, although Romm didn’t post his on a billboard. Heartland has unambigously seized the moral low ground with this stunt.
For better or worse, such episodes arguably have little impact on the larger scientific and policy debates. It will be interesting to see how the list of speakers at the forthcoming Heartland Conference reacts to this.
Scientific consensus stronger than scientists thought?
Yale Climate Media Forum has an article Scientific consensus stronger than scientists thought? Subheading:
An innovative sampling of a small group of climate scientists’ perspectives suggests their views may be more commonly shared among their science colleagues than they had thought.
Not sure how “innovative” this sampling was; I certainly wasn’t asked. A suggestion for their next study: survey mass murders and terrorists for their opinion on global warming. Who is right, Romm or Heartland, in terms of which “side” claims the most dangerous adherents? I’m not placing bets on this one.
Mann vs ATI
Some interesting developments in ATI’s struggle to get access to Mann’s UVa emails, see this post at the ATI blog. Things didn’t go too well for Mann at the latest hearing. The interesting issue is the disparity with Wegman’s emails, which were released by George Mason University (which is also in the state of Virginia). Somewhere I read (help, I can’t find the link) that Mann cited Wegman’s emails extensively in his hockey stick book. Mann didn’t seem to object to Wegman’s emails being made public.
Hit job on Richard Lindzen
It is difficult to describe this NYTimes article “Clouds’ Effect on Climate Change Last Bastion for Dissenters” as anything but a hit job on Richard Lindzen. The only thing that made sense to me was this statement:
The questions that scientists still need to answer are voluminous. For instance, they want a better idea of how clouds form at a microscopic scale, how their behavior varies under different atmospheric conditions, and how sensitive they are to higher temperatures.
Britain plans to make publicly financed research freely available
Finally, some sanity. From an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Throwing its weight behind open access, the British government has declared it wants to make all research paid for with public money freely available online. If it succeeds, the move is likely to have significant consequences for publishers, and will boost the international momentum of the open-access movement. But the government won’t share details about how it will make the plan a reality.
Cartoon by Josh
Josh has a good cartoon that was posted at BishopHill. However, he omitted the lunatic fringe on the Sceptic Isle (e.g. the people at Heartland that came up with the billboards).
It is very instructive to se the odium heaped on Pielke Jnr because he also saw the NYT article as a hit job. The believers really do turn on the heretics – almost like a cult religion really.
“Throughout history, many competing cults have attempted to predict dire catastrophes for the Earth. With respect to these cults, the key psychological and sociological question is: ‘What happens when the predictions fail?’ … [T]his is precisely what is happening to our media with respect to the increasingly unequivocal `knowledge’ that we have now entered a cooling period in climate. They are starting to experience a powerful dissonance because of their strong promulgation over the last 20 years of the doomsday, catastrophic view of ‘global warming’… Historians, long hence, will surely have a fascinating time analyzing the rise and fall of the cult of catastrophic ‘global warming’. Even now it is possible to detect close parallels with the pattern of many traditional doomsday cults. And, it is particularly interesting to note that scientists are just as susceptible to such cults as nonscientists.” (Dr. Philip Stott)
Ignoring emotional out brusts and considering only empirical facts:
I was pleased to read that Senator Inhofe publicly scolded US Defense Secretary Leo Panetta yesterday for using his position as US Secretary of Defense to promote unscientific global warming alarmism:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=19095fc2-802a-23ad-4304-e50e41acd308
Historical Background:
1. The great benevolent reality that surrounds us and sustains our lives has been celebrated throughout recorded history by highly regarded artists, musicians, poets, saints, scientists and religious scriptures.
2. Albert Einstein himself realized and communicated the great benevolent reality that surrounds and sustains us with his famous equation, E = mc^2, in 1905;
Life is sustained by energy (E) that is stored as mass (m) in material that surrounds us !
3. Last month long-suppressed experimental data from 1960 to 2012 confirmed Einstein’s 1905 conclusion [O. Manuel, “Neutron repulsion,” The Apeiron J. 19 123-150 (April 2012)] http://tinyurl.com/7t5ojrn :
_ a.) Life on Earth is sustained by an abundant stream of energy (radiation, particles and fields) flowing outward from the Sun’s pulsar core:
_ b.) The same great benevolent reality that has been celebrated and communicated throughout recorded history by artists, musicians, poets, saints, scientists and scriptures.
http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V19NO2pdf/V19N2MAN.pdf
4. World leaders and leaders of the scientific community saw nothing benevolent and reacted in fear to the “nuclear fire” that consumed Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, as the mass (m) in uranium atoms was released as energy (E).
_ a.) The United Nations was formed in Oct 1945 to avoid nuclear war
_ b.) Information on energy (E) that sustains life was obscured after 1946
_ c.) World leaders began using science to promote Godless, fear-mongering propaganda after 1946
_ d.) The United Nations, the US National Academy of Sciences and the UK’s Royal Society promoted fear and the need to control population and environment [e.g., The Royal Society, “People and Planet Report” (26 April 2012)]
http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/people-planet/report/
5. World leaders and leaders of the scientific community ignored this message of hope for mankind reported by the first scientist to visit the ashes Hiroshima, Dr. Kazuo Kuroda of the Imperial University of Tokyo [P. K. Kuroda, “The Origin of the Chemical Elements and the Oklo Phenomenon” (Springer-Verlag, Berlin/Heidelberg/New York, 1982, 165 pp.) page 2]:
“One day in August 1945, while standing in the ruins of Hiroshima, I became overwhelmed by the power of nuclear energy.”
“The sight before my eyes was just like the end of the world, but I also felt that the beginning of the world may have been just like this.”
The bold portions of Kuroda’s statements were confirmed by the same suppressed experimental data that confirmed Einstein’s 1905 conclusion [O. Manuel, “Neutron repulsion,” The Apeiron J. 19 123-150 (2012)] http://tinyurl.com/7t5ojrn :
The current demise of society and loss of confidence in scientists and politicians is the direct result of fear-based decisions from 1945. The rest of this sad tale is available here:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-55
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Issac Held’s latest post is a highlight for me this week.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/blog/isaac-held/2012/04/30/27-estimating-tcr-from-recent-warming/
the guestimates keep coming down.
From what?
From two and above. Dr. Held is looking at TCR, but with water vapor feedback appearing to have less positive impact, the ECS estimates should start dropping as well. Actually, if you modified your simple concentric sphere radiation model to reflect the variation in relative atmospheric layer flow rates, you would see that 1.5 per doubling is more of an ideal value. Atmospheric sensitivity is closer to 0.8 per doubling of CO2 over a longer time period since most feedbacks tend to reduce overall sensitivity under various conditions. Static models have little chance of describing the complexity.
Nick, consider a radiant model of latitude 45. Instead of spheres use a radiant discs of equal area. The surface would have area A the midtroposphere would be A plus a small fraction, likely negligible, and the stratosphere A plus a fraction that may be significant.
The relative velocity difference between the surface disc and the middle disc on average would need to be considered for a small error of a percent or two. The relative velocity difference between the middle and stratosphere would be more significant. In both cases, there would be less return of surface radiation.
Now consider the surface one fixed disc, the middle a slightly larger slowly rotating disc and the stratosphere a five disc wheel revolving so it is unlikely that the return from this disc would originate from the surface. In order to realize the maximum GHE, all there disc layers would have to fully “charge”. What is the probability of that happening?
Did someone say UAH?
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-satellite-global-climate-closer.html
Bart R. I had been using UAH because it was warmer from 1995 than RSS. It will be interesting to see if the adjustment increases the cooling slope from 2000.
Nick,
The reasonable AGW believers are back peddling from the apocalypse ASAP.
Pretty soon you and the other extremists are going to be rather isolated.
apocalypse has never been a position.
As usual you have no science argument, just the whole “CAGW” strawman.
lolwot, “apocalypse has never been a position.” Hansen’s boiling oceans and Ray Pierre’s 400,000K would appear to be apocalyptic to some :) So it does tend to confuse the masses when pictures of Manhattan flooded with 50 meters of water are shown with global warming mentioned in the text. That part of the uncertainty seems to have been pretty well communicated. 1.5 C of warming primarily felt in the northern latitudes doesn’t really paint the same picture.
So since the Catastrophic or Apocalyptic terms have never been a “position” what actually is the “position”?
Hansen is not and has not predicted the oceans will boil. Neither has Ray Pierre predicted 400,000K temperatures.
Mentioning the worst-case scenarios is not the same as predicting they will happen.
lolwot, I beg to differ. Gavin Schmitt is noted as saying something to the effect, “over 3C or 1.5C” is doesn’t really make much difference.” What the more likely scenario may be makes a HUGE difference. Separating Hansen’s fantasy scenarios from realistic projects has become more difficult. Al Gore used a few “worst case” examples to spice up his documentary. Eli Rabbet on this blog posted “at 20C all die” The C in CAGW has been communicated, but is consistently denied. Kinda confuses the “position”.
” Gavin Schmitt is noted as saying something to the effect, “over 3C or 1.5C” is doesn’t really make much difference.””
What’s the full quote?
“What the more likely scenario may be makes a HUGE difference.”
And so does the worse case scenario. No-one talks about car bombs at the olympics, everyone talks about planes being flown into stadiums.
That doesn’t mean they are offering “fantasy predictions”, more like warnings.
lolwot, “That doesn’t mean they are offering “fantasy predictions”, more like warnings.” Warnings without verifiable certainty are just scary stories. There is a pretty good track record for the scary story telling crowd. The probability of adverse health impact to exposure to less than 100 millirem per year of radiation is not only uncertain by may be beneficial. The EPA set the Yucca mountain standards at 15 millirem per year for the next 10,000 years out of concern for public welfare?
Manipulation statistics for political purposes is an art form much like dramatic prose. So the same politically motivated agency applies standards to Coal than cannot be met by biofuel under the pretext of public health and safety concerns.
Now, because of the fear of warming, the EPA will get some pressure from liberal supporters to reduce radiation limits because nuclear is now less likely to be danger it was once thought to be by the warm and fuzzy liberal scientists that use linear non threshold modeling to “prove” how dangerous exposure to low doses of radiation could be.
So “warnings” from some sectors would be laughable if they were not so expensive.
A danger can exist without being “verifiably certain”
“Hansen is not and has not predicted the oceans will boil.”
I guess that depends on what you mean by the word “prediction”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACHLayfA6_4
(Go to about 2 minutes, which is after he talks about “chaotic” events, hundreds of New Orleans-like Katrina disasters, an “out of control’ planetwide conditon, and other non-apocaylptic possibilities.)
Maybe we need Bart R to provide one of his “special” definitions.
lolwot, “A danger can exist without being “verifiably certain”
You feeling under the weather today? The use of statistics to stroke one’s feeling of self esteem is nothing new. The State of Florida enacted the national seat belt law, mainly because there federal government offer money if they did. We all know that seat belts save lives. So having the state of Florida “force” people to save lives would save more lives.
The majority of seat belt citation are written in residential speed zones. It is a lot easier to catch people not protecting themselves in slow moving vehicles in the day time than at night when inebriated motorists are exceeding the speed limit. So a disproportionate number of the $116 fines for not wearing safety restraints are issued to drivers less likely to become highway fatality statistics.
The State of Florida has published that the Click-it or Ticket program has reduced fatalities from 0.47 to 0.4 per million vehicle miles. That is truly an unbelievable success rate. The national average is nearly 1 fatality per million vehicle miles and the State of Florida is by no means one of the safest states to drive.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/floridatrafficfatalities.png
Looking at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, what year would you think that the State of Florida seat belt law was enforced? That’s right! 2009 where the rate of decrease of fatalities was reduced.
But, it is a good law because seat belts save lives so the state is perfectly within its right to impose a civil penalty for failure to wear seat belts even though there is no compelling evidence that “forcing” is more effective the “education”. A small erosion of personal liberties for the good of society.
Law enforcement is pleased to do their part to save lives by “forcing” people to wear seat belts. So pleased that there are contests among LEO to see who can write the most citations with bonus points awarded if the traffic stop results in arrests for a variety of other non seat belt related offenses. Can you say legal profiling?
http://www.floridalel.org/About
I discovered this after receiving a citation in basically,my driveway.
With the Click-it or Ticket law, the LEO does not have the authorization to give a warning instead of a citation. That means that the courts have no jurisdiction to dismiss charges should there not be a medical or other driver was not wearing a seat belt. Which means I am liable to spend some time in jail soon doing the civil disobedience routine.
Unlike you, I doubt the intentions of big government and statisticians that tend to gussy up their results. Click it or ticket is a law enforcement cash cow handed out of a silver platter by warm and fuzzy thinkers.
You are willing to believe that there is a significant real possibility of danger from GHGs that can only be averted by killing coal. I have no doubt that somewhere you have seen statistics that “prove” it :)
Hansen has the most prescient and brilliant mind on the subject of climate. Especially his work over a decade ago. He’s called things that others did not. A lot of things skeptics take for granted (eg a warming world) he saw before.
Lolwot– Do you see any potential danger in your hero worship of Hansen?
Drat, went to the end of the thread.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/05/04/week-in-review-5412/#comment-197897
It is good to have heroes, though it can be painful when their humanity shows.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/plot/uah/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/trend/plot/uah/trend Notice how the new HADCRU4 diverges more from the satellites? But it agrees with GISS better than before.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/gisslotinhversusuahnh1981to2010baseline.png
If you compare UAH NH with GISS NH, using a common 1981 to 2010 baseline, there appears to be a significant divergence. Hmmmm Possibly averaging temperature over large ranges like 1200 kilometers may have some issues?
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/UAHpoleandtropicfrom2005.png
Hmmm? Both poles and the tropics have been cooling since 1995, according to the satellite data. Obviously, the satellite data must be wrong since it disagrees with the surface station data and the models.
Let’s see, the world went through this in the 1890s with Arrhenius, again in the 1930s with Calendar and yet again in the 1990s with Hansen. Is the third time a charm? I don’t think so.
why would you expect the lower troposphere and surface trends to match exactly? In fact why would you expect any trends to match exactly? Where’s the error bars?
And yes if you subdivide the world into ever smaller parts you will find a few with a negative temperature trend. But that’s a bit like finding a country with a falling population and using that as an argument against global population increase.
lolwot, “why would you expect the lower troposphere and surface trends to match exactly? In fact why would you expect any trends to match exactly? Where’s the error bars?”
I would not expect anything to match exactly, the system is non-linear and extremely complex. I would expect there to be some patterns that have some logical sympathy, approximating system delays of course, to match changes in some forcing. One of the few forcing that we have a reasonable estimate of its magnitude is solar. By comparing solar to the mid-troposphere oceans, there is a reasonable correlation with a lag of approximately 2.5 years. By comparing mid-troposphere to land only, there is a reasonable correlation to CO2 forcing change. The mid troposphere is useful in both of these for several reasons. It filters out more of the cloud noise, is amplified due to its lower thermal mass, and has slight better polar coverage than the lower troposphere and surface.
Sub-diving the globe is required since there are differing heat transfer rates and anthropogenic impact. Land use change in some areas has significant impact on real and measured local temperatures. Separating the land and oceans also is required since the differing impact due to surface temperature radiant response to forcing is over 30%. CO2 forcing has a non-linear relationship that varies with the fourth power of the difference between the surface and effective radiant layer temperatures.
Accurate error bars cannot be estimated until there are accurate error bars determined for the data. At this point I am not particularly impressed with the estimated accuracy of the data sets.
Why should we guess, when we could just interrogate them…
http://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-InternmentResettlement.pdf
now scientists will continue their valuable discussion about that incredible dangerous and invisible gas CO2. Who’s board now? Remember now, this is for the children.
No thoughts on the new EPA ruling that CO2 is a pollutant and new coal fired power plants are under new regulatory regime? EPA will be blocked by the House of Rep and the lines of combat drawn in the states that depend on coal mines and coal fired power plants. Coal is a bad energy choice for reasons other than CO2. Nox and Sox plus mercury and radon emissions impose costs on society as a whole that are external to the first cost of electrical power. Plus scrapping the tops off mountains. Slag heaps and river/stream pollution are good enough reasons to add controls without overreaching. Too bad they don’t address the issues that can build a consensus instead of extending the reach of the regulatory environment. Energy costs are going up and the economy stalled just in time for the election. The fireworks in Congress will be interesting.
Nox and Sox and Fox in Box.
EPA = End Poverty in chinA
I don’t necessarily agree with you but
End Poverty in Asia might have been less clunky.
True. But China has been the primary beneficiary of stupid environmental policies.
But I guess both India and China are burning coal like crazy thanks to environmentalists.
How does the House stop an EPA regulation?
Defund the EPA.
The house can’t do that alone.
Nope but put the coal mine states and the coal fired power plant states together they can pass a bill with senate ok that tells EPA to back off, CO2 not a pollutant under clean air act. If ignored then they defund the EPA in sections. EPA has done lots of good on air, water and superfund but this stretch beyond the law can damage them for a long time. Not a good fight with no consensus. Big economic damages in those startes right before an ;election.
Let’s begin with the attempted marginalization of William Gray and the employment by the Left of the rhetoric of ‘Holocaust denier’ to compare skeptical scientists to Nazis. And, when we hear of a ‘consensus’ are we not being treated to the collectivists’ form of truth ‘finding’ and truth ‘making’ and ultimately the enforcement and ‘truth control’ according to government-funded science authoritarians?
We are seeing the re-writing of history and the corruption of science. Even now global warming alarmists refuse to admit that MBH98 (aka, the ‘hockey stick’ graph) is a proven scientific fraud.
Heartland is pulling the billboard campaign.
David
Its a shame they ever rolled it out in the first place.
tonyb
Actually, as David pointed out earlier, it effectively served a purpose. It attracted attention.
If I though that anyone who isn’t a climate change fanatic (i.e., already fixed in his/her opinion) were paying attention to this, I’d be tempted to think was a good thing as it exposes the unseemly underbelly of politically oriented “skepticism.” In reality, all this will do is perhaps drive “realists” one nanometer further.into their trenches – if that’s even possible.
A more realistic analysis is it shows how marginal Heartland may be to the debate. If not before, than perhaps now.
If that were the case, then why would so many shining lights of “skepticism” participate in their conferences?
I said on the original gleick thread that Heartland didnt speak for me.
tonyb
Joshua everybody loves a conference. Mostly to see other people.
I have long argued that heartland are a side show. yet, I would go to their conference. I like side shows and I would love to meet Lucia in person.
People do things for many reasons. usually their motivation is something other than YOU would guess
“usually their motivation is something other than YOU would guess”
Touche.
+1
Not really a shame at all. Best to see an organization’s true colors in moments when they let their guards and better judgement down.
They think Al Gore and your cult are kooks. No surprise. You are kooks.
The Guardian were critics?
The Guardian that suggested it was “edgy” to blow up children?
That Guardian?
“Well, I’m certain you’ll agree that detonating school kids, footballers and movie stars into gory pulp for ignoring their carbon footprints is attention-grabbing. It’s also got a decent sprinkling of stardust – Peter Crouch, Gillian Anderson, Radiohead and others.
But it’s pretty edgy, given 10:10’s aim of asking people, businesses and organisations to take positive action against global warming by cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by 10% in a year, and thereby pressuring governments to act.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/sep/30/10-10-no-pressure-film
Heartland isn’t advocating mass murder. Environmentalists are.
Judith by quoting the Guardian it is clear you have no sense of perspective.
All that you say is true – but it would have been just as true had HL not launched its fathomlessly foolish campaign.
I don’t think it was foolish. I think AGW fanatics are deranged and dishonest. Al Gore / the Unabomber. Similar deranged philosophies.
The kool-aid drinkers feign disgust, but the meme is now out there.
15 years of cooling, well above average sea ice in the antarctic, the penguin are fine … but the cult keeps screaming the same things.
The average person now realizes the AGW cult are the kooks.
Here’s what I find interesting.
“Skeptics,” on the whole, don’t seem to have problem with the ubiquitous analogizing “realists” to eugenicists, Lysenko, etc. There were some objections I saw, such as from billc, but they were few and far between.
But for some reason many do seem to feel that they need to denounce this campaign from HI..
Purely from a sociological perspective, I wonder what the difference is? Why is this different than the WSJ editorial or Lindzen comparing environmentalists to people who advocated forced sterilization?
Seems like a rather odd inconsistency to me.
RE: Why is this different than the WSJ editorial
Seriously Josh.
and this one: Lindzen comparing environmentalists to people who advocated forced sterilization
Guess you’ve missed the news on people like Erhlich (a realist using your term) and many others who believe that we need to reduce the planets population.
tim –
No, I’m serious. I don’t see the difference. I’d appreciate it if you’d elaborate.
Even assuming that there’s no valid distinction between Erhlich and eugenicism, Lindzen made a broad comparison between environmentalists writ large and eugenicists.
Too bad we can’t use the Guardian as a reference–they have a story about how forced sterilization is making a comeback in India, using UK money designated to fight climate change.
Starry, starry light.
Would you rather be a pig?
Ol’ Sol a mio.
=========
Joshua,
Show us the differences instead of pretending that it is too rude too discuss.
Show us.
Dare ya, big brave Joshua.
From what I recall, Lindzen has not compared environmentalists to people who advocated forced sterilization, and indeed it would be illogical to attempt to do so, since they are one and the same people, and you can’t really compare a man, however hysterically deluded, with himself.
Lindzen may have compared BELIEF CAGW with BELIEF in the desirability of compulsory sterilsation, and pointed out that they frequently coexist, but that’s not the same thing at all.
And actually, if you believe the CO2 mythset, advocating for measures to drastically reduce global population is perfectly rational. It’s the premise which is idiotic, not the conclusions that flow from it.
1; you guys are like those people who promote forced sterilization.
2. you are like lorena bobitt
Joshua. You don’t see the difference?
1. you are a nazi
2. you are hilter
Joshua, you dont see the difference.
All of these arguments “likening” one group of people to another group of people is a form of metaphor. Metaphor works by (generally) suggesting there is a set of predicates that are true of both entities.
So what is difference between these metaphors? granted, neither is very nice. and neither is very effective. But, clearly you have to see why the metaphors where the tenor is a single person are most odious.
1. you are a lunatic
2. you are charles manson
see the difference?
Steve, Mr. Hilter was a charachter on a Monty Python skit. I believe you meant Hitler?
“At its Web site, the Heartland Institute is meanwhile directing readers to a quiz in which they can guess whether various quotations are from Mr. Kaczynski’s notorious Unabomber manifesto or rather from Al Gore’s book “Earth in the Balance.”
Full disclosure: this reporter, age 26, scored 33 percent.”
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/a-new-tactic-for-climate-skeptics/
Bullseye!
Judith, are you willing to take the quiz?
I took the test, and scored 67%.
Actually, I think it’s a worthwhile exercise, and far better than the billboard thing.
I find this as superficially entertaining and the next right-center person. But let’s be realistic about “Kaczynski’s notorious Unabomber manifesto.” At the time it was printed, more than one member of the Academy remarked that the manifesto made a lot of sense. And it is oh so long. Finding quotes in the manifesto that sound sorta like (choose your least favorite left-eclectic crank and insert here) is a game for children. Too easy. And so, ultimately boring.
I think the AGW cult has way more in common with the Unabomber than they would like to admit.
Too bloody late. The damage is done. This will set the skeptic side back 5 years. Today I fear for science. In five years, how will we respond to the intelligent designers when they say “you were sure about global warming too”. How will we respond to the anti vaccine crowd when they say “you were sure about global warming too”. This idiocy by Heartland is a catastrophe for science.
I doubt it. Scientists seem to forget that over 90% of the “ground breaking” papers are a waste of dead trees. It is just unfortunate for some climate scientists that people actually read their work :)
John,
Bunk. This is an own goal, not a blown game.
The believers have done this sort of crap for decades and it has slowed them down very little.
yes, hunter, but the warmists have never had integrity on their side, while the sceptic side, has – until this piece of juvenilia. Worse, having just received a truckload of high-explosive ordinance from Peter Glieck, they have proceeded to detonate in their own magazine. What a shower…
The idiocy by Heartland is not a catastrophe for science because Heartland and their general policies have nothing to do with science. It is merely a setback and embarrassment for a political lobbying organization.
I think Heartland has made a devastating point. For example, your ranting about sea ice has more in common with the Unabomber than it does with real science.
You people are kooks.
Heartland has made an incredibly tasteless false association that is devastating to their credibility. This error in judgement likely displayed their true colors as a politcal lobbying organization and now they are forced to backtrack and attempt to do damage control. It would be funny if it weren’t so pitiful. The Koch Bros. should demand a full refund for their share paying for this sickening bit of ill-conceived politically motivated theatre.
R. Gates,
Just when I am prepared to dump on HI, I read your stuff and realize that at least part of the reaction b y skeptics against HI is that you believers are too cowardly to deal with tough realities.
The MWP was likely cooler than today. Mann was right. Get over it.
The only lying scumbags around here are those who lie that the MWP was much warmer than present. And those lying scum bags are almost inevitably climate skeptics.
Jan 2011 and Jan 2012 were as cold as Jan 1942 and Jan 1944.
None of your cult admit that or ever mention it.
The MWP was warmer.
“Jan 2011 and Jan 2012 were as cold as Jan 1942 and Jan 1944.
None of your cult admit that or ever mention it.”
We are still waiting for you to admit the holocaust happened.
R Gates,
Perhaps you should go back and read those Heartland documents Gleick stole. Exactly why are you bringing the Koch’s into this discussion? Their donation to Heartland was for health care issues, not climate change.
LOLwot,
Ironic that in a discussion of the Heartland billboard, which you are so quick to deplore, you manage to call people lying scumbags. Pot, meet kettle.
This kind of thinking– “set the skeptic side back 5 years” is yet another perfect example of fake skepticism aka denialism. Skeptics are really not supposed to have a “side”– a real skeptic has got no horse in the race. They, like all good scientists, should be dispassionately neutral on the topic at hand, simply being skeptical about any claim and demanding proof before considering it as possible, but not taking a “side”.. Where I hear this kind of “set our side back” kind of rhetoric, it is an instant and dead giveaway that that person is not a real skeptic at all, but rather, probably has some political agenda behind their fake-skepticism. When you take a side, you are no longer neutral, or even a disbeliever who is willing to be persuaded, but rather, you’ve chosen your team, and will fight for your “side” to the bitter end, despite any evidence you might be shown. Such is the world of denialism based on political ideology..
R. Gates,
Skeptics appreciate your advice about what we need to do in the spirit in which you offer it.
I have to agree with you here R. Gates. But true neutrality is really hard to actually achieve for most scientists because they can become passionate about what they do also. So, there are sides to scientific inquirey, but to be skeptical means you have to be open to looking at all the sides and open to the idea you may not be right in what you think you know.
John, this true neutrality is hard to achieve but those who make the biggest breakthroughs in science do so because of this ability. They look at nature with a continually fresh perspective which allows them to see things in a unique way that others missed because of their jaundiced perspective. It does not mean that you should never adopt a paradigm, but simply that you should realize that it is a paradigm that is fluid and could be subject to change.
“this true neutrality is hard to achieve but those who make the biggest breakthroughs in science do so because of this ability.”
Yes, because most often you reveal something new in your understanding when you make an error. Making errors and mistakes are the single most valuble learning tool which can lead to major breakthroughs in understanding. You have to be ready to admit to your error, learn and move forward. I think we agree on this.
“Skeptics are really not supposed to have a “side”– a real skeptic has got no horse in the race.”
Well if this episode shows one thing, it is that they do have a side. Small numbers of them will rally together and speak for all the other skeptics when they feel it is politically expedient to do so.
It’s a shame that they can’t just focus on the science, but then they are by and large political animals.
Politics is irrelevant at the end. AGW “movement” had all the politics, money, media, academia etc on their side, but in the end the truth outs.
I don’t think so. Your “truth” is that sea levels are falling, arctic sea ice is recovering and global temperature is falling.
All false.
Whatever the truth, it will out lolwot. I welcome whatever outs.
Whether global temperature is falling or rising, arctic sea ice is recovering or melting depends on the time-scale, magnitude and significance. Global climate changes at all time-scales. The most dominant trend is the cooling at the multi-millennial time-scale (since the Holocene optimum ~8 ka BP). At the much shorter time-scale, the warming since the mid ~1970s is plateauing at the moment and the warming will shift to cooling. This is almost certain (lines of evidence).
“At the much shorter time-scale, the warming since the mid ~1970s is plateauing at the moment”
Don’t think it is
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/JohnN-G_ENSO_trends.gif
21 of 48 US states have been cooling since 1921.
I’d call that a plateau.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/is-the-usa-warming-the-noaa-data-saysit-depends-part-2/
lolwot,
You misrepresent the situation:
The reality is that neither temps, slr, sea ice, or weather are doing anything dangerous, unusual, or catastrophic.
The other part of that reality is that the AGW believers misrepresent this as often as possible.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/
The cooling will really start after the SC24 plateau (~2013 – 2015), maybe even before that – the SC24 is VERY weak. By 2020 warmists will try to claim that they never really believed in AGW and that there was never really a consensus. The downplaying will be even stonger than the cooling.
“The reality is that neither temps, slr, sea ice, or weather are doing anything dangerous, unusual, or catastrophic.”
That’s like claiming “terrorists are not doing anything dangerous at the moment”.
“oh whoops they just blew something up”
“well, I was right to say they weren’t doing anything dangerous at the time…”
“By 2020 warmists will try to claim that they never really believed in AGW and that there was never really a consensus.”
No you have it backwards. By 2020 climate skeptics will claim that they expected the world to continue warming.
Unfortunately for them though, the blogs have archives.
Exactly lolwot! I’m very glad there are archives.
Edim writes “the SC24 is VERY weak.”
Absolutely correct. In addition, the trend lines of Livingston and Penn continue to hold up. The average magentic field strength of sunspots is now below 2000 gauss. Sunspots may still disappear around 2020; the first time this will have happened since the Maunder minimum.
Are people picking sides about sea level?
http://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/1000-rallies-100-countries-connect-dots-extreme-weather-climate-change.html
So at least we can agree that there is a place and meaningful use of the word “denier” as being a non-neutral person, a fake skeptic who has a “horse in the race”. These fake skeptical deniers will not actually look dispassionately at the evidence, but if they look at all, they see it with a jaundiced eye.
I’ve got no problem with people being skeptical about whether or not there is anthropogenic climate change. I certainly was in that category many years ago. I applaud and welcome and encourgage real skepticism, for without it, science collapses and we get a consensus religion. And I do believe there is an element of this in the AGW community. Thus, there is a kind of continuum of positions that range something like this:
Fake skeptic (aka denier) – will never be convinced about AGW no matter what. They will fight for “their side” to the end.
Neutral skeptic – still not convinced one way or another, but will look disapssionately and honestly at the evidence.
CAGW skeptic – convinced that AGW is happening on some level but convinced it will not be catastophic.
AGW warmist – convinced that AGW is happening but skeptical about whether or not it will be catastrophic.
CAGW warmist – convinced that AGW is happening and convinced it will be catastrophic without massive coordinated global action. This action could be either action to reduce greenhouse gases or action to plan for adaptation or both.
CAGW alarmist – would never be convinced that AGW is not happening and believe that we’ll be screwed without massive greenhouse reductions in the next few decades…i.e. they’ll be no civilization around to adapt to the hothouse future.
CAGW resignist – would never be convinced that AGW is not happening and believe we’re probably already past the point of no return to a very bleak future…i.e. we’re screwed aleady.
I’m definitely a AGW warmist, and am actively looking at what the real long-term impacts might be. This goes back of course the the sensitivty issue, but also we need to consider how quickly this interglacial might have otherwise ended without human intervention in the climate. Might there be a level of greenhouse gases we want to maintain to prevent the next glacial period if it is possible to do so? This gets back to the notion of geoengineering and Anthropocene management along the lines of thought of Mark Lynas. I am not convinced this is the correct way to approach it, but it does intrique me.
“So at least we can agree that there is a place and meaningful use of the word “denier””
Yes.
R Gates is an Antarctic Sea Ice Denier.
The AGW cult is made up of Hockey Stick dishonesty deniers.
R. Gates writes “CAGW skeptic – convinced that AGW is happening on some level but convinced it will not be catastophic.”
I am not quite sure where I fit into this hierarchy. I am not only convinced CAGW will not be catastrophic. I am also convinced that the effect of adding CO2 to the atmospnhere from current levels has no discernable effect on climate whatsoever. The effect of adding more CO2 is far too small for us ever being able to detect any change in climate whatsoever. How do you classify me?
Hard to say where you fit in. You claim you are convinced that adding more CO2 from current levels has no discernible effect on the climate, yet there is absolutely no body of scientific research to support your conviction, and much that would say the opposite. For you to be so readily convinced of something with lot’s of evidence saying the exact opposite, would push you into the denier category.
R. Gates, you write “yet there is absolutely no body of scientific research to support your conviction, and much that would say the opposite. ”
On the contrary, I have the very best of scientific data to support my position. We have excellent data on global temperatures for the time since CAGW is supposed to have started, and good data for the previous 100+ years. This data clearly shows that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has absolutely no discernable effect whatsoever on the characterisitcs of the temperature/time graph. If you can show me a temperature/time graph where the effects of adding CO2 to the atmosphere are clearly visible, I would be grateful. Note, you need to prove that the effect you claim is there, was actually caused by adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
Further, no-one has, as yet, been able to MEASURE the climate sensitivity of CO2. What I had drummed in to my head during Physics 101 at Cavendish Labs, Cambriodge, was that if you cannot measure it, then you dont know what it is. I was taught by people with names like Bragg and Dirac. When I see an actual measurement of the climate sensitivity of CO2 added to the atmosphere from current levels, then let us talk as to whether I will change my mind.
R Gates,
This is so much bs. The fact that I have a “horse in the race”, to use your terminology, has no bearing on what I believe or not believe with regard to global warming. What bearing it does have is to make me want to be sure that when I fork over my dollars, it is for valid reasons. I don’t deny anything. I simply ask for evidence. And when it isn’t forthcoming, I say bs.
I know better than to buy miracle cures from snake oil salesmen or to send money to Nigerian “bankers” holding millions of dollars for me.
R Gates,
This “skeptic” most certainly has a horse in the race. Several of them. They go by the name of tax dollars and energy bills.
timg56,
A good many skeptics are motivated not by science, but by the costs that might be associated to curbing their fossil fuel dependent lifestyle. So you are not alone in this regard and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Money and religion have often trumped the advancement of science.
@R.Gates
A good many climate scientists are motivated not by science, but by leftist ideology and grant-farming. Money and ideology have often trumped the advancement of science.
No. The catastrophe for science are the Lysenkoists who call themselves “scientists” – and get away with it. The damage this will do in the long run to public support for real science is incalculable.
As long as Mann, Jones, Trenberth, Briffa, Hansen, and all the other corrupt “climate scientists” are not critized BY NAME by for their refusal to follow the Scientific Method, the damage will just get worse.
The idiots are those in the media, academia and government who believe in the Scientific Method, but REFUSE to name names.
We are just 2500 comments from 200,000. Go team!
The main problem with claims of consensus is that there is usually no clear statement of what it is that everyone supposedly subscribes to. I suspect that there probably is a broad consensus that (1) rising CO2 tends to produce a warming effect, (2) the earth’s climate has warmed over the past 120 years (but not continuously and not in all regions), (3) rising CO2 probably contributed to this warming but it is not clear what % was due to CO2, (4) further emissions of CO2 in the 21st century is likely to produce additional warming, and (5) further increases in CO2 in the 21st century are a source of concern. I doubt that there is a broad consensus on the extreme viewpoints: (a) the earth’s climate would be essentially unchanged were it not for rising CO2, (b) essentially all warming in the past 120 years was due to CO2, (c) we can predict the temperature increase due to rising CO2 in the 21st century within moderate bounds, and (d) the effects of global warming due to rising CO2 in the 21st century will be disastrous. This is all discussed at length in my book “The Climate Debate” available at amazon.com. -Donald Rapp
Ah the irony.
The UK’s commitment to open data includes publicly-funded scientific research (one guesses they mean after peer review, sadly, instead of from cradle to grave, and when the funding comes in before the research, as opposed to all research used in all lobbying and licensing and so forth).
“But the government won’t share details about how it will make the plan a reality.”
You got ot love it: from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ to ‘disastrous climate disruptino’ to ‘climate weirding’ to… “WEATHER HAPPENS!”
Judith Curry, I’m not sure where you read that Mann quoted Wegman’s e-mails extensively, but I do know that was said by the lawyer for ATI in the court hearing. I know this has been highlighted at least at WUWT (a link to the full transcript is available at that page), and it’s probably been mentioned elsewhere.
From the transcript (page 82):
By the way, I’m not convinced the lawyer for ATI is correct about this. To my knowledge, Mann never quoted an e-mail gotten through an FOI request. My recollection is he says he was forwarded the e-mails he quoted from.
I could be wrong, but without some sort of example, I don’t believe so.
Brandon, it may have been the excerpt I had posted [May 3, 2012 at 3:03 AM] from the transcript in the thread at Bishop Hill which led Judith to her assertion.
My hope is that I have not led anyone astray by citing [ATI lawyer] Schnare’s words from the transcript (pp 81-82). It did not occur to me (although in hindsight perhaps it should have) that his prefatory (pp 79-80) remarks were anything other than a recitation of the facts which he could substantiate on request.
It is possible that Schnare was (one would hope) inadvertently conflating what was USA Today‘s FOIA request – which was probably far more recent than what one might infer from Schnare’s account in the transcript.
You had noted:
I don’t dispute your recollection (after all, you persevered through the whole book, and all I can claim to have read is the two chapters available in the freebie sample).
But, apart from my disinclination to take Mann at his word, I would suggest that it’s not inconceivable that Mann has chosen to … uh… redefine the meaning of the word “forwarded” in order to, well, hide his receiving these emails subsequent to an FOIA request initiated by him.
As an aside, it seems to me that regardless of the veracity of Schnare’s account, one might wonder how Mann’s claim that he was “forwarded” the Wegman emails is significantly and/or materially different from the fact that other recipients of the Climategate emails had also received them via – admittedly unconventional – “forwarding” to a server from which they might be retrieved.
hro001:
I seriously doubt this. First, Waxman’s staff had every reason to forward Mann e-mails as they support him, and would want to work with him. Second, in my experience, Michael Mann is extremely lazy. I suspect many of the misrepresentations he’s made have been nothing more than him being too lazy to figure out the truth. Because of that, I don’t think he’d put forth the effort required to make an FOI request and sort through a bunch of e-mails.
Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about being mislead on this. Lawyers should not get factual issues like this wrong, so it was reasonable to take what he said at face value (especially since nobody disputed what he said).
Mann used Vergano’s articles about Wegman, which relied on FOI information. Mann refers specifically to Vergano getting Wegman’s email through FOI as follows:
In case anyone’s forgotten Schnare’s quote, which some have stated here with certainty is a “lie”.
Brandon,
I’m not sure I follow. Schnare is filing a legal brief, not a term paper or a journal review paper. What he said is pretty clear with regard to presenting the judge with evidence as to Mann’s opinions about other people’s e-mails and foia as it applies to other people.
The judge isn’t a journal editor that needs to consult a style book.
My 2:50 PM comment is directed at Brandon Schollenberger’s 2:44 PM comment.
John M:
Which is irrelevant to the issue of whether or not Mann actually cited/referenced/quoted e-mails gathered through FOIA requests. The lawyer’s overall point could well be correct even if what he said wasn’t true. That one argument a person makes for a point is wrong does not mean the point itself is wrong.
The error in the brief is nowhere near as minor as you say. The lawyer clearly said Mann quoted certain e-mails, and by all appearances, that’s untrue. There is no style book needed to know not quoting something is quite different than quoting it.
Mind you, I’m not arguing this error was important. The only thing I’ve said about its significance is there is no way to tell it was a lie, rather than an honest mistake. But however the error happened, it was still an error.
Brandon 3:12 PM
Again returning to the transcript quote I pasted in 1:58. I read that to mean that Schnare is literally referring to passages in Mann’s book (“tags”). From Steve McIntyre’s quote, there is certainly reference to the e-mails. I take “cited” to simply reinforce reference to them (again, this isn’t a term paper), They certainly were obtained under the FOIA. The only quibble is whether he directly quotes them himself or merely quotes someone who quotes them.
He’s pointed the judge diectly to the passages. How can there be any serious issue here?
John M:
First, we don’t actually know what he pointed the judge to. We’re just trying to guess at what it might be. It’s possible he pointed to something entirely different than what Steve McIntyre referenced. Heck, I’m willing to admit it’s possible he pointed to something I missed, and thus was completely right in what he said.
Second, he clearly refers to multiple instances. As you say, “passages.” Even if we took the quote from McIntyre as being perfectly representative of the lawyer’s claims, it is still only one instance. I have no idea what other things he might have pointed to, but at the moment, it seems like they couldn’t fit his description.
By the way, I’ll accept that passage can be considered to reference and cite Wegman’s e-mails, in a very non-standard way. However, they definitely do not quote the e-mails. Also, the two e-mails discussed were written in response to an FOI request, meaning they are not comparable to Mann’s situation (as his e-mails existed prior to the request).
In fact, the lawyer clearly referred to a different set of material in his brief, talking about “3,000 pages of responsive records” (which include e-mails). That is quite different than two e-mails written to describe something in response to an FOI request.
So no, that passage does not justify the lawyer’s claims.
Thanks Steve McIntyre. I knew about that but didn’t think to mention it since Mann didn’t cite, reference or quote the e-mails themselves. Referring to someone else doing so is obviously different than doing so himself.
Still, it’s definitely worth pointing out.
I just read the section of the book which relates to the Wegman report, the NRC report and the Barton hearings (pp 160 – 175) and can say with 100% certainty that Mann neither quoted nor referred to any emails released by Wegman in the FOIA request. In fact, he referred to no emails from Wegman, PERIOD, AFAICT — however this was not a close reading. The only block quotes in that section were from congressional testimony, none of it Wegman’s. I do not feel that it would be wrong to call Schnare a liar on this point.
Judith, I think you have been spun by ATI on this. You have also been spun on how the oral arguments went on 4/16. The judge ruled at the end of that hearing against ATI on the matter of waiver because of the disclosure to Mann’s counsel, although w/o prejudice. This means that if ATI can come up with plausible new arguments on this issue they can refile (I almost typed that as refail!). He did not rule on whether or not ATI was entitled to discovery (I do seem to recall that the WaPo reported that he ruled against them a week later but was unable to locate the article, so I tend to doubt my recall on this one item).
Judith, you should be careful about who you believe, it can make you look foolish to believe liars.
jmsully, before being willing to support accusations of lying, you should read more closely. If you do, you’ll see on page 174, Mann discusses certain things Wegman said. From his note #52:
His note #54:
Not only did Mann refer to e-mails by Wegman, he even quoted from (at least) one. This doesn’t support ATI’s position, but it does diminish your position. If you made this mistake, how do you justify (implicitly) accusing the ATI lawyer of lying?
Also, I want to point out there is absolutely no way to verify the contents of a number of the references Mann gives, as he says they’re e-mails people sent to him. I have no reason to doubt the above quote, but given the constant misrepresentations in Mann’s book, I wouldn’t accept anything he says at face value.
Does this constitute 1) disclosure under FOIA? and 2) Use which constitutes copyright infringement as ATI asserts. In neither case does is the answer yes.
As far as your assertion goes, he quoted one sentence of one email sent to a 3rd party and not obtained via FOIA in a footnote (which I admit I did not look up until this moment). Dude, you have seriously got to be kidding. And how do I justify Schnare of lying? Easy, check out page 82 (at least on Watt’s site, I don’t have and don’t intend to download and print a copy of the transcript to verify the line and page numbers. This is flat out BS. Mann was forwarded a copy of an email sent to Waxman (most assuredly not private since it was sent to a public official regarding a matter which was the subject of a congressional hearing). So given this, I was not 100% accurate. Mann did quote, in a footnote, a single sentence from an email which was part of the public record and not obtained via a FOIA request.
Schnare remains a liar.
jmsully, you confuse me:
There are three answers to this. First, no.
Second, who cares? Nobody claimed it did.
Third, ATI never claimed claimed that “constitutes copyright infringement.” In fact, ATI’s position is the exact opposite (something made clear in the full transcript, which you haven’t read). You have, quite simply, made this up.
You say I have to be kidding… because I pointed out you were wrong? You even acknowledged you were wrong. Why should I have to be kidding to point out you made a mistake?
You made an honest mistake in your first comment. I didn’t call you a liar. You made another honest mistake in your response to me, completely making something up. I’m not calling you a liar. On what basis do you completely dismiss the possibility of that man making an honest mistake?
If being wrong is all it takes to be liar, you’re a liar. If making something up which is obviously untrue is all it takes to be a liar, you’re a liar. If making something up because you misunderstood some text is just a mistake, then you’ve just been mistaken. As has that lawyer.
Brandon, at page 80 (or it may have been 81( Schnare says:
17 Then a publishing house, Columbia
18 University Press, published a book that
19 included, cited to, and quoted the Wegman
20 e-mails, e-mails obtained under the Virginia
21 FOIA. They showed no concern about a copyright
22 interest in those e-mails, either.
This is a silly accusation since there is no contravention of copyright involved here. I did admit I was not 100% correct (see above). However I have read all 206 pages of the transcript.. Does copyright matter? As I said in a subsequent post, no. This was a red herring by Schnare which successfully diverted the argument. A good bit of lawyering, but not germane to the questions at hand.
And Schnare’s claim about how Mann came into possession of the email in question — that was a flatout lie. No FOIA was involved. Schnare’s implication here is that Mann obtained the email in question from Wegman via FOIA. This is not true as pointed out in the series of footnotes you referred me to. In fact, the only FOIA served on Wegman that I am aware of is the one which Dan Vergano of USA Today filed. Check out the first link here for more information. It would appear that Vergano was not pleased with the limited amount of info he received.
jmsully:
This is a silly comment as nothing in that text claims there is a “contravention of copyright.” You’ve just made this supposed accuastion up, then criticized a person for making it, even though he never did anything of the sort. It’s rather strange you would falsely accuse someone of making a false accusation.
You did say that. But saying it for the second time doesn’t make it any more true than when you first said it. Copyright was a serious issue, and you’re just making this up.
You’ve repeatedly asserted this, yet you’ve never done anything to respond to what I’ve said regarding it. You cannot know what was in his mind when he said what he said, so you have no way of telling if he lied, or just made a mistake.
I can’t begin to imagine why you’d say “the only FOIA served on Wegman” is that one. Doing so implies the lawyer claimed there was another, but that’s completely untrue. The lawyer specifically referred to the same one as you mentioned.
You said you wouldn’t download a copy of it, which I took to mean you didn’t have a copy so you hadn’t read it. This was supported by the fact you displayed no knowledge of the contents of the transcript. If you claim you have read the entire transcript, I cannot realistically dispute it since I’m no mind reader, but I can say this.
You’ve displayed no knowledge of the proceedings, and you’ve said multiple things which were flagrantly untrue. If you really have read the transcript, you have no excuse for what you’ve said.
BTW, I am assured that this does not constitute anything punishable. In fact, since his diversion was successful it is actually admirable. Copyright was not at issue in this argument and he succeeded in diverting the argument.
jmsully:
You should really stop making things up. Before saying what is and is “not at issue,” you should at the very least, find out what is and is not at issue.
Copyright is/was a key issue in this matter.
No Brandon, copyright is not really an issue here. It is not a bar to release. In fact, a formal claim of copyright basically bars the sorts of documents at question here from exemption. However, Schnare seemed to be arguing that the informal “copyright at birth” doctrine rules here. Schnare seems to be arguing that this informal copyright (which applies to pretty much every single word written today) means that Mann’s documents would be subject to disclosure (because of the existence of copyright, which excludes them from exemption under VA FOIA laws). But then this argument about Wegman and FOIA wouldn’t make any sense in this context.
But please, explain to me how copyright is an important issue here. From reading the transcript, it appears that the issues at question here — as pointed out by the judge at the end of the hearing — were whether or not UVa waived the right to exempt emails by disclosing them to Mann’s counsel (they lost) and whether or not ATI was entitled to discovery. If Mann’s emails, etc. had some form of formal copyright associated with them as opposed to the informal copyright at birth doctrine protection (they did not, although his papers do) then they would be subject to disclosure. However, this is not the case, and much of this was explained by counsel for UVa during the hearing.
jmsully:
What is with me and blockquotes? I seem to mess them up 20% of the time I use them. Sorry about that.
Anyway, for those who may be following this exchange, it’s worth pointing out there isn’t one copyright issue, as jmsully portrays. It is true formally copyrighting material puts it in the public domain, meaning it is non-exempt. Despite what jmsully portrays, this issue is completely irrelevant. ATI’s lawyers have made absolutely no argument in regards to this point.
The actual copyright issue is UVA and Mann both claim copyrights on e-mails make them exempt from disclosure. That’s something counsel for ATI disputes. In short, the argument is absolutely nothing like what jmsully would have you believe. He claims an ATI lawyer brought up the copyright issue as a diversion, but in reality, ATI is responding to an argument made by both Michael Mann and UVA.
Waxman, hmm, a Democrat. You might think that Mann got a copy of that Email from Waxman or his staff? Do you have an example where the email was actually from an FOIA request to GMU. There is excelllent evidence that this is not the case in a letter from the VA FOIA Advisory Board to Dan Vergano. (there may have been other requests, but clearly in that one there was no substantive release)
Eli Rabett, let nobody doubt your ability to make nonsensical and misleading comments:
Yes I might. That’s why I explicitly said “I have no reason to doubt” it when Mann says that’s how he got the e-mail, as well as saying my “recollection is he says he was forwarded the e-mails he quoted from.”
I have no idea why you’d ask a question I’ve already answered, but thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify something which was already perfectly clear.
If I had, it would have been strange of me to post, “To my knowledge, Mann never quoted an e-mail gotten through an FOI request.” I can’t imagine why I’d post to say the exact opposite of the truth in regards to what I know.
But again, thanks for giving me an opportunity to clarify something which couldn’t possibly be misunderstood. I know some people will strive as hard as they can to misinterpret things, so this is probably for the best.
Eli, in fact in the series of footnotes Brandon directed me to he states that the quoted email was forwarded to him by Waxman. No FOIA needed. Schnare is a liar.
Why yes jm sully, which is the point.
And just so it doens’t get lost in the discussion…
http://judithcurry.com/2012/05/04/week-in-review-5412/#comment-197802
Brandon,
I am impressed by your attention to detail and love it. You are working your way onto my heroes list. Maybe not as high as Brandon Roy and Cal Ripken Jr, but on it none the less.
Thanks! I’m kind of flattered.
I’m also kind of ashamed to admit I had to look up who Brandon Roy is (I know Cal Ripken Jr). The only famous Brandon I could think of before that was Brandon Lee. You’d think with it being my name, I’d know more.
After writing this, it occured to me that it is sad sign of who we seem to hold up as heros. Each year when they poll high school and college students for whom they most admire, the lists are almost completely filled with celebrities (or atheletes).
I can at least say that the person who has been at the top of my list has not changed for 50+ years – my dad. And I’d at least lick to think that having Cal Ripken on my list is a reflection of his character and example of hard work and dedication, than just his athletic accomplishments.
What I’d like to see is more people like Brandon (Schollenberger, not Roy) on people’s lists. I have Dr’s Theresa Canjar and James Pankow on mine. Teachers take up a number of slots on my list. As do people like my nephew, who is back in Afghanistan for the third time, in command of an airbourne infantry company.
I’ve often wondered why our news outlets do not celeibrate academic achievement to the same degree as sports. This time of year we should be seeing on the front page the list of students graduating HS with honors and where they hope to go to college. If academic achievement were held in the same esteem as celebrity achievement is, perhaps Michael Mann would be more interested in being recognized as a top flight scientist rather than a climate celebrity.
After reading the two guest posts this week I have made up my mind. Climate change is a hoax, planted by aliens whose real goal is to get humanity transitioned onto alternative energy sources before peak fossil fuel runs out.
Climate Change is a hoax designed to transfer as many jobs to China and India as possible before it is found out.
The Brits do not know what they are going to do re open access (or OA), so this is a hollow promise. There is green OA where articles from subscription journals are made public after a year or so. The US NIH does this. Most UK Research Councils already mandate green OA but it is not enforced, so maybe they will enforce it, which is no big deal. Then there is gold OA where authors pay for publication and the articles are imediately free. Gold OA means restructuring the publishing industry. It will be fun watching when the real issues hit the political fan, probably this summer.
For the publisher’s perspective see here
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/05/03/crossing-the-rubicon-is-the-uk-going-to-enable-open-access-for-all-taxpayer-funded-research-by-2014/
On the contrary, read the British Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council policy on open access as well as that of the Welcome Trust and other funders
======================
EPSRC’s policy, which is in line with RCUK’s position, covers access to any form of scholarly work arising from EPSRC funding and accepted for publication in an academic journal.
The policy requires that all published EPSRC-funded research articles submitted for publication from 1 September 2011 must be made available on an Open Access basis.
====================
You are blowing smoke
Judy,
I can’t myself see anything different from wheeling a Hollywood actor up who says she is firmly of the view that global warming is a great problem, to the opposition’s wheeling up a criminal to say the same thing.
If you are saying that it was a mistake for Heartland to go to the low ground already occupied by the orthodox, I might agree. But I’d like to hear the argument.
Don, the issue is the intended inference that global warming alarmists are mass murderers. The corollary that global warming alarmists are actors isn’t quite the same.
Less literally, I see it as payback for calling skeptics deniers. But the logic is rather weird.
Of course real skeptics are just that, honestly skeptical AND willing look honestly at the evidence to be convinced otherwise. Fake skeptics or deniers will never change their position no matter what. They will fight for “their side” to the bitter end. Deniers give real skeptics a bad reputation, just as CAGW alarmists give AGW warmists a bad reputation.
Why not worry about the people who fantasize about slaughtering children on YOUR side. Or the people on your side who want to genetically engineer humans to hate eating meat.
Heartland thinks you people are kooks. Get used to it. You are.
This is an extension of the argument used by Fred Singer since 1995 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leipzig_Declaration ); “In a world in which poverty is the greatest social pollutant, any restriction on energy use that inhibits economic growth should be viewed with caution. For this reason, we consider ‘carbon taxes’ and other drastic control policies … to be ill-advised, premature, wrought with economic danger, and likely to be counterproductive.” Repeated since by Lords Lawson and Monckton, it’s a formulaic fallacious device.
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion simply exploits the victims of mass-murder, poverty, persecution to justify an unrelated argument.
There are appropriate ways to discuss impacts of climate change — negative or positive — on the interests of populations; however, these aren’t those.
Except Fred’s argument is sound and literally true, not metaphorical.
One would expect the association of ‘literally true’ and ‘Fred Singer’ to be less than tightly bound, as regards a piece of paper with some 80% of its signatures falsified.
Also, from the point of view of development economics, there is nothing sound in the argument. Efficient allocation of resources for plastics, nitrogen fertilizer, pharmaceuticals and other industrial chemicals from fossil fuels each dwarf the importance of artificially reducing the price of fossil fuels in more developed nations, from the point of view of less developed nations; this is supported by the positions of advocates and experts, farmers and consumers, in lesser developed nations worldwide.
So, you’ve made a literally false claim on all premises.
Why?
I read the Singer comment to imply that affordable and available energy is very important and I agree with it. I disagree with your statement “Efficient allocation of resources for plastics, nitrogen fertilizer, pharmaceuticals and other industrial chemicals from fossil fuels each dwarf the importance of artificially reducing the price of fossil fuels in more developed nations, from the point of view of less developed nations; this is supported by the positions of advocates and experts, farmers and consumers, in lesser developed nations worldwide”. If plastics, nitrogen fertilizer, pharmaceuticals and other industrial chemicals from fossil fuels are available and cheap but farmers still have to, for example, use animals or their backs to plow fields because fossil fired machines are too expensive, have to move water manually because fossil fueled pumps are not available, or don’t have electric lights and all the other electrically powered paraphernalia we take for granted, then I believe they would vote for reducing the price of fossil fuels. Moreover I disagree that not artificially raising the price for fossil energy to include whatever externalities you believe is appropriate precludes providing the resources for those items. With all due respect, it is very easy for all of us sitting in front of a computer to take for granted the miracle of electricity. I object whenever there are suggestions that the over a billion people without electricity shouldn’t have it if it means that fossil fuels are used to provide it.
Roger Caiazza | May 4, 2012 at 7:46 pm |
You’re free to hold your opinion about people you’ve never met, spoken to, asked about these issues, and discussed with their needs and wants and what benefits they seek.
The facts remain different on the relative costs to them of pipes for drinking water and sanitation, wind-powered pumps, solar-assisted water filtration and treatment, and the containers used in transporting drinking water as well as crops, all from the one issue of plastics alone.
You can’t make plastic from oil they’ve burned to run a tractor you can’t afford to buy that some multinational uses to compete with your goods.
BartR
My interpretation is that our disagreement is whether society can provide both plastics and affordable electricity to those currently without access to both or does society have to choose one or the other. My impression is that you believe that society has to make the choice. Either we provide plastic or we artificially reduce the price of fossil fuels. Those two options are mutually exclusive. I also think that when you say artificially reduce the price of fossil fuels you are implying that externalities have to be applied to fossil fuel use to increase the price to cover the “true” cost of their use.
I disagree with those points because I think that artificially raising the price of fossil energy increases the cost of producing the plastic to the point where it may not get to those who need it. I would argue further that no plastics production facility can operate solely on renewable energy without extraordinarily higher costs. As a result of the increased costs the plastic is not going to make it to those without it even if you sufficient feedstock to produce it. While I only have opinions about people who I have never met, I suspect that they would prefer to have the plastic if it means society can only provide it if the cost of theoretical externalities are not included.
Seriously, how do you propose to produce and get the plastics to where it is needed without using fossil fuel?
Roger Caiazza | May 4, 2012 at 8:29 pm |
My interpretation is that our disagreement is whether society can provide both plastics and affordable electricity to those currently without access to both or does society have to choose one or the other.
Clearly, for any barrel of oil, if you have burned it for energy, you cannot then make plastic out of it, or pharmaceuticals, fertilizer or industrial chemicals. (There’s a use of residual heat component, but that’s not really the main point.) You _might_ be able to make something out of plastic and then as one eventual form of recycling burn it as fuel, but this isn’t really a long-run practical consideration for gasoline, say, and is merely a small fraction of the overall.
So, yes, petrochemical resources are rivalrous. Once you’ve committed the resource on way, no one else can use it.
My impression is that you believe that society has to make the choice. Either we provide plastic or we artificially reduce the price of fossil fuels.
Either we provide the lowest cost plastic and appropriately priced energy from fossil fuels, or we hike the price of plastics (and pharmaceuticals, and nitrogen fertilizer and industrial chemicals) and distort prices throughout the energy market, blocking entry of new energy sources, and imposing tax churn and unevenly distributed tax burdens on some while others ride free. That’s pretty clear.
Those two options are mutually exclusive. I also think that when you say artificially reduce the price of fossil fuels you are implying that externalities have to be applied to fossil fuel use to increase the price to cover the “true” cost of their use.
I disagree with applying externalities, in the sense you use it. Why is disposal of CO2 by the carbon cycle an externality? If a producer of fossil fuel sells it as fuel, the only intention must be that energy is produced by burning and emitting CO2. There’s no way around that outcome. That’s not an externality, but a direct dependency. Why should the carbon cycle be free, for the case of such lucrative uses?
I disagree with those points because I think that artificially raising the price of fossil energy increases the cost of producing the plastic to the point where it may not get to those who need it.
See, I’m not sure I follow your math here. In fact, I’m sure you don’t follow your math here, too, or you wouldn’t make the claim.
If the carbon cycle is priced for everyone, and everyone gets the full revenue from pricing the carbon cycle as a dividend, then everyone has all the buying power they had before. If they want plastics made with energy from fossil fuels, the same as before, they pay out the extra income from their fossil energy dividends. Indeed, if they by purchasing plastics use less fossil energy (say by having more plastic parts in their now lighter vehicles, or using plastic mirrors in a CPV power system) then their buying power has gone up, making their effective tax burden less overall, giving them the ability to get even more plastic if they so choose.
I would argue further that no plastics production facility can operate solely on renewable energy without extraordinarily higher costs. As a result of the increased costs the plastic is not going to make it to those without it even if you sufficient feedstock to produce it.
Heck, if the plastic manufacturer uses geothermal or wind energy, the price of their plastic need not go up, if economies of scale from increased demand for alternative energy have brought their price below the current price of subsidized fossil energy, or if innovation has increased price efficiency once barriers to entry through subsidy are ended.
While I only have opinions about people who I have never met, I suspect that they would prefer to have the plastic if it means society can only provide it if the cost of theoretical externalities are not included.
I somehow think if all those ‘theoretical externalities’ end up as cash in their pockets, you might be wrong.
Seriously, how do you propose to produce and get the plastics to where it is needed without using fossil fuel?
These being the plastics you can no longer make, because you’ve burned the petrochemical raw materials instead of using plentiful alternative energy sources?
Bart R
Thank you for your explanation of your position relative to mine. I tried to draft a response to rebut your presumptions about energy usage but have become convinced that your take is so far detached from mine that I could never convince you that the energy math does not add up as you suggest. In brief your claim that alternative energy sources are plentiful is not correct.The Rutt Bridges and David Rutledge posts on this website take a good look at all sources of energy and suggest some of the issues with the renewable energy sources that contradict your vision.
I agree that it may be possible to replace electric generation from fossil facilities with renewable power but the transportation sector is a much higher hurdle. Even if I concede that plastic could be manufactured without fossil fuel as in your vision, how does the feedstock get delivered to the plant and plastic get delivered to the consumer. Renewable replacement of electric generation is going to use up renewable resources, i.e., there won’t be any additional places to put wind or solar facilities. Electric cars or trucks are at least an option but what about planes and ships.
If you get into the details of energy use, the only way to avoid using fossil fuel on the scale you propose is for a complete re-structuring of society. (The first thing to go is the global economy because it depends on fossil energy transport.) I believe any scenario where pricing carbon use as an externality, dependency, or any other terminology to the point where it mitigates emissions to the point where societal changes occur is orders of magnitude more expensive than adapting society as it is structured now to the negative effects of carbon use.
Roger Caiazza | May 5, 2012 at 10:53 pm |
From time to time I use the phrase, “the genius of the fair Market” to differentiate between how the views of a few experts work, and how the views of every participant in an economic system combined work.
Let’s consider an expert who has some very interesting ideas about the price of oil and the world economy to come: http://www.thelavinagency.com/speaker-jeff-rubin.html
This economist believes the world is about to hit a mark where no matter what we do, energy prices will skyrocket. He constructs a very plausible case. If he’s right — and he’s got a fair track record, so he may be, or not — then all alternatives to paying for fossil fuel will be explored by most people. Conservation, massive reorganization of the structure of cities, mass transit, renewable energy, bizarre and little-known chemical fuels running a variety of oddball engines, the whole gamut will be explored.
Now, Jeff Rubin _doesn’t_ consider the problem of nitrogen-fertilizer, plastics, industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals also going through the stratosphere in price (double or triple today’s levels). However, if his basic premise is right, but the Market has to allocate scarce resources at these dramatically higher price levels in areas so fundamental as food, medicine and key factors of production of every manufactured good on the planet, then we have a much bigger disruption ahead of us than putting on sweaters and riding bicycles.
There are two ways we could approach those issues: 1) committees of experts like our well-informed experts, Bridges and Rutledge, who will miss something big in their central planning attempts; 2) pricing all rivalrous, excludable goods so near to the Capitalist ideals as possible — including the carbon cycle’s waste disposal service — and let the genius of the Market minimize suffering and maximize utility.
Because the central planning experts who advocated for subsidized fossil energy have made our future very, very doubtful, separate and apart from mere climate issues.
Well reasoned, Bart.
Btw, Rutledge’s article is posted also at The Oil Drum, where one can compare the reception it gets.
Even after seeing the billboard (which I had not done when I wrote my post above), that is not the inference I drew, at all. My take on the unabomber ad is simply that here is an evil person who believes in global warming: that is, not all those who believe in global warming are nice people who want to save the planet.
And my take on the actor is simply the converse, that here is one of your celluloid heroes who believes in CAGW, so shouldn’t you?
In short, the moral high ground has been that ‘we, the orthodox, are virtuous people trying to save the planet, over the objections of you, the deniers, who are selfishly holding on to what you have and want.’ The billboard seems to me to be saying ‘well, here’s one of your supporters’.
It wouldn’t have occurred to me to suggest such an ad campaign, but I doubt that, to use your words, that ‘global warming alarmists are mass murderers’ was ‘the intended inference’.
This is just stunning.
There’s no way that I believe that you don’t understand the rhetorical purpose behind analogizing “realists” to lunatics and mass murderers.
Judith, that is not at all the impression I got from Heartland’s explanation of the billboards. What they are saying is that warmists get away with extremist assertions re “deniers”, when Heartland briefly billboards in the same vein it gets a huge antagonistic reaction – HI is drawing attention to the disparity and double standard, it’s not equating warmists with mass murderers.
Global warming alarmists FANTASIZE about mass murder, They hire famous people to write and direct commercials about that FANTASY.
And Guardian columnists call it “edgy”.
“Well, I’m certain you’ll agree that detonating school kids, footballers and movie stars into gory pulp for ignoring their carbon footprints is attention-grabbing. It’s also got a decent sprinkling of stardust – Peter Crouch, Gillian Anderson, Radiohead and others.
But it’s pretty edgy, given 10:10’s aim of asking people, businesses and organisations to take positive action against global warming by cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by 10% in a year, and thereby pressuring governments to act.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/sep/30/10-10-no-pressure-film
These are mainstream warmists displaying their fantasies to all.
@curryja
The English language is a rich one with many synonyms. The term “denier” was chosen to associate global warming skeptics with mass murder. Allowing its use and at the same time objecting to the Heartland billboard is blindly inconsistent at best.
Not sure which is sadder – that you can’t see the difference or that Judith thinks your comment deserves a serious response.
You see no difference between someone voicing an opinion and analogizing people to mass murderer?
Really?
And I love the “Mommy, mommy” you snuck in there (“..already occupied by the ‘orthodox.”) It would be artful if it weren’t so lacking in accountability. Not sure if that’s an improvement over hunter’s approach or not.
The Billboard has a message: instead of of what Joe the Plumber thinks and believes the Left is more in tune with what people who are anti-America and that gives wings to people like Ted Kacyzynski, Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Ward Churchill ….
Indeed. Many years ago when I started Climatechangedebate.org we had an online quiz. We had five qoutes from the Unabomber Manifesto and five from Gore’s Earth in the Balance. People were invited to say which was which, and nobody could.
So – you denounce the approach before you employ it?
What is the point of comparing a decontextualized quotes from the Unambomber’s opinions and Gore’s?
Did you offer full context for the quotes?
I am no defender of Al Gore – he’s a blowhard of the first order; but this nonsense almost drives me in that direction. Should I decontextualize some of your quotes for rhetorical purposes (assuming I haven’t already :-)?
What kind of context makes it ok to hide the decline–Mann only had a ruler?
Joshua,
Deal with the quotes. Get some smelling salts, sack up, and deal with he similarities.
Your pretending to get vapors everytime someone points out something about AGW you do not like only makes you look weak and feeble minded.
I’m sick over H.I.’s spectacular misjudgment. Hard for me to comprehend what they were thinking. This hurts, all the more so because it’s self-inflicted. It’s the best news the warmists have had in many months, and it was handed to them free of charge courtesy of the Heartland Institute. Whoever’s responsible should be fired. The best thing to do is get that done right away, along with the issuance of a sincere apology.
“We do not apologize for running the ad, and we will continue to experiment with ways to communicate the ‘realist’ message on the climate”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/04/heartlands-billboards-and-joe-romms-stunning-hypocrisy/
If the AGW cult fires Mann, I will take what they think seriously.
I think Heartland has made a really great point.
Yes the refusal of the bulk of the establishment to punish, criticize or even distance themselves from the Climategate Crooks – the deafening silence – leaves the distinct impression that the Climategate Crooks are not merely a few rotten apples in the barrel, but rather that the whole barrel is rotten. And in this situation where dishonesty is seen as unexceptional, the thinking climatology layman cannot but be skeptical.
My guess was they figured lets take a page from the other side’s playbook and see how it gets received. The billboard shows little difference from the Brad Johnson article linking the Norway nutjob to “deniers” and is certainly less disgusting or disturbing than the 350.org commercials with exploding “deniers”. Apparently I guessed correctly.
Personally, while I can understand the thinking behind it, I would have argued against it. We already know about media biases (in either direction) and trying to prove a double standard in this instance doesn’t gain you much in relation to the potential negative backlash. But hey, they aren’t the first to step on their d*#k’s. Just ask David Appell (or maybe Nick Stokes).
I’d also consider (were I the H.I.) spending some money on a P.R. firm that specializes in damage control. This is beyond bad.
I want to see Hansen’s picture and quotes side by side with the sane people who made the “No Pressure” video,
In other words nothing happened this week
Here’s something I find interesting from Anthony Watts:
And from what I see, most WUWT readers seem to agree with him. Also, from Joe Bast:
It seems pretty much everyone agrees this was a bad move, and the billboards are going to be taken down about a day after they went up.
Heartland has already agreed to take the billboards down. At least they’re responsive even if monumentally foolish.
w.
The moral equivocation is stunning.
Come off it Josh.
I know you like pot stirring, but this is weak.
Look at all the silly/stupid thing Joshua writes, and we all missed him…lol
i like the way you were wrong about WUWT readers.
One thing, and one thing only made them take down those signs…the possibility of a mass defections from their upcoming conference, which would have turned it into a non-conference. They will of course do as much damage control now as they can, claiming it was all meant to be a test, blah blah blah. But the end result is that their happy little conference is preserved and they now only have so suffer some severe behind-the-scenes tongue lashing by their speakers and sponsors. A lesson learned and this too will pass and their ability to continue as a lobbying and “outreach” (i.e. propaganda) organization will be intact…
I look forward to more billboards. Frothing at the mouth comments like yours are hilarious.
In whose view is what Heartland does that important?
If any institution publishes silly/stupid things they discredit their standing. Please review the claims made by many “highly regarded” universities on the topic of climate change and let’s compare what was claimed by many of the “highly regarded” to observed results over the next ten years.
+1
The Heartland Billboards are genius. AGW is a Crackpot Theory held by Crackpot Believers. The billboards cut to the chase effectively..
Andrew
Never let it be said that you play political games — agreeing with something in principle but offering criticism out of political correctness and expediency.
If others would follow your lead, I suspect that we’d get somewhere in this debate more quickly.
Joshua, do think the Heartland Billboards make any false claims or factual errors?
Andrew
Dr Curry,
I got no further than this comment “A suggestion for their next study: survey mass murders and terrorists for their opinion on global warming. Who is right, Romm or Heartland, in terms of which “side” claims the most dangerous adherents?” before cracking up.
That is a survey I’d love to see done. Maybe MAD magazine will sponsor it.
Without referring to it, anthropologist Desmond Morris puts “climate change” in perspective. Looking at human evolution, Morris writes in the Telegraph that “We have only undergone one major environmental change in the past 12,000 years, so one mustn’t expect a huge alteration.”
He goes on: “The big change we have seen, as a primate species, is urbanisation. Up until the point when we discovered agriculture, we had always lived in small hunter-gatherer tribes. But once we had planted crops and domesticated animals, we had given ourselves the chance to build up a food surplus. This let our villages become towns, and our towns become cities full of specialists, who made exciting new discoveries and set us on a path towards technological brilliance.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/9245998/The-age-of-the-urban-ape.html
Good point. Humanity has voluntarily moved to an environment NASA has estimated at 7C to 9c warmer in the summer than surrounding the countryside.
RE: Heartland billboard.
If I had to guess, I’d say someone thought it would be a nice riposete to Brad Johnsons article linking the Norway nutcase to “deniers” of climate change.
I don’t have to guess that it is one they’d love to have a do over on. Talk about stepping on your willy. Well at least they have offered new evidence that no matter how smart or bright one may be, they can still do some really stupid shit.
Whatever… people still will be interested to more about what global warming alarmists have in common. Other than being secular, socialist Westerners, who do you think they consider are their comrades? Who do you think they look to for spiritual guidance?
We have seen many examples of cults throughout history that have pontificated about catastrophes of all sorts in the offing.
For example, the global warming alarmists all share one thing in common. With them it not ‘God Bless America’ it is, ‘No, no, no, god DAMN America.’
Sorry, but holding out Gleick and his community’s reaction to his actions with Heartland is a fallacy and annoying. Gleick was praised by many prominent believers. Heartland was chastised harshly by nearly all skeptics and already stopped the ads.
The point of the ad- that some pretty strange people believe in extremist AGW- happens to be true. And it is not the skeptic’s job to explain why.
I took a look at this study. N=232. About a third of the people who signed up are students (graduate and post-doc). About 40% of them didn’t give their names, only aliases.
Finally, who are these folks? I’m pretty well-read in science, and I recognized just three names: Steven Mosher, Bart Verheggen, and Kerry Emanuel.
It appears that the participants are self-selected, and that anyone can sign up (although it’s not clear if they accept all applicants).
As a result, I fear I put little faith in this one …
w.
There were a couple guys from SkS as well.
My first request to join was denied until I supplied a reference to our AGU poster.
Thanks, Steven. Yeah, that’s what was afraid of. It’s a double-selected group, first self-selected, then further winnowed by the pollsters. Too bad, because as a result nothing they come up with will be defensible as representative of anything.
w.
have a look at the methodology. You had to predict what other would think as well. think about that.
Well, let’s see. Since they seem to be triple selected for agreement with AGW, by self-selection, because many are in universities, and because the folks themselves seem to select AGW supporters, I’d think that the agreement among them would tend to be greater than I’d think …
How’d I do?
w.
Right. They asked 170 academic faculty and graduate students. That’s a consensus alright.
Triple selected. Universities and colleges are dominated by Democrats, and have been for decades. Those institutions churn out left-leaning “scientists”. And then those left-wing “scientists” sit on hiring committees who hire more left-wing “scientists” and if by chance a skeptic does sneak through, the journals make sure those papers don’t get published … or someone like Trenberth will do a Wagner on them.
You can sum it up in one sentence: Climate change research has been plagued since the days of hysterical fears of imminent cooling in the 1970s, by design problems, misuse of research data (both positive and negative with adjustments to raw data without explanation, and adjustments made to the adjustments — all without any justification whatsoever — and, the substitution of data without any disclosure of the questionable gimmicks being employed, together with the knowing corruption and outright loss of raw data without accountability of any kind), poor statistics, small samples, unverifiable computer models constructed using questionable time-invariant climate parameters and reductionist mathematics, and a sycophantic culture of interrelated, self-reinforcing, self-serving, self-appointed gurus — elevated far above their competence for ideological reasons — who idolize and memorialize superstitious preconceptions, indulge in flawed conclusion and hucksterism, and proselytize their politically-correct voodoo pathological climate science (likened by some outside Western academia to the science of ancient astrology), all while self-righteously opposing with cannonades of denigration the accomplishments and observations of serious scientific skeptics and an ever-growing number of global warming heretics of self-defeating AGW theory and eco-terrorism.
Wag,
That is an extremely long sentence!
In other words: junk science as practiced by CAGW junkies.
‘Researchers are trying various shortcuts to get a rapid answer. One of those is to use short-term natural variations, such as the El Niño cycle, to see how clouds react to higher ocean temperatures. Dr. Dessler, the Texas A&M researcher, did that recently. His analysis, while not definitive, offered some evidence that clouds will exacerbate the long-term planetary warming, just as many of the computer programs have predicted.’
Odd how they can hold one idea – that ENSO shows positive cloud feedback to AGW – but can’t accept at all that cloud changes by anything but AGW. The satellite data showing positive feedback is correct but the trend data from the same source showing secular variability is incorrect. Climate weirding in action.
At the very least schoolteachers can now spell ‘weirding.’
Dr. Curry:
I like your blog a lot. But have you misstated, or at least overstated, something? You refer to “…Joe Romm’s article Norway Terrorist is a Global Warming Denier, although Romm didn’t post his on a billboard.” Yet your link reaches only an article of that title. It is written by someone other than Joe Romm, though the article is in Romm’s blog, to be sure.
Maxdaddy
Romm approved it.
Heading off to a 100-year-old’s birthday party. I’ll ask him if he’s seen any change in climate since 1912.
Mind, as he grew up in west London, I won’t necessarily take his answer in Brisbane as being definitive. Not unless he takes a hockey stick to me.
Times have changed. In my generation the scare stories were about making out in the front seat of a chevy and the ‘date’ sort’a calling all the global warming off so the guy puts it in gear and throws gravel leaving lovers’ leap to drop off his date only to find a hook dangling from the passenger door.
The Lindzen hatchet job is amusing.
“. By drawing attention to the what ended up being insignificant (and
spurious) trends over the length of the record, Trenberth and Fasullo (2010b) have given what turns out to be a false impression of irreconcilable trends in the relation between ocean-enthalpy increases and the TOA energy imbalance3. These results unfortunately overshadowed the real revolution in such approaches, namely the recognition that our observing system shows evidence of large inter-annual fluctuations in the flow of energy through the Earth system and that these might be trackable as they work their way through the system – for instance from anomalies in the TOA net radiation, to changes in ocean heat uptake.”
http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/staff/stevensbjorn/Documents/StevensSchwartz2012.pdf
From the article link, http://www.masterresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Attach3.pdf
“I sympathize with Rev. 4’s comments who concludes that the new paper simply has to explain why the opposite conclusions from the same data set by Trenberth et al. are flawed.”
who is got honesty for THE BOTTOM LINE:
ALL THE HEAT IN THE TROPOSPHERE OVERALL; IS ‘’the EARTH’S GLOBAL TEMPERATURE’’ Forget about USA temp, or Arctic, or Antarctic, or Mediterranean, or heat in the sea, in your oven, in the fossil fuel, or heat stored in the atoms. Unless is ALL heat combined in the troposphere ONLY, it’s = misleading / smokescreen.
1] Forget about the temperature in the sea; submarine volcanoes /hot vents increase the temp. B] winds, ruff sea cools the surface water. C] below if is 10cm of 20C and 55m of 23C; or is the opposite, nobody notices the difference; even though tremendous difference in the amount of stored heat. D] yesterday’s rain brought coldness from high up and cooled the ‘’surface’’ water; below hasn’t changed – but record will show: the Whole ocean to the bottom as colder by 2C. It’s stupid data for immature people. Designed exclusively for fundamentalist and for the Urban Sheep.
2]Forget about Arctic temperature, or surface temperature, or Antarctic temp; they are all for confusing the ‘’already confused’’ The whole temp of the troposphere is earth’s temperature!!! If one is taken on Arctic in July, was warmer than normal, England was warmer than normal in May, Brazil in December was warmer than normal, Australia was warmer than normal in January… it’s all meaningless crap. Smokescreen / puling wool over ignorant eyes. To get from 10 light years away from the truth, down to only 9 light years: they should take the on every monitoring place temperature simultaneously, on the whole planet. For example, at 12 pm Greenwich time; then to take it at 8am Greenwich time ‘’on the whole planet’’ and compare those two. Lets call it: ‘’People’s request, model for monitoring’’
3]Forget about the temperature in the stratosphere. That temp doesn’t fluctuate. B] in the stratosphere are gases as aerosol, helium, ozone. Those gases just seat / spin there and never come to the ground to bring any coldness = they are irrelevant for the planet’s temperature regulation. Are used occasionally for confusion There is no methane in the stratosphere, it’s a lie. Methane sinks in the ground, because is produced together with other compounds. If some goes up in the atmosphere at night – as soon as reaches altitude where is sunlight, UV, infrared; zaps it instantly and turns every molecule of methane into 2 molecules of water and one CO2.
4] Forget about cherry picking, always is someplace warmer than normal; unless the Swindler finds out and report the other place where is colder than normal; he is lying to you; or fundamentalist is usually lying to himself also / reassurance – fear of reality.
5]Forget about the heat in the smelters, converting ores into metals / my oven was yesterday 240C, making roast; does that means that GLOBAL temp is gone up by 225c? Idiots! Energy that came from the sun yesterday and was locked in the trees or crops – then released in 6months or 25y (the word: ‘’energy budget’’ is crap). Red soil absorbs more heat than rock – irrelevant if released in the air at 12pm or 11am. It’s not difference than them talking about the energy locked into the fossil fuel, or into the atoms = con job. Those ‘’energy budgets, positive / negative signals and albedos’’ should all go into Hansen’s & Plimer’s ass. Sand exchanges heat different than red clay. Fundamentalists from both camps: Q: what’s the difference if CO2 in the air releases the heat 2minutes before, or after?! It’s the O2+N2, stupid!!!
Rocks and clay don’t go up towards the stratosphere, to release / waste heat and exchange it for coldness. It’s the oxygen + nitrogen, they are 998999ppm, stupid! The amount of wool the Warmist pulled over the Fake Sceptic’s eyes; to keep the Fakes warm and cook their brains, is bigger than Mt Ararat. They will start ‘’researching’’ if the stew, goulash, soup, or french-fries have bigger energy budget and which of them is releasing heat faster ‘’and producing GLOBAL warming… As long as the Fakes are Warmist’ roles of toilet paper. There is money to be made on shonky researches. There is no money into acknowledging that: ‘’overall global temp is always the same; that’s what the laws of physics and my formulas say!!!
6]Forget if the sealevel goes up or down, that has noting to do with any phony GLOBAL warming. There are real reasons for it.
7]Forget about the ice on the polar caps + glaciers. They don’t depend on temperature, average temp there is minus -30C. on the land ice is melted from below, by the geothermal heat / on the sea is melted by the salty water. More ice / less ice; 100% depends on the availability of raw material for renewal of the ice every winter. That raw material / water vapour in the air, is treated as ‘’ bad for the climate’’ by the fanatics from both camps.
As soon as heat is released from wood, coal, volcanoes, smelter, plutonium, from your oven, into the air; ‘’then it becomes /belongs as GLIOBAL temperature’’. No matter if its in your room, backyard, Arctic, equator, 2-40-700m in the air, or 1-5-20km altitude. That is GLOBAL temperature. All other crappy staff is for creating zombies / fanatics / rip-off and destruction of the democratic west. If not with red Kalashnikovs / oppress them with green. CO2 is increasing, not a hint of GLOBAL warming; fake Skeptics are looking for reasons why. Because isn’t such a thing, idiots, stop helping the Warmist. The fake Skeptics are the biggest Sadomasochists.
When any extra heat is released, or produced in the air / troposphere; on the place / places released -> that O+N expands upwards, accordingly, to the extra amount of heat released. Intercepts EXTRA coldness, to equalize, and instantly shrink; not to redirect too much extra coldness. That’s what regulates the global temperature. Any other heat than the heat in the troposphere; is a smokescreen. No matter if is Arctic’s, Antarctic’s heat, or heat in the sea, or heat stored in the atoms, in the fossil fuel, or in your oven; becomes GLOBAL temp is, when is released in the air, not before. ONLY ALL COMBINED HEAT IN THE TROPOSPHERE IS ”THE GLOBAL TEMP” All the rest is time wasting for destruction / misleading / for confusing, for ripping-off the Urban Sheep. THIS IS THE BOTTOM LINE / THE TRUTH
ANOTHER BOTTOM LINE:
To calibrate the variation in Global temperature; needs a solid / RELIABLE starting point. As: water freezes on zero centigrade / boils on 100C.
1] If you exclude part of the planet – that is not GLOBAL temperature. If you exclude 95%, as it is the case with the Conspirator’s GLOBAL temperature – it’s brainwashing business, nothing to do with the reality. If is monitored on 6000 places for IPCC, that says about the temperature on 6000m3, not GLOBAL temperature. On one small hill there are 1000 different temperature; AND THEY CONSTANTLY CHANGE for every 10 minutes in 24h. There are even days when between 10-11AM is warmer than at 12, doesn’t that matter? Temperature changes every 10 minutes – unless is data collected for every 10 minutes – is only fodder for the Urban Sheep. If upper troposphere is warmer than normal (because of dimming affect) – lower troposphere / just above the ground is always cooler / if upper atmosphere is colder – on the ground is hotter. Excluding one or the other – is not earth’s temperature; because on the earth, temperature distribution is 3 dimensional. Thermometer is for monitoring the temp in a room; not one thermometer for a million cubic kilometres. With 6000 thermometers officially monitoring for IPCC; can collect temperature for 6000 rooms; Hilton hotels have 12000 rooms – not enough thermometers to monitor those rooms; what about for the rest of the planet???
Therefore: must be included the warmth in the WHOLE troposphere / for every 10 minutes / on the WHOLE planet. Only if that is done, can be calibrated. But if that is done – no need for calibration, because OVERALL the warmth units in the Whole troposphere are ALWAYS THE SAME. Because the laws of physics and my formulas say so. They use the word ”sensitivity” to confuse the ignorant. If they use ”sensitivity” in oxygen + nitrogen in expanding when warmed / shrinking Instantly when cooled… the conspiracy would have fallen a part in days. When gets warmer than normal close to the ground, VERTICAL WINDS speed up! As soon as it cools – they slow down; why the real laws of physics are discarded? Using the word ”thermodynamics” but not using it, WHY?! Which people don’t want to see the end of the propaganda? The Warmist believe in 90% possibility in GLOBAL warming + most of the brainwashed Skeptics – they believe 101% in GLOBAL warming. They are the Devil’s advocates – doing the Warmist dirty job (the Fake Skeptics that are Warmist’ roles of toilet paper)
Horizontal winds take the heat away from solid objects / vertical winds are taking the heat up and exchange it for extra coldness / as soon as it gets warmer > the vertical winds increase in speed / strength. 2] Warmed troposphere expands accordingly / increases in volume INSTANTLY; that is the second and most important factor; taboo for both camps… Look at it on the bright side: the brainwashing propaganda will make the psychiatrist rich.
Heartland really jumped the shark.
However, I cannot help but notice that biomedical scientists have pretty much zero support for other scientists and the media when it comes the the description of us. Anti-vivisection groups represent us a stupid sadistic torturers.
Take a look at the posters and the sort of protests we have to deal with
http://oxford.indymedia.org.uk/2005/07/319879.html
http://www.pitch.com/binary/520d/wanted_poster.jpg
http://www.wwail.org/literature.html
Now look at this image from the UK’s best selling left-wing ‘quality’ newspaper.
http://www.pitch.com/binary/520d/wanted_poster.jpg
Now that photograph is staged. Not only is the handling wrong (safety tip never point a hypodermic at your own body), not only is the needle the wrong gauge, not only is the needle placed on the wrong part of the animal (tail vain), not only are the gloves circus-clown oversize, but, the maximum volume is 250 mircoliters for a large mouse.
Here is how it is done
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MDcyardkmw
So why did the greater defender of global waring, the Guardian, use a fake photograph to make biomedical scientists look as bad a s possible?
Judith, I participated in the poll of climate experts. It was an innovative polling approach.
Innovative how? As in no one ever polled in this fashion before? or innovative some other way?
read.
Ok, fair enough… so tell me
1) do you think this poll is representative of how scientists in general would predict their peers to respond (underestimating) about scientific consensus?
2) what percentage of your peers think it is representative of scientists in general?
Ross McKitrick has posted a letter to Heartland at Climate Audit
http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/04/mckitrick-letter-to-heartland/
And it’s almost enough.
I’m not saying this to be my usual mean and critical self. I say this with all due respect for Dr. McKitrick. But he himself has pointed out, the message is the billboards themselves. Their takedown won’t be the message; that they were ever there will be. It will be there for all parties: those who sympathise entirely with the billboards’ sentiment far more than can be excused by some venting, those who vented and regret a little that the message they hoped to convey has been lost but no more, those who willed to vent and feel some twinge of remorse for the escalation and overstepping (you all have read the way I write, you have to know I’m intimately connected to the darkest of these preceding sorts of sentiments), and those who were shocked and appalled but who retain their own beliefs earnestly hoping that most associated with the Heartland are like them, and all the vast majority whose feelings are more remote, or even the polar opposite.. they’ll all remember the billboards.
If someone thinks BAU will cut it without some closure on that message, they’re wrong. I don’t think Dr. McKitrick is going to stay that wrong about that problem for very long. He’s a bright guy. I hope some better bridge gets built than just a teardown of a billboard and an ‘oops’.
Because it’s not going to go well, either way, if past situations like this one are anything to judge by, but at least with a sincere and meaningful, lasting and probably very painful elevation of positions and significant outreach, all that will last is the message people remember.
McKitrick said:
McKitrick started all the juvenility with his book “Taken By Storm” of a few years ago, where he spent page after page childishly describing global temperature as a T-Rex dinosaur. Once I read his narrative, I have never been able to treat climate skeptics seriously. They could never convince me of holding any scientific authenticity in their own little cartoon worlds.
WebHubTelescope:
Right… All the juvenility started just a few years ago.
“I read a book by this guy, so now I’ll dismiss the entire group for all times. Because open-mindedness is how science works!”
Not really. If some skeptic presents an alternative model that that is not some piece of junk, which is what most of the candidates are, then I would be willing to work it. I am always on the lookout for simplifying models of the environment, but facing the facts, I see no practical alternatives other than the ones that I and others spin-off from the conventional physics models of the climate.
Do you have something?
WebHubTelescope:
Yes. I have your word you wouldn’t listen to me no matter what I provided,* which is perfectly in line with the behavior I’ve observed from you on this blog. Such as when you insulted Steve McIntyre and his work because he worked on topics he had an interest in, not the topics you are interested in.
Well, if I did, I have changed my mind (Google doesn’t work on comments here). Curious as to what you actually know about science in general, experimental science, physics theory, or anything besides rhetorical debating points.
About McIntyre, I believe he associates with McKitrick. McKitrick is the guy that associates global temperature with a cartoon dinosaur he refers to as T-Rex. Not transitively interesting to me.
WebHubTelescope:
If you want to know something about me, you’re free to ask. I’ll answer any question. There’s a good chance I’ll mock you as I answer your questions, but your general behavior merits all that and more.
I don’t care whether or not you find McIntyre interesting. You flat out insulted him because he doesn’t study the topics you want him to study. Who he “associates” with is meaningless in regards to that. In fact, that is only meaningful as a rhetorical trick, similar to what you criticize me for (supposedly) using. Similar, but worse.
By the way, if we’re going to dismiss people for random reasons, I pick this quote for you:
You actually accused a guy for lying while saying he may not know what he said was untrue…
Impressive rhetoric. Big whoop.
If your goal is to act like you can argue with a climate scientist w/o having any background in science, then you can go ahead, but no one really cares, except for others like yourself. That’s what you rhetoricians don’t seem to get.
“Take by Storm” was not a book on climate science, but was a book of rhetorical argument. That’s why it was roundly ignored.
WebHubTelescope:
I’m not sure what brought this up, but since you mention it, I certainly do think I can argue “with a climate scientist.” People like you may choose to ignore me, but that doesn’t mean anything more than you’re close-minded. Here’s an example of what I can do, whatever my qualifications may be:
Richard Tol insulted our host for posting a discussion of two papers on this site last year. When he posted his list of criticisms of the paper, I was able to show a major criticism of the papers was not only unfounded, but was stupid. It showed an extreme lack of knowledge from Tol on the matter being discussed, and I was demonstrated to know more.
There was also the little matter of my “technical” review of Michael Mann’s newest book which showed how he had repeatedly misrepresented science and math.
The fact people may ignore/dismiss me doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not I’m right. As such, I don’t really care if they do. It’s pathetic behavior on their part, but that demeans them, not me.
WebHubTelescope,
I dare you say Brandon Shollenberger (please make sure you write his name properly) can’t argue with climate scientists. I believe he’s fully prepared. Please consider how he argued with Vaughan Pratt:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/27/lindzens-seminar-at-the-house-of-commons/#comment-178924
Do take note of the way he can conduct a scientific argument:
> That’s stupid.
> For me to have ignored a point of yours, you’d have had to have made that point. You didn’t.
> I would call it a point made in a different fork and thus not a point made in the response you claimed I ignored a part of.
I hope you do agree with me that this proves he’s ready.
Yes, he specializes in these convoluted gotcha arguments. English can be ambiguous in expressing a technical argument, so a back-and-forth will always devolve into meaningless banter unless it can get rooted into a mathematical or logical modeling construction.
B.S. may not like it, but that is the way progress is made.
Only a fraction of the general population is willing to participate on a technical climate science topic, and only a fraction of that fraction is willing to put the pencil to paper and do anything analytical.
WebHubTelescope:
There are numerous examples of me offering to participate in a detailed discussion across various blogs. In most cases, my offer was ignored. In others, it was dismissed.
The only person who even pretended to take me up on it was Arthur Smith, and he promptly resorted to claiming it would be too much effort to verify my claims, even though he could have just followed a few links. And the fact it was too much effort to verify what I said didn’t prevent him from saying I was wrong. And later, he posted about how nobody on my “side” was willing to discuss the very thing I tried to get him to discuss. And when I pointed out that was untrue, he went back to saying I was wrong in the exact same way as he had before, despite the fact he had simply ignored me providing proof he was wrong.
My offer is still open, and I’m happy to discuss any topic I’ve commented on in whatever detail is necessary. I’m confident you will resort to petty rhetoric to dismiss this fact, the same approach you always use when dealing with me.
Climate scientists have made a concerted effort to avoid engaging people on issues. Because of that, and the fact their supporters mostly adopt the same strategy, it’s impossible for a member of the general population to participate.
Then again, evidence suggests it’s impossible to have any reasonable discussion with people who support global warming. The things and people they call reasonable tend to be anything but.
By the way WebHubTelescope, you constantly refer to me using “rhetoric” and make comments about “high school debate.” In case I haven’t made this clear yet, it’s pathetic. If you actually had anything of value to say to me or about anything I’ve said, you’d say it. That you haven’t indicates a great deal.
B.S. I suggest you put your warez on a blog site. The Google http://blogspot com site is good because it has all the math markup you will need, and you can post charts and figures to back up your ideas.
WebHubTelescope:
Is today a day for random, unsolicited suggestions? If so, I suggest you stop using abbreviations for people’s names which are automatically associated with words that have negative connotations. Given your constantly haughty tone, frequent snide remarks, and multitude of straight-up insults, a lot of people would suspect it of being an intentional slight.
Why would I start up yet another blog on subjects where people and their arguments are constantly ignored? I would happily run a website if I had the resources for it, but it’d be something far more effective than a simple blog. I’ve actually given it quite a bit of thought and have had a fairly detailed idea for a website for a couple years now.
So no, I’m not going to start a blog. If I’m going to do something, I’d much rather do it right.
WebHub won’t use the wc unless he has chart that says it’s time to go.
Well, do what I did. Use a blog as a running notebook of thoughts and ideas.
When you have enough pieces put them together into a larger document. In my case it was a blog turned into a book. Then you start a new blog.
At least I don’t leave floaters, unlike some people.
Hi,
Did I get the threading right? Probably not!
Floaters!! Eeeew!!! Love it! Probably an appropriate metaphor for “global warming due to GHGs”.
See it slowly disintegrate – avoid the odour – watch everybody say “It wasn’t me !”
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
WebHubTelescope,
I’m sure there is misunderstanding between you and Brandon Shollenberger, whose name I advise again to spell properly, for if you’d pay due diligence to his technical discussions we’d concur about his proficiency.
Take for instance his discussion with Richard Tol he referred above. It’s sad he did not link to it, for you’d then immediately see that there is much technical content in the discussion. You can see a with an enlightened commentary by Bart Verheggen there:
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/to-publish-bs-or-not-thats-the-question-judith-curry-vs-richard-tol/
Since the discussion metastasized into a few threads, he also has a run-down of the relevant links.
The title of Bart’s post has nothing to do with your suggestion to Brandon Shollenberger to use Blogspot, of course.
WebHubTelescope,
I left another piece of evidence there:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/05/04/week-in-review-5412/#comment-200238
WebHubTelescope,
I see you’re unresponsive. Silence of the lambs. More Omertà?
Let’s hope not. In any case, I believe I have the most compelling evidence of Brandon Shollenberger’s readiness:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/its-fancy-sort-of/
This must be read in tandem with Tamino’s post:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/bs-and-dk/
Two very charitable blogposts.
Let’s note Brandon’s takehome:
> I was right. From the very start, I was right.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/its-fancy-sort-of/#comment-95549
Not our emphasis.
I say he’s ready.
“I am absolutely dismayed. This kind of fallacious, juvenile and inflammatory rhetoric does nothing to enhance your reputation, hands your opponents a huge stick to beat you with, and sullies the reputation of the speakers you had recruited.”
The same could said for most advertising.
But is it not public service to make general public aware of the possible extent of how crazy the CAGW people are?
The issue is simply most people don’t want to be taxed for billions or trillions of dollar, because CO2 may make the world a bit more warmer.
It might be interesting debate for nerds.
But people in general are only going to care if there something important regarding CO2 emissions.
Hence the people who want to increase taxes- for numerous reasons,
wish to say that driving your car, will end life on the planet.
There is no shortage of people have been brainwashed into thinking that being moderate is the ideal state of being. These people are providing evidence that they are stupid. No moderate position has ever been correct.
Halving the difference to between to two positions, will be wrong.
E.g. slavery vs freedom. One is right and one is wrong. Saying some people should free and some shouldn’t is wrong.
To say, this debate can’t resolved, and there more important issue that can and should be resolved is on the other hand perfectly logical.
But being in the middle and halving the difference is the stupidity of a moderate and plague of modern society.
Being a moderate to the like of Hansen and Al Gore, is paying a robber half the money he demands. Or being half as crazy.
New York city isn’t going be 10 feet under water. We not measurably closer to the Greenland melting as we were 1000 or 5000 years ago.
And if one wants to talk about Antarctic melting one even going deeper into fantasy land.
The theme of these beliefs is that humans of today are worse off than humans a century, or 10 centuries, or 1000 centuries in the past.
That technology is the cause of this worsening or the destruction of this world. This is the belief of the Unabomber. And is same belief of Osama Bin Laden. And many people are taught this religion.
This pseudo science of course appears scientific. But there no rational assessment that supports this conclusion.
It’s a myth. Like all myths one could say there some things “true” about it.
There is also another myth regarding an idea that humans are progressing, that humans are on a path of destiny or habit or tendency is towards ever increasing improvement- as if human were a machine that going in one direction.
An idiot moderate would split these two “ideas”. They are both wrong and halving the difference isn’t an improvement.
Thing about the progressive view which wrong is the idea, that progress accidentally happens. And that humans are improving- that the human soul or body is improving.
Humans are not starving as much, they living longer. Many diseases can be cured. But the animal which is human is not evolving.
The caveman wasn’t a better human than modern human nor is it worse. The cavemen wasn’t nicer, or kinder, nor more rude or meaner. Though obviously the culture as evolved- we have different rules, we do things things differently.
The culture is evolving [it’s changing- rather than improving] and doing so at blinding speed, culture is dependent upon education. Not to be confused as same as public school education- there no blinding speed here.
I would say the modern America could not make document from scratch as good as the American Constitution. I think this is proven fact, considering American’s involvement in the construction of other countries constitutions.
Why this is the case is debatable- the circumstances and selection of who was involved. That were not appointed by a some general, a president or king. Etc.
My point isn’t we are worst off, now, but rather to indicate there has not being huge strides, in terms of “social awareness” or “cultural awareness”.
So we are not diving into darkness nor climbing rapidly towards the light
in terms of general culture or biologically. But science continues to make progress, and the technological advancement is remarkable over the centuries and recently. This is not the cause of all the problems, they making life better. And will continue to do so.
What has been a problem are ideological, particularly ideologies which are pseudo science- e.g, Marxism. something pretending to be science which is actually anti-science. Not democratic, truth established political bodies/authority, and lacking any means of correction or feedback- does theory match reality.
ESTIMATION OF CLIMATE SENSITIVITY (CS)
IPCC’s climate sensitivity (CS) is about 3, and its prediction is a warming of about 0.2 deg C per decade.
For 120 years, from 1880 to 2000, the long-term trend was about 0.05 deg C per decade as shown below.
http://bit.ly/IQYIP2
This observed long term global warming rate is not going to change soon, as it is the property of the current climate pattern.
As a result, the observed climate sensitivity can be estimated from the above values using:
Observed CS/Observed Trend = IPCC’s CS/IPCC’s Trend
Observed CS/0.05 = 3/0.2
Observed CS = 0.75 deg C.
This is means that the climate sensitivity for doubling of CO2 is about 0.75 deg C.
Note that currently, since 2004, the globe is cooling at the rate of 0.12 deg C per decade.
http://bit.ly/KxsExd
This means that the global warming phase of 1970-2000 is over and we are in the cooling phase, and this maintains the long-term warming of 0.05 deg C per decade.
Note that currently, since 2004, the globe has been cooling at the rate of 0.12 deg C per decade.
http://bit.ly/KxsExd
This means that the global warming phase of 1970-2000 is over and we are in the cooling phase, and this maintains the long-term warming of 0.05 deg C per decade.
This start of cooling rate since 2004 must result in deceleration of the sea level rise and deceleration of loss of sea ice extent. Indeed that is happening now.
Deceleration of sea level rise => http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Deceleration of loss of sea ice extent => http://bit.ly/JgYa3L
This supports the climate sensitivity estimate of about 0.75 deg C.
Mr Orssengo. Apparently we do have to go through this same charade every few weeks.
And on the deprecated HadCRUT3 dataset, still? Really, you still don’t understand why that’s wrong, technically? What the mechanically calculated reasons it’s not appropriate are? When even its own authors dismiss the dataset, there’s good reason to reexamine ones reliance on it, and to fully explain why one is retaining it with something better than, “I think its authors are lying.” I mean, if that were the case, were they lying then, or are they lying now? Why would anything based on any of their data either way be worth looking at through your eyes, acknowledging that you believe in nothing you are basing your analysis on, but still utterly convinced by your foregone conclusion?
Since 2004?! That’s barely eight years. It’s under half of the 95% confidence timespan. Do you understand the concept of statistical confidence? I know you use r^2 figures, but do you get what a confidence interval is, and how it applies? At all?
There have been dozens of periods (depending on start and end month) on the HadCRUT3 curve comparable to the post-2004 trend, or more extreme, several in the past four decades, and yet we must agree there has been warming since the start of HadCRUT3, and that there has been a great deal of warming in the past four decades.
A sub-17-year cooling anomaly is hardly proof of the end of a warming phase; there were comparable trends in each decade of the 1970-2000 ‘warming phase’ itself.
Why do you insist on invalid methodology, when you could as easily point to the possibility that the climate may not warm, without the exaggerated and spurious computations on decrepit data?
Arctic sea ice extent declined slowly through the first three weeks of April, compared to recent years. The slow decline through March and the first few weeks of April meant that by mid-April, ice extent was at near-average levels.
At the height of global warming ice extent at near average levels. Wait what is coming in the next 10 years. It will be snow everywhere like in the 1970s. You will beg for the return of global warming.
I will keep my hadcrut3, as it explains the pause in sea level rise since about 2004.
http://bit.ly/KxsExd
Bart, have you seen what it shows? It shows a cooling of 0.12 deg C per decade since 2004, for about 9 years, a cooling rate never seen in the record since the 1970s.
And.. since you’re venturing into Arctic Sea Ice, let’s avail ourselves of a closer look at this ‘decelerated’ loss:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/05/Figure2.png
Hey! Wasn’t the first week of February the lowest ever Arctic Sea Ice extent for first week of February?
Why, so it was.
And the current sea ice extent? while it’s the third highest in the decade, it’s also the fourth lowest on record, and trending rapidly down relative to the other four since mid April.
You have a funny, funny definition of ‘deceleration’, Mr. Orssengo. Remind me never to let you drive.
Global Sea Ice +600,000 sq km above normal.
Mr. Orssengo, yes, it’s me again.
Looking at your ‘decelerated’ sea level rise.. On a record only being collected since 1992, you’re claiming that the ENSO-linked variations of the past two years represent meaningful deceleration? Are you implying this, or stating it outright? Because this ‘supports the climate sensitivity estimate’ will cut both ways, where we look at the recovery of sea level rise; will you then be accepting climate sensitivity of 6 or more?
I think not.
Mr. Orssengo, where will you get your HadCRUT3 going forward? Will HadCRU still produce it ad infinitum, now that they’ve produced HadCRUT4? And when HadCRUT5 comes along, what then?
Why aren’t you using HadCRUT2? Well, other than that it stopped in 2005?
The goalpost remains the same: the most appropriate dataset available, based on the most appropriate analysis uniformly applied to so much of the data as possible. Well, not really most appropriate, of course — no one’s doing sufficient and necessary data collection for the climate system in question. But why do worse, with something already bad, than you need to?
HADCRUT4 ends in 2010. Not finished yet.
Until then …. colder than 1944.
http://i47.tinypic.com/2ez5ykp.jpg
Girma
Your analysis is spot on (despite the “howls of outrage” from Bart R).
HadCRUT3 tells us it warmed by 0.7C since 1850.
Without tossing in the (largely hypothetical and postulated) differentiation between “ECR” and “TCR”, it is obvious that AGW has resulted in somewhere between 0.35 and 0.63 degrees C since temperature measurements started in 1850, while atmospheric CO2 rose from 290 to 390 ppmv, IF we believe in the validity of the HadCRUT3 record, Mauna Loa measurements plus the IPCC estimate of pre-Mauna Loa CO2 levels based on ice core data.
This calculates out to a 2xCO2 temperature response of 0.8 to 1.4C, depending on how much we attribute to solar impact (7%, as estimated by IPCC or 50%, as estimated by several solar scientists).
It also assumes that IPCC is correct in its estimate that all other anthropogenic forcing factors other than CO2 (aerosols, other GHGs, etc.) cancelled one another out over this period.
So your figure of 0.75C is right on the lower end of the calculated range.
Max
Actually, IPCC’s CS is 3.26 (http://bit.ly/KoqxSt).
As a result, observed CS = 3.26 *0.05/0.2 = 0.82 deg C
wrong again. You keep estimating the TCR. idiot
On another thread, this was said about Steven Mosher:
Hopefully Chief Hydrologist reads this thread.
Yes I did notice but what do you want me to do? Judith – if you are watching Stevens remark was a gratuitous ad hom.
It is all such nonsense anyway. As Gatesy keeps pointing out – the ‘planet’ hasn’t noticeably been cooling at all.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=vonSchuckmann-OHC.gif
You can compare this to the SW anomaly
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=ceres-swanomaly.jpg
And to ENSO if you really want to.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=ENSODSR-1.gif
And that to the global tropospheric temperature anomaly.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=maclean-2009-Fig4.gif
And while there should be a greenhouse signal in there somewhere – if you can’t see it you can’t calculate sensitivity. Otherwise – sensitivity is an emergent property from models – say 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C. Which is a bit unfortunate because – not to coin a phrase – all models are wrong.
Not that sensitivity is a constant is a spatio-temporally chaotic climate system. And you know what Einstein said about space and time. “…for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.” And –
‘Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent “now” objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.’
The last bit was for Joy who was too chicken to take me up on evolution. What meaning does evolution have in a four dimensional continuum?
Oh wait… Were you being sarcastic in the comment I linked to? I thought you were seriously saying Mosher is always polite, hence my response. I couldn’t imagine how anyone would think that of him.
If you weren’t being serious, that would make a lot more sense.
how do you think I earned the nickname moshpit.
I am not polite have never pretended to be polite
and I accept the consequences.
Girma persists in ignorance and has a Phd.
he spams this conversation and I return stupid spamming
in the following way.
First I am polite and try to offer suggestions.
Then if they persist over time I will eventually call them out for what they are.
Brandon.. what is the TCR?
Steven Mosher:
A while back, I asked a few questions about some details of instrumental temperature records to learn more, and your response was to immediately be an unhelpful jerk. Apparently you are more polite to spammers than people honestly interested in learning.
Good to know.
Why in the world would you ask me this? Nothing I said to Chief Hydrologist has any connection to climate, much less a specific issue within it.
But hey, since you’ve asked, I’ve discussed the TCR on this site recently, sure, but I’ve never claimed to know what the value of it is. All I’ve done is condemn the methodology of David Appell, DocMartyn, WebHubTelescope, Jim D, Bart R, and Girma for being overly simplistic and inherently biased. Oh, and I’ve promoted Isaac Held’s recent blog post on the topic as being insightful.
I guess since I don’t know of any flaws in Held’s work, if I had to guess, I’d say the TCR is no higher than 1.8C, and it is most likely lower by a significant margin. But that’s just me repeating him, so it’s non-informative.
Actually, I probably shouldn’t have responded to that comment seeing as the comment was against blog rules…
Lots of pearls
Clutching thereof.
Also fainting couches.
pigs ear in flight – swine before
wrong. you are estimating the TCR not the ECR.
go read Held and learn some physics
Mr. Orssengo, do we have to go through this same charade every few weeks over and over again?
Climate sensitivity is highly variable with and dependent on a number of factors, mainly which obscure the full amount of the value, but which again can’t much be relied on to continue to grow as CO2 level continues to grow. The sensitivity seed is bursting out of its shell, taking root and branching out. Also, the transient sensitivity is timespan dependent, too.
But mostly, we know from examining your methods in the area of GMT, you do not have sufficient handle on methodology and technique to perform this type of analysis competently. Leave it to trained professionals.
CO2 causes cooling as the last 15 years show.
If Heartland is the lunatic fringe, every alarmist who uses the term denier is lunatic fringe. Every climate scientist who defames another by claiming he is funded by oil companies is a member of the lunatic fringe.
Judith, I’m not sure you have the fortitude to be fair to both sides on this.
As Andrew Sullivan summed it up
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In some ways, this is an almost perfect illustration of what has happened to the “right.” A refusal to acknowledge scientific reality; and a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses entirely on guilt by the most extreme association
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.
FWIW, Heartland could have gotten away with Freddy Krueger, but it never would have occurred to them. Fake pearl clutching and lack of humor, where has Eli seen those? Youse guys prefer rejectionist??
Completing Andrew Sullivan:
….what has happened to the “left.” A rebranding of IPCC-style scientific fraud as “reality”, and a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses entirely on guilt by the most extreme association – the legacy this fraud says we are leaving our grandchildren.
Gotta have our false balance in the morning
Nothing false about the balance, Eli. Politics is brutal business and always has been. The distribution is normal. The difference is the right is right.
Eli,
Honesty apparently isn’t one of your strong suits. Care to show us how Brad Jonhson’s linking of the Norway terrorist on trial with climate “deniers” is at all different from the Heartland billboard.
One can rightfully deplore Heartland’s decision to run with the billboard. It takes a hypocrite to just stop there.
Looking to Andrew Sullivan for anything to do with thoughtful critique is like looking to a grocery store butcher for good surgical advice.
If Gleick wasted his bullet, why has Heartland committed seppuku?
Yep, I think they just made his point for him…
Eli
Heartland were wrong on so many levels of which the moral, ethical and bad taste aspects are key. Also important was the strategic thinking brehind this. What was going through what passed for their brains? From a British perspective I have always thought Heartland a side show but that has now been elevated (downgraded?) to a stupid irrelevance.
tonyb
Eli,
If you guys had gone after Gleick as strongly as skeptics went after this one day campaign by HI, you would sound less like desperate wishful thinking. Or if you had even gone after Romm when he promoted the same thing about skeptics regarding the Norwegian murderer.
HI screwed up. They got told to stop by their supporters. They stopped.
The rest is transparent wishful thinking on your part.
If you believers held your guys to anything close to the same standards we hold our guys to, you would not be seen as such self-serving insincere hypocrites
,
Heartland should do more. And they should play the “No Pressure” slaughter children in the name of the AGW cult video.
There is no monopoly on common sense on either side of the climate fence.
“If Gleick wasted his bullet … ”
Heartland is a think tank. Gleick used to be a scientist.
One probably committed fraud, one mocked Al Gore’s ranting and raving by noting that the Unabomber and Gore’s philosophy were similar.
Mocking and fraud are not the same.
But more importantly, why such violent imagery from Judith and you Eli?
Bullets?
Frikadelle at fifty paces
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque
And ironically, it appears to apply to lots of people all over the spectrum.. which means I’m participating in it by pointing it out. :D
Fraud: “deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.”
Mock: “to attack or treat with ridicule, contempt, or derision.”
A fourth sense for a fourth sense:
mock·er·y (mk-r):
4. A false, derisive, or impudent imitation
Yes this Heartland insinuation is almost as bad the use of “denier”. But at least there’s only one person/place doing it, not millions.
Most people don’t get the visceral reaction Chicago — site of ICCC 2012 — has to Unabomber references, as one of their native sons.
I can see why it might be attractive to HI to draw the connection to Berkeley to people’s attention, to plant that seed in their minds — which a cynic might suggest they’ve accomplished by their billboard-and-pulldown campaign (not to cynically imply something staged about the event) — and to then build on that theme at ICCC proper. Which I have to ask, who doubts this will happen, if not officially then among the looser cannons (and who is to say which is which?
So, really, anyone going to ICCC, it would be shocking to not see more shocking and intentional activities in this vein. If you don’t have hip-waders and a thick skin, but do intend to go, then best to obtain both.
And prepare when you return to face the shocked and dismayed people you return to with some excuse, like, “I was as surprised as you. I’m very concerned of course. How could I have possibly known it would be like that? I couldn’t know. I didn’t expect it. You should apologize for putting me through this grilling. I’d like to strike a committee to investigate it, will you support funding my research, seeing as how you jumped down my throat without giving me a chance?”
“The billboards and the blog post are on an intellectual and moral par with ThinkProgress’ article Norway Terrorist is a Global Warming Denier, although Romm didn’t post his on a billboard. “
Or WUWT:
Charles Manson becomes an advocate for global warming
mwhaha let the wriggling begin
Take a look at this:
“Ha ha ha! Pretty funny – Charles Manson arguing for changes in behavior from a MORAL point of view! Ha ha ha! Al Gore, Charles Manson, the EPA and Osama bin Laden all aligned in the “AGW Cause”. You gotta love it!”
-WUWT commenter LearDog, April 2011
“Like everyone has said – a serious lapse in judgement…This stuff has no place in civilized debate – which I had THOUGHT that the Heartland was trying ro promote. Bad move, Heartland.”
-WUWT commenter LearDog, May 2012
I think that says it all.
lolwot,
Both are true.
I have said before that crazy evil people use words in ways different from non-crazed/non-evil people.
Most of us realize that the crazed despot/terrorist sounding like an AGW believer is a side show and wish to focus on the main point: AGW is junk.
Heartland took down their ill advised billboards because fellow skeptics demanded it. Publicly and loudly. Did Romm find himself under intense believer condemnation for promoting the claim that the Norwegian mass murderer is representative of skeptics?
So you wanted Heartland to take it down because it wasn’t effective, rather than because it was wrong?
Hunter,
“promoting the claim that the Norwegian mass murderer is representative of skeptics”
Did he? Where?
And what again is the difference between:
Norway Terrorist Is A Global Warming Denier
and Anthony Watts:
Charles Manson becomes an advocate for global warming?
Your cult advocates the slaughter of children.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/sep/30/10-10-no-pressure-film
Ok Nick,
If you are saying there isn’t a difference, between the billboard the Brad Johnson piece and the WUWT post, I’ll agree. Both sides using the same tactics. I’m not particularly impressed by it, but to each their own.
The point some of us are making that if you are going to critize one, you have to come down on all. People who don’t identify themselves as hypocrites.
timg56
“I’m not particularly impressed by it”
Yes, that’s pretty much my view, in both cases. I think as a blog post topic, it’s just juvenile. As a Billboard tactic, it’s a bit more than that.
“People who don’t identify themselves as hypocrites.”
I guess that’s the basis of Anthony Watts’ headline:
Heartland’s Billboards and Joe Romm’s stunning hypocrisy
Is this global warming => http://bit.ly/KxsExd
According AGW advocates, DOWN IS UP.
See what the above global cooling trend has done to the sea level rise => http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
that graph doesn’t include the last 3 months of data
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh315/TKphotofolder/BAUT/MSL_Serie_ALL_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust-1.png
For the most part, the only place sea level is rising is off the east side of Indonesia and north of Australia.
Its a calibration error.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Map_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.png
Challenge for all:
Learn to read DNA.
Solar-Terrestrial-Climate Weave
http://i49.tinypic.com/219q848.png
(can be isolated more than a dozen ways)
Bart R
Okay, I will use both hadcrut3 and hadcrut4 simultaneously as shown => http://bit.ly/KBYVE4
And this one => http://bit.ly/JAUiJ4
Mr. Orssengo
You mean like this? http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2004/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2004/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2004/trend/offset:0.15/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2004/trend/offset:-0.15/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2004
And to echo Scott’s question, please explain why HadCRU changed the dataset, in detail, with technical notes and full citations where appropriate. And whatever happened to HadCRUT2 and HadCRUT1? Were there such things, if there are now a 3 & 4? Why did those change? Is this a constant process of improvement, or goalpost moving? Can you offer an explanation of how one could prove which one is going on? Scott trusts you, Brooklyn-Bridge-buyingly. You should explain these things for him.
goalpost moving!!!
Mr. Orssengo, do you mean what exactly, that I’m http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/special-pleading in response to your http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-gamblers-fallacy ?
Howso? Certainly using HadCRUT4 to establish the 8-year trend (which again I assert no less than before is too short a span to be valid).
What is the confidence level associated with eight years on the GMT?
Every decade has comparable downward trends on HadCRUT3, even during unarguably rising longer periods. You’re vesting too much confidence into too little data. These goalposts remain in the same spot. You’re just NINE YEARS SHORT.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1994/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1994/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1994/trend/offset:0.15/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1994/trend/offset:-0.15/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1994
There you go. Your goalposts, not of course that even that would mean much, but at least it would have a 95% confidence level; from there, you still have problems of Bayesian probability and mechanical explanation — which are also unmoving goalposts.
Bart R, don’t trust much of anything anymore but Girma seems to make sense and provides backup. I look for observations and data supporting theory Not changing data to conform to theory and am saddened by Hansen and Mann. I even voted for Gore a long time ago and it must have beeen on another planet. But lots of science work to do. No consensus. Clouds are tough to represent in models and hard to tell if they increase warming or mitigate with current knowlege. So please be polite and we can explore thehese together.
Let’s take Girma’s graph and change the start date to 1900
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2004/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2004/trend/offset:0.15/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2004/trend/offset:-0.15/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2004
I think Girma is saying that this recent period is different from similar pauses you can see in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, isn’t he?
Scott
I know Mr. Orssengo seems to make sense and back up what he says. However, Mr. Orssengo has a PhD and is a professional engineer, yet continues to use invalid methods over and over again to arrive at his conclusions and produce the graphs he uses to back up his opinions.
Let me give a brief list of the technical issues with Mr. Orssengo’s arguments that should not be coming from a man of his credentials:
1. Black-or-white logic. With Mr. Orssengo’s work, every pronouncement is, “therefore AGW is false.” Not ‘probably false’, or ‘false at a 95% confidence level’, or ‘called into question at a 5% level of doubt’, but outright and unequivocal. This just can’t be done in graphical analysis so readily.
2. Insufficient validation. To Mr. Orssengo’s arguments, any line between two endpoints on a graph may as well be not just a valid trend but also a phase. This is not valid, for the simple reason that one must validate the claim that a smoothed curve is representative of the underlying data at some significance level, to claim it reveals a trend, and must conform to the even stricter definition of phase, which requires that one be able to determine by distinct properties of the observations where the phase starts and ends to some confidence level.
It’s generally pretty easy to construct a linear trend that is representative of a dataset: there are rote formulae for producing linear trends and curves that are accepted to be representative; it’s further pretty routine to find inflection points and mechanically construct quadratic or trigonometric equations and then estimate the r^2 value of the curve over a given range of data. However, it’s just as easy to follow all the steps in the recipe and come up with nothing meaningful, which is why analyses of signal:noise are applied to datasets compared to linear trends and so forth.
This is one more place Mr. Orssengo’s work typically fails to apply the expected level of judgment as an engineer; the minimum span to fit a linear trend to GMT is about seventeen years, at a 95% confidence level. Spans shorter than 17 years are less reliable. (Myself, I prefer 30-year trend lines, but of course we only have very poor data for anything more than four such non-overlapping 30-year trends, which is too little to make much use of.) Mr. Orssengo uses periods so far short of the 95% confidence level as to be in the realm of ‘pure guess’.
3. Failure to consider predicate probability. In the rising span of the past half century, many shorter falling spans have happened comparable to the post-2004 period: at least one falling span has occured each decade. Yet overall, the trend has been rising, and even possibly accelerating. Given the number of past falling trends, the odds that the current falling trend represents a break from the long-term rising trend are extremely small, contrary to Mr. Orssengo’s assertion. You can look this up as “Bayes Theorem”.
4. Purely bad technique. From comparing compressed annual or multi-year curves to running mean curves (very different things), to compressing sometimes to start year and sometimes to midline (skewing results by half), to failing to zero his starting points when comparing trends, to confusing the interpretation of a derivative curve, and on and on, Mr. Orssengo’s work appears to flaunt every convention of graphical analysis to the utmost. If a student were using these techniques in a first year community college course, he’d fail.
5. Persistence. When these errors appear in Mr. Orssengo’s work, he sometimes maintains his work is not in error, sometimes says he’ll correct the error but the corrections don’t appear or appear and then disappear, or sometimes something unrelated is changed and the errors retained or multiplied.
6. Reasoning from the conclusion. Mr. Orssengo has firmly planted his flag in pronouncement after pronouncement, action after action, on the one thing he will not change: the conclusion of his logic that AGW is not true. He then obviously and patently bends his techniques to produce this conclusion by any means. This is simply antirational.
7. Plagiarism. When citing sources, Mr. Orssengo has been seen to say a source has made some claim, that when carefully examined patently says another thing entirely. He’s done this more than once with the works of Dr. Hansen. Alternatively, he’s taken figures or methods from others’ work and misapplied them or used them for other purposes inappropriately, seemingly unaware he’s gotten it wrong.
Summed up, you may trust Mr. Orssengo; however, by the standards of academia and his profession, his performance has fallen far, far below minimal thresholds.
I bear him no ill will. I think he’s possessed of many nice qualities. However, his work is simply not trustworthy.
Girma, can you help explain why they changed the data? I like your graphs and trust your explanations. Seems to me like changing the goal posts when the skeptics made the effectie points about the lack of warming in 15 years. I understood pulling out theh urban island heat increase but that should reduce temps. Over the wide pacific temps are only known thru obscure satellite measurements. I enjoy the NASA data but worry about manipulations by Hansen and true believers. Why hadcrut 3 not used when temps go down but trumpeted in 98 when they went up.
scott
When observation contradicts with data, they change the data. We learnt in our science class to chuck the theory in such cases. For some reason they are not applying this. Mind you IPCC’s AR4 was based on HADCRUT3. Inexplicable.
sorry
When observation contradicts with theory
Mr. Orssengo, you make a very grave accusation here against HadCRU. What is your evidence of this?
And why didn’t you use this argument about HadCRUT2?
I understand if you believe there is evidence of wrongdoing, it’s easy to submit an FOI request to force the Hadley Center to produce the documents you require.
So far as I can tell, the only one doing what you suggest is you.
One for the cartoon thread
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3hxqUJmfmWU/T6R-fMyPY3I/AAAAAAAABZE/rMekSR9Chf0/s1600/heartland.jpg
Or this one…
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/documents/nas_response.pdf
It is never to late to ask good questions of science, these should have been asked before the bush league took over. At least they have a consensus view now. Darn, just look at where all that money went?
‘O’ know wonder: We are pleased to provide the following responses to the twelve (12) questions you raised to us in your April 20 letter.
Smoke & mirrors.
Crowd madness is already the best defense for belief in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, cf gullibility, venality, will to tyrannize.
Once climate weirding is shown false, and climate change accepted as natural and global warming understood to be better than global cooling, the quaint conceit that humanity is bringing catastrophe on itself with creative energy utilization will mark one edge of a range of rational understandings of humans and their environment. Not madness, perhaps, but not normal.
================
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion
Let’s remember Heartland’s rather embarrassing past of supporting industrial interests over science and public health. In the end, Heartland is a lobbying arm that funnels money from wealthy industrialists into the political and social spheres in an attempt to influence policy and public perceptions in the hope that such influence will ultimately aid in protecting the profits and markets of those industrial interests. This sad episode of their failed ad campaign was a gross misstep, but certainly not fatal as such lobbying attempts will never go away.
The elephant in the room has moved its vowels and R. Gates finds himself surrounded with warm consonants.
=====================
Hah! Fabulous!
Very clever Kim. You do write for a living, yes? If not, you should. Heartland may be looking for some new writers for their future ad campaigns I would imagine…
Nice. Der Elefant im Porzellanladen.
Actually, Die Scheiße kommt aus denjenigen in der Leugnung.
Edim, I’m sure the Heartland Institute would fully approve of this propaganda piece. Heck, maybe the same brilliant minds that came up with their latest fiasco billboard campaign came up with this delightful little video.
Propaganda erkennt keine Grenzen an!
R. Gates, it’s just a kid rapping. Heartland is irrelevant here. Even politics is irrelevant. Only science and evidence.
And the unabomber
Could you translate this into English, French, Spanish or German so I can understand what it means?
My comment above was meant for Gates, obviously.
If Gates should think he is writing something in German, what he implies is that non-deniers suffer from constipation.
That is not how it works, Gates. Industries targeted by the greens have a right and a duty to defend themselves against destructive nonsense. They support people who see things the same way, like me. I do not despise the greens because somebody pays me, quite the opposite. I go where I am needed, out of a sense of duty. Same for Heartland. Your “merchants of doubt” theme is just stupid. The green movement is the communism of our time, a threat to our way of life, something to be fought, and fought hard.
Yes, I understand, the tobacco industry had a “right and duty” to protect its interests, and Heartland was only assisting in that “right and duty”. The lies, the falsifications, the distortion of the science were all part of that “right and duty”. Who cares what the toll would be on public health? Lie, distort, and bend the truth to the point of breaking– all for the sake of maximizing profit. And The Clean Air act and the Clean Water act brought about through the EPA are just then seen as roadblocks to industries fully exploiting the full ramifications of their “rights and duties”. Such are the wet dreams of unbridled capitalism. But capitalism without a conscience and true social responsibility and a consideration of the public health and public good is fortunately very old school. Fortunately, some companies and capitalists “get it”– what’s truly good for the person, is good for the company and is truly good for the planet. It’s not that capitalism is bad…not in the least. It’s just how it is practiced. Heartland’s fiasco with their despicable ad campaign is the wrong way…
.
The UK estimates 2,700 people dead each year because of higher energy prices caused by green taxes. Your side actually kills people.
Yes, sunshinehours1, as we’ve been told by Heartland– “our side” is equal to terrorists and murderers. Maybe you should lobby Heartland to have the billboard put back up.
The apples of my eye
Burnt by frosting flower buds.
Give thanks, ungracious.
========
Your side kills thousands in the UK alone.Own it.
It would shows the face of those who die in the winter because they can’t afford to heat their homes properly.
It would show the number of unemployed and why the jobs went to China where the increase in CO2 in just one year, let alone the last 10, dwarfed the microscopic changes in the US.
Industry fleeing …. CO2 way up … old people dying …
“One in four households will struggle to keep warm this winter because of costlier gas and electricity and the impact of green taxes, figures out today show.
More than five million households in England alone are living in fuel poverty as incomes stagnate and energy bills soar. It is feared many may have to choose between food and energy in a ‘heat or eat’ dilemma.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2068933/Quarter-homes-face-fuel-poverty-Green-taxes-add-burden-struggling-families.html
This is your cult R. Own it.
“Prominent NASA scientist and global warming alarmist Dr. James Hansen has endorsed an eco-fascist book that calls for cities to be razed to the ground, industrial civilization to be destroyed and genocidal population reduction measures to be implemented in the name of preventing climate change.”
http://suckersonparade.blogspot.ca/2010/02/nasa-scientist-and-global-warming.html
Sunshine Hours 1, actually the number of deaths laid to fuel poverty is 7,500, according to the Independent. Not all of that can be laid at the doorstep of government policy. Direct and declared policy costs are about 10%, so using the same type of statistical attribution the UN uses to estimate climate change deaths at 300,000 per annum, we could say that maybe 750 in Britain may have been pushed into fuel poverty with fatal results because of government climate policy. However, there is an undeclared portion of utility rate rises that are due to capital investment in renewable energy, mostly wind farms. The UK regulator OFGEM explicitly authorized the utilities to finance the wind farms that the government ordered the utilities to build by passing the capital costs on to rate payers. This would need to be factored in to whatever blame we wish to assign regarding fuel poverty deaths.
Just to be clear, I’m not blaming either government policy or specific rate rises for these deaths. I support renewable energy and government assistance for it. But what makes me furious is the idea that this massive change in the country’s energy infrastructure could be telescoped into such a short time period at all, that no thought would be given to the negative effects on the poor and that it would all happen without any transparency.
“Direct and declared policy costs are about 10%”
“The DECC paper compares the price of a kilowatt hour of electricity in 2011 with what it would have been without climate change policies.
Without the green measures, it was 13p but with them in place, it was 14.9p per kWhr, 15 per cent higher.
Projections show that by 2020, the differential rises to 27 per cent: 14.4p without green policies and 18.3p with.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102848/Green-taxes-add-15-electricity-prices-Government-finally-admits-families-pay-meet-emissions-targets.html
And Thomas …. all that money cruelly stolen from the poor, for .668GW out of 36GW demand.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
The UK estimates 2,700 people dead each year because of higher energy prices caused by green taxes.
“Green taxes” are not the predominant cause of higher energy prices in the UK. Between 2004 and 2010 energy bills rose on average by £455, of which £75 was due to green energy policies. Of that £75, £45 relates to policies promoting energy efficiency which were primarily aimed at the least well of and have reduced bills.
http://downloads.theccc.org.uk.s3.amazonaws.com/Household%20Energy%20Bills/CCC_Energy%
Andrew, DECC says 15% of current electricity prices are from green taxes and it will be 27% soon.
And I assume green policies that prevented nuclear power (and a vast array of other hidden costs to consumers) are not accounted for.
The UK will have spent 120 billion pounds on wind and wind subsidies and all they get for it is around 1GW out of 42GW demand.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Squandered money cannot be easily recouped. Or accounted for.
sunshinehours1,
15% of electricty prices, but only 5% of gas prices. And it’s gas which people generally use to heat their homes.
What’s more you are only considering half the equation – a chunk of that money spent on “green” policies is not spent on power generation but on energy efficiancy measures and support for poorer households.
You have to take the effect of the latter into account and if you read the DECC report you will see that the net effect on fuel bills for some households will actually be negative, ie lower bills.
I would also make the point that looking at energy bills in isolation does not give the full picture anyway because there are various other governments policies which impact on families finances in a big way and thus affect their ablity to pay their fuels bills. Just one example – many families who are seeing cuts to their tax credits are obviously going to find it harder to afford essentials such as fuel and food.
I don’t really get your point about “green policies that prevented nuclear power”, although the £100bn that will be spent on decommissioning our existing nuclear faciities could certainly have gone a long way to reducing fuel poverty.
“Confirming similar studies, Professor Gordon Hughes finds that a wind turbine generating electricity worth £150,000 a year costs consumers £250,000 in subsidies.
By 2020, he predicts, wind power will cost us almost ten times more than the same amount of energy from efficient gas-fired power stations, with only marginal savings in CO2 emissions.”
http://thegwpf.org/uk-news/5151-the-p120-billion-blunder-wind-energy-ten-times-dearer-than-gas-power-stations-.html
Wind power is an unnecessary burden on the poor that benefits the rich landowners.
Kill the poor. AGW cult responsible.
“Around 2.5million people are now in debt to their energy supplier, with the average gas bill arrears now £320.
A Government-commissioned study earlier this year warned that more than 2,700 people are dying each year in England and Wales because they cannot afford to keep their homes warm.
The study by social policy expert Professor John Hills, of the London School of Economics, concluded that green taxes on household power bills have a disproportionate impact on poorer homes.”
sunshinehours1 | May 5, 2012 at 12:29 pm |
If people are in debt to their energy supplier as opposed to their bookie, likely their energy supplier offers better terms. Which isn’t surprising; bookies in the UK aren’t government subsidized.
And yet, the number of deaths due hypothermia in the UK is counted in the single or low double digits; and indoor deaths due hypothermia fit on the fingers of one badly mangled hand.
You’re quoting such patently bogus numbers as to make yourself appear absurd.
I suspect that the Excess Winter Deaths due to inadequate heating is quite conservative as they say in the report. I suspect the methodology is quite similar to that of the EPAs claims about death from coal power plants.
“Of the thousands of excess
winter deaths each year, the overwhelming majority
of these occur amongst the elderly. The elderly
are also at greater risk of suffering from non fatal
adverse health consequences as a result of spending
time in low temperatures as are, to a lesser extent,
younger children and those suffering from long
term illness or disability based on the research we
detailed in our previous report.”
http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/funding-support/fuel-poverty/4662-getting-measure-fuel-pov-final-hills-rpt.pdf
Bart, you are typical of the heartless AGW cultist who does not care about the poor. Too busy making a buck off the AGW scare.
sunshinehours1 | May 5, 2012 at 3:39 pm |
The ‘excess winter deaths’ phenomenon is well known. It’s perennial. And it’s utterly unrelated to the price of fuel.
It happened in ancient times. It happens today. It’s happened when prices were lower. It’s happened when relative prices were higher. It hasn’t led to better home building in the UK, where even though there’s been a law requiring builders to make draft-proof, well-insulated residences since the 1970’s.. and you’d think if the UK cared about ‘excess winter death’ in the least as a result of cold weather, they’d have actually enforced the law, ever.
They haven’t been enforcing their building standards; if their builders were so negligent and contributory as to have caused so many deaths due such shoddy practice, they’d be a valid target, by your very reasoning.
But they’re not being hauled up on charges of negligent homicide in the UK by the thousands. Why? Because ‘excess winter deaths’ has zero to do with home heating, either due poor building or insufficient heating.
Your argument holds no water. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause
“Excess winter deaths are defined by the Office for National Statistics as the difference between the number of deaths during the four winter months (December to March) and the average number of deaths during the preceding autumn (August to November) and the following summer (April to July).
Although the phenomenon of excess winter deaths is not unique to the United Kingdom, the incidence is markedly higher than for countries with similar climates and living standards. England has an 18% rise in deaths during the winter, on average, whereas Finland has a 10% increase, Germany and the Netherlands have 11%.[6]
Since 2000, excess winter deaths in England and Wales remained generally at around 25,000. For the period of 2007-2008 the number of excess winter deaths was 27,480. The winter of 2008-2009 the coldest in 10 years, and the Office of National Statistics estimated there were a total of 36,700, an increase of 49% over the previous year, which represents a 23.8% rise in deaths during the winter”
sunshinehours1 | May 5, 2012 at 4:44 pm |
The general tendency is, the warmer the climate the higher the excess seasonal deaths. This is irrespective of how extreme the season. Spain has more excess seasonal deaths than the UK. Is this due to the high price of heating fuel?
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-texas-sharpshooter
“The deaths of hundreds of people in Europe as a result of the cold weather demonstrated the need for binding targets in the fight against poverty and homelessness, writes German MEP
The extreme cold weather is not just exposing the plight of the homeless in Europe. It also reflects a drastic failure of policy with the deaths of hundreds of people across the continent.
More than 600 people have died so far during the cold snap – 80 plus deaths in Poland, about 130 in the Ukraine, hundreds in Russia, and some in Germany. Most of those who freeze to death are homeless. Many are sleeping in parks, streets, under bridges but others live in unheated homes because they cannot keep up with sky-rocketing energy prices, while their heating systems are antiquated or totally inadequate.
When people fall into poverty they often save on the heating first and foremost. Or they simply cannot pay their bills anymore, and are cut off by energy suppliers. Taking up the idea to limit private energy costs to 10 per cent of household incomes could be an effective first step.”
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/1520/europes-winter-deaths-reveal-drastic-policy-failure
I look at reports with weasel words like “suggests” and appeals to emotion like ‘thousands will die’, and I know I’m being subject to propaganda and falsehood.
Why would someone stoop to fraud, if they had an actual case?
Well, they wouldn’t.
You say there’s a homelessness problem; I’ve worked on homelessness issues, and difficulties stemming from mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, lack of life skills, unemployability, underemployment, personal security, the high price of rents and tuition, overcrowding, workplace hazards, difficulty obtaining medical treatment, disease.. I’ve seen all of those contibute to homelessness and misery.
I’ve yet to see anyone attribute the problem to the government hasn’t raised taxes to put more into subsidies for fossil fuels, other than the UK media.
Absolultely, extreme weather can lead to deaths; cold and heat are brutal forces of nature. People vulnerable due already to being pushed to the edge are most likely to suffer in this way. And if those more than a dozen other factors are not issues, then you just don’t find anyone with issues about the price of heating.
But as a common factor in taking resources away from resolving those other baker’s dozen issues, higher taxes shifted to pay for fossil industry subsidies and impose deadweight loss on the market.. that’s certainly contributory.
Shame on the UK media for its backwardsly exploitative and wrongheaded assertions in this matter.
“Shame on the UK Media”???
Bart, it s was government funded report by a Prof from the LSE and even he admits the number of deaths is conservative.
“We do not know how many of the people who turned up the heating did so because they could afford to and how many had to make sacrifices elsewhere. Nor do we know how many stayed cold. We do know that no matter their income, households faced very different costs to achieve the same level of warmth, largely due to the varying energy efficiency of their homes.” http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/funding-support/fuel-poverty/4662-getting-measure-fuel-pov-final-hills-rpt.pdf page 2.
So, they know nothing except that homes in the UK are built terribly. The UK has had an energy efficiency standard since 1972 that it has never enforced. Just another case of a nanny state run amok with command and control regulations that controls nothing and commands no one.
“It is now recognised that before the end of the decade something like a revolution in our housing stock is required to address this energy inefficiency that has been a fact of life for too long.”
John Hill’s idea that _fuel_ is to blame for poverty is novel, and utterly divorced from fact. Of the price rises in the UK that the poor have no ability to control, the price of putting on a sweater and another pair of socks is among the lowest. No one dies of high fuel costs in the UK: if they did, then excess winter deaths would certainly be more felt as one moves north, instead of less.
Why would anyone entertain this leftist, anti-rational, patently wrong claptrap?
And why would they expect this socialist stuff would fly in America?
Environmentalists and con men are heartless scum who couldn’t care less if their lies about “climate change” kill people.
You’ve made your point.
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-nature
“Almost 3,000 people in England and Wales will die this winter because they cannot afford to heat their homes, a report suggests – more than the number killed in traffic accidents each year.
Commissioned by the government, the Hills Fuel Poverty Review found that if just 10% of UK winter deaths are caused by fuel poverty – a conservative estimate it claims – 2,700 people will perish as a direct result of being fuel poor.
The report also found that between 2004 and 2009 the “fuel poverty gap” (the extra amount those with badly insulated homes and poor heating systems would need to spend to keep warm) increased by 50% to £1.1bn as a result of rising fuel prices.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/oct/19/fuel-poverty-2700-victims-winter?newsfeed=true
My understanding is that this research is much more robust than the EPA claims about PM2.5 from coal mines killing people.
More importantly, linking deaths to fuel poverty in the UK is statistically stronger than linking CO2 to the warming that took place decades ago.
“Every year 600,000 households (2 million people) are getting their power switched off in Germany because they can’t afford the skyrocketing electric bills. ”
http://notrickszone.com/2012/05/01/germany-succeeds-making-energy-unaffordable-for-15-of-its-population-600000-households-disconnected-annually/
@RGates
You mention the lies and distortions of the tobacco industries’ scientists, and their blatant disregard for public welfare (health) in pursuit their paymaster’s interests (profit), calling this a capitalist wet dream.
Yet are completely silent on the lies and distortions of government climate scientists, and their blatant disregard for public welfare (freedom and prosperity) in pursuit of their paymaster’s interests (totalitarianism). A socialist wet dream.
The amount of money Heartland spends is equivalent to the loose change in the back of Al Gores couches in his 7 mansions compared to the amount China’s agents funnel through Greenpeace, WWF etc al.
But if it annoys you it is money well spent.
@R.Gates
Heartland is a lobbying arm that funnels money from wealthy industrialists into the political and social spheres in an attempt to influence policy and public perceptions in the hope that such influence will ultimately aid in protecting the profits and markets of those industrial interests.
Just like government scientists are used to advance the vested interests of government. The main difference being the scale – the $5m pa (of its own money) that Heartland spends, being almost undetectable next what government spends (of the public’s money) on climatology alarmism.
Humans are not causing this: 42% more tidal force will be exerted on Earth this weekend! It will be caused by a closer fly-by than usual of the moon.
I wonder what else humans aren’t causing? Do ‘ya think maybe the Sun might explain global cooling? And, how about global warming too and even… the climate?
Perhaps it really isn’t the Sun. Maybe it’s something more close to home like increases in property taxes that causes global warming.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2137774/Supermoon-Biggest-moon-weekend-tides-rise-planet.html#ixzz1u0aUyGhF
Interestingly the WUWT poll now shows 22% supporting the billboard campaign, with over 2000 votes and repeat voting blocked. I do not share their anger but I certainly understand it.
So I guess I’m the only one who finds the Heartland billboard funny? Now if Heartland said “CAGW fanatics are unabombers” that would be as offensive as many denizens here claiming skeptics are deniers.
What would be really horrible would be an ad showing Michael Mann pushing someone’s grandma off the economic cliff. Oh wait, that was a Democrat Party front group’s ad about Paul Ryan pushing a grandmother off a real cliff.
Oh, and as far as how Chicago sees such things, to quote Paddy Bauler: “Politics ain’t beanbag.”
Oh the horror!!! The horror!!!
Gates writes with a weary tedium that is downright painful, “Yes, I understand, the tobacco industry had a “right and duty” to protect its interests, and Heartland was only assisting in that “right and duty”.
Why don’t you guys actually try to think instead of reflexively reaching for the same old tired arguments that don’t have a snowballs chance of changing anyone’s mind. The conflation of big tobacco with big oil is absurd on its face in that it’s by now well established even among honest warmists, that skeptics are not professional lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry. One of Gleicks great favors was the revelation (for those who weren’t paying attention) that H.I. had almost no money from that source. Big oil gives much more to green interests than skeptical.
Also bear in mind that the number of AGW skeptics is orders of magnitude greater than tobacco/cancer skeptics. The former is essentially grassroots, involving many millions of people if the polls are to be believed.
Pockreguy said:
“The conflation of big tobacco with big oil is absurd on its face”
_____
Yes, you are right. Big oil is far more powerful, so it’s a bit like comparing a firefly to a 2000 watt bulb, but both have at times relied on very generous government welfare to keep themselves profitable.
How typical. Cynical, evasive, and utterly bereft of meaning. It’s not even clever. If you guys were any more vapid you’d all just float away.
pokerguy,
If you were to ignore R. Gates deceptive posts, and then his evasive posts, there would be very little left of R. Gates posts at all.
The Yale forum on Climate Change & the Media’s recent poll Scientific Consensus Stronger than Scientists Thought is indeed illuminating.
To my knowledge, no-one has noted that the Yale poll vividly illustrates and strikingly confirms an orthodox account of the scientific process that is hosted by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), titled Reflections on the Scientific Process, as Seen in Climate Studies (a Google search will find it; Spencer Weart is the author).
However, the reaction of sites like ScepticalScience to the inflammatory billboards of the Heartland Institute shows that the folks at SkepticalScience entirely appreciate the implications of both the Yale poll and of the AIP history: Scientists reject Heartland’s race-to-the-bottom.
And the reason is simple. When we look at (for example) this week’s posts at SkepticalScience, we see science advancing at a such a pace, and strengthening to such explanatory depth and predictive power, as to provide a simple explanation for the Heartland billboards: A race-to-the-bottom is the only race that Heartland can win
Reliable Prediction: Our seas will rise, our lands will warm, our science will strengthen … and Heartland will race-to-the-bottom.
Funny how Warmists can lie, cheat, steal, exaggerate and use foul language about so call skeptics yet so little is said in mainstream media or blogs. But listen to the howls of outrage when the Warmists are on the other end of the stick. No bias there then?
beesaman | May 5, 2012 at 1:09 pm |
Huh. I guess Climategate in the media and blogs doesn’t count?
How many Billboardgate inquiries do you expect?
Which ClimateGate conspirators have lost their jobs?
Who lost his job as editor of a journal for daring to publish a paper that Trenbeth disagreed with?
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/special-pleading
http://AGWisacult
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic
Ha!Ha!, The thing that is so funny about this, is that you think you are being serious, my oh my…
beesaman | May 6, 2012 at 11:18 am |
It’s sweet of you to think I think, but really some things are so patently wrong it takes no thought at all to merely observe.
And you view “Billboardgate inquiries” as serious?
Observation without thought, you describe yourself most succinctly!
Thought. Bias. Potayto. Potahto.
Or in yor case, as you have admitted, lack of thought.
As we say in the UK rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb…
Bart, Everyone is a winner & you are a winner too.)
beesaman | May 8, 2012 at 1:19 pm |
Lack of thought. Lack of bias.
Tomayto. Tomahto.
Wacka-wacka-wacka.
The current climate pattern of the last 100 years by Girma Orssengo:
http://bit.ly/JCevOq
lolwot | May 5, 2012 at 3:44 pm |
So I take that to mean the you now agree that Hansen did say the ocean’s will boil.
Just checking.
It was gob-smacking to learn from Climate Etc. posts that the Heartland’s billboard owed its theme to one of WUWT’s Anthony Watts own essays: Charles Manson becomes an advocate for global warming (find it with Google). WUWT? … a race to the bottom by climate change skeptics?
On a happier & far more inspiring note, Judith’s link to Yale forum on Climate Change & the Media’s recent poll Scientific Consensus Stronger than Scientists Thought is indeed wonderfully illuminating and hopeful.
To my knowledge, no-one here on Climate Etc. has (so far) noted that the Yale poll vividly illustrates and strikingly confirms an orthodox account of the scientific process that is hosted by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), titled Reflections on the Scientific Process, as Seen in Climate Studies (a Google search will find it; Spencer Weart is the author).
Happily, the reaction of sites like ScepticalScience to the inflammatory billboards of the Heartland Institute shows that the folks at SkepticalScience entirely appreciate the implications of both the Yale poll and of the AIP history: Scientists reject Heartland’s race-to-the-bottom.
The reason scientists are reaching that conclusion is simple. When we look at (for example) this week’s posts at SkepticalScience, we see science advancing at a such a pace, and strengthening to such explanatory depth and predictive power, as to provide a simple explanation for the Heartland billboards: A race-to-the-bottom is the only race that Heartland can win
———————————–
Reliable Prediction: The Earth’s seas will rise, our lands will warm, our science will strengthen … and Heartland/WUWT will continue their race-to-the-bottom.
Because *that* is the only race that Heartland/WUWT has shown they win.
Alonzo,
I would suggest that the race to the bottom is on a crowded track.
While you are googling, try typing in:
Breivik climate skeptic
Looks like it’s not that clear who will “win”?
” Scientific Consensus Stronger than Scientists Thought”
Translation: Baaahhh. We’re sheeep!
Left wingers who dominate faculty lounges and hiring committees have managed to train and hire a lot of left-wing sheep who all think alike and they get jobs running journals to keep the non-sheep out.
No surprise.
Think Inside The Box.
Alonso
When I read the survey results the only issue where there appears to be a consensus is on whether humans are the PRIMARY cause of warming over the last 250 years. The term primary does not mean it is over 50%, but does mean it is thought by those surveyed as the largest single contribution.
What else do you or anyone else find striking?
What wins in the end are Mother Nature’s accelerating changes, illuminated by fact-driven, well-mannered, good-natured scientific posts, as typified by “New research from last week” at ScepticalScience.
And please let me say that Judith’s Climate Etc. does pretty well too!
The folks who criticize Judith are mostly the race-to-the-bottom types (on both the right and the left) whom most folks have ceased to respect.
Points to consider from the survey:
Only 30% of climate scientists agreed that if governmental policies do not change, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will exceed 550 parts per million between 2050 and 2059.
There was no consensus among climate scientists that if and when atmospheric CO2 concentrations reach 550 ppm, the increase in global average surface temperature relative to the year 2000 will be 2-3 degrees Celsius, or 3.2-4.8 F.
There was no consensus among climate scientists that if governmental policies do not change, in the year 2050, the increase in global average surface temperature relative to the year 2000 will be 1.5-2 degrees Celsius, or 2.4-3.2 F).
Only 30 percent of climate scientists agreed that the likelihood that global average sea level will rise more during this century than the highest level given in the 2007 assessment of the IPCC (0.59 meters, 23.2 inches) is more than 90 percent.
There was no consensus among climate scientists that the total number of major hurricane landfalls in the U.S. from 2011-2020 will be increase from prior periods.
There was no consensus among climate scientists that given increasing levels of human activity, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere can be kept below 550 ppm.
You found an interesting way to distort the survey. Actually 90% said more than 1 degree for the first two answers, and more than 50% said more than 2 degrees for these answers. Same for your other “no consensus” claims
For the second one, actually that would be 1.5 degrees where the 50% threshold is met, i..e. the 2050 rise relative to 2000, which works out at 0.3 degrees per decade.
Jim- I did not distort the survey, I accurately restated what was summerized. If 30% disagree on a point there is clearly no consensus.
You are talking about one column in a histogram. If it was divided into smaller intervals even less would agree in each column. This was not an objective way to evaluate consensus. More meaningful is that 90% say more than 1 degree for doubling, and more than 60% say more than 2 degrees for doubling, and more than 1.5 degrees by 2050. This would be a consensus you could derive because the majorities are significant.
Jim
I am not surprised there was agreement with the basic physics of a 1degree increase.
The survey demonstrated that even among the somewhat biased group selected to be asked questions there was no consensus on warming greater than that basic level.
There is a difference between majority belief and a consensus.
Yes, and 60/40 agreement on 2 degrees which is a somewhat positive feedback. For 90% to say more than 1 degree between 2000 and 2050, implies they expect 0.2 degrees per decade as a minimum, which can’t be achieved without a positive feedback unless they expect CO2 to double within that period, which requires over 700 ppm by then or nearly 4 ppm per year, which I doubt anyone expects.
Jim
At that low level of positive feedback it is difficult to successfully justify the fear of climate change happening so quickly that humanity will have difficulty adjusting.
Yes, when IPCC says it will be a degree warmer by 2050 and maybe 3-4 degrees by 2100, skeptics go crazy, but as you say, the IPCC forecast should not be made into a big deal, because the potential impacts of that size of change are what the debate should be about, not the fact of the change itself.
This poll is a real yawner. How accurate can a poll be when it claims experts in a field and doesn’t suspect that people born after 1985 may not really be experts? They don’t even have the beer bong imprint off their face yet.
From what I read the process for selecting those surveyed was statistically questionable. Even with that, the results donot support any great case in support of cAGW fears
Alonso,
I hope your narrative comforts you, but it is fact free and highly deceptive.
.
In scolding Heartland for its billboards, we might keep in mind that we are all constructed very much alike: With great ability to see the flaws in others better than the flaws in ourselves.
The five senses are directed outward on all of us.
Compassion is never overused.
I was myself angry at others for many years before I finally realized that I needed to inventory myself more, and inventory others less.
I.e., I agree Heartland showed poor judgement. Who hasn’t done that? They seek the same goal as the rest of us – restoration of scientific integrity. Patience and tolerance of others – warmists and skeptics – may be the most beneficial strategy for everyone!
Oliver K. Manuel
http://www.omatumr.com/
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-55
I’ll see your Heartland Unabomber billboard and raise you Barack Obama’s Julia ad, his president eats dog fiasco, and Elizabeth Warren’s defense of her faux Indian heritage.
The progressives have far outshined the conservatives in the stupidity in advertising department this week.
This is disgusting, what idiot would vote for candidates who don’t support Private Property Rights.
2012 PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS VOTER GUIDE RELEASED!
http://www.calpropertyrights.com/?page_id=1195
Where do California Candidates Stand on Private Property Rights?
The Alliance sent the 2012 Property Rights Protection Questionnaire to all California candidates running for Congress and the State Legislature to determine who shares a strong commitment to protecting private property rights.
Since this is in German it did not jump into Dr. Curry’s eyes:
http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article106232575/Boeing-steht-offenbar-vor-Milliardendeal-mit-China.html
It says that because of the European CO2-Trading System, China Eastern will buy Boeings instead of Airbusses.
Normally, “Die Welt” on climate sounds as if their articles were written by Rahmsdoof of the Ökoinstitut Potsdarm.
Actually, Judith, I was hoping my ‘Stupid extremists’ covered that…
;-)
Empirical Vs IPCC model projections => http://bit.ly/IBTfhI
And yet, you’d promised to continue to compare like-to-like, which would include the same range of upper and lower bands around the IPCC ensemble of projects as around your trigonometric contrivance.. where did the bands go?
And what does it look like for competing datasets? HadCRUT4? GISTemp-LOTI?
..HadCRUT2? ;)
Please compare with IPCC’s own projection graph => http://bit.ly/Alpxyk
Girma | May 5, 2012 at 8:52 pm |
.. Their one standard deviation range (which you did not include in your representation of their projection, as clearly it comes to a single point with no standard deviations around it) vs. your two standard deviation range around your own projection?
You’re sure you don’t see how that’s dirty pool?
Don’t you think it is dirty pool to in effect use a shotgun pattern so wide it isn’t an actual prediction?
And they were still wrong by a mile.
sunshinehours1 | May 6, 2012 at 10:37 pm |
I think it’s idiotic to use the model runs as a prediction. So did the people who ran the models. They went to great length to say so, and to explain why.
And yet, still IPCC ill-advised spokesmen went ahead and blithely assembled a 0.2C/decade ‘ensemble projection’, which further they put broad warnings on repeating some of the issues with trying to turn model runs into predictions.
“Can’t know” applies to the climate as a whole. We can’t know all of its parts. What we can know includes the physics of GHE, and the general principles of Chaos Theory. While these can’t tell us how exactly the GMT and weather systems will look in the future, they can tell us it’s a lousy policy to continue to raise the CO2 level by human activity.
So, http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque in this. Mr. Orssengo doing his utmost to continue to insult the intelligence of everyone who looks at his logic-abusing graphs doesn’t excuse the error of the IPCC in throwing up a misapplication of the models, of course.
Pretty much the only use of the models for prediction that is meaningful is in “What-if” reasoning. Given the observations we do have, and the difference between the models with and without the CO2 changes we know have happened, we can push all the model runs down to conform to observed temperatures, and see ‘what-if’ guesses of the behavior of the GMT with different CO2 changes.
Models don’t predict what happen. They let us see, given what eventually happens, what the climate might have relatively looked like if we had instead changed our inputs. That’s all. That’s the limit. And even for that, two standard deviations of variability (or more) are still needed to get a range of responses in the GMT record to these changes, because a system like the climate under greater external forcing expresses greater variability. As “what-if” isn’t really very testable, it’s generally not much interest.
Mr. Orssengo’s whole ‘which prediction wins?’ approach is simply a dead-end.
“I think it’s idiotic to use the model runs as a prediction.”
Yes considering how bad they were.
But they used them as scare tactics anyway!!!!!
“So did the people who ran the models. They went to great length to say so, and to explain why.”
Really? Where?
sunshinehours1 | May 7, 2012 at 11:34 am |
Wait.. you have so much to say about the models, and yet you’ve never read the original paper presenting them?
They sure use the word projections a lot. And projected.
37 times on one page titled “Projections of Future Changes in Climate”
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
If you don’t have a dictionary handy …
“4. A prediction or an estimate of something in the future, based on present data or trends.”
Hey, wow, as low as the 4th alternate meaning?
“Those French. They have a different word for everything.” – Mark Twain
You’d think the special effort made to distinguish their results from predictions after the first 36 times might make a dent.
Or the words ‘estimate’, or ‘scenario’.
Or you might get the hint where they say, “The new assessment of the likely ranges now relies on a larger number of climate models of increasing complexity and realism, as well as new information regarding the nature of feedbacks from the carbon cycle and constraints on climate response from observations,” that the science isn’t settled, and the projections grow in complexity and attempts at realism, and that they include more information about feedbacks and constraints as that information becomes available.
In other words, if it’s a prediction, it’s the sort of prediction not to be used for forecasts, and that will change over time.
So the silly people who do say things like 0.2C/decade — whether they’re from the IPCC or otherwise — are just doing it wrong.
In the meantime, they also don’t begin to scratch the surface of how really scary some of the risks implied by their ideas could be, if they were serious about scaremongering.
Rather than talk about sea level rise of five meters, they could explain how this might mean the end of beer as we know it.
Bad predictions are bad predictions.
sunshinehours1 | May 8, 2012 at 9:58 am |
Bad predictions are bad predictions.
When all you have is a nail, everything looks like a hammer.
Everyone thinks forecast when they hear weather. Well, that’s not what this is.
Bart, when I see predictions of .2C per decade and the Feb/Mar 2012 are colder than 1878 … I laugh and I laugh. You people are conmen. And as reliable at forecasting the future as weathermen are.
Feb 1878 – 0.364C
Mar 1878 – 0.322C
Feb 2011 – 0.259C
Mar 2011 – 0.322C
Feb 2012 – 0.194C
Mar 2012 – 0.305C
“You people”? Meh.
Do you see me making predictions of future GMT?
Here’s the most reasonable prediction I can contrive, given what is knowable:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1995/trend/offset:0.5131/detrend:-0.05/plot/gistemp/from:1995/trend/offset:-0.3/offset:0.2131/detrend:-0.05/plot/gistemp/from:1995/trend/offset:-0.15/offset:0.2131/detrend:-0.05/plot/gistemp/from:1995/trend/offset:0.15/offset:0.2131/detrend:-0.05/plot/gistemp/from:1995/trend/offset:0.2131/detrend:-0.05/plot/gistemp/mean:89/mean:97/from:1995/plot/gistemp/from:1995/plot/gistemp/mean:11/mean:13/from:1995
There is about 95% chance that 25 years from now we will see 95% of GIS-LOTI monthly temperatures in the 17 years between 2012 and 2029 will fall between series 1 and series 2 on the graph, centered on series 5, nine times in ten, if no external forcing changes grew to new levels of significance after 1995. I have no confidence about new external forcing change levels, so treat this forecast mainly as a test of whether something is different in about climate now than it was two decades ago.
For reference, the most recent 17 years of data, used to derive the linear parameters of the forecast are presented as series 6-8 in smoothed forms and in the form GIS-LOTI provides. The method of predicting is to apply the same difference in trends between the 17 years ending 1995 and the 17 years starting 1995 to the 2012-2029 trend line, and to raise the range of predicted 2012-2029 temperature by 0.2C, the approximate difference in mean temperature between 1995 and 2012.
This forecast is validated by applying the same method to the performance of all 17-year periods (regardless of start month) over the duration of GISS-LOTI in the last third of the dataset, on the assumption that the climate has remained essentially subject to the same mechanisms since the GHE became the dominant multidecadal climate influence.
There’s my forecast. A real expert could likely shoot it full of holes. But then, so could someone who knows nothing at all.
There is no missing heat!
China is not to blame!
The global warming pause is due to the climate following its pattern of the last 100 years.
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-gamblers-fallacy
Bart R
Is the AMO a natural phenomenon, or is it related to global warming?
Instruments have observed AMO cycles only for the last 150 years, not long enough to conclusively answer this question. However, studies of paleoclimate proxies, such as tree rings and ice cores, have shown that oscillations similar to those observed instrumentally have been occurring for at least the last millennium. This is clearly longer than modern man has been affecting climate, so the AMO is probably a natural climate oscillation. In the 20th century, the climate swings of the AMO have alternately camouflaged and exaggerated the effects of global warming, and made attribution of global warming more difficult to ascertain.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/amo_faq.php
Bart R
The “Pacific Decadal Oscillation” (PDO) is a long-lived El Niño-like pattern of Pacific climate variability. While the two climate oscillations have similar spatial climate fingerprints, they have very different behavior in time. Fisheries scientist Steven Hare coined the term “Pacific Decadal Oscillation” (PDO) in 1996 while researching connections between Alaska salmon production cycles and Pacific climate (his dissertation topic with advisor Robert Francis). Two main characteristics distinguish PDO from El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO): first, 20th century PDO “events” persisted for 20-to-30 years, while typical ENSO events persisted for 6 to 18 months; second, the climatic fingerprints of the PDO are most visible in the North Pacific/North American sector, while secondary signatures exist in the tropics – the opposite is true for ENSO. Several independent studies find evidence for just two full PDO cycles in the past century: “cool” PDO regimes prevailed from 1890-1924 and again from 1947-1976, while “warm” PDO regimes dominated from 1925-1946 and from 1977 through (at least) the mid-1990’s. Shoshiro Minobe has shown that 20th century PDO fluctuations were most energetic in two general periodicities, one from 15-to-25 years, and the other from 50-to-70 years..
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
What is the AMO?
The AMO is an ongoing series of long-duration changes in the sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean, with cool and warm phases that may last for 20-40 years at a time and a difference of about 1°F between extremes. These changes are natural and have been occurring for at least the last 1,000 years.
Girma | May 5, 2012 at 9:05 pm |
All of which adds up to diminish, not add, to your claims. Subtract the AMO, PDO, ENSO and Arctic circulation effects from GMT, and what do you get?
Let’s use the dataset that already has subtracted most of these, BEST:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/mean:59/mean:61/from:1900/plot/jisao-pdo/compress:60/scale:-0.25/plot/esrl-amo/compress:60/scale:-0.25/from:1900
And there we have a problem with your contention. Up to 1980, there’s a case to be made for correlation with PDO, but that entirely vanishes in 1980 and runs counter to the trend. AMO has a slightly better fit over the long run, but it’s known to only be about an order of magnitude of the size of the change, and with both these oscillations we see — as we see in the Arctic — the better explanation is that they follow the GMT influence, not lead it. On top of that, as the kinetic energy in the oscillations comes from the same source as the heat, so you really can’t talk about them and their influence without considering GHE intrinsic to it. They’re certainly not behaving the same today as they behaved a century ago, appearing to display signs of period doubling.
UHI might be contributing about the same amount, but as we see from HadCRUT4, when you remove cities you get a higher rise in GMT than when you include them.
So really, there’s large room to doubt your claims.
Girma, I have to agree with Bart R, you should expand your horizons. You have gotten about all you can get out of global “average” temperatures.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/GISSsimpleregression.png
A simple linear regression of the tropics and extents gives a reasonable range of expected temperatures for the year 2100. Since there is no proof that we know what “average” should be, those are based on the mean of the full record.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/UAHsimpleregression.png
Likewise, you can use the tropics and extents with the UAH satellite data, using the 1981 to 2010 baseline, since that is nearly the mean of the whole record and get another range of rough estimates.
You will note that the tropics and southern extent in both cases have very similar end points while there is considerable difference in the northern extent trends.
Since CO2 forcing should be somewhat uniform, the northern extent difference may indicate non-GHG impacts. See, simple easy, no definitive statements, just a logical inference that some other factor may be involved.
Then to further expand your horizons, you could include the annual sea ice variation. Since freezing salt water produces denser sea water that sinks and the fresher ice is formed, an area about the size of Australia forms an melts each season the rate of the sinking denser water which feeds a portion of the thermalhaline ocean circulation is approximately 10 cm per second, you could determine that the travel time for the flow from pole to pole is approximately 60.9 years.
Then by comparing the melt/freezing rates for the Antarctic with the satellite data for the same period, you could infer that some portion of the AMO is related to Antarctic temperatures and that variation in the Arctic sea ice melt rate would shift the intensity of the AMO magnitude.
That should provide you with a little more complete theory than “they’re wrong” You have a chance of determining just how wrong “they” are :)
Thanks Dallas
Girma.
The IPCC scnearios show warming of 1.4C to 4C over
the 1980 to 1999 PEROID.
Your chart is wrong. it always has been wrong and continues to be wrong.
Steven
Do you mean to say I should take the average range not the maximum?
Steven
I took the value from the following:
The uncertainty ranges derived from the above percentages for the warming by 2090 to 2099 relative to 1980 to 1999 are 1.1°C to 2.9°C, 1.4°C to 3.8°C, 1.7°C to 4.4°C, 1.4°C to 3.8°C, 2.0°C to 5.4°C and 2.4°C to 6.4°C for the scenarios B1, B2, A1B, A1T, A2 and A1FI, respectively.
Thanks.
I did know it was relative value.
In that case, I have to ADD 0.4 deg C to the IPCC’s projection range.
I did NOT know it was relative values
They do predict most of North America will be 1C warmer than 1999 by 2020/2029 under all scenarios.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-spm-6.html
..than the 1980-1999 average… Big difference. Less than 1 degree, more like 0.6-0.8, also big difference. Why do you want to exaggerate the IPCC projection? It is consistent with a rate of 0.15-0.2 degrees per decade.
HADCRUT3 average for 1980-1999 = .1616
HADCRUT3 2011 = .339
Do you think it will warm .82C by 2020?
The color they used is 1C to 1.4999C.
Do you think The USA will warm by 1.32C by 2029/2029?
HADCRUT has a trend of .5 degrees in 30 years, so it could easily reach 0.8 by 2029 even without much of an acceleration.
The USA is only 2% of the earth’;s area. predicting it to any detail is a crap-shoot.
“2% of the earths area”.
Not that old deflection. 7% of the land.
HADCRUT3 has Jan 2011 and Jan 2012 as cold as 1942/944.
http://i47.tinypic.com/2ez5ykp.jpg
And 2011 was only .219C warmer than 1981 … 0.073C / decade
You notice how La Nina years have been getting warmer. La Ninas are now like extreme El Ninos used to be, as you showed.
Back to back La Nina’s as strong as the big one in 98/99.
And another 20 years or more of a cold PDO with lots more La Nina’s than El Nino’s.
http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.jpg
Girma, your own chart posted at 8:52pm proves your chart posted at 7:56pm was wrong, it seems.
The mistake he makes is perhaps one of the stupidest I have ever seen by a Phd.
Steven
the best estimate for the high scenario (A1FI) is 4.0°C (likely range is 2.4°C to 6.4°C).
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
What is wrong with that Steve?
Do you think the initial rate for the extreme that ends up at 6.4 C is 0.64 degrees per decade? Your crude line drawing leaves this impression.
.64C per decade seems right for the 2020-2029 scenario.
They predict 2C rise in the Arctic by 2020/2029 from 1999.
Middle set of graphs.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-spm-6.html
sushine, I think Girma’s graph was for global, but he can correct you on that himself.
PS Why do they use a 2 decade base line for predicting one decade temperatures. Seems ….. dishonest.
“… one of the stupidest …”
I vote for this one:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13721-sea-levels-will-rise-15-metres-by-2100.html
Steven,
Is Girma’s mistake as large as claiming we are experiencing unprecedented extreme weather and the world is experiencing a climate crisis?
The billboards just repeated the adage, “By their friends shall ye know them.”
The implication is that it’s because of shared motives. Could be!
Well, I’d go to Heartland, this year, to meet Lucia, or Steve Mosher, or
Judith Curry, or Steve McIntyre, or Anthony Watts, but, frankly, it looks
pretty political. Chris Christie seems to be the pick o’the litter, this year.
….Lady in Red
That is kind of you. I’ve met gavin, john cook, scott mandia, tim palmer, peter webster, judith, mc, anthony, willis, tallbloke, ross, nick stokes, , goddard, smokey, fuller, leif, leifs wife, von storch, muller
all charming and nice.
Doubtful
LOL
I think this can’t be repeated too often.
If people stopped to think about it from time to time – that a person’s views on a subject usually do not reflect what sort of a person they are – we might have more polite discourse.
Some interesting developments in ATI’s struggle to get access to Mann’s UVa emails, see this post at the ATI blog. Things didn’t go too well for Mann at the latest hearing.
Puzzling item – the link is to a may 30, 2011 post. At the latest hearing, the only outcome was that the judge denied two ATI motions. This seems to be more suckering from ATI spin.
http://bit.ly/2X21Vg
Very logical. Thank you.
Kim @ 5/5 11.12am: lol … Is this the elephant designed by the committee?
Yesterday, there was this post
R. Gates | May 5, 2012 at 11:05 am |
Hard to say where you fit in. You claim you are convinced that adding more CO2 from current levels has no discernible effect on the climate, yet there is absolutely no body of scientific research to support your conviction, and much that would say the opposite. For you to be so readily convinced of something with lot’s of evidence saying the exact opposite, would push you into the denier category.
@@@@@@@@@
I responded with a somewhat lenghty post at
Jim Cripwell | May 5, 2012 at 11:53 am |
R. Gates, you write “yet there is absolutely no body of scientific research to support your conviction, and much that would say the opposite. ”
On the contrary, I have the very best of scientific data to support my position
@@@@@@@
Since then, R. Gates seems to have disappeared. As I have noted before, our hostess has provided a level playing field for us to discuss the science behind CAGW. However, when I present my idea of the science, all I seem to get is silence from the proponents of CAGW. It would be nice to hear some sort of response from R. Gates, but I am not holding my breath.
It occurs to me that, horrors of horrors, I just might have the science right.
Eeeeeasy Jim lad. Let our man R Gates have a breath and enjoy his weekend – perhaps he’s one of those odd people with a real life, ie outside of blogging :-) Ignoring the last few days, by and large he’s been quite measured and helpful I thought. So don’t chase him off …
Punksta, Agreed. It is the same problem I have waiting for a CO2 signal to appear in any temperature/time graph. How long do we wait beofre we conclude that there never will be a signal? How long do I wait for a reply from R. Gates before I conclude he is not going to reply? If I have jumped the gun, I apologise.
“How long do we wait beofre we conclude that there never will be a signal?”
What would this “CO2 signal” look like?
Steady warming trend from 1950 in 95% of the temperature stations.
Sunshinehours, why steady? Shoudn’t it be accelerating, according to the “hypothesis”?
Edim, good questions. I think the hypothesis is so general it means nothing, but maybe some AGWer can narrow it down.
You started by claiming the surface temperature records were good data:
“We have excellent data on global temperatures for the time since CAGW is supposed to have started, and good data for the previous 100+ years.”
Which is odd because I thought according to a lot of climate skeptics the surface temperature records are a useless collection of fudged adjustments by Hansen and Phil Jones upon faulty data (UHI, AC Units, Airports, etc). That’s a rampant belief among climate skeptics. Do you not share it?
“This data clearly shows that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has absolutely no discernable effect whatsoever on the characterisitcs of the temperature/time graph. If you can show me a temperature/time graph where the effects of adding CO2 to the atmosphere are clearly visible”
There are actually three possibilities, not the two you suggest:
1) The temperature record clearly shows an effect from adding CO2.
2) The temperature record clearly shows no effect from adding CO2.
3) The temperature record is not expected to clearly show either way.
#3 is correct.
“Further, no-one has, as yet, been able to MEASURE the climate sensitivity of CO2. What I had drummed in to my head during Physics 101 at Cavendish Labs, Cambriodge, was that if you cannot measure it, then you dont know what it is.”
You never calculated anything?
Thanks, lolwot, for providing a reply.
You write “3) The temperature record is not expected to clearly show either way.
#3 is correct”
This gets down to the nitty gritty. Why is 3 correct? Surely, if CO2 is going to make temperatures climb rapidly enough so that CAGW is real, eventually there must be a CO2 signal. 3 simply cannot be correct into the indefinite fufure; otherwise CAGW is wrong. So, implicit in your statement, there must be a time limit as to when a CO2 signal must appear. What is this time limit? How long do we have to wait for a CO2 signal to appear?
You also wrote “You never calculated anything?”
Of course I calculated lots of things. That is not the issue. Where calculations are based on what we call the laws of physics, we know the calculations are always going to turn out to be correct. We can predict the time and place of solar eclipses way into the future, because we know that every time anyone has ever done this, it always turns out to be correct.
However, when we estimate what may happen in the future, that is an entirely different issue. This is the case for the climate sensitivitry of CO2. With no feedback climate sensitivity, the value of 1 C for a doubling of CO2 is based on the assumption that this estimation can be made by only looking at the radiative term. This assumption has never been justified, so there is reason to believe that estimations based on this value for climate sensitivity could be wrong. In these circumstances, we need to measure the value, so as to be certain that the original estimation was indeed, correect. That is the difference.
In 1981 Hansen predicted that the CO2 signal would emerge in 1990, and be seen as a warming that is several standard deviations above the natural variability of the 20th century. It did. You seem to be behind the curve a little, so to speak.
Of course – he gets to define the natural variability. I wonder what he says in 2020. Aerosols?
He defined it from the standard deviation of the previous decades of 20th century climate. How would you define it?
Jim D you writes “In 1981 Hansen predicted that the CO2 signal would emerge in 1990, and be seen as a warming that is several standard deviations above the natural variability of the 20th century. It did. You seem to be behind the curve a little, so to speak.”
If you are correct, why is it not possible to calculate the climate sensitivity of CO2 from this signal? And if it is possible, why hasn’t someone done it? Or if they have done it, what is the value?
Do you have a link for that Hansen prediction? Maybe I don’t know the exact details of his analysis, but to me it looks, even a bit of fudge didn’t help.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1900/to:1980/plot/gistemp/from:1981
Several standard deviations? On which planet did the signal emerge?
I predict a trend like this for 2000 – 20 (1934 – 54), maybe even more cooling:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1900/to:1980/plot/gistemp/from:1981/plot/gistemp/from:1934/to:1954/trend
I wonder who will be closer.
Edim | May 6, 2012 at 11:54 am |
/www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:59/mean:61/from:1900/to:1980/plot/gistemp/mean:59/mean:61/from:1980/plot/gistemp/from:1934/to:1954/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1954/to:1974/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1974/to:2002/trend
You predict it for 2000-2020? Why not for 2002-2012?
After all, everything else after 1980 seems to be moving about twice as fast as before 1960, if we’re attempting to portray the GMT as being self-similar. It would make sense for higher temperature level to reflect faster drivers of change, and shorter phases. If your model method holds.
Which would make 2012-2022 like 1954-1974 (ie same rise, twice as fast), and 2022-2037 like 1974-2002, again same rise only twice as fast, if your model of self-similarity holds. Then the whole thing would repeat, only four times as fast as the past eight decades, giving us the same rise again by 2054 as we’ve had since 1934. If that’s what you’re saying.
Bart, it doesn’t repeat, it rhymes. The cooling will be stronger and longer than the mid-20th-century cooling, in my prediction (solar activity caused).
Edim, Hansen’s 1981 Science paper has been much talked about recently. Here is one link from Realclimate
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/evaluating-a-1981-temperature-projection/
The paper itself is worth a read. It is understandable to non-specialists too. Considering when it was written, it was ahead of its time. The 3rd column on page 964 is where he talks about sigma levels and the signal emerging from the noise in the 90’s.
Jim Cripwell, you say someone should compute climate sensitivity from the temperature record. The temperature record is consistent with a sensitivity of over 2 degrees per doubling, which predicts 0.15-0.2 degrees per decade of warming currently, becoming greater in the future, The last decade was 0.15 degrees warmer than the previous one, and this still holds despite the so-called pause.
Edim | May 6, 2012 at 12:42 pm |
You have a good means for predicting solar activity?
And this solar cooling.. it matches past observations in any way how again?
You appear to be reasoning from the foregone conclusion.
Jim, thanks for the link. He says that the standard deviation for the full century is only 0.2 °C? That cannot be correct.
Bart, current solar activity affects the cooling. It needs time to develop.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=11917887
Edim, we are getting used to a swing of 0.5 degrees in decadal averages only now. It never used to be that way. It needs to be realized how unusual the last 50 years have been.
Jim, that’s exactly what I’m not convinced of and I don’t know how you can believe that. AGW variability looks just like the pre-AGW variability. My lying eyes?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/hadcrut4gl
People often bring up 1910-1940 but that swing was from below average to above average. the recent one was from above average to more above average, making it unusual, and without a parallel in the record.
Jim, why would it matter, below or above the average? Below average natural, above average anthropogenic? It reminds me of “four legs good, two legs bad!”.
If ALL of the 1910-1940 warming was natural (lets call it x) , then a reasonable person must assume that warming after 1950 (lets call it y) is a result of x + CO2.
x+ CO2 = y
.7C + CO2 = .7C
CO2 = 0
The average is set by the sun, albedo, GHGs and aerosols. We are changing the average. It never used to change this much. That’s the point.
sunshine, there is a restoring force to the average (it is called energy conservation). It is much harder to add enough energy to get from 0.1 degrees above average to 0.3, than to go from -0.1 to +0.1. Similar things happen with springs around their average length.
The last down and flat period lasted from 44 to 79.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1909/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1909/to:1943/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1977/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1943/to:1977/trend
We are only 14 years into the cold flat 35 year period.
and the next flat period might also be 0.6 degrees warmer than this one. When you find a flat period after the temperature goes below average, then you would have a point, but this just shows the average is increasing.
The average decreased into the LIA without CO2. The average might have increased after the LIA without CO2.
Periods of more sunshine due to cloud changes added energy to the system …
http://i40.tinypic.com/xgfyok.jpg
http://i51.tinypic.com/eb3pmb.jpg
http://i55.tinypic.com/34qk01z.jpg
And the albedo changed.
http://www.arm.ac.uk/slides/epb/
What percentage of the microscopic warming was caused by CO2. Zero is a distinct possibility.
sunshine, a distinct possibility is that warming while cloud cover decreases kills the idea of a negative cloud feedback, and is also consistent with the continents warming fastest (e.g. see BEST). As continents warm relative to the oceans they become less cloudy, which feeds back to droughts and heating. So becoming less cloudy is a consequence of warming, which in turn is a consequence of increasing CO2.
It isn’t warming. It isn’t warmer than the 1942/44 peak on land or in the oceans. UHI and the dying and lowering of the thermometers accounts for microscopic differences.
The 30-year average is still going up with every “flat” year. I define that as climatic warming. It hasn’t stopped as you can clearly see if you use a 30-year running mean on any temperature series.
HADCRUT3.
Colder than the 42/44 peak. Now. Land and Sea.
No wonder they are so desperate to replace HADCRUT3.
“Colder than 70 years ago” is not a rallying cry designed to keep the con going … but it would be true.
The last 30 years are 0.5 degrees warmer than the 30-year period centered on the 40’s. Does that not mean anything to you? You seem to be a bit oblivious for not noticing this, but I think many skeptics have this form of blindness when it comes to dealing with facts that have actual statistical significance.
The warmest 10 year period in Tennessee occurred before 1940.
https://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/tennessee_1921.png
There are numerous states (21) that have the warming/cooling/warming/cooling shape with the 35 year cold period right in the middle of supposed CO2 warming.
Its no surprise Mueller and BEST try and claim CO2 only started to have an effect from 1950 … they picked the nice cold period to start their graphs and it all appears dramatic.
Explain that big cold 35 year period just when CO2 “supposedly” started to warm the planet.
Why did the temperatures fall off a cliff around 1955/58?
https://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/mississippi_1895.png
https://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/arkansas_1895.png
https://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/south-carolina_1895.png
etc
sunshinehours1 | May 6, 2012 at 5:11 pm |
From ’44 to ’77?
Surely, at least from ’34 to ’77, no?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1909/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1909/to:1943/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1977/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1934/to:1977/trend
And while from a certain point of view this may put us 14 years into a 43 year cooling period, it could also put us 24 years into a 43 year cooling period, too. Or 29 years in, or 33 years in..
We can’t tell when such an observation-defined phase begins until we know when it ends in the observations; as we don’t know if has ended or when, we can’t know when it’s begun.
Endpoints will screw up anyone in graphical analysis. http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-gamblers-fallacy
Edim | May 6, 2012 at 2:01 pm |
I see 150 years of observations which show a remarkable solar signal in GMT; one of the truly remarkable pieces of evidence for the influence of the sun in not just millennial but also decadal GMT.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/mean:41/mean:61/isolate:123/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:11/mean:13/scale:-0.001/from:1810/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:11/mean:13/scale:-0.001/from:1960
And it ended by 1960.
The sun is only something the GMT used to know.
“Surely, at least from ’34 to ’77, no?”
LOL!!!!
Thats hilarious.
Still climbing in 34. All the way to 44.
sunshine, your logic is that global cooling will follow now because the southeast corner of the US was cooling 60 years ago? Does that sum it up, or did I miss a step in your argument? Sounds airtight to me.
Cooling FROM 1921.
And while I have not had a chance to graph the data myself … take a look at all the deep blue in the latest HADCRUT4.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/figures/anomalies.png
-3C to -5c cooling in the USA from the 1961-1990 baseline!
-10C cooling in Russia and Alaska.
Sure, some of the earth has warmed according to the CRU … but from 1961-1990? That encompasses some of the coldest periods since 1910. Or course it will appear a little warmer.
If they used a 1920-1940 baseline most of the globe would be blue.
that’s a single month, December 2010 compared with the average. It’s not trends over time.
Its December 2010 because thats where HADCRUT4 stopped at.
The relevant part is that 61-90 was pretty damned cold.
Temperature fell of a cliff just before 1961 and didn’t recover until the last 1980s.
https://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/alabama_19211.png
Thats a damned cold baseline.
Jim,
Feel free to display your “very best scientific” data that supports your position. As a open minded scientific person, I welcome all and any new data. The vast preponderance of evidence I have reviewed in studying this issue for the past 25+ years would say quite clearly that if we go to 560 ppm CO2, the issue isn’t whether the world (meaning troposphere and oceans) will get warmer, but the issue is only how much and what the effects will be. But please, bring on your data Mr. Cripwell!
R Gates The logarithmic curve of co2 seems to suggest that there would be little extra warming if pre industrial levels doubled.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
What is your opinion?
tonyb
Tony, Gates does not realize that the weight of evidence is in the eye of the beholder. The vast preponderance of evidence I have reviewed in studying this issue for the past 20+ years would say quite clearly that AGW is false. And we have looked at the same evidence. So his pronouncement carries no weight. Only specifics count, such as the one you raise, the log die-off of forcing.
My opinion is that those who would propose that the logarithmic curve of CO2 in any way suggests no additional warming if pre-industrial levels simply don’t know very much about radiative transfer and how saturation of CO2 in the atmosphere actually works. I don’t blame them, as it is actually pretty complicated stuff, but I do blame them if they simply believe what is posted on a skeptical blog rather than do some deeper reading on the subject from a wide variety or sources. I would highly suggest that anyone serious about actually learning about the science behind AGW read “The Warming Papers” (available on Amazon) cover to cover. If you don’t have the time and money for that, but are serious about understanding the true science and physics behind CO2 and the saturation effect in the atmosphere, one of the very best postings on this can be found here:
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/05/12/co2-an-insignificant-trace-gas-part-eight-saturation/
The above post is just part 8 of an 8 part series about this, but really, anyone who is serious about this subject and who really wants to try to get a handle on the actual science behind what CO2 really does as it relates to radiative transfer in the atmosphere and doesn’t want to read The Warming Papers, ought to at least read the complete series from the above link starting at the very beginning here:
http://scienceofdoom.com/2009/11/28/co2-an-insignificant-trace-gas-part-one/
Here’s the thing to keep in mind. We’ve only seen the transient climate response (TCR) to our current 392 ppm of CO2, and have not yet seen the equilibrium climate response (ECR) as it takes many decades to unfold…i.e. the cryosphere is responding to levels of CO2 we had met years ago, and will be responding many years from now to our current level, even if they somehow froze at 392 ppm) but we never will know what the ECR would be from 1990’s, 2002’s, or today’s level because the atmosphere continues to accumulate more and more greenhouse gases every year, far faster than the longer-term equilibrium response will take.
Here’s my current view on the issue of TCR/ECR and what final average global temperature increase of the lower troposphere we might end up with if we are so fortunate as to halt the rise in CO2 at 560 ppm.
The TCR for the lower troposphere might be as low as 1.5C per doubling of CO2 from per-industrial levels, but all that is fairly unimportant, as it is the ECR that really matters in the long term as it is what effects ecosystems, weather patterns, etc.. Where will the temperatures settle once the system has seen all negative and positive slower Earth System feedbacks play out? 3C as an ECR is a pretty reasonable estimate, given that numerous studies give a range for the TCR/ECR ratio from about 0.4 to 0.8. Also, paleoclimate data from the Pliocene and Miocene (the last time CO2 levels were this high or higher) indicate temperatures 3C or more higher. So both the climate models and the paleoclimate data would suggest that a 3C increase for a lower tropospheric ECR is a pretty reasonable, in the range estimate for an Earth that goes from 280 to 560 ppm of CO2. Of course, given the rapidity (from a geologic perspective) with which CO2 (and other GH gases) is increasing, it is entirely possible that various components of the slower earth-system response could lag others, meaning that, even halting the concentration of CO2 at 560 ppm could lead to an over-shoot situation whereby temperatures increase by 4.5C or even higher before settling back at the 3C higher level for the equilibrium response.
Since it began warming at the end of the LIA, would you care to speculate on how much of the recent warming is due to the TCR of recent forcings and how much of the recent warming is due to the ECR of earlier forcings?
Steven,
if you want to try and say “it’s been warming” since the end of the LIA, (which many AGW skeptics like to insist upon), you need to first define exactly what “it” is that has been warming (i.e. troposphere, oceans, N. Hemisphere, S. Hemisphere. winter, summer, etc.), and then define exactly when you’re suggesting this loosely defined period of time known as the LIA did in fact come to an end.
But I do understand what you’re trying to get at (at least if it’s an honest question and not some skeptical talking point you’re simply parroting). So let’s assume you really want to discuss this. First define for me exactly what is that is warming, and the define when you think the LIA ended. Once you do that, perhaps we can look for an answer by looking at the science.
“Steven,
if you want to try and say “it’s been warming” since the end of the LIA, (which many AGW skeptics like to insist upon), you need to first define exactly what “it” is that has been warming (i.e. troposphere, oceans, N. Hemisphere, S. Hemisphere. winter, summer, etc.), and then define exactly when you’re suggesting this loosely defined period of time known as the LIA did in fact come to an end.”
During the LIA glaciers globally were advancing, and it is generally regarded as ending when most of these glaciers began a retreating: 1850.
Some glaciers formed during LIA may completely disappear within 50 or so years.
As measuring device it could said to be the advancement of glacial globally- hence the term, Little Ice Age.
But glaciers take time to response to warming and cooling conditions and of course one needs accumulation of snow that seasonally falls, compared to amount the melts and/or evaporates.
Or as wiki says:
“There is no agreed beginning year of the Little Ice Age, although there is a frequently referenced series of events preceding the known climatic minima. Starting in the 13th century, pack ice began advancing southwards in the North Atlantic, as did glaciers in Greenland…
1250 for when Atlantic pack ice began to grow
1275 to 1300 based on radiocarbon dating of plants killed by glaciation
1300 for when warm summers stopped being dependable in Northern Europe
1315 for the rains and Great Famine of 1315–1317
1550 for theorized beginning of worldwide glacial expansion
1650 for the first climatic minimum.
The Little Ice Age ended in the latter half of the 19th century or early in the 20th century”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
R. Gates said, “First define for me exactly what is that is warming, and the define when you think the LIA ended. Once you do that, perhaps we can look for an answer by looking at the science.”
Actually, I would like to get into that discussion. The oceans of course would be warming. There is a fairly good indication that global sea surface temperatures have been below average for the past 1000 to 1500 years are so depending on which part of the globe you consider. The internal quasi-oscillation between the northern and southern hemispheres makes is hard to nail down. Since the southern has a greater percentage ocean area, I prefer the southern hemisphere.
I even did a crude paleo proxy using southern South American and Tasmainian proxies
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/JustforgrinUAHsouthernhemispheresplicefrom900.png
The proxies were tree rings, Neukum et al for the SSA and I will have to look up the author of the Tasmania reconstruction, which do not give a very confident indication of absolute temperature, but a fair indication of average conditions and extreme shifts, with mainly volcanic causes in most cases. The general shifts agree fairly well with the HADSST2 data set I spliced using the mean of the common period. Crude, unscientific, pick your favorite term, but It actually agrees about as well as any other attempt I have seen for a SH reconstruction. Conclusion? it was cooler now it is warmer. Really stuck my neck out on that one :)
Adding the SH UAH data just indicates how the atmospheric temperatures vary with respect to sea surface temperatures. AQUA data also shows the seasonal relationship between sea surface and atmospheric temperatures.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/playingwithaquauptothestratosphere.png
Now I can confidently expand my conclusion to it was cooler and now warmer with oceans doing their thing out of phase with the atmosphere. Believe it or not that is significant.
So out of curiosity, I compared the UAH tropics and extents, detrended just to see annual relative changes,
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/UAHdetrendedtropicsandextents.png Indeed, the Southern extent varies less than the northern extent and even the tropics. Pretty stable down there, relatively speaking.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/GISSdetrendedtropicsandextents.png
Comparing GISS tropics and extents, also detrended, there is little variation early in any of the regions and rather dramatic out of phase changes later. Hmmm?
That is a bit odd. After my crude detrending of mean sea level to the UAH, finding a rather impressive correlation and comparing UAH to solar also finding a rather impressive correlation, CO2 forcing to UAH land only and finding a rather impressive correlation, UAH south pole and finding a rather impressive correlation to sea ice change, I tend to suspect that there may be an issue or two with the surface station data.
Mind you, this is all very unscientific, but since HADCRU4 adjusted to the Northern high latitude weighting, the surface stations tend to diverge even more from what appears to be a reality.
http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/staff/stevensbjorn/Documents/StevensSchwartz2012.pdf It appears some more scientifically inclined individuals also seem to think the satellite era data value is under appreciated in some circles.
So yes, there are a few that believe that OHC regain from prolonged below average conditions is not properly considered.
Then again I am just another loonie denier that can’t possibly appreciate the complexity of the situation :)
Oh, you might also note that the range of Antarctic sea ice seasonal variability is trending to more stable conditions, possible due to a natural climate shift. I believe that has some impact on the deep ocean currents.
But it hasn’t been warming “since the end of the Little Ice Age”. There was no warming in the second half of the 19C/start of the 20C.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:1920/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1850/to:1920/trend
Rather difficult to “define what has been warming” since they simply refuse to release the ARGO and satellite data from 1600 on. Using reconstructions can certainly tell us how much ECR there should be remaining from the forcings that caused the warming from 1600 to 1950. It is a simple and logical question that I have yet to see anyone attempt to answer. How much of the most recent warming is TCR and how much is ECR?
gbaikie | May 7, 2012 at 1:25 am |
It’s been warming since the last glaciation.
gbaikie
the version of the LIA you gave came from the Connelley version of wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Little_Ice_Age&action=history
Tony has references to paintings of satellites and sonobuoys from the Renaissance and Baroque eras that you can try to decode.
Andrew … no warming?
The temperature in the last 1800s fluctuated by 1.75C over periods as short as a decade.
The was utterly amazing warming and cooling going on.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:1850/to:1900
Feb 1878 anomaly was .364
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
That means it was warmer than Feb 2011 and Feb 2012.
You can’t see the trend easily because it was HUGE!!!!!!!
Of course you are going to get individual months, or periods of several months even which are extreme in one direction or the other. That happens now and it will always be the case, although I would guess the fact that records for that period are less reliable than today will mean that such outliers would be more likely. That’s just natural variation – the overall trend over that period was virtually flat.
“the overall trend over that period was virtually flat”
And that is the whole point of creating a global temperature … to con people into think temperature is flat or gradually rising when it is chaotic.
Temperatures even at the state level fluctuate by 3F or more from one year to the next.
https://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/alabama_19211.png
But if you throw enough of them into the sausage maker you can con people into think a possible rise of .7C over 100 years is unusual.
Thats why groups like BEST and HADCRUT hate graphing smaller regions. It ruins the con.
R Gates
Thanks for this. I suspect I might have read many of the papers in the book as they seem to be historic ones, but nevertheless I will try to get hold of it. I have been following the science of doom articles from the start.
I’m surprised they don’t get more widely referenced.
It strikes me this would be an interesting subject for a thread-those promoting the logarithmic curve are-in my opinion-as knowlegable as those who believe it has flaws.
tonyb
Sunshine,
http://c1planetsavecom.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2012/04/warminbg-hole2_43090_web.jpg
Sunshine,
Of course local temperatures will vary far more than the gobal average temperature, which is why it’s not very meaningful to claim “it’s warming” or “it’s cooling” based on temperature changes in a particular location, at least over relatively short periods of time. Of course it is those individual locations which will be affected by changes in climate so sometimes we do need to know what’s happening at loccal level but sometimes we need to know what is happening to the earth as a whole, so for that we need the global average temperature, even if it is a somewhat artificial construct.
The claim I was originally responding to is that the earth has been warming since the LIA, which is clearly a reference to global temperatures. I was merely pointing out that if we look at the global temperature record we can see this is not true.
andrew, I’ll repeat myself. In the 1800s there was warming. A lot of it. And cooling. HADCRUT has temperatures fluctuating by 1.75C.
At some point it was even as warm as it is now.
However, NOW is colder than the 1944 peak of the last natural cycle.
Climatereason,
I would be interested to know what you consider a reasonable estimate for the duration of the LIA, as personally I find the Wiki explanation rather unsatisfactory. Given that the maunder minimum usually associated with the LIA lasted from 1645 to 1715, and looking at the temperature reconstructions I would say that a reasonable estimate would be from the early 17th to the late 18th century. Would you agree?
R. Gates,
From reading you here for awhile, you are simply parroting things you read elsewhere regarding CO2 and radiative transfer. You hope to distract from that by pretending skeptics are not as smart as you.
R. Gates,
Your attempt at pretending skeptics do not follow the science implies that you are not sure if things have warmed since the LIA. Have they not warmed since the LIA? Have they cooled since the LIA? Are we in the LIA?
Were glaciers advancing until the mid 20th century?
Ah c’mon Hunter! Uncalled for. Mr/Ms Gates makes clear arguments pretty politely.
Here’s another way to look at this issue of climate change involving energy flows rather than temperatures. I actually prefer this way as it gets more to the actual physical effects of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations– that is, the actual effect is one of an external forcing altering the energy balance of the planet. Have a look at this study:
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/huber11natgeo.pdf
There is much to digest in this study, and the methods section is worth a few passes. But the results are strong additional confirmatory evidence of human impact on the climate…all from an energy flow perspective. Some may not appreciate how unique and strong this kind of study is in support of the general theory of AGW, but I especially find it insightful in how it breaks out different types of forcing (natural, anthropogenic, cooling, warming) from natural internal variability, AND gives well defined and well reasoned bands of uncertainty. The conclusion is not unique– humans are warming the oceans and atmosphere– but the process of looking at energy flows is, IMO, on the right track. Combining this study with more finely focused attribution studies is yielding some valuable insights– and the best part is, they will be fairly neutral to the models and might even help refine future models.
In regards to warming after the LIA, by 1900 at the absolute latest the climate had certainly recovered, but this is a broad and general statement, as we already, even in 1900, are getting some small net warming from human activity, thus, the very end of the LIA recovery crosses over with the start of the industrial revolution and so separating the two becomes difficult. Energy flow studies such as the one referenced above can help illuminate this cross over period, and so if you look at the graph at the top of page 4 and focus on the period around 1900, you can see the beginning stages of stronger anthropogenic influence.
R, “humans are warming the thermometers”
It is called UHI. NASA satellite suggests 7C – 9C in US cities in the northeast in the summer.
The US population has quadrupled since 1900.
Any warming signal is just UHI.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/heat-island-sprawl.html
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00509.1
I don’t think it is any surprise that the counties that grew the least or shrunk from 1900 to 2010 had the lowest temperature rise.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/county-population-statistics-and-coolingwarming-stations-since-1900/
R. Gates, even the IPCC shows net positive natural forcings until mid 20th century. The obviously don’t believe in or don’t take into account a significant ERC since they show natural forcings going down immediately upon a small decrease in solar cycle intensity. It really doesn’t matter if the forcings causing warming in the early 20th century were anthropogenic or natural (and some of that would be ECR not TCR), the ECR would still be present and because of this all the warming in the latter half of the 20th century couldn’t possibly be TCR. The higher you argue for a ECR value the lower you are arguing for a TCR value. I tend to agree with the IPCC. The ECR is either so slow or so small as to be worthy of ignoring. I know they agree with this because they show natural forcings as a negative value immediately upon a small dip in solar cycle intensity in mid 20th century.
David, It would be nice if more time were spent on the ERL or ARL, (energy radiation level or average radiation level). It is confusing and not very consistently defined. It should be defined as levels, distinguishing the sources of the energy and the radiant gases.
Of the energy in the atmosphere, most is transferred from the surface via evaporation, next solar absorption, surface outgoing long wave absorbed then surface convective/conductive energy. Separating each source, the impact that one changing has on the others is easier to follow in my opinion. The simple OLR, DWLR and atmospheric window version of ERL, is very misleading and would result in an overestimation of radiant impact. In fact, it is probably the one worst mistake in attempting to describe the atmospheric effect.
Sunshine,
Yes, brief interludes of warming and cooling, as one would expect, but that’s just “noise” – there is no sustained trend.
And yes, you managed to find one freakishly warm month in 1944 which was warmer than the equivalent month in 2012. That’s completely meaningless, it’s beyond cherry-picking.
Not just 1944. 1942 was almost as warm.
The 1942/44 peak was the end result of 30 years of natural warming starting in 1909/1910.
And then it cooled. And you would have people believe the cooling was noise and then it warmed. And that wasn’t noise.
In the world of R Gates : Cooling and previous high points are noise, but the 1998 high point wasn’t noise.
The reality is … its all natural noise. No Co2 signal.
And the last two months of the HADCRUT3 record is COLDER than 1878.
And the tiny bit of temperature higher than 1942, 1944 and 1878.
Noise. And UHI.
hunter,
Why don’t you actually try addressing the arguments that R. gates is making, then the rest of us can judge for ourselves who really understands this stuff.
Sunshine,
I’m not sure what data you are using but I can’t see a single month in the global record for 1942 which is nearly as warm as it is now year . In any case, single months mean nothing – they are “noise” whether they are warmer or cooler.
If your arguments is that temperatures can go up and down very sharply over very short periods of time then we are in agreement. But what is being discussed here is “warming since the LIA” which means we have to look at long term trends. Saying it has both warmed and cooled over very short periods during that time doesn’t tell us anything.
But I think we may be going round in circles.
Andrew: “I’m not sure what data you are using but I can’t see a single month in the global record for 1942 which is nearly as warm as it is now ”
I found 3 very recent months.
Jan 1942 – 0.215C
Jan 2008 – 0.053C
Jan 2011 – 0.194C
Jan 2012 – 0.217C
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
1878 too.
Feb 1878 – 0.364C
Mar 1878 – 0.322C
Feb 2011 – 0.259C
Mar 2011 – 0.322C
Feb 2012 – 0.194C
Mar 2012 – 0.305C
Jan 1944 was even warmer than Jan 1942
Jan 1944 – 0.240C
Andrew: “If your arguments is that temperatures can go up and down very sharply over very short periods of time then we are in agreement”
And over a long time. Temperatures fluctuated as much as 1.75C in the 1800s. Theres not reason why they can go slightly above 1944 or 1878 from a few years and slip down below 1878 and 1942/44 for a few years.
If the CO2 theory was true it would be impossible for .2C or .4C fluctuations to take temperature back to where they were in 1978 or 1942 or 1944.
Andrew, did you know 1944 was even warmer in the NH.
Jan 1944 – 0.572
Warmer than Jan 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Wow. Warmer than 6 out of the last 7 January’s.
.43C warmer than Jan 2011.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3nh.txt
Jan 1948 0.305 was just .013C cooler than 2012. But it was warmer than 2011 and 2008.
Looking at NH data it is amazing. First 7 months of year:
1875 -0.958 -1.109 -0.948 -0.659 -0.116 -0.071 -0.177
1878 0.135 0.544 0.516 0.555 0.053 0.380 0.070
A 1.653C swing in 3 years for March.
And the AGW cult wants us to panic over microscopic changes. Ha!
Gates, I think this sentence from the abstract of http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/huber11natgeo.pdf says it all: “Based on a massive ensemble of simulations with an intermediate-complexity climate model we demonstrate that known changes in the global energy balance and in radiative forcing tightly constrain the magnitude of anthropogenic warming.”
Not surprisingly they find a lot of anthro forcing. But using a model that has anthro forcing built in to demonstrate anthro forcing is circular reasoning.
From everything we know, variations from energy “balance” should oscillate naturally. Everything in climate oscillates naturally.
You are right David, there are many cycles in climate and weather, and also many non cyclical events as well. Volcanoes would be an example, as are anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases, which represent a non cyclical external forcing on the climate.
I’m quite sure CO2 is the impotent GHG. Despite an increase in bright sunshine in the 90s and a lowering of Albedo in the same time frame, the current temperature is still below peaks in 1944 and 1878.
Ross McKitrick has a fascinating paper out, suggesting that most of the Tropospheric warming in the last 50 years took place in a single step function.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/has-co2-warmed-the-planet-at-all-in-the-last-50-years-its-harder-to-tell-than-you-think/
If so it probably falsifies AGW, as there is no way a gradual GHG buildup can produce a step function. Ross is speaking at the Heartland Climate Conference later this month.
And Girma’s many analyses falsify McKitrick’s. It’s a bit more complicated than that.
How do they falsify McKitrick? Are you saying the step is not there?
Is the step statistically significant?
no david. The point is the theory says nothing about whether there can or cannot be steps. the theory says that if you increase the opacity of the atmosphere in the IR band that the planet will warm.
THAT is the sentence you want to falsify and Ross work says nothing about that proposition. zero zip nada
“The planet will warm”
Every station will warm?
Every station will warm by the same amount?
Some stations (like big cities), will warm a huge amount, some will warm a little, some will cool a little and some will cool a lot?
If 51% of the stations warm and 49% cool, does that count?